Page 179 - James Caan - The Real Deal

16 · Life in the Office

having two beautiful daughters, I still hankered after a son, and I
tried to persuade Aisha that it was time to have another kid. But
Aisha really didn’t want any more children, and even though I
pleaded with her for a couple more years, she wanted to balance
a career with a family, and that meant keeping our household to
a manageable size.
While my parents were in the country, dad came to visit me in
the office and I couldn’t resist showing him a cheque that had just
arrived from a client for £22,000 for placing a single candidate.
His first reaction was that it was a mistake.
‘This is crazy. Do they know what they’re doing?’
‘This is what we do. We’re actually really good at finding the
best people.’
To him, the idea that someone would pay us £22k for one piece
of work was like a joke, and he saw me as just a young guy who’d
come up with a flaky idea. I could almost hear him thinking ‘It’ll
never last.’ He still didn’t take it seriously at all.
That same trip, however, our conversation got very serious. I
had just returned from abroad and was putting my travel
documents away. When he saw my passport he asked me a
question I’d thought I would never have to answer.
‘What’s the name on your passport?’ he said almost casually.
As I turned round to face him, the look in his eyes told me that
my answer was going to hurt him deeply. A few months before I
had made my name change official with a Change of Name deed.
I instantly realised I had made a huge mistake in not telling him
earlier.
‘It’s James Caan.’
There was silence for quite a while. He was really upset. In fact,
to say he was upset is an understatement. He was angry. A
nickname was all right, he said, but don’t lose your identity, don’t
lose your family name. It was quite a lecture, and I completely
understood his point of view. In Asian families tremendous

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