Page 202 - James Caan - The Real Deal

The Real Deal

where they counselled children in need. Within a few hours of
listening in on some of the conversations I knew I had to help. I
was invited to join their fundraising board, which meant attending
meetings once every six weeks to discuss ways I could use my
knowledge and contacts to bring funds in for the charity. I knew
from the letterhead that the patron was Prince Andrew, but I
didn’t think for one second that he would ever actually attend any
of the meetings.
I turned up for my first board meeting and was introduced to
some of the most impressive people I had ever met. Stanley Kalms,
the chairman of Dixons; David Svenson, who ran Microsoft in
Europe; the head of Goldman Sachs in the UK: these were some of
the most high-profile and successful business operators of their
generation, and I was somewhat of a minnow in comparison. And
then Prince Andrew joined us.
Working with such a high-calibre board was an amazing
experience for me because I learned so much from the others. For
ten years I had been so wrapped up in running my own businesses
that I had never really looked at how others ran theirs. I was
getting an up-close masterclass in how some of the most talented
people in business operated and I gained insights into what it takes
to run really large corporations. I was a bit of a maverick, a cheeky
outsider, but they were Establishment stalwarts and watching
them operate was an eye-opener. Just as I had observed the
effective habits of Tom at Reid Trevena all those years before, I
now took my chance to learn from some of the brightest and best
in British business. And what was even better was that we were
using what we had to raise millions of pounds. There was always
this terrific motivation in the room because we were trying to help
the NSPCC, and that made everything we did really enjoyable.
I remember once someone suggested having a tennis tournament
with all the old greats playing each other. ‘Let’s have Borg v
McEnroe: the rematch.’ There are a lot of charity tennis events, so

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