Page 56 - James Caan - The Real Deal

The Real Deal

We didn’t speak for about three months after that, which meant
that my social life calmed down a bit. I was still going out most
nights, but without Bernie around things were quieter, and I could
really concentrate on work.
I replaced him with somebody else, really knuckled down and
started to focus on actually placing people rather than dating
them! The results in terms of placements and commission were
pretty much instant, and getting that immediate return on my
efforts was very satisfying.
By now I was seeing a bit more of my parents. Things were still
fairly formal between me and my dad, but I started going home once
or twice a month for a meal, and it was fantastic to spend time there.
My brothers thought it was cool that I had changed my name and had
started calling me James. After a few months they decided to change
their names, too: Azam decided he wanted to be known as Adam,
Ayub chose Andrew and Nadeem told us we should call him Stephen.
It wasn’t all that uncommon for Asians at the time to Anglicise their
names, but going from Nadeem to Stephen – or Nazim to James for
that matter – was quite a leap! My parents had taken my name
change as a childish phase I was going through, like obsessing about a
pop star, and hadn’t said much about it. It was only when my
brothers also started changing their names that they became upset,
but even then they thought it was something we would grow out of.
By this point it was dawning on my dad that I probably
wouldn’t join the business at twenty-one, as I’d said I would. As
far as I was concerned it was out of the question because in my
mind I hadn’t achieved anything yet. I still thought that I would
start my own business one day, and proving I could do it on my
own continued to be important to me.
In the meantime, the Victoria branch had really started to take
off, and when the manager of the Oxford Street branch resigned I
was moved across to manage it. This was City Centre Staff
Bureau’s flagship branch, so it was definitely a promotion. After a

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