‘He’s facing up to his problems in a sensible and practical manner’ said one government official. ‘Not only is he following the Conservative Party lead in a number of areas, but I think there’s also something we can all learn from him when it comes to climbing out of difficult circumstances.’
When we interviewed Martin at his home in Chessingham he seemed distinctly chipper despite his past misfortunes.
‘It all started back in 2008’ he explained. ‘I had been working as a plumber and was doing all right. But having a bit of spare money left at the end of each week I started to, you know, speculate.’
In January that year he joined a gambling syndicate made up of a group of chums he had met at a race day. They came across a horse called ‘Square Mile’ and it just seemed that it could never lose. On some weeks they would place several bets, wherever it was racing, and pocketed regular winnings. Martin soon found that he could let the occasional difficult plumbing job go and spent more time on-line or meeting his well-heeled chums at one race course or another.
‘There was this chap down our street, Luka,’ he recalled, ‘and him and his mate Cheng drove this old Chrysler van. They were both time-served plumbers, so I used to let them have the more time consuming and less profitable bits of work and kept the good stuff for myself. Life was sweet.’
‘Then it all suddenly went wrong. It was in the 3.30 at Newmarket, and at the final fence there were several horses neck and neck, but they had been over-raced and were all a bit tired. Then an Arabian stallion cut across the field and down they all went. Persian Pariah had to be put down and Mediterranean Breeze only just pulled through with help from the vet.’
‘It would not have been so bad, but I had put almost everything I had on Square Mile and lost it all as the rank outsider, Bricadoon came in to win the race.’
How Martin responded to this misfortune, though, was what set him apart and gained praise from ministers. Firstly he launched a campaign to have Square Mile’s trainer banned from the sport. ‘It was clearly his fault.’ Said Martin. ‘He risked all our money and the valued property of the owner by allowing Square Mile to race that day. I had him banned for life and good riddance too!’
Next, Martin had to look at his own finances. ‘The other guys had quite a bit of money put away, but I didn’t, you see.’
‘First thing I did was put all my plumbing tools up for sale. There was no point just having them lying around the house getting in my way, so I sold them to Cheng for fifty quid. That meant I could look the bank manager in the eye. He asked me how I would continue my business, but I was ready for that. I had struck a deal with Cheng so that I could borrow the tools back for a tenner a go. I’ve done six jobs this month through doing that, so my business hasn’t been affected.’
But it wasn’t just his tools. In a move that Number Ten described as ‘Just the way we would run the economy’ he then decided to stop his son doing the paper round.
‘He was earning twenty quid a week but he wasn’t very efficient at it. So I told him to ‘sell’ the round to the son of one of my syndicate associates’ lads. He wasn’t keen but I explained that it was a difficult round to do, what with the big hill near his aunt's, and he couldn’t expect someone else to do it without an incentive. So in the end my mate’s son gave us 50p for the round and I bought him a new bike in return. Our papers now still get delivered on time, but my mate’s son looks so much more efficient on his new bike than my son used to on his old Raleigh’.
‘Anyway, the next stop was to bring in some more money to keep the bank manager at bay. So I managed to sell a kidney’.
I stop him at this point. ‘A kidney? Wasn’t that a bit extreme?’ I say.
‘Not at all, not at all.’ Says Martin. ‘The fact is, having my renal function performed by an internal kidney was just not very efficient. I had to carry it around inside me, feed it, all that sort of stuff. It was much more sensible to have it removed. In fact I had both removed and I now pay a private health company for regular dialysis sessions. I got two thousand quid for the pair, and the dialysis only costs me three thousand a month. Luckily one of my syndicate mates is a consultant renal surgeon, so he does me a really good deal’.
At this point a man knocks on the door. ‘I’ve come for the extinguishers!’ he calls through the letterbox. Martin wheels his drip across to the door and lets him in. ‘One in the kitchen, one on the landing.’ He says.
When he returns he describes his latest cost cutting measure. ‘That’s Neville.’ He enthuses. ‘He’s one of my old syndicate mates’.
‘I was thinking about how everybody on this street has a couple of fire extinguishers around the house, in the garage, in the car, you know. Well it just seemed such a replication of, well… you know.’
‘Anyhow, it just seemed much more efficient to dispose of all but a few of them. I managed to talk the neighbours round and Neville has taken them off our hands for a few quid (well we had to pay his expenses) and now we will just have two extinguishers in Mrs Grantham’s living room at number 32. So we can easily get to them if we need them, provided that she’s not out at her mum’s of course, and honestly, what are the chances of two houses burning down at the same time and her at her mum’s. Ha! It just makes so much sense’.
Things haven’t all been plain sailing for Martin’s economy and efficiency drive though. Last winter his gran froze to death in her shed after Martin had arranged for one of his syndicate mates to redirect the gas to his stables, and his son is now out of school.
‘I had to take him out of school because they were teaching all sorts of inefficient nonsense about maths and science and stuff. They even got him doing a project on ‘green’ energy, whatever that is. Political correctness gone mad! My mate in the syndicate says that petrochemicals are the only real source of proper energy. And he should know, he runs a petrol station. Anyway, my lad’s now educated at home by Fox News, and Clive from the syndicate has sorted me out with a nice little earner by offering to buy all those bricks in the foundations of my house’.
I ask him about this.
‘Oh yes, this is the start of the proper recovery for me.’ He says. ‘He’s promised me fifty quid for the lot, putting me back to exactly where I was before the horse race. He’s started exploratory foundation brick removal behind the kitchen door and thinks he can get out over ninety percent of my brick reserves. I can’t see why everyone isn’t doing it!’
Martin has been invited to join a government think tank later this month.
