When a burglar entered Jack Petchey’s bedroom, he acted instinctively. Wearing only socks, he grabbed what he called “something heavy”, yelled at the intruder and chased him downstairs out of the door. The incident highlighted two of Petchey’s most prominent characteristics: impulsiveness and positivity. They propelled him from east London poverty to a midnight blue Rolls-Royce, a knighthood and a permanent monument to his philanthropy, the Jack Petchey Foundation.
In 1948, aged 23, he bought his mother’s house from her landlord for £800, selling it immediately for £1,200 and moving the family into a smarter home nearby. This would be the first of many property deals. The new house doubled as a front office for his taxi business, often sleeping there not to miss any late-night customers. “I had that entrepreneurial spirit born in me,” he said. “When I had one car I wanted two, and when I had one building I wanted two. It just progressed from there.” In the 1960s he discovered Dale Carnegie’s book, How to Win Friends and Influence People, and began adopting inspirational thoughts such as “success is more attitude than aptitude”. He used to listen to Carnegie recordings as he drove to his office.
In 1965, the stocky, bow-tied Petchey took over Woods Motors in Elephant and Castle, south London, closed the business and sold the premises for an instant £146,000 profit. That encouraged him to move into property development, but to avoid high UK taxes he turned to Portugal. After building a few villas in 1972 he launched the Clube Praia da Oura holiday resort on an Albufeira clifftop, which 12 years later had 585 apartments. “We were able to rent them in the summer,” he said. “But it was almost impossible in the winter, which meant that I had 12 months’ staff costs spread over a six-month summer period.” But, as so often in Petchey’s career, a problem became an opportunity. In Florida he saw how timeshare could cover the winter months and started a holiday ownership exchange. However, newspapers claimed his sales staff were pushing too hard. In 1988 he appeared at Bow Street magistrates’ court on 30 charges under the Trade Descriptions Act and Consumer Credit Act, accused of luring people to timeshare meetings by falsely promising free gifts and loans without being properly licensed. Petchey denied all the charges and was acquitted.
With his gravelly, slightly refined version of an East End accent he became a director of West Ham United, the club he had supported as a boy. Passed over as chairman there, he bought Watford Football Club from Elton John. But his businesslike, not to say miserly, approach to the balance sheet earned him antipathy from fans and the manager. When £3.4 million came in from Sky television rights, Graham Taylor, the former England manager, said: “The first player I’ve got to buy with that is called Petchey. He’s 72 years old and he’s not going to kick a ball for me.”
In 1998, Petchey sold an industrial estate to Saville Gordon, a property company, for £135 million and took shares as part payment. Now a stock market investor, he realised this was a lot less trouble than directly owning physical buildings, and having to deal with local authorities and find tenants. He started to target shares of companies that were valued at less than their assets, warning their managements to sharpen up or he would sell the firm over their heads. It worked. When other investors saw Trefick or Richmount, his two Isle of Man firms, appear on a share register they would dive in too, knowing there was a high chance Petchey would make them a profit. He also bought shares of publicly listed car dealers. In 2003 the City’s Takeover Panel decided he had breached its rules when taking control of a hotelier, Hanover International.
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The next year he decided it was time to give back. He began the Jack Petchey Foundation, investing more than £170 million in youth projects across London and Essex. He believed that by rewarding success and helping poor children feel positive about themselves, they would have the confidence to overcome adversity, and reach their full potential. “My aim,” he said, “was to help kids who needed it the most. I wanted them to learn to believe in themselves. It takes just one person who believes in you to change your life.” He set up schemes for young people involving public speaking, dance, sport and music. He ran an awards scheme open to more than 2,000 schools and youth clubs and in 2006 opened the Petchey Academy (now the Excelsior Academy) in Hackney, east London. In the latest Sunday Times Giving List he was shown as making donations of about £9 million from a total worth of £434 million.
“The motto I most use is, ‘If you think you can, you can’,” he said, adding: “Of course, the opposite of that is, ‘If you think you can’t, you can’t’. If I thought like that, I wouldn’t be where I am now. The right mental attitude is key. You never go out on the road to go nowhere.”
Jack Petchey was born in Plaistow, east London, in 1925, son of Stanley, a railway signalman, and Dorothy, a cleaner and a waitress at a Lyons Corner House. They also had a daughter, Joan, and an elder son, Douglas, who died of appendicitis, aged six. Although Jack’s grandparents ran a sweet shop, his family could only afford a 10ft by 12ft rented room in a terraced house.
“I had a happy childhood,” he said. “But it was poor. My father spent most of his time in the pub.” At six years old, he made money running errands for neighbours. He was given one of his earliest business lessons when he was 11. A greengrocer, Eric Woods, told him to divide a box of tomatoes in two, pricing one half higher than the other. “Some like them cheap,” said Woods, “and some like them expensive.” The boy would deliver vegetables to people’s houses. A member of his school board caught him and the school took him to court charged with underage working. He got off because his lawyer pointed out that tomatoes were fruit, not vegetables.
He attended Monega Road School in Manor Park, leaving at 13 with no qualifications. “I never saw the benefit of school then, though I saw it later,” he said. He got a job on 12 shillings a week as an office boy for the Solicitors’ Law Stationery Society in Fetter Lane. If money was tight at home, he gave his mother his wages.
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When the Second World War broke out in 1939, because he had been a Scout, Petchey was enlisted as a police messenger in East Ham, joining the Auxiliary Fire Service two years later as a motorcycle messenger. In 1943, he volunteered for the Royal Navy with the training ship HMS Collingwood. Initially serving as an electrical air fitter as part of the Fleet Air Arm, he rose to chief petty officer and then went to RAF Great Dunmow in Essex because stocks of planes had plummeted and they needed help building more.
After leaving the forces he became a clerk. When he applied for promotion, the personnel officer told him he was not management material, so he quit. Although the managing director apologised for the insult, he was determined to go. He spent his £60 navy discharge gratuity on a second-hand car and started the taxi business. He turned into a second-hand car dealer after someone asked him to sell theirs. In the immediate postwar years, he said, anyone could try anything.
In 1949, he married Diana Harrison, whom he had met in a pub when he was looking for customers. Driving past his old home, they saw his father, bags packed, about to leave his mother. Petchey drove on and never saw his father again. He and Diana had four children: three daughters, Jackie, Susan and Amanda, and a son John, who died of leukaemia. Diana died in 2004. In 2016, he married his longtime partner, Frances Segelman, a sculptor of the royal family and other leading personalities. She and Petchey’s daughters survive him.
In 2004 he was appointed OBE for services to young people and CBE in 2011. He was knighted five years later for charitable work. He wrote a 2005 autobiography, 50/50 Man, after his sister’s nickname for him.
Petchey played squash until his mid-eighties and in retirement concentrated more on charity. He was a keen bridge player. “I never switch off and keep my mind sharp,” he said.
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Despite his problems at Watford, he had at least one fan there. Steve Perryman believed that, of the several clubs he managed, his best relationship was with Petchey: “Jack said, ‘If I give you this job we’ll be in bed together. If you drive to work thinking I’m a bastard you’re not going to work properly for me. We need to be upfront on how we are thinking.’ And I said, ‘Jack, I love it’.”
Sir Jack Petchey CBE, businessman and philanthropist, was born on July 19, 1925. He died on June 27, 2024 aged 98
