The plumber who became a broker
Monday, August 30th, 2010You get two kind of people in life: those who brokers deals and those who are plumbers and they don’t usually have much in common. A plumber like my Uncle Fred generally doesn’t know a thing about what a broker does and I doubt a broker could fix the loo in his own house if his life depended on it. In fact if I’d told my Uncle Fred that I was going to broker a deal he would probably have offered to lend me his wrench or his hammer. But Uncle Fred mixed a lot with the kind of people who did broker deals, on the fringes at least, because he was always being called to the estate of some wealthy toff or other to address their upper class toilet issues, which are, although they would never believe you, exactly the same as everyone else’s.
If I had ten quid for every yarn Uncle Fred has spun over the years I’d probably have as much money as he does, yes contrary to the public image plumbers are awfully well off and Uncle Fred was particularly so. One of my favourites is, like many of them, a true story about plumbing and people, two things that cannot be separated no matter how nice it would be sometimes. It was a damned and miserable day last winter when Uncle Fred got a call instructing him to hurry over to Lord Snotley’s estate post haste as the Lord, one of very prominent brokers in London, had a somewhat pressing emergency. Before you could say “broker”, Uncle Fred was out the door and into his trusty Old Fiat circa 1861 to rattle his way down the country lanes through a blizzard that was slowly and coldly paralyzing the nation and causing huge accidents and pile-ups on the freeways.
Miraculously he arrived safely, no doubt praising the Virgin Mary and, after imbibing several of the offered sherries and stuffing a few pork pies into his back pocket for later he went in search of the brokers up the ridiculously winding staircase as directed by the downstairs maid. Chuckling to himself, he always laughed at his own jokes did Uncle Fred, he shouted down the utterly silent passage, “Lord, I believe you want me to broker your toilet!” Hearing my Uncle the Lord shouted back in a rather thin voice that he was a broker first and a lord second and there was no need to use his title but could my uncle please hurry into the bathroom.
Uncle Fred has pretty much seen everything when it comes to toilets but this was a new one. The Lord was knelt on the floor literally up to his shoulders in the actual loo. He explained that he had dropped his cellphone into the toilet while trying to use the facilities and broker a large and important deal at the same time. Uncle Fred swallowed his tears of laughter and opened his toolbox but the Lord yelled “No damn it all Fred, you have to broker the deal for me first!” He rattled off the number and instructions to sell five millions shares of Lloyds immediately as it was going to fold the in the next hour and Uncle Fred dutifully took out his own cell phone and made the call.
The freeing of the broker from the toilet was a little messier but it was done as professionally as possible. Uncle Fred got home in time for his tea and when the cheque from the Lord arrived it was in an envelope addressed to “My broker, Fred”.
