Pidgley’s approach shocked me, but we’ve lost a colourful business personality

The sudden death of Tony Pidgley at 72 has robbed British property and business of one of its most audacious, colourful personalities.

I last saw the Berkeley Group boss in January this year. We met at his office on the Berkeley development opposite Battersea Park. It was early in the morning – Tony always liked to be at his desk before seven – and dark and cold outside. There was hardly anyone else around.

We spent an hour discussing everything from the state of the nation (Pidgley was no fan of Brexit), the property sector (he was worried about London’s prospects and was talking about investing heavily in Birmingham), his family (he showed me a school essay one of his granddaughters had just written and asked what I thought), and his life (he told a tale about how someone once gave him a look in a bar and his companions suggested they roughed him up, only for Pidgley to say no, he would go and talk to him, and the fortunate bloke then became one of his biggest backers).

I laughed and said he should publish his life story – how he was brought up by his adoptive parents on a traveller camp in suburban Surrey, was barely able to read and write, but went on to create one of our of biggest property empires, and net himself a considerable fortune. He shook his head. “Nah, I’ve thought about it, but things happened that I wouldn’t be able to tell, and then it wouldn’t be my life.”

What things? He grinned knowingly and shook his head. “They can’t be repeated.”

Over the years I got to know Pidgley. I was a director and trustee of the Rose Theatre in Kingston-upon-Thames, built by Berkeley as part of a deal with the local council to develop the town centre’s riverside. The theatre had always struggled for money.

My phone went. It was him. “Here, are you still involved with that theatre?” I said I was, and he knew I was. “How does a million quid for it sound?”

I replied that it sounded great, thank you. That was very kind of him. “You have to do something for me,” he said, so perhaps not so generous after all. “You’ve got kids, haven’t you, Chris?” Indeed, I had. ‘How would you feel if one fell in the river?” I’d be upset, I said.

“The thing is I’ve got the Turk’s Boatyard site [in Kingston, where they set off in Three Men in a Boat], and they want me to put affordables on the bottom floors. The thing about affordables, Chris, is that they breed, and they will be right by the river. There’s nothing to stop a toddler getting out and falling in.”

He changed tack. “You pay taxes, don’t you Chris?” I agreed that sadly, I did. “How do you feel about people on benefits living in a luxury block overlooking the river? It’s not right, is it?”

Before I could answer, he said this was his proposal. “I will pay £1m to the theatre if you get the council to agree I can move them elsewhere in the borough, anywhere, I don’t mind where.” He paused. “If they stay, they’re a blight on my property. It will be much easier to sell the top floors without them there and I can get a much better price. This way, everyone wins. Your theatre gets a million quid, and they still get to live somewhere nice, in Chessington or Tolworth, wherever, and I get a good price for my apartments.”

I said I’d take his plan to the council, which was heavily in hock to the theatre and see what they said. I’d not even finished putting Pidgley’s offer of a million to the Rose before the council official stopped me. “Let me guess, he wants us to redo the planning permission for Turk’s Boatyard, take out the social housing, and relocate it to another site? The answer is ‘no’. He does it all the time, he gets the permission, then sets about rewriting it. No.”

When I told Pidgley the council’s response, he said it had been worth a try. “It’s your theatre’s loss. I was prepared to give it a million quid but it’s not getting it now.”

Pidgley’s approach shocked me. His disregard for the terms struck with the council, for the “affordables” who he’d agreed to house, was cynical. The word “blight” was terrible.

But then he was not going to render them homeless, rather he was going to house them in another part of the borough. OK, it would not be by the river, however it would not be bad. Quite the reverse. it would still be brand new and built to the specifications laid down by the council.

For that he would donate £1m to the theatre, which would go a substantial distance towards solving its immediate financial needs. Yes, he would pocket a much greater profit on his flats. But £1m is £1m, for a theatre that was struggling for cash.

It was improper of him to submit an application, get it agreed, then attempt to tear it up. Of course it was. Nevertheless, there were two losers here: the Rose that lost out on £1m, and the council that ultimately would probably have to stump up further funds for the theatre.

This week, when I heard about Pidgley’s passing, I thought again of that call, and the council official’s reaction, and how this was one he didn’t win, but wondered, how many he had won, how many of his other projects had a different outcome.