You Did What?: 83 years of misadventure, mayhem – and millions

How to make buckets of dosh, screw things up, lose the lot, shake with fear, talk your way out of it, live under a false name, behave appallingly, fall in and out of love - often with the wrong people, feel joy, shame, terror, misery, disbelief, skirt death a few times, have an endless stream of dreadful hangovers - and still be at it when I should be tucked up in bed with a nice warm drink. If the idea of that little lot interests you, here’s a few snippets from my story.• Three stabbings and two near funerals: Believe it or not, I have been stabbed or partially stabbed three times. And I damn nearly lost my life twice after two of them.• Hiding from Hitler: In 1940, I trembled with fear in a bomb shelter. Was Hitler going to conquer Britain? It looked like it. Being scared like that is something hardly anyone nowadays can imagine, but I remember it vividly.• Millions made and millions lost: I never kept the millions I should have, though I did make two or three. Then through my own stupidity, lost almost all of it. Find out how to avoid my mistakes!• Trips to Ogilvy’s Chateau Touffou … How my wife took the great man for a ride …”Have you any idea what the roof cost?” … “I hate rabbit” …… the lost owl …Helena Rubinstein’s bed, “That’s the local mayor; he hates me.” And other Ogilvy stories• She saw Daddy ***ing Granny… It's absolutely true, and it refers to my mother seeing my father doing something no father should do with his mother-in-law.• Why did she forgive him…? Nowadays, people get divorced for infinitely less than what my father did to my mother, yet she forgave him, because of what had happened to her as a child.• Even after he gave her the ****? Surely no marriage could survive what my father did to my mother. But they stayed together. What made their extraordinary marriage survive?• Knee deep in shit with David: Ever visited a sewage plant? They don't often run conducted tours, but I made an impromptu entrance when young with one of my cousins. I can almost smell the pungent results 70 years later.• My most stupid money mistake: I never would have had to work again if I'd taken the advice of my accountant back in 1967. But I didn't, so I had to struggle for decades afterwards. Let me tell you why I think this was a blessing. Confused? You May Be. But not as much as me.This book is a mongrel. That’s because half is about my private life, which has been slightly unorthodox. I hope you find it entertaining. The other half is about my business life. Read that not just for entertainment, but for profit. By that I mean I will offer you an awful lot of advice, mainly based on an awful lot of mistakes and very little success.It could save you a lot of misery and quite possibly make you a great deal of money. You just have to avoid all the stupid things and copy the very few intelligent ones I did. I hope you'll find it entertaining.