Longtime Ago People
In a world where family connections shape us, stories bridge generations. Many of us carry cherished memories of those who touched our lives, which I think deserve to be shared.
Each episode I hope will feature guests recounting touching, funny, and inspiring memories, celebrating the impact these individuals had on their lives. I aim to beautifully remember loved ones, offering listeners nostalgia, warmth, and connection.
I am looking for people to reflect on the impact of these relationships.
Longtime Ago People
UK Kid To US Oil And Wall Street Insider
David 1967
Well scout, wildcatter, mentor & mate
A £99 suit, a borrowed tie, and a last-minute interview kicked off David’s career—a journey that leapt from the North Sea to Wall Street, and eventually to long Napa weekends after 4 a.m. starts. In this episode, I trace that unlikely arc with him: a teenager who didn’t know oil from Brent crude becomes a well scout by asking sharper questions, then pushes his way from drilling updates into mergers and acquisitions, and finally into institutional equity sales, guiding billion-pound pension flows.
The scenes he describes are nothing short of cinematic. Helicopters slamming onto offshore platforms in the freezing North Sea, a noddy suit zipped to the chin. Paper tickets on the London floor giving way to algorithms and dark pools. A finance director expecting a kid in LA and instead getting Wolfgang Puck at Spago. Kiefer Sutherland opens with a compliment, Oliver Stone debates the soul of Wall Street, and Keanu Reeves glides through a tiny Santa Monica room with calm, generous grace. These aren’t name-drops—they’re field notes on how to meet anyone with poise: don’t perform, don’t fawn, just be human.
What underpins it all is mentorship—and the inches you can reach. A boss who takes a chance sends him to Houston. A wildcatter teaches range and risk. Jerry Jones threads through the decades, from an eight-person meet-and-greet to a long Napa lunch where stories roll and the tip matches the legend. David’s philosophy is simple: life is won in small increments—the six inches in front of your face. Ask for the next challenge before you’re ready. Keep your true friends to ten, and care for them well. Let legacy be kindness, not monuments.
If you’re navigating a career pivot, fascinated by oil and markets, or searching for a mental model that holds under pressure, this conversation offers practical insight and hard-won perspective. Subscribe, share it with someone who might need a nudge of courage. What's the best advice a mentor ever gave you?
What inch are you fighting for today?
Al Pacino - Any Given Sunday - "Inch By Inch"
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Have a story echoing through time? I’m listening—300 words or fewer.
"In a world where you can be anything, be kind."
You're listening to Miles, and this is a long time ago, people. Now, this afternoon for me here in Arundel, I'm in the UK, but my guest today is David, and I think it's very early morning for you. David, what's going on? Where are we?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah. So seven o'clock. And um, so right now I live in Napa Valley in California, and I actually work in San Francisco. So it's a bit of a commute, but um it's worth it for the weekends. And if you'd asked me, I don't know, when I was a young lad living in London, you know, where Napa was, I couldn't even tell you. And for those that don't know, it's the it's regarded as the wine district of the country.
SPEAKER_01:Yes. I know it from um that film with Lindsay Lohan in Dennis Craig, the parent trap.
SPEAKER_00:The winery, that winery is just up the up the road from here, maybe two, three miles. And you know, I've gone there and they said they have so many people turning up just to go in to the winery to say, hey, can we just go and see you know where the filming was done? And they said such an exclusive little winery, they're like, nah, you gotta get off our properties. But I know the movie you're talking about, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Okay, so how far is it to what what is your what is your commute then?
SPEAKER_00:It's 62 miles each way. So I start really early, so I get up, you know, I'm up at four, and um it probably takes me about an hour and ten to drive in the morning because there's no public transport. It probably takes me about two hours in the afternoon because you get in in California, most people start to get off at three because the East Coast shuts down at five, six o'clock. So then everyone's like, let's go.
SPEAKER_01:Let's go, let's get out of this.
SPEAKER_00:My uh ex-wife wanted to get we used to live in San Francisco, I'd lived there for 18 years, and uh she wanted to get involved in the wine business. She was involved in the wine business, she started off part-time, she was doing that reverse commute driving from San Francisco to Napa. So she wanted to get full-time, she wanted to get into learning to to be a winemaker and all that sort of fun stuff. She was a Somalier, took all other various courses, and uh I said, you know, you do it for love, right? So I said, Yeah, sure, why not? Let's do it, let's get my five-minute commute to work to put it into three hours a day, right? So it made perfect sense. And uh so it's literally eight years in an in the month, month's time that we we would have lived here. I mean, she's obviously left now, and I'm lucky to have the house. But we moved in and it was just one of those biblical storms that was coming. And my neighbor across the street, who I'm very good friends with now, he said him and his wife were just looking at us and just saying, Oh, those poor souls are moving everything in. And when it rains up here, it's like literally a typhoon. And uh so for the first two years, I hated it because it was just exhausting, right? Uh and then COVID came, and then I was allowed to work from home. So it's great. You know, I was the luckiest guy in COVID because I could just literally work from home all the time, give my hours. And then about 18 months ago, they're like, nah, enough of that, you've gotta you've got to go back in the office. It's tiring, but I get to the weekend and it's it's stunning up here. So it's that's the reward. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Just take me back to that morning in October 1985. What was going through your mind when you left home and you and you started your life in the city?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so let me give you a little bit of a backstory there, right? So, you know, I left high school at 18 and you know, I didn't have the right qualifications to go to college. I didn't really want to go to college, to be honest, university. And I wanted to become something in finance and uh didn't know anybody, not no one. But my next door neighbor who was good friends with my dad, he said, Well, why don't you go into insurance? And I said, Well, I know nothing about it, so he told me about it, and I went to interview with a bunch of people, got rejected from everybody. Then I wrote off to um, I think at the time it was like 21 brokers, stockbrokers in the city. This is just before Big Bang. Big Bang was in 1987, so this is 1985. Got rejected from everybody. And then uh Lloyd's Bank, I went through the whole process, they were gonna give me a job. I think they went off for me like uh 6,200 pounds, right? And just before I accepted it, I got a call. I was at my mum's house, I got a call, and it was James Capel. And you know, the significance of them is so they were Queen's broker back then, right? Personnel came on the line, they said, uh, we've got this super junior position in this thing called the Petroleum Services Department. Would you like to come in and interview? And I said, Yeah, sure. So they said, We have to come in tomorrow. And I'm sitting there, this is honestly a true story, and I have no idea about oil and gas or anything like that. And uh that night there was a BBC documentary on the uh Brent oil field. The Brent oil field was the second oil field discovered in the North Sea back in, what was it, 1971, started production in 76, and that's how you get the Brent oil price. It's named after that oil field, even though it was the second one. So I just, like a sponge, right? I just sucked it all in, walk in, and this guy starts asking me, he says, What do you know about oil and gas? So I'm like, oh, funny you should ask that. It's like downloaded, right? And this guy had written books about it. At the time I thought he was like 50 years old, but he was like in his early 30s, right? So but you think when you're 18, you think, oh my god. He goes, Okay, okay, you seem to know something. And uh he goes, Well, what do you know about computers? And I knew nothing about computers. They'd literally just started like IBM XP, like it's giant boxes, right? As big as your kitchen table. I said, Yeah, yeah, yeah, I kind of know my way around a computer, completely lying my ass off, right? And he looked at me and I'm sure he knew, right? I'm still friends with him now, which is amazing. He's just retired, he's in his 70s. He said, Okay, so I go home, my mum says, How did it go? And I said, It was great, you know, we were laughing, joking around, blah, blah, blah. She goes, Well, you haven't got that. You haven't got that job. And as soon as she said that, this is in the afternoon of doing the interview, the phone goes, I pick up the phone, it's Martin, this guy, Martin Loughgrove, and he goes, I'm not sure if this is the right thing to do, but I'm going to offer you a job. He says, You have to start tomorrow, and I'm going to offer you 5,235 pounds a year. So it was less than the Lloyd's Lloyd's job. And I'm like, I'm in. That's it, 100%. Because I really like the guy. You know, one of the things I've learned is that over the stage of your life, you come across various people that are your mentors. You know, that you learn something from them and they guide you in the right direction. They hate help you make the right decisions. And then as you get older, as I'm now myself older, it's time for me to be a mentor, and I have been to various other peoples. Yeah, so that morning I do actually remember it. My mom's all you know proud. She bought me a suit, it was 99 pounds. Thanks, mum. No tie. So I had to use the uh had to use the memory score tie, which I thought was great, but looking back on it, it's super cringeworthy. Then I just, my mum said, Well, I've got to take a picture of this, you know, I want to you know commemorate it or whatever. I'm like, great, you know, super embarrassed again. And then off I went. I walked, I was like two miles to the train station and got on the train, went in there, and knew absolutely nothing. And uh so Martin said to me, He said, Right, well, I know you don't really know anything about oil and gas, so I'm gonna teach you about oil and gas. So he sent me off to various corporates, you know, I don't know, Petrofina, Shell, BP, Totel, something like that. And they taught me the basics. And as my career went on, I learned more and more about oil and gas and spent a lot of time out there. Well, what is uh you know, on the platforms and things like that, which is that's another conversation, it's totally fascinating. The all business in itself. I don't know if you get the landman on the TV show. Yeah, yeah, Billy Book. Yeah, I mean I advise everyone to watch that. And if you take away all the all the curricular stuff and just concentrate on what he's saying about oil and gas, he's 100% right. So, anyway, so that first day, you know, at the end of school, I was good friends with Andrew Forrester. So we left, I don't know, when does school end July or something like that? So we're now October. I hadn't really heard from Andrew. And I don't know how it happened, but on the first day, Martha said, Oh, you know, if you go to lunch, I reached out to Andrew the same day he started literally at the building across the street, and he was on the insurance uh London, London insurance market for Loiser London. And his dad who'd just come out of the army, he said, Right, I'm gonna and he was starting that day too. And he said, Right, I'm taking you up to the local calf up by the um Tower of London. So the three of us, well, none of us will ever forget that day. It was your first day. And that's how it was how was all three of you, your first day. Yeah, yeah, all th all three of us first day, dad's out of the army, Andrew and I are both 18, and he's in the insurance market, which I wanted to be in. I'm now petroleum services department, so I was still trying to figure out what the hell that meant. But it's it started me on this career of getting into I mean, I was in equity markets, but at that time, you know, it was more into mergers and acquisitions. Again, I'm so super junior and I'm like photocopying everything, faxing because there was no internet, right? Faxing stuff out. But I had some incredibly, incredibly good memories from doing that stuff. I think so. When I first started, Martin said to me, okay, well, the North Sea's divided up into quadrants and grids and blocks and things like that. And all the oil companies licensed them out from the government, right? This is going back. So remember, I got in in 1985. The oil industry in the North Sea had only started producing for 10 years. So I'm really in at the beginning. Martin said, All right, I want you to become a Well Scout. I'm like, I have no idea what a Well Scout is. Every company has a Well Scout, right? And what they do is they just learn or they report back to management how the wells are drilling, right? So we're at 13,000 feet, we haven't got any signs of oil and gas, or we're doing this, putting mud down, whatever. And I said, Okay, so what do I want to do? What do you want me to do? He said, Well, call these people and find out what they're doing. I said, They're not gonna tell me. He said, Well, figure it out, off you go. So I did this for about two years, and I became pretty good at it, where I have to be careful here, but I would say to people, are you drilling this well? And they go, Yeah. And like, what can you tell me about it? And they're like, Well, we're at this level. And that's not any information, you know, you're at 12,000 feet, 13,000 feet, right? And then I would just say, Well, you know, I heard that this other oil company up the street, you know, they're drilling another well, and they've got some gas shows, right? And they'll be like, Can you tell me more? And I said, Well, you've got to tell me more about yours, right? And so I would get everyone to tell me everything, right? By just making a few things up now and again. So it's hilarious. And uh and at the end of the year, they have this award, they call it the Wells Scout Award. It's only ever gone to a uh an oil company, and they awarded it to me. And I thought, wow, that's really uh that's really cool. And then I walked into my boss's office, Martin, I was 21, and I just walked into Martin's office and said, I'm bored, I don't want to do this anymore. I'm gonna quit unless you give me something else. Because he was doing the real the real stuff, you know, mergers and acquisitions and buying and selling. So what I mean in the oil business is you're literally buying production. So if you know take the Brent oil field, it was owned by BP, typically they would have 100% and they do what they farm it out to other oil companies to share the cost. So maybe you say Shell bought 20% and they said, Okay, Martin, I want you to sell 10% of this. So that's what we did. We're going take the 10% and try and find find people to buy it. So Martin said to me, uh he looks at me incredulously. I remember he just looked up from his desk and uh I said, Yeah, I just I can't do this anymore. I've done it and I'm I'm not gonna get any better. And he said, All right, all right, let me think about it. Calls me in the office the next day, says, Right, I'm sending you to Houston. This is 1989. Right. And I'm like, great, you know, America, you know. Always wanted to go there. I remember when I was uh 12 years old, this is very vivid memory for me with my dad. We were at NASA down in uh Cape Canaveral, down in Florida. And you know, when you first go to America, well, especially when you're young, especially when you come from the UK, you're just like, What is this place, right? I remember vividly to this day, and my dad remembered he's past now, but he remembered it too. I looked at him, I'm looking out the window, I'm looking at the the launch tower for the you know, for the rockets, for the space shuttle, and I said, Dad, you know, I'm gonna live here one day. And he just laughed. He said, How are you gonna do that? And I said, I don't know, I'm gonna figure out a way. So anyway, fast forward to 89, I'm in Houston, and I met my my second mentor, who is also retired, interesting character in himself, this guy called Ron Zimmerman, and uh we all we all affectionately call him the Z. He led a fascinating life. His dad was president of Texaco Company, and then Ron said, I don't want anything for you, I'm just gonna go and do it myself. So, in the space of that, he became uh a rodeo writer, he was a scout for the Dallas Cowboys football team, he was a wildcadder, so he was doing his own oil and gas production. He worked for was it Alpha Ed who owned Harrods because he was selling stuff in Libya? He was the first oil man in Russia before you could even get into Russia. Very interesting guy. So he's just taught me under his wing. To this day, we're we're still friends. I mean, he's taught me a lot, a hell of a lot.
SPEAKER_01:So you've um you basically stood on oil platforms, you stood on trading floors. Is there any particular one moment that that stood out that you've thought how have I got here? How has this happened to me? Is there any moment that uh Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:I I think that I'll give you two examples, right? I mean, I feel honestly blessed and I feel embarrassed telling these stories because you know I I think that I'm just being very lucky. But the first time I went out to a an OSEO platform, and these things are fast, it's like it's it's two hours straight in a straight line. You get in a helicopter, they are lit literally stripped down gasoline cans, and before you get on them, you have to do a safety course, and they put you in these things which they call noddy suits, and they're these giant rubber suits that zip all the way up, and you can you you can't move. And so we're in there, and I don't know, there's like 12, 14 guys in there. Uh, you know, if you go in the sea, you're dead, right? You're done. It doesn't matter if you've got this noddy suit on, you're dead because it's so cold up there. Anyway, we're flying in, and it's an ex-Vietnam pilot, and he literally thinks he's still in Vietnam, right? So Brennan has four platforms, and as we're coming in, you just see these four little specks, and then you see these four little um little lights, and then you've got the helicopter noise, it's just deafening, even though you've got headphones, it's deafening, right? You're flying in, flying in, and then he literally swoops right up and just bam on the platform, and the noise was so tremendous. And I'm just like, here I am, I'm in my early 20s, and I'm in the North Sea that not many people would ever get to do this, ever. Yeah. And I thought that was that was good. And then the second example was when I was on the New York Stock Exchange floor. So I'd gone on the London Stock Exchange many times, I'd done the Tokyo one, and then I was on New York Stock Exchange, and uh so I did the opening bell ceremony back in 2008. So this is a yeah another little trinket of mine. This is uh this is first what they call first oil from an oil field back in 19. So they give you these little barrels. That's taken from the very first barrel that was produced at this uh oil field called Morpeth. Morpeth number one. So yeah, that's two that's two very cool experiences. Um again, just feel very lucky to have done all this stuff.
SPEAKER_01:You mentioned earlier on about technology, and I love technology by the way, and uh I to sort of two questions really. You say it's transformed. In what way is it transformed? I mean, I know I mean how basic was it back then compared to now?
SPEAKER_00:Well, um back in the day, right, if you worked on the London Stock Exchange floor, you literally were writing paper tickets, right? So you and you would have what they call um brokers and jobbers, right? So you'd have to go and find someone to sell the stock to you, and then you'd say, Well, how much do you want? And then they'll give you a price, and then you'd you scratch it down, it would be like three pieces of paper, like one you gave to the client, one you kept yourself, and one you like fired off the up the pipe to the back office who would then record the whole transaction. So it was soundwritten, which is amazing. And then um, you know, in today's world, it's literally just all done on the computer. They have these things called um dark pools of money. So basically you you as a client, you know. So so my job now, just to make sure everyone understands, is uh if you have a pension or 401k plan, I talk to uh the portfolio managers that run these things. And I'm in theory giving them either really, really good advice or nine times out of ten really, really bad advice on which stocks and which markets to be in. And when these guys, just to put it in perspective, you can get a uh a$500 million order or a billion dollar order pretty easily if they decide to act on that. And then that all that stuff goes in your your pension and hopefully it works, right? So don't come blaming me if your pension return is terrible. And so, yeah, so you've got these adult pools of money and so you you send an order into the computer, scrambles it around a bit, and then no one knows who's buying what, but you get your order filled. I mean, I'm not a trader, but they call an institutional equity salesman, and um and I and I love it. And that's you know, you asked me before we started the conversation if I'm still working, and and I am, and the reason being is I just absolutely love it because I've learned so much uh from so many people, but I get to see some really interesting things, right? So, for example, back last year, I think November last year, I had the finance director of one of the biggest grocery chains that you have in the UK. It shouldn't be too hard to work out who it is. And so he was telling me about all the product development, you know, all the stuff they do on selling their own brands. And and before he met me, he thought I was some 30-year-old guy, right? And I said, Well, let's just do dinner. We're in LA, so let's just do dinner. And he said, No, he just sent a message back. Before he'd met me, he sent a message back to his sister and say, No, no, I'm I don't want to do that. And as we went through the day, he said, We're doing dinner, right? And I said, uh I said, well, he said no. And he goes, Well, yeah, I didn't know you, so yeah, I I kind of wanted to want to do dinner with you. I want to do dinner then. And so I said, I I got a really good restaurant for you. It was uh Wolfgang Puck restaurant, Spargo in uh Beverly Hills, right opposite the Region Beverly Wilshire, which was the hotel and pretty woman, which is where we were staying. And uh we get talking. He says, Have you met Wolfgang before? I said, Yeah. I said he kind of knows me. Like he's he's I'm here all the time. He see he runs around. And lo and behold, he walks around the corner. And the guy looks at me, he's like, You're shitting me, right? I said, No, and I said, You want to get your picture taken with him? Right? And he's still joking, right? I said, No, no. I said, So I went over and I said, Hey Wolfgang, I need a flavor, can you come over and uh and take a picture with this guy? He said, Yeah, sure. So, but other you know, I've gone around with oil companies and banks and insurers and tech companies and things like that.
SPEAKER_01:I'll just come on to that because uh again, uh you've met presidents, you've met prime ministers, rock stars. Who surprised you the most and and why?
SPEAKER_00:Okay, great question. Two people. I mean, there's so many people, but two people to start with. Kiefer Sutherland. Oh man. That's so cool.
SPEAKER_01:I'm a big 24. So yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, yeah, yeah. I'm a no, so I'm I'm with Kiefer. I'm not with Kiefer, I'm just I was with a mate, we're at the Beverly Woolship, we're staying the night, and uh I said, I've got to go out for a Siggy, right? We're halfway through our steak dinner, I've got to have a sig. Roll outside, and um, we're all still in our suits and ties because we've been taking companies around all day. And this guy walks up to me and he he taps me on the shoulder and he goes, I had a beard at the time. He goes, he said, You look like a very distinguished gentleman, right? And they said, uh, I knew exactly who he was. And I said, uh I said, yeah. I said, well, thank you. I said, um that's very kind of you to say that. So when we got talking, and it the thing when you meet these people, it doesn't matter whether CEOs or actors or musicians or presidents or prime ministers, it doesn't matter. If you just act yourself, yeah, you're right and don't and don't fawn over them, they relax and they let their guard down, and then they say, Oh, you're a pretty cool guy. And so I I looked him in the eye and I said, You're not gonna believe that. I said, first of all, yeah, I'm a huge fan, I'm not gonna make a big deal about it, but you know, huge fan of 24. I said, the story about 24 is the guy that turned me on to the series is a friend of yours. And he looked at me, he says, he says, Nah, that's that's impossible. And I said, Okay, well, I'm gonna tell you another story to make sure that you know that this is true. And so there was this this friend of mine, his name's Bobby G, right? It's Canadian, right? As you know, keeper's coding too. I said, There was a day a few Christmases ago where you and a bunch of mates were in the Dorchester Hotel, suitably inuberated, and uh you kind of took your top off, your shirt off, and was dicking around. And he looks at me and he's like, No one really knows that story. I said, Well, Bobby G. I gave me his name, I said, Yeah, he does, and you're his friend. He goes, Shit, you're right. So that was that was he was very cool. And then um there was another thing where I'll give you two, I'm gonna give you two more because they're really good stories. Again, I'm having uh dinner in LA with a bunch of people, client, I'm sitting at the table, and Oliver Stone is literally right next to me. You know, the guy did platoon Wall Street, yeah, yeah. You know, Wall Street, like my idol, right? Again, I get up, I just gotta have a cigarette. I'm a ciggy outside. He walks out and he he says, I'm gonna have a cigarette too. So we just started talking. And I said, Look, I said, uh, I know who you are, you don't know who I am, but I'm sure you get a lot of people that come up to you and tell you that your movie Wall Street was the reason why they got into Wall Street, and he goes, All the time. And he goes, he goes, I guess you're one of those guys, right? And I said, No, I was already on I was already in the city, right? So and then I came to Wall Street, so no. I said, But we do have something in common. And he goes, Oh yeah, what's that? And I said, uh, yeah, I worked at Bear Stones. So Bear Stones was one of those big US investment banks, and his dad worked there, and his dad got fired from there, and he never ever forgave Wall Street for it. So his whole thing about Wall Street was like anti-Wall Street and just you know how terrible it is. So I'm like, Yeah, that's interesting. Yeah, I yeah, yeah, shame about that. And then the other another, I mean there's so many, but I'll just give you a very brief one, and then everyone will love this. Yeah. Uh Keanu Reeves. Yeah, wow, and these are all good names. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I met Keanu and uh again, I was in another room. I don't, you know, I'm I'm not like hanging out in Hollywood, right? Whatever. But I was just sitting having dinner with a buddy, and uh he walks in the room and he went around to every it was this tiny little restaurant called Cabo, uh Casa, Casser in uh Santa Monica. And he just was by himself, he was, you know, he was meeting some friends and he just walked around the table and just you know, just casually introduced himself to everyone, made sure everyone was having a good time. And and I think he did that because he didn't want people coming up to his table. And he was just like, there was such a zen about the guy, and just he was so so humble and so nice. And you see, you hear all these stories about him, you know, taking the subway in New York, you know, helping people out, giving people money. It just and of course, you know, I mean, who doesn't love the Matrix, right? I mean, that's just one of the all the time. But I mean, for me, it wasn't the Matrix, right? For me, it was point break. Point break, yeah. Right? So check this out, right? You should take exactly, right? So you'll probably want a picture of this. So this is uh Gary Bucy, Patrick Swayze, and Keanu. Yeah. And Gary Bucy signed it, right? So yeah. I love Gary Bucey as well. Dude, I mean, dude, Utah, get me two, right? Get me two two uh meebles, whatever it was. Young dum and full of we won't say anymore. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. You love music, right? I love music too. I spent the last and that's what I remember from school, you know, when we just barely overlapped, you know, your love of music, and it's still there. I mean, you do your what is it, your Sunday morning single or postcard or whatever it is. And uh and uh so I spent the last 20 years building out my rebuilding out my vinyl collection. And it's just a rabbit hole that you go down, right? You know, do you say, oh I gotta remember that. We all listened to that back in 82, or you know, you listen to some early stones back in 71, 72, or whatever. If one loves make you ago, right? So I'm with a very, very close friend of mine and a friend of his, and we were having dinner because we were staying at the how I think it was the Halcyon Hotel up in uh Nottinghill, Nottinghill area around there. It's just literally the three of us having dinner, a nice dinner. Um again, this friend of mine, Jed, who's who's past, he taught me a lot about life. You know, he was well to do, and he was a bash, he would go, like uh, you know, if you're gonna get your shoes, you get them from John Lobb. If you're gonna get your wine, you go to the Berry Brothers, you know, and all this sort of crap. Great story with him. Where we met Nicolas Cage, by the way. So, anyways, all of a sudden the the waiters come in the room and it's a this white room, it's nothing special. I come in and they put these tables together. Mick Jagger walks in with Dave Stewart and maybe about 15, 16 young women. Yeah, and we didn't even bat an eyelid. This this guy, Ed and his friend Richard, you know, were ordering some pretty special wine, because that was their gig, right? And uh so we're drinking it, and we completely ignored him, like a hundred percent. And he's looking at us and he's looking at what we're drinking, and all the girls are like trying to like make and like Dave's like you know, talking to all the other women. And he goes, he goes, literally goes, Oi, right? So what? He goes, Oi. Well, we turn around, Judge, Jed turns around and he goes, How can we help you? Right? It's like Mick Diagger, right? And he goes, Well, what are you drinking? And he goes, Well, we've got this, I don't know what it was, uh burgundy, whatever, I don't remember. And he goes, Well, don't you come and join us for dinner? And he goes, Well, we're having dinner. He said, Well, have dinner with us. So they they put us on the table, and um, of course we're nowhere near him, right? Because he's surrounded by all the women, and we're on the table and we're like, Well, we could have just sat our own table and but we didn't. Yeah. Technically, I had dinner with him, and he was a nice guy, but he's checked in on us and stuff like that. Super cool. And uh, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Okay, so what's this Nickel Cage one comfort?
SPEAKER_00:You just mentioned uh I was with Jed and we went to NASA in the Bahamas. We were seeing someone down there, and uh we went to this place called Great Cliff, which is still around. If you look it up, it's known as the third largest, greatest wine cellar on the planet, right? It's an old colonial house. The cellar is cut into bedrock, and there's no air conditioning down there, but it's because it's so deep, it's really cool, you keep all the wines there. So we're having a we're having a very special night. And this this is again Jeb being generous to me and and teaching me, you know, how about what to look for in wine. You know, we're drinking like I don't know, we're drinking uh Chateau Tobaux, where he said, Well, Bash, this is the difference between like a 1972 and 1974. You look at the bottle and you've got the square, you know, the pre-74, whatever it's got the square bottle, drinking O'Brien. It was an exceptional wine dinner. We didn't eat, or we we had a few things, but not much. And we drank five bottles of the greatest wines in the world. And and the and the Major Paddy kept coming up to us. He's like, Wow, he said, You guys are just doing the hits, right? Nicholas Cage is on the table with two other women, and he's looking at us and he's like, What are you drinking? And we told him, we said, Well, what are you drinking? And he said, Well, I'm drinking this, I can't remember which year it was, but it was an echizo, uh domain Romney Conte Echizo. It was like$32,000 on the uh on the wine list. And we're like, that's a little bit out of our price range. So he's laughing. The the um Somalia says, Well, do you want you both want to come down for a tour of the wine cellar? So, yeah, so he took us down and gave us a tour of the wine cellar. So that was my my nick cage story. Nick Cage story, cool, good stuff. I want to tell you a great arc story that sort of aligns with my 40 years, right? And goes back to this character, Ron Zimmerman, right? He uh, as I said, he was a scout for the Dallas Cowboys. So back in 1989, Barry Jones bought the Dallas Cowboys, and it was a huge scandal at the time. And you can there's a net a Netflix show about the Cowboys during this period. He was an oil man, okay? And he had an oil well that came in and he basically gambled his entire fortune on buying the Dallas Cowboys in 1989. He paid, I think, 189 million million dollars. Today it's the world's richest franchise. It's over, I don't know, nine, ten, eleven billion, twelve billion dollars. Bet it all. Typical what we call wildcat that just roll it. And so Ron got the well, this was on Houston. So Ron got this invite, and he's like, Yeah, this guy, Jerry Jones, I kind of know him. He's bought the Cowboys, he's doing this like meet and greet at the um Houston Petroleum Club. I can't go, you should go. And I thought it was gonna be like a hundred people in there. I walk in, there's eight people, and me, right? And Jerry. And I'm like 21, and these are all oil men in the like 60s, and they the whole room just stops, and everyone looks at me like, Who are you? And so I go through the whole story. I said, But don't worry, I'm not gonna say anything, I'm just gonna sit here and just listen, right? But I am a Cowboys fan, you know. My mum used to watch the Dallas Cowboy show when we lived in London, and you know, the the beginning credit, they fly over the Cowboy Stadium with a big star. So Jerry got a kick out of that. Forward to 2020. I'm at uh I'm in the Super Bowl and I was lucky enough to be invited to uh one of the agents' parties. So everyone just turned and all these famous people turn up. And Jerry's there, and I'm just like, I was with my buddy JB, and I said, dude, I said I gotta get a picture with Jerry because you know back then you didn't have the phones or whatever. And JB said, Yeah, let's go for it. I won't I went out with Mr. Jones and said, You don't remind me, if you don't remember me, but and he said, You said, Stop. You I do remember you back in '89, Houston Petroleum Club, you were the 21-year-old saying nothing, and you know, I wasn't sure who you were. So we had a final conversation with that. Then we fast forward to what 2012. This is when uh my assistant's husband got the head job at the Cowboys, and he said, Come in, come to you know you're in Dallas, come meet Jerry again. Again, I walk in. He said, You have a habit of meeting me every decade. And then no, but there's this is the best part. So I've seen him multiple times since then, and then about two years ago, he said, he sent me a message and he said, I'm coming up to Napa because my granddaughter is getting married. And he said, he said, Let's do lunch. And I said, Great, let's do lunch. And you know, most people that sitting there, you know, because I've had this luck and experience of dealing with these famous people and rich people, you just he's just like, Hey, hey Jerry, good to see it, right? And he comes up to Napa and he said, Where should we go? And so there's a there's a great restaurant I've been going to forever up here. It's called Bistro Don Giovanni. And I know the owner, Gio, really, really well, you know, Italian guy, really part of the community up here, brilliant, beautiful outside uh restaurant with a beautiful garden. And I said, Gio, I said, Look, gonna need a table in the back for for eight people, maybe ten, and uh it's gonna be someone famous coming in. And he said, Dave, he goes, That David, he said, there no one will care. You know, this is an apparent. And I said, Okay, great. So you don't have a problem with it, goes, don't have a problem with it. He said, How are you on the table for? I said, Well, let's just, you know, let's I don't know, a couple hours, two, three hours. He said, Fine. So Jerry comes in. Of course, when Jerry comes in, it's a commotion because he's got all his bodyguards with him, right? They're all around him. Jerry comes in, everyone starts to go nuts because you've got a lot of tourists there. They're like Jerry's. Anyway, he put us on the table, we sit down, we're having a great lunch. Jerry's telling me all these amazing stories. When he used to, because he knew Al Davis really per personally, the the Raider, the owner of the Raiders, and Jerry bought, he said, Yeah, I bought this package of vineyards up here, like 80 acres or something. And I sold it like years ago, 1969 or 1970, for three million dollars. He said, Do you think I lost money on that? And I said, No, I don't think you did, Jerry. I said, because you took that three million and then you put that into the oil and gas business, and then you bought the Dallas Cowboys. So yeah, I think that's right. Right, right trade is a good thing. Yes, right. Right. Anyway, so all these bodyguards around, Geo's going nuts. He's like, What's up with the bodyguards? I'm like, he's gonna have the bodyguards, it's just a thing. And it's Jerry, his wife, his daughter, his son, my friend, and and his wife, my ex-assistant and myself, and uh, and I think maybe the general manager or whatever. And so the plan was for us to go wine tasting because I'd lined something up really special for them. And Jerry said, You know what? He said, I think I'm just gonna stay here. It reminds me of of Southern Isle, you know, just hanging out because it's such a beautiful.
SPEAKER_01:He likes it, he likes it, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah, yeah. He said, I just want to sit here. And he held cult. Well, he held cult all day, right? So we turned up at 12. He was still there at seven, right? And and she goes to David, he said, David, I I need the table. And I'm like, I said, Don't worry, I'll take care of you. And so obviously I'd left and Jerry's still holding cult and whatever. And I see Gio like a week later, I said, Did he take care of you? And he goes, He took more than care of me. Well, he left a substantial tip. And when I mean substantial, we're talking an oil man tip, right? So I think so. Yeah, so that's that I think that's my uh that's my favorite arc story. And you know, there's there's obviously many others, but again, it goes back to my point of having mentors in your life that can shape you. So if I hadn't gone, if I hadn't met Martin. Or taking that job, he would not have sent me to Houston. If I had not gone to Houston, I wouldn't have met Jerry. And then I've met other people through Jerry, and just and it that's how the the I think the arc of life goes.
SPEAKER_01:Okay, so um you mentioned the Inches speech. So tell me first of all, for anyone listening, what is the Inches speech?
SPEAKER_00:Okay, so it wasn't the greatest movie in the world, but Al Pacino is the guy that gives this thing called Inches, right? Inches speech. And um it's from a movie called Any Given Sunday, which is a US movie about American football, about the sort of trials and tribulations. Anyone on this web that listens to this, I strongly advise you to go and listen to it. It's a very, very, very powerful scene in the movie. And you can call it up on YouTube and watch it. And basically, you know, the team comes in at halftime, they're getting their ass kicked, and he's basically saying to them, look, you know, I think one of the greatest lines is we either come together as a team or we die as an individual. He's saying, Yeah, I've made all the wrong choices, you know, I can't do this for you, you're gonna have to do it yourself. And he said, just like football, you know, just like uh in life and football inches, right? It's the inch you have to claw and fight for to get ahead. And he says it's the six inches in front of your face that makes you know the difference between winning and dying. So I I'm paraphrasing it, but that pretty much it's just and it's just built and builds and builds out. So Al Pacino, one of the greatest actors of all time, delivers this speech. And if you don't have goosebumps at the end of that speech, then there's something wrong with you because that is like a motivational thing. You're I I use it of motivation every time when I'm down, yeah, when I've got something tough to do, when everyone's like, you know, against me, you know, difficult times in you know, my divorces or my mom and dad passing. You know, you just I just go back to that. I just that it was that expression you're the six inches in front of your face, because that's all you got, right? It's right now. That's all you've got. And it's like I say to a lot of people, you know, life is a book, it's a bunch of chapters, right? Some are long, some are short, some are happy, some are sad, some are good, some are bad. It just depends what part of the chapter you're in. And once it's done, you turn the page, you start the new one. And that's how I've always lived my life. So whether it's in relationships or whether it's in work or whether it's in events, whatever, that's how how I look at life.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
unknown:Okay.
SPEAKER_01:Thank you for that, David. Just looking ahead now, thinking about legacies and all that sort of stuff. Not just as far as business concern, but how do you want your legacy to look?
SPEAKER_00:Honestly, um, I don't really care about it. If I I'm a living I'm living the life for myself. You're really living in the power now, aren't you? Yeah, I don't I mean, I think well, I mean, we're all gonna be dust at the end of the day, right? Because think about it, right? The way I look at it is, you know, mum and dad pass, they're buried, then I'll pass, I'll be buried, or I won't be buried, but it'll be scattered across the planet. Then my daughter will come.
SPEAKER_01:Have you got a place where you want to be scattered?
SPEAKER_00:Oh, yeah, I got like seven, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I've got seven players. Oh, you're gonna be split into seven. Yeah, I've got I've got more friends.
SPEAKER_00:So like I'll give you an example. So like uh one of them is our football ground. So if you see a shifty guy there dropping a few ashes on it, you know that's me.
SPEAKER_01:You say Arsenal, sorry, you say Arsenal then.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:I've just known you're in the top five. That is that as soon as you came on, you got your Arsenal too.
SPEAKER_00:I'm being a big Arsenal fan. I've been an Arsenal fan forever. I actually went to the ground this summer because I'd never done it, even though I'd you know I've been to the stadium many times. I did the tour.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And if you're an Arsenal fan, I advise everyone to go and do it. But in the day before I was in Madrid and we did the Burnabell, the Real Madrid Stadium, and it made the as fantastic as the Arsenal one was, the Real Madrid Stadium tour was on a different planet. But anyway, so like Arsenal Football Ground, um uh Lake Tahoe, because I used to have a house up there. Yeah, okay. Um then uh there's this uh the old Ritz in Madrid, it's a beautiful hotel, it's now a Mandarin, and they have this beautiful garden where guests can sit outside, and you wouldn't even think you're in a city, but it's very tranquil. So someone gets spread there. There's this thing called the Sutro Tower in San Francisco, which is an old radio antenna, so something around there. So you know a few other crazy places, but that's that's where you find me. But going back to the original thing, going back to the original thing, like once my daughter dies, no one's gonna know who the f I was, right? And no one's gonna care, right? So that's why I don't care. I I just want to be a good, honest person um that provides for my well now, my daughter, and um to be good to my friends. That's it. That's it.
SPEAKER_01:So this is last question, really. We might touch on beverage, but last question. So if you were standing on a stage, I think I think I know the answers because you've mentioned them already. But if you were standing on a stage, you're getting an Oscar for your performance in your life, who are you gonna fight?
SPEAKER_00:Great question. I actually I have had the um equivalent of that for the finance industry, by the way. Yes, even better. Um well, I mean, there's no doubt it would be um it would be people in my mentors, right? So this guy Martin Lovegrove, it would be Ron Zimmerman, the Z, it would be this guy called Mek DiVazi, this guy called Tom O'Leary, um and and uh and obviously, you know, my friends, you know, I wouldn't be able to name them all, but you know, my dad told me something, and I did this exercise the other day, and it some people may find this strange, but my dad told me a very, very long time ago, he says, David, if you can count your true friends, your really true friends who do anything for you at any time, no matter what, on one hand, he said you're a lucky man. Yeah. And you know, I've been fortunate because I've traveled so much and I've lived in all kinds of different places that I've met a lot of good people. And so I I did the exercise. I said, you know what, it's impossible to do five, so I'm just gonna do it in buckets of ten. And I just kept refining it and refining it and refining it down. I got the ten. And then I had a twenty and a thirty, right? But the tet the twenty and the thirty are not as tight as the ten. But that's you know, I I I really advise everyone to really sit back in life and say, okay, who could I c you know, this the one guy lives in Australia, worked with me in these data rooms when I was young in London's, you know, the oil and gas business, and lives in Adelaide, hasn't got a pot to piss in, but we're friends, and whenever I come over to Adelaide to see him, you know, it's like or we talk or we text. It's like it was I saw him like yesterday. And I think that's that's somewhere like you know, with Andrew too. Like I see him maybe once a year, you know. But it's like we were at school yesterday together, and um I think that's and so I would thank all my friends. I think it's the other thing.
SPEAKER_01:So we I just finish off now, just um just touch on Bemridge scores. We both went there and I did a little part um about about Bemridge. So does that seem a long time ago? Now it seems a long time ago. There again, it does seem like yesterday as well. So it's a bit of a bizarre. Yeah, no, you're you're right. No, it does. Yeah. I think Bemridge for me shaped my music that I I I listened to. I think we we we survived Bemridge because of the music. But what what about yourself? Any any thoughts on Bemridge score came back? Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Look, uh I think it it really shaped me. I I really do. I mean, as I I was mentioning, you know, the first three days was you know, I was 12, right? 12, 13. Yeah, same, yeah, when I went, yeah. Never never been away from my parents, but wanted to just had that I want to get away. Because otherwise I was gonna go to school locally, and I I didn't I just didn't want to do that. I don't I d you know, and I think that's why I've moved around so much. I mean, I've moved like 20 times in the last 30 years, and I just I just had that like you know, that what's it, the Rolling Stone? And uh I said, yeah, I want to go to the school. And because it was the Isle of White, you're like, well, what is that? Yeah, what's the other way? Right, exactly. So first three days were terrible, you know. I was crying, like, you know, I made the boost for sake of my life, and uh then after that, I'm like, well, pull your bootstraps up, you know, let's get going. And um, so I've I you know still have uh Andrew, obviously from there, his very, very dear friend, and and David Gibbs, who went there as well. He left after a little bit, but it wasn't his thing, but we're very, very close. And um, so I still have some good I mean, obviously, you were I mean, I remember the one thing I remember about you was your love of music. That was it, right? Because you pick something up from everybody. And I think so. What is it? I mean, it makes you kind of romantic about, you know, because the classrooms are on the cliff and you were looking at the you know the ocean and and the summers were which we never really got to experience because we always left, right? I think there was a two-week, two, two-month window, we were never there. But there was a camaraderie, I think, with your fellow roommates, doormates, and um I was terrible at school. I had I didn't realize I had an ADD, right? So I I had no idea no concepts, my brain's fried. And I just love playing sports there, right? And uh and just having a laugh. So it really taught me perseverance, it taught me how to be very independent, and um I think that I've I've leant back on that as um through the years, you know, to remain and to be independent, to just trust your gut instinct, to you know, sometimes not listen to people and just push forward for for what you think is right.
SPEAKER_01:David, thank you very much for your time today. It's been a pleasure talking to you. Uh you know, it's uh uh uh you've had a very, very interesting live. So thank you very much for posting um your uh your post that on Facebook, right? That's what I read and what I wanted to reach out with you and talk to you about. So thank you for sharing your stories with us. Thank you very much. All right, buddy. See you soon. Yeah, bye.
