‘From the depths of a dunking tank to scaling the heights of the Humber Bridge towers’
‘DONE IT ALL’: Vickie Jackson talking about her life and career with Phil Ascough
Chewing the Fat, out to lunch with Phil Ascough
This week’s guest: Vickie Jackson
Venue: Clapham Restaurant, Kingston Theatre Hotel
We’re talking about caving, deep down beneath darkest Derbyshire, bobbing around in the nithering North Sea for offshore survival training, and abseiling off the Humber Bridge – not the road deck but the top of the north tower.
You get the idea that Vickie Jackson has done it all and, by and large, without batting an eyelid. There were just a couple of occasions that got the better of her – one as a cleaner and the other with the Queen.
“As a supervisor, I used to go and see the cleaners to give them their time sheets and ask how they were getting on,” Vickie recalled.
“One evening I went to see them at an office in Wincolmlee and they were struggling with a big buffing machine. I said I would have a go with it and it took me over – I clattered a table out of the way and knocked a leg off a chair.”
The royal date came in 2006 when Vickie received her MBE for work in the community.
She said: “I only found out when I opened the envelope. At first I thought it was something about income tax but it was a letter saying I had been put forward and asking if I would be interested.
“I was shocked. I really couldn’t believe it. It was magical being there on the day. I couldn’t have had a better experience. Her Majesty said I must be very busy. I replied not busy enough, because I wasn’t. It just popped out of my mouth. She was very, very nice.”
Vickie was embarrassed enough to be invited to feature in this column, but there’s more to come as we find out how you progress from cleaning offices in Wincolmlee – and not making a great fist of it – to getting a gong from Her late Majesty.
Now 81, she’s also a veteran of my business lunch features from the late 1990s – the first person to appear in both columns – and she remembers better than I do where we went: “It was the Millhouse in Skidby but I can’t remember what we ate or what you wrote, but it was accurate!”
For someone who is arguably the closest we have to business royalty, Vickie is surprisingly low profile. She hasn’t done an in-depth interview since that lunch some 35 years ago, just speaking briefly to the media every now and then when one of her roles has demanded it.
‘MAGICAL’: Vickie Jackson receiving her MBE for work in the community from the Queen
Such occasions are increasingly rare. Alison Brennan is “doing an excellent job” as managing director of Kingston Recruitment, the business which Vickie founded in 1985. Hull Business Improvement District (HullBID), which Vickie guided through its most challenging times as chair, is now established as a valuable asset to the city centre business community under current chair Jim Harris and executive director Kathryn Shillito. Humberside Offshore Training Association (HOTA) is a leader in its sector under CEO Karen Shepherd.
Vickie still sits on the board at HullBID and HOTA, because they value her straight-talking, common sense and adherence to the maxim “do as you would be done by”. It’s not about diversity. The men afford her the greatest respect because she’s earned it, as do her colleagues at the Hull Businesswomen’s Breakfast Club, where she has twice served as chair.
To a man and woman around those influential tables, they know Vickie can be relied upon to ask the tough questions, maybe because she hasn’t quite grasped something herself or, more likely, because she has and is determined to secure absolute clarity.
Recalling a local restaurant director’s description of Vickie’s elegance, we met at the Kingston Theatre Hotel in the Clapham Restaurant.
The modern hotel is a delight, hidden away in a part of the city centre which may be unfamiliar to all but theatregoers and students at Ron Dearing UTC. But every now and then the landlords at the Hop & Vine and the New Clarence fly the flag for the Theatre Quarter with a joint beer festival, this year tying in with the exciting food options on their doorstep at Yinji Bar, Blue Bay, Lena’s Ukrainian Kitchen and Tanyalak.
From our table overlooking Kingston Square we peruse menus offering everything from sandwiches to substantial, including a very tempting afternoon tea. We make mental notes of the Christmas packages and the pre-theatre dining, although how anybody could sit through a show after, for example, mushrooms marinera, sirloin steak and sticky toffee pudding is beyond me. These days.
Ever decisive, Vickie had emailed me her choice in advance: “You can have whatever you like but I’m having a prawn cocktail!”
It’s available as a starter but Vickie just about mastered the main, leaving a bit of salad. I ordered the chicken and bacon Caesar salad from the daily specials, enjoyed it but made another mental note to return in the chill of winter and try the pie, steak, fish and chips or whatever. Perhaps while pondering the remarkable history behind the Clapham name.
Emily Clapham opened her dress-making salon on the site of the hotel in 1887. In no time she became known as Madame Clapham, dressmaker to the rich, famous and even the titled.
Discretion dictated that she could not reveal the identities of all of her celebrated clients, but it is known that they included Queen Maud of Norway as well as the 8th Viscount Chetwynd, who needed something special for the coronation in 1911 of King George V.
PROUD MOMENT: Vickie Jackson after receiving her MBE with, from left, son Anthony, husband Bob, and son Robert
A presentation by experts from Hull Museums during HullBID Fashion Week in 2013 revealed that people used to pay to send their daughters to work for Madame Clapham because they valued the experience so highly. Some of the girls were too young to work and had to hide in the warrens of basement rooms. When the building was converted into a hotel the owners found gold pins, reels of cotton and all sorts of other things under the floorboards.
The city’s archives also offer some pointers around J A Hewetson & Sons, who became Kingspan in 2001 and were Vickie’s employers from 1957. As Vickie tells a few stories I consider some of the detail revealing how much times have changed.
“They were part of Horsley Smith and they did parquet flooring. I went there as a junior and I enjoyed it because I went to everybody’s office collecting the post. It meant walking past some of the workmen and they fell deadly silent. I blush very easily, although not so much now as then. I was there for two years and I learned how to operate the switchboard and that was the job I loved the most.”
“I’d kept up my netball from school and we had a joint team from Hewetson and Horsley Smith. I was also a hurdler over 100 yards. I was good and I got into the school teams but I hated hockey. It was too dangerous.”
“I was at Plumrose at 121 High Street and while I was there I left to have Robert. In those days that was that. There was no maternity leave and you weren’t invited back. It never even entered our heads.”
“I worked in the sprout factory at Birds Eye Wall’s but only for two weeks. The hours were 6pm until 9pm and that suited me because it was just after Anthony was born. I also worked evenings at Imperial Typewriters. There’s six years between Robert and Anthony and I did these jobs when they were children.”
Robert, now 59, and Anthony, 54, have their own business, KFM Recruitment. They also own the Old Town pubs the Burlington, Crown & Cushion, and Star of the West. Anthony, known as Chico to rugby league fans, played for Hull FC from 1989 until 1999. Bob, Vickie’s husband and companion on the golf course at Ganstead and in the caves of Derbyshire, worked in various production roles and is now 87.
Vickie said: “I met Bob when I was 15 but I told him I was 18. We got married when I was really 18!”
By 1985, with the boys older, Vickie was ready to launch her own business but was initially blocked from working by her employer. She also encountered discrimination during the survival training linked to her work in the offshore industry.
She said: “Before HOTA was set up we did the survival training in the North Sea. You had to climb down a ladder on the side of the boat and in you went. I wasn’t at all worried because I knew we had the best suits. The hardest part was climbing back up the ladder and the worst experience was one of the instructors pushing me under. I don’t think he was impressed that a woman could do it.”
SUCCESSION: Vickie Jackson handing over the Hull Businesswomen’s Breakfast Club chair badge to Freya Cross of The Deep Business Centre in 2015
The formation of HOTA came in 1987 when the likes of Conoco, British Gas and BP invested to set up a local training facility instead of sending workers to Scotland and Norfolk. The sites at Albert Dock and Malmo Road are in demand with the offshore sector, and for team building days and charity stunts.
Give them a shout if this is an offer you can’t refuse: “Strap your team into the Helicopter Underwater Escape Trainer also known as the ‘Dunker’ and let them be submerged in the 4.5m deep training pool.”
Vickie has done it of course, and from the depths of the dunking tank then scaled the heights of the Humber Bridge towers for the abseiling fundraiser in aid of Dove House Hospice, where she also sat on the board.
The Hull Businesswomen’s Breakfast Club, formed in 1992, was another sign that women didn’t find the business environment particularly welcoming.
Vickie said: “I was involved in the Breakfast Club from the early years. They approached me some time after it was formed. There wasn’t anywhere at that particular time for women in business to go to let off steam and talk to someone in a similar position about their experiences.
“I’ve been chair twice and there have been some really good women. I’m really impressed with the women around the table now. We had to introduce ourselves recently and I said I was due to leave but I’d decided to stay. There were some lovely cheers even from people I don’t know.”
HullBID was set up in 2006 and Vickie became involved after attending a Humber Business Week event at Smith & Nephew where Ken Baldwin, Kathryn Shillito’s predecessor, was talking about the new city centre partnership.
Vickie recalled: “I had never heard of it but that wasn’t surprising because it was one of the first in the country. I went to some of the meetings to find out more and I could see it would benefit the smaller businesses in the city centre because it would get them working together.”
Vickie joined the board and, after the departure of former Princes Quay manager and local legend Mike Killoran, took the chair at a time when the organisation was facing a renewal ballot in a tough economic climate and against loud, if limited, opposition from a handful of businesses.
Vickie said: “I wasn’t sure about being the chair but the BID was having a bad time and I wanted to find out what wasn’t right. We won the ballot, very narrowly, and have since won two more with big majorities. But I only do it because it’s been very good for the city centre and especially for the smaller businesses.”
Her own small business, Kingston Recruitment, remains in safe hands 38 years after it was launched. From its original offices above the former Midland Bank in Whitefriargate, the firm moved to Kingston House just along Parliament Street and, more recently, into more modern offices in Lowgate, next to St Mary’s Church.
Vickie said: “I launched Kingston Recruitment as a local independent business and it’s still there now but I really don’t get involved much. We have always had a solid and high calibre client base and Alison and her team are doing a really good job of running the business. That’s how I’ve been able to work on other things!”
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