Hello everyone, welcome to another edition of Up Close & Personal for the Renegade Magazine. As always, I’m here but there’s a little bit of a twist today, in the fact that I’ve got Dave Dean with me. I’ve been around to all the Renegade Faculty and interviewed them, so, the only one that’s missing is me! Now Dave Dean is going to interview me. Hi Dave, how are you?
Dave Dean: I’m very good Steve… Welcome to Up Close & Personal.
Steve Matthews: Thank you Dave.
DD: It’s an interesting twist isn’t it, you usually being on the other side of the chair so to speak. I’m honoured today to be able to bring this interview to the magazine because I think it’s time people heard your story. You’ve brought everybody else’s story, you’ve done a little bit of travelling… Of course, you forced me to go to San Francisco to interview James Vanreusel but I think it’s time people heard who’s the real Steve Matthews. It’s a pleasure for me because we’ve worked together now for some time, and it’s been an absolute pleasure to work with you, so I think that the readers of Renegade and people listening into the podcast are going to get a very interesting insight into where the character they see within Renegades was forged and built.
SM: I’ll do my best, I met you five years ago, and I’ve been on a downward spiral ever since.
DD: Let’s kick this off Steve, I know these calls are more really about our business and our careers, but I want to delve into how Steve Matthews became Steve Matthews, what contributed to this character that you’ve become?
SM: Well, I was brought up on a council estate, one of the toughest council estates in Wales apparently, although it didn’t feel like that when I was growing up if I’m honest. I was brought up on an estate called Wildmill and it’s just down the road from where I live now… with the old adage of the Rottweilers go around in pairs, boy scouts throwing grannies across the road. It was rough but didn’t feel like that growing up. I’m really proud actually, to come from somewhere like that. I tell everybody, I meet a lot of people in my life who try to forget where they come from for whatever reason. I’m quite proud of where I came from actually… so, council estate boy, my father was a policeman who did 33 years’ service and finished as Police Inspector, and my mother worked for HSBC Bank or Midland Bank as it was originally before HSBC bought it and she spent nearly all her working life there before she retired. So, I certainly didn’t get my entrepreneurial spirit from my parents, they thought I was mad actually. Talk about inner circle and listen to the people that you surround yourself by, when I told my Mum and Dad that I was going to start up on my own, I got, “no, no, no for goodness sake”. So just the normal route really, I had some good friends, the council estate humour as you see all the time… bobby knocking, playing football against garages, rugby. I had a great upbringing and a really good family. I’ve got my sister, a bit younger than me but honestly, I had a great upbringing.
DD: It’s interesting that you were in a very tough area of Wales and had a great upbringing, that happens a lot doesn’t it, in communities where they are challenged because economically it’s driven, it’s a very low GDP. There are many areas like that in Wales. I know, I was brought up in one myself but you often find in those communities, that camaraderie, that ‘we’re in this together’ spirit… but it’s interesting that those who buck that spirit, those who have ambition beyond it, they get up and leave, they have to because you’re not going to achieve what you want to achieve in that area. Now, your choice of where to go was, you decided to go and join the Navy.
SM: I did yea… I obviously did Secondary School. I have to say, a bit of a precurse about where I came from is, I didn’t want for anything growing up, Mum and Dad didn’t have a load of money, but I didn’t want for anything. I had loads of love, I had anything I wanted at Christmas, there were lots of people on the estate far worse off than myself. So, it was tough in the fact that there were loads of nutters there really, rather than tough for me. So, I went through Secondary School and when I got to do my GCSE’s, all I wanted to do was go out and work. I found out what earning money was because I had a part time job, I’d worked all the way through the summer, which we’ll probably come back to because I think this is where I probably got my entrepreneurial spirit… I just wanted to earn money. So, the exams weren’t really massive for me. My Mother was desperate for me to do A Levels and go to University, but I just knew it wasn’t for me. And that’s probably the only time that me and my Mum have ever fallen out really, she was saying, “you need to carry on with your education”. In fairness I was quite bright, I passed all my exams, but I knew the world of education was not for me. We compromised, so instead of doing A Levels in University, I said I’d go to Technical College and do I.T. I don’t tell many people that actually, I tell everybody that I’m useless at I.T. and I was useless at I.T. So, I went to Technical College, a local College and did I.T. and that wasn’t for me either, and because I’d done it under duress, I literally spent 2 years on the golf course. I kind of rebelled against my Mother, I thought I’d pretend I was going and just went and played golf. So, I wasn’t very good at I.T. but my golf was fantastic. I got down to 3 handicap, played in the South Wales Boys, best round of 68 on a par 72 course. Golf was my game but then I thought, ‘I’ve got to go and do something’, so I went and joined the Royal Navy. I had a dose of reality before I joined the Navy mind. I went to work in a factory, and the factory was responsible for injection moulding, which is doing backs of televisions as it was then, printer cases for Epsom, that kind of stuff. It was production line, shifts… mornings, afternoons, nights. I got the job actually because there was girl I was in school with also who went to College with me, she was in the Accounts Department, she knew I was looking for work and said, “will you pick up litter”? So, I spent 2 weeks just walking around picking up litter. What they didn’t know, it was the middle of summer, so I used to go out on the lash, have a few beers the night before and honestly spend all day sleeping under the trees. I started picking up litter, they said I did a great job at that, and did I want to come into the injection moulding plant, as they were taking on shift workers? Mornings, afternoons and nights, for those of you who’ve never done it, mornings was 6 til 2, 2 til 10 was the afternoon shift and 10 til 6 the night shift. It was the most boring job in the world, and I tell my son all of the time and my daughter actually, that you have to be careful of the career choice you pick… The people there were fantastic by the way, nothing against the people what so ever, but the job was so boring. And I know for a fact, and I left that job when I was 18, there’s people still doing that job today. So, in other words, they’ve done that for the last 30 years… Picking up a part, cutting off a little bit, wiping a bit of oil off, put it in a bag and stick it in a box… and more power to them. All they did was work for their 2-week holiday a year, in Spain or whatever, looking after the kids, hard workers but always resentful of management. It was a big learning curve actually. When I left they stripped me naked and tied me to a post, they cling filmed me to a post, so that was my initiation when I left.
DD: Any photographs, any evidence?
SM: I did used to have a photograph of that actually, I don’t know where that’s gone. I remember, I had red pants on at the time which wasn’t very pleasant, I wasn’t expecting it. And then I went and joined the Navy. Again, another fantastic life experience… That and golf actually made me the man that I am today! I can honestly say, for the discipline and the ability to talk to people. Golf is fantastic for that, anybody listening who wants to push their kids into some kind of sport, Golf is fantastic for that. It’s the only sport I know, first of all, you’re playing against yourself all the time, and not only that, you’ve got to stand on the first tee and you’ve got to spend 4 hours with people from all walks of life. I’ve played with everybody from factory workers and bin men to royalty. I’ve played with Princes and do you know, when I was in the Navy, I was the best golfer on the ship and so the Captain used to take me everywhere. I used to play with dignitaries all over the world and it gave me the ability to talk to people. Hence, why I can talk forever really! So, when I joined the Navy, I was an electrician that was scared of electric. And because I guess I was a good talker, and used to making people laugh, I literally spent 7 years as a glorified painter and decorator, who was very good at cleaning. I sunbathed for 7 years.
DD: That’s not the job description you want to advertise.
SM: I’ve got to be truthful, the only reason I joined the Navy, was because I wanted to get out of Bridgend, which is where I’m from, I wanted to see the world, I’d heard all the stories about how all the nice girls like a sailor… That’s what I was hoping was true. I did try, but it’s not necessarily true. That’s all I wanted really, I wasn’t worried about a career, I just wanted to go in and honestly have some fun. I wasn’t worried about going up the ranks but because I’d done so well in my exams, when I went to sign up, they said, “you’ve got so many qualifications, you’ve got to go in as an Officer”. I said, “I don’t want to”, but they said, “with these qualifications, you’ve got to go in as an Officer”, so after some duress, I signed up. There was a bit of a wait, that’s why I got the job on the production line, waiting to go in… Because my Mother couldn’t afford my drinking habit, so I thought I’d better pay for that myself. I went down and did the Admiralty Interview Board down in Portsmouth, at HMS Sultan, but I knew I was doomed from the start…
Listen to the rest of the interview at 729Renegades.com/ podcast
