Remembering My Start at Computacenter.

I was young, and wide eyed when I joined Computacenter and the average age for the company was approx a year below mine. I was considered an old man at 21.

What can I say about CC?

• They gave me my opening into IT.
• They started what became my 42½ year career.
• Prior to a specific event (maybe more on that another time) I would have happily stuck with them.

At the time, I was working for the BBC as a PNW Scenic Operative and absolutely loved the job. My then young self saw the Beeb as my future. At some point I would have looked to transfer internally to being a cameraman or something in production. Instead, 1983 saw me responding to an advert for a PDI Engineer. When I spoke to the recruiter I had to ask what PDI meant.

Yes, I was young, I was very green but I was keen, and the advert did say “full training given”.

Did I say I was young and green?

I didn’t get that job, but the recruiter remembered me and skip forward to early 1984 he asked me if I was serious about changing from a job paying close to £12k pa to one that was £5½k. The challenge to me was, if I was serious to meet him at his office at 9am the following morning. This is where the PNW bit comes in. PNW means Permanent Night Working and I rolled off of an 11hr shift, changed into my suit at BBC Shepherds Bush studios, hopped on the tube and was outside his door before he opened.

The recruiter was convinced and he put me forward. A week or so later I was interviewed by a one ‘Digby Christmas’ – yes, genuine name and I turned up in my light grey suit, pastel pink shirt, matching socks and probably a contrasting tie but I forget which now. This was the early 80’s and pastel colours were all the rage. A future colleague, Lee Burke (“Bourke actually”) happened to walk past the interview and recalled me as the “pink sock guy”. But, despite a decent interview the job itself didn’t really exist. CC were very much speculating at that time as to what the market would do.

The job? A delivery installation engineer. Engineer being a grand title for someone that could shift boxes and plug bits of hardware together!

As to employment, all I got was silence.

Then mid 1984 I get a phone call out of the blue. CC had managed to track me down and offered me the very job I’d interviewed for almost 6 months earlier. The only catch was could I start that coming Monday.

I could, as my BBC job was still technically a “temporary one” and the contract for which was renewed on a 1 or 3mth basis each time. The cohort I’d started with, approx 20 of us, were one by one being offered full time roles. And in a burst of serendipity my contract renewal for the next 3 months was sat in my works mail box and dated to start the following Monday.

I choose to walk away.

Monday saw me meet the team, and take possession of my shiny 1984 Ford estate van – I regret that I don’t recall that registration, but I do recall the one on the first car I had via CC was C880 SRX. The van came with something equally precious, my new AllStar fuel card.

The team I met were:

• Digby Christmas – head of sales
  • his deputy who’s name I sadly forget
• Mike Norris – the then Lime Street branch manager and now CEO
• Tracey – our indomitable receptionist
• And Mike Head – one of the engineers assigned to “educate me” in the ways of computers and life at CC. He also taught me the ways of edlin ** with the words “if you remember nothing else, then remember how to use edlin as it will save your life”. He meant technically of course, not my physical one!

In fairly short order I also met Mike Bojang, Dave Crate (manager of engineering), Phil Hulme (co-founder of CC and now a sir I note), and Ian Lines who became a lifelong friend and was sadly taken from us way too soon. There were many others, mostly names I now forget, but one other does stand out and that was Mad Mike our transit van driver who ferried gear from CC’s Watford site to the various branches.

Stay tuned for more …

** edlin – aka ‘line editor’ was a very early means to edit batch, config, etc files. It was like vi had a bastard child and then cast it away!