Meet the businessman who faced a baptism of fire in the nets with Fred Trueman

WITH his hair trailing like a stallion’s mane, Fred Trueman could terrify the world’s finest batsmen into submission with a single withering look.

David Hall knows exactly how it feels to have undergone an “examination” from Fiery Fred. On April 18 1966, Trueman gave Mr Hall a seventeenth birthday he would never forget.

“I went for a trial with Yorkshire at Headingley and I was surrounded by the stars,’’ said Mr Hall. “There was Geoff Boycott, Fred Trueman, Ray Illingworth and Brian Close and me at the nets.

“The coach said, ‘Boycott and Hall get your pads on’. Boycott went to net number one, where he knew he wouldn’t be facing Fred Trueman.”

Obediently trotting to net number two, the teenager took guard against a cricketing force of nature who was in his prime.

“It was terrifying facing Trueman in the nets with the balls whizzing past my head,’’ he said. “I managed to hook one of Trueman’s deliveries for what would have been a six, if the nets hadn’t been there.

“Trueman came down the wicket and glowered at me and told me that everyone had gathered to see him bowl and not me bat.”

As he recounts in his book, “Telling Tales”, Mr Hall’s appearance at the nets that day gave him a fleeting, but priceless, impression of the cricketing greats.

There was Trueman, piling his buffet plate impressively high with enough food for the whole team, and Geoff Boycott, who emerged from the dressing room immaculately turned out in his full England kit, complete with England cap, as if he was on a modelling assignment.

At the end of the day, Mr Hall received a half a crown to cover his travelling expenses. He never became a first class cricketer, despite his bold display.

“I wasn’t a bad cricketer, but I never practised,”, said Mr Hall.

When it comes to business, Mr Hall has displayed faultless tenacity. Today, he is a well-known author, consultant and entrepreneur who built his own consulting and training business from nothing to a 120-strong workforce across 12 offices.

He has worked with more than 100 businesses in the UK Australia, South Africa and Indonesia to help them raise their game.

He’s even picked up a BAFTA for co-writing the BBC TV series Winning and Winning 2 in the early 1990s.

Born in York in 1949, Mr Hall was effectively brought up by a single mother. His father Joseph spent most of Mr Hall’s childhood in hospital because he was traumatised by his experiences of the Battle of Arnhem. Family life revolved around his mother Eileen.

Mr Hall said: “My dad was with the red berets, the forerunners of the SAS. He was a medic and during the battle he spent time looking after the dying and the dead. The trauma of the battle really affected him. He was one of a generation who never talked about the war. They didn’t want to look back.”

Mr Hall’s school performance was unremarkable.

“I remember the look on my mother’s face when I told her I had failed the eleven plus,’’ said Mr Hall. “I was determined to prove myself.

“When I left school my mother persuaded me to take up a trade. Because I was big, the careers woman at school said I should consider working for the building industry. I became an apprentice plumber and I was a disaster. But one of the managers on the site sent me to the Vocational Guidance Association, who said I seemed to have a commercial mindset.

“It was the first time anybody had told me I had anything of real use,’’ he said.

“I got hold of a copy of the Practice of Management by Peter Drucker and became fascinated by management consultancy. I started to read every book I could get my hands on.”

He gained a Diploma in Management Studies, then a Masters in Management and spent evenings and weekends undertaking small consulting projects.

He became friends with an ambitious young businessman called Terry Bramall in the late 1970s, who came to trust Mr Hall’s judgement.

The construction company Mr Bramall created - Keepmoat - was sold for £783m in 2007, a record figure for a privately-owned Yorkshire business.

Mr Hall recalled how his friendship with Mr Bramall started: “Terry asked me to check out some land to see if it was worth buying. I spoke to people in the street and nearby shops and they told me there was no way people were going to buy homes there.

“I sent a one word report to Terry saying, ‘No.’”

“Twenty years later the land was still for sale, which shows I was right. Keepmoat was a great business.”

The TV series which helped him gain national fame - Winning - was all about finding struggling businesses and seeing how to turn them round.

“In the businesses that were struggling, the management were ‘umming and arring’,’’ said Mr Hall. “In the successful businesses they were very articulate and had a direction. I’m interested in entrepreneurs, people who create a business from nothing, like David Kilburn of MKM.”

Made redundant at the age of 50, David Kilburn set up MKM Building Supplies in 1995.

Today the company is the largest independent builders’ merchants in the UK.

Alongside Mr Hall, he worked to establish For Entrepreneurs Only (FEO), a group with 180 active entrepreneurial members. Since 2011, the group has provided mentoring to help 400 people to start their own business in East Yorkshire.

“We launched FEO because we were concerned about unemployment in Hull, we wanted to be part of the solution.

"My new book includes 10 toolkits to help people succeed.

“It’s for people who ask the question, ‘How can I do something like that?’

As fiery Fred could have testified, Mr Hall is no pushover when placed in a tight corner.

David Hall

Date of Birth: 18th April 1949

Education: Post Graduate Diploma In Management Studies (DMS) Master’s Degree in Management

First Job: Apprentice Plumber

Last book read: On Form by Mike Brearley

Favourite song: Money for Nothing by Dire Straits

Favourite holiday destination: Maui

Favourite film: True Grit with John Wayne

Thing he is most proud of: Being awarded a Visiting Professorship by Curtin Business School in Perth Westeran Australia

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James Mitchinson