Still wet behind the ears, he inherited one of the first true country insurance brokerages, (as opposed to agencies), which, due to his father having suffered a long and debilitating illness, was bankrupt. However, together with the business, came his father’s reputation for the instilled principle to the extreme of “honesty is the best policy,”

Unwittingly initially, he did not appreciate the value of that reputation, but the business soon flourished accordingly, leading, he says, to his first big mistake, when he sold an excellent business to concentrate on the sea.

Many have called him a Fishing Freak, with which he, himself has no argument. If you need proof of this freakiness, you only have to know that just after turning six, he managed to persuade a seasoned fishing skipper at the Gordons Bay harbour to take him out with his crew on a commercial line-boat This naturally resulted in the initial belief that he had fallen and drowned in the harbour!

However, he points out that what you are has little to do with you, and that your strengths and weaknesses of your abilities and character are determined by a combination of your family heritage, and that Power that many of us refer to as Our God. All that you have to do is to try and ensure that you make the best use of them for the benefit of as many others as possible.

Fifty six years later, he had accumulated a diploma as an Associate of the Chartered Insurance Institute, together with a Dale Carnegie management and accountancy diploma, a fishing masters ticket, a pilot’s licence, in addition to a flirtation with politics, a rocky personal history, the formation some thirty or so companies, two of which he took to listing on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange, in some fifteen or so different industries and vocations.