• 1978 to 1986


    • My first proper job began as a stock room assistant at a high street chemist, part of a YTS scheme. I progressed through various roles within the shop, ultimately managing the dispensary. The chemist, C Horton Ltd in Cirencester, had me responsible for ordering drugs, filling prescriptions, supervising Saturday staff, and overseeing the computerized labelling and ordering system in the dispensary. Although the job was fascinating, it was not highly paid. To supplement my income, I worked as a nightclub DJ on weekends at the Crown Hotel in Cirencester and the Tunnel House Inn at Coates during the early '80s.


      I then moved to the Royal Marsden Hospital in Sutton, Surrey where I completed drug orders for the wards and fulfilled outpatient prescriptions. Although better paid it was very predictable and very boring.

      After a year I moved to Vestric Ltd which is now called AAH Pharmaceuticals. Here I covered a large part of the UK selling computer systems to high street chemists. These computers were used to print medicine labels and re-order the drugs via a Modem. I had to turn prospects into sales, do the installation and the staff training. The first of these systems were made by ICL and ran Concurrent Dos which was a brand of CPM and then moved to Ms.Dos PCs.

      Principle skills learnt
      • Customer management
      • Staff management
      • Sales
      • Area management
      • Customer Training