In this fifth chapter of his professional memoirs, to be published in six parts, Oliver Ash recalls how one of the greats of Paris real estate, Miles d’Arcy Irvine, helped shape his career in the boom of the late 80s. To catch up with the first four chapters, please follow the link at the bottom of this piece.
Miles above all: driving for miles
As well as his considerable mental capacities, Miles had a wonderful sense of humour and I rarely found him unable to take a joke. The first time I recall this was after a near-death experience in his car after only a few weeks in my new job.
His chauffeur back then was a Korean called Wong. One afternoon we had gone to inspect a Talbot racing-car test track near CDG airport, which was up for sale. The idea was for Wong to then drop Miles at the airport to catch his flight and finally drive me back to the office. After losing our way trying to find the test track, which was hidden away from prying competitors’ eyes in the forest behind the Morfontaine Golf Club, we were running late when we left. Miles realised he was going to miss his flight. His solution to this problem was to instruct Wong to drive down the middle of the two-lane road at top speed. Wong looked nervous when this instruction was barked out and neither he nor I imagined for a minute that it was meant seriously. However, Miles made clear it was and that disobedience was likely to be a capital offence. Perhaps Wong realised in the shock of the moment that if he got Miles to the airport in time then at least he wouldn’t have to drive him back to Paris. It suddenly dawned on me that we were hurtling down the middle of a narrow road at 100km/hour, with cars rushing towards us, horns blaring, headlights flashing, swerving away at the last minute, while Miles was whipping Wong on (only metaphorically, because thankfully I never saw an actual whip in his car) like Lester Piggott on a Derby winner. I instinctively hit the deck in front of the back seat, closed my eyes and wondered what the inevitable, fatal collision impact was going to feel like. Meanwhile, Wong swerved this way and that in a trance while Miles barked out orders: “Turn left noooowwww”, “Faster, Wong, faster”, “Go on, go on!” After what must have been 10 minutes, but seemed like an eternity, the car came to a shuddering halt. I lifted up my head. We were at the airport. Miles turned to me across the back seat. “So, how did you like that Mr Ash?” Miles grinned.
“It was fine,” I managed, feeling the need to show I wasn’t going to be intimidated by his sense of immortality, “but I might need a change of underpants.”
Telling the story to Marc the next morning (I didn’t yet have a therapist) provoked a knowing smirk. “I refuse to get in a car with D’Arcy,” he said. “He’s a lunatic.”
Well, I was still in my trial period, so I did get in a car with him one – and only one – more time. This was a few weeks later in Paris. He was driving his VW Golf to a meeting somewhere near Trocadero. As a result, we were heading up the Champ Elysées towards the Arc de Triomphe.
“There’s only one way to get round this little square,” Miles declared with menace in his voice. “You have to just assume you’re the only vehicle on it.”
As it was rush hour in Paris and the roads were full of traffic, I did start to question the scientific basis of this theory, but there was no time for that. Miles hammered into the huge open roundabout making up the Place de l’Arc de Triomphe and I collapsed into the brace position and started to pray. There were furious screeches of brakes, hooting of horns and a few angry shouts. From the depths of the front passenger area I didn’t notice Miles change direction though. He continued round the Arc in a smooth circle, while all around was mayhem. When we emerged into the Avenue Kleber unscathed, but leaving scores of enraged motorists behind us, I made a mental note not to doubt Marc again.
When it came to cars, Miles was indeed on another planet. It was the same with telephones. In the late 1980s mobile phones were just being invented. They were extremely bulky and heavy too, which meant they were generally to be found in expensive cars, and only those who were both prosperous and exceptional had started using them. As he was both prosperous and immeasurably exceptional, Miles decided he needed five telephones in his chauffeur-driven Mercedes, each one capable of functioning in only one country, so he could keep in touch with all his international partners. There was barely enough room to sit down on his back seat with the phones installed left, right and centre. As soon as he started calling people, any unfortunate passenger, sometimes me, would become embroiled in great coils of phone cables. It was all rather unnecessary, as none of the phones worked properly anyway. But the multitude of car phones certainly added to Miles’s reputation as an eccentric operator, albeit a successful one.
Miles was occasionally the subject of pranks and piss-taking, usually by Marc, who was one of the bravest when it came to dealing with Miles. Clearly Marc felt he was so uniquely skilled at his job that he could get away with quite a lot. Before one company seminar in Ibiza, Miles emerged sporting a new moustache, which he appeared to be proud of, but we all thought didn’t suit him at all. Marc bought 20 false moustaches and insisted we all wear them before the opening seminar dinner. Miles walked into a dining room full of competing moustaches. He smiled, but we could all sense he was not amused. The moustaches were soon discarded.
Despite that awkward moment, for the most part Miles could be self-deprecating and I never got the sense he took himself too seriously. This meant that as the years wore on and he took me more and more under his wing, I could take the mickey out of him too, but I now knew to tread carefully…
