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A Heart of Gold
Jacqueline Gold
Ann Summers
A Woman's Courage
Ann Summers HQ
My partner – hand outstretched – waved the paperback at me.
“Read it! Honestly, it’s a good story!” she declared earnestly.
Somewhat sceptical I took the book from her and glanced at the cover. “A Woman’s Courage by Jacqueline Gold. Doesn’t she run sex shops?”
“Just read it!”Two days later when we sat down for breakfast I handed her back the book.
“Did you like it?”
I nodded. “I’m seeing her next Wednesday for an interview”.As the glamorous Ms Gold walked into the living room of her impressive, comfortable home where I was perched in an armchair waiting to meet her, she greeted me with a warm handshake, offered me a drink and then sat back expectantly, if a little anxious. I sensed that even someone as seasoned as her still had many reservations when it came to the press.
And yet looking at the woman sat before me, it was hard to believe that she had been in the public eye for close to 3 decades.
In fact she was 19 years old and not long an employee Ann Summers - the group owned by her father - when she first realised the potential that existed for selling sexy lingerie and sex toys for women in the privacy of their homes.
“It wasn’t easy working for my father’s company. You might think that being the daughter of the “boss” meant you had a simple route to the top but dad treats everyone in his organisation the same. Merit and not nepotism determines your progress”.
Clearly her father, the multi-millionaire business man, David Gold, could spot the same industry and success he possessed, in his daughter. Her appointment to the Ann Summer’s brand saw the concern grow under Jacqueline’s stewardship to a sales force of over 7,500 people, with 136 shops and a turnover of £155 million.
Furthermore, with the takeover of Knickerbox in 2000 adding to the empire, the business end of life seems to be going from strength to strength.
But I had read Jacqueline Gold’s book from cover to cover so I was well aware that beyond the “business” bed of roses sat an altogether much darker and more emotional story.
As a child, she had been forced to endure many traumas; a broken home, her parents’ destructive personal relationships, child abuse from a step-father and difficult early experiences of love all left a very telling mark on the young Miss Gold.
“I still find it very hard to talk about my early years. Following my parents separation (which led to her father leaving the marital home and her mother’s lover moving in) both my sister and I had to endure a series of unsettling, life-changing events, which have scared us both in many ways.
“There were numerous nights as a child when I cried myself to sleep and lived in fear of being left alone in the house with my mother’s partner because of what he did to me. To share the same roof as your abuser means you have no safe quarter; nowhere to escape to. Coming home meant coming back to the horror.”It struck me as strange then that a woman who had endured such sexual trauma in her early life should take up a profession in what was a very sexually provocative business.
“As a woman the last thing I wanted to do was shy away from my sexuality. The abuse could have made me turn into myself but I wasn’t going to allow that “monster” to scar me any more than he already had done.”
And yet, the scars may run very deep because Jacqueline has made no secret of the misfortune she has suffered with her relationships, from a failed marriage at an early age to the collapse of a long-term partnership that she had at one stage believed would “last forever”.It seemed to me that she was running from her past and yet that past was in itself forever governing her future when it came to her personal life. And as I was to discover, the woman who many people may believe has everything, was in truth lacking the one thing all her wealth and success simply could not buy.
Part two of our interview with Jacqueline Gold will feature online next week but for more information on Ann Summers or the lady herself, visit her website at http://www.jacquelinegold.comGeorge R Vaughan
Sun, 09/21/2008 - 21:12 — Jacqueline Gold
