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‘We all have different ways of doing things,’ says David Jones, when I ask him what makes a good captain of a corporate ship. He certainly has his own way of preparing for a high-pressure day like the one he had last week at the annual general meeting of Wm Morrisons, the supermarket group where he is deputy chairman and troubleshooter-in-chief.
‘I generally wake up about 6 a.m. My body is stiff and I’m almost unable to move. If I’m at home, I ask my wife Ann to move my legs out of the bed and pull me up. If I’m away, I have developed a technique of rolling off the bed on to the floor, then getting on to my knees before making a supreme effort to stand up. This can take anything up to half an hour. I then take my first medication; depending on how stiff my body is, I either lie down to wait for the drugs to work, or check my emails or play patience. About 30 minutes later my right foot starts to clench, the first indication that the drugs are working. Dressing is a trial: I’m not bad at putting on a shirt or trousers, but socks are difficult, buttons are a nightmare and ties are such an impossible task that I rarely wear one.’
The demon that David Jones wrestles every morning is Parkinson’s disease, an incurable affliction which he kept secret for almost 20 years while he built a hugely successful career in mail order and retailing, culminating in the chairmanship of Next, the high street fashion chain, from which he retired last month. I last saw him a year ago, when I was editing his autobiography, Next to Me, from which this account of his morning routine is taken.
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