Chris Bird jokes about having made loads of money for other people – and now it’s time for him to make some for himself.
For the past 21 years he’s somewhat incongruously combined running the relatively tiny Bird Consultancy PR agency with some of the biggest and most high-profile roles in the city, appearing in as many headlines as he’s helped to create and not always for good reasons.
Not only did he spend five years at the helm of his favourite football club, Manchester City, a job so exhausting it twice put him in hospital, but tragically, he also lost his mum, Violet, to the Hyde serial killer Dr Harold Shipman.
At the same time he’s been a close confidant of some of the most impressive business people in Greater Manchester – part of Fred Done’s incredible success story as his PR adviser and chief executive of his Walkden sports travel company, Sports Tours International, which has just returned to profit.
He also sits on the board of JD Sports.
The self-confessed workaholic says he’d never do anything to jeopardise the working relationships he’s developed these last 21 years, but he is ambitious to build something bigger all of his own.
He’s currently speaking to private investors about backing an enlarged media company comprising the Bird Consultancy and any number of enterprises which might add up to a winning group of companies.
“I’m looking to raise some cash and for people who want to work with us. One thing I can do is turn businesses around.
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“It might be that we could work with some younger management teams and give them some good advice. It could be that we could give some older management teams some support and a well-deserved rest.”
Mr Bird says he believes he could building something similar to the listed media company formed by the Hasgrove Group in Manchester says and that he is already eyeing a London-based sports broadcasting company.
Whatever comes of his plans, given his track record, it’s likely that there will be some exciting interesting times ahead.
Business Week is meeting Mr Bird at the Bird Consultancy’s offices on John Dalton Street, Manchester.
His stature is more jockey than footballer and he talks in a refreshingly down to earth way, peppering the conversation with the occasional emphatic expletive.
He was born in Wythenshawe but raised on the notorious housing estate in Hattersley which was still struggling to come to terms with having provided a home to the Moors’ murderer Ian Brady and Myra Hindley.
He recalls breaking into their boarded up house when he was a child and says that his mum would have been horrified to discover what he’d been up to.
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It’s clear from our conversation today that he holds his late mother responsible for the traits which have served him so well in business.
Mr Bird’s ‘business’ career began as a 13-year-old selling ice cream on a market stall, a job she encouraged him to take in order to improve his confidence and his mathematical skills.
“I was useless at maths, not really interested” he quips. “Working with money changed that.”
Never particularly academic, he left behind education when he finished Hattersley Comprehensive.
He worked in the “black hole of Calcutta” that was the Hyde dye works and endured a short stint as a trainee signal man before embarking on a media career.
He’d risen through the ranks as a sales executive at Piccadilly Radio in Manchester when he ran into the station’s new owner, Owen Oyston.
“I realised that if he could succeed in business, then anyone could succeed in business,” he recalls. “I decided I wanted to work for myself and walked out of what was the best paying radio sales job outside of London.”
It was exactly 21 years ago this week that Bird formed what would become the Bird Consultancy alongside the radio personality Phil Wood.
His long-suffering wife, Lynne (Mr Bird talks repeatedly about how much he has neglected his family over the years) told him to do what he wanted so long as he didn’t lose the house.
He didn’t tell her that he’d already remortgaged it.
What was meant to be the perfect mix of commercial savvy and creative spark faltered when the two men realised that as much as they liked each other, they couldn’t work together.
“Creatively, we were a match made in heaven,” he says. “In business, we were a f****** disaster.”
The partnership was dissolved after three years and the Bird Consultancy now employs six people, including Chris’s brother Peter, who joined after a 20-plus navy career.
Bird looks after the PR needs of enterprises ranging from Fred and Peter Done’s bookmaking empire to the Manchester Central conference centre.
He says that the success of the Bird Consultancy is almost entirely down to ‘fear’ – the fear that his phone won’t ring, a client will end a contract or a member of staff will resign.
In many ways, it’s the things which Bird has achieved concurrently with the success of the Bird Consultancy which makes his story so compelling.
A father of three, and grandfather to two, Bird will be 49 in February has easily has enough stories for an autobiography.
He met JD Sports’ founders John Wardle and David Makin in 1991 when they had only 15 stores. The pair have also been significant shareholders at Manchester City.
He says his relationship with them sums up his relationship with other clients.
“I always say if you want to employ a traditional PR agency, then you probably don’t need us. If you want a mentor and friend and someone who who will take time to understand your business and help it to grow in other ways, then we’re perfect.”
Bird says that working alongside such inspirational characters as Wardle and Makin, Fred Done, David Bernstein and Howard Bernstein is what drives him and inspires him.
He’s particularly taken with the way that Fred Done’s business career has continued to flourish to the extent that at the age of 67, he has just become the owner of the Tote.
He adds: “If Fred can continue to achieve such great things at the age of 67, then I’ve got loads of time.”
*The role of chief operating officer at Manchester City was a job which fulfilled Chris Bird’s wildest dreams but cost him his health.
So exhausted was he during his stint at the club that he was twice admitted to hospital.
But in hindsight, he says he should never have walked away from unfinished business.
He did so, he says, because he felt it would protect the position of chairman David Bernstein, who he believed was vital to the club’s future.
“In business it was probably the greatest honour to be invited to sit on the board of the club I have grown up supporting,” he said. “It was the hardest and most fulfilling job I have ever done.
“For the first 18 months, I didn't take a day off because the whole place was a shambles.”
Having helped to bring order to Maine Road, Bird was part of the team which saw City first build their new training ground and then prepare to move to the new stadium.
He says he began by looking at the club’s retail offering and at ways in which the club could broaden its fan base both domestically and internationally.
His work at Manchester City was initially on a PR basis, helping with the press when the new manager, Joe Royle, arrived.
“I became more involved in the day-to-day running of the club. I started noticing things around the club and thinking: 'There are better ways of doing this'.
“Then David Bernstein said: 'We want to extend the role – to become the chairman's assistant’. I became chief operating officer.”
Bird famously fell out with Kevin Keegan, who replaced Joe Royle, over facilities at the training ground, but eventually made up and maintains a professional respect for him.
“I always thought that I had a five to seven-year job to do at Manchester City and that I could have created a strong platform for them to go on and achieve the things they have in a very different way. We’d gone down to the Second Division but the fans stuck by us. All we had was bloody good hospitality.
“David Bernstein had a vision that Manchester would be like Milan – United and City like Inter and AC – and that is now coming true.”
Bird left Manchester City in 2003. In 2007, Bird says he attempted to buy the Blues in a deal with former footballer Ray Ranson. The club was eventually sold to Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra and then to its current owner Sheikh Mansour.
Nowadays, Bird says he is not made to feel welcome at the Etihad Stadium but he still goes to away games when he can.
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