Obituary

One of the iconic Covent Garden names of the second half of the 20th century will be laid to rest on Thursday, and here, contemporaries, colleagues, family and friends pay tribute to character and pioneering businessman Johnny Cruisey.

Johnny (left) and Jimmy Cruisey in front of the firm's infamous white board in 1984

Johnny and his brothers were born in Drury Lane, on the fringes of Covent Garden, and while neither parent worked in the Market, their father’s three sisters, who lived on Gresham Street off Tottenham Court Road, were all well-known flower sellers in the West End.

Johnny’s cousin Joe also began his career in the market as a porter, before becoming a printer, but it was proximity rather than familial connection with Covent Garden that saw Johnny begin working at Barney Springer (Russell Street) as soon as he left St Joseph’s Roman Catholic School in Macklin Street. It would prove to be the start of his long and distinguished career in the fresh produce trade.

Younger brother Jimmy had followed Johnny into the market and in 1959, the pair joined commission agent Albert Lawson to found Albert Lawson Ltd in a ramshackle office above Harold Day, in Russell Street. The business kicked off with its first order of 100 ‘Italian heads’, bought from Victor Torfs for 8s. 6d a crate and sold to Wilson and Leatherhead of Middlesbrough. Geoffrey Wilson loaned the trio £100 to get started, which they worked off in commission.

The market was very different then to now, of course, as it was still a hub that sold to provincial markets up and down the country and Johnny spent a lot of the early days on the road establishing new contacts and bringing new trade to Covent Garden.

“There were at least a dozen, maybe 15 commission agents in the market each morning in those days,” says Philip Emanuel, who traded with Johnny for decades. “They would take huge volumes of product on stock to sell to customers around the country. Most of the bulky stuff came through Covent Garden because we were able to move it quickly. And you have to remember that we were the yardstick for the rest of the country. If the job in Covent Garden was 12 shillings, but we started taking 9 and sixpence, within 15 minutes, markets everywhere else would react.

“Johnny was a real dealer. He knew his business, but he was always fair and never tried to catch you out. In fact, if you’d made a mistake on price, he’d often try to help you out. I had tremendous respect for him.”

As commission agents, Lawson’s worked extremely long hours buying and selling in the market, and when the market began to change, Johnny used his expertise in new potatoes, Spanish grapes and Italian fruit in particular to become a leading importer for both Covent Garden and his wider customer network.

Pretty quickly, Lawson’s became one of the leaders in the market and moved to more spacious premises in Long Acre. Over the years the firm had been bolstered by the likes of John Gant, Peter Powell, Tony Lefevre, Peter Rogers, Kevin Wilcox, and Micky O’Leary, some of whom were also board members.

Johhny and Jimmy’s cousin Peter Powell got his first job at the market when Jimmy was giving him a driving lesson and asked him to come in for a few days while he was waiting for a job as a printer, like his dad. “It was 100 yards from my bedroom to the office, so of course I did it,” says Peter. “And once I got there, that was it, I never left!”

Like others, he recalls the “pandemonium” in the office in the 1960s. “The amount of produce coming into and going out of Covent Garden on a daily basis was enormous.” He adds: “We were a team and Johnny was always looking for something else to get involved in. In the 60s, before the supermarkets started to take a hold, we got involved in retail with three shops, but sold them all after a few years, then we got into fridge freezers. It didn’t always work, but it was great fun.

“Johnny was a fantastic wheeler dealer and never let a deal go unclosed. He was like a leach and if it dropped from 10p to 8p, 7p… he’d find a way to get it done! That was the era of there being some really good commission agents in the market, the likes of Joe Da Costa, Harry Roberts and Albert Lawson himself, but I think Johnny was up there above them all.”

A 14-year-old Micky O’Leary was given his first job – as a tea boy - by Johnny in 1961. Micky had a long and happy career in the market, culminating in a 20-year stint with Hars Hagebauer. He was also friends with Johnny for more than 60 years. “Johnny was one of the real characters of the fruit business and the real key was the consistency of his character,” said Micky. “He didn’t fake it; he was the same every day and it made no difference who he was talking to.

“When Lawson's was set up, commission agents were quite staid, very traditional and respectful of the rules. They didn’t tend to speak to each other’s customers, for example. But that wasn’t Johnny, he was fearless as a man and a trader. He ruffled a few feathers, that’s for sure, but I think he was always underestimated for his intelligence.”

Gary McGrath, more of whom later, picks out one of Johnny’s many achievements: “He was the first in the country to bring in a full truck of produce (Spanish grape) for a provincial market (Sheffield) and he’s remembered by everyone as a man who when he saw an opportunity, went for it. Those were good days to be a commission agent. You’d be sending six pallets to Glasgow, 10 to Gateshead and four to Wolverhampton. The majority of it went through Covent Garden as there were no depots.”

Micky adds: “There are only a certain amount of people who really change the way business is done in the market and Johnny was one of them. It was a running education working for him and the firm was one that gave everyone a chance to get on.

“He was a genuinely good man. In all the years I knew him, I can’t remember him doing anyone any harm. He was very supportive of younger people like myself coming into the trade.”

Colin Gant, whose dad John was a partner of Johnny’s at Albert Lawson, was one of the younger people who benefited. “I knew Johnny from when I was a little kid,” he says. “Dad used to take me up to the old market and it was a real treat. Johnny was such a talented bloke and when he walked into a room, he lit it up. He was so generous to me – always introducing me to people as ‘my Colin’. He really was like an uncle.

“In those days, they were the best in the business and I would do some work for them in the holidays when I was 8 or 9. Kevin Wilcox would always tell me to add some money on to the tea order and Johnny found out and slaughtered me!

“He also got me my first job, at A Philips with his brother Joey, which started me off on my long career in the trade.

“Johnny was a good friend of the family. When my mum died in 2012, my dad was obviously very sad, but Johnny turned up out of the blue and it really made his day. He knew everyone and so many people would have called him their friend.”

Philip Emanuel, who began working in Covent Garden in 1959, says Johnny was his first customer as a salesman, in the early part of the following year. “It must have been early in 1960 as it was the Cypriot carrot season and Johnny was a customer of my father [another legendary figure known to all as Legionnaire Lou]. He walked on to the stand one morning and said to my dad ‘I don’t want to deal with you now. Philip’s here.’

“The first customer he gave me was Sargent of Sheffield. There were huge quantities of Cypriot carrots in the market in those days and that day they were selling for approximately six shillings a net. He bid me for 600 and I almost fell off my box! So, I served him and wrote the ticket – my dad said ‘you did what?’ but the price came in at about 5 and sixpence, so I didn’t do to bad!”

It was the start of a decades long business relationship and friendship. “I knew him all my life in the trade,” says Philip. “Johhny was a straight up guy, very personable and always smiling and happy. My wife Hilary and I were very friendly with Johnny and Yves for many years.”

The abolition of import licences that essentially protected products from Commonwealth countries opened up the market for more European product and Lawson’s was very well placed to take advantage of the new opportunities. Johnny became chairman of the London & Provincial Fruit Buyers & Merchants Association, which of course widened his reach again and put the firm in the right place when the association received enquiries from growers and exporters wishing to sell their products in Britain.

Johnny also had interest in C&C, one of the wholesalers in Covent Garden, as well as in other parts of the UK. He looked well beyond London when becoming a group of four that included Brian Critcher who set up Fresh Fruit for Wales in Cardiff in 1970. Brian and Johnny became close friends and both bought apartments in Benidorm, where they shared regular holidays for four decades. But it was business that first brought them together.

“Johnny was the go-to guy to get product and he had access to a host of good quality international brands,” remembers Brian. “We became big in Ferrari and other Italian brands and A Gomez and other Spanish brands. This was in the days when everything was still being sold through the wholesale markets, so the product would go into Covent Garden, then to us and we’d sell a lot of product. Our job was to sell it quick and satisfy the growers.

“Lawson’s took a few pennies a package as a commission agent, which was a lot less than the 6% an importer would charge. We were very successful before eventually shutting that business in 1998. Johnny was central to the success – he was a larger-than-life character, very popular, and always wanted to be at the centre of things. We had some great times.”

When the market moved in November 1974, Lawson’s naturally followed suit and experienced the huge change. The company’s office was featured in a TV programme created to illustrate how the new market was functioning. “To say that the office was a hive of activity is a massive understatement,” says Tony Ganio, who worked there from 1975-77.

“The office had a wall length white board with all the offers of that day, and it was constantly being updated. Phones would ring incessantly, everyone was on at least two phones at a time and we had direct lines in to several of the wholesale companies who were operating below us in the market.”

Johnny was a big personality, one of the key figures in the market. Tony also recalls how he handled the imports of Canary Island potatoes through a company called Casmi, in Tenerife. “The communication between Johnny and Eduardo of Casmi was legendary”, he says, as both struggled to speak the other's language, but overcame the barrier to forge a highly successful business relationship.

Johnny left Lawson’s and spent a few years investing in the development and construction of property. However, he returned to the market to work for Freddie Sharmer, before becoming an independent commission agent and sharing an office for more than a decade with two fellow agents Gary McGrath and Jim Molloy.

He was in effect competing with Lawson’s, but as an agent, not an importer, but Peter Powell says: “We both made a living doing similar things, but we never stepped on each other’s toes."

Gary McGrath remembers his time sharing an office with Johnny as hugely rewarding. “I was relatively late to the trade, having only entered the market in 1986 with Jim. But when Johnny joined us, my world changed. He was best man at my wedding 24 years ago. When he left, the market missed him, but me and my family still had plenty of good times with him after that.”

“He was unique. There were many times he’d do things and people were asking ‘what do you want to do that for?’,” Gary says. “But that would never stop him.”

“He was also a very funny man and although he had his moments, I don’t think I ever really saw him lose his temper other than when he played a bad shot on the golf course,” said Gary. “Although there was one night overseas where him and Jim got quite heated over whether Coca Cola or Pepsi Cola was the answer to a question in Trivial Pursuit!”

Still on the game-playing front, he added: “We worked hard, but so many days when we finished at 1.30pm, we’d get a sandwich from the bridge café and sit in the office laughing and playing Kalooki ‘til 6.

“We had many a great golfing holiday and Johnny set up the Covent Garden Golf Society and brought in sponsors that helped to make those really memorable, fun days.”

As well as the joy, there was tragedy in Johnny’s life, as both daughters Suzanne and Gillian died young. He and Eve adopted grandson Leon who is now 37 when his mum sadly passed. Eve died last year to end a long and devoted marriage.

Johnny retired around 20 years ago, aged 70. Peter Powell says of his cousin. “He loved the trade, but it was Covent Garden that was particularly dear to him. As a family, from the day we were born we were in the market and it was a wonderful place to be.”

Gary Marshall, Chairman of Covent Garden Tenants Association, was also a friend of Johnny’s. He says: “Johnny was one of the great characters that made this market what it was and still is. He was an incredible entrepreneur before the word was trendy and some of the stories about the groundbreaking deals he did and the chances he took are legendary. He loved wholesale markets and wholesalers around the country, not just New Covent Garden, and was a pioneer in logistics, buying product from Covent Garden and using the transport of the day to distribute it to his customers across Britain.

“He was also a lovely man, great fun to be around – and he epitomised the hard, but fair approach to business at Covent Garden. People often say that there aren’t the same characters around any more – I’m not sure that’s true, but I would say there’s never been anyone quite like Johnny. He was a one-off.”

The last word goes to Gary McGrath. “He was different class; so well known and so well liked across the market and also around the country. In the old Covent Garden, he was instrumental, with Sheila Springer, in the installation of the bronze sculpture that commemorates some of the old fruit, veg and flower traders.

“He knew everyone. Wherever you were, if you said you worked at Covent Garden, you’d be asked ‘do you know Johnny Cruisey?”

Johnny Cruisey’s funeral will take place tomorrow (Thursday March 27^th) at St Ann’s Church, 4 Brighton Road, Banstead, SM7 1BS. The service begins at midday and will last for one hour.

Drinks and refreshments will be available at Cuddington Golf Club from 1.15pm.

RIP Johnny.