I’ve owned quite a few suits. My time in one of the world’s largest meat companies, Thomas Borthwick and Sons, the UK’s largest meat company, FMC and New Zealand’s largest animal by-products exporter, Colyer Watson, had suits as their corporate uniform. But three suits stand out. Let me tell you why.

The first was a tweed suit I wore, pretty much all the time, in Scotland. It was perfect for negotiating with Scottish farmers a price for their cattle and sheep. The last thing I wanted to look like was a pinstripe member of the London Stock Exchange come to steal Scotland’s hard-earned produce. My tweed suit and my family tartan kilt softened the farming community to my antipodean roots.

It’s off the subject of suits but I must tell you a story about my kilt. The kilt was made for me by a tailor in Edinburgh, from 8 yards of Hunting McInnes tartan cloth. The first time I wore the kilt was to a Burn’s Supper in Edinburgh. Before leaving I had been walking around the house telling Alison to “bring on the English”. I was more than ready to “send them home to think again”.

It was a cold, windy and snowing night. Part way over the Borland Glen our car slipped into a small ditch. I got out to push it back onto the road. As I pushed the wind and snow blew my new kilt up around my face. Alison wound down the driver’s window, looked back and said, “I bet you wish the English were here now.”

Being as Alison was the Scottish 1500m track champion and representative she had the resume to get away with her cheek. There is a time and place though.

Anyway, back to the tweed suit. I’m pretty sure my farming acceptance, founded on that suit, saved the London Knightsbridge Head Office of FMC several million dollars in the price paid for Scottish cattle and sheep. What did Napoleon say, “A soldier is the uniform he wears.”

My second favourite was a pinstripe suit made for me by a small tailoring business in Sunningdale west of London. This suit was a real Knightsbridge number, ideal for a London Head Office business meeting, perfect for a pint in the Belgravia Horse & Groom, and made for an evening in the Palm Beach Casino in Berkley Square. And before you ask, that suit did all those things, many times.

The cloth was incredible. Merino wool as soft as a feather with a wide, very thin pinstripe made of gold. Yes, real 18 karat gold thread. I know that sounds more like an expensive Christmas tree, but it wasn’t. In fact, the suit was understated in an expensive sort of way.

The most memorable moment for this suit came at a new meat plant we built in Perth, Scotland. I invited two Marks & Spenser’s executives from London to visit the new facility with the idea of selling it as a source of meat for their 254 stores. It was a special day. I chose my pinstripe suit for the occasion. When they arrived, we discussed the plant’s superior hygiene. I boasted that the plant was so clean I could kill five sheep and not a drop of blood would get onto my suit.

On the slaughter floor I kick-started the conveyer that brought live sheep up to the killing point. For some reason the conveyer failed to stop and live sheep were being ejected into the processing area. I was desperately trying to grab sheep. By the time we got things under control my gold pinstripe suit was covered in mud and Scottish sheep poo. Fortunately, the visitors from London thought it was hilarious and approved us as a supplier.  

But my all-time favorite suit was made for me by an apprentice tailor at Rembrandt Suits in Courtney Place, Wellington, New Zealand. The apprentice happened to be my brother, Kim. What a talent. The cloth was dark grey Merino with a narrow cream pinstripe. The comfort, the style, the cut and the hand-stitching were straight out of Gieves & Hawkes, No.1 Savile Row, London – but dare I say, better.

I wore the suit Kim made me on my first day at work after finishing university and for many years after that. It came with me from Wellington management trainee to New Product’s Manager for Borthwick’s world-wide group in London.

The suit’s most memorable moment came after we shipped the first container of chilled lamb between New Zealand and the UK. Prior to that all New Zealand lamb was shipped frozen. Today chilled lamb is a multi-million-dollar business. But back then it was cutting edge technology.

We sold the first container to Marks & Spenser. They decided to use their Marble Arch store to control the public sale. The New Zealand ambassador (Hugh Watt) heard about the new product and asked me to arrange a visit to the store.

Dressed in Kim’s suit, I arrived at New Zealand House. The ambassador’s car (license plate NZ1) took us to Marble Arch. Soon we were admiring the meat counter while I explained how we had begun with one carcass by air to this shipment by sea of a full container.

Hugh Watt noticed a little old lady pause at the New Zealand chilled lamb counter and select a pack of leg steaks. The ambassador asked whether she had bought the lamb earlier in the week.

“Oh yes,” said the lady.

“You enjoyed it then?” inquired Watt.

Oh, it is not for me. It’s for my Pekinese,” she said.

There is a swimming side to the chilled lamb story. The foreman who packed that first container of chilled lamb at the Waingawa freezing works, Russell Geange, has also been the Head Coach at the Carterton Swimming Club for years. Duncan Laing, who began his working life in the Waitara works, used to say the best coaches always begin in a New Zealand meat works. Some in white gumboots and others in a pinstripe suit.