Mel Morris CBE | The Future of AI & The Past of Derby

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0:38Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Listeners of this show will get a$75 sponsored job credit at Indeed.com slash podcast. That's Indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need a hiring hero? this is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs. Welcome to Jimmy's Jobs of the Future and happy birthday to us. It's five years exactly since we put out the first episode with Hayden Wood, who was the founder of Bulb. It was at the time the fastest growing technology company in the United Kingdom and Europe. Fair to say things have changed.

1:14I've posted on various social media, on LinkedIn and Substack in particular, some reflections on building the podcast over the last five years. and what the future may look like for us as well. But on to today's guests, we have Mel Morris. And Mel Morris has always been ahead of the curve. He backed online dating in the 90s. He worked on one of the most iconic mobile games in the early noughties when it came to Candy Crush Saga. He came much more prominently into my life as the owner of Derby County Football Club in 2014. what followed was a pretty exciting eight years of investment of busy summers signing lots of players various playoff campaigns and as we talk about in the episode there was an element of derby county goes to hollywood with signings like frank lampard ashley cole and wayne rooney but it all ended in disaster with mel morris plunging the club into administration and the club being relegated from the championship with a record points deduction.

2:23At the time I was quite heavily involved with the Save Derby County campaign. As we talk about in this episode with Mel Morris he wasn't sure that necessarily helped things at the time but he's back today to talk about what he thinks the future of AI looks like and what may happen next. It's a fascinating episode, it's got a little bit of something in it for everyone I think in terms of we talk about the history of technology how he's been able to kind of spot the trends going ahead the very interesting time at Derby County and the sort of disaster that it ended in but also a look to the future and what AI might actually be able to do so a fascinating episode I hope you enjoy it make sure you subscribe so we can continue to get bigger and bigger guests

3:17mel welcome to jimmy's jobs the future i was intrigued to start with the past in 1973 you left school and obviously you sort of made your money on the internet when did you first come across a computer oh wow that was really really early doors so first came across a computer before I left school okay all right I actually had a visit to Rolls-Royce uh saw one of the huge devices they were using which was probably a bit bigger than the size this office time is about four it's probably about as powerful as my my wristwatch today yeah um and that intrigued me and and I suppose you know as a kid you know what these things really are but I thought yeah this looks like really exciting things to do and uh it it set me up on a path where I was hell-bent on making sure I had something to do with technology going forward.

4:10It proved more difficult than I thought it was going to be, but that was the starting point. And so why did you leave school at 16 then? What was the sort of logic with that? Because there wasn't something that you could do that was computer science at that stage? I excelled at junior school. I really did. I did really, really love the school. It was a really small school, maybe about 150 pupils. Loved it. And, you know, it was great for me because it was a family environment. My mother left home at seven, so this was a really great place for me to be. I enjoyed it, and I excelled. We had French lessons at a young age, which was unheard of then.

4:48When I went to senior school, I was coasting for the first year or two because the junior school had done such a good job with me. I don't think I ever actually then realized I needed to switch on. So I had not really done well. I came through with a few GC results. But I wanted to work with tech, and that was what I wanted to do. And, of course, at that time, most people were going to go and be an apprentice for Rolls-Royce or British Rail or somewhere like that. And that wasn't for me, although I did actually take a role initially when I left school with Qualcast on Victory Road, which was a big industrial foundry.

5:30and I lasted there about two, three months. It was a horrendous environment. I feel for the people working in those sorts of places because you go in there and it's like it's 120 degrees Fahrenheit. You've got molten metal spilling around all over the place. The fumes are terrible. I'll get home at night and have a wash. It's black. The water's black. And then another couple of sinkholes of water and my hair's black. it's like you know i wish you could it now but of course it's that boat's sailed but so so it was so i went there and i was at a technical college at uh chesterfield yeah uh looking to do metallurgy which wasn't exactly what i wanted to do but it seemed like a good path and had a motorbike accident on the way to college one morning and uh i thought i don't know why i'm doing this i'm not enjoying it yeah yeah traveling from derby to chesterfield and so i said the good thing so I'll wrap this up and go and find a role in tech and I got my first role that was closer to tech but not in tech which was was quite disappointing in some ways and so what was the journey then on sort of going on the path to you day in the mid 90s oh wow I mean there's a lot of stuff happened between those two points so the the job that was nearly tech but wasn't I ended up decollating paper coming out of a printer.

6:55So you have three-part paper sets coming out. Now, my job is to separate those out and deliver them around to different offices. And I thought, well, it's a piece of technology that no one had in mind. And I was looking pretty miserable one day. And one of the ladies there said to me, what's the problem? I said, well, I want to really work with computers. And she said, well, her husband is the computer manager for EW Bliss. it was another big industrial pressing company in Darby on City Road. And I sort of went along there and he said, look, you know, listen, why don't you come and just spend two weeks with us?

7:29And I said, well, I'd love to, but I have no holiday left. So he said, well, you know, quite a tech two weeks off. I said, no, I'm not going to lie to them. So I'll pack my job in. I'll come for two weeks. If it doesn't work out, I understand, but I'll give you everything. So here we go. and about six days into it they said they're gonna give you the job and this was writing computer software at that time in a program language called COBOL common business oriented language and I found it really easy really easy and had this this guy that a guy called Jed Dunkel 26 years old one of the few people who could say he actually had a computer science degree and he was really smart and he decided that I was pretty good he could get me to do all sorts of things and he could sit back and watch and that suited me because I would end up learning so much stuff I could always turn to him for advice and stuff like that and I was doing all the work so in the end he left and I ended up picking up his role and then probably by chance about a year later someone from the National Bus Company came in and they were trying to convert some data off magnetic tapes and they were having real difficulty with the utilities they were using to do it so I asked them if it could help and they explained what they were trying to do I said well that software is not going to do that for you but if you give me an hour I'll write you something that will do it for you and he thought that was crazy so I set about and developed this program compiled first time and did the job brilliantly much faster than the thing they were trying to do and it worked and so he decided to offer me a job and i said to my boss who gave me this break he's offered me a job here well he's here it's a bit unfair he's come to use your computer and now he's trying to think it's too sorry but but that's the way it is anyway he was a really good friend a guy called tony board dead now but he he said look you know it's a really big opportunity for you you know if you if you want to go and do this do it but just give us enough time to get someone in to yeah have to replace what you do, which I did.

9:33I joined National Bus. This would now be coming up to the latter part of the 70s. And I'd learned such a lot of stuff from this 26-year-old. And all the staff there seemed to not really read the manual. So I was like a walking encyclopedia for all the questions they had. I didn't mind. It was fine. And then at the age of about 18, 19, they then give me this team of people in national bus to to to manage which i did and i was sort of doing that quite happily um but but but i got to a stage with it where i thought you know i really want to try and venture out and do even more so i went for an interview at vickers in newcastle uh the shipbuilding yeah all right and well military and shipbuilding but so on the on the scotswood road uh there you go name dropping a nice name so and i went there and i'd been reading these manuals about the work they did on this operating system I'd never seen before.

10:30And I turned up for the interview and the guys say, you've not worked on any of this, you've got no experience with it. I said, I know. Why are you here? I said, because I've read all the books, I know everything there is to do with this thing. I spent hours going over them. I'm pretty sure I know everything there is to know about this thing. They thought it was impossible. I said, well, look, let's cut to the chase. Why don't you get some of your top guys and get them to fire questions at me? Yeah. and see how I get on. Anyway, of course, like a red rag to a ball, this young whippersnappers come in, and these guys are now going to these things.

11:04So they asked about an hour and a half of questions, and they stopped, said, have you got any questions? They said, well, maybe I've got one, and it might lead to a second. And I said, the first question is, I believe I answered all those questions totally correct. All right, am I right? And they looked at me, I said, yeah, you're right. The same question is, when do I start? And there's no mobile phones in those days. So I'm driving back down to Derby and stop en route at Scotch Corner and ring the staff agency, got this consulting interview. So it's a contract position. And they said, we've been offered a ridiculously high charge outbreak for you.

11:47It tells you you're going to take it. So I took it. And I owned more in the first three months there than I had done in the previous two years. And that set me on a path that there's some value in all of this that can be done. And is that when the ambition began to kind of harden? I thought, yeah, I found technology. It's never easy. It's never easy. I found technology something I could master. Yeah. With enough effort, I could do it. And as things got on, I got better and better at doing that. Now, roll the clock forward, you know, 50-odd years to now, and I've probably programmed more than, probably getting on for 20 programming languages during that time, all of which I had to retrain on or learn about to do, and all of which I found some were interesting, some were better than others.

12:42But the principles were the same. Yeah. Have you found it more difficult as you've got older? Because that's often one of the things, right? No, no, I'm not. You know, I mean, again, I suppose the young guys working with me now probably say, yes, he has. But I don't feel it, have I? And my productivity certainly doesn't seem to have shown that. And as we got through two or three more businesses which are built and sold, I then had this opportunity to move to America. and you know it was really weird because i got two two young kids one aged three one aged 18 months and uh and i said look i've gone for this interview and we can move to the states and we did move we made the move and it was fantastic for me uh to see the scale of technology that was available to companies over there the contrast was almost like you know it's almost like someone you're making do with a with a push bike and these guys have got you know limousines it was that big a step up into no not the principles the amount of money that was available to invest in technology made what we do but there was a flip side we always had to work with really low power, low cost equipment.

14:03You just have to try harder with that. You have to try harder because otherwise you'd have anything done. Whereas these guys would have 20 computers where we would have two or three. And that to me was a really interesting point. And over there, everyone seemed to get promoted every nine or 12 months. And some of them, some of them barely got four or five years experience, didn't even really know how to write programs, but they were still getting promoted and i thought at the time there has to be a way to do what you enjoy doing which for me was writing software without having to move into becoming a director of something to earn lots and lots more money and i found the way of doing that so whereabouts were you in the states then so i was in a place called chelmsford and wang laboratories were placed in a town called lowell yeah it's about 35 miles north of Boston.

14:54Yeah. Lovely, lovely environment in terms of the sort of living environment around there is fantastic. Obviously, New Hampshire just on the Stokes' throw away and loads of coastline, which was lovely. So I spent about two and a half years over there, really enjoyed it. And then, of course, the grass is always greener, isn't it? You know, so, you know, we decided we'd come back home and then got back. Three months later, I thought, you know, we should back over there. Yeah. So I had about a year or two not feeling to come to another place, actually. Wish it was full of discontent, but hey-ho. And so when did you start U-Day then?

15:29When was this sort of like you saw the gap? Well, so there was a, after Wang, there was a company called Minitech, which was basically producing computer software that, based on the experience I built with working in Wang, was able to make those computers run much faster. Yeah. And I mean, much, much faster. and so that was really successful. We got to a stage where we were producing about 12, 15 million pounds a year of revenue, very profitable. One of the aberrations was I built a hotel while I owned that business. The property crashed. The value of the hotel went from 17.6 to 4.5 million within four months.

16:13And I owed nine on it. So you can imagine how that went down. but we managed to be able to scrape through and service a debt and so on and so forth and eventually sell it for 12 but i'd lost six or seven million on the back of that but it was a great project hotel still standing today it's the michelever court we've seen it so and so so it got to the stage where my feeling was that you know there's there's a lot more to be done here and on the back of that we built up more and more behind many tech to have to develop hardware systems that were sold by wang and then wang went into chapter owing us a lot of money a lot of money uh you know millions and you know they were never going to be able to pay it it had gone it was in chapter 11 and you know and but my feeling was the wang family must be in tatters with this because they had a business worth several billion, and now it's about to go crumbling.

17:11So I flew over to the States to see if I could actually help them find some way of creating value out of what it is they had. And they thought it was going to chase the debtors. I said, look, that song is coming. I know I'm not going to get that back. But on the back of that, I met a gentleman from actually from near Reading, a guy called Jeff Shingles. and he was the UK head and eventually European head for digital equipment and I stuck with a really good relationship with him and that really helped me in a lot of different ways going forward. But the transition was that on the back of Minitech being squeezed because Wang went into Chapter 11, we had to recreate the business and the Wang market was gone.

17:57So I decided to develop some software that was on PCs and it would be used to measure the productivity of PCs and their users to spot things like, you know, this secretary could do with training on Microsoft Word or something. Yeah, yeah. So on and so forth. And that was going really well. Sold that business to Platinum Technology in the States for a lot of money. And then on the back of that, I joined them for about 18 months as head of new product development and then decided I really wanted just to start something else. had a local friend uh who wanted to start a dating agency and uh i said i have no interest in that but whatever we got building an internet one and and that's where that started uh and that was like late 90s yeah so we started the business in 99 yeah okay so the internet was bubbling at the time you can imagine it was absolutely really buoyant exactly and you end up exiting that for sort of 10 million well a lot more than that i mean the the reality of it was that um we were looking to float the business and of course the bubble burst for the internet literally just before we were able to get it away so sooner than be able to raise a quarter of a billion dollars to fund the business we ended up having to scrub around to find a company with some money in and do a reverse takeover of that cost us a lot of stock and we raised seven and a half million which compared with a quarter of a billion.

19:25So we ended up being the least well-funded startup in dating that there was at the time. And that was really interesting. So the team seemed to think that seven and a half million would be enough to get us going. I always had doubts. And within six, seven months, we were nearly out of cash. All right. You know, they'd spent it all on advertising and stuff like that. And now it's like, you know, it was gone. And I said, look, we need to really sort this out because what we've developed is really good. So we have to find a way to make this successful. And we ended up in a scenario where we had probably about maybe three months' worth of cash left to survive.

20:10And we found a business who had even less cash than us, had a much bigger user base, but wasn't generating that much money. Okay. So the idea was we take our product, which was much better than theirs, buy their business into ours, give them stock for their business as part of the combined entity, and then use our platform to grow it. And we went from being probably in the top 100 to being the number two within nine months of that deal. Wow. Okay. So that's quite a change. And then you exit it. And then there's a period between there and Candy Crush and King, right? Well, not really. not really no i mean it was quite interesting because the whole candy crows well the whole king or what was then called minus player scenario was bubbling around just before we sold udate and so so what happened was i was looking to raise money to expand udate and from a company called benchmark capital really good beast and firm and um we met with them and and the uk guys said it wasn't for them uh one of their partners in the states was very keen to do it but for a long story short because we were public they didn't feel they could find a way of doing it but ricardo zaccone who was the ceo of king i asked if he could join us he was an entrepreneur in residence at benchmark i really liked him rating really high smart smart guy i thought you know could we hire him do you mind if we approach him anyway ricardo said he'd join so before we about a year or so before we sold uday ricardo joined uday okay all right and and then we hired a guy called toby roland tiny roland's son yeah so he also came into you date so toby and ricardo who were the the two ceo the joint ceos for king for quite a while were both working with me at uday when we sold uday they both made a reasonable amount of cash not massive amounts but a reasonable amount of cash out of it the business sold for 150 in stock by the time people exit it was 270 million yeah and and basically they ricardo had some friends who worked with him at spray in sweden and they'd started this little gaming company so ricardo said you know now your date's gone i want to go and do this and toby said i'll come with you and so they both went off to do that and found that it was more expensive to do it than they thought it was going to be and they always kept in touch with them so about three four months later said look you know we need some help will you come on board this chair and will you help us raise some money so i said sure love to work with you guys fantastic opportunity and no one wanted to know i mean literally no one wanted to know we scoured europe all over the show looking to try and raise money for what was then my list player no one wanted and uh we got to a situation where you know we're probably coming up to christmas and the lights were going to go off it then got some money um and my feeling was that i had to make quite a bit of money out of out of you day really liked and rated these guys and the team that in sweden really well so i backed it i said look you know just don't worry we'll fix it and we signed the paperwork on christmas eve of 2003 yeah all right and and that set and i stayed through to be chairman of that business with them uh for the following what would then be 11 12 years till it went public in the states and um and eventually raised money lots of money but but you know no one wanted to know until we were doing you know probably close on 30 40 million of revenue a year you know and what was it that you saw the opportunity there in mobile gaming like well i It's fair to say I saw it because I think Toby and Ricardo saw it very clearly.

23:59And I was backing them and the team more than the market opportunity because there wasn't a lot of money to be made in gaming at that point. Lots of money in gambling, but not in terms of games. And mobile had only just started really, you know, smartphones hadn't really kicked off. And it wasn't until, I suppose, you know, you probably heard of Zynga. And, well, you know, so basically Facebook had partnered with Zynga. And that had basically created a billion-dollar business in Zynga with games in some of which were not that, you know, elaborate in terms of trying to be kind here, not that elaborate in what they did.

24:38Foreign villain, things like this were on the platform and stuff. So we looked at that, and credit to Toby and Ricardo, because they spotted that smartphones were coming. But it's hard to suddenly market to smartphones. Easy to market to Facebook, but it's not easy to market to smartphones. So they managed to get Facebook to do another deal alongside Zinger. It wasn't quite the same. And we were able to ride the Facebook graph, the user base, into the mobile platform. And that was a massive, massive breakthrough. Yeah, it was. And then, credit to Ricardo, the team had spotted that basically the games we were promoting were tournament games.

25:29You and I could play each other at pool. Yeah. Right? But you would have 3 ,000 or 4 ,000 people play. And one would probably win 4 ,000 euros. And I remember saying, the problem with this model is that there's 3 ,999 people who don't want to talk about it. That's only one. this is right i got four thousand euros in this thing here and uh and that's where the the whole concept eventually of where candy crush was what it was was that first it was candy crush saga yeah saga because we needed a game that was never going to end yeah okay and that was really important otherwise you're going to keep recreating it and and all of a sudden candy crush saga was a league it wasn't a cup the tournament games are a cup you you lose you're out you win you stay to the end you get a prize but the league and everyone said where's the league going to come from the guy said it's simple it's going to be your friends we're going to get this game we're going to give people free lives to a degree and after a while they'll have to wait for more free lives or they can introduce more friends or they can pay yeah and most people didn't want to pay in fact i think sort of like 3 % of people ever paid for Candy Crush.

26:393%, all right? And it was still, I mean, at peak, before we sold, it was doing just under$10 million a day of revenue. And even today, I hear that even under Microsoft, it's probably still doing about the same. Wow. All right. Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. And it was a business model, but I take a small amount of credit for being part of the journey for it. And I pass most of the credit on to Ricardo. Sebastian, Lars, these guys who were the powerhouse behind the business. But yeah, it's almost completely, yeah, it's quite a new business model that you've sort of introduced and so on. Yeah, it was. Are you a fan of Jimmy's Jobs of the Future?

27:19Hi, I'm Sonny, one of the producers behind the show. And we don't just make this podcast, we produce some of the best business content out there, working with global brands and founders. Over the past year, we've flown around the world and demand keeps growing. And with four prime ministers trusting us with their appearances on this show, you're in safe hands. So if you're already in the market for a podcast or standout business content, why not start with us? Drop me a line at sunny at boxlight.io, try our podcast calculator, or book a meeting at boxlight.io. That's boxlight.io. Now, back to Jimmy.

27:55So you get to 2014, right? And your IPO on the New York Stock Exchange, you go from being worth a few million quid to hundreds of millions. what's then going through your mind in terms of like you know what am I going to spend money on no I never really viewed it like that and I probably don't probably don't have the same I didn't want to make trillions it was never in my mind that I was like you know so my lifestyle hasn't changed probably since probably 2003 all right yeah it really hasn't it's not changed at I still have a nice car, great house. In fact, the house I'm in now rebuilt, I actually had the plot on the house before that since 1989.

28:39So my lifestyle didn't change. I had an apartment in Spain and so on and so forth. So I didn't really have this sort of, you know, well, let's look at this thing. I have me now grow this or whatever. And I wanted to do a number of things to try and help people. So the first one is I set up a charitable trust. All right, it's still going today. We've helped lots and lots of people. We've had a very wide remit, so it's in medical, sporting, and research technology. And we've helped, known as cancer patients, help with treatment. We've funded lots of projects to try and find cures for different things.

29:17We've still got a kidney dialysis project going now called iTrend, which we did with Nottingham and Dalby University. That's coming to an exciting phase now, where that's about to do a product phase. but looking really, really good. And we helped some amateur sports people get back in. So we've got Genevieve Somerville, who's one of the UK Olympic ice skating champions. And she's been nurtured by the likes of Robin Cousins and people like that now, so that's good. We've got a number of tennis players and golf players, amateurs that we've helped on their journey. and of course and then you know i got involved with with derby i've been involved previously and uh you know as much as i i don't want to haul over the coals of that you know we nearly got promoted on several occasions and things would be very different had we pulled that off but you know sometimes two goals short of where you need to be and uh the last attempt you know what does it feel like as a as a chairman director when you know that ball goes in the net in the last minute at Wembley and you just sit there or you know the game against Villa and you must what's running through your head because not only are you having the disappointment as a fan you're sitting there as chairman thinking it's tough it's tough and I think it was tough for the fans it was tough for the club it was tough for Frank it's tough for Frank and I know people say well there was all sorts of discussions around team selection and stuff like that.

30:50But, you know, Frank had a plan, okay? And it was entirely his prerogative to have that plan. I think we all thought, you know, Murray should have started and so on and so forth. But he was closer to the fitness levels and things like that. And I'm sure that probably in his mind was if we can get to half time at 0-0 or at a draw, Murray would come on and probably give us a chance to win the game. I think it's fair to say Villa had a very strong squad a very strong squad i mean you know some real talented what they went on to achieve yeah but but i think what what frank had achieved during that season you know the second leg at leeds yeah which starts to be one of my favorite games of all time they're just fantastic united away yeah i mean so he did some fantastic things with with what he had to play with and uh so so you know it went the wrong way and it's like my first reaction was get down there you Show support for Frank.

31:43We lost, but we have to brush ourselves down and go again. And so that was brutal. And it is brutal. But it's a game that is fine margins. Fine, fine margins. You obviously invested a lot of money in, so north of 200 million, right? What else? There's obviously transfers and salaries, which everyone kind of focuses on. But what else did you kind of invest in and around the club? black-white kids jobs we completely redeveloped the training ground i mean it was probably increased its size by 70 percent another six seven pitchers put a proper 4g uh pitch in there a five-a-side outdoor pitch put a brand new gymnasium and uh swimming pool and leisure center in i mean several million dollars of working there and and the plan was always to try and develop the youth and hope that they would carry the value through for us but as things got tight particularly after covid you have to keep the lights on and you know yeah sometimes unfortunately those decisions aren't as easy and you know you're running a championship club i don't care which club it is in the uk if it's not a relegated premier league club it's not a you know a sort of a i suppose a relegation payment club then you're talking of a million to two million a month just to keep the lights on.

33:11That's what the owner has to put in every single month just to keep the lights on. But there was also a period where it's become known in Derby County folklore as like Derby goes to Hollywood, right? Like there were signings of Frank Lampard, Ashley Cole, Wayne Rooney. These guys had like 350 England caps between them all. It's like, do you feel you sort of tried to accelerate the sort of promotion push? Yeah. Yeah, I mean, yeah, it was always my dream that it would get promoted. It was always my dream that it would get promoted. And, you know, what I feel is always the challenges and to which club you look at, you know, no matter how much money you've got, it takes a while for things to gel.

33:53Sometimes you can just hit it right. But there's a time. There's a time for a club. There's a time for a team. There's a time for a manager. And we can look around, you know, Club A, Saks Manager A, and he goes on to another club, he's mega successful. Would he have been successful at the other club? Who knows? It's really very, very, say, fine margins and lots of things that can catch you out. I mean, first season of ownership, two of our key players injured. One injured in pre-season training. I mean, what do you do? Do you say, well, okay, well, we'll write this season off and just write it out?

34:30Or do you go and buy to try and compensate? and I was always trying to push it forward and that ultimately became my downfall with it. And, you know, again, bitter disappointment as to how it ended, but, you know, let's not lose sight about it. Football clubs were probably the only business where the government said, you've got to keep doing what you do, but you can't have any income. Yeah. We were the only sort of business I know of that were in that situation. It was lunacy in many ways. I can understand why they're one of the people to be able to watch football. But, you know, when you're losing the best part of 20 million of revenue, you know, it goes out.

35:12That's absolutely going to rocket your losses, you know. And what was the decision-making process like for putting the club into administration? Agonizing. Agonizing. You know, agonizing. And, you know, I think that, you know, to me, the hardest decision ever, the easy one is just to keep going and keep going. but I knew I had to fund the administration process, right? Because otherwise, you know, the club would have disappeared. So I had to make sure there was funding there for the payroll in administration, right? Because that was critical to keep that going. And, you know, credit to David for stepping up and picking the club up.

35:51And I say I only have two wishes there. One is, A, he has more luck than I had and also has more success than I had. and I'm sort of really keen to see the club succeed and this is why I don't give many interviews. I don't see the point because it doesn't help the club. No. Okay, it doesn't help. Do you feel like you need to apologise to the fans? I said many times over that I'm sorry for how it ended. No question mark about that. I know the fans felt that But probably, you know, they probably felt more nervousness at the end, all right, not realizing the fact that I was bankrolling a lot of what was happening during the administration.

36:39All right. So, you know, I didn't probably have quite the sort of, you know, I suppose the sort of disaster view of what was going to happen. Of course, everyone got involved, MPs and all sorts. Didn't help. and of course and and i still say that you know the big part of this is the efl's process of being able to sell a football club is broke yeah it's fatally broken all right it's fatally broken and what i mean by that is that if they want to do something to help clubs to find owners they should before someone is able to even make an offer on a football club they should actually validate them and certify them as knowing that they have funds and will be accepted as an owner to a particular level of funding.

37:29Okay. And they should charge that individual 50 or 100 grand to get a license. The license would say, you've been approved by the EFL to this budget and you can get a deal done in a week. And these clubs that are teetering on the edge would be able to find things so much easier and faster as opposed to wasting time, meet with someone, validate them yourselves, check they've got funds, submit the paperwork to the EFL, wait four, five, six weeks, don't like it, want more details. That's disastrous. Why do you not think they do that? To me, it strikes that football has only become professionalised in the last sort of 30 years or so.