We were growing a very significant business at the same time as having great fun. There was one person who was my rock throughout this period and that was Alice Bufton. I met Alice through Todd Williams, a former Australian hockey player who was a client of RT and was renting my house in Northampton. We had an arrangement that he would stay in the house in Northampton during the week and then join Tim at the weekends and use my room in the flat. On one weekend during the summer of 2001 I had been invited up to a polo match at Dallas Burlston’s grounds at Stoneythorpe Hall. I invited Todd and his friend Alice Bufton to join me. Alice had never been to a polo match and turned down centre court tickets at Wimbledon to accompany Todd to Warwickshire.
I will never forget seeing Alice for the first time, wearing the Barbarian panama hat that she had borrowed from my house. Alice assumed you should wear a hat to go to the polo and grabbed my hat from my house to smarten up the rather shabby clothes that she had worn the night before. I am surprised I even noticed what she was wearing; she was beautiful and I became totally disinterested in watching the polo. This was just as well really because there was no polo to watch; instead, Dallas offered the guests an opportunity to eat and drink in his new clubhouse, whilst people raced around the pitch in his Ferrari.
