AT some point in the coming months, Colin Taylor plans to deliver a message about the importance of charity, looking out for others and helping those in need. It will be a message that he hopes to deliver at a church service. A funeral. His own funeral.
‘Yeah, I’ve arranged it all. I’m going to write it down and print it off for people to read,’ he says as he rattles through a list of the readings and hymns he has planned for the service.
But first, he wants to talk to the media about his life – his up and down, rags-to-riches-and-back-again life.
It is, in his own words, a ‘warts-and-all interview’ where no questions are off limit. Questions like: How did you make your money? How much were you worth? How many people have you helped? And were you really a gangster?
They are questions directed at three very different Colin Taylors – Colin Taylor the Businessman, Colin Taylor the Philanthropist and Colin Taylor the Charity Worker.
The Colin Taylor that thousands of Islanders know today is the latter, the man behind Christian charities Caring Hands and, latterly, Love Thy Neighbour.
It was with Caring Hands that, in 2011, Mr Taylor set up the Island’s first men’s refuge, Sanctuary House, in the former Sabots d’Or guest house on the High Street in St Aubin.
The news of the former businessman’s plans was met locally with horror – horror at the thought of ‘down-and-outs’ occupying a property in such a location. Letters were published in this newspaper; a public meeting was held; warnings that alcoholics and former prison inmates would be hanging around in an otherwise quiet and peaceful village were issued. But the refuge opened, the fears largely subsided and soon many locals, including some of those who were once against the venture, were on side.
It was a particularly sweet victory for Mr Taylor, who by this point in his life was almost penniless after losing his personal fortune, which he says was once estimated at £4.5 million.
‘When we opened the refuge I had about £200 to my name, but I needed £12,000 for the deposit and rent. It may as well have been a million. My son, Paul, was in the Marines and got a pay-out because he got an injury. I phoned him up and explained what I was doing.
‘He said “How much do you need, Dad?”. I told him and he transferred the £12,000 the following day,’ says the 62-year-old, who is now spending much of his time in hospital after being diagnosed with a terminal illness last year.
‘We started with nothing and continued with just the generosity of the people of Jersey. Now it is financially secure. We never lost a bean.’
Before long another refuge, Sanctuary Lodge, was opened in Beaumont. And last year, after leaving Caring Hands, he set up Love Thy Neighbour and opened the Island’s first almshouse since the Poor House at the Hospital burned down in 1859. The move fulfilled his ambition of creating a long-term home, rather than a short-term refuge, for those in need.
The charity has also launched a scheme to pay for the doctors’ and dentists’ bills of some of the Island’s poorest residents.
Sitting in his home – which, incidentally, is one of the almshouses he opened last year – Mr Taylor cannot even estimate the number of people he has helped over the years. So how did he get to this point in his life?
He was born in Nigeria, where his father worked for nine months at a time for 27 years, and later resided in Uganda before returning to the UK full-time at the age of 16. He joined the Royal Air Force the following year and left just over ten years later, when he became a member of a helicopter search and rescue team.
He later took a job as a sales and marketing director at an oil company before running his first hotel with his mother and father. Then he launched his own property business which, according to some, was linked to the gangland underworld of Glasgow.
‘I had pubs and hotels and where there was a deal to be done I would build houses,’ says Mr Taylor. ‘I made a lot of money. I had a nice house. I used to go to Vegas a lot. Then the tax man said I should live abroad, so I looked at some options. When I came here I had a net worth of £4.5 million.’
Mr Taylor arrived in Jersey in 2001 and took over the Forester’s Arms pub at Beaumont two years later. ‘It was a charity pub. I set up the William and Helena Trust, which was named after my parents, and set about helping people.’
And so Colin Taylor the Philanthropist began his work in earnest. Over the coming years he helped numerous people, many of them young and ill. After hearing that one girl, aged six or seven, had been receiving treatment for cancer, he paid £500 a week for her medication, which he says wasn’t covered by the Health Service.
He later flew her to Chelsea’s Stamford Bridge football ground, where she was a mascot for the day and where the crowd raised more than £5,000 in a collection in her name.
Later he paid for another young ill Islander’s cancer treatment at a specialist centre in Austria. And he would charter a boat to take out young people who were bordering on a life of crime. ‘This got a big write up in the JEP, and soon loads of people were contacting me. I gave away £250,000 in a couple of years.’
It was a continuation of a giving nature that began several years earlier when he was living near Loch Tay in Scotland.
‘I remember when I had money, when I was at Loch Tay, there was this shop that sold toys and sweets and it was closing down. I went round there one day and asked him how much his stock was worth. I bought it all and took it to the school and gave it to the children. It was awesome seeing them with all those toys.
And then, six years after arriving in Jersey, it was all gone. ‘My mother died. This had a huge impact on me. Loneliness is the biggest killer, you know. People get depressed, and the stronger the character the harder it hits them and they just don’t know it is hitting them.
‘I didn’t have a breakdown. I just took my eyes off the ball. Then the market crashed and my business suffered. I was giving too much money away. I had to sell some of my businesses in Scotland and put some in administration. It was too much. I wasn’t thinking straight.
‘I split up with my wife Gwen in December 2008. It was nothing to do with her – she has been an absolute diamond to me. By January 2009 I was sleeping in my car or on the beach at the Gunsite. If I needed the loo I would use the public toilet. If I needed a shower I would go to Les Quennevais. Then one day I had just had enough. I took some paracetamols and drank a bottle of vodka and ended up in hospital. That was me in 2009.’
In the months that followed, Mr Taylor set about helping others, and Colin Taylor the Charity Worker was born.
‘Something strange happened. You can print this, but I don’t know whether people will believe me. I was walking down to St Brelade’s Church. I was going past the Airport Garage and the football pitch and this figure appeared, this apparition, call it what you will. It had long blond hair and piercing blue eyes and was wearing a long robe and to this day I believe it was Jesus. On that day I knew I wanted to open a place for people who had fallen through the gap – not people who had hit rock bottom, but just people who needed help. And that’s what I did.’
Now Mr Taylor is preparing to say goodbye to those he loves and those he has helped. Last year he was told that he is suffering from an irreversible medical condition and that recently, after his condition deteriorated, he was given just a few months to live.
‘The thing that I really want to get across now is about community living. If we look at the way we live – and I am not Bible thumping here – but if we say hello to our neighbour or think, oh I’ll knock on their door and see how they are, then you can reach out and really touch people’s lives.
‘You see, the thing is, you never know when your time is up and all this will be out of your hands and you will look back and think of all that time wasted.
‘My life has finished, but this is not a sob story. It’s about what people can do to help others.’
So that is Colin Taylor: Businessman, Philanthropist and Charity Worker. But not Former Gangster. Definitely not, he says, despite the rumours that have circulated for years after the Daily Record published a story claiming he was the business partner of millionaire gangland criminal John Friel.
‘I ran five pubs in Glasgow. You have to have your wits about you and you have to be a strong character. I met every type of gangster you can imagine in Glasgow, and you have to deal with this. If you don’t, you are going to have grief on your hands.
‘I knew John and I worked with his family. He was a gangster a long time ago, but not when I knew him. I worked with his family, that was it. Do I have a record? No. I can assure you that I was never a gangster. I have never been involved in drugs. I have nothing to hide on that.’
And anyway Mr Taylor is more concerned about delivering a message for the future than addressing rumours about the past.
‘My message will be that you can’t take it with you. That is not to say you can’t have a good life – earn lots of money and have some fun. But we can all give some more to others. It really can be done.’
