DRIVER PROFILE Meet the tall guy with the funny accent from Durham
Now, we’re not saying that everyone from Durham has a funny accent... it’s just that when Adrian Fets gets aerated or enthusias- tic about something you can’t understand a single word he’s say- ing. Especially the end of the sentence, which goes straight up through the top of his head!
Never mind all that... we’ll start at the beginning.
Young
Fets arrived in the world in 1964. He left school in 1980 to work in a gaggle of dead-end jobs: dead- end because they went nowhere as far as he was concerned. He started work in an engineering factory, then nine months later went into ‘mechanic- ing’ in the motor trade for a while. From there he did some driving for a local removals firm for about 18 months. Adrian’s least popular job (“I’ve always been useless at getting up early...”) was as deputy manager for a newsagents, which involved getting up every morning at 4am, and having to deliver the newspapers as well if the paper boy(s) didn’t turn in. Ho hum. He stuck with that for about 18 months, then spent two years work-
April, but according to Adrian, there still is not a written-down set of new conditions for the area under its current regime. Suffice to say that there is still a lot of discussion going on in this respect, and as chairman of the above mentioned local asso- ciation, Mr Fets is taking an active part in same.
ing on an open cast land reclamation site. Good money, rubbish hours.
He had learned to drive as soon as he was 17, having learned in his friend’s parents’ private hire vehicle. That was in the days before Ben- son -v- Boyce, and all the other regulations the trade knows today. “I don’t even know if I was properly insured!” he says. Nonetheless, the ‘bug’ had bitten; Adrian started doing a bit of part-time private hire work for his friends.
He started as a hack- ney carriage driver part-time as well in Durham City; having got his hackney plate
he went self- employed... the rest is history.
He’s still at it
today, running two hackney carriages, and has seen quite a few changes over the last 25 or so years both in the rules and the people who enforce them. He could write a book about all that, as they say, if he had the incli- nation to put down a few words on paper...
RULES IS RULES Never being one to sit in the background, Adrian found himself getting active in a local association, the Durham Independent Taxi Association, when the council brought out some new condi-
tions of licence a few years back which, shall we say,
dis-
pleased a good many licence holders in the area. In fact he called in the auspices of the National Association and, in 2004/5, suc- cessfully appealed against the imposition of the colour white on hackney carriages - both at Magistrates’ and Crown Courts. After that rather momentous result, things ticked over a bit more peacefully in the area for a while, until the impending change of Durham City Coun- cil into a Unitary Authority raised its head recently.
In fact
the UA was estab- lished on the 1st of
However, in what little spare time he has, Adrian is kept busy in other ways by other people: namely his son James and daughter Ashleigh, who are 14 and 11... and also two boisterous dogs that need a lot of walking. As a single parent his leisure time is limited, as you might imagine, but as this issue of PHTM goes to press Adrian and his kids will be wending their way down through France to Spain in their motor home for their holi- days, with the end destination being somewhere between Gerona and Barcelona.
WHAT A TRIUMPH! Another spare time activity came about quite by accident: about five years ago Adrian acquired a 1979 Triumph Dolomite, which he bought off Ebay for the princely sum of £284. He had to tow it all the
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NATIONAL PRIVATE HIRE ASSOCIATION
Don’t take our word for it - this is what Tracey Whitehead, Director of Swift Fox Cabs, Leicester has to say:
“Our company has benefited greatly from the Association’s vast legal and trade knowledge; we intend to continue enjoying these benefits!”
0161 280 2800
npha@btconnect.com
PAGE 96 PHTM AUGUST 2009
NATIONAL PRIVATE HIRE ASSOCIATION
way back to Durham from Watford, as the car had been standing in a garage for three years and the battery packed up.
So why did he do this thing? “It caught my eye, as it was in such good nick generally,” Adrian says. “One owner, 34,000 genuine miles, I even have the original bill of sale; it was one of those spe- cial editions with all the extras, and even back in 1979 it origi- nally cost £6,700. “Also I wanted my lad to learn a bit about doing your own mechanic work on a car.
Today’s modern vehicles are all elec- tronic, and you have to take them into the dealership if the slight- est thing goes wrong. With the Triumph we can tinker with the mechanics and do our own repairs. We main- ly drive it around during summer week- ends.”
So there you have it - our NPHA representa- tive in the Durham area, Mr Fets. We are in pretty constant con- tact, as there are always licensing developments going on, especially under the new UA. And Adri- an’s turn of phrase has us in stitches on a reg- ular basis. Long may it continue!
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