Breakfast for Jennifer D'Abo-CEO Rymans

Jennifer and I were bridge partners. I used to let her do what she liked and we still won. Perhaps we had telepathy. An exquisite person - some say “The Woman of Substance” was based on her. The first woman to launch a takeover bid for a company – and also voted Businesswoman of the year many times. She lived in the most amazing places – later in life she had a cottage in the grounds of Blenheim Palace and a weekender at the Anchorage in Palma De Mallorca.

She loved to entertain maybe 3 or 4 times a week. And many. She however never went to shows or theatre and generally spent NYE in bed with a book. Our ritual was to get together on Boxing Day at her cottage.

On finding out that she had a terminal illness she bought a hotel in France but sadly departed aged 57. I was in Australia at the time and had no way of knowing except the telepathy came into play again. Something pushed me to check the obituaries in the English papers.

I miss her and as it is Christmas, I think of her.

For breakfast I would give her

Indian Tea with spices

Parathas like the punjabis make them

Hot mango pickle

Fresh mangoes

And a kiss

I know this would compare with the best of breakfasts she would have had at A list Homes and Hotels.

She was a true Yorkshire girl at heart- simple and harworking. Her three husbands may have been  bad picks but she left a legacy of colour for me at least

Her book “Jennifer D’Abo at home” – fast food for stylish people in a hurry still available and my recipe there with many others

As we would eat our breakfast slowly, I know that she would appreciate that we can go to each other’s homes even in pyjamas.

Her children Joel Cadbury and Mrs Charles Farr( Sophy) carry the D'Abo sparkle...

Mrs d'Abo made a fortune in the 1980s by turning around the Rymans

stationery chain and selling it for £20m to Pentos, the bookshops

group.

Some regarded her as a female Bertie Wooster who wore heart-shaped

spectacles and called everybody "Dahling". Others, said the Financial

Times a deceade ago, regarded this as a disguise for an extremely

astute businesswoman who was quick to spot money-making opportunities

but tended to flit around, the one who sparked larger than life

stories.

The directors of the Ryman chain of shops selling office supplies were

taken aback when their chairman locked them in the Bond Street branch

in London, gave them cloths and mops, and asked them to clean the

place. "But Jennifer, I've never cleaned a place in my life", gasped

the Managing Director. "You are going to start now, angel", replied

Jennifer d'Abo. "I like clean shops" she explained.

She had been complaining to the board for months to increase the cash

allotment for cleaning. "This was my way of showing them what was

involved, " she said.

From this incident it will be gathered that Mrs d'Abo had what the

Financial Times called "rather an unconventional business manner".

For a start she was a woman, which seemed to disconcert the City. At

one stage in her career she was told she could certainly take the

training course for membership of the Stock Exchange but that, being

female, she would not be allowed to take the examinations. So she

learned to fly a plane instead.

She was born Jennifer Mary Victoria Hammond-Maude, 14 August, 1945,

daughter of Michael Hammond-Maude and the former Rosamond Patrick, &

was educated at Hathertop Castle, Gloucestershire.

Career: Chairman of Ryman Ltd, 1981-87; Roffey Brothers Ltd, 1988;

Director: Burlingtons Furnishing Co., 1977-80; Jean Sorelle, toiletry

manufacturing co., 1980-83; Stormgard plc, 1985-87; London Docklands

Development Corporation, 1985-88; Channel Four Television, 1986-87;

she was a non-executive director Pentos plc, 1987-88; Member of the

Industrial Development Board for Northern Ireland, 1992-94 (she

resigned in Nov. 1994 and accused officials of withholding vital

information about the Hualon project); she was a member of the

Doctors' and Dentists' Remuneration Review Body, 1989-92; Imperial

Cancer Research Fund, subsequently Cancer Research UK, Member of the

Council from 1994; Trustee, British Museum (Natural History) 1988-99,

&c.

She had a home for some years on the Duke of Marlborough's Blenheim

estate in Oxfordshire.

She was married thrice - firstly to David Morgan-Jones, of the Life

Guards, with whom she had one daughter, Sophy (another of

Morgan-Jones's wives was Sandra Paul, now wife of the former Tory Home

Secretary Michael Howard); she married secondly, in April, 1970, Peter

Egbert Cadbury, of the chocolate family, and godfather to her

daughter. This marriage ended in divorce in 1975. From her marriage to

Cadbury she had a son, Joel (b. 1971). Her third husband was

stockbroker Robin d'Abo, head of a landed family. They divorced in

1987.

She said she was on the best of terms with all three of her ex

husbands.

Jennifer found in the early days that no one would take take someone

called Mrs Peter Cadbury seriously when she applied for a job.

"My accountant asked me what I spent the most money on, and when I

told him it was probably the grocery bill, he said that my most

economic solution in that case would be to buy a grocer's shop of my

own." She picked one, after looking at 32, and worked there from seven

every morning until seven at night. "Then my new husband said that it

was time I stopped smelling like a side of bacon."

Backed by Barclays Bank she next went up the scale and bought a

supermarket in Basingstoke for £500,000 in 1976. With the help of an

executive lured away from Waitrose, she made such a success of it that

she was able to sell it two years later for £1.3m. Later ventures

included the toiletry factory in Peterborough, bought from a group

forced into receivership. When she first looked at it she said it

"resembled a bomb site just after the blast, with moreale at rock

bottom. " She soon built up a full order book.

It took her a year of wheeling and dealing to buy the Ryman chain from

the Burton Group. This purchase involved raising £3m from merchant

banks in the City. "They kept me waiting for my CV," she famously

intoned. "I didn't know what they were talking about, and I wasn't

much wiser when my husband Robin explained that what they wanted was

my curriculum vitae. What a joke!" So she took off to a jeweller and

had a little CV made out of silver which she kept in a small

plush-lined box. When someone asked for it she would take out the box

and place her bit of silver on their desk.