Year of the dragon: Hilary Devey is moving on

Her parents moved into managing pubs and, while still a child, Devey pulled pints and ran the bar. At 12, she was raped by a stranger after being lured to a house by an older school friend. Despite this, she denies her childhood was tough, Devey not being a type to feel sorry for herself: ‘I always knew I was loved and I always had a smile on my face. Yes, I worked hard but I enjoyed it. It stood me in good stead for the future.’

Every twist and turn of her story is set out in brutal honesty in Devey’s autobiography, Bold as Brass: My Story. ‘You dig things up that you’ve forgotten or that you don’t want to remember. There were many times when I thought, “I wish I hadn’t started this”. And then you have to finish it, for the publishers.’ The book reveals that her father — who died in his 50s — was violent and also that he had another family, yet he remains her hero and entrepreneurial inspiration: ‘There was an optimism about him that I’ve never seen in anybody else, an “Oh well, one door closes, another will open” attitude.’

Her father didn’t want her to go to university — assuming she’d marry and be supported by her husband — so after school, Devey joined the Women’s Royal Air Force. She swiftly became disillusioned and left, stumbling into the haulage industry where she was initially an administrative assistant. At 28, four years after her first marriage broke down, she fell in love with a Turkish man, Hussain. They had a son together, Mevlit. But Hussain beat her and it eventually transpired that he already had a wife and five children, an echo of her father’s behaviour. She eventually left him in 1992. ‘I have terrible taste in men,’ she admits. She says she stayed for so long because she had a young child: ‘And I guess it becomes a way of life. I remember on one occasion after I left him, sitting in a car on the seafront and looking at my child, who was 12 months old, in the back of the car, and thinking, “Well, what do I do now?”’

Meanwhile, Devey had advanced in logistics jobs, hopping between companies. But she always felt that salaried positions weren’t safe and she didn’t want Mevlit to feel the fear she had when bailiffs stripped her parent’s house. Her eureka moment came in a haulier’s office, when she realised she could revolutionise the way goods are delivered (via a central hub, cutting down delivery times). So in 1996, aged 39, she founded Pall-Ex, a palletised freight network. As her bank manager refused her a loan (on the grounds that she was a ‘woman in a man’s world’ and a single mother, to boot), she had to sell her car, jewellery and other possessions to fund it. ‘The beginning was hard,’ she recalls. ‘I was in rented Portakabins with no running water, no electricity, and one chemical loo shared with 40 fork-lift truck drivers. Needless to say, I learned excellent bladder control.’

Her motivation stems in part from natural ambition, but also from her busy mind. ‘My brain has to be active all the time. I don’t like butterflying, moving from one thing to another. I like to immerse myself in it and do it properly, whereas a lot of entrepreneurs touch here and there.’

For all the difficulties in her life — in addition to everything else she battled Bell’s palsy as a child, and then suffered a stroke in 2009 which has left her unable to pick anything up with her left hand — the hardest thing has been her son’s addiction to heroin. She sent Mevlit to boarding school and discovered, when he was 17, that he had developed a drug problem. At its nadir, Devey had to pick him up from drug dens, and he once called her 70 times in a few minutes, begging her for cash.

Mevlit has been clean for seven years now and lives with his partner Sam at Rangemore Hall, Devey’s Staffordshire mansion. ‘I couldn’t live through it again, but I am proud of him. He still lacks self-esteem but I say, “If you’ve got over that, you can do anything.”’

Devey says she felt desperately guilty about being a working mother, returning to the office when her son was just two weeks old. ‘I still do, to a degree. You miss so much, and it didn’t help that Mevlit then went down the wrong road with drugs, so I thought that was my fault. He says it would have happened anyways, he was just in with the wrong crowd.’ She confesses that she found her working life much easier than her private life. ‘It’s people, not business that’s difficult.’

Which is perhaps why, despite many offers, she has never sold out. ‘I never had any intention to.’ Some of those bids came from male competitors who had initially said that she — as a woman — would fail, something Devey clearly delights in. To this day, the industry is very male dominated. ‘I’ve felt sexism in every way conceivable. Swearing. Men saying, “I’m not working for an eff-ing woman.”’

Her advice to women who want both a career and children is telling: ‘The best choice would be their partner. If they get the right partner, there is a chance they can have both. If they don’t, they won’t.’ She’s been married three times, the last ending in divorce in February after less than two years. Both she and her ex, 47-year-old property developer Phil Childs, cited ‘unreasonable behaviour’. Would she ever marry again? ‘No,’ she cackles, ‘absolutely not. I wouldn’t like to put myself through that again.’ Is she dating now? She hesitates. ‘Er… I’m seeing somebody. I wouldn’t call it dating.’

She is plotting a move into politics next. ‘There’s too much politicking in politics. Most of our politicians are disingenuous with the facts. I think I would be a refreshing change.’ She won’t reveal her political allegiance — ‘That would be telling’ — but she clearly has a social conscience: ‘I’ve got a very good heart. I think every child deserves an education, every elderly person deserves to be warm in winter, and every sick person deserves to be cared for. If the government hasn’t got the purse strings to do that, let’s bring in a private health [system] that they pay into.’

She dubs David Cameron ‘weak’, wrinkling up her nose as she says it. Devey wants small businesses to receive more help, incentives for companies to take on the young and a reduction in corporation tax. But she pays her dues, dubbing tax avoidance ‘absolutely disgraceful’. ‘I’m proud to pay tax. We all moan about it, but the country will grind to a halt if we don’t. Avoidance or evasion is not something I would ever do... You only have to look at Greece and Spain and see the state they are in. We have to pay taxes to live in a civilised society.’

But before politics, there’s the more trivial matter of her collection of evening and cocktail dresses. She has form in this field — sketching the white jacket with enormous shoulder pads that won so much attention on Dragons’ Den. Her main influence is McQueen: ‘What he could do with material was unbelievable’.

As the interview wraps up, I ask if she would ever retire. ‘No. I might slow down but why would I ever stop?’ She then leans forward —‘Give us a kiss’ — and plants an affectionate peck on each cheek. I’m thrilled to discover I don’t make her foot itch. ES

The Intern starts on Channel 4 on 4 April