MAUREEN LIPMAN CBE - Client Testimonial

Actress and writer, Maureen Lipman has been a client of Goodman Jones for over 20 years, as was her late husband, playwright, Jack Rosenthal CBE.

Here, Maureen talks about her “Desert Island Accountant”.

I went to my Desert Island when Sue Lawley was still televisual. I was Mike Parkinson’s first guest; he’d just left or been pushed out of his chat show formula and boy, was he slumming! I have no recollection of what my choice of records was, although I reckon Alma Cogan was in there somewhere and John Lennon and just enough classical fare not to make me look a total airhead, nor do I remember my luxury item – let’s say it was a solar powered fridge. In the interim years I’ve changed some of of my musical taste but, nostalgically, would still take Alma and Lennon, but my luxury item? Quite different. For reasons I shall explain, I shall take my accountant.

When my late husband – I wish there was another way of describing him, he’s not late he’s omni-present –and I first started earning the kind of money which merited attention being paid, we got into trouble with a tax bill, through the ministrations of, let’s be charitable, and say a “lazy” accountant.

I wish I could remember how or who recommended Goodman Jones but from the first meeting with Raymond Morris we knew we were in a safe pair of hands. Since that time those hands have received more cups of coffee, bagels, lunches, brunches and copies of my signature on pieces of paper covered in hyroglyphics than Zenadine Zidane has had recurring dreams. Would I change a hair of it? …Sorry Raymond – not a good metaphor – no, I bloody wouldn’t …and his reward? -  for all the meetings and the midnight oil and the little strips of sticky yellow paper he has lovingly placed in the page requiring a signature, and the constant laughter when we greeted him at the door of our house dressed up as Arab potentates, or subjected him to my minutes of the meeting including such stuff as;
At this point Mr. Morris took a large sheaf of tightly typed papers from his briefcase and laid them on the table –
“Mind!!” shouted the director of the company – “ you’ve just put the company records in the cream cheese.”
And, “at this point Mrs. Rosenthal asked if there was time to slice the worsht before we moved on to discuss the Death Fund.”

His reward is to accompany his most innumerate, disinterested, vague, scatty, attention span -less client to an uninhabited island, there to explain the intricacies of the balance sheet, the pension plan, the Tessa, the Isa, the PSA and the Pisher …the outcome, the income the declarations of employees, the exact amount of bonus to be paid every Michaelmas,  the why it’s better to queue for 2 hours at the Halifax in order to shift everything to the Norwich, how many Manchester United shares  would you have to buy to broker a seat at the Stretford End and why there is beauty and resonance in a perfectly drawn up column of numbers.There we shall count the stars and measure the universe. There we shall calculate the distance between two coconut trees and fathom the numbers of scallops in a fishnet. There he will explain to me the mysteries of the off-side rule and why it doesn’t apply to the Gunners

When the Cruise ship arrives to pick us up I shall deposit Raymond by the pool with a Mahito cocktail and a copy of Hello and I shall go straight to the computer room with a copy of the Financial Times, a calculator and a Spread Sheet, the FTSE , The Dower Jones, the Davy Jones, the “If it’s good enough for Mrs. Jones” and by the time we dock in Portsmouth Sound  I shall have made enough money to give a helping hand to dear old Warren Buffet. Goodman Jones Morris and Rosenthal …mmm, I think it’s got quite a ring to it.