Richard Harpin

speaker

914 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jan 2026 last heard 12 Jan

Richard Harpin’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jan 2026 with 1.

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James Reed: all about business · 61. The email that saved HomeServe and sparked a £4bn business | Sir Richard Harpin · 12 Jan 2026 podcast

And the biggest problem was Friday night, tenants would ring saying, water pouring out of a radiator or block drain in the backyard.

And you could not get a plumber for love nor money in Newcastle on Friday night.

They're all out drinking.

So you're from Newcastle, that area, or Northumberland?

Originally a Yorkshireman, born in Huddersfield, but moved to Newcastle at age five.

Right, okay.

And that's where Procter & Gamble have a big base.

So you were working for them and you were doing a sort of side hustle doing rentals, is that what you were doing?

So property management and letting and buying houses, that was the opportunity, a shortage of young professional shared accommodation in Newcastle at the time.

Right.

You reminded me of a sort of plumbing disaster that happened to us many years ago.

We had to ring and it was someone called Emergency Man came and did not do a good job.

And probably ripped you off with a big repair bill.

Yeah, it wasn't a happy experience.

I still remember it.

Go on.

So you saw a space in this market.

So got into it, called it A1 Fast Fix.

We'll be at the front of Yellow Pages section for plumbing and heating.

Put our life savings into the business, £50,000 at the time.

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