THE ELITE INTERVIEW
WORDS: HANNAH PREVETT
“I knew I could create a brand of food for kids that brought together health, convenience and fun”
to attend a boarding school in Derbyshire, returning to visit his parents in Zambia during school holidays. He was bright and, unlike most people who find find it easier to engage either the creative or logical part of their brain, Lindley was good at both art and the sciences. He plumped for the sciences when choosing his A-levels and then, once again, when he applied for university, enrolling on a cellular pathology degree at Bristol University. “Only about three universities did cellular pathology then,” says Lindley. “I was good at biology and I like doing things that are different.” But it was soon clear that this bet hadn’t paid off. “A week in, I was asking myself, ‘What have I done?’” He quit the course after one term and instead read politics and economics, subjects that appealed to the creative in him. But the extra year it took for him to graduate cost him dearly in the rat race to secure a job. “I left university in 1989 in the midst of the recession,” he says. “My friends had all applied for jobs in 1988 and had had no problem, but when I came to apply for jobs in 1989 there were none left.” Without a job to go to, Lindley decided the best course of action would be to further his education, so he embarked upon the training to become a chartered accountant – eventually leading to a job at KPMG. “I didn’t really enjoy it at the time, to be honest,” he admits. “But 15 years later, when I set up my business, it proved absolutely invaluable.” After four years at KPMG in London, Lindley married his university sweetheart, Alison, and they went on a six-month honeymoon, before relocating to LA for a year. On his return to the UK, Lindley was on the look-out for a new challenge, and became financial controller at kids’ TV station Nickelodeon in 1995. “It was great,” Lindley says. “I had a bright coloured office, filled with big toys.
October 2012 www.elitebusinessmagazine.co.uk
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