Gayle Goshorn goes Bunburying
Thirty-six years ago two significant events occurred in Leila Potter's life - she set up the Bunbury domestic agency, and her youngest of three daughters, Emily, was born. At the beginning of this year Emily joined the staff of the agency, bringing things to a neat full circle that doesn't always seem to apply to the rest of the business.
'Once, a customer told us, "We must have someone to look after Elisabeth, she's eight years old, the person doesn't have to be experienced",' one of Leila's stories begins. 'We thought, oh, that will be a mother's help. Then we discovered Elisabeth was a lioness. So we crossed out the mother's help bit.'
Then she adds, 'And believe it or not, five couples applied for the job - to look after a lioness!'
The impression given is that this sort of thing is the order of the day at Bunbury. Leila, who looks rather like Esther Rantzen dressed as Barbara Cartland, has built up a nationwide reputation for the Cheshire village agency by keeping the emphasis on personal service. Its slogan is 'Everybody needs somebody'. At Bunbury the personal verges on the eccentric, but then so do traditional manners and charm, these days. Emily, however, represents the brave new world of technology, websites and marketing.
'When Emily first came into the agency she was terribly businesslike,' says Leila. 'I was afraid to go out shopping in case I came back and my desk had been moved.' Emily laughs this off, seeing them more as an enterprise of mother and daughter helping mothers and daughters (and sons). She tries to put her finger on why she alone of her siblings joined the agency.
'I'd done everything glam. I started in advertising, I worked for American Vogue in Paris, I worked for Andrew Lloyd Weber, and for haute couture designers - people who are difficult to look after. I had experienced so many different types of people. And you know, you just want to put something back.' She says she had only just started her travels around the world when her mother, phoning her in South America, asked what she was going to do when she returned, and it came to her - she replied, 'I was thinking about the agency.'
Now she enjoys working amid the office banter with Leila and the other staff, playing agony aunt and giving advice to clients and nannies alike.
'The mother's helps want to call themselves nannies, but we have to tell them we can't put them forward for a job with a newborn,' says Leila. 'It's nannying of the nannies,' suggests Emily.
Leila says, 'Yes, I treat the nannies like my own daughters - so I'm horrible to them! No, not really. But when I lecture at the colleges, to the second year childcare students, I'm quite severe with them.' She makes the students role-play job interviews. 'Within ten minutes I can recognise those who are natural nannies, and those who will be better at paperwork and so on. I have to remind them that the first thing you say when you arrive for an interview is "How lovely to meet you. And where are the children?" - not "what's the salary?"'
Customers may require even firmer guidance. Leila says, 'Some clients will go on and on about their lovely house, and how many gardeners they have, and only spend two minutes talking about their children!'
Like many agency proprietors Leila says she started Bunbury as a result of her own experiences looking for childcare for her own family more than 30 years ago - though what kind of experience this was is not exactly made clear.
'We had one nanny who was so gorgeous, she looked like Marilyn Monroe in miniature. All of our men friends were coming round and we thought it was just to see the baby. She was with us four years, then she fell in love with a wrestler, who turned out to be married with children...' So goes another story that seems to ramble off charmingly to no known destination.
'Once one of our nannies rang up and said she had a friend who was an ex-nun in the Seychelles and spoke perfect French. So we placed her with a family. And then this family invited us round to dinner, and they said, "By the way, did you know she was pregnant?" Then we knew why she was an ex-nun! So she ended up as the housekeeper, and there she was, making us a lovely dinner.'
Bunbury proudly points to the restaurant writer Egon Ronay and the actress Joan Collins as past clients looking for domestic staff. 'One of our latest requests was for a governess. The last one had been about 20 years ago,'
Leila recalls. 'Oddly enough, we'd had a CV from a French lady who wanted to come to London and be a governess. We thought, come on, this is the 21st century. And then two weeks later this client came along looking for a governess.'
They haven't yet added governesses to the butlers, housemen, gardeners and chauffeurs as well as nannies, cooks, housekeepers, carers and companions that they offer to supply, but even as the younger generation, Emily doesn't see her approach as so very new. 'After all, you are working in people's homes, and if anything is going to stay traditional, let's hope it's family life!' she says. One change that Leila notes over the years is that domestic staff now call their employers by their Christian names, and their relationship is more casual - 'the change is in the rapport', she says.
I confess to them that before I knew it was a village in Cheshire I thought the agency's name came from the Oscar Wilde play 'The Importance of Being Earnest', where Bunbury is an invalid relative invented by one of the characters as an excuse for him to go off on Bunburying trips to the country. This in itself arouses little interest from the Potters, but hearing it from London hits a nerve. 'We call ourselves country mice, but we're not country bumpkins,' says Leila. Emily adds, 'Having come back from London I notice there's something different in the country - it's not the pace, it's in the attitude - it really is friendlier.'
Besides, they place staff all over, in city and country. They're not exactly clear how the agency got its broad reputation; Emily credits it to Leila's talent for networking at all manner of events she attends, as well as having served as a local councillor for nine years, as the chairwoman of the Bunbury Conservatives and as an expert witness for the Law Society.
Now, with Emily taking up the torch, how is the agency going forward? 'It's the pink and white banner!' she says gleefully. 'We all love pink, everything has to be pink, and we've made this pink and white banner with our slogan, Everybody Needs Somebody. We take it to all the regional shows.
The pi ce de resistance is the Nantwich Show. We're going there with our big banner and we're sponsoring the heavy decorated horses, which is the biggest draw in the show. I've booked a newspaper photographer - I mean Mummy thinks she's Joan Collins anyway, so Mummy can at last be a star, and I can be a Vogue model. At least it's not some boring corporate brochure! I don't want us to become detached and impersonal like some of the bigger agencies.'
Not that they're so small. Along with the Potters the team is Trish Brewin, the chief secretary and 'agency rock', Barbara Casey, 'secretary and legal eagle', the 'tapdancing bookkeeper' Judith Kennedy ('she's always trying to add another zero to the accounts'), and Giles Cross, their media consultant who designed the website on which these descriptions appear.
Is there, perhaps, any prospect that mother could retire and hand over to daughter? 'They shall have to slide me out from under my desk!' warns Leila. Emily stresses that it's quite clearly defined how each member of the team has their own unique role. 'As long as Mummy wants to sit on her throne, she can - it doesn't stop me growing the business.'
So, what are they looking forward to? 'Well you know, Emily,' says Leila.
'The main event... the most important thing in my life...'
'The Nantwich Show?'
'No, the golden wedding!' Leila and her husband celebrate their golden wedding anniversary this August, and it's going to be a huge family get-together. It promises to be done with flair - and they know where to get just the right staff for the occasion.
