Close Menu
Front Page Draw-In

Tasting Victory, Chapter 1: Humble Beginnings

There is nothing wrong with Saint-Etienne, where I was born, but nothing special about the place either.

 

A medium-sized industrial town near Lyon, it was the birthplace of Casino, a large French chain of super- markets. It also boasted a two-star Michelin restaurant that we never visited, some universities of great national prestige and ‘Les Verts’, once France’s best football team. But despite all these achievements, the Saint- Etienne of my youth could feel bleak. It is very cold in winter owing to a continental climate exacerbated by its high altitude, and it can be very stuffy in the summer. Its beauty lies in the surrounding countryside, whose hills inspired me, making me feel like a racer in the Tour de France as I cycled over them.

My family did not lack money, as my father’s father had been a successful local architect and my mother’s father had been a partner in a small but flourishing factory. We had a nice house, thanks in part to our grand- parents, who helped with family finances.

What the Basset family lacked was harmony. My mother Marguerite, a qualified midwife who had never practised, married my father, Pierre- René, a factory draughtsman, because their two families wanted them to. Both sets of grandparents, unfortunately, were oblivious to the fact that my parents couldn’t stand each other. Despite their mutual loathing, my parents produced three children – my sister Antoinette, thirteen years older than me, my brother Jean-Henri who is eight years older, and then me. By the time I was five my sister had gone to work and live in Lyon, and my brother left home by the time I was ten.

 

They left me in the company of parents who were odd, to say the least. They did not have many friends, as I don’t think they knew how to interact with people very well. This is not surprising as they could hardly interact with one another. Neither learnt to drive, so we always had to use public transport, rarely went anywhere and were stuck with each other.

We never had holidays abroad, as my father used to maintain that people go abroad on holiday when they hardly know their own country. Unfortunately, he didn’t feel it necessary to explore French regions either, so we simply stayed in the area. At least we had a holiday home in the countryside, thanks to my grandparents, which was twenty-five kilo- metres away from home. My mother, my sister, my brother and I went there during the school holidays and some weekends; my father would join us on weekends and during his month-long holiday. It is a shame to say this, but it was better when my father was not there, as we could enjoy the small, simple house in peace.

There was a farm next door, where Remi the farmer lived with his dog and I was allowed to play among the cows and goats. It’s also where I had one of my first, formative food experiences. One day, Remi grabbed one of his chickens, knocked it dead and then pierced the head with a sharp knife. Remi filled a glass with the blood, which he left to thicken in the fridge for a few hours. Later, he pan-fried the solid chicken blood in small cubes with parsley and garlic. I had a portion of the finished dish, which is called sanguette. While I felt sorry for the chicken, the result was delicious.

But my parents sold the holiday house when I was six, along with the family home, so they could afford a new house. From then on, until I was sixteen, we were trapped at home together and without a television. My father was against us having a TV, because he said programmes were infantile and not good for education. He may have been right, but television was good for social bonding. In France in the 1960s there were only two national TV channels with two big evening shows, which everyone else at school would watch and talk about the next day. It was frustrating not to be able to enter into the conversation. My father’s odd beliefs were turning me into an oddity too, excluding me from my peers.

I had another source of shame as well. My parents argued continually, and it sometimes spiralled into violence. When I was six, I saw my brother try to separate my parents, only to have his arm slashed by the knife one of them was holding. He was cut badly and still bears a large scar today. There were times I saw my parents fight so badly, they both ended with bloody faces.

At school we were given books of family stories, textbook examples of how things should be. I didn’t recognise the situations. For me, returning home each day filled me with dread, because I never knew if I would find my parents alive and well or not. Luckily for us, we lived in a detached house – if we had lived in a flat, like most of my schoolmates, we would have been expelled for causing a disturbance. My parents shouted insults and threats to one another so loudly that the neighbours could hear everything. I felt the humiliation deeply. Every time I turned the corner to my home street, the tension forced my head down to look at the pavement. From 200 yards away, I would hear my parents shouting at one another. I only ever took friends home if I was totally sure that one of my parents would not be back until late.

They argued constantly about money, although we were comparatively well off. My mother hated budgeting, while my father was strict. Each morning, before going to work, my father would leave on the cup- board a sum of money in cash that he deemed sufficient for the daily shopping; a bit more if my mum needed to buy clothes for us, a bit less if it was for food only. Mum was not allowed to have her own cheque book. Money became a fundamental point of anger and frustration between them.

My parents were not monsters. They did all their damage to each other, not to us. The only time they got upset was if one of us sided with the other parent. I tended to side mainly with my mother, but my father was still quite loving towards me, although I frustrated him.

Scroll on to continue

My father loved reading. He read Flaubert, Hugo, Voltaire, Zola and more; Jules Verne was his favourite author. It was a great source of disappointment to him that I wasn’t buried in the classics. I was reading, but my shelf was stocked with Asterix, Lucky Luke and other comics. I loved the Saint-Etienne football team, while my father considered footballers idiots running after a ball. We only had one thing in common: a love of cycling. My father loved the Tour de France. Maybe this is why he never drove a car, but always went to work by bicycle.

While he was at work, my mother stayed at home. Cleaning was not a priority, but she baked well. I remember the delicious cakes, jams, jellies and other wonderful desserts she made. Her clafoutis, a classic French cherry cake, was really delicious and her egg flan out of this world. I still carry the taste in my mouth. She could make all sorts of fabulous stews and magnificent varied gratins; her endive gratin was my favourite. Otherwise, her cooking was inconsistent. Because I regularly witnessed my mother cooking and often, like most kids do, wanted to help, I grew up quite interested in food, asking my mother endless ques- tions about her cooking. I was hooked! On the other hand, she could serve us some very average fare too. Neither my father nor my mother knew much about wine, although they drank plenty of ordinary wine.

Something else that did not interest them was my schooling. They knew which school I went to, and that was enough for them. It took until the end-of-year report to discover that things were not going well. I was a natural mathematician and began each year by getting the top marks. However, because my parents were not interested in my progress, I became lazy and my marks gradually tumbled lower and lower, skid- ding to barely acceptable by the end of the year. To relieve the stress of home, I became the class clown. I wanted to make everyone laugh and was regularly reprimanded.

At home we also had cats and dogs. I was besotted with them and used to play for hours with them; they taught me a lot about life. I enjoyed so much hearing my cats purr on my lap, or playing fetch with my dogs, or other made-up games when we were out in a field. Of course, pets are not eternal and so every time one died, I would be heartbroken and cry for days, completely inconsolable. It was so hard to show open affection to my parents when I was growing up that I gave all my love to animals instead when I was young.

I left school at sixteen with only the BEPC, the official national qual- ification for that age. I still wonder how I managed to pass this quite simple, basic exam, as I was not focused on studying at all.

When dreaming of an adult life with a family of my own I promised myself that it would be a loving atmosphere and that my home would be extremely peaceful. Like many children who grow up with violence, I developed a sharp sensitivity to people. In my case, I felt a need for people to be comfortable, which would prove useful in my future career. Finally, life had become too unbearable for them both to continue to live in the same house together and they eventually separated when I was seventeen. I left to live with my mother in the home of her deceased parents, in a town close by. My father also moved house, but stayed in the same town, alone and unhappy. I saw him regularly, but found we had nothing to say. He was not a bad father. He loved me in his own way, but the life that had been forced upon him had made him unhappy. After she left my father and moved away, my mother had some of the happiest years of her life. However, later in life she had dementia and after she had a fall in the street when she was ninety, she declined quickly. She would not recognise me when I was in front of her, but if we showed her a photo of me in a trade magazine she would say: ‘This is my son, Gerard.’

At seventeen, however, it was not obvious that I would become someone featured in magazines. I had dropped out of school because of my poor marks, and the only job I could find was in a local clothes shop. I had no clue what to recommend to customers and was sacked after two weeks.

My second job was in a factory, where I had to push a trolley to different areas and collect boxes, which I then had to stack on shelves. This time, I quit before they could sack me.

Next came a job in a luggage factory, where I was supposed to fold a piece of metal, destined to be part of a suitcase, with the help of a machine. After two days I had not even reached a third of my target and my work was so poor in quality that most of it had to be discarded. I was sacked.

I was sacked so often that the officers at the local Job Centre despaired of me. They told me – often – that I was a lazy, useless idiot. And I was, because my mind was on something else: cycling. It was something I was good at and I dreamt that one day I would be the King of the Mountains in the Tour de France. In my dream, I would be pedalling up the tor- tuous climbs of le Galibier or le Tourmalet, riding towards victory as the leading group behind me exploded with the effort of it. I would stop for a moment and look down below to see the carnage, with all the other riders exhausted and unable to keep up. The huge crowd along the road would be going crazy, shouting my name. I was their cycling idol!

And so the time passed, with me being sacked during the day, while cycling across the hills in the evenings and at weekends, whenever I had spare time.

At the time young Frenchmen of eighteen years old had to do their national military service, but because my parents were separated, my mother did not work and I lived with her, I was exempt as I was deemed to be supporting my mother financially . . . which was not completely true.

At last, a friend of my mother’s found me a job as a sales assistant in a hardware store, selling tools to tradesmen, along with domestic appli- ances. The two young managers, Armand and Marc, taught me the job and I not only learned about hardware, but also how to sell.

Between the cycling and the hardware, life improved. But it wasn’t a life that was taking me anywhere. My parents’ neglect had left me un- developed in many aspects of life. I was only modestly educated, I had no professional qualifications, I struggled to hold down jobs and I couldn’t even dance or swim. On top of that, I was shy and sensitive, and easily hurt.

Fortunately, life was about to change.

 

It looks like you're in Asia, would you like to be redirected to the Drinks Business Asia edition?

Yes, take me to the Asia edition No