WHSmith plc

Anyway, the point I'm trying to make here is, though I wasn't in Storm's office that often, I was there one day when Colin Schiller came in.

Now, I used to read Fastbikes avidly, I remember the time on Cheapside, London EC2, when I went into WH Smiths and it was, I think it was issue two, Sean Emmett's on the cover on some tried 900 doing a fucking absolute 12 o'clock wheelie, which drew me to pick it up and then rifle through the pages.

And I'm looking at this amazing photography of people either doing that, that or, you know, sideways.

And I don't think...

Yeah, I wouldn't want to try painting that.

Remember when WH Smith got in trouble for the Vervoid cover of Doctor Who magazine? So they went all out.

We got an octopus.

Andrew Skilleter gave us a giant squid attacking the world.

My wife and I stopped in one near the Tuileries, which I guess is, we're persona non grata because we're almost arrested there.

But in that same neighborhood, there's like a W.H. Smith bookstore.

There's also the Red Wheelbarrow by Luxembourg Gardens.

And that just shows you how international this city is.

We've got... examples in the collection of a type of book called The Yellowback.

And we've got some examples on display on our restored WH Smith kiosk that you can see in Station Hall.

And these types of books were produced for the railway age, so they would be sold on station bookstalls.

with the idea that passengers would buy them to read on the train.

And then I remember doing media studies at secondary school where you have to do work experience.

And the best thing they could find for me was a week in WH Smith selling magazines.

We've all been there.

We've all been there.

It also paid taxes.

now private equity is a huge rabbit hole in and of itself and i'm going to make a future video about private equity really focusing on how huge private equity funds bought up so much of britain but i'm going to use morrison's as an example for this video now if you walk down any british high street you're going to pass by private equity owned businesses So for example, Pizza Express, Burger King, Cafe Rouge, The Body Shop, Wagamama's, Zee Zee's, New Look, Bella Italia, WH Smith's, Boots, Waterstones.

Ring a bell? So all of these shops that we walk by on the high street, they're actually private equity owned.

But what does that actually mean? Well, at a high level, what happens in private equity leveraged buyouts is that a private equity institution or firm will buy a business and then they'll take the debt that they created for the buying of that business and largely place it within the business itself.