Why a man who sold three companies spends his days talking about the British high street

I tried to retire. Properly tried. Different countries, different cities, the full tour. And what I kept finding, wherever I went, was that the thing I missed most was British culture. Not a brand, not a chain, not a logo. The actual texture of life that Britain does better than anywhere else.

So I came home.

And what I found when I got back was a high street in the worst state I have ever seen it. Shops closed. Towns gone quiet. The kind of quiet that creeps up on you slowly and then one day you walk through the centre and realise it arrived without anyone announcing it.

I had money from the exits. I had time. I could have ignored it. Most people in my position do.

Instead I pressed record.

That is the whole story. No grand strategy, no consultancy behind it, no campaign manager. Just a man who had been around long enough to recognise something worth fighting for, and who understood that the only tool he had that nobody else was using was the ability to do the maths out loud and point a camera at the result.

I built a movement called Keep Them Open. The aim is simple: bring love and attention back to the high street, support independent businesses in every way I can, and keep doing it every single day until it shifts something. Three videos a day if that is what it takes.

The reason I do the numbers, the reason I sit here and work out where the money goes and what the fees cost and why the chains can absorb things that would finish a sole trader in a fortnight, is because nobody else is doing it for them. The independent butcher is up at five. The woman who remortgaged for her coffee shop is working seven days. They do not have a comms team or a lobbying budget. They have a counter and a card machine and the hope that enough people will notice.

I noticed. That is all this is.

If you have a story about an independent that deserves the spotlight, send it to keepthemopen.com.