1. Sarah: Where did you get-t….to where you are today?
Jeremy: This is in term of the Olympics...Ok. I’m er…a member of the Oldham business leadership
group and the aims and sort of profile of that is to try and raise the economic, tourism and, erm
things that- one of the projects that we’re doing was the Olympic projects…so….to erm…. The
Olympic project that we did was called one future and…I took on board- because I got an interest in
sport – I took on board the chairmanship of our one future project. The one future project involving
the Olympics was to raise the…profile of Oldham for the Olympics and also for the particular
erm….particularly to do with the legacy issues about keeping people involved in sport, keeping
people involved in-in sort of health and general fitness and also how we er…improve the economic
output of Oldham through using the Olympics as a catalyst. So this is a project I took on because we
had one or two connections and…erm… then it just grew its own legs and got bigger and bigger.
Sarah: How does it feel to be nominated for the pride of Oldham?
Jeremy: Well of course it was- it was quite an honour but that wasn’t the reason why we took on the
project and erm the other point about it is that I was representing a team so…it was a little bit false
in terms of it-it wasn’t just me it was a full team involved. But again, it is-is an honour to be able to
that. It wasn’t something that we planned to do and er, it was nice to get a little bit of recognition
for something that we do as a company anyway putting something back into the community as part
of our corporate, social responsibility agenda.
Sarah: How does it feel...to come from a small place like Oldham and have an input...on something
...so big like the London Olympics?
Well...who says Oldham is a small place? I think the population of Oldham 230,000, 240,000. It was
once one of the richest towns in the world with the cotton legacy and er Winston Churchill was an
Mp who was...er... probably regarded- or as seen in a BBC survey several years ago- he was regarded
as the greatest Britain. So first of all....I’d take issue with Oldham as a small place. Then I would say,
ok...we’re not necessarily a small place. How much influence did we have on the Olympics?
Well...not necessarily a lot. We had, erm, an Oldham obviously medal winner, Nicola White, erm I
wouldn’t say we were involved in the training, although I did use to go watch Nicola play hockey
because she played Hockey with my daughter erm...what we’ve got to look at is the legacy things
that come out of it and how many people can we get involved in the sports clubs, using the Olympics
as a Catalyst. Did we have a big input? Well, Oldham did, Newbridge school did good work in filming,
er... some of the, er, er , proo, pre-media stuff for the Olympics so-and alot of Oldham companies
did alot of work on the Olympics too, so... we played a part, but it’s part of the legacy issues. How
can we then get people to- from Oldham- to contribute to the Glasgow commonwealth games, so It
doesn’t stop after the Olympics, it’s how we carry it forward.
Sarah: Do you think...what...you have...achieved would encourage other people from small towns to
think big?
Well, again, I’d take issue with the small town. I think that one of the things that we...would do as
part of the business leadership group and indeed the council and indeed the college sixth form and
the Oldham college is –is to promote- is to promote Oldham, Oldham erm, if we’re going to a lasting
sort of economic impact we can’t think small, we’ve gotta think big and what we’re trying to do is to

2. raise the profile of Oldham, say how many ambassadors we’ve got er, there’s a guy called Paul
Walsh who’s chief executive di- of diasio. He distresses Oldham routes, we use Nicola White as an
Ambassador er...who got the bronze medal in the Olympic hockey. Paul Scholes. So you know, using
the sort of attributes that we’ve got within Oldham, how have we actually go and sell that within the
UK to make obviously...er...the lives of the people here and the youngsters who are coming in to
employment to make Oldham a place to er...live and promote. So er we’re not necessarily small,
we’re not necessarily big but we can promote ourselves certainly outside of Oldham and errrr....
hopefully on the national stage and the then international stage in due course.
Sarah: What do you think the secret to-s- to your success is?
Ooh...the secret to our success? I think having a good team, er and we have alot of er good
ambassadors and alot of good connections and I think- I think working as a team will deliver alot
more than working as individuals so, its the team that it comes along and the relationships that
we’ve formed and to continued with and we’ve got- there’s a great base in the sport, business erm,
that I think we need to sell to the – the wider world , I think one of the things that we don’t do is
promote ourselves so alot of the good things that we’re doing involve, in this wise, sports wise and
education wise in Oldham we can- we can look at things too negatively, we should go out and sell
ourselves to the wider world.
Sarah: Thank you.