When he was seven Fear managed to get on a train to London because he had read about Buckingham Palace and wanted to have a look at it. A year or so later he decided to cycle the 27 miles from Malmesbury to Bristol to visit his dad. The police brought him home on both occasions but he doesn't remember feeling frightened. "As far as I was concerned I was having an adventure. When the police found me I was sitting on a wall happily drinking Tizer."
He devoured everything from the Financial Times to the Morning Star on his paper round and was "addicted" to the classifieds in Exchange Mart, which is where he spotted an advert for a domestic oven cleaner that could be used on ovens without having to switch them off or cool them down. He realised it could be a boon for industrial bakeries which took days to cool down - but the manufacturers were in the States.
"I had no idea how you made a phone call to America so I called the operator. We got chatting and she told me she would calculate how much money I needed and call me back. This was a revelation in itself. I didn't know you could be rung up in a phone box. She told me how much money to put in the slot and then put me through to the firm in New Jersey. They thought she was my secretary."
To be sure of constant access to his "office", Fear sat on a chair outside the phone box as well as hanging his fake sign. The kindly operator, Joyce Thompson, continued acting as his "secretary" for outgoing calls.
"Sometimes she would interrupt me to say I had another call waiting which meant I had to put more coins in the slot," he recalls. At other times he would pay his mate's older sister to handle incoming calls. Joyce became a friend and Fear visited her every year until her death. "She was a wonderful lady," he says.
He persuaded the Americans to make him their European agent and pass on the formula for their oven cleaner which he mixed up in his dad's tool shed, later progressing to a lock‑up garage. Easy Clean was a runaway success and three years later he sold the company for 100,000.
N ext, he joined an estate agent with a half-hearted view to training as a surveyor but switched to dealing in property having ascertained it was the most surefire way of making money. He spent the Seventies acquiring buildings and land in France, the US and Britain.
His next coup came in the Eighties when the government announced the construction of the Channel Tunnel. "Nobody thought it would ever really happen but I remember watching Margaret Thatcher on the news and I just knew she was going to make it happen. I drove down to Kent the next day and bought a caravan park."
He secured permission for year-round use and advertised it as providing accommodation for men seeking work on the Tunnel project. The plot had cost him 100,000 and brought in 300,000 a year in rent.
The Fear empire now includes a factory manufacturing woodworking machinery, another making car and van trailers, a mail-order company selling dog-training DVDs and another selling hypnosis DVDs for losing weight. "Basically we're always on the lookout for good, innovative products," he says. He acquired his 64th company only two days ago - a pub which he plans to turn into a restaurant.
Now 57, he has been a multi- millionaire for more than two decades and enjoys all the trappings of success, dividing his time between an apartment in Antibes on the Cte d'Azur, a house in Florida and a penthouse overlooking the harbour in his native Bristol. There are four luxury cars in the garage. His son Leon, 27, works with him and he also has a daughter Alexandra, 30, who is mother to his three-year-old grandson Roux. Twice divorced, he lives with his partner Elizabeth.
Success brought him glamorous friends too. When his business partner Arne Naess married the diva Diana Ross, Fear was naturally invited to the wedding in New York. "On that occasion I did stop and ask myself how a boy from a Bristol council estate had got there."
He claims to have no idea what he is worth. "I'm only interested in money for the freedom it gives me to live my life as I choose. I've never had a mortgage and I've only ever borrowed money in order to make money, not to improve my lifestyle. You only do that with money you've already made."
Can Fear be compared to that other council estate wheeler-dealer Del Boy Trotter? Actually he'd rather you didn't. In fact making the dubious comparison is only likely to annoy him. "I think my informal approach is more like Richard Branson," he says. Besides, there is one crucial difference between him and Del: Stephen Fear not only made his fortune, he hung on to it too.
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