A high-stakes gamble that paid off in weeks

And that is exactly what Gordon Leicester did as he peered out of his bedroom window in Kemp Town, Brighton, 20 years ago.

His gaze was attracted by two 50ft mobile elevating work platforms, or cherry pickers as they are more commonly known, and he strolled over to a local goods yard where they were being stored for a closer look.

Two days later he was the proud owner of one of the machines.

Two decades later his collection has expanded to 350 and his business, Facelift, is the biggest independent access hire company in the south of England.

He said: "I had finished my A-levels at Brighton and Hove Sixth Form College and started a one-man-band firm doing building and maintenance.

"I was 20 when I saw the cherry pickers in that yard and it was a bit of a 'eureka' moment.

"I was fascinated by the machinery. Something caught my imagination and I saw endless money-making possibilities for painting, decorating, electrics and roofing in hard-to-reach places.

"I had a look and asked if I could have a go.

"It was a Saturday and they said they would sell me one, which was on the back of a Leyland truck, for £3,000. I knew I had to have it.

"They wanted the cash by Monday so I spent the weekend begging and borrowing from friends and somehow raised the money."

The gamble paid off. Gordon made his £3,000 back within a fortnight.

He used the cherry picker as mobile scaffolding for his building jobs but requests to hire it came in thick and fast.

Gordon, 40, added: "We see platforms everywhere now but 20 years ago they had a huge novelty factor.

"If you are doing a maintenance job on a roof or up a spire that might only take you a day, then hiring scaffolding is labour-intensive and not a cost-effective way of doing things.

"With a platform you go up and down, tow it away and it's done.

"It was not long before I realised there was far more potential in hiring them out than using them as part of the building firm.

"I bought my second machine, an 85-footer, in 1989 and started buying more and more and taking on staff."

Gordon began running the firm from his bedroom before moving into a yard at Shoreham harbour. Facelift soon outgrew that and he moved to the company's current home in Hickstead, near Haywards Heath, 12 years ago.

Facelift now has offices in east and west London, Southampton and Liverpool, with a new branch opening soon in Birmingham.

The firm employs 110 staff and has an annual turnover of £8.5 million.

Its most expensive platform cost £450,000 to buy and is designed for working under bridges. It costs a cool £1,200-a-day to hire.

As well as the hire side of the business, Facelift has a sales wing for brand new cherry pickers, a school to train 1,000 people-a-year how to operate them and a new retail branch selling safety equipment such as harnesses.

Much of the work undertaken by the machines is banal, such as repointing bridges, cleaning barnacles off ships and repointing brickwork.

But there is also a glamorous side to the business.

Gordon added: "One day we might be working at a gloomy power station somewhere and the next we could be on a film set.

"We have worked on London's Burning, the movie Batman and lots of others. It is usually so cameras can get unusual shots or we act as mobile lighting rigs. Recently we put the giant red nose on BBC headquarters for Comic Relief.

"Sporting venues and events like the British Grand Prix are also quite common."

Some of the more unusual jobs included raising a Madam Tussauds waxwork of David Beckham on to a plinth in Trafalgar Square and rescuing a parrot from a tree.

Gordon said: "Once we were hired by The Sun newspaper to elevate a reporter above the Big Brother house and he unfurled a banner offering £50,000 for the first couple to bonk on the show.

"We have also had the pleasure of working on some of the UK's finest buildings over the past 20 years.

"In Brighton we have worked at the Royal Pavilion, The Grand hotel, both piers, the Hove Enginerium and the County Cricket Ground.

"Further afield, we have worked on virtually all the River Thames bridges, Buckingham Palace, Nelson's Column and the Millennium Dome."

He said aerial platforms had "revolutionised" maintenance work on high buildings in town and city centres.

Gordon also attributes his company's success to a degree of luck.

He said: "I never dreamt when I started 20 years ago we would be where we are now and how these machines would take off.

"The advances in technology and what cherry-pickers can do have been immense.

"Of course, we have also been lucky with regulation.

"The Health and Safety Executive has been vocal in encouraging their use rather than scaffolding and ladders, which has helped us.

"There are something like a million working hours each year conducted from the basket of an aerial platform and that increases every year "We have always been at the forefront of health and safety.

"Like all businesses that have been around for as long as us, there have been ups and downs and we have had periods of financial difficulty but we have been fortunate to weather them.

"We have a good product that people will always need so we are okay in that respect.

"We have four major competitors to keep us on our toes and things are going very nicely."

May 3, 2005