Charting the rise and fall of the Gormans

W ITH its many bars, lush VIP rooms and celebrity clientele, the Roxy Club in Orlando must have seemed like the perfect place for Chris and Mary Gorman to let their hair down for the evening on a family holiday to Disneyland Florida.

The tycoons from Bridge of Weir in Renfrewshire, have long been known for their capacity to party, having spent half a million pounds on a three-day extravaganza in their Spanish villa to celebrate their 10th wedding anniversary. And the Roxy, where Nicki Minaj sometimes DJs and Cristal champagne can be bought for $300 a bottle, would have appealed to the couple’s taste for the ostentatious.

But the venue, which recently introduced “stripper poles” around its dance floor, also has a reputation for sleaze. A favourite haunt of golfer Tiger Woods, who met lover Julie Postle when she waitressed there, it has had more than its fair share of busts for drugs and prostitution.

Within hours of their arriving at the club’s hip hop night – a predominantly black event at which they would have stood out – the flash, but outwardly respectable Gormans would become embroiled in their own scandal, a tale so lurid that it would change their lives forever.

The details of what is alleged to have happened in a toilet cubicle at the Roxy that night have made headlines on both sides of the Atlantic. Alerted by “noises”, staff at the club asked the occupants to open the door, but they refused. When an off-duty police officer hired as a bouncer arrived he says he saw Mary performing a sex act on an unnamed black man, as her husband watched.

Had the couple come quietly, the Roxy’s VIP manager Jason Agan has asserted, they would merely have been thrown out of the club (as the unnamed man was). But, it is claimed, Mary was screaming and shouting and refusing to leave. In the confusion that followed, she is said to have pushed the police officer in the chest. A small amount of a white powder, said to be cocaine, was found in a black wallet insider her handbag.

Then, as a still hysterical Mary was being hustled outside, Chris is said to have “come at” a police officer, screaming: “That’s my wife. That’s my wife.” “He grabbed hold of the police officer’s arm, until the police officer shoved him out of the way. He ended up on his back with his legs in the air. it was so funny. He looked like a beetle, who has fallen on his back and his legs are stranded in the air,” a club worker said.

Mary has since been charged with battery and possession of a controlled substance, while Chris has been charged with interfering with an arrest. After paying around $1,300 in bail the couple were allowed to return to the UK.

The scale of the Gormans’ fall from grace is captured in their terrible police mug shots, so far removed from the soft-focus portraits said to adorn their Bridge of Weir home, or the glamourous party pics on their social networking sites.

Gone are Mary’s glossy coiffured-mane, her perfect skin and her dazzling white teeth; in their place are wild tangles, panda eyes and a blotchy complexion.

Chris looks less like a global entrepreneur and more like a low-level Glasgow gangster.

Once recognised for their contribution to the community – Chris was awarded an OBE for his services to business – the couple, who pride themselves on their celebrity contacts, hobnobbing with the likes of George Clooney and Alesha Dixon, could now find themselves social pariahs.

Last week, they sent out a pleading e-mail claiming the circumstances surrounding their arrest were very different to those that had been laid out in the police report, insisting they would be denying all charges and begging close friends to stand by them.

But Mary has already been asked to stand down from her role as ambassador for the charity Action for Children Scotland, with a spokesman playing down the part she played in organising its Turnberry Fashion Event later this month.

Meanwhile, attempts have been made to restrict access to the family’s personal website, which boasts clean-cut images of the couple and their four children, aged between seven and 21, promotes their many achievements and carries the motto: “One for all and all for one.”

Such public humiliation will come hard for a couple who, for 15 years, appeared to have the Midas touch. Born into relative poverty – Chris in Hartlepool, Mary in Cumbernauld – they built a multi-million-pound empire from scratch.

Uninterested in school, Chris left with five O-levels, joined supermarket chain Fine Fare as a management trainee and seemed destined to enjoy a steady career in retail.

But even then, he was restless; At 17, while supplementing his Fine Fare wages with evening work in nightclubs, he read a book which he says changed his life, Dale Carnegie’s classic How To Win Friends And Influence People.

“I was always a bit of a hustler,” he has said. “Carnegie’s book made me realise that achieving what you want is about how you interact with other people and that you could do anything, no matter what background you came from.”

Blessed with business acumen, the gift of the gab and a near-impeccable sense of timing, he was the consummate entrepreneur. After selling light text displays for shop windows, he progressed to selling answering machines until – demonstrating the prescience for which he was to become famous – he fixed his sights on the mobile phone market.

So good was Gorman at selling that at 21, his employer, Aoko, offered him a 20% stake in the business, an offer he turned down, opting instead to head for London.

By 1992, however, he had set up home with Mary, herself a budding entrepreneur; still struggling the pair sold their London flat and headed north to Glasgow, where they married on a “shoestring”, selling Mary’s car to pay for the ceremony.Very soon, however, their fortunes turned. Having set up DX Communications with Richard Emmanuel, Chris saw his £25,000 investment grow as the number of shops rose to 170.

He made his first million after DX Communications was sold for £4.5m just before the market turned. Investing this money in internet services company Reality Group he went from strength to strength, selling this business for £35m, and making it onto the Sunday Times rich list in 2003. Although some of Chris’s ventures were less successful – the Gadget Shop, for instance went into administration – the couple nevertheless thrived, with their personal fortune now estimated at £45m.

As the Gormans’ wealth grew, so did their capacity for spending it. Soon they were investing in all the trappings of the newly rich; big houses, flat-screen TVs, flash cars and champagne; and in living the kind of celebrity lifestyle they had long aspired to.

Never one to shy away from publicity, Chris raised his public profile, by taking part in several business-related TV shows, including Make Me a Million and building up a network of showbiz contacts.

Indeed, if those who know them have any criticisms, it is that the Gormans are too interested in conspicuous consumption, and too impressed with their own achievements.

Though there is no doubting their commitment to charity work – as well as giving up time to mentor young people, Chris helped organise Live 8, while Mary has raised funds for Action Medical Research’s Touching Tiny Lives – their lives seem nevertheless marked by personal excess.

Those who have visited the Bridge of Weir home recall multiple TV screens, a bar, a disco and a swimming pool, while Gorman himself has a penchant for bling such as diamond-encrusted pendants.

Their wealth also allowed the couple to give vent to their irrepressible personalities. Ask anyone who knows the Gormans about them and the first thing they’ll tell you is: “They love to party.”

“You cancel anything else in your diary for a Gorman party,” John McGlynn, chairman and founder of car park group Airlink, once said.

Their hedonism peaked in the three-day extravaganza they held for their 10th wedding anniversary. Gorman hired Madness, Hot Chocolate and drag queen, Lily Savage, to perform for 200 guests at their house in Puerto Banus in Marbella; and Cilla Black flew in to host a personal Blind Date-style competition for Mary.

Nor are the couple known for their privacy or their discretion; although in a professional context, they promote their family almost as a corporate brand (they describe their marriage as “a successful partnership that crosses personal boundaries into their business lives”), Mary’s Facebook site was full of photos of them having a good time; Chris in loud shirts, Mary in a succession of tops that show off her ample cleavage.

Some are decidedly racy. In one, the 43-year-old poses in a shiny red cap with “bad girl” emblazoned on it, her finger stuck provocatively in her mouth; in another Mary poses with “adult fantasy star” Rebecca Jessop.

A suggestion as to how this party lifestyle had the potential to backfire on them came in an infamous 2005 court case, when Gorman’s fellow Gadget Shop directors sued him and Tom Hunter over their purchase of the Birthdays chain, claiming the pair had struck a private deal behind the company’s backs.

Gorman and Hunter won the case, but the picture that emerged of their lifestyle was unedifying; there was talk of wild partying, drunken exchanges and Gorman dancing on the tabletops at a nightclub in Monte Carlo.

Even so, few would have predicted that their world would have imploded so dramatically during what was supposed to be a family holiday; at a time when most families would be focused on negotiating the queues for the new Harry Potter theme park, it is claimed they were engaged in a tawdry encounter that threatens to destroy everything they have worked to achieve.

Look up a list of Chris Gorman’s current business interests and you will see that – while he has abandoned his strategy of investing in large high street retailers – he continues to have a lot of fingers in lots of pies; there’s Quintessentially, an exclusive concierge service for wealthy business travellers, and Lucid PR, the largest national radio, online and TV promotions company, as well as mobile music service ChartsNow. He also lectures in schools and universities and is an honorary professor in business at the University of the West of Scotland.

Mary meanwhile, is a success in her own right. Having worked as managing director of the Reality Group, she now operates a property development company as well as working as a management consultant.

The stakes, then, are high. Although legal sources say Chris’s alleged offence is merely a misdemeanour, which would not attract a jail sentence even if he were convicted, Mary’s are third degree felonies, which could lead to three to five years imprisonment.

The couple – whose case will be heard at Orange County Court – have hired top Orlando attorney Mark Horwitz and plan to fight all the charges. “We are optimistic of resolving this case in a satisfactory way,” Horwitz has said. Certainly, since returning from the sunshine state in August, the couple have not seemed unduly worried.

With their skirmish with the law a well-kept secret, they continued to be seen out and about at social events. Just last weekend, they were “on top form” at an £800-a-head Hallowe’en bash compered by DJ Suzie Maguire and former Miss Scotland Nieve Jennings to raise money for Yorkhill Children’s Hospital. With Chris dressed as the Mad Hatter and Mary as a saucy French maid they partied at the Crowne Plaza until 2am. Little did they know that just hours later, details of their arrest would be plastered all over the newspapers. With the world agog at the scandal, it seems unlikely the couple will be out partying again in Glasgow for some time to come.