Tom Hartley: The Dealmaker

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Instantly Shane’s sense of humour draws you to him as a person, and instantly puts you all at ease. From there you’ve got this amazing level playing field that you’re all on, Shane’s very much on the level of the actors and he’s part of this with you and he’s really driving you forward. Obviously he’s an incredible visionary and he’ll see something very small in a scene and he’ll come in and make the smallest suggestion which will then grow and grow and you go off and play with it. It’s an amazing experience for an actor to have that creative playing field and it’s quite rare. Soraya Jane Nabipour

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Fast forward more than 40 years and weathering the storm of three recessions, Tom now boasts a massive base with showrooms near his gated home, in Overseal. He has sold cars to the super rich and famous for decades. Every day was a highlight. Working on this job was a bit of a religious experience, you have to give yourself to it and the flow of it, and I’ve liked that. You didn’t know what was going to happen each day, in terms of how we made it, because it was improv, so for me there were always little magic moments that you couldn’t predict or foresee in the scriptments, and you just go that’s magic, that’s the alchemy that is beautiful. So I enjoyed seeing those things pop up. Someone might do something or it might be a feeling, or it might be coming in to a space where the art department had just smashed it. I really enjoyed observing every day, the bits of magic the crew the team, the actors created. Olivia Pentelow

Personally, he is a great guy with a great business and he deserves this book to be his day in the sun.” It was during the workshopping process with the actors I realised there was also a story to tell leading up to Ben’s incredible book. A prequel that not only allowed us to understand ‘why’ the Cragg Vale Coiners did what they did, but maybe fall in love with them a smidge while they did it. It may have turned into one of the biggest crimes in British history, but it was pulled off by a bunch of destitute farmers and weavers doing what they had to to survive, and I think people will resonate with that. The first time I read Shane’s scriptments, the colours, the characters, the world, Shane’s humour that a lot of us have seen throughout his work prior to this, was all there and that just jumped out straight away. Obviously there’s a lot of serious themes and the content at times is quite heavy but Shane’s very unique but familiar humour I was really drawn to first and foremost. Behind that is obviously this really rich history of the family itself, the Hartleys, but also the area, the Calder Valley and this particular part of West Yorkshire. It’s a real love letter to the area as well.

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Dubbing himself ‘The Dealmaker’ which is also the title of his book, Tom tells his story of life growing up with a traditional Romany family in Glasgow, to making his first million by the age of 17. Set in the moorland hills of 18th Century Yorkshire, England, is a country divided. As the aristocracy are building the first cotton mills and factories, the common people are starving. David Hartley (Michael Socha) has been away from his family’s remote moor-top dwelling for seven years. On his journey home to Cragg Vale, West Yorkshire, David gets lost in the moors. He’s dragging a mysterious looking bag of tools with him and on his last legs. I really liked Bell House because behind it there’s a vista where we would all chill, and just being there was peaceful and beautiful.This is always an incredibly tough category to choose who will win but it’s great to see it go to Tom. The fascinating life of Tom Hartley, 59, has been laid bare in his first autobiography detailing his astonishing rise to the top to become one of the world’s most successful luxury car dealers.

Tom Hartley: The Dealmaker by Tom Hartley | Goodreads

Working with Shane, I’ve come to really learn that he’s probably one of the most humble people I’ve ever met in my life. Even though when you watch his work, you’re like wow this is Shane Meadows, but when you meet him and work with him, he’s so humble in terms of he’s like a friend, the way he speaks to you, he’s welcomed me as a non-professional who’s come from the open casting, and he’s treated me exactly the same as everybody else on the job. Thomas Turgoose These days his base boasts two showrooms, one with a glass ceiling offering a 3D experience, as well as a helicopter pad to fly in his high-profile clients. He is the multi-millionaire supercar dealer who has helped put South Derbyshire on the map but did you know he walked out of school at 11 unable to read or write?

But new Type Approval Import regulations, which meant only official franchised dealers could import and register cars in the UK, pretty much killed Tom’s business off. “I basically went from hero to zero overnight because I had spotted a gap in the market, but I became too successful and was brought down by the establishment,” he said.