p20

We all have our mini cab stories. I have an enormous fund from directing drivers to Albion Road, through overcharging enough to get to Manchester and back and grappling with language barriers so impenetrable that I’ve fled from the car in despair.

But I declare now that if I’m gonna call anyone then it’s Premiercars in Defoe Road. They’ve been around since Stokey was a two-sheep village. ‘No-one pretends that you don’t get the odd journey which goes wrong’, says co-owner and former civil servant Steve McLean, 46, ‘but we do care about running a good service and all our drivers are thoroughly checked out and registered’.

Steve, his wife Linda, 42, and her brother Enver Mehmet 31, known to all as Gary, took over the running of the then Defoe Cars in 1996 when it had 12 drivers and a nasty-looking office. Today the 90 drivers are all linked up to a state-of-the-art satellite navigation system which can plot their exact position within 500 yards. Gone are the days of ‘He’s just round the corner, luv,’ ‘Yeh but which corner – Hyde Park?’

The trio also operate a system of driver grading. ‘We have those who do airport runs, they’re always the smart, best cars. Some mostly do very local jobs. We try and fit the driver to the job when we can, although it’s not always possible when we’re very busy,’ says Steve. And busy they certainly are. Premier has 90 cars, all linked to their satellite system.

‘It cost us £200,000’, says Steve, and come Friday and Saturday nights they are madly juggling hundreds of calls. ‘People can get very frustrated when they can’t get a car immediately at those times but we never tell them “its on its way” when it’s not’, says Gary. ‘This is a long-term business and we value regulars.’

The trio sing the praises of their controllers. ‘It’s a very high pressure job’ and customers sometimes don’t realise that it’s the controllers who have to cope with a multitude of jobs, cars, callers not there when the cab turns up, abuse when notorious N16 traffic makes them late and always the odd refusal to pay.

‘You wouldn’t believe the stunts people get up too to try and avoid the fare’, sighs Steve. ‘We had one guy who handed the driver a cheque which turned out to be a pay slip.’ Premier are acutely aware that N16 is not all middle-class folks playing it by the rules, and there have been some first-class bundles outside the Church Street offices. ‘One fare, a regular customer as well, started an argument with a driver and knocked him unconscious on the pavement in front of the window. We have had stabbings, the lot,’ says Steve. ‘But we try to be very cautious about the fares. We turn down calls we don’t like the feel of. Usually it’s on a mobile and we’re asked to meet them “on a corner”. We can tell.’

The drivers pay the firm an agreed rental each week, generally pick a shift pattern and Gary, ‘whose instincts are legendary’ keeps a close eye on their progress. ‘If anything goes wrong we give them a chance to improve but I’ve no problem with telling them to go elsewhere if they don’t work out’, he says.

They have carried numerous celebrities in their time but still talk in hushed awed tones of the time ‘ they had that Nicole Kidman in the back of the cab.’  She was lovely, very polite, bit quiet’, say Steve and Gary.  It’s a 24/7 job for the trio. Steve has the office hot-wired to his home with CCTV to the office and the full data system on his home computer. ‘I can’t stop myself tuning in’, he says, ‘I have to know what’s happening.’

The Premier team know that overcharging can sometimes happen when you feel a driver has plucked a figure out of the air. Gary gazes into the middle distance and launches. ‘There is a strict fare list and I check everyone out thoroughly. We are installing an even more finely-tuned system which should eliminate any problems entirely’, he says. ‘But if anyone thinks they have been overcharged by a driver from us, then contact the office immediately and we’ll sort it out.’ All Premier drivers are properly insured, registered, checked and interviewed by Gary who obviously has an acute nose for a wrong ‘un. But he feels Premier can get tarred with someone else’s brush.

‘There are dozens of cab firms within a very short radius of Church Street who we know don’t run as tight an operation’, he says. ‘I get really mad that we play by the book, pay all the right taxes, get all the proper checks and there are firms out there who are getting away with it’, says Steve.

I’ve got to confess that I use Premiercars all the time and my life would partially collapse if they blacklisted me. ‘Oh yes, we’ve got a blacklist’, says Steve ruefully. But, hand on heart and moth-eaten wallet, I can say they have very rarely let me down.