UA-171643620-1 Keith Madeley Working Hours interview - Working Hours

Episode 27

full
Published on:

15th Jan 2024

Work is Cone-ecting Yorkshire

Keith Madeley recorded on 06/11/2023

Keith Madeley (AKA Mr Yorkshire (you’ll find out why in the interview)) left Grammar School at 16 and joined British Rail as a Clerk in Bradford. 2 years later Keith was moving to London for a promotion and then going on to pass all the exams to become British Rail’s youngest ever Station Manager at 21 years of age. Keith cites this as a great grounding for his future.

Leaving London at 25, Keith moved back to Bradford and initially worked as PR Manager at a Computer Software company before being promoted to General manager after 3 months and then becoming a Director of a couple of their subsidiaries. At 28 Keith joined with a friend to form an Independent Financial Advisory business which they ran together for 30 years. Keith was always looking at developing new products and building their business with PR. In 2004 they sold their business on to a major company. Since that sale, Keith has been Chairman and/or Non Exec Director of several companies and Charities/Non-profits.

Keith loves to help Yorkshire companies lift their profile and he is a member of the Board of the Yorkshire Asian Business Association, known locally as YABA. This role helps Keith on his personal agenda of promoting diversity and inclusivity in the area.

These days though Keith’s main focus is marketing his wife’s Children’s Educational book series, called Cones. Yep, that’s right. The books are about those ubiquitous orange warning/safety cones everyone has seen. Keith has secured sponsorship for every one of the Cones books so far each with a major company. With 18 Cones books now published, another 7 in different stages and more in negotiations, the Cones series is going from strength to strength.

Email keith@mryorkshire.com

Website http://www.mryorkshire.com

Cones Books: https://theconesbooks.co.uk/

Unity Club: https://www.unityclubleeds.com/

Show artwork for Working Hours

About the Podcast

Working Hours
The Story of Work in Leeds in the 2020s
What do you do?
Western Studios, Leeds presents Working Hours: a podcast series surveying the people of Leeds on their thoughts and feelings on the topic of work. I want to talk to my city about work. Why do we do it? Do we like it? What could we do differently? What will we? How does work change and how does it change us?
Leeds, the largest city in the largest county on the UK mainland, is a former imperial textile centre and is now a major UK financial centre. This series will document the city’s experiences through Lockdown, Brexit, creeping technological unemployment, new and continuing resource wars, the ongoing dismantling of the welfare state and our accelerating ecological emergency.
If you are in Leeds or from Leeds then help me to reach my target of interviewing 1000 Loiners over the 2020s. Let me ask you, what do you do?
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