Interview: Chris Andrews

Photographer Chris Andrews considers himself — and who is to doubt him? — “Oxford’s first street salesman of the modern age”.

As the 1980s dawned, he could be found peddling his framed prints of his city views to tourists in Turl Street or the Broad. Around him on roller skates, the better to attract the punters, circled his wife Ginger.

To promote his first exhibition in the Newman Rooms, off St Aldates, in 1979 he strapped on sandwich boards for a pavement patrol.

“You have to have a touch of the entrepreneur to get things going,” he says. “The worst anyone can say is no. This was barrow boy at its best.”

Happily, like so many barrow boys, this one prospered.

Taking stock of his business today — when to Oxford has been added nine more centres with tourists to tempt — he lists sales of more than 15m postcards, a million-plus calendars and half a million books, his 45th and latest being Belfast — A View of the City.

But these products are only part of the range offered. The website devoted to Chris Andrews Publications lists others that include fridge magnets, posters, diaries, wrapping paper and notecard wallets. Bookmarks will shortly return after some time away.

The Belfast book — featured last week in this paper’s Limited Edition magazine — is shortly to be launched with an Irish-themed party at The Fishes, in North Hinksey, a few doors from the former farmhouse he and Ginger share with their three affectionate dogs, their daughters having now flown the nest.

Carole, 27, lives in Bicester and is deputy manager of a children’s care nursery in Summertown. Reesy (Theresa), 25, works for a software company and divides her time between London and Brighton.

The Fishes, where Chris is a familiar and popular figure, would have been the obvious place for a meeting with The Oxford Times, but instead is chosen another pub both foodie and traditional. He talks of his life over a lunch of venison burger and red wine at The Punter, in Osney.

Born in Alton, Hampshire, in 1957, he moved soon after to Cheltenham where his late father was an aero industry executive with Smiths and his mother — now 91 and in a nursing home –— ran the WRVS in the local hospital.

He has two older siblings, a sister working in a special care baby unit and a brother now retired from his job as a pilot with Cathay Pacific.

At his school in the town Chris proved “pretty sporty”, excelling as a sprinter and rugby player. He continued to play rugby in later life, turning out for Oxford Rugby Club until he was 40.

Academically, he was less successful, realising that a career in medicine was impossible on the A-levels he was likely to achieve.

University places reading psychology were offered but he opted instead to study at the Oxford College of Radiography in Headington. Over two-and-a-half years he learned the techniques of diagnostic X-rays at hospitals across the city.

He also met Ginger, one of his teachers, with whom he eventually went to live in Juxon Street, Jericho.

First he lived off the Cowley Road (“quite lively, then as now”), during which time his love of Oxford, and of photography, developed.

“At one stage there was a problem with the heating or something and I didn’t have to pay rent for a couple of months. I decided to buy myself a decent camera.”

This was a Praktica — a significant upgrade on the Brownie he’d started out with. It became his constant companion on early morning outings into the city.

“I just found I loved the light at that time of the day. Between five and six in the morning, Oxford is a different world. For a start, everyone you meet speaks to you. As you walk around in beautiful golden light, the whole place is idyllic.”

Recording this world on film, Chris soon realised, was his preferred role in life rather than taking X-ray slides of broken bones and the like. So this is what he opted to do, keeping solvent with work at his Jericho local, The Globe, and driving for the wine company Dolomores.

Having sold framed examples of his work at a number of exhibitions, and on Sunday displays on the railings outside the University Parks, he achieved a business breakthrough when one of his customers suggested he should produce postcards.

Since this contact, Duncan Spence, owned a printing company in Abingdon, the now defunct Sands Press, this was obviously the place to produce them.

Views of 16 different city spires were printed, 5,000 copies of each.

Delivered on Tuesday, they were sold by Friday.

“Now let’s talk about proper numbers!” Chris was advised.

Mr Spence has remained a powerful business mentor, and friend. Chris and Ginger were leaving, the day following his Punter lunch, for the Tulpen rally, a 10-day trip from Alsace to Berne in an Aston Martin DB7 belonging to his R R Elite Hire Company. Mr Spence was in a DB9.

With Ginger now involved in the company full-time, chiefly on marketing, and secretary Annabel Matthews soon to join (she has remained for 25 years with never a day of sickness), the scene was soon set for expansion. After calendars came books, the first of which was The Romance of Oxford, written by local journalist Tony Gallup and with design by Mike Brain, a rugby-playing friend of Chris’s who still contributes to the publications today.

Chris bumped into another useful contact — literally — on the River Cherwell. Paddling in his canoe, he collided with a beautiful mahogany boat belonging to David Huelin, recently retired from the banking scene in South America.

A chat led to drinks; drinks led to a working relationship that was to produce three books, including Oxford Introduction and Guide, which is being revised and reprinted.

The Andrews empire extended steadily to take in Cambridge, London, Stratford-upon-Avon, Cheltenham, Henley, Bath, the Peak District, the Cotswolds and the Chilterns.

Through Duncan Spence was added the Channel Islands, where he had business interests.

Chris and Ginger lived and worked on Sark for a year in the late 1990s, with Annabel looking after operations in Oxford. Gateway Publishing, which they still run there, is shortly to publish a lavish edition, The David Shepherd Archive Collection, costing £2,500.

In Oxford, work has focused since 2000 in offices at Curtis Yard, Botley, which serves as a warehouse for products.

Initially reluctant to embrace new technology in cameras, Chris has worked for five years now with a Nikon D800, whose technical excellence he now considers superior to film.

Early morning outings with it still figure in Chris’s life, but these days there are no more sandwich boards, or a roller-skating wife.