He says, I brought the children up to know the value of money, to understand how blessed they are when most of the world is not. They worked in my call centres in the early days and I’ve involved them a lot in my charity, meeting disadvantaged kids.’ They will also not inherit his entire fortune, as Caudwell has signed up to The Giving Pledge, a philanthropic movement set up by Bill Gates and Warren Buffett to encourage the wealthy to leave half their money to charity.
This, though, appears to have not stopped his children feeling the pressure of their father’s legacy.‘We will never quite live up to Dad, whatever we do,’ Rufus told the recent Channel 4 documentary. ‘We almost feel guilty that we have this. You think “What have I done? Why do I deserve this?” It’s the luck of the draw. I just happened to be born from a certain set of parents.’ Rufus’s troubles clearly weigh heavily on his father. ‘It is very upsetting and frustrating,’ says Caudwell. ‘But most of all for Rufus. It’s been a roller-coaster, a total roller-coaster.
‘We’ve tried everything — different doctors, different therapists. There’s nothing we’ve not tried really, to help him. Sometimes we think there’s a breakthrough. Around Christmas time he seemed to get a little better — sometimes something as small as a change in medication can make all the difference — but subsequently he got worse again.’ He pauses. ‘It’s very, very hard.’
But then Caudwell, 61, has known hardship before: like all the best entrepreneur tales, his is a classic rags-to-riches. The eldest of two brothers, he was born to a working-class family in Stoke-on-Trent and his father was gravely ill through much of his childhood, dying when Caudwell was 18. His mother worked in a postroom to make ends meet. Click here to read Billionaire's Little Regret And Amendments
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