Bill Cullen came through the worst of times in his young life, but had one of the happiest childhood's imaginable and he has managed to pen this autobiography without, like others have, being bitter or begrudging either to those with whom he grew up, to those in authority or to his native Dublin.
The autobiography charting the rise of Bill Cullen from his humble origins in the slums of Summerhill, Dublin, is a warmly written reflection onthe life of one of Ireland's most successful entrepreneurs Bill Cullen has donated all the royalties from the sale of the book to the Irish Youth Foundation, of which he is a director, with a portion given to Northern Ireland Children's Enterprise.
On the 31st of May 1941 the German Lu~waffe bombed Dublin. At the time the German's claimed the bombing had been an accident, but with the release of German Government files in the years since, it has been shown that the action was a deliberate attempt to wipe out the Dublin Fire Brigade Headquarters after units of the Brigade had gone to the aid of Belfast when it had been blitzed by the Germans in the week before.
The bombing of Dublin resulted in the deaths of 38 people. Bill Cullen's father Billy was in the Irish Army Reserve at the time and was called into service for 3 days and 3 nights. After arriving home physically and emotionally exhausted Bill's mother Mary cleaned her husband's tired and inured body and took him to bed. Nine months later Bill Cullen was born.
Bill Cullen was born in a caul. A caul (a membrane that sometimes clings to the head and face of a newborn baby) has been considered a good luck omen since ancient times. It is used as a natural amulet to protect sailors and sea travelers against shipwrecks and drowning. It was not an uncommon custom for cauls to be brought and sold (usually at expensive prices). In 1942 Mary Cullen gave the caul to Bill's uncle who sold it in a pub on Dublin's docklands to an American naval officer for IR 2O, an enormous amount at the time, so much in fact that this money kept the Cullen family for 6 months. It was a huge windfall in tough times and because of this Bill to some extent became his mother's lucky child, and this luck has stayed with Bill Cullen.
Bill Cullen's upbringing was in a house in the slums of in inner city Dublin. The eldest boy of 14 children, 7 boys and 7 girls Bill, because of his position in the family, became his mother Mary's 'aide de camp.' Mary Cullen sold fish and fruit on Dublin city streets while Billy her husband was for the most part unemployed, working on the docks when it was required and earning a laborers wage which did not meet a third of the income required to keep the Cullen household.
From five years old young Bill Cullen was selling penny apples on O'Connell St. in Dublin and he remembers vividly selling the first oranges and bananas to arrive in Dublin in the aftermath of the war.
It's a long way from Penny Apples (the title comes from when he took over the Renault distribution franchise and, having told his mother, she replied, "You've borrowed eighteen million pounds. God bless you, son. That's a long, long way from penny apples"), is Bill Cullen's tribute to his mother, father and grandmother, the people who shaped his character and gave him the self confidence and self esteem to enable him to become what he is today, a self made man, 100% owner of a company vvith a turnover of $350m a year, and which last year made a $50m profit.
