In loving memory of Anthony 'Gerry' Royal Parish

Anthony Royal 'Gerry' Parish

06/05/1931- 16/12/2002
Died Aged 71 years

Founder of Queensway Warehouses, who pioneered out-of-town shopping in the U.K, and in later life became a medical researcher

The first Queensway warehouse on Queen's road, Norwich

Oasis launch with Dickie Davis and second wife Cherry

Anthony Royal Parish, 'Gerry' to his friends, was born Cadge Road, Norwich. One of five children with brothers Ronnie, Neville, Kenny and sister Jane.

His father was a book-keeper who, during WWII was in the RAF and posted to numerous locations around the country. As a consequence Gerry had a very disrupted childhood and education, attending more than 13 different schools and spent time in Scotland as an evacuee. He left his last school, Henderson Secondary Modern, aged 14.

After working several years for a dry cleaning firm, he was conscripted at the age of 18 for two years in the Royal Army Medical Corps as a medical orderly posted in Egypt.

After leaving the army in 1950, he worked as an asphalter, floor tiler, and finally as a carpet fitter at Bonds of Norwich (now John Lewis). In the early 1950's he set up 'Parish Brothers' carpets and furniture with his brother Ronnie. He married Marjorie Salisbury in 1955 and went on to have three children, Julie Jenny and Peter.

In 1967 he set up Queensway in a shop on Queens Road. After visiting his sister, Jane, in the USA, he realised that the future of retail in the UK lay in discounted out-of-town warehouse shopping selling carpets direct to the public. Within a few months he moved to a disused warehouse. By offering exceptional discounts and investing heavily in advertising, Queensway’s turnover increased at an extraordinary rate. As the volume of sales increased, he was able to negotiate greater discounts from the suppliers and pass these on to the customers. In 1968, sales were £265,000 p.a. By 1971, they were over £18 million p.a. At one point one branch a month was being opened and a private plane had to be used to urgently ferry parts to the different branches.

He financed the purchase of the Jacquard club for his friend Albert Cooper. The club opened on the 14th October 1971. Gerry was a regular performer in Cooper’s blues and folk band, playing the harmonica. He was frequently on the same bill as the leading blues, folk and jazz acts of the day, among them Stephane Grapelli, Jimmy Witherspoon and George Melly. Gerry and Cooper auditioned for the TV talent show 'Opportunity Knocks', made famous by presenter Hughie Green.

He separated from Marjorie and married for a second time to Cherry in 1971. His second son Ben was born and then his last child Joe. He enjoyed, but was not always comfortable with the trappings of wealth, moving into a 12-bedroom mansion on the outskirts of Norwich, driving a Rolls Royce and taking his family on holidays to the South of France and Ibiza.

By the mid 1970's Gerry's mental health was deteriorating. This was characterised by unpredictable moods swings, memory loss and tiredness that was impacting on his business and personal life. A number of the original key personnel resigned or were removed after the hiring of management consultants that included John Murphy (formerly of Interbrand) and Bill Bailey onto the Queensway board. Queensway was expected to float for around £7 million however, there was a drop in profits and a serious downturn in the economy which further caused the share price to plummet. Coopers and Lybrand advised against the flotation and it was withdrawn. Gerry was by now very ill and this forced him to accept a £2 million offer from Phil Harris (now Lord Harris of Peckham) of Harris Carpets in 1977.

Gerry then went on to create the Oasis Sports & Leisure Club with his wife Cherry Wales. Now such fitness centres are commonplace but back then it was ahead of its time. Soon after the launch a year later he separated from his wife Cherry and consequently sold the Oasis in 1978 to Harry Serruys.

A regular visitor to Ibiza in the 1970's, he saw the potential of developing homes there and invested in 'Pueblo Esparragos', a village of holiday apartments in the resort of Cala Llonga.

In 1983, he was briefly remarried for a third time. He went out to Florida, to try to recreate the success of Queensway in the USA. He set up a company called 'Forget' (with a French pronunciation) in Florida in 1983. Due to a number of factors, among them the unfortunate choice of name, unfamiliarity with the local market, launch timing and location, it floundered. The illness had further affected his ability to make sound business decisions. He lost all £300,000 invested, returning after only one year.

Determined to find a cure for his illness, he visited a doctor in the USA in 1986. From his medical and working history the doctor diagnosed an organic brain syndrome caused by chemical poisoning and put him on a course of nutritional therapy. After the first week of being treated with the Sandoz drug Hydergine he felt a "cloud had been lifted". After several years of treatment he made a complete recovery.

His American doctor had taken a medical history and attributed his condition to the two years spent working in a drycleaners when he was 16 and exposed to the solvent trichloroethylene. He set out to prove the association. He discovered that this solvent could cause a latent poisoning and began compiling a case against the manufacturers, ICI, who he claimed knew of the dangers as early as the 1930s. To produce a concrete case, Gerry needed to understand physiology and psychopharmacology which he studied for several years despite dyslexia and a limited educational background. He produced a large dossier of evidence and launched an unsuccessful case against ICI.

Several years later it occurred to him that the illness may have been connected with the prescription drug Valium which he had been prescribed for 5 years prior to his illness because of stress. He set out to show that Valium is a narcotic/anaesthetic and to prove that it was another trigger of his mental illness. After further investigation of these drugs, he claimed to have discovered a catalogue of harmful side effects and alleged there was a sinister corporate, medical and governmental framework that was attempting to cover-up the fact that these were narcotics masquerading as a benign medication.

He launched an unsuccessful lawsuit against Roche that was thrown out on a 'Statute of limitations' technicality. The case was brought within 3 years of the time that he had been able to make the association. However, the judge ruled that the case could not be brought because over 3 years had elapsed after the damage had been caused. A European Court, through the intervention of the Queen after a petition, subsequently overturned this ruling.

Whilst waiting for the legal process to proceed, he applied his understanding of brain metabolism to Sudden Infant Death. He was able to make the association between the use of anaesthetics and the disruption of brain protein synthesis in infants. He correlated the incidence of deaths after 3 months of age with the full development of the adrenal gland and the delayed death activated by the onset of adrenaline in the newborn’s body.

In 1987, the BSE epidemic was beginning to take hold. The medical establishment suggested CJD maybe a consequence of the consumption of beef products. This was taken by the British government to be medical fact despite being unproven, resulting in the destruction of the entire bovine stock of the UK, export bans, and compensation claim costing the country millions. BSE was frequently described as 'transmissible' in experiments where the disease was actually induced by direct injection or by feeding concentrated amounts to test animals. Gerry argued that in a normal environment, BSE prions are unable to cross the blood-brain barrier. He explained the BSE epidemic by attributing a change to the meat-rendering process that prevented the removal of dioxin free radicals that damaged the blood-brain barrier.

Right up until his death he worked tirelessly with his son Ben on his research; writing to successive Prime Ministers, politicians, the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs and scientists. Unfortunately, a combination of having no academic background and controversial views meant that his work was often dismissed. However, he published his much-referenced findings on the Internet from 1996 onwards and in several publications including the Journal ‘Medical Hypotheses’. He was invited to become a fellow of the New York Academy of Sciences in 1988.

He had an indefatigable optimism and resilient determination which pushed him in all his ventures and sometimes stubbornly refused to accept the advise of others. He was characterised by an extraordinary and unique sense of humour that enabled him to overcome adversity. An atheist for most of his life, a ghostly experience in 1971 caused him to embrace the spiritual aspects of his life, regularly attending the local spiritualist church.

In 2001, Gerry married his last wife Rema Navarro who survives him.

Anthony Royal Gerry died from cancer on 16th December 2002 leaving wife Rema, and from previous marriages, two daughters and three sons.

Additional Information

Queensway became Harris Queensway after taken over by Phil Harris in 1976. In 1988 Harris Queensway was valued at £450 million and the company was sold to become Lowndes Queensway. Sir Phil Harris went on to start CarpetRight. Lowndes Queensway went bankrupt after the recession in 1993 and survives today as Allied Carpets. John Major made Phil Harris a life peer in 1995 for services to the Conservatives.

The Oasis Sports & Leisure Club is still operating as a successful business.

Gerry died before he was able to resume his lawsuit against Roche after the European ruling overturned the UK law courts decision. To date there has not been one successful lawsuit against Roche over Valium.