Serving the Teesside Business Community | 23
HIGH FLYER
Dave Byrne meets the adopted Teessider who’s out to prove the
sky’s the limit when it comes to IT sales and service
C
HRIS Petty’s life and character are full
of apparent contradictions. He’s the
boss of a thriving IT firm but admits
to knowing relatively little about
computers. He’s a self-titled party animal but
lives to work. And he’s a school reject who
fought most of his classmates but boasts an
open, unguarded personality that you can’t
help but warm to.
We chat in his office at the Preston Farm
base of Cornerstone Business Solutions, the
IT firm he runs with fellow directors Chris
Clark and John Storey. He rocks back and
forward in his chair, regularly bursting loud
with laughter, as he recounts tales – many of
them unprintable - of his life and work.
“I’ve had about 54 jobs, maybe more,” he
says. “But I’m basically unemployable.” There
he goes again with those contradictions.
One thing Chris could never been accused
of being is predictable.
Born on Tyneside, he was adopted by a
Thornaby couple when he was just nine
months old. With a mum who was a church
organ player and a lay preacher father who
reskilled as a vicar when an industrial injury
forced him into early retirement from his job
as a process operator at ICI Billingham, it
was perhaps no surprise that the young Chris
was an altar boy.
But any pretensions of an angelic
childhood soon gave way to a rather more
mischievous, darker side that saw him made
persona non grata at all Teesside secondary
schools.
“I was a nightmare at school,” he admits.
“I hated school. I didn’t fit in. I was fighting
all the time. I got picked on for the reason
of being small, so I took up boxing at a very
young age. And I was a bit of a good boxer.
I’ve got an amazing right hook!
“I had no interest in education. Even
now I can’t go to a conference and listen to
speakers for long. I can’t relax. I’ve got to be
up, speaking and doing something.”
After being kicked out of the local Thornaby
Secondary, he switched to Stockton’s Ian
Ramsey School, only to be expelled from
there too.
“I nicked off for six months solid,” he
recalls. “No other school would take me.
“I went back for the exams and basically
wrote my name and a few stupid answers
on the exam paper. So I’ve got five U’s and
Art. And yet I’m a wiz at maths - I don’t think
anybody can beat me on Countdown.”
By then, Chris had