Wildcatter who came in from the cold

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Telegraph
By Harry Mount
(Filed: 30/10/2004)

If you're searching for the glue that sticks Tony Blair to George W Bush, look no further than the Prime Minister's old Fettes classmate and school debating partner William Gammell, the man who shared a childhood with the Prime Minister and the President.

Chief Executive of Cairn Energy, the whizz-kid oil company that has boomed over the past year, and a former Scottish rugby international, Bill Gammell, 51, has just been crowned Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year. As if all that wasn't enough, not only is Tony Blair a childhood friend, but so is George W Bush.

The President used to visit Gammell in the school holidays because Gammell's father, James Gammell, was also in the oil business and was a friend of George Bush Senior. James Gammell is the founder of the Scottish fund manager, Ivory & Sime, which in 1950 backed Bush-Overby, Bush Senior's fledgling oil and natural-gas business. Their sons struck up a friendship and spent childhood holidays together at the Bush family compound at Kennebunkport, Maine, and the Gammell family farm in Perthshire.

And so, when Bush became President, his first words to Blair were, "I believe you know my old friend, Bill Gammell."

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