Ray Kennedy

Ray enjoying a Pan Books group-hug with Brian Davies and Chris Owen.

Born in May 1950 to a French-speaking Belgian mother and a father who was Export Manager for Tampax (he could never call it by its brand-name, it was always “the Product”), Ray grew up comfortable with things foreign. 

He attended a Catholic “neo-Jesuit” school at which he won English and French prizes and became Captain of Fencing (the type with swords, not enclosing your garden). He went on to read French and Spanish at Bristol Uni, followed by an International business course. Leaving Bristol, Ray was only made 2 job offers from his 200 applications, one by British American Tobacco to learn Arabic and manage Middle Eastern sales from Beirut and one from Newsweek Magazine. Since Beirut was bombed to smithereens before Ray could accept the offer, he joined Newsweek.

Ray with a rather predatory looking Beryl Bainbridge, in Stockhol

Several strange Newsweek missions included driving to Berlin through former East Germany and being searched by Russian military and driving around Spain doing little other than having lunch with SGEL types. Ray was glad after this to accept Jonathan Lloyd’s offer to join the Fontana Export team at Collins Publishers. Being given a territory of Mediterranean Europe and the Caribbean at 25, at a time before even the Fax machine was in common use and you “just had to go”, seemed to Ray like all his birthdays had arrived at once.

At Collins, Ray worked with Jonathan Lloyd, Douglas McCreath, David Love, Brian Davies & Charles Viney among others and at sister company Pan Books, with Chris Owen, Nick Potts and the late Roger Lloyd-Taylor, to whom is due the founding of the annual OEL lunch. In the 1980s, Ray joined Hamlyn Publishing as an Export Manager, working with Gunnar Lie and Terence Cross. He changed territories to South America and the Far East and eventually opened a Representative Office in Singapore to develop sales in Asia. Paul Hamlyn kindly emerged from making money elsewhere to buy back his eponymous company for a pound and a lot of debt, and Ray decided to go freelance. He had many happy adventures and memories from the Publishing world, but will resist their telling to avoid litigation.

In the ‘90s, Ray took the opportunity to move into the new industry of Computer Games and worked in Richard Branson’s former Virgin Mastertronic team to set up SEGA in Europe, then went to live in Germany for a few years to help Sony project manage the launch of the PlayStation . Projects for Chinese, American, German and Spanish companies followed in fields as varied as Audio and TVs, Musical Instruments and Karaoke. 

Ray now has an office with a small team in Barcelona, from which he helps Spanish makers of guitars, Cavas and Serrano ham to break into UK and German supermarkets and other sales channels. He also fronts the UK subsidiary of a German maker of Fitness equipment and Sportswear (ironically), selling mainly into Direct Marketing channels like Amazon.

Ray, at his wedding to Miranda in 1980, with Charlie Viney and David Love

Ray has been married twice, first in 1980 to Miranda, nee Grant, until 1996 and again to Maryan, nee Vigus, in 1999 until 2006. A firm believer in the dictum “practice makes perfect”, Ray now co-habits happily with Mary Lambert somewhere in Buckinghamshire.

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email: ray1950kay@gmail.com