interview
Island Life - April/May 2010
"I didn’t want a career
being just a cog in a
machine - I wanted to
be the machine"
Photo: Simon Dabell pictured 2010 at Blackgang Chine
Making it work with four
generations looking down...
Simon Dabell only has to look around the
walls of his office at Blackgang Chine to
smooth-running family business.
But as Simon explained it was not quite
realise he is in his right vocation after all.
that cut and dried. A keen amateur actor
Four generations of the Dabell family
and formerly trainee manager with John
was from the Grandvoinet family and her
father started the Rex Cinema in Shanklin
in the 1930s.
“I was born in Lincoln in 1953 and went
stare down on him, beginning with
Lewis, he actually attended an interview,
to school locally, before, at the age of
Alexander, a self-styled Victorian
conducted by the family hierarchy, before
eight, I was packed off to boarding school
entrepreneur whose idea it was to create
being given the go-ahead to take up his
at Woodhall Spa, which was only 20 miles
what has become one of the Island’s most
duties within the company, which now
from home, which I found hard.
popular attractions.
operates under the banner of Vectis
Then there is great-grandfather Walter,
grandfather Bruce and uncle Dick,
Ventures Ltd.
However, that was the ‘done thing’ in
those days if your family could afford it.
Simon, 57 later this year, was born
“I then went to public school in Essex
who at 86 is still involved himself daily
and grew up in the Lincoln area as his
until I was 18, but I was not academically
in the company. So it would perhaps
father Peter left the Island after serving
bright and managed to scrape six O levels
seem inevitable that Simon would join
in the navy because he wanted to be a
and one A level, so I was not university
the fifth generation of Dabells in the
mechanical engineer. Simon’s mother June
material,” Simon smiled.” But I was in the
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