On a crisp winter’s day, the residents of Hastings enjoyed nothing better than strolling along the resort’s Victorian pier and gazing out at its panoramic views of the English Channel.
But last Saturday, there was an angry protest of about 250 people stretched out in a line from the padlocked wrought-iron gates along the promenade.
The object of their ire was the pier’s new owner, self-styled ‘Sheikh’ Abid Gulzar — a flamboyant businessman disparagingly known as ‘Goldfinger’ because he drives a gold-coloured Mercedes sports car and wears pebble-sized gold rings on each finger.
Protesters are angry Abid Gulzar was allowed to buy Hastings Pier last summer for just £60,000 — despite the fact it had recently been magnificently restored with £14.5 million of public donations and Lottery money. They are incensed he has closed it down for winter
Already appalled he was allowed to buy the Victorian relic last summer for just £60,000 — despite the fact it had recently been magnificently restored with £14.5 million of public donations and Lottery money — they are incensed he has closed it down for winter.
Mr Gulzar claims he was forced to do so because it was unsafe after being targeted by saboteurs and vandals displeased with his tenure. His opponents believe it is a cynical ploy to cut costs during the quiet season. They have many other grievances, accusing him of cheapening the 300-yard pier — whose designers were awarded the Stirling Prize, the architectural equivalent of an Oscar — by festooning the decking with fibreglass zoo animals and playing constant pop music over the loudspeakers, and behaving ‘like an 18th-century mill owner’ to staff.
Indian-born Mr Gulzar counters that there are racial overtones to the campaign against him, depicting his ‘enemies’ as an unruly mob who’d like the pier to be run on ‘donations, grants and government handouts’ and ‘want everything for free’.
Mr Gulzar (pictured) claims the pier was closed as it is unsafe after being targeted by saboteurs
The stand-off has turned so ugly that locals have dubbed it ‘The Battle of Hastings Pier’.
So what do we know about the controversial ‘Goldfinger’? How did he gain astonishingly cheap ownership of this 150-year-old national treasure, with an illustrious history that includes its use as a World War II landing jetty, and as the venue for concerts by the Rolling Stones and Jimi Hendrix?
I met Mr Gulzar in the cluttered boardroom of one of two hotels he runs in Eastbourne, 17 miles along the East Sussex coast from Hastings, and where he also owns the pier. Being an inveterate self-publicist, it wasn’t difficult to glean his backstory — or at least his colourful version of it.
Whatever his enemies think, he is certainly an engaging character; a fierce British patriot (a signed portrait of Baroness Thatcher hangs in his hallway) and dandyish dresser with a gold tie adorned with Grenadier Guardsmen.
His penchant for gold (the fake variety) is everywhere — most items in his office appear to be made of the stuff, from elephant-shaped tea-pots and goblets to giant pineapple statues.
He delights in showing off his ten jewel-encrusted (real) gold rings and two chunky gold watches; and wastes no time in mentioning the gold-coloured Mercedes sports car, which was vandalised a few days ago. (A local woman has been charged with the offence, which was apparently unconnected to the pier wrangle.)
In 2008, structural damage forced the pier's closure and two years later it was almost completely destroyed by fire. The gutted remains of the pier are seen in 2010
After buying Eastbourne Pier — or ‘Sheikh’s Pier’ as a banner proclaimed it — for a reported £1 million, in 2015, Mr Gulzar controversially painted its domes gold and embossed its 50 lamp posts with golden lions (his favourite symbol) without planning permission.
‘I’ve loved gold since I was a child,’ he chuckles. Yet almost in the next breath, he is complaining about his ‘Goldfinger’ nickname, saying it was invented by his enemies to besmirch him.
‘If I liquidated everything, yes I’m worth good money, but in no way am I a multi-millionaire — the man with the gold fingers and gold car,’ he snaps. ‘I mean, it’s crazy? What man has a car made from solid gold? I just covered the Mercedes with gold wallpaper!
‘And these rings: I bought most of them for a few hundred pounds. Who is a multi-millionaire these days, with all the taxes you have to pay, except maybe a bank-robber?’
Rant over, he runs through his biography. Born in 1945 into an entrepreneurial family of Punjabi leather tanners, he attended a Himalayan boarding school and his father served with the distinction in the British Raj.
He arrived in London at 19 and worked in the leather business before buying houses and shops. However, he was ‘disowned’ by his family for marrying a German, with whom he had three children before they divorced 20 years ago. He then wed again and had two more sons.
Tears fall as he recalls how one — a teenage soldier — was mysteriously shot dead when visiting his girlfriend in Switzerland. His third marriage, to a Pakistani woman, was short-lived.
After these marital travails he escaped to Eastbourne and worked ‘seven days a week’ to build his business. ‘For the past 18 years I have lived in the bridal suite at my hotel — without a bride,’ he says balefully.
He admits he is not a genuine sheikh, saying nor does he pretend his business career has always run smoothly. Yet the failings never seem to have been his fault.
However, legal records and Companies House documents reveal his chequered corporate history.
In January 2017, two of his Eastbourne hotel firms — Lions Hotels Ltd and Chatsworth Hotel Ltd — went into liquidation, owing around £2.5 million to creditors.
Mr Gulzar is also sole director of a string of other ‘dormant’ companies which have outstanding county court judgments against them running into many thousands of pounds.
In 2013, he was fined £45,000 and ordered to pay £90,000 costs for damaging a conservation site at Pevensey Levels in East Sussex, where he owned land and had planted non-native trees, and erected various structures without consent.
Then, five years later, a tax tribunal heard how he had racked up debts of £640,000 to HM Customs and Revenue. Mr Gulzar assures me he has paid off all these sums.
Mr Gulzar — a flamboyant businessman disparagingly known as ‘Goldfinger’ because he drives
