Zoe Cooper is on the road to recovery after a rollercoaster 15 years.
From 2007 she enjoyed eight successful years in charge of Perth pub Twa Tams, where she put everything on the line to reintroduce live bands and hosted the likes of KT Tunstall on a number of unforgettable evenings.
But the 46-year-old is now officially bankrupt after the ill-fated purchase of Sante, a Perth bar that was previously owned by Julien Mouly, who was jailed for assaulting a woman.
Zoe, who also ran a record label en route to an HND in audio engineering, now lives close to Dundee’s Wellgate Centre and is aiming to put her financial troubles behind her by becoming a best-selling author by the age of 50.
She begins a three-year PhD in September.
“Bizarrely I love my life,” she says. “All things considered I am quite a positive person.”
In this feature, the second of two parts, Zoe recounts a period of remarkable highs and lows.
In the first part she spoke about the excitement and drama of her first 31 years, including running a strip bar in Dundee and Arbroath’s Inverpark Hotel.
The second part resumes her story in the following sections:
- From sack threat to Twa Tams success
- KT Tunstall and local bands
- Funerals, ashes, wills and toilet bags
- Bankruptcy and writing ambition
From sack threat to Twa Tams success
By the age of 31 Zoe had endured a host of struggles in less-than-ideal jobs but her luck was about to turn.
Despite leaving Belhaven-owned Pivo under a cloud, the company supplied alcohol to the Inverpark so a link was maintained.
When one of its pubs, The Twa Tams in Perth, needed a manager she didn’t hesitate.
“I said ‘yes, that’s the place for me. It is a music venue so is ideal’,” she says.
However, it was far from plain sailing at the beginning.
“I had been there when it was owned by the Craic family,” Zoe recalls. “It was a fab pub but I walked in and Belhaven had refurbished it and had taken the heart out, taken the music out.
“I asked ‘where is the stage’? They said they would put music on in a raised area that just looked like someone’s living room.
“I thought ‘oh my God, that’s ridiculous’. It was terrible. This isn’t going to work. The place was going out to lease because it was going so badly. It was only making £2,500 a week. It was terrible.
“I was doing all the cooking and cleaning and it felt as though I was going through the same experience as I had at the hotel.
“They said it was definitely going out to lease. The area manager who employed me apologised and said they could get me another job.
“Three or four months in I was ready to quit as I didn’t sign up to do this all over again.”
‘They’re going to fire you – you can’t do this’
Belhaven then had a change of heart, decided not to lease it out and allowed Zoe to carry on running the pub.
She asked for the stage to return but the company refused. At this point she pushed her luck, persuading a departing manager to part with the £2,000 needed to reinstate the singing area.
“He signed off the money but didn’t say I could have the work done,” she says. “I didn’t close the pub. I just put tarpaulin down and the guys got on with work.
“Unfortunately a stock take took place and it was reported that works were going on.
“Then the building guy who worked for Belhaven walked in. All the work had been done and it was looking fab.
“He looked around the back and said ‘they’re going to fire you – you can’t do this’.”
Zoe’s reaction was to hastily double down.
She had recently employed a contact from her college course, Dochan MacMillan, to promote events and she told him to book some bands for the forthcoming Friday and Saturday.
That weekend, local acts performed on the stage that Zoe hadn’t been authorised to install.
“At that point on a Friday we would take £300. On the Saturday, maybe £600 or £700.
“That first weekend with the new stage we took £3,000 on the Friday and £5,000 on the Saturday.
“That is up there with one of my proudest moments.”
‘It was the longest five minutes of my life’
However, it wasn’t until two weeks later, when Belhaven operations director Kenny MacKenzie paid Twa Tams a visit, that Zoe knew she was out of the woods.
“He came round and had a look at it all and it was probably the longest five minutes of my life,” she says. “He turned around and looked at me and said ‘very good, very good’.
“He said that what I had done was amazing. So I was allowed to get a new PA system with speakers, mixing desks, microphones and got the system all updated.
“In the first year I got an award for the best new manager at Belhaven, a lovely handwritten letter saying ‘I was wrong, you’re fantastic’ and a £7,000 bonus.”
“The great thing is that I was unbudgeted because they were going out to lease so I didn’t have to operate within the same parameters. They just left me alone and I got to operate the pub.
“I remember coming down to my office at one point thinking ‘I love my job’. For a long time I couldn’t imagine doing anything else.”
KT Tunstall and local bands
The music side of the enterprise was particularly fulfilling. Zoe had a contact with DF Concerts, which lined up some big names for the Tams.
These included the likes of Belle and Sebastian, Travis and Frightened Rabbit. A host of musical festivals also took place at the venue, with every single event free of charge.
One of the most memorable gigs took place in summer 2010. Zoe received a call saying a “massive” act was coming, but that she wouldn’t find out who it was until close to the time.
Six weeks later, she was notified on the Thursday that the mystery act was KT Tunstall, who would perform at the Tam’s the following Tuesday, June 15 2010.
“I thought ‘oh my God, how are we going to organise this in such a short time?’,” Zoe recalls.
Luckily her staff and contacts came up trumps. One of these was Keith Allan, of Tay Valley Design, who printed posters and tickets at short notice. The latter was still necessary despite the gig being free to enter.
“We said to people that if you are here for 6pm on the Tuesday you can have a ticket for KT. The tickets were gone in six minutes. It was absolutely mental,” Zoe says.
“I got barriers for the Tuesday. It was amazing how we were able to get everything done over the weekend.”
‘She went on Radio 1 afterwards’
KT didn’t demand a fee or any diva-like treatment. Her only request to the pub was somewhere to make herself some tea.
Zoe wanted to do better than that though. She turned her office into a ‘green room’ and bought KT a special present.
She says: “KT’s favourite tipple was whisky so I got her some specially-made grouse that said ‘the famous KT Tunstall’ and on the back ‘rub a dub dub’.
“She loved it. The gig was amazing and she went on Radio 1 afterwards and said we were one of the most professional venues she had experienced.”
Later that year, KT Tunstall was quoted in the Billboard magazine as saying: “I liked the Twa Tams gig in Perth, when a girl on crutches started climbing on top of the sound engineer’s desk to get a better view,”
Such gigs were not exceptionally money-spinning. Because the capacity of the venue was 300 there was a limit to how much money could be made above a normal night.
“We probably did £7,000 that night,” says Zoe. “You make more at Christmas from office workers.
“I had made the decision that all our gigs would be free, no matter what.
“This was because around the back you could only fit 90 people but the capacity of the whole place was 300 so how do you charge 300 people if only 90 people are going to physically see the gig? It wouldn’t have been fair.”
‘That was the weirdest gig he had ever played’
Local acts were also given a platform at the Tams thanks to Zoe setting up a regular open mic evening.
Folk band Mad Ferret – comprised of Sandy Stirton and Chris Woods – were the house band and the pair currently run the pub having taken over in 2019.
“We had Frightened Rabbit, Gun, Kassidy and guys from Abstract who did separate gigs,” Zoe recalls.
“Malcolm Middleton randomly had a gig on Halloween. We were really big on Halloween and really got into it with the dressing up.
“He said that was the weirdest gig he had ever played.”
Funeral, ashes, wills and toilet bags
Away from the music, strong bonds formed with regular drinkers.
In two cases Zoe had the privilege of being involved in the aftermath of their deaths.
Hugh was the first, passing away suddenly in his early 70s. He had been a merchant navy sea captain whose marriage to a Finnish woman ended due to difficulties arising from being at sea for prolonged periods.
“His biggest regret was never having kids, so at Christmas and Easter he got me to do these big buffets to get families in,” Zoe says. “He was known as grandad Hugh. He was absolutely brilliant.”
“One day in 2009 a customer let me know that Hugh had passed away.
“He had no family this way and hadn’t spoken to his sister for more than 10 years.
“I was phoning around everywhere, trying to work out where he had been taken. I eventually found out it was a police morgue and a funeral director behind Twa Tams was dealing with his funeral.
“His sister was next of kin but didn’t know much about his life. No one was going to come up for his funeral so his sister had told the funeral director to just do a closed service where only the funeral director goes in.
“But I thought ‘you can’t do that’ because 100 local people wanted to say goodbye.
“So the crematorium in Perth amazingly let us have an hour service and the funeral director organised it.
“We didn’t have to pay any money so we had a massive service for him with all people from the pub.
“There is still a plaque up there in his name.”
‘I didn’t want to part from him’
Hugh told Zoe in a random conversation that he wanted his ashes scattered near the Bell Rock Lighthouse, off the coast of Arbroath, and his brother-in-law told Zoe she could do the deed if she wanted.
“For the longest time Hug’s ashes sat in the pub because I didn’t want to part from him. It said the ‘world’s greatest grandad’ and had a photo beside it.
“When I left the pub I thought ‘I can’t leave him here’ because the company might have not wanted him there.
“I still have to scatter his ashes at the lighthouse and I am doing it this summer – finally!”
‘It was a surprise but what a gesture’
More recently in 2017, after Zoe had left the Tams, another regular passed away.
His name was Gus, “a phenomenal guy” who wanted to donate his body to science but because his body was found at home 10 days after his death this was not possible.
“He left money in his will for me and one of the supervisors,” Zoe says. “It was a surprise but what a gesture.
“It’s that sense of community that I loved from running a pub.
“You would get an old guy sitting in the pub on their own not talking to anybody so we would make it our job to get people chatting.
“We used to do a Christmas dinner. Random men would come into the pub and we would get them to know each other by having them eat together.
“I love that connection with people. We had a lot of customers in wheelchairs or less abled and we would let carers know that we could look after them so they could have independence.
“We took a couple of guys, who stayed down the road, home at the end of the night and physically put them in the house and the TV on – that kind of stuff.”
‘If they recoiled in horror this was not the place for them’
Zoe had a special tactic to ensure new recruits were prepared to help out disabled customers.
She says: “One of the regulars was in a wheelchair and had a bag, but because I am friends with him I would empty it. I also used the scenario as an interview technique for potential staff.
“I am not going to make a member of staff empty someone’s bag – that’s not going to happen – but I used to say ‘we have a lot of disabled customers so you might be called upon to help them go to the loo’.
“If they recoiled in horror this was not the place for them to work. If they said ‘OK, I have never done it before bit I can give it a go’ then that would be the kind of reaction I was looking for.
“80% passed that test. It was a great way of determining someone’s character when you didn’t know them.”
‘It was becoming very corporate’
Zoe’s time at the Tams came to an end in 2015, eight years after she began her tenure.
Greene King, Belhaven’s parent company, began to have more involvement and decided to refurbish the pub.
“It just looked like any Greene King pub you would see anywhere and it just didn’t work,” Zoe says.
“They put a tile floor where people would dance and what happened was that it cracked.
“The new-look pub opened and did exceptionally well. Food sales went up but the drink went down. We also lost our contract with DF Concerts because the vinyl floor didn’t work.
“We were making money but the heart had gone and it was getting harder and harder for the gig side of it.
“It was becoming very corporate and all about paper work and ticking the boxes. A lot of the fun was taken out of it.
“One day I was cooking in the kitchen and then dealing with change at the bar. I got a call from my boss at the time giving me a serious dressing down because I wasn’t on a conference call about machines.
“I was like ‘that is so way down the list of my priorities’. Cooking and serving drinks to my customers is, and at that point I thought ‘I’m done’.”
Zoe threw a big farewell party where she received “so many gifts”.
“I ended Tams on a high so I was glad I left when I did,” she says.
Bankruptcy and writing ambition
Zoe sought a career change to become a writer, but another hospitality project was on the horizon.
She was in a partnership that bought an initial 10% stake in the Sante restaurant in St John’s Place, Perth.
“The idea was that we bought a stake in it and then we have a year to purchase the lease and buy them out,” Zoe explains.
Then, suddenly, the existing owner Julien Mouly was convicted of domestic abuse and sentenced to 15 months in prison for repeatedly assaulting a woman.
“We didn’t know he was going to jail,” Zoe says. “It was still his company but we thought we would just keep running it before deciding our next move because we had staff there and a clientele.”
Her partnership eventually took over the restaurant and renamed it Tapavi. For legal reasons we cannot disclose the circumstances that led to Zoe’s subsequent bankruptcy in 2019.
She says: “I had to bankrupt my company and bankrupt myself. I lost my car, lost my house, lost everything. I had to move back ibn in with my mum.
“I was £100,000 in the hole and homeless. I had used every penny I had. I am still bankrupt and sequestrated now.”
‘Bizarrely I love my life’
Throughout this tumultuous period Zoe was still pursuing her writing ambition and started off with the Writers Bureau, an online course that matches students with authors.
But there was no deadlines and “it wasn’t structured enough for me” so Zoe turned to the formal setting of Dundee university, which had launched a masters course in creative writing and forensic investigation.
Because of the restaurant nightmare the one-year course turned to two but she still passed and begins a PhD in English and creative writing in September 2022.
This involves doing a TV series, novel, audible podcast and 80,000-word thesis.
“That will be another three years,” she says. “I am going to be a best-selling author by the time I am 50.”
Since the end of the ill-fated restaurant venture Zoe has worked as assistant manager at Dundee pub Trades House and was most recently a mobile Covid tester for Scottish Ambulance Service.
Socialising has formed a big part of Zoe’s career so far, but she is now looking forward to a slightly more solitary existence.
“During Covid I was studying so was content and happy to lock myself in front of the computer,” she says. “I had never tried it to that extent before.
“Bizarrely I love my life. All things considered I am quite a positive person.
“The writing is cathartic and I was always interested in forensics and science. I even applied to be a crime officer but you needed biology.
“I am really excited.”
Zoe’s website can be found here
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