I can well believe that. Apparently he would grab his briefcase and head towards the landing pad without 'paying a visit' and would also return to the office several times before he actually got in the helicopter; his secretary would phone the FBO at Farnborough as he went out of the office and keep a running commentary going on how many times he returned before finally getting airborne.
On one occasion at least, he would be inbound to Heathrow in one of the Gulfstreams and if there was any delay in the stack, he would instruct the pilot to divert to Farnborough, the problem being the helicopter would already be at Heathrow and woe betide the pilot if it wasn't back at Farnborough waiting for him when he landed.

Halfpenny Green in the 70s..
McAlpine Construction ran a King Air
Marsh & Baxter butchers ran an Aztec...

Ferranti in Edinburgh operated a Rockwell Commander, a couple of DH Herons, a DH Dove and latterly HS125s.

PA-23 Aztec G-APYX. owned by Pressed Steel Co of Cowley, who, as the name suggests made car body panels.
It should be remembered that The Pressed Steel Company were one of the driving forces behind the creation of BEAGLE Aircraft. Read the story in "" FALSE DAWN "", an excellent comprehensive read.... BEAGLE operated G-ACIT de Haviland 84 Dragon for while in the 60s.

Ind Coope/Allied Breweries had their own fleet and their own airfield too - Tatenhill near Burton On Trent (unsurprisingly). Not sure if they owned Tatenhill outright, but at the time they were pretty much the only activity there - around late 70's possibly early 80's.

My Dad Worked for Ind Coope and I remember as a young boy us regularly dropping him off at the airfield to head off (as a pax, not pilot) to tropical paradises such as Southend and Lossiemouth!

Along with a few helicopters...both the helicopters and Herons' were frequently seen at MAN.

Green Shield Stamps; who remembers them? I think some of their soup bowls are buried in our loft!!
IIRC they operated a HS125-600 in the 1970s.

Became 'Argos'.

I remember the Aerostar G-RIGS - not sure if it lived at Fairoaks, or I'm just recalling the Alan Mann dealership connection. Always wondered what Rig Design Services did. So obvious... :}

Treadigraph, I did not fly the aerostar as by then I had Joined an Airline by . We used to fly out of Denham With the Bonanza & the Baron, But Aerostar would need a hard runway so Fairoaks sounds Plausible Great Guy. He gave me great experience at the time. He used to Design Oil & Gas Rigs IIRC.

Williamson's Diamond Mine TANGANYIKA

This one is not is based in United Kingdom. The mine was situated at Shinyanga in Tanganyika. It was "out in the wilds", well away from the nearest airport with a commercial air service. The mine was a large operation that commenced operations just after the Second World War, although Williamson had found the source of the diamonds before the war. The mine was operated by ex-pat personnel as well as a local labour force. The company operated aircraft to bring in personnel and smaller equipment: the product was also carried. The main route was from the mine to Nairobi in neighbouring Kenya.
Their first aircraft were an Avro Anson VR-TAP and two de Havilland 104 Doves VR-TAN & VR-TBB. Later they operated a pair of Douglas C-47 Dakotas VR-TBJ & VR-TBT. Their final transport aircraft was Douglas DC-4 5H-AAH which operated in the 1960s.
The company operated a flying club for their employees at their own airfield Shinyanga. Over time they had three DHC-! Chipmunks VR-TBE, VR-TBK & VR-TBO. Sadly VR- TBE. was lost in an accident. The company also acquired Bristol 171 Sycamore Mk3 VR-TBS. The intention was to use it for survey work but it was not much used. It was flown out and back to Weston super Mare in a Bristol freighter. The aircraft still exists back in Britain. It was the only helicopter to appear on any of the East African Colonial aircraft registers. Williamsons also operated Cessna 180 VR-TBL & de Havilland DHC-2 Beaver VR-TCB as company hacks....

I was lucky enough to fly on Williamson's DC-4 when I was working in Kenya. Somehow the folk group I was singing with at the time was invited down to Shinyanga for a weekend "entertaining the troops". Previously I had thought diamond mining was an old boy in a bush hat and a sieve. The Williamsons operation involved a fleet of draglines and JCBs. Very impressive. As aviation had cropped up in the course of the weekend and I'd met the DC-4 pilots, I got 30 minutes in the right hand seat on the return to Nairobi. Great times.

There was a Quantel Islander that used to operate out of Southhampton quite often in the early 1990's.

Bejam frozen foods had a Chieftain (G-BEPR) at Leavesden which I flew a few times in 78/79. It was replaced by a Rockwell 690B (G-IANS) in 1980.
I did all the ARB exams and flight training on it, only for it to be sold before I could complete the 1179! :{

Asda Walmart
 

The first corporate aircraft operated by Asda after the Walmart takeover was a Rockwell Turbo Commander 690B. It was one of the US based aircraft that was moved to Leeds and flown by US based crew on a 6 month rotational basis. Eventually this was replaced by a King Air B200 flown by a locally based crew. The Turbo Commander was returned to the US and at that time the Asda flight department became fully self sufficient.
However within a couple of years Walmart sold off their Germany stores and the need for inter European travel diminished somewhat.The end came however with the appointment of a new Asda CEO. His first operational decision with regards to the flight department was to shut it down and sell the King Air.

Loganair came out of the corporate flight department of Logan Construction, started by father Duncan Logan pre-WW2, and really built up by son Willie Logan. They did construction projects all over Scotland from an Inverness base, including both the motorway through Glasgow and the Tay Road Bridge, and found an aircraft valuable for visiting the widely dispersed locations. Willie bought a Piper Aztec for this. Not required all the time, it started being hired out, and this was the beginning of Loganair.

In 1966 Willie requested a flight from Glasgow to Inverness, but the Aztec had already been chartered out, so they hired one in for him from Strathallan Air Services, an air taxi operator. This crashed on approach to Inverness, killing Willie but the pilot walked away. Loganair carried on and ended up, with different owners, with the current operation, and still the same name, universally recognised in Scotland.

Memory is shallow - but many years ago I was a shareholder in Lonhro and one of their annual reports had the wonderful statement that their '60 hard-working corporate aircraft' were a proud part of their asset value. I assume it was not only Tiny Rowland's G2 HB-ITR but a lot of African bushplanes as well.

Didn't Tiny invest in Laker at some point? Maybe he included Freddie's fleet in his tally :p

In my baby pilot days at Peters Aviation we had the National Coal Board DH Dove, a Cessna 421 which I think belonged to Brown and Root, the Nuclear Power Group Heron G-ANUO and the aircraft belonging to the Nolty J Theriot tugboat company initially a Hansa Jet and then a pressurised Navajo which I seem to recall operated as Flying Titanic Airlines. Air Anglia Executive looked after Reckitt and Colman’s Navajo and the famous PA31 G-OLLY belonging to Robertson’s Jam

Another less well known company with, I think, a Cessna 421 for exec transport was Ruston Bucyrus who built dragline excavators.