He left the security of a “proper job” to venture on his own as a newspaper print consultant and helped fill the news press at the eastern newspapers plant at Norwich. Several of his contracts were for some of the UK’s top weekly newspapers such as Motorcycle News which was one of the first newspapers to be printed in full colour on all its 128 pages. He also managed the print side for groups such as Home Counties Newspaper which owned
popular weekly tiles such has the Ham & High. At the same time his family owned a large kennels and cattery in Northamptonshire.

However, on the 7th of April 2000 Frederick’s hip replacement went pear-shaped and he went into a coma. Frederick was in and out of his coma and when awake didn’t recognise his wife Julie or his son, Stephen. He had become violent and had to be sedated on several occasions before leaving the private hospital 10 days after his operation. He later found that BUPA had charged him for a private ambulance to take him to Northampton GH so he could have an MRI scan to see if they could see what had gone wrong. They also charged him £450 to see a psychiatrist so they could see if anything
had caused the problem. Everything came back as normal, but he was concerned that he doesn’t remember visiting the psychiatrist. So bad was his memory that he had to close both of his business and take early retirement. It was years later he learnt that he had suffered from a fat embolism which got into his blood stream. The surgeons now ensure they “washout” the opening preventing this problem from happening. The coma did a lot of damage to the memory part of his brain, and he had to rely on input from his family to try and rebuild his memory bank. He still suffers from the memory problems after 23 years and his mobility is worse then when he went into hospital.