I asked Mr Compton if he had experience in publishing, here:
One of the positives could have been, "I spent from 2006 to 2014 working in publishing." Did you have any experience in the business prior to opening Tickety Boo Press?
He has not responded to my question. So I had a quick look around the internet, and found nothing suggesting he has any publishing experience prior to founding TBP, although I did find a writing blog he started then abandoned within the last few years. Nor have I found anything relating to the bankruptcy he claimed he suffered in 2006, here:
I thought I would take the opportunity to respond the your post about me. First of all me going bankrupt relates to my company that went bust in 2006 due mainly to the crash in the home improvement sector that was badly affected by the downturn. I am discharged from my bankruptcy now but can I make the point Tickety Boo press Ltd is an entity in its own right and bankrupts are still entitled to continue to work which is what I did. I was cover artist and acquiring editor.
However, I did find that he's been director of a cascade of kitchen fitting and related companies, mostly now all dissolved, mostly operating from the same address (I won't link to the page as it provides contact information, home addresses, that sort of thing).
I found a bankruptcy order against him which was dated March 2015, but which was discharged in March of this year (again, no link: personal information given).
I found complaints against his kitchen and bathroom fitting companies in a consumer column titled Mr Justice.
This is the most recent, I think , dated May 2015 (although the search facility there isn't working well for me right now):
Mr Justice: Blyth trader Gary Compton goes bust
A trader who has appeared in Mr Justice several times has gone bust.
Gary Compton, of Blyth, Northumberland, filed for bankruptcy at Newcastle County Court in March.
The bankruptcy order was made on his own petition and was published in the London Gazette.
[...]
Mr Compton has been mentioned several times on this page over complaints from customers of his furniture businesses.
[...]
When asked to comment Mr Compton said: “I am not prepared to comment.”
But he went on to comment a great deal when he later added by email: “So nice to hear your snivelling little voice again. So we have went bankrupt, it has happened to 1000’s of people and we move on.”
Gary Compton first came to my attention in 2003 when I received angry calls from several customers about his former business [redacted], based in Cramlington, which dealt in kitchens and bathrooms.
At the time he blamed contractors for letting him down and the company eventually went out of business.
Last year he turned up in our pages again after setting up internet company Regency Chic to sell furniture to customers all over the country.
When I investigated why he had failed to deliver a table which had been paid for he sent a series of foul-mouthed emails.
If you read the full article it refers to the 2015 bankruptcy I mentioned earlier, which is now discharged: this was, I assume, a personal charge and not a business-related one.
Then there's this,
in which he explains why he shut down his bathroom fitting adventure: it's dated September 2004, and was updated in February 2013. Note that the financial crisis was not given as an excuse in this case: instead, he blamed his subcontractors and Mr Justice for his failures.
Driven round the U-bend
Unlucky Gary Compton wanted to be flushed with success after expanding his kitchen business into bathrooms.
But it ended in tears when he pulled the plug on his company's growth following a catalogue of complaints from Mr Justice readers.
Now Gary is closing down the bathroom side of his company after admitting that it all went down the pan.
He blames sub-contractors for letting several customers down before the new venture had a chance to become established.
And he also blamed bad publicity after I carried a story in this column about the complaints last month.
I also found
a site which it seems Mr Compton has set up in response to those Mr Justice columns. There are only two posts on that site, a greeting post, and
a post which reads,
The “Cock of the North,” being nasty again.
Ian Robson: self-proclaimed Victor Meldrew is inventing old news. Probably because he has no talent so needs to do this.
A nasty excuse for a journalist who enjoys ruining people’s lives.
I'll agree: none of this is directly pertinent to his publishing endeavours. I include it here because it indicates a pattern of unprofessionalism: closing businesses down when they fail to thrive, running up debts which cannot be repaid, letting customers down, and responding to challenges and criticism with anger and rudeness. And that might well be important information for authors who are considering signing with this press.