Life

Nuala McCann: a flat-packed farewell to 'Mr IKEA'

Farewell, Mr IKEA. It would be tasteless to mention flat-pack coffins at this stage, but something tells me that Ingvar Kamprad would probably have approved...

Nuala McCann

Nuala McCann

Nuala McCann is an Irish News columnist and writes a weekly radio review.

Ingvar Kamprad, founder of Swedish furniture giant IKEA, pictured outside the company's head office in Almhult in 2002
Ingvar Kamprad, founder of Swedish furniture giant IKEA, pictured outside the company's head office in Almhult in 2002 Ingvar Kamprad, founder of Swedish furniture giant IKEA, pictured outside the company's head office in Almhult in 2002

INGVAR Kamprad lived a long life. He was loaded but he was also notoriously thrifty.

The Swedish founder of the IKEA furniture chain was 91-years-old when he died peacefully in his sleep last week. People who read this column will know that the great big furniture shop is, to me, like Dante's nine circles of hell.

The reason they have a creche is because you could lose your toddler in there, spend years wandering through the wildnerness of beds with hurdy gurdy names only to end up running into your very own teenager with spots and a beard.

We have wasted precious hours of our lives going round in circles through the various pathways in search of the perfect cheap flat-pack bookshelves called Billy, hoisting the cardboard boxes into the back of the car to drive home.

The effort to save the delivery cost of said Billy meant it was wedged perilously from the boot through to the front passenger seat, jutting over at such an angle that, as the driver, I could quite easily have decapitated a passenger in the front seat beside me if I had felt the need to brake.

We had to clear the car for Billy.

Ingvar's IKEA is my nemisis, my Inspector Moriarty, my 'never again' place. My man does not share my loathing.

So, we end up there every so often when I give in and we arrive back with planks and a plan... so easy for Leonardo.

I've just listened to a radio play on the late great David Bowie – it's a year since he died already – where Bowie said that, when you get to a certain age or are ill, there are really only two questions left: how much time have I got and what shall I do with it?

Personally, I won't be making up flat-packs.

Ingvar was one of the world's richest people but believed in keeping his wallet close to his heart. He lived in a pretty little yellow Swedish house – not too fancy.

He wore clothes from the flea market and he boasted about it.

The entrepreneurial gene was there from an early age. Little Ingvar started off selling matches to his neighbours at the age of five years old, according to his obit in this week's Guardian, and progressed to riding around on his bicycle selling seeds, pens and nylon stockings.

At 17, he founded IKEA with the money his dad gave him for doing well despite his dyslexia.

Apparently, the furniture man had his Eureka moment watching one of his employees get a table into a customer's car by unscrewing the legs.

The rest is flat-pack, do-it-yourself history.

He was not squeaky clean and later regretted a dalliance with the Swedish right wing in his youth. He said that his past involvement with Nazi groups was his biggest mistake.

IKEA – made up of his own initials and those of his homeland in Sweden – took over Europe in the 1980s. It spread faster than the great fire of London.

Indeed, before the big bold hurdy gurdy furniture store set foot on soil here in Northern Ireland, the wonder of it lit up women's eyes at mother and toddler groups I once attended.

There were organised bus runs to Scotland to stock up on IKEA stuff and tales of cramming the bus boot full of flat-pack kitchens for the return journey home.

I would never have gone that far for a Billy or a Malm. I am, however, intrigued by stories of people who got locked into the store for the night – my worst nightmare – and students who did it for a lark.

There was a craze among teenagers in the US, Canada, UK, Belgium, Netherlands, Japan, Australia and Poland for sneaking into an IKEA store, hiding in a wardrobe for three hours and staging a sleepover.

The first offenders filmed themselves bouncing up and down on the beds.

It all got out of hand when two 15-year-old girls joined in but got frightened and sat still in a cupboard all night for fear of setting off the shop alarm.

They were caught and reported to police for trespassing.

As Ingvar himself might have asked, 'aren't there better ways to have fun?'