DAVE Cox is a North-East motor mechanic who has forged a £1m business out of supplying jaguar car parts using skills he gained from handling multi-million-dollar deals in the Middle East.

The Darlington businessman admits he is beginning to doubt his own sanity after spending the best part of two years overcoming a mass of obstacles to create a commercial music club for the town.

After agreeing to lay out £300,000 with business partners to fund the idea of turning Borough Road's former music centre into a performance, rehearsal and recording space, The Forum project may now overshoot its April opening date by five months.

The latest set-back is the performance area floor which must be raised 6in to comply with disabled access legislation which comes into force in September this year.

Meanwhile, Cox has found the North-East's ability to provide new gas and water meters and a beefed-up electricity supply almost impossible to arrange.

He said: "You can appreciate we can't open without hot and cold water washing facilities. Things like the floor I can give a definitive answer to, although it was held up by the electrical work because a lot of the routes run through the performance lounge. So we're talking about mid-May probably beginning of June when I'd like to say we'd be ready. Then we've got to decorate, so we're talking mid-June. If you want a safe answer then its August. June, possible, July, likely, August, definite."

On the floor problem Cox said: "To be fair, the building controller brought up the subject and it is necessary to be compliant for when the new disabled access laws apply in September this year. I suppose you just take it on the chin but I think everything is do-able.

"The utilities and the lease have been more frustrating. If we could have started in June-July last year with a bit of flexibility from Darlington Borough Council it would have meant we could have come across these issues long ago. With drainage we still haven't got any drawings or plans from the council so we had to find things out for ourselves. It's annoying and frustrating but we're aiming to have the bar open for mid to late April - if we can have hot and cold water.

"A wonderful story came last month. After months of negotiating, when the NEDL (Northern Electric's integrated utility services) engineers turned up they said 'there's no hole outside'. I said isn't it your job? They said 'yes, but we're supposed to have a digging team who come two days before'. So they waited two hours while the diggers came and dug the hole and then the engineers left. Four days later, a hole-filling team came and tarmaced the hole over and sealed it back up without the new cable being connected. We said 'what are you doing filling the hole in?' They said they were told that the hole had exceeded its open date and the company were only allowed four or five days. It is unbelievable. So we had no hole and a newly-prepared pavement that had to be dug up again. This is a 'right said Fred' situation.

"If it wasn't so serious it would be comical. I'll probably laugh at it in a year or two, but I don't find it funny at the moment."

Particularly after this episode, Cox has found himself asking the question why any right-thinking businessman would be putting himself through all this agony?

He said: "You've got to keep looking towards the final goal, at the end of it, it should be something that works. We've got a lot of interest. We're probably reached the level of 300 to 400 musician memberships who are interested. We haven't had anyone who thinks it's a dumb idea yet, which worries me a little bit. We've set the social membership at £25 a year and the actual musician membership is under-18s, £85 a year and adults is £95 a year. We're trying to make it so that it's a breath of fresh air for anyone trying to move forward with music."

So what is the career profile of the man more used to tuning engines at Hurworth-based Eurojag than sounding out the benefits of a risky musical venture?

Until now Dave Cox has always been involved in the motor industry.

He said: "I started as a motor mechanic but soon wished I'd stayed on at college like my dad said and enrolled at Darlington College of Technology for an IMI (Institute of Motor Industry)-related business course."

By the age of 23 he was supervising part of a Darlington car dealership before moving to the Middle East to join Nissan Kuwait.

There he was in computer projects, procurement and importing stock.

"At the age of 24 I learned a lot because I was out in Kuwait on my own. A lot of work was with development, technical management, seven workshops and import depots. You can imagine the size of the place where I worked, it was absolutely vast.

"To cut a long story short, I came back to England and was just about to emigrate to take up a job in Queensland, Australia, when I was offered a job setting up a chain of outlets for a UK company in London. I ended up staying for six months and then put Australia on hold because I met the love of my life, wife Val, and moved to Saab GB."

There he developed a central London facility in St Catherine's Dock right next to Tower Hill. The premises dealt with after-sales, exports and servicing and for five years Cox also dealt in marketing involving branches in London and nearby Marlow.

"Then Val wanted to start a family, so we decided to move back to the North-East and I joined Dutton Forshaw, of Stockton.

"After two years I was given the option to move back to London or go out on my own. Myself and a partner, Peter Robertshaw, set up a company called Eurojag doing car parts for jaguar. I was familiar with the prestige market and I could resource all over the world which meant I've never been frightened to bring the world here as opposed to sitting in Darlington and hoping to buy at the right prices.

"We built up a specialist network from Sovereign House in Hurworth which looks like a scrapyard because we salvage old jaguars and get the components reconditioned. If you wanted an electronic control unit you've got a choice: go to the main dealer and pay £1,500 or get one for £300-£400 from us."

Eurojag's turnover was £1.6m, but is now back down to under £1m after Cox and Robertshaw decided against expanding the London site and opted to lease it out instead.

Moving back to the music project, which saw him make an unsuccessful bid to develop the old Beehive Club in 2002, he said: "I now have enough time for this project.

"My hobby all the way through has been music because I've always played in bands - I don't play anything well, but I use the keyboard, guitar and a little bit of vocals.

"The whole idea of the Forum is that it has to be fun whether you become successful or not."

Cox intends to plough most of the profits into providing resources for the members which means subsidies can be provided to give people a reason for going.

"The club could collapse completely because of the capital spend. The second way, it just hangs in there and does nicely, but in the main we anticipate it will become a popular venue for everybody.

"We'd be happy in ten years if we get our money back. I don't want to be an idiot and come out losing all my money, so it has to be something that pays its way."

"I've got a hell of a lot to learn and all I'm doing is trying to use every aspect of my experience I've learned in the last 25 years and put it into something I feel passionate about. But I can safely say you'll never see me perform on stage."

That doesn't mean to say that his three children - aged six, 11 and 13 - won't be making music at The Forum in future. Cox's second oldest child is already a promising drummer.

*NEDL acted quickly to rectify the problems concerning the Forum's power supply. Work was completed earlier this month