Valentines Day 1996. A cold, rainy day in Devon, England. After a quick breakfast, we said our goodbyes and set off for work at separate recruitment agencies - and were both fired the same day.

Our crime? The owners of both companies thought we were setting up our own agency to compete with them, so they hatched a plan to make sure it would never happen.

A little stressed to say the least, we went for a walk across the neighbouring fields to our house. Making our way back we saw a suited figure approaching us. Two minutes later we were served. Yes, amazingly, they had gone that far.

Pages and pages of restraints meant that basically they wanted to not only stop us setting up our own company but also not be able to work for 12 months for any recruitment agency in a 50 mile radius.

Unfortunately for them, their case was thrown out by the court because they had no evidence, just a hunch.

Now you may be thinking hey, there's no smoke without fire. We must have been considering this, right?

Wrong. We were in shock. It was the furthest thing from our minds. We were newly married, happy in our own little bubble of comfort, and earning decent money from our commissions because we were good at our jobs. In fact, we loved our jobs.

But they burst that bubble - so this is what we did.