Claridge's

My final thing I must say is the photography and the imagery and the art are, oh my God, they're so good.

Well, we were very fortunate because we managed to, I mean, we didn't discover David Downton, although I think he did do his very first paid for illustration for me at look now magazine when i was a baby editor and he has gone on to become this kind of probably the top illustrator in the world and he from the very first beauty bible illustrated our books and um we just felt that we couldn't have a beauty bible without david's illustrations but he's grander than god now you know i mean he really is he's as i say he's the illustrator in residence at Claridge's and he, you know, covers the collections for, you know, W Women's Wear Daily or whatever, you know, he's just number one.

And we were like, we need to use David's illustrations, we really it won't be a beauty Bible without.

So anyway, we took him out to lunch.

Well, let's go back.

I mean, Gordon Ramsay's at Claridge's.

You head down to London.

How was that experience walking into that kitchen?

So then when I came down to London, which I was invited by my parents to do after certain personal changes in my life, came down to London in 94, I wasn't really looking into going back into hospitality because I was just frightened by all the top hotels.

You know, when you go to Claridge's and stuff, I didn't even go in at that time.

I remember just passing them.

I thought, I can never work there.

It was a very niche, high-level kind of hotel.

very high network kind of people that went there.

There was a saying because it was owned by the same Maybourne group hotels, which included Claridge's, Berkeley, and also the Connacht.

They used to say that people go to Claridge's to be seen, but they went to the Connacht to be private.

Yeah.

Um, you know, Claridge's, do they get more competitive because Rosewood Chancery's come on board, and therefore business that we wouldn't have competed with Claridge's for because Claridge's quite happy that we had that business, all of a sudden now Claridge's may say, "Actually, we would like a little bit of that business that you've got." So even if it's not directly competitive, there's sometimes a knock-on impact for, for business-

Yeah

... because a different hotel decides that they'll go for something else as a result of.

This is real, real struggle for me talking to you.

Uh, and, and they're putting me up at Claridge's.

Ah, boo, boring.

[laughs]

So I didn't really take it too seriously.

And I went for an interview opposite Claridge's at the old, you know, Brook Street offices.

And I had seven interviews at Grosvenor and I got the job.

And I was just qualifying.

Well, this is the interesting bit.

In 2012-13, Liverpool 1 was largely being finished and I didn't need to be in Liverpool, but I'd moved my whole family north.

So we were living, I had two young daughters, my wife, we were living about an hour away near Nantwich and I... moved back to London to work on a large project opposite Claridge's, which is actually on site at the moment, Milton Street, South Milton Street Triangle.

And I worked on that for two or three years and it was killing me, to be honest.