THEY are the pointiest pair of pointed shoes I have ever seen on a man.

“Do you like ’em?” asks Peter Williams, flipping his feet up on to his long white desk to show me. His black winkle-pickers taper into an exaggeratedly sharp apex, a good few inches past his toes. “I don’t see why only women should be allowed to wear pointy shoes, do you?” Williams, a compact, chatty man, grins widely. As boss of Selfridges, the department store that worships brands, he has, it seems, become a bit of a poster boy for the shop’s products. On the morning we meet at the company’s London West End head office, he is topping his pointy shoes with a mint sorbet suit and abundant white shirt, setting off his deep tan, hairy chest and luxuriant moustache. It’s a bit like interviewing Swiss Tony’s better-looking twin brother from Las Vegas.

He giggles, well used to the digs. “The shoes are Dolce & Gabbana, the suit is Kenzo, the shirt Paul Smith and we’ll stop there.” Cue another loud laugh.

Winchester-born Williams, 49, the store group’s former finance director, is a well-liked boss, famed for his snappy dressing as much as his smiley management. He started as an accountant, and is perhaps keen to show that, now he is a chief executive, he is about more than just numbers.

And running Selfridges nowadays does demand a certain style. Last week it opened its extraordinary store in Birmingham, all wavy walls and silver-studded blue exterior, the culmination of years of graft on Williams’s part when, as finance director, he was cutting the deals for new sites.

While he was beavering around doing that, his old boss Vittorio Radice was busy revolutionising the formerly dowdy store at its London base, turning it from a Grace Brothers lookalike into a savvy, top-brand emporium. Radice, an exuberant Italian hailed by many as an intuitive retail genius, jumped ship for Marks & Spencer earlier this year, after grooming Williams (he insists not literally) for the top job. So Williams is in the top slot at last, a new store is opening with media brouhaha, and he is ready to take some of that credit. Everything rosy? Well, not entirely. No sooner had he got those pointy shoes under the boss’s desk this spring than Selfridges, sales up 10% to £445m, became the subject of a ferocious bid battle.

Williams put together his own management buyout but bid too low. The Scottish entrepreneur Tom Hunter also missed the cut. The victor was the Canadian billionaire Galen Weston, who snaffled up Selfridges for £628m to add to his retail empire. That left Williams and his management team a bit richer but less certain about their futures.

“I think you can say,” says Williams, with a philosophical shrug, “that we’re all on trial at the moment.”

As if to emphasise the point, Allan Leighton, chairman of the Royal Mail and a non- executive at Galen Weston’s store group, waves through the glass wall of Williams’s office. Leighton is presumably the busiest man in London at the moment, sorting out the strike threat at the Royal Mail and the takeover bid for Wilson Connolly, the builder he also chairs. And now he is firmly ensconced in Selfridges’ Duke Street headquarters, helping secure the new relationships.

A bit awkward? Not at all, shrugs Williams. Weston was always his preferred bidder, and he is comfortable with the new ownership. It’s just ironic that, having developed strong relationships with City analysts during Selfridges’ plc days, he is now in private hands.

Others suggest it must be frustrating too, given that he wanted the top job in 1996, when Radice got it and ended up heading the plc through a more upbeat economic climate. Radice also knocked a chunk off the share price when he left, helping put the group into play.

But there are no sour grapes, says Williams. He and Radice are still close — they attended the Birmingham launch party together on Wednesday. He owes his old boss a lot, he says, for letting him take on “the non-financial stuff” while preparing for the top slot. “Vittorio was fantastic. He allowed me the freedom to do my bit,” he says.

Radice returns the compliment. “Peter is fantastic. He’s got his financial background, a great eye for opportunity and the talent to seize it,” he says. Radice also adds that, far from undermining Williams’s position, Weston’s empire will give Selfridges extra clout. “These are people with real experience of retailing, something that is part of their blood.”