MIDDLE-MANAGERS scrabbling up the corporate ladder have a deep fascination with those who make it to the top.

That’s why General Electric’s Jack Welch received a $7m advance for his autobiography and why more than 10m people have bought Stephen Covey’s The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. Everyone wants to know the secrets of success.

Here at The Sunday Times, we already know them. Over the years, our interviewers have spoken to scores of chief executives, inviting them to spell out their daily routines, their work patterns, likes and dislikes.

So we thought we’d trawl the archives to draw up a profile of the composite chief executive. What does he do? How does he spend his time? Which books and films inspire and amuse him? What does he drive? Invariably, of course, the chief executive is a “he” — a middle-aged man on his second marriage to a younger wife. There are exceptions, but not too many.

Our model chief executive lives in Kensington, which provides easy access to Heathrow airport — essential for visiting the company’s overseas operations, and for taking his young wife to the the south of France.

But relaxation is usually the last thing on his mind.

Most chief executives tell us that they start the day early. Very early. Donald Gordon, the septuagenarian chairman of Liberty International, says he wakes before 4am and starts work almost immediately. “I spread out all my files on my bed . . . and read for three or four hours,” says the property and life-insurance tycoon.

David Crossland, the former Airtours chairman, was another early riser, though not by choice. “It’s just my body clock — it’s a real bore,” he says. Starting at 4am allowed Crossland to start on his paperwork and e-mails — but he paid for it. By 6pm he was exhausted.

More extraordinary was Shoichiro Irimajiri, the former president of Sega. Irimajiri’s day started at 4.45 with an hour of jogging or other exercise. After a day of meetings, at 6pm he would head out for a four-hour dinner then move on to review progress at one of his software firms, rarely getting home before midnight.

This lunatic schedule was clearly not enough. Poor sales of the Sega Dreamcast cost Irimajiri his job.

Kevin Leech, the former ML Laboratories chairman who briefly became an internet billionaire, was another who did not know when to call it a day. He said he never finished work before 10pm, even at weekends, and sometimes carried on until 2am or 3am. If he ever did finish early, he would go out to one of the pubs or restaurants he owned on Jersey. That way, if he ever got bored he could “catch the manager’s eye, and get stuck into a discussion about the business”.

But there is only a shaky correlation between long hours and financial rewards. Leech over-extended himself and was declared bankrupt last year.

In his twenties, Michael Dell also used to work 18-hour days, seven days a week. But the computer billionaire got a wife and a life. “When you’re working, there’s a real law of diminishing returns,” he says. “You go beyond a certain point and your effectiveness disappears.”