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Lord Young, former C&W chairman, remembers Allan as the most able executive of his generation at the company. “He had the most wonderful ability to get on with anyone, whichever country he was in.”

By contrast, Thus remains resolutely Scottish (forget the incongruous name, Allan likes the recognition factor). Its head office and many of its employees are in Glasgow, though it is doing an increasing amount of business south of the border. That allows Allan to keep his home close to Tunbridge Wells, so that he can be near the main markets. A non-Scot might not have found it so easy.

But Allan has earned respect both in Scotland and in City circles for the way he has stuck it out at Thus. He makes jokes about the lack of other telecoms bosses who have lasted as long, and he puts it down to experience. You have to understand the technology to do the job properly, he says.

“It’s been fashionable to believe that good managers could do a job at any company,” he says. “My theory is that you have yet to see a telco run well by a man from outside, at least not until the market is very different.”

Allan’s most important achievement has been to meld a disparate operation pre-float into a unified company. “The firm had grown by acquisition. We had consultants in who worked out there were 16 separate micro-cultures, operating in completely different ways.”

Demon, the internet start-up, and the telecoms service initiated by Scottish Power were poles apart. “There was innovation coming from Demon and quality from the Scottish telecoms people. It gave us a blend we would not have had from just Scottish Power.”

But the differences had to be ironed out. “We established three to five-year programmes, the values and culture were set: one company, one vision. Everyone now works for Thus, and we have three words everyone understands — Boldness, Simplicity, Speed — symbolised by the three dots in our logo.”

Colleagues also found him as demanding of others as he is of himself. “Bill has an open, inclusive style,” says John Maguire, finance chief at Thus and another C&W veteran, “but you have to deliver.” Consequently, of the original eight senior managers at the firm when it floated, only one is left.

Is this because they got better offers elsewhere or because he’s been a hard-as-nails boss? “Bit of both,” says Allan, speaking softly through his teeth. “We cannot afford to carry passengers.”

That belief in the work ethic was forged young, when he was growing up in the shipbuilding community along the Clyde. Allan, youngest son of a merchant-navy engineer, decided early that he wanted to get out. “I will never forget at the end of the working day, the tide of men running to get out of the shipyards, running to escape from it.”

So, while at school, he applied for a traineeship down south at C&W. “For training and travel,” he says. “As a child I was into scouting and orienteering. I was one of those kids who once they had climbed one mountain always wondered what was beyond the next one.”

He had ample chance to indulge that at C&W, and rose to the highest levels before a disagreement over promises made to politicians in the West Indies made him reassess his future.

Allan has never been frightened of speaking his mind, as those who have heard him fulminate against telecoms regulation know. When the brokers handling Thus’s split from Scottish Power contacted him, he jumped.

Yet he remembers his C&W time with affection, and it remains his formative experience. “There was a cultural unity there, it was like being trained by the Jesuits. They could send you anywhere in the world and you could pick up what someone else had left and do a good job.”

It all fell apart, he says, because outsiders came in and top management lost confidence in the staff. “The criticism was that we over-engineered everything. Today we call it quality management.”

There were whispers last year that he might be going back to C&W as chief executive. Those who know him speculate that it would have happened only if C&W had bought Thus — or vice versa. Allan dismisses the rumours, saying he wants to stay put.

“We have a lot of shareholders who bought in at the top. It would be nice to say that we have put this business on a sure path and that these people will get their money back.”

Others believe his perseverance will pay off. “He is running one of the few independent telecoms businesses that is going to come through,” says Young. “All the rest are falling by the wayside.”

But getting there still takes willpower and a certain hairshirt mentality. Allan is a boss who, when not playing tennis with his sons on the courts near his home, likes to teach himself piano, and drives himself to the station every morning in his Volkswagen Polo.

No driver? “If anyone saw me with a chauffeur...” he says, shaking his head. Hence the unglamorous offices, the enforced hot-desking, the frantic to and fro-ing from London to Glasgow. The plain fact is that many in the sector with glossier lifestyles have already gone belly up, and he knows it.