THE Quintain boss Adrian Wyatt is running late. “I’ve got to have a drink,” he says, shaking the rain off his coat and staring in desultory fashion at the clingfilmed plates in front of us. He had wanted to lunch out; I had wanted to interview in. We had compromised on some cold meats laid out by his staff on the boardroom table.

He grabs a bottle of Pouilly Fuisse. Pop goes the cork. Glug goes the bottle. Then he says sorry and beams a cheeky smile. Wyatt, 56, bon vivant and founder of Quintain, likes a drink almost as much as he likes a joke. But, most of all, he likes to make money from property.

Trained as a surveyor, but with a thwarted ambition to be an actor, he has run his own property company for nearly a decade, through good times and bad, and has recently emerged as a key player in two of the most high-profile regeneration projects in Britain.

Two weeks ago Quintain was given unconditional planning consent for the 14m sq ft development around the Dome on the Greenwich peninsula. Earlier this month it was also given preliminary approval for a 5m sq ft development in Wembley around the new national stadium. Last week the company announced a 15% rise in annual profits. It has been quite a month for Wyatt.

And I would guess he enjoys the attention. Standing in his third-floor boardroom just off London’s Oxford Street, surrounded by giant glossy photos of his developments and chaperoned by his finance director, Rebecca Worthington, he starts chatting away about this and that, his love of flying, the sea, his former wives. He has been married three times, drives a burgundy Aston Martin, and tells me he is having a replica first world war monoplane built so he can visit by air the Flanders battle sites where his grandfather fought.

Life, he points out, taking a long slurp of wine, is not just about work, it’s about fun too, and that must filter through into the business. He has even written a company mission statement that culminates with the exhortation: “Ideas, even mad ones, will be encouraged. The age of Aquarius approaches. Mum will be proud of you.”

Bonkers or what? He is terrific company, though. Thinning hair swept back, face tanned but rumpled, tie off as soon as the photographer leaves, he looks as if he has just stepped off a speedboat in Nice. Undercutting it is a line in corny patter and dodgy jokes — “I warn you, I am not politically correct” — that makes even his friends wince. Born in Birmingham but brought up outside Bournemouth, Wyatt clearly has aspirations to be property’s first end-of-the-pier comedy act.

Ask him if he is motivated by money and he retorts, “Nah, I’m not materialistic, but as Woody Allen said, ‘if you ain’t got it, they don’t do it’. Hahaha.”

And the gold-plated Daimler driven by his former boss Sir Bernard Docker? “We used to call it Jewish racing yellow. Hehehe.”

Comedy aside, he runs an admired outfit, whose interests seem to be widening: offices, shopping centres, fund management, student accommodation — anything where Quintain can add value and squeeze higher yields. Wyatt’s style is to latch on to opportunities, and go into partnership with others who do the building.

“The great plan here is that we don’t have a plan,” he says, lifting his glass. “It’s all done by return to shareholders. Otherwise it’s prescriptive.”

The scheme for the regeneration of the Greenwich peninsula, in partnership with the Australian builder Lend Lease and involving the American entertainment company Anschutz, includes high-density housing and a 22,000-seat arena inside the Dome. About 41% of the homes built will be “affordable” for key workers.

At Wembley, where Quintain already owns and operates the Wembley Arena venue, there are ambitious plans for the complete rebuilding of the area around the new national stadium, with Canary Wharf-style offices, hotels, shops, plazas, a square as big as Leicester Square, a boulevard as wide as Regent Street, plus homes for 8,500 people, with 40% allocated as affordable housing.