SOME find him shyly distant, others physically intimidating, but David Arculus, the former media boss who has recast himself as a captain of industry, wins most round in the end.

“My skills are those of a journalist, really,” says Arculus, in his affable, rather posh tones.

“I am good at getting information out of people. Most who are committed to a job tend to know the answers to their problems, and I am good at showing that. I am good at being a team member, too.”

He has also proved adept at plotting a career that in recent years has seen him jump from the magazine group Emap to its rival IPC, the exhibition firm Earls Court Olympia, water firm Severn Trent and now the mobile-phone network MMO2.

This month he takes over from David Varney as chairman of MMO2, while also chairing (until December) fellow FTSE 100 firm Severn Trent. He sits as a non- executive director at Barclays and heads the government’s Better Regulation Task Force. Arculus — a traditional Worcestershire name, “Roman for small archer, we think a legionnaire got left behind” — clearly likes to be busy.

“It’s very important that a chairman has at least two jobs, not one,” he says, a small smile creasing his thin lips, “otherwise he is tempted to do the chief executive’s job.”

Dauntingly tall with the firmest of handshakes and an almost quizzical look of earnest intent, Arculus has a sober City front quite at odds with his background as a pioneer of glossy pop magazines at Emap.

He stayed 24 years at the Peterborough-based publisher, part of the team that transformed it from a sleepy regional newspaper operation to an innovative magazine powerhouse, launching Smash Hits, Q, Empire and a range of other entertainment and hobby titles.

Then, when he failed to get the top slot, he left and began that career transformation from media magnate to City grandee. Now at 58 he is seen as a safe pair of hands with good connections and a media expertise that makes dealing with the externals — press, consumers, interest groups — less daunting to him than to most.

Which is why MMO2 is paying him £325,000 a year for a two-day week and a £300,000 share award that is under review — twice what he was getting at Severn Trent. He might make even more if MMO2 is taken over.

“My contract is within all the guidelines,” says Arculus, sitting in MMO2’s City office, “and I wouldn’t make a great deal of money from a takeover. Anyway, just think of the rewards in the venture-capital world compared with plcs. I was lucky to be involved in a couple of venture-capital buyouts, IPC and Earls Court Olympia, so I am not afraid of selling a business, but my natural inclination is to be a buyer.”

At the £5.6 billion turnover MMO2, he takes on a firm that has won plaudits for the way it has built a growing business since plucking itself out of BT in 2001, but faces tricky questions on future strategy as the mobile market consolidates.

It also, through its Airwaves subsidiary, runs a controversial contract to supply secure digital communications (Trans-European Terrestrial Radio — Tetra) for the police in England, Scotland and Wales. Tetra’s giant masts have already created environmental and health concerns.