Personal assistants to Peter Wood, chairman of the insurance giant esure, have a habit of staying loyal to their former boss. Both his previous PAs are working with him again after taking career breaks. He says: “I’ve two former wives, so I’m obviously better at choosing my PAs than my wives, although I can’t say that I regret my marriages because I have five lovely daughters.”

Peter’s present PA is Julie Brown, who has been busy organising his 60th birthday party. But though Peter says he has retired from marriage, he has no intention of retiring from work. “The brain is a muscle and it needs to be used,” he explains. “I’ve probably got five-and-a-bit more years in this job, but I will always be doing something. I play golf but get bored after nine holes.”

Peter is best known for the way in which he has revolutionised the insurance world, first with Direct Line, which used telephones as its marketing medium, and which he sold before founding esure, which uses the internet. But he likes to describe himself as a restaurateur.

He recently opened a restaurant called POST, in what was the post office in Banstead, Surrey. Another restaurant is the Dining Room, in nearby Reigate, a few hundred metres from his office. He dined there, liked the food and struck up a friendship with the head chef, Tony Tobin, which resulted in the two becoming business partners and buying the restaurant.

Has Peter’s great friend Michael Winner visited Tony at the Dining Room? “Yes,” Peter says, “and Michael was on his best behaviour.”

Oh dear, what a shame. Winner fronted the annoying esure television advertisements that coined the catchphrase “Calm down, dear. It’s only a commercial”. Even Peter describes it as the marketing equivalent of an unscratchable itch.

He says: “Michael and I met after he phoned to complain about his insurance with us, and I’m one of the few people who understands him. Like him, I don’t book restaurants but tables, and plane seats rather than airlines.”

Peter had originally intended to become a doctor, but the family money ran out while he was at medical school. “It was a great relief to me,” he says, “because I don’t have a bedside manner.” He got into computers, went to sort out an insurance company’s IT and founded Direct Line in Croydon in 1985.

It was there that he met Julie 17 years ago. She recalls: “I was 16, quite cheeky and straight out of school when I went to work as a junior in Peter’s office.”

Peter’s PA then was Carol Hall, who left to have a family, but who has now returned to work in the restaurant side of Peter’s business interests. Carol’s successor, Alex McCormick, also eventually left to have children, and now works alongside Carol in POST. Julie herself left briefly, to try her hand at sales. “But after three months,” she says, “I hated it. Peter was looking for a PA and heard that I was available and I’ve not looked back since. We get on well and have a similar sense of humour. And I have huge respect for him. I know his requirements — for example, which side of the plane to book him on.”

Julie is Peter’s PA in every sense of the term, organising his private life — the birthday party in November involved a guest list of 150 and a marquee — and liaising with the housekeepers in Peter’s homes in Surrey, Spain and Barbados, at the same time keeping an eye on his business interests in the US: all of this on top of the esure work.

She says: “I’m usually in the office by 8am and leave at about 6 or 7pm, but it could be later. Peter’s diary is mission impossible and every day is different.”

Peter works different hours. He says: “I come in between 10am and 10.30am. I might go home at 4pm, or it might be 8pm. Or I might start working at night after an evening function. I haven’t a boss, so I can do what I like, but I couldn’t do anything without a good PA, and I’ve been lucky in all mine.

“Julie is brilliant at organising travel and asking people to do things. She’s always happy. If she gets fed up with me, she hides it well.” timesonline.co.uk/creme ‘I couldn’t do anything without a good PA, and I’ve been lucky in all mine’

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