Cheri Dowd met Simon Woodroffe, the creator of the Japanese YO! Sushi restaurants, when he bought the houseboat next to hers in Chelsea two years ago. “I’d moved into mine two months earlier,” Cheri says. “It’s fun and bohemian and I wouldn’t go back to living on dry land. I met Simon through neighbours and he asked me to be his PA.

“In the mornings, I get newspapers, fruit and porridge and share breakfast with Simon and his daughter, Charlotte. My office is on Simon’s houseboat — he has business meetings here and I’m responsible for organising these and creating a pleasurable working environment. I also cook for Simon and Charlotte and stock up their fridge, as well as doing the normal PA duties.

“This is a lifestyle role, not a 9 to 5 job. Last night, I was here until 11pm, but that was because I cooked dinner and then went off to yoga before coming back to tidy up.” Cheri, 40, has had several changes of career. “I grew up in Stockport and was discovered by a modelling agency at 15. I’d always been an ugly duckling, but I left school and went to Japan to model there before becoming a catwalk model in London.” Cheri took a secretarial course but then trained as a chef. “I travelled extensively around Europe, often in the most magical locations. My first major job was cooking for Annie Lennox and her family in London and Majorca.

I’ve also cooked for Bob Geldof and his partner Jeanne Marine, as well as Bono, Damien Hirst, and Tony and Cherie Blair.”

After catering, Cheri trained in Balinese massage but had barely taken up this new occupation when she met Simon. “I’m lucky to have this way of life. YO! is big business but I never feel part of a corporate working environment. People absolutely love Simon — he’s compassionate, not a preacher, and I’m like a sponge trying to learn from him.” Simon, who left school at 16 with two O levels, has had even more changes of direction than his PA. His first job was as a bus conductor, before he became a roadie, stage designer, show producer and film-maker. “Then I got divorced, felt I had done things wrong and that I was running out of time.

“What makes an entrepreneur? Desperation and anger. You have to be angry about the way things are done, whether badly or not at all. At the end of my marriage, I was on my knees emotionally and felt unfulfilled. I remember wishing I was addicted to narcotics or alcohol because then at least I could have gone to AA or NA and talked to friends about life. My worst addiction was smoking, so I went to Nicotine Anonymous and that got me through.

“Before I started YO! Sushi, people said I was mad to think anyone would want to eat Japanese food off conveyor belts.” Eleven years on, there are 50 restaurants in the UK and elsewhere, including the Middle East and Moscow, and two Yotels, at Gatwick and Heathrow. “Before they opened, critics said they’d be claustrophobic and no one would want to stay in a tiny room with no natural light. But staying in capsule hotels is like being on a luxury yacht.” Further Yotels are to open and Simon is extending the YO! brand to YO! Home, a futuristic residential concept, and YO! Zone, a spa which he hopes to open in the old Battersea Power Station.

Like Cheri, Simon relishes his houseboat lifestyle, where there are few dividing lines between leisure and business. “It suits me very well to be able to think about work 24 hours a day. I’m not a believer in work-life balance: the rich don’t take holidays, because their whole lives are so nice.” He thinks more people could become entrepreneurs. “My advice is to follow your dream, start immediately, don’t stop the day job but give up watching television,” he says. He has an equally unique take on employing a PA.

“Cheri is involved with my life in many ways and this is probably the first job she has had where she is appreciated for all her talents. It’s not conventional: I don’t boss her around and I don’t dictate letters to her. But it works.”

Simon Woodroffe features in a new book on entrepreneurs, Making It, published by Crimson at £11.99

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