THE last time I saw Luke Johnson he was a black T-shirt kind of guy, edgy and
shy, almost geeky, with fingers in different financial pies and a newspaper
column to boot. I was writing about entrepreneurs and he was best known for
making a fortune out of Pizza Express. He could get tetchy if you said he
did it by shrinking the pizzas.
That was seven years ago and look at him now: aged 45, chairman of Channel 4,
lean and sleek in a Paul Smith suit, warmly chatty but still a man of many
parts. We are sitting upstairs in a branch of Patisserie Valerie, his latest
investment, an old Soho pastry-shop chain that he’s expanding fast. Let’s
hope he doesn’t shrink their famously large almond croissants in the
process. He shoots me an amused stare. “I think if I did, people like you
would give me a kicking.”
He looks relaxed, which is a surprise. He has agreed to meet to publicise his
new book, The Maverick – a selection of his columns, set out by theme. But
more pressing, of course, is the need to rebuild some positive profile after
the furore caused by C4’s Celebrity Big Brother in January, when Indian
actress Shilpa Shetty was abused by various housemates.
Part of the flak back then was directed at Johnson for failing to refute
accusations that his programme-makers deliberately provoked racial conflict.
Critically he corpsed when ambushed on Radio 4’s Today programme with
questions about the show.
A low point? “I guess so,” he sighs. “I should have realised that when the BBC
said that it wanted to interview me about something else, and not Big
Brother, I shouldn’t have trusted them. There are lots of lessons to be
learnt.” There will be more to say when two reviews of the Big Brother
rumpus are published later this spring, one by regulator Ofcom and another
commissioned by C4 itself. For now, Johnson is keeping his own counsel.
“There have been lots of serious accusations, and the questions and research
that go into these reports are extensive, and I am confident they will give
a rigorous analysis of what happened.”
That sounds like chairmanspeak. “Well, that’s the role I’m trying to fulfil.”
And he says it all patiently, precisely, with a nasal Estuary twang. Johnson
went to grammar school, then Oxford, and, as the third son of well-connected
polemicist Paul Johnson, knows all about combining schmooze with the
stiletto when he needs to. The surprise, perhaps, is that the Big Brother
furore caught him off-guard.
It confirmed some people’s view that he was an odd choice as chairman of a
broadcaster with a public-service remit. A super-bright serial investor,
Johnson has made most of his £120m fortune from restaurant stakes – he used
to own The Ivy and Le Caprice, then the Belgo and Strada chains – and had
little experience of television before 2004. He can also have a sharp tongue
and a prickly temper, hardly the ideal combination in a sensitive role.
And guess what? He almost agrees. “To be honest,” he smiles, “I accepted the
job as C4 chairman almost without thinking because it was such a surprise to
get the offer that it seemed ludicrous to turn it down.”
But he’s not content to be just a figurehead. At C4, Johnson has revamped the
board and focused it on commercial and digital possibilities. New nonexecs
such as Lastminute co-founder Martha Lane Fox and Betfair’s Stephen Hill
have been brought in.
Andy Duncan, the chief executive he appointed – a former Unilever marketing
director – says Johnson has ensured the board has a broad, youthful,
external perspective.“It’s a time of unprecedented technological change,
it’s tougher financially, and the whole broadcasting industry has to become
more externally orientated. Luke’s determined to make a difference,” says
Duncan.
Johnson says he simply likes the challenge, and there will be more ahead. Some
believe Gordon Brown will sell off C4. Johnson shakes his head. “I think
it’s unlikely to be sold by this administration because they have stated in
their manifesto that they will be keeping it state-owned.”
But surely, as a fan of the markets, he is pro-privatisation? Not necessarily.
“And I think selling it to a rival would be a disaster. All its positive
unique characteristics would be lost. I would hate to be the chairman who
had seen a simple sell-off. I was told when I started that my task should be
to leave it in a better state than I found it.”
And will he? C4’s programmes seem increasingly obsessed with sex and
controversy. Johnson shakes his head. “The fact is Channel 4 has always
shown programmes about sex, some are better than others, and if you want to
see sex on telly there are 400 channels on satellite, and a lot show a great
deal more nudity and sex than we do.”
It’s straight-bat stuff, which he now performs effectively – his only nervous
tic is the occasional patting-down of his brushed-forward hair. So did he
misjudge the offence given by Big Brother in January? He pauses.
“If there’s another row of a similar sort, things will be done differently.
But the fact is I have been there three-and-a-half years and Channel 4 has
performed well in terms of audiences, revenues and awards. It’s not
intelligent to judge the channel on one incident and one programme.”
Judging others not intelligent enough may be a Johnson weakness. He originally
read medicine at university, worked briefly as a City analyst and likes to
niggle. He has fallen out with other entrepreneurs in the past.
One who has worked with him describes him as a “rug-tweaker”, never pulling
the rug completely from under his partners, but always keen to keep them on
edge. “Luke is not a people person, nor a team builder”.
But he is very good at squeezing “cash, costs and waste”, which has enabled
him to improve the operations he has invested in. Parsimony is second
nature. He is reputed to have once walked a team celebrating a
multi-million-pound deal out of a champagne bar and into a pub just because
he objected to the bar’s prices. True? “I can’t remember,” says Johnson,
“but it sounds terribly like the sort of thing I might do.”
Now he runs all his investments through Risk Capital Partners, a firm he set
up with four partners and mainly his money. It owns stakes in 10 businesses,
including the restaurant chain Giraffe, IT recruitment firm Interquest,
high-street chain East and a clutch of greyhound-racing stadiums.
Greyhounds? “Er, yes, I think it will be successful in the long term. You have
to remember that we have most of the sites freehold, so we have those net
assets to fall back on.”
Ben Redmond, a director at Risk Capital Partners, says Johnson is unrelenting.
“It’s a drive to achieve things, to grow things.”
Where does it come from? Johnson shrugs. Perhaps from his father, who is now
better known as a historian in America than here. “I read an article once
that summed it up best as ‘I’ll show ’em’ – whether it be teachers or
sib-lings or parents. Inevitably my father was a role model, he is an
ambitious man.”
Is that why he writes too? A friend of Johnson once told me he thought the
pithy columns were designed to prove a point to his family: “It’s as if they
might think that making huge amounts of money is not, on its own, success.”
Johnson scoffs when I run it past him. “If it was just about that, I’d have
stopped after a while. But I enjoy it.”
He recently moved his column from The Sunday Telegraph to the Financial Times.
He now seems keen, as with the C4 chairmanship, to add a little gravitas to
the portfolio. But isn’t it hard to be a maverick when you’re burrowing into
the heart of the Estab-lishment? “I’ve mellowed,” he says. He married Liza,
a pharmacist, in 2004, and now has two children. Hang on, didn’t he used to
be contemptuous of executives who wouldn’t take risks because they were
worried about paying the school fees?
He smiles. “Well, I am 45, and I think you need to be careful not to become an
embarrassing old roué type. I met a girl I love andI settled down. It
happens to us all, doesn’t it?”
Very polished. No doubt Johnson will make a better fist of his next radio
interview.
LUKE JOHNSON’S WORKING DAY
THE Channel 4 chairman wakes at 6.30am at his house in Maida Vale, north
London. Luke Johnson makes his children breakfast and eats porridge himself,
then sets off for his Risk Capital Partners office in Bloomsbury by Tube. He
is at his desk by 8.30am.
“Most days I will have a board meeting, or a meeting to look at a new
investment or a meeting at C4. The rest of the time it’s phone calls,
e-mails and stuff.”
He takes contacts for lunch at Le Caprice or J Sheekey – both of which he used
to own – and returns to work, stopping before 6pm so he can get home to bath
his two children. He does less media socialising in the evening than he used
to. “When I first took on the chairmanship of C4, I took on anything that
was going. Now I’m much more selective. You have to be disciplined and learn
to say no.”
VITAL STATISTICS
Born: February 2, 1962
Marital status: married, with two children
School: Langley Grammar, Berkshire
University: Magdalen College, Oxford
First job: account executive, BMP
Salary package: £72,000 from Channel 4 plus investment income
Homes: Maida Vale, west London, and in Paris and New York
Car: grey BMW 6 Series
Favourite book: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, by Hunter S Thompson
Favourite music: Elvis Costello
Favourite film: Point Blank
Favourite gadget: Sony Ericsson mobile phone
Last holiday: New York
DOWNTIME
LUKE JOHNSON relaxes by writing his column for the Financial Times. “If I
didn’t write it, I would miss it.” He also plays tennis at the Paddington
Sports Club. “I have a regular partner who tends to beat me. My philosophy
on tennis is that you wait for the other player to play a losing shot.
Frankly, it only works against those who don’t use that against you.”
He has an enormous collection of business books. “I have about 10,000 books,
in my office and in different rooms at home. I have built a few bookshelves
over the years.”
Otherwise he spends time with his young family. He also sees his parents for
supper most Sundays. “They live nearby, and they often pop round to see us.
Having a close family is a great luxury in this day and age. My dad has
never written about us, and I would be aghast if anything I wrote upset him.”
