OF all the gin joints, in all the towns, in all the world, I have to walk into Paul Walsh’s. He’s having his photo taken. As the joint in question is the glitzy cocktail bar which Diageo, the world’s biggest drinks company, keeps on the ground floor of its London headquarters, he’s pretty much in charge.

And you can tell. Tall, paunchy, balding and thickset, Walsh looks like Tony Soprano in spectacles, readjusting his suit as he finishes up and heads for the lift. He gives a tight smile of greeting, but makes little small talk. If there were just a couple of pole dancers, we really could be in the Bada Bing.

Up in his fourth-floor office, jacket off, sprawled in an armchair, Walsh then goes from cold to warm quickly. Seven years at the top of Diageo – which makes Johnnie Walker, Gordon’s, Smirnoff, Captain Morgan, Guinness and more – has given him a burly confidence that exudes from every pore.

Diageo, formed from the merger of Grand Metropolitan and Guinness a decade ago, is now a global leviathan with interests in just about every spirit and beer sector. And Walsh, 52, is the man who created it.

This week his company will announce sales figures close to £10 billion. For Walsh, a bluff Mancunian whose blokeish humour masks a fiercely competitive nature, it will be another milestone. He obsesses about market share. Diageo is huge in Europe and America, and growing fast in emerging markets, but not fast enough for him.

“We’re No 1 in Brazil, No 1 in Russia, No 1 in India, not No 1 in China,” he pauses to pour more coffee. “It pains me to say we are No 2.”

He gives a mock-wince and sips from his cup. Walsh came up on the finance side at Lord Sheppard’s GrandMet, then became “Americanised” running its Pillsbury subsidiary for a decade. He doesn’t like coming second.

Those who have worked with him say he has an uncomplicated, can-do style, and a street-smart love of numbers. He’s also not shy of making the big jump.

He reshaped GrandMet and Guinness by selling the group’s food interests and focusing on premium spirits, snatching many of Seagram’s brands in a complex acquisition in his second year in charge. Earlier this year there was more speculation that he was planning another swoop to break up Scottish & Newcas-tle, the brewer.

Any truth? He grins. “I can’t say yes or no. What I would say is that if you look at the profile of that company, and look at our aspirations around globality and growth – I think most would acknowledge that the two aren’t compatible.”

Yet press reports suggest he discussed a joint bid with the brewer SAB Miller, the clandestine negotiations coded Project Spice and names changed to protect their identities: SAB was Sage, Diageo was Dill . . .

Walsh laughs, then gives a bit away. “None of our document-ation said that. But come on, do we look at competitors? Absolutely. Do we think ‘if only we could get a bit of that business’? Absolutely. But I think sometimes others do the same and we get attached to it without our involvement.”

Others suggest that if Walsh learnt one thing from his mentor Sheppard, it was “strategic curiosity” – always look at all possibilities. He’s more forthcoming about Absolut vodka. Its parent company, owned by the Swedish government, is up for sale this autumn and Diageo will be bidding. About £3 billion?

Walsh’s beady eyes narrow above his monogrammed shirt. “I’m not going to tell you how much we’ll bid. The reality is, no-one’s seen the company’s numbers yet.”

How badly does he want it? “It’s nice to have but we don’t have to have it. It’s a bit different from Seagram – we had to have that. It moved us a quantum leap away from the rest of the pack, particularly in America.”

And is he selling? Three years ago, he said he might sell Guinness, if the right offer came in. Now, with sales growth flagging in Ireland and proving hard work elsewhere, you would think it must be back on the agenda. He says, firmly, no.

“For any brand, you never say never – but I would be personally disappointed if we had to sell it, because it is a great brand and truly global and fits our portfolio.”

But some are still unconvinced by Diageo’s strategy for beer, which provides 20% of its net sales. It has Guinness, Red Stripe, Tusker, Harp and others, but is small-fry in beer compared with giants such as Inbev and SAB Miller.

Diageo also missed a trick with cider, one of the surprise successes of the past two summers in Britain. Walsh annoyed rivals recently by dismissing cider’s prospects as “not a long-term trend”.

Sour grapes? “No, I just don’t believe it will grow ad infinitum to take share from beer.”

But Diageo didn’t spot it coming and doesn’t have a big cider brand. “Correct,” he says, suddenly terse.

At times like this, you wonder if the team that missed that one has been taken into the car park and dealt with.

Then he lightens up. “Look at this,” he says, pointing to the rain outside his window. “I’d guess current cider figures are pretty miserable now.”

He prefers to focus on emerging markets and the profits coming from premium spirits sales. The recent reduction of tariffs on Scotch imports into India has Walsh almost smacking his lips in anticipation.

“The punitive duty rates haven’t allowed people in India access to the real stuff. They’ve been buying fakes. When those barriers come down, imagine what’s going to happen . . .”

He looks excited. That upbeat

drive has characterised his rise through business. An only child, Walsh wanted to be an RAF pilot but failed a medical on colour blindness. Instead he trained in accountancy at Manchester Poly, got a job in the Coop and used that to jump into GrandMet, with a determination fuelled by thwarted ambition.

He says he gets his work ethic from his engineer father, his love of organising from his mum, and confidence from both. They taught him “the world is your oyster, go and explore it”.

He did. Key moves were his decision to work in America for GrandMet, then to take on Pillsbury. Sheppard remembers Walsh being sent to Texas to sell a hotel for GrandMet. He returned, saying he hadn’t got the right amount for the business, but had made up the difference by selling its chandeliers separately. That, says Sheppard, is when they knew Walsh was top management material.

Pillsbury was tougher, a bastion of American business never headed by a Brit. Yet Walsh ran it for a decade, winning his American team round, later offloading the company to General Mills, which shares the same Minneapolis base. Good for the business and good for the people, he later said.

For Walsh sees himself as a people-centric boss. Diageo’s London headquarters is nattily done up like a top ad agency, the bar emphasises its marketing roots. And he’s proud of the growing multi-ethnicity of its global workforce. Other bosses say it’s hard not to be won over by Walsh’s total enthusiasm for business in all forms.

“Paul is direct, nononsense and pragmatic,” says Roger Carr, chairman of Centrica, where Walsh sits as a nonexecutive director. “but he’s also very savvy. Business just brings him to life.”

You can see that in Walsh’s robust defence of the drinks sector’s attempts to stop alcohol abuse – Diageo will spend £2m this year on television advertisements plugging responsible drinking. It has been leaning on the retail trade, too. He says we will soon see less of the “buy one, get one free” promotions in bars.

As for recent suggestions about raising the age limit for buying alcohol, he says we should not invent new laws, just enforce the ones we’ve got.

“If an individual is found causing nuisance on the street, there should be consequences.”

That Lancashire bluntness buoys up the troops, although campaigners still feel that drinks firms could do more. It doesn’t impress the City, either, which worries that Diageo’s growth may soon falter. More than 40% of Diageo’s shares are now held in America – more than here. So much for the group being a British champion.

“There’s no question that America prefers our prospects to the UK,” says Walsh. Why? He shrugs. “They see the brands, and the discount we trade at versus the other leading US consumer-product companies, and investors here don’t.”

It may also be about speed. Walsh acknowledges that “reshaping” the company as Diageo took longer than it should have. Perhaps British investors lost patience.

So how long will he stick around to tell doubters that they’re wrong? As long as it takes, he says. He has a new chairman to bed in next year, when Lord Blyth is replaced by Roche boss Franz Humer. Walsh will stay as chief executive, results willing, for at least another three years.

Which could make him one of the longest-serving FTSE 100 bosses around. He nods and smiles slyly. “That’s the objective.” Really? He just laughs, like it’s the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

PAUL WALSH’S WORKING DAY

THE Diageo chief executive wakes at 5.30am at his flat near Chelsea Bridge. Paul Walsh has coffee and is driven to Diageo’s London head office by 7.30am.

“I do newspapers, e-mails, then one-on-one calls with my team. I have nine executives reporting directly to me.” Later he may lunch contacts at Mirabelle in Mayfair. He works until after 7pm. Half the year he is abroad. “I enjoy the travelling, seeing markets like China and Brazil and I get energy from our teams.”

DOWNTIME

PAUL WALSH relaxes by fishing and riding near his country house in West Sussex. “I’m really boring, I have discovered flyfishing. I also go hacking on my horse, Sebastian. He’s 17.1 hands high.” Walsh also has an old E-type Jaguar that he drives at weekends.

Does he have to drink a lot as boss of Diageo? “No, some days I don’t even have a drink.” He recently divorced after many years of marriage. Does he have a girlfriend? “I’m not telling you,” he laughs.

VITAL STATISTICS

Born:May 1, 1955

Marital status: divorced, one son

School:Royton and Crompton, Oldham

University:Manchester Polytechnic

First job:trainee accountant, Coop

Pay package:£2.4m

Homes:Petworth and Chelsea

Car:grey Range Rover

Music:Pink Floyd

Book:Birdsong, by Sebastian Faulks

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