"Felix says he doesn't consider himself a philanthropist, but people will
be walking in his forest long after his dead," he points out.
His tour of the charitable rich also takes in Lord Lloyd-Webber, Kelly
Osbourne, John Madejski, and David Sullivan, who made a fortune from the
Daily Sport and other salacious rags.
"He [Sullivan] said to me, 'I can't stand these people who form a charity
foundation and put their name on it, like the David Sullivan charitable
foundation'. I said, well actually, David, I've just formed one, called the
Bannatyne Foundation.
"We had a laugh about it. His first view was that you should give all
your money to your children, but I think we turned him round a bit."
Bannatyne has certainly turned: while he relishes his riches, he believes
leaving too much money to your children is a "burden". He now
plans to give the bulk of his fortune to his foundation. "About 10
years ago, I started having more money than I could spend. So I looked at
what else I could do. In particular I went to Romania, where I saw children
tied to beds because they were HIV or Aids patients abandoned by their
parents. "The nurses threw food at them because they thought they could
catch HIV by feeding them. It was terrible. So we set up a hospice, and it
works."
His foundation, kick-started with an initial £1m donation, will further
develop such projects and others, including funding food and school
programmes in Malawi. Like many modern donors, he brings an investor's eye
to giving, seeking concrete results from his gifts.
It's an attitude he also applies to giving money to his children, who will
still inherit some of his wealth. "They have trust funds — with rules.
They can't have cigarettes, for example. And they can't buy flash cars and
drive them at 100mph. They're not allowed Ferraris and things like that.
"If they want to, they can buy cigarettes with their own money; all I'm
saying is that if the trust fund is funding the cars and the lifestyle, then
they don't get Ferraris and cigarettes or anything like that."
Such strictures are probably rooted in Bannatyne's rise as a self-made man.
The son of a factory worker, he grew up with six siblings in a council house
in Glasgow, and sought escape from poverty first in a paper round, then at
15 by joining the navy.
Taking orders was not his strong point. Court martialled for trying to throw
his commanding officer overboard, he drifted, earning a living as a farm
machinery mechanic. Though he later spent time as a surf bum in Jersey,
where he partied hard, he never lost his entrepreneurial instincts amd
finally found a niche selling ice-creams.
Life wasn't an immediate bowl of strawberry splits; competition was stiff and
he resorted to socking one business partner who was diddling him. With the
capital he amassed, he moved into property and began opening care homes for
the elderly, spotting a gap in the market for well-run homes with en-suite
facilities. A genuine risk-taker, he borrowed heavily to expand and within a
few years had a business worth millions.
In the early days charity took a back seat. On one occasion, when two
hard-boiled eggs went missing from one of his care home's kitchens,
Bannatyne instituted an investigation that lasted weeks. He never did find
them.
