Simon Hume-Kendall interview
ABOUT SIMON HUME-KENDALL
Multi-millionaire Simon Hume-Kendall, 56, wields considerable influence in Kent and Sussex. He is chairman of the Conservative Party in Tunbridge Wells and deputy chairman of the party's Kent branch.
His business interests are considerable. He made his fortune in shipping before moving into the oil industry. His Kent Attractions business currently owns Bewl Water and Lamberhurst Vineyard, and used to run the Hop Farm Country Park.
The more glamorous aspects of his career have seen him take in acting (appearing in the Go-Between alongside Julie Christie in 1970), football (director at Crystal Palace during the 1990s) and a stint as a media mogul (as non-executive director of Sport Newspapers).
He lives in Lamberhurst with his wife Helen and their three sons.
The interview took place in late December, while debate was rife over the cost of tickets at Bewl's LaplandUK attraction and in the wake of controversy over Tunbridge Wells Borough Council's plans to take all 48 councillors out for dinner to meet the candidates for chief executive.
IR: So here I am with Tunbridge Wells' most powerful person
SHK: (Laughs)
IR: Is that not how you view yourself?
SHK: No, no, there are several people who run this borough and town and who run it very well. I would have thought that you qualify for that job, you've certainly got more influence than anybody else, being Editor of the Courier.
IR: And that's coming from the man who runs the Conservatives, owns tourism in this area and has his finger in many pies…
SHK: Well I'm chairman of the Conservatives in Tunbridge Wells and I'm deputy chair in Kent and the role of the Conservatives here is to provide support to the politicians and would-be politicians.We have a group of volunteers and the whole aim is towards getting Conservative party supporters elected under the Conservative banner in Tunbridge Wells and then we have a running mate who this year is Chatham and Aylesford who will typically be a weaker association, a weaker constituency than Tunbridge Wells, and then we also help them as best we can at election time and that's our sole raison d'etre.
IR: But your role is to ensure the Conservatives stay in power in Tunbridge Wells and Kent and it's the Conservatives who are running things. Ultimately you have power and influence over those politicians as chairman of the party. If Greg (Clark) does something you disagree with you can throw him out
SHK: You're absolutely right technically, that is absolutely true. In the extremely unlikely event Greg were to transgress he would be brought to book by Conservative Central HQ before the Conservative (constituency) chairman dealt with them.
IR: I was reading an interview with Simon Cowell in which he said what he wants now is to get more and more and more money. As a wealthy man yourself I wondered what your goal was?
SHK: I'm absolutely astounded that that is Simon Cowell's ambition. The actual accrual of money I don't think is a particularly interesting thing, it's what you do with the money that's 500 times more interesting. I guess if you want to keep it in store as a testimony to yourself as to how well you've done then it would be possibly an ambition but I'd have thought for somebody like Simon Cowell it would be a particularly unfulfilling one. I'm amazed really. I'd have thought he'd have had little need for it but if he's only after the money then good luck to him, I'm sure he'll make plenty of it.
IR: You must have totted up over the years how much you've made, spent and lost?
SHK: Yes of course and I've done all three. However, I genuinely and categorically believe there is no real merit in a pool of wealth for the sake of nothing else. In a world like the little microcosm in which we live if you're able to have a decent roof over your head and the usual creature comforts and you can eat every meal, which pretty much everybody in this country can do anyway, in some cases obviously rather too many too often (laughs, looking at his stomach)…
IR: You said that, not me
SHK: …and you have financial freedom so you're not waking up every morning worrying about accounts or banks coming to call or worrying how to pay your mortgage, the opportunities are to do just about anything are so fantastic that it becomes shades of grey. It comes down to the size of the rooms in which you live really. As long as you can cover your costs of living actually it's all about what friends you have and what ambitions you want to fulfil. Actually filling your bank balance doesn't sound a very exciting one to me.
IR: A reservoir and a vineyard can't be the most profitable enterprises to invest in
SHK: Well they're not bad at all. For us we return a yield of about seven per cent of our capital investment and that's quite a bit more than you would get on a residential property in London. We set out a certain mantra: to secure facilities for people in the rural area where we live and that's a very important part because it means you don't have to be grabbing all the time and forget what it means, and to make those successful and affordable to the public.
At the vineyard we've got on to see if you can really make good wines in Britain and at Bewl there's been a big push on the fishing and it's getting so exciting.
IR: You love fishing so you bought a reservoir so you could fish in your garden. I find that amazing
SHK: It's more than that because it has sailing and all the other water sports and also the day visitor attractions. It's really affordable and really fun.
IR: OK, you've done your PR bit
SHKL No this isn't PR, this is what we've done. I've put in the children's play area, people can come and have a great day and they can come for the whole day for three quid.
IR: Talking of price, does it then rankle you that LaplandUK is so expensive for families?
SHK: I love Lapland. I have openly asked them before this year if they couldn't consider moderating it and I think it's a pity it's happened so late on in the year because Mike Battle's a very clever man and he's a lovely fellow – he's very honest and honourable – and I found it sat very uncomfortably with the Bewl brand of being affordable because it's so high and I think it's a pity that he left it so late to halve the price.
I think it probably could have been explained to the public better (about what the ticket price included) but now at its present price I think it's perfectly fair and I am right behind it.
At the moment I think it's quite good value. You have to go there to understand why – it's like any high end product; why would somebody pay one price for one shirt and five times the amount for ostensibly something that does the same job?
IR: Is there anything you can do to bring the price down? It looks bad on your Bewl brand
SHK: No, we have no control over it all but market forces have. If they had been as busy as last year then the price would not have come down. It is the visitors who are voting with their feet and not booked as heavily as last year. It still attracts a vast amount of people; we have 110,000 day visitors a year between March and October and then November-December we hand over to Lapland. In those two months, last year they had 50,000 visitors and this year it will be somewhere around 40,000 - so although it's not perfect they're obviously doing something pretty right.
IR: Are you happy for it to be at Bewl again next year?
SHK: Oh very much.
IR: What impact has Santa's Magical Kingdom at the Hop Farm had on Bewl?
SHK: I think the price differential would have been noticed by the public. I think the way the Hop Farm have done it, in not including food and not including skating (in the ticket price) is probably a sensible model because some people may not want to go there and eat and some people may not want to skate. That's the lesson that Lapland might learn from Peter (Bull, Hop Farm owner)'s great skill as a showman. It's inevitable that if Lapland has had 40,00 people and Santa's Magical Kingdom 30,000 that a good body of that 30,000 has come directly from Lapland. But it's been a very tough year for a lot of people; people are still nervous, I know I am. At £150 for a day out, some people would do it but not everybody can afford to.
IR: What do you think are the problems in Tunbridge Wells?
SHK: On the one hand there is no doubt that at midnight a new monster emerges from people who over the past few hours were previously totally sane people, and the situation becomes more volatile and the police handle it very well, but to a layman undoubtedly it becomes more threatening after midnight and inevitably the whole 24-hour drinking thing doesn't really work.
IR: We don't have 24-hour drinking in Tunbridge Wells. It's not had a massive impact; a couple of bars open an hour or so later
SHK: But there is a general perception that there are more problems on the street than there used to be. But I agree that would be at the bottom of my list, I don't think it's a huge overriding problem. I reckon if you and I walked through Tunbridge Wells on Friday night/Saturday night from top to bottom we wouldn't be molested, we wouldn't be beaten up.
IR: Well I'm not very popular…
SHK: You mightn't be! (laughs)
SHK: I think traffic is a problem everywhere but a little more thought could be given as to what could be done. We talked about a tram-alike system, and they are very popular, where they are electric buses and literally start down near the Pantiles, at the fairground car park or somewhere, winging its way up through the High Street, up Mount Pleasant, up to Victoria shopping centre and coming back down and stopping regularly on the way up.
IR: I think looking at anything more complicated than that is just trying to make it unviable
SHK: I spoke to two of the borough councillors who were driving it – Chris Woodward and Tracy Moore – and I put them in touch with Nick Chard who now has the transport portfolio (at Kent County Council) and I said that we would be able to come up with quite an investment for that as we would see it as a tourist attribute. Then they could use the High Street for less public parking, widen the High Street and Mount Pleasant because the public won't need to park there because they can just get on and off and then you free up all of that area; you free up the need for people to come in and out and for the sake of a few extra minutes the public can come up, hop on a tram, one end of the town to the other in no time at all and anywhere in between. People would use it all the time and it would have a very attractive design and you'd be looking probably at £2million.
It would be a boom to the town, we'd get a reputation for the Tunbridge Wells tram, we really would, it would look great, it would look a million dollars. You'd have three of them, keep rotating. Sure, it won't be without its teething problems, of course it will, and it won't be a perfect solution, but it will be a damn sight better and we'd be known for it and all those old ladies and (pausing to look at his stomach) and overweight businessmen who start at the bottom of the town can then simply go up to the top, it'll be in constant use and everybody wins – absolutely, there are no losers; the retailers will have people coming past their shops, they won't be frustrated, won't be having to park, won't be driving off to go somewhere else. Then for those people who want to bring their car, they won't be excluded, the roads won't be closed off, they can go and park in the car park which will then be much emptier, much easier to get into; it really does work.
SHK: I would be the lead investor. There would be other investors and I believe there would be considerable support. I think some of the retailers would be keen to invest; in fact I know.
IR: Where has the project got to? If you've gone to KCC and said this would revolutionise public transport in Tunbridge Wells and I'll put up the cash, why have they not bitten your arm off?
SHK: They are considering it at the moment. There are those who are anti it but I don't know why yet, they haven't come back with a reason.
IR: Including Roy Bullock
SHK: Let's not personalise it to Roy – what KCC were anti was a fixed rail of £25million because the problem is if it doesn't work you're landed with it.
IR: So what are the chances of it actually happening?
SHK: Good. KCC have gone from totally anti to looking at it, it's a KCC decision but needs borough (council) support.
IR: Do we need a chief executive at Tunbridge Wells Borough Council?
SHK: Yes. Do you need one at the Courier? After all it is only a business by another name, there must be a paid, full-time non-political member who is carrying out the wishes of the members. It's the business of running the town – there has to be a boss.
IR: Are you in favour of all 48 councillors being taken out to dinner to choose the chief executive?
SHK: Well I know why it happened and I know what has happened; what has happened should have been what happened at the outset which is to make sure the dinner is not paid for by the ratepayer.
IR: Is that an example that the abuse of public money is just endemic of the system, even locally, and it's only now that because of the MPs scandal, that people are getting angry about it?
SHK: Well I don't think it's an abuse of the system because I think it's perfectly proper to get a new chief executive introduced to the members, it's no different to a shareholders' meeting.
IR: I wouldn't dispute that but for the meeting to be over a three-course meal at the High Rocks…
SHK: That was the tradition. Was it a good tradition or a bad one? In the current climate it's clearly a bad one, it's been brought to their attention by the Courier and they've rectified it. Is the system ever going to be perfect? No, never. Is the system obdurately refusing to listen to these things? Clearly no. Cllr Bullock was deeply worried about the whole thing and he took it very, very seriously and he understood what you said and he realised he'd made an error. He didn't try and fight it, he didn't say 'I'm not going to do anything', he just made a mistake and he was only following tradition – that's what Tunbridge Wells does – and he dealt with it straight away; he's very careful with money by the way, I think everyone is at the moment.
IR: You've made it very clear that you're a fan of Roy Bullock. Do you think he's the man to be the leader of the council? I hear whisperings in the Tory ranks that it might be time for a change
SHK: First of all you have to understand the man. His background is he got an MBE for putting out the fires in Kuwait and it was very dangerous and he did it. I am a fan of his for that reason alone. Secondly we work closely together in the Conservatives and he is as far and as focused a worker as I have ever met in my life. No human ever gets everything right but he puts in hours and he puts in the effort.
IR: Your argument there is similar to the argument you hear about Gordon Brown – he's a hard worker, he's a good man, he wants to do well but that doesn't necessarily translate to success
SHK: Well the council has gone from failing to excellent which is the highest borough council rating you can get…
IR: Which Sheila (Wheeler) takes the credit for
SHK: I think the whole team must take credit, I don't think it's any one individual. Just like Roy would have taken the blame if he'd failed I think they can both take a large amount of credit for having the achievement, as can just about anybody involved. There was a huge amount of effort by people. Yes, it was wrong before but they've changed to put it right and that's where Roy is good – he's willing to recognise where change is able to be made and he does put it into place. At the same time his manner can be sometimes brusque. In any political leadership there are always whispers, probably with the exception of Sandy Bruce-Lockhart. There's always a challenger.
The other thing that must be remembered is there will be the issue of succession because Roy is clearly not going to be the leader of Tunbridge Wells forever. He seems to go on forever but at the end of the day he will want to retire and someone will take over.
IR: Do you think he will stay on after the next local elections?
SHK: He keeps his cards so close to his chest I just don't know.
IR: Who do you think are the potential successors?
SHK: There are some great people – Catherine Mayhew, who stood against Greg in the selection for the MP, is right up there. Tunbridge Wells would be really lucky to have her as a leader.
IR: When I was researching you I found this on a website forum from a few years ago; you'll enjoy this. It said 'The Hop Farm is owned by a Mr Simon Hume-Kendall who is the illustrious proprietor of the Sport stable of newspapers. He also has a satellite channel called SportXXXGirls and a phone sex service. Worse even than that he is a big wheel in the Tunbridge Wells Conservative Association'. What do you make of that? Which is your major sin?
SHK: Well that was in Private Eye.
IR: Have you got it framed in your toilet?
SHK: No but I kept the copy. The owner of Private Eye, Ian Hislop, lives in Staplehurst and our kids know each other and our wives play tennis. There's a slight case of mistaken identity because Sport Media Group is a public company, of which I was non-executive chairman. Sport Newspapers were bought with a publicly stated idea of cleaning them up and to use their national status to deliver a more salubrious offering to the type of people who read it, so it would be more humorous and more inquisitive and more outrageous in terms of what it reported and it started its history not so…smutty is not the right word.
IR: It's not far off, surely?
SHK: But not quite. Its first headline, probably when you were too young to remember, was 'London Bus Found on Moon'. Huge outcry – and then it had 'Elvis found' and Hitler turned up and it was like a grown-up boys' toy and then it got smuttier, dirtier and dirtier and we got the opportunity to buy it. It was making £9million profit and our stated intent was to bringing it back to being irreverent and humorous. There are Sports everywhere and somebody saw the word Sport, and saw SportXXX and Sport this that and the other and assumed a) that I was the owner because they probably confused chairmanship with ownership and b) assumed I owned all the rest which was hard core porn which we didn't own and was nothing to do with us, but there are so many things called Sport.
IR: You're not a porn baron then?
SHK: No, not at all. The Sport is probably at the outer end of the tabloids in terms of its smuttiness but its readership is about 100,000 a day. At its zenith it was at 750,000 but it just got grubbier and grubbier and less and less pleasant, but it was very profitable and it was right for the media group at the time.
IR: But circulation dropped when you removed the sex, didn't it?
SHK: Yes, badly.
IR: So sex sells. Shall I introduce a page 3 in the Courier?
SHK: I think you might get a little bit of attention, you might get your own headlines.
IR: Your name is synonymous with the Sport. Are you happy with that?
SHK: Very happy. My role is not to sit in judgement, it's to give them the product that our shareholders have promised, unfortunately our readership didn't like our cleaner version of the Sport and so it was a failure.
IR: So you're a failed porn baron?
SHK: It's a red top, we'd show topless women but so does the Sun, Rebecca (Wade, former Sun Editor) does that so I'm no more of a porn baron than her. It's a little racy. The answer is no, I'm absolutely not ashamed of it. I was there in the academic pursuit of being involved with a national newspaper. Given that I had no background in it, it was the lowest sort of life but that's where you'd expect to start, at the bottom. If you'd said would I rather be chairman of the Sport or the Mail, believe me it'd be the Mail in a shot, but it was a tremendous experience for me but I didn't have issue with the morality part. As such a newcomer I just didn't know the business.
IR: So it's a chink in your armour? You lacked confidence and you're usually a very confident guy.
SHK: It was a total lack of ability.
IR: That's a very frank admission of failure, which is quite refreshing from a businessmen of your stature
SHK: No no, I've had loads of failures. Why there are not more penalties for insolvency is because people don't go into a business with an annuity policy, you go into business taking huge risks and loads of my enterprises have failed and will continue to fail. I've put money into all sorts of things.
IR: Have you had more failures than successes?
SHK: Well no obviously because I have a net current surplus. The old management company at Bewl we put into liquidation – is that a business failure? Not really, it didn't have any employees, you have to close things down everything now and again, that's what happens in business.
IR: How do you look back at your time at the Hop Farm? Do you judge that as a success?
SHK: No, I was completely the wrong person for that. I was running three chairmanships at that stage and what it wound up as was I was working five days a week on them and it (the Hop Farm) was just too big a job for me.
IR: If you'd have stayed there and not brought Peter (Bull) in would it have had to have been wound up?
SHK: No, no, it's a very hard business to manage. It's very profitable, Peter's just spent a hell of a lot of money on it. It needed a permanent, strong hand. It's too profitable to run into financial problems.
You'd have to go there on a weekend to know why I sold; it's not where I wanted to spend money, it's a different type of clientele – every weekend there was a huge fight. My five days a week I was a businessmen and every weekend there was an event and every time at about 11pm there was a punch-up and I was called out. There would almost invariably be some sort of incident all the time and it just wasn't what I wanted to do. At the vineyard, touch wood, I don't think I've ever had a single incident.
IR: How much money in your time do you reckon you've spent?
SHK: (Very long pause) Well over a long period and including buying and selling it obviously becomes very blurred. My biggest ever acquisition was Sport Newspapers which was £51million but that wasn't all my money, the biggest ship we ever bought was $21million. The Hop Farm wasn't far off, that was £9million at the time and I sold it for a bit more than that. Probably quarter of a billion over the years.
IR: Does that sort of figure scare you?
SHK: No, that's why you look at the debts of the country as a whole and they say a trillion dollars and it (£250m) doesn't sound like a huge amount to me. You see so many people who've made a billion and obviously though I'm nowhere near that, you meet lots of people who have made that and you think if the country has lost £178billion it's actually not that much when you think – yes it's appalling but 100 people could go and pay it off. But I get my pleasure out of people, it's far more important to me than money. I enjoy poor people, rich people – I don't really like bad people but they are pretty few and far between
IR: What about the super-rich? Are they unpalatable people?
SHK: The ones I've met aren't but they can be. You get the odd very dismissive person who really won't talk to you unless they think you can do them some good. But most people haven't got to where they've got by not being very personable, they enjoy the company of other people just as much. I know some of the quite wealthy Russians and they are just good friends, you never talk about money with them.
IR: Why aren't you on Dragon's Den or something similar?
SHK: I was going to do Secret Millionaire, they selected me to do it and they gave me a slot and everything. Then the credit crunch came and I was worried that the world might be going into collapse and thought it would look awfully gross wandering around pretending you were poor and as it happens the huge collapse everyone was predicting didn't happen. I regret not having done that, actually, it would have been a lot of fun. In fairness there was a clash as well – I said here are five weeks I can do and there's one I absolutely can't and of course they gave me the one I couldn't do but I'd have probably changed everything.
I do get invited to do things. I will now look again to see what sort of thing.
IR: What about Dragon's Den or something similar where you invest your money?
SHK: If there are any new shows like that I'd like very much to do it. Simon Jordan did Dragon's Den so you obviously don't have to be that rich to get on it.
IR: You live pretty well don't you?
SHK: I've got a pretty controlling wife! No, we really don't live that well actually. First of all you've got a tiny detail called school fees and you're looking down the barrel of £25,000 per kid a year and then you've got to pay tax before you pay that. So every day you wake up, even though one of my kids has a scholarship, £300 a day is spent before you wake up, it's huge money. We don't really have that much spare.
IR: How much are you worth then?
SHK: (pause) £20million. If you'd asked me a year ago I'd have probably said £30million but it's been a great leveller being downvalued because all the values of our properties came down and some of the shares, we lost a lot of shares on paper.
IR: Do you see yourself as a wealthy man?
SHK: (Very long pause) The third richest man in this country, who shall remain nameless, I asked him what he thought was wealthy, he's 80-something, and he said 'forget anything anyone tells you about assets, it's income. When you've got £1million a year of income, with no debt against it, then you know you're rich'. Now you can't afford a private jet, or a yacht, because that's super-rich but when you can afford your lifestyle and everything reasonable you want…
IR: So by that definition you are wealthy?
SHK: On the edge of. My little brother is chairman of one of the major investment banks, he hasn't seen less than £5million for a long time. There are some hugely rich people but then once you've got enough…
IR: Again, we come back to Simon Cowell. What's he going to do with all his money?
SHK: Just sitting and having money is no point, it's just a way of keeping a score, it's much better to go and do something for someone else with it if you don't want it for yourself. I've had the Hume-Kendall Foundation going for 19 years which provides education for people whose parents have died during their education which is what happened with us - people stepped in and paid our school fees until we all left so we wanted to repay the favour. That's been a great place to put money and then we've tried to help with some of the schools; getting them special status and various capital assets. We helped Uplands out at Wadhurst, we agreed to be the sponsor for Tunbridge Wells High, there are loads of things we give small amounts to, there's all sorts of things you can do.
IR: What's the most money you've lost in a single deal?
SHK: Me and my partner lost $11million to the Romanian government when they cancelled the contract on us and they owed us $11million. We sued them, won in their courts, they then appealed and part of their deal with going into the EC was all their claims going to Strasbourg were exonerated. So even though we won against their own government in their own country it got wiped out by the Strasbourg court, which is one of the reasons we love the EU so much because they are nice and fair to new member states, and that nearly brought us into bankruptcy.
IR: What was it like dealing with the Russians just after the Cold War?
SHK: We were some of the first people to go into the closed cities. Foreigners were banned from going in and when we got there - we were the first people to go into Samara - you saw cars driving on the frozen river. That was very exciting because they wanted to see what foreigners were like and once they found we were pretty much like them it was amazing, we had such huge adventures. It was like being a real, latterday pioneer.
IR: Have you met Putin or Gorbachev?
SHK: I've met Gorbachev. Our organisation was backed initially by the then KGB because they vet any foreigners who came in and our first paid director was a colonel in the KGB and he was on our backs pretty fully until we sold out to the government.
IR: What was Gorbachev like?
SHK: He was a huge hero, he had huge stature. I met him after the event
IR: Do you miss being in the football business?
SHK: Who says I'm not? The situation at the moment is football is very difficult because the big teams have made it untenable for the smaller teams. In the third and fourth division it's possible to get something going if you've got a good manager and you can get a decent ground. I've got a big pal at Southampton who's having more fun than he's had in years because they're winning games all the time and they've shed a big mountain of debt and the horror story of spoilt players on ridiculous contracts and they've got players there who are really wanting to play and they're doing very well. We found that with Palace – Palace is in a hideous mess, it's a seemingly irreconcilable mess but we will try and reconcile it. If you want to be the first to say it, am I interested in taking (Simon) Jordan out of Palace? Yes and I am trying but I'm not talking to Jordan because I can't see any assets in there other than the players and most of them are on too high contracts. So yes I do miss being in football, it's been very lucky for me that my friends own Birmingham City – Ralph Gold, my next door neighbour – and we've got three or four people – Ron Noades, the former owner of Palace, the ex-Birmingham lot, myself and one or two others, who are all good pals who would all like to go back into football at some level or another. Palace are losing £100,000 a week.
IR: Would you be in a position to help local clubs? Crowborough Athletic, for instance, is struggling enormously.
SHK: I'm at this moment helping Ringmer Football Club sort themselves out. But I'm not helping them with money, I've got them the right adviser. The good thing is that over the years we've pretty much worked out what to do. I helped out Aldershot and got them back. When they were bankrupt I was brought in by the league and I suspended my directorship to help out Aldershot, got them sorted out, got them out of bankruptcy, we went down out of the league and then of course you bounce back with a fearsome strength. That's what's needed, it's no good sticking an Elastoplast over the wounds – you've got to clear it out and sort it out.
IR: So you could help Crowborough; maybe not financially but you could point them in the right direction?
SHK: If they want to give me a call.
IR: Do you think the Conservatives will win the next election?
SHK: At the moment it would be a big lead to surrender but it's not enough to get a clear overall working majority. You need 20 seats realistically to run the country.
IR: John Major had fewer than that
SHK: Yes but you can't do much, you limp along, and there's a lot that needs to be done.
IR: Will Greg Clark be a future prime minister?
SHK: I'm not really a betting man but if you asked me to take a book on will Greg Clark ever live in Downing Street I wouldn't be taking any bets, the book would be closed.
IR: So you think he's a more likely Chancellor?
SHK: It would be more than evens, would be my personal guess. I am extraordinarily biased and I know the truth of what Greg's like – I deal with him day to day and the guy is the most composite individual I've ever met in my life.
IR: Would you like to have continued in acting?
SHK: It's not a lie when they say acting is 90 per cent perspiration, 10 per cent inspiration and I had an extraordinary moment, I was so lucky to take part in the film. After that you can't be a part-time actor, I would have had to have traded off the rest of my life which has been so exciting and so colourful for me, to have said 'I'll forgo all that to be an actor' there's no way I would have done it because the life of an actor can achieve huge acclaim. You are beholden to the casting director, you are beholden to the films you have made. I've been the private part in making a major feature movie called the Calling with Susannah York and Brenda Blethyn – Kent County Council and I did that. Also with Ian Wright and Sid Owen did a 15-minute short film we made ourselves and it came fourth in a film awards.
IR: How come you're making films with Sid Owen and Ian Wright?
SHK: Well Ian and Sid acted in it, I've known Ian since he was 21, he's just younger than me, he's one of my best friends, we have loads of adventures together, we do a lot of charitable stuff together and he's a phenomenal talent. We've been friends literally since the day we met at Palace.
IR: What do you make of his Live From Studio Five show?
SHK: Listen, it's like the Sport, you can criticise it but it appeals to people, look at their ratings.
IR: I didn't criticise it, I just asked.
SHK: Well, people do. The punters love it because it's the news in a way that a certain part of society like it fed to them, I think he's very good and he appeals to that kind of person.
IR: What are your biggest regrets?
SHK: Monetary-wise I should have probably held more of the shares for longer in the oil company because we sold it in the end for $3.5billion last March. It was a public company and of course I kept thinking it had reached the top - we started at 6p a share and we sold it in the end for £16 a share and I kept thinking we'd reached the top and I kept selling great lumps so by the time we got to £16 a share, I hadn't sold everything thank God, but I'd sold a hell of a lot.
But is that a regret? I'd much rather have built this building (the Hotel Du Vin) than have the £20million in my bank that it's worth. Buying the building is quite interesting but it's much better to have built it, that's why I like Lamberhurst (Vineyard) where I've totally created that, I've rebuilt the whole place. One of the big moments for me was getting Lamberhurst back this year as being selected by M&S as their top white wine; that was huge for English wines – at last English wines have come of age.
IR: Is the wine there really any good? And be honest, you're a man who knows his wine
SHK: M&S's wine buyer thinks so. It's £11.99 there, they just can't get enough. They price it, not us, and you then either give it to them or you don't. So we were really chuffed because they were grapes that I'd planted, roots that we'd chosen and planted. We started planting those in '99 so it's been a long labour of love to get here but we are here.
SHK: Other regrets… I would like to be thinner, perhaps that's not a regret, it's an ambition.
IR: New Year's Resolution maybe?
SHK: New Year's Resolution.
Just going back, I just want to tell you about Greg. Greg is a very, very special guy. What you see – very unusually in people, let alone politicians – is what you get. He's just the most composite person – he is so balanced, and this is why I'm pretty sure he'll achieve higher office. There are only six great offices of the State and it would be surprise me if he didn't (secure one) because if you delve around in Westminster and talk to Labour, Liberal or Conservative MPs you will not find anyone say a bad thing about him. He's extremely popular because he's so straight.
IR: Even when he's stressed?
SHK: I can't say I've seen him under real stress. I think you put him under some with the article about the books (when the Courier revealed Greg Clark had claimed £61 for books giving tips on after-dinner speaking).
IR: If that's the worst scandal he has in his political career he's done better than anyone else. Would you make a good politician?
SHK: Locally, the subject matter isn't demanding enough. Unless you're like Roy Bullock when it's really hands-on it really is something that's done by people in a very small amount of their spare time. As regards any higher level, I'm just not adequate quality. The quality of the MPs is very high and their dedication to the job is pretty much to the exclusion of all else and none of the things I do I want to give up.
(Pause) Someone like you would be a fantastic politician…
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