The Gentleman‘s Journal Podcast

Harry Shukman, our writer on the dubious 'billionaire beat' of late, takes us inside the world of luxury estate managers — the string pullers who choreography the lives of the 0.0001%. Expect Shamans on private jets, £100,000 scented candles, an FBI-grade screening process, and 27-hour work days.  'Overheard at the Clubhouse' is our brand new podcast series at Gentleman's Journal, where we delve i...

John Russo, the CEO of Maddox Gallery and an expert in street art, takes us inside the sometimes discombobulating contemporary art market. In a fascinating conversation, John tells us what we should look for in our first art acquisitions; how Instagram is dramatically changing the way art is discovered; why smart TVs could be the future of art displays; and what the atmosphere was like in the room...

Ruth Rogers is the founder of the River Cafe — London's last true power restaurant, and a bastion of brilliant Italian comfort cooking. But the only thing harder than getting a reservation here, perhaps, is getting a seat on her new podcast, 'Table 4.' The brilliant new interview show, helmed by Rogers herself, uses food as the jumping off point for a series of candid, strikingly honest interview...

Ben Francis is the founder and CEO of GymShark, a fitness company he started with some school friends back in 2012, drop-shipping supplements to their pals in the bodybuilding community. The first thing Ben sold was a £52 pound tub of USN Hyperbolic Mass protein powder — an order that earned ben a whopping £2 profit, but which left him, in his own words, dancing around his bedroom. A few years lat...

Our guest today is Jamie Laing, the founder of Candy Kittens, former star of Strictly Come Dancing and Made in Chelsea, and now author of a new memoir: I Can Explain. Jamie is one of the most open and honest and energetic guests we’ve ever had on the show. A natural entrepreneur with infectious enthusiasm, in his early twenties he walked into a meeting with Harvey Nichols to pitch his new business...

Scooter Braun is a media proprietor, record executive, investor and manager, best known, perhaps, as the mastermind behind the careers of Justin Bieber, Ariana Grande and many others. He started his career selling Fake IDs at Emory University, before becoming one of the most successful club promoters in Atlanta. After dropping out of college, Scooter jumped headfirst into the music industry — wher...

Charlie Bigham is the man behind the gourmet food brand that bears his name — and the saviour of many a weekday dinner time. Known for his wholesome takes on British classics, Charlie’s eponymous company — which celebrates its quarter century this year — sells 80,000 meals every single week, and will likely hit £100 million pounds in sales this year alone. But for Charlie, you sense that the finan...

Federico Marchetti is the founder and Chairman of YOOX-Net-a-Porter. He grew up in Ravenna, an ancient town in Northern Italy, which is home to some of the most historically significant mosaics in the world. And Federico describes his career, in fact, like a giant mosaic — a long process of placing building blocks on top of building blocks, slowly working towards a grand design. After an early car...

Most of us would be content to have one big hit in our lifetimes, and to milk it for all its worth. But Marcia Kilgore has had four resounding successes with four separate businesses — Bliss, a range of New York beauty spas, of which she sold a majority stake to LVMH for a reported $30million in 2004; Soap & Glory, a toiletries brand thar Boots bought acquired in 2014 and has hundreds of millions...

On a special episode of the podcast we talk to three figures from the world of retail about the quiet revolution taking place on our streets. Ross Bailey is the founder of Appear Here, the venue marketplace for shops, pop-ups, and just about anything else; Luca Faloni is the founder of the beautiful Italian outfitter that shares his name; and Archie Hewlett is the founder of London footwear label...

Jack Rivlin is the founder and former CEO of the Tab — a network of student newspapers. Started while Jack was at Cambridge, the Tab hoped to bring energy, levity, and a tabloid edge to the dull and worthy university papers — and used volunteer student journalists to report on the things that actually mattered to them. It soon grew to plenty of other universities in the UK, and in 2016 Jack raised...

Louis Theroux is a documentary filmmaker, journalist, broadcaster, national treasure, and latterly podcast host. Louis joined us on the podcast to talk about the release of his brilliant new documentary Shooting Joe Exotic, in which he revisits the star of last year's Tiger King documentary — but the conversation soon became about so much more: the state of America right now; the trouble with soci...

Marco Pierre White is the legendary chef often described as the enfant terrible of English cuisine, and the youngest cook ever to receive three Michelin stars. Marco’s story has now passed into legend: the childhood on a council estate outside Leeds; the prodigious genius mentored by Albert Roux, Pierre Koffman and Raymond Blanc; the outrageous work ethic and infamous temper; the pre-Raphaelite cu...

Andy Coulson is a strategic advisor, former Downing Street director of comms, former editor of the News of the World — and onetime resident of HMP Belmarsh. Across the nineties, Andy worked his way up from a local newspaper to take on one of the biggest jobs in the UK media, before jumping over the fence to join the Cameron campaign as DC ascended to Number 10. Then, following the News of the Worl...

Gerald Ratner is the former CEO of the Ratners jewellery empire, and a professional corporate speaker. As a young man, Ratner worked his way up the ladder of his family company, eventually turning it into the biggest jewellery chain in the world. And then, at the height of his powers, a single speech changed his fortune forever, and sent his life and his business into a downwards spiral that took...

In a special episode of the podcast, we're joined by Tommy Stadlen and Jonnie Goodwin — two prominent members of the UK’s investment community. Tommy is the co-founder of Giant Ventures, and has had a remarkably varied career — working as an advisor to both Barack Obama and David Miliband, setting up a photography app that was then sold to Microsoft, and even finding time as a teenager to release...

Will Ahmed is the founder of Whoop — the man behind an ingenious wearable strap that tracks your sleep, your recovery, your strain, and all sorts of other clever metrics. Its early fans included LeBron James and Michael Phelps — and its newest fans include most of the VC universe, who have just pushed Whoop to a $ 1.2 billion valuation. (Will, by the way, is still only 30 years old.)  In this epis...

My guest on today’s show is Jamie Siminoff, the founder of Ring. Jamie is the start up world’s tinkerer-in-chief — a true inventor who first stumbled upon the idea for a smart, video-enabled doorbell because he wanted to communicate with delivery drivers while he was down in his garage. The journey from that moment — to a famous $1 billion acquisition by Amazon — is fascinating: full of ups and do...

Jasper Cuppaidge is the founder of Camden Brewery. After missing a flight on a round the world trip, Jasper found himself stranded at the Westbourne Pub in Notting Hill — and soon worked his way up from glass collector to owning his own establishment, via every single rung on the hospitality ladder. Later, he began brewing his own lager — and the rest, as they say, is history. By 2015 , Jasper had...

Sir Martin Sorrell is the advertising mogul who took a small company called Wire and Plastic Products (they used to make shopping baskets back in the day) and transformed it into the biggest advertising company in the world. After leaving WPP in 2018, he set up S4 Capital — a new, data-driven, obsessively futuristic marketing company for the modern age. It is already worth more than £2 billion, an...

Tim Warrillow is the co-founder and CEO of Fever-Tree, the mixer maker extraordinaire. The company was set up in 2003, when Tim and his co-founder Charles Rolls realised there were all this lovely gin sloshing about the place, but a pretty lacklustre selection of tonics. So he trooped off to the Democratic Republic of Congo to find the best ingredients in the world — and just about lived to tell t...

Today we’re taking a deep dive into a brand we’ve loved for a very long time — Crockett & Jones. You’ll know them as one of the first names in  English shoemaking — they make beautiful handmade shoes in timeless styles, with true attention to detail and infectious enthusiasm. So a couple of weeks ago we headed to their famous factory up in Northampton to meet the people behind the brand — from the...

Asket is the fashion brand that doesn't want you to buy clothes. The company was set up in 2014, and it focuses on a permanent collection of a few beautifully designed and very well made garments. There are no seasons, no sales, no gimmicks, no fads. The manifesto is simple: buy less, buy better, and keep it longer. In this episode, the boys talk about their first impressions of one another; their...

John Foley is the founder and CEO of Peloton, the at-home exercise company. John started out working in a candy factory, before a meandering career took him to Silicon Valley, the record industry, Barnes & Noble and beyond. At 40, he decided to start selling exercise bikes that let you attend spin classes whenever and wherever you wanted.  Almost everyone told him it was a terrible idea. But after...

Sir John Hegarty is the British Adman extraordinaire, and the industry’s favourite contrarian. He’s the founder of BBH, one of London’s best established and most successful ad agencies, and the brains behind decade-defining campaigns for Levis, Audi, British Airways and Johnny Walker.  This is an episode from the Gentleman’s Journal archive — we recorded it back in the summer of 2018, but it’s onl...