The Gentleman‘s Journal Podcast

Imran Amed is the founder, CEO and editor-in-chief of Business of Fashion, perhaps the most authoritative voice in the entire fashion industry. Imran started the company on his sofa in London in 2007, and has since grown it into a media powerhouse that employs more than 100 people. In this episode, we spoke about all sorts of things in this very interesting episode: why you should look for your gl...

Jeremy King is the restaurateur behind so many of London’s finest and most adored restaurants. Along with his long time collaborator Chris Corbin, he opened the Ivy and J Sheekey and Le Caprice in the nineties, all of which became London’s first true ‘power’ restaurants — and more recently, they’ve been behind places like the Wolseley, the Delaunay, Colbert, Fischer's, Soutine and Brasserie Zedel....

Our guest today is Eddie Jordan, the former boss and founder of the Jordan Formula One team, racing pundit, and all round legend of the sport.   This was a hugely enjoyable conversation — we spoke about how Eddie almost became a dentist as a young man, about the Wild West days of Formula One in the early nineties, about working closely with Bernie Ecclestone, about his unique style of dealmaking,...

Joe Grossman is the founder of Patty & Bun, who, as you probably know, make some of London’s most coveted burgers. Set up at the height of the 'burger boom' in 2012, Patty & Bun has outgunned its many competitors at every turn, and now operates 12 sites across London and elsewhere. At the start of lockdown, Joe launched 'DIY kits' so that his customers could re-create their favourite burgers at ho...

Our guest on today's episode is Jo Malone CBE — the nation’s favourite perfumer. She founded Jo Malone London, her first fragrance brand, when she was just 21 from a tiny flat in London, before selling it just a few years later to Estée Lauder for undisclosed millions. She now runs Jo Loves, a more experimental and personal perfume brand that takes its inspiration from her own life and memories. ...

Our guest on today’s episode is Simon Woodroffe, the founder of YO! Sushi. Simon had never opened a restaurant before when he launched YO! Sushi in Soho in 1997 — and at first, it seemed like the robot waiters, smoke-extracting ashtrays and raw fish served off conveyor belts might be too much for Londoners to get their heads around. But they soon fell in love with it, of course — and it was Simon’...

Our guest on today’s episode is Bill Browder, the American financier, author and activist — and Vladimir Putin’s public enemy number one. This is one of the most eye opening and poignant episodes we’ve ever recorded. Bill is, like all of our guests, an incredible entrepreneur and business person — in fact, he set up and ran perhaps the most successful hedge fund of all time. But it’s what Bill did...

Our guest today is Tej Lalvani, the formidable CEO of Vitabiotics. Vitabiotics is a brilliant British success story — it was set up by Tej’s father in 1971, and has since grown to be the biggest vitamin company in the United Kingdom. You’ll probably know it because it keeps David Gandy looking so handsome on all those billboards and tube adverts across the capital — but Vitabiotics and their marqu...

Our guest on today’s episode is John Caudwell, the founder of Phones 4u and super philanthropist. John is an incredible entrepreneur, and he was at the cutting edge of telecoms throughout its earliest, wildest days. Some of his war stories from the first years of Phones 4u are incredible — like the time Motorola tried to destroy his entire business with a single dastardly deal. But John survived,...

Emma Sayle is the founder of Killing Kittens, and one of the world’s leading “sex-entrepreneurs”. You might know Killing Kittens as the brand behind a world of high-end sex parties that put female empowerment at their core — perhaps you've even been to one of their events.  The company turns 15-years-old this year, has more than 80,000 active members, and turns over many multiples of millions, as...

Professor Stefan Allesch-Taylor CBE might best be described as a serial entrepreneur — though that doesn’t really cut it. Stefan has been a policeman, an advertising agency founder, a film producer, a stock broker, the director of The Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s charities, an arch philanthropist, and an advisor and investor to countless successful start ups. He's also the first Professor of the P...

Our guest on today's show is Will Butler-Adams, the CEO of Brompton Bicycle. We recorded this one at Brompton’s factory in West London, and it's a fascinating episode that tells the story of one of Britain's most singular brands and the man behind its quiet revolution. In it, we spoke about Will’s two trips to the amazon (one of which very nearly killed him); his visions for a truly bike friendly...

On today’s episode we sit down with two men from the top of the property game: Liam Bailey, the Global Head of Research at Knight Frank and Tim Hyatt, the Head of London Residential at Knight Frank. The property market can sometimes seem like an opaque and mysterious business. But in this episode, Tim and Liam lift the lid on its inner workings, revealing how they got into the game, the challenges...

Our guest on today’s episode is Luca Faloni, the founder of the Italian menswear brand that bears his name. Luca’s business is a classic style start-up success story — one excellent hero product, a little artisan craftsmanship, a successful online store, a loyal and discerning following… and then the slow steady climb to start competing with the big boys. Today, the brand has four major stores acr...

In a special live episode of the podcast, we've teamed up with esteemed Northampton shoemaker Church’s for a Rugby World Cup extravaganza. Editor Joseph Bullmore is joined by Dylan Hartley, the most capped hooker in England history; Ben Franks, the Kiwi two-time World Cup winner; and Harry Mallinder, the U20s World Cup winning captain. With plenty of audience participation from the gathered crowd,...

This special ‘al fresco’ episode of the podcast is all about 'collecting masterpieces' — investing in luxury, celebrating beauty, and building a covetable collection of anything, from cars to watches to wine. Recorded at Hampton Court Palace at the annual Concours of Elegance car show — and made in partnership with our good friends at German watchmaker A. Lange & Söhne — it features Simon Cundey o...

David de Rothschild is an explorer, conservationist, and Breitling watch ambassador. He looks a bit like a more handsome Jesus, and is, in many ways, the older brother you've always wanted. He’s got a ripping yarn for any situation, often with the battle scars to match — like the time he danced for an Ecuadorian chieftain, at gunpoint, to Kajagoogoo. Or the time he sailed a catamaran made of plast...

Johan Obel and Clemens Boeninger run the Drug Store — the UK’s foremost and finest seller of CBD. And if you don’t know what CBD is, you soon will — the cannabis extract is behind one of the biggest new industries of this century, and it's being applied in a huge amount of treatments and supplements. The market around it, meanwhile, is predicted to be worth some $22 billion by 2022. For two young...

Davide Cerrato is the Managing Director of Montblanc Watches and one of the most fascinating figures in modern watchmaking.  In a special episode recorded down at Hound Lodge on the Goodwood estate — Montblanc, of course, are the official timekeepers for Goodwood’s Festival of Speed — Davide tells us why we should always strive for imperfection; how he lost his favourite ever watch as a young man;...

Jean-Baptiste Lecaillon is the chef de cave at storied champagne house Louis Roederer, and one of the leading voices in this ancient and enigmatic industry. This was an incredibly fun episode to be a part of — Jean-Baptiste brought a couple of bottles of champagne along to the recording, and over a flute or six we spoke about his predictions for the world of wine, the truth about biodynamic champa...

Our guest on today’s episode is Nick Wheeler, the founder of Charles Tyrwhitt. Now a true pillar of the high street and perhaps the best known shirtmaker in Britain, Charles Tyrwhitt began when Nick started flogging shirts by mail order at university. In the decades since, it’s had monumental highs and a couple of lows — in fact, Nick tells us how the brand very nearly went bust twice, and how he’...

Our guest on today’s episode is Simon Kidston, perhaps the best known vintage car broker and connoisseur in the world. Born into a motoring family, Simon was destined to work with cars — and what he doesn’t know about the things really isn’t worth knowing. Today, he’s a world authority and private advisor and who helps the likes of Ralph Lauren and Marc Newsom get their hands on some of the rarest...

Alexandre Mars is a serial entrepreneur and the CEO of Epic Foundation, a groundbreaking charity platform. Epic focuses on taking the grey areas and worries out of charitable giving, and builds philanthrophy into the structure of all the companies it works with. Alexandre has been described as the “French Bill Gates” — and the comparison is pretty fitting. A businessman from his teenage years, Ale...

Zia Yusuf is the co-founder of Velocity Black, a mould breaking digital members’ club and one of the fastest growing venture-backed technology companies in the world. Zia is one of those tech founders who really does live and breathe his business, and he has an almost philosophical approach to entrepreneurship that I think a lot of business people could learn from. In a fascinating conversation, w...

This is a very exciting episode for us  — it marks the first time we’ve ever recorded the podcast in front of a live audience. In December I sat down at the Conduit Club in Mayfair with five of the most exciting young entrepreneurs in London, and spoke to them about their memories and experiences in those make-or-break first days of the start up game.  We were very lucky to be joined at the Condui...