Pie’s the limit for Scots entrepreneur Matt Barr

By Jackie McGlone
Published on Sunday 19 February 2012 00:00

GLASWEGIAN entrepreneur Matt Barr, a former assistant to rock star Sting, has opened a restaurant in London selling pie-and-mash meals to the upmarket residents of Putney.

Barr, whose younger brother is club tycoon Colin Barr, has teamed up with his German partner Dorothy. The pair, who both worked for Sting and his wife Trudie Styler, have created Putney Pies on the Upper Richmond Road, where they serve updated traditional pies on enamel plates. It is a reminder of the ashets on which Scottish butchers would sell steak pies – a memory from Barr’s childhood in Glasgow.

“I’d had this idea for an upmarket pie-and-mash restaurant for years,” Barr said. “As a young boy I got involved with the wrong kind of people in the Red Road flats – gangs and stuff. I was a nice boy, but easily led. Luckily, I didn’t do anything too bad, although times were grim.”

Of his connection with Sting he said: “I never talk about what our jobs entailed; I wouldn’t want them to think I’m cashing in on their fame and friendship. They employed Dorothy, then me, because they knew we would be discreet,” he said. “We’re both publicity-shy.”

Nonetheless, Barr, who was to have been apprenticed as a boilermaker until he got a job in a Sauchiehall Street fashion shop, has seen celebrity culture at first hand.

He went into branding and marketing design after moving to London, where he co-owned a model agency, then a publishing company and a trendy drinks company. “All done with no qualifications whatsoever,” he said.

Barr said he marketed 15 Hollywood films for Sony, from Men in Black to Godzilla and As Good As It Gets. “I produced film premieres, found the venues and compiled the guest lists for red-carpet events,” he said. “Two years ago, Dorothy and I decided we wanted to travel less and finally open that posh pie-and-mash restaurant that I’d been talking about.”

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