Interview: Antony Worrall Thompson - Boiling Point

Published on Thursday 12 February 2009 18:54

AT ONE point during my meeting with Antony Worrall Thompson, his hands start to shake perceptibly, and his eyes, already a little red-rimmed, grow distinctly wet. "I'm so sorry," he says, a tremor in his voice. "I'm just very, very angry. I'm shaking because I'm seething."

He is not known for his anger. At 57, Worrall Thompson does not rant or swear like Gordon Ramsay, Marco Pierre White or Jamie Oliver. On the contrary, "Wozza" is the avuncular, populist "squashed Bee Gee" (as Ramsay cruelly called him) famous for stints on Ready Steady Cook, Saturday Kitchen and an early sterling performance on I'm A Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here!

Despite a harrowing adolescence – he suffered a profound crisis of confidence as a teenager after a horrific rugby accident smashed up his face – he has never dealt with his issues by throwing kitchen implements at sous chefs. Yet here he is now, hotly furious to the point of tears.

"Last week was probably the toughest week of my adult life," he adds miserably. On Friday, through the gloom and sleet, he and his wife took a wretched tour of their six restaurants to inform the 105 staff members that the group was bust and 65 of them were losing their jobs. It was pay day and none of those 65 has yet seen a wage packet.

"Telling the staff was supposed to be the administrator's job, but the administrator was stuck in snow in Swindon." He smiles bitterly at the banality of it. "So my wife and I had to do it. It was probably better that way. At least we could be gentle. Otherwise it's so cold and cut-throat."

Worrall Thompson has used personal savings to buy back two venues in his Grill chain, but four others in London and Henley-on-Thames will now close. His staff, he says, will be paid through the government scheme that guarantees a statutory redundancy sum of 330 per week for 12 weeks, though they may have to wait up to a month for their money. If the administrator allows it, he'll bump up some of the missing wages with cash from his own pocket.

"Yes, I've wept over it. I haven't broken down completely, though my wife did a bit the other day. One manager has been with me for eight years, he's over 50 and he's going to find it hard to get another job. I've got a young lad, too, who came to us at 15 and built his way up to be head chef at the age of 23. He's fantastic and he'll get work, but it's just so sad. These are people we've nurtured."

And he is also angry at the banking industry that has refused him help. The recession caused restaurant custom to slow down shockingly from October of last year, at about the time the credit crunch first hit the high street. As he analyses those months leading to administration, Worrall Thompson illustrates perfectly (and very publicly) the failure of a business sent first to its knees by the slow-down and then trampled in the mud by newly parsimonious bankers. He is back on the rugby field all over again.

"I was 16 when my face was smashed and it took me at least ten years to get my confidence back. Right now I feel as though I'm starting from the bottom again. Mentally, this feels worse."

The problem, replicated in the kitchens of restaurants across the country, is a much-reduced cashflow. Even the very biggest names are feeling pinched, or worse – Jean-Christophe Novelli's gastropub business has been hit by severe financial difficulty; and there are rumours that both Gordon Ramsay and Marco Pierre White are also feeling the pressure.

Yet Worrall Thompson does not owe millions. He is keen to stress that he has always bought restaurants out of profits generated by existing businesses, and that the only loan he has is a maxed-out overdraft. The Grill chain started life in 1997 as a single restaurant in Notting Hill, west London. "I was a fool," he huffs. "I should have borrowed 5 million and then the bank would have shared the pain."

In fact, he owes Lloyds Banking Group "about 225,000" and needed a further 200,000 to cover pay cheques and suppliers into the spring. "At first, the London restaurants held up," he says. "But we've definitely noticed a decline in corporate-sector bookings."

Worrall Thompson admits he could have reacted "more quickly" to the signs of slow-down, but in October he began implementing 120,000 worth of cuts. He reduced staff levels, sought pay cuts and cut the lunchtime service at several venues. He claims that he brought all six restaurants back into profit in December but still it wasn't enough.

He and his accountant then compiled a sheaf of financial forecasts with which to apply for the extra cash, but Worrall Thompson says that in January Lloyds simply stopped talking to him.

"A letter went completely unanswered and then they stopped taking my calls. I think they were embarrassed about what they were doing to me. Or perhaps frightened of talking to me. Yes, I'd have given them hell, but a lack of reply was actually even more stressful." I hardly dare ask what he thinks of bailed-out bankers taking big bonuses this year. I expect him to explode, finally, and smash every one of the perfectly polished wine glasses awaiting evening service at the Windsor Grill. Instead he seems to sag, utterly wearied, then almost to whisper: "This is a recession created by greed. Why isn't there rioting in the streets?

"I think the Treasury has been very nave. There's been such short-term thinking, such gambling. Yet those responsible still seem the least exposed to pain. I had a business with a good brand and I tried to run it as tightly as I could; we were simply cash-strapped for a short period."

"The only thing we can hope is that, six months down the line, people get bored of being in the doldrums and those who've still got jobs start to spend again." He will bounce back, even if his staff don't. His astonishing autobiography, published a few years ago, describes a life of huge resilience. The child of two actors, he was neglected by his alcoholic mother, who used to lock him in the coal cellar (once, having escaped at the age of three, he claims to have spent several days on the run with a tramp).

Worrall Thompson also revealed he was the victim of sexual abuse at the hands of a teacher at his school, King's College in Canterbury, though he has always counted the rugby accident as an event of greater psychological significance. "I don't think (the abuse] affected me that much," he said. "I'm just stubborn."

He never made much money out of the restaurants (he took an 8,000 annual salary from the group, and paid his wife 5,000). Instead, he says, he regarded their future sale as a potential pension.

Not that he's forced to shop at Lidl these days – Worrall Thompson has his quite separate but lucrative TV and publishing careers. He could, in fact, have kept the restaurants open by pledging as security his 1.6 million house in Oxfordshire, or by cashing in the property he has bought for his children, but he makes it clear that that was never an option. "I'm not prepared to put my family in jeopardy. I have another company (for TV and other work], but it's not all my money. I couldn't just take from that."

His domestic life is complicated, but it's Jay, his third wife, whom he credits with getting him out of bed these days. Worrall Thompson has two grown-up sons (who live in Sydney) from his second marriage to an Australian whom he met while running his first restaurant, Mnage Trois in London. Jay was once a waitress at Stringfellows and came to work for him at his London eaterie 190. They now have two children: Toby-Jack, 13, and Billie-Lara, 11.

All the affairs he had before Jay were the result of insecurity, he says, caused by his "broken face" – "I shouldn't have married anyone until I met her," he says. "She has a brilliant attitude to all this. I've been very morose at times, I do feel as though I've let lots of people down and Jay has tried to kick me out of it. She says it's a new start, that it doesn't matter about money. I have to try and take that attitude myself."

So they have cut down: he has swapped his "big juicy Audi" for a greener, cheaper hybrid and, ironically, he has stopped spending big bucks at other people's restaurants. "I can always do something else," he says. "I can sell my pigs at farmers' markets."

He's joking, clearly, but it's the only joke he makes. Worrall Thompson was once our plumpest, jolliest celebrity chef, but he looks deflated, physically smaller, as I leave Windsor's stormy, and quite deserted, restaurant quarter.