Threescore and ten – and more
Terence Conran celebrates his 70th birthday tomorrow, the day after opening his latest restaurant complex. But the doyen of the British restaurant middle market has no thoughts of stopping work, as David Harris found out.
Terence Conran does not look 70 and, by the look on his face, he is understandably pleased about that. He has the air of a man content with his lot, confident in his own abilities, proud of what he has achieved and fully expecting to achieve a lot more. Arrogant? Maybe, but then he has a lot to be arrogant about.
Today (Thursday), he opens his new restaurant complex in Edinburgh, at Ocean Terminal, and tomorrow he comes back to London for a party at Pont de la Tour and the Blue Print Café. There are too many guests to fit in one venue, so it's family in Pont, workmates in Blue Print, and bring the groups together in the Pont bar afterwards.
It will be quite a party and, if nothing else, should mark the end of the "Terence Conran is 70" interviews, of which he is heartily bored. It will also let him get on with his work, with which he is decidedly not.
Conran, cigar-smoking after all these years ("I am completely convinced that if you don't inhale, they don't do you any harm"), is still at his desk by 8.30 most mornings. This is not as difficult as it might be, because his apartment is above his London office in Shad Thames, but he certainly has no thought at all of taking it easy.
"I think people who retire die," he says with typical concision, adding that, in any case, "98% of what I do is work".
Britain's most successful middle-market restaurateur, grumpy by reputation, is pleasant enough in person, although there is a single-mindedness that points to hard edges under the sleek manners.
Even the New York terrorist attack seemed to feature in his mind largely in terms of its effects on Conran Restaurants, which opened Guastavino's in the city last year.
He says: "Guastavino's was closed for two days because of the shortage of water - restaurants were asked not to open. How long before it [business] will come back again, I don't know. I mean, the recession was there even before this occurred and restaurants were not doing particularly well.
"The only positive thing to be said - and I'm rather embarrassed about saying it - is that there are so many restaurants down in the World Trade area which people are obviously not going to now, and this will clearly push those people uptown. But then, when people are in an emotionally depressed state like that, they don't really feel like going to a restaurant."
Just now, the restaurant that most occupies Conran's imagination is Almeida, his new project in Islington, an area of London so fashionable in recent years that it is slightly surprising that it hasn't had a Conran restaurant before.
The food at Almeida will be simple "because that is what I have a passion for at the moment. Food has become too complicated - too many different flavours on the plate, the main ingredients submerged by all the other things that are going on. Chefs are spending far too much time trying to be artists."
It's quite clear that Conran has retained his enthusiasm for restaurants, but he still thinks of himself primarily as a designer. And a designer with a philosophy that would sound a touch bumptious if it wasn't coming from a man whose influence on later 20th century British middle-class design is unparalleled.
What Conran is most proud of is precisely this influence, his role "as somebody who offers people - through furniture, through hotels, through design work - the opportunity to experience a different style of life".
He concludes: "What we are trying to say is that this restaurant, this garden, this interior, actually can add to the quality of your life. This is our belief and, if you like it, fine."
