Meet Britain's unlikeliest tycoon

BUSINESSMEN in this country are a conventional bunch. They adopt the same sober dress code. They wouldn't dream of alienating anybody - let alone potential customers or investors. They don't dare speak out on anything controversial for fear of causing upset.

Not Tim Martin. Martin, 49, is the founder of the JD Wetherspoon pub chain. His favourite clothes, even for meetings with City bankers, are a lumberjack shirt and chinos, topped off with a donkey jacket. He carries his papers, not in a Samsonite but in the nearest carrier bag to hand. His hair is long and unkempt, giving him an overall mullet from Milletts look. At 6ft 6in and 17 stone, he's a giant of a man.

Martin will like the description (although perhaps not the Milletts bit, for underneath his ruddy exterior he is surprisingly sensitive, even about his appearance. 'If you go to France, lots of men have longer hair. I've got a French hairstyle.'

Meet him in one of his bars and you could be forgiven for thinking he's Jethro from the Archers or one of the Wurzels up from the country for the day. He speaks in a mangled accent, an amalgam of New Zealand, where he spent time as a boy, Belfast, where he went to school (his father was a Guinness executive, hence the travelling round) and Exeter, where he now lives.

Ban on smoking

He's your classic good bloke, the sort who everybody likes, who props up the corner of bars, the one who uses his height to get the pints in before a Six Nations game at Twickenham. He's funny, tells stories against himself and can be relied upon for a view on everything and everybody.

Unlike most bar-stool lawyers, though, Martin's opinions count. This pub landlord controls 640 pubs which had a turnover last year of £787m and produced profits of £54m.

When he speaks as he does, and frequently, the rest of the industry, and society, is forced to listen. He can't abide gaming machines in pubs. He also hates music and the noise from TV screens drowning out the craic. He despises binge drinking, going so far as to scrap discounted spirits and two-for-one beer offers. He can't stand yob behaviour and bad language in his pubs.

This week, he's proposed a total ban on smoking in Wetherspoon's, two years before Government restrictions come into force. He loathes foreign holidays (although this didn't prevent him taking a six-month sabbatical from running the firm to go travelling).

He's vehemently opposed to the single currency, spending £40,000 of his own money to fill his outlets with ant-ieuro beermats and posters. He believes if Britain joins the euro the country can expect higher interest rates, a collapse in social order and riots on the streets. He doesn't pull his punches - literally. Once on a BBC News 24 debate with europhile industrialist Lord Haskins, he threatened to hit him.

Back to the future

Listening to Martin and listing all his outpourings together, a different picture starts to emerge. He's actually very conventional indeed - in a Last of the Summer Wine, hearty Daily Telegraph sort of way. He's worth an estimated £90m but eschews the flash accoutrements of his fellow rich. He lives in the country, with Felicity, his wife of 29 years, and their four children.

To relax, when he's not playing squash, he walks the dogs. He prefers travelling by train than by car - but hates Walkmans. He likes to read - poems, especially Dylan Thomas, are a favourite - and to sit in a pub, on his own, with a pint and a newspaper.

{1} It's this last that defines Martin's approach to business. When he was at university, studying law at Nottingham, 'there were a lot of very old-fashioned, sleepy pubs run by regional family brewers. They hadn't been modernised and I think subconsciously that inspired me.'

In fact, all he's doing - apart from scrapping smoking - is taking pubs back to how they were. He admits to being moved by an essay of George Orwell's from 1946, of what should constitute an ideal pub. 'Plenty of elbow-room' friendly bar staff, good, cheap beer and food, and no broadcast noise.

His parents divorced when he was 15. 'A degree of insecurity combined with a good education is perfect if you want to become a megalomaniac,' is his take on the subsequent years. By the time he went to university, he was alone - his father was in Jamaica, his mother in Ireland. 'I thought, crikey - I've got to look after myself. To put it crudely, I wanted to make a few quid.'

Dukes of Hazard

He qualified as a barrister, but oddly, given his penchant for speaking his mind, he hated having to speak in public. In 1979, he quit the Bar. While studying for his Bar finals, he liked to unwind with a few pints at the end of the day. His haunt was Marleys in Muswell Hill - close to his flat - which specialised in serving cask ales from regional brewers. The owner wanted out and Martin stepped in, selling his flat, and changing the name to Martin's.

Soon afterwards he had to eject some rowdy drinkers and the experience reminded him of a teacher called Wetherspoon who had trouble controlling his class. He added the JD to the company name after one of the characters in the Dukes of Hazzard programme.

He'd hit on a winning formula and the City was happy to back him. From the off, Wetherspoon's pubs were different. Their rise chimed with the disappearance of High Street banks and post offices. Instead of buying up existing bars, Martin renovated old, distinctive buildings. His pubs went for simple, well-made food. As the number of his branches grew, so was he able to use volume to lower his prices, often undercutting the other pubs in town.

His sharp business brain was yet again in evidence, though in different circumstances, when, in October 2002, his brother Gerry's smaller Old Monk pubs chain went under. Martin did not offer to bail out his brother. At the time a friend of Martin's said: 'It was just business. Never an issue.'

Offside on TV decision

Martin's acumen has sometimes worked against the image he likes to present. Despite his opposition to binge-enticing offers, for example, his usually large pubs often attract a young, boisterous crowd seeking cheap alcohol.

Likewise, his Orwellian prescription was rudely shattered by the sheer commercial pragmatism of discovering that takings slumped during the football World Cup in 1998 because his pubs didn't have TV. Reluctantly, he's let them back in - although not in all of them and definitely, no music. Now, he's prohibiting smoking.

The wearily raised eyebrows from his rivals and the outcry he's provoked, suggest he must be mad, that trade is bound to suffer. But Martin isn't stupid and neither is the City - Wetherspoon shares have fallen only slightly.

A non-smoker for 20 years, he's acted now, he says, to get in first, 'to seize a commercial advantage'. His aim is to 'bring people back into pubs who are staying home at present'.

He's acutely aware that persuading drinkers to forgo their supermarket carry-outs and to return to pubs is the greatest challenge the industry and Wetherspoon's face. He may defy stereoptype but scratch the surface, and Martin is as hard-headed as any other businessman.