The Jimmy Heneage Experience

FOUR days into a disastrous exercise in the Kenyan bush, James Heneage realised he was not cut out for a career in the Army. The disciplined men of the Grenadier Guards under his command had finally lost patience with their first lieutenant's inept map-reading.

In retaliation, they staged what Heneage readily admits was 'probably the first instance of a mutiny in the regiment's long history...I was always the kind of officer who would be behind the bike sheds having a crafty smoke,' he says. 'I think my men followed me more out of curiosity than anything else.'

But while he failed as an army officer, Heneage has shown strong leadership in the world of business, founding a £60m bookshop empire.

Heneage was educated by Benedictine monks at Worth Abbey, West Sussex, before going to Sandhurst. After serving four years in the Army, he enjoyed a brief career in advertising with Ogilvy & Mather. Then, in 1987, he decided to start his own business with a friend, investment banker Philip Dunne.

Heneage says that at the time, he was impressed by the way Waterstone's had established a nationwide chain of bookshops, but felt it was missing out on a potentially lucrative market in smaller towns across Britain.

So Ottakar's - named after King Ottokar from Heneage's beloved Tintin books (he tweaked the spelling) - was born. Starting with shops in Brighton, Banbury in Oxfordshire, and Salisbury, Wiltshire, the chain grew steadily and had done enough by 1992 to convince venture capitalists at Foreign & Colonial to invest and finance an ambitious expansion programme. Shops were opened in Scotland, Wales and the North and in 1998 the company was floated on the London Stock Exchange.

Today, there are 120 Ottakar's shops in Britain, making it the second-biggest chain selling only books. Heneage is also experimenting with selling toys.

It is an enviable record for any 45-year-old entrepreneur, but Heneage insists that for him, selling books is far more than just a business. He says: 'It is a labour of love - -anyone who has been into a number of our stores will realise that we give a great deal of freedom to our managers to put personal touches into what they do. I think it makes them better places to work in, but it also gives them a more human face - and it makes them better places to sell books.

'You obviously have to carry the core stock, but there is scope in this business to have a little fun. It is no secret that I have loved the Tintin books since I was a child, so we now have Tintin sections in our shops.

'That is a bit of self-indulgence, I suppose, but they sell very well and we now find that people seek us out because they know they will be able to find Tintin. I think bookshops need to have the odd eccentricity - the occasional surprise. They need to be places that people enjoy going to.'

That sense of English eccentricity is something that seems to run through Heneage's approach to life in general. One of his four children is called Harry Tintin, while at the firm's annual awards, staff are presented with model rockets designed along the lines of the spaceship in Herge's books.

They are also entertained by the boss playing keyboards with his own rock band - the Jimmy Heneage Experience. Heneage has a reputation for remembering the names of a large proportion of his 2,000 employees. This was confirmed when, at the mention of his store manager in Llandudno, Heneage launched into an anecdote about her.

Wander into the branch in Clapham, south London, and you will find a life-size model of a Dalek barking out orders to delighted schoolchildren.

Of course, if you don't like Tintin, working at Ottakar's would probably be a nightmare, but Heneage insists that his staff are tolerant of the chief executive's foibles. 'I think they know that we have a different approach from some of the other booksellers and they seem to like it,' he says.

'When we started the company, I had no idea it would grow in the way it did, but I am now delighted with where we are. There is still huge scope to expand in the UK. We estimate that there are at least 200 towns where we could put an Ottakar's and we have been very happy with how our acquisitions have been absorbed. I am very fortunate to be doing something I love. That is why I started the business and that is why I intend to carry on growing it.'