Matt Hermer, the Boujis man

The youngest of four children, Matt was brought up in Cardiff. His father Julius was a lawyer and a local politician, his mother Gloria had a jewellery shop. All of his siblings are high achievers: one brother is a lawyer, the other a banker, and his sister Deborah is a civil servant who used to work with Alastair Campbell at Number 10 and is now head of communications at the Department for International Development. But Matt was never going to follow in such conventional footsteps. 'When I was three, I climbed into a milk float and drove it into three parked cars,' he recalls.

This was merely the first of his escapades. 'I rebelled in a minor public school way,' he admits. 'I was always the one who would shout in class and get smacked or thrown out.' He was sent to board at Clifton College in Bristol, which, he says 'saved me from being really naughty. It just worked for me. I was head of house by the third term.'

(Right) Cocoon, W1

When he was 15, his father was elected Lord Mayor of Cardiff and the family moved into the Mansion House. 'I loved it, jumping around the house and having parties,' he says. 'A chauffeur would drive me to school in the ridiculous Rolls-Royce with the crest on it.' His father's position also brought Matt face to face with celebrities and royalty, including the Princess of Wales, an early training in handling A-listers, which was later to prove useful.

Uncertain about what to do in his career, he applied to study land management at Reading University. 'Gerald Ratner, who was a friend of my father, told me to,' he says. 'But I gave up after two lectures.' Instead, he switched to politics and history, and, after graduating, got himself a job at Hambros bank. Altogether, he spent eight years in the City, working for Dresdner Kleinwort Benson, then ABN Amro.

By 1998, when he was 26, he was earning 'six figures plus, plus, plus,' he says, and had just been headhunted to go somewhere else. One night, he was out drinking at a favourite watering hole, Barfly on Walton Street, when the barman told him it was for sale. 'I said, "Great, let's buy it, it'll be fun,"' he says. 'I was very impulsive. But it made sense. I used to entertain people on the expense account and at the time there were no cocktail bars in London - it was pints and mushy peas. I'd worked in the States where there were cocktail bars everywhere, which I loved because physically I've never been able to drink pints of beer.'

He remortgaged his house to buy the bar from Lee Chapman and Leslie Ash in what, he thinks, was 'probably the worst deal of the decade. I paid a lot more than I should have. But it turned out to be a fantastic investment.'

(Left) Eclipse, SW7

Six months later he threw in his City job and went into the bar business full-time. The next step was to open Boujis, because after drinking at his cocktail bar, the first Eclipse, his clientele wanted to work off some energy without having to traipse into the West End. How did he come up with the bizarre name? 'Oh, one of the designers came up with a list of possible names, and I spotted this one and asked what it meant. And she said, "Darling, it means all of everything and all of nothing." And I said, "That's it!" Then we thought we'd put it all under one roof with Cocoon.'

Volstead came next, the speakeasy-themed club on Swallow Street (which he sold last year to private investors). 'And after that, we thought we'd do some restaurants,' he says airily, making the creation of this empire sound not only logical but simplicity itself. But to go from Boujis to Bumpkin - which will be the first restaurant group to get Soil Association accreditation in the UK - seems to me a giant change of direction.

With its faux-rustic décor, wild flowers on the table and conscientious buying policies (the restaurants serve sustainable British fish, naturally reared meat, seasonal vegetables and organic eggs and dairy), the restaurants seem miles away from the careless urban hedonism of Boujis. In fact, Bumpkin is so worthy that the Notting Hill branch has become David and Samantha Cameron's weekend hangout. 'Oh, no, it's a linear progression,' says Matt. 'The bars and clubs have a certain clientele, and they're the people who come to the restaurants, but they bring their kids and their parents, too.'

Bumpkin is clearly his favourite venture. 'As I get older, I'm more into food and wine than clubbing,' he says. 'And I feel like Bumpkin is my baby. Building a concept from scratch, seeing it grow and become successful is the closest I've ever come to having a child. Every step of the evolution is so heartwrenching and emotional.'

His attitude to his other ventures is much more prosaic. 'I go to the bars about once a month, and the club every six to eight weeks,' he says. 'This is a business and I run it as a business. You won't see pictures of me falling out of anywhere drunk. If I went clubbing every night, it would be like working 24/7 because I'd always be noticing what wasn't right. That's boring. I'd rather go home and switch off.' What does he do for fun? 'I'm happy reading a book,' he says. 'I go to bed at 11pm.'

His biggest indulgence, he says, is travel. Even the experience of being caught up in the tsunami while holidaying in Khao Lak in 2004 hasn't put him off, although he says that he was just 15 seconds from death. 'I was actually going down to the beach when I met everyone else running up the stairs screaming.' He made it to the roof unscathed, carrying a man whose arm had been torn off by the force of the water.

Clearly, he has the luck of the devil; the safe in his bedroom was ripped out of the wall by the wave, and he spotted it in the floodwater and was able to retrieve his money and passport. Matt stayed on for several days to help the rescue effort, which he says was 'pretty traumatic', and subsequently raised thousands of pounds for Khao Lak at a charity party in Cocoon. 'We've built a fishing school, put in a tsunami early-warning system and built a new school,' he says proudly.

Matt lives in domestic bliss in Chelsea with his girlfriend of two years, American PR girl Marissa Anschutz, to whom he recently proposed. 'It was totally un-romantic,' he admits. 'I'd just done a gym class and she was sitting on the sofa, in pyjamas, reading the newspaper. I got down on one knee and then I burst into tears. But it was perfect - I'd never want to do it in a restaurant with violins and the maître d'...'

The pair have just sent out invitations to their engagement party. A Crack Baby-fuelled night out in their own club? Er, no: a barn dance for 200 people at the Hellenic Centre, off Marylebone High Street, with rustic-style canapés provided by one of his competitors. Yes, there's no denying it: Matt Hermer is a very unusual nightclub proprietor.