Oisín Rogers, The Devonshire: 13 Unconventional Leadership Secrets of the World’s Best Pub (these will blow your mind)

0:00Hello, hello. Hope you are wonderful. This episode is fucking sick. I'm so thrilled to welcome back the absolute legend. and Osh Rogers, who is the co-founder of The Devonshire. Yeah, Osh's second rodeo on the potty, and this episode blew my mind. Probably one of the most intriguing, esoteric, weird and wonderful conversations I've ever had on leadership, to be honest. On our first podcast, we talked at length about his upbringing, how he came to be this very venerated publicum. but this time I wanted to get inside his brain and really how has he built this hugely successful pub what are his leadership principles and there's just tons of stuff in this um I mean we go into you know your job as a leader is to take away the silent interferences the one percent improvement rule alone doesn't make a difference it's when all of these little one percent micro changes add up you have this huge um huge impact and success if you like rory sutherland if you like behavioral economics which i fucking love uh there's tons in that we go into why the devonshire have a three week um waiting list to create happy customers i absolutely love this there's a gorgeous little trick about why as soon as you order your bill uh at the devonshire straight away there's going to be a card machine there that goes deep into daniel kahneman's peak end rule which i love why service is black and white and hospitality is color again gorgeous danny mayer who's the absolute og um his salt shaker principle of leadership which is great versus osha's point north leadership principle so so so so good um i love this why the devonshire don't serve shots and this is a delicious lesson in uh you know you got top-down leadership and bottom-up leadership and Osh says something that's really stuck with me it's great ideas come from a single place not a committee so good um yeah there's tons in this it's literally a conversation laded with sparkling easter eggs of wisdom so please tuck in demolish and enjoy this uh ebbing and flowing oozing and flowing conversation um and yeah if you like it please do share it with a friend we literally grow this podcast one recommendation at a time and yeah give us a five star review if you can it all helps uh push it any out there and um yeah thank you so much uh osh thank you so much for having me back um absolutely loved our podcast last time um as i said it did really really well um and there was there was just bits i came out when i left last last time I came out and I was like, fuck's sake, those bits I didn't ask you.

2:47And I want to explore some of those today. But I think the first thing is last time we talked about how you had that sort of, before you opened this place, you had that sort of excitement, that almost shitting yourself feeling, which I think are two sides of the same coin. You've now jumped in. We're probably going to get this to go live around the year anniversary of this place opening. Yeah. And I'd love to know what have been some of the unexpected learnings you've gathered since jumping off the precipice and opening this place that, you know, if we did this a year ago, you thought, oh, I'm not going to be learning that.

3:29That's a difficult one, I think, because, you know, there's so many inputs and so much stuff going on that I think to actually sift it all out and say what I've learned is a difficult question. But what I will say is I've learned a lot of things. And, you know, people say you can't teach an old dog new tricks. But I've had to learn a lot of tricks in terms of actually the complexity of the booking system, the restaurant, the volume and all that stuff. But I think the favorite thing that I've learned is something that I probably knew all along. And that is that people really like a nice pub. They really like to be in a pub that's good, you know.

4:06and I've been working really hard on trying to keep it authentic, real and a place where people enjoy themselves and feel that. Yeah, because when you have that sort of meteoric success and it just absolutely boots off, how do you keep that sort of humbleness and humility in keeping it apart? I'm not really humble. I mean, I'm not. I'm delighted about how it's gone, But I think there would have been a real danger of going, okay, I've made it now. I'll just sit back and watch it. But I don't think that's ever in my nature anyway. We're always, between Charlie and Ash and I, we're always trying to tweak little bits around the edges to make sure it's always good.

4:49And we do beat ourselves up about, you know, you get the odd one-star review when someone doesn't like it. And you really sift it out and see what's happened and work out whether you can make things better. and we're constantly and always doing that. And I don't think that's going to change. So you just, when you get those bad reviews, because I think part of anyone who does something well, especially like in a creative pursuit, you've got to have a sort of mendacious little thug in your head saying that shit. I think I do have that. Really? It can be quite annoying at times. You lie awake at night going, you know, there's people waiting at the bar the other day for like two, three minutes at one stage.

5:26how do we pull that cork out of the bottle so they don't have to do it? And think, do you put an extra member of staff on or do you increase the flow rate of the beer? Do we need more taps? Do we need to do this? And, like, we spent a lot of capex on increasing volume on the bar in particular. So when you say capex, sorry. So cash, basically. Right, yeah, yeah. On doing things, you know. And same in the kitchen with bits of equipment and moving stuff around and thinking about, you know, how people flow through the building and taking tables out here, putting them in there, moving stuff around, making the zones a bit more comfortable where we can.

6:06And obviously you can see the green room continues to sort of change and evolve and turn into something. And I think that's probably a symptom of what our brains are like, that we will always try and add incremental little bits in where we can. What are some of those, because I completely agree, and I've got that voice in my head, where I listen to a podcast back and I'm like, that was shit. I can't even know if I've done 100 of these. I stop it. I listen back to it and I'm like, I can't. I should have asked that. And as I said to you when we did this last one, as I was walking out, I was like, fuck's sake, you didn't ask about the artwork.

6:40It's one of the most interesting bits about this place. But yeah, what are some of those little 1 % or 2 % tweaks that have then had, in your opinion, a massive change in perception? Do you know what? It's a really interesting question, though, because each one on its own doesn't make much difference. It's when they're all there that all of a sudden you feel in a different place, you know. And, you know, I can say that, you know, we put the Guinness Zero in or we added in an extra Budvar tap or we changed the configuration of the fridges so that the wine was closer to where. And each one is like minimal, like makes a tiny difference.

7:14But when you do 50 of them, then there's a difference. Yes. You know, and I thought I could probably, they're all boring things if I'm honest with you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But, you know, they are things. And the way between the three of you, because I think we talked last time about your chaos, Charlie's order and Ashley's perfection. I love that sort of that. But it's so true. And I'm not saying it happened totally by accident, but somehow that balance works between the three of us. And I think, you know, we get on, we're really tight, we're really close. But I think my chaos definitely frustrates the other two.

7:48Their perfection definitely frustrates me sometimes. but we need it. You need that sort of three balances in there. But that voice in your head, that's what I'm trying to get into, is that, as I said, that sort of just that thing that says, that's not good, that's not good, which is so ironic because that's what you need to create something super successful. I don't know. Whether you do need it or not, it definitely kind of... What does it sound like to you, that voice? I mean, it's always there. It's like a monotone in the background. you know i'm looking around i'm looking around the room now looking and saying that that that picture is slightly wonky i need to move that coffee cup the phone over there it's just like two degrees out i've always got this stuff going on and and i try and when i see things do do them straight away or as quickly as i can so the impact's there and it's it's about taking away um um sort of silent irritants things that irritate you in the eye or the or in one of your senses that you don't necessarily vocalize they're the things that make the difference and we look at those all the time or try to look at those all the time you know music been too loud or or or not loud enough or you know things like a a lingering smell in the background that's only just uh perceptible you'll never you never go oh i don't like smelling here but in your head you got it there and it can lead to kind of a negative thought about the business and i'm always watching out for those things but yeah that negative thought is what makes it better i remember i listened to a podcast of stormzy when he came off the stage at glastonbury absolutely fucking smashed it came off the stage like literally everyone was like going this is sick he came off the stage started crying he was like that was shit yeah it's like that little voice in your head going i didn't hit that no i didn't hit that no yeah loads of comedians i'll get that yeah loads of comedians um there's this comedian stavros forgotten his second name hilarious guy and he was saying that he'd released his special netflix and he'd wish he'd give it another four more months but the special went absolutely insane but it's that that creative i think you can't have creativity without as i say like a voice in your head that's just telling you looking for the the bad things well i think um i i've got great sympathy for creative people who do performances and do one thing like that i mean that stormsy thing that i'd beat myself up like mad about that you know even if everyone's telling me it's great and the problem he's got is he's only got one chance to do it whereas we're doing it every day and we're always adding you know even if we had 0.0001 every day over a long period you're getting an improvement and I like feeling those improvements how do you think like because obviously what was we got here super early say like 6 a.m.

10:33and you see the sort of um the underbelly of the place you know you've got the guy cleaning the floor yeah we're talking about that and i think going through london it's like that film uh 28 days later you know first thing in the morning yeah there's been it feels like there's a fucking apocalypse there's there's people sweeping this sweeping the streets yeah you're clearing away the aftermath yeah yeah and it does feel like a performance yeah so like how how would you say as i said we're just going with the flow like i'm just following my curiosity But how would you say the build-up of the Devontary is like a sort of theatrical performance?

11:07We're surrounded by theatre around here. I don't know. I always try and find the odd sort of synergy between what we do and the creative industries, but that's just my natural leaning. Yeah. And I kind of love it that we get painters, artists, poets, filmmakers uh songwriters singers performers all of those people kind of come in here and we buzz off that because there's a great there's a great feeling of you know doing something that that's making people feel good yes you know and you know and that's really what this room is about and when you said you borrow from the creative uh and arts i know there's like lots of like sing-alongs in here like yeah what are some of those one or two things you kind of pull from there and and weave into the way you run run this place because i would say this when i was as i told you i've been here for many piss up but on a on a friday like this is analogous to like kind of not a rave maybe that's too strong but there's there's like a feeling like that when it is uh raucous righteous it's all those intangible but it's definitely some sort of vibe yeah and what yeah what do you say about the people it's always about the people that are there and how they're how they feel and how they're made to feel and if everybody's happy in a room it's contagious it kind of feeds in and we we try and do that and try and facilitate that at least as much as we can the um last time we were here i was recording with you we finished at about 11 a.m on a monday and i remember vividly i was hilarious there was a couple outside well there's one guy had come in i think was having a couple of vodkas early on a monday morning sometimes happens there was a guy there was but then there was this couple who came in uh with a bottle of champers and uh you were like what are you celebrating and the guy goes fucking monday mate and i was like that is so funny but i'd love to know and i think people um people can teach you a lot about i think you can learn something from anyone right and you must have you must have been absorbed with so many interesting creative crazies beautiful misfits what have been some of the unusual and uh almost underrated conversations you've had with people here and what have they taught you about life well i think it happens all the time that you you kind of just impact or impinge on somebody and and they'll throw something back at you that becomes becomes useful i i might come back to that one because i can't i'll have a little think about it yeah that's interesting what you said is like that they'll they'll it's almost like that that volleying thing of they'll they'll give you something and it will come back it's almost like that yeah as i think as we said last time the octopati it's like being your tentacles being in the fucking thing there's loads of things yeah there's there's loads going on i'm trying to think about you know it's one of the best things is actually impacting them you know i mean you know when you meet somebody on the stairs and they go i've just had a really great anniversary meal and i didn't even know they were in and thank you so much and even though i wasn't directly involved you feel a great sense of pride about things like that and you know i was cycling here from farrington earlier on some guy on a racing bike comes up behind me he goes hi mate i've got no idea who he is and he goes you're the only person in london can wear a velvet jacket at eight o 'clock in the morning i mean who are you but obviously nice guy and you know obviously uses the pub or whatever but it's not it's it's nice to have those little vignettes those little moments you said early like you're not you're not humble um and you you've got an ego i think i'm not humble but maybe i am i think i think it's a very british thing to say in america we champ or not in america in america they champion people are trying to do do great things whereas i think in britain we have this tall poppy syndrome where we're like you know don't don't overstep the mark and i actually think you know anyone who sets up their own business you need ego to fucking bash through the obstacles how's your ego being a superpower first question second question how is your ego your enemy because i think they're two sides of the same coin yeah i think it's a good question i think i'm i think one of the answers i'd like to give straight away is that i've got a really good network of close friends who keep me from being a dickhead i think but you know you met my you met lara there earlier on he's already taking the piss about this setup yeah yeah yeah um and like you know people like you know my mate bob or uh you know mike or or even you know my brother connor he'll text me and go hope your fucking head isn't getting too big you bollocks you know what i mean that's right oh by the way i don't swear on you you can swear what you want mate yeah go for it yeah go for it but uh no i think that's useful to have you know uh uh an oversight you know my wife tracy as well she'll like go you know you need to just keep it on the level you know you're just a pub manager you know you're just running a single place and i don't really want to change because that's that's what i am oh yeah but also i think it's good to show i'm gonna show off like i think showing off is not a bad thing but how would you say um like how would you say ego has been important for for this to get in this place to where it is like what i I don't know.

16:17I think I was fortunate to have a long career of doing okay before and trusting my instincts when it came to the pub stuff in particular. You all right? Yeah, all good. You know, I spent long enough taking what looked like gambles in terms of doing stuff with the pub, whether it's the social media side or the product side or menus or pricing or, you know, special nights or, you know, doing things in a different way in terms of service, that I knew that even if my decision was slightly wrong, I was going to run with it and make it right. Such as? Such as, I don't know, maybe. I mean, one of the things you might want to mention is the way the reservations work.

17:10I think I made a decision that I didn't want to have like long-term reservations where people had booked four months in advance and we're going to be looking forward to it for that length of time and then coming with a really massively high expectation that they've done it so that that's the reason why we made a decision that you can only book three weeks in advance so that people you book and then you do the thing and you come along so there's not that building sort of thing and that sort of came from to be honest it came from a discussion i had with uh russell norman bless him yes yeah and he was doing something similar at bruto and i just thought fuck it i'll do it and it's ended up we've ended up making it work even though it kind of doesn't make sense yeah that's so clever like i was reading um something the other day but well it's like uh happiness is reality minus expectations i think expectations and it's a book called um oh fuck the name by a guy called morgan house a really interesting guy and he was basically saying the issue is is everything's got better in the world like you look at it compared to say you can get a fucking hot shower in america say 50 60 years ago which now we can do that but the issue is is that everything's got better but our expectations have gone up so much of what has to be especially with social media all this stuff i think that's so shrewd of just like saying right we've got three weeks here yeah you're not going to give you set these massive expectations because the bigger expectation the easier it is just to not meet that so i really feel that a lot because because i think you know social media and what happens on the internet really amplifies you know the expectation that people have and you know at the end of the day we sell sell pints steak and chips a few sides and some sauces you serve the steak and the chips and the sides and somebody does this unbelievably rt photograph and puts it on the internet going this is the best steak I ever had you got to go here blah blah blah of course it's good but is it the best in the world no probably not but it's good but you know people reading that going right I am going to have the best steak in the world and all of a sudden they come in and it's raining outside the pub might be too busy the table might not be ready when they come in they might sit in a in a table that's a bit noisier than what they wanted to be they might be too close to the table beside them And all of a sudden, their expectation for us to actually deliver them a really great time becomes way more difficult.

19:33Yes. Because the difference between what they expected and what happens is more tangible. Yes. Because of what someone else put on the internet a couple of weeks before. So, you know, we grapple with that quite a bit. And we try and watch out for those tables. And it does happen. Of course it does. Yeah, of course. If you're having a bad day, right, and you've had an argument with your boss or you hate work or the tube was stuck for like three hours or you got soaking wet before you come in. If you sit down in a restaurant, you ain't going to be happy. It doesn't matter how good it is. And I've said this as well before.

20:07I think when you're not happy sitting at a table at a restaurant and you get the food, it doesn't matter if it's the best food in the world. It doesn't taste right. It's almost when you're in that mood, you're looking for anything to go wrong. Yeah. How do you – so obviously that's going to happen, right? so people people come in and they could be as you say they could have an argument with the missus argument with the husband things going peak tongue at work like i love that little trick of managing expectations with the booking system how would you have anything else you've got in place any of these little incremental things that kind of um when some someone comes like bulging in or whatever that you can kind of ease them off a little bit well you know i mean i mean the danny mare other than a pint well do you know what pint is the best thing you're a glass of champagne we've got a medicine cabinet upstairs of of of stock that's not on the tills so we got some sweet wine we've got some madeira we've got some champagne yeah you know and i want to see that being used by the by the staff you know i don't want to look in that and have it be the same as it was yesterday so you've got medicine cabinet yeah so that is like you know so people will see that that's to no no no no they don't see it but what happens is if we say to see a table that's obviously pissed off it's up to us to go over there and go how can we help what's the story by the way here's a couple of glass champagne i hope you enjoy your evening and that hope quite a lot of the time that smooths it or at least makes it a bit better and then the expectations a bit easier to manage you mentioned danny mayer yeah he's uh so for yeah for listeners he's i think he's was it uni he does grammar city tavern in new york he does he set up shake shack He's like hospitality.

21:41He wrote a brilliant book called Setting the Table. And I think he probably wrote it in the 2000s. I need to bloody check that, of course. But it was sort of a Bible for me because it's one of those books that tells you what you already know in a really well put down way. And you go, ah, you know, he talked about guest experience, guest expectation, what the difference between service and hospitality is. what's that for you difference between service and hospitality well i think to quote danny mayer um service is black and white hospitality is color yes you know it's uh it really is about how people feel but i've gone on to ban the word hospitality from the business i don't know whether i said that to you before no no go on i feel the word's been hijacked a bit by corporates and government and it's become a political word it's political word as in people talk about hospitality right which which encompasses everything from cinemas to hotels all of that whereas i think when when we're running individual entrepreneurial brilliant businesses where we're really trying to make people feel something then we need another phrase that doesn't put us in the same group as you know a chicken shop or you know or or a high street or that phrase be we're in the looking after people business yes you know yes yeah i think hospitality is too and also it just doesn't make it i listen to something it's a weirdly ugly word ugly word yeah it's like it doesn't say it's it's not a beautiful it's not a beautiful word and also someone was saying this about ai is ai needs a rebrand because it's freaking the shit out of people people thinking when i was young ai was a bloke who came to fertilize cows yeah they were saying they should rebrand ai to co-intelligence so you rebrand it to co-intelligence it's like this is going to help you get more smile it's going to help you do i've got no idea what's going on yeah neither neither but i'm just but i completely agree is the word hospitality is too too reductionist and for like it it's it's blanket word that you know what's happening here is so different to fucking mcdonald's around the corner but i do think going back like 20 odd years when when danny mayer began to use that word to describe what we do it meant something different and in that book setting the table which i still um give copies to our restaurant managers and our senior people you know you go in there and you you look at he he spent a lot of time looking at how he learned what he did and danny is somebody with a huge brain who really understands that how people feel when they leave his businesses defines what his business is and i know that sounds really simple but that is really what we do you know because we're retailers right so which means you know retail means you sell a product every other retailer on the high street or wherever you go in you buy the product and the value of what you bought is in a bag that you walk out or at least you've got a tangible thing it's a pair of shoes or a jacket or a hat or i don't know makeup or whatever that whatever you're buying it's there and your value is there whereas you come to us you spend 50 quid on a load of pints with your mates or you come and have a hundred pounds a table for two or a thousand pounds table for two when you pay that bill and you walk out you don't have a bag you don't have a tangible thing all you have is a memory of what you did and a feeling of being full or sated or otherwise and that's what you take away you know and and we're we're in the in in and also you've you've spent a big chunk of your time to do that yeah and we want to make sure that people walking out have feel value for that time and that that intangible thing with they bought which has now disappeared becomes a memorable thing that can be traded as a story to friends family work colleagues that sort of thing and you know that can't be described in one word that's not hospitality yeah you know do you know what I mean yeah for sure I think he's he's got in that book um and I've read I've read the book unreasonable hospitality which is by Will Gurdier I think yeah yeah yeah really great great yeah really fucking good book apart from the bit with the Maharachi band in the fridge I'm not sure about that yeah yeah it's weird that's another story but he he talks Danny Mayer talks about um the moving the salt principle you know have you heard that but remember that so he's basically saying he's in new york and he's he's got his whole idea in his head about what he wants i don't know what the restaurant was he wants it to go to be this place and he's he's got this vision his head but he's trying to get the staff to to be on board with that vision and he gets in the guy from is it sparks steakhouse who comes in he calls me as i look man i need some help with this he goes right danny um take everything off the table and put the salt shaker in the middle because where do you want the salt shaker where a bit like you with the phone mate you know you're and that phone is where do you want that salt shaker and danny goes there and then the guy goes right and then he grabs the salt shaker moves it there yeah and he goes your job as a leader is to constantly be just showing people this is where the salt shaker goes this is how i want it to and i think the whole point of that what he's saying is it's not necessarily it works on two levels it's one it's moving the salt shaker and it's show them and remind them i think that's remind them is what he says in the book but the other part is you've got to understand and have the empathy for your staff is that and i think this is no one's going to care about as your um as much as about your business as you so that's that's a fact of life i think it's a really works on two levels it's like one show people and really move it into the middle this is how we do things yeah but the other thing is have empathy it's like it's not their business what would you say is your the the austin rogers uh like moving the salt shaker well i'll give you that one quite easily i think an awful lot of businesses make the mistake of assuming that the staff know what you're doing and how to do it and i think it's up to us as leaders to explain why we're doing things and how we do them and you know our why is we're in the business of making people feel comfortable safe happy and well looked after sure and how we do it is a million different things you know if I have a group of staff and we're doing a bit of training one of my ones is I'll just go right everybody point north and they'll go you need to make a decision point north and everybody will go there, there, there, there, there and I'll go well let me tell you something north is that way right now everyone point north

28:53so when they know where it is and what it is they're much more likely in fact 99 to do what they're supposed to do but if you don't tell them and they don't know then you're going to get 10 different results yeah i interviewed um margo henderson she was saying that one of fergus's things like how he got saint john going in the day it was tell them tell them again tell them again and it's that same thing as your north yes north pointing north what happens if say everyone was pointing north and this is moving the salt shaker and then suddenly you know you're in the chaos of a pub it's a cacophony of like craziness and people's fucking north star starts moving well how do you like how do you tweak that like is that a thing i i i think really the answer to that one is you've got to give them as much help and information as you can and there comes a stage when a member staff becomes trustworthy in terms of what they do you know obviously someone comes in who's worked somewhere else and has their own ways of doing things they're going to take weeks to become trustworthy and once you reach the trustworthy threshold where i'm confident that you're doing the right thing most of the time and that you get it and you understand how the flow works and you understand how things work and you're likely to have juniors asking you questions and you're likely to give them the right answer what I say to people at that level is I now trust you to make decisions so when you need to make a decision about how to do something what I want you to do is think what do you think Osh would do and do that and if you're totally wrong I'm still going to back your decision but we're going to discuss it and if you're right brilliant so crack on is there and that empowers people to just get on with things is there an example i mean obviously not no names or anything of where that has happened because that's a beautiful uh nuanced sort of leadership principle of you build the trust and i think and you you give it you give it you give it to them yeah and then and then if they if they balls it up it's that's it gives them the freedom to say right whatever decision i make is right but if it goes wrong like what's the nuance there of how you correct that and i suppose you support the decision that's most important even if it's completely fucking wrong is there an example um i think i think things like um an easy one is we don't take tables more than eight people unless they're on feasting menu yeah sometimes people don't want feasting menus so you can make a judgment and go a la carte for nine people that's fine but sometimes you look and you go oh fuck me there's a there's an a la carte here of 12 people what's happened and then you go and find out and they say oh they really pressurized me and they want me to do it and i spoke to kitchen and that's okay and you know that sort of thing's okay as long as kitchen's okay with it the table's okay you're not too busy at the same time and you're able to do it and that that's an example of someone you know using their initiative to get on with it and working outside the rules to make the guests feel looked after and happy and fine and i think that's great how important is it to say no to a guest the whole thing about you know the customer's always right all that shit yeah like but i think it does if you say yes to sorry if you yeah saying no is actually important because as you say it could be suddenly nine people or 10 people or 12 people on the a la carte menu yeah that could actually have a knock-on effect the rest of how everyone else feels like how important is it to actually like train your team to say no or not necessarily no but like i think i think they're good at it i mean the thing about saying no is it's it's a red line stuff you know the the most likely person to say you're going to say no to is someone who's rude or horrid or too drunk or badly behaved or something like that and once they step over there and for example a customer tells you to fuck off which happens believe it or not yeah yeah yeah occasionally you just gotta be able to just go no you fuck off that's that you're going you're not getting served i'm really sorry our relationship's over now catch you later see you later mate yeah that's amazing well that happens believe it or not even here people I'm very okay.

33:22Not as often as you might think, but it does happen on occasion. One of the quotes I love is by Trevor Gulliver. I think it's Gulliver. Trev, yeah. Good friend of Trev's, by the way. Don't say anything bad about Trev. No, no, it's all good things. Don't worry, mate. But he says, I think St. John's in their 30th year and they're putting all this stuff on social media, all the storytelling. I think they're copywriting or whoever does that deserves a medal because it's gorgeous. But not short of stories. Oh, so good. but he says one of the things that's been recurring i've seen is always yet never the same yeah and i think it's that kind of links back to your point at the beginning mate about the tinkering and i think and also i've seen it here we've got the rubber soul album the beatles up there the beatles are my favorite band of all time i'm obsessed with beatles and i think what they did better than anyone is they were always the same yet never the same like the the their first album compared to like Rubber Soul to Revolver Soldier.

34:19Like you listen to some of the music, I don't know what that is. Is it one of the songs where they like reversed everything and we're using all the weird synths and it's just like you're listening to it, you're like, what the fuck is this? So different, but it is still kind of the same. I think the Beatles are the best at always, never the same, like constantly reinventing. And we've talked about this place before being timeless. But how are you trying to do the always, yet never the same with this place? I don't think we think about it in that way. Interesting. Actually, I think the always is important, and I've talked about that, about the timelessness of it, that people don't feel that it's trendy.

34:59I think that's important. I think there's a feeling of comfort and safety in what we do that's not trying to be zeitgeisty or to, you know, trying to put twists on things or trying to reinvent things or trying to re -educate the guests that this is a different way of doing things. you know that we were careful that we don't do that that we just make the best pint taste consistently right make the best chips taste consistently right make sure that the experience of whether it's going to the toilet or you know sitting down at a table or you know um or coming into the green room and having the music is something special and and in a consistent way but I suppose the never the same thing might be in here this is this is evolving chaos yeah we have all sorts happening here in terms of music art presentations poetry all sorts of bits and pieces the yeah I want to talk about the artwork because I said it was like fuck sake I was kicking myself I was like why didn't I ask about that yeah fuck them all is like something I've got a chip on my shoulder right and I was just told as a kid like you're you're not going to do anything like just don't even bother going to uni so i've still got that i've got this fuck them all syndrome right where i'm just like well even with this i'm like you know like this time we've got bigger cameras up fuck you if you doubt me fucking game on i'd love to know who told you who's who said you're not good enough oh i don't i i can't think of that that being an issue um for me i just always wanted to push to be better um i i pretty much ignore people who who are negative or diss me in any way and like I you know I worked in corporate for pub companies for 30 odd years and I can't think of a time when people said I wasn't good enough people might have said don't agree with you and I think you're a mentalist but I always tried to prove those people wrong by continuing on the track I was doing and I managed to prove myself through sales and profitability and happy customers what's the example when people said you're a mentalist um i mean i mean if you go back to the guinea and i said i went to them and i said during the pandemic the pizza express has gone bust across the road can't we just speak to the landlord get the bloody keys and and run it and they basically said that's not what we do you you can't do that.

37:33So I went personally to the landlord on Bruton. So you were going to run the Pizza Express as a Pizza Express? No, we ran it as the Guinea. So basically we got the keys of the place, put white tableclots on the whole thing, set up a service station, and we were running the food from the Guinea kitchen across the road and serving people in there. And we did it for a year really successfully. And like when I said we were doing that and we're going to, I mean, imagine bringing plates of food across the Bruton place in the rain with umbrellas, you know, it sounds fucking stupid and daft and a bit like off the wall but we did it and it was really profitable and you know when i said it first to the guys the guys there they went that ain't happening mate that is just not normal behavior and you want the landlord won't give you the place anyway and you won't be able to do it because of xyz and a b and c i just went i would do it anyway and how did you how did you convince them to like did you just go and how because i think a lot of people i think pushing against the grain or doing things differently is a real strength but i think people can have the idea but either lack the bravery to do it or or up selling people on the idea i think selling people ideas is a is a superpower it's what danny mayer does so well yeah but how do you how do you do that if what would your advice be for someone who's like you've got this amazing idea but they can't push against it do you know i mean um so i was having a conversation about this this morning i think some of the best leadership and the best ideas come from a single place they don't come from a committee of people making a decision and i think pubs are good for that when when you're the landlord because i'll just go right this carpet's got to go and change the carpet i'm going to do a design for the carpet and the carpet's going to be different and you crack on you do it and you live with the decision and you continue to live with that decision and you make it work and you make it look nice i'm not sure carpet's the best idea but you know i think when you go and look at when you go and look at pubs for example you look at a i don't want to name a particular chain or whatever but you look at a pub belonging to a company that's got 300 pubs or 2 000 pubs and you go in there you can see and feel that the decision making has been made by committee that there's that everything is kind of lacking in spirit and style it's very flat and it's very similar to the other ones that they do the the pictures on the wall while they look like they might be interesting when you go really close they're not fantastic iterations of what they are the lighting's never right uh the the the way that people flow through the building always feels slightly uncontiguous there's there's a feeling that you know the space isn't right and and i think a lot of that comes from the fact that it's not done by a single person that it's done by loads of people and how did you when you're working in a big kind of corporate group how did how did you become because i feel from what i don't know i'm asking this is it feels like you kind of had your own sort of free reign in that when you're working for those big corporates how did you get yourself in that situation i did it over years and years by just um being pretty pig-headed about doing what i wanted to do and proving i was right by increasing sales and by the end they were just like just like just fucking leave them alone it's not it's not worth it i remember a boss saying to me uh a long time ago about 15 years ago thing about you is if you see a door you always kick it open you know i thought that was a good analogy for what i would what i'm like as to manage you know always just fucking want to see what's on the other side and barge through and try and try and do it i love the idea of of an idea comes from a single person and last time we talked about sort of top-down leadership which you're like like you're you're you actually and charlie like the order uh chaos and perfection is like how how a tree goes down and i suppose that's your north pointing pointing north is your example of that but then i love businesses that really encourage bottom-up ideas you know like the starbucks um the starbucks writing on the cup was one single person that didn't come from the top down yeah that was what one one single person said right the queue's fucked i I mean, when it needs to create a moment of magic, I'm going to write someone's name on the cup.

42:04Yeah. And bang, there you go. The whole lid thing, the Starbucks lid was really interesting because back in the day, the lids were all like, you know when you go like proper shitty polystyrene cups? Yeah. And they, in Howard Schultz, the founder of Starbucks, he would have made way more money if he just painted that cup, the cup that everyone fucking uses now. Yeah, yeah. But he was saying, so that was, the cup was a top-down thing, but the bottom up was as i say the writing on writing on people's names so ripping people's names on the cup you were doing bottom-up innovation in young's you were saying right we're going to go and rip open pizza express i'm going to do it you know that works single single people single moments of genius how do you encourage your team i'm always watching out for that here and so do you do you encourage how do you how do you encourage it though because i think it's so easy it's all about empowering you know and you know you know when you make that decision you do what you think I would do then that stuff actually happens by itself I remember when we opened first I think we were only open a couple of days in November last year and we'd had a busy night everybody left and the bar team were at the bar and I've just gone to congratulate them and one of the guys said to me he said what is it about shots?

43:24and I said what do you mean? he said these people coming in ordering like eight Sambucas or five tequilas or ten slippery nipples what's that about? and this is a lad who's come over from Dublin who hasn't really seen this culturally before and I said well you know it's just a thing people have shots he says but do people not have shots in Dublin is that not really a thing? not particularly not in the pubs these guys worked right and so I said well what's the problem he said every time they do it they're either dickheads when they ask or they become dickheads straight after and i said maybe he said yeah i'm telling you they're all shouting at each other and doing this and the other and i don't get it and i said well what do you think we should do he said we shouldn't sell them and i've gone okay let's give it a go and do you know what we don't sell shots and it completely changes the mood of the place i think and I think it was a seminal moment for that.

44:25There's something about the fact that we don't do, we don't really do cocktails either. Most people have what you might call proper drinks, the pints, glasses of wine, gin and tonic. So they're slow drinking. There's none of that frenetic, let's get pissed attitude and that completely changes the environment and that was a complete bottom up thing. Yeah, yeah. Any other ones that have been, that have bubbled up? Give me a minute. You know, simple operational things that people come up with. Yeah, that's what I mean. How we polish the glasses in the restaurant. You know, we've got this weird glass polishing machine that someone saw in Boland that we've just bought five of them.

45:06And you've probably seen it on social media. These great big brushes go around. They're quite cool. I'm trying to think of other wee bits and pieces. There's lots of examples. Come back to it. the um rory southern was telling me about um this restaurant in i think it was the will gurdier book and he i can't say his name but um he was saying that um the way they became the best restaurant in the world is they focused on they wanted to look at what their competition weren't doing almost where where the gap was and they talked about um the peak end rule which is a guy Daniel Kahneman who's a behavioral economist behavioral economist which based what Rory does and he basically says the moment of an experience our satisfaction levels are greatest at the peak which is in the middle and the end yeah so that's why you know when you go to a gig the reason fucking stone rate roses leave uh you know waterfall till last is because they want people to come out and you're like buzzing if they ended up with like one of their b-side tracks you'd be walk away but like for fuck's sake yeah it's that peak and rule and he says yeah loads he can't rule that that's there's a lot of people think about that in restaurants yeah what would you say yeah the souffle i mean it's pretty pretty pretty cool i think and you know we spend a lot of time making sure that those desserts are pretty amazing um and also the whole the bill thing i mean one of the things that annoys me in a restaurant is when you order the bill and they bring you the bill and then they disappear again that's so fucking annoying i mean why so I mean it's always been since we've done it that when you bring a bill to table you've got the pdq machine yeah because when someone orders a bill guess what they want to do they want to go you know how often does that happen yeah I mean seems so bloody obvious but I think probably 70 80 percent of restaurants you ask for the bill they bring you the bill and fuck off again leave you there too what are you supposed to do yeah yeah yeah just look because you've eaten everything yeah you've probably got nothing left you actually ask for the book because you want to pay yeah You know, I don't know.

47:06Yeah, that's so interesting. I want to talk about some of, like, who do you call when things are going peep-tonk? Oh, I've got a really great name. I mean, between the three of us, we've talked about me, Charlie and Ash. Yeah, who's on the periphery of that? But, you know, Ben Chapman. Ben Chapman. Mountain Brat, Smoking Goat, Kiln, and my great friend Brian Hannan. I mean, Brian and I go back a very long way because he came from pubs. He came from corporate world. You know, did Mitchells and Butlers, was in charge of thousands of pubs at one stage. Went on to do Selfridges, then sort of retired, then set up this so amazingly entrepreneurial Super 8 business with Ben.

47:57What's the Super 8 business? So that's Mountain, Kiln, Smoking Goat, Brat, and there's another one. But I'll remember it in a minute. Oh, Clemson's Arch as well. Yeah. So, I mean, they've got a team, a huge team. They really understand the corporate side of things. They really understand guest experience. They really understand food. Obviously, they've got Meadu, Thomas Parry working with them, you know. So he's such a great pool of amazing talent. And, you know, I think, you know, I'll meet Brian for a pint or a cup of tea probably once a week or twice a month at least. We spend a lot of time together just bouncing stuff around.

48:40But he'd be very close to us. What was the stuff you sort of bounced around in the last couple of weeks? You know, we've got to manage things like where are we going to be in a year's time? how do we develop and you know look at uh continuing to to to grow i mean one of the things that keeps me awake at night is what happens if we're no we're no longer seen as as as attractive you know if all of a sudden people go ah we'll move on to the next thing um and that worries me point yeah like that it's something because it's like it's almost having such so much success so quick it's like yeah that's that's that there's actually a price to that it's a burden yeah it is and you know even like six eight months ago we thought when's it going to die off when are people going to stop coming and how do we deal with that if we either flatten off or go into any kind of decline because obviously you've got investment in staff and suppliers equipment all the stuff you know and you know you want to have contingency for stuff and you know even stuff like you wake up at night and you go what are the things could really fucking screw us up you know what happens if it burns down or there's a terrorist attack or somebody clears out the bank account or you know this there's a pandemic or there's a what are all the things that the crises that we might have to manage and you know we've we've actually spent time looking at all those what are some of those in terms of keeping this place attractive um i think that's a bit of a more esoteric question and we just have to hope that it is but i think it comes back to what we discussed earlier earlier on if we are always constantly looking at the edges and trying to tweak and make the incrementals better you know work on the consistency of the offer and make sure that the guests experience is always improving then fingers crossed we should be okay but i could be wrong i don't know we can only do our best yeah no so that's um in terms i think again i think it's another rory southern thing he talks about the in the edges where no one really focuses yeah they're the most important bits by the way when you add them all up yeah what are some of those sort of those edge peripheral edges things i think it is everyone focuses on everyone's in the middle right i think with everything and that's why you get kind of the i think we talked about last on the modernization of pubs is everyone's looking here but actually all the interesting bits so the almost like the burnt crust do you mean that's where it gets really yeah interesting or nuanced like what would you say those are

51:24don't know don't know um it's it's it's a million things things like you know making sure the doors don't squeak making sure the paintings kept the the is is kept up to date and that the the things aren't chipped when you look at them closely you know making sure you've got enough glassware in the place for when you get really busy there's nothing worse than going into a pub right when it's really really busy and you ask for a pint which is eight quid or six quid and they give to you in a shitty little plastic glass and you go why am i having plastic oh we're a bit busy mate yeah that is you know and that we would oh that would that would kill me to do that so you know things like that so the corollary to that is i've got a thousand pint glasses hidden washed ready so when it really goes off that we can actually fill the shelves and nobody ever drinks out of plastic glass you know it's little bits like that that you wouldn't necessarily think about and other businesses would go oh we don't have enough glasses so there you go there's a shit plastic glass at exactly the time you're at your most busy when you've got the opportunity to really impress people it's all those as you say it's all those one percent little things that add up if you're a challenger brand that's absolutely killing it in d2c but you're struggling to crack retail then you've got to listen to this maybe you've got an ocado listing maybe you've got a whole foods listing maybe you're absolutely killing it in selfridges maybe you're absolutely killing it in your farm shop and your indies.

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53:32Northstar are not like another data company that force feeds you data like Fuagua that act like a NASA space mission. It's super, super simple to use. Their team are amazing and they actually get the challenger mindset northstar are your shortcut to smarter decisions stronger pitches and investor confidence all built specifically for challenger brands like yours you don't need a massive sales team you need northstar link in the show notes click that link and you'll be able to book a free demo with northstar highly highly recommend that and thank me later how does your brain because i feel like um how does your brain sort of cope with that constant thinking of like the downside does that impact your enjoyment of this place or how do you balance those two things i don't think it does i think it's i see i always hold them at the same time i hold it yeah and it is part it's the job and i've done it for that long that i've kind of got a bit of balance on it and i'm able to pull away thankfully but another one i've been thinking about as well recently is you know you know it gets very very busy the toilets downstairs get really really busy there's a couple of times during the day like about six o 'clock in the evening before before the the theatres start and then when the theatres finish again at 10 30 when everybody piles into the toilet so we have to think about how do we close that bottleneck and how do we keep it so that if somebody's going from the restaurant down there that it doesn't look like it's blown up down there and it's full of toilet roll and people have thrown all this stuff all over the place there's no soap and you know it's war all over so we've of you know we've dealt with that by putting a full-time person on there just to make sure it's right all the time and those little things do make a tiny difference i think and then on the on the enjoyment part like what's how do you uh and i think it comes from experience you said it's like you said in terms of the the negative it's not negative bias it's that constant improvement thing yeah which is as you say it's almost so just baked into your modus operandi of like constantly looking at how can we improve things what's what can be going wrong on the other side of that how do you create the um almost switch off for that i'm asking that selfishly because at the minute with everything i'm doing i'm constantly looking like that needs to improve that needs to improve and it sort of takes away from the enjoyment of it sometimes I don't think it does I think I think I think when when you look at something that is either a tiny problem or a big problem and you realize what that is and then you make a strategy to fix it and then you fix it.

55:56there's something really quite cathartic about that anyway and it's way better than leaving it obviously because that's the that's where you that's where you get screwed if you if there's something that's niggling you in the background that's always there you don't deal with and i think i've learned over over a long time that i try and deal with them straight away as soon as i see it i'm on it i have to be because because the flip side of that would drive me bananas if i wasn't able to do yes you've got a really the the sort of the i hope to say this right the publican perspective i think is a really interesting perspective in that you see um you see out there and as i said i've been part of in the mix for so many times and it is this real kind of this um humdrum and like this yeah this this energy and feeling when you're out there And I think in the press, there's this whole thing of Matt Ridley talks about how bad news travels fast and good news travels slow.

56:56So we're literally to survive. We like bad news because it's like it helps us from adaptive, you know, for example, if you if if you're a fucking caveman and there's a if you start looking at your food and you're happy with your food. but there's a fucking lion there you've got to look at the negative oh there could be a lion there to keep you going so bad news travels quickly and we're obsessed with bad news that's what gets papers going but here you see it and you see outside of all the news outside the social media you kind of get this sort of microcosm of if this may be a bit of a push but kind of humanity in some respects loads of people i think that's a good that's a good observation that i've i actually find that i've got to extract myself from that quite often because i'm i'm in a bubble here you know and people are having a nice time all the time yeah and it can be it can be a lot it really can be a lot and i don't get time to watch tv or read the news so quite a lot of the time i don't know a lot about what's going on outside yeah and sometimes when i do go and i take a day off and i go and put on the news i go what the fuck is that yeah yeah honestly it so so it is and i think i think something else that comes from that is that there is there is something going on here where people feel yeah yeah different and they feel happy and stuff and and they're having a really nice time i've also noticed that in the pub i don't know if you've noticed this people aren't on their phones like they are everywhere else they're actually genuinely having a chat and yeah and and talking about doing the whole split the g bollocks and talking about you know random bits and pieces and having fun and and and i'm really proud that that's happening but i think it's pretty unusual that's what i'm that's what i'm trying to get to is it's like you've got this really unique perspective it's almost you're in this not cuddly utopia but as you say the news is people the news is going to be bad whenever you look at it because it's because it fucking sells and gets attention from an adaptive sort of uh evolutionary perspective but what has um yeah why what has this sort of taught you about humans and human nature from just being in this in this wonderful place most people i think i think most most people are really lovely it's one of the one of the things i'm i'm fond of i mean yeah yeah it depends on your point of view i think everyone can be a dickhead but there's something happens here where even dickheads don't behave like dickheads out there usually and and that's a great pleasure for me what i've what i've observed is i've said this thing to my mate today is like a bit of a joke is i hate people but i love human beings yeah you know like people like people whereas i feel like when you're here it feels like everyone's being a human being it's not people like you know yeah the tube in hear today was like fucking people just like oh this is fucking dumb head in but actually when you yeah it's kind of people and human beings aren't necessarily the same thing what are some of the um so back to sort of the art stuff which we just kind of we jumped into the fucking stuff which fuck them all which i still love yeah what are some of the pieces and what i'm going to do is i'll take pictures after this and we'll we'll pull it onto the screen well the thing is i told you before that this room was an afterthought this didn't uh this wasn't part of the design of of the of the pub it came along what was it going to be originally just it wasn't going to be part of our purchase so this was the shop next door right which was on which is the same landlord and during the process of us having already designed the pub they said to us we think this is a bit too small for shop do you want to add on to your lease and i immediately said yes without having any clue what we were going to do with it and at the time obviously that was blocked off so you couldn't get through so the only way through would have been through there so we had to work out how to break it through get fire capacity done on it and see that we could get it for license and then make a decision on it and i just basically said well we'll just do it as the back room and then we'll we'll wing it from there and actually when we opened this the carpet was down but there was nothing on the wall uh and it was just a blank space and we started with a blank space and i always wanted to have somewhere where creative people feel comfortable and that was the baseline and the second uh line in in it was that i have an obsession with soho and particularly the old colony rooms which colony room the colony room was a club that started in soho in the 40s or 50s right uh on the first floor of 41 a dean street where i coincidentally keep my flat oh and uh there's there's a couple of really great books about it and how amazing it was i mean what was so amazing about it everybody went there so basically the pubs used to close between three and six so at three o 'clock anyone who wanted to have a drink had to be a member of a club colony was one of the most uh frequented and certainly the most debauched one right so there was the academy there was blacks there was uh there are dozens of clubs and so of which only a couple uh remain colony closed in 2005 but the columns colony famously had this green wall so i copied the green color from there and there's there's photos of who went there everybody from Michael Caine to David Bowie to Francis Bacon to Laurence Olivier to all of the Brat Pack to all of the West End actors Tracy Emin like you know it just it must have been a den of chaos but one of the things that happened there was that the artists of the time from Bacon to Emin to all of the um damien hurst they would donate their art to the colony in exchange for bar tabs so they'd be drinking there all the time with this incredible art all over the place and i i didn't set out to have art of that quality but somehow we've managed to get a few pieces as we went along well it's what's mad is from what i think when i was here last in april that's wait as you said that that is like always but never the same in terms of this little microcosm yeah the green room is that because it's like there's way more stuff on here than last time what would you say we don't own most of it actually so when we started off i asked a few friends i said listen if you've got any art at home that you'd like to lend us so scott collins owner of meat liquor actually gave us the fuck them all which was the very first thing to go up yeah and actually this video of the first irish session here where they're all playing their fiddles around one table there's not even any furniture in here the only thing is like bare walls and fuck them all and they're all fucking playing that is such i might publish that position yeah because it's it's only a year ago yeah you know and since then i've like asked everybody i know um who's got bits and pieces so you know it's it's it's amazing what's going on that's an original black lorat there so black lorat i don't know that so black lorat is a french parisian graffiti artist who started in the 70s in in paris and uh did an awful lot of stuff that looks like banksy before banksy had done it so he had rats and bits and pieces all over there really great artist and uh my favorite thing about this is this is um lent to us by a customer by the name of marcus white who's a fabulous guy he obviously bought this for his house and it's not fitting in his house is it so he's gone to me he's gone to me mate you can you can you can borrow it if you want and i've gone yeah and actually when we put it up first i wasn't sure about it because it's so mental and so big and whatever but we've grown into it and what was really interesting was that black larat who's probably in his 60s now and a lovely french guy right he was doing a huge exhibition in london uh in the summer it might have been june or july so the gallery owner got in touch with me and said i understand you got a black claret on on display and we said yeah and he said do you mind if we come down and have a look they've come down they loved where it is and they took a couple of photographs and everything and about two days later i came in and i noticed that on the right bottom left hand side is this white rat which had appeared so he actually came in and tagged it without us knowing the guy that's so sick you see the white on the outside that's on the frame and it casts a shadow over the uh oh my god over the picture which is really cool but he's also tagged the outside of the pub as well there's a rat above the window which you'll see on the outside which i thought was great yeah what does that actually like i know there's not to get all fucking hearty farty wanky here but i do i am really interested in this stuff what what was your mate who passed you like why did he buy that big fuck of painting in the first place i think you'll have to ask marcus yeah but i do think that is it's got it's got a great symmetry i think he can be what you want it to be obviously that anonymous mask is in there which is kind of a recurring theme in in in in in in current culture at the minute you've got the whole when you say when you say that the the anonymous mask that's the thing I'm going to put this on the screen for people.

1:06:14Can you see in the middle of the screen? Yeah, but how is that relevant now? I don't know. But it's, you know, Anonymous is sort of, you know, all that anti-Trump thing, all that sort of hacker stuff going on in the background. You know, a guy protecting himself with a big screen. I think, you know, you can take any kind of sort of symmetry from society from that. But apart from that, I love the colour. I like how it's set up. but it's a beautiful piece. What are some of the other pieces that have really like speak to your soul? Well, I mean, one of my favourites is this one here, which is a piece done by Ed Sheeran.

1:06:58And I knew that he was doing this art. Now, the great big colourful one that looks like Damien Hirst's Jackson Pollock. Yeah. So Ed's been, during the pandemic when he wasn't performing, he did loads and loads of art. and i saw that that he'd done it and i said to him mate if you've got a spare one uh will you drop it in and fuck me he came in the side door one day and said right that's for you so we've put it up and he signed it there it says only guinness in the back room edge here yeah this one here the the the liam gallagher one as well it's a bit of history behind that one because that is by rob monday and uh rob monday's a pretty well-known artist now and he specializes in holograms and lenticulars and that was taken in 1997 yeah and his studio was in the back garden of the pub that i ran at the time which was the marlborough enrichment and uh the gallagher brothers came into the pub on the day they were doing the shoot and uh it was all a bit mad at the time but i actually fell out of contact with rob for 20 odd years how come just well just you You know, you move on from the pub.

1:08:07He became, he had family, became quite famous for his art, did his thing. I was always aware that he was there, but we hadn't seen each other. He walked in the pub like six months ago, eight months ago and gone, I've got something for you. That's so sick. What I find so interesting is how nothing is truly original. Everything is reinvented. And I think you had the idea from this place from, what was it? The Colony Rooms. The Colony Rooms. Again, I'm so shit with names, mate. Sorry. the french guy is is an inspiration for banksy yeah i think i think i think it's worth going back to that because banksy has actually written that everything no there's nothing that i've done that black larat hasn't done before you know so it's almost an admission that you know he was more than an inspiration or back to the beatles as a obviously they think people think they're the most inspirational band of all time there's fucking brilliant podcast by this bloke up in stoke funnily enough who goes through rock bands and and how they create all the songs yeah and he'll go through um like i don't know any any a pick a beat or song and he'll say this is what they were listening to and he listens back to it like oh my god they are inspired by those three things out of them to get david bowie's got a quote which is the only art i'll ever study is that art i can steal from which i think's sick because it's just like you know whether it's you with uh i think that i think there's a huge element of truth in that yeah that you take the best i I try and take the best of what I've seen elsewhere and amalgamate it into the thing that I'm doing.

1:09:36If I see a really good idea, I'll nick it. Of course I will. What ideas have you nicked? Oh, and you were going to ask that. Let me think. Can I come back to you? Yeah, of course. I'd love to talk about the, as we were saying at the beginning, these sort of unusual characters. because I know we talked about this is a sort of yeah cuddly utopia against the sort of the brashness of the outside and almost like a that fucking battering ram thing um what would you say are some of the yeah the really interesting people you've met it doesn't necessarily it could be some of these artists that are in here it could have been like what of those that they taught you um well you know you think of of people like um damien priestly the artist he's he's a soho stalwart he's got pieces all around i think we've got three or four damien priestly this is this one here which you'll see you probably show later is gaston burlamov who's the guy is that the one on the this this guy here with the glass of wine right uh he was the landlord of the french house friend of de gaulle uh brings back that whole story of how the French house was, you know, the seat of the British side of the French resistance during the war.

1:10:59Wait, say that again. So during World War II, French resistance used the upstairs of the French house in Dean Street to have their meetings about how to beat the Nazis. And de Gaulle actually visited the French house a couple of times after the war and was friends of Gaston. um actually but at that time the pub was called the york minster yeah and they changed to the french house then after that because of its historical connotations with uh france having uh that's crazy and when all these when all these creatives come into this room like i think i was speaking to um have you ever tried the brand bativo yeah yeah yeah they're on my podcast the other week they're amazing people but he was a real uh he was a sort of flavor he would do these bars basically and he um for lavish events funnily enough with loads of creative so he did prince harry and megan's wedding did calvin harris's wedding he did ellie golding's wedding and he basically got this weird brief saying um we want you to create something so fucking unique and just sort of blow people away so he was at these weddings with all these crazy sort of creative people yeah and we were talking it's almost like this fizzing sort almost like an effervescent feeling of just stuff colliding.

1:12:18And they were trying this drink, and everyone was at this wedding saying, mate, you need to turn this into a brand. And that's how the brand was born. But yeah, you have this kind of beautiful space here. What are some of the things you sort of observed from just loads of creative people colliding? I've certainly observed that. And without naming any names, we've had quite a few, you know, very well-known people come in here and join in. And that's been a huge thing. One of the things, we don't like photography. So we found that people from the Jonas Brothers to Youngblood to Ed to Lewis Capaldi are able to sit down, kick back, and just be normal.