HOT
THE LIFE OF SPICE
have to live, breathe and smell it. If anybody thinks I wasted nine years of my life at the shipyard, I can say it wasn't like that. It was an apprenticeship into the psyche of the Glaswegians and the Scots. It's part of me, and made me what I am today'.
'At thirteen I started picking potatoes during the school holidays. That was back breaking. I'm not saying the shipyard wasn't hard, but compared to picking spuds…'
After a period in India in the late 1970s, he was back, and faced with returning to the shipyard or going into the restaurant business full-time. He chose the latter and by the mid-1980s had 'begged and borrowed' enough to buy the business where he'd started his secret second career a decade before. He thinks this practical experience stood him in very good stead for what came next. 'It's very important to know any market inside out. I learned the [restaurant] trade from the ground up, washing toilets, stocking the cellars, doing bar and waiting work.
A mix of pragmatism and careful property buying saw the business expand even through the recession-hit early 1990s, although Charan doesn't claim his hot food empire's growth was always an upward curve. 'Everyone gets things wrong, but I don't think making mistakes should deter you. If you don't evolve, you die. Stay where you are and other people will overtake you'.
This urge to change and develop new ideas may explain the curry king's decision to sell his restaurant business - although cannily he has retained the freeholds to the restaurants themselves.
'I became a landlord, and overnight went from having 400 employees to none', he says. 'I think you have to do different things in life, and the time to stop is when something is doing really well. The staff kept their jobs and the restaurants will go from strength to strength'.
Appearing as The Secret Millionaire has been just one of his post-Harlequin activities, and he was pleased with the results. 'They shoot about 60 hours of film for 49 minutes of television, and you don't know what will hit the cutting room floor, so you have to have faith in the producers, the directors and the communities themselves.
Now he's dividing his time between importing Indian goods (from sandstone to plumbing items) and helping Scottish entrepreneurs develop businesses in India. He's even designed tartan shehrvani jackets.
Charan Gill appears to be a grounded and thoughtful product of two distinct cultures. And he's entirely at home in both. He's also a fine example of a thoroughly modern businessman and philanthropist with a passion for life which shows no signs of cooling.