Interview with Allan Leighton

Having safely delivered Asda into the hands of Wal-Mart, he famously quit the top job at the superstore to ‘go plural’. His non-exec backlist features lastminute and Leeds United, and his current CV lists BSkyB, Selfridges, Bhs and the chair of Royal Mail. Not a one-trick pony, then.

The meeting room in Selfridges’ head office is quiet. Outside, there’s the din of delivery vans coming and going from the store, workers chatting on their fag break, drinkers having a late-afternoon pint at the pub on the corner. In here, there’s silence.

A few grainy pictures of Selfridges in Edwardian times, of people promenading on Oxford Street and in the shop’s roof garden adorn the walls; otherwise, the decor is plain. The place is soulless. Then, the door is flung open and in strides Allan Leighton. Suddenly, the space is as busy and noisy as the street below. He catapults into the chair, his long limbs stretching out to the sides. His head is shaved and burned by the sun. He looks fit and lean – more ageing footballer than businessman in his early fifties.

He bristles with energy and purpose, already keeping a beady eye on his watch. Everything about him says fast and furious: his sparse physique; his body language; his dress of checked shirt, no tie, playful Union Jack cuff-links; and his speech. It’s as if he’s wired. Top boss on speed – that’s Allan Leighton.

I remind him he’s having his photo taken after we’re done. ‘I hate bloody photographers,’ he says, flinging his head back, his hooded eyes twinkling.

His humour is self-deprecating – he and I know he’s been photographed countless times and always gives a good picture.

He looks around. ‘Yeah, you see these pictures,’ he says, pointing. ‘That’s what we want to do, to make it how it was. We’re going to put the garden back.’

Somewhere, you know there’s a list. On it will be the words ‘Selfridges roof’. Alongside it will be a multitude of other must-do items and reminders for Leighton’s job as a director of Selfridges, and his other posts – as chairman of the Royal Mail and board member of Bhs and BSkyB. Until recently, the schedule would have been even longer, including the chairs of lastminute.com and Cannons gyms, and a directorship of Dyson. Further back, it would have included references to Leeds United Football Club, Wilson Connolly and Scottish Power, which he also helped run.

Leighton is a one-man phenomenon. He is everything to everybody: the boy who went to a smart direct-grant school and from there to a polytechnic, and later to Harvard Business School; the boss who is just as at home talking to postmen as he is talking to the Weston family, which owns Selfridges, or the clever trendies who run lastminute, or City bankers, Cabinet ministers and members of the House of Lords.

His reputation is as an arch-moderniser, a cutter of crap, no respecter of old methods and fancy titles. Yet he was also a morris dancer and liked a bit of bell-ringing in the past.

His image is that of macho man, of a rebel who wears a trademark gun-slinger leather coat, but he can do conservative and traditional just as well as anyone when it suits him. He can be as aggressive as his mate, Philip Green, but he can be a hip, self-improving New Ager as well (‘Follow your bliss’ is the sort of simple Leighton saying that has colleagues nodding in agreement and, later, scratching their heads in bafflement).

He’s inordinately proud of Selfridges and its transformation from dull department store into hip retail destination, but here he is, gazing at faded black-and-white prints and wondering how best to reproduce the scenes they show.

So, how does he do it? Some managers struggle to hold down one post, while Leighton, the ultimate juggler of appointments, does several and with aplomb. How?

‘I never think of it as multi-tasking. I’ve got different jobs to do in the organisations I work for. The fact is, the portfolio I have ranges from private company to listed to publicl