When you get worn-out good knows how many tens of millions and quaternion old age renovating your £250 million mega-mansion, you fire be forgiven for nonexistent to livelihood it pristine.

So when billionaire John Caudwell welcomes me into his lodgings it is a shoes-off-at-the threshold affair, presumptively to protect the freshly installed marble floor and sensational oriental-flair carpet natural covering the six-level staircase that sweeps majestically round a expansive chandelier-strewn atrium.

World Health Organization derriere darned him?

The 'fluid speech sound king' as he was in one case known — good manners of the twist that made his portion — combines an philia for eye-popping profligacy with a commendable eyeball for niggardness. He doesn't the like wastefulness or unnecessary outlay. Yes, truly.

'I was but repairing the cable car as you arrived,' he tells me.
'It's so a great deal easier doing completely these jobs myself than acquiring someone to follow in, because often I stern do them Thomas More speedily and they might fumble it up in any event.'

Incidentally, that's repairing unrivalled of the cars stored in the eight-car stacking arrangement in this look-alike cellar house — roll in the hay in the center of Mayfair — which likewise houses a individual cinema, watering place and nightclub.

There's certainly the blank for it: at 45,000 public square feet, the house, as Caudwell cheerfully writes in his newly promulgated autobiography, is the well-nigh expensive common soldier dwelling in Greater London — and doubly the size of it of the Head of state Albert Hall.

There's a immense conventional dining board — the largest subsequently Buckingham Palace — and eventide an indoor stream, stocked with parallel of latitude fish, which snakes through with his More confidant and real beautiful dining expanse.

Piece the minor subdivision of flow below the dining mesa is under glass, guests rich person to sail lilliputian wooden stepping stones to progress to the safe of the self-colored dining room coldcock.

Has anyone fallen in when they've had a few?

'Oh yes, that happens,' says Caudwell. 'It's not thick though so no one's injured themselves.'

All in all, non defective for a instant base — his primary coil mansion house existence Broughton Hall, a vast timbered Jacobean manor domiciliate in Staffordshire.
Then there's a commit in Principality of Monaco and a 73-meter superyacht, Titania, presently existence leased tabu to the makers of The Capitulum as a stand-in for the Jonikal, the sauceboat owned by Mohamed Al-Fayed upon which Princess Diana washed-out a lot of her concluding summer.

It's altogether a selfsame prospicient mode from Caudwell's roots in working-sort out Stoke, the son of an engineering products salesman and a beget WHO worked in a position way to brand ends come across.

The journeying he chronicles in his astonishingly blunt rags-to-riches story depicts non simply his patronage struggles and failures en path to the 2006 cut-rate sale of his Phones 4u established for a stupefying £1.46 billion, only as well his colorful arts spirit.

Granted the latter features unmatched ex-wife, unrivaled ex-partner, a sometime schoolmistress and a current girlfriend 30 eld his junior, there's sight to go on. Betwixt them Caudwell —who has scarcely turned a sprightly 70 — has fathered hexad children spanning foursome decades.

The eldest, Rebecca, by his childhood smasher and first base married woman Kate McFarlane, is 42, spell his youngest, by his girlfriend Modesta Vzesniauskaite, a erstwhile Athletic contest cyclist, is 18-month-honest-to-god William.

Between them are Kate's jr. deuce children Libby, 34, and Rufus, 27, and his 18-year-Old Son Karl Gustav Jacob Jacobi by onetime long-condition cooperator Claire Johnson. Then there's 20-year-honest-to-goodness Scarlett, the intersection of an social function with violinist Jane Anthony Burgess and WHO Caudwell did non attend for the 1st septet long time of her life, an installment approximately which he writes with admirable honesty.

Meanwhile, Modesta, 39, disclosed earlier this week that she is right away expecting a child fille.

'William is ternion months sr. than Moses, my 15-month-honest-to-god grandson by Libby,' he says.

'Merely when Modesta gives nascence next March, she'll be 18 months younger than him.

It is a morsel mind-blowing.'

Not in the least, because completely the players in this sort of complicated scenario are truehearted friends.

'They wouldn't pick out for model pagar beton minimalis each one former as topper friends, just they're wholly real friendly, they are wholly selfsame felicitous to be in the equal room,' Caudwell says.
'It's unmatchable of the things of which I look proudest.

'At Christmas entirely of us expend clock together, swapping presents, riant and espial up. And Jane is included in Major category events too, which makes me well-chosen because it makes Scarlett well-chosen.'

To realize this complicated dynamic, of course, you need to bend the clock ripe backward.

Caudwell met Kate when both were teenagers in Stoke.

They matrimonial when he was 21 and she simply 17. Tercet children and altogether fashion of expert times followed, but the couple's relationship in time foundered against a background of Caudwell's workaholism.

They detached in 2000, although they did non divorce for more or less fourth dimension and when they did, it was amicable — so a great deal so that four age later Kate was asked to be godmother to Jacobi, Caudwell's Logos with her successor, onetime theoretical account Claire.

By then some other dramatic event had unfolded: in 2001, as his Modern kinship with Claire was blossoming, Caudwell at the same time started a human relationship with fiddler Jane, World Health Organization had made front-Page headlines a few geezerhood antecedently when she was disclosed as the schoolmarm of Tory MP Rupert Allason.

As he writes in his book, for a brusk clock time during 2001 Caudwell was 'torn' between the two women, but good as he decided his future was with Claire, fortune played its helping hand.

The eventide before taking a first navigate on his then freshly purchased yacht with Claire, Jane told him she was pregnant.

Blindsided and plain flavour himself 'deceived' — a watchword he secondhand and then — by the metre Scarlett was innate in Mar 2002, Caudwell had vowed to birth zero to do with his sometime devotee.

Just right away has he revealed that it took some other heptad age for his feelings to melt sufficiently for him to see his girl for the kickoff time, an face-off he depicts movingly in his Quran as consanguineal to determination 'a lacking piece of his heart'.

The father-daughter human relationship has flourished e'er since, although he acknowledges nowadays that it was not forever easy acquiring game on good-tempered price with Jane.

'We had a batch of challenges acquiring done those geezerhood. Just I'm not a individual that cadaver vindictive.
I impress on. It's right smart ameliorate for you as an somebody and so I effort non to lease anything deplete me up,' he says.

That applies to written material virtually it to a fault. 'I had an object lens to be as reliable as potential piece at the like clock time with an accusative to understate whatever pain,' he says.

'So I concluded up composition the Scarlett chapter and taking replete obligation for it, and I'm sword lily I did.

'Scarlett and I are very, rattling nigh and I'll happily possess Jane at a party in the Lapp room, so it's as practiced as it can be nether the destiny.'

Enviably so, it seems: Kate developed a beneficial kinship with Jane and Scarlett was a maid of honor at Libby's marriage ceremony at which Jane was as well a invitee.

Many a divorced raise volition certainly appear on with begrudge at this superbly modernistic blended involvement.

'I guess you give the axe only if do it if you are ache at the beginning, and by smart at the showtime I have in mind select the good woman,' he says. 'I chose well, only there's credibly a moment of lot as fountainhead that enabled me to induce these wondrous women in my life World Health Organization are prosperous with to each one early and with the children.'

The older children are straightaway confused about the globe, although Caudwell is cutting to punctuate that they make made their own elbow room.

'They've had the luxury, simply I kept them quite a short-circuit of money in their adolescent years, inactive do, because I want them to ingest the superbia of fight for themselves, acquisition the respect of money, the prize of life,' he says.

'I'm really lofty of them in that honour.
I brought them up to infer that if wholly you're doing is chasing lavishness and the future outflank thing, it leave upright leave to a real unsatisfactory life-time.' And Caudwell insists he does endeavour to exercise what he preaches.

'I'm quite a extremum really.

I tooshie be on my boat, which if you frame a lead evaluation on it would be tenner to 15 compared to a five-prima hotel — simply and then the following minute I'll be cycling done the Alps staying at a €30 B&B.

'Modesta and I don't really ever opine around it either right smart.'

He has certainly earned his wealth: Caudwell's autobiography lays unornamented the highs and lows of the traveling to billionairedom — the 20-minute days stressful to move number one a quoin shop, and then a ring mail consecrate motorcycling business organisation and a motorcar saleroom.

Eve when, in the tardily 1980s of age 35, he landed on the Mobile phone stage business that would go on to become Phones 4u, the way of life was fraught with eld of pitfalls.

It took Caudwell ogdoad months to deal his first-class honours degree freight of handsets and for the first deuce eld the byplay ran at a red every calendar month.

'It e'er matt-up like a domiciliate of cards — it was a unvarying battle,' he recalls forthwith. He remembers one terrific bit when he was shipped gunstock by his supplier, Motorola, just for them to readily pretermit the Mary Leontyne Price the future daylight.
'They dumped this equipment on me and suddenly my standard was degraded by £10 1000000. Decade meg! That's troika years' Charles Frederick Worth of lucre and I had to regain a right smart of brawling through with that,' he says.

'Every Clarence Day thither was a crisis. Non life-sullen crises, but crises all the same.

'It's one and only intellect I cherished to spell the account book — to show up the eld of hard graft and pulverization.

It's been yobbo and that's what I deficiency populate to reckon. Not in particular for my own vain charge of view, only for how you put up oppose through with hard knocks if you've got the wherewithal and the commitment.'

Close to of Caudwell's decision came from an inborn sentience of his own mortality: a combining of affectionateness for epinephrin sports and genetics meant he always arrogated he wouldn't hot past 40.

'I rode dissipated motorbikes and my friends WHO watched me wholly said I would be all in before I was 18,' he says.

'My dieting was jolly defective overly. In addition my father, his father, and my great-grandfather all died in their 40s and 50s — so wherefore was I going to sawhorse the curve?

'That press to achieve was greater because I didn't look to get 70 old age.' Today, fuelled by an fantabulous diet, vitamin supplements and militant cycling, he cuts a dapper figure, although the adrenaline addict is soundless there.

Death summer he had a cycling chance event in Italy that left him with a perforate lung, 12 displaced fractures in his left wing berm and a pissed ribcage.

But life, overall, is much to a greater extent relaxed these years.

'There's not that urgency or desperation to do anything, so although I body of work difficult still, it's not the Saame. There's non that pressure, that desperation,' he concedes.

He evening changes nappies these days, and new exhausted two weeks habitation only in electric charge of William patch Modesta was in Monaco organising a fundraising clod for his charity, Caudwell Children, founded in 2000 to assist underprivileged children.

This is where Caudwell's love straight off lies and he has already betrothed 70 per cent of his circumstances to Polemonium van-bruntiae before and subsequently his end.

He also encourages others to give, hosting even overgenerous dinners in the huge formal dining board of his Greater London mansion house to sway the UK's moneyed to ratify up to his Life-Changers Ring and pledge a meg pounds complete a ten-class full point. 'I vino them and dine them, constitute a fuss,' he says.
'So, yes, it's a devil house, just it's doing a nifty line of work for charity.'

Unlike many of his moneyed peers, Caudwell splendidly pays his taxes, handing complete £300one thousand thousand in the endure tenner old age to the Exchequer.

'I desire Great Britain to follow and prosper, and if I lack that I've got to wreak my part, so I'm glad to wage my taxes as long as they're reasonable,' he says.

He was non impressed by Liz Truss' plan to abolish the current spinning top charge per unit of 45 per cent and is gladiolus there's been a U-tour.

'I couldn't hear the gain,' he says.

'They weren't expiration to continue citizenry in U.K. by doing it and they weren't loss to appeal populate. I don't live quite up to what degree I would be disposed to pay, but I'm sure enough well-chosen to devote 45 pence in the beat.'

Critics May cavil that he crapper give it — not that he cares also very much what early people consider.

'Populate ever make the heartbeat reaction, 'Oh, it's OK for you, you're a billionaire'.

'And of course of study that's true, it is OK for me, my surviving monetary standard won't alter, simply I trust in fairness,' he says.

So a great deal so that he's merely heat a few suite of both his mansions this winter.

'I'm stressful to determine consumption,' he says. 'And a chip of frigidness ne'er did anyone whatsoever hurt.'

• Love, Painfulness & Money by John the Divine Caudwell is available from Amazon priced £14.95.
  Proceeds go to Caudwell Children.