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Besides his age - he is 49 - you can quickly see the attractions for David Burns of heading up over 45s travel specialist Page & Moy.
His formative years spent witnessing the whirlwind rise of holiday giant Airtours certainly taught him most things he needed to know about the travel industry. But the man's also a great traveller in business life too.
"I've always been a bit of a traveller," he tells me as we sip the first of far too many glasses of wine in the bar of Leicester's Watsons restaurant, an unassuming eaterie in a frankly dead corner of town. The weather clearly hasn't helped tonight - a scorching summer evening ensures the restaurant is virtually empty. "I've been told the food's good here at least," he quips.
Still, the venue and time (supper rather than the customary lunch for this feature) suit Burns who spends the week in a Leicester flat before rejoining the family in Cheshire at weekends. "It means I can work flat out in the week without any interruptions," he muses. "Oh yes, and go out for runs at ridiculously early hours too," he jokes.
Back to the travelling theme he says: "My customers are travellers too. They are people who want to travel, not just have a holiday." I interject that they are also the famed grey pound, the fifty-somethings with time to spare and cash to spend. "To be honest I don't really like the term. For one thing these people haven't got as much time to spare as you might think because they haven't got that long left with us. They're in a hurry. Also I object to the word grey. I'm 50 next year and I'm not grey yet. Or at least I don't think I am," says Burns.
The remark is typical Burns. An affable and vivacious character who possesses the admirable and rarely seen quality in the business world of not taking himself too seriously. During his career he has needed to be too. In fact he should have plenty of grey hairs by now.
Five years ago he abandoned the relative sanity of Airtours (he worked his way up through the ranks to become company secretary) for the insanity of football. "It was one of those accidents of life. I had decided it was time to move on from Airtours and got home from a holiday to find the paperboy had delivered the Telegraph by mistake instead of the Times. The Football League job had only been advertised in the Telegraph and I started looking at it," says Burns.
Burns initially thought the chief executive job would be a "stitch up" but it didn't prove the case. "The more I got to know about the job the more desperate I was to get it," he says. Burns' footballing credentials were spot-on too. To this day he is an obsessive lover of the game who attends at least two matches a week, sometimes more. "I saw four the other week, the last one was in Congleton," he says. I can well believe him. During our dinner he receives several calls on his mobile from mates organising his next set of matches. Oh, his mother called too, but that was to tell him an uncle had died.
Almost immediately ensconced in the Football League things started to go pear-shaped. "I always understood the chaos of the job, but never understood the power of the media. Frankly it was chaos. You've got the chaos of football and media all coming together. Everyone has an interest and a view and it deflects you all the time from running the business."
The chaos was caused by the flawed deal that had been struck before Burns took up the post with the pay-TV venture ITV Digital. The chaos started from virtually the moment he stepped through the door and would last for the next 23 months (the dates have become etched like a bad dream on Burns' memory) until he and chairman Keith Harris decided enough was enough.
Burns is proud of what he achieved in the job - shook up the culture of the business, reduced overheads, struck commercial deals (including a four-year deal with Sky which remains to this day) - but admits that they all became lost behind the digital fiasco.
"ITV had made an upfront payment before I arrived and they then paid £389m in August 2001. There was a big sigh of relief when that cheque came through, which tells you how worrying the situation was becoming. From about March 2002, once I could see the flaws in the contract, it was stressful stuff," says Burns.
ITV Digital's eventual demise left 72 Football League clubs with a £3132m black hole. A court case against Granada and Carlton Communications, the owners of the ill-fated company, failed after the media companies proved they were not liable for ITV Digital's debts.
Many clubs had secured their spending against the income and when it failed to materialise it forced some into administration.
Did Burns, a lawyer by training himself, ever think he could win the legal battle? "No, the contract was flawed. That was pretty obvious on a reading of it. The business case for ITV Digital was also flawed," he says.
With the legal battle lost Harris and Burns became the focal point for the resentment of a number of club chairmen. The pair eventually resigned with Harris memorably remarking that he had given "the asylum back to the lunatics".
It all got very personal. Theo Paphitis, chairman of Millwall, memorably described Burns as unfit to run a kebab shop.
"You know, Theo always was good for quotes but what has his record been with Millwall?" mutters Burns under his breath, clearly still rankled to this day by the vitriol that was poured over him. "There were four or five particularly vociferous chairmen who really didn't want me around, simple as that. It got very personal," he says.
How did you cope with it all? "Oh it was difficult sure, but I'm not a quitter. I stuck it out for as long as possible until I knew the game was up. In particular I was keen to strike the deal with Sky before I left, which to this day I think was a superb deal. That said, when your friends and associates read this stuff in the papers it isn't nice. My children got stick at school, the wife got calls at home. It's tough but you live through it and come out the other side. You have to believe that you are in the right. I believe to this day we had the moral high ground."
The scars of these traumatic days still show. Burns winces when our photographer points a lens in his face, his mind drawn back to the days when he couldn't leave his house or office without an army of photographers in tow. "I've got used to being without this," he says.
Yet in a funny kind of way I get the impression Burns feels almost happy to have relived the experiences again, experiences that have stayed locked away in the back of his mind for the past few years but perhaps needed to come out again. It's almost as if he's exorcised a few demons over our dinner.
So, where has he been since? The answer is keeping his head down and working for one of Britain's most successful private (very private) leisure entrepreneurs Trevor Hemmings, owner of a good chunk of Blackpool (and the latest Grant National winner to boot). Says Burns: "Trevor just rang me up and said that he'd seen in the paper that I wasn't working. I dusted myself down, had a break, came back and gave Trevor a call. What I learnt from Trevor was that he just got on with doing the job. He's very successful and just keeps himself to himself. His businesses are extremely well-run.
"I just disappeared from public view, got back to doing normal sensible things and learnt an awful lot. Trevor has a real different approach to running businesses. He is a great teacher, great fun, works you very hard.
"He is also a trailblazer, does things way ahead of others. His success is simple.
It's all about building your business and spotting chances but he doesn't need to shout about it as he goes along.
"If I look back on my career I have been incredibly lucky with the people I have worked with, a string of terrifically driven and successful businessmen. David Crossland at Airtours, Trevor Hemmings, Keith Harris at the League. For instance at Airtours I found myself on the board with the likes of Sir Tom Farmer, Sir Michael Bishop, Harry Coe. All legends of the travel business," he says.
Burns makes no play to be like them.
"I am not an entrepreneur, someone who is going to set up their own business. What I can do is manage a business, organise a business, make profits, manage people. I think I'm pretty good with people. You recognise what you are good at."
However Burns' own penchant for also doing deals in the industry certainly made him an attractive buy-in candidate for equity house HG Capital when his present role came up for grabs. In particular, his experience at Airtours merging the Pickfords and Hogg Robinson businesses to form Going Places certainly raised his profile.
Burns describes the last eight months at Page & Moy as the most exciting and rewarding of his career. The chairmanship came up for grabs following Page's acquisition by rival and fellow Leicestershire business Travelsphere (which is backed by HG) almost a year ago. "It was a great opportunity to take an equity stake in a great business," Burns simply puts it.
"It is hard work, it's graft. But we have done a heck of a lot of work in a short period of time, recruited some very good people. We are in very good shape. It's a cracking business." Burns has made plenty of tough decisions too. "The cost base was too high when I arrived. There have been some job losses but they were needed."
Despite working in very similar areas of the market Burns says there is remarkably little crossover between the two businesses, which between them have a database of 4 million, turn over £3175m, employ 600 and both specialise in direct-sell escorted holidays overseas to over-45s.
"Page is a more premium brand, more gently paced. A Page holiday is about the experience," he says.
Burns adds that there are lots of opportunities to grow the business and the wider family of brands. A budget brand perhaps? "Yep, that's something we're looking at, as is something at the high end."
Burns concedes that Page had not moved on in recent years and made the radical changes it needed to. "One of the first things we did was to have a real go at the marketing. Page is a business everyone has heard of but perhaps one that few are sure what it stands for. We've moved heavily into direct marketing and building the relationship we have with existing customers, looking after the customers we have rather than spend all our time chasing new ones. We're also doing a lot more long haul holidays. Combined with driving down costs, the net effect is that we will be significantly more profitable this year than last," he says.
What about financial services and using that database to even greater effect in the mould of Page's biggest rival Saga? "At the moment we are entirely focused on selling holidays but in the future there is no reason why we cannot look at other activities that would appeal to our customers. Saga is now a financial services business, its holiday business is dwarfed. The opportunity is the same for us. But at the moment we are concentrating on the business as it is. There will come a time when we start to look around but we have to prove this works first. We are like a hamster on the wheel at the moment."
Concentrating on the business to get a good exit for HG too. Burns confirms recent press reports that the business has just appointed UBS to "look at its options". He naturally remains tight-lipped on the review but given the private equity arena's appetite for leisure deals a secondary buyout looks a distinct possibility, although a trade sale to the likes of Saga - whose own buyout last year significantly raised the profile of the sector - cannot be ruled out either.
Whatever happens Burns knows that his priority is to keep his eye on the main ball: "I've seen too many businesses fall apart to know the dangers. Look at the collapse of Airtours. Why did it fall?
A number of new people came into the business who did not have the same drive. A whole cadre of people left between about 1998 and 2000 and people coming in maybe thought it was all too easy.
But tour operating is very, very hard.
At the same time a particular German deal really didn't work out. Once people lose control of a business a whole load of things start to happen.
"For me personally the demise of Airtours was very, very sad to see. But that's business, companies come and go, the leisure industry has a history of that"
His formative years spent witnessing the whirlwind rise of holiday giant Airtours certainly taught him most things he needed to know about the travel industry. But the man's also a great traveller in business life too.
"I've always been a bit of a traveller," he tells me as we sip the first of far too many glasses of wine in the bar of Leicester's Watsons restaurant, an unassuming eaterie in a frankly dead corner of town. The weather clearly hasn't helped tonight - a scorching summer evening ensures the restaurant is virtually empty. "I've been told the food's good here at least," he quips.
Still, the venue and time (supper rather than the customary lunch for this feature) suit Burns who spends the week in a Leicester flat before rejoining the family in Cheshire at weekends. "It means I can work flat out in the week without any interruptions," he muses. "Oh yes, and go out for runs at ridiculously early hours too," he jokes.
Back to the travelling theme he says: "My customers are travellers too. They are people who want to travel, not just have a holiday." I interject that they are also the famed grey pound, the fifty-somethings with time to spare and cash to spend. "To be honest I don't really like the term. For one thing these people haven't got as much time to spare as you might think because they haven't got that long left with us. They're in a hurry. Also I object to the word grey. I'm 50 next year and I'm not grey yet. Or at least I don't think I am," says Burns.
The remark is typical Burns. An affable and vivacious character who possesses the admirable and rarely seen quality in the business world of not taking himself too seriously. During his career he has needed to be too. In fact he should have plenty of grey hairs by now.
Five years ago he abandoned the relative sanity of Airtours (he worked his way up through the ranks to become company secretary) for the insanity of football. "It was one of those accidents of life. I had decided it was time to move on from Airtours and got home from a holiday to find the paperboy had delivered the Telegraph by mistake instead of the Times. The Football League job had only been advertised in the Telegraph and I started looking at it," says Burns.
Burns initially thought the chief executive job would be a "stitch up" but it didn't prove the case. "The more I got to know about the job the more desperate I was to get it," he says. Burns' footballing credentials were spot-on too. To this day he is an obsessive lover of the game who attends at least two matches a week, sometimes more. "I saw four the other week, the last one was in Congleton," he says. I can well believe him. During our dinner he receives several calls on his mobile from mates organising his next set of matches. Oh, his mother called too, but that was to tell him an uncle had died.
Almost immediately ensconced in the Football League things started to go pear-shaped. "I always understood the chaos of the job, but never understood the power of the media. Frankly it was chaos. You've got the chaos of football and media all coming together. Everyone has an interest and a view and it deflects you all the time from running the business."
The chaos was caused by the flawed deal that had been struck before Burns took up the post with the pay-TV venture ITV Digital. The chaos started from virtually the moment he stepped through the door and would last for the next 23 months (the dates have become etched like a bad dream on Burns' memory) until he and chairman Keith Harris decided enough was enough.
Burns is proud of what he achieved in the job - shook up the culture of the business, reduced overheads, struck commercial deals (including a four-year deal with Sky which remains to this day) - but admits that they all became lost behind the digital fiasco.
"ITV had made an upfront payment before I arrived and they then paid £389m in August 2001. There was a big sigh of relief when that cheque came through, which tells you how worrying the situation was becoming. From about March 2002, once I could see the flaws in the contract, it was stressful stuff," says Burns.
ITV Digital's eventual demise left 72 Football League clubs with a £3132m black hole. A court case against Granada and Carlton Communications, the owners of the ill-fated company, failed after the media companies proved they were not liable for ITV Digital's debts.
Many clubs had secured their spending against the income and when it failed to materialise it forced some into administration.
Did Burns, a lawyer by training himself, ever think he could win the legal battle? "No, the contract was flawed. That was pretty obvious on a reading of it. The business case for ITV Digital was also flawed," he says.
With the legal battle lost Harris and Burns became the focal point for the resentment of a number of club chairmen. The pair eventually resigned with Harris memorably remarking that he had given "the asylum back to the lunatics".
It all got very personal. Theo Paphitis, chairman of Millwall, memorably described Burns as unfit to run a kebab shop.
"You know, Theo always was good for quotes but what has his record been with Millwall?" mutters Burns under his breath, clearly still rankled to this day by the vitriol that was poured over him. "There were four or five particularly vociferous chairmen who really didn't want me around, simple as that. It got very personal," he says.
How did you cope with it all? "Oh it was difficult sure, but I'm not a quitter. I stuck it out for as long as possible until I knew the game was up. In particular I was keen to strike the deal with Sky before I left, which to this day I think was a superb deal. That said, when your friends and associates read this stuff in the papers it isn't nice. My children got stick at school, the wife got calls at home. It's tough but you live through it and come out the other side. You have to believe that you are in the right. I believe to this day we had the moral high ground."
The scars of these traumatic days still show. Burns winces when our photographer points a lens in his face, his mind drawn back to the days when he couldn't leave his house or office without an army of photographers in tow. "I've got used to being without this," he says.
Yet in a funny kind of way I get the impression Burns feels almost happy to have relived the experiences again, experiences that have stayed locked away in the back of his mind for the past few years but perhaps needed to come out again. It's almost as if he's exorcised a few demons over our dinner.
So, where has he been since? The answer is keeping his head down and working for one of Britain's most successful private (very private) leisure entrepreneurs Trevor Hemmings, owner of a good chunk of Blackpool (and the latest Grant National winner to boot). Says Burns: "Trevor just rang me up and said that he'd seen in the paper that I wasn't working. I dusted myself down, had a break, came back and gave Trevor a call. What I learnt from Trevor was that he just got on with doing the job. He's very successful and just keeps himself to himself. His businesses are extremely well-run.
"I just disappeared from public view, got back to doing normal sensible things and learnt an awful lot. Trevor has a real different approach to running businesses. He is a great teacher, great fun, works you very hard.
"He is also a trailblazer, does things way ahead of others. His success is simple.
It's all about building your business and spotting chances but he doesn't need to shout about it as he goes along.
"If I look back on my career I have been incredibly lucky with the people I have worked with, a string of terrifically driven and successful businessmen. David Crossland at Airtours, Trevor Hemmings, Keith Harris at the League. For instance at Airtours I found myself on the board with the likes of Sir Tom Farmer, Sir Michael Bishop, Harry Coe. All legends of the travel business," he says.
Burns makes no play to be like them.
"I am not an entrepreneur, someone who is going to set up their own business. What I can do is manage a business, organise a business, make profits, manage people. I think I'm pretty good with people. You recognise what you are good at."
However Burns' own penchant for also doing deals in the industry certainly made him an attractive buy-in candidate for equity house HG Capital when his present role came up for grabs. In particular, his experience at Airtours merging the Pickfords and Hogg Robinson businesses to form Going Places certainly raised his profile.
Burns describes the last eight months at Page & Moy as the most exciting and rewarding of his career. The chairmanship came up for grabs following Page's acquisition by rival and fellow Leicestershire business Travelsphere (which is backed by HG) almost a year ago. "It was a great opportunity to take an equity stake in a great business," Burns simply puts it.
"It is hard work, it's graft. But we have done a heck of a lot of work in a short period of time, recruited some very good people. We are in very good shape. It's a cracking business." Burns has made plenty of tough decisions too. "The cost base was too high when I arrived. There have been some job losses but they were needed."
Despite working in very similar areas of the market Burns says there is remarkably little crossover between the two businesses, which between them have a database of 4 million, turn over £3175m, employ 600 and both specialise in direct-sell escorted holidays overseas to over-45s.
"Page is a more premium brand, more gently paced. A Page holiday is about the experience," he says.
Burns adds that there are lots of opportunities to grow the business and the wider family of brands. A budget brand perhaps? "Yep, that's something we're looking at, as is something at the high end."
Burns concedes that Page had not moved on in recent years and made the radical changes it needed to. "One of the first things we did was to have a real go at the marketing. Page is a business everyone has heard of but perhaps one that few are sure what it stands for. We've moved heavily into direct marketing and building the relationship we have with existing customers, looking after the customers we have rather than spend all our time chasing new ones. We're also doing a lot more long haul holidays. Combined with driving down costs, the net effect is that we will be significantly more profitable this year than last," he says.
What about financial services and using that database to even greater effect in the mould of Page's biggest rival Saga? "At the moment we are entirely focused on selling holidays but in the future there is no reason why we cannot look at other activities that would appeal to our customers. Saga is now a financial services business, its holiday business is dwarfed. The opportunity is the same for us. But at the moment we are concentrating on the business as it is. There will come a time when we start to look around but we have to prove this works first. We are like a hamster on the wheel at the moment."
Concentrating on the business to get a good exit for HG too. Burns confirms recent press reports that the business has just appointed UBS to "look at its options". He naturally remains tight-lipped on the review but given the private equity arena's appetite for leisure deals a secondary buyout looks a distinct possibility, although a trade sale to the likes of Saga - whose own buyout last year significantly raised the profile of the sector - cannot be ruled out either.
Whatever happens Burns knows that his priority is to keep his eye on the main ball: "I've seen too many businesses fall apart to know the dangers. Look at the collapse of Airtours. Why did it fall?
A number of new people came into the business who did not have the same drive. A whole cadre of people left between about 1998 and 2000 and people coming in maybe thought it was all too easy.
But tour operating is very, very hard.
At the same time a particular German deal really didn't work out. Once people lose control of a business a whole load of things start to happen.
"For me personally the demise of Airtours was very, very sad to see. But that's business, companies come and go, the leisure industry has a history of that"