I could have closed down bits of British Home Stores to make more money but it's not my style. I want to make my money as a retailer, not by putting people out of work.
I think everybody, from every end of the market place, from young through to old, wants to be fashionable. Everybody. Women want to feel like they're wearing the right merchandise, regardless of age. They want to be trendy.
I have a very clear conscience.
I don't regret anything I haven't done.
I don't like department stores. I had a chain of department stores back in 1994 which was Lewis's and Owen Owen, only for a short time, and I found department stores personally difficult.
It's not my style to blame anybody else.
Stand in my lobby at 5:30 P.M., and there is no one who gets out of the lift who is not on a gadget. No one is talking to each other. I get in the lift and say, 'Hello,' and everyone's head is down tapping on a screen.
I am brave, but I take a view. It is an educated view. I am careful. I am not reckless.
I was never going to be a scholar.
They already know all about brands... but what 16- and 17-year-olds won't necessarily have is experience of the world of work. The more that businesses get involved with schools, the better, because businesses sometimes complain that students don't have what they require to succeed in work.
I hope and believe all the people that worked very closely with me at BHS for all those years, and some for the whole journey, will know it was never my intention for the business to have the ending it did.
You are forced to have the best data capture, the best information, when you have goods in hundreds of factories around the world, and the question is: 'Where is everything?' And how do you bring it all together?
I think I pick more winners than losers.
I used to leave my house at 6:30 in the morning, and I would visit 10 shops every Saturday, starting at the furthest shop I'd decided to go to that day, ending up in Oxford Street 12 hours later.
I wasn't a good school pupil. I was interested in business.
