Duncan Bannatyne: I'd love to show Madonna what we have built in Romania

David Cohen
03.07.09

When Dragons' Den tycoon Duncan Bannatyne travelled to Romania this weekend to attend the wedding of a local orphan, his trip attracted none of the headlines that accompanied Madonna's outing to an orphanage in Malawi last month.

But the remarkable story behind how Bannatyne came to be the surrogate dad asked to give away the radiant bride Adela Bodor goes to the heart of the debate about how wealthy Westerners can best help orphans in poor countries.

In contrast to Madonna - who handpicked four-year-old orphan Mercy James and, in 2006, David Banda, then aged one, to whisk them to a life of spectacular wealth in the West - Bannatyne holds the view that orphans prosper best when they're helped within their own communities.

Seven years ago, the self-made Scottish entrepreneur, known ironically as "the nastiest Dragon", had visited the High Infection Hospital for HIV orphans in the Romanian town of Tirgu Mures at the invitation of a philanthropist friend.

"I was shocked by the squalid, inhumane conditions," he says, speaking exclusively to the Standard.

"Kids were chained to their beds and left to die in a place that stank like a sewer, and the untrained carers had a policy of never hugging the children because they mistakenly believed you could catch HIV through bodily contact.

"There were kids cowering in the corner, and, to make things worse, mentally ill children were kept alongside others who were of sound mind. I was so overcome I went outside where nobody could see me and cried my eyes out."

But Bannatyne, 60, who is worth £320 million according to The Sunday Times Rich List and has six children (aged seven to 25) from two marriages, was not tempted to adopt orphans.

Instead, he decided to found an orphanage of his own, stumping up £120,000 to build Casa Bannatyne to accommodate 10 HIV orphans, aged five to 13.

"I will never forget the chilling words of the hospital manager when I told him I was building an orphanage," he recalls.

"He rolled his eyes and said: 'You're wasting your time, half the children will be dead before you're finished.'"

But Bannatyne proved them wrong and his orphanage was ready for occupation in six months.

Like most of Casa Bannatyne's first residents in May 2003, Adela, then 13, had tragically contracted HIV from a blood transfusion at birth.

Her father died when she was four and her poverty-stricken mother had left her at the High Infection Hospital three years later, promising to return. Adela had waited every day but her mother never came back, leaving the young Adela depressed and broken-hearted.

Her marriage this weekend to Sorin Radut, a young man who also has HIV and who comes from a nearby town, represents a personal journey from despair to hope that could not have taken place without the vision and generosity of Bannatyne.

"I'd love to show Madonna what we have built in Romania because although I have no wish to knock her, cherry-picking the best kids from an orphanage to adopt and bring up in the West is utterly distasteful to me," he says.

"Madonna says she can give Mercy a better life, and I am sure she can but if you can help 10 children and give them a better life in their own country, it might be less glamorous, but isn't that a preferred solution? Few people realise that orphanages in these countries are not as we know them because often children still have a parent hanging around.

"They've been abandoned because that parent is destitute and believes the child will have a better life in the orphanage but often the children maintain useful links with their extended family, and sometimes even that parent, which they pick up on later.

"Besides, if people visit Romania and Somalia and select the cutest orphans, adopting only those who don't have HIV or other serious long-term illnesses, then all that's left are children nobody wants or with incurable diseases.

"So you leave behind a situation of even greater despair than when you arrived, and overall you end up doing more harm than good."

Bannatyne issues this message to Madonna in an interview at his £1.5 million Covent Garden penthouse after a day filming Dragons' Den at Pinewood Studios.

These days he divides his time between London and his weekend homes in Cannes and Darlington.

Physically he's in great shape, as you might expect from a man whose business is fitness clubs.

He is wearing a Tom Ford tie and shirt, a Savile Row made-to-measure jacket, and a £10,000 Cartier gold watch.

Earlier, he and fellow Dragon Theo Paphitis had spent their lunch break pounding the Tarmac on a 10-mile run.

"Theo is 10 years younger than me and he just about keeps up," says Bannatyne, combative as ever.

Asked who is top dog among the Dragons, and who has the nose for the best ideas, he retorts shamelessly: "There is no doubt that I am the wealthiest Dragon. I am worth over £300 million and no other Dragon even comes close.

"I'm also the most successful in terms of who has picked the most winners [six] to invest in on the show."

He says that actually all the Dragons get on "like one happy family - which means we also have fights like in any happy family", but reveals that this seventh series, due out on BBC2 in autumn, could be his swansong.

"I've had a great run," he says. "Next year they'll probably change the Dragons to freshen things up a bit. It's quite possibly the last series for me."

His put-downs have caused him to be dubbed the Simon Cowell of the Den, and he is often assailed by members of the public seeking to pitch their entrepreneurial ideas.

"The most bizarre approach I've had recently was when I was crossing a busy road in the West End and a woman in a Mercedes literally stopped her car in the middle of the road, jumped out and ran over to me brandishing her business card.

"She started telling me about her 'brilliant business idea' while buses and traffic backed up and everyone started hooting."

He admits to enjoying the public recognition, though, especially since the roots of his extraordinary rags-to-riches tale is one that's never far from his mind.

Duncan was a mildly dyslexic child who left school with no GCSEs after growing up in a council house in Clydebank, the second of seven children to a father who'd been a Japanese prisoner-of-war and then worked in the Singer sewing machine factory.

As a teenager, he started doing a paper round after his mother refused to buy him an ice-cream, saying they were too poor.

He joined the Navy and then earned himself a dishonourable discharge and six months in Colchester prison for attempting to throw his commanding officer off the side of an aircraft carrier because "somebody bet me £5 that I wouldn't".

After bumming around Europe for a decade, Bannatyne decided he wanted to make his fortune, and so at 29 he scraped together £450 to buy an ice-cream van.

Soon he had built up a fleet of 45 vans, which he sold on for £25,000. He invested in a care home which he grew to a group of 36, and which he sold 10 years later in 1996 for £46 million, before moving on to build his empire of 62 fitness clubs.

His business has defied the credit crunch, he says, with turnover and profit marginally up on last year and "no redundancies" among his 3,000 staff.

Today he lives a less workaholic life, splitting his time between business and family, and he likes to stroll over to the Ivy Club, or meet up with mates for a game of poker.

But it is his memory of what it is to be young and vulnerable that has inspired his philanthropy, he says, and which has led him to give away £2 million in four years, including £30,000 a year to Scottish International Relief for Casa Bannatyne.

His pride in the orphanage is evident from the images in his apartment overlooking the Royal Opera House: alongside framed snaps of his second wife, Joanne, his six children, and his celebrity friends, racing driver David Coulthard and boxer Joe Calzaghe, are shots of himself standing or playing with the orphans of Casa Bannatyne.

"To me, the orphans are like my extended family," he says.

"It's become a hugely meaningful part of my life to see the children grow and develop. When I first met Adela, she was a quiet and reclusive 13-year-old. Over the years, I've watched her grow into a mature, confident young woman with a mischievous sense of humour and a belief that she can have a happy life.

"Like the other orphans, she has limited English, but she calls me 'Uncle Bannatyne' and sees me as her benefactor, a kind of rich uncle, a role in her life I'm happy to play. I wouldn't have missed her wedding for the world."

Did he pay for it? "No, in Romania the tradition is that the groom's parents pay for the reception but my present to the newly-weds was a fully paid 10-day honeymoon at a resort on the Black Sea.

"I couldn't have been more delighted when Adela surprised me by asking me to walk her down the aisle and give her away. I felt so incredibly honoured, so moved.

"To have played a part in helping this once-frail orphan sprout wings and become the savvy, optimistic young woman she is today is one of the most fulfilling things I have ever done."