It looks almost like the perfect CV for a vacancy at the top of a commercial television station: advertising, television management, City media expert, newspaper proprietor, entrepreneur, networker and bon vivant.
Yet when Luke Johnson got the job of chairman of Channel 4 last week, there was shock, surprise and even a touch of fear that an 'outsider' was going to head the station. The Financial Times said a 'pizza maestro' had got the job, conjuring up images of a fat Italian in a chef's hat sitting down at a mahogany desk with flour on his hands.
That's Johnson for you. No matter what he has done, or what he will go on to do, he will always be the 'pizza man'. He was half of the two-man team that made Pizza Express one of the enduring landmarks of the British leisure scene. He helped to spark the eating-out revolution and made himself a multi-millionaire in the process. But all that was back in the early 1990s. Apart from a brief tilt at buying the company back when he thought it was on its uppers last year, he has not been involved in the chain for years.
And his interests in the food business have gone decidedly upmarket - his Signature holding company owns the Ivy (probably the TV industry's favourite restaurant), Le Caprice and the Strada and Belgo chains.
The other reaction when he got the job was to point to the fact that Paul Johnson, right-wing newspaper columnist and historian, had called Michael Grade, then C4's chief executive, 'Britain's pornographer-in-chief' because of all the bare flesh and risque story lines the channel was running. How ironic, it was declared, that his son should be put in charge of the channel. The connection is not one that Johnson Jr will want the world to dwell on.
He is, of course, his father's son, and there is more than a passing temperamental resemblance between the irascible journalist and Luke, who is straight-talking to the point of sometimes being abrasive and who does not suffer fools gladly. But he is no daddy's boy. Luke made his own way in the world from early on, and is a self-made millionaire. At 42 (it is his birthday tomorrow), he has a different generational mindset from his father, and it would be interesting to be a fly on the wall during a debate between the two on social issues or cultural affairs. An intra-Johnson family row would be a sight to behold.
His rise to proverbial fame and fortune has been often told. Not very good at school, he went to Oxford to read medicine, but found that there was money to be made, and good fun had, out of organising student parties. He fell in with Hugh Osmond, a fellow medic who had also decided his real talent lay in extra-mural hedonism, and the duo, dubbed 'Hughie and Looey' made a business out of it, running parties in nightclubs and bars in Oxford and Bristol. Johnson doesn't speak much about medicine these days, but you get the feeling he's very happy at the way things have gone.
He got into advertising with agency BMP, then worked for Jonathan Aitken when he was chief executive of TV-am. He gained valuable financial nous - and began collecting his impressive list of contacts in the press - as a media analyst with City bank Kleinwort Benson. This confirmed his abrasive reputation, and more than one financial journalist has come away with ears burning after asking Johnson a dumb question.
He and Osmond bought Pizza Express, which was a well regarded brand that had been around since 1965 but which needed investment and exploitation, and formed one of the most effective business partnerships since Mr Rolls and Mr Royce. They have since fallen out over business deals, but remain on speaking terms socially.
It is doubtful, however, that Hughie and Looey will double-act in the City again, especially now that Johnson has got the Channel 4 job to occupy him. His appointment last week was even more a surprise because the nodders and winkers had suggested, right until last weekend, that former Coca-Cola chief Penny Hughes was going to get the job. But Johnson was always in the reckoning ever since being approached by the headhunter last year. He was, it transpired, the favourite of Lord Currie, the Ofcom regulator, in whose gift the job lay. Johnson had interviewed well, it is said, and by the time it came to tell the Channel 4 board of their choice, Ofcom had no doubts.
His media-ish background will have helped, but there are several other reasons why Johnson was Ofcom's choice. The age profile of the channel's viewers is decidedly younger than the other terrestrials, and certainly younger than that of previous chairmen. And, as Johnson has let it be known, he is a natural Channel 4 viewer, who takes in its mix of high-brow film and 'off-the-wall' content.
His reputation will also have helped. A TV channel that has revelled in its 'spiky' focus over the years will not be afraid to have a real-life iconoclast at the helm, even if his 'enfant terrible' days are somewhat behind him. As a putative outsider, he comes to the job without the prejudices of the TV 'luvvies' circle, and he will certainly not be daunted by others' reputations or egos.
And, of course, he comes to Channel 4 at a decisive time for British TV. News of his appointment was almost drowned last week in the furore surrounding the post-Hutton meltdown at the BBC, but it is easy to forget that there is an alternative - in both senses of the word - public-service broadcaster in Britain.
Channel 4's silhouette is similar to BBC2, but with a sharper, younger focus, and of course it is not involved in radio at all. Nor does it make programmes, like the BBC, but instead is the mainstay for the large independent sector of programme-makers.
Channel 4 is commercial in the sense that its income derives from advertising, but in all other respects it is a rare example of a public-private enterprise that works. It has ridden out the advertising slump, and experts agree that the signs are that the TV ad recession looks to be over. Sure, the channel has made some controversial investments in the past few years - the 4Ventures division and E4 offshoot are examples of expansion projects that have had a tough time.
But many media companies made similarly over-ambitious plans when times were good. Channel 4 looks to have overcome its problems in this respect.
Johnson comes in with a blank piece of paper, but, despite his entrepreneurial past, there is nothing that suggests he will set about privatising the channel. Besides, there are other strategies to be designed. It must have been in Johnson's ambitious mind that, just 24 hours after his entry into TV's mainstream was announced, two rather bigger jobs came vacant in Shepherds Bush, just up the road from Channel 4.
It would have seemed ridiculous to suggest it even a week ago, but maybe Johnson has pushed himself into the reckoning to be the next-but-one director-general of the BBC.
Profile
Name Luke Johnson
Born 2 February 1962, Buckinghamshire
Education Langley Grammar School; Magdalen, Oxford (MA Hons)
Career Party organiser, advertising, TV executive, media analyst, entrepreneur, chairman Pizza Express, owner Sunday Business newspaper, chairman Signature restaurant chain
Marital status Single
Interests Travel, reading, eating
