John Caudwell

“I'd much rather leave £2bn to charity, or £3bn or £4bn, than £1bn. That is my motivation to carry on working as hard as I do.”

“I always switch off from the business when I go across the threshold. Home is home, and I try to keep it that way.”

“I'm a capitalist. I'm not going to feel sympathetic to people leading a life they don't have to lead who, with effort, could maybe break out of it.”

“My philosophy is very much to encourage my children to forge their own success and happiness, even though that will undoubtedly involve much more modest levels of wealth creation.”

“I don't like paying too much for anything or wasting it. I think that I'm more of a balanced individual rather than a dichotomy.”

“I will stay living in Staffordshire. Other people would be moving offshore. I am reasonably happy to help support the British economy. I have done very well out of Britain.”

“I'm known for value for money. I was brought up to be frugal, and it's definitely a factor in my success. I was born in the Fifties, which was a frugal era, and my family had to be very careful with money out of necessity.”

“I'm addicted to the deal, to the next thing. It's irresistible.”

“I have a helicopter that I use for U.K. business trips, and I fly myself. I have a yacht in Antibes in the south of France, which is a sort of indulgence, as we only use it for about four weeks a year. The rest of the time, it is chartered out to people as a business.”

“I'm a wealth creator. I'm not interested in saving in the least. While I do spend a lot, I don't spend money like other billionaires. I'm probably quite unusual, albeit I do have some of the significant trappings. But I always try to make my assets work for a living.”

“I had challenges to overcome as a child, and that was good.”

“When I came into the mobile phone business, I was really the upstart who pretty much took the business, not quite by storm, but really made an impact on it quite early on. But it was from a position, really, of feeling that I was a last mover.”

“I believe in workers' rights when people are doing a good job.”

“Business gives you a massive high. Doing a great deal, coming up with an inspirational solution... It's very addictive. But it doesn't last long. In isolation, it's a bit sterile. It doesn't reward the soul.”

“I might have made more money if I had outsourced to India, and I knew I'd find it easier to hire senior managers in London. But I wanted to be in Stoke. What could be more satisfying than creating work for 3,000 people in my home town?”

“Knowing that my ancestry had all been quite wealthy and owned their own businesses probably left me with the ambition to replicate what they'd done.”

“Before I really even understood what the term meant, I wanted to be wealthy. I wanted to be able to drive the beautiful old Rolls-Royces my father admired when I was a child.”

“Some of the things I did in my early career were massive learning curves because I had no one to guide me. You learn very quickly because it costs you torment and trouble.”

“I was only 21 when I bought a five-bedroom detached house in Stoke-on-Trent that was way outside of my financial status in life. I did it by borrowing money from my family and the bank, taking out a huge mortgage.”

“I do want to keep the Wedgewood Collection in place, intact, and open to the public. Selling it off would be a real tragedy.”