Last night when the publishers of this unsolicited piece on me posted it on Twitter I had two thoughts. Firstly, whoever kindly wrote it had done a huge amount of research on me, citing things I’d said in the past which I had forgotten and then quickly I moved on to consider all the things I’ve done wrong or got wrong which tend not to get written about. From poor commercial decisions to failures of character, there are things I have only recently opened up about, like I did in a magazine column where I wrote of the poor manner in which I used to sometimes treat people working at The Cinnamon Club and Roast when pride in one’s work can in a flick of light turn into anger and aggression.

I don’t think I’d ever like anyone other than myself to write or speak about these things though. Earlier this year the much-respected Russell Norman very bravely opened up to The Guardian about the traumas of opening a post-pandemic, post-Brexit restaurant and I remember saying to media friends at the time that I wouldn’t like to see myself portrayed in that way, as a victim of external events and talking about the difficulties in overcoming them.

I’ve always taken a slightly different approach – be open about the difficulties you face but only after you have overcome them. Just over 20 years ago this played out in a particular way when the BBC made a fly on the wall documentary about me opening The Cinnamon Club. At the tenth anniversary dinner for it, I was set next to its producer and I told her a whole host of things that happened which I hadn’t shared at the time and she said: “Oh my God why didn’t you say any of that?”.

A lot of businesspeople come off badly when doing fly on the wall programmes but I was more concerned about agreeing to have The Observer’s restaurant critic Jay Rayner do a fly on the wall feature which turned out to be a fun few months of him quizzing me about everything but again unbeknown to him, I held back as much as I shared.

Fast forward to now and there’s a TV company looking to make a series about my much delayed and most ambitious project to date. They’ve been filming me walking through different parts of London where I’ve talked excitedly about The Grand Plan and The Mission and they’ve interviewed some of the team I’ve been assembling about what they make of it all.

One day after some filming with the producer and cameraman we had lunch over which I inadvertently changed my tone and shared how difficult it is to start a new business these days and I got the same reaction: “Why do you never talk like that on camera?” That’s still difficult for me – not because I don’t want to be honest but because I’m careful about what I want to be honest about and what I aspire to achieve.

I still don’t really share much about how I’m feeling. Apart from the fact that I’ve just shared that.