11:21am Thursday 21st January 2010
Joanne Bannatyne is a beauty with brains and great business acumen. No wonder she melted the heart of a Dragon, says Jenny Laue.
AS I’m setting up an interview with Joanne Bannatyne through Bannatyne PR, the one thing that keeps going through my mind is that being married to one of the Dragons can’t be easy. No offence, Duncan, but when I put myself in Joanne’s shoes, it’s not a comfortable place to be. Judging from numerous newspaper articles and TV appearances, Duncan’s a man who knows what he wants and how to get it. A man who is, shall we say, very straightforward.
As well as having a well established business empire, multi-millionaire Bannatyne is a mainstay on the popular BBC2 series Dragons’ Den, in which hopeful entrepreneurs pitch their ideas in the hope of gaining financial support and business expertise from one of five of Britain’s top business brains.
Joanne isn’t at all intimidated, though. Physically, she might be petite, but here’s a woman who can hold her own. “I know him so well and react well to his personality.
I think we work well together, but to break it down and analyse why would take forever,” she says.
“We still talk about the business a lot and I like to keep up to speed with it. I have been involved since the beginning of some of his businesses and spent a lot of time in the nursing home company, so I can argue objectively about issues with him, which I think he appreciates.”
Joanne sees their relationship as very grounded. “Like a lot of couples, it’s based on knowing and understanding each other very well. Duncan and I are very well suited to each other, because we both come from a business background. I knew what he was like before we married and it helps that we can bounce ideas off each other.”
Being with Duncan and seeing the business grow organically has been hugely exciting, says Joanne. “We have very rarely grown through acquisition, so we have basically built the business from the ground up, which is really exhilarating. From the nursing homes to the health clubs and hotels, the fun of identifying a site and seeing it through to create a successful business is a fantastic feeling.
“And yes, publicly Duncan can come across as aggressive sometimes, and he can be. But he’s a strong character in whatever he does, be it in business or his charity work.
Bannatyne’s ambition and drive are offset by a really dry sense of humour, says his wife. He also values family time and holidays.
Joanne admits that when she first worked for Duncan she didn’t think that would be any romantic attachment, not least because there is a 17-year age gap between them. “But we became much closer through the business.
We had a common interest and we realised that we enjoyed being together.”
Joanne is a Northern lass. She grew up in Norton, near Stockton, and it was St Mary the Virgin Church in the village that the couple chose for their wedding. She went to the local comprehensive, St Michael’s, in Billingham, and trained as a nurse at the former Middlesbrough General Hospital. She then went to London to work in a specialist hospital in the oncology and A&E departments.
“I qualified in 1989, although I didn’t start working for Duncan until the early Nineties.” She says. “I worked as his director of nursing right up to when we sold the nursing homes in 1997. We both then went on to start the health club company. Although it was a lot of fun and very rewarding working in nursing, you do have to work shifts whereas health clubs close for the night, which is nice. Plus, I have always been keen on health and fitness, and it’s great to be doing something you’re really interested in.”
The first Bannatyne Health Club cost £2m and was opened in 1997 in Ingleby Barwick, Teesside, after Duncan sold Quality Care Homes for £46.3m. Now, 12 years down the line, there are 60 luxury health clubs in the UK and 30 Bannatyne Spas. The Bannatyne Group also includes three hotels in Darlington, Durham and Hastings.
Blessed with a lot of creative energy, Joanne was also heavily involved in the regeneration of the former New Grange Hotel in Darlington, now Hotel Bannatyne.
“I did this hotel,” she says proudly, referring to a massive £1m redevelopment of the building in Southend Avenue where we are sitting. “It wasn’t easy to persuade Duncan to let me loose on it. I needed to do a lot of research first. I couldn’t just say give me a million and I’ll do it, but I was confident that I could.”
With the help of former colleague Tony Bell, Joanne set out to redecorate the hotel in a contemporary style with dark wooden floors, cosy ambient lighting and modern, yet comfortable furniture. She also introduced the thriving Maxine’s restaurant to make the hotel more viable as a business. There have been several additions to the hotel since and it now offers 60 bedrooms and function suites.
“I set the hotel on the path to where it is now, but it really is down to Bannatyne’s managing director, Nigel Armstrong who runs the businesses with Duncan.”
It’s a sign of the mutual trust in their marriage that Duncan was happy to let his then-partner take care of the hotel. “Duncan didn’t really get involved because he was very busy running the health clubs,” says Joanne.
“He thought this was tying up too much of my time, although he was happy to hand over the reins.”
After their marriage and the arrival of their two children – Emily, now ten, and Tom, eight – Joanne took a step back from the business to bring up the children, but also explore some new opportunities. These included the Lone Star Emporium, a boutique jewellery store she runs with her sister, Jacquie, in fashionable Yarm High Street.
Although Joanne enjoys many foreign holidays, especially in the south of France, where the couple have a holiday home, she loves nothing better than returning home.
“The North-East is home for us. I love coming home.
We have a place in London and the south of France, and when the weather is not so good here we’ll just pack our bags and fly out, but I wouldn’t want to live there. I like the familiarity of the North-East. It’s family and it’s home.”
Joanne also engages in a lot of charity work, which is something that’s rubbed off from Duncan who is wellknown for his philanthropic efforts.
The causes she really has given her heart to are helping children with spina bifida, the WellChild Awards and the orphanage in Romania – Casa Bannatyne – which Duncan founded 12 years ago.
In fact, it seems there isn’t much the talented 43-yearold couldn’t take in hand and turn into a success. Joanne would probably modestly deflect any praise and say Duncan’s flair for business must be rubbing off, but my guess is that she’d be a millionaire herself by now even if she hadn’t married one of the wealthiest businessmen in the UK.
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