John Caudwell, the mobile phone retail billionaire, is worrying that the readers of the FT will think him “stark raving barmy”.

亿万富翁约翰•考德韦尔(John Caudwell)现在担心，英国《金融时报》的读者会认为他是个“十足的傻子”。考德韦尔原来从事手机零售业务。

He might have a point. He sometimes seems like a billionaire on a budget. Raised in the Midlands city of Stoke-on-Trent, he continued to buy orange juice from Happy Shoppers after becoming one of Britain’s richest men. He’s a helicopter fan who travels EasyJet and a yacht owner who this year cancelled his holiday on the vessel because someone else was willing to pay him to use it.

他这么说可能是有道理的。他有时看上去像是一位精打细算的大富豪。他在英格兰中部地区的特伦特河畔斯托克（Stoke-on-Trent，以下简称斯托克）长大，在成为英国最富有的人之一后，他一如既往地去便利店Happy Shoppers买橙汁。他酷爱直升机，但也会乘坐廉价航空公司易捷航空(EasyJet)的飞机。他有一艘游艇，但今年他取消了在自己的游艇上度假的计划，因为有人出钱租他的游艇。

Other parts of his life are similarly contradictory. Mr Caudwell admits to being a “hard taskmaster” when asked if he sometimes terrified his staff, but one who intends to give to charity the lion’s share of the more than £1bn he made from Phones 4U .

他在生活中的其他方面也充满着矛盾。当被问到员工会不会怕他时，他承认自己是“严厉的监工”，但他计划将卖掉Phones 4U所得的十几亿英镑中的大部分捐给慈善机构。

Five children with three partners reflects a turbulent private life, but it was in a former wife’s villa that he eventually took his holiday this year.

他先后有三位伴侣，育有5个子女，这反映出他的私生活有些混乱，但他把今年的度假地点最终选在了他前妻的别墅。

His vast London house is also deceptive, on one of those quiet roads in Mayfair that are made more lonely by the blue plaques that indicate a livelier past.

他在伦敦的公寓也具有欺骗性，这栋公寓位于梅菲尔最安静的路段之一，那些代表着辉煌过去的蓝色门牌(blue plaque)让这里显得更加冷清。

A man called Craig is waiting to guide me upstairs, past rooms stacked with Mr Caudwell’s racing bikes and photos of him and his partner hobnobbing with the celebrities and minor royals who adorn a certain type of London nightlife.

一位叫做克雷格(Craig)的男子正等着把我带上楼，我们经过一个个房间，有的摆放着考德韦尔的竞赛用自行车，有的挂满他以及他的伴侣与喜欢光顾伦敦夜生活的名人和年轻皇室成员在一起的照片。

But Mr Caudwell has in truth been camping out in this vast mansion since he bought it from a Middle Eastern royal family two years ago. The furnishings are still the previous owner’s – ornate columns, marble and gold paint – and interiors that he dismisses as “nasty, horrendous” will soon be replaced in a two-year project that will also dig out an underground complex containing a pool, an eight-car stacker lift and a cinema.

实际上，自从两年前从中东某皇室家族手中购得这栋公寓以来，考德韦尔只是勉强在这里居住。室内陈设还保持着原业主的风格——豪华立柱、大理石和金漆。他打算用两年时间重新装修，弄掉那些“令人生厌、糟糕透顶”的内部装饰，再挖一个地下室，在里面建一座游泳池、一座可以容纳8辆车的立体车库和一所影院。

He will put a couple of Ferraris in this basement complex even though he does not like cars. “For show,” he says. Bikes are his thing, although he is not fit enough to do his once semi-regular bike ride from his family home more than 150 miles away in Stoke to London.

他不喜欢汽车，但他打算在地下室停放几辆法拉利(Ferrari)——“就是展示”。骑自行车才是他的喜好，但他现在的身体不适合像过去那样经常骑自行车了，那时他会从斯托克骑150多英里到伦敦上班。

Only the ornate ballroom – where he holds an annual charity ball – will remain after the refurbishment work. “That,” he says, “is my taste.”

重新装修后，惟一保留原样的将是装饰华丽的舞厅（他每年在这里举办慈善舞会）。“那，”他说道，“符合我的品味。”

In the meantime, the mansion feels all the more deserted for the few staff gliding around staircases in the semi-darkness. There is not even heating. Mr Caudwell needed to buy 60 freestanding radiators from a discount store for when he has guests.

在半明半暗中围着楼梯走动的几名工作人员，让这里感觉更像是无人居住的房子。公寓里甚至没有暖气，一旦有客人来，考德威尔需要从折扣店购买60台独立电暖器。

We talk in a modestly outfitted study near the top, dominated by a messy desk covered with blueprints for his own abode and for the renovation of a nearby Mayfair car park.

我们在接近顶层一间略微装修过的书房交谈，乱糟糟的书桌上摆满了设计图纸，有关于住所的，也有关于附近一个停车场的改造计划的。

“Not being given to understatement, I think it’s probably the best site in the world,” he says, glancing at the architect’s plans to turn the Audley Square car park into a Portland stone-clad residence. “But with some of the ugliest buildings. It will be very beautiful.”

他表示：“不谦虚的说，我认为这可能成为全世界最棒的地方。”他一边看着建筑师关于把Audley Square停车场改造成波特兰式石材立面住宅的规划书，一边说道。“但旁边有一些丑陋无比的建筑。它会非常美。”

Beauty matters to Mr Caudwell, which may surprise those who know him only from his chain of colourful high street stores and flashy advertising campaigns.

美对于考德威尔至关重要，这可能会让只知道他那些位于商业街色彩斑斓的连锁店铺以及奢华广告的人感到意外。

The entrepreneur is dressed plainly in blue jeans, blue shirt and loafers. But when we go into another room, more outré tastes emerge in form of examples from his own line in ornate gold and silver etched jackets, punningly branded “Jean Caudevelle”.

这位企业家衣着朴素，穿着蓝色牛仔裤和蓝色衬衫，脚上是一双平底鞋。但走进另一个房间时，我们就可以看出他那较为奇特的品味，那里摆着一个系列的风格华丽的金银刺绣的夹克衫，其品牌名一语双关——“Jean Caudevelle”。

The line of clothes is one of a number of ventures bankrolled by the £1.4bn sale of Phones 4U; the new projects range from high-end women’s fashion to innovative boat engines and eastern European health clubs.

这个服装系列是利用出售Phones 4U所得的14亿英镑运作的多项业务之一；新的项目还包括高档女装、新式轮船引擎以及东欧健康俱乐部。

Mr Caudwell says that his net wealth is still roughly the same eight years since the sale in spite of some prominent property investments in Mayfair and Antibes – and “a lot of tax”.

考德威尔表示，在出售Phones 4U 8年后，他的财富净值大致与以前一样，不过他在梅菲尔和昂蒂布投资了一些知名的房地产，还背着“巨额税赋”。

He still works a 10 hour day in his semi-retirement but says that his days at the coalface are over. “I did 20 years of grief,” he grimaces. “I was on the edge of my seat everyday. Everyday there was disaster looking to whack me around the head.”

他现在处于半退休状态，但仍每天工作10小时，他表示，他亲身从事实际工作的日子已经结束了。“我苦干了20年，”他扮了个鬼脸说，“那时候我每天都过得紧张兮兮，每天都犹如大难临头。”

He also backs a fund management business called Signia, which caters for more than just Mr Caudwell’s wealth – “There are a lot of customers,” he says – and has just made a film with actors Idris Elba and Gemma Arterton called A Hundred Streets.

他还把钱投在了一家名为Signia的基金管理公司，该公司不只打理考德威尔一个人的财富。他表示：“Signia有很多客户。”他还与伊德瑞斯•艾尔巴(Idris Elba)和杰玛•阿特顿(Gemma Arterton)两位演员合作，拍了一部名为《100条街》(A Hundred Streets)的影片。

Two more movies are in the works using his own scripts – a disaster movie based on environmental issues and another on talent competitions.

还有两部影片在筹备中，用的都是他自己的剧本，一部是着眼于环境问题的灾难电影，另一部讲述才艺比赛的故事。

These are all secondary, however, to the charitable endeavours that he wants as his main legacy (a pledge to donate at least half his wealth will limit the amount that his five children receive).

然而，相对于他的慈善行动，这些都是次要的。他打算把今后遗产中的大部分捐赠给慈善事业（他承诺至少将半数财富捐出，他的5个子女所能够继承的财富将因此大为减少）。

For Mr Caudwell, using his money creatively and usefully as well as profitably is important. Soul searching after the sale of Phones 4U led him to this realisation.

对于考德威尔而言，如何以创造性、有益并且盈利的方式来使用他的资金是件很重要的事。出售Phones 4U之后的自省让他认识到了这点。

He said he decided that he wanted to do more charity work rather than making more money for its own sake. “I didn’t want the stress and hassle of having my life in someone else’s hands. But [then] that remotivated me to make money – not for me but for charity.”

他说道，他决定要做更多慈善工作，而不是为了钱去赚更多的钱。“我不喜欢让我的生活掌握在其他人的手中，我不喜欢那种压力和麻烦。但（接着）这再次促使我赚钱，但不是为我自己，而是为了慈善。”

He says that money alone was never his main motivation. “In the early days, I had everything to prove. A very working class lad with a burning ambition. A very crude way of measuring success is how much you are worth.”

他表示，金钱本身从来不是他的主要动力。“早年的时候，我要证明一切。我就是劳动阶级中怀着远大理想的一名小伙子。衡量成功的一种非常粗略的方式是你值多少钱。”

The success of Phones 4U was as much the barometer as anything else. Starting with the opportunistic sale of a job lot of bricklike Motorola handsets, Mr Caudwell tapped into the sudden boom in mobile communications to build a national retail chain selling 26 phones every minute and employing as many as 3,000 in his home town of Stoke alone.

Phones 4U的成功是一个最重要的衡量标准。从最初零散的售卖砖头一样的摩托罗拉(Motorola)手机开始，考德威尔一脚踏入突然爆发的手机通信热潮中，他创建了全国连锁零售店，每分钟就能销售26部手机，单单在他的家乡斯托克就聘用了多达3000名员工。

After Phones 4U went into administration last month, however, many of those jobs will be lost, something he fears will pile further pressure on a “difficult city to survive in” following the collapse of industry in the area.

然而，Phones 4U于9月申请破产保护，很多就业岗位将丧失，他担心这将进一步加大一个“艰难城市”在该地区工业衰落之后“生存下来”的压力。

It was a sense of lingering loyalty to Phones 4U that prompted him to make a public attack against the mobile phone operators that had contributed to the end of Phones 4U by deciding to withdraw their products to focus on their own retail chains.

他心中仍然对Phones 4U念念不忘，为此他公开抨击那些造成Phones 4U灭亡的手机运营商，这些运营商决定撤下他们的产品，专注于自己的连锁零售店。

“I used to find this aggressive behaviour in my 20 years in business. I was annoyed about it. Also, I have a lot of employees still there. In my opinion, [the mobile groups] colluded and killed the business stone dead. That is a dreadfully ruthless act of sabotage. That’s why I stood up and spoke. A tiny percentage chance that something would occur to save the business.”

“在我20年的经商生涯中，我经常看到这种强势的行为。我很恼火。而且我的很多员工还在那里工作。在我看来，（那些移动集团）合谋杀死了这家企业。这是一种极其冷酷无情的蓄意破坏。这就是为什么我站出来讲话的原因。挽救这家企业的可能性很小。”

The operators have rejected the accusations, pointing to well-flagged separate strategic moves away from using third-party rivals to their own shops.

这些运营商否认上述指控，他们指出他们清楚意识到要采取独立的战略举措，从利用第三方竞争对手转向通过自己的门店销售。

Mr Caudwell was linked with a rescue bid but says that this was never likely. He says that his days of deal making – which he likens to a drug – are coming to an end. And anyway, he adds, there is not much left in the brand to salvage.

人们猜测考德威尔可能会提出收购以挽救这家企业，但他表示这不可能。他说，他从事交易（他把这比喻为吸毒）的日子已经结束。他补充称，毕竟，现在这个品牌已经没有多少可拯救的东西了。

“If I could have been a white knight I would have been. But [the operators] dropped a nuclear bomb. There was no coming back from it,” he says, surveying the remains of a business left behind by a changing market for smart devices. “There is nothing to buy; nothing left.”

他说道：“如果我还能当一个白衣骑士的话，我会去做。但（那些运营商）投下了一颗核弹。没有退路。”他在考察了被日新月异的智能设备市场落在后面的这家企业的残余资产后说道：“没有什么可买的；什么都没剩下。”