Steve Thomas, Chief Executive of Luminar plc, Chair of the British Entertainment and Discotheque Association (BEDA) and the biggest – in more ways than one – man in mainstream discos, is a veritable soundbite factory. Almost every phrase he utters has you pricking up your ears, scribbling furiously and checking your tape recorder to ensure that not a syllable goes astray.

In the course of 40 minutes spent with the nightclub industry’s new Obergruppenführer, cryptic comments – most being eminently quotable, some potentially libellous – pepper the outpourings of low-down common-sense for which this industry colossus is renowned.

“Everyone in the industry knows that Brannigans was started on the back of Chicago Rock” is just one controversial statement. “The pub industry has released a monster onto the high street” is another, in reference to deregulation of licensing hours. “We’re everything from Safeways up to Harrods” he proclaims of his newly enlarged company.

It is well worth a long wait in reception, with its black plastic furniture, frayed carpet and juke-box, and a trip in the terrifyingly ageing lift, to be unceremoniously manhandled by Thomas into his sparsely-furnished suite on the top floor of an unprepossessing office-block up a side-street in less-than-fashionable Luton.

This rugby-loving man is tall, well-built, large without being too overweight – the kind of guy it’s better to have on your side than in the opposing scrum. He’s also street-wise, voluble, mock-aggressive and, by God, does he know his business.

His office features a subtly-placed trophy-cabinet, where a raft of gongs speak volumes about the

esteem in which the man is held, both within the business community in general and in the industry that has been his life since the late 1970s. The 1992 BEDA award for “New Concept of the Year” for Chicago Rock Café jostles for space with “Entrepreneur of the Year”, awarded the night before we meet at a sparkling ceremony hosted by The Times, Citibank and Vodafone. “I only win awards because of the people behind me” Thomas says self-effacingly. “They do the work that gives me the flexibility to deliver.”

Described variously as a “jokey, jovial Welsh giant”, “a bull in a china shop” and “a nice guy in a ghastly business”, Thomas is all these things and more - God-fearing, abstemious and family-orientated.

We met just days before the biggest deal of his life was rubber-stamped – the takeover of rival nightclub operator Northern Leisure for £360m which has, at a stroke, created the country’s biggest operator of late-night entertainment venues with almost 240 units, 10% of the UK nightclub market and a capitalisation, at £600m, “bigger than First Leisure ever was” he points out, grinning cheekily at me.

Stephen Charles Thomas was born in 1953 in Cardiff Castle, where his father was caretaker. His leisure industry stepping-stone was the Welsh capital’s Top Rank Suite where “I was everything from toilet attendant to doorman to DJ” recalling, wryly, the days when kids really did learn the business from the bottom up and not from the dizzy heights of graduate traineeships. He was to stay with Rank, moving around their estate in various positions, for some 9 years before becoming the king of his own particular castle, a disco called Ronelles, in Cambridge in 1979. “The John Lewis store group had a good reputation and their brand was ‘Jonelle’” Thomas explains, “and my partner’s name was Ron – so, Ronelle!”

A year spent with legendary entrepreneur Adam Page led to a role within brewing giant Whitbread’s leisure division between 1984 and 1988 and to the formation of Luminar in January 1989, when the company was valued at £14,000. South of the Northern deal, the company boasted a £74 million turnover with pre-tax profits for 1999 up 53% on the previous year at £12.7 million. Split into three divisions – Chicago Rock Cafés, Dancing and the quaintly-named Emerging Businesses – Luminar’s units spanned the UK from Inverness to Truro and all points between.

Emerging Businesses, under the deft control of industry veteran and former Rank operations supremo Tony Marshall, include the Jam House in Birmingham, a live music venue created with input from R & B muso Jools Holland, Leicester’s Life and Rhythm Room and The Coffee House in Chelmsford, a Starbucks-style café nailed on to the side of a Chicago Rock and a brand which Thomas is keen to expand.

The acquisition of Northern will increase Luminar’s staff count to over 10,000 – “and I know every one of their names!” Thomas says with a grin. He stresses the importance of a happy environment and the rejection of politics in the workplace. “They mustn’t take their eyes off the ball. I mean, some people in this business are so busy covering their arses that they’ve forgotten where their arses are!” he fast-bowls at me, brazenly moving on fast to the next subject while I’m still writing down that doctrine. And then another hits me, whack, straight between the eyes – “Ten people working together is worth a hundred who don’t believe in each other”!

His no-nonsense approach to the business is what endears Thomas to some and infuriates others, in particular those that like to expound on the intricacies of leisure. “If this was a complex business, I wouldn’t be running it!” Thomas soundbites enigmatically, delving deep into self-deprecation for the first, but not the last, time.

But the complexities of deregulation and the future of the late-night entertainment business are pet topics with Thomas, and he will talk incessantly around, about, on top of and below the subject. You know instinctively what he wants to say, the points he wants to make, but he consistently refuses to put them into words that you can write down, look at and say “Ah yes, I understand what he means.” This clearly arises as a result of his deep knowledge of the subject and eagerness to cover every angle, but can sometimes frustrate and confuse the listener, particularly the City lads, who have occasionally been puzzled by Thomas’s oratorial.

That said, his views are plain and sensible, and fly in the face of industry doomsayers who predict a rough ride for nightclubs once pubs can stay open late. “This industry is about delivering entertainment” he says, “and we’re in a volatile, ever-shifting market. Deregulation is important to us, but it’s important to get the dynamics right. What the White Paper actually is doing is deregulating the nightclub industry – we can open later and earlier. The pub industry has not yet grasped that it’s actually a regulation of their business!”

Thomas is of the opinion that the breweries are over-complacent in thinking that 24-hour licensing will be to the pubs’ benefit. “With our entertainment skills and understanding of what the public wants, it’s easier for us to go into the day than for them to go into the night. Once they try to trade late and find themselves having capacity regulations placed on them, they’ll lose what a pub’s all about – people being together, chatting and having a drink. All they’ll be doing is elongating their hours of opening to get the same revenue. I think they’ve made a big error. The BLRA don’t understand the dynamics of it – or if they do, they’ve chosen not to inform their membership.”

“The brewers have been getting away with murder for years” Thomas says firmly, “but now ‘Hello, it’s over, pal’! The writing’s on the wall - the nightclub operators are going to dominate entertainment, liquor and food-led businesses. We deliver!”

His message to the corridors of power is as sharp and clear as a pint of lager – “Wake up, government! It’s the pubs you need to control, not the nightclubs. We’ve got our act together – there was no trouble during Euro 2000 in clubs, only in pubs. They feed them with cheap booze in an uncontrolled environment and then dump them on our doorstep! And what about drugs? If we allow them on our premises, we’re toast! I don’t see those controls happening in the pub industry – why not?”

The distinction between pubs and nightclubs rings loud and clear for Thomas. “Nightclubs are ‘Stars In Their Eyes’ - people want to walk into a club and be transformed into something else. Pubs are like ‘Coronation Street’ or ‘EastEnders.’” Clubs will, he believes, prosper by being more spectacular and dramatic.

Thomas foresees smaller club units doomed to fall out of favour following deregulation, especially those without a high-street shop window. “If your club’s on the first floor it’ll fall away, because it can’t display the drama. But if it’s on the ground floor, it can always be a pub! So where’s the problem?”

Luminar professes to have all markets covered within their product mix, encompassing hard dance with the Life and Liquid brands, entertainment with Northern’s Jumpin’ Jaks and Luminar’s Chicago Rock and Jam House, new concept The, in what Thomas calls the “deliverer” market, Rhythm Room in the discounter market and the aforementioned coffee-café brand.

The future holds no horrors for Thomas and his team. “We have an administration centre packed full of liquor, food and entertainment professionals” he says, “and the next big thing will, I’m afraid, be more of the same.” Asked about European ambitions, he says “The time is not right to move into Europe at present. But the work’s being done on that score - world dominance is not off the agenda!”

As I write this, my inbox bleats that I have two e-mails. One is from Steve, saying what a pleasure it was to see me and the other from Luminar’s hyper-efficient web-based corporate information service, letting me know that the Northern offer has gone unconditional. So it seems the City will just have to get used to Steve Thomas, soundbites, homilies and all. He’s here to stay – and no one in their right mind is going to argue about that with such a big, big man!

favourite things

Book Any autobiography, but especially Sidney Poitier

Film “La Cage Aux Folles”

Overseas place to visit Anywhere in Asia

Play “The Chalk Garden”

Food Thai

Car Anything that doesn’t break down!