John Clough is a rarity among plc chief executives; a man whose early personal experience suffuses the business organisation he leads.

Today he is a millionaire businessman at the helm of a growing FTSE 250 company, but he has not renounced John Clough the son and grandson of miners, who kicked a ball in the back lanes of Northumberland colliery terraces and fought the family mongrel to get closest to the fire. “I remember nights by the coal fire, you burned as much as you liked because it was for free,” he recalls.