Celebrity Interview - The Boardroom Baron
The Boardroom Baron
RENOWNED FORMER PUBLISHER AND EBULLIENT MAN ABOUT TOWN MARC BURCA TALKS EXCLUSIVELY TO ANNABEL MILNES SMITH ABOUT LIFE IN HIS HEYDAY
Before meeting Baron Marc Burca, 56, in the heart of Puerto Banús, I had asked him for some press cuttings. He arrived with albums almost groaning under the strain − some of the press cuttings showing his publishing achievements, and his life as a “man about town”, invariably linked to numerous young beauties and with celebrities never too far from his side. I asked Marc about his family background.
“On the Romanian side my Great Uncle Titulescu was the Romanian delegate to sign the peace treaty to end the First World War at Versailles and he later became Foreign Minister of Romania and President of the League of Nations between the First and Second World Wars. What the Pope was to Poland, Titulescu was to Romania, in that era. My Romanian grandfather was Ambassador to Egypt; he in turn married a very poor working class French girl and produced my father. So my father was brought up in poverty and boarding school in Paris by his mother until the age of 17 when he went to Romania to meet his wealthy family.
“My mother came from a middle class family and was in the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry during the war, with the Queen. She drove ambulances and dignitaries. My father, after being in the Foreign Legion, caught a ship from the Middle East to London to join the Free French. He was later parachuted into occupied France as an agent. He was awarded the Croix de Guerre and the Medale Militaire, which is one of France’s highest honours. He went on to become managing director of Reids Hotel in Madeira, the George V and Plaza Athene in Paris, and the Hotel Metropole in Brussels. He was then elected president of the EHMA, which is the governing body for five-star hotel managers in Europe.”
And what of Marc’s personal family life?
“I have three children: Francis, 28; Kate, 25; and little baby Jean-Marc, seven months.”
Are you a hand’s on father?
“I am afraid to say I am rather lazy. I put this down to Jean-Marc’s mother Isobel being a totally devoted mother. She does all the hard work.”
Where does your title originate from?
“It goes back many years to when the Boyards ruled. It was the Boyards who got together and offered the Romanian throne to the German Prince of Hohenzollern. My ancestors were Boyards in Wallachia, one of the four countries that make up modern-day Romania.”
Now let’s get back to Marc’s rather colourful career, his playboy label and indeed his lifestyle in general. Before becoming a publishing giant, he indulged in many other pursuits. He kicked off his working life as a DJ on a radio station called CSB 90 in Portugal. Surprisingly his next move was as a trainee manager at Safeway’s in The Kings Road.
“The King’s Road was the place to be in the 1960s. Any job there was good enough. I was then given my first break into television by H.E Bates, who introduced me to his son Richard. He employed me as a trainee film director at London Weekend International, LWT’s film company. I worked on productions such as Catweazle, Think Twice, and Married Alive. I later discovered whilst sitting next to Catherine Zeta Jones at a dinner party that she too had worked for him when he produced The Darling Buds of May.
Did you have a fling with her? “Certainly not! At the time she was going out with the controversial now ex-Blue Peter presenter John Leslie but we talked and talked about Richard.
Without a shadow of a doubt, Marc’s success in business was having his own firm of surveyors in Mayfair at the tender age of 21, inventing letting offices under licence and selling Britain’s largest office building in 1976 while seconded to Jones Lang Wootton; but the biggest success was his joint concept of London Portrait, being the first publisher of THE magazine and founder of Boardroom. So where did it all start?
“My father has written several books so I suppose it is slightly in the blood. In my earlier days I had been involved in politics and produced and edited a record called A History of the Conservative Party, with my partner Dr Rhodes Boyson MP, who became Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. Marius Goring and Gerald Harper did the voice-over and some of the finished albums were signed by Sir Anthony Eden, Harold MacMillan, Sir Alec Douglas Home, Margaret Thatcher and William Hague.
“I felt at the time that I started up Boardroom in 1982 that there was a need to have an alternative view of the world. By creating the magazine I could project what I wanted society to become; being one of optimism, free enterprise and encouragement of anyone starting up a new business. You have to remember in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s there was suspicion of business. People who started a new business venture were considered to be capitalist pigs. There was an air of revolution. I had completely the opposite idea and believed in the 'Thatcherite' view of the world; where one has to encourage new enterprise because it is the starting up of businesses today that creates the jobs of tomorrow.”
“Boardroom made money from day one. It was run on a very strict budget. We never spent money until we had made it. It was a very tough beginning. It became, according to surveys, the most popular controlled circulation magazine in London. That was because it had 60 per cent editorial. It was totally different to any of the other ‘freebie’ magazines. It had a little bit of Tatler, Private Eye, Punch, The Economist, Playboy and Spectator in it. It was news, views and a taste of the good life.”
He also took over the Etonian magazine called Freeway, London Society and Belgravia Magazine − and merged them into Boardroom. Marc also had a host of celebrity contributors including Andrew Neil, Gavin Hooper, Una Mary Parker Lady Colin Campbell, Sandra Howard (wife of Michael), Sholto Douglas Home and Koo Stark. Indeed his celebrity friends span far and wide. Over the years he has interviewed such names as Sir Richard Branson, Charlton Heston, Donald Trump, Ian Hislop, Lord Delfont, Lord Grade, Michael Grade, Gerald Ronson and Peter Ustinov.
The success of Boardroom was not only down to Marc’s publishing ability but was also aided by Sir Dai Llewellyn, who edited the magazine’s fourth issue and whose continued friendship and support helped to keep the magazine in the limelight… In particular, Dai’s interview with Nigel Dempster, illustrated by The Times cartoonist Richard Wilson – a classic.
Marc tells the story of how the magazine was asked to review a development called the Marbella Club in Jamaica and Dai decided to do the review. However, there was a problem. “I got a telephone call on the day he was leaving, from Heathrow airport, relaying a message from the cockpit of Air Jamaica which was sitting on the tarmac waiting to leave with its famous passenger, but there was no sign of Dai. They refused to take off without him. Dai was running rather fashionably late. “I thought it was rather an accolade to the power our journalist had.”
Marc and Dai had a very harmonious relationship while working together. “I often compared him to Derek Jamieson, the erstwhile editor of The Daily Express, who always said, ‘I am a hands on editor; my door is always open.’ So whenever anyone knocked Jamerson was never in.” Dai subsequently felt this was the best line while operating as editor. His motto: ‘Be exclusive but elusive.’”
Whatever magical recipe they had in the publishing industry Boardroom certainly made waves throughout its shelf-life, achieving six readers per copy on its 40,000 circulation. Marc in his younger days was a part-time male model. Needless to say, with his dashing good looks he was linked to various well-known beauties whose names he would not share. As chairman of the Relief Fund for Romania he organised a flight to Bucharest with food during the revolution; he also took the first member of the Romanian royal family on the flight with him, namely Prince Paul of Romania − the son of Prince Carol, eldest son of King Carol II and older brother of King Michael. The flight included five TV crews and 10 journalists. He took them with him to highlight the food shortage and the scandal of abandoned babies he had heard about from Sue Lloyd Roberts, the legendary BBC journalist. “We were let down at the last minute by the airline so I took the initiative and paid for the flight, of 100 passengers, with my American Express card.” As a result of the exposure many babies were adopted from Romania.
Marc, it seems, has always been on the sidelines of the political foray and sometimes at the receiving end of libel action…
“In the 1987 election, I was PA to Michael Howard, ex-leader of the Conservative Party, and lived with him in his house in Folkestone. His agent was the wife of a Seychelles minister. They told me about the revolution that had taken place in the Seychelles. Albert Renee, the president, had ousted Sir James Mansion, the legitimate president, through a coup d’etat. He put many members of the government in prison, and tortured them. This had all been in the national newspapers. However, for some reason Albert Renee decided to sue Boardroom and myself personally for libel, allegedly because the profile of our readers meant they were more likely to go on holidays to the Seychelles.”
In London, Marc was also legendary on the party circuit. His annual cocktail party was one invitation that was never turned down. I have been lucky enough to be one of his guests, and each year I attend it is always like stepping into the pages of Who’s Who. A great treat for a fellow journalist.
Having taken the publishing world by storm, Marc then decided that southern Spain was the next place in which he was going to concentrate his business acumen. His first project was purchasing and transforming the El Madroñal Tennis Club, making it the reciprocal club in Spain to London’s Hurlingham Club.
Appreciating the sheer beauty of southern Spain, Marc then made a monumental decision. He purchased 1,000,000 square metres of farmland and transformed it into what can only be described as like a backdrop for the film The Mission. It is therefore hardly surprising that his neighbours now include Sir James Goldsmith and The Earl of Bradford. (Incidentally, for anyone wishing to live in the grandeur of this aristocrat’s playground, Marc still has three plots for sale.)
On leaving Marc following our interview, I felt extremely honoured to have been in his presence and only wish that I was somewhat older and could have experienced just a glimpse of this legend’s past lifestyle and indeed worked alongside him on Boardroom. However, knowing Marc as well as I do, I am now sitting by the telephone, living in the land of hope that he may explode back onto the scene with another publishing sensation. Let’s face it, every girl has to have her dreams!
