"I hate fancy-dress parties," says Henry Strutt, the 43-year-old chairman and chief executive of Jardine Fleming. "But I'm made to go by my wife. When I get there I usually have a good time." He was most recently seen partying in a 1960s hippy outfit, complete with false beard and strapped-on padded stomach. Fellow partygoers thought he looked like Benny Hill, a British slapstick comedian.
It is somewhat hard to imagine Strutt so attired when he approaches you from behind his capacious desk on the 46th floor of Jardine house. At first sight he can appear diffident, some might say slightly arrogant. But friends are quick to leap to his defence. "He is warm and funny," says one, "although he can sometimes be a bit shy and reserved."
Hong Kong socialite and friend David Tang draws a comparison with PG Wodehouse. "You could almost see him as a character at Blandings," says the business tycoon. "He's a bit plumper than Lord Emsworth. But I can certainly see him happy among his pigs." Henry Clavering Tollemache Strutt comes from good East Anglian stock, and owns his own ancestral "Blandings" in Suffolk. The family fortune derived from brewing, while on his wife's side he is connected to another great East Anglian family, the Fisons, who produce the chemicals to make England's lawns green.