Russian billonaire, Oleg Deripaska, normally tries to avoid the media spotlight. But Tim Whewell was able to spend some time with him and gain an insight into his life.
Having spent a couple of days in the company of the 164th (until recently ninth) richest person in the world, I can report that he knows an awful lot about the properties of silver foil, plans to make Russia into a nation of white-van lovers, and is partial, late of an evening, to a cup of special Siberian herbal tea.
I can report nothing about the view from his spectacular yacht, the Queen K, where he famously entertained Lord Mandelson, the speed of his private jet, or the furnishings in any of his many homes – because that was not the "vulgar" subject matter the Aluminium King of Russia, Oleg Deripaska, had in mind when he invited me on a private tour of his empire.
No. We were going to roll up our sleeves, put on our safety glasses and hard hats – and talk production.
We were interested in the source of wealth, not its trappings.
In the 85% automation level on the assembly line at GAZ, his car plant at Nizhny Novgorod on the Volga – the 3,200 welding spots on his latest model, the Volga Siber – the accuracy on his quality control apparatus of one micron – a thousandth of a millimetre, the 415,000 amp current that electrolyses the alumina at his smelter in Sayanogorsk in southern Siberia – do not stand too close – and the scorching 730 degrees Celsius inside the furnace.
These are statistics to conjure with, not those you may have heard before about Mr Deripaska – how he was worth $28bn (£17.5bn) last year and only $3.5bn (£2.1bn) now.
In any case, he disputes those figures.
He never had anything like as much as they say, and anyway, he parries jovially as we sit back in his company’s Swiss-style chalet high in the Sayan Mountains, do I know how much money I have got
Touche! I am stuck.
On the one hand, I feel a certain moral obligation to stand up for that portion of the world’s population that does need to keep abreast of its financial affairs.
On the other hand, do I really want my new friend to think I am some kind of Fagin, sitting up half the night over piles of pennies
Mineral exploration
From this you will probably have gathered that Mr Deripaska and I quickly established an easy, bantering relationship.
He not only looks much younger than his 41 years, he is positively boyish in his energy and enthusiasms.
And so we bound down the assembly line at GAZ discussing axles and suspension, touching on the benefits of the Toyota Management System, debating why Britain lets its engineering talent go to waste.
Later in the week, four time-zones to the east, he diverts his helicopter to take me low over the breath-taking Sayano-Shushenskaya dam, once the highest in the world, the source of all those amps in the smelter.
All the time he is pointing down excitedly at the spruce-covered hillsides, telling me what geologists might find next under Siberia.
He has cornered the market in aluminium, but that is not enough. Down there is copper. Further on, molybdenum.
The helicopter’s nice, furnished with cream leather sofas. But we are asked not to film it. For security reasons and also, you will remember, because that is not the kind of thing we are interested in on this trip.
He tells me about all the extra trees he is going to plant around his factory, down where the mountains meet the bare steppe. He tells me about the computers he is giving to schools.
Becoming friends
Only late at night in the chalet – and Mr Deripaska likes late nights – do we turn briefly to darker, more emotional matters.
"Why," he asks suddenly and insistently, "do the British press hate Peter Mandelson so much"
And again I am stuck. Because while I can think of many possible answers to this question – all intriguing enough to occupy a happy hour over a pint down at my local – I am talking now to Peter’s friend, a guy I am trying to bond with.
And so we return to the subject of whether his light commercial vehicle, the Gazelle, could have been improved by technology from the British firm he once owned, LDV.
I will be honest. I am not very interested in vans.
But I liked Oleg Deripaska.
I liked his teasing grin. I liked his ready laughter. And I appreciated his delicacy in not wining and dining me.
Our trip to Siberia was good for both our reputations – because, in these stern days of expense-related scandals, I have almost nothing to declare – only his herbal tea, the master-class in foil making, the unforgettable swoop in the helicopter – oh, and a tiny souvenir ingot of the first aluminium from his smelter.
As for a journey on a gigantic yacht – as Frank Sinatra almost sang in "Who Wants to be a Millionaire" – I am so glad I did not.
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Off with their lordships
Just because No 10 wants a little expert help is no reason to grant outsiders a lifetime in ermine
It is hail and farewell time around Whitehall. Hail to Baron Sugar of Clapton, but farewell to Baron Darzi of Denham, not to mention Baron Carter of Barnes. Let the great big world keep turning without you, Baron Malloch-Brown of St Leonard’s Forest. And cheerio Baron Jones of Brum (though you’ve been gone quite a while already).
The last four were the leaders of Gordon Brown’s new pack, trailblazers for his government of all the talents. But now it’s the government of all the exits. Digby Jones vanished in under a year, talking about his “dehumanising, depersonalising” time as a junior functionary. Mark Malloch-Brown and Ara Darzi did rather better, notching two years apiece – until this month. Stephen Carter, Lord Broadband, wins the palm for a headlong transition. Appointed to a ministerial post in the Department of Culture, Media and Sport, October 2008: announced resignation, June 2009.
More comings and goings than Manchester City in the transfer window. More drama than an absurd BBC Trust meeting trying to decide whether Lord Hired of Fired can play apprentice finder in an election season. More dilemmas of a wholly ridiculous kind: first, why do talented outsiders wither and die in ministerial smog? But second, why do we have to give these chaps a job for life – attendance money, expenses, office costs, title – to sign them up for a few bare months of public service? What have they done to deserve decades of squirming in ermine?
Now, of course, it’s not quite possible yet to guess where the new, independent fees office will finally pitch their lordships’ expenses, beyond daily subsistence of £82.50 a day. Perhaps the four barons just departed won’t attend, won’t claim, won’t want to play the game at all. But it’s still a great game, eternal membership of a club that leaves the Garrick standing.
But why, pray, is it necessary to offer such enduring beneficence in order to get a little specific on board? There’s no reason for Downing Street not to add a noted surgeon or distinguished UN official to the team: reinforcements both sensible and necessary. A Commons full of professional members – no second jobs, no experience of life outside Central Office or some trades union HQ – isn’t likely to throw up much in the way of ministerial talent.
And this is a bind that will grow worse if David Cameron gets his way and reduces the number of MPs. Do we trust the people we elect to govern us? No: and we’re not exactly awed by them either. The wellsprings are running dry – and the true need for constitutional change has never been clearer.
Why go through the flummery of titles and bounteous cash flowing the wrong way in order to import expert ministers to do expert jobs? Why pavilion them with phoney baronies if they can just turn up in the Commons, make statements, answer questions and do the normal thing? Why pension them off to the Lords, where expense streams always run and nothing is truly proactive (or particularly democratic)? Let Mr Carter arrive, appear at the Commons dispatch box as requested, do his stuff – and then go back to being plain Steve again.
That’s the submerged logic of the new constitutional reform bill as tabled. What No 10 gives, life peers can henceforth shuck off. What heredity bestows no longer matters. But, why then deem that any of it matters? Choose a pragmatic version of the American cabinet system, fit for modern purpose. Spare Lord Mandelson months thinking up his title. Leave Lord Adonis in the right traffic lane. Impose no legacy for groaning generations to come. Here’s a very modest proposal that abolishes mindless contortions and futile cost. Watch Mark MB junk that upper house hyphen. Call My Lord Darzi just Dr once more. Lord Suralan, you’re terminated. That’s what you might call real reform.