You're listening to a podcast from the BBC World Service. This is Hard Talk with me, Stephen Sacker.

Thanks for downloading this edition of the program. I do hope you enjoy it.

Welcome to Hard Talk on the BBC World Service with me, Stephen Sacker. My guest today has a family name long associated with the hotel business in the UK.

Sir Rocco Forty is the son of Charles Lord Forte, a young immigrant to the UK from Italy

who worked his way up the ladder of the hospitality industry from a single milk bar in 1930s

Soho to a chain of hotels, including some of the poshest in London.

Rocco took over the business from his father, only to lose control of it in a hostile takeover.

So Rocco decided to develop a new hotel business, acquiring a string of five-star properties in countries,

including Italy, Germany and Russia, as well as two hotels in London.

Now, though, his profits and his expansion plans have been hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic,

and Sorocco 40 has become a high profile critic of the lockdown strategy

implemented by the UK and indeed many other countries too. He says avoiding deeper economic damage

should be the number one priority of all governments. But is he in danger of missing the bigger picture that even

when the pandemic is a distant memory, the travel and hospitality business may never return

to the pre-COVID status quo? Well, Rocco 40 joins me now. Welcome to Hard Talk. Thank you very much for asking me to join you.

It's a pleasure to have you on the show. And you, like everybody else, have lived through the most

extraordinary three months of this COVID-19 pandemic. I wonder what impact it's had on you, both personally and professionally,

in terms of your business. Well, I mean, I've had the virus and recovered from it. So, and

back to full, full health now. I was never hospitalized or anything like that

and it was really like

a very very bad flu.

But the thing

...