He was the king of the high street, the emperor of the emporium, the bringer of high fashion to the grateful masses.

He's Sir Philip Green and he's really a Colossus riding high, fingers in so many pies, from politics to show business to retail.

He is at the center of so many different things and he's a hugely powerful

influential figure.

From buying low and selling high in the rag trade

Sir Philip Green became a retail billionaire

and then it all came crashing down.

There are stories starting to emerge including one that we wrote that he was thinking about selling BHS and with hindsight that was the first inkling the first sign of a crack in the

fishers that would eventually bring down the entire empire. So what went so

right for Green? What went so wrong and what will he do now? You're listening to

stories of our times from the Times and the Sunday Times. I'm David Erronovich.

Today, the rise and fall of Sir Philip Green. People in the industry want to talk, but there is a nuance, they want to talk on their terms.

Oliver Shah is the Sunday Times business editor and the author of

Damaged Goods, the inside story of Sir Philip Green, the collapse of BHS

and the death of the High Street.

Oliver first came into contact with Sir Philip Green, while he was the paper's retail

correspondent.

You need contact to get stories, and you need people who are well placed to explain what's happening to you and

give you the inside track, but you can then become captive of those contacts quite easily

and you can end up writing for your contacts or writing for the specific city or business

audience. One of Oliver's best and most exotic contacts for almost a decade was a man

who it now seems is going out of business.

...