Philip Bowman, Chief of Allied Domecq: Drinking, gambling and the man who fears our addictions

Philip Bowman, the chief executive of Allied Domecq, ought to be every chav's best friend. Not only does he run the company behind brands beloved of the young and drunk, such as Malibu, but as the chairman of Coral, he can offer them a punt on the nags as well. To cap it all he is also a director of Burberry, the apparel group whose famous tawny check has been adopted as the badge of honour for this yobbish consumer tribe.

Philip Bowman, the chief executive of Allied Domecq, ought to be every chav's best friend. Not only does he run the company behind brands beloved of the young and drunk, such as Malibu, but as the chairman of Coral, he can offer them a punt on the nags as well. To cap it all he is also a director of Burberry, the apparel group whose famous tawny check has been adopted as the badge of honour for this yobbish consumer tribe.

His elevated position among this new social group has now been recognised by none other than Gail Rebuck, the formidable chief executive of Bill Clinton's publisher Random House, who has presented him with Chav! A Users Guide to Britain's New Ruling Class.

"I don't think Gail actually wanted to be attributed with that," the Australian-born Mr Bowman says. But as he and Ms Rebuck are veterans of the BSkyB board and the whole James Murdoch appointment saga it was not too difficult to guess who might have supplied him with the copy he brandished at Thursday's Allied Domecq annual results.

Aside from the frivolity of it all, Mr Bowman, as the head of the world's second-biggest drinks company, does have a real problem with Britain's binge drinking culture that scars so many high streets. And as the chairman of Coral he is learning to deal with the dire warnings of another looming national addiction thanks to the Government's laissez-faire attitude to gambling.

His views on the matter are not what you would expect from a gambling boss. "When things have been deregulated, like in my home country of Australia, in Victoria, there have been problems that have come from it. It's a little naive to suggest there will not be any here."

But while the Government is ready to turn Britain gambling mad, it is now mumbling about clamping down on the ugly consequences of another piece of deregulation it has sponsored - longer opening hours. Isn't Labour getting a bit confused?

"Certainly from my perspective there is a degree of schizophrenia in what's going on with some of these initiatives," Mr Bowman says.

So who's to blame for Britain's booze blight? The drinks giants, the pub companies or the bleary-eyed consumers themselves? "I think the drinks industry has a role to play. We have put moderation messages in our advertising. We have our own internal code of conduct for marketing and we have created an advertising review board of outside people to ensure we comply with our own internal standards," Mr Bowman says.

"The issue in the UK with binge drinking, and it is a peculiarly British issue, is that it is conduct that would be unacceptable in almost every other European country. I think there is a major role to play for the retailers with some of these mega-pubs. There is a problem if you are offering very extended happy hours or offering as much as you can drink for a fixed amount of money. Yes the industry does have a responsibility and we believe we take them seriously. We believe it's also very much in the hands of the retail trade to address," he says.

But it's not all to do with the trade. Britain, it seems, has drunk itself into oblivion and has lost the collective ability to say "when".

"It reflects what I would call changes in the social environment. Changes in family values and changes in educational values. Alcohol has always been available, nothing has really changed from that point of view. There are now less pubs than 30 years ago but binge drinking was not a problem then but it has now became socially acceptable," he says.

The danger for the industry is that the Government steps in and starts charging the likes of Allied to clear up the mess. "What is required now," Mr Bowman says, "is a renewed sense of individual responsibility and individual accountability. Legislation is not the solution to that. There is a much more fundamental collapse of the value structure."

Individual responsibility is a strong theme with Mr Bowman. In the mid-1990s he pioneered corporate whistle-blowing when he exposed the fact that a vice-chairman of Coles Myer, Australia's biggest retailer, had used the company's money to buy shares in a private company the vice chairman controlled.

Mr Bowman was fired but won a A$1.7m settlement through the courts. Although vindicated, Mr Bowman felt the fallout from the case would hamper his future career down under so he decamped to Britain, becoming finance director of Allied Domecq in 1998.

A product of Westminster School and Cambridge, he is no stranger to British life. But his Australian links have kept him close to the likes of Rupert Murdoch who drafted him onto the BSkyB board - which he has since left - where he witnessed at first hand the controversial rise of Rupert's son James to the chief executive's chair.

Sadly for the conspiracy theorists he has nothing but praise for the way the BSkyB nominations committee handled the process and for Murdoch junior himself. "It was an interesting process to go through not least if, like me, you're someone who enjoys people watching and how people behave and what the media writes."

"The difficulty was you had a shareholder with 35 per cent. The presumption was they used a degree of nepotism. I don't subscribe to that. We have had a number of chief executives since the company's listing, Sam Chisolm, Mark Booth, Tony Ball. They have all been very good people to take it through its evolution. The proof is how successful the business has been. It's somewhat strange to think that the biggest shareholder would want to put someone in charge of the business who couldn't take it forward. Rupert Murdoch expects people to deliver," Mr Bowman says.

Whether Murdoch fils lives up to Murdoch pere's expectations remains to be seen. Mr Bowman, however, has his own demanding chairman to please in the shape of Gerry "I'll show them who's boss" Robinson. Does having a man who makes a living on television stalking companies telling people to rip up their business plans and start again make for a tricky relationship at Allied HQ?

"His job is to choose and fire the chief executive," Mr Bowman says. "We have some very, very good debates. He adds significant value. He is very active in going round the business in different parts of the world. You don't see it in the same perspective running it day to day."

What Mr Bowman has been doing day to day is to restructure the Allied portfolio, buying brands piecemeal rather than embark on one of the huge global deals beloved of arch rival Diageo. Top of the list has been wine acquisitions, a corporate activity that Paul Walsh, Mr Bowman's opposite number at Diageo, famously rejects as being a waste of money.

"Wine is seeing a 13 per cent growth in profits, return on capital is up a full percentage point to about 6 per cent and there has been revenue growth of 7 per cent. Since we first set out our targets for wine two and a half years ago it's been a pretty bloody painful period. The fact that we have come through and delivered what we said we would means we've done rather better than we thought."

Wizard from OZ

Post: Chief executive, Allied Domecq.

Age: 61.

Education: Westminster School and Cambridge where he read medicine.

Career: Born in Melbourne but schooled in the UK, he started out in accountancy and "venture development" which took him to Iran, his native Australia and the US. At Coles Myer, Australia's biggest retailer, he rose to become finance director but took the potentially career limiting move of shopping his boss to the financial authorities. Left Australia and came to the UK where he was finance director of Bass, the leisure group that has since been broken up. Joined Allied Domecq as finance director in 1998, taking over as chief executive in 1999. He is chairman of Coral and a directory of Burberry. Previous non-executive directorships include BSkyB and Liberty.

Pay: £2m a year including £1m performance related bonus.

Family: Unmarried, but with a long-term girlfriend.

Hobbies: Breeds thoroughbred horses. Keeps a farm in Australia and is a collector of fine wines.