Call to the front for an officer and gentleman: George Bull had the right pedigree to succeed. Nicholas Faith reports

IT LOOKS improbable: George Bull, a 57-year-old former Guards officer as chief executive of a firm largely run by Essex men. But then it becomes clear why he's triumphed: because of an almost intuitive understanding of how to translate brand names into profits.

Mr Bull comes from impeccable lineage: his father a lawyer, his mother from the English branch of the Hennessy cognac family.

At Ampleforth, Britain's premier Catholic public school, he was head boy for four terms. 'Leading never worried me,' he says. Then he adds: 'I think they chose me because I had a loud voice.'

This reluctance to take himself too seriously in public is typical of Mr Bull. By his own admission no intellectual, his leadership potential was further developed by three years as an officer in the Coldstream Guards. He retains the professional heartiness of the Army officer, who is a lot shrewder than he would ever dream of letting on, and would think that overt displays of intelligence amounted to unacceptable showing off.

His 30 years in the drinks business started in the most casual fashion when his cousin - now Lord Windlesham - left the Hennessy agents, Twiss Browning and Hallowes, to go into politics. Mr Bull took his place in time to celebrate the firm marking a record turnover of pounds 1m. That was in 1958, and for the next 20 years Mr Bull survived a seemingly endless series of takeovers until he achieved real power as second-in-command for 12 years to Anthony Tennant, during the rise and rise of IDV, Grand Met's highly successful drinks subsidiary.

Mr Bull provided the discipline, the administrative back-up and the continuity. He used to claim that it was 'more or less the same business as when I joined' even though turnover had multiplied several thousand times.

Characteristically, he claims he was simply lucky: 'I never had the same job for more than three years at a stretch, but I never had to ask for a new job or even for more money . . . I never had a game plan, I was never ambitious. I've got no aspiration for grandeur.'

During his four years as successor to Mr Tennant at IDV, Mr Bull proved the triumphant exception to the rule that long-serving number twos do not make good commanders. Apparently friendlier and less aloof than his predecessor, he maintained the momentum and ensured that IDV retained its top slot in the world's liquor business.

But the key to Mr Bull's likely priorities are based in his ancestry and his early training. As a Guards officer, he would have learnt (and applied) the Brigade's motto that 'there are no excuses'. As a Hennessy, he would have learnt the value of brands over the centuries. And he would have grasped his fundamental belief, that brands must 'add value' from working for IDV - a firm that relied for much of its profits on brands such as J&B Rare, a whisky famous for being the favourite of the late Duke of Windsor. And, after the Guards, working for Sir Allen Sheppard with his famous management technique of 'a light grip on the balls' must have seemed a doddle.

(Photograph omitted)