The day Donald Trump phoned my wife...

Posted by: Giles Barrie

29 November 2010

It was May 2003 and Mrs Barrie took the call in our kitchen. `Is that the Barrie household? I have Mister Donald Trump for you’.

Yeah, right. Only I did have an inkling that before it might really be `The Donald’ who was calling me at home because I had met him in New York just a couple of weeks before.

I was thrown back into those pre-boom days last night by a BBC Two profile of Trump, presented by newsreader Emily Maitlis.

Whereas Selina Scott’s famous hatchet job on the developer in the 1990s focused only on him, Maitlis met the whole family including his sons Donald junior and Eric and daughter Ivanka.

Sitting where I sat, opposite Trump in his corner office overlooking Central Park, I was transported back to my own meeting with him.

What struck me was his attention to detail. Famous for not wanting to shake people’s hands, Trump’s delicate, manicured fingers toyed with a paper knife as he talked.

He had sheaves of architectural drawings on his desk, and in the corner samples of marble and other materials. This was a man who clearly lived and breathed buildings.

On the downside, he also employed the `hyperbole’ Maitlis identified as a Trump fault, notably when he claimed that 93% of local people support his giant Aberdeen golf course scheme.

Gerald Ronson is Britain’s closest equivalent to Trump – the type of developer where the name itself can add considerably to the value of the building.

The next British pretenders to his throne are the Candys. They will imminently reach practical completion at their One Hyde Park scheme in London and are still achieving sky-high values.

Trump, Ronson, the Candys.

All three have ridden the rollercoaster of development, but all three maintain their ballsy approach.

Love `em or hate `em’ property can’t live without them.