‘I had no idea’: Pret founder Julian Metcalfe, 64, reveals bombshell moment an old flame told him he had a secret 19-year-old daughter – who grew up believing her father was The Stud star Oliver Tobias
The Itsu and Pret founder has opened up about the moment he found out he had a secret daughter after a brief conversation with a society beauty.
Julian Metcalfe, who founded the Pret sandwich chain with university friend Sinclair Beecham in 1984 and later sold it for £364 million and now owns Japanese fast food empire Itsu, spoke of the shocking discovery that he was the father of a teenager he didn’t know . about the latest episode of Steven Bartlett‘s diary of a CEO.
The tycoon, who is married to New York woman Brooke, told the Dragon’s Den star he discovered the bombshell news 15 years ago when he was 45, after an out-of-the-blue phone call from former flame Camilla Ravenshear.
They had briefly met in the mid-1980s with Ravenshear, who died in 2017 at the age of 57 and kept details of her daughter’s real father secret for almost two decades.
Metcalfe appeared on Steven Bartlett’s Diary of a CEO podcast and revealed how he was first told about his daughter Celeste
Their daughter, Celeste Tobias, who now sits on his company’s board of directors, grew up believing she was the youngest child of Oliver Tobias, star of numerous film and television hits in the 1970s – including, alongside Joan Collins , the infamous film The Stud.
Camilla, a niece of former Conservative minister Lord St John of Fawsley, divorced Tobias in 1991. She had two more children, daughters Angelica and Dahlia.
He described his relationship with Celeste as ‘incredible’ and says he now sits next to her twice a week on the board of his company.
Celeste pictured, early twenties, in 2011; she told the Evening Standard in 2012 that she had no idea Oliver Tobias wasn’t her real father when she was growing up
Oliver Tobias and ex-wife Camilla; the couple divorced in 1993 after nine years of marriage. Camilla died in October 2017 at the age of 57
Metcalfe reveals in the episode how Camilla broke the news to her daughter, then a student at Bristol University, that he was her biological father two weeks before she met the entrepreneur on King’s Road in London to tell him.
He said: ‘Her mother called me, who I hadn’t seen in ages. I had no idea her daughter was my daughter, I had never met her. Her mother asked to see me and we met on King’s Road.’
Bartlett asked, “Weren’t you suspicious when she asked to see you?”
He said he had no idea of the news that was to come, saying: “I certainly wasn’t suspicious of it. I thought she might need help.”
Actor Oliver Tobias, now 76, was known for his role in The Stud alongside Joan Collins; he was married to Camilla Ravenshear until 1991
He described his former lover as a “cool, intelligent, quite wonderful, eccentric brilliant woman” who he remembered “very fondly.”
Metcalfe, who met his current wife, author and interior designer Brooke de Ocampo, in 2007, said she told him: “I have a daughter and she is your daughter.”
He added that he then asked how long Celeste had known and she said only fourteen days: “I asked her, “When did you tell her and how did it go?” She replied, “I told her two weeks ago, and not well.”
The trio are said to have met for the first time at the chic Babington House, near where Celeste studied.
After the news broke, Metcalfe said: ‘I have a brilliant, beautiful and thoughtful 19-year-old daughter. I think I’m the luckiest man ever.’
In 2012, Celeste told the Evening Standard: ‘I was told just before I went to university in Bristol. I think my mother believed that I had always known that I wasn’t Oliver’s, but of course I didn’t. How can you know such a thing? I had no idea.’
Julian Metcalfe with his interior designer and author wife Brooke; the couple met in 2007 and married in 2008; together they have seven children
Metcalfe, who lives with his wife in a country house in South Oxfordshire, said he now had a good relationship with his daughter after developing a relationship with her in adulthood. He said: ‘She’s now on the board and sits next to him two days a week and it’s incredible.’
Metcalfe is an old Harrovian whose grandfather Edward was best man for the recently abdicated Edward VIII at his wedding to Wallis Simpson.
He has three children and became a grandfather when Celeste gave birth to a daughter, Tiger-Lily, in 2019.
During the episode, Bartlett also revealed how an unknown family member had entered his own life, telling an uncle he didn’t know had walked into his mother’s store one day.
He said: ‘At some point in my early life a man walked into my mother’s shop and said he was my uncle. Turns out he was. I didn’t know I had uncles in this country. Turns out I did’.
Metcalfe created the Japanese fast food brand Itsu in 1997; he sold the brand that made his name, Pret, for £364 million
Metcalfe’s first business venture was opening a wine shop in Fulham, while also working as a surveyor.
The popularity of its healthy fast food brand Itsu has soared in recent years, with it currently having 77 branches in the UK. The chain, named after the Japanese for ‘when’, launched in 1997 with a £1 million restaurant in Chelsea, west London.
Last month, Metcalfe warned of possible Labor reforms to workers’ rights, saying they would come at the country’s expense.
Speaking about Labour’s plans, he said: ‘Nothing is free. The cash-strapped consumer ultimately has to pay much more for goods and services because costs, taxes and red tape so easily cripple motivation and sensible trading.”
The party plans to implement labor market reforms within the first 100 days of winning power.
The policy, led by former union secretary Angela Rayner, would see workers given rights to new jobs from day one and a crackdown on zero-hours contracts.
Labor also plans to scrap all trade union reforms introduced since 2010, when it was last in power, and scrap Tory attempts to stop workers from striking.