The original idea wasn't to do something with food . . . it was to be rich and famous. I fell into franchising by accident, originally with ProntaPrint, so in the beginning, all I knew about was franchising and printing. Soon after that, all I knew about was franchising. But, at least I thought that franchising could be a way of realising my ambitions. . .

And did it?

I've given up on my original ambition . . . it's not about being rich and famous anymore. It's about having the freedom to do what I want to do now.

So what qualifies you to run a sandwich shop?

Nothing really. To put it crassly, I saw a commercial opportunity. I do like food, and I enjoy cooking, but that's just by the by for what you're asking. I just thought that a sandwich bar would be something which could be built-up fairly quickly. And most of the successful franchises that people know tend to be in food.

Still, there must have been an overall concept behind O'Brien's Sandwich Bars There was, and still is. Our thinking was that we wanted to do the best we possibly could in terms of sandwiches and coffee. That was our product differentiation, as well as the fact that it came with an Irish theme. And the fact that we wanted to open 1,000 of them. That hasn't changed, and that's the kernel of the business.

We shouldn't talk too much about Colonels . . . other franchises might be listening.

So how close are you to achieving the ambition of opening 1,000 outlets?

We have about 300 in 13 countries at the moment. But we'll get there, and I intend to still be here when we do.

O'Brien's had been an undoubted success story . . .

was it luck or good timing?

You have to remember that there were times when it looked like it wasn't going to work . . . we started to turn a profit in about our seventh year. But, as for the success, it has been a combination of good luck and good timing.

And getting good people to work around me.

It must have been down to good product as well. So who designed your sandwiches?

In the beginning, I did. The Chicken and Bacon Triple Decker . . . that's mine. So is the Shambo, and the Crambo. In fact, I invented all of our sandwiches in the early days. But we are a made-to-order sandwich bar, so it's not really rocket science. Mostly, people choose what they want, so there's not too much inventing to it.

And who is O'Brien?

Nobody. When we were deciding on the original format, we felt that an Irish name would be appropriate, and my own name doesn't fit particularly well with that. If you put an "O" before a name, that makes it Irish, in the same way as a "Mc" makes it Scottish, so I opened the phone book and saw that O'Brien had the most entries in the "O" section.

So it's nothing to do with Wanderly Wagon, then?

No. Or anything else.