Sir Rocco Forte
The chairman of the eponymous luxury hotels group is as at home on the peg as he is in the boardroom, having enjoyed days in the field with shooting royalty and literal royalty alike
“THIS IS the one interview that Sir Rocco wanted to do,” I am told as I am introduced to the instantly recognisable hotelier in the Kipling Suite of Brown’s Hotel in Mayfair. It is quickly apparent that he is at home not only in his hotels but also in his own skin, and it puts one immediately at ease.
In the hospitality trade, there is a knack for making guests feel comfortable and special. In his autobiography the late Lord Forte, Sir Rocco’s father, recalled restaurateur John Quaglino, who was apt to tell his guests, “You know you are my best customer. I do not let anyone else have this table. Even if The Queen came in, she would have to sit somewhere else.” Concluded the discerning Lord Forte: ‘You left his restaurant feeling on top of the world.’ Am I being similarly flattered now?
No. Sir Rocco Forte really does relish giving this interview, for he clearly adores shooting. The self-deprecating anecdotes flow. There was the time he shot at Gatcombe Park when Princess Anne was married to Mark Phillips. Her Majesty The Late Queen was invited, too. Sir Rocco was running late in his Ferrari and “broke the speed record” coming down the drive from the entrance lodge to the house, roaring into quite a kerfuffle: “There were all these policemen there; they thought I was an intruder,” he recounts. “It was a wild-bird shoot and on the second or third drive, I winged a bird and it fluttered down. I called out to a figure in the background to ‘Mark that bird’, then saw that the figure was wearing a headscarf. It turned out to be The Queen. ‘Mr Forte,’ she said, ‘I think this is your pheasant.’” Thankfully, it didn’t preclude his knighthood.
Sir Rocco shot his first pheasant aged 14, using a .410, and would go on to shoot regularly at his father’s Ripley estate in Surrey. He graduated to over-and-unders when the gun type was less fashionable, explaining: “With high-bird shoots and bigger cartridges, you get a more direct reaction on the recoil; they don’t kick as much.” He came to favour Berettas, and is pleased to see that Holland & Holland has launched a new over-and-under since
being taken over by the venerable Italian firearms manufacturer.
Taking over the 2,500-acre Ripley shoot, Sir Rocco found himself agreeing with his friend the late Sir Joseph Nickerson (“the best shot I’ve ever seen”), “who believed that managing a shoot could be as interesting as shooting itself”. Over time he has focused more on Ripley, having separately shot grouse with Sir Joseph at Wemmergill in Co Durham and organised a high-pheasant shoot in Yorkshire. “As my friends get older, they prefer to shoot at birds they think they can hit rather than birds that are stratospheric.”
The terrain at Ripley presents a different kind of obstacle. “The challenge of flatter land is to get the pheasants to fly well, but I have a young keeper who is keen to experiment. Last year, we started having partridge days early in the season. The technique is entirely different as to where we release and drive them.” The keeper also presents partridges in the pheasant shoots later in the season, “which adds a lot of variety and excitement”, Sir Rocco says with a smile. “Partridges are about being quick: the ‘lefts’ and ‘rights’; the pressure makes you miss. You put a lot in the air; people get excited.”
He reflects: “When you’re young, you go almost anywhere to shoot. With time, it is more about the friends with whom one feels comfortable. The sport to some degree is incidental. It’s a wonderful way of bringing people together. My wife says I have too many shoots,” he quips, “but it’s a very important part of my life.”
Food is naturally a factor. He quotes the celebrated Fulvio Pierangelini, “who oversees the cuisine in all our Italian restaurants, whether in Italy or outside, and whose philosophy is, ‘Simplicity is the point of arrival, not the point of departure.’” Sir Rocco is on the lookout for a good pheasant recipe, and partial to roast partridge, but predictably his tastes run in ancestral directions. Comfort food comes out on top – for example, Cotoletta alla Milanese or Vitello Tonnato (as done by Pierangelini): breaded veal cutlets or veal with tuna, respectively. Yet little can beat a really good bacon and eggs, he says – especially at a shooting breakfast.
Along the way, he succumbed to salmon fishing in Iceland, staying in a lodge so spartan that there was no electricity or running water. His leisure activities would become more testing still. Aged 54, he took up triathlons and participated in world championships. What little free time he had (alongside growing his new hotel business) was absorbed by training for them. He ended up taking part in an Iron Man contest at Klagenfurt, Austria, in 2005, coming second in his category, and qualified for the famous Iron Man competition in Hawaii, but decided not to allocate the time to it. “I rather regret that now,” he says.
On the charitable front, Sir Rocco is keen to support the Royal National Institute for Deaf People (RNID) and espouses the benefits of wearing hearing aids, which “have developed hugely in the past 10 years”. HRH The Late Duke of Edinburgh attended one RNID event at Buckingham Palace, as its patron, “and did a double take”, Sir Rocco recounts. “What are you doing here?” he recalls the late Duke asking him. “Then he realised the reason: ‘Too much shooting?’” Sir Rocco also remembers the Duke being taken aback upon receiving a pair of ear defenders at the same event. “Like everybody else who started shooting in my generation, we never used them,” he explains.
His phone rings – in his hearing aid, for it is wirelessly connected. We have overrun, and his next appointment beckons. He has barely slowed down from his triathlon and Iron Man days, it seems. Reassuringly, there is no sign that he intends to.
My wife says I have too many shoots but it’s a very important part of my life