More than a decade after he lost control of a dynasty, Sir Rocco Forte has restored the allure of the family brand with a collection of luxury hotels across Europe. His re-invention seems complete, but now New York and the Middle East are in his sights

Sir Rocco Forte used to be an actor. Or perhaps that's going too far. He did once appear in a TV play, though, as an Italian waiter. The audition was a breeze, mainly because "the other kid had freckles and ginger hair". The young Rocco's Roman features had prevailed. Plenty more acting roles came his way, but as a career it was destined to be brief. His father, Lord [Charles] Forte, was unequivocal: did his only son want to become an actor, or did he want to work hard, go to public school and come into the business? "I said I wanted to work hard, go to public school and come into the business," recalls Sir Rocco, with a wry grin.

Some years later, he was having a drink with a friend when the actor Michael Caine approached. "He looked at me and said, 'were you ever in a TV play'? I said yes I was. He said, 'yeah I was in that play too. It was before I was discovered'—so I had a speaking part and he was just an extra."

Out comes a rasping laugh. The eyes gleam with amusement. He's in good spirits, Sir Rocco. Fresh off the plane from Berlin, he's managed to squeeze us into a slender gap in his diary. If we don't photograph him today, we're warned, we won't get another chance for, well, forever. Better get on with the interview then. We're at the back of the Albemarle, a plush, modern-British restaurant at the foot of Brown's, Sir Rocco's Mayfair hotel. In many ways, the Albemarle is a perfect embodiment of its owner: rich and refined—grouse on the menu—a well heeled, old-school kind of place where everybody knows instinctively which way to pass the port.

For Sir Rocco, life is still a show. "You are always performing," he says, right knee bouncing up and down like a piston. "If you're going to talk to a group of people you have to do it in such a way that they're going to get excited. There's acting in every inter-relationship."

Has he improved those presentation skills? It seems pertinent to ask. It was, after all, a public relations-tinted coup, engineered by Granada's Sir Gerry Robinson, that in 1996 lost him control of Trust House Forte, the hotel group his father had spent five decades building. Sir Rocco had waited 23 years to take on the top job at the family business. After only a few years in control it was snatched away from him. Over the course of just a few weeks, in a battle fought largely through the newspapers, gloss and spin were the deciding factors. Sir Gerry was the swashbuckling raider. Sir Rocco was, well, absent—off shooting pheasant when the hostile bid was launched. Was he outmanoeuvred by slick PR?

"I had an attitude that the results would speak for themselves. I didn't like to over-promote something, or myself." It wasn't enough. The battle was won by Granada. But Sir Rocco won the war, achieving an inflated price of £3.9bn for the shareholders and in the process pocketing £325m for the Forte family, £60m of which he used to fund his current project, the Rocco Forte Collection.

These days he's more relaxed about image projection, but there's still an unmistakable trace of shyness. Penny Moore, chief executive of Hospitality Action, the industry charity of which Sir Rocco is chief patron, calls him "a very unassuming guy. Not excessively gregarious..." but "he commands respect". Sir Rocco is just happy he doesn't have to deal with the trappings of public company status anymore. "The financial journalists came with a predisposition as to what I was like; it was quite difficult to change those views. Then I was a pariah, because I was my father's son, running a business he'd developed. Now, because I've re-invented myself to some degree, running a business that on the surface seems reasonably successful, I'm a hero."

Reasonably successful is classic understatement. Hero is probably stretching it. But Sir Rocco's "reinvention" is almost complete. His 11-strong hotel group stretches from Manchester to Sicily. Add in St Petersburg's Astoria to the east and a yet-to-open venue in Marrakech and you're left with a geographical "X" of luxury hotels spanning  continents. "The idea was to create a luxury hotel group covering major European city centres because there was no one else doing that, and there still isn't." So where next? "We're not in Barcelona, Milan, Moscow, Amsterdam, Paris or Madrid. I want to be in New York, too. It's the only city in the US I want to be in at this stage."

Next year, turnover is expected to exceed £170m. Expansion to the Middle East was never part of the original blueprint, but new hotels in Jeddah and Abu Dhabi will be relatively low-risk: the group will manage rather than wholly own the buildings. Sir Rocco doesn't rule out Dubai, but he wonders whether there is room. "I don't particularly want to sit in a strip of hotels." On top of that, he adds: "If you do a hotel in Dubai you'd have to do something that architecturally is quite stunning, otherwise it's lost in everything else that's there."

It might seem a touch ambitious to be considering any kind of expansion when all but the super-rich are tightening belts. But Sir Rocco insists occupation rates are still good. "We're in limbo," he says. "Some companies don't want to be seen spending money, but that will all settle down." But for a fall in the number of US guests at his Italian hotels, the group hasn't really seen much of a downturn. "Even if you look at our Rome hotel... we're above the year before, so it's not an appalling situation."

Sir Rocco, a qualified accountant, says he has no time for financial chicanery. "Unless you can calculate something on the back of an envelope it's not worth doing." He tells the story of an aggressive US developer, using a complex deal to push a New York property on to him right at the top of the market. "The guy said to me 'you need a lot of balls to do a deal like this'. I said to him 'you don't need balls, you've got to be completely bloody mad'. I don't want to be hamstrung for years." Respect for risk has served him well. He called the last bubble, time and again. "But the funny thing is, it actually got to the stage where I thought, 'well maybe there is something different this time, maybe it is going to carry on'."

He says he doesn't worry about the value of his property portfolio (some of his hotels are on long leases, some are wholly owned and others are joint ventures with HBOS). There is plenty of room for a correction, he feels—a return to more sensible property prices. In any case, there is a built-in safety net to city centre investment: "Prime property in city centre locations will always hold its value to a certain degree. There's a rarity value to it."

Nick van Marken, tourism, hospitality and leisure partner at Deloitte, says the aspirational nature of the market helps its re-sale value. "There's always someone who aspires to own a recognisable hotel, even in a market that's well supplied, such as London or Paris," he says.

But it's not just location, of course. The luxury service sector has exacting standards. And Sir Rocco has a sharp eye for detail. "I don't like being ignored. I expect to be made welcome, wanted and important. Sometimes you walk in and it's like a desert." What else irks him? Those hangers, the fiddly ones that you can't remove. "You spend hours trying to hook the bloody thing back in. I go mad." And too many waiters buzzing about: "You sit down at lunch and five people offer you bread, six people pouring you wine."

But addressing these bugbears allows problems on his own patch to be spotted and dealt with quickly. He also knows a chancer when he sees one. "If I get a customer complaint I've got a good idea whether it's justified or not. The psychology of a complaint is interesting because no one ever complains about one thing." Instead, he says, you receive a whole list of complaints that you have to pick apart to find the underlying problem.

That knee is off again. Time to change the subject. Politics? Sir Rocco says he's "interested" but not "involved", although he is on the board of the Centre for Policy Studies, a devoutly Conservative think tank (sample publication: Enemy of the People, by Maurice Saatchi, a document that "charges" New Labour on seven counts of inadequacy. On all counts, the defendants are found guilty). At 63, Sir Rocco appears more than a little disillusioned. "You get very enthusiastic about certain people. Mrs Thatcher—I was very enthusiastic about what she did, I still am. But there aren't many politicians of value around at the moment."

This is a leading remark. Or at least it feels like one. Does he not think much of David Cameron? "It's not fair to say I don't think much of David Cameron. He's a very attractive individual. He's bright, he's got an ability to communicate." But...? "My argument with the Tory party is that it's playing politics, it's not grappling with the issues."

And those issues are? He rattles them off. "We're over-taxed, government is over-intrusive, the schools are a mess, the hospitals are a mess." Add to that public transport and the airports, which, says Sir Rocco, are "not up to scratch". Most definitely not on the list is "the environment", a subject Sir Rocco believes to be a convenient smokescreen for tax rises. "The whole environment thing is completely exaggerated. In the last seven years the world hasn't got any hotter. It got hotter the previous 25, but got colder the 25 years before that—and we had greenhouse gases rising that whole period.

"Is it greenhouse gases? I don't know. It's not as certain as people make it out to be. Obviously pollution is not a good thing, you want to avoid it. You want to conserve energy in every possible way. But it's a bandwagon. It's just another way for politicians to raise taxes. It's easy to say we'll fix something that's going to happen in 50 years' time. This idea of windmills is complete nonsense."

His one concession to green living is saving energy, because "energy is bloody expensive". Does he use energy-saving lightbulbs in his hotels? Absolutely not. "In some places you have these energy-saving bulbs and the room is in complete darkness. You can't read a book." Anyway, he adds, what's the point? "If we stopped all greenhouse gas emissions in this country, China replaces them in eight months."

That knee is pumping. Time to get him photographed. "Another chance to show off my acting skills," says Sir Rocco as he disappears up the stairs.