If you haven't got some entrepreneurial skills then you're a dead duck in the design business. Look at people such as Conran and Dyson. They are great designers, but also fabulous entrepreneurs. They are good at presenting what they do and understanding markets.

The designer and entrepreneur in me are in conflict. As a designer, you tend to be exuberant and imaginative. Out of necessity you push boundaries. You don't accept the norm. Entrepreneurially, you have a different hat on, where you look at whether the market is there and the numbers add up.

The route to market is critical. It's something I realised 30 years ago. If you haven't got shelf space, forget even putting pen to paper. You can have the greatest ideas in the world, but if you actually want people to buy and acknowledge them, you have to be in the market.

I have always been in the middle market. I set my stall out not wanting to be at the luxury end, because I don't believe in it. I know what goes into manufacturing and what goes into profit margins, and I don't trust it. I am more comfortable aiming at middle England, middle Australia or middle Japan.

I started Warehouse in partnership with Mike and Maurice Bennett. Maurice used to say that business is like a circus act and you need a jumper and a catcher. He used to say I was definitely the jumper. He didn't have the stomach for it, but he was a good catcher.

It is totally different today to when I started in 1964. It was easy then. I had no knowledge and no business background and it was like falling off a log. I didn't have anyone who knew about business. My dad was a sheet-metal worker, and I didn't have brothers or sisters. I was like the accidental tourist who fell into it.

I'm not frightened of having a go and sticking my money on the line and gambling. I'd rather gamble in business than go to a horse track.

We don't manufacture enough in the UK. When I started in 1964 there were 1.4 million women on sewing machines. Last year, it was 70,000. The irony is that the Chinese, Japanese and Vietnamese want goods that are made in England. The government should be looking at how we can incubate the Made in Britain brand again.

My biggest success is survival. I have been in business for 46 years and have designed in five decades. I have been fortunate that I've had things fall into my lap that have given me great opportunity.

My biggest failure was going out of business. The damage it caused still motivates me. If you look at your life as the rings on the tree, that failure is a knot which irritates me. A guy smacked me in the face when we were in the pub after we'd gone into administration. He said: "It's alright for you, you'll be back again—I won't." It was a lesson.

I don't miss TV. It was good fun and The Clothes Show did the industry a lot of good. Egotistically, TV is satisfying because you get treated very well. If you aren't careful, you take it for granted. I only did it a day a week, it was like a Saturday job.

Current reality TV makes me want to put my fingers down my throat and choke. It's just so debasing. I wouldn't want to do that. The makeovers we did were the first reality TV. But we did them with respect and everyone looked and felt great. We didn't make fools of anyone for the sake of TV. Perhaps we let the genie out.