by Jon Ashworth
A look past the media reports at Matt Barrett�s rise to the top post at Barclays

I AM excited about meeting Matt Barrett, who steps up to the chairmanship of Barclays this week after four years as chief executive. Where to begin? Shall I ask him about his ex-wife, the former model? Or should I start with that marvellous �gaffe� about not borrowing on credit cards? This is going to be fun.

The door swings open, and there he is tall, impeccably dressed, eyes twinkling. With his rakish moustache and winning smile, Barrett, 59, looks like one of those ageing matinee idols who would have your mother swooning in the aisle. It is impossible not to like Barrett. He oozes Irish-Canadian bonhomie, outlining his rise from humble clerk to millionaire banker. He roars with laughter when I recall his arrival in the UK in 1999, which coincided with a rumpus over (words edited out) photos of his second wife, Anne-Marie Sten. Barrett quipped at the time that employees saw parts of my wife that I never saw .

Was he taken aback by the ensuing tabloid furore? I expected it completely, he says, adding that he would have preferred a more low-key arrival. What people forget is sometimes these (things) are quite painful. But you say, look, it s good copy and they can t resist it, so I ll live with it.

Barrett is similarly nonchalant about last year s disastrous select committee appearance, when he told MPs that borrowing on credit cards was too expensive . This did not do much for morale at Barclaycard. Barrett says his remarks were taken out of context. It was an honest answer to a question about long-term debt. But I didn t trash the company. I didn t trash credit cards.

He goes on: I ve been CEO for nearly 17 years, and I have more arrows in my back than Saint Sebastian. It s the old one-liner: if you can t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. You don t go into these jobs at the point of a gun, and you accept that the slings and arrows of outrageous media will grab you from time to time.

Barrett reads two books a week and peppers the conversation with literary allusions. If I could paraphrase Kipling: good or bad media, two imposters just the same . I ve trained myself not to get overly excited about nice pieces, and not to get overly depressed about others, and to accept that it goes with the turf.

Do you like it when it happens? No. But are you going to spend your life beating your breast? No, you get on with your job, and if you have the belief that over time you ll do good things, then the world will cut you some slack.

Barrett once dreamt of being a writer, but his life story is far more intriguing than many works of fiction. The only son of a Kerry bandleader, he was brought up in Kells, Co Meath, on the road from Dublin to Donegal.

He attended the local Christian Brothers School where discipline was instilled through the cane. I learnt tolerance for pain, he laughs. I tell my children stories of growing up, and they don t believe me. It sounds like something out of Dickens.

In 1962, aged 18, Barrett set off for London to seek his fortune. If you wanted to eat, you emigrated, he says of Ireland in those days. Unemployment was as high as 30 per cent. If you weren t on the farm, you automatically headed for the ferry to Holyhead.

He landed a job as a clerk with the Bank of Montreal. We had a walks department, which meant you walked the cheques and handed them off to the banks in the City. Imagine me as a utility clerk, at 18 or 19 years of age, walking in the City delivering cheques.

In 1967, aged 22, Barrett went to Canada on a two-year training programme with the bank. I often joke and it s a true story that when they asked me, I said, Well, there s good fishing in Canada, so I ll go for a couple of years. And I never got back. Moving to Canada was a huge, life-changing experience for me, and I fell in love with the country.

Canada had none of the UK s class hang-ups. Here, you were more preordained for what your status in life would be. I became very excited about the meritocracy that I saw within the Canadian environment. There were lots of opportunities. Lack of credentials didn t seem to matter. Performance was what counted.

He got off the plane in Montreal on January 15, 1967, with a borrowed C$100 in his wallet. I think I was on 500 a year in London, and I got an advance to help me buy winter clothes. It was about 20 below zero when I arrived with a 20mph wind. It cut me in two. I ll never forget thinking: Have I gone stark, raving mad? Nothing can be this cold.

On his first day at work, Barrett met Irene Korsak, a Polish immigrant working with him on the foreign exchange desk. They married 18 months later, and went on to have four children, Tara, Kelly, Andrea and Jason, all now living in Toronto.

They re unreconstructed Canadians, he says, pointing with pride to a family photograph on the sideboard. It s nice when your kids get to the stage of becoming your friends, not your kids.

Barrett rose through the ranks to become chairman and CEO of Bank of Montreal. In 1999, soon after announcing his intention to retire, aged 55, he took a call from Barclays chairman, Sir Peter Middleton. The bank had recently parted company with its chief executive, Martin Taylor, only for his successor, Mike O Neill, a former US marine, to retire after one day on health grounds. Sir Peter called me and said, Why don t you drop in for a discussion? and I said, No, no, please go away! I ve just finished. But he was pretty persuasive.

Barrett had told journalists that he planned to retire to the trendy beach suburb of Conchas Chinas in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. I gave this press conference saying that I was going to smell the roses before I fertilise them, and going to grow a pony-tail and go down to Mexico and write bad books in Conchas Chinas. Then, a month later, I announced I was coming to one of the most historic, conservative institutions in the world. They pulled my leg pretty badly.

He has no regrets about returning to the UK. This is a very different England, a very different London, to the one I was in as a kid. It has moved from aristocracy to meritocracy. You hear a delightful range of accents these days. If you go back 40 years, you wouldn t have heard those accents and you wouldn t have an Irishman as chairman of Barclays.

That said, Barrett admits that he still feels a bit of an outsider. This is the first time in my life that I ve been hyphenated, he laughs. He s Irish-Canadian . When you re labelled like that, it has a slightly marginalising effect. It kind of hints at not quite one of us . In Canada, I was never called anything except Matt Barrett.

Still, he feels settled enough to call London home and recently bought a property in the West End. I ve decided that I will spend the rest of my life in London. I won t go back to Canada.

Barrett expects to devote about 60 per cent of his time to the Barclays chairmanship, which is a non-executive role. I haven t drawn breath for 42 years. I m looking forward to having a little more time for friends. He intends to rekindle his interest in fishing, with trips to Argentina for brown trout, Florida for tarpon and Russia for Atlantic salmon. As the interview draws to a close, I ask him whether he is still happily a bachelor. No one s ever happily a bachelor, but you have to play the cards you are dealt, he says, eyes twinkling with amusement. So, yes, I m unattached, I m afraid.

What about all those articles about Barrett attending glittering receptions with a beautiful girl on each arm? I wish it were true, he sighs. I wish I was having half as much fun as is sometimes reported, but I m afraid my life is a bit more boring than that.

Perhaps, as chairman, Barrett s luck will change. He has the magnetism to attract the ladies, not to mention the wealth. But as he says about money, in his own disarming way: There s only so many filets mignons you can eat.

THE POWER 100

CV: MATT BARRETT

Name: Matthew W Barrett

Born: September 20, 1944

Residence: London

Marital Status: Twice divorced, four children

Education: Christian Brothers School, Kells. Harvard University (Advanced Management Programme, 1981)

Career: Clerk at Bank of Montreal in London in 1962. Moved to Canada in 1967 on two-year training programme. Settled there. Chief operating officer from 1987-89. Chief executive officer from 1989-99. Appointed chief executive of Barclays in 1999. Succeeds Sir Peter Middleton as chairman this week