And he is slicker than ever with the catchy sound bite favoured by politicians. Less Rentokil, than Rent-a-quote.”I’m much more interested in talking about the future than the past,” he says in a soulless meeting room in the offices of Rentokil’s financial adviser UBS Warburg. “And I can think of many exciting things I’d like to do that I haven’t been able to because I’ve been chief executive of Rentokil Initial.”Such as? “I may well become more involved in politics because that has always been a great interest of mine. And I do have a great ambition to be a slightly better golfer than I am already My handicap is 12.

It used to be 10 but my stint at the CBI rather hampered me.”Ah, so the dreaded “curse of the CBI” has a golfing angle too. Wounded shareholders will remember that it was Sir Clive’s presidency of the business organisation that was seen as partly to blame for Rentokil’s stumble, though there was clearly more to it than that.And what of politics, where Sir Clive is a famous Tory supporter, pro-euro sympathiser, and very, very pro-Kenneth Clarke in the Conservative leadership election? “I don’t know what role I would have, though it would probably be different if Kenneth Clarke wins the leadership than if Iain Duncan Smith does.”He says he loves the cut and thrust of politics as well as the thrill of painting on a broader canvas than is possible in business. “I think if anything I would have preferred to have been a politician Businessmen operate in a microcosm They have a big influence but only in a limited sphere. Politicians operate across a very wide spectrum, though your influence is far less because you have to persuade such a wide variety of people to agree with you.”He is keen for Kenneth Clarke to win on 12 September, though denies he has been offered a job if that happens.”The reason is that if Kenneth Clarke wins he represents a genuine opportunity for the Conservative Party to win the next election. His views may be more representative of the electorate than the Conservative party members.

But [his views] are centre-right and this country is centre-right This Government is centre-right. Whereas Iain Duncan Smith doesn’t represent the views of the electorate.”He claims he is exasperated by the UK’s anti-euro tendencies. “I can’t see any point in criticising from the sidelines when we are still likely to remain a member of the EU. To me it is better to get involved and influence things in the way you would like them to be.”What I fail to understand is that this country has been a great success through diplomacy over hundreds of years and built an empire. Now we’re in the EU and we think everyone’s against us whereas in fact all they are trying to do is get the best for themselves. Why do we think Johnny Foreigner is against us? What happened?”Sir Clive denies that the thrill of Rentokil has gone now that it is concentrating less on the big deals – like BET and Securiguard – and more on the worthy but dull mantra of organic sales growth and margin improvement.”The difference between me as a chief executive and the financial press is that I want to be boringly successful whereas they want me to be a surprising failure.”He also denies that he will struggle to be a hands-off non-executive chairman after running his own creation for so long “I think I could do it.

I’ve had three chairman here and been on lots of boards so I think I know the difference between chairman and chief executive.”He denies it will be a nightmare for his successor to have the Ghost of Rentokil Past hovering over him. “What I’ll bring is knowledge of the industry and where we’ve gone wrong and suggest ideas even if they’ve been tried and failed before. Because there are so many things in life where you can have the same idea but the timing is very important.”In many ways Sir Clive was destined to become a business leader. Born in Bristol [he still has the rounded vowels of the West country] his father was a director at Rio Tinto, the mining group. His upbringing was tough though Sir Clive denies there was little domestic warmth. “It was a Victorian upbringing in that there was discipline and order.”Business was an obvious choice: “The difficulty with life is that you rarely find out, even by the end of it, what you wanted to do because you don’t get the opportunity to explore other things. So most of us tend to go into things nearest to us, whether through friends or family, and explore those first.”He denies Rentokil may be broken up after his departure He also denies that he regrets the “Mr 20 per cent” title “Good heavens, no.