Sir Rocco Forte credits his super-fit physique for his recovery from coronavirus, which he contracted recently.
'I had all the symptoms, though I haven't been tested,' the hotel tycoon says, from his house in Ripley, Surrey, where he has been recuperating with his wife Aliai and his family. 'My wife hasn't had it. Her friends say the coronavirus wouldn't dare attack her,' he laughs.
'I had a high fever for about a week, a cough, a sore throat. For four or five days it felt like hell. I had to try to focus on helping staff but I couldn't manage more than 10 or 15 minutes. Now I feel more normal and have started to work again.
'My two daughters and my son-in-law had it.'
At 75, Forte maintains an athletic physique, having taken up hardcore training in his mid-50s.
At his peak, he represented Britain several times at the World Triathlon Championships and didn't stop until he was 65.
'I am in the danger category age-wise, but I didn't get any extreme symptoms, probably because I am very fit, which helps. Even so, it was worse than the worst flu I have ever had, by far.'
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Having made a personal donation of £100,000 to Boris Johnson in the election last year, Forte says: 'I hope he makes a full recovery.
Carrying on working takes the body's focus away from fighting the virus, so he should convalesce. We need him, there is no one to replace Boris.
'What worries me is what happens with this lockdown. It can only be solved if you have herd immunity or a vaccine or a cure. We can't go on like this.
People like me who have had it should be able to have an antibody test and be able to function normally. The young should be allowed to get out. The old and the vulnerable should stay in but the rest of us should be able to get back to work.'
As the chairman and founder of the luxury Rocco Forte Hotels group, which includes Browns in Mayfair and the Astoria in St Petersburg, his business has taken a direct hit.
Struggle: Forte has a string of hotels in Italy, including the Verdura Resort in Sicily (pictured) and the Hotel de Russie in Rome
'It's a nightmare, I never imagined a scenario where you have no income. This is by far the worst situation I have ever experienced,' he says.
'When Lehman Brothers went down in the financial crisis, our sales dropped by 40 per cent – but not by 100 per cent like now. In the three-day week in the 1970s, there was a period when things were pretty bleak and London was empty.
'The Ritz was for sale for £2.75million then. My father (the legendary Charles Forte) offered £2.25million. I couldn't persuade him to pay more. Now it is being sold, apparently for £700million.'
Is he looking for similar opportunities now to snap up prime assets cheaply?
'I don't know that it is an opportunity to buy, actually, because it is a temporary situation. I wouldn't be selling at below value, that's for sure.
'We are concentrating on minimising our outgoings, which is mostly wages and rents. We have used various government schemes around Europe to put staff on temporary layoff.
'We have also tried to top up those schemes as much as we can particularly for people at the bottom of the scale who suffer more hardship than anyone else. Everyone has taken a pay cut.'
It is, he says, 'a lost year': 'We will not have any real profitability. We are not generating cash to invest. By next season, I hope things will normalise. We are still producing our weekly sales sheet, it is quite funny looking at it and just seeing zeros.'
Despite not normally being a fan of big government spending and borrowing, Forte says Johnson and Chancellor Rishi Sunak are 'going in the right direction' with their multi-billion pound support for families and firms.
'I was lobbying hard for furlough having seen it work well in other countries and Sunak brought it in extremely quickly.'
As well as having Italian family roots, Forte has a string of hotels in Italy, including the Verdura Resort in Sicily and the Hotel de Russie in Rome.
'In Italy they are in a much more difficult financial situation than the UK. I'm hoping we might open there in July or August. Here in the UK I don't know.'
The pandemic, he says, will lead to a shake-up.
'The NHS is fantastic, full of brave people fighting against the odds. But Public Health England are a complete bloody disaster. The applause is for those on the front line, not the incompetent bureaucracy.
'But not everything should change. Having conference calls is bloody awful, I can't wait to get back to having meetings face to face.'
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