Gerald Ratner started working behind the counter of the high street jewellers started by his grandfather. He made his way up to the top, turning a loss-making business into a FTSE-listed company with hundreds of stores in the US and a healthy share price.

Gerald Ratner started working behind the counter of the high street jewellers started by his grandfather. He made his way up to the top, turning a loss-making business into a FTSE-listed company with hundreds of stores in the US and a healthy share price.

In April 1991 he made a public relations blunder of such epic proportions it made the front page of every red top paper in the country.

During his speech, Ratner quipped that one of the shop’s products was sold so cheaply because it was ‘total crap’.

He says: ‘Even today I get misquoted as saying all my jewellery was crap. Yes, I did make a joke about a sherry decanter we sold, which was a dumb thing to do, but the effect it had was unbelievable.’

It’s a reminder of what can happen to a public company when PR goes wrong. His joke knocked £500 million off the market cap and 18 months later he was out of a job. The pain of the blunder, he says, lasted for close to 15 years: ‘After I left Ratners I couldn’t get a job. I spent five years cycling.’

Eventually, he remortgaged his house and raised £175,000 to start a health club in Henley, which he sold in 2001 for £3.9 million. As his confidence returned, he went back to his first love, jewellery, negotiating a partnership with an Indian company to start Geraldonline.com.

He now claims to have enough distance from what happened to make light of it, using it as a source of entertainment on the after-dinner circuit, generating publicity for the company.

‘I’ve turned the whole thing to my advantage, generating hits on my site due to my notoriety,’ he says.