There's no reason now why I can't change my company name to Rocco Forte Hotels

There's no reason now why I can't change my company name to Rocco Forte Hotels."He could even buy up some of the old Forte assets, particularly from the Meridien chain, sold to Nomura last month. "Maybe there will be a fallout from Merdien and I can pick up something. They have some luxury hotels that don't really fit, such as Madrid, Warsaw and Geneva." Asked if he has already made contact, he smiles and denies it, though something is clearly in the air. RF Hotels has upmarket locations in Rome, Florence, Brussels. Edinburgh, St Petersburg, Cardiff and Manchester and sales this year are forecast to reach £70m.Sir Rocco reels off a list of cities he would like to be in including Milan, Venice, Frankfurt, Berlin, Madrid and Barcelona.

London and Paris are key targets though prices are prohibitive "Not to have a hotel in London is a bit of an irritation. It may be best to wait until the market slows down a bit and it looks like that is happening."The hotels are given extensive design makeovers by Sir Rocco's sister Olga Polizzi, who sits on the board as well as running her own successful hotel, The Tresanton in Cornwall Are they competitive? "Not really, no She deals with the decor. I do most other things."He says he enjoys handling the transactions without a phalanx of expensive advisers. "With every deal I've done, I've been the principal and produced the heads of terms. But I hate completion when the lawyers try to outdo each other over every last little bit."He doesn't miss the City.

"You have to spend a lot of time dealing with people who often don't really understand you're business And you are repeating yourself all the time. You feel like a gramophone record." A float of RF Hotels is, therefore, unlikely. "It is not something I'd discount absolutely, but as long as I can finance my business without recourse to the stock market I'd prefer not to float."Sir Rocco spent much of last week in Manchester where his group's newest hotel, The Lowry, opened in Salford in April. It was then that the leaked letter from Granada to Tony Blair emerged with the media group complaining that it could become a takeover target if the laws on cross-media ownership are not changed.

Granada becoming a takeover target rather strikes a chord with Sir Rocco, who for all his good manners, cannot hide his glee "It's rather amusing," he says clearly enjoying the thought. "They obviously can't take their own medicine."He is caustic on its sale of the Forte portfolio "It proves the point I made at the time," he says. "It's a complete waste because they have destroyed a very good company and actually haven't made much money out of it. So what was it for? Maybe if they'd stuck to media it would have been alright."What about launching a bid for Granada, just for vengeance's sake? "It would be amusing, wouldn't it? But I don't know anything about media."Sir Rocco doesn't have much time for Gerry Robinson, the former Granada chairman who famously launched his bid when Sir Rocco was out on a grouse shoot. The same goes for Carol Galley, the former Mercury Asset Management investment head who sealed Forte's fate when she sold MAM's stake to Granada. 'It's water under the bridge," he says, his voice drifting off "I don't spend any time thinking about them.