It is not surprising. Daswani advertises heavily in the British broadsheets. 'A suit fit for a millionaire,' the ads declare, 'at a price you can afford.' The adverts look cheap, but perhaps that is the point: so are the suits.

The adverts list which country and town his team will visit on any given day. If it is Friday it is London, Monday Belfast, Wednesday then it must be Dublin. A week later it is New York, Washington DC or Los Angeles. Within the next six months the 45-year-old tailor's grand tour will reach Paris and Germany, and other parts of Europe.

'I go wherever I'm invited. Companies ring up and ask for us to set up shop for a while, so we oblige,' says Daswani. 'It's tiring, but that's business nowadays. Sometimes it is a strain on the family, but often I bring my wife.'

During the chat and my mock fitting, about 10 men have popped in to peruse the piled-high banks of sample wool and cotton cloths. They are handed a quick drink, measured and photographed on a digital camera - the images are then e-mailed to Cameron Road, Kowloon, instead of the all-important second fitting.

In six weeks (three for a rush job) a suit will pop through their doors, for as little as #188 (HK$2,440) for a 'superfine wool suit, a blazer or sports jacket, one matching pair of slacks and two silk ties' (customs duties and British tax cost extra).

'People do spend more, sure. The average is about #300-#500. That's two suits, two shirts. We do more expensive suits for about #800, but it's still cheaper than Savile Row, which costs anything from #3,000-#5,000.'

It sounds cheap, too cheap. But repeat business suggests the suits don't fall apart in a year. 'My clients come back, year after year. They recommend me to friends, who then tell their friends ... we don't want to reveal too many figures so let's say we do hundreds of suits a week ... almost 1,000 this week.'

Is there competition? 'No, Savile Row is too formal, too expensive, too conservative,' he says of London's famed suit street. 'People like coming here, it is relaxed. We have a better selection of materials. There were tailors from Leicester who tried to copy us, but they had no back-up - we have 500 to 600 staff subcontracted in Hong Kong, we are the biggest tailor there - I never saw them again.'

Daswani is now in full PR pitch: 'People love what we do, for the prices we charge. That's why we are successful.'

As if on cue, a confident early thirty-something barrister-type breezes in. 'Mr Daswani,' he says, shaking his hand, nodding to the other tailors. 'Gentlemen. Nice to see you all again. I see you've a better view of Hyde Park this time.'

Minutes later an elderly man, smart but casual in a chequered country-style jacket wanders in. He is ushered to a seat, given a drink and passed some cloth. Has he been before? 'No, my first time.' Did you see the adverts? 'No, my friend recommended the service.'

There is nothing new about Hong Kong tailors wandering the world servicing clients. What is new is the sheer scale of Daswani's operation. He has eight tailors now in London, and a shadow team working its way down Britain from Aberdeen. He has four rooms on the 11th floor of a five-star hotel, and that costs about #1,000 per night, rack rate.

'Plenty of tailors come here for business but none are doing as well as us,' he says. 'We have been coming to London for years but after the British left in 1997 we noticed a drop in trade in Hong Kong. Less western tourists were coming to buy suits. Although more mainland Chinese visited, they did not buy suits, they bought gold and medicines. So we expanded our overseas operations.'

Daswani now claims to service what he calls the 'Who's Who' market: 'the judges, QCs, ministers, the Lords.' Four-fifths of his trade are men.

People such as Tony Blair? 'I can't name names.' But Daswani has copied six sea-cotton shirts for the British prime minister? He smiles: 'We never name names. I can tell you we do make clothes for politicians, judges, top bankers.'

Daswani is not so cagey with my mock fitting. 'You have a slight stoop, sir.' (Oh no, here we go.) 'But it is nothing we can't deal with. Your back is a bit hollow and the right side is slightly higher than the other. Do you carry a bag on that side? I thought so. You have a bit of a belly but what man doesn't.' It's as if he is about to sell me a gym membership, not a suit.

As a third-generation tailor, Daswani has gleaned some socio-anthropological insights. He can tell, for instance, if men work with computers. 'A lot of IT guys come in and you can tell straight away. They have a stoop from leaning and staring into computer screens.'

Has anyone left unhappy, after all, the lack of a second sitting can cause misunderstanding? 'We measure to the nearest millimetre. And we use the camera as a safeguard, as a sort of second fitting. We are not God, we can't be 100 per cent perfect, so if someone is not happy then we have a tailor in London to help.'