When I'm at home in Britain, I have breakfast every morning with my two children [son and daughter] and put my son on the bus to school before leaving for the office at about 7.30am. My daughter is now old enough to drive, so she takes care of herself.

After I graduated as an engineer, I had the option of going to work on the oil rigs in the Middle East, as did many of my friends. However, my love of cars won the day and I chose to work in the automobile industry, initially as a graduate trainee with Rover.

I made a conscious decision early in my professional life that I wanted to be able to provide my family with a solid and permanent home, and that I did not want to be based overseas. I also wanted to avoid the rigours of shift life as experienced by my friends working in the oil industry, where people spend two or three months at work, followed by two or three months off. That's not a great way to live, either for an individual or their family. Looking back, I definitely made the right decision.

As chairman of Rolls-Royce, I travel about 100 days a year, so time spent 'grounded' at home with my family is very important to me. The novelty of sleeping in a different bed in a different hotel in a different city every night wears off very quickly. It's a bit of a cliche, but there really is no place like home.

Naturally, I drive a Rolls-Royce to work. This is for a specific reason though, as opposed to just flaunting the fact that I have one. I am nothing if not critical about each new automobile we produce and test driving a car allows me to objectively assess all facets of it, from whether the various controls are within easy reach of the driver to whether the steering wheel feels too soft or hard.

We will be releasing up to four new models in the next few years and we are about to launch a convertible [the Phantom Drophead Coupe]. This is the model I have been driving recently; it is a wonderful automobile.

I am part of the senior team at Rolls-Royce that focuses on marketing issues, among other things, including identifying new markets, developing and growing new and existing markets, the design aspects of our models, the characteristics of each model, the materials used, etc. Then there are the usual day-to-day business operations, which take up a considerable part of my day.

We employ 550 people at Rolls-Royce and one of the most enjoyable things I do on a daily basis is to 'walk the line' - the production line. Everyone knows everyone else and so it's a very friendly and enthusiastic working environment. A great example of this is the guy on the assembly line who told me he is the first person in the world to drive every single car we produce. Part of his job is inserting the key into the ignition of each car for the first time, turning on the engine and driving the car to an allocated holding area. One day we were talking and I asked him how many Rollers he had driven. 'I have,' he said, 'literally, driven every car we have produced in my lengthy career here and love the fact I am the only person who can say this.' We produce around 800 cars a year, so this individual has certainly driven more Rolls-Royces than anyone else on the planet.

I know all our employees by name and walking the line has resulted in a great feeling of camaraderie, whereby anyone who feels they have a point to raise or needs to suggest something specific in relation to our cars can just grab me and speak to me when they see me walking by each day.

This has been my fourth visit to China in as many weeks and what a wonderful event I was here for, too - namely the presenting of the keys upon delivery of 14 new Rolls-Royce Phantoms to their new Hong Kong owner [The Peninsula hotel].

We have recently experienced 60 per cent growth in Asia, so that indicates the market potential across the region, and with the current rapid growth and development on the mainland, I foresee comparable growth for Rolls-Royce there too.'