Evening Standard (London): PLANET EARL

Robert Earl is the Londoner who mixed movie stars and milkshakes to create Planet Hollywood, a global phenomenon that's had spectacular ups and downs. Now, as the good times roll again, he tells Lydia Slater why he's betting on casinos

We're purring through the glitzy part of the West End in a sleek, black Mercedes with tinted windows, and Robert Earl is keeping us all entertained with stories about California's new governor. 'Arnie's a real prankster,' he says. 'He once made me get up early, go hiking and then play tennis, all before breakfast, and I was starving. When the food came, I grabbed at the salt and pepper and shook them over the food, but the swine had unscrewed the lids of the salt and pepper pots.' He laughs heartily at the memory of his terminated breakfast.

Robert Earl has this sort of relationship with the world's biggest stars because he is the owner of the movie-themed restaurant chain Planet Hollywood.

In 1991, he had the idea of persuading Sylvester Stallone, Bruce Willis, Demi Moore and Arnold Schwarzenegger to join forces in promoting Planet Hollywood, in exchange for shares in the company.

The 'eatertainment' concept took off, spectacularly.

At one time, Earl was talking of opening 300 Planets around the world; the company was worth $3.5 billion, of which his personal holding was worth over $1 billion, and by 1997 his London diner was the most profitable restaurant in Britain.

But the global economic downturn and the events of 9/11 had a disastrous effect on the business. He had to close several of his American restaurants and filed for bankruptcy twice. And while the stars remained loyal, their agents were less forgiving. 'Let's just say, I wasn't top of anyone's call sheet in Hollywood,' he says mildly.

But the obituaries were premature. Earl, 52, is back and as bursting with ideas as ever. He's got a dizzying variety of projects on the boil, including a Planet Hollywood 2,600-bedroom hotel-cum- casino in Las Vegas where guests can sleep on famous beds, including Madonna's (from In Bed With Madonna) and the one featured in Basic Instinct (ice pick optional). Then there's the Wheeler's oyster and champagne bars which he's bought with celebrity chef Marco Pierre White, the Armani franchise in Mexico, a range of Planet Hollywood frozen food that's just gone into Sainsbury's, a planned US chain of sandwich bars which he's launching next year with the 11th Earl of Sandwich, and the Rex nightclub beneath the newly revamped Leicester Square branch of Planet Hollywood. What's more, he's hooked a whole new raft of stars into the Planet Hollywood net, including the double whammy of Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake, as well as hanging on to the old guard, too.

All except Schwarzenegger, that is. 'I'd have asked him to be involved with the Las Vegas casino, but it wouldn't be appropriate now,' he explains.

Still, he's hoping to be asked to do the food for the inaugural party. 'I can tell you, he's going to surprise everyone,' says Earl confidently. 'He's going to do an amazing job.' He ushers me into the gaming room of his latest project, the casino 50 St James, a grand, stuccoed mansion that used to be the Jamaican High Commission. Earl has gone into partnership with London Clubs International and is now co-owner of the casino, lending his touch to glam it up.

Soberly dressed in a dark suit and white shirt, and bearing an eerie resemblance to Joe Pesci in his Goodfellas role, he stands magisterially behind the roulette wheel, spinning it for the photographer. 'This is all going to go,' he explains, waving a casual hand at the magnificent brocaded walls, the vast, glittering chandeliers and the swagged velvet curtains.

Earl's idea is to remodel the casino in a style similar, he says, to the Conduit Street restaurant and club Sketch, with cutting-edge modern design, several different luxury restaurants, a lounge bar and a swanky gaming room.

' Everyone at the moment has a casino like this one,' he explains. 'Beautiful spaces, the same customer base of middleaged, overseas visitors rather than locals. But I'm intending that instead of going to San Lorenzo, The Ivy or Zuma, you'll use your membership to come here, eat at the restaurants, use the lounge downstairs and go upstairs to gamble if you feel like it.' The plan is, of course, for his starry chums to hang out in the casino. 'I'd be very hurt if the American stars weren't regularly eating and partying here,' he says, his dark eyes looking wounded at the mere thought.

The casino's new name will be 50. Is that in figures or letters? 'You choose,' he says generously. I prefer Fifty, I say. 'OK,' he says.

'You named it.' He's not a gaming man himself. 'I don't have the patience to play for small sums,' he says, though they don't seem all that small: he launches into an anecdote of a recent gambling excursion with Bruce Willis.

Willis won $250,000 at the tables and was so delighted he gave Earl's bodyguard, Big John, $80,000 as a present. 'John was going to pay off his mortgage, his ex-wives, everything. I told him to go home with the money,' says Earl, 'but he wanted to stay and watch.

'Well, of course, Bruce started losing. He lost the rest of his money and then he took back John's $80,000, put it on the table and lost that, too.' He shakes his head, sorrowfully.

'Of course, John never really expected to keep the money in the first place, but it was nice while the fantasy lasted,' he says.

Earl believes he owes his business empire to his genetic inheritance. His mother, Daphne, who ran a dress shop in North London, gave him his entrepreneurial instincts, his father an easy relationship to celebrity.

Robert Earl Snr was a popular crooner, so the family used to spend the summer holidays in Blackpool, hobnobbing with the likes of Dick Emery, Hughie Green and Cliff Richard, who were all performing there for the summer season.

'It had a major effect,' Earl says. 'For me, celebrity is not mesmerising in any way. And my ease around stars translates into them having confidence in me.' Food was a passion for the whole family. 'My grandmother used to force-feed me,' he says with a reminiscent smile. 'I was a plump little bugger in those days. It's definitely a Jewish thing,' he says. 'I love food.

My parents and I can be in the middle of one meal and we'll already be talking about the next. My wife just can't stand it.' Although Earl regards it as his duty to sample the burgers at his restaurants regularly, he is actually rather trim, the result, he says, of an enforced diet after he put on 20lb holidaying on his friend, Bhs owner Philip Green's yacht this summer.

He takes no exercise, since a brief fitness craze, the result of Schwarzenegger's exhortations, ended in failure. 'I took a personal trainer with me everywhere, and I had a washboard what-d'you-call- it,' he says. 'But he really pissed me off. He'd take away my food and eat it himself!' He fired the trainer and hired a personal chef instead. 'Now I'm much happier,' he says.

As a child, Earl was a terrible show-off. He was always performing to the family, and had once hoped to step into his father's patent leather shoes and follow him on to the stage as a comedian, until he realised he wasn't good enough.

But the showbiz world never lost its fascination.

By 16, he was spending the school holidays working at his father's theatrical agency, booking the acts and taking commission.

After a relatively undistinguished school career at Hendon County grammar in North London 'I was too keen on girls and sport' Earl went to Surrey University to do a degree in catering and hotel management. While there, he wangled himself the catering contract for the Lincoln pop festival, collected 450 of his fellow students to work as helpers and made himself 100,000 in four days a fortune in 1972. 'I don't think I paid the other students,' he twinkles. 'I think they're still looking for me.' After college, he went to work for the billionaire businessman Joe Lewis, for whom he opened a themed medieval banqueting hall complete with serving wenches near Tower Bridge; by 1977, he'd formed his own company, selling it ten years later, just before the stock market crash, for 62 million.

He moved in on his wife, Tricia, who hails from Sidcup and at the time was a buyer for the clothes chain Snob, with similar efficiency, arranging to be seated next to her at a friend's wedding. 'I stared down her dress all night, then took her to Trader Vic's,' he says. 'She hated me. It took a lot of time, but I wore her down. You're lucky that you've caught me with flu, or I'd wear you down, too.' They have been together for 30 years and married for 23. Tricia is the president of the Orlando Ballet, and the couple live in Orlando in a large glass mansion on a private lake next door to Tiger Woods.

They have three children, Beth, 23, who launched the Rex nightclub in London at which Britney was seen strutting her stuff last month; Cara, 21, who attends a design school in Manhattan; and Robbie, ten, who, says his father fondly, wants to take over the entire business himself. One of Earl's great pleasures in life is coaching his son's soccer team; he motivates them for key matches by offering to treat the players and their families to lunch at you-know-where.

But what really drives him, he admits, is work.

Even holidays are simply a case of relocating his office to the beach; he used to take secretaries, fax machines and all, to Cap d'Antibes. Only his letterhead would change, to show the family lying on the beach under parasols.

After the downturn in Planet Hollywood's fortunes, he became extremely depressed. 'I could understand what makes people kill themselves,' he says, which, given his ebullient demeanour, comes as a shock. 'My wife was a saint to put up with me. I was a bear, a real bear during those years.' Friends advised him to give up on the chain and try something new. Instead, he threw himself further into his work. 'It wasn't about getting the money back; I just wanted everyone involved to be able to walk with their heads high. There were many people in Hollywood who picked on my movie-star partners and taunted them. At the time, Bruce and Demi were getting divorced so my business story moved to the front pages; there were headlines like "Unlucky in love, unlucky in business".' He's after 'retribution', he says. 'It's what I've been working on for the past four years, and momentum has gathered.

Now, I'm back, and I'm embraced in Hollywood again.' He takes a triumphant sip of his lemon and honey. His ambition is to consolidate the 26 successful Planet Hollywood branches he has remaining the London restaurant being one of his flagships and to relaunch the brand with the Planet Hollywood Resort and Casino opening in Las Vegas in 2005.

To this end, he's poured 1.5 million into a makeover of the London branch alone. He's beefed up the menu with the help of Marco Pierre White and added an interactive tour of the restaurant's movie memorabilia collection.

So here he is at 52, back on top, chums once more with the celebrities, owner of homes in Florida and the luxury Caribbean resort Parrot Cay, and with more money in the bank than he knows what to do with (the latest Sunday Times Rich List valued his fortune at 100 million). Isn't he ever tempted to retire?

Earl looks puzzled. 'I love my work,' he says.

'It's my passion. I get to fly around the world with celebrities; what I love to do is totally integrated for me with my work. I went to Fashion Rocks and that was work; I was talking to Beyonc, and don't be surprised if I ask her if she wants to get involved with Planet Hollywood.' Partying is, he says, all part of the job. 'Though my wife hates it. She's completely the opposite of me; she likes a quiet life.' Which is the reason, he says, that she's not keen to see him retire. 'I'm not sure she wants to spend that much time with me,' he says frankly, stifling a sneeze. 'I'm much too exhausting.'