Fired with enthusiasm to run children's adventure centres

RICHARD Farley was showing a health and safety executive around his huge new children's adventure playground, Hobbledown, before the gates opened to the public when he spotted something awry.

- Lucy Tobin

"I noticed a bonfire was slightly out of control and an adjacent hedge had caught fire," the entrepreneur explains. "So I used the watering can next to the fire to try and douse the hedge." Unfortunately, though, the watering can was actually full of petrol.

"The HSA officer laughed, at least, and it took about half an hour to get the fire under control - we had to replant the hedge though!"

Luckily for Farley and his co-founder Nick de Candole, the firefighting was a one-off. Their family entertainment business, The Escapade Group, started with two soft-play style activity centres in Croydon and Romford, and now has four sites, including a vast 126-acre Hobbledown Heath opening in Hounslow this month. This year Escapade is expected to welcome 1.3 million visitors and hit a £16 million annual turnover.

It started when the duo, both now 54 but friends since meeting as teenagers, started a property development business together in 2000. Five years on, they wanted to do something different and had contrasting ideas. De Candole wanted to create an upmarket children's playcentre model, Farley had an ambition to launch "a premium gymwear brand - a 'Sweaty Bob' for men". The pair flipped a coin "and here we are," Farley laughs. He doesn't seem to mind backing his friend's idea "although I do look at Gymshark and think we could have made it a success!".