An Interview With Ben Elliot

B.E.: I don't know. I'd like to think that what I'm dedicated to is looking after Quintessentially members 24 hours a day. What happens in my private life is certainly private.

L.G.: But your clients presumably like to read about those things.

B.E.: I honestly think what my clients, our clients, care about is our ability to deliver the best service, 24 hours a day and the rest of it. I wouldn't have thought, one, they're even interested, and two, they would've actually even known. That's why we've been successful. I don't think it's anything to do with who my aunt is or whom I happen to have, um, you know, been out with or anything like that. We employ nearly 3,000 people worldwide. Full-time. And I'm proud of what we as a team created. When we started in London, it was meant for people just in London. And, in fact, we've been able to come to New York, where I live, and this city for us has been the most exciting, brilliant, open opportunity. And for me personally the best thing that I ever did in my life was go to New York.

L.G.: How do you divide your time now?

B.E.: I'm going to Asia for three weeks to visit our Tokyo and China offices in three weeks' time. I'm doing a large event at the Cannes Film Festival. I spend a lot of time traveling in the rest of America, so it depends. I mean, there's no rule. My business partner and I spend most of our time visiting our offices and helping the team that we work on.

L.G: And you've had as your clients, I've read, people like Harvey Weinstein and Gwyneth Paltrow and Scarlett Johansson and various others.

B.E.: We have a number of well-known people and a number of less well-known people, and hopefully they love what we do.

L.G.: What are some of the more recent interesting requests that your company has been able to fill lately?

B.E.: Well, there's somebody in London who wanted a Premiership footballer to train his children to be best at football, which I thought was rather brilliant. For somebody in New York, we're being asked, through Quintessentially Estates, to look for an architect who will create a Batman cave for some illustrious member behind a library door. There's somebody who, maybe reading about the new Indiana Jones film, wants to fulfill a fantasy of going to Petra in Jordan, going to explore Indiana Jones-style some of the wonders of that country. We get asked for outlandish things day in and day out, but I think most of the things we do is what you imagine us to do, which is to help people with their lives, and to organize themselves and get the very best deals and those kind of things.

L.G.: And one of the odder requests that I read about was somebody wanting squirrel meat?

B.E.: I don't think you're allowed to gather up the squirrels in this great city.

L.G.: And eat them.

B.E: I think people might think you were peculiar.

L.G.: How did you come up with Quintessentially as a name?

B.E.: We just felt it encapsulated what we were trying to do, which is the very essence of what we do.

L.G.: Why an adverb? Why didn't you make it a noun?

B.E.: You sound like my father, or my Latin teacher. I'm not sure. Quintessentially, I don't know, it runs off the tip of my tongue better, and I liked it.

L.G.: So you're here for a couple of weeks and then you're off to Asia?

B.E.: I'm going to Cannes one week to throw a party, and then I'm flying to Japan and around Asia and then to Australia, which I haven't been to for maybe 15 years, actually, so I'm excited about doing that. Then I'll be back here for most of the summer. Maybe when we next meet, you could ask me sweeter questions than you asked today, you bastard!

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