In this interview, first published in 2000, he speaks about his passion for basketball and his love of fast cars. Together with his brother, he just also happens to run one of the most successful businesses on the island

Why is everyone I am interviewing on a diet? There I was, contemplating the heavenly dishes Philippe (of Chez Philippe fame) was describing to me, when Kevin Decesare walks in, plonks down and announces: “Only a salad for me, thanks”.

Apparently, after his bad car accident three years ago, he had lost a lot of weight (“I call it my crash diet” he jokes with macabre humour). Now, the weight has crept back up, as weight has a nasty habit of doing, and he is determined to lose it.

We were at Mon Pain, or as the regulars call it, Chez Philippe. Surrounded by the shops and offices on The Strand, it is a favourite with business people who are looking for a casual place where, like that famous bar in the sitcom Cheers, “everyone knows your name.”

Don’t ask for a menu here because there isn’t one. Instead, the food changes every day and is written in chalk on a blackboard, “I discuss the day’s dishes with my very understanding chef” owner Philippe says. “Then, I go do the shopping – just like a housewife! Occasionally, like today, I find something new like fresh figs, and I tell him, ‘let’s make something with this!’. I always like to have something fresh and different.”

Kevin has been coming to Philippe’s since it first opened: “The salads were really different here – just like you get abroad. The food is very consistent; you rarely complain that it is not as good as usual. When I have guests I invariably bring them here. Philippe is nice and so is the rest of the staff. It’s good for a light lunch – except for the bread, the bread is so good…” he looked at it with longing and I offered to remove it from sight.
My conscience decreed that I, too, should stick to a salad. Kevin chose a Caesar salad while I had the house salad – crab meat, salmon, avocado. The large portions ensured that we would not feel hungry for at least another few hours.

There is a Maltese saying, I told Kevin: is-shab fl-ajru tajjeb (loose translation: going into partnership is a bad idea). Yet you and your brother have together built one of the most flourishing companies around. What is your secret?

“We are extremely different in the way we do things. We argue like mad. He’s the office man; when we’re negotiating contracts he does it better than I do. He has more staying power than me. I’m more practical. I think I see an opportunity quicker. But then getting it to work is another thing. When I come up with an idea, it will eventually end up on his lap and he will get it under control. So between my vision and his managerial skills we work well together. This project we’re doing now demands both our strengths.

The ‘project’ is a Lm25 million venture which includes an international franchise five star hotel, the re-opening of the Synergy gym, an IMAX theatre, car park and an ice skating rink.
But surely, I insisted, working with your brother can put on a strain on the relationship when things get intense?

“Well, this might sound a bit corny, but although we’re brothers, we also care about each other very much. If something happens to him, I’ll be the first there to defend him and vice-versa. There’s this bond between us. Not all brothers are like that.”

Kevin gives his mother credit for creating this bond. A typical, doting, Maltese mamà, whose sons can do no wrong, he fondly describes her as being very over-protective, and always, but always, ready to take their side…even if they are in the wrong. “We may argue, but when it comes to other people we show a common front.”

The brothers differ in other ways too. While Ian’s holidays sound like a Safari adventure, Kevin is, by his own admission, more ‘boring’, preferring comfort over exotic destinations. An incurable workaholic, his trips abroad are kept brief because he itches to get back to the office. “I went to Australia for just 10 days, and I went to Chicago twice for just 36 hours” he tells me casually.

Kevin is one of those restless beings who always has to be doing something. He even talks fast, as if his lips can’t quite keep up with the thought processes of his brain. Suffice it to say that, like his father before him, he goes to work every day of the week, 365 days a year. The kind of man who goes far in his career, but who is every woman’s nightmare. “Every Sunday I go in to do the cinema programme, even though I could easily do it on a Monday.” But why, I wonder silently to myself. “It gives me a feel of what is going on” he adds, as if reading my mind.

So you never want to be at the point where you delegate things to managers? “No, no, no” the very idea seemed to fill him with anxiety. “My brother’s like that, when he goes abroad he switches off, he doesn’t phone. I phone work every day from wherever I am. With the mobile it’s even worse now.”
Sounds like you’re a control freak to me, I suggested. “I don’t think I am – I just want to know what’s going on.” (Hate to tell you this Kev, but that’s what a control freak does…)
He wasn’t happy with this label: “Maybe it’s insecurity, thinking that without me it won’t function, even though it does”, he laughs a little shakily.

One of the things I had heard about Kevin Decesare is that he can be very demanding with his staff: “I’m as demanding of them as I am of myself” he points out. “I don’t suffer fools easily. I expect people to have common sense; to know what to do. I’m also rather short-tempered, but with the amount of pressure we have at the moment, one can understand that. Those who are good in their positions don’t have any problems with me. I don’t get upset at those who do their job well. But when the bleeding obvious is not done….!”
The exasperation in his voice is palpable and you realise why it is that the Decesares excel. The culture of ‘u iwa tghaddi’ (‘it will do’) certainly never infiltrated this particular clan.

Kevin’s volatile temperament is never more in evidence than on the basketball court when he is watching the Rabat team, which he sponsors. I have witnessed his behaviour on the sidelines first-hand. To put it mildly, the guy goes berserk.

“I’ve been sent off by the referee many a time. That’s my character. I get extremely upset but I get over it quickly. Basketball gives me the chance to vent my frustration which I can’t do at work or at home. I let off steam big time. My players have a hard time with me, I really tell them off. They take it from me because they have strong characters. I’m surprised I’ve never been punched out by one of them!” he suddenly realises.

Kevin is of the belief that you get more out of people if you push them to their limits; getting them to perform at a level that even they themselves do not think is possible. While it may sound extremely harsh, this philosophy apparently gets results. Eden Leisure Rabat Depiro have won the League
four times in a row, while in the last two years they lost in the final game “with a little help from the referee, I would say!”

When it comes to his two sons, Sean, 9, and Kevin, 10, he also tries to push them to the best of their ability. He does not, however, consider himself to be a very strict father. “The way they talk in front of me! I would never have talked like that in front of my father. ‘Dad, Kevin kicked me in the blls!’ They’re much more open” he laughs, shaking his head in disbelief. “But then they’re afraid of me if I get angry.”

The Decesare grinta is already evident in the younger offspring, who is extremely competitive, according to Kevin: “Like me times ten! He drives his older brother crazy. Sean gets away with murder. A real pixxicalda!(a pain in the backside).” As if he does not have enough to do, he also hosts a weekly radio show with Victor Formosa on Bay Radio in which they interview various personalities. He shrugs noncommittally: “It was something I wanted to try out.”

He recently tried to obtain another radio license for a current affairs station but was turned down because he is not allowed to own two stations: “It’s ridiculous. The state, the political parties can have all these stations, but Eden Leisure can’t.”

I turned the subject back to his serious car accident which has left him with a scar on his forearm. I distinctly remember the photo of the car which had smashed into a wall, and how everyone said that the airbag saved him: “Well, that and God” he says. “The front of the car was gone. I had a bad knock on my head and I blew my cartilage out and needed operations. It still swells up when I go skiing.” For the first three months after the crash which had brought him so close to death, Kevin remembers not caring about anything anymore. Feeling that he had ‘cheated death’, what used to worry him before no longer did. “It was like: what the hell, how long are we here for? kind of thing. Then gradually, my feelings came back.” Four weeks after the crash, he drove again for the first time at 20 miles an hour with everyone hooting their horn behind him.

OK, I told him, let’s just enumerate exactly what the Eden Leisure Group includes: Bay Radio, the bowling alley, the cinema complexes in Fgura and St Julians, 50 per cent of Axis, 50 per cent of Gallerija and various rental properties. Of all these ventures, which one are you the most proud of?

“When I opened Styx in 1980. I was only 20 years old.” (20 years old! When I was 20 my greatest project was buying just the right outfit for Saturday night. That, and wondering if I would meet some cute guy).

“It was a very tough growing up period because there was no police control and the hoods would really give us a hard time. Running it helped me to be much stronger.” But it was not all work, of course. Clever Kevin had figured out the ultimate way to pick up girls. The cinema complex is another notch in his belt. People had labelled him crazy, mad, insane and any other adjective you can think of. One cinema, maybe, but six? Trusting his instincts, he, of course, proved them wrong.

At that moment it suddenly struck me that I was having lunch with probably one of the richest men in Malta (you know, the kind of guy your mother always hoped you’d marry). Frankly, the guy is loaded. My theory has always been that too much money changes people, and not always for the better. Is this really the case? “Well, I’ve gone beyond having a boat. Everyone who has money has a boat in this country! I hate going to Comino and seeing everybody you see during the week anyway. Doesn’t excite me one bit. But basically, whether I earn Lm10,000 or Lm20,000, I don’t think I’d live any differently.” Did he mean that there comes a point when (dare I say it?) there is only so much you can spend?

“I don’t have expensive tastes compared to most people. I like cars, automobiles, that’s what I like.” Out of the blue, he informs me that he doesn’t do drugs and never has, which he assures me is very rare for someone who has run night-clubs for 20 years. He doesn’t smoke or gamble either. Food and the opposite sex, are my only vices, he adds with the disarming grin of a man who is oh so sure of himself. The word which comes up again and again when people want to describe Kevin Decesare is succinct and very telling: they call you a kiesah (conceited) I tell him. Kevin is not surprised: “I have been called that name all my life.”

He then tells me how until he was 15 he was ‘so nice’ to girls, a real good boy jahasra! and they used to treat him so badly (Oh no, I groaned, not that old line!). I knew what was coming next: of course, he started being horrible to girls and they all came running (why can’t men be more original?) Joking aside, Kevin agrees that his reputation of being a kiesah is due to the fact that people automatically assume that if you have money, have a nice car, wear nice clothes, and are seen with nice women, you are, basically, a sh*t. “You can’t really win, so I ended up feeling I don’t give a sh*t!”

He also agrees that there is a lot of envy in Malta. He would definitely prefer the American way of life where having money means you are looked up to, admired. Whereas here, he goes on, everyone is always pointing fingers, ready to tear you down “Ghax dak hekk, jew hekk. It’s something I’ve lived with all my life”.
He describes himself as a friendly, easygoing sort of person, and not really a snob. “I wouldn’t want my son to marry a slut or a real hamalla, but I wouldn’t mind talking to a hamalla” is how he puts it.

His brother and their friends tell him he is difficult, especially when they are abroad, although he is not quite sure why. Maybe it has to do something with the fact that he tends to get his own way all the time…
Getting older displeases him. “It’s getting closer to the end, you know? Sometimes I wonder, what is all this for, why don’t I just sell out, get out of the business. But then I enjoy achieving something; the fact that people expect a lot from us. We don’t do things tal-qamel (shoddily).”

At 41, he craves the excitement he used to feel when he was in his 20’s: “Don’t you feel that life is boring now?” he asks me. I could not really agree with him there – after all, who wants to be still trekking around Paceville at our age?
What he does enjoy is being at home with his family, in his comfortable surroundings. “I love my house” he says. That’s called contentment Kevin, not boredom.

I put forward a tantalising prospect. What if, for one year, he could be in charge of Malta and run it like he does a company – what would be the first thing he would do? “Shut it down for six months” he answers automatically. “Then you’d have a big, big sign so that any plane overhead could see it: ‘closed for re-decoration’.”

The idea obviously appealed and his blue eyes took on a faraway look: “I would make myself Minister of Tourism and give tourism the importance it deserves. It needs product development badly, and it’s money well spent. Everything you arrange will give you money in return. Politicians see it, but they haven’t got the guts to do it. In one year, I would turn every tourist area in Malta into the South of France. It doesn’t cost much to do it.” (Irriduh, irriduh u lil Kevin irriduh!)

Our salads finished, I had ordered a tarte tatin in a moment of weakness. Kevin looked very smug for having turned down dessert.

While most people consider the Decesares as a success story, he reminds me that they have had their share of failures: the Palladium didn’t work, for example. “However, I’ve very fortunate that I work with my brother. He’s the guy who puts on the brakes. I’m going at 100 miles per hour – I go into his office full of ideas of what I want to do and I’m always on the go, but I’m lucky I have him with me, because he has what I don’t have. He gets things right. Me, I want to keep moving on to the next thing.”

It all comes down to having a feel of what is going on, what people want, what works and what doesn’t, and what niche needs to be filled. If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, than the Decesare brothers can consider themselves flattered. “Everything we’ve done has been copied. Discos, cinemas – there is no market for any more cinemas. Everyone thinks they’re going to make money, but they’re not. We’ve always done things to a high standard, but others have lowered the quality.”

He asks me whether he could see this interview before it was published (control, control!). No, I said firmly. A worried frown crosses his face and he hurries off, eager to get back to the office.