MARK DUNHILL, the rugged director of Alfred Dunhill, is your classic "ho-for-the-open-spaces" English gentleman. At 39, "I'll be 40 in four days" he told me, he plays more sports that other men dream of taking up. Golf, tennis, swimming, hiking, skiing, he also follows jazz and sings occasionally in the choir, and when time permits, does the Saturday morning market with his son and the dog. Alfred Dunhill, which sells exclusive luxury products like clothing and accessories to men, need not look further for a model.

At 9 o'clock in the morning, he came to the Brasserie at The Oberoi, Bombay, looking like an advertisement for his brand. Later over breakfast he told me modestly, "Everything I'm wearing is from Dunhill... except my socks and boxer shorts!" The previous night, he had introduced the first Dunhill showroom to India and talked about the quintessential English luxury brand. But now, the agenda was food. I had been tipped that Mark Dunhill is a great foodie and an exceptionally talented cook. And he almost dashed my hopes by ordering fresh fruit and a "double espresso". No sizzling bacon, no eggs to order, no rolls with maple syrup.

Seeing my surprise, he explained: "One joy of working in Asia is the fresh fruit. In England, it is a delicacy. We get tropical fruit that is imported and kept in newspaper! By the time it reaches me, it is often spoilt." By Asia, he meant Malaysia, where he was based in Kuala Lumpur. And Singapore, Hong Kong and India, where he is now responsible for the domestic retail and wholesale business of Alfred Dunhill. He gave a culinary description of Malaysia. "What food! And what extremes, so healthy, but so deliciously dangerous! You can put on vast amounts of weight. When I fly into KL, first thing I do is visit Madame Kwans, a temple of nonya cooking. This is fusion food. The local cuisine, plus Chinese and ethnic Indian. You can discover a country through its cuisine by exploring the restaurants."

His interest for food was handed down by his mother. "She expressed her love for me by spoiling me at the table," Mark said. And he showed his gratitude by cooking breakfast for his parents when he was five. "I made scrambled eggs, bacon and toast. It's the typical English breakfast. Very easy to cook. Most Englishmen don't graduate beyond it. Left to their own devices in a kitchen, they would be able to cook only bacon and eggs. My dad's of that vintage. He'll only go into the kitchen if it's on fire! Once my mother was out for two weeks and left him all his meals in tupperware boxes in the fridge. He ignored her instructions, threw all the food out, and lived on bacon and eggs! I think men are of two categories. Those who cannot cook. And those who love to cook."

Mark Dunhill definitely loves to cook. "If you are condemned to eating three meals a day, how much more joy you would get out of life if you derived joy out of food," he told me. But his passion for food only took off when he lived in France for ten years. "How different France is from England," he admitted. "In the cities of England, you will find the gastronomy of Europe, but in the countryside, cooking is like what it was 15-20 years ago. Fine cooking is just not ingrained in the English psyche, it's not part of our heritage. In France it is. And they also have the joy of buying food in the market. I used to go with my son and the dog every Saturday morning and come back with a car load of food that I knew we would not eat, but which was very nice to look at!"

And he talked about the wines of France. "I was living in Gaya, near Toulouse, which is an old wine area, and by going and buying my wine from the local vineyard, I learnt so much. Wine is so cheap in France. A five gallon drum of Rose, which I used to take home and bottle, and which saw me through summer, was cheaper than petrol! Though he went beyond Rose to develop a liking for Burgundy, Mark Dunhill is not a fussy wine drinker. "I'm quite happy to drink regional wines," he said. And he likes a cognac and port. "Though the older I get, I find I wake up with a head the next morning. My tolerance is decreasing. Good thing I left France!" He does not drink Scotch. Alfred Dunhill makes a fine blended whisky under licenced agreement with a famous Scotch house. "It's called Dunhill Whisky," said Mark, "and, yes, I do drink it, it's an absolutely fine whisky. Fine enough to drink as a digestive and not just an aperitif."

We came back to food. He enjoyed wholesome French cooking. "I could do a roast duck stuffed with fruit," he said. "Or a lentil stew. And I have a large repertoire of exotic salads. There's also classic French cooking. Though I must admit, I've been busy the last five, six years. So I tend to repeat recipes. But I promised to treat myself to a course at a cooking school in Gascony run by a master chef called Andre Daquin. It's a temple of gastronomy. I'd also love to learn how to cook Indian food. I'm fascinated by the North-West Frontier Province food of the Bukhara in New Delhi. This cuisine is the first gateway to India for the foreign tourist. Bill Clinton has baptised Bukhara as the best restaurant in the world! Do I agree with that? Hmnn... what you eat here is certainly not what you find in the Indian restaurants of the world. But, certainly, the tandoor paneer and the black dal at the Bukhara are to weep over." Yes, he enjoyed cooking. It was therapeutic to empty the mind and concentrate on something different. It was crucial to have a hobby that balanced life. His was cooking. It occupied him physically and mentally. It cut him off from all the stresses of life. In France, his passion for food got the better of him, and Mark Dunhill got involved in the restaurant business. "The food was wonderful, the hospitality was superb, the restaurant offered VFM. Unfortunately, the book-keeping was not of the same standard! We were the cheapest restaurant in the whole of France, and also the least profitable. It was an interesting experience."

He never cooked in the restaurant. Not even when he had a row with the chef, an artistic and temperamental man who threw a tantrum when the restaurant was full and stormed off with his knives! "But I worked as a waiter," Mark said. "What an underestimated worker the waiter is! He's like a theatre artiste, a tense, highly-strung personality who puts in two performances a day. He hits peaks and troughs. He has his emotional highs and lows. And he faces intense stress during service. My goodness, can you imagine keeping a mental picture of all the tables, at what stage of the meal each one is on?" I said I couldn't. "Neither could I. That's why I moved out of the restaurant business," said the director of Alfred Dunhill, who now has 181 retail outlets in 26 countries to worry about, including one in Bombay