“Entrepreneurs aren’t made, they’re born - it’s in the genes,” Rigby believes. “You’ve got this driving urge to do things and you are never satisfied [until] you have achieved all that can be achieved.” Yet Rigby himself once dreamed of life in the RAF. When his father lost his eyesight and with that his clerical job, the teenage Rigby took a more conventional path - joining the graduate scheme of a US tech business even though he hadn’t been to university. Rigby would launch his conglomerate with a £2,000 loan in 1975, starting out with a recruitment business before diversifying into technology, aviation, hotels, property and finance. He owns airports near Bournemouth, Coventry, Exeter and Norwich. In 2021 he became the first British businessman to be awarded the Legion d’honneur owing to the success of SCC, a recruitment business that has created more than 3,000 jobs in France.