While many people found new hobbies during lockdown, Philip Thorley developed the playlist to be played at his wake.

The boss of east Kent pub chain Thorley Taverns wasn’t feeling particularly morbid – nor dying, as some family members feared - merely wanting to ensure the soundtrack to his post-funeral knees-up hit the right note.

“It’s not set in stone,” he says. “It's a moveable feast. I make notes in my diary and every two or three months I'll update it.”

We’ll get to some of the songs on that list shortly.

We’re sat in his office in Broadstairs - the nerve centre of the Thorley Taverns empire. From here, the firm’s 400 staff and 18 pubs and hotels – “all within 10 minutes’ drive – are co-ordinated.

The walls are lined with framed photos - mostly sports - with a large signed Australia Rugby World Cup shirt from 1999 taking pride of place.

It is not, it has to be said, the most modern of buildings. It’s a grand Edwardian construction - the inside (leading from reception to his office at least), a maze of modest-sized rooms and narrow corridors.

Philip Thorley (he prefers his full name to just Phil, which I’ve always called him) is a sprightly 61-year-old - happy to talk about anything and everything with what appears to be disarming honesty.

A lifelong Chelsea fan, he and a friend would play football on the street when they were children “when you could do that sort of thing”, taking turns to be either Peter Bonetti in goal or striker Peter Osgood.

He plays golf regularly, goes running twice a week and is a regular face at a local gym. And, it seems, he rarely puts his brain into neutral.

“I wake up early,” he says. “I jump straight out of bed, my mind races from the minute I get up. And I enjoy it. It doesn't drive me or other people mad. It's just how I'm made and how I'm wired.”

He is, it must be said, highly engaging company, with an easy charm and friendly demeanour.

He’s been in the trade since a teenager - a career path perhaps inevitable given his father was the Thanet “legend” Frank Thorley - the firm’s founder.

He died in 2023 at the age of 87, prompting a slew of tributes from those who knew or had worked for him. At his funeral, some 1,000 people lined the streets to bid him a final farewell.

“He stepped back from running the company a long time ago,” says Philip.

“He didn't enjoy the best of health during the end of his years, but he enjoyed being the figurehead.

“We were more business partners than father and son, to be honest.

“My dad was the hunter-gatherer - he loved finding the new sites, he loved doing them up. And I was the operator who looked after the people.

“People are my gig. I like people and people generally like me. Not everyone, but I'm a people person. I'll talk to the dustman or a managing director - I don't give a monkey’s.

“So there was a good business thing there.

“My dad was extremely charismatic, extremely hard-working and he enjoyed what he did.”

Thorley senior was living in south London - he’d grown up in Bermondsey - when he acquired his first pub, The Angel, near Fenchurch Street in the City, in 1971. Four more would be added to the growing stable of hostelries before, in 1975, Frank took a leap of faith.

His family had always enjoyed holidaying in Thanet so when the Charles Dickens pub in Broadstairs became available he swooped.

Two years later and with more pubs on the isle being added, he moved down permanently.

It was from Broadstairs that Frank built the business into what it is today - ably assisted by son Philip. Not that it was all plain sailing.

“We had quite a fractious relationship,” Philip says of his father. “We were both very strong-minded people.

“But a lot of the values of the company - where we come from, where we set up, was what we developed and did together. We worked very well together.

“But Frank's shadow still casts over the company. We wouldn't be here without him.”

Today, Philip is the main man - although the brass plaque by the front door of the firm’s administrative headquarters still bears his father’s name.

The building - once Broadstairs’ police station - had a fleeting role in the classic Only Fools & Horses Jolly Boys’ Outing episode.

Philip now sits atop a hospitality empire which once spread across Kent and into London with almost 50 outlets.

Today, it is a far more slimline affair - 17 of its establishments lie within Thanet’s borders; the one outlier in neighbouring Sandwich.

It exited the last of what was once a six-strong chain of pubs in London in 2013 and Philip says all those pubs it pulled out of were on sound business decisions. They once operated pubs in Gravesend, Meopham, Maidstone, Canterbury, Ashford and Dover.

Today, their portfolio includes the likes of the recently revamped sports bar Cramptons in Broadstairs, the cliff-top Captain Digby nearby, the flint-facade of the Tartar Frigate by the harbour, the seafront Barnacles, just opposite the Turner Contemporary in Margate (and adored by our pub reviewer Secret Drinker), the Queen’s Head on Ramsgate marina, and the Pegwell Bay Hotel.

Philip’s office has a connecting door to his operations manager - George Thorley, his 39-year-old son.

“I’d say I'm the operator and he's the brains behind it,” Philip says.

“His business acumen with regard procurement and purchasing and how he looks at things is different to how I do. So it's a complementary skill - we don't want to sit in the same seat.”

Just like he and his father before him.

Philip, originally from Catford (he attended school in Lee Green on the Lewisham and Greenwich border), and who’d initially gone to college to study photography, was just 18 when he found himself running The Angel.

“I was a young man who just wanted to earn money,” he says. “I was a good old south London boy, enjoyed my sport, my music, being in pubs.

“I was working behind the bar and realised the person playing the music was being paid four times as much and I thought I can do that - so I went and became a DJ.”

His tastes range from punk “when I was young”, to soul and disco courtesy of his stint behind the decks. “I have very wide and varied list of likes,” he adds.

“From there, responsibilities came along, so I ended up running the pub with my girlfriend - who is now my wife - and then because of my passion for music, it became a music venue and nightclub.”

But then his father acquired a site in Cliftonville. A former nightclub and pub. It would change the direction of his life.

“I came down here for a year and said I don't think I'll stay on the coast, I don't think it's for me and, 40-odd years later, here we still are.”

Thorley’s was the pub on the ground floor of the Cliftonville site - Frank’s, a nightclub, on the level up.

Long since changed hands, today it’s home to the Faith in Strangers nightspot.

“We had a load of fun,” Philip says as he reflects on those early years in Thanet. “We created a disco fun pub with a DJ seven nights a week - the venue was busy pretty much from day one.

“We learned a lot. When you're 20 and running a pub and nightclub your learning curve is extremely steep.

“From day one I had a team of doormen, DJs and an entertainment budget, so life was really busy but the people were fantastic.

“Some of the people I met then are still mates now.

“The economy is very tough in Thanet, but the location, the beauty of the place, is second to none.

“I call it the boomerang place; people go to university, they go to find a job, but everyone wants to come back because the place is special.

“I suppose that's why we never left. We now have family, children and grandchildren here and I absolutely feel part of the Thanet community and the Kent community, but I'm also very proud of my London roots.”

So does he, I ask, feel more Thanet than London boy now?

“You can't ever take the Londoner out of me,” he says with a smile, “but I'm extremely proud of Thanet and what we do, what we represent and how we do it.

“I don't hanker to go back [to London] and, to be honest, you couldn't pay me enough money to return. I'm extremely happy living in Broadstairs and an area which is very special to me.”

Yes folks, the people behind such a pillar of the Thanet community for the last 40 years are Down from London folk. Ponder that before you criticise next time.

Philip has been a school governor for years, president of the local rugby club and chair of Thanet Safe - the crime prevention operation which unites businesses, the police, CCTV operators and the local council. He’s also chair of the council of UKHospitality - the national body for the, as the name suggests, hospitality sector. He is no slouch.

He and his wife have now been married 38 years, they have two children and three grandchildren - the latest of which arrived just before Christmas, delighting her grandfather (“she’s a little superstar”, he says).

But the hospitality industry has not been an easy one of late. Hit by a succession of enormous challenges, it’s a tribute to all those within it that it continues to shine so brightly today.

Philip explains: “For everyone in the hospitality business, it’s been like fighting Mike Tyson with one hand behind your back for the last five years.

“We had Covid come along and we were shut down. We had to take out loans; we come through that and then we have the war in Ukraine and utility bills going crazy.

“We don't have a cap like domestic customers, so we just about get over that, and now the government ups National Insurance contributions which is going to put 8.25% on our wage bill from April 1 - which means I've got to find £8,000 a week more to pay the wages. It is bonkers for a little pub company.

“It's been really hard work. We love what we do and we have fun - if I'm not having fun I don't want to do it - but it feels as though we've been fighting one thing after another.”

He admits the first week of Covid lockdowns was the “most worrying” of his career. He was sat in a restaurant in Broadstairs with two close friends when Boris Johnson announced pubs were to close.

“I worked every day to make sure our three strands - the people, the pubs and the mothership, in other words Thorley Taverns, all got through it. We didn’t make one person redundant and by the time we reopened we’d only lost two or three staff.

“We looked after our people and I think that's been paid back in spades.

“A business is the sum of its people.”

A week before we meet, Philip was up at the Houses of Parliament where 56 MPs were invited to discuss with their constituents the impact of the National Insurance increase - a move ushered in during Rachel Reeves’ first Budget and derided by businesses up and down the country. Only half a dozen attended.

But he has praise for his MP - East Thanet’s Polly Billington - who was among the few to turn up.

“We had a good and robust conversation,” he reveals, “and that will continue. It's no good just moaning to each other in the pub, you've got to go and do something about it.

“You have to think something will come of it. If you don't you might as well not go out and not talk to anybody.

“I do think we can make a difference.”

But, like all other operators, he admits prices are going to have to rise to counter the increase in their costs. “We have to otherwise we can’t pay our staff,” he says.

“The quality of bars, restaurants and hospitality is important to the quality of life of any particular area.

“If you go somewhere on holiday and the bars and restaurants are fantastic, you come back and tell everybody. If it's rubbish, no one is going to go there.

“What we do is really important, and how we do it is important. If they run them irresponsibly, they become a nuisance to the local area. We want to be complementary to the local area.”

Philip has no issue with the likes of Wetherspoon - which has its biggest outlet in Ramsgate, just opposite his firm’s Queen’s Head. “It creates footfall for Ramsgate seafront. The more [pubs and restaurants] there are, the more people will come.

“Micro-pubs pop up and serve a community - and that can only be a good thing.”

And what of rival Kent pub chain - Shepherd Neame?

“Sheps are competition,” he admits, “but we don't see them as the enemy. We're all doing it together. Their challenges in Broadstairs are my challenges in Broadstairs, for example.”

He doesn’t stock their beer, though, opting instead to deal with Ramsgate brewer Gadds’ - preferring its local links. He is a relentless champion of Thanet (when he met the King in 2022 at a function, he invited him down to Broadstairs for a pint).

At 61, is the time when he passes the baton on to his son approaching?

“Retirement? I've got a good number of years left in me then I'll start to slow down. But I still enjoy what I do, I believe I'm still relevant, that I add a lot of value.

“I run twice a week, I regularly go to the gym, I married a chef so we eat really nice food. I enjoy my wine, I'm a pub person.”

As for that playlist of his for his final send-off?

It’s an eclectic mix. There’s his favourite, David Bowie alongside The Clash (the somewhat fitting Should I Stay Or Should I Go Now? in case you were wondering), Oasis, The Killers, Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers’ Islands in the Stream (“love a bit of that when I’ve had a drink, who doesn’t?”), Barry White, Stevie Wonder and The Proclaimers’ I’m Going to Be (500 miles) because, as he adds “if you’ve even been out with me and I’ve been drunk, you’ll have heard me sing that”.

It will be, one imagines, a fitting send-off for a man for whom hospitality has been a way of life and is in his genes.