Sir Cameron Mackintosh

Sir Cameron Mackintosh is a much loved, world renowned and hugely talented, British theatrical producer and theatre owner notable for his association with many commercially successful musicals.

For nearly 50 years Mackintosh has been producing more musicals than anyone else in history, including the three longest-running musicals of all time, Les Misérables, The Phantom of the Opera and Cats, which are still running extraordinarily successfully across the world. He is also responsible for bringing Mary Poppins, Oliver! and Hamilton to the stage.

My own tastes happen to be in tune with what the public wants. I think that's the reason my batting average is so high, not because I've discovered some brilliant formula.

Sometimes, thinking on your feet can be the most creative. Constrained circumstances can bring the best out of you. Some of the most successful shows come out of shoestring invention.

I'm a war baby: I was brought up with rationing, and my parents always had to struggle. I remember when I was sent to boarding school - Prior Park College in Bath - my father was asked how he was going to pay the fees, and he replied: In arrears.

Mackintosh began his theatre career in his late teens, as a stagehand at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, and then became an assistant stage manager on several touring productions. He began producing his own small tours before becoming a London-based producer in the 1970s.

I used to have to beg and borrow £25 to hire some French windows. I started producing in 1967, and I was in debt until 1981. Having a think about whether you can afford this or that is a good discipline to have, to maximise what you can achieve to the highest standard.

I think the worst thing that could have happened to me would have been having a hit at 20. I don't know what that would have done to me. But instead, I had to scrape a living for years. And my first show, which opened in 1969, lost over £45,000, an absolute fortune then.

In 1981, he produced Andrew Lloyd Webber's Cats, then considered an unlikely subject for a musical. It became the hit of the season, and went on to become one of the longest running musicals on both sides of the Atlantic.

In 1986, Mackintosh produced Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera,which is one of the most commercially successful musicals of all time and has outgrossed record-breaking films such as Titanic and E.T.

He produced Claude-Michel Schönberg and Alain Boublil's next musical Miss Saigon, which opened at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in the West End in September 1989. It was similarly successful and the 1991 Broadway production achieved what was then the largest advance ticket sales in theatre history.

I'm privileged to have had some success, but I've never forgotten what it was like to queue for a half-crown gallery seat for 'Oliver!' which is why I ensure that there are £20 day tickets for Miss Saigon and that the balconies in my theatres are as comfortable as I can possibly make them.

I love architecture almost as much as I love my musicals.

Mackintosh's Delfont Mackintosh group owns eight London theatres, the Prince Edward, the Prince of Wales, the Novello, the Queen's, the Gielgud, the Wyndham's, the Victoria Palace and the Noël Coward.

Mackintosh was knighted in 1996 for services to musical theatre.

In the Sunday Times Rich List of 2019, Mackintosh was estimated to have a fortune of £1.28 billion.

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