I'm Thierry Bourret. French by birth, international by choice, based in Bangkok because life has a sense of humour.

I haven't lived in France since 1986. What started as a six-month trip to learn English turned into four decades across the UK, Aruba, Japan, Hong Kong, and now Thailand. Watching France from the outside for that long gives you a particular kind of clarity about it. Not nostalgia. Just distance.

My career began in kitchens. Trained chef. Then a temp job in pricing at a Japanese electronics firm, which turned into a decade leading a €240M business unit at Hitachi. These things happen when you don't have a plan.

In 2009 I walked away from corporate life and jumped into toys, which sounds mad but made complete sense at the time. I built Asobi, a UK distribution company, from nothing to £2.4M turnover and launched the Slow Toy Movement, celebrating beautifully made, sustainable play before anyone was calling it a trend. We placed product in Selfridges, Harrods, and John Lewis. Then I lost control of the business in a boardroom coup, which was educational in the worst possible way.

In 2015 I started Konomocha in Hong Kong. No drama this time. Just a lean, sharp agency helping toy and stationery brands crack markets across EMEA and APAC. Thirty years of relationships, built in person, over bad coffee and long flights. That's still how it works.

I'm on my third marriage. Christine was French, Michiko was Japanese, and Jovelyn is Filipina. I don't mention this to be provocative — it's just that three marriages across three nationalities, forty years outside your own country, and a career that's never once gone to plan tends to shape how you see things. I don't hide any of it.

These days I live in Bangkok with Jovelyn and our rescue dog Sarra. Jovelyn built ako & sila, a fashion jewellery brand with five shops across Bangkok, from the ground up. Watching someone do that is something.

I'm a Freemason. Have been for years, with a gap in the middle. I mention it because most people's picture of it is wrong, and the best way to fix that is to be straightforward about it. It's a brotherhood. The values are the same ones I find in rugby: you show up, you hold the line, and you look after the people beside you.

At 64, I recently lost 24kg. No medication, no programme, just discipline applied to a slowing metabolism and thirty years of bad habits. It took longer than I expected. I'd do it again.

Outside work, I read too much, shout at the rugby, and yes, I did appear on Blind Date on British TV in 1989. The tape is lost. Let's leave it there.