IT WAS a long way from home for a boy from Bradford, standing on a pontoon, knocking on the giant hull of the QE2 as she sat in the Bay of Pattaya in Thailand.

Julian Reiman, in his finest three-piece suit, sweating in 100 degree temperatures, shirt ripped with the exertions of trying to get aboard the cruise liner was desperately trying to get the attention of somebody, anybody.

After all, he had travelled half way around the globe for a job interview on the world's most famous cruise liner — only to find the greeting party absent. So he spent 40 minutes banging on a porthole.

Eventually a senior crew member peered down, and with a dry calmness, said: "James Bond, we've been expecting you."

A fitting welcome perhaps for somebody who has earned his crust from meeting, greeting and customer relations.

Making the customer feel valued, maximising profits, selling your business to the world. It all comes down to training staff. And that's where Julian comes in.

He has spent his adult life learning lessons in the hospitality industry from the likes of Cunard, Harrod's and Trust House Forte. He has even had time for chastening experience at the doomed Nortel factory in Paignton.

His work has taken him across the globe, from Fiji to New York, Cairo to Kensington.

Along the way he has been ably supported by wife Yvette and has raised three children, latterly in Paignton.

He thinks the Bay has a lot to learn from the most successful hospitality industries, not least applying core values which turn good companies into great ones.

Life Lesson One was learned from his father, Frank, a mill owner in Bradford.

"Hard work," he says. "When I was very young he sent me down to wrap bales of wire wool. My hands were bleeding at the end of it, but he said if you want to work with me you have to go and work with the lads."

His upbringing was middle class and stable, but never easy.

"My education was a particularly difficult one. Unless you were in the top half dozen of the class the chances of doing well and getting out of Bradford were low. I wasn't in the top half dozen so I had to work hard at it."

It was his father and mother, Ann, who spotted his talent.

"My father advised me to go into catering, they thought I was quite good on the domestic side of things, washing up and so on."

With this unlikely string to his bow he swapped Yorkshire for the Lancashire coast and enrolled at a hospitality college in Blackpool.

It was the mid-1970s, an era of flares and fondues, flaming steaks and frilly shirts. Basil Fawlty was the recognisable face of British tourism.

It wasn't that the British could not give good customer service, just that it depended on what mood we were in.

Julian gained experience in hotel kitchens and restaurants in the UK and Germany with hotel groups the Prince of Wales, Grand Metropolitan, Trust House Forte and several others.

The pivotal moment came when he was offered a job in personnel and management and found his true talent lay in helping companies to make the most of their staff, and staff to make the most of their talents.

By 1987 he had the big opportunity with Cunard and the close encounter with the QE2.

"I was asked to go over to New York and meet the senior president for human resources. I flew to New York and spent the next 12 years of my life setting up all the training for the eight cruise ships plus the Ritz Hotel and some Caribbean ports as well."

The world suddenly began to open up for the Bradford boy and he didn't look back.

Rio, St Petersburg, Sydney, Cairo. Often he would take the QE2's Blue Riband voyage from the UK to New York and travel back to London on Concorde.

"I would sometimes sit up front with the pilots on Concorde. Instead of drinking Tetley's it was Dom Perignon. I did have to pinch myself sometimes when I found myself in Fiji or Cairo. In the mid-80s these were still exotic places to visit."

He met Yvette on a blind date in London. She was successful in her own right, working for American Express and later Sunsail International. She encouraged him to make the most of his career opportunities, but as time passed and a family arrived, insisted they moved to a more permanent base.

"She promised to divorce me if I didn't," he laughs.

"I remember looking at the Sunday papers and saying, why don't we go for quality of life and move to a quieter area."

The family, now including three children, moved to Paignton and in 2000 Julian began work at Nortel — the telecommunication manufacturer fizzed out spectacularly when the market for optical equipment crashed.

"It was like a move made in heaven. They were great times until everything went bang. The company overreached itself. For some people it was a very difficult time. My job had been to help move careers on, so losing people was very difficult."

He then landed an interview with the enigmatic and eccentric boss of Harrod's, Mohamed Al Fayed — a man whose retail empire employs 6,000 people.

After being kept waiting for two-and-a-half hours, Julian had a short interview with the man himself.

With a top floor office in Kensington, a training auditorium seating 120 people, an office decorated with the finest Harrod's furniture, he oversaw every type of training Harrod's offered.

"Everybody who came into Harrod's was fully trained. Nobody went on to the shop floor until they had done the two-week induction. Harrod's is a world class shopping experience."

He doesn't have a bad word to say about his former boss.

"He is very charismatic, very generous with people around him. He runs the show with a very unique management style and his loyalty to staff is tremendous."

Today, as well as offering his bespoke management and service industry training to customers such as The Ritz (London) he spends one or two days a week at South Devon College overseeing a management and customer service course.

Torbay seems a world away from the sun-drenched high life but Julian thinks differently.

"One of the things I often do is take the coast road and I'm reminded of the beaches in Rio de Janeiro, like Ipanema. That's where I rank the beaches of Torbay. On a hot summer's day I make my way down the coastal roads and it is not a million miles away from Copacabana."

It is the small things people and authorities are still getting wrong, he thinks. Parking tickets, gloomy taxi drivers, the surly teenager serving in a shop, attitudes and outlooks.

But attitudes in the hospitality industry have changed over the years.

"I think people have become more au fait with service standards. We have learnt a lot from America about being service-centric. Also some of the service in the Far East is much better than we have. In general the UK still lags some way behind.

"I think this area has tremendous potential. Developments like the Cary Arms make me think the future is in good hands."

It all comes back to Lesson One, learned from his father.

"Unless people properly train, give good service and want to give good service we are going to be playing catch-up for a long time.

"It's going to take effort from everybody concerned, from people who run bed and breakfast to the council leaders, but it can be done."