WHAT unites the following: the London 2012 Olympics, ’80s synth star Howard Jones, the Guide Association, Harrods’ couture, Clarks Village, Butlin’s Red Coats and Sir Bobby Charlton?

One rich-voiced, Welsh-born tour-de-force of popular fashion and design. His name? Jeff Banks – and he’s styled them all.

Banks – founder of the Warehouse high street fashion chain, awarded a CBE in 2009, a man who describes himself as ill at ease if he’s badly dressed – has been tailoring the nation for decades. He also has a Jeff Banks store at Clarks Village in Street.

For many, Banks is most closely associated with The Clothes Show – he presented more than 300 episodes of the BBC’s pioneering fashion programme.

I ask him what’s it like to wield so much influence in the fashion industry, to change its face and bring it on? “It’s my part in the downfall,” he laughs in response down the line. “I don’t even think about my role in the industry. It’s one of those things, that when you’re on the inside of it looking out, you never think anything of it.

“But then people are very nice to you and will tell you things like: ‘I bought this frock from you in 1974 and I’ve kept it ever since because I got engaged in it.’ Hear something like that and you realise people have a connection and a history with you.”

Want to find the place where he gets really creative? It’s that realm of tension and potential for creating a beautiful, clever, innovative, functional or classic design, within reach of the ordinary Joe’s wallet.

“I take a page out of Terence Coran’s book, from when he started up Habitat [the household furnishings chain],” Jeff added.

“What he did was say: ‘I’m going to make things that I want and desire but I want them to be affordable to a lot of people.’ “So throughout my own career I have always stuck to that principle – to make it the best it can be but still retain that affordability.

“Only once in my whole career did I make a collection where there were pieces in it that were just stupidly expensive – one piece was £3,500. I just thought, you’re getting above yourself, sonny.”

So when starting a fresh project, what’s Jeff’s modus operandi?

“I call it ‘design engineering’. It was harder for Issigoni to design the Mini than it was for Ian Callam to design the Aston Martin DB9, and he knows where I’m coming from.

“It’s easy to design expensive clothes – you pull an expensive team together and throw some Swarovski crystals at it.

“When it comes to engineering something, where you say, I’m not going to forgo quality, I’m going to make it the best but retail it at 50 quid… I’d rather be an Issigoni than a Callam. I think it’s where my strength lies.”

Jeff describes his own style as eclectic – a life-long hangover from his younger days as a mod.

“I have never, ever lost that modernist streak, which revolves around looking sharp.

“I can remember when I was in art school [Jeff went to Camberwell and Saint Martin’s Schools of Art in London, and Parsons The New School for Design in New York] going into a pub and it was full of mods, right at the beginning of the mod movement, and I had a big sweater, turn-up jeans and a beret on.

“I felt so out of place but from that moment I never lost that attention to detail.”

That keen eye is no doubt what made Banks a born businessman – the story goes that he started buying paraffin to sell to raise the money for his grammar school uniform – with tens of shops to his name.

It’s always a treat for him to return to the branch at Clarks Village in Street – last month it was to crown the ‘Best Dressed Man in Somerset’. Suave Street lad Connor Derbridge won a weekend away to Paris and a £500 Jeff Banks watch.

“I mean, what a way to spend a weekend, at Clarks Village in Somerset,” Jeff said. “And it was great to meet up with everybody.”

Connor obviously has his style sorted but Jeff had some key advice for the wannabe metrosexual.

He said this season men merely need to consider four pieces for their wardrobes – an unstructured blazer, a pair of chinos, a pair of chino shorts and a shirt. “Get those four things right, and you can just go anywhere,” he said.

The fashion industry gets a lot of flak for its flaws but Jeff, 71, can give the inside scoop on how it has changed for the better.

“I think everybody’s got much more professional. I think in the main the level of design for the money that the customer gets is fantastic.

“When we started Warehouse in the seventies, nobody was actually doing the direct factory floor-to-retail concept, so I was first in that.

“Today, probably 60-70% of the fashion industry operates in this way.”

The Jeff Banks store is at 12 Clarks Village, Street. His expanded biography is available to read online at www.jeffbanks.co.uk