Being overly jet-lagged does not slow down Richard Quest, as Matt Eaton recently discovered over breakfast with CNN’s globe trotting anchor.
Richard Quest won’t eat anything on his plate without first knowing what it is.
"I don’t know why, it must go back to when I was a kid,” he says as we sit down for breakfast.
We’re perched 56 floors above Hong Kong at the Island Shangri-La’s Restaurant Petrus, but the breathtaking views of Victoria Harbour you’d usually expect are non-existent, thanks to a heavy fog that’s taken over the city.
He then selects from the breakfast menu in his trademark full-throttle guffaw.
"I'll have the full English breakfast," he says, "just to live up my English stereotype. But no black pudding."
It's a short wait before our meals arrive and Quest, jet-lagged from one of the most hardcore travel schedules I've heard in a long time, is deep into one of his many stories about life as a globe trotting anchor for CNN.
But we're soon cut off when breakfast arrives.
"Excuse me," Quest asks. "What is this on my plate?."
"I’m sorry, it’s black pudding," our waitress nervously stutters.
But it doesn't really matter and he pushes it aside and tucks into his food at the same rate he reels off tales about life on the road.
It's really quite hard to believe he is jet-lagged.
Quest is one of those characters you wonder if he will be as large in real life as he is on screen.
And the short answer to that is yes, he most definitely is.
Throughout the hour we have scheduled I barely manage to ask a question and I soon realise there’s not much point trying to. It's best to just let him go for it.
https://vimeo.com/87832704
It's easy to see how Quest has earned his way to the top end of the broadcast journalism world.
Over our meal the discussion flips between global travel, social media, how big data will shape the cities of the future, the history of aviation, the role of Asia in the world financial markets and he’s an expert on every single one of these topics.
His long list of guests have included world leaders such as David Cameron and Petr Necas of the Czech Republic; the biggest names in banking such as Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan Chase, Robert Zoellick, the former President of the World Bank and IMF boss Christine Lagarde.
Outside the business world there are few journalists who have had guests as many and varied from His Holiness, The Dalai Lama to actress Joan Collins and the founder of Playboy, Hugh Hefner.
So how does Quest keep himself grounded when he's swanning around the world in business class and living in five star hotels?
He doesn't take any offense to the question and the answer is really quite simple.
“Because fundamentally I’m a journalist," he says.
"Even if they bow and scrape to me everywhere I go - which they don’t by the way - but if they do, it won't work."
"On this trip I’m going to Kuala Lumpur to do Business Traveller, which back to my normal job. I will be interviewing people and we’re doing a program about value on the road. That is getting back to the normal meat and veg of it all."
But can it become intoxicating traveling the world with a sense of ridiculous entitlement?
“Absolutely. Of course it can. I think anyone who does this job has to fight viciously against it. You can’t do my job by sitting in some ivory tower.”
So how do get over it?
"You just do. You make time for yourself."
As our time wraps up and we make time for the obligatory Twitter photo and Quest explains his schedule over the next few days, which includes time between Hong Kong, Malaysia and a Turner event in Macau - which has something to do with a bed on stage - but the details of that remain secret.