Jeff Banks PPCSD (born Jeffrey Tatham-Banks, 17 March 1943) is a Welsh fashion designer of men's and women's clothing, jewellery, and home furnishings. Born in Ebbw Vale, Wales, Banks co-founded the fashion chain Warehouse in the late 1970s. He later created and presented the television programme The Clothes Show, broadcast on BBC One from 1986 to 2000. Biography Banks was born in the Monmouthshire valleys of South Wales, at Ebbw Vale. His sheet metal worker father left his mother when Banks was eight, and she consequently decided to move to London. He was offered a scholarship to independent public school St Dunstan's College, in Catford, south London, but his mother couldn't afford the uniform. He went to Brockley County Grammar School instead, but still without a uniform. In order to afford a uniform he set up his own business buying paraffin at the bottom of the hill, then pushing it up in an old pram, and selling it for a penny more at the top of the hill. By 13 he was employing a man to drive a lorry-based tanker, and at 15 he sold the business. Encouraged by a teacher to study art and become a painter, he realised his art skills were limited during his first year at London's Camberwell School of Art, and so transferred to studying interior design and latterly textiles at Saint Martin's School of Art, and then fashion at New York's Parsons The New School for Design. Banks holds honorary degrees from the University of Lancaster, University of East London, Newcastle University, University College for the Creative Arts, and the University of Westminster, and is a Doctor of Arts. He was awarded the Minerva Medal by the Chartered Society of Designers in 1994 and was the Society's President from 2001 to 2003. In 2009 Banks was appointed as a Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire in the Queen's Birthday Honours. Career In 1964, with money saved from the paraffin business and from his father mortgaging his own home, Banks opened the boutique Clobber in London, which carried his own designs along with other designers' work. It proved such a success that in 1969, he launched his own fashion label. In 1975 he opened the first standalone Jeff Banks shop in London, as well as retail outlets in twenty-two department stores, including Harrods and Harvey Nichols. In the late 1970s, he