The no-expenses-spared summer holiday: From 40 crew to more than 5,000 nautical miles in diesel, the eye-watering cost of Sir Shifty's extravagant eight-week getaway

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With a personal fortune of nearly £4 billion, Sir Philip Green was never likely to settle for two weeks on the Costa Del Sol for his summer holiday.

But even by the disgraced tycoon’s lavish standards, this year’s break has been staggeringly extravagant.

The 64-year-old has just returned from an eight-week trip around the Mediterranean on his £100 million yacht, accompanied by his wife, Tina, the nominal owner of his Arcadia retail group.

Sir Philip Green, pictured with his wife Tina, on his way to La Fontanella restaurant in Capri, as the tycoon and his family enjoy their luxury break around the Mediterranean

The £100 million Lionheart costs £250,000 to staff

In his two months on the Lionheart, Sir and Lady Shifty took in various sun-soaked parts of the Med, from Greece to the millionaires’ paradises of Capri and Sardinia.

The billionaires’ holiday lasted from July to September — months which saw the final remaining BHS shops close their doors and 11,000 staff made redundant. Sir Philip sold the department store chain to former bankrupt Dominic Chappell for £1, after the Green family had taken out millions from the firm in the preceding years.

While Green cruised around the glitziest ports, two Commons select committees published a report into his actions surrounding BHS, which accused him of ‘fantastically enriching his family’ by weakening BHS until it was ‘on life support’.

The store was left with a massive hole in its pension fund — that could be as much as £770 million — which the pensions regulator is now investigating.

But perhaps the most mind-boggling thing about the holiday was not the unfortunate timing, but the cost . . .

ALISON BOSHOFF investigates the story of Sir Shifty’s Summer.

WHAT AN ITINERARY!

The massive jolly began on July 9 in Livorno, Italy, when Green’s new superyacht — built to his family’s exact specifications — left port.

His wife Lady Green, who likes to dabble in design, took care of the boat’s interiors, which, as you might expect, are very expensive, and very flashy. The yacht sailed first to Malta, where the vessel is registered, and after its arrival on July 10, spent more than a week in port, being prepared for the holiday under the watchful eye of Lady Shifty. It also did several day trips around the island.

The Greens then set off to Kalamata, on the Peloponnesian peninsula, arriving in the beautiful Greek coastal resort on July 21.

Continuing their cruise around the rugged southern peninsula, they sailed on to the relatively undiscovered and affluent island of Spetses, popular with high-society Athenians, on the 24th.

Sailing past the tiny coastal town of Karystos on the Greek island of Euboea, the Greens arrived in the popular tourist island of Skiathos on July 30.

Perhaps feeling out of place, Lord and Lady Shifty soon turned around, sailing back down past the island of Euboea days later.

The catalogue of classical haunts continued as July became August, with visits to Mykonos and Athens, before Sir Philip’s yacht finally cruised through the Corinth Canal. Sailing up the coast past Delphi — where futures were told in ancient times — it reached Albania on August 26, where the Lionheart refuelled.

Of course, no Grand Tour would be complete without Italy, too, so the couple set sail again to the southern tip of the country the next day, past Sicily and up to Capri — the spectacular Italian island dotted with Roman ruins and designer boutiques.

Next stop for the Green machine was Corsica — fashionable, mountainous and French — then on to the billionaires’ playground of Sardinia before they finally dropped anchor back in Monaco on September 4. All in all, the Shiftys notched up 5,377 nautical miles and spent at least 1,224 hours sailing.

HUGE DIESEL BILLS 

WHY do billionaires have such bad tempers? Maybe they’ve realised their mega yachts really do drink diesel.

A boat measuring more than 71m (Lionheart is 78.5m) consumes 500 litres of diesel an hour — when the engine is on but the boat isn’t moving. Based on cruising speeds of between 15 and 22 knots, a yacht of Lionheart’s size will consume £1,690 worth of fuel per hour. Since Sir Philip spent 1,224 hours at sea, the cost of filling Lionheart’s tankIS VAST.

£250,000 ON STAFF

Another major expense is staff. A yacht the size of Lionheart could expect to have about 40 crew. That includes those who man the interiors (stewardesses and stewards), the exteriors (deckhands, first mate, bosun) and the engine room (engineers).

Then there is the galley crew (chef and sous chefs), plus the captain and chiefs of each section reporting back to him.

Staff on the luxury yacht are paid from £2,500 a month tax free for deckhands with £6,700 for the more senior crew such as the chef and chief engineer with the captain on even more 

The entire crew is on tax-free wages starting at £2,500 per month for deckhands, including board/food. The salary goes up to £6,700 per month for more senior crew such as the chef and chief engineer. The captain is on even more.

The full cost of staff on a yacht this size, including medical costs and insurance, could amount to £1.5 million a year, meaning Sir Philip could have shelled out £250,000 on wages for his two-month jaunt.

THE COSTLY ESSENTIALS

The spending does not end there. Yachting experts estimate that docking costs reaching a staggering £250,000 will have been paid over Green’s summer jaunt. Green visited the most exclusive marinas in the world where even billionaires jostle to get a spot.

Prices are worked out with the port manager and are usually charged on a per night basis depending on the yacht’s length.

Spaces at these super-yacht ‘hotels’ are in such high demand many billionaires drop anchor at sea as close to the port as they can without an allocated space.

Other costs include around £18,000 a month on insurance, to cover any eventuality — including calling in a crack team to rescue them if the vessel was captured by pirates, stolen or destroyed.

According to yachting experts, owners can expect to pay 10 per cent of the purchase value in running costs each year meaning Sir Philip will hand over £10m a year to operate Lionheart

Maintenance and repairs typically cost £750,000 per year. It might be a new yacht, but it’s still a work in progress with a team of engineers and electricians working around the clock to ensure no malfunctions. That means Sir Philip would have needed to set aside £125,000 for any holiday hitches.

Sir Philip can expect to pay £10 million or so a year to own Lionheart

He’d also have to shell out £11,000 for a satellite data link (£66,000 per annum), which operates the yacht’s navigation system, £121,000 on food (up to 50 people eating three good meals a day for two months soon adds up) and £21,000 on entertaining.

And that’s not counting the requisite billionaire boys toys to maintain, such as jet skis and high-powered inflatables.

So aside from the £250,000 on wages and huge fuel costs, these added extras over eight weeks run to more than half a million pounds.

Sounds steep? According to yachting experts, the cost of operating a yacht of this size are approximately 10 per cent of the initial value of the boat every year.

That means Sir Philip can expect to pay £10 million or so a year to own Lionheart. 

FLIGHTS IN HIS £50m PRIVATE JET

Sir Philip, 64, owns a Gulfstream G650ER worth £50.5 million. There are only 181 in the world.

This jet was picked up in the spring and is an upgrade from his old Gulfstream G550. It can carry up to eight passengers at a time.

It’s reputed to be the best private jet money can buy — faster and more comfortable than any other.

Over the summer, Sir Shifty has used the jet to dip in and out of his long hot summer cruise, at a cost of at least £88,000 in fuel.

Sir Philip recently upgraded his old Gulfstream G550, pictured, to the G650ER in the spring

This is calculated according to a pilot’s rule of thumb based on the five, four, three formula (£5,000 for the first hour, £4,000 for the second and £3,000 thereafter) and the fact that jet fuel costs £6.79 per gallon.

The jet flew from Nice to Malta, then back to London, on July 11, which apparently dropped Tina off on the Lionheart.

It then went from London to Malta and back again on July 15 to drop Sir Philip on the island to board the yacht.

Not that he stayed onboard for long. The jet then flew back from London to Malta and back with Sir Philip and, on August 8, a round trip from London to Athens and back with Sir Philip again.

On August 19 the jet flew from London to Nice, and on August 20 it went from Nice to Athens, then on to London.

It is thought that these trips may have been to bring Sir Philip’s daughter Chloe out to see him.

In all, the fuel costs would rack up to £88,520. Add in the fixed costs of owning a jet, which are estimated to amount to £333,000 a year.

These include pilot fees of £172,000 a year, crew fees of £52,000 a year, and hangar charges of £60,000 a year — it is kept mostly at Farnborough airport in the UK.

Sir Philip and Lady Green also have the use of a helicopter for short hops if needed.

...AND A MODEST PARTY (for once)

At least Sir Shifty didn’t have to splurge much of his £3.7 billion fortune on a birthday party this year. Due to the bad publicity following the BHS debacle, he didn’t mark his 64th birthday with his customary lavish bash.

(Unlike a year ago when he was happy to splash the champagne at a party in Mykonos — as our pictures on the previous page show).

It is said he had a small party on-board the yacht in August while the family were in Greece. But aside from the Greens’ Monaco friends, few of his big-name pals seem to have attended.

Interestingly, his old friend Kate Moss was in Greece at the same time, but chose to stay with restaurateur Sir David Tang on his yacht instead, as did Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York.

Perhaps they don’t like the choppy waters around him.