Profile: So what's love got to do with it?: The Weisfelds: Business is a powerful glue in the marriage of the couple aiming to turn round Poundstretcher. They talk to Richard Thomson

GERALD WEISFELD isn't there. He must be nearby, though, because his big gold Roller is parked prominently in front of the hotel where we are due to meet. His wife, Vera, explains he is with bankers, putting the finishing touches to their pounds 6m investment in ailing Brown & Jackson, owner of the Poundstretcher stores chain, announced last week.

Small and neat in a suit with huge gold buttons, she perches on a sofa and talks in a soft voice, but it is evident that she is waiting for Gerald. At last he bustles in, small and neat like his wife, with tinted glasses, crocodile-skin shoes and the biggest gold watch you've ever seen. There is an interlude in which they hug and kiss somewhat self-consciously. Then they sit side by side: two middle-aged self-made millionaires dressed head to foot in designer clothes, holding hands.

This, certainly, is one of Britain's most unusual and improbable pair of entrepreneurs. For the better part of 20 years they were the husband-and-wife team which built one small shop in the wrong part of Glasgow into the What Everyone Wants discount stores chain. After all that time, and the pounds 50m they picked up from selling the chain four years ago, they are still remarkably, publicly affectionate.

'Gerald is my best friend,' says Vera, curiously eager to advertise how very close they are. 'We're besotted with each other.' She never knew real romance until she met Gerald (or Mr Weisfeld as she normally addresses him). The romantic Gerald, for his part, insists on sitting next to his wife when they attend formal dinners because he prefers talking to her. He makes sure a dozen red roses appear punctually on her birthday and St Valentine's Day.

And since he has recently taken up musical composition (he plays the piano), he has written a song for her called 'Vera, I Love You'. It was the first he wrote and features on a recently produced CD of his music. Vera describes his style as 'easy listening'.

Naturally, the question that arises in the mind of any sane observer is: can they be for real? Marriage is hard enough on its own. Business partnerships frequently end in acrimony. So how come Gerald and Vera didn't strangle each other years ago?

The answer is probably that theirs is not so much a normal marriage as a powerful business dynamo - the public canoodling is deceptive. They are an equal partnership. 'I make the decisions until Vera gets involved,' jokes Gerald. 'It's a democracy.' This is all the more surprising since Gerald evidently finds it hard to share control of a business with anyone. He was thrown out of his first venture by his two partners, who also happened to be his older brothers.

More recently he was thrown out as chairman of WEW by its new owner, Amber Day, then run by Philip Green. Green says he was spoiling plans for the company. Weisfeld says he was trying to stop the new owner changing a formula that had made WEW a success. There was bitterness on both sides when he left.

With Vera, however, things seem to be different. When creating their winning system of piling high and selling cheap to create WEW, they each had their own areas of responsibility and expertise. Gerald was the hard-nosed buyer, choosing the merchandise and driving hard bargains with suppliers. He also picked the location of the shops and kept an eye on the company's finances.

Vera, as tough as her husband, handled the selling side. She decided what merchandise should be sold when, and kept the turnover going. She also handled the staff. Her style was rather that of a cheerleader - literally at times. 'From day one I had the staff singing. They sang at every store opening. Even the customers sang.' When the Weisfelds finally bowed out, the chain's 37 branches competed in a singing contest, with the winners getting a free holiday in Florida at the couple's expense.

But did the Weisfelds not sometimes disagree strongly over business matters? 'We do disagree, but we respect each other,' says Vera. 'We discovered over time that when there was a business crisis we could always rely on each other. We were always there for each other.' In this relationship, business is clearly an unusually powerful cement.

But that is not, perhaps, surprising since it was business that brought them together. Gerald was born in London into a Jewish family. His first job, after leaving school at 15 without O- or A-levels, was in his brother's clothing business in London's East End. For 16 years he and his brothers ran a successful operation until, in the early 1970s, they fell out.

He bought a shop at the dowdy end of Argyle Street, Glasgow's main shopping strip, surrounded by pawn shops, bookies and sweaty sandwich bars. He bought it 'because it was the only thing going', rather than because he wanted to move north. By then he had parted with a wife and three children.

Vera applied for a job at his new shop. She was born into a working-class family near Glasgow. She too started work immediately after school, going into clothes retailing like her older sister. She had worked at C & A and done a string of other retail jobs by the time she met Gerald. She had also been married, with two children, and had left her husband after 11 years.

Gerald had no job to suit her but tricked her into staying by saying she could run his new Edinburgh shop. (He did not look for a site there for another four years). Romance was not in the air at this stage. It was only when the store began to expand six years later that they hit it off in other ways. 'It was a shock when we got together,' Vera insists.

By their own account, the decision to sell WEW came after a plane in which they were flying from Rio almost crashed. Reassessing their lives, they felt there had to be more than business.

The sale left them fabulously wealthy. Apart from the Rolls- Royce and a big house in Glasgow, they have recently bought a large villa at the Cap d'Antibes near Nice, and an 80ft boat. And after years of selling cheap garments, they love expensive clothes.

'Versace, Valentino, Armani. I shop all over the world,' says Vera. 'It's wonderful not to have to look at the price tag.'

But while out of business for the last four years, they appear to have been restless. They talk endlessly and proudly of their involvement in an impressive array of charities, such as the mental Olympics and teenagers with cancer. But it was not enough.

Recently they put in a surprise bid for the struggling Celtic Football Club. Their motives seem to have mixed charity and business. They wanted to save it as a venerable, indeed essential, part of Glasgow culture. But they also claim it has 'great potential' as a business. They certainly did not have a deep love of football - Gerald had not watched a game until he was 49. Perhaps fortunately for everyone, Celtic rejected them.

So now they are coming out of retirement by buying into Poundstretcher. It is, in many ways, a natural move. Another discount retailer, Poundstretcher is one of the most dismal shopping experiences of the decade, in dire need of rescue.

The Weisfelds believe they can save it by applying the magic formula that created WEW. Their main contribution, they say, will be to teach the existing staff how to do it, rather than doing everything themselves.

Sceptics don't believe they can pull it off. Poundstretcher, after all, is more than three times the size of WEW, with horrendous problems to match. But the Weisfelds are undaunted.

'People always told us we couldn't succeed with WEW but we did, and we'll prove them wrong again with Poundstretcher,' says Vera.

She smiles, and cuddles her husband on the sofa.

(Photograph omitted)