I was so skint that I had to borrow money for KFC… now I’m worth £2billion after spotting easy business opportunity

TYCOON Robert Bull is Bob the billionaire bungalow builder.

He is number 88 on the UK Rich List, worth £2billion, and made his fortune by constructing more single-storey homes than anyone else in the UK.

Bob and his stunning fiancée live in a £10million mansion with its own three-lane bowling alley and six double garages to house his £4million collection of 12 supercars.

But incredibly, just seven years ago he could not afford the price of a takeaway.

In the 100ft-long kitchen at his home near Southampton, Bob tells The Sun how he went bankrupt owing £3.5million.

And he only realised he was in deep financial trouble when he took his two sons to KFC and discovered he couldn’t pay.

Bob, 46, says: “I put my card in and it didn’t work. The next card didn’t work either.

“I was pushing my youngest, Jack, in the pram. I put my food back and I said to my son Bobby, ‘Have you got any money?’

“I had to borrow the price of a KFC from my 12-year-old so my kids could have something to eat.

“When the kids had finished their meal I crossed the street and went into the Lloyds Bank.

“I still get emotional about it now. The woman in the bank cut my cards up in front of me. I felt like a piece of s**t. That was my lowest day, and I hated it.”

Bob’s grandfather had started out in the caravan park business after World War Two and his dad Jack, 75, became a millionaire but lost everything in the 1990s crash.

With a business partner, Bob ran the country’s second-biggest caravan park group until the company ran into trouble in 2016.

Bob says: “I was very lonely, miserable and depressed. There was huge amount of shame and it gave me a breakdown. I’d borrowed money off people I’d known since childhood and lost it.

“It killed me because everybody I spoke to said, ‘You let me down’. It broke my heart and made me cry.”

After three months of being unable to work because of depression, Bob spotted a gaping hole in the housing market and had the idea of turning caravan parks into bungalow villages, for people who wanted to sell their homes and downsize.

He would buy their old homes at market value and sell them a factory-prefabricated bungalow in a new community, each with a drive, a garden and a shed. There are no fees, and buyers keep the equity from their house sale.

Bob says: “My dad came out of semi-retirement and helped me raise £9.7million and within a year the business was worth £100million.

“They can take everything from you but not your know-how.”

In 2017 his company, RoyaleLife, built 20 bungalows on a site near Southampton, held an open day and sold them all.

In a year he had sold 100 new bungalows, and says: “I repaid every penny I’d owed and one of the guys who sued me for £76,000 and put me in the bankruptcy court, we bought his business two years ago for £43million.”

Today, Bob’s company is worth £4billion and employs 2,000 workers.

He plans to build 2,000 eco-friendly bungalows a year, each costing from under £200,000 to more than half a million. Bob aims to move into Scotland next year.

In the corner of his home’s three-acre garden — protected by two security men and a pair of Dobermann guard dogs — is a caravan, to remind Bob where it all began.

At the door we are met by his ex- Royal Navy butler, who used to look after the First Sea Lord and spent a ten-year spell at the British Embassy in Iraq.

He leads us into the heart of the house, a massive kitchen that has two TV screens and a 30ft-long marble island.

A pool, sauna and gym are at one end and at the other is a 22-seater dining table.

Bob says: “The first time I saw this house I’m thinking, ‘I mustn’t tell this guy how nice it is, I’ve got to play it down’.

“Then I came into this kitchen and I said, ‘Look I’ve got to be honest, I have been trying to play down this house for about half an hour.

“‘I will have it. Don’t bother talking about it. I’m not going to bid you’, because there was no point.

“All I said to him was, ‘I want everything, even the cutlery. You move out with your clothes’.”

It is seven years since Bob had his car repossessed during bankruptcy proceedings.

Today his six garages house his collection of 12 supercars, including five Rollers, two Lamborghinis — an Aventador and a Urus — plus a 211-mph Ferrari GTS.

Bob says: “They’re all special. You can’t just go to a garage and buy them, they have either body kits, unusual colours or they’ve had the engines expanded. We’ve also got the fastest Porsche 911 turbo in the world.”

The other love of Bob’s life, his fiancée, Norwegian entrepreneur Sara Nilsen, 30, says: “By the way it was called a ‘widow maker’ before he had it tuned up. I don’t know why he did it.

Former local councillor Sara whose blonde hair is 26 inches long has designed a unique £43 hairbrush brand that stimulates hair growth.

The couple met at a bar in Mayfair in 2019 after Bob had been to see his bankers but they were both in relationships.

A year later Bob rang Sara who was in Kristiansund, Norway, not far from Manchester City ace Erling Haaland’s home town.

Twice-married Bob says: “I wasn’t looking for anything serious but we talked and laughed for hours.

Sara says: “I was telling him how I had been attacked and bitten by a 1,100lb pig when I went with my mother to look at an animal for her farm in Norway.

“I hadn’t been long out of hospital and he sent me some flowers.”

Soon they met in London and fell in love.

Bob says: “I was four-stone heavier then. I knew I was punching above my weight because she is stunning – everywhere we go people look at her.

“Sara’s like a film star to look at but she is kind and affectionate.

“When she gave me a cuddle for the first time I’d never felt like that before. We have a load of things in common. And she is funny.

“You can have the weight of the world on your shoulders in the morning and she can say something that just tickles me. I start to laugh and I go off to work in a different frame of mind.

“I’ve got two beautiful children and the relationships may not have been all what I wanted them to be but now I have got somebody I want to be with for the rest of my life.

“I want to enjoy my children that I have got and I would like to have a bigger family.”

The couple also have a £1million house in Sara’s home town in Norway which they are doing up.

And last weekend, Sara flew Bob to the vineyard in the South of France where they make his favourite wine, Châteauneuf du Pape and the on to St Tropez to mark his 46th birthday.

She says: “He is actually a very generous, fun and kind guy. When we met he was unhappy and stressed.

“He worries about everyone in his life. I said ‘All I want is stability and someone who loves me’. I know he wants the same.

“In the past I’ve been with someone who was so jealous and possessive it felt like being in jail.

“When I held Bob’s hand, I felt he craved touch. I thought ‘I’m going to make you the best you can be. You’re going to look and feel better about yourself.

“We’re going to do your teeth, do your hair and make you lose weight’. And he has.

“I’m so proud of him. He worries a lot about the business. I’ve said to him ‘What’s the worst that can happen? You lose everything. You’ll still have me, we’ll start again.”