He has hosted dice table for the glitterati aboard QE2 and worked in casinos from Prague to Iran. Now Nick Malone, the son of a custodian of the Crown Jewels, has been appointed chief executive officer to help turn Duncan Bannatyne's casino empire dream into a reality. Julia Breen reports.

NICK Malone - a croupier for more than 30 years - is keen to get away from the James Bond image of casinos being run by gangsters with white cats.

The new chief executive officer of Bannatyne's Casinos said: "You would be amazed how many people think casinos are like they are in James Bond movies.

"But I'm not like that at all. I want our casinos to be pleasant places to come, where bad behaviour won't be tolerated and where we treat people with respect."

Duncan Bannatyne's first £5m casino opens on Newcastle's Quayside in February, creating more than 70 jobs.

The first, and most important, of those jobs, has gone to Mr Malone, who was headhunted from the Spearmint casino, in Prague, by fitness entrepreneur Mr Bannatyne.

Mr Bannatyne hopes to build a casino empire as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Bannatyne Fitness - starting on St Ann's Road near the Millennium Bridge.

The Darlington-based businessman has also tried - and failed - to get planning permission from Darlington Borough Council for a casino near his head office on Haughton Road. But that is an ongoing saga as he waits for an appeal to go through the Government office.

His Newcastle casino will, Mr Malone believes, appeal to an emerging generation of young, successful professionals and entrepreneurs in the vibrant city.

There is a good reason why Mr Malone was headhunted for the chain.

He has experience of setting up casinos, running and managing them, and has worked his way up from being a trainee croupier with Mecca in 1971.

Mr Malone was put in the Army by his father at 15.

"He thought I would love it as much as he did," he said. "I didn't have a choice about it and I hated it."

He had spent a childhood travelling around after being born in Aldershot, and spent time in Germany before coming back to the UK, because "my father couldn't stay in one place too long".

Eventually the family settled in the South. His father became a warden at the Tower of London and later a curator of the Crown Jewels.

After three-and-a-half years in the Army, Mr Malone purchased his discharge after seeing an advert in the Evening Standard for a trainee croupier. He was chosen from hundreds of applicants.

"I loved it," he said. "I took to it like a duck to water and picked it up very quickly."

He soon found his sea legs and got a job in the QE2's casino, where he rubbed shoulders with politicians and stars - though he declined to say which ones.

He was on the QE2 when it was the subject of an IRA bomb threat in the 1970s and a bomb disposal team had to be flown out into the middle of the Atlantic. Although it was a hoax, one engineer was killed when he parachuted on to the cruise ship.

Mr Malone returned to the UK soon afterwards, and got a job in the Bahamas.

"I was standing there with the letter in my hand and my girlfriend of the time said 'I don't want to go to the Bahamas', so we ended up going to Iran.

"It was grim in Iran in the 1970s. I remember going to the hotel and ordering a sandwich which they put on the bar. When I went to eat it, it moved and then these two giant cockroaches walked out of it. The barman just shrugged."

After nine months in Iran, Mr Malone returned to England and carved a career working for casino company Pleasurama, before getting a break at Ladbrokes, which made him general manager of a club in Leicester.

While at Crockfords, in London, which had been taken over by London Clubs International, the company floated on the Stock Exchange, becoming Capital Corporation, with Mr Malone later becoming assistant gaming director.

He was operations director at Stanley Leisure before working for himself then, in 2001, he was asked to open and run a new casino in Prague - The Spearmint, next to strip club Spearmint Rhino.

"Prague has a population of 1.5 million and there are 30 casinos and 200 strip clubs," he said. "You are talking about a city that will implode.

"We were open, honest, everything went through the books in Prague.

"Some of the casinos there are run by the Mafia but we kept well away from that. We went in there and did everything above board and stayed out of trouble.

"But one casino had a grenade put through its window.

"It was an interesting time but I wasn't like a sheriff in a Western town - I just went in and kept above board, didn't do things the Czech way, and everything was fine."

Mr Malone now hopes he can help create a more upmarket casino in Newcastle, where customers can eat, drink, listen to background cabaret or gamble.

He said: "Newcastle is crying out for a quality, upmarket casino where people get excellent entertainment and where they feel safe.

"But then, I wouldn't want anyone to feel the casino is at a level that makes them feel uncomfortable."