The Nugget: Tim Lightbourne

Meet Tim Lightbourne. Chances are you know his wine company, Invivo. The wines are pretty tasty, having won over 150 medals and trophies. And they’re pretty famous too - thanks to their partnership with talk show host Graham Norton.

Invivo was born in a London pub in 2008 where Tim and mate/winemaker Rob Cameron hatched a plan to build a quality wine brand based on fun, not waffle - which they promptly celebrated with another bottle, of course.

Still it took some help to get cranking. The banks said no, so in 2015 they turned to crowd funding. Good idea, because the crowds turned to Invivo, and turned up with the dough.

Tim’s always had good ideas. He once managed the HP Sauce brand in the UK and had to send it to Keith Richards everywhere in the world. Cleverly, he got Keith to send back signed labels – cheeky bugger.

Still his best idea happened while watching Graham Norton on the box. He noticed the guests and the host all drank wine - which wasn’t Invivo. So he simply got on the blower and asked the question. Graham said “sweet as”, Tim jumped up on a plane, met the host, checked out the famous red chair, & started sending up a case to the show every week.

Sales went off. A few years later Tim had a brainwave to smuggle fresh grapes up to London (he won’t tell us how or where – fair enough) where he appeared on stage and got Graham to crush them with his feet. Lucky for Tim, Graham was keen. Lucky for the rest of us, Graham’s feet were clean.

These days Invivo sells over three million bottles a year in 17 countries. There’s even a prosecco and gin on the way.

From the winery to wine shops, & from the week to the weekend, Tim’s a 3 Wise Men guy, seen here wearing our new chinos (The Charlie), slim-fit white shirt (The Seven Stars - both $120 or 3 for $300), blazer with floral lining (The VB, $400), and tan brogues (Bertie Rizzo, $230).

When he’s not selling grog, Tim likes surfing and doing CrossFit, although mostly that’s to keep up with his “pretty busy” two-year-old son, who’s clearly as irrepressible as his dad.

Yep, Tim’s got a good handle on what’s important in life, which you’ll see with these following answers. There’s a couple of cheeky ones in there, which from Tim, we wouldn’t expect anything less.