EMAP and Gary Hughes are moving up - upstairs, to be precise. I arrived at the media company's London headquarters to find that everything has been packed into boxes to be shifted to a bigger space, one floor up.

Hughes, 41, is the company's Paisley-born finance director and former finance chief of SMG, the Glasgow media group he left in 2000 to join his current employer.

He has the hungry look of an executive who, despite already achieving lots in his career,

harbours barely concealed

ambitions to keep climbing. And not just the stairs.

Despite the punishing hours and late nights with head buried in complex accounts inevitably

associated with such a high-

pressure job, he still appears

surprisingly youthful.

While it is probably de rigueur for London-based media executives to affect a ''young at heart'' outlook, Hughes unselfconsciously bounds into the stripped-bare room - aside from table, chairs and assorted framed magazine covers adorning the walls - and delves for a soft-drink from the fridge, like the oldest teenager in the FTSE-100.

He is affable and smiling, but has steel in his eyes, letting everyone know he is determined not to be messed with.

It is this determination that has probably helped propel him from Paisley to base camp, just below the summit, of one of Britain's biggest media groups.

Emap has 19 analogue radio licences, 70 digital and another seven digital music TV channels, including the Box and Kerrang!

It also has an impressive UK and French consumer and business-to-business magazine empire which includes FHM, Heat, Top Sante, Nursing Times and Construction News.

Celtic-mad Hughes recently had a reunion, of sorts, with his former paymasters when Emap bought a 27.8% Scottish Radio stake from SMG at the knock-down price of (pounds) 90.5m, in what some observers dubbed ''an old pals act''.

Hughes scoffs at the suggestion, and in his staccato, machine-gun delivery, rattles: ''I wish the world worked like that. No, it wasn't an old pals act. We did it because it was good for Emap rather than

anyone else.''

He said that Emap did its homework on all the UK radio groups and Scottish Radio scored highly ''because it is a well run business''.

A combination of Emap's and SRH's radio assets would give it ''all the major towns and cities north of Birmingham and would have a major fighting force in London,'' he noted.

However, he stresses that the

purchase of the SRH stake was merely a ''strategic option'' and that ''at some time both businesses might come together'', but then again ''it might not, it's not a given''.

Scottish Radio's management reacted angrily to news that SMG, fomer owner of The Herald, Sunday Herald and Evening Times, had sold its entire stake to the cash-rich and acquisitive Emap. Scottish Radio said it even offered to help place the stake with institutions. SMG turned down the offer and sold to Emap, helping ease the Scottish company's (pounds) 254m debt burden.

A clearly livid Scottish Radio management team said it looked forward to striking up a better

relationship with its new largest shareholder.

Hughes said such corporate handbags was partly reflective of the situation SRH had with SMG.

''They look at us as a radio group and they run radio as we run radio. They look at us and think they have got more in common with Emap than they had with SMG.''

Emap's broad sweep of assets leads Hughes to liken the group to US giants like Disney and Viacom, which also own assets in different media segments.

This has not always been popular in the UK, with analysts preferring pure players, whether it be in radio, TV or publishing.

Hughes says this sort of thinking belongs to the dinosaurs, and just as the ice-age swept these beasts from existence, changes to the laws on media ownership would have the same impact on the luddites.

''Regulation has actually forced the UK into these narrower pure play definitions. It's already

changing. The days of the pure plays are a thing of the past.''

Hughes is convinced that Emap will benefit more than most from a more open market controlling who owns what in UK media. ''The bottom line is that money talks and we are the only ones with the cash to do anything,'' he crows.

Just in case he hadn't made his point, he noted that even after Emap has paid its dividends to shareholders, it still generates more cashflow than the whole rest of the radio sector.

It is difficult to believe that such a bright and seemingly single-minded man never really knew what he wanted to be when he grew up on the outskirts of Glasgow.

''Career options were not something you immediately thought of growing up in Paisley,'' he says.

However, he knew that whatever he did, it would have to earn him ''(pounds) 100-a-week, because I thought that was a fortune''.

Judging by that measure, Hughes has exceeded his wildest dreams many times over. According to Emap's last annual report, he earned (pounds) 489,000 in the year to March 2003, including a basic salary of (pounds) 310,000 and a

performance bonus of (pounds) 136,000.

His is a star that is definitely

rising in the media firmament. He started his career in slightly less glamorous circumstances, trading commodities, where he worked until 2am just to catch the latest crop reports from Brazil.

In 1984 he joined Ernst &

Whinney, where he qualified as a chartered accountant. Guinness came calling in 1988, which he joined as chief group accountant and swiftly embarked on a global acquisition spree.

He made 25 acquisitions for the drinks group, before moving to Connecticut in the US to oversee integration of a major spirits

company.

Hughes returned to London in 1994 to become deputy finance director at Forte hotels and leisure group. In just two years, he

contributed to turning the tired group around before selling to Granada at a huge premium.

In 1996 he returned to Scotland, taking over the chief financial

officer and business development director job for SMG.

SMG went on an acquisition spree that piled on debt. It hoovered up The Herald and Evening Times newspapers, Grampian Television, Virgin Radio, Pearl & Dean, Ginger Productions and, after Hughes left, a stake in Scottish Radio Holdings.

Unlike Guinness though, these purchases had mixed success for the group and SMG has since been forced to sell assets to reduce debts.

Despite retaining his family home in Glasgow, where his wife, Margaret, and sons, Gavin, 8, and Scott, 4, live, Hughes left SMG in 2000 for Emap. His first job was to get the company out of America and its failed Petersen publishing arm, a company it bought in 1998. It was a tough decision, he says.

Since then, Emap has gone from strength to strength, vindicating his decision to toss the group's US ambitions overboard.

Despite cutting short the group's US adventure, it continues to sell around 1.2 million copies of FHM there every month. The lads-mag is the UK market leader, and has been an unmitigated success since Emap bought it for (pounds) 1m in 1994. Hughes reckons the title is now worth some (pounds) 200m to (pounds) 250m, adding: ''It was probably the best (pounds) 1m ever spent.''

Despite FHM's success in the US, Hughes belongs to the ''once bitten'' camp for the time being, with regards to foreign expansion.

''We see ourselves as an Anglo-French media group. We won't be planting a flag in a third major

territory.''

As for his own ambitions, Hughes starts by choosing his words carefully: ''I've never tried to pre-plan anything, I'm very cynical of these people who say I've got to do this by that time.

''I love what I'm doing, I love this business. I've got no hidden agenda as to what happens next.''

When pressed on the subject, he lets the mask slip, adding: ''Obviously, I would have to look at something that was demonstrably more interesting than what I'm doing now.''

insight

Favourite book: Monsignor Quixote, by Graham Greene, the Muhammed Ali biography and Black & Blue, by Iain Rankin.

Favourite film: ''Depends on my mood.'' Gregory's Girl, Apocalypse Now and Meet the Parents.

Favourite recent CD: Elephant, by The White Stripes.

Car: C-Class Mercedes estate.

Ambitions: ''Not to get ahead of myself. To enjoy things as they happen rather than reminisce. For my boy Gavin to play for Celtic.''

What drives you?: ''Fun mostly. I switch off if I'm not enjoying myself. Good people, and the need to move forward.''

What did you want to do as a kid?: ''Anything that could get me (pounds) 100 a week. I thought that was a fortune.''

Heroes: Sir Anthony Tennant, former Guinness chairman. ''When I was there, he was single-minded and a marketing genius.'' Jock Stein - ''There will never be another.'' And David Bowie.