Mark McCormack

Speaker 30:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

Speaker 30:08

The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen eighty nine.

Speaker 30:11

And the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:29

My castaway this Wimbledon Week is a marketing man, but that simple title belies the extent of his influence and the breadth of his interests. Having made millionaires out of the golfers Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player, his attention turned to tennis. He it was who transformed the Wimbledon Tournament from a polite English pastime into a multi-million pound business. Since then he's moved on even further. These days he has interests in many other sports, and in film, television and opera too all of which means he runs the professional lives of people as diverse as Jackie Stewart and Jerry Hall, Michael Parkinson and Kirita Carnowaher. He is Mark McCormack.

Presenter1:11

But it is, they say, Mark, the uh marketing of Wimbledon which you regard as your single greatest achievement, is that right?

Mark McCormack1:18

Well, I think in many ways it is. I think I'm awfully proud of the job we did with Arnold Palmer and are still doing for him and for many of the other athletes that.

Mark McCormack1:27

we have represented and continue to represent for several decades. But I think that some of the accomplishments at Wimbledon have been very challenging and extremely gratifying for me over the last twenty years.

Presenter1:40

But you you transformed its profits from a mere forty thousand pounds a year, I understand, to seven and a half million. Now how much was that brilliance on your part, or how much was it totally unexploited potential?

Mark McCormack1:53

Well, I think you say I transformed the prophets. I certainly would like to feel I was a part of that, but there were an awful lot of

Mark McCormack2:00

of factors involved in that transformation.

Presenter2:03

Well, I want to find out in a moment how you make millions, or indeed make millionaires. But first of all, let's hear how you might like the idea of being plucked out of all of this hurly burly business world in which you live and plonked onto a desert island.

Mark McCormack2:18

Well, I've always been someone who can um doesn't have any trouble being alone. Uh now, I've never tried it for a an indefinite period, but uh to uh

Mark McCormack2:28

be able to be dropped somewhere and just uh uh reflect and uh and be alone. And it wouldn't be something that would scare me very much at all initially.

Presenter2:36

I think we'd all miss people, I mean family and friends, of course, but is there any anything that you would really miss other than them?

Mark McCormack2:43

I certainly would miss, I'm sure, the excitement of the life that I lead before too much time went by.

Mark McCormack2:49

But uh I would look forward to the tranquillity of it.

Mark McCormack2:52

And to just being able to sit and think and reflect and have no telephones and no meetings and no airplanes to fly on.

Presenter3:00

Let's pause there and uh hear the first record that you're going to take with you. What is it?

Mark McCormack3:04

It's uh Don't Cry for Me Argentina, which uh has always been a sort of an exotic and uh

Mark McCormack3:09

sort of a melody and a haunting tune that I've always liked and it sort of reminds me of the distant places around the world that I've been fortunate enough to travel to and have been fortunate enough to have associations with over the years.

Speaker 43:23

Don't cry for me, Argentina.

Speaker 43:29

The truth is.

Speaker 43:31

I never left you.

Speaker 43:34

All through my wild days, my mad existence, I kept my promise, don't keep your distance.

Presenter3:47

Julie Covington singing Don't Cry for Me, Argentina, from Evita.

Presenter3:52

Golf was of course, Mark McCormick, the beginning of it all, your passport to success, if you like. How did you come to take it up?

Mark McCormack3:59

Well, when I was six years old, uh I was hit by a car in Chicago, Illinois, where I lived, and uh had a uh uh fractured skull. And at that time, all young

Mark McCormack4:09

boys in America wanted to play American football and uh

Mark McCormack4:12

I was certainly one of them. And the doctors told me that because of the fractured skull I uh really shouldn't do that. Um and uh my father, recognizing that I

Mark McCormack4:22

with someone that liked to compete and liked sports, uh suggested that I uh start playing golf and taught me golf uh at a very young age at a time when not that many people were playing it in the United States. And uh

Mark McCormack4:34

He felt it was a sport that I could play throughout my life, and one that I could play obviously with no danger to a fractured skull. So I started golf at that point.

Mark McCormack4:43

And um I suppose it was being hit by the car that uh led me indirectly into everything I've ever done in golf.

Presenter4:50

This was in Chicago, as you said, where you were born, just in the early days of the Depression, when

Mark McCormack4:54

What is your f

Presenter4:54

What did your father do for a living?

Mark McCormack4:56

He published agricultural magazines, farm magazines in the Midwest.

Presenter5:00

So were you quite well to do as a family?

Mark McCormack5:02

We were certainly comfortable as a family and well to do. I'm not ever quite sure what that means, but I you know, we certainly didn't want for anything.

Presenter5:09

And were you any good at school?

Mark McCormack5:11

I did pretty well at school. I I was uh accused of never working very hard and doing well without working hard, which meant that everyone thought that if I worked harder I'd do a lot better. But I enjoyed it and I enjoyed all the extracurricular things as well.

Presenter5:25

And that this the first school you went to was called Harvard, I guess.

Mark McCormack5:28

I went to Harvard School for Boys in Chicago.

Presenter5:30

Not the heart.

Mark McCormack5:31

not the Harvard, and uh later on went to Princeton. Uh

Mark McCormack5:35

and also to William and Mary, the College of William and Mary, from which I graduated and ultimately went to law school at Yale University. So I have the rare triple of having gone to Harvard, Princeton and Yale.

Presenter5:46

But not quite. But, um, golf all of the time, even though you were studying law, was your overriding passion, was it?

Mark McCormack5:53

Well, I loved golf and I I was uh pretty good at it at a young age. I mean, pretty good by uh normal standards, not by the standards of the people we're representing today or for the last uh twenty years or so. But I won the uh uh prep school championship in Chicago, the w school what you call, I guess, the schoolboys' championship uh here in Great Britain. And uh

Mark McCormack6:11

played in uh college at university and then uh played in the U. S. Open Championship and the British amateur and the US amateur and things of that kind. But I quickly figured out I wasn't good enough to

Mark McCormack6:21

Win these events. I was good enough to get into them, and I was striving to figure out some way to.

Mark McCormack6:27

Keep my fingers in the pie of golf, so to speak, and at the same time use the legal training and college background that I had.

Presenter6:35

And then you had a very good idea, which we shall hear about, after your second record.

Mark McCormack6:40

The second record is And I Love Her by the Beatles and written by Paul McCartney. And of course I've I've always been very, very as I'm sure millions of others have, but I've been very attached to the Beatles, I think largely because their career

Mark McCormack6:55

really started about when mine started in the in the sixties. And I've sort of related to their lyrics and to everything they did. And this particular song is I think one of their best.

Speaker 47:07

I give her all my love

Speaker 47:11

That's all I do

Speaker 47:15

And if you saw my love

Speaker 47:19

You'd love her too, I love her.

Speaker 47:27

She gives me everything

Speaker 47:32

And generally

Presenter7:36

The Beatles and I Love Her.

Presenter7:38

So the young Mark McCormack, aged thirty-ish, looked at a golfer called Arnold Palmer and thought, um, I could do something with this man and his talent. And you made him an offer. What was it?

Mark McCormack7:50

Well, in those days, as strange as it may seem today, nobody was representing professional athletes and um I felt that I knew golf and I was a lawyer and uh

Mark McCormack7:59

and I knew that he had a very vast raw talent.

Mark McCormack8:03

And I said to Arnold that I thought that I'd could get him some golf exhibitions and maybe help him with some contracts and look at the contracts he already had and improve them. And he said, you know, he said, I really can't stand dealing with contracts and taxes and finance and insurance and all those things. And if you could take that off my mind so I could just concentrate on playing golf, it'd be terrific.

Mark McCormack8:23

shook hands on a on an arrangement that has um

Mark McCormack8:27

lasted for almost thirty years now and uh

Mark McCormack8:30

And the only agreement he and I have ever had has been a handshake.

Presenter8:33

And what was your cut in all that? What did you get out of it?

Mark McCormack8:35

Basically, it was a percentage of his gross income, varying depending upon the type of income it was. In exchange for that, I would.

Mark McCormack8:42

run his business operations and manage his uh business affairs, which uh

Mark McCormack8:47

Today are literally into the hundreds of millions of dollars in designing of golf courses. He has sixty-five golf courses under construction at the present time in various parts of the world.

Mark McCormack8:57

millions and millions and millions of dollars worth of uh sales of his Arnold Palmer branded merchandise and clothing and all kinds of commercials. He has automobile dealerships and aviation companies and owns country clubs and real estate and and and what have you. And

Mark McCormack9:11

Walking down the streets of Tokyo, Arnold Palmer is as well recognized as he is walking down the streets of New York City.

Presenter9:15

He's got a chain of tea shops in Japan, hasn't he?

Mark McCormack9:18

He has uh restaurants in Japan, right? And he used to have a chain of dry cleaning centers in America.

Presenter9:18

Yeah.

Presenter9:23

And would it be fair to say, though, that in those early days your cut was something like twenty five per cent?

Mark McCormack9:27

I suppose that would be a uh a a rough uh a rough guess, yes.

Presenter9:30

And then soon after you launched him in that kind of way, as it were, with this personal appearances and sponsorships and exhibition matches, a a a chap called Niklaus and a chap called Player came along knocking at your door.

Mark McCormack9:42

Well, right. What happened was that the

Mark McCormack9:45

I had my first three clients were Arnold Palmer, Gary Player and Jack Nicholas, and in the next five to ten years they won every golf tournament that mattered.

Mark McCormack9:52

And at the same time golf exploded and television hit and everything was

Mark McCormack9:56

Was everything all happened at once and it was

Presenter9:58

That's cool being lucky as well.

Mark McCormack9:59

It's called the best business advice you can give anyone is to get good luck.

Presenter10:03

Let's have your third piece of music.

Mark McCormack10:05

Oh, the third is by a group that I've always felt very attached to once again because they came along right at the sort of the height of my career in the mid seventies, I think, or early seventies, the Eagles.

Mark McCormack10:19

And uh this particular one is the best of my love.

Speaker 410:22

Wasting our time.

Speaker 410:24

Cheap talk and wine.

Speaker 410:28

Left us so little to give

Speaker 410:32

That same old crowd was like a cold dark cloud.

Speaker 410:37

That we could never rise above

Speaker 410:46

Here in my heart.

Speaker 410:48

I give you the best of my love.

Presenter10:53

Best of My Love by The Eagles. They're all quite sloppy or record smart.

Mark McCormack10:58

They're all sort of sentimental, I think, and I I think I'm a pretty sentimental person actually.

Presenter11:03

But surely you have to be a tough person, too, to do the sort of business you do.

Mark McCormack11:06

Well, I think you have to do both probably, but I think it's nice to have not be always tough.

Presenter11:10

Jack Nicholas's motto was always said to be to win and to win and um it's yours too, isn't it?

Mark McCormack11:17

Well, I think that's a pretty good motto. And uh Gary Player's motto was The harder I practice, the luckier I get. I think that's not bad either.

Presenter11:23

But when you don't win, is it good enough to have tried your best?

Mark McCormack11:28

Well, sure it is. Uh but that doesn't make losing any more uh satisfying.

Presenter11:33

Do you admire, then, the killer instinct?

Mark McCormack11:35

Oh, I think the killer instinct is uh uh in anything is terribly uh uh admirable.

Mark McCormack11:41

I think the champion uh in sports

Mark McCormack11:45

keeps his killer instinct.

Mark McCormack11:47

throughout his career, whereas many of the near misses in sport start out with a killer instinct and then get a little complacent about their life and think, Oh, well, I don't have to be number one anymore and they get a little bit content with being number two or number ten and making s making it sound like that's pretty good.

Presenter12:04

Do you have the killer instinct?

Mark McCormack12:06

Well, I think so. I think in business I certainly do. And I I get accused of having it sometime in sports where I don't have the talent to live up to the killer instinct that I have. I have great killer instinct and not enough talent.

Presenter12:18

But does that make you a less than nice person?

Mark McCormack12:21

I think if you compete fairly and compete hard and work hard and strive for excellence, I don't think people can accuse that of being unnice characteristic.

Presenter12:31

But can you put it away at the end of a business day and go home to your wife and actually turn into mister Nice Guy?

Mark McCormack12:33

Yeah.

Mark McCormack12:36

One of the strengths that I think I do have is the ability to compartmentalize things and to be get in a huge argument with someone and turn off the minute somebody else walks into the room and be over the argument two minutes after I've had it. And I think that's very good because it gives me a lot more peace of mind, a lot more tranquillity inside.

Mark McCormack12:57

And I think it's also enables me to be a lot more civil to people like my wife and others who I certainly want to be awfully nice to if I can.

Presenter13:06

Well, you you branched out from the golf we were talking about into tennis, as we've said. Um who were your clients in those early days? Billie Jean King, wasn't it? Was she one of those? Well, we.

Mark McCormack13:13

Well, we we started out with um people like Margaret Court and Billie Jean King and Rod Laver and Ken Rosewall and um Virginia Wade and Yvonne Gulagong and a lot of household names of that kind and have moved up um through the years to where today we're representing a lot of the top young players in in the game as well as some of the superstars of today.

Presenter13:33

It's easier these days, I think, to mention the people you don't represent, who are I think Steffi Graf, Boris Becker, Sabatini.

Mark McCormack13:39

Sabattini.

Presenter13:40

Those are the three. Would you like to get hold of them?

Mark McCormack13:42

Well, sure. I think you you know, you can't have everything. I figured that out a while ago and uh

Presenter13:47

But would you attempt to poach them? They belong to somebody.

Mark McCormack13:49

Well, poach is a funny word. I think that if any of them were unhappy with those people representing them and their contracts expired, we'd be certainly interested in talking with them. But we do, as you say, represent Chris Evert, Martina Navratilova, and Yvonne Lindel and V. Lander and a whole host of the top players.

Presenter14:09

Some more music, I think.

Mark McCormack14:12

The next song has a lot of meaning to me because the BBC did a television program a number of years ago.

Mark McCormack14:20

On it, Tony Jacklin, who was one of our clients in the early 70s, sang a song called Both Sides Now. And of course, Both Sides Now is a

Mark McCormack14:29

a record that talks about life and um I've often thought about it uh in terms of my own life quite a bit, so it's got a double-edged meaning to me, Tony Jacqueline and uh both sides now.

Speaker 414:40

So many times I would have done, but clouds got in my way.

Speaker 414:49

I've looked at clouds from both sides now from a painter.

Speaker 414:55

And still the song

Mark McCormack14:55

Does it

Speaker 414:57

It's cloud illusions I recall, I really don't know clouds.

Speaker 415:08

Uh

Presenter15:10

Tony Jacklin singing both sides now. Let's talk then, Mark McCormick, about the commercialization of Wimbledon. Sixteen years ago you approached the organisers, the All England Club, and suggested what that you could run their affairs better than they could.

Mark McCormack15:24

Well, actually, I first that is definitely not what happened. In nineteen sixty eight, I I'd been out at Wimbledon, and at the time Buzzer Haddingham, who's now the chairman of Wimbledon, was the chairman of Schlazingers. And I was telling Buzzer, gee, I said, what a wonderful event this was and the ambiance.

Mark McCormack15:42

And look and feel of Wimbledon was so exciting to me, and I started asking him a lot of questions about it. And he said, Why don't you go out and meet the then-chairman, Herman David, and talk about some of the ideas you have? And I went out and I.

Mark McCormack15:53

We talked about two things. I I said, you know, it it's a shame that you don't have a film of this event, which over the years you could have on film everything that happened at the tournament and and there was no such thing happening in 1968. And the committee said to me, Well, who would ever pay for such a film? We'd love to have one and I said, Well, I'd be happy to produce it and pay for it and then recoup out of the first proceeds our investment in the production and then

Mark McCormack16:21

And I'll share the proceeds over that and they said, well, by all means, do that.

Mark McCormack16:26

Then I asked him about international television.

Mark McCormack16:28

And they said at the time, they said, Well, you know, we have a couple of contracts. We have a contract with BBC Enterprises, which.

Mark McCormack16:35

It pays us, I don't know, $25,000 or something for f all foreign rights, and we get $50,000 from the United States.

Mark McCormack16:42

And so we wouldn't want to commission pay commissions on the first $75,000, but if you can do better than that, we'd be happy to have you represent us. So we then started representing the television rights to Wimbledon, which of course today are worth millions and millions and millions of dollars on an annual basis. Then, about 15 years, pardon me, about 15 years ago in 1974.

Mark McCormack17:03

I suggested to the club that possibly

Mark McCormack17:06

they might look at the customer entertainment element of Wimbledon by setting up entertainment tents or marquees because as beautiful as Wimbledon was, it'd be nice to be able to go somewhere which wasn't crowded and everything.

Mark McCormack17:19

In between matches or on a hot day, and have a drink, or maybe have something to eat. And they again said, Well, that sounds like a great idea, but who would pay for erecting the tents and what have you? And so.

Mark McCormack17:28

we made an offer to the club to set up the tents and take the full financial burden and risk of them, and they let us do that. And we then went to them in the late seventies about the merchandising of the Wimbledon name, which is perhaps the

Mark McCormack17:42

One of the greatest accomplishments I think and feel that I feel the proudest of.

Presenter17:47

Wimbledon is much more, as you quite openly say, about money than it ever was. You've redefined it in that sense. What do you say to those who would accuse you of making money more important now than the tournament, than the game?

Mark McCormack18:00

I don't really think so. I don't think I've done that. I think that any player at Wimbledon, you could ask anyone that's still in this championship now.

Mark McCormack18:09

what the prize money is if they lose a quarterfinal match or win it.

Mark McCormack18:13

None of them will even know the answer to that question. They'll know they win more. But all they're really trying to do is win the championship.

Mark McCormack18:19

Wimbledon is the most prestigious tennis event in the world by miles. It's to the credit of the people that have been running the All England Club and the Wimbledon Tennis Championships that they've been able to do this, and they jealously guard their position at the pinnacle of the game.

Presenter18:33

And if, after that, anyone had any doubt about your commitment to tennis, they should be reminded that you are, of course, married to a tennis professional, aren't you?

Mark McCormack18:42

Well, right. I I w I'm fortunate enough to have married uh Betsy Nagelson about three and a half years ago, and uh this is her uh sixteenth consecutive Wimbledon Singles Championship.

Presenter18:51

And has that marriage, your second marriage it is, has that experience mellowed you at all? Would you say it's meant?

Mark McCormack18:56

Well, you'd have to ask people that know me.

Presenter18:59

Well, thy haven, they say it has.

Mark McCormack19:00

Well, I would like to think that it has. I think it's certainly the luckiest thing that ever happened to me in my life. I think she's a very, very.

Mark McCormack19:07

special woman and someone I love very much.

Presenter19:10

Let's have another record.

Mark McCormack19:12

The next one is a a song that um actually reminds me a lot of Betsy because um she's been a great Bruce Springsteen fan all of her life and one of the songs that we both liked uh by Bruce Springsteen was Drive All Night.

Speaker 419:25

Lying in the heat of the night

Speaker 419:31

Like prisoners all our night

Speaker 419:35

I'm gonna get shivers down my spine, girl, and all I wanna do is hold you tight.

Presenter19:55

Bruce Springsteen, Drive All Night. Now let's hear more about the um personal side of Mark McCormick. How do you keep at bay the stress and the tension?

Mark McCormack20:04

I get up very, very early.

Mark McCormack20:06

But I try not to take a nap if I can in the afternoon. I mean, I get up about four thirty and start working usually around five o'clock.

Presenter20:12

What do you do at five o'clock in the morning?

Mark McCormack20:13

Well, my secretary comes over, the one that well, I have a secretary that takes dictation and I do my dictation usually from about five until seven.

Mark McCormack20:20

And then start my other secretary comes over around seven o'clock and and um

Mark McCormack20:25

whether I'm here or uh in the United States. And uh

Mark McCormack20:29

I try then to take a nap. I try to get some sleep. I sleep very easily on airplanes. I sleep well. I could.

Mark McCormack20:37

Sleep anywhere, really. I once uh

Mark McCormack20:39

I was at L um Monza, the racetrack, and I was right next to the track and sleeping in the caravan, and nobody could believe it.

Mark McCormack20:46

But um that's I think very fortunate for me.

Presenter20:49

And you're a keep fit fanatic?

Mark McCormack20:50

I try to do that. I I d I'm not a fanatic. Uh I try to p uh run or play tennis, you know, maybe twelve to fifteen days a month or something like that. I try to do sit-ups or side bends or push-ups or some kind of exercise most every day.

Presenter21:05

You're also, I understand, a a list maker and a numbers junkie. You constantly work out the statistics of your life, is that right?

Mark McCormack21:12

Yeah, my mother years ago told me that I wasn't getting enough sleep and I s uh started about twenty some odd years ago.

Mark McCormack21:19

Keeping a record of my sleep, just so that I could say to her, Well, I slept 42 hours more this year than I have last year at this time, or something like that.

Mark McCormack21:27

I've done the same thing with exercises because I wanted to make sure I was exercising at the same amount or or a little bit more each year and I keep a record of a lot of things of that kind.

Presenter21:35

Put on a card in your pocket.

Mark McCormack21:36

I have little cards in my pocket on a little calendar and I have all kinds of little details there.

Presenter21:41

Can I test you how much sleep have you had in the past week?

Mark McCormack21:44

I'll give you a better statistic. I would say that through May of this year,

Mark McCormack21:49

I've slept sixty hours more than through May of last year, which is rather uh amazing, uh I think. And uh in the last week though I slept only forty five hours, so I'm not doing too well uh during uh during June.

Presenter22:01

And do you have this one on your card? How much money have you earned so far to day?

Mark McCormack22:06

Oh, I don't have anything like that on my card. I couldn't even tell you how much money I earned uh in a in a particular year, really. I mean, I uh uh other people kind of keep track of that for me and I I just uh

Mark McCormack22:16

At this point, I'm really just enjoying what I'm doing so much that that's uh

Presenter22:20

You stopped counting.

Mark McCormack22:21

Well, it it it becomes secondary after a point. I mean, I think when when you have nothing

Mark McCormack22:26

Money is very important to you, and when you have enough to live a comfortable life,

Mark McCormack22:30

uh th then it becomes less and less important.

Presenter22:33

Here's an easy one. What's your next record?

Mark McCormack22:36

Uh the next record is um uh Stevie Nick's record, uh Leather and Lace.

Speaker 422:42

Heaven's Forever.

Speaker 422:45

Face to face.

Speaker 422:48

My city old mountain stay with me stay

Speaker 422:54

I need you to love me. I need you today.

Speaker 423:00

To me older, take from me my lady.

Presenter23:08

Leather and Lace sung by Stevie Nix

Presenter23:11

Mark McCormick, the criticism that is most often levelled against you is that you have potentially a conflict of interests, that you can often manage a tour for tennis players or cricketers, and at the same time own the event that they're going to play in, and represent many of the players who are turning up in it, so you're getting a slice of the action at every turn.

Mark McCormack23:30

If you take an event like the Santori World Match Play Championship at Wentworth, for example, which

Mark McCormack23:35

Is an event that we created out of thin air, meaning there was no World Match Play Championship in golf.

Mark McCormack23:42

I felt there ought to be one. We put up the money to create this event. It's now become a part of the London autumn season, sporting season.

Mark McCormack23:50

Certainly the second most important golf championship in Great Britain behind the Open Championship itself.

Mark McCormack23:55

And that's an event that I've taken our company has taken the full financial risk of.

Mark McCormack24:01

And the qualifications for that tournament are that the best players in the world get automatically invited. If they win the US Open or the Masters or the British Open, they're invited.

Mark McCormack24:11

Because we represent most of the best players in the world in golf,

Mark McCormack24:15

Most of them automatically qualify for this event.

Mark McCormack24:18

Because we've taken the risk of staging the event, putting up the prize money, renting the golf course and what have you.

Mark McCormack24:24

We feel we should take the reward from the sale of tickets, the sale of sponsorship, the sale of television rights and what have you.

Mark McCormack24:30

So I feel the net result of all this is giving the British public

Mark McCormack24:34

a high quality uh golf event for it to see in person and on television.

Presenter24:40

The other criticism that is levelled at you is that in the end your sporting clients, anyway, are working for you rather than you for them, that that their job is to put balls in holes and over nets, and when they do, you make money.

Mark McCormack24:54

Well, yes, but most often the monies that we earn for them off the course or off the court or off the ski slopes or off the playing field far exceeds the monies that they earn

Mark McCormack25:06

on the court or course as the case may be. And I think that we participate in their income, and it's a fairly negotiated participation, which I think most of our clients are very happy with. I listen, if they pay us a certain amount of money,

Presenter25:17

By the

Mark McCormack25:20

And at the end of the year, they don't feel that we've been worth a lot more than that to them, having paid it to us, they'd quit.

Mark McCormack25:28

And most of em don't quit.

Presenter25:30

So when people accuse you of being something of a of a predator, a devourer of people, you would object?

Mark McCormack25:35

Yeah, I don't think that's very nice and nor very accurate.

Presenter25:40

And now you can get even opera singers to sing for you, as in in Carmen and Aida at Earl's Court. That's been a very different and new venture for a man who began as a sports promoter, isn't it?

Mark McCormack25:49

Well, we figured out that we were equipped to deal with artists, whether they're classical artists or sports personalities, throughout the world, and we felt it would be foolhardy not to try to do this in in the in the arts. And it's been terribly successful working with people like Kiri Takanoa and and like Itzhak Perlman and

Mark McCormack26:09

And then staging operas like Aida and Carmen. It's been very gratifying, and I don't have a lot of.

Mark McCormack26:15

Culture myself, Kiri Tekanawa keeps saying to me, She's going to teach me culture, and she says the first thing that she's going to have to learn is that it's intermission or interval, not half-time.

Mark McCormack26:25

And so that's about where I am on culture, but it's been pretty successful for us.

Presenter26:30

Some more music, please.

Mark McCormack26:32

The next song is something that I've spent a lot of the most enjoyable days of my life on the west coast of Scotland.

Mark McCormack26:38

playing golf at Turnberry and Prestwick and Troon and some of the great golf courses there. And right off the west coast is a place called the Mull of Kintyre. And of course, since I've already said I'm a Beatles fan and I'm a Cartney nut, I get a double edged result again with Wings and Mull of Kintyre.

Speaker 426:52

As he carries me home to the mother-looking town

Speaker 427:03

All of Kinsa, oh mistrolling in from the sea, I desire is always to be here, O Morl of Kinsa.

Presenter27:23

Paul McCartney and Wings, and Mull of Kintyre.

Presenter27:26

Mark, as you've shown, profit is not a dirty word to you money is not unmentionable. Do you find us, the English, somewhat quaint in that respect?

Mark McCormack27:35

I think there's certainly a l I I like to say the English people, British people are are more

Mark McCormack27:42

genteel uh than we are in America, and I think uh a little bit um more um uh reserved or restrained about

Mark McCormack27:52

talking about things involving money or commercials, they're they're uncomfortable with it. But I think it's changing a lot. And I think that politeness or

Mark McCormack28:02

In effect, reservedness in sports has perhaps worked over the years to the detriment of the British sportsman and sportswoman. But I think that's changing too. And I think you look at what's happened with Nick Faldo, for example, and Sandy Lyle, and some of these golfers that are just beating everybody to death around the world, and I think that's because they're.

Mark McCormack28:23

They're saying, hey, wait a minute, we're pretty good and we're going to assert ourselves just like everybody else does. And I think it's changing.

Presenter28:29

So if we could best borrow from the um American nature.

Presenter28:34

more punchiness, more more ability to go get. Which characteristic do you think Americans could best benefit from in our nature?

Mark McCormack28:43

Equanimity and quality, really, I suppose, would be two adjectives that would

Mark McCormack28:47

her nouns would come to mind

Mark McCormack28:49

Class an American term.

Mark McCormack28:53

is something the British people have. And that's said in a good way. I mean, it doesn't mean one class or another, but they have a lot of class. And I think the Americans could do with a little more.

Presenter29:04

So as you sit on your desert island, thinking now back on this career we've been discussing, will you have, do you think, any any large regrets, you know, the deal that slipped through your fingers, or something personal?

Mark McCormack29:15

My biggest regret is that there isn't more time to do more things. I do in in a given year now a thousand things or more. That's over three a day, maybe maybe more than that.

Mark McCormack29:27

any one of which, when I was sixteen years old, I would have considered the thrill of a lifetime.

Mark McCormack29:31

Uh and uh I I just

Mark McCormack29:34

Feels so lucky to be able to wake up each morning and start a new day.

Mark McCormack29:39

I my my only regret is that there isn't uh isn't more time to enjoy more of it.

Presenter29:45

Shall we have your last record?

Mark McCormack29:46

The last record is a very meaningful one to me. It's a song about Marilyn Monroe. And it's called Candle in the Wind by Elton John. And it basically talks about life being like a candle in the wind or her life being that way. And of course, that's the sort of feeling that I have about many of the sports personalities and other personalities that I've known. Their careers are short or shortened by injury or lack of ability or age or what have you. And you think about all of their lives as being candles in the wind.

Speaker 430:16

And it seems to me you lived your life like a candle in the wind.

Speaker 430:23

Never knowing who to play into

Speaker 430:27

When the rain set in

Speaker 430:31

And I would've liked to know you, but I was just

Speaker 430:37

Jantu burned out long before the legend ever did.

Presenter30:46

Elton John, Candle in the Wind. So, Mark, you have to choose one of those records that uh you must have more than any of the others.

Mark McCormack30:54

I'm going to choose uh Bruce Springsteen's uh Drive All Night.

Mark McCormack30:58

Because it's longer.

Mark McCormack30:59

And it's uh more versatile.

Presenter31:02

Uh

Mark McCormack31:02

And it was

Presenter31:02

Reminds you of Betsy.

Mark McCormack31:03

And it does.

Presenter31:05

And a book. Now, we already put on to this island the complete works of Shakespeare and the Bible. So what else would you like to have?

Mark McCormack31:11

Well, I want to have uh Les Miserable.

Mark McCormack31:14

And I want a French dictionary to go with it because I'd I'd like to improve my French as I uh go through the fourteen or so so volumes uh of Les Miserable, which I read parts of when I was in school majoring in French, and I'd just like to complete them.

Presenter31:29

And your luxury. What can we supply you with? But it has to be something that is of no practical use to you whatsoever.

Mark McCormack31:34

Well, I'd wanted to have a suntan lotion.

Presenter31:36

Oh, well, it's only semi practical. You could have that.

Mark McCormack31:38

That's what I'd like.

Presenter31:39

Right. Well, you shall have it. And um I shall say, Mark McCormick, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs.

Mark McCormack31:45

Thank you.

Speaker 331:53

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Islandists archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio form.