Gerry Robinson

Speaker 10:00

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. The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen ninety six, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:29

My castaway this week is a business man. He was born poor, one of ten children who moved with his parents from Donegal to London's East End when they crossed the sea to look for work. He was clever and did well at school, but university was not part of his world, and he trained as an accountant instead.

Presenter0:46

Bit by bit he levered himself up the corporate ladder of several big companies, and then ten years ago he organized and led a management buy out of Compass, the contract services division of Grand Metropolitan.

Presenter1:00

Now rich in his own right, he was recruited in nineteen ninety one by Granada, where despite complaints that a caterer could never run television, he's maintained programme quality, acquired London Weekend Television and when not keeping a beady eye on the ratings for Coronation Street, taken over the Forty Group. He is Jerry Robinson. What does Mrs. Robinson think of her ninthborn these days, Jerry? Has your success surprised the family, or did they always know you had it in you?

Gerry Robinson1:27

I think for my mum the whole thing is a mystery, and that's showed itself in a number of ways. I I think the way that it showed itself most clearly was on one occasion her saying to me, Do you have your own office? And she has no sense at all, I think, of what it means. She she's pleased about it, but no more pleased than she is about the achievements of some of the others.

Presenter1:46

I was going to say, to be fair, some of the others of the ten have done very well, haven't they?

Gerry Robinson1:50

Yeah, they have. The the the whole family. I I think there is something about coming into uh a society from outside that does make you strive. And

Presenter1:57

And I think the whole

Gerry Robinson1:58

Family done.

Presenter1:59

Uh

Gerry Robinson1:59

You know reasonably well.

Presenter2:00

Brothers who've been head of Big construction, yeah.

Gerry Robinson2:03

Yes, I had a brother who's the head of Trollop and Coles, and I have a brother who runs a large part of another construction company. Yeah, they've done a lot of work. And an assistant.

Presenter2:09

And um a sister who's got a million pound business or I read.

Gerry Robinson2:12

Well, I have I have a sister who who does run her own cleaning business and another sister who who went on to become really quite senior within the National Health Service.

Presenter2:20

So what is the explanation? It isn't just coming in from the outside and and feeling competitive. Perhaps it's because there were so many of you. You have a competitive spirit naturally anyway. I have a feeling that maybe maybe it

Gerry Robinson2:29

Maybe maybe it is some want. It is a want that drives you at that level. It's it's the more negative, trying to prove something that somehow you don't feel you have that drives you in this way. And it's very hard to touch. It's very hard to be precise about what it is.

Presenter2:43

But you have to inherit the qualities that make you capable of of picking up and carrying out that drive from somebody. Where would where would you put it down to your mother, your father? What did you get from whom?

Gerry Robinson2:55

Well, I I would say it was almost certainly m my mother. She was much more strident, much more pushing about things than my father, who who was rather laid back.

Presenter3:04

He was a carpenter in Donegal.

Gerry Robinson3:06

Yes, he was. He he was a pretty lazy carpenter from what I can remember too. He had quite a tough life in a very small village community where he was the village carpenter and, you know, there wasn't a lot of carpentry.

Presenter3:18

You mentioned he w he was lazy. You've often almost boasted, I feel, of the the fact that you're actually quite l fundamentally quite lazy. You're not a workaholic, which sets you apart from so many captains of industry and big businessmen these days who seem to work every hour that God sends in order to achieve what they achieve. You don't. You go home.

Gerry Robinson3:36

I'm very, very easy about the time that I spend at work and it's certainly by most standards very short time. It'd be very unusual for me to be in the office beyond five thirty. Very unusual. Certainly be unusual for me to be in the office before nine, nine thirty in the morning. Not at all unusual for me not to be there on the Odd Friday here and there. Not not at all unusual. And I think that comes from a feeling that we all kid ourselves that we're the ones who lead the whole thing forward. Most things actually happen at a a level within an organisation like Granada that you don't

Presenter4:04

We don't

Gerry Robinson4:04

Yeah.

Presenter4:04

Get near

Gerry Robinson4:05

Touching.

Presenter4:06

So it's not laziness, it's a considered approach, is it?

Gerry Robinson4:08

It's a bit of both, I think.

Presenter4:11

Well, I bet it wasn't like that when you were taking over Forte. I have to say, you were probably there all the hours.

Gerry Robinson4:14

No, we w there were very long hours involved in that. Although I did manage to get to to Ireland for two and a half weeks during the bid.

Presenter4:20

Tell me about your first record.

Gerry Robinson4:21

Well the first record is Katadeva from Bellini's Norma.

Gerry Robinson4:25

I just love it. It just moves me. It it haunts me almost. It's as simple as that.

Speaker 45:01

Whisper the song with the song breath with a song.

Presenter5:30

Part of the aria Casta diva from Bellini's Norma, sung by Joan Sutherland, with the orchestra of the Royal Opera House Coven Garden, conducted by Francesco Molinari Pradelli.

Presenter5:40

The forty takeover we'll talk about, Jerry, but it was when you took over Granada in the early nineties that your name first began to be known outside business circles. They called you, as I said very disparagingly, the caterer, because you'd run Compass, the catering company. You'd have been about, what, forty-two, forty-three at the time. Yeah. And you walked into Granada television, knowing that they would be suspicious of you, you know, resentful, because you were going in to tell them how to run their business. How nervous were you at that point of walking? I mean, it was a very intimidating situation, I would have thought.

Gerry Robinson6:12

It's extraordinary, but I I never ever thought of Granada in any sense as joining the media. For me it was a company that had got itself into considerable difficulties. I thought this was something that could be turned around very easily. So it was almost it was almost mechanistic.

Presenter6:27

I can see. It was just a just another company that you could see you could turn around. You've been head hunted to do it. But nevertheless, there is something different, isn't there? she asked.

Presenter6:35

About a

Presenter6:39

It is fundamentally creative in a way that

Presenter6:42

you know, running service stations or running hotels isn't.

Gerry Robinson6:46

Oh no, no question about it. It's very different and I learnt that pretty quickly in a fairly public way. But there's a lot that is similar too in terms of any organization. If you want something to work, first of all you have to get the right people. Secondly you have to allow people the space to actually get on with it in an environment that enables them to do it. Somebody once said to me and I think it's very valid that the only serious difference between television and any other business is you get a higher quality whinging in television than you do in any other business. And there's some truth in that.

Presenter7:12

And you can't stand winges. No, I don't like

Gerry Robinson7:14

I think I think you either get in and get on with it or decide to go and do something else.

Presenter7:18

Rumour has it that you got exceedingly bored with being told that Granada had once made something called Jewel in the Crown.

Gerry Robinson7:25

What I think eventually got to me was the feeling that here was a company.

Gerry Robinson7:29

reveling in a past which was thirteen years ago. And that's all very well and all very exciting, but actually our problems were here and now. What were we doing now? That was what was interesting to me.

Presenter7:37

Now

Presenter7:40

But you've still, as I say, to return to the personal experience of it, got to be quite a strong character at the age of forty two to go in and face all of those people who know an awful lot more about the product than you do, and tell them how to do it.

Gerry Robinson7:54

I I think you achieve a great deal by stupidity. I if you don't actually know what you're going to hit, you're deeply in it before you know the difficulties. I knew there'd be some difficulties attached, particularly with some of the personalities involved, but I have to say I was shocked and amazed by how much publicity that this whole thing uh caused. So I wasn't prepared for it and I'm not quite sure, genuinely not sure, that if I'd known that I would have gone in with quite such courage as as appeared to be the case afterwards.

Presenter8:20

Because of course what you did within a matter of weeks to internal and external outcry was you you sacked David Plowright, the the the chairman of Granada man who'd been making television programmes when you were still at school.

Presenter8:32

Why was that necessary?

Gerry Robinson8:34

Well, what happened with David now and I got on very well with David. I liked him very much. He's a charming man, clearly someone who'd achieved a great deal. David was sixty-one years old. He was already past the retirement age within Granada. He was not going to like somebody new coming in in the way that I did. Why why would he? I I wouldn't like it under the circumstances. So after trying over a couple of month period to actually get David to change one or two of the things that we did and getting nowhere.

Gerry Robinson9:01

I simply decided it was a waste of time, a waste of his time and a waste of mine, and that we should find a gentle exit. And actually we planned a gentle exit and got very close to pulling it off, and went slightly wrong at the last minute.

Presenter9:11

Aromic

Presenter9:12

You've said since that Granada wouldn't be around today if you hadn't taken over. Do you think that's true?

Gerry Robinson9:17

I think Grenada might be around as part of something else. I I I think there's a fair chance that Grenada itself would have been taken over. There there was a need for a shake up within Grenada. And somebody coming in from outside, I think, has the opportunity to do that in a way that an insider

Presenter9:31

Come.

Presenter9:32

Tell me about record number two.

Gerry Robinson9:34

Record number two is uh a Gregorian chant, it's the the Magnificat and Canticle to Our Lady sung by the the monks of uh Corabbe.

Gerry Robinson9:42

And it just reminds me of my time at Seminary in Castlehead in in Grangeover Sands.

Speaker 49:49

Yeah.

Speaker 49:52

Anime Ado Nir

Speaker 410:00

We are recessive days Who merely taught and lay on.

Speaker 110:06

Me talk.

Speaker 410:12

What is it called?

Speaker 410:16

Lorne at on me

Speaker 410:20

They take some traveling speed to a snow

Speaker 110:21

And so

Speaker 410:26

Inteu savatore mevo.

Speaker 410:31

We are respects it to Militota Manchiles.

Speaker 410:38

Lecheeni Mex Horpeata Me Ti Gentromes Generati Horn.

Presenter10:45

The magnificat and canticle of Our Lady sung by the monks of Caw Abbey, and memories of the days when Gerard Jude Robinson was training to be a Catholic priest in Lancashire with the Holy Ghost Fathers, Jerry.

Presenter10:58

Well, I it's very difficult.

Gerry Robinson11:00

in arrears to really get a grip of exactly what that was about.

Gerry Robinson11:04

I've often tried to pretend to myself that it wasn't real at the time, because it's certainly I'm not religious now. But I it it was absolutely r real.

Presenter11:11

What the desire to be a priest was real.

Gerry Robinson11:14

Yes, I it's c certainly, you know, within a large Catholic family, being a priest was the pinnacle in a in in a way that's what every Catholic mother wanted. So at least part of of the desire must have been rooted in that because of pleasing one's mother.

Gerry Robinson11:29

It never quite worked for me. I I became very homesick really quite quickly, and and towards the last couple of years I realized that it really wasn't for me.

Presenter11:39

But you went there when you were eleven, which was shortly after you'd come over from from Donegal with your family to live in the East End. I mean, maybe

Gerry Robinson11:44

We have

Speaker 411:44

Uh

Presenter11:46

That experience in itself had shocked you, that that that it made you yearn for, I don't know, a quieter life.

Presenter11:53

Well, there's certainly something very

Gerry Robinson11:54

Very unsettling to come from a very small village community in Donegawal to a pretty harsh community in the east end of London. I mean, it couldn't be more different. So there might have been something in that.

Presenter12:05

I mean, I I don't want to overreg it, but you were very, very poor, weren't you?

Gerry Robinson12:09

We were very poor. We we came over to live in a flat of two rooms where we actually shared a bedroom with uh my mum and dad, uh myself and my younger brother. And so we were very poor, yes.

Presenter12:19

You'd also uh of course at that stage, as I say, t age ten or eleven, you'd known grief, you'd known bereavement, because you'd lost a brother.

Gerry Robinson12:26

Yeah.

Presenter12:26

Yeah.

Gerry Robinson12:26

Yeah.

Presenter12:26

So how old were you when that happened?

Gerry Robinson12:27

I was s I was seven and Eddie uh was drowned when he was fourteen. And I honestly it's only in the last four or five years that I have really been able to get back to that in in in some real way, to really understand the impact that that had on me, which was which was obviously enormous. I felt very close to to Eddie. He was a very calm, uh, quiet individual, which

Presenter12:50

Hmm.

Gerry Robinson12:50

Wasn't exactly typical of the Robinsons, and I missed him hugely.

Presenter12:55

This was in Donegali drowned in the sea.

Gerry Robinson12:56

Yes, he drowned in the sea while while swimming. I mean, there are all sorts of reports that he got cramp and I don't think anybody really knows. He drowned while swimming and and actually had to be rescued his body had to be rescued from the sea by by my father, which was awful.

Presenter12:57

Ben

Presenter13:10

So were you quite then a serious little boy as a result of all these experiences, do you think, at that stage?

Presenter13:17

I didn't think I was that s

Gerry Robinson13:17

Serious th th this was obviously a particularly serious event, which had.

Presenter13:17

Serial

Gerry Robinson13:22

Enormous repercussions in the family, enormous sense of security lost for, I think, for quite a long time.

Presenter13:28

So you went off to the seminary. How how you had it was fee paying. How on earth did the parents aff uh afford it?

Gerry Robinson13:33

Well, it wasn't it wasn't fee paying in any serious way. You you chipped in what what you could. It was essentially financed by the church, and and therefore the the fees involved were very, very small.

Presenter13:43

But it was a very rigorous education.

Gerry Robinson13:45

Oh, very rigorous. And in some ways there's a benefit in that, but in the round, and I think the test of this is I certainly wouldn't send or wouldn't seek to send my children to be educated in that way. I think it's much, much too rigid.

Presenter13:56

Favorite subjects?

Gerry Robinson13:58

I actually enjoyed the subjects that have been absolutely no use to me whatsoever since, like Greek and Latin, where obviously there isn't much.

Gerry Robinson14:04

It doesn't feature very heavily in the business community.

Presenter14:07

And what did you come out with? What qualification?

Gerry Robinson14:10

I came out uh at the age of just under seventeen with uh eight O levels and um four A levels and and straight A's because there was nothing else to do.

Presenter14:19

And why did you decide to come out? Why did you decide well at the age of sixteen that you didn't want to be a priest?

Gerry Robinson14:24

Yeah.

Gerry Robinson14:26

Two things happened. One is it did all start to fall apart for me logically when I thought about it and when I started to read even fairly basic stuff from Encyclopedia Britannica. And also girls started to look pretty interesting at that age too. One of the mistakes I think that the seminary made was that they allowed a whole group of families to come in one Whitsun.

Gerry Robinson14:43

And uh amongst this grouping there were a number of girls here?

Gerry Robinson14:46

and they look pretty enticing to me.

Presenter14:48

Record number three.

Gerry Robinson14:50

Record number three is Elaine Page singing I'll Be Surprisingly Good For You. This record is closely related to my oldest daughter. She and I used to used to sing this together when she was quite small, and she'd be terribly embarrassed to hear this, but it was a wonderful time for me.

Speaker 415:04

It seems crazy, but you must believe.

Speaker 415:09

There's nothing calculated, nothing planned.

Speaker 415:14

Please forgive me if I seem naive.

Speaker 415:19

I would never want to force your hand.

Speaker 415:23

But please understand, I'd be good for you.

Speaker 415:29

I don't always rush in like this.

Presenter15:32

Elaine Page singing I'd Be Surprisingly Good For You from Evita.

Presenter15:37

So it was off to the Youth Employment Agency with your mum, Jerry. What did they come up with?

Gerry Robinson15:42

Basically I sat and met this chap for the first time and the first job he came up with, literally, was a job for in the cost office in Lesny Products that made match box toys in in Hackney.

Gerry Robinson15:53

I went along for that interview, got the job, delighted with myself.

Gerry Robinson15:58

And um that's how my career began. I'm absolutely certain that if they'd given me a job in personnel someone I'd have gone along and done that.

Presenter15:59

Yeah, I'm

Presenter16:03

And you stayed there for nine years. It doesn't sound like a driven man, you know, a man with this competitive edge who's determined to

Gerry Robinson16:10

With one exception, I have not sought jobs. And the reason I sought a job on one occasion was that I needed a car.

Presenter16:17

This was after nine years at Lesnar, you went to Lex.

Gerry Robinson16:18

Yes, it was Lex. Yes, it was. And and the reason I went to Lex was that Lesnar wouldn't give me a car and and uh Lex would.

Presenter16:24

What did they give you?

Gerry Robinson16:24

A mini. And it was wonderful. It was a new mini. It was, for me, the greatest thing ever.

Presenter16:29

So you became finance director of of Lex, didn't you? The car hire division. Yes.

Gerry Robinson16:33

Yes, I did.

Presenter16:34

Yeah, and then this is the big moment really, isn't it? You would have been about thirty-two, you were head-hunted by Grand Met. Is that the kind of turning point?

Gerry Robinson16:41

Yes, I w well what happened was I I'd worked with someone called Eric Walters in Lex who had himself gone off to join Grand Met, and he effectively offered me a job I couldn't refuse.

Presenter16:53

So you became a kind of troubleshooter in your early thirties. You then became head of this contract services division, which is where the catering comes in. You turned it from loss into profit, staged a management buy out.

Presenter17:05

And at this point, presumably, you became a rich man.

Gerry Robinson17:09

Yes, the buyout was one of those things that worked extraordinarily well. It was a company that happened to have one of its main subsidiaries was in catering. I mean, the terrible truth is I can't fry an egg. It's a great joke at home when anybody refers to me as the caterer. And we did have great success with it at a time when management buyouts were very popular. So raising the funds was extraordinarily easy. Within a matter of a couple of weeks, we raised $163 million, which was a huge sum at the time. Of course, there have been much, much bigger buyouts since then.

Presenter17:38

But how much money did you personally put in the bank?

Gerry Robinson17:41

I suppose in the round I've made probably about fifteen, twenty million out of the whole exercise uh o over that period of time between then and and now, reinvesting the sums, etcetera.

Presenter17:51

And then you got kind of bored.

Gerry Robinson17:55

Yes, what what happened was that that the company was running extremely well. I wanted to broaden what we did and and so we made a bid for a cleaning company called obviously Sketchly and that didn't work. And and the message from shareholders that I I heard from that was that you know they really didn't want to diversify out of what Compass was. And I decided that for myself that was that was too dull.

Presenter18:15

So the challenge had gone. So you

Gerry Robinson18:15

So it's a challenge.

Presenter18:17

You seem to have gone into a kind of semi-retirement. You only went into the office two days a week.

Gerry Robinson18:21

Yes, I had a lazy

Gerry Robinson18:24

I had a lovely time. I really had a lovely time. I I spent a year where mostly what I did was paint. And I really, really enjoyed it. And it was a good time too, because my daughter was doing her DCSEs and I was able to help her. Heather and and my first child was born, so April was then I was able to spend a lot of time with her as a very tiny baby. And I think

Gerry Robinson18:43

That was what

Presenter18:44

I'm the And then along came the Granada Headhunters.

Presenter18:47

Tell me about your next record.

Gerry Robinson18:49

My next record is the overture from Verdi's La Traviata, which I associate very much with Heather and myself getting married. It was uh the music that was played uh during the wedding ceremony.

Presenter19:58

The overture to Verdi's La Traviata played by the National Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Richard Bonning.

Presenter20:03

Tell me a bit more about your management style, Jerry Robinson. It seems to me from everything you've said, simplicity is the key to your approach, isn't it?

Gerry Robinson20:12

There is a tendency to think that one person r runs things. Of course they they don't. The only way you can run an organization like Granada is to have individuals running each part.

Gerry Robinson20:22

in their own style, in the way that they like to do it, in the way that works for them.

Presenter20:25

But you've got to know what they're doing and understand what they're doing, haven't you?

Gerry Robinson20:29

Yes, you you build up a trust built on working with people for a for a period of time. Sometimes surprisingly quickly you get a feel for whether somebody is capable of doing what they're doing or not.

Presenter20:38

So you're happy to give people their heads if you've decided they're okay.

Gerry Robinson20:41

There's enormous freedom within Granada. I mean, it's very interesting that if if you look at what's happened in Granada over the last five years, the perception that I've come in and changed the whole thing and changed all the people, there are only seven people of the top one hundred managers in Granada that are new over the last

Presenter20:57

But what's been different is their targets, presumably. You s you set them targets. How often do you then check up on them?

Gerry Robinson21:04

Annually, you set budgets which which should be quite stretching. They need to be sensibly stretching. They can't be daft and if you set something which is unachievable, the whole thing falls apart. So it has to be realistic. Once those budgets are set, we have an attitude within Granada that

Gerry Robinson21:18

It will deliver it. You don't get fifty-seven reasons why it's all fallen apart.

Presenter21:22

But if they if they don't, off with the heads.

Presenter21:25

Yes, in in a sense

Gerry Robinson21:27

But but as I said, very few people that that's happened to, most people actually do rise and enjoy the fact that parameters are set, that there is something to strive for.

Presenter21:35

But if you don't concern yourself with the detail, then it's easier for you to be ruthlessly analytical, isn't it?

Gerry Robinson21:42

The time you get into the detail is when things start to go wrong. And then you really do get into the detail. You do want to find out what's happening, why it's happening, what's been done about it, what can be done about it.

Presenter21:51

When do you lose your temper?

Presenter21:54

I've almost

Gerry Robinson21:55

Never lost my temper in a business scene, in the sense of ranting or raving. It doesn't culminate in that in that kind of behaviour.

Gerry Robinson22:02

It culminates in a decision that this isn't going to work. This person is not going to work. It will not work in this way. We need to change. And that happens very rarely.

Presenter22:12

Does it matter to you whether you're liked or not?

Gerry Robinson22:15

Oh yes, of course it is. I I I think anyone who pretends that they don't care about being liked is is lying to themselves. Of course it matters. But there's quite a close correlation between being liked and being respected. And if being liked means taking the soft decisions which harms the the overall company, I it's not for me.

Presenter22:32

But the problem is, isn't it, that there are probably two Jerry Robinsons. There's the one that's affable and and genial, uh but there's the other one who when he goes to work can be

Presenter22:42

very tough and get quite rough and maybe

Presenter22:45

Being affable and genial misleads people into thinking that that applies to your approach to business too.

Gerry Robinson22:50

There is something in that because I think people are sometimes surprised when I do dig in on something in a pretty hard-nosed way. They misread in some ways the geniality. What I have is a clarity about what's wanted. And I'm pretty good, I think, at laying out what I think that is. I'm pretty good also at listening to be told that actually what I want is not reasonable at the beginning. But if we agree that we're going to go down a particular path and someone then comes back to me and says, actually, whether we agreed it is impossible, I certainly listen a bit less to that than I do at the beginning.

Presenter23:22

Record number five.

Gerry Robinson23:23

Record number five is from Dire Straits The Man's Too Strong, which I I think is the first song that I shared with my my son Richard, and we also used to sing this together.

Presenter23:24

Yeah.

Speaker 423:32

Run with the money.

Speaker 423:34

I have a vision like a sea

Speaker 423:37

Rewritten history with my armies and my crooks

Speaker 423:42

Invented memory

Speaker 423:47

I didn't burn all the books.

Speaker 423:49

And I can still hear his laugh, and I can still hear his song.

Speaker 423:56

The man's too big, the man's too strong.

Presenter24:01

Dire straits and the man's too strong. The takeover of London weekend, Jerry, was big, but your takeover of Forte was the biggest and boldest you've ever tackled, and it became pretty brutal. How long was it in the planning?

Gerry Robinson24:15

Well, in in any detailed sense, we we've been looking at Forte in in a lot of detail for the last two years.

Presenter24:21

And you regularly dined in Little Chef's?

Presenter24:23

To analyse it.

Gerry Robinson24:23

Yes, we we did an en did an enormous kind of travelling around exercise. It's it's always come across in the press that I'd visited every single little chef in the country, encouraged to do so by by Heather, who I have to say was completely disinterested in the whole process.

Presenter24:37

So you did all this homework, and then you pounced in November'ninety five, and by january'inety six it was yours. It was presented as a very personal battle between you and Rocco Forte.

Gerry Robinson24:48

It was never personal from my point of view, and I honestly think that the way that Rocco himself handled it was magnificent. I mean, this is a business which felt

Gerry Robinson24:57

I'm sure, like a family business, it was like someone coming and taking your birthright away, and I think his handling of it personally was was really superb.

Presenter25:05

Did you enjoy the whole process, or or was it agonizing and terrible, and would you never want to go through such a thing again?

Gerry Robinson25:11

I didn't enjoy it at all.

Presenter25:13

How miserable would you have been if you'd have lost?

Gerry Robinson25:16

I'd have been deeply upset. I I I mean clearly you don't set out to make a bid like that with any belief at all at the beginning, anyway, that you could possibly fail. And I think if we had failed, I I'd been deeply upset.

Presenter25:26

You had to raise the best part of four billion pounds to do it, and you pledged to sell off two billion pounds worth of assets in the longer term, roughly speaking. Your critics say that that was burning the house to roast the pig, that it it it smacks of asset stripping. They're right, aren't they?

Gerry Robinson25:41

Yeah.

Presenter25:41

Well

Gerry Robinson25:41

You have to look at the difference between the value of assets and the profits that those assets give you. We have retained or are retaining about eighty percent of the profit making capacity of the business.

Presenter25:55

But those are the lesser bits, those are the little chefs and and and the happy eaters.

Gerry Robinson25:59

Yes, those are the bits that don't have huge asset value attached to them. In some ways it was part of the problem with the business in the first place, was that there were very expensive assets, not earning returns. You can't have it both ways. If you are going to improve the underlying performance, you are going to get out of those parts of the business that are very high asset value and not giving return.

Presenter26:18

So you spot an undermanaged business, as it were, and you go for it, and you should make a lot of money out of it. The argument is that responsible business management is about growing a business, isn't about cultivating it and cherishing it, not

Presenter26:31

cutting it up into bits, downsizing it, sacking the staff, and selling bits off again.

Gerry Robinson26:36

I believe that growth within the existing business is vital. People do not want to belong to an organization or don't feel comfortable in the long term belonging to an organization that's going nowhere. It's not an exciting place to be. So you do have to be moving forward on all fronts.

Presenter26:49

You'll sell off the trophies, will you? The big parts of the business.

Gerry Robinson26:52

Yes, we are shortly to issue a sale document on what are called the exclusive hotels.

Presenter26:56

And the irony is, of course, that Rocco Forty will probably buy those hotels back off you.

Gerry Robinson27:01

For me that would be a very elegant solution, but but I don't know whether that will come to pass or not.

Presenter27:04

As long as he bought them and you made a profit.

Gerry Robinson27:07

Yes.

Presenter27:09

Record number six.

Gerry Robinson27:10

Record number six is the duet from uh from Lack Me. It's just one of those uh pieces which, although it's been used commercially, still remains for me uh just a very, very beautiful song.

Speaker 427:46

Oh my gosh!

Presenter28:22

The duet Via Malika from Delibes Lachme, sung by Madi Mesple and Daniel Mille.

Presenter28:29

So you've got a second family now, Jerry, as you say. You've got two very small children, April and Timothy, and then Richard and Samantha, in their teens and early twenties. You see them lots'cause you take lots of time off. You play golf on a Friday, is that right?

Gerry Robinson28:44

This is one of those wonderful stories that has become the you know it's like visiting every little chef. I play golf every Friday. No, I unfortunately I don't. I I play golf some Fridays and I like to play golf particularly with my with my son.

Presenter28:55

But where do you holiday? What what is your idea of relaxation?

Gerry Robinson28:59

We have a cottage in in Donegal in Ireland and um whenever we sensibly can we go there.

Presenter29:05

And is that where you'll retire to eventually?

Gerry Robinson29:07

I think so. It it's quite hard to be certain. I I don't think I'd like to live exclusively in Donegal. The idea would be to have a situation in which I could spend a good deal of time in Donegal, but also r remain with the base in London.

Presenter29:20

Is there therefore y do I get a sense there's part of you that doesn't particularly like what comes with with the territory, the the sort of rubbing shoulders with the rich and powerful and the sort of London life?

Gerry Robinson29:32

You do need a balance on these things because the business side is incredibly seductive. People want to get involved with you, you want to get involved with people, and before you know where you are, you can be sucked into that whole mesh, some of which is quite pleasurable, but if it's at the expense of forming proper relationships with your children or being close enough to real friends as opposed to business acquaintances.

Gerry Robinson29:54

I think that's a mistake, and you have to be really quite clear in your own mind what what what you want to achieve.

Gerry Robinson30:00

I I'm absolutely clear that, you know, five years from now, maybe seven years from now, and certainly ten years from now.

Gerry Robinson30:06

I'll be absolutely disinterested in what's happening in the business world.

Presenter30:10

So you might be growing potatoes or doing a bit of carpentry like you did in Donnegore.

Gerry Robinson30:13

I certainly like carpentry. Growing potatoes, I quite like the idea of, but I suspect I wouldn't be very good at.

Presenter30:20

So you sound like a perfect candidate for a desert island.

Gerry Robinson30:23

Well, perfect in the sense of looking after myself, but very imperfect in the sense of of not liking to be alone. I I I do like to be with other people.

Presenter30:31

Mecho number seven.

Gerry Robinson30:32

Record number seven is the meditation from uh Massanes Tais.

Gerry Robinson30:37

I heard this piece of music in a film which was about the concentration camps, and the it was about the orchestra being kept alive because they were talented musicians, and there was just something enormously haunting about the piece.

Presenter31:50

The meditation from Massonet's Thais played by Lauren Marzell with the new Philharmonia Orchestra.

Presenter31:57

Jerry, you're forty seven. You've got, obviously one can hear retirement in your sights. But if the call came now, you know, the opportunity to lift another company off its knees, are you still a gun for hire? Have you got it in f in you?

Gerry Robinson32:11

No, absolutely not.

Presenter32:13

Shudder at the thought. No, I I've I'm actually very

Gerry Robinson32:15

Attached to Grenada, I I have very much enjoyed what's happened in Granada. I enjoy working with the people there. I like the businesses that we're in. And no way would I go and do it all over again. You know, it might not work next time around. I mean, there is no certainty in these things. In a sense, people often seduced by the idea if you've done it once, you can do you can do it again, but you might not. It might not work another time because you yourself change and maybe the organization that you go into doesn't respond as well as as the one that you've just been acting with.

Speaker 432:36

You might

Presenter32:47

So luck has played a big part in it all.

Gerry Robinson32:47

Oh no.

Gerry Robinson32:49

Uh

Gerry Robinson33:02

You get an exaggerated view of what you're capable of.

Speaker 133:05

Last record.

Gerry Robinson33:06

The last record is There'll Be Better Days Even For Us, sung by Agnes Boltzer. This music we played when Heather was having April.

Gerry Robinson33:15

And uh we played it really throughout throughout the pregnancy. And I have I have a sense in which um music really does get through, perhaps even before the child is born, and it's certainly it's meant a lot to us since.

Speaker 433:33

Otisomenada Karimaramiro Kongero Pikra Palakeria El Badya Kuda Sura Peraro.

Presenter33:53

Uh

Presenter33:55

There'll Be Better Days Even For Us sung by Agnes Boltzer with the Athens Experimental Orchestra conducted by Stavros Xahakos, I'm told it is.

Presenter34:04

If you could only take one of those eight records, Jerry, which one would it be?

Gerry Robinson34:08

I I'd I'd have to take the casadiva.

Presenter34:11

The Bellini.

Gerry Robinson34:12

It just, uh it moves me more than anything else.

Presenter34:15

What about your book?

Gerry Robinson34:16

I the book I was going to take was The Collins' History of the World by JM Roberts, simply because for me it's it's the history book that put all the bits that I knew into a context. It's it's a wonderful, wonderfully complete book about the history of the world. And your luxury. My luxury would be a painting kit in terms of having my easel and my oils and and uh my brushes.

Presenter34:36

Are you any good at it?

Gerry Robinson34:38

Well, I'm good enough at it to enjoy it, and and Franklin of Desert Island, if it's only me, that's fine.

Presenter34:44

Jerry Robinson, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs. Thank you very much. But

Speaker 134:56

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