Archie Norman MP

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 30:09

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

Presenter0:31

My Castaway this week is a business man turned politician. A text book education, public school, Cambridge, and Harvard Business School, combined with individualistic vision he led a dying grocery chain to multi million pound profits have made him an object lesson in the successful side of modern Britain.

Presenter0:49

What he learned on the High Street, informality, team work, and appealing to young people and women he's now carrying into politics. As the Conservative MP for Tunbridge Wells and a Vice President of his party, he's determined to see it modernized and streamlined.

Presenter1:04

Whenever you go into a new organization, he says, things are usually worse on the inside than on the outside. He is the now non executive chairman of ASDA, Archie Norman.

Presenter1:16

How dismayed were you, then, Archie, by what you found inside Tory Central Office? Was it far worse than you viewed from the outside?

Archie Norman MP1:23

Well, it's not just a question of central office, it's a question of the whole Conservative Party. Now I think the effect of m the catastrophic defeat on may first was to lay bare the fact that our organization as Conservatives has been in decline for some twenty years.

Presenter1:38

It's amazing that that should have been going on when when the Labour Party was streamlining its its its set up.

Archie Norman MP1:44

Well, of course, the Conservative Party, in a sense, has been extremely successful. We've we won successive elections extremely handsomely, and as a result, I suspect the leadership paid less attention to the grassroots and to the organization than we should have done.

Presenter2:01

So complacency set in.

Archie Norman MP2:01

Complacency set in. And Conservatives are naturally often sceptical about change and sceptical about modern ideas. And as a consequence, there isn't that natural process of continuously re-engineering and redeveloping ourselves that might have taken place in other institutions.

Presenter2:18

So how sceptical have they been by the kinds of changes that you've tried to institute? I mean, wear your own clothes today, for example.

Archie Norman MP2:25

Well, I haven't uh tried to introduce uh ASDA into the Conservative Party because every organization is different and I believe the first thing to do with a a new organization is to cut with the grain, to understand the heart of it and to create something which expresses that spirit. And the spirit of the Conservative Party is different, obviously, from that of a business.

Presenter2:44

But it must have been your idea that they should wear pullovers in Eastbourne to have a bonding weekend.

Archie Norman MP2:50

Well, William Hague organised the bonding weekend, and of course it was, as you say, a great fashion show, probably the best collection of woolly jumpers and brown corduroy trousers Britain has seen for years. But part of the idea is the same, isn't it? Which is you have to start in a failing organisation by bringing people together to feel that they want to be part of a team, that they want to work together to break down the barriers between people. But that's exactly what you did in the supermarket, isn't it? The importance of woolly jumpers and so on is not what people look like. It's that it takes away the suited, the titles, the status things that get between people and act as barriers to communication.

Presenter3:16

But that's not exactly what you did in the supermarket, isn't it?

Presenter3:31

What about Bin Bag Monday, where everybody put all the rubbish off their desks in a bin bag and tried to sort of kick be more efficient?

Archie Norman MP3:38

One of the ideas we developed at Asda was that because we have open plan offices, if you have everything open, you can't leave everything looking a tip. And that means that you have to have a clean desk policy. And from time to time, all organisations need a bit of a spring clean. So we introduced the idea that every now and then we'd have a black bag Friday and people will come in in their jeans, be issued with a black sack on the way in, fill it with all the garbage and detritus that develops in any office over time and put in the basement of the building where we have a big skip to fill up and take away. And it's a bit of fun, a bit of excitement, it means you have a better working environment.

Presenter4:17

And would the Tories benefit from that too?

Archie Norman MP4:19

I don't want to upset any of my colleagues in Central Office, but I suspect there is scope for a clear out of a certain amount of surplus paper in the building as well. That's true in every organization.

Presenter4:32

But the truth is you don't even have an office in Central Office, do you?

Archie Norman MP4:35

How can you be

Presenter4:35

How can you be a vice chairman of the party and not have an office in the place?

Archie Norman MP4:38

Well, contrary to popular opinion, I'm not actually responsible at all for central office. That is run by the chairman and deputy chairman. My responsibility is a humble one, which is to prepare the plans for reform of the whole party. And therefore, I have an office round the corner so that when ordinary members come to discuss reform, they feel that they're discussing it outside the context of central office. This isn't central office's reforms. It's the members' reforms.

Presenter5:04

And you don't mind being once removed from central office by the sound of it.

Archie Norman MP5:07

I think it's important that people see me as once removed from Central Office. Central Office is, after all, the servant of the party. It's not, at the end of the day, the party itself.

Presenter5:19

Tell me about your first record.

Archie Norman MP5:21

My first record is The Flower of Scotland, played by the Campbellton Pipe Band. I wanted to have something to remind me of my childhood days in Scotland, and this is something that really captures the spirit of the West Coast of Scotland.

Presenter6:04

Flower of Scotland, played by the Campbelltown Pipe Band. You were responsible, Archie Norman, for really a cultural revolution at Asda. Apart from open plan offices and Christian names all round, you abolished company cars and chairs in meeting rooms, in conference rooms. How did that work?

Presenter6:21

How do you have a meeting if you can't sit down?

Archie Norman MP6:21

Okay, this

Archie Norman MP6:23

Well we haven't abolished chairs altogether, but one of the things I believe is that a working office should be a place where people can create all sorts of moods. There has to be times to be creative, times to be dynamic, times to be argumentative. And so you want to have an open plan office environment where everybody can talk and communicate, but different sorts of meeting rooms. We have meeting rooms at Asda where people can sit down and lounge around.

Presenter6:47

There are two.

Archie Norman MP6:47

We have music playing in some meeting rooms and we have music playing in some office areas. But we also have what I call a standing room, which is a room where we had used to have a perfectly ordinary table and chairs. I noticed that when we had the meetings a lot of people were leaning back and dozing off and it was inefficient. So we had the local carpenter in and we got him to put a couple of feet on the legs of each of this table and it is now the standing room. And if you want a short snappy meeting with a quick argument and debate and a decision, that's the place to have it, because I have noticed that if people are standing up, they find it hard to doze off.

Presenter7:23

But you as Chief Executive didn't have your own office.

Archie Norman MP7:26

Uh nobody in Asda has their own office.

Presenter7:29

But what happened if you wanted to make a confidential phone call, if you want to have a discussion about a merger with Safeway or something?

Archie Norman MP7:34

There's not a lot that goes on and should go on in an organization like Asda, which is confidential because we work as a team.

Presenter7:39

There must be some.

Speaker 27:42

Uh

Archie Norman MP7:43

And generally speaking, I believe in sharing ideas and everybody can see the chief executive or the chairman working alongside the colleagues in the same way.

Presenter7:52

What happens if you just want some peace and quiet away from this music playing or whatever and away from all the hubbub of people around you?

Archie Norman MP7:59

Well, we're not uh high on peace and quiet, we believe the organization should be fizzing with excitement.

Archie Norman MP8:05

And I am the sort of person I like sitting in my office and shouting across the room to people.

Presenter8:09

You haven't got enough people

Archie Norman MP8:10

No quiet sitting in in my table and being able to sh when I say my office, I regard the ASDA it's like sitting in the ASDA office and being able to shout across the room. And my colleagues work that way. And I believe if you want peace and quiet, you can either, of course, go into a meeting room or, better still, go home.

Presenter8:28

It's quite Orwellian, though, isn't it? That everybody can see everybody else at the same time. There's this sort of.

Presenter8:35

Kind of equality, and yet is there.

Archie Norman MP8:38

Well, i i in organizations like ours, uh the purpose isn't to create

Archie Norman MP8:43

Uniformity. The purpose is to create character and personality and to encourage people to express themselves as they would do at home.

Archie Norman MP8:51

You see, it in essence we're trying to create a service based organization, one in which everybody feels that they want to be part of it, they want to identify with it, they feel comfortable being at work, and they want to express themselves. We believe service comes from the heart.

Presenter9:06

But there isn't true equality, is there? Because at the end of the day you have the right to hire and fire people, and indeed when you first went in there I think you made thousands of people redundant.

Archie Norman MP9:14

That's right. And the early days were tough days. They were dark days for Asda. And it's important to remember we're a success today. We weren't a success then. But it's not that we believe in complete equality. Obviously, people are paid differently according to the market requirements. People have to make decisions. We are a decision-making company. I'd like to think the business can turn on a sixpence when we have to, and every one of 75,000 colleagues will then work differently. But we do believe in single status. In other words, nobody is more important than anybody else. Everybody's view is to be respected. That's why, for instance, we run the biggest and the most successful suggestion scheme in Britain.

Presenter9:49

Yeah.

Presenter9:54

This is the Tell Archie suggestion scheme, which they can write you, and you write back.

Archie Norman MP9:56

Yeah

Archie Norman MP10:01

The idea is uh simply that uh everybody in every organization I'm sure it's true in the B B C has frustrations and has ideas, and uh we respect those ideas.

Presenter10:11

But the bottom line is, they may call you by your Christian name, they may get handwritten replies from you to their suggestions, but you still have the right to sack em if that's what you decide to do.

Archie Norman MP10:21

We are a business. We are competing in the marketplace. The success and the future of colleagues in the business and shareholders depends on our commercial success. We are a decision-making organization. There is command and control. That's true. All successful organizations have to be able to move fast today and move forward. And I do believe in leadership. And single status does not mean you don't have leadership. It doesn't mean you don't have decision making.

Presenter10:46

Record number two.

Archie Norman MP10:48

My second record is Dance the Blessed Spirits. This is a piece of flute music. I in my childhood I was made to play the flute for a period. I wasn't a great success, but this was the height of my achievement. I'm afraid my flute playing doesn't sound quite like this.

Presenter12:00

Part of the Dance of the Blessed Spirits from Glux Orfeo ed Uridice, with the London Philharmonic, conducted by Raymond Lepard. You were made to play the flute by your mother, I think.

Archie Norman MP12:11

I assiduously played the flute for 10 years and I think one of the things that I've

Presenter12:14

And you performed even when you were terrified.

Archie Norman MP12:16

One of the most terrifying moments in fact the most terrifying moment of my life was probably appearing in the school concert at prep school.

Archie Norman MP12:24

and stepping out on the stage in the bright lights and playing a handled flute sonata in front of uh four hundred people.

Presenter12:29

But your mother was proud of you.

Archie Norman MP12:31

I just wanted to get to the end and get off stage.

Presenter12:34

What about academically? Were you any good at all at school?

Archie Norman MP12:38

Uh no, uh the most important thing uh for me at school was football. In many ways I found myself in football because uh that was what I was good at.

Archie Norman MP12:49

At the age of about fifteen I started uh studying economics, uh which again was my subject. There was an absolutely inspired economics teacher uh called Graham Jones, who is now the headmaster of Repton, who picked me up academically and made me into a success. I don't think previously I'd ever uh gone through school with any real uh appetite for academic work uh before I started studying economics.

Presenter13:14

And you went from Charterhouse to Cambridge, as your father had done before you. Um but, academically speaking, it doesn't sound as if Cambridge did very much for you. You said I I could have passed the day I arrived.

Archie Norman MP13:26

Well, this is true. I think I mean I I did the economics tripos and I'd actually studied economics at the University of Minnesota as well. The Cambridge course was an easy one. I think one of the problems with Cambridge teaching in those days is that there wasn't a lot of teaching. There was of course the tutorial system and some of the tutors were very good, but a lot of the lectures were a waste of time. And most of my Cambridge period was spent doing things other than economics.

Presenter13:54

Like what, politics?

Archie Norman MP13:54

What polit

Archie Norman MP13:55

Uh there was a certain amount of uh playing politics at Cambridge. I was chairman of the Conservative Association, um and uh those were the great days of uh

Archie Norman MP14:04

ideological clash of ideas in student politics. The left was the true left, um quasi communist, true socialists, and the right uh were moderate conservatives.

Presenter14:17

Record number three.

Archie Norman MP14:19

My third record is um a Cambridge record. It's the Christmas Oratorio. I I think uh on a desert island you need a bit of bark anyway, and this is something that takes me back to my Cambridge days.

Presenter15:29

The opening of Bach's Christmas Oratorio with the King's College Choir and the Academy of Saint Martin in the Fields conducted by Philip Ledger.

Presenter15:37

If um if Cambridge doesn't get the Archie Norman academic seal of approval, Harvard certainly does. One of the greatest educational establishments in the world, you've declared. Why, how does it do it?

Archie Norman MP15:49

Harvard Business School is truly unique. It is a teaching institution first and foremost. The object of Harvard Business School is to create good business managers, and that's what it sets out to do.

Presenter16:03

So what happens when you when you get there? Did you just get thrown in at the deep end?

Archie Norman MP16:07

There's a great moment on the first day when you everybody arrives and lounges around in the bar and so on and it of course comes dawns on you that you have to go and register and you go along and register and fill out all the forms and when you fill out the forms you told to go and collect your case studies and you find yourself given about two and a half feet of case studies which are your work for the next year.

Presenter16:31

What dossiers on people?

Archie Norman MP16:33

case situations where that managers have found themselves in previously. And you take these back to your room and sit down and think, well, that's it, until you look at the top copy and it says you ought to do three of these by tomorrow morning, and each one is going to take two hours to read and study.

Presenter16:48

So you get into the classroom and the lecturer will say, Right, what do you think of that case? And you've got to be on top of it.

Archie Norman MP16:53

There were very few in my day at Harvard there were very few lectures and virtually no books. Every class, three classes a day, was a case study led by a professor who would come into the room and all these rooms are octagonal boxes, windowless boxes, theatre style, with the students arranged round the outside and the professor would come in, look around the room and he'd look you in the eye and say, Archie Norman, I'd like you to start the case today. Tell us what you would do. What happened to my stomach at this point? And 50% of your marks or ratings on the course derived from class participation, so what you said really mattered.

Presenter17:22

What happened to your stomach at this point?

Presenter17:32

You could get thrown out, could you, if you didn't perform well.

Archie Norman MP17:32

You could get

Archie Norman MP17:35

The principle that the business school worked on then was that every year 5% of the students would fail the course. So over the course period of the two years, 10% would fail. And the effect if you have a course like that where 15% are going to get honours and 5% are going to fail each year, the effect is that the bottom 30 to 40% believe they're going to fail and spend the year in a state of stressed panic. And of course the top 30 or 40% think they're going to get honours and spend the whole time striving to succeed. So it creates that sort of pressure cooker atmosphere which is quite unique and a lot of people find very difficult.

Presenter18:11

But you decided you were going to be a success, did you?

Archie Norman MP18:14

I enjoyed it hugely. I I think that if you come from uh a Cambridge type of background and if you're somebody like me who

Archie Norman MP18:21

quite enjoys business problems and problem solving and enjoys the classroom atmosphere, then it's uh just two years of tremendous fun.

Presenter18:30

Record number four.

Archie Norman MP18:32

This is I guess a classic nineteen seventies sort of pop anthem, which is David Bowie and Heroes.

Archie Norman MP18:43

Just for one day.

Speaker 218:57

Uh

Speaker 219:00

Uh

Archie Norman MP19:00

I drink all the time.

Archie Norman MP19:05

Cause we love the earth.

Speaker 319:09

That is a

Presenter19:10

David Bowie and Heroes. So you were twenty five, Archie, fresh out of Harvard, nineteen seventy nine, straight into a job with McKinsey, the corporate strategist.

Presenter19:19

Here again we've got an organization with its own culture, its own theology almost, I think, Mackenzie. Can you define what that is for me?

Archie Norman MP19:27

Yes, McKinsey was a very in some ways a very introverted institution, one where people worked on confidential assignments that th they were only in a position to discuss with their own colleagues, that had its own system, its own system of promotion, and it's very much its own ethos, and I believe still does today.

Presenter19:45

So you can't talk about your work outside, so it's

Archie Norman MP19:48

Absolutely. There's no discussion of client work outside. In fact, as a general rule, consultants in McKinsey won't say who they're working for, who their clients are. And the consequence of that is that all the workplace discussion takes place inside the institution, which adds to that sense of both

Presenter19:48

So the node is

Archie Norman MP20:06

Doing something valuable and something special, but also that sense of being together.

Presenter20:11

Hm. It's said that you can spot a Mackenzie man, or indeed woman, at at ten paces, is that right?

Archie Norman MP20:16

I believe there was a time uh in the late sixties when McKinsey men were all meant to wear wear white shirts and hats. By the time I arrived would have abandoned the hat bit.

Presenter20:26

But you can still spot'em.

Archie Norman MP20:28

There's a McKinsey style, but I think the most important thing about McKinsey for me was and still is this sense of professional service that from the day you arrived it was drummed into you that your interests were subordinate to the client's interests, that you were there to serve the client and to develop solutions that would make the client more successful.

Presenter20:48

What about if he was the problem himself? What about if he was insisting on the wrong ideas, the wrong strategy for the company? What about if he was unpopular himself?

Archie Norman MP20:58

Well, many chief executives and business leaders are unpopular. I mean, business isn't a popularity contest. But would you tell him to go if the right analyst?

Presenter21:03

But would you tell him to go if he analyzed that he was the problem?

Archie Norman MP21:06

The the right uh the the the the the servant prin the service professional service principal means that uh if he is the problem and you're having to work for him, the right thing is to stop working.

Archie Norman MP21:17

And to say we can't help you any more.

Presenter21:19

Hm. You were made a partner after five years. It's a pretty tough environment, I gather. I mean, it presumably if you're not made a partner, you're out. I mean, you're either m made up or

Archie Norman MP21:22

Mm-hmm.

Archie Norman MP21:28

Uh

Presenter21:28

Uh

Archie Norman MP21:28

The principal who is up or out. I mean there's a simple point that in a consulting firm you can't afford to have everybody promoted because then the firm becomes extremely expensive.

Presenter21:28

Yeah.

Archie Norman MP21:37

You have to pay your partners more. So the system that McKinsey worked to was that if uh after between five and eight or years or so you didn't become a partner, then you left the firm. And I guess approximately six out of seven uh joiners, consultants, never made it to partner, so they left.

Presenter21:55

In fact, you recruited, I think, William Hague when you were at McKinsey, didn't you? And now he's recruited you. Well, I'm not sure why.

Archie Norman MP22:00

Well, I'm not sure why recruited him. The the funny thing is that um I I believe it I did interview William, uh but he remembers a great deal more about the interview than I did. I don't think it was a very long one, and I don't think we had to pause for a lot of thought before deciding to offer him the job.

Presenter22:18

Next piece of music.

Archie Norman MP22:20

There'll be moments stuck on my desert island where it'll be necessary to lift the spirits and um the uh next piece of music is a seriously uplifting and jolly piece, uh which is Purcell's Come Ye Sons of Art.

Speaker 322:59

Come away, come to come, be sound of welcome, come away to know your voices and catch the letter to celebrate, who celebrate this song. To all your voices and introduce way, To celebrate, who celebrate this triumphant day, To celebrate, who celebrate this triumphant day.

Presenter23:34

Michael Chance and Timothy Wilson with the English Concert and Choir singing Purcell's Come Ye Sons of Art Away, conducted by Trevor Pinnock.

Presenter23:43

You left McKinsey in'eighty six to become finance director of Woolworths, Archie. You were still only thirty two. Was that move about money? I mean, you're presumably more likely to m make money in big business than you are as a corporate strategist.

Archie Norman MP23:57

Uh no, I earned less um in my first year at uh Woolworth Holdings than I did at McKinsey.

Presenter24:03

Yeah, but you'd have got share options and things, wouldn't you?

Archie Norman MP24:05

Oh yes, but share options are only worth something if the company does. Well, the no, in fact, what happened there was that Woolworth, one of my major clients, I'd worked with Geoff Malkay, now Sir Geoffrey Malkay, who was then the chief executive. And we were just on the brink of the turnaround of the Woolworth business, which was in pretty terrible shape when we started. There came one day a bid from Dixon's. And this was a hostile bid, which was high drama in the corporate world. And Jeff asked me if I would stay to help organise the defence of the bid, which I did. And I dropped everything to do that and worked on nothing else for the 90-day period, night and day. And it turned out to be the largest ever successful takeover defence in Britain at the time. Nobody expected us to survive, but we did. At the end of that, Jeff said to me, Well, you can't leave now. And I said, Well, if I'm going to stay here, I'll need a job. And he said, Well, you can be finance director. And there were three directors then who ran Woolworth Holdings and created what then became Kingfisher in the years to follow.

Presenter25:13

But is there then greater bars to doing it as opposed to analysing it?

Presenter25:18

Yeah.

Archie Norman MP25:18

Oh yes, I think you grow out of consulting or at least I grew out of consulting.

Presenter25:18

Oh yeah.

Archie Norman MP25:23

You've got to remember as a consultant.

Archie Norman MP25:25

As involved as you are and as close as an advisor as you may be, there's always another meeting after you've left, and that's when the decision's taken.

Presenter25:34

And after five years there at, as you say, what became Kingfisher, you became the youngest chief executive of a FTSE one hundred company when you went to Astor in'ninety one. But all the time, as I understand it, your name was on a list at Central Office as as a as an approved Tory candidate. Is that right?

Archie Norman MP25:52

Oh, I think I must have been the idlest member of the candidates Conservative candidates list for at least fifteen years. And every two or three years somebody would get in touch with me from central office and I'd go in there for an interview with yet another vice-chairman of candidates who would look at me rather sorrowfully and say, You haven't done very much for the Conservative Party, have you? And I said would explain I said, No, well I'm afraid I've got a business to run.

Presenter26:15

More music.

Archie Norman MP26:16

This is a record for those lighter and dreamier moments on the desert island. It is Take My Breath Away by Berlin.

Speaker 326:24

Watch it in slow motion as you turn around and say

Speaker 326:33

Take my favourite

Speaker 326:43

Take my friend now.

Presenter26:53

Berlin and Take My Breath Away.

Presenter26:56

It was appalling timing, Archie Norman, to decide to stand as a Tory MP just at the point when the party was destined to go into the wilderness. Or was that part of the attraction?

Archie Norman MP27:08

For for me that was uh not a problem. I I I mean uh I've gone into public life in order to make a contribution and uh in many ways it's easier for me to make a contribution now than perhaps it would have done if we had uh won the last uh general election.

Presenter27:24

Well but the the field is more open, it's easier to make some kind of success out of there

Archie Norman MP27:29

Well, there are rather fewer of us to do the work, and there's the same amount of work to hand around. But also.

Presenter27:31

Yeah.

Archie Norman MP27:36

I do believe in organisations and in changing organisations. I believe that is my experience and that's where I can make a difference. And it just happened that once William had been elected leader, he asked me to be vice chairman of the party responsible for the reform programme. And that that in a sense is the contribution I can make right.

Presenter27:55

But it's a

Presenter27:58

But it's a long uphill struggle, and in the meantime, for the moment anyway, you're still a backbencher. You know, you a man who's used to being the boss, who's had a staff of seventy five thousand people. You know, there must be moments of deep frustration, not to mention complete boredom.

Archie Norman MP28:14

Well one of the sort of mantras you get from other politicians, they they will say to me, You ought to understand this isn't like business, you know. And I think that people in politics imagine that businesses today are still places where you put your feet up on the boardroom table and smoke a cigar and issue orders higher and far people.

Presenter28:30

Well, no, but they're places where you like power.

Archie Norman MP28:30

They saw you like

Archie Norman MP28:32

It's not like that. Most businesses now your power only derives from the effectiveness of your people and their morale and motivation. And the role of successful business leaders is to organize and communicate to people so that they feel good about all marching in the same direction.

Presenter28:46

But at least you have the power to do that, is decide this is what we're going to communicate today. You don't have that now. I mean, that that's the point, isn't it? You must get bored. You must get frustrated. I can't believe you don't.

Archie Norman MP28:59

Well, I don't get s frustrated now because I'm kind of doing a nine-day week. I've got uh the reform programme, which will hopefully we could be completed shortly. I have my uh constituency in Tunbridge Wells, then I also have the chairmanship of Asda. I'm also on the board of Railtrack, so uh I've got a nine-day week, I don't have time to be bored.

Presenter29:19

But next stop front bench shadow front bench, surely.

Archie Norman MP29:23

I would like to be able to spend some time developing my political agenda and contributing to the clash of ideas that has to be part of the the regeneration of conservative thinking for the twenty first century.

Presenter29:38

And which job might you have your eye on? Something financial? Shadow job?

Archie Norman MP29:41

No, I don't I'm not I'm not in that sense a political specialist. I don't and I don't believe that that that's the right approach anyway. I'm here to help and if there's an opportunity.

Presenter29:57

I hope so. All politicians are here to help. But if you want to be on the front bench, the the shadow front bench, you've got to have a job. I mean, which job do you fancy?

Archie Norman MP30:04

Well, I I think all this discussion is pretty academic at the moment. My purpose of reforming the Conservative Party in the first place is somebody wants to offer me a job afterwards, that's fine. If they don't, that's fine too. I'm very, very content to continue with as I'd originally planned to do before I started on this with my constituency and my connections in business.

Presenter30:09

Somebody wants to be able to do it.

Presenter30:24

Next record.

Archie Norman MP30:26

Uh the next record is a really uh stunning uh piece of uh reading by Richard Burton uh of the Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

Speaker 230:37

breeze blew, the white foam flew, The furrow followed free We were the first that ever burst Into that silent sea. Down dropped the breeze, the sails dropped down,'Twas sad as sad could be.

Speaker 230:53

And we did speak only to break The silence of the sea.

Speaker 230:59

All in a hot and copper sky The bloody sun at noon, Right up above the mast did stand, No bigger than the moon. Day after day, day after day, We stuck nor breath nor motion, As idle as a painted ship Upon a painted ocean.

Speaker 231:16

Water

Speaker 231:18

Water everywhere and all the boards did shrink

Speaker 231:23

Water, water everywhere, Nor any drop to drink The very deep did rot, O Christ, that ever this should be Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs Upon the slimy sea.

Presenter31:38

Richard Burton, reading part of The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. How do you think you'll manage Archie Norman on this desert island?

Presenter31:47

No shelter, no food, no company. What would

Presenter31:50

What would a Mackenzie man do about this problem?

Archie Norman MP31:53

Oh, I don't know about a McKinsey man. I think the McKinsey Man is lost without slides and a projector to make a presentation with, but um I'd be very content. I you know, I the happiest and most tranquil days of my life are probably spent on in Scotland, on the island where my father's family used to farm and uh where I have a small farm now.

Archie Norman MP32:13

I'm a very self-contained person. I'm quite content. I'd be quite content to be alone. I think I'd manage reasonably well without a bed to make and housekeeping to do.

Presenter32:25

What do you think you'd miss most? Your family, obviously, apart, your wife and your daughter apart. What would you miss?

Archie Norman MP32:31

Well, I think I'd miss no, no, no, I don't know. I'm a sort of person who likes to have a few boulders to fling around, and I'd miss the organizations to change and the people to lead and the things to make happen.

Presenter32:34

The suggestion box.

Presenter32:49

Wha what about escape? Oh, you know, with no guarantees that you could make it, would you would you take the gamble?

Archie Norman MP32:56

Oh, I think I I would take the gamble if there was an opportunity. But at the same time I've always been content in what I do, and I would be able to make life work on this desert island.

Presenter33:10

Last record.

Archie Norman MP33:12

My final record is um

Archie Norman MP33:14

The Mozart Requiem, which probably of all the works I have chosen best expresses to me the depths of the human spirit and to some extent the melancholy of human life.

Presenter34:27

Part of the opening of Mozart's Requiem with the choir of Saint John's College, Cambridge, and the English Chamber Orchestra conducted by George Guest. If you could only take one of those eight records, Archie Norman, which one do you think you'd take?

Archie Norman MP34:39

Oh, I take the uh Mozart Requiem.

Presenter34:42

And your book as well as the Bible and Shakespeare.

Archie Norman MP34:46

Well, I thought about this and um I thought about having Gibbons decline and fall, but then I guess a lot of people have that um

Archie Norman MP34:53

So I thought the most useful thing would be to the Take the Complete Angler by Isaac Walton.

Presenter34:58

And what about your luxury?

Archie Norman MP35:00

My first reaction was to have a fishing rod to go with a complete angler, but then that's not really a luxury, that would be a utility. Uh so instead I'd have something that I'd really want, uh which would be a jar of Marmite.

Presenter35:13

Archie Norman, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs.

Speaker 335:25

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