James Dyson

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

Presenter0:31

My castaway this week is an inventor. Today he's a rich man thanks to the household appliance that bears his name and millions will use every day of their lives. But the road to success has not been easy. His ingenuity has never been in question. While still at college he designed the Sea Truck, a flat bottom boat used by the military. He followed this with the ball barrow, a wheelbarrow with a ball for a wheel. But the invention which eventually made his fortune met with scepticism, mistrust and envy wherever he went. Only supreme self confidence and undying commitment rescued him and his family from financial ruin. There's no such thing as a quantum leap in development or research, he says. Only dogged persistence. He is the creator of the bagless vacuum cleaner, James Dyson. Not a very romantic thing to have dedicated your professional life to, James, or is it in your view?

James Dyson1:23

Well, it is in a way. I mean, a an an obsession is romantic, I think. And I've been lucky enough to have been creating things. And creating is romantic, rewarding, emotional.

Presenter1:35

But not necessarily a thing of beauty, or would you argue that your vacuum cleaner is a thing of beauty?

James Dyson1:40

Well, that that would be a dangerous thing to say. But yes, I I mean I love machinery. I love engineering and love machinery, and I see tremendous beauty in machinery. And I think things that work well start to look good as well.

Presenter1:53

But how it looks is what is distinctive, of course, about your your vacuum cleaner, not least because it has this transparent box. You can see the dirt going into it, and that I know you've always believed is very, very important. Why? I mean, again, it's it's just not very attractive, not very romantic, not very beautiful.

James Dyson2:11

No, it's neither of those things, but it I hope it's interesting. And I I think that even if you're not technical you like to see how things work. And now we even make totally transparent vacuum cleaners. And I I think it's important if you're using something to know how a catch works or to know how the door opens or to know how to empty it.

Presenter2:29

You're kind of appealing to the scrubber in us all that needs to see.

James Dyson2:29

I think

James Dyson2:31

But the point about seeing the dirt, of course, is that it's it's a bit like those German laboratories. You know, there is a sort of morbid fascination in looking and seeing what you've done or what you've picked up.

Presenter2:43

Well, it is an amazing story because within six months of launching this thing on the UK market, you captured fifty percent of it, I think, in terms of money anyway. An amazing success. How many years were there between having the idea for this invention and launching it on the market?

James Dyson2:59

Well, my my son was born at about the my last son, at about the time I invented it in nineteen seventy nine, and he was fourteen by the time I'd got the machine on the market, and he was sixteen or seventeen by the time we were making a profit. So a long time.

Presenter3:12

A huge amount of angst and misery and near bankruptcy.

James Dyson3:17

I were a real Pilgrim's Progress.

Presenter3:19

Not a poverty.

James Dyson3:20

Mm.

Presenter3:20

which we shall hear about. But just tell me, if you can, in a nutshell, when was the moment, often called the Eureka moment, when you thought, I know what the world hasn't got and what it would like to have?

James Dyson3:32

It was a moment I I was in my ball barrow factory welding um a huge metal cyclone that we were putting into the factory to replace a kind of giant vacuum cleaner. And uh the the difference between the two was that the

James Dyson3:48

Giant vacuum cleaner we had before had a bag, or something like a bag, that was constantly clogging. And I discovered about industrial cyclones that collected dust by centrifugal force without clogging. And as I was welding this thing, I thought, well, why on earth aren't these things in miniature used in vacuum cleaners? So I raced home, ripped the bag off my upright cleaner, and made a sort of blue peter contraption made of cardboard and sellotape and swim poetry. It could even have been a cereal packet. I won't say which brand, and then a bit of swimming pool haze, and started pushing it around the room, and it worked.

Speaker 34:16

Uh

Presenter4:16

A serial package was

Presenter4:19

I won't say which

Presenter4:24

And how many more prototypes did you make after that?

James Dyson4:27

Many more than I intended, in fact it took four years and well over five thousand prototypes to get it right.

Presenter4:34

Tell me about your first record.

James Dyson4:36

Well, i it it it really is a first record because um up until that point when I was about five I think we'd had those records that kept snapping whenever you lent on them and the the very first I think it was vinyl record that we had that ran round at thirty three and a third rpm and I always wondered why they selected that particular speed was a Kathleen Ferrier record. And um I suppose it was the first woman I heard singing and I thought all women sang like this and in a way I wish they did.

Presenter5:52

Kathleen Ferrier singing Have Mercy, Lord on Me from Bach's St Matthew Passion, with the Jakes Orchestra conducted by Reginald Jakes, and that was recorded in 1947, and memories um for you, James Dyson, of being a small boy in Norfolk, where such records were played at home. Did you notice machinery? I mean, you mentioned thirty-three and a third, even as a child. Were you curious about machinery?

James Dyson6:14

Not particularly. I mean, I took things to bits and never put them together again. But I come from an academic and religious background. My relations are all schoolmasters or headmasters or vicars. So engineering wasn't a subject under discussion at all.

Presenter6:29

So if anybody had told you then that you would become an engineer, a designer, would you have laughed at that?

James Dyson6:34

I didn't know what a designer was, and I didn't know an engineer. So, yes, I would have laughed it off completely.

Presenter6:41

It's your father taught classics. I think your mother taught French at at one point as well, didn't she?

James Dyson6:45

Yeah.

Presenter6:46

You've said I was oblivious to approval, which is pretty unusual, really, for a schoolboy. Why why didn't you care what people thought, what the teachers thought of you?

James Dyson6:57

I d yes, I I I suppose I did care a little bit w what they thought of me, but um

James Dyson7:03

I didn't see anything unusual in that. I was just getting on with what I was doing.

Presenter7:06

But you were trying to be different.

James Dyson7:07

We were trying to

James Dyson7:08

Yes, I think I was trying to be different, but but n not in the sense that I was not wanting approval.

Presenter7:14

Your father was very ill when you were small, and eventually he died when when you were nine. What effect did that have on you?

James Dyson7:22

Well, I I think it affected me hugely. It it certainly made me feel very different and alone. It shouldn't have, because my mother was a wonderful mother and father substitute and very capable and quite domineering in a way. But I think seeing him die and being without him really for the last three years of his life affected me hugely. My mother managed very well and the headmaster at Gresham's, this wonderful school in Norfolk, was kind enough to

Speaker 47:46

Yeah.

James Dyson7:55

I don't know whether they had life insurance in those days, but he allowed my brother and I to go to the school virtually free, which was a a great gift. And because of it being North Norfolk and the the fifties and sixties, um money was very unimportant. And what was much more important to me, a greater gift, was the countryside, the seaside, the sand dunes, the freedom.

Presenter8:18

And what do you think the school thought of you at the end of it all?

James Dyson8:22

Well, I don't know. I mean, my my headmaster wrote to my mother, saying goodness knows what James will do, but he really must be quite intelligent somewhere and somehow.

Presenter8:33

Implying but we haven't seen it yet.

James Dyson8:34

But we haven't seen it yet, and I quite understood his comment.

Presenter8:38

Record number two.

James Dyson8:39

Record number two is Mozart's Bassoon Concerto. I had to play it in in in grade eight and I played it appallingly badly, so it's lovely to hear it played properly.

Presenter9:49

Quiddy and Brooke playing part of the rondo from Mozart's concerto for bassoon and orchestra in B flat major, with the Royal Philharmonic conducted by Sir Thomas Beacham.

Presenter9:58

You were a teenager in the sixties then, uh James Dyson, when style and design were beginning to be important again and Terence Conran was in the wings waiting to to be sent to stage. How did you find your place in all of that?

James Dyson10:11

Well, I knew nothing about it, I didn't know it was going on.

James Dyson10:14

I didn't even know you could design chairs or products or stained glass windows or pottery or anything. But I I did art at A levels, one of my A levels, so I decided to go to London and to an art school and see what it was like, see if I enjoyed it, which is exactly what I did.

Speaker 310:32

This was the Royal College of Art.

James Dyson10:32

It was the Royal College of Art. No, this was not yet the Royal College. No, it was the Bayam Shaw School of Drawing and Painting in Kensington. It had been a kind of Deb school, but had become very serious under a wonderful principal, Maurice de Seismaris. And we were taught by Bridget Riley and Peter Sedgley, wonderful artists. And I thoroughly enjoyed my foundation year, as they called it. And one day, the principal, Maurice de Sazmeres, called me into his office and he said, What are you going to do next year? And I hadn't thought about it at all. And he said, Well, I think you ought to try design. And I'd never thought of it before, because actually during that year, I was only doing drawing and painting. And I said, Well, what sorts of designs are there? What can you design? And he said, Well, there's furniture, product design. And I thought, well, I know about chairs. I've sat on chairs. I'll be a furniture designer. And I quite liked the idea. I quite liked the idea of.

James Dyson11:23

Constructing something useful.

Speaker 411:25

Hmm.

James Dyson11:25

So I joined the Royal College. And I then discovered a very interesting American architect called Butmister Fuller, who designed the most wonderful huge domes for covering sports stadia. And instead of using huge concrete beams or massive rolled steel joists, RSJs, he built up this very delicate structure of struts of aluminium to make a very light roof structure which could span enormous distances, 1500 metres. And in the process, what inspired me about it was that he was an engineer.

James Dyson12:01

creating th this engineering structure, which is incredibly beautiful, without even trying to be beautiful. In other words, its elegance came not from its styling, but from its engineering. And I latched onto that.

Presenter12:12

And he too made little he made little models, rather like y you did before you for the prototypes as it were of the die sex.

James Dyson12:18

Extraordinary, he worked on a on a trestle table with drinking straws and sticks and glued them together with rip fixed. Making domes. Making domes. Which shows that you you don't need a a high tech machine shop to invent things.

Presenter12:26

It's making dooms. Making dooms.

Presenter12:32

So so cut to the chase. Age twenty three, you you designed the C-Truck. What was revolutionary about that?

James Dyson12:39

It was a high speed landing craft. It went up to sixty miles an hour and carried a couple of jeeps and would land directly on a beach. So it was faster than a hovercraft and, unlike a hovercraft, went in a straight line, was much cheaper and was quiet. So it was invented by Jeremy Fry, who became a great mentor for me. And through him I learnt how to engineer products, how to develop products, and ultimately how to sell them. He was the first engineer, designer, entrepreneur that I'd met, and the mixture was quite intoxicating.

Presenter13:15

But what you really wanted was something that was yours and that could be all yours.

James Dyson13:20

Yeah, ultimately, yes.

Presenter13:21

So you knew that then.

James Dyson13:21

See?

James Dyson13:21

I knew that then, I knew that then, and uh I told Jeremy Fry and he quite understood.

Presenter13:27

Record number three.

James Dyson13:28

I'm the child of the sixties. And Bob Bob Dylan I mean he he looked extraordinary in the sixties. He had this uh great long black curly hair, and was quite insolent, yet a poet. Um and th there's a wonderful line in in The Simple Twist of Fate, which is he felt the heat of the night hit him like a friend.

Speaker 413:55

They sat together in the farm

Speaker 413:58

As the evening sky grew dark

Speaker 414:02

She looked at him and he felt a spa

Speaker 414:05

Tingle to his bone.

Speaker 414:09

Twas then he felt alone.

Speaker 414:11

And wished that he'd gone straight.

Speaker 414:16

And watch dad.

Presenter14:17

Uh

Speaker 414:17

Forest

Presenter14:18

Simple twist or fade.

Speaker 414:19

Yeah.

Presenter14:20

Bob Dylan and Simple Twist of Fate from his album Blood on the Tracks. You were in your late twenties, James, when you decided to reinvent the wheel, effectively. Enter the ball barrow. Can you describe it to me in a couple of sentences?

James Dyson14:34

Yes, instead of having a wheel, it has a big round ball, like a football, so that it won't sink into soft ground. And while I was about it, I redesigned the bin and almost everything about it.

Presenter14:45

And this was born of your own experience, so

James Dyson14:47

We are using a um a builder's navba navby barrow, which I thought was the best type of barrow, to do up my farmhouse in Gloucestershire.

Presenter14:55

I went and the wheel wobbled and the thing became unstable and

James Dyson14:59

The wheel wobbled, um cement slopped out of it and cement dribbled through the edges. I couldn't shovel out of it'cause the the shovel hit the rivets inside it, the cement stuck to it, the sharp edges hurt my knees and hurt the door jams as it went through. Almost everything about it I thought was awful, so it was a soft target.

Presenter15:15

Great invention, big demand, wins awards, becomes market leader.

Presenter15:20

This time, the company that makes it is partly your own, but in the end.

Presenter15:24

The company was sold out from under you. What was the lesson you learned there?

James Dyson15:29

Well the lesson I l w was to in fact to have control. And I it's a very difficult thing to do that because if you're raising money inevitably you have to give away bits of the business. But I determined from that moment onwards never to do that w at all costs and whatever happened. It's better not to get into the venture if you're not going to have full control.

Presenter15:50

And what do you mean by control? You mean that your name must be on the patent?

James Dyson15:55

Uh but certainly that my name must be on the patent, but much more than that, that I must control the company and the destiny of the company for two reasons really. One is so that no one can push you around, and secondly because when you're making all the decisions, you know that you're on your own and you're making for absolutely the right reasons and your your reasons and not somebody else's reasons.

Presenter16:16

That's easy to do if you've got the money, but of course if you've been looking for backers and you're getting other people to put their money in, then you you know you can't ask for that control. That's that's the squeeze, isn't it?

James Dyson16:25

That's the squeeze, and that's probably why it took me such a long time to get the vacuum cleaner going, because I didn't have any money. I've always been heavily in debt.

Presenter16:34

But you had the idea. Again, it's classic inventor problem, isn't it?

James Dyson16:38

Yes, absolutely a classic inventor problem. But um with the vacuum cleaner I started much more slowly, didn't go out for backers at all, and just started developing the product, getting it right, and then going out and licensing it rather than manufacturing it.

Speaker 416:53

Hmm.

James Dyson16:54

Trying to license something is extraordinarily difficult as well. Trying to go and sell it to someone else so that they make it and pay you a royalty. That turned out to be extraordinarily difficult. I thought it would be dead easy. Here's a better vacuum cleaner. Surely someone would take it up.

Presenter17:09

But they didn't.

James Dyson17:10

But they didn't.

Presenter17:11

And terribly difficult, therefore, to hang on to all these lessons you're saying you learned along the way, when at the same time you've got a wife and children and, you know, a home to run and the income ain't there.

James Dyson17:24

Loe wasn't there for many years and I borrowed from the bank, and the bank got pretty nervous at times, but they stood by me.

Speaker 417:31

Clue.

James Dyson17:31

Um and also Deirdre stood by me and understood the need to create things and the the fact that you have to go through these huge troughs of despair before they're successful.

Presenter17:43

Tell me about your next record.

James Dyson17:45

Well, my next one is The Bath Camerata Singing Brahms, and the my wife sings with the Bath Camerotta, and they're an amateur choir, but anything but amateur. They're extremely professional and beautiful, and I would love to have this record with me on the desert island.

Speaker 418:12

Oh, he is a sleek care.

Speaker 418:40

Please do it.

Presenter18:50

The Bach camerate, including Mike Ostaway's wife, singing part of Brahm's Varum istas Licht Gegeben. So the stage was set, really, for the entrance of the Bagless Vacuum Cleaner, invented by this battle-scarred and therefore much wiser, James Dyson. Can you describe the principle of it so that the layman can understand it?

James Dyson19:09

In a normal vacuum cleaner the the air and the dust have to go th or rather the air has to go through a bag. So the idea is the bag traps the dust and then the air goes through the tiny pores of the bag. Now what I discovered was that the very first dust that went in the bag blocked these holes, tiny holes in the bag, so you lost a lot of the airflow and therefore a lot of the suction. So I was trying to replace that with something that collected the dust in a different way. And mine collects dust by spinning it centrifugally out of the airstream, rather like a salad dryer. That's a very simple salad spin.

Presenter19:43

Sort of salad spinner, so the water is

James Dyson19:45

So Exactly. The water's certainty outside and the only way out for the air is in the center, the chimney in the center. And that's simplistically how it works.

Presenter19:51

Come with the

Presenter19:55

The vacuum cleaner that you described, the one with the bag, was invented in nineteen hundred and one. We've all been using it ever since. You say that it's simply not effective. Would we and all the people who make it really have put up with it all this time if it didn't do the business?

James Dyson20:09

Yes. For an interesting reason I don't think that anyone really realized what was happening. You know, you push a vacuum cleaner across the floor and it makes a noise and you don't really know what it's doing. I mean you believe it's picking up the dust, but you don't actually know.

Presenter20:22

Things might look better, or you would say they wouldn't.

James Dyson20:25

Uh well you don't know. I think people just just don't you can't look into the pile of a carpet, you can't see what's going on.

Presenter20:31

But your suggestion is and this, as we know, has been put to test in law, so it is a serious question, your suggestion is that once we've sucked up a layer of dirt, of dust, just a small layer of it, and the pores of the bag are are full, then it's not really picking up much after that. Now isn't that rather an exaggeration?

James Dyson20:50

No, what what I'm saying is that the um the first fifty grams of dust that you pick up can, and quite often do, remo reduce the suction by fifty percent. If you reduce the suction by fifty percent, you reduce the pickup by almost a similar amount. I mean, it varies according to vacuum cleaner type.

Presenter21:01

Yeah.

Presenter21:09

And yours goes on picking up at the same rate.

James Dyson21:09

Yeah.

James Dyson21:11

Ours goes on picking up at the same rate, right until it's full.

Presenter21:14

You don't accept that you've exaggerated the disadvantages of the classic vacuum cleaner?

James Dyson21:20

Well, of course not. No. I mean I what I'm trying to do is is produce the best possible vacuum cleaner and uh I'll go on doing that till I'm in my grave, I should think.

Presenter21:31

Record number five.

James Dyson21:33

Record number five is um

James Dyson21:36

A Brook's violin concerto, and I've chosen it because well of course it's extraordinarily beautiful, but also I think the most erotic piece of music I've ever heard.

Presenter22:42

Maxime Wengeroff playing part of the Adagio from Bruch's violin concerto No. one in G minor with the Leipzig Gewanthaus Orchestra, conducted by Court Mazor.

Presenter22:52

It took you, say, James, fourteen years from ripping the bag off your vacuum cleaner, sticking the cereal packet on it, to to launching your machine onto the UK market. On your forty fifth birthday, I think.

James Dyson23:03

Yes, it felt like it as well.

Presenter23:06

How close did you come to bankruptcy during that time?

James Dyson23:10

Well, very close, on on several occasions. And qu I think on at least three occasions I knew that unless I negotiated and signed that deal, that particular deal, I would be bankrupt. And I owed over a million pounds to Lloyd's Bank at one point.

Presenter23:29

But time and again, it is the classic tale, really, isn't it, of the small inventor.

Presenter23:34

Taking his invention around to the big boys and getting the cold shoulder.

Presenter23:39

On the other hand, not surprising because of course if they accepted what you are offering, you are undermining their very market, the thing they made.

James Dyson23:47

Yes, I think that was the problem and of course it required a huge change of culture.

James Dyson23:52

It required them to stop selling the technology they've been selling for eighty years and sell something completely different. And that's a big volt fast and probably too big a step for most companies to take.

Presenter24:05

But it was worse than that, wasn't it? Without mentioning any names,'cause, you know, it could be actionable. You would argue, I think. You would contend that several of the big names in the business tried to do you down.

James Dyson24:18

Yes, I remember for example when we started selling the vacuum cleaner, one company said, Well if you want to buy uh a vacuum cleaner from someone who used to make wheelbarrows, you can buy that thing. But if you want to buy one from someone who's been making for ninety years, buy ours. Um and also all sorts of little tricks um with i in in the shops, which I don't really want to talk about. But uh

James Dyson24:40

I I think at first they they tried to dismiss us as and suggest we'd only last six months and would disappear, that we were a shooting star, that we'd go bankrupt.

James Dyson24:49

Um but we didn't.

Presenter24:51

But it was worse than that, wasn't it? And again, no names. But er, you know, there were others who tried to appropriate the design.

James Dyson24:57

That's a kind way of putting it. Ripoff is a better word, I think. Nick. Yes, Nick, the designer. Yes, there's been a lot of that with a number of my products. And yeah, I mean, it's in a way it's the sincerest form of flattery. But actually, it's much worse than that. It's theft. It's like someone pinching your child. And it's always done what is even worse is the story behind it often, not the very fact that they've done it, but the fact that they've mocked you or cheated you and then copied it. And that's what makes it even worse.

Presenter25:29

Yes. You have spent an inordinate amount of time fighting lawsuits in one form or another, reading your story. There's more about law than there is about invention almost. You wouldn't have succeeded if you hadn't been pig-headed, I suppose. Dogged is the nice word. But you are you are obviously somebody who is deeply, deeply determined. Where did that come from?

James Dyson25:53

I th I think probably from long distance running. Uh I started doing long distance running when I was about ten or eleven and got really keen on it when I was about fourteen or fifteen. And learnt from that that you you only win races by going through the pain barrier and realizing that other people are also going through the pain barrier. So if at the very moment that you're feeling the worst you accelerate, you'll demoralize the others.

Presenter26:22

More music.

James Dyson26:24

Yes, my my next piece is Parcell, and this is rather an interesting again vocal, but it's a counter tenor and a tenor and trebles, and the trebles have this rather cheeky and haunting question throughout the song, Where is he, but where is he?

Speaker 426:43

Thou shalt eat the labour of thine hand.

Speaker 426:50

For thou shalt eat the labour.

Speaker 426:56

Yeah.

Speaker 426:57

Oh there.

Speaker 427:09

And happy shalt thou be

Speaker 427:14

Yeah

Speaker 427:18

The additional alarms are being

Speaker 427:21

Where is that?

Presenter27:31

Purcell's blessed are they that fear the Lord. So, James Dyson, you now have a turnover of two hundred and forty million, you outsell your nearest rival three to one. A steel and glass H Q in Wiltshire, with a pool as you go in, and lavender walls, they tell me, and no suits in all senses of the term. What have you got against suits?

James Dyson27:51

Well, the suits are a kind of armour that you put them on and once you've put them on you're efficient and you can be a ruthless businessman. And that's absolutely the last thing I want. I hope that people feel relaxed and normal and unbusinessy, because the kind of atmosphere we want is one of creativity, where people are not afraid to do things, people want to innovate, people want to do things differently and better. And getting rid of the suits is all part of that and the start of that, and getting rid of the ties as well.

Presenter28:23

You're radical in so many other ways. Uh you've shunned big advertising agencies. You don't well, you don't advertise much at all, do you?

James Dyson28:29

We advertise a bit. Yes, but not much, comparatively speaking. It's not very effective, according to our figures. So perhaps I should go and see advertising agencies. Now, I started off in advertising agencies and realized that that simply wasn't for me. I wanted to be able to sit down for a long time and talk through our problems and what we were trying to say and have a very strong, consistent message over a long period of time.

Presenter28:31

Yes, but not much comparatively speaking.

Presenter28:54

But that's what any company would say, when they use advertising agencies. I mean, is it more to do with you not wanting?

Presenter29:01

I suppose wanting to be in control, not wanting to cut anybody else in.

James Dyson29:05

No, not no, not that so much, as um as as wanting to do things differently, and wanting to not make a big splash with the advert. I think a l a lot of adversements try and amuse and try and win awards, and I didn't want any of that. I just wanted to tell the story straight.

Presenter29:22

So you'd deny, would you, that that that you are a controller? Because I know again you don't deal necessarily with dealerships, with electrical shops in the way that others might. You like to deal directly with the customer yourself. Control is is the word that keeps surfacing all of the time one's learning about you.

James Dyson29:41

I d don't think that would be entirely true, but it would be true in certain areas. I'm very keen on following the design and our new developments and our research. But I don't really control that because the company's too big now to actually control that.

Presenter30:00

Hm. And really, I say it's not it's not at all uh any kind of criticism. I w I suppose what I'm asking is.

Presenter30:10

Is it the case that you can invent something, design something, market something, sell something, make a huge profit out of something, without employing any of the people that we have come to believe at the end of the twentieth century you need to have, like advertising agencies? That's the fascinating thing.

James Dyson30:27

That's the f

James Dyson30:28

The answer is yes. And there's a great or has been a great fashion over the last thirty years to bring in consultants for everything. And I feel that as a business and as someone making and creating a product,

James Dyson30:40

All the the things like advertising and public relations and marketing and graphic design and engineering and product design should all come from within the heart of the business. That if you don't have a strong and it's rather like a body, that that all these functions are organs of the body, and if they're not in your body, you don't have that inner strength.

Presenter31:02

Record number seven.

James Dyson31:03

Record number seven is uh my son Sam's band. He formed a band um two, three years ago called Wax On, Wax Off, and this is one of the gentler numbers.

Speaker 431:15

She walks into a summer's day

Speaker 431:19

Realizes that he's here to stay

Speaker 431:25

Only you can bring me out of it.

Speaker 431:30

Didn't know by now only you

Speaker 431:36

Maya

Presenter31:42

Slow Down, played by Wax On Wax Off, written by my Castaway son Sam Dyson, with his friend Johnny Benn, who was singing.

Presenter31:49

Um what are you inventing now, can you say?

James Dyson31:52

Well I'd love to, but I can't. But we we've got some um very nice products that we're developing and uh it takes a long time because we we develop new technology for a product and then you have to engineer the product, or get the technology right, then you have to engineer the product and then you have to design it and then tool it up and go into production and test it and

Presenter32:10

True guitar

Presenter32:12

But it's something domestic, it's something that that um

Presenter32:16

I shall find exciting, is it?

James Dyson32:18

Well, I hope so, I hope so. Yes, it's certainly domestic.

James Dyson32:21

And you don't need one.

Presenter32:21

Yeah.

James Dyson32:22

Yeah.

Presenter32:22

Oh, good. So your success and your wealth hasn't hasn't robbed you of inspiration. You're still having l lateral ideas as you go about life.

James Dyson32:23

What's

James Dyson32:31

Well, I hope so. And also I'm lucky because we now have three hundred very bright young engineers and scientists who have loads and loads of ideas all the time. So a lot of the ide or most of the ideas are coming from them, which is wonderful.

Presenter32:44

But on a desert island you are entirely alone. Do you think you'll feel inventive there, or just plain miserable?

James Dyson32:51

I'll be miserable because I'll be without people, but I know exactly what I'll do.

James Dyson32:56

I'll start making things and I'll start growing things'cause I also enjoy both of those. I'm a I'm a keen gardener and I enjoy creating gardens and I love making things and fiddling around with things. So I'll be busy.

Presenter33:10

You'll be all right.

James Dyson33:11

Bye, sure.

Presenter33:12

And the the fear of failure, which could mean death, will presumably drive you on, as you say.

James Dyson33:13

Object-driven even.

James Dyson33:18

Yes, it'll drive me on. But I but also I'll just get involved in making things and get manic about making things.

Presenter33:24

Master England.

James Dyson33:25

My final record, I

James Dyson33:27

Bought in a French supermarket and

James Dyson33:29

The thought was just simply beautiful and it's by Albinone and it's called The Beatitudes.

Speaker 434:00

I'll save

Presenter34:36

The choir of New College, Oxford, singing part of the Beatitudes, arranged by James Cameron to Albinone's Adagio for organ and strings, and they were conducted by Edward Higginbottom.

Presenter34:46

If you could only take one of those eight records, James, which one would you take?

James Dyson34:51

Wow, that's difficult. I think I think I'd take wax on, wax off.

Presenter34:54

And uh uh your book as well as the Bible and Shakespeare.

James Dyson34:58

Well, I my first thought was to take the Engineering Machinery Handbook, which is the sort of Bible that's six inches thick and tells you all about engineering, because I never learnt engineering. But I decided it wouldn't be much use on the island, so I chose instead a really beautiful book called Olives: The Life and Lure of a Noble Fruit by Mort Rosenblum. And it's a most extraordinary adventure around the Mediterranean, visiting people who grew olives. And it was a most stunningly interesting book about a a tree and a fruit and oil that I love.

Presenter35:30

And your luxury.

James Dyson35:31

is a sore.

James Dyson35:33

So that I can start cutting up trees and making things.

Presenter35:34

Start cutting

Presenter35:36

You can't have it. It's far too practical.

James Dyson35:39

Yes, but it I can make things which which will be luxurious.

Presenter35:40

Which will be luxurious. Exactly. It's practical. You can't do it.

James Dyson35:44

But it'll have to be olive oil and minted.

Presenter35:47

James Dyson, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your Desert Island discs.

Speaker 335:59

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