Robert Swan

Speaker 30:00

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

Speaker 30:08

The programme was originally broadcast in the year two thousand, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:30

My castaway this week is an explorer. His appetite for adventure meant that by the age of twenty-eight he'd raised three and a half million pounds to retrace Scott's trek to the South Pole. Three years later, he'd recruited a multinational team for another gruelling journey to the North Pole. Thus, he was assured his place in history as the first man to walk unaided to both poles. These huge expeditions made him realize how threatened our planet was and encouraged him to become an environmental campaigner, a role in which his natural gift for communication has allowed him to excel.

Presenter1:04

His energy and commitment, however, have been partnered by something less fulfilling, depression. The route down from the peaks of achievement, it seems, is something he's found hard to make. The qualities of real survival, he says, are the ability to cry, to ask for help. He is Robert

Presenter1:22

What we admire, of course, in heroes like you, Robert, is your sheer physical courage, pitting yourself against those ferocious elements, you know, temperatures of minus fifty and so on. Are you saying that's the easy bit?

Robert Swan1:34

It really is actually the easy bit, when you're saying you're going to go to the South or North Pole.

Robert Swan1:40

If you have the right mindset, you start your journey and you either get there or die. It's actually really quite simple.

Presenter1:46

Is it that simple? I mean, if I don't do this job, I die.

Robert Swan1:51

I in my mind, yes, I made a commitment to myself.

Robert Swan1:56

That I'd rather reach the poles than come back without reaching the poles.

Presenter2:01

But you imply that you you therefore, en route, contemplate death.

Robert Swan2:07

You don't contemplate death on a sort of minute by minute basis. It's not like that. You can make a mistake on a seventy day journey on the third day that could kill you on day sixty five. It's a war of attrition.

Presenter2:22

But you've also known sheer terror out there, haven't you?

Robert Swan2:24

I think at that stage, you know, I did this when I was quite young. I I really don't think that I'd created a shell round me that not much could get through. Even sheer terror couldn't get through. I think a fear of failure

Robert Swan2:40

was more of a horror and a terror to me. Delivering back to all the people that made it possible was a a constant fear, a constant terror that I'd let somebody down.

Presenter2:52

So when you look back on what you did in walking to those two poles, do you look back with a sense of pride and achievement or amazement that you even made it?

Robert Swan3:03

A sense of pride which is only really now happening ten, twelve years after it. During it it was just really a question of put your head down and get on with it.

Presenter3:14

Interesting though. I mean, I said, you know, you're an explorer. That's not what you like to be called at all, is it?

Robert Swan3:19

No, uh the entire world has been photographed from outer space. So really we're not exploring anything. We're merely travellers in the footsteps of the real people like Scott, Shackleton and Amundsen.

Presenter3:35

Tell me about your first record in that case.

Robert Swan3:37

Well, I mean, this is this is the man. Um, it's all John Mills' fault. Uh this is a a section from Scott of the Antarctic, the film, and starring John Mills, and this is the bit that got me as a kid.

Presenter3:38

This is the ma

Speaker 23:54

Had we lived?

Speaker 23:56

I should have had a tale to tell.

Speaker 23:58

of the hardihood

Speaker 24:00

Endurance.

Speaker 24:02

and courage of my companions.

Speaker 24:05

Which would have stirred the heart of every Englishman.

Speaker 24:10

Seems a pity.

Speaker 24:13

But I don't think.

Speaker 24:14

I can write more.

Speaker 24:18

These rough notes.

Speaker 24:21

and our dead bodies.

Speaker 24:23

Must tell a tale.

Speaker 24:29

For God's sake.

Presenter4:36

Sir John Mills as Captain Scott delivering the last page of his diary. That was from the film Scott of the Antarctic. It is it's incredibly moving still, isn't it?

Robert Swan4:46

It's just the most unbelievable story of courage, commitment, and the fact he was sitting there in the tent, Scott, writing that diary with frozen fingers, and that we could read it, and it was in perfect English, with proper punctuation.

Presenter5:07

How old were you when you saw that film?

Robert Swan5:09

Well, I was roughly about eleven years old when I saw that film and it just g it just grabbed me. I mean, it really grabbed me. Out of the screen, wham, I was hooked.

Presenter5:20

But why, I wonder, why you, and why at that moment?

Robert Swan5:24

Well, I think that people underestimate radically the power of teachers at school. And at my first school, Laysgarth School, had this history teacher, Mr. Tate, Stuart Tate, who just had passion. And he could bring history alive from a book. He could actually make it live. You could smell it. You could hear it.

Robert Swan5:49

It just made me want to go into history somehow in a very small way. And I remember thinking, looking at the map at school on the wall, those school maps, and there were these sort of white fingers sticking up from the bottom of the world, the Antarctic. And I thought, what is this place, this massive continent? And even when I was eleven, this idea of the fact that nobody owns the Antarctic fascinated me.

Presenter6:19

But of course that happens to a lot of young boys and they have heroes or they want to make their mark in history, as you say. But with you it stayed. You know, it became it became an obsession, effectively, didn't it?

Robert Swan6:31

It became an obsession.

Robert Swan6:34

Simply because

Robert Swan6:37

I'm like that.

Robert Swan6:39

I am an obsessive person, I'm trying not to be.

Speaker 26:39

I am

Robert Swan6:43

It's got me to both poles. It's also got me into a few problems in my life. But in order to pull off something.

Robert Swan6:51

As big as that, you have to have a single focus, a single aim that you cannot move away from. You can't do it half-heartedly. And I think also I was in a good position because I was number seven in the family, the youngest. And also, you can see when you're the youngest in a family, how short life is, and the fact that if you don't execute a dream early on, it will remain a dream.

Presenter7:22

Tell me about your sick.

Robert Swan7:23

In record.

Presenter7:23

Yeah.

Robert Swan7:23

Uh

Robert Swan7:24

Well, a bit of nessen dormer I think is crucially important. I I I can't sing.

Robert Swan7:30

But if I could sing.

Robert Swan7:33

And I was walking to the South Pole. I think this is how I would feel. So this song just really encapsulates for me that feeling of longing for home, emptiness, and the overpowering. It is overpowering. It's almost too much. The beauty of the Antarctic.

Speaker 37:57

Maybe slightly rules were in men.

Robert Swan8:21

One goes.

Presenter8:24

Oh, splash

Speaker 38:28

Uh

Speaker 38:39

Predior batosolier with me.

Presenter8:55

Andrea Bocelli as Calaf singing Nesundorma None Shall Sleep from Act three of Puccini's Turundot with the Moscow Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Vladimir Fedusayev.

Presenter9:06

You've talked about seeing pictures again early on while this obsession was developing of Scott and his team and recognizing what's what's described as the flawless gaze of young men in the South. Can you describe to me what that gaze is?

Robert Swan9:23

It's far distant. It's rather cold, actually.

Robert Swan9:27

But if you look look at it long enough, there is a

Robert Swan9:31

There's an inner warmth there and you

Presenter9:33

But do you get it from having been there, or is it I mean, is it simply burnt eyes?

Robert Swan9:40

No, I think it's

Robert Swan9:42

It's burnt hearts.

Robert Swan9:44

Because it is all a bit too much. It's a kind of long distance view. It's almost like they're looking through you out.

Presenter9:54

And on to the horizon.

Robert Swan9:55

Yeah.

Presenter9:55

Of course it wasn't just your your eyes that got burned, was it? Um walking to the South Pole, or was it the North Pole? Your flesh got burned too.

Robert Swan10:02

Well, both poles, we walked underneath this these things called holes in the ozone layer and I'd never heard about those things. But we did have bad skin damage, especially on the North Pole, and that was a huge shock to feel that one was walking underneath something that no one knew much about, and you were actually physically hit by it.

Presenter10:26

But you actually smelled burning flesh, didn't you?

Robert Swan10:27

Yeah, and and the skin peeled off and we hadn't read about this. We'd read about all other disasters in Captain Scott's diary, but we hadn't read about their faces being burnt off. It was a big shock.

Presenter10:39

Again, we come back to who is this person who does these things. And I was reading the psychological report that you actually published about yourself, about all of the team, when you returned from the South Pole, the the reports on you beforehand. And what it said, one of the things it said about you, was that you were very self-assured and independent-minded, but that the reverse of that coin was that you can be insensitive to others, be a bit thick-skinned.

Presenter11:05

Is that again what makes you a good person, as it were, to go into the jungle with?

Presenter11:11

Yeah.

Robert Swan11:11

Or not.

Robert Swan11:13

I think actually deep down it's it's that I have been and remember that report was in you know nineteen eighty six I think that I created a box round myself I was very isolated as a person but I suppose to stay alive under hostile circumstances it probably helps that you're a bit thick skinned uh and you are rather insensitive.

Presenter11:38

Because we should explain that that when we say you walked unaided, what that means, it means what? No dogs, no depots, no air supports, no radios?

Robert Swan11:48

Well, on the South Pole we made a uh we wanted to respect

Robert Swan11:52

the Scots and the Shackletons and the Amundsons.

Presenter11:55

Do it just like that.

Robert Swan11:56

And we felt, well not just like them, of course not. We had better clothing, better equipment, better everything, we had knowledge, so we were only kind of touching the surface, but we wanted to respect their commitment and their isolation. And I feel it's wrong with people who call themselves explorers going off into the great unknown and then ringing up for help ten minutes later. So on the South Pole we carried nothing. No radios, no backup, no equipment, satellite stuff, nothing.

Presenter12:26

So, you were your own dogs, as it were. Well, we were our own dogs.

Robert Swan12:28

Well, we were our own dogs. I was the main dog because, um, you know, I was with the top, top people, Roger Meer and Gareth Wood. I mean, they're the best in the world. All I have to do is pull the sledge.

Presenter12:40

Okay, so you're the dog. But if that dog then becomes a bit insensitive and a bit thick skinned, uh when you have nothing but each other, then every tiny act of selfishness must magnify.

Robert Swan12:52

We had luckily, because we did it all traditionally, the South Pole. We went down on our own ship, we lived in a hut, five of us in a box no bigger than this studio, for nine and a half months. We kind of got through quite a lot of that.

Presenter13:07

But you had some huge battles of

Robert Swan13:09

Oh, unbelievable. And you know, it's interesting to look back on it and see how from that experience one did actually learn about things like insensitivity, in my case, maybe trying to be nice to everybody and failing across the board. But the key was the power to achieve the poll often came from that friction.

Presenter13:33

Why? Can you explain that?

Robert Swan13:35

Because it kept us on the edge. We were very, very different people coming together to to crack out a small piece of history. And I think that edge that was created between us, although it was difficult, ghastly and horrible, and it was difficult, it kept an edge. And that edge, when you're in a place that wants you dead, it's worth keeping that edge, otherwise you don't come home.

Presenter13:58

Number three.

Robert Swan13:59

Right, I think a bit of Hebrew slaves work from Verdi would would go down nicely. When we go to the North Pole, it's eight from seven nations. And the leader of the expedition, again, isn't me, it's our fantastic Russian doctor, Dr Misha Malakov, who the way he operated is very much like this record, very disciplined, and in many ways our team of eight from seven nations were slaves to the place we were in, the Arctic Ocean.

Robert Swan15:19

Uh

Presenter15:30

Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves from Verdi's Nabucco, performed by the Chorus and Orchestra of the German Opera of Berlin. So we've gathered, um, Robert Swann, that you didn't exactly sail through these expeditions. Is it true that even before you set out from the South Pole that you tried to blame John Mills in person for being there, for your being there?

Robert Swan15:50

Well, absolutely. I mean, I was sitting in a hut in the Antarctic

Robert Swan15:54

I hadn't seen a lady for eight months. I'd spent years putting an expedition together, and then on top of that, we as a team had to walk nine hundred miles to the South Pole. So I thought, well, I'd better tell John Mills.

Robert Swan16:08

Now we couldn't really get many letters in and out, but I wrote him a letter saying, Dear John Mills, it's all your bloody fault that I'm sitting in a hut, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You should have some recognition that your acting skills can have far reaching and rather painful results. Yours, Robert Swann.

Robert Swan16:27

And I thought nothing had happened. Great. He sent me back a photograph of him in full Captain Scott kit in Ealing Studios, kind of fake snow, goggles. And he wrote across the top, and I I've still got it, If you don't look like this, Robert, after a while, you'll know you're going the wrong way. Yours, John Mills. I thought this is my man.

Robert Swan16:52

And we

Robert Swan16:53

Reached the pole and um I went to go and see him afterwards. Did you?

Presenter16:57

And

Robert Swan16:58

Well, because walking to the pole, as I tried to say at the beginning of the programme, is actually the easy bit. At the end of our expedition, we lost our ship. Southern Quest got crushed by ice. That meant leaving three people there, organising aeroplanes, ships to go and collect rubbish. Massive problems, big debts. So I went to John Mills and I said, John, you know, I owe a lot of money.

Presenter17:23

You hadn't met him before.

Robert Swan17:24

No, I hadn't. No, I went to go and see him. And he and we had just a fantastic conversation. I sort of thought, well, I'll tell him at the end, you know, I've got this huge debt. I've never had a job. How am I going to pay off the debt?

Robert Swan17:36

And he looked at me and he said, You'll have to talk your way out of it, boy. And I said, I can't. I owe the bank the money. He said, No, no, no. Stand up and speak about it, Robert. And I said, I can't do it. And brilliantly he said, I'll teach you how. Did he?

Robert Swan17:53

And we went and stood in his bathroom. I think Mary, his wife, thought we'd gone completely mad and

Robert Swan17:58

He spent quite a lot of time, several days, teaching me as best he could, because I'm a slow learner, how to speak in public. And actually that's not only what paid off our debts once I managed to get reasonably good at doing it, it's actually the engine room of all we do now. So bless him. Not only was he responsible for the madness in the beginning, he's been responsible for helping achieve what we're now doing.

Presenter18:24

So that's how you you you fund things? I mean, you raise lot um I you don't have to answer this question, but I mean, what do you get then for standing on your hind legs in front of what, a bunch of accountants, I presume, or or a b businessman of some kind, do you?

Robert Swan18:38

Yeah, I mean it it started at two hundred and fifty

Robert Swan18:42

pounds to schools and things and I've built it up over the years. And yes, I get paid over ten thousand pounds to go to America for an hour. Uh why? Because it's a story about people.

Presenter18:57

Yes, but I wond how how deep is there anything beyond the simple metaphor that business is like walking to the pole, you know, leadership, courage, meeting your achievements, setting goals for yourself? Is it does it run any deeper than that?

Robert Swan19:11

It has to,'cause that's all balls to me. All that sort of tarry on people.

Presenter19:15

It's alright.

Robert Swan19:19

The main thing I think people take from our story is that

Robert Swan19:25

It's been, on the whole, a series of major catastrophes and disasters, and how did we overcome those? But it's just a great story, and people love it.

Presenter19:35

Yeah, but do any of them give in their notes?

Robert Swan19:36

Yeah, well sometimes it's a bit tricky. I think they come back and it's always difficult when they come on one of our trips, not to the Pole, but to the Antarctic. And they come back and telephone rings, I'm giving up, I'm going, you know, and all that. I have those problems. I said, well, look, hang on in there.

Robert Swan19:52

stick with the program, otherwise the boss is going to kill me. And nearly always they stay and hopefully make a contribution in all seriousness in a much more positive way to the company, we hope.

Speaker 219:56

Uh

Presenter19:56

Nearly always they

Presenter20:05

Record number four.

Robert Swan20:06

For well, I think a bit of underworld work now, this was my introduction really to to young people today. It opened a a door for me.

Presenter20:20

Yeah. Empty.

Speaker 220:21

Good boy and all in your inner space boy ahead and good boy and feel

Presenter20:46

underworld and born slippy. Let's um talk environment, uh Robert, because um you're a keynote speaker at the Rio Earth Summit, you're a special envoy for UNESCO these days, but you've had some very direct experience of global warming, haven't you?

Robert Swan21:01

Young people really want to hear how it is rather than what people think it is. And when you've had incidents like we've had walking to the North Pole, hundreds of miles from the nearest land, you're in the middle of a frozen ocean and the damn place melts and it's never melted before at that time of year in Arctic history, it's a bit of a shock. So they need to hear those things. In our small way, what we try and do is to try and inspire young people on these absolutely desperate issues of ice caps melting, all these issues.

Presenter21:07

So

Speaker 321:18

Under the feet.

Presenter21:19

Uh

Presenter21:35

Yeah.

Presenter21:38

And clearing all that rubbish from the South Pole. Well, I don't quite understand what the rubbish is. Why is it what is it? Why is it there? Who put it there?

Robert Swan21:46

Well, nobody owns Antarctica.

Robert Swan21:49

But there are forty-four nations who govern and are part of the Antarctic Treaty. And in 1991, Jack Cousteau managed to get a treaty signed which preserved Antarctica on an environmental level for about fifty years, from 191 to 2041. And part of that treaty is all the governments signed up, rightly, to remove any of their existing rubbish. And all the richer nations, our country, done a fantastic job.

Speaker 322:18

What is the rubber?

Robert Swan22:19

The rubbish is just stuff that's accumulated over the years at base camps, scientific base camps. What we try and do as part of our programme is to take on the removal of a thousand tons of rubbish from a Russian station in the Antarctic. That's part of the programme.

Presenter22:37

But was it what again, what is this old oil drill?

Robert Swan22:39

It's just drums and stuff, things, machines, things that people have left there over the years. We're just going to do the Russian rubbish for now. Uh, I think we'll just keep working on inspiring young people. We kind of owe it to them.

Presenter22:52

Record number five.

Robert Swan22:54

This is Yellow Ocean Club. This record sums up for me the moment where I arrived back and I had no idea who I was at all. This was the beginning of a mad period in my life.

Presenter23:40

That was yellow, an ocean club. So, um, tell me about it, Robert. You were thirty-three, you'd walk to both poles, you were fated as a hero, and then

Presenter23:49

Come.

Robert Swan23:50

Well

Robert Swan23:51

I think when you achieve as a team, but there was a personal achievement there, to be the first in history stupid enough to walk to both polls and you're standing out some outside number ten with the Prime Minister and all those sorts of things, it it's a bit a bit of a shock.

Robert Swan24:10

But also there was something in me that just collapsed. Up until the age of thirty three I couldn't spell the word depression. And suddenly there was just this emptiness inside me which just blew me away totally. And I was in pain, I had a bad back and all kinds of problems. But that was no excuse. To become one step off being a major alcoholic, that's no excuse. And down I went. I went down big time.

Presenter24:46

How far down was a full-scale breakdown?

Robert Swan24:48

Well, no, I'm I'm being rather strange in in this type of thing. It was a full scale breakdown between nine o'clock at night and six o'clock in the morning, but from six o'clock in the morning to nine o'clock at night I still played the game as it's supposed to be played. In other words, I didn't drink then. And gradually I felt this hand coming from way down below saying we're going to get this man. And it just it blew my marriage apart, it blew every single thing that I'd held close to me apart. And most importantly of all, I believed I was living a lie.

Speaker 225:04

Yeah.

Robert Swan25:29

I was going round telling everybody to be this, this, and this in my lectures, but actually what was I inside? Nothing.

Presenter25:36

Would it have happened, do you think, if you hadn't gone to the polls?

Robert Swan25:41

honest truth, it would have happened probably when I was about fourteen and it wouldn't have been drink, it would have been something intensely heavier. I think I had an engine ticking in me from a very early age, and thank God, and I mean that, that I was able to go to both poles.

Presenter26:00

But you feel a bit more in control of it than you did, obviously.

Robert Swan26:04

Oh yeah, I'm in control because I'm back. I s I'm not sure.

Presenter26:07

And because you're

Robert Swan26:08

But Control

Presenter26:08

Yeah.

Robert Swan26:10

Probably.

Presenter26:13

Record number six.

Robert Swan26:15

This is the kind of fight back bit. This is The Power of Love by Frankie Goes to Hollywood.

Speaker 326:23

Burn desire, love with tongues of fire, burns the soul.

Speaker 326:32

Maybe.

Presenter26:33

Uh

Speaker 326:34

Yo

Presenter26:51

Frankie goes to Hollywood and Power of Love and that, Robert, you say, is your fight back. Why?

Robert Swan26:57

Well, I've always had a bit of difficulty with the words unconditional love and when young Barnaby

Robert Swan27:07

My son was born.

Robert Swan27:09

I remember sitting sitting looking at him with a dreadful hangover and I saw him sitting there, you know how children with food all over their face in one of those chairs that move on the table.

Robert Swan27:20

And I thought

Robert Swan27:23

He doesn't deserve this.

Robert Swan27:26

a father like this. And I thought, I've got to take the steps. I've got to be unmacho enough to ask for help. And I tell you, it was such a relief to actually go and talk to people about it and be told, you know, there's nothing wrong with you, Robert, you're not an alcoholic, you've just got an engine that's blowing your brains out. So I think it's best that you just

Robert Swan27:50

Calm it down a bit.

Presenter27:50

Is that what you tell your business men these days, or do you let them go on believing you're mister Macho?

Robert Swan27:57

No, I don't think that people believe I'm that. I really don't.

Robert Swan28:01

However, when I'm speaking to those big audiences, I know that the majority of men in the audience, quite a lot of them, are struggling with this problem of drink.

Robert Swan28:13

dominating them in some way. And I think that it's a relief for them when I mention only don't go on about it, just say, well, I have I've had my difficulties and I asked for help and and I think it does help people to see a so called tough macho person like me in theory

Robert Swan28:31

Maybe having the guts just to say, Well, I've been there.

Presenter28:34

What about um Barney? He's now six, isn't he? Um, having a a hero for a father, or anyway, a father who's who's made history, and put it like that. It can be a problem that, can't it? I mean, it can be an awkward legacy.

Presenter28:47

You would know that.

Robert Swan28:47

Absolutely. Uh and I had the privilege, and it was a privilege, to talk to Sir Peter Scott, Captain Scott's son, Eddie Shackleton, Lord Shackleton, Sir Ernest Shackleton's son, and they both said to me, Robert, for goodness' sake, make sure that you don't push it on your son. I'm aware of it, fingers crossed, I hope I can make it easy for Barney, but whatever happens, it won't be easy.

Presenter29:16

But I wonder what it is, because as we've said now, if everything's been done, the world is a small place, as you say, been photographed from the outside and the inside and the upside. And uh, you know, somebody's recently well David Hempleman Adams, of course, recently become the first man to balloon to the North Pole. I suppose you could balloon to both poles, but you know, essentially the great adventures have been had and done, haven't they?

Robert Swan29:37

Well, good luck to them if they want to float around in balloons. I think the the last true greatest exploration left on earth is to survive on it. And I believe those people will come from industry, business and commerce actually. There's where our future heroes and heroines come. Because to look after our world, it's sad but it's true. We have to look at the environment perhaps as a business opportunity. And those people who can manage to engineer that, that people can improve all these boring things like bottom lines and budgets and all the things I don't understand. But if they can improve it by looking after the world, maybe that gives people an extra incentive.

Speaker 229:54

Bros and heroins.

Presenter29:55

How

Presenter30:21

Record number seven.

Robert Swan30:23

Fine young cannibals, good thing it's.

Robert Swan30:28

My father was a pretty tough guy actually, but he was very fair.

Robert Swan30:34

And he said to me when I was quite young, he said, Robert, you'll only ever have really five best friends. When you're young you think, nah, I'll have twenty-five but no, he was right and I just feel that one must celebrate friendship because friends are what it's all about really.

Speaker 330:57

That's been near

Speaker 331:02

We had to go

Presenter31:24

Good things sung by the fine young cannibals. What do you do for holidays, Robert? Or don't you take them?

Robert Swan31:30

I go to Norfolk, uh north west Norfolk, um buckets and spades, sailing, sand, and sometimes good weather, nearly always bad, but we love it.

Presenter31:40

I thought you climbed mountains and ran marathons.

Robert Swan31:43

Well, I do a bit of that in my spare time to keep fit, try and keep a bit of edge on.

Presenter31:48

Keep a bit of edge on. This phrase that keeps cropping up. Why don't you take a bit of a drink?

Robert Swan31:49

Yeah.

Robert Swan31:52

Because I actually come on let's cut to the bone here. I'm actually one of the laziest people you'll ever meet.

Presenter31:57

Really?

Robert Swan31:58

Yes.

Presenter31:58

Why'd you say that?

Robert Swan31:59

Cause I am.

Robert Swan32:01

I could do nothing professionally and that's why I can't wait to go to this desert island. I can't tell you how much I'm looking forward to it because that's really what I am. I'm really a very lazy person. Last record. This is Better Off Alone by Alice DJ.

Speaker 232:43

Your

Presenter32:57

Alice D J and Better Off Alone.

Presenter33:00

What about if you could only take one of those eight records with you to this island? Which one of all of them would you have to have?

Robert Swan33:06

Oh, definitely. I'd take the last one better off alone, because obviously I'd be isolated on my island and I'd be thinking

Robert Swan33:13

Come on, guys and girls, back there, you're the future, you've got the power, get on with it.

Presenter33:17

And what book would you like to have with you?

Robert Swan33:19

No question I would take the a giant special version please of the Times World Atlas so I could see where I'd been in my life, which is just about everywhere and just for once know where I was on my desert island. It'd be just fantastic just to sit there and say right, that's where I am and I'm not moving.

Presenter33:42

And your luxury.

Robert Swan33:44

Luxury

Robert Swan33:45

I think definitely it has to be.

Robert Swan33:48

A course and a very good course on accountancy.

Robert Swan33:54

Because

Robert Swan33:55

Accountancy in theory runs in my family.

Robert Swan33:59

And I obviously didn't pick up those jeans. And everybody, all my brothers, especially my elder brother, has always been saying, Robert, will you please try and understand how money works and how companies work and all these things? So it'll be a great luxury for me to sit there on the desert island and think, right, at last I understand what all these people have been telling me for the last 40 years.

Presenter34:23

Robert Swann, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your Desert Island discs.

Robert Swan34:26

Great to be here.

Speaker 334:35

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

Robert Swan35:22

Uh