Tim Smit

Speaker 20:00

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 20:08

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

Presenter0:31

My castaway this week is a conservationist. He didn't start out that way. He made his money in the music business, and then on holiday in Cornwall, he fell in love with the place and moved his family there. First of all, he restored a farmhouse, which he still lives in. Then he stumbled across some lost gardens, and knowing next to nothing about plants, restored them too. Now he's embarked on his most ambitious plan so far, the Eden Project. His beloved county will soon be home to the world's largest greenhouses, part of an organic theme park of flora, sculptures, performance, and restaurants, which combine to create a showcase and a laboratory for the earth's plant life. If I believe something's going to work, he says, my belief seems to rub off. He is Tim Smit. So a botanic impresario is what you've become, Tim. Does that surprise you, having studied archaeology at university and then gone through a rock and roll career? You know, it's a funny place to end up.

Tim Smit1:30

It's a total shock, yes. But it's been it's been great. I think uh that there's a there's a very famous Hungarian inventor called Nagi who always said that you should actually try to do your best in a field in which you know absolutely nothing, because that way you don't come at it with a lot of baggage.

Presenter1:43

It's it's a great title, The Eden Project. It conjures up this kind of perfect place where everything is beautiful and bountiful and so on. But it is very difficult to sum up, and I I just use the word theme part there. You don't like that bit, do you?

Tim Smit1:56

Um I loathe it.

Presenter1:57

Why?

Tim Smit1:58

If by theme park you mean that you're talking about uh something that is themed, fine, it is about plants and human dependence upon plants, but it normally comes with a lot of baggage implying hamburger joints and a sort of trivial approach to things, which is not what we're about.

Presenter2:14

Exactly. But is it commercial or is it altruistic? Is it more a laboratory or more a a visitor attraction?

Tim Smit2:22

It's commercial in order to be altruistic. I believe that if you set things up to become white elephants, you'll never ever buy the freedom and independence you need to actually make a difference. But it must be entertaining because as far as I'm concerned, I'm not very interested in seeing the 3 million people who are already committed to the environment worship what we do. They already know their own minds. What really excites me is why are people not connecting with 54 million people in this country who have no interest in it at all?

Speaker 42:39

Where sh

Presenter2:49

And it's the kids you want to start with, isn't it? It's the kids you want to bring in.

Tim Smit2:52

Kids in terms of mental state, I mean you see one of the thi the things I've noticed is that when you're a professional in any field whatsoever, you're grown up in the fields you studied and a few of your hobbies, but everything else, you're probably at the level of a twelve year old. I am.

Tim Smit3:05

And I think one of the problems is wherever you go, you get sort of people think they're flattering you by hitting you at the level at which they are. You know, even when I was an archaeologist going around the British Museum, I used to actually walk out after 45 minutes. I felt overwhelmed by too much thunkage. And I actually like people to beguile me, sort of seduce me with information, to actually get the old greyer cells going. I mean, the best review I ever saw of a book was On the Back of the Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins. Some guy had said, This book made me feel so damn clever. And I know exactly what they mean by that.

Presenter3:33

It's obviously a great vision. You can hear all of that even as you begin to speak about it. It's also very romantic. Was there a moment when it first dawned on you, when you said Eureka?

Tim Smit3:43

Sort of. I I was already sort of imbued with plants that change the world and fruits and vegetation and stuff from Heligan and the stories of the great plant hunters.

Tim Smit3:50

I suppose the moment at which I thought of the complete picture was driving along the A thirty, the arterial road into Cormann, and as you come to the the the major roundabout above St. Austral there's this whacking great spoil heap which is cut to stop it sliding but at a certain light as the sun goes down it takes on this reddish hue a bit like Aya's rock and I remember looking up at it once and thinking wow you know Arthur Conan Doyle's Lost Worlds and suddenly your mind drifted to craters and volcanoes and wonderful vegetation and uh there was Eden Project. If you say it very fast it doesn't hurt at all.

Presenter4:22

More of that later. Tell me about your first record.

Tim Smit4:25

Uh my first record is is Boys of Summer by Don Henley, who many people will know as he used to be with the Eagles. It's the sort of record which if you didn't own an open top car, you can actually get a sense of what it'd be like to own one without having to pay for it.

Speaker 44:40

Nobody on the road

Speaker 44:43

Nobody on the beach

Speaker 44:46

I feel it in the air

Speaker 44:49

The sun was out of reach Empty lake, empty streets, the sun goes down alone

Speaker 44:57

I'm glad I'll have

Speaker 44:59

Oh no

Presenter5:01

The Boys of Summer, sung by Don Henley, as part of the the soundtrack of your life, is it measured out in pop music, your life?

Tim Smit5:08

Oh, I d I d I just adore music of all sorts.

Presenter5:11

I want to talk more about your rock and roll career, but but I just let's yes, warts and all. But I just want to hear about a bit more about Heligan first, to just to remind people the lost gardens of Heligan.

Tim Smit5:15

Yeah.

Presenter5:24

One of the most romantic stories in the world, I think. Tell me about that first moment when you you went in there. I was going to say walked in there, but of course you didn't walk in there, did you?

Tim Smit5:32

No, no, no. I I went in with a guy who's now a really good friend, John Willis, who had inherited the estate and

Tim Smit5:38

Even he didn't know what was in there he knew that on the maps it was a garden.

Speaker 25:42

How big?

Tim Smit5:42

How big?

Presenter5:42

Yeah.

Tim Smit5:43

In terms of pure garden, it's about two hundred acres, and then there's sort of woods which have got follies sort of lost in them. But when we cut our way through, we're talking about laurels that were monsters, you know, thick as a man's thigh. We had to cut through with machetes and get in, and the brambles were about fifteen feet high across the entire site. And during the course of about three hours, we came across a grotto and a wish a wishing well, and eventually we came to this big brick brick wall in the middle of which, just like in the secret garden, there was this door just slightly ajar of rotting. We pushed and pushed and pushed and then broke through. We were in this incredible place which just had brambles everywhere, but you could see the glint of blue glass and we were alongside a very big vinery.

Tim Smit6:20

And cut our way into that. And the moment I walked into it, I knew I wanted to restore the place. It was just instant. Bang, I'm going to do it. But there was just.

Presenter6:26

But why why was it in such terrible disrepair?

Tim Smit6:29

It's very sad really. The the house and gardens was at their were at their real peak at the start of the First World War. But with the onset of war, most of the the gardeners sort of volunteered to go to war and more than half of them perished on the fields of Flanders and didn't come back.

Presenter6:43

And you found their name somewhere in there, didn't you?

Tim Smit6:45

Yeah, when we cut our way into the smallest of the walled gardens called the Mellon Grounds, the Mellon Garden.

Presenter6:48

Melon Group

Tim Smit6:50

We we came across a tall two-story building which was gutted and as we cleared it out in the plaster of what was the Thunderbox room, the old toilet, where they would have been sitting, you could see the right hand had written and all the staff had signed their names and sort of made graffiti. It was actually remarkably clean graffiti, but and it really brings home the the decorations of the war because then the next time you see most of those names is on the war memorial at the lovely village church of St New, just up the road.

Presenter7:12

Hmm.

Tim Smit7:12

Frank point.

Presenter7:13

And so there there it all was, a kind of sleeping beauty. And in this vision of the diggers going in and nosing around and kind of trying to lift, and then you start hacking it all down. How intact was it underneath it all?

Tim Smit7:26

I'll never forget, june fifth, nineteen ninety two, we peeled back over a hundred yards of the major walk.

Tim Smit7:33

From dawn till that night, there it was suddenly the whole vista was was there. It was very strange but beautiful.

Presenter7:39

And I read there's about two and a half miles of paths altogether in that.

Tim Smit7:41

Sorry together than that.

Presenter7:42

But there's a darker side to all of this as well, um as well as the gardeners who died in the war. There's a g you had to have it exorcised, didn't you?

Tim Smit7:51

Yeah, we did. I mean, one of the funny things about Heligon is is that it's got a very gentle melancholy to it. In fact, it's at its absolute best when there's a very gentle drizzle in the air.

Tim Smit8:01

And after we started the restoration.

Tim Smit8:05

I'm so insensitive I can't even tell you when toast's burning. But an awful lot of my guys were sort of

Tim Smit8:10

sort of being very reluctant to go certain places and we started to talk about it and they

Tim Smit8:14

They felt very odd in about three or four places, and in one particular place there was something very, very nasty, which I don't particularly want to go into. And we might we had dozens upon dozens of letters from visitors who came saying that they'd seen things in certain places. The most remarkable was actually rather sweet. In the melon garden itself, we were forcing chicory in the dark in these what looked like rhubarb forcing pots with lids on. And this couple came to see me about six o'clock one evening and said, Look, Mr. Smith, um, something very strange has happened. We were we were standing in that little forcing room having a look at everything, and suddenly there was the sound of of crunching cinders, and one by one the lids of each of the pots, of fourteen pots, was lifted and put down, and the last one went down. There was a sigh.

Tim Smit8:55

And the door opened and closed.

Tim Smit8:58

But that didn't feel malevolent or anything. I felt that was rather nice, someone to watch over us. The other thing was not, and and that took place

Presenter9:05

That's too horrible to test.

Tim Smit9:06

Well no, it it it's something that's beyond my ken and I feel I feel uh incapable of of describing it because it's it'cause it's at second hand. It wasn't me that experienced it. All I will say is that two guys who had actually been in hurricanes in the Bay of Biscay, who are not scared of anything but when they saw what they saw in our Lost Valley, were so frightened by what they saw they couldn't hold a cup of tea.

Presenter9:28

What did you do about it?

Tim Smit9:29

Now called in the bishop.

Presenter9:31

And

Tim Smit9:32

It was it was a very I think truly surreal day because of course

Tim Smit9:37

He came on a day when the birds were singing and the sun was in the heavens and all the rest of it, so you felt like a most terrible fraud. But we eventually went down to the place where the not so pleasant thing had happened.

Tim Smit9:48

And

Tim Smit9:49

You felt as if you were in a movie because he turned he turned to me.

Tim Smit9:52

As we were walking back, he said, Do you know, Tim?

Tim Smit9:54

Everybody thinks that religion is about going to church. He says that's to keep people happy, but there's a big battle between good and evil.

Tim Smit10:01

And all honesty, I cannot tell you that good is winning. And I thought, Oh, no, I don't want to hear this So from that moment on I I I I feel that, you know, there may be something I know not what, but I'm not sure I want to know.

Presenter10:14

But you feel good is Winnie. Well, all these people are turning it's the most visited garden.

Tim Smit10:19

Without a

Presenter10:19

Without a house, I think is is the phrase in your country, isn't it?

Tim Smit10:21

Now the country

Tim Smit10:22

It's the most visited private garden in the country, yeah. No, it's it's terrific, the public love it.

Presenter10:26

But are they still reporting spooky goings on?

Tim Smit10:29

A few, not so many now.

Presenter10:31

It was now.

Tim Smit10:31

Yeah.

Presenter10:32

Record number two, tell me about that.

Tim Smit10:35

What is it uh Beatles, Strawberry Feels Forever. But Strawberry Fields for me felt when it came out to be just so different, so mysterious, so wow, these chaps are going somewhere where where music hasn't gone before.

Speaker 410:47

Let me take you down, cause I'm going to

Speaker 410:53

Strawberry field

Speaker 410:58

Nothing is real.

Speaker 411:01

Nothing to get hung about

Speaker 411:05

Strawberry feels forever

Presenter11:08

Beetles and Strawberry Fields. So you were, what, at school, I suppose, about then? Why, in this country?'Cause you were born in Holland, weren't your father is Dutch?

Tim Smit11:16

Yeah.

Presenter11:16

He was a KLM.

Tim Smit11:18

Yeah, he was airline pilot. He wasn't a pilot, no, he's a an executive, a sort of managerial guy.

Presenter11:18

Airline pilot.

Presenter11:23

But is that why he sent you over here? Because he was travelling?

Tim Smit11:25

Well, my my mum's English and we were posted to Turkey.

Tim Smit11:30

and they didn't have either English or Dutch schools there. So I was sent to an English boarding school because I couldn't go to school in Holland because my grandparents were a bit old, so they sent me to a day school, me staying with the grandparents.

Presenter11:39

And you got into music at school, yes?

Tim Smit11:41

Yeah, but I've always been into music since I was three years old. I used to I used to put my head on the soundboard of the grand piano that my granny had.

Presenter11:49

And I don't

Tim Smit11:49

I'd always put it it wasn't very glamorous. I'd say, This is bombers or whatever, you know, but um typical kids.

Presenter11:55

And you formed a band then at school?

Tim Smit11:57

I formed a band at school and we were brilliantly awful.

Presenter12:00

And you did this at university as well at Durham?

Tim Smit12:02

Yeah. The guy who sh I shared a room with in Durham, called Charlie Scarbeck, he and I formed a band at Durham because we both skint. But our first gig was the most fantastic disaster. It was the Candle Mass Ball at St Chad's College. We were going to be paid the princely sum of thirty pounds, and we thought to really be impressive. The guy was doing the disco, we slipped him a fiver to put on his strobe lights as we started.

Tim Smit12:23

We went one, two, three, four. The strobe lights went on and of course everything goes into slow motion. So we all started in different keys. We couldn't see where we were. And the whole thing, after two minutes, we just stopped playing in a complete cacophony and this old chap walked across the audience and he he whispered in Charlie's ear, he said, How much are we paying you this evening? and Charlie said, Thirty quid. He said, If we pay sixty, will you stop?

Tim Smit12:43

Yeah.

Presenter12:43

But it got it got worse than that, didn't it? You I mean when you became well, you became professional, went on tour of Northern Europe.

Tim Smit12:43

But it does

Tim Smit12:47

Went on tour of northern Europe. We became professional in as much as we abused our health and went and stayed in some of the lowest dives that the Europe has ever had to offer.

Tim Smit12:55

And uh

Presenter12:56

Yeah.

Presenter12:58

So how out of all of this because I read that eventually you get Porsches and you're drinking champagne and how do you make money in the middle?

Tim Smit13:04

No, no, no, no, that's absolutely not true. I never owned a Porsche. I never owned.

Presenter13:09

You made some money. How did you make money if that's how you went on?

Tim Smit13:14

Well, we decided we s we decided that maybe touring wasn't the thing and being in a rock band wasn't as glamorous as we thought it was. And we decided to become songwriters, but no one wanted to cover our songs, so we had to become producers as well. And then we had to find people to sing our songs. And then and then we struck very lucky with a lady called Louise Tucker, who was an opera singer, and she was babysitting for me with my sister-in-law. Someone got ill and th during the studio session the following week and we invited her down.

Tim Smit13:39

And we made this record called Midnight Blue, which was loosely based on the melody of Beethoven's Pathet Pathetic. I sent it to a friend in Holland.

Tim Smit13:48

Who worked for a record company just out of curiosity, really, and he phoned back immediately and said, It's really good, and I've paid it to the boss of the company, and he wants it. Can you fly over?

Tim Smit13:55

We went over, they said we'll do a deal now today if you want to do it, but if you can record one more track and we really like it, we'll do an album deal. So Chani and I went back quickly, knocked up a number and uh we had an album deal. Here it got sort of top twenty, but it wasn't serious here, but I mean it was number one all over Europe and Canada did well in the States. And the first two albums did really well. And that was fun.

Presenter14:16

And you made your money.

Tim Smit14:16

But it

Tim Smit14:17

Yeah

Presenter14:19

Well, I just want to know where it comes from, because I mean, to go off to Cornwall and buy gardens or whatever, you know.

Tim Smit14:24

No, well no, no, I mean one can overplay the hand. I mean, you know

Tim Smit14:27

The truth is I'm a small bit-part player in the music industry who struck lucky in a few areas but really wasn't talented enough to make it the whole way.

Tim Smit14:35

And, um, you know, you you've got to own up to that sort of thing. And when you have to fly out of Heathrow three times a week and you're phobic about flying, you soon decide to move to Cornwall.

Presenter14:42

Record number three.

Tim Smit14:44

God Only Knows sung by the Beach Boys, which I think

Tim Smit14:47

How appropriate. I think it's one of the cleverest records ever written.

Presenter14:49

Yeah.

Speaker 414:52

You should have believed me.

Speaker 414:55

No life would still go on behind me

Speaker 414:59

The world could show nothing to me

Speaker 415:03

So what good would living you mean?

Speaker 415:08

God only knows what I feel about you

Speaker 415:16

And God only knows what I'd be

Presenter15:20

God Only Knows sung by The Beach Boys. Um so ten years in the music business, Tim Smit. Um no Porsches, but a lot of champagne. And then, you know, because you're a man who acts on an instinct like that, something must have happened. You suddenly must have thought, did you? I'm going to quit this. Enough.

Tim Smit15:37

It wasn't quite like that. I decided to leave London. I lived in Brixton at the time. Uh decided to leave London and my wife and I looked at where we might live. And we were on holiday in Foy in in um Cornwall and it was raining. Walked into an estate agent's and I saw this house and I said

Tim Smit15:54

I'd like to have a look at that and they said, So wouldn't like it and I said give me that house.

Presenter15:58

And you're still there now?

Tim Smit15:59

Yeah, I was f I first fell in love with it.

Presenter16:01

And you live there very c comfortably by all accounts. You just sort of

Tim Smit16:04

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Presenter16:04

You don't worry about muddy feet, do you?

Tim Smit16:06

No, it's the sort of house you wipe your feet on the way out.

Presenter16:09

How many children?

Tim Smit16:10

I got thirty, I got Alex who's twenty, I got Laura who's eighteen, and Sam who's sixteen.

Presenter16:16

Sam is a rock musician and you're his sometime roadie as well.

Tim Smit16:17

Yeah.

Tim Smit16:19

I'm in sometime right, yes.

Presenter16:20

So you're living vicariously.

Tim Smit16:22

Absolutely, he's far better than I ever was, I have to say. But um, no, it's terrific. It's terrific going to to a pub and watching your son play in a band and then, you know, you've got a pint of beer and he's not allowed to drink it, so he sits down at half time and you talk about the gig and he drinks your beer and it's really it's really terrific.

Presenter16:35

It's really it's really terrific. Let's have this next piece then.

Tim Smit16:38

This next one is Muse, eh?

Presenter16:40

Mm-hmm.

Tim Smit16:41

They're a fabulous band. They come from Tynmouth and Devon, but they were recorded at Sawmill Studio, which is just up the road from Foybe, and I think they're probably going to be one of the biggest bands in the world next year.

Speaker 416:54

And me, begging for some rest for the end.

Speaker 417:04

I don't want you to ignore me. Don't want you to ignore me. When you see

Presenter17:22

Muse and Muscle Museum. Um, Tim, if Heligan was a huge project, then Eden is off the clock, really, isn't it? Just to give an idea of of the scope of it, it's what, thirty five football pitches?

Tim Smit17:36

Yeah, the base of the pit is 35 acres. It's 200 feet deep. 200 feet.

Presenter17:38

And how many deep is it? How steep. Yeah. And south-facing slopes.

Tim Smit17:42

South facing slow.

Presenter17:43

Where you're putting these huge buildings that you say are very soon now going to be the most some of the most famous buildings in the world. What are they?

Tim Smit17:50

Oh definitely.

Tim Smit17:51

They're giant conservatories which are designed to look like they're made by something from nature, these big hexagons. And they just come off the side of the hillside and off you go.

Presenter18:01

They're kind of lean to's really.

Tim Smit18:03

Lean to, yeah. Half half decent greenhouses, says my friend Martin Miles when he says

Presenter18:04

Yeah.

Presenter18:05

This is my first time.

Presenter18:06

But the first one is going to have Washington, and it's big enough to ho house the Tower of London, the first one is going to be a little bit more. Should you want to, yeah.

Tim Smit18:11

Should you want to, yeah, not a lot of room for plants after that. Actually, the n the neat statistic is the second biggest covered space in the world.

Presenter18:18

Is it?

Tim Smit18:19

Yeah, freestanding, yeah, after after the um uh the rocket centre at Cape Carnaver.

Presenter18:23

And what's going to be in it?

Tim Smit18:24

That particular conservatory is dedicated to the humid tropics.

Presenter18:27

So you're going to have what mahogany antique trees reaching to the roof?

Tim Smit18:29

Reaching to the roof. Yep, yep. We it goes up to fifty seven meters so we can it's the first conservatory's ever built that will take things to maturity.

Presenter18:36

But it must rain in there. I mean, it's a rainy forest.

Tim Smit18:37

Yeah, it's a very good idea.

Presenter18:59

And how do you get the plants to fill all these things? You've imported them, have you?

Tim Smit19:03

We've got a twelve acre nursery just up the road where we've been propagating lots of stuff. We've got a big team up there. We import plants only really from within the EU, but stuff from outside the EU we have to be very careful.

Presenter19:14

Very careful.

Tim Smit19:16

But well we we have propagated an awful lot from seed.

Tim Smit19:19

And a lot of this stuff is much healthier if you grow it from seed as opposed to bringing it in as a tree. You've got to be pet a bit more patient. But the thing which is actually knocked us sideways is that when you grow these plants in ideal conditions, not in the rainforest, but so that their roots are their nutrient is there, we've been having trees put on seven meters in a year.

Tim Smit19:35

by seven meters, which has incredible problems because they're growing so fast, their bark isn't doesn't get very strong so they can bend over. So you have to get take them for fitness training. You know, you no you have to hug a tree and shake it you have to shake it. But you don't think about those things to start with, do you?

Presenter19:45

But you have to you know hug the tree and shake it.

Presenter19:50

Record number five.

Tim Smit19:51

Record number five is the famous Lobster Song by Nihi Theta, who are a Cornish company, but they tour all over the world. And they do these very plangent, sort of Celtic type things which sort of put the hair up on the back of your neck.

Speaker 420:03

I'm sure it has it all.

Speaker 420:07

He never showed himself to me.

Speaker 420:14

Skies are big but over high

Speaker 420:19

So long as monsters swim the sea

Speaker 420:26

You might be mad too on the side of

Presenter20:32

The Knee High Theatre Company singing Lobster. It's still very difficult to see Tim Yu. I'm sorry about this. I can see the link between Heligan and Eaton, obviously, but I don't see the link between them and you. Is there anything in the history of the family, you know, any obsession with conservation or green fingers? I don't know.

Tim Smit20:53

No, no, there there isn't. I mean

Tim Smit20:56

Gosh, I don't know how to put this without it sounding awful. I'm not very good at anything in particular. I can't put up shelves, I can't or DIY I'm a nonsense at. The one thing if I had to say one thing, you know, if if under torture that I'm good at,

Tim Smit21:11

is I can make other people believe in themselves.

Tim Smit21:14

And my greatest excitement is is being with good people who've actually given up the feeling that they could be contenders and saying, Go on, go on at the devil on their shoulder.

Presenter21:23

Do you wake in the night in in cold sweats that it won't go it won't work, that it will go the way of the dome, dare I say?'Cause it is a bit dome like.

Tim Smit21:32

He's swearing again.

Tim Smit21:35

No, I don't wake up in the sweats, because a whole lot of people have decided to to work on a project which

Tim Smit21:42

I think is really important, which is to A illustrate human dependence on plants, but much more important is to make people reflect on the fact that you don't have to be depressed about the future. Because actually the big battle that we all face is that we we here in the West, we want our material things and and we don't want to give them up and

Tim Smit22:02

a lot of the environmental movement has been coming across as very, very worthy and hair shirt, and which isn't going to communicate very well to especially urban kids, is it? And I'm saying that, look, if you husband the land resources well,

Tim Smit22:15

You can probably get quite close to having your cake and eat it, but you've got to put brain power into this, you know, and find a balance between conservation and land use. I mean, hell, if you're a a hill farmer in Nepal, do not tell me if the rarest radar dinner in the world is outside your house and your kids are freezing, that you don't chop it down. Of course you do. We've got to get real about this. Everybody has the same expectations in life. The fact that someone has not yet got that, you shouldn't prevent them being able to aspire to that, especially when it's us that's caused it in the first place.

Presenter22:45

More music.

Tim Smit22:46

More music, Dancing in the Street, David Bowie and Mick Jagger, of course Eighty Five Live Aid.

Tim Smit22:53

I mean, who wasn't moved by Live Aid? I thought it was just fantastic. It was the first time I was ever aware of the power of communication, where you had people all over the world focusing on something. And that I also had this sense of the power. If you could harness that, you could actually really change things for the better.

Speaker 423:13

Yeah.

Speaker 423:15

Dancing in the street

Speaker 423:20

Fun invitation, the cross-bramation, a chance for votes for me

Speaker 423:27

We're laughing and singing, our music swinging, dancing in the

Presenter23:38

Dancing in the street with David Bowie and Mick Jagger in a special performance for Live Aid. Have you ever thought of going into politics, Tim?

Tim Smit23:45

Oh no, I'd be terrible.

Tim Smit23:47

You don't sound as if

Presenter23:47

You don't sound as if you'd be terrible. I mean, you'd you'd make the Rio Summit stick, wouldn't you?

Tim Smit23:53

Tell them what it is. Politicians shouldn't have skeletons and they're covered, you know. I find the most interesting people I know have huge amounts of skeletons.

Presenter23:53

Tell them what to do.

Presenter24:01

Well otherwise as long as you admit to them, is when you t to try to cover them up.

Presenter24:06

Is it true you were asked to help run the dome at one point?

Tim Smit24:10

I wasn't asked to run the dome, I was asked to.

Tim Smit24:13

Have some input into the dome.

Tim Smit24:15

Um

Presenter24:16

You refuse?

Tim Smit24:17

Yeah.

Presenter24:18

Why?

Tim Smit24:19

First of all, Eden is my first love, and I didn't want to be distracted from that. Also.

Tim Smit24:26

I felt that- let's say.

Tim Smit24:29

one did get involved, I felt that other people ought to do it. And I had this idea for the dome, which I I presented to the government, and a lot of people got quite excited by it, but at that time it was being bought by a bank.

Tim Smit24:42

Um I left it at that.

Presenter24:43

Yeah.

Presenter24:45

What are you going to do next then? Because you'll stay obviously with Eden till it's up and running and flourishing. But then

Presenter24:52

What happens, I'm quite sure you'll think of something else.

Tim Smit24:55

A actually what I will do is I want to d there's twelve thousand acres of land next to Eden.

Tim Smit24:59

Derelict.

Presenter25:01

Do you own that?

Tim Smit25:02

No, it's owned by uh Imris, the English China Tay Company, but it's derelict and they have basically said to us that if we have good ideas for it we could do it and there's some real exciting.

Tim Smit25:11

Projects we could do on there.

Presenter25:12

What?

Tim Smit25:13

I'd like to encourage a large chunk of the

Tim Smit25:15

Putative

Tim Smit25:17

Cornish University to go there and actually dare to stop copying other universities and actually really make a leapfrog like they did at MIT in the States and concentrate on the earth sciences and waste management, because I think the future is going to be the total re total recycling.

Tim Smit25:32

We had a Ziri, Zero Emissions Regeneration Initiative, which is starting in Germany, where you build a company and the only company that will get a planning permission to go next to it is a company that uses all the waste at the company next door.

Presenter25:45

What happens to the family while you're out doing all this moving and shaking and visioning? Do they suffer from healthy neglect?

Tim Smit25:50

Healthy neglect.

Presenter25:52

Sure. Uh

Tim Smit25:53

Vandals. Um no no no, I mean I'm not that neglectful.

Presenter25:57

Healthy neglect

Tim Smit25:58

Healthy neglect.

Tim Smit26:00

Thanks, Peter.

Presenter26:00

Next piece of music.

Tim Smit26:02

If you were to ask me the most charismatic person I have seen in my life, it would be Marvin Gaye.

Tim Smit26:08

When we had that hit with Louise Tucker, we appeared at this charity do called the Popchauer in Holland. They they get like people who are big world stars and then at the bottom of the bill would be people like us who'd got a current hit. So imagine imagine a stadium with a double orchestra and a gateway underneath the double orchestra where the stars come out. All the stars are rehearsing, you know, there was Diastraites, there was Billy Press and Sarita.

Tim Smit26:32

The orchestra's tuning up.

Tim Smit26:33

Where's Marvin Gay? Suddenly the doors open at the end of the stadium.

Tim Smit26:38

And this guy is in a fur full-length coat right down to the ground, shades, a felt hat.

Tim Smit26:44

This guy doesn't look left, he doesn't look right, he just walks straight out.

Tim Smit26:48

And it's a long walk.

Tim Smit26:50

And it was like a film. The orchestra stopped tuning up one by one. It was ye ye ye.

Tim Smit26:56

and the audience who were talking you know, there's thousands of people in the audience, they suddenly stopped talking.

Tim Smit27:01

He walks towards Billy Preston who obviously knows really well and does a high five this guy has been out of the music business for four years in Ostend. He hasn't made a record.

Tim Smit27:10

except the one we're about to play, has just come out and everybody loves it, Sexual Healing.

Tim Smit27:15

He does a high five to Billy Preston, walks towards the stage. He still hasn't even looked behind him, and he goes.

Tim Smit27:22

Not look round.

Tim Smit27:24

You've got all these other stars. He doesn't know it's his turn to rehearse. It's not his turn.

Tim Smit27:27

He's just got total confidence that everybody's looking at him and they're going to play his song.

Speaker 427:34

I know you'll be there to give me

Speaker 427:38

Love you

Speaker 427:40

We'll free.

Speaker 427:43

If you don't know, then you're here.

Speaker 427:47

Oh, I can tell you, darling, that it's sexual healing.

Speaker 427:53

Get up, get up, get up, get up, Let's make love tonight.

Speaker 427:58

Wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up Cause you do it right

Presenter28:02

Marvin Gaye and Sexual Healing. So, to the Desert Island with you, Tim Smith. No good at D.I.Y., you say.

Tim Smit28:09

No, absolutely not.

Presenter28:10

Good at growing things to eat, or are you just a JCB card really?

Tim Smit28:13

I know a man I've been known to look at a shovel.

Presenter28:17

Dig a few patches.

Tim Smit28:18

TV patches.

Presenter28:19

But left on your own for a long period, without anybody either to inspire you or for you to inspire, how would that be?

Tim Smit28:27

Um I I'm quite fond of my own company actually.

Presenter28:30

Pretty?

Tim Smit28:31

Yeah, I'm gregarious, but I I'm I'm not uh

Tim Smit28:34

I don't don't crave company at all times.

Presenter28:37

And you're a you have, you know, the important ingredient for desert island living, it seems. I mean, you're fundamentally incredibly optimistic, aren't you?

Tim Smit28:45

Yeah. I I well, I discovered at an early age I wanted I wanted to do Moody, you know, but I didn't have the body for a tight white T shirt and I didn't look like James Dean, so I I was lost really.

Presenter28:55

But do you always j are you always happy? You seem to be so happy.

Tim Smit28:59

Most of the time, you know, I yeah, yeah, most of the time.

Presenter29:04

Lastly, are you going to have a party on this island, I can tell, with all this music?

Tim Smit29:07

I'm a big Rolling Stones fan. I mean, I've always been a Rolling Stones fan. I mean, I I think I played my first Schlesinger tennis racket electric guitar in front of the mirror to the Rolling Stones. You Gotta Move is actually a track off Sticky Fingers, the last track. And it's not a famous track by the Stones, but there's something about it. It's a very simple slide guitar track, which is like a jam, but in it it's got that kind of sinister Creole feel within the blues, and you feel it it's just you could feel as if it could actually go on for hours, just building bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger.

Presenter30:07

You've got to move by the Rolling Stones. Now, if you could only take one of those eight records, which one would you take, Tim?

Tim Smit30:14

I think it would have to be dancing in the street.

Presenter30:18

Why?

Tim Smit30:21

A I liked the original record so much, but b there was something so joyous about that particular day.

Tim Smit30:28

And

Tim Smit30:30

It would be symbolic.

Tim Smit30:33

You know, I I suppose perhaps if I'd been sensible I'd have had a bit of sort of bluesy piano, you know, because once I'd learnt to grow tobacco I could have a cigar at night and th watch the blue smoke go up and hear those blue notes in the background. And that'd have been good. But then I thought I'd get really lonesome because there'd be no lady, you know, all on my own, it'd be just a chimpanzee maybe, and that'd be really sad. So I thought have all upbeat records.

Presenter30:53

You've got the Bible and you've got Shakespeare. What about your book?

Tim Smit30:57

I thought long and hard about this book, and it seemed dumb to take a book that I'd already read, because I'd know how it finished, unless it was sort of like an encyclopedia. So I decided I'd take a book, a really, really big book, where they'd forgotten to print new words so I could write down lots of ideas inside it.

Presenter31:12

And your luxury.

Tim Smit31:14

A grand piano.

Presenter31:16

Tim Smith, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your Desert Island discs. A pleasure.

Speaker 231:29

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