Sir Stanley Kalms

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

Presenter0:31

My Costaway this week is a businessman, one of Britain's most successful high street retailers. He founded his first commercial enterprise at the age of ten, buying and selling stamps. He didn't do very well at school, but he'd barely finished his education before he was turning his father's North London photographic shop into a highly profitable operation. His flair for buying led him to import good quality, well-priced cameras from the Far East, and by his late twenties he'd become a millionaire. Today, with 1,300 outlets across the country, he heads a five billion pound business. He can look back on a life guided by single-mindedness, conscientiousness, and determination. You've got to have a rage to make things happen, he says. You've got to burn inside. He is the chairman of Dixon's, Sir Stanley Calms. That's a a description of aggression, really, isn't it, Sandy? You know, that will to win, that hatred of being beaten. That's all in the mix, too, is it?

Sir Stanley Kalms1:28

Yes, I think that aggression is very much part of the philosophy of success. You do need to want to be successful. You do need to have an inner drive.

Presenter1:38

It's like being a top sportsman, really, isn't it? You gotta want to go out there and kill'em.

Sir Stanley Kalms1:41

Well, I don't really like the word kill because I I don't think you see it in those terms. You be have to be successful for yourself. The opposition should be able to bang their head against your success, but you don't have to kill them. I've never made an objective of destroying the other side. I've made the objective of being more successful in my own field of adventure.

Presenter1:42

Uh

Presenter2:00

Yes, but that involves destroying the other side, really, does it? Or or eating them up, buying them up.

Sir Stanley Kalms2:05

Buying the map is legitimate, but the consequence of my actions is not my responsibility and there is plenty of room for others.

Presenter2:13

But you obviously get hooked on it. I mean, as I say, you've got thirteen hundred stores. Why do you want thirteen hundred and one?

Sir Stanley Kalms2:19

Because there's a manager somewhere who wants to be the manager of my thirteen hundred and one. If you're employing thousands of people, they've all got ambitions. Those ambitions surge inside a company. You're trying to in fact control them. It's like controlling a volcano. Within the volcano, there are people who want to come out and run their own businesses.

Presenter2:38

But isn't there also perhaps as motivation in there as as as well as money and wanting to do the best by your staff? Also some kind of pride? Because I read that quite early on a headmaster in your life was very dismissive about you, wasn't he? And I wonder how much that kind of spurred you into action?

Sir Stanley Kalms2:56

I'm not sure at that time it spurred me that much, but I think I had always within me the drive I think only on reflection did I realize that that perhaps was one of the motives.

Presenter3:05

What did he say, that, headmaster?

Sir Stanley Kalms3:07

What he said was that I'd been lucky to pass my exams. I'd taken in those days the matriculation exam, and he said I was lucky to have passed. I thought that was the most appalling comments you could ever put on a young man's report. It could have been disastrous if my career would have depended on showing that report.

Presenter3:24

Do you remember how it made you feel?

Sir Stanley Kalms3:25

I remember it made me feel very bitter and angry. I really was furious that a headmaster could be so dismissive of a young man.

Presenter3:32

I wonder if he lived to see your success, that headmaster.

Sir Stanley Kalms3:35

He probably saw or read somewhere because I got fairly good publicity at quite an early age. I hope he did.

Presenter3:43

It does all mean, of course, that you're kind of two people, I suspect, because I know you're a great family man, but obviously you're you're a toughie at work and a softy at home. Is that possible?

Sir Stanley Kalms3:52

Well I d it's not only you true people, but of course during your life you change as well. And of course you're quite right. The other side of being aggressive is that to me the family is the sole raison depth of life.

Presenter4:04

Better tell me about your first record.

Sir Stanley Kalms4:05

Well the first record is The Nutcracker Suite by Tchaikovsky. This is an annual event where uh the festive season where I take all my grandchildren. It's very emotional. It's arriving when we sit there and have the first bars and this play the children's faces light up.

Presenter5:19

Part of the Wolfs of the Flowers from Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite, played by the Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by John Launchbury. You've often said, uh, Sir Stanley Calms, that uh plagiarism is an essential skill of the retailer, and I have this image of you as a young man prowling the streets of North London in those early days, seeing what everybody el all those other electrical retailers were up to. Is that is that what you did?

Sir Stanley Kalms5:40

That's what I did. My wife would give better testimony whenever we went out. We stopped at every single chemist and photographic dealer on our route, and I studied every single competitor. Yes, of course you've got to know what the comp competition is doing, and if you're unskilled, as I was as a young man, you have to learn a better way of doing things.

Presenter5:57

But how did they react to that, those other retailers?

Sir Stanley Kalms6:00

Well at one stage one of my suppliers took me out to lunch, which was a big thing in those days, and gave me a very nice gentle warning. He said, you're very aggressive, you know, this is a gentlemanly business and you really shouldn't be quite so demanding and try and steal other people's business. And I think that was one of the turning points of my life. I went back to the office, wrote him my classical letter, The World is My Oyster, and from that moment I was determined that nothing was going to stop me.

Presenter6:26

And quite the opposite effect.

Sir Stanley Kalms6:28

It had absolutely the opposite effect and the guy who actually who warned me eventually took a job with me as a stockkeeper.

Presenter6:28

Yeah.

Presenter6:35

Let's uh start at the very beginning though. It um it was a ph a photographic studio your father had, wasn't it?

Sir Stanley Kalms6:40

He had a studio, which usually took pictures of little babies.

Presenter6:43

But he was a photographer.

Sir Stanley Kalms6:44

No, he wasn't, but he had a photographer who did that. He just ran the business. My father started the business just before the war, and during the war, it was a photographic studio. And it was a good business, because the troops were away and people wanted photographs sent backwards and forwards. After the war, the business declined, and when I came into the business in 1948, the studio business was really in decline, and I started to sell the few cameras that were available.

Presenter7:09

Where did the name Dixons come in?

Sir Stanley Kalms7:10

That was just bought off the shelf. It was rather lucky that it was a good name.

Presenter7:14

You were very young. I mean, I think you were sixteen when you first started running the shop.

Sir Stanley Kalms7:15

Yes, I was.

Sir Stanley Kalms7:17

Yes, I was sixteen. I left school following the headmaster's report, intending to go back, but I was so successful in the first few weeks there was no question this was my forte.

Presenter7:27

So give me a give me a snapshot then of Stanley Carm's age sixteen, you know, behind the counter.

Sir Stanley Kalms7:34

Well, I was pretty horrible. I was very aggressive, very sarcastic, not to the customer, but to everybody else. It was just my trait, uh insecurity, I suppose. But the customer got terrific service.

Presenter7:45

Tell me about your second effort.

Sir Stanley Kalms7:47

My second uh choice is Charles Trenay La Maire. I didn't have much of a youth. I was all into business very quickly, but this was a tune of the time. And so although I I wasn't one of the boys and sort of the scene, this was the one tune that I recollect of my youth.

Speaker 38:03

Aber se monque.

Speaker 38:09

Love it.

Speaker 38:13

Oh I don't see.

Speaker 38:16

Belong des Golficola

Speaker 38:20

Adi was late to dance on La May.

Speaker 38:26

There were no filly songs on.

Speaker 38:28

The other

Speaker 38:33

Lumber

Presenter8:33

Charles Trunet singing La Mer. Let's go back a bit earlier, Stanley Carms. Um you'd have been a young boy at the outbreak of war, what, seven or eight years old. What what was your experience of it? Were you bombed? Do you remember all that?

Speaker 38:33

Check.

Sir Stanley Kalms8:46

Well, I remember the day war broke out and the sirens and rushing down to the shelters and then we lived in North London during most of the Blitz. And it was only towards the end of the war when the doodle bugs came that my dad said, Come on, you kids, this is dangerous. And he packed us all off to a most horrible boarding house in Blackpool, where we stayed about three or four weeks. During that period, he came back and was living in our house in Hendam. And one night a doodlebug fell in the field behind and virtually destroyed the house. And it just so happened that he was in the house afterwards. He wasn't hurt. He came back to the house to see it semi-destroyed. And the phone rang, that was still working. It was my mother from Blackpool. How are you, darling? Is everything all right? Yes, of course everything's all right. He said, would you mind going to my wardrobe and bringing me this, that and the other? And my dad loved telling this story. He said he couldn't find the wardrobe. He was standing in a room with a telephone. And it's a sort of a family story and it's actually quite touching and a sign of what happened in those horrible days.

Presenter9:44

Good.

Presenter9:47

How important has your your Jewish background been to you during life? Your father was a was a Russian Jew, I think. His grandfather came from Russia and your mother's family came from Poland.

Sir Stanley Kalms9:56

Mother's family lives in Poland. My mother was born in Poland, my father was born in England.

Presenter10:01

But how much how much has it influenced you? It's obviously a huge part of you, isn't it?

Sir Stanley Kalms10:01

How much is so?

Sir Stanley Kalms10:06

I think it's a total part of me. There's no aspect of my life that isn't continuously based on a Jewish attitude and philosophy.

Presenter10:14

So you you can be tough and competitive in business, as you've described, aggressive as you said, but but but

Presenter10:20

The the ethical approach, the the the need to be totally ethical is always there, is it?

Sir Stanley Kalms10:25

There's nothing I've ever done that hasn't been based on the history of the of the Talmud, of the way Jews have to behave in the world, in business. It totally dominates every single action I've ever taken.

Presenter10:37

So when there've been bumpy patches when Dixon's has been accused of not behaving quite properly, and in all businesses that happens o when they've been going as long as yours, that must cut very deep with you.

Sir Stanley Kalms10:45

Okay, this

Sir Stanley Kalms10:48

It it does, but I mean it is the exception because you set the standards. Clearly in a very large business there will be moments where someone doesn't observe the the the philosophy of the company and you just have to correct it. I mean I get annoyed and upset, but it doesn't it doesn't shape my belief in what I've started to do is right.

Presenter11:05

No, but I just wo of course. But I just wonder what you do then. Do you kind of call a huge staff meeting and address the troops and say, you know, we tell them that you just can't they cannot behave like this?

Sir Stanley Kalms11:14

For this

Sir Stanley Kalms11:16

If there was a scenario where we were doing something which I didn't agree with, certainly we would we would correct that straight away.

Presenter11:23

But have you done that in your time?

Sir Stanley Kalms11:25

I've never had to do it. I mean, there's been occasions where we've done things wrong and you pay the penalty for it. But I've known the f the core philosophy of the business has never been impinged. It's only people not performing correctly. That is actually very much part of Jewish philosophy. You set the rules, but you accept there will be exceptions. You will break the rules. And we have penalties and punishments for those who break the rules.

Sir Stanley Kalms11:48

Next record. Well, my next record is very meaningful to me. It's a cantor singing Kolnidre. Kolnidre is the introduction of Yon Kippur. It starts at dusk. The synagogues will be very crowded at this time. There will be an atmosphere. We're not going to eat for 25 hours. It's the moment of repentance, of self-analysis. And you go into the synagogue. And there's an atmosphere really of excitement and tension. And the cantor will then sing the opening bars of Kolnidre, which is a liturgical song, and it's about repentance. And this is the most emotional moment of the year for a Jew.

Speaker 211:50

Uh

Speaker 312:28

Passa

Presenter12:57

Leo Rosenblut singing Colnidre, and and it goes on and on, you say.

Sir Stanley Kalms13:01

Yeah.

Presenter13:02

For how long?

Sir Stanley Kalms13:03

Two hours and then thirteen hours the next day, yes. Non-stop.

Presenter13:05

Come on.

Presenter13:07

Let's go back um in your life again to to where you met your wife, because it it seems to me you've almost approached it perhaps in the same way as you did business with a great determination and great speed, didn't you?

Sir Stanley Kalms13:18

I met my wife at a dance I was organising, it was a Jewish dance, and she came in. I saw this beautiful girl come in and go in, and I was at the door, so I couldn't go over several hours later. And then I went up and asked her to dance, or rather I sent a friend to ask her,'cause I was very shy. And she said yes, and our eyes met, and that was it. One dance, and I said, This is my little sweetheart. We met on Saturday. I took her to Battersea Fan Fair on Monday, which he thought was appalling. On Thursday, I took her to Richmond Park and proposed. Friday, I came home and said to my dad, I'm going to get married. He nearly threw me out of the house. He said, Don't we meet the girl? Could we perhaps have a chance of seeing her? Is she Jewish? Yes, yes, yes. But I proposed in five days and it took a long time to get married because of in those days you just listened to your parents. So we waited fifteen months. And we'd been married a long time. More than 50 years. No, well not quite. I think about 48 years.

Speaker 214:11

There we were.

Speaker 214:15

Yeah.

Presenter14:15

Fifty years.

Presenter14:18

Um

Sir Stanley Kalms14:19

Uh it's been an outstandingly successful marriage.

Presenter14:19

Yeah.

Presenter14:21

But was that again all part of the game plan of this ambitious young man, as it were, that you I mean you because I know you've you've said before now that you you have to get married to counter the pressure of business as it were because that's what a family does for you. It's all part of the plan.

Sir Stanley Kalms14:36

Uh

Presenter14:36

I think I won't.

Sir Stanley Kalms14:37

I think I wanted to get married. I wanted to settle down. I w I I saw from my home life with my parents the importance of home life. The ch the luck is if you find the right person. Obviously I was lucky because we've been together all this time and you know haven't had a row yet.

Presenter14:51

But there's more than that, isn't there? That if you've got this kind of home base, which, as you say, is very important to you and it's part of your religion, part of your upbringing, but also you're you're then so strong you can go out and conquer the world.

Sir Stanley Kalms15:01

Well, that is an outcome of that policy.

Presenter15:03

Hmm.

Sir Stanley Kalms15:03

And I was very lucky, so the moment I got married I had the secure home, had my castle, and I could get home to that castle and whatever the pressures there were outside.

Presenter15:03

Yeah.

Presenter15:12

How many children have you had?

Sir Stanley Kalms15:13

I've got three sons.

Presenter15:14

And none of them miss coming into the business.

Sir Stanley Kalms15:16

Now they've all had their little run at the business and they think that they're better out of it. They rather enjoy developing themselves independently and I'm proud of them for that.

Presenter15:24

But you must be disappointed nevertheless.

Sir Stanley Kalms15:26

There's an aspect that when I retire next year the business is no longer part of the family. But I've never seen the business anyway other than part of my career to develop. It's it's big, it's important, it's self sustaining. I don't feel paternalistic about it in those terms.

Presenter15:42

On the other hand, businesses like that that are set up by families tend to founder actually. If you look at, I suppose, Sainsbury's, Marks and Spencer's, they begin to falter anyway when those

Presenter15:53

Founding fathers move away and there's no member of the family, the original family left.

Sir Stanley Kalms15:56

Well, I hope not. I I th that is true in many cases, but I hope you put off that day for a long time. Certainly when I leave the company it will have A one plus management, and I hope they'll survive and run and grow the business for many years to come.

Presenter16:10

Equip number four.

Sir Stanley Kalms16:11

My next record is really a reflection of where I am in life. Having reached nearly 70, I start to think about my immortality. And this song by Frank Sinatra, My Way, in some way reflects a great life of a man who's been there, done that, and now beginning to think about the last phase of his life. I love his singing. He sings My Way.

Speaker 316:35

I plan

Speaker 316:37

Each jotted course.

Speaker 316:40

Each careful step

Speaker 316:44

On the byway

Speaker 316:48

More

Speaker 316:50

Much more than this.

Speaker 316:53

I did it

Speaker 316:55

Ma

Presenter16:58

Frank Sinatra and My Way. Well, your way was very exciting, Stanley Calms along the byway. You you floated the business in'sixty two, by which time you got sixteen shops and you got your own brand and you've got a mail order and

Presenter17:11

But at that point you could say, I've made my million, I'm a millionaire. That must have been a great feeling.

Sir Stanley Kalms17:17

It was a great feeling to have money in your pocket, but it really wasn't the real impact. I mean, going public was actually one of the great burdens that one placed upon oneself. All of a sudden, from a private company that didn't have to account to anybody, all of a sudden you were very accountable to shareholders. And in fact, the two or three years afterwards were perhaps the toughest years I had from going from a private autocratic organisation to a public accounting business. And two or three years later, I had a fairly difficult year in business. All of a sudden, I was very conscious: have I failed? Have I run out of steam? I was thirty-three, and I felt that a total failure for about six months. It was a sort of the downturn that executives sometimes have, this little male menopause. It was a horrible period, and it happened that our figures that year weren't that good. And I thought that when they came out in August, the sky would open on me. And it so happens, and I was dreading the moment. And then we announced the figures, and nothing happened. My friends still spoke to me, the city still liked me, the shares didn't budge. And I remember going into the office and saying, boys, let's get going again. Come on. This was just in my mind. And it was lucky to have that sort of emotional breakdown early in my career. I think it gave me tremendous resilience in the years afterwards.

Speaker 217:27

All of a

Speaker 218:26

Yeah.

Presenter18:26

Yeah.

Presenter18:33

You've had all sorts of titles along the way, you know, whether it's sort of chief executive officer or chief operating officer or whatever it is, or chairman or executive chairman.

Presenter18:41

I don't know whether that's actually made much difference to the way you've done it, really, in all these years, has it?

Sir Stanley Kalms18:46

I don't think so. I think we I have learned to delegate, but I have been at the centre, I have been the pilot. The secret of management is to have key data in front of you so that you can monitor things.

Presenter18:51

Hmm.

Presenter18:56

Well, so you keep pulling up what's been sold so far today?

Sir Stanley Kalms18:58

Well, I can actually pull up what's been sold so far today and even at uh three thirty in the afternoon I know the daily sales.

Presenter19:05

But on Fridays you descend on shops unannounced.

Sir Stanley Kalms19:07

I I certainly visit some stores each week, yes, and I still get the figures phoned through to me on a Saturday night, so it's still old fashioned, handsome management.

Presenter19:17

And do do these stores ever score a hundred percent when you get go in there?

Sir Stanley Kalms19:21

No, you can't score a hundred percent with me, that would be uh impossible. But you can get the feel of the store whether the manager's in in the right track, and what was they're they're the easy ones, the toughies are when the manager is off the p off the pace.

Presenter19:33

Hmm.

Sir Stanley Kalms19:33

And then you have to sort of wind him up again and get it right.

Presenter19:36

Now how do you answer the critics? Because as you will know only too well, the commentators say that the main problem Dixons have is that the consumer doesn't love it. They shop in it, they like it, obviously, because the business is doing so well, but they don't feel affectionate towards it like they might we might towards Tesco's or Boots or something. It's a kind of cold, straight, hard business.

Sir Stanley Kalms19:57

Yes, if it's a cold, straight, hard business, it's a very successful cold, straight, hard business. I'm not quite sure how you can change that image. We're a multiple. I think that is just the type of criticism that one gets, that one has to learn to live with. I am conscious that you have to improve your service all the time, but we are not cuddly.

Presenter20:17

Well quite. You're not touchy feely. You don't feel you ought to inject a bit of that or Again, perhaps it's this whole business about the the personality of a business being dictated from the top. And as you say, what you like to do is to buy hard and sell hard, and that's the way it is in Dixon's.

Sir Stanley Kalms20:21

I'm not sure.

Sir Stanley Kalms20:31

Well one would assume that most of our customers like to buy this way today. This is what customers want. They get good value, they get good service, they may not get love and affection, but they get attention. I think if I went for the cuddly feeling, I think I would have I would not have that formula.

Presenter20:47

Well

Sir Stanley Kalms20:47

I don't have that formula. Maybe the local dealer has that formula.

Presenter20:51

The most amazing thing in all of this cutting edge stuff, because you've been as it happened purely by luck, I suspect, at the at the turn of the twentieth century, you know, you were in the most exciting business there was, electronics. The most fascinating thing is that you're not very good at it yourself. You don't use a computer. You can't

Sir Stanley Kalms21:08

No, I I don't have any technology. I'm I suffer from real techno fear and in fact have difficulty in pressing the right buttons on my telephone. But that that's not important. I mean some people are like that.

Presenter21:20

Sure, but do you still write telephone numbers in a little blackboard?

Sir Stanley Kalms21:23

Yeah.

Presenter21:25

He said, reaching to his pocket and waving it.

Sir Stanley Kalms21:28

Yeah.

Presenter21:28

Yeah.

Sir Stanley Kalms21:29

Well, this programme I seem to have a strong streak of nostalgia within me which I hadn't quite realized before. But what I wanted now to do is to get out of that mood and perhaps be a little bit more contemporary and wind myself up a little bit. So I I th I I fancy uh something from a scene. All his overtures are very exciting and noisy and I thought uh The Thieving Magpie.

Presenter22:49

Part of the overture to Racine is the thieving magpie played by the London Classical Players conducted by Roger Norrington.

Presenter22:55

So, Sir Stanley Combs, as a as a leading retailer and a a moneyed man, obviously, you've been able to have quite a bit of influence at number ten over the years, haven't you? Been close to successive Tory leaders. How close were you to Margaret Thatcher?

Sir Stanley Kalms23:09

No, I don't think I've had any influence whatsoever. I have had a good personal relationship with the Conservative Prime Ministers, but not close, but just uh working and understanding that I'm sympathetic and supportive of Conservative policy.

Presenter23:21

I've seen you described as a as a shoulder to lean on, and uh, you know, a a good person for keeping up morale. I just wondered when and how she or they might have leaned.

Sir Stanley Kalms23:31

Well, I think that uh no one's lean, I assure you of that. Uh but I have been supportive both personally, vocally and financially, and I'm seen as a sort of a robust conservative. And that's I have a series of views of my own, and I just project those views. Sometimes they're listened to, but mainly they fall on indifferent ears. You can't actually persuade politicians. But I am supportive of the market economy.

Presenter23:55

Can't you persuade politicians?

Sir Stanley Kalms23:57

I doubt if you can. I think the pressures of political office are such. You can slowly. But I think we're only all little drops of all little drops of ideas on to fairly robust umbrellas which politicians shelter under.

Presenter24:11

But you've been pushing at an open door, certainly, I I suspect, with both both Margaret Thatcher and William Hague, in terms of your being anti-Europe, anti-Euro.

Sir Stanley Kalms24:18

Right.

Sir Stanley Kalms24:19

Yeah, yeah.

Presenter24:19

You want to save the pound, as they put it for you.

Sir Stanley Kalms24:20

I think in those two areas I would certainly have the total support of Lady Thatcher and William Hague and I hope the next Conservative leader.

Presenter24:29

But I would have thought with your family history of fleeing persecution in in Eastern Europe you would have been much more likely to have wanted unity, to have been keener to see cooperation.

Sir Stanley Kalms24:41

First of all, I totally believe in Europe. I'm not against Europe. I'm against giving up the pound for the Euro. I think you do have to differentiate. I think the European idea of a single market is first class, and I hope that will stop further wars and antagonism. But I think the economic policies are wrong, and I think the political issue of a European master state without a democratic process leaves me very concerned.

Presenter25:06

So you're going to be manning the barricades, are you? This is going to be your last great battle.

Sir Stanley Kalms25:10

I will be ready to man the barricade, and I certainly will be marching down Whitehall when the moment comes.

Sir Stanley Kalms25:17

I do like writing a lot, but I can't write in silence. I like a background sound. And when I sit at a desk or a table with pen poised, I want a sound filling my mind which doesn't distract me from my thoughts. So I've chosen Air on a G string from Bach Suite No. 3, which I think is the most beautiful Adagio music.

Presenter26:41

Air on a G string from Bach suite number three in D major, played by the Berlin Philharmonic, conducted by Herbert von Karrion. What about the future of your business, Stanley Combs? You've been lucky, as we say, you're in the right business at the right time, but aren't there also the seeds of its own destruction in it? Because all those kinds of things, electronic goods, white goods, brown goods and so on, can be sold more cheaply on the Internet. Indeed, some of your former employees are doing just that, aren't they?

Sir Stanley Kalms27:07

I think that since I've been in business I've always been up against intense competition and it's never been competition that slowed my growth. I think we'll always be front front players.

Presenter27:17

But it's all about price, isn't it? And on the Internet, because they haven't got the overheads and so on, that they can undercut you.

Sir Stanley Kalms27:22

Well, I don't think the Internet is a serious form of business, quite frankly. I think the Internet overhead, when it's truly costed, is quite high. When you are selling through the Internet, it's not just a question of sitting there and taking an order through the Internet. You've got to get the goods from wherever they are into the customer's home. And it's quite an expensive process.

Presenter27:26

That'd be good.

Presenter27:40

So you don't think they can undercut you enough to dent your business?

Sir Stanley Kalms27:42

But yeah.

Sir Stanley Kalms27:43

I think the overhead of the Internet is such that it doesn't allow for rampant price cutting and those who are offering these very low prices are like all discounters. They have a short, sweet life. But there are many ways to market, and we I've been used to that all my life. I've never ever had a period when I wasn't being competed at and having people biting at my ankles.

Presenter28:03

You've seen a lot of them off. I mean, all those rumbolos and electricity boards and people. But the c the Carphone Warehouse dented you, didn't it?

Sir Stanley Kalms28:03

You see

Sir Stanley Kalms28:05

Present.

Sir Stanley Kalms28:07

Yeah, but

Sir Stanley Kalms28:10

Well, on the contrary, the Carphone Warehouse was a very nice business. It stimulated us and we set up our own and have done dramatically well. I think there'll always be a case for niche retailers to run alongside. That is what the market economy is about. It allows opportunity. It's a great battle out there. And I enjoy that competitiveness.

Sir Stanley Kalms28:31

But I'm very keen on close your eyes music, things I can sit back, actually close my eyes, relax, and hear beautiful sounds drifting through the room. And so I've chosen Beim Schlaffer Geyen, which I think is beautifully sung by Elizabeth Schwarzkopf.

Speaker 329:12

Oh what the heat

Presenter29:43

Part of Beim Schlafengen from Strauss's Fallos song, sung by Elizabeth Schwarzkopf with the Radio Symphony Orchestra of Berlin, conducted by George Sell.

Presenter29:51

I suspect, Stanley, being the kind of man you've described, so successful outside the home, that you're possibly not terribly practical within it. Would I be right?

Sir Stanley Kalms30:00

Yes, there's a.

Sir Stanley Kalms30:03

Calm tradition that one should never be able to knock a nailing straight, and my dad passed that down to me from his dad. We are totally useless with our hands, absolutely incapable of doing anything manually.

Presenter30:15

So you're not an ideal castaway, really, are you? You're going to be a bit um stuck on this island, aren't you?

Sir Stanley Kalms30:20

No, I think I'd be an absolute ideal castaway. I'm very resourceful.

Presenter30:23

You'd have your optimism, your determination, your aggression.

Sir Stanley Kalms30:27

I cannot see myself rolling myself into a hole and covering myself. No, I would find a way to be rescued.

Presenter30:35

Last record.

Sir Stanley Kalms30:36

My last record is from my favourite opera, Tosca, and it's by Cavadosi, who realises he's shortly going to be shot. And it's a song about his reminiscences with his meeting with Tosca. And I think it is a very sad song. It's the type of song that I sometimes would like to sing to my wife when the time comes.

Speaker 330:58

Can you check on this turn?

Speaker 331:13

We have lost your Lord.

Speaker 331:19

El un pasos fiona vararena.

Speaker 331:29

Prabhu Yafrakram.

Speaker 331:40

Father of Friend Rachel

Speaker 331:50

Oh the chivatio

Presenter31:58

Giuseppe Di Stefano as Cavaradossi singing his Aria et Lucivan L'Estelle from Act Three of Puccini's Tosca with the orchestra and chorus of La Scala Milan, conducted by Victor De Sabata.

Presenter32:09

I pick up from odd things you've said, uh, Stanley, that that you know, you have a sense of encroaching age, intimations of mortality, that kind of thing. Is that what you feel these days?

Presenter32:20

Not that you look it or show it or seem to be it, but somehow

Sir Stanley Kalms32:20

Mother tune.

Sir Stanley Kalms32:24

Well, I suppose all my life I've been into planning and thinking of the future, and if a man who's approaching seventy doesn't start thinking and planning about his his final ten or fifteen years, then he's missing an opportunity to capitalize the best years of his life.

Presenter32:38

But you you've announced um to the city that you're going at the end of next year.

Sir Stanley Kalms32:42

And of next Jai will pass on the pilot ship.

Presenter32:46

How tough is that going to be for you?

Sir Stanley Kalms32:48

There probably will be a short emotional change, but I am prepared for it. I have a very full life and I do I always think forward. I'm a very positive thinker. I I'm not you brought out the nostalgia in me to day, but essentially I'm not a nostalgic person. I don't have I don't allow too much luxury of nostalgia. So I think forward on all the good things I can still do.

Presenter33:07

Now what about if you could only take one of those eight records with you, only one? Which which one would you single out?

Sir Stanley Kalms33:12

I think it would be air on a G string. I think, the adagio, I can keep running and running and running continuously while I rethink about the next few years and how I get off this damned island.

Presenter33:23

What about your book?

Sir Stanley Kalms33:24

My book uh well, I w I've chosen Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations. I mean there are many editions of this, and I've always wanted to study it and read it, and I would love to be able to sit down and slowly work my way through it.

Presenter33:37

And your luxury.

Sir Stanley Kalms33:38

My luxury would be between a pack of cards and a telescope. I want both of those two things, but I'm very keen on bridge and I'm very keen on playing cards, so I think I'd choose the cards. It would amuse me during any moments when I'm a little bit bored or restless.

Presenter33:54

Sir Stanley Combs, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs.

Speaker 234:04

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