Bob Worcester

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 two, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:30

My castaway this week is a pollster. He's made a fortune out of discovering what you think about politics, religion, royalty, groceries and almost everything else in your lives. Born in Middle America, he was forced to grow up quickly after the death of his father when he was thirteen. Soon he was writing down ten things he planned to do in life. One of them was to live in England, and this he achieved in his mid thirties, and he bought control of the market research company for which he'd been working.

Presenter0:58

He's been running it ever since. His business is the touchstone of the consumer age upon which politicians, businesses, and services depend to test their opinions, policies, and products. Now in his late sixties, he remains as passionate about his life and work as ever. You only pass this way once, he says, and if you don't do everything you possibly can, see everything, go everywhere, meet everybody, and make as good a contribution as you can.

Presenter1:25

You've missed it.

Presenter1:26

He is the Chairman of Morray, Market and Opinion Research International, Bob Wooster.

Presenter1:31

So what else, Bob, was on that list of ten things you were going to achieve, and have you achieved them all?

Bob Worcester1:36

Well, I haven't achieved them all, but things that I have achieved include writing a book, I think I'm on my twelfth or thirteenth at the moment, being in a movie. There was a movie called Julia, The Lillian Hellman Story, that starred Jane Fonda and Essa Redgrave, Jason Robards and Bob Wooster, only Bob Wooster's part was about three seconds.

Presenter1:58

We didn't spot you there. But obviously you'd have to be very confident to set those out and to achieve them. And that is what you have, isn't it? A kind of confidence in yourself, a natural confidence.

Bob Worcester2:08

Well, I'd like to think so, but on the other hand, you can set out targets for your life, as I did when I was about fifteen, and not necessarily achieve them, and I have failed to achieve two conspicuously. I am still as hopeless at French as I was when I was fifteen, although that was on my list, and I have yet to learn to fly. So those are the two things that were on that list that I have failed.

Presenter2:33

Yes, but you're s a success.

Bob Worcester2:33

Yeah.

Presenter2:36

The quality that you have to have, though, Bob, above all others in order to do what you do is integrity. We have to be able to trust what you're saying, because otherwise there's no point in listening to you if you're not telling us the truth. You must on occasions have had to get pretty tough with your clients. I mean, have you ever sacked any of your clients because they wanted you to massage or manipulate the information?

Bob Worcester3:01

Just two.

Bob Worcester3:03

Robert Maxwell and Sir James Goldsmith, and they both wanted to use us for their own ends. In the case of Robert Maxwell it was that he wanted to see the results of the surveys that he was commissioning before he would allow them to be published. And if he didn't like the results, he was going to bury them. And I said, Well, that's your prerogative as publisher, mister Maxwell but my terms and conditions of contract say that if they haven't been published within seven days of the intended publication date that I'm free to give them away. I don't know about that, he said. It's my money. And of course we know now it wasn't his money.

Presenter3:41

But that's how you guard yourself, is it? Against being used, as it were, or your information that you supply being used. You say, If you don't use it, I've got the right to publish it in seven days.

Bob Worcester3:50

Well, that's one constraint that we put on our clients. But a second one, of course, is that if they come to us with a questionnaire and we don't like the questionnaire, we say thank you very much, but goodbye. And that's how Sir James Goldsmith was sacked, because I'd done one or two things for his referendum party.

Bob Worcester4:06

Which he was.

Bob Worcester4:08

pretty unhappy about because they showed that he was going nowhere, as indeed he went nowhere. And he wanted me to change the wording of the question, to ask a conditional if he kind of a question that would boost his ratings. And we said thank you very much, but uh no thank you.

Presenter4:23

Tell me about your first record.

Bob Worcester4:25

The first record really should be the theme music for this program, because it's from an O'Shaughnessy poem, The Music Makers.

Bob Worcester4:35

And it begins We are the music makers, And we are the dreamers of dreams, Wandering by lone sea breakers, Which I'll be doing a lot of, I guess, And sitting by desolate streams.

Speaker 34:58

The dream was the dream was long.

Speaker 35:17

On drink my Lord's in praise.

Presenter5:45

Part of Elgar's We Are the Music Makers, performed by the London Philharmonic Choir and Orchestra conducted by Bryden Thompson. Let's go back to your very, very beginnings now. I indicated in the introduction there was this major turning point in your life when your father died very suddenly when you were thirteen. How did it happen?

Bob Worcester6:02

Well, he had a heart attack. He had a history of heart disease. He'd uh had a heart attack in his thirties.

Bob Worcester6:08

And he couldn't get insurance after that and had another heart attack when he was in his late latish forties when I was thirteen. And that being an only child threw us right into a change in our very middle class, my mother playing golf in the morning and bridge in the afternoon with her circle and taking part in charity work and the like into needing to work and my jeopardy in my university and I had to undertake three jobs while I was at university to work my way through university.

Presenter6:45

So one mini I mean, life before and life after the death of your father was hugely different because of this lack of money.

Bob Worcester6:45

Bro.

Bob Worcester6:50

And very different.

Presenter6:51

But what about psychologically? I mean, a dreadful thing for an adolescent boy to to lose his father like that. Did he just sort of get up one morning and go to work and not come back? How did it happen?

Bob Worcester7:01

Well, he went off on a trip, and he did something very unusual. I was I was at a friend's house, and he stopped off to say goodbye.

Bob Worcester7:10

uh to the friend's house, and he'd never done that before.

Bob Worcester7:13

and I never saw him again.

Presenter7:15

And your mother.

Presenter7:17

It pretty well broke her up, didn't it?

Bob Worcester7:19

Well, it did. Uh she she became an alcoholic.

Presenter7:19

But not surprisingly.

Bob Worcester7:23

and uh went through a very bad period uh well I was fourteen and fifteen. But she discovered Alcoholics Anonymous.

Bob Worcester7:32

She never took another drink.

Bob Worcester7:35

From then until the day she died she met my stepfather, NAA. She was very active.

Bob Worcester7:41

during that period of her life.

Presenter7:43

But again, for you, age thirteen.

Presenter7:47

In a way, because you were virtually an only child, weren't you? You had a half-brother who was much, much older.

Bob Worcester7:49

The half-brother was much, much older. Oh, he didn't live with us, so I was an only child.

Presenter7:51

You had to look after this alcoholic woman.

Bob Worcester7:56

Yeah.

Presenter7:57

That must have been tough.

Bob Worcester7:59

Well, it was, but I was very much supported by my environment in my high school.

Bob Worcester8:04

The group of friends that I had were incredibly supportive.

Presenter8:08

And you still see all those friends there? They're kind of family, are they?

Bob Worcester8:11

Well, they they were. They're at some distance because, of course, they're in Kansas City. But I recently went back to my fiftieth high school class reunion, and you know, we all, as you get to my age, think our short term memory is fading, but our long term memory was pretty good. I went back to the fiftieth class reunion, and I found out my long term memory is not that good either.

Presenter8:15

But I really

Presenter8:29

Record number two.

Bob Worcester8:31

During that high school days and into university, we had a wonderful, wonderful social environment. I had my first dinner jacket when I was thirteen and started going to dances, and uh we danced the night away and the the record that is most in my mind of that period is uh Stan Kenton's orchestra and particularly this most danceable of music called Intermission Riff.

Speaker 39:15

Yeah.

Presenter9:55

Stan Kenton and his orchestra and Intermission Riff, and you can name every artist on on the track, I can tell. And you danced at school to that. What what what sort of a figure would you have cut, Bob, at at school?

Bob Worcester10:08

Well, what kind of a figure man about town, so to speak, very active in everything I was

Presenter10:13

Uh

Speaker 310:13

Sporty.

Bob Worcester10:14

No, not particularly sporty. I was never very sporty because uh I'm very badly myopic. So when I I didn't see the ball coming at me, I saw three balls coming at me and I didn't know which one to catch. So I was also uh one of the youngest boys in the class, and several of us had skipped a class earlier.

Presenter10:33

So you were bright, you were fast-tracked, were you?

Bob Worcester10:34

Yeah, we were fast track. There were a group of us. It was a fast track school, and it was a very, very bright bunch of kids. Nearly everybody at the school went to went to college, and and nearly everybody in the class at college has done well since.

Presenter10:49

But you're obviously therefore very focused. Probably because you were on your own, as it were, that you'd lost your father. Would you say that's what it was, that you looked at yourself and were constantly asking yourself how you were going to make a living?

Bob Worcester11:02

It wasn't, Sue, that I was concerned about making a living. I knew I was going to make a living, so much as the dedication to the idea that you only come this way but once, and if you don't do it all now, as you said earlier, you're not going to get another chance. And I've felt very strongly about that since as long as I can remember. And so my old blind aunt, long since deceased, told me that when I was aged three she could remember me saying I was going to live in London sometime during my life. Now I'm sure at age three I didn't have any idea why or even where it was, but I was going to do it, and I've done it.

Presenter11:42

Record number three.

Bob Worcester11:44

Record number three is really the transition record, Dvorak's New World Symphony. Here's a European going to the United States, as de Tocqueville did in 1836 to 1840, writing Democracy in America, a book that had a tremendous impact on me. So is Dvorak's New World Symphony. There was another record called Manhattan Towers that also had a huge impact, and I can remember lying on the floor with the lights out by myself, looking up at the ceiling, dreaming of being

Bob Worcester12:19

In Europe, being a traveler, leaving Kansas City and seeing the world.

Presenter13:19

Part of the second movement from Dvorak's New World Symphony played by the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Herbert von Karian and a piece of music that represents for my castaway Bob Wooster that transition between America and the UK. Coming over here, which you finally achieved, this ambition of yours, thirty-two years ago, came in the late sixties. It was very cleverly done because you've been working for McKinsey's, the management consultants in Washington, haven't you? Just give me a quick rundown on how you moved across the water.

Bob Worcester13:47

Well, I didn't move on their behalf, because they wouldn't let me come. Mackenzie had too many Yanks in the London office, and they were repatriating them back to the States.

Bob Worcester13:57

And so I was headhunted out of McKinsey to be the financial controller at Opinion Research Corporation, which was very much in the market research, opinion research business.

Bob Worcester14:09

And the chairman and chief executive looked at the outline of what I thought needed doing and said, How long will all this take you? And I said, three to four years, and you're going to be ready to go to Europe. And I want to head it up because I've always wanted to live in London. And three years and nine months later, we were on a flight over here to set up Mori in London.

Presenter14:31

And you bought them out. You you made it your own.

Bob Worcester14:32

That was four years later.

Presenter14:35

And you've been there ever since. Morrie was born. How knew how cutting edge was was

Bob Worcester14:38

How

Presenter14:42

polling and this kind of pollstering really then, because it had been around for some time. Hadn't Gallup, I think I read, had had forecast that Churchill would lose the forty five election.

Bob Worcester14:51

They did indeed, and I used to say to people, Look, Gallup have been here for thirty years, so what I'm doing is not new. But I set up Mori really to slice out a new part of the market, because what I was interested in was corporate image research, almost unknown in this country.

Presenter15:09

Drink.

Bob Worcester15:10

Employee Attitude Studies, again virtually unknown.

Presenter15:13

And being a man who who makes lists and sets himself targets, you would have had some very big names on your list. What kind of names did you get into the net early on, and which ones did it take you a very long time to

Bob Worcester15:20

Yeah.

Presenter15:26

Get over onto your

Bob Worcester15:27

Well, as you say, I am somebody who makes lists. And in the first year, when I first set up, I thought, when I have Shell and ICI as my clients, I will have made it. And both Shell and ICI were clients in the first year, I am happy to say. Then a few years later, after I had done work for the Prime Minister, as it was, Harold Wilson, and for the Labour Party for four or five years, my reputation was such that some media people asked me to do their public polling. So I got into that and decided when I have The Economist, which I did in 1975, 3rd of January 1975, the cover story on The Economist. But then after a few more years, I realized that until I had the Bank of England, the Church of England and the Crown as my clients, I wouldn't have made it. And Buckingham Palace fell into place in 1997.

Presenter16:18

You mentioned getting the cover story on The Economist, obviously engraved on on your memory the precise date. Is that part of what fires you? You want to you want it's journalistic in that sense. You want to make the story.

Bob Worcester16:31

My job is representing British public opinion as objectively and systematically as it's possible to do.

Bob Worcester16:40

In my professional career I have no other raison d'être.

Presenter16:44

So why do you remember the date that you got the cover story at the corner?

Bob Worcester16:46

I'm pretty good on numbers, but what what was your name?

Presenter16:50

Okay.

Presenter16:51

Record number four.

Bob Worcester16:53

Well, record number four is a transition again.

Bob Worcester16:57

I had sung with the choir in high school and with the choral group in university. And then I'd laid out for a while and I saw in the Evening Standard that the St. Bartholomew's Hospital Choir was doing Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. And I thought, I've always wanted to sing that. And the following year they said, well, we're going to do Mozart's Requiem. And it's just the most wonderful choral music.

Presenter18:25

The symphonic choir and orchestra of the Gulbenkin Foundation of Lisbon singing the Sanctus from Mozart's Requiem and the conductor was Michel Corboz.

Presenter18:34

You mentioned the big firms, Bob Wooster, that you worked for in the beginning, but you were then with the Labour Party, I think, for practically twenty years, from about nineteen seventy onwards.

Bob Worcester18:41

Ask him the

Bob Worcester18:43

Well, Harold Wilson was probably the best follower of my work that I ever had, the most absorbent client that I've ever ever had.

Presenter18:51

What do you mean when you say the best follower of your work? Do you mean that you were telling him what to do on the basis of what you were discovering the public thought?

Bob Worcester19:00

I would never tell him what to do. I would tell him what the public thought. And if he was a good politician, he would take that into account among the many things that he had to worry about. But on one memorable Saturday morning I presented the results of some fairly sophisticated multivariate analysis that showed to him that then as now, more people were movable on the issues of the National Health Service than any other single thing, and exactly who it was among the electorate who could be moved on that. And he moved Barbara Castle, who was then the health minister, into a more prominent position, changed his own speech to reflect that. He restructured the last week of the February 28, 1974 election campaign.

Bob Worcester19:51

to respond to public opinion. And that's what a politician should be doing, is not following the polls, but responding to what the polls are telling the people.

Bob Worcester20:03

are saying.

Presenter20:04

Which he eventually won, of course, that election, the Monday after the Thursday. Very eventually.

Bob Worcester20:06

The Monday after

Bob Worcester20:08

Very, very narrowly.

Presenter20:10

But that is what is riveting about it. As you say, you're deeply interested in politics. You care very much. You take on a specific political party, the Labour Party, as your client. How do you maintain objectivity? How come you don't go native?

Bob Worcester20:29

It's very difficult not to go native. You have a natural sympathy for your client, but I very, very early on, when I first set up Mori, said we are not anyone's advocate. We are providing information to our clients. So I can work on both sides.

Presenter20:45

Of course, but you're going in sitting down with Harold Wilson. He's asking your advice. You've just described how actually you can give him some advice which is going to make him more successful than he might otherwise be.

Bob Worcester20:57

I didn't give him advice, Sue. Let me be very clear about that. I remember one memorable time when I was presenting to effectively the Cabinet. It was the Campaign Committee with the Prime Minister, Jim Callahan, in the chair. And he asked me three questions, and I answered the first two. And I said, the third question, Prime Minister, calls for political judgment, and you don't pay me to take those or to make those. And he said, quite right, Bob, and moved right on.

Presenter21:24

Echo number five.

Bob Worcester21:26

Well, record number five is a Beethoven. It's the Missa Solemnis, and to me it's the greatest choral work that was ever written.

Presenter22:33

Part of the Annus Day from Beethoven's Missa Solemnis sung by the Monteverdi Choir with the English Baroque soloists conducted by John Elliott Gardner.

Presenter22:41

So, um, polls for general elections, Bob Wooster. This is what we we all really know you for. Seventy nine, eighty three, eighty seven, they were all kind of there or thereabouts, spot on, I think. In eighty seven you were.

Speaker 322:52

That's a

Presenter22:53

And then came 92, when John Major pulled off his shock seven-point victory and all the polls, including yours, had said Neil Kinnock was going to win. What went wrong?

Bob Worcester23:04

Well, let me correct it first, and that's that none of the polls said that Neil Kinnock was going to win. All of them said it was going to be a hung parliament. And what went wrong? It was a combination of things. There was perhaps 30 to 40 percent accounted for by late swing. And in a fast-moving election campaign, people do change their mind. And sometimes they go entirely or more or less entirely one direction. Sometimes they cancel each other out. So you've got equal numbers going from labor to conservative and conservative to labor or with the liberal Democrats or whoever they are in. But the principal thing is that the 1992 election was really guided by the 1981 census. And the surveys upon which we based our quotas were based on analysis of the composition by social class of this country.

Bob Worcester23:59

Eleven years after they were taken in the census.

Presenter24:03

And in the meantime we'd had Thatcherism.

Bob Worcester24:03

In the meantime, we

Bob Worcester24:05

Exactly.

Presenter24:05

And everybody jumped out of their boxes. So you'd got your quotas wrong.

Bob Worcester24:09

We got the clothes wrong, basically, and I think that was the majority.

Presenter24:11

Why wouldn't you have spotted that?

Bob Worcester24:13

Well, because there was no basis upon which to spot it, because the 91 census hadn't yet been published. But we all.

Presenter24:19

People knew what had happened in those Thatcher years. You know, the the class system changed itself. I mean, people who lived in council houses became homeowners. Blue collar workers might become white collar workers, but certainly had gone into tax. Many, many more people pay tax these days than ever they did years before. All of those things. Was that not remiss of you not to spot?

Bob Worcester24:39

We spotted it. We just didn't spot enough of it.

Presenter24:42

He didn't allow for it.

Bob Worcester24:43

We didn't allow enough, we'd allowed some for it. But that ten year period showed a bigger change in the class structure than any decade in a thousand years of English history.

Presenter24:55

But it was quite incredibly embarrassing, wasn't it?

Bob Worcester24:58

Was very embarrassing, yes.

Presenter25:00

Painful worse?

Presenter25:02

Painful.

Bob Worcester25:02

Painful? It wasn't painful in terms of the work.

Bob Worcester25:05

After the 1992 election, when the perception here, particularly at the BBC, was that we got it so horribly wrong wrong as that was, nonetheless, our business went up in the following quarter because polling is such a tiny, tiny proportion of the market research business, and even in my own company, as high profile as it is in polling, it's only two percent of our turnover.

Presenter25:25

I understand that, but you must have been terrified that this was the end of it.

Bob Worcester25:29

Oh, I wasn't terrified at all, Sue. I mean, we have ongoing contracts and, you know, business with

Presenter25:35

Yes, but you've been proved that you could get it terrible.

Bob Worcester25:38

Thank you.

Presenter25:38

Nope.

Bob Worcester25:38

Uh

Presenter25:38

Oh.

Bob Worcester25:38

Yeah.

Presenter25:38

Uh

Bob Worcester25:38

It wasn't terribly wrong. It wasn't terribly wrong. Most people in most kinds of surveys, whether you're talking about the internal communication surveys that we do here at the BBC or many other clients, commercial clients, charities, trade unions, all the variety of work that we do for people, three or four percentage points is neither here nor there. What they want to know is not that it's seven years.

Presenter26:00

But it is in the general election, that's the point.

Bob Worcester26:02

Of course it is. But they're not running general elections.

Presenter26:03

You must have.

Presenter26:05

No, but you must. I'm talking about you and general elections. At the following election and indeed this last one, you must have that kind of cold feeling inside just as the day itself approaches, thinking, let's check everything. Have we got it right this time?

Bob Worcester26:20

Every election day.

Bob Worcester26:22

Oh, what a terrible time. Nobody shoots craps with their lives and careers the way we do. And it's that we have faith in the robustness of the work that we do, and confidence that what we are doing is as objective and systematically done as possible, and that we are doing the best job we can. Nobody can ask us to do more than that, not even the BBC.

Presenter26:46

You really got it in for the V V C

Bob Worcester26:47

The B B C have really got it in for us.

Presenter26:49

Record number six.

Bob Worcester26:51

Well, record number six is probably the thing that uh I cannot listen to, at least the overture.

Bob Worcester26:58

without coming up all goosebumps and possibly tears, and that's the overture to Wagner's Lohengrin.

Presenter28:06

Part of the overture to Wagner's Lohengrin, played by the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Raphael Kubelik. Of course, Bob, in France in particular, and maybe in other countries, I don't know, the publication of polls during the course of an election campaign is banned.

Presenter28:23

There's a body of opinion in this country that thinks they ought to be as well. I think the accusation is that you distort the democratic process. What do you say to that?

Bob Worcester28:30

Well, I don't think all of that's true. It's true that about twenty six percent at the last measure would like to see the publication of opinion polls during general elections banned, but then put that in context that fourteen percent would like all election coverage on radio and television to be banned during general elections.

Presenter28:49

Yeah.

Bob Worcester28:49

So that puts it into some context.

Presenter28:52

But I would presume that you would like to see yourselves as, as we've said, totally objective, but also as a kind of innocent bystander.

Presenter29:02

During the course of an election campaign, but you're not, are you? Because what you are telling us affects what we think the next step.

Bob Worcester29:05

Because what you are telling us is affect

Bob Worcester29:08

That's excellent. I think that's very good. What we are is not innocent bystanders, but conveyors of information, objectively and systematically

Bob Worcester29:20

Derived from the British electorate themselves. As to their intention. As long as it's accurate. Oh, absolutely. And it's accurate in 99 cases out of 100 to within 3 or 4 percentage points. But to let the British public know that there's likely to be a low turnout, to show that one party is ahead and one party is behind, gives an incentive for both sides to turn out. And after all, in a democratic society, you want to have a high turnout.

Presenter29:53

But the election the last election was a very low turnout, and there are some people who would say that was the fault of the pollsters because you were predicting that there was it was a foregone conclusion. Labour was going to walk it, and indeed they did. And therefore people didn't bother to turn out because they thought I can't affect this election.

Bob Worcester30:00

There's

Bob Worcester30:10

I know there are some people who say that, there are some people in the media who say that, and some politicians who say that, but the facts are.

Presenter30:16

It probably sounds old

Bob Worcester30:16

Uh

Presenter30:16

Members of the public.

Bob Worcester30:17

Oh, I'm sure that's the case. But the facts are different because if you look back at 1997, the polls were predicting a large majority for the Labour Party. And in 1983, when Mrs. Thatcher got a 143 percent majority, they were certainly predicting a huge majority. And yet you had turnouts in the mid-70s in those elections. It wasn't apathy in this election. It was disengagement. People were not voting because the polls said that the Labour Party was going to win. They were not voting because they were fed up with the politicians and the media and the way they covered the election.

Presenter30:54

Record number seven.

Bob Worcester30:55

Well, record number seven stays with Faulkner. I was tempted, as of course all Wagnerians are, to have all my eight records Wagner, but uh it's Wagner's Parceval, and the chalice scene at the end of the first act is probably the high point of the operatic experience in my life.

Presenter32:11

The orchestra and chorus of the Vienna State Opera with Take of the Bread from the chalice scene at the end of Act One of Wagner's Parsifau, and that was conducted by Sir George Schulte. You're uh sixty-eight now, Bob Wooster. You made yourself a multi-millionaire, they say. You go into work still every day, or you work every day, anyway. The most satisfying thing surely is that you've lived up to your own expectations.

Bob Worcester32:36

Certainly that I've been able to build the business that I have.

Bob Worcester32:40

is very satisfying.

Bob Worcester32:42

I'm proud of the sons that I've raised. They're doing well. And I'm certainly pleased to be involved in so many things other than the business because I've spent the last 30 years as a pluralist doing four or five jobs at one time. But the thing I get most personal satisfaction out of these days is working as a non-executive director at the Medway Hospital, because here is a business that's a 100 million pound business. It operates 365 days a year, 24 hours a day, in a perpetual state of crisis because the decisions they make there are about life and death, literally. And we're winning.

Bob Worcester33:22

I read so much negative publicity about the National Health Service, and I think

Bob Worcester33:27

That's not my hospital.

Presenter33:29

So take you away from it all, put you on a desert island, alone with all your thoughts and opinions and your facts and your figures. Would you survive? Would you make it without

Bob Worcester33:39

Huh.

Presenter33:40

With that low boredom threshold of yours?

Bob Worcester33:40

Hello board and

Bob Worcester33:42

Oh, no, no, no, no, no. I'd certainly make it. I'd love to have a scuba mask and snorkel because I'd be cataloging the fish that were there and the coral and the reef and mapping the thing. I don't know how big this desert island is going to be, but there's going to be flora and fauna available for me to catalog and to count and to put in their boxes and to cross-analyze. And I'm pretty excited about it, actually. As long as it's warm, I tell you, I wouldn't like to be in the outer Hebrides or someplace where I was cold all the time.

Speaker 234:18

Last record.

Bob Worcester34:19

Well, the last record is the finale of the Sans Organ Symphony. To me it is the ending of all endings, and so uh the organ symphony will have to be my finale.

Presenter35:31

Part of the finale of St. Saint's organ symphony in C minor with the Orquestre du Capitole de Toulouse, conducted by Michel Plassant. If you could only take one of those eight records, Paul Pusta, which one would you take?

Bob Worcester35:44

Well, I think it would have to be the Saint-Cent.

Bob Worcester35:50

It is

Bob Worcester35:52

The one piece of music that I've listened to probably most in my life.

Presenter35:56

What about your book?

Bob Worcester35:58

Decker

Bob Worcester35:59

GLOBES AT GREENWHC The National Maritime Museum at Greenwich has the greatest collection of globes

Bob Worcester36:07

In the world.

Presenter36:07

What sort of claims?

Bob Worcester36:09

all sorts of globes terrestrial globes, celestial globes. It's a book for admiring, absorbing, for reading again and again. It would teach me history, geography, cartography, astronomy, politics, art.

Bob Worcester36:24

a metallurgy, a bit of languages, philosophy, and above all patience.

Presenter36:29

Sounds right up your street. What about your luxury?

Bob Worcester36:32

Well, to accompany the book, I'd like a pair of celestial and terrestrial globes, so that I could at night watch the stars and study them, and the terrestrial globe would give me thought about where I would visit and what I would do in all of those other islands that I wouldn't be able to be on, and indeed the continents and cities that I would value seeing either again or for the first time.

Presenter36:59

Professor Robert Wooster, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs.

Bob Worcester37:03

Such a pleasure.

Speaker 237:11

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