Sir Christopher Bland

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 business man. Energetic, tough, and not frightened of a scrap, his commercial acumen has been put to use in both the private and public sectors. He earned his knighthood for services to the Health Service and was until last year chairman of the BBC.

Presenter0:46

His childhood was character building. His parents lived abroad and often didn't see their son at boarding school in England from one year to the next.

Presenter0:55

After national service and Oxford he became, among other things, a member of the GLC. He made a million pounds in a printing firm, and famously a few more millions as chairman of London Weekend Television. I'm naturally bossy, he confesses, but I don't bear grudges, and I always apologise. Now the new chairman of BT, he is Sir Christopher Bland. I suppose if you're bossy, Christopher, it's best to be the boss, and you've been the boss of an awful lot of things over the years, haven't you?

Sir Christopher Bland1:22

Yeah.

Presenter1:22

Uh

Sir Christopher Bland1:22

Yeah.

Presenter1:23

I look I mean, looking at the list, it is amazing. The range is huge, from singer sewing machines to steam locomotives to televisions.

Sir Christopher Bland1:32

Well, my father worked forty years for Shell in one job, so when after three years of my first job I moved, he thought this was signs of dangerous instability. When I moved a second time after another three years, he thought it was all up.

Presenter1:47

But you've always been the boss, really, looking at it. It seems to me, and I I worked it out, that from the age of

Presenter1:53

thirty three, when you were the managing director of a company, you've been at the top either M D or chairman ever since. So if you've spent forty years working, nearly thirty years of it, you've been at the top.

Sir Christopher Bland2:05

Yeah.

Sir Christopher Bland2:06

The great thing about being Chairman, there are two really good things about it. One is that you pick the diary dates so people can't muck you about and say, please be there at ten o'clock on the Tuesday.

Sir Christopher Bland2:19

And the other thing is the avoidance of being bossed about by other people.

Presenter2:23

Greg Dyke, former colleague here at the B B C and indeed before that at London Weekend of yours, famously said of you, He's got the attention span of a peanut.

Sir Christopher Bland2:31

Coming from Greg, that's pretty rich.

Presenter2:31

Coming from

Sir Christopher Bland2:34

I think

Presenter2:34

I think he meant to be complimentary, I think.

Sir Christopher Bland2:36

He did. He did. He he wouldn't wish to be anything else, I'm sure. But now the pair of us are pretty fidgety. I mean, Gregg doesn't sit through long meetings without crossing his legs and fiddling with his he's got a spectacle case, by the way, that's at board of governors' meetings when he got particularly bored, he would open and shut with a loud click.

Sir Christopher Bland2:55

And he'd also do that in front of the select committee, and on several occasions I had to reach over and take it away from him, like a schoolmaster confiscating a particularly difficult object from a boy in class.

Presenter3:06

And what do you do when you get bored?

Sir Christopher Bland3:06

Yeah.

Sir Christopher Bland3:08

Well

Sir Christopher Bland3:10

As you get older you get uh more patient.

Sir Christopher Bland3:13

More long-suffering.

Presenter3:15

But you haven't been at times. I mean, again, rumours have it that when you get cross you say rubbish or worse.

Sir Christopher Bland3:21

I have actually said bollocks in the council chamber.

Presenter3:24

I don't believe

Sir Christopher Bland3:24

And I got a frown from Lord Reef.

Presenter3:28

So di diplomatic skills are not your strong suit.

Sir Christopher Bland3:30

No, I'm more diplomatic now than I was when I was in my thirties and forties.

Sir Christopher Bland3:34

I've grown older and wiser, and

Sir Christopher Bland3:37

You learn things.

Sir Christopher Bland3:39

You may not.

Sir Christopher Bland3:40

internally be any more patient, but you know it's wise to

Sir Christopher Bland3:45

Mask irritation and impatience.

Presenter3:48

So you learn that saying bollocks doesn't get you very far?

Sir Christopher Bland3:52

gets you to the council chamber of the VBC, so it's not too bad, but you can't say it all the time.

Presenter3:57

And I don't.

Presenter3:58

Tell me about your first record.

Sir Christopher Bland4:00

My first record is Shostakovich Symphony No. 5 in D minor. And I pick this because I heard it at a July prom about five years ago when Slava Rostropovich conducted it brilliantly. And Rostropovich came more or less straight from the rostrum and he was on a terrific high and warmly embraced me several times. And being kissed by Slava Rostropovich warm and bristly off off the podium is quite something, I can tell you.

Presenter5:29

The opening of the final movement of Shostakovich's Symphony No. five in D minor, played by the National Symphony Orchestra of Washington DC, conducted by Rostropovich, he of the sloppy kiss, Christopher Brand.

Sir Christopher Bland5:40

Warm kiss.

Presenter5:41

Warm kiss

Sir Christopher Bland5:41

Yeah.

Presenter5:41

How tell me how you made your first million?

Sir Christopher Bland5:45

I was out of work. I'd been fired after a takeover of a little construction company that I was the managing director of. And I was in a merchant bank where a friend of mine was working and he showed me a balance sheet of a printing company and said, What do you think of this? And I said, It looks terrible to me. It looks bust. And he said, Yes, but uh what about it? So I looked again and I said yes, I'll do it if I can buy.

Sir Christopher Bland6:14

a significant share of the of the equity.

Presenter6:17

You've got a bit of money to do that.

Sir Christopher Bland6:18

Well, I had my my redundancy money. I had twenty thousand pounds, and he said, We'll sell you a quarter of it and I said, How much will that be? He said, How much have you got? I told him. And he said, That's all right. It's worthless, but we'll sell it to you for twenty thousand pounds.

Presenter6:35

But it looked as if it was going to go bust.

Sir Christopher Bland6:37

Well, it was heavily overdrawn, and it was in the di during the three day working week, and it was when the printing business was controlled by Nat Soper, NGA, Sogat, and Slade.

Sir Christopher Bland6:50

I was an innocent until I met Reni Chubb of the London Women's Branch of Sogat.

Sir Christopher Bland6:56

It was a tough business.

Presenter6:57

And it didn't go bust, it turned around.

Sir Christopher Bland6:59

No, it didn't go bus.

Presenter7:00

And you made your million. This was late seventies, early eighties, wasn't it, by the time you made the money. And you still you have on the table in front of you the well, it's not the cheque, it's a sort of bank's paying in slip of that.

Sir Christopher Bland7:12

The pink slip. Yes, it's a lucky talisman.

Presenter7:15

Keep it in your wallet.

Presenter7:17

It's got more than a million on there. Let me have a look.

Sir Christopher Bland7:19

Million one hundred and thirty two thousand

Presenter7:21

Five hundred and fifty one pounds and seventy p.

Sir Christopher Bland7:24

Before text

Presenter7:27

So it's a strong motivating factor in choice making.

Sir Christopher Bland7:28

I don't think that's true because otherwise it wouldn't have taken me so long.

Presenter7:33

I just wondered if there was a kind of

Presenter7:36

drive in you to restore the family fortunes. I mean, the Blands are an old family who had no fortune left, I think, by the time you came on the scene.

Sir Christopher Bland7:45

My grandfather described his occupation in his documents as gentleman, which meant he didn't do any work. And the Blands had been big landlords in the south west of Ireland, but not rich landlords. But all that had gone.

Presenter8:00

But th they were once I think you joined the Dragoon Guards later on. It was once the Blands Dragoon Guards, wasn't it?

Sir Christopher Bland8:06

Yes, in the eighteenth century they were called Bland's Dragoons, or part of them were.

Presenter8:11

Who became the Royal Inniskilling. But was there then that in you, this somehow, perhaps, and maybe this is a romantic vision of mine, but something in you that said, you know, I want to restore us to where we ripe. I mean, you were pretty penniless, as you say, until you made this million. Somehow you wanted to get it.

Sir Christopher Bland8:28

You're either penniless or you're not. I was penniless. My first flat in London was what they call a cold water walk-up, six pounds a week, no bath, shared loo.

Presenter8:30

But

Sir Christopher Bland8:37

And I got paid twenty pounds a week, and six pounds of that went in rent. So I was scratching along, and I scratched along for a long time.

Presenter8:45

Tell me about record number two.

Sir Christopher Bland8:47

Record number two is Where the Bee Sucks from the Tempest. I pick that because

Sir Christopher Bland8:53

It's a slightly pooterish reason. At the age of twelve I sung it on Jamaica radio in exchange for a I think a fifteen shilling book tuck.

Speaker 39:01

When the bee sucks them all kind, In a cowslips there I lie Then I coach when owls do cry, when owls do cry, when owls do cry.

Presenter9:02

Uh Yeah.

Speaker 39:14

From the back spec I do fly Folder Sunset Merry Mary, Roadsome Sit Mary

Speaker 39:27

When the bay sucks there or cry, In a cold slips bell I lie Then I coach when owls do cry, When owls do cry, when owls do cry. On the backs back I do want of the songs that are merry, merry of the songs that are in me

Presenter9:55

Elizabeth Harward singing Thomas Arne's setting of Aerial Song from the Tempest. You sang it, Christopher Bland, on Jamaica radio when you were twelve years old, because your parents were living out there. Your father, you say, worked for Shell Oil. Was he a a high flyer?

Sir Christopher Bland10:09

No, he wasn't. He was a middle ranking executive all his life in Shell, and he wasn't very interested in business.

Presenter10:15

And you'd been born, in fact, in Japan just before the war, hadn't you? And you'd moved around a lot they moved around a lot Canada, I think, and Kenya, as well as Jamaica. So you and your younger brother were sent back to this country uh to go to school. These gaps in not seeing your parents, how great were they?

Sir Christopher Bland10:32

Well, it could be quite long. Shell were an an enlightened employer. They sent you out one summer holiday and three. Your parents came back one summer holiday and three. So

Presenter10:42

What happened in the third one?

Sir Christopher Bland10:43

In the third one, nobody went anywhere. So that was close to a year and three quarters when you didn't see your parents.

Presenter10:49

Age twelve.

Sir Christopher Bland10:50

Age twelve, ten, and on up to eighteen.

Presenter10:53

What did you do in those gaps?

Sir Christopher Bland10:55

Well, I both my brother and I were lucky to be brought up by remote cousins in in Northern Ireland who had six children of their own, and they were are a wonderful, big, chaotic country family.

Presenter11:09

Yes. You you were in in quite a tough school. You went to Sedborough in Yorkshire. A hard nurse of men is its motto, I think. Um what form did the hard nursing take?

Sir Christopher Bland11:19

Well, we wore shorts and we ran a lot and it's a pretty bracing atmosphere. I may say it's changed greatly. I went up there to reopen my old house for girls, so it's come on a lot.

Presenter11:31

But then there were what, cold baths?

Sir Christopher Bland11:32

But then they were what?

Sir Christopher Bland11:33

Coal bars every morning

Presenter11:34

Caning?

Sir Christopher Bland11:35

I'm afraid so.

Presenter11:36

Bullying?

Presenter11:38

Uh not

Sir Christopher Bland11:39

too much bullying, but it was typical of a boys boarding public school at the time.

Presenter11:44

Could you hold your own?

Sir Christopher Bland11:46

Yes, yes, I didn't disappear.

Presenter11:49

And looking back on it, w what do you think you suffered as a result of that parental absence?

Sir Christopher Bland11:56

It's hard to tell, but I know I wouldn't.

Sir Christopher Bland12:00

Like it for my own son.

Presenter12:02

Who's now eighteen?

Sir Christopher Bland12:03

Who's now eighteen?

Sir Christopher Bland12:05

Actually what I think w was what must it have done in particular to my mother, you know, seeing me off and my brother off at the airport, knowing they weren't going to see us for a year and a half.

Presenter12:15

Hmm.

Sir Christopher Bland12:15

I I find that very, very

Sir Christopher Bland12:18

Hard to understand.

Presenter12:20

Rook number three.

Sir Christopher Bland12:21

Record number three is Danny Boy. That's because I'm Anglo-Irish, my wife is Irish, and I'm in the middle of the Irish Channel in terms of my sentiments. And when uh Ireland play England I'm confused. I know the words of the Irish national anthem, but in English, and I'm really proud to be an Anglo-Irishman, as Yeats said, no petty people.

Speaker 312:48

Oh, Danny boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling.

Speaker 312:56

From glen to glen, And down the mountain side

Speaker 313:04

The summer's gone And all the roses falling It's you, it's you must

Presenter13:17

Uh

Presenter13:18

Danny Boy, sung by Mario Lanzer. You're obviously um a clever chap, Christopher, because you got an exhibition to Oxford to read history, Queen's.

Speaker 313:18

Yeah.

Presenter13:27

You'd done your national service first uh in in the Dragoon Guards. Presumably then, even at eighteen, you were in charge of chaps.

Sir Christopher Bland13:33

Well, you start as a trooper. Then I, after various stages, became a second lieutenant and then I was in charge of chaps. Yes.

Presenter13:42

And you learn to fence why fencing?

Sir Christopher Bland13:45

Uh

Presenter13:45

Well it

Sir Christopher Bland13:46

intrigued me and I tried it in the army.

Sir Christopher Bland13:49

And uh it was it was really enjoyable. I liked it very much.

Presenter13:53

'Cause it's kind of it's a surrogate duel, really, isn't it? You either win or you die.

Sir Christopher Bland13:56

Yes, and that's

Sir Christopher Bland13:58

Got a certain point to it.

Presenter14:00

And you played it at Olympic level, aren't you?

Sir Christopher Bland14:02

Well, the Irish Olympic fencing team, which isn't quite as strong as some fencing teams, but I did I went to Rome in the nineteen sixty Olympic Games, which was one of the last really enjoyable

Sir Christopher Bland14:15

Unsecurity conscious Olympic Games.

Presenter14:18

So why and when did you give it up?

Sir Christopher Bland14:20

I fenced a bit when I came to London, but it was pretty hard.

Presenter14:24

What you died too of.

Sir Christopher Bland14:25

I died too often.

Presenter14:26

So there you are. You were everything to play for as you came out of that education and national service. You were an all-rounder, you were talented, you were ambitious.

Presenter14:35

You could have turned your hand to so many different things, and indeed did. You you flirted with politics, and that came to naught. But what happened, I think, during that flirtation was you met someone who was in fact to lay a kind of foundation stone for your future success, didn't you?

Sir Christopher Bland14:51

Yes. And it was more than a flirtation. It was an affair at the end of which I got rejected. I did try very hard until I became

Sir Christopher Bland15:01

thirty-five or so, to be a Tory MP.

Presenter15:05

Some said you could have been a Cabinet Minister. Think that's true?

Sir Christopher Bland15:09

Yes, I do, on a good day, with a bit of luck. Whether I would have been a cabinet minister in the Thatcher Government, I'm not sure.

Presenter15:16

Why not?

Sir Christopher Bland15:16

Because she and I

Sir Christopher Bland15:18

Not that we met very often.

Sir Christopher Bland15:20

Weren't ham and egg.

Presenter15:22

Tell me about this man you did meet, with whom you did get on, then.

Sir Christopher Bland15:25

Well, Christopher Chataway was an important influence in my life because he was leader of the Inner London Education Authority on the GLC and I was part of that because I sat for an Inner London Borough. He and I got on well and he made me chairman of the school subcommittee. And then when he became Minister of Posts and Telecommunications, he rang up one day and said, would I like to be Deputy Chairman of the Independent Broadcasting Authority?

Sir Christopher Bland15:53

So I said yes, I really would, and went out and bought a television set.

Sir Christopher Bland15:58

And one way or another

Presenter16:00

But you hadn't had one before.

Sir Christopher Bland16:01

No.

Presenter16:02

You were thirty four years old.

Sir Christopher Bland16:04

Yes. But television sets were rarer then. They weren't an automatic uh thing in those days.

Presenter16:10

Well, this was sort of late seventies, I guess.

Sir Christopher Bland16:12

Yeah, well, all right, perhaps. Anyhow, I just I said

Presenter16:15

I think there were quite a lot of people.

Sir Christopher Bland16:15

Uh

Sir Christopher Bland16:15

Well, there were quite a few. But I didn't have one. But I did by the time I became

Presenter16:18

Thanks.

Sir Christopher Bland16:21

Deputy Chairman of the IBA.

Presenter16:22

Yeah.

Sir Christopher Bland16:23

We hope so.

Sir Christopher Bland16:29

Yes, but Christopher Chatterway knew lots of people. He didn't make them all deputy chair of the IBA.

Presenter16:34

Record number soul.

Sir Christopher Bland16:36

Record number four's my regimental band playing the regimental quick march fare you well in in the skilling.

Presenter17:13

The band of the fifth Royal Iniskilling Dragoon Guards, playing their regimental quick march, Fare Ye Well in Iskilling. So you worked your way up, Christopher, from your first job as a an assistant advertising manager at Curries, and you were a marketing manager at Singer's Sewing Machines, learned how to do buttonholes, I gather.

Sir Christopher Bland17:28

Good button.

Presenter17:30

Then you did a stint with an American management consultancy and by thirty-three you were managing director of the UK end of the business.

Sir Christopher Bland17:37

Yeah.

Presenter17:38

And on you went through that first million and so on. But let's move then to nineteen eighty three when you became because all of these strands in your life started to pull together and you became chairman of London Weekend Television. Was that looking back

Presenter17:52

The best job you've ever had in the sense of its being the most fun.

Sir Christopher Bland17:56

Yes, it was. LWT was a small business. It was about seven hundred and fifty people and a very talented group at the top. And the business went really well. We won the franchise, which was a very important and pretty nerve-wracking moment when you're either in business or out and the

Sir Christopher Bland18:16

News is flashed over a fax machine to your office.

Presenter18:20

Bidding for the franchise, not knowing what to bid, because they were sealed bids, weren't they?

Sir Christopher Bland18:23

Yeah, they were sealed beards.

Presenter18:24

And of course across the land people were bidding as little as a pound for such franchises and as much as tens of thousands of pounds.

Sir Christopher Bland18:31

Oh, fifty two million I think was the highest bid, and that was turned down because it was too high. So you didn't know we got ours for eight million because our opponents who bid thirty two were turned down on quality grounds.

Presenter18:44

What you did in order to get that, famously, as I mentioned in the introduction, was put golden handcuffs on the top management. That's to say, you promised them a lot of money if they stayed, so so that when the franchise went through, they were still there.

Presenter19:00

That's been very controversial. I mean, you made millionaires of people overnight. You made yourself many, many millions on that occasion. And you've been beaten round the head with that fact ever since. Would you do the same again?

Sir Christopher Bland19:12

Yes, I would, because I didn't promise them millions. I said, here are the handcuffs, here are the shares, which you have to pay for, and we paid for them at and the shares I think were then seventy P. Anyone who thought they were going to go to six hundred and seventy, which is what they eventually went to, I think, could have gone out and bought them. But there was no promise. I mean, shares do go down as well as up. So there was no guarantee if we'd lost the franchise.

Sir Christopher Bland19:39

We wouldn't have made any money at all.

Presenter19:40

But it was the other seven hundred people I mean, fifty people in that company made a hell of a lot of money. Seven hundred people didn't make any.

Sir Christopher Bland19:47

Well, I I think it was a weakness in the scheme, and there are all kinds of complicated tax and other reasons why we couldn't extend it right across the company. And actually

Sir Christopher Bland19:57

As I recall, we...

Sir Christopher Bland20:00

I think between us gave half a million pounds to the rest of the stuff, which we could afford, but you stumped up.

Presenter20:07

What you stumped up from your own cash.

Sir Christopher Bland20:08

From your own cash. Yeah. No obligation to do that and no doubt it we did it because we hoped that we would feel good as well as they would feel good.

Presenter20:16

We felt a bit guilty.

Sir Christopher Bland20:18

Uh oh.

Presenter20:19

Yeah.

Sir Christopher Bland20:19

Uh probably. Probably.

Presenter20:21

But if that was the best moment winning the franchise, presumably the worst was losing the whole company to Granada.

Sir Christopher Bland20:27

Yes, that was a terrible moment.

Sir Christopher Bland20:29

But, you know, if that hadn't happened I wouldn't have become chairman of the BBC, so it's an ill wind that blows nobody any good.

Presenter20:38

And that's business.

Sir Christopher Bland20:39

Yes, and that's business. It's tough.

Presenter20:42

Record number five.

Sir Christopher Bland20:43

It's Elizabeth Schwatzkopf singing Bis Doo by Mir, which is both lovely and also quite a gloomy song.

Speaker 320:58

Boop.

Speaker 320:58

Fine ear

Speaker 321:03

Is tricked on thine hand.

Speaker 321:15

John and Hovens.

Speaker 321:29

We're so fun.

Speaker 321:44

Um

Speaker 321:46

Fearing it, Loy and our best.

Presenter21:53

Elizabeth Schwarzkopf singing Bach's Bistu by Mir, accompanied by Gerald Moore there. Back then, Christopher Bland, to who you know, is it true you asked Virginia Bottomley, then Secretary of State at the Department of Heritage, I think it then was, for the BBC chairmanship?

Sir Christopher Bland22:09

Yes, I went along and said, look, here's why I think I'm qualified. So.

Sir Christopher Bland22:16

I I I did.

Presenter22:17

And you got it.

Sir Christopher Bland22:18

Yes.

Presenter22:18

Look, there are so many things one could talk about with the BBC. There are always controversial issues surrounding it as we know who's running it and how it's being run. But by far the most important issue has to be how it's funded and whether the licence fee can be justified. It's guaranteed that licence fee until 2006. It's going to be difficult to justify it beyond that, isn't it?

Sir Christopher Bland22:41

I don't think so.

Sir Christopher Bland22:42

I think if the political and public will is there and the BBC spends its money really wisely, then it will turn out to be as justifiable in two thousand six as it has been throughout its history.

Presenter22:56

But it is a matter of public pressure as well, isn't it? That people say, Look, I I've got Sky, I pay this much money for Sky, I hardly ever watch the B B C why should I go on forking out for this what is effectively a poll tax?

Sir Christopher Bland23:08

Yes, and you always have to press them very hard when they say I don't either watch or listen to the BBC, because you then say, Well, what did you think of Blue Planet? and they say Oh yes, that was really good or what do you wake up to in the morning and they admit to waking up to Wogan and and suddenly it turns out that most people use the BBC.

Presenter23:29

But they still might find it too high a price to pay, that's the point, while they're beginning to pay for pay television.

Sir Christopher Bland23:36

Well, I think that a uh a licence fee of one hundred and nine pounds looks awfully cheap when you compare it with the sky subscription of over three hundred pounds a year. Look what you get for it.

Presenter23:48

But what about the other arguments? And I mean, you've experienced it from the other side. You'd be very cross if you were still running London Weekend television and commercial television is in difficulties, advertising revenues are falling, ITV Digital is failing, while the BBC rides triumphantly into some would say pay television's territory, you know, specialised digital channels for the arts and children's programmes and so on. It's unfair competition, shouldn't be doing that. And that was your strategy.

Sir Christopher Bland24:14

Well

Sir Christopher Bland24:15

It's not unfair competition. And if you look at BBC's children's programmes, they're quite different to those which are offered by the commercial rivals, which are largely a diet of cartoons. And we have to point out to the ITV companies that ITV Digital's failure is not the BBC's fault, it was the commercial judgment that went really badly wrong. The collapse of advertising revenue is because demand from companies like the one I chair for advertising is extremely soft at the moment. But it has nothing to do with the BBC.

Presenter24:48

Hand on heart, do you think the licence fee will survive beyond two thousand six? Would you be willing to put your million pounds on it?

Sir Christopher Bland24:54

Absolutely.

Presenter24:56

Record number six.

Sir Christopher Bland24:57

Record number six is Lou Reed's Perfect Day.

Sir Christopher Bland25:01

It was the BBC's theme tune, the the children in need version of it. And whenever in my early days as chairman I gave a speech, if there was any excuse, I'd play the perfect day recording for about a minute and a half because it put people in such a wonderful mood for whatever you wanted to say next.

Speaker 325:20

Just a perfect day

Speaker 325:25

You made me forget myself

Speaker 325:30

I thought I was someone else.

Speaker 325:34

Someone good.

Speaker 325:37

Yeah.

Speaker 325:40

Such

Speaker 325:41

Ha ha Days I'm glad I've been in with you.

Speaker 325:48

Perfect day.

Presenter25:50

The Children in Need version of Lou Reed's Perfect Day, sung and played by a host of stars. And so to um B T Christopher Bland, which is where you went last year. You were just about sixty three. You might have thought that the B B C chairmanship was your last and greatest job.

Presenter26:06

Did you phone a friend for that one as well?

Sir Christopher Bland26:08

No, a headhunter phoned me. I was asked whether I would

Sir Christopher Bland26:14

Consider leaving the BBC by a headhunter and I said no.

Sir Christopher Bland26:20

Under no circumstances and I then said

Sir Christopher Bland26:23

in a strange and serendipitous moment, except for B T. She says, I'll call you back, and I got off at the job. And I took it not without a lot of heart searching.

Presenter26:33

And so you went to BT huge problem. It had thirty billion pounds worth of debts, and you've cut those down to a mere fourteen billion, which is still pretty hefty by selling off and hiving off and separating off and all those global joint ventures and so on that the previous management got BT into. Now what?

Sir Christopher Bland26:51

Go on driving it down. That, by the way, is what thirty billion looks like when you write it on a bit of paper.

Presenter26:56

Two, three, four.

Sir Christopher Bland26:58

The Zeros go a long way to the west.

Presenter27:00

Ten zeros. So it's big, but I mean there's still quite a lot of those left. Now what you can do?

Sir Christopher Bland27:01

Yeah.

Sir Christopher Bland27:05

Well the pressure is greatly reduced on us, but what we've now got to do is concentrate on BT's core business, making sure that we control our costs very carefully, that we do provide a really first-class service, and that's what we're doing.

Presenter27:19

That sounds essentially as if you're putting it back to where BT was in the mid eighties when it was first uh privatized, you know, that you are simply a a supplier of lines, communications for the consumer.

Sir Christopher Bland27:30

And and that we introduce new technology, for example, broadband.

Presenter27:36

So that fast internet access, which you can do because you've got contact with these customers. You're in a brilliant position to do that, because you've you're already in all of those homes, aren't you?

Sir Christopher Bland27:44

Yes, we've got over twenty million customers in the United Kingdom, so it's a a very, very strong position.

Presenter27:51

But the press got very excited when you suggested that that B T and you did this, I think, the end of last year, had the capacity to rival Sky, that you could actually get programmes down those copper wires onto television sets.

Sir Christopher Bland28:04

Well, that was a a subeditor.

Sir Christopher Bland28:07

producing a headline. I was asked about what BT's position might be in terms of broadcasting and I said at one extreme we could simply be a supplier of access, at the other extreme we could get heavily into content like B Sky B. The most probable position for B T is somewhere in the middle.

Presenter28:28

So where is that? What's the strategy then? If to get rid of the debt you go back to your core business, to doing, as I say, what BT was doing when it was privatized in nineteen eighty five, what's the strategy then? Is that all you're going to do?

Sir Christopher Bland28:41

That's a pretty good strategy. Telephony is a good, profitable business and BT is really putting a lot of intellectual and R and D muscle behind broadband and and what you can deliver down a broadband pipe is much more interesting than the old

Sir Christopher Bland28:58

Uh unaugmented copper wire.

Presenter29:01

Record number seven.

Sir Christopher Bland29:03

This is the fat swallow playing and singing. I'm gonna sit right down and write myself a letter, which.

Sir Christopher Bland29:10

I can play on the pianola.

Presenter29:13

We can all play on the piano.

Sir Christopher Bland29:14

We can, but but it's amazing how when you do it, you think this is really me.

Presenter29:19

I'm gonna Mm-hmm.

Speaker 329:20

Right.

Speaker 329:22

And write myself

Speaker 329:24

I'll let us

Speaker 329:28

And make believe it came from

Speaker 329:36

I'm gonna write words, oh so sweet.

Speaker 329:40

They don't have me off my bl

Speaker 329:45

Uh

Presenter29:45

A lot of tears

Speaker 329:46

Yeah.

Presenter29:46

Fat swallow and write myself a letter. Casting off time then then, Christopher, but you know all about roughing it, don't you? Because you've got some kind of m fishing bothy o off the top left hand corner of Scotland.

Sir Christopher Bland29:59

Yes, it's on a peninsula about twenty miles south of Cape Roth.

Presenter30:04

No electricity.

Sir Christopher Bland30:05

It's no electricity.

Sir Christopher Bland30:06

Everything works off calor gas.

Sir Christopher Bland30:10

and a rather strange Irish central heating system that works without electricity through drip feeding oil rather inefficiently around the house.

Presenter30:19

and you can only get to it by boat.

Sir Christopher Bland30:20

Everything comes in and out by boat.

Presenter30:22

But could you I mean it is your version of a desert island, could you be there alone? Could you hack it on a desert island?

Sir Christopher Bland30:28

Yes, I think I could.

Sir Christopher Bland30:31

I'm pretty practical. You have to be up there. I'm a great expert on oil lamps, of which I have a fine and varied collection. I know all about the Aladdin lamp and its vagaries.

Presenter30:42

And you're the chairman of a cookery school, so can you cook?

Sir Christopher Bland30:46

I put myself through our advanced evening classes, and I did okay. So it's.

Presenter30:52

So you're into the twice-baked souffles on the absolute.

Sir Christopher Bland30:54

Absolutely. I'm glad you know about that.

Presenter30:55

I'm daddy.

Presenter30:56

Last record.

Sir Christopher Bland30:59

This is the

Sir Christopher Bland31:01

third movement of Beethoven's string quartet in A minor. I first came across this when I was uh an undergraduate in Oxford in Aldous Huxley's Point Counterpoint. And he said about it, and I'm reading from a

Sir Christopher Bland31:15

My ancient copy with three and sixpence on the cover.

Presenter31:19

Penguin cover.

Sir Christopher Bland31:20

Penguin cover

Speaker 231:20

Uh

Sir Christopher Bland31:21

He said it was an unimpassioned music, transparent, pure and crystalline, like a tropical sea, an alpine lake.

Sir Christopher Bland31:31

Water on water, calm sliding over calm, the according of level horizons and waveless expanses, a counterpoint of serenity.

Presenter32:39

The opening of the third movement of Beethoven's string quartet in A minor, played by the La Salle quartet. If you could only take one of those eight records, Christopher, which one would you take?

Sir Christopher Bland32:51

It would be between Beethoven and Fat Swallow. And I think I'd pick Fat Swallow. I think he would get awfully melancholy.

Presenter32:57

And we

Sir Christopher Bland32:59

If you only had Beethoven.

Presenter33:01

What about your book? You've got the Bible and complete works of Shakespeare, as you know.

Sir Christopher Bland33:05

Yes, I'd want to take some poetry. I think I'd take if I had to pick a a single poet, I'd take

Sir Christopher Bland33:11

John Donne, and if it was his collected works I'd get the sermons thrown in.

Presenter33:16

And your luxury.

Sir Christopher Bland33:18

It would be very expensive. It would be two and a half miles of Hampshire Chalk Stream, the upper Itchen.

Sir Christopher Bland33:25

Could could you do that?

Presenter33:26

Uh easily.

Sir Christopher Bland33:28

Thanks. Well, that would be that would be very good.

Presenter33:30

You'd better have a fishing rod, I think.

Sir Christopher Bland33:32

I'll make one.

Presenter33:32

Oh okay.

Sir Christopher Bland33:32

Oh, okay. No, I think that would be too luxury.

Presenter33:36

Sir Christopher Bland, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island issues.

Speaker 233:47

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