Sir Howard Stringer

Presenter0:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young. Thank you for downloading this podcast of Desert Island Discs from BBC Radio 4. For rights reasons the music choices are shorter than in the radio broadcast.

Presenter0:10

For more information about the programme, please visit bbc.co.uk/slash radio four.

Presenter0:34

My castaway this week is Sir Howard Stringer, now Chairman of the Board and formerly CEO of Sony.

Presenter0:40

He was, surely, the only chief executive who was a decorated Vietnam vet as he knelt before the Queen to be knighted. It gives you something of an idea of the breadth and heights of his achievements. Born in Cardiff, he went to eleven different schools before his sixteenth birthday, and it clearly gave him restless feet. In the mid-sixties, he headed to America, where his first job was answering phones for the Ed Sullivan Show. He loved TV, and it felt the same about him. He's won a raft of Emmys for his productions and worked with all the big beasts of the broadcasting jungle, including Walter Cronkite, Dan Rather, and David Letterman. He has spent the last few years commuting between New York, Tokyo, London, and Hollywood, the first and so far only Westerner to run the Japanese giant Sony. He says

Presenter1:25

I think I'm a bit prone to new adventures. The same damned impulse that got me in trouble by sending me to America in the first place compels me to take challenges when offered them.

Presenter1:35

Back in two thousand five, then, when Sony appointed you chief executive of a seventy odd billion dollar company and you were the first Westerner to be brought into the fold, they were taking something of a risk, were they?

Sir Howard Stringer1:47

They were and I said as much. And actually I said, Well, I'd better learn Japanese and everybody said, No, no, no, because it'll take up too much time. You've got to learn the other stuff and if you're staggering with early Japanese, you'll irritate everybody and it'll slow you down and I said, Well, all right.

Presenter2:02

So as the CEO of Sony, you you were there at the point when well, everything changed, really, didn't it? We could end up not just watching the news or or a movie on a little sort of device the size of our palm, we could also film ourselves I'm thinking now of the Arab Spring

Presenter2:18

You must have sometimes felt that you were in the centre of a sort of whirlwind.

Sir Howard Stringer2:21

Yes, I think the whole Apple transformation, the transformation from the analogue world which Sony dominated to a digital world in which everybody can copy everybody else, steal ideas from everybody else, has transformed the business in a way that makes it exciting if you like change, but every so often you say, oh my goodness, is there any a sanctuary in this ever-changing world?

Presenter2:42

I'm so glad you mentioned the A-word first and not me. I'm thinking they're of Apple. Are people who work at your level at Sony allowed to own an iPod?

Sir Howard Stringer2:50

I never told anybody they couldn't. I told my children they couldn't. They didn't pay any attention anyway. Do you have one? I do not have one. I can't go that far. Really? Well, I've been shouted at by Steve Jobs over the years because we were the last holdout on surrendering music to the iPod. And it's my only little act of rebellion, is to say, I'll stick with a Walkman. And we still maintained eventually civil conversations, but I knew he was going to be trouble. Let's have some music. What's your first choice of the morning?

Presenter3:20

Uh

Sir Howard Stringer3:20

Yeah.

Sir Howard Stringer3:21

Well, I've chosen Adele singing the Skyfall theme tune that opens over the credits at the beginning of the Bond movie because I have a long relationship with the franchise and it captures the zeitgeist of James Bond and really gets it right.

Speaker 43:39

Let the sky fall and he crumble.

Speaker 43:46

We will stand tall and face it all

Speaker 43:51

Together let the sky fall

Speaker 43:55

Spiny combo.

Speaker 43:58

We will stand tall and face it all together and

Presenter4:10

That was Skyfall by Adele. So, Sir Howard Stringer, as a a programme maker and a journalist, you tackled some fascinating subjects, included among them documentaries about the Palestinians, about Northern Ireland, the Vietnamese boat people.

Sir Howard Stringer4:22

Yeah.

Speaker 44:22

Yeah.

Presenter4:23

What was it about those very difficult subjects to tackle? Why did you have the appetite for it? Because there are surely easier ways to make a living.

Sir Howard Stringer4:32

Yes, I believe because I'd been in Vietnam, Northern Ireland didn't seem that big a deal, and Southern Lebanon didn't seem that big a deal. It was all actually more dangerous than Vietnam. But I liked the exotic nature of overseas locations, and every time I shot a documentary in the United States, it was dull as ditch water.

Presenter4:49

But you've said that really the most exciting period of your professional life has been when you were working with Dan Rather on CBS Evening News. What was it about that period that proved to be so intoxicating?

Sir Howard Stringer4:55

Yeah.

Sir Howard Stringer4:59

Well, I'm not exciting so much as fulfilling. We were second in the ratings when I took over, and we went to number one by a huge margin. And it was the last time, really, that the White House watched the Evening News every night. Our audiences were so big. Those days are gone. And I knew that that would happen. But for a moment, we were front and center on the news excitement. And it was scintillating.

Presenter5:23

Did you have a sort of bat phone on the desk when you knew the White House was calling after you'd run something?

Sir Howard Stringer5:28

Yeah, but but but didn't pick it up.

Sir Howard Stringer5:30

Let somebody else pick it up because you never know whether they're calling to yell at you or calling for another reason. They don't very often call to compliment you.

Presenter5:37

Walter Cronkite, of course, was the huge American anchor and and Dan Rather then took his place on air. And he has said of you, Dan Rather, that you had an almost coyote like ability to recognise who's going to be potent, to sniff out the very nexus of power. Do you think he was right?

Sir Howard Stringer5:55

I think that's a bit of an exaggeration. I'm stumbling along like everybody else.

Presenter5:59

You stumbled into well, you didn't really stumble into David Letterman, did you? You poached him, you wooed him relentlessly. He was working at the other big American network.

Sir Howard Stringer6:03

You guys

Sir Howard Stringer6:05

Yeah.

Sir Howard Stringer6:07

Yeah.

Presenter6:07

And you decided that you wanted him. Tell me what your technique was for getting on board.

Sir Howard Stringer6:12

Well, I knew there was a moment when the network had to make a choice between two rival hosts. And the one I preferred was David Letterman because he reflected the CBS sensibility of our prime time and the sort of high-quality comedy shows and so forth. So I sort of pursued him and I had to compete actually with Rupert Murdoch, who wanted him for Fox. And I think it's the last battle I ever won against Rupert Murdoch. And I remember I flew in and I'd flown in such a hurry because I was on vacation and I came in, I didn't have any cufflinks, so I had paper clips instead of cufflinks, and I looked completely scruffy, which didn't really bother Letterman. And then I made my case and I said, David, you belong in this tradition, these great people that stretch back to the dawn of television, Ed Murrow, Cronkite, and so forth. You're the natural successor, and it worked.

Presenter7:00

Time for some more music, Howard Stringer. Your second of the morning. What are we going to hear?

Sir Howard Stringer7:04

The Pearlfishers Duet. It's an opportunity to hear Bryn Terfel, who, one, is Welsh, two is someone I've tried to lure to Sony music and I've failed, but the duet makes your hair stand on end because it's so special.

Speaker 47:16

It's that I'm sorry, yes.

Speaker 47:23

Is for the morphine water.

Speaker 47:29

We set our set on the surface.

Speaker 47:37

The song in women swarms forever in love for life.

Presenter8:10

Bryn Terfel and Andrew Bocelli singing the Pearl Fisher's duet. So, Sir Howard Stringer, you were born in nineteen forty two in Cardiff, to Margery and Harry, but your father was away in India. Did that mean that you were particularly close to your grandfather?

Sir Howard Stringer8:24

Quite. My mother lived with her grandparents in Parry. But my mother looked after me on her own quite a lot, because for nineteen forty six we moved to Cornwall. It was very damp and I got pneumonia. My first memory is of being in hospital. And I think she had to work hard to take care of me, and she really did a great job.

Presenter8:42

I read a story I'm not sure how true it is, indeed if it's true at all that when you were a little boy and you went to nursery school, or you were even in your first year at school, one day you decided it was time to go home and you walked how many miles home on your own?

Sir Howard Stringer8:54

Three or four. I actually I thought school was over, so I trotted out to the door. My mother wasn't waiting, so I proceeded to trek from one end of Barry

Sir Howard Stringer9:02

all the way through the centre of town to the other end of Barrie where my grandparents' house was. And it was a very long way. One shudders to think today you couldn't do that. Nobody thought it was particularly peculiar that this four-year-old was trotting along. And when I got to the house, I couldn't get in the gate because it was too high. And I remember shaking it desperately, because I wanted to go to the bathroom, shaking it, and eventually the people in the house heard the door rattling and reached the conclusion that it might be me.

Presenter9:10

No.

Presenter9:31

And, um, your mother was very keen that you had a good education. Is it true that she sent you to Elocution La?

Sir Howard Stringer9:35

That's aged.

Presenter9:36

At aged four.

Sir Howard Stringer9:36

Something like that. Yes, she does. She changes the story. But yes, because she had some instinct that a Welsh accent, where we were constantly about to go, would not be particularly helpful. She worked hard on teaching me and reading to me. She didn't have to make a living on her own because my father was in the Royal Air Force. But I do have a sense of constant reading.

Presenter9:56

So your father returned from the war when you were round about four. C can you remember that day?

Sir Howard Stringer10:01

Yeah, four or five. Um I don't remember the day. I'm told it was strange, because I had no real understanding of who he was, and we had to catch up.

Presenter10:02

Yeah.

Presenter10:12

And what sort of man was he?

Sir Howard Stringer10:13

He was a sort of man who, under the right circumstances, might have been successful in many careers. He was put into what was then a workhouse by his mother after he was born, and he didn't see her until she was fifteen, and she came to collect him, and he rejected her and joined the Royal Air Force. And so he and my mother both were good students, but neither had the chance to go to school beyond they were fifteen. So I I think I became the repository of their scholastic ambitions and so forth.

Presenter10:43

And you're you're six foot four, are you? What are you a tall man?

Sir Howard Stringer10:45

Six foot three.

Presenter10:46

No, he was about five foot ten, I think.

Presenter10:49

What age were you then when you overtook him in height? That's always a significant moment.

Sir Howard Stringer10:52

17. I was a small child and I suddenly went toxic at 16 or 17.

Presenter11:00

Let's have some more music then, Howard. We're on your third disc of the morning. What are we going to hear?

Sir Howard Stringer11:03

Or what

Sir Howard Stringer11:04

We're going to play the trumpetschill sound from Handel's Messiah because it was almost a triumphant moment of my teenage years and it turned out to be a rather catastrophic moment. I uh played the solo in the Handel's Messiah that the school performed in front of several hundred, maybe a thousand people. I started boldly, played the first minute of it and then

Sir Howard Stringer11:27

My lip went dry and I ran out of gas. I still feel it. I it was the first public failure I I'd ever experienced.

Speaker 412:27

I'm glad they joined the listening for the people.

Presenter12:39

The trumpet shall sound from Handel's Messiah, played by the London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Sir Colin Davis, and sung by Alastair Miles. So, Howard Stringer, I said eleven different schools by the time you were sixteen. That's a lot of moving around as a child.

Sir Howard Stringer12:52

You have no choice. You you you go away and come back to a different place and you have to make new friends. Sometimes I'd I'd make a girlfriend and then we'd be moved and I'd come back and she disappeared and uh sometimes I never even got to know her name. So so there is a kind of sink or swim inevitability about relationships. Otherwise you become reclusive.

Presenter13:12

You didn't come from a well-off background, but you did win a scholarship to a boarding school. How did you fit in?

Sir Howard Stringer13:17

Yeah.

Sir Howard Stringer13:18

I won scholarships to two boarding schools, one at nine.

Presenter13:20

One

Sir Howard Stringer13:22

And I didn't fit in then. I was much too young, much too small. I know about bullying at that school. I won't give its name. And there was then a scholarship exam at the age of when I was eleven for a bigger school and a better school, and I was really motivated for that one. So I got that scholarship, and it liberated me from the place which had been rather unhappy.

Presenter13:42

It wasn't necessarily a time, of course, when children would talk to their parents about bullying. Did you talk to yours?

Sir Howard Stringer13:46

No.

Sir Howard Stringer13:47

No. I once did a terrible thing. I brought the the school bully home for tea.

Sir Howard Stringer13:52

And that was.

Sir Howard Stringer13:54

That was not a good idea, and I still look back and think, oh, that was cowardly.

Presenter13:58

What was the thinking behind that?

Sir Howard Stringer13:59

Well, that he would see me as a reasonable human being and wonder why he was sticking pencils in my neck every classroom.

Presenter14:07

That's a rather conciliatory and advanced mode of thinking for a child. Yes.

Sir Howard Stringer14:09

Then I took boxing lessons and one day I hit him.

Presenter14:14

Okay. And that worked, did it? That worked. Um, so you won a place at Oxford to read modern history. Yes. When you were there then, I mean, it still was at that point a bastion of privilege. Did you notice that?

Sir Howard Stringer14:25

No, because it wasn't. For some reason it was a s Merton College was a small college, quite well off. There was a blend of public schoolboys and grammar schoolboys, and I never felt that I didn't um fit in, ever, at at Merton. And my friends at Merton are still friends.

Presenter14:43

Now here's the thing you had lived the life really of an only child.

Presenter14:46

And suddenly you were blessed with a little brother. How old were you when your brother came along?

Sir Howard Stringer14:50

Twenty twenty one, something like that.

Presenter14:53

Right. It's very difficult for children when they realise that their parents, um, you know, still have sex. Was it tricky for you that that you had a little brother?

Sir Howard Stringer15:00

It was a shock because we lived in a village and my mother was not noticeably pregnant and the people in the village figured out that I somehow I'd pulled this off. I'd got somebody in the family way and this baby that showed up was probably mine. But I was pretty soon on my way to America. That had nothing to do with the arrival of Rob, but yeah, it was a shock.

Presenter15:19

So it was nineteen sixty five when you headed to America. You were twenty three years old. What was it that propelled you there?

Sir Howard Stringer15:22

Nice.

Sir Howard Stringer15:23

Yeah.

Sir Howard Stringer15:25

I'd always been captivated by the sense of transformation in America because it was the Kennedy period and the civil rights movement and all the Rhodes Scholars that I was at school with were rushing off to join the campaigns to solve civil rights, to work in the Justice Department. And I thought, this is so much fun. These people are making a difference in their early twenties. And I couldn't imagine doing the same thing in the UK at the time.

Presenter15:49

That's so interesting because of course it was a time when the UK maybe for the first time ever in its history w was cool. You know, the the Beatles were there you know the the

Sir Howard Stringer15:54

I knew about the music. I was oddly cool, possibly for the last time in my life.

Presenter15:55

Mid sixties.

Presenter16:04

So it gave you a sort of exotic currency.

Sir Howard Stringer16:05

Yeah, yeah, who knew?

Presenter16:07

Let's have some more music then. What what are we going to hear your force?

Sir Howard Stringer16:10

Fourth Record is is a Barbara Streisen record which she sang on a one-hour special and I was answering viewers' phone calls. All the fans called in and so forth. But there was also a strain of anti-Semitism. People were saying how dare they put a Jewish singer on, how dare we devote time on the air to her. So it was shocking to me. And I didn't listen for very long. I mean, I hung up on them.

Speaker 316:36

Don't tell me not to live, just sit in cutter. Life's candy and the sun's a ball of butter. Don't bring around a cloud to rain on my parade. Don't tell me not to fly, I simply got to. If someone takes a spill, it's me and not you. Who told you you're allowed to rain?

Presenter16:59

Don't Rain on My Parade by Barbara Streisand, of course. And you were saying that the reason you'd chosen that Howard Stringer is because you remember answering the phones when her one hour special was on. But of course you have worked with her throughout her career as a massive artist.

Sir Howard Stringer17:11

Yes, we've sustained the relationship over a long period of time. She's had hits in five decades. She is a.

Sir Howard Stringer17:17

She's a tour de force. But we've always had a good relationship. I went to her house for dinner once and she just bought a a lot of English antiques. And she kept saying, This is English. Howard, you'd know about this. And I said, Actually, I don't. Do you have any idea how much th this the th this costs? And I said, Barbara, I have no English antiques in my house. I'm sure it costs a lot of money, but I have no idea. She seemed rather disappointed by that.

Presenter17:38

Maybe she bought them just to impress you. Um so I said in the introduction, your first proper job was with CBS answering these phones, and you did it for the the Ed Sullivan show. How did you get the job?

Sir Howard Stringer17:50

I wrote to every single television company. I only got one reply, and that was from CBS, and they said, We don't give jobs without an interview. So I got on my boat. I was planning to come anyway, got on the boat, arrived.

Presenter17:59

Hmm.

Sir Howard Stringer18:03

Called the personnel office, very naive lad that I was, and said, Excuse me, but I'm here for my interview, clutching this one-line document. They were so embarrassed, they said, You came all the way for this. Yes, I'm eager to be at CBS. I know a lot about CBS. My father and I watch CBS shows in England. I'm here. And to be fair to them, they worked.

Sir Howard Stringer18:26

quite hard to find me something.

Presenter18:28

At that stage, as a European, you were favoured for a green card, and you got a green card to allow you to work. But the problem with the green card was it meant that you were also eligible for the draft, and indeed you were drafted to Vietnam.

Sir Howard Stringer18:32

To allow you to work.

Sir Howard Stringer18:38

Yes, I didn't really know I was eligible for the draft. I knew in principle, but I didn't know it would happen quickly.

Presenter18:41

Right.

Sir Howard Stringer18:44

Uh

Presenter18:45

It could have dodged Uh

Presenter18:49

Why didn't you do that?

Sir Howard Stringer18:50

Because it would have been the end of the adventure, and that's what it was about. It was a great adventure, going to the United States, which to me was larger than life.

Presenter18:58

I've read that you were awarded five medals for your service, and yet I can't in anything that I've read of you talking about it work out how it was you got the medals, because you always seem to sort of dodge the question, why were you awarded five medals?

Sir Howard Stringer19:09

Because four of them were for showing up. That can't be true, can it? Yeah, pretty much. I mean Vietnam Campaign Medal, Vietnam Service Medal, a Good Conduct Medal for being nice, a medal for being in the Army, and one medal for meritorious achievement in hostile circumstances, which was an Army Commendation Medal.

Presenter19:26

Tell me about the hostile circumstances.

Sir Howard Stringer19:27

Well, there were uh we were always in hostile circumstances.

Presenter19:32

How close did you come though to real danger?

Sir Howard Stringer19:35

Not a lot. Three times, I think, I was aware of being shot at, and I didn't think that was a good idea. And I wasn't cowardly, but I was thinking to myself, wait a minute, I was only in America three months and I was drafted, and the few trips I took on convoy escorts and search and destroy missions, I thought, well, no, no, wait a minute, a man could get killed doing this. And I didn't do anything dishonest. I just made myself extremely valuable to the commanding officer to do all the things because I had an Oxford education that would be useful. And so I sort of enjoyed the experience.

Presenter20:08

Um, you had a dramatic departure. You were nearly shot out of the runway almost off the runway, really.

Sir Howard Stringer20:10

Yeah, almost all

Sir Howard Stringer20:12

Yeah, we were leaving from a a base called Ben Hoa, which was outside Saigon, and we were lined up on the runway to get on this plane when the Viet Cong attacked the base. And we got onto the plane, and as it went down the runway, you could see tracer bullets coming towards us, and one of them went through the tail, which we later found out. And all I could think of was, Am I going to die on my last day in Vietnam? Is that what this has all been about? And then we went to Okinawa and changed planes because of the bullet hole, and all was well.

Presenter20:43

Tell me about your next piece of music. It's your fifth of the morning.

Sir Howard Stringer20:46

Well, this was a song that was popular in the army at the same time I was there, which is The Animals, We Gotta Get Out of This Place. And it was something we sang while marching. It was something we sang whenever we felt truly irritated, because it reflected how we felt. The difference between a draftee and a regular army is we didn't want to be there. We had to be there and we did it. But we really wanted to get out of this place.

Speaker 421:13

We gotta get out of this place.

Speaker 421:17

If it's the last thing we ever

Speaker 421:21

We gotta get out of this place.

Speaker 421:24

Earl is a better life for me and you.

Presenter21:31

We've got to get out of this place by the animals and memories there for you, Sir Howard Stringer, of serving in Vietnam. So you come back from Vietnam, you go back to America and you go back to CBS, and you end up working with Walter Cronkite on T V specials. And the subject is President Lyndon B. Johnson. Tell me. Sounds fascinating.

Sir Howard Stringer21:41

BS

Sir Howard Stringer21:43

Yeah.

Sir Howard Stringer21:44

Yeah.

Sir Howard Stringer21:48

Well, ironically, the the Vietnam experience suddenly became useful.

Sir Howard Stringer21:54

Johnson had agreed to do a series of interviews. We were talking about the decision to stop the bombing. And because of my Vietnam experience, I was hired to help write the questions for Walter Cronkite. And we went down to the L B J ranch in Texas and stayed there for ten days.

Presenter22:11

And working I'll come to Lyndon B. Johnston in a minute, but working with Walter Cronkite. I mean, let's remember, he he had this status as America's most trusted man. How did you get on with him? Were you in the least bit overwhelmed by working with him?

Sir Howard Stringer22:23

No, he was a very generous man. He was not the slightest bit pretentious. He was charming and smart and thoughtful and funny. He was very avuncular in style. I mean and he could read the phone book and and make you pay attention. And the interviews, which were quite difficult for him, because very hard for Walter, who is essentially a very nice avuncular person, as I said, to attack President Johnson face to face. And that created some problems because he really couldn't do it.

Presenter22:53

Is it true? I've heard rumour of the fact that some of the questions had to be dubbed in later. Is that true?

Sir Howard Stringer22:57

No, it changed the course of television news in America, and probably here, because the technique was.

Sir Howard Stringer23:04

You did the interviews with a single camera on the subject.

Presenter23:07

Yes.

Sir Howard Stringer23:08

And then you reversed the camera and you repeated the questions. What he was doing.

Sir Howard Stringer23:14

without really thinking about it, was making the questions that he

Sir Howard Stringer23:18

didn't ask directly, more aggressive. So, do you mean to tell me, Mr. President, you didn't understand? As if he was grilling the President. The President saw this and hit the roof and he said, He didn't have the courage to talk to me like that in the room. Nobody talks to me like that. And so, thereafter, in the news division, we created a rule in the CBS News standards that you had to have two cameras, and you had to have one camera on the interviewer and one camera on the subject.

Presenter23:47

And how did you get on with President Johnson? I mean, you spent a lot of time, a lot of intimate time with him. You sat down to meals together and so on. How did you get on with him?

Sir Howard Stringer23:52

You sat down.

Sir Howard Stringer23:54

And so on.

Sir Howard Stringer23:55

It was like having lunch with Henry VIII. I mean, he was profane and funny, he had great anecdotes, he'd be taking beans and dripping them down his bathrobe and doing imitations of President Nixon, and it was an amazing experience which has never been captured in public, never captured in public, but I but I saw it, you know.

Presenter24:14

Nixon, of course, who went on to take the presidency. What did he think of him? What was his opinion in private?

Sir Howard Stringer24:20

Not much. Not much. You know, he um he would compare him to women who l whatever. You g I can't repeat the stories. I've never repeated the stories.

Presenter24:29

That's a pity.

Sir Howard Stringer24:30

Yeah. But it sounded good. But we did go we used to we used to get out in his car and we'd have a cameraman in the back with me and he'd stop and feed the deer cigarettes. And

Sir Howard Stringer24:41

I thought that was sort of remarkable. But if ever I turn on the camera, he said, No, no, no, no camera. So I have all these images in my brain forever, but nothing on video.

Presenter24:46

The camera.

Presenter24:51

Let's have some more music then. Your sixth of the day. What are we going to hear now?

Sir Howard Stringer24:54

We're going to hear Symphony Number Six, The Pathetique, by Tchaikovsky. Because if I'm on a desert island, I'm going to want something that sweeps across the oceans and takes me out of myself. And

Presenter24:54

We're gonna

Sir Howard Stringer25:07

This piece of music has a relationship in two separate levels. One, it's what the Boston Symphony played when I made a documentary in China. They were the first orchestra into China just as the Cultural Revolution had come to an end. And then, years later, the Sony Orchestra, which is one of the few companies that had its own orchestra, picked this to play at Carnegie Hall. So I thought, well, there are bookends to my life that are rather endearing.

Presenter26:27

Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. Six, The Patitique, performed there by the Boston Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Seiji Ozawa. So you married in nineteen seventy eight, given that you have lived this life.

Presenter26:38

Across three continents. How how have you and Jennifer managed to to juggle that? It must must have been very tricky.

Sir Howard Stringer26:44

Well, she spent a long time living in the United States with me and I think the 9-11 experience when she was in New York alone and I was traveling the world, I was in Sweden at a board meeting, I think finished her off. She'd always said that, look, I'm going to come live with you in America, but at some point I need to go back to England. She's very English. And I think 9-11 said she said to herself, Well, look, first of all, I want the kids to go to English schools and secondly,

Sir Howard Stringer27:11

If I'm going to be left alone so much, I'd just as soon be left alone in the tranquillity of the English countryside as in New York, where people are taking planes and bombing buildings. And I accepted that on the assumption that I wouldn't stay in America forever.

Presenter27:25

And so when you were offered the job of CEO of Sony, you had you had been at very senior level in the company, but it was something of a surprise to you, am I right?

Sir Howard Stringer27:34

Oh, totally, totally. And I went to the kids and I said to them, Look, I've got this job. I don't know whether I should want it. I would have been very happy if it hadn't been offered to me. But now that they've asked me, because there's a crisis, I usually get jobs in crisis. I'm never a first choice, really, in that sense. And I said, if you don't want me to take it, I won't take it. And my daughter said, well, we love you, Daddy, but we kind of like Sony with all its gadgets. Well, you're thinking about the PlayStation system. Yeah, and its music and gadgets and so forth. But it was a tough call.

Presenter27:59

Well, they were thinking about the PlayStation 2.

Presenter28:05

So you had to as you had indeed at CBS. You you cut a lot of uh the workforce at CBS, you cut down journalists there, you you know you got this reputation for being the man that didn't mind sacking, and then you went on to Sony and you had to do the same thing.

Sir Howard Stringer28:17

Well, it wouldn't be fair to say I didn't mind sacking. If you look at the trajectory of my jobs, I've been in these jobs at the height of the golden era, and I've always had a sense that it's catching up with us, whether it was the golden age of documentaries or the evening news.

Sir Howard Stringer28:33

I could see the handwriting on the wall, and whether I wanted to or not, there is no getting away from it. You either adapt or you die.

Presenter28:41

At twenty eleven running Sony was well, we could characterize it, your annus horribulous. There was uh the Fukushima nuclear disaster, there was a big cyber hacking scandal, floods in Thailand, the yen's rise, which made uh import-export more tricky than it had ever been.

Presenter28:59

Not not a great year?

Sir Howard Stringer29:00

It was truly horrible. The greater the crisis, the more the communication is required. For the first time, it became clear to me that I had real handicaps in my ability to do what I could do in the United States, which is rush up and down corridors and make people feel better about it. And I began to feel like I did on that plane ride out of Vietnam. I began to feel like there was a conspiracy that I couldn't control. So I don't think it's in my nature to feel sorry for myself, but very frustrating. Let's have some music. Well, this is.

Sir Howard Stringer29:35

Oh a wonderful

Sir Howard Stringer29:37

song from a chorus line, which is one of my favorite

Sir Howard Stringer29:41

Musicals. It's composed by a very good friend of mine who died this summer.

Sir Howard Stringer29:48

I don't know what to make of him dying. It's it's it's two people died that I'm very close to this summer, Nora Efren, the screenwriter and director.

Sir Howard Stringer29:56

and Marvin Hamelish. And these are two giant talents, really irreplaceable. And Marvin was still writing musicals in his late sixties, still composing, and I loved him, and um his death is still a shock to me.

Speaker 430:14

Everyone is beautiful at the ballet

Sir Howard Stringer30:14

I

Speaker 430:21

Every prince has got to have his wander.

Speaker 430:33

Rock the ball rain!

Presenter30:43

At the ballet from the musical accordus line lyrics were written by Edward Cleban and the music was composed by your good friend Marvin Hamlish, and we heard their singing Kelly Bishop, K. Cold, and Nancy Lane.

Presenter30:55

When you look at where you've been, wh when you uh as you have had to day, ha pause for a moment and then cast your mind back, what do you make of this rather extraordinary and varied life that you've lived to date?

Sir Howard Stringer31:07

I've just been very, very lucky, but I've charged full speed ahead without ever knowing exactly where I was going. And I often say to people when they ask me why the how did I get such and such I say the truth is the job you have is more important than any future job and I was lucky enough to have jobs even answering phone calls that I found enjoyable. Jobs fell towards me, I didn't go towards them.

Presenter31:33

And what about the nature of being a corporate man? Because there you were, you know, making these documentaries, feeling that you had something to say, feeling hopefully, I guess, that when people watched them they made a difference. And for this last tranche of your career, you know, you've been a

Sir Howard Stringer31:40

Illinois Hope

Presenter31:45

A company man. It's been about profits. And h how does all of that sit with you?

Sir Howard Stringer31:49

hasn't been about very big problems.

Presenter31:52

I was trying to be nice, but yes, and significant losses to me.

Sir Howard Stringer31:54

The timing was not so good. Um yes, I mean I didn't have an MBA. I didn't intend to be a corporate executive. I stumbled after I'd finished doing the evening news into the presidency of CBS News and then the presidency of the network, mostly because no one else seemed to be available. And I think that was the same at Sony.

Presenter32:15

At least some of that English modesty has still clung to you. You you can't mean all of that, surely. I mean, of course you you have capabilities. You'd never be appointed to run these huge organisations if you didn't.

Sir Howard Stringer32:22

Yes, but I I never said to myself I'm the perfect candidate. And I think for people being ambitious, looking ahead is a bad idea. If you are seen because you are having a very good time, you'll get noticed. You have to prove yourself.

Presenter32:38

You're going to be on an island, of course, after this. You're going to be all on your own. Have you contemplated how you'll deal with that?

Sir Howard Stringer32:40

To the

Sir Howard Stringer32:41

Have you come?

Sir Howard Stringer32:44

Well, I I keep being drawn back to the movie Tom Hanks and the Castaway, which I thought captured an experience that I wouldn't want to replicate, and the fact that he seemed to spend a large part of his time talking to a basketball is not something I say I relish. I don't think I'm a good Desert Island candidate.

Presenter33:00

Let's have your final piece of music, then, Howard Stringer. What are we going to hear?

Sir Howard Stringer33:03

Well, this is a love song from Vojak's opera Rose, Song to the Moon, and this is a kind of a tribute to my wife, because if I'm going to be alone on a desert island,

Sir Howard Stringer33:13

I need memories of the love of my life and um and this is a song that on a desert island would probably reduce me to tears, but it would create emotion in me instantly because it's so achingly beautiful.

Speaker 433:31

Seek them most.

Speaker 434:20

Christmas for the great.

Presenter34:30

Song to the Moon from Dvorak's opera Rusalka, sung by Renee Fleming. That was from The Last Night of the Proms back in twenty ten. So, Sir Howard Stringer, I am going to give you the books now. You get the Bible, and you get the complete works of Shakspere, and you get to take uh another

Sir Howard Stringer34:44

Thai boot

Presenter34:44

Yeah.

Sir Howard Stringer34:44

I'm going to take a book of short stories by F. Scott Fitzgerald, including The Diamond as Big as the Ritz. And the reason I would take it is I love his writing and somehow that era can never be captured. You know, they're still trying to remake the Great Gatsby, and there is no resonance in American society for that peculiar period of American history.

Presenter35:05

We shall give you that book, then, and you're allowed a luxury.

Sir Howard Stringer35:08

I want a daily edition of the New York Times and the London Times, and I'm very happy sitting there on that desert island. If you want to give me a luxurious chair, that's fine.

Presenter35:17

I'm giving you the chair, I'm not giving you the newspapers. It's cheating. You're too connected to the outside world that way.

Sir Howard Stringer35:22

Shame on you.

Presenter35:23

Sorry, and if you had to pick just one of these eight disks to save from the waves, which one would it come down to?

Sir Howard Stringer35:29

I I I think in the mood I'm in today I I'd like to remember Marvin Hamlish because the sense of loss is still so palpable that I can't get it out of my head.

Presenter35:40

We shall give you that. Sir Howard Stringer, thank you very much for letting us hear your desert island discs.

Sir Howard Stringer35:44

Thank you for talking to me.

Presenter36:19

You've been listening to a download from the BBC.

Presenter36:22

You'll find more information on the Radio 4 website: bbc.co.uk slash Radio 4.