John Timpson

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 the businessman John Timpson yes, as in Timson, on the High Street, where we, our parents, and probably even our grandparents, have gone to have our shoes repaired and our keys cut.

Presenter0:47

You think that sounds like a rather old-fashioned business model in this era of digital commerce? Think again.

Presenter0:53

My Castaway runs his company with the sort of progressive ethos a Californian tech giant would dream of. Every employee there are over three thousand gets the day off on their birthday. Use of the company's holiday homes is free and if there comes a moment when money's tight at home, staff are welcome to dip into the company's hardship fund.

Presenter1:14

Oh, and ten per cent of all their employees have been to prison.

Presenter1:18

Second chances are very much my castaway's thing, which probably also explains why he and his late wife fostered no fewer than 90 children throughout their long marriage. He says you don't have to be a tyrant to be successful. From all the evidence I see, you can do good and run a good business. So welcome, John Timpson. Thanks very much. You say in return for those benefits that I've just mentioned, I hope we'll talk a bit about those later, you only ask two things of your employees, that they look the part and that they put the money in the till. And I'm imagining that in looking the part, they have to look smart, nice shiny shoes and all that.

John Timpson1:39

Thanks very much.

John Timpson1:56

Nice job.

John Timpson1:57

Yeah, well you don't normally see their shoes because they're hidden under the counter, but uh yeah, they've they've got to wear the uniform, got to look look smart, turn up on time and keep the shop smart. But that's it. Beyond that they can do whatever they want if they think that's the right right thing to do to look after each individual customer.

Presenter2:16

You have four is it fourteen hundred shops?

John Timpson2:19

Fourteen hundred outlets, yeah. So do you do you visit them? That's the most important executive job I do. Physically it's difficult to get to fourteen hundred in a year, but I'll get to over half of them, eight hundred or nine hundred.

Presenter2:31

But do they know you're coming?

John Timpson2:32

The first one doesn't. And the m many times I've walked into a shop and the phone's gone, I've picked up the phone, I've been so John's on his way and so thanks, I'm here But I'm not going there to catch them out, I'm going there to meet them and just have a chat.

Presenter2:47

Um you're not very keen on spending money within the company on marketing and advertising. I believe you've made an exception when it comes to uh the Mann City football ground.

John Timpson2:56

Ah, that was wonderful. I've been a lifetime Manchester City supporter and for the last 20 years plus season ticket holder. So I had seats at Main Road. But when we moved to the new stadium, the Etihad, from the seat we got, you couldn't see a scoreboard. So I wrote to the board and I said, have a scoreboard, please. And they said, we'll raise it. And nothing happened. So I wrote again and not much happened. So I then sent them a cheque for £25 written out to the Manchester City Scoreboard Fund, which of course didn't exist. But that brought someone running to see me in the office. And as a result of that, I bought them a scoreboard. And for three years, they had this scoreboard there. And they allowed me to put Timpson on it. It was great.

Presenter3:45

You say you've had a season ticket for twenty years. You know what? I would have thought you sort of be up in the director's box with the prawn sandwiches and all that.

John Timpson3:50

My seats are as far away from the director's box as possible. I like to be with normal, everyday supporters. When our team get near the goal, they all stand up to look and I stand up with them.

Presenter4:03

Let's go to your first piece of music, John Timpson. Tell me about this. What are we going to hear?

John Timpson4:07

Well, this is by the five-penny piece. I'm going back to the 60s, 60s, 70s. This is where I started in business. And our business, founded by my great-grandfather, which was originally shoe shops rather than shoe repair shops, made its money by doing good, straightforward stuff and really good service. And I was lucky enough to start working in Lancashire around the shops there. And I think this five-penny piece down our street talks about life as it was then and the way I think it still is.

Speaker 44:37

Down our street, you're bound to meet Kindly people and they really are a treat They will help you out without a doubt

Speaker 44:46

Everybody's welcome and they're down our street.

Speaker 44:52

Emma in the market makes a round of toast Cups of tea and saccour in she really is the most She'll invite you in with a toothy grin But you better watch your pockets or she'll have whatever's in

Speaker 45:06

Fred the fruit, take a look, polishing these onions upon this Sunday soot.

Presenter5:12

That was the fivepenny piece in Down Our Street. John Timpson, it is worth seeing when it comes to the EU referendum. I'm going to be talking to people, Desert Islandists, who have very different views in the lead up to the referendum. But what what's your view?

John Timpson5:26

I think that there are those on the one side who are risk adverse, process driven, sort of people who are fairly conservative and they want to stay in, and there are people like me who are a bit of a maverick who think, give me the chance to have a go, free me of some of the red tape. And I'm sort of more a character who's likely to want to be out than in. But it wouldn't make much difference to our business either way, because a lot of the stuff that comes down from the EU, if I don't agree with it, then we do it our way. And I also wonder if we did come out, have we got the talent in the UK to really take advantage of it? We probably have. It is a risk. But on balance, I think it's a risk worth taking.

Presenter6:11

You say that in running your company that it's a sort of inverted pyramid. The customers are the broad base at the top and the management and the people who run everything and make the big decisions are the small people at the bottom, as it were. Obviously counterintuitive, completely at odds with the way I imagine most businesses are run. What does that mean in practice?

John Timpson6:31

Okay, one of my first things I had to do was to convince our people that they have got total freedom. So for the last 20 years, anyone in our business, every colleague, can spend up to £500 to settle a complaint for a customer without referring to anyone else. It actually saved me a fortune because by settling complaints quickly you avoid big problems. And also I say to people, all our colleagues, you can charge what you want.

John Timpson6:58

I'm talking here of shoe repairs, key cutting, because you always got some customer's got a particular problem you need to solve, and you've got to give your people the freedom to solve it the way they know best.

Presenter7:10

So managers are not dictating, managers are supporting.

John Timpson7:13

Yeah, they're not allowed to give orders. They can't tell people what to do. They're there to help their people. Not just in work, but actually, because it goes way beyond the workplace. And it took five years to convince middle management that their job becomes creating the team and helping them, letting their people have the freedom and becomes a more interesting job. But it took five years to get there.

Presenter7:39

Time for your second piece of music, John Simpson. Just tell me a little bit about this. Why have you chosen this piece?

John Timpson7:44

Well this goes back to my teenage years when I struggled to play the violin and I actually learned the trick of how you can look good by keeping the bow in time with everyone else but if it doesn't hit the strings you don't actually ruin the rest of everyone playing. So in other words I was more of a grade three sort of level but the Archduke trio I was able to play well enough to just about be satisfied with the noise. My mother was a very capable pianist and there was a friend down the road who played the cello. So we had some very amusing times. This is when I was about 14, 15, 16 having a go at home in our living room.

Presenter9:26

That was the Schirtzer from Beethoven's Trio for Piano, Violin, and Cello in B flat major opus ninety seven, performed by the Callickstein Laredo Robinson trio. So, uh, John Timpson, yours is very much a family business, as we know. Uh did your father, Anthony, ever take you along to work when you were a little boy?

John Timpson9:42

Used to go to Blackpool every year. We had a shoe repair shop and a shoe shop in Blackpool. So I visited the shops. I always remember we did it every year. But I I spent a lot of time talking about business to my father over the washing up. He washed, I dried and we talked especially when I was still living at home and I had first left school and I was the shop assistant and I got hooked on the whole thing.

Presenter10:06

As I mentioned in the introduction, you would go on much later to foster ninety children. Your wife gave birth to three children. You then adopted two others. So what did you see? What did you absorb from your own parents?

John Timpson10:19

We were a very ordinary is perhaps the wrong word. It was conventional, that's the right word, and conservative with a small C. My parents were big social. I was introduced to playing golf at the age of 10 because my father did. I've got an elder sister, just the two of us. She was much more of the social animal going to parties. I was quite withdrawn, really, I guess.

Presenter10:45

A bit shy? A bit shy?

John Timpson10:46

Very shy, yeah. And uh at the background there was always the family business thing. I always knew I'd never even questioned the fact I was going to be part of the family business. It was just the way I was brought up. It was always expected, you know, that I would follow in my father's footsteps.

Presenter11:02

You say that being brought up, it was a very conventional environment. You were quite a shy boy, and here you sit in front of me as this.

Presenter11:09

you know, highly individualistic businessman, quite buccaneering, unconventional. I'm wondering what it was. Did your parents leave you to your own devices? Were you given lots of freedom?

John Timpson11:19

No, I don't think so. I think that

John Timpson11:22

What really changed for me was Alex.

John Timpson11:25

When I met my wife. Your wife, yes.'Cause she was the one who brought all the children and uh and had a completely different attitude to life than I had when I met her.

Presenter11:35

We will find out much more about that, John Timpson. But for now, we're going to hear your third disc. Tell me about this.

John Timpson11:40

Ah, Elvis. Do you know there's some bits of music you can picture exactly where you were? Yes. This one takes me back to school. I went to boarding school when I was age 13. And in the second year, you got allocated a little study with about six of you together. One of my friends, Simon, he had the record play out, and this Elvis track was nearly always on. And I could just picture my desk in that study with this Elvis track being played.

John Timpson12:14

Uh Uh

Speaker 112:14

Okay, I think

John Timpson12:14

Uh

Speaker 412:15

Victory.

Speaker 412:16

You love your thing.

Speaker 412:19

Put a chain around my neck and leave me anywhere.

Speaker 412:29

I don't wanna be a tiger, cause tiger's plates are rough I don't wanna be a lion, cause lions ain't the kind you lovin'

Speaker 112:41

Bumps it up.

Presenter12:44

Elvis Presley and let me be your teddy bear and you say John Simpson that was chosen for those early days of boarding school and you and your five mates in this sort of shared boarding room. Your father encouraged you to train as an accountant rather than go to university but you gave that up pretty quickly. You decided you would go to university. You were reading industrial economics at at Nottingham.

Presenter13:04

How did student life suit you?

John Timpson13:07

Yeah, I I mean I got to university rather strange route. I hated the accountancy thing.

John Timpson13:13

Ticking figures in a mill in Mows Platting, just north of the city centre in Manchester. I did it for six weeks and then I just uh walked out and went to my father's office and said, You know, I've got to do something else. So he gave me a job filling in the figures at the office for a bit. But after two weeks of that, I became a shop assistant and after that was great.

Presenter13:36

W was he was he angry, your dad?'Cause he sort of had it mapped out for him.

John Timpson13:39

Not at all. He was never an angry man anyway. He thought he'd done the right thing, but he could quickly see that I was going to learn a lot more working in the business and serving customers than I was ever going to learn sat in an office with accountants. But I realized during that year that I was sort of missing out on the university thing, and I somehow got in. And I managed to get in the university golf team. In those days, not many people played, which was fantastic because the six members of the team became members of Woolerton Park Golf Club. And they had a special rate for us, which was £3 a year, of which the university paid half. And it was a drive and a five-hour away from the room I was living in. So it was perfect.

Presenter14:23

Uh you went after university uh to work as a graduate trainee at Clark's before you then joined the family firm. What were you doing in those early days, basically? What was the job?

John Timpson14:29

Family

John Timpson14:33

When I went to Clark's. Yeah.

Presenter14:34

Yeah.

John Timpson14:35

Well, they stuck me in uh in a factory in what was called the closing room, doing the uppers, which is the the top bits, the left. I I was meant to be stitchy. I but I was hopeless, I'm absolutely useless at doing anything with my hands, and uh anyway I survived that. It was very interesting.

Presenter14:42

Well that's shoes

Presenter14:51

What was the worst injury you sustained?

John Timpson14:52

I didn't no, they they they they gave me very easy things, so there was no moving parts involved really. But I I did that for a bit and then they were worried because we'd also in our business got a a big factory we had in Kettering and they didn't want me to get involved in the time and motion study.

Presenter15:08

Yes, I was wa this was what I was getting to because of course they would know that you were the boss's son from Timpsons that made shoes. Did they sort of keep you away from the interest?

John Timpson15:13

Yeah.

John Timpson15:16

They took they kept me away from the time I it wouldn't have done any good'cause I didn't understand anything about it anyway, but uh so I didn't do that and instead I went to work in one of their shoe shops. That was uh a bit more retail experience and uh finished off the course and then started with Timson.

Presenter15:31

More of that in a second. For now let's hear your next piece of music. We are on your fourth.

John Timpson15:35

That's Ella and Louie. Isn't this a lovely day to be caught in the rain? University time, because I had a friend in the first year who had the Ella and Louie tracks, and we used to listen to those on a Sunday morning and then go down to the golf club for a couple of pints with the members. Not many university students did that in those days.

Speaker 415:55

The weather is frightening, the thunder and lightning.

Speaker 416:00

Seem to be having their way

Speaker 416:05

But as far as I'm concerned, it's a lovely day

Speaker 416:15

The turn in the weather will keep us together So I can honestly say

Speaker 416:25

That as far as I'm concerned.

Speaker 416:29

It's a lovely day

Speaker 416:34

And everything's okay.

Speaker 116:44

Yes, isn't this a lovely day?

Speaker 416:44

Yeah.

Speaker 116:50

To be curled in a rain

Presenter16:54

Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong and isn't this a lovely day? So, um, John Timpson, you did go into the family firm then. By the age of twenty-seven, you were director of Buying.

Presenter17:05

That I mean, it sounds like a rapid rise, and of course I'm sure the people who were working with you couldn't help thinking, Oh, yeah, the boss's son. Look how quickly he goes up the ladder. Did you feel that?

John Timpson17:12

Look.

John Timpson17:16

Actually, I thought I was I was surprisingly good, I thought, at the ladies' buying job, for someone who've got very little fashion sense, really. But I worked how to do it, how how to actually work out what was going to sell in the shops next year. It was dead easy. You just saw what was selling in Italy one year, and so that's what was going to sell home at home the next. In those days, you got them made up in Lancashire. It was it was a wonderful time and and and it worked quite well. Uh but yeah, I mean I was young to be a director at the age of twenty-seven, probably wet behind the ears, but

John Timpson17:49

That's fairly normal in a family business in a in a way. But these these are the days where uh, you know, I was mister John and my father was mister Anthony. Very different days. But everything went according to plan, really.

Presenter18:01

By nineteen seventy three then, you you as you say, you were a director, just in time, beautifully timed, for this great sort of explosion of a family feud that happened within the business. In essence, your uncle ousted your father from the company, and that must have been a moment of

Presenter18:21

Huge tension and trauma for your father.

John Timpson18:23

devoted his life to this pursuit.

John Timpson18:27

My father just had to leave. I mean, he was told he had to leave that day and bring the car back a week later, never to go into the shops other than a customer. It was really quite nasty stuff. And suddenly

John Timpson18:40

The whole life that I thought had been planned for me, as it were

Presenter18:43

As it were.

John Timpson18:43

Yeah.

Presenter18:43

Gasp.

John Timpson18:44

Came to a grinding halt.

Presenter18:46

And you d you did subsequently you sold your shares, you went to work elsewhere, and then it was a sort of cycle of ten years by the time that that you came back and you led this management buy out and and the family was back to owning a hundred percent of this business. Was your father still alive?

John Timpson18:59

On the

Speaker 118:59

100%.

John Timpson19:03

Yeah.

Presenter19:04

How how did that conversation go when you said we've got a track?

John Timpson19:07

Well, he was very pleased and he uh a modest amount of money I needed to put up to buy my share, he he lent me part of it and so he he was able to see it coming back into family hands.

Presenter19:18

Let's have some more music, John Timpson. We're going to hear

John Timpson19:22

Your fifth? Uh the carpenters. Uh reason why this is here is that uh I've spent uh quite a few years when I've actually had quite a lot of stress.

John Timpson19:37

You you spend all day between feeling miserable or having butterflies in your stomach, one or the other, and you

John Timpson19:47

All the time going around thinking about trivial things which really don't matter but suddenly matter a lot, and you can't make up your mind what to do, and you find yourself looking at everyone else and feeling very jealous of what a nice, easy life they have and how they can cope with things and you can't. And when I first got it, I didn't think it was something you talked about, but it helps yourself to talk about it. And I've discovered it also helps other people, certainly colleagues at work in the business.

John Timpson20:23

Quite regularly. So if it hadn't been for you saying that you've had this problem, I wouldn't have had the courage to go and talk to my partner or talk to the people I work with and go to the doctor. And one of the things I did was I started playing the piano very badly, but I managed to find easy to play pieces. And the one I enjoyed most was a whole book full of carpenters things. So that's why the carpenters are in there to help me through some of the dark times.

Speaker 120:58

Uh

Speaker 420:58

Um Top of the world

Speaker 421:01

Down on creation and the only explanation I can find

Speaker 421:08

Is the love that I've found ever since you've been around? Your love's put me at the top of the world.

Speaker 421:24

Something in the wind has learned my name And it's telling me that things are not the same

Presenter21:33

That was the Carpenters and Top of the World. So, um, John Timpson, you've mentioned your wife, Alex. You've said that that was the moment when things changed profoundly for you, was when you met her. And you were both um you know, you were parents, you were running a successful business, you were very busy, and Alex said to you

Presenter21:52

What did she say to you, I want to foster? How did was there a conversation?

Presenter21:57

Yeah. Yeah. That's a kind of qualified yes, isn't it?

John Timpson22:01

She did ask me, but I don't think there was any doubt what the answer was going to be.

John Timpson22:07

It it was a long time after we'd been approved by the Fostering and Adoption Panel to be foster carers, and nothing sort of happened. I'd have forgotten all about it. And I arrived home one Friday night.

John Timpson22:19

To find I've got two more children in the house. What I wasn't prepared for is the completely different experience that they'd had in life compared with our children. Inasmuch as, I mean, we had a fairly big garden, but they called it the park. They'd never seen anything like it before. And almost immediately we got a couple of these little tractor things which the children drive around with their feet, and round around the kitchen and literally going F F F F. Right. Colourful language. Colourful language. Which, of course, our children thought was absolutely fantastic. But this was the start of many things, and they stayed with us for six months.

Presenter22:52

Right. Colourful language. Colourful language.

Presenter23:03

There are, and I've read in your books, you know, that there are difficult, dark, complex stories as well. When you take on foster kids who obviously are not able to be at home for all of the circumstances we can easily imagine, they bring with them much of their lives and much of their distress and trauma. What have been the most difficult things?

John Timpson23:26

Um

John Timpson23:28

Well, you get a lot of the behaviour that is caused by lack of attachment that they experience in their early life. I mean, basically what's happening with these kids that come into care, a lot of them, haven't had the normal bonding process that happens at home.

Presenter23:44

So you get aggression and you get rejection and you get tempers.

John Timpson23:46

Yeah, and we didn't really understand because no training in those days. We didn't know what attachment was, and we didn't understand that really they behaved like that because they lacked self-confidence, they didn't trust other people, they didn't know who they really were, and they were testing, they were trying to see whether they had got a secure place with you. And what they wanted was confirmation that they were secure, but they did that in a way which we found difficult. The second couple we had, both of whom came with signs of physical abuse, Cirac burns, and that sort of thing. And the little girl, she used to play with the doll's house, but it always finished up in a complete muddle, everything all over the room, and she was playing what happened at home. And her brother managed to take a mallet to a hundred and ten, I counted them, panes of glass at our coal frames by the greenhouse. Goodness me. That's the way he got rid of his frustration.

Presenter23:50

We have no idea.

Presenter24:39

Goodness mate.

Presenter24:42

Let's have some more music, John Timpson. We're on your

John Timpson24:46

Sixth. Yeah, well, this is No One Quite Like Grandma. Well, this was a Christmas song. It went to number one. But it was performed, this is why it's here, by the St Winsbridge School Choir from St Winnerford School in Stockport, which is where the second two were at when this was recorded.

Speaker 425:10

How we love you.

Speaker 425:13

Come all we do.

Speaker 425:17

Oh, you may be far away.

Speaker 425:20

Think of you. There's no one quite like Grandma. And I know you will agree.

Speaker 425:30

Joe Eyes is a friend to you and she's a friend to me. There's no one boy dark grandma.

Presenter25:42

Uh that was St Winifred's School Choir, and there's no one quite like Grandma Griffith.

John Timpson25:45

Chosen for good

Presenter25:46

Alright.

John Timpson25:46

Uh

Presenter25:46

Uh

John Timpson25:46

It it brings back fantastic memories. Although I must admit it's not a a piece of music I will play very often on the island.

Presenter25:48

Yeah.

Presenter25:54

I get it. Um, John Simpson, uh ten percent of your employees have been in prison.

Presenter26:00

Many of those people manage your shops. How do their working peers respond when they find out that somebody who's been in the nick is going to come and w work alongside them?

John Timpson26:10

Good question. This is my son James's project. He was visiting a prison and he was shown round by a guy called Matt, who impressed James so much, he said, Here's my card. When you get out, give me a ring, I'll find you a job.

John Timpson26:27

And he's still with us and he's running one of our shops. Uh and we kept fairly quiet about it until suddenly I discovered that uh I think it was a Sun newspaper. It ran

Presenter26:37

It was cons learned to cut cadence, isn't it?

John Timpson26:39

Consult learned to cut keys. So we have a weekly newsletter in our business, so I ran a headline at the front page of that, said The Sun Won't Stop Us, which told everyone about it. And I was in for a big surprise.

Presenter26:40

So it was a good thing.

John Timpson26:53

Our colleagues have been fantastic.

John Timpson26:56

They take an enormous pride in helping these people. To the extent of uh if s one or two people have have not not had somewhere to go to live when they le left prison, they've gone and stayed with some of our colleagues. They've lived with them.

Presenter27:10

Uh now we're talking here, to be clear, we're not talking about parking violations here. You know, these these can often be people with violent criminal pasts. Some of them are murderers. What sort of vetting is done to make sure that these people are

John Timpson27:21

Sure that these people Uh

John Timpson27:25

We do the interviews. We want to employ people from prison who are going to make a success of it.

John Timpson27:31

We don't want to set them up to fail. So we're picking them on their personality.

John Timpson27:37

And

John Timpson27:38

There are plenty of people who've who've got criminal records, who are working for businesses who don't know about it. We know what our people have done. We hardly exclude anybody. We don't take people who are sex offenders. We don't take people who've been found guilty of arson. The offenders doesn't matter to us. What matters is their potential and their personality.

Presenter28:00

Is it the case, then, that none of you you call them colleagues, you know, generally members of staff?

Presenter28:05

have ever come forward and said I don't want to work next to this guy.

John Timpson28:10

Uh

John Timpson28:13

In the early days we had one or two who particularly the the managed management level say, Joe, I really don't want to be part of this?

John Timpson28:24

But a lot of them have changed around because they suddenly found they've got fantastic people have come. So you do have to have a cultural change. And it's a great education for the people they're working with to be more understanding of other people in society. And once they actually work alongside these people and realize how much that has changed their lives and what drive there is to do better, it actually inspires them as well.

Presenter28:48

Let's go to some music, John Timpson. We are on your seventh disc. Tell me about this.

John Timpson28:54

Well, Buddy Holly, True Love Ways. This was the piece of music that was played on our 25th wedding anniversary, which we celebrated on Necker Island. Alex, as well as being eccentric, was occasionally extravagant. There were 17 of us went off, and then on the wedding anniversary itself, when we came down for dinner, they made sure that this tune was being played. We went to see Buddy the musical, I think it was eight times. So it's simply here because it's Alex.

Speaker 429:27

Just you know why

Speaker 429:33

Why you and I?

Speaker 429:39

We'll buy and buy.

Speaker 429:45

No true love wise

Speaker 429:50

Sometimes we'll sigh Sometimes we'll cry

Speaker 129:54

Uh

Presenter30:01

That was Buddy Holly and True Love Ways, and it was chosen for your wife, Alex. You you say it was being played on Necker Island on your twenty fifth wedding anniversary when you came down to dinner. You were married for forty seven.

John Timpson30:09

The restaurant

John Timpson30:13

Very nearly forty-eight years.

Presenter30:14

Nearly forty-eight years. She died very recently, and and when you were talking about her, it's clear that

John Timpson30:15

Forty-eight years.

Presenter30:21

You lived a very different life because you married Alix.

Presenter30:25

I mean, what was her legacy in your for example, in your business? Did she influence the decisions you made?

John Timpson30:30

I think she made an enormous influence. I mean, there were one or two very critical decisions that she made a big difference to. There was a time when I had thoughts of floating the business. We've got a merchant banker lined up and she just came and said, you're mad. You would never be able to work with these people. You would find it so difficult to have institutional shareholders or any other shareholders. And how right she was. And that I mean, that was a brilliant, brilliant piece of advice.

Presenter30:57

And what about this extraordinary feat of this short term fostering throughout your marriage?

Presenter31:04

You know, did it did it bind you closer, do you find it?

John Timpson31:06

I think it probably did. Yeah, I mean, there were times when, you know, you get back, it's been a pretty busy day, and actually Alex is tireder than I am, and you don't have time to talk because it's that one's bedtime, that one's bedtime, and so on. But I don't think we ever really had a difference over what was happening with the children. I mean, and when we f stopped doing fostering, she became a home-start volunteer, which is almost the same sort of thing. And always what one of the great things she did was to break all the rules.

Speaker 131:16

Yeah.

Presenter31:37

So very similar to you in that respect, in terms of how you run your business.

John Timpson31:39

Yeah, I mean, I think she gave me the courage to do that. And also, of course, uh the business now is run by James, our eldest son, who has a lot of Alex's character in him.

John Timpson31:51

One of the strengths, I think, is that you've got a father and son who are able to work together.

Presenter31:56

Because you're now chairman of that.

John Timpson31:58

Because I'm chairman, James runs it day to day. But I also know that uh if we have any difference of opinion, I just think, well, he's just like his mother, so I let him win.

Presenter32:10

John, I have to be clear. This castaway island we're sending you to is no Necker Island. There will not be a fleet of staff. You'll be all on your tod. How do you think you'll cope?

John Timpson32:19

On a practical level.

John Timpson32:21

Badly.

Presenter32:22

Will you?

John Timpson32:22

Will you? I have no practical spills at all. Uh, psychologically I think I'll be fine. I think I'd I quite like my own company from time to time. I hope I'll be able to eat. Cooking I can do, but no, I would cope with with difficulty.

Presenter32:36

Let's go to your eighth piece of music. Tell me about this.

John Timpson32:39

This is uh Danagal SB and this particular track has got on it

John Timpson32:45

people who I've heard many times and know got to know quite well, and it just brings back to me the lovely holidays for the last twenty years that I've enjoyed in the Caribbean.

Speaker 432:55

Down in New Orleans waving the spine All them cats are drinking that wine Drinkin' a mess it's a little delight Oh when they get drunk, stop singing oh night Drinkin' once hoodie drinkin' wine Drinkin' once hoodie ooh to drink the wine Drinkin' once hoodie oo they pass that bar the lady Yeah Now drinkin' a mess it's a little delight When they get drunk, stop fightin' all night Oh they're knocking down the windows and they're tearing down the doors Drinking them gallons of call and come on Drinkin' once hoodie drinkin' wine Drinkin' once hoodie drinkin' wine

Presenter33:23

Oh dang it.

Presenter33:28

Drinking wine sporioti, that was Donna Gillespie. It's time, John, for me to give you um the books you get, the complete works of Shakespeare and the Bible to take to this island, and you're allowed to take a book to join those. What what's your book going to be?

John Timpson33:41

Well, I'm going to take the Mayor of Casterbridge because I've always wanted to write a novel. I've written business books and I I thought I could study that and use that as a sort of learning curve to write the novel. It's yours. A luxury too. Really what I'd like to take is a tennis court. But I think I'll run round the island and take the paper and the pen.

Presenter33:48

Yeah.

Presenter34:03

The novel, it is then. The novel's going to win out. Um which one of the eight discs would you save?

John Timpson34:08

Buddy Holly's got to be there'cause uh Alex is still got to be with me with True Love Ways.

Presenter34:13

It's yours then. Uh John Timpson, thank you very much for letting us hear your Desert Island discs.

John Timpson34:18

Thanks very much.

Presenter35:00

You've been listening to a download from the BBC. You'll find more information on the Radio 4 website, bbc.co.uk slash Radio 4.