Jayne-Anne Gadhia

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Yeah.

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This

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Uh

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Is the B B C

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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.

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

Presenter0:40

My castaway this week is Jane Ann Gardia. As CEO of Virgin Money, she is arguably the most influential female banker in the UK and one of very few women in the top flight of finance, a situation she's working hard to change. A couple of years back, she led a government review into why the financial world seems so bereft of women in the boardroom.

Presenter1:02

In her own small way, her mother was something of an equality pioneer. Back in Birmingham, in the 1950s, she was one of the very first female bank tellers. My castaway, as an only child, says she was very tall, awkward, and bullied at school. As a grown-up, she's been frank about her struggle with postnatal depression. Reasons, perhaps, why she's a supporter of the mental health awareness charity, Heads Together. She says, everything in my life has been an accident. And the only reason it happened is that I've always been excited to go through a door that hasn't been opened before. Taking opportunities has always been something I've loved, and it hasn't let me down yet. So welcome, Jane Ann. As far as going through these doors that were never opened before, every successful career needs a bit of, you know, we can call it good luck, fate, whatever. What qualities, though, do you think you personally possess?

Speaker 11:49

See.

Presenter1:54

That have meant that the doors have managed to be opened by you in particular.

Jayne-Anne Gadhia2:00

I think that I've always loved people and loved chatting to people. And so wherever I've been, I've been keen to meet new people, talk about what they do and understand more broadly how their lives are and how organisations work. Balance sheets and numbers are just the output, but it's the people that make the business, serve the customer and do great things.

Presenter2:20

I mentioned in the introduction that the Treasury had asked you to conduct this review into women in finance. You'll know as well as I do the FTSE Top one hundred ranges across all sorts of industries, and yet there are still only, I think it's seven currently, women CEOs in the FTSE one hundred companies.

Presenter2:35

It would seem that the problem is not just confined to banking. Why just s stick to banking?

Jayne-Anne Gadhia2:39

It's worse in banking than everywhere else. That was the thing that shocked me. And I felt ashamed by that. Why on earth would we have created a financial services industry that was more close to women than anywhere else? So we've come up with the Women in Finance Charter that the Treasury, HM Treasury, support and lead. And what that says is we want CEOs in financial services to properly put this issue on their agenda, set themselves targets and make sure they've got the right balance of men and women in their business.

Presenter2:41

I was not thinking.

Jayne-Anne Gadhia3:05

Now, of course, on the positive side, we're thrilled that more than half of the people that work in financial services now work for firms that have signed the charter. That means that half don't. And so companies have chosen not to sign the charter. And I'm afraid I'm now starting to say to women: if you work for one of those companies, find out why they haven't signed, work out if you really like the culture or not. And if you don't, get out and join a company that's more progressive and is going to be more successful. And I think that as women, we have to take that really to those businesses and really make a difference.

Presenter3:36

Tell me about your first disc this morning then, Jane Ann Cartier. What are we going to hear?

Jayne-Anne Gadhia3:39

Well, we're going to hear Pashabelle's Canon in D. Every time I hear it, I remember how it changed my life. I was in my late twenties, I should think, at the time, when I went on a a course called The Leadership Challenge.

Jayne-Anne Gadhia3:51

And it was all about how leadership requires us to step out of our comfort zone. And at the very end of this two day course we were all asked to watch a film

Jayne-Anne Gadhia4:02

And to listen to music and to create a vision of the future that this music brought to mind. And the music, of course, was Pashabar's Canon in D. And as I told my story and gave a vision of what I thought the world could be like, I thought, gosh, never knew I had that vision in me. And I was given a cassette to play back in the car on the way home. And I think this music was something that lifted me and inspired me. And I feel that inspiration every time I hear it.

Presenter5:37

That was part of Pachbel's Canon MD. And Jane Angardi, you said going into that that that was chosen as music on a leadership course where you were encouraged to to write and then to give a presentation.

Presenter5:49

Explaining your view of what leadership meant. What was it you learned and what was it you said about the role of leadership?

Jayne-Anne Gadhia5:56

Certainly that was the time that I realized that leadership for me, it's the art of helping people to get together to create something that you think should be done. And how do you get people together around a balance sheet? You can only get people together, I think, around a common purpose.

Presenter6:07

Okay, I know.

Presenter6:10

Your career is notable by being untouched by any sort of subprime horrors or by P P I scandals or by lie bore but I wonder as a banker if you must have felt in the last few years completely tarred by the same brush.

Jayne-Anne Gadhia6:26

No, I'm definitely. I mean, when uh

Jayne-Anne Gadhia6:28

people start to not want to join banking because of the lack of trust and you know when we see in the women in finance work that women don't want to join because of the poor culture. I think we all feel tarred by that brush. And the point that I should make is that I know many, many, many bankers and everyone wants to solve this problem. I think that the banking sector today is from the inside and I hope from the outside.

Jayne-Anne Gadhia6:57

Transformed and unrecognisable from the system that it was before the financial crisis in 2008. And there's lots of technical reasons for that and regulatory reasons for that. Banks have more capital. The regulators absolutely focus on people's sort of fitness and properness for the jobs that they do, and I think that's exactly right. It's an overhead for banks, but I don't hear anybody saying that it shouldn't be done. So I do think that's important. But at the end of the day, it's people that will make the difference. And having good people that do the right thing for the right reasons, which for me means realizing that banking is a service to our customers and our economy.

Jayne-Anne Gadhia7:37

primarily, and that profits come out of that, and that being driven by the profit motive purely is never, ever going to result in the best form of banking.

Presenter7:46

Time for some more music, Jane Angardia. Tell me about your second.

Jayne-Anne Gadhia7:49

My second choice is a queen track and I've loved Queen for a very, very long time. Discovering Freddie Mercury and all the excitement that he brought to the stage was something that marked a transition for me between my childhood I think and my late teens. And I said perhaps a bit stupidly recently to one of the newspapers that I know all queen tracks and can sing them and somebody did ask me to sing it in public which of course I shouldn't have done but did.

Jayne-Anne Gadhia8:16

So I wasn't sure which queen track to choose, but in the end I had to choose the one that I think probably transforms the world of music. And although it's a bit predictable, it's still absolutely magnificent, and that's Bohemian Rhapsody.

Speaker 28:30

Bye-bye.

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Life had just begun.

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Come here.

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Didn't mean to make you cry If I'm not back again this time tomorrow Carry on

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Rude Chariot

Presenter9:05

That was Bohemian Rhapsody from Queen and Jane Ann Guardia. I will not ask you to sing from that. Tell me a little bit then about your childhood, and tell me about the stories where you would call yourself Jane Ann the Fighter and you would come out on top.

Speaker 19:10

That's the only thing.

Jayne-Anne Gadhia9:21

Oh, I'm an only child and definitely grew up in a sort of working class family that was trying to better itself.

Jayne-Anne Gadhia9:30

I was born in the sixties, money was short and travel was non-existent really. And I liked my books. And as I went to sleep, I would always imagine myself in some sort of difficult I used to like Robin Hoodwright and I could imagine myself in the Sherwood Forest fighting off these baddies and being the person that was leading people. Those were chartered stories but oddly they've sort of stayed with me and you do have to be very resilient don't you in the world and in the jobs that we do in order to take the knocks and sort of bounce back and I think that when I need that resilience some of these stories come back and remind me that actually however tough things are you can always find a way through.

Presenter10:11

I I was going to ask you, you know, triumph over the baddies and all that, you know, who the baddies were, but I read an interview with you. You said you were properly duffed up by the boys at school.

Jayne-Anne Gadhia10:21

Yeah, not actually physically, but I was in the first year of girls there, so it had been a boys' school forever. And from memory there were about seventeen of us. I suppose I would have been fourteen or fifteen when I went there, and I was over six foot tall. And of course boys aren't over six foot tall normally at the age of fourteen or fifteen. And so from the moment that I arrived, I would be screamed at by these boys who'd hide behind corners and dash out at me screaming.

Jayne-Anne Gadhia10:49

You know, I was the freak show.

Jayne-Anne Gadhia10:51

And although that continued throughout my time there till I left in the sixth form, in the end I'd sort of won them over, I guess, and it was more in fun than it was in horror. Nevertheless, I still remember my school days with a lot of warmth. The school was great, the teachers were good, and you know, I was blessed with a good education.

Presenter11:09

What did your parents say about all that happening?

Jayne-Anne Gadhia11:11

Well, of course I never told them because from my parents' perspective, you know, me going to that school was a big deal. I'd got there on some sort of grant or scholarship, but I think they had to pay some money for me to be able to go. And that was quite tough for them at that point. I think this is one of the things about bullying, really. It's sort of embarrassing to tell people that you're being bullied. And so... Because there's a shame in it. There's definitely a shame in it.

Presenter11:32

Because there's a shame in it.

Jayne-Anne Gadhia11:34

And so it wasn't anything that I was, as a young teenager, ready to talk about. I suspect it built an inner resilience that has served me well in the world of men subsequently.

Presenter11:48

Let's have some more music, Janan. Tell me about your third. What are we going to hear?

Jayne-Anne Gadhia11:51

Well we're going to hear Gary Moore and Parisian Walkways because we talked a little bit earlier about the fact that as a child of the 60s you didn't go away much and I remember the first time I left the UK. I was 18, my parents took me and my best friend Liz to Paris for a weekend and I can remember we got a hovercraft over, got on the train to the Gardeno, got out of the train and I can smell now the goulois as you got out at the station and see the cafes down the road and Paris felt like the most exotic place, was the most exotic place that I'd ever been.

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I remember parents in what they named.

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The shape of the reason

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Sam Michelle No Bourgeoisie Way.

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And I recall

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That you are mine.

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Oh spirits and

Presenter13:04

That was Gary Moore and Parisian Walkways. Jane Ann Guardia, these days students who leave school with good exam results and a guaranteed place at university, as you did when you were pretty young, a year early, I think, when you got that guaranteed place, they might these days go to, you know, South America or somewhere in Africa to volunteer. You went as far as the Unemployment Benefits Office in Dis in Norfolk. And it is. Why was that?

Speaker 113:15

Well you've got that current

Jayne-Anne Gadhia13:27

Well, when I left school, as I say, money was a bit tight at home and my mum and dad were very keen that I'd get a job and start to contribute. And uh I remember my mum taking me to

Jayne-Anne Gadhia13:37

Sign on at what used to be called the Dole Office, and it didn't take very long for me to find actually a job there.

Presenter13:44

And this was sort of 1979. Unemployment was a very, very big issue. When you were there as a young woman, what did you notice? What were your thoughts?

Jayne-Anne Gadhia13:52

It was the first time that I'd entered the real world and seen the challenges that people from all walks of life have to deal with. It was mainly men actually signing on it, because of course mainly men were working at that particular point. And whether it was men that were devastated to have been made unemployed, younger people that were starting out or people that have no fixed abode, NFAs, it was a hugely colourful and in-depth experience. And we were always told never to give the claimants, as they were referred to, money. And I bumped into a lad that I'd signed on, he was not much older than me, one lunchtime. And he said to me, Love, can you lend me a fiver? I really need to have something to eat. I really fancy some fish and chips.

Jayne-Anne Gadhia14:36

And I thought, I'm being told I can't shouldn't do this, I'll lose my job. But I just wanted to let him have the money, so I gave him the fiver and worried about it for ages. And a few weeks later, he came in. And you know, when you're frightened, that sort of rush of adrenaline through your body, and I thought, oh no, he's going to come and say what I'd done. And he said, I just wanted a quiet word and to give you your fiver back. And I must have looked surprised. And he said, thank you so much for trusting people like me. And it was the best lesson. And I've never forgotten that.

Presenter15:04

And tell me this, when you're recruiting youngsters, are you looking for a good degree, good school exam results, or are you looking at the character?

Jayne-Anne Gadhia15:12

Character first every time. And I do think that attitude and temperament are the absolute key. And I, you know, I'm I'm mother of a nearly fifteen year old and I hope she does okay in her exams. It's not the be-all and end-all of everything. Never take no for an answer. Go and bang on the doors and tell people why you're brilliant. Don't be annoying about it, but just be confident about it because people will listen.

Presenter15:36

Right, Jane Ancardia, let's uh go to the music. We're gonna hear your fourth.

Jayne-Anne Gadhia15:40

After I'd been working at the Unemployment Benefit Office, it became time for me to head off to university. So I went on what's called the Milk Round, where students go to see universities that they might like to go to. And I was in Bristol one night and we went out to disco and it was a smoke-filled room, it was dark and the music was loud, and on came Gerry Raffert's Baker Street. I was really taken by this particular new life and I knew that this was the beginning of something really special.

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Winding your way down a baker street

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Light in your head and dead on your feet well another crazy day

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Drink the night away and forget about everything.

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This city doesn't make you feel so cold It's got so many people but it's got no soul And it's taking you so long

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Find out you were wrong when you thought I'd held it

Presenter16:50

That's Baker Street from Gerry Rafferty. Jane Angardia, there is a particularly touching passage in your autobiography where you say, There are lots of things looking back that are hard to believe. Until I met Ash, I had never peeled a clove of garlic or tasted a mango. I had never contemplated a view of life different from my own, and I had certainly never come across the idea of arranged marriages. So tell me how you met.

Jayne-Anne Gadhia17:15

Uh we so I uh ended up going to London University and I arrived on Freshers Week and uh went on the first night down to the bar and um one of the guys came over and that turned out to be Ash. But because you know, in Indian men, he's the oldest son and was expected to have an arranged marriage because of that he would go and see people that his family thought would be good for him to marry, arranged wives in other words.

Jayne-Anne Gadhia17:44

And so I was kept a a big secret for quite a long time. So it was it was a an interesting and colourful and new experience in in so many ways.

Jayne-Anne Gadhia17:54

Did you ever say to him, No, you're not?

Jayne-Anne Gadhia17:57

Um, no. I never ever stopped him from going to see these sort of potential new wives. I think I was just always confident that nothing would come of it. But he was two years ahead of me at uh university.

Presenter18:01

It's sort of

Jayne-Anne Gadhia18:09

And so when he left, he actually went to live with my parents and got a job in East Anglia, but told his parents that he was staying with a friend and was working with this particular friend. Anyway, dad was away one week working and so I'd said to Ash, why don't you bring my mum down to university for the weekend? And when they got home, mum and dad's house had been burgled.

Jayne-Anne Gadhia18:29

And as it turned out, his mum rang just at that point and without thinking, he said, Oh, I can't talk to you now, we've been burgled. And his mum said, Oh, I'm coming up to see you because all of your things must have gone. Anyway, as a consequence of all of that, of course, the the truth came out. And um his mum first said uh to him, Well, you know, I don't think I ever want to see you again and then uh an hour later ran back and said, Of course I do, bring her down tomorrow.

Jayne-Anne Gadhia18:54

And um Ash's parents had got all of the family together in a a house in South Hall, and he had two little cousins at the time, who were about two and five. And uh I remember saying to them, Everybody seems quite happy about the fact that I'm here and they said, You don't really understand the language, you don't know what they're saying.

Jayne-Anne Gadhia19:12

And I said, Oh, well, Granddad seems quite happy. And he said, Oh, one of his boys said, Granddad's blind, he doesn't know you're white.

Jayne-Anne Gadhia19:19

And uh it was quite funny and I've always been welcomed with open arms.

Presenter19:22

You know, we don't really think that much about mixed race relationships these days. You know, it's not unusual. In the nineteen eighties though, I mean, how were you treated as a couple?

Jayne-Anne Gadhia19:31

I remember that I was just finishing my degree.

Jayne-Anne Gadhia19:36

And I'd gone home to study for my finals and I used to study in the in Norwich County, Norfolk County Library. And there would be an uh a man that would wait for me afterwards and chase me down the street and he'd shout after me because he knew that my boyfriend was Indian. After that experience, I mean I remember going to what was then called Anston Winnie. No Anston Winnie.

Presenter19:59

No Ernst and Young, but I think it's a very good thing.

Jayne-Anne Gadhia20:00

Now I war actually, even a further generation on.

Presenter20:01

Even if the

Jayne-Anne Gadhia20:03

And of course completely changed, I should point out, you know, very diverse organisation now. But at the time there was one guy there who was particularly racist and refused to sign my wedding card when Ash and I got married because I was marrying an Indian man. And I remember being thoroughly upset. I don't recall saying to him what I would certainly say to him today.

Presenter20:23

Right, Jane Angardia, let's hear your next piece of music then. We're uh we're gonna hear your fifth.

Jayne-Anne Gadhia20:27

So when Ash and I met thirty seven years ago, there was one particular piece of music that we've always said is ours. And we don't play it ourselves at all, really, that'd be a bit cheesy, but whenever it comes on, we go, That's our song, and it's REO Speedwagon, and keep on loving you.

Speaker 220:48

And I meant every word I said when I said that I love you. I meant

Speaker 221:03

Keep on loving you.

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Cause it's the only thing they know what I do

Speaker 221:14

I don't wanna sleep, I just wanna keep on loving you

Presenter21:27

It's your tune, Jane Ann Guardia. That is Ario Speedwagon and Keep On Loving You. I I should let listeners know that after university you went on, you trained as an accountant, you worked your way up through well a number of banking positions. Um you've gone on record as saying that alpha male banking has landed us in a lot of trouble. So let's then go back to the causes of the the big financial crisis. In two thousand eight

Presenter21:52

Just to remind people, of course, RBS was eventually it was bailed out by the government to the tune of forty five billion pounds. You had left RBS for Virgin in, I think, two thousand seven, but prior to that you'd worked at RBS and you'd worked very closely with Fred Goodwin for a number of years. How would you describe the pervading culture within RBS in those years prior to the banking crisis?

Jayne-Anne Gadhia22:15

I mean, I I should be very honest that I enjoyed a lot of the work that I did at RBS and I met a lot of good people. So I want to put that on the record first because it certainly wasn't in any way obvious that this was a bad place. And by the by, not all of it is bad.

Jayne-Anne Gadhia22:34

So I think the real point is that when RBS bought the Nat West Bank, it was such a brilliant deal to have done. It made RBS, this great bank in Scotland, one of the biggest banks certainly in the country and probably one of the biggest banks in the world.

Jayne-Anne Gadhia22:51

And as a result, I think the management team and Fred Goodwin in particular were fated for that success. And what that did, I think, was to create a drive for more and more of that growth and that success and results. And in the end, that over focus on the output at all times meant that the senior management there lost control both of the business itself and the culture that underpinned it. And that was devastating for everybody involved from the very top all the way through. And I think that in a very alpha male culture, and certainly we saw a bit of it, a lot of it maybe at RBS, it was an attitude of win-lose. I am going to win, I am going to succeed at all costs. And I think that has been very damaging. And it's undoubtedly the case that the people at the top of the organisation were people that had very similar attributes and skills. There was no diversity, I think, of thought and challenge. Mm. Yeah.

Presenter23:47

I'm happy to say that collateralised debt obligations and credit default swaps are not my territory here on Desert Island Discs. But, you know, looking at the industry more widely at that point and the pyramid upon which it was built, was there ever a time when you began to understand just how deep the problem was that you felt there is something rotten at the heart of the banking industry right now, and I'm working in it?

Jayne-Anne Gadhia24:12

Well, so I'd answer that in two ways. The reason I was at RBS at all was that We Virgin Direct at the time had partnered with RBS to create a business called the Virgin One account. And Richard Branson sold the whole business to RBS in 2001. And when he sold it, he wrote me a note and said, if ever you want to come back because you hate corporate life, just give me a call. And in October 2006, enough was going on at RBS for my team to say to me, do you remember when Richard wrote you that letter? It's time to give him a call. And by the middle of 2007, a lot of us came back to Virgin Money.

Presenter24:52

I mean, could you see the train coming down the track towards RBS?

Jayne-Anne Gadhia24:56

No, but you mentioned these complicated financial instruments. I was running the RBS retail mortgage book at that point in time. And it wasn't Fred Goodwin at all that asked me to do this, but one of his team asked me why we were not securitising subprime mortgages. And I remember myself and my finance director at the time, we didn't know what that was. And I mean, we felt stupid, right? And I promise you, Kirsty, we scratched our heads and said, well, how does that work then? But not because we could see the train coming down the track, but because we thought all these really clever people really knew what they were talking about and we didn't.

Jayne-Anne Gadhia25:34

And it made me think, if I don't understand anything, I'm not going to do it.

Presenter25:38

Definitely time for some music, Jane Ann Gardia. Tell me about your sixth.

Jayne-Anne Gadhia25:41

Whilst I was at RBS, the team there created a sort of corporate track, and it reminds me of Scotland, and I love Scotland. And the track is called Now We Are Free and it's from the soundtrack of the film Gladiator.

Speaker 225:57

I knew the shadow

Speaker 226:01

Anoshine.

Speaker 226:11

Yeah

Speaker 226:13

Song de Lee.

Speaker 226:17

Happy girl.

Speaker 226:29

What do you say?

Presenter26:38

That was Now We Are Free from the soundtrack to the film Gladiator composed by Klaus Bedelt, Anne Zimmer and Lisa Gerrard, performed there by Lisa Gerard with the Lyndhurst Orchestra conducted by Gavin Greenaway. Jane Anne Gartiger, your daughter now, Amy, she's about fifteen now, actually. She'll be fifteen in August, that's right. What does she make of her mother's extraordinary high-flying career?

Jayne-Anne Gadhia26:53

Should we fit?

Jayne-Anne Gadhia26:59

Somebody once said to me, Does your daughter see you as a role model? I said, She's fourteen, she sees me as an embarrassment.

Presenter27:06

Um Amy came along after several miscarriages. You'd had five IVF attempts. Um you had eventually become pregnant around about the age of forty and that must have been apart from being thrilling to get the news, also given what you'd been through, it must have been a ter was it a terrifying time as well? A nerve wracking time?

Jayne-Anne Gadhia27:23

I think, um yes, because I mean, I think I'd had about nine miscarriages and so goodness me.

Presenter27:29

Goodness me.

Jayne-Anne Gadhia27:30

As it turned out, Amy, as she knows, may have been a twin, and we lost one of the two, and she therefore is a little miracle.

Presenter27:38

After she was safely delivered to you, you have written about these are your words, you said you you felt hopeless, miserable and out of control, and there'll be very, very many women who recognize that. That feeling of you know, you're building up to the moment that is going to make you the happiest in your life, and what happens is postnatal depression sets upon you. As somebody who was so used to being efficient and strategic and coping, how did you deal with postnatal depression?

Jayne-Anne Gadhia28:07

Um I think I tried to deny it for quite some time. So I I was completely stupid. I thought that, you know, I was so in control of my life that I'd be able to add a baby to it. And of course within the few hours of her being delivered I realized that that of course was not going to be in any way feasible and indeed neither did I want it to be. I'd suddenly fallen in love with this little thing in a way I'd never thought possible.

Jayne-Anne Gadhia28:33

Ash had given up his job.

Jayne-Anne Gadhia28:35

in order to look after her and me, because I was the main breadwinner. And so I felt completely trapped. It felt like, having read the Harry Potter books, the Dementors had come into the room for me. It felt like a black cloud was over me and my soul was being sucked out.

Jayne-Anne Gadhia28:53

And I had never experienced anything like it. I couldn't listen to music, which was definitely a sign of my depression. And I couldn't be at home anymore. And so we'd take ourselves off to a variety of friends or my mum's. I remember coming down to a hotel in London, which was the last drawing. And I think that must have been a sort of acknowledgement that things were different and that we had to make a real decision to change things. And so I decided the way I'm going to cope with this is I'm going to work nine till six and I'm only going to work five days a week and I'm not going to stay away from home at night. And at the end of that year, Norman, my boss, told me I'd had my best ever year and I said, that's ridiculous. How can that be? I've struggled with being a mum and all of this.

Speaker 129:34

The

Jayne-Anne Gadhia29:39

Illness and he said, Do you know what, Dianan? Having something in your life that's more important than work has made your judgment much better. You've had a brilliant year.

Presenter29:47

Jaina and Gargiva, let's have uh some more music. We're going to listen to your seventh now.

Jayne-Anne Gadhia29:51

Well, from a child as an only child, I definitely had a very intense relationship with the biggest pop star of the time, and that was Donny Osmond. And when I told one or two of my friends that I was going to have the privilege of being on Desert Island Discs, they all said, Well, we'll know that Donnie Osmond's going to be one of the tracks. And I said, No, not at all, I can't put any of that sort of music on. To which one of my friends said, That would be the act of the utmost treachery. And I thought, Do you know what? He's absolutely right. And so here's Donny Osmond with Survivor.

Speaker 230:26

Nah.

Speaker 230:28

By the seasons pass.

Speaker 230:32

Try to make it laugh

Speaker 230:35

And I watched it farm away

Speaker 230:40

But a man can't be measured by the number of times he is not.

Speaker 230:45

It's all about what he does when he gets back up again.

Speaker 230:52

I'm a survivor. What you gonna change your mind for?

Presenter31:01

Your teenage heart throb, indeed, maybe your enduring heart throb. That was Donny Osmond there with Survivor at J. Hancardia. The financial services industry, a big part of it, is encouraging us to think about our future. Are you somebody who thinks about their life in that way, who thinks, I've got an end game, I'm going to stop now? You know, there's the pot of honey.

Jayne-Anne Gadhia31:22

Oh, that's quite difficult, isn't it? Because of course that's the right th way to think about it. But my life has definitely been a succession of happenstance that has led me to different places and I expect that to continue. I hope that I'm not going to retire, you know, I'm going to continue doing something, whatever it is. When people have fed up with me in banking, I hope that there'll be somewhere else to go and something else to do.

Presenter31:44

Let's hear your final disc, What Is It, Jain Guardia?

Jayne-Anne Gadhia31:47

Throughout all of my years at Virgin Money I've met some absolutely brilliant people and of course along the way we've lost some of them and we had a fantastic guy called Mark Barnes who was our HR director for a number of years and he very tragically died in a car accident at the age of 36. And the reason that I've picked this song is that it was played at Mark's funeral and of course every time I hear it I think of him and everything that he brought to all of us, customers and staff and his team and to his family. So this is Brian Adams and everything I do I do it for you.

Speaker 232:27

It's not worth fighting for

Speaker 232:33

Can't help it, there's nothing I want.

Speaker 232:39

I know it's true.

Speaker 232:43

Have to say I do.

Speaker 232:47

Do it for you.

Presenter33:01

That was Brian Adams, and everything I do, I do it for you. I'm going to give you the books now, Jane Ann. You get the Bible and you get the complete works of Shakespeare. You're welcome. And you get to take one other book. What's your book going to be?

Jayne-Anne Gadhia33:07

And you can't do that.

Jayne-Anne Gadhia33:11

Well, the book that I know I'd love to read is Les Miserables by Victor Hugo, because we love the musical as a family. And then perhaps when I get off the island, I can know whether or not that musical's really true to it.

Presenter33:24

Ever the optimistic, you may have the book and your luxury.

Jayne-Anne Gadhia33:28

So my luxury item is a sari, a very colourful sari that would make me cheerful. I'd probably use it as a hammock if it was uh strong enough. I might be able to use it as a flag to bring in my rescuers, and it would always make me think of India, its colour, and how much I love my husband and my family.

Presenter33:36

Try

Presenter33:45

Wonderful. Asari is yours, then. The one disc that you would save, if you had to. Which one would it be?

Jayne-Anne Gadhia33:52

It would have to be the Pasha Belle, because it's the one of them all that makes me know that.

Jayne-Anne Gadhia33:59

The world is good, we can make a difference, and our spirits can soar.

Presenter34:06

It's yours. Jaina and Guardia, thank you very much for letting us hear your desert island discs.

Jayne-Anne Gadhia34:10

Thank you very much.

Presenter34:55

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.

Speaker 135:27

This is the B B C.