I think what we've learnt over the years is that what we, the directors and senior managers, know is far less than the collective intelligence of the customers and the people who work in the pubs. So it's our job to go in there, not peeve them off with our authoritarianism, speak to them and get ideas from the coalface.

Presenter asks

How surprised were you at the result of the EU referendum?

I was pretty surprised. This is a egotistical story, but I was asked to be on David Dimbleby's referendum show and I dipped out at the last minute because I thought we were gonna lose.

Presenter asks

The recording

Transcript

Timestamps play the recording from that turn

Tim Martin
This is the BBC.
Presenter
Hello, I'm Kirsty Young. Welcome to Desert Island Discs, where every week I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, the book, and the luxury item that they'd want to take with them if they were cast away on a desert island.
Presenter
For rights' reasons, the music on these podcast versions is shorter than in the original broadcast. You can find over two thousand more editions to listen to and download on the Desert Island Disc's website.
Presenter
My castaway this week is the businessman Tim Martin. The founder of J. D. Weatherspoon, he runs 900 odd pubs. By anyone's reckoning, that's a lot of booze and grub to dish up. A lot of staff, too. He employs thirty seven thousand people. And whilst hipster fads for Vietnamese food trucks or pop-up vegan cafes come and go, it seems our taste for a pint of ruddles and a plate of scampion chips is greater than ever this year. His company's profits are up twenty-five per cent on sales of one point six billion.
Presenter
He was originally destined for the bar of a different sort. As a young man he qualified as a barrister but a fear of public speaking led him instead to open his first establishment, Martin's Free House.
Presenter
He seems to be over his shyness now, having recently and repeatedly spoken up publicly in favour of Brexit. In the run up to the referendum he even printed half a million beer mats explaining the case for Britain leaving the EU.
Presenter
His business philosophy is much like his philosophy on life, he says.
Presenter
Don't try and change the world. But if you can, just make tiny tweaks every day to make it that bit better. That's a very powerful force over time. And so uh welcome, Tim Martin. I described you there
Speaker 1
Uh
Tim Martin
Yeah
Presenter
As a businessman, but just a moment ago, before we opened the microphones, you described yourself as a public.
Tim Martin
Yes, my day to day life involves uh running pubs and trying to make the tweaks you mentioned so it's more precise to say publican.
Presenter
You visit quite a few establishments a week, ten pubs a week.
Tim Martin
Well I try not to let it ever drop below ten, but average is probably twelve fourteen a week.
Presenter
I managed to get a sneaky little look at the notes you make, which are usually highly private and confidential, and I notice I mean they're very, very detailed. There are photographs in there too. One of your notes said Very good breakfast wrap, but cutlery quite poor.
Presenter
So it's all about the detail, is it?
Tim Martin
Yes, I go into pubs and try and imagine that I'm a customer and try and imagine what they'd be looking for. I also try and park half a mile away from each pub so I get a mile walk there and back, but also walk through the town and see how our pubs look when you've arrived at it in cold blood from somewhere else rather than parking round the back.
Presenter
The runaway
Tim Martin
But
Presenter
And of course part of building a business is taking the team with you. What's your advice about that? About people not saying, Oh God, here he comes.
Tim Martin
I think what we've learnt over the years is that what we, the directors and senior managers, know is far less than the collective intelligence of the customers and the people who work in the pubs. So it's our job to go in there, not peeve them off with our authoritarianism, speak to them and get ideas from the coalface. And then every week we make decisions in concert with them. When I go to the office and we have our weekly meetings, we've got pub managers and area managers who sit in in all the meetings. Do you think
Presenter
That all of the small pubs that are closing are doing so because your great big chain is sort of gobbling up the high street.
Tim Martin
I don't think so because if you look at London where we've got most pubs, two of the most successful companies have been Young's and Fuller's which have adapted themselves to our presence and become very, very good indeed. So I think uh you'd find that a lot of pubs have shut down in areas where Wetherspoon isn't smaller villages, suburbs, but we do better if there are other pubs and restaurants near us. So we're not trying to kill everyone off.
Presenter
Right.
Presenter
Um, you have said inactivity equals unhappiness. You are somebody who believes in, what, a bit of exercise every day?
Tim Martin
Yeah.
Tim Martin
Yes, I found when I was younger that I was quite a stressy sort of guy, and I found the way for me to convert anxiety into a positive force was to take exercise. But if you can do an hour or two up on your hind legs and avoid too much soya, which is sitting on your ass, then I think it's better for everyone. You might live longer or you might not.
Presenter
Tell me about your first piece of music tomorrow, and what we're gonna hear?
Tim Martin
The first one is uh a guy very popular in the nineteen seventies, Loudon Wainwright the third. He hasn't got a good idea of a pub, which a lot of people have to say don't, and this is a brilliant Mickey take of someone who drinks too much in a pub.
Speaker 3
Then I do my usual time.
Speaker 3
The phone ranging, ranging.
Speaker 3
I'm standing there in a phone booth.
Speaker 3
Coping with the ugly truth
Speaker 3
E C
Speaker 3
I know where you are.
Speaker 3
Yeah.
Presenter
Louden Wainwright III, Down Drinking at the Bar. Tim Martin, you've printed all these bar mats and very recently you've done this manifesto for a successful Brexit. There are very many places, both here on Radio 4 and of course beyond, where people are discussing at great length the ins and outs of Brexit. And for our purposes, I want to discuss you at great length. So I'm not going to go into all of that, but I am interested in the fact that you've got two or three thousand people from other EU countries currently working your business, as I understand it. They're young, they're enthusiastic, they want to engage in the hospitality industry, a growing industry in Britain.
Speaker 1
I am
Presenter
If we're not in the EU, we don't have that, and that will fundamentally affect the prices that people pay, the atmosphere, all the things that people enjoy about our hospitality here in the UK. What would you say to all those people in your industry who are shouting that message loud and clear right now?
Tim Martin
I'd say you're right in a way, folks. Immigration is a good thing, but you don't need to give your democracy away in order to have what you want.
Presenter
So you're talking there about I mean we hear often cited the the Australian point system is let plenty people in, but let us choose specifically who those people are, is that what you're saying?
Tim Martin
That's right. I'm saying subject to the will of the people. Immigration is a good thing. You need a slightly rising population as the years go by to have a successful economy in a successful country. There's quite a low birth rate. So use a point system.
Presenter
Of course, a majority of people voted for Brexit, and many of them complain at what they see as the relentlessly over pessimistic view of the media in its representation of what's going on currently.
Presenter
You yourself, as somebody who's been vocal and engaged in all of this, how how have you found your treatment?
Tim Martin
I found my treatment by the media excellent, and that's across all the media. I do think the media have faithfully tried to report what people say. Obviously, people in the media have their own views, I suppose. A lot come from London, and it so happens that there are remainers. But I think people have, on the whole, tried very hard to be unbiased, apart from some newspapers, which I think could have done better to present both sides. They've been a bit too doctrinaire. A great weave.
Presenter
Of well, let's be polite and call it surprise, overtook the media the day after the vote as somebody who's in his pubs every week.
Presenter
Who is out there facing the customer? How surprised were you at the result?
Tim Martin
I was pretty surprised. This is a egotistical story, but I was asked to be on David Dimbleby's referendum show and I dipped out at the last minute because I thought we were gonna lose. And I thought I'm not gonna be there and saying yes, the best man won.
Presenter
Let's have some more music, Tim Martin. We're going to listen to your second one. Tell me a little bit about this. Why is it on your list?
Tim Martin
This is a song from Van Morrison, and I'd say it's an ode to work. It's got all the fantastic music you'd expect from Van Morrison, but I love the line, I'm a working man in my prime, cleaning windows, because I think work's vital for most of us, for all of us really.
Speaker 3
What's my life? I'll help you cleaning windows.
Speaker 3
Take my time. I'll see you when my love goes.
Speaker 3
Baby, don't let slide. I'm a working man in my prime.
Speaker 3
Colour in the windows.
Speaker 3
Number thirty-six.
Speaker 3
Uh
Presenter
Glorying there, Tim Martin. You were in everything that is Van Morrison. That was cleaning windows. And you were you spent a lot of time in Northern Ireland as a kid. You were born in nineteen fifty five in Norwich, and then your dad moved because of his job. Just tell me a little bit about your father.
Tim Martin
He went to school in Dunganon in Northern Ireland where my mother was born and they married. He went to Cranwell at the age of eighteen. He then got married and was a fighter pilot in the RAF, in the RAF Aerobatics team. Golden boy at school, top athlete, very good rugby player, captain of the rugby team, quite a glamour boy.
Presenter
Tell me a bit about your mum and dad's parents. What sort of parents were they?
Tim Martin
They had a very fiery relationship and basically they didn't really get on, especially after the old man left the RAF when I was about six. We went back to Northern Ireland and had a turbulent time, but they sank their differences. We went to New Zealand for five years, but then when we came back when I was fifteen to Belfast, they split up, and then I still remained friendly with my father, but not so much with my mother from that time on.
Presenter
Can you remember as a little boy what you were interested in? What did you like doing?
Tim Martin
I think one of my two brothers and I were both very sporty, like the old man.
Presenter
You're a big guy. You w what height are you no?
Tim Martin
No, six foot six. I was six foot three at thirteen, so I was always the biggest guy in the class and always played a lot of sports and uh was in the school football under eleven team at seven, I remember, I was possibly my greatest sporting achievement. And uh when we went to New Zealand we were both very sporty, like a lot of kids, but we took it seriously.
Presenter
Right.
Presenter
Yes. You mentioned your dad was in the aerobatics flying squad in the RAF. Was there a sense in which anything you do, you take it to the limit?
Tim Martin
Put in the up.
Tim Martin
Not from being pushed by my parents, I wouldn't say. They wanted me to work hard at school, but I had this feeling from when I was a kid, slightly nutty feeling, that if I wanted to do something, I definitely could do it. And I had no doubt at all I could become... It's it's a terrible thing to say, I know I won't be doing myself any favours, but if you really, really concentrate on something, there's a a deal of truth in it, you can achieve it.
Presenter
Was there any sign, when you were a little kid, of that entrepreneurial spirit? I mean, did you start a small business when you were at school?
Tim Martin
No, I think one of the things that helps is to swim against the tide, as a guy called Sam Walton of Walmart said, as a key characteristic of an entrepreneur. So I was always a balsy little git and I always felt I knew better and well wasn't frightened to say it probably to too great an extent.
Tim Martin
Yeah.
Presenter
Tell me about your next piece of music. We're going to listen to your third disc of the day.
Tim Martin
This is a a song by The Beach Boys Do It Again. Amazing sound, unique sound, the Beach Boys. No one's ever produced music like them, and this one reminds me of the Beach, Surfing, Youth, and it's an ecstatic record.
Speaker 3
It's a lot of medicine, talk to golden
Speaker 3
Conversation
Speaker 3
Girls we knew when their hair was soft and long, and the beach was the place to go.
Speaker 3
Rise in a way for sunshine, California girls and
Speaker 3
Coast mine warmed up weatherless Getting together and too
Presenter
That was the Beach Boys and Do It Again. So Tim Martin, a self confessed, balshy little kid. Uh let's talk then about this kid getting a little bit older. That that was out in'sixty nine, that track, and by that time you you were enjoying a surfing life and your parents decided that they wanted to send you to boarding school.
Presenter
They took you to boarding school. Tell me what happened.
Tim Martin
My old man decided that I was getting too grown up. I was hanging out with the surf dudes, smoking cigarettes, and uh he went into a pub, and you weren't allowed to drink till you were twenty one in New Zealand, and he saw me in there having a pint, and he was the Guinness rep in
Presenter
Uh
Tim Martin
Yeah.
Presenter
Good. Were you drinking Guinness at least? Was it?
Tim Martin
Well you can
Tim Martin
And they decided I should go to boarding school where both my parents had been and they took me off to a place called New Plymouth which was 250 miles away and it was a school with a military training for the first week. So I went there for one night and ran away and hitchhiked home 250 miles. I was away overnight and there was a police alert but I got home before the old man.
Presenter
Isn't there?
Tim Martin
What was
Presenter
What's the problem? Why didn't you
Tim Martin
You like it.
Tim Martin
I was in love with a gal.
Presenter
Uh
Tim Martin
In uh back in Auckland, so so that was enough for me.
Presenter
Yeah.
Presenter
And so they took you back, presumably, did they?
Tim Martin
No, no, they gave up then. Really, I was six foot three and they realized there's only so much you can do.
Tim Martin
It's terrible, isn't it? I know I am awful.
Presenter
So your parents moved back to Northern Ireland. Your dad transferred him back to Northern Ireland. By this stage you were around about fifteen? Yeah, just before I was fifteen. And this was to Belfast. Now this was a crucial moment i in the history.
Tim Martin
And this was to Belfast. Now this was a
Presenter
of Ireland and Northern Ireland, it was a time at which the troubles were in full flare.
Tim Martin
The troubles really were in in full flare, so it was a bit of a culture shock and I don't want to overplay it, but the parents got divorced and uh being taken away from New Zealand both my brothers went to boarding school. I stayed in the house with my old man, so suddenly it was just me and him for a while and uh he was busy, he was working and he was traumatised too. But um it didn't last for that long because my father went abroad to live in Jamaica and I went to live with uh with another family and that was great. So the trauma then was short lived. In fact it was less traumatic probably than some of the previous uh fifteen years.
Presenter
And so you know, this was the early seventies you went to it was it sounds to me, when I read about it, like a pretty sort of posh grammar school in Northern Ireland. It was Campbell College. That suited you better, did it?
Tim Martin
Yeah, I mean I was just such a pain for the teachers in Campbell College. I blush when I think about my balshy behaviour, but I was the only guy they had who was six foot six and sixteen stone in the rugby team. So they needed to keep you there. They needed me. It just about kept me at the school. But actually after a while there, to be fair, I did work very hard as well and I got my O levels and I got my A levels.
Presenter
So they needed to keep you there.
Presenter
Let's take a break, Tim. Uh let's have some music and we're gonna hear your fourth.
Tim Martin
This is a great song. Came out when I was twelve, thirteen, fourteen, that period when you're starting to get interested in gals and it's very romantic, nostalgic, and the amazing combination of Johnny Cash's booming voice and the great Bob Dylan's wonderful song.
Speaker 3
When the rivers free
Speaker 3
And summer is
Speaker 3
Please see for me if she's wearing a coat so warm.
Speaker 3
To keep her from little how laying wind.
Speaker 3
If you're traveling
Speaker 3
In the north.
Speaker 1
No
Speaker 3
Yeah.
Speaker 3
When the wind's been heavy
Presenter
Oh winds mid heavy
Speaker 3
On the borderline.
Presenter
I was Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash and girl from the North Country. Tim Martin. You went to eleven different schools. You were a father of of four now grown up children yourself. How do you think this rather robust childhood that you had affected the way that you then parented your own kids?
Tim Martin
It's very difficult to say. I think there's so much a natural instinct in what you do. But um I never fell out with any of my children and I never even got angry with them really. But I did tell them what to do and I'm so pleased that I've got on so well with them. That's just not possible with all kids or all people, so don't feel bad if it doesn't happen to you as well.
Presenter
Um, you went on to read law at Nottingham University. We've been married for a very good long time to Felicity. How did you meet?
Tim Martin
I can't believe I'm this old, but I met on my twentieth birthday. I invited her to my birthday party. I'd had a couple of pints in the bar at university, and as I wandered by I plucked up the courage, fortified by a couple of pints of Nottinghamshire bitter, to ask her if she wanted to come along and to my intense surprise she said yes!
Tim Martin
Hey.
Presenter
You finished your your law degree in nineteen seventy seven. You were going to become a barrister. I mean, that why did you want to do that?
Tim Martin
I finished my law degree in 1977 and decided I was going to chuck it in because I wasn't very good at it. I struggled to understand it quickly. I get by and I worked for six months in a pork pie factory and then worked for six months selling advertising space in the Newcastle Journal in London. And I thought the law was bad, but selling advertising space was worse. So I went back and did my bar exams in the middle.
Presenter
So you're fully qualified but you never practiced. Yes.
Tim Martin
Yes. And it was fully qualified by the skin of my teeth. Right. Still qualifying, isn't it? Still qualifying.
Presenter
Well it's still qualifying, isn't it?
Presenter
And so, partly, as I said in my introduction today, I had read that it was because you didn't like this idea of public speaking.
Tim Martin
I was very paranoid about public speaking. I don't know why, I just got a phobia about it. At university I stopped going to lectures and at the bar. I went to two bar exam lectures in the whole year, and they started asking questions, and I got so nervous I never went to another one.
Presenter
So quite crippling then.
Tim Martin
It was crippling if I'd had to go, but since I didn't have to go, I I did what I did at boarding school and just headed off. But I studied it from books.
Presenter
Uh oh.
Presenter
Some more music, Tim Martin. We are going to hear your fifth choice on your list of eight.
Tim Martin
This is the wild sixties and seventies rocker Captain Beefheart, and I remember this from my A-level years, and there was a refrain in it which was keep on walking and don't look back and for some reason it just stuck in my mind. My wife thinks I've got a mild case of Tourette's, so if I'm having a shower you can hear me say keep on walking and don't look back to myself.
Speaker 3
Uh Stop walking and don't look back.
Speaker 3
Around the corner the wind blew back, followed the yellow brick road.
Speaker 3
It ended up in black bowl black hose taught the gift of love. Smile and children painted joy. Sunshine pipe, girl and boy, bag of tricks and candlesticks. Peopa Mint kite for my toy. Yellow brick, black, bow, black.
Speaker 3
Keep on walking and dunno.
Presenter
That was Captain Beefheart and Yellow Brick Road. Let's then try to understand, Tim Martin, how you went from being.
Presenter
A qualified barrister who didn't want to practice to opening a pub. It was called Martin's Free House, your first pub. How did that happen? Why did you want to do it? And how did you get to do it?
Tim Martin
Well, I'd got the absolutely insane idea after leaving university that I could become a great squash player. I read an article about a guy called Jonah Barrington, and at eighteen or nineteen he decided he was going to practice twenty four hours a day and become world champion, and he did. So I tried this and got absolutely nowhere at all. Ten years later, I saw the open squash final at Wembley, and I was heavier, I realized, than both of the finalists together.
Presenter
Yes, you don't seem a nice.
Tim Martin
Natural Scotch player. I was a natural rugby player, but I'd blown it by then. Uh the whole thing was a debacle really, but
Presenter
Yeah, but
Tim Martin
You've got to try. So I went back to uh doing my bar exams, but I had no intention of being a barrister. I thought it was a good qualification. And cutting a long story short, someone had converted a bookies into a pub just down the road, and they said you should go there for a pint, it's really good. And the pubs in London were poor. I started going there while I was doing my bar exams, and the guy decided he wanted out, and I took over his eight year lease of a pub that was the size of your studio.
Presenter
How good were you at it in the beginning?
Tim Martin
I was just so bad, and I did everything wrong for quite a prolonged period of time. In fact, if I could have got out, I probably would have done. But I couldn't'cause I'd signed a lease. We weren't making any money.
Presenter
It was a good
Tim Martin
Sh
Presenter
Two years before you made any money.
Tim Martin
It was four years before we made a decent profit, although we did have three or four pubs by then, so even though I was no good at it, my ego was such that I still expanded. The pub was very busy and the the instinct that we could do better than other pubs was quite strong. And we weren't tied to a brewer, and most pubs were tied to brewers then, so it gave us a a big advantage. And the other thing is you couldn't buy pubs then because they all belonged to the brewers who wouldn't sell them. So the real thing we pioneered was getting a shop and getting planning permission and a licence for a pub, which people more or less thought was impossible on a big scale then.
Presenter
By the time you had these three or four pubs that you weren't brilliant at running, but maybe getting a bit better, how in debt were you, and to whom?
Tim Martin
Um
Tim Martin
We I was in debt to everyone, but heavily into the banks. Did that worry you? Yeah. Floating on the stock market for us was when it became everyone else's issue as well, and we raised plenty of money.
Presenter
In those early days
Tim Martin
These did felicity
Presenter
Yeah.
Tim Martin
Do you have an opinion?
Tim Martin
Um she didn't ever tell me to stop. Unlike me, she's not a natural worrier. Oh, well, don't worry. Uh someone'll come away, take the pubs, take the house, take the car. So take you if they've got a big enough job.
Presenter
And hopefully take you if they've got a
Tim Martin
Which is an unusually laid-back approach. It certainly is.
Presenter
It certainly is. Felicity, I doff my cap. Right, let's have some more music, Tim Martin. Time for your sixth. Tell me about this.
Tim Martin
This is a poem by Dylan Thomas, absolutely fantastic poet. Many of the ringing phrases in the English language come from him. A pal at school told me, another amateur philosopher like myself, that Poem in October was a brilliant poem and he was right, and I've loved it ever since.
Speaker 1
It was my thirtieth year to heaven, Woke to my hearing from harbour and neighbour wood, And the mussel pooled and the heron priested shore, The morning beckon with water praying and call Of seagull and rook, and the knock of sailing boats on the net webbed wall, Myself to set foot that second in the still sleeping town.
Speaker 1
and set forth.
Speaker 1
My birthday began with the water birds and the birds of the winged trees flying my name above the farms and the white horses, and I rose in rainy autumn and walked abroad in a shower of all my days.
Speaker 1
High tide and the heron dived when I took the road over the border, and the gates of the town closed as the town awoke.
Speaker 1
The springful of larks in a rolling cloud and the roadside bushes brimming with whistling blackbirds, and the sun of October summery on the hill shoulder.
Speaker 1
Here were fond climates and sweet singers suddenly come in the morning, where I wandered and listened to the rain, ringing wind, blow cold.
Speaker 1
In the wood far away under me.
Presenter
That was part of Poem in October, written by Dylan Thomas and read by Richard Burton.
Presenter
Tim Martin, there's a recurring theme when I speak to you, and it is whether it was meeting your wife, had a couple of pints and asked her or I like to go for a pint and I'm about how much do you drink in a typical week? What what's your unit intake?
Tim Martin
I have two or three days off a week when I only have one pint.
Presenter
That's a day off.
Tim Martin
It's the
Tim Martin
Last night I cracked and had two when I was listening to these songs that are on the show today. But uh I try and ha s stick to three or four pints maximum. Uh so hopefully my doctor's not listening and it's uh it's a perfectly reasonable number of units, Your Honor.
Presenter
I'm sure you are constantly asked by uh young people, all sorts of people, who want to start their own business. What would be your one or two bits of advice?
Tim Martin
A lot of people tell young people it's a great thing to do, but it's only a great thing to do if you've got the right personality to do it. If you haven't got the right personality and you're not a bit of a maniac, it's probably best to give it a miss. But if you do do it, the main characteristic is persistence and listen. It's not what the guy who's running the business thinks, it's what everyone else thinks, and that needs to be absorbed and distilled by successful business people.
Presenter
And when you are chatting, as you do every week, to managers and deputy managers and bar staff,
Presenter
Do you ever say to them, Never, ever say this to the customer?
Tim Martin
No, and I also tell them you don't have to smile either.
Presenter
You tell them not, they don't have.
Tim Martin
They don't have to smile, no. We don't g go out of our way to tell them to be nice,'cause I think that puts too much pressure on people. I think when you go to a pub, you get a beer, someone's natural personality will emerge better if they're not under too much pressure, which of course they are under tremendous pressure anyway. So some of our best bar staff are quite grumpy.
Presenter
They don't
Presenter
Let's have some more music, Tim Martin. Tell me about this. We're going to listen to your seventh now.
Tim Martin
This is one from Dire Strait, Sultans of Swing. Strange little vignette. Mark Knoffler just arrived in London forty years ago, and he goes past a pub where there's a band playing, and they're called the Sultans of Swing.
Speaker 3
Then Harry doesn't mind if he doesn't
Speaker 3
Make the scene.
Speaker 3
He's got a daytime job. He's doing alright.
Speaker 3
He can play the honk tonk like anything.
Speaker 3
Saving it up
Speaker 3
Friday night
Speaker 3
With the Sultan
Speaker 3
With a sultan
Presenter
Swing.
Presenter
Dire Straits, Sultans of Swing. Y you were a father, as we know, Tim Martin, but also now a grandfather. How many grandkids have you got? Four. Do you spend much time do you have much time to spend with them?
Tim Martin
Yeah, I spend a fair bit of time. I've um uh changed my lifestyle a bit because uh one of my grandchildren has uh got uh severe physical disabilities. So I spend uh five or six sessions a week if I can um helping him to uh learn to sit up. So I've become his part-time physio. What difference has your input in his life made? Um well, it's hard to say really, but I took three months off work to uh stay with him for three months and uh did a lot of rolling and at the end of it he was able to m sit up more or less and he now sits up very well. So that sort of thing. But it there are millions of people out there who deal with disabilities and the main thing is time and energy. And we're lucky, we've got a big family and we're well off. I take my hat off to the single mums who haven't got either of those things.
Speaker 3
Yeah.
Speaker 1
Mm.
Presenter
What was it like for you stepping back from work and and and not doing it and focussing on something so entirely, intensely personal?
Tim Martin
Well, nothing can stop me thinking about pubs. So even when I was lying on the floor rolling with my grandson, I was still plotting plotting and planning. So but yeah, it was it's nice to do something different like that. And twelve years ago I took a six month uh sabbatical as well.
Presenter
And why why was that at the time?
Tim Martin
And what
Tim Martin
Um my old man died and I just thought I'm going to take six months off. We were all upset and uh I just wanted to see what it would be like. I was forty eight, forty nine, I'd done pubs for a long time, but after six months I was really glad to be back to work, rather sadly I thought. I thought I was going to read the works of Shakespeare and learn Russian and French, but actually I found without work I did even less.
Presenter
So he never seriously, even now, contemplates stepping away.
Tim Martin
No, I'm sixty two. I'm hoping to work for another forty, fifty years and then have a long retirement. I've been accused of not being realistic.
Presenter
What what does your wife say? You've made a good big pile of money. Does she ever say to you, you know, now is the time that we can go and, you know, buy that house on a shoreline somewhere and just
Tim Martin
I think that's her idea of a nightmare. She said, Whatever I do, I'm not allowed in the house during office hours.
Presenter
Is that true? More or less.
Presenter
How would you cope on this island, then?
Tim Martin
I much admire a lot of your guests, but a lot of them I think have been fibbing when they say they'd be very happy. I'd want to get the hell out as quickly as I could. I would struggle on an island. There's no pubs.
Presenter
Not as far as I'm aware. Tell me about your eighth piece of music then, Tim Marson.
Tim Martin
This is one by the great Bob Marley, a natural mystic. He's a musical philosopher really, and a bit of a Dylan Thomas from Jamaica.
Speaker 3
Listen carefully now.
Speaker 3
This could be the first trust in
Speaker 3
Misless will be the lamb's
Speaker 3
Many more will have to suffer
Speaker 3
Many more will have to die, don't I?
Presenter
Natural mystic Bob Marley there. Tim, I'm going to give you well, I give all my castaways the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare, and you will be allowed to take one more book along. What's it going to be?
Tim Martin
Um it's a book called The Dance to the Music of Time by Anthony Pohl, as I think he pronounced his own name. It is twelve volumes, but I was hoping you could g uh give me a bit of latitude there.
Presenter
We're going to have to find one huge volume, I think, and it's going to be some size, but you may take that. And a luxury, too. What's your luxury?
Tim Martin
I was hoping I could take a boat building kit, but I didn't think you'd allow that, so it might have to be a surfboard, I think.
Presenter
Yeah, I'm pretty sure you can have a surfboard. I'm not gonna let you have a boat building.
Tim Martin
I'm not gonna
Tim Martin
No, that's a that's a shame, but uh yeah, there should be a few waves on the back. Do you still surf? I do actually, yes. Took it up again after a thirty-eight-year break and still managed to get up on the board and terrify the life out of other surfers as I come charging along at my eighteen stone. We shall give you a surf.
Presenter
Do you still, sir?
Presenter
Um if I had to
Presenter
Ask you to choose just to save one of these eight disks. Which one disc would it be for you?
Tim Martin
I think it would probably have to be the combination of the mesmerizing poem of Dylan Thomas and the mesmerizing voice of Richard Burton. That's yours, then.
Presenter
And Tim Martin, thank you very much for letting us hear your desert island is.
Tim Martin
Thank you very much, Kirsty.
Presenter
I hope you enjoyed this edition of Desert Island Discs. You'll find more interviews with artists, musicians, scientists, sports stars, comedians, and more at bbc.co.uk slash desert island discs.
Tim Martin
This is the B B C.