Sir Peter Lampl

Sir Peter Lampl0:00

This is the BBC.

Presenter0:03

Hello, I'm Kirstie 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.

Presenter0:16

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.

Presenter0:48

My castaway to day is the entrepreneur and philanthropist Sir Peter Lampel. His beginnings were modest, his achievements are not. He made a fortune in commerce, but instead of buying a super yacht, he plumped instead for trying to do his bit to make Britain a fairer place to grow up. As founder of the Sutton Trust, he spent twenty years and around about fifty million pounds of his own money trying to improve educational outcomes and social mobility.

Presenter1:16

He first got a taste for giving after the Dunbling school shootings. It was his money that funded the campaign that successfully saw the introduction of a total ban on hand gun ownership.

Presenter1:28

Witnessing the power of that well-financed crusade, convinced him to devote the remainder of his time and wealth to giving disadvantaged youngsters at the bottom of the pile a hand up. He says, I am into excellence, but I think we need to focus more on fairness and opportunity. We have got such a long way to go to make it fair. So, Sir Peter Lampel, fairness and opportunity sound that sounds pretty simple, doesn't it? Why is it proving so difficult?

Speaker 11:50

Uh

Sir Peter Lampl1:50

So

Sir Peter Lampl1:54

It's like pushing water uphill.

Sir Peter Lampl1:57

Social mobility we're talking about.

Sir Peter Lampl2:00

people from

Sir Peter Lampl2:02

Low moderate income backgrounds moving up the ladder.

Sir Peter Lampl2:05

In a relative sense. And if you're doing that, you are actually displacing people who are already on that ladder.

Sir Peter Lampl2:13

So there is a lot of resistance to social mobility because of that.

Presenter2:17

And it's the case, I believe, that if you were somebody

Presenter2:20

Born in the late 50s, you're more likely to have made your way up the class structure than somebody who was born in 1970. We're getting less socially mobile as a country.

Sir Peter Lampl2:29

Yeah, we are. You're absolutely right. If you're born in the late 50s, you had more chance of moving up the ladder than if you were born in the 70s. And it's interesting why that is. Really, two main reasons. One is inequality has risen enormously over those years and since then. And high inequality means lower social mobility because there is much further to go. And the second reason is education. You might think, oh, well, education is good for everybody. Actually, the people who've taken advantage of education opportunities, like many more kids going to university, have been the middle classes. The lower classes are still shut out.

Presenter3:10

So much to talk about, Sir Peter Lampel, but for now we're going to go to your music. Tell me about this first disc. Why is it on your list?

Sir Peter Lampl3:15

Well, my first piece of music is She Loves You by The Beatles.

Sir Peter Lampl3:21

It was my first business deal.

Sir Peter Lampl3:23

I was a 16 year old and Love Me Do was released and it sort of became on my radar as a new group, the Beatles. And then a few months later, Please Please Me and I saw that there was going to be a Beatles Christmas show was advertised. And I don't know why, but I bought 24 tickets. I thought they'd be a great investment.

Sir Peter Lampl3:46

Then a few months later She Loves You came out, and that just blew the socks off everybody. I mean, it was the startled Beatle mania. So the tickets I bought were worth a fortune. So I sold the tickets and kept four

Sir Peter Lampl4:01

And three friends and I went to the New Year's Eve, we went to the Beatles' Christmas Show.

Presenter4:06

Yeah.

Sir Peter Lampl4:07

Fensbury Park

Presenter4:08

The f

Presenter4:08

Yeah.

Sir Peter Lampl4:09

Yeah.

Sir Peter Lampl4:09

Then, when we got in and the show started, we had some very good seats, but literally, we couldn't hear a thing. I mean, nothing.

Sir Peter Lampl4:16

The screaming was so loud.

Speaker 24:32

You're playing you, Blast

Presenter4:33

Good love. When I saw her yesterday, it's you she's thinking of.

Presenter4:41

And she told me what to say. She said she loves you, and you know that can be

Presenter4:49

The Beatles. She loves you. So, Sir Peter Lampel, you formed your educational charity, the Sutton Trust, back in nineteen ninety seven. Up until then you were very, very successful in business. What persuaded you to take such a change of direction?

Sir Peter Lampl5:02

Well, the first thing was was the Dunblaine situation.

Sir Peter Lampl5:07

I'd been in the States for twenty years.

Sir Peter Lampl5:10

I was very sensitized to

Sir Peter Lampl5:13

the gun issue. And we were kind of moving in that direction here.

Sir Peter Lampl5:17

And the Don Plane thing happened, which was horrific, and there was a campaign to ban handguns set up in this country.

Sir Peter Lampl5:27

And I got the organizer and two fathers whose daughters had been massacred in this dreadful thing. And I said, Listen, I'll fund whatever you guys need.

Sir Peter Lampl5:38

And as you know, we've a complete ban. I mean, it's fantastic.

Sir Peter Lampl5:42

The thing was so successful way beyond anyone's dreams.

Sir Peter Lampl5:45

So that got me into philanthropy, and then I set up the Sutton Trust, and that was having come back to this country.

Sir Peter Lampl5:53

Chances for kids from low, moderate income backgrounds have gone backwards. But how did you come to know about that?

Presenter6:00

I mean, you had this world, you know, business world you were involved in.

Sir Peter Lampl6:00

Well

Sir Peter Lampl6:02

I was asked to have lunch with the president of a college where I was at. They found out I made some money. You get asked to lunch, right? One of the Welsh. Yeah, there was lots of colleges. So I started chatting to the president. He was Welsh. When I was there, lots of Welsh people came through. There weren't any any more. That's just one example. So I approached the Oxford admissions people.

Presenter6:09

One of our clubs.

Sir Peter Lampl6:22

I did some research on how many kids from state schools went to Oxbridge when I was there compared to now. And it had gone down quite significantly. It was below 50% when I was there. It was about two-thirds. So I approached the admissions people and said, listen, you've got a problem. And they said, well, we can't admit kids if they don't apply.

Sir Peter Lampl6:43

I said, well why don't you persuade them to apply? And I suggested a summer school for kids they'd never heard from.

Sir Peter Lampl6:49

And they said, Well, we're not really that keen And then I said, Well, listen, I'll pay for it and th th they got more interested at that point. So we ended up running a summer school, sixty four kids came.

Sir Peter Lampl7:00

And 16 ended up getting in. These were new kids, so that's what got me started.

Presenter7:05

In Finland, you'll know this, they're a leader in educational achievements. It is an exclusively state-run system. It wasn't always that way, but they decided to make it that way.

Sir Peter Lampl7:08

Achievements

Speaker 17:11

Yeah, it wasn't.

Speaker 17:12

Yeah.

Sir Peter Lampl7:13

Yeah

Speaker 17:14

Uh

Sir Peter Lampl7:14

Yeah.

Presenter7:15

In your informed opinion, with all that you've come to know and understand, and you do a lot of number crunching, that's a big part of the Sutton Trust remit.

Sir Peter Lampl7:18

Yeah.

Sir Peter Lampl7:21

Try to screen it.

Presenter7:22

Do you think that outcome of them being at the top or close to the top of educational outcome tables has got something significant to do with the fact that they are exclusively state?

Sir Peter Lampl7:32

I think it does. We have a very strong private sector in this country. I think if you could wave a magic wand, you would have like the European countries, not just Finland, they basically don't have private schools if they do their minimal.

Speaker 17:46

Mina

Sir Peter Lampl7:47

And everyone goes to a state school. I think that's a good thing. Where I'm coming from is that isn't going to happen.

Sir Peter Lampl7:55

So we have private schools. What we're trying to do is to say the private day schools should be opened up based on merit, not money.

Presenter8:04

We're gonna have some more music, so Peter Lampel, tell me about your

Sir Peter Lampl8:06

I've chosen the sound of music.

Sir Peter Lampl8:10

I got a place at university and then I went travelling for six months and I get back and there's a letter from my future tutor saying I want you to come and do a maths exam.

Sir Peter Lampl8:20

And I'm like I hadn't even opened a book for six months.

Sir Peter Lampl8:23

You know, it's a horrible feeling when you open an exam paper, you go, Oh my god, I don't know any of this stuff.

Sir Peter Lampl8:29

So I felt very depressed because I thought I'd done badly and

Sir Peter Lampl8:34

I was got out the exam and there was a cinema opposite.

Sir Peter Lampl8:38

was playing the sound of music.

Sir Peter Lampl8:40

So I went in there.

Sir Peter Lampl8:42

Saw the sound music

Sir Peter Lampl8:44

And it just lifted my spirits enormously because it's that kind of movie. And the other thing was, it was filmed.

Sir Peter Lampl8:51

where I had been to a summer camp.

Sir Peter Lampl8:54

For six weeks.

Sir Peter Lampl8:56

In what they call the Salzkamakur, which is the region around Salzburg, which is exactly where Salad Musa was filmed.

Presenter9:07

The hills are alive with the sound of music.

Presenter9:15

With songs they have sung for a thousand years The hills fill my heart with the sound

Presenter9:28

Who's he?

Presenter9:31

My heart wants to sing every song it hears.

Presenter9:38

The prelude from The Sound of Music, sung by Julie Andrews, composed by Richard Rogers and Oscar Hammerstein. Sir Peter Lempel, your father is Austrian, in fact. He left uh Vienna in nineteen thirty eight.

Sir Peter Lampl9:50

Yeah.

Presenter9:50

What did he tell you?

Sir Peter Lampl9:51

Yeah.

Presenter9:51

Uh

Sir Peter Lampl9:51

Tell you About that time? My grandfather was Jewish, so my father was half Jewish. And Vienna, even before thirty eight, was becoming intolerable for anyone with Jewish heritage. And of course, after the Anschluss, which was in thirty eight,

Sir Peter Lampl10:07

it became a lot worse. So my grandparents and my father ended up getting out of Vienna and uh over to this country. And then, you know, they were promptly arrested. Intern they call it. Enemy aliens. So

Sir Peter Lampl10:21

So having escaped. They become arrested. And then my father joined the British Army and.

Presenter10:23

I then

Presenter10:25

So he was allowed to serve in the British

Sir Peter Lampl10:27

Yeah, he was.

Presenter10:27

Yeah, he was.

Presenter10:28

Keyword

Sir Peter Lampl10:28

Yeah.

Presenter10:29

Pause uh in the tank

Sir Peter Lampl10:30

Regiment

Presenter10:30

What were the views of the other people serving with him, given given his conversation?

Sir Peter Lampl10:33

Oh, I think he was totally accepted. He was fine.

Presenter10:36

And after the war he returned to Vienna, and that was when he he met th the woman who would become his wife.

Sir Peter Lampl10:41

Yeah. Just before that, yeah.

Presenter10:43

And you were born in nineteen forty eight and then they moved to Batley in Yorkshire. Why do they change?

Sir Peter Lampl10:48

Well, because my grandfather got a job there. We moved into my grandfather and grandmother's house in Batley. Do you remember that? Oh, God, it's an awful place, yeah. The house, you mean? I mean, I'm sure Batley's very nice. No, no, no. Batley was just covered in soot, and it was just awful. What were the circumstances of the house? Was it very. It was cramped, presumably? It was kind of a terrace house. It was cramped.

Presenter11:00

I mean I'm sure that

Presenter11:09

Yeah.

Sir Peter Lampl11:12

Yeah, it was not very nice living there. Although we moved when I was four. And what did your father do for a living?

Speaker 111:12

Yeah

Sir Peter Lampl11:18

He was seventeen when he'd left Vienna.

Sir Peter Lampl11:21

He had been at gymnasium, which is like grammar school. But he didn't have any qualifications at that point, so he worked during the day and he studied at night, and he ended up becoming a professional engineer.

Presenter11:35

So you were in your I mean, we've talked a little bit about social mobility. They were quite mobile themselves, your parents. They were massive, massive.

Sir Peter Lampl11:40

They were massive, massive, because when I was eleven we moved to Surrey and then he ended up as a director of a public engineering company. So

Sir Peter Lampl11:50

Massive social mobility for my father, yeah. We're going to have some more music, Sir Peter Lampel. Tell me about your third Jumping Jack Flash by The Rolling Stones. I was living in New York. I'd set up my own business. I had an owned an apartment which was worth quite a bit of money.

Sir Peter Lampl12:06

But I needed the money for the business, so I sold it.

Sir Peter Lampl12:10

So I rented an apartment.

Sir Peter Lampl12:12

Nice building in New York.

Sir Peter Lampl12:14

And I was lying in bed. All of a sudden I heard this incredibly loud Rolling Stones music. I sat bolt upright, thought, What the hell's going on? So I called down to the concierge. I said, Listen, can you get them to turn off that Stones music?

Sir Peter Lampl12:31

And there was a pause.

Sir Peter Lampl12:33

And he said

Sir Peter Lampl12:35

That is the rolling star. So I said, what?

Sir Peter Lampl12:37

He said, Yeah, Keith Ritchard just moved into the building. They're up there. I've got to go to work in them. Would you please tell them to stop playing?

Sir Peter Lampl12:46

So twenty minutes later

Sir Peter Lampl12:48

They stop.

Sir Peter Lampl12:49

So

Sir Peter Lampl12:50

In honor of the fact that the Rolling Stones.

Sir Peter Lampl12:53

Stop playing at my request.

Sir Peter Lampl12:56

I'd like to do jumping chat for that.

Speaker 213:04

I was born in a glass bar came.

Speaker 213:11

Don't know.

Presenter13:14

Uh

Presenter13:15

Brandy.

Sir Peter Lampl13:19

It's a

Speaker 213:23

Matches of guests for the song

Speaker 213:29

Jumping down Shipping Cask!

Presenter13:35

That was the Rolling Stones and Jumpin' Jack Flesh and memories for you, Sir Peter Lampel, of having the Stones as neighbours upstairs playing. You got them to stop though, which I think was pretty good going. I think you're right. Nice polite boys, really. I'm interested in, we touched on it just a bit a moment ago, this social mobility of your family. You'd moved to this council estate in Wakefield after you lived with your grandparents, then you went on to live in Reigate, and your father was slowly improving his jobs as he went. Given that the family was from an Austro-German background, and given that these were the years just after the war, was there any impact for you growing up? That your mother was German? There may have been, but I wasn't aware of it. You have a a sister as well. Did your parents have... They obviously had ambitions for themselves. Did they have ambition for both of you? Did they talk to you about what was expected?

Sir Peter Lampl13:41

You bought the f

Sir Peter Lampl13:48

Yeah.

Speaker 113:48

Uh

Sir Peter Lampl13:49

Sure.

Speaker 113:50

Uh

Speaker 113:53

Yeah.

Speaker 113:56

Yeah.

Speaker 113:58

Yeah.

Sir Peter Lampl14:19

They were very concerned about

Sir Peter Lampl14:22

Creating education opportunity for us. I mean, we're talking now when maybe 7% of kids went to university at my time. And.

Presenter14:31

Yeah.

Sir Peter Lampl14:33

We both went to university, so that was kind of unusual in those days.

Presenter14:37

And you said that, you know, only back then 7% of school kids would be going on to university. Not only did you go to university, and your sister did too, but you went to Oxford.

Sir Peter Lampl14:41

Yeah.

Sir Peter Lampl14:45

It was a huge break for me to have got in against the odds. I mean, no one really thought I would get in. But I've got a philosophy of life, which is you've got to give yourself a chance to get lucky. And so even though people didn't think I'd had a great chance, I applied anyway and I got in. So you've got to try. But it was a big break. And yeah.

Presenter15:09

I'd agree

Sir Peter Lampl15:09

Time.

Presenter15:10

Loved it.

Sir Peter Lampl15:11

Yeah.

Presenter15:11

Let's have some more music, said Peter Lampel. We're gonna listen to your fourth.

Sir Peter Lampl15:14

When I lived in New York there used to be a radio programme.

Sir Peter Lampl15:18

Called Saturday Night with Sinatra.

Sir Peter Lampl15:21

And we would religiously listen to this because most people in New York were big Sinatra fans. So the reason I've chosen this is to remind me of good times in New York.

Speaker 115:33

These little town blues

Speaker 115:37

are melting away.

Speaker 115:41

I'll make a brand new start of it.

Speaker 115:46

In all New York

Speaker 115:51

If I can make it there, I'll make it.

Speaker 115:58

Anywhere it's up to you, new, new your

Presenter16:10

The theme from New York, New York. That was Frank Sinatra singing it, of course. Um, Sir Peter Lampel, as we know then, you did your first I was going to say big deal, actually it was a pretty big deal, selling those tickets at a mark up to the the Beatles' Christmas show. You made a little bit of money, it gave you a little bit of appetite for what you were capable of. You left Oxford with a chemistry degree.

Speaker 116:20

Yeah.

Sir Peter Lampl16:21

Yeah.

Presenter16:28

Did you at that point have any idea where your future lay?

Sir Peter Lampl16:31

Well, I thought it lay in business, yeah. So I very quickly

Sir Peter Lampl16:36

Went on to the London Business School.

Presenter16:37

Was it legitimately just the idea of making a fairly big aw?

Sir Peter Lampl16:40

What of cash? I always wanted to be a general manager and run things.

Sir Peter Lampl16:45

So that was my motivation. It wasn't making

Presenter16:49

A lot of cash. One of the things you said in an interview that I read was that it was much easier to make money out of boring businesses than glitzy ones. Why is that?

Sir Peter Lampl16:57

Well, because obviously everyone's interested in glitzy businesses. Yes. And my criteria for what was a good business to get involved with

Sir Peter Lampl17:07

Was if it put people to sleep at a cocktail party.

Presenter17:11

We are a special

Sir Peter Lampl17:11

We are a special distributor to the manufactured housing and RV industry in the United States. Do you want to know more? I really don't know. No, no, that's enough, right?

Presenter17:20

No, no, that's enough.

Sir Peter Lampl17:21

With

Presenter17:22

Which boring business did you make the most money in?

Sir Peter Lampl17:24

Uh

Presenter17:24

Uh

Sir Peter Lampl17:24

Well, I had two businesses in Germany.

Sir Peter Lampl17:27

And they both made a huge amount of money. They were in the building materials business.

Sir Peter Lampl17:33

And the Berlin Wall came down.

Sir Peter Lampl17:36

And all of a sudden the market for building materials went crazy.

Sir Peter Lampl17:40

So businesses that were growing at 3% were suddenly growing at 50%.

Presenter17:44

Fifty percent.

Sir Peter Lampl17:46

Because all of a sudden everyone in East Germany, as soon as you get any money, you're going to fix up your house.

Sir Peter Lampl17:51

So we've made roller shutters, which they have in Germany. So that went crazy. Then we had balconies for apartment buildings. Nothing had been done since 1945, so the whole place was falling apart. The quickest way you can make an apartment building look good is put new balconies on. So all the apartment buildings in East Germany were putting new balconies on. So we had the balcony business.

Sir Peter Lampl18:15

We ended up selling them and I retired from business.

Presenter18:20

A

Sir Peter Lampl18:20

Forty-seven as a manner, yeah.

Sir Peter Lampl18:23

Yeah.

Presenter18:24

Time for some more music, Peter Lampel. Tell me about your next one. We're going to hear your uh your fists.

Sir Peter Lampl18:29

Okay, this is California Girls by The Beach Boys. I was flying out to California with an American friend of mine on July the 4th.

Sir Peter Lampl18:39

So we landed in LA and we were going to get the Greyhound bus down to San Diego, and they said, No, no, don't bother. Just get a plane, it doesn't cost anything. So we got on a P S A, which was the California Airlines.

Sir Peter Lampl18:51

And the uniform for the stewardesses was hot pants. So we were like, wow, this is a great place. Those were the days. Those were the days.

Presenter18:59

Hmm.

Sir Peter Lampl18:59

So we land in in San Diego.

Sir Peter Lampl19:02

We're immediately thrust onto a huge beach party on Mission Bay and it's like being stepped off the moon. I mean

Sir Peter Lampl19:11

There was beering hose pipes, they were roasting pigs.

Sir Peter Lampl19:14

And as you can imagine, the girls were all blonde and beautiful. And of course, they were playing Beach Boys.

Speaker 219:21

And all around this great big world and I see all kind of girls.

Presenter19:29

Yeah, but I couldn't wait to get back in the States back to the cutest girl

Speaker 219:34

In the world.

Presenter19:55

The Beach Boys, California Girls, Memories for You, Sir Peter Lampel, of beer and hose pipes and hog roasts on a swift. I wish I'd been at that party. Um I want to talk to you about something that it is traditionally very uncomfortable for British people to talk about, which is money. Now you worked for twenty odd years in America, certainly lived there and worked between continents.

Speaker 120:01

I wish I'd been at

Sir Peter Lampl20:11

Twin continents

Presenter20:13

America has a very, very embedded culture of philanthropic giving.

Sir Peter Lampl20:19

Correct.

Presenter20:19

When you were in America, did you witness that and were you a giver when you were there?

Sir Peter Lampl20:23

I did, and I was a giver, not to the extent I am now.

Sir Peter Lampl20:28

But the figures are the Americans give about 2.1% of GDP.

Sir Peter Lampl20:34

And we give 0.7%.

Sir Peter Lampl20:37

They're about three times as philanthropic as we are. And if you make a lot of money in America, you're expected to do something with it. Here, not the case. It's like a peer factor. It's like, well, everyone's doing it. We're going to this fifty six. Yeah, I'm going to look bad if I don't do it. And a lot of them are genuinely philanthropic and want to be helpful.

Presenter20:49

Yeah.

Presenter20:51

Yeah, it's not gonna look bad.

Sir Peter Lampl20:58

Now coming back to this country, I always say if you want to get rid of a Brit, just ask them for money, because they'll run a mile and you'll never see them again in case they think in case you'll ask them again. Are you talking now

Presenter21:12

About the big givers? Because we know that when it comes to the charity sectors, there are a lot of people who are.

Sir Peter Lampl21:15

I'm talking about the big

Presenter21:15

The big givers, because our charity sector has taken a bit of a battering in recent times. But people do give. They do their monthly direct debits right.

Sir Peter Lampl21:17

Yeah.

Sir Peter Lampl21:19

Yeah.

Sir Peter Lampl21:22

And their monthly direct divider jokes.

Presenter21:24

Okay. Uh what about your relationship with your own money? When you started to make

Presenter21:29

A serious amount of money. Did you enjoy that? To a certain extent.

Sir Peter Lampl21:30

Yeah.

Sir Peter Lampl21:34

I mean, I could have just kept going and make more and more money. But once I made a certain amount, I said, well, that's enough money for me to do whatever I want.

Sir Peter Lampl21:43

And I'm going to do something else.

Presenter21:44

Can I ask you how much that was?

Sir Peter Lampl21:46

Yeah.

Sir Peter Lampl21:46

It was, you know, close to a hundred million.

Presenter21:50

Oh, a lot of people.

Sir Peter Lampl21:50

Oh, yeah.

Sir Peter Lampl21:52

So I was looking for something else to do, which ended up being the sun troll.

Presenter21:55

Which was not making more money, just to be cle'cause you could have you retired at 4.7, you had 100 million in the bank, you could have just, as I say, you could have bought the super yacht. You could be floating off the Cayman on the bottom.

Sir Peter Lampl22:04

I could, but I'm not interested in that. I was more interested in doing this. I should have made some more money because I could have given more money away to this thing.

Presenter22:11

In the beginning when you started the Sutton Trust.

Sir Peter Lampl22:14

Hmm.

Presenter22:15

In 1997, it was a year after you had been involved with the Dumblane charity.

Sir Peter Lampl22:17

Yeah.

Sir Peter Lampl22:19

Yeah

Presenter22:21

What was your original intention in the beginning when you set it up?

Sir Peter Lampl22:24

I had no strategy, no nothing. You didn't I didn't know what No.

Sir Peter Lampl22:28

I just wanted to help some kids. That's where I started. And then, a bit like the Don Blaine thing.

Sir Peter Lampl22:34

I just got 16 kids into Oxford who wouldn't have gone there. You know, this works. The following year we got Cambridge, Bristol and Nottingham. Now we have a dozen universities. Roughly we have nearly two and a half thousand kids doing our summer schools. And that's when I got seriously interested in the Sutton Trust and funding it. We now fundraise. I mean I'm not putting the kind of money in that I used to. Let's have some more music. This

Presenter23:01

This is your sixth of the day.

Sir Peter Lampl23:02

Well, this is uh Swan Lake, and I was dating this rather nice girl in New York who was loved the ballet. So I ended up buying season's worth of ballet tickets, two tickets, at City Ballet, which at that time

Sir Peter Lampl23:18

Borushnikov, Peter Martin, Susan Farrell, I mean the best ballet company in the world.

Sir Peter Lampl23:24

Anyway, after about three months, she dumped me. So I was left with these ballet tickets. Then I realized, if I asked girls out and say, well, you want to come to the ballet with me, they thought I was sensitive, considerate. They thought I was wonderful. So I really got into ballet.

Presenter24:48

Uh

Presenter24:49

Music from part of the final scene from Swan Lake by Tchaikovsky. It was performed there by the Boston Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Seiji Ozawa. Let's talk a little bit more then about your recent life's work, Sir Peter Lampy. Last year the Sutton Trust piloted a summer school aimed at the group which achieves, I think, the worst GCSE results in Britain. Interesting to note that that group is white British boys. 24%, I think, achieve five A star to C grades. They were offered this, you've talked a lot about summer schools, and these boys were offered a tailored summer school opportunity at Oxford University, no less. How did it go?

Sir Peter Lampl25:30

We're still evaluating it, but it's a great initiative. I think they were not low ability, they were quite high ability, but they were white working class. My experience is you've got to show kids the opportunity.

Sir Peter Lampl25:46

More often than not, they'll grab it.

Presenter25:48

And you yourself, when you were growing up, we come back to it again, you know, seven percent of kids going to university, now it's just about half of kids coming out of school is going to university.

Sir Peter Lampl25:52

Right.

Sir Peter Lampl25:54

Very good.

Speaker 125:56

Yeah yeah

Sir Peter Lampl25:57

Yeah.

Presenter25:59

There's some big questions being asked right now about whether there's any point in that and whether it's time and money well spent. What's your view?

Sir Peter Lampl26:04

What's your view?

Sir Peter Lampl26:06

A lot of those kids should go to university. The problem is that kids are coming out with over £50,000 worth of debt. Three years out, 20% to 25% not in graduate employment. I think there's far too many kids going to university. This is a big agenda. We are looking to push degree level apprenticeships.

Sir Peter Lampl26:28

which means you're working for a company, you're going on day release. It's kind of what Germany and Switzerland do. The advantage of that is you earn while you learn, you come out with no debt.

Sir Peter Lampl26:40

and you come out with skills the marketplace wants. We've done some work on all on the figures on this. And if you take two students, one is a degree student and one is an apprentice student,

Sir Peter Lampl26:54

Over a lifetime, average degree student, the apprentice will earn more. Really?

Presenter26:59

Yeah.

Sir Peter Lampl26:59

Really? Than the average we're talking degree level apprenticeship.

Presenter27:03

Can you give me an example of

Sir Peter Lampl27:03

What sort of jobs then that encompasses? Well, for instance, you've got Jaguar Land Rover has teamed up with Warwick University. So kids are based at Jaguar Land Rover. They are going to Warwick for their academic training.

Sir Peter Lampl27:19

That is more competitive to get into than the top universities. What you need is a good employer with a good university. Now we don't have enough of those, and it shouldn't be just engineering. When we're talking degree level apprenticeships, we should be talking about everything, accounting, law.

Sir Peter Lampl27:37

marketing, I mean the whole range of things.

Presenter27:40

Time for some more music, Sir Peter Lampool. We're gonna listen to your seventh now. Just tell me about this. Why is it on your list? Well, I can

Sir Peter Lampl27:45

Came back from New York.

Sir Peter Lampl27:48

They were putting together financing for a new opera house at Glimbourne. They were asking people like me to put some money in, so I did.

Sir Peter Lampl27:56

and I became a founder member of Glimeborn, which means I get two tickets for the rest of my life. So as a result of that, we have been going to the opera quite frequently. And I guess the my favorite opera is The Magic Flute by Mozart.

Sir Peter Lampl28:22

Yeah. Yeah.

Presenter28:24

Uh

Sir Peter Lampl28:24

Uh

Speaker 128:26

Uh

Presenter28:26

Yeah.

Presenter28:28

Ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-kina!

Sir Peter Lampl28:37

Uh

Presenter28:38

Fennie Ver Spike, Fennie Ver Spider Felischer Freud, Wirka Seiner.

Speaker 128:39

Let's go.

Presenter28:46

Yeah.

Speaker 128:51

So keep on.

Presenter28:53

So dear kingdom

Speaker 128:53

So dear button

Presenter28:54

Is a little final kid?

Speaker 128:55

But finally

Speaker 228:56

Yeah.

Presenter29:03

The line So develop liner in the line So de flying the line is an inclined popcorn

Speaker 129:05

Uh

Speaker 129:06

In the lines or in the flyer

Speaker 129:11

I hear it.

Presenter29:16

Papagena, Papageno from The Magic Flute by Mozart. That was Bryn Terville and Christine Rice. They were accompanied by the Scottish Chamber Orchestra conducted by Sir Charles Makeras. Sir Peter Lampel, you've made the news for lots of reasons, and I was surprised, among all the cuttings I read about you, to see a headline in 2009 that read Missing Millionaire Philanthropist.

Presenter29:36

Yeah. Uh

Sir Peter Lampl29:37

What happened?

Presenter29:37

Uh Yeah.

Sir Peter Lampl29:37

Yeah.

Sir Peter Lampl29:38

Well, what happened was I was going through a very difficult divorce and my children were involved.

Sir Peter Lampl29:46

And

Sir Peter Lampl29:47

I mean, the the arrangements for men in this country in terms of after a divorce are

Sir Peter Lampl29:55

terrible. I mean, you don't see your kids at school and

Sir Peter Lampl29:59

I got depressed and uh as a lot of people do, I think about a quarter get depressed at some time in their lives. You know, went on a walkabout and You sort of ducked out of life for a few days? Well, it wasn't a few days, it was just

Presenter30:07

Yeah.

Sir Peter Lampl30:15

Will you die?

Presenter30:16

Into

Sir Peter Lampl30:16

But um

Sir Peter Lampl30:18

I mean the good thing is what's happened here is I can talk about it.

Presenter30:21

Yeah.

Sir Peter Lampl30:22

But a lot of people get depressed, so.

Presenter30:24

A lot of people do, and more and more people are talking about it. It is interesting, I think, for somebody who you know always strikes me that people who are entrepreneurial are almost pathologically optimistic. You know, they think that the future is going to be better. And you're somebody who has, as we know, has plowed this significant fortune into trying to make the future better for people. Were you surprised at yourself at the time? Because did it sort of take you by surprise that that was a good idea?

Speaker 130:36

And you

Sir Peter Lampl30:43

Yeah.

Sir Peter Lampl30:47

What I was I was impressed.

Presenter30:48

Yeah.

Sir Peter Lampl30:48

Yeah.

Presenter30:49

Punk.

Sir Peter Lampl30:49

Click Yeah. I never ever dreamt that I would get depressed.

Presenter30:53

You retired once in your mid to late forties. Have you got any plans of doing it again?

Sir Peter Lampl30:56

It's a few

Sir Peter Lampl30:58

Not at all. No. Listen, I don't have a better idea of what to do, so I'm going to keep doing this.

Presenter31:06

The tortuous thing about inviting you here today, of course, is that I send you to a desert island where you will be.

Sir Peter Lampl31:11

Even

Presenter31:13

All on your own? How will you do? I mean, you're a very socially engaged person. Yeah, I want to.

Sir Peter Lampl31:16

Yeah, I won't do very well at all. No. For two reasons. One is I like having people around. I'm going to be on my own on this thing, right? All on your own. Oh, I don't know.

Presenter31:24

Boom.

Sir Peter Lampl31:26

Yeah. And I'm not particularly practical, so I'm not sure.

Sir Peter Lampl31:30

I'd figure out how to survive, so.

Presenter31:33

Sorry about that. Tell me about your eighth piece of music then. What

Sir Peter Lampl31:35

Uh Yeah.

Presenter31:35

Yeah. Uh

Sir Peter Lampl31:36

We're gonna hear Cecilia by Simon and Garfunkel. And why have you chosen this? Well, we have a house in Florida that is right by the sea and we have a terrace that overlooks the sea that has a very good sound system. So my wife and I both love music, love listening to music and love singing to music. We sit out there

Sir Peter Lampl32:04

Belting away to Jimi Hendrix.

Sir Peter Lampl32:08

The Beatles, you name it. But our favourite is Simon and Garfunkel.

Speaker 132:15

What?

Speaker 132:17

You're shaking my confidence daily.

Speaker 132:21

What's your ceiling? I'm down on my knees.

Speaker 132:26

I'm dead.

Speaker 232:27

Will you please do come home?

Speaker 232:31

Celia, you're breaking my heart.

Speaker 232:35

You're shaking my confidence, baby.

Speaker 232:40

What a single

Presenter32:46

Cecilia, Sim Lengar Funkel. It's time now, Peter Lampel, for me to give you some books. I give every castaway a copy of the complete works of Shakespeare and the Bible, and they get to take one other book along to the island with those two. What what are you going to take?

Sir Peter Lampl32:53

And the Bible.

Sir Peter Lampl32:57

Right.

Sir Peter Lampl33:00

I'm going to take the complete works of Robert Frost.

Sir Peter Lampl33:04

I think he's a wonderful poet. I've spent time up in New England, which is where he's from, New Hampshire, Vermont.

Sir Peter Lampl33:13

I love his poetry. It's about, you know, rural life in those parts of the world.

Sir Peter Lampl33:19

Birches and the road less traveled and so on and so on. So I would take Robert Frost's complete works.

Presenter33:25

Complete work.

Presenter33:27

You're allowed a luxury, too, something that just makes life

Presenter33:31

More bearable. Well, I reckon you get pretty

Sir Peter Lampl33:33

Be thirsty on a desert island.

Sir Peter Lampl33:37

So I think I would want two cases of champagne.

Sir Peter Lampl33:41

One to drink.

Sir Peter Lampl33:43

And if there's any left, one to the people that rescue it.

Presenter33:47

typically optimistic, if I may say so. You can certainly have a couple of cases of champagne, a few more cases even if you want them. Finally, if I were to ask you to save just one of these discs from the waves, which one would it be?

Sir Peter Lampl33:52

Right.

Sir Peter Lampl33:58

I would say because it's beautiful and it's quite long and it's got depth, I would say the magic flute.

Presenter34:05

It's yours. Sir Peter Lampel, thank you very much for letting us hear your desert island.

Sir Peter Lampl34:08

Thank you.

Presenter34:21

Hi, I hope you really enjoyed that interview with Sir Peter Lampel. Some of his musical choices have also made other appearances on Desert Island discs. Dame Julie Andrews was on the programme back in 1992 talking to Sue, and Sir Paul McCartney was a castaway on our 40th anniversary programme in 1982 in a very memorable edition with Roy. Peter also chose some Rolling Stones as a memory for the time he lived in the same apartment block as Keith Richards, and Keith joined me in the past to share his Desert Island discs. Definitely worth a listen.

Speaker 134:53

I was going to Sidco Art School.

Presenter34:55

Right.

Speaker 134:55

And Mick at that time was going to the London School of Economics.

Speaker 135:00

I just get off and said, Gabino. Me ma I'm sitting in the carriage and suddenly he walks in.

Speaker 135:06

There's Mick who I haven't seen in years going, Wow man

Speaker 135:09

What's that under your arm?

Speaker 135:12

And he pours out the best of muddy waters and rocking up the hops by Chuckberry.

Speaker 135:19

And these are American pressings, you know, and you can't get these records in England at the time, you know.

Speaker 135:26

Basically, that was the hookup for the stones and for Mick and I was just that we had this

Speaker 135:32

Same interest in music. You got any more records like that? And he said, sure. I said I I send away to Chicago for them.

Speaker 135:41

Wow, this man's organized, you know?

Presenter35:43

And was your writing partnership always an easy partnership?

Speaker 135:47

Not always, but in the early days, very easy. In a way, I mean, this is like uh

Speaker 135:53

Being on the factory line, you know, because I remember very well.

Speaker 135:58

And Satisfaction had just come out and it's number one all over the world. Mick and I are going, Yeah, great, fantastic, man, you know. And then the knock at the door and there i is uh basically the record company is saying, Where's the follow-up?

Presenter36:17

Sure.

Speaker 136:17

Mm-hmm.

Presenter36:18

Is it true and I don't know, it's one of these things you read and you think, Can that actually be true, that satisfaction came to you, the riff came to you in your sleep and you didn't even know you'd

Speaker 136:25

Doing your s

Speaker 136:27

I had no, I thanks God to the um

Speaker 136:30

The recently invented cassette player.

Presenter36:33

Which was by Eurobeus.

Speaker 136:33

Yes. And I happened to be uh between friends at the time and I sleeping with the guitar on the bed, you know.

Speaker 136:43

And somewhere obviously in the night I I got up and laid down the basic framework for satisfaction. The only way I knew that something had happened because I looked at the tape

Speaker 136:56

And I know that I put in a brand new tape, so therefore.

Speaker 137:01

The real has to be empty that side and full that side. But it had gone the other way. It was.

Presenter37:06

Uh

Speaker 137:08

You know, it was recorded.

Speaker 137:11

So I thought maybe I'll hit the button in the wrong position during my sleep or something. So I roll it back and listen back and there is this very weak faint idea of satisfaction, you know, the riff, the first verse and the second, and then 45 minutes of me snoring.

Speaker 137:32

But it was by a miracle you just captured on that little machine.

Presenter37:42

That was Keith Richards talking to me back in the autumn of 2015. All the programmes are available to download from our archive.

Presenter37:50

Next time, my guest is going to be the computer scientist doctor Sue Black, who can put Saving Bletchley Park on her C V along with helping young mums to learn a little bit more about computers and coding. So I do hope you'll join us.

Sir Peter Lampl38:13

This is the BBC.

Speaker 238:17

Just before you go, I want to tell you how you can find the best stories from across the BBC. The Drama of the Week podcast showcases our favorites, from brand new writing to classic plays. Explosive drama like Paradise Lost, War of the Worlds, and Blood, Sex and Money by Emil Zola. All you need to do is subscribe to Drama of the Week wherever you get your podcasts.