Guy Singh-Watson

Speaker 40:00

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.

Presenter0:49

My castaway to day is the farmer and entrepreneur Guy Sing Watson. The founder of Riverford Organics, his veg boxes packed with everything from crugettes to cardoons nope, me neither are delivered to more than fifty thousand British homes every week. He's proved what some thought impossible that a multi-million pound food business can be built on seasonal and sustainable produce. But then he likes to do things his way. In the mid eighties he quit a high powered job in Manhattan and travelled home to Devon to begin working three acres of land with nothing more than a wheelbarrow and a borrowed tractor. His first thirty vegetable boxes were sold to his mates out the back of an old two C V. Now, well he has an annual turnover of almost fifty seven million pounds.

Presenter1:39

But then just maybe he had a genetically modified advantage. His parents began as tenant farmers in the early fifties, and now every single one of his four older siblings are back home working the same acres. The Devon soil, it would seem, is pretty much in their bones. He says of farming organically

Presenter1:58

In this business you're trying to learn and manage an ecosystem. It feels right to farm in harmony with nature. I don't want to dominate and replace it with something of my own need.

Presenter2:09

So welcome then, Geising Watson. It's interesting to talk to you at a time when it seems that more and more people are choosing to put vegetables right at the center of the plate, as it were. How much of a significant change have you noticed in the way that your customers shop and what it is they want from their veggies these days?

Guy Singh-Watson2:26

Well, in 30 years, I'm afraid to say there has undoubtedly been a decline in cooking skills, and I'd say particularly being able to make use of the more humble vegetables, the beetroots and cauliflowers and cabbages, which is a bit frustrating because those are the things that grow so well in our climate. But you're right, I mean, more recently, I mean, vegetables taking kind of centre stage is something that I absolutely celebrate, and it's certainly what excites me. I'm not a vegetarian, but it's always the vegetables that I'm thinking about when I'm planning a meal, and the meat is on the side, if there is any at all.

Presenter3:02

Right. What what is a cardoon?

Guy Singh-Watson3:05

A cardoon is a relative of the thistle, it's also a relative of the globe artichoke. With a cardoon it's more like celery, you eat the fleshy central fill, the leaf, and some people think they're tough and bitter, which they can be.

Presenter3:19

What what should you do to a cardoon to make sure it's not tough and bitter?

Guy Singh-Watson3:23

Normally blanch it for ten minutes or so in uh acidulated water and then you know, they're delicious in a gratin, a soup. Uh, you can make fritters out of them. Everything's delicious in a gratin.

Presenter3:33

Everything's deliberate. Just in the gratin.

Guy Singh-Watson3:35

Ha ha ha

Guy Singh-Watson3:37

I mean, they just look fantastic, and they are perennials. And perennials are just so much better for the soil because they don't involve plowing the soil every year and disturbing it. I've got beds of them that have been there for ten years. I've never weeded them, I've never manured them, I've never watered them.

Presenter3:50

You've got proper farmers' hands. Not only do they look very capable, but reassuringly they look like they've got some nice dirt under their fingernails. How much time are you out there in the fields?

Guy Singh-Watson4:00

I was out there last night actually splitting up global artichokes ready to replant them. You know, to be honest.

Presenter4:02

Yeah.

Guy Singh-Watson4:07

An hour a day, I suppose I'm out in the fields doing things.

Presenter4:10

Is that a need for you? Do you need to spend that hour?

Guy Singh-Watson4:12

Absolutely. You know, and I I think it's very important to look after yourself and kind of refuel yourself. And for me, I'm quite an introverted person and being on my own in the fields with my vegetables, that's what kind of recharges me.

Presenter4:25

Guy, we're gonna go now to the list. Tell me about this first piece of music.

Guy Singh-Watson4:29

Well, this is Kenny Rogers, and you picked a fine time to leave me, Lucille. And I used to sing this on my tractor quite a lot. And it was a time when my first marriage was probably starting to fall apart, so it seems very poignant to me. I did have four children, they weren't hungry, and there were the crops in the fields. I love country music, I love its simple directness, and I can be a bit soppy as well. So, I love this track.

Presenter5:04

Uh

Guy Singh-Watson5:04

Four hundred

Speaker 45:06

Children

Presenter5:06

Uh

Presenter5:07

Uh

Speaker 45:07

Crappin'

Speaker 45:11

I've had some bad times, lived through some sad times, but this time you heard me

Speaker 35:18

Uh

Presenter5:20

You picked a fine time to leave me, Lucy.

Presenter5:28

Kenny Rogers and Lucille, and I have a very strong image of you, Guy Watson, sitting singing that in your tractor while you plow your fields. Looking at the contents of your vegetable boxes, it's interesting to me that not everything is grown on this lovely farm that you have in Devon. And also, I was surprised that not everything in the veg boxes is even grown in Britain. When it comes to food miles versus polytunnels, which I guess is sort of the equation in the end, why are food miles preferable?

Guy Singh-Watson5:58

Well, like so many things, it's just you know a gross simplification of what is a very complex question. Sometimes local is best, but if you're looking at it from an environmental point of view, and we did a long study with Exter University on this, it very often is better to import. In the case of hot house heated greenhouses producing peppers or tomatoes, it's somewhere between five and ten times more efficient in terms of CO two emissions to grow them in Spain without heat rather than to grow them in the UK with heat. So we grow our own tomatoes from early July to the middle of October. That's when you can grow them without heat, and the rest of the time they come from a guy called Paco down near Almeria who grows them in tunnels without heat and that is environmentally the right thing to do. I have no doubt about it. It'll come by lorry or sometimes by ship.

Presenter6:51

You don't fly anything ever.

Guy Singh-Watson6:53

We don't fly no, I would say the two absolute insanities in fresh produce if you want to reduce the environmental

Guy Singh-Watson7:00

Footprint of what you eat. Don't eat anything that's been on an aeroplane and don't eat anything produced in a heated greenhouse.

Presenter7:07

Let's have some more music. Guys, sing Watson. We're going to hear your second. Ah, well.

Guy Singh-Watson7:12

If appropriate. Tell us about this. Oh, well, this is the Tofu Love Frogs and Vegetable Attack, and we. This is a first.

Presenter7:18

This is a first.

Guy Singh-Watson7:19

Uh

Presenter7:19

Uh

Guy Singh-Watson7:19

I've not had this one before. We've had some pretty wild parties on the farm over thirty years and they've they've kind of tamed down a bit now, which is a bit

Guy Singh-Watson7:28

I feel a bit sad really in some ways, but you know, some of them used to go on all weekend and there was one particular party that used to happen on a Halloween and this band, the Toffu Love Frogs, came and played. Everyone came in fancy dress and almost everyone took magic mushrooms. It was that time of year. Anyway, yeah, Toffu Love Frogs.

Speaker 47:48

Best of the time, come without dumbout, best for the time, come and have coming out, best for the time, best for the time, who put down, come and dump it out, best for the time, come and double down, best of the time, come without coming out, best for the time, best for the

Speaker 48:10

Couple English on the radio, I scope you won't be soon but true they know you look no face to go with a baseball gangster low continue Well now you're doing it I know we feel the gangster save that I'll just move just watch our makeshift baseball millers on your attack Well I got a code say what we say Now we just turn it now and think Cap on the close This is gonna be

Presenter8:28

That was Tofu Love Frogs and Vegetable Attack. Um your your mum and dad, uh John and Gillian guy, they had there were five of you within seven and a half years?

Guy Singh-Watson8:37

Yeah, it was 18 months almost to the day between us, so it was nine months on and nine months off for my mum. Yeah, that sort of success.

Presenter8:44

That sort of successional planting beautifully done. And you you are the youngest then. What impact di did it have on your character?

Guy Singh-Watson8:45

Usually done

Guy Singh-Watson8:50

Oh well, I would say that I had to fight hard for what I could get. They would sometimes say that I was a spoiled, overindulged little brat, but so

Guy Singh-Watson9:05

I think particularly when I was younger I had pretty sharp elbows and was pretty intent on getting what I wanted, getting my own way and uh you know, it's something that I probably regret a little bit, yeah.

Presenter9:18

Were were you involved around the farm? Were you expected to help out?

Guy Singh-Watson9:21

Oh god, yeah, from being able to walk virtually.

Presenter9:24

What what were your first jobs?

Guy Singh-Watson9:26

Mocking out the pigs actually I think. And I think I could just about remember picking up eggs with my mum and milking the cows and, you know, out on the tractor plowing.

Presenter9:36

Is it true you were given a pig for your eighth birthday?

Guy Singh-Watson9:38

I was given a pig for my eighth birthday and

Presenter9:38

Uh

Guy Singh-Watson9:41

Get annoyed by siblings, actually.

Guy Singh-Watson9:44

But anyway I was given a pig, and she had fourteen piglets twice a year, dutifully, and she was a wonderful pig.

Presenter9:51

And did you ever have to send her to slaughter?

Guy Singh-Watson9:54

Actually, I can't remember what happened to that particular pig, but I later kept sheep and yeah, they went to slaughter and I remember eating the Henry, the uh bottle fed lamb, orphan lamb that I kept, and uh yeah, it didn't bother me at all, actually.

Presenter10:08

Um, growing up, then, your parents had Become farmers in the very early fifties, 1951 I think it was, and they started with 36 Ayrshire cows.

Guy Singh-Watson10:14

I think

Presenter10:17

They didn't really have any experience, and they didn't have much cash either. How aware were you and the rest of the family of the precarious nature of the business?

Guy Singh-Watson10:27

We were made very aware from an early age and my father didn't spare us any of the details of his bank balance and he was constantly on the verge of bankruptcy. Partly because as you've alluded to, he didn't actually have much practical experience himself, so there was a lot of learning going on. But partly he was just sort of pig-headed and stubborn and needed to do everything his own way. You know, he always wanted to find a way of keeping pigs. He loved pigs and he wanted to find a way of keeping them that gave them the freedoms that he felt that they should have. And, you know, he was decades ahead of his time.

Guy Singh-Watson11:03

And um he lost a lot of money.

Guy Singh-Watson11:06

You know, but I could but it also, you know, it was probably very good experience in terms of being entrepreneurial and

Guy Singh-Watson11:14

you know, learning how to evaluate risk and so and so on. And we did all have our businesses from you know, I think I started selling well-rotted manure from the garden gate. Very glamorous that was. I was definitely still at primary school.

Guy Singh-Watson11:25

You know, my brother was selling logs and my sister was raising the calves and uh someone was keeping chickens. You know, that's that's we didn't have pocket money.

Guy Singh-Watson11:36

And then I got tenpence an hour for mucking out my dad's pigs at the weekend.

Presenter11:40

Then you were lucky to have

Guy Singh-Watson11:40

Always lucky to have it.

Presenter11:40

The boys

Presenter11:41

Right, tell me about your third one. What are we going to hear? What's this?

Guy Singh-Watson11:44

My mother loved Calypso. Actually, she grew up in Trinidad and Calypso was the music and she particularly loved Terry Belafonte. He is devastatingly handsome, which I suspect might have been one of the reasons my mum liked him so much. And this is Chickens. One day a rooster.

Presenter12:07

Came into our young.

Speaker 412:08

Who are you?

Speaker 412:12

And caught those little chickens.

Speaker 412:19

Right off their guard.

Speaker 412:28

They're laying eggs now, just like they used to.

Guy Singh-Watson12:33

Ever since that rooster

Speaker 412:35

Uh Came into our

Guy Singh-Watson12:37

Yeah yeah.

Speaker 412:37

Alright.

Presenter12:38

That was Harry Belafonte, your mother's favorite singing chickens there, Guy Sing Watson. You you have a a restaurant on site at the farm. You've written books too. Tell me a bit about your mum's cooking, because of course on a farm

Presenter12:52

The physical work means that people have to be well fed. Was she the person doing that feeding?

Guy Singh-Watson12:57

Absolutely. We ate fantastically well and we used to have these lunches where often there'd be two, three, four people from the farm would come and eat and the whole family and would sit down and she'd just cook this amazing food. You know, she'd cure her own bacon, she made her own bread, her own butter. I can remember picking purple sprowing with her in the garden at a time when no one else grew purple sprouting broccoli. She was just so far ahead of her time. I mean the way she cooked would have been incredibly fashionable now, but was just totally out of fashion then. And you know, mostly she was cooking what grew on the farm.

Presenter13:33

Did you have any input into what was served up?

Guy Singh-Watson13:35

Absolutely no choice whatsoever. I do remember once that she used to make her own mayonnaise, can you believe that? I mean, she used to make her own bloody mayonnaise for lunch. And I used to, being the little brat that I was, I don't like your mayonnaise, mum, can't we have Hellman's? And I do remember once she put some of her mayonnaise in a Hellman's jar and gave it to me and everyone else around the table knew and I can remember her asking at the end, so guy, how was the mayonnaise? I say, oh, it's delicious, mum. And everyone just burst out laughing.

Presenter14:08

And what and what about cooking for the farm workers too? I mean, they just sat down

Guy Singh-Watson14:12

And ate what they were given. Yeah, you know, so the whole thing now, I mean my children didn't get any choice either. I don't know, that's how I love to eat. Even if I go to a restaurant, I will often just say to the just bring me whatever you think's good.

Presenter14:12

Yeah.

Guy Singh-Watson14:24

Choice is an over overrated.

Presenter14:26

And just a little bit more about your mum. When I have read about your mum, I've had a sense of her as an extremely strong.

Presenter14:33

Character. Would that be right?

Guy Singh-Watson14:34

She was phenomenally strong, yeah. I mean how she got all that work done, you know, looked after five kids, God and went and got bits from my dad's combine and did the wages, and I just cannot begin to imagine how she squeezed it all into a day and um

Guy Singh-Watson14:53

you know, a bit more demonstrable affection probably wouldn't have gone amiss, but I certainly felt very secure in her love and, um

Guy Singh-Watson15:04

No, I think she's been the role model for quite a few people. Quite difficult to live up to, I have to say.

Guy Singh-Watson15:10

Um

Guy Singh-Watson15:12

You know, it's hard not to project that onto your own relationship in a way which would be, you know, utterly unreasonable. You know, I guess she, um she didn't do a lot of favors for the next generation of Watson Wives.

Presenter15:25

Um, we're going to hear some more of your music, Guy Sing Watson. Tell me about this next one.

Guy Singh-Watson15:29

Well, the Sex Pistols Anarchy in the UK. I was not at all a cool teenager, but some of my friends were, and they heard that the Sex Pistols were paying in Plymouth. And I've just got my driving license and had a car, so we all piled into the car. I had no idea what to expect. I was probably wearing a pair of flared jeans and a rolled neck sweater. I'm not even a tweed jacket, you know. And we went down to this club. Yeah, and there they were. Johnny Rotten and Sid Vicious and all these pogoing Plymouthians spitting, you know, and the mosh pair at the front. It was pretty extraordinary. Pretty dreadful music, really, I think. But anyway, here we go. Sex Pistols Anarchy in the UK.

Speaker 416:17

The rights!

Speaker 416:27

I am an antichrist.

Speaker 416:32

Coaster, don't know what I want, but I know how to get it. I wanna destroy, bossed up by design.

Speaker 416:43

One of the best.

Speaker 416:45

Yeah yeah.

Presenter16:50

That was the Sex Pistols and Anarchy in the UK. I just looked at you during the the playing of that guy and I said, You're not loving this, are you? You said, No, I'm not really But it w it brought you back to that memory. I'm wondering how the the boy in the roll neck sweater and probably jacket and the floors in nineteen seventy seven at the gig in Plymouth, how how did you feel when you were there?

Guy Singh-Watson17:06

I felt just completely out of time with my generation really. And um, you know, I was this farm boy. That was my life really. I just loved farming and I I'm sure a lot of adolescents feel they don't fit in then there's nothing

Guy Singh-Watson17:19

But there you were, and it was your luck.

Presenter17:20

But you say not fitting in you were dyslexic as well, though uh, pretty profoundly dyslexic. So how did you get on in school?

Guy Singh-Watson17:27

I learnt strategies to cope, really. You know, when I went to the comprehensive, I was put in the lower streams because I could barely write, you know, and I had all the classic P's and B's and couldn't read very well. My children used to plead with me not to read them a bedtime story. I stumble over all the words. But I think kind of having to be a bit different, I don't know, in some ways it helped. It's amazing how many dyslexic people do go on to be, you know, entrepreneurial. Indeed.

Presenter17:59

And as you say, that is such a sort of frequent part of the story of so many entrepreneurs. What is not?

Guy Singh-Watson18:03

That's what

Presenter18:05

It's a paradox. You you're you're dyslexic uh you got into Oxford.

Presenter18:09

So how does that work?

Guy Singh-Watson18:10

That was pretty extraordinary. I mean, I suppose I had I used to ask my teachers, how can I write better? And then one of the teachers at Totnest, the comp, said, you know, go away and try and at least get it to fit between those lines. You know, my writing did get a bit better. Actually, I've always been really good at taking exams after the 11 plus.

Presenter18:32

But a big part o of getting in is the interview. How did that go?

Guy Singh-Watson18:33

Poor s

Guy Singh-Watson18:36

Badly. I remember coming into the room and being given half a dozen eggs and a bit of wood which had a load of insect tracks in it. And I was pretty sure it was a tree with Dutch elm disease, I think. And they just said, talk about that. I mean, for God's sake. I mean, what a way to interview people. You know, no doubt all the public school kids have been coached in how to respond to that. Anyway, I didn't get into that college, but fortunately, I think Trinity particularly wanted someone there to study agriculture or something anyway, and they gave me a place. And I suppose it laid the foundation for trying to find a way of farming which works kind of within nature rather than dominating it and putting something else in its place, which seemed to be what most agriculture was doing.

Presenter19:21

And so a boy brought up on the farm who's selling manure at at the farm gate when he's still at primary school and who then goes on to study agriculture, Oxford, and then he leaves and decides to go to Manhattan.

Guy Singh-Watson19:33

Well, I came back to the farm. Oh, yeah, no, I came back for a couple of years and

Presenter19:34

Oh, yeah.

Presenter19:38

But it didn't work out?

Guy Singh-Watson19:39

It it didn't for a number of reasons. You know, I'm a very, very independent person and to work within a family partnership was always going to be a struggle. And I packed my bags, I got a job in London, got myself a snappy suit, and called myself a management consultant, and bizarrely people believe me.

Presenter19:58

A little bit more of Manhattan then to come. We will fit in the music on the way though, Guy Sing Watson. So tell me about this then. Tell me about your fist.

Guy Singh-Watson20:06

I suppose when I did go to London and later in New York and started living life a bit as a young man and going to clubs and stuff, the best music was always in the gay clubs and I just think Jimmy Somerville is extraordinary and I think this is a really beautiful track. I also think he was an incredibly brave and principled individual actually. So this is Jimmy Somerville and Bronsky Pete, Small Town Boy.

Speaker 420:54

I should never have

Speaker 420:58

Yeah.

Presenter21:09

That's Bronsky Beat and Ginny Somerville and Small Town Boy. Guysing Watson, you were a very successful management consultant. You were so successful in London, the company sent you over to Manhattan to set up an office there.

Guy Singh-Watson21:21

Yeah.

Presenter21:21

You've since called it stimulating but morally bankrupt. That's very strong words. What was the problem?

Guy Singh-Watson21:28

I don't know whether management consultants still do the same thing, but the worst of it was you often would get you'd be going researching a market for someone and you'd go and interview. You often end up interviewing the competitors of the company that you were working for. And it was viewed as perfectly acceptable to go and lie about why you were there and create some sort of pretense. I particularly remember interviewing someone and him asking to my face, you're not doing this for such and such a company. And I was. And at that point, I was in too deep and I just carried on lying. And it was just awful. It was just completely unacceptable. And the bizarre thing around it, this was the 80s. You know, greed was good. And that's what everyone around me was doing. But I just couldn't do it in the end. And I rang up the office in London and said, I'd resign. And they said, we're going to chuck the keys in the river and off. Which is what I did. You didn't chuck the keys in the river. I did literally chuck the keys in the river, yeah. And I lived in New York for a bit. I have to say, I'd probably been doing rather too many drugs at that point. Anyway, so I left New York, I went up to Maine and I taught kids to sail, actually.

Presenter22:21

You didn't chuck the keys in the river.

Presenter22:37

Did you feel you had to sort of clean up your act?

Guy Singh-Watson22:40

I did a bit, yeah. I went on a complete health and fitness thing. And yeah, stopped drinking, stopped taking all those drugs and sailed and ran and rode and swam, you know, until I felt better again.

Presenter22:53

And you went home and you went back to the farm and your plan was what?

Guy Singh-Watson22:54

And you

Guy Singh-Watson22:58

I realize a lot of the decisions I made have been really quite impulsive. I came home with my then girlfriend for Christmas. Didn't work out with the girlfriend. I was planning on going back and sailing boats again in in Maine and uh

Guy Singh-Watson23:12

I just found myself out in the field with a plow. That's how I remember it. I don't remember planning it or anything. Actually, I can remember being conscious that I needed to start my own business because I couldn't work for anyone else. By then, I'd realized I was too pig-headed and independent to ever. I think I was probably unemployable at that stage. I knew that I needed to be outside a lot, and I knew that I hated selling things. So, actually, something that was kind of like a repeat purchase that people just bought anyway, like vegetables, seemed to fit in pretty well. And then I found, you know, when I got home, this whole organic thing, a lot of people were talking about. So, I think there was a whole load of threads which just came together when I got back and got on that tractor and found my calling, really, which I really did because I love growing vegetables every bit as much now, 30 years later, as I did then.

Presenter24:00

Let's have some more music, guysing Watson. We're gonna go to your sixth now.

Guy Singh-Watson24:04

Well, this is Talking Heads. It was actually after I'd left Manhattan and I was teaching these kids to sail on an island in a very remote part of Maine. And when I wasn't teaching sailing, I used to gravitate towards the kitchen on this island. And there was a wonderful cook who was macrobiotic, actually. And he kind of got me into more sort of plant-based eating. And I used to go and help him in the kitchen. I remember he was very impressed by my knife skills. Anyway, Talking Heads were playing all the time in the kitchen. And this track really brings back that kitchen.

Speaker 424:42

You may find yourself living in a shotgun shop.

Speaker 424:46

And you may find yourself in another

Presenter24:49

And you may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile and you may find yourself in a beautiful house.

Presenter24:59

With a beautiful voice!

Speaker 425:01

You may ask yourself, well

Speaker 425:05

How did I get here?

Presenter25:20

I was talking heads, Anne, once in a lifetime. Uh we won't find Riverford organics in our supermarket, Guy Watson. What w you did sell to supermarkets for a little while. What what's the problem?

Guy Singh-Watson25:31

Um yeah, I used to sell to Waitrose and Sainsbury's through the late eighties up until about 2001. My first brushing with a supermarket was when I was trying to get my pack house up to supermarket standards. And we'd arranged that I think I was going to grow little gem lettuce and cabbages or something. And the buyer said, Yes, well, we we need you to be here next Thursday to meet our technical man who's going to tell you about what you need to have in your pack house. And I said, Okay, great. We couldn't make it Friday, could we? Because I need to be in London that weekend to see my girlfriend and the phone went dead on me.

Guy Singh-Watson26:10

And I called him back. I said, I'm terribly sorry. I think we must have been cut off. And he said, No, Sonny, when we whistle, you jump. And I.

Guy Singh-Watson26:19

I just couldn't believe that anyone, you know, would speak to another human being, you know, with such contempt.

Guy Singh-Watson26:25

And that was it. I went out and I picked up a sledgehammer, and that was the end of the packhouse that I'd been building. You destroyed it yourself? I destroyed it. I smashed it up.

Presenter26:31

You destroyed it yourself.

Guy Singh-Watson26:35

And I went back to selling to shops. And then, as the business grew, I did end up selling to supermarkets through third parties who were doing the packing and you know, experienced similar behaviour. You know, a supermarket buyer always say makes a second-hand car salesman seem like a priest. They want someone who will supply them with broccoli 52 weeks of the year, preferably at an absolute standard price and a standard specification. And if you can't grow it in the UK, they'll grow it in Spain. And if it fails there, they'll air freight it in from California.

Presenter27:06

Well, of course, I I mean I don't have the the knowledge of of a farmer and therefore it's difficult for me to to reply to those points. But certainly I would say in defence of the supermarket and that industry is that for consumers, you know, lots of us are very happy to be able to go along to a supermarket, do our weekly shop, know that it's good value for money, know that it's cleanly packaged and go home and

Guy Singh-Watson27:22

Oh that's good.

Presenter27:26

That's, you know, job done.

Guy Singh-Watson27:28

Yeah, they have provided convenience, but I mean, at what price? I mean, you sold.

Guy Singh-Watson27:34

food which is old, which is overpackaged, which is anonymous. You know, is that really what we want? Most people want to feel some connection with how their food is produced and to feel some trust in how it's produced. And I j I think that has largely been lost.

Presenter27:48

Um, it's very interesting actually that you and uh your second wife, Keeta, you have a pub together and a big part of its offering is that it does what you consider to be very good food and and simple food. How is it working together? Because, you know, running a restaurant is running a pub it's you know, it's not the most straightforward of jobs.

Guy Singh-Watson28:06

We try and say that we won't talk about business upstairs at least. But we do. We regularly you know, we have a large double ended bath and we will regularly find ourselves sitting in there talking about, you know, what food is on the menu, you know, or staffing issues or supplier policy and

Presenter28:23

You all dromatic you.

Guy Singh-Watson28:25

Well, as a matter of fact, she is leaving us to go and open her own pub.

Presenter28:29

To have some more music. A guy wants to tell me about this. It's your sevenths.

Guy Singh-Watson28:32

Leonard Cohen, I'm Your Man, gives you hope for the future that anyone can just be so cool and sexy and humorous and this track makes me laugh a lot and it is actually a track that Geeti and I played at our wedding.

Speaker 428:47

If you want a lover.

Speaker 428:50

I'll do anything you ask.

Presenter28:54

Man, too.

Speaker 428:56

Uh

Presenter28:56

And if you want another kind of love

Presenter29:02

I'll wear a mask for you.

Speaker 429:07

If you want a partner take my hand or if you

Presenter29:13

If you wanna strike me And down in anger.

Presenter29:19

Here I stand.

Presenter29:22

I'm your man. Leonard Cohen, I'm your man. You said, Geising Watson, that many entrepreneurs can be I'm about to quote you directly impetuous, restless misfits who charge through life leaving havoc behind.

Guy Singh-Watson29:38

I seem to remember I was writing about Donald Trump when I wrote

Guy Singh-Watson29:43

But yeah, no, I mean most entrepreneurs, they definitely have a few nuts loose somewhere and are often driven by a um I don't know a need for approval or something or other and they often are quite borderline aggressive in pushing other people aside and I know that I have a lot of those traits and I do need to keep an eye on them. But I do think if you

Presenter30:10

Is that the impulsive st you know, like smashing up the the packing shed with the

Guy Singh-Watson30:13

Yeah, I know that I can yeah. And you know, I a lot of my decisions well, I think uh most so many of our decisions are emotionally driven. And I think if you recognize that, you know, you're one step closer towards being able to make better decisions. And um

Presenter30:31

So one of one of your most recent decisions is to sell seventy-four percent of your company to the

Guy Singh-Watson30:37

You know, I feel that the business's continuing success, by which I don't just mean commercial success, but being true to its values and so on, depends almost solely on the people who work within it. So they are the people who I want to own it, and they will own 100% at some point between now and when I die. What do your kids say? Well, I think it's greatly to my children's credit that they have been largely supportive. You know, I think wealth can be really horrible in the way it divides people. And I think to lumber kids with a million quid or two million quid is a millstone round their neck on the whole. And I think they are very.

Presenter30:39

Yeah.

Guy Singh-Watson31:20

capable and willing to make their own way in the world and that's what I'd like them to do.

Presenter31:26

When you land on the island, what will you do first?

Guy Singh-Watson31:29

Well, I'm sure I would build myself a shelter and then I'd probably set about trying to catch some fish. And I'd be looking at the waves all the time, because when I'm not farming my great passion is surfing.

Presenter31:40

And what about the veggies? What would you try to plant?

Guy Singh-Watson31:43

Without knowing the soil and the climate and, you know, the rainfall and so on, that would be very hard. But I a a sandy soil on a desert island is going to be a challenging

Presenter31:52

It's a challenge.

Guy Singh-Watson31:54

Asparagus might do quite well, but you know, coconuts are probably your best bet.

Presenter31:59

Tell me about your final piece of music, then, Guy. What are we going to hear?

Guy Singh-Watson32:02

Yeah, this is Grace Jones and it kind of takes me back to my heady days of discovery in New York and I think Grace Jones is just extraordinary in her sassy, strong, original. I mean she was so ahead of her time and I love this one. It makes me think of the New York streets.

Speaker 432:29

I think down the

Presenter32:39

Uh

Presenter32:39

Three

Presenter32:51

Far no more for Christmas.

Presenter32:54

Me

Presenter32:56

All up to the power, baby.

Presenter32:59

Grace Jones, pull up to the bumper. It's time now for me to give you some books. You get the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare. What's the other book gonna be?

Guy Singh-Watson33:08

Well, I think it would be uh Thomas Hardy's Far from the Madden Crowd. Gabriel Oak was a hero for me, I suppose. Okay, well that's so yeah, maybe I modelled myself on him.

Presenter33:17

So yeah, maybe I'll be able to do that.

Presenter33:19

Okay, that's your book. The Luxury. What will your luxury be?

Guy Singh-Watson33:23

And the luxury, if you're gonna let me have it, is gonna be a surfboard. Yes, you can have that. As long as you don't.

Presenter33:27

Yes, you can have that as long as you don't use it to paddle to another island.

Guy Singh-Watson33:30

Well, I've probably not fit enough for that. So um yeah, no, I'm hoping there's gonna be a great point break on this island somewhere and I can while away my days.

Presenter33:33

Um yeah

Guy Singh-Watson33:40

Getting better at surfing.

Presenter33:41

Certainly, that's yours. What about the track to save, if you had to just pick one?

Guy Singh-Watson33:46

It's gonna be Jimmy Somerville and Small Town Boy.

Presenter33:50

That's yours. Guy Singh Watson, thank you very much for letting us hear your Desert Island discs.

Guy Singh-Watson33:55

Thank you.

Presenter34:06

Well, as we leave Guy contemplating surfing the waves, I can tell you that if you're interested in good food, you'll find plenty castaways in our back catalogue that you might like to hear from. Jotam Otto Langi, Nigella Lawson, Rennie Redzepe, Prue Leith, Heston Blumenthal, Ruth Rogers, and Raymond Blanc.

Presenter34:24

One of my other guests also grew up on a farm, the chief executive of the Soil Association, Helen Browning.

Presenter34:30

We spoke back in 2015 when she explained how she came to run her family's farm. It was clear that your future was going to be in farming, but something rather unexpected happened. Your father just saying you take over. Yes, I finished my degree and came back to the farm in the middle of 1986. And I knew I was going to get very involved in the management there quite quickly, but I didn't realize that he was going to say...

Guy Singh-Watson34:43

Tickle.

Presenter34:56

Right. I'm stepping back altogether and letting you get on with this. My father handed it over very swiftly. And you were aged what, about twenty four? I was twenty four. So you were sort of wet behind the ears and full of idealism and you were managing I mean, I'm I'm interested particulars, you know.

Guy Singh-Watson35:04

Top.

Guy Singh-Watson35:07

Uh

Presenter35:10

Were you the only woman on the farm? I mean, how many men were you in charge of on that farm? There certainly weren't any other women working there at the time. I inherited a staff of men.

Guy Singh-Watson35:14

Uh

Guy Singh-Watson35:18

Bye.

Presenter35:21

Mostly twice my age, very sceptical about what they'd heard might be happening. They knew I was interested in organic farming. I'd done a year's research on an organic farm as part of my degree. So they knew I had those kind of inclinations, and it was quite a shock for them when I took over the reins. And you started these very small-scale explorations. You know, you'd take 20 acres and you'd say, We're going to have a go at doing it the organic way.

Presenter35:51

I can't imagine it all went to plan all the time. I mean, w g give me some of your disasters.

Presenter35:57

Well, there are so many disasters along the way. Actually, most of them have been in marketing rather than farming. But to start with, yes, we took 20 acres and we ran lots of trials on that 20-acre site for the first year or two. And that was really to kind of make sure that we were researching things properly. But it was also about building the farm's confidence in the idea of going down this route. So we grew lots of different varieties of clovers and grass mixes. We grew vegetables in raised beds. We had different varieties of wheat and growing different plants together, which is an organic method. And we had our first house of laying hens. We had our first two pigs, all in this 20-acre site, running it almost as a small holding within the larger farm. Pretty cutting-edge stuff at the time.

Presenter36:41

Well, I a lot of people seem to think so, particularly when we took it out of the test bed and started to convert the larger farm. And it created a lot of interest because I was a tenant, I was paying a commercial rent.

Speaker 436:53

Mm.

Presenter36:53

So it wasn't as though this was either a rich man's hobby or a sort of hippie dream somewhere. This was about commercial farming that was going organic and doing it on a reasonable scale. So having shown ourselves that actually you could grow amazing clovers, you didn't need all this nitrogen fertiliser. I think everybody on the farm was bowled over. So we started converting one of the two dairy herds with the idea that we'd compare and contrast for a few years to see which one worked best. But to be honest, by the time we got halfway through that conversion, I was sort of completely bitten by the bug and we started converting the whole farm over a period of five or six years. Helen Browning. As ever, her edition of Desert Island Discs is available to download from wherever you get your podcasts. My guest next time will be the milliner Philip Treasy and we'll be talking about his Irish childhood and how he came to be making such amazing hats. Do join us.

Speaker 438:00

This is the BBC.

Speaker 438:03

It was twilight.

Presenter38:05

And Bailey was late. An extraordinary real life story. The black woman in the South who ran

Presenter38:12

Grandsons and Nephews has her heart strings tied to a hanging noose. The author Maya Angelou's Memoirs on BBC Radio 4 across the coming year.

Speaker 438:22

I will be a conductorette. I will!

Speaker 338:25

Well, nothing beats a trial but a failure. Give it everything you got.

Presenter38:32

Beginning with Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Search for the amazing Maya Angelou, wherever you get your podcasts.