Cressida Dick

Presenter0:01

BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts. I'm Lauren Laverne, and this is the Desert Island Discs Podcast. Every week, I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, book, and luxury they'd want to take with them if they were cast away to a desert island. And, for rights reasons, the music is shorter than the original broadcast. I hope you enjoy listening.

Presenter0:43

My castaway this week is Cressida Dick. As Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, she's the highest-ranking police officer in the UK. She's also the first woman ever to get the job. She spent her police career tackling crimes of every sort, many of which made headlines around the world, from the reinvestigation into the murder of Stephen Lawrence to the MP's expenses scandal and running the counter-terrorism operation at the London Olympics. Her career in the force wasn't always on the cards. She initially studied agriculture and forest sciences. How did this former forestry student take to working in the urban jungle? She loved it. She says, I joined the police force because I wanted to be involved with a much wider range of people. I wanted to be in a team and doing something important. I wanted to do something that when I came home at night, I knew I had made a difference. Cressida Dick, welcome to Desert Island Discs. Thank you very much. We all face new crimes these days. Thieves on mopeds, drones disrupting flights at airports, online trolling. We've seen MPs being abused outside Parliament recently. How do you react to all of these different challenges?

Presenter1:51

Well, I think the great thing about the Met, in fact about policing in the UK generally, is that we do have different challenges every day, every week, every month, and we are very good at predicting some of them and adapting to others. I think we are a very front-footed service, and we're always looking at the next technologies, the next themes. But we also have to worry about what happened last night, indeed, sometimes what happened years ago. And so we have to think a lot about the past, the present, and the future. And my job is to lead a Met that's effective today, but will be effective into the future, particularly as technology changes. You've said that we have to put the fear back into the criminal. And one of the ways that you've done this is by using police cars to ram thieves on mopeds off their bikes. What was the thinking behind that strategy? Because it is controversial. We've used a whole range of tactics. As a result of those tactics, we've reduced the number of those crimes by over 40%, nearly 50% actually. We use it very rarely. I think in the whole of last year, in the whole of this great seething city, so-called tactical contact was used just over 60 times. And we pursue people occasionally, over 600 moped-enabled pursuits last year. And what we have observed in the last few months is actually more and more people are just stopping and therefore the contact is absolutely not required. But if they do,

Presenter3:14

make off from the police. And more to the point, they're driving on the pavements, they are refusing to stop however many times they're asked, and they're putting themselves and the public at risk. The vast majority of the public seem to support us in using when it is safe to do so this tactic.

Presenter3:29

Let's go to the music, Cressida Dick. What was your criteria for choosing today?

Presenter3:34

Well firstly I find it very hard. I can't believe I'm going without ABBA but I'm going without ABBA. But I wanted to take music that I really love and or that reminds me of particular times in my life, places and people. And my first record is Me and Bobby McGee by Chris Christofferson. I think Christoffson's amazing. He was an actor. He also was a helicopter pilot and a road scholar at Oxford. I suspect a real hellraiser. I saw him twice last year. He's in his 80s and Me and Bobby McGee reminds me of the country, of the open road and of freedom and the fact that freedom is a kind of double-edged sword.

Speaker 34:13

Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose.

Speaker 34:20

Nothing ain't worth nothing, but it's free.

Speaker 34:28

Feeling good was easy loan when Bobby sang the blue.

Speaker 34:35

Feeling good was good enough for me.

Cressida Dick4:42

Good or not me and Bobby McGee.

Presenter4:47

Chris Christofferson with me and Bobby Magee. Cresser de Dick, the murder and knife crime statistics for the past twelve months make grim reading. The Met is under huge pressure to deal with it.

Presenter4:59

You've put more officers on the street and you're carrying out more stop and search. For you personally, what's the biggest challenge in bringing those figures down?

Presenter5:09

Well the figures are a huge challenge but they're also a huge sort of drive for me. Every day I and I think the vast majority of them are working desperately hard to try to reduce the phenomenon of particularly young people on the street carrying weapons to intervene early, to divert them away from it, but also to catch people who are carrying knives, to take knives off the streets, to bring people to justice. Of course what we know is that a huge number of the people who are stabbed have also stabbed people before and vice versa and that these youngsters are finding it really hard to resist being exploited, being bullied, being tempted by the offer of huge money and drug dealing. To stay safe you need to carry a weapon is what some of the bigger boys, some of the gangsters, some of the organised criminals will say to them. So it's a complicated phenomenon and we're beginning to see in the figures of people under the age of 25 who've been stabbed, we're beginning to see that those are reducing through enormous efforts by my officers and many others. But that's no comfort I'm sure to a mother who's worrying about whether her son can go out safely tonight or even more to the point, the families of the youngsters who've died.

Presenter6:30

And I think I have to be out on the streets a lot, which I am, with my officers, at public meetings and indeed meeting with and talking to people in our most disadvantaged areas and of course quite frequently to people who found themselves the victims of knife crime or mums who've lost their children or had their children locked up for serious crime. I do that a lot. I think it's important to try to understand.

Presenter6:56

Now Desert Island Discs isn't the place to get into arguments about figures, but while the government deny a causal link between funding cuts and rising knife crime, we know that police budgets have been reduced and therefore you have fewer resources at your disposal. What's your view? Is there a relationship between the two things?

Presenter7:16

I've always said I think there is some relationship between the reduction in public spending generally and in particular in policing and this phenomenon. It's obviously much more complicated than that, but in the last few years the demand on policing has gone up, the complexity, the expectations on us, including online crimes, human trafficking, terrorism as well of course. So we're being asked to do an enormous amount and we have had in the Met alone the last few years we've taken over £700 million out of our budgets. So it's tight and it's difficult. It's challenging. I'm pleased to say in the last two years we have managed to get more investment and right now the Met is growing and we're recruiting and I'll be able to put more people out on the streets and I'll be able to give them better kit and new ways of bearing down on violent crime.

Presenter8:09

It's time to hear some more music. Tell me about your second disc today. Why have you chosen this one?

Presenter8:14

So I like Dance of the Swans from Swan Lake. This reminds me of the very first time I went to the ballet at the new theatre in Oxford and I was absolutely transfixed. And also of my mother putting on a record on the record player, ballet, opera, sometimes other things. And I used to just dance around and round the sitting room on the pink carpet, taken away into another world.

Presenter9:43

Part of the Dance of the Swans from Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake, performed by the London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Andrei Prevan. Taking you back to dancing on the pink carpet, Cressida Dick. Wonderful. I mean, if you ask my friends now, they very rarely see me dance. They think it's a sort of moment if they do. There's time yet. You might decide to go back to it one day. Well, on the Desert Island, I shall certainly let Rip, I can tell you.

Cressida Dick10:01

Yeah.

Presenter10:05

So, Cressida, public service is very much in your genes and social justice is a quite a big part of your family history. How aware were you of that growing up?

Cressida Dick10:08

Social justice

Presenter10:15

I think I was quite. My father's side of the family were mostly doctors and nurses. And on my mother's side, there were teachers and people who had travelled the world working in charities. And back in my sort of earlier generations, campaigners for anti-slavery or child poverty, that kind of thing. So my mother did talk about it a bit. And I think I was quite aware of that, yeah. So tell me a little bit more about your parents, Cecilia and Marcus. They were both academics at Oxford. Tell us a little about your mother first. What kind of role model was she? She was a a great role model. I would

Presenter10:52

You know, she's the biggest influence on my life. I guess that's rather an obvious thing to say, but she was actually quite shy in a way, I think, but she always assumed that I could do anything my brother did. She was also divorced quite young, I think I was about six, and then my father died when I was about eleven. So she had to make quite a lot of sacrifices to bring us, all three of us up, and she did that in a kind of brilliant but stoical sort of way.

Presenter11:23

I know that she used to occasionally make you nettle soup. Yes. We didn't actually have a huge amount of money, but I don't think it was because of that. It was just that waste-not, want-not generation. So Sunday roast, you know, the fat would be sieved off and would be used again. And I'm actually vegetarian, I have been since I was about 20, but she used to encourage us to eat the most disgusting-sounding bits of animals. And, you know, nothing was wasted. And nettle soup was sometimes on the menu. And the family philosophy sounds like it was one of freedom and independence was at the heart of it, wasn't it? Yeah, I think we were taught to be independent, and I'm very grateful for that. And given self-confidence, hopefully not arrogance. But we were also taught, you know, not to expect anything to come our way, not to think much of luxury. But we were allowed to do what we wanted to do, and we were out playing all day long, you know, riding our bikes and going swimming in the river. And no worries from my mum about all that. It's time to go to the music. Tell me about your third disc today.

Cressida Dick11:56

Was that

Presenter12:27

Well, I didn't think I could go to a desert island, perhaps forever, who knows, without Dusty. And I'd like to have in private, and this is obviously one of her later, probably a disc by then, not just a record, after she'd been through some really, really bad, I suspect, tough times, and then got together with the pet shop boys. And Dusty was all too briefly, sadly, but was reborn. And I think it's a great story of somebody coming back.

Presenter12:56

Whatcha got the same

Cressida Dick13:00

In Friend.

Cressida Dick13:04

Is there one I love?

Cressida Dick13:07

We're in this together. Uh

Presenter13:10

Uh

Cressida Dick13:10

Uh

Presenter13:11

Chicken D.

Presenter13:15

Deep hole

Cressida Dick13:16

Please

Cressida Dick13:18

Say you would never in love.

Cressida Dick13:22

But you can remain in love.

Presenter13:28

Dusty Springfield with In Private. So Cressidik, tell me a little bit more about your father, Marcus. So as you mentioned, he died when you were just eleven, and he and your mum divorced when you were a little bit younger than that. But what was he like and what was your relationship with him like?

Presenter13:45

I remember, you know, loving him to bits and admiring him. We've obviously still got lots of of photographs. And I occasionally meet people even today actually who were taught by him.

Presenter13:57

So I'm not quite sure how many of my memories are really my own and what people have said to me since. He was very good looking. He was a very good sportsman. He was obviously academically talented. But he died really young and I suspect he had his demons. He was very charming and he'd smoked a lot and drank a lot. And again, of course, the Second World War had influenced him a lot. He was a young man when that was happening and felt very strongly about how the world had been and could be in the future.

Presenter14:32

Goodness knows what he would think of me being a police officer. And goodness knows how my life would have been if he had had lived, I don't know.

Presenter14:39

Tell me about the Dragon School then. You attended there and girls could only go if their brothers had been pupils. Completely bizarre when you look back, isn't it? But that was the way of it. And so there was, I think, two of us girls in my year of sixty-odd people. Wow. And what was that like? It was great. I loved it. I was knocking about with all these boys, playing rugby and cricket with the boys, football with the boys. And a school that, again, encouraged one to be quite independent and free-spirited. I read an old school report of yours from those days which said, yes, here we go, buckle up. Attractive, slightly roguish personality, thinks for herself. I need to know about the roguish bit first. Yeah, I think at school I was quite naughty on and off.

Cressida Dick15:10

Yes, here we go. Buckle up.

Presenter15:23

I hope I was never unkind or criminal in my behaviours, but I probably was.

Presenter15:28

My brother says I was I was a handful, but I don't remember that. It can be difficult for brothers to

Presenter15:35

So tell me a little bit more about the the outdoorsiness then, because listeners might be surprised, given, obviously, your subsequent career, that you went to Oxford and chose to study agriculture and forest sciences. What was the appeal there?

Cressida Dick15:42

He went

Cressida Dick15:46

What was the

Presenter15:48

Well we had most of our family holidays staying with friends on a farm in the West Country and I was really interested in farming and I'd also gained from a very young age a deep love and a bit of knowledge of nature. It was two years of biological sciences and I worked reasonably hard in the sciences. I was never going to be a star but I found it really, really interesting.

Presenter16:13

Well we'll find out a little bit about what happens after that next, but first let's hear your next track. This is your fourth today. I would not be able to go to the Desert Island without some Beethoven piano. In fact, at one stage all my discs were going to be Beethoven piano. And I love all the concertos and the sonatas, but I'd like to hear number seventeen in D minor.

Presenter17:37

Part of the third movement of Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. seventeen in D minor, The Tempest, performed by Vladimir Ashkenazi. Kressidik, what then made you settle on the police as a career?

Presenter17:51

Well, I find it quite hard to put my finger on it actually. I

Presenter17:54

I don't have any policing in the family, but I know that when I was a teenager I started to think about possibly going into policing and I spent a week with my local force. But after university I worked for a while in a big firm of accountants and found out what I didn't want to do or be I think. I travelled a bit, I worked in a fish and chip shop and then I applied again. You know I wanted to do something meaningful. You mentioned that you worked in a chippy. I think you're the only Met Commissioner ever to have done so. What was that like and did that sort of real life experience give you a perspective that came in useful? Yeah I really enjoyed it actually. I mean I didn't enjoy going home sort of smelling of fat but I really enjoyed anybody and everybody coming in and occasionally late at night, you know quite lively. I remember the guy who ran the shop, lovely man, big Turkish guy. He actually had a very large baseball bat behind the counter which of course would be very illegal nowadays but every now and then there was a certain amount of excitement in the shop and he was able to sort of quell it quite quickly with his presence.

Presenter19:01

And you were turned down by your local force, I think, Thames Valley, but then you successfully applied to the Met. So your first beats were in Soho and Mayfair. What was Soho in nineteen eighty three like for a woman police officer? Oh, it's great.

Cressida Dick19:04

Yeah.

Presenter19:15

I guess I'd led, relatively speaking, quite a sheltered life. I'm glad that I was 23 when I started, not younger. There's a lot of sex trade, of course, a lot of night life. And we got to walk always. So we would have our own beat, which was just, you know, a few streets that was ours. So were you on your own doing this? Because 23 years old, and I think you just squeaked by on the height requirement as well. So not one of the loftiest officers on the earth. I was. And I am quite relatively speaking short of stature. At that time, you had to be 5'4, and I only really got in because I think the nurse helped me. And I'd been stretching a lot for the days before. But I mean, walking around Saho on your own? Absolutely, yes. I mean, there were other officers not very far away, of course. But I loved that independence. I loved the idea that at three or four in the morning, it was just me there. That's the great thing about policing, in a way, that you do have a lot of responsibility very early, and you've got to make decisions, sometimes life and death decisions. And I think there's something about putting a uniform on and thinking people are looking to me to make decisions and to look after them that makes you feel.

Presenter20:27

Capable.

Presenter20:29

Let's go to the music. This is your fifth disc today. Why have you chosen it?

Presenter20:33

Well, on the desert island, I think one's going to have a lot of time to think. And.

Presenter20:39

It felt important to me to have a track which actually makes me think about sad things because sometimes in sadness you really learn and you change your perspectives, you get closer to people. So I would like to hear from the great Roy Orbison singing crying, but I'd like the duet with KD Lang because I think her voice, particularly when she hits that top note, is extraordinary.

Presenter21:41

Roy Olberson and KD Lang with crying. Cressa de Dick, you've said of policing, we are in the risk business, and as a senior officer, you're responsible for choosing which risks your officers take. In 2005, the London 7-7 terror attacks killed 52 people and injured 700. Two weeks later, on the 21st of July, four more bombing incidents took place. And the following day, the Brazilian electrician Jean-Charles de Menezes was shot and killed in a case of mistaken identity. You were the commander in charge of the operation that day, and later you were personally exonerated of any blame. At the time of those events, what was the impact on you?

Presenter22:29

Well, it was an awful time for um

Presenter22:33

So many people, obviously, most of all, Jean Charles's family.

Presenter22:39

Also, I think the people who were there when it happened and the officers, the firearms officers and the surveillance officers.

Presenter22:49

So I was very conscious that it was a hundred million times worse for other people than it was for me. But I was very high profile, quite rightly held to account, investigated over months and years. And it was a difficult time. But I simply wanted to, if you like, do my duty, which was to explain to people what had happened from my point of view, stand up and be counted, show some leadership. And I came through having, I guess, learnt a lot about how operations like that can be run. I think the Met learnt a lot. And the testament to that is the hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of firearms operations that we've had since, including against many, many terrorist subjects and other people. And it's the events of that day obviously stay with one. You know, I think about it quite often.

Presenter23:53

Was it an experience that changed you?

Presenter23:58

I think it did.

Presenter24:00

It didn't make me want not to take responsibility for high-risk operations. If anything, rather the reverse. I carried on doing leadership roles in command roles in very high-risk areas with a sort of determination to do them as well as we could. But it made me... It caused me to learn a lot about the impact of these kinds of events on everybody and how one can, as a leader within an organisation, look after people who've been through the events that, say, the firearms officers had been through. And it taught me quite a lot about what counts in my life and the things that I really cared about and wanted to hang on to.

Presenter24:50

You know, I wish, wish, wish it hadn't happened of course. But if anything, it's made me a better leader, a better police officer, it's made me more resilient.

Presenter24:59

Let's go to the music. This is your sixth disc. Why have you chosen it? I'd love to have a hymn. I love hymns. I was brought up with hymns. I'm not tremendously religious, but I have spent quite a lot of my life in church. So this hymn, Lord of All Hopefulness, I think will remind me of sort of meditation in church. But also it's a hymn that has words about the beginning and the middle and the afternoon and the eve of the day. And I think it's appropriate for life on a desert island.

Cressida Dick25:26

In the afternoon.

Presenter25:34

Or dread my mess, Lord One.

Presenter25:41

Yeah.

Speaker 225:41

Whose voice is not tend but whose presence is love?

Speaker 225:50

Be held saving.

Speaker 225:55

I give a sneak.

Presenter25:58

Hail on peace in our hearts, Lord, at the end of.

Presenter26:07

Uh

Presenter26:14

Lord of All Hopefulness, sung by the choir of King's College, Cambridge. Cressa de Dick, you'd worked your way up to Assistant and then briefly acting deputy commissioner of the Met and then in 2015 you retired from policing to join the Foreign Office. You did come back though in 2017. You returned as the first female Met Commissioner. What do you remember about the moment that you found out?

Presenter26:37

It was extraordinary. I was in my office just a matter of a very few hours after my interview had finished and somebody said, oh, Cresta, the home secretary, is on the phone. Amber Rudd had been chairing the interview panel. And, you know, I was just amazed, really, and excited. And she, you know, there was no time for lots of chat. She needed to get on because it was breaking in the news. So I went through to talk to my boss and he seemed really pleased. And he said, you'd better ring Helen, hadn't you? So I rang Helen, my partner, who was at work as a duty inspector in the police at the time. And I remember she said, I'm going to have to sit down. It was great. It was a fantastic moment. And I thought about my mum. Did you? Yeah. What would she have said, do you think?

Presenter27:28

I think she'd have laughed probably. She she'd have sort of giggled and and laughed and would have found it quite hard to believe. But um uh I guess she'd have been proud.

Presenter27:40

How was your appointment received elsewhere? You said it was breaking in the news. Well, I was pleased to hear that, you know, quite a lot of people in the Met who knew me seemed really excited about it. But there was, you know, quite a lot of attention, I suppose, about who I was, where I came from, and what I might be like as the Commissioner, you know, what my priorities would be. And also a conversation about your gender. You know, the first woman to do the job. How significant is that? You know, the Met was founded in 1829.

Cressida Dick28:06

Significant.

Presenter28:10

We are now in our hundredth year of women in the Met, and we are celebrating those early pioneers. For me, for many, many, many, many, many years I've been not very conscious of being a woman doing the job, I'm just a person doing a job. But I am aware that it causes people to see the organisation in a slightly different way. And the fact that I'm seen as perhaps a bit different in some respects, I realize, on occasion, kind of makes young people think, Oh, I could have a go, or I might try. I feel different, but I might try. And that's great.

Cressida Dick28:18

Many

Presenter28:42

Yes, you launched a recruitment drive to try and increase the numbers of women. It's at what about 27% now? Amongst police officers. Across the whole of them, it's a bit higher than that, but it's only, in my view, about 27% women officers at the moment. And obviously, in the long term, in order for us to have the best of the best, I'd like us to be 50-50. I don't think that's going to happen in my Commissionership, but I'm quite ambitious for this.

Cressida Dick28:48

Am I

Presenter29:08

Time for some more music, Cressida Dick. Tell us about your seventh and why you've chosen it. Well, my partner Helen really introduced me to lots more Schubert. And this particular Swan Song Serenade was playing when we went to a gallery to see Turner's paintings of Wessex. So I love art. I adore Wessex and the West Andrew know it very well. And also Schubert will remind me of Helen.

Presenter30:42

Schubert's Swan Song Serenade performed by Alexander Huvthof and Andreas Freuleich.

Presenter30:49

Cressida Dick, not only are you the first woman to lead the Met, but you're the first openly gay Commissioner, too. How has the atmosphere for gay officers changed since you joined the police?

Presenter31:00

Enormously. I mean, as it has for women as well. When I joined there was probably, you know, one woman in the CID office and one woman in the crime squad and there were just two of us on a team of about forty, fifty people. And I think particularly perhaps for

Presenter31:16

Gay men actually. It's changed enormously in that time. But I'd be naïve if I thought it's all plain sailing for everybody. What I can say is, you know, if I take you to see my response teams, you know, there are people of all shapes and sizes and lots and lots of openly gay people. And, you know, the guys and girls just don't think twice about it. I want everybody to thrive. You know, I want people from all backgrounds, you know, ethnic backgrounds, religious backgrounds, sexuality, gender, whatever it is, to feel that the Met is their Met and that it's a safe and good place for people to come to work. And I think it is. And how important is it symbolically that you're out there able to be out and doing the job today?

Presenter32:03

I don't think I can judge that at all. I have n I've no idea.

Presenter32:06

Sometimes people say to me they think it's important, but to be honest, for me I hope this doesn't come out wrong, but I think it's one of the least interesting things about me. You know, I happen to love Helen, she's my partner. Um, on we go.

Presenter32:21

Looking back, as we have been, on your career, what do you think you've learned about yourself?

Presenter32:27

Gosh. Um

Presenter32:29

I feel very lucky that I've landed on my feet in a job that I adore.

Presenter32:34

I guess I've been a bit more maybe a little bit more resilient and stoical than I thought I would be.

Presenter32:41

I know that when I was a little girl my father was worried that I was very shy and I think I remain in some respects quite a private person but I've learnt and enjoy being able to engage with people and I enjoy that more and more. I feel very fulfilled by what I've done. If it ended tomorrow from my point of view I've had a great time. I hope it doesn't. And I know that lots and lots and lots of women around the world, men and women, aren't able to do a job they love and be able to be themselves and there's a lot more for us all to do.

Presenter33:17

Let's go to the music. This is your eighth and final disc. Well, I was thinking about the Desert Island and thinking one of the things that I will miss probably more than almost anything will be laughter. I really like a good laugh and being by yourself it's harder, I think, to find things to laugh about, even in wonderful nature and surrounded by the sea and the sky. So I wanted something that would amuse me. I loved watching it in a film. I was sitting there with my dear friend Ruth, who sadly is no longer with us, and we just laughed our heads off when Colin Firth and Rupert Everett sang Love is in the air.

Speaker 333:57

Something about you tonight, but I

Speaker 334:00

Uh

Presenter34:01

Love is in the eye

Presenter34:03

Everywhere I look around

Speaker 334:08

Love is in the eye

Speaker 334:11

Every single song

Speaker 234:13

Uh

Speaker 234:16

But I don't know if I'm being foolish.

Speaker 234:21

Don't know if I'm being wise.

Speaker 334:22

But it's fine.

Speaker 234:24

It's something that I must believe in.

Speaker 334:28

And it's there when I look in your eyes.

Speaker 334:32

Uh

Presenter34:32

Lock is in the air

Presenter34:34

It's absolutely ridiculous.

Presenter34:40

From the soundtrack to the film Centrinians, that was Colin Firth and Rupert Everett singing Love is in the Air, composed by Harry Vander and George Redbun Young. Cressida Dick, I'm about to cast you away then. I can give you the complete works of Shakespeare and the Bible as usual. You can also take another. What would it be? I'd like to take the complete works of Thomas Hardy. I love the poetry, particularly the love poetry, and I love his novels as well. You can also take a luxury. What would you like?

Presenter35:10

Well, I'm afraid I have simple and boring tastes. I would just be so happy if you gave me a large endless supply of different soaps, particularly sort of floral soaps that remind me of flowers I've grown and happy times. So scent is important to you. I read that your sense of smell sometimes lets you down, though, Cressida. I think you know what I'm referring to here.

Presenter35:37

I have no idea how you know that, but it's true. Scent is very important to me. But it is the case that my colleagues think it's hilarious that I simply cannot smell ever the smell of cannabis. So I'm hopeless in that respect. So we'll just stick with the florals for the soaps then. Yeah, that would be lovely for me. Thank you very much. Okay, and finally, if you could only save one of these tracks, which would it be?

Presenter36:06

It would have to be the Beethoven.

Presenter36:08

It's yours. Cressa de Dick, thank you so much for sharing your Desert Island discs with us. Thank you. It's been a joy. Never thought I would. Thank you.

Presenter36:36

What a wonderful selection of music and a great conversation from Cress. It's good to know that not being able to smell everything doesn't necessarily have to hold you back in the police force.

Presenter36:47

Two previous Met Commissioners have been castaway to the peace and quiet of the island, Sir Robert Mark in nineteen seventy six and in two thousand six Kirsty interviewed Lord Stevens.

Presenter36:59

How were those early days at Police Training College?

Speaker 337:02

I didn't like them at all. It was learning by rote really, learning by word. It was a very regimented system. I did actually think that if tra the training school was anything like the real world of policing, I wouldn't wouldn't survive it and would have to go and look for something else.

Presenter37:18

And at what point did you decide to to buckle down and see it through? Or did did you indeed decide at any point that you wanted to get out of training in college?

Speaker 337:25

Well, I failed my first two exams at the Trade School, which was interesting. And if I'd have failed the third, I might have been kicked out. But you know, I just decided to get down and get up at five in the morning and learn these things weren't perfect, which you needed to do at those days. No, I decided to see what it was going to be like in the real world. And as soon as I went to Totten Court Road, as soon as I went on the streets, as soon as I started being involved in policing proper, I knew I was into something for the rest of my life.

Presenter37:52

So your early days on the beach, as we've said, in Tottenham Court Road, in uniform, how was life? What was it like?

Speaker 337:59

It was great. It was a fantastic experience. Tottenham Court Road at that period of time was policing an area which was the headquarters of the Beatniks, as they used to refer to as a very, very busy police station. You were the dust men and dust women of society. You dealt with things that other people fortunately don't have to see. You know, in the first three weeks of my being on the beat on my own, I had to go around the corner and deal with a man who'd come out of a building after an explosion, who unfortunately subsequently died, who was burnt from head to foot. And you had to deal with that for three to four minutes before the ambulance arrived and then go on and follow that up. And that's just an indication. And people actually, quite rightly sometimes, don't understand policing and the rawness of policing. Quite frankly, at the end of the day, it takes someone to be very tough to do policing. And it's my favourite phrase, it's not for the faint-hearted. You couldn't do it just for the money, honestly.

Presenter38:49

And w as well as the police work, um, making friends with the local nurses in the local hospital.

Speaker 338:54

Well, that was part of the difficult type of duties we had to do. And I remember the Middlesex Hospital, of course, I met my wife, she was in the University College Hospital, the Middlesex Hospital. I was caught by the patrolling sergeant having a sack race down the Kazler department at 2 in the morning. Fortunately, he didn't take it any further. But yes, that was part and parcel of the enjoyment of being on the beat.

Presenter39:14

Is it true that you had to sit your police sergeant's exam three times?

Speaker 339:18

Yes, yeah. I I was enjoying myself so much as a detective constable.

Presenter39:23

W would it be fair to say on that basis that the the job of top cop, as we like to call it, wasn't necessarily in your sights at that stage?

Speaker 339:27

But it wasn't necessary

Speaker 339:30

The thought of top cop was definitely not in my sights and I don't think anyone who knew me would have ever, ever thought I would have ended up as Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police.

Presenter39:39

Lord Stevens talking to Kirstie in 2006. My guest next week is the author of the Shetland and Vera books, Anne Cleves. Do join us then.

Speaker 240:01

Hello, I'm Jeff McCearney and I want to tell you about Don't You Forget About Me, a brand new hub for great music documentation.

Presenter40:07

Entries from BBC Radio 4. Whatever your musical taste, we've got you covered, whether you want to discover the cult of Apex Twin or appreciate the genius of Jeff Buckley.

Cressida Dick40:17

Yeah.

Speaker 240:17

My whole philosophy or my whole discovery is that every emotion has a sound to it.

Cressida Dick40:21

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