Jo Fairley

Presenter0:01

BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts. Hello, 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.

Presenter0:41

My castaway this week is the businesswoman Jo Fairley. As the co-founder of Green and Blacks, she helped make Having a Conscience cool. The brand was the first organic chocolate and the first Fair Trade product in the luxury market. When it launched in 1991, she was already established as a successful journalist and magazine editor, so she exchanged sifting through press releases looking for the next big thing to writing her own, making sure her chocolate was on everybody's lips, literally and metaphorically. Often described as a serial entrepreneur, her success with Green and Blacks was followed by a string of best-selling beauty books, a bakery, a health centre, and most recently, a perfume subscription service. She says businesses are born by putting one foot in front of the other and keeping going till you've opened the door of that shop or launched that website or whatever your venture is. We started with an order for two tons of chocolate and then built up from there. You just roll up your sleeves and do it. Joe Fairley, welcome to Desert Island Discs. Thank you very much.

Jo Fairley1:39

Yeah.

Presenter1:41

So let's kick off with that order for two tons of chocolate then. You already had a successful career. What was it that convinced you to go in such a different direction back in 1991? I found two squares of chocolate on my health food entrepreneur boyfriend at that stage desk and I put them in my mouth and a taste explosion went off and I said what is this? This is the best chocolate I've ever eaten and Craig Sams, now my husband, said it's the world's first organic chocolate. And I said what are you going to do with it? And he said I can't really do anything. And he had built a whole empire, whole earth foods, on no added sugar.

Presenter2:19

And I just kept on and on at him. And eventually he turned around and said, Look, if you're so interested, you do it. And what he meant by that was I had to do the PR in marketing, which kind of fitted with my journalistic skills. And the really big catch was I had to finance it because he didn't have launching a new brand in his budget. And I had sold my flat before I'd moved in with him and I had banked £20,034 in equity.

Presenter2:43

And two tons of chocolate were going to cost twenty thousand pounds. Wow, so and I didn't even have enough for a pair of shoes actually. So I I literally gambled everything on what I thought was, you know, a really exciting idea.

Jo Fairley2:47

So ha

Presenter2:58

Had to ring my bank manager, ask him to transfer twenty thousand pounds and w weirdly they want to know what you're spending your own money on, so I had the delight of seeing chocolate.

Presenter3:09

It was an exciting idea, but also quite a radical one. I think these days we're quite used to the idea of posh ethical purchases. But back in the early nineties, the eco market was very much in its own separate yurt, wasn't it? It was. It was very much considered to be earth shoes and lentils. And so we were the first brand to just make that leap from the eco-niche to the mainstream.

Jo Fairley3:20

Yeah.

Presenter3:30

I embarked on this because I thought it would be a great adventure, not because I thought one day it was going to be a giant global brand. I never imagined. In fact, I'd been too scared to put one foot in front of the other if I'd known how successful it was going to become. And what was the first challenge that you faced? The first challenge was a heat wave. So I bought the chocolate in June and then the temperature went off the scale and I realized I had £20,000 worth of something that melted at 75 degrees and I could see my investment trickling down the M25 if I wasn't careful. So it had to go into controlled temperature storage and we launched in September instead of June.

Presenter4:10

How important is music in your life? I'm famously middle of the road. So what are we going to hear first, John? You're going to hear Orb's Fluffy Little Clouds, one of the tracks that I kind of got from Craig, my husband, and it's definitely funkier than my normal music taste, and it's a reflection of how our tastes have kind of melded a bit over the years.

Jo Fairley4:42

Player it different sound.

Jo Fairley4:47

Playering different sounds on top of each other.

Presenter4:52

Fluffy clouds.

Presenter4:54

Fluffy clouds and

Presenter5:02

The Orb and Little Fluffy Clouds. Joe Fairley, you built the brand with your husband Craig starting out the year you got married. What rules did you have for mixing your business and private life?

Presenter5:14

I had to be really strict quite early on because I realised that we were talking about business all the time and that we wouldn't have a marriage as well as a business. So we had separate offices, but when we got home in the evening, we would catch up by going for a walk round Nottinghill for an hour. And we would download our day, have ideas, discuss business, and then when we got home again, we were banned from talking about it till the next day. And that was how I think we managed to stay romantically involved as well as being in business together. You said earlier that if you had had any idea what you were in for, you would have been too scared to do it. Tell me more about that.

Presenter5:54

Everything that we did with Green and Blacks was very instinctive, it was very it felt right always. So I wasn't intellectualizing about it, thinking would this be right for the brand? I was doing it as I felt it.

Presenter6:08

But if someone says one day your brand is going to be bought by a huge company, then I think I'd start to worry about figures more and worry about strategy and planning. And I'm really, that's not my thing. In terms of the workload, I mean, what was your average day like back then? Oh, I was no stranger to 18 hours because there was no money to pay me. All our money was tied up in stock right from the very beginning. So I retained my career as a journalist. And so I would get up really early in the morning to meet deadlines and interview people on the phone. And, you know, I just juggled these two roles. So quite often it was an 18-hour day. You sold the company to Cabbri's in 2005. Now, back then, Green and Blacks was credited as having made Fair Trade fashionable. But a couple of years ago, they did launch a bar that wasn't certified organic or Fair Trade. Do you think that corporations and consumers might be moving away from that kind of social responsibility?

Jo Fairley7:02

Yeah.

Presenter7:03

The Velvet Collection comes under the Cocoa Life Project, which is Cabrie's own project in West Africa. And they're very open about the fact that this was really influenced partly by seeing how we did business. You know, big business is trying to learn from small business about how to do things. I'm just incredibly proud that we've played a role in that, because a little company can make a small difference, but a big company can make a massive difference. It's time for your next piece of music. This is second. Tell me about it.

Jo Fairley7:30

This is a second

Presenter7:32

Andy Palacio, he's no longer alive, he was a singer who was based in Belize and he is a wonderful Caribbean guy and everywhere we went in Belize when we were trying to source cacao, he would be playing in the back of these shack-like restaurants on a tinny transistor with fluorescent light and this to me is the sound of Belize.

Jo Fairley8:03

Man, you go near the middle.

Presenter8:07

At the IU

Jo Fairley8:08

Uh

Speaker 28:10

That's it, man.

Presenter8:10

I

Speaker 28:11

You know,

Speaker 28:16

I need high baby.

Speaker 28:18

Lots of good

Presenter8:27

Andy Palacio and the Gary Funa Collective, Watina. Joe Fairley, being an entrepreneur sounds like it might be in your blood. Tell me a little bit about your family, especially your maternal grandfather. My maternal grandfather, William Powell Richards, you have to see it with a Welsh accent, came from South Wales with nothing and built himself up to be a very successful entrepreneur with factories producing women's clothing in the East End and lost everything in the war due to the bombing. I still have an attic full of buttons that were rescued from one of the factories, and if you open the box today, you can still smell the smoke from the factory burning down. So the most extraordinarily resilient man because.

Presenter9:13

He had six children, and all he cared about at the end of the war was the fact that they were all still alive, including my two uncles, twin brothers, who were in the D-Day landings. So, you know.

Presenter9:24

It's an amazing inspiration.

Presenter9:26

So you had three younger brothers and your father worked away, so it was usually you and your brothers and your mum. What sort of household was it?

Jo Fairley9:33

What sort of

Presenter9:34

My father worked very hard. He was the science editor for ITN. He'd cut his teeth on the Evening Standard and he was very successful. But he'd chosen to be in the science sphere at the time when science was exploding, particularly the space race, was happening. And in fact, he was the presenter for the ITN coverage of the moon landings, etc. But it did take him away from home a lot. I have three brothers. The youngest one is only four years younger than me.

Presenter10:02

So we were quite a handful. I always say it's where I got my leadership skills.

Presenter10:07

So you managed them, did you? I managed them, but they would always get their revenge because I made them join things like I created organisations. So we had the Busy Bee Club, where you got fined if you were caught not doing something. What does that say about me? And then I had the Happy Club, which was such a great title that later Bob Geldoff stole it for an album title. And we were a gang. We were pretty chaotic, really. My mother had her hands full. And what kind of parent was she? She was very creative and really devoted her life to bringing us up, you know, at a time when women stopped work, they didn't really go back to work. And she was a potter, an amateur potter.

Presenter10:51

whose initials were VJPF.

Presenter10:54

And my cousin looked at one of her pots one day and said, Oh, very junky pottery factory. It's a bit of a harsh review. Yes, but she took it well.

Presenter11:03

Let's go to the music, Joe Fairley. What's your third disc and why have you chosen it? So this is King Louie from The Jungle Book. We would go and see films as a treat, often on Boxing Day, and my dad would buy us the album. And we would then spend the next few months acting out this film in the living room. I was generally the director and obviously the star and whether it's Jungle Book or Mary Poppins or Chitty Titty Bang Bang or Sound of Music, we would act it out. And I was thinking about that the other day and about how kids probably now just watch the video again.

Presenter11:40

And don't get that kind of creative play of putting on the jungle book for the family in the front room. This is one of my favourite tracks. It's I Wanna Be Like You.

Jo Fairley11:50

Now I'm the king of the swingers, oh the jungle VIP I've reached the top and

Speaker 411:56

Had to stop and that's what's bothering me.

Speaker 412:00

I wanna be a man-man-cup and stroll right into town and be just like the other men. I'm tired of all going around.

Jo Fairley12:10

I wanna be like you I wanna walk like you see it's true

Presenter12:21

Louis Primer with I Wanna Be Like You from The Jungle Book. Joe Fairley, as you mentioned, your father Peter was a science journalist and will be known to some listeners for his ITV moonlanding coverage. What was he like as a dad? He was an only child, so I think having four kids was a bit of a shock. He quite often, when he was home, used to go and shut himself in his study. He did work very, very hard, but I do think there was a little bit of distancing himself from the chaos going on in the rest of the house as well. He just never had lots of kids around. But he was also very funny, he was very convivial, he was a bon viveur, he was a great host. And our house did, through the efforts of both my parents, become the kind of family hub. And all the cousins-I have 13 first cousins, six aunts and uncles, etc. would all congregate at our house. And, you know, considering he didn't have any brothers and sisters, he adjusted to that very well.

Presenter13:19

He was away for work a lot then. Did you miss him?

Jo Fairley13:20

And if you

Presenter13:21

I did, but he was having a very, very exciting time. And we did also feel that there was a sort of higher purpose. I mean, you know, that man's exploration of space was an unbelievably exciting moment in human history. And we did feel a little bit of a part of that. And then he used to bring back presents for us or well, he would bring charms for a bracelet for me and my mum, and also perfumes for both of us. So very precociously, I had this incredibly sophisticated wardrobe of fragrances from a very early age, which he'd

Jo Fairley13:43

What way?

Presenter13:56

Probably grabbed going through duty-free or whatever. But that was what kindled my interest in fragrance that became quite a big thing later. It's time for your next piece of music. What is it and why have you chosen it?

Presenter14:07

This is Fly Me to the Moon by Frank Sinatra. My dad loved Sinatra, he loved the whole rat pack, and this was often playing in our house, and it's very appropriate because he had so much to do with the astronauts and so much to do with the moon landings. And we played it at his funeral, actually, as well, and he would have been delighted by that.

Speaker 414:29

Fly me

Jo Fairley14:30

Me to the moon, let me play among the stars.

Jo Fairley14:37

And let me see what spring is like on

Speaker 414:41

At Jupiter and Mars

Speaker 414:45

In other words...

Speaker 414:48

Hold my hand.

Speaker 414:53

And other

Jo Fairley14:56

Baby, kiss me.

Presenter14:59

Fly Me to the Moon by Frank Sinatra. Joe Fairley, were there signs of your entrepreneurial talents at school? I don't think so. I really hated school.

Presenter15:10

And after the age of about seven, I really dragged my heels to go there every single morning because I was a fairly naughty child at school because I was bored. I was really, really bored. I had this idea that somewhere out there was a much more interesting world and it wasn't happening within the four walls of Bromley High School for Girls. And my anarchism wasn't that bad. It was sort of in the form of later on hoisting grey school knickers up the school flagpole with a bunch of friends and tying dustbin lids to the boot of the headmistress's car with fishing line, etc. But it's enough to get you.

Presenter15:53

pigeonholed as troublesome, naughty, not going anywhere. So that was how the teachers saw you? Yes. And I think I went to same school from four to sixteen, so I never got the chance to reinvent myself at the age of eleven. I was just labelled basically.

Jo Fairley16:00

Yeah.

Presenter16:08

And I decided that I wanted to get out of there as quickly as I could. Did they give you any careers advice? Their expectations of me were absolutely zero. And there is a defining moment in my life when I was about 15 before my O-levels, where for some reason my careers teacher was also my religious knowledge teacher. We were having a scripture class, and instead of discussing the Bible, we got into a talk about what everybody was going to do when they left school. And she got to me, and I said, I want to be a secretary.

Presenter16:41

And misses Wooten said, narrowed her eyes, looked at me, If you s make so much as a Girl Friday, Joe Fairleigh, I'll eat my hat.

Presenter16:51

And it was like I heard a Saturn V rocket ignite under my chair, because that was the moment that I became absolutely determined to make something of myself and prove her wrong.

Presenter17:04

And it was unforgivable to say that to a girl. School was quite tough for you then. What were you like as a teenager? Did you have pleasures and joys outside of your school life? I was obsessed with magazines. That was my lens on the rest of the world. That was what showed me that there was more to life. And I papered the inside of my wardrobe, because I wasn't allowed to put the pictures on the wall, with pictures of places and people and some clothes, but images of how I wanted my life to be.

Presenter17:39

I realise now that this was a form of creative visualization, but I would tear these pictures out of Vogue and I'd go, you know, that's how I want to live. And the really extraordinary thing is that over the years, I've gotten to meet almost everybody whose picture I stuck up in that wardrobe. I've been to those places. I've kind of lived the life that I saw through Vogue magazine. You left school at 16 and went on to pursue your dream of taking that one-year course at a secretarial college. We even had classes in reading really bad handwriting.

Jo Fairley18:09

Chip.

Presenter18:13

In case we went to work for a doctor or whatever. And all of these skills, a bit of business, bit of finance, bit of shorthand and typing, and just general skills, just are so useful. I think everybody should go to Secretariat College because you learn how to make things happen and how to organise stuff. Let's go to the music, Joe Fairley. What's next? Carly Simon, You're So Vain. Someone else whose picture I think I had on the inside of my wardrobe, who I did ultimately meet, she's about 18 foot tall and quite terrifying. I love.

Presenter18:47

women singers like Carly Simon, like Carol King, and what my husband does refer to as sad lady music. But I love it. And this is the quintessential sad lady song, I think.

Speaker 419:03

Be your partner and you're so great.

Speaker 419:09

Probably think this song is about you, you're so bad

Jo Fairley19:15

Uh

Jo Fairley19:16

You think this song is about you, don't you, don't you?

Jo Fairley19:23

At least several years ago When I was still quite tiny

Jo Fairley19:30

When you say

Presenter19:32

Carly Simon, and you're so vain. Joe Fairley, by the time you were nineteen you'd worked as a secretary for a couple of years. You then landed a job on a magazine called Woman's World. What do you remember about it?

Presenter19:43

I was so excited to actually be in magazines which I'd spent, you know, so much money and so much time on over the years. And there I am in my first few weeks. And this features editor gives me a press release to write up into a paragraph. And I said to Howard, well, I can't write. And he turned around and said, don't be so bloody wet. or words to that effect. And I thought, well, okay, my dad can write. Howard says I can write. And I turned it into a paragraph of copy. And then before I knew it, I was being sent to interview incredible people, movie stars like Charlton Heston and Joan Collins, Betty Davis.

Presenter20:25

She slapped my wrist when I got one of the names of her films wrong. She was completely terrifying.

Jo Fairley20:30

Billy

Presenter20:31

At first you were a features writer. By 23 though you became the youngest editor of a magazine in the UK. Incredible. Were you very driven? I wasn't driven. Everything that's happened to me has kind of been opportunities that have come my way and I've said yes. My boss called me into his office one day and he said, I need your help. I need a new editor for Look Now, which was a sister younger teenager publication to Woman's World. And I said, what are you looking for? And he reeled off a list of attributes and literally as a joke at the end of it, I said, well, what you really want is someone just like me. And he said, yes, and I'd like you to start in the morning.

Presenter21:09

And so I was catapulted into this role as a magazine editor with no experience and terrified for the first month that I was going to get fired. I suffered from the most enormous imposter syndrome, which I think is very common. And my dad gave me a book of publishing terms and I bluffed it through the first month with this book of publishing terms. So how did that work? Well, the picture editor would come down and say, Do you want this picture bled off? which means taken to the edge of the page. I now know. And I'd go, yeah, I think that's great. And then I'd look up what bleeding off meant. You'd wait for them to go off. Of course, I'd wait for them to leave the room. And then look up bleeding off. And actually, if I did want a board around it, I'd ring up and say, you know, Penny, I think it would look better with a border. Can we just go with that? And honestly, the first month I was terrified. But then I realised at the end of that month that producing a magazine was a mechanical process and I knew how to do it. And so from that moment on, I was free to be creative.

Jo Fairley21:44

We'd wait for them to go out and re-

Presenter22:08

So what are we going to hear next? Well you're going to hear Madonna's La Isla Bonita because for me both music and perfume have an ability to transport you through time and space faster than a TARDIS and I was in New York with a couple of girlfriends it was steamy hot. We were walking down 2nd Avenue and there was a guy in front of us with a boom box on his shoulder blasting out La Isla Bonita and every time I hear it I can virtually feel the humidity in the air and I can feel that kind of electric crackle of being in New York.

Speaker 222:46

Last night I dreamt of San Diego

Speaker 222:51

Just like I never was gone, I knew the song The Young Girl With Eyes Like Patez

Presenter23:01

It all seems

Jo Fairley23:03

Like yesterday

Presenter23:04

Not on the way.

Presenter23:10

This is where I love to be La Isla or Mi Isla

Presenter23:17

Madonna and La Isla Bonita, Joe Fairley, alongside your successful chocolate company, you also have a very successful line in books, the best selling Beauty Bible series. Have you ever experienced things that didn't work out, ever experienced failure?

Presenter23:32

Not that I can think of, honestly, because good ideas put the work in stands your best chance of success. And I'm very selective about the things that I decide to do. I don't just follow any random idea. I listen to my gut, and if my gut is telling me this is really good, and also I'm my own customer. So if there's a service or a product that I'm not finding, I reckon there's lots of other people out there that feel the same way. It's interesting too that, as you mentioned earlier, in the early days of Green and Blacks, you know, you continued to work as a journalist, you continued to keep the security of that job. So as well as being very selective, presumably you're also cautious and giving yourself a security net of some sort. It was just needs must, you know, I needed to pay my own bills, basically. But also, my network of contacts through journalism was fantastically useful. You know, I was the PR. So I got the chocolate out to lots of people who were my contacts and just trusted that they would pick up on the fact that it was the most delicious chocolate that they'd ever tasted. And they did. And that was a real factor in our success. We got lots and lots of press coverage. And we kind of got it out to all these chefs at the beginning as well. People like Delia Smith and Hugh Fenley Whittingstall and ultimately Jamie Oliver, etc. And they recognised it too. But knowing how to do that, I'd got from my journalism. It's time for your next piece of music. This is your seventh disc today. Why have you chosen it?

Presenter25:01

I have chosen this because my best friend was Paula Yates, who I met through my journalism again.

Presenter25:10

And we were best friends for 20 years and loved each other to pieces. I was always there for her. And George Michael was a particular favourite of ours. This track, when it came on, we used to slow dance together. There was never any more than that, but we just used to stare in each other's eyes and slow dance to this. And we were both very fond of George, who actually also was the DJ at her wedding to Bob. And would basically play his own music and then get up and dance to the tracks. And I think only George Michael can get away with that. Yeah, if you're George Michael, I think that's the correct call. It is.

Jo Fairley25:45

I'm gonna go.

Presenter25:53

So which track have you chosen? I have chosen Careless Whisper because that's Paula's and My Song.

Speaker 225:58

Yeah.

Jo Fairley25:58

I'm never gonna dance again. Guilty feet have got no rhythm But what's easy to pretend And though we are not a f ⁇

Jo Fairley26:09

Should've known better to cheat a friend. Waste the chance that I'd been given. So I'm never gonna dance again. The way I dance with you.

Presenter26:29

George Michael and Careless Whisper. Joe Fairley, you were Pauliates' best friend, and you were also the one who found her after she died, which is of course a terrible experience to go through. How did you process that? Well, you know, I think it's in your darkest moments that you find your greatest strengths. And I knew that at that moment I had to be incredibly calm. And I was incredibly calm. I don't know where it came from. Probably all my yoga that I've done over the years. And I just dealt with it. And it was dramatic and painful and traumatic. And, you know, I'd lost my best friend.

Presenter27:11

She'd left behind four beautiful girls and I have stepped in and tried it in my way to keep her alive for them. How do you do that? What bits of her personality do you want to keep alive? I often tell stories about, you know, what their mum got up to. But one of the most touching things I think that's ever happened to me was that Tiger, when she was about five, said

Presenter27:35

Mum always used to say how much she loved you, and I said, Wow, that makes me so happy and she said, Yes, but sad at the same time.

Presenter27:44

And I I think when children go through that kind of thing, they develop a sort of emotional intelligence as well.

Presenter27:52

So anyway, I when we acquired the house that we bought after Paula died, um, it had a stage in the back garden, and so various generations of girls have come and put on plays on that stage, rather as we did with the jungle book.

Presenter28:08

And there's a great joy in being able to allow kids to just let rip.

Presenter28:13

Seems to me, Joe Fairley, that if you'd wanted to take early retirement in Paradise with your feet up

Jo Fairley28:18

With your feet up.

Presenter28:19

You might have done it by now. Why haven't you? I discovered a word the other day that I think sums me up. And I was at a garden lecture on Sunday. And apparently, at midlife, you either become generative or stagnant. And generative people are people who like to do things. And I like to do things. I am not somebody who's very good at staring at those little fluffy clouds for very long. Even in my back garden, you know, I'm lying down for five minutes and then I'll be up deadheading or watering or whatever. And I'm also very curious. I'm very curious to know what can happen next. You know, I started my most recent business, The Perfume Society, five years ago at a time when I really could have stopped and done nothing. But I had an idea, it filled a gap in the market and I wanted to see where it could go. Do you think it's possible you'll come up with a new idea or two on your desert?

Jo Fairley29:12

I'm not sure if I can do any hope.

Presenter29:17

I really hope not. I do give ideas away randomly now. You know, if I have an idea, I don't want to do it. I'm quite happy to give it to someone else to do.

Presenter29:26

It's time for your final disc today, Joe Fairley. Why have you chosen this one? This is Wagner's Lieberstad from Tristan and Isolde.

Presenter29:35

I hated opera before I met Craig. He introduced me to the joys of opera, and particularly Wagner, which I never thought I would like. And this piece of music we loved so much with its orgasmic crescendo that we had it played at our wedding. So, this reminds me of marrying the most wonderful man, my best friend, someone who makes me laugh every day. And they really broke the mold when they made Craig.

Presenter31:09

Part of Lieberstudt from Wagner's Tristan and Isolde, performed by the Philemonia Orchestra conducted by Otto Klempere.

Presenter31:18

So, Joe Fairley, I'm sending you away to your desert island with three books: The Bible and the Complete Works of Shakespeare, plus one of your choosing. What will that be? So, the book I really want to take is an absolutely beautiful book by the National Geographic, and it's called Edible: An Illustrated Guide to the World's Food Plants. And we're very interested in our house in eating unusual things. But this book has all kinds of tropical plants, so I figure it will help me identify on the island which ones are edible and which ones might kill me.

Presenter31:50

Sounds like a very important point to have with you. You must have it, of course.

Jo Fairley31:51

Very important.

Presenter31:54

You can also have a luxury item, something to make your time on the island more enjoyable. Well, I did think of chocolate, obviously, but chocolate is not great in the heat. So I am going to take my pillow, which isn't particularly special, but is my pillow and it's got my microbiome in it, which means that basically it's got my bugs in it. But it means wherever I go, any hotel I stay in, any plane I'm on, I am able to go out like a light. And I think that if I could cozy up with my own pillow, I know I'm very capable of making a lovely little bire in the corner.

Jo Fairley32:05

Yeah.

Presenter32:29

With shells and make it look really nice, but that will make it comfortable and cozy, and I'll be able to go to sleep. Oh, absolutely, that sounds lovely. Finally, perhaps this is the most difficult question for you: which of these one discs would you save above the others? It's going to be the jungle book because it would make me laugh. I'll act out all of the parts, and it's rather appropriately jungly, I think. And just something to make me smile on the island. And it's yours, Joe Fairley. Thank you very much for letting us hear your desert island discs. Thank you for having me.

Presenter33:10

As we leave Joe on her island, there's just time for me to remind you that we have a whole range of business people in our archive, including Richard Branson, Joe Malone and Nicola Horlick. And you can hear all those and many more programmes via BBC Sounds.

Presenter33:25

Jo chose George Michael's Careless Whisper as one of her tracks. Back in 2007, George Michael was cast away by Kirstie Young.

Speaker 433:33

I've never said any of this before, but it's odd. I'm just kind of ridiculously ready to say these things now. But I have a huge propensity for guilt because I was the boy in a Greek family who could do what he liked from a very early age and did.

Speaker 233:49

Because the culture and the family

Speaker 433:50

Because the culture was patriarchal and it was to indulge the boy. I have two wonderful sisters who never got their way as young Greek girls, obviously. And I grew up with this terrible feeling of guilt. I had feelings of guilt as a small child, knowing that I was always the one that was going to get the easy ride. And I carry that propensity for guilt in strangest ways. And I think I've finally realized one of the reasons my life has been so extreme and has felt so, in some ways, self-destructive, is that it sounds arrogant, but I never had any feeling that my talent was going to let me down. I had a feeling that I had a huge advantage over a lot of other people in the industry and a lot of other people in my own life, obviously, that I love and care about very much. And I think in a strange way, I've spent much of the last 15 or 20 years trying to derail my own career because it never seems to suffer. I suffer like crazy. I suffer all around it. I've suffered terrible things, obviously, bereavements and public humiliations and blah, blah, blah. But my career just seems to always write itself like a duck in a bath, you know, like a plastic duck in a bath. And I think in some ways I resent that.

Jo Fairley34:57

Yeah.

Speaker 234:57

Yeah.

Speaker 235:02

When you were very, very young, you decided you wanted fame. I mean, it was a very deliberate strategy of absolutely.

Speaker 435:05

Deliberate strategy by the way. Absolutely. But by the time I was 22 or 23, I knew that I was chasing something that was making me unhappy.

Presenter35:13

George Michael, talking to Kirsty Young back in 2007. You can hear this programme on BBC Sounds and on the Desert Island Discs website.

Speaker 435:30

Beyond Today is the daily podcast from Radio 4. It asks one big question about one big story in the news and beyond.

Presenter35:37

I'm Tina DeHealy.

Speaker 435:38

I'm Matthew Price.

Presenter35:38

And along with a team of curious producers, we are searching for answers that change the way we see the world.

Speaker 435:45

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And join in on the hashtag Beyond Today.

Speaker 435:48

Beyond today.

Presenter35:50

I have

Speaker 235:50

Went down you