Sir Malcolm Walker

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.

Presenter0:44

My castaway this week is the businessman, Sir Malcolm Walker. He's the co-founder of the supermarket chain Iceland, which he started with a friend in 1970. Fed up with their day jobs at Woolworths, they each invested £30 and began moonlighting in a retail unit selling frozen food. Their boss wasn't too pleased when he found out they both got the sack, but it was worth it. 52 years on, Iceland has over 1,000 stores in the UK and Ireland with sales of around £3.5 billion. Under his leadership, the company has won numerous awards from retail and consumer groups. Meanwhile, beyond the freezer aisle, he's helped raise some £30 million for good causes, particularly Alzheimer's charities, in honour of his late wife, Rhianneth, who named that first shop in 1970. He's had downs as well as ups at the company he started, including being fired and setting up a rival venture before being asked to return, eventually buying back the business, taking it into family ownership once again in 2020. He says, I'm an ideas man. If 5% of my ideas benefit the business, I consider that a good result, so long as the other 95 don't do too much serious damage. Malcolm Walker, welcome to Desert Island Discs.

Sir Malcolm Walker1:54

Pleasure.

Presenter1:54

So you've often said that with 2% of the grocery market, Iceland shouldn't really be here. Why do you think it's still around more than fifty years after you created it?

Sir Malcolm Walker2:03

But we understand the business. You know, most supermarkets, you can't tell me who the boss is'cause they change every three or four years. But because I've been there fifty odd years, I do understand the business. And I think we're very good at motivating people, motivating our staff. So fifty two years later, we've still got burning enthusiasm.

Presenter2:23

It's just as well because you need it at the minute. I mean, economically, the forecasts right now are pretty bleak and we're already in a cost of living crisis. How has that affected the business and your customers?

Sir Malcolm Walker2:33

Well, I suppose to be fair, we're not waiters, so we actually do better in a recession.

Presenter2:41

So people come come to shop.

Sir Malcolm Walker2:43

I was going to say the trade down, but I don't like putting it that way. People come to a more sensible shop.

Presenter2:49

Okay, so I mean you have said in the past that there's a bit of a stigma around uh shopping at Iceland.

Sir Malcolm Walker2:55

Yeah, let's not pretend. I mean, there is and I I always say a third of the population of the G Great Britain love us, a third don't care and a third would wouldn't be seen dead in an Iceland. But

Presenter3:00

Uh

Sir Malcolm Walker3:07

Until they've tried it, they don't really know.

Presenter3:09

So you've got more people coming through the door because they're looking to manage their budgets effectively. Are you having to put prices up yourself and charge customers more?

Sir Malcolm Walker3:19

We are, but we have to be competitive and you know inflation running at fifteen percent on food that's just food cost price inflation. Never mind electricity, which has gone up three or four times. It's a real struggle and we're having to cut costs wherever we can, think of innovative things to do to cut the electricity bill. But unfortunately, you know, we have to pass on food cost increases, as does everybody else.

Presenter3:45

As

Presenter3:47

And have you noticed that people are having less money to spend, what what do the company books tell you?

Sir Malcolm Walker3:51

People are actually spending more because of inflation, but they might be buying one or two less items in a basket. We're very famous for a group of products that we sell for a pound. Well, half those now, we actually lose money selling them, but we have to keep them there. It it's a stake in the ground. And you can imagine the sales of our one pound products have doubled and trebled, and we're losing more and more money selling them. But you know, it's important to us that we have that.

Speaker 14:01

But

Presenter4:17

Um

Presenter4:20

And you mentioned energy prices, which of course are a concern for everyone. I mean, I've heard plenty of stories about small kind of convenience stores turning off their fridges because it's just so expensive to run them. But you specialize in frozen foods, so you must be quite vulnerable.

Sir Malcolm Walker4:22

Yeah.

Sir Malcolm Walker4:29

Yeah.

Sir Malcolm Walker4:35

We spend more money on electricity per pound of sales than any other supermarket because everything's refrigerated or air conditioned. There is an energy price cap which disappears in April. No idea what'll happen after that. But without that, we'd lose money this year.

Presenter4:53

So are you

Sir Malcolm Walker4:54

Worried about the future. We're always worried about the future. Right from the very first day that we opened uh a store. Yeah. Once you stop worrying, I think you drift into complacency.

Presenter5:04

Malcolm, it's time to get to the music. Tell us about your first piece today. What have you chosen and why are you taking it to the desert island with you?

Sir Malcolm Walker5:10

Well, this was a a bit of a change in attitude for me because I was never a fan of classical music and then one day at home I was listening to the radio and this magical piece came on the radio which totally changed my mind. And it's the Violin Concerto Number One by Max Brook. I think it's brilliant.

Presenter6:26

The adagio from Brooks Violin Concerto No. One, performed by Itzak Perlman and the Royal Concertgebau Orchestra, conducted by Bernhard Heitink.

Presenter6:37

So Sir Malcolm Walker, you were born then, nineteen forty six, to Ethel and Willie Walker in Grangemoor, West Yorkshire. I know that your dad was a colliery electrician, but he had an accident that that forced him to change jobs. What actually happened?

Sir Malcolm Walker6:49

What actually happened? He had an accident at the pit. A coal cutter crushed his foot, so he couldn't work at the pit anymore. But um we always had what you call a small holding, chickens and pigs and a few animals. And How big was it? It was only eight and a half acres.

Speaker 17:02

Yeah.

Sir Malcolm Walker7:05

But Dad then went full time on the farm and was a pioneer, I hate to say it now, in battery hens. He built a huge shed with hundreds of battery hens, and we went into egg production.

Presenter7:17

Did he ever get any compensation for for what had happened to him?

Sir Malcolm Walker7:19

No, that didn't exist in those days.

Presenter7:22

Yeah. Well, and accidents were were incredibly common. Yeah.

Sir Malcolm Walker7:23

That's where

Sir Malcolm Walker7:24

Yeah, yeah.

Presenter7:25

My name

Sir Malcolm Walker7:25

wasn't actually that bad. He wasn't lame or anything. But then, uh, you know, he was a heavy smoker and he died when I was, I think, fourteen years old. Uh, so that just left my mum. And it it was it was very tough. But I used to help my dad on the farm.

Presenter7:28

Boom.

Presenter7:35

Yeah.

Presenter7:42

What did you do?

Sir Malcolm Walker7:42

I used to do everything. It was work, after school, our weekends work. I I'd even drive the tractor and plow the field when I was fourteen years old and maybe that got my work ethic going.

Presenter7:50

Or

Presenter7:53

So tell me a little bit more about working on the farm. So we had these chickens, the hens. What else?

Sir Malcolm Walker7:57

Bahen

Sir Malcolm Walker7:58

Thousands of them. Uh well we used to grow vegetables and flowers and uh I remember he uh uh started uh a round. That means uh going off in the car, knocking on doors, do you want to buy some eggs? Can I be with him?

Presenter8:12

Home delivery service, that's familiar.

Sir Malcolm Walker8:14

Yeah, and I just remember selling daffodils. We had half an acre of daffodils in the garden which we'd cut and try and sell.

Presenter8:17

What

Presenter8:21

Was it a case of whatever, you know, you had that you could make money out of or whatever was in season?

Sir Malcolm Walker8:26

Well, my mum was very good at uh making sponge cakes with all the broken eggs. She was always making sponge cakes and had quite a following who would buy these sponge cakes.

Presenter8:35

So she was a good baker.

Sir Malcolm Walker8:36

Fear.

Presenter8:37

And what was her attitude to work and and customer service? Because I think eventually they set up a little grocery shop, didn't they?

Sir Malcolm Walker8:43

They did. They um set up a a very small grocery store, but they only had that for about twelve months before my dad died.

Presenter8:50

Let's have some more music, Malcolm. It's time for your second choice.

Sir Malcolm Walker8:54

Well, I go right back to my dad and he would sing and my mum would play the piano and I can remember him singing a song called Goodbye by Joseph Locke and I can still remember every word.

Sir Malcolm Walker9:10

I shall start my life and you

Sir Malcolm Walker9:24

More time when I leave

Sir Malcolm Walker9:28

Turns on to fight a salvage for woe.

Sir Malcolm Walker9:35

Uh

Sir Malcolm Walker9:35

But I'll be sometimes missed by the girls I've kissed in somewhere besides

Presenter9:42

Goodbye, sung by Joseph Locke. Malcolm, as you mentioned, you lost your dad very young. He died from cancer when you were just fourteen years old, so that left your mum and you and your older brother. It must have been a very difficult time for all of you.

Sir Malcolm Walker9:56

I remember it quite well, but my brother was seven years older. That's quite an age gap. And he he was o off on his first job and then he worked ab abroad a lot.

Presenter10:00

Okay.

Presenter10:07

But you were at home going through the whole thing. What do you remember?

Sir Malcolm Walker10:10

Yeah, well um

Sir Malcolm Walker10:12

I suppose

Sir Malcolm Walker10:14

Education wasn't a priority. I failed my eleven plus twice and went to secondary modern school and then for some unknown reason they let me try it again. So in the second year I was sent off to the grammar school. But I was a year behind. So it was really quite difficult.

Presenter10:21

Mm.

Presenter10:30

So you'd already had that setback and then and then losing your dad must have been really difficult. Were you the kind of family who could talk about that?

Sir Malcolm Walker10:38

No. He just got on with life. Those things happened.

Presenter10:40

Little thing.

Sir Malcolm Walker10:42

It was very hard. She got the widow's pension after my dad died and that was ten shillings a week or fifty pence. That was the widow's pension. So

Speaker 110:45

Mm-hmm.

Presenter10:52

Do you think that was an extra spur, not having your dad and and you must have been watching your mum struggling to make ends meet?

Sir Malcolm Walker10:59

I don't know where my interest in business came from, but when I was still at school, chopping logs, selling it, organising dances, all the gang in the village used to hang round outside the fish and chip shop. There was no youth club or anything, and conversation was always, what shall we do? So I took the lead and I organised a dance and I did it in the local church hall. I booked two groups, sold tickets, and we organised a dance. And I made a profit which I gave to Cancer Research Fund. But then I thought, I'll do another one for me. So.

Sir Malcolm Walker11:33

I then started doing a whole series of dances at different church halls around Huddersfield.

Presenter11:38

Yeah.

Sir Malcolm Walker11:39

I was a teenage impresario.

Presenter11:41

Did you have an idea of what you wanted to do after school?

Sir Malcolm Walker11:44

Nobody went to university.

Presenter11:45

Hmm.

Sir Malcolm Walker11:45

There was no expectation. There was no expectation. And I didn't swap for exams. I thought I would be a carpenter. Right. But when I was at school, the careers teacher came round and said, What are you good at? I said, I like organising things. She says, Well, in that case, you should go into retail. So I did.

Presenter11:47

There is no expectation.

Presenter12:07

All right, well, I think it's time for some more music, Malcolm. Your third choice today. What have you gone for and why?

Sir Malcolm Walker12:13

The next record reminds me of the time when I was organising dances, still at school, and at one event this band played a song called Only You. It was a ballad and I just thought it was absolutely beautiful. So I want to play that, but also it's something that stuck in my mind. And I got married again in August last year, and that was perfect for that dreaded first dance.

Sir Malcolm Walker12:45

You and you alone

Sir Malcolm Walker12:49

Yeah.

Speaker 112:52

Do me love you do

Speaker 112:57

And fill my heart with love.

Speaker 113:02

For all

Sir Malcolm Walker13:02

Yeah.

Presenter13:13

The Platus and only you. Easy to dance to, Malcolm. So you were advised by your careers officer at school to pursue a career in retail. You tried Littlewoods, Marks and Spencer, Lewis's and Leeds, but they all turned you down. What do you think they missed in you, Malcolm?

Presenter13:28

Yeah.

Sir Malcolm Walker13:29

Boom.

Presenter13:29

I was Beautiful.

Sir Malcolm Walker13:30

You had to have an arithmetic test and I couldn't. And Marks and Spencer's, the guy was really good. He invited me in for an interview at the local store. He spent an hour talking to me about life, but said, you know, you need a university degree. I then went to Woolworths, which is bottom of the list. And the reason I went there was they took anybody. It didn't matter. Because their training programme, well, there wasn't one, but basically, you started at the bottom sweeping the floor and ended up as being chairman. The dropout rate was phenomenal. And basically, it was if you could stick the course, you made it. So I started sweeping the floor in the Huddersfield store. And unfortunately, I was doing that two years later because the guy who took me on had moved on and they didn't know that I was a trainee manager, thought I was a floor sweeper. Anyway, eventually I got moved to Leeds and started my career properly. And you know, it was really hard. It was six days a week, and you'd have to be in at eight in the morning or seven if you were letting in the breadman and you couldn't go home till maybe eight or nine o'clock at night. But there was also a great camaraderie because moving around the country to different stores, moving into flats and bed sits with your mates from Woolies, you know, it was quite an adventure.

Speaker 114:34

Hmm.

Presenter14:48

So that was the way it worked. I think you've described it as like a mini university. So as you kind of climb the ladder, they'd send you to different places wherever there was a vacancy, I guess.

Sir Malcolm Walker14:51

He's so hot.

Sir Malcolm Walker14:58

It taught you to become self sufficient in many ways. And I suppose really, looking back, you think there wasn't really a training course and I didn't learn anything. But then you think, actually, I did. I learnt an awful lot by just becoming self-sufficient. So when we started Iceland,

Presenter15:01

Uh

Sir Malcolm Walker15:16

I sort of instinctively knew what to do.

Presenter15:18

How many ideas did you try out before you hit upon Iceland?

Sir Malcolm Walker15:23

Well, we had quite a few. We had um a chain letter. Right. Peter Hinchcliffe, my partner, tried to sell me a chain letter. You know what a chain letter is, do you?

Presenter15:31

Yes, you receive a letter and then you have to pass it on to other people. How do you make money at that point?

Sir Malcolm Walker15:35

You buy the letter and then you send it off to head office, they retype it with your name moving up the list and you get it back and then you sell copies. A little bit complicated, but I realized the only guy making any money out of this was the guy who was organizing the chain letter. So it's an early pyramid scheme, isn't it?

Presenter15:53

It's an early

Presenter15:54

Okay.

Sir Malcolm Walker15:56

Then we'd moved on and Peter was an avid reader of The Exchange of Mart and he'd found this aerosol which made a frying pan non-stick, probably highly toxic, but we bought about twenty cases of this with the idea of not having Tupperware parties but non-stick parties, persuading people you can make your old frying pan non-stick and the superflon non-stick stayed on the shelves in the frozen food shop for a couple of years before we sold it.

Presenter16:23

Alright, well, before we find out about that first shop, I think we've got Absable Music, so Malcolm Walker. It's your fourth choice today. What is it?

Sir Malcolm Walker16:29

Well, uh one of the stores I got to I did a summer season in Scarborough, which was really good fun. And um nights out in Scarborough at the local dance hall and uh one of the songs popular at the time was Silence is Golden by the Tremolins.

Sir Malcolm Walker16:49

Plain to see sharp

Sir Malcolm Walker16:53

I'm crying.

Sir Malcolm Walker16:55

Especially when someone is hurt.

Speaker 117:05

Silence is golden.

Speaker 117:09

But my

Sir Malcolm Walker17:10

I still see

Speaker 417:13

Uh

Sir Malcolm Walker17:13

Shop.

Speaker 417:13

All this is golden, golden.

Speaker 417:18

Nice.

Presenter17:22

The Tremolos and Silence is Golden. So, Sir Malcolm Walker, you went into business with your Woolworths friend Peter Hinchcliffe. You set up Iceland, each putting in £30. Now, initially, you had one store in Osworth Street in Shropshire. Tell me about that first year. How did it go?

Sir Malcolm Walker17:39

We got no money, so we couldn't fit it out or we couldn't buy a load of stock, so we were going to sell fruit and vegetables. Then we got the idea of selling loose frozen foods. In 1970, there wasn't the frozen food market that there is today. We'd buy catering boxes of peas, fish fingers, beef burgers, tip them loose into trays in a open top freezer and sell them by the shoalful.

Presenter18:04

Okay, so that was what you started doing.

Sir Malcolm Walker18:04

Okay.

Sir Malcolm Walker18:05

That's what we started doing.

Presenter18:07

Did you have a a vision of where you wanted the business to go?

Sir Malcolm Walker18:11

We were really serious from the first day. We wanted this to work. We saw it as our future. And we used to talk about Marks and Spencer's, not the retailer, but using the words to describe a quality approach. And we never took any money out of the business. We were still employed by Woolworths until they found out and fired us. And then I got my pension money paid out. So I think we could we survive for six or eight months without taking any money out. My wife Riannith was a teacher, so we lived on her salary. And it just worked really well from day one because we opened the first shop having spent sixty pounds between us on the rent. We fitted it out with freezers and everything, tills and scales on higher purchase without having to pay a deposit. And we bought frozen food on credit. So actually, at the end of the first week, we got cash in the bank and with nobody to pay only the staff wages.

Speaker 118:40

Mm.

Presenter19:12

You must have been so thrilled. I mean, going from having a job that you'd really become very dissatisfied with, there you are, you know, feeling you can't get ahead, feeling frustrated.

Sir Malcolm Walker19:13

To be so

Sir Malcolm Walker19:16

Conversely

Presenter19:21

You must have felt like you'd struck struck oil or something.

Sir Malcolm Walker19:21

You must have

Sir Malcolm Walker19:23

Well, it was a bit scary as well because when Woolis found out, you know, we were called down to head office. I knew it wasn't for us to get promoted, so we got fired. And then, my God, you know, what have we done? We're on our own. So, we better open the second shop quickly, which we did in Rill, and then the third one in Flint. And in the first year, we opened four because we'd discovered something called positive cash flow. Every time we opened the shop, our bank balance went up until we started spending more money on the shops. Then we went into overdraft for the next fifty years.

Speaker 119:35

Yeah.

Presenter19:56

How easy was it to balance family life with building the business?

Sir Malcolm Walker19:59

There was no emails, so when you went home you were home. It was a different world and for the first year or two I worked very long hours, but soon I got the balance right and I never really worked weekends and as we started the family I was always there for school plays, for sports days, at home at the weekends and again people say, oh I built a successful business but I never got to know my family. Well I think that's terrible.

Sir Malcolm Walker20:28

Uh

Presenter20:28

Alright, so Malcolm Walker, it's time for your next piece of music. What have you chosen and why are you taking it to the Desert Island with you?

Sir Malcolm Walker20:34

As we grew the business and we had the children, we were able to afford a small house in Marbea and we used to go there most school holidays. And there was a restaurant in Marbella called Tony Darley's, an Italian restaurant. And we go there quite a lot. And there's always some guy with an accordion who would come round the tables playing. And he had a voice to match Elaine Page. And I'd always ask him to play Memory. which he did. And we also would go to London quite a bit and see all the Lloyd Webby shows. And I just thought that was an amazing song. But this reminds me of Tony Darlie's in Marbea.

Speaker 421:15

We all alone in the moonlight.

Speaker 421:21

I can see.

Speaker 121:22

Smile like the old day.

Speaker 121:25

I was being careful there.

Speaker 121:31

I remember

Presenter21:32

Um Yeah. The time I knew what

Speaker 121:34

I'm a new

Presenter21:36

Bitness was

Presenter21:39

Let the memory

Presenter21:44

Uh

Sir Malcolm Walker21:45

Again.

Presenter21:47

Elaine Page, singing memory from the musical Cats, composed by Andrew Lloyd Webber. Sir Malcolm Walker, Iceland went from strength to strength during the 80s and the 90s but the millennium didn't get off to such a great start for you. In 2001 you were forced to step down after selling £13.5 million worth of your Iceland shares prior to a profit warning. You were investigated and later cleared. What ha

Sir Malcolm Walker22:11

Happened. I'd done 30 years running the business now I was tired and I wanted to retire and that coincided with us buying Booker the cash and carry chain. That is a long story don't have time to go into it but it was a great deal and it's since proved to be. So anyway that got me a new chief executive Stuart Rose Lord Rose as he is now but we had different views. I thought he was coming to run the business and I was going to retire. He saw it a little bit differently. He disappeared and I was left holding the baby and I thought, oh no I can't, you know. Anyway I found a new boss and he joined the business and it all went wrong. Share price collapsed and I was forced out. So I was fired for the second time in my life. So instead of retiring I was so angry that I decided to start a new rival frozen food business called Cool Trader which I did. I ran that for four years and then the new guy had made such a mess of Iceland and I was invited back to save it and sold Cool Trader to Iceland.

Presenter23:25

And how did you feel about your reputation? I mean, you'd been shown the door.

Sir Malcolm Walker23:28

It was completely trashed. So for a while nobody could look me in the eye because there's no smoke without fire. Well later it was proved that there was no smoke and there was no fire.

Presenter23:36

Mm-hmm.

Presenter23:42

But at the time that must have been really difficult for you.

Sir Malcolm Walker23:45

Was, but I got stuck into Cool Trader.

Presenter23:47

You'd work out. You went straight into that.

Sir Malcolm Walker23:50

The next day.

Presenter23:51

Really?'Cause I I think your son Richard shared a memory of you coming home with your boxes from the office. That must have been tough.

Sir Malcolm Walker23:52

Yeah.

Sir Malcolm Walker24:00

Yeah. I got um thirty years of clobber in the office, so I had to pack it all up, put it in a transit van and and take it home. It was not easy being fired from a a business that I created.

Presenter24:13

So the company is now, after several other twists and turns, back in family ownership. I know that you've said you're a born warrior. I wonder what you worry about these days.

Sir Malcolm Walker24:21

Yeah.

Sir Malcolm Walker24:24

Electricity.

Presenter24:26

Well, I think you're not alone in that.

Sir Malcolm Walker24:27

Yeah.

Presenter24:28

Time for some more music, then, Sir Malcolm Walker. Your sixth choice today. What have you gone for?

Sir Malcolm Walker24:29

Then some

Sir Malcolm Walker24:32

We often used to go to London to see the shows, and we were really lucky in able to get tickets for one of the very first performances of Phantom of the Opera with Michael Crawford and Sarah Brightman. I've seen that show many times since, but nothing of course can compare to that first one where those two singers were just off the scale. And I still listen to it. I still think it's one of the most magical. Is it an opera? No, what is it? A musical, but it's fantastic.

Sir Malcolm Walker25:06

Let me be your friend.

Sir Malcolm Walker25:10

Let daylight dry your teeth

Speaker 125:11

Let dry your tears, I'm here with you beside you.

Speaker 125:18

To guard you and to guide you

Presenter25:24

Single the free wing tree.

Sir Malcolm Walker25:24

Ah

Speaker 125:30

Uh

Presenter25:30

Oh my

Presenter25:32

Oh my head with true cups in the town.

Presenter25:40

All I ask of you. Sarah Brightman and Steve Barton from the original London cast of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Phantom of the Opera. Samarkam Ocram, just thinking back on this music list so far, you're quite a romantic, aren't you, Erta Hart?

Sir Malcolm Walker25:52

Oh, I am a romantic. I mean, that first record, isn't it so beautiful?

Presenter25:57

Absolutely. I can see it's all in there in the mix. You married your childhood sweetheart, Rhianned, in 1968. Now, she died two years ago, January 2021, after having early onset Alzheimer's and then living with the disease for many years. You'd been married 52 years. How did you cope with her illness?

Sir Malcolm Walker26:19

Do you know it's really difficult because symptoms start unnoticed, maybe many years before diagnosis? Just little things, irritation, I told you that, weren't you listening? You know, then you realize maybe there's a an issue. When she was diagnosed, uh she was obviously devastated, but she s wasn't the sort of person who would um Google it and see what the prognosis was. So

Presenter26:26

Hmm.

Speaker 126:26

Uh

Speaker 126:38

Um

Presenter26:44

How old was she at that point?

Sir Malcolm Walker26:46

She's uh one year younger than me, so this was ten, twelve years ago that she was diagnosed. But it probably started fifteen years

Presenter26:54

So diagnosed in our early 60s, but she'd maybe been unwell for some time.

Sir Malcolm Walker26:57

You've been unwell for some time. I don't know how people manage. I'm in a very fortunate position in that I could keep her at home, I had carers and I could keep her at home right until the very end. But if people say, you know, you lost your wife two years ago, I didn't. I lost her ten years ago.

Presenter27:16

That must have been very tough to lose someone without being able to fully grieve them.

Sir Malcolm Walker27:21

Well, you grieve over a long period of time and, you know, life carries on. And even when she was bedbound for years, I've still got my life. I did everything I could for her at home. But I'm still only thirty four years old.

Presenter27:39

In your own mind. Has our illness changed the way you look at life at all?

Sir Malcolm Walker27:44

No, not really, but it's made me realize what a devastating disease it is. And as a family and as a company, we've now put a lot of effort into raising money for Alzheimer's research because it was an unfashionable and underfunded illness.

Presenter28:01

But it hasn't changed your outlook. It sounds to me like you're all about what you do rather than reflecting on

Sir Malcolm Walker28:07

Yeah.

Presenter28:08

Like to

Presenter28:09

And and what do you think wh when you do, when you when you look back, are you a different person now than before you went through that? No, but it

Sir Malcolm Walker28:15

It's about

Presenter28:15

Oh

Presenter28:16

Like

Sir Malcolm Walker28:16

Yeah.

Sir Malcolm Walker28:17

How do you manage in your own mind, not feeling guilty, that, you know, your wife's dying and you're still living your life?

Presenter28:21

The

Presenter28:24

Yeah. And how did you manage that? How did you

Sir Malcolm Walker28:28

I suppose you get used to it over a long period of time.

Presenter28:33

It's time for your next piece of music, Mo. We've had several musical tracks, and obviously you and the family spent a lot of time going to see musicals live.

Sir Malcolm Walker28:40

Yeah.

Presenter28:41

It sounds like obviously you you loved that, but did Rihanna as well?

Sir Malcolm Walker28:43

Good.

Sir Malcolm Walker28:45

Yeah, she was a grade eight pianist, although like anybody with a talent, she'd never play for people, she was shy. But we developed a taste for opera, and we used to go to the opera, and sometimes we'd go to Verona, to the opera there in the Roman amphitheatre. And I still do. And when I say I've developed a taste for opera, I don't know anything about it. I can hear a opera aria, and I can't, I've forgotten which opera it's from, I can't remember the story, but I just like the arias. And if I was by myself in the car, out of choice, I'd put on an opera aria. And Puccini is opera for beginners, I suppose. And the best of Puccini is Laboem. And for the next record, I've chosen an amazing and romantic piece called O Suave Fanicula. And I think that's how you pronounce it.

Presenter29:50

Put on a train

Speaker 130:31

Let's just

Presenter30:44

O Suave Fanitula, O Sweet Girl, from La Boheme, performed by Luciano Pavarotti and Mirella Frani with the Berlin Philharmonic, conducted by Herbert von Carrian.

Presenter30:54

So Malcolm Walker, I'm about to cast you away onto your desert island, of course. Now, Malcolm, you have had some pretty wild adventures in your life, actually for charity. You've climbed Everest.

Speaker 131:02

Yeah.

Presenter31:05

That you've abseiled down the shard or you know, all kinds of things. You you do have some idea of how you cope in extreme situations. Do you think that'll prepare you for life as a castaway?

Sir Malcolm Walker31:12

Yeah.

Sir Malcolm Walker31:15

I used to think I'd be really good as a castaway, but I think I'm coming to realise I I like company. I might struggle. But I'm practical. I'd manage.

Presenter31:25

Well, we'll let you have one more track before we send you off to your desert island. What's your final choice today, Malcolm Walker?

Presenter31:31

Huh.

Sir Malcolm Walker31:32

Book. Life moves on.

Sir Malcolm Walker31:34

And it has to, and I feel very lucky to have been given a second chance at life and love. I met Natalie several years ago, and we finally got married in August last year. We had a small but incredibly beautiful wedding in Lake Como in Italy, right by the lake. It was actually just magical. Natalie's got many talents, but one of them is something she hides from people. And I didn't know about it, her friends don't know about it, and her parents don't know about it, but she's a very, very talented singer. And to the surprise of my wife and everybody else at the wedding, she sang an opera aria beautifully.

Sir Malcolm Walker32:17

She didn't know if she'd manage it, so she recorded it first, just in case. Well, as it happens, she didn't need the recording, she sang it perfectly. But um after a lot of persuasion she gave me a copy of the recording, on condition I never played it for anybody.

Sir Malcolm Walker32:37

But given that I'll be by myself on the island and only me will hear it, I will take that with me. And it's um another Puccini, uh Cuando Muenvo, sung by my wife, Natalie Walker.

Speaker 433:21

Oh there's a

Speaker 433:31

The lives of the world.

Presenter33:51

Cuando Menvo from Mazetta's Waltz from La Boème, composed by Buccini and performed by your wife, Sir Malcolm Walker, Natalie Walker. Now, Malcolm, it's time to cast you away. To help you settle in on the island, of course, we'll give you the books to take with you. You'll have the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare. You can also have another book of your choice. What will that be?

Sir Malcolm Walker34:02

Yeah.

Sir Malcolm Walker34:04

Did you

Sir Malcolm Walker34:10

Well, it would have to be Robinson Crusoe.

Presenter34:14

Just from a practical perspective or are you a definition?

Sir Malcolm Walker34:16

I've actually never read it, but I think I should, and I think it it would be good inspiration on how to cope.

Presenter34:22

You can also take a luxury item to help you pass the time more enjoyably. What do you fancy?

Sir Malcolm Walker34:27

Well, it would have to be something useful, necessary. Oh, and on a

Presenter34:30

Oh, don't have anything useful or necessary, Malcolm. I'm not al no, I'm not having that.

Sir Malcolm Walker34:34

I like cooking and I would enjoy cooking on the island, fish, shellfish, whatever, so I'll need a heavy cast iron cooking pot.

Presenter34:43

You're allowed a heavy cast iron cooking pot. I mean, cooking is, you know, it's as much an art as anything else, so I'll allow that. And if you had to save just one of the eight tracks that you've shared with us today, which would it be?

Sir Malcolm Walker34:55

Well, it couldn't be anything other than Cuando Menvo sung by my wife.

Presenter35:00

Samal Gamorka, thank you so much for letting us hear your Desert Island discs.

Sir Malcolm Walker35:04

Thank you very much.

Sir Malcolm Walker35:12

Uh

Presenter35:19

Hello, I hope Malcolm's happy on his island with his cooking pot and his copy of Robinson Crusoe. There are more than 2,000 programmes in our archive which you can listen to, including the programmes of former presenters of Desert Island Discs, Roy Plumley, Michael Parkinson, Sue Lawley, and Kirsty Young. You can find their programmes if you search through BBC Sounds or on our own Desert Island Discs website. The studio manager for today's programme was Emma Hart, the assistant producer was Christine Pavlovsky, and the producer was Sarah Taylor. Join me next time when my castaway will be the sports presenter Gabby Logan.

Speaker 136:24

Another thunderstorm. Lights out. Sometimes I just can't hear difference between uh thunder or shelling or explosions. Documentary adventures.

Presenter36:36

Yeah. Uh Uh

Speaker 136:36

Uh

Presenter36:36

Uh

Speaker 136:36

The

Presenter36:36

Invite a closer listen. We were willing to put not only our bodies on the line, but our whole

Presenter36:44

Being a documentary podcast from BBC Radio 4.

Speaker 436:48

So do you mind testing? Yes. Okay. Alright, what did you have for breakfast say?

Speaker 436:53

I'm here to talk about a traumatic experience.

Speaker 436:57

What did you have for a breakfast? Oh, I had pancakes.

Presenter37:00

Oh, um

Presenter37:04

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