Patrick Grant

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.

Presenter0:42

My castaway this week is the fashion designer and entrepreneur Patrick Grant. He's best known as the sharp-seated judge on the great British Sewing Bee. The hit show has celebrated and even reinvigorated our national love of making, and that must give him particular satisfaction, as a passion for craftsmanship and a determination to revive British manufacturing have shaped his own story. A childhood fascination with the way things work led to a degree in engineering, but then at the age of 33 he made a bold change of direction. He put every penny he could raise into buying a struggling Saville Row Taylor's. He turned the business around and five years later was named Menswear Designer of the Year at the British Fashion Awards. More recently, he's invested in a Blackburn garment factory and started a new venture offering high quality British-made clothing at accessible prices. He says, I've always been somebody who loves beautifully made things that give you a lot of joy. I love objects which last a long time and get better the more you use them. Patrick Grant, welcome to Desert Islandist.

Patrick Grant1:45

Thank you very much for having me.

Presenter1:47

So let's start with that fascination with how things are made, Patrick. Were you the kind of kid who would take their toys apart to try and figure out how they worked?

Patrick Grant1:54

I was just always

Patrick Grant1:56

Always enjoyed the meticulousness of putting things together with my hands and it always made me feel really good and the outcomes were always things that I was really proud of and got great pleasure from.

Presenter2:08

You've been a judge on all nine series, Patrick, of um the Great British Sewing Bee. It is perhaps the friendliest competition show on television. I mean, everybody ends up supporting each other, they cry when someone's eliminated. Is that about the format? Or do you think it's about the kind of people who like sewing?

Patrick Grant2:25

I think it's about all of those things. I think naturally people tend to sew in groups. We didn't invent the term sewing bee. Sewing bees have been around for a long, long time. There were sewing bees at Buckingham Palace. The Queen Mother had sewing bees during the war to make things for the war effort. All the palace staff got together and sewed in one of the big ballrooms, amazing photos. So I think on the whole, people tend to sew with other people. I mean, in our workshop, our tailors are always chatting as they sew. There is just a communal vibe around sewing that translates very naturally into what happens on sewing bee. We never discouraged it. And then, of course, there is the fabulous people themselves who are just warm-hearted, lovely, kind, generous individuals. Almost without exception, we've had the most lovely people on the show.

Presenter3:13

We're about to get started on your music choices, Patrick. Now you've shown numerous fashion collections over the years. I wonder if you've been involved in choosing the music for the shows.

Patrick Grant3:21

I chose the music for every show. It was a a huge pleasure. And actually this first one was in a show not that long ago. In fact, one of my last shows. It's lovely to see it on this list.

Presenter3:31

Well, on that note, I think we should showcase your desert island discs, starting with your first choice. What is it?

Patrick Grant3:37

My first choice is Les Fleur by Minnie Ripperton. It's got a very uplifting message that says inside everybody there is something wonderful if we can just unearth it. But my dad was a huge music fan. He loved blues and soul and dance music of all descriptions. He used to drive me down to school from Edinburgh down to Barner Castle. It's about a three and a half hour drive and we'd just sit in the car and do that kind of John Gordon Sinclair kind of dancing against a tree thing in our seats. And it was, you know, lovely memories of sharing music with him.

Speaker 14:08

I mean it asks.

Presenter4:41

Minnie Ripperton and Leifler. Patrick Grant, let's go back to the beginning, shall we? You were born in Edinburgh in nineteen seventy two to Jim and Sue Grant, and you've described your upbringing as a bit famous five, so outdoorsy, right?

Patrick Grant4:53

Yeah, very much so. I was very lucky. I went to a lovely primary school round the corner from where I grew up in in Morningside in Edinburgh, called South Morningside, and I spent four years there. I had everything on my doorstep. Just across the road from me, there is what is now a nature reserve called the Hermitage. Steep sided with beech trees down the far end and I mean all sort I mean a thick wooded valley with caves and all sorts of intrepid

Presenter5:18

So inviting for intrepid young man.

Patrick Grant5:19

It was absolutely amazing. I had a lovely upbringing, and my dad was a rugby coach, and so we.

Presenter5:26

Well, not just that. I mean, he had quite an intriguing C V by the look of it, your dad. He became a successful accountant. Yeah. He mentioned the rugby coaching, but he'd also managed a rock band and been a champion jive dancer.

Patrick Grant5:32

Yeah.

Patrick Grant5:37

Yeah, no, my dad had an interesting route. Before he met my mum, my dad was managing a band, which at the time were called Dean Clark and the Gaylords. Went on to be called Marmalade, and they had a hit called Obla Dee Obla Dah. He was the East of Scotland Jive champion with his cousin Trish. My dad loved music, loved dancing, and then he became an accountant. I don't really know why.

Presenter6:00

Yeah.

Presenter6:01

But it's interesting because that kind of trying lots of different things, that's quite an entrepreneurial approach to life, isn't it?

Patrick Grant6:07

Well, he was really good at maths. He took family life seriously and he wanted to be a good provider and so he got a job as an accountant and that was him for a while.

Presenter6:18

And what was your relationship with him like? Did you look up to him? He sounds quite cool.

Patrick Grant6:21

He was quite a closed character. He had a very difficult upbringing. He lost his dad when he was quite young. His father took his own life.

Patrick Grant6:29

which we found out much later. He never spoke about it at all. And so when I grew up I didn't know that he'd had this terrible, difficult, traumatic childhood. But he loved sport and rugby and that was our thing. On on Sunday mornings we would go to the back pitchers at uh Murrayfield and myself and people that I'm still friends with today, we all played in the same mini rugby team.

Speaker 26:33

Hmm.

Patrick Grant6:54

And we were super successful. We won loads of tournaments. We traveled all around Scotland. We were actually really good.

Presenter6:59

And you were good specifically.

Patrick Grant7:00

I was alright. Yeah, I was quite good. I mean, actually, a lot of the people in my mini rugby team at Wanderers went on to play representative rugby.

Presenter7:08

You scored a try for Scotland, didn't you?

Patrick Grant7:10

I scored one try for Scotland in a game against Wales under nineteens at Straddy Park in Thlenethley, and it was on the telly. All of my friends who were friends growing up were t were coached by my dad and have great memories of of him. He was a great coach.

Presenter7:16

And it was on the

Presenter7:23

Let's take a break for some music, Patrick. This is your second choice. What have you gone for and why are you taking it to your desert island?

Patrick Grant7:29

I loved classical music as a kid, and right throughout my adult life, I've enjoyed classical music. I lived in Liverpool for about five years, and I had two season tickets in Liverpool. One was Everton Football Club, and the other one was the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic. And I used to go every wee-I think pretty much every week when I lived in Liverpool, I'd be at the Phil. My next track is Arvo Pert, My Heart's in the Highlands. There are lots of reasons for this choice. I mean, first, it's a beautiful piece of music.

Patrick Grant7:56

It's called My Heart's in the Highlands. It's a Rubby Burns poem and song that has been set to the organ. It's incredibly evocative of the Highlands. Every sound of that organ feels like the kind of mist and the clouds sitting in the valleys. And my heart is in the Highlands. I feel most at home and most relaxed when I'm up a mountain, either on my bike or on foot. And I always have done.

Speaker 28:29

In the highlands my heart is not here.

Speaker 28:54

My heart in the highlands are chasing the deer

Speaker 29:20

What chasing?

Presenter9:23

ARVO PERT, MY Heart's in the Highlands, performed by Elsa Torp and Christopher Bowers Broadbent. Patrick Grant, you've described your mother Sue as possibly the most sustainable human being on the planet.

Patrick Grant9:36

Yeah.

Presenter9:37

Tell me a little bit more about it.

Patrick Grant9:37

Good old mum, she never throws anything away. My mum also had an unusual upbringing. My mum's father was in the RAF and he was killed, disappeared somewhere over the Bay of Biscay in December 1943, and my mum was born in April 1944. So she never knew her father. And my granny, who was the most fantastic woman, brought my mum and my uncle up on her own. My granny remarried an American serviceman towards the end of the war and then divorced him within a year. And so she lost her war widow's pension because of that. And so she worked always. My mum was brought up with very little and was brought up always to make things laugh. My granny was a great scraper of the mold off the cheese. And my mum has inherited all of my granny's carefulness. She looks after things. She has a little sewing machine upstairs that she repairs things with. And she was latterly, she was the administrator at Edinburgh University's Graduate School of Social Science. And she was very well loved by the students. And they have a prize now in her name that's given every year. I think for prob I don't know what it's for actually. It's for the nicest student or the best student or something.

Speaker 19:56

Though she never knew her father.

Presenter10:50

So was she quite a kind of outward facing character?

Patrick Grant10:52

She was the person that looked after all of the students all of the time. She ran the school, but she was really the student's sort of point of contact with the school.

Presenter11:01

When did you first get into clothes and care about what you were wearing?

Patrick Grant11:04

I was really obsessed about clothes from a very early age and I remember going to a a christening, I must have been two or three, my mum will correct me on this, but they put me in some sort of blue with a white piping sort of sailory suit thing and I really didn't like it so I I lobbed myself in the fountain so they'd have to change my clothes. And at boarding school I would tear out pages from L and Vogue and so on and pay.

Presenter11:29

How did that go down with your

Patrick Grant11:31

My roommate Simon had sort of Bon Jovi posters on on his side of the the room and my side was, you know, people like Beatrice Dahl and Kristen Scott Thomas was on mine. Like quite sophisticated looking, you know, elegant women and lots of pages from Vogue and things. And this was in the period before there were kind of men's fashion mags.

Presenter11:44

Okay.

Presenter11:49

Disc number three, please, Patrick. What have you chosen?

Patrick Grant11:52

It's Do You Wanna Funk by Sylvester. James Godfrey and I used to go to a roller disco in Edinburgh called Coasters and we would be weaving round backwards doing little spins, little crossovers and they played a lot of amazing music at Coasters. This was the period of the lot of disco and Sylvester was one of the biggest. The first couple of bars and I am back at Coasters with my blue with a rainbow roller skates on being really cool as a 12 year old.

Speaker 212:34

Do you wanna f

Speaker 212:37

Won't you tell me now?

Speaker 212:41

If you wanna punk, let me show you how.

Speaker 212:46

Welcome to me

Speaker 212:48

Do you fall apart with me?

Presenter12:55

Do you want to funk? Sylvester. Patrick Grant, you haven't followed the traditional path for a clothing designer. You went to Leeds University to study material science and engineering first.

Patrick Grant13:05

I think everything that I learnt during my years doing that, I think are incredibly useful now. I studied polymer science, and I studied all of that, the chemistry side of textiles rather than the kind of fashiony side of textiles. And it's really useful. I understand the limitations and what we can do. And I still work with Leeds University, who are doing a lot of amazing research into ways in which you can reduce the overall carbon footprint, water footprint, pollution footprint of the fashion industry. Because we've spent years and years and years trying to make textiles that, you know, for example, the way we dye things. We've developed dyes that never fade and the colours never come away. And what we need if we want to recycle our clothes is we need to get all of those colours out. So we've spent 200 years making dyes that cannot be removed. And now we need technology that allows us just to switch those dyes off and take them out. We can't recycle our synthetic clothes because they all just turn out brown. So there's lots of stuff in there that I still find fascinating that because of my science background, I feel like I have a better understanding of genuine ins and outs and the genuine kind of footprint. Because a lot of people who work in clothing really, really just have the wool pulled over their eyes by the people that are supplying them. And even some of those don't really know it that well. So I feel really well placed to be tackling one of the really big problems in our industry.

Presenter14:26

I can see the fascination with engineering, but why didn't you consider going into fashion sooner? I mean, there can't have been that many boys at your school cutting out pictures from Elle magazine.

Patrick Grant14:36

I I don't know. It wasn't the careers team at school weren't, you know, weren't busy saying, you know, design and fashion is a is a you know, I I did math, physics, chemistry, A-level. I was good at science at GCSE.

Presenter14:45

Available

Presenter14:48

So you were on that track.

Patrick Grant14:49

That was the trajectory I was on. Also, I loved it. I was fascinated by it, and I'm still fascinated by it.

Presenter14:55

And

Patrick Grant14:56

I it just never occurred to me that working in clothes was a thing I was going to do.

Presenter15:00

It's time for disc number four, Patrick. What have you gone for?

Patrick Grant15:03

I've gone for Big Time Sensuality by Bjork and very specifically the Fluke Magimix. There are lots of reasons. I was trying to find the one song that kind of encapsulated six years of going out clubbing, raving, whatever you want to call it. This was one, like this song, you know, I can remember my friend Dave running onto the dance floor when this came on at Vague. And Vegue was an amazing club because it was the first big club in Leeds where everybody dressed up. Everybody wore what they want. I remember our friend James once went down. He painted himself head to toe in gold and he had these twigs that he'd sprayed and he claimed he was the king of the wood sprites. And he had these sort of speedos on that he'd also sprayed gold. And then halfway through the night, he whipped the speedos off and everything was sprayed gold. And that was the kind of place Vague was. Everything went. It was such a joyous place. And this was a big song. But I also took this Bjork album with me around Greece for the summer and I must have played it a hundred times on my Walkman's.

Speaker 216:11

To enjoy

Speaker 216:15

The heart who and the jazz do the diamond sensuality here

Presenter16:39

The fluke mix of Bjerke's big time sensuality. Patrick, you spent ten years working in industry and then changed direction when you were studying for an MBA. I think you noticed an ad in the Financial Times and made quite a bold decision during one college lunch hour. What actually happened?

Patrick Grant16:55

There was nobody else around, so I sat and I read the paper and I got to a section at the back which I'd never seen before in my life called Businesses for Sale. And in Businesses for Sale was this tiny little postage stamp-sized advert and it said for sale, tailor to emperors, kings, and presidents. Please write to Mr. Granger at 16 Savile Row. And I thought, wow, is that a Saville Row Tailor for sale? So I wrote him a letter and I went to see the shop and I thought, I can't believe that this is an actual, like an actual Saville Row Tailor's that was at the time nearly 200 years old, was for sale in the back of the paper.

Presenter17:27

So you were studying for an MBA in business, but you hadn't yet graduated.

Patrick Grant17:30

Yeah.

Patrick Grant17:32

No, no.

Presenter17:32

So you're walking the shop floor with him.

Patrick Grant17:34

I remember walking into the shop on Saville Row and thinking, Yeah, I I can do better than this And I remember walking into the workshop and meeting some of the tailors and everything about the business sort of felt like it was in decline and I thought, Look, I can probably I think I can do this And so actually it didn't feel like a big risk, even though

Presenter17:38

Right.

Speaker 117:38

Yeah.

Patrick Grant17:52

Obviously it was.

Presenter17:53

How old would you be now?

Patrick Grant17:54

I think I must have been thirty two when I saw the advert. It was back it was in April, and then I turned thirty-three in the May, and it was December by the time I sort of bought it. But I sold my house, I sold my car, I raised money from friends and family, my granny pitched in. So they were supported.

Presenter18:10

So they were supportive. I mean, people was there anymore.

Patrick Grant18:11

I mean my mum thought it was absolutely mad. My friends were about to graduate and become hedge fund managers and earn squillions and I wanted to go and take over a sort of it was in a voluntary arrangement with the receivers. It was financially on its uppers and I loved it and I thought this is an amazing thing and I reckon I can probably do something to turn it around. So I yeah, I went for it.

Presenter18:37

Did it give you any sleepless nights?

Patrick Grant18:38

I expected everything to be absolutely rosy. I'm a very optimistic person generally. I think you have to be if you want to start businesses. You've got to think they're going to succeed. I think in August of the second year that we were I was there, I think the door to the shop opened once in the entire month.

Presenter18:54

Scary.

Patrick Grant18:55

And I thought, oh god, I've made a terrible mistake here. Mum lent me a bit of money and the bank lent me a bit more money and I sort of kept it afloat. We had this amazing customer from Spain and he had, I think he'd had about eight suits on order. I remember phoning him up at the beginning of August and saying, hello, just to let you know your suits are ready. And he went, oh fine, I'll be back in September. And I thought, oh God, we'll be gone by then. No, no, we need you to come and collect. But it worked out fine. And it went from penury to more than doubled the size of the business in about three years.

Presenter19:25

It's time for your next piece of music, Patrick Grant, number five. What are we going to hear? And why?

Patrick Grant19:30

This piece of music is called Harry Patch in brackets in memory of by Radiohead. It's a kind of anti war protest song. Tom Yorke and Johnny Greenwood had heard an interview with Harry Patch on the radio where

Patrick Grant19:44

Harry Patch was the oldest surviving soldier from the First World War and he didn't talk about the war at all for something like 87 years. He was invited to go and meet a German soldier, the oldest surviving German soldier from the First World War. And they met and they shook hands and they spent time together. And he wanted to talk about what a terrible waste of life war is. And my granddad died in the war. My mum grew up without a father because of the war. And it's an incredibly touching piece of music and it uses some of the things that Harry Patch said in the interview. I worked with Tom York. We did the costume for an Atoms for Peace video. Having loved Radiohead for all of these years, to be invited to work with Tom directly was such an honour.

Speaker 220:51

Taka

Presenter21:06

Radiohead Harry Patch in memory of

Presenter21:09

Patrick Grant, in twenty fifteen you bought the Cookson and Clegg textile factory in Blackburn in a bid to save it from closing and to begin a new business, community clothing. But within a year you had to put the factory into voluntary liquidation and make staff redundant. It must have been a really tough time. What do you remember about it?

Patrick Grant21:27

Oh, it was awful. It was absolutely awful. We had a plan when I took over the business. One of the ideas that emerged was the idea behind community clothing, but it took a while to get that up and running. And we had a couple of really big contracts at Cookson's, and one of them, very well-known high street brand, didn't pay their bill for a very long time. And the other, a very well-known British sportswear brand, cancelled a huge contract with about two weeks to go, and it killed us. And I had to make everybody redundant. And I scrambled to find the money to buy the machinery back from the liquidators. And we managed to come to an arrangement with our landlord, and all of our suppliers got paid, and we made sure that everything was good, and we got back up and running again.

Presenter22:13

I'm having to make everybody redundant.

Patrick Grant22:14

It was horrifying. I mean, my dad was made redundant, so I saw it from that side. It's it's traumatic in a very real way for people, and having to do it en masse to all of those people was dreadful.

Presenter22:26

How many people were you able to get the jobs back?

Patrick Grant22:27

Well we got we took them all back, but fortunately that second time around it went better until COVID.

Presenter22:34

That idea of supporting British skills and manufacture is hugely important to you, but so many companies have outsourced to cut costs. Is there a skills gap?

Patrick Grant22:45

There's a huge gap. The factories that we work with, many of them are sort of family-owned, many of them have been where they are for centuries. In some cases, we've got factories that we work with that date back to the late 1700s. In the past, it was easy for them to find staff. People would follow parents or grandparents into these businesses, they would learn these skills.

Patrick Grant23:05

Almost without exception now, we find that all of the factories we work with, and we work with 42 factories in the UK now, they all find it very, very difficult to find people who want to learn those skills. And I think that is because for decades now, we have undersold the idea of skilled manual work. Both Conservative and Labour governments have, I think, made it the case that sort of skilled manual work feels like second class work. And I think that's completely wrong. You can make a great career in our industry.

Presenter23:39

It's time for more music, Patrick. Your sixth choice today. What are you taking to the island next?

Patrick Grant23:44

This is Kill Dem by Jamie XX. And.

Patrick Grant23:48

It's a song that I can't sit still to. This is just a great dance tune.

Speaker 224:10

Feel free.

Presenter24:24

JamieXX and kill them. Your factory was making PPE during COVID. How quickly were you able to switch over?

Patrick Grant24:29

It's okay.

Patrick Grant24:33

At the start of the pandemic, we were approached by a number of different suppliers of uniform. So companies that normally make their uniform in countries overseas. The one we ended up working with had factories in four different countries. All of those countries had been closed down. We were getting loads of inquiries from people. Can you make scrubs? Can you make gowns? What can you do? I was on the phone for about seven or eight hours every day. I remember looking at my phone log about two months into COVID and thinking, I was recharging my phone twice a day just to keep up with the calls. I was in work 12, 14 hours a day. And we said to them, look, whoever gives us an order first, you can have it. We're here. We want to do whatever we need to do. And a company called Alsico, who were based in Preston, gave us an order. They sent us through, electronically sent us the patterns through. We made a sample that day. I think it was a Wednesday. They came in on the Thursday morning, signed them off at 10 a.m. The truck from, there's a company in Chorley that make fabric for uniforms. They arrived the Thursday afternoon. We got it straight up into the cutting room. We cut it. We started sewing it on the Thursday. And on the Friday, lunchtime, the first scrubs were coming off the line. Private enterprise during COVID stepped up and did amazing stuff. You know, we are just one of lots and lots of businesses that stepped up. And at the same time, the government and others were running this catastrophically shambolic program to try and manage PPE supplies into the NHS. And we were involved in that. It was heartbreaking to see how badly they all performed. And my dad died of COVID very, very early on, very unnecessarily, because there was no PPE in the hospital. He'd gone into hospital for a very routine operation, caught COVID in hospital and died three days later.

Patrick Grant26:18

Totally unnecessary that he died, but there was no PPE in the hospital. I remember going into the hospital about a week before. He was in for this operation on his legs on things.

Presenter26:25

This would be the marcher.

Patrick Grant26:27

This was the March. COVID was on the rise, but there was no PPE in the hospital because they didn't have any. I remember somebody in the Cabinet Office, I went to them early on and said, look, there are loads and loads of people who can sew at home. We've got very limited sewing capacity in the UK, but hospitals need scrubs and gowns. There are a million sewing machines in homes around the UK. Lots of them want to help. There are lots of also empty factories with cutting capacity. We can get the fabric, we can cut it centrally, we can distribute it to home sewers. And they say, health and safety. We wouldn't. I'm like, it's a pair of scrubs. Like, there are doctors wearing pajamas. Like, this is fine. No, we'd have to sign off every individual sewer through health and safety. I'm like, you've all lost your minds.

Presenter27:07

Patrick, we've got to take some time for the music. It's your seventh disc next. What have you chosen and why?

Patrick Grant27:13

I have chosen a song called Get Better by Alt J. This is I think the saddest song I know.

Patrick Grant27:21

Um so this is a song that came out during Covid. And it's about somebody struggling with the loss of a loved one. And um I lost my dad during Covid. And I mean there's a little shout out to the NHS in the lyrics and at the end there's a little there's a little recording.

Patrick Grant27:41

And um

Patrick Grant27:43

It's just the the loved one in question is a little clip of them saying better to their partner. And it's these little fragments of lives that we hold on to when we're when we're grieving. And um it's it's a lovely song, it's a beautiful song. Of course it brings back memories of my dad and uh

Patrick Grant28:09

It's it's also it's kind of uplifting because we will get through and um you know and hanging on to these little things allows us to treasure the memories. And the things that that I treasure that were my dad's pieces of his clothing and I I have his ties and when you tie them you can only tie them in one way because he's tied them so many times. The knot only forms the knot that he would wear. So you you know that his fingers were there holding that silk in exactly the same way. And this song is a lovely song because it reminds me that things will

Patrick Grant28:40

Get better.

Speaker 228:40

A growing high smile

Speaker 228:44

Your hand won't walk you through the gallery

Speaker 228:57

Get better.

Speaker 129:01

I know I will.

Speaker 229:06

Get better.

Speaker 129:08

My darling.

Speaker 229:08

My daughter

Speaker 129:10

I know I will

Presenter29:15

Alt J and get better.

Presenter29:17

Patrick Grant, the fashion industry does have a huge environmental impact, even at the sustainable end of the market where you are, is that something you struggle with?

Patrick Grant29:26

We just consume too much stuff. We consume too much stuff in every aspect of our lives now. And as somebody who loves really good things, I find it incredibly depressing. Businesses started outsourcing the making of the things that they sell to other people. And when they first did it, that was fine, because they took something that was made locally and they moved it to Hong Kong and they had somebody make a version of it in Hong Kong. And it was sort of almost the same. But then over the last 30, 40 years, every six months they've gone back to that factory and said, Can you make it a bit cheaper? And eventually that factory says, oh, I can't make it any cheaper. So they go to somebody else and oh, we can make it cheaper. But they use

Patrick Grant30:02

lower quality materials, but they make them thinner. And then they make them and and every six months the things we buy in our ordinary life have got worse and worse and worse and worse and worse. And now the things that we buy are so universally rubbish, they have no value to us at all.

Presenter30:17

Cost of living There are plenty of people who can't afford to buy too much. They can't afford to buy. They're struggling to get the basic.

Patrick Grant30:18

Is this the

Patrick Grant30:22

It's devastating. But the reason those good things are so expensive.

Patrick Grant30:27

comparatively is because we don't make them in big volumes anymore. They u you know, we used to employ 1.6 million people in the UK making textiles. Now it's about 100,000.

Patrick Grant30:36

When we had a big industry, the bigger it was, the more efficient it was, and the good quality stuff would be affordable, or certainly more affordable.

Presenter30:43

It's almost time to cast you away to your desert island. First things first, talk me through the outfit.

Patrick Grant30:49

Well, I'm I'm probably wearing the trousers I'm wearing today because I wear these trousers probably seventy percent of all days. Either in

Presenter30:54

They're a cocky, a cocky pants.

Patrick Grant30:55

They're a khaki baggy field trouser. They're incredibly robust. They're the sort of trousers that you would have been able to buy anywhere forty years ago. Like super hard wearing, loose, lovely, you know, they're great. I'm probably wearing a blue crew neck and a sandal that I've made out of twisted coconut tuft and uh driftwood.

Presenter31:16

Oh well, everyone'll be copying you the following year when you escape. What sort of island are you hoping for?

Patrick Grant31:21

I'm hoping there's plenty of driftwood that washes up. I'm hoping that there's stuff growing on the island that I can spin into yarn. I'm gonna make myself a loom and a spinning wheel on this island so that I can, you know, make myself some togs and maybe a sail. But maybe some flax growing on this island. That would be quite good. Flax that you spin into linen that you can then use for everything from clothing to sails to hammocks to roof tarpaulins.

Presenter31:39

The new condition

Presenter31:47

Meanwhile, fingers crossed.

Patrick Grant31:47

Our fingers crossed. That's what I'm doing.

Presenter31:49

Well that's the practicalities taken care of. On the emotional side you'll be completely isolated.

Patrick Grant31:50

Taking care of

Patrick Grant31:53

Yeah.

Presenter31:54

How will you deal with that?

Patrick Grant31:55

I'm going to make stuff. That's what I'm going to do on this island. I'm going to making things makes me feel calm and happy and centered and useful. So I think I will spend my time building things, making things. That's what I'll be doing.

Presenter32:10

Well, we've got one final track to hear from you before we cast you away, Patrick Grant. Your last choice today, please. What is it?

Patrick Grant32:16

It's a song called I Saw by Young Fathers.

Presenter32:20

And why have you chosen it?

Patrick Grant32:21

The Young Fathers are an Edinburgh band. What I love about Young Fathers is as a band they feel like the very best of how multicultural Britain contributes positively to our society. The way that people from other places bring so much value to our lives is, I think, encapsulated in this sort of very culturally rich small band that make amazing music.

Speaker 232:47

Give me that bulletproof vest

Speaker 232:50

Yeah, I love susceptible.

Speaker 232:56

No falling for your champs, put crashing through your arms, handful of coins, and a bowl of fists. Beat me alive!

Speaker 233:05

Cleaning on it!

Speaker 233:07

A bad seed, a rotting apple, tickle the rubbish

Speaker 233:14

Buried in between justice, holier than thou

Presenter33:18

Young Fathers and I Saw. So, Patrick Grant, it's time to send you away to the island. I'm giving you the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare to take along with you. You can also take one other book. What would you like?

Patrick Grant33:30

I'm going to take a book by Mike Abbott. It's called Green Woodworking. It's an encyclopedia of woodworking techniques, but it starts all the way back at the tree, which is useful, because it'll teach me how to make planks before I make everything else. So I'm going to teach myself how to make things with wood.

Presenter33:47

Wonderful. You could also have a luxury item. Not so practical, if you wouldn't mind. Well, something for.

Patrick Grant33:51

Well, actually, my luxury item is somewhat connected, but I'm taking a set of woodworking tools.

Presenter33:56

Well, there has been precedent for

Presenter34:00

Tools that are used to make an object that is for sensory stimulation, that is in pursuit of aesthetics rather than anything practical.

Patrick Grant34:04

This includes

Patrick Grant34:08

I'm gonna make myself a piano. I'm gonna start with a xylophone.

Patrick Grant34:12

And then I'm going to work my way up. I can probably make an oboe, I reckon.

Presenter34:15

It'll keep you busy anyway, Patrick Runt. I'm not entirely sure I believe you, but I'm gonna I'm gonna let it pass this once. The tools, for non practical purposes only, are yours. And finally, which one track from the eight that you've shared with us today will you rush to save from the waves first?

Patrick Grant34:16

Patrick.

Patrick Grant34:30

I'm gonna take Kildem because it makes me happy.

Presenter34:35

Patrick Grant, thank you very much for letting us hear your Desert Island Discs.

Patrick Grant34:39

Thank you.

Presenter34:53

Hello, I hope Patrick's very happy on his island trying to make a piano and who knows, maybe even an oboe. We've cast away many designers over the years, including Paul Costello, Stella McCartney, and Savile Row Taylor Andrew Ramroop. You can hear their programmes if you search through our Desert Island Discs programme archive or on BBC Sounds and you'll also find Patrick's favourite musician Tom York in there too. The studio manager for today's programme was Sarah Hockley, the assistant producer was Christine Pavlovsky and the producer was Sarah Taylor. The series editor is John Gowdy. Join me next time when I'm talking to Women's Health Ambassador Professor Dame Leslie Regan.