Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Led ASDA to multi-million profits and as Conservative MP & vice president works to modernize his party.
On the island
Eight records
I wanted to have something to remind me of my childhood days in Scotland, and this is something that really captures the spirit of the West Coast of Scotland.
Orfeo ed Euridice: Dance of the Blessed Spirits
London Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Raymond Leppard
This is a piece of flute music. I in my childhood I was made to play the flute for a period. I wasn't a great success, but this was the height of my achievement.
King's College Choir and the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, conducted by Philip Ledger
I think uh on a desert island you need a bit of bark anyway, and this is something that takes me back to my Cambridge days.
This is I guess a classic nineteen seventies sort of pop anthem, which is David Bowie and Heroes.
Michael Chance, Timothy Wilson, English Concert and Choir, conducted by Trevor Pinnock
There'll be moments stuck on my desert island where it'll be necessary to lift the spirits and um the uh next piece of music is a seriously uplifting and jolly piece, uh which is Purcell's Come Ye Sons of Art.
This is a record for those lighter and dreamier moments on the desert island. It is Take My Breath Away by Berlin.
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
the next record is a really uh stunning uh piece of uh reading by Richard Burton uh of the Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
RequiemFavourite
Choir of St John's College, Cambridge and the English Chamber Orchestra, conducted by George Guest
The Mozart Requiem, which probably of all the works I have chosen best expresses to me the depths of the human spirit and to some extent the melancholy of human life.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:16How dismayed were you by what you found inside Tory Central Office? Was it far worse than you viewed from the outside?
Well, it's not just a question of central office, it's a question of the whole Conservative Party. Now I think the effect of… the catastrophic defeat on may first was to lay bare the fact that our organization as Conservatives has been in decline for some twenty years.
Presenter asks
6:21How do you have a meeting if you can't sit down?
Well we haven't abolished chairs altogether, but one of the things I believe is that a working office should be a place where people can create all sorts of moods.… we also have what I call a standing room, which is a room where we had used to have a perfectly ordinary table and chairs. I noticed that when we had the meetings a lot of people were leaning back and dozing off and it was inefficient.… if people are standing up, they find it hard to doze off.
Presenter asks
7:52What happens if you just want some peace and quiet away from this music playing or whatever and away from all the hubbub of people around you?
Well, we're not uh high on peace and quiet, we believe the organization should be fizzing with excitement.… I believe if you want peace and quiet, you can either, of course, go into a meeting room or, better still, go home.
The keepsakes
The book
Izaak Walton
I thought about having Gibbons decline and fall, but then I guess a lot of people have that um So I thought the most useful thing would be to the Take the Complete Angler by Isaac Walton.
The luxury
My first reaction was to have a fishing rod to go with a complete angler, but then that's not really a luxury, that would be a utility. Uh so instead I'd have something that I'd really want, uh which would be a jar of Marmite.
Presenter asks
12:34What about academically? Were you any good at all at school?
Uh no, uh the most important thing uh for me at school was football.… At the age of about fifteen I started uh studying economics, uh which again was my subject. There was an absolutely inspired economics teacher… who picked me up academically and made me into a success. I don't think previously I'd ever uh gone through school with any real uh appetite for academic work
Presenter asks
19:19Can you define what that [McKinsey culture] is for me?
Yes, McKinsey was a very in some ways a very introverted institution, one where people worked on confidential assignments that th they were only in a position to discuss with their own colleagues, that had its own system, its own system of promotion, and it's very much its own ethos
Presenter asks
23:43Was that move [to Woolworths] about money?
Uh no, I earned less um in my first year at uh Woolworth Holdings than I did at McKinsey.… Woolworth, one of my major clients, I'd worked with Geoff Malkay… And we were just on the brink of the turnaround of the Woolworth business… There came one day a bid from Dixon's.… Jeff asked me if I would stay to help organise the defence of the bid, which I did.… At the end of that, Jeff said to me, Well, you can't leave now. And I said, Well, if I'm going to stay here, I'll need a job. And he said, Well, you can be finance director.
“the spirit of the Conservative Party is different, obviously, from that of a business.”
“The importance of woolly jumpers and so on is not what people look like. It's that it takes away the suited, the titles, the status things that get between people and act as barriers to communication.”
“We are a business. We are competing in the marketplace. The success and the future of colleagues in the business and shareholders depends on our commercial success. We are a decision-making organization. There is command and control. That's true. All successful organizations have to be able to move fast today and move forward. And I do believe in leadership. And single status does not mean you don't have leadership.”
“I'm a very self-contained person. I'm quite content. I'd be quite content to be alone. I think I'd manage reasonably well without a bed to make and housekeeping to do.”