Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
A designer known for cheerful, practical homeware with a nostalgic 1950s style, who built a global business from ironing board covers.
On the island
Eight records
And I chose that because I was, I don't know what age I was, I'm not very good at, must be about six or seven I guess. And I was given a record token. And I've always loved going shopping, even from a very small age. I'd lived in the country, so I didn't have much opportunity to go shopping. But I do remember taking my record token into Andover and seeing the whole list of singles. And I chose the name. You know, living out in the country with chickens, I thought, okay, I'll go for that one. And that was the start of a kind of long, long love of the Rolling Stones.
Ella Fitzgerald & Louis Armstrong
'cause this really reminds me of my parents growing up. And it was kind of going down to their side of the house. And my dad loved playing music. I think of my parents at the weekends,'cause that's when they were both around the most.
Because I'm I'm very close to my sister and as a teenager when I was completely in awe of her we would lie on the sofa learning how to smoke, listening to Lou Reed.
This is your husband. My common law husband, he's really or whatever. And I think he's the most talented person ever. And he's worked in the record industry since he left school. He's aged seventeen from being a T-boy. He's worked producing and making some of, I think, the best records ever. And this song to me completely epitomizes what he's done.
which really reminds me of my days going off in the truck behind the carboot sails and having this playing.
this in particular reminds me very much of my stepdaughter Jess and her coming back from school one day, aged about 10, saying, have you heard of that song, Let's Get It On? I was saying, yes, why? And she'd just played it for her introduction to sex education lessons at school.
Always Look on the Bright Side of LifeFavourite
On the island, I definitely need something that reminds me of England. I love travelling and I love going away more than anything on earth, but I know that I would miss home and I would miss England a lot. And this song, Always Look on the Bright Side of Life, is kind of relentlessly cheerful, which could drive me mad, but also I think I'd I'd need a bit of this.
There's an emotion in it. There's a sort of a sense of melancholy which is also quite happy. How can I say I'm very inarticulate today, but there's something about it that's incredibly comforting and thought-provoking, and I think that's why I'd need it.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:16Was there a tipping point where you realized your business had gone from a small handmade concern to a serious global concern?
Do you know, I don't know the exact point. I really felt from very, very early on I was onto something with the notion of what I was doing. I remember feeling I'd really overstepped the mark when I opened my second shop, thinking that's probably going a stage too far. What am I doing?
Presenter asks
5:16What is it you love about the process of shopping?
literally, as a very, very small child, I would go and play in the garden with my sister. We were thrown out every day, you know, to get fresh air or whatever. And I turned a laurel bush into a shop and leaves were money and I was, you know, I don't know what I was lining up and selling. But the whole process I absolutely adore.
Presenter asks
7:28Was it quite an old-fashioned upbringing?
Very old fashioned when I look back. I don't remember learning, but I remember books so we had to copy lots of A's and B's, endless copying, which I did beautifully, right to left. No one would watch what I was doing, and I'm very left handed.
The keepsakes
The book
I thought if I took the big La Russe with me, I could sit there and learn French.
Presenter asks
11:30What was your mother's business?
She ran, she had paying guests at home. Not long after he died, she was quite short of cash. With absolutely no self-pity, she started cooking and taking and selling food on a market stool in the local town. And this was someone who hadn't had to cook for all her adult life.
Presenter asks
15:13Did you have a sense of ambition in your mid-twenties?
I always had these ideas going and I had um one real saviour which is I've got a cousin, a most lovely woman called Belinda Belleville. She was a dress designer. She had a company called Belleville Sassoon in the sixties and she was the only woman I knew who went off to work and she wore much trendier clothes than my mum... But I never expected to have a business like her'cause she was kind of... Really up on a pedestal, what she was doing. I knew I was creatively... at school, for example, I won the art prizes and I really enjoyed art and I had creative skills. But I didn't know how I could convert that into an actual business.
Presenter asks
25:39Was the reason you didn't have children connected to being diagnosed with cancer?
It's true. I had breast cancer in my mid-thirties... And I was very lucky that it was found very early on. And so I didn't have to even have chemotherapy. But I had a choice afterwards. We could have had children. And there's at the time I was advised not to because of the risks... But I never imagined I wouldn't have children. And so it's very hard if I think about it. But I would never, I'm sure, have had my business if I'd brought up children. In a way, my business has been a bit like a replacement child. I've had to do that to fill that gap. And it's served me in that way.
“I've always worked on a very simple basis, you know, such a simple mind, that um more in than out is quite helpful.”
“I do remember very clearly at his funeral, it's a very strange memory I have, but thinking, I'm just going to have to show him what I can do. for him to sort of feel proud of me.”
“I think you have to if you're going to do something you've got to be honest to yourself and do I do what I like for myself and I don't expect everyone to like it.”