Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Businessman and chairman of Northern Foods who built a small dairy into one of Britain's biggest food companies and is a prominent Labour supporter.
On the island
Eight records
Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125 'Choral': III. Adagio molto e cantabileFavourite
Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Leonard Bernstein
It's a recording made by Leonard Bernstein on Christmas Day in Berlin in 1989, two months after the wall came down. An experience that I never expected to see. And Bernstein, a great radical playing this piece of music, epitomizes that great day.
Herbert Stothart and Harry Ruby
She reminds me so much of Diana, the Princess of Wales. She was dazzlingly beautiful, she was impetuous, she was outrageous, she was vulnerable, she was tragic, she was charismatic, she was a public icon. But at the same time, she always acted herself, try as she could, she was obsessed with the camera, and this song expresses what they were both all about.
To me, Lennon and McCartney typified the sixties. They wrote an endless string of brilliant tunes, but I suppose Sergeant Pepper added words to those tunes, and the poignancy, the clarity, and the ironic humour of the words in this song are quite astonishing.
He was the first all-American footballer. He became a lawyer, he became a great singer, he became a great actor, and he gave it all up in order to fight for civil rights. He was the worst victim, probably of McCarthyism. His passport was taken away from him in the 1950s. And eventually, he got it given back and came to England in 1958 and stayed with my father-in-law and the family. And I think this song, Joe Hill, really is what Paul Robeson was all about, both his voice and, of course, his beliefs.
It's a song out of a musical called King Kong, which came to London in 1961, the year after Sharpeville, from South Africa, played by an all-black cast at a time where apartheid was tightening its grip. Mandela was still free, but you had a terrible sense of doom and you felt it watching these actors as they played. I remember a young actress in tears at the end of it, and you felt something awful was going to happen. And yet you could feel at the same time the exuberance of black South Africa.
Symphony No. 9 in E minor, Op. 95 'From the New World': II. Largo
Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Herbert von Karajan
Very simply, Dvorak, I seem to have an obsession with America, a love of the place, a sometimes a contempt for the place, but you can't get away from the excitement. This piece gives vivid images of the wide open spaces of Midwest America.
If You Miss Me at the Back of the Bus
Pete Seeger was a great folk singer, great radical. Player in the 60s, in the civil rights movement in the 60s. And this song is about the ban which took place in those days in Alabama, which forbade black people from sitting at the front of the bus.
The First World War was probably the most pointless war of all. Millions of soldiers seemed to be sacrificed for nothing. There were an extraordinary number of beautiful tragic songs written for those soldiers, and Joan Littlewood's show in nineteen sixty three absolutely caught the flavor of the futility and yet the heroic beauty of these songs.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:46How could you support the nationalization of the means of production and lead a publicly quoted company with a duty to your shareholders?
I never believed it and I never took it seriously and I don't think very many people in the Labour Party ever took it seriously from Clement Attlee onwards.
Presenter asks
5:02How does [your belief in informality] work when you employ twenty five thousand people?
Well, we actually break it down into twenty-one companies, and all of them have got their own managing directors, and we give as much autonomy as we possibly can do to those managing directors, and they in turn have got to give as much autonomy to the people underneath. The trick is to give people the autonomy, but at the same time to make sure that you have control over the values and the principles and the broad strategies of the business.
Presenter asks
7:57Why was the second Aldermaston march in 1958 a kind of defining moment in your life?
It was. Well, it was interesting because the Irish Times I had somehow secured to get five pounds in the Irish Times to write about the Aldermarsen march for them. And it was a compelling moment. I mean, you could just see that there was something extraordinary happening where democracy was alive and well, and something was going to change as a result of this. And I joined the march, and I've been marching ever since.
The keepsakes
The book
Sean O'Casey
I came down to Sean O'Casey and a collection of his plays, Juno and the Paycock, Captain Boyle, Joxer Daly, all of those characters and the language, the bitterness and the humour.
The luxury
I thought of bringing Lord's Cricket Ground and I could spend all day at Lord's Cricket Ground and then write about the pay write about it at night. What if you bump into John Major, he's got the oval on this arm? Oh, I see. So well, that would be at least we have that in common. We have a few more things in common perhaps. But eventually I decided just a pen and paper and I could write my profit forecast for the company. I could try and write a book, which I'd love to do, but I haven't been able to do. And maybe eventually write a message because, you know, milk bottles float around, they get lost, and maybe one will turn up on this island, and I'll put a message into the milk bottle and it will get back to its depot, as I'm sure it will do, and somebody will come and collect me.
Presenter asks
21:44What is your vision of Europe?
I do believe that there's going to be more devolvement within Europe towards a Europe of one hundred cities where we can all identify with a city and we can all culturally have a centre there, economically have a centre there. And we're going back to a concept which existed 600 years ago in Italy. It seemed a very civilized concept and I think it will come.
Presenter asks
26:27What's the reason for not taking as much money as you're deemed to have earned?
I have a lot of shares in Northern Foods. I mean, I've been in this business all my life. It's almost a family business. I don't need the money. And thirdly, there is a problem. I think that salaries have got out of control here and in the United States. People are concerned about it. Governments can't do very much about it. I'm not saying all salaries are out of control, but there are too many almost obscene payments going on. And I think business has got a job to set an example as politicians have.
“The lesson that when you get an insoluble problem, walk away and when you come back it may have been solved.”
“The nation state has created so much violence in Europe over the last two or three hundred years. I mean, there is very little that can be said in favour of the nation-state and the relationship between one nation-state and another.”
“It is no longer possible for one country to look after its economic or political destiny on its own. That is a reality of life.”