Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
A public service regulator and serial regulator, best known for leading oversight of probation, criminal case reviews, and exam qualifications, creating order i
On the island
Eight records
It is going to be Loch Lomond. And the reason I've chosen this is because I've got such fond memories of Scotland. As a child, both my parents were working, and my brothers and I, we were shipped off to Glasgow, where my father's sisters lived, usually for the whole of the summer holidays. And there was a freedom up there. And I had cousins that were just that little bit older than me. So I thought they were just fantastic, you know, stylish and edgy and fun. And we just did things that I wasn't quite allowed at home.
We're going to hear a really old ditty, Scarlet Ribbons, Harry Belafonte, and I've chosen it because this was an important song to me when I was a small child. My father was a painter and decorator, worked hard at work, but my mother had a load of projects for him at home as well, you know, redoing the kitchen or building an extension. But he was always singing and he used to belt this out. perhaps while wallpapering the ceiling and looking at me and smiling. We had a lovely, happy household. My parents were just great parents.
Oh, this is T-Rex and Ride-a-White Swan. Fantastic. When T-Rex came along, they were just so different, and you know, they were just gorgeous as well. Mary and I went to see them at the Colston Hall, and it was just such a fantastic experience. Yes, we did get an invite backstage. We didn't go because Mary's father was outside in the car patiently waiting to pick us up. Probably just as well. But yeah, we were a bit thwarted.
Solsbury HillFavourite
So I've chosen Peter Gabriel Salisbury Hill, and I've chosen it because it's just such an uplifting song. Once I was married with children, we used to play this year after year. Everyone sang along with it. And I think it's a strong message really that life can send all sorts of unexpected sort of events in your way and sometimes they can turn out really well.
Oh, we're going to hear a Wagner piece, The Ride of the Valkyries. This really has a great deal of resonance for me about a period in my life, two thousand and seven. When I was chief executive of an organization called Animal Health, and we dealt with a small outbreak of foot and mouth disease. I was the field commander for the response to that. But the deputy chief vet at the time, Fred Landegg, was hugely experienced, and sometimes when you're in the heat of the moment a bit of levity helps. And Fred had this tune on his phone. This was his ringtone. Yeah. And whenever I heard it I knew that something was afoot, but he was on top of it.
Piano Concerto No. 2 in G minor
Stephen Hough with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra
I've chosen Saint-Sans Piano Concerto number two in G minor. I went to see it performed live at the Symphony Hall in Birmingham with my husband, and I was just so uplifted and moved by it. It's a tremendously difficult piece to perform, and to see the pride and relief and joy on the faces of the pianist and the orchestra and the conductor as it concluded, I'll never forget it.
So I've chosen I Shot the Sheriff by Bob Marley. I think it's a great song. I loved it when I was at the Criminal Case Review Commission where it was surprisingly rare that someone actually acclaimed their innocence when they applied to us. They might say that they'd had an unfair hearing or they'd been stitched up by the police. It wasn't often that they started by saying they were innocent, interestingly. But sometimes you'd get a situation where someone would say to you, Well, I didn't commit that particular crime because I was committing a much worse one at the time. And it's a pretty good alibi, really.
Soave sia il vento (from Così fan tutte)
Renée Fleming, Anne Sofie von Otter, Michele Pertusi with the Chamber Orchestra of Europe
This is from Mozart's Cosifantuti, just a beautiful piece of music and singing. This is where men are going off to war, and it's a bit of a lament, but actually, in typical opera style, they're not really going at all. So there's a sort of tongue-in-cheek aspect to it as well, but it is tremendously moving.
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:41So tell me more about the appeal of walking into those chaotic situations and creating order. Most people would run a mile. Why don't you?
Well, I think in a lot of these jobs, you're walking into an organisation that, in one way or another, needs some sort of help. And if you've got the experience and you can sort out some of those really grisly problems that have been lying around for a while, it is very satisfying to make things work better, but also to show good people that are working hard in difficult circumstances that it can actually get better, that they can have someone a champion who'll make it work for them and for wider society. You never, in an interview for a top job, really get told quite what the issues are. You know, you have to get through the door and find out. Have there ever been any particularly nasty skeletons? I've had situations where it turns out the organisation is almost ludicrously underfunded, for example, and then you're pretty quickly into a battle to get that sorted. That can often involve some rather testing conversations with ministers and perhaps one or two appearances before a select committee to sort. Can you give us any examples?
Presenter asks
5:16What was your biggest challenge in that role?
A first challenge was to make sure the inspectorate itself could inspect well enough and fairly enough to make sure that it was making really solid, valid judgments about what it was actually seeing. Secondly, I think it was to set standards for probation because actually government had changed quite radically how probation is delivered and part of that it had thrown sort of expectations out of the window. So we had to really start and say what good probation should actually look like. But then thirdly, and I suspect over time most importantly, it was persuading government that in privatising much of probation, although it may have had good intentions, it actually wasn't working out as intended and things did need to change.
The keepsakes
The book
The Oxford Book of English Short Stories
I'm going to take the Oxford Book of English short stories. It's a lovely thing, great variety of stories in there. So I'll be able to choose the right one for whatever mood I'm in.
The luxury
I will be very keen to create some sort of garden and to nurture things along.
Presenter asks
9:29Tell me a little bit more about home life. You were born 1954 in the West Midlands in Wolsall Wood. It was you and your two brothers. We already know that your dad was a crooner, and I know that you learned quite an important lesson from hearing your dad sing while he worked. What was that?
That's right. So I suppose innocently I was watching him working and singing once at home and I said. Please and It must be great to enjoy your job so much. And he said, no, actually, I hate it. But it's what I do to earn a living. And it was a real shock to me at the time that people did jobs that they didn't particularly enjoy in order to earn a living. Of course, it makes a load of sense, but at the time, it was a real lesson for me, and I respected him for that.
Presenter asks
27:08You said it was a very difficult time for you professionally. How did you get through it?
I think it probably was the most difficult time of my career, because it was very plain that something unfair had happened. Regulation had not been able to prevent that unfairness happening. And that's a sober reflection for me, that you can't always make things right. Just to explain, in that case, a new qualification that had been designed some years before had been examined for the first time in twenty twelve. The national results looked healthy. But underneath that there were huge variations between schools. Now my first thought as a regulator regulating was that these pesky exam boards must have done something awry, but actually they had not. They had acted fairly and awarded fairly. We were therefore at a loss to know exactly why these variations had occurred school by school, but we did set about finding out why. We had to build new systems there to interrogate very large data sets school by school, class by class. And there we found that while the situation was complex, there were a number of changes to the qualification which perhaps not every teacher had fully understood. But it was also clear that a good number of teachers had been overenthusiastic in the way they had marked students' coursework. So really it was a question of trying to explain that, but we were not successful in the sense that proceedings were issued against us, and then it was a question of making sure we were able to get our position across in those proceedings.
Presenter asks
30:40What do you think are the biggest challenges facing us there?
Well this is an enormously exciting role actually. So we've got enormously large data sets now in the public and private domains and also we've got the exponential growth of artificial intelligence and the issue for us as a country is to make sure that those things are used and developed for the public good. Terribly difficult to work out how one might actually regulate it but this organisation created by government is trying to get a grip on that and doing some very good work.
Presenter asks
33:55What's the first thing that you'll do when you get there?
I'm going to take a good look around and see where I'm going to start planting my garden. So you're a keen gardener? I have come to gardening late in life, but yes, I really do enjoy it.
“It is very satisfying to make things work better, but also to show good people that are working hard in difficult circumstances that it can actually get better, that they can have someone a champion who'll make it work for them and for wider society.”
“Knowing what you're talking about, underrated these days, I think.”
“And he said, no, actually, I hate it. But it's what I do to earn a living. And it was a real shock to me at the time that people did jobs that they didn't particularly enjoy in order to earn a living.”
“I think it probably was the most difficult time of my career, because it was very plain that something unfair had happened. Regulation had not been able to prevent that unfairness happening.”
“I love being a dame.”