Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Progressive businessman behind the Timpson shoe repair and key-cutting chain, known for second-chance hiring.
On the island
Eight records
This is by the five-penny piece. I'm going back to the 60s, 60s, 70s. This is where I started in business.
Scherzo from Piano Trio in B-flat major, Op. 97 'Archduke'
Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio
This goes back to my teenage years when I struggled to play the violin... I was able to play well enough to just about be satisfied with the noise.
This one takes me back to school. I went to boarding school when I was age 13. ... this Elvis track was nearly always on.
Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong
University time, because I had a friend in the first year who had the Ella and Louie tracks, and we used to listen to those on a Sunday morning.
The reason why this is here is that I've spent quite a few years when I've actually had quite a lot of stress. ... I started playing the piano very badly, but I managed to find easy to play pieces. And the one I enjoyed most was a whole book full of carpenters things. So that's why the carpenters are in there to help me through some of the dark times.
There's No One Quite Like Grandma
This was a Christmas song. It went to number one. But it was performed by the St Winsbridge School Choir from St Winnerford School in Stockport, which is where the second two were at when this was recorded.
True Love WaysFavourite
This was the piece of music that was played on our 25th wedding anniversary, which we celebrated on Necker Island. ... It's simply here because it's Alex.
This particular track has got on it people who I've heard many times and know got to know quite well, and it just brings back to me the lovely holidays for the last twenty years that I've enjoyed in the Caribbean.
In conversation
Presenter asks
5:12What is your view on the EU referendum?
I think that there are those on the one side who are risk adverse, process driven, sort of people who are fairly conservative and they want to stay in, and there are people like me who are a bit of a maverick who think, give me the chance to have a go, free me of some of the red tape. And I'm sort of more a character who's likely to want to be out than in. But it wouldn't make much difference to our business either way, because a lot of the stuff that comes down from the EU, if I don't agree with it, then we do it our way. And I also wonder if we did come out, have we got the talent in the UK to really take advantage of it? We probably have. It is a risk. But on balance, I think it's a risk worth taking.
Presenter asks
6:11What does the inverted pyramid mean in practice?
Okay, one of my first things I had to do was to convince our people that they have got total freedom. So for the last 20 years, anyone in our business, every colleague, can spend up to £500 to settle a complaint for a customer without referring to anyone else. It actually saved me a fortune because by settling complaints quickly you avoid big problems. And also I say to people, all our colleagues, you can charge what you want. ... I'm talking here of shoe repairs, key cutting, because you always got some customer's got a particular problem you need to solve, and you've got to give your people the freedom to solve it the way they know best.
Presenter asks
The keepsakes
The book
Thomas Hardy
I'm going to take the Mayor of Casterbridge because I've always wanted to write a novel. I've written business books and I thought I could study that and use that as a sort of learning curve to write the novel.
The luxury
Really what I'd like to take is a tennis court. But I think I'll run round the island and take the paper and the pen.
What did you absorb from your own parents?
We were a very ordinary is perhaps the wrong word. It was conventional, that's the right word, and conservative with a small C. My parents were big social. I was introduced to playing golf at the age of 10 because my father did. I've got an elder sister, just the two of us. She was much more of the social animal going to parties. I was quite withdrawn, really, I guess. ... Very shy, yeah. And uh at the background there was always the family business thing. I always knew I'd never even questioned the fact I was going to be part of the family business. It was just the way I was brought up. It was always expected, you know, that I would follow in my father's footsteps.
Presenter asks
18:01What happened during the family feud when your uncle ousted your father?
My father just had to leave. I mean, he was told he had to leave that day and bring the car back a week later, never to go into the shops other than a customer. It was really quite nasty stuff. And suddenly the whole life that I thought had been planned for me, as it were, came to a grinding halt.
Presenter asks
21:52How did the conversation go when your wife said she wanted to foster?
She did ask me, but I don't think there was any doubt what the answer was going to be. ... It it was a long time after we'd been approved by the Fostering and Adoption Panel to be foster carers, and nothing sort of happened. I'd have forgotten all about it. And I arrived home one Friday night to find I've got two more children in the house. What I wasn't prepared for is the completely different experience that they'd had in life compared with our children. Inasmuch as, I mean, we had a fairly big garden, but they called it the park. They'd never seen anything like it before. And almost immediately we got a couple of these little tractor things which the children drive around with their feet, and round around the kitchen and literally going F F F F. Right. Colourful language. Colourful language. Which, of course, our children thought was absolutely fantastic. But this was the start of many things, and they stayed with us for six months.
Presenter asks
30:21What was your wife Alex's legacy in your business?
I think she made an enormous influence. I mean, there were one or two very critical decisions that she made a big difference to. There was a time when I had thoughts of floating the business. We've got a merchant banker lined up and she just came and said, you're mad. You would never be able to work with these people. You would find it so difficult to have institutional shareholders or any other shareholders. And how right she was. And that I mean, that was a brilliant, brilliant piece of advice.
“anyone in our business, every colleague, can spend up to £500 to settle a complaint for a customer without referring to anyone else.”
“My father just had to leave. I mean, he was told he had to leave that day and bring the car back a week later, never to go into the shops other than a customer.”
“What I wasn't prepared for is the completely different experience that they'd had in life compared with our children. Inasmuch as, I mean, we had a fairly big garden, but they called it the park.”
“We don't take people who are sex offenders. We don't take people who've been found guilty of arson. The offenders doesn't matter to us. What matters is their potential and their personality.”
“she just came and said, you're mad. You would never be able to work with these people.”