Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
A designer and entrepreneur best known for founding Habitat and introducing British shoppers to the duvet and chicken brick.
On the island
Eight records
it's from a film that I adore called Some Like It Hot, and it's that wonderful picture of Marilyn Munro in the railway carriage with Jack Lemmon and Tony Curtis in drags supporting her, singing to her ukulele.
A record for contemplation. It's absolutely wonderful for when I want to sit down, draw, think and be creative.
Choir of King's College, Cambridge
the beginning of a a meal in a good restaurant might be a dry martini, and I'm unlikely to get one of those on my desert island. So I've got this bit of music which is twice as good as a dry martini.
this I chose because it reminded me of my time in Paris when I used to go to a wonderful little club and listen to him playing.
here to cheer me up like anything, which is Handel's music for the Royal Fireworks. I'm passionate about fireworks and certainly I don't intend to have a funeral or anything like that. I'm going to leave a very considerable amount of money in my will to have a fantastic firework display and a feast for my friends.
is actually about my children. It's um meant to be a compliment to them that I am mad about them all.
You Can Get It If You Really Want
this is a a bit of music for being on a desert island. And you know, when your spirits get low, you can listen to Desmond Decker, and you can get it if you really want it.
The Köln Concert, Part IFavourite
I choose this again because I can sit down and work and draw, and it inspires me.
In conversation
Presenter asks
2:46How important is money to you in all of this?
none of it at all is about money. I have never ever been interested in money for its own sake in my life. I'm interested in doing things, and to do things, of course, you have to Have money and make money. So it's means to an end.
Presenter asks
6:02Where did the concept of Habitat come from?
Well, it came in two directions. First of all, I mentioned I was a furniture manufacturer and I produced a range of domestic furniture and we sold this range to retailers around the UK. And when I went round and looked at our furniture in these shops, it was invisible. I mean, it was simply subsumed by a mass of sort of other styles. No retailer had any philosophy at all. And I thought, well, it's never going to succeed under these circumstances. Equally, on the other hand, I'd seen friends of mine like Mary Kwan, Poland, Tarfin, Ozzy Clark, the early days of Bieber, frustrated designers putting their ideas directly in front of the public in the way they wanted to put them, because they couldn't get through the brown buyers. And I thought, well, I should be doing the same sort of thing for home furnishing.
Presenter asks
19:50What was the game plan for you in amassing all these companies [for Storehouse]?
Well, all the time they were companies that had problems. Mothercare had a merchandise problem, very well-run company, very good properties, but its merchandise was really horrible. And Selim Zilke, who'd started it, said, I think you should run it because you understand merchandise. And we had a terrific time redesigning the range and made things really good looking and hugely successful. Same with Richards, it was absolutely collapsed, chain of 200 women's fashion stores, really terrible. And we bought them and revived them.
The keepsakes
The book
H. G. Wells
I had a great argument between bile bodies, which makes me laugh like anything, and um HG Wells's History of the World and decided on that because I realized I knew so little about the history of the world and you know here would be an opportunity to be sensible.
The luxury
Well, this was a terrible problem again, because I'm a devoted cigar smoker, so I did think of all the private humidors in Dunhills. But then I thought probably let's be sensible again and have an endless supply of A four sheets of white paper and an endless supply of four B pencils.
Presenter asks
25:38Do you think you were a pretty poor husband and perhaps a worse father?
Probably, yes. So I'm told from time to time. I love them all and we all talk together and we're very friendly together, but they've all divorced me and therefore, you know, I must be unsatisfactory in all sorts of different ways. ... I supp I suppose partially because of the work thing, that um my hobby that, you know, that I'm so devoted to what I'm doing that I do not give enough time to being a good husband.
Presenter asks
29:28How much of a shock was it to be knighted by Mrs Thatcher?
It was a considerable shock and certainly my first reaction was not to accept it, but Caroline said that being a lady would get her to the front of the queue in the local grocery store, so she thought that I probably ought to accept it. And interestingly, when I went and talked to the designers in the business, who I thought would, you know, think it was the most pseudo-corner thing to do. They said no, you should accept it because it is symbolic of design being important.
“I'm not driven. Uh I just enjoy doing it and get a great deal of pleasure and satisfaction from it.”
“I have never ever been interested in money for its own sake in my life. I'm interested in doing things, and to do things, of course, you have to Have money and make money. So it's means to an end.”
“I like energy. I like the waiters rushing through with long white aprons and trays above their heads. I like to see the food being cooked. And this is why many of our restaurants have got an open kitchen where you can actually see the energy in the kitchen. I like the whole theatrical performance of it.”
“It's a very, very, very happy time in my life because I work only with people that I really like and who certainly appear, unless they're terribly good liars, quite to like me. And so there are no politics in it. There are no shareholders to worry about.”