Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
A businessman who is chief executive of Prudential and was the first black man in Britain to lead a FTSE 100 company.
On the island
Eight records
This sends me back to the seventies when I was a teenager in high school and the the lines Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery, None but ourselves can free our minds This is something I've taught my children and it's something I deeply believe.
TajaboneFavourite
It goes back really to Africa because I come from two very different traditions. My father is from Senegal and my mother is from a a very different background and much more privileged from the Ivory Coast. And this music is very representative of a music that you get in the north of Senegal. It's very moving.
And it's funny because he's come to epitomize or symbolize French traditional French singing. And he was my mother's favorite singer and she passed away when I was quite young, in 1984, I was twenty-two. And one of the last things we did was to go to a concert of um Esnavu.
Heaven Is Ten Zillion Light Years Away
It brings me back to my childhood because the thing about having four older brothers and I used to go steal their records and this was one of my favourite songs. So I would listen to this um again and again and again and he's got some interesting lines there. One of which is you know why must my color black make me a lesser man?
I heard her at the closing ceremony of the Olympics, which I think was a a great moment for this country. Probably very British, I was among the sceptics and the grumbling people before the Olympics.
I love movies, not just spaghetti westerns. But this one I saw uh with one of my brothers when I was very young. And this is a a beautiful piece of music by Eno Morricon, who's been prolific as a score writer and has made many, many great soundtracks.
I came to opera relatively late in life. The first opera I saw was in nineteen eighty four, La Tosca, in Paris, with Pavaotti. And I think it's a beautiful piece of music by a great Metzos opera node named Janet Baker.
I like Francinatra and it's probably a very appropriate way to close this series of musical pieces.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:26Do you feel like a powerful man?
No, no, no, no, no, no. I just have to have a conversation with my children to be brought back to earth and to reality. No, I mean I think life is much simpler than that. I I have very simple goals every day. I have a number of tasks to accomplish and that's how I live my life.
Presenter asks
2:07Are you somebody who feels comfortable as a leader of people?
Not really. It's a bit like working on a tight rope because you feel all those expectations around you and it's rarely comfortable. But if you really believe in what it is you're trying to achieve, it helps you go through the journey and walk without looking down. Once you start looking down, you risk falling.
Presenter asks
4:47What is it that you find interesting about [insurance]?
Well, I I I know that people find it dull, but I I don't, luckily. I think we perform a very useful function. I think that risk is something we all have to live with, and in simple terms, our mission is to protect you against the main risks of life.
The keepsakes
The book
Fyodor Dostoevsky
It's quite simple because it's a book I read the first time I went to China in nineteen eighty four and really there was basically no music, no entertainment. Any evening at seven PM we'd be locked in our rooms, and it was The Karmazov Brothers by Fedor Dostoevsky. And I know it's a book that keeps you company when you are alone. So it's I think it's a very safe choice.
The luxury
I love peanuts, so I have made the assumption that there are peanuts on your island, am I right? ... Okay, then I want a uh solar powered uh ice cream maker because I love ice cream.
Presenter asks
Why did you make the decision to go back to Ivory Coast [after the coup]?
I felt indebted to the people who had um worked with me. My PA had gone during the coup in the middle of the night to my office to stop the rebels from looting my office with their bare hands. So I would have felt pretty lousy if I just said, Look, I have a French passport. I don't need to come back.
Presenter asks
22:03Do you think David Cameron is right to keep pumping taxpayers' money as subsidies abroad?
aid is actually not such a big potato. The real issue and the things that distort and create poverty are subsidies, for instance, to wheat to make bread, which means that poor people in Abidjan Viet Ricos eat bread made with French flour rather than flour from cassava locally, and that's creating so much poverty in the countryside. ... I'm a great believer in the private sector. I think that countries have to lift themselves out of poverty. I don't think that the answer comes from the outside, because what drives democracy is the notion that I contribute, even if I make one hundred dollars a year, one dollar out of that one hundred is going to government and therefore I have a stake.
“It's a bit like working on a tight rope because you feel all those expectations around you and it's rarely comfortable. But if you really believe in what it is you're trying to achieve, it helps you go through the journey and walk without looking down. Once you start looking down, you risk falling.”
“I had a professor in France who who always said um what makes the difference between people in life is not how high they can go, it's how low they can go. And he always said, Young men, raise your minimum. Because that will define your potential in life.”
“I don't believe in violence in politics and the whole political scene there is led by people who believe that the unjustified means for me life is sacred, absolutely sacred.”
“The problem with a lot of aid is that it works against democracy because the country is supported by other countries' taxpayers who don't vote in the local elections.”