Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Founder of UK's first internet bank EGG and credit business Noddle; established STEM schools; chairman of RFU.
On the island
Eight records
The keepsakes
In conversation
Presenter asks
2:23Have you always been happy to stick your neck out and take that leap [of starting something new]?
I think so. I can't remember a time when I haven't uh been willing to sort of give it a go over and over again. I think it uh it partly comes from having big brothers and sisters who just uh you lose to continuously and if you don't keep coming back then you're just going to keep losing, so you get used to uh coming back over and over and over again, and that's what I do.
Presenter asks
2:57What kind of changes have you seen in the sectors that you work in regarding diversity?
I think it is changing. I work mostly in technology, but I also see education and I see financial services and broader in businesses. … Organizations are getting just more open to the idea that if you have more diverse teams, you're just going to get more variety in the conversation, and that makes for a better business. So I think organizations are gradually realizing that even if you didn't think it was the right thing to do, it actually makes good business sense to have more variety around the table, more ideas, more ways of thinking about things, and you push forward from there.
Presenter asks
5:06How did [your father] come to the UK in the first place?
The book
Tade Thompson
I would choose the Wormwood trilogy, of which Rosewater is the first one, by a writer called Tadde Thompson. I love science fiction, and I created an award called the Nomo Awards for African Science Fiction, and that book won the first prize. And it's an amazing vision of a future. So that's what I would choose.
The luxury
Solar-powered AI-driven puzzle creator
I do puzzles. ... I decided to create a solar-powered AI-driven puzzle creator that can generate puzzles for me. And they'd be based on pictures of my family and so forth. It's going to use a technique called generative adversarial networks. I've got it all mapped out, a 3D printer to print them out.
Well, he joined the army in Nigeria. Before it was Nigeria, this would have been the mid-fifties when he was about fourteen years old. So he was essentially a child soldier, if you like. He sort of pretended he was sixteen and managed to get himself recruited because that was one of the ways sort of out of the village. And then the army there chose three boys to come to the UK to be trained. … And so next thing he knew, in about 1957, he was on a flight over to Harrogate to the Army Apprentice School. … And then after he left the army and he stayed in England, he ended up getting a job at some point at the BBC and became one of the first, if not the first, black electrical engineers working at the BBC.
Presenter asks
6:20How did [your father] deal with what he found in this country [the UK]?
He was tough, very, very tough and very, very smart, intellectually, extremely clever. And there was a lot of overt racism back then. If anything happened, rather than just saying, okay, let it go and so forth, he just wouldn't. He would challenge and fight continuously and sort of saying to me, you never ever back down. Back then on T V there was a programme called The Black and White Minstrels and he worked as an engineer, I think, either on that programme or around the time when it was going on and some of the lads used to come up to him and sort of touch his face and say, oh, yours doesn't come off. And then they'd all fall about laughing and so forth. So he had all that good stuff back then.
Presenter asks
10:44How did you get on [at school in Teddington]? How did you fit in?
I loved it. Those were my rugby playing, ice skating days. It could be tough. Early seventies, London, you know, you're a little black boy and the sort of overt racism that you have to experience, you have to figure out how to deal with it. But then I was a rugby boy and I had my friends around me and if I had to fight, then I'd fight, and if I didn't have to, then I'd navigate. And we found a way through, so it was okay.
Presenter asks
26:20You have described living in what I think you call a state of persistent sadness. Is that an important part of who you are? Would you want to change it if you could?
I don't think I would want to change it. I think it is part of who I am. I'm genuinely happy and genuinely sad, often at the same time, in the same moment, in the same periods, and I think that is who I am, and I'm comfortable with that.
“I can't remember a time when I haven't uh been willing to sort of give it a go over and over again.”
“He was tough, very, very tough and very, very smart, intellectually, extremely clever. And there was a lot of overt racism back then. … He would challenge and fight continuously and sort of saying to me, you never ever back down.”
“she blacked up my face and then other boys were coming in and falling about laughing and then she realized that I was crying because the makeup was running off my face. … I was so embarrassed that I was going to have to go out on stage and there would be this huge roar of laughter of little Tom all blacked up and so forth.”
“they tied us up and put us on the ground. … my dad was driving home just at that time, and then he looked and he thought, I know that looter. … he came over and begged them and they untied us and stood us up.”
“I'm always sad, and I'm almost always happy as well, and I can be both at the same time.”