Amanda Blanc is the group CEO of the insurance company Aviva. She is one of a handful of women at the top of FTSE 100 companies and has spoken out against the sexism and misogyny many – including herself - have encountered during their careers. In 2022 she called out disparaging comments made to her by some of the male shareholders at her company’s own AGM. Her published riposte received some 1.6m views in the space of a few days.
Amanda was born in Treherbert, a former mining village in the Rhondda Valley. Both her grandfathers worked down the mines and she says the miners’ strike of 1984 left a lasting impression on her and taught her the value of community. After studying modern history at Liverpool University, Amanda joined a graduate training scheme at Commercial Union. By the age of 29 she was the company’s youngest and first female branch manager when she took up the post in Leicester.
She joined Aviva in 2020 and the following year she was appointed Women in Finance Charter Champion by HM Treasury. She was named the Sunday Times Business Person of the Year for 2022.
Amanda is married to Ken Blanc, who also worked in insurance but gave up his job to support her career. They have two daughters and live in Hampshire.
DISC ONE: Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God) - Kate Bush
DISC TWO: Town Called Malice - The Jam
DISC THREE: Thank You for the Music - Abba
DISC FOUR: Tainted Love - Soft Cell
DISC FIVE: This is Me - Keala Settle
DISC SIX: Dignity - Deacon Blue
DISC SEVEN: The Man – Taylor Swift
DISC EIGHT: Land of My Fathers - Welsh rugby fans at Six Nations Championship, 2013
BOOK CHOICE: Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
LUXURY ITEM: A photo album
CASTAWAY'S FAVOURITE: Tainted Love - Soft Cell
Presenter Lauren Laverne
Producer Paula McGinley
This is an unofficial transcript meant for reference. Accuracy is not guaranteed.
Previously sounds music. Radio broadcasts, hello, I'm Lorna van and this is the desert island discs. Podcast. Every week I ask my guest to choose the eight tracks book and luxury they want to take with them if they were cast away to a desert island and for right.
Reasons the music is
water down the original broadcast? I hope you enjoy listening
michael
the way this week is the business woman Amanda blank she's, one of the most influential
leaders in the city of london and is currently group seal of a visa. The uk largest insurer, she has thirty years experience in her sector, starting out on the shop floor and working her way up to the
Top she's now want of just eight female ceo to lead a footsie one hundred company and is credited with transforming its fortunes. After a number of difficult years. She grew up a world away from the corporate boardroom herself belief
resilience were instilled during her of bringing in a coal mining family in the Rhonda volley. Both qualities were never
And when she spoke out against the sexist comments aimed at her at her own companies atm last year, the story made headlines and her response to it. One many funds she says, I'm
person who likes change and likes to fix things once something
karen maintenance rule. I'm probably not the right skill set for that Amanda. Blank welcome. Today's island death has done
you very much for a nice interjection. Well, it's thrill to have you here. You are known amanda by your colleagues as the queen of execution. I mean quite a soubriquet. Tell me more about what do you think they mean by that? Well, I hope that's a compliment to not a criticism, but maybe it's both now I just like to get things done. I think you did so often in life. People just talk and talk and talk and talk- and I think you know there's a time for talking, but it is definitely more of a time for doing and if you get into something and you get chief, something
Kate may not be hundreds and perfect, but actually doing something is better than just sort of setting an adjudicating to catering at the side and in saying
well. Maybe if my work
got my work. I I don't know, I think just getting things done important. So it's all about getting stuck it is. I can hear your passion and and not an interesting one, because in Schuman still sometimes get a bad rap. I think one journalist memorably, if ungenerously called it
boring uncle of the financial services have so, and you love it, I think- is so unfair nations and, of course, from the outside people sent by insurance companies, don't pay claims and all of that service. If we pay. Ninety eight ninety nine percent of all of all claims, but more importantly than that, the world doesn't function without insurance. A best doesn't come out of a bus depot attain, doesn't leave a train station, an airplane doesn't fly, and I think we
that a bit in the financial crisis. When you know there was a there was a moment where one of the very very big insurers who ensured a lot of the aircraft wasn't sure that they were going to operate and the whole world was like. Oh hang on what's going to happen, so I think insurance plays a really key role in an independent society.
All right. It's tend to get stuck into amusing alone, account disk number one. What have you chose to take to your island first, so the first disc is capers running after him. I recently bought an apartment in the city and am by both have a pilot on by two inch that apartment and at five o clock in the morning. I can be seen, and hopefully by many people, but on my bike. Listening to kate bush and he's got a brilliant beat, but to keep a cyclist appeals and I basically get their absolute joy of seeing the city wake up. So I look out onto tat bridge onto canary wharf.
I basically see the lights come at in the city. The office sites come on, I'm cycling away, get em myself ready for the day, and you just think how lucky I am to be able to exercise to be able to listen to these wonderful music
why do you keep?
she and running up that hill, so amanda
Don't you were born into her by former mining village in the rendezvous alley. Both your grandfather's, I think we're mine, as did they start work. Young people generally did in those days yeah. My my grandfather started work at the age of thirteen, his father, how to carry him home from work that day, because he was just so exhausted.
It's hard to even imagine what that was like. I'm looking at the really sad story about charlie is that he actually witness the accident that killed his father. He saw a piece of work so for any fathers neck now
didn't die immediately, but he never went back to work after that and he did die of their injuries, so that had happened just a year after he started. So he was at fourteen, yes and and the stories that they told I mean the communal
It was just everything and they lived in the street, which is actually at the top of the valley which they called the tavern. Everybody in that street really worked in the mine ore and was connected to the mine in that way and yeah they had marching bands and, and they used to go on trips to blackpool every year on the bass and what about your other grandad suits, so that was charlie,
That was that, and we used to call him dads, and he was also in the mind, but he retired he retired. A minor
and he worked in the other page. So you know charley was workin companion, he was working in blank home and he got interested
most senior role in the end, but he was still working underground and still is how life revolved about that. Do you described this? This wonderful tight,
community monday, but but of course the minus strike nineteen. Eighty four everything changed. What do you remember about? Not everything? It really did change everything. I mean the impact on the community with absolutely huge, every chapel that was built,
every business that that was there? The train line which went to the form of the pit down to the docks in cardiff, unambitious,
These were put in place because of mining. The pubs that were built- and there were many- were all built around that mining community. So
when the strike happened in the strike went on for so long, I mean it was so punitive to the mines.
I can remember, you know donating tins of food, but there was a lot of pride. People didn't want to take hands. I of course they didn t know it was really tat. Do you spend a lot of time in the rhonda today and what what's your connection with it in and what do you think about how things have changed so my mom and dad they live in the round the valley and
four way to talk in the morning, we'll get phone calls from all that you know the various family people around them. Are you ok? Can we do anything for you today? Do you need anything over to me? My sister live away from home that sense of real belonging, real community. Absolutely still exist today, the term for small music. I think Amanda your second choice today. What have you done for so this is the jam town called malice when I watch the film Bulgaria it the bit where he tapped his way through all of these houses in the vital interest in deep frustration right around. You know the fact that his family didn't understand that he wanted to be a valid answer.
and in that? Obviously, the lines of the house's just reminds me of the valley and just brought back sermon town called
is the jam amanda blog, your mother,
plenty sounds like she was a hard worker. What's jobs did she do? Oh, she was a shot worker, a factory worker she's, to work night,
What factory did she work? She she worked in. It was called a rubber wheel factory. Now I don't know the actual name. I can't remember the action, but she used to peel rubber off of wheels and then she also worked in the canteen in that factory. So these wheels used to be to deliver, choose to do some homeworking. They used to be delivered to the house, and she said this really sharp knife and she used to like
If the rubber edges off the wheel and then they will got to do that. Yes, she was very keen for for you and your sister to explore other interest by the sounds of it. What did she encourage you to do everything? I'd go home and it will be at half t v d quickly and then it will be right. Okay, what's tonight and swimming you know, singing piano, clarinet brownies, you mentioned piano that that was a a
if he was, I think. Well, I was great. I got to grade eight piano, I would say it was more a passion of my mother's and it was with mine and she she basically says a loaded sentence. Have you done your practice yet another one? So she was
what'd you in not dare did you have a piano merging, I would say nagging would be the other word I would use should have put supporting flash pushing, discouraging european. When I was there, we Jason, I can remember, we had the most beautiful new plan on they saved up for that piano, and it really was beautiful and you as an upright yamaha piano and glistened it sean. It was beautiful and it was in our best dream that was not a scratch on that piano from the day, a rival to the day that they. So this amount about your father David. He was sales manager for a chemical com.
nay when he s work and soon so that must have involved quite low travel. It did a year, but I remember he had this little office and even when computers were first, then you know we just basically blackened green screens and there was a curtain.
In what in our living numa, he used to sit behind the curtain doing his work to very late at night. He was an incredibly hard, also an incredibly hard worker.
Amanda you life, lifelong will be fun, won't got you interested in that in the first place, my best friend
join bonnet. Her father was president to the westward the union. I can remember it so well, it was a sort of late seventies and sometimes I used to get to go with joanne down to the angel hotel in cardiff, not go to the game, but we used to be
able to listen to the sound of the game going on. We could hear the atmosphere could hear you could hear the singing. You could see the atmosphere
yeah, but we didn't go with your own dad. No, we didn't go to rugby mma. No, no, my dad! He can't watch rugby why he loves it because he's a jinx, so he used to go. He used to go on the
ips when he was younger? I do remember he did that occasionally, but actually he now will say I sewed last weekend. When obviously am who else played england, he I said to him: did you watch the game? Is oh? No? No! No! No! My mum watched there, but he had to go to another room because he believes that he's a jingle stone villa next piece of music. What have you got for us? This is thank you for the
music by other and on the reason that this is such a fantastic songs. I remember this so well singing this in chapel, with my sister Catherine,
and we would have been. There would be like twelve us. I guess it would mean quite unusual to think such modern music, but we had a guy called Kevin rally who used to
at lead us in in in chaplin. He said, let's sing, thank you for the music and I just think he listened to the words of this song and thank you for the music and I just love music.
as the brilliance of the other and thank you for the music amanda blanc. He went to treorchy comprehensive school. Did you keep up with the music interests while you were there? Oh yeah, absolutely and in fact I know got a bit of a confession. I never actually went active pe at all
I would thank off to the music centre and jam do something we that, with the orchestra with my parents, are piano all singing. I just loves. I love music. So much will you tempted to study music at universal grady?
I mean that's, that's gettin up them. I have great age on piano on the clarinet and apply it actually to do music, and when I was going for the interviews, I'm thinking I'm not good, you I'm nothing if not totally pragmatic.
You can see other people and you just think you know what I'm not going to be good enough to make a career ouch as actual life. Out of that. So then I I sort of
switch to to history. Thou must have been quite a big decision to make an quiet, a disappointment in its way to actually this path that you thought was going to be, the one you took wasn't gonna be open to just one could be possible, yeah
It was disappointing because I knew I generally bit my whole life that I was going to suit to do music. So how did you deal with her
I mean in a way I always tend to, and it is, I think, just a feature of the way I am. Is the you sort of diesel
pointed to a little while and then you just think. Ok what next push yourself down move on and you ve got to be resilient.
When you you know, I mean in life generally, but you won't. You must have had that then yeah, I guess so, and it was just a case of okay. So that's not gonna whoop body is I I apply
it's too from far history and I was able to go to liverpool and study modern history, so modern history in particular, why that course how it was the one that was available? I'm not gonna pretend
is anything more scientific to it than that. I'm not sure. I thought
It's about what I was going to do next. At any point, it was just a matter of you know enjoying what I was doing and then I finished, and it was ok what now so what did happen? Next I had two job offers. One was with Mitchell morgan county council, which was a graduate scheme, so I was lucky to get to graduate job offers and that was you know, stay at home. My my mum could do my washing and cooking and all of that and that would have been lovely or go to luton and do and become a graduate for commercial union and that's what I chose to loot in one. Why? Oh my gosh, because I thought, if I.
I can go there and I probably never would have what did you think about insurance at the time? What did you know about nothing? I only only about your car insurance or your home insurance. I didn't know
the thing about anything else, but you learned really quickly. You did everything you did claims and underwriting you know, whereas today you would have to go to different parts of the country to do all of those things. At that point, you were able to learn everything in one place. While I think on that note, we better have some more music amanda artist know before what are we going to hear next to descend before it is tainted? Love soft sell? This takes me back to year in nineteen eighty one me and my best friend
catherine savage on the beach in upper Evan. You know you, you do those things where you record you undertake record. I know not warrant, not meant to do that so taken every idea, tape off the radio on Sunday night and then you have a pencil and you'd wind it back, and then you play again- and you know you you'd like to think that he was a little
like the algarve in upper avenue, was not what it was probably code and windy, but
he loved this song and we pay the song constantly
god. I can't sleep soft now
intended love, so
the blank at just twenty nine you move to less stairway became commercial unions, youngest ever and first female branch manager. That was a huge turning point, for you have to do that when you got the job disbelief I thought about it. I mean I forgot, I mean that can't be rice and they will. I don't know you gonna be fine, but I was twenty nine,
walked into this lester branch and it was on charles street in Leicester and it was very, very old fashioned building. So I mean you know it
you an idea. The branch manages office had its own toilet and I stress I did not use the smiling because
it was very sort of that. It was very ironical, very hierarchical, william
did you not people who knew? There was no appeal, most people who were older than me, and you know what,
walking new calling uniting disease? Alzheimer's
amanda and in it
show quite a lot to try and change the culture, but you know
I I think I did, and it was really fun unless there was just a brilliant city and a great place to work. So, even though ye said you, you felt disbelief when they told you you'd got the job, I mean there must have been part of you. That was confident enough to take it. Yeah I mean you, I think you have an
incompetence, but I'm not going to pretend that I didn't walk in there on that first day. You know thinking oh yeah, I mean how is this going to pan out and I say they saw the people I speak to today,
If I've speaking to a twenty five year old and they'll say you know
you do the results. So are you look so confident and I'm go you do what you think that I dont feel butterflies. You think that I'm not new man, even today, you get over it more quickly, but you still feel that it's time for more music. This is your fifth.
The choice today Amanda. What are we going to here and why you taken it with you to the island? So this is me, is the song careless asher from the guy
Two showman. I mean there's a little bit about me and obviously that song, particularly just really was
just a monumental song, a monday said this a bit of me in this war. But if you see yourself
this too often that goes on a law in the city. You know you pretending to be something that you're not anymore,
career. I think I've seen a lot of that, but I just think if you turn up as yourself, you conquer far
this is me
settle for the soundtrack to the greatest children Amanda blank in nice,
ninety nine new joint action as a regional director. Now you hard, you first owes a caitlin three years later and you ve talked about the time that you allowed yourself to take off as maternity leave. How soon did you actually go back? I was back within about six or seven weeks. I think it was
Soon, how do you judge that? How did you know when I was exhausted? I mean literally- and I thing then you're not good at anything, and why did you go by so soon and while because I really, I really did
My job- and I think I was really good at my job. I could see that my colleague was going.
we do really well, and you know I and I want you to do the best for my children and I and I felt that was going to be for the best. But would I make the same
decision again, probably not think was in two thousand and six. You were actually,
the post of ceo of the retail broking division for tower gate insurance, but you weren't sure that you should take it. Why not? I really felt that it was a bit mad to take this big new job. As my first ceo position three months pregnant- and it was at that point that can really matter-
and sad actually, I think you're going to do really well, and I want to support you in that and I'm happy to give up my career for you to do that so you're, both in in cheer and yet he was in banking at that point, but he'd been in insurance for prior to that, but he said you know, I think that it will be very, is going to be very difficult and you took three weeks. Maternity
at the time I mean that must have been just physically physically stupid, stupid and also I was four so difficult. Physically till I was older and exhausted, it was, I was completely exhausted and the head office for target was in maidstone and I lived in manchester are chatting in nantwich in cheshire, so it wasn't just that the job was intellectual,
demanding charley, was also physically challenge. I was getting the train to london, which was my base every day, the sort of six twenty five train from crew station every morning, and I would like to allow it to open the laptop as soon as I get on. I would work all the way down and then I'd get about the four o clock train back. I would work all the way back and it was exhausting. It was crazy. You mentioned your husband, can saying: ok, I'm gonna give my career and be there for the kid state today. So he took his power
and and and made his peace with at and and and what about yours? What did you have to reconcile? So I think I had to reconcile. I wasn't always gonna be there for this, the scoop projections or for the parents evenings, but every everything in life is about choices, and once you ve made your choice, then I think you're gonna reconcile yourself that you should be there for the really
important things, and it allows you to prioritize? So you know when there, when they taken the lead in the production of Peter pan is Rihanna data. I was there and I saw it three times because she had to leave part and that's that's when you priorities and in terms of you know you go,
went rolling and life. Now you are quite vocal about ensuring that this stuff that work for you have a good work life balance. Now you have no was practice. That is that, because you haven't been able to in and how committed oh you to making sure that they can things can change going forward here,
so I got better when we move to Hampshire, which we did in twenty eleven and then I was
able at a much shorter commute and then I was able to practise what we preach around work life balance and whilst I would go in ITALY, I would always leave early. I leave at five o clock so that I could be home for the evening and I would always say to my team, as I was walking out of the office. What are you doing? What are you doing here? Go home. You got lives, you got families go home and live that life. Now I would like to say that today I perceive practice that, but being the footsie one hundred ceo isn't is just in there. I would like to say that you can have a work life balance, but genuinely you live, you breathe, you sleep, you eat it,
think about it. Constant, a eight am children, road or their sixteen and twenty, but it is all encompassing it's time to go to the music amanda number six. What are we gonna hear next? This is dignity by an deacon blue. This is the song really for. Can he's really bright guy
physics graduates, an mba and he gave all of that to support the family and, of course, that decision is taken in many households in the reverse. So I think it's really annoying
and to acknowledge that and then there's the deal that you have to have around how you communicate with.
Southern. Have you respect each other and how that communication needs
really really strong between the two of you doesn't always work, but I think its key and of course candy scottish, and so it is a little bit about that in it as well. But this is a sound that he loves. The children will always go when they saw
amazon, because we both thing we allowed that's decently and dignity amanda blank in July, twenty twenty you were appointed group see you of a visa. Britain's largest insurer net was struggling when you took over and since you appointment, things have started to turn round, but still he had a surprising experience at your age gm last year,
what exactly happened. Amanda taught me through that day. From your point of view, I mean go figure. It was a really interesting day. I had just finish my speech and I sat down and somebody stood APA. It was announced new gentlemen and he stood up and said it's great to see so many women on the boards. You know because I so good at housekeeping
set the tone effectively for the meeting and then another shareholder basically saying that m that I want
the man for the job, and then there was a fire.
no at by another shareholder about you know needing to wear the trousers, and they compel me to a previous, see, yo and said. You know that I should wear trousers. What was going through young, I mean complete disbelief and the financial times and were in the room
and so they were, they were like commenting on it and I was just about to get on a plane to go to canada, and so I went
When I was having dinner with my kids and my daughters were saying, we can't believe that some could, of course, by that point,
being it was getting tiggle I had caught lie and somebody after he had been in the actual aid and the waves written story about an unarmed people which all people were talking about, and I talk to them about it. I said you know this is what has happened today and, as I was sort of thirty five thousand feet in the air or actually you know why this is not acceptable and no happy about this at all
I saw how am I going to deal with anna, though I'm going to write a linkedin article and I posted it, and then I switched my phone on and literally my phone was going at it. What is a lowly what she said? What did you write? I wrote that you know that for too long I had sat back and not said anything, but it's time to step up it's time. It's time to talk and it's time for this stuff to stop and judge me by my by my results, but not by the fact that I'm wearing a dress and in a when I started reading the stories in the email, responding to what you do all over the world. In I was
putting this happened. To me. This happened to me. This happened to me. This happened to me either foot cc, yos, saying sometimes the same shareholders, but that these things it happened. I have often thought as well
I mean. I've done very well and I should be happy with that. I'm not really appreciate.
He's my role as a role model. You don't have to think of yourself as a role model may fails. Big headed or something is rejected,
Why should I be a role model, but then, if you're not going to do it, who is this wasn't the first time that you you'd find yourself dealing with a hostile situation, a monday in twenty
when you joined the welsh rugby union board as chair of the professional rugby board, which runs the game in wales, he resigned the following year, brought it up there. I spent two years on the welsh rugby union board on it. You know I I I would say that I'm, you know, I'm reasonable business person. I've been in business for a long period of time, but when you are just simply not listened to some misogynistic comments walking and there was one which isn't actually. What do you know about governance while quite a lot? Actually, I've got thirty two years of experience and I'm and I operate in a regulated business. Nobody else was asked that question, but I was- and I got an apology for that- actually am a written apology for it and you gave a
blistering leaving space. I did about what had happened. Getting things off your chest, I mean. How did they experience? Leave you feeling personally, I still feel that genuine ninety nine I dont say this very often, if that, if I had been listened to that, we wouldn't have had the situation that would have happened over the last number of weeks, particular in respect to the women's.
the women's game, I'm you know, and there was a women's, a woman's review which was undertaken about the way the women were treated very very differently to man, and I called for the women's review to be made public and I called for the board governance to be modernized and neither of those two things have happened.
We find ourselves now in the situation where you know, a lot of women have come forward to say that they were badly treated, and so it left me feeling deeply frustrated very sad actually, but I'm hopeful.
ass. You know with the review of its now been undertaken, and I hope that you now. I hope that our master contribute to that review, that there will be change, but it needs to change
it's time to take a minute for the music, your disk number, seven, if he would. This is taylor, swift and the man. My fixing, our daughter is a massive taylor, swift fan and not part of the reason for the song, but the other reason for the song is taylor. Swift, I think, is pretty ike
make in terms of the way she has stood up for herself. I think, if you listen to the words which you here in the opening out, you know she's basically saying do. I have to be like this to be able to be successful and alpha mail, and I would
You do not have to be like that and then come in and in the worst taylor, swift and the man amended long. I know that your twitter account is named after your passion for shoes and I'm duty bound to explore this at some point in the programme. That time is now how extensive is the collection? Well,
this extensive okay and don't tell KEN and it's alright he'll, never know or no, please don't tell anybody, and so it has it's own book and I take pictures of the shoes so that I can line it has a book. You know in that I like a photo album with the pictures
this beautiful, and so when you're planning an outfit you conflicts through the works. I mean. I know that that feels ridiculous, but
I put the whole shoe account actually started as a bit of fun. We will go into a conference in manchester and one of my team said: wouldn't it be funny if your shoes have their own twitter account to go to this conference? And I said oh ok, maybe that would be actually quite fun. I'm afraid that your heels will do you no favors on the island, and I am about
cast you away. Oh, I in your professional opinion, Amanda wonder how you'd rate your chances of of navigating the challenges of the island successfully. Very,
very low, not a very practical in terms of being able to look after myself person. To be honest,
so the practical side, not so goods emotionally. How will you be with isolation honour? I would hate that I love being with people. I got all my energy from people, so
That would be ready, really sound. You are a very high energy person. Will you try and escape? I think you use
the time I'm not about swimmer. Do you think it would work, so maybe will be worth a shot. We'll? Let you choose one model
before you go to london, what's your last selection to take on being so. My last election has to be the welsh national anthem, but it has to be very specific version of the welsh national anthem, which is the version
which was sang before wells, beatings and in what was then the millennium stages.
And you know where we are now a stadium. Seventy thousand people with
yellow, daffodil, hats and all the anticipation and the players
holding onto each other. You know all these phenomenal players and the emotion on their face as they sing this song and that the muse and, let's be honest, the best anthem I mean It- is the best on them, and you see our sort of if you like older brother, the england fans, you know a a slight nod to say that for granted,
You know that that's good. We recognise that is good and we like to hear you sing it I'll give you that
the
the
the mouse national anthem. Some by funds in cardiff millennium stating justify whales, went onto beat england in the twenty thirteen six nations championship, amended
it's time I'm going to send you away to the island, I'm giving you the bible, the complete works of shakespeare, and you can take one of the book of your choice. What are you gonna go for
the take little women, louise male comp ny lies. I just read this book, maybe
the times when I was younger for very different way.
in an were five. If you include the men- and I just I just love, it is a great story. You can also have a luxury item.
To make your stay on the islands little bit more enjoyable. What would you like I'm going to take the photo album of all the photos? I'd rather have ever taken of the shoes. Do not have the shoes to be clear to just be totally clear and because I think that that will help you know. If you can't be physically with somebody, then at least you can even be able to see them to friends and family will publicity and finally, which one track of
Eight that you ve selected today. Would you rush to save from the waves is really a tough one that but I'm gonna go for tainted love the eighties with such an iconic decade of music, and that, for me, is one of the iconic songs. Amanda blunt. Thank you very much for letting us here. Your desert island discs. Thank you for having me
the
hello
my conversation with amanda. Maybe she can
fashion and nice pair of low healed sandals from driftwood
castaway many business people over the years, including dapper, maiden, nickel a whole like an john thompson. He can find these episodes in a desert island discs programme archive untrue baby.
see sounds the studio manager for today's programme was Jackie marjoram, the assistant producer was christine. Pavlovsk ii on the producer was pull him again next time my guest will be the actor and activist less car. I do hope
agnes.
They called it shaka nor in the outside world, and we got a horrible
is: why did the us and uk invade iraq? I gotta tell you he would have invaded iraq if Saddam Hussein had a rubber band, a paper clip and golden career
BBC security correspondent, so many
stories I've covered have emerged from Iraq. How on earth do you go about working with people when you are for an invite,
Why was the intelligence wrong? That's one conclusion! I don't agree with it, but I'm not gonna come from
in shock and war iraq. Twenty is on I'm trying to get to the truth of what happened and its legacy
Today, though, see these things get taken out of the context in which their said and written at the time, such now for shock and war on BBC sounds to get new in
its into possibly the most controversial period in recent history.
Transcript generated on 2023-04-11.