Hello, I'm Kirsty Young and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in 1996 and the presenter was Sue Lawley. My castaway this week is abo- Businessman he was born poor one of ten children who moved with his parents from Donagore to London East End when they crossed the sea to look for work. He was clever and did well at school but university was not part of his world and he trained as an accountant instead. Bit by bit he... Heavered himself up the corporate ladder of several big companies. And then 10 years ago he organized and led a management buyout of Compass, the contract

his division of Grand Metropolitan. Now rich in his own right, he was recruited in 1991 by Granada, where despite complaints that a caterer could never run. Television he's maintained programme quality, acquired London Weekend Television and we're Keeping a BDI on the ratings for Coronation Street, taken over the 40 group. He is Gerry Robinson. What does Mrs Robinson think of her ninth born these days, Jerry? Has your success surprised the family or did they always know you had it in you? I think for my mum the whole thing is a mystery. And that's showed itself in a number of ways. I think the way that it showed itself most clearly was on one occasion, her saying to... Do you have your own office? And she has no sense at all, I think, of what it means. She's pleased about it, but no more pleased. Than she is about the achievements of some of the others. I should say, to be fair, some of the others of the ten have done very well, haven't they? Yeah, yeah they have.

The whole family. I think there is something about coming into a society from outside that does make you strive. And I think the whole family have done reasonably well. Yes, I had a brother who's the head of Trollope and Coles and I have a brother who runs a large part of another construction company And a sister who's got a million pound business, I read. Well, I have a sister who does run her own cleaning business and another sister... Who went on to become really quite senior within the National Health Service. So what is the explanation? It isn't just coming in from the outside and feeling competitive. Perhaps it's because there were so many of you, you have a competitive spirit naturally anyway. I have a feeling that maybe it is some want. It is a want that drives you at that level. It's the more negative, trying to prove something. That somehow you don't feel you have that drives you in this way. And it's very hard to touch. Very hard to be precise about what it is. But you have to inherit the qualities that make you capable of picking up and carrying out that.

Drive from somebody, where would you put it down? To your mother, your father, what did you get from him? I would say it was almost certainly my mother. She was much more strident, much more pushing about things than my father, who was rather laid back. He was a carpenter in Donaghoe. Yes, he was. He was a pretty lazy carpenter from what I can remember too. He had quite a tough life in a very small village community where he was the village carpenter and there wasn't a lot of... You mentioned he was lazy. You've often almost boasted, I feel, of the fact that you're actually quite, fundamentally quite lazy. You're not a workaholic, which sets you apart from so many captains of industry and big businessmen these days who seem to work every hour that you work. God sends in order to achieve what they achieve. You don't, you go home. - I'm very, very easy about the time that I spend at work and it's certainly by most standards very short time. It'd be very unusual for me to be in the office beyond 5.30. Very unusual. Certainly be unusual for me to be in the office before nine, 9.30 in the morning.

Unusual for me not to be there on the odd Friday here and there, not at all unusual. And I think that comes from a feeling that we will kid ourselves. That you know we're the ones who lead the whole thing forward. Most things actually happen at a level within an organization like Granada that you don't get near touching. What laziness is a considered approach, is it? It's a bit of both, I think. It wasn't like that when you were taking over Forte, I have to say. You were probably there all the hours, right? No, there were very long hours involved in that. Although I did manage to get to Ireland for two and a half weeks during the bid. Tell me about your first record. Well, the first record is 'Catter Diva' from Bellini's 'Norma'. I just love it. It just moves me. It haunts me. Almost. It's as simple as that. Oh. ♪ Oh, oh, oh ♪

Part of the Aria Casta. Diva from Bellini's Norma, sung by Joan Sutherland, with the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House Covent Garden conducted by... Francesco Molinari Pradelli. The 40 takeover we'll talk about, Gerry, but it was when you took over... Granada in the early 90s that your name first began to be known outside business circles. They called you, as I said, very disparagingly the caterer because you'd run Compass, the catering company.

You've been about what, 42, 43 at the time? Yeah. And you walked into Granada Television knowing that they would be suspicious of you, you know, resentful because you were going in to tell them how to run their business. How nervous were you at that point of walking? I mean, it's a very intimidating situation I would have thought. It's extraordinary, but I know... I never ever thought of Granada in any sense as joining the media. For me it was a company that had got itself into considerable difficulties. This was something that could be turned around very easily. So it was almost, it was almost mechanistic. I can see it was just a, just another... Company that you could see, you could turn around, you've been headhunted to do it. But nevertheless there is something different, isn't there? she asked, about a television, a programme making company, because it is fundamentally creative in a way that, you know, running service stations or... Hotels isn't? No question about it, it's very different and I learned that pretty quickly in the fairly public way but there's a lot...

That is similar to in terms of any organization. If you want something to work, first of all you have to get the right people. Secondly, you have to allow people the space to actually get on with it in an environment that enables them. To do it. Somebody once said to me, and I think it's very valid, that the only serious difference between television and any other business is you get a higher quality whinging in television than you do in any other business. And there's some truth in that. And you can't stand whinging. No, I don't like whinging. I think you either get in and get on with it, or decide to go and do something else. Rumour has it that you got exceedingly bored with being told that Granada had once made something called Jewel in the Crown. What I think eventually got to me was the feeling that here was a company, revelling in a part of the world, which was 13 years ago. And that's all very well and all very exciting, but actually our problems were here and now. What were we doing now? That was what was interesting to me. But you still, as I say to return to the personal experience of it, got to be quite a strong character at the age of 42, to go in and face all of the problems that we had.

Those people who know an awful lot more about the product than you do and tell them how to do it? I think you achieve a great deal by stupidity. If you don't actually know what you're going to hit, you're deeply in it before you know the difficulties. I knew there'd be some difficulties attached, particularly with some of the personalities involved. But I have to say, I was shocked and amazed by how much publicity that this whole thing caused. So I wasn't prepared for it and I'm not quite sure, genuinely not sure, that if I'd known that I Gone in with quite such courage as has appeared to be the case afterwards. Because of course what you did within a matter of weeks... To internal and external outcry was you sacked David Plowright, the chairman of Granada Man, who'd been making television programs when you were still at school. Why was that necessary? Well... What happened with David Nunn, and I got on very well with David, I liked him very much, he's a charming man, clearly someone who'd achieved a great deal.

61 years old, he was already past the retirement age within Granada. He was not going to like somebody new coming in in the way that I did. Why would he? I wouldn't like it under the circumstances. After trying over a couple of month period to actually get David to change one or two of the things that we did and getting nowhere, I simply decided it was a waste of time, a waste of his time and a waste of mine, and that we should find a gentle exit. And actually we planned a gentle exit and got very close to pulling it off and... Went slightly wrong at the last minute. You said since that Granada wouldn't be around today if you hadn't taken over. Do you think that's true?

I might be around as part of something else. I think there's a fair chance that Granada itself would have been taken over. There was a need for a shake-up within Granada. And somebody coming in from outside, I think, has the opportunity to do that in a way that an insider can't. Tell me about record number two. Record number two is a Gregorian chant. It's the Magnificat and Canticle to Our Lady sung by the monks of Quaravi. And it just reminds me of my time at seminary in Castle. In great jivasans.

The Magnificat and Canticle of Our Lady sung by the monks of Quar Abbey and memories of the days when Gerard Jude Robinson was training to be a Catholic priest in Lancashire. The Holy Ghost Fathers, Jerry? Yes. Well, it's very difficult in a race to really get a grip of exactly what that was about. I've often tried to pretend to myself that it--

Wasn't real at the time because it's certainly, I'm not religious now, but it was absolutely real. What, the desire to be a priest was real? Yes, certainly, you know, within a large Catholic family, being a priest was the pinnacle in a way. That's what every Catholic mother wanted. So at least part of the desire must have been rooted in that because of pleasing one's mother. It never quite worked for me. I became very homesick really quite quickly. And towards the last couple of years, I realised that it really wasn't for me. But you went there when you were 11, which was shortly after you'd come over from Donagore with your family to live in the East End. I mean, maybe that experience in itself had shocked you, that it made you yearn for, I don't know, a quieter life. Well, let's see. Certainly something very unsettling to come from a very small village community in Donegal to a pretty harsh community in the East End of London. I mean, it couldn't be more different.

So there might have been something in that. I mean, I don't want to over-egg it, but you were very, very poor, weren't you? We were very poor. We came... We lived to live in a flat of two rooms where we actually shared a bedroom with my mum and dad, myself and my younger brother. And so we were... Great Paul, yes. - You'd also, of course, at that stage, as I say, to age 10 or 11, you'd known grief, you'd known bereavement because you'd lost a brother. - Yes. - How old were you when that happened? I was seven and Eddie was drowned when he was 14. Honestly, it's only in the last four or five years that I have really been able to get back to that in some real way, to really understand the impact that that had on me, which was obviously enormous. To Eddie, he was a very calm, quiet individual which wasn't exactly typical of the Robinsons and I missed him hugely.

Donagol, he drowned in the sea? Yes, he drowned in the sea while swimming. I mean, there are all sorts of reports that he got cramp and I don't think anybody really knows. He drowned while swimming and actually had to be rescued. His body had to be rescued from the sea by my father, which was awful. So were you quite then a serious little boy as a result of all these experiences, do you think, at that stage? I don't think I was that serious. Serious event which had enormous repercussions in the family, enormous sense of security lost for I think for quite a long time. So you went off to the seminary. It was fee paying. How on earth did the parents afford it? Well it wasn't fee paying in any serious way, you chipped in what you could, it was essentially financed by the church and therefore the fees involved were very, very small. Very rigorous. And in some ways there's a benefit in that. But in the round, and I think the test of this is, I certainly wouldn't send away...

And seek to send my children to be educated in that way. I think it's much, much too rigid. - Favorite subjects? I actually enjoyed the subjects that have been absolutely no use to me whatsoever since, like Greek and Latin, where obviously there isn't much to them. It's the future very heavily in the business community. And what did you come out with? What qualifications? I came out at the age of just under 17 with 8 O levels and 4 A levels. And straight As because there was nothing else to do. And why did you decide to come out? Why did you decide at the age of 16 that you didn't want to be a priest? Two things happened. One is it did all start to fall apart for me logically when I thought about it and when I started to read even fairly basic stuff. From Encyclopedia Britannica. And also girls started to look pretty interesting at that age too. One of the mistakes I think that the seminary made was that they allowed a whole group of families to come in one witson. And... Amongst this grouping there were a number of girls here. They looked pretty enticing to me. Record number three. Record number three.

Three is Elaine Paige singing I'll Be Surprisingly Good For You. This record is closely related to my oldest daughter. She and I used to sing this together when she was quite small, and she'd be terribly embarrassed to hear this, but it was a wonderful time for me. ♪ It seems crazy, but you must believe ♪ *music*

Please understand I'd be good for you I don't always rush in like this Elaine Page singing 'I'd Be Surprisingly Good For You' from Evita So it was off to the Youth Employment Agency with your mum, Jerry What did they come up with? Basically I sat and met this chap for the first time and the first job he came up with literally was a job in the cost office in Lesney Products that made Matchbox toys in Hackney I went along, um... For that interview, got the job, delighted with myself, and that's how my career began. I'm absolutely certain that if they'd given me a job in personnel somewhere I'd have gone along and done that. For nine years. It doesn't sound like a driven man, you know, a man with this competitive edge who's determined to... With one exception, I have not sought jobs.

And the reason I sought a job on one occasion was that I needed a car this was after nine years at Lesney, you went to Lex? yes it was, and the reason I went to Lex was that Lesney wouldn't give me a car and Lex would what did they give you? a Mini It was a new mini. It was for me the greatest thing ever. So you became finance director of LEX, didn't you? The car hire division. Yes I did. And then, this is the big moment really isn't it? You would have been about 32, you were head hunted by Grand Met. Is that the kind of turning point? Well, what happened was I'd worked with someone called Eric Walters in Lex, who had himself gone off to join Grand Met, and he effectively offered me a job I couldn't refuse. So you became a kind of... Troubleshooter in your early thirties, you then became head of this contract services division which is where the catering comes in. You turned it from loss into profit, staged a management buyout and at this point presumably you became a rich man.

Yes, the buyout was one of those things that worked extraordinarily well. It was a company that happened to have one of its main subsidiaries was in catering. I mean, the terrible truth is I can't fry an egg. It's a great joke at home when anybody refers to me as the caterer. And we did have great success with it at a time when management buyouts were very popular. So raising the funds was extraordinarily easy. Within a matter of a couple of weeks we raised $163 million, which was a huge sum at the time, of course, in much, much bigger buyouts. But how much money did you personally put in the bank? I suppose in the round I've made probably about 15-20 million out of the whole exercise, over that period of time between then and now, reinvesting the sums, etc. And then you got kind of bored? Yes, what happened was that the company was running extremely well. I wanted to broaden what we did, and so we made a bid for...

Cleaning company called obviously Sketchly and that didn't work and and the message from shareholders that I heard from that was that you know they really didn't want to diversify out of what Compass was. I decided that for myself that was that was too dull. So the challenge had gone so you seem to have gone into a Semi-retirement you only went into the office two days a week yes I had a laziness rose up again I had a lovely I really had a lovely time. I spent a year where mostly what I did was paint. And I really, really enjoyed it. And it was a good time too because my daughter was doing her DCSCs and I was able to help her. Heather and my first child was born, so... April was then, I was able to spend a lot of time with her as a very tiny baby and I think that was wonderful. And then along came the Grenada Headhunters. Tell me about your next record. This is the overture from Verdi's La Traviata, which I associate very much with Helen and myself getting married. It was the music that was played during the wedding ceremony.

La Traviata played by the National Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Richard Bonning. Management style, Gerry Robinson, it seems to me from everything you said simplicity is the key to your approach, isn't it? There is a tendency to think that one person runs things. Of course they don't. The only way you can run an organisation like Granada is to have individuals running each part in in the way that they like to do it, in the way that works for them. But you've got to know what they're doing and understand what they're doing, haven't you?

You build up a trust built on working with people for a period of time. Sometimes surprisingly quickly you get a feel for whether somebody is capable of doing what they're doing or not. So you're happy to give people their heads if you've decided they're OK? There's enormous freedom within Grenada. I mean, it's very interesting that if you look at what's happened in Grenada over the last five years, the perception that I've come in and changed the whole thing and changed all the people, there are only seven people of the top 100 managers in Grenada that are new over the last. But what's been different is their targets, presumably. You set them targets. How often do you then check up on them? Annually you set budgets which should be quite stretching. They need to be sensibly stretching. They can't be daft. If you set something which is unachievable... The whole thing falls apart, so it has to be realistic. Once those budgets are set, we have an attitude within Grenada that we'll deliver it. You don't get 57 reasons why it's all fallen apart. But if they don't, off with their heads.

In a sense, but as I said, very few people that that's happened to. Most people actually do rise and enjoy the fact that parameters are set, that there is something to strive for. But if you don't concern yourself with the detail, then it's easier for you to be ruthless. It's endlessly analytical, isn't it? The time you get into the detail is when things start to go wrong. And then you really do get into the detail. You do want to find out what's happening, why it's happening, what's been done about it, what can be done about it.

When do you lose your temper? I've almost never lost my temper in a business scene, in the sense of ranting or raving. It doesn't culminate in that kind of behaviour. It culminates in a decision that, This isn't going to work. This person is not going to work. It will not work in this way. We need to change. And that happens very rarely. Does it matter to you whether you're liked or not? Oh yes, of course it does. I think anyone who pretends that they don't care about being liked is lying to themselves. Of course it matters. But there's quite a close correlation between being liked and being respected. And if being liked means taking the soft decisions which harms the overall... Company. It's not for me. But the problem is, isn't it, that there are probably two Jerry Robinsons. There's the one that's affable and genial, but there's the other one who, when he goes to work, can be very tough and get quite rough. And maybe...

Being affable and genial misleads people into thinking that that applies to your approach to business too. There is something in that because... I think people are sometimes surprised when I do dig in on something in a pretty hard-nosed way. They misread in some ways the geniality. What I have is a clarity about what's wanted. And I'm pretty good, I think, at laying out what I think that is. I'm pretty good also at listening to be told that actually what I want is not reasonable at the beginning But if we agree that we're going to go down a particular path and someone then comes back to me and says Actually, although we agreed it is impossible. I certainly listen a bit less to that than I do at the beginning Record number five Record number five is from Dire Straits, The Man's Too Strong, which I think is the first song that I shared with my son Richard. We also used to sing this together.

Dire straits and the man's too strong. The takeover of life... And weekend Jerry was big but your takeover of Forte was the biggest and boldest you've ever tackled and it became pretty brutal. How long... Was it in the planning? Well, in any detailed sense, we've been looking at Forte in a lot of detail for the last two years. We dined in Little Chef's to analyse it. Yes, we did an enormous... Traveling around Exeter, it's always come across in the press that I've visited every single little chef in the country. Encouraged to do so by Heather, who I have to say was completely disinterested in the whole of it. Process. So you did all this homework and then you pounced in November 95 and by January 96 it was yours. It was presented as a...

Personal battle between you and Rocco Forte? It was never personal from my point of view and I honestly think that the way that Rocco himself handled it was magnificent. I mean this is a business which felt, I'm sure, like a family business. It was like someone coming and taking your birth right away. I think his handling of it personally was really superb. Did you enjoy the whole process or was it agonising and terrible and would you never want to go through such a thing again? I didn't enjoy it at all. How miserable would you have been if you'd have lost? I'd have been deeply upset. I mean, clearly you don't set out to make a bid like that with any belief at all at the beginning anyway that you could possibly fail.

If we had failed, I'd been deeply upset. You had to raise the best part of £4 billion to do it, and you pledged to sell off £2 billion worth of assets in the longer term, roughly speaking. Your critics say that that was burning the house to roast the pig, that it smacks of asset stripping. They're right, aren't they? Well, you have to look at the difference between the value of assets and the profits that those assets give you. We have retained, or are retaining, about 80% of the assets. The profit making capacity of the business. But those are the lesser bits, those are the little chefs and the happy eaters. Yes, those are the bits that don't have huge asset value attached to them. In some ways it was part of the problem with the business in the first place, was that there were very expensive assets, not earning returns. You can't have it both ways. If you are going to improve the underlying performance, you are going to get out of those parts of the business.

That are very high asset value and not giving returns. So you spot an under managed business as it were and you go for it and you should make a lot of money out of it. The argument is that responsible business management is about growing a business, is about cultivating it and cherishing it, not cutting it up. To bits downsizing it, sacking the staff and selling bits off again. I believe that growth within the existing business is vital. People do not want to belong to an organisation or don't feel comfortable in the long term belonging to an organisation that's going nowhere. It's not an exciting place to be. So you do have to be moving forward on all fronts. You'll sell off the trophies, will you, the big parts of the business? Yes, we are shortly to issue a sale document on what are called the exclusive hotels. And the irony is, of course, that Rocco Forte will...

Probably buy those hotels back off you. For me that would be a very elegant solution, but I don't know whether that will come to pass or not. As long as he bought them and you made a profit. Yes. Record number six. Record number six is the duet from LACME. It's just one of those pieces which are there. Used commercially still remains for me just a very, very beautiful song.

The duet Viennes Malika from Delibes Lacme sung by Maddy Misplay and Daniel Miele. So you've got a second family now, Jerry, as you say. You've got two very small children, April and Timothy, and then Richard and Samantha in their teens and early You see them lots because you take lots of time off. You play golf on a Friday, is that right? This is one of those wonderful stories that's become, you know, it's like visiting every little chef. I play golf every Friday. No, unfortunately I don't. I play golf some Fridays and I like to play golf particularly with... With my son. But where do you holiday? What is your idea of relaxation? We have a cottage in Donegal in Ireland and whenever we sensibly can we go there. And is that where you'll retire to eventually? I think so.

It's quite hard to be certain. I don't think I'd like to live exclusively in Donegal. The idea would be to have a situation in which I could spend a good deal of time in Donegal, but also remain with the base in London. Is there therefore, do I get a sense that it's part of you that doesn't particularly like what comes with the territory, the sort of rubbing shoulders with the rich and powerful Of London life. With you, you want to get involved with people, and before you know where you are, you can be sucked into that whole mesh, some of which is quite pleasurable, but if it's at the expense of forming proper relationships with your children or being close enough to real friends as opposed to business acquaintances, I think that's it. It's a mistake and you have to be really quite clear in your own mind what you want to achieve. I'm absolutely clear that, you know, five years...

From now, maybe seven years from now, and certainly ten years from now, I'll be absolutely disinterested in what's happening in the business world. So you might be growing potatoes or doing a bit of carpentry like your dad in Donegal? I certainly like carpentry. Growing potatoes I quite like the idea of, but I suspect I wouldn't be very good at. So you sound like a potato.

Perfect candidate for a desert island? Well, perfect in the sense of looking after myself, but very imperfect in the sense of not liking to be alone. I do like to be with other people. Record number seven? Record number seven is the meditation from Massenet's Thais. I heard this piece of music in a film which was about the concentration camps, and it was about the orchestra being kept alive because they were talented musicians. And there was just something enormously haunting about the piece.

The meditation from Massenet's Ties, played by Lauren Marzel with the new Philharmonia Orchestra. You're 47, you've got, obviously one can hear, retirement in your sights, but if the call came now, you know, the opportunity to lift another company off its knees, are you still a gun for hire? Have you got it in your sights? No, no, absolutely not. But you shudder at the thought. No, I'm actually very attached to Granada. I have very much enjoyed what's happened at Granada. I enjoy working with the people there. I like the businesses that we're in. No way would I go and do it all over again. You know, it might not work next time around. There is no certainty in these things. In a sense people are often seduced by the idea that if you've done it once you can do it again, but you might not. It might not work another time because you yourself change and maybe the organisation that you go into doesn't respond as well as the one that you've just been acting with. So luck has played a big part in it.

No, no, and people always say that as a way of kind of modesty, but I genuinely believe that if you lose sight of the fact that a lot of what's happened is about being lucky, being in the right place at the right time, you get an exaggerated view of what you're capable of. The last record is There'll Be Better Days Even For Us, sung by Agnes Balser. This music... Played when Heather was having April and we played it really throughout the pregnancy and I have a sense in which music really does get through perhaps even before the child is born and it certainly has meant a lot. To our sins.

There'll be better days even for us sung by Agnes Bolzer with the Athens Experimental Orchestra conducted by Stavros Tsakhakos, I'm told it is. If you could only take one of those eight records, Jerry, which one would it be? I'd have to take... The Casa Diva. The Bellini? Yes, it just, er, it moves me more than anything else. What about your book? I, the book I was going to take was the College of Science. History of the World by J.M. Roberts. Simply because for me, it's a history book that put all... All the bits that I knew into a context. It's a wonderful, wonderfully complete book about the history of the world. - And your luxury? - My luxury would be a painting kit in terms of having my easel and my oils and my brushes.

Well, I'm good enough at it to enjoy it, and Franklin of Desert Island, if it's only me, that's fine. Jerry Robinson, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your Desert Island discs. Thank you very much. You've been listening to a podcast. From the Desert Island Discs archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk/radio4.