Hello, I'm Kirstie Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive.

For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

The program was originally broadcast in 1994, and the presenter was Sue Lawley. My castaway this week is a newspaper proprietor, the son of a wealthy Canadian businessman, he was

schooled from an early age, not in conventional education where he was notoriously insubordinate,

but in the art of corporate warfare. He bought his first share at the age of 8.

At the age of 35 he was chairman of one of Canada's largest conglomerates.

Nine years ago he transferred his attentions to this country, buying the Daily Telegraph at a knockdown price and turning it into a hugely profitable newspaper.

He enjoys the power and influence his acquisition has brought him.

As his editor says, he simply adores being a tycoon.

He is Conrad Black.

Why did you buy the Telegraph Conrad Black?

Was it as much to gain position here as it was to make money?

No, I had really no interest at all in position here.

I bought it because I was interested in the business, had been in the business for many years,

the newspaper business, had read a good deal about newspaper owners in this country and elsewhere,

and my idea was that it was an intersection of what

could be commercially very advantageous with what could be interesting. What was

interesting to me was working with the writers and with the editorial product. I was not in that mold

and am still not in it and not likely to join it, for which there is some precedent of people

who come from other Commonwealth countries here with their

coat tails trailing behind them seeking position in this country. I'm not doing that.

But it was nevertheless, inevitably the ownership of the Daily Telegraph an entree into the British establishment

...