Gerry Robinson

Desert Island Discs

BBC

Society & Culture, Music Commentary, Music, Personal Journals

4.4 • 13.7K Ratings

🗓️ 2 June 1996

⏱️ 36 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The castaway in Desert Island Discs this week is a businessman who started life as one of 10 children in a poor family in Donegal, moved with his family to London's East End and started his career at Matchbox Toys in Hackney. From there, he worked his way up the corporate ladder of several large companies until 10 years ago he organised and led a management buy-out of Compass - part of Grand Metropolitan.

Now extremely rich in his own right, he'll be talking to Sue Lawley about the controversy he then attracted. Known as 'The Caterer' because of his business background, he went on to acquire London Weekend Television and controversially to take over the Forte Group. He'll be discussing his early ambitions to be a priest, his days at a seminary, the high-achieving nature of his family and how he coped with the stress of the Granada takeover of the Forte Group.

[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello I'm Krestey Young and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive.
0:05.0	For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.
0:08.2	The program was originally broadcast in 1996 and the presenter was Sue Lolly. My cast away this week is a businessman. He was born poor, one of ten children who moved with his parents from
0:35.2	Don Agaw to London's East End when they crossed the sea to look for work. He was clever
0:40.7	and did well at school but university was not part of his world and he trained as an accountant instead.
0:46.9	Bit by bit he levered himself up the corporate ladder of several big companies and then ten years ago he organized and led a management buyout of
0:55.6	Compass, the Contract Services Division of Grand Metropolitan.
1:00.1	Now rich in his own right, he was recruited in 1991 by Granada, where despite complaints
1:06.0	that a caterer could never run television, he's maintained programme quality, acquired
1:11.2	London weekend television, and we're not keeping a BDI on the
1:14.4	ratings for Coronation Street, taken over the 40 Group. He is Jerry Robinson.
1:19.0	What does Mrs Robinson think of her ninth born these days, Jerry?
1:23.5	Has your success surprised the family or did they always know you had it in you?
1:27.1	I think for my mom, the whole thing is a mystery and that's showed itself in a number of
1:31.0	ways.
1:32.0	I think the way that it showed itself most clearly was on one occasion her saying to me do you have
1:36.2	your own office and she has no sense at all I think of what it means she's she's
1:41.8	pleased about it but no more pleased than she is
1:44.3	about the achievements of some of the others. I didn't say to be fair some of the
1:47.8	others of the ten have done very well, haven't they? Yeah, yeah they have. The whole
1:52.4	family I think there is something about coming
1:54.4	into a society from outside that does make you strive, and I think the whole family have done
	...

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