Hilary Devey

Desert Island Discs

BBC

Society & Culture, Music Commentary, Music, Personal Journals

4.4 • 13.7K Ratings

🗓️ 28 October 2012

⏱️ 34 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Hilary Devey, businesswoman and TV star is interviewed by Kirsty Young for Desert Island Discs.

The very incarnation of entrepreneurial spirit, Hilary Devey built a haulage network business from scratch, which now employs nearly eight thousand people and has an annual turnover of £100 million. She has a successful media career and is one of the current incumbents of the TV programme Dragons Den.

The real drama in her life has happened off screen. The skeleton in her parents' closet reappeared in her own life. She's been married and divorced three times, her only child has battled drug addiction and a severe stroke nearly killed her in 2009.

Despite this, she remains ambitious and energetic in the business world and says that there's no such thing as a glass ceiling.

Producer: Alison Hughes.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, I'm Kirstie Young. Thank you for downloading this podcast of Desert Island Disks from BBC Radio 4.
0:06.0	For rights reasons, the music choices are shorter than in the radio broadcast.
0:10.0	For more information about the program, please visit BBC.co.uk.
0:17.0	Radio 4.
0:18.0	The The My My castaway this week is the businesswoman Hillary Devay, the very
0:38.6	incarnation of the entrepreneurial spirit. She's built from scratch a haulage business with
0:44.3	almost 8,000 employees and an annual turnover of a hundred million pounds. The
0:50.0	TV show Dragons Den has made her a star but the real drama of her life has happened off camera,
0:56.0	married and divorced three times, her only child has battled heroin addiction, and she herself
1:01.4	fought back from a severe stroke that nearly killed her.
1:04.8	All this and she still has time to look like she's walked straight off the set of
1:08.3	dynasty.
1:09.3	Blood red nails, killer shoulder pads and enough bling to make Alexis Carrington fume with jealousy.
1:14.8	She says that people say you have to be ruthless to succeed in business, but I think that's
1:19.3	rubbish.
1:20.3	Well Hillary you don't exactly come across as a soft-hearted walk over yourself.
1:23.7	You have to be pretty tough.
1:24.9	No, I think what I've learned to do over the years is to take the compassion out of business
1:29.7	decisions and then put compassion back in once I've made them.
1:33.4	I don't believe you have to be ruthless to get to the top.
1:36.9	I think you've got to be understanding, be empathetic and it doesn't stop you having a heart
1:42.3	and feeling sorry for people but if you have to deliver bad news then I'm sorry you've got to deliver bad news.
	...

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