Hello, I'm Krestey 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 1991, and the presenter was Sue Lawley. My castaway this week is a businessman. It's an inadequate description of someone whose rank and position make him one of the most important figures in British industry today.

Educated at Charterhouse in Cambridge, he entered the foreign office, but he soon forsook the pleasures of

Whitehall for those of commerce first as head of a wall coverings company it was he

who gave us pre-pasted wallpaper and later as a management consultant.

His taste for plain speaking and his independence of mine caught the eye of politicians

in the mid-80s and he was asked by Michael Hesletine to head the Audit Commission.

It was from there that he moved to his present job in which he says

a couple of words out of place can have a considerable effect.

He is the Director General of the

CBI John Bannum. And how often Mr. Bannum have you said a couple of words out of

place? Far too often for my own good I strongly suspect. But to that extent it's it's quite a political position

isn't it because when you say something it can have an effect on jobs or on the market.

Yes it's a strange position. We have no power but rather a lot of influence.

And of course the challenge is to use the influence constructively to try to help solve some of the problems that

affect us day by day. and that's the challenge.

The danger is that a couple of words out of place can have exactly the wrong effect.

Nobody wants to see unemployment increase jobs put at risk and so on.

You say it's a challenge but isn't it also deeply frustrating to have influence but no power

and no hope of any power?

I suppose it is.

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