Maurice Saatchi

Desert Island Discs

BBC

Society & Culture, Music Commentary, Music, Personal Journals

4.4 • 13.7K Ratings

🗓️ 24 September 1995

⏱️ 37 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The castaway in Desert Island Discs this week is the advertising man, Maurice Saatchi. He and his brother Charles created what became the biggest advertising agency in the world. Saatchi & Saatchi masterminded the Conservative victory in 1979 with their slogan 'Labour isn't working'.

He'll be telling Sue Lawley about the heady days of the 1980s - a red Ferrari would be delivered unannounced to the best names in the business, with the offer of a job with Saatchi & Saatchi. Then, last year, he fell from grace when a boardroom shake-up meant he had to leave the company he had so lovingly created.

[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 Kirstie 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.
0:08.0	The program was originally broadcast in 1995, and the presenter was Sue Lawley. My castaway this week is an advertising man. He came to this country from the Middle East at the age of one.
0:36.0	He went on to achieve a first-class degree at the London School of Economics,
0:40.0	and soon after that he set up an advertising agency with an elder brother.
0:45.0	Over a period of 20 years their approach became synonymous with commercial and political success.
0:51.0	The Tory Party and British Airways were just two of the beneficiaries of their
0:54.6	astute campaigns and the brothers became very famous and extremely rich.
0:59.9	But the company overreached itself.
1:02.1	Late last year there was was a shareholder's revolt,
1:04.5	and my castaway found himself driven into exile
1:07.5	from the firm he created.
1:09.4	He vowed revenge, and already in a new company
1:12.4	he's once more casting his spell across the world of advertising.
1:16.6	He is Morris Saatchi.
1:18.4	Are you still intent on revenge, or is the passage of time taking the sting away? I didn't quite
1:24.5	vow revenge Sue but I did take the view that the people who had taken control of
1:29.2	such and such him weren't people with whom I could work.
1:33.2	You went away and you've since set up on your own.
1:35.8	What you've taken, and this must have been quite sweet revenge, is you took that British Airways
1:40.5	account, which is said to be worth some 60 million or so.
1:44.2	How many others have come across with your clients?
	...

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