More Rosebud: Chris Patten, Lord Patten of Barnes

Rosebud with Gyles Brandreth

Gyles Brandreth / Plain Jaine Media

Society & Culture, Unknown

4.8 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 15 July 2025

⏱️ 59 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

It's More Rosebud, and our guest today is a political heavyweight. He was a member of parliament and cabinet minister under Margaret Thatcher and John Major, was the UK's last governor in Hong Kong, and then Chancellor of Oxford University. It's Chris Patten, Lord Patten of Barnes. In this episode, Chris tells Gyles about his childhood, growing up in the west of London in a happy and loving Irish family with a jazz-musician father. He tells Gyles about working for Ted Heath and Margaret Thatcher, about Hong Kong and about his pride at having been involved in the Irish peace process. He talks about Trump and his fears for the future.

At the start of this episode, we also have a surprise: Rosebud's shortest ever interview! Plus a listener email and more chat from Gyles and Harriet.

Enjoy this.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This drops on a Tuesday, but you can listen to it anytime you like.
0:04.3	It's more Rosebud. Less of me, more Harriet, and lots of surprises.
0:09.7	Thanks for being with us. Hello and welcome to more Rosebud. It's a Tuesday, which means there's more of me and much more of Harriet Jane, my producer and friend.
0:38.5	How are you, Harriet?
0:39.5	Yes, fine, thanks, Charles.
0:40.8	Where are we meeting today?
0:42.5	We're at this morning, because you're on this morning, this morning.
0:45.4	I'm on this morning, this morning, if you're one of our international listeners,
0:49.6	is a television program that goes out every day on ITV,
0:53.7	which is the main commercial channel in the UK,
0:56.2	and it goes out from 10 a.m. to 12.30, sometimes at 1 o'clock. And I pop up on the show a couple of
1:01.3	times of the week, and I love it. I'm doing it for several years now. And we do it in a building
1:06.3	called Television Center, which was a BBC building, and which I first came to in, oh, the late 1960s.
1:16.7	And I met the controller of television then, who was a man called Paul Fox.
1:24.0	So this is literally before you were born, Harriet.
1:28.5	And I'd done a TV show for ITV on Christmas Eve.
1:34.8	No, New Year's Eve, 1969.
1:37.5	So perhaps the year I came here was 1970, which would be 55 years ago.
1:42.4	And I was seen by the top man, the controller.
1:45.3	Maybe it's the controller of BBC One.
1:46.5	Straight to the top, Giles.
1:47.9	Straight to the top.
	...

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