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 2007. My castaway this week has done more than perhaps anyone else to shatter the glass ceiling. She is Nicola Horlich. A mother of six

children and now step-mum to another three. Her proud boast is that she's never missed a sports

day or a school speech day. She says her career as one of our

top investment bankers is an extension of her maternal instinct, nurturing the companies she's plowing

funds into. With apparently limitless energy, talent and ambition,

she seemed to be the one woman who had managed to have it all. Until that is,

her eldest daughter Georgie was diagnosed with leukemia. For 10 years she combined

nursing her daughter with her highly successful career whilst also looking after the

rest of her growing family. Nicola Horlic it was during that time that you were

given the nickname Superwoman in the press.

I don't know if it makes you Blanch or if you secretly quite enjoy it.

What do you make of that title?

I really do Blanch actually, because I really think that somebody who has a highly paid job

and has lots of help at home is not a superwoman. I've also been very lucky that my mother

is relatively young. She was actually only the same age as I am now when

Georgie was born rather remarkably. So as a result she's always been there in the

background and my brother also has always been very supportive. So yeah I've had

lots of help and I really don't regard myself as a superwoman.

When I say they called you superwoman, the they I'm referring to of course is the press.

And what drew you to their attention was you were heading up Morgan Grenfell Asset Management's

...