Nina Campbell
Desert Island Discs
BBC
4.3 • 14.3K Ratings
🗓️ 16 March 1997
⏱️ 35 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
When designing the interior of Sunninghill for the Duke and Duchess of York, this week's castaway on Desert Island Discs rummaged through the cellars at Buckingham Palace in search of just the right treasure. She's also coloured Ringo Starr's library cranberry red, and suggested tasselled tie-backs for Rod Stewart. Nina Campbell is one of Britain's top interior designers and a devotee of the English country house style, although, as she admits to Sue Lawley this week, she never goes near the country - it's too wet and windy.
[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]
Favourite track: Design For Living by Flanders & Swann Book: A photograph album Luxury: A bed
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, I'm Krestey 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 1997, and the presenter was Sue Lolly. My castaway this week is an interior designer. She was brought up in post-war London by a mother |
| 0:34.9 | who refused to leave Belgradeia and a father who looked wonderful in pyjamas. Boarding school in |
| 0:40.6 | Ascot was the nearest she got to the countryside and by her early 20s she'd set up her own business. |
| 0:47.0 | She's gone on to win the American Fashion Award for the quote woman whose most influenced style internationally, unquote. |
| 0:54.8 | Certainly her ability to create beautiful rooms in which many different ideas form a unified |
| 0:59.9 | theme has made her a favourite among the rich and famous and a highly successful |
| 1:04.4 | business woman. Married and divorced twice she says husbands can come and go but |
| 1:09.5 | whatever you do girls hang on to your curtain maker. She is Nina Campbell and not |
| 1:14.6 | Naomi Campbell often confused I think Nina. Sadly not when they see me but... But is |
| 1:20.3 | the implication of that quote that you personally couldn't make a pair of curtains to save your life? |
| 1:25.6 | Oh, I don't think I could, no. I might have to on the Desert Island, but I couldn't, not that anyone would want hanging in their room. |
| 1:30.8 | So you can't sew? No, I can't it. I did make a skirt at school once but |
| 1:34.0 | my mathematics was so bad and it was one of those box pleated skirts that I either had to lose |
| 1:38.9 | about three inches to fit into it or gain it and I attempted to lose it and failed on both |
| 1:43.4 | kinds. So the skill is in in the eye is it it's a visual imagination yes I |
| 1:48.8 | think so and by hanging on to the curtain maker he's able to help me out. But it's it's color then is it? I think |
| 1:55.2 | color is very important. I actually think what must be quite depressing in a way for designers |
| 1:58.7 | is that color I feel is more in a way. I mean if you have the choice of a bad design and good |
| 2:05.2 | color you'll get away with it more than a good design in bad color I think. |
| 2:09.2 | But as I understand it coordination is that word is anathema to you you don't like things that coordinate in the classic sense |
... |
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