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Desert Island Discs

Sir Adrian Cadbury

Desert Island Discs

BBC

Society & Culture, Music, Personal Journals, Music Commentary

4.314.3K Ratings

🗓️ 29 January 1995

⏱️ 39 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The castaway in Desert Island Discs this week is Sir Adrian Cadbury, for nearly 20 years chairman of the famous chocolate factory that bears his family name.

He'll be talking to Sue Lawley about his Quaker background and his experiences of rowing for Britain in the 1952 Olympics, as well as discussing his views on the standards and values which dominate British business life today.

[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]

Favourite track: Symphony no 1 No 1 in C Major, Opus 21 by Ludwig van Beethoven Book: Dr. Johnson's Lexicographic Works by Dr Samuel Johnson Luxury: Fibreglass sculling boat

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

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 a businessman. For nearly 25 years he presided over the famous chocolate

0:35.0

company which bears his family name. He joined it after Eton, the Guards and Cambridge where

0:40.1

he rode for Britain in the 1952 Olympics.

0:43.0

A Quaker, he was the chairman of a recent committee which looked at the ways of preventing

0:48.0

falling standards in the management of big companies.

0:51.1

He shrugs off the criticism his recommendations attracted and still hopes that

0:55.2

the business world will accept the advice of the successful man born with a chocolate spoon in his mouth.

1:01.6

He is Sir Adrian Cadbury. Let's get important things straight first

1:05.3

then Sir Adrian. Do you like chocolate? Have you got a sweet tooth? Absolutely. Yes, I have indeed.

1:09.9

You're the original fruit and nutcase. I'm you, this theory, you know, that if you work in the company, you actually go off chocolate is really not true.

1:18.8

People divide very quickly into those who settle down to a steady daily intake like me and then there are a few who

1:24.8

seeing a sort of five ton vat of chocolate do find it puts them off a little.

1:28.1

And you still got your own teeth? I still got my own teeth. But living near the factory

1:32.3

which you've done for most of your life I mean you can

1:34.1

smell it for some four miles around can't you the chocolate on the brunes and

1:37.9

occasionally you know people object to this and I used to say it's them well just

1:41.2

go and live near Dunlop you know and see what's like to smell a tower

1:44.3

factory. The great thing at home was that if you could smell the chocolate then you knew it was going to rain.

1:49.2

Well because the wind was in a certain direction. Absolutely. But as a boy I it must have been wonderful, something out of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, if you really like the stuff.

1:57.0

We were taken a sort of annual visit in our school holidays, and that was wonderful because of course there were things like the

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