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Sliced Bread

Toast - Sinclair C5

Sliced Bread

BBC

Health & Fitness

4.6695 Ratings

🗓️ 4 May 2023

⏱️ 26 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

While Sliced Bread takes a break we serve up… Toast. A study of the spectacular failures of wonder products and businesses which had promised so much to consumers.

You can contact us at toast@bbc.co.uk

In each episode, the presenter and BBC business journalist, Sean Farrington, examines one big idea which ended up toast, examining the reasons behind the failure and discovering what can we learn from its story today.

Sean unpicks all the early optimism, hype and ambition, speaking to expert commentators to discover how they view things now and what, if anything, could have been done differently.

Sean is assisted by the self-made millionaire and serial entrepreneur, Sam White, as together they try to work out what went wrong.

This week, Sean and Sam look into the Sinclair C5 - an electric vehicle from the 1980s which promised to revolutionize personal transport.

They get a first-hand account of what happened from the former Managing Director of Sinclair Vehicles Ltd, Barrie Wills, and hear how the Isle of Cumbrae became a hotbed for the Sinclair C5....until the little vehicles started breaking down all over the island.

They also speak to Grant Sinclair - nephew of the C5's inventor, Sir Clive Sinclair - and hear how he has devised a new and very different take on the C5 which he plans to launch soon.

Presenter: Sean Farrington Producer: Jon Douglas

Toast is a spin-off from Sliced Bread, the series in which Greg Foot investigates the latest so-called wonder products to find out whether they really are the best thing since sliced bread.

Sliced Bread returns for a new batch of investigations in May. In the meantime, Toast is available in the Sliced Bread feed on BBC Sounds.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Hello, podcast fan.

0:03.0

Consider this your invite to the UK's biggest podcasting party.

0:06.7

We're heading to Sheffield from the 4th to the 6th of July

0:09.0

for the BBC Sounds Fringe at the Crossed Wires Festival.

0:12.8

We'll be joined by some of the biggest names in podcasting,

0:15.3

including Sarah Cox, Charlie Hedges, Russell Kane,

0:18.4

and some bloke called Greg James doing his radio four show called Rewinder.

0:23.2

You can watch live shows of your favourite podcasts and the best part is free.

0:28.0

To book your free tickets, go to crossedwires.org slash fringe.

0:34.4

BBC Sounds, music, Radio Podcasts.

0:40.3

Hello and welcome to Toast, brought to you by the team behind BBC Radio 4's hit consumer journalism series, Slice Bread.

0:49.8

I'm Sean Farrington. With me is Sam White, self-made millionaire, entrepreneur. Sam is here

0:55.6

to decide why today's wonder products went from being the best thing since sliced bread to

1:00.9

toast. Her decision is based only on what she hears over the course of the next 25 minutes or so

1:06.6

using her business nows and lifetime experience. Which one's more important? Definitely lifetime experience,

1:13.8

mate. Great. Let's get to it. Now, by coincidence, Sam, today's Wonder Product got a very brief

1:22.5

mention right at the start of our very first episode. It was when we were talking about Google Glass, actually.

1:29.6

I'm judging by your face you didn't pick it up at the time.

1:31.9

I would have been impressed if you did.

1:33.9

We were talking to former BBC technology correspondent Rory Ketland-Jones.

1:37.8

He was wearing Google Glasses at the time when he spoke to us.

1:40.3

He said this.

...

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