Vincent Cable MP

Desert Island Discs: Archive 2005-2010

BBC

Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.4 • 804 Ratings

🗓️ 18 January 2009

⏱️ 37 minutes

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Summary

Kirsty Young's castaway this week is the Liberal Democrat Treasury Spokesman, Vince Cable. He studied economics at Cambridge and had a rich career before entering parliament in 1997. Now, he's become something of a media darling; seen by many as one of the few people able to understand - and make credible suggestions about - the current financial crisis.

In this personal interview, however, politics is largely set aside and instead Vince describes the home-life that shaped him as he grew up and the rich family life he has enjoyed as an adult. His fiercely ambitious father was an activist for the local Conservative party: he was talented, driven and passionate, but also overbearing and unwilling to hear voices of dissent. Vince dismayed his father by dropping his science degree in favour of economics and later outraged him by marrying his first wife, Olympia, who was from Kenya. Despite his father's view that mixed-race marriages 'didn't work', they were married for more than 13 years and raised their three children together before Olympia's death from cancer. After her death, he says, he envisaged a lonely old-age lay ahead - but an unpromising debate about free trade and agriculture brought him together with his second wife. Now he says he wears both his wedding rings together as a tribute to the two happy marriages he has enjoyed, he continues to go dancing every week with his second wife Rachel, as he did with Olympia and he is, he cheerfully confesses, a romantic.

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

Favourite track: La Ci Darem La Mano from Don Giovanni by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Book: A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking Luxury: An Aston Martin car.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, it's Nicola Cochlin. Young people have been making history for years, but we don't often hear about them. My brand new series on BBC Sounds sets out to put this right. In history's youngest heroes, I'll be revealing the fascinating stories of 12 young people who've played a major role in history and who've helped shape our world. Like Audrey Hepburn, Nelson Mandela, Louis Braille and Lady Jane Grey,
0:24.7	history's youngest heroes with me, Nicola Cochlin.
0:27.8	Listen on BBC Sounds.
0:30.4	Hello, I'm Krista Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive.
0:35.5	For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.
0:38.6	The program was originally broadcast in 2009.
1:12.4	Music My castaway this week is Vince Cable. As the Liberal Democrats' Treasury spokesman, he's seen by many as the all-action superhero of the credit crunch, the I-told-you-so man of British politics. He predicted the current financial meltdown years in advance and seems one of the few able to offer credible solutions. Rarer
1:18.6	still in politics, he has spent a long time and a vivid existence outside the Westminster
1:23.9	village. Paying tribute, the party's current leader, sums up Vince Cable's attributes rather
1:29.1	neatly.
1:30.2	There are, says Nick Clegg, few men who have excelled as an economist, a comedian and a
1:35.2	ballroom dancer.
1:36.7	Praise indeed, Vince Cable, and probably all the sweeter, when it comes from a man who has
1:41.2	the job that many people think you should have, leader of the Lib Dems?
1:44.6	I'm delighted with his compliments. I think he's a very good leader and I'm very happy being his deputy and speaking for us on economic policy and that's where I expect to be till the next general election.
1:55.0	Suitably diplomatic. We would expect nothing less. It's an honest answer.
1:58.7	But interesting, of course, at the next general election,
2:01.7	there's every chance that we'll see a hung parliament. You are openly admired by leaders of both
2:06.8	parties that you oppose by Labour and the Tories. If you were to be offered the role of
2:12.5	Chancellor, would you take it up? Not as an individual. I'm not moving away from the Liberal
2:16.9	Democrats. I'm very
2:17.8	happy with my party. I hope the outcome of the election is that we would reform the government
	...

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