YouSaid · the spoken record

Stuart Rose

lines on the record: 59
first: 2009-11-22
most recent: 2009-11-22
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“It would have to be Philippano. I think she's got a fabulous voice. It's a lovely piece of music. She sings a great repertoire of music, but it's music to sit back, enjoy, and think about life.”
2009-11-22 · Desert Island Discs · Sir Stuart Rose · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I thought about this long and hard, and some people probably think I'm a wimp for choosing this, but I think probably where for me it would be a power shower delivering water at any temperature 24 hours a day and a complete set of fresh white fluffy towels.”
2009-11-22 · Desert Island Discs · Sir Stuart Rose · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I was wondering if I could substitute the book for a copy of the times delivered every morning, if that was allowed. I'd very much like it.”
2009-11-22 · Desert Island Discs · Sir Stuart Rose · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I've chosen a record which is by the Smiths. It's slightly tongue-in-cheek, heaven knows I'm miserable now it's called. It reminds me sometimes of difficult times, but it also reminds me to laugh at those difficult times, bring yourself and rise above it and just smile because there's plenty to smile about in life and I am a cheerful chap.”
2009-11-22 · Desert Island Discs · Sir Stuart Rose · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Have a letter once to say that I was the most arrogant and self opinionated man since Tony Blair. I'm not sure if that was a compliment or not.”
2009-11-22 · Desert Island Discs · Sir Stuart Rose · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I have say it's crossed my mind from time to time, but of course we never do that. I will admit this much. We do have a lot of mail that comes in. I try my best to answer most of it. If not, it does get diligently dealt with. But we do keep a nutters file. And that is a file of letters which are either incredibly rude or incredibly funny or just incredibly bonkers. And sometimes when I'm feeling really down, I bring it out and have a laugh with my secretary.”
2009-11-22 · Desert Island Discs · Sir Stuart Rose · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think infuriating completely. MNS is expected to behave to a different standard to other retailers. I'll give you some examples. Some I understand and some I'm less understanding of. But we accidentally printed a t-shirt for a child which showed a child being bottle fed and within minutes I had the chairman of the National Association of Midwives on the phone threatening to boycott Marks and Spence if we didn't remove it. I understand the reasons behind it, but it's a business which is judged all the time on how it behaves and what messages it sends out.”
2009-11-22 · Desert Island Discs · Sir Stuart Rose · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I won't say that I can do it all the time, but I think there is no doubt about it that to be successful retailers, whether it be Marks and Spence or anybody else, the trick is to understand what the Zeitgeist is, to understand what the mood of the moment is, and then to try and deliver that just ahead of when the customer wants it. That's the trick.”
2009-11-22 · Desert Island Discs · Sir Stuart Rose · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But my daughter did, and it was at Marks and Spencer for some two or three years until about six months ago. She was now gone on to do her own thing, but yes she was in the shop for a while. But my son is there I mentioned the word, he's a banker, but he's at a bank that neither lends money nor borrows money. Sensible man. That's the right sort of bank to be in.”
2009-11-22 · Desert Island Discs · Sir Stuart Rose · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, sometimes you just have to sit back and have a laugh. I'm particularly also fond of cricket as it's a big love of mine. And I came across this called the Duckworth-Lewis method. It's a song about cricket. It makes me laugh and it makes me think about the game that I like.”
2009-11-22 · Desert Island Discs · Sir Stuart Rose · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, but I'm also quite willful, I'm also quite selfish. I can do my laundry, I can do my cooking. So anybody who ever hitches arrived with me has got to be prepared, if you like, to take me for what I am. But equally, I hope that I would be prepared to take somebody else for what they are.”
2009-11-22 · Desert Island Discs · Sir Stuart Rose · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, you know, I've neglected my family. If I had treated my family in a different way or my wife in a different way, I'm sure probably we'd be still living together, but I didn't. But as I say, I hope that the best of old relations doesn't disappear. Equally, I'm a glass half full man, so I'm very hopeful that there's a whole new horizons and things that I can do find a little excitement.”
2009-11-22 · Desert Island Discs · Sir Stuart Rose · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, it's not about work at all, but it's about the pressures of life. It's about the pressures of work. It's about the pressures of family life. It's about the way you behave. I've behaved badly in a number of occasions in my life. And you can't put the milk back in the bottle. You have to move on.”
2009-11-22 · Desert Island Discs · Sir Stuart Rose · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, and very happily married to somebody that I loved very deeply with whom I have got two children, and sadly for lots of reasons I let that marriage deteriorate, although I firmly believe that it takes two for that to happen. Is it too late?”
2009-11-22 · Desert Island Discs · Sir Stuart Rose · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, I mean, we are, my mother was a pretty passionate person. She had a pretty volatile personality. I have got a pretty volatile personality myself. But I think I'm quick to say sorry. I'm certainly in the business and in my private life if I screwed up on something. I don't mind saying, look, I made a mess of that.”
2009-11-22 · Desert Island Discs · Sir Stuart Rose · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Probably at least a quarter, maybe a half, I can't remember the truth, but certainly as she had some Greek blood as well, so she's quite exotic.”
2009-11-22 · Desert Island Discs · Sir Stuart Rose · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The next piece of music is something that no matter what mood you're in that absolutely calms you down. A beautiful piece of music by a singer called Philippa Giordano who is not a classically trained opera singer, but she's singing here Casta Diva from Bellini's Norma and it's a fabulous piece of music.”
2009-11-22 · Desert Island Discs · Sir Stuart Rose · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I often usually have to go back to an office meeting, but put it this way, there's never any wine left in the bottle.”
2009-11-22 · Desert Island Discs · Sir Stuart Rose · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I take him to a post restaurant usually, and he likes that, and his eyes light up. He gets stuck into his food. He's got a healthy appetite. He's very fit, and he's 86 next year, so there's not much to complain about.”
2009-11-22 · Desert Island Discs · Sir Stuart Rose · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, we are pretty close. My father's a very independent minded man, but I make it my business to see him for lunch every month.”
2009-11-22 · Desert Island Discs · Sir Stuart Rose · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Actually, interesting enough, the thing that made me think most of all was when I became 49, which was the age my mother was when she killed herself. And of course, you think about these things all the time. But of course there are regrets. I regret my mum's not here to be able to enjoy some of the things. I regret that she's not seen her grandchildren. I regret that my father has had quite a difficult time.”
2009-11-22 · Desert Island Discs · Sir Stuart Rose · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was a turning moment in my life. People have asked me, I've often asked me this question, and did I suddenly switch off one, switch and switch on another. I think what it did make me do is grow up. And it made me suddenly realize close on about mortality. It's the first time somebody close to me had died. Made me think about what life was about, possibly in a very simplistic way, but where was I going? What was I going to do? And I think that I did, possibly because I was, you know, wanting to. be occupied put a lot of my energies into work.”
2009-11-22 · Desert Island Discs · Sir Stuart Rose · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, my first thought is, of course, I beat myself up that if I'd wrong my mum at eight o'clock instead of nine o'clock, she might not have killed herself, but rationality tells you that if somebody wants to kill themselves, they will kill themselves. You're angry with somebody for having done that to you. You are sorrowful thirty three years this year later that you are not there to be able to say in a look what's happened. I've got married, I've had children, this is your grandchildren, this is what your family have done, so you can't talk to it to anybody. But equally, I respect people's independence. I respect people's choice. And I think my mum was obviously unhappy. That's the choice that she made. I'm absolutely certain she would not want to have caused the pain that she caused us, but we respect her memory.”
2009-11-22 · Desert Island Discs · Sir Stuart Rose · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, you have to do things, I mean, particularly it was obviously a very shattering time for my father in my usual fashion, I suppose, I took control and got things organized. I then went back to work fairly quickly afterwards and I sort of locked it away for quite a long time. And it's only in the last ten years or so, I suppose, that I've unlocked it a bit more because it has had a very big effect on not only my life, but my family's life.”
2009-11-22 · Desert Island Discs · Sir Stuart Rose · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And my mother had suffered from what would today probably be described as mild depression for a lot of her life, and she was pretty good at hiding it. But, you know, there we wear one November day in 1973. My mum I know hadn't been very well. I went around to see them at the weekend. My mum was unusually in bed and I said, look, I hope you feel better tomorrow. I'll call you tomorrow, which was a Monday morning. Monday morning is where at the time it's still artificially busy time in our business. I made a mental note to call at eight o'clock. I forgot I called her at nine o'clock and she'd already killed herself. She left no note. And that is obviously a very shattering experience for particularly for my father, for my sister and for myself, and it takes you a long time to get through that.”
2009-11-22 · Desert Island Discs · Sir Stuart Rose · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What's next is something a bit different for me. It's Tony Hancock, and it's Kenneth Williams. I have a lover flying. I have a love of this ridiculous. And this, I think, encompasses all those things.”
2009-11-22 · Desert Island Discs · Sir Stuart Rose · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“At the end of the first week that I left Mark Suspencer, I was very sorely tempted over a glass of whiskey living on my own in London because my family was still in Paris to pick up the phone and sell like I've made a dreadful mistake. I soon got a grip of myself.”
2009-11-22 · Desert Island Discs · Sir Stuart Rose · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, the most straightforward way I can describe it is that in Mark Suspencer, you were part of the machine. You had no visibility at either end. When I went outside suddenly to the Burton group as it was, Sir Ralph Alpin, who was the chairman at the time, marched in one day and asked me what I was doing about selling and acquiring properties, what I was doing about hiring and firing staff. And these were things I'd never touched. And of course, I learned a whole pile of new skills that M&S hadn't taught me at that time, which is why I firmly believe that if I hadn't run those businesses had that time out of Mark Suspencer, I would have been completely unqualified to come back and do the job I subsequently did.”
2009-11-22 · Desert Island Discs · Sir Stuart Rose · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But I do firmly believe, and I would say this, and I think I have said it to my children and to anybody, look, you get one life. You have to try and potentialize it to the best of your ability, and that's what I was trying to do. As it happened, it was a win-win for the family financially, because in moving it was a step up financially, but it was a big risk, and I took it up.”
2009-11-22 · Desert Island Discs · Sir Stuart Rose · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, if you're saying or suggesting that maybe that I've taken some selfish decisions in my life, the answer is yes. Which more?”
2009-11-22 · Desert Island Discs · Sir Stuart Rose · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I was a commercial director running all our products in Europe and I was just coming up for 40. I'd done 17 years. I had had a few run-ins with senior management at the very top of the business. But I mean, one of the reasons I did go to Paris was because I was banished to Paris because Cumin Rose, sit down, you're going to Paris. So although it was a good thing. No I had been asked to go five years before and refused, so I didn't have much option the second time around, particularly since I was in the bad books.”
2009-11-22 · Desert Island Discs · Sir Stuart Rose · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think so. I mean, I'm very conscious of it, but that's what I am. I think people like to be surrounded or have somebody around who's got sort of an energy level. I mean, you do need a high energy level to run a business like ours. And it is sometimes I find quite infectious. And I'm very lucky I was given an extra battery. I hope it keeps going for a while yet. I wouldn't change it.”
2009-11-22 · Desert Island Discs · Sir Stuart Rose · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, it has to be the Beatles. I came rather conservatively from Africa wearing a regulation school uniform. I suddenly came to a place where suddenly loon pants were around t-shirts were around. People were smoking funny substances and doing funny things. And there was this rather weird music. I hadn't heard much pop music. I've chosen Hard Days Night. I think it's a great Beatles song.”
2009-11-22 · Desert Island Discs · Sir Stuart Rose · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“As a youngster. There's no doubt about it that my mother instilled me with a huge amount of confidence. My mother was very ambitious for me, as all mothers are for their children, but particularly so she knew that I was struggling, I suspect, with boarding school and with academia, but she always made me feel that I had something significant to offer, and interestingly enough, I've always fallen back on that in the sense that my mum said I could do it. Well, I'll show him I can.”
2009-11-22 · Desert Island Discs · Sir Stuart Rose · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, I mean I still today feel if you like bad about it. I didn't go to university so there was always in the back of my mind well I'm going to have to work hard or I'm going to have to show people that I have got this ability because I believed I had.”
2009-11-22 · Desert Island Discs · Sir Stuart Rose · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, I was my academic career has definitely been difficult for me. I was about a year behind when I came back and I was always struggling, if you like, at the bottom of the year trying to make headway. Given the time.”
2009-11-22 · Desert Island Discs · Sir Stuart Rose · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think for all the obvious reasons my parents just in the same way as most parents did believed it was the right thing. They wanted to give me the best education. The Quakers have a very nice attitude towards life and the development of people so it wasn't the school where you went and got beaten. No. This was not a school where there was fagging, this was actually by the standards of the time quite benign. And, you know, in terms of what it did for me as a human being, I got a lot out of it, but I was just lonely.”
2009-11-22 · Desert Island Discs · Sir Stuart Rose · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, it was a very big shock. I mean, I was quite insulated and I was quite naive and it was quite a shock to me, therefore, when I think it was a shock to my parents as well, particularly my mother coming back from colonial Africa for ten years, suddenly back to the UK. And it was certainly a shock to me being bundled off to boarding school, suddenly finding that this was a whole different world. Having come from literally four of us seeing each other all the time with a very close circle of young school friends in Africa to this big, cold, rather dark boarding school in York where you got bundled off in those days at the beginning of term and you came back thirteen weeks later. And yes, I was lonely and I was unhappy in the first year that I was at school.”
2009-11-22 · Desert Island Discs · Sir Stuart Rose · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My third track is slightly unusual, I think. It's Algelsum, and it's Mammy, and it absolutely is one of my earliest childhood memories. We were very privileged as children. My father and my mother actually were very adventurous. We were travelling abroad when we used to come back on home leave. We used to go from East Africa up to Venice or Trieste by boat for three weeks, and then my dad would have a car, which he would buy, and we would travel across the continent back to England, and it would sometimes take three or four weeks. We used to be your family together, go downstairs and have a meal, and we used to sort of entertain our parents, and our parents used to entertain us, and I can run with my sister singing this song for my parents. I can still remember my parents literally falling about laughing. And it's a very evocative memory.”
2009-11-22 · Desert Island Discs · Sir Stuart Rose · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They talk to you about those times? A little bit. I never met my grandfather on my mother's side because he died very young, and my grandmother was never around. She was a very tough minded, independent lady, so it was quite a disparate family. And therefore, for me, the African part of my childhood, which is when our family was together and our early formative years, is an important memory for me.”
2009-11-22 · Desert Island Discs · Sir Stuart Rose · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, and I often think to my father who's now eighty six that actually he has had a very traumatic life. And my mother again came from a difficult background, from a family of cotton growers in Egypt. Her father died when she was very young. I think her child was quite difficult.”
2009-11-22 · Desert Island Discs · Sir Stuart Rose · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, very charming, intelligent, educated. My father speaks better English than I do. He appears more British than I do, so he's very much the English gentleman. But somebody who had had quite a difficult childhood, his parents fled from Russia at the end of the revolution, and he was not literally, but metaphorically adopted by a spinster Quaker lady called Nona Ransom, who knew a war was coming and said to his parents, look, it's going to be very tough. There's going to be a world war. I'll take your son to England, educate him and make sure he's protected, and that's what she did.”
2009-11-22 · Desert Island Discs · Sir Stuart Rose · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My father was born Igor Briansev and is now called Harry Rhodes. Harry Ransom Rose. My father, as I say, came here very young, became a naturalized British subject, joined the REF and flew Lancaster bombers, came out, went to university, the LSE, and then decided one day that he would follow up an opportunity overseas and join the colonial service and went to Africa, where suddenly your life was transformed. It was bright blue sky every day, warm conditions, school from seven till twelve o'clock afternoons off on the beach, and living very much the colonial lifestyle. It seemed to my parents very well.”
2009-11-22 · Desert Island Discs · Sir Stuart Rose · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We were initially living in a prefab directly when I was born in 49, and then we moved to Warwickshire, where we literally lived in a caravan with an outside Lou.”
2009-11-22 · Desert Island Discs · Sir Stuart Rose · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it was quite an emotional time for him. My father is not English. He was born in China and came here and was absorbed into this country just at the start of the Second World War. My mother, although she had English blood and Scottish blood, actually was born and brought up in Egypt. My mother in particular who'd not come to England at all till she was about sixteen, suddenly finding herself in Warwickshire and Hailing Island, probably in the middle of the winter.”
2009-11-22 · Desert Island Discs · Sir Stuart Rose · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, my family and I left Africa in 1661 when Tanganika as it was became independent Tanzania and I met a gentleman who was trying to start the school up. He was looking for some funding. Somebody introduced me to him. He came to see me and then from that it sort of generated to, well, if I'm going to go, I'll take my father and my sister. And then why not? We'll take everybody. So we all went out for a week.”
2009-11-22 · Desert Island Discs · Sir Stuart Rose · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, this takes me back to my early childhood to Africa, where my parents took me as a five or six year old back in the very early fifties. It's a piece of music from the Wagogo tribe who live effectively in the central highlands of Tanzania, Tanganika at the time. I went back a few years ago, I took my family back with me, I took my father, my sister, and I took my children. And really delightfully, when I was there, the Wagogo tribe who'd come from that particular area elected me as an elder of the Wagogo tribe. I think I'm the only white elder of the Wagogo tribe. We found this piece of music, and I hope your listeners like it.”
2009-11-22 · Desert Island Discs · Sir Stuart Rose · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You were talking about two men who got very strong views. You're talking about a 12 billion pound bid. One of the biggest bids probably ever had, hostile bids in the UK. You're talking about a lot of emotion and you're talking about wanting to win. This was kill or be killed.”
2009-11-22 · Desert Island Discs · Sir Stuart Rose · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He didn't actually smack me, but there was some, how do you say, grasping of the lapels? Vigorous grasping of the lapels.”
2009-11-22 · Desert Island Discs · Sir Stuart Rose · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, I made enough money to be independent, which was very nice. But, yes, you're absolutely right. When the big came along, it was hotly contested because there was a man who had very firm views. Here was another man myself who felt that this company should not disappear into private hands. So there was an absolute mismatter of views. And it did get quite physical one morning on the pavement just outside Baker Street.”
2009-11-22 · Desert Island Discs · Sir Stuart Rose · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source