Desert Island Discs: Archive: 2016-20181 Jul 2018

Guy Singh-Watson

Guy Singh-Watson is an organic farmer and founder of Riverford, a major British supplier of organic vegetables through a box delivery scheme. Born in 1960 and the youngest of five children, his parents became tenant farmers in Devon in 1951. He describes himself as "a proper little farm boy", and spent his free time outside, clambering up trees, catching rabbits, rearing his own pig and helping on the farm.

Severely dyslexic, he disliked school, but thanks to an aptitude for performing well in exams, he won a place at Oxford University to read Agricultural and Forestry Science, graduating with a First. He briefly joined the family farm, but left to become a management consultant in London and then New York, returning to the farm in 1986. He started cultivating vegetables on three acres of land with a wheelbarrow and a borrowed tractor, and found his niche, moving from three to 18 to 50 acres quite rapidly.

Initially, Guy sold to supermarkets, but became convinced that there must be a better way of getting his produce to customers, and set up a veg box scheme in 1993. His company now delivers to around 50,000 homes a week and had a turnover of £56.7 million in 2017. Guy has four grown-up children from his first marriage and an eight-year-old step-daughter from his second marriage to Geetie Singh.

Presenter: Kirsty Young Producer: Cathy Drysdale.

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Episoder(126)

Dr Kevin Fong

Kirsty Young's castaway is Dr. Kevin Fong. He is a consultant anaesthetist at University College Hospital London, and an expert on space medicine. He is a senior lecturer in Physiology at UCL and the ...

6 Aug 201735min

Sheryl Sandberg

Sheryl Sandberg, Chief Operating Officer of Facebook, is Kirsty Young's castaway. She worked for Google at the beginning of the tech boom before joining Facebook in 2008. Raised in Miami Beach, Florid...

30 Jul 201735min

Jayne-Anne Gadhia

Kirsty Young's castaway is Jayne-Anne Gadhia, Chief Executive of Virgin Money. She is currently the government's Women in Finance Champion. She worked for Fred Goodwin at RBS just prior to the financi...

23 Jul 201735min

John McEnroe

Kirsty Young's castaway is the tennis player and commentator, John McEnroe. He won three singles and five doubles Wimbledon titles, four singles and four doubles at the US Open and was ranked number o...

16 Jul 201735min

Sue Perkins

Kirsty Young's castaway is the comedian and TV presenter Sue Perkins. She and her friend Mel Giedroyc first appeared as a comedy duo at the Edinburgh Fringe over 20 years ago and together they present...

9 Jul 201752min

Professor Carlo Rovelli

Kirsty Young's castaway is the theoretical physicist, Professor Carlo Rovelli. His book 'Seven Brief Lessons on Physics' became one of the fastest-selling science titles of all time, catapulting him f...

2 Jul 201736min

Stella McCartney

Kirsty Young's castaway this week is the fashion designer Stella McCartney.Born the middle child of Paul and Linda McCartney, Stella's early years were a paradox: she would either spend her days ridin...

25 Jun 201750min

Jed Mercurio

Kirsty Young's castaway is Jed Mercurio. Creator of Line of Duty, and an award-winning TV writer, producer, director and novelist, he is one of the few British script-writers to work as an American-st...

18 Jun 201734min