Hello, I'm Kirstie Young. Thank you for downloading this podcast of Desert Island Disks from BBC Radio 4.

For rights reasons, the music choices are shorter than in the radio broadcast.

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Radio 4. My castaway this week is Sir Howard Stringer, now Chairman of the Board and formerly CEO of

Sony. He was surely the only chief executive who was a decorated Vietnam vet as he knelt before the Queen to be knighted.

It gives you something of an idea of the breadth and heights of his achievements.

Born in Cardiff, he went to 11 different schools before his 16th birthday, and it clearly gave him restless feet. In the mid-60s, he headed to America, where his first job was answering phones for the Ed Sullivan show.

He loved TV and it felt the same about him.

He's won a raft of Emmys for his productions and worked with all the big beasts of the

Broadcasting Jungle including Walter Cronkite, Dan Rather and David Letterman.

He has spent the last few years commuting between New York, Tokyo, London and Hollywood,

the first and so far only Westerner to run the Japanese giant Sony.

He says, I think I'm a bit prone to new adventures.

The same damned impulse that got me in trouble by sending me to America in the first place

compels me to take challenges when offered

them.

Back in 2005 then when Sony appointed you Chief Executive a 70-odd billion dollar

company and you were the first Westerner to be brought into the

fold they were taking something of a risk were they? They were and I said as much and

actually I said well I better learn Japanese and everybody said no no no because it'll take up too much time you got to learn the other stuff and if you're

staggering with early Japanese you'll irritate everybody and it'll slow you down and I said

well all right. So as the CEO of Sony you were there at the

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