Matthew Swann - Why playing it safe is the biggest risk of all

Speaker A: M welcome to the Nottingham Business School Business Leaders Podcast, where business leaders tell

Speaker B: their stories and share their insights. All our guests have a personal connection with Nottingham Business School, so listen, learn, enjoy and share.

Speaker A: Welcome to another episode of the Nottingham Business Schools Business Leaders Podcast with me, Mike Sassi. Matthew Swan is director of the BBC Concert Orchestra, a world class organisation listened to by millions of people across radio, television and digital platforms. Matthew's career as an accomplished arts exec and classical music producer and curator spans some of Britain's most influential music institutions, including the Roundhouse and the City of London Sinfonia. At the BBC, he has built a reputation for driving audience growth through innovative programming, blending classical music with jazz, folk, film scores and collaborations with pop artists including Gary Barlow, Dua Lipa and Ed Sheeran. Under Matthew's leadership, the BBC Concert Orchestra has expanded its footprint and diversified its audiences, building an increasingly distinctive cross genre identity. But it still also regularly takes center stage at the most famous classical music concert in the world, the BBC Proms. Today, Matthew joins us here at the Nottingham, uh, Business School to unpack the realities of leadership in a modern cultural institution. Matthew Swan, welcome to this episode of the Business Leaders Podcast.

Speaker B: Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here. I wish I could take credit for half of what you've just said about me, but go on. Yeah, I'll take the compliment.

Speaker A: Yeah, well, let's just draw a veil over that. We'll just move on. So, welcome back to Nottingham.

Speaker B: Actually, thank you.

Speaker A: Because I know you were here last month with the BBC Concert Orchestra working with university students. This is an ongoing project. You've done it for a couple of years past and I think years in the future. How's that all going?

Speaker B: It's going very well. We're coming to, uh, the end of our third year of partnership with both Nottingham Trent University and the University of Nottingham. I'm very pleased to say we've signed for another three years. Um, but it's one of the most joyous things that we do coming up here. And Nottingham's a great music city. Anyway, um, you have one of the finest concert halls in the country by a long shot. Um, and in fact, um, I understand there's a slightly larger city down the road called Birmingham. And Birmingham's own Symphony hall was inspired by the fact that Simon Rattle, a very famous conductor who conducted the City Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, came to Nottingham with his orchestra and turned around to councillors in Birmingham and said, why don't we have that in Birmingham? So you guys are the OGs.

Speaker A: You're saying all the right things so far. So I presume that collaborations with universities are only part of what you do. What does a typical week look like for an orchestra director?

Speaker B: There is no typical week. Um, and I suspect that's in common with a lot of the people you interview for this podcast. I mean, the orchestra themselves. If it's February, we'll be doing Radio 2's Piano Room Monday to Thursday or Tuesday to Friday if it's prom season. So July to September, we normally have four or five proms every year, so we might be rehearsing for two or three days and then out at the Royal Albert hall and doing other bits of big summer festivals around that we might be on tour. Um, so we might be in Malta or Switzerland or China or the Czech Republic. I'm just reading off some of the places we're about to go to. A meeting recently sounds very, very nice. So there is. And my week is dependent on, do I need to be with the orchestra that week? Do I need to be present? I, uh, think that's a big part of leadership that people often forget. Do I need to be in wider BBC meetings? Do I need to be setting up future projects? Or do I need to be holed away at home in my office getting through the emails I've not looked at for the past five days because I've been doing all of the above.

Speaker A: It sounds incredibly exciting. Is it?

Speaker B: Um, I always love my job at least 51% of the time.

Speaker A: And the other 49.

Speaker B: No. Colin.

Speaker A: Right. So I read that the BBC Orchestra concert. Ah, orchestra, sorry. Was originally set up in the 50s to provide music for BBC radio, but obviously it's moved on since then. I know because I saw something which said you were playing Northern Soul in Liverpool recently, so you obviously have moved on. Tell us about that.

Speaker B: We were. So, yeah, it was set up. Um. Well, in fact, 2026 will be our 75th anniversary, which is very exciting. Um, it was set up. I mean, the BBC still has five orchestras and three choirs. One of those choirs is fully professional. Um, it used to have a lot more ensembles. Um, so it had a big band and a dance orchestra, all sorts of things. Uh, the concert orchestra was set up with quite a wide brief to sort of what used to be called light music to bring that to a wider audience. And we've ended up being certainly the most versatile of the BBC orchestras. We are the ones that will do classical music. We'll play on Radio 2, we'll play on 6 Music. The Northern Soul tour was an Interesting one actually, because it's happening more and more. It started life, ah, at uh, the BBC Proms. One concert celebrating that incredible subgenre of Northern Soul which is, you know, I'm sure some of your. Well actually it kind of touches all ages. But you know, people know of clubs like the Wigan Casino clubs in Stoke and a big club in Nottingham m here as well.

Speaker A: Well, I worked in Stoke on Trent for seven years and my Lord, it was relatively recently and they still talked about it. And that was 20 years after I was there.

Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. Um, so it was a huge sub genre and of course a lot of the tracks that were played at Northern style clubs had orchestral backing, you know, even it was just strings. So when, when the Northern Soul Prom was created, just before my time. Although it's an area of music I'm absolutely fascinated by and hopefully know a little bit about. Um, and we worked with an external promoter to say actually there are lots of places around the country where this would, this would be very successful. So it's a good example of actually how the orchestra works now that started life as a radio broadcast and as a BBC Prom and has now become a commercial entity in its own right. And it's one that brings money into the BBC. So. So the concert orchestra can ensure that we can still do the things that we're doing at a time when, let's not beat around the bush, the license fee funding is not getting any bigger.

Speaker A: Hey, and you've just hit upon the next topic, haven't you? How difficult is it to maintain that balance? Artistic ambition on one side. And then as you say, the realities of ruined a publicly funded organization,

Speaker B: it's not without its challenges, but it is perfectly doable. Um, um. I mean around about 20% of the concert orchestra's income is. Comes from commercial sources. That, I mean that could be very simple. That could be us selling tickets for an orchestra which, for a concert that's being broadcast anyway, that's, that's an easy one to do. Right? Um, um. Or it could be us going to promoters around the country and saying we'll come and do especially our big Radio 3 vehicle, which is Friday night is Music night. Every Friday, 7:30 at Radio 3.

Speaker A: Get the plug in. Come on.

Speaker B: Absolutely, absolutely. Which is, you know, a real sort of variety of music covering some classical, but, uh, music theatre, film, music games, music, all sorts of things. Um, it could be us going to a promoter and saying we'll bring this concert for a fee. We get the broadcast, they get a performance, they do well with audiences. Um, or it could be us leveraging other big BBC brands. So, for example, every year we take a Radio 2 concert out to Malta, um, and that's paid for by the Maltese government through the Maltese Tourism Authority as a way of driving Malta as a cultural destination. But that's a concert which then goes out on radio too. So I think the danger is of saying, how do you balance the two. How do you balance the commercial income with being a publicly funded organization as part of the BBC? Actually you drive the commercial income by leaning into the BBC. That's what people are interested in. We're hopefully going to, um, East Asia later this year. Part of the reason I'm sure we've been chosen is because we're a great orchestra, obviously. Um, but because the BBC brand carries a lot of weight.

Speaker A: But 20%, that was your first figure there. You've still got. Still. The other 80 is from the public purse.

Speaker B: It is. Um, and I would argue we provide excellent value for money from the public purse. Um, if you look at what all the orchestras do, but certainly in our case we are right across, um, Radio two. Um, certainly. I'm sure a lot of the listeners of this podcast will have tuned into Piano Room in February. That will continue. Um, we're right across a lot of TV as well. When you hear the bigger, uh, sort of more lush arrangements on Strictly Come Dancing, that's us. It's all pre recorded in the summer and then Dave Archie's backing band join in. But the bigger orchestral sounds, that's us as well. That's great value to a licensed feed player. Things like Call the Midwife, we're the orchestra.

Speaker A: I read that, I read that David Attenborough as well.

Speaker B: Yes. So we're doing a massive concert, um, in May, um, I think may 8th, um, at the Royal Albert hall, which is to celebrate David's athletic, um, Attenborough's 100 years and his massive, huge career at the BBC. We've recorded lots of soundtracks for those programs, as have one of our sister orchestras, the BBC National Orchestra of Wales. And that's a program which I'm sure will have huge impact and a real sort of sense of meaning for so many people that engage with the BBC. Um, it's going out not quite live word starting at half seven. It goes out at half past eight on BBC One, um, another radio station. So it's things like that and the Proms, the last night. The Proms and other proms. The lecture I'm doing later for the business school. I'll Play a track from the prongs we did last year. Just seeing the scale of what we do, but actually, uh, uh, uh, in a way that provides incredible value. Another great example. Um, sorry, you've got my art.

Speaker A: Yeah, we are. You're on a roll. You're on a roll. You're on a roll.

Speaker B: So Friday night is Music Night, as I say, a kind of Friday night programme on Radio 3 where we do lots of different types of music. One of the Christmas specials we did in the December just gone was a Gospel Christmas Special. Uh, the conductor, Daniel Bartholomew Poizner, came over from Canada. We were with him a lot, working with him in the summer again, um, and two amazing, um, gospel choirs from London. And what was really lovely was that that was a concert that went out in its entirety on Radio 3 on Friday night, just before Christmas. Great. It also went out on Christmas Day on the Beverly Night Gospel Christmas Special on Radio 2. Um, and the same time, that afternoon and evening, it went out and won extra on two gospel specials that they have now. Also on Christmas Day, Radio 2 played Trevor Nelson's Soul Christmas, which features the one and only BBC Concert Orchestra from the Royal Albert Hall a couple weeks before. And at the same time we had the Call the Midwife, Strictly Come Dance. Call the Midwife. Strictly Come Dancing. No, Call the Midwife Christmas Special on BBC one and the Strictly Special, which we'd done a couple of tracks for, and, and all of that at the same time as BBC4 telly was showing a Friday Night is Music Night we'd done the previous year from Snake Maltiness, Console and his stuff.

Speaker A: Great value for money.

Speaker B: Great value for money, exactly.

Speaker A: But wait a minute, this versatility, doesn't it make it difficult then for you to carve out your own clear identity?

Speaker B: The versatility is part of our identity. So we do play straight up classical repertoire, what's known in the trade as overture, concerto, symphony. So, you know, the big pieces of classical music that a lot of people hear and go, oh, that sounds like Star wars, it's the other way around. But, you know, it's. So we do do those big works. We're doing a huge concert next week at the Southbank Centre in London where we're doing this big piece by Liszt called the Dante Symphony. Um, but at the same time doing Piano Room, doing London Jazz Festival, doing pop concerts up here, working with Trevor Nelson, working with Beverly Knight, all of those things.

Speaker A: It's.

Speaker B: That's the DNA of the orchestra. Um, and that's one of the reasons why I enjoy it so much because I've always had one foot in that rock and roll world, um, and really enjoy it from that perspective.

Speaker A: It's a great line, one foot in the rock and roll world. So there are five BBC orchestras, are there not? And the other four, they really don't have a foot in the rock and roll world.

Speaker B: They're all versatile in their own way. Certainly some of the orchestras have real specialism in playing new classical, contemporary music. Um, the Scottish and Welsh orchestras have a real remit to serve those particular nations, as you would imagine. BBC Symphony Orchestra does a huge amount of international touring, um, and really flies the frag, um, from that perspective. And the BBC Philharmonic does a lot of classical work but has also got a great relationship with 6 Music, um, and they are also in the Proms this year. Literally just been announced, we're doing sort of four very pop rock and roll soul type Proms. But they are doing, um, the Alan Menken who's. If you love a 90s Disney film, then you love Alan Menken's music. So they do sort of, you know, dip their toe in that water. But we are the orchestra that really sort of runs with that.

Speaker A: It's great listening to you enthuse, but everything you talk about there involves collaboration. And collaboration is a word used by pretty much every leader that passes through this room. How do you, um, ensure that collaboration isn't just for the sake of grabbing a headline, that it is genuine, that is genuine success, that everybody, you know, on one level at least, benefits?

Speaker B: Um, it's simpler than that. Nothing would happen without it. In order to get on the radio, we need the buy in or to get on BBC Sounds or iPlay, we need the buy in of Radio 2 or Radio 3 or the wider BBC music team in order to make a concert happen out of London. We don't have the resources to sell a concert outside of London, so we need to work with the Nottingham Royal Concert hall or Birmingham Symphony hall or whoever to make that happen. But even in London we require partnership that goes across whether it's partnership and collaboration within the BBC. So making sure that the outside broadcast team know what's going on, can break those big trucks and make everything work from that perspective. And the nature of an orchestra is one of collaboration. You've got one person at the front, in theory, sort of leading things. But actually. Yes, that's right, yeah. But actually a really good conductor, uh, takes as much from, from the orchestra as he or she, sadly still too often a he as they are sort of directing the orchestra. It is really, it should be a two way process. We very quickly find out the conductors who are not prepared to engage in the two way process and they don't get invited back. And those conductors already are. Men don't get invited back. The image of the sort of, you know, the tyrannical maestro, luckily, is disappearing fast from view. It is much more about that and often conductors will come to the concert orchestra. And I mean, I've mentioned For Night's Music Night a few times now, but there's specific ways we do things in that. Um, and the ones that are really successful, if it's their first time doing that program, will turn up and go, you need to talk me through this because I don't know what I'm doing. Um, and the orchestra will be pleased actually that that conductor has turned around and said, I'm relying on your expertise because it's an expertise I don't have. So we can work together like that.

Speaker A: So no more tyrannical maestros.

Speaker B: There are still a few knocking around, but they don't work for the BBC Concert Orchestra.

Speaker A: So as an overall wrap up to what you've just been talking about there, what do you think the overall role should, uh, a public service broadcaster play in the cultural life of the country in 2026?

Speaker B: We are there to provide value for our audiences. We're there to be right across the uk. We're there to celebrate big moments in national life. David Attenborough's hundredth. We are there to provide monetary value for the public as well, making sure that your license fee money is being well spended. And it's a huge brief, but actually when you start drilling down and says, okay, as the BBC Concert Orchestra, what can I do? What can I ask the orchestra to do? How can I work with the orchestra that delivers that? I mean, ultimately, the BBC's mission is very simple. Inform, M, educate, entertain. We do all of those. We play great music that you might not have heard of before, but it's great. We do lots of entertaining, certainly. Um, and educate as well. We work as all the BBC ensembles do, right across work in schools and communities right here in Nottingham with this universities.

Speaker A: These are difficult times. Would it be too grandiose for you to say you've got a role in pulling the country together, trying to unify, trying to build some kind of common perception?

Speaker B: Yes, I think the BBC more broadly has that moment. Certainly big national events, big royal events, big political events. The BBC is there as a kind of convener of everyone Experiencing that, um, the BBC is huge. 20 plus thousand employees. I can't comment on absolutely everything the BBC does in that sense. What I can do is in my corner of the BBC, I can say, okay, how can we contribute to that national conversation? What can we do that says what can we do to make sure that the BBC is physically present in Nottingham, in Poole, in Portsmouth, in Birmingham, in Huddersfield? These are all places we've just been to or about to go. How are we physically present internationally all of those things? How are we providing moments? Radio 2 Piano Range is a great example of this. Um, Helen Thomas, who runs Radio 2, says radio, um, 2 is the biggest radio station in Europe, by the way, and possibly other bits of the world as well. Um, Radio 2 is the only radio station in the world that could pull off Piano Room that could have that many top level artists.

Speaker A: You're gonna have to take the uninformed us through.

Speaker B: So, yeah, Piano Room is, um, Radio 2's sort of big principal live vehicle. So every February we have 20 plus artists coming through.

Speaker A: This is the Ed Sheeran, Dua Lieber,

Speaker B: the Gary Barlows, the Tory, Amos, the Loafies, all those kind of people. And they come through and they do three songs with the BBC Concert Orchestra raised especially. One is, um, a song they've had out recently, one is one of their classic songs and one is a cover. And some of the covers are amazing. I remember last year Franz Ferdinand, Franz Ferdinand covered Toxic by Britney Spears and it was phenomenal. So it's things like that. Radio State 2 is the only radio station in the world that could pull off that level of ambition and make it work and get it to a massive audience. I mean, 15, 14, 15 million people on the radio, countless more online, but they can only do it because of the BBC Concert Orchestra.

Speaker A: And I was just gonna say, what's your specific involvement? So, you know, you get your hands dirty, you go out in front of them, you go and talk to these people, or you just orchestrate from behind.

Speaker B: I'm, um, very much orchestrating that metaphor from behind. It's a common misperception because people go, oh, director. The BBC Consortium. What's it like conducting them? No, different type of director. It's more like a CEO role.

Speaker A: I had worked that one out. So now we're going to take a quick break from our chat to mention m the MBA programs at, uh, Nottingham Business School. As we've learned from many of our guests, effective business leadership is about confidence, adaptability and thinking strategically. These are the key ingredients to delivering innovation and impact in crowded, competitive markets. So if you are ready to transform your career, visit ntu.ac.uk mba to explore the MBA programs at Nottingham Business School. We're one of only 1% of business schools worldwide who hold the prestigious Strong Triple Crown accreditation. That's ntu.ac.uk mba to find out more. Now, back to the show. So back to your own leadership. Um, prior to the BBC, you've worked across many prominent music organizations. So what lessons from early in your career, when you were curating, when you were producing, um, what lessons you learned there but still shape your leadership today?

Speaker B: I was thinking about this this morning as I was coming up to Nottingham. There's a few. Um, you mentioned the word collaboration. I prefer to use words like collegiate. So working very much.

Speaker A: What's the distinction?

Speaker B: Collaboration always feels a bit sort of forced. That's just how my mind works in terms of semantics. But collegiateness is one where we're all coming together, everyone's got an agenda, but those agendas are mutually beneficial and we're all working to the same thing. So that's one thing. Um, the second thing I think for me is often taking calculated but quite big risks.

Speaker A: Oh, you're a risk taker?

Speaker B: Um, yes. My father was known in his business career as the most cautious, biggest risk taker.

Speaker A: What did he do?

Speaker B: He worked in financial services, but he took a company that was set up in Bradford, um, doing personal credit, and set up their international business in the Czech Republic, in Poland and South Africa, America. And it worked. It was very successful. Um, but he did it in a very cautious way. Um, and I've taken that in some senses and some of the risks I've taken in my career so far. So leaving a relatively safe job in corporate fundraising at the Barbican, because I felt I had something else to do, and becoming a producer at the Roundhouse, that was a big risk. And at the same time, setting up something called Voices now, which was a convener and a research, um, arm and a festival of choral music, sort of jumping on quite a big swell in interest in choral music at the time, which did take place at Ray Nice, but I had to set everything up from scratch. And that was hugely successful for about 10 years, but it was a massive risk with people turning around to me and saying, is this going to work? But I felt that those two things I was doing was something that the wider cultural sector needed and a lot of people had agreed with me, but it's taking that leap. Um, and it's the same with the concert orchestra as well. The BBC orchestras used to do a lot of things for broadcast which were to what we euphemistically called studio audiences, I. E. No one's paying for tickets. That can't happen anymore because we need to bring commercial inclining. But it was a big leap for me and a lot of other colleagues to say, okay, we've got quite a big venue here and we're quite late agreeing everything, because Friday night is Music Night. Came Back to Radio 3 not in a rush, but at speed, at pace, which is good. Can we switch to selling tickets? Do we have the resource to do that? A few colleagues weren't sure that we did, but we did it anyway and it sold out. Oh, uh, well then. So it's that kind of risk to sort of say, you know, okay, I've thought about absolutely everything. Yes, this still remains a proper risk. This is not nailed on. But if we don't do it, then we are deceiving ourselves by thinking that we can carry on doing business as usual and that being fine. Because business as usual is not fun. Business as usual is where you start falling over and falling behind.

Speaker A: Right, okay. Um, right. I'm still fascinated by this line that a lot of people who are risk takers hesitate to say that they're risk takers, but you've come straight out with it there. So I'm going to give you the obvious question. Which one hasn't worked?

Speaker B: Um, so career previous to the BBC, Um, I set up with two colleagues, um, who do have lived experience of this issue. Uh, an organization called your Turn Collective, um, which was, um, a research and development incubator for classical music, but for music creators that came from backgrounds that are massively underrepresented in classical music, particularly around, um, backgrounds in terms of ethnicity, in terms of disability, in terms of socioeconomic background. Lots of people told us, and we spent ages talking to so many potential collegiate partners. Um, everyone said, this is a great idea, this is greater, this is exactly what we need. And the part of the problem we were trying to address was the fact that in classical music, quite often people's approach to diversifying creators and audiences is to go to someone from a different background and say you represent the working classes or the African diaspora or a certain type of disability. And so by bringing you in, we've solved that problem. Oh, by the way, you've got five minutes. Um, we need it in three weeks and you'll have 10 minutes to rehearse it and you won't be able to make Any contribution and it will all be a bit false. And we said, no, actually, we need to be going to these underrepresented music creators and saying, what do you want to do? And then give them the time and the space. And, uh, everybody, including Arts Council England, said, this is a brilliant idea. No one gave us any money. All right? Okay.

Speaker A: And so it withered on the vine. It didn't get the starting line.

Speaker B: I think some people took the message of, okay, this is something that we, we, we need to do. And a few. I've seen bits of it. The seeds we've sewn, dropped in at other places. And a slightly different approach to commissioning, which is good, but, yeah, it's, um. Maybe that's. That's what needed to do. I don't know. Um, and, you know, made two incredible friends from it. Um, as I say, who do have lived experiences of those areas. I do not.

Speaker A: Um.

Speaker B: So, yeah, but it's. That's the thing with risks. I mean, the problem is, say business as usual means falling off and falling behind.

Speaker A: So go on at the other end of the scale then. Tell me the, um. Let's put it in leadership terms. Tell me the leadership decision of which you are most proud.

Speaker B: I think it is probably a tour to Japan I did with my previous orchestra, where I had to defend this tour in front of a slightly testy board meeting. Um, and say when one particular member of the board, who I'd like very much and very respected leader in his own field, um, said, why should we be doing this? This is about stroking people's egos. It's not about, um, what the orchestra should be doing. It's not about serving our charitable purpose. And actually not in the moment, because it was all quite fraught, but it being able to turn around quite soon afterwards to that person and say, we're doing it for the following reasons. We're doing it because this attracts other funding. We're doing it because, actually it is part of our charitable mission. It is part of our charisma mission was to take an approach that we've got, which is very much about social value, first to Japan and work with Japanese partners there. Um, it is about the orchestra as well. It's an amazing experience for them. It will make us a better orchestra. Having those 10 days away doing quite concentrated series of concerts. It meant that we could record a lot of the repertoire that we were taking out and release that. So we created a new audience there. Uh, so it's often when it comes in moments of challenge, where someone says you shouldn't be doing that. And I think, yes, we should, we absolutely should be doing that. The fault I've got here is that I have not persuaded you properly. So how do I do that?

Speaker A: Is that a skill that you've only developed as you've got older and more mature and more experienced in what you do? Would you have been able to do that earlier in your career? Or is it something that leaders have to actively go and look for?

Speaker B: Um, I think if you are a leader, it's something that will happen sooner or later. If it doesn't, then I would suggest that you might be avoiding conflict for the wrong reasons. Um, I think I take a different approach to it now. Um, I'm currently about a third of the way through a coaching apprenticeship through the BBC. Um, and my approach has changed even in that short time to be much more about not. It's not about not sort of, you know, showing my cards, but about extracting a lot more information from people with a very sort of, you know, we're thinking about going in this area, kind of talked about what that means rather than a full five minute explanation and then pick holes in it.

Speaker A: Finally, what advice might you give to the next generation of arts leaders, given what's happening all around us? Um, those leaders who are trying to navigate rapidly changing, increasingly challenged environment, talk

Speaker B: to everyone all the time. Talk, talk, talk. Network, network, network. Network, by the way, doesn't mean standing in a crowded cocktail, sort of, you know, party and being the loudest person in the room. It's about very sensibly and cleverly but thoroughly going and having sensible conversations about things that people will be interested by. And, uh, not being a show off in that sense, being very collegiate, taking a coaching approach in that sense, and not being afraid of risk when times are difficult and times are hard. I mean, this is a, it's not a binary choice. But if there was a binary choice, it would be retrench, go back to business as usual, put on more Tchaikovsky symphonies and hope that your dwindling audience will stay with you and it will dwindle less slow. Or take a risk, take a very calculated risk where you talk to everybody, um, and something in your gut and gut, by the way, as you develop your leadership experience. Gut is not gut, it is your brain working quicker than you're able to process the massive amount of experience you've got. But don't be afraid of that risk. Not every risk will pay off, but the danger of not taking the risk is retrenchment. And business as usual. And that's where you fall down and fall over.

Speaker A: Christoph so as much Northern Soul as Tchaikovsky or vice versa, I don't get the right way around it.

Speaker B: I love Northern. My university dissertation was the Origins, Development and Influence of Funko from the late 1960s to late 1970s, and I was studying classical trumpet at the same time. So I love Tchaikovsky and I love Alton Soul in equal measures.

Speaker A: That's possibly the best final answer I've ever had. Matthew Swan, thank you very, very much for taking the time, uh, to join us for this episode of the Business Leaders Podcast. Thanks very much.

Speaker B: Pleasure. Thank you for having me.

Speaker A: If you enjoyed this episode of the Nottingham Business School Business Leaders Podcast with Matthew Swan, why not try previous episodes with entrepreneur, chef and musician Levi Roots, the former Chief Exec of the Financial Ombudsman Service, Caroline Wyman, or the former head of the RAF Air Chief Marshal Sir Andrew Pulford, kcb, cbe. This episode of the Nottingham Business School Business Leaders Podcast was produced by Russell Bingley and presented by Mike Sassy.