Stephen Kelly
speaker
621 appearances
3 recordings
2 series
first heard Jun 2026
last heard 10 Jul
Stephen Kelly’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 3 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 2.
Appearances
I worked years back in the 80s for a guy called Peter Gershon.
And he was chairman of Taylor and all these great things.
But he'd done, I think, with Michael Barber in the Blair government, a similar role in about 2000.
And I said, Peter, you know, what's it like?
Because I have witnessed, because I've done stuff with the government, some amazing people from the private sector.
literally go back into government and sort of become zombies within six months, just lose their spark and energy.
And I thought, well, I don't want to do that.
So I sort of went to Peter and a couple of other people who had worked in the civil service and said, what can you tell me?
What's the lessons you learned?
And he said, interestingly, he said,
Civil service, Stephen, is like an infinite wall, infinitely high, infinitely wide.
And someone like you, but just because your energy is going to every day wake up seven o'clock, you'll go in there and you'll bang, running, sprinting and smash into that wall.
Fall crumpled on a heap.
And then you'll dust yourself up and you'll think, no, you never fail.
Failure is not an option.
Next day, you'll do exactly the same thing and you'll keep doing this.
And then you realise if you keep doing it and you keep talking sense and keep doing the right things, eventually that wall has doors and windows, but they only open from the inside.
So you have to be invited in.
So I'll tell you one of the sort of guerrilla stories.
In the first two weeks, I had meetings with Treasury colleagues, and I was based in both Whitehall, 70 Whitehall and Horse Guards.
Showing 221–240 of 621 · page 12 of 32
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