logo
episode-header-image
Jul 2016
34m 42s

Levi Roots

Bbc Radio 4
About this episode

Kirsty Young's castaway is the entrepreneur, Levi Roots.

His business success began following an appearance on BBC Two's Dragon's Den in 2007. With guitar in hand, he sang about his 'Reggae reggae sauce' which he had been selling for years at London's Notting Hill Carnival. Both Peter Jones and Richard Farleigh invested in the business and within six weeks, his sauce was bottled and on supermarket shelves. Recipe books, TV shows and a restaurant, or 'rastaurant' followed.

He is the youngest of five children born in Jamaica. When he was four, his parents went to build a new life in the UK. Each year one of his siblings came to join the family in Britain. When Levi was 10, he left his much loved grandmother behind, never to see her again. Unable to read or write when he started school, he caught up quickly. He became a Rastafarian as a teenager. Following school, he became an apprentice engineer but left that to pursue a career in music.

In his late twenties, he went to prison for five years. His time inside would prove to be a turning point for him. Music continued to play an important part in his life and he was nominated for a Best Reggae Act MOBO award in 1998.

A father of eight, he lives in Brixton, London.

Producer: Cathy Drysdale.

Up next
Jul 5
Professor Lucy Easthope, emergency planner
Professor Lucy Easthope is an adviser on disaster recovery and planning. She’s an expert in planning for and reacting to major incidents: natural disaster, terrorist attacks, pandemics and fires, and is the visiting Professor of Mass Fatalities and Pandemics at the University of ... Show More
51m 36s
Jun 29
Romesh Ranganathan, comedian and broadcaster
Romesh Ranganathan is a comedian and BAFTA-winning broadcaster who has been a fixture on British television screens for the past decade. In addition to his TV shows and stand-up tours he presents the Weakest Link on BBC One, Radio Two’s Saturday morning show and another weekly Ra ... Show More
50m 23s
Jun 22
Abdulrazak Gurnah, writer
Abdulrazak Gurnah is emeritus Professor of Post-Colonial Literatures at the University of Kent and the 2021 Nobel Prize winner in Literature. Born in Zanzibar in 1948, the second of six children, Abdulrazak grew up in the dying days of the island’s status as a British protectorat ... Show More
51m 17s
Recommended Episodes
Aug 2023
Success is seasonal with Hak Baker, Benjamin Zephaniah, Celeste and Baxter Dury
Hak Baker, Benjamin Zephaniah, Celeste and Baxter Dury talk about writing whilst living in London, their view of success in their careers so far, and the impact of family and cultural history on their writing.Hak Baker was born in Luton and raised on the Isle of Dogs, in London. ... Show More
32m 3s
Sep 2024
AJ Tracey on London’s streets and how music saved him from a culture of fear
AJ Tracey is one of the most influential artists in the UK music scene today but his life could have taken a very different direction had he not made some serious changes. AJ is known for his groundbreaking contributions to grime, drill and UK garage. Last year he celebrated 1 bi ... Show More
42m 24s
Dec 2023
Jeff Tweedy
Singer and songwriter Jeff Tweedy discusses cherished memories from his childhood kitchen in Illinois, and the invaluable time he spent at his kitchen table with his mother, and he explains how his favorite home-cooked dish today–known simply as The Dish–became a Tweedy family hi ... Show More
40m 42s
Mar 2020
Episode 120 - Rob Bailey
Rob Bailey defines the term entrepreneur.  He developed an interest for sewing at the age of 7, and by the time he was in high school he was designing, creating, and selling his own clothing.  In college, he shifted his pursuits from football to becoming an exective chef at a Mic ... Show More
2h 4m
Nov 2024
18. Malcolm Gladwell
Kirsty Young asks the writer and podcaster Malcolm Gladwell what advice he would give his younger self.Gladwell's writing, in books such as The Tipping Point and Outliers, successfully distil complex ideas for a mass audience, and he has worked as a staff writer for The New Yorke ... Show More
42m 51s
Sep 2023
Angélique Kidjo
Angélique Kidjo, often described as "the queen of African music", has recorded fifteen albums, worked with a diverse array of musical collaborators from Burna Boy and Alcia Keys to Philip Glass and Peter Gabriel, and won five Grammy Awards. In 2023 she was the recipient of the Po ... Show More
43m 55s
Oct 2024
What Jack Reacher did next — Lee Child on our favourite lone wolf
How a Birmingham boy became best-selling thriller writer, Lee Child, and the creator of one of the literary world's most popular loners. (R)James Grant grew up in Birmingham when it was a bustling industrial city.While huge workforces would pour of the factories as men ended thei ... Show More
51m 42s
Mar 2024
Mark Cuban
Mark Cuban — entrepreneur, fixture on the reality TV show Shark Tank, and born outsider — joins Michele this week. Mark shares how he acquired a do-what-needs-to-be-done attitude from his Jewish immigrant grandparents when he was a boy in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; how he first ta ... Show More
40m 40s
Jun 18
AJ Tracey - ‘Buying my mum a house will always be my proudest achievement’
Rapping phenomenon and Tottenham Hotspur superfan AJ Tracey joins us this week to talk about supporting his mum through her cancer journey, the pressures of staying an independent artist and what football has taught him about failure. AJ Tracey has been rapping since the age of f ... Show More
52m 48s