Paddy Ashdown MP

Speaker 20:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

Speaker 20:08

The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen ninety one, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:30

My castaway this week is a politician. It's a career he's come to late in life, having started out as a soldier and served as a diplomat.

Presenter0:38

Born in India fifty years ago, the son of a soldier, he was brought up on a pig farm in Ulster, and educated at public school in Bedford. At the age of eighteen he joined the Royal Marines, served in the Far East, Malta, and Belfast, and taught himself Malay and Mandarin Chinese as he did so.

Presenter0:55

It was only seven and a half years ago that he became a member of Parliament but his soldier's energy, combined perhaps with his diplomat's skill, has taken him to the top at great speed.

Presenter1:06

Recently elected Frontbencher of the Year, he's been leader of the Liberal Democrats since nineteen eighty eight. He is Paddy Ashdown. Not that that was the name you were born with, which was something far more proper. Jeremy John Durham Ashdown. Did you pick up Paddy on the Alster Pig Farmer?

Paddy Ashdown MP1:23

Well, not exactly, no. I picked it up actually when I went to school because when I went to school, aged eleven, I was sent across the water to the school that my father and my grandfather had been to, and I may say which to my chagrin removed my Irish accent from me. I'd love to continue to have a regional accent, and I think it's part of your

Paddy Ashdown MP1:41

inheritance, but so they drove it out of me. But when I arrived there I had a broad Irish accent that sounded as though I come from Belfast, and the result was, of course, they all christened me Paddy.

Presenter1:50

But did you ever come under you must have done some pressure to change it from your local constituency body, who like got nice proper names and good British sounding names?

Paddy Ashdown MP1:57

They did when I arrived there and they decided that um well I'd uh recently returned from Geneva having resigned from the Foreign Service and they wanted me to call myself Captain Jeremy John Durham Ashton, Royal Marines retired and I said, Well, if that's what you want me to do, you better choose another candidate.

Presenter2:14

Is that because they thought this so-called action man image was glamorous and attractive?

Paddy Ashdown MP2:14

That because they

Paddy Ashdown MP2:18

In those days, yes, I mean it's a different constituency and a different constituency organization.

Presenter2:23

You did struggle, though, for some time to get rid of the Action Man image, didn't you? And you I mean you succeeded.

Paddy Ashdown MP2:27

Well, I'm glad I don't think I've succeeded fully. The press are all too eager to put you in a little nice pigeonhole which says ex soldier, um, ramboesque, etcetera., which is the way that they stop trying to treat you seriously.

Paddy Ashdown MP2:40

I am the leader of a political party. I am an MP. I have my own views, and I want them to be judged by what I say and do, not by the uniforms I may have worn in the past.

Presenter2:52

What of course that uniform you wore in the past does mean is that you're capable of survival and survival on a desert island. So that bit of it, the practical bit presumably you're rehearsed and practised in, what would test you, do you think, alone?

Paddy Ashdown MP3:05

I'm certain I know what to test me. What to test me would be to be kept inactive. I'd have to find things to do. I'm a I have a sort of burning frenetic energy that has to be directed towards something. So sitting in the sun under a palm tree for ever and ever and ever would drive me totally bonkers.

Presenter3:24

And would you have to play music?

Paddy Ashdown MP3:26

Oh, I would have to play music. I'd have to play it daily because music and especially classical music that my mother introduced me to and she literally she it was like showing me a spring which has gone on bubbling and producing new

Paddy Ashdown MP3:42

joys every time I dip into it, and it is the one sure source of solace, and something more than that, something that lifts you above ordinary life and gives you a different level of existence.

Presenter3:54

So what's the first record?

Paddy Ashdown MP3:56

Well, my first record, I suppose, is the one I would want to come back to.

Paddy Ashdown MP4:00

whenever I needed calming down and whenever I needed uh that special solace, and it is of course um a great piece of music by Schubert, opus one six three, the second movement of Schubert's quintet.

Presenter5:12

Yo Yo Ma and the Cleveland Quartet playing part of the second movement of Schubert's Quintet Opus one sixty three. So you're the son of an Indian Army colonel. Um was India the family tradition? I mean, was it half expected of you too?

Paddy Ashdown MP5:26

Well, it it was the family tradition. I'm told though I've never been managed to actually make this stand up historically, that we actually the family went out originally with um Clive as soldier adventurers and stayed in India for two hundred odd years. And um but I think it was

Paddy Ashdown MP5:40

part of um the process which led me into being a soldier.

Presenter5:44

Hm. So were you brought up out there at all?

Paddy Ashdown MP5:46

Only for the first uh four years of my life. We left in nineteen forty-five.

Presenter5:51

So you have no memories of?

Paddy Ashdown MP5:52

I have one memory of it. It was of coming down out of the plains, out of the hills, down to the plains and going to Bombay. I can't remember any detail of it, but I do remember the train stopping outside a station and I remember even as a four-year-old feeling the fear in the train. It was very full. And then we steamed slowly through a station on which nightmares recalled it to me throughout my childhood and my adolescence. There was, as I recall it anyway,

Paddy Ashdown MP6:18

with the eyes of a child, no place that you could have put a foot down without ste treading on dismembered bodies. And the smell, of course, was one of putrefaction. It was part of the um part of the partition riots. Um but that's my only memory of India. Some flashes here and there, but

Presenter6:33

But the the going through that uh that railway station was when you were for when you were on your way home out of India, wasn't it?

Paddy Ashdown MP6:39

Yes, on my way home with my mother, my father was left behind. He was one of those who stayed behind to help India through the business of getting independence, and indeed through the awful partition riots.

Presenter6:48

Then eventually your father joined you in in Ulster, and is that where the the pig farm came in?

Paddy Ashdown MP6:52

He decided to set up in farming. He did that, established it in 1947. It was not a great success.

Paddy Ashdown MP6:59

He ran out of the family basically didn't go bankrupt in the sense that um they went formally legally bankrupt because my father wouldn't do that. He would pay off all his debts and but the it collapsed um when I was eighteen.

Paddy Ashdown MP7:14

He had tremendously formative influence on my ideas. He was certainly the first respectable voice, long before I was prepared to do it, who condemned and saw the failures of the Vietnam War. A real lateral thinker, a man who in when we were young

Paddy Ashdown MP7:31

did a tremendous amount. He used to encourage argument, fierce discussion. My goodness, they were fierce too. And it was a a household and a family background that literally tumbled over with discussion, argument, people taking different views.

Presenter7:43

Political argument.

Paddy Ashdown MP7:44

Sometimes, sometimes philosophical argument. My poor mother used to have a terrible time struggling to keep the peace between us all, because she wasn't entirely certain this was a good idea. Um but uh yes, it was argument on every subject.

Presenter7:57

Record number two.

Paddy Ashdown MP7:58

I'd love to hear the record which my mother opened the door for me on classical music, where my mother.

Paddy Ashdown MP8:05

really introduced me to it was of course uh it was uh Handel's Messiah and uh it reminds me of her and it reminds me of the gift that she left with me. I'm not a religious not formally a religious person, but if there is anything that leads me to the belief in an existence of a God, and I do believe in one, then this piece of music does that more powerfully than all the theological texts ever written.

Speaker 49:21

Take

Presenter9:28

Emma Kirkby singing Come Unto Him from Handel's Messiah with the Taverner players conducted by Andrew Parrott.

Presenter9:35

You apparently didn't make a huge academic impression, um Paddy Ashdown at school, and yet in your twenties you started teaching yourself all these obscure languages like Malay and Dayak.

Paddy Ashdown MP9:46

Well, there were two things that uh school did for me. I mean first of all on languages I got the world's

Paddy Ashdown MP9:51

record low mark for French. I got five out of two hundred and my school reports are redolent with uh things that I will never learn languages, which of course is just about the only skill I discovered in later life. But the two things my school gave me the first was a certain self-confidence, which was soon rubbed out of me, but not a bad thing to start uh life at eighteen.

Paddy Ashdown MP10:12

The second much more powerful and a much more sustained gift was one given me by two teachers, um an English teacher and a history teacher.

Paddy Ashdown MP10:20

who I suppose up until sixteen this had been assembling a sort of bundle of tinder that somebody had to light, and they lit it, and what they left me with was an inquiring mind and the desire to continue to learn.

Presenter10:33

So you were a late academic developer, but but not a a late developer in other ways by all accounts. You were had great success with the opposite sex quite early on, I think.

Paddy Ashdown MP10:34

Late developer.

Paddy Ashdown MP10:42

But I don't know what on earth leads you to say that, Sue. I really did.

Presenter10:46

I read somewhere that your father actually encouraged his eldest son's amorous activities. He's not a proud one.

Paddy Ashdown MP10:51

I wouldn't go that far either. But I think he did a certain amount I mean, I think he he recognized that um he was a man before his time, so I think he he had the spirit of the sixties in his blood uh in in in the fifties. And you took full advantage of it.

Presenter11:04

And you took for

Paddy Ashdown MP11:06

I took enough advantage of it to get into trouble, I seem to recall, in the sense that when I was at school we got ourselves into some trouble with some friends by visiting rather too frequently the local girls' school, which was not a thing then frowned on. Now in more liberal times, of course, these things would not attract the smallest attention.

Presenter11:25

But there were other uh there was other athletic price. I mean great sportsmen at school I think. What you lacked in academic ability you you you lacked.

Paddy Ashdown MP11:31

Well it w it was a joy. My last two years at school were were were two years in which athletics was a passion and I did a lot in athletics and at the same time was able to begin to expand my brain and that was uh useful.

Presenter11:44

Were you popular?

Paddy Ashdown MP11:46

I can't tell you. I've never known whether I'm popular.

Presenter11:48

It's just that, you know, sometimes peer groups can be rather resentful of of of those in their midst who seem to have it all, you know, looks and sporting ability and pulling the birds.

Paddy Ashdown MP11:56

Well I'm not sure I had it all. Well not sure I had it all by any manner of means. I don't think you'd have ascribed those three attributes to me whilst at school or indeed even later. And I suspect that I was disliked by some as you have to be, I suppose.

Presenter12:11

But do you do you care what other people think about you?

Paddy Ashdown MP12:12

Okay, I'm done.

Paddy Ashdown MP12:14

Um, yes, but not so much as to alter my own way of life and my own opinions. I I've got a thin I've got a very thin skin. I've got too thin skin to be a politician, some people say. I am upset when people write nasty things about you in the papers, as they do and I suppose must. But it's never, I don't think, altered my own opinions or indeed the way I want to go to carry things through. I I think I've got probably not much else in terms of attributes, but I have got quite a strong will. And if I set my mind to do something, by and large, I'll I'll get it done.

Presenter12:47

Next record.

Paddy Ashdown MP12:48

My mother led me to classical music by way of Handel. I've led my daughter to classical music by way of Vivaldi, and to remember her and the joy she gives me, I'd love to hear Vivaldi's concerto in G for two mandolins.

Presenter14:03

Part of Vivaldi's concerto in G for Two mandolins played by E. Muzzici.

Presenter14:08

In a sense, Paddy Ashtown, you were orphaned, really, at eighteen, weren't you? Because your family emigrated to Australia and you stayed here and joined the Royal Marines. Then within three years you were married. Are those facts linked, do you think? Were you in need of security?

Paddy Ashdown MP14:22

I think they are linked. Um and my mother, who is a very perceptive commentator on these, said it was linked. Um but uh I met my wife

Paddy Ashdown MP14:32

when I was eighteen.

Paddy Ashdown MP14:34

Uh eighteen and a half.

Paddy Ashdown MP14:37

In fact, we got married twenty nine years ago to day.

Paddy Ashdown MP14:40

We got married then in military sin. This was a forbidden thing to do. We had to ask permission of their lords of the admiralty because we weren't allowed to get married before we were 25 and I quite disgracefully got married ten days before my twenty-first birthday. Our kids came about four years later and even then we weren't allowed to have quarters, we weren't allowed to have any kind of marriage alliances and when I went abroad, as I spent a lot of time abroad, Jane had to make her way out to me by hitching lifts on RAF aircraft.

Presenter15:08

So off you went. I mean, heavy weapons training in Singapore and then there was the Indonesian campaign and uh the Green Bere, Special Boat Section. You've said since that that, the SBS, was one of the most formative periods of your life.

Paddy Ashdown MP15:21

I think the whole of the Royal Marines, but particularly the SPS, though, I probably didn't realize it until later. I mean, I suppose I became politically aware first off when I, as a young eighteen-year-old, took command of a troop in the Far East shortly to go on active service and discovered that some of them couldn't read and write. And I thought that was a scandalous outcome from a society which was supposed to be a modern one. I was deeply angered by it. And I then decided strongly that if only we could have a society in which people's individual skills and abilities and potential was able to

Paddy Ashdown MP15:53

They realized, rather than one overlaid by the class system, what a nation that would be.

Presenter15:58

So what are you saying? That their education and background wasn't necessarily um as as good in inverted commas as yours?

Paddy Ashdown MP16:05

Yes, they didn't come in blessed with the kind of background that I'd had, going to a public school, which mattered, I suppose, more then than perhaps it does today, and um th they didn't have the chance to realize their f their full potential.

Presenter16:19

But you said earlier on that school had given you a a a sense of confidence. Does that also mean an air of superiority? And is that what got knocked out of you? Oh, yes, I think so.

Paddy Ashdown MP16:24

That what got knocked out of you. Oh yes, I think so. I think exactly that. I think an air of unbearable superiority. Um as as a public school boy in the in the late nineteen fifties, I think I was probably unbearably um superior in my attitudes, but it soon got knocked out of me.

Presenter16:39

There are two stories that I've come across that surround this element in your life. One is that um is this true? You dropped from a helicopter into the sea, put on diving gear, swam underwater, and put a limpet mine on a vessel containing Dennis Healer.

Paddy Ashdown MP16:53

Well, Dennis, I thought, had forgotten this, but it appears in his book. No, it's true. It was an exercise. It was when Dennis was Secretary of State for Defence. He was touring the Far East, and we put on a demonstration for him of the kind of things that we were doing at the time. I remember this because, of course, Dennis was a great man, and I was a young Royal Marine Lieutenant, but I didn't think Dennis did. And we appeared not long after I was elected on the same television programme. And somebody said to me, Do you know Dennis? and I said, Well, of course I've seen him around the house. And I've met him before, but I don't suppose he'll remember. And he remembered in perfect clarity exactly where it was. There are those in my party who think we should have put a real link of mine underneath there, and that would have solved some problem.

Presenter17:32

With assaults of

Presenter17:33

What about the other story, which is that as a result of your training you're you're the only man in in the commons who can kill with one hand?

Paddy Ashdown MP17:40

Oh, I think it's a wild over exaggeration. Anyway, if you can kill with one hand, it's not nearly as good as being able to kill with your tongue, which is what is the uh powerful um weapon in the House of Commons. Uh I've always admired wit.

Paddy Ashdown MP17:53

And it's something I'm not blessed with. Now I've none of the natural gifts of a politician. I've had to learn them all. I'm not an easy House of Commons performer. I don't frankly like the place. It stands for many of the things in politics that I don't like. I think it's changed slightly with the new Prime Minister.

Presenter18:07

What does it stand for that you don't like?

Paddy Ashdown MP18:08

I think it's pompous. I think it's separated from the reality of life. I think it deals in a rather um childish form in the great issues of our day. I think it is literally ridiculous, ludicrous, that we sh stand there and shout at each other instead of listening to our opinions. I think it's a wretched place, frankly, but it's the place I have to do my work, and I have to learn what you have to do to get your point across, even under those circumstances.

Presenter18:33

Another piece of music.

Paddy Ashdown MP18:34

Well, I want to go to my time learning Chinese. It was a unique opportunity that opened up a whole new world to me. And again, it was a very strong influence in my life. I lived with a Chinese family in Hong Kong, spent two and a half years there as a student, taking the equivalent of a first-class degree in Chinese. I loved the period, and to remind me of that, happy two and a half years with my family and how much I've got from contact with the Chinese nation, I want to hear.

Paddy Ashdown MP19:00

Well, in Chinese

Paddy Ashdown MP19:02

It's Kung Shanyayu.

Paddy Ashdown MP19:04

In English it is bird song on Kung Mountain.

Presenter20:07

Birdsong on Kung Mountain. If you had known that soldiering wasn't to be your whole life, um, when you were next head hunted by the Foreign Office and became a diplomat and sent to live in a lovely house on the shores of Lake Geneva, uh didn't you think that that was the beginning of the rest of your life?

Paddy Ashdown MP20:23

Yes, we lived in a glorious house on the shores of Lake Geneva. Our kids were young, old enough for us to be able to enjoy taking them skiing, going walking, climbing mountains, and we had many good friends and we lived a wonderful life. But it was 1974, Sue, and there were two elections and a three-day week. And certainly, representing Britain abroad, I think we saw more clearly and perhaps even more accurately the dissolution of the British political society and the dissolution of Britain's way of government.

Paddy Ashdown MP20:56

Over the course of two years whilst there we were deliriously happy there, but I and Jane just decided that we had to put our lives somewhere that it we felt it would matter and um we started talking about this and then things just happened and it was just as though slightly dramatically put but just as though the doors opened in front of us and sort of somebody said this is the way you've got to go and we found ourselves going that way.

Presenter21:21

But what you did might have appeared at the time to be slightly irrational, because you you gave up this job, and it was 1979, as you say, and you you gave up this well paid and interesting career.

Paddy Ashdown MP21:21

Yeah.

Presenter21:30

You went to Yeovil, which had been in in Tory hands since, what, n nineteen ten, I think.

Paddy Ashdown MP21:34

Exactly right.

Presenter21:35

Um, I mean, i i it it was simply not rational.

Paddy Ashdown MP21:39

No, it wasn't rational. It was the most irresponsible decision I've ever taken in my life.

Presenter21:42

So why did you do it?

Paddy Ashdown MP21:43

Because I felt I had to, because I I mean it it's very difficult now to rationalize it.

Presenter21:48

I think people thought you had the money so you could afford to indulge the political ambition.

Paddy Ashdown MP21:50

No, no, no, I'm afraid that's not true. In fact, uh I was unemployed for the first six months and then unemployed for six months shortly before I was elected and there was one occasion when Jane and I literally were down to our last pennies and we had to we sent the kids away on holiday to friends in Switzerland and I said unless I can get a job by the end of this month then we'll have to give it up and I'll take a job in London.

Paddy Ashdown MP22:12

And as it happened, I got a job as a community on a community programme as a youth worker in Dorset County Council.

Presenter22:18

But did you assume in the beginning, with that sort of natural air of confidence that you'd been taught, that you would arrive in this constituency? It would be a simple matter of opening a garden for you, and then you'd leap into Westminster?

Paddy Ashdown MP22:24

Oh yeah

Paddy Ashdown MP22:25

So

Paddy Ashdown MP22:28

I had no idea what politics was like before I did this thing. I did indeed, exactly as you suggest, assume that I would arrive from Geneva as a diplomat making his way up and in due course I was such a wonderful person that I was bound to be elected, my goodness me, when I got there and discovered the realities of it.

Paddy Ashdown MP22:46

And so I soon had that knocked out of me. But let me just be clear.

Paddy Ashdown MP22:51

I was lucky. I had a fantastic team of people around me who we gathered together, who fought that seat. I was the recipient of the victory at the end of the day, but they were the architects and builders of it, and they're still my closest friends.

Presenter23:04

Record number five.

Paddy Ashdown MP23:05

Well, here I have to go into um in into opera. I w discovered it about ten years ago. It's been a passion for both my wife and myself. We are both incurable romantics, and therefore it has to be Puccini. I want to play it from La Boheme. My wife always um

Paddy Ashdown MP23:21

Bursts into tears in the last act of La Boheme, and I took her to the Welsh National Opera not long ago, and I said to her, Right, now there's no crying in the last act.

Paddy Ashdown MP23:29

And she said, Okay. So while someone was singing this, which is Your Tiny Hand is Frozen.

Paddy Ashdown MP23:35

The tears are dripping off the end of my nose onto my programme, and she never lets me forget it, so to remember that and for the beauty of the music, Yotini's hand is frozen from Puccini's La Boem, please.

Speaker 423:47

Uh

Speaker 423:58

Una happier.

Speaker 424:01

Yeah.

Speaker 424:07

Aspect is in your era.

Speaker 424:12

La Dirogam Isa Isa

Presenter24:45

Giuseppe di Stefano singing Ce Gellida Manina from Puccini's Laboem with the orchestra of La Scarlea Milan conducted by Antonino Votto.

Presenter24:54

You turned Yeovil around in a few years, Paddy Ashtown. You're now attempting to do the same for your party. Do you believe there's much chance of the nation turning again to a third party, having been really rather badly burned last time?

Paddy Ashdown MP25:07

I would say that would be a very good question.

Presenter25:09

You would say that, wouldn't you?

Paddy Ashdown MP25:10

Well, I would say it, but let me see if I can give you some reasons for it. First of all, I do believe that.

Paddy Ashdown MP25:16

That tremendous hope that

Paddy Ashdown MP25:19

sprang with the alliance in between 83 and 87, and which, as you rightly say, was dashed as an act of sheer vandalism by ourselves, and it's my job to try and put all that right, to pick up the pieces and put it back together again. It's still out there. There are thousand millions of people out there who desperately want an alternative to the present two old parties. Now, it's not going to be easy, and I don't pretend it's going to be quick, but my job is to rebuild a vehicle that will be a vehicle for that hope again, and I think it can be done.

Presenter25:46

But in the past that third force had big names in it, names which had had experience in office. You can offer very little of that. Do you really think that in a general election people would turn to you?

Paddy Ashdown MP25:56

I think there's a great thirst, a great hunger out there for an alternative to Conservative and Labour.

Paddy Ashdown MP26:02

And I think that there is a hunger out there for a new kind of politics on a new agenda which meets the aspirations of the British people.

Paddy Ashdown MP26:10

I think where we went wrong in the past is that we believed it could be done overnight. I never don't don't believe that. I didn't believe it when it took me eight years to win Yovo. Hard, solid work, building up a party, turning it round from a demoralized party, beginning to

Paddy Ashdown MP26:26

Build slowly with a long-term perspective, and that's what I'm doing nationally with the party now, and I'm glad to say it's having some effect.

Presenter26:34

Some more music

Paddy Ashdown MP26:35

I want to play a piece of music which my son plays. He's got a rock group. It's the Becketts, the Begin to Cut Records. This one is about to come out in a month's time.

Paddy Ashdown MP26:44

My son has a star. It's a star I envy him. He plays the guitar and plays it beautifully. Play any musical instrument. Tell you this, if I could have played the piano, any musical instrument, I wouldn't have been in politics. He can, and this is what he produces. I have to be absolutely frank and say when I listen to this

Paddy Ashdown MP27:02

It would not be for enjoyment, but it would be to remind me of him and his gift.

Paddy Ashdown MP27:07

And the luck I wish him in developing it.

Speaker 427:10

How many times do I not say this show?

Speaker 427:14

And we're playing with Henster Live.

Speaker 427:18

Come here time tonight, running across the section

Presenter27:39

Me and Robert Foster by The Beckett So I mean, what do you say?

Paddy Ashdown MP27:41

I so I tell you that we have a we have a wonderful problem in our house. I live in a little terraced cottage in Somerset, and my son has the top, which is the attic, and I have my music in the bottom.

Paddy Ashdown MP27:55

And that means that Beethoven at the bottom is competing with the Becketts up top, and in the landing in between it is sheer murder.

Presenter28:02

What happens when the neighbors complain to their MPs?

Paddy Ashdown MP28:04

Well, forgive you your wonderful neighbours. They don't we've got thick walls. I don't suppose they hear it too much, but if they do, they don't complain.

Presenter28:05

So they don't

Presenter28:09

What will you do on your desert island all day, Paddy? How do you envisage amusing yourself?

Paddy Ashdown MP28:14

I would just have to be busy inventing things for myself to do.

Presenter28:17

We talked about your being able to survive earlier on, but of course when a when a marine is is sent off to survive, he's got all the kit, hasn't he? He's got a bit of string that he can snare rabbits with, and he's got the Swiss Army knife and the, I don't know, bit of fire or Kendall mint cake or something. How would you be with absolutely nothing but your bare hands?

Paddy Ashdown MP28:33

Well, th th when we used to do survival training, of course, that's exactly where we how we used to be put out into the field. Um so you have to make do with the things that you have available. I have memories of um of sharing a mouse with a fellow marine when we were extremely hungry in the in the new forest. And I remember one occasion, Sue, when it was the best survival lecture I ever had, it was from a Royal Marine sergeant who came in.

Speaker 228:50

How did you

Paddy Ashdown MP28:57

And he said, Right, I'm going to lecture you on survival to day, he said, a very simple lesson, and he pulled out of his pocket two slices of bread.

Paddy Ashdown MP29:05

And he pulled out of his other pocket a frog.

Paddy Ashdown MP29:07

And he put the frog between the sides of the bed and then eped them and said to them, That's survival. If you can do it, you'll survive. And that was the end of the lecture. I thought it was rather impressive.

Presenter29:16

Did you ever do it?

Paddy Ashdown MP29:16

No, certainly.

Presenter29:18

I wonder if you could I wonder if you were really stuck on a desert, if there really were no means of escape, and you really could do nothing, and you were bored out of your mind, as you said, and you couldn't sit under the tree. What what would you do, Enny and I wonder if you'd opt out?

Paddy Ashdown MP29:31

Doctor

Presenter29:32

In the sense of sort of walking into the sea and just going on.

Paddy Ashdown MP29:34

Ah, no, no, I don't think I would do that. I could not conceive of me giving up. Life is far too enjoyable for me.

Presenter29:42

Do you think that having been a a soldier for a considerable chunk of your life, that it gives you a a different perspective from your parliamentary colleagues on war?

Paddy Ashdown MP29:51

Clearly my time.

Paddy Ashdown MP29:53

In the services helps me a bit to understand what's going on in the Gulf, what has been going on in the Gulf.

Paddy Ashdown MP30:00

Um but I wouldn't say that it gave me a special insight except to know what the condition of the average grunt in a hole in the desert actually feels like. I don't think it gives me a particular insight into the tactics or strategy because my experience wasn't at that level. But it probably does allow me to understand what war

Paddy Ashdown MP30:20

and danger in those circumstances is like for the ordinary person.

Presenter30:24

Record number seven.

Paddy Ashdown MP30:25

Well, I want to uh remind myself of a finally the last Kuwait crisis in 1962.

Paddy Ashdown MP30:33

when um I was bundled as a young second lieutenant, a young lieutenant on board um HMS Bulwark and thundered up the Gulf alone, no air cover, nobody else, to go to Kuwait because we were told the Iraqis were there.

Paddy Ashdown MP30:44

Half of war is

Paddy Ashdown MP30:46

heroism and half is farce. The Kuwait crisis of nineteen sixty two was all farce. On the way up the Persian Gulf I had a mad colonel who the intelligence said the Iraqis were on Kuwait airport.

Paddy Ashdown MP30:57

And we were just about to assault there, and did in due course. They weren't there, I'm glad to say. Decided that the way you impress these Arab johnnies was to put on a show.

Paddy Ashdown MP31:05

And he decided that the show, for some god knows what reason, would be a show of Scottish country dancing.

Paddy Ashdown MP31:12

So my preparations to go to war for the first time was to be dancing on the shuddering quarter deck of bulwark.

Paddy Ashdown MP31:20

And learning the Aitesome Real, dressed in an army blanket for a kilt. And.

Paddy Ashdown MP31:25

I remember the day before we went into Kuwait in 1962. I remember then.

Paddy Ashdown MP31:33

approaching what I thought was active service, standing on the weather deck of HMS Bulwark.

Paddy Ashdown MP31:38

and listening to Sunday service at sea.

Paddy Ashdown MP31:41

And this record of Janet Baker's singing Elgar's sea songs, and this is Sabbath Morning at Sea, always reminds me of that particular incident.

Speaker 431:50

Patience assist me to look hard assist me to look hard, we give the saints with a hard

Presenter32:32

DAME JANET BAKER singing part of Elgar's Sabbath Morning at Sea with the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sir John Barbara Olive.

Presenter32:39

So you're a man, Paddy Ashton, who considers himself to be in the right job. Is is there a more right one? How great is your ambition to be Prime Minister?

Paddy Ashdown MP32:47

Oh, you don't want to do my job and lead a party. If you don't want to do it from Downing Street, you might as well give up, if you're not prepared to have that as an ambition.

Presenter32:55

And how great would be your disappointment if you never made it

Paddy Ashdown MP32:58

Oh, it would be great uh uh because

Paddy Ashdown MP33:02

You have a life that you want to make the best use of and achieve the most according to your own lights and your own potentials. But uh even if I cease to be the party leader now, I think that I've helped with my colleagues to stabilize the party, to give it a name, to give it a set of ideas.

Paddy Ashdown MP33:21

Uh and that's uh an achievement which

Paddy Ashdown MP33:24

I'd be proud enough of.

Paddy Ashdown MP33:26

Uh but I think we're going somewhere.

Paddy Ashdown MP33:28

I believe we've got it right.

Presenter33:29

And your fiftieth birthday approaches. I've already written you off as being fifty already, but you're not quite.

Paddy Ashdown MP33:34

Well, if you're proud about these things, I suppose you'd say a few days left, but uh fifty's good enough.

Presenter33:40

And you don't mind about age?

Paddy Ashdown MP33:41

No, don't mind about age. Um I love my job. I'm I think coming close to the peak of my intellectual and physical ability when you take the combination of those two and I look forward to the next uh two or three years with a good deal of excitement. I think things are beginning to move in the way that I'd want them to and I think we've now got an instrument in the party uh and personally I've got enough energy left to do what needs to be done.

Presenter34:07

What needs to be done is your last record.

Paddy Ashdown MP34:10

Well, I want to go to sheer enjoyment. I'm passionate about classical music.

Paddy Ashdown MP34:15

But I love traditional jazz.

Paddy Ashdown MP34:17

And this is a record called Don't Let It Bother You, which will cheer you up however miserable a day it is on that desert island by the one and only the great Fat Swallow.

Speaker 434:28

Frown, smile upside down, turn that frown upside down, and smile, sing, Laddie daddy, daddy, daddy, sing, sing, sing, don't let it bother you.

Speaker 434:39

If skies are grey, learn to grin, take it on the chin, everything will be okay.

Presenter35:25

That's Walla, and don't let it bother you. So which of the eight records is more important to you than any of the others, Paddy Ashton?

Paddy Ashdown MP35:32

I would want to have the puccini.

Paddy Ashdown MP35:34

It would fill my heart to be able to listen to Puccini on a Desert Island and remind me in particular of the joy that we've had from this particular composer and this opera for my wife and myself.

Presenter35:47

And it would make you cry.

Paddy Ashdown MP35:48

And it would make me cry.

Presenter35:49

Which is also useful.

Presenter35:52

Um a book.

Paddy Ashdown MP35:54

I'd like a book. I was a carried around as a soldier in the Far East when we were in Borneo. My wife gave it to me. It's the Poems of John Donne.

Paddy Ashdown MP36:04

John Donne just has it all the wit, the artifice, and particularly the passion.

Paddy Ashdown MP36:11

About both things profane and things sacred. So that's my book.

Presenter36:15

And your luxury.

Paddy Ashdown MP36:16

My luxury is easy, though I suspect you will not allow me to have one half of it.

Paddy Ashdown MP36:22

I want a computer. And if you'll allow me, I'd love to have a modem as well so I can communicate with the outside world. Not that I'll ask for rescue. I just want to be able to exchange computers. I love computers. They're absolutely fascinating. I bought my first one when I was 1981 and I've been fascinated by them since. I think I've got nine in my office, about four in my office back in the constituency, one at home and a little laptop machine that I carried around with me. And if I have a few minutes, I'm nearly always playing with it in one sort of another.

Speaker 436:26

Uh Uh

Speaker 236:26

Not that I

Speaker 236:29

All right.

Presenter36:49

Paddy Ashdown, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island is.

Paddy Ashdown MP36:52

Thank you for asking.

Presenter36:53

Come on.

Speaker 237:01

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Islandists archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.