John Banham

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.

Speaker 20:11

And the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:29

My castaway this week is a business man. It's an inadequate description of someone whose rank and position make him one of the most important figures in British industry today. Educated at Charterhouse and Cambridge, he entered the Foreign Office, but he soon forsook the pleasures of Whitehall for those of commerce, first as head of a wall coverings company it was he who gave us pre-pasted wallpaper and later as a management consultant.

Presenter0:54

His taste for plain speaking and his independence of mind caught the eye of politicians in the mid eighties, and he was asked by Michael Heseltine to head the Audit Commission.

Presenter1:04

It was from there that he moved to his present job, in which he says a couple of words out of place can have a considerable effect. He is the Director General of the CBI, John

Presenter1:15

And how often, mister Bannum, have you said a couple of words out of place?

John Banham1:19

far too often for my own good, I strongly suspect.

Presenter1:22

But to that extent it it's it's quite a political position, isn't it? Because when you say something it can have an effect on jobs or on the market.

John Banham1:30

Yes, it's a strange position. We have no power, but rather a lot of influence. And of course, the challenge is to use the influence constructively to try to help solve some of the problems that affect us day by day. And that's the challenge. The danger is that a couple of words out of place can have exactly the wrong effect. Nobody wants to see unemployment increase, jobs put at risk, and so on.

Presenter1:53

You say it's a challenge, but isn't it also deeply frustrating to have influence but no power and no hope of any power?

John Banham2:00

I suppose it is. I was brought up, for example, when I was at the Audit Commission, I used to know week by week and certainly month by month whether I was winning, losing or drawing. Now I have no idea what game I'm playing, let alone what the rules are or where the goalposts are and so on. And it's very di it's impossible, as a matter of fact, to judge whether or not you've had any direct influence. All you can be thankful for is that good things happen and they seem to be the kind of things that are generally in the interests of the people who pay my salary. And so I'm in the business of making other people heroes and that's fine.

Presenter2:36

Well now the salient question today is would you like to be banished to a desert island? How does that strike you?

John Banham2:42

Well, funnily enough, I've been on a desert island. I worked for Julius Nerere in Tanzania back in the late 60s. And my family and I lived in Dar es Salaam. And every Sunday, well not every Sunday, but very often, we would go off to some of the islands just off the coast there, which are desert islands. And delightful they were, but not for banishment. I think an afternoon is one thing, to be banished is quite another.

Presenter3:08

But on this desert island you do at least get your music to keep you company. So what's the first record that you'd like to play?

John Banham3:14

I think the first record I'd like to play will remind me of one of the most enjoyable things that I've had the chance to do, which is sailing. I was brought up on the River Fowl, messing about in boats. I did a lot of sailing when I was in East Africa, and I used to do some ocean racing when I had the time. And I found myself out in the middle of the fast net race in 1979, where we were overtaken by a hurricane.

John Banham3:38

And I learned then a lot about myself and about how people face up to quite terrifying circumstances. And every year there's a service for seafarers in St Paul's Cathedral. And I'd like very much to hear Kirya Tecanoa singing Caesar Frank's Parnius Angelicus with the choir of St Paul's Cathedral.

Speaker 44:00

There's one demo.

Speaker 44:44

Save those people.

Presenter4:52

Kiri Ticarnoa singing Cesar Frank's Parnis Angelicus with the choir of Saint Paul's Cathedral and the English Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Barry Rose.

Presenter5:01

Tell me about your experience in that fast net race, nineteen seventy nine. It was hit by a freak hurricane, wasn't it?

John Banham5:07

Yes, it was. This was uh a very, you might say, interesting experience for someone who's never had to, consciously at least, uh, go through a war.

John Banham5:16

When someone puts their hair out of the hatchway on a yacht and you're thirty miles off Land's End.

John Banham5:21

and tells you that a hurricane is forecast. It's quite an interesting experience.

John Banham5:26

And uh we were in a quite a small boat.

John Banham5:29

And there were a crew of five of us, as I recall, four very close friends, and the godson of uh one of the members of the crew.

John Banham5:37

And uh we had to work out for ourselves what to do. And of course one's first instinct when you hear there's a hurricane forecast.

John Banham5:46

is to believe that once again the forecaster have got it all wrong. It can't possibly happen. So we just carried on really thinking, well, it'll go somewhere else or this is just more exaggeration by the BBC, the usual things that one thinks in these circumstances. And

John Banham6:00

In the middle of the night, or at least later on in the night, clearly the wind got up and we found ourselves fully reefed with the a boom of the mainsail permanently in the water, and eventually we found ourselves, as it were, surfing down waves with a tiny um foresail, a storm jib.

John Banham6:18

Doing well, our speed was off the clock, we were going so fast, and we wound up with no damage at all.

John Banham6:25

Sailing straight into Milford Haven. We were heading actually originally we were heading for the southern tip of Ireland.

Presenter6:31

So I suppose once you've weathered something like that, a Black Monday on the Stock Exchange is as for nothing, isn't it?

John Banham6:37

Well, uh of course. To see to find that you're in danger, uh that unless you do the right things quite unpleasant consequences could follow and that to see how you stand up to that kind of pressure uh is kind of reassuring for those of us who have led a pretty soft life.

Presenter6:52

You say you've led a a soft life. I mean, you seem on paper, anyway, to have led quite a a charmed life, really a prep school, public school, a first at university, a couple of job applications, and then head hunted forever after that. Does it feel as though it's really come quite easy?

John Banham7:09

Yes, I think it does. I I think what it has given me, I suppose, is a sense of obligation. It's a very old fashioned word, but uh my family keep telling me I'm a rather old fashioned person.

Presenter7:18

You got a scholarship, didn't you, to Queen's College, Cambridge?

John Banham7:20

On the contrary, I was awarded a scholarship when, much to my surprise and everyone else's, I acquired a first. I was very lucky to get into Cambridge and in current circumstances I'm absolutely sure that I wouldn't have stood the slightest chance of getting into Cambridge. It so happens that I think I'm the seventh generation to go to Cambridge and in those days it was possible to get in almost by my father ringing up the college and inquiring about whether his own room was available. And so I never put pen to paper to my knowledge to get into Cambridge.

Presenter7:54

Record number two.

John Banham7:56

Well, the second record comes from

John Banham7:58

my school days. I was a charth house and in those days and indeed still it was a school which where music was very important and I did English literature where which is where I acquired an interest in language and the the use of language and one of the people that I studied was A. E. Hausman.

John Banham8:21

So I'd love to hear Vaughan Williams, who himself was a childhouse and taught music there, and on Wenlock Edge from the poem by A. Hausman, sung by Peter Pearce.

Speaker 48:31

On when the hitch the wood's in trouble His forest trees are reeking heavy

Speaker 28:38

Yeah.

Speaker 48:43

The gale it blies, the saplings come o'er And thick on seven snow the leaves.

Speaker 49:08

Blow like this through Holt and Hangar, When you're the corner, sitis told,'Tis the old wind in the old languor, But then it fresh an others.

Presenter9:33

Vaughan Williams on Wenlock Edge from the poem by A. E. Houseman, sung by Peter Pears, accompanied by Benjamin Britton and the Zorian String Quartet.

Presenter9:42

Your success, John Banham, at University, gave you the confidence to trust your own instincts, you said, and you said since that you're not afraid, therefore, of rocking boats. Um I mean, do you go further than that? Do you see boat rocking as an activity to be applauded?

John Banham9:57

Well, I think it's a necessary activity. The pressures to go along in our society and to accept the received wisdom and

John Banham10:05

And just

John Banham10:07

take what people tell you is the truth as the truth and go and apply it, are very considerable. And I've usually found that um when all the experts agree on something, they turn out to be wrong. So I've always had this

John Banham10:20

It's a iconoclastic streak, I suppose.

Presenter10:23

So which boats have you most enjoyed rocking in your time?

John Banham10:26

Enjoyment is perhaps not the right word, because it isn't actually much fun, rocking boats. You know perfectly well that if you rock boats in Whitehall, the place is peopled with characters who believe in, you know, don't get mad, get even. So I have a string of people all loaded up waiting for me to make some terrible mistake. But I, for example, found that looking at community care and the scandal of 50,000 people or whatever it was, who were in hospitals in the care of all of us, just getting lost, no one could tell you where they were.

John Banham11:02

Now that that's a boat that needs to be rocked and luckily the Audit Commission, the Griffiths report that followed and now the legislation is going to make some good come out of all of that. I think many of the things that have happened in local government were boats waiting to be rocked that needed to be rocked. Things were just getting a little bit too comfortable. People...

Presenter11:23

Didn't didn't Michael Heseltine warn you actually when he offered you the job job that it would make you the most unpopular man in Britain?

John Banham11:24

My

John Banham11:29

Well, Michael, of course, is a pretty pretty good guy to that kind of thing and he did indeed.

John Banham11:35

And he was right. I don't mean literally right. But there are very few prizes in Whitehall for being right.

Presenter11:42

Record number three.

John Banham11:45

Well, all of us, I think, are very lucky if we have perhaps half a dozen really close friends, the kind of people you could ring up at midnight and say, I've made a terrible mistake, you know, what shall I do now? Apart from our families, and almost all my close friends.

John Banham12:01

I first met or they became friends of mine at Cambridge, so I'd like something to remind me of Cambridge.

John Banham12:08

And in particular, I'd like to hear the sanctus from Foray's Requiem sung by the choir of King's College, Cambridge. And this would also remind me of our reprobate elder son, who I once heard sing in this very piece.

Speaker 412:21

Is what changes?

Speaker 412:32

The glory of the world.

Speaker 412:41

Whose unchange Host of Christ

Presenter13:20

The Sanctus from Foray's Requiem, sung by the choir of King's College, Cambridge, with the English Chamber Orchestra conducted by Philip Ledger. You actually worked in Downing Street for a time shortly after university, didn't you?

John Banham13:32

Yes, I found myself, rather to my surprise, in the Foreign Office as a temporary assistant principal when I left Cambridge. And we were working in the Foreign Office, which you then approached down Dining Street. So I used to walk down Dining Street every morning, turn left opposite number ten, and there would, as I recall then, there was somebody on their knees outside praying, presumably for the good of the world. So you felt as though you were entering heaven at the same time.

Presenter14:02

So how did you get then from from the cloistered calm of all of that, of the Foreign Office, to to prepasted wallpaper?

John Banham14:08

Well, very easily really. I had a temporary job at the Foreign Office and I took the exam to be made a permanent member of the staff in the so-called branch A as an officer I suppose you might say. And every year they have perhaps a thousand applicants and they take perhaps ten people and I was number eleven on the list. And I was offered the job as you know I could stay there and work my way up or I could go away and get some experience in business. And I thought it was better to go away and get some experience in business and see what happened.

Presenter14:40

Was that your first taste of a kind of failure?

John Banham14:43

It was. It was a quite a blow uh because I wanted it. I liked it very much. And I probably wanted to do it too much. I've usually now found that if you particularly want a job then the best thing is not to want it too badly and then uh they all fall off the trees.

Presenter14:56

So you went off and really took a crash course, as it were, in the commercial world, didn't you? In the world of competition and profit and loss and so on. And then the the headhunters arrived at your door for the first time, and you were snapped up by McKinsey, the American management consultant. Someone said you had to work your socks off to stay alive in that company, and you stayed alive for fifteen years and became a director. Is that fair comment?

John Banham15:18

Yes, I think it is. Um that old uh the story used to be that if you weren't married when you arrived at McKinsey, you were most unlikely uh to get married while you were there, since you had no time for social life. And uh it was, and is, a marvellous uh place and I enjoyed

John Banham15:34

every year of my time there, partly because I was working with marvellous people, partly because we were working on very interesting problems, and partly, I think, because every year that passed I felt I had more choices for the future than I had at the beginning of the year, so it met the three key requirements for any job really.

Presenter15:55

Record number four.

John Banham15:57

The fourth record is something first of all to remind me of my first visit to a desert island and secondly to remind me of our daughters, one of whom is now working in southern Africa. She's teaching at a mission school in Lesotho.

John Banham16:12

And so I thought I'd like something African. I unfortunately couldn't remember any Tanzanian music, so I asked our middle child, our eldest daughter, if she could come up with something that that would sort of remind me of Africa.

John Banham16:25

And uh she came up with Bob Marley and The Whalers uh Time Will Tell from their album Kaya.

Speaker 416:32

Give the power to a morale

Speaker 416:37

Run come cruise ship fly in a draft

Speaker 416:43

Time in the low

Speaker 416:46

Oh time will change.

Speaker 416:50

Think you're in heaven but you live in hell

Speaker 416:56

Think you're in heaven but you live

Presenter17:01

Bob Marley and the Wailers and Time will tell from the album Kaya. So work of whatever kind is important to you. But money, I think, isn't so important, is it?

John Banham17:11

No, it isn't really. I've never been interested in making money for its own sake. I've always m been much more interested in what one uh can contribute. I don't want to sound as though I I'm poverty stricken. That certainly wouldn't be the case. And um one of the great joys of working for a firm like McKinsey

John Banham17:28

is that we were very well paid, so that I had a measure of financial independence.

John Banham17:35

much earlier than I think would have been the case had I been working for somebody else.

Presenter17:41

But when you left there to go to the Audit Commission, you took a huge cut in salary. I think it was much publicised, um some sixty six percent. I I probably got the figures entirely wrong, but I worked it out at something like a cut of

Presenter17:52

From a hundred and sixty five thousand to sixty five thousand a year. I mean, that that's a large thing to undertake for a family man.

John Banham18:00

Yes, but uh I could afford it. Um and in any case uh the publicity was not about the cut, it was about the sixty-seven thousand pounds that I was being paid.

Presenter18:08

But you didn't take an increase when it was offered, did you? I think the Top Salaries Review Board recommended you an increase at one point and you said no, thank you.

John Banham18:14

Yes, but I think that was rather different because then the Audit Commission was in the business of having to tackle the problems of Liverpool and Lambeth.

John Banham18:24

I just didn't think it would be right to put the district auditor in the very awkward position of having to defend me while he simultaneously had a very difficult job on his hands.

John Banham18:34

in Liverpool, a job that he and his colleagues performed marvellously well.

Presenter18:38

And you're not taking a pay rise this year at the CBI.

John Banham18:41

Absolutely. Some people would say that just reflects my performance, of course. But no, I I th but that's a personal thing. Um I just don't want to find myself commenting on top management pay and people saying, well, they he would say that, wouldn't he?

Presenter18:53

But then you've been defending some of the big pay awards that we've heard of this year to to chairmen of newly privatized companies. Why have you defended them?

John Banham19:01

Because I think that pay ought to reflect performance.

John Banham19:04

And the important thing is that people agree in advance how their manager's performance is going to be assessed and how performance will itself be reflected in pay. And it is quite unacceptable.

John Banham19:18

To my mind at least, that there should be one law for the bosses and one law for everybody else. That simply can't be.

John Banham19:25

sustainable in the long term or indeed in the short term.

John Banham19:28

We made it very clear in discussions with our members.

John Banham19:32

that anyone who had their pay increase by an amount that couldn't be justified very clearly on the basis of the results set out in that particular year's annual report

John Banham19:42

would find themselves answering some very difficult questions.

John Banham19:45

That's another case of prophecy, perhaps.

Presenter19:47

Let's have some more music.

John Banham19:49

Well, one of the problems, I think, with any discussion about business publicly is people think it's all about greed and envy and not much else.

John Banham19:57

And I'm very proud of being a trustee of the People's Dispensary for Sick Animals. And last year.

John Banham20:05

the PDSA. Rather than hire a public relations consultant, which we were advised to do, we thought the nicest thing to do was to give a concert for our friends. And I'd like to hear one of the pieces that was played at that concert, which is one of Schubert's impromptu's number two in E-flat.

Presenter21:13

Schubert's Impromptu number two in E flat, played by Alfred Brendel. So your pay, John Bannum, at the CBI is performance related, a concept you believe in. But how do you judge performance at the CBI? I mean, is it by the number of headlines you attract or the number of policies that you advocate and the government adopts? Difficult business, really.

John Banham21:32

Well, if it was, I'd be extremely rich.

Presenter21:34

Actually, did it?

John Banham21:35

But um fortunately for all of us it isn't. The way our President's Committee, which is the kind of cabinet of the CBI, operates, is I agreed with them back in late nineteen eighty seven a strategy which set out what we thought the CBI should seek to become.

John Banham21:51

And then once a year the President and his close colleagues take a look at

John Banham21:58

how we've done against that strategy, and they form a judgment of whether they've done well or done badly.

Presenter22:04

So what did you say it should seek to become?

John Banham22:07

We set out to become, as it were, problem solvers, to keep running up the flagpole solutions to important problems that affect virtually every business in the land. The problems of a shortage of skills, the problems of an inadequate transport infrastructure.

John Banham22:22

The problem posed by the environment, the problems in our inner cities, the problems of inadequate links between schools on the one hand and businesses on the other, and problems like that.

Presenter22:32

But wouldn't people take all the more notice of the CBI if it had as its members, rather like the TUC has all the unions, all the companies in the land, so that you could hold an annual conference and every chief executive was sitting there on your front row? You don't have that, do you?

John Banham22:47

Well, I could do without national events like TUC conferences. Uh I don't want to be unfair. The uh nature of our uh national conference uh is really a matter for the members. They they want it. I keep on telling them if I was you I'd wrap this whole thing up. And they come on saying no, we think this is rather useful. We like to get together every now and again. We're kind enough to invite the press and they come in droves as a matter of fact.

Presenter23:08

But you'd be prepared to do away with it, would you?

John Banham23:10

Absolutely, if it didn't uh fulfill any function that our members wanted fulfilled.

Presenter23:14

Another record.

John Banham23:15

One of the most moving experiences that I've had recently was to be down in Dresden at a conference which I was helping.

John Banham23:22

part of which I was held into chair.

John Banham23:24

And the organisers said that they'd arranged a church service for us.

John Banham23:29

And um Dresden, as you know, was flattened by the RAF during the war.

John Banham23:33

And uh we had insisted that

John Banham23:36

Part of the British delegation would include somebody from Coventry, which had also suffered the same damage.

John Banham23:41

And so we

John Banham23:42

March after this service, six o'clock on a Saturday evening, Vespers in the Kreutzke in in Dresden.

John Banham23:49

And

John Banham23:50

Lo and behold, the place was packed. There must have been five thousand people there.

John Banham23:55

And the Bishop of Coventry, who was part of our delegation, came and preached a sermon.

John Banham24:02

On the Virtues of Hope in the Midst of Despair, in flawless German.

John Banham24:07

And by the time he'd finished, the whole place was kind of mopping its its eyes somewhat. So I'd like a piece of music to remember that by, and I'd like very much to hear a part of the first movement from Bach's double concerto for two violins and orchestra.

Presenter25:18

Part of the first movement from Bach's double violin concerto in D minor played by Anne Sophie Mutta and Salvatore Acado, with the English Chamber Orchestra conducted by Salvatore Accardo.

Presenter25:30

You'd only been a year at the CBI, John Bannam, in nineteen eighty eight, when you told the Government in no uncertain terms that its statistics were way off beam. But they didn't take any notice, did they?

John Banham25:41

Sadly not. Only now have they realized to listen very carefully to what thirty thousand businesses are telling them every quarter, how expensive that failure can be.

John Banham25:50

Uh the reason why we are

John Banham25:53

in the difficulties we now face.

John Banham25:55

Is because, or one reason, is because in the aftermath of

John Banham26:00

the so called crash in the world's stock markets, which by the way are higher today than they were just before the so called crash, the official statistics were showing that output was falling.

John Banham26:13

and the CBI's figures were showing that output was rising.

John Banham26:16

And the government were foolish enough or the officials were foolish enough to believe their own statistics. The result was action to try to stimulate the economy that didn't need stimulating because it was actually growing rather healthily.

John Banham26:28

And unfortunately, in the budget of nineteen eighty eight, contrary to our advice at the time, the government, instead of reinforcing the so-called supply side of our economy so that business was able to expand its productive capacity and thus continue to invest, instead cut taxes.

John Banham26:48

And the rest, as they say in the tabloids, is history.

Presenter26:51

So why are they listening now when they wouldn't listen then?

John Banham26:54

Well, because uh

John Banham26:55

They realize that we were right and the economic policy establishment was wrong and they don't want to make the same mistake twice.

Presenter27:03

It's not to do with the change of Prime Minister.

John Banham27:06

Uh no, I'm sure that couldn't possibly be the case, could it?

Presenter27:08

Let's have your next record.

John Banham27:11

Well the the next record, I suppose, is

John Banham27:14

a reflection of where I was brought up and where I now live. If anyone had asked me at any time in the past forty-five years where I came from,

John Banham27:26

and I happened to be in New York, I never would have said England or Berkshire, where we happened to have a home. I would have said Cornwall because I'd always believed, although I was born in Devonham, which is a crime for anyone living in Cornwall,

John Banham27:36

that that's where I always felt that I belonged. And so I'd like something that's Cornish to remind me of Cornwall. And of course we live by the sea, which would give me some comfort that good things happen at sea as well as shipwrecks. And so I'd like obviously to hear Trelawney sung in this case by the Polpero Fisherman's Choir.

Speaker 427:56

A good sword and a trusty hand, a merry heart and true

John Banham27:58

Come on.

Speaker 428:02

King James's men shall understand what Cornish lads can do, and have they fixed on where and when, and shall Trelawney die. Here's twenty thousand Cornish men will know the reason why. And shall Trelawne live, or shall...

Speaker 428:31

Uh

Speaker 428:31

He's a boy.

Speaker 428:35

Outspake their captain, brave and bold, a merry white was he, If London starboard Michael's home, We'll set Trelony free. We'll cross the Tamerland to land, The Sebron is no stay, With one and all and hand in hand, And who shall bid us?

Presenter28:58

Trelawney sung by the Polpero Fisherman's Choir conducted by Jack Libby.

John Banham29:03

Yes, you probably know, Sue, that there were uh thirty thousand Cornishmen at Twickenham uh this year.

John Banham29:09

for the final of the inter-county uh rugby championships. And halfway into the second half, the Cornish team were dead, buried and gone. In fact, we were sitting at home, thankful not to be at Twickenham and thinking it was just going to be embarrassing. And suddenly, you could almost see it on this television screen, this team changed gear.

John Banham29:29

And they won going away. It's the most astonishing sort of comeback in rugby history, and the point of the story.

John Banham29:36

Uh at least it seems to me.

John Banham29:38

is that leadership can make a difference. You can see companies that are going straight down the pan realize if they're going like this they're going to lose and they're going to have to change. Shorts in Belfast two years ago was a basket case. Today it's a world-class company in two years. And I believe the same can happen to economies, which is what I would like enjoy thinking about on my desert island.

Presenter29:59

What happens to you next after November nineteen ninety two? Retirement is a word that crops up in in the articles one reads about you, and yet it's difficult to believe that's what you have in mind at the age of fifty one.

John Banham30:12

Well, I I think if you start thinking too much about what you're going to do next, then you don't do what you're currently doing well.

John Banham30:18

Um

John Banham30:19

I could also aspire to be promoted to undergardener from assistant undergardener at home.

John Banham30:27

I I haven't really thought at all about uh what I'd like to do. Uh I I obviously uh think I would drive my

John Banham30:34

family completely crazy uh by uh just being on their hands.

Presenter30:38

Talk of retirement, though, sometimes indicates a a guilty conscience about having neglected the family in the past.

John Banham30:44

Well if I have neglected the family in the past, and I suspect I probably have, then it's too late to do anything about it. And I strongly suspect that if you were to ask them, what do you remember about your father?

John Banham30:56

When they're doing desert island discs, if they're so privileged, they will say, well, what we can remember is being told to keep quiet because dad is working, which is a terrible thing to say. We're very lucky. We see all our children quite regularly except our young daughter who's out there teaching human biology to twenty-year-olds, which is a very challenging task, I would have thought, done in Southern Africa. But when we do see them, they tend to come with cricket teams of friends, which is a delight for me, rather hard work for my wife.

Presenter31:25

Shall we have your last record?

John Banham31:28

Well the last record will remind me of of

John Banham31:31

the day that really changed my life, I suppose, which is when I um

John Banham31:34

When I got married, I was very lucky to be accepted by someone who's really made a tremendous difference to everything that I've done. And so what I'd like to have is a piece of music that was played as we were leaving the church, but I not on the organ, but for three hands on a piano.

John Banham31:54

because uh this particular duet was played uh both by my

John Banham31:59

By my wife and our best man at our 25th wedding anniversary. And it would.

John Banham32:05

remind me of twenty-five very happy years and that would be the arrival of the Queen of Sheba from Solomon played by Cyril Smith and Phyllis Selleck.

Presenter33:07

Part of Handel's Sinphonia The Arrival of the Queen of Sheba from Solomon, played by Cyril Smith and Phyllis Sellick. So one of those records, John, you have to choose as being your favorite above all the others?

John Banham33:21

I think it'd have to be the Forays Requiem.

John Banham33:25

and Cambridge.

Presenter33:27

And a book. You have the Bible, and you have the complete works of Shakespeare waiting for you. What shall we add to the pile?

John Banham33:32

Well, I would like to add the collected works of A. Hausmann.

John Banham33:37

I'm not sure why, because he's extremely morbid and he or his poems.

John Banham33:43

I think imbued me when I was at school with a sense that life is pretty ephemeral and although I was a bit of an athlete and have run the London Marathon and so on, but most ath most athletes die young and so you better get on with things. And I think probably a houseman would so depress me that actually it would have the reverse effect, bit like going to a tragedy.

Presenter34:07

And a luxury.

John Banham34:10

Well, I'm not quite sure whether this will qualify as a luxury. I'd spent years smoking only other people's cigars. And I thought if I had 24 cigars, then among other things, I'd be able to keep track of the time. So I'd have one cigar every evening, staring out to sea. And with any luck, I wouldn't lose complete track of time. And I would remember some of the appalling after-dinner speeches that I've had to listen to, and the even more appalling after-dinner speeches I've had to give, and enjoy not having ever again to appear as an after-dinner entertainment for anybody.

Presenter34:47

John Bannon, you shall have it all. Thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs.

John Banham34:51

Thank you.

Speaker 234:59

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