Jocelyn Stevens

Speaker 30:00

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 30:08

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

Presenter0:30

My Castaway this week is an entrepreneur, newspaper man, and public servant. He's now sixty. During his lifetime he's revitalized Queen Magazine, launched Radio Caroline, saved the Evening Standard, and served as managing director of Express Newspapers.

Presenter0:46

At the moment he's deputy chairman of the Independent Television Commission and Rector of the Royal College of Art. That he's done so much is due to two things his great wealth and his enormous energy. He works in London, but spends his weekends in Gestad. Flamboyant and glamorous, he epitomises the jet set. Hard working and anxious to do a worth while job, he's looking forward to taking over as Chairman of English Heritage later this year. He is Jocelyn Stevens.

Presenter1:15

There's only one question to ask, Jocelyn, after an introduction like that, which is, aren't you exhausted? I mean, how have you managed to pack so much in?

Jocelyn Stevens1:22

Well, I never felt better. Uh this is the extraordinary thing I've always longed to be old.

Jocelyn Stevens1:27

I don't know why, and now I'm sixty, I really feel terribly well and very energetic.

Presenter1:33

Is there a downside to that kind of boundless energy? I mean, are you a man who's easily bored?

Jocelyn Stevens1:40

No, I've never been bored. In fact, that's why I rather anticipate being cast away. I have to say, I'm not always bitter. I get very angry because I'm terribly intolerant about people who let one down and let themselves down. So I regard life as a a struggle. I don't regard it as a a permanent as a laugh or a permanent joy. In fact, nobody could possibly describe fourteen years at the head of a newspaper company as being anything but the most unbelievable grind. But there was huge satisfaction in it.

Jocelyn Stevens2:15

I don't want to give the impression, or let you give the impression, I'm a sort of happy, jolly swagman swinging through life. I don't think I've done that at all.

Presenter2:24

And what kind of music are you planning to take with you, and how have you chosen all eight of your records?

Jocelyn Stevens2:29

When I've chosen eight

Jocelyn Stevens2:30

records which each one mean something to me and which will uh will remind me of very good times or very important times in one's life. I mean music is by far the most emotive way of remembering anything, and uh that's why I think it it's a terribly good idea to be allowed eight records, rather better than eight books.

Presenter2:54

Let's play your first record, what is it?

Jocelyn Stevens2:56

It was called Begin the Begin.

Jocelyn Stevens2:59

I really think it's the first record I remember. It it dates back to when I was eight and living in Scotland and my sister my stepsister who's extremely beautiful teenager and permanently in love had a wind up gramophone with two seventy eight speed records, night and day and begin the begin, which she used to play continuously. And when she was at my stepbrother Blair and I used to listen to them secretly, hoping some of the magic would rub off.

Jocelyn Stevens3:26

I'm with you once more under the stars And down by the shore an orchestra's playing

Speaker 13:42

And even

Speaker 33:43

The pounds seem to be swaying

Speaker 33:50

When they begin

Speaker 33:54

The biggie

Presenter3:56

Bing Crosbie singing Begin the Begin. Let's start at your beginning, Jocelyn Stevens. You you had a very tragic start in life, didn't you? Because your mother died as a result of your birth. How what happened?

Jocelyn Stevens4:08

Well, she got um septicinia, I think, at the time I was born. And in those days, when um there weren't the kind of drugs, penicillin, etcetera, around, septicinia was very serious. The story is, which I never really heard directly, as you can imagine, was that they had to choose between saving my mother or myself, and since she was a very strong Catholic, they decided to save me, which of course I would now think was entirely a wrong decision.

Presenter4:39

How old were you then when she died?

Jocelyn Stevens4:41

Eight days.

Presenter4:42

And how old was she?

Jocelyn Stevens4:44

She was about twenty four.

Presenter4:46

And your father, how did he react?

Jocelyn Stevens4:48

My father was absolutely destroyed by this. He was not a Catholic. My mother was a a Halton, and he felt very badly, therefore, about them. He felt that they had uh, uh in a way, with me, killed his wife. Forever afterwards I always b believed, and he never denied, that when he saw me I was the murderer of his

Jocelyn Stevens5:12

Of my mother.

Presenter5:14

Did he see you very much?

Jocelyn Stevens5:16

Not very much now.

Presenter5:17

So who brought you up, then, in those early years?

Jocelyn Stevens5:19

Well, there was these extraordinary grandmothers. One, his mother, who was very sweet, a little old white-haired granny of the rather artistic and very shy and sweet, and my mother's mother, who was my grandfather had married after seeing her playing pussy boots in the in the playhouse in Manchester and fancied her for her very good long legs. She was a sort of gaiety girl and uh she was quite the different. She was uh extremely tall, red-haired and beautiful and and wildly socially ambitious.

Presenter5:56

So did you live in her house all?

Jocelyn Stevens5:58

Now I lived in my own house in

Presenter6:01

Your own hand.

Jocelyn Stevens6:02

In London I had my own little staff, I had uh my own little Rose Royce, my own nanny, and my own personal priest.

Presenter6:10

But y you as a small baby had your own house?

Jocelyn Stevens6:13

This

Presenter6:15

And and th this entourage looked after you and the and the grandmas came to visit.

Jocelyn Stevens6:19

Grandmothers can visit, yes.

Presenter6:20

And but who took you out in the day or where you know, how were you looked after?

Jocelyn Stevens6:23

The chauffeur used to drive me round Hyde Park.

Presenter6:27

And what were you dressed in?

Jocelyn Stevens6:29

Entirely in satin.

Presenter6:31

baby blue and white satin wrappers.

Jocelyn Stevens6:33

I don't remember too much about my materials, but all I know is that I remember being entirely in satin, and this is verified by my to be stepbrother Blessed Right Wilson, who whose first memory of me is is sitting in this huge nursery on a bright blue carpet dressed entirely in white satin.

Presenter6:55

Record number two.

Jocelyn Stevens6:56

The

Jocelyn Stevens6:58

Scene at the end of Act Two of Gottadamerung, when Siegfried, the world's greatest hero, influenced by a drug, betrays his love for Brunhilde and is stabbed to death in the back by the ghastly Hagen. I have chosen his funeral oration, which is played while his body is carried back to the hall of the Gibbichings.

Jocelyn Stevens7:24

I really got involved in all this. This last autumn at Covent Garden when I saw the whole of the ring. It was the first time in my life. I was absolutely carried away by it. And this is a dramatic climax, as far as I'm concerned, of a whelming power.

Speaker 17:29

But

Presenter8:38

Part of Siegfried's funeral march from Act Three of Wagner's Goethe Demerung, played by the Vienna Philharmonic conducted by Sir George Schulte.

Presenter8:45

Your mother's family were were the Hultons, you said, the the the Press dynasty, and she left you, I think, the best part of a million pounds when she died, didn't she?

Jocelyn Stevens8:54

Yeah.

Presenter8:54

But she left you something else too, a a a series of letters. Can you tell me about those?

Jocelyn Stevens9:00

Yes, well they they were letters written a sort of diary, really, written from the moment she knew she was pregnant, and they were addressed to J, whom I shall never know.

Presenter9:12

So she knew that your birth would possibly result in her death.

Jocelyn Stevens9:15

Yes, you must have done.

Jocelyn Stevens9:16

And that was very strange.

Jocelyn Stevens9:18

The Book of Letters was simply wonderful. It was really all about the her concern for the times we lived in. She was tremendously socially conscious and ran a home in the East End for poor people and worked very unselfishly in that field. And she wanted me to be very aware of one's responsibilities.

Presenter9:43

Your father remarried, didn't he, when you were about six years old. How how did that change your life?

Jocelyn Stevens9:50

I think he married a a splendid Scottish lady whose husband had died, and that's how I came to gain two wonderful step brothers and a stepsister and moved to Scotland and I believe that my stepmother probably saved my life. I would have ended up as some absolute well, some say I I still am, but I would have definitely been a monster.

Presenter10:11

But but then there was more trouble in store because after prep school you went off to Eton, where apparently you suffered because you were terribly pretty.

Jocelyn Stevens10:20

Well Eton was and I suppose all the other public schools at that time, and um I think it's less so now were rife with homosexuality. And I was a very small boy, and small boys were always prey to large boys. I hated all that.

Presenter10:37

I I read a a description of you. Does this ring a bell? That he was a boy with a lock of yellow hair hanging almost to his chin, a carriage like a regimental sergeant major, and the angriest blue eyes. Does that sound?

Jocelyn Stevens10:50

I think with the angry blue eyes are

Jocelyn Stevens10:53

I suppose true. It's I've always felt I've had to struggle. I think it it must relate from from those early strange days really. I've always always thought of myself as an orphan in a strange way, because you can you can see already how one really had no one person during those years who one felt particularly attached to and switched the whole time. And it was very unnerving really.

Presenter11:21

Record number three.

Jocelyn Stevens11:23

Record number three is my very good friend the Milkman. That's an Eaton record. Communications in Eaton were very primitive in my time. I had a crystal set which I made myself and hid under the floorboards of my room when I wasn't using it.

Jocelyn Stevens11:39

But when one became fediciner one got a gramophone.

Jocelyn Stevens11:42

And that's how I got to play Fats Waller. I think I liked him so much because of his.

Jocelyn Stevens11:48

Irreverent.

Jocelyn Stevens11:49

And magical touch mister Sitcha for.

Speaker 311:54

My very good friend, the Milkman said.

Jocelyn Stevens11:58

Yeah.

Jocelyn Stevens11:58

That I've been losing

Jocelyn Stevens12:01

Too much sleep.

Jocelyn Stevens12:03

He doesn't like

Jocelyn Stevens12:05

But I was like you

Jocelyn Stevens12:08

He suggests that you should marry me.

Jocelyn Stevens12:14

I'm trying to do it.

Jocelyn Stevens12:16

My very good

Presenter12:20

Fat Swaller and my very good friend the Milkman. After Eaton, Jostin Stevens came National Service, 1948. Which regiment?

Jocelyn Stevens12:28

The rifle brigade.

Presenter12:29

Why?

Jocelyn Stevens12:30

My father was in the Rifle Brigade, my eldest step brother was in the Rifle Brigade.

Jocelyn Stevens12:34

And it was a regiment I I very much admired.

Presenter12:37

And what rank did you go that?

Jocelyn Stevens12:39

As a rifleman with everybody else, joined up at the depot in Winchester, had our longings removed, hair cut off, slept thirty six in a hut.

Jocelyn Stevens12:49

Loved it.

Presenter12:51

You won the sword of honour.

Jocelyn Stevens12:53

That the officer trained him to go. Yeah, I was.

Presenter12:55

Yeah.

Jocelyn Stevens12:56

I was determined to do that.

Presenter12:58

Why?

Jocelyn Stevens12:59

Well I wanted to be the best cadet.

Presenter13:01

What did you have to do to win it?

Jocelyn Stevens13:03

You had to be very good at everything and you had to be a leader.

Presenter13:10

And how much did it mean to you to win it? Obviously, an awful lot.

Jocelyn Stevens13:13

It meant a great deal, yes.

Presenter13:15

But your father didn't come to the ceremony.

Jocelyn Stevens13:17

No, and that very much disappointed me. But then it was absolutely difficult.

Presenter13:22

But you minded, patently.

Jocelyn Stevens13:24

Court

Presenter13:25

So going back to uh your early life, after national service you then went to Cambridge. Why did you go to Cambridge?'Cause you don't sound as if you particularly had any academic aspirations.

Jocelyn Stevens13:36

I went to Cambridge because I was quite good at rowing at Eton, and in those days the university entrance was rather more lax than it is now. And one evening after the Henley Regratta, my house tutor came to me and said, You can have a place at Trinity College, Cambridge, if you wish. They saw you row and they were very impressed. So I thought, Well, that sounds all nice. So I said, Yes, thank you very much.

Presenter14:03

Did you have any ambition then? I mean, what did you want to do with your life?

Jocelyn Stevens14:07

Be journalists.

Presenter14:08

How did you know that?

Jocelyn Stevens14:09

I never had any other doubts at all for what I would do. I was hugely influenced by my uncle, as I've already said. Picture Post was a heroic enterprise of

Jocelyn Stevens14:21

um my life in journalistic terms during the war.

Presenter14:24

which he had founded.

Jocelyn Stevens14:25

and which he'd find it and ran and the

Jocelyn Stevens14:28

When I lived with him, the journalists came, the editors came, it was the most glamorous life I could ever imagine.

Presenter14:33

So you went to serve your apprenticeship with him, did you?

Jocelyn Stevens14:36

Yes, I I got stuck into journalism in in Cambridge with with um varied results. And then Amisha I left, joined him at four pounds a week.

Presenter14:45

Four pounds a week. But but Uncle Teddy was the boss.

Jocelyn Stevens14:46

Yeah.

Jocelyn Stevens14:48

Absolutely, German.

Presenter14:51

Next piece of music.

Jocelyn Stevens14:53

I've chosen a piece about the Green Jackets on Parade called I'm 95, which was the regimental marching song. And I've done that because it reminds me of a very silly story in Germany when we were stationed there. The Green Jackets we always pride ourselves on doing everything different from anyone else, and of course better. One of the things we did was march at 144 paces a minute, when all the other regiments marched 120. And somebody forgot that when they planned General Eisner's farewell parade as head of the Allied forces in Germany. We were at the back of the parade and we set off at our normal speed, crashed into everyone in front, caused absolute chaos.

Jocelyn Stevens15:34

and much rage, and I don't think we've ever been asked to pray with anybody ever again.

Presenter15:38

So this is a fast march that reminds you all of that, is it?

Jocelyn Stevens15:40

Is it fast enough?

Presenter16:30

That's very good. Um I'm ninety-five, played by the Normandy band and buglers of the third battalion of the Royal Green Jackets. It is very fast, isn't it?

Jocelyn Stevens16:38

Just imagine you taking it.

Presenter16:39

Just imagine you're taking in

Presenter16:41

So you came into your inheritance when you were twenty one, I think, didn't you? What was the first thing you bought?

Jocelyn Stevens16:45

Yeah.

Jocelyn Stevens16:47

I bought on the day I was twenty one a Astenmahin D B two, which was the third one that had been built, and there was the ve al almost the very latest sports car on the market in England.

Presenter17:00

And you wrote it off.

Jocelyn Stevens17:02

I was driving back from lunch on that same day when I had a birthday lunch and um I'm very glad there was no such thing as breathalize, there was no such'cause I don't think I must have been very sober. Driving extremely fast to Eaton Square, I lost control and hit.

Jocelyn Stevens17:18

an island middle thread and cut it almost in half.

Presenter17:21

But the island or the car?

Jocelyn Stevens17:23

Car

Presenter17:24

You wrote it off completely.

Presenter17:26

That's the kind of story one reads about you and doesn't really quite know whether to believe or whether it's apocryphal. And there are so many stories like that. I mean, stories of your.

Presenter17:35

throwing typewriters out of windows in rage and cutting off transatlantic telephone calls with pairs of scissors and uh firing somebody over the tannoy. Are they all true, these stories, more or less?

Jocelyn Stevens17:46

Yes, most of them are, I'm afraid. Most of them date from the days of Queen Magazine, which was sort of in the sixties, where we had the most enormous fun for ten, eleven years.

Presenter17:56

But you obviously occasionally made some people cry. You you've got a reputation for being a bit of a bully.

Jocelyn Stevens18:01

Oh, yes. I just got te and still do, desperate when things aren't right. I'm a mixture of I think I'm actually quite good with in in teaching people. At the same time I'm it mixes with a sort of i a terrible intolerance about people who and things that don't work. I think it's inherited. My grandfather used to

Jocelyn Stevens18:22

smash clocks that didn't work. I mean, he said a clock is meant to tell the time. If it doesn't tell the time, it is useless, and once struck the clock, the Louis XIV clock, from the mantelpiece in the French embassy, and smashed it to the ground and and gave that as an explanation. What's the point of having a clock? It's a very sort of grandfather thing to do. I wasn't trying to ape him, but I I heard about that afterwards.

Presenter18:46

More music.

Presenter18:48

Number five.

Jocelyn Stevens18:49

Tosca. I've chosen the bit where Tosca realizes that she is the price that Scarpia, the chief of police, requires for saving the life of her lover.

Jocelyn Stevens19:01

How I got into opera was really working in Fleet Street as a managing director. About eighty-five percent of my very long days, I did about fourteen-hour days then, were dealing with the unions. In fact, there was no time in the fourteen years I was there that we ever had total peace in our three plants in the country. And Lord Goodwin one day, who was chairman of the newspaper prior association then, sold my chairman Sir Max Aitken and Rupert Murdoch the idea that they should apply some of the wages of sin, as he called them, which they'd earned, to the arts and that they should rent a box. And I was one of the beneficiaries. I used to go up in the evening there, break off my union negotiations, go and see some dramatic scenes on opera, and then go back greatly fortified and batter the unions.

Speaker 320:09

It is a five-month

Speaker 320:21

One for a day.

Presenter20:41

Maria Callas singing part of the aria Vicidate from Act Two of Puccini's Tosca with the orchestra of Vlascala Milan conducted by Victor de Sabata.

Presenter20:51

And memories of Jocelyn Stephen's battles with the Fleet Street print unions. You mentioned Queen Magazine, though. That was something you bought for yourself on your twenty fifth birthday, wasn't it? How much did you pay for it, do you remember?

Jocelyn Stevens20:59

That's right. How much did you

Jocelyn Stevens21:02

About ten thousand pounds.

Presenter21:03

and it was very genteel, not to say stuffy. Yes.

Presenter21:08

Society magazine.

Jocelyn Stevens21:09

This way.

Presenter21:10

Tell me what you what you did with it and how you did it.

Jocelyn Stevens21:13

Well

Jocelyn Stevens21:14

The first thing I did was ring up Mark Boxer, who's my compatriot at Cambridge, who'd been when we did publishing Underground publishing in Cambridge together, and Tony Armstrong Jones, who was then Snayden, who made up our little triumvirate. We sat down to do a magazine which we'd sort of planned without really knowing it, which was satirical in a rather gentle way, in a rather witty way. We were quite I was quite angry at that time about England. 1956 was a year of tremendous revelation and it was the year of Suez, which for my generation, quite a lot of us, was really a revelation that England no longer had any power.

Jocelyn Stevens22:06

And that we hadn't come out of the war as winners, we'd come out of the war as losers. And nobody told us we still postured as a world power.

Jocelyn Stevens22:16

I thought it one could work out that anger with wit and and commercial success by by not with a sledgehammer, but by a with a an ep, shall we say. And we started to um do that through Queen Magazine.

Presenter22:32

You ended up interviewing Prime Ministers, didn't you?

Jocelyn Stevens22:34

Oh gosh, we threw out we really became very, very ambitious, we attracted. What was happening was that all the other magazines were really very dull. They'd come out of like most of England come out of the war, thinking that nothing really much had changed. And there were this extraordinary outburst of talent that came out all over the place. Photography, all the new photographers appeared where there were none before. And they'd nobody else would publish their pictures. So we really just left the door ajar and talent just poured in.

Presenter23:06

There's a wonderful story too, isn't there, about um Tony Armstrong Jones taking a rather suggestive photograph and it's being printed in the same week that he became engaged to Princess Margaret.

Jocelyn Stevens23:16

That's right. It was of a rather dark girlfriend with very few clothes on, which we we started using photographs on full pages, which was regarded as being outrageous, not just because they were of dark girls with little clothes on, but of it just as a whole. And when Princess Margaret went to introduce Ernie to her mother and said, He's a photographer, Mummy. And the Queen Mother said, Oh, oh, really? What's he doing? He takes cruises with the Queen. Oh, do show me. And the coffee they happened to pick up contained this picture of Edogoff. Oh, said the Queen.

Presenter23:52

But obviously they were fun days and uh you were part of what was known then as the Princess Margaret set, weren't you? Which was you know very jet-setting of those sort of things.

Jocelyn Stevens24:01

I suppose so. I never sort of thought of it as that.

Presenter24:03

How important is it to you, has it gone on being to you, to be, if you like, where it's at, where where the smart set are, having fun? I mean, we know that you enjoy extravagant parties in Gestaad and so on. Is it an important part of your life, that overt enjoyment of it? And I don't say that to accuse you of being any kind of dilettante or hellraiser, but is that an important part of your life?

Jocelyn Stevens24:27

Not really. The newspapers you see wasn't don't fit into that picture at all.

Jocelyn Stevens24:33

I mean the newspaper management life was looking back on it, fourteen years, it was sheer grinding hard work. And it broke up my marriage, it broke up it was terribly damaging on the family, one was completely unlivable with, because you you know you left every morning, came back at 11:30 at night, dead, the telephone would start ringing as soon as you got home. It was like being in some other world. When I finally left Express newspapers, thank God I was fired by Lord Matthews a minute too soon, I made a speech to the staff and I ended up by saying I've, since I left, applied to rejoin the human race and been refused.

Presenter25:17

Record number six.

Jocelyn Stevens25:19

Record number six.

Jocelyn Stevens25:21

is You Are the Sunshine of My Life and I've chosen this song as a a tribute to Vivian Duffield, with whom I've lived for the but just over fifteen years, in fact, who I love very much and who has made me very happy indeed. These these have been wonderfully happy years, newspaper years or not happy years really.

Speaker 325:41

Oh, the sunshine of my life.

Presenter25:44

Yeah.

Presenter25:45

Yeah.

Presenter25:48

That's why I'll always stay wrong

Presenter25:53

Mm mm yeah yeah.

Presenter25:55

You are the apple of my eye.

Speaker 326:03

Forever you stay

Presenter26:05

In the phone

Speaker 326:06

Uh

Presenter26:10

Stevie Wonder, and you are the sunshine of my life.

Presenter26:13

Eight years ago, Jocelyn Stevens, you were appointed Rector of the Royal College of Art. According to which reports you read you were either a disaster or a godsend. At least your impact wasn't neutral, I suppose. What what's your assessment of what you tried to achieve there?

Jocelyn Stevens26:27

Well

Jocelyn Stevens26:28

This wasn't a

Jocelyn Stevens26:30

A very smart job, going back to what something you said before. In fact, the place was in a terrible mess. So one really had a tremendously hard time to rebuild the structures and the self-confidence and get good people. I mean, it's an astonishingly exciting place now. The Royal College, it is an extremely elitist place. It is the only postgraduate College of Art and Design and Communication in the country, in Europe, in fact, wholly postgraduate. It has now regained an excellence which is totally accepted internationally. The staff, I wouldn't swap a single one of the course directors professors now, they're terrific. The mood is so up, the number of applications for next year's by students, places is again up on last year's record. We've completely rebuilt it, put it in from seven awful buildings into one, two neighbouring buildings, re-equipped it. And as somebody said, a critic actually, somebody has said, if Darcy Seams can do to English Heritage, for example, what he's done to the Royal College, then he would have done a very good job. And by that, he said, you know, he can leave find such a good staff and leave them in such good morale. And that is undeniable.

Presenter27:58

So you move on to um English heritage. Um they must be trembling in their shoes, because I see you've been quoted as saying already that you have radical plans for Stonehenge. What on earth are you going to do to it?

Jocelyn Stevens28:11

Well Stanhand is i is is it a

Jocelyn Stevens28:14

Ghastly story, really. I mean, there is a structure 5,000 years old, arguably our oldest structure in England, one of the two World Heritage Sites in England, which we have, the moderns, have driven the roads both sides of, one so close that heavy lorries vibrated. We built this rather small little, rather dangerous little car park, rather than nice little tunnels. It's totally and utterly surrounded by ugliness, which we've created.

Speaker 128:43

Yeah.

Jocelyn Stevens28:50

Heritage is one of the buildings we're entrusted with the care of, amongst 400 others in England. And I'm determined that we can get together. It's like all English problems. It's half owned by somebody, somebody else's got something else, somebody else's got something else. County councils, local councils, nobody can get together, nobody can agree a solution. It's an absolute disaster and we've got to get it right. And that's one of the things I'm hoping to do.

Presenter29:15

And you relish the idea of the conflict to come.

Jocelyn Stevens29:18

Conservation is bound to be controversial. If you save something and stop a road being built, you annoy fifty percent of the people. If you let the road be built and don't save the person, you annoy the other fifty percent. But I think I mean we've got a wide range of experience and skills in heritage, good staff, and we hope we're going to obviously get most of our decisions right.

Presenter29:43

Record number seven.

Jocelyn Stevens29:45

Well, I thought it'd be rather appropriate to uh entirely appropriate in fact for the new job uh to choose the State to Homes of England.

Speaker 129:54

Though we're young and tentative and rather representative science of a noble breed, We are the products of those homes serene and stately that only lately

Speaker 130:08

Seem to have run to seed The stately homes of England, how beautiful they stand, To prove the upper classes have still the upper hand, Though the fact that they have to be rebuilt And frequently mortgaged to the hilt Is inclined to take the guilt.

Presenter30:25

Noel Coward and the stately homes of England. You say, Justlyn Stevens, that you're looking forward to your sojourn on the desert island. Won't it be rather quiet for a man who's who enjoys parties, who likes people, who thrives on conflict? It's difficult to understand what you're going to enjoy about it.

Jocelyn Stevens30:43

Well, I I will find.

Jocelyn Stevens30:46

something. Uh I'm very very practical.

Jocelyn Stevens30:49

I'm very good with um hammers and screwdrivers and all those kind of things. Um love carpentry, do all those sort of things. And um I'm sure there will be animals, I love animals, um I'm just I'm just extraordinarily interested in what's what's around at all times.

Presenter31:12

But you will, in a sense, be orphaned again, won't you?

Jocelyn Stevens31:15

Yes, but that's that's a condition which I'm very, very well trained for.

Jocelyn Stevens31:21

My early life has given me huge reserves.

Jocelyn Stevens31:23

I'm just not frightened of anything.

Presenter31:26

Last record.

Jocelyn Stevens31:29

The best of times is now. I chose this song because I really believe it. As has been recently reported, Vivian and I love giving parties. We actually enjoy ourselves a lot. I mean, we've we and with my children, we laugh a lot. And this song has become our kind of signature tune. It's beautifully played at parties for us by a a sensational orchestra called the Leicester Lanning Orchestra under a terrific leader called Charlie McCartney, who played my birthday in February. And it's sort of it's our kind of marching song.

Jocelyn Stevens32:30

As quiet as you're on

Jocelyn Stevens32:35

And make this moment.

Jocelyn Stevens32:39

Because the best of friends is not designed.

Presenter32:46

The Best of Times sung by George Hearne and Elizabeth Parrish from the original cast recording of La Coge or Folle.

Presenter32:53

One of those records, Jocelyn Stevens, you have to choose that would be more important to you than the others?

Jocelyn Stevens32:58

I'm afraid you've probably guessed that it's the Gohan Damrung.

Presenter33:02

The Wagner

Jocelyn Stevens33:03

Yeah.

Presenter33:04

and book, as well as the Bible and Shakespeare.

Jocelyn Stevens33:07

Other Men's Flowers, um which is a brilliant anthology of of poetry selected and

Jocelyn Stevens33:13

Annotated by the late Field Marshal Lord Wavell, first published in nineteen forty four, and still going strong.

Presenter33:21

And your luxury.

Jocelyn Stevens33:22

Well, my luxury, which I hope you'll accept as being within your rules, is one mile of the River Test. For me it is the most beautiful river in the world, beside which I could sit and never, never be bored.

Presenter33:40

But you might fish in it, you might use it for all sorts of practical purposes to feed yourself.

Jocelyn Stevens33:44

Now I promised that I would just look at it.

Presenter33:47

I'm getting a bit worried about tracts of land being taken to this island. However, I I I can't

Presenter33:53

I can't quite say no, but I think from now on no more land. However, for you, Jocelyn Stevens, a bit of the river test. Thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs.

Jocelyn Stevens34:02

Thank you.

Speaker 334:11

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Islandists Archive.

Speaker 334:15

For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk/slash radio four.