Rt Hon David Mellor MP

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.

Presenter0:31

My castaway this week is a politician. The son of a Dorset schoolmaster, he read law at Cambridge and in 1972 was duly called to the bar. In 1979 he entered the House of Commons and became the first of that election's intake to achieve government office. But Mrs. Thatcher didn't seem to take to him, and his promotional path after that earned him the nickname the Crab because he made so many sideways moves. However, when John Major became Prime Minister, he finally entered the Cabinet. Politics, he says, are important, but not paramount. That's probably just as well. In his present job, he has to take an interest in a multitude of other things, from the arts, broadcasting, and sport, to the soon-to-be-formed National Lottery. He is the Secretary of State for National Heritage, David Meller.

Presenter1:15

So your passion for politics is not limitless, David. Are you one of those rare members of government who doesn't particularly want to be prime minister?

Rt Hon David Mellor MP1:23

Oh, I certainly don't want to be Prime Minister. I I never have, and uh I'm delighted that uh John Major is Prime Minister. I was one of those who worked hard to get him there, and he's there with my blessing, and long may he reign.

Presenter1:34

But you wouldn't mind one of the three big offices, I mean Foreign Secretary, Home Secretary, or Chancellor, would you? You wouldn't say no.

Rt Hon David Mellor MP1:39

It's always very difficult to talk about these things as people never believe you. They always assume that you're just saying something that isn't actually true. But you know, I have never in my life ever focussed on a particular job. I enjoy politics. I think politics is important. I think it's important that good people go into politics and work hard and try and achieve something. But I've never sat down and thought in five years' time I can be X and in ten years' time I can be Y.

Presenter2:03

But is your passion for politics not limitless because you have passions for so many other things? Perhaps that's the reason, uh, not least football, of course.

Rt Hon David Mellor MP2:10

Yes, I'm interested in a lot of other things, and I don't think one should have an all-consuming interest in politics. I think that one should have what well I think it's Dennis Healy's phrase, isn't it? A hinterland. And that means that if one day one's political career goes pop, you've something else to do with your life. In fact, I've also said in the past, and thoroughly mean it, there's a life after politics, a time when one won't want to be struggling with some of these intractable problems in Whitehall and will want, you know, a bit more time to oneself. So I am interested in a range of things: sport, music, my friends, reading.

Presenter2:22

Yeah.

Presenter2:45

Now, on what basis have you chosen y your eight records then? Ha has it been a struggle? It must be if you know so much about it.

Rt Hon David Mellor MP2:51

Yes, but it's been a fascinating struggle. Everyone is fascinated by the whole idea of choosing eight pieces of music. I find it, you know, very interesting to do. And what I've tried to do is to choose eight pieces of music that are outstandingly good pieces of music that I could listen to over and over again. I've tried to choose them in performances of the great artists that I have come to admire over the many years I've been listening to music. And some of them also, of course, put me in mind of

Rt Hon David Mellor MP3:19

times in my life that it's nice to remember as well.

Presenter3:22

And the first one is?

Rt Hon David Mellor MP3:23

Well, the first one is uh a part of the last movement of Elgar's cello concerto because I've always loved the music of Elgar. I discovered it uh as a teenager and couldn't understand why at that time Elgar's reputation was not very high. He was seen as a pompous old Edwardian and uh

Rt Hon David Mellor MP3:41

It seemed to me the music was far more about inward experience and far more about Elgar's own emotional life. When I was starting off my record collection, a friend of mine sold me a job lot of what he regarded as redundant long-playing records, which included this marvellous performance by Sir John Barbaroli and a Halley orchestra, not the famous one with Jacqueline Dupre that everybody knows, but an earlier one with the French cellist Andre Navarra.

Presenter5:06

Part of the last movement of Elgar's cello concerto in E minor, played by Andre Navarra with the Halley Orchestra, conducted by Sir John Barbaroli.

Presenter5:14

I'm told you have an encyclopedic memory for music and recordings. I mean, you know who played the third violin in a certain recording of Marla's Fifth, or who was the second recording engineer, is that right?

Rt Hon David Mellor MP5:24

Well, it interests me, you know, because I think that uh it it's a bit like, you know,

Rt Hon David Mellor MP5:29

John Major and cricket, he knows wisdom backwards. I think it's fascinating sometimes just to enter a completely different world.

Presenter5:35

Well, is it to exercise the mind, or what is it? Why do you need to know?

Rt Hon David Mellor MP5:37

What do you

Rt Hon David Mellor MP5:38

Genuinely interesting. It genuinely interests me. You see, if I for instance the other day I've finished a few hours' work on my box, I might pick up the Gramophone magazine and read some reviews of records and read a few things and it sticks.

Presenter5:51

But it's also, isn't it, that you have that kind of mind and uh it's well known that you are able to master your briefs very quickly and and it's been much appreciated by the people you've worked for and there have been many in your political life because of this.

Speaker 36:03

Yeah.

Presenter6:04

Crab-like process, I mentioned earlier. I mean, one can think of Leon Britton, Geoffrey Howe, David Waddington, Nigel Dawson, Kenneth Clark, Norman Lamont.

Speaker 36:05

Run

Presenter6:12

It must be a relief for you to be your own master at last.

Rt Hon David Mellor MP6:16

Well, you know, I was interested to read that crab thing. I'd never quite seen it that way. I mean, I did a few years as a Parliamentary Undersecretary of State and then a few years as a Minister of State. And I've never actually regretted that. You know, people always assume, because they have this image of vaulting ambition that they foist on a number of us, and me particularly, because I'm always, I suppose, a fairly determined and positive and forthright kind of fellow, so they assume one must be hell-bent on world domination, and the sooner the better. But that isn't actually the case.

Presenter6:45

But you're not denying, are you, that misses Thatcher was reluctant to promote you? She did leave you moving fairly sideways for an awful long time.

Rt Hon David Mellor MP6:52

Well, I don't know whether she did or whether she didn't, you know, and it no longer matters really, does it?

Presenter6:56

She she did once tell you that uh you wouldn't have made such a good barrister as she did.

Rt Hon David Mellor MP7:00

No, she told me it was very funny actually at the time.

Rt Hon David Mellor MP7:03

I was um

Rt Hon David Mellor MP7:05

She had a good way of putting some of us down, and I think we deserved it, to be fair, quite a lot of us. So I mean, I don't really make any complaints about that, and it's a story that always amuses me. But I remember one particular stressful point in a meeting. She she leant across the table and she said, Did you ever practise at the Chancery Bar, David?

Rt Hon David Mellor MP7:21

And I said, No, Prime Minister, I didn't fracture the Chancery Bar. No, David, she said, You'd never have made a living at the Chancery Bar.

Presenter7:27

What a put-down.

Rt Hon David Mellor MP7:28

Well, uh it's um

Rt Hon David Mellor MP7:31

I think the great thing about politics is, you know, if you can dish it out, you've got to be able to take it.

Rt Hon David Mellor MP7:37

And it never does you uh it never does you any harm.

Presenter7:40

Record number two.

Rt Hon David Mellor MP7:42

Well

Rt Hon David Mellor MP7:43

Another one of my great early loves, in fact the voice of all the voices that I know that I think is the most beautiful and that I've collected his recordings assiduously down the years, and I find his voice deeply moving, and of course his own life rather sad too, because he's a great singer who died very, really quite young, is the Swedish tenor Jussie Björling. I particularly wanted to choose a little song that I've long loved, it isn't as well known as it ought to be, by the Scandinavian composer Hugo Alphén. It's a little song called Now Take My Heart.

Speaker 48:16

They were so star, also small to meet the everyday.

Speaker 48:26

This one.

Rt Hon David Mellor MP8:27

It's all

Speaker 48:32

Hill is for lake.

Speaker 48:44

The cornerlessness.

Speaker 48:52

Mm-hmm.

Presenter9:12

Jossi Björling singing part of Now Take My Heart with the Royal Orchestra Stockholm conducted by Nilz Grevilius.

Presenter9:19

Childhood, David, was post war wareham in Dorset. Your father was head of the maths department at the local secondary school. What about your mother? Did she work?

Rt Hon David Mellor MP9:28

Uh well, she didn't work gainfully, but she did an enormous amount in our town. She was involved in a whole host of things. The

Rt Hon David Mellor MP9:35

She ran a local family planning clinic and she was uh uh active in the Saint John's Ambulance Brigade. She was one of those people actually that I think probably are rather important in life, who was ready to get involved in a whole range of community activities. And I think

Rt Hon David Mellor MP9:50

To me, one of the most touching things was that when she died, far younger than one would have wished, our church was absolutely jam-packed for the funeral with all sorts of people from the locality, and I think that was a sign of a a good life well lived.

Presenter10:03

What about cultural influences at home? Books and music? Were they there?

Rt Hon David Mellor MP10:07

Oh, certainly. My father is, and certainly was then, very keen on music. Of course, he was a well-educated man, and there were lots of books around. And I always read a lot. Of course, there wasn't the same distractions in those days. I mean, the television, I can still remember as a kid, was something that we didn't have for quite a long time. I used to go to my grandparents' on a Sunday and watch those dreadful, mawkish children's serials, the Children of the New Forests and all those ghastly things.

Speaker 310:29

The apple yars.

Rt Hon David Mellor MP10:30

Oh, unbelievable. And and um so I was driven quite readily into the laugh of the book, or rather the book in the lap, and um I I read a lot and of course went out and about a lot. I mean we used to go out a lot, play football.

Presenter10:43

And you sang in the school choir.

Rt Hon David Mellor MP10:43

And you sang in the school choir.

Presenter10:45

Your boy Treble, and by all accounts you suffered terribly from stage fright, which is very difficult to believe.

Rt Hon David Mellor MP10:51

Well, it's true actually. You know, I had, you know, a pretty good treble voice, I mean, good enough to appear in various competitions. And yet I used to be I have nightmares about it. I always used to imagine I would come in flat and would din this first note into my head and was quite neurotic about it. It came as a great shock to me when I was at school in my mid-teens and we had a school debate and I made a speech and suddenly realized that none of the same um

Rt Hon David Mellor MP11:16

problems overcame me then. I mean people may wish that they had, but uh sadly for them they didn't and I found that I had none of those problems.

Presenter11:25

Number three.

Rt Hon David Mellor MP11:26

Well, number three, I mean, I'm again...

Rt Hon David Mellor MP11:29

sort of sifting through all of the music I listen to and picking out the great people that have had an influence on me. And one such is the Romanian pianist Dinu Lupati, who I think is the greatest performing artist that I know simply because of his enormous technical facility, but also the spiritual qualities of his playing. And I think there are many people in music who would agree with this. You know, he led a very tragic life.

Rt Hon David Mellor MP11:53

dying of leukaemia amidst great suffering in nineteen fifty at the age of thirty three.

Rt Hon David Mellor MP11:58

But right at the end of his life they managed to get him to record, and these recordings of, you know, I think are the touchstone of great piano playing. And the last thing he ever played in public was Myra Hesse's arrangement of Jeju Joy of Man's Desiring, and I'd certainly like to have that.

Presenter13:13

Dinu Lipati, playing part of Bach's Jeezu Joy of Man's Desiring, arranged by Dame Myra Hess.

Presenter13:19

You read law at Christ's College, Cambridge, David. How unusual was it for a boy from Swanage Grammar to go up to Cambridge?

Rt Hon David Mellor MP13:26

Well, some did, but most didn't.

Presenter13:29

Did you natur did they naturally sit you for the exam? Or did you have to ask? Or did they spot you and did they say, Here's a brilliant chap?

Rt Hon David Mellor MP13:35

No, you had to push a bit.

Rt Hon David Mellor MP13:37

I all probably more than ever wanting to sort of any particular government office, I did want to go to Cambridge. I always thought that that was a place that would be a bit special, and so it turned out to be.

Presenter13:47

And and when you got there, did you feel, as people did in those days, uh inferior to the public schoolboys who dominated the place?

Rt Hon David Mellor MP13:54

Oh, there's no doubt about that. I mean, I think when you've come up from a little country grammar school that, you know, undoubtedly gave us a good education and did its best, but it plainly wasn't Eton or Winchester. And you've certainly noticed the layers of polish on some of these other fellows, you know.

Presenter13:58

You know.

Presenter14:06

Is that why you didn't in the end star in the Union? You know, you're the sort of chap one might expect to read had been President of the Union, but you obviously didn't have a role there.

Rt Hon David Mellor MP14:15

No, I I didn't, partly, I think, for that reason and partly because I didn't really seek one. I was chairman of the University Conservative Association, which and of course, I also used Cambridge, I mean, to discover a whole lot of things in life that, you know, I hadn't previously had a lot to do with. And

Rt Hon David Mellor MP14:30

I think actually, I mean, I always feel rather sorry for these folk that say, thank God there are fewer of them I think around these days, school days were the best days of their lives, because certainly it it is not so for I think most people one uh admires. But I have to say that university is capable of being because you know you you you're in a tremendous hothouse environment and a place like Cambridge, everything is available to you, and I think

Rt Hon David Mellor MP14:54

I I really count that as the most valuable three years of my life in many ways.

Presenter14:59

Next piece of music.

Rt Hon David Mellor MP15:00

Right, well um

Rt Hon David Mellor MP15:03

Of the symphonies, the one that thrills me most and always has done for all the twenty-five years that I've known it intimately is Beethoven's Seventh Symphony. And it also gives me an opportunity to take with me a performance by Sir Thomas Beecham, the great British conductor and indeed a great British person, raconteur wit. It was once said of him, I think, that his greatest artistic creation was his own personality. But he was a formidable musician, and although he purported not to like Beethoven, and in fact he said that Beethoven's seventh, one of the movements, was like a lot of yaks jumping about, he nevertheless was a remarkably effective interpreter of it. And I'd like to hear towards the end of the last movement, as Sir Thomas marshals his troops for the final onslaught.

Presenter16:50

Part of the last movement of Beethoven's Symphony No. Seven in A major, played by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Sir Thomas Beecham.

Presenter16:57

In October 1974, David Meller, you fought West Bromwich, and to steal your line, they fought back.

Speaker 417:03

That's right.

Presenter17:04

Then in nineteen seventy nine you won Putney in South West London, which you've represented ever since.

Speaker 417:05

Exemption

Presenter17:09

Nine years forever the bridesmaid, and then nineteen ninety minister for the arts, followed by Chief Secretary for the Treasury, and now Minister for Fun. Do you mind that title, or do you think it diminishes the office in some way?

Rt Hon David Mellor MP17:17

Do my

Rt Hon David Mellor MP17:20

No, I think I brought it on my own head really, because when I went in to see John Major that Saturday after the election, they said to me, Are you going to be Minister of Fun, the press outside? and I said, No, I don't have any fun. And when I came out, you know, it hadn't wasn't going to be announced for a few hours, but I said, Oh, I think life may be a bit of fun now. And so I brought it on my own head, really.

Presenter17:37

The other thing is, of course, that that if the National Lottery brings in the much talked about one billion pounds, then your department will be very, very powerful indeed. It will have an awful lot of money to spend. Where would you best like to see it spent?

Rt Hon David Mellor MP17:48

Well, I would like to see it spent on a range of things that will never get all that perhaps they would think they really need from conventional public expenditure decisions. So I'd like a fair chunk to go to the arts, particularly capital spending to keep up our theatres and museums and so on. I'd like quite a lot to go to sport. I think that we want sporting excellence. The whole nation is cheered when a British sportsman like Nigel Mansell does well. Equally though, all of us have something to gain from sport, and I think we want a range of sports facilities through the nation that allows everyone to participate who chooses to do so.

Rt Hon David Mellor MP18:23

I'd like quite a lot to go on the heritage, keeping up some of the great buildings. You know, just the you know, if you take one London example, the Albert Memorial, we've just had a bill in for almost thirteen million the cost of doing up the Albert Memorial. I mean, it is very it's very expensive to do up these items.

Presenter18:40

What about something very close to your heart, which is opera, which at the Royal Opera House at least is fairly inaccessible because it's so expensive? Is there any way that you can make that more accessible to the mass of people?

Rt Hon David Mellor MP18:52

Well, I would like to think that it could be. Indeed, I'm very sad that it has become that way. Of course, they say that it was inevitable, and you know, I think there may be another view to that. I want the arts to be accessible. I want people to be able to go and see things without having to have a massive checkbook in order to do so. I mean, I I'm very much in admiration, for instance, of the National Theatre, because they manage to have a very high artistic standard. They manage to fill the theatre, and when you go there, there is a classless air about it. It's not the fat cats, it's everybody, it's everybody who wants to go and see a great play, doing so at affordable prices.

Presenter19:34

Record number five.

Rt Hon David Mellor MP19:35

Right. Well, I've concentrated uh up to now on artists that are dead, a number of them, people that I only know through recordings. But um

Rt Hon David Mellor MP19:44

I've been very fortunate in my life in getting to know and indeed become firm friends with some of the great artists of our time. And my next two records actually have two of my greatest friends in music. And the first of these is the Latvian conductor Maris Janssens, who is to my mind one of the most dynamic and exciting conductors. And I'm pleased to say that he's just accepted the post of principal guest conductor with Anna Falomoni. And I want to play one of his recordings with the orchestra, the complete Nutcracker Ballet. I've always loved Russian music, and the Nutcracker is a marvellous piece. Sometimes people think it's just a piece for children, but actually the orchestral effects and the tunes.

Rt Hon David Mellor MP20:20

A wonderful, I mean, a mature composer at his best, and I always am thrilled by the great pad deuf on a nutcracker, so here it is.

Presenter21:27

Part of the padide from Act Two of Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker played by the London Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Maris Janssens.

Presenter21:35

Also within your current brief, David Meller, is the future of the BBC, whose charter comes up for renewal in nineteen ninety six. You said you want to encourage debate on the subject, but

Rt Hon David Mellor MP21:39

Yeah.

Presenter21:44

Isn't the problem here that the B B C will always mean different things to different people, and at the end of the day somebody has to decide what its future should be? Who should that be?

Rt Hon David Mellor MP21:53

Well, I think in the end the government will have to decide, but I'm anxious that we should decide after a proper debate and decide for the right reasons what I'm

Rt Hon David Mellor MP22:03

Concerned is that if the BBC is a national institution, then plainly all parts of the nation have to get something out of it.

Rt Hon David Mellor MP22:12

But where I think the real argument and debate will center is on what sort of BBC does one need to deliver the program services that we all agree. I think the problem the BBC has, and it is inevitable in a fast-changing broadcasting environment, is keeping the bureaucracy under control and keeping the management and organisation up to date.

Presenter22:31

But can you envisage, for example, a B B C which specializes in in excellence, in top class news and current affairs, and leaves the market to deal with general entertainment and quizzes and soaps and movies and so on? I mean, can you envisage that? Is that a possibility?

Rt Hon David Mellor MP22:45

I personally don't think there's any such easy or cut-off point.

Rt Hon David Mellor MP22:49

Because you have to remember the licence fee is paid for not only by the intellectual in Hampstead, but the man in the council house in Gateshead or Hartleypools or Wareham or wherever.

Presenter22:59

Have you seen El Dorado yet?

Rt Hon David Mellor MP23:01

No, I haven't actually. I'm afraid one of the things about politicians is that we don't watch a lot of television. Whether this is a good or a bad thing, I leave others to decide.

Presenter23:08

But as far as you're concerned, do you think that that kind of soap is the sort of thing the BBC should be doing?

Rt Hon David Mellor MP23:14

Well

Rt Hon David Mellor MP23:15

I think there's an issue there, but of course, once you make once it is clear that you're talking about running a channel with a broad range of entertainment, then you can't really rule out what is, as I understand it, one of the most important parts of a scheduler's weaponry, a soap that draws in a lot of people at the beginning of the evening, which hopefully means they then stick with the channel all the way through. I'm sure there's some element of that thinking. See, one of the things that I quite enjoy about the broadcasting job, it's actually the fourth time, perhaps as a result of my crab-like progression that you keep telling me about, that I've been the Minister for Broadcasting. And I hope that each time I've learnt a little bit more about broadcasting, and I don't rush, I hope, to too many superficial judgments about these things.

Presenter24:00

Record number six.

Rt Hon David Mellor MP24:01

Right, well, um

Rt Hon David Mellor MP24:04

My last record was by uh one great conductor I admire and uh see a lot of, and uh uh my next record is by a similar figure, Klaus Tenstett, who is a wonderful conductor of the old school.

Rt Hon David Mellor MP24:18

And I want to hear him playing some Mahler. I admire Klaus a great deal. He's a genuinely nice man off the podium, man who's suffered a lot, who's had terrible battles with cancer, but who has a great humanity and whose interpretations of Mahler are probably the greatest you can hear at the moment. Of course, there are many great Mahler interpreters in their grave, but those you can actually go out and see live, I would say Klaus ranks the highest. And he just has a tremendous ability to galvanise an orchestra. It's wonderful when you see a great conductor with an orchestra playing on the edge of their seats. They really want to give it all for him. And the one that I particularly want is a recording of Mahler's Fifth Symphony, which was recorded at the Festival Hall in 1988. Klaus had just come back after this dreadful illness and it was a deeply moving occasion and everyone was

Rt Hon David Mellor MP25:08

was extremely touched by the whole thing and I think that little adagietto from Mahler's Fifth Symphony is what I'd like to take with me.

Presenter26:13

Part of the adagietto from Mahler's Fifth Symphony in C sharp minor, played by the London Philharmonic, conducted by Klaus Tenstedt.

Presenter26:21

How much time do you find to spend on your music, David? Do you make a point of earmarking concerts and operas that you want to go to? And now you're uh minister for free tickets, you can get there every time.

Rt Hon David Mellor MP26:28

Yeah.

Rt Hon David Mellor MP26:29

I suppose I can say that I'm working when I go.

Rt Hon David Mellor MP26:33

Well, of course I listen to music every day'cause I mean I always listen to music early in the morning and usually in the car and so you know I I'm not dependent on a live uh live music but I do like to go to live music'cause of course it gives you the opportunity of seeing fresh people and of course there is some there is an immediacy about live performances.

Presenter26:53

What about hunting for C D's though, which you which as you say you have so many of? That's a time consuming business. How did you manage to fit that in?

Rt Hon David Mellor MP26:55

Which is you

Rt Hon David Mellor MP26:59

Oh, well, I always make a point of doing that,'cause, you know, once again

Rt Hon David Mellor MP27:03

I feel if you've worked hard all week you can pop off on a Friday afternoon to a record store and you know I don't

Presenter27:08

Have you got anybody you do that with?

Rt Hon David Mellor MP27:10

Yes, I've got various friends that I sometimes do that with, and indeed the shops that I go, I'm pretty well known, you know.

Presenter27:17

Members of the opposition, you go with.

Rt Hon David Mellor MP27:17

Members of the O

Rt Hon David Mellor MP27:18

Oh well, there's at least one member of the opposition that uh shares my tastes in these discs.

Presenter27:23

A certain recently retired opposition spokesman on foreign affairs.

Rt Hon David Mellor MP27:27

Indeed so. He's a great uh a great record buff and certainly has a tremendous uh grasp of culture matters.

Presenter27:34

Record number seven.

Rt Hon David Mellor MP27:35

Right, well we've got to have a bit of Mozart, haven't we? I mean we and of course there's six hundred odd works to choose from so it's inevitably going to be a bit arbitrary.

Rt Hon David Mellor MP27:43

But um

Rt Hon David Mellor MP27:44

I mean, I could choose dozens of bits of Mozart, I have to say. But there's one particular piece that I love, and that is the part of the Credo of Mozart's Great Mass in C minor, which is a most beautiful, beautiful tune. And I think fascinating because

Rt Hon David Mellor MP28:02

It's wonderful. When you listen to it you think how marvellous and yet there's no evidence that Mozart had any religious belief at all. You know, he w wrote these things to order. In fact, he didn't even bother to finish this particular piece. It was

Presenter28:10

Did you

Rt Hon David Mellor MP28:13

The man he most hated, the Archbishop of Cardinal the Archbishop of Salzburg, asked him for this piece, and it's quite clear that he composed some bits of it and pulled some of the other bits of the mass down off the shelf and just tacked them together. And yet in the middle of this piece is this work of extraordinary genius which has such, I think, consolation.

Rt Hon David Mellor MP28:32

Uh and one doesn't need, I think, to be deeply religious to sense that.

Presenter29:31

Part of the credo from Mozart's Mass in C minor sung by Barbara Schlick with the Collegium Carthusianum conducted by Peter Neumann.

Presenter29:39

You're forty three, David Melly. You've said uh that there's life after politics, and uh you said, and I quote you some time ago, I want to get there while I'm still young enough to have some of it. What what kind of thing do you mean? What do you want to do?

Rt Hon David Mellor MP29:52

Well, that's ill formed in my mind, but I think to have time and space for the other things that, you know, I hope what we've been discussing this today makes clear matter to me. And, you know, you to just to do some other things, I think that people don't realize that um

Rt Hon David Mellor MP30:09

In politics today it is very high pressure and you're expected to be highly effective in your constituency, which I enjoy actually. I mean the biggest kick I've had out of politics was getting an increased majority at the last election because you felt then this wasn't happening all over the nation and this was the folks that I love and I live amongst.

Rt Hon David Mellor MP30:28

helping me and you sent that somehow made you know was to me the most touching thing. So I work hard in my constituency, but also um you work very hard and often rather ridiculous hours uh in government. And I just I just don't think you can see yourself on that treadmill for ever.

Presenter30:45

So you'd like to be stretched in a different way, but I wonder in what kind of way?

Rt Hon David Mellor MP30:49

Well, I'm gonna you know, I haven't thought about it. I think it would be silly to do so, but you know.

Rt Hon David Mellor MP30:54

I tell you the the sad thing about politicians often, they give the impression that they want to stay forever.

Rt Hon David Mellor MP30:59

Like, you know, they have to be dragged, kicking, and screaming off the stage. I think the late Max Miller.

Presenter31:00

You know that

Rt Hon David Mellor MP31:04

who was a comedian. I'd love actually I should have taken one of his things to this Desert Island'cause very funny man. I'd love to have been part of his audience. I've always had a great admirer for the stand up comic of genius. And you know, he once said, always quit when they're asking for more.

Rt Hon David Mellor MP31:19

And he used to hop off the stage when they were still roaring for him. How few politicians ever know how to do that?

Speaker 331:24

Last record

Rt Hon David Mellor MP31:26

Well, this is the ultimate thing for me. You know, I've um

Rt Hon David Mellor MP31:30

I spent many years of my life sort of rather warily circling round Wagner and not quite uh getting there.

Rt Hon David Mellor MP31:36

But the more uh I get into music, the more it's clear to me that perhaps really the greatest influence on modern music and in many ways the greatest composer that I know is Richard Wagner, simply because of the intensity of his music and uh extraordinary complexity of it and the dramatic depth and weight of it and

Rt Hon David Mellor MP31:58

You know, Mozart wrote great music, but it's great music on its own terms. It didn't change what came after. Wagner changed everything. And I think if you get immersed, as I've done since I've started to go to Bayreuth in Wagner,

Rt Hon David Mellor MP32:12

I think there's nothing like it really. And it's been very difficult for me to choose. I've really had to choose actually. It came down in the end between the sacred and the profane, because I wasn't sure whether to take uh Parsifal, which was Wagner's late effort to acquire a little religiosity, and Tristan, which may have been the real Wagner speaking to us.

Rt Hon David Mellor MP32:32

Uh and in the end I've decided that it has to be Tristan, the Isolda's Lieberstad, which to my mind I mean, music in the end, like so many things in life, comes down to great emotion, passion, these tidal waves that run through all of us. And I think that uh Isolde's Lieberstad to me is

Rt Hon David Mellor MP32:49

about the ultimate musical statement that I know.

Presenter33:52

Birget Nielsen singing the Liebes Tot from Wagner's Tristan and Isolde from the nineteen sixty six Bayreuyd Festival with a festival orchestra conducted by Karl Burm. And that, presumably, David, from what you said, is the one record that you'd take of the eight, is it?

Rt Hon David Mellor MP34:06

Yes, probably. I'd like to take, I think, the rest of Wagner as well, but I'll have to settle for that.

Presenter34:10

What about your book as well as the Bible and Shakespeare?

Rt Hon David Mellor MP34:13

Well it's difficult. I mean if I was going to spend a lot of time by myself then my desire for self-improvement meant that uh I should take something like Grove's Dictionary of Music so I could come back uh better. But I think maybe that's a bit uh that's a bit of a tough decision. So I think I'd like something that takes me back to Dorset. I've always loved Thomas Hardy and I think I'd like to take the Mayor of Casterbridge.

Presenter34:33

And your luxury?

Rt Hon David Mellor MP34:35

I think I'd like to take a telephone.

Presenter34:37

Oh, I'm not sure you can take a telephone.

Rt Hon David Mellor MP34:39

Well, I know you

Presenter34:40

You can't talk to anybody. I mean the whole point is that you've got to be on your own.

Rt Hon David Mellor MP34:43

I know, but I love the telephone and it's kind of

Presenter34:46

We have a toy telephone.

Rt Hon David Mellor MP34:47

Well, I was going to say that what I should do is have one like if I can't have it wired up, because I love to talk to my friends on the telephone, I'll have it like Linus's blanket and carry it round with me for comfort.

Presenter34:57

David Meller, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your Desert Island discs.

Speaker 335:08

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