Lord Oaksey

Speaker 10:00

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 10:08

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

Presenter0:29

My castaway this week is a jockey and a racing journalist. After Eton and Oxford he abandoned a prospective career in the law to become a junior racing correspondent on the Daily Telegraph.

Presenter0:40

He also rode two hundred winners as an amateur jockey, nearly winning the Grand National in nineteen sixty three.

Presenter0:46

He retired from racing in nineteen seventy five, worried that his next injury might kill him, but continued as a journalist, a television commentator, and an author.

Presenter0:56

His passion for horses is tempered by an engaging objectivity. Racing, he says, is a lovely, enthralling, but, let's face it, basically insignificant pastime. He is John Lord

Presenter1:09

Are you confessing in that, John, to devoting your life to something that in your own estimation is really less than worthwhile?

Lord Oaksey1:17

Well, to have certainly spent it in a in a happy, comfortable, insignificant rut. I think I think that's that's true.

Presenter1:25

Do you, though, as well have any kind of residue of of guilt, if you like, that you didn't follow your father and your grandfather into the law? Because they were both rather eminent in their field, and you turned your back on all of that for racing, didn't you?

Lord Oaksey1:38

Yes, at the time I had a a a major feeling of guilt, and my beloved dad was so wonderful about it that that that guilt really didn't last very long. I I felt qu and I knew, in fact, that he'd spent a large amount of money so-called educating me for the for the law, and there I was twenty-five, having never earned an honest penny in my life. And um I suddenly, in the middle of the bar exams, said I was going to be a juvenile racing correspondent, and he might easily have bored a hole in the ceiling and exploded, but he didn't at all. He um said the important thing is to do something that you

Lord Oaksey2:20

You enjoy.

Presenter2:21

But I wonder why he didn't. Your your grandfather had been a Lord Chief Justice, and he himself, your father was very eminent. He'd presided at the Nuremberg trials, and, as you say, spent all this money on your education. Why was he so understanding?

Lord Oaksey2:34

Well, both my grandfather and he were crazy about riding. They had all their lives been concerned with horses, so to them I think

Lord Oaksey2:45

It wasn't as much of a shock as if they'd been absolutely blinkered.

Presenter2:50

Hmm.

Lord Oaksey2:50

Liars.

Presenter2:51

Hmm.

Lord Oaksey2:51

They weren't blinkered.

Presenter2:52

Let's have your first desert island disc. What's it to be?

Lord Oaksey2:56

Well, it's to be Jerusalem, and you may think it's inappropriate, but the purpose of it is, partly is to explain the absence of Brahms and Liszt from this selection. Because when I was at Eton, I went in for the choir test. The reason for that was not that I fancied my singing voice, but that you got off two days early at the end of the term, if you were in the choir. And the very distinguished organist, I think he was called Doctor Lee, in fact I'm sure he was, who was doing the test, and he went bong and said, sing that, and I went, ah, and he looked at me rather oddly and said, sing that.

Lord Oaksey3:35

And I went on he said, Lawrence, either you're tone deaf, or you're making a mockery of my organ.

Lord Oaksey3:41

And that was the first time I'd ever heard the words tone deaf, or ever really thought that I couldn't sing in tune. But in college chapel, when you sang Jerusalem, you didn't need to worry whether you were singing in tune, because everybody shouted so loud that even I felt that I was singing in tune. And I love it.

Speaker 14:36

See

Presenter5:00

Jerusalem, sung by the choir of King's College London, conducted by Gary Cole.

Presenter5:05

You rode as an amateur jockey, John Oakesie, for the best part of twenty years, and you rode more than two hundred winners. But the most riveting tale has to be how you nearly won the Grand National in nineteen sixty three. Tell me the tale from the beginning. How did you get the ride in the first place?

Lord Oaksey5:20

Well, I'd had two rides on on my beloved taxidermist, who was the best horse I ever rode, but sadly he never ran in the National when he was at his best. But then I was sort of facing the future with no obvious horse to ride and no chance particularly of getting a ride in the Grand National, and my very great friend Gay Kindersley, who'd been himself leading amateur, and he kept having awful falls and breaking every bone, till finally he wasn't allowed to ride for a whole season. And at that moment he had this very, very good young horse, promising young horse, called Carrick Begg, and so I bought a half share in him in return for the ride.

Presenter6:04

And you prepared well in the on the day you you you were in the lead. You were you in the lead going over the last, coming up those four hundred and ninety four yards.

Lord Oaksey6:06

Mm-hmm.

Lord Oaksey6:10

Coming up, there's four hundred.

Lord Oaksey6:13

I was going very, very well. I got over the last in front and was in front, sort of what they call round the elbow, which is half way up. And then about about fifty or maybe a hundred yards from from him, I suddenly felt this awful like like a car with a puncture, you know, su suddenly the action had gone and and poor Carrick Begg was exhausted. And then of course what I ought to have been able to do was to contribute my strength. The only thing was I didn't have any strength left.

Presenter6:40

And then you saw Ayala at your right knee.

Lord Oaksey6:43

Right, exactly. Floating past, just just about sort of fifty yards from the line.

Presenter6:48

And he beat you by what?

Lord Oaksey6:50

Three quarters of length.

Presenter6:52

Uh

Lord Oaksey6:52

Yeah

Presenter6:53

Do you have video of it? Do you replay it?

Lord Oaksey6:53

Yeah.

Lord Oaksey6:55

Oh, I'm afraid they keep replaying it on National Day. There's there is a more heartbreaking one when Red Rum Caught Crisp, which makes you cry even harder. But I cry quite a lot about Carrick Begg.

Presenter7:04

And is it true that some years after you didn't win the National, that some bright spark said to you, aren't you the chap who got tired before he's fought?

Lord Oaksey7:13

It's a dangerous place.

Presenter7:23

This is a dangerous place to go.

Lord Oaksey7:26

And I was suddenly confronted by this grubby little man, and he was looking up at me, so he was tiny. And I know you, he said, I know you. You're the booger who got tired before his horse.

Presenter7:40

But how would you have felt if you had gone all the way round and been first past the post, which you weren't, only to discover that the race was void?

Lord Oaksey7:48

Oh, I can't believe how I would have felt, except I know how John White felt, well though he's behaved since that dreadful nightmare happened to him. You just can't imagine anything worse than riding a beautiful race, coming first past the post in the Grand National, and then the first person you talk to tells you that there wasn't a race at all that was void.

Presenter8:11

What about all those other jockeys who didn't even get to run the race?

Lord Oaksey8:14

Oh, and a lot of them, don't forget, had been wasting, not eating for days or weeks, probably spending hours in the sauna, sweating away, and uh you you you just it it I once fell at the first fence, and that's bad enough. This must have been worse.

Presenter8:29

It it was, undoubtedly, a a national disaster. Was there in the end, do you think, a certain inevitability about it? Was it a fiasco that was waiting to happen? Yeah.

Lord Oaksey8:37

Well, I I can't, and I don't think anybody can think why it hasn't happened already, because this size of field has been being started from that tape starting gate for many years, and why on earth didn't horses get their heads over the tape before?

Lord Oaksey8:55

Record number two.

Lord Oaksey8:57

A very, very great hero of my youth and and never mind my youth, middle age, old age, everything is Humphrey Lyttelton. And my first reasons for hero worship were when we were children. His family and mine were great friends. I was deeply in love or I was age nine, passionately in love with his uh younger sister Eleanor, but I also worshipped Humphrey because he was so nice to me. I mean I was very the horrid, squitty little boy who he might have been nasty to and he wasn't. He couldn't have been nicer. And then later at at at Eton where he'd been a great jazz hero, he used to come back and play. And although I'm totally unmusical, I do love jazz, particularly his sort of jazz. And latterly, I've admired him so much as a commentator. I mean, he's just as good with words as he is with music.

Presenter10:49

Humphrey Lyttelton and his band and St. Louis Blues. In fact, John Oakesy, you won your first Grand National when you were eight, really, didn't you?

Lord Oaksey10:58

Well, I certainly thought I was riding in the Grand National because I had uh this marvellous, very rotund pony called Mince Pie and a minder and groom called Harris, Bill Harris, who was uh just as keen as I was about racing and who, I'm sorry to say, introduced me to betting. My first bet was with him, sixpence each way, on a thing called Fair Cop the Second, spelt Fair K O P Roman two, and I went off to school and Harris sent me the postal order for seven shillings and sixpence, which was a huge bet, a huge win.

Presenter11:37

How old are you then?

Presenter11:40

I thought you also won the family sweep stake on Royal Mail.

Lord Oaksey11:41

Uh

Lord Oaksey11:43

You're quite right. You're qu quite right. I did indeed. When how old would that have been? The awful thing, I'll get the date wrong. I suspect it was about thirty-eight or thirty-seven, eight or nine.

Presenter11:53

Didn't we say gambling's in the blood, isn't it?

Lord Oaksey11:55

The well, the National certainly came in via the sweepstake. Sadly, there was no television in those days.

Presenter12:02

And you had um three big sisters.

Lord Oaksey12:05

Whom you love.

Presenter12:05

whom you loved love dearly.

Lord Oaksey12:08

Absolutely. They claim to have spoilt me. Well, actually they they say that when I wanted anything they used to call me B V, which stood for baby voice, which is the voice that they claimed I used when I wanted anything off my mother.

Presenter12:23

And you had a nanny who loved you dearly.

Lord Oaksey12:25

Absolutely. All my life. She was with us. She came in 1926, age 16, and died two years ago. Still there.

Presenter12:32

And you all lived together, as it were, in a in a rambling farmhouse in Wiltshire, where you still live today?

Lord Oaksey12:38

It's all pretty and delicate

Presenter12:40

It's all pretty idyllic stuff, really.

Lord Oaksey12:41

Yes, I I I'm sure there were bits that didn't feel that good at the at the time, but of course it was lovely and we had uh ponies and dogs and uh a blissful life. It obviously appeared less blissful when you went to school, but to tell the truth I enjoyed almost all of that too.

Presenter12:53

Well

Presenter12:59

Let's pause there for record number three.

Lord Oaksey13:01

Well, it's a very special one because you have very, very kindly recorded it, and it's and it's another of my very great friends, this time singing the song himself. It's not his own song, but it's John Julius Norwich.

Lord Oaksey13:17

as he's now called. He used to be called John Julius Cooper when I knew him. First of all at at at Eton, although I didn't know him well there, but then at Oxford, where we um eventually shared at digs. And he hasn't ever been very particularly keen on exercise or athleticism, but a superb entertainer, and when in doubt he would out with his guitar, and very, very often the call was for the Borgers having an orgy.

Speaker 113:30

Never

Lord Oaksey13:44

And here he is, your recording.

Lord Oaksey13:47

The borchers are giving an orgy

Lord Oaksey13:50

There's a Borgia orgy tonight.

Lord Oaksey13:53

Isn't it sickening? We've run out of strychnine. The gravy will have to have Grand Glas for thickening The poisoned Chianti is terribly scanty, But everything else is all right. I've hidden an asp in the iced cantaloupe, There's arsenic mixed in the mark turtle soup, And struate Benzedrine in the apricot coop.

Speaker 113:56

We will have

Lord Oaksey14:14

But the borgia or gun.

Presenter14:16

John Julius Norwich singing The Borgers Are Having an Orgy, a unique recording which Lord Norwich made specially for his friend Lord Oakes's Desert Island Discs.

Lord Oaksey14:25

And that's only one of the contributions he's made to my happiness down the early for instance when his father was had just stopped being ambassador to Paris. John Jules knew that I was keen about racing and they had a little little chateau in the forest of Chantilly and he invited me over and Duff Cooper arranged that we should see Marcel Boussac's horses, which was the great stable of the post-war years. And we went to Les Aigles, which is in the middle of the forest of Chantilly, a huge expanse of grassy gallops. And there in the early morning were these beautiful, long-maned, long-tailed, Araby-looking horses, which were the best in the world at that moment. It was an experience I've never never forgotten.

Presenter15:08

Yeah.

Presenter15:13

Let's go back to your life. Uh when did the journalism come in? How did you you you decided against the law, as we've said, because barristers don't have time to ride, but then you got into journalism, to writing about racing.

Lord Oaksey15:24

Well, it only came in because I needed somebody to pay me to go racing, because I was only going to ride as an amateur, so I wasn't going to earn any money by riding, even I mean nobody would have paid me. And this job became vacant on the Daily Telegraph. A great friend of mine and my family's called Bill Curling, who's still going strong, was Hotspur at the time, which is the senior racing correspondent of the Telegraph. And he told me one day that he was looking for a sort of junior second in command.

Presenter15:55

But it was quite high up to start. I mean a little bit of nepotism there.

Speaker 116:19

Next door.

Lord Oaksey16:20

Uh

Speaker 116:20

Uh

Lord Oaksey16:22

But but the I think the only reason why I passed my interview with him was was that I it so happened that I'd fallen off a horse the week before and broken my collarbone, so I had my arm in a sling. And I think that Frank thought that anybody who can get close enough to a horse to fall off it must know more than

Presenter16:39

And your your byline was Marlborough. Why did they call you that?

Lord Oaksey16:43

Because I started uh riding out for a heavenly man called Bob Tunnell, who had been a great jockey and was by now a great trainer, and he allowed me to come and get run away with by his horses all over the Marlborough Downs. So when Frank decided that I needed a nomed plume, he said, Well, why don't we call you Marlborough? You always keep reversing the bloody charges from from down there. And I said, You can't do that. I wasn't at the school. I d I don't know the Duke. And and but a few days later in it came.

Presenter17:13

And it worked.

Lord Oaksey17:14

Yeah.

Presenter17:14

But the journalism brought in the money. The riding was just for the thrill of it. Did you ever get anything? What happens if you're an amateur jockey and you ride a winner? Surely they give you something.

Lord Oaksey17:24

They I have to admit that they I think it's I think the statute of limitations may protect me. They they do, of course they give you something sometimes. They give you a lovely, large, sinister looking brown envelope, but not very often. My great friend Edward Cazlitt, who's now a judge of the High Court, in fact he's the only judge of the High Court ever to ride a winner at Cheltenham, and was a jolly good amateur for his father was a trainer. And he used to ride in point of points a lot of the Cazlitt horses and you know, no chance of ever getting anything. And one day an old farmer who was known to be a great gambler said, Oh, will you just will you ride my horse, Mr Cazlitt?

Lord Oaksey17:59

I fancy him tomorrow in the main mess, so Edward rode it and won and knew that a huge gamble had taken place on this horse, so so when he met the old farmer afterwards he was thrilled that when the farmer said, Oh, come meet me at my car after the last race tonight, my my son, I've I've got something for you Sure enough, he got out of the boot of the car this large brown paper parcel which Edward was expecting to be full of fibers and he said, There you are, my boy, they come through my thanks and they were all laid this morning.

Presenter18:29

Wonderful.

Presenter18:31

Let's have some more music.

Lord Oaksey18:33

Now then, my time of doing the bar exams and

Lord Oaksey18:38

Being a young journalist, I suppose, was mostly spent in

Lord Oaksey18:42

London or tenured working working in the weeks in London, and various episodes of unrequited or only partially requited love.

Lord Oaksey18:52

occurred and the great long player in those days was Songs for Swinging Lovers, Frank with the Immortal Nelson Eddy accompaniment. I do know enough about music to know how good that was. And the one I've chosen is You Make Me Feel So Young.

Lord Oaksey19:15

You make me feel there are songs to be sung, bells to be rung, and a wonderful fling to be flung And even when I'm old and grave I'm gonna feel the way I do

Lord Oaksey19:32

Today Cause you make me feel so young

Presenter19:40

Frank Sinatra and You Make Me Feel So Young.

Presenter19:43

The other thing you get if you're a jockey, amateur, or professional, is plenty of falls and plenty of injuries, John Oakesy. How many bits of you have you broken or cracked in your time?

Lord Oaksey19:53

Several bits, but nothing terribly serious. Well, the worst fall I had really was the last one, but I did along the way have a fall at Cheltenham, which actually I didn't think was all that serious at the time. I knew I was sort of kicked in the rib, so to speak. But I went on riding and rode actually rode a winner on the Friday. And then on Sunday, the horse I had the fall off at Cheltenham, I was going to ride in the Grand National. He was a horse called Capino of the Kazlitz, and it was really rather flattering and a great thing for me to be asked to ride Capino. So I was mad keen to ride that in the National. And Sunday morning, I suddenly had the most frightful tummy ache and said, you know, I think I must go off to the hospital and get to see what this is, and did. And the only person at the Radcliffe was a quite young New Zealand intern.

Lord Oaksey20:46

who who really br rather brilliantly recognised the fact that I had a tummy full of blood and and had bust my spleen and was in quite a bad way. And uh they took it out there there and then and and all was well. It's an impossible question for you.

Presenter21:01

to answer, but I think you've got to be very brave, haven't you, to be a national hunt jockey?

Lord Oaksey21:05

No, no. I honestly think that bravery for

Lord Oaksey21:09

The way I did it was is the wrong word, because I think bravery is overcoming fear. And although certainly sometimes I I was afraid, the basic fact was that it was what I longed to do. And admittedly, on a Monday, rainy Monday afternoon at Plumpton, riding a horse with no chance, as you plodded down to the start, you did think, What on earth am I doing here? and and and risking my neck for nothing. But the fact was that you you absolutely loved it, so I honestly don't think bravery is the right word.

Presenter21:42

But it was a particularly nasty injury in nineteen seventy five, wasn't it, that finally persuaded you to give up racing. You'd have been, what, about forty six by then.

Lord Oaksey21:50

What what happened

Presenter21:51

Uh

Lord Oaksey21:51

Uh Yes. I I just got kicked on the jaw and concussed quite badly and the doctors said that if I got kicked on the head too many more times I'd be even punchier than I was already and so so they persuaded me to give up.

Presenter22:05

Record number five.

Lord Oaksey22:07

Now, throughout everybody's life, but particularly throughout everybody's life in racing, luck or fate or destiny or God or whatever you like to call it plays a huge part. And so I've always thought that the the Luck Be a Lady from Guys and Dolls is a marvellous song and and it very much expresses what what I feel about the way luck directs your life.

Speaker 122:32

Yeah, it isn't fine.

Lord Oaksey22:32

There, it isn't nice. A lady doesn't wander all over the room.

Presenter22:39

But

Lord Oaksey22:39

Uh

Presenter22:39

Blow on some other guys dice So let's keep the party polite

Presenter22:46

Never get out of my sight!

Speaker 122:49

Uh

Lord Oaksey22:49

Stick with me, baby, I'm the fella you came in with. Look be a ladies!

Lord Oaksey22:56

Luck be a lady.

Lord Oaksey22:59

Uh

Speaker 322:59

Luck be a lady to nut

Presenter23:03

Robert Alder singing Luck Be a Lady from Guys and Dolls. Did your father uh regret uh not pressing you into the law, or did he follow your career with pride?

Lord Oaksey23:12

I think and hope that it it gave him some in fact I know it gave him some pleasure in the end. After two seasons I I suddenly got lucky getting the ride on taxidermist happened to me and in fifty seven, fifty eight I rode taxi in these two good races, the Whitbread, which he won very easily at Sandine in the spring, and then the next autumn the Hennessy Gold Cup was at Cheltenham and it poured with rain, which was exactly what he didn't want. We very nearly took him out, didn't run him.

Lord Oaksey23:43

But they decided to run him in the end and he and I plodded round behind, miserable in the in the mud. And I arrived at the last fence sixth with with five horses in front of me and Kirsten, that should have been winner, so to speak, a long way in front of me. But Taxi, for some reason, he sometimes used to do it. He got over the last fence and suddenly decided this is a whole new ball game and set off up the hill. And when I'm depressed, I show myself uh a film of that race because you can't believe the horse couldn't go so fast. And he got up on the post and pipped Paul Kirsten, a short head. And you were asking whether my father got any pleasure out of the racing. He was would have been just over seventy by then, but he was standing down by the last fence and saw that I was going very well and thought that I might possibly be placed and hurried up the hill at Cheltenham, still not having any idea that I might have won. And then one or two people said, Oh, I think he might have won and and and he wrote a letter to my mother, which I've got at home, I I found not that long ago, in which he described his his day and his experience with the finish. And he said it was the most exciting day of my life. And um it can't have been true because he fought all through the first war and was a judge since nineteen thirty two and presided over the Nuremberg trials, but it might have been the most important most exciting sporting moment of his life.

Presenter25:10

Hmm.

Presenter25:12

Do you do you own any steeplechasers these days, or do you just have horses for for fun, for family, as friends?

Lord Oaksey25:18

No, I've got uh two beloved retired ones. One is Tuscan Prince, who I used to ride, and then he was given me by his owner, Sir John Thompson, and Sir John gave him to me to teach Sarah, my daughter, in Pointer Points, which he did. How old is he now then? He's twenty-eight, and I agonise all the time, as I'm sure many owners do, about whether I'm keeping him alive for my pleasure or for his pleasure. I mean t if if Tusky was here now, you might well think he looked a bit of a wreck. I mean his his old coat is coming out in tufts and that kind of thing. But I think that he's pretty happy.

Presenter25:36

Yeah.

Speaker 125:36

How old is she now then?

Presenter25:58

You'd know if he was unhappy, would you?

Lord Oaksey26:00

I hope so.

Lord Oaksey26:01

The awful thing is when I do think he's unhappy and then you have to have him put down and I'm

Lord Oaksey26:06

Not at all looking forward to that.

Presenter26:08

You're quite sentimental about her.

Lord Oaksey26:10

I'm sorry to say terribly, terribly sentimental. Horses, the worst thing about life is the number of horses and dogs you outlive.

Presenter26:18

Record number six.

Lord Oaksey26:21

Now then, this is one of my great lifelong favourites. It's Bing singing these foolish things.

Lord Oaksey26:27

The winds of March that make my

Speaker 126:30

Mark the dancer

Lord Oaksey26:32

Yeah.

Speaker 126:33

Yeah.

Lord Oaksey26:34

A telephone that rings

Speaker 326:36

Speaker.

Lord Oaksey26:37

Uh

Speaker 126:37

Bye.

Lord Oaksey26:37

Yeah.

Speaker 126:37

Who

Speaker 326:37

Uh

Lord Oaksey26:39

Yeah.

Speaker 126:39

Uh

Lord Oaksey26:39

To answer

Lord Oaksey26:42

Oh how the gold

Speaker 126:44

Most of you claim

Speaker 126:48

This police thing

Speaker 126:51

Remind you.

Presenter26:55

Bing Crosbie and these foolish things. Racing has become a a very high security business these days, hasn't it? Minders at the course and scanners in the stables. Has there always been such skullduggery, or is it getting worse?

Lord Oaksey27:09

There's probably been worse skalduggery, I think, but uh less scientific skalduggery. There is, undoubtedly, a danger now of

Lord Oaksey27:18

scientific nobling. I mean, it's very, very easy to find a drug which will make a horse go slower. I mean, after all, you only need to make the horse feel a little lethargic and that'll be enough to ensure that it doesn't win.

Presenter27:35

And that drug can just be thrown at the horse as it walks through to the course?

Lord Oaksey27:39

Uh

Presenter27:39

Yeah.

Lord Oaksey27:39

Yes, of course there are suspicions of darts and certainly horses have been sprayed in the past in some mysterious way.

Presenter27:40

Cool poison dust.

Lord Oaksey27:49

Recently, as you know, there have been a couple of cases where horses have been found to have had a tranquilizer drug, which was clearly designed to stop them. And the question has been, who did it? I think that nothing that in which so much tax-free money is easily redistributed is going to be straight. But I honestly think that our racing is as near about as near straight as you'll get.

Presenter28:17

Record number seven.

Lord Oaksey28:19

Now then, this is from one of my great friends who I've mentioned before, Gay Kindersley, to whose kindness I owe the ride on Carrick Bay. Gay is much more musical than me and sings and very often collects a group instrumentalists of various sorts. His own instrument is a huge tea chest with a broomstick stuck in it, and he's very rightly enthusiastic about the songs of Percy French. And one of his great terms was Slattery's Mounted Foot.

Speaker 328:50

You've heard of Julius Caesar and the great Napoleon II, And how the Kark militia beat the Turks at Waterloo. But there's a page of glory that as yet remains uncut, and that's the warlike story of the Slattery's mounted foot. This gallant corps was organised by Slattery's eldest son, a noble-minded poacher with a double-breasted gun. Aye and many a head was broken, aye, and many an eye was shot.

Presenter29:15

Yeah.

Speaker 129:17

Yeah.

Speaker 329:18

When learning to

Presenter29:20

Michael O'Duffy and Slattery's Mounted Fut. So, John, there are no dogs, no horses, no people except you on this desert island. Um it'll be very miserable.

Lord Oaksey29:30

I shall be miserable about the certainly no dogs. But, um, uh, they wouldn't like it, I suppose. I anyway, I can't have anything and no chance of you or a Girl Friday or anything like that.

Presenter29:40

I do or anything like that. Well, no animal company either.

Lord Oaksey29:44

Well, I

Lord Oaksey29:46

I I mean, in theory I don't mind being alone for a bit.

Presenter29:50

But will you be any good in the practical sense, any good at knocking up a shelter, or cooking, or swimming, or?

Lord Oaksey29:55

I regret to say that that all I can can do is hope that the challenge will bring out some hitherto undiscovered

Lord Oaksey30:04

I did do carpentry at school. I made a bookshelf for my mother and I can I can see it collapsing.

Presenter30:05

I do

Lord Oaksey30:13

And it was a long time ago anyway.

Presenter30:14

What will you do all day there then, on this island?

Lord Oaksey30:18

Well, I'm a sort of sort of would-be keep-fit addict, so I might run round it, or plod round it.

Presenter30:25

You've just celebrated your sixty fourth birthday. Um obviously from what you say you you don't care to think about retirement. Um I mean, I suppose in any case in retirement you do much the same as you do when you work, which is go to the races.

Lord Oaksey30:39

It's a very very good question whether how m how much I would go racing if I wasn't writing about it. The the answer is that the flat racing I wouldn't go nearly so much. I wouldn't go to moderate flat racing and I would still go what to watch jumping because I love it. But the trouble is I don't see any prospect of retiring because I can't afford to and in any case I don't know that I'd really want to. I think I'll probably if somebody will will employ me to go on writing. I think I'll go on as long as they will.

Presenter31:09

Last record.

Lord Oaksey31:11

This is one of my great loves and heroines, Ella Fitzgerald, and there are various episodes of my life in which every time we say goodbye has meant something, sometimes good, sometimes bad, sometimes sad, but it's always meant something, and I I believe that she sings it like nobody else.

Speaker 131:36

There's no love song fighter but how strong

Lord Oaksey31:41

Strange the change from major to minor

Speaker 331:47

Uh

Lord Oaksey31:48

Uh

Speaker 331:48

Every time we say

Speaker 331:54

Goodbye.

Presenter32:05

Ella Fitzgerald, every time we say goodbye.

Presenter32:08

So if you could only take one of those records, John.

Lord Oaksey32:11

It's a contest, it's a photo finish between these foolish things and Jerusalem, but I think it's a little bit more. It depends depends on how I'm feeling really, but but um I think on the whole I'd better have Jerusalem really because when I'm feeling low that'll make me feel sort of sloppily patriotic, which is what I am just about.

Presenter32:33

What about your book?

Lord Oaksey32:34

Well, I hope you're going to allow me an omnibus because I'm a tremendous lover of P G Woodhouse. Um uh and there is only one book you know.

Presenter32:42

It's only one book, you know, it's only one book.

Lord Oaksey32:45

Um but anyway, I believe that his funniest writings were were about the Mulliner family, and I would adore to have the Mulliner omnibus, but if I can't it'll have to be just one big Mulliner book of the Mr. Mulliner's memoirs of his relatives and their exploits.

Presenter33:03

We'll strike a bargain on that afterwards. What about your luxury?

Lord Oaksey33:07

Do you think there could have been a ship wrecked on the other side of the island with a cargo of champagne?

Speaker 133:13

Yeah.

Lord Oaksey33:13

Yeah.

Speaker 133:13

Yeah.

Lord Oaksey33:14

I really need quite a lot of champagne to last me and keep me cheerful. But it is what I most love drinking, and I do find that a glass any time of day really cheers me up, and I feel would just keep me going if I started to get a bit low. And I need one of those things, if you please, which um keep the fizz in.

Presenter33:29

Why is the

Presenter33:35

But you're not going to drink the whole bottle at once.

Lord Oaksey33:36

No, no, no, there's not none gonna be none of that popping thing. It comes out with a sigh like that of a satisfied woman.

Presenter33:42

Why is the why is the ship on the other side of the island? Have you got a

Lord Oaksey33:45

It could be my side.

Presenter33:47

Well I was just wondering if you were expecting the tide to bring it round bottle by bottle or whether you were gonna go

Lord Oaksey33:50

When are you going to go and catch it? No, I just thought I could it would be lovely. As I'm touring or jogging round the island, I came upon this ship and it turns out to have been a a shipment of Moe and Chandon or possibly Bollinger.

Presenter34:04

Wonderful. I'm sure it's there. John Oakesey, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs.

Lord Oaksey34:09

Oh, thank you, I've loved it.

Speaker 134:18

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