John Cole

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 journalist. Born and brought up in Belfast, he enjoyed a distinguished career in newspapers, serving as deputy editor of both The Guardian and The Observer. Then at the age of fifty four he moved to television. There he became a household name, as most nights of the week he reported on Britain's political scene. Though mocked by the satirists for his herringbone overcoat and ulster accent, his humour and precision ensured that he always kept the attention of his audience. He is the former political editor of the BBC, John Cole.

Presenter1:00

How is retirement, John? Are you as busy as ever?

John Cole1:03

Well, I am at the moment, so I've taken on a freelance contract with the BBC and I write a column for the News Statesman and I write occasionally for the telegraph and do a few other things. But I've made a deal that I won't wa work during the summer. So come the end of May, retirement will begin at least for a few months.

Presenter1:21

But I presume it's impossible to imagine your life without politics. I mean, politics all your life is is what's turned you on, really, isn't it?

John Cole1:28

Well, politics and journalism, you know, both of them they they ran together at least in the later stages of my career. But most of my friends are either politicians or journalists or broadcasters, so uh inevitably I spend a lot of time with them and I enjoy them.

Presenter1:42

But i i it's the it that's what you've always found exciting, isn't it? I mean, is it is it the thrill of the chase or is it politics for itself? What is it that's that's made you so fascinated by Westminster?

John Cole1:51

Well, originally it was the thrill of the chase. I mean, I suppose my formative job as a political journalist was as labour correspondent of The Guardian, and I used to chase stories there. And that was a good period, because the trade unions were very much in the news and the nationalised industries and so on. I mean, I appointed Alfa Robins chairman of the National Coal Board before Harold Macmillan got around to announcing it, and that gave me a great deal of I mean, it was a detective kind of story because somebody gave me a hint about it and I checked it in all the proper places and everybody said it was nonsense. And then someone made a speech that showed guilty knowledge, and I just phoned him up and said, What would you say if I wrote this? And he just said, My God, be careful. So I said, Thanks for the confirmation.

Presenter2:34

It's you've got to be a good gossip, really, is what you're saying.

John Cole2:37

Yes, you do. You have to be...

John Cole2:39

prepared to let other and I sometimes think I'm not as good at this as I o used to be uh you have to let the other person talk a lot and go perhaps a little further than he intends to go.

Presenter2:51

That they spot you doing that, that they think I know about this wise old bird.

John Cole2:53

I know about this wise old bird. I once said when I came to the BBC I was asked for some unaccountable corporate reason to sign the Official Secrets Act and I said to the man who had appointed me, I thought you had appointed me in order to persuade Privy Councillors to break their Privy Councillors' oaths and tell us some news, because that's what open government is all about. He had the grace to laugh.

Presenter3:15

We'll talk more about that aspect of your work in a minute, but tell me first of all about John Cole on a desert island. Would you be in any way competent in the practical sense?

John Cole3:24

No.

Presenter3:24

I didn't think you would be. It's it's it's your wife Madge who's the handyman at home, isn't it?

John Cole3:28

Yes, she she can do everything. She can mend fuses and things like that. My dad was an electrician, but he taught my elder brother how to do all the clever things, and I stood around and held the screwdriver, so I've never really learned too many of these things. So I won't attempt to claim to you that I'd be highly competent, because it would cause too many horse laughs when I got home.

Presenter3:47

So what's the first piece of music you'll take to your desert island?

John Cole3:50

Well, I would like to hear some of Handel's water music, The Hornpipe. I suppose this is partly because it's a very good tune, but it's also because it's associated with the Thames. It was originally performed there for one of the Georges. And great rivers flowing through cities do excite me, and particularly perhaps because I worked for the latter part of my career at Westminster. I do find it sort of a fascinating place. I sometimes used to come out of the House of Commons at night, and the buildings were lighted up, and I just thought, well, you're incredibly lucky to be working in such a beautiful place.

Presenter5:25

Part of Handel's water music, The Hornpipe, played by the Academy of Saint Martin in the Fields, conducted by Neville Mariner.

Presenter5:31

We were saying that that politics is about intrigue and and gossip. It's it's really the fight for power and position, isn't it? Which I suppose was never more true than during the demise of misses Thatcher at the end of nineteen ninety. Some say that was your finest hour, John. How how was it for you?

John Cole5:46

Well, it was a very big story, wasn't it? And uh obviously to be around at an exciting period of politics like that is great fun. You

Presenter5:54

You were there every night outside Downing Street, and getting it gently right, all those little hints that you laid, sometimes when other people weren't going as far as you, you seemed to know a little more than most. I mean, were you

Presenter6:07

Never ask a journalist his sources, but were you in receipt of well-sourced factual information, or were you actually, if you like, reading the runes?

John Cole6:16

Well, both both really. I mean, principally reading the ruins, but there were a few people talked at key moments very frankly to me, or reasonably frankly, enough for me to use my own nouse and go ahead and uh

Speaker 46:25

Mm-hmm.

John Cole6:31

predict what was going to happen.

Presenter6:33

Because you predicted, I think, on the night that she was in fact deciding to go. You you said there was a two percent chance of her going, which was the nearest anybody had gotten.

John Cole6:41

Yes, it was rather more than a two percent chance as it turned out, but that was was the fair it was what someone had said to me who was in a position to know and who was really telling me get ahead of the story a bit.

Speaker 46:52

Yeah.

Presenter6:52

Hmm.

John Cole6:53

I wish I'd gone further actually, but there you are.

Presenter6:55

And you also predicted that John Major would succeed her, when others weren't necessarily predicting that.

John Cole7:00

I don't think I was so strong on that, Sue, because I did actually some of John Major's campaign managers were a bit annoyed with me, as with other uh newspaper journalists, because we didn't swallow all the figures they were putting out. I took the view as a BBC political editor that I shouldn't be attempting to influence the election of the Conservative Party leaders, not our function, and I think it's a particularly sensitive one. So although people were saying that he was front runner, certainly we hinted that, but I don't think we went too far.

Presenter7:32

Hmm.

Presenter7:33

That will go down in journalistic history a as a terrific story. Are there others you've covered, John, that you'd put alongside it as having all the ingredients of a riveting political yarn?

John Cole7:45

Yes, there have been so many. I mean, I once had an interview with Clem Attlee when he was Prime Minister on the Irish border. He'd been on holiday in Sligo. When you think of conditions now, here was the British Prime Minister driven by his wife, which was a risk in itself because she was a terribly bad driver. They stopped at the customs post. I was sent down there as a young reporter to cover the customs thing. The customs officers insisted on her opening the suitcases to see if they were smuggling anything. No police escort. Prime Minister threw his legs out of the car, stoked his pipe and was available for interview. And there happened to be a story running, one of these many spurious stories about the unification of Ireland. And I had the cutting. He hadn't seen it from a Sunday paper. And shoved it in front of him and took the pipe out of his mouth and said, Got your notebook. He was a very notoriously laconic man. Got your notebook. And I said, yes. And he dictated a denial of this.

Speaker 18:21

Or

Speaker 48:21

Uh

Speaker 18:21

If

John Cole8:40

And it came in natural paragraphs. I mean, I just went straight to the phone and dictated it to the office. It was so beautifully done.

Presenter8:46

That was a real scoop, pretty much.

John Cole8:47

Well it was it was quite good for a local paper, yeah.

Presenter8:49

But Prime Ministers simply weren't interviewed in those days, were they?

John Cole8:52

Well, he was on holiday, of course, and the relaxed atmosphere of Ireland and all that, and no policemen around.

Presenter8:58

Record number two.

John Cole9:00

Well record number two is the Ode to Joy from Beethoven's Symphony No. Nine. As I understand it, Schiller originally did not write

John Cole9:12

Old to Joy Freude, the great shout that comes from the bass. He wrote Freiheit, Freedom. But in those little German courts of the period after the French Revolution and the reaction to it, I think the word freedom wasn't too popular and he was persuaded to change it. Now I suppose the French Revolution for all its dreadful excesses and together with the English Civil War are my formative political touchstones. They're about democracy, the removal of tyranny and despots. And this music would on my debtor round would conjure that up for me.

Speaker 410:36

Is there a

Presenter10:53

Part of the final chorus, The Ode to Joy, from Beethoven's Symphony No. Nine in D minor, sung by Jose van Damme with the Berlin Philharmonic and the Vienna singers, conducted by Herbert von Karian, or the Ode to Freedom, as you say, John. You're you're a revolution man.

John Cole11:07

Well, I I don't like the violence of revolutions, but I do think that the tyranny of the Bourbons had to be overturned, and I think in England Parliament had to assert its right against the divine right of kings.

Presenter11:20

What about your own brand of politics today, though? I mean, how difficult has it been maintaining your impartiality?

John Cole11:27

Well, I made a deal with myself when I joined the BBC that limited number of people have the responsibility and and the right to report politics on television and that it was fair deals.

John Cole11:41

For everybody as far as I could give them.

Presenter11:43

At the same time it must have been difficult winning the trust and the confidence of of those of the right. I mean, misses Thatcher, for example, knowing that you'd been deputy editor of The Observer and of The Guardian would know you were not naturally one of us.

John Cole11:55

No, that's right. And I d I think to be fair to most politicians, I mean one senior cabinet minister I was having lunch with shortly after I took the job made some remark rather like what you've just said and I said, surely you realize that I'm the totally impartial political editor of the VBC, to which he replied, Well, absolutely, John, the only thing is I've been reading what you've written for the past twenty-five years, and that's fair enough. But I think I hope most of them would believe that I've tried to give uh reasonably balanced between one and the other, though obviously I've got my own views.

Presenter12:26

Are you prepared to say where those views are, where you would fit in the in the political spectrum?

John Cole12:30

Well, left or center.

Presenter12:32

Left of centre uh Wilson Merlin Rhys Callaghan sort of Latterly Hattersley sort of man, yeah.

John Cole12:37

Yes. I don't like to define it in terms of personalities, because the personalities frequently uh disappoint you. I think journalism is by its nature a deeply sceptical profession.

John Cole12:49

I mean, somebody said what are the occupational diseases of journalism, cynicism and ulcers. Well, I've had the ulcers and an operation for them, thank God, but uh I hope I haven't got cynicism, but I've certainly got pretty deep scepticism.

Presenter13:01

You've attempted to avoid the cynicism, haven't you? Yes, I have. I've always defended politicians.

John Cole13:03

I've always defended politicians. I think politicians are, on the whole, good people, and I mean politicians of all parties, that they go into politics with a sense of public duty. I've absolutely no time for these people who stop me and sympathize with me with having to spend my time with politicians. I sometimes am rude enough to say, in my opinion, they're rather better than the rest of you.

Presenter13:23

Has the fact that you're an Ulsterman and a and a strong Protestant and reportedly in favour of the Union and concerned about Anglo Irish agreements, has that part of you stood in your way professionally at any point, do you think?

John Cole13:36

I don't know. I mean I suppose at the Guards and I wrote the leaders there at a crucial phase. I mean I would claim to be the first person that uh in the British media that advocated power sharing between Catholic and Protestant politicians, which is now the received wisdom of the only way to run the province. I advocated that early on, but I also backed internment, as others did at the paper at the time, and that made me s rather unpopular with some of my colleagues.

Presenter14:01

It was said uh that one of the main reasons you didn't become editor of of The Guardian in nineteen seventy five, having been deputy editor for some six years before that, was that you held those kinds of views, such strong views on

John Cole14:12

I don't actually think that would be a convenient thing to believe. So I've it may have been a factor with some people. But there were other perfectly good reasons. I mean the the man who's still editor, the guardian Peter Preston was a younger man than me. I was too close to my predecessor Alastair Hetherington in age for comfort. Uh he was a younger man, much more suitable to run the paper in all sorts of area other areas, just as important as politics, you know, that's areas like fashion and music and modern culture and so on. I'm much more in tune with that than I was and I think it was a perfectly decent decision, though obviously I was disappointed.

Presenter14:43

It was

Presenter14:44

Perfectly decent

Presenter14:47

Next piece of music.

John Cole14:49

Well, I thought I should have something from Ulster. There's a man called Phil Coulter who produces rather nice tapes which I use a lot in my car. This one's called The Green Glens of Anthrum. Our family my original family, my father and mother and elder brother Desmond, we were all considerable singers at home, usually when we were washing up after Sunday lunch and it was Irish folk music as well as English, Scottish and Welsh and some hymn singing, anything you could harmonise. So although this is not singing music, it still would remind me of that period.

Presenter15:53

Phil Coulter playing the Green Glens of Antrim.

Presenter15:56

Let's go back to your beginnings, then, John. You were born on the Antrim Road, Belfast, back in nineteen twenty seven. Your father was an electrician, you say.

John Cole16:04

That's right. He stayed in employment right through between the wars, which was the recession, and then he took over the business that he worked for, a small contracting business, just about the beginning of the war, and had to work very hard keeping it going during the war. And he was in the Home Guard as well, as training officer for the Belfast Battalion. And he died tragically young, fifty-two, immediately after the war.

Presenter16:24

But happy family memories before before the war intervened.

John Cole16:27

Oh, splendid family memories. I mean, we weren't very well off, but as I say, he remained at work, and my mother, who was a very good manager of a small amount of money. So I remember occasions when my father would say, How much have you got Alice, halfpence and all? and she would decide how much the family covers and we would go off to places like Blackpool or Douglas for holidays. And my father was a great organiser of boys, so there were just the two of us, but he would take six cricket stumps and four bales and a bat and a ball all strapped to the outside of the suitcases on the ferry. And when we got there, he would assemble all the boys that were available on the beach. And if the beach wasn't good enough, he would take us off to a park.

Presenter17:11

And collect all the boys from everywhere.

John Cole17:12

Yeah.

Presenter17:13

Yeah.

John Cole17:14

Yeah.

Presenter17:14

And then the war intervened. You would have been a teenager by then. What what do you mean?

John Cole17:17

No, I was I was about uh ten or eleven, yeah, by the war. And I just uh I I went to grammar school on the day after war broke out.

Presenter17:20

Yeah.

John Cole17:28

uh the the Monday morning. And uh my school grammar school life just covered the war because I was on holiday in the north coast of Ireland with my parents on the day that the equivalent of A level results were coming out. So I went up to phone the school and get the results and when I came back down I saw a newspaper billboard which said atom bomb dropped on Japan and I came down and my parents were obviously asking how did the results go and I said oh they're all right but what's an atom bomb dad and he said I don't know because nobody had been told about these things. I mean they were very secret as you know and the ordinary public didn't know about them.

Presenter18:05

Had you decided then what you wanted to do with your life, what you wanted to be?

John Cole18:08

Yes, I'd always wanted to write because people had told me at school that I was reasonably good at writing. Then I discovered that the way to earn a living as a writer was probably as a reporter, as a journalist, so I joined the Belfast Telegraph. How much were you paid, you remember? Two pounds a week. And when I came home, I told my parents I got the job, and I said it's two pounds a week. And my father looked at my mother and he said, Look, son, I don't want you to be disappointed. I think you'll find they pay by the month. It's two pounds a month. But it wasn't, it was two pounds a week, so I was rich, rich, rich.

Presenter18:41

Yeah.

John Cole18:44

Okay.

Presenter18:45

Let's have some more music.

John Cole18:47

Record number four is another bit of my youth, really. It's a duet from Sir John Steiner's Crucifixion. My elder brother Desmond, who was a rather good solo singer, a bass baritone, sang the solos and duets in Steiner's Crucifixion. I don't know whether you know about Sir John Steiner, but he's part of that great tradition of Victorian church music. I mean when he wrote his first oratorio, which was his doctoral thesis, there was such a big crowd turned up at Maudlin College that they hadn't enough room, and they all marched to the Sheldonian Theatre to hear this oratorio. I mean there's a part of me that would like to have lived in the Victorian period when faith, Christian faith, was more generally held than now. But then I remember what an awful period it was in terms of injustice and poverty and so on, and I suppose I'm glad enough to be in the modern age.

Speaker 419:42

Oh thou pleadest in for my transgression.

Speaker 419:50

Bidding me look off and trust and live.

Speaker 419:57

Oh the world.

Speaker 420:00

Mr. Line Interswession

Speaker 420:06

We woke up and let us family.

Speaker 120:07

Ah

Speaker 420:14

Oh of the

Speaker 420:28

No not

Speaker 420:33

Yeah.

Presenter20:37

David Hughes and John Lawrenson singing the duet So Thou liftest thy divine petition from Sir John Steyner's Crucifixion.

Presenter20:45

Nearly twenty years on The Guardian you spent, and then on to The Observer, and then eventually again you became deputy editor. But then you tangled with Tiny Roland, who was trying to take the paper over. What happened?

John Cole20:55

Well, I mean, we fought off principally the editor, but the rest of us helping him, the editor Donald Trelford. We fought off a number of proprietors, Jimmy Goldsmith, Rupert Murdoch, and then Tiny Roland got the paper. And we had some negotiations at what's now the Department of Trade and Industry in the middle of the night. And I, having a bit of a short Irish fuse from time to time, had a something of a shouting match with him. And when the negotiations were over about two thirty or three o'clock in the morning, he came round and it seemed he was going to walk out without speaking to anyone, but he shook hands with Trelford. And then he shook hands with me and his cold blue eyes fixed me and he said how much he was looking forward to working with me. I thought this did not sound like a very long career. And the next morning the BBC got in touch with me and asked if I would be interested in being considered for the political editorship. And I said, Well, I wouldn't. I don't think I can afford to be interested in being considered. I don't need gossip paragraphs in the newspaper about me being a candidate. I might be interested in being offered the job.

Speaker 421:49

Yeah.

John Cole21:58

So I moved back to reporting and

Presenter22:00

But you had to do a camera test first.

John Cole22:03

Yes, that's right. I had to do a camera test in this informal board, which you're familiar with in the BBC, a number of senior executives. And while I was waiting for this board, the secretary of the man who had invited me in said to me, she gave me a cup of coffee and then she said, the test's a disaster. And I thought, well, I've heard of modern interviewing techniques, but this is a bit rough. And she said, boy, cuts out. May isn't doing very well. So I realised that the BBC wasn't quite as tough as I'd thought it was.

Presenter22:28

So I

Presenter22:32

Next record.

John Cole22:34

The next uh piece of music I would like is the Prisoners' Course or Slave's Course from Verdi's Nabucco. This is really in for no other reason that it it's a very good tune. I've heard that other people have selected it too, and maybe some that I wouldn't approve of, but why should the devil have all the good tunes as they found her in the Salvation Army said.

Speaker 423:06

There is a love and peace, there is a love. Yeah.

Speaker 423:17

Praise the Lord and Lord.

Speaker 123:17

Praise God.

Presenter23:52

Part of the Prisoners' Chorus from Verdis Nebucco, with the orchestra and chorus of the German Opera House of Berlin, conducted by Giuseppe Sinopoli. Can we talk, John Cole, about the transition from print to broadcast journalism? It it it didn't come easily to you, did it? You didn't enjoy fitting what you had to say into what's called in the news a three-minute package.

John Cole24:13

That's right, and sometimes shorter than three minutes. I haven't found it straining in the sense that people usual usually think outsiders think broadcasting is straining, the sort of nervousness of appearing in front of a camera. I found it straining in the kind of r the long debate that you know goes on with colleagues as to how the things should be done right. And I think one becomes more strident if one's not careful, more aggressive, and occasionally more vain. I think many of us are less nice people than we would be if we had chosen some less frantic profession.

Presenter24:40

Mm-hmm.

Presenter24:43

Yeah.

Presenter24:46

What you mean you actually being on the television somehow cheapened what you had to say?

John Cole24:46

Uh

John Cole24:51

No, no, not not being on the television, but the struggle to get it into its right form, the sort of uh endless committee, the perpetual committee that seems to be associated with broadcasting. I hate conferences and meetings. I tried to reduce the number of conferences at the Observer, but nobody else would go along.

Speaker 125:01

Yeah.

Presenter25:07

But it's much more of a a team business, isn't it, television? You're not just sitting alone behind your typewriter. Unless the editor's got fi pictures to fit what you want to say, you can't say it.

John Cole25:10

Oh yeah.

John Cole25:12

No, no.

John Cole25:15

What you

John Cole25:17

Well, that's right. And uh the you know the struggle as to what you can say with pictures, you know this old story, Lord Privy Seal is the big television joke where you show a coronet, uh uh lavender and a seal with a ball on its nose and some editors used to think that you had to do it like that. Well now, you know, the that struggle has gone on perpetually between uh reporters and editors I suppose.

Presenter25:22

Below

Presenter25:41

Record number six.

John Cole25:43

Well, this is perhaps an unusual one. I'm a supporter of West Ham United Football Club. This came about because in 1966 I had a fellowship in America and Madge joined me for part of that fellowship. At that time we had three little boys. We now have four rather bigger boys. Madge's parents came over from Ulster to look after the boys and my mother-in-law was making sure that they did the right things, behaved themselves, ate the right things. But my father-in-law, who was an Irish Football International before the First World War, was determined that his duty was that they should see every match in the World Cup, even if it was later in the day than they should have been up. And the result was that they became very excited by England's victory. And the three, well I would say the three key players, but let us just say three important players were West Ham players, Bobby Moore, who died recently, Jeff Hurst and Martin Peters. And by the time I came back from America, the family was sort of awash with claret and blue, and I've been a West Ham supporter ever since. So the song I asked for is I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles, which is sung, I think, by the West Ham squad.

Presenter27:23

I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles, sung by West Ham United. It was in nineteen eighty four, John, when you'd been at the B B C for about three years, that you had a serious heart attack. It was a close call, wasn't it?

John Cole27:34

Yes, it was. Fortunately I had it, as you say, at Westminster in the BBC office and I was taken to the Westminster Hospital, which is only about two minutes away. And uh but it was it was a bad heart attack. I was fortunate enough to have a coronary artery bypass operation and that served me well for nine years now.

Presenter27:52

And six months later you were back at work. And one of your first jobs was the Brighton Conference. Yes, I worked for the.

John Cole27:57

Yes, I went to the other conference, the other party conferences and was very careful, got to bed early, had supper in my room, all that sort of thing. And then on the last night of the Conservative Party conference I I was in the next door hotel, which is a couple of hundred yards away I suppose and heard the bang and turned out. I asked someone what they thought I ought to do and they said go up to the police station and interview Mrs Thatcher. So we d we did this interview for breakfast television and so on.

Presenter28:22

And she called you John.

John Cole28:25

Yes, well all of us have our weak moments in the middle of the night. So anyhow I had occasion to ring up the Westminster Hospital and to make an appointment after sales service so to speak and I spoke to the young woman at the age of about my second child but a person of great authority in all our lives, the senior staff nurse. And she said, I saw you interviewing the Prime Minister in the dark. And I said yes, that was the police station at four o'clock in the morning. She said, I then saw you in the nine o'clock news. Was that pre-recorded? And I said, no, it was live. So what time did you get to bed? And I said, well, someone drove me home. I got to bed at midnight. And she said, well, that's not the way we told you to behave, John. And I said, well, it was rather a special event. When I told the consultant about this, he laughed and said, well, the fact is, Mr Cole, probably most of my ex-patients are behaving quite as foolishly as you, but if you insist on doing it in front of a television camera, my staff are going to give you a lot of criticism.

Presenter29:20

Record number seven.

John Cole29:21

Record number seven is part of Weine Kleinen Nachtmusik by Mozart. Again, it's principally because it's a good tune, but I've got a bit of a long distance love affair with Vienna. I first went there youth hostling while the city was still divided between the four powers and the four soldiers, Russian, American, British and French, rode around in a cheap, and it was all slightly Harry Limish. I th there was then a gap of oh thirty-five years when I went back with Madge and this time it was uh Wagner and Mozart and so on. But I did persuade her to go out late at night in the in the little uh Ringstrasse tram car to the big wheel where if you remember Harry Lime had this astonishing performance. It was all locked up and chained unfortunately at that time of night, but it was still rather spooky so we came back quickly.

Speaker 430:10

Uh

Presenter31:06

Part of the second movement of Mozart's Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, played by the Amadeus Quartet.

Presenter31:11

There's another very good story, John, that's done the rounds about you, and that's Roy Hattersley ringing you up and saying, Now we've got to quash these rumours about us too. Can you can you tell us that story? I've got to ask you.

John Cole31:23

Yes, well we were we were having lunch together and I don't know, the wine list came round and I said, Oh, here, L Roy, you'll have a look at this I was the host, but I said, You have a look at this uh you know far more about than I do and he said, John, you mustn't accept these ludicrous private eye stories that I know all about lunch and that you speak with a funny voice and I said, But I do speak with a funny voice Uh uh one or other of us must have told our friends this bon mo I expect both of us and it appeared in some gossip colour.

Presenter31:51

But the truth is that you've been really quite irritated about the endless comments about your accent and your overcoat, haven't you? It's annoyed you.

John Cole31:59

Then the early days it seemed to me to get in the way of discussion of one's journalism, which I thought was quite important to and thought I was reasonably good at. I've got less concerned with it as the years have passed, but I still do think actually it is a bit ludicrous in this day and age that it's assumed that the only two ways of speaking are like a Cockney taxi driver or the rather boring Oxbridge standard. I mean people throughout these islands speak with a

John Cole32:26

A wide variety of accents, which add, I think, to the richness of our life, and I'm glad they're being increasingly reflected in the B B C, and if I've contributed a bit to that, well, I'm pleased.

Presenter32:37

But do you think you would have become a national institution if you'd stayed in print journalism? I suppose that's what I'm really saying. That that all of these characteristics about you have helped make you what you are today, which is very well known and very successful in your trade?

John Cole32:52

Yes, I mean, I think what really uh makes you well known and successful is just appearing frequently and hopefully talking a reasonable amount of sense.

Presenter33:02

So given your time again

Presenter33:05

Are you happy that you became the political editor of the BBC, or if you'd had the choice, would you have been editor of The Guardian?

John Cole33:11

Oh, I would have been editor of The Guardian, yes, undoubtedly. I mean, print was my first love and I spent most of my time in it. I mean, there's no use looking back over careers. I've enjoyed immensely everything that I've done. I've been jolly lucky to have had the chance to do it. I missed the editorship of The Guardian, but I've enjoyed what I've done. I mean, life consists of uh picking yourself up, dusting yourself down and carrying on, doesn't it? And uh, enjoying what you're doing, and I've got no complaints.

Presenter33:38

Last report.

John Cole33:39

The last record is another church music dating, I suppose, originally from my church choir days, but also I've taken part in singing it at many Welsh nights at miners' conferences or Labour Party conferences. It's Guide me, O Thou Great Redeemer to the tune Comronda.

Speaker 434:18

He said one gave us a

Speaker 434:25

Praises, songs and praises.

Presenter34:59

Guide me, O Thou Great Redeemer, sung by the Dunvant Male Choir, conducted by T. Arwen Walters, and you can sing the bass, Jonathan.

John Cole35:06

Yes, that's right. I won't do it just now, if you don't mind, unless you're prepared to take the soprano.

Presenter35:11

I don't think I could do that. But I can imagine you on your island marching around singing it with giving it full belt. Which of the eight records would you take if you could only take one?

John Cole35:19

I think the Beethoven, the Ode to Joy, or, as I prefer to call it, freedom.

Presenter35:23

Right. And your book as well as the Bible and Shakespeare?

John Cole35:26

Well, I think I would probably like Proust.

John Cole35:30

I've read most of the first volume of the English translation, but I would like it in French, because I assume my French is sort of tolerable, but not very good. But I assume if I came across rather a lot of words that I didn't know in a book of that length they would be repeated so often that the context would make their meaning clear, and it would certainly improve my French.

Presenter35:54

And your luxury.

John Cole35:55

Yeah.

John Cole35:56

Well, I would like to ask for a B B C engineer because I just know it was my luck and technical incompetence that the gramophone would break down in the first week, but I know you won't look at it.

Presenter36:06

No, you've got infum tables.

John Cole36:07

So I think what I better have is a typewriter.

Presenter36:10

And you'd write the novel, would you?

John Cole36:11

I would probably write the novel on the typewriter or write something. I w I wouldn't be happy if I wasn't doing a bit of writing.

Presenter36:18

John Cole, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs.

John Cole36:21

Thank you.

Speaker 136:30

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Islandists archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk/radio4.