Kate Adie

Speaker 20:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

Speaker 20:08

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

Presenter0:29

My castaway this week is a broadcaster. Most of us have at some time heard her tell about the world's great events. She reported from Tiananmen Square one of her most terrifying experiences, where she was grazed by a bullet. She went to the Gulf War, one woman among two thousand men. And most recently she's been in Bosnia, where her cool, crisp voice and graphic eyewitness accounts have served to bring home to millions of viewers the tragedy of the conflict.

Presenter0:55

She's worked for the same organization nearly all her life, rising from local radio to where she is to day, the B B C's chief news correspondent. She is Kate Ady.

Presenter1:06

Are you surprised, Kate, to find yourself where you are, doing what you are? I mean, it wasn't exactly planned, was it? Very surprised. Not at all planned. No, I left school, which had trained me, or had hoped that I would leave, in order to fill in a year or two learning a little bit of light cookery or perhaps some useful nursing before marrying a missionary and going out to minister to the Empire. And even when I left school, the Empire had somehow disappeared. So I had to knuckle down, go to university, where I read an extremely interesting but not terribly practical degree in Old Icelandic and Swedish, and come out and find a job. And in desperation, applied to the BBC and at the first interview, and I think it's still on a bit of paper somewhere round this building, was asked what are you prepared to do for the BBC? and apparently replied anything.

Presenter1:56

You you did do it. You did all sorts of things, but you certainly didn't report in the beginning, and in fact had to be told to become a reporter, because you didn't want to be one.

Presenter2:04

I turned up at the B B C in Plymouth after some years in local radio.

Presenter2:09

saying, Hello, I'm the new radio producer and they said, No, we don't want one of these, we want a television reporter. I said, Well, that's not me and they said, Yes, it is. There's a gap in this afternoon's programme, you're doing it.

Presenter2:20

But prior to that I'd spent a lot of time in radio and loved it and learnt a lot. But I never had a day's formal training as a journalist. So you're a self-taught journalist in that sense, because you have no journalistic training? Yes, I watched other people and I I worked my way through it. I sort of felt my way through it. And there are still mistakes. I still make very basic mistakes at times. And I have to remind myself because I didn't have the formal training. And can you, like all television reporters can, remember the first piece to camera you ever did? Oh, yes. Dreadful. I strangled a rabbit.

Presenter2:56

I was meant to be reporting on a rabbit farm, and I was so terrified in trying to remember these words about.

Presenter3:03

the rabbit breeding industry, and I was so terrified by staring at this camera I had no idea what to do, so the cameraman, to try and relax me, sort of handed me this enormous big, fluffy white rabbit.

Presenter3:15

And I stood there doing this piece again and again and again and again. And when I was doing it for the seventeenth time, I got the words right. And the cameraman said, The words are fine, but the rabbit's nearly dead. You know, it's dead.

Kate Adie3:23

Good, you're gonna be able to do it.

Presenter3:26

But you know, I mean, people who have successful careers often say that it all happened by accident and by default and so on. But nevertheless, obviously there are things about you and about your character that that shaped those events as they went along. I mean, what what would you say are your characteristics, I mean, negative as well as positive, if you'll admit it, that have got you to where you are? I'm curious about just about anything.

Presenter3:47

I really am. I found when I joined local radio that I could actually make programmes about dustbin lids. I did on one occasion. You had to in local radio.

Presenter3:59

Have ideas, and I didn't feel I was creative. So I just used my eyes and my ears, looked at the world around me, and said, What can we do something interesting about? And off I went. Tell me about you and music, though. I mean, how important is it to you? I grew up with a background that was Methodist. So you went to church to sing, and I went to church a lot. I also went to a church school, and there was a lot of music there, and there was music at home. It's not of desperate importance to me, but I'm a terrible old romantic, and I do like romantic music. So, some good, strong, slushy stuff coming up, is that? Absolutely. What's number one?

Presenter4:36

It's the Bruch Violin Concerto. I did my university revision to this. It sort of calmed the nerves. It sounded lovely. It meant that my brain drifted off from tenth century Icelandic literature, which I was hacking through at the time.

Presenter5:39

Part of the second movement of Bruch's violin concerto number one in G minor, played by Yehudi Menouin, with the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Landon Ronald.

Presenter5:48

So despite the fascination that Dustbin Lids held for you, uh, Kate Adie, you you apparently got bored as a kind of local reporter and set about escaping to London, didn't you?

Presenter5:58

I think they also got bored with me. I really was quite dreadful in regional television. I do not have the knack.

Presenter6:06

of making feature news items. I I'm afraid I'm very much one of those people, and that's why I'm in television news, who likes the the kind of techniques we use in news, where you take your camera as a pair of eyes, you look

Presenter6:22

Uh you blink a few times, you look at it, get the essential out of it, and go. So when you went from as you did from Plymouth on loan, as it were, weekend relief to the newsroom in London, you suddenly found where you wanted to be, did you? That that sort of speed and the immediacy of a main newsroom? What was interesting about it was that you had to get what was relevant, you had to get what was

Presenter6:45

Important and what was interesting. And you had to squeeze it into a certain amount of time. People were not going to be interested for long periods. You had to get the essential over, and it fascinated me. But you also want to be and enjoy being where it's at, really. You like to feel that you're at the the hub. The cliché is that it's the ringside-seated history, but it's also true. And it's absolutely a tremendous privilege. It's wonderful. So it must have been deeply frustrating in the Gulf War when you found yourself hundreds of miles away from the action, stuck in the desert with the army.

Kate Adie7:07

It's

Presenter7:19

No. Um I never

Presenter7:22

actually experienced a more intense time.

Presenter7:25

If you are on the way to war.

Presenter7:29

A real war. You do contemplate a lot of things, and so does everyone else round you. There is this extraordinary communal feeling.

Presenter7:38

It was an amazing time. And was that easy for you as a woman with two thousand men? It's fascinating. A lot of them talked to me, maybe because I was the only one there and I was old enough to be their mother.

Presenter7:49

But you literally signed up, did you, and listed next of kin and all the rest of it. I mean, you you became a soldier. That's it. No difficulties about your being a woman. Absolutely every difficulty in the world, in the practical sense, and next time I'll take a large inflatable bush with me. We're in the flat desert. A number of things become quite difficult.

Presenter8:08

But the rest of it, other than those one or two practical things, was made easy for me by the men. They were marvellous. They made no concessions. I dug my trench along with every one else. I dug a very small trench and said, could I sort of crouch in it?

Presenter8:24

But were there times when you were absolutely whacked and couldn't keep up? I mean, it does require enormous physical stamina and training that you hadn't had. We were put through live fire.

Presenter8:34

Training, you know, infantry training, just a little bit of it. You know, and when you're having to run and people are firing at you and over you, and the the rest of us are sort of nineteen-year-old fit young men, I wondered. But I thought it was a good idea. But why did you teeth? I did it. I did it. I think they thought that, you know, unless we knew the reality of it, it's no good having weak links in the chain, and it's no good having people who went into the desert thinking that maybe they'd have an easy ride. This was war.

Kate Adie8:46

But why did you not if I did it?

Presenter9:00

Record number two.

Presenter9:01

This is the sound of Kiritakanawa singing, and this is utter jealousy as well as delight to listen to her.

Presenter10:05

Gary Takano are singing in Landwina with the English Chamber Orchestra conducted by Geoffrey Tate.

Presenter10:10

So you went to London, Kate, as a full-time reporter in the late seventies, in your mid-thirties, vying for stories with the rest of the reporters on the rank?

Presenter10:19

I suppose your big break was the Iranian Embassy siege, wasn't it?

Presenter10:23

Yes, and I was just another reporter on the Rota. I just happened to be there at the time. So it was pure luck that you were sent. Mm-hmm.

Presenter10:31

What are your memories of it? I mean, mine are that you seemed to be there day in, day out, describing what was going on outside that embassy building. There were a number of us who spent a lot of time crouched on a pavement. We'd no idea really what was going on, though we could guess at certain things. And when the actual moment came round, I, more than anything, I think, was filled with fear because I knew one of the people inside who was a PBC sound recordist. The moment being when the SAS was going to go in, yeah. Yeah, and I suppose the first thought I had was, My God, something's happened to him.

Kate Adie10:59

Yeah.

Speaker 310:59

Yeah.

Kate Adie10:59

Go in, yeah.

Presenter11:04

And then pulling my brain together and saying, Oh, well, whatever, get on with it, get on with it.

Presenter11:13

And I specifically remember that moment of thinking you set some things to one side for the moment. It's not a matter of not having the feelings, but you are there to do the job. From then on, I think everybody knew who Kate Adie was and and what she did. But not least, I suppose, because you were a woman, because you were a woman in a dangerous situation and fourteen years ago, because it was 1980, wasn't it, that that was very unusual.

Kate Adie11:21

Yeah.

Presenter11:38

I think that's always been a part of it, because there are

Presenter11:41

There is still a a minority where women are concerned in this job, and um one hopes that it will change. One hopes. But do you think there is some sexism in that sense attached to your success? You know, that there's an added attraction to the viewer of which the newsroom is not unaware of having notoriety. There's an added oddness. Yes, it's a woman. And also, if you go into some situations which traditionally and conventionally people see as a man's situation.

Kate Adie11:59

And there's a notoriety.

Presenter12:11

I I think people like to play up that and say, well, there's a woman going there. But in a sense, it's given you a an unfair advantage, if you like, over the men, over the Martin Bells and the John Simpsons and so on, because they they may well file

Kate Adie12:16

Yeah.

Presenter12:24

Equally effective reports, but yours are the ones that are remembered because you've got the name because you're the female. I don't know what makes that happen. I really don't. Is it still so strange that a woman's voice is heard doing this now? I don't know. I don't think so. It shouldn't be. It shouldn't be. It probably is. I mean, but do you feel, have you felt?

Kate Adie12:40

Uh

Kate Adie12:41

I mean

Presenter12:45

Any resentment on the part of other not of Martin Bell or John Simpson, I'm sure they aren't capable of being so small-minded, but other reporters, maybe from other organisations, that resentment of, oh, Kate Aid is coming. Well, I'd hope that didn't happen. I don't like the publicity and the sort of attention which attaches just to the name. I just like to go and do the job. And luckily, I go to such obscure parts of the world and such groth holes that most of the time nobody has a clue who I am, and you're covered with muck and you're not looking entirely your best, so it's not usually a problem. More music.

Presenter13:23

But the next visit takes me back.

Presenter13:25

to my childhood. It's pure sentiment for the North East of England. A wonderful voice. Thomas Allen, who was brought up in Searam Harbour in County Durham, and I was just up the road in Sunderland. And it's Tom Allen singing his heart out.

Speaker 313:51

And may he

Speaker 313:57

Haven't glorious

Speaker 314:01

Peron mir se padlum aprais mi hi cornis britas, residu raris, notuses amaris, puzior peris trius impera.

Speaker 314:29

Abore estro mis

Speaker 314:32

Hey, don't go.

Presenter14:37

Thomas Allen singing Estuans Internus from Karl Orff's Carmina Burana with the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Andre Previn and memories for Kate Adie of a happy childhood in Sunderland where you were brought up as the only daughter of John A. pharmacist and his wife Maud but you were told as soon as you were old enough to understand that you were adopted. Yes, I've always known and my school friends knew and all through my life people though I haven't for obvious reasons you don't actually go around saying oh by the way but anybody who's known me well has always known I was adopted. I had a marvellous childhood. Wonderful. But then recently in the last few years you decided to find your real family. Why suddenly? What made you suddenly want to know having not known for some 45 years or more? It wasn't sudden and I took a long time. I always thought that at some point I would do it and my adopting mother wanted me to do it as well.

Presenter15:30

And she died as I went off to the Gulf War.

Presenter15:34

And something you mentioned earlier, that I actually had to fill in the forms when I joined the army. And the army appears not to just have one single line for next of kin, but some enormous page. And I realized that my adopting father, who is by then very frail and a little confused and in a nursing home, that

Presenter15:55

Um, I didn't actually have any relatives. That was it.

Presenter15:59

But they said they didn't have a large family then. No, none.

Speaker 215:59

And the things that they

Presenter16:02

And then I said to myself,

Presenter16:04

Nonsense

Presenter16:06

I do know that there are people.

Presenter16:09

So when I came back, what I did was I set about to a friend who was very kind and put me in touch with a counsellor.

Presenter16:17

And this is the proper way to do it. And I would say to anyone who's thinking of it, you need someone.

Presenter16:24

who takes you through things, not to do things quickly. And over the months she talked to me and she made me face a few things, though there was nothing unhappy or deep down. It's just that you are made to face up to a number of things because it's it's quite dangerous. Here you are.

Presenter16:41

Putting your nose into the past many years ago, and you don't know what the feelings of other people are, so you go carefully.

Presenter16:49

And over the months, she counselled me, and then she eventually made the first approaches. To see if they wanted to know about you. Yes, indeed.

Presenter16:58

And

Presenter17:00

I couldn't believe it when she came to me and she said, you know,

Presenter17:04

Yes, of course. Your mother wants to see you.

Presenter17:09

Most extraordinary moment. And we took a little more time.

Presenter17:13

and eventually she arranged a meeting.

Presenter17:17

And I met her.

Presenter17:19

and I still can't really find words to describe it.

Presenter17:24

It's the most amazing thing that ever happened to me. It's wonderful.

Presenter17:28

Had she known your mother who you were

Presenter17:30

No.

Presenter17:32

So she got a tremendous shock.

Presenter17:34

I have been apologising to her ever since.

Presenter17:38

Because you apparently look very much alike. And I wonder if she'd ever looked at you on the television and...

Speaker 317:38

Because you can't leave it up.

Speaker 317:40

Yeah.

Presenter17:44

My my my nephew, my elder sister's um.

Speaker 317:44

I won't look at it.

Kate Adie17:44

Uh

Presenter17:49

Son Charles apparently sat watching the telly some years ago and said, Ma he said, Doesn't Kate Adie look like grandma? And the family said, Ya ha another joke from Charles.

Presenter18:00

Yes. Amazing. So now you've got lots of relatives to fill in as next to them. You've missed an enormous amount. And I.

Kate Adie18:04

But yes.

Presenter18:07

cannot stop almost every morning thinking how lucky I am.

Presenter18:12

It it it is an extraordinary thing to go through, but it's given me the most tremendous.

Presenter18:19

Feeling of happiness. Absolutely. It's fantastic.

Presenter18:24

Record number four.

Presenter18:27

I want to music which is again romantic and is very English. It's Vaughan Williams'. I love Vaughan Williams' music. It makes me think of this country, of which I'm very fond.

Presenter19:28

Part of Vaughan Williams' Wasps overture played by the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sir Malcolm Sargent.

Presenter19:34

You and BBC Television News, Kate, were in the headlines in 1986 when Norman Tebbit attacked your reporting, although he didn't mention you by name, as being sympathetic to Libya following the US bombing of Tripoli. You were incensed, I remember. Yes, and I always refuted everything that was alleged, and I've stuck by every word that was in that broadcast. And every word subsequently has been picked over, analysed, put in context, and the allegations did not hold water. The allegation was that that your reports were emotive because you were standing among people who who allegedly had been bombed. I think that emotion is part of life and part of reporting, but other people's emotions, and I would suppress my own. Do you? I mean, I think one one felt your fear when you were in Tiananmen Square, for example, and one felt your revulsion at what you'd witnessed at the time. The fear was uncontrollable. It was very frightening, and therefore I was unable to

Speaker 320:28

The mirror

Kate Adie20:28

Yeah.

Presenter20:34

As you will live up to my own rules on that. And there's a very difficult grey area.

Presenter20:40

which the whole subject of whether reporting is truly objective. I don't think it can ever be truly objective. As I grow older, I um realize that, you know, things are so complex. And

Presenter20:55

I um by my background, my views, my principles, whatever sort of motivates me, that will inform my reporting and be the basis of it. So it can never be truly objective, neutral and totally without any you can argue, of course, that that it would be absolutely right to show your revulsion at some I mean, you must have witnessed some things which are indisputably. This is the grey area where you say, um, should one be outraged on behalf of of human beings? Should one should one somehow try and prick the conscience? Should one say there are values and there are human rights which are universal? And you get into a very dangerous area.

Kate Adie21:07

Okay.

Presenter21:34

What sort of answers do you come up with to those questions? I don't have them, and I'll truly confess that I don't.

Kate Adie21:36

Black and Tarl

Presenter21:41

Have those answers. I do what I can, that's my sort of little motto. I do what I can. I try and find the right way through to it. And I suppose that I'm prepared to acknowledge that there are some principles to do with human dignity and human rights that should be upheld, and when they are torn apart and destroyed or trampled on or whatever, that then the reporting should at least reflect that.

Presenter22:17

More music, number five, I think. That's Phil Collins. Now, this is pure nostalgia for the desert.

Presenter22:24

and driving across it when we all went to war.

Presenter22:27

And

Presenter22:28

You had the sounds of these three quarters of a million human beings and their armoured vehicles across the sand. I we never managed to convey this extraordinary sight and sound. But there were we in the middle of it, a little sort of tail of vehicles with me and our picture editor driving a pick up truck with a satellite dish in the back of it, desperately trying to follow other people and playing Phil Collins very loudly off to war.

Presenter22:57

Uh

Speaker 322:57

Is such a plaque in de Spain.

Speaker 323:03

Along with you I will follow you will you follow with love days and nights love

Speaker 323:13

No will be, I will stay with you, will you stay with me just one sea?

Presenter23:21

Phil Collins and Follow You, Follow Me. How does the former Yugoslavia rate on the scale of difficult and dangerous assignments? One of the worst, I would have thought. Very nasty. It's dangerous, it's unpredictable, it's horrendous to view.

Presenter23:40

You can hardly see a village, a town, where something dreadful has not happened and where people are in a dreadful state. How close have you come to death?

Presenter23:58

Two plays.

Presenter24:00

Uh a number of times. In Bosnia.

Presenter24:02

Yes, and once or twice elsewhere.

Presenter24:05

It's not something you look for. I feel very strongly when people say do you go there for the thrill, the excitement, the adrenaline. No. Uh yours truly, you know, is capable of of of of hiding in a dog kennel if necessary. Um and I get very frightened and I certainly don't find a brush with death something that uh I look back on and

Presenter24:33

I know hug myself with the thought of oh, well, look what you went through there I look back on it and shiver, shiver I spent a horrendous night along with three other people.

Presenter24:45

In the early days of the Croatia-Serbia war, in which we found ourselves stuck on a kitchen floor in a house with tank fire coming over us, and the house next to us was blown away with three people in it, and we were lying on the kitchen floor. I'd managed to pick the one house in the village which had no cellar. It's just my luck. And.

Presenter25:08

I can remember, and I can recall now,

Presenter25:12

bracing myself and shaking with uncontrollable fear as the shells whistled over us. I mean, I just thinking, next one, next one, it's awful.

Presenter25:23

So how do you feel? I mean, you've spent a lot of time out there over the past couple of years, haven't you? How much time? Probably almost almost coming up to a year in the last two and a half years.

Kate Adie25:28

How much time?

Presenter25:32

And you usually go for a sort of four or five weeks didn't. How how do you feel when they say, Okay, Kate, time to go to Bosnia again? Well, if I didn't if I if I became afri afraid and I thought, Oh God, I didn't want to go, then I wouldn't go, because you endanger other people and you're not much good working. You do think hard about what am I doing, why am I going, is it doing any good?

Presenter25:53

you have to be able to answer yourself and say, I think I am actually doing something. It has a positive effect result, or at least it is worthwhile. If you feel that it doesn't anymore, then I think you should stop going.

Presenter26:08

Number six.

Presenter26:10

Oh, on now to another lovely piece of music. Um this is pure soppiness, uh opera. I was first taken to opera when I was about mm ten or eleven, and uh

Presenter26:21

With Maud, my adopting mother, popped into the Theatre Royal Newcastle off the street, compete with shopping baskets, to a matinee of La Boheme, and totally fell in love with this.

Kate Adie26:32

Amilavra miya vich mi.

Speaker 326:38

Uh

Kate Adie26:39

Uh

Speaker 326:39

Uh

Kate Adie26:39

Yeah.

Speaker 326:39

Uh Aduisque Monsieur.

Speaker 326:51

Evil

Presenter27:33

Jose Carreras and Barbara Hendricks singing the duet from the end of Act One of Puccini's Labohemme with the French National Orchestra conducted by James Conlon.

Presenter27:42

Everyone will expect, Kate, that you'll have no trouble at all on a desert island, that you are one of life's copers, isn't it? Is it true?

Presenter27:49

Um yes and no.

Presenter27:53

If if a large insect crosses the beach as I land, I'll have a problem, actually. You must have met some insects in your travels before now. I mean, I'm sure you've slept in some fairly infested places, haven't you?

Kate Adie27:59

He must have

Presenter28:05

Yes, yes, but but but um that makes no difference. Uh f familiarity does not breed fondness. I'll be relatively practical, I I hope. Um I intend to plant the desert islands with every seed I can find. I'm going to cultivate it, I'm going to organize it.

Kate Adie28:20

This is not a single.

Presenter28:22

You're probably packed and ready to go. No, no, no, no, no. This is a complete myth. I have no idea. I still end up with all the wrong things in the wrong country. But what about medicines and things? Because you've caught some pretty nasty things in your time, haven't you? Oh, they've caught me, yes, yes. I I am the thirteenth only person in the country who got Congo Crimea hemorrhagic fever.

Presenter28:48

Thanks to some lovely bug in Kurdistan. Yours is a career which inevitably takes over your life. I mean, it's unpredictable. You don't know where you're going to be tomorrow, and it's presumably been impossible to compartmentalize it, to balance it out. Have you taken a conscious decision that you would, if you like, subjugate yourself to it? The absolute opposite. I've never felt it did. I do have a private life and.

Presenter29:13

It determinedly, you know.

Presenter29:16

takes up a large chunk of my existence and the job is there as a job. I think it's uh just purely a convention that people say, Oh, well, the job must rule. No

Presenter29:26

Not at all. I suppose they say that because you're not married and because you haven't had children, so it's easy for them to write that you've sacrificed motherhood and sacrificed

Kate Adie29:26

Let's put

Presenter29:33

Yourself, to your job, to the BBC. Has Kate Adie sacrificed herself to the BBC? Absolute rubbish. You know, there are times when Kate Ady has wished to have a BBC for breakfast, you know, and spit the bits out. Absolutely not. And I just find that's a sort of conventional view. Music. What is it? Number seven.

Kate Adie29:33

I know.

Kate Adie29:35

To the BB

Presenter29:52

Back to my roots for the next piece of music. Um I was taken quite a lot to Durham Cathedral. I was brought up in Sunderland, and since then I I sort of drift into

Presenter30:02

Those sorts of buildings, lots of lovely places where people.

Presenter30:08

produce marvellous sounds in very beautiful buildings. And I suppose it all started in Durham Cathedral, which I still love going back to, and listening to choral music.

Speaker 330:41

Oh Jesus the Saviour did comfort.

Presenter31:19

The choir of Durham Cathedral singing I Wonder as I Wander.

Presenter31:23

You'll be forty-nine this year, Kate. Um John Simpson and Martin Bell, I keep quoting, they're they're older, so there's no reason that you should be thinking about hanging up your kit bag or whatever you do. I don't actually think a great deal about the future. I have not actually had a career. I have just bumbled through it somewhat sideways, taking the jobs as they come, so I'm quite terrible about not contemplating what I should do. I wonder how long w women reporters can in in television can go on. I mean, o obviously in print journalism, you know, one thinks of Clare Hollingworth, who was reporting from Peking in her late seventies, and Martha Gailhorn and so on, but

Presenter31:56

You must have a limited life, have you? I think so, but I think before and or or as I begin to contemplate.

Presenter32:04

change. I think the job is changing. I think the whole of the way we get our journalism is on the change now in a very big way. There are more channels. There's an appetite, or at least there is a perceived appetite for twenty four hour news, for news to be there when you

Presenter32:21

switch the set on all the time. Uh this is going to have to be fed by agencies, by film coming in, by video coming in from all over the world, and I think there'll probably be less call on reporters. It'll also be found that they're expensive to send somewhere. You will get far more just

Presenter32:39

Pictures coming in from around the world. But then, who does the commentary? The back of bass, they do that. Absolutely. And I think there will be much less rigorous reporting. So, to all the young women who wish to emulate you, you would say there probably won't be the opportunity apart from anything else. I wouldn't like to be pessimistic, and I would love more women to come into it. I hope there will be a place for reporting which is relevant and which does say to people, Hey, this is important. Please listen, please look. And the other message, presumably, is don't go into it if you're looking for glamour or for fame. Well, fame, I suppose.

Presenter33:13

But frankly, Congo Crimea Hemorrhagic, whatever it is. Yes, yes, and various bits sort of, you know, sort of the old bit of shrapnel that flies about. No, it's not glamorous. No, not in that sense. It's glamorous in one sense, in the sense that it is a passport to a marvellous look at the world. When I think of the places I've seen, the people you meet, and and the the experiences you you live through with people, ah, that's quite fabulous. It is. That's a kind of glamour. But if it's glamour meaning the clothes, the glitter and the easy chair, hm?

Presenter33:50

No, not my job.

Presenter33:52

Last record.

Presenter33:53

Last one, another bit of Fawn Williams, if I may.

Presenter33:57

I suppose the kind of music which evokes when I'm abroad and in

Presenter34:01

Somewhere none too pleasant, the kind of lovely countryside and a way of life and values and people and this country. I do love it. And this is the music that says, Yes, these are my roots, and this is lovely.

Presenter35:18

The end of the first movement of Vaughan Williams's Symphony No. Six in E minor, played by the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, conducted by Sir Neville Mariner. If you could only take one of those eight records, Kate. It's going to be that last one. It's lovely. I'd I'd stand on the beach of the desert island and look at the horizon and listen to that.

Kate Adie35:30

Mm-hmm.

Presenter35:36

What about your book?

Presenter35:37

I need to I think take

Presenter35:40

Chaucer's Canterbury Tales

Presenter35:42

And what about your luxury?

Presenter35:45

Could I have, please, um, a large

Presenter35:49

Victorian bath with claw feet.

Presenter35:52

The mortar in it. Oh, yes, um, because that is what I fantasize about most of the time.

Presenter35:58

Um, when I'm working, and I'd have thought that if you are on this lovely island, I presume it's going to be lovely, please?

Presenter36:05

And I will lie in the bath and I will think, This is civilization.

Presenter36:11

This is all right. I will live with what I have round me. But I'd like my bath, please.

Presenter36:17

Kate Adie, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your Desert Island discs. Thank you.

Speaker 236:29

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