Derek Jameson

Speaker 30:00

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

Speaker 30:08

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

Presenter0:29

My Castaway this week is a journalist and broadcaster. He was born sixty five years ago in an East End foster home, and brought up, he says, without the handicaps of family and religion. At the age of eight he discovered that one of the big sisters in the home was in fact his mother.

Presenter0:44

His taste for reading and writing led him towards journalism. Beginning as a messenger at Reuters, he eventually became the editor of three Fleet Street newspapers, the Daily Express, the Daily Star, and The News of the World.

Presenter0:56

Then nearly a decade ago he joined BBC Radio, where he's become a popular personality, first with a breakfast show and now with a late night programme. My life, he says, has been an attempt to prove that I'm entitled to a place in the human race. He is Derek Jamieson. It's a real rags to riches saga, Derek, or are you going to tell me there are no riches?

Derek Jameson1:16

Well, that's absolutely true. I mean, it's been a lifelong struggle and it goes on. Every single day, people ask me how I'm doing as I walk along the street. You know, I'm now a sort of national institution. And they will say, how you doing, Del? And I always say, struggling on in a cruel world. Yeah, but she's right. Struggling on. And they all laugh and say, this is cruel, driving a taxi or being up a ladder.

Presenter1:39

But you've got a nice house on the south coast, you've got a flat in London, I mean you've done terribly well.

Derek Jameson1:44

Very, very well.

Derek Jameson1:45

At least a hundred times better than anyone could ever have imagined. But if you are born and grow up as poor as I was, then you carry those scars with you all your life.

Presenter1:56

So that what hasn't altered then is your perception of yourself, is it, that you still feel you've got to struggle to prove that you're, what, not a nobody?

Derek Jameson2:04

Totally, yes.

Derek Jameson2:06

I am a poor working class lad from the slums of London, and every time I open my mouth people discriminate against me.

Derek Jameson2:15

They don't think I'm clever, or I've done anything, or I've succeeded. They think it's that Yobo Derek Jameson.

Presenter2:21

You sure? Do they? Or is it that you think they do?

Derek Jameson2:22

Did they always

Derek Jameson2:24

Well, that's the question, isn't it? I mean, I'm only just coming face to face with the reality at the age of sixty five. Could it be me? You're telling me something now, Sue. I never thought of it that way. You think it might be all in my head? Now, of course people discriminate against me.

Presenter2:40

Because of the accent?

Derek Jameson2:41

Absolutely. It's never done me any good at all. My dear, if I had spoken like Sue Lawley instead of Derrick Jamieson, I would have done ten times better.

Presenter2:52

But you've smoothed it out, haven't you? You speak you're a lot posher to day than you were ten years ago.

Derek Jameson2:57

Well, indeed, I'm not even a cockney. I mean, I'm seen as the archetypal cockney, and every time a newspaper mentions my name they say Cockney DJ, Cockney Dell. But of course I'm not a Cockney.

Derek Jameson3:09

Can't list talk like that, don't they? Are you doing so, all right, girl?

Derek Jameson3:13

You know that's Cockney.

Presenter3:15

Right, let's look at your music. Tell me about music. How important is it to you? Well, I think.

Derek Jameson3:20

I've got this wonderful gift of universal taste, you know. I like all music, everything. And when Fate decided that I should be a DJ on BBCU Radio, on a music station, Radio 2, I was delighted because it gave me a chance to be surrounded, enveloped in lovely music. Although most of the time they don't play my kind of music because I prefer opera and the classics to pop. But I still like pop music, I still have a great love for it.

Presenter3:51

And your first record is one of the great classic pop numbers of all time, isn't it?

Derek Jameson3:55

That's why I chose it, because it represents the world of pop music. This, I think, is the greatest piece of music ever written in the pop world, Nilsson's Without You.

Speaker 44:08

I can't forget this evening Or your faces you were leaving But I guess that's just the way the story goes

Speaker 44:22

Always smile, but in your eyes your sorrow will show

Speaker 44:29

Yes, it show

Presenter4:34

Nilsson and Without You.

Presenter4:36

Describe then, if you will, Derek Jamieson, where it all began, the the the Foster home in Hackney. Was it really squalid?

Derek Jameson4:42

Indeed, well I was born in the Hackney Hospital in 1929 just alongside the Hackney marshes and discovered as I got older, three, four, five, that I was one of a large group of children, waifs and strays, the rejects of life. An old girl called Mrs. Agnes Wren, Mar Wren, brought us up. She ran this home purely privately. I mean everything was beg, borrow or steal. That was her philosophy.

Speaker 45:10

In that order.

Derek Jameson5:11

There was no well, she always used to say not necessarily in that order. There was no welfare state, no social workers. You had to live on your wits, you know, and she sent us out to earn pennies from an early age. But did you steal?

Presenter5:26

What did you steal?

Derek Jameson5:27

Just things from shops, you know. I mean uh fruit. I remember uh there was a greengrocer's at the top of the road called Charlton's, and every time I went into Charlton's I would pinch apples.

Derek Jameson5:39

pears, any fruit I could get my hands on, because fruit is the staff of life, isn't it?

Presenter5:44

But did you take stuff home to her? Is that what she kind of expected?

Derek Jameson5:47

Oh yes, we did that. I mean we went out to get money and the money bought food.

Presenter5:52

But the conditions in the home were, and you've written about them, pretty squalid, weren't they? I mean, I you've written about five to a bed and someone peeing up your back.

Derek Jameson5:59

That's right, yes. Bed bugs marching across the ceiling. I mean, can you believe, Sue, to be so poor that you drink your tea out of an old jam jar because no one can afford a china cup or any kind of cup?

Presenter6:14

But where did the money come from? So

Derek Jameson6:16

Well, some of the women who had illegitimate babies would give Ma five bob a week, send the postal order now and again. Uh she would go round the churches, you know, scavenging in churches, seeing what she could get. One week we'd all be supporting the Salvation Army, and then a couple of weeks later we'd all be Catholic, and then we'd be congregation.

Derek Jameson6:36

She she didn't tell him that none of us were baptized at all.

Presenter6:40

And in fact, then you discovered, uh as I said at the introduction, uh at the age of eight that one of the girls in the seven or eight

Derek Jameson6:45

You see, Elsie Wren was one of the big girls. My name was Jameson. It wasn't Wren. Ma Wren ran the home. She was in charge. And it never occurred to me until I began to realize how much Elsie seemed to depend upon me and turned to me and leaned on me when she wanted support and help. And it occurred to me around the age of seven or eight that Elsie

Derek Jameson7:12

was in fact my mother. I didn't call her mother until I was well into my thirties.

Presenter7:17

How how old was she then?

Derek Jameson7:19

Well, she was twenty when she had me, so growing up in the thirties she'd be in her mid twenties, twenty four, twenty five.

Presenter7:25

And then she had another child who you had assisted.

Derek Jameson7:26

Yes, I have a sister Jean who's in America, Ohio, and she was born in 1936 and I think by the same father.

Presenter7:35

Is there quite a fine line, then, dividing this idea that this home was an orphanage, or was it a brothel?

Derek Jameson7:43

Well, no, it was an orphanage. I mean, some of the girls, the way in which they got their money, yes and not all the girls, but some of the girls, um, didn't a bear examination, but it certainly wasn't a brothel, but you could say that uh the girls made the supreme sacrifice when necessary to get a bag of groceries.

Presenter7:59

Let's have record number two.

Derek Jameson8:00

As you know, I'm a great opera lover. I discovered it in wartime days. I had this wonderful program called Two Way Forces Favourites. And there, amid what, Vera Lynn, the Ink Spots and Shelton, suddenly I heard this incredible voice and it was Gili singing Pegliarchi. And I fell in love with opera that day, that Sunday lunchtime at the age of 14. And I've been totally enchanted ever since. And I think this is not only one of the world's greatest singers, but one of the greatest arias of them all. Dame Joan Sutherland singing, I dreamt I dwelt in Marble Hall.

Speaker 48:39

I went from your voice.

Speaker 48:46

With most of the sounds of my sight.

Speaker 48:53

In the whole house and all within those words that I was

Speaker 49:10

I don't reach first to the rich of God.

Presenter9:28

Joan Sutherland singing I Dreamt I Dwelt in Marble Halls from Michael Bouse's The Bohemian Girl.

Presenter9:33

You'd have been about, what, twelve or thirteen, Derrick, when you were evacuated to Bishop Stortford. How did Derrick Jameson cheeky, rough, illegitimate, which was quite a stigma in those days, wasn't it? I mean, how did you go down in Bishop Stortford?

Derek Jameson9:45

Well it wasn't easy because people used to whisper things like, I know all about you and you little tyke and all that. And I had this wonderful story, Sue. My father was an air hero. He was killed in the First World War, you know, the old air flying corps. It was a battle over the trenches in Flanders, shot down in flames, a great war hero. Sadly, at the age of 9, 10, 11, I didn't realize that if my father died in World War I, which ended in 1918, what was I doing being born 10 or 11 years later? And that, so, so that, of course, was my ruin. Yes, everybody knew I was a liar.

Presenter10:07

Yeah.

Presenter10:25

You can find ruin.

Presenter10:29

But but there was a man called Ernie Hare, wasn't there, who gave you a good hiding, and then became a rather well, a kind of father figure.

Derek Jameson10:36

Yes, teachers were in short supply because of the war. I think we had three or four teachers for a big East End school from London and one of the teachers was Ernest Hare. He took an interest in me. He saw something and sure enough I had destroyed someone's potatoes, seed potatoes, had cut them up with a penknife and he knocked me across the road, you know, bash, because I lied and tried to blame someone else and he bashed me across the road, which had a tremendous salutary effect upon me. I formed a great attachment to him. I remember being very, very emotionally tied up with Ernie Hare and his family and everything. And he encouraged me to the point of paying for library tickets. And he got season tickets for me. I could get as many books as I wanted on his tickets.

Presenter11:27

So you were a natural reader, you like

Derek Jameson11:28

Yeah, I used to devour books, four, five, six books a week, mainly uh modern American literature.

Presenter11:35

But at some point you were sent away to a ballstall, nevertheless, you're

Derek Jameson11:38

Well, no, it was an approved it was the award time equivalent of approved score, one step down the ladder ladder soon. Not Ballstall. Ballstall's a prison for young offenders. Approved score is uh a cut above that, you know. But I I was found to be uh beyond care and control by a juvenile court.

Derek Jameson11:56

Uh I'd got into some mischief and rolled some millstones from a flour mill into a river, which uh wasn't the thing to do in wartime Britain.

Derek Jameson12:05

So they sent me to this hostel whereas beyond care could be a little bit of a matter of time.

Presenter12:08

So this was despite all the fact that your education was kind of moving on, you'd you'd taken a liking to improving. Indeed.

Derek Jameson12:15

Indeed, and of course I was very, very good at uh English writing. I mean I was a gifted uh a gift with words that's been with me all my life.

Presenter12:24

But was it in the was it the influence of Ernie Hare that pulled you back from criminality? I mean but for him

Derek Jameson12:29

And yes.

Derek Jameson12:30

And and the books, the reading.

Presenter12:32

What happened to Ernie Hare?

Derek Jameson12:34

Ernie went on to become a local headmaster. He he had uh children of his own who have written to me since my autobiography came out and I told the story of Ernie Hare. His children have written to me.

Presenter12:43

Did you keep in touch with him?

Derek Jameson12:45

No, I wrote him a long letter declaring my uh undying love for him and my thanks and gratitude for everything he'd done for me, and he didn't answer it. It was a bit too painful and embarrassing.

Presenter12:58

How old were you when you wrote that?

Derek Jameson12:59

Fourteen.

Presenter13:00

Were you hurt?

Derek Jameson13:02

My whole childhood was just a bed of pain, and that was one of the most painful episodes.

Presenter13:08

Next piece of music.

Derek Jameson13:09

At the age of 15, 16, I decided I was a communist and became very, very strong in the faith, I remember. This stemmed more or less from the love of the Red Army, what Joe Stalin was doing in World War II. And the Red Army used to come over to Britain once a year and give concerts. And we all used to go being young communists. And I remember sitting in the Royal Albert Hall, and there was the Soviet Army chorus and band, the Red Army, and suddenly they broke into this piece of music. You've never heard anything like it in all your life. Listen to this.

Speaker 413:47

I wrote a letter to his highest money pole Saying soon at least if they tried to help me all He's not made mistakes

Speaker 414:01

Hey,

Presenter14:34

Soviet Army chorus and band and it's a long way to tipperary.

Derek Jameson14:37

Amazing.

Presenter14:38

You were a communist in your teens, you say, and you've certainly been a Labour voter all your life.

Derek Jameson14:44

I've always been on the left. I'm not a doctrineer uh political person. I really take issues on merit, you know.

Presenter14:51

But how did you square the kind of politics you had during those heady days of Fleet Street? I mean, you were editing.

Presenter14:59

Two of the nation's most right-wing newspapers, you know, the Daily Express and the News of the World. Was that non-difficult, compromising sometimes?

Derek Jameson15:04

You have to go for the professional thing. I couldn't turn down being a newspaper editor in Fleet Street after all the years I'd spent there because of political consider I hate politicians anyway. I regard them as appalling people.

Presenter15:18

But we've missed you know, there's a gap in the story. How did the outdoor messenger from Reuters even begin to get a toehold in the street of Shea?

Derek Jameson15:25

In 1949 I was conscripted into the army to serve my two years, best two years of my life. Marvellous. Really enjoyed it. And finished up as an instructor in Austria. And when I came out of the army, Reuters wouldn't reinstate me. They said, no, no, he's a political activist. So I went to the labour exchange in Hackney, sorted out the manager and told him to phone Reuters and say, you've got to take this man back. It's the law. He has the right of reinstatement for six months. So they took me back for six months, very reluctantly, told me to look for another job. And I knew I had six months to save myself. Well, I worked, I beavered away, I did everything to the very best of my ability. And I made such an impression that within, what, three or four months, nobody ever again mentioned the thought of my leaving. And of course, became a very senior executive at Reuters. I was one of the duty editors by the time I actually left in 1961.

Presenter16:29

Record number four.

Derek Jameson16:30

Well, I was saying I was in the army, what a marvellous time I had in Austria, and every guest house, everywhere we went, we could hear this incredible music of an instrument we'd never heard of called the Zither. And then Carol Reed brought out his film, The Third Man with Olson Wells, Trevor Howard, Joseph Cotton, and of course the theme was Harry Lyme, the character played by Olson Wells, the music of Anton Karras.

Presenter17:25

A Harry Lyme scene from the film The Third Man.

Presenter17:28

You were a dab hand, Derek Jamieson, at the black art of circulation building. You quadrupled the circulation of the Sunday Mirror in Ireland at one point. Now, how did you do it?

Derek Jameson17:38

In Ireland, how did I do that? Well, that was simple. It was 1965. I went to Manchester to launch the first colour in national newspapers in Ireland. And we went to town and began enlisting writers. I the first person I signed up was a young girl from Northern Ireland called Bernadette Devlin, who became the youngest MP in the House of Commons. And the day her first column appeared in the Sunday Mirror, the circulation in Derry, Londonderry, quadrupled, as you say. Of course in the Republic, my greatest support was the Kennedy family. Every every week he used to be some different aspect of the Kennedy.

Presenter18:22

I was going to say, I mean, there were more obvious ploys like the case or the pill or the pope, any story to do with any of those things.

Derek Jameson18:28

My greatest front page, the lead said The Pope and the Pill. Didn't say anything about the pill, we just had to go at birth control, but it was near enough. So it was the Pope and the Pill, the inside story of the Kennedy family, and a picture of a girl in a white shark skin bikini in colour, and across the bottom in red, white letters on red, Manchester United in colour. And that paper, Sue, sold out in about two and a half minutes.

Presenter18:37

Threatened the Pope?

Presenter18:57

It's not a very subtle art, is it, the art of circulation, of a tabloid?

Derek Jameson19:01

Well, I mean, you you have to sell newspapers. You are there as an editor to sell newspapers, you know, and it's an art that us popular journalists possess and the posh ones don't. I was the editor of the Daily Express. I put on twenty five percent in fifteen months.

Presenter19:13

I would say this would be a

Presenter19:18

What was the trick there? Well how do you make the Express more popular?

Derek Jameson19:21

Peter Townsend, Group Captain Peter Townsend.

Derek Jameson19:25

He was the first boyfriend of Princess Margaret, right? So I bought his story. When I arrived at the Express I said to the executives, what have we got? Meaning what what properties, what features? Nothing, they said, nothing. Looked blank. And one of them said, oh, we have an option on a book by Peter Townsend, but it's not finished yet.

Derek Jameson19:46

Buy it. But he hasn't finished it. Buy it, I said. Buy it. Don't care what it costs. Buy it. And we bought it for 70,000 unseen. And I serialised it in the Daily Express as the Royal Romance of the Century, which was rubbish, of course. The Royal Romance of the Century was the Duke of Windsor and Mrs. Simpson. But of course, the public doesn't remember that. No chance. And it put on 165,000 copies. And more importantly, we held them. You know, you can put on 160,000 and lose them two days later.

Presenter20:18

But you don't, by the sound of it, have to have a lot of respect for your reader then. You just shove in a headline'cause it sounds good.

Derek Jameson20:24

I have more respect for the readers of newspapers, for my own people, than anything else on God's earth. I don't know why you say that.

Presenter20:32

Because you just said you'd sock'em a headline that wasn't necessarily accurate, but it didn't matter, they'd swallow it.

Derek Jameson20:38

Oh, do you mean it wasn't the raw romance of the century? Yes, but I don't feel that my readers are suffering too much because of that. They go home at night and say, Oh my God, that Jameson cheated us. He said that was the raw romance of the century and it wasn't.

Presenter20:44

What did you say?

Presenter20:53

Is it true that when you launched the Daily Star for Victor Matthews in nineteen seventy eight you said it was going to be Tits, Bums, Q P R and Roll Your Own?

Derek Jameson21:01

No, indeed not, because the Sunday Observer had to publish a retraction. There's nowhere in a million years. So think about it. Would I launch a newspaper in Manchester and talk about QPR?

Presenter21:14

Is it a phrase, if you throw in some good human interest stories as well, that might just have about summed up your approach? You know, Tits, Bums, Manchester United, good human interest stories and roll your own.

Derek Jameson21:26

I think it's a bit thera it rather patronises the readers, and it I don't regard the working class like that. I'm a member of the working class like that. So what middle class people think of the working class like that? I don't.

Presenter21:33

So what more

Presenter21:37

But what more than that?

Derek Jameson21:37

And never would no way would I take the view that my readers are into tits and bums and roll your own. I regard that as offensive to me and offensive to them. It's a typical middle class statement.

Presenter21:38

No!

Presenter21:50

What's your definition of what makes a good tabloid newspaper then beyond those things we just talked about?

Derek Jameson21:55

Interesting the public. You bring out a newspaper that interests the readers.

Derek Jameson21:59

Why is it that there are people take the view that if a newspaper sells four or five million copies, there must be something wrong with it?

Derek Jameson22:09

What kind of elitist statement is that?

Presenter22:11

Code number five.

Derek Jameson22:14

Ah, back to opera. Well, of course, I'm an incurable romantic. I still cry when I hear opera. Every time I play Placido Domingo, I say the world's greatest singer, just to upset the Pavarotti fans. And if any of them doubt it, just listen to this.

Speaker 422:32

I got

Presenter23:17

Placido Domingo singing the aria et lucivan les dele from Puccini's Tosca with the Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Giuseppe Sinopoli.

Presenter23:25

It was in march nineteen eighty uh that the week ending satire show on Radio Four said you were an East End boy made bad and you thought Erodyte was a kind of glue and various other

Presenter23:39

Not desperately, as it turned out, damaging jokes at your expense. But you blew, you sued. Why why did you react so strongly?

Derek Jameson23:46

All I had done to come from that total, utter poverty, hardship, deprivation, no family, no money, no food, and to have clawed my way up from that to become the editor of several newspapers and all the rest of it, and all they could say is summing up my career, an East End boy made better.

Derek Jameson24:10

What a bunch of toffee nose twits. So I thought we'd go for an apology and then of course the management of The Express and newspapers wanted to support their editor. The lawyers got hold of it in 1980. I parted company with The Express in 1981, I think it was, or around that time. I was on my own.

Presenter24:31

But what I don't understand is, I mean, Private Eye had been calling you Sid Yobbo for some time. That's and again that the implication there, although it's said since that it was quite a fond nickname, I don't know it was particularly fond, but i the implication is that you were illiterate, that you were a bit rough, and it was an image you'd cultivated. Why suddenly did you balk at this one? Which was pretty feeble.

Derek Jameson24:49

Which is indeed. Their attack on me was not that wasn't literature, that wasn't satire, there was nothing clever about it, it was just character assassination. But I didn't want it to go to court. I knew I couldn't win this. I had a feeling very strongly.

Presenter24:58

But I didn't want it to

Derek Jameson25:06

And the jury said, yes, defamatory. And I thought, oh, thank God I've won. I'm all right. Defamatory. And then they added, but not malicious. And that meant it was free speech, fair comment. And I was left with a bill for £75,000. And of course, that was every penny I had and more. And what saved me was the BBC didn't press for their money. They never ever collected their money from me. And what's more, they picked me up, dusted me down, and made me a star. How about that?

Derek Jameson25:37

Record number six. The Beatles. Well, the Beatles in the sixties, early sixties, changed everything. Life was never the same again. It's too boring to explain, because the Beatles, the music does it, especially this one, because it applies to me. I've been saying this all my life. Help, help!

Speaker 425:56

I need somebody Not just anybody You know I need someone

Speaker 426:05

When I was younger, so much younger than today I never needed anybody's help in any way

Speaker 426:15

But now these days are gone and I'm not so self-assure Now I find a change of mind and open up the door

Presenter26:25

The Beatles and the help. So now, Derek Jamieson, you're a broadcaster. Um you patently enjoy it. Are there similarities with newspaper editing? Do you think do do you feel you know who those people are out there?

Derek Jameson26:36

Oh yes. I've always had this uh thing for the public, you know. You see, right at the beginning I wanted to communicate. I wanted to reach out and touch people. I felt abandoned, rejected, uh uh an outsider.

Derek Jameson26:50

a maverick, someone different from the rest. I even wondered how I survived at all. What am I doing on earth? What am I here for? And the only thing that I could reach out and sort of get strength from was the feeling that I must make people like me or even love me, shall I say. Well, I needed the love of people. I needed support. That's what drove me as a newspaper editor and I suppose that's what drives me as a broadcaster.

Presenter27:17

But it also explains why you had such a thin skin.

Derek Jameson27:21

Yeah, indeed. Oh, absolutely. I'm much too uh emotional and vulnerable always have been.

Presenter27:27

But as far as the listeners are concerned, I mean, uh does it go further than that then? Are you also seeing yourself as

Presenter27:34

some kind of proof to them that disadvantaged people can make it.

Derek Jameson27:37

I'd like to feel that uh someone looks at me and says, My God, he did all right for himself from a very poor start, then that's a good thing, isn't it?

Presenter27:47

But you must get some negative letters as well because uh you're this kind of presenter I mean you're you're not exactly anodyne, you know you're the kind of presenter people either love or hate, aren't you?

Derek Jameson27:53

We kind of present it.

Derek Jameson27:55

Well, oddly enough, very little. The vast majority of letters I get from the public, and I suppose I get more than most broadcasters, are totally supportive. But of course, they have a program on Radio 4 called Feedback. When they took me off the breakfast show, Radio 2, to make way for Mr. Wogan's return, I got something like 10,000 letters protesting. Feedback on Radio 4 used one letter saying, Thank God that man is going good ridden.

Derek Jameson28:28

That's what you have to put up with if you come from the working class.

Presenter28:31

But why do you think that's got anything at all to do with class?

Derek Jameson28:34

Of course it has. You don't think they'd have done that to Sue Lawley, do you? You must be joking.

Derek Jameson28:41

But it's only Sid Yobbo. It's only old Derek Jamieson. Doesn't matter about him. What a dreadful person Have you heard the way he speaks?

Presenter28:51

And these days you take the wife to work with you, just Ellen.

Derek Jameson28:53

Guess yes.

Presenter28:54

Who presents your late-night show on Radio 2 with you? By the sound of it, you'd rather be back on breakfast.

Derek Jameson29:01

I don't know. I don't know that I would now. You know, it's a bit late in the day for me, isn't it?

Presenter29:06

But you obviously resent being moved over so that Terry Wogan could come back.

Derek Jameson29:10

Oh, absolutely, yes.

Presenter29:12

Record number seven.

Derek Jameson29:13

Back to opera. My favourite is La Boheme because it's a wonderful story of love and beauty. And of course there's this girl in the garret in Paris dying of consumption. And Rodolfo, the artist, the revolutionary artist, falls in love with her. She tells him, I'm just a simple ordinary girl who loves the country, the flowers, the birds and so on. My name is Mimi, she says. And here's Renata Tibaldi with that message.

Speaker 430:06

Just see the Lord my mother.

Speaker 430:10

Keep on

Presenter30:28

Renata Tibaldi, singing the aria Mi Chia Mano Mimi from the first act of Puccini's Laboem, with the orchestra of the Academy of St. Cecilia, Rome, conducted by Alberto Erede.

Presenter30:40

Four decades in Fleet Street, Derrick.

Presenter30:42

one in broadcasting, practically. You've edited, as I said at the beginning, three national newspapers. You've become a radio personality. And yet you still have this inferiority complex, this chip on your shoulder, this kind of view that the world is trying to do you down.

Derek Jameson30:58

No, it's it's not inferiority complex. God forbid, I don't consider myself inferior because I happen to come from the working class. What I would say to you, Sue, is that I have this feeling that the class system in this country matters a great deal, and if you happen to be born at the bottom of the heap

Derek Jameson31:17

Then, of course, you do feel that the the working class, the poor, get a rough deal in this country.

Presenter31:24

But aren't you living proof that that doesn't have to be the case?

Derek Jameson31:27

Yeah, but look at the price you have to pay. Look at the struggle. Look at the effort.

Presenter31:32

What price have you paid?

Derek Jameson31:33

Well, I mean, I've been working flat out since I was fourteen years of age. Nothing ever came easy. I became a newspaper editor because I had done every single job on a newspaper, from making the tea to laying out the front page.

Derek Jameson31:48

There aren't many editors who can say I can do every single job in a newspaper. Other factors have applied. I had to get there by sheer hard work, graft, talent, ability, drive, whatever. All those things that emerged from, I suppose, my poverty stricken background.

Presenter32:05

Let's have your last record.

Derek Jameson32:07

Would you believe, despite all my uh reservations about uh society in Britain and the class system and so on, I happen to be a very very fervent uh lover of this country. I think it's the greatest country in the world. I think we're all exceedingly fortunate to be born British. And as much as I hate jingoism and flag waving, I'm always entranced by uh The Last Night of the Proms and it makes you proud, doesn't it, as they stand here. Most of them are foreign music students anyway, I reckon. But anyway, I must have this on my island to remind me of home. It's a snatch of land of hope and glory from The Last Night of the Proms.

Presenter33:45

Land of Hope and Glory, recorded live at the last night of the proms in nineteen sixty nine with the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Colin Davis. If you could only take one of those eight records, Derek.

Derek Jameson33:56

I would have to be Placido Domingo singing from Tosca because that's an opera that says it all and uh certainly my favourite out of this choice of records.

Presenter34:06

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

Derek Jameson34:09

Well, I think I said that I'd educated myself on modern American literature and the the writer who had the most effect upon me was John Steinbeck. So I would take his greatest work, The Grapes of Wroth, about the Dust Bowl in Oklahoma, and that would keep me going.

Presenter34:26

What about your luxury?

Derek Jameson34:28

Well, a a word processor, would that count as luxury?

Presenter34:30

Yeah.

Derek Jameson34:31

I'd like a word processor to play with. I can make my own newspaper, write novels, send off imaginary letters to people I want to complain about. Yes, a word processor.

Presenter34:31

I'm not.

Presenter34:42

Derek Jamieson, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your Desert Island discs.

Speaker 334:53

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