Peter Blake

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

Presenter0:30

My castaway this week is a painter. Today, at sixty-four, he's a pillar of this country's artistic life, a member of the Royal Academy, a commander of the British Empire, and until recently associate artist at the National Gallery. It's been quite a journey for the electrician's son from Kent, who pioneered the British pop art movement and designed the psychedelic cover for the Beatles LP Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club band.

Presenter0:54

Currently working on, among other things, a shrine to Elvis Presley, he says that his paintings are all about celebrating life. He is Peter Blake.

Presenter1:03

And the life that you celebrate, Peter, is your own, really, isn't it? It's it's all your own tastes, all your heroes and heroines, Marilyn Monroe, Henry Cooper, Tarzan.

Peter Blake1:13

Yes, most of the things I paint are certainly are are heroes of mine, or they're I think what I'm interested in is a is the society at the edges of things. I mean a brief synopsis of pop art is that it started in at three points in the mid fifties, in America with Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg, in London at the ICA with the Independent Group with um Eduardo Palazzi and Richard Hamilton as a main core. And they, I think, intellectualized about popular culture um and that became their their form of pop art. And I at the same time was at the the Royal College of Art and I think I suddenly thought, Well, my life's quite interesting. I'll paint the things I do, and that became my branch of pop art.

Presenter1:57

Which were what, children reading comics, people on Brighton Beach, fairgrounds?

Peter Blake2:02

Yes, the things I I I was doing were going to professional wrestling matches with with my mum and my aunt, um, going to fairgrounds, going to a modern jazz club in Dartford every week, you know, and I I was only fifteen, um, and living a kind of um north east Kent

Peter Blake2:21

sort of street life, the equivalent of.

Presenter2:24

The equivalent of it was new, this kind of art. Um it was different. Did it shock? Did it shock in the way today people are shocked, not to say outraged, about art being dead fish or ants crawling across floors or piles of bricks?

Peter Blake2:37

I don't think it was shocking in in the same way, but it was it was new. It was um I think what was shocking was the subject matter. One was suddenly painting something that hadn't really been painted before.

Presenter2:49

Because people were used to traditional art, they didn't realize that you could sell a painting that was of a child reading a comic.

Peter Blake2:56

Exactly, yes. I think certainly in art schools the the main art that was being done was life painting, still life and portrait. I mean the tradition that the and landscape, traditions that had gone on forever really.

Presenter3:08

Tell me about your first record.

Peter Blake3:10

The The Beach Boys are great heroes of mine, almost my favorite band, I think. And Brian Wilson particularly went through terrible troubles and and has come back to make some fantastic albums recently, and this is one of the songs from from one of those.

Peter Blake3:28

More men outside

Peter Blake3:34

There's no hope you can get

Peter Blake3:36

Getting it in so long

Presenter3:51

Do It Again, sung by Brian Wilson with his daughters Carney and Wendy Wilson. So tell me about the record sleeve, Peter, a seminal moment in your career when you were commissioned to do the the cover for Sergeant Pepper. It was nineteen sixty seven. You'd have been thirty five, and the Beatles what in their early twenties in their prime. Whose idea was it?

Peter Blake4:09

It was Robert Fraser's idea. He he was the gallery owner that I was with, the Robert Fraser Gallery. He was a great friend of the Beatles and the Stones. He was he was an an aristocratic young man, and he thought that a real artist in Italics sh should do it a painter should do it.

Presenter4:26

But whose idea was it to have this kind of magic crowd with recognizable faces?

Peter Blake4:30

Well, I I think I really can claim that. Um again, it's thirty years ago and and we all claim different elements of it. When Paul and I talk, um yeah, he tends to claim he claims what nobody else has claimed. So um but I definitely thought of that, the magic crowd which could be made life size and with with cutouts and waxworks. We anyone could be in it.

Presenter4:53

So it it it all existed, did it, these cutouts?

Peter Blake4:55

Yes, it was it was built in the studio. It wasn't a collage.

Presenter4:58

Where is it now?

Peter Blake5:00

Well, I've got a couple of the bits. I think I managed to get about eight at the time, and it's dwindled to to two.

Presenter5:06

Which ones who've you got?

Peter Blake5:08

At the moment three in fact I've got um Max Miller, W C Fields and an American artist called Richard Linda. And it's interesting now to look back that the only musicians were Bob Dylan, who John put on, and somehow I managed to sneak Dion of Dion and the Belmonts in. And I looking back, I think the Beatles probably didn't want other musicians on. I didn't realize it at the time.

Presenter5:33

But they'd invented Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club band, hadn't they? I mean, they were going to do something with that band. They wanted it to be real, didn't they?

Peter Blake5:40

They wanted to go on the road again and knew they couldn't as the Beatles. And they thought they could do this thing which Paul did later, I mean, with Wings. He he he would turn up at the university and just play a gig an anonymously. And the Beatles thought with Sergeant Pepper they could do that. They could take out this unknown band. But of course it it didn't work and they then didn't want to tour anyway. And they decided to make a double album of it, which would have been one of the first double albums. But they they used up Strawberry Fields Forever and Penny Lane. They had to put out the singles, so then they didn't have enough material for a double album.

Presenter6:16

But the the album was still double, wasn't it? I mean the picture went on across the inside and

Peter Blake6:19

Yeah.

Peter Blake6:21

Yes, what what we did, there suddenly was an empty pocket. So I'd I'd proposed this idea of a kind of a bag of goodies, a little plastic bag with a badge in and perhaps some sweets and a toy. And that was one of the very few things that we weren't allowed to do because it was a it was a marketing nightmare and and um EMI really drew the line at that. So we put it all onto one sheet of paper, the sergeant stripes, a badge, um and we put that as an insert into the second sleeve.

Presenter6:51

How much do you think that jacket, that cover, and its design contributed to the success of the album?

Peter Blake6:58

I think a lot, and and I don't think the Beatles really appreciate how much. I mean, I don't know whether you've ever heard the stories that we were paid so little to do it, we were paid two hundred pounds, and recently this all came up again when the anthologies were being talked about. And the the album cover has won prizes, which the album doesn't necessarily win. I mean, it's I think it's been recognised quite often as being, you know, the the the number one album cover, but the record isn't often the number one album. It's usually thirty or forty.

Presenter7:30

Yeah. Uh Number

Peter Blake7:30

Yeah.

Peter Blake7:31

Record number two brings back ex extraordinary memories, and not even particular memories, but memories of of um of childhood and and um wonderful things that have happened.

Speaker 37:50

Just a dream ago

Speaker 37:56

When

Speaker 27:57

The world.

Speaker 27:59

Was you?

Presenter8:12

When the World Was Young, sung by Peggy Lee.

Presenter8:15

So, Peter Blake, you're a working class boy from an area of Kent which produced Mick Jagger, Henry Cooper, and the Mods. A strange area, you've called it, and you've said you were a weird little boy. Are the two connected?

Peter Blake8:27

I don't think so. I mean, I call it the Strange Area because it's it's that bit that's between the east end of London. It's between the countryside of Kent. As you've suggested, the whole mod movement really started there. David Bowie came from that area, came from Bromley. And it produces a particular kind of person. The Stones came from there. But I think I I was an odd little boy, um that was a quite separate thing. Um

Presenter8:52

But why were you on?

Peter Blake8:54

I I think I was pathologically shy. I mean, I couldn't go into a shop. If if I was with my dad and he said, Would you go in and get me twenty gold flake or whatever? I couldn't. I couldn't go literally couldn't go in through the door. And and that was probably some kind of um state which now would be treated. But you I I was painfully shy.

Presenter9:14

So to be evacuated as you were as a as a seven year old to a rather curious household was incredibly painful, wasn't it?

Peter Blake9:23

On the day war was declared, the air raid siren went immediately, and we were all sort of bundled into the the the one Anderson shelter in the street. And I think everybody panicked, and we were literally looking up at the sky for the for the bombs to fall, and we were evacuated th the next day, I think.

Peter Blake9:40

And it was a strange household. Um the the lady's name was Mrs Lofts. Her husband uh had been a steward had been in the Royal Navy and was a steward at Greenwich at that point. So he would come back about once every three months with tales of the sea and you yarns and w you he was a sort of magical figure to us. There was a son called Peter, a daughter called May, a a farm worker called Bill, who's um who every morning would get up at five o'clock in the morning and he would fart from the top of the stairs to the bottom in one continuous fart. Um so that was um pretty strange. And a man called Mr Grace who had been in the Boer War, who was about six foot six tall. He'd had a leg amputated on the battlefield and never left his room except to walk we would see him from the school, you were at the sort of striding at the top of the the hills like Captain Ahab. So I mean it was a pretty strange household.

Presenter10:42

And what about you in all of this? I mean, d did you show any artistic skills? Were you sketching Captain Ahab or?

Peter Blake10:48

No, I I wasn't in in any way a child prodigy. The the only reason I went to art school was that while we were in Essex you had to take the examination for where you were from. So I had to take the Kent examination in Essex by myself for the grammar school and failed it. And then later I took an examination for the technical school in Gravesend. And at the interview they said um if you wanted to go to art school you could do a little drawing exam and you can go to the art school and and really that's where it started.

Presenter11:19

So you went to Gravesend Art School, I think, aged fourteen. Who or what were you drawing and painting then when you got there?

Peter Blake11:27

I went to what was called the junior art department. So, um I mean, I was probably the only person who ever went to art school in short trousers. You still in sort of grey flannel short trousers. And at the very first life class we did, the model was Quentin Crisp, who then, I suppose, was in his late twenties, had bright blue hair, lipstick, white make up and blue nails. I mean f so for a little boy of fourteen who'd cycled to school on his racing bicycle, it was slightly colourful and alarming.

Presenter12:00

Record number three.

Peter Blake12:02

Record number three.

Peter Blake12:03

is Mrs. Shufflewick, who in fact was was Rex Jamieson. It was one of the first acts where um a man dressed as a woman. It was a radio act, so you couldn't see him. And and he did it um as a a kind of drunken char woman. He later did it on television in one of those kind of fold over floral aprons and and a turban. But the I remember him mainly from the radio.

Presenter12:27

So I got these. I took all my c I've got a stitch on, all in the bundle under my arm, and I was up the staircase. Everything in the garden was lovely, not a sound.

Presenter12:38

And I got to the bit when it bends round the corner of the top and I got the shock of me. I was on top of a 29 bass.

Presenter12:56

And all these people turn round, you know.

Presenter13:01

Or sober.

Presenter13:06

You know, I just think it's just I'd never seen a woman with no clothes on on top of a bus before.

Presenter13:12

So none of them minded, so I

Presenter13:15

I I just stood there, you know, I thought I'd stare them out.

Presenter13:23

This is Shufflewick Entertains with Rex Jamieson from the album Look In at the Local, hence all the background noise, and memories for Peter Blake, my castaway of the fifties back in Kent.

Presenter13:33

When you applied Peter to the RCA, the Royal College of Art, you intended to study illustration, I think, but you got her a a place at the School of Painting instead. Why? What happened?

Peter Blake13:43

When I'd finished the the kind of basic training, which was the old intermediate examination, I did a year of an illustration course and Robin Darwin, who was the then the the rector of the Royal College, saw my portfolio and I'd put one small painting of my sister in and he said, um take this boy in the painting school. And I think that's what makes me what I am, that that I if I do illustration, I don't patronise it. I think if painters do graphic work, they often kind of patronise it. And if if graphic artist you often find graphic artists who want to be painters but but don't become painters. So I think I am quite a rare bird.

Presenter14:24

So you're saying i illustration, graphic art is considered the inferior skill?

Peter Blake14:28

By the painters.

Presenter14:29

But the result of being that kind of hybrid is that when you have painted.

Presenter14:35

Critics, I think, sometimes haven't taken you as seriously as you've they they've accused you of being lightweight, haven't they?

Peter Blake14:40

That's right. I I think in a way perhaps I am. The rea my reason for painting i is a kind of a b you a a jolly one, a cheerful one. I mean I want to celebrate, I want to make magic, I want to do um happy pictures, and that at times hasn't been very fashionable.

Presenter14:55

So your lack of serious intent works against us.

Peter Blake14:57

I think so. I think it does.

Presenter15:00

You you also attracted a lot of flack, I think, in in the seventies when you set up a kind of ruralist movement. You went to live a kind of rural idle in the West Country, didn't you? Picnicking and painting and so on.

Peter Blake15:09

Pitching King and

Presenter15:11

The critics were pretty merciless then, weren't they?

Peter Blake15:14

In in the seventies, I think what upset them um I won't go into the whole way w the ruralists um happened, but a ruralist is someone who moves from the city to the country. That's the dictionary definition. So we were all city folk who who who had moved to the country.

Peter Blake15:31

Um our manifesto sort of was to paint you magic and love and even sentimentality. And you even now people can't accept that sentimentality can be a reason to paint. I mean it it jars ev even as I say it now, and I think it's a very positive emotion.

Presenter15:51

Next record.

Peter Blake15:53

Next record is um I I think my old time singing hero, Chet Baker. I I saw Chet Baker when he first came to London in the fifties and was lucky enough to meet him two or three times and love his voice.

Speaker 316:07

Your answer was goodbye And there was even postage due I fell in love just once

Speaker 316:20

I'm glad it had to be

Speaker 316:24

Everything happens to the

Presenter16:32

Chet Baker and Everything Happens to Me with Raymond Foll on piano, Benoit Cursin on bass and Jean Louis Vial on drums.

Presenter16:41

It was a few years ago, Peter, that you were invited to become associate artist at the National Gallery. What was the deal? What was on offer?

Peter Blake16:49

What what was offered was two years at the National Gallery with the studio, and you put on an exhibition at the end of that time. It had to relate to the collection, and there had to be some kind of link with the public. And the what I chose to do was have an open day on the last Friday of each month.

Presenter17:08

So they could come into your studio.

Peter Blake17:10

At that point they could come into the studio.

Presenter17:11

But you spent most of your time there?

Peter Blake17:14

Ye yes, it I mean, it became my main studio.

Presenter17:16

And and when you say you had to you had to what make connections with all of the pieces of art that were on display there?

Peter Blake17:24

Yes, I I suppose the simplest solution would have been to have done straight transcriptions and and just copied pictures. But I did pictures about pictures. I mean for example, there was a painting called The Venuses Outing to Weymouth, which um I I wanted to do a picture about myths and I realized how many Venuses there were. So I I used um Constable's Weymouth Bay as a setting and and th the concept was that all these Venuses went to the seaside in the Shara bank and they had had a picnic on the beach.

Presenter17:53

They had a cricket match as well, didn't they?

Peter Blake17:55

Well, the Cherubs had a cricket match.

Presenter17:57

What did you say to yourself? I I can be inspired here. First of all, there's a lot of Venuses.

Peter Blake18:02

Well, that that wasn't the first inspiration. I I knew I had if I did it, I had to start straight away, because I'm I'm a terrible kind of player about her. I mean, I would have arranged the studio and made it pretty and spent wasted a lot of the time. So I wanted to start immediately, and I chose a painting which I thought had a wonderful title. It was called Exhibition of Rhinoceros at Venice by Longhi. And I'd been doing a series of work about Venice Beach, so it was a perfect way to start.

Presenter18:32

Tell me about record number five.

Peter Blake18:34

Record number five is is um my old mate Ian Dury. Um our paths have often crossed. I taught him as a student. I'm a hero of his and he's a hero of mine, which is a a nice combination.

Speaker 218:46

Reasons to be Cheerful, Part Three.

Speaker 218:50

Summer Buddy Holly, the working folly, good golly miss Molly and boats Ammersmith Pully, the Bolshaw and Bally, jump back in the alley and nanny goats AT Winner's Camels, Dominica Camels, all other members plus equal boats, seeing Piccadilly, Fanny Smith and Willie, being rather silly and porrie oats. I bet you Brennan Barrett, she ought to come and share it. Your work and we can spare it. Yellow socks, too short to be haughty, too nothing to be naughty. Going on forty, no electric shots.

Speaker 319:11

Uh

Presenter19:14

Ian Dury and the Blockheads with their Reasons to Be Cheerful, Part 3.

Presenter19:19

Let's talk about another series of your paintings in in this exhibition as a result of your being at the National Gallery, and that's to do with Madonna's, because you took a lot of classical Madonna's and transposed them, didn't you, into modern settings with the pop star Madonna in the background and a classical Madonna.

Presenter19:38

Breastfeeding the Christ child. What was the b I see you're making connections, which is what your brief was. But what is the point beyond that? Should we just smile at that connection and pass on?

Peter Blake19:48

Well, one of one of the paintings I was already doing before I was offered the National Gallery Post was a picture called Madonna of Venice Beach, which was about the idea of Madonna the singer and a Madonna and child almost meeting on at Venice Beach. So I continued with that one. And then there's a series of smaller ones where in one, for instance, there's a Madonna and child and someone riding a bicycle who clearly can't see the Madonna and child. So it's about um it's about magic again, it's about whether they know she's there or not, and the oddness of suddenly there being a m Madonna and child in that kind of setting.

Presenter20:30

It's just the juxtaposition, as with the Venuses on Weymouth Beach. What about another one you did, the nine prettiest bottoms in the National Gallery?

Peter Blake20:31

Jim.

Presenter20:38

Whose bottoms were they?

Peter Blake20:40

Boucher certainly was one of them, and I think there was a a Rubens, and I think there was a Renoir.

Peter Blake20:44

In what I I did another series called um

Peter Blake20:49

in homage to woman, which was the ten prettiest heads, you know, the ten prettiest faces. So I think the nine prettiest bottom maybe sort of later came out of that. And it just was the the idea of uh I suppose it's a slightly cheeky idea of of just

Presenter21:03

Yeah.

Peter Blake21:04

Exactly. Of of just choosing the the the nine and prettiest bottoms and putting them together.

Presenter21:10

So you're happy that what you were doing was making these connections and creating a kind of comic absurdity, really, just that was entertaining, that was well done, you hoped, and and that people would be interested in?

Peter Blake21:23

I think both. The the the Madonna um

Presenter21:23

Buzz

Peter Blake21:27

The National Gallery Madonna was a terribly serious picture. I mean, it wasn't a joke at all. It was a serious m religious Madonna and child. So it it it was rather serious, sad pictures and an element of humour, a mixture.

Presenter21:41

It's just I came across this phrase that was in the programme for the exhibition. It was said that that this was the whispering of artists to each other across the centuries. I wondered if that wasn't a teensy weensy bit pretentious.

Peter Blake21:53

I thought it was a beautiful phrase. I think Marco Livingston wrote it and it it's just um me picking up on on something that's already painted and in a way there's a return. It ha while I was there, they showed the Pope Innocent X painting by Velasquez and towards the end of its run there they added three bacons and and they reflected in each other and it almost was exactly what he meant.

Presenter22:19

The person the work certainly had a a profound effect on was you, because I think you said that it was the culmination of your career, really. Is that how you feel about it?

Peter Blake22:28

Yes, halfway through I I suddenly thought I'm doing more work than I've ever done in a two year period. I'll never show in a better place. So this has to be I I talked about it at the open days in terms of theatre, that the the Tate show was the end of the second act and the National Gallery show was the finale, so it was the you know it was the big crescendo, the final the final kind of song.

Peter Blake22:53

But then everything from then could be an encore, and in an encore you can do something quite different. So really I've moved on to the encores now.

Presenter23:02

Sixth record.

Peter Blake23:03

Sixth record is um Dion Warwick and That's What Friends Are For.

Peter Blake23:11

I think friends are very important. I mean, it sounds almost banal to say it, but um I mean my wife has become a great friend of mine and friendship be it becomes more and more important perhaps as you get older.

Speaker 223:24

And uh

Speaker 223:26

Never thought I'd feel this way.

Speaker 223:30

And this part is out

Speaker 323:31

I can't say.

Speaker 323:33

Glad I got the chance to say

Speaker 323:38

Let I d

Speaker 223:39

Do you believe I love you?

Speaker 223:42

Can do

Speaker 223:44

I should never go away.

Speaker 223:48

Well then close your eyes and try.

Speaker 223:51

The other way we do today.

Presenter23:55

Leon Warwick, and that's what friends are for. You called that exhibition Now We're Sixty-Four because you are. Tell me about the the Encore. Is this the Shrine for Elvis?

Peter Blake24:06

Yes, th w when I was asked to go to the National Gallery, I was alwa already working on an exhibition called In Homage to Elvis Presley. I'd I'd done a show about five years ago, In Homage to Marilyn Monroe. So I was putting that together. So I've just moved into a new big studio in Hammersmith and I'm working on that exhibition.

Presenter24:24

But what will it be? How big will it be?

Peter Blake24:26

Uh The the main piece will be about twelve feet long by eight feet high, and it's as though it's a uh a wall of a house, so it has a picture rail and a skirting board. And on the wall is a collection of popular paintings of women. So there's a Trechikov and there there's some pictures I've found in in junk shops. And in the middle of that collection someone has cleared the space and made a shrine to Elvis Presley. So there's a table, fairy lights, Elvis ephemera, um either music playing all the time or a video playing all the time, and or everything about Elvis.

Presenter25:04

So it's quite large, this thing.

Peter Blake25:05

His trophy

Peter Blake25:06

By eight feet, and it also comes into the room. There there's a carpet with the table on and some toys on on the floor.

Presenter25:12

So it's not the sort of thing anybody's going to buy, is it?

Peter Blake25:16

Um, probably not. I mean, unless a museum bought it. But I think every so often y you you one makes a a a kind of folly or or a white elephant. I think you have to make them.

Presenter25:26

Record number seven.

Peter Blake25:28

I've noticed in in in some some of the people on the island, um even if they choose all opera or all classical music, they sometimes put in a kind of popular song for street cred. I mean it's often Noel Coward or it's Colt Porter. So I think this is my popular song and it's to remind me of of my daughter Rose.

Presenter25:48

What'd you think about that? Now you know how I feel. Say you can handle my love. Are you for real?

Speaker 325:57

I won't wait.

Presenter25:57

Yeah.

Speaker 325:57

Hastings.

Speaker 225:59

I'll give you a try. If you really bug me, then I'll say goodbye. Yeah, I won't tell you what I want, what I really, really want. Don't tell me.

Presenter26:07

What you want, what you really, really want to have, I wanna have a wanna really, really, really wanna take a seat.

Speaker 226:13

If you wanna be my lover

Presenter26:15

Spice Girls and Wannabe, to remind you of your nine-year-old daughter, Rose. You've always been known, Peter, for having numerous works in progress, and I think you've started to finish them off recently. You've just delivered one to David Hockney thirty years after you started.

Presenter26:31

Does that mean that you have intimations of your own mortality?

Peter Blake26:35

I think you do as you get older. At the National Gallery my intention was was very much to finish things off. I intended to only start about ten things and I was determined to complete them and kind of put this whole thing to rest. But of course I I started so many that it happened again, you know, and a lot of those pictures were in progress. But I am bringing things to a conclusion, yes, and I think you do a bit.

Presenter26:59

Because you not least because you've been ill, haven't you?

Peter Blake27:02

Yes, I I've um I've had a couple of scares. I had a a minor heart attack and I had a a tumor removed which um for a week I was told it was probably cancerous and I I think you do face um life and death at times like that. And as you I think you you you suddenly there is a point where you're no longer immortal. I mean you you're aware of your mortality and you start to clear the desk. I mean it sounds it it it sounds more mournful than it is, but you're closer to the end of your life than the beginning, I suppose.

Presenter27:33

So you're in your encore, period?

Peter Blake27:35

My uncle, period.

Presenter27:36

But it could be your brightest and your best, yet, perhaps.

Peter Blake27:36

Yeah.

Peter Blake27:39

Well, things are good. Yes. I mean, I'm very happy wi wi with Chrissie. Uh my two elder daughters are are wonderful. I mean, I'm working very well. I'm moving into a new studio, so it's a very optimistic time.

Presenter27:51

Last record

Peter Blake27:52

Last record is um Judy Garland singing over the rainbow.

Speaker 328:00

With a rainbow way off

Speaker 328:09

John Land that I heard of

Speaker 328:14

One

Speaker 228:14

Single lullaby

Presenter28:22

Turn up.

Presenter28:26

Judy Garland and Somewhere Over the Rainbow from the original soundtrack of The Wizard of Oz I've always liked the idea of Troubles melting like lemon drop.

Peter Blake28:34

Yeah.

Presenter28:36

If you could only take one of those eight records, Peter.

Peter Blake28:40

I think um When the World Was Young, the Peggy Lee song, it it's a difficult choice, but it does conjure up so many memories that I think in playing it you you'd you'd remember your childhood and you you'd remember you'd make up memories, you'd dream. What about your book?

Peter Blake28:55

At first I was going to ask you whether I could take the complete works of Dickens, and then I decided that you might not let me. True. And and my sister's son is a writer. His name is Lawrence Norfolk. He's written two books, some L'Emprier's Dictionary and The Pope's Rhinoceros, and I tried to read them and I've never had time, and I have to confess to him here that I haven't. I'll I'll take L'Emprier's Dictionary.

Presenter29:02

True.

Peter Blake29:20

and study it.

Presenter29:22

And your luxury.

Peter Blake29:23

Well, my luxury um I don't have many ambitions left, and and one of them is a curious one. I want to see my stomach muscles again. I tend to be portly, and I know they're there, so I'll take a a a home gym.

Presenter29:37

Peter Blake, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs.

Speaker 329:48

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