Christina Noble

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.

Presenter0:31

My castaway this week is a woman with a highly personal mission. From Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam, she runs a foundation devoted to helping the country's poor, orphaned, and abandoned children. She understands their suffering better than most. She was a Dublin slum child, brought up in appalling poverty, whose mother died when she was ten, and whose alcoholic father abandoned her and her brothers and sisters. She was gang raped when she was sixteen and lived on the streets. Later, she suffered in marriage to a violent and unfaithful husband.

Presenter1:03

Then eight years ago she began to realize a dream she'd had many years previously. She went to Vietnam to help those who are, as she was, the innocent victims of cruelty and neglect. Since then, through the foundation that bears her name, she's provided food, medicine, education and love for more than sixty thousand children of the street. She is Christina Noble.

Presenter1:27

It was a dream, Christina, a dream that you had back in nineteen seventy one that's at the root of this remarkable work. Tell me about that dream first.

Presenter1:36

It was a dream, but it was ri it was so real. There were children running, a lot of children, with two in particular up the front, and

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The face as I'm telling you, I can remember the face of the girl. Her face was screwed up and the tears were coming down.

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and you could feel in her body

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Her desperation.

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And

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I tried to catch her hand to stop them falling into the ground that was opening up and behind them there was uh smoke, lots of smoke, red, black, and beyond the smoke was Vietnam. But Vietnam was written in the sky in the sky. When you got up the next morning after having had this dream, did you recognize that it was something different? It was something you were going to do something about? Was it that instantaneous the experience?

Christina Noble2:29

Take me to the next one.

Presenter2:37

Um

Presenter2:40

I see some of the children growing up and I think

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The dream really was for a reason. It really, really was. Not least because I think when you went there eventually, eighteen years later, and started to help all these children who are called

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Budoi, isn't it? Budoi, the dust the dust of life in Vietnam.

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Some of the first ones you met looked exactly like the children in the dream.

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Absolutely hang and hung.

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They were two little girls, and

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and I remember them looking up at me, little tiny things.

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And uh

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They sort of thought I was so important, this woman with a nice white T-shirt, blue cravat, nice white trousers.

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uh the hair, you know, and they looked up and it was like it was almost like I used to think that everybody was so so big, so tall, so superior.

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So respectable.

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So what you were recognizing really was that there's

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You know, not a lot of difference between an Irish gutter and a Vietnamese gutter. Absolutely no difference whatsoever. Every child has the same

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Needs.

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Tell me about your first record.

Presenter3:55

The first record is One Day at a Time because.

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Most of my life has been that way. I've had to take one day at a time.

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Um

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And I actually put it on at six o'clock every morning. That's to tell me

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Today is another day. You've got through all those days in your life, and for the children it's another day. Look where you're at. Look where you've taken them to now.

Christina Noble4:20

One day

Christina Noble4:23

I'm sweet pizza.

Christina Noble4:30

I'm home.

Speaker 24:30

I'm only here.

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Uh

Speaker 24:32

Man.

Speaker 24:35

I'm just a woman.

Speaker 24:40

Help me believe.

Speaker 24:42

What I could be and all that I am.

Presenter4:49

One Day at a Time, sung by Lena Martell. So, Christina Noble, you work with a staff of sixty people or more. You have small schools, medical centres, a homeless centre, and much more.

Presenter5:01

You fundamentally took on the problem that the authorities in Saigon, in Ho Chi Minh City, were willing to ignore. But are there endless numbers of these children, these these boudoi dust of life? Do they just go on coming?

Presenter5:16

Yeah, it's getting easier, I think, now, from the point of view that there's more education about children, there's more social sort of

Presenter5:24

activity going on. There wasn't at that time, there was nothing.

Christina Noble5:27

Hmm.

Presenter5:28

And I've got to say there's more organisations in there.

Presenter5:32

You know, that that's kind of that's I sometimes think that's a bit like putting big plasters over something.

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You have to start at the beginning, which is the kids.

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Educate them.

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From the belly, you know, from the womb to the straight. But you've got to cope with their immediate problems as well. So there's malnutrition first of all. And also, I think a lot of them suffer still, don't they? The effects even a couple of generations on of Agent Orange, this defoliant that the Americans sprayed across the African country.

Christina Noble5:58

Defoliate

Christina Noble6:00

Um across Vietnam.

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The children have serious malnutrition problems.

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diseases are associated with malnutrition.

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Malaria, some of them septicemia, pneumonia, children with tumors, rare cancers, skin cancers.

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I mean, kids'll be abandoned in a bin or on the street, or you might get somebody call me and say, Christina, there's a child abandoned, you know.

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Now, I wasn't there to change the world. I wasn't there to do that. I'm more realistic in that than that.

Presenter6:35

And I thought to myself, the first thing I have to do is get a base. Now to get a base, um I don't know anything about communism or the way they work with the bureaucracy. I thought I have to get money. And I went to some oil companies and uh they just looked at me and s basically said bye bye.

Presenter6:52

I went to Enterprise Oil and I said please help me.

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I took a different attitude. I took Les Blair and Jeremy Martin.

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Down and show them some children. What executives of the company? Yeah, they're like big executives. And I put the children into their arms.

Christina Noble7:01

What exactly

Christina Noble7:02

Yeah.

Presenter7:07

And I said, don't tell me that they don't have the basic human rights of any child.

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Don't tell me they're different.

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Don't tell me that they are the dirt beyond dirt.

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I said, if you tell me that

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Then we are the same. We are more dirt than what they are.

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And that's how I got the money. It worked. It worked. And that was the beginning of it all, wasn't it?

Christina Noble7:27

It worked. It worked.

Christina Noble7:29

And that was the beginning of it all.

Speaker 37:32

Take

Christina Noble7:32

Yeah.

Presenter7:32

They they gave ten thousand dollars, ten thousand dollars.

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Christina Noble had ten thousand dollars. I remember jumping up. I couldn't believe it. I said, I don't believe it. I won't believe it till I see it.

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I got it.

Presenter7:47

And I thought, that's it. I can fight the whole world in a nice way. Do you understand me? I can trace the streets of London. I can go everywhere and say, this oil company trusted me, please.

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And in a way, that's how it all happened. I built a medical and social centre.

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Tell me about record number two.

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Record number two, which is the Dubliners.

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It brings back memories of my father, my father when he was a young man.

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and uh when I remember his trilby hat and his nice suit and his nice shoes that were polished and close memories of family and going for walks, you know, at Stillorgan and out by the Dodder River.

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and when he'd catch congareel and my mum'd chop it up and cook it.

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And they were the days where

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We had hope.

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And

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There was a feeling of this is only the beginning, but we're on our way.

Speaker 28:42

Raised on songs and stories

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Heroes of renown.

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But passing tales and glories that once was Dublin Town.

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The hallowed halls and houses, The haunting children rhymes.

Speaker 29:07

Bedawance was part of Dublin.

Speaker 29:11

Then the rag

Presenter9:13

The Dubliners performing Dublin in the rare old times, and singing about the place you, Christina Noble, were born, the Liberties Estate, near the Guinness Factory, in the heart of Dublin.

Speaker 29:21

In the

Christina Noble9:21

Artemis.

Presenter9:22

You were born at Christmas nineteen forty four.

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Tell me about the first ten years of your life before your mother died. How poor was poor?

Presenter9:32

Um

Presenter9:33

Poverty was like you might eat three days a week.

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Four days a week.

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And

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That that was brilliant.

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The worst thing was

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Um my father's drunkenness, his alcoholism.

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the way he drank everything, he the way he took his shirt off his back and s sold it.

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The way my mother my mother's face my mother was a really good woman she was a lady, you know, a real lady. Um

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She tried to give us a sort of peek at what the possibilities were beyond.

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That that p life of

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absolute, abject poverty and sickness.

Presenter10:20

And to do that she had to work all day.

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But she still couldn't do it, could she? She still she couldn't do it. My father drank and drank and drank and drank and drank, and then he'd come home and he'd just splash the dinner up on the wall that she had to work all day for. And he beat her up, didn't he? He beat her up and

Presenter10:39

He would stand in the flats and he'd sing

Presenter10:43

like the clown, and then he'd take all the money out of his pocket and throw it at the kids. And in the midst of it all, you seem to have found great pleasure, funnily enough, in all of this singing and dancing or performing, wanting you wanted to be a performer, didn't you? I did, yes. What did you do? Did you earn money singing?

Presenter11:01

I did. I sang in pubs. I sang outside of pubs. This is a a little girl, you know. A little tiny tot, you know. I I sang since I was about five or six years old.

Christina Noble11:05

This is a little girl, you know.

Presenter11:10

I tap danced, anything, you know, that could get a little bit of money.

Presenter11:15

I'd go into the pub and I'd say, Mister, do you want me to sing for you? you know, and can I go up on stage and do it? And I'd I'd get up and I'd sing, Grab your coat and get your hat.

Presenter11:24

Leave your worries on the doorstep. Not have a pair, a little pair of buckskin boots, you know, taps on them.

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And um

Presenter11:31

I would then go outside of the pub and I'd sing outside as well. I used to go down to the cinemas where the queues used to be in the cinemas and I'd sing.

Christina Noble11:37

Copy

Presenter11:39

You know, oh, we ain't got a barrel of

Presenter11:43

Money. And I'd have I'd have an outfit on me, you know, and I'd put red paper on my cheeks to make my cheeks look red and on my lips. So I looked like a stage person, you know. And

Presenter11:53

That was the light.

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That was the light around the desolation.

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One, two, three, four, you know. It was the dreams that kept you going. Dreams, dreams. So dreams. I I was the dreamer of dreamers, you know. But did did all of those dreams come to an end then when your mother died? When mum died, most of them came to an end. Uh it was never the same.

Christina Noble12:05

It's real.

Christina Noble12:09

Dreamers, you know.

Presenter12:18

Because mum had tuberculosis. I think the the the my mother's death itself was very traumatic because I was present at my mother's death.

Presenter12:27

And I had made my confirmation on the Thursday, and mum died on the Saturday. But I had this pink, beautiful dress on me and I remember being with my mother because I knew how hard my mother had worked for this. She'd slaved for this confirmation outfit. And I was standing there and just

Presenter12:46

Saw my mum and my mum was breathing really strange and all the blood you know, I w and as I as I went over the nun was trying to drag me away, you know.

Presenter12:54

The blood went all on my confirmation frock. It was like a big thing, you know, came out. And uh they were trying to drag me off, but I was holding her. I kept saying.

Christina Noble12:58

Hmm.

Presenter13:03

You know, you can't die, mum.

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You know

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You can't die, mammy. And I said to her, Do you want some lemon, you know, barley water? Because she always seemed to drink barley water, and it made her better, you say, before, you know.

Christina Noble13:14

Hmm.

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And the nun took me away and said, Your mother's gone to God, you know.

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M.

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That I shouldn't

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I shouldn't call her,'cause I was screaming.

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And they said that uh I was to let her go to God in peace.

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Tell me about your next record.

Presenter13:34

The next record is uh

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by the light of the silvery moon, by darkest day, because darkest day to me

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was everything that I wish my mother could have had.

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You know, I I love Dorothy. I wanted Doris Day to be my mum when my mum died.

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She was one of these people who was in the kitchen and she was singing and she was happy and she had this wonderful big smile.

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I love Durstay for that. I love Durstay for

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The way she

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She could make you for a very short time feel that you were safe.

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By the light

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Of the Silvery Moon.

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I want to spoon

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To my honey I'll croon Love's tune Honeymoon

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Keep her shinin' in June

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Your silvery beams will bring love's dreams, We'll be culling soon.

Presenter14:35

By the light of the silvery moon, sung by Doris Day from A Day at the Movies. And these days I gather, Christina, you sing in the clubs of of Saigon, Ho Chi Minh City, to to raise money, yeah? I sing uh I sing in a few uh not too many places now, but um I do sing, yeah, it's mainly to spread awareness. Uh For the children. But you're really sort of part of the local scene. The management says, look, now Christina Noble's here and she's going to pass the hat round afterwards, I think. Well, yes, at the same time, all the people are there and they're having a great time and they love it. But to call you the Mother Teresa of Saigon is not quite appropriate, really, is it? Absolutely not. And I'd say to you that recently in Ireland they called me Mother Teresa with balls basically. Excuse that expression, you know, if you can turn that off.

Christina Noble14:58

But you

Christina Noble15:02

That's right,

Christina Noble15:10

But the cooler the

Presenter15:27

In a way it's a bit like that. I am totally dedicated to what I do. Let's just go back to your life then, uh your early life in Dublin in the nineteen fifties, because you know, if it was possible, the conditions in which you lived got even worse after your mother's death, didn't they? Your father was then permanently drunk. You children were covered in fleas and scabies.

Presenter15:47

Was there nobody you could turn to? Were there no relatives or authorities in in Dublin, you know, who could help the hungry and the neglected? I mean, what about the Church?

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Couldn't turn to the church because

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We are

Presenter16:03

I I we f we were nobody, really. We were living in filth and dirt, uh scabies, fleas, ringworm, dermatitis on the eyelids and the hands. I had I had have all my eyelashes taken off in hospital. Um we were filth. Uh there's no doubt about that. And um we were ashamed. So eventually uh I suppose the inevitable happened and you were taken into care. Well well a kind of care. You would have been eleven going on twelve. Johnny was what seven, Katie five, Philomena three.

Presenter16:40

And you weren't sent away together, were you? You were split up.

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They separated me from my brothers and sisters, sent my brother to Artai and my other two sisters to another place, and they sent me.

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to this other part of of of Ireland.

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I could never accept the loss from my brothers and sisters. I could never accept the separation. I could never accept my mother's death.

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And uh

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I don't know if you could imagine.

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We were we were all we had.

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Tell me about record number four.

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Um, Eric Clapton, Danny Boy. It reminds me of when I would put my brother on my knee.

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And I would

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Put my arms around him and try to sing him to sleep, and I did it for my little baby sisters. I was trying to give them love.

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Protect them.

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But the reason I wanted Eric Clapton was because

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Eric Clapton, little boy died.

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And in a funny kind of way I I could feel his pain.

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Do you understand me, that loss he must have felt and

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The loss, being separated from my brothers and sisters, it was a death because we were told, I was told they were dead, and they were told I was dead.

Presenter18:24

Eric Clapton playing Danny Boy.

Presenter18:27

By the age of sixteen, Christina, you were out and back on the streets again, but of course by then you were a woman, and again perhaps the inevitable happened, you you were raped. Was that something that you'd lived in fear of?

Presenter18:40

Yes, I was I was a child in a f a woman's body. I was still a little tiny girl and knew nothing. And I was um I was raped by I I've never known if it was three or four. I can never remember.

Presenter19:00

Ah yeah.

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They took my

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My body away from me.

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They took my innocence away from me, they took my dignity away.

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But did you understand did you know what was happening?

Presenter19:18

Yes, I knew what was happening. I thought I was going to die, I thought it was going to be murdered, but

Presenter19:24

But you didn't report it, you didn't go to the police. In all of this story, you never turned to the authorities. Was that born of ignorance as much as anything as well? Did you not feel you didn't know how you could do that?

Christina Noble19:34

Yeah.

Presenter19:36

I didn't go because I didn't trust them.

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I didn't trust the police. I didn't trust the priests.

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I didn't trust adults.

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I didn't see them no more. They became invisible to me after that. Adults just simply became invisible to me. And you lived you lived alone in the park, I think, didn't you? You lived in Phoenix Park, in a hole in the ground.

Presenter20:02

Yes, I live near the Maliers, the monument.

Christina Noble20:04

The money

Presenter20:05

And what you didn't know because of your ignorance was that as a result of this rape you were pregnant. Yes.

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And M.

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I had a child, the child was taken away from me because they said I was homeless and

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I didn't have red takes to bring him up.

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So they just took him away.

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I don't know any more than that, really. And you've never found him since? No.

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I have gone back and asked them.

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But uh

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I didn't have any rights.

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So you were, what, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen years old. Your mother was in a pauper's grave, your baby son was lost to you, had gone for adoption, your brothers and sisters

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you couldn't get hold of it um

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And you decided to leave Ireland. I think you you said before now, I I died in Ireland and no one ever knew it. That about sums it up, really, doesn't it?

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I died in earth.

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I lost everything.

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I lost my roots, my country.

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as well as my child.

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Tell me about your next record.

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The Clouds Will Soon Roll By reminds me of the little girl that used to play the organ in the cinema.

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And, you know, the chap who works at uh our foundation, Michael.

Presenter21:32

He loves organ music and the whole two t together we often talk about it and have some laughs and jokes about it and this will make me think of him.

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The Clouds Will Soon Roll By played on the Wurlitzer organ by Russell Holmes.

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Um you fled to England, Christina, to Birmingham, where you were to meet and marry a Greek, with whom you had three children. You've written that this man was

Presenter22:27

quite terribly violent towards you, and once within a week of your giving birth, at other times when you were pregnant. I know it's a question of and often asked of abused women, but why didn't you leave him? Why did you stay for thirteen years and keep on taking it? I'd nowhere to go.

Presenter22:44

I had really nowhere to go.

Presenter22:46

I had no family where I could really go to. I could I had nowhere to go, and I was so scared they took my children away. I was so scared, you see.

Christina Noble22:52

You say?

Presenter22:53

But you did manage to leave eventually, than thank heavens, and and you found happiness with a man who was kind to you. And your your life really began to come right, didn't it, in the late seventies? You began to get qualifications, you set up a catering business. You know, you you found yourself really, didn't you? You began to unravel all this awfulness that had happened to you. I went to college.

Presenter23:19

I did really well, you know. But you'd had that dream, that dream we were talking about at the beginning.

Christina Noble23:20

But you'd have

Presenter23:24

And so all the time there it was, you were bringing up your children and you were

Presenter23:28

Going to college and you set up in business and catering and so on, but all the time that dream was there. And then one day, when you were forty-four, you set out for Heathrow Airport with a ticket for Saigon in your pocket and a few pounds. Can you remember the feeling in that moment? I was nervous. I was very, very nervous. The things that was going through my mind was, was the dream foolish? Maybe I am tapped, you know, maybe I am mad.

Presenter23:57

But yet I still had to do it. Nothing could stop me.

Presenter24:00

Tell me about your next record, number six.

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Shuli Basi, This is my life.

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When I was in a mental hospital I had a nervous breakdown.

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Um I I don't remember I don't remember very much about it, except

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I drew all of the mental institution, drew all of everything.

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Everything.

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I couldn't be changed and the r record that kept me going through all of it was This Is My Life. Funny how a breaking heart can make me start to say what good is mine.

Presenter24:42

Funny how I often seem to think I'll

Christina Noble24:45

Find another dream in my life.

Christina Noble24:52

Till I look around and see this great big world

Presenter24:55

Path of me and mine.

Presenter25:04

Shirley Bassey and this is my life.

Presenter25:07

There are, Christina, so many wonderful stories, particularly for those of us who enjoy the kind of Cinderella syndrome of you smuggling all these scruffy kids into s smart hotels in Saigon and washing them in the showers and letting them have a whale of a time in the hotel swimming pool. You must have got into terrible trouble with the management for all of that, but you just needed to do it. You just did it, didn't you? I just did it because it was very natural for me to do that. They had the right to be in there. If I paid for them, that was okay. They were my guests. And simply that's how I saw them as my guests. And you gave them a huge Christmas party on Monday. They had a plastic time. They had Father Christmas. They had the guitar, they had singing, they had presents, they had Christmas trees, they had great meals, and they had these wonderful waiters with the dicky bows and the girls looking after them.

Presenter25:53

But not least they had they got all the things you've never had. They got all the things I never had. That's quite an important part of your story, really, isn't it? What you're doing now is you're giving these children

Christina Noble25:53

But not

Presenter26:04

What you never had, what you always wanted.

Christina Noble26:05

Yeah.

Presenter26:06

I'm giving them love and I'm helping them to realise their dreams. We have children. Can I say there's been over 70,000 children now who's come through us? You're able to send these children across the world for operations that people offer to give and so on and help in that way. But you spend most of your time in Ho Chi Minh City itself and a lot of your time out on the streets. That's right. Cuddling these children, being with them. Um but I understand that that w where you live your your own rooms are crammed with dolls and soft toys. Yes, they are. Have t uh teddy bears and soft toys and

Presenter26:47

Dolls with babies and all kinds of stuff. And these are these are not just to give away, these are perhaps, you know, toys you never had. These are for me. I never had I never had a toy when I was small.

Christina Noble26:50

And these are

Christina Noble26:53

There's toys you never have.

Presenter26:58

I never had a toy. But you've got it all now. I've got everything. I mean, I am. Can I just say to you that I'm the luckiest person in the world?

Presenter27:05

I mean that with my heart and soul.

Presenter27:08

Tell me about your next record, number seven.

Presenter27:10

Abba, I had a dream in nineteen seventy one.

Presenter27:15

And that dream.

Presenter27:17

It took me the other side of the world to have the children of Vietnam.

Presenter27:21

And children in Vietnam are learning to sing I Have a Dream in Vietnamese.

Presenter27:28

Yeah.

Speaker 327:28

Ha

Presenter27:28

Uh

Speaker 327:28

And the tree

Speaker 327:32

For some to sing

Speaker 327:36

To help me call

Speaker 327:41

Anything. Uh

Christina Noble27:46

If you see the wonder

Christina Noble27:51

One of the things

Presenter27:52

Everything.

Presenter27:55

I HAVA DREAM by ABBA. And you say, Christina, you sing that wherever you go, to the children, wherever you find them. Yes, I sing it all over the world to all the kids, and they clap and they bang their feet while I'm singing it, so it's the children yes. And there's been talk of making a film about your life, is that right? Do you think it's going to happen?

Christina Noble28:10

And there's been

Christina Noble28:13

Do you think it's gonna

Presenter28:15

I think it will happen. I know it'll happen, in fact. There's very serious talks going on at the moment. And Glen Close might play you, is that right? Somebody mentioned Glen Close and you know

Christina Noble28:20

And slip.

Christina Noble28:22

Yeah.

Presenter28:26

I don't want to be uh a kind of uh movie star image played about me. I'm a very simple woman and down to earth person. So there has to be substance so that it will benefit the children worldwide and it will benefit

Presenter28:41

People like me

Presenter28:43

who thought they were nobody, nobody's child. And Christina, may I ask finally, what happened in all of this to your faith? Because as you've said, the you know, the Catholic Church didn't serve you too well when you were in Dublin, and I think it's disappointed you on several occasions since when you've been fundraising and so on.

Presenter29:01

Do you still have your faith? Is it still there? I love God. I'm I'm I I have such a great relationship with our Lord.

Presenter29:08

I you know, I told you about being lucky, I mean, that's what I'm telling you, and I'm not the easiest person in the world to be around because I'm always running around, I'm my mind is always doing something.

Presenter29:19

And I say to our Lord sometimes, I'm really sorry I forgot to say thanks for yesterday, because I get through things that you can't believe.

Presenter29:26

I managed to get papers that nobody can get. You know, I'm talking about bureaucracy.

Presenter29:32

And I would say that through our Lord we have achieved what could have been probably deemed as the impossible.

Presenter29:41

Lost record.

Presenter29:42

The last record now it's about uh it's the Irish uh National Symphony Orchestra. Three or four of them came to Vietnam um to see me. I don't know them, I'd never met them or anything, but they read about me, so off they went. They were so impressed by what they found.

Presenter29:58

They they said they were going to do a benefit concert for the Christina Noble Children's Foundation. And can I say we're in fourteen countries now, which is a good sign, you know.

Presenter30:07

I couldn't believe it, you know. I I said to Christina at our office, I said, Yeah, they won't do that, they're just maybe emotional at the moment.

Presenter30:15

They did, and they invited me to that concert and it was huge. There was me sitting down listening to the National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland. I couldn't believe it. Here we had another dream that was being realized, you know.

Presenter31:27

Berndt Glemse with the National Symphony Orchestra of Ireland conducted by Yeji Maksimuk.

Presenter31:33

Now, if you could only take one of those records, Christina, one of the eight, which one would you choose?

Presenter31:38

I think I'd have to choose Bassey, surely Basi, this is my life.

Presenter31:43

Because I was so near death and now I'm so alive.

Presenter31:48

And what about a book? Um we give you the Bible and we give you the complete works of Shakespeare, so that'll keep you busy. But um what about a book of your own?

Presenter31:57

I think I'd like the book Kells because I'd like to understand a bit my about my Irish heritage, my background. And what about a luxury?

Presenter32:05

Well, I'd take a photograph of a cottage in Ireland with me and I'd pin it on the tree, a little cottage with a little bit of land, where I could pull flowers, and I would bring my brothers and sisters back.

Presenter32:17

and um I'd have a big fire and I would cook them a great big pot of stew. We may not talk about the past, but just one time we'd be together, and then I'd give them a key and I'd say

Presenter32:30

We still have our roots in Ireland.

Presenter32:32

Christina Noble, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs. Thank you so.

Speaker 332:45

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