Ralph Steadman

Speaker 10:00

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

Speaker 10:09

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

Presenter0:31

My Castaway this week is a cartoonist. Brought up in North Wales, he didn't start drawing seriously until he enrolled in a correspondence course run by a certain Percy V. Bradshaw. He got his first big break with Private Eye when his distinctive style, savage caricature conveyed through ballooning bodies and wild ink blots, became highly popular. With the American journalist Hunter S. Thompson, he collaborated on Gonzo, a form of reportage he's reluctant to define, but which took him all over the United States. Now an established illustrator and author with a string of publications behind him, he says, I use my work to exorcise fear. Maybe I'm just an old-fashioned coward. He is Ralph Steadman. So all that savagery and grotesque distortion and so on is your aggression.

Ralph Steadman1:21

It's a fraud. It's a savage front, actually, just just to l make people think that I actually am in control and I'm not in control of anything.

Presenter1:32

But what are you frightened of?

Ralph Steadman1:33

Uh that's why people have fear, you know, and particularly psychological fear, because they don't know what they're frightened of, but they just know they're frightened of something. And what I try to do is to draw it in some of the the more extreme.

Ralph Steadman1:48

kinds of drawing which I do. I do some drawings now called knee jobs, and just let my pen draw, and whatever comes out, I guess, is what I'm afraid of.

Presenter1:58

But it's people's knees, they say.

Ralph Steadman1:59

No, I have it sitting on my knee. Mind you, there are knees drawn. Are you? Are you.

Presenter2:04

Yeah, I thought you were doing legs these days instead of feet.

Ralph Steadman2:05

Yes, I am doing knees and legs, and and particularly for politicians I just refuse to draw their faces.

Presenter2:11

Why not?

Ralph Steadman2:12

Uh I I think it was a mark of disrespect. You know, I really wanted people to feel uh that I really disliked them intensely, and drawing their knees and their legs was much more insulting somehow.

Presenter2:25

But didn't you give up doing their faces, the faces of politicians, because they started to like it and wanted to buy them to put on the lavatory wall?

Ralph Steadman2:31

What's up?

Ralph Steadman2:32

I simply refused.

Ralph Steadman2:34

because I figured that by by expending our hard-earned skills on their personas, we were in fact doing them a favour, and I was not trying to do them a favour.

Ralph Steadman2:49

And

Ralph Steadman2:51

I to realize it was all just a game.

Speaker 32:53

Okay.

Ralph Steadman2:54

That's why it couldn't stand splitting image.

Ralph Steadman2:56

Because to me it was bringing the unacceptable into people's living rooms and making it acceptable.

Presenter3:02

Coming back to the fear, though, you will obviously

Ralph Steadman3:03

But you are

Presenter3:04

Frightened of Richard Nixon when you were drawing him. I'm going way back now, 72, I think, on the campaign track. Why?

Ralph Steadman3:08

I think I'm

Ralph Steadman3:10

I just felt that he represented a threat to the status quo in the world. He was.

Ralph Steadman3:17

manipulating a constitution which was there to protect people, and the people were not being protected, they were being used, manipulated, and eventually destroyed.

Presenter3:20

Yeah.

Presenter3:25

And it gave you you said at the time butterflies in your stomach to draw in

Ralph Steadman3:29

Whilst I was drawing in here.

Presenter3:30

But you were you were drawing him while Hunter S. Thompson, I mentioned the the American Doctor Hunter S. Thompson, was writing about him, and it was that series of works called Fear and Loathing.

Speaker 33:30

But

Presenter3:41

Thompson obviously loathed all of that Nixon et al.

Presenter3:45

Is yours the fear in fear and loathing?

Ralph Steadman3:48

It quite possibly could be, but I think he had fear too. He found he he first experienced his fear and loathing during the Chicago riots of'sixty eight, and uh it was then that he was he was butted and kicked and beaten, and he'd only come out of the hotel lobby into the front when this thing erupted.

Ralph Steadman4:08

And eventually took refuge again. I guess he's as big a coward as I am. Well, he's bigger when he's six foot six, but never mind.

Presenter4:15

I want to talk more about Hunter, and indeed you, but tell me about your first piece of music.

Ralph Steadman4:18

My first piece of music is really I I decided that my music on a desert island would have to either move me

Ralph Steadman4:24

To laughter or to tears, one or the other, or to some kind of nostalgia. And so I chose Toby Rix playing Haydn's concerto for trumpet and orchestra. And it's played on an instrument of his own invention, the Totorix. Now it sounds to me like a tin saxophone or a tin clarinet.

Presenter5:45

Toby Rix playing part of Haydn's concerto for trumpet and orchestra on an instrument of his own invention, the Totarix. That means a series of car horns, actually. You're probably right. And he was accompanied by the Willembreicher Collectif and the Mondrian strings.

Ralph Steadman5:53

And he was a company.

Presenter5:59

Then there was Gonzo. Then, come on, we've got to define it. It's a form of journalism created by you and Hunter Esther.

Ralph Steadman6:04

Well, can I I think mainly and uh primarily by Hunter Thompson because um he just wanted he didn't want to work with a photographer he wanted uh somebody that would draw.

Ralph Steadman6:14

And um it's a kind of journalism where you go to cover ostensibly to cover a story.

Ralph Steadman6:21

You sort of cover the story, but you're bored by the story. You have to recreate the story and make one of your own, and become part of it.

Presenter6:29

But particularly you'd be bored if it was the Kentucky Derby or the Americas covered. Everybody's covered it before, so it was a new way of doing an old story.

Ralph Steadman6:33

Come on, come on.

Ralph Steadman6:36

In a way, yes. What you got what are you going to say about it? There are horses and there are rather rich people drinking too many mint juleps, you know.

Presenter6:43

But I mean give me an example. Take me to the America's Cup for example 1972

Ralph Steadman6:46

Well, yes, nineteen seventy September. I was asked again after the Kentucky Derby, which was already.

Ralph Steadman6:54

Uh dubbed A Gonzo Story by a man called Bill Cardozo.

Ralph Steadman6:59

And they said, Would you like to go again? But this time it's the America's Cup, and I hate boats. I can't get on a boat, you know. And I knew I was going to be sick, seasick, and I was. But um.

Ralph Steadman7:10

By the end of the week Hunter realized that we had no story, as usual.

Ralph Steadman7:16

and we needed to do something and he said, Well, you're the artist from England, what do you want to do? He'd brought with him a red and a black spray can.

Ralph Steadman7:26

And he gave them to me. He says, Could you do some of these?

Ralph Steadman7:28

So I said, Well, look, I I don't know, what what do we mean? I could well, write something, endorse something, what what do you do all the time, you know, what what the goddamn you people from England do anyway You know So so I said, Well, I can

Ralph Steadman7:41

I could draw in one of the boats. Good idea Excellent. I'll hold you both.

Ralph Steadman7:45

and that afternoon, for sea sickness, he gave me a pill.

Ralph Steadman7:49

and the pill turned out to be psilocybin, which is hallucinogenic.

Ralph Steadman7:53

and uh it's the first drug I'd ever taken in my life, and I think it's the last, apart from diazepan to calm down. But uh he gave me that in the afternoon. It was about six o'clock that evening I began to see snarling red eyed dogs.

Ralph Steadman8:06

In a bar we were in.

Ralph Steadman8:09

and they were on the piano.

Ralph Steadman8:11

The water was ma you know how it makes with the moon reflecting on the water. It makes sort of

Ralph Steadman8:17

knife like slashes of white, but they were red for me.

Ralph Steadman8:23

And by this time I was so far gone, I would have done it. In fact I would, because, you know when you shake those little containers

Ralph Steadman8:31

They click, click, click, click. And that was the thing that alerted a guard. And said, What are you doing down there? Oh, just looking at the boats. Just looking at the boats. Oh, we're ruining our Ralph. We've got to free, Ralph. We must free. We've got to get out of here. Otherwise, I'll have police everywhere. They'll have guns, Ralph. They'll have guns. They'll put us in jail, Ralph. We're not supposed to be here. He puts his oars in the rollocks and pulls on them and falls backwards in the boat. See, these things come out, his legs in the air. I didn't get that. We were caught. Thank God we were caught. I would have been in prison.

Presenter8:58

Gonzo in action.

Ralph Steadman8:59

And we eventually got back to the back to the boat. We managed to escape everything. Well Hunter said, this is terrible, we failed Ralph. We must send up distress flares immediately. And he brought with him these distress flares and he shot three of them up into the up into the bay, red ones, green ones, and they all fell onto decks of boats and that started fires. And so the fire brigade were out. And of course the attention was completely off us. It was just distress flares, boats on fire.

Presenter9:27

But you certainly made a story.

Ralph Steadman9:29

It certainly made a story.

Presenter9:30

But I mean, if we're still attempting to define gonzo, first of all, then there are certain ingredients on there. There's got to be danger.

Ralph Steadman9:37

I sorta yes.

Presenter9:38

You two were mavericks. You were attempting to get away from the market.

Ralph Steadman9:39

You realize I'm best I work best on the edge.

Presenter9:43

Yeah.

Ralph Steadman9:43

That's the thing. On the edge of whatever it is we do.

Presenter9:44

On the edge

Presenter9:46

And there's got to be fear and loathing. Yeah I mean he detested those rich fat cats who owned big yachts.

Ralph Steadman9:48

Yeah.

Ralph Steadman9:52

Well big young the pigs, as he called them, you know, they're the that's what he

Presenter9:54

That was a cool.

Presenter9:55

I can understand that because I know that he was, you know, deeply, deeply concerned that that the American dream had all gone wrong. But why you? I mean, why should you care about all of that?

Ralph Steadman10:02

Mm.

Ralph Steadman10:05

Uh I suddenly took it very personally because I I saw I saw America as a screaming lifestyle. I took offence at it in a way that in a way I I I think I was brought up by moth my mother to be let her heart to be um

Ralph Steadman10:22

Rather moral.

Ralph Steadman10:24

boy, you know, law abiding, shall we say. And um the idea that that people were lying and cheating in high places and we know enough about that even here now.

Ralph Steadman10:38

It really offended me in a way that I thought I'm I'm here to do something I'm here on

Ralph Steadman10:42

On a mission.

Presenter10:44

Tell me about your second favourite one.

Ralph Steadman10:45

Well next one, I I've uh loved Neil Young ever since I first heard this L P Harvest, and I used to sing them myself in high school younger. And I love this song, Old Man. Uh I think it expresses um how I'm just beginning to feel now, actually.

Speaker 311:02

Lullabies, look in your eyes, Run around the same old pound Doesn't mean that much to me, To mean that much to you

Speaker 311:16

I've been first and last Look at how the time goes past But I'm all alone at last, rolling home to you

Presenter11:34

Neil, young and old man. You're only sixty two. What do you mean, old?

Ralph Steadman11:37

Well, it's a kind of funny age, but it liked that.

Presenter11:41

Let me to ask you about you as a young man, a young boy, in fact, because what is very odd is that you you didn't do anything with art for years, and you were a failure at school in in terms of art, weren't you?

Ralph Steadman11:53

Yes, I came across my old school reports recently. In a package my mother had let I didn't realise and she kept everything. I just come across them. Letters, and even rather a nice letter from the headmaster I have vilified for years.

Ralph Steadman12:07

saying that he really is a willing boy, but he doesn't try hard enough. So I'm sure a lot of people get that. But it was him, wasn't it? It was him that the fear of God into me, yes, absolutely. No, the fear of officialdom into me.

Speaker 112:12

So

Speaker 112:14

But it was

Speaker 112:18

Yeah.

Presenter12:18

But why and how?

Ralph Steadman12:21

Uh he found a filthy poem on a girl.

Presenter12:25

Well, Mocket Point.

Ralph Steadman12:26

M well, Mocky Bond, okay, Mocky Boint. Everybody had re read

Presenter12:26

Yeah.

Ralph Steadman12:30

The vibes, you know.

Ralph Steadman12:31

and the headmaster brought her up on the stage.

Ralph Steadman12:34

By the ear.

Ralph Steadman12:36

and the piece of paper, the offensive piece of paper, in the other hand, and he talked about this material and this creature. He completely broke that girl's spirit like that. I hated him for it, and I also felt a coward at the same time. With somebody should have oh, we should have all stood up together.

Ralph Steadman12:54

But we were too young. We were just in fear of authority. You don't do that. But I would love to have done it. I wish I had that that sort of fighting spirit then that I seem to find later. But uh

Speaker 112:55

Two.

Presenter12:56

You don't do that.

Presenter13:05

What did he look like?

Ralph Steadman13:06

He had a vicious little nose on him, which I often draw which is more like a beak.

Ralph Steadman13:12

And a dark seven-o'clock shadow.

Presenter13:15

He's cropped up as a monster since, hasn't he?

Ralph Steadman13:15

Control.

Ralph Steadman13:17

He has really he's he stays in the back of my mind and turn very vicious lips somehow.

Presenter13:23

Did he can you as a corporate person?

Ralph Steadman13:25

Yes, I did get the cane, yeah. And and that's a that's a serious problem because

Ralph Steadman13:30

I didn't feel I deserved it and I don't think any child does, frankly, deserve that sort of um it was the whipping way he did it, it was the relish with which he did it that I think I disliked, and I've always said since then That authority is the mask of violence, and I've used it in a cartoon or two in mine. I used it during the Watergate hearing.

Presenter13:51

And you saw him again, didn't you, after you left school and started working?

Ralph Steadman13:53

Yes, I went eventually after the Havilland Aircraft, which lasted nine months. I was going to be an aircraft engineer. I didn't like factory life. I couldn't stand the sirens going off to bring you to tea or to take you to lunch, etcetera. Uh I left after nine months and then I got a job I I tried to get into a bank, would you believe for some reason? I don't know why now. And then I got a job at Woolworths as a trainee manager they called them. You were a stockroom boy, really, making bales of paper and uh sweeping up and oiling the floors on a Friday night. They used to have the wooden floors in Woolworths, yes, in Colwyn Bay.

Speaker 114:23

The floors in Woolworth.

Ralph Steadman14:26

And I was swe finishing sweeping out of the door and the f the then I had to pick it all up off the pavement and then and Hubert Hughes walked past and he said to me, You've really made a mess of your life, haven't you? Sweeping the streets and he said it with such contempt and from then on I thought I have no real uh l love of authority.

Presenter14:50

Call number three.

Ralph Steadman14:51

Well, lovely Ronny Drew, who used to sing with the Dublin, as I guess he still does sometimes when they have a wake or something, in Ireland.

Ralph Steadman14:57

And he's singing here uh one of Mark Knoppler's songs, uh Brothers in Arms, and it's another song. It just moves me and it also brings me to the barricades.

Speaker 315:08

As the battles raged higher,

Speaker 315:14

And though they did hurt me so bad

Speaker 315:19

In the fear and alarm

Speaker 315:25

You did not desert me, my brothers in arms.

Presenter15:33

Ronny Drew singing Mark Knopfler's Brothers in Arms. What about um home life, Ralph? Your your parents and you had an older sister, I think. Did they provide any kind of anti-grandfather?

Ralph Steadman15:40

Did they provide any kind of father were very supportive, even going through the troubling times of trying to find work, you know, when I didn't know what I wanted to do. And no one had ever said to me, How about being a cartoonist anyway? So, um my sister worked in a bank. She she left school and did the right thing and then she got married at twenty-four and she looks like Maggie Thatcher, sounds like Maggie Thatcher. Maybe that's got something to do with it, I don't know.

Presenter16:06

To do with what?

Ralph Steadman16:07

With my feelings about Maggie Thatcher, I don't know, because uh my sister wa bullied me.

Ralph Steadman16:12

I'll say that. I love her dearly, but she bullied me.

Presenter16:15

So, how did the drawing emerge from all of this? I mean, I mentioned in the introduction Percy V. Bradshaw and his correspondence course in the United States.

Ralph Steadman16:21

Yes, well I was about I had to do I knew I had to do my military service and uh it was coming sooner or later. I was seventeen and I was going to have to do it and I still had not got the job I wanted and I eventually got a job in an advertising agency as a a T-boy and it was there that the drawing began.

Presenter16:30

Unless

Speaker 116:30

Yeah.

Ralph Steadman16:39

Because thy showed an aptitude, apparently.

Presenter16:42

And then you saw this advert.

Ralph Steadman16:43

And I saw this advert, You too can learn to draw and earn pounds. And I thought, Ah, this is good you know. Twelve lessons for twelve pounds, plus another six lessons on how to be a cartoonist for seventeen pounds ten shillings.

Presenter16:59

From Percy.

Ralph Steadman17:00

And that was a bargain. So he I I took the course and I did it during my my military service and I was drawing things like pairs of boots on beds and blankets and robbaring, things like that, and trying to draw the guys playing cards round the table, you know, as they al always did.

Presenter17:15

And you used at some point in the fifties, I think for about three years, every week you sent a piece, a a cartoon to punch.

Ralph Steadman17:22

Punch. Yeah, every week, without fail. I sent to Punch before they finally accepted one, but that was when I long left the service.

Presenter17:28

But do you stay to write back? Did they give you any kind of hints?

Ralph Steadman17:30

I I'd get the odd uh a lot of cartoonists out there would probably know, but in fact they would get from William Hewerson, the art editor at the time.

Ralph Steadman17:39

A ref rejection note with a uh a target written on it, the arrow going over the top, just missing the point. You know, that was the idea of it.

Presenter17:47

What was the first drawing you had published?

Ralph Steadman17:49

It was a drawing of during the NASA Suez Canal crisis.

Ralph Steadman17:56

And the cartoon was very much like Giles. I I idolized Giles, and I tried to draw like Giles, very much so.

Ralph Steadman18:03

and I did a drawing of a man sitting by a locked gate on a canal somewhere in England.

Ralph Steadman18:10

And s and he's saying

Ralph Steadman18:12

Nasseroo

Ralph Steadman18:13

Let's see.

Ralph Steadman18:14

Not particularly good.

Presenter18:16

Yeah, but the point

Ralph Steadman18:16

Break it.

Presenter18:18

More music

Ralph Steadman18:19

Well, uh this one I I I met William Burroughs on several occasions and one on one occasion I actually um uh went on a shooting expedition with him where we shot art.

Ralph Steadman18:30

Uh I made him a Target print, a silk screen print, with two pictures of himself one either side.

Ralph Steadman18:37

And the target in the middle to shoot. And we made a shot art print. We made a hundred and two of these prints. But we did shoot one of Hunter Thompson. And we put this picture I'd done of Hunter up on the there's a print up on the target board. And I said, William, for this one, what I want you to do is there are three places on that target which I want you to hit. One of them is his sheriff's badge, the other one is his Rolex watch, and the other is between the eyes. So yeah, okay. And he goes.

Speaker 319:08

Yeah, okay.

Ralph Steadman19:11

Bam, bam, bam, one after the other, like that, right, six times. And I say William, you missed, you know. They've all gone through his neck. He said

Speaker 319:15

Hello.

Ralph Steadman19:20

Yeah.

Speaker 319:20

Well he's dead of me

Ralph Steadman19:23

So as I'd chosen William Burroughs reciting his version of A Thanksgiving Prayer with the NBC Symphony Orchestra,

Presenter19:30

And it's quite strong meat.

Ralph Steadman19:31

It is strong meat because I I yes, but I but it it it's so uplifting in its way. Beca and it it's it's protest again. And I think protest if it you can't you can't um censor protest, it must be what it is or or if you don't like it then you have to switch off.

Speaker 319:52

Thanks for a nation of thanks.

Speaker 319:58

Thanks for all the memories. All right, let's see your arm.

Speaker 320:03

You always were a headache and you always were bored.

Speaker 320:10

Thanks for the last and greatest betrayal of the last and greatest of human dreams.

Presenter20:20

William Burrows reciting his version of a Thanksgiving prayer with the NBC Symphony Orchestra.

Presenter20:25

Um Ralph Sidden, it was undoubtedly Private Eye that gave you your first big national press break, as it were, in in the early sixties. Uh you'd have been about twenty five

Ralph Steadman20:34

Print

Ralph Steadman20:35

I sent a reject from Punch which was called um Family Tree. It was in fact a tree with people your family uh as they die, you simply hang them from the tree, you know, in a row.

Ralph Steadman20:50

And it kind of it appealed to private eye, I think.

Presenter20:53

Then the series studied. I mean, this septic aisle.

Ralph Steadman20:56

Se yes, the septic aisle was one where I just took various things like woman at a spinning wheel and t turned that into a woman at the roulette table. So everything became a satire uh on

Ralph Steadman21:09

on various uh the old curiosity shop was a bijou gem shop selling rubbish, you know, and uh the highwaymen with police waiting in r in for speeding people passing.

Ralph Steadman21:21

The village idiot became a man on a boy on a motorbike, who never done up for the Iron the Nines.

Presenter21:24

No.

Presenter21:26

So this was your kind of you were lampooning the sixties with your affluence

Ralph Steadman21:28

Yeah.

Ralph Steadman21:29

Yes, exactly, with those things. I did another series called New London Cries.

Presenter21:30

Those things.

Ralph Steadman21:34

which was based on Hogarth's old lung cries.

Ralph Steadman21:37

And I'll Sue the Bastards was one I did for Private Eye itself, you know. That was a New London cry at the time in the sixties. Everyone was suing Private Eye.

Presenter21:43

Thanks, D.

Presenter21:45

But you believed, I mean you you you mentioned this earlier, you believed you could change the world with all this.

Ralph Steadman21:45

You

Ralph Steadman21:49

Undoubtedly.

Ralph Steadman21:51

And I guess it has changed, but for the worse, so I haven't done a good job, you know.

Speaker 121:56

Thanks for clicking.

Ralph Steadman21:57

Well, my I must choose something from my dear son Theo, who's a got a beautiful voice, like his father.

Ralph Steadman22:05

And he's my he's he's playing one of his own compositions, Wish You Were Here, and I'd love to have that, because I would wish all my children and my wife to be there on this desert island of mine, which I've already built and developed in my own mind.

Speaker 322:20

Where people used to preserve

Speaker 322:24

I'm not too scared to speak

Speaker 322:28

When you have spite replacing kindness, lies replacing truth.

Speaker 322:37

Violence as intimidation

Speaker 322:40

They justify it use

Speaker 322:45

I wish you were here

Presenter22:50

Theo Stedman, my castaway son, playing his composition, Wish You Were Here. You've turned away in the main, anyway, from print journalism, and you've done books and you've gone into theatrical design and writing, indeed, for for productions. You've used uh your talent as you've gone on i i it's in a more serious but less transient I suppose kind of way.

Ralph Steadman23:11

Yeah.

Presenter23:11

Is there a serious artist often, do you think, trying to get out?

Presenter23:15

Ever cartoonists?

Ralph Steadman23:17

Yeah, I think I wanted to be an artist of some but I want to be the artist on my terms. My terms are that I don't see the difference between the kind of art I do and the kind of art an artist says he does. I'm expressing myself with the visual image and sometimes it takes on an intellectual context. It's not altogether just a gag line that says, oh, that's fun, I'm gonna leave it at that. It's trying to get somewhere and to say something in a way that possibly cannot be said in words.

Presenter23:46

Yeah.

Ralph Steadman23:46

And that's rather an important part of art.

Presenter23:49

'Cause it's often been said that it works the other way round, or has done, that that that people like Picasso and da Vinci, for example, were closet cartoonists.

Ralph Steadman23:53

Yeah.

Ralph Steadman23:55

Well they are, I mean without a doubt. Uh uh Leonardo was very much interested in caricature, uh the difference between caricature and caricature. And the caricature, the moving of of lips outwards or the nose outwards or inwards or a weak chin, he'd he'd record all these things. And Picasso really was doing, as Paul Clay would have said, taking the line for a walk.

Presenter24:18

Record number six.

Ralph Steadman24:19

I was asked by Richard Gregson Williams to become artist in residence at Exeter.

Ralph Steadman24:24

in nineteen eighty nine, and not only was there to be that, but he also wanted me to write something for Exeter Cathedral.

Ralph Steadman24:32

And would I

Ralph Steadman24:33

Collaborate with

Ralph Steadman24:35

a composer called Richard Harvey,

Ralph Steadman24:38

and the guitarist, John Williams. I couldn't believe it, I thought, why me?

Ralph Steadman24:43

But anyway, um I did write something called The Plague and the Moonflower and uh I was influenced by a book I'd read on Amazon flowers by Margaret Mee and she discovered this moonflower that blossoms only once a year in the moonlight, gives its best shot in the dark, and that but is also a parasite and that to me seems such an irony.

Ralph Steadman25:05

I made it into the

Ralph Steadman25:07

The beautiful side of life, if you like, with the twist and the tail.

Presenter25:10

And the plague.

Ralph Steadman25:11

And the plague was uh the dark side of our souls. In fact, it's a demon, but it's not an alien, it's us. And we are exacerbating any attempts we might have to put the world to right with having by having these appetites which simply

Ralph Steadman25:26

consume and destroy.

Presenter25:28

It's a kind of requiem for the twentieth century, really, isn't it?

Ralph Steadman25:31

Without a doubt, it I think is the first millennium piece, actually.

Ralph Steadman25:35

Because it also mentions that, with the coming dead millennium, held fast inside the last decade, what have we done to make our pride run? What have we made?

Speaker 325:45

Swing of the Kingdom of Saint.

Presenter26:38

The treble Amon O'Dwyer, accompanied by John Williams, on the guitar, singing part of A Child's Carol from The Plague and the Moonflower, written by my Castaway Ralph Stedman, with music by Richard Harvey. So exercised are you, Ralph, about the environment, about the world, about us, that you've written uh you've ghosted God's autobiography in a book called The Big I Am.

Ralph Steadman26:59

Yes, I just I tried to figure out why God would be so vindictive, would punish us for doing things

Ralph Steadman27:07

Uh really, which one called wrong, you know.

Presenter27:10

But he, your God, is kind of baffled and and amazed by by what he sees. And he also feels completely helpless.

Ralph Steadman27:19

Yeah.

Presenter27:20

But but that that's you, isn't it? You are not

Ralph Steadman27:22

It is me, I guess. I'm God, okay? In this, I'm God. I was writing it. I thought I can be God if I

Presenter27:25

Ah

Presenter27:26

No, I was wrong.

Presenter27:27

You might be.

Presenter27:29

You feel helpless. That's your point, isn't it?

Ralph Steadman27:31

Yes, I do.

Presenter27:32

And you're frightened? You still have to do it.

Ralph Steadman27:33

Yes, I'm still frightened, yes, about it all. I'm frightened for uh for this earth. I think we're really s it's beginning to show signs of of cracking up, you know. But I also know about the Gaia principle and the self-regulation of the nature. It will probably get rid of us, but will maintain itself in some form. If it makes it anti-life just to get rid of us, it will somehow do that. Nature m will do what it must.

Presenter28:00

It will self-regulate.

Ralph Steadman28:01

It's self-regulated, yeah.

Presenter28:02

But but but you, considering where we began with this discussion, have have failed yourself, though, haven't you? You haven't exorcised anything.

Ralph Steadman28:10

No, I'm still a hopeless mess. But everybody f must feel that. I mean, it's not I I'm not I'm just trying to do anything about it.

Presenter28:15

But I'm I'm helping you.

Presenter28:18

It's interesting because of where you come from. I mean, you feel now that we're immune to the cartoonist, obviously, which is why you've stopped doing Facebook.

Ralph Steadman28:24

Yeah.

Presenter28:26

We are immune to most things, are we? Have we become pretty monstrous at the end of the 20th century?

Ralph Steadman28:32

Yes, we we become we become saturated with imagery. We d we don't know what to do with it all. I recycle it. I actually put it in my drawings again. Things that exist in magazines and papers, newspapers and bits of print and bits of everything stuck into my drawings.

Presenter28:45

But what about those of us who can't do that?

Ralph Steadman28:49

Well have a good barbecue.

Presenter28:51

Record number seven, go on.

Ralph Steadman28:53

Code number

Ralph Steadman28:54

Well, uh, it's called it's from Beethoven's Mr. Solemnis, and I actually in the seventies started writing what I thought would eventually become some kind of animated film called Beaver, a saga of wild ambition. And I have a hunch it's me again actually, trying to build an animal

Ralph Steadman29:12

uh Kingdom's Opera House over a waterfall, rather like Frank Lloyd Wright would do.

Ralph Steadman29:17

And um he because he's woken every morning from beautiful dreams by the cacophony of sound, the dawn chorus. It's just it's it just needs organizing somehow.

Presenter30:29

The opening of the Kyrie from Beethoven's Missa Solemnis, sung by the Monteverde Croix with the Orchestre Revolutionnaire et Romantique, conducted by John Eliot Gardner. You've um built and developed this desert island in your own mind, you say, Ralph.

Ralph Steadman30:43

Uh

Presenter30:43

Yeah.

Ralph Steadman30:43

Yes, I well, I think it's going to be I figured out it should be somewhere about thirty five degrees south latitude by one hundred and forty degrees east longitude, somewhere puts me about north west of New Zealand, somewhere around the Pitkin Islands.

Presenter30:43

Yes, I am.

Ralph Steadman31:00

And um I'd start if I could find running water, I'd start building certain things. I might even be able to make power, who knows? Make a dynamo, wind a dynamo for a but it's wire, I haven't got wire. So you'll be

Presenter31:11

So you're reasonably optimistic despite other stuff.

Ralph Steadman31:13

Oh yes, and I really want to build a Huey Piscinium arch on the beach, looking out to sea, to the west, because I would actually wait for the green flash. You know the green flash? In Hawaii, if you sit facing west across the Pacific, as the sun hits a certain point in the atmospheric layer right across the sea, you get a green flash in the air like that. And it's the most wonderful thing. If you've never seen one, it's not just a sunset, it just goes for a brief moment, boomf.

Presenter31:42

And you don't need a seasickness pill to see that one.

Ralph Steadman31:45

No, you don't. No, and you sit there and then it and then you've got to be giving you his own show every night in this Proscenia march.

Speaker 131:52

Last record.

Ralph Steadman31:53

Well, I really love this. I love this woman's voice. Norma Waterson actually has a l a lived-in voice and I chose this record too because it makes me feel sad and makes me feel for some folk who I often see and think, although I like drink myself, that in a certain state of it it creates in me a uh a sense of um fear.

Speaker 332:18

Like an eagle, I am there in heaven.

Speaker 332:24

And his shouts and his curses are just hymns and praises To kickstart his min

Speaker 332:37

God love the drunk, come raise up your gladness, amen.

Presenter32:46

Norma Waterson, and God loves a drunk. Now, if you could only take one of the eight, Ralph.

Ralph Steadman32:51

I can't honestly I'd take none of them at all if I can't take them all, but uh since my son is in there I'd like to take my son to remind me of all my children and Anna, my wife. I could remind me of all the the people I love in my life.

Presenter33:04

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

Ralph Steadman33:07

Larousse's Encyclopedia of Mythology with a introduction by Robert Graves because

Ralph Steadman33:14

I think that it would give if I'm going to be on this desert island, if I'm going to be

Ralph Steadman33:19

uh creating this uh a sort of a new civilization, as it were, of one.

Ralph Steadman33:24

I would be a god.

Ralph Steadman33:25

And I would be building effigies t to give me something to believe in. And I'd like to have the mythology uh to delve into, to recreate various legends, if you like, around myself, perhaps. You know, that would be what I'd really like to do.

Presenter33:44

And a luxury.

Ralph Steadman33:45

And a luxury would be and there was a I thought about, first of all, taking um a snorkel, and then I thought about insect repellent, and then I thought about um a bag of chisels, which might seem ridiculous, but in fact if I'm going to build and fashion icons, I need chisels to I can make a hammer.

Presenter34:05

It's a bit practical, not really allowed, I suppose.

Ralph Steadman34:07

Oh, you're not allowed to. I thought I was being artistic, not practical. I'm building.

Presenter34:08

I sorta

Presenter34:11

All right, what if you promise not not to build anything to live in with your chisels?

Ralph Steadman34:11

I promise not.

Ralph Steadman34:15

But what can I do?

Presenter34:16

I wonder where I'm gonna live?

Ralph Steadman34:18

Well I was gonna make a treehouse and all that stuff.

Presenter34:21

No no if you use your chisels, you can't.

Presenter34:24

Look, promise me you won't use the chisel to build the tree house, and you can have it.

Ralph Steadman34:28

Thank you very much. I'm going to stick with that and I'm going to hold you to it as well.

Presenter34:32

Ralph Stedman, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desertile indisc.

Ralph Steadman34:35

It's been a pleasure. Thank you.

Speaker 134:43

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