Martin Bell

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. The programme was originally broadcast in two thousand and one, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:30

Mike Ostaway this week is a journalist. After what he's termed a serene upbringing in Suffolk, he did national service but failed to make officer grade, an early indication, he believes, of his suitability for his later profession. Cambridge and a double first led to the BBC and a distinguished career as a reporter in Northern Ireland, Vietnam, America, the Gulf War and Bosnia, where he was famously wounded.

Presenter0:54

Four years ago he found himself in the public eye for a very different reason, as the white suited MP who stood against Sleaze and won. He promised he'd give up the seat after one term, and this he's done. Sixty three this summer, having failed to win a different seat in the general election, he's technically unemployed. But his strong sense of justice, stirred into anger by his experiences in the Balkans, is still at large after his time in the Commons. I have, he says simply, strong feelings about things. He is Martin Bell. Martin, how strong are your feelings about being unemployed?

Martin Bell1:29

I'm uh enjoying being unemployed. It's never happened to me before.

Martin Bell1:34

I thought I'd make it kind of antsy and not happy with it, but I cannot remember ever having been happier in my entire life than I am at the moment.

Presenter1:41

You did talk you have talked you've written, in fact, about being close to tears in what you call the soft dawn of June the eighth, when you didn't win Brentwood and Ongar. You realized the adventure was over. What what tears were they? Were they tears of loss, of nostalgia, of humiliation?

Martin Bell1:58

Not really that. I I felt a sense of hurt on behalf of the people who had worked with me and for me, and it was the young people who came on board. It was so inspiring, and I felt that by losing although narrowly I'd I'd let them down.

Presenter2:11

But you see, your answer to that is is quite an emotional answer. You talk about hurt and so on, and I think that's what one finds interesting about you, that that having been for so long and I've known you in television news over the years a dispassionate and rather austere television journalist, war reporter,

Presenter2:28

You've become a very emotional person and you seem happy to put those emotions on display.

Martin Bell2:33

I suppose a little bit. I was very uh closed up as a as a as a kid, very conventional upbringing. But I mean, diff I suppose you you turn into somebody different. So I've sort of I've changed and I've I've I've

Presenter2:45

Have you changed or do you think it was all there waiting to get out?

Martin Bell2:48

It probably was, and the life I've led has sort of got it out, I think. I described myself somewhere as a battle-softened veteran, so that's where I am now.

Presenter2:55

And that's

Presenter2:56

That sort of romantic hero I wonder whether you read those kinds of of of books as a boy, because it is romantic hero stuff. It's the white suit and, you know, the question to the Prime Minister about slaying dragons and standing for integrity and all this

Martin Bell3:08

Yeah, well that makes it sound so self-righteous. It's not really, it's just you've got a certain sense of right and wrong. Yes, I did. I used to read romances, you know, The Prisoner of Zender. I love that.

Presenter3:18

Tell me about your first record for this desert island.

Martin Bell3:21

My first record

Martin Bell3:23

is Albineni Zadaggio. It's played by Vedran Shmailovitz, who was in Sarajevo during the war. He was a concert pianist of European renown, trapped like hundreds of thousands of others in this siege. And one day in the summer of'ninety two he got out his old his white tails, and he played his cello in the most poignant way at the scene of one of the city's massacres. And at other street corners other musicians with trumpets, violins were playing the same thing. It's like an anthem for a doomed city.

Presenter4:24

Part of Albinone's Zodagio for strings, played by Vederan Smilevich, who adapted the piece for the cello.

Presenter4:29

Incredibly haunting that, Martin. Do you miss it, being out there? I mean, obviously, war's a terrible thing, but there's something.

Presenter4:38

Compelling, isn't there, about being at the scene there?

Martin Bell4:40

Yes, there is. I don't miss the the roadblock hassle and the daily dangers while you're there. I wasn't one of those headbangers. I do miss the friends. You made the most amazing friendships. Now journalism is a very competitive profession. What's wrong with it is that people tend to succeed at each other's expense. But not in that that war zone. In that war zone we we helped each other and got an amazing comradeship among the most unlikely bunch of people.

Presenter5:05

And does that happen? One always imagines that it happens in in the hotel where you all stay. There's always a war hotel, isn't there? And you've known them all from kind of Saigon to El Salvador to Sarajevo.

Martin Bell5:14

Well, yes, there are war hotels and war hotels. They're normally quite comfortable and a comfortable distance away from the war zone. I mean, the Continental Palace in Saigon was one. It's almost hire a taxi and take me to the war. Holiday Inn in Sarajevo is completely different. Right on the front line is actually 200 metres, less than 200 metres from the front line. So under small arms fire, this hotel was for three and a half years.

Presenter5:35

This will tell you.

Presenter5:37

Is that the hook? Is that what ke kept you doing it for thirty three years out there? Because it you know, you get shot at, it's it's it's bad for marriages. Bust up two of your marriages, I think, the job. You know. Is that the hook, the the bonding, the the having common cause, you know, the common enemy?

Martin Bell5:52

I think a sense of having a front row seat at the making of history. There's a little bit of that. And I will admit that Bosnia was quite addictive from that point of view because there were very few of us there. And the great thing about that was you got to know the main players, the UN commanders, the Bosnian government leaders, and not deal with them always through intermediaries. And so there was a sense of sharpened reality, which I, after that,

Martin Bell6:17

Nothing was the same again. I I and I I found it very difficult to adjust to more humdrum news, and a lot of others did too.

Presenter6:23

Yeah.

Presenter6:24

But also when when you were out there over all the years, not just i i in Bosnia, um I know that you were very popular with the crews because you would, I think in a nutshell, would never send them anywhere you wouldn't go yourself, really. You you sort of led them very paternalistic, actually.

Martin Bell6:39

Well, as as you've mentioned, I did I did uh I did fail my officer selection course, but I think you can learn from failure. And one of the things I learned was to look after people. And you don't send them where you do. There's a tendency to, you know, go go out and get me some shots of this and that. And what else we did? We formed a foop a pool, the first voluntary pool, so that

Martin Bell6:57

There was no competitive shooting of these gunfights and it lasted for about three and a half years. And we actually saved lives among the journalists. It was very unprofessional, but I'm proud to have done it.

Presenter7:08

But also when you're up front you like punctuality. I mean these crews also had to turn up when you said.

Martin Bell7:14

Oh, yes, we developed a concept of wheels roll. That is the time the wheels actually moving on the Land Rover, and they knew that.

Presenter7:20

And you sit that time.

Martin Bell7:22

I I I set the time. I think it I think it was the Duke of Wellington who said that if you're early you're wasting your time, and if you're late you're wasting mine, and he was another stickler for punctuality.

Presenter7:32

Record number two.

Martin Bell7:33

The second record has to do with the Gulf War. I was attached to the Seventh Armoured Brigade, the Desert Rats, with the Queen's Royal Ayushazars, and the Staffordshire Regiment, and the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards. We were in the desert waiting for the start on on on Burnsday, actually, and the Haggis was brought in by helicopter.

Martin Bell7:51

with Kate Adie presiding, as it happened, and we drank the toast.

Martin Bell7:55

To the great man, in orange juice, because we were on Saudi territory, which was something the Scots had never done before.

Martin Bell8:02

And of course the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards are the only regiment of the British Army, as far as I know, which ever had a platinum record. It is, of course, amazing grace.

Presenter9:01

Amazing Grace played by the Royal Scots Dragoon Gods. Tell me, Martin Bell, about your serene background. It is your word, I have to say, but it's it's it's an interesting word that you choose to describe it.

Martin Bell9:13

My father was a was a was a a a country author, Adrian Bell, who wrote wonderful books. He farmed a bit. He was the founder of the Times crossword puzzle. He used to dr cycle around the country lanes with the puzzle propped up in his basket of his bicycle, devising these clues as he ran.

Presenter9:29

How many did he conver?

Martin Bell9:31

He wrote the first in about nineteen twenty nine, and he compiled about three thousand of them. And we wondered if just once, if he got just a fraction of the gross national product, was was wasted by people doing his crosswords instead of doing their work, he'd be a very wealthy man.

Presenter9:46

Did you do them? Could you do them?

Martin Bell9:48

My job was to send them to the post, and I would put them in the envelopes, and the the clue would be there, and the answer beside it, and I still couldn't see the connection. But I do believe he once took a train to London. He didn't go to London very often. He had his copy of the Times, and he saw somebody opposite, struggling with his puzzle, so he just picked up a pen and filled it in, and laid it on the carriage seat beside him.

Presenter10:07

Wonderful.

Martin Bell10:08

then closed his eyes and smiled.

Presenter10:09

But he didn't make a lot of money.

Martin Bell10:11

No, he's never never a wealthy man. They never had any any holidays.

Presenter10:15

Because they sacrificed it all for you and your sisters.

Martin Bell10:16

And your sisters? This we all went to boarding schools which they couldn't afford and it was a terrific sacrifice. And I suppose if I you know, I probably worked too hard at university and didn't have enough fun because I felt I had to pay them back and couldn't possibly fail them.

Presenter10:29

Well, you did you worked hard and indeed it it worked,'cause you got a double first in English, didn't you? But you did National Service first. What did he want you to be, your father?

Martin Bell10:38

He never uh specified. I mean, he d he himself had been the son of a journalist. He was not a country chap at all. He came from um Battersea and he he became apprenticed to a Suffolk farmer in order to escape the life of toil in a in a London office. But it was his father that inspired me. He was the news editor of the Observer. I remember quizzing him about his job. And as I as I was always a kid with an immensely low boredom threshold, I decided at the age of twelve I was going to be a journalist.

Presenter11:05

Next record.

Martin Bell11:06

The next record has to do with my father. There was a programme called Down Your Way, which many listeners will remember, with Franklin Engelman. And they came to Suffolk, to Beccles when he lived there. And he was certainly one of the more interesting citizens in Beccles. He was then quizzed about what he did in life and his views of this and that. Then he was invited to choose a record. The record he chose was an East Anglian song of The Foggy, Foggy Dew, which happens to be about an unmarried father. This was in the mid-60s, and the BBC was not about to have a record about an unmarried father on the airwaves. So can I please, 35 years later, have The Foggy, Foggy Dew by an East Anglian singer?

Speaker 311:40

Symaried there lay close to me and wipe away them tears. Then I hauled a shift up over her head and I wrapped it round her lairs. We was all right in the winter time and in the summer too. And I held her tight that lived long night to save her from the foggy, foggy dew.

Presenter12:03

The Foggy Dew, sung by Phil Hammond from Holt in Norfolk. Um so you chose journalism, Martin, but you chose television journalism, not written journalism. I wonder why?

Martin Bell12:15

I felt, I suppose, more challenged by the newer medium. I remember worrying that I was got into television news too late, because BBC Two had just started up with a sort of catastrophic opening night when the the lights went out and the news was read by candlelight and I thought I was too late to catch the train. But in fact, I I mean all the hacks say this, but I really think I worked in the golden age of it. You know, it was about thirty-four years and I got in just as it as as there were certain electronic possibilities opening up and soon enough you could do satellites. And I got out just as the mobile phones arrived. And chaps could call you up from London at the far end of the earth telling you what the feeling of the meeting was about the story you were covering.

Presenter12:56

Preconceptions from the newsroom.

Martin Bell12:57

Department of Preconceptions, yes.

Presenter12:59

Yes. But tell me how how you did it in those golden days, you say. You would get, as I understand it, into the uh having collected all your film and so on, you'd get into the edit suite out in the field there, you'd put the pictures together, and then you did not write, did you? You spoke.

Martin Bell13:13

I did that because for twelve years I was the BBC's correspondent in Washington and I was working against at least a five-hour time difference. And so you had to write or to think very fast. And I realized if you didn't write it down, you could do it faster. It's a little bit like writing sonnets. You have to pack an awful lot into a very short time. I mean the average length. No, the length of my pieces was a minute and 42 seconds. They always came out like that.

Presenter13:40

Exactly. A minute forty two. How can you possibly sum up what you've seen and heard that day in places of war in surely it creates a distortion. Just try and sum it up in one minute forty two. And if you were writing if you were writing a piece for a newspaper, you could have been writing wonderful pieces for the Times or The Telegraph or whatever.

Martin Bell13:59

Ah, you obviously didn't read my monthly columns for the Knutsford Guardian. But in the television news, in a minute and forty-two you can say an awful lot. Think how eloquent just one still photograph can be, sometimes one black and white still photograph. I call it the art of writing silence, which is knowing when to shut up.

Martin Bell14:16

You know, people love the sound of their own voice, people love to be seen on television doing the stand up raw or piece to camera as we call it. And I found as if I got as I got on I did fewer and fewer of those, because I didn't have to establish that I was there. And I was also getting rather old, and, you know, the face starts falling apart, and you say, I don't want to see that face on my screen, so I cut myself out a lot.

Presenter14:35

Well, so there was a bit of vanity there, too.

Martin Bell14:38

Well, I didn't like sort of I didn't like looking terrible. I suppose most people don't like looking terrible.

Presenter14:42

But then you go and put well, we'll talk about it later, but then you go and put yourself slap bang in the public eye and in the white suit so they don't miss you. But we'll come to that. Tell me about record number four.

Martin Bell14:51

I was twelve years in the in the States. I was there even before in in'68 I was covering the campaign of uh Hubert Humphrey.

Martin Bell15:01

In those days they actually met the people. They moved among the people. It wasn't entirely done in television studios. And one of the most vivid memories I have was with Hubert Humphrey going to Brooklyn. He had Chubby Cheko with him, because it was the high point of the twist, and you had to have your show business supporters. But he also had Mahalia Jackson, one of the greatest gospel singers ever.

Martin Bell15:25

And on my desert island I have to have Mahalia Jackson singing Rock of Ages.

Speaker 315:33

Uh

Speaker 315:40

Clare falling.

Speaker 315:45

Love to me your heart, myself. Indeed.

Presenter16:01

Mahalia Jackson and Rock of Ages.

Presenter16:04

Eleven wars you've covered, Martin. There seems to have been something different for you, anyway, about the eleventh Bosnia. Now, was it different, or was it because you had begun to change, as you indicated earlier?

Martin Bell16:18

It was different. I know that I had never been so close for such long periods of time to the suffering of of innocent people. Not so much?

Martin Bell16:28

Not for not for such a sustained period. Yes, I had seen so called ethnic cleansing before, I hate the term, I'd seen it in in in in with the Igbos of Nigeria in nineteen sixty six. Well, I many worse things happen in Bosnia.

Martin Bell16:42

Uh

Presenter16:42

And you came back from seeing it for the first time, before I think the phrase had been had become popular, dare I say, this time around.

Martin Bell16:48

Yeah.

Presenter16:50

But you you came back and I think started to lobby, didn't you, a UN official who was staying in the hotel?

Martin Bell16:56

Well, I'd I'd I'd I'd spent all day out with my wonderful camera crew in Eastern Bosnia, and we got the most amazing pictures of twenty thousand people being driven from their homes. Now, obviously I felt guilty that I was I was unable to help them. I was the only person there with a set of wheels, but I

Martin Bell17:11

I convinced myself it was important to get the story out, and I was editing it as this UN official, Cohn Doyle, who later became a very good friend of mine, an Irish Army officer, arrived, checked in. I said, I came rushing down. I said, Look, this is what's happening. You can't let it happen. Go and see the Serbs. Go and stop them doing it. And that's really not a journalistic function. No, you crossed the line, didn't you? I crossed the line. But I think if you look at what I wrote, I never said we must get involved because the pictures made the argument for me. I don't like crusading journalism. I never did it. But at the same time, if you're filming some people trying to get water from a standpipe in Sarajevo under siege and they're being shot at as they go to this, I mean, you can live without food up to a point, but you can't live without water. So they took these risks, and we were filming, and of course, somebody was wounded in the leg. And at that point, you stop being an impartial journalist and you become an ambulance driver. Because I think that you.

Presenter18:02

Do you?'Cause you ha you had not in the past.

Martin Bell18:04

I had not in the past, and I reproached myself. I remember a scene in El Salvador where fifty people were crushed to death when Archbishop Romero was buried. And I s I reproached myself afterwards. Surely you could have done something to help these people.

Presenter18:18

And this is what you called the journalism of attachment. This is this is ceasing to be dispassionate.

Martin Bell18:23

It's it it's it's a lot of things. It is realizing that your your reports have an effect and you've got to be responsible about them. And I came to that. It took me a time to get there, but that's what I came to conclude.

Presenter18:35

Next record.

Martin Bell18:36

In the Bosnian War I forced my crew every day to listen to the love songs of Willie Nelson both sides. It was one of my superstitions, and I felt it helped to keep us alive. And the first track on that record is the sort of, I don't know, the anthem of war correspondence everywhere, on the road again.

Speaker 318:58

The world keep turning on we

Speaker 319:04

Down the road again.

Speaker 319:07

Just can't wait to get on the road again.

Speaker 319:11

The life I love is making music for my friend. And I can't

Speaker 319:20

And I can't wait to get on the road.

Presenter19:23

Willie Nelson and on the road again. At the same time, Martin, as you were changing your approach to your journalism, y you started it was all part of the same thing, I think, to get angry with the BBC. You accused them essentially of sanitizing the news, of censoring the the brutality and the grief.

Presenter19:39

What what were you seeing that they weren't broadcasting or wouldn't broadcast?

Martin Bell19:44

This was about six months after the Bosnian war began, and new guidelines were introduced in the name of good taste, because they'd been to their focus groups and they'd done their audience research and they'd concluded that people didn't like being upset. Fictional violence it it was there all the time.

Martin Bell20:02

But the real world uh upset people, to which I responded, really, war is an upsetting business. And a point was reached early in 93, we were able to show almost nothing of what we saw. You could see the uh slightly romantic figures of camoufl camouflage clad soldiers rushing around the ruins, blazing away with their kalashnikovs, but nothing at all of what was there at the other end, the the maiming and the killing and and even the grief of the bereaved.

Presenter20:27

But you've never been able to broadcast maiming and killing and that

Martin Bell20:30

We were able to broadcast uh little bits. I mean, at the Ahmichi massacre I got round this by showing a burned clenched fist and otherwise just general shots. I'm not saying we should have broadcast everything we saw, but we were in the end able to put almost nothing out and I thought this had the the effect of glamorizing and pretty war. And since you see you didn't see the costs, people said, Well, you can settle your differences like this at the point of a gun, can't you?

Presenter20:54

But when you you showed it as you did in in the one panorama you did towards the end of your career, you showed as much as I think you felt you possibly could in that. And one leading written journalist accused you of of giving us the pornography of violence and the pornography of grief in full flood, didn't he? I mean, do you think you went too far?

Martin Bell21:12

No, I think that I'm I'm proud of that because it was it was truthful. But it was at about that time that they started to draw the guidelines more tightly around me, and I think that was a rather seminal point, that particular panorama. From then on we could show very little, and we should have shown more than we did.

Presenter21:29

And now and now, when you see it today, what what do you feel when you watch the the foreign news output on television news now?

Martin Bell21:29

Yeah.

Martin Bell21:35

So I don't see very much. There has been a dumbing down. Foreign news has been significantly taken out of the agenda. The BBC's ten o'clock news still has some. I also see a lot of what I call inauthentic, because I know that a report from so-and-so in such and such an alleged front line is actually going to be a mix of all kinds of videotapes brought in, because you can make dubs and copies and cut them in easily. And there's a tendency now to go out to a fairly well-appointed hotel close to the front, but not at it, and get hold of all this stuff and weave it into an apparently compelling package, except that the bloke's not there very often.

Presenter22:14

Isn't that, Martin, people will be thinking slightly dinosaur stuff, you know, you just sort of ante the new technology and, you know, you've not really been there unless you've actually been shot at and all that stuff.

Martin Bell22:27

No, I think it's um I think it's authenticity.

Presenter22:30

Pecul number six.

Martin Bell22:32

Recognize 6 comes from my African days. I did a lot in Africa, Angola, Rhodesia as it then was.

Martin Bell22:39

Uganda, where I was a witness to Idiamin's wedding to Lady Sarah of the Mechanized Suicide Regiment of the Ugandan Army.

Martin Bell22:47

Biafra, of course, which had a very profound effect on me as a very young reporter. I loved Africa, I hated Africa. Simultaneously, you couldn't be neutral about it, and I will remember that on my desert island with Under African Skies by Paul Simon.

Speaker 323:02

This is the story of how we began to remember.

Speaker 323:08

This is the powerful pulsing of love in the vein.

Speaker 323:15

After the dream of falling and calling your neighbor

Speaker 323:21

These are the roots of rhythm and the roots of rhythm and rain.

Presenter23:25

Uh

Speaker 323:27

Yeah.

Presenter23:27

Da Doom Ba Tum Ba Dum Ba

Presenter23:30

Paul Simon singing Under African Skies. Tell me then, Martin, about the decision to become, as Christine Hamilton put it, the Mother Teresa of Tatton. She was wonderfully horrible about you.

Martin Bell23:40

She was very consistent. I thought that as time passed I might hear a gracious word. I never did.

Presenter23:47

But did you find it intimidating? I we laugh about it now and it is quite funny, even, you know, d when you see it written. But there's some pretty horrible s I think at the time it must have been quite difficult.

Martin Bell23:56

The month of the Tatton campaign was the most worrying of my entire life.

Presenter24:00

It's a good line that, but you do mean it.

Martin Bell24:02

No, I really absolutely mean it. You know, I understood the dangers in the real world in war zones, but I'd never been.

Martin Bell24:10

ambushed in that way before. I'd been ambushed in other ways. I'd never had to deal with such consistent hostility, not just then, but to this day.

Presenter24:18

But why did you agree to do it? I mean, the story has been told many times how you were approached and so on, and that Richard Branson had been considered and Terry Waite had turned it down. But finally, you know, you said yes, and the rest is history. But why? Why were they pushing at an open door asking you to stand as an independent candidate?

Martin Bell24:34

It happened very late in the day.

Presenter24:35

But

Martin Bell24:36

Uh

Presenter24:36

Uh Yeah.

Martin Bell24:36

Nominations were about to close. They couldn't think whom to approach. And I ran into Kate Hoey, who later became sports minister for a while, at an exhibition I was opening of Bosnian war photographs, and she looked at me rather meaningfully and suggested I might like to have a go.

Presenter24:36

Yeah.

Presenter24:51

But she must have known you were if she didn't just turn up and have the idea in the moment.

Martin Bell24:54

Dead on the moment.

Presenter24:55

Why you? Why did people know that they could ask you, and indeed why did you say yes?

Martin Bell25:00

I said yes, um on a whim, and mostly because all the regrets in my life have not been about the things I've done, but about the things I haven't done, the path not taken and the challenge not accepted. And I thought I would kick myself for the rest of my days if I hadn't given it a go.

Presenter25:16

But it is fascinating because it's such a character reversal.

Martin Bell25:21

Yes, it's something I never thought of doing before. Except I've always had a

Martin Bell25:25

Thirst for new experiences. I like I told maybe it has to do with the low boredom threshold, do you think?

Martin Bell25:31

That wasn't a boring month, and it wasn't a boring four years that followed it. It was actually the best four years of my life.

Presenter25:36

Mary, do you mean that?

Martin Bell25:37

Yeah, and I absolutely mean that. Not for the job I did, but for the people I represented. I'm I never expected to do that. And they were just lovely people.

Presenter25:45

I suppose part of the same, again, common enemy, people pulling together, same as out in the field, all of a sudden you're bound together. It is quite romantic.

Martin Bell25:54

Well, and and being an independent too. It's a bit like being a foreign correspondent. Beyond the rim of the civilized world, they can't get at you to tell you what to do.

Presenter26:01

And are you going to confess to how many white suits you now own?

Martin Bell26:04

I suppose I have to. It's six, but one of them's getting pretty shabby, so it's very soon going to be down to five.

Presenter26:10

Record number seven.

Martin Bell26:12

I spent an awful lot of time as MP for Tatten stuck in the permanent car park, which is between junction six and ten on the M six outside Birmingham. And to get me through the angst of this, I started listening to Classic FM. Then after about two years I couldn't stand their oleaginous self-promotions any more. So I bought a one of these compilations of light classics. And when the traffic was particularly bad and totally immobile, I loved to play this next record. It's by Arthur Sullivan. It's the most over the top Victorian ballad there ever was. It's the lost chord sung by another Beckles boy, Stuart Burroughs.

Speaker 326:51

It linked all perplexed meanings into one perfect peace, And trembled away into silence, As if it were loath to cease. I have sought, but I seek it vainly, That won't hold me by.

Speaker 126:56

One per

Speaker 327:18

Which thing was that?

Speaker 327:35

Maybe the dispidation.

Presenter27:50

The Lost Chord, sung by Stuart Burroughs, with The Ambrosian Singers, conducted by Wynne Morris. How much do you miss the Commons then, Martin?

Martin Bell27:57

Not that much. Listening to overlong speeches, not at all.

Martin Bell28:03

Fudging in committees, uh not at all.

Martin Bell28:06

I suppose I miss being able to move causes along by being an MP, like helping the former prisoners of war, the Japanese. That was worth doing. That was absolutely worth doing.

Presenter28:15

There's a wonderful piece of uh bet hedging that you've written as a postscript to to not getting back into the commons. You wrote The adventure was over, at least for the time being probably for good.

Presenter28:26

You know, all the options are still there, aren't they? Are you any closer to knowing what you're going to do?

Martin Bell28:32

No, I've I've only been uh unemployed briefly. It's the first time in my life I've ever been unemployed. I'm still reflecting. I've had a few offers to do um this and that.

Martin Bell28:42

But you can't take up all the causes or you're ineffective on the side.

Presenter28:44

Didn't Kofi Annan, the Secretary General of the UN, once ask you to be uh at his side?

Martin Bell28:50

I got an approach from somebody in the UN um in early in 97. Would might I be interested? But I didn't I was away being snowbound in Belgrade at the time. I got got it far too late.

Martin Bell29:01

No, something always turns up. I always find that for every door that closes at least two will open.

Presenter29:05

You're reasonably newly wed, of course.

Martin Bell29:08

I am. I am. So the old cliche about spending your time with or more time with your family actually means something to me. I really can. Fiona's been very good about the amount of time I've been away, but now I can see much more of her, and I've got two grandchildren. Got a new granddaughter arrived a month ago, so things are going going really well.

Presenter29:24

We would automatically assume such a person as you would be very good on a desert island, but I'm beginning to wonder I

Martin Bell29:30

Well, I'd be quite good at looking after myself because that's a little bit of basic training in the army has helped you with that.

Presenter29:35

Yeah, but there's nobody to bond with and do all that stuff.

Martin Bell29:38

No, no, I wouldn't be no, I would I would miss my friends, I would miss my family, I really would. But if I've got to do it, I'll do it.

Presenter29:44

Last record.

Martin Bell29:45

While I was in Washington I I covered a lot of the independence ceremonies in some of the smaller Caribbean islands which had been British. There was St Vincent, St Kitts Nevis and St Lucia. And it was in the course of the St Lucia Independence, which I think was February 79, everything started to go wrong. There was a petrol crisis. The prisoners burnt down the jail.

Martin Bell30:07

The Royal Navy frigate which has come to celebrate the occasion rammed the pier head. And I included these things in my report in a rather understated way, but the um the Government of St. Lucia, the new Government of St. Lucia, didn't like it, and I think they put their one of their calypso groups on to me.

Martin Bell30:23

And I've had a calypso sung not just about me, but against me. It comes from St. Lucia. It's done by the True Tones, and it's called Foreign Journalists.

Speaker 330:33

Listen to this about them foreign journalists

Speaker 330:43

Celebration

Speaker 330:51

Martin Bell of BBC is the one we want to see We have beat them late them with no sin

Presenter31:01

Foreign journalist's Calypso sung by the True Tones of San Lucia. If you could only take one of those records, Martin, which one would you take?

Martin Bell31:10

I think Amazing Grace, because I have fancy.

Presenter31:14

I fancy for haggis an orange.

Martin Bell31:15

I've got fancy for fancy for hackers orange juice. I love military music. My other grandfather, who wasn't a journalist, was the first director of music of the Lifeguards.

Presenter31:23

What about your book? You got the Bible, you got Shakespeare.

Martin Bell31:25

I want to do a bit of reverse nepotism and take my father's first and most famous book, Corduroy by Adrian Bell, which is a lyrical account of his apprenticeship on a Suffolk farm in the early twenties.

Presenter31:36

And your luxury.

Martin Bell31:38

I want to take the Suffolk Concert Band, of which I'm president or patron or something, on a bandstand so they can play the few of these tunes as well.

Presenter31:46

But you can't,'cause they're alive, I presume.

Martin Bell31:48

And then that case they'll be off a bandstand, but they'll be there.

Presenter31:51

No, they won't be there. You can't. I can't take them at all. We are living things on the bottom. Oh, dear.

Martin Bell31:53

Mama can't take him at all.

Martin Bell31:55

Oh dear What about I thought John Major took the Lord's cricket ground or something.

Presenter31:58

It took the ground, it didn't there weren't any players on it.

Martin Bell32:01

Oh, that's very sad.

Martin Bell32:03

Mm.

Martin Bell32:05

I think I'll take

Martin Bell32:07

A barrel of Adnum's Ale.

Martin Bell32:09

Brood in Southwold, if I may.

Presenter32:12

Martin Bell, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs.

Speaker 132:22

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