Sir Peter Morris

Speaker 30:00

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

Speaker 30:08

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

Presenter0:31

My castaway this week is a surgeon. Born in Australia in the 1930s, he assumed family responsibilities early. When he was an adolescent, his father died of a heart attack, and shortly afterwards, his younger brother was killed and his mother seriously injured in a car accident. Driven, therefore, by a sense of purpose, he decided on a medical career which, coupled with a naturally inquisitive mind, led him into the world of transplant surgery. At the age of 40, he was invited to Oxford to become the Nuffield Professor of Surgery. He accepted on one condition, that the city be given a transplant unit. Today, that unit is a world leader, and the professor who insisted on its creation one of the world's great pioneers in the tricky but crucial world of organ transplants. There has to be more to surgery, he said, than just seeing patients and operating on them. Now, the president of the Royal College of Surgeons, he is Sir Peter Morris.

Presenter1:27

Sir Peter, you you performed your last operation some six months ago, but I wonder if I can take you back. Do you remember your first transplant operation at at Oxford?

Sir Peter Morris1:36

Well, I do indeed. It was january the twenty ninth, nineteen seventy five, and

Sir Peter Morris1:42

Two kidneys became available from a donor who had died in the Oxford region and the family very graciously gave permission for the kidneys to be retrieved. And the first patient was Geoffrey Slade and we transplanted him, I think it was about 10 o'clock on that night, and then went on to do the second patient, Ella Newey, after midnight, so the next day, January 30th, somewhere about 2 o'clock in the morning. And they were the first two kidney transplants in the middle of the day. And they were successful?

Presenter2:10

And they were successful?

Sir Peter Morris2:11

And they were both successful, yes. In fact, Alan Newy is still alive and well today with that same kidney transplant.

Presenter2:17

And Geoffrey Slade was twenty-five, I think, at the time.

Sir Peter Morris2:18

25

Sir Peter Morris2:20

Yes, and he'd been on dialysis for nearly eight years and was desperate for a kidney transplant and he subsequently had a second kidney transplant about ten years later and then sadly died last year.

Presenter2:32

I suppose you mentioned the names, you obviously remember them well. I suppose you do remember a lot of your patients. It's that kind of area of surgery. Well, it is.

Sir Peter Morris2:39

Well, it is because however successful the surgery, they remain on drugs to stop rejection and they have problems arising from the drugs. All the original ones in the first few years I knew by name and saw them often and they knew me and we regard each other as friends.

Presenter2:55

But it does strike one as being the area of medicine in which the the surgeon perhaps with greatest clarity embodies the difference between life and death. I mean, there is this kind of you are God to the patient.

Sir Peter Morris3:08

Yeah.

Presenter3:08

Well

Sir Peter Morris3:09

Yes, I know that's a commonly held belief. I've never felt like that, to be quite honest. You know, it's another job that you must do to the best of your ability. I've never seen myself as a godlike figure.

Presenter3:20

Sure you haven't. But what I'm what that means is that in that moment the patient is so vulnerable and you are so powerful, it would seem. So there's a kind of bond between you. That's really what I'm saying. It's interesting.

Sir Peter Morris3:27

It would

Sir Peter Morris3:32

Well, that's certainly so. I mean, I think

Sir Peter Morris3:35

Well, I'd hope. I've felt that with all patients, uh that there is a bond between you. I think the trust between a patient and their surgeon and vice versa is a very important part of practice.

Presenter3:46

But it is also, of course, that going back to the the God thing, when I you know, I see you twitch, I know you don't like it very much, but it is, of course, what's led to surgeons and I think well would you agree it has been a problem, they have become slightly arrogant on occasion, certainly in the past, because they're put on this pedestal.

Sir Peter Morris3:51

Yeah.

Sir Peter Morris3:59

Read how

Sir Peter Morris4:04

They're put on this pedestal. Certainly, yes. I mean, I can tell you some pretty horrendous stories when I was a young surgical trainee about some of the people I encountered.

Sir Peter Morris4:14

And I in fact always wondered, did you have to really practice surgery like that? And in fact,

Presenter4:19

Like what? I mean, I think it's a good idea.

Sir Peter Morris4:20

Well, treating everybody that worked at them like dirt is perhaps a bit too strong, but having tantrums in theatre if things weren't going right, this type of thing. And then I was exposed to Claude Welsh, who came from Boston as a visiting professor to Melbourne, and everything was pleased, thank you, in the theatre. And he was marvellous. He never got cross, he never got worried, and they'd saved up all the most difficult patience you could imagine for months beforehand for the great man to operate on. And he became my idol then. And later on I went to work with him in the States years later, and it was a great experience.

Sir Peter Morris5:01

Tell me about your

Presenter5:01

Tell me about your first record.

Sir Peter Morris5:03

Well the first one takes me back to university days and it's Graham Bell and his ragtime band, which was an Australian Dixieland band which we thought was the greatest in the world, but I'm sure it was a fairly parochial band, but we used to love this and listen time and time again dancing. It was a almost a university hymn.

Presenter6:25

When the Saints Go Marching Home, played by Graham Bell and his Australian jazz band, and Memories for my castaway Peter Morris of University in Melbourne. Where you were going to study engineering, but you suddenly switched to medicine. What what caused that?

Sir Peter Morris6:38

A friend of my mother's, who I was very close to, died. She'd had an intracerebral hemorrhage, and I then started reading a little bit about neurosurgery and

Sir Peter Morris6:50

Suddenly decided I want to change to medicine. Well you won't believe it now, or at least the young people today wouldn't, but I went up to the university with my mother to see the registrar. And I can remember we were sitting down in the office and my mother said, my son wants to change to medicine. Cut a long story short, we walked out half an hour later and I was enrolled for medicine. Now can you imagine that happening today?

Presenter7:14

But that was when you were presumably eighteen, something like that.

Sir Peter Morris7:17

Yes, that's a good idea.

Presenter7:18

That was the death, as you say, of a friend of your mother's. But you'd also, as I said in the introduction, been very known a lot about death in your young life by then already, because your father died when you were fourteen.

Sir Peter Morris7:26

Yeah, already because

Sir Peter Morris7:29

That's right, yeah.

Presenter7:30

How did that happen?

Sir Peter Morris7:31

I think the exam results from school had just come out and I'd topped the class and so he was taking us all out to a movie as a celebration and then he got chest pain during the show and went outside and just said he had indigestion. Then he didn't come back so we went out and he was lying on the floor and an ambulance was called and of course in those days he was just taken home in the ambulance and the local doctor came and administered morphine. That was all they could do. Of course today he would have been rushed into a cardiac centre and probably survived, I would imagine, because he was only forty nine at that stage.

Presenter8:07

And he died the next day, didn't he?

Sir Peter Morris8:10

That's right, yeah, or during the night, in fact.

Presenter8:12

Were you with him?

Sir Peter Morris8:12

No, I'd gone to sleep. My mother was with him, and she'd packed my brother and I off to bed, and

Sir Peter Morris8:18

When we got up in the morning she told us he'd died.

Presenter8:20

And then of course worse was to come because a year later your your brother Stan died. How old was he when he died?

Sir Peter Morris8:25

The step

Sir Peter Morris8:28

He was thirteen.

Presenter8:29

Yeah, and it was a car crash.

Sir Peter Morris8:31

Yes, we'd gone down to my father's brother's place at the seaside for Christmas Day and during the Christmas lunch one of those deck chairs collapsed and had sort of chopped the end of my brother's finger off. So we'd all got into the car going looking for a doctor and of course pretty hard to find on Christmas Day and stopped at one and there was a notice saying there was a doctor on duty back in the other direction and as we were doing a U-turn across this busy road we were hit right in the middle by a big army truck roaring along and so my brother was the closest. He was killed or he died in hospital later that day from chest injuries. Again, would have survived probably today. My mother was badly smashed up with fractured pelvis and legs and my aunt and uncle also quite badly hurt and

Presenter9:16

Yeah.

Speaker 49:16

Hmm.

Sir Peter Morris9:25

Amazingly, I just had a few cuts and

Sir Peter Morris9:29

Nothing else.

Presenter9:31

And then quickly in the wake of this you went off to boarding school. You were sent off probably because your mother needed some respite, I'm sure. But but I I it's just almost impossible to understand how you coped with all I mean i in in in one short year your family had been devastated.

Sir Peter Morris9:35

Probably because your mother needed some respite, I'm sure.

Sir Peter Morris9:39

Bye.

Sir Peter Morris9:45

Very well, in fact, and I was put into boarding school at Xavier College, a Jesuit college, and they were just marvellous to me because I was very rebellious. I rejected everything, I rejected God, I just must have been the most difficult child, and yet they coped with all this in a marvellous way, and I came through it.

Presenter9:55

There

Presenter9:58

Order

Presenter10:08

Record number two.

Sir Peter Morris10:10

Well, I'd like uh Mozart's piano concerto in C major. That uh reminds me of my mother, who was a good pianist and used to play this a lot. It would r remind me of her, because uh she had to handle me also when she came out of hospital and uh get me back into shape, which she did.

Presenter11:26

Part of the second movement of Mozart's piano concerto number twenty one in C major, played by Daniel Barenboim, who's also conducting the Berlin Philharmonic.

Presenter11:34

Um those who know you, Peter Morris, say that those terrible tragedies in in your personal life ultimately made you highly motivated. Is that fair?

Sir Peter Morris11:45

I would say I was always pretty motivated about anything I did and whether that made a difference.

Sir Peter Morris11:52

I honestly don't know.

Presenter11:54

What difference then would it have made to you? So you went through obviously a terrible time.

Sir Peter Morris11:54

What difference then would it

Sir Peter Morris11:59

One thing it did when I recovered from it or made me.

Sir Peter Morris12:04

much more compassionate about people and their problems.

Presenter12:08

Hmm.

Sir Peter Morris12:09

I think it stood me in good stead as a practising doctor.

Presenter12:13

So

Presenter12:14

You came out of it pretty well, obviously. You moved towards university, but not before you'd gone and done some national service, which by all accounts was a complete hoot. Not least'cause Barry Humphreys was there

Speaker 412:23

TAAAAAAAAA

Sir Peter Morris12:23

Bayham

Speaker 412:24

This was that

Sir Peter Morris12:24

Yeah. Uh

Speaker 412:24

But

Presenter12:26

What did he do? What happened?

Sir Peter Morris12:28

He, I think it's fair to say, almost drove the regulars to suicide because just very subtle changes in his uniform. For example, he'd come out on parade with everything beautifully polished except for one button, one brass button. Or he'd come out and parade beautifully turned out, except he'd have his right boot on his left foot and vice versa. And the regulars

Presenter12:38

Yeah.

Sir Peter Morris12:53

who were trained as never knew whether the Mickey was being taken out of them or whether they were just dealing with a someone that was a bit stupid and this went on for ages.

Presenter13:03

Tell me about your next record, because this is a reminder of childhood, isn't it, this one?

Sir Peter Morris13:07

Yes, during the war my brother and I spent a large part of the war in my family farm run by my maiden aunts because the men were off at the war and there was a large prisoner of war camp with Italian prisoners of war and they were all working on farms in the area and we had three Italian prisoners of war on our farm.

Sir Peter Morris13:33

Of course they all sang Lilli Malane, and they taught us to sing Lilli Malane in Italian. And in fact I could sing it in Italian as a child, and that's why I'd like to hear it again in Italian.

Speaker 413:44

Tam mi una roza da den el surpoon.

Sir Peter Morris13:47

Yeah.

Speaker 413:48

Legal dun fido, de tuenca belido.

Sir Peter Morris13:50

Oh hey.

Speaker 413:53

Orce do mari pianjerai madopor.

Speaker 414:00

Surira yaki, riri marle, aki, ririmarlen.

Presenter14:14

The trio Marcellus Ferrial singing Lilimane in Italian in memory of the prisoners of war who helped out in Australia when you were a boy. They it sounds to me from what you were telling me just while that was playing that that they almost became family really.

Sir Peter Morris14:28

Well, they were. I mean, they ate in the house and of course they were marvellous to us children'cause they loved children and we had a most spoilt time.

Presenter14:36

And your aunt had a soft spot for one of them, didn't she?

Sir Peter Morris14:36

Uh

Sir Peter Morris14:38

Yes, she did indeed I think. I don't know. I always had he had a soft spot for her, that was certainly so.

Presenter14:46

So eventually you qualified, what, late fifties? You you and came over here actually briefly, didn't you, to the UK? You worked your passage on a ship, tell me.

Sir Peter Morris14:55

That's right, yes. All budding surgeons tended in those days to come to the UK. Again, because we were all panellists, we all worked our way across as ship's doctors. So my wife and I, because I was just newly married, came across as a ship's doctor on a cargo passenger boat, which was the most uh boring five weeks I'd ever spent in my life. But fortunately I was studying for the fellowship exams.

Presenter15:23

But I gather you also kept busy with the crew, who kind of had the occasional spot apother.

Sir Peter Morris15:28

Well, yeah, I mean, once we'd been to Port Aden, and again, Port Sedan, the only thing I had to treat was venereal disease or

Sir Peter Morris15:37

And I was paid off with a shilling at the end of the voyage.

Presenter15:39

Is that all?

Sir Peter Morris15:40

And I had to sign it. Yeah, that was they have to give you something to make it legal and a shilling was the standard.

Presenter15:45

But you had a free passage.

Sir Peter Morris15:46

I had a free pass.

Presenter15:47

Sort of.

Sir Peter Morris15:48

Yeah.

Presenter15:50

So, you spent a couple of years in this country, Hammersmith and Southampton, and then you went to the States. And really, this is.

Sir Peter Morris15:52

Yeah.

Presenter15:56

That's where eventually you began to get into the area of transplantation, wasn't it? It was a new exciting area, that's it.

Sir Peter Morris16:02

Oh, absolutely, yes.

Sir Peter Morris16:05

You know, the whole transplant program so only a handful around the world at that stage, and uh my professor.

Presenter16:11

True.

Sir Peter Morris16:14

Back in Melbourne was very keen for me to move into transportation and also.

Sir Peter Morris16:19

Learn all about tissue matching and tissue typing, because nothing existed in that area in Australia, and it was in its infancy in just one or two places in the world.

Presenter16:28

But it's interesting, isn't it? Because right at the beginning when donor organs were being rejected.

Presenter16:34

It seems so obvious to us now why, but you didn't know why then, and it was really your work. It was you who who originally analyzed why, wasn't it?

Sir Peter Morris16:37

Yeah.

Sir Peter Morris16:42

Well, in some aspects, yes. I mean, one, I think, quite important contribution I made with Paul Terasaki, we showed that antibodies were very important in rejection. And if you, in fact, tried to transplant a kidney, for example, or any organ for that matter, into a patient who had antibodies, that recognized donor transplantation antigens and that organ would be rejected within

Presenter16:46

I made

Sir Peter Morris17:06

Twenty minutes, half an hour, and that

Speaker 317:06

Yeah.

Presenter17:06

Twenty

Sir Peter Morris17:09

Hadn't been recognised before, so this was quite an important development.

Presenter17:13

So there you were absolutely in on the beginning of it. And by the the nineteen sixties you were very much into the the genetics of transplantation, and you went back to Australia from where you sought the help of an ancient tribe of New Guinea inhabitants.

Sir Peter Morris17:22

Back

Presenter17:29

Who were they?

Sir Peter Morris17:31

Well, this was the Highland natives of New Guinea that um really had not been

Presenter17:33

Uh

Sir Peter Morris17:36

touched by any immigration or mixture of genes, and because they had not been presumably influenced by all the diseases that most populations have been, their genetic system of transplantation antigens hadn't evolved as much as it had in

Presenter17:48

English

Sir Peter Morris17:53

Other communities.

Presenter17:54

Just one problem, though, when you were there they were cannibals.

Sir Peter Morris17:58

Well, yes. I mean, ritual cannibalism had been practised probably up until

Sir Peter Morris18:04

At least nineteen seventy. In fact, one good story is we were.

Sir Peter Morris18:10

out taking blood samples from a village right on the edge of the escarpment.

Sir Peter Morris18:15

We asked uh a man who was between forty and sixty, and

Sir Peter Morris18:20

Did they go on raiding parties down into the coastal areas?

Sir Peter Morris18:24

Yes, they did, or had done, and did they bring women back? Annie said, Yes, they did.

Sir Peter Morris18:30

And then we asked, what did they do with the women? We're assuming we'd be told, well, they married them, etc. And he said, no, we put them in that, and he pointed to an enclosed paddock with six-foot palings around it. And what did you do? And he said, we fattened them, through an interpreter, of course, we fattened them up and then we ate them. And so I remember that was in 1970. So this man certainly in his lifetime remembered that happening now. Amazing.

Presenter19:04

I could number four.

Sir Peter Morris19:05

Here I'd like to hear Joan Bays sing We Shall Overcome because in the Stay I was in Boston for over three years at in the s late sixties, mid sixties when uh civil rights activity was big and Joan Bays was everybody's heroine.

Speaker 419:24

Reach out.

Speaker 419:30

We shall overpower.

Speaker 419:35

We shall look so deep in heart.

Speaker 419:49

I do believe

Presenter19:54

Joan Baz and we shall overcome. You also went on, Peter Morris, to prove that that blood transfusions in in kidney patients and they normally have to have hundreds, don't they? Helped rather than hindered the acceptance of a donor kidney. It had always thought, again, that the opposite was the case, wasn't it?

Sir Peter Morris20:11

Yes, this is quite contrary to accepted thinking, including my own. And when I got back to Melbourne, they had very good records of transfusions, and I was able to do quite a big study. And to my amazement, it turned out that patients who had had a lot of transfusions did certainly as well, not worse, and perhaps better than those who had had few or none.

Presenter20:32

So you're obviously very much a a pioneer in the field, and it's not surprising, therefore, that the telephone rang one day from Oxford and you were invited to become the the Nuffield Professor of Surgery.

Sir Peter Morris20:36

What's Price

Presenter20:42

The only problem was they didn't have a transplant unit, which is what you were interested in. Did you really blackmail them into getting one?

Sir Peter Morris20:49

Oh no, they were keen to have one too, and they but I mean it did put quite a bit of pressure on the market and unless we

Presenter20:56

What they said to the government, and unless we have one, we can't get this good chap from Australia to come in.

Sir Peter Morris21:01

Well, I don't know quite what they said, but I suspect something along those lines. And fortunately, the government were persuaded to do so. In fact, once persuaded, they did fund it very well. Because I think they were concerned that the results of transportation were so bad in the UK they felt that they weren't going to fund any more units. It was just good money after bad money.

Presenter21:21

Okay,'cause they were atrocious failures. I mean, ninety percent failure.

Sir Peter Morris21:22

I mean, ninety percent failure then? Well, not quite as but there was a high you know, forty percent of patients died in the first year and about fifty percent of grafts survived one year, so they weren't

Presenter21:33

And the success rate now is what, ninety percent success, is it?

Sir Peter Morris21:36

Well, it's about eighty five to ninety percent at one year and about seventy percent at five years, and that's graft survival. Of course, in the case of kidney, if the graft fails, they can go back on dialysis and uh

Presenter21:40

Is it

Sir Peter Morris21:46

Patient survival is better, yes, then they can have another go.

Presenter21:46

Have a second.

Presenter21:49

Record number five.

Sir Peter Morris21:51

Well, I'd like to hear Rodolpho singing the little tiny hand is frozen from the first act of La Bohaime. It's one of my favourite operas, one I've seen it a lot, but also I saw it on one magical night at the Sydney Opera House. We had dinner looking out over the Sydney Harbour Bridge beforehand and then had La Bohaim after and the whole evening was one very special occasion.

Speaker 422:21

I'm not sure if I can do it.

Presenter23:14

Luciano Pavarotti as Rodolfo, singing Ce Gellida Manina, Your Tiny Hand Is Frozen, from Act One of Puccini's Laboem, with the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Herbert von Carrion.

Presenter23:24

There are two major practical problems, Sir Peter, that stand in the way of donor surgery, aren't there? Lack of donor organs and lack of resources, money, facilities and staff to transplant them. Let's deal with the shortage of donor organs first. How much damage have the scandals at the Bristol Baby Unit and the Alderhay Children's Hospital over the harvesting of without permission of body parts done to the supply of organs?

Sir Peter Morris23:49

Well, surprisingly, very little. There was an initial impact on the number of donors available, but it's gone back to normal now.

Presenter23:57

'Cause the supply of organs is is

Sir Peter Morris23:59

Well, it's still quite inadequate for what we need, and this is a major problem for transplantation.

Presenter24:00

Yeah.

Presenter24:04

Because of course improved road safety and seat health.

Sir Peter Morris24:07

That's right. I mean, there are good things about less road deaths, there are less deaths from cerebral hemorrhages, and so that's all good.

Presenter24:15

What has happened as a result of those two scandals, it seems to me, is that that uh it's tarnished the image of of the medical profession, and most particularly of your guys, the surgeons.

Presenter24:26

And now that that confidence is damaged, it's very difficult to get it back, isn't it? Because we are now saying we the public are saying

Sir Peter Morris24:32

Yeah.

Presenter24:34

I want to know this guy's record. I'm not putting myself under the knife. Who is he?

Sir Peter Morris24:37

Myself under the

Presenter24:39

You know, there's been a sea change in our attitude to surgery.

Sir Peter Morris24:39

Yeah.

Sir Peter Morris24:43

Yes, and there's going to even be a bigger sea change, and I think that's a good thing. I don't have any problem with that whatsoever. I think we do have to be far more transparent with the public. I mean, as has existed in the States for quite a few years now.

Presenter24:57

But you can ask for his record, can you?

Sir Peter Morris24:59

Yes, yes, indeed. I mean, basically in my unit in Oxford, we always had our records available for the patients, not for every single procedure, but for the big dangerous procedures. So we could tell them what my record was for that particular operation, what the unit's record was for that particular operation.

Presenter25:02

Uh

Presenter25:16

And you're available to do it and you give the time to do it. You're not always importantly moving on somewhere else. I think that's a good idea.

Sir Peter Morris25:20

Is it important?

Sir Peter Morris25:22

No, I think that's another problem that

Sir Peter Morris25:26

Because we don't have enough surgeons' time, they're under a lot of stress and often

Sir Peter Morris25:31

The perception of arrogance is due to two things. I think one, that the surgeon is short of time, rather stressed, knowing he's got to do ten other things in the next hour. And secondly, of course, a lot of surgeons feel that if they don't give an air of, let's say, confidence, which might be interpreted as arrogance, that the patients won't trust them, that they're up to the job. That's wrong, but I mean that I think is in part the way this perception of arrogance has developed. I'm not pretending there aren't and haven't been arrogant surgeons, but they're not all arrogant at all.

Presenter26:06

I want to talk to come on to the other problem of the shortage of surgeons and the pressure of work and resources, but let's pause for record number six.

Sir Peter Morris26:09

Yeah.

Sir Peter Morris26:13

Well, I'd like to hear Mozart's Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, which is a lovely melody.

Presenter27:19

The opening of Mozart's Serenade in G major, Eine Kleiner Nachtmusik, played by the New York Philemonic conducted by Leonard Bernstein.

Presenter27:26

You warned about the impending crisis in the world of transplant surgery, Peter Morris. Nineteen ninety nine you published a report shortage of surgeons, operations being performed by exhausted people, not enough nurses, unattractive hours. How much have things changed since you filed that report?

Sir Peter Morris27:44

Well, I think

Sir Peter Morris27:45

Quite a bit not as much as we would have liked.

Sir Peter Morris27:49

One of the major problems is the lack of transplant surgeons. You're working more often than not out of hours rather than in hours and

Sir Peter Morris27:57

This is no longer attractive to the young surgeon who

Presenter28:01

Because they're not financially recompensed for enough for that, is that?

Sir Peter Morris28:04

Well enough, no. And there's no private practice either in Transplantation, which I'm sure does influence and uh

Sir Peter Morris28:12

And there's going to have to be some rationalisation in provision of transplant services.

Presenter28:17

What, you're gonna have to cut some units?

Sir Peter Morris28:19

Yes, I think it's inevitable because if we have a staffing that is acceptable, then there has to be a Sufficient volume of work to go through that to maintain the activities not only of the surgeons but of the whole infrastructure that goes with a transplant program.

Presenter28:34

So you say there in will inevitably be some centres cut. How many are there and how many do you think will be cut?

Sir Peter Morris28:42

Well, I it's not for me to say. I mean, I think

Sir Peter Morris28:46

There are various criteria that have been laid down that a centre must meet, and the Department of Health have accepted those with respect to designation and staffing of units. So that if the unit can't meet those, And doesn't have any uh possibility of meeting those criteria in the next few years, then I would say it would have to go.

Sir Peter Morris29:08

Uh

Presenter29:08

Uh

Sir Peter Morris29:08

Echo number seven.

Sir Peter Morris29:10

Well, I'd uh like to hear uh Radimus singing Celeste Aida and if possible Jose Carreras sing this as I had the pleasure of hearing him sing this in Barcelona accompanied by a piano where he gave a concert at a transplant congress about four or five years ago.

Presenter29:27

You know

Speaker 429:34

Bless the world.

Speaker 429:43

Yeah.

Speaker 429:52

Because

Speaker 430:09

Robinson

Speaker 430:11

And all sir of

Speaker 430:22

Last way lost black hole.

Presenter30:30

Jose Carreras as Radamez singing Chieleste Aida from Act One and Verdi's Aida with the Vienna Philharmonica conducted by Herbert von Carrian. Um do you think you'll be any good alone on this desert island? Perhaps you've even been to some off of southern Australia.

Sir Peter Morris30:44

Well, I've been to I've been to Irelands on short holiday breaks and always

Presenter30:52

Surrounded by luxury, I think.

Sir Peter Morris30:53

You're surrounded by luxury exactly. And I think what you're envisaging for me is rather different.

Presenter30:59

But you're a practical chap, I mean, brought up out in the countryside who can, you know, kill a rabbit or cook it a bit, can you?

Sir Peter Morris31:00

Uh

Sir Peter Morris31:01

Mm.

Sir Peter Morris31:03

Yeah.

Sir Peter Morris31:05

Indeed, can you? Oh, I can indeed. I can skin a rabbit. In fact, when I was a child, I can remember my brother and I heading back in the train to Melbourne with six hundred skins all tied together with uh string.

Sir Peter Morris31:18

and we couldn't understand why everybody in the carriage was moving.

Sir Peter Morris31:23

as we're on this 300-mile train trip.

Presenter31:26

But what would be your greatest fear alone on that? I mean, obviously, you'd miss your family and so on, but that, you know, the obvious apart, what do you think?

Presenter31:34

Alone, completely alone, stranded.

Sir Peter Morris31:37

I guess not being able to

Sir Peter Morris31:40

think or be active. I suspect I could survive by devising thought games, practical games, etc. I mean I used to play a lot as a child by myself after my father died. I mean occasionally my mother would come out and throw cricket balls at me before a big match, even when I was at university. But I used to play against this brick wall we had at the back of our house and I used to devise every game known to man against that brick wall. Davis Cup tennis matches, cricket test matches, football matches. And so I think I could work out a way of surviving.

Speaker 332:25

Last record

Sir Peter Morris32:27

When I'd like to hear Schubert's Ave Maria, preferably sung by a boys soprano,

Speaker 433:01

What's the

Speaker 433:25

Mm-hmm.

Presenter33:33

Added Jones singing Schubert's Ave Maria. Well, if you could only take one of those eight records, which one would

Sir Peter Morris33:40

I think I'd take Mozart's piano concerto in C major.

Presenter33:45

What about your book? You've got the Bible and you've got Shakespeare.

Sir Peter Morris33:48

I'd quite like to take the Patrick O'Brien series on Albury and Matcharin, which I suspect you might forbid, but I have heard rumours that they're going to produce them in one single volume. The reason I'd like to take them is you can read them over and over again. Albury's the sea captain, Matcharin is the physician-surgeon, and the portrayal of medicine and surgery in the Napoleonic Wars is extremely accurate and absolutely fascinating. I keep learning things, and I might even learn how to build a ship and sail off the desert island.

Presenter34:22

What about your luxury?

Sir Peter Morris34:22

What about

Sir Peter Morris34:24

Well, I had thought it'd be very nice to have a computer, but as I wouldn't have any power and I wouldn't have my son James to tell me how to use it, I've decided I'd select a set of golf clubs, as long as you allow me to take some golf balls, because if it's an island I could construct a golf course round the island, and I could certainly keep myself pretty active and probably become the world's greatest sand player.

Presenter34:47

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

Sir Peter Morris34:51

Thank you so much.

Speaker 334:59

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