Paul Gambaccini

Speaker 20:00

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 two, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:29

My Castaway this week is a disc jockey, the cultivated voice of pop. He presented shows on Radio One for nearly twenty years and left it unusually without rancor. These days his anglicised American tones grace classic FM, where he returned after a gruesome battle with the highbrows at Radio Three. He lost.

Presenter0:47

Born in New York, clever and musical, he came to this country on a scholarship to Oxford. His encyclopedic knowledge of music had drawn him to broadcasting and he tried to get a job with local radio, but discovered he had a better record collection than they did. He went on to become Radio One's youngest star, and has been telling us about culture, high and low, pop and classical, ever since. What's good is good, regardless of whether it's high or low, he says. He is Paul Gambaccini.

Presenter1:15

Your story, Paul, um of is one of how you became this arbiter of high or low or both um taste. The fact is you might have been a lawyer, mightn't you?

Paul Gambaccini1:25

I came very close to going to law school.

Paul Gambaccini1:28

I had done well at Dartmouth College in the Ivy League and had been accepted to Yale and Harvard Law Schools.

Paul Gambaccini1:36

And the pressure was on.

Presenter1:38

Parental pressure is this? This is what your parents wanted for you, is it?

Paul Gambaccini1:38

Ben

Paul Gambaccini1:41

Well, my dad once told me that he had hoped that one of his three sons would become either a priest or a lawyer.

Paul Gambaccini1:47

But the pressure at the moment, when I was in college, was from the institution itself.

Paul Gambaccini1:52

At that time there was the feeling that the future leaders of America would be lawyers. As Watergate proved, the future criminals of America would be lawyers. But we were told you go from the Ivy League to the law schools.

Paul Gambaccini2:05

But then I was crossing the green one day.

Paul Gambaccini2:08

And I encountered a student named Bob Harrington, who said, Have you applied to Oxford yet? and I said, No. Why? And he said, It's a two year paid vacation.

Paul Gambaccini2:18

And I thought, well, how fantastic

Presenter2:20

So this was 1970. This is why and when you crossed the pond. Indeed, it was. But you never went back.

Paul Gambaccini2:23

Indeed it was.

Paul Gambaccini2:25

I never completely went back. I I went back to work for half a year.

Paul Gambaccini2:32

As executive producer of WBZ, not Z, in Boston, Massachusetts, which was at 50,000 watts, one of the biggest radio stations in the country.

Paul Gambaccini2:42

But even when I was doing that I was sending tapes back to Radio One.

Presenter2:45

I love the technicality of it all. I mean, I also love all these names of American radio stations. I mean, you were brought up surrounded by all these W A B Z's, weren't you?

Paul Gambaccini2:54

Oh, fantastic, yes.

Paul Gambaccini2:56

Even when we moved out of New York City to Westport, Connecticut, just before I was six years old, we were within a fifty mile radius of New York City, so I could hear all the stations. And this was very, very important.

Presenter3:08

But you were always, it seems to me, picking up, soaking up facts. I mean, you are encyclopedic in your knowledge, aren't you, of pop music? You seem to me to have soaked it up. Was that something that happened completely naturally, or did you think, I am going to make this you know, what I do in life?

Paul Gambaccini3:24

It happened completely naturally. Not a single member of the college administration said I should work in radio, even though that was clearly my power base, and that was what I did well when I was in college. There was only one.

Presenter3:29

Radio.

Paul Gambaccini3:35

A college friend of mine, who said

Presenter3:37

Paul, have you ever thought of going into radio? But you presumably thought that everybody knew what you knew. You you didn't realize you were an exception. You thought you were a little cla-

Paul Gambaccini3:43

Exactly. It wasn't until I was on Radio One and I was irritated that Tony Blackburn didn't know something and I s and I suddenly thought about it and I thought, Well, actually, there's a lot I know that he doesn't know.

Paul Gambaccini3:53

But then who else here knows all this? And I suddenly thought, Oh my gosh, I'm the freak

Paul Gambaccini3:59

And that's when I realized that I was the different one. Because it was so natural to me. I thought everybody knew this. Everybody knew that Unchained Melody was the B side of Hung on You and it was flipped to become the hit.

Presenter4:12

Or what was Love in Spoonful's first hit? Or when did the what was the name of the Temptation's lead singer in 1968? What are the answers to these questions? You know them all.

Paul Gambaccini4:21

I thought you wanted me to tell you. Well, I could, actually. David Ruffin was turfed out, and in came.

Paul Gambaccini4:26

Uh well Eddie Kendricks, who was already there, he's he's the one anyway.

Presenter4:30

This is the lead series. Yes, thank you.

Paul Gambaccini4:31

Dennis Edwards came in as the new member.

Presenter4:32

Tell me about it. What about the loving spoonful? You didn't tell me that one.

Paul Gambaccini4:35

Oh, uh do you believe in magic?

Presenter4:36

Right, thank you very much. First record.

Paul Gambaccini4:39

This is the finale of Rhapsody in Blue by Gershwin, as it appeared in the film soundtrack of Woody Allen's Manhattan, New York.

Paul Gambaccini4:46

is such a collection of wonders. It's where everything that's going to happen in the world, good and bad, happens first. And yet, in the midst of this seeming disorder and chaos, there is so much beauty and so much wonder.

Paul Gambaccini4:59

And it was captured.

Paul Gambaccini5:01

by Woody Allen on screen and it's captured in the music.

Presenter5:28

Great stuff, isn't it? The finale of Rhapsody in Blue by George Gershwin from the film soundtrack of Manhattan played by Gary Grafman and the New York Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Zubin Mater, and an evocation of America where my castaway, Paul Gambuccini, was born and brought up. You've often said, Paul, that you know you were born and brought up in the right place at the right time. Why do you feel that so strongly?

Paul Gambaccini5:51

Well, I missed the Depression. I missed World War Two.

Paul Gambaccini5:55

I was born in New York City, which is really the most important city in the United States, at the time when the United States was the center of the world in terms of having not been devastated by World War two. We had the economic advantage in the nineteen fifties.

Presenter6:14

Cany was the home of an enormous amount of music at that time, and of the world's output it must have had the largest proportion.

Paul Gambaccini6:20

That's right. Somehow the United States was suddenly the place to be in terms of music and in terms of painting and in other areas as well. And to be there and to take it all in as it was all happening. I mean the golden age of the Broadway musical as well. I'm not just talking about rock and roll. Uh and uh some of these wonderful classical composers like Copeland and Bernstein were around when I was

Presenter6:41

West Science Story of course, fifty something. What was it? Fifty what?

Paul Gambaccini6:42

What was it?

Paul Gambaccini6:45

Fifty seven, I think.

Presenter6:47

Yeah. Apart from that, uh you know, the name is terrific. I I have to ask you about the name, Gambaccini, it's a great name, Italian origin of course, but there's lots of other bits and pieces in there as well, isn't there?

Paul Gambaccini6:57

Yes, I am a mongrel of Europe.

Paul Gambaccini7:00

Uh my father's parents were both from Italy, so I'm fifty percent Italian.

Paul Gambaccini7:04

My mother's mother had

Paul Gambaccini7:07

English parents. So I'm 25% English. And then there's Irish and German.

Paul Gambaccini7:13

So you see there are four countries in there.

Presenter7:15

So the grandparents or the great grandparents who are immigrants would have come in through Ellis Island and all that. Very much

Paul Gambaccini7:20

My father's parents indeed are recorded in the Ellis Island book, which is now on the Internet. And uh you can go and you'll find Guido Gampuccini.

Paul Gambaccini7:32

He was my grandfather, whom I never met. He died before I was born.

Presenter7:35

So you were the boy from the Bronx. Only for the first few years, though, I think. The the family obviously your father s what did he do?'Cause he must have made some money and moved out to kind of leafy suburbs.

Paul Gambaccini7:45

In the typical immigrant child style, he wanted his kids to be Americans, he wouldn't allow us to learn Italian.

Paul Gambaccini7:53

We had to speak English.

Paul Gambaccini7:55

And he wanted to go to where there were better schools, and thus the suburbs, because Westport, Connecticut had a high school which had been chosen one of the top ten in the s in the country.

Paul Gambaccini8:07

Staples High School. So we moved to Westport, Connecticut. He had had some success. He and three Armenian immigrant children formed a photo engraving company. A photo engraver made the plates for magazine ads and covers. They did well enough to

Paul Gambaccini8:25

by other companies until they had the vertical printing process, and they were the biggest shop in New York. But he was still on the way up when we moved to Connecticut, and at that time the house cost twenty thousand dollars, and uh so even someone just starting out could afford it.

Presenter8:44

Michael number two.

Paul Gambaccini8:46

I always love this record because, of course, being recorded live, it actually happened in two and a half minutes of time and space.

Paul Gambaccini8:52

And it always sounds to me as if the pianist may not catch up to them. And I love it particularly at the end, as it sounds like he's really struggling to keep up with them. And then they conclude with that fantastic build that they'd had at the beginning.

Speaker 49:08

Up to the hot

Speaker 49:11

Let's go to the hammer baby, let's go to the hammer baby, let's go to the house.

Speaker 49:20

Let's go through the high

Presenter9:34

At the hop, Danny and the Juniors. Great end, that, isn't it?

Paul Gambaccini9:36

Okay, good.

Presenter9:36

Uh

Paul Gambaccini9:36

Uh

Presenter9:36

Yeah.

Paul Gambaccini9:37

Fantastic. Love the timing.

Presenter9:39

We've talked pop so far, but of course there was a a a classical element to your musical education as well. Am I right in thinking you might have been a concert pianist?

Paul Gambaccini9:47

Yes, indeed. Uh I was

Paul Gambaccini9:52

Not a child prodigy, but a a um someone who was interested in the piano from when I was five. I remember my parents took me to Uncle Jim's, and Uncle Jim had a piano, and I sat down at it and started plonking away. Unfortunately it was plonking. It wasn't like Mozart, I didn't uh pick it up by ear.

Paul Gambaccini10:08

But nonetheless my parents went hm

Speaker 210:10

Hmm.

Paul Gambaccini10:11

And uh when I was nine they got me a piano.

Paul Gambaccini10:14

And I took classical lessons for six years.

Paul Gambaccini10:17

However, I had to stop because my teacher, who had been a professional, took me to see one of her former pupils in New York at Town Hall.

Paul Gambaccini10:28

He was giving a recital, and as I watched him under the clig lights in front of the press,

Paul Gambaccini10:33

I had this sudden feeling of horror. Oh, my God, this is what she has in mind for me.

Paul Gambaccini10:38

Yeah.

Presenter10:38

But you were obviously what and I think it's your phrase a multiple geek. That's to say you could do a bit of everything. I mean maths as well as the history, the politics, philosophy, economics, music

Paul Gambaccini10:49

It's very interesting. We had um an aptitude test, and on that test and on the state tests, I was officially a math genius.

Paul Gambaccini11:00

Now, I I don't necessarily boast about this because I also was officially mechanically useless.

Paul Gambaccini11:07

Don't ask me to fix your car. That was my worst aptitude. But, mathematically, I was a genius. Now,

Paul Gambaccini11:13

This has not translated itself into mathematical theory, but it has been extraordinarily useful in timing.

Presenter11:22

Calculating who's gone up and who's gone down the top 20.

Paul Gambaccini11:24

Sure. Do a backtiming, for example, when you're putting a record program together, so you know when to start something and when to end it.

Presenter11:31

And you could have gone to Harvard or Yale, and you chose not to because they didn't have a good radio station, is that right?

Paul Gambaccini11:38

Well, that was one of the reasons. This was uh 1965 and it was in the middle of the civil rights protests and the uh Vietnam War was coming to our attention and we weren't out to please the establishment. And although I'd been accepted by Harvard, which was the place to go to, I took a visit there with my brother and I remember I went to the dining hall and I sat next to someone. I said, Do you mind if I sit here? And he said, No, not at all. And I said, I'm considering coming here. Do you like it here? And he said, Yes, I love it here. And I said, Why do you love it? And he said, Well, this is the one place in the world where I can come and not need another person. And I thought, how creepy is that?

Speaker 212:05

No, no

Paul Gambaccini12:18

But more importantly.

Speaker 212:19

And then

Paul Gambaccini12:22

And Dartmouth had

Paul Gambaccini12:24

the largest radio station in the country run by students. And I walked around the beautiful countryside surrounding the college with my little portable, listening to the radio station. And I just thought, I want to be near this station. I didn't necessarily want to be on it, I just wanted to be near it.

Presenter12:42

And the truth is, you did the voice test, they took you and you ended up running.

Paul Gambaccini12:46

Yeah.

Presenter12:46

Well, absolutely. Huge success. Let's stop there for your next record.

Paul Gambaccini12:50

This is the track I turn to the most from my favorite album.

Paul Gambaccini12:55

I think the Beatles' best album was Revolver. And this is such an affirmation of happiness and life. It's the one that I do go to first on the album. It's And Your Bird Can Sing.

Speaker 413:14

That you've got everything you want And you're by dancing But you don't get me

Speaker 413:23

You don't get it.

Speaker 413:25

Me and so you've seen seven wonders And your bed is green but you can't see

Presenter13:35

The Beatles and Your Bird Can Sing from the album Revolver. Getting back to your life and getting you over here across the pond, as you say, nineteen seventies to do P P E at Oxford. The darkest two years of my life, you've called them. Why was that?

Paul Gambaccini13:49

After five months in which I had uh cycled everywhere and I had I had fantastic experiences cycling around the Oxford area. Once I cycled ten miles to the north, I thought, Well, that's enough for today and I leaned my bike against this wall and I thought

Paul Gambaccini14:06

Hmm. Might as well see what's on the other side of the wall.

Paul Gambaccini14:10

And it was a palace. It was Blenheim. And I didn't know it was there. And I thought, this is like Disneyland. It was an amazing discovery. I had all sorts of discoveries like that. And that was lovely. But of course, I missed friends and family. And I missed my Dartmouth situation with the radio station because they wouldn't let me broadcast on Radio Oxford. They wouldn't let me audition for Radio Oxford. It was like being unemployed at the age of twenty.

Presenter14:36

So you were cut off really from what had been giving you your lifeblood, which is this radio and DJing and running the station. That's the point, isn't it?

Paul Gambaccini14:43

Yeah.

Paul Gambaccini14:44

Yes, that is the point.

Presenter14:45

You you became anxious'cause you didn't have it any more.

Paul Gambaccini14:48

That's right, and one night

Paul Gambaccini14:50

which I will never forget.

Paul Gambaccini14:51

I called my successor at the college radio station on the night of his directorate dinner when they turned over to the next class. And when I hung up, I had that sinking feeling. Yes, folks, it does exist. I just knew that I had unintentionally changed countries. Because there was nothing for me to return to. You can say, oh, you can go back to the States. Yeah, to what?

Paul Gambaccini15:14

And I had a combination of negative feelings, which I'm sure.

Paul Gambaccini15:20

Immigrants have.

Presenter15:21

Hmm.

Paul Gambaccini15:22

A particular people who emigrate on their own.

Presenter15:24

But I wonder if that was the point and that was perhaps what gave you the the impetus to say I'm going to forget about this academic stuff and I'm not going to be a lawyer or I'm not going to be a I'm going to do radio.

Paul Gambaccini15:35

I remember having an aftermeal coffee, in my case hot chocolate, as we often did, in Queens College, across the street from University College, my college, with James Fallows.

Paul Gambaccini15:48

Jimmy, who went on to become President Carter's head speechwriter and a very distinguished journalist, had gone to Harvard and he also had been accepted at law school.

Paul Gambaccini15:58

And he said, But I don't want to go to law school. I want to write. He'd been the editor of the Harvard Crimson. And I said, Well, I don't want to go to law school. I want to be in radio.

Paul Gambaccini16:07

And we vowed together that we would do what we could to not go to law school.

Paul Gambaccini16:14

And thank heaven we both made it.

Presenter16:17

Next piece of music.

Paul Gambaccini16:18

Here is the piece that more than any inspired me to become a classical pianist as a boy, which is Griggs Piano Concerto performed by Arthur Rubinstein. I very romantically, or perhaps dramatically, thought if I was warned a minute in advance that I was going to die, this is the music that I would like to have played. I'd like to go out on this. Somehow for me, this combined romance and tragedy. I thought of the Fjords long before I'd even been in a Fjord. And when I finally was in a Fjord, I thought,

Paul Gambaccini16:53

I was right. He was right. This is the perfect music.

Presenter17:54

Artur Rubinstein and the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the end of Grieg's piano concerto in A minor conducted by Alfred Wallenstein.

Presenter18:01

So you started work, Paul Gambaccini, on Radio One in nineteen seventy three. You were only twenty four, but people even then were saying that you sounded avuncular. I suppose it's'cause, again, you knew so much.

Paul Gambaccini18:11

I cared about what I was presenting, not the personality that I was projecting.

Speaker 418:17

Yeah.

Paul Gambaccini18:17

Uh for example, in the this is the Radio One calendar days, of course, I knew that I was never going to be a pin-up.

Paul Gambaccini18:25

Don't protest, Sue. Um I knew I wasn't going to be one of these sort of sexless sex symbols like Tony Blackburn. I just thought my product is the knowledge and the authority presented in an entertaining way. If you are an expert like Patrick Moore in astronomy, you can have a long career regardless of fashion.

Paul Gambaccini18:47

and thank Heaven I was never associated with some sort of fashion.

Presenter18:51

During that time of being a DJ, albeit, you know, this this this very factual person who was conveying lots and lots of information, you also perfected the art of the talk over. Tell me about the talkover.

Paul Gambaccini19:02

The talk over, quite simply, is the space on the record before the singer starts. When I was a boy, there was a diss jockey called Dan Ingram on WABC, and he could talk anything up to within the last breath before the vocalist came in. I have him on tape talking up Twist and Shout by the Isley Brothers, and every time I hear it to this day, it sounds like he's not going to make it, but he does get out in time. Now, okay, you don't want to talk up a beautiful, sensitive record, but most rock records don't fall into that category.

Presenter19:34

Why don't you put the cans on and try talking me up to this beautiful sensitive record? Oh, one second.

Paul Gambaccini19:40

Oh one second. Yeah

Paul Gambaccini19:43

Well, this was a r

Presenter19:43

But Uh

Paul Gambaccini19:44

Uh

Presenter19:44

Uh

Paul Gambaccini19:44

At first

Presenter19:44

Yeah.

Paul Gambaccini19:44

Uh

Presenter19:44

It's about nine seconds. So, do you want to say something and then wave your hand when you want to cue the record?

Paul Gambaccini19:50

Okay. Uh I first heard this. I was at the breakfast table in that magic year, nineteen fifty seven. And uh we were listening to WINS New York. The sports reporter Bill Stern was sitting in as the host. He played the new WINS Pick Hit of the Week.

Paul Gambaccini20:05

And when it was finished he said, That is so beautiful. I'm going to do something which isn't allowed. I'm going to play it again.

Paul Gambaccini20:13

And so I heard, two times in a row, Frank Sinacha with the Kahn and Van Eusen song All the Way.

Speaker 420:21

Who knows where the road will lead us? Only a fool would say.

Speaker 420:33

But if you let me love you, it's for sure I'm gonna love you.

Speaker 420:41

All the way.

Speaker 420:47

All the way.

Presenter20:51

Frank Sonata singing all the way. You were in at the start of Classic FM in the early nineties, uh Paul. In a sense you were the first classical DJ, weren't you?

Paul Gambaccini21:02

I was called in by Michael Buck, the programming director, two months before Classic FM was going to go on air, and he said, I want to have a chart show. Would you like to do it? And I thought, well, either this is going to be a great success because it's never been done before, and everybody will say, Gee, why didn't anybody think of this before? or it'll be a tremendous flop.

Paul Gambaccini21:21

Well, believe it or not, and we do turn for wisdom to the strangest sources, I recalled the words of Shirley MacLean, who had said, No one knows your failures precisely because no one heard them or saw them.

Paul Gambaccini21:35

And I thought, okay, even if this thing dies, I'm still on Radio 1, and nobody knows I've flopped. So you practice.

Presenter21:41

So you practiced your coming in at number four Beethoven's Fifth.

Paul Gambaccini21:43

Oh, I didn't have to do all that. Here's an example of the terrifying power of the mind that we do not tap.

Paul Gambaccini21:52

Michael Buck said, I want a countdown at the end with music like Alan Freeman's. And I thought, Okay.

Paul Gambaccini21:58

The Homage March from Sigurd Jolsefar by Grieg. Now

Paul Gambaccini22:02

How did I know that that was going to fit perfectly? It's kind of scary, but obviously in that five seconds, and it was five seconds, m my mind was like a computer going, stop Homage March by Greek.

Paul Gambaccini22:15

I think probably we all can do that, but there are only very few moments when we actually do pull it out of the hat. Interesting. So I did do that in a DJ style. No talkovers though. I want to point that out. And we had this completely unexpected success.

Presenter22:31

Absolutely. And then Radio Three came after you, because I think they spotted that they could do with a bit of this. The trouble was that it made you temporarily only, it has to be said, the most hated man in radio. What happened?

Paul Gambaccini22:43

I knew from the very beginning that there was going to be a problem. We did a week of run throughs before we did the actual shows, and I had said in my three teases at the top of the hour, Bryn in the American Top Ten

Paul Gambaccini22:59

And I was told, You can't say Bryn, you have to say Bryn Turville. Well, as if people listening to Radio Three don't know who Bryn is. I mean, name me another Bryn. It was so casual for it. You know. Exactly. It was so casual.

Paul Gambaccini23:12

And I thought, uh-oh, they don't want me. They want my rating.

Presenter23:17

And in the end they went for you, didn't they? They said that uh they didn't like your accent. I mean, it was quite sort of racist in a way. They thought you were too chatty, and you were this is the greatest crime of all insufficiently knowledgeable about classical music.

Paul Gambaccini23:29

The producer of the show and I would go in every morning and we would look at the papers and there would be, you're quite right, reams of press. I didn't recognize the person. There was another thing out there which was attracting all of the positive and negative feelings that people had about Radio Three.

Presenter23:49

How bruising was it as an experience? How hurt did you get?

Paul Gambaccini23:52

I have to say it was the most unpleasant experience I've had in my career. I don't even have to try not to think about it, because it's like a bad meal in a restaurant. You just don't go back.

Presenter24:04

Record number six.

Paul Gambaccini24:05

You often see people asked who was the greatest teacher they had, and there was indeed a film where various uh celebrities, including Tony Blair, would turn to the camera and say somebody's name. Well, if I turned to the camera, I would say George Weigel.

Paul Gambaccini24:20

And almost any one who ever was in the choir at Staples High School would say the same thing.

Paul Gambaccini24:25

He managed to get out of us performances that were beyond our abilities. At our Christmas concerts every year, the combined forces of the Staples student body, the choir, the orchestra, the glee clubs would conclude the Christmas concert by coming together to perform the hallelujah chorus by Handel.

Speaker 425:23

And it's a way for him.

Speaker 425:29

So please don't be

Presenter25:42

The Hallelujah Chorus by Handel, sung by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, accompanied by the Philadelphia Orchestra and conducted by Eugene Ormondy.

Presenter25:50

Radio three apart, Paul Gambuccini, you you've had a very successful career taking in Radio Four and Radio Two along the way. But what about personally? I I mean I I can ask you if that's been so successful, because you wrote a book a few years ago called Love Letters in which you wrote seven letters to men you have loved, not not all of them lovers, but it was disconcertingly frank and actually full of pathos, I felt.

Paul Gambaccini26:15

I know what you mean, but I thought it was more important for the community to know that there's someone who made it through. I did really want to leave an accurate record of what it was like to be a gay person in those times.

Paul Gambaccini26:30

Because you can't get that accurate record by going to any of the British papers. Um there was actually a front page story continued on the inside, which is this farrago of nonsense, which said that it's impossible to have uh gay intercourse without taking drugs.

Paul Gambaccini26:49

Well hello. I've never taken these drugs in my life. Um uh y you know, couldn't they have called somebody first and asked them?

Paul Gambaccini26:58

there was just so much negativity and falseness going around that I just thought I've got to write something that's true. And if it means that people know that at one time I was uh robbed or hurt,

Speaker 227:05

And if

Paul Gambaccini27:11

Well, okay.

Paul Gambaccini27:13

I don't have that

Paul Gambaccini27:16

Feeling of having shared too much, to be honest, because maybe I'm an American. It could be that.

Paul Gambaccini27:23

Or maybe and probably this is the case.

Paul Gambaccini27:26

I just believed in the importance of the project so much.

Presenter27:30

It certainly read as if your personal life had, and perhaps all our personal lives are to an extent, been a a quest for companionship and love, and it certainly is the case that when you finished writing that book back in the mid nineties you didn't seem to have found it. Have you found it since?

Paul Gambaccini27:49

Uh, at the moment I'm uh I'm doing okay.

Presenter27:52

Like what number seven.

Paul Gambaccini27:54

This is by the only people I ever asked for an autograph. I went to see them at a department store in our hometown called Barker's, which no longer exists. And although my father wouldn't let us buy forty five RPM records on the grounds that they were an example of planned obsolescence,

Paul Gambaccini28:12

I was allowed to buy their latest single.

Paul Gambaccini28:14

These guys, who interestingly enough were called twin pianists, that doesn't mean that they were twins, it means that they played the piano at the same time, Ferranti and Teischer.

Paul Gambaccini28:23

And Tonight is my favorite song.

Presenter28:53

Yeah.

Presenter28:55

Tonight, played by Ferranti and Titcher and their orchestra from the motion picture soundtrack of Bernstein's Westside Story. What's that in?

Paul Gambaccini29:02

The Glissando at the end. They all of their big hits ended with the Glissando in the early sixties, although by the late sixties with the theme for Midnight Cowboy, which also made the top ten, they learned to fade out.

Presenter29:03

The rest of the

Presenter29:13

Huh.

Presenter29:14

Okay, so it's off to a a desert island for you. You must have seen Tom Hanks in Castaway. I mean, that's about it. Can you hack it?

Paul Gambaccini29:21

My mechanical aptitude is my lowest aptitude. So all of these things like building lean tos and somehow making primitive cooking facilities would be rough. I I have to hope that this island would be located near the Bahamas and they'd have lots of flying fish.

Presenter29:38

But I mean, you are a city boy, really. Do you I mean, can you commune with nature? Is it can you find any pleasure or peace in that?

Paul Gambaccini29:45

I love nature. That sounds so ridiculous. But just yesterday I accepted a delivery of several trees from my terrace.

Paul Gambaccini29:58

You have to remember I went to Dartmouth in part because it is a very rural scene. The autumn leaves in New England are my favorite beauty sight. And I I unfortunately love lushness and greenery more than I love sand and aridity. So the desert island wouldn't be my example of a night with nature.

Presenter30:22

Last record.

Paul Gambaccini30:23

Last record.

Paul Gambaccini30:25

Is My Girl by The Temptations. I had to have a Motown song because.

Paul Gambaccini30:31

It was the sound of Young America as I was growing up. There is something about the sincerity and the humanity of Motown.

Paul Gambaccini30:38

which transcended all barriers.

Paul Gambaccini30:41

And one of the geniuses they had was Smokey Robinson, who wrote the beautiful words of this song

Speaker 430:48

Gotta sweetest song.

Speaker 430:51

The lovers in the tree.

Speaker 430:56

Well, I guess

Speaker 431:00

Say, what can make me feel this way, my dear?

Presenter31:18

My girl, By the Temptations. If you could only take one of those eight records, Paul, which one would you take?

Paul Gambaccini31:23

I would take Rhapsody in Blue because it reminds me of home.

Paul Gambaccini31:26

And home is the place you'd want to think of when you were on a desert island.

Presenter31:30

What about your book?

Paul Gambaccini31:31

The Karl Barks Library, which is bound volumes of

Paul Gambaccini31:35

With the Donald Duck family stories, done by this great man, Karl Barks, who joined the Disney Studios as an animator in 1935. I have a Mickey Mouse storyboard drawing he did then. He became head of the Duck Unit in the late 30s. And then during the war, when they were propaganda films, he felt uncomfortable and he started doing the comic books, which he did for 25 years, during the course of which he invented such characters as Uncle Scrooge McDuck. And his books, which are probably the most read comics in the history of the world, especially...

Presenter32:04

Especially by you.

Paul Gambaccini32:05

Especially by me.

Paul Gambaccini32:07

Are guaranteed to bring joy when you're baking on a desert island.

Presenter32:12

And your luxury.

Paul Gambaccini32:14

I hope this isn't a cheat, but

Paul Gambaccini32:16

I would like to take my piano. All my life I've had a piano in the home. And even when I don't play every day, I still want to have it there in case I do want to play. Now, what's the cheat? I would need my piano bench. And my piano bench happens to include my favorite sheet music, because although I'm a good sight reader, I can't play by ear.

Presenter32:38

Paul Gambaccini, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert islanders.

Paul Gambaccini32:41

You're welcome.

Speaker 232:49

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