Rt Hon Robin Cook MP

Speaker 10:00

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

Speaker 10:08

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

Presenter0:30

My Costaway this week is a politician. There can be little doubt that he's a very clever man. Having abandoned his thesis on the Victorian novel, at the age of twenty-eight he fought and won a seat in Parliament. Here he sparkled, his oratory, intellect, and acute forensic skills opening up wounds in the Conservative Government. When New Labour came to power, he was swept to high office and became Foreign Secretary. He had arrived. But, four years later, he departed to the less exalted position of Leader of the House of Commons. The world knows it was a surprise, he admits, but doesn't let that prevent him from bringing reforming zeal to his new job. I've always been the school swat, he says. If I'm frank, that's one of the reasons a number of people have found it difficult to take me as a personality. He is Robin Cook.

Presenter1:16

Not a surprising trait, though, Robin, in the The Only Son of a Schoolmaster, um being bookish. I gather you'd read the whole of Dickens by the age of eleven.

Rt Hon Robin Cook MP1:25

Yes, but I wouldn't want to sound as if I had a unhappy childhood of any kind. I mean, actually when you're an only child you don't spend your time saying, Well, I'm rather lonely being an only child. You you take that as a natural condition of existence.

Presenter1:36

But you always very hard working, you know, you you did what you were told, you did your homework, you tucked yourself away with a book.

Rt Hon Robin Cook MP1:40

Yeah.

Rt Hon Robin Cook MP1:43

Well, I didn't have much alternative in the homework, because my father was, of course, a schoolteacher at the same school that I went to, and so I brought the s work home with me from a very early age, as it were. But he was a very, very committed father, and I think that if I've had confidence, it's because very early on in my life I was given confidence by my father. He himself was uh a very strong man, um a man who gave me a lot of encouragement, but without at the same time in any way overindulging me. Perhaps a limitation was that he did have that restraint of a Scottish figure. Uh it was only after he died and I was clearing out his uh belongings that I found this immense packing case full of cuttings about myself, which I'd never known he had kept.

Presenter2:28

Well, he never he never displayed his pride in your achievements.

Rt Hon Robin Cook MP2:29

He never

Rt Hon Robin Cook MP2:32

I think I knew Hugh, who was proud of me, but I remember one occasion when I it was the first time I had been to Buckingham Palace and to meet the Queen and

Rt Hon Robin Cook MP2:39

I happen to mention to my father I I wonder what grandfather said it, who was a great l labour supporter if he had known that I was achieving this. And after a moment's silence, my father replied

Rt Hon Robin Cook MP2:51

He would say you were a traitor to your class, which, you know, put me in my place. And and but I probably deserved it. I think it's actually terrific to have a father who gives you security, confidence, encouragement, but at the same time doesn't let you get above yourself.

Presenter2:55

Place and bar

Presenter3:02

But I'm quite interested that th this quote that I read out there, I've always been the school squad. I'm if I'm frank, it's one of the reasons a number of people have found me difficult to take. I mean, the implication there is that if you'd honed your personal skills as assiduously as you did your professional homework, you you might have achieved more. Do you think there's a bit of truth in that?

Rt Hon Robin Cook MP3:21

If I'm being frank and uh indulging a bit of sixties self-criticism here, I think that I have I've limited myself by not paying enough attention to other people's feelings, and I recognise that, and I've come to learn that a lot through my second marriage to Guena, who has taught me a lot about emotional intelligence, and I would like to think now that I respect other people's feelings and understand the need to show understanding of the way they feel rather more than I did in the past. Uh that's a criticism of me, it's not a criticism of other people.

Presenter3:49

No, no, I understand. But it what it means is that there is a sense perhaps your that your mind is moving towards the what might have been had you earlier on been

Rt Hon Robin Cook MP3:57

Oh.

Rt Hon Robin Cook MP3:57

No, no, I

Presenter3:58

But you can do it on this desert island, you see. I mean, that's what it's for. Looking back across it and thinking what might have happened if you played it differently.

Rt Hon Robin Cook MP4:00

Okay, I

Rt Hon Robin Cook MP4:04

No, I have no regrets. I've had a very good career and a very full life. And looking at where I've got to, I'm very pleased with what I've achieved. And very pleased also that I've brought into the world two good, true sons of whom I'm very proud.

Presenter4:17

But I presume your memoirs, and there are bound to be some, at some point, will examine this what might have been or what went wrong at which point.

Rt Hon Robin Cook MP4:24

I enjoy writing, and I think when I've got more time to write I may do more writing, but I wouldn't want anybody to think of that as a threat.

Presenter4:30

Well, they will. Tell me about your first record.

Rt Hon Robin Cook MP4:34

I'm a child of the sixties and uh nobody better encapsulated than Bob Dylan. I'd like to have mister Tambourine Man, partly because it's got the most rich, wonderful lyrics of any song of that time, but also because it ends with him dancing on the beach beneath a diamond sky on the circling sands, and possibly with nobody there to watch me, because I'm a very poor dancer, I might actually risk it myself.

Speaker 44:55

Beneath the waves, let me forget about today until tomorrow.

Speaker 45:02

Hey Mr. Timmerine Man, play a song for me. I'm not sleepy and there is no place I'm going to.

Speaker 45:13

Hey Mr. Tim Marine Man, play a song for me. In the jingle jangle morning, I come following you.

Presenter5:25

Bob Dylan and mister Tambourine Man, and the image of Robin Cook dancing beneath the diamond sky, silhouetted by the sea. So there's a free spirit in there, is there? You're a child of the sixties in that sense, yes?

Rt Hon Robin Cook MP5:37

It was a great time to be young, it really was. I think that it was very liberating, and maybe perhaps some of the difficulties I've had since is that I have never quite adjusted to the rush slightly more judgmental and prim times than which we live now.

Presenter5:49

And yet, you know, your background and upbringing was really quite neat and tidy, wasn't it? You wanted to be a minister of the church, I think. That was the original ambition.

Rt Hon Robin Cook MP5:52

Yeah.

Rt Hon Robin Cook MP5:54

Yeah.

Rt Hon Robin Cook MP5:56

I think that was what was so liberating in the 60s for so many of my generation that having been brought up that way, we were then able to put it behind us and recognize that there were other possibilities to life.

Presenter6:06

So you lost God at some point.

Rt Hon Robin Cook MP6:07

Yes, yes. I mean, I was brought up in the Presbyterian Church and that was part of the security of life. You had a rhythm to it, you went to church on Sunday. For a whole two years after Sunday lunch, I then copied out in longhand Tamashanta because some confounded teacher had told my father my handwriting wasn't good and to this day I can still recite Tamashanta at the drop of a hat.

Presenter6:28

Did you win prizes in Bible class and that kind of thing?

Rt Hon Robin Cook MP6:31

Yes, yes, and indeed went on eventually to be a Bible class teacher. And I have a lot of respect for the Presbyterian Church. It's very democratic and very socially committed. Uh and the that side of it I found very attractive. But I'm not a spiritual man and eventually I decided that I was myself, I'm afraid, a signed up atheist. I'm not evangelical about it. I have great respect for those who do believe in it and in some ways envy them.

Presenter6:55

I haven't quite got the picture of Robin Cook, the boy, yet. I mean, uh, certainly the family background, but what about at school? What would his peers, what would the boys have thought of him?

Rt Hon Robin Cook MP7:02

I find the English people, if I can put in those terms, have a little bit more difficulty with the idea of the school swatting. In Scottish terms there's never been the same prejudice against intellectualism. And on a Friday we used to wander down Number Ors to the local newspaper shop from school, and Dels would buy the New Music Express and I'd buy the New Statesman.

Rt Hon Robin Cook MP7:22

Nobody thought this was peculiar. It was just, you know, that's the sort of thing Robin does. It was accepted.

Presenter7:26

And what about the girls? What would they have thought?

Rt Hon Robin Cook MP7:29

We used to have a debating circuit within Edinburgh, in which the opportunity Friday night uh was to go and debate at the girls' school.

Rt Hon Robin Cook MP7:37

And some of us went in order to take part in the debating, and some of us went because they were at the girls' school.

Presenter7:41

Mhm. And um certainly m your first wife, Margaret, in her autobiography, said you were warm and witty. I so th this sort of slight image that comes through a slightly awkward intellectual is perhaps not accurate.

Rt Hon Robin Cook MP7:55

Well, I'm I'm very grateful for any of the kind things that Margaret said in her book, and I I treasure those ones. I have a press image which I acquired quite early on in my life in the house, and

Rt Hon Robin Cook MP8:06

Once you've acquired a press image, it sticks with you. They never change it, they never turn over the record, and I quite often I find it difficult sometimes to recognise myself there.

Speaker 18:08

Uh

Presenter8:08

Never check.

Presenter8:15

Tell me about record number two.

Rt Hon Robin Cook MP8:17

In my generation the folk song, Protest song, was very big. It was a way of getting across a political message, and the father of all of them, of course, was Ewan McCall. And I liked to have Ewan McCall and Peggy Seeger, his partner, singing Dirty Old Town, which combines two very marked features of sort of left politics, is great affection for the old, decayed uh society, and at the same time

Rt Hon Robin Cook MP8:42

A really radical commitment to make a change and chop it down and start again.

Speaker 48:45

Shining steals dumped in the fire.

Speaker 48:53

We'll chop you down like an old dead tree

Speaker 49:02

Dirty Ota.

Speaker 49:05

Dirty Old Town.

Presenter9:12

You and McCall and Peggy Seeger singing Dirty Old Town. Um another rather touching thing that Margaret mentions in her book I mean it is nice, I promise you is is how nice the flat was that you lived in in Edinburgh, because your mum had kitted it out, hadn't she, and it had sort of lacy lampshades and china cups and traycloths and you know, not exactly the back cloth one would expect for a thrusting young radical, really.

Rt Hon Robin Cook MP9:35

I think that neither Margaret and I were very strong nest builders, but every time when we would come back from our respective jobs we would find that my mother had been around and had put up the lace curtains and had uh put these homely feminine touches to it, which we indulged, although whenever she was away, frankly I took down the lace curtains'cause I could never buy lace curtains and I actually like to see out the windows and I'm very sorry for my mother's listening to this and I apologise. We've kept this hidden for her for forty years.

Presenter9:59

We mentioned their dirty old town. I mean, you learned a lot about the dirty parts of Edinburgh as well as your nice clean flat, because you you went around the slums. Housing really was your great interest, wasn't it?

Rt Hon Robin Cook MP10:10

It was housing that brought me into local government politics. I was active in shelter and I came up through the Labour Party onto the council and actually became the convener of the Housing Committee.

Presenter10:11

Come talk

Rt Hon Robin Cook MP10:19

And those days you had real genuine slums. I have been round old buildings in which you could see the mushrooms coming through the floorboards where people were living.

Presenter10:26

Part of that time, in the early part, when you were involved in shelter and child poverty action group and so on and going round the slums, you were still doing a PhD. I mean, that was your day job, wasn't it? And and uh into the Victorian North.

Rt Hon Robin Cook MP10:37

It i it it is true that I was at university doing a PhD and then going out working the Labour Party from six o'clock on in the evening and

Presenter10:45

So when was the moment when you decided to chuck in academia? Because you didn't finish that PhD, did you? No.

Rt Hon Robin Cook MP10:45

To wait

Rt Hon Robin Cook MP10:50

Yeah.

Presenter10:50

And and go to politics.

Rt Hon Robin Cook MP10:51

Yeah.

Rt Hon Robin Cook MP10:52

I vividly remember the moment when I decided to pack it all in. I was a colleague beside me who was doing a thesis on sanitation in the Victorian novel.

Rt Hon Robin Cook MP11:01

Now there is no sanitation in the Victorian novel, unless you current Bleak House, but he had got six happy chapters on why is there not more sanitation in the Victorian novel? And he was walking three foot off the air, so pleased with it, and I thought, Well, look, if that's what it's all about, there's more important things to do with life than this.

Presenter11:17

So you chuck that in. You also worked as a teacher at some point. This is all before you became an NP, I think you went to work teaching some pupils who were kind of pretty illiterate, I think, and you ended up

Rt Hon Robin Cook MP11:22

And the soul

Rt Hon Robin Cook MP11:23

I think you went to the next one.

Presenter11:29

Belting them, I quote you. I mean, how did you slap them, or did you literally belt them? What did you do?

Rt Hon Robin Cook MP11:35

Oh, it was a belt, so owned in the did you take it, pull it from your trousers and wallop them? Yeah, you you kept it in your in your wallet pocket of your jacket and it went over your back of your shoulder. There you're a strip of leather.

Presenter11:46

And where did you belt?

Rt Hon Robin Cook MP11:47

On the hand.

Rt Hon Robin Cook MP11:49

I I don't remember it with any pride, but of course if the teacher in the class from the left of you and the teacher in the class from the right of you is doing it, you have no alternative but to be part of that culture. I'm glad we banned it. And I would say that with the worst, most difficult of those classes I deliberately decided I'm going to stop doing them. I mean they were so hardened it made no impression on them.

Rt Hon Robin Cook MP12:08

And actually, after a very tough first month, I got more respect out of them because of that.

Presenter12:13

And but was it a case of the um abused becoming the abuser? Had it happened to you too?

Rt Hon Robin Cook MP12:18

No, I I was belted at school, yes. I mean every a look, every child of my age, certainly every boy of my age, uh, in Scottish schools were belted, and it was just part of the custom of the time.

Rt Hon Robin Cook MP12:29

It also taught me a lot, particularly, never ever lose your temper, which is very important if you're taking part in debates all the time. You knew with the class that the moment you had lost your cool they were on top and you were underneath.

Presenter12:34

Uh

Presenter12:40

This hasn't stopped you losing your cool since, I'm sure.

Rt Hon Robin Cook MP12:43

I I one manages to give the impression of it occasionally, but you have also got to remain very strongly in command of what you're doing.

Presenter12:49

Let's spool on to your twenty eighth birthday, february nineteen seventy four, and you get elected for Parliament. You became an MP. Tiny majority, but you were in there. Um a seminal moment in the life of Robert Finlerson Cook. I presume y you know you thought it really was your birthday,'cause it was everything you wanted.

Rt Hon Robin Cook MP13:04

Yeah, it was paradise. I had the opportunity to do what I enjoyed most in life, which was talking, arguing and debating politics morning till night, and it was a great experience. And I've had a wonderful time in Parliament. I wouldn't uh not have spent the last thirty years in any different way.

Presenter13:20

Record number three.

Rt Hon Robin Cook MP13:21

My uh busiest period in politics was the time when I was for five years the health spokesman for Labour, opposing the changes that the Conservative Party was then doing to the NHS. I was wonderfully rewarding and exciting, but boy, it was demanding.

Speaker 113:33

Wonderful

Rt Hon Robin Cook MP13:38

I found that to get to sleep at night the one trick that would always work would be play the Ziggy Diddle which I think is one of the most magnificent pieces of music and what I'd like to hear is that wonderful crescendo towards the end because I discovered that if I put this on the cassette player, this would be four C D's I could drop off at this moment.

Presenter14:58

Part of Wagner's Siegfried Idel, played by the NBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Arturo Toscanini. We've touched on the fact that you've been your own worst enemy as far as cultivating friends and creating a constituency for yourself is concerned. Your greatest mistake of that in the political field is said to have been your relationship with Gordon Brown, that the personal chemistry between you hasn't been great, and indeed that's been given by many as the reason that you were made foreign secretary, that he didn't want you in the domestic economic kind of area. Is that fair?

Rt Hon Robin Cook MP15:31

I think Golden Brown has been a tremendous chance to the Exchequer.

Rt Hon Robin Cook MP15:35

and also which I greatly respect in Gordon, he has achieved more social justice than any labor chance that we've ever seen in our time.

Presenter15:43

But you'd have liked to have done that yourself. You would have liked to have been Chancellor, wouldn't you? But I enjoyed being Foreign Secretary.

Rt Hon Robin Cook MP15:48

But

Presenter15:48

Yes. That was what I was doing.

Rt Hon Robin Cook MP15:51

I was doing the trade and industry job before I moved to the Front Section under John Smith. And that was the time when we exposed the Matrix Churchill scandal, to the time when we opposed the closure of the coal fields. It was very busy, very challenging, very rewarding period, and I think we landed some blows and contributed to the subsequent general election.

Presenter16:09

I mean, you said that he was blissfully happy there. And it's what you wanted. But he didn't want you in that big spending domestic arena, did he?

Rt Hon Robin Cook MP16:13

It's what

Rt Hon Robin Cook MP16:18

Well, the change came when Tony Blair came p took over as th the leader.

Presenter16:23

And I

Rt Hon Robin Cook MP16:23

Yeah, I went willingly to the phone office because

Presenter16:25

But you said it didn't play team strengths.

Rt Hon Robin Cook MP16:27

Looking back, the my one regret about the Foreign Office is you see the world, but you don't see the British Parliament. And it did take me out of Parliament for four years, and I'm very glad to be in a job which takes me back in the Middle of Parliament.

Presenter16:32

Yeah.

Presenter16:38

It was also of course, it is still probably I don't know how how much you feel you modernised it, but certainly it's the most traditional of all the departments. It's the one that can completely take you over if you're not very careful, can't it? I mean, Sir Humphrey can reign supreme, and and the Foreign Secretary himself can get submerged if he doesn't play his cards right.

Rt Hon Robin Cook MP16:57

If anything, Sue, I think the problem was sometimes the other way. What I described as Thomas the Beckett syndrome. Sometimes a chance light remark before you knew it had been turned into policy and distributed to two hundred embassies round the world, and you spent some time retrieving saying, Well, I didn't actually quite mean that.

Presenter17:11

But looking at it from the point of view of the leadership, which is where I began asking about this.

Presenter17:16

In effect, you were out of the country most of the time. All of your time, all of your energy was used up. Effectively, your political wings were clipped, weren't they?

Rt Hon Robin Cook MP17:24

I don't think that would be a fair summary. I mean, only a member of the Cabinet is busy, and I think possibly one of the things we need to look at in public life is whether we need to provide more space for people to think.

Presenter17:35

Record number four.

Rt Hon Robin Cook MP17:35

Yeah.

Presenter17:35

Yeah.

Rt Hon Robin Cook MP17:36

Wagner is slightly politically suspect, so I think it's time we had something deeply politically correct. So I thought we'd have Cacheturian and Spartacus. I first went to Ballet actually in the seventies. I was in Paris on a parliamentary delegation at a free evening and I went along to Paris Opera and they were doing Giselle and I have been hooked in Ballet ever since. Spartacus is tremendously dynamic and dramatic because as well as the beauty there's also the brutality.

Presenter19:01

Part of Act One of Catachurian Spartacus, played by the Bolshoi Theatre Orchestra conducted by Algis Zuraitis. The ballet you love, Robin Cook, and and horse racing well, national hunt. Is it true that you tried to organise a lot of your trips at the Foreign Office around race meetings? The Melbourne Cup and the Manila Jockey Club, hm?

Rt Hon Robin Cook MP19:18

I I think it'd be wrong to say a lot of them, but uh embassies did cotton onto the fact that if there was a race meeting nearby it might help the desk officer to secure my attendance, and that it did go to one or two of them around the world, particularly in Hong Kong.

Presenter19:29

So you tried to get a a balance in this very demanding job as we have established. But you'd created a rod for your back, really, hadn't you, with this talk of an ethical foreign policy or an ethical dimension to foreign policy. You must have come to regret that.

Presenter19:44

Because you couldn't deliver it.

Rt Hon Robin Cook MP19:44

Means you

Rt Hon Robin Cook MP19:46

No, I never regretted it once.

Presenter19:46

No.

Rt Hon Robin Cook MP19:48

I just think it's really

Presenter19:48

In principle it's not regrettable, but but the the political reality wasn't

Rt Hon Robin Cook MP19:50

Go back.

Rt Hon Robin Cook MP19:52

I I think I regretted the fact that it did not get a fairer wind within the British debate, but it was actually immensely respected around the rest of the world and particularly throughout Europe.

Presenter20:02

What I'm interested in is the fact that that kind of um idealistic philosophy is a luxury that you can enjoy in opposition, and then when you come face to face with political reality, you can't quite do it, can you?

Rt Hon Robin Cook MP20:15

No, I wouldn't agree with that. I think it is terribly important that we do have politics of principle as well as certainly politics that are also practical. You need to get that blend and that balance right.

Presenter20:25

I mean there was a there was an arms sale going on in Jordan a couple of weeks ago at which both Prince Andrew and the Defence Minister and the Iraqis were present, you know.

Rt Hon Robin Cook MP20:34

As I understand it, the presence of the Iraqis was a matter for the Jordanians, not for ourselves. But in any case, they aren't going to get any of the weapons that were being shown there. But you know, at the bottom of all this, Sue, there's a bigger and more difficult question, and that is does our country wish to maintain what is, after all, one of our most successful and large sections of manufacture industry, which is in production of weapons. And if you want to have weapons produced at home with the British forces, then you have to accept that that's going to be they're going to be sold elsewhere. Now, that's a very big political question.

Speaker 120:56

Yeah.

Presenter21:03

That's a very big that's a very

Presenter21:05

That's precisely the point, though that's the real politique of it, isn't it?

Rt Hon Robin Cook MP21:08

It is, but the role of the Foreign Office is to make sure that those sales are regulated, that they are not ending up in hands where they be used for oppression, that they are not fueling tension, that they are not fueling conflict.

Presenter21:17

You can't possibly know that, though, can you? If you're at arms fairs where Syria, Iraq, Iran are all pl present, Libya are all present.

Rt Hon Robin Cook MP21:23

Yeah, but the license

Rt Hon Robin Cook MP21:25

But they don't sign over the licence at the Arms Fair, so th those decisions have to be taken subsequently in Whitehall with very substantial knowledge, and nobody knows better than the fallen office, the situation around the world.

Presenter21:37

It is a huge problem though, isn't it? And that is why, in a sense, as I say, you you created a rod for your back, because of course what you're saying in principle is absolutely right, in practice you can't deliver it.

Rt Hon Robin Cook MP21:38

Then

Rt Hon Robin Cook MP21:39

And so I say

Rt Hon Robin Cook MP21:47

One of the consequences of our period there is that we now are much more transparent to the decisions we took. That's not only helpful so that people can see what we've done, it's also a very useful restraint on ministers and government because we know at some future date anything we do will come out in the public. We cannot behave and should not behave in private, which is of course what happened when the Conservatives armed Iraq and led to the Matrix Churchill scandal.

Presenter22:11

Which was the moment of your your greatest triumph, I think. You crucified the Conservative Government, did you not?

Presenter22:17

When the Scotch report came out. You absorbed it. I mean, let me give you a compliment in all of this.

Rt Hon Robin Cook MP22:18

You absorbed it.

Presenter22:22

I think you absorbed about two thousand pages in an hour or something and went out there and made mincemeat. Mincemeat of them, what?

Rt Hon Robin Cook MP22:26

Three hours, don't exactly three hours, three hours.

Rt Hon Robin Cook MP22:28

I think that uh debate in Beatrix Churchill did have a very powerful effect on the perception of the Conservative Government and was part of the way in which we then removed from any sense of authority or credibility for the next election.

Rt Hon Robin Cook MP22:40

I think it's number five.

Rt Hon Robin Cook MP22:41

I have to have something about horses because they have been such a large part of my leisure life. I've also been always very fond of instrumental folk music. Ali Bain is the great master of the Scottish fiddle music and there is a piece at Tamer When the Snow Come which is about the taming of the Shetland ponies and how they're first broken in. And if you listen carefully you can just about see the pony kicking up and if you ever watch a young horse for the first time being put in a long running rein and being utterly insulted and bucking at it, you can just see this captured and then.

Speaker 122:45

Measure.

Presenter22:46

The line

Presenter23:45

Ali Bain, and tame her when the snow come. You were at the Foreign Office for uh four years, Robin. You said you wanted to be the longest serving Foreign Secretary in modern times, and then suddenly

Speaker 123:52

What the

Presenter23:54

Surprisingly to you, as everyone else, who said you were out, shuffled out after the second election victory, you must have been incredibly disappointed.

Rt Hon Robin Cook MP24:03

It was a surprise, and I've never made any bones about that, and I wasn't the only one who was surprised by the change. But Prime Ministers have to make these decisions, it's their prerogative.

Presenter24:12

But again, you know, people link it to Gordon Brown that you were actually getting too pro Europe. Gordon didn't like it because he wanted to be a little more cautious about it at the end of the day. He wanted you out, and again he got his way.

Rt Hon Robin Cook MP24:25

I think it is inevitable that whoever is in the Foreign Office is going to perceive the European dimension and the European perspective. That's in the nature of politics.

Presenter24:35

Why did you lose the job, then?

Rt Hon Robin Cook MP24:37

That is a question I think that you'll have to take Tony out to the Desert Island to ask. Or wait for your memoir. Any Prime Minister needs to freshen his team. I understand that, and there's no point arguing about it. And as I said, I'm happy as a pig and straw in the job I'm doing. I enjoy it thoroughly.

Presenter24:42

Or wait for your memoirs.

Presenter24:49

Said.

Presenter24:53

Pig and straw. Very very diplomatic.

Rt Hon Robin Cook MP24:55

Yeah.

Presenter24:56

It's not down to us.

Rt Hon Robin Cook MP24:56

Down to Earth, I think. Down to Earth.

Presenter24:59

There was also, of course, and you know I have to mention it at some point the the personal crisis that that occurred when uh you were discovered to be having an affair and your wife subsequently wrote her autobiography. This all happened.

Presenter25:12

In the first couple of years of your being at the Foreign Office. You've never responded to her criticisms of you, and I wouldn't expect you to do so now, but it must have been.

Presenter25:21

Very difficult to cope. Again, it's a form of public humiliation which one can only guess at.

Rt Hon Robin Cook MP25:29

It was a difficult time, uh and one of the things that I I regret about public life now is that there's no aspect of your life that is left private, and I think that's a big price to pay for being in public life.

Rt Hon Robin Cook MP25:42

I'm happy with the outcome. I'm very pleased in my second marriage, and it's a very happy, secure second marriage. I think if I.

Presenter25:49

But was it the lowest point of your political

Rt Hon Robin Cook MP25:51

It was a tough private time, yes. If I have a regret, I I think I should have uh faced up sooner than I did the fact that my first marriage had failed and I should have made the break sooner. I I shrank from it because for most human of reasons and I didn't want to deepen the wounds, but looking back I know that was wrong.

Presenter25:53

If

Presenter26:09

Record number six.

Rt Hon Robin Cook MP26:10

I came to jazz late in life, but it's a joint uh passion of Guinea and myself, and I like to hear Keith Jarrett uh playing I Love You, Porgy. It's a most melodic, wonderful, soothing piece and I I wouldn't have any of the stress on desire. There'll be no press lobby asking me difficult questions, but if I ever feel stressed, this is what I would put on and relax to.

Presenter26:59

I Love You Porgy played by Keith Jarrett, there you be lying, looking at the stars.

Presenter27:05

So Leader of the House, according to everything you've said about it, this is Central, this is where you want to be, it's Parliament, and you're going to turn it over, you're going to modernize it, you're going to shorten holidays and change everything. And voting on the Internet, that's an interesting one. Can you make that happen, and if so, how quickly?

Rt Hon Robin Cook MP27:23

It's got to happen, hasn't it?

Presenter27:29

And it's

Presenter27:38

Understanding

Presenter27:40

But eventually you're going to have to review the voting system as well. That's in Trainer Manifesto Committee, and you're going to push on with the reform of the House of Lords, which, like the old lords themselves, seems to have gone to sleep a bit. So all these things are happening and obviously it's an exciting place to be, as you say.

Presenter27:55

But I just can't help feeling that it still only uses up half of your brain.

Presenter28:00

People would be surprised if a kind of ambitious intellect as yours can be satisfied for the next three years doing all of that.

Rt Hon Robin Cook MP28:07

Oh, yes, I know. I I have so mellow. Well, thank you very much. I think one of the kindest things that's been said about me.

Presenter28:09

Oh, you sound so mellow.

Presenter28:13

But what you could do, obviously, and what you know the radical left who once saw you as their leader would perhaps like you to do is jump shit.

Presenter28:22

Get back on the back benches and start saying what you really think.

Rt Hon Robin Cook MP28:26

I thoroughly enjoyed my time in the back benches, and I certainly would wish to be there oh, soon, not soon in the immediate future, not to morrow, please, but I would certainly want to do that before I round off my career.

Presenter28:37

So next election, or might you think about resigning along the way when you sort of

Rt Hon Robin Cook MP28:41

I i in politics the firm rule is never announce when you're going to go because you're effectively written off from the moment you announce it, not when you say it's going to be. Oh, I will see what the future brings for me. But I've I've had a very good career, a very full life and I'm very satisfied with it. I've no regrets.

Presenter28:53

But I f

Presenter28:56

Do it.

Presenter28:58

Record number seven.

Rt Hon Robin Cook MP28:59

I've never actually been very good with instruments, but in my fancy if I ever did actually play an instrument it would want it would be the saxophone. And I like Harl Bostig, one of the great early masters of the saxophone, playing Wrap It Up, which is a good enthusiastic one to get me dancing.

Presenter30:15

Oh, Bostic with Wrap It Up. I thought she got stuck there for a minute.

Rt Hon Robin Cook MP30:18

No, it's a feature actually of some of his tracks that he does repeat the same note repeatedly. But no, there was no dust in the needle. That was actually for real.

Presenter30:25

And this is, I gather, an image of Gaina dancing round the kitchen.

Rt Hon Robin Cook MP30:29

Yeah, she d yeah, I can take that image with me to my desert island because she does dance sometimes the kitchen to the music. And there was a curious piece appeared in one of the Sunday papers that when I came home after ten o'clock vote we would put on formal dress and go down to the ball go down to the ballroom and dance there. I can assure you, when I creep home after a twelve hour day, the last thing I want to do is put on tails and go dancing in the ballroom. The kitchen will do.

Presenter30:51

The kitchen will do. You're going to dance on this desert island, you said. What else are you going to do as you kind of knock up the shack and you know snare a rabbit or whatever?

Rt Hon Robin Cook MP31:00

Margaret said after twenty-five years of being married to me that if I ever put up a shelf she would faint and that was probably a fair fair statement. Uh I I did my peer in the scouts like a good Presbyterian that I was uh and I think I can probably cook over an open fire but as I remember it cooking over an open fire involved a lot of aluminium foil so I'll probably need an aluminium foil tree.

Presenter31:22

Last record.

Rt Hon Robin Cook MP31:22

Music means a lot to Guiner. She can come out of a concert with a sense of excitement and vibration that I I can only envy. We went the other week to hear Marla's fifth played by Simon Ratt on the Berlin Philharmonic and it was an extraordinary experience and she came away reanimated with bright lights in her eyes and skipped along the south bank.

Rt Hon Robin Cook MP31:45

And I would like to have the end of Marlow's Fifth, that wonderful exuberant crescendo which is so life-affirming and to remind me of Guin and the tough and the good times we've had together.

Presenter32:53

The finale of Mahler's fifth in the new recording, Simon Rattles First with the Berlin Philharmonic. Now, if you could only take one of those records with you, Robin, which one would you take?

Rt Hon Robin Cook MP33:01

No, it'd have to be the Wagner, uh, without doubt. And uh it uh is such a beautiful lyrical piece and so relaxing.

Presenter33:08

Siegfried Idl. And your book.

Rt Hon Robin Cook MP33:10

I so adore books. I really would like to go round the corner of my beach and find that the Bodleian Library has fallen through a space wharf and is washed over my island.

Rt Hon Robin Cook MP33:18

But if I can't do that, then I think I'd like to have the annual form book, which is the Bible of all racing enthusiasts and gives you the results of all the races in the past twelve months.

Presenter33:28

Be very out of date by the time we got to the point.

Rt Hon Robin Cook MP33:30

Well, I would like a plane to circle round once a year and drop the next edition out if it's permissible. Preferably the Raceform version, because my son works for Raceform and he could put some coded messages for me in it.

Presenter33:41

What about your luxury?

Rt Hon Robin Cook MP33:43

I think a chess computer. Um then I could perhaps every now and again celebrate, possibly, the theoretical possibility of beating a computer, which I rarely do. And if I ever get rescued, then I won't be able to look forward to being able to beat my sons for a change.

Presenter33:57

Robin Cook, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island is.

Rt Hon Robin Cook MP34:00

Thank you very much.

Speaker 134:07

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