Pen Hadow

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

Presenter0:31

My castaway this week is an adventurer. Last year he made history by becoming the first man to walk alone and unaided the four hundred and seventy eight miles from the north coast of Canada to the North Pole, a journey that's been described as the greatest endurance feat on earth. So it was a fitting achievement for a man driven by a determination to re-establish his family's name as one associated with high endeavour. A string of ancestors, old Herovians all, had played county cricket, got big in India, run a shipping line, won Wimbledon and climbed the Matterhorn, but the family had rather lost its taste for pioneering until he rekindled its dying flame. And so it was at the third attempt that he walked the family name back into the history books. I have no interest whatsoever, he says, in doing something that's been done before. He is Pen Haddo.

Presenter1:22

Penny, it took you sixty four days from March to May last year to walk that walk. Um a long time to be alone in a hostile environment. You tell me it was at minus forty six and a half degrees. What was the thing you were most frightened of during that journey?

Pen Hadow1:38

Failure.

Pen Hadow1:39

Absolutely failure. It was my third attempt, for me it was imperative that I succeeded.

Pen Hadow1:45

So I think fear of failure was probably the the scariest thing. I mean more obviously there are lesser considerations.

Presenter1:51

Well but what about Arctic things like polar bears?

Pen Hadow1:54

Yeah, well, uh I I'm so familiar with the ways of the polar bear and it's a bit like a Russian roulette. I mean uh if it's gonna happen it's gonna happen, um rather. There are wheezies and ruses that one can uh use to deter them if they do make an approach. I've hit a bear on the head with a saucepan when uh I opened up the zip of my tent. Had heard some crunching going around outside, but that's there are all sorts of things that can cause those sort of noises, so I was pretty um naunchalant about it, and the bear's head was about a foot from the tent zip.

Presenter2:06

If they do make

Pen Hadow2:20

I always have a loaded shotgun, but it was facing the wrong direction. I thought, by the time I've reached forwards.

Pen Hadow2:25

reorientated the gun, cocked it, and stuck it out of the tent.

Pen Hadow2:30

that I could be too late, so I grabbed the nearest heavy object that I could, which was a saucepan, and bashed the bear through the tent flap as hard as I could on the head.

Pen Hadow2:39

The the great tip is to try and break the pattern that a seal would follow. A bear hardly comes across anything other than seals as as organic. That's what he eats. A seal a week and it's a happy bear. I think it actually it was the of the sourceman that actually freaked the bear out rather than any pain I made affected, which was minimal.

Presenter2:46

That's what

Speaker 42:46

That's what it is.

Speaker 42:49

Yeah.

Presenter2:57

Oh come on, you must have I mean you laugh now, you must have been terrified.

Pen Hadow3:01

It wasn't truly there wasn't time to be terrified.

Presenter3:03

What about when you're in the water? Because they call you the human icebreaker, and when these great canals open up between the ice, you you get in there in a kind of immersion suit, don't you, when you're on your own and dragging this buoyant sledge behind you. I mean

Pen Hadow3:12

Don't you when you

Speaker 33:12

Pora

Pen Hadow3:15

Behind you.

Presenter3:16

Couldn't they sort of swim around and nab a leg?

Pen Hadow3:21

If they just took the leg, I wouldn't worry so much. No, you are hugely vulnerable when you're in that situation because A, you're doing exactly what C would be doing.

Presenter3:21

If they just took the leg I would

Presenter3:31

Yes, quite.

Pen Hadow3:32

You can't get a gun, so you take your chances.

Presenter3:34

Take your chances. You certainly do, and now we know what to do when we get into that situation. But it was your determination to succeed, as you say, your fear of failure that got you there.

Presenter3:45

What did you do in that moment of completing the four hundred and seventy eighth mile? Can you describe the emotion of it?

Pen Hadow3:52

Two um huge emotions swept over me. The first was utter, utter relief that it was finally over. I had spent fifteen years and hardly a day passes, and that is not an exaggeration, as my poor wife will confirm, when I didn't spend a considerable amount of time thinking about it, planning how to do it. And I had totally not anticipated what it would feel like for it to be over. It hadn't occurred to me that there was a whole new world and h how that would manifest itself. So utter relief, almost immediately followed by

Pen Hadow4:24

My God, I'm going to have all that time that I've spent over the last fifteen years free. I'm not going to have to worry about this any more. And I can march forwards

Pen Hadow4:34

unshackled by this what had become a a real uh albatross round my neck.

Presenter4:41

Tell me about your first record.

Pen Hadow4:43

Well, I'd love to hear uh Nimrod because it's music that I associate with uh the Senatoff and uh the War Memorial Day.

Pen Hadow4:52

For me, it says everything says British.

Pen Hadow4:55

And also for me it has a sort of family significance because I was brought up very much to believe that to be a Haddo meant something. It stood for certain values and it stood for certain sorts of uh standards and this reminds me of my responsibilities to be a haddo.

Presenter6:11

Nimrod from Elgar's Enigma variations played by the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra conducted by Simon Rattle.

Presenter6:17

So you went on that journey to the North Pole, Penhaddo, at the age of forty one. You obviously still can feel the emotion of arriving. Not least, I think, because you had pledged to your father, or at least at the moment of your father's death, that you would achieve this thing. Just give me the circumstances of m of that pledge.

Pen Hadow6:39

My father was um the most remarkable man.

Pen Hadow6:44

He because

Pen Hadow6:48

I made this post to my father because a big part of me thought that this is what I was here to do and that it would in some way

Pen Hadow7:01

reward him and my mother for everything that they had put into my upbringing. I don't thi I actually know that if my father had been alive he had been alive minutes before uh if he had been able to hear me, um he would not have wanted me to do this because he knew of the dangers involved and he would have been, I think, very upset to think that he had

Pen Hadow7:27

set in motion this level of expectation.

Presenter7:31

So it was in the moment of his dying, or his having just died, that you stood there at at the bedside and said you were going to do this?

Pen Hadow7:38

Yes, I had planned to do it to do it before, but I was really

Presenter7:41

Mm.

Pen Hadow7:43

Reaffirming that this indeed was what I was going to do, and partly it was for him.

Presenter7:48

But it was also linked, was it not, with what I was indicating in the introduction, th th this as if there was some kind of gap in the family history that that that the Haddows weren't achieving any more.

Pen Hadow8:00

Um I I think that's right. I I'm not laying this at my at my father's feet in some sort of uh in any sort of critical way. Um we each take what we what we want from our parents. This is what I d chose to take.

Presenter8:09

Of course.

Presenter8:12

But you'd obviously take from your father that he felt a sense of well not having contributed to this this family endeavour.

Pen Hadow8:21

What my father did was to invest everything that he had in his children, um, over and above his career even. He was a very modern man in an age when um that was really quite unusual.

Presenter8:33

What was his career?

Pen Hadow8:35

He had um several, really. Most of the time he ran his own businesses.

Pen Hadow8:41

And there were a sort of spectacular array of different things that he did, all of which were hugely interesting. He always did it with enormous sort of conviction and humour.

Presenter8:51

He was a bit of an entrepreneur. He was always trying something and not quite getting there. Is that?

Pen Hadow8:55

I think yes, I think that's perhaps the best way to put it.

Presenter8:59

And so that would feed into you, as you say, you you took um developed a sense of ambition as a result of that. I mean, do you feel now that you have sort of settled it, paid the family dues?

Pen Hadow9:10

Uh yes, I do, but interestingly to me, I I now discover that actually it goes far deeper than that and I would have done it anyway because I know

Presenter9:19

You just needed the excuse.

Pen Hadow9:20

Well, yes, I didn't think I did, but um having got to the poll I know I I my wife and I sort of half hope that that would be it, but it's not. It's just oh, it's much more deep seated than that, and I will go on and on pushing myself, I think.

Presenter9:33

Tell me about record number two.

Pen Hadow9:36

Well, uh The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe was a uh a television series, um black and white.

Pen Hadow9:43

And this is the um soundtrack that used to be played for the uh for the credits and uh

Pen Hadow9:49

I absolutely adored this. I I can't describe how much of it. It just transported me away to a place that I

Pen Hadow9:57

I've so wanted to be uh at since I was about five years old and I love this music with a passion.

Presenter10:34

Well, that was a quick one. That's just that's just the sort of theme tune to Robinson Crusoe of your youth, yes?

Speaker 410:40

Yeah.

Presenter10:40

By Gian Piero Riveri and Robert Mellai.

Presenter10:44

Um it does certainly read as if you were put on this earth to do this exploration business, because as I understand it you were sort of put out in icy conditions from a tiny baby, is that right?

Pen Hadow10:55

I do have a connection with uh Scott of the Antarctic, a rather rather bizarre one. Um when Scott uh Robert uh Falcon Scott died, um his wife had already given birth to Peter.

Presenter11:06

So Peter's got a little bit of a.

Pen Hadow11:06

Who became Sir Peter Scott?

Presenter11:07

But

Pen Hadow11:08

When his father had had died, um his mum decided that he must be inured to the cold in case he be uh attracted to follow in his father's footsteps. So from the age of two to seven he was uh introduced to the cold for a longer and longer periods with less and less clothing during the autumn, winters and springs of the British weather. And so he was definitely hardened to the cold.

Pen Hadow11:32

And a lady called Nanny Wiggly had been taken on to oversee this conditioning process. His nanny. His nanny.

Presenter11:35

Is Nanny?

Presenter11:37

Nanny Wiggly

Pen Hadow11:37

Nanny Wiggly, is that she don't have in the family and um

Pen Hadow11:41

She then went on to look after my father when he was small and brought him up on the stories of Scott of the Antarctic. And I w had the misfortune, if you like, to be my father's eldest son, and worse still to be uh born uh in Perth in uh Scotland.

Presenter11:53

So did you get frostbite age three days is really the question?

Pen Hadow11:56

Well, now now I lasted quite well actually, but uh there did come a moment when my mother um was able to put her foot down and say no more. So um I am a half-baked polar explorer, probably fair to say.

Presenter12:08

But you have you I mean, you do get quite hot, don't you? How do I know? I see you take jackets off and all those

Speaker 412:13

Yeah.

Pen Hadow12:13

Uh

Speaker 412:13

Yeah.

Pen Hadow12:13

Exactly.

Presenter12:15

You told me that you don't sleep in hotel beds. You know, that you get out and lie on the floor because they're all too hot for you.

Pen Hadow12:22

Yes, um, I do burn at a high temperature, it's true.

Presenter12:25

Now let's go to prep school with you,'cause I I'm told that at prep school you thought you were tubby and unsportify and a no-hoper. Age seven. You wrote yourself off. Is this j?

Pen Hadow12:33

Is this just

Presenter12:34

Uh

Pen Hadow12:34

Yeah.

Pen Hadow12:35

Oh, yes, it is true. But it was all brought to a head at the end of my first year. We had a a sports day and there was an obstacle course that all ages did in one go.

Pen Hadow12:48

Half way down the course I was horrified to see that there was a low bar about twelve inches off the ground, supported at each end by a log, if you like. And I looked at this as we were being talked through it and I thought

Pen Hadow13:00

I am not going to get under this.

Speaker 313:02

Too tubby.

Pen Hadow13:02

I'm too tubby.

Pen Hadow13:04

And um I was convinced that all the parents uh would be shrieking their heads off with laughter as this little rotun character couldn't get under the low bar like a stuck little pig. Of course I went under it easily enough um when it came to it, but uh that seemed to be a sort of a a watershed moment in my life when I said something's got to change here, I'm going to do something about this.

Presenter13:23

So how high did you rise at your prep school in in terms of your ability in sport?

Pen Hadow13:29

Um, well t t to the top really. By by my last year or two I was captain of all of all the sports.

Presenter13:34

And fiercely competitive, I bet.

Pen Hadow13:36

And terribly competitive. I had been very keen on cricket and had been put forward for the Sussex Smartlets, the young Sussex County team. But increasingly I was getting interested in athletics because I love the idea of training. And if you in in in athletics, you put in the effort and the training, you pretty much get the results at the far end. Record number three.

Pen Hadow13:55

My great thing uh is club anthems. I'm a great dancer, as uh my friends know, so I thought I'd better pick the queen of them all, um Kylie Minogue, and what is recognized worldwide as her greatest single feat, which is Can't Get You Out of My Head. Good old Kylie. Here we go.

Speaker 414:16

Boy, your love and it's all I think about. I just can't get you out of my head. Boy, it's more than I dare to think about.

Presenter14:38

I live in Og, and can't get you out of my head. Did your father, Penn, encourage you in all this? I I can imagine he was sort of buying you all the best bats and racquets and he didn't come and run in the father's races in spikes.

Presenter14:52

Uh

Pen Hadow14:52

It happens, it happens. No, no, no, definitely not. But he, again, ahead of his time, he used to come to almost every match, school match, at prep school, and was the only father that did, and was hugely popular with all the other boys for his support. But it was done in a very gentle, sort of loving way, and was absolutely not coercing me in any shape or form. I'm a natural enthusiast. He didn't have to.

Presenter14:52

It happens, it ha

Presenter15:15

So you went to Harrow and you decided to do a marathon there called the Long Ducker, is that right?

Pen Hadow15:23

Yeah.

Presenter15:24

Tell me about it.

Pen Hadow15:25

Yeah.

Pen Hadow15:26

Long Ducker was a marathon from the the door of your house down to the Grand Union Canal, run along the towpath to Little Venice, up onto the Edgeware Road, to down the Edgeware Road to Marble Arch, and then retrace your steps back to Harry on the Hill.

Presenter15:39

Just a full math.

Pen Hadow15:42

26 miles and 385 yards or what have you.

Presenter15:42

Point something.

Presenter15:45

Tell me again, I love the sort of the arrival point. When you came back up the hill at the end of the twenty-six point whatever. W were they all there? Were the parents there? Were the boys there? Was the headmaster there?

Pen Hadow15:50

At the end of the trial.

Pen Hadow15:56

When I got to the base of the hill, two boys ran ahead toward my house, who were having lunch at the time, and th it was a Sunday, so they were all in their tail coats and and top hats and so on, which is for Sunday dress code. And they all streamed down the hill to meet me and then ran back up with it. It was one of those wonderful moments, which I'll I'll never forget. I even got a photograph of it.

Presenter16:18

And you became captain of all sorts of things at Harrow, didn't you? I mean, you just went on huge, hugely sporting success. It must therefore have been a a huge shock when you left, aged eighteen, not just to leave, but to to fail to get into the army. What went wrong?

Pen Hadow16:23

Shoot.

Pen Hadow16:35

Yeah, I can look back on it now and and see the the the humorous side of it.

Pen Hadow16:39

Some members of the Haddow family had gone through the Scots Guard, so I went for my interview and they said, You're just the sort of chat we want, it's fantastic. You've got to go to the RCB, the regular commissions board. Everyone has to, it'll be a breeze, and we look forward to seeing you in a few weeks' time. So I went to this thing. It's three and a half days down at Westbury, every sort of test you can imagine.

Pen Hadow16:58

The whole thing left me completely cold. It was so so cold blooded and all these all these wretched chaps like myself all trying to show off. I mean, it was so obvious what was going on and they all leaping to the front and saying, Right, let's do this, that, and the other, getting frightfully bossy and I just thought this is so puerile. This is not for me. I just couldn't get involved.

Pen Hadow17:17

You couldn't be a team player.

Pen Hadow17:21

Well, I I

Pen Hadow17:23

I think I am a team player really, but it's it does strike me that most of the things I've done have been either alone or as a leader rather than as a as a team player.

Presenter17:35

Equal number four.

Pen Hadow17:38

Mike Oldfield and Omadawn. I I enjoy it because he is so brilliantly talented.

Pen Hadow17:44

And I very much at Harrow was aware that uh I had some talents, but I didn't think that they were being deployed in the right sports or the right areas. Anyway, I used to listen to this a great deal for many years.

Presenter18:24

Mike Oldfield and Oma Dawn. You've said that that music is, I quote, very dark, very me.

Presenter18:31

Which is interesting. I mean, you did have a bit of a dark period after not getting into the army, did you? I mean, did you get quite low?

Pen Hadow18:38

Uh yes, I to be honest, I don't think it was the the fact that I didn't get into the army, but since I was about

Pen Hadow18:43

thirteen, almost to the day I I I know when I started to feel that I was meant to be doing something in particular.

Pen Hadow18:49

If you liked I was here for some sort of purpose.

Pen Hadow18:52

And like a dog with a bone

Pen Hadow18:54

Although I was excelling in some areas, I felt that there wasn't I could go further, I could do more, and it gnawed away at me throughout university.

Presenter19:06

So, you just didn't know what field this ambition was in, but you sensed.

Pen Hadow19:09

Tucson

Presenter19:10

You sensed ambition in yourself, you just didn't know what it was you had to do.

Pen Hadow19:14

Yes, in a funny sort of way, it wasn't even ambition. It was something deep inside me that was saying.

Pen Hadow19:19

Um

Pen Hadow19:20

There is something that you can really fly at, and the onus is on you, Pen, to work out what it is. You aren't going to get any clues, but you almost have a responsibility to find out what it is. And uh it consumed me really and made me very frustrated, deeply frustrated, and and therefore consequently sad because I felt the best years of my life were passing away and I wasn't doing what I was meant to be doing. I used to go through yellow pages, anything, to try and come up with an idea that would set me off and think, aha, this is it, we're off.

Presenter19:51

You did go into an office for some time. You went to work for IMG, didn't you? The uh sort of sports management company, and you you were quite successful there.

Pen Hadow19:58

Yep, I had a had a had a happy enough time there working at RMGS working with fantastically talented people, both within the organization and the people that we were representing, and they were doing what they really loved doing, and they were flying because that's how it was for them.

Pen Hadow20:12

And uh and I increasingly realized that I should be on the other side. It wasn't that I should be a star, but that I should be a doer out in the field doing things, um not um sort of generating income and and and being a sort of businessman, if you like.

Presenter20:25

And you stayed there for five years and did very well. But in the end you gave it up.

Pen Hadow20:26

Yeah, but

Presenter20:29

Because you went on a kind of Arctic journey. And was that the moment when you realized that that was what this ambition was supposed to be to do with anyway?

Pen Hadow20:40

That was the the the tr the launch pad, if you like, into the Polar World for me.

Presenter20:45

And how old were you then?

Pen Hadow20:47

I'm hopeless on dates. I barely know how old I am, but I think I was about twenty-six, something like that.

Presenter20:51

And you'd found it at last.

Pen Hadow20:54

I didn't know it then, but I knew completely that this is what I had to do. It may not lead anywhere, but at that moment in time this was for me.

Presenter21:04

Equipment number five.

Pen Hadow21:07

When I was a garner before I joined IMG, there was a job in Belsize Park. So one day I'd launched myself into this enormous bed full of laurels that ran up the side of the estate. And I came across a box set unused of classical music, four tapes, and Brahms Piano Concerto, number two in B-flat major. It sat in my car as a box set for about five years.

Presenter21:25

Number two.

Speaker 421:29

Yeah.

Pen Hadow21:30

And this has become my favourite piece of music.

Presenter22:34

Vladimir Ashkenazi playing part of Brahm's concerto number two in B-flat major with the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Zubin Mehta. So Penhado, two unsuccessful attempts to the North Pole in nineteen ninety four and ninety eight, and finally last year you did it, losing two stone and one ski in the process. So fifteen years between the conception of the idea, knowing it's what you want to do, and the execution.

Presenter22:57

and you didn't go into an office during all of that time. How on earth did you manage financially?

Pen Hadow23:03

I um have my wife Mary to thank for mainly. She shouldered the responsibilities financially for our household. She realised that I had to do this thing, that was the next step for us.

Presenter23:15

She never attempted to change you. She never attempted to say, come on, get real.

Pen Hadow23:17

Never attempt.

Pen Hadow23:19

I think I can honestly say not once. She knew what she married, and she married me for being that person, and to her eternal credit and my eternal gratitude, she has never tried to change me into something that I'm not.

Presenter23:32

But you m have made money during all of this time by running a travel company. It's a kind of have experience, have pluck, have know-how, will travel. Where do you want to go? Is it?

Pen Hadow23:43

Uh

Pen Hadow23:45

I set up a guide service in 1995 and I was committed to being totally inclusive, disabled people, older people, women in particular.

Presenter23:55

How do they differ from men? Are they any better at

Pen Hadow23:57

Oh, it's very interesting. The men uh if you even touch, go near their sledge when it gets jammed or they're struggling with it, the air turns blue. The implication being that

Pen Hadow24:09

They can't manage.

Pen Hadow24:10

There's no helping them. Women.

Pen Hadow24:13

work much more naturally as a team. They flow over the big jumbles of ice on the Arctic Ocean. Th th they don't even talk about who's going to help who. The whole thing just flows along in a highly sort of mutually supportive way, which I've never seen men do ever. They're much better at personal hygiene. I mean men, part of the deal seemed to be that you had to come back looking as though you'd been in a war and your face was butchered. Otherwise, presumably it was all rather too easy. And actually has opened up a whole new approach. It's very important to look after yourself. It's key. And why risk getting abscesses and not brushing your teeth and risking problems with your teeth? All these things can jeopardise an expedition. So women have brought something quite valuable to the total process of getting from A to B in the polar world.

Presenter24:58

We're very sensible, Lucy. Record number six.

Pen Hadow25:01

Didn't say that.

Pen Hadow25:02

Um

Pen Hadow25:04

Uh what I'd like is Music of the Night by Peter Jeffs. This is a song that I came across on my iPod, this little uh music machine that I took with me, solar powered, um, with Simon Murray, uh, or who was my partner on my South Pole expedition earlier this year. And uh Simon steered me towards it as something that I really must listen to, and eventually I succumbed. And I'm so glad that I did, because I think that Peter Jeffs has a voice that is liquid gold.

Speaker 425:33

Let the dream begin, let your dark aside even.

Speaker 425:41

To the power of the music that I write.

Speaker 425:49

The power of the music of the night

Presenter26:02

Andrew Lloydweather's Music of the Night, sung by Peter Jeffs. That's of course from Phantom of the Opera. So, um, Pen Haddo, you've been to the South Pole, you've been to the North Pole. What's the difference in which is better?

Pen Hadow26:15

North Pole, every time, Arctic Ocean.

Pen Hadow26:18

You're setting off at the beginning of spring when the sun is barely over the horizon for any length of time.

Pen Hadow26:24

And so you're getting very low angle light, sort of sunset light if you like.

Pen Hadow26:28

The snow is not a white blank canvas. The Arctic Ocean has this crust of ice, sea ice, and when lit by this these gorgeous colours, you get these wonderful lights of oranges and reds, moving through sort of violets and purples and then steely greys and blues.

Presenter26:44

Yeah.

Presenter26:52

And it's not like that at the South Pole.

Pen Hadow26:54

The South Pole.

Pen Hadow26:56

Essentially, it's a massive dollop of ice up to four kilometers thick, splurged over the continent of Antarctica beneath.

Pen Hadow27:06

And on the journey that Simon and I did, the the surface is is monochromatic. It there's just wind driven snow. Um but it it creates this sort of monastic exi it's a very simple existence. So then you're thrown back onto your onto the onto your inner workings of your mind. And for some people that can be a quite a spiritual or enriching or refreshing experience.

Speaker 327:26

And feedback.

Pen Hadow27:27

Yeah, absolutely, but I regard.

Pen Hadow27:30

My longer journeys as secular pilgrimages. And what I love I love really about the North Pole again is that at the North Pole itself, there's nothing there. So its value is only what you've invested in it. To me it was almost everything. And so that the moment of reaching it was really indescribable. The South Pole is much more prosaic. There's a two or three hundred people based there, Americans. It's a vast station. There's no attempt at a sort of beautiful ascetic architecture. There's a ceremonial glass mirror ball. It's all rather.

Pen Hadow28:04

Disappointing.

Presenter28:05

Yeah.

Presenter28:06

And when you sit at home in your cottage on Dartmoor, looking out of the window into the rain more often than not, do you kind of long to be out there, the North Pole, all that beautiful light?

Pen Hadow28:19

I uh I have to say that I d I do. It definitely h will always hold a huge allure for me. When I'm up there I do what I have to do, I'm totally absorbed, but the moment I've achieved what I want to achieve, I've gone. I'm now back in Dartmoor looking forward to getting back there. So I sort of flip from one to the other and I can move from being alone for sixty days into a West End nightclub in ten minutes.

Presenter28:43

Number seven.

Pen Hadow28:44

Ah, well

Speaker 428:46

Yeah.

Pen Hadow28:47

This is um it's a track called Loaded by Primal Scream. It's just a fabulous track. It mixes um dance with a seriously uh groovy beat. Somehow this is me. It's sort of very individual, independent. I love it.

Presenter29:33

That was Primal Scream and loaded. You have a son, Wilf, who's five now, and Freya, daughter who's two. Um are they going to feel, do you believe, the same kind of determination to um honour the Haddo name with endeavour in the way that you have?

Pen Hadow29:51

If Wilford Freya um become polar explorers, I will feel that I have failed as a father because if I haven't opened their eyes

Pen Hadow30:01

to more options than that. If they really feel that that's the best thing that they can be, I think that uh something has gone wrong. That said, I mean they're tough, hugely humorous, spirited characters and um I just w want them to be happy. That is the most important thing and I'm a I am a tortured soul and as we were saying earlier uh I had had hoped, half hoped, that having reached the the pole and and then the south pole that life would somehow become easier and softer and but uh I now know that that's not going to be the way it's going to be and that I will continue to be very uncomfortable inside unless I'm actually out and achieving something.

Presenter30:40

You haven't got it out, I feel like it's not. No, it's never going to go, isn't it?

Pen Hadow30:42

No, it's never going to go and it's

Pen Hadow30:44

No. So it's going to be uh continues to be tough to be by Nado in in his head anyway.

Presenter30:51

And what about what do you say to Wolf when you're going off?'Cause sometimes it's for months and months on end. And and as discussed at the beginning, you know, we laugh about polar bears, but they're a real threat. I mean, there are times when

Presenter31:01

Perhaps you have to address the fact that you might not come back. Wh do you ever talk to the little chap and say?

Pen Hadow31:07

I do. I've seen a seed in his head that, um

Pen Hadow31:12

If every he wants to know where I am when I'm not around.

Pen Hadow31:17

He knows how to find the Pole Star which sits over the North Pole and that that's where Dad will be.

Pen Hadow31:22

When I went off for the North Pole I mean, it is a risky business I gave him a little pet talk and said, Look, I'm going to be away for a long, long time. Now, for Wilf, when he was four

Pen Hadow31:32

A long, long time was longer than the day after to morrow. I said, Look, you've got to look after mum, after Mary and uh your sister. You're the man of the house now.

Pen Hadow31:42

Bless him, he absolutely took it to heart. He his he knew his job was to look after them and uh he wa behaved immaculately for the first six weeks. He's always a star, but he's uh sort of um wise beyond his years. And I realized w actually before he even came back that I put on far too much pressure on him because he's the sort of chap that would just take it literally.

Pen Hadow32:02

And so when I went off to the South Pole I was much more um

Pen Hadow32:06

more gentle with him in that respect, bless him.

Presenter32:10

Last record.

Pen Hadow32:12

Well, I've chosen Barry White. I mean, it is impossible to select your eight favourite songs. This one.

Presenter32:17

It's songs.

Pen Hadow32:19

is the family anthem really. And we'll always have intensely happy memories of Mary with Freya and me with Wilf whirling like dervishes around the kitchen table to this song. We but we all all four of us know it and love it. And um

Pen Hadow32:35

I think for me, I'm obviously assuming and would want it to be a challenge. I'm not interested in a hot, cosy island with a palm tree and a little waterfall. I want this to be a as hard as it can be ice-capped island. I'll enjoy that, unlike as that may seem. And uh after a year having um worked out how to survive, I'll make it my business to escape back to my family. There's there's a part of me, a worryingly big part of me, that you plan these expeditions to the nth degree and then you achieve them.

Pen Hadow33:02

Well, it's a surprise.

Pen Hadow33:03

You know, what's exciting about that? I like having to go seriously pear-shaped and find myself coming back five years later having had a really interesting time. So you're giving me the excuse to do that. I'm looking forward to it. Barry White, and you're the first, the last, my everything.

Speaker 433:22

I've always

Speaker 433:23

Only one like you.

Speaker 433:27

Out of the way.

Speaker 433:30

They could have made too

Speaker 433:35

Girl, you my reality

Speaker 433:39

I've lost it all three.

Speaker 433:42

Now the fight

Speaker 433:44

Come and laugh!

Presenter33:48

Barry White, and you're the first, the last, my everything. If you could only take one of those eight records, which one would it be, Pen?

Pen Hadow33:55

I'm going to go for uh the Brahms piano concerto.

Pen Hadow33:59

Because there's so much to it.

Presenter34:02

And what about your book? We give you the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare, as you know.

Pen Hadow34:06

I'd take uh the Oxford Book of English Verse. I've discovered on my expeditions that novels don't really work. They're great first time, second time, even third time, but they start to get a bit thin after that. Poetry is a sort of it's reduced like a sauce, it's rich. And I would uh really enjoy working my way through understanding and appreciating what they've achieved with the English language.

Presenter34:28

Annual Luxury

Pen Hadow34:29

Well, I don't think it's really luxury, but I'm going to take a six-inch nail.

Pen Hadow34:33

I'm aware of a group of Russians in the in the thirteenth century, five of them, who were um shipwrecked. They'd survived for six years and the only thing they had or found was a six inch nail in a bit of driftwood. And that was the start of their recovery. So that would be my starting point. So I'm hoping you won't regard it as a useful item. But I just I would look at this nail and I'd think partly

Pen Hadow34:59

If that's all they needed.

Pen Hadow35:01

I'll work it out myself, how I'm going to do it. And partly I think what a what an idiot for having chosen a six-inch nail when you could have had a pillow, but I'm I'm always using the harder option, so.

Pen Hadow35:11

Typical bank.

Presenter35:12

Ben Haddo, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs.

Pen Hadow35:16

Thank you, Sue, very much.

Speaker 335:24

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Islandists archive.

Speaker 335:28

For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio form