Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP

Presenter0:00

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

Speaker 20:13

Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:23

My Costaway this week is a politician. His easy patrician manner belies his humble beginnings. Born in a Glasgow tenement, the son of a joiner who rose to manage the City Corporation's building department, he was a hardworking student, but more importantly, a dedicated athlete. He held and then re-broke the British 100-metre record, captained the UK athletic team, and competed in the Tokyo Olympics and the Commonwealth Games. Meanwhile, he was becoming a lawyer. He went on to take silk and run a very successful legal practice. But running fast and doing well at the law were not quite enough. Seventeen years ago, he entered Parliament. Since when he's risen to become one of his party's most sure-footed spokesmen, a vital asset in its efforts to become first the National Party of Opposition and then, of course, of government. Every career I have chosen has been competitive, he says. I like to win. He's the deputy leader of the Liberal Democrats, Sir Ming is Campbell. Known to all as Ming, of course. You've had three lives, all of them so competitive, as you say. That must mean that behind this very refined exterior there's quite a lot of grit.

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP1:30

I only realized that quite recently. If you run, if you compete, then you win or you lose. If you are an advocate in court, then you win or you lose your case. And of course you can win and lose your seat. I don't know where the competitive streak came from, because I neither of my parents were particularly competitive, but my mother was a very good sportswoman, and some say she'd have played hockey for Scotland, but she was made to help her mother in the family shop on Saturdays, and so that pu paid to her sporting career.

Presenter1:58

So that

Presenter2:00

But all those kinds of things mean that you know how to be rough and tough, is really my point. I mean, if you you know, you're a criminal barrister and you're a politician and you've got to kind of get out there and slog.

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP2:10

Well, I don't think people would describe me as a shy, retiring flyer.

Presenter2:14

No, but they describe you as urbane and polite and all this things but but underneath, guiding it all is a kind of ambition. Now, where does that come from? Was that born in the Glasgow tenement?

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP2:14

I think it's a new

Presenter2:25

Uh

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP2:25

I

Presenter2:25

I think

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP2:26

That both my parents were extremely intelligent. They should both have gone to university, and if they hadn't been children of the Depression, they undoubtedly would have gone to university.

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP2:36

And from a very, very young age I was conscious of the fact that I was expected to fulfil a lot of the ambitions which they had and which for them remain unfulfilled. And so

Presenter2:47

Yeah.

Speaker 22:47

Uh

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP2:50

You got on through education. You got on through application. And every parent wanted their child to get on. I mean, this is.

Presenter2:52

You got a

Presenter2:58

What did your father want for you then? What was the Holy Grail, as far as he was concerned?

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP3:00

It's not good.

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP3:02

He wanted me to be a judge in the court of session in Scotland. Could have been that. Could have been, but other things.

Presenter3:07

You gave it up for politics.

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP3:07

Gave it up.

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP3:09

Other attractive things came along.

Presenter3:10

So he drove you, didn't he? He lived vicariously through you.

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP3:13

There was quite a bit of that, and that made for sometimes quite uncomfortable relationship. I was asked about this the other day, and I had a more comfortable relationship, I think, with my mother. First of all, because she was tremendously interested in sport. In nineteen forty-eight, the Olympic Games, I was brought it was a very hot summer, but I was brought in to listen to the radio and to listen to the Olympic Games from London.

Presenter3:36

It would have been what about seven.

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP3:37

I was seven.

Presenter3:37

Note.

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP3:37

I can't say that that's what fired my interest in athletics, but it was part of being interested in sport.

Presenter3:43

What did they live to see you achieve, then?

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP3:45

My father didn't really see me achie by his standards, I don't suppose I achieved a great deal, because I mean I took silk. He didn't see that. He didn't see that. I became a Member of Parliament, he didn't see that.

Presenter3:53

He didn't see that.

Presenter3:58

You became a Privy Councillor, you were knighted. My goodness, his cup would have broken.

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP3:59

You were knighted.

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP4:02

He he he he'd have liked all of that. Uh he'd have talked about it quite a lot of the time to his friends.

Presenter4:09

Tell me about your first record.

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP4:10

My first record is The Ride of the Valkyries from Wagner's Ring, and it's the first piece of classical music of which I was really conscious. And it arose out of a programme called Top of the Form, which was quintessentially the BBC of the 1940s and the 1950s, two grammar schools usually, in a general knowledge competition. And I remember one of the competitors from the girls' schools, always a girls' school and a boys' school, one of the competitors from the girls' school was asked to identify a piece of music. And the piece of music was the Ride of the Valkyries. And I was astonished that someone who wasn't all that much older than me could know so much.

Presenter5:48

Part of the Ride of the Valkyries from Wagner's Ring with the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Herbert von Karian. So just tell me a little bit more about your father, Mink Campbell. So he rose up, if you like, from sort of craftsman class to the managerial class.

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP6:08

Uh

Presenter6:10

Is it a class thing he wanted you then to become the professional class?

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP6:14

Yeah. I suppose if you like these class descriptions, he turned himself into managerial class, as it were, but he was absolutely determined that I should do better than him.

Presenter6:22

But

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP6:24

And so university was a given. I mean, it wasn't a question of if, it was a question of when.

Presenter6:24

And

Presenter6:29

But did that mean that therefore we've said that he slightly lived vicariously th that he was too controlling of you?

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP6:36

Uh we had our moments.

Presenter6:37

Good.

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP6:38

And I broke out of that by going as a postgraduate to Stanford University in California, about which he was pretty doubtful.

Presenter6:45

He didn't want you to go.

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP6:46

No. Why not? He wanted me to win the scholarship, which I did.

Presenter6:47

Why not?

Presenter6:51

Yeah.

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP6:51

But he didn't want me to take it up.

Presenter6:54

He just didn't want to let you go.

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP6:54

Come back.

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP6:55

Yeah, I think he thought that I might go and never come back. And in fact, I nearly did.

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP7:01

It's still

Presenter7:01

It stopped you going to Oxford earlier on, hadn't you?

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP7:03

He he di yeah, there was an opportunity to go to Oxford and he would have had to pay for it. He said, Look, what's on with Glasgow University? Perfectly good. Uh I think there was um a sense in which he he was concerned that I might sort of grow away from him.

Presenter7:18

Hmm.

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP7:18

Um that must have been out of affection and regard and a sense of shared ambition for me.

Presenter7:24

Those are quite controlling there.

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP7:25

Yes, he was quite controlling man.

Presenter7:26

And'cause you were at Glasgow University, hometown university, for what, six years?

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP7:30

Six years living at home, I mean living within sort of ten minutes of the university.

Presenter7:31

Mm-hmm.

Presenter7:34

Good.

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP7:35

I mean, I lived, went to school and went to university, all within about a square mile.

Presenter7:39

And then when you came back from California, I think later on in your twenties, I think you went to live at home again.

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP7:45

I uh b wanted to go to the bar. Uh he wanted me to go to the bar, and he was willing to support me for that. I find myself, aged twenty seven, uh, still at home, and this being a good Presbyterian household, you won't expect it to be out after twelve midnight on a Saturday night.

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP8:04

But I discovered through painful experience which stairs on the staircase creaked, and I could go back to that house now, and I could get myself up the stairs without anyone knowing I'd actually come in at half past two in the morning.

Presenter8:19

But you left home eventually at eventually

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP8:21

Eventually I did. Yep. Once I was called to the bar that's based in Edinburgh it made no sense not to go and live in a flat in Edinburgh.

Presenter8:28

Record number two.

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP8:29

Record number two. I love the theatre, and I've always uh rather liked uh Dylan Thomas. And I think that Richard Burton's got one of the best voices I've ever heard in my life. So this is uh a part of Under Milkwood by Dylan Thomas, read by Richard Burton. To begin at the

Speaker 28:48

Beginning.

Speaker 28:51

It is spring, moonless night in the small town, starless and bible black, the cobbled streets silent and the hunched, quarters and rabbits' wood limping invisible down to the slow black.

Speaker 29:03

Slow.

Speaker 29:05

Black

Speaker 29:06

Pro black fishing boat bobbing sea

Speaker 29:10

The houses are blind as moles, though moles see fine to night in the snouting velvet dingles, or blind as Captain Cat there in the muffled middle by the pump and the town.

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP9:21

What a voice, what a voice of politics.

Speaker 29:22

Politics.

Presenter9:23

Brilliant. I don't know. Richard Burton, reading p the the opening actually of Under Milkwood by Dylan Thomas. So, I mean, you really got into your stride at university, literally. Um, you began to run like a dream, although as you said, you weren't a natural athlete. What were you doing that was right then? Just working?

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP9:37

Training, yeah, training, getting some um well informed coaching, doing a lot of weight training, uh which was rather unusual, getting good opportunities and having a great slice of luck.

Presenter9:49

How did you come to be chosen for the Tokyo Olympics?

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP9:51

An enormous slice of luck. I was due to run in a meeting in Scotland, a sort of domestic match between the Scottish Universities and the Scottish American Athletic Association.

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP10:02

And on Friday morning a letter arrived say inviting me to compete at the White City the next day. And I went down and I won the three A's two twenty yards championship. You know, I came from sort of nowhere. I wasn't I wasn't on the plot. I just suddenly emerged.

Speaker 210:03

Uh

Presenter10:13

Yeah.

Presenter10:15

Wasn't bothering.

Presenter10:17

So you must have thought you were quite something,'cause you'd got an MA by then, hadn't you? You were President of the Union by then. I mean, it was all happening.

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP10:19

I was 2 I was 23.

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP10:28

Very selfish. I've been thinking about this quite a lot recently.

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP10:32

Very selfish existence because there was this enormous focus on sport. Not to the exclusion of other things, because I was.

Presenter10:38

The only way you could do it is that it's not a problem.

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP10:39

Yes, exactly. But but I was uh I was doing part-time I was doing I was doing my LLB and in those days we did it on a part-time basis. You weren't allowed to read law until you were educated. MA first. So Donald Dewar and John Smith, my contemporaries, did exactly the same. Then you went to work in an office. But what you did you used classes in the morning at the university, classes in the evening, office in between. So I was doing second degree, I was doing what was a solicitor's apprenticeship, I was president of union and I had a girlfriend.

Presenter11:09

You didn't do amazingly well at the Olympics. That's all right. I won my heat.

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP11:11

No, I won my heat. Yes. And then I ran rather badly in the second round. But we got to the final of the four hundred metres relay. Really? And we broke the British record.

Presenter11:13

Yes.

Presenter11:18

Pre-

Presenter11:21

Have you gone on running in the thirty five odd years since then? I heard a story of one Lib Dem MP breaking the treadmill in the House of Commons. Is that you?

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP11:31

No, that is uh Paddy Ashton. Paddy, when he went to the gym, used to throw himself at the equipment rather in the same way as he threw himself at Parliament, which was without any inhibition, and he was so vigorous that he broke the equipment. But I don't claim that.

Presenter11:50

Record number three.

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP11:51

Record number three is about athletics. I mean, there have been quite a lot of films about sport, but Chariots of Fire of all those films seems to me to get inside the mind of the athlete and the atmosphere of them. The sheer mind numbing fear of running in in an Olympic final.

Presenter12:39

Vangelis with chariots of fire from the 1981 film. What about your um political origins then, Ming Campbell? Were were your parents politically active?

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP12:47

Both my parents were very politically interested. Neither of them was active. And all of their friends were politically interested. So on Saturday nights when people came round to call, then there was politics, politics, politics.

Presenter12:58

But where were they in the space?

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP12:59

Oh, they would let my father be in something called the IOP, the Independent Labour Party.

Presenter13:02

Very left.

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP13:03

Oh yes, quite left. Yeah. But he'd sort of moved. He was a great admirer of Clement Davis, who was the Liberal leader in that awful period after nineteen forty five, when you remember the election results all said, and the Liberal lost his deposit.

Presenter13:17

Who was your political hero?

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP13:18

Joe Gremond. I was um eighteen at Glasgow University. Joe Grimmond came. It wasn't long after Suez, nineteen fifty six. I went up to University in nineteen fifty nine. And Grimmond had taken this very strong position on Suez, and he was a marvellously

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP13:35

romantic looking figure.

Presenter13:37

Great style.

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP13:38

Tremendous style and very carefully the forelock was carefully contrived. I mean, that was the kind of uh, if you like, the the glamorous side of it. And and the theoretical side was being made to read John Stuart Mill's essay on libertarianism. And I said to myself, I wish I'd written that.

Presenter13:55

Hmm.

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP13:55

And that's for me.

Presenter13:57

But your your parents, as you say, were a a a bit more left than that. And then your contemporaries at university, and you've mentioned some of them, you John Smith and and Donald Dewar and Derry Irving.

Presenter14:06

All of whom were in the Labour Party. Why did you strike out separately then? All because of Joe Grimmon?

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP14:09

They're all labor.

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP14:15

I mean, I suppose the there was a sense of rebellion slightly against I mean, it wasn't a major, I mean, it wasn't exactly the French rebellion, wasn't it?

Presenter14:22

To be a liberal.

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP14:23

Yes, exactly. I was going to say, I mean, it wasn't exactly a huge rebellion to say to one's left leaning parents, Well, actually I'm going to be a member of the of the Liberal Club at at university, but it was what I felt and it's what I've always felt.

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP14:38

At least one Tory chief whip said, Why didn't you come in our direction? I'm sure we could find you a safe seat. Mark you, that was a promise which probably

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP14:47

would have been difficult to fulfil, as subsequent events have proved.

Presenter14:49

Well,

Presenter14:50

But John Smith also calls it.

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP14:52

Concluded you, didn't he?

Presenter14:53

Well that thing has just got cross because it's

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP14:54

I mean, in the early hours of the morning when perhaps we'd all had a glass or two, he rounded me and said, Why on earth are you in the Liberal Party? Why aren't you in the Labour Party like your parents?

Presenter15:01

Anna

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP15:05

What's the answer to that? Well, the answer was I'm liberal.

Presenter15:05

Same button

Presenter15:07

Why was that?

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP15:10

I mean, I'm I I do genuinely believe in individual freedom, people's right to determine the way they live their own lives. The government should be uh off our backs. Uh we should be able to make choices for ourselves. Um

Presenter15:24

That sounds like Toryism.

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP15:25

Yeah, but uh th that sort of uh freedom uh is not, in my view and should not, in my view, be related to financial advantage. Conservative attitudes to to what's freedom seem to me almost always to relate to financial advantage. You've got a choice if you've got the money.

Presenter15:27

B

Presenter15:43

Makeup number four.

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP15:46

When I was in California as a postgraduate student at Stanford University, I used to go to parties, and I'd be the only person who wasn't stoned on pot. I was sort of clear eyed and clean cut and on the training track.

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP16:01

And there was this record by this man called Bob Dylan that everyone spoke about, and the record is Hey, Mr. Tambourine Man.

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP16:08

And I thought it was just a good record.

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP16:10

But what I didn't realize was that the tambourine man was the man who brought the drugs.

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP16:16

So in my naivety

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP16:18

My sort of provincial West of Scotland naivety, I used to say, Gosh, this is a great record, let's play this little knowing that this was part of the culture of the time, which in those days involved quite a lot of drug consumption.

Speaker 316:33

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

Speaker 316:44

Hey Mr. Timberin, mine glass song for me. In the jingle, jangle morning, I'll come following you.

Presenter16:56

Bob Dylan and Hey, Mr. Tambourine Man, and memories of not taking drugs in California. I mean, you really were.

Presenter17:02

Uh are a child of the fifties, not the sixties. Well, you said you were the sort of the last of the sexually inhibited, too.

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP17:09

Yes, we were. Yeah, we were scared stiff.

Presenter17:11

Were you? Yeah. But you you drank a lot, you I mean

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP17:14

No, well no, I know I d I d I didn't uh I was saying rather cruelly to my wife that I never drank gin until we got married.

Presenter17:22

But you had riotous parties in Donald Dewar's basement.

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP17:24

Yes, but I used to drink lemonade or or I was I was obsessed about about athletics and about sport and if you were

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP17:32

trying to get to the Olympic Games, and you didn't drink. But at a certain part in the evening it was necessary that a deputation would go from the party upstairs to meet his parents, to be given a glass of sherry, and just to be talked, to be asked how things were going, and all of that, and hoping we were enjoying ourselves.

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP17:50

And I was always a member of that delegation, because I didn't drink, and therefore I could be trusted to engage misses Jur in serious conversation without causing any embarrassment to Donald or anyone else.

Presenter17:56

Mm-hmm.

Presenter18:04

So off you went into the law. You were called to the bar in the late sixties. Um criminal law was your field and then you made a QC.

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP18:11

Yeah. In Scotland in those days uh specialization was difficult because there wasn't enough work. I mean the bar was quite small. There were only about a hundred of us, five hundred now.

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP18:21

And so it was quite difficult to specialise. So what we tended to do, we tended to be generalists. And certainly when I was starting out as a as a junior at the bar, I mean, I remember being junior counsel in a murder trial one week and conducting a planning inquiry the next.

Presenter18:35

But all the time while you were doing that you were standing for Parliament and and failing. I think you stood fi in five elections before you got in over thirteen years.

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP18:42

Five elections before you got in? Over thirteen years. I nearly got to Robert the Bruce Spider.

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP18:48

I stood twice in Greenock in 1974. There were two elections in that year, if you remember.

Presenter18:51

Yeah.

Presenter18:52

Yeah if you remember.

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP18:53

And uh that was a great baptism. I was eventually elected in North East Fife by then. Be it was East Fife when I went. It was Asquith's old seats, a very strong Liberal tradition, albeit uh somewhat decayed. Your first majority. It's like Calais, it's engraved on your heart.

Speaker 218:59

Yeah.

Presenter19:10

But what was really driving you is my question. Was it just because you couldn't bear not to have won by this stage?

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP19:20

Not to chalk up a failure. And when I got in, I had a kind of view that perhaps I might do one, well, I couldn't I had to do more than I'd probably do two terms and then go back to the bar. And I did actually carry on quite a lot of bar practice in the early days, but as I got more involved, and in particular when Paddy Ashtown came in, with whom I formed a close political relationship and a close personal friendship too, then I got more and more committed to the politics and I was less and less able to do the law.

Presenter19:49

So it's not a decision you've regretted.

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP19:52

No. I mean, I I think the Royal Bank of Scotland may have regretted it from time to time, but not me.

Presenter19:58

Put number five.

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP20:00

On the night that Elsa and I got engaged, we were separated by about seventy miles. She was organizing on behalf of shelter.

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP20:10

A charity performance of Fidelia by Scottish Opera.

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP20:14

And I was speaking at a sports dinner in Saint Andrews.

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP20:19

So on the night of our engagement we were separated.

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP20:23

And as a result Fidelio, which was her opera, has always had a special place.

Speaker 220:23

Yeah.

Speaker 320:53

So

Speaker 320:57

Your face in walls.

Speaker 321:05

Uh

Presenter21:28

The prisoner's chorus from Beethoven's Fidelio sung by the Arnold Schoenberg Choir with the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Sir Simon Rattle and memories of getting engaged to Elspeth back in nineteen seventy. I mean you met and married within three months, I think, didn't you?

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP21:42

We were introduced to each other by Nicholas Fairbairn, who was a rather to use my words a colourful Conservative Member of Parliament, and we met each other on the thirteenth of March, and we were married by the twelfth of June, as she said afterwards. I held my nose and jumped.

Presenter21:57

And when you got into Parliament, aged forty-six, so some

Presenter22:02

What's that? Seventeen years later, she became your secretary and she's gone on being. Let's talk about that political career.

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP22:06

Hey.

Presenter22:09

Paddy Ashdown became leader just after you got into the House, and you became, as I said in the introduction, one of his most sure footed uh members of the party underneath him. You rose through the r ranks, you became a privy councillor.

Presenter22:22

You must, ambitious as you are and you've heard and make no bones about you must have thought of succeeding him when he resigned in'ninety nine.

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP22:30

Well, there was a lot of talk about it. One couldn't go anywhere without on public occasions without people mentioning it. I took a view, first of all, that I didn't think I was likely to win. I thought it seemed to me pretty obvious that Charles Kennedy was the preferred candidate among the membership. Second, I had been very closely associated with Paddy Ashton and my analysis was that I had been so closely connected with them and the party was ready for something else and for something different.

Presenter22:55

But there's a niggle of regret.

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP22:57

There was a no, not

Presenter22:59

It would have been the icing on the cake, wouldn't it?

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP22:59

In the IC

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP23:01

It would be a little bit.

Presenter23:01

Been an Olympic athlete, been a QC and ended up as leader of a

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP23:05

Being the leader of the third party is a pretty onerous task. Quite a lot of me was thinking this could be a pretty rotten existence for ten years.

Presenter23:12

Yeah.

Presenter23:16

Even if it's a third party that now thinks it might become the second party, party of opposition, as I said in my introduction.

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP23:22

One would have had to be quite optimistic to think that that was an inevitable conclusion. Mark you, I suppose anyone who joins the Liberal Party as I did in nineteen fifty nine with six MPs

Presenter23:22

And

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP23:32

is probably guilty of a certain amount of political optimism.

Presenter23:36

Number six.

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP23:37

Because of the kind of life I lead.

Presenter23:38

Yeah.

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP23:38

It it's very difficult to go to concerts or theatre or whatever, but we make a very strong effort to do the Edinburgh Festival as hard as we possibly can. And that's been the case now for more than thirty years. And the Edinburgh Festival has a wonderful chorus, and I have recollections of Verdi's Requiem with this wonderful, wonderful music. That's why I've chosen that.

Presenter25:06

Started with the Dieziere from Verdi's Requiem, with the Kirov Orchestra and Chorus conducted by Valery Georgiev. Your role as deputy leader of your party, Ming, is an important one, not least because there have been concerns on and off over the past year about Charles Kennedy's health. A story has been published recently that you were asked earlier this year to act as a caretaker leader. Is that true?

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP25:29

Um

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP25:31

Twelve months out from elections then one covers all contingencies. Um Charles got this stomach bug at a bad time. It um upset him um and there were some anxieties. But these have all been overtaken by the fact that the story was

Presenter25:46

But the but the story was that you that you said you if you would be installed and not have to compete in an election, then you would accept this. I mean, the party was definitely gearing itself up in case something awful happened.

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP26:00

Well, the party was anxious and when he appeared to have this uh health scare, then not surprisingly, twelve months out from election, people began to think, Well, what if something terrible happens and uh and and he's not able to go on? And so there were some described the other day in an article as contingency arrangements, but we don't need them.

Presenter26:06

No.

Presenter26:21

Hmm.

Presenter26:23

But that is you you are the contingency rent. You're the safety net. You're the the safe pair of hands. Are you just sort of

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP26:28

Well well let me put it this way, that if it was necessary for some reason to take the party through to an election, then I would most certainly do that. But I have no ambition to be the leader of the Liberal Democrats. I have an ambition for the Liberal Democrats, which is that we should get many more votes in the next election and many more seats.

Presenter26:45

Well, you say that. Um you know, and there are those who believe in some quarters that that's going to happen. But of course it's been said on so many occasions there have been so many dawns, you know, based on the statistics of of by-elections. Is it I mean, where would you put it, honestly, now?

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP27:01

I genuinely think it's the best opportunity we've had in my active political lifetime. As I said elsewhere recently, I've been to more dawns than the Archdruid of Wales. I've been through the Alliance. I was through the Lib Lab Pact. I mean, I've been through all of that.

Presenter27:16

Crosby Hill Head.

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP27:16

Yeah.

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP27:17

Head, Hillhead, you know, um Brent, uh Leicester South. I've a large collection of places where I've been and for which I got the T-shirts.

Presenter27:26

And this compares.

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP27:26

But this is, in my view, quite the best, and the best opportunity.

Presenter27:31

And if this dawn again proves false, um what happens then to the man who likes to win? Does he give up or does he challenge for the leadership then?

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP27:40

But then you with your experience know that politicians never answer hypothetical questions.

Presenter27:45

Well, you, with your experience as a politician, know that I must ask.

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP27:47

Yeah, but we will have to agree a truce or a draw on this topic.

Presenter27:52

So you might put that icing on the cake, get that sort of third title yet.

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP27:56

I think it is um

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP27:58

So far beyond the bounds of possibility it's not worth considering.

Presenter28:02

But you stopped short of saying highly unlikely.

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP28:04

Politicians never say never, but I think on this occasion I can say never with some confidence.

Presenter28:10

Number seven.

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP28:11

Record number seven. It reminds me of Murrayfield. I'm obsessed about Scotland. It's been quite difficult to be obsessed about Scotland in recent years because our record at rugby hasn't been particularly good. I first went, and I'm almost embarrassed to confess this, in 1954 to Murrayfield as a schoolboy, aged thirteen. It makes me think of hope, often unfulfilled, but hope which is always resurrected in time for the next match. It is Highland Cathedral, played, I think, by the Grenadier Guards and the Golden Highlanders.

Presenter29:43

The Grenadier Guards and Gordon Highlanders playing Highland Cathedral, conducted by Major Rodney Parker. You've mentioned Ming Campbell your illness, which which was a bit of a facer, wasn't it?

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP29:55

Nothing prepares you for the moment when a man who's no doubt said it to many people in his life, in his professional life, says, Well, I'm afraid to tell you that you've got uh a malignant tumour. And it is. I mean, you're brought back on your heels. I've determined that uh as indeed was my wife right from the very beginning, and who was um tired of strength throughout the whole thing.

Presenter30:19

And yours was a beater.

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP30:21

Yeah.

Presenter30:21

It was kind.

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP30:22

I mean, I was very it was in one so far as could be ascertained, it was in one place.

Presenter30:25

Hmm.

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP30:26

I responded to the chemotherapy and the radiotherapy treatment, and I got through the treatment by and large without too many side effects.

Presenter30:33

And mentally though, you what you're saying is you did spur yourself on, because I know we we saw you during and I mean chemotherapy and so on, it takes an awful toll, doesn't it? But we saw you on the television doing interviews then. Was that

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP30:37

Is that

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP30:44

Was that part of I was absolutely determined to do it because Iraq had begun to boil up.

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP30:48

And I was absolutely determined that I was not going to be out of the story, if you like. And that was part of my way of coping.

Speaker 230:53

Hmm.

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP30:56

But ju it just shows you how these serious episodes in your life have a kind of superficial quality uh as well. The one thing that worried me was the fact I lost quite a lot of my hair.

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP31:08

Uh I mean uh vanity vanity, I suppose, is the answer to that.

Presenter31:09

Vanity van

Presenter31:12

But you're recovered. The prognosis is.

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP31:13

Yes, uh uh I mean I have regular check-ups ev every three months and that will go on for five years. But so far everything seems all right.

Presenter31:22

So you you're competitive, you know how to maintain your morale, I mean, you you're gonna be fine on this desert island, aren't you?

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP31:29

Yeah.

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP31:30

I don't like my own company that much. I like people round about me. I I can get lonely. And I'm totally impractical. Some stuff will have to be washed ashore along with me if I'm going to survive. I can fish a bit, but I'm not sure I can and I can make a fishing pole, but I'm not sure I'll be clever enough to manufacture a hook out of a novel tin can or something of that kind. I could unless there's a ready supply of coconuts and fruit and things, I could starve.

Presenter31:52

I could

Presenter31:58

Dost record.

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP31:59

Last record is part of Marlowe's Fifth Symphony. It's uh a part which of course is always associated with the film Death in Venice. I'm never quite driven to tears, but certainly emotionally affected by it because of its enormous power and subtlety.

Presenter33:18

The end of the Daggietto from Mahler's Fifth Symphony played by the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Gunter Herbig. Now, Ming, if you could only take one of those eight records with you, which one would you take?

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP33:28

Well, it daren't be the last. I mean, if I'm going to be lonely on this island, then I'm afraid that, beautiful though this music is, it would simply compound my loneliness. No, I need something to keep my spirits up. I need something rombustuous, and I think that means that the ride of the Valkyrie has got to get the accolade, and it will remind me of my childhood.

Presenter33:50

And what about your book?

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP33:51

Well, I'm going to cheat, if I may. When I was quite young I was given Treasure Island and Kidnapped in the same volume.

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP33:59

And of course Robert Louis Stevenson, one of the great Scottish authors. These were the first serious books I read. I don't know what I can't remember what age I was, perhaps seven or eight, something like that. So if I can have one volume with Treasure Island and Kidnapped, I will be very happy to read it day in, day out.

Presenter34:16

And your luxury.

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP34:19

As a result of being a Member of Parliament for North East Fife, I'm a trustee of the golf courses at St Andrews, including the old course, the home of golf.

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP34:29

But because of my interest in athletics and when I was younger, I never had time for golf.

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP34:34

So, what I'm going to do, my luxury, is a set of golf clubs. And because this island is going to be surrounded by sand.

Rt Hon Sir Menzies Campbell MP34:41

I will emerge from this island as the best bunker shot player in the Western Hemisphere.

Presenter34:47

Yeah.

Presenter34:48

Swimming is Campbell. Thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your Desert Island discs.

Presenter34:58

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