John Fortune

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

Presenter0:29

Mike Costaway this week is a satirist. For the past twelve years, he's appeared regularly on television as one half of a wittily toe-curling conversational duet. A cynical spin-doctor, clueless toff, ruthless businessman, or one of many other alter egos, he and his partner John Bird skilfully reveal the absurdities and inconsistencies of modern British life. For him, it's been a return to frontline show business after a long absence. A member of the group of iconoclasts that came out of Cambridge at the turn of the 60s, he was one of the talents with Peter Cook behind the Establishment Club in Soho, and wrote for and appeared regularly on the new genre of satirical television shows such as Not So Much a Programme More A Way of Life. Born in Bristol 65 years ago, he might never have made it to Cambridge and the glittering footlights but for an English teacher who encouraged and inspired him. He's more responsible, he says, than anyone else in my life for anything I've achieved. He is John Fortune. What was his name then, John, this English master?

John Fortune1:33

His name was Teddy Martin, also called Sandy Martin, and he was in his late 40s, I suppose, when I was about fifteen. And I was pretty average at school, and that's flattering. And then one day, Teddy came into an English class and, without saying anything at all, started to read the foul quartets of T. S. Eliot.

John Fortune1:59

And something happened and it changed my life.

Presenter2:03

What happened?

John Fortune2:05

I don't know. I'd never heard anything like this and the fact that it was poetry, the fact that it was modern.

John Fortune2:12

The fact that I couldn't understand it, but desperately wanted to.

John Fortune2:16

was extremely important.

John Fortune2:19

And from that moment I became very, very good at writing about poetry and literature, and Teddy encouraged me.

Presenter2:26

But you hadn't really read much before, then you

John Fortune2:28

No, no. In our house we had two books. One was called The Universal Home Doctor and the other was called The Universal Book of Hobbies. And that was it.

Presenter2:39

So did he kind of take you under his wing? Did he give you books?

John Fortune2:41

Yes, he did. He took me home to his house after school one night, and it was the first time I'd ever seen a room which had books from the floor to the ceiling. And he had a a car, and he filled up the back seat with books and said, When you've finished this lot, come and get some more.

Presenter2:59

And did he inspire you then to apply for Cambridge? Is that the Cord Park?

John Fortune3:02

Yes, he did.

John Fortune3:06

I was at a very eccentric school, the cathedral school, in Bristol.

John Fortune3:11

Why eccentric? Well, because the headmaster was extremely eccentric.

Presenter3:11

What?

John Fortune3:16

He

John Fortune3:17

He encouraged me to take an exam for Saint Catherine's College, Cambridge, which I took in the Cathedral Library, and about three weeks later I said, Have you heard anything from Cambridge? and he said, Oh oh, oh God, I forgot to send the papers.

John Fortune3:31

Ah, so he was that etc.

Presenter3:33

But you did eventually go up to Cambridge, didn't you, to do your exams and be interviewed for a sort of three days?

John Fortune3:36

Two.

John Fortune3:38

Yes, I went to King's. And I didn't know Kings, except when I saw the chapel, I remembered that um.

John Fortune3:46

In the Radio Times there was an advertisement for Pi Radios and it had a picture of King's College Chapel. I thought, Oh, that's the Pi Radio place And so I was there for three days and uh it was absolutely wonderful. I remember the night before the first exam I was staying in a student's room

John Fortune4:06

just looking in the bookshelves, and there was a paperback book of James Thurber.

John Fortune4:11

And I opened it. I'd never heard of James Thurber, and I started to laugh.

John Fortune4:16

And that was a wonderful

Presenter4:17

Mama.

John Fortune4:18

Moment.

Presenter4:19

Amazing. Let's have your first record. Tell me about that.

John Fortune4:22

Oh, this is Thomas Talis. It's his forty-part motet spemin alium, and this is sung by the Choir of Kings.

Presenter5:32

Part of Thomas Tallis' Spem in Allium, sung by the choir of King's College, Cambridge, led by Stephen Clebery, and memories of Cambridge in the late fifties for my castaway John Fortune. It was a watershed in his life. Presumably John for a working class boy from Bristol I mean it was full of untold exotic

John Fortune5:50

Absolutely amazing. I mean in my first year, well I suppose my first term I had sexual intercourse for the first time.

Presenter5:50

Is that

John Fortune5:59

I tasted claret, I tasted whisky, brandy, I had spaghetti that wasn't out of a tin, I had coffee that was ground, aubergines.

John Fortune6:10

Cogettes. It was amazing. I must have spent the whole year just eating and drinking and making up.

Presenter6:15

And have the same thing. But your timing was also perfect i i in a sense because of course it was just at the moment, wasn't it, when the working class was becoming very fashionable. So angry young men and hurry on down and room at the top. I mean you'd have been really in there.

John Fortune6:26

Yes, it works.

John Fortune6:28

How many of you have

John Fortune6:31

Well, I was, um, in in every sense. Um I mean, the fact that at home we had a an outside lavatory and no bathroom was just catnip to upper class young girls who'd been to Cranbourne Chase and all that sort of thing.

Presenter6:49

They like to hear you talk dirty.

John Fortune6:51

Oh, absolutely. Yes. Did you actually go outside to have a pee in the middle of the night? Certainly.

Presenter6:56

Certainly.

Presenter6:58

But a a wonderful different atmosphere from the atmosphere we've left behind in Bristol, which I do want to talk to you about. But just free and liberal and

John Fortune7:05

Yes, King's was the first college in Cambridge to take the spikes off the the gates and the railings. And I used to always climb in with my girlfriend on a Saturday night and I'd climb over first and then she would climb over very decorously in the sort of fifties hoop skirts, you know, that sort of thing. And as she landed on the gravel there would be the voice of the porter from the shadow of the buttress of the chapel saying, Well jumped, miss.

Presenter7:36

Oh, wonderful.

Presenter7:37

You were taught by FR Levis, yes.

John Fortune7:40

Ah yes, and uh I wanted to have supervision with him and uh eventually Frank Levis said, Well, I I don't know. I mean, you know, you're from King's. King's I remember walking up King's Parade and seeing Lytton Strachey.

John Fortune7:58

With Daddy Rylands on one arm

John Fortune8:02

and Rupert Brooke on the other, and I didn't know where to put myself.

Presenter8:07

You make him sound like Eno.

John Fortune8:09

Well, he was I mean, he was a bit like that. He was very puritanical.

Presenter8:10

Five minutes.

Presenter8:11

Uh

John Fortune8:13

But he was a wonderful man.

Presenter8:15

And E. M. Forster was a fellow. Now, I I mean, Kings was his permanent home wasn't. Yes, it was. He would have been, what, nearly eighty by

John Fortune8:18

He would have been

John Fortune8:22

Yes, I suppose he was. But he was very, very charming. I had a great friend who lived in the rooms above his in King's, and one night he knocked on my friend's door and said, I'm awfully sorry to interrupt your lovemaking, but could you do it a little more quiet? Wonderful.

Presenter8:44

I have to ask you, in talking about Levis, did you learn from him about satire and that satire was about moral judgments? And have you borne this in mind ever since?

John Fortune8:53

I certainly at that time was very influenced by Levis' very rigorous view about society and the great tradition and all that. As I've got older and more decadent, I've sort of rather left those beliefs behind. I like to think that what John and I do is ridicule our betters. Record number two. This is Pablo Casals playing the Song of the Birds. This is because I suppose I was introduced to music because of my father. I didn't really know my father very well because when I was very tiny he went off to the war and I really didn't see him again until I was six. But he played the cello, so I'd like to hear Pablo Casals and remember my father.

Presenter10:47

Pablo Casals and the Catalan folk song, The Song of the Birds. It is fascinating, John, that your image today, which of course is completely false because it's drawn from your kind of satirical appearances, but nevertheless, it is consistently one of being sort of upmarket buffer. Somebody called you, I think, a sort of ineffectual Latin master.

Presenter11:06

But it is the complete antithesis of your origins, isn't it? That's what's fascinating.

John Fortune11:10

Well, it is, and I know that whenever I do something, my wife says to me, Try not to sound up a class.

Presenter11:17

So your father was a a travelling salesman, isn't he?

John Fortune11:19

Yes, he was. He was.

Presenter11:20

He was.

John Fortune11:22

Uh no, no. She worked before she got married. She worked in a dress shop, and oddly enough, I have a middle name, Courtney.

John Fortune11:31

And I used to say to her, Why on earth did you call me Courtney? and she said, Well, he was the man that owned the dress shop, and he was the only rich man I have ever met.

Presenter11:40

And you lived in a a little two up, two down, unless you see outside lavatory, but then you moved into a bigger house.

John Fortune11:43

You see.

John Fortune11:46

We moved into a bigger house because my grandfather died, and my grandmother and my mother's brother decided that they'd like to sell their house and move in with us, which in fact they did. It was quite difficult because my grandmother wasn't a particularly nice woman. My uncle used to go off to work at nine o'clock in the morning, and five minutes later, she would start to boil the cabbage. And so, by lunchtime, it was just appalling.

Presenter12:17

You can smell it now.

John Fortune12:19

Ugh.

Presenter12:19

Okay.

John Fortune12:19

Uh

Presenter12:19

Yeah.

Presenter12:20

So if you were uh as you say under the influence of this this uh school teacher and you were beginning to learn about literature and art and how to think and so

John Fortune12:28

Yeah.

Presenter12:29

Presumably the desire to escape was at the front of your mind, was it?

John Fortune12:34

Well, I remember when I was at my primary school, I think uh we had an interview with the headmaster, Mr Elton, and he said to my mother, There's no reason why John shouldn't go to university, even Oxford or Cambridge, and you wouldn't have to pay a penny.

John Fortune12:51

And I never forgot that. I was educated at King's for three years and at the beginning of each uh year the a bursa used to come to my room and say, Oh, um I've got the money for your exhibition um here. Would you like it in cash or wine?

Presenter13:10

What did you tell me?

John Fortune13:10

What did you take? I just take the cash, I'm afraid. Now it's a little bit. Yeah, yeah. And then those great big white notes.

Presenter13:13

Well, this is not.

Presenter13:18

Old five pounds.

John Fortune13:19

Yes, that's right. In my teens I got very, very keen on jazz and I joined the Air Training Corps because they had a silver wing band and they gave me a trombone and sort of taught me to play it. Except that the very first time we had a parade and we were marching along with a huge crowd behind us.

John Fortune13:42

and the music began slipping in the lyre that screwed to the trombone.

John Fortune13:46

And I tried to grab it and let go of the slide which just fell off and 2,000 people tramped over it. But this record, this is just infectious jazz. This is Louis Armstrong and his all-stars and this was at the Town Hall concert in New York in 1947.

Speaker 314:10

No one to talk with by myself, no one to walk with, I'm not being. Save my life for bad Poseidon one love

Speaker 314:25

Reflecting you that don't think it out for this

Speaker 314:33

Like Jack Horner in the corner

Presenter14:39

Mary Armstrong and Ain't Misbehaven, recorded live at the Town Hall, New York in 1947. Your Cambridge timing was right for other reasons too, wasn't it, John? Not just that working class was fashionable, but that the footlights were moving into their kind of satirical heyday. A lot of people who were to become very famous were around. I mean, shall I drop some names for you? David Frost, Peter Cook, Jonathan Miller, Eleanor Braun and of course John Bird.

John Fortune15:04

And John Bird, absolutely. And in fact, in my first year at Cambridge, he directed the footlights. And being very rigorous, John, every sketch in it ended with death. So that was a departure. And then I directed the footlights in my second year and wrote most of it with Peter Cook. And those were really great days. But

Presenter15:04

John Byrd, absolutely.

John Fortune15:32

Until that point, most Footlight's reviews have been ab about bedmakers and punks and um putting chamber pots on top of a chapel and that kind of thing.

Presenter15:43

But how would you characterize how you changed it and what did you bring to it if you did away with the bedmakers?

John Fortune15:48

I suppose what we uh brought to it was um very, very much influenced by Peter. So it was that sort of surreal.

Presenter15:58

Going off a tangent.

John Fortune15:58

Going off at tangents.

Presenter16:00

Bizarre.

John Fortune16:00

I mean, I can't remember why, but the one that I directed was called for some reason Pop Goes Mrs. Jessop. Now, why that would be the case I've absolutely noticed?

Presenter16:10

But it makes us laugh immediately, doesn't it? But he was a huge, he was an outstanding completely different, wasn't he? Yes, he was. He was.

John Fortune16:16

Two.

John Fortune16:18

Yes, he was. He was. And I had the luck to work with him at Cambridge. And then when I left, he opened this club called The Establishment. And I was going to direct it and write it with John Bird. And we'd get some actors in to do it. And we'd spend every night at the Cafe Royal counting our cheques.

John Fortune16:39

And we had a we had two days of auditions and uh we couldn't find anybody. I mean we found Barry Humphreys, but uh Barry isn't really a team player, you know.

Speaker 116:50

Mm-hmm.

John Fortune16:51

But anyway, so Peter said, well, we can't get any actors, you'll have to do it yourself. So we did.

Presenter16:58

Mm.

John Fortune16:58

And we spent uh a year in London.

Presenter17:01

This was in in Soho in Greek Street, wasn't it? And it it was hugely successful.

John Fortune17:03

In Greek Street, wasn't it?

John Fortune17:06

Hugely successful.

Presenter17:08

Steamy, smoky, full of people.

John Fortune17:08

It's major.

John Fortune17:10

Yes, because as Peter saw, everybody wanted to become a member of the establishment.

Presenter17:18

Record number four.

John Fortune17:20

This is Peter. This is Peter Cook and Dudley Moore. And Dudley is interviewing Peter, who is the proprietor of a less than successful restaurant out in the wilds of Moorland, miles from anywhere, called The Frog and Peach.

Speaker 317:38

There's no parking problem here, situated as we are in the middle of a bog in the in the heart of Dartmoor. Yes. No difficulty parking, some difficulty extricating your car, but otherwise well situated. Yes, but good evening. Good evening. Don't you feel again you're at a disadvantage because of your menu? I mean... The menu? Oh, this has been a terrible hindrance to us. Building up a business. The menu is the most appalling thing. It's there's so little to choose from. We start with what's there? Spawn cocktail. Spawn cocktail.

Speaker 117:49

Uh

Speaker 117:50

I

Speaker 117:58

Purely

Presenter17:59

Uh

Speaker 117:59

Uh

Presenter17:59

Yeah.

Speaker 117:59

I'm a business that

Presenter18:04

Let me stop.

Presenter18:06

Spawn Cocktails. Peter Cook and Dudley Moore and Frog and Peach from not only but also in nineteen sixty six. So John Fortune, you were writing and directing and performing and from all the history you've described you were obviously one of the architects of the so called sixties satire boom.

Speaker 118:17

Yeah.

Presenter18:24

Um but then all three of you, Bird, Cook and you managed to miss out on the kind of popular birth of this thing, which of course was on television with that was the week that was. Where were you? What happened?

John Fortune18:36

Well, what happened was that originally uh that was the week that was was going to be the establishment on television and we were uh offered a tour of America.

John Fortune18:47

We did one pilot, with John Bird doing the David Frost role.

John Fortune18:52

But we went to America and we had our own club in in New York.

John Fortune18:56

And in the meantime, that was the week started, and I remember David Frost coming to New York and actually saying to me, I wonder if I should um build on this success and go into Parliament.

John Fortune19:12

But, alas for Parliament, he never did.

Presenter19:16

So by the time you came back, the something was happening. Yes, absolutely. And you you lot had missed out.

John Fortune19:18

The s

John Fortune19:19

Yes, absolutely.

John Fortune19:21

Well, uh to some extent, although

John Fortune19:24

The subsequent programmes, not so much a programme, more a way of life, and then The Late Show and BBC Three, we did take part in those. Yes, yes.

Presenter19:33

Yes, yes, of course. Absolutely. Yes, you did, didn't you? Yes.

John Fortune19:36

Yes. Yes.

Presenter19:39

Record number five.

John Fortune19:40

Record number five. This takes me back to New York and the establishment there, because when we arrived there.

John Fortune19:49

The manager said, Um, I realize you need a trio because you've got a girl who's going to sing. But we don't have a lot of money and so I've had had to uh hire some black musicians. I hope you don't mind. I'm we said, Well, we don't, no. Um and he said, But

John Fortune20:05

The piano player can play. His name is Teddy Wilson. And this would be like me saying to you, the sound recordist next door is someone called Richard Dimbleby. I mean, it was absolutely amazing to me. Every night he would play, and he'd always say, what would you like me to play? And I'd say, play something you used to do with Billie Holiday. and Lester Young. And he could never remember because he'd done so many. But this record is Billie Holiday singing and it's easy to blame the weather.

Speaker 320:47

When I think of the sun, it scares me. My one alibi will pass.

Speaker 320:54

Springtime I hear is early this year.

Speaker 320:58

They'll see through me like glass I see no reason for this breakup So let me be the first to make up If a reason must be had it's easy to blame the weather

Presenter21:13

Billy Holiday with Teddy Wilson and his orchestra, and it's easy to blame the weather. Turning to the two Johns then, John Fortune as opposed to John Bird, the trick is really that it's non confrontational, isn't it? You talk to each other and gently and almost affably expose the absurdity of any given issue.

John Fortune21:32

Yes, it should be a helpful conversation.

John Fortune21:36

And uh we take it in turns to be George Parr, who's the

John Fortune21:41

person who's usually uh defending the indefensible.

Presenter21:44

And he's always called George Pilate, whoever he is.

John Fortune21:45

Yes, yes, absolutely. And so we don't say come off it, Mr. Parr. You must know that what you've said is that we say no, it's very, very interesting. Now, why exactly has the government decided to do it this way?

John Fortune22:01

And

John Fortune22:02

In the um the easiest forms, I mean, for example, British defence policy, you don't have to make jokes about it, you only have to describe it, and it's extremely funny.

John Fortune22:17

As long as you don't try and challenge the absurdity of it.

John Fortune22:21

So if you just say, well, tell us about the Eurofighter, the fact that it's a joint venture and Spain and ourselves are building one wing of the aeroplane, we build half each, and it wasn't for years and years until they put them together that they realized that we were doing it in inches and they were doing it in centimetres. So our bit was twice as big as theirs. And this, you don't have to make this up.

Presenter22:47

You don't create the absurdity, it is absurd. And you don't write it, do you? You kind of it's how much on the hoof is it?

John Fortune22:48

The cheat.

John Fortune22:52

We'll

John Fortune22:54

Well, we have a framework.

Presenter22:56

And you don't rehearse it?

John Fortune22:57

No, we don't, because we are the laziest people in the world. We have an argument. We know where we're starting and we know where we're finishing.

Presenter23:04

Laziness is not the reason though, is it? That in a sense you'd you'd preempt the jokes somehow you've just got to lean back and let it happen.

John Fortune23:11

Yes, I think you do, and you have to have the confidence for doing that.

Presenter23:14

Yes, and that and that takes a lot of confidence.

John Fortune23:17

Yes, less so now because people seem to like what we do and we've never touch wood broken down and completely failed.

Presenter23:27

You do corpse though.

John Fortune23:29

Yes, and I'm very ashamed of that.

Presenter23:31

No, you're not. No, I am not. It's always quite a good moment.

John Fortune23:32

It's always crazy.

John Fortune23:33

Well, people say that. But the thing is that because we haven't heard what each of us is going to say always, if someone comes up with something that we've never heard before and strikes us as very, very funny, it's very difficult to keep a straight fist.

Presenter23:44

Very difficult to straight face. And do you prefer being George Parr or his interlocutor?

John Fortune23:51

I don't mind. In some ways, if you're asking the questions, if you're the interviewer, you think, oh, well, it's not my job to get the jokes this week.

Presenter24:01

Yes, I I must say I would have thought it would be more difficult to be George Parr.

John Fortune24:04

Yes, we take it strictly in terms.

Presenter24:07

Oh dear.

Presenter24:08

He said, which week do you prefer?

John Fortune24:11

I don't know. I'm sorry. I don't I mean, I like it both. I like I like the relaxation of not having to be funny, if you see what I mean. On the other hand, if I do think it's funny, I enjoy doing it.

Presenter24:19

Yeah.

Presenter24:24

Michael number six.

John Fortune24:25

I'm a Scarlatti freak, and this came about when I was doing a play in the West End, and opposite the stage door was a wonderful shop called Cheapo Cheapo Records.

John Fortune24:36

And it had thousands of LPs, and I used to go in there all the time and buy

John Fortune24:41

Wildly romantic music.

John Fortune24:44

And I think I must have been talking to John Bird because he's desperately rigorous and ascetic and thinking I've got to be more like John. So I went into this place and I saw a record of 14 sonatas by Domenico Scarlatti played on the harpsichord and I thought that's like having a cold bath. You know, it couldn't be more ascetic and rigorous than that. And of course discovered that Scarlatti is the most wildly sensual romantic composer of all.

Presenter26:20

Part of Scarlattis sonata in A major, played by Scott Ross. So.

Presenter26:26

John Fortune, you can't ask everybody about their politics, but I can ask you, wh where do you put yourself in the political spectrum?

John Fortune26:32

Um

John Fortune26:33

Pretty far to the left. I would like to describe myself as a as a socialist.

Presenter26:40

Radical left.

John Fortune26:41

Yes, I I suppose so.

Presenter26:41

Yes, I

Presenter26:43

Um does that mean that although you shoot holes in his government every week, that you will vote for Tony Blair at the next election?

John Fortune26:50

No, I will not.

Presenter26:52

Huh.

John Fortune26:52

No. What I'd like the next question

Presenter26:55

Well do you vote then if you're of your political hue?

John Fortune26:58

It's it's terribly difficult. My recommendation to everyone uh listening out there would be um is at the next election not to vote at all. No one. No one vote.

Presenter27:00

Mm.

Presenter27:11

No one.

Presenter27:13

Is this is this a sort of absurd proposition, or are we to listen to this very seriously?

John Fortune27:17

Please listen very seriously.

Presenter27:18

Yeah.

Presenter27:19

It is a problem though, isn't it? Because, you know, you are a satirist. The the show that you do with John Bird and and with Rory Bremner i you know is put forward as an uh an entertainment and yet at the same time it is political comment. It's serious comment. And I you know, the the line gets blurred between the two and that's difficult.

John Fortune27:40

Yes, uh i it is. I I mean, I would I would hate for people to think, Oh, well, this is just a rant. It it has to be funny, it has to be entertaining, because otherwise people won't

Presenter27:52

Because

John Fortune27:54

Listen, and it won't affect them.

Presenter27:55

But if you get too serious, it ceases to be entertaining, surely.

John Fortune27:59

Well, exactly, and that's what we try not to do.

Presenter28:01

Yes, but you are political commentators masquerading as satirists, actually. That's where it's got to.

John Fortune28:06

I'm happy with that.

Presenter28:08

Are you?

John Fortune28:09

You shouldn't be. And also, I wouldn't really like to spend my life doing anything other than having a good laugh with my closest friend.

Presenter28:28

Click on number seven.

John Fortune28:29

One of the nicest things about being in show business is that you do meet a lot of people and you don't have to spend a lot of time with any of them. I remember my father worked for this company for thirty-six years and uh he couldn't stand the other people in the

John Fortune28:50

Two

John Fortune28:51

Whereas if I do uh a television series for for six weeks, at the end of it I never uh have to see anyone again. But um I I worked a lot with Eleanor Bronn, who's another very, very close friend.

Presenter29:03

But luckily you don't have to see it together.

John Fortune29:04

I don't have to see her now. Except I am seeing her.

John Fortune29:09

Anyway, she recommended to me Bramsey's chamber music and I I love it.

Presenter30:16

The opening of Brahm's string sextet number one in B-flat, played by Jean-Claude Penettier, Régis Pasquier, Raphael Oleg Bruno Pasquier, Jean Dupuy, Roland Pidoux and Etienne Piclar. And they didn't have a kind of um, you know, name of a sextet, so I'm afraid they all have to be named. There they go. Um how does uh how does a satirist cope on a desert island? I mean, does he just sit there and think how absurd?

Speaker 130:32

Name this

Speaker 130:33

And if it

John Fortune30:33

Yeah.

John Fortune30:35

Um how do

John Fortune30:42

Well, um, I wouldn't cope very well. I have to say, I used to have a screwdriver, but my wife, Emma, buried it in the garden in case I ever was tempted to use it. She couldn't bear, so I'm hopeless.

Presenter30:56

I should have asked you, by the way, what did your English master, the Teddy Martin, think about what became of his protege?

John Fortune31:03

He was he was keen. Just before I left Cambridge, I talked to him and he said, Well, what are you going to do? And I said, I'm going to join the Workers' Educational Association and bring Yeats to the coal fields. And he said, Well, that's wonderful. And I had a an interview with the WEA and they said, Well, you can do that, and we'll pay you six pounds a week. And then Peter rang me up and said, We'll pay you twenty pounds a week to come and tell jokes.

John Fortune31:29

So, I'm afraid it all works.

Presenter31:31

But Teddy Martin gave it a thumbs up.

Presenter31:34

Lost record.

John Fortune31:35

This is Beethoven's piano sonata number thirty, opus hundred and nine.

John Fortune31:42

And this is played by an American great pianist called Richard Good. And I've chosen this because this was the first present I gave my wife Emma when I met her. I met her just before Christmas, about 15 years ago. I absolutely fell in love with her immediately. And I gave her this record as a Christmas present.

Presenter33:00

The opening of Beethoven's piano sonata, number thirty, in E major, played by Richard Goode. Now, if you could only take one of those eight records, John, which one would you take?

John Fortune33:09

I'd take the bit of him.

Presenter33:11

And your book, as well as the Violet Shakespeare?

John Fortune33:13

This may be a slight cheat, but I'd like to have a novel called The Leopard by Giuseppe Tommasi di Lampeduzza. But if I possibly could, could I have it in English and Italian? Because maybe by the time I get off this island I might know a bit of Italian.

Presenter33:31

Why not? And your luxury.

John Fortune33:33

My luxury. I think what I'd like actually is a very old

John Fortune33:37

very beautiful rug made by the Baluch people of Afghanistan. And I could sit on this and um in strong sun sunlight the wonderful colours would be tremendous. And I'd sit and watch the horizon.

Presenter33:55

John Fortune, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs.

John Fortune33:58

Thank you.

Speaker 134:06

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