Frank Gardner

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 five, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:30

Mike Costaway this week is a journalist. For the past ten years he's been a familiar figure on radio and television, explaining and analysing the world of the Middle East. Then, last year, the reporter became the story. While filming in a suburb of Riyadh, he and his cameraman were attacked by gunmen. His colleague was killed and he was left for dead. But today, he's back in the world of journalism that his would-be assassins were determined he'd leave forever. Confined in the main to a wheelchair, he's once more a regular figure on our news bulletins, once again delivering his careful commentaries.

Presenter1:04

This is a determined man who arrived at his present career after he'd absorbed the world of Islam by living in it, worked as an investment banker for nine years, and then taking himself off to journalism school. I want my life back, he says. It's never going to be the same as it was before, but I'm determined to make the most of it. He is the B B C's security correspondent Frank Gardner.

Presenter1:27

Frank, none of us anticipates having our spirit tested in quite the way that you have. Have you discovered depths of determination in you that you never knew you had?

Frank Gardner1:36

I've had to, Sue. Um I mean there are really two choices when you're made suddenly paraplegic. You can lie in bed and feel sorry for yourself and say, Oh no, I don't feel like doing physio today, I can't be bothered or you can get up and try to think positively, to think, Okay, if I really work on this, perhaps I can build something up from the muscles that I still have got in my upper legs. The the problem with it is that it's there is no obvious light at the end of the tunnel.

Presenter2:02

You don't know what the goal is quite, do you?

Frank Gardner2:04

Not really, because I mean paraplegia is a sort of it's a one-way street, you know, it's it's not something that you normally recover from, so you have to make the most, and and that's what I'm doing.

Presenter2:13

But what you describe obviously is the great power of positive thinking, but it can't stop you.

Presenter2:19

perhaps just internally these days railing against the unfairness of it, because as you've said before now, you know, you were one of the few people who sought actually to explain the beef, as you've put it, of the Islamic militant.

Frank Gardner2:32

Yes, I mean, it doesn't mean to say that I have sympathy with them, but I did think, and I still do think, that it's important that.

Frank Gardner2:38

We in the West make more of an effort to understand what are the roots of this anger and this desire for revenge that Islamist extremist militants have. And of course, that's made all the more pertinent by the London bombings. They didn't just come out of nowhere. There are reasons for this. The people who shot me didn't know that they were trying to kill Frank Gardner. We were just targets of opportunity. Here was a chance to.

Speaker 12:52

Mm-hmm.

Frank Gardner3:04

Just to make life hard for the authorities and for Westerners in Saudi Arabia.

Presenter3:07

And have you had any feedback from your sources as to what the reaction was when they discovered who it was they'd shot, this person who did attempt to to explain?

Frank Gardner3:16

Um yes, a little bit. I'm not sure necessarily that our actual attackers found out who it was, but people who are in those circles felt that perhaps it was an own girl. But I'm sure there are others who think, ah, you know, he's still a Westerner, he's still a Briton, and therefore he's part of the enemy.

Presenter3:26

Hmm.

Presenter3:30

But it does mean that journalists are targets. I mean, again, one thinks of Daniel Pearl, who was the Wall Street Journal.

Frank Gardner3:34

Yeah.

Presenter3:36

um reporter who was killed in two thousand two, again in a horrible way by Islamic militants. I mean, i it is the oxygen of publicity. These things get beamed around the world, so the journalist is a target.

Frank Gardner3:48

Yes, I mean it it wasn't always this way with al-Qaeda. I mean back in 96 Osama bin Laden had a PR officer here in London and I went to meet his PR officer in a London hotel and he said the Sheikh is ready to give his first T V interview and he would like it to be the BBC. And I arranged to go and interview him in Afghanistan and I had everything fixed up and two days before we flew the Taliban made their big advance on Kabul. Bin Laden told the BBC to wait until things settled down and they never did settle down and we never did the interview.

Presenter3:51

Yeah.

Presenter4:16

Let's get you to this desert island and hear your music. What's the first one about and why do you want to take it?

Frank Gardner4:18

Cut you.

Frank Gardner4:21

I'd like to choose a very uplifting waltz actually by somebody called Emil Walteufel, which I suppose probably means wood devil in in German. It's called Le Patiner, the Skaters, and my parents gave me this C D and it actually reminds me of very happy trips I've done to Bavaria, where I took my family skiing only last year. I can't believe it was last year when I was still able-bodied. And I listened to this a lot in hospital last summer in some pretty dark days, and it cheered me up.

Presenter5:34

Part of Emil Waltoufel's Les Patineur, the Skaters, or the Skaters' Waltz, as we call it, played by the Slovak State Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Alfred Walter. Music that um cheered you, Frank Gardner, in hospital and reminded you of happy days on the ski slopes. Is there any chance at all that you might just manage to ski again one day?

Frank Gardner5:52

Oh, yes, but not as we know it. There is a very active programme for disabled people to do things like water skiing, skiing, paralleling, just about every sport you can mention, using adapted devices. And I think as far as snow skiing is concerned, you sit in a sort of

Frank Gardner6:10

I don't know what it would you'd call it, right? It's almost like a sled. So I am planning to take my

Presenter6:13

A bit more like Bob Sling. Exactly.

Frank Gardner6:14

Exactly. It's a bit like that, yeah.

Presenter6:16

But you can get vertical, can't you? I mean I I say you're confined in the main to a wheelchair, but you you are beginning to attempt to walk.

Frank Gardner6:19

Oh yeah, yeah.

Frank Gardner6:23

Yes, exactly. I mean, I've been using calipers, which are sort of rigid, almost like tubes in a way, that you slot your legs into, you strap yourself in, and I've just started to walk using crutches, which is very scary. Because if you imagine it's rather like a pack of cards balanced on four vertical matchsticks, you're wobbling around with no stability, and it's very scary. One of the grim things about paralysis is that if you don't use your legs, you get osteoporosis. And I've just been told I've got osteoporosis in my knees, which I thought was an old person's disease, a symptom of not walking enough, which I suppose it is. It's lack of use. Lack of use.

Speaker 16:38

The war

Presenter6:54

I suppose it is. Lack of use. Lack of use. So you've got feeling down to your knees.

Frank Gardner6:58

Yes, I have. I've been very, very lucky. I mean, given that I took six bullets, you know, these bullets missed my heart, lungs, kidneys, liver, you know, private parts. So they're always going to hit something. And I've got what's called an incomplete injury. There is always slight hope, but they say that you really get most of the recovery in the first six months. And I've been told not to expect to be able to walk again without a sort of calipers.

Presenter7:24

But you need to be vertical sometimes. I mean, you know, imagine you're at a party or something. You just don't want to be two feet below everybody.

Frank Gardner7:26

Yeah, imagine you would

Frank Gardner7:30

You're absolutely right, so I mean I've done this, I've gone to things socially and it's it's miserable, you're down there, all the conversation is taking place two foot above your head, so I will make a great effort to be in my calipers on a frame and talk to people and just make sure I don't get pushed over.

Presenter7:45

Let's go back to the the origins of your interest in the Middle East, because you read um Islamic studies at University of Middle East.

Frank Gardner7:51

Arabic and Islamic studies, yeah.

Presenter7:52

Yes, but why had you decided to do such a course? What had inspired you?

Frank Gardner7:57

Well, initially it was Sir Wilfrid Thessinger. My mother knew him, I think, in the fifties, and we bumped into him on a bus.

Presenter8:02

Famous explorer intervest, yes.

Frank Gardner8:03

Yes, I mean he he wrote uh the Arabian Sands and the Marsh Arabs and he did all these epic crossings of the empty quarter of Arabia in the forties and fifties. And we went to tea with him in his his pad in Chelsea and he had all these great photographs up on the wall and of trains of camels crossing dunes in Arabia and I just thought wow

Presenter8:23

But I'd get the impression that when you went to Cairo as part of your university course, you kind of went native, didn't you? You you ducked out of lessons and went and lived with a family and worked with a family.

Frank Gardner8:31

You're far too well informed, Sue, yes. That's right. Very luckily I met an Egyptian family who said, come and live with us, and so I did. And they spake no English, and I had to learn Arabic the hard way. And the deal was I taught their children as much English as I could, and I was allowed to stay under their roof, and it was fantastic fun, and I fasted with them during Ramadan, and just lived with them and slotted into their lifestyle. And that was a sort of formative year for me. It kind of formed the genesis of my real love for the Arab world.

Frank Gardner8:59

Makeup number two.

Frank Gardner9:01

This is a composition by my father who really got into composing after he retired from the the diplomatic service and this was something he composed and it ended up being performed on the South Bank at the Festival Hall and I actually went to the concert it was being played which made me very proud. It's a an oboe concerto or part of it and it's called Alla Marcia by my father Neil Gardner.

Presenter10:11

The opening of the second movement, the Alla Marcia, from the concerto for oboe and string orchestra composed by my Castaway's father, Neil Gardner, and played by Andrew Knight on the Oboe with members of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Barry Wordsworth. So your fascination, Frank Gardner, for travel, your interest and respect for other cultures

Presenter10:30

You got from your parents, did you? Because they were diplomats. Both of them diplomats, actually. It was unusual for a woman of of that generation.

Frank Gardner10:35

Yeah.

Frank Gardner10:37

That's right. I my mother was one of the first women to get into the diplomatic service, into the foreign office, typical foreign office way. They said, you know, where would you like your postings to be? And she said, well, I don't want to get anywhere behind the Iron Curtain. So they sent her to Hungary. And I actually went back with her in 1990 and we saw the house where she'd lived and it was fantastic. She was in tears of happiness. She said, I never thought I'd lived to see a Hungary without communism. Because in her day, friends of hers were being dragged out of their houses in the middle of the night and never heard of again. It was a pretty hardcore Stalinist place. So I'm very, very lucky there. I mean, they gave me a good grounding. And w when we lived in Holland, we used to go off to Switzerland and Germany, which nowadays people do at the drop of the hat, but it was a big deal back in those days in the sixties and seventies.

Speaker 111:08

Hmm.

Presenter11:18

It was to Holland that they they took you uh when as diplomats.

Frank Gardner11:23

Yes, my father was posted there and you know if you look at the map, I mean Holland's right next door, but to me, at the age of six, this was the most exotic place. And to go to sleep in a boat on on Harridge, Parkston Key, I remember, and to wake up in another country, I just thought this was thrilling and I I loved Holland. And the interesting, the G in Dutch is very similar to the Arabic KH. It's it's a letter that most people find it very difficult to pronounce, but I suppose because of that.

Presenter11:49

I learned at the age of six. Yes, it gave me a great ground taking. You're an only child.

Frank Gardner11:50

Yes, it gave me a great grounding.

Frank Gardner12:02

Yes, they they did. I behaved quite badly once. They were having some some drinks party and um my father was trying to get everybody's attention and he wasn't doing a very good job of it. So I I got hold of this bell and I stood up on a chair and rang this thing. I said, Excuse me everybody, my father wants to make an announcement. I was sent straight off to bed. You know, I think I'd sneak down in my pajamas.

Presenter12:20

I think I'd

Presenter12:23

So you're quite confident, assured, so.

Frank Gardner12:25

That's a polite way of saying I was probably cocky, yes. I was packed off to boarding school at eight. I was being difficult.

Presenter12:30

That you sent back here.

Frank Gardner12:31

Yes.

Presenter12:31

And you arrived back here late sixties. And you didn't know who the Beatles were.

Frank Gardner12:36

That's right.

Presenter12:36

Stunning.

Frank Gardner12:37

Yeah, I mean it was very tough actually. Well, gosh, no, it wasn't tough, let's be honest. I went to a privileged prep school. But.

Frank Gardner12:44

I'd never heard of a cricket pitch, I'd never heard of the Beatles, I didn't speak French, and I just made gaff after gaffe and I was quite badly teased my first um my first term there, because I was just so naive and ignorant.

Presenter12:57

Tell me about the next piece of music, number three.

Frank Gardner13:00

Yes, this is a bit of a jump, I suppose. Um, Pure Shores by All Saints. I I really like All Saints, and it's just it's a wonderful bit of escapism. You know, you listen to this and you just you think of some wonderful hidden island in Thailand somewhere, and when you're sitting in London at your desk in the rain, it's a great way of escaping.

Speaker 313:18

I'm gonna

Speaker 113:19

Bring it.

Speaker 313:19

Uh

Speaker 113:20

Yeah.

Speaker 313:20

When you hear what I hear, it's calling you, my dear, out of reach. I can hear it calling you. I'm coming, I'm drowning swimming closer to you.

Presenter13:45

All saints and pure shores.

Presenter13:48

You're obviously very bright, Frank. You were

Frank Gardner13:50

Steady, steady, steady.

Presenter13:51

I got a C and two D's.

Frank Gardner13:52

I got a C and two D's at A level.

Presenter13:54

Well, I was gonna I was gonna say exactly that. What happened?'Cause you got a scholarship to Morbora, didn't you? You got an exhibition. But then not very good A levels. I don't know why these things follow us through our lives. They seem to define us to some extent. But why did you go downhill? What happened?

Frank Gardner13:58

The uh

Speaker 314:00

Uh

Frank Gardner14:00

Yeah.

Frank Gardner14:07

I sort of spread my wings at Marlborough. It was a good school, still is, but there was so much to do other than academia. I was into a lot of other things. I was into running. I was in the cross country team. I was into shooting. I was captain of shooting and I did a lot of acting, a lot of drama. And there just seemed to be so much more to life than knuckling down and doing what I should have been doing.

Presenter14:25

So you didn't get into oxygen, which is what you wanted to do.

Frank Gardner14:28

I did retakes. Having got a D in history, I retook it in November and got an E. I took it again in January and got an O. So I just really wasn't got out for that.

Presenter14:37

And then you study Arab and Islamic studies, and then you become an investment banker. I mean, where is the pat?

Frank Gardner14:39

And Islam.

Frank Gardner14:43

There is none. It is a Cambranian motion. I just bounced around life, really.

Presenter14:47

Were you any good as a banker?

Frank Gardner14:50

Um in in aspects of it, yes. I mean, I wasn't actually interested in banking or or numbers or finance or economics. What I really enjoyed was working in Bahrain for Flemings, where I was running my own office. It was essentially marketing.

Presenter15:02

And were you living the life of Riley, therefore?

Frank Gardner15:04

Pretty much, yes. I mean, I was given all the the trappings, you know, of, I suppose, a sort of Playboy life. I had a a villa with its own swimming pool, a soft top convertible five litre mustang. I had a a speedboat which I got to choose. It was just an amazing life.

Presenter15:19

So why after nine years of that do you chuck it all in and decide to become a journalist, and take yourself off to journalism school and get no money and join the BBC, get no money?

Frank Gardner15:28

Um, it's what I always wanted to do. Um I mean all this time that I was working in banking, I was writing articles for freelance for magazines, usually travel writing. So I thought time for a big switch. Let's do it now before it's too late.

Presenter15:43

It's a brave, a brave move, though.

Frank Gardner15:45

Yeah, yeah, well

Presenter15:46

And again, no pattern. There you go again, you know.

Frank Gardner15:49

Yes, but I was fulfilling a desire that I'd always wanted to do, and I managed to sort of get a foot in the door by taking an unpaid work experience attachment. And I was very lucky the the story started to come up about Kuwait and I was the only person in the newsroom that had been to Kuwait and so I was able to offer some ideas.

Presenter16:06

But then you after that obviously you you made your name and then you became Cairo correspondent.

Frank Gardner16:08

Yeah.

Frank Gardner16:11

Yep, Cairo correspondent. It was very tough on our marriage. Being a foreign correspondent may sound like the life of Riley, but it's it's a supremely selfish profession. You know, it's not fun for the person left back home.

Frank Gardner16:24

Yeah.

Frank Gardner16:25

Next piece is um that uh well known theme from James Bond. I I dunno, I've always loved Bond films, who doesn't? A friend of mine sent me this cassette when I was living in Bahrain, and I I put it in the car. I went to fetch a friend from the airport.

Presenter16:38

This is in the m

Frank Gardner16:39

Mustang. In the Mustang. And we kind of cruised away from the airport and the music just sort of slid in and there was the Bond theme and he just cracked up laughing. Then we got held up at the traffic lights and went nowhere.

Presenter17:16

The James Bond theme played by John and Barry in his orchestra.

Presenter17:20

So, Frank, it was June last year in the wake of a lot of unrest in Saudi Arabia and shootings and hostage taking Westerners in Saudi feeling really

Speaker 117:26

Yeah.

Presenter17:29

very ill at ease. You decided to go out there to do a piece about whether the oil installations were in any way threatened.

Speaker 117:31

Yes.

Presenter17:37

You'd said on a piece the week earlier, I think, in from our own correspondent, that, you know, it was uneasy. Why why weren't you worrying?

Speaker 117:38

Yeah.

Frank Gardner17:38

Yeah.

Frank Gardner17:45

Oh, I was worried. But this was supposed to be a a a minimal risk trip. By going with the government and by saying, Okay, we you know, we put ourselves entirely with you, we expected to be looked after. Um unfortunately things went wrong when we went to Riyadh, and I think they misjudged how dangerous Riyadh was, and I suppose we did too in that sense, and that they didn't provide us a police escort.

Presenter18:05

It was your last location, I think. You were going home the next day, weren't you? And you were it was a a leafy suburb of Riyadh, but a suburb where it was known that militants lived.

Frank Gardner18:08

Yeah.

Frank Gardner18:14

There had been trouble there in the past, and we didn't ask to go into it. We filmed outside and they were very relaxed, the Minders. This took them as much by surprise as we did. Yeah. I mean, they were terrified, of course. They ran for their lives because they thought they were going to get popped as well.

Presenter18:27

But

Presenter18:28

So what happened exactly?

Frank Gardner18:30

Um

Frank Gardner18:31

The first I knew was a car drew up near by, a young man got out smiling, looked quite a nice guy, and said in Arabic, Salaamu Alaikum, peace be upon you and then he pulled out a gun. And that was a bad moment, because that was just the the sense of betrayal there. You know, when you say peace be upon you, that is you know, it's I wish you no harm, wish you no evil. He said that to get me off guard, to try and get closer to me, so he could kill me. I saw him pulling out the gun and I ran and uh he fired, hit my shoulder, I carried on running. Somebody else fired there was a second group, and uh they got me down on the on the ground and uh I pleaded for my life, but they still put four bullets into me.

Speaker 118:44

Because

Presenter19:09

Because they came up to you then at close quarters after the two bullets and you'd gone down, then they came up close and shot four at close range.

Frank Gardner19:13

Yeah.

Frank Gardner19:15

I mean, this is the this is something I can't I it's very unhealthy to think about this, but I can't help thinking if only I could have thought of something convincing to say after the first two bullets, I would have walked out of hospital in August last year.

Presenter19:29

But there was nothing you could say, was there? I mean, it was an execution, wasn't it?

Frank Gardner19:31

I don't think so either.

Frank Gardner19:33

Essentially, yes. Um they they had decided, you know, they wanted to kill me and they left me for dead.

Presenter19:38

I mean you did try, you spoke to them in Arabic.

Frank Gardner19:40

Yeah.

Presenter19:40

You actually said you were a Muslim, didn't you?

Frank Gardner19:44

It was shorthand for saying I've got a degree in Islamic studies and I respect your religion and your society. But they weren't having any of it. And it when I think about it, it was an incredibly cowardly attack. We were totally defenceless, at point blank range. They pumped bullets into my back, on the ground. I mean, how brave is that?

Presenter19:45

Dang, I got it green.

Presenter20:01

Into your stomach and pelvic area. This was the one.

Frank Gardner20:03

Yeah.

Presenter20:04

They didn't shoot you in the head, which you would imagine

Presenter20:07

might be what they would do if they were out to execute you. I mean what

Frank Gardner20:11

Yeah. Well, they came in over to check and uh I think they thought, Well, there's no way he's going to survive that.

Presenter20:17

But you you must have thought in in that moment, here comes a bullet, this is it.

Frank Gardner20:20

Yes, I thought this is it. This is the one in the back of the head. Or, actually, after that I realized that worse things could have happened. You know, I could have been uh beheaded.

Presenter20:29

Hmm.

Frank Gardner20:29

Which just doesn't bother thinking about.

Presenter20:29

Which t

Presenter20:32

D did you in that moment of lying there, you know, did you reconcile yourself to death, as it were?

Frank Gardner20:37

No, I went into survival mode. Play dead. Shut my eyes, stop breathing, don't move, don't move a muscle. And I could feel them sort of walking around me. And then they got back in the car and went. By this stage, I was already paraplegic, and I propped myself up on my hands so that I could shout better. And initially, my thought was to cry for help, but it soon developed into just cries of pain. It was just indescribable. But part of me, I think, the sort of survival mode in me was saying, gotta stay conscious, get word to the British Embassy, get help, to survive.

Presenter21:12

Let's pause there for some music. Number five.

Frank Gardner21:15

This is a track by a Lebanese singer called Farouz, and it's called Habaytik, meaning I loved you. And I I love a lot of Arab music, and I used to listen to her music a lot when I was living in the Middle East.

Presenter21:27

Habbaita kui shaw al-nailat al-hawa Doll girl. I took away Show and Halloween Latin Halloween Album.

Speaker 121:36

Yeah.

Speaker 321:39

Run.

Speaker 121:41

Night and push show

Presenter21:42

Yeah. We never did hello both.

Presenter21:56

Ferouze, meaning turquoise and habatak. I loved you. So you were were rescued in the end, Frank, by precisely the right man in the right place at the right time, a surgeon who specialized in the nature of bullet wounds, and he treated you over the next eight days.

Presenter22:11

During the whole time you were unconscious, and as you say, nearly died early on in those eight days. But then you came.

Frank Gardner22:16

Hmm.

Presenter22:17

Round, did you immediately know where you were and what had happened?

Frank Gardner22:22

Pretty quickly, because when I came round, my wife was there smiling above me. And of course, I was thrilled to see her. But one of the first things I learnt was that Simon Cumbertz, my cameraman, had not survived. And that was a terrible, terrible blow. Then when I realised I was still in Riyadh, I was very nervous. I said, it's not safe here. And she'd never been to Saudi Arabia before, and she had to obviously take a big decision. Coming out, our children have nearly lost one parent. Is it sensible for the second one to go out? There was an armed guard on my room. Al-Qaeda made their point. I was small fry for them.

Presenter23:01

Yeah.

Presenter23:04

What about them, though? I mean, have they ever been brought to justice? Has anybody ever launched an investigation into what happened?

Frank Gardner23:08

Investigation into what happened? Yes. With a lot of pushing from the British Embassy, they've told us that all but one of the people involved in the attack are dead. And I do believe it actually, because they've been killed in other shootouts. Not executed, but they've carried on attacking the government and attacking Westerners, and they've all been killed, all but one. He is in custody. He was wounded quite badly in a shootout in April. And they want to bring him to trial.

Speaker 123:21

Hmm.

Presenter23:33

Yeah.

Presenter23:34

Obviously, from everything you've described, you know, it just so happened that day your number wasn't up. I mean, did you?

Presenter23:40

Did you pray I mean, you're a man who's spent such a lot of time studying closely uh a people who are defined by their faith. Do you got have you got one of your own?

Frank Gardner23:50

Oh yes, I believe in God. I must admit, I was too busy thinking of the practical business of survival to be praying at the time when I was lying there bleeding to death in Riyadh. Since I've thanked God for staying alive and thanked God for the fact that my injuries aren't worse, I spend quite a lot of time on a spinal injuries ward and I'm the only person who can feed himself, who can get in and out of a wheelchair and I'm very lucky in that sense. I mean I wouldn't be able to do this without my wife who acts as a carer in many ways. But I've got away relatively lightly so yes I thank God for that.

Speaker 124:01

Um

Presenter24:21

Yeah.

Presenter24:28

Mixby's music.

Frank Gardner24:31

This is a very uplifting piece of music, I think. It's um one of the Brandenburg concertos, and it's impossible not to like Bach, I think. I mean my mother tells me that Bach was quite close to God, and it's just so uplifting this music. It's just wonderful. I could listen to it forever.

Presenter25:47

Part of the third movement of Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No. Two, that was played by the English Concert and directed from the harpsichord by Trevor Pinnock.

Presenter25:56

We live in a new world now, Frank. The threat of terrorism is with us and it's not going to go away. When you came back earlier this year, you predicted let me quote you with awful accuracy what would happen in London. You said they want to see mass casualties with no warnings, preferably simultaneous. And of course that's exactly what they and we did see. Is intelligence in exact science that it is the only weapon really that we have against these people?

Frank Gardner26:23

No, not not at all. I I think I hope that increasingly people will realize that the the root causes have got to be tackled. You know, there have got to be psychological reasons for this.

Presenter26:33

But is it possible to see however distant an end to the global war on terror? I mean, do you think that your children, when they're when they're young, when they're adult, will still be facing this kind of terrorist threat?

Frank Gardner26:46

I would hope not at this level. Unfortunately, I have a bad feeling that it may get worse before it gets better. And one of the catalysts for this, I'm afraid, is Iraq. It's the new jihadi battleground. You can never win or lose a war on terrorism. You can only reduce incidents of terrorism to a sort of manageable level. I mean, that's an awful expression, that, because for those who are caught up in it, of course it's not manageable, for those who've lost people, but it can be reduced. But it's, I'm afraid, a war without end.

Presenter27:14

Please music.

Frank Gardner27:15

Again, a bit of a departure here. Macy Gray and a song called I Try. She's a great singer. Used to listen to this sometimes in Cairo when I was there a second time. We had a relatively big flat that overlooked large parts of Cairo and we'd play the music, crank out the music, open the windows, we lived up on the 18th floor, amazing view right over this historic city, over the Gazira Island in the middle of the Nile, over the river, over the citadel, out to the Makutam Hills.

Speaker 327:42

I tried to say goodbye and I choke

Speaker 127:47

Try to walk away and I stumble. No I try to hide it, it's clear. My world crumbles when you are not there. Goodbye and I chew. Try to walk away and I stumble. No I try to hide it, it's clear. My world crumbles when you are not there.

Presenter28:09

Macy Gray and I try. What about your parents in all of this, Frank? It must have been just well, it must be very difficult for them coping seeing their only child suffering as you have.

Frank Gardner28:22

I think the first night must have been absolutely horrendous for them. They saw it on the ten o'clock news the night we were shot. The presenter said news just coming in that two Western journalists, or I think it might have even been two BBC people, you know, had been attacked and shot by gunmen in Riyadh. And my father turned to my mother and said, It's our son. I know it is. It's him. He just knew it. And this was the moment they dreaded in twenty-five years of me going to the Middle East. And in their eighties they went and got their jabs to go out to Saudi, but my wife, who'd come out and was there by my bedside, said, no, no, it's okay, you know, we're bringing him home soon. And I remember them coming to see me in the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel, and I was all hooked up to tubes, I was emaciated, I was jaundiced, I was a pathetic sight. And I remember saying to them, I'm so sorry.

Presenter29:14

And what about your children, the other end of the spectrum, the age spectrum for you keeping?

Frank Gardner29:17

Well they've been fantastic. It's been very difficult for them because I was always quite physical with them, putting them on my shoulders and teaching them rollerblading and whirling them round and

Frank Gardner29:29

Even now, I'm still not the same person. Anybody who says, oh, it's still you, you're still the same person, after paraplegia, is talking nonsense. You're never the same person, really. In some ways, you can be a better person. You know, I've learnt a lot of patience, a lot of humility. I've had to. They're just thrilled to have me home to tuck them up and give them their bedtime stories. It hurts that I can't chase them around a courtyard or take them off to the park in the way I did before. But there are other things. I'm teaching them chess, I'm helping them with their homework. It has meant that a huge amount of the burden of parenting has fallen on my wife. She's really had to do not only kind of helping me get back on my feet, as it were, or get back into my chair, but she's had to do far more of the parenting than she would have done otherwise. She is the heroine from this.

Presenter30:20

And you've obviously never been busier one way or another.

Frank Gardner30:23

It's very busy now, which is, I mean, thank God, you know, it's a good thing. I mean, otherwise, what? I'd be sort of lying on bed staring up at the ceiling, thinking, woe is me. I'm very busy. I'm trying to kind of balance work with physio. I've got to keep up the physio. And I'm writing a book. And I'm, of course, trying to spend time with my family as well, trying to catch up over the last seven months. I simply don't have enough hours in the day. Last record.

Frank Gardner30:49

This last record is Cumbia. It's Colombian Cumbia, which is a a form of music they have out there. And I just think it's great. I I went I've been a lot to Latin America. I've done a lot of travelling there, fortunately, and I loved Colombia. It's such a wild and exotic and exciting country.

Presenter31:15

See the baby.

Speaker 131:20

Vamos vamos abailada que na ba te bandango y nerituna nerita que noist savailando.

Presenter31:34

Pedro Laffa and his players and Cumbia Del Monte. Now if you could only take one of those eight records, Frank, which one would you take?

Frank Gardner31:41

I think it would have to be Brandenburg concertis, simply because I think I I would just never get bored of them. Um I'd take as many of them as I could and um try and ration myself, I think, until the batteries ran out on my Walkman.

Presenter31:52

What about your book? You get the Bible and you get the complete works of Shakespeare, as you know.

Frank Gardner31:57

I think I'd probably take Ian Forster's passage to India. There was a sort of I don't know, a kind of ethereal, otherworldly quality to that India that he described.

Presenter32:07

And a luxury you get.

Frank Gardner32:09

And I thought about this, you see, and I'd have probably given you a different answer before being made disabled. But I think I would go for some sort of solar-powered buggy. And one of the things I miss about being disabled is that I can't birdwatch in the way I used to. I didn't do it very often, but I used to love getting out into wild country. The wilder and rougher terrain, the more I liked it. But if I had the solar-powered buggy, you see, on the island, I'd be able to kind of whiz around and watch pelicans diving for fish and that kind of thing. That'd be fun.

Presenter32:36

Frank Gardiner, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs.

Frank Gardner32:39

Thank you.

Speaker 332:49

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