Andy Kershaw

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 seven.

Presenter0:27

My castaway this week is the broadcaster and journalist Andy Kershaw. His career to date is as distinctive as his delivery. In a world awash with modulated accents and a balanced perspective, he stands out for his passion and plain speaking, combining an evangelical enthusiasm for world music with a fascination for reporting from the planet's most unstable places.

Presenter0:49

He says he's happiest when he's marinated in mosquito repellent and living out of a rucksack.

Presenter0:53

And although he's best known for unearthing unfamiliar tunes and bringing them to a wider audience, it's his current affairs reporting that's brought him the greatest acclaim. Rwanda, Burundi and Haiti are among the eighty-one countries he's visited, his frontline despatches vividly conveying the true horror of conflict. So, Andy, this professional sort of split personality d does it come from the same place?

Andy Kershaw1:14

Yeah, I think so.

Presenter1:15

Which is what?

Andy Kershaw1:16

A fascination with the world, I think. I mean, I I did set out to be a journalist when I went off to university in Leeds in nineteen seventy eight, and it all got horribly derailed while I was there by rock and roll.

Presenter1:28

We'll come to that later on. Let's just stay with the journalism. The late spring of 1994, you got an unusual invitation. Tell us about that.

Andy Kershaw1:37

I was asked by the Today programme.

Andy Kershaw1:39

To go to Burundi, this was soon after the Rwanda thing had kicked off, to go to Burundi with my great friend Jeff Spink, BBC producer, to find out whether the ethnic conflict would spill over from Rwanda into neighbouring Burundi. And we were sitting at a bar one night in a hotel there.

Andy Kershaw2:00

And a guy came up to us, a local guy, and he said, Would you like to go into Rwanda? I had promised everyone back at home I would not set foot in Rwanda because it was beginning to emerge, you know, just exactly what was going on.

Presenter2:12

Let's remind ourselves, this is this is at the very time that the Tutsis are being uh massacred by the Hussis.

Andy Kershaw2:16

And the moderate hutus, yeah. This was mid-May, and it had kicked off on April the 7th. And this guy turned out to be the Bujumbura representative of the Rwandan Patriotic Front, the rebels, the good guys. And he said, Do you want to go over into Rwanda? And I said, Well, look, I'm a coward. I said, I don't want to meet the government soldiers. I don't want to meet the Inter Rahamwe, the death squads. I said, I'll only go where your guys are. And he said, Yes, I can arrange that for you. So, to cut a long story short, Jeff and I crossed the border one night into Rwanda, turned a bend in this red dirt road, and met all these kids wearing Wellington boots and holding transistor radios to their ears and listening to the BBC World Service. And some of them, when they put their AK-47s down on the stocks, they were shorter than their rifles. A platoon of about 10 of them. And they took us round for.

Andy Kershaw3:05

Um well, all the time we were there.

Presenter3:07

And the reports that you brought back, the reports that you filed for the BBC were h hugely significant because at this time you were seeing things that no other journalists were seeing.

Andy Kershaw3:13

Well, there was the strange thing was, Kirsty, nobody really wanted to go because it was so horrific, and there was no kind of

Andy Kershaw3:21

Immunity for press people. If you got caught up in it, you got caught up in it. And also, don't forget, simultaneously, what was happening is Nelson Mandela was being inaugurated in South Africa. So every Africa specialist was down in Pretoria. And so I think that's how a Radio 1 DJ ended up covering the Rwandan genocide for the Today programme.

Presenter3:43

And not so much of a coward, really.

Andy Kershaw3:45

Oh, I am, I am. I've never been as frightened in my life. I never want to nor fear like that again. When we were ambushed south of Kigali one day, first of all the vehicle in front of ours went over an anti tank mine, and then whoever they were, the government or the intera Hamway, opened up from a banana plantation on us, gunfire.

Andy Kershaw4:03

And then to get out of this fix, we had to walk for 11 miles down a road which was quite clearly full of landmines. And I saw them as well, anti-personnel mines. And it was getting dark, and you couldn't switch on a torch. Uh if you switched on a torch, you'd make yourself a target. It was completely dark, and every time you put your foot down, you expected a bang. It was the most frightening thing I've ever done. And also, you knew when you were approaching a village because you could smell it.

Presenter4:30

Tell me about your first piece of music, Andy.

Andy Kershaw4:32

Yes, I think change of gear. Let's get happy about Africa. The Bundu boys and their arrival in the UK in 1986 was for me a road to Damascus experience. I remember John Peel and I, because we shared an office for many years, tiny little office. We used to sit across a table from each other with a record player in between. And this EP, as it was at the time, came in and we put it on. This tune started and we both just pros and we just stared at each other for the duration of it and thought, what is this? What is this? And that's what I'm always looking for in life. That sense of what is this?

Speaker 35:19

Yeah.

Presenter5:35

The Boondoo Boys, Andu Penu, Wangu, you were in perpetual motion throughout all of that, Andy Curtis.

Andy Kershaw5:40

It's just so pretty and it's so simple as well and and so and so melodic. You know, I l I loved the Bundu Boys so much. When they turned up, they had nothing. They were one guitar short of what they needed. I lent them my electric guitar. And then I did unpaid rodeon for them, going round with them. I loved them so much.

Presenter5:56

Let's rewind to Rochdale in nineteen fifty nine when you were born. What what sort of a family were you born in?

Andy Kershaw6:01

Uh, my dad was uh well, by the time I was about five, my dad was a headmaster of a secondary school. My mum was the headmistress of a nursery school, so I came from a teaching background really.

Presenter6:10

And brothers and sisters?

Andy Kershaw6:11

Uh one sister older, now and sick music.

Presenter6:13

Indeed. And what was home life like? I mean, was there discussion? Was there music? Was there a lively house?

Andy Kershaw6:18

No, it wasn't a musical family at all, in fact. And my auntie Brenda, my my dad's sister, was a lot groovier than my dad, and she had Beatles records, and she'd even bought me a Beatles plastic wig and a Beatles guitar, and I remember standing on her kitchen table singing I Want to Hold Your Hand. Um I'd be about four at the time.

Presenter6:35

What a great event that is. And so the parents, both headmistress, headmaster, was there an expectation that they'd have a clever little boy who studied harsh.

Andy Kershaw6:39

But the

Andy Kershaw6:42

Well, I think so, yes. I think I got my energy and my enthusiasm from my mum and my curiosity from my dad. Yeah, education was w was the priority, sure.

Presenter6:51

Are you the club?

Andy Kershaw6:51

Ost what?

Andy Kershaw6:53

A bit. A bit.

Presenter6:55

And did you li you liked the status of knowing things that other people didn't?

Andy Kershaw6:58

Yeah.

Presenter6:59

Does that continue?

Andy Kershaw7:02

Is that what you're saying?

Presenter7:04

Well, I am trying to say, I'm not sure if Clever Dick's a radio 4 phrase, but yes. Clever dick is what I'm trying to say.

Andy Kershaw7:08

That's what I'm trying to say.

Presenter7:09

I suppose what I'm hinting at is the idea of introducing people to things, saying that, you know, this is music that you won't know about, but I know about.

Andy Kershaw7:14

Oh sure, yeah, that that's that's that's the mission. Look, John Walters, my dear departed Radio One producer, and that of Peel as well, used to summarise the Reithian public service broadcasting attitude in one phrase. He used to say to us over and over again with wearying frequency in the office, he used to boom at me and Peel, look, we're not here to give people what they want. We're here to give people what they didn't know they wanted. And I think that's what drives me.

Presenter7:43

You want track two, tell me what it is.

Andy Kershaw7:45

Bob, in a way I'm where I am today because of Dylan, you know, and when I was twelve, we're going back to about nineteen seventy two, I was buying slayed records and sneaking them into the house under my coat. Uh but what really blew me off the middle of the road and into the margins uh was Bob Dylan, and I just never heard anything like it.

Presenter8:05

And you've been very specific that you want us to play right at the beginning of the recording. Explain what we will uh hear.

Andy Kershaw8:10

Oh, well, this is a version of Like a Rolling Stone, which was recorded at the Manchester Free Trade Hall on May the 17th, 1966, on Dylan's first electric tour of the UK. And a huge proportion of the audience at all those concerts they liked Dylan, you know, as the. By the times they are a changing. They wanted the forky Dylan, the Woody Guthrie Dylan. And there was this enormous tension between artist and audience. And I'd always wanted to make a documentary about this one concert. And after a long process, I tracked down the man who made the most infamous heckle in rock and roll history. He shouted one word in 1966. And in 1998, 1999, I tracked him down. And it was the climax of the concert. It was the last number. And there'd been heckling and slow hand clapping all the way through. And just before Dylan and the band plunged into Rolling Stone, let fly with this cry of Judas.

Presenter8:31

Woo!

Presenter9:39

Bob Dylan and Like a Rolling Stone recorded live at the Manchester Free Trade Hall in nineteen sixty six. You are living every moment of these tracks as you as you hear them here. I mean, do you wish you had been a musician?

Andy Kershaw9:50

Do many do many do many of your guests sing along to the record?

Presenter9:53

No, in fact, you are the fr

Andy Kershaw9:56

Um, d do I wish I'd been a musician?

Andy Kershaw9:59

No, not really. Not really, because I think it would hold then no mystery for me. Right. And also, if I were able to play, I'd have to be able to play the guitar like Raikuda. Or if I pu uh w was able to play the piano, I'd have to be able to play the piano as well as Jerry Lee Lewis.

Speaker 310:03

Right.

Presenter10:04

Uh

Presenter10:13

Uh you were a grammar school boy and by your own admission a a bright boy, a studious boy. I mean did you ever try to take up an instrument?

Andy Kershaw10:18

Yeah, I tried plucking the guitar like everyone did at university and I was no good. Um, you know, you have to recognise sometimes'cause you can't be good at everything. I tried motorcycle racing, I was no good at that either. Probably as well actually.

Presenter10:31

When you were at school then, did you were you part of a gang? Were you a sociable chap?

Andy Kershaw10:35

Yeah, sociable, sure.

Presenter10:36

And what were your gang into?

Andy Kershaw10:38

Motorcycles, fishing, photography. It was kind of anti-football gang, if anything.

Presenter10:43

'Cause they're I mean, fishing and photography, I was thinking about this and they're quite sort of solo pursuits, aren't they?

Andy Kershaw10:48

Mm.

Presenter10:48

Yeah. Do you you like that? You like the idea of being

Andy Kershaw10:50

I am yes, I am very gregarious. I love other people. I love my friends. Uh I like meeting new people, you know. But I'm also quite self contained as well. When I need to be self contained, I can be.

Presenter11:03

You'd said, though, you'd started to buy music that wasn't typical of the music that was being bought by other teenagers. You know, they were buying Slade and there were you buying Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan. And and it's o it can also be a chosen point of difference. It can be a way of saying, I'm different from you, I'm not one of the mob.

Andy Kershaw11:18

Oh no, it wasn't a a a style thing in a sense. No, God no, no, it's just that Dylan pointed me off in lots of different directions. From Dylan, I started listening to Woody Guthrie, I started listening to Muddy Waters, Big Bill Bromsey, Johnny Cash, um it w what we now call, I suppose, American Roots music.

Presenter11:20

Yeah.

Presenter11:33

But that would be very different from what your contemporaries would

Andy Kershaw11:35

Oh, yeah, they were all walking around with Led Zeppelin albums under their arm by the time they were fifteen. And you know, I I was uh I was walking around with Woody Guthrie.

Presenter11:45

Were you saying to them, Listen to this,'cause this is really good?

Andy Kershaw11:49

Um yes, pro probably was, um and uh they were ignoring.

Presenter11:55

Tell me about your third record.

Andy Kershaw11:57

I don't know, what is it?

Presenter11:58

Uh your third record is The Clash.

Andy Kershaw11:59

God the clash. I love the clash. Well, I was I suppose of the punk generation, but of the punk bands, I think the clash just stood head and shoulders above all the others. They turned up at Leeds University, one of the greatest concerts I've ever seen, in January 1980. And I have to say, they were that night the greatest rock and roll band I've ever seen. They were the fully rounded, finished item. They had everything. And they were also the only white band that fully understood and could play Reggie. Don't tell me about the police. Don't tell me about UB Force. I wouldn't dare. White Man in the Hammersmith Pally. I won! Two, three, four!

Speaker 312:55

Come on in.

Speaker 312:57

Asking for someone to be done.

Presenter13:04

Pooh!

Andy Kershaw13:05

Fading experience.

Presenter13:05

Well you shouldn't be so interested when we could play all of the record at the clash and white men at Hammersmith Pallet. In nineteen seventy eight you enrolled as a a politics student at Leeds University. You never quite managed the lectures.

Andy Kershaw13:16

I did in the first year. And what happened in year two? I became the entertainment secretary. And Leeds, along with Lancaster, they were the two biggest college venues in the country. And there wasn't a rival venue of the same optimum size in the city.

Presenter13:29

So when when bands came to play

Andy Kershaw13:30

When bands like The Clash were on tour, they came to Leeds University. So I was like 19 years of age, and I was in charge of this team of like 200 volunteers, and I was booking the bands. So I actually took a conscious decision: what am I going to do? Come out with a piece of paper like everyone else, or come out with this experience? What did Albert Hammond say in that song? I gave it up for music in a free electric band.

Presenter13:51

Uh give us a a roll call of some of the bands you put on over.

Andy Kershaw13:53

Oh god.

Andy Kershaw13:56

The Pretenders, The Boomtown Rats, The Black Ahooroo, The Clash Christmas nineteen eighty to send the students home for the Christmas holidays. We did Ian Jury and the Blockheads on the Friday night and dire straits on the Saturday.

Presenter14:09

Extraordinary. And and you were literally sort of setting up the g

Andy Kershaw14:10

And I'm

Andy Kershaw14:12

Uh

Presenter14:12

Yeah.

Andy Kershaw14:12

Big

Presenter14:12

Yeah.

Andy Kershaw14:12

Yeah, I was in charge of everything. I was a shy lad, you know, before I went to Leeds, and then suddenly I did I really surprised myself. Before I'd gone to Leeds, I'd I I you know, I'd hardly dare go in a shop and uh ask for a newspaper. I've never been really been able to explain it. I got there and I just wanted to do it.

Presenter14:28

The shoes fitted. You just thought, This is me, this is where I belong. Did anyone ask any questions about why you weren't going to lecture?

Andy Kershaw14:30

Yeah.

Andy Kershaw14:33

Yeah. They used to haul me in from time to time. But anyway, they forgave me. And last year, Leeds gave me an honorary doctorate.

Presenter14:40

Because you never actually got your degree of time, just to be clear.

Presenter14:44

Two parents as headmaster and headmistress. They could have been delighted. No, they weren't. You mentioned the honorary doctorate you got from Leeds a couple of years ago. Did that make up for it? I mean, is that important?

Andy Kershaw14:46

Uh

Speaker 314:46

Yeah.

Andy Kershaw14:46

Yes, yes.

Speaker 314:46

They could have been delighted.

Speaker 214:53

Uh

Andy Kershaw14:53

Yeah, exactly. It meant an awful lot actually. It did. I must say I'd always felt like I'd I'd left that gap, that hole behind me. And I felt like I'd let down my mum and dad. And although I'd done quite well out of because it wa was a launching pad into all this.

Andy Kershaw15:09

And when the university decided they were giving me that, I was absolutely thrilled to bits. And and and to reward them them for that, I brought The Who back last year to do live at Leeds again in this in the same hall where they recorded the the nineteen seventy classic.

Presenter15:19

And there's image.

Presenter15:22

That's a very nice thank you. Tell us about record number four.

Andy Kershaw15:26

The Hunter S. Thompson of Rock and Roll, Warren's Eagle. Well, this one.

Andy Kershaw15:30

For me, it's it's a song that's never far from in mind in some of the places I I I find myself. And I went down to the Angolan Civil War in nineteen ninety six. I was with a demining team in a town called Quito.

Andy Kershaw15:45

And the front line had been the main street through town, and everything was like gnarled by flying metal, and there was so much ordnance left lying all over the town unexploded mortars and rockets and God knows what.

Andy Kershaw15:58

I got up one Sunday morning thinking I was about to set off and walk through another mine, spend a day walking through more minefields, literally. And they said, Oh, no, no, we take Sundays off. I said, But what do you do? They said, We sit around in the garden and drink gin and tonic. Oh, well that sounds all right.

Andy Kershaw16:12

And they had one of those C D wallets, you know, like a ghetto blaster set up in the garden. So I'm sitting there leaning back against these unexploded rockets, surrounded by UNITA, listening to Warren's Evon in the middle of a Civil War, singing Lawyers, Gums and Money.

Speaker 316:26

I was gambling in Havana.

Speaker 316:31

At Tocol Rest

Speaker 316:36

Send lawyers, pens and money.

Speaker 316:41

Dad, get me out of this. How?

Speaker 316:50

And the innocent bystander

Presenter16:54

Warren Zeevan and Lawyers, Guns and Money. There was a line in there that chimed with you, which was I am the innocent bystander. Is that how you see yourself in all of this when you plunge into these extraordinary situations?

Andy Kershaw17:05

So yeah, what was it? Stuff between a rock and a hard press and I'm down on my luck. Yeah. It's nosiness actually, Cassidy. That's all it is. It's curiosity. It's n it's sheer nosiness. And it's also at times it's um it's a huge thrill to be not necessarily something as extreme as Rwanda, but sometimes it's just a huge thrill to be a witness to history.

Presenter17:25

I mentioned in the introduction you've been in eighty-one countries by your own reckoning, one of those being Haiti. Tell me about your first trip to Haiti.

Andy Kershaw17:33

I was getting bored, frankly, at Radio One. And I wanted to stretch myself. And so the old hankerings for foreign journalism came back. And I thought I'm going to take myself off on an adventure. Then I read Graeme Greene's The Comedians about Haiti under Papadoc de Vallier in the mid-sixties, which wasn't so much a novel, it was more a piece of journalism. And then I read a piece in National Geographic about this very, very brave liberation theologian, left-wing Catholic priest who was working in the slums of Port-au-Prince called Jean-Baptiste Aristide. And I thought, this guy sounds remarkable. And so I took myself off.

Presenter18:07

Did you go there to compile a report or you went there for your own curiosity?

Andy Kershaw18:10

I went out of nausiness again, but when I got there I realized that this was a major story, that this little fellow wa he told me I met him on the first day he was in hiding, and I said to him, Look, if the opportunity ever presented itself, would you ever stand for President of this country? and he said, No, no, no. Nine months later, I was standing on the steps of the Presidential Palace underneath him whilst he was inaugurated.

Presenter18:29

To hear your voice doing that documentary at the time, I I remember it clearly myself was extraordinary because you were the you were a voice of Radio One. It w it it was a very strange leap that you took into front line, hard nosed, very punchy political journalism.

Andy Kershaw18:46

Wasn't a very strange leap for me.

Presenter18:47

No, that's what I'm wondering.

Andy Kershaw18:48

Yeah.

Presenter18:49

Yeah.

Andy Kershaw18:50

Of course it did, yeah.

Presenter18:51

Was there a resistance professionally to you doing

Andy Kershaw18:53

Oh, I think in that sense the Radio One thing was a a bit of a millstone round your neck in that th there I think there was always a slight assumption, if you like, that if you were a Radio One DJ then you couldn't be a proper journalist as well. I think I did have to fight that a little all the way through. Um you know that well we won't use Andy because he's really a DJ, not a journalist. Um well where where were they in Rwanda?

Presenter19:16

There's a wonderful quote from your old friend John Peel. He used to joke that one of the great universal imponderables was what made Andy Kershaw so angry. I mean, you have a sense of propelled injustice about things. You seem almost like

Andy Kershaw19:27

Yes, I think you're right. I think it's less so now than it used to be.

Presenter19:30

What was it back then, if if it's not any longer the case, what was it back then that made you angry?

Andy Kershaw19:35

Your injustice makes me angry still still can do.

Andy Kershaw19:38

We'll try and do something about it, I suppose, is what you're trying to do, in your own little way.

Andy Kershaw19:43

It makes me angry now, actually.

Presenter19:45

Have you ever been tempted to to get into politics proper?

Andy Kershaw19:48

Yes, I was asked to be an MP.

Presenter19:49

Wh which party, just to be clear? It was Labour Party.

Andy Kershaw19:52

Oh no, I mean I g I grew up in a Labour family. My mother was a Labour councillor. We came from you know a very left-wing background. But in nineteen ninety five, as soon as Blair uh took over the Labour Party I realised he was a wrong'un and I realized increasingly that the more left wing party was the Liberal Democrats. So the Lib Dems asked me to be an MP.

Presenter20:11

Um why didn't you?

Andy Kershaw20:13

Um because um to be honest with you, I couldn't put up with the tedium of daily constituency work, you know.

Presenter20:21

Did you think long and hard about that? No.

Andy Kershaw20:24

No.

Andy Kershaw20:25

I'd have got some safe seat in Cornwall, probably. I'd have spent all my life on the train going backwards and forwards to London, and then when I was back in Cornwall I'd be dealing with people who hadn't had their bins emptied. Whereas, of course, I'd really want to be dealing with affairs of State.

Presenter20:37

That's so romantic, isn't it? That's a very romantic notion. I mean, in order that we we garner people's trust and that they believe in democracy, we have to deal with the micro as well as dealing with the macro.

Andy Kershaw20:46

Become too impatient.

Presenter20:49

And a romantic?

Andy Kershaw20:50

I want to yes, and I'd want to grab the steering wheel. Yeah. Um

Andy Kershaw20:54

But but, you know, Ming Campbell at the time was doing a very good job as f as foreign affairs spokesman. There was no need for me, and I wanted to go to the Isle of Man in any case.

Presenter21:02

Tell me about your next record.

Andy Kershaw21:03

What is it?

Presenter21:04

It's a Leiden Wayne Reich.

Andy Kershaw21:05

Oh god, Loudoun. I've been a big Loudoun fan ever since I first heard him when I was about 13. And at whichever stage I've been in my life, Loudoun has always had the appropriate song. But he's got one which has always stuck with me, and it's almost like my mission statement. People will know when they see this show what kind of a guy I am. They'll understand just what I stand for and what I just can't stand. One man guy.

Speaker 321:28

People will know when they see this show the kind of a guy I am

Andy Kershaw21:33

Uh

Presenter21:33

Aye, aye, yeah.

Speaker 321:38

They'll understand just what I stand for and what I just can't stand.

Speaker 321:47

They'll perceive what I believe in and what I know is true.

Speaker 321:55

I don't recognize I'm a one man guy

Presenter21:59

Loudon Wainwright and One Man Guy, you have uh spoken about briefly your time at Radio One. Let's talk about that, because it was a rich and fascinating time for you. First of all, you ended up sharing an office with John Peel and John Walters. What was that like?

Andy Kershaw22:14

Well, it was just fantastic and hilarious. I mean, I was so lucky, Kirsty. What better induction could I have to the BBC, to public service broadcasting, to Radio One, than to be put with those guys? It was like the house at Pooh Corner, somebody once said. Walters was stout and rather pompous, so he was Pooh. And Peel was standing in the corner of the field in the drizzle like Eeyore, saying hmm no thistles. And of course I was Tigger, jumping up and bounding around and trying to lick your face.

Presenter22:45

What if it I like of you.

Andy Kershaw22:47

Walters told uh I think it was somebody from The Guardian not long after I've joined. See how you how you end up even talking like Walters when you'd spent that long with him. Walters said, It was like somebody coming in and letting a blue bottle out of a jar.

Andy Kershaw23:01

But the the listen, the I was so lucky. They really took me under the wing. The Walters particularly really protected me. Peel became my great friend. You know, we used to go to the T T races at the Isle of Man together and he was always like my my advisor, if you like.

Presenter23:17

And was your whole life at that point was it was it music and you were going to gigs and?

Andy Kershaw23:21

Yeah, yeah, I was out every night at gigs and I was, you know, single.

Presenter23:22

Yeah.

Andy Kershaw23:25

Uh

Presenter23:25

What sort of protracted student exist?

Andy Kershaw23:27

Absolutely. Yeah. It's still going in a way, you know.

Presenter23:27

Uh

Presenter23:31

Yeah. I mean I mean, you you now are you're no longer on Radio One, you're on Radio Three now. You've found a very you are posh, you're legitimized by being at at Radio Three. And and the world music that I mean, you you sort of blanch at the term world music.

Speaker 323:36

Please.

Andy Kershaw23:44

Well, it was a phrase that was created really by the record industry to try and cope with what I was doing on Radio One. So it gradually evolved. You see, the programme, all you get on my radio programmes is what I happen to have been listening to and enjoying that week. So the programme very quickly evolved into something that wasn't a rock show anymore. And Radio One found it's had a world music programme by stealth without asking for one.

Presenter24:07

But in the end it didn't want it.

Andy Kershaw24:09

Oh, it took a long time. Took fifteen years, isn't it?

Presenter24:11

Yeah. So there was fifteen years of having this loyal fan base who went out to the record shops on the basis of what you taught them about, asked for the records. It was your home. But but how did it come to an end then? You you didn't fit with the profile.

Andy Kershaw24:16

You

Andy Kershaw24:18

Asked for the records.

Andy Kershaw24:23

I was thinking after all that time with a different controller and uh the controller of Radio One just didn't want me there anymore. And within a few days I got a phone call from Roger Wright, the controller of Radio Three.

Andy Kershaw24:34

And he said one thing to me that just convinced me in a flash that this is where I belonged, Radio Three. He said to me, Do you know what I like about your radio programme? And I said, Roger, I can't begin to imagine He says, What do I like about your radio programmes? He said,

Andy Kershaw24:47

I never know what's coming next. And I thought he's got it. He understands. And I might play you something from uh the Congo, and then I might play you something from Cuba, and then I might play you something from, you know, Britain or the United States. So it's all world music. It's all world music.

Presenter25:04

Thanks.

Presenter25:06

Um it strikes me, Andy Kerschel, that your career, um, rich and incredible as it has been so far, has been a sort of series of very, very lucky breaks on your behalf.

Andy Kershaw25:14

I'm the luckiest person I know. I mean, it was just incredible the way things happened. Tell me about your next track. Johnny Mitchell. If we're going to use the term world music, Johnny was in there years before I was. But we come back to her album Blue, 1970, 71, something like that. And there's a song on there which, for me, just embodies the carefree promise of travel. And it's one of those songs that's going through my head when I'm bouncing down that rubber walkway at Heathrow Airport, you know, off to some madhouse or hellhole or whatever. Carrie.

Speaker 225:50

The wind is in Vermont Front Last night I couldn't sleep Oh you know it sure is hard to leave you, Carrie, but it's really not my home

Speaker 226:03

My fingernails are filthy, I've got beached tar on my feet, And I miss my clean white linen And my fancy French clothes

Speaker 226:15

Oh, carry it out, you can carry it out, you can

Presenter26:19

Joni Mitchell and Carrie, you've spoken about this nosiness and you've spoken about a feeling of wanting to see injustices put right. When people feel that sense of discontent with the way things are, it can make them uncomfortable with life and make them feel sort of at odds with the world. No. No. No. You don't feel that? No.

Andy Kershaw26:41

I love life. I love people. It may be a bit of an old cliche, actually, Kirsty, but it's also one of the most.

Andy Kershaw26:50

Um

Andy Kershaw26:51

In a way, reassuring things. I I've I've tended to find that those who've got least give the most.

Andy Kershaw26:58

Those who've got least give the most.

Presenter27:00

It's interesting given all the horrors you've been exposed to, because it does leave a lot of uh war correspondents and war reporters feeling significantly diminished about the capabilities of mankind.

Andy Kershaw27:11

Um, well, I don't spend all my time in those kind of places and I think probably what it's done, if anything, it's it's made me even more grateful for the lucky position in which I find myself when I get back. I don't have to walk fifteen miles to get water, and I'm I've I've got food and I am comfortable and we're very, very lucky. That's what it's taught me, going around and seeing the misery in which most people in the world live. Most people in the world.

Presenter27:40

Tell me about your next piece of music.

Andy Kershaw27:42

Um

Andy Kershaw27:43

Oh, yes, Graham Parsons and Emmy Lou Harris. It's another travelling song. It's such a romantic song, this, and it's a song I always carry with me when I'm away. And I play it a lot, and it reminds me of Juliet, who's the great love of my life. And, you know, the lines in it's 20,000 Roads, I went down, down, down, and they all led me straight back home to you. You know, it's about coming home to that security and that love from some madhouse republic or another. And in, you know, my more imaginative moments, I think I am Graham Parsons, and Juliet is Emmy Lou Harris.

Speaker 328:29

Want to scratch my head, sweet Annie Ridge, And welcome me back to town

Speaker 328:37

Come out on your porch or step into your parlour and I'll tell you how it all went down.

Speaker 328:45

Out with the truckers and the kickers and the cowboy angels.

Speaker 328:52

Every good saloon in every single town

Presenter28:59

Graham Parsons and Emmy Lou Harris and Return of the Grievous Angel

Andy Kershaw29:02

With the great James Burton on the lead guitar there as well.

Presenter29:05

Thank you for that. Um you've won seven Sony Gold Awards, and just to put that into some sort of context for people who don't know, I mean that's the equivalent of winning sort of seven BAFTAs. It's a very big deal indeed.

Andy Kershaw29:15

Seven World Motorcycling Championships. In my dreams, yeah.

Presenter29:17

Yeah.

Presenter29:19

Um you've mentioned Julia. I mean remarkably you've fitted in two children as well, Sonny and Dolly. That's right.

Andy Kershaw29:24

His

Presenter29:25

And Dolly's named after Dolly Parton.

Andy Kershaw29:26

She is. And do you want to tell them whose son he's named after?

Presenter29:29

Uh well, uh you need to remind me, yes.

Andy Kershaw29:31

A breadvan on the M six.

Presenter29:33

Right.

Andy Kershaw29:33

Juliet was about to have Sonny. We were days away and we were coming back down the M6 from the north somewhere. And she said, What are we going to call this child? And I said, Oh, to hell with this. It was about the hundredth time we'd had the discussion. I said, Look, what we're going to do is we're going to name him after whatever's written on the next truck I overtake. Well, the first truck that we overtook was a Sunbless bread van. And then it hit me in a flash. It's not Sunbless, then Sonny. My dad had always called me Sonny Boy when I was a little lad. That became his name. Dolly was named, yeah, unashamedly after Dolly Parton.

Presenter30:03

I mean, given that you say that you're happiest when you're marinated and uh mosquito repellent and carrying a rucksack, a desert island for you w would it be a happy happy time?

Andy Kershaw30:11

But I sort of live on one, don't I? But I do like island life, yes. And as I said to you earlier, I can, when needs be, be very self contained. So I'd cope.

Presenter30:21

The solitude would be fine.

Andy Kershaw30:22

Um yes, for a while. I can go quite a while on Mill.

Presenter30:27

Tell me about your last record.

Andy Kershaw30:29

Oh, these are a real find. About three years ago, I went to an extraordinary event called the Festival in the Desert, which takes place in the Sahara Desert, about 100 miles north of Timbuktu. It started out as a gathering of the Tuaregs, the nomadic people of the Sahara Desert who come from Mali, Niger, Mauritania, and they travel hundreds and thousands of miles on the camels that come to this thing. And this is a band of Malian Tuaregs called Tina Owen. And, you know, lots and lots of bands know how to rock. Very few bands know how to roll. These boys, Tina Owen, they are the masters of what you might call roll and roll.

Speaker 331:29

Where do I

Speaker 331:31

Yeah.

Speaker 331:32

But I'm drowning inside.

Presenter31:37

Tineri Wen and Matajen Yin Nixan. Now, you know on this island we give you the Bible, as you know, in the complete works of Shakespeare. A third book. What would you like it to be?

Andy Kershaw31:47

Well, I wouldn't like the Bible or Shakespeare. Thank you very much. You don't have to take them. I'm just offering them. No, well, you can keep them, thank you. Um I'd like the collected works of Ryszad Kaposzynski, the great Polish journalist who died earlier this year. Kaposynski got together in the body of his work history, politics, philosophy and travel.

Presenter31:50

Okay, you don't have to take them. I'm just offering them.

Andy Kershaw32:07

All in one.

Presenter32:08

It's all yours. Your luxury. Your luxury.

Andy Kershaw32:09

Two

Andy Kershaw32:11

An unlimited supply of bog roll, please.

Presenter32:13

Right, which you've got remarkably sitting on the bottom.

Andy Kershaw32:15

I've always got one with me. I've always got one in me in my BBC box here because I can't think of anything more undignified than not being able to wipe your bottom. And so I want a I want a mountain of it on the desert island, please.

Presenter32:26

You may have that. And now I know it's been virtually impossible to choose eight, but I'm going to force you to pick just one record out of the eight.

Andy Kershaw32:32

I'd forgotten this bit It's got to be the bundoos and a panu wangoo. It'll always make me happy. It'll always keep me optimistic. It just b brims with life and humanity.

Presenter32:45

Andy Kirtil, thank you very much for letting us see your Desert Island Discs.

Andy Kershaw32:48

Thank you very much for having me.

Presenter32:56

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