John Humphrys

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.

Presenter0:08

The programme was originally broadcast in two thousand eight.

Presenter0:27

My castaway this week is the broadcaster John Humphreys. For twenty one years the nation has woken up to him on the Today programme. Tea, toast, and a generous helping of his tenacious style going down a treat with millions of his loyal listeners. The politicians he regularly skewers are unsurprisingly less enthusiastic. Jonathan Aitken once accused him of poisoning the well of democratic debate. His role as Grand Inquisitor is quite some way from his beginnings, as one of five children brought up in the poverty stricken back streets of Cardiff. But it's a background that's informed and inspired him throughout his fifty years in journalism. For a long time he has said I had chips on both shoulders. They're still there, under the surface. You never quite get over things that happen in your childhood.

Presenter1:13

So is it a strong sense of social injustice was it a strong sense of social injustice that propelled you into journalism in the first place?

John Humphrys1:21

A bit of that, a bit of jealousy, a bit of anger, a bit of frustration, a whole combination of things. You never quite know, do you, until much later.

Presenter1:29

Jealousy for those who had when you had not

John Humphrys1:31

I suppose so. And uh there was real poverty in it in the post war years and they were very bleak those post war years. It it's easy to forget now because it is

John Humphrys1:40

I say only sixty years ago, but it's it's not that long ago in historical terms. But this was a very different world indeed. This the country was a very different country indeed. Um and uh

John Humphrys1:52

You sort of began to get a feeling at that time that there was another place, that that you weren't being admitted to, that there were other good things happening, and that you weren't being um allowed to share in them. And you you you felt, I felt, a bit puzzled at first, and then, I suppose, increasingly cross, and, yeah, jealous that that we didn't have all of that.

Presenter2:16

And what about that florid phrase of Jonathan Aitkins that that you were poisoning the well of democratic debate with your style of interviewing? What did you make of it at the time?

John Humphrys2:25

Oh, I was terrified at the time. Yeah, I terrified is possibly slightly overdoing, but I was phoned at home. I can remember it ever so clearly as you can with the important moments in your life. My then-boss phoned and said, look, he's made this speech, and we think this is potentially rather serious. And of course, he was right. I actually thought that my career, such as it was, had come to an end at the Today programme. Because if others in the cabinet, and he was a member of the Conservative Cabinet at the time, if others in the cabinet had taken the same view and did not want to be interviewed by me, and that was the implied threat, the stated threat, in the Aitken speech, I couldn't continue to present the Today programme. That would be an end to it. And it wasn't really until the Monday when Ken Clark, God bless him, and Douglas Heard, Lord Hurd, God bless him, both got on to the Today programme and said, look, we're not a part of this. And Ken Clark actually went on to the World at One to say, in effect, that he thought Aitken would be talking rubbish, that we realised it was going to swing in my favour.

Presenter3:31

Was that the occasion upon which you gave Ken Clark a calculator to work out how many times you were going to interrupt him during the interview? Is that the same?

John Humphrys3:35

Many times you would get to

John Humphrys3:37

Yes, because Aitken had said part of his case against me was that I had interrupted Ken Clark, I think he said thirty-four times in one short interview on the Today programme. So when Ken next came in I did hand him a calculator and he looked at the calculator. He was Chancellor of the Exchequer at the time of course and he said, you know, I never did figure out how to make one of these things work.

Presenter4:03

Nice line. Tell me about your first piece of music then.

John Humphrys4:06

The first piece of music is Ella Fitzgerald. I have been terrified by two interviewees in my whole life, and I mean terrified. One of them was Margaret Thatcher, you'll not be surprised to hear. The other was Ella Fitzgerald. The problem with Ella Fitzgerald was that I failed to interview her. I was the editor of the teenage page of the Cardiff and District News. And Ella Fitzgerald came to Cardiff and I went into her dressing room and I was so scared and clumsy, imagine it, that my elbow caught a mirror, knocked it to the floor, smashed it, and she looked at me with rage and contempt and said, Get that kid out of here. So I never actually did interview her. But to this day, I tremble at the thought of it. Almost literally, I can feel myself breaking out into a sweat as I describe it. But by God, could she sing?

Speaker 44:55

Sweet push carts gently glide, ding by The great big city's a wondrous toy Just make for a girl and boy We'll turn Manhattan into an isle of joy

Presenter5:21

Ella Fitzgerald and Manhattan. So you said you never quite get over things that happen in your childhood. Tell us about your childhood. How was it growing up in Splot, wonderfully named part of Splot?

John Humphrys5:31

It uh we were we were respectable poor. That that's that's it. The height of wealth was a bowl of fruit on somebody's table when there was nobody ill in the house. You know, that was that was the mark of of inordinate riches. Um we just didn't have much money.

Presenter5:51

Your father was a French.

John Humphrys5:52

Poet

Presenter5:52

Yeah.

John Humphrys5:52

French porish were self employed, so sometimes had no work.

Presenter5:55

He was a a Tory.

John Humphrys5:57

And a Republican

Presenter5:58

and a Republican.

John Humphrys6:00

And a Republican. He didn't fit any of the norms, no. He he was once slung out of the Tory club because there was only one seat left on a crowded Friday night, one chair vacant and it was beneath the picture of the Queen and he refused to sit underneath. So they slung him out. But yeah, he he didn't like the Royal Family.

Presenter6:01

That's confusing.

Presenter6:03

Apparently contradictory.

John Humphrys6:23

Yeah.

Presenter6:23

And the other thing

John Humphrys6:24

I didn't like authority of any sort, that was the point about him. That's what I got from him, I suppose.

Presenter6:28

I'm glad you said that. I was about to say that.

John Humphrys6:30

I saved you the trouble because

Presenter6:37

A sense somewhere, not quite tangible, that there were people somewhere else, for whom life was a good deal better. Wh where was that coming from? How was it in the air?

John Humphrys6:48

Well it came to me um

John Humphrys6:50

Most clearly, when after the 11 plus, I went to a posh school, and almost all the kids there were middle class. So.

John Humphrys7:01

Very occasionally, very occasionally I would go home with one of them and see how the other half lived, as it were. But you didn't have a mix with it. There was there was a very, very clear social divide. Very clear.

Presenter7:13

And the relative poverty then left you with a determination, I get the feeling, that it's never going to be like this for me.

John Humphrys7:18

Mm, absolutely that, yep.

Presenter7:19

You know

John Humphrys7:21

Yeah.

Presenter7:21

And now are you very careful with money?

John Humphrys7:24

Um I don't waste anything. It's um it's one of the things I think you inherit. I am very, very, very conscious of waste, and I regard waste as as as wrong, morally wrong. And waste is waste is a moral issue, not not just a matter of practicality, but it's wrong.

Presenter7:43

Tell me about your next piece of music, then.

John Humphrys7:46

My first um job outside Cardiff was in the Welsh Valleys, and one of the things I had to do was follow around the labour of love this, follow around the Penderrus male voice choir. The music was wonderful, but even more moving was the sight of these miners,'cause they were all miners of course, standing on stage looking utterly immaculate with their crisp blazers and

John Humphrys8:10

white shirts and carefully knotted ties, and the veins of the the lines in their hands and on their cheeks where the coal dust over the years had had become ingrained. And I suppose one shouldn't over romanticize this, but there was a sense of real dignity about them. These concerts were intensely for me intensely emotional, emotional affairs. Uh nothing more so than when they were singing

Presenter9:08

The Pendiris Male Voice Choir and Mivanwe. And school then? You you as you say, your parents had made sure that you did the homework, you studied hard, you got into the high school, the equivalent of a grammar school. Nobody else in the street was there, so you were untypical to that extent. You were obviously bright, but you didn't enjoy school particularly.

John Humphrys9:25

Hated it, absolutely hated it, partly the chip on the shoulder bit, but also because I was average and I didn't have any real kind of social network there. I didn't I felt always felt that I didn't quite fit in. And I used to deliver newspapers to raise a few Bob morning and evening. And it was particularly bad weather one morning, a lot of snow about the papers were late arriving at the shop when I went to collect them. So I was late at school. I got school a bit late and was caned by the headmaster. And I'd explained to him why it had happened. And I think probably you might have expected a headmaster to say, Well, look, in those circumstances, you know, you weren't you weren't skybing off, you were you were out there in the in the driving snow, battling through the blizzard to deliver newspapers to earn some money for your family. That's actually rather a good thing, but not not a bit of it. I got caned anyway. And and that that really that really hurt in all sorts of ways. I I never forgave him for that.

Presenter10:23

So at the age of fifteen you walk into the Penarth Times, it's nineteen fifty eight, you wanted to be Clark Kent.

John Humphrys10:28

I wanted to be Clark Kent well, yeah, w w w the only comics we got, pretty much the only comics in those days that I remember anyway, were Superman comics, and Clark Kent became Superman, obviously, and Clark Kent was a reporter, therefore I wanted to be a reporter. Very, very childish and understandable maybe at the age of five, but

Presenter10:37

Clear

John Humphrys10:45

Carry on with that thought into my twenties, thirties, forties, fifties. Well, mm one wonders.

Presenter10:52

Tell me about your next piece of music bend track number three.

John Humphrys10:55

When I was in the valleys, one of my closest friends was a chap called John Jones who worshipped Duke Ellington, and I used to go with him to the concerts. In fact, it's one of my very proud boasts that many years later, when I was in New York, and I went to an Ellington concert in the Rainbow Rooms at the top of the Rockefeller Centre, and I went for a wee in the interval, and there was the great man, and I stood next to him. Didn't speak to him, of course, I wouldn't have dared, but oh, God, standing there next to Duke Ellington and having a bit, good God, alive. And of course, you associate Ellington with just one number. He played it at the start of every concert, A-Train.

Presenter12:36

Duke Ellington and Take the A Train. So you joined the B B C in Liverpool in nineteen sixty six.

John Humphrys12:42

Sounds about right.

Presenter12:43

You were twenty three. Do you remember getting the job?

John Humphrys12:47

Um yes, I do. There were two of us who were were in the final short list, a chap called Mike Mackay and me. He was given a contract freelance job and I was given the staff job as district reporter for Liverpool and the North West, and it was the probably the best job I've ever had, actually.

Presenter13:08

Why is that?

John Humphrys13:09

Uh

John Humphrys13:10

Just because it was my own patch, I was my own boss.

John Humphrys13:13

And it was just a fabulous place to be. Liverpool was so exciting at the time. Beatles and dock strikes, mostly dock strikes. I did spend an awful lot of time reporting dock strikes. But it was great to be independent, have your own patch, uh, at a time when there was a lot of news. And although I was working for Manchester, ostensibly, uh a lot of my stuff was appearing on in London as well, so I was I was becoming part of the big news picture.

Presenter13:38

What did your parents make of the job?

John Humphrys13:40

Well, when they first saw me on telly I think they were a bit stunned, really, because by and large boys from Splot didn't end up on the telly by and large, but they were rather tickled by the whole thing.

Presenter13:51

Did they give you their opinion on your

John Humphrys13:53

My father never did. My mother just said, Oh, it's lovely, isn't it? That's all, really.

Presenter14:00

And you got married pretty young, and had children in quite quick succession.

John Humphrys14:04

Yep, I was married, as was fairly typical in those days, when I was just two and twenty one, and the babies came very quickly, so I was a very young father. Actually, I rather suspect I was pretty boring.

Presenter14:05

It has with

John Humphrys14:15

Yeah, yeah, I was probably very boring at the time. I enjoyed life, but I was pretty boring.

Presenter14:16

Yeah.

Presenter14:20

Were you obsessed with your work?

John Humphrys14:23

I think not. I think you're obsessed with work if you don't enjoy doing anything else. Uh that's obsession, isn't it? Yeah, I've worked hard. Uh I've worked probably harder than most people around me for a variety of reasons, and that's um I suppose a not a bad thing. But maybe, maybe, maybe I've maybe I've overdone it. Maybe. Yeah, I think probably with the great benefit of hindsight, if I were to go back thirty or forty years, I'd probably spend a little bit less time working and a little bit more time doing one or two other things, probably.

Presenter14:57

I mean, what I was wondering, what I was getting at there, was how much time you actually spent with your children when they were small. Much time at all?

John Humphrys15:02

I missed seeing my children grow up to some extent because I became a foreign correspondent quite early on and from then on spent oh six, seven, sometimes eight or nine months of the year abroad. So I miss seeing my kids a lot. I remember once going on one trip uh and my daughter Catherine uh was a baby when I left home and was a toddler when I came back. So I miss seeing her growing up and the first bits of the walking and things and it that's sad. You shouldn't do that. That's I wouldn't recommend that to anybody.

Presenter15:34

More of your foreign adventures then in just a moment. Right now tell me about your next piece of music.

John Humphrys15:38

Next piece of music is connected with America. Um Don MacLean, um most famous at the time, I suppose for American Pie, but I think his most beautiful song was Vincent.

Speaker 315:51

Swirling clouds in violet haze Reflect In Vincent's eyes of china blue.

Speaker 315:59

Colours changing hue

Speaker 316:04

Morning fields of amber grain

Speaker 316:09

Weathered faces lined in pain are soothed

Presenter16:15

Beneath the artist

Speaker 316:16

It's loving hand

Presenter16:18

Don McLean and Vincent. And that track you say reminding you, John Humphreys, of the time you spent in America. You were there during Watergate, during the impeachment hearings?

John Humphrys16:27

Well, I've been sent to New York, not Washington, to open a television bureau television news bureau, though we didn't have one, believe it or not, in the States at the time. And within literally a week or so of my arriving for the first time ever in the States, a thing called Watergate started happening.

John Humphrys16:45

After about a year or so it was clear it was the biggest story that ever was, and they moved me down to Washington very, very bizarrely moved out of Washington Charles Wheeler, the greatest foreign correspondent of his time. So there was I, callow youth.

John Humphrys17:00

not yet thirty, um, taking over this story.

Presenter17:04

And you almost missed the resignation.

John Humphrys17:07

I sort of almost missed the resignation because like everybody else in Washington during that ghastly hot summer uh the the Watergate hearings were suspended briefly so that everybody would go and have a have a break in in August and I went back to Britain uh took my family back to Britain. I was there for twenty-four hours and it was fairly clear that things were happening and I was down in Cardiff with my family. It was fairly clear that things were happening. I went back to London and they said you shouldn't be here, should you boy and I caught the next plane back to the States leaving my family behind after a holiday of approximately one and a half days.

John Humphrys17:45

And and I had a stroke of enormous luck because uh

John Humphrys17:49

I happened to know a chap called Peter Pizer, a congressman, Republican congressman, and the next day he rang me and said, Don't know if you're interested, but I happened to be at the White House having a prayer breakfast with the President this morning, and he's going on television tonight. And I said, Do you know what he's going to say, Peter? and he said, He didn't say, but I figure we know, don't we? And of course, it was the resignation speech, and I got on to London and said

John Humphrys18:17

He's going to resign to night put up a satellite. Big deal in those days. Satellites cost thousands of pounds to to put up, as we used to say. And I went in to tell you and said the President's going to resign to night. Thank God he did.

Speaker 318:29

That would be the end of the

John Humphrys18:29

That would have been the end of my career if they well, I think so, yes. It was it was a it was a wonderful moment. But pure luck. Mm do you know most of journalism is luck.

Presenter18:37

Well, you say that. A couple of times you've used the word luck in relation to your career, and of course a lot of it is tenacity, is working the contacts, working the phones, always making sure that you're there earliest, that your call is in first, that people don't forget your name. It's very, very, very, very competitive, especially in the field of foreign journalism for correspondence.

John Humphrys18:38

A couple of times.

John Humphrys18:54

Yeah.

John Humphrys18:56

Yes

John Humphrys18:58

Oh, it's highly competitive and you can't come second. That's absolutely right. But if you're not in the right place at the right time, then that's it. It's luck. It's mostly luck.

Presenter19:08

What about the desire to come first?

John Humphrys19:10

Oh yes, you've got to be competitive.

Presenter19:12

Where does the competition come from? Is it a desire to keep your job, or is it a desire to give the other man a bloody nose?

John Humphrys19:20

It's very difficult to separate those two. But there's a there's certainly a a bit of that in me. I do remember once being based in uh Salisbury Rhodesia, as it was, and they sent I was going on holiday and they sent out it uh another reporter to take over from me while I went on holiday and I can remember rushing around for weeks, hoovering up every story I could find. And so when this poor chap arrived there were already seven Humphreys films waiting to be transmitted on the nine o'clock news. It was a wicked, terrible thing to do, and I feel only slightly ashamed.

Presenter19:51

Hmm. So where are we? We're on track five.

John Humphrys19:52

Track

John Humphrys19:54

From the States I wanted to come back to London, but they said, No, would you mind going down to South Africa to open a television bureau there? Which uh I did. And it was at a time when apartheid was at its height, ghastly, ghastly time to be there in lots of ways, but of course a wonderful story for a newsman, and the resistance movement was in full flood. And this was their song, and Cosi Sikalele Africa.

Speaker 420:23

Gosi sigle freeda.

John Humphrys20:24

Yeah.

Speaker 420:29

Malupagani Su tumolayo.

John Humphrys20:33

Yeah.

Speaker 420:35

Isa Yetu.

John Humphrys20:35

Isa Mitana.

John Humphrys20:38

Yeah, two

Speaker 420:41

Gaussi.

Speaker 420:43

See L.

John Humphrys20:44

We can live.

Speaker 420:46

Tina Lu Sapo.

Presenter20:52

The Teal Choir and in Cosicalele Africa. So, first of all, you'd taken your family to America. You'd come home even for a holiday, and that only lasted for twenty four hours. You'd taken them to South Africa. I mean, how safe were your family i in South Africa?

John Humphrys21:06

Oh, perfectly safe. I I got a bit of harassment occasionally. You know, they'd come knocking on the door. They, I mean, Special Branch would come knocking on the door. A bit of threatening, a bit of tapping your phone and stuff like but nothing serious.

Presenter21:18

Uh is that why eventually you decided to come home?

John Humphrys21:21

No, I decided in the end to come home because I'd had enough of being on the road. I really had. I did not want to live in hotels and and on aeroplanes. And I said, That's it, no more. And they said, Well, what about the nine o'clock news on telly reading that I said? Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful.

Presenter21:36

Wonderful, wonderful.

John Humphrys21:39

I did think I would enjoy it. Well, look, I don't think.

Presenter21:40

Well, look at famously opposite.

John Humphrys21:41

I had I did not. I had a it was for the first time in my life. I was I had a routine, a rhythm, a pattern to my life, and I could say to somebody, Yep, I'll see you next Thursday, we'll have dinner. Fine, perfect. But it was boring. You go in, you talk about the news of the day, you have interminable meetings, and then when everybody else has gone home and you're fairly knackered, it's nine o'clock at night, you have to perform. You're on air for about four minutes, perhaps by the time you've taken out all the filmed reports and everything else, reading from an auto-queue. Well, it's not a job for a grown man, I'm afraid.

Presenter22:18

So suddenly you got a call out of the blue from somebody at a programme called the Today Programme. And what did they say to you?

John Humphrys22:19

Oh woman.

John Humphrys22:25

And what did they say to you? They said John Timpson is retiring.

John Humphrys22:30

At the end of the year, would you like his job? And I said yes.

John Humphrys22:34

Boom. This was about midnight. I just got a lot of money. Literally one conversation. One conversation. Would you like it? And I didn't give it a mo I didn't even say how much.

Presenter22:37

Literally one call

John Humphrys22:43

How much money I said yes, absolutely, yes. When can I start?

Presenter22:48

Hold that thought and tell me about your next piece of music.

John Humphrys22:52

Classical music for many years has played a huge part in my life. I I now listen almost to nothing but classical music. One of the pieces that turned me on to it was the Beethoven Violin Concerto, which struck me at the time, thirty-five years ago, whenever it was, as being the most beautiful piece of music I'd ever heard.

Presenter24:15

Part of the second movement of Beethoven's violin concerto in D major, played by Itzhak Palman with the Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Carlo Maria Giulini.

Presenter24:23

So your interviewing technique on today then. Let's talk about that. I believe you do. And many people, of course, relish it. They relish listening to you pinning those sweating politicians to the studio wall. Some people, however, say that it generates more heat than light. What do you say to them?

John Humphrys24:27

I have one?

John Humphrys24:32

Listen to you.

John Humphrys24:41

That would be true.

John Humphrys24:43

If you make the assumption that the politician is always there to tell it like it is, to answer your questions fully, frankly, and freely and if they come in to do that

John Humphrys24:55

And it happens sometimes. You let them do it. Mostly, for perfectly obvious reasons, they don't come in to do that. They come in to deliver a message. They argue the case, of course, but they deliver messages. That's the reason they come on to the Today programme. Now it's not your job to stop them delivering that message, but it is your job to ask them what lies behind it, to challenge it if necessary, and to pick them up. If they repeat the point they've already made, if they try to dodge the question you've asked them, if they say things like, Well, actually, what people at home want answered is this, and then go off on their own riff. In other words, if they try to deliver a party political broadcast, which often they do, it's your job to say, Come off it, squire, let's have none of that. Now, how about answering this question? It's a perfectly simple, straightforward question, what's the answer?

Presenter25:44

Well, during that answer, you said for perfectly understandable reasons they don't want to answer my questions. For political reasons. But do you start from the basis that I'm paraphrasing now, for reasons of elegance? But Jeremy Paxman says he starts from the basis of he says this is a bit of a misquote, but basically, why is this lying, so-and-so lying to me? No, that's where you start.

John Humphrys25:49

Party political reasons.

John Humphrys26:02

I don't start on that basis. I don't believe that they're there to lie. There are some politicians who lie, of course. Mostly, in my view, they don't. They want to tell the truth. But I do start with the assumption that they are there for their benefit rather than necessarily for the benefit of the audience, for the elucidation of the public as a whole. And it's my job often to try to get them to be a bit more candid than perhaps they intended to be.

Presenter26:29

When politicians walk into the Today studio, can you feel when they are scared?

John Humphrys26:34

Hm. You can feel when they think they're on a sticky wicket. Um and you can, I think, sense when they are not happy with the policy that they're defending. And that's when they're uneasy. Look, they're pretty bright people, politicians, and w to get to the Cabinet you've got to be very bright indeed, and tough and aggressive, and all the rest of it. But they don't like it if they have to defend a policy that they wouldn't themselves have chosen. And they do most of them find that very difficult, and that's what you're able to sense.

Presenter27:03

So you've been in front of that today microphone now for almost 21 years. It is

John Humphrys27:06

Exactly twenty-one years.

Presenter27:08

Yes. Exactly twenty-one years. You've beaten Brian Redhead's record.

John Humphrys27:14

Brian tried to punch many people in his time. I once intervened between him and the programme editor whom he tried to punch in the green room. He didn't actually lunge at me, but he threatened to do so. Brian had a very, very short view. He was a great man, Brian. Let me just say this instantly. He was one of the greatest, if not certainly at his peak, the best broadcaster in Britain. But yeah, we all had these little bust-ups with Brian, but it was all forgotten five minutes later. Great man.

Presenter27:42

Is there aggro between presenters about who gets to do what? I mean, if you know your editor tells you yes, on Tuesday the Prime Minister or the Minister or the important diplomat who's not yet made themselves available is going to.

Presenter27:56

How do you divvy it up?

John Humphrys27:57

We all want the best interview. Of course we do. But by and large we um we get on remarkably well. I think that this bunch, the present bunch of presenters on the Today programme, gets on better as a group than any I've ever worked with, and I've worked with a lot over the years and we we we get on pretty well, yeah. But of course there's a bit of tension. It'd be odd if there wasn't, we're competitive, we're journalists.

Presenter27:58

Okay, hold on.

John Humphrys28:20

Creative Tank

Presenter28:20

The Mets Corner. Sure. Tell me about your next piece of music then.

John Humphrys28:24

My son Christopher is a professional cellist and when he was a youngster he played for the Reading Youth Orchestra and his first solo performance was the Elgar Cello Concerto and I can remember sitting in the front row squeezing my upper arms with the tension of it and I feel as if I've still got little indentations in my upper arms from from the pressure of the colour.

Presenter28:47

And how old was your son at this point?

John Humphrys28:48

And he was sixteen at the time. Yeah, it was terrifying. So I obviously want the Al Garcella concerto.

Presenter29:51

Mrs. Lav Rostropovich playing the opening of Elgar's cello concerto with the Mosca Philharmonic, conducted by Gennady Rostevtsiensky.

Presenter29:59

So, John, after more than a quarter of a century together, your marriage with Edna broke down. That was in the late nineteen eighties, and uh you met your partner, Val. In the was it in the Today production office that you met?

John Humphrys30:10

I can't

Presenter30:10

I can't imagine you having an office romance.

John Humphrys30:14

Did you find it tricky?

Presenter30:14

Did you find it tricky?

John Humphrys30:15

Neither can I.

John Humphrys30:16

Um I don't really remember it being particularly tricky. No, no. It all felt a bit out of character for me.

Presenter30:25

And you have a little boy, Owen. Yeah, he's seven. He is. He's he's seven now. Were you ready to embark on fatherhood already? Absolutely not. Absolutely not.

John Humphrys30:28

Yeah, you see.

John Humphrys30:33

Absolutely not. Absolutely not. I was ready retire to retire from all that and look forward to my grandchildren. And I was deeply reluctant to start on it all over again. But it's been utterly, utterly

John Humphrys30:47

Glorious. Been wonderful. I can't believe how.

John Humphrys30:51

How uh wonderful it's been. It sounds incredibly corny, doesn't it?

Presenter30:54

No, no, I don't think it does at all. I remember um having my first child around about the same time as as you had yours. And although I didn't know you, I remember hearing you say, because Tony and Cherie ensconced in number ten were also having a child. Little Leo was born. And I heard you say, I mean, what is paternity leave for anyway? I don't even know what it's for. I swear I threw something at the radio. Did I really say that, oh dear? You sounded rather unreconstructive.

John Humphrys31:04

But Tam were also having a child.

John Humphrys31:13

Did I really say that?

John Humphrys31:17

Well, that was before Owen was born. Right. And everything changed after that. I didn't tell you. Well, it did. I just fell completely in love. Again, what a corny thing to say, but I did. Having children as I did at the age of 21, 22, 23, was one thing. Having a child at the age of 57 was something quite different. You view them quite differently. I view Owen quite differently from the way I viewed my other digital. It's partly because

Presenter31:19

Right.

Presenter31:21

Did it?

John Humphrys31:46

Other things in your life are less important. Your career doesn't matter any longer. You don't worry about making a living and earning the money and paying the mortgage and all that. None of that matters any longer. And maybe that's what it is because all your attention is is focussed on this little chap. And uh I just have found myself utterly, entirely captivated by him. And uh there really isn't any other way of putting it. I get so much pleasure and joy from him that uh I find it very difficult to express it.

Presenter32:16

Do you think also being the age that you are, you worry about not always being able to express it? And you think, well, maybe by the time he's in his late teens, early twenties, I might not be in robust health, or I might not even be around, and therefore every minute matters?

John Humphrys32:25

Don't need twenty

John Humphrys32:31

That may be subconsciously there. I don't think that consciously, because I sort of assume I will always be there, but I suppose. Stupid, isn't it? But um but it may that may be it may be c more concentrated because of that. I suppose that's possible, isn't it?

Presenter32:45

Tell me about your final piece of music then.

John Humphrys32:48

Well, it's because of Owen. He, um

John Humphrys32:51

Bizarrely, I suppose, at a very early age showed huge enthusiasm for rock and roll. This takes me full circle, really, because I suppose I started my musical career, if that's what you can call it, with rock and roll, and um he absolutely insisted I know one's not meant to say this on Desert Island discs because they're one's own choices but I'm very happy to have given in to him when he insisted it had to be great balls of fire.

Speaker 433:14

Hold it by the

Speaker 433:16

Well, I'm off to love you like a club.

Speaker 433:21

So,

Speaker 433:23

Can't just worry

Speaker 433:26

Chinese man rail dung and that would

Speaker 433:29

I'm real nervous, but it's always fun.

Speaker 433:32

Come on, baby! It drives me crazy!

Speaker 433:36

He's just looking at the balls of fire!

Presenter33:40

One to have Owen dancing round the kitchen. That was Jerry Lewis. Great balls of fire. I will give you John Humphreys the Bible, the complete works of Shakspere. You're allowed to take one other book. What will it be?

John Humphrys33:50

Poetry, the biggest poetry anthology you can lay your hands on. I've never given enough time or attention to poetry. Uh one novel would drive me mad after a week, so it's got to be poetry.

Presenter34:00

Right, you can have that. And of course the luxury too.

John Humphrys34:03

The cello. I doubt that I'll be quite up to Rostropovich's standard by the time I leave the desert island, but I want to give it a go. I had tried in the past, failed miserably, but I want to try again.

Presenter34:13

And if the waves were to threaten to wash away the disks, I'm going to make you choose one that you would save. Which one would it be?

John Humphrys34:21

Probably the Elgar in the end.

John Humphrys34:24

It'd remind me of the family.

Presenter34:27

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

John Humphrys34:30

Thank you.

Presenter34:38

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