Richard Ingrams

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 eight.

Presenter0:27

My castaway this week is Richard Ingrams. As co founder and former editor of Private Eye, he is one of the godfathers of contemporary British satire. Sudes Corner, Deer Bill, and Coleman Balls all originated with him at the helm.

Presenter0:41

From a privileged and well connected background, he seems an unlikely outsider. Yet he's spent a lifetime pulling the rug from under the feet of the great and the good. It's often proved a risky route, bringing him into conflict with army recruiting sergeants, cabinet ministers, and billionaire industrialists alike. Now the editor of the Oldie, he says that he wouldn't know what to do if he stopped working, that he is hooked on journalism. You are in your early seventies now. You're still contributing to Private Eye.

Richard Ingrams1:10

Yes, I have been since I gave up the ownership. I couldn't keep away.

Presenter1:13

Why, why do you feel the need?

Richard Ingrams1:15

Partly because I need the money, but I've always enjoyed very much writing jokes with the people at Private Eye. And that goes on and I'm part of it. I'm not responsible for it anymore, so that's great weight off my shoulders.

Presenter1:27

I think of editors at least the newspaper editors that I know of as being very sort of autocratic and power hungry and terribly authoritarian people, and yet you don't seem anything like that. What attributes do you bring to the job?

Richard Ingrams1:40

I remember my friend Malcolm Muggeridge saying that an editor should be like a blind man tapping his way along with a white stick, and I've always felt a bit like that myself, sort of not knowing what's going to be the next issue.

Richard Ingrams1:53

Depending very much on circumstances or what came up, and not planning in advance anything.

Presenter1:58

Doesn't that make you nervous?

Richard Ingrams2:00

It does, but it's more exciting to do it like that.

Presenter2:02

We will probably end up talking quite a lot about getting on the wrong side of important people, which you seem to have gloried in over the years. But especially I mentioned their billionaire industrialists. I'm thinking of Jimmy Goldsmith, the late James Goldsmith, who tried to get you thrown in the clink.

Richard Ingrams2:13

Very

Richard Ingrams2:17

Yeah.

Presenter2:18

Uh

Richard Ingrams2:18

Not only that, but he tried to actually close the magazine down.

Richard Ingrams2:21

Which no one had ever tried before.

Richard Ingrams2:24

And he set about it in a in a very systematic way, you know, suing not just me and the company, but also suing the people who were distributing the magazine.

Richard Ingrams2:33

And if he'd carried on doing that, I mean he could have actually destroyed it.

Presenter2:36

We may talk in some detail about the actual case, because it was pretty interesting. But he did, of course, he didn't succeed. What happened?

Richard Ingrams2:38

It was.

Richard Ingrams2:42

Well, he didn't succeed, mainly I think, because public opinion rallied to the eye.

Richard Ingrams2:48

Tell me.

Presenter2:48

Tell me about your first piece of music, then?

Richard Ingrams2:49

Well, when I was young, which is a long time ago, I used to play the cello due to my mother's influence. This is a part of Rachmaninoff's cell sonata, which I couldn't play anyway. It's played by a man I greatly admired, Paul Totellier, whose old people may remember doing uh masterclasses on the BBC. I remember him doing a masterclass on Rachmaninoff's celli sonata, and he said, It is Russian, it is sad.

Presenter4:16

Part of the third movement of Rachmaninoff's cello sonata in G minor, played by Paul Tortellier accompanied by Aldo Ciccolini.

Presenter4:23

So, Richard Ingrams, you are one of four boys, and you were actually brought up in the early years in Scotland.

Richard Ingrams4:29

I was.

Presenter4:29

Living with your grandmother? Why was that?

Richard Ingrams4:31

My grandmother lived in Scotland. She'd been married to a Scottish doctor called Sir James Reed, who lived in a place called Ellen, which is north of Aberdeen. He, by chance, became one of Queen Victoria's doctors at Balmoral, partly because I think he could speak German and the Queen Victoria had all these German relatives. My grandmother was one of Queen Victoria's maids of honour.

Richard Ingrams4:56

much younger than him.

Richard Ingrams4:58

Anyway, it was to her house that we were evacuated at the beginning of the war.

Presenter5:04

And your mother went there to live with you.

Richard Ingrams5:06

Yes, she did, but uh she visited London quite a lot during the war to be with my father.

Presenter5:11

And what was your

Richard Ingrams5:11

Your father doing?

Richard Ingrams5:13

My father worked in the Ministry of Economic Warfare.

Richard Ingrams5:17

which was a lot to do with this black propaganda that went on. Unfortunately he never spoke to me or to anyone very much about

Richard Ingrams5:26

What he did in the war.

Presenter5:28

And you didn't find out until much, much later. Indeed, it wasn't it reading a a biography that had been written of you that you actually learned more detail about what it

Richard Ingrams5:35

Well, I that was partly the case, but I also read in the diary of Bruce Lockart, who was a big shot in the Foreign Office, that my father had been sent at the end of the war

Richard Ingrams5:45

to interview all the leading Nazis in prison in Nuremberg.

Richard Ingrams5:50

including Goering and all the others. It was the sort of thing that if I'd been a small boy, if I had known that about my father, I would have been so proud of him. But see he never said anything about it.

Presenter6:01

And apart from being literally a a distant figure, did did he come and visit, or when he came to visit, what what was your relationship with him like?

Richard Ingrams6:07

Very seldom like. He was a quite a distant figure. I was always a bit scared of my father, actually. And I think my mother was too.

Richard Ingrams6:15

He was a very good look. He had a lot of charisma. People who worked with him said that.

Richard Ingrams6:20

But he was quite distant and

Richard Ingrams6:22

I always found a bit scary.

Presenter6:24

And your father was Anglican, your mother had converted to Catholicism. They came to a well, we first say, an unusual arrangement with their four sons.

Richard Ingrams6:27

Good.

Richard Ingrams6:32

Well, there was a lot of tension because of religious difference. My father was Anglican, but very fiercely anti Catholic. My mother was a Catholic convert.

Richard Ingrams6:42

But as far as we we boys were concerned, they divided us up into two Catholic and two Protestant, and I was one of the Protestants. People forget how fiercely sort of anti Catholic

Richard Ingrams6:56

Prejudice there was in those days, particularly in the upper middle classes.

Richard Ingrams7:02

My mother not just her husband, but her two brothers, for example.

Richard Ingrams7:07

I think strongly disapproved of her religion.

Presenter7:10

And yet it must have been something she felt profoundly strongly. I mean, given that she knew that that would be the feeling and yet she still chose to do it.

Richard Ingrams7:13

I'm not given the

Richard Ingrams7:15

Still checked.

Richard Ingrams7:16

No, my mother had two great loves apart from her boys, I think. They were the Catholic Church and music.

Presenter7:24

What did she play?

Richard Ingrams7:25

She played the violin she was a very good violinist.

Richard Ingrams7:28

She had been taught music at St. Paul's Girls' School by Gustave Holst.

Richard Ingrams7:33

And then she went to the Royal College of Music with her sister. And then they went to Leipzig and they studied. And she could rarely have been a professional violinist.

Richard Ingrams7:42

But when she got married she gave it up.

Presenter7:44

And so for you, when you were young and growing up, it was really your mother and music, those were the two things happening in the household.

Richard Ingrams7:49

Yes. And and this uh Catholic thing was in the background. I mean I always had a problem, and I still have slightly in in confusing God and J. S. Bach. So they were sort of mixed up in my mind. Tell me now about your next piece of music.

Richard Ingrams8:06

Later on I used to play music with my mother, and it was really the happiest music experience I think I had, was playing violin sonatas. Of course I couldn't play the piano part well enough, but we managed to get through the slow movements. And this is one of Beethoven's slow movements that I used to play with.

Presenter9:17

The beginning of the second movement of Beethoven's Violin Sonata No. One, played by Yehudi Menuin, accompanied by his sister Hepzeba Menuin, recorded in nineteen twenty nine. And memories there for you, Richard Ingrams, of playing with your mother, even if you didn't quite manage to pull it off as perfectly as you would have liked. You were sent away to boarding school then.

Presenter9:35

aged seven. And you've written that your older brother, Peter John, if I ever cried, he kicked me. Um that doesn't sound like he was a terrific comfort, and sounds as though you were maybe having a bit of a hard time at boarding school.

Richard Ingrams9:47

And so

Richard Ingrams9:50

I suffered terribly from homesickness and

Richard Ingrams9:53

My elder brother, who is a who is a much stronger character than me, was very, very scornful.

Richard Ingrams9:58

and embarrassed by having this younger brother.

Presenter10:00

Where did you go to school?

Richard Ingrams10:01

Well, I went to school originally at a prep school in Winchester called West Stands, which doesn't exist any more. And then we went to Shrewsbury School, which was my father's old school.

Presenter10:11

And is this where you met Willie Rushton?

Richard Ingrams10:14

Willie Ruston was my exact contemporary at school, and they were we were in the same house together. Willie was one day older than me.

Presenter10:21

Can you remember what drew you together as friends? I mean, what was it as simple as a shared sense of mischief and humour?

Richard Ingrams10:24

Yeah.

Richard Ingrams10:26

Yes, it was humor, absolutely. Was a natural cartoonist. So we used to do things together in the school magazine.

Presenter10:33

Yes, that's an irresistible fact, isn't it, that you started working together on the School Magazine? What sort of publication was that?

Richard Ingrams10:35

You start

Richard Ingrams10:39

Well, it was very boring. I mean, it was almost all long descriptions of cricket matches, with the scores laid out, sort of taking up a whole page. There were sections of it where people were allowed to write jokes and poems and things like that at the back, and we used to do that. I've always worked best with other people and uh having Willie as a collaborator, which we went on being until he died basically, and it was a wonderful

Richard Ingrams11:04

God given opportunity.

Presenter11:05

And both of you lost your fathers at a relatively young age. You were just sixteen when your father died of a heart attack.

Richard Ingrams11:10

Died a

Richard Ingrams11:10

Yes, that's absolutely true.

Richard Ingrams11:13

And of course in a way that was an advantage to us later because we didn't

Richard Ingrams11:17

We didn't have fathers breathing down our necks saying, When are you going to get a proper job? I never had that, luckily.

Richard Ingrams11:25

My mother was very easygoing as far as I was concerned.

Presenter11:28

Do you think then Private Eye might not have happened if your father had been around?

Richard Ingrams11:32

I think very possibly, yes.

Richard Ingrams11:35

He wouldn't have approved of it at all.

Richard Ingrams11:37

Um

Presenter11:38

But would you have had the courage to do it or do would you have knuckled down to do what he wanted you to do?

Richard Ingrams11:41

It's an interesting thought though, but I think I think it's true that uh

Richard Ingrams11:46

Had he been alive, things would have been very different.

Presenter11:50

Tell me about your next piece of music, then.

Richard Ingrams11:52

I'd always wanted to play the piano from an early age, and I still do, and I've actually recently started having lessons again. But I was partly inspired when I was a boy by listening to Fat Swallow, who's one of the great pianists, I think, of all time.

Presenter12:59

Handful of Keys by Fats Waller. I'm not sure if that was envy or admiration or a mixture of both in your eyes as you listen to that. You say you've you've recently taken up uh is it piano lessons you've taken up? How's it going?

Richard Ingrams13:09

Yes, I have, yes. How's it going? Very well. I was very lucky to find a a very good teacher, Raymond Banning, and I've been doing it for about ten years now, and and it's made a fantastic difference.

Presenter13:19

Let's talk then about national service. It would be fair to say it wasn't a huge success.

Richard Ingrams13:24

Uh should have been part of the officer class. We were all told at school that we were the leaders of the future, and it was assumed that when you did national service you would have a sort of tricky two months at the beginning where you did basic training, but then you would be made an officer. You'd be mixing with your old friends and have a good time.

Richard Ingrams13:40

And it didn't work out like that at all.

Richard Ingrams13:43

I failed this original interview.

Richard Ingrams13:46

which was thought to be just a pure formality. Nobody failed the interview.

Richard Ingrams13:51

I don't think I've met anyone else who failed it.

Presenter13:53

And what did you do? I mean, what did you do to Thale?

Richard Ingrams13:56

Well

Richard Ingrams13:57

I was flippant, as I often am. I remember they said to me,'Do you mean to shows me a school?' He said,'Do you play soccer for your school'? and I said,'N no, sir' he said,'Well, it's a soccer school, isn't it? What did you play'? he said. And I said,'I played the cello' and uh that didn't go down at all well.

Presenter14:13

You ended up probably having a much more interesting job, which was you helped illiterate soldiers to read and write, and you came into contact with all sorts of

Richard Ingrams14:19

Then

Presenter14:21

Young men that you wouldn't otherwise have met.

Richard Ingrams14:23

Yes, I was very lucky in that way that I was posted to the Educational Corps in the end.

Richard Ingrams14:28

But even then I ran into trouble with the authorities'cause I was sent out to Korea.

Richard Ingrams14:33

And I remember having this chap who was very, very balsy.

Richard Ingrams14:37

and refused to do anything. And in the end I said to him,

Richard Ingrams14:40

Well, just write down what you think of the army.

Richard Ingrams14:43

And he seized a pen and began to write ferociously. And of course it was all four letter words in everything.

Richard Ingrams14:48

And this got back to his commanding officer when I was put on a charge.

Richard Ingrams14:53

And I thought it was my greatest educational achievement was actually getting this man to write something. I thought it was a great triumph.

Presenter15:00

I wonder about you and authority because you did come from a terribly proper background, and yet it would seem that even from a very early age, for example, you know, saying I played piano, sir, you know, you you very deliberately wanted to to kick against people and sort of not

Richard Ingrams15:08

Anno

Richard Ingrams15:09

You know, you

Presenter15:15

Follow their version of how things should be

Presenter15:18

Where did it come from?

Richard Ingrams15:19

Well, it's very it's very hard to explain, but I think the being in the army had a lot to do with it.

Richard Ingrams15:24

And I think uh being in the ranks in the army made you aware very much of the differences in society and particularly the way the establishment, as it was called then, sort of operated.

Presenter15:37

Willie Ruston didn't go to university. You you did go to Oxford. It was there that you met Paul Foote. Yes.

Richard Ingrams15:39

Did go to

Richard Ingrams15:42

It was another of these v these chance meetings in my life which have made a fantastic difference.

Richard Ingrams15:48

and again we kind of teamed up together.

Richard Ingrams15:51

Rather like Willie and I had done. And we we did magazines and

Presenter15:55

What do they call it?

Richard Ingrams15:56

But one was called Parsons Pleasure. Later on there was a magazine called Mesopotamia.

Richard Ingrams16:01

which was in a way a kind of forerunner to Private Eye.

Presenter16:05

And what about girls?

Richard Ingrams16:06

Well, that was the greatest you see, I I I've been to an all boys' school and three brothers. I had hardly any experience with the opposite sex at all.

Richard Ingrams16:14

I mean, I remember Ken Loach saying that it was a kind of delirium. It was amazing, the the freedom and the fun and everything, and to be able to do what you liked and have your own room and everything. It was just wonderful. Tell me about your next piece of music then.

Richard Ingrams16:27

This is my link with the old country being on the desert island. It's The March from the Battle of Britain by William Walton.

Presenter17:35

Part of the march from William Walton's Battle of Britain Sweet, played by the Academy of Saint Martin in the Fields, conducted by Sir Neville Mariner. So after Oxford then, Richard Ingrams, you didn't go and start a magazine, you started a theatre company.

Richard Ingrams17:48

Well, I did. I started a theatre company with a friend of mine who'd been at Oxford, John Duncan.

Richard Ingrams17:54

We formed a small company and we went round schools doing

Richard Ingrams17:57

sort of theatrical anthology. John was a very good director.

Presenter18:00

So were you I mean, you were interested in performing yourself?

Richard Ingrams18:03

Yes, we'd done a lot of that at Oxford. I mean, the sort of magazine world and the theatre world was mixed up.

Presenter18:09

I imagine it took a little bit of cash at least to start up a theatre company. Where did the cash come from?

Richard Ingrams18:14

Well, I'd inherited some cash from my

Richard Ingrams18:16

Great-grandfather, and um I blew it all on this project.

Richard Ingrams18:22

We lost it all. Did you? Yeah.

Presenter18:25

Would you mind?

Richard Ingrams18:25

Uh

Presenter18:25

Um

Presenter18:27

Not all that much. And so the theatre company sort of petered out for lack of funds. And and you had friends who were beginning this magazine was was it even called Private Iron?

Richard Ingrams18:36

It was. There was a lot of difficulty finding the right name for it. But there were people I'd been.

Richard Ingrams18:42

at Oxford with, who'd done magazines, Peter Osborne particularly, now a very successful book publisher he was the sort of business brains behind it, and Chris Booker, who was another Shrewsbury friend, he came in on it.

Richard Ingrams18:56

Classic case of the old boy network. And did it start with a purpose?

Richard Ingrams19:01

No, not at all. I think there's this kind of feeling amongst us that we've been having a lot of fun at at Oxford. And it'd be nice to go on.

Richard Ingrams19:09

having fun l in later life.

Richard Ingrams19:12

Now it seems an extraordinarily arrogant thing to think that we could.

Richard Ingrams19:16

Start a magazine just like that.

Richard Ingrams19:18

But

Richard Ingrams19:20

I think uh there was a feeling that if you were young maybe you could start something new.

Presenter19:25

And how did you manage to run the magazine? Because I mean you had apart from r writing for the the school magazines and the university magazines you didn't really have any experience to speak of. No.

Richard Ingrams19:34

No, and the extraordinary thing was that very soon afterwards we had things like the perfume affair happening.

Presenter19:40

How did you deal with that at the time?

Richard Ingrams19:41

Well, I was very much helped by

Richard Ingrams19:43

The advice of Claude Coburn, who is a veteran journalist who we brought in to do a guest issue.

Richard Ingrams19:49

And he sort of changed the field of private eye to a certain extent by starting sort of serious reporting in the magazine.

Richard Ingrams19:58

So it became more of a kind of two-edged sword private eyes.

Richard Ingrams20:02

Part of it was jokes and satire, but there was then there was another sort of

Richard Ingrams20:07

serious reporting side which developed.

Presenter20:10

And around about that time you also met the woman you were to marry, Mary Morgan. How did you meet?

Richard Ingrams20:15

Actually I know Mary for quite a long time because she was a family friend. Her mother had been one of my mother's paying guests when mother was short of money. She then worked with our theatre company.

Richard Ingrams20:28

And also with private eye.

Richard Ingrams20:31

So there was a long um

Richard Ingrams20:34

Well, it wasn't exactly courtship.

Presenter20:36

What do you mean it wasn't exactly a coach?

Richard Ingrams20:37

Well, um, she was a kind of family friend and we stumbled into a relationship, if you like. Tell me about your next piece of music then.

Richard Ingrams20:45

But this is just to remind me really of the sixties and the years of satire.

Richard Ingrams20:50

I think the funniest thing that came out of those years was almost certainly the T V show not only but also with Peter Cook and Dudley Moore.

Speaker 320:59

Goodbye, goodbye, you will leave in your skilled art. Goodbye.

Speaker 321:06

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 321:07

Total top, bottle the top.

Presenter21:24

Peter Cook and Dudley Moore and Goodbye. You were-I don't want-I hate the word chortling, but you were sort of having a good old laugh all the way through that. And saying.

Presenter21:32

You were sure that Peter Cook was was improvising all that stuff?

Richard Ingrams21:35

Well, he had that feel a lot of the Peter's things were improvised. It was the kind of thing he used to come up with in sitting in the pub. The the awful thing is that, um, like with a lot of very funny people, you you fall about laughing and then afterwards

Richard Ingrams21:48

When people say, Well, what were the jokes? Well you can't remember anything about

Presenter21:52

I I'm wondering about the atmosphere generally that surrounded how Private Eye was made. I mean, I have a, I suppose, a romantic notion that there you all were sitting in these rather grotty pubs in Soho and then wandering up to the rather grotty office and then somehow managing to rattle off a magazine every couple of weeks. Is that about right or was it far more industrial?

Richard Ingrams22:09

Well it was it was very like that in the early days, yes. And it was a very boozy place too, um, particularly when Peter was around.

Presenter22:18

But you were told to give up the booze, weren't you?

Richard Ingrams22:19

Well, I was, yes. I got to feeling very ill actually, and I was convinced that I was dying.

Richard Ingrams22:26

And the doctor said my liver was several sizes too big and I should give up drink.

Richard Ingrams22:30

Did you find that easy? I did actually, partly because of this sort of semi-death sentence that had been passed. Yeah.

Presenter22:37

And that was

Presenter22:38

That was sort of sixty-seven. That was towards the end of the the sixties. We're kind of jumping ahead a bit because I want as we mentioned before, goodbye, you you got married and you

Richard Ingrams22:43

Is that what

Presenter22:48

You moved to the country. Was that was that a deliberate choice to separate your your working life and your family life?

Richard Ingrams22:53

It was partly, yes, to get away from

Presenter22:56

Yeah.

Richard Ingrams22:56

The

Presenter22:57

Yeah.

Richard Ingrams22:57

Yeah.

Presenter22:57

And what about the children? You had a son and uh then a daughter, Mar Margaret, who who you called uh Jubby was her her name, her family name. And did you spend much time with the children, or were you on the train commuting, reading the papers or in the books?

Richard Ingrams23:11

Well I did. The way Private Eye developed, because it was a fortnightly magazine, it became a kind of alternate week sort of job and it's remained like that too, and it's partly the reason why it's lasted so long, I think, because

Richard Ingrams23:23

not just the editor, but the people working on it, were able to go away and do something else.

Presenter23:28

So you spent quite a lot of time with your family?

Richard Ingrams23:30

I did, yes.

Presenter23:31

And your second son Arthur was born he was born severely disabled.

Presenter23:36

That can put a tremendous strain, of course, on a family. How difficult was that?

Richard Ingrams23:41

The worst thing about it is w if you have a child, a normal child, half the fun of it is seeing it develop start to walk and crawl and talk and in Arthur's case none of that happened, you see, and it takes quite a long time because doctors uh tell you, Oh, you know, he's going to he's going to be all right. They they try to.

Richard Ingrams24:01

Give you some hope.

Richard Ingrams24:03

And then it slowly dawns on you that actually it isn't gonna

Richard Ingrams24:06

It isn't going to be like that.

Richard Ingrams24:08

Uh

Presenter24:08

He died when he was seven, and I'm wondering.

Presenter24:11

what sort of effect it had on his brother and sister as well. I mean, that must have had a profound effect upon them.

Richard Ingrams24:16

Well, i it did in a way, but for a lot of the time he was uh in hospital and so when he was a bit older he I don't think they saw too much of him. But it it did impose a tremendous strain on everybody because it's a bit like being an addict in a way. It's uh only people who have that experience.

Richard Ingrams24:37

know what what it's like.

Richard Ingrams24:39

To deal with a thing like

Presenter24:40

You bring up being an addict, y your your daughter.

Presenter24:44

who who did marry and have a family and three children.

Presenter24:47

had a very serious addiction and drug addiction throughout her life that ended up

Presenter24:51

Killing her.

Richard Ingrams24:51

And it wasn't true that she she had that trouble all her life. It was something that came on

Richard Ingrams24:56

When she was quite old.

Richard Ingrams24:58

She was a lovely person, full of uh happiness and uh laughter and

Richard Ingrams25:04

Actually, sharing with me her lot of tastes like well, like all this music, she loved all that.

Richard Ingrams25:11

And the same kind of jokes and all that sort of thing.

Richard Ingrams25:14

And of course the awful thing about drugs is that the person

Richard Ingrams25:19

Becomes a a a stranger really, and also you.

Richard Ingrams25:24

have this feeling of helplessness that you can't

Richard Ingrams25:27

You can't really do anything to help them or get them to change. It's

Richard Ingrams25:31

you know, it's like people say, they have to want to

Richard Ingrams25:33

Today

Richard Ingrams25:35

Let's take a break for your next piece of music then.

Richard Ingrams25:37

Well, Mozart is known to have therapeutic properties. And uh at certain low points in my life I find myself listening to Mozart's chamber music particularly, and this is part of one of his string quintets.

Speaker 426:39

Um

Presenter26:51

Part of the adagio from Mozart's string quintet in G minor, played by the Heutling string quartet.

Presenter26:57

Private Eye, of course, Richard Ingram's wasn't just about the humour. It was about exposing corruption, hypocrisy, the questionable foibles of people in positions of power.

Presenter27:08

When newspapers didn't do that significantly. I mean, where did you find the editorial chutzpah to do that?

Richard Ingrams27:16

Well, it was something that uh crept up on us in a way, but I associate it very much with Paul Foote, who joined the magazine in sixty eight, I think, and was with it at I mean, he kept leaving and then coming back. It was his spiritual home in a way, probably and it because it gave him the freedom to

Richard Ingrams27:33

To write what he wanted.

Richard Ingrams27:35

Uh

Presenter27:35

You do talk a lot of the time, when you're talking about private eye, about other people's contributions. You you don't seem very comfortable with acknowledging your own.

Richard Ingrams27:43

Well, I mean, I think that the editor is simply a kind of conduit for other people's talents. I've tended with people like Paul and Auburn Raugh and people like that to give them their say and and just let them write whatever they want. I mean maybe I was too lax in that way. How how many sort of libel suits were filed against you? Can you remember? I can't remember. It's it'd be terrible to have to count them all up.

Presenter28:03

You remember?

Richard Ingrams28:07

A lot. A lot, yes.

Presenter28:09

You could say a lot. And then there was James Goldsmith, who wanted to do you for criminal libel, which is quite a different thing in terms of the seriousness as the courts view it.

Richard Ingrams28:18

Yes, it was something that was used in the old days, in the nineteenth century particularly, to imprison journalists who made trouble for the government. Can you remember what it was you wrote that particularly got us goat?

Richard Ingrams28:29

I don't think it particularly got his goat, but he used it as as a means of sparking off the criminal law, was the s was the suggestion that he had played some part in helping Lord Lucan escape after the famous murder in nineteen seventy four.

Richard Ingrams28:46

And that was one of those unfortunate mistakes that creep into an article, because it wasn't the main point of the article really.

Richard Ingrams28:53

It was enough for him to suggest that we had accused him of some kind of criminal offence.

Presenter28:58

And in the end he withdrew the action at all.

Richard Ingrams28:59

It all came to nothing.

Richard Ingrams29:01

He did. Uh it was partly because he decided uh that he wanted to own newspapers. And he discovered that it didn't go down well with journalists, the th the idea that he was trying to have another journalist, however disreputable, put in prison. So he wanted out, and then he agreed to a very run-of-the-mill kind of settlement, which let us off the hook.

Richard Ingrams29:22

B

Presenter29:22

Let's take a break. Tell me about your next piece of music.

Richard Ingrams29:24

If I had my way, I'd probably choose all music by Bach to go on this programme. I remember Pablo Casal saying Bach is my best friend, and that's how I've always felt about him, and I've never been bored by any of his music.

Presenter30:40

The beginning of the Gloria from Bach's mass in B minor played by the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Ogain Jochum.

Presenter30:48

There was a lot of tittle tattle about people's private lives in private eye. Not so much now that Ian Hislop's in charge. And of course that meant that your own life was then covered in the press in its various ups and downs, your private life. Did did you mind that?

Richard Ingrams30:53

But I not so much

Richard Ingrams31:04

Well, it was partly when I ceased to be the editor of Private Eye, I was suddenly aware that I was very vulnerable, because I think people refrained when I said long ah, I was the editor.

Presenter31:11

Ah.

Richard Ingrams31:14

They refrained from saying anything.

Richard Ingrams31:16

But immediately I stepped down.

Richard Ingrams31:19

I became a target for attack.

Presenter31:21

You had a long marriage, a thirty year marriage, and and it broke down, and it was detailed in the press.

Richard Ingrams31:26

Breath.

Presenter31:27

Difficult to deal with?

Richard Ingrams31:29

It was, but I you know, I think what people need to remember who've had that experience is how ephemeral uh publicity of that kind is and how quickly

Richard Ingrams31:38

People forget what they've read in the

Richard Ingrams31:41

paper even by the next day.

Presenter31:43

Your long-term partner now I mean spectacularly for the press is twenty-eight years younger than you. That's something for them to get their teeth into.

Richard Ingrams31:50

Yes. What we call an age gap relationship.

Presenter31:54

How do you find an age gap relationship?'Cause you also have a young son who's ten.

Richard Ingrams31:57

Yes, yes.

Richard Ingrams31:59

Well we ha it's it's quite a strange household because there's an old man of seventy, a forty year old woman and a ten year old boy. But uh actually we seem to get along quite well and it's been great actually having a a son, uh even if it's not my son uh in my old age, because it helps to keep me young. I spend a lot of time trying not to watch Top Gear, which is what Louis likes watching all the time.

Presenter32:24

And what about you've spoken very warmly about the importance of all these people that surrounded you throughout your career, people like Willie Rushton and Peter Cook, John Wells, Urban Waugh. None of them, of course, around any more.

Presenter32:37

Two.

Richard Ingrams32:37

Missed the I miss them very, very much actually, particularly Paul Foot and Bron Wall too and

Richard Ingrams32:44

No, all of them, because I think I sort of relied on them for support, but also for a sort of kind of sounding board for my own journalism.

Richard Ingrams32:52

I valued their take on what was going on very much, and I don't have that really any more.

Presenter32:59

Are you good at being on your own? You're going to be on your own, on the island? Uh

Richard Ingrams33:02

Very bad had been on my own. What

Richard Ingrams33:05

I get very, very restless and uh unable to kind of settle down and do anything.

Presenter33:10

So this is going to be a

Richard Ingrams33:12

Claire.

Presenter33:12

Something of a nightmare.

Richard Ingrams33:13

It is. It is a nightmare, yes. I think I'm going to end up rather like Ben Gunn, the man in Treasure Island.

Richard Ingrams33:20

with a long beard and completely round the bin.

Presenter33:25

Tell me about your final choice, then.

Richard Ingrams33:27

Well, this is romantic music by

Richard Ingrams33:30

The most romantic composer I think Schumann, whose piano music I particularly like playing now.

Speaker 433:37

Amid wished and dense on the grave.

Speaker 433:57

Is First an unspreiter nie brule?

Speaker 434:18

This first launch break in Nebraska.

Speaker 434:26

Oh me

Speaker 434:28

Why did she

Speaker 434:30

But

Presenter34:34

Song number twelve from Schumann's Diech de Liebe, sung by Peter Schreier, accompanied by Christoph Eschenbach. So I will, of course, give you the Bible and the complete works of Shakspere, Richard. What other book would you like to take?

Richard Ingrams34:47

Well, I'm going to take a book called

Richard Ingrams34:50

Teach yourself piano tuning.

Richard Ingrams34:52

But that relates to my luxury.

Presenter34:54

I think I might know what it is, then.

Richard Ingrams34:56

What is your life?

Richard Ingrams34:59

It's a grand piano, and um I shall need that book.

Presenter35:03

In order to survive.

Richard Ingrams35:05

Yeah.

Presenter35:05

And if I was to force you to save one of those disks from the incoming tide, which one would it be?

Richard Ingrams35:10

Well, it would be um spark, I think, because as I said, uh you don't get

Presenter35:16

Richard Ingrams, thank you very much for letting us view your desert island discs. Great pleasure.

Presenter35:27

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