Janet Street-Porter

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 Janet Street Porter. She pioneered the highly stylized, sassy broadcasting that revolutionized youth television and went on to influence a generation of programme makers, winning awards and new audiences along the way.

Presenter0:41

Born, she says, with frilly teeth, big glasses, and beige hair, she also came with a healthy measure of ambition, determination, and creativity.

Presenter0:50

Yet although she's held down a fistful of highly influential media jobs and commanded budgets of tens of millions of pounds, she has often been criticised.

Presenter0:59

Derided for her abrasive manner, for throwing tantrums, and for an apparent lack of seriousness, she has described herself as the most hard-boiled, opinionated, aggressive woman in Britain, but adds, I have long learned how to tailor my behaviour and speech for the appropriate audience. I am wondering which version we're going to get to day. Don't worry.

Presenter1:22

I'm feeling quite mellow today. I mean, the implication in that, in the idea that you tailor yourself, is that you always know exactly what you're doing, that when you fly off the handle.

Presenter1:33

You're absolutely intent upon flying off the handle.

Janet Street-Porter1:37

Yes, I think when I'm on television now, television at the moment thrives on confrontation, and that's what people want to see. Of course, I'm not like I am on television at home or just going around on a day to day basis.

Presenter1:51

What about people's opinion of you? You're one of the. There are very few people who elicit such strong opinions. Firstly, I would say.

Presenter1:57

Everybody knows who you are, and, secondly, everybody has an opinion on you.

Janet Street-Porter2:02

Yeah, it doesn't bother me now, but I think that it did bother me in the seventies and it did bother me in the eighties when I was doing really good work on television and I felt that it didn't get the recognition at the time. And I felt it was a class thing too. I've got to be honest with you. I have made television that's changed the way that television looks today and I'm really proud of that. And it was a team effort and all the people that did that with me have all gone on to be incredibly successful. I mean they are the media establishment today. So we did change things. But the snobbery of television at the time I went into it, I can't begin to tell you, especially places like the BBC, where I went once for a job and the man who was channel controller at the time said to me I had to be retrained in the BBC way of doing things. I think what he meant was, you know, I was common and I wasn't going to fit in.

Janet Street-Porter2:58

Um so I do think that I had to overcome quite a lot of prejudice.

Presenter3:03

But you you didn't change the voice and you didn't change the short for all of them.

Janet Street-Porter3:06

No, life's too short for all of that. I've got no time for all of that. It's just complete rubbish. No, I've always been the way I'm comfortable being.

Janet Street-Porter3:15

When I went into the media, people talk about role models. I didn't have any bloody role models, there weren't any.

Janet Street-Porter3:22

I was a bit adrift.

Janet Street-Porter3:25

But I kind of got through that.

Presenter3:28

Uh

Janet Street-Porter3:28

Tell me about your first choice today then. Well, my first uh choice is a Baroque opera uh by Rameau Les Boriard. Now

Janet Street-Porter3:36

I'm a big opera fan. While I was at the BBC, I produced an opera and I won the Prix Italia for it. And my love of opera started as a small child because my godmother had worked at Saddler's Wells. And my mother and my godmother used to take me to the opera in the ballet when I was really, really small. And I remember sitting on the counter of the bar at Covent Garden when I was about eight, and they get a pile of cushions for me to sit on at the matinees. So I never regarded opera as an elitist thing. It was something that I just grew up with.

Presenter5:09

Borre in a Rage from Rameau's Les Boriade. And you mentioned a couple of your big successes, one of them being the the opera that won the Pre Italia. What about the things that haven't gone so well? I'm thinking obviously and automatically of live T V. You spent eight months there.

Presenter5:23

And it it became well known for the topless darts in the news by the way.

Janet Street-Porter5:27

Oh well that was after I left. Yeah.

Presenter5:28

But how are you when things don't go well?

Janet Street-Porter5:30

I'm very disciplined. I'm very, very disciplined.

Presenter5:32

Right.

Janet Street-Porter5:34

You know, Live TV was one of those things where I left the BBC, I had a fabulous job at the BBC and I went to Live TV to set up a digital channel and I built these really groundbreaking studios at Canary Wharf, I took on all this staff and yet the management structure of the holding company was problematic and when it looked like you know it was going to go the way that I wasn't comfortable with editorially, I got out.

Janet Street-Porter6:01

You know, I've got a great sense of getting out and moving on. I mean, I've done it with my marriages, and I've certainly done it with my jobs.

Presenter6:08

You are, it strikes me, a genuine toughy. I mean, you're not somebody to buckle under pressure. Indeed, we've seen you on television with that. We've seen you in the vibration.

Janet Street-Porter6:15

You won't see me weeping in the office. No.

Presenter6:17

No, no, but we but we've seen you on. I'm thinking, now if I'm a celebrity, get me out if you want to.

Janet Street-Porter6:21

Oh no, I like doing programmes like that. I mean the thing is I am I am pretty tough. I'm a pragmatist though. In any situation I'll work out how to get the best out of it. I'm not a sniveler.

Presenter6:32

Did you deliberately want people to see w I mean, I would describe as a sort of nurturing, motherly side of you that I certainly didn't know existed. You know, the one who was sort of cleaning out the lavs and making almost every food.

Janet Street-Porter6:43

I did all the cooking, yeah, I like doing the cooking.

Janet Street-Porter6:46

Well, I the reason why I did the program was because

Janet Street-Porter6:51

I think before that

Janet Street-Porter6:53

I was on programmes like Question Time, I was on documentaries, people had one view of me.

Janet Street-Porter6:59

But I thought I'm not going to be one of those people that just sneer about reality television. I want to get right into the centre of it and see what it's actually like from the inside. And, you know, there were things about it that drove me completely mad: the endless witchering, you know, the drivel that people talk for hours on end. That particularly gave Paul Burrell a hard time. Princess Diana's former button. His attitude.

Presenter7:18

Oh Princess Diana's former button

Janet Street-Porter7:21

I can't really stand obsequious.

Presenter7:23

You wrote afterwards of the experience that you were touched at how much people liked you. Speaking there of the the the audience.

Janet Street-Porter7:32

Yeah, I had tremendous reaction. When I came back to Britain after doing the programme, women would come up to me in the street and just thank me for being on it and not being a kind of bimbo in a bikini. Did you like that they liked you? I'm quite embarrassed about it. I'm quite uncomfortable. But I you're uncomfortable being liked.

Presenter7:49

You run back.

Janet Street-Porter7:52

by the public at large. I'm quite a private person and I've got a vo a quite a close circle of friends. You know, I'm not going to be going into a room and meeting a lot of people I don't know. So suddenly through T V I've met millions of people, eight million people. So it was an extraordinary feeling. You just sounded shy there.

Janet Street-Porter8:14

Yeah, I am a bit shy and I can't go into a room by myself, actually. I do find it quite hard to go anywhere and be kind of exposed.

Presenter8:24

I think of you as a woman who could walk into any room with a glass of well, maybe champagne, maybe something else in her hand, in a very distinctive outfit, and make conversation with anyone. I could walk into the room. This

Janet Street-Porter8:36

Talking to people I'm not interested in.

Presenter8:37

Uh

Janet Street-Porter8:39

Just like the entrance curtains, just headline.

Presenter8:40

We'll just headline that.

Janet Street-Porter8:43

That's

Presenter8:43

Contradiction. Let's take a break for ch

Janet Street-Porter8:46

Tact number two, what have you chosen? I've chosen this track by Massive Attack called Unfinished Sympathy. It just sums up the very, very best of British music of the early nineties. The minute I heard it, it just seemed as good as a classical symphony. It's absolutely heroic.

Speaker 49:09

And I've been mad in love before

Speaker 49:13

Be with you

Speaker 49:22

I stay without a night

Speaker 49:25

You're the person that I can't forget

Speaker 49:29

And now I've got to know my

Presenter9:35

Massive attack and unfinished sympathy. Let's go back then, Janet Streetporter, to the early days. You grew up in Fulham with uh a younger sister and your parents. Tell me about your day to day life.

Janet Street-Porter9:46

Yeah.

Janet Street-Porter9:46

Well we lived in half a terraced house off the Parsons Green Lane. We were pretty hard up. My father was an electrician and my mother, well one my first memories are she's working as a school dinner lady and my parents seemed to have a relationship which looking back on it was a bit weird. My mother was Welsh and her sister came to live next door to us, my auntie Vi who I'm still very great friends with and I was obviously a horrible little snob because I used to imagine that they picked up the wrong baby in the nursing home, that the right parents would come and get me. I used to pray for some nice parents to come and get me.

Presenter10:27

What sort of parents did you want? What was the fantasy?

Janet Street-Porter10:30

Oh, I wanted nice middle class parents who lived in Epsom, you know, out there in green suburbia and um read The Guardian and listened to radio for I just found my parents quite abrasive. They also didn't really get on that well.

Presenter10:44

We we do want to please our parents even if we don't like our parents though.

Janet Street-Porter10:49

Yes, I probably did want to please my parents, but there were so many rules in our house. My father was a real stickler for etiquette. My mother had to wear a clean apron for meals.

Janet Street-Porter11:00

And we were not allowed to leave the table till we'd finished our meal. And I remember my sister used to fill her pockets with the bits of the dinner that she couldn't eat.

Janet Street-Porter11:10

Yeah, loads and loads of rules. My father used to bark them out. He had a a mouth like a letterbox. He used to just issue orders. You said you were probably a frightful

Presenter11:17

Little snob. Were I mean, were you a difficult child? Were you unfortunately?

Janet Street-Porter11:21

I don't think you know whether you're difficult or not, but I was very opinionated. There was a period between primary school and becoming the really rebellious teenager where I was, you know, very self-improving. I kept lists of all the books I read. And then as I went through my teenage years, I kept lists of every single film I'd seen, every book I'd read. We didn't have a television until I was fourteen.

Janet Street-Porter11:44

So, um, we have to play cards. I do remember.

Presenter11:48

Well you can't

Janet Street-Porter11:49

Am I competitive? I remember having to play cards with my fat my father was just about as competitive as I am. I'm sure I got it all from him. My sister and I would be sitting around the table playing this card game for hours on end because that's what we did. And you were smart at school. You were an achiever at school? Oh yeah, well I was a bit of a swatch by the time I got to secondary school.

Janet Street-Porter12:13

I did get into grammar school and when I got there I did really enjoy school. I've got to be honest. I mean I it appealed to me. There's more things to do, more it was it appealed to competitive nature, I think.

Presenter12:25

And the self-improved

Janet Street-Porter12:26

Do you think I mean, it's. Oh, it was going rampant by then. I mean, I was.

Presenter12:27

Oh, it's got

Presenter12:29

Yeah.

Janet Street-Porter12:30

I was going to exhibitions, I was going to museums, I was, you know, a complete self-improver.

Presenter12:36

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

Janet Street-Porter12:39

Well my next record I don't even really like very much, but I'm on this desert island and I've got to choose a record that sums up my childhood. So I've chosen a George Thornby track. My parents loved this era of, you know, music hall and radio stars and I can't listen to two bars of this record without remembering everything in Elmstone Road, Fulham.

Speaker 113:03

Now I go cleaning windows to earn an honest bow.

Speaker 113:07

For a nosy parker, it's an interesting job. Now it's a job that just suits me. A window cleaner you would be if you can see what I can see. When I'm cleaning windows, honeymooning couples too. You should see them bill and coo. You'd be surprised at things they do. When I'm cleaning...

Presenter13:29

George Formby and the window cleaner. I've never had a castaway who's rolled their eyes through one of their choices before.

Janet Street-Porter13:35

Ten seconds of it and I'm cringing. I can imagine my mother, you know, it's j all coming back.

Presenter13:42

Unusually you've done what most women never do, which is openly criticise your mother in public. Indeed, you've done it for money. You had a one woman show where you got up on stage every night.

Presenter13:53

It would be fair to say, and ripped your mother to bits.

Janet Street-Porter13:56

Yeah, I couldn't obviously I only did it when she was dead. I mean, I know that sounds a bit of a coward. And it did cause distress to her sister.

Presenter14:05

Yes, I was surprised to hear you say a moment ago that you get on very well with your auntie Vi.

Janet Street-Porter14:09

Yeah, I do. I do now. And, you know, I love my Auntie Vi very much. But I had a very, very complicated relationship with my mother that I felt that I had to work through and get out of my system. She was proud of me, and yet she loathed me. She was jealous of me. She was small-minded. She criticised me for being married more than once. And then I found her background so extraordinary. When I delved into my own mother's past, I found that he was the woman who was married to one man who left him for my father and wasn't married when she had me.

Janet Street-Porter14:46

And I mean the words pot and kettle do come to mind. How do you know she loathed you?

Janet Street-Porter14:52

I don't think she loathed me. I think she I j I just irritated the hell out of her. I think loathing was probably the wrong word for me to use.

Presenter15:00

Were you too similar to her?

Janet Street-Porter15:03

Oh, the one thing I don't like doing is looking in the mirror and seeing elements of higher.

Janet Street-Porter15:09

Um

Janet Street-Porter15:11

She was always completely miserable and upset about her lot in life, and yet what was there to be miserable about? And I suppose the one lesson it taught me is, I am not going to grow old and be like that. I'm not going to be an old misery. I'm not going to be sitting at home moping. I'm not going to whinge about my lot in life. You know, I am not going to be like that.

Presenter15:35

You did whinge a bit when you were fourteen because your parents uprooted you from the place that you loved.

Janet Street-Porter15:39

That was shocking. I was sitting at the dinner table one night.

Presenter15:41

I was

Janet Street-Porter15:43

in Fulham. And my father just announced we're moving to Perivale. The next week. The next week And it was troop movement orders, you know pack your bags, we're going next Tuesday. What was life in Perivale like?

Presenter15:51

Cannot

Janet Street-Porter15:55

Well, I loved growing up in Fulham, and then suddenly I was going to be uprooted to the very end of the central line. It might as well have been Mars. And the other thing was, I still went to school in Fulham, so I spent an hour each way on the underground every day.

Presenter16:11

So what did you do to try to make your life more bearable apart from I imagine

Janet Street-Porter16:15

Well, I did my homework on the train, obviously. Otherwise I would never have gone out in the evening. And did you go out a lot? Yeah, by the time I was fifteen I was um going I was a mod. Uh Saturday nights I'd go to St Mary's Ballroom in Putney and I would generally stay over with my friend from school in Putney.

Presenter16:34

How did you look? What were you wearing?

Janet Street-Porter16:36

We had a very rigid uniform, uh long narrow skirts, very clumpy shoes uh that you could only get from one or two shops. And I used to spray my hair silver and wear false eyelashes. My mother's looks all completely appalling.

Presenter16:49

So tell me then about your next track.

Janet Street-Porter16:51

Well, I've chosen a piece by the modern jazz quartet called Cortage. Now, from 14 to 18, I was three nights a week in clubs and doing loads of exams at school as well, spending an inordinate amount of time on public transport. But music was a really big part of my life. The MJQ are so of that period of the end of the fifties and the early sixties. They were just so cool.

Speaker 418:10

Yeah.

Presenter18:16

Modern jazz quartet and quartege and memories there, Janet Streetwater, of being around about fourteen. You say and go to Hammersmith to see them.

Janet Street-Porter18:22

Uh a bit older, I think fifteen.

Presenter18:25

And the way you looked, you th that was very evocative, the way you described yourself there. Were you were you confident about the way you looked then?

Janet Street-Porter18:32

I realise now I probably look pretty good, but at the time you're so insecure, aren't you? You're racked with anxiety because I was very tall, I was very thin, I had the big frilly teeth, but I just kept my mouth shut.

Janet Street-Porter18:47

Quite a lot. Um, I was smart.

Janet Street-Porter18:51

That's probably attractive.

Presenter18:53

There there are uh pictures in your books of you looking I mean, very striking and very, very moody. Were were you aware at that point? I mean, especially if you're tall, you do kind of

Presenter19:03

Have a power over people when you're tall. There is an intimidating quality to somebody who's tall, especially a young woman.

Janet Street-Porter19:10

Yeah, I mean I didn't have a lot of boyfriends. I met a a guy at one of these clubs that I got engaged to who is an ar architectural student. I think I probably was aware that I looked striking, but I didn't have a huge amount of confidence. I mean I was of that mixture that you are when you're a teenager.

Janet Street-Porter19:30

You sneer at so many things, but you're not really confident. It's so hard to explain it.

Presenter19:36

Uh

Janet Street-Porter19:36

Yeah.

Presenter19:36

You yourself studied architecture for a couple of years.

Janet Street-Porter19:39

Yeah, but before I went to architectural college I spent a year, my last year at school, photographing buildings, drawing them, making notes about them. I was also interested in things like um comic strips and stuff like that. So a lot of that informed my work later on in television. So, you know, when I came to do a series like Network Seven in nineteen eighty six, I did have a big mental library of images and books and stuff to draw on, you know. I'm not someone who's an intellectual, but I've a I've accumulated a lot of experiences and I've also sifted through and sucked out the bits that I need for what I'm doing.

Presenter20:21

Purposeful and self contained even as a teenager then.

Janet Street-Porter20:25

But yeah, I was very self contained. I mean

Janet Street-Porter20:28

I think I had not a lot of boyfriends. The ones I had didn't really own me. They knew me.

Presenter20:34

And you l you left the first serious boyfriend you had who, as you say, you were engaged to to to to go on and and quite quickly get married.

Janet Street-Porter20:42

Yeah, well, I met the man that I later married, my first husband, at the ICA at an exhibition in London, and I went with my fiance and Tim Street Pool just asked me out to dinner and I said, Oh, well, I've actually I'm engaged and he looked over and he said, Who is it? and I said, That's him over there and he said, Well,

Janet Street-Porter21:01

You know, I said, All right, I'll dump him.

Janet Street-Porter21:04

And that was it. And that was it. That was it. And your mother, not surprisingly, appalled at the situation. Yeah, she was appalled, but then I found out that's exactly the kind of thing she'd done in her time. So.

Speaker 121:05

That was sick.

Presenter21:10

Yeah, if you were

Janet Street-Porter21:16

It wasn't that bad.

Presenter21:17

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

Janet Street-Porter21:20

Well my next piece of music is Joan Sutherland singing part of the mad scene from Lucia de Lamamore. Now the reason I've chosen this is as a schoolgirl there were classical concerts for children if you were lucky enough to live in London. Obviously I'm a relentless hoarder and I've got all my diaries and notebooks and letters and everything, but I've got the programme for this con and the first concert I went to, whoever did the programming thought, oh, Joan Sutherland's in town, she can sing the mad song. So there was I sitting in the stools of the Royal Festival Hall and on came Joan Sutherland and sang the mad scene from Lucia

Janet Street-Porter21:59

And it was electrifying.

Speaker 422:16

Uh

Speaker 422:17

Here fantasma, here fantasy, the visible.

Speaker 422:34

Where did you go?

Presenter23:00

Joan Sutherland singing part of the second act of Donizetti's Lucia de Lamamour.

Presenter23:05

I noticed in the Daily Mail recently that there was a journalist, a columnist indeed, who put you on the list of fifty people who were deemed, I'm using his words now, to have wrecked Britain.

Janet Street-Porter23:16

Well yeah, the irony of that is that the Daily Mail have serialised all my books. I think it's quite an accolade to be considered one of the people that's wrecked Britain. I find it bizarre that a kind of uh televisual style that I pioneered in 1986 still permeates television today. I find it slightly depressing. I'm not thrilled about it. I wish someone else had come up with something else.

Presenter23:38

And we're talking about things just to remind people of things like the sort of ticker tape that goes along the way. Yeah, the information bar across the bottom of the screen.

Janet Street-Porter23:43

Yeah, the information bar across the bottom of the screen. Yeah, music over the back of boring bits and junk cut editing, running two things simultaneously, splitting screens. I mean I got a lot of ideas for all of that from people like William Burroughs' Cut Ups and also French New Wave films like Chris Marker's Legette and stuff like that. And I obviously brought all that.

Presenter23:48

But

Presenter24:06

By the time you got to making programmes, let's remind people you you made Network Seven was four, Channel four early days was Def two, there was the Rough Guides, Red Dwarf, the Fool Wax. How difficult

Janet Street-Porter24:12

Yeah, nineteen eighty six.

Speaker 124:13

Uh

Presenter24:20

Did you find it making I mean, I've I'm sure I've read you say it yourself that you are not particularly a team player. How difficult did you find it making those programmes when you you have to be part of a huge team in Tellers?

Janet Street-Porter24:30

Oh well, with rough guides, I wrote out the format, absolutely wrote out the handbook about how it had to be shot and gave it to the people to do it. I mean I wrote it and it was as simple as that. It was a style book and I was that controlling. But it did work really well because people kind of got it because before then he'd gone somewhere, he always had Judith Chalmers whitering on about, you know, the cheapest hotel or hours of sunshine. And I said, no, let's go to Senegal, let's go to Jamaica and let's see what the locals do. And it just made a completely different kind of travel programme.

Presenter25:04

So you are fine working in a team as long as you're at the head of the team telling everyone we're going in this direction.

Janet Street-Porter25:08

Yeah. I mean I always say there's two ways of doing things, my way and the wrong way.

Presenter25:13

When you left the BBC in the mid nineties there was, I think it's fair to say, a huge amount of coverage about the fact that you hadn't been given either the job as controller of BBC One or BBC Two.

Janet Street-Porter25:25

Oh, and I was never going to be controller of BBC One. I did want to be controller of BBC Two, but when they gave that to Michael Jackson, I thought, well, you know, what the hell?

Janet Street-Porter25:33

I did feel it was a bit of a Mains World, and I did feel it was still a bit of a club.

Presenter25:37

When you went to the Edinburgh Television Festival, you gave it's always called the very prestigious MacTaggart lecture, but it is. You criticised what you called the four N's in television. It was male-dominated, middle class, middle-aged and mediocre. Were you so?

Janet Street-Porter25:53

Oh, and the other M, too many of'em.

Presenter25:56

Um it seems very odd to me that you would stand up in front of all these people, many of whom would be in control of whether or not you had employment, after that speech, and tell them they were a bunch of duffers.

Presenter26:07

Did I care? I mean, no. Why did you not care? I mean, but you had to earn it.

Janet Street-Porter26:11

But you ought to earn it.

Janet Street-Porter26:15

It was reported around the world, that speech, everywhere from the Variety to the Hollywood Reporter.

Janet Street-Porter26:21

I was proud of saying that.

Janet Street-Porter26:23

And it was true for a very long time. I mean, let's be honest, we talk about progress for women, but progress for women is inching along at a snail pace. It's shocking.

Presenter26:34

What was it you think then that kept you out of a job like the BBC running BBC Two? Was it simply that you weren't the right sort, that you hadn't been to Oxbridge, that you didn't talk with a proper voice?

Janet Street-Porter26:46

I think that I wouldn't wouldn't have been a safe choice. People might have thought, Oh, she might fly off the handle. She's not diplomatic enough. And they might have been right. Well, they could have been right.

Janet Street-Porter26:57

I'm not losing any sleep over it. I don't look back over my career and think for one minute that there's any part of it that was a bit of a flop. I've had a great career and I'm going to have a great career. Now I'm a pensioner, I'm not going to retire.

Janet Street-Porter27:12

And spookily enough, I get more offers of work now than I probably did ten years ago.

Presenter27:18

Uh

Janet Street-Porter27:18

Tell me about your next

Presenter27:18

Six pieces of music there.

Janet Street-Porter27:19

Well, I've chosen Philip Glass's soundtrack to the cocktail film Beauty and the Beast. Beauty and the Beast is probably my favorite film of all time. Philip Glass takes the film and he wrote an operatic score that fits the movie.

Janet Street-Porter27:37

It's absolutely mind-blowing, so it adds another dimension to what is a classic piece of cinema.

Presenter28:10

Dinner with the Beast from Philip Glass's soundtrack to the Jean Cocteau film La Belle et la Bette.

Presenter28:16

I suddenly drew breath when you said I'm a pensioner, quickly there, because.

Speaker 428:18

See the

Presenter28:20

You're sitting opposite me in in a very short black mini skirt. You're wearing a very vivid tartan jacket with patches made out of bright red hearts. Your hair is its usual signature fabulous colour in the latest cuts. Have you made peace with being a pensioner?

Speaker 128:30

Yeah.

Janet Street-Porter28:36

I don't even think about it.

Presenter28:37

Uh

Janet Street-Porter28:38

I certainly don't feel like a pensioner, not in any way, shape, or form.

Janet Street-Porter28:42

I think first thing in the morning I'd probably look a bit rough, but

Janet Street-Porter28:46

Not a lot of people see that.

Presenter28:49

And this idea of not looking back, and and you were talking about your career and how rich and how much you've enjoyed it. You we we haven't even mentioned and we've come this far the fact that you were the editor of The Independent on Sunday. Are you I mean, I know you walk.

Presenter29:02

When you walk, you don't think about your life, you don't think about what's gone before.

Janet Street-Porter29:07

No, not really.

Presenter29:07

What are you d what are you thinking about when you walk?

Janet Street-Porter29:10

I geez.

Janet Street-Porter29:12

What I tend to do is I like walking in really bad weather, rainy, windy, miserable,'cause that way you don't see anyone and you're bi and I tend to just walk

Janet Street-Porter29:22

in a straight line.

Janet Street-Porter29:25

You're sitting here with your mouth. I'm looking at the shop. Do you walk alone?

Janet Street-Porter29:29

Mostly, yeah. I broke my ankle at the beginning of the summer. I was actually um hiking in Glencoe in Scotland and I climbed down off the mountain'cause I didn't want to call Mountain Rescue and make a big fuss about it and then I drove myself to hospital and then drove back home again when they set it.

Janet Street-Porter29:46

I'm tough.

Janet Street-Porter29:48

Uh

Presenter29:48

And hog Cool. You really are a genuine toughie. There are people who pretend to be tough, but when they're in a situation that requires proper toughness, they sort of fall to pieces. You're not one of those people.

Janet Street-Porter29:58

No, I'm not. When my sister was dying of cancer, I could have fallen to pieces, but I didn't.

Janet Street-Porter30:04

And I was so angry about it. And this person who is the closest person to you in the world is dying. And

Janet Street-Porter30:12

It it was extraordinary process that

Presenter30:14

There's nothing you can do. You'd had this spiky, difficult relationship as children, then. Wh when did you make peace with your sister? When did you start to get on with her?

Janet Street-Porter30:22

after my mother died.

Janet Street-Porter30:24

And, you know, my sister and I were very different. We didn't agree about most things. I don't think sisters do. But we accommodated each other and we could listen to each other.

Janet Street-Porter30:35

You know, when you say do you look back on things

Janet Street-Porter30:38

Obviously you look back and wish the conversations you could have had with people of not around any more. But you know what? When I'm on a walk sometimes I talk to them anyway,'cause if I believe in an afterlife so what's the problem, you can just have a chat.

Janet Street-Porter30:51

Tell me about your next piece of music. My next piece of music is The Pet Shop Boy. It's always on my mind and I met Neil and Chris first of all when I was producing a kids' show for ITV. We had this thing where we asked pop stars to come on the show and put brown paper bags over their heads and the kids had to guess who they were and they just not surprisingly refused to do it. I was in the gallery, you know, the controller and I went, so what's their problem? Why won't they do it?

Janet Street-Porter31:17

Anyway, eventually they came round to my house for dinner and from the minute they walked through the door you know, we just hit it off and I guess that was about 1986.

Speaker 431:29

Maybe I didn't treat you

Speaker 431:33

Why not good as I should?

Speaker 431:37

Maybe I don't love you

Speaker 431:41

Quite as optim as I could

Speaker 431:45

Little things I should have said and done.

Speaker 431:52

Yeah.

Presenter31:59

The Pet Shop Boys and you were always on my mind. I wonder, Janet Streetport, if there was ever a time in your life when you wanted to have kids, when you thought about being a mother?

Janet Street-Porter32:08

No, not really. I was married to somebody who had a son who I adored, but the little boy died of stomach cancer when he was eleven, and my husband was absolutely devastated by that. And if we were going to have children, that was the moment, and then there was no question after that, because if someone you love so much is taken from you, he couldn't even be in the room with a child for years after that. And I could understand that.

Presenter32:39

As you say, you've been married four times and you're not going there again, but you have been in a a long-term relationship for quite some time.

Janet Street-Porter32:45

I know that it's a bit of a world record for me. It's going to be 10 years at the end of this year. Yeah. And.

Presenter32:53

And ten years of happy monogamy?

Presenter32:55

I mean you didn't have a great track record before

Janet Street-Porter32:55

Another track.

Janet Street-Porter32:57

No, I didn't have a great track record. Actually, while Neil s Neil was singing that, I was thinking of all the men I could have said that to, and that'd be quite a cast list.

Janet Street-Porter33:08

You know, I'd as I was getting bored with one, I'd have the next one lined up.

Presenter33:11

I'm just running this one up the flagpole, but I can't imagine you are necessarily the easiest person to live with.

Janet Street-Porter33:16

I admit that,'cause I admit I'm not the easiest person. I live in a very minimalist house. I don't like mess.

Presenter33:18

Uh

Janet Street-Porter33:24

Yeah, they have a corner.

Janet Street-Porter33:27

But I don't like stuff on the walls that I haven't chosen, you know. Yeah, it is really hard because men come with droppings, don't they? The detritus of like a bloke. It's oh, you can't control every aspect of you have to let a bit go. I do sound really insane now, I realise that.

Presenter33:45

And the man that you've been with for for for ten years, d are there arguments or he just accepts that those are the ground rules for living with gentlemen?

Janet Street-Porter33:52

No, he's a very, very strong personality. I'd say it was pretty difficult living with him too. But we've managed. And also I think that we are not

Janet Street-Porter34:03

In each other's face the whole time. I need a bit of space.

Presenter34:07

You'll be good.

Janet Street-Porter34:08

Donald

Presenter34:08

Island, won't you?

Janet Street-Porter34:09

Uh

Presenter34:09

Yeah.

Janet Street-Porter34:09

I'd be pretty good on an island.

Janet Street-Porter34:12

I can look after myself pretty well. I'm not going to get too frightened by things.

Presenter34:19

Tell me about your final track, then.

Janet Street-Porter34:21

My final track is so sexy and I remember.

Janet Street-Porter34:26

Otis Redding the first time I heard him, and then I was lucky enough to go and see him live at Hammersmith Odeon as it was then, and all these women ran to the front of the stage and banged their handbags on the ground, and it was an orgasmic moment.

Janet Street-Porter34:41

And this record just is so sexy.

Speaker 434:47

Bye with the song I knew

Speaker 434:49

Way up there.

Speaker 434:52

I go with love most everywhere.

Speaker 434:56

I'll be the moon when the sun goes down.

Speaker 435:00

Just to let you know that I'm still around

Speaker 435:05

That's how I scroll down. Whoa.

Speaker 435:10

I scroll down.

Presenter35:15

Otis Reading, and that's how strong my love is. So, Janet, I'm going to give you the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare. You can take another book. What's it going to be?

Janet Street-Porter35:23

Uh I think I'm going to take Larousse gastronomique.

Presenter35:27

Uh

Janet Street-Porter35:27

That's a great book. It's got lots of descriptions of how to prepare all kinds of food. It's quite a technical book. Don't know where you're going to get.

Presenter35:36

Don't know where you're gonna get the clarified butter from, but I know

Janet Street-Porter35:38

No, but I'll make and I'll make do, I can make fat out of something else. What about your luxury?

Janet Street-Porter35:44

My luxury item I'm not allowed a buckler. Can I have a Swiss army knife?

Presenter35:48

Okay.

Janet Street-Porter35:50

Too practical. No, really. And not allowed a notebook?

Presenter35:53

Yeah, really.

Presenter35:56

Yes, certainly a notebook.

Janet Street-Porter35:57

I'd like a notebook then.

Presenter35:58

Okay.

Janet Street-Porter35:59

To write ideas down.

Presenter36:00

Okay, I'll give you some pens. And if you had to choose one of the eight tracks, which one track would you choose?

Janet Street-Porter36:06

Well that's really difficult. It's a toss up between Pet Shop Boys or Philip Glass. Yeah.

Presenter36:12

Uh

Janet Street-Porter36:12

And

Presenter36:12

Your choice is Petrovoice. Janet Streetporter, thank you very much for letting us hear your Desert Island discs.

Janet Street-Porter36:19

Thank you.

Presenter36:27

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