Vincent Cable MP

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 nine.

Presenter0:28

My castaway this week is Vince Cable. As the Liberal Democrats' Treasury spokesman, he's seen by many as the all-action superhero of the credit crunch, the I told you so man of British politics. He predicted the current financial meltdown years in advance and seems one of the few able to offer credible solutions. Rarer still in politics, he has spent a long time and a vivid existence outside the Westminster village.

Presenter0:54

Paying tribute, the party's current leader, sums up Vince Cable's attributes rather neatly. There are, says Nick Clegg, few men who have excelled as an economist, a comedian, and a ballroom dancer. Praise indeed, Vince Cable, and probably all the sweeter when it comes from a man who has the job that many people think you should have, leader of the Lib Dams.

Vincent Cable MP1:14

I'm delighted with his compliments. I think he's a very good leader, and I'm very happy being his deputy and speaking for us on economic policy, and that's where I expect to be till the next General Election.

Presenter1:24

Suitably diplomatic, we would expect nothing less.

Vincent Cable MP1:26

In glare it's it's an honest answer.

Presenter1:28

But interestingly, of course, at the next general election there's every chance that we'll see a hung Parliament. You are openly admired by leaders of both parties that you oppose, by Labour and the Tories.

Vincent Cable MP1:28

Yeah.

Presenter1:40

If you were to be offered the role of Chancellor, would you take it up?

Vincent Cable MP1:43

N not as an individual. I'm not moving away from the Liberal Democrats. I'm very happy with my party. I I hope the outcome of the election is that we would reform the government and I would hopefully be part of it. But I'm certainly not interested in being prized away to work for one of the other parties. No, no, no, that will be a good idea.

Presenter1:57

No, no, no, that was no condition. I wasn't suggesting that. I was suggesting that if you held the balance of power in the lib dems that you may be offered as a as a lib dem the role of chancellor.

Vincent Cable MP2:07

Well, I I think we'd we'd cross that bridge when we come to it. We've always said that if we get to a hung Parliament situation, the party that gets the largest number of seats will be invited to form the government. And that's the approach we have. And my role as an individual is an entirely secondary part of that equation.

Presenter2:11

Is that a yes?

Presenter2:26

My party politics omiter has probably gone off the scale. I think we've we've had enough of all the stuff you're used to talking about. I'm going to talk to you about all the stuff that people don't really know.

Vincent Cable MP2:31

Yeah.

Presenter2:35

about you. And as I said in the introduction, it's been a rich and varied life. It's very interesting to me that so much of your life and your family's life is is woven through your musical choices today. Tell me about the first choice.

Vincent Cable MP2:46

The first choice is it's in Yorkminster and my father is singing in the chorus of a choir which is singing The Messiah. My father was a very strong personality, incredibly energetic, ambitious, intolerant. And in his later life he started singing in the minster and my mother and father's relationship was not an easy one, but they stuck together and they developed companionship in later life. Much of it around the minster where my father sung and she was a guide. And the music that they introduced me to as a child was very much the kind of oratoria tradition. So I think the Messiah captures that very well.

Speaker 34:17

Let's shall see it together.

Speaker 34:21

And all the shall see it together.

Vincent Cable MP4:22

Yeah.

Presenter4:29

And the Glory from Handel's Messiah, sung by a York Celebrations Choir, led by John Warburton. The organist was Charles MacDonald. Your father, as you were saying in the introduction, Vince Cable, was one of the choristers in that recording.

Presenter4:41

It would be easy for one to assume on hearing that that your family came from a rather establishment background. That in in fact was not the case at all. It was r rather humble beginnings.

Vincent Cable MP4:50

Yes, my my mother and father worked in factories when I was born, but my father retrained to be a teacher and he taught building trades in a technical college and much of his life was building up a career as a professional, having left school at fourteen and my mother similarly left school at fourteen, did not have a formal education, but was you know deeply interested in in poetry and philosophy and was self-taught.

Presenter5:17

So your family, although as you say, mother and father had both left school at fourteen, sort of migrated then from the the the absolute working classes to to what, maybe a lower middle classes?

Vincent Cable MP5:26

Yes, we sort of progressed in steps. I think my father in particular was very class conscious. We gradually moved from a terrace house to a semi-detached house and eventually the triumph of a detached house and that my sort of uh early upbringing was sort of marked by these progressions in the class system as we advanced.

Presenter5:31

Palace.

Presenter5:43

And how was it marked by the sort of father that he was? You you described him as somebody with huge energy and determination and ambition.

Presenter5:53

He was a big man in every sense. He occupied the home. Did he set the tone of the home?

Vincent Cable MP5:56

Well yes, very much so. Um I mean the positive side were were these Calvinist virtues of hard work and honesty and frugal living. And quite a lot of that he passed on to me. But he was very domineering actually and he had one view of the world and it was not my job or my mother's job to contradict it and it uh it was it was quite a difficult environment that I grew up in for that reason.

Presenter6:21

And when you did contradict it, what happened?

Vincent Cable MP6:23

Well, we'd have quite sort of heated arguments. I mean, in a way, it was where I l first learnt to debate, I suppose. I think I was about twelve or thirteen. It was the Suez invasion, and I rather recklessly took the side of the Egyptians. And so, you know, heated arguments and slippers flew around and hit the radio. My father was a good father in one sense, that he did encourage me to talk and debate, though he made it very clear that there was only one view, and that was his. What about as a little

Presenter6:49

Cool Boy. What sort of character were you as a little boy?

Vincent Cable MP6:52

I think probably quite boringly well behaved and got top marks at school and always got, you know, prizes and

Presenter6:59

And was your father ambitious?

Vincent Cable MP7:00

Yes, he was very, very ambitious for me and um when I got an eleven plus and went to a grammar school and of course then subsequently went off to Cambridge they my mother and father were you know very very proud. It mattered an enormous amount to them.

Presenter7:13

So uh we will talk about Cambridge in some detail later, but but passing the eleven plus, that was quite a difficult time in your family around about that time because your your mother became ill.

Vincent Cable MP7:22

Yes, I think my mother had a major nervous breakdown. My brother was born, her mother died, her sister, who she was closest to in the world, emigrated to Australia and lost contact largely. She had a breakdown, she went away for hospital, I think, for a year or more. My brother was temporarily fostered. And she never really quite recovered for some years. But gradually she sort of built up her self-confidence that was always quite low through teaching herself, through adult education, and through becoming a minster guide. Do you remember it being a difficulty? Yes, I don't want to exaggerate, but there was no sort of emotional warmth.

Presenter7:59

But yes, I don't want to exaggerate.

Vincent Cable MP8:05

And there was quite a lot of tension. And I I think probably I just learnt to focus on

Vincent Cable MP8:11

on the things that I could do, which was basically around school.

Vincent Cable MP8:14

Tell me about your next piece of music then. Well, this jumps to my present life. I have a grown up family now. My eldest son, Paul, is a very accomplished musician, and here he's singing in Prague in the Rudolph Finium with the Prague Philharmonia, Amarbent by Bach.

Speaker 48:35

Amabund Kamdi Tau Bavid.

Speaker 48:43

Until

Speaker 48:51

Oh shit.

Speaker 49:00

Oh man, Spunger.

Speaker 49:07

Have lead and shows this all mixed cause come up.

Speaker 49:18

He was hearts in Christ for the broth.

Presenter9:28

Your son, Paul Vincent, singing I'm Abent from Bach's Saint Matthew Passion. Uh Vince Cable, you are a hugely assured performer in the House of Commons. Were you always so confident your confident young son?

Vincent Cable MP9:39

No, I was a very, very timid, awkward teenager. Um what helped me to get confidence was when I was sixteen I was picked out and given the lead in the school play which was Macbeth and I did learn over a period of months to look at an audience and to communicate and I think ever since then I I've overcome that basic inhibition which very large numbers of people have about standing up in front of a large audience.

Presenter10:07

Did you surprise yourself at the time by finding that you were quite good at it?

Vincent Cable MP10:10

I I did, yes. I mean, I was absolutely terrified. And in fact, I still am when I have a big public event. I'm always very frightened. But I think having that experience as a teenager was a phenomenal breakthrough and I'm indebted for life to the teacher who gave me that break.

Presenter10:26

And also, as you described it, the beginning in those teenage years of of having fairly strong arguments with your father, the Tory. He he w he was involved in in Tory politics.

Vincent Cable MP10:36

Yes, at a fairly low level. I think he was chairman of his local ward and he delivered leaflets. And in fact, he

Vincent Cable MP10:42

He died of getting pneumonia out in the snow delivering leaflets for Mrs Thatcher and you know, anyway, that part of him I I adored really. I mean, it's his commitment and passion. I mean, I I totally disagreed with a lot of things he was saying. But nonetheless there's a really, really admirable streak in all of that.

Presenter10:58

You said your father was ambitious for you. Did did you feel the weight of expectation as a as a teenage schoolboy?

Vincent Cable MP11:04

Yes, uh but I I'd sort of delivered. Where it became quite difficult was that uh I think I did have a talent for writing. I was passionately interested in history and politics and things of that kind, but my father insisted that there were no jobs to be had in those what he called arty farty subjects, and so I was told I had to be a scientist and I did my A levels in science and went to Cambridge to do natural science.

Presenter11:29

I mean, when you won a a place at Cambridge, that must have been a moment of of huge pride and significance, I imagine.

Vincent Cable MP11:35

Well, it was yes, it was. My father was enormously proud. And it was partly, I think, uh also getting his own back on on all the teachers in his staff room who had degrees and of course he didn't have a degree and and I think he'd felt throughout his life that that he was struggling to prove his own worth and you know having a son who went off to university in some style was was quite a comeback.

Vincent Cable MP11:58

Tell me about your third piece of music then. This is Akabilk and it's Stranger on the Shore. Although most of my choices are classical music, I love good popular music and uh this sort of conjures up so many romantic memories from my late teens and early twenties.

Presenter12:42

Ackerbilt and Stranger on the Shore. So there you were, Vince Cablet, Cambridge in the early 60s. It must have seemed incredibly.

Presenter12:50

free and easy and enjoyable compared to the rather autocratic uh home life you'd had in York with your with your big personality of a father? Did did you manage to enjoy it, kick up your heels a bit?

Vincent Cable MP13:01

Uh yes, I think so. I I I didn't um you know, didn't have a very freewheeling lifestyle and I was pretty conservative in my I wasn't into drugs or things of that kind, but I I I loved the the freedom of ideas and I spent a lot of my time going to very offbeat things, and going to lectures on theology and things that just interested me. And I I probably didn't do as well as I should have done in my science uh exams because I I did all kind of unorthodox excursions into things which weren't going to help me with my degree.

Presenter13:33

You switched from doing natural sciences, which was what your father wanted you to study, to doing economics. Why at the time did you make that switch?

Vincent Cable MP13:41

Well, I think it was the closest link with the real world and and the world of politics. And Cambridge Economics at that stage had a very high reputation. Um I I had I had quite a short induction. I didn't do the full economics course so I had to learn very quickly. But later in life I've I've understood the importance of what I was taught even if I didn't fully grasp it at the time.

Presenter14:03

And Sovin's Kable, you ended up explain this to me at the age of I think it was twenty three being I mean, it's been characterized as being deputy finance minister of Kenya. I can't quite believe that that's true. And some cheeky journalists have even said, well, it's the highest political office he's ever held. But what was it exactly you were doing in Kenya, aged twenty three?

Vincent Cable MP14:23

It wasn't like that. It it wasn't political. I was a fairly junior Treasury official in the Finance Ministry, but because most of the expatriates were leaving and the young African graduates hadn't at that stage arrived, I found myself in my mid-twenties with a ludicrous level of responsibility. But it did get me into really exciting areas of policy. This was in the Kenyatta Government. The people I was working for, among others, were Kibaki, who was the president president. It was a very exciting time.

Presenter14:52

Were you even at that young age, in your early and mid twenties, the sort of person who felt fundamentally that if you were on this earth then you were here to make a difference?

Vincent Cable MP15:02

Yes, and um I think in that role I I did actually make a difference. I've always been interested from the very outset in the practicalities of economic policy. I mean there are there are a lot of people around who are far better economists than I am. But I I think right from the very outset I've been interested in the, you know, getting your hands dirty aspects of it and and what you actually do when you're in a practical situation.

Presenter15:21

OOOMS

Vincent Cable MP15:26

Tell me about your next piece of music then. The next piece of music actually captures the character of my wife, Olympia, who was a very beautiful, lovely woman who I adored from throughout our married life. And this piece, The Appassionata, actually captures her character. She was a very passionate woman and she loved the piano, she was a fine musician, and she was never happier than when sitting at home playing for hours, bashing out Beethoven. And we had a little picture of Beethoven alongside the family. That was she he was a great hero.

Presenter16:51

Claudia Arrau playing part of the final movement of Beethoven's piano sonata number twenty three in F minor, the Apassionata, Memories There of Olympia to whom you were married for thirty years. You you met more than thirty years indeed you you met

Presenter17:05

Not in Kenya, but she was from Kenya where you ended up working. Tell me how you met.

Vincent Cable MP17:07

But you ended up

Vincent Cable MP17:09

Um well in strangely it was in a hospital. We were both nursing in a location and we met in the um common room and found we had a lot of lot in common, fell in love and it turned out that I happened to be going to work in the city where she came from which was Nairobi. So we met up again um a year later and decided we were going to get married. Both sets of parents were absolutely outraged. Her father was a very tough, unbending but like my dad really, and I was certainly not what was envisaged. And so he forbade her from marrying me and tried to stop it. And my father was equally outraged and decided we would be excommunicated as well. So we embarked on married life with a lot of friends and a lot of love and hope, but having two alienated parents, sets of parents.

Presenter18:03

Do you remember what your father said when you told him that you planned to marry Olympia?

Vincent Cable MP18:06

Well, this was not what he'd intended. It it was it was going to fail. Mixed marriages always failed, he argued. It would outrage the neighbours. Uh what would they think about it? Uh turning out with a uh a lady with a different colour on the doorstep. You know, he just felt sort of disgusted and disappointed and uh didn't want it to have nothing more to do with me.

Presenter18:29

Given the huge opposition from both families, did you ever consider calling it off, did Olympia?

Vincent Cable MP18:35

No, we didn't. And in fact, in a strange way it actually brought us closer together. You know, we felt we were kind of united against the world.

Presenter18:43

What sort of wedding did you have?

Vincent Cable MP18:44

Well, it was grand, and it was partly, I think, Olympia wanting to say to the world, I'm proud of what I'm doing and so she organized a wedding she was a Catholic in the the the grand Catholic cathedral in the middle of uh Nairobi.

Vincent Cable MP18:59

Um the priest worked out, I think, that her motives were not they're totally religious and he sort of took his revenge on us by withdrawing the choir and uh uh giving us in the in our marriage service a half hour lecture on the evils of communism. Quite why he did that. But anyway, at the end uh Olympia stood up to him and w they had a row in the vestry afterwards, but they shook hands and he he gave us a frosty smile and wished us well.

Presenter19:24

Uh you did uh eventually move back to Britain. It was the very year, nineteen sixty eight that Enoch Powell made his Rivers of Blood speech. I mean, you were moving back to Britain at a time when race was very high on the agenda.

Vincent Cable MP19:36

Well, this was the time of course of the Kenyan exodus, the Kenyan Asians who were being pushed out of Kenya. So it was a very emotive time. And when we arrived and we went to Glasgow, which is where we had a job, I'd got a job at university, it was in the middle of this intense racial feeling. So it was the the context in which we started our life in Britain was not a happy one.

Presenter20:00

And was there ever reconciliation with your two families?

Vincent Cable MP20:02

There was, after a period of years, I think my father discovered that um we were actually doing quite well and we had two young children and he was curious to know what we were happening. So rather out of the blue he asked to see us. And he melted quite quickly and I th he loved my elder son Paul and and our you know their daughter and invited us invited them to stay with them. And in a strange way over a period of years he became very, very close to Olympia. He discovered that she had most of his values and they really got on like ass and fire, they love music. And eventually I think it got to a point where he was closer to her than to my mother.

Vincent Cable MP20:43

I'm never quite sure if he overcame all his prejudices, but but it was a remarkable transformation and quite heart warming.

Presenter20:51

Remarkable.

Vincent Cable MP20:52

Tell me about your next piece of music. This is my daughter-in-law, Agnesa Totova, married to Paul. She's a very fine singer, and she's singing The Song of the Moon by Borjak, and this has particular significance. We got at Olympia's funeral. She sang this beautifully, and it was a very, very moving occasion.

Speaker 321:14

Which could not heavy occur.

Speaker 321:24

Little tall icon fit me.

Speaker 321:34

See him.

Speaker 321:45

Every day.

Presenter22:06

Your daughter in law, Agnesa Totova, singing Song to the Moon from Dvorak's Rusalka. So you were in your twenties then, Vince Cable, when you first tried to win a seat in Parliament. You already had some experience of politics in Kenya. Did did you have in your mind that you were absolutely set for a career in politics?

Presenter22:25

Two.

Vincent Cable MP22:25

Yes, I it's something I I I very much wanted to do, but I didn't see the way through. And when Olympia and I settled in Glasgow, I very quickly got involved in Glasgow politics. Um I stood for Parliament in the 1970 election and then got on to Glasgow City Council and I got much more absorbed in that than I did in my professional work. You at one point worked with with Gordon Brown? While I was on the council one of the projects which Gordon Brown launched was a book which came out as The Red Papers for Scotland and he invited me to contribute to that. What sort of a young man was he?

Presenter22:59

Yeah.

Vincent Cable MP22:59

Yeah.

Presenter22:59

Uh

Vincent Cable MP23:00

I didn't know him at all well, but he he was clearly one of the rising stars of the Labour Party in Scotland. And this was the the early seventies where there were some very, very able people John Smith, you had Robin Cook, and there was Gordon Brown and there were others. And th these were the these were the future stars. We didn't know that at the time, but it was an exciting political environment.

Presenter23:21

And you tried how many times did you try to become an MP?

Vincent Cable MP23:25

Well, I got in at the fifth attempt.

Presenter23:27

So that was throughout the seventies, eighties.

Vincent Cable MP23:28

In the eighties I stood in York as a SDP Liberal Alliance candidate twice, and then I stood in Twickenham before I finally got in in ninety seven. And and you'd gone from Labour to SDP? Yes, I I got caught up as a lot of people did in the Civil War and the Labour Party between the really extreme left and others that were more moderate and I felt I had to throw in my lot with the with the Social Democrats.

Presenter23:36

That

Presenter23:59

I mean, I suppose one of the upsides of of constantly never becoming an MP throughout the seventies and eighties was you you probably had much more time with the family, more time to spend at home. What was family life like?

Vincent Cable MP24:10

Well, there was a lot of music. Olympia was a very accomplished musician and music teacher. All my three children were very good at different instruments. I was the listener in the family, and I was the one who took the kids round to their lessons and to concerts of various kinds. But that was a role I was very happy to play. Useful to that constituency, then? Absolutely.

Presenter24:32

So twenty-seven years after you had first decided that you wanted to become an MP, you became one. Can you can you recall your feelings on that night? Must have been personally a momentous night.

Vincent Cable MP24:41

Well, it was a great it was. And I was, yeah, obviously elated, but there was a sort of unhappiness in the background because by this stage Olympia was very ill. I mean, she'd had cancer for quite some years, and I was always conscious that there was this lurking in the background. And we didn't talk about it because she didn't want to talk about it. She didn't want it to be known. She didn't want to be regarded as a goner. She was a very feisty person. So I knew that the next few years, although it was great to have finally made it into Parliament, I knew that her health and the problems around that were going to be the dominant issues in my life and hers. Let's take a break for some music. What have you chosen next? This is Beethoven's first piano concerto, and it reminds me of an occasion when.

Vincent Cable MP25:29

Our daughter, Aida, went to the university uh she was at Cambridge and gave a concert. She played this piece beautifully. And I remember sitting next to Olympia and I saw the tears rolling down her cheeks of pride and joy as as our daughter sort of played this piece. So it's it's it always uh comes back to me.

Presenter26:48

Murray Pariah playing part of the first movement of Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. One in C major with the Concert Gerdbauer Orchestra of Amsterdam conducted by Bernard Heitink. You said strong memories there of of watching your daughter play that up on stage, and also it was a piece that Olympia knew and played, but uh would never have played in public. She was

Vincent Cable MP27:08

No, she was desperately um shy of performance. She was a wonderful musician. Large numbers of kids in Twickenham were taught the piano by her and sang very well, but did not like performance. She was happiest playing the piano on her own.

Presenter27:24

She fought her cancer for fourteen years, which must have obviously been an incredible struggle for her, but must too have had a very

Presenter27:31

big impact on you and the family as the family was being brought up.

Vincent Cable MP27:35

Well, she was very brave and very positive and never made a burden of it. And that made, of course, life easy for the rest of us. She was very positive, always wanted to be involved in what I was doing when I was an MP, even th even though she was very ill by that stage, tried to help me with my work and was absolutely terrific. But it became very difficult, certainly for the last two years of my first term as an MP, she was disabled and at home, and I was trying to care for her while being being the local MP. I I did get a lot of help. My younger son took a year out of college to stay and help his mum and we had friends and uh relatives who helped as well. But it was certainly probably the most difficult phase of my life emotionally as well as practically.

Presenter28:20

Can we talk about the dancing? When did the dancing begin?

Vincent Cable MP28:23

Uh well, it started a long time before that. Olympia and I, when the kids had started to grow out, we wanted to do something together.

Vincent Cable MP28:30

and went along to the dancing school in the area and enjoyed it, but became a bit obsessive. We started doing exams and acquiring cups and things of this kind. Eventually she she couldn't dance anymore, but uh it had got implanted in me and then when she died and I was looking for things to do and take me out of myself, I went back and started dancing with my dancing teacher, which I I've done until now. What's your latest qualification or certificate? It's all embarrassing. It's sort of international supreme or something like some ridiculous title, but it's a bit of a bow in your presence. Well no no no no it it isn't all that. It's it's the important thing is not the awards you get. It's it's the fact that it's it's very good for your physical fitness and and mentally as well. You can completely switch off. I do the exams to keep me up to scratch, but I mainly do it for pleasure.

Presenter28:57

That was more than embarrassing.

Presenter29:03

I bow in your presence.

Vincent Cable MP29:18

Uh

Presenter29:18

And your new wife, Rachel, do you dance with her?

Vincent Cable MP29:21

Yes, I do. Was she already a dancer? No, she wasn't. And I think when Olympia died, I I didn't expect to be married again. I think like a lot of widowers, I assumed I'd spend the rest of the time alone. But a few months after Olympia died, I was giving a talk in the New Forest, and I launched into a sort of rant. And this very elegant lady on the front row started quarrelling with me. And it led to her inviting me back to see her cows, because the issue was about free trade and farming. It's a good chat up night because I've never had it before. And I took up the offer, and we've been blissfully happy ever since.

Presenter29:53

It's a good chat upline though, because I've never had it before.

Vincent Cable MP30:00

Tell me about your next piece of music then. Well, this just conjures up those recent romantic memories. It's Pat Boone's Love Letters in the Sand. I was driving up on a motorway to some political meeting with Rachel and this came on the radio and we felt that somewhere this captured what we were all about.

Speaker 430:17

Now my broken heartache.

Speaker 430:23

With every wave that breaks over love matters.

Speaker 430:34

In your sand.

Presenter30:42

Pat Boone and Love Letters in the Sand. Uh, Vince Cable, can I ask you, are you wearing two wedding rings?

Vincent Cable MP30:49

I am, yes, yes,'cause I've been lucky to have had two very happy marriages, and I like to celebrate both of them.

Presenter30:56

I I've never seen that before, and the fact that you are a dancer leads me to think that underneath the hard boiled MP exterior is is something of a romantic.

Vincent Cable MP31:08

Yes, I'm I'm very romantic. And certainly when I met Rachel and and we became close, I sort of rediscovered in my sort of late fifties all those emotions, love, romance, the things that you thought you've never found again. And it's been a wonderfully happy experience and it's been a wonderful stage of my life.

Presenter31:29

You're going to be marooned, of course, on the desert island, and you will, cleverly, because of the tracks you've chosen, be surrounded by members of your family. How do you think you'll be on on your own? I mean, you're you seem like quite a people person.

Vincent Cable MP31:42

Yes, but I one of my frustrations is not having enough time to write, which I enjoy doing. And I would love to, you know, write history, to write seriously. And to do that you need to research and have time. So no, actually I would welcome the the freedom and the time. Tell me about your final piece of music then.

Vincent Cable MP32:00

This is my elder son Paul and Aggie, my daughter-in-law, singing together, and they're singing in Don Giovanni. This is my favourite opera. I went to Prague with Rachel to listen to Paul singing, the lead role in Don Giovanni, in the States Theatre, which was Mozart's old theatre. So there's a a lot of parental pride as well as musical appreciation in this.

Speaker 432:23

A shid on um idi

Speaker 432:34

Ready not in one time.

Vincent Cable MP32:34

In order

Vincent Cable MP32:56

Yeah.

Speaker 333:00

Upon course

Presenter33:13

Your son and daughter in law, Paul and Agnes are singing L'Aci darem la manu, Give me your hand from Mozart's Don Giovanni. So then, Vince, I will give you the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare, and you can choose a book to take, too. What would you like?

Vincent Cable MP33:26

I would take Stephen Hawking's brief history of time. I got to page six and hit a brick wall, and it's long been an ambition to understand it. But more importantly, it would enable me to have a proper conversation with my younger son, Hugo, who is a very bright mathematician, theoretical physicist, is now based in Singapore. And he talks to me about quantum physics, and I nod without quite understanding what he's saying. So having time to really get on top of that subject would be an ambition that I'd love to have.

Presenter33:58

And your luxury.

Vincent Cable MP34:00

Uh I think one of the great advantages of a being castaway on desert island one wouldn't have to worry about being politically correct. And if this was a developed desert island with tarmac roads, I would have a really fast car and an Aston Martin and enjoy speed. And if it was a less developed island, I would have a fast horse and gallop along the beaches very fast.

Presenter34:21

Oh, go on. Be very unlimped them and have the Aston Martin. I'm going to give you that. And if you had to choose just one piece of music from the eight that we've heard today, which one would it be?

Vincent Cable MP34:23

I've had the estimate.

Vincent Cable MP34:29

I I think I'd have the Don Giovanni, partly because of the family connotations, but it's uh Mozart operas are the finest music and I listen to them over and over again.

Presenter34:40

It's yours. Vince Cable, thank you very much for letting us hear your desk.

Vincent Cable MP34:43

The title is Thank you very much, Krist.

Presenter34:44

Thank you.

Vincent Cable MP34:45

Uh

Presenter34:51

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