Martin Shaw

Speaker 40:00

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.

Speaker 40:28

My castaway this week is the actor Martin Shaw.

Speaker 40:31

He was still a student when Alec Guinness sent him fan mail he auditioned for Sir Laurence Olivier, and trod the boards with John Gilgood.

Speaker 40:39

Even Elvis Presley apparently endorsed his talents.

Speaker 40:42

In many of his best known roles, he is a maverick, a campaigner, and an idealist.

Speaker 40:47

elements that seemed to have been important to him in real life too.

Speaker 40:51

But although he's been one of our most popular stage and television actors of the past forty years, and has taken on more than a hundred different roles, he has spent half a lifetime moving out of the shadow of one of his earliest parts, Ray Doyle in The Professionals. He says of his choices, Anything worth doing is going to be risky, and I really wanted to take risks. I don't think we take enough. Everybody is so afraid of upsetting somebody. People have just got to grow up. If they're upset, then don't watch. We will come on, Martin Shaw to Laurence Olivier and Gilgood, I hope, a little later.

Speaker 41:26

But first of all the king. Elvis, how did he come to actually see or almost review one of your performances?

Martin Shaw1:35

It it happened uh through a psychic who came to see me uh playing Elvis in Are You Lonesome Tonight, which was uh a tribute written by Alan Bleasdale. And it was one of the final performances and I got this extraordinary letter from a psychic. He said that he was aware that Elvis was on stage, that he'd been in touch with Elvis and that Elvis thought the whole thing w was rubbish, but it was a gas.

Martin Shaw2:02

Uh

Speaker 42:04

Interestingly to m to me at least, it it's in your theatrical work that you've won the great plaudits and uh the awards and and all of those things that go along with being in a public profession. Uh does the acting on stage does it fulfil you more than television?

Speaker 12:10

That

Martin Shaw2:20

I think so, yes. For a start you can remain in the character for two and a half hours instead of

Martin Shaw2:26

sipping at it, you know, for one and a half minutes at a time.

Speaker 42:27

Mm.

Martin Shaw2:29

But also because you get an instantaneous response, and the choices are far broader uh on stage. You know, you can choose to be a lawyer, a doctor or a policeman.

Martin Shaw2:40

That's about it nowadays, if you're going to work on television.

Speaker 42:44

Is it the case that you thought about chucking in the television work a while back'cause you just found the sort of

Speaker 42:49

The degradation of the quality of prime-time television too much to deal with.

Martin Shaw2:54

Yes, it's it's been on my mind for a couple of years. But then of course, you know, there are there are financial imperatives as well. And because I believe it can be put right.

Speaker 43:00

Yeah.

Martin Shaw3:05

When I first started to be successful.

Martin Shaw3:09

You had the royal court, and you had the movement of dissent and protest, and so people writing plays to make a difference.

Martin Shaw3:16

You don't get that nowadays. The first consideration now is is it going to be a commercial success?

Martin Shaw3:23

And then you have to filter it through layers of executive decisions, all based on economics.

Speaker 43:28

You're being very calm and even handed about that. I can't imagine it sits very well with you.

Martin Shaw3:32

It doesn't sit well with me at all, you know. But I think that's really goes across the board, to tell you the truth. I mean, everybody I speak to

Martin Shaw3:39

basically has the same complaint, which is levels of management, filtering things through.

Speaker 43:46

Let's uplift ourselves with some music, then tell me about your first choice.

Martin Shaw3:50

First choice uh is uh David and Igor Oustrach playing the the Bach double violin concerto. I love this because of the the sense of partnership. One of the first things I learned at drama school when we did improvisation classes was that you must be aware of and listen to the other person. And this is a prime example of two people working together.

Speaker 45:07

Periten Jor Oustrech playing the second movement of Bach's concerto for two violins in D minor with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Sir Eugene Gussance.

Speaker 45:18

Sir Martin Shaw, all three of your children have become actors. Did you try to persuade them against it?

Martin Shaw5:23

Yeah.

Martin Shaw5:24

Well, I tried to warn them of uh the dangers and insecurities, but there's only so much you can do.

Speaker 45:29

There's a

Speaker 45:30

And you've acted with all three.

Martin Shaw5:32

I have, yes. It was uh it was wonderful to do that. And I I wondered how it was going to be, but

Martin Shaw5:38

It really only takes a few minutes.

Martin Shaw5:41

And then if you're concentrating on what you're doing, they just become another performer.

Speaker 45:44

Really?

Martin Shaw5:44

Really?

Speaker 45:45

One of the biggest stage roles that you played i in terms of the uh acclaim that it garnered was uh Thomas Moore and A Man for All Seasons. You played with Sophie, your daughter, in that, and she played your daughter, Meg. Uh it is a a very close devotional relationship that that they portray. Was that difficult to to tread in intimate and often very involved?

Martin Shaw5:53

Not

Speaker 35:54

Mm.

Speaker 46:06

Can

Martin Shaw6:06

No, not at all, because it it I mean, in a sense, it was just an extension of our life, you know, because uh

Martin Shaw6:13

Meg and Thomas uh had a a very close relationship, but also a closely critical relationship in a positive sense. And it was just it just carried on from where we left off.

Speaker 46:24

She hasn't asked for your head when you die though to be to be buried with her, I think.

Martin Shaw6:27

Buried with her, I think.

Speaker 46:28

Yeah.

Martin Shaw6:28

No, not not yet, but n now she has the idea. Thank you. She might

Speaker 46:32

Let's talk a little about um your early childhood. Then you you were born into the sort of dying days of the Second World War. Um what do you remember of those early years?

Martin Shaw6:39

Mm.

Martin Shaw6:43

I was b born and brought up in Birmingham, which was Heavily bombed.

Martin Shaw6:49

And the house that my parents lived in had been bombed out, so it was very present. And that sense of fear was very present, particularly in my mother, who was uh was fifteen when the war started. And it sort of shattered her nerves, and she was fearful through most of her life.

Speaker 47:07

Austerity, I'm imagining. I mean, was it pre pretty austere upbringing?

Martin Shaw7:11

Yes, but we didn't know it was austere.

Martin Shaw7:13

There's a kind of satisfaction and simplicity in lack of choice.

Martin Shaw7:19

which is calm and peaceful.

Martin Shaw7:21

And there is a sort of a unity of purpose because everybody's in the same boat. And I suspect we shall all be back there f before too long.

Speaker 47:29

Tell me about your second piece of music then. What have we got?

Martin Shaw7:31

The second piece is Tino Rossi and Jatainré. I will wait for you. And my mother told me an extraordinarily sweet story about this. She was seventeen during the war and was in Irdington, which is a suburb of Birmingham. Went to the milk bar. And there was a young airman who was seventeen years old and asked if he could buy her a cup of tea. And of course she rebuffed him. And he said, No, no, no, I'm not trying to pick you up. It's just that I have to leave to go on active service this evening. My parents are crying and I just had to get out of the house and I've got the whole day to kill.

Martin Shaw8:06

And so she said yes, and then on the radio came this piece of music.

Martin Shaw8:11

Then he said, because she loved to dance, he said, Would you like to go to a tea dance?

Martin Shaw8:16

So they went to a tea dance, and the first thing that the orchestra played was Chateaundre.

Martin Shaw8:22

Then he asked if he could write to her, because he had no one to write to, and she agreed, and that was that this little day together.

Martin Shaw8:29

And then three weeks later she had a letter from his commanding officer to say that he'd been killed on his first mission in the bomber and they had found her address in his personal effects.

Speaker 18:42

Des entre la, je crois ententre temp pas.

Speaker 18:48

Leuvon ma pour autour d'ébruitan.

Speaker 18:53

Qu'êtzma porteur, j' coutemva, et las pleurians, pleurien novien.

Speaker 49:10

Tino Rossi and Jatte Andre, I will wait. So you mentioned there, Martin, before we went into that last disc, that your mother's house had been bombed out during the war and this had left her as a teenager and latterly with a sense of uh nervousness and and insecurity. You lived would it have been with your parents and their parents?

Martin Shaw9:30

Yet my parents lived with my grandmother and grandfather, and we we all lived there till I was eleven.

Speaker 49:35

Uh

Martin Shaw9:35

How was that?

Martin Shaw9:36

Crowded, but it worked. Yes, it was fine.

Speaker 19:38

Perfect.

Speaker 49:38

Uh

Speaker 39:38

Yeah.

Martin Shaw9:41

But uh I remember the dream for all of us was a house and a car, as tha as if that was the the ultimate aspiration, which of course was achieved. But nowadays it's something that's taken for granted.

Speaker 49:52

And how long was it before they achieved that? You were eleven.

Martin Shaw9:55

I was eleven, yeah.

Speaker 49:56

though that must have been quite an event.

Martin Shaw9:58

Oh, it was an enormous event. And my father died, sadly, in August, and

Martin Shaw10:03

My mother's been suffering from Alzheimer's for quite a long time, so when my dad went we had to clear out that house. It was and remains an extraordinarily difficult and poignant thing to do, to clear out and abandon that house.

Speaker 410:18

Tell me about any memories you have of your grandparents then living in such close proximity. I mean, it's almost considered these days to be the ideal, isn't it? That that children have that regular and close contact with their grandparents.

Martin Shaw10:26

Regular and close contact with the grandparents. Absolutely, and I'm very grateful for it. My grandmother was a very jolly, warm sort of person. I remember when she would make toffee and then stooping down to chop firewood into sticks for lollipops.

Martin Shaw10:42

twirl these sticks around and my grandfather was a blockstock and barrel gunsmith. I used to stand at the table on tiptoe and watch him eating his tea with the same penknife that he'd been using in his shed on the guns.

Speaker 410:58

And y you have uh a brother who's who you're close to, but who's quite a lot younger than you.

Martin Shaw11:01

Yeah.

Martin Shaw11:02

But not younger than you.

Speaker 411:05

So you lived so almost as a an only child for a significant amount of time.

Martin Shaw11:09

For seven years, yes.

Speaker 411:10

What was important to you?

Martin Shaw11:11

Important

Martin Shaw11:14

Playtime, I suppose. To be away from school. I hated school. Did you? I loathed school with a passion.

Speaker 411:21

One.

Martin Shaw11:22

Why? Because I formed the impression that I was working for my teachers, not for myself. And so I missed out on a lot just through being willful and stubborn and rebellious. And

Martin Shaw11:35

I loved my English teacher and I loved my drama teacher.

Martin Shaw11:38

And hey, Presto, look, this is where I am.

Speaker 411:41

Were you very good at those subjects, naturally?

Martin Shaw11:43

I was very good at those subjects naturally, but I think also because uh th those two teachers were enlightened and modern. I mean I remember teachers with with chalky gowns and snotty moustaches and glasses that didn't fit, you know, all that dotty teacher stereotype. And you I just used to think, you're an idiot, why why would I work for you?

Speaker 412:06

Let's take a break for some music, what's next?

Martin Shaw12:08

Next we've got Yevgeny Kistin playing Recommending Off Spiano Concerto No. 3.

Speaker 412:13

And why have you chosen this?

Martin Shaw12:14

What I've always thought about art and the expression of art is the marrying of the access to what you're feeling with the skill to express it. There is hardly any artist who can do it as brilliantly as Yevgeny Kissin. And when I first heard this recording and it came to an end,

Speaker 312:25

Boom.

Martin Shaw12:33

And I realised that it had been a live recording, uh I it almost made me feel dizzy.

Speaker 413:38

And the audience cheered to Martin Shaw. That was Yevgeny Kisin playing the finale of Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. three in D minor with the Boston Symphony Orchestra conducted by Seiji

Speaker 413:49

Um I said in the introduction that you were sent fan mail by Alec Guinness. Tell me about the circumstances of that.

Martin Shaw13:56

It was my last performance at drama school at Lambda, and uh Alec Guinness was uh associated with Lambda, and he sent this wonderfully encouraging letter, congratulating me on my performance and wishing me luck with my career.

Speaker 414:11

How thrilling!

Martin Shaw14:12

Yeah, deeply thrilling.

Speaker 414:12

Uh

Speaker 414:13

And going to Lambda then, you had decided when did you decide that this was the life for you, the life of an actor?

Martin Shaw14:19

Well, I had decided when I was sixteen.

Speaker 414:21

And what about life in London?

Martin Shaw14:23

Life in London in nineteen sixty three was very exciting. It was the beginning of of change. I really didn't have enough money to participate much in the social side. I just had enough to pay my rent and to buy some food, quite a lot of alcohol.

Speaker 414:26

Who's three?

Martin Shaw14:39

And then work on building sites during the vacations.

Martin Shaw14:43

And, of course, there was the Royal Court Theatre, and John Osborne, and Arnold Wesker, and so on.

Martin Shaw14:49

The whole theatrical movement was changing, and modern theatre, and The Method, and Marlon Brando, and the um the actor studio in New York.

Martin Shaw14:58

It's an incredibly exciting time to be an actor.

Speaker 415:00

So you knew that you were not going to be walking through the French windows with a tennis racket saying, Has Daphne gone yet?

Martin Shaw15:06

To do a little bit of that.

Speaker 415:07

Did you feel you were

Speaker 415:09

on the crest of a wave of something important in a

Martin Shaw15:12

Absolutely, absolutely. But then of course part of the job is the apprenticeship, and after I'd left drama school I went to Hoardchurch Rep and was walking through French windows and making props and doing all of that stuff. But that very soon ended.

Speaker 415:27

And was it around about that time you you

Martin Shaw15:29

Met your first wife, Jill at Hornchurch Rep in 1966. She, like me, was an assistant stage manager.

Speaker 415:35

Was it round about that time? I know you suffered a horrible attack. You were you mugged?

Martin Shaw15:40

No, I wasn't mugged. It wasn't not as glamorous as that. I I I met an old buddy from drama school and w w we got absolutely hammered.

Martin Shaw15:49

and I was helping him home.

Martin Shaw15:51

when we got into a fight. But I have no idea what caused the fight, but I woke up in a doorway.

Martin Shaw15:58

grievously battered, and after two bouts of plastic surgery here I am.

Speaker 416:03

And you had a I mean, it was incredibly serious. You had a fractured skull. You had to

Martin Shaw16:07

A fractured skull at the side of my face was bashed in, several teeth. We're gone.

Speaker 416:13

Did you worry about what it meant I mean apart from worrying about getting better did you worry about what it would mean for this career that looked incredibly

Martin Shaw16:19

Uh

Speaker 416:20

Promising.

Martin Shaw16:21

Yes I was, because my face was rather bent, but it didn't seem to matter too much.

Speaker 416:26

They made a good job of putting it back together.

Martin Shaw16:26

Maybe I'll go.

Martin Shaw16:28

Reasonably, yes. I mean, it is kind of lopsided, and I have got this piece of silicone on one side of my face. But I think now at the age of sixty four slippage is inevitable anyway, so we just let it go.

Speaker 416:40

Tell me about track number four then.

Martin Shaw16:42

Track number four is the lacrimosa from Mozart's Requiem, and

Martin Shaw16:46

It just touches that innate sadness in me, which is not misery, but it's just that sense of contemplative missing of something that you can't quite put your hands on.

Speaker 417:56

The Lacrimosa from Mozart's Requiem. You mentioned earlier you you said you didn't have much money and and some of it went on the drink and then you got into this horrible fight. You can't remember the circumstances because you you were too drunk.

Martin Shaw18:06

Because he

Speaker 418:08

Drinking took up a fair part of your time?

Martin Shaw18:11

It did until right up until about nineteen seventy. It was a kind of badge of office, you know.

Speaker 418:16

Um

Martin Shaw18:18

In order to be an important and exciting young actor, it was good to be a hellraiser. It's utterly ridiculous and I blush to tell you. But that was the way that was the way it was seen. And especially if you were around the Royal Court a lot, which I was. And then, thank God, fortunately, literally and figuratively, I saw the light in nineteen seventy and stopped. What happened to to make you see the light?

Martin Shaw18:42

I discovered a spiritual path which is still at the centre of my life, and indeed was with my parents as well. We all sort of got it at the same time, which involved teetotalism, vegetarianism, meditation, and so on. And it was literally like a light.

Martin Shaw19:01

of of understanding.

Martin Shaw19:03

and I stopped overnight.

Speaker 419:05

Was that difficult?

Martin Shaw19:06

No, not at all.

Martin Shaw19:08

Not at all.

Speaker 419:09

And how much would you have been drinking, then, to suddenly stop?

Martin Shaw19:12

Well, there was at at one point I was ill, and the theatre people sent me to see Sir Ronald Bodley Scott, who was an eminent Harley Street physician, and he prodded my spleen and said, How much do you drink? and I lied, and said half a bottle of scotch a day. It was considerably more.

Speaker 419:28

Well, and you were able to function doing that. You were able to go on stage at night just

Martin Shaw19:31

Well, you become inured to it. Your body hardens up. I mean, now, uh I think a sniff of the barmaid's apron and I'd be flat on my back.

Speaker 419:40

And extraordinary that you say around you say it was around about the same time your parents embraced this too? What did you simply talk to them about it and it made sense to them?

Martin Shaw19:48

Yeah. I mean, my but my father wasn't the most extraordinary man, and I mean, he was the sort of man that would pass a tree and say, Oh, the energy coming off that tree and then he would go and put his hands on the bark.

Martin Shaw20:02

and just remained there communing with the tree. Now, as children we thought this was funny.

Martin Shaw20:08

Now I know he was right. So my father was predisposed to it.

Martin Shaw20:13

So when I told him about this path that I'd heard about, we had a three-hour conversation and at the end of it he said, You know, I've been looking for that all my life.

Martin Shaw20:22

And that was nineteen seventy two.

Martin Shaw20:25

And then we told my mother, and she said substantially the same.

Martin Shaw20:29

And so, in a sense, for all those years the three of us have trodden that path together.

Speaker 420:34

Extraordinary. Tell me about your next piece of music, then.

Martin Shaw20:35

Uh

Martin Shaw20:37

It's uh Kiri Takanoa and Lucia Popp singing Cosiminari from The Marriage of Figaro Mozart. These two singers just listening to each other so intently that their voices blend so beautifully. And there's something wonderfully liberating about perfect and beautiful music which relieves us all of all of our prisons.

Speaker 121:05

Yeah.

Martin Shaw21:05

Yeah.

Speaker 121:05

And then the boss fear.

Speaker 321:09

Stop boy.

Speaker 321:37

And when the style is all by the sin, we see this war since.

Speaker 421:56

Kiriti Kenoa and Lucia Pop seeing Cosaminare, What Are You Telling Me? from Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro. Let's stray then, Martin Shaw, into a a difficult area to talk about. Difficult because I'm asking you to define in words something that's maybe not possible to define in that way, s spirituality, this path that y you went on, and

Speaker 422:18

Intriguingly, you your your parents travelled with you, which is you describe it as a light.

Martin Shaw22:22

Hmm.

Speaker 422:23

Can you say more about it?

Martin Shaw22:25

Uh

Martin Shaw22:26

Uh

Martin Shaw22:27

Basically no one is ever really happy, ever. There is always something missing with everybody, no matter what they get, and we all of us think that it lies in something material, or in a person, or a thing.

Speaker 422:29

Never.

Martin Shaw22:39

And in fact we all know that that's never the answer. And it's the separation from our source, and you can call that source soul, spirit, God.

Martin Shaw22:52

Christ, anything you want to call it, but there is something above, beyond and outside of the physical for which we all have a yearning, whether it's conscious or unconscious. It doesn't matter how it's done, what the Lord is called, as long as there is someone who knows the way and can show us the way, and that throughout time has been a teacher, a living teacher, a guru or a master, and of which of course Christ was a great example.

Speaker 423:21

So do you have a guru?

Martin Shaw23:22

Yes.

Speaker 423:23

Who is your guru?

Martin Shaw23:24

Uh he at the moment he I say at the moment because the um the guru that initiated me d uh died in nineteen ninety. At the moment he's um an Indian man called Goorinda Singh, and my guru is um Charan Singh.

Speaker 423:40

And so what do you do? Do you go, do you travel to see him? You take instruction, you talk to him about your problems? How how does this practically manifest itself?

Martin Shaw23:49

Practically there are the precepts that we follow, which is teetotalism, vegetarianism and meditation and a good moral life, and we all know basically what that means. And that's it, really. That's all you need to do. But you can travel to India and meet the the Master, and that's inspiring.

Martin Shaw24:11

But really it's an individual internal practice.

Speaker 424:14

What impact did it have upon your life when you embraced it, because at that time you were a husband, and by that time also a father to young children?

Martin Shaw24:21

The young ch

Speaker 324:22

Children.

Speaker 424:22

That must have been a lot for those around you who knew and loved you to embrace.

Martin Shaw24:27

Well, the only outward manifestation, I think, really was the fact that uh I wasn't drinking. And the spiritual side of things it made no difference because I never force it on people. I only talk about it if they ask.

Speaker 424:40

Does it make you seem rather boring to people?

Martin Shaw24:43

Well, probably, yes. I mean, I it I have been accused of it, but I think it's because because people regard the antidote to boredom uh as lying in a in a bottle or a

Speaker 424:43

Yeah.

Martin Shaw24:55

The carcass of an animal.

Martin Shaw24:57

So I don't mind in on those terms being regarded as boring.

Speaker 425:01

Let's have some music, what's next?

Martin Shaw25:03

Next, surely he hath borne our griefs from Handel's Messiah.

Martin Shaw25:08

I loved this particular recording.

Martin Shaw25:11

Handel throughout after he'd written Messiah, the poor man walked hundreds of miles, literally, trying to find a body of singers who were able to sight read, and he couldn't find them, and ditto with the musicians, and so he could never achieve his ambition, which was to have a huge orchestra and a huge choir sing this huge piece. Malcolm Sargent.

Martin Shaw25:36

Put this lot together. The music is great enough to withstand almost any interpretation, but this is what Handel himself would like to have heard, I believe.

Speaker 426:42

Surely he hath borne our griefs from Handel's Messiah, sung by the Huddersfield Choral Society with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, conducted by Sir Malcolm Sargent.

Speaker 426:52

Can we talk, Martinshaw, about the professionals? Is that fine to do that?

Martin Shaw26:57

Yes, absolutely fine. I mean it's sort of a myth uh that's grown that I don't want to talk about the professionals. I said I didn't want to talk about it because I was bored with talking about it. And the more I didn't want to talk about it, the more it seemed like this was something that was worth talking about.

Speaker 427:13

So you felt like a victim of your own success. I mean, it was hugely viewed at the time. Seventeen and a half million people used to sit down and watch that.

Martin Shaw27:17

Two and a half million people used to sit there and walk

Speaker 427:19

Um, it seems to me curious that here was a person you started recording at the end of the seventies or mid mid-seventies?

Speaker 427:27

Seventy seven. Yes. And you would at that time have been, as we have found out, a vegetarian, who wasn't drinking, presumably I mean had forsworn violence, was no longer in punch out, and there you were playing this fairy.

Martin Shaw27:33

Uh

Martin Shaw27:34

Presumably

Speaker 127:34

Yeah, I mean But

Speaker 127:36

Violence was no longer

Martin Shaw27:37

But if

Speaker 127:37

But in the pun

Martin Shaw27:37

Shut up.

Speaker 427:40

I mean, bombastic. And your character was the one that got into the fights, wasn't he? How did that sit with you?

Martin Shaw27:43

Sure, sure.

Martin Shaw27:45

I didn't mind at all. And I don't mind now. I mean, it's just acting. I've never yet been in a T V or a stage fight where once it's over the protagonists haven't stood up and said, Are you okay? You all right? I didn't hurt you. Oh, god, well, that well well done I mean it's always very friendly and affectionate.

Speaker 428:02

You've had these big and very successful roles since, of course, the professionals on television as as well as stage. There's been Judge John Deed, Inspector George Gently. They they make you very famous, of course, is the thing. If you've got millions of people watching, how what's that like to walk down the street and be famous?

Martin Shaw28:12

Isn't the thing?

Martin Shaw28:18

It it depends on the approach. Sometimes it's it's terribly sweet and affectionate. Um of the professionals I've had it said, you know, Oh, you're my childhood.

Martin Shaw28:30

And people have told me that.

Martin Shaw28:32

They came to watch some filming in their street. Uh some guy said, Oh, you sat me on your motor bike when I was nine years old and I've never forgotten it. So that kind of stuff is is very lovely to hear.

Speaker 428:45

and being a sex symbol.

Martin Shaw28:47

Meaningless.

Speaker 428:48

But do you get do you get women, or and indeed men, perhaps, throwing themselves at you?

Martin Shaw28:51

Uh

Martin Shaw28:53

No. Maybe it's because I'm very different off off stage and off screen. I don't know. But um either I'm insensitive to it or I ignore it or it doesn't happen. I think probably the latter.

Speaker 429:06

Let's take a break for some music then. Tell me about track number seven.

Martin Shaw29:09

This is uh Jennifer Rush and The Power of Love. Sometimes other people's words express better than you can what you want to say and this was this was given to me by my partner on a significant anniversary of ours uh and uh I was very moved and touched by it, so I wanted to include it and indeed take it to my desert island.

Speaker 429:32

Are we allowed to know her name, your partner?

Speaker 329:36

Cause I am your lady

Speaker 329:43

You are not that.

Speaker 329:53

For me.

Speaker 329:57

Oh man I can

Speaker 430:01

Jennifer Rush and the power of love. I'm going to cast you away in a moment, in a few minutes, in fact, on this desert island.

Martin Shaw30:07

Uh

Speaker 430:08

I hear that you like to be solitary anyway. You quite enjoy your own company.

Martin Shaw30:13

Yes, I do. Um I have a place in in Galloway, in Scotland, which is uh very wild and very isolated.

Speaker 430:20

And you go there for stretches at a time?

Martin Shaw30:22

Hm, as long as I possibly can.

Speaker 430:24

How long?

Martin Shaw30:25

I mean, the longest I've been there alone is six weeks.

Speaker 430:28

And and do you have things like radio, television?

Martin Shaw30:31

There is radio there, um not television, only but only because I can't get a signal.

Speaker 430:35

But it sounds as though it has some sort of spiritual element to it, this sort of retreating from life to a to a quiet and wild

Martin Shaw30:41

Yes, it does have a spiritual element, yeah, because you I mean

Martin Shaw30:46

The great philosophers and and spiritual teachers have said Know thyself and you can't really do that with so much mental noise around.

Speaker 430:54

So the desert island. Do does it, in fact, sound quite appealing?

Martin Shaw30:58

No, it doesn't the idea of being a castaway.

Speaker 431:01

Hmm.

Martin Shaw31:02

I think would be incredibly difficult, and the prospect of never seeing anybody again, and all the people that I love.

Martin Shaw31:09

That would be amazingly difficult.

Speaker 431:11

Are you are you difficult to live with?

Martin Shaw31:13

So I'm told, yes.

Speaker 431:15

Who tell who tells you that?

Martin Shaw31:17

Everybody.

Martin Shaw31:19

I do try, and you know, I it's part of life's quest, you know, to be understanding and generous and be a good person, whatever that is. But uh experience has shown me that I must be difficult.

Speaker 431:32

You say experience has shown you that. You've been married three times and you're no longer married.

Martin Shaw31:35

Thanks, and you're not.

Martin Shaw31:36

Boom.

Speaker 431:36

Is it a is it a sadness to you that that you've been married so many times or that you didn't sort of stick at something for longer?

Martin Shaw31:42

Yes, it is, because I've I've never been in any relationship where I didn't intend it to last forever.

Speaker 431:49

And do you think is that to do with maybe your your own

Speaker 431:53

Very determined spiritual journey. I mean, are you somebody who is working on themselves?

Martin Shaw31:57

No, I don't think I mean in fact quite the reverse. I mean if I was uh if I was more intent and um

Speaker 432:00

Yeah.

Martin Shaw32:06

Fastidious on my spiritual journey, then probably it wouldn't have happened like that.

Speaker 432:12

Time for some music then, your your final track.

Martin Shaw32:14

Final track is the Chopin's Piano Concerto No. one, and it's just so lyrical and relaxing and poetic. And if Mozart was the the Shakespeare of music, then Chopin's the Shakespeare of the piano.

Speaker 433:27

Istvan Seke playing part of the second movement of Chopin's Piano Concerto No. 1.

Speaker 433:32

So this is the point, Martin, where I'm going to give you the complete works of Shakespeare, also the the Bible or another religious text. Do you want to take something else?

Martin Shaw33:37

Do you want to take something in the middle?

Speaker 433:40

Okay. A and you're allowed to choose a book.

Martin Shaw33:43

I think it would be one of Patrick O'Brien's Aubrey Maturin novels. I think Patrick O'Brien writes better than pretty much anybody in the in the English language. And there are twenty of these novels. So if I can't take them all, I would just take the thickest, which is Post Captain.

Speaker 433:59

Just one and you can have that one.

Martin Shaw34:02

Well, if there was some way of connecting up a synthesizer th that has a sequencer attached to it, you know, built into it, I would take that because then I could make up my own music, because I play very, very badly and inexpertly. And with um with a synthesizer and a sequencer you can string things together.

Speaker 434:09

Good.

Speaker 434:21

A solar-powered synthesizer.

Martin Shaw34:22

A solar-powered synthesizer so I could compose.

Speaker 434:25

I'm sure one exists somewhere. And it is yours. And of the eight tracks we've heard today, which one track would you choose if you had to pick just one?

Martin Shaw34:32

Oh, that would be so hard, wouldn't it? I would think the

Martin Shaw34:38

The Messiah, because it it sort of uh i is a condensation of all of my hopes and aspirations.

Speaker 434:45

Martin Shaw, thank you very much for letting us hear your Desert Island discs.

Martin Shaw34:48

Thank you.

Speaker 434:48

Yeah.

Speaker 434:57

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