Anna Ford

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Hello, I'm Kirsty Young. Thank you for downloading this podcast of Desert Island Discs from BBC Radio 4. For rights reasons the music choices are shorter than in the radio broadcast.

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For more information about the programme, please visit bbc.co.uk/slash radio four.

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My castaway this week is the broadcaster Anna Ford, and it seems we're lucky to have her. After years in the spotlight, these days she says she would happily give her fame to a passing tramp.

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One of the first high profile women in T V news, she remained something of an enigma. She was the shy child who was also head girl, the vicar's daughter who memorably threw a glass of wine in a Tory MP's face, and the very private person who wrote an open letter to a national newspaper accusing Martin Amos of being a useless godfather to her daughter.

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She says of her life these days, I want to retire completely from obligation. I feel like I've been weighed down by responsibility. I feel like I've been head girl all my life. So that dream of no longer having any obligations is something I think that many of us can sympathise with. Have you managed it yet, Anna Ford? I'm managing it. It's a wonderful feeling. I'm uh.

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looking forward to selling the family house of thirty years, which means a lot of lightening the load of ownership, and retiring from jobs which I've enjoyed very much, which will leave me time to contemplate and to be, because life is very short, and somehow you are in danger of becoming so busy

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that you never actually give yourself time.

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to think

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Your friend, the writer A. Anne Wilson, says of you, you are ridiculously truthful. Is he right?

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I think being ridiculously truthful is a fault, because sometimes there are things one shouldn't say, and I've always admired that English ability to dissemble. My husband had that mark in Lodes, but it maybe comes from the vicarage background.

Presenter2:20

You'll make a good interview then, I'm sure, if you're ridiculously truthful. You were, of course, a familiar face on T V and in that way that newscasters are a daily familiar face. I I'm sure there are lots of viewers who

Anna Ford2:23

Um

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who miss you now you're not on the screens. Do you miss it at all? Do you miss the the daily rumble of news in your life? I don't miss being on the news at all, and I didn't miss it the day I left.

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What about all the attention that you must have had throughout the years? Well, I found that, particularly when I joined ITN, very intrusive. I mean, I can remember going shopping and being followed by cameramen.

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and suddenly thinking, I haven't got anywhere to hide.

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That wherever I go, I'm being looked at. And that was a very, very unsettling time. It took me a long time to get used to. What about now? Of course, people must still look at you when you're in the supermarket. Hardly now, because a whole generation of people have never seen me on television, thank goodness. And my hair's gone grey, so I don't get looked at nearly so much. And that's relief. You've been outspoken about the lack of older women on television. Or is it outspoken or is it just spoken? You've given people your views on it, at least. I wonder, having been one of the so-called older women on TV, if you didn't owe us all a duty to stick at it.

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I don't think any one person knows any group a duty. No. I did it long enough. I was sixty three when I left.

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But I do regret the lack of older women on television, simply because it isn't reflective of the society that we live in. We hear from the very top, from the Director General himself, indeed, that the BBC is clawing back its position.

Anna Ford3:52

It's a bit late, isn't it?

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Have you had the cold? Have they asked you back?

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No.

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No, but they have asked people like Julia Somerville back, and I did bump into her recently and said, Congratulations, I'm really pleased that you've taken this job and she said, Yes, I know, but I've only got twenty four days a year on my contract. Which seems to me tokenism.

Anna Ford4:13

See

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So if they did call you, what would you say?

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Well, I would say no now, because it's not what I want to do with the small bit of life I've got left.

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and I've done broadcasting for thirty two years, and I had the most fascinating visiting rights in many, many worlds, and I was able to go to all sorts of places and to meet all sorts of people.

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But uh I want a different sort of life now.

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Let's turn to your musical choices then, and afford that the first track that we're going to hear today is what?

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It's a very uplifting piece of music. It's Duke Ellington and it's it don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing. I visualise myself on this desert island needing to have a sort of music while you work in the morning to get me out of bed if there is such a thing as a bed and to do a bit of exercise and dancing on the beach and I think this is the disc that I shall be doing that to.

Speaker 45:08

Don't mean a thing?

Speaker 45:10

You ain't got the swing.

Speaker 45:16

It don't mean a thing, all you gotta do is swing.

Speaker 45:27

Makes no difference if it's sweet or hot.

Speaker 45:31

Just keep that field, every little thing is that Don't mean a thing if you ain't got that sway

Speaker 45:56

Shut down.

Presenter6:04

Duke Ellington, and it don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing with Raynance and Taft Jordan. So, Anna Ford, your career then has taken you from reporting for Granada to presenting on Men Alive, presenting on Tomorrow's World,

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Before that was you became known as the face of ITN, one of the founding people, of course, behind T V and more of which later. Uh broadcasting is is very demanding, it's very competitive. Did did you always feel that you had the steeliness for it?

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I think I was incredibly lucky. I mean, I was offered jobs by the B B C and Granada Television when I graduated from university in nineteen sixty six, simply because I'd been President of the Students' Union.

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and because those were days in which students were beginning to be revolting, that I was continually being asked down the road in Manchester to either of those studios to explain what was happening in the student world.

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Because of that I was offered jobs and so I was known by both broadcasters. But I took a three-month contract with Granada Television researching documentaries for World in Action and never left. So I sort of fell into it by chance. But once you'd fallen into it by chance, were you aware I mean a very sharp elbowed profession. There are lots of people, especially when it comes to the the point where you're an anchor, there are lots of people who want your job. Well I'm sure that's true but I was incredibly lucky. I mean I was chosen all the time. Actually I nearly didn't get a job with Desmond Wilcox because apparently he was told by MI5 or by somebody at the BBC that he wasn't to employ me because I was a security risk. That was in 1976 and I only learnt that in the 1980s. That was because you'd marched a lot as a student, was it? Well it was because I'd marched because I'd known communists. I'd never been a communist because I'd been on CND marches. Perhaps because after that time I'd also chosen to teach in Longkesh, intern members of the Provisional IRA. There are all sorts of reasons, but anyway, the Desmond Wilcox said, blow that for a lark and gave me a contract. So Longkesh, of course, being more commonly known as the Mays Prison. Now that that was when you were very young, you were teaching at the Mays Prison. T tell me about that experience. It must surely have been one that shaped you.

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I was working for the Open University and I was living in Northern Ireland.

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And a friend of mine who worked at Belfast University said there is no education being provided in Longkesh. Would some of us volunteer to act as teachers and to offer ourselves to go in there to teach? So I volunteered, and I was given compound seventeen.

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I was twenty seven.

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Compound seventeen was full of interned members of the Provisional IRA. You were driven round the prison in an army lorry. You were dispatched into the compound, the door was locked behind you, and are left there for an hour and a half.

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And I said to these men on my first day,'Well, you've asked for a teacher what do you want to talk about'? and they said'Politics, miss.

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So we had some amazing conversations about politics, about who they were, where they were coming from, whether their philosophy was going to lead them somewhere.

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Did you have to really gird yourself to that first time that you visited and the door shut down? I was naive. No, I didn't have to gird myself, and I never felt in any sense

Anna Ford9:06

Blush of nose.

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of fear, being alone in that compound with these men. They treated me with great dignity, and I never felt any sense of fear at all. Time for some more music, then. Our second disc. What are we going to hear?

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We're going to hear something that I first heard when I was thirteen. It's Bach's concerto for two violins and strings in D minor, the double violin concerto.

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Play by Yudi Manuin and David Oistrap.

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I heard it when I was at school.

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In Minehead in Somerset, and a young visiting trainee teacher.

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Just at the end of a Latin class, took it out one day and played it for us, and I was bowled over. I had never heard it before, I'd never heard anything like it before.

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And I've loved it ever since.

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Yehudi Menyon and David Oustrach playing the opening of Bach's concerto for two violins and strings in D minor with the Great Symphony Orchestra conducted by Alexander Orloff. So let's go back then, Anna Ford. You were born in nineteen forty three in Gloucestershire. Your family uh moved when you were quite young to the Lake district, and what are your memories of that?

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My memories of the first seven years of my life, which I can think were in the Lake District because I was so young when we moved there, were absolutely idyllic. They could not I could not have had a happier childhood.

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Partly because we lived in a very remote valley, then Eskdale.

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where there was fantastic wild life, where there was a local village school run by a wonderful woman called Miss Armstrong that I went to when I was four.

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which was closed for nature walk whenever the weather looked good.

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We had a playground of about four square miles, which was full of tarns and woods and rivers and rocks and just wonderful places. You said a moment ago that you're you're selling up the family home of thirty years. Are you heading to the country then? You sound you sound very nostalgic. Funny enough

Anna Ford11:59

Going to f

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I had that big pull to head to the country, and I've been recently driving up and down to Sussex regularly, and I've come to the conclusion that my head is in the country, but my heart isn't there any more.

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And that's partly because all my friends are in London, and all the things I do are in London, and therefore, although I shall have to go to the country a lot,

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I think I'm going to end up living in London. Now both of your parents in the early days were actors. Did you ever see them on stage? Never. I never spoke about it. We once managed to persuade uh my mother to record the mad scene from Ophelia.

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Uh she'd understudied Pegascroft.

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And we left her to record this on the tape recorder and came back.

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And the recorder hadn't worked, so we never heard her doing it. Isn't it true that you at one point you met Alec Guinness and he remembered your mother? I did. I sat next to Alec Guinness at a BAFTA dinner years ago, and I said to him

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Do you ever remember being in a play with somebody called Gene Wynne Stanley? and he said I do.

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Um, she was going to be very good. What happened to her? Didn't she marry some awful vicar? And I said, I'm sorry, that awful vicar was my dad.

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It's true, I think, that your father had an offer from the movie mogul Sam Goldwyn to go to Hollywood, and what what do you know of that?

Anna Ford13:16

Yeah, well

Presenter13:17

Well, I know that when Pa was twenty one he was in a play called Morning Becomes a Lecturer, and it happened to be seen by Sam Goldwyn, who went round to the dressing room afterwards and said, Gee, I'd like you to come to Hollywood and play Juvenile Leeds.

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And my father had just become engaged to my mother, who was a Manchester girl, a socialist.

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And I think she said to him at least this is the way the story goes if you go to Hollywood, I won't come with you. And he didn't go, and I think he may have regretted it all his life. In fact, I sometimes think my parents shouldn't have married each other. They were very different sorts of people. Right. Your father was a strict disciplinarian, is that right?

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He was a strict disciplinarian because I think he was afraid of things getting out of control.

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And I think the way of having five children was to discipline them and to keep them under control.

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But actually inside he was a lost soul, I think. And if your mother was under study to Peggy Ashcroft, she clearly was a a young actress of talent. Did she ever talk to you about a thwarted career or what what might have been? No, she was more likely to have been a sculptress. She did one or two heads, which were very good, and she she had a

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She had a wonderful talent, my mother, as an artist. She was clever.

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She was a wonderful mother, because we moved so often, and I remember my mother always at the top of a stepladder in a very old smock, painting vicarages from top to bottom, in wonderful colours, and then we'd move. I mean, I went to school when I was four.

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I went to another school when I was seven.

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Another school when I was nine, another school when I was eleven, another school when I was thirteen, another school when I was sixteen.

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And that meant lots of moves, including one emigration to Canada, where we stayed for three weeks. She didn't get a chance to paint that house. We came back.

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I'll ask you about Canada in a moment. That sounds fascinating. Emigrating for three weeks. For now, we're going to hear some more music and afford. Tell us what's next.

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We're going to hear the dawn chorus, and I hope there's going to be a cuckoo in there, because my almost my earliest memory is waking up to the most tumultuous bird song, and in our valley there would often be five or six cuckoos cuckooing away all the time, and it is a particularly magic sound.

Speaker 415:34

Yeah.

Speaker 415:43

Yeah.

Presenter16:00

That was the Dawn Chorus recorded in May in Kent. So, Anna, you went you've talked about going to all these different schools. Of course, the the byproduct of that quite often for people is they become the outsider. They're they're good at sort of appearing to fit in, but actually they don't quite feel like they fit in. W was that the case with you? Absolutely. I mean, you're an outsider enough when you're brought up in a vicarage.

Anna Ford16:07

Um

Presenter16:21

because you're economically working class and yet you're socially middle class. So you're already an outsider. And then going to all these schools, of course I was the outsider. I hadn't a clue what was going on. So Canada happened for three weeks then, you emigrated, as you say, that in nineteen fifty six, when you emigrated to Canada. It took us six weeks to get there.

Anna Ford16:36

Six, right?

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We got there, and I think the parish that my father had thought it was going to be and had blown it up in his mind wasn't quite it was

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What he'd expected.

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It was not in Vancouver, it was thirty six miles outside, it was a little wood camp.

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And I think they looked at this place and they did the brave thing. They spent the last bit of money they'd got, which wasn't much, in flying back to England and spreading us out amongst various relations until father found a parish again. And why did your father keep moving on from parish to parish?

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Because he was a l but as I said before, he was a lost soul.

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He had a pattern of behaviour in

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parishes where he would quarrel with the organist, sack the Mothers' Union, close the Sunday school, and then say my mission in this parish is over. But he was irate and angry and unresolved.

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and emotionally lost and didn't have a friend. He never made friend.

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The first relationship a daughter has, of course, with the opposite sex is is with her father emotionally. How was your relationship with him? Troublesome, because he was brought up in a very Edwardian era, where to praise children

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Was a very bad thing because it ruined them. So I don't remember getting any praise from him at all, and quite the opposite.

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He would uh you know say

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You're playing hockey again, you great glumping thing.

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And I don't think he meant to be like that, but he just couldn't somehow cope with the idea that just being relaxed with his children was the best way to be.

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You've described very vividly this uh picture you have in your mind of your mother constantly being out ladders painting vicarages beautiful colours and then having to move on. She was also, as we know, mother to five.

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Children. She died relatively young. She was just fifty-seven. Do you think she was worn out by that lifestyle? She was worn to a ravelling, as they say in the north of England. She uh wasn't well anyway. She had anemia. I think she'd had cancer for some time before she died, but being somebody who never complained, that wasn't picked up by the local GP who just told her to put her feet up in the afternoons. Time for music, Anna Ford. Um, we're on our fourth disc.

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This is Bob Dylan.

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It's a wonderful recording of his

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His song which his poetry really which plays really well today is called Masters of War.

Speaker 319:02

Come, you masters of war

Speaker 319:06

Here that build the big guns.

Speaker 319:10

In the bill of death planes!

Speaker 319:15

It a bell oly bombs.

Speaker 319:19

Is it hiding behind the walls?

Speaker 319:23

It hide behind discs.

Speaker 319:28

I just don't want you to know I can see through your mask.

Presenter19:32

That was Bob Dylan, Anne, Masters of War. You were speaking there, Anna, about your father and saying that he he never approached parenting in a in a relaxed way, in the way that he should, as far as you're concerned. Have you approached parenting in that way? You're you're a mother to two now grown up daughters.

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I've tried to. I mean, I was a single mother because my husband died when they were quite young, and that's not been easy. But then a great many women have had a far more difficult time than I've had.

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Is that all part of the responsibility, the head-girl thing, feeling that you can't actually be weak, you can't collapse, you can't say to somebody else, I don't know what to do here, it's your turn?

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No, you can't. And and it's something being a single parent I wouldn't wish on anybody because you're being both parents. And I did feel very responsible because I was bringing them up. I had to go back to work.

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And I was mending the roof and taking the car to the garage and doing the family shop and your

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Doing all the decision-making and all the difficult things.

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And what about sharing the joyful moments, of course? Because with a partner you can each indulge yourselves in your preoccupation, which is your children. You can bore each other silly, but you're not able to do that.

Anna Ford20:36

Children you can

Presenter20:43

That I would have loved to have shared it with somebody. I mean, not just at school when they were in plays or when they were doing things or when they.

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when they were enjoying things, or when we were on holiday together, having a wonderful time, but when they both got their degrees. I mean, I was lucky enough to be Chancellor of Manchester University when Katie got her first class degree.

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and I had to warn the parents that I might burst into tears, because down there somewhere was my little girl who was coming up. She came up, gave me a great hug,

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And it was an amazing moment, but I wasn't able to share it with her father, which would have been wonderful. And what about listening to Bob Dylan there in nineteen sixty three? But would

Presenter21:21

Was that your student days? Would you have a student? Yes, I went to university in sixty-three. Yes. So what sort of student were you?

Anna Ford21:22

Yeah.

Anna Ford21:24

Yeah.

Presenter21:27

I was all over the place as a student. I was very political.

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I was very naive. I came from the country. I mean there was a girl there who came from the south of England who had a fur coat and red nails, and I thought that was the most sophisticated thing I'd ever seen in my life.

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But I didn't study a lot. In fact, I can remember getting a note from my professor at the end of my second year when I'd been particularly involved in student politics saying, Dear Hiawatha they used to call me Hiawatha because I had pigtails

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Um, do you belong to this department any longer? We would very much like to see you. I understand you're involved in student politics, but please drop in one day. So I did go. And you sang and played guitar, and you were often professionally engaged. You played in bars and clubs and so on. I did. I played in bars and clubs to earn money. I used to get five pounds a night.

Presenter22:15

I once played at mister Smith's in Hanley and the Potteries, and got forty pounds for a week.

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But the stripper got fifty pounds for doing fewer nights than me. I didn't mind not really, no.

Speaker 422:25

Never tempted

Anna Ford22:27

Anyway.

Presenter22:28

You did have a manager though when you were a singer. I did, yes, Chris Wright, who then went on to own Chris Lis Records.

Anna Ford22:30

I did

Presenter22:34

Yes. Did he ever try and sign you up?

Presenter22:37

No, we did talk about whether I could have done it professionally, and he always very kindly says I could.

Presenter22:43

Um I wonder about uh you know, hanging over, talking to you is I'm afraid to say the question of your looks, because you are an uncommonly beautiful woman and is very kind. And when one looks back at photographs of you when you were

Anna Ford22:51

I'm gonna see how far.

Presenter22:55

a baby newsreader when you just started out in television, you know, the thing that one can't help noticing is how arresting you were. Uh Robin Day once said of you, of course, you know, uh Anna everybody in television wants to sleep with Anna Ford. Did you find that was the predominating attitude, that you were only there because of your looks?

Presenter23:13

I don't think I thought about that at the time, but looking back, I think looks played a very important part.

Presenter23:20

And I was beautiful, and I can see that when I look back at those photographs, and I think, why didn't I know I was beautiful?

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Because I didn't. Let's have some music then. We're uh on your fifth disc of the morning.

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This is Julian Bream playing guitar.

Presenter23:37

And it reminds me of going to Spain for the first time, and feeling that Mediterranean heat and smelling those smells, and listening to a gipsy in a little square in Cordoba playing the guitar many years ago.

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Julian Breem, playing part of Majorca by Isak Ilbanith. Anna Ford, you anchored News at Ten with Reggie Bozenke. Is it true automatically you're smiling when I mention his name? Is it true that he used to slip you love poetry across the desk between introductions? Yes, he used to slip me. Dear Reggie, I adored Reggie. He was absolutely wonderful.

Anna Ford24:56

Yeah.

Anna Ford25:02

Do you

Presenter25:08

And Reggie would land either obscene poems, um, little haikus and things, or love poems on my script just before I was about to read it to camera. And you couldn't I mean, your eye would catch just a sight of this, and it was almost impossible not to laugh. Um so when all the attention was on you there and you didn't really like it, did you ever think about chucking it in and going back to to doing the adult education?

Presenter25:34

I did, but I suppose I didn't have

Presenter25:39

the guts. And then it happened that, you know, I had

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Claire, my elder daughter, in 1982, and then I had Katie in 1985.

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And then Mark died in'eighty eight, so I d I went back to television then.

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Because it was a job. I might not have gone back if Mark hadn't died. Tell me about meeting Mark. You met him for the first time in w was it, nineteen seventy eight? Nineteen seventy eight. I met him at a spectator ball. It was the most fabulous ball and it was some

Anna Ford26:03

My legitimate spectator

Presenter26:08

enormous anniversary of the Spectator magazine and the whole world was there and I didn't mean to go, but I'd had an invitation and at the end of the news at ten Reggie said, Come on, old Bean and Mark Boxer was standing there and Reggie said, Do you know Mark Boxer? and I said no, so

Presenter26:26

Mark grabbed my hand and took me off to dance, and that was the first time we met. And how did you get on?

Presenter26:33

Well, Mark was absolutely fascinating, and he was spinning this story about I can't dance with you for long because my wife's in the balcony, my lover's by the bar, my mother in law's standing over there, and so I shall have to deposit you back somewhere else any moment now, while he was giggling away all the time. I never quite knew with Mark what was the truth and what wasn't.

Presenter26:52

And then I didn't hear from him for two years. And then I had a a little note, written in beautiful writing, saying I'm giving

Presenter26:59

Party for Martin Amis. Would you like to come? Please don't bring anybody and don't tell anybody. Mark Boxer.

Presenter27:06

So I went. I went at midnight, rather like Cinderella in reverse, because I'd been to another party, and then he asked me out to dinner, and that was the beginning of the end, really.

Presenter27:14

And he was uh an editor, editor of Tatler at one point, and and also a cartoonist. Was he somebody that knew I mean, he still is such a sort of colourful, vivid figure when people talk about him. Was he somebody that just knew everybody?

Anna Ford27:24

Was he sorry?

Presenter27:27

He knew the whole of London, and therefore to be with Mark meant that you were constantly having passing by this glittering prey of well-connected people, either in journalism or in literature or in all sorts of different worlds. And Mark's memory for detail was extraordinary because he was a caricaturist and a cartoonist. Going home from a party was the best thing, because he would have noticed everything. He'd have picked up gossip. He was fascinated by the truth of gossip. So did you feel, although you would have to share him with all of London socially, did you feel that there was a wonderful personal conspiracy between the two of you? Well, I felt he really loved me because he said he did. And because when we were together, we had such fun. Time for some music. What are we going to hear?

Presenter28:13

We're going to hear James Taylor.

Presenter28:16

and Carolina in My Mind. It's a slightly melancholic song, but it's about looking back to happy places.

Anna Ford28:23

Karen, she's a silver sun You best walk her way and watch it shine

Anna Ford28:31

Watcher, watch the morning come.

Anna Ford28:36

A silver tear appearing now I'm crying, ain't I?

Anna Ford28:43

Gone to Carolina in my mind

Presenter28:49

That was James Taylor and Carolina in my mind. So your husband, then, Anna Ford, uh, Mark Boxer, died in nineteen eighty eight. He was only fifty six years old. Can you remember finding out that he was seriously ill?

Presenter29:00

I do. It was extraordinary. He had been to New York in February.

Presenter29:06

And he came back saying, I think I've got flu.

Presenter29:09

Um within a week they said he's got a brain tumour.

Presenter29:13

And

Presenter29:14

He had weeks of radiotherapy and he just got worse and worse and by July he was dead. And you had two young daughters. Your daughters Katie was three and Claire was six, is that right?

Anna Ford29:24

Is that blues?

Presenter29:25

Could you even possibly explain it to them, or was it just a case of keeping the show on the road? I remember Claire asking if Daddy was going to die, and my saying yes, and her saying, Well, what is dead?

Presenter29:35

and thinking, I haven't I don't even know how to begin to explain.

Presenter29:40

And we just sort of poddled along really, this small family of three suddenly.

Presenter29:45

Without a father.

Presenter29:47

And what about you? You were in the very early stages of a marriage. I mean, eight years in, and you were sort of just figuring each other out, really? Yes, we just really got to know each other, and we were settling down in this wonderful house in West London,

Presenter30:01

Everything was wonderful, so to have that whipped away was about the worst thing that could possibly happen to you, and yet

Presenter30:10

You cope with it, because you've got to. I mean, there were moments when I thought

Presenter30:14

I'll just take my passport out of the box and I'll go on the first plane to South America and disappear completely. But of course that was pipe dream. I couldn't possibly have done that to the girls.

Presenter30:25

Your upbringing

Presenter30:27

makes you feel well, I shouldn't bang on about it too much, because I can see the pain on other people's faces, so I ought to keep it to myself.

Presenter30:36

More than twenty years later, you did an extraordinary thing. You wrote an open letter, I mentioned it in the introduction, to a national newspaper about Martin Amos. Now, Martin Amos is a

Presenter30:46

Godfather to one of your daughters. And in this open letter to, I think it was The Guardian, was it? You said that.

Anna Ford30:48

And

Presenter30:52

You accused him of narcissism, a lack of empathy. What on earth possessed you to do that? Oh, spontaneity. I mean, you know, when you've had a very disciplined life and you've been responsible, there are occasional bursts of spontaneity. Maybe I shouldn't have done it. I suppose I'd be still a bit cross that

Presenter31:11

Martin had professed such love for Mark, but taken absolutely no responsibility for his daughter after he died.

Presenter31:18

Martin Amos did admit to the fact that he had been an appalling godfather, and he said he was going to write to his goddaughter. He did, he wrote her an extremely nice letter, and I think they're in touch.

Anna Ford31:24

He did.

Presenter31:27

Right. But you are not in touch with him.

Presenter31:29

No, not because I don't wish to be, but he may not wish to be in touch with me.

Presenter31:35

Good time for some music, I think. Let's have some.

Presenter31:37

We're on your uh seventh desk and afford. This is Paul Simon, and you can call me Al. Now, this is to remind me of all the many, many holidays the girls and I had.

Presenter31:46

when we drove literally all over Europe and we drove through France many times, we drove down to Italy, and we would be playing Simon and Garfunkel, The Mammas and the Papas, that sort of generation of music. So this is Paul Simon.

Speaker 432:01

If you be my bodyguard, I can be a long lost pal.

Speaker 432:08

I can solve you daddy, and daddy, when you call me,

Presenter32:28

That was Paul Simon, and You Can Call Me Alan Memory's There for You of In the Car With Your Girls on Holiday.

Presenter32:34

Um Anna Ford, I mentioned in the introduction, the the glass of wine and the Tory MP that it came into contact with. The Tory MP was Jonathan Aitken, who of course famously later on went on to become a Cabinet Minister, was subsequently disgraced and went to prison. You threw a glass of wine over him. Why?

Presenter32:50

Because he had taken over T V A M and I was a founding member of that company, and I was fired summarily after coming on air, having not been paid by the company for two years. So I left the company that morning. There may still be things of mine on the hat rack.

Presenter33:06

And in my desk?

Presenter33:08

So I saw him at a party several months later, and he came towards me, and I had my wine glass filled up, and walked over and threw it at him, because that's how I was feeling, and I don't regret it at all. But he did tell awful stories about it. He said it was red wine, it was definitely white.

Presenter33:27

He said that most of it went over Jim Callaghan. I had a phone call from Jim Callaghan later that week saying I'm so sorry that I left the party before you threw wine at John of the Lake.

Presenter33:39

But then, you know, I don't blame other people. What you learn from these things is, that you must take great care in life who you go into business with, and I learnt that.

Presenter33:49

You say you don't regret it. How how many people have congratulated you on your actions over the years? Oh, qui quite a lot. Quite a lot.

Presenter33:58

And where in your life, or is there room in your life, for love? I mean, I think of Anna Ford, and I told people to day I was coming to interview Anna Ford, and the men uniformly had a sort of look of

Presenter34:08

She's been my heart's desire for as many years as I can tell you on their face. You know, uh

Anna Ford34:10

I'm first mid.

Presenter34:13

Are you happy alone? Are you alone?

Presenter34:16

I'm very happy to be solitary and in my own company, but I wouldn't say I was completely happy alone. I think one of the difficulties of being famous is that the wrong men feel able to approach you, and the right men wouldn't dream of approaching you, because they'd think she'd never look at me, whereas I probably would.

Presenter34:38

Right. The message is out there. We'll see what happens. What about you alone on the island? I think you'd be very good on the island because I think you'd be good with your own company and I think you'd be very practical, am I right? Yes, I'm quite practical. I think what I'll do is map the island first and I shall see whether I've got

Presenter34:55

a clean water source, a nice spring, where I'm going to build my house, where the prevailing wind blows from, all those sort of things.

Presenter35:03

I mean, in that way I'll be busy and I'll be perfectly all right, and I shall certainly try and build a house.

Presenter35:08

You're a survivor, I think. And it's time now, then, for your final piece of music, Anna Ford. What are we going to hear?

Presenter35:14

This is to remind me of France, which I have loved all my life since I went there on my own when I was sixteen.

Presenter35:20

And this is the wonderful Tino Rossi singing Jatte Andre.

Speaker 435:48

Just a

Presenter35:52

Tino Rossi and Jetandre. So, it's time for the books, Anna. I shall give you the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare. What are you going to take along to?

Presenter36:01

Would it be very rude, first of all, not to take the Bible? No, you're allowed not to take it. I don't think I'll take it. Um the book I'd like to take is called Staying Alive, and it's edited by Neil Astley, and it is five hundred wonderful poems. And I think A, I can learn them off by heart to make sure I don't get Alzheimer's.

Presenter36:18

And also I think they'll sustain me emotionally while I'm there. Absolutely. That book is yours then. And of course, as you know, you're allowed a luxury too.

Presenter36:26

I'd love a well equipped tool box.

Presenter36:29

Am I allowed to take that? So I can build a house.

Presenter36:32

Well, I mean if I'm not allowed a toolbox, I'd like an endless supply of very good leaf tea with a mug.

Anna Ford36:39

Yeah.

Presenter36:40

And a kettle, and a teapot, and some semi skimmed milk, please. It's yours, sir. Thank you. And if I had to force you to save just one of these discs from the waves, Anna Fort, which one would it be? I think the Paul Simons reminds me of the girls.

Presenter36:54

Anna Ford, thank you very much for letting us hear your Desert Island discourse. It's been a great pleasure. Thank you, Kirsty.

Presenter37:35

You've been listening to a download from the BBC. You'll find more information on the Radio Four website: bbc.co.uk slash Radio Four.