Jamie Cullum

Presenter0:00

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.

Presenter0:10

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

Presenter0:32

My castaway this week is Jamie Cullum.

Presenter0:40

A prodigious talent. When you watch him sing and play piano, it's as though music, not blood, is pumping through his veins. He's worked with everyone, from Paul McCartney to Amy Winehouse, and even Clint Eastwood. He is a master of live performance. And one can imagine that those early days of hoofing between pizza bars and jazz clubs have been perfect training for the demands of fatherhood. He is married to the model and writer Sophy Dahl, and their daughter Lyra is just a year old.

Presenter1:09

So how did someone who failed their Grade Four piano end up with a bunch of hits and a stack of awards? Hopefully we'll find out. He says, Nothing I have done feels like it was easy. Well, that's very interesting to me, Jamie Conn, because you do look when you're performing as though you find it incredibly easy. There's a lot of craft going on there.

Jamie Cullum1:29

I always find words like prodigious very frightening because I certainly never felt prodigious when I was young. I I didn't feel bad about what I was doing, but I felt like I was just kind of knocking around and having a good time. And certainly no one at that stage plucked me out and said, You're gonna do this when you're older. It was nothing like that really. It was just always something I enjoyed so much. It's come from pure play and enjoyment, really.

Presenter1:54

Can you explain to us what it is you get out? I mean, it's clear what we get out of your live performance. It's thrilling to watch. But what do you get out of live performance?

Jamie Cullum2:02

It's where you feel that the time you've spent behind the piano and the time you spent working on your voice and your songs and your interpretations, where all that kind of goes away, you can throw it in the bin and it it's happening uh I guess the word automatically is wrong, but it it definitely happens with with no thought. That for me is when it feels kind of very beautiful.

Presenter2:22

I like that you said just a moment ago there, when I was young. You have now reached the grand old age of thirty-two.

Jamie Cullum2:27

Yeah, but it

Presenter2:27

Yeah, but yeah.

Presenter2:28

When when you sing, w when I listen to your voice, I think, well, it sounds like the voice of somebody who's on a sort of quart of bourbon a day and at least forty fags.

Jamie Cullum2:36

Well, that's true. Is it? Yeah.

Presenter2:37

Is it?

Jamie Cullum2:38

Yeah. Well, no, but it it's funny, most people still think I'm about twelve years old, so that's funny, but I always looked really young. I remember when I was when I first went to school, about four days in, there was an announcement at assembly that said something like the girls in in the later classes must not pick up Jamie Cullum and carry him around.

Presenter2:39

Yeah.

Jamie Cullum3:02

I remember being in in

Presenter3:03

There's just there's four girls up at the back with their hands up wanting to do that later I should say.

Jamie Cullum3:07

I remember at break time just being kind of plucked and picked up. I quite liked it, to be honest.

Presenter3:12

Michael Parkinson, of course, was one of your early champions, both on his radio and television shows. And I noticed there was a fabulous publicity shot of you, and I think it was probably the last chat show that he did on ITV, and you are standing alongside Irisha down here. Michael Kane, David Attenborough, Edna Everidge, Julie Dench and David Beckham.

Presenter3:29

Di was there any sense in which you felt overwhelmed that night, I'm wondering?

Jamie Cullum3:34

I felt like I'd been photoshopped in for that.

Jamie Cullum3:37

I'm so bad at being cool in those situations. I've just, everyone's always looking kind of smart and kind of chilled out, and I'm in the middle going.

Jamie Cullum3:46

I'm holding my thumbs aloft and doing a ridiculous smile, but I I I always feel like that inside. It always feels slightly unbelievable because it's born out of something that was just something I love to do.

Presenter3:57

We're very fortunate because you're going to not just share with us your eight Desert Island discs today, but you're also going to play some of your Desert Island discs. Can you tell me a little bit about your first choice?

Jamie Cullum4:07

This song I'm going to play is very significant because it was the first proper kind of jazz tune that I learnt how to play. I just learnt from listening to the recording of it and I literally painstakingly worked out every note in every chord over this whole piece of music. And it was the first one I ever played kind of properly live at a gig. I was at a pub near here. There's a pub in Cologne called The Fox and Hounds. And I used to go there with a friend of mine to just watch the music. And one night the piano player was very miserable and he ended up kind of sloping off stage and the guy who was leading the band he said, Is there anyone out there who can play? And I shrunk into my seat and my friend pushed my hand up and they dragged me up and I played the song I'm about to play now.

Jamie Cullum4:59

Do you know what it means?

Jamie Cullum5:02

To miss New Orleans.

Jamie Cullum5:06

And miss her each night and day.

Jamie Cullum5:14

I know I'm not wrong.

Jamie Cullum5:18

Cause the feeling's getting stronger

Jamie Cullum5:22

Loger eyes stay away.

Presenter5:26

Fabulous. My casts away, Jamie Callum and You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans. And now you have to sit here and be all normal.

Presenter5:33

Because

Presenter5:34

Because once you've done do you not feel like doing a back flip or something after you've done something like

Jamie Cullum5:38

It's it's done all right for JLS, hasn't it?

Presenter5:40

Uh

Presenter5:42

Um you you were saying just as the introduction to that that you know you you sort of studied every corner of every note to work out how to piece that together. Is it indeed the case that you don't really read music in the strict sense of the word?

Jamie Cullum5:55

No, I mean I don't really read a note of music and when I started doing piano lessons, because music was so important in our house, but what became very quickly apparent was that I just couldn't get to grips with the notes on a page and the teacher would say, Okay, we're going to read this piece of music and I would say to her, I remember vividly, well, can you play it to me first? So I'd make her play it for me and then I'd start playing it and then I'd add bits that I thought sounded better. And she said, you can't do that to bark, you just can't, you know.

Speaker 16:23

Yeah.

Jamie Cullum6:25

Maybe maybe to handle, but um

Jamie Cullum6:27

So she I and I remember I that the reason why I didn't really get further than grade four was because at that stage, you know, the sight reading part was so important. Like it was almost like I was dyslexic. So I I really gave up after that point trying to read.

Presenter6:40

So do you find that's it has it I mean, it hasn't inhibited your musical creativity? Is there any time when you sort of think, you know, I really wish I could, that it would be better?

Jamie Cullum6:49

Oh, every day, yeah. I'd love to re yeah, I'm I'm I'm actually funny enough gone back to studying that now to try and learn to read music properly because I would like to compose scores and do all sorts of things. That's something that I'm gonna I'm gonna get to.

Presenter7:03

I've been reading for the last sort of almost year or so that Jamie Cullum is is bringing out an album. Now I'm wondering if the pram in the hall is getting in the way of the album, because as I mentioned in the introduction, Lara's now a year old and of course I'm sure you're pretty involved in her little life as it emerges. So is that getting in the way of the new album?

Speaker 17:16

Yeah.

Jamie Cullum7:16

Nothing.

Speaker 17:16

Uh

Jamie Cullum7:16

B

Jamie Cullum7:19

Yeah, just

Jamie Cullum7:22

No, I mean it's not actually. Now, Daphne took some time off before she was born and after she was born to just kind of be around and enjoy that amazing first period. And then I started drifting back to the studio and at that point I think you really enjoy the creativity part of it even more.

Presenter7:36

Daddy's music, does she listen?

Jamie Cullum7:38

She likes music, she loves the drums. I have a drum kit at home and uh I definitely sit her down on my knee and get her to hold the sticks and play. She thinks it's hilarious. I mean this my little studio at home is one big playhouse for her. It's amazing. And I think the more music education kind of focuses on the the pleasure aspect of it, I think the more people will stick with it.

Presenter7:50

Right.

Presenter7:57

Um it's a very cruel and unpleasurable thing to ask a musician to choose just eight pieces of music. How how tortuous has it been for you?

Jamie Cullum8:04

Oh, it was agony. Yeah, it was like being beaten by you, you know.

Presenter8:04

Yeah.

Presenter8:12

Some people would pay good money for that, do you? But I And

Presenter8:19

They'll cut that out.

Jamie Cullum8:20

Yeah.

Jamie Cullum8:21

That's exactly what I was thinking.

Presenter8:23

I'm

Presenter8:24

Do tell me about your next piece of music.

Jamie Cullum8:27

It couldn't be more inappropriate after that. This is a piece of music I completely love. My parents are both very musical. My whole family are musical. But my mum always used to sing in church. She used to sing the psalm every week. Amazing. I remember her kind of rehearsing it on the way to church. I was in the back, kind of feeling angry about going to church and reading my Judge Dredd magazines when she was practicing the psalm. And I just remember hearing this music. So this beautiful piece. It's called The Lamb by John Tavernagh.

Speaker 19:07

Does one go?

Speaker 19:19

We think

Presenter9:22

And did the feed by last dream.

Speaker 19:40

So

Speaker 19:41

Sorthy, holy.

Presenter9:49

That was The Lamb by John Taverner, performed by The Sixteen, led by Harry Christophers. So, Jamie Calm, you were born in nineteen seventy nine. You grew up in Wiltshire. What what are your earliest memories of life at home with a family? I guess.

Jamie Cullum10:03

Uh

Presenter10:03

Uh

Jamie Cullum10:03

It was definitely a house where the radio was kind of always on, something was playing. Sound of the sixties on on a Saturday morning. A piano being in the house, a guitar being in the house, it being played by my brother, my uncle coming over playing guitar, my dad playing guitar, my my mum singing the Stephanie, music, uh and lots of food. Always always food, all the time.

Presenter10:26

Uh tell me then about your parents' background. Your father, first of all, is it right? He moved to this country, he wasn't born in Britain, certainly.

Jamie Cullum10:31

He was born in Jerusalem. His mother uh was she was from Prussia. She was Jewish and she fled the country in good time and made it to Jerusalem. And she met my grandfather there, who was who was English. He was born there and then they moved back.

Presenter10:46

And did you meet your grandmother?

Jamie Cullum10:47

My German grandmother, we called her Omi, yes, she was very important in my life. She was probably the most intelligent person I've I've still ever known. She was a a member of Mensa and she would always want to talk about books she was reading. She was a member of like book reading groups and anything I was reading for A-level English she'd already read and and digested, you know, ten times over. She could have done my essays for me.

Presenter11:12

She didn't ever, did she?

Jamie Cullum11:13

No.

Presenter11:14

Nose the touch

Presenter11:16

Now's the time to come.

Jamie Cullum11:17

I love radio.

Presenter11:19

He just mouthed she did for people listening at home. And and what about your mother's background?

Jamie Cullum11:24

Well, it's equally as interesting. My mum was born in Burma. Her father was Indian, and her mother was Burmese. And during that very confusing war, which no one seems to fully understand the history about, when Japan invaded Burma, they came over to the UK on a boat with one trunk full of things and ended up in Wales.

Presenter11:45

So what about did that background I mean, that is particularly exotic by anybody's estimation. Did did all of that matter to you when you were growing up? Did you think, well, this heritage does sort of make my story different? Or was it just that was just the family?

Jamie Cullum11:57

Well, tragically, it matters more to me now that they're all gone. You know, obviously when I was growing up, my granddad would um my nan and grandad, they just were, you know, they were fun and they were brilliant and they were really important in my life and Omi was too. That's always the problem, isn't it? You get far more interested in it the older you get and then sadly they're passed away, but um they were brilliant.

Presenter12:13

Yeah.

Presenter12:18

Time for some more music, Jamie Callum. Y your third disc of the day. What are we going to hear?

Jamie Cullum12:22

Well, this is a massively important track to me, and it's great that we're in Bristol because this is great Bristol music. When I finished doing my A-levels, I decided to take a year out to kind of decide exactly what I wanted to do. I was doing music, but I thought doing music for a living was what other people did. I just thought it was something I would do for fun. It was around the time this music called drum and bass was coming out, and it just kind of connected the dots between what my peers were into, which was a lot of kind of beat-driven electronic music, but also it had this jazz melodic element to it. It's called Brown Paper Bag by Ronnie Size.

Speaker 113:00

Uh

Speaker 113:25

No no no.

Speaker 113:28

No.

Speaker 113:34

Uh

Speaker 113:40

No.

Speaker 113:42

No.

Presenter13:55

That was Ronnie Sayers and represent and brown paper bag. You can all sit down now.

Presenter14:01

Whole place was up to that one. Um I'm wondering if your older brother Ben was a big influence. So often when I speak to castaways I say, you know what, I started listening to music and it was really my big brother or my big sister's music that I started listening to. Was he a an influence on you musically as you were growing up?

Jamie Cullum14:15

He was I mean still to this day he's my most important musical influence. I mean he obviously being an older brother he did everything first. He was the one kind of playing the guitar, being in all the bands and everyone was always asking me, are you Ben Cullen's brother?

Jamie Cullum14:29

And I'm like, yeah, yeah, I am. And I was like, I want to play the guitar too, you know. So we've always collaborated, and I mean, he's the most generous person I know.

Presenter14:29

Yeah, yeah.

Presenter14:37

Does it make it easier bearing the fame thing when you've got sort of somebody in your corner sort of professionally and somebody you're able to talk through things with who's been there since literally the beginning?

Jamie Cullum14:48

Absolutely. I think the only way you can deal with any kind of fame is by having a s a solid rock of a background because it's all so unreal and you need to come back to things that you just know are one hundred percent real without a shadow of a doubt.

Presenter15:03

You did go to university, but you turned down a place at Oxford. Wha why did you do that?

Jamie Cullum15:08

It didn't feel right and it felt like other people's ideas of what I should be doing. Um I just remember feeling like it was someone else's path and not mine. I knew I needed to go and work out this music thing.

Presenter15:21

And here are your parents who I mean, we've heard a little of their fascinating story. So they are first generation immigrants, and certainly there's been hardship in the past there. Here's their son being offered the sort of ultimate accolade of the establishment. And you say, Mum and Dad, I'm not going. What did they say?

Jamie Cullum15:37

They were they were cool about it, which is amazing, you know.

Presenter15:39

Which is a major.

Jamie Cullum15:41

They really were and I think that that's that's one of the greatest gifts I was was given by them. They allowed me to make choices that felt like they were from my heart and that I love I I hope I give my own child that amazing gift. That's about as good as it gets really.

Presenter15:56

It's time for your fourth choice of the day, and you're going to perform this, Jamie. Tell us a little bit about the song and why you've chosen it.

Jamie Cullum16:02

Well one of the great things about doing what I do is I get to meet my heroes. Well I've got to meet Elton John a few times now and he's obviously one of my heroes although I didn't know he was because I was obsessed with a guy when I was at school called Ben Folds and I went to see him in concert. I came back and I was in the kitchen singing a song called Tiny Dancer which Ben Folds had performed and my mum said are you singing an Elton John song and I went no it's Ben Folds and she got out a copy of the album it was on and I then listened to every Elton John album I could find and got to meet him and actually played this song in front of him as well which again foolish foolish

Speaker 116:28

Right.

Speaker 116:29

Sh

Jamie Cullum16:43

Ha ha ha.

Jamie Cullum16:44

But I now have this amazing picture of me sitting next to him, although it looks a bit like I'm sitting on his lap, weirdly.

Jamie Cullum16:53

It really does. It really does. I'm not. I'd love to have done. But he he was just he was so kind and he's so encouraging to me. So I'm going to play out on John's Tiny Dancer.

Jamie Cullum17:07

Hold me closer, tiny dancer

Jamie Cullum17:14

Yeah.

Jamie Cullum17:15

Lights on the farway

Jamie Cullum17:20

Baby Devil.

Presenter17:21

And sheets of letter You had a busy day today

Presenter17:36

You made a pretty good job of it. That was of course my castaway Jamie Callum performing Tiny Dancer written by Alton John and Bernie Topin. I I mentioned Jamie in the introduction that one of the people you'd worked with was Clint Eastwood. He asked you to get involved in writing the music for Gran Torino. How did that work? Did you did you collaborate with him? He he actually sent you some music to begin with as the as the sort of seedling for what he wanted you to do.

Jamie Cullum17:59

Yeah, it was very much a collaboration. I had been lucky enough to meet Clint Eastwood through his son, Kyle Eastwood, who's a bass player. So when it came to Gran Torino, he knew he wanted a song and a theme in this movie. And while he was filming it, he said he could hear what the melody was going to be of the score while he was literally looking through the lens of the camera. I think it's probably the greatest professional experience of my life, really.

Presenter18:23

And you were nominated for a Golden Globe for that, am I right?

Jamie Cullum18:26

Yes, that was amazing. I got to go, I got a suit. You realize the pecking order of celebrity when you go to something like the the Golden Globes. I arrived and the lady from Warner Brothers Films met me and so she started taking me down the a mile long line of press and they were pushing me through quite fast because Brad and Angelina had just arrived. So they wanted to get Cullum out the way, you know.

Presenter18:48

That's

Presenter18:50

Bad timing, huh?

Jamie Cullum18:50

Yeah, so they were kind of. She was walking down the line going, okay, I've got Jamie Collum here, any takers?

Jamie Cullum18:58

I'm literally walking down the line and they're going, No, no, no, thank you, Brad, Brad, no, no. And finally, I see fern cotton.

Jamie Cullum19:08

Who no one is speaking to, so I run over to her and we do like a half-hour in-depth interview.

Jamie Cullum19:14

And then I go into the Golden Globes, lose to Bruce Sprinkstein and get completely drunk.

Jamie Cullum19:19

And had a brilliant time.

Presenter19:21

I think you deserved it. Is it true the first time you appeared on Parky's show you were wearing a suit from Oxfam?

Jamie Cullum19:25

Yes, I was, but it was altered.

Jamie Cullum19:29

But it was a good suit, you know.

Jamie Cullum19:31

I guess people dress you now. You look very smart. Oh goodness me, yeah. I mean I'm f I dressed myself so I put my own. No, I don't mean you have some

Presenter19:36

No, I don't mean you have some disabs.

Presenter19:40

Are you I think you're being deliberately mischievous. I mean, you know, our Dolce Gabbana not saying, Jamie, please take these twelve handmade soups.

Jamie Cullum19:47

Str strangely no. Do you know what? I I have not really delved into that whole world. I think early on things like that started to happen, but it it all felt a bit kind of unnatural. Stuff like that makes me a bit nervous.

Presenter19:57

What was the point at which you thought my future lies in music? You know, I've you got a first class degree from Reading University, so academically things went very well for you. You said earlier, other people did that. When was the point at which you thought, you know, just maybe, maybe I can make a living at this?

Jamie Cullum20:12

It was the last year at university and um I joined loads of function bands really. You know, I played on weekends I'd sometimes play four or five weddings or you know bars and pubs. People were coming back to see me and I also realized that there weren't really many other people doing what I was doing. So I actually made a s I made a C D when I was at university with some of my student loan. I think I made three hundred copies of it. And I just remember I was at a gig my mum and dad came to see me. I I played somewhere in Cheltenham and there just came this moment where we literally couldn't open the C D's fast enough. People were buying them and I think I decided in my last year of uni that I was gonna

Jamie Cullum20:52

Move to London and just give it a few years.

Presenter20:55

Let's hear another one of your choices then, Jamie Cullen. What are we going to hear now?

Jamie Cullum20:59

I discovered most of my early jazz interest through hip hop music. This tune is by a a British band called the The Cinematic Orchestra. They did a track with probably my favorite rapper. It's called Roots Manoeuvre. They did this incredible track called All Things to All Men.

Speaker 221:16

And now it seems as if we're used to the shiggery.

Speaker 221:19

We made our beds and now we hate where these beds be Took nothing at all to part this Red Sea I'm a shackled child singing the good song of freedom They've got no pride to interrupt our grieving Teardrops dropping for the pain of the world My best friend dies when she was just a young girl

Speaker 221:38

Left me here to fend for myself. Now the pain never leaves. We just learned to cope. So we

Presenter21:44

That was the cinematic orchestra and all things to all men. I suppose one of the most important gigs you ever did, and interestingly it was one that was unpaid, was for the Lavender Trust, because uh that's a breast cancer charity, and there you were accompanying a certain very famous model on piano. Tell me about that.

Jamie Cullum22:02

It was at Claridge's and the only person who I was really going to accompany was was Sophie and we'd never met before. And we immediately started chatting about books that we loved and she was a proper bookworm. And we just got on really well straight away. I mean I didn't entertain for one second she'd be interested in me. I assumed that everyone who met her would kind of fall in love with her so I didn't really think that it would necessarily be my place. So I played it pretty cool. But well I thought she had balls to sing in front of these noisy people drinking tons of free drinks. I thought she was really she had she r you know had a lot of I don't want to say balls again because you can't say that about your wife can you? Nerve. A lot of nerve is the word, yeah. But again, you know, she she was living in New York, she she had a boyfriend and we just remained kind of casual friends and then kind of I think it was about six to eight months later she moved back to England and obviously it became more after that.

Presenter22:44

Nerf

Speaker 122:45

A lot of nerve is the one.

Presenter23:01

I mean, as you say, you know, when you first met her, you thought, well, she couldn't possibly be interested in me. And it's not that you're an unattractive person, but she is one of the most famous models in the world. So how did you get over that initial is she interested?

Jamie Cullum23:11

I think it's because when you're you know, that's one of the things that people misunderstand about her. I think there's a lot of people who who have maybe been models in their career that you assume that they kind of carry this weight around with them, but she's nothing like that at all. She's she's unbelievably down to earth and kind of earthy, and we connected on an entirely different level away from that whole thing. And since I've known her, she hasn't really done any any modelling. So she kind of stands around in the kitchen drinking cups of tea, like labouring over sentences. You know, that's that's that's the Sophie I know, and that's the one that I fell in love with.

Presenter23:44

Okay, it's time now, Jamie, to to hear your next piece of music. What are we gonna hear?

Jamie Cullum23:48

Well, this it's interesting we've been talking about My Wife, because this is a song that reminds me and tells me about the life I have now, which is with two girls, my daughter and my wife. You create this unit and you want to look after them and protect them and you become this kind of clan and it's an amazing feeling and this song really kind of captures that. It's by a band I love anyway called Animal Collective and it's called My Girls.

Presenter24:44

That was Animal Collective and My Girls. So you're going to be thirty-three this year, Jamie. It seems a little early to be looking back on the highlights of your musical life. So let's just talk about the highlights so far. You've performed at the Proms, at the Royal Variety Performance, you've sold out at the Royal Albert Hall. I'm wondering what have been your personal highlights, the moments that you've thought, ah, that's what it's about?

Jamie Cullum25:05

They're always the smaller moments. Receiving the C D through the post for the first time or finishing a song just at home on the piano and then seeing it become something, seeing it take on a life of its own. Those to me are the moments that make it incredibly special.

Presenter25:23

Tell me about two thousand three then, when Twenty Something came out. I mean there was just an enormous reaction, an enormous critical reaction. You know, it was so much more, wasn't it, than flavor of the month. There was a real sense that this is somebody to watch. Did you feel that you were almost hit by a tidal wave of attention that year?

Jamie Cullum25:43

I did. It was immense and quite frightening and I was completely unprepared for it. You know, you can just see by what I was wearing on so many things that I turned up in that I was just not prepared, you know. Like what? Terrible clothes and jeans that didn't fit and you know, I hadn't even brushed my hair like today. Physically it was hard because I was traveling so much, but that was also exciting, but I was completely unprepared for it. And I definitely went through a stage where I wasn't myself. You find yourself at three o'clock in the morning surrounded by people you don't know, in a house you don't know, in a city you don't know, and you're not sure how you're going to get home. And it's like, what am I doing here? I don't even like these people. You get carried along by this huge ego train, and it's very easy to kind of get get lost in it. But the thing I always, always had to save me.

Speaker 126:22

Yeah.

Jamie Cullum26:34

was the fact that my most enjoyable thing was getting in a room with my band and playing. And that's not romanticizing it, that's just what I enjoy doing the most. That would always kind of drag me back to earth. It was always more fun than being in a room full of people I didn't know.

Presenter26:48

Time for some music, Jamie. Um we're near the end. Seventh disc, what are we gonna hear?

Jamie Cullum26:50

Seven dis

Jamie Cullum26:52

This artist is someone I look up to so much right now, and he's an incredible songwriter, a multi instrumentalist, and he's utterly he's as creative as any novelist. His name is Sophian Stevens, and the title of this song is Concerning the UFO Sighting Near Highland, Illinois.

Jamie Cullum27:12

When the Revenant

Jamie Cullum27:15

Can't do

Jamie Cullum27:19

We couldn't imagine what it was.

Jamie Cullum27:27

In the spirit of Uh

Presenter27:29

Uh

Jamie Cullum27:31

Uh

Presenter27:31

Three star.

Jamie Cullum27:34

The alien thing that took its form.

Presenter27:38

That was Sophian Stevens, and concerning the UFO's sighting near Highland, Illinois. I'm going to cast you away, of course, to an island where there will be no radio show to present, there'll be no gigs to play, you'll be away from your beautiful wife and your little daughter. How on earth will you cope?

Jamie Cullum27:54

Aren't there another two thousand and seventy three castaways there already?

Jamie Cullum27:59

Sounds like we could have a rave to me, but...

Presenter28:00

After seventy years you found the flaw in the format.

Presenter28:06

No, you're all on your own.

Jamie Cullum28:08

Oh, okay.

Presenter28:08

Yeah.

Presenter28:09

How are you going to cope?

Jamie Cullum28:10

Uh

Jamie Cullum28:11

I I would find it very hard to cope now now I've found my soulmate. You know, we exist as a pair now definitely. But if I had to, I'm pretty good on my own. I'm actually quite a gifted layabout, I promise you. So I'd just sit under a tree and get a tan.

Presenter28:25

You'd survive. Okay, it's time now to hear your final disc, Jamie. What are we going to hear?

Jamie Cullum28:30

Well, am I going to play it for you? You are. Okay. Well, we talked about the Lavender Trust event I played, and this was the tune that Sophie sang and I played for her. Obviously, a very important tune in my life now. It's a beautiful song called I Think It's Going to Rain Today. When I realized I was going to play it for this, I started trying to put it in my key. And I realized, even though it's really low for me or really high in Sophie's key, it doesn't sound right in any other key now. It only sounds right played in this key. So I'm going to play I Think It's Going to Rain Today in the original key.

Presenter28:31

You are.

Jamie Cullum29:01

Scarecrows dressed in the latest style

Jamie Cullum29:06

With frozen smiles to chase the love away

Jamie Cullum29:12

Human kindness is overflowing.

Jamie Cullum29:20

And I think it's gonna rain

Jamie Cullum29:25

They

Presenter29:30

Jamie Cullum and I Think It's Gonna Rain Today by Randy Newman. So we come to the point, Jamie.

Presenter29:35

You know what happens? I give you the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare. Good, good. Yes, and you get to take another book.

Jamie Cullum29:37

Good, good.

Presenter29:40

What what other book would you like to take?

Jamie Cullum29:42

This is very hard. But I think I would take the book that helped me fall in love with reading really and uh a lot of ways helped me fall in love with jazz as well. Um it would have to be On the Road by Jack Kerraway.

Presenter29:55

Okay, we shall give you that. You're alive a luxury too, of course. What's your luxury gonna be?

Jamie Cullum29:58

Um it it would be very simple actually. I love to draw, so I would take a huge stack of lovely white paper and tons of pencils and I would work on my is it draftsmanship? Is that the word?

Presenter30:09

Set the wall.

Presenter30:10

So you wouldn't take a piano.

Jamie Cullum30:12

Well, I thought about taking a piano, but I thought, you know, a piano is too boring a choice. You'd expect that too much. And, you know, I've done an awful lot of playing the piano in my life, and they probably want to rest from me, anyway. So I would take a pencil and tons of paper.

Presenter30:21

Yeah.

Presenter30:25

It's heerous. And and if you had to save just one track from the waves, which one would you save?

Jamie Cullum30:30

Uh it would have to be the last one, I think it's gonna rain today'cause that's uh obviously without that song I'm not sure I'd be where I am right now.

Presenter30:38

Okay, and we of course asked you to perform it for us, for our pleasure. But who's singing? Would you take your version? Would you take somebody else's? Oh, hell no.

Jamie Cullum30:43

Oh hell no, I take Nina Simone's version.

Presenter30:45

Nice.

Speaker 230:46

Yeah.

Presenter30:47

Okay, it's yours. Jamie Cullum, thank you for joining me at the More Than Words Festival in Bristol, and thank you very much for letting us hear your Desert Island discs.

Jamie Cullum30:56

My pleasure. Thank you so much for having me.

Presenter31:37

You've been listening to a download from the BBC. You'll find more information on the Radio 4 website: bbc.co.uk slash Radio4.