Professor Tanya Byron

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.

Presenter0:35

My castaway this week is Professor Tanya Byron. She has spent the past twenty odd years in clinical practice helping children, young people, and families deal with some of the most difficult parts of life depression, anxiety, aggression, self harming, and drug addiction.

Presenter0:51

She came to public prominence through her television work, books, and advice columns, and it would seem she had the perfect background to cope with life as a clinician in the spotlight. Her father was a successful T V and theatre director her mother worked variously as a nursing sister and a model.

Presenter1:08

It was a highly dramatic family tragedy that ignited her interest in what spurs people to behave the way they do. She says of her work.

Presenter1:16

I do have a particular desire to enable young people, on the cusp of what could be the most extraordinary life, to live and live well.

Presenter1:25

So Tanya Barnes, through the work you do in your advice column weekly in The Times and certainly through the work you've done on television, you're very well known for giving parents advice, especially advice about younger children. Your kids are teenagers now, but but when they were much younger, were you able to take your own advice? Were you able to implement the strategies that you tell other people to?

Professor Tanya Byron1:44

Can you imagine how messed up my ki kids would be if I had been a psychologist instead of a mother? You know, I think being a practitioner didn't necessarily make me into a better mother. I think being a mother helped me be a better practitioner, because certainly you empathise with the trials and tribulations of parenting when you're one yourself.

Professor Tanya Byron2:02

I remember once being in a public shopping place with a good friend of mine when I'd just started making a series called Little Angels for the BBC and my son was having the most horrendous tantrum. I mean he's fifteen and a half now, he's a great young man, but he had the most extraordinary tantrums and because I'd been on television I could see a level of recognition on people's faces and sort of horror and surprise that here's this woman looking so helpless in the face of her own child's behaviour.

Professor Tanya Byron2:27

And I remember my friend saying to me, Tan, just put your head down and walk away and I'll pretend he's mine.

Professor Tanya Byron2:34

And I did, and it was great.

Presenter2:35

Uh

Professor Tanya Byron2:35

Yeah.

Presenter2:35

Yeah.

Professor Tanya Byron2:35

Uh

Presenter2:36

Uh

Professor Tanya Byron2:36

With

Presenter2:36

Iron

Professor Tanya Byron2:36

On our families Now is demolis

Presenter2:37

Okay.

Professor Tanya Byron2:38

Is that a good thing?

Presenter2:38

Do you think?

Professor Tanya Byron2:39

I'm kind of, you know, I struggle with the idea of the friend parent. And when I write about this, I get a lot of people writing to me saying, well, of course, we want to be our children's friends. And of course, we do. But I think, you know, when children are young, particularly, and I think particularly children who come from families that are very aspirational and very articulate, I find that in those families there's an awful lot of sort of negotiation that goes on between parents and young children. It's almost as if parents subcontract out the parenting responsibility to the child themselves. And often parents will say to me, Well, I don't like to upset them. I don't want to see them cry. I don't want to say no. And I think if you're desperate to be your child's friend, particularly when they're young, and for them to approve of you as their friend, you're going to really struggle as their parent because sometimes as a parent you have to do things that they don't like.

Presenter3:24

Clinician, writer, wife, professor, broadcaster, mother, do you ever have time, I wonder, to breathe out and relax and not do?

Professor Tanya Byron3:31

Yeah. Um mm I have a group of girlfriends who've been my friends for many years and uh spending time with them at least once a week is is really important. I love Zumba.

Professor Tanya Byron3:42

I just loved dancing like I did in the eighties as a teenager and just enjoying myself. Um I've had to learn to not do. My father was a very active, sometimes quite manic man, and so learning not to do is something I think I've had to master as a skill as I've got older.

Professor Tanya Byron4:00

Yeah.

Presenter4:00

Let's go to the music, Tanya Byron. Telling you about the first one.

Professor Tanya Byron4:03

What are we gonna hear?

Presenter4:03

Yeah.

Professor Tanya Byron4:04

So the first one is David Bow, Absolute Beginners. I love this song. I've always loved this song and I I always will love this song. There's a line in it, I absolutely love you. My husband sang it this song to me when we met very early on and he told me he absolutely loved me and lucky for me he still does.

Speaker 44:23

As long as we're together.

Speaker 44:31

Risky goes ahead

Speaker 44:40

Absolutely.

Speaker 44:48

The act of the games.

Presenter4:53

David Bowie and absolute beginners. You were asked by Gordon Brown when he was Prime Minister to carry out research into the safety of children online and you published a report. It's something of course that we are preoccupied with right now as parents, this sort of great digital bogeyman that might be hanging over our households and threaten our children and their safety and their welfare. Do you wonder sometimes that we might be looking in the wrong direction?

Professor Tanya Byron5:19

I just find it really almost perversely ironic that we are so preoccupied with children's safety online. Yet because of the way that we've constructed childhood for most children, children really often have no option but to do their childhood online because our culture is so risk averse. Kids have very, very little freedom offline. So if I think about my childhood, you know, out on my bike, favorite experiences was away from adult supervision.

Professor Tanya Byron5:49

Best times I can remember were where I was probably doing things I shouldn't have done.

Professor Tanya Byron5:53

And these I think are really kind of critical experiences for children from a developmental perspective. So we have this kind of paranoia about the online world, yet we want our children in their bedroom, their multimedia emporia, online because we know they're safe.

Presenter6:09

I bet there'll be so many people who'll listen to you say that and who'll think, Well, you know, I can't disagree with a single word of that, but I don't really know how to do it, because I worry that my kid's going to get knocked down by fast traffic or at worst abducted, and at least when they're in their bedroom, I know where they are. If I know you don't want to be entirely prescriptive to every family in Britain, but if you could give a piece of rich and thoughtful advice, what would you say to them about how they bring up their children?

Professor Tanya Byron6:36

We do live in a world where there are many threats. There are many real threats to our children, to the ones we love. As a mother myself, I know that what that anxiety feels like.

Professor Tanya Byron6:46

I'm not sure it's any more threatening than it ever was. I just think we're more aware of it and we see it happen because media can bring it to us at the moment. And that then does fuel a huge anxiety. But we then have to think about whether that anxiety is realistic in terms of the decisions we make about raising our kids. And I would argue.

Professor Tanya Byron7:08

that the more we raise our kids in captivity, the less we give them the opportunity to develop risk aware and risk management skills and fundamentally probably the more vulnerable we make them.

Presenter7:21

Let's take a break for some music, Tonya Barn, and tell me about this second uh track. Wh why have you chosen it and what is it?

Professor Tanya Byron7:27

It's Barbara O'Reilly by The Who, and it is, again, something anthemic I listen to a lot. It talks about the teenage wasteland and

Professor Tanya Byron7:38

One thing I despair about is how much we really disrespect the young people, our next generation. We create things like mosquitoes which we put in public places to drive them away, high frequency noise devices. Unless young people will show their distress in a way that's socially acceptable, those that are out there angry, aggressive and defensive, probably because they're very frightened.

Professor Tanya Byron8:03

We dump them and we don't care about them. And I think if we are constantly seeing that the youth of our society are most vulnerable, those we should be protecting are really struggling, then we're probably not doing a very good job.

Speaker 48:16

I hear.

Speaker 48:26

Back to who my miss

Speaker 48:41

I don't need to be forgiven.

Presenter8:47

That was The Who and Barbara O'Reilly. So I'm going to ask you, Tanya Byron, to tell me about yourself. And I'm wondering, as somebody who spends her life asking people to tell them about themselves, do you feel happy to talk about yourself?

Professor Tanya Byron9:00

Um yeah, I do. I mean, it feels quite nerve wracking. I'm close to a few people, have lots of lovely friends, but probably I don't talk hugely openly about myself with many people and probably won't now, partly because of the job I do. I don't think it's helpful for those that I'm working with at the moment to know too much about me.

Presenter9:18

Okay.

Professor Tanya Byron9:18

Well we'll see how far we get. Tell me

Presenter9:19

But you died then.

Professor Tanya Byron9:21

My father, his name was John, and he, as a father, was incredibly loving, but emotionally very demanding as well.

Professor Tanya Byron9:29

He was an extraordinary man. He was a creative theatre television film director. He directed Olivier and all the Shakespeare's for television. He worked with Lou Grade at ATV in the early years, worked on some of the real kind of defining programmes of the time, things like Crossroads, Emergency Ward 10, Zed Cars, those kinds of things. But he was also a very tricky man. He was a man of extremes. He was very passionate, and that passion could be incredibly exciting, quite manic at times, but he could also have very dark times. And he died in 2005 when I was making House for Tiny Tearaways. He was 67. He had a huge heart attack as he was directing. He was directing Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead. And that was a huge, huge, huge loss for me. And, you know, when you have these kind of really exciting moments in your life, like sitting here talking to you now, one of my first thoughts is, oh, God, Dad, I wish you were here. I wish you could hear this.

Presenter10:25

Be sure.

Presenter10:26

Can you give me examples of of when it was very, very good?

Professor Tanya Byron10:31

I think the way he had complete and utter 100% belief that my sister and I would be as good as he thought we would be. For example, I went to a very, very academic, very pretty girl's school, hated it. And one parents' evening, my parents were told that I would never be a high flyer. And I remember my father's outrage was so reassuring. And he said to me, Look, you'll do it when you do it. And as far as I'm concerned, you're doing it now. And you're great. And

Professor Tanya Byron11:03

Wow. I mean, that's a good bit of parenting.

Presenter11:06

Of all you need really, isn't it? Uh

Professor Tanya Byron11:08

Absolutely. But then there were times when he'd get very anxious and worry. I think he struggled as we grew up, he struggled to let go of us. There were some really difficult times and, you know, sometimes his mood swings could be really quite difficult f to manage for him as m as much as anyone else.

Presenter11:25

You and your sister are very close in age, as you've told us. How do you think it impacted on you? Because of course we're a product of not just our genetics, but our environment.

Professor Tanya Byron11:34

We're really close. I think if we were not sisters we'd be very close friends. It's made both of us we've talked about this we're both pretty vigilant in terms of reading

Professor Tanya Byron11:45

A rem reading a situation. She's very talented creatively. She's multilingual. She works for the European Commission. She's an extraordinary woman. But I think what it's made us is incredibly bonded in the sense that we both came through a childhood that had its challenges, but because also of our mother, who is an amazing woman, we look back and think, wow, he was a great father.

Presenter12:09

We'll talk about your mother in a moment. For now, we've got to fit in the music, Tanya Byron. We're going to hear your third disc. Tell me about this.

Professor Tanya Byron12:15

Well, this is Dad, my father, John Sickle. Um my childhood every morning was jazz playing, fresh coffee on the table, real Continental breakfast, and uh this is the song really that is my childhood.

Speaker 412:56

Don't let the temple

Speaker 413:02

Hello

Speaker 413:18

Da da da da da da da da da.

Speaker 413:21

How can you

Presenter13:32

That was Dave Brubeck and Take Five. I'm listening to you talk about your father, Tanya, and and the obvious deep affection that you talk about him with. I'm thinking about you as a teenager. Did you clash up against each other once you started to form your own opinions and try to shape your life?

Professor Tanya Byron13:46

Oh gosh, I yeah, I really did. I think I was probably not

Professor Tanya Byron13:51

The most pleasant teenager. Um, yeah, I fought back. I fought back. And, um, my poor mother actually, I think for her, um, you know, she was uh she was there. And, you know, this happens in families with with teenagers.

Presenter14:07

Your poor mother you

Professor Tanya Byron14:09

That's the crazy newscast.

Presenter14:11

Yes, there she was, caught in the middle of it all there. How did she handle all of that?

Professor Tanya Byron14:15

My mother's extraordinary. You know, when people meet her, they find her quite sort of reserved. My mum's actually quite shy. She's also incredibly beautiful. She worked as a model in the, well, the 60s, really. She did some when my sister and I were little as well. But then she's also a nurse, a trained nurse, and so she then devoted her life to being a nurse, a brilliant nurse.

Presenter14:38

She worked in theatre, is that right? Theatre sister. So used to managing a crisis, cool and calm, just probably the perfect uh insofar as anybody's a perfect wife for a husband, you know, ideally suited to your father in that way.

Professor Tanya Byron14:40

Theatre sister.

Professor Tanya Byron14:49

Yeah, she's incredibly kind. She loved him. She loved us. She still loves us. Um you know, she's an amazing grandmother. And, you know, I think she just went with it and we came through it and that's life. Tell me more about your grandmother.

Professor Tanya Byron15:09

Um my father's mother was um

Professor Tanya Byron15:12

Uh German, she was Jewish, she was a biochemist, but she was also an actress and a model, used to, you know, cabaret, Berlin, Germany, all very exotic and exciting. Um and she and my father had an incredibly destructive relationship and I I loved her. She was very old. She used to wear sort of men's suits and sort of fedoras and very Marlena Dietrich and quite exotic and a bit kind of wow, not the granny that all my friends had. So she would come to Sunday lunch like that?

Presenter15:40

Yeah, would she She did reserve that for the cabaret.

Professor Tanya Byron15:41

Yeah.

Professor Tanya Byron15:43

Oh, no, no, that was her. Right. Yeah, that was her. And then just later on in her life, found Christianity and.

Professor Tanya Byron15:51

In November 1982 she became a Christian, she had a baptism, and then in March 1983 she was murdered.

Professor Tanya Byron16:01

But tell me more about that. What happened?

Presenter16:02

Uh

Professor Tanya Byron16:03

She lived in a very large house which she rented the top floors out and there was someone who was living there who was a heroin user and had been told to leave.

Professor Tanya Byron16:15

who then I think came back, I understand, on the uh

Professor Tanya Byron16:20

wi wi with the intention of taking money. My grandmother was very chaotic, she lived in chaos, you know, lots of money and things and stuff all over the place. Um this was a woman who was eight months pregnant and she came my grandmother and her had some kind of altercation and the woman picked up a poker and beat her to death.

Professor Tanya Byron16:37

And you know, it was awful because my father was a suspect and because they hadn't got on, he was a suspect right. And so that was pretty grim. You know, I can remember there were sort of press outside the house. My sister and I were sent to live somewhere else. Goodness me. It was yeah, it was grim. And, you know, it was very I think it was also very difficult to see my father try and understand how to grieve.

Presenter16:44

Exactly.

Presenter17:04

And how did you and the rest of the family deal with it?

Professor Tanya Byron17:06

Yeah.

Professor Tanya Byron17:06

It's funny, isn't it? Because I kind of don't have hugely formed memories about how we dealt with it. I mean, I was about to take my O-levels, we were at school.

Professor Tanya Byron17:15

And the only way I could deal with that was to try and understand why it would happen.

Professor Tanya Byron17:20

I think that sparked an interest in how, even in the most tragic, dark places of life, one can find understanding and a way to deal with it and a way to move on from it. And again, I think

Professor Tanya Byron17:35

There's this amazing woman sitting in the middle of the family, and she just kept us all going, and we kept going.

Professor Tanya Byron17:43

It eventually became part of the family history.

Presenter17:47

Time for some music, Tanya. Tell me about this. We're on your fourth of the morning.

Professor Tanya Byron17:51

Ugh, this is just me. And

Professor Tanya Byron17:56

Becoming a young woman and jumping around and going out and having fun, it's Debbie Harry. I want that man.

Speaker 418:05

I wanna dance with everybody

Speaker 418:09

Drive through Texas in a black limousine I wanna be the heaven before I die

Speaker 418:19

I wanna pair up because I

Speaker 418:24

Catch the lights up on the Ferris Green

Speaker 418:27

What I really want, I just can't buy

Speaker 418:32

Here comes much with the sensation

Presenter18:37

That was Debbie Harry and I Want That Man. Um, Tanya Byron, how much time did you spend studying and how much time did you spend dancing to Debbie Harry in your bedroom when you were a teenager?

Professor Tanya Byron18:47

Not enough of the former and too much of the latter, I would say. Yeah. Absolutely. I went to a great school, but I don't think it was probably the best school for me. I suppose the great thing about it, it was an all-girls school, very, very much founded on the idea that women can, will, do, and must achieve. You know, there was a real sense of empowerment of girls.

Presenter18:49

Right we say, yeah.

Presenter19:06

And as we know, your interest in psychology was sparked, but I can't imagine, given that we are sort of just about the same age, that that you were able to do psychology at school then. No. So w w did you go to the library and find books? Did you buy books? Did you talk to your mother about this interest you had?

Professor Tanya Byron19:14

Yeah

Professor Tanya Byron19:20

All of those things, but also my father and also his side of the family particularly, you know, stories, storytelling and analysis is so much part of the fabric of that family. So I just remember these fantastic conversations with kind of elderly relatives, some of whom when I was young were kind of Holocaust survivors, and just the way they told stories and thought about things. I find that fascinating. I still do. I'm just, you know, you meet someone and you just want to know their story.

Presenter19:47

Is that what therapy is at its best? Is it people sitting in a room and trying to order their existence and their experience by telling stories about it?

Professor Tanya Byron19:56

Absolutely. It's about the narrative and it's about constructing the narrative in a way that makes enough sense for the helplessness and the hopelessness that that person might be feeling at the time to not be there anymore. It's about putting things in order. I like tidiness as well. I like making order out of chaos. So it's about that.

Presenter20:18

You said that you weren't a high flying academic student, but you did well enough to get into to university. What do you make of lots of the youngsters that you you treat and listen to today who who have

Presenter20:31

Almost unfeasibly large amounts of pressure and, as a result, anxiety about their achievement, even when they're fourteen, fifteen, sixteen years old.

Professor Tanya Byron20:40

It makes me really mad. I mean, you know, if the grades I got at A-level, I went to York University, it's a great university, I would not have got in there with the same grades. So the bar is very different now. What do I say to young people? So I sit in clinics with these beautiful, intelligent, articulate, fabulous young people who have been pushed and pushed and pushed.

Professor Tanya Byron21:02

Through, I think, what to some degree is quite a narrow definition of education, and who are doing just really well, but are just carving into their arms, or smoking a lot of weed, or drinking, or feeling suicidal, because they just haven't got all the A stars. And that, therefore, as far as defining who they are, is just not good enough.

Professor Tanya Byron21:27

I don't think the way you evaluate intelligence, and definitely not the intelligence of a person who's going to use that wisely and successfully in their life, comes down to their grades.

Presenter21:38

Let's have some more music. We're on your fifth.

Professor Tanya Byron21:41

Yeah, Doris Day. I mean, you know, from Debbie Harry to Doris Day, both blonde, iconic.

Professor Tanya Byron21:47

Brilliant women. And Doris Day, this is for my mum. My sister and I were brought up on a diet of nineteen fifties mu musicals. My sister and I can recite virtually every line in every lyr lyric from Calamity Jane. So this is just the best Doris Day song.

Speaker 422:03

You won't admit you love me And so how am I ever to know You always tell me Perhaps, perhaps

Speaker 422:18

Say

Speaker 422:21

A million times I've asked you.

Speaker 422:24

And then I ask you over Again you only answer

Speaker 422:34

Perhaps, perhaps?

Presenter22:37

That was Doris Day, and perhaps, perhaps, perhaps. So, Tanya Barron, you went to York University, as we know. You graduated in psychology, went on to do a master's and then you got your doctorate. You work a lot with teenagers, young adults, and often, I imagine, their families. Are those difficult sessions sitting with somebody and their family and saying, Well, it's not really about him, it's sort of about all of you?

Professor Tanya Byron22:59

Um well, I suppose it's how you do it really. I mean, I suppose a good answer would be to talk about when I worked for quite a number of years and then became a consultant in an inpatient unit for young people who have such a high level of distress, psychological, psychiatric, emotional and behavioural that they can't be managed in outpatient services in the community.

Professor Tanya Byron23:18

And these children would come in and they would sit in the middle of what was often very chaotic systems, not just with their parents or carers and siblings, but also extended family and also other agencies that had tried to work with them.

Professor Tanya Byron23:31

And we would often congratulate the child on bringing everybody to a place where we can all try and work out what on earth is going on. But fundamentally,

Professor Tanya Byron23:41

The person, the individual who is showing the difficulty, is not necessarily the only individual responsible for the difficulties that exist.

Presenter23:51

I very deliberately in the introduction to you used this quote about on the cusp of what could be the most extraordinary life, to live and live well. To live there is really interesting. I mean, I'm presuming that you

Presenter24:03

Must over the years have had teenagers who sit in your consulting room and just say, I'd rather be dead.

Professor Tanya Byron24:11

I have, and and I do, and I think probably that is one of those professional experiences that will always make your heart jump.

Professor Tanya Byron24:22

Looking into the eyes of a child or a young person who wants to be dead.

Professor Tanya Byron24:27

is truly truly

Professor Tanya Byron24:30

It's truly sad.

Presenter24:32

Do you keep in contact with people that you've helped as teenagers when they they travel on through their life, through their twenties and into their Some of them, I guess, now must be in their thirties now, and maybe building their own families?

Professor Tanya Byron24:42

Yes, I do. I do. So that must be very rewarding. It's fantastic. They find me, I don't find them. And obviously it's important just to kind of redefine the relationship, but many, many years have passed. It is. And I think that's why I have an optimism bias about life, and that's why I get so angry when you just hear all this stuff about these kids that we write off as having nothing to offer and no hope. I've met those kids, and they can become, and often do become.

Professor Tanya Byron25:12

The most wonderful.

Professor Tanya Byron25:14

Wonderful people.

Presenter25:15

So many of us are living with teenagers and we know how terrific they are and we know how lovely their friends are, and it can be very frustrating to feel that the words problem and teenagers always seem to appear in the media in the same sentence. We need to shake that one off, surely.

Professor Tanya Byron25:28

We never will, though. I mean, there's this great quote by Plato, which I don't have in front of me, but fundamentally Plato was kind of bemoaning the youth of today, they run right in the streets and they disrespect their elders. I mean, I think

Presenter25:40

Twas ever thus.

Professor Tanya Byron25:41

Twas ever thus. And what's great about teenagers is it sh I suppose they shake us up and uh maybe we could do with a bit of shaking up, so that's not such a bad thing.

Presenter25:50

Let's have your sixth disc, Tanya Barn, and tell me about it.

Professor Tanya Byron25:52

So this is the the. It's called Uncertain Smile. It's very much being at university. It's just a great track, but particularly there's a big piano section in it. Jules Holland is playing the piano and oh, I could listen to this forever, and often I do when I'm writing. It's a great track.

Presenter26:38

That was the the and uncertain smile, and we heard Jules Holland there playing piano. Let's talk about you do comedy writing.

Professor Tanya Byron26:44

Well, I'm really lucky to I've written um with Jennifer Saunders. She's a good mate of mine. I met when I went on her show with Dawn French in two thousand five. I did the House for Tiny Tearaways, they were big fans. They asked me to come on and we sort of mocked that up with them.

Professor Tanya Byron26:59

And they're both unbelievable women. I mean, I just remember there I am standing with these two women who I used to talk about in my women's group at York University as being these iconic women, you know, up there with Debbie Harry and, you know, Doris Day for goodness sake. So it was all a bit overwhelming. But she and I just became great friends. She's really into narrative. And so we do spend a lot of time sitting in Pavement Cafes, drinking a nice glass of wine, looking at people and saying, Right, let's tell their story.

Presenter27:26

And you co-wrote and created the character Vivian Veil, which people might remember from a few years back. She was a sort of.

Professor Tanya Byron27:29

Yes.

Presenter27:33

A talk show host or somebody who did these mid-morning programmes where people spill the beans?

Professor Tanya Byron27:37

Yeah, but those grim ones where it's really exploitative telly and the people are clearly very unwell and really don't need someone yelling at them and telling them to pull their socks up. Yeah, so we did that and it was just brilliant, loved it, and spent an awful lot of time laughing and writing. And humour is really important to me. Apart from all the tragic tales I've told, you know, my childhood was full of humour. Busy, sociable, happy life, loads of people around. You know, we still do that with our kids. Jokes are very important ways of coping with difficult times. You know, having a laugh is often as good as having a cup of tea in a crisis. Good advice there. Thank you.

Presenter28:17

Doctor. Let's go to your next piece of music then. Tell me about this. Why have you chosen this?

Professor Tanya Byron28:23

Well, I think everybody knows this. It's Pacca Bell's Canon in D major. It reminds me of when my kids were little. I kind of felt I ought to put a classical piece in, to be honest.

Professor Tanya Byron28:32

You felt the pressure, didn't you? I felt the pressure. But actually, you know, this is when my kids were babies and it just was nice music to hold them to. I think I used to feed them to this. Um I just like it.

Presenter29:50

Hachebell's cannon in D Major, played by the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Karl Moonschinger. So, Tanya Barne. We've got this far, and apart from right at the beginning, we haven't really spoken about your husband. Bruce, how did you meet?

Professor Tanya Byron30:03

My father, at the end of his life, ran a television and theatre training school, and my husband was in the first intake of students. He'd been living in Australia for many years, so he was this kind of brusque Australian guy. And I remember thinking, Mm, gosh, not sure I like you. Anyway, I'd had a sort of bit of a situation at work. I was working at Charing Cross at the time, and some rather unpleasant patient had threatened me with a knife and blah, blah, blah. And I went home, and he and some of the other students were going out to the pub, and I went with them, and I just really liked him, and then decided actually I liked him more than liked him, loved him, and here we are.

Presenter30:35

And and your kids then, uh Lily and Jack, both teenagers, now, are they showing much more of a bent towards the arts?

Professor Tanya Byron30:42

Yeah, definitely. Lil is very musical, sings, plays piano brilliantly. That's her thing, and uh that's where she wants to go. And Jack, he's at performing arts school and he's actually very interested in film making. And again, it's one of those moments where I think, Oh, Dad, I wish you were here because you and Jack would just have so much fun. He makes lots of films and things, so yeah.

Professor Tanya Byron31:01

None of my genes there.

Presenter31:03

I'm going to send you to an island, a desert island. You'll have nobody's stories to listen to. Of course, you'll have all the stories in your head that you've listened to over the years. How do you think you'll cope on your own?

Professor Tanya Byron31:12

Um I think I'd be okay, actually. Yeah, I think I'd be fine. I'd probably quite enjoy the solitude. I'd struggle with it to begin with. I'm sure I'd start talking to inanimate objects and find ways of working out their story. But um actually I think I'd quite enjoy it.

Presenter31:27

Tell me about the final piece we're gonna hear then.

Professor Tanya Byron31:29

Okay, so this is the really big piece for me. It's Frank Sinatra. Again, very much part of my childhood, very much part of the music of my childhood and of my children's childhood. It's that's life, and there are some great messages in it for people who have maybe hit the bottom. It's all about hitting the bottom and picking yourself up and carrying on. And that's what my dad was, and that's what I try and do in my job and probably have done in my life. And that's what I'd like people who feel desperate and sad to feel that they can do in theirs.

Speaker 332:04

That's live.

Speaker 332:07

That's what all the people say.

Speaker 332:11

You're riding high in April

Speaker 332:14

Shut down in May.

Speaker 332:17

But I know I'm gonna change that tune.

Speaker 332:23

When I'm back on top, back on top in June.

Speaker 332:28

I said that's life.

Speaker 332:33

And as funny as it may seem

Presenter32:37

Frank Sinatra, and that's life. I'm going to give you then, Tanya Byron, the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare, and you get to take another book along, too, to this island. What's it going to be?

Professor Tanya Byron32:46

It's going to be Emma by Jane Austen. I like all of Jane Austen's books, but I I like Emma because it's not the central theme isn't about finding a husband. And I love her. I love her. So I'll take her with me.

Presenter32:59

It's yours and I'm gonna

Professor Tanya Byron33:00

Thank you.

Presenter33:00

Yeah.

Professor Tanya Byron33:00

Uh

Presenter33:00

Luxury as well.

Professor Tanya Byron33:02

Please, may I have the biggest, most beautiful grand piano?

Professor Tanya Byron33:08

A because I think it will look like a companion.

Professor Tanya Byron33:11

And B because I'd like to learn the Jules Holland piano section from the Uncertain Smile while I'm there. I mean, I've gonna have time, so I might as well do something useful.

Presenter33:22

Quite good at piano already, I hear.

Professor Tanya Byron33:24

I was better, but I'd enjoy the time to really get to the standard I want. You can certainly have that then.

Presenter33:29

Finally, which track would you save from this eight?

Professor Tanya Byron33:32

Uh I'd take the the uncertain smile because I'd listen to that over and over again'cause I wouldn't be able to take any music with me'cause you're not going to give me anything else. So I'd have to take the track and I'd listen to it over again and I'd play it as well as as it's played on that track.

Presenter33:46

Professor Tanya Byron, thank you very much for letting us hear your desert island discs.

Professor Tanya Byron33:50

Thank you.

Presenter34:31

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.