David Nott

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.

Presenter0:34

My castaway this week is the surgeon, David Knott. For most of the year, he's busy bicycling across London, scrubbing up and going about the everyday business of saving people's lives. Indeed, he's one of Britain's top vascular surgeons, carrying out three different kinds of surgery at three different hospitals. It seems, however, that that's not quite enough to keep him occupied, because for more than twenty years he's also taken time away from this demanding role in RNHS to work in the world's crisis zones, among them Darfur, Sierra Leone, the Congo, Afghanistan, and Syria, all countries that have at times

Presenter1:11

been war-torn hell holes riven by savage destruction and brutal suffering.

Presenter1:16

The official term for his makeshift operating room amid the carnage of war is a surgically austere environment. In practice, it's not just the dirt, lack of instruments, and low blood supplies that have to be coped with, but also that medical facilities and doctors are increasingly victims of missile attacks. Being a medic runs in the family. His Welsh mother was a nurse, his Indo-Burmese father an orthopaedic surgeon. In fact, it was a trip with his dad to the cinema that first sparked his interest in life on the front line, the movie.

Presenter1:49

Was the killing fields. He says, When you go so far and have come close to death and cheated it.

Presenter1:56

You get an amazing adrenaline buzz. It sounds a bit crazy, but there's an element of risk taking that's not enjoyable, but it's euphoric. It's like a drug. So um welcome, David Knott. That idea that proximity to death can somehow make us feel more alive is not a new one.

Presenter2:13

It is an odd one, though. Can can you explain a little more?

David Nott2:16

About it? Yes, I mean I've been involved in many crises really where I've been operating in operating theatres and outside you can hear gunfire and you can hear the sounds of bombs dropping and you really have to concentrate on the patient that you're operating on. But it is the fact that it's so intense and it's so dangerous and it's so difficult gives you one, gives me anyway the most incredible adrenaline buzz. When I first started over 20 years ago, you know, I'd never experienced a war before and being involved in the middle of it all and also being very close to people that were being injured and next door to people that were being shot, you realise at the time that life is so precious and so important and to try and preserve it is a wonderful thing.

Presenter3:02

And this surgically austere environment, what have you got? What don't you have? What does it look like?

David Nott3:07

Well, when you're working in the NHS, you've got CT scanners, MRI scanners, you've got groups of people that sit around meetings and discuss things called MDTs, multidisciplinary team meetings, and you've got massive amounts of laboratory assistance. But here, you're really on your own, and you really have to know how to deal with the patient themselves. You have to deal with every single injury, every single medical problem without a CT scan, without an MRI. And you go back to what you were taught to be as a doctor with a stethoscope, your own medical knowledge, and you have to make the right decision for that patient, knowing that, in fact, if you operate on this patient, you might use up all the blood that you have available to you. And the problem is that you won't have any more for anybody else. So it's making those very difficult decisions.

Presenter3:54

Let's go to your music now. Uh David Knott, tell me about your first choice. What is it and why is it important to you?

David Nott4:00

Brought up by my grandparents in Wales because my mother was a first-year nurse when she met my father who had come over from India and they were very poor. My mother was from a very tiny little village in the middle of Wales and so she wanted to complete her nursing training. My father had no money at all to look after me. So my grandparents brought me up until I was about four and we lived in a small village called Trellech outside Carmarthen. And I remember so vividly sitting in the back of their Austin A10 whilst I was being driven from one place to another, sliding on the back seat on the leather and listening to them singing to each other this song.

Speaker 45:01

All shall come, my Lord.

Presenter5:14

That was McFanway sung by the Triorki male choir with the Jonathan Price string ensemble. It's hard for those of us who don't really know the practical ins and outs of war and what it is to be the on the front line, and that's most of us, to understand the personal danger that you're in. I want you to cast your mind back to the Syria conflict in I think it was 2013. You found yourself operating on a fighter from so-called Islamic State. Can you just explain what happened?

David Nott5:44

Yes, I was in the hospital and our hospital was on the front line, probably about 100 metres from the front line, and you could hear gun fighting around. And suddenly, one of the patients started bleeding profusely and lost about a litre, two litres of blood from the chest rain. So we took him downstairs to the operating theatre. And I was with one of my Syrian colleagues, another surgeon, who hadn't done that much thoracic surgery. And as we did an operation called a thoracotomy, suddenly the door flew open and six fighters came in, all with their AK-47s. And the Syrian surgeon looked at me and said, just don't say anything.

Presenter6:25

Y you literally did not open your mouth for fear of the fact that they would find out that you were

David Nott6:28

No, I didn't say a single word. I was shaking the whole way through and I tried to physically control myself as this was going on. And one of the fighters came up who was in charge of this group. And in fact, I suddenly realised that this was an ISIS fighter that we were operating upon. And the rest of the group that were with him were from ISIS. And so my colleague then said, well, you mustn't disturb the senior surgeon who's operating and trying to stop the bleeding on your colleague. And I remember so vividly my legs shaking like jelly. They stayed in for about 20 minutes with their guns all pointed towards us on the floor, but they were not far away from us. And then all of a sudden something happened outside and six of them left. The senior stayed in until about 20 minutes before the operation was finished and he was happy that we'd stopped all the bleeding and then he left.

Presenter6:28

Yeah.

Presenter7:25

Do you care who you operate on?

David Nott7:27

I don't care who I operate upon.

David Nott7:30

You know, I think I think to that person, maybe, you know, I'd saved his life, maybe he might have changed his mind about things. And so, you know, we're all human beings.

Presenter7:40

Of course, we are all too aware of uh the horrors that are perpetrated in the name of so-called Islamic State. I think some people will think that's very difficult to hear.

Presenter7:49

all the things we know about what those people are capable of, and you would say still this is a life worth saving, because he may well have gone on to be fit and well and kill many other people.

David Nott8:00

Exactly. But I don't know that, and you don't know that, and nobody knows that. And, you know, he may find out that he was operated on by a Christian surgeon in a hospital.

Speaker 48:08

Uh

Presenter8:08

Yeah.

Presenter8:09

Yeah.

David Nott8:10

He and I hope he does find out.

Presenter8:12

Time for some more music now, uh David Knott. Tell me about your second piece of music.

David Nott8:17

When I was a little boy, I had a bit of a lonely childhood, really, and spent most of my time building aeroplanes, air fix aeroplanes, and I must probably had about four or five hundred of them hanging from my top of my

Presenter8:28

Four or five hundred

David Nott8:29

Yes, yes. I had hundreds of them hanging from little bits of cotton in my bedroom. And I then wanted to learn to fly. And I actually did learn to fly. And I got a private pilot's license, a commercial pilot's licence. I even became an airline transport pilot and flew for this company in Luton called Hamlin Jet for about 10 years. And this next record is leaving on a jet plane, but it's in Welsh because most of my holidays were spent in Wales. And my mother introduced me to this record.

Speaker 49:01

Progisana Guenimi

David Nott9:03

It's not when you mean

Speaker 49:06

To end my hearts I need.

David Nott9:06

To end my heart or sni

Speaker 49:10

Dalving dinner.

Speaker 49:17

For in God I Tell no more end.

David Nott9:20

Don't know what it is.

Speaker 49:22

Lifetime comes an event.

Speaker 49:27

A breath gown at all

Presenter9:31

That was Treban and Gediel. Tell me then a little bit more, David, about you say you had these four or five hundred airfix models that were all hanging from the ceiling of your bedroom. Early Dexterity, the little boy who made four hundred air fix models, that must have been jolly good training for what you do now. I mean they're difficult.

David Nott9:48

They're difficult those. They are, they're small and difficult and I loved it. And I was on my own doing it all and and, you know, I really enjoyed the whole thing. You know, and I'm actually work with both my hands.

Presenter9:58

Your ambidexuals.

David Nott9:59

Yes, I'm ambidextrous. I can operate with my left and right hand.

Presenter10:02

I was asking you during that last piece of lovely music, I was saying, you know, the fact that you are working in three distinct types of surgery at three big London hospitals I said, you know, I've said that's unusual. What is it about you, do you think, that has wanted to do that?

David Nott10:17

Well, I do it because it's important for me to keep all the plates spinning. That if I go abroad, for example, and they'll turn around to me and say, well, are you a general surgeon? Well, I am actually because I work in this hospital. And are you a vascular surgeon? Well, I am actually because I work in this hospital. And I've still got so much enthusiasm for surgery. I still love learning new things, new techniques, new operations. I love teaching it to people. I love people suddenly realising, gosh, I can do this.

Presenter10:43

Let's go to your next choice, David Knott.

David Nott10:46

So when I was a student, I had difficulty actually. I'm not the brightest of all people.

Presenter10:51

Yes, you do seem very dim. Above all else, that's what are you talking about? You're not the prices.

David Nott10:56

Well, you know, I did struggle at school and I didn't get my A-levels first time and I had to go back for a second time to have a go at them. And I think that's actually helped me for the rest of time. But I remember finally getting into university to do medicine and I was delighted and I went to St Andrews and I had a colleague of mine, a first year who shared a room with called Johnny Woods, who's still my best friend. And we invited these girls around for pancakes by candlelight. So they came round and unfortunately the candles set fire to the curtains which set fire to the whole hall of residence. But luckily the fire brigade came and it stopped. But as I came back that evening, all wrapped up in various bandages and so on, I was given a shot of morphine from the doctor. I was in such a great amount of pain. But this music came through the wall and it was just like, gosh, I am in heaven. It was beautiful and it's always remained one of my favourites.

Speaker 312:03

There's a lady who short

Speaker 312:06

All it glitters is gold, and she's buying the stairway.

Speaker 312:13

The heel

Speaker 312:16

When she gets there she knows.

Speaker 312:19

If the stores are all closed, With a word she can get what she can

Presenter12:29

That was Led Zeppelin and Steerway to Heaven. So, David Knott, you qualified as a doctor then in the early 80s. Tell me about how you became a surgeon. You were on call one night, I think it was in Manchester. Indeed, you'd gone on to do the secondary part of your degree at Manchester. You're at Manchester Royal Infirmary. You received a call. There was a woman who

Presenter12:48

She had a head injury, I think. Tell me what happened.

David Nott12:50

Tell me what happened. Yes, I just qualified. I'd done six months as a harris physician and I went down to Manchester and I was late coming back from my elective so there were no house surgical jobs, but there was a house neurosurgical job. So I did that and was doing that for a couple of months and the neurosurgeon, the registrar and senior registrar, lived many, many miles away, about 25 miles away. And I had a really nice neurosurgical colleague who's called Peter Stanworth. And he said to me, David, I need to show you how to do a burr hole. I need to show you how to make a hole in somebody's cranium to get rid of blood in case it happens and I can't get there in time. And so I said, okay, Peter. So he showed me how to do burr holes on a patient that we were operating upon.

Presenter13:31

How'd you do it?

David Nott13:31

And so you make an incision in the side of the head and you drill a hole to get down to the dura, which is the lining of the brain. And then you put this burr in, which makes the hole much bigger and allows things to come out if it's going to be bleeding. So he showed me this. And then one day he was on call and I got a phone call from a colleague to say they've had a patient and they think they've got a bleed on the brain. So the patient came across, we did the CT scan. And I looked at the scan, I thought, crikey, you know, there's a very big bleed on the brain. And her breathing became much worse. And the anisa said, I'm going to have to intubate because otherwise she's not going to make it. So I phoned up Peter and said, I've got this problem. He said, well, David, you've just got to do it. So after only doing this job for two months and only having been qualified for eight months, I stopped the professor of surgery upstairs who was just about to do a renal transplant. I said, I'm sorry, I'm going to take this patient to the operating theatre. And so as a 24-year-old, 25-year-old doctor, I started to mobilise the team. They all came down. And as I started drilling, nothing came out. And then suddenly one of my friends said, Dave, Dave, other side. So I drilled the wrong side. So I then went to the other side and drilled this other hole on the other side of the head. And still nothing came out. And then I saw this blueness underneath the dura, which meant it was a subdural hematoma. And again, I knew what to do, because Peter had told me. So I then drilled another hole and another hole. And finally, the blood did start to flow. Her respirations came back to normal, her blood pressure came back to normal. And that's the moment I thought, right, I'm going to be a surgeon.

Speaker 414:52

Yeah.

Presenter15:08

And how was she, I mean long term?

David Nott15:10

She she did fine. She did fine.

Presenter15:13

Now, of course, your father was a surgeon, and your mother was a nurse, and presumably as you'd been growing up and talking to them about the possibility of doing medicine, they had spoken to you about their working lives. I mean, what had they said to you? What advice had they given you?

David Nott15:26

Well, I really wanted to be a pilot, to be really honest with you. And dad said, no, no, no, no, you're not. You're going to be a doctor, you know. So there was a lot of pressure on me for doing that.

Presenter15:31

So

Presenter15:34

And now, of course, you know, we would tend to think these days, well, it's unfair, you know, children have got to find their own way.

David Nott15:40

Oh no, he did the right thing. He used to chase me upstairs to work. I would he would sit outside my room, and he'd come into my room and sit there and watch me studying. He was determined I was going to become a doctor determined.

Presenter15:53

Let's have some more music, David Knott. Tell me about this, then. We're on your fourth of the morning.

David Nott15:57

So the next one is a theme to the deer hunter. And the reason why I've chosen this is because it's one of my great films of all time. Robert De Niro had such power, such amazing amount of pure leadership, a lot of integrity. And from somebody that just is basically a worker in a factory, suddenly becomes this enormously strong character. And if I could have about 5% of what he has, I'd be happy.

Presenter17:32

The theme to the deer hunter, that was Cavatina, composed by Stanley Myers and played by John Williams. You've been taking unpaid leave from the NHS, then, David Knott for around about 20 years to go and work, as we know, on the front line, doing multiple types of surgery, saving people's lives in very difficult circumstances. I want to ask you about the first time that you did that. It was 1993. It was in Sarajevo during the conflict there. And you looked at the pictures on the television and you thought, I've got to go.

Presenter18:00

As many of us will know, you know, television pictures are only really an approximation of the reality when you were there.

Presenter18:06

What was it?

David Nott18:07

Really like That first time. How much of a shock was it? Gosh, it was a huge shock. I remember even sitting on the Aleutian aircraft landing into Sarajevo. I only had about five minutes to get off the airplane because it was one of those turnarounds and we had a nosedive into the airport. Found it very exhilarating, to be honest. And then we got picked up by a bulletproof MSF vehicle, which took me to one of the hospitals. And I was on my own then in the city, state hospital in the city centre, which was called the Swiss Cheese Hospital because it had so many holes in it. We used to be hit all the time. And it was the first time I ever felt that, you know, hang on a minute, you know, international humanitarian law should be here to help me. I'm a doctor. You know, why are you shooting hospitals? We didn't know much about trauma at the time. Patients would come in and unfortunately they would die on the operating table because it was so cold. One particular time I remember I was operating on a young lad who'd had a fragment injury to his major blood vessel in his abdomen and a rocket had hit the hospital. The whole place shook and I was operating with an aesthetist and a scrub nurse and somebody else and suddenly the lights went off and it was completely pitch black. And so five minutes passed, ten minutes passed, nobody came. I don't know 15 minutes later the lights went on and I was the only person in the operating theatre. Everybody had left because they realized that if the hospital had been completely destroyed we were all going to die. But nobody told me and it was a big major moment for me realizing that

David Nott19:34

You know, you probably have to look after yourself sometimes rather than the patient. Have you done that since? Are there times when you have to exit mid-operation? I was in Gaza in 2014 during the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And I was working in one of the big hospitals in Gaza City. There was this little girl that had come in who was about seven who'd had her evisceration, it's called, where the bowels are hanging out of the abdominal wall. She'd had severe fragmentation injuries. Her fragment had gone into her bladder, her spleen, her stomach, and so on. I prepared her with iodine and so on. Somebody came up to me and said, David, we need to go now. We need to leave the hospital because it's going to be blown up in five minutes. And I looked at her, and at the time, I had no family, I had no siblings, I had nobody. And I was thinking, well, okay, I'm on my own here. And, you know, am I going to leave this little girl on her own to die in the hospital? And I made a conscious decision that I wasn't going to. So I stayed there with her and thought, well.

Presenter20:41

So you must tell me what happened, what happened to the rest of the

David Nott20:43

So all the staff in the operating theatre left. I was there with the anaesthetist and I looked at the anaetotist and I said to him, Do you want to go? He said, no, I'll stay with you. And so the two of us just stayed there. We operated, waiting for the bomb to explode onto the hospital. Nothing happened. And three or four days later, I've got this picture of me and the little girl.

Presenter21:08

Right. We're going to take a break. We're going to have some music. David Knott. Um, tell me about this. This is your fifth one of the morning.

David Nott21:14

So I've done this job for many years and I really love it and I also love the Rolling Stones and I've been to see them five times from the Los Angeles Rose Bowl to Manchester City Football Club and one of the records which I really really love it's Give Me Shelter and I take it with me when I go on my visits.

Speaker 422:01

He's girlish shallow, he's getting the shallow way one

Speaker 422:09

He's got to shy away, he's got to shy away.

Presenter22:16

That was the Rolling Stones and Give New Shelter. You said, David Knott, that you often take that on your many trips around the world just to sort of comfort you through these extraordinary situations that you've been sharing with us this morning.

Presenter22:27

I want to ask you, David, about you speak so

Presenter22:31

disarmingly calmly about all these utterly

Presenter22:36

Extraordinary circumstances.

Presenter22:39

Post-traumatic stress disorder is very well documented, certainly among people who are working in the military and indeed people in emergency services.

Presenter22:46

You've been subjected to so much trauma, so much human distress, the very worst.

Presenter22:53

that human beings can do to each other.

Presenter22:55

What has been?

Presenter22:57

The effect upon you.

David Nott22:59

I I do suffer, there's no doubt about it. It takes me about three months to get over a mission sometimes. And sometimes I'm very angry and and and that's part of the post-traumatic stress. But I think more recently I I've suffered severely when I came back in 2014, almost psychotic um post-traumatic stress.

Presenter23:20

And this would be what violent rages and flashbacks and trying to contain the

David Nott23:24

Yeah, a small little tiny little ember will if somebody says something to me will grow into this fire which grows into a furnace which grows into something uncontrollable.

Presenter23:25

Metal

Presenter23:35

You were as it happens, you've been given an OBE for your work and and I know that you had you did was it in twenty fourteen you had lunch with the Queen? Yeah.

David Nott23:42

Yes.

Presenter23:42

Yeah, so this was just when you had come back and ha were suffering this terrible

David Nott23:43

Yeah, so this

David Nott23:47

Episode, how was lunch? So I came back around October the 15th, 2014, and 10 days later I found myself sitting in Buckingham Palace with the Queen. And she was sitting on my right, and I was sitting on her left. And when it came to my turn to start talking to her, she said, I heard you've just come back from Aleppo. I said, yes, I have. And if you consider coming back from where I just come from, it was the whole the hospital was being blown. Yes.

Speaker 424:15

Yeah.

David Nott24:16

Everything around me was being shelled, and I'm coping with children that were badly, really badly damaged. And she must have detected something significant because I didn't know what to say to her. It wasn't that I didn't want to speak to her. I just couldn't. I could not say anything. So she picked all this up. She said, Well,

Presenter24:30

I just got

David Nott24:36

Sh shall I help you?

David Nott24:38

I thought, how on earth can the queen help me? And all of a sudden, the courtiers brought the corgis, and the corgis went underneath the table. And she went to one of the courtiers and said, can we open up that please? And so she opened up this lid and there were a load of biscuits. And so she got one of the biscuits and she broke it in two and said, okay, why don't we feed the dogs? And so for 20 minutes, the queen and I, during this lunch, just fed the dogs. And she did it because she knew that I was so seriously traumatized. You know, the humanity of what she was doing was unbelievable. And did it help you? Very much so. I think stroking animals, touching dogs, feeding them. And we just talked about her dogs and how many she had.

Presenter25:12

Yeah.

David Nott25:28

She was so warm and so wonderful, and I'll never forget it.

Presenter25:32

Let's have some more music, David Knott. Tell me about this. We're gonna hear your sixth disc.

David Nott25:36

This is a a record which I've been around the world fixing people and I suddenly got to stage probably where I think I probably needed fixing myself and something quite remarkable happened to me which I'd never in a hundred years thought would happen.

David Nott25:57

But uh the record is called Fix You by Coldplay.

Speaker 426:01

When you love someone but it goes to ways

Speaker 426:07

Could it be wild?

Speaker 426:17

Lights will guide you home.

Speaker 426:25

And ignorance And I will try

Speaker 426:35

A fiction.

Presenter26:40

That was Coldplay and Fix You, you said, David, as we went into that uh piece of music, something remarkable happened.

Presenter26:47

You had said for many years that you did what you did because you didn't have a wife and family. Well, you do now. You do now have a wife and family. It happens quickly and

David Nott26:54

Do not have a west sound.

David Nott26:57

Well, it was remarkable. I remember thinking that when I was in Gaza that I was probably going to die here because I remember being one of the shelters and it was somebody, a reporter asked me, what's it like to work in Gaza? And I said, well, it's like the apocalypse. I thought it was like the apocalypse. It felt like the shelter that we were in was shaking and I thought, I'm not going to survive this. And I'd met a girl at a charity event just a few weeks before that. And I thought, God, she's nice across the table. And I never thought anything of it. But then I thought, hang on, I'm not going to survive this. I don't really think I'm going to... So I'll send her an email. So I sent her an email and said, I met you. I remember you giving me your card. And I just want you to know that I think you're very nice.

Presenter26:58

Yeah.

David Nott27:47

I would never have done that had I not thought I was going to die. And so she sent me an email back, saying, Well, why don't we meet up? And I said, Well, fair enough. And I met her outside a tube station and it was just I it's you know when they say it's love at first sight it was love at first sight. So I had three weeks with her until I went off to Syria and it it was remarkable.

Presenter28:15

You have a daughter now called called Molly and I'm of course you must have been there when Molly was born. Were you involved in in Molly's delivery?

David Nott28:21

Well no, it was brilliant because I mean when Ellie was pregnant, she was 28 weeks pregnant, this earthquake happened in Nepal and she's so utterly supportive. She could see me itching and she said to me, David, if you really need to go, go and I'll be here and I'll call you if anything happens. So I went off for three weeks to Nepal for the earthquake when she was pregnant and I came back. And of course then she had some problems and needed a cesarean section. So it was fantastic because my colleagues, my colleagues I'd worked with for 20 years at Chelsea and Westminster, he did the cesarean section. My anaesthetist colleague who I'd worked with for 20 years, he did the anaesthetic. So I was surrounded by friends. It was a joyous moment.

Presenter29:09

Let's have some more music, David Knott. Tell me about your your seventh.

David Nott29:12

Claire Delune is all about Ellie. And it's about how when I came back from back from Syria after six weeks she was at the airport waiting for me and

David Nott29:28

Should we just listen?

Presenter29:28

Should we just listen to it?

David Nott29:31

Okay.

Presenter29:31

Uh

Presenter30:38

That was Debussy's Claire de Lune played there by James Rhodes. So David Knott, many of the characteristics you have you will have in common with lots of other surgeons and doctors and GPs and nurses and people who work in our NHS and want to do the best for the patients that they have. What's going on in your head that makes you think, well, I've got to leave this and take it somewhere else?

David Nott31:02

Because you're doing good where you are. I am doing good where I am, but other than the hand, there's lots of other people that can do my job. But out there with the knowledge that I have,

David Nott31:12

If I don't go, those patients will die, whereas if I stay here, I'm not hugely one hundred percent required, whereas there I am, and that's the difference.

Presenter31:22

Along with your wife, Ellie, you've decided together to set up a charity, uh the David Knott Foundation. Its purpose is to train doctors locally for the sort of emergencies that you've worked in for the last twenty years.

David Nott31:35

Years. Yes, I run this course at the Royal College of Surgeons called Surgical Training for the Austria Environment course. I also ran another course as well called Definitive Surgical Trauma Skills course. But it costs money to go on this course. And so Ellie and I set up this charity which actually will pay for surgeons to come from all over the world and we'll send them back with all this information. We actually take a smaller part of the course to the front line and we just train 30 surgeons which came over the border from Syria. So Ellie is the chief executive. I am the chairman. We do have a group of trustees but I'm absolutely delighted to say that our patron is Baroness Betty Boothroyd.

Presenter31:39

So

Presenter32:13

You are somebody who has you've consistently called for humanitarian corridors in Syria in order to allow aid and medical help in, and so on, and so on.

Presenter32:22

So many of these conflicts are so murky, not just Syria, so murky and complex.

Presenter32:29

When you pipe up and get involved, how able do you think you are?

Presenter32:34

To be thoughtful and useful in those circumstances, politically, I mean.

David Nott32:39

I've tried very hard. I've tried writing things, I've tried talking to people, I've tried media to try and change the politicians' ways of thinking. I've been to the House of Commons recently and some politicians do say to me, David, we are listening to you. Keep going because we are listening to you. But it doesn't change anything really. And it needs politicians to change wars. That's the only way it's going to work. But until that time, I shall work so damn hard for the humanitarian point of view to help those people there, but also realising that there's not a huge amount I can do, but I can bring it to the attention.

Presenter33:15

And there'll be nobody to save on the desert island. There'll be no moments of well, there might be some high drama, but it'll just involve you.

Presenter33:23

Nobody to stitch up, nobody's head to drill. Um how will you do on your own on a desert island?

David Nott33:29

Well, I said this to Ellie the other day. I said I'm going to cope very well and she was really upset that I was able to cope on my own. But I I will be able to cope on my own. I'm I'm very happy with my own solace and uh I won't have any problems.

Presenter33:36

Yeah.

David Nott33:41

Tell me about our final disc then, David Knott. So it has to be about Molly. And I've chosen Good Golly, Miss Molly, by Little Richard, which is probably the best rock and roll music I think one could ever listen to.

Speaker 433:56

Good galley, Miss Mars.

Speaker 433:59

So like the ball, the darling Miss Marley.

Speaker 434:05

So that the power

Speaker 434:08

When you're rocking on the morning, can't hear your mama call?

Speaker 434:15

From the early early morning to the early early night, when the comments mile and rockin' at the house of blue light, good gall and Miss Smile.

Speaker 434:23

So like the ball.

Speaker 434:26

But when you're knocking down a phone

Speaker 434:29

Can't hear your mama call

Presenter34:32

Little Richard, good golly, Miss Molly. Write, David, here are the books. I give you the complete works of Shakespeare and the Bible to take to this island, and you get to take one other book along with them. What's it going to be?

David Nott34:42

Yeah. Well, I have great difficulty in languages and I really want to learn Arabic. And so I'm going to take uh Arabi Masbut, which is uh a book about uh learning Arabic. Okay, that's yours then. You're allowed a luxury. I'm gonna take my fishing rod with me'cause I'm gonna catch that elusive salmon which I

Presenter34:47

Yeah.

Presenter34:58

I've never caught. We shall give you that. If you had to save just one of these eight disks that you've chosen today, which one do you think it would be? Well, it would have to be

David Nott35:07

Good golly, Miss Molly.

Presenter35:08

All right, we'll give you that then. David Knott, thank you very much for letting us hear your desert island discs.

David Nott35:13

Thank you.

Presenter35:55

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.