Desert Island Discs at 75

Speaker 20:00

This is the BBC.

Presenter0:03

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.

Presenter0:14

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

Presenter0:44

We're going to have several great voices. This is a program of great voices.

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What was the very first broadcast you heard to remember?

Presenter0:51

Uh it was an interview with a cow. I don't know.

Presenter0:55

A good broadcaster? She was a jolly good broadcaster. I put her microphone up and said moo, and she mooed.

Presenter1:01

I was elected St Pancras Borough Council as one of the youngest members in 1937. And they said, Oh, you go on Maternity and Child Welfare Committee. I said, Why should I? I'm not married and I haven't any children. You go on it.

Presenter1:16

We did a sketch together called The Ladies What Come to Oblige. I can't remember the words, which is perhaps a mercy.

Presenter1:24

I was just in constant pain when I was on point. No Margo Fontaine, I.

Presenter1:30

I don't care half of the time what people say or think, so I do what I like. You know, people are not used to that. If somebody bothers me, I tell them to pull off.

Presenter1:42

Are you a therapist? Because I need one in London. Anytime. Anytime. For free.

Presenter1:48

Alone with your thoughts, civilization and the people you love nothing but a distant memory on the horizon, with only the wildlife and an island breeze for company, with daily practicalities of survival and sanity your greatest concerns.

Presenter2:04

Some comfort is at hand. Any eight discs in the world, copies of the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare, along with a book of your own, together with one single hand picked luxury. These few things will be your solace and inspiration, and might just ensure you live to tell the tale.

Presenter2:23

Those are the choices the presenter of Desert Island Discs has been asking people from all walks of life to consider since January 29th, 1942. Welcome to this special celebration of the screen legends, politicians, musicians, entrepreneurs, comedians, scientists, artists, writers and sporting superstars who've agreed to be cast away to their very own Desert Island.

Presenter2:49

It's been nothing short of a privilege for the past decade to be in conversation with some truly fascinating people. One of them was the British small screen legend Betty Driver. A stalwart of Coronation Street, she'd been at the bar of the Rovers' Return dishing up hotpot and one liners for forty odd years.

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Her career began in the nineteen twenties, when, aged just eight, her mother put her to work on stage. She hated it, but none the less it made her a star.

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By nineteen sixty six, running a real life little pup of her own, and imagining she'd retired from Shobiz for good, out of the blue an offer came to join the cast of the Salford Soap.

Presenter3:29

What began as a few weeks' stint turned into the roll of a lifetime. So well into her eighties was there really nothing tempting these days about the idea of retirement? I just love working, and I n will never retire. Ever they'll have to shoot me to get rid of me.

Presenter3:46

Certainly make big viewing figures in that particular episode, I'm sure. What is it about the work that you love so much? When I joined the street, I've made friends and I'm the happiest person in the world. It's just like a big family, and I just love it. That is lovely to hear you say that there is a great sense of happiness because I know in your early life there wasn't a lot of happiness around you. So now you think you've found a sense in which you feel fulfilled? No, no, we had no happiness when we were little. Me and my sister Frida, no, we went to a different school each week, which was horrendous. So you never really caught up on any education. It was awful. We had a mother that was a matriarch, and she just wanted me to be in the theatre.

Desert Island Discs at 753:48

So

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Alright.

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I know.

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Irrespective of whether I wanted to or not, and she wanted me to sound like Gracie Fields, and I hated Gracie Fields, so constantly.

Presenter4:36

It was a battle. Do you remember getting that first call for something called Coronation Street and them saying, you know, we think? Yes, it was amazing. We took a little pub in Derbyshire and one day the phone went and it was executive producer of Coronation Street. He said, Could I come and see you? I said, No, don't miss a daft. It's a pub. Of course you can come and see me. Yes, come on. So he came round. I said, What's the matter? He said, Well, you're pulling pints here. Why don't you come and pull pints and the rovers return? I said, Where's that? He said, In Coronation Street. I said, Yes. Well, we'll probably do about six episodes and I'll be back.

Desert Island Discs at 754:41

Oh yes. It was a

Presenter5:11

Forty one years later I'm still churning out hot pot.

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It's amazing. It is amazing. I couldn't help, of course, but mention the hotpot. Do you know how to make hotpots? No.

Presenter5:23

No, I'm dreadful. I'm terrible cook. My friends, I've got seven men friends and uh they all know I'm rubbish in the kit. I really am rubbish. I mean I bought some steak the other week and I looked at it and I thought, It's a bit thick that I bet that'll be tough. And I hammered hell out of this piece of meat. You could have sold your shoes with it. And of course I tried to eat it at the end. No way. Went straight into the bin.

Presenter5:47

Speaking of which, now tell me why you've chosen this first piece of music and tell me what it is. Oh, I want to apologise to start with for playing this piece of music, which I can't stand. I can't bear my voice. I hated it when I did it when I was eighteen, and I'm ninety now. And oh, I just can't bear it. But all my friends like it, you see, so I did it when I was making a film. I got a contract to do three films, and this was this song was in one of the films. And it did quite well, and I thought, ooh, I'm going to be a big film star. Oh, lovely, you know. I finished the three films, and then the war broke out, and all the contracts were cancelled. So that was the end of my filming career. I've hidden these records, I've got really old records, right at the back of the wardrobe, so nobody would find them at all. But my friends, oh, they're like little squirrels, you know, they found this. And it's called I'll Take Romance. Oh.

Speaker 36:44

I'll take romance.

Presenter6:46

Hey.

Speaker 36:49

While my heart is young and eager to fly, I'll give my heart a try, I'll take romance.

Speaker 37:04

Yeah.

Presenter7:06

I'll take romance.

Presenter7:10

The late Betty Driver, whose difficult and fascinating life made for great conversation. And over the next three hours I'll be reminding you of a few more, including the unforgettable ninety seven year old Eric Winkle Brown.

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Born in nineteen nineteen, he was one of the very few castaways I've interviewed born before Desert Island Discs was even on air.

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A world-renowned fighter pilot, he held the record for the most flight deck landings ever completed, two thousand four hundred and seven over sixty five years. Dapper, diminutive and daring, he was an absolute delight, and when I asked him to introduce his sixth choice, Andy Williams, singing Call Me Irresponsible, there was an undimmed twinkle in Winkle's eye.

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Well, that has it.

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I thought to myself, Well, yes, I have my irresponsible sides too. Let me

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Let me tell you one of the things I did which will demonstrate this. I was asked to do the first

Presenter8:13

Landing on a small carrier of a Spitfire or a seafire. Having done this, I was full of the joys of spring, and on the way back from the event, more or less, I had to pass the fourth bridge, which has three lovely spans, as you know. So I did a loop round each span. You did not. And upset the inhabitants of Queen's Ferry, who

Presenter8:43

reported it to the police. Fortunately didn't get the side number of the aircraft and nobody, nobody thought the Navy had a Spitfire. So it all fell on the RAF and they were accused of it. I wasn't caught out there. If I had been I think I'd have been court-martialled.

Presenter9:03

They might still be after you, Reddick.

Speaker 39:05

Ha ha ha ha.

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Call me irresponsible.

Speaker 39:07

Yeah.

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Call

Speaker 29:15

Or me unreliable

Speaker 29:20

Throw in

Speaker 29:22

Uh

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Underpendable two

Speaker 39:27

Uh

Speaker 39:28

Uh

Speaker 39:31

Do my foolish alibi.

Presenter9:41

The late Eric Winkle Brown speaking to me in twenty fourteen. We'd like you to share your favourite programmes and in case you're late to the party there are over two thousand editions available to listen to online and download. Tweet your favourites using the hashtag DID at seventy five.

Presenter10:00

Plenty more memorable moments to come from the archive, but first let's go back to the beginning of the story and to the man who created one of the world's longest running radio formats, Roy Plumley.

Presenter10:12

This is the BBC Home Service.

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Desert Island Discs.

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Each week at this time, a well-known person is asked the question, if you were to be cast away alone on a desert island, which eight gramophone records would you choose to have with you? Assuming, of course, that you also had a gramophone.

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This week's Castaway is introduced by Eamon Andrews.

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Now please don't be alarmed at not hearing the suave, reassuring tones of Roy Plumley. Nothing's the matter with him except that he's now on the island to change it about. And thank you for being sport enough to do this, Roy. I suppose I had this coming to me, Emmett.

Presenter11:03

Now where to begin, I don't know. I've been checking up on Roy, journalist, advertising man, actor, member of a male voice choir, radio announcer, producer, writer, disc jockey chairman, collector of playbills, gramophone records, press cuttings on the theater, and now a castaway. Is that me? That's you. Well, now since we have got you on the desert island so far without your disc, would you like to tell me how this idea started? Of this program, I mean. Well, it started a long time ago, over 16 years ago, in January 1942. I was looking for an idea that we could do a series of gramophone programs on. And I sent this idea in thinking, well, we might be able to do six. Six? What number is this? This is the 387th.

Presenter11:44

Now to the hard question, how are you going to manage on this island? How?

Presenter11:48

Well, I've probably got more theoretical knowledge about how to manage on a desert island than anyone in this country, because I've heard a lot of the best brains in Britain tell me about it.

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Uh I picked up all sorts of tips like if you want fresh water you

Presenter12:01

Cut a hole in dead fish and you'll get fresh water. But how I'd manage when it came to the point, I've no idea. Have you ever built anything? I I can build a garden shed.

Presenter12:11

Well, somehow, Roy, I think anyone who's resourceful enough to sing on the streets, even in Guildford, deserves something. And you've given away so many first-class castaway badges yourself that I'm presenting you with one straightaway. I shall wear it with pride, Eamon. Thank you.

Presenter12:24

Eamon Andrews interviewing the creator of Desert Island Discs, Roy Plumley, in 1958. That was his second appearance as a guest on his own programme. He was first cast away in 1942 as only the 15th ever guest. And that extract was from an edition of the programme only recently rediscovered in the BBC archives. It's one of quite a few editions that'll be added to the online archive for the first time this weekend. Just go to bbc.co.uk forward slash desert island discs.

Presenter12:56

The premise of the programme has remained remarkably unchanged throughout the past three quarters of a century, which is testament to the simple brilliance of Roy's original idea. I still ask my castaways how they think they'll survive on the island. In nineteen fifty six Roy spoke to a particularly resourceful guest.

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How do you do, ladies and gentlemen?

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Our castaway this week really needs no introduction, the coin a phrase, but nevertheless she's going to get one. She's a star of many films in the United States and in Britain, a star of variety in television and radio. It's BB Daniels.

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Evie, how are you going to make out on this island? Are you going to be a good castaway, able to look after yourself?

Speaker 313:34

I don't think I'll do too badly.

Speaker 313:36

You know, I'm quite a good gardener. I grew all my own vegetables during the war.

Presenter13:39

Yes, that's a help. Could you make a hut, a shelter of some sort?

Speaker 313:42

I think I could. When I was a little girl in my grandmother's ranch I used to make things.

Presenter13:46

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 313:47

I'd make the walls probably of rocks and mud.

Presenter13:50

Yeah.

Speaker 313:50

Claim might if I could get it.

Speaker 313:52

And uh bamboo sticks. I put them closely together and maybe filled them in with a little dried seaweed, you know, to keep the rain out.

Presenter13:59

You know,

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Could you start a fire?

Speaker 314:01

Oh, yes, I think I could start a fire all right. My

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Alright, am I?

Speaker 314:05

Well, I could use my engagement range.

Presenter14:06

Does a diamond do that?

Speaker 314:08

Who said it was a diamond?

Presenter14:09

Well

Speaker 314:10

'Cause this is a class one. You see, Ben gave it to me.

Presenter14:12

Oh, I think we see it yet.

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Can you cook?

Speaker 314:15

Oh yes, I'm not a bad cook at all.

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What would you cook?

Speaker 314:18

Well, I could get some wild grain. Do you have wild grain on your island?

Presenter14:22

Well, I hope so.

Speaker 314:23

And I could pound it on a stone and mix it with a little water and a little salt, take some salt water out of the sea and let the water evaporate, get my salt that way.

Presenter14:30

Yep, my salt.

Speaker 314:32

I wouldn't have any meat because I can't kill animals.

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Fish?

Speaker 314:35

Oh yes, I love to fish, but I hate to uh put the bait on.

Presenter14:39

The moment

Speaker 314:39

The worm's whale.

Presenter14:41

I think you've got things pretty well taped in it.

Speaker 314:43

Maybe I can get a teacher monkey to do it, huh?

Presenter14:45

On this island, Beebe, would you try to keep up appearances? Would you try to keep smartly turned out?

Speaker 314:51

Yes, I think that's the only way a person can really live with themselves, don't you?

Presenter14:54

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 314:55

When my clothes wear out, which they will eventually, I think I'll make myself some uh two-piece outfits out of coconut fiber.

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Splendid.

Speaker 315:03

Oh, another thing uh that I can make, I think.

Speaker 315:06

is a comb out of a a fish skeleton.

Presenter15:09

Well, I didn't award you your castaways latch before, Beebe, so here it is, and the highest possible grade.

Speaker 315:14

Well, thank you very much.

Presenter15:15

Yeah.

Speaker 315:15

Draw it.

Presenter15:16

Well, she was a treat. The marvellously inventive BB Daniels, more than rising to the task of surviving on the island, fishbone comb, indeed. Often the most excruciating task for our guests, especially for musicians, is whittling down their choice of tracks to just eight. In nineteen fifty five the conductor, Sir Malcolm Sargent, found the whole idea particularly challenging.

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Listen out for the moments where they chat about the capabilities of a hand cranked gramophone.

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Well, here you are on the island, Sir Malcolm, and I'm afraid you have no idea how long you're going to be here. It may be for many years. And you can choose to have with you just eight records from the half million or so the BBC has in its library. Your only entertainment for perhaps the rest of your life. Rather a sobering thought. First of all, apart from the fact that you've made so many records yourself, how much would you say that the gramophone means to you in private life? Do you play it a lot for pleasure?

Presenter16:14

It's a very interesting question. I don't actually have time to play gramophone recordings for my own actual pleasure as a part from the good they can do me in my work. I mean, I put on records always with a purpose. I put them on because I wish to hear somebody's reading of a certain thing to see what I can learn from it. But the chances of really just putting it on for the pleasure of hearing it are very, very few. Well, now you're going to a desert island where you will have plenty of time for that, I'm afraid. What has guided your choice? Being a professional musician, living in music every day for many, many hours, to me, it would be a strange thing to bother to take records to a desert island at all, or even a gramophone, because frankly, I would much rather take the scores of the works than the actual recordings of them. Why do you say that?

Presenter17:03

Well, I must put it to you perhaps in another way. If you were keen on Shakespeare and were given the choice of taking the films of half a dozen Shakespeare plays, done in the best way by Olivia or whoever it was, or take the book which you would prefer, I assure you that if you saw the films half a dozen times, you'd begin to get so used to it, used to the inflection of the voice, that it would dull much sooner than the interest would of reading the play and getting, as years went by, I don't know how long I'm going to be on this island, but for me, I would rather have the scores of the great works than have gramophone recordings. Yes, well, you obviously made your point there. Well, you haven't got the scores, I'm afraid, you have these records, and what is your first one? Well, the first one I would certainly choose would be a good recording of the complete Handel's Messiah.

Presenter17:53

Well, not the complete, I'm afraid, just one side. Oh! Ah.

Presenter17:58

Oh no, but one moment. We're allowed long-playing records on Twitter. No, because you have no source of power on the island. You only have a hand-cranked gramophone. This is appalling. What a terrible thing to be fixed with eight short-playing records, which you've got to hear as often as possible. However, I would certainly know that I will get a great deal of pleasure occasionally putting on a recording of Surely He has borne our Greece, from the Messiah. Yes, and I hope you would choose your own recording of that, would you?

Presenter18:30

Well, modesty forbids me mentioning the name of the recording, which I think the best so far. Well, perhaps in this case, I'll be allowed to choose myself. Here it is.

Presenter19:18

How do you do, ladies and gentlemen?

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Our castaway this week possesses one of the most beautiful singing voices in the world.

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Her records have frequently preceded her to this island, records of opera, of leader, and of operetta. It's with great pleasure that I welcome ashore Elizabeth Schwartzkopf.

Presenter19:34

Madam Shrotkoff, you spend most of your life travelling about the world. Have you had any experience of desert islands? Oh, indeed I have, actually. You have, yes. I had an emergency landing once from coming back from Australia.

Desert Island Discs at 7519:40

You have

Presenter19:43

in an island in the middle of the Pacific, and there was nothing but a coral reef, a hut, a landing way, a landing strip.

Presenter19:52

And uh stranded ship. How long are you with her? Five hours. Oh, five hours. I'm afraid this is going to be longer than that. Ah, but I will have records with me. Oh, yes.

Speaker 319:57

Not anything?

Presenter20:01

Now allow me to interrupt for just a moment, because if you follow the programme much over the decades, you will no doubt have heard that Elizabeth Schwartzka famously chose a total of seven of her own performances. Well now we're finally in a position to reveal why. She was cast away in nineteen fifty eight.

Presenter20:21

Do you have much time to play records in in ordinary life? No, not really. You know, uh when we are making those records, we listen to them so many times that w once they're finished we have no time ever to listen to them again and that's what I want to do when I'm on the desert island. With your husband and executive of Gramophone Record Company, there must be plenty of records in your home.

Desert Island Discs at 7520:33

One

Presenter20:40

Yeah, I should think there are. I think we have about uh ten thousand. Ten thousand. All those riches and you can't play them. No. Oh so what what is your plan of campaign? That they're mostly your own records that you haven't really had a chance to rehearse that. Oh and of great artists which I haven't had the chance to hear. and which I would like to hear really for the first time in my life.

Desert Island Discs at 7520:58

Yeah.

Presenter21:00

What's the first one you've chosen?

Presenter21:01

Well, I'm afraid I will stick to my own records for once because I will like to relive my life, surely, as I have lived with very many wonderful artists and colleagues. And I would like to play you the record which is

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began my career outside of Vienna.

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And it is the Brahms Requiem.

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On the strength of that record I was

Presenter21:23

Engaged to do the Ranzrekfem with Fort Wengel and Lucerne in 1947. And also, Toscanini heard that record and later told me quite a lot of things about it. And I had.

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One great friend at Tascanini through the Braunsreich piano. A very important record in your life history. Yes, indeed.

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Yes, indeed.

Presenter22:42

The legendary Elizabeth Schwartzkopf singing Bronze Requiem, her programme is another newly rediscovered edition added to our archive today.

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The reasons behind a castaway's choice of discs is always a talking point, along with the question of how they honestly think they'd survive, but

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Importantly, the conversation is an opportunity to try to understand

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how the life they have lived has made them what they are.

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Given the accomplishments of castaways, the insight they offer, not just into themselves, but moments of history, can be truly extraordinary.

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In this 1958 edition of the programme, Roy asks broadcaster Richard Dimbleby about the early days of news reporting.

Presenter23:23

I was living then in a bed sitting room in Bloomsbury, very hard up, and I was listening one night to the 9 o'clock news. Heard the announcer, this was in 1936, heard the announcer give the usual credits before the news to all the news agencies who'd supplied the news. And I suddenly thought, for no reason at all, why don't they have a man of their own who goes out and reports things and comes back to the microphone and gives his story?

Presenter23:45

Wrote to the BBC and said, wouldn't it be a good idea? And to my amazement they wrote back and said we hadn't thought of that, it would and I got the job. Just happened like that. What was the very first broadcast you did, do you remember?

Presenter23:54

Uh it was an interview with a cow.

Presenter23:58

Was she a good broadcaster? She was a jolly good broadcaster. I put a microphone up and said, moo, and she moo. A cow down at Amesbury in Wiltshire called Cherry. I remember her very well. 1936, you joined the BBC News Department. That job took you all over the place, did it? Yes, it did.

Presenter24:14

I went on the first big Royal State visit abroad to Canada, 1939. I went down to the Spanish Civil War, a good many places in Europe. And then the war came along and you really began to go places. Yes, I had to work jolly hard. I was the BBC's first war correspondent. Actually, two or three days before the war itself began, as far as working, so when it was obvious it was coming, we took a recording car quietly over to France and hid it in a garage in Paris. So we were all ready, and we then took it up to the BEF headquarters and we were there when the BEF arrived, so we got away to a good start.

Desert Island Discs at 7524:45

There.

Presenter24:49

And then for the first part of the war I spent in Europe. I was transferred to the Middle East in the spring of 1940.

Presenter24:55

Had two and a half years out there going almost everywhere from from Greece right down to Abyssinia. You've covered just about all the war, France, didn't you?

Presenter25:04

Except I wasn't in North Africa, the west part of it, or in Italy. Otherwise, I think everywhere. I read that you did 22 operational flights with the RAF, including a mass raid on Berlin.

Presenter25:17

Yes, I did. That was with Bomber Command in 1943. I used to fly alongside Guy Gibson, the BC. Wonderful man.

Presenter25:23

And stood at his side and tried to take pictures of the raids, the one on Berlin in particular with his cine camera, but we were always flying so high and the air was so cold that the oil in the camera froze. I never got a single picture. You ended up in Berlin yourself at the end of the war in Europe? Yes, I did. I went in very early on before the British Army went in, was arrested briefly by the Russians, who managed to get out, and then they took me down into the bunker where Hitler committed suicide, showed me it, and I pinched a knife and a fork and a spoon of his, which I've got at home now with his initials on the handle. When anybody comes to dinner I don't like, I give them the spoon to eat the soup with.

Presenter25:59

I wonder how many dinner guests he treated to that particular privilege. That was the legendary broadcaster Richard Dimbleby.

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Back in the early days it wasn't routine for the B B C to keep recordings of broadcast programmes, so there aren't any copies from the nineteen forties and only around thirty from the whole of the nineteen fifties, among them

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The soprano Joan Sutherland, comedian Benny Hill, jazz musician Dave Brubeck, and the horn player Dennis Brain, all downloadable and very much worth a listen.

Presenter26:28

Before we move on to the sixties, here's another of my personal favourites. In Desert Island Disc's seventy five year history, quite a few guests have appeared twice, but only two people have been cast away four times Arthur Askey and our greatest living naturalist, Sir David

Presenter26:46

Only Michael Parkinson missed out on the joy of casting him away, but I am delighted to say, in twenty twelve, for our seventieth birthday edition, it was my turn.

Presenter26:55

Given that he'd spent much of his life exploring and exposing the wonders of the planet, I asked him whether he thought of our world as some great cosmic accident, or if it had brought him closer to the Lord.

Presenter27:09

Um

Presenter27:13

I don't think that um an understanding and an acceptance of the four billion long history of life I don't think that that is in any way inconsistent with the belief of a a supreme being but uh I don't think it's um I I'm not

Presenter27:35

so confident as to say that I'm an atheist, I would prefer to say I'm an agnostic.

Presenter27:41

And so there you were as this little boy in your short trousers, sort of grubbing around for ammonites that had populated the Jurassic Seas. Did it go that deep, or did you just think they looked jolly good and you knew they were old? Oh no, no, the romance of it was was very vivid. The possibility that there is in front of you there's a rock the size of a football, and there's quite a good chance that that will contain a shell.

Presenter28:08

Perfect, perfect shell, which nobody in the world has ever seen before, and which the light of the sun hasn't shone on for three hundred and fifty million years. You are the first person to see that. That's thrilling. How old were you wh when you set up your own little well, it was a sort of museum, wasn't it? Well, I collected things. I mean, kids do collect things. Certainly by the age of ten or twelve.

Presenter28:35

There were lots of ammonites and fossils, and bellamnites and various brachiopods and various things from the Leicestershire Jurassic upper lias. Oh, there were bits of Roman pottery. I had a grass snake skin from a whopping grass snake, I must say. I remember it was about getting on two and a half feet long, I think. I mean, it was very big. Your brother Richard was equally enthusiastic about his passion, which was very early on acting. He did force you to join in on occasion. Yes, he. I mean, Leicester was blessed with a very, very good amateur dramatic group. And Dick was there all the time, all the time. He forced you into joining him, though. I've seen the photograph of you dressed up as a char lady.

Presenter29:19

Oh, well that was one of his yes, he also put on shows. Of course he did, yes. And um and recruited me as a sort of a you know, spear carrier for the for the dumb parts. Um and we did a sketch together called The Ladies What Come to Oblige. Um I can't remember the words, which is perhaps a mercy.

Desert Island Discs at 7529:22

Yeah.

Presenter29:38

Let's uh let's hear another one of your choices then. Um the fourth of the day, what are we going to hear now?

Presenter29:44

Well, if I'm on a desert island, the desert islands I know, as against the sort of popular myth and so on, they are actually pretty sterile places. And I would like a reminder of the richness of the natural world, of the rainforests. And one of the nicest to do that would be a a recording of the lyre bird, which lives in southern Australia and mimics other birds as well as many other things that it hears.

Presenter30:22

What?

Presenter30:27

Yeah.

Presenter30:37

Uh

Presenter30:38

What

Presenter30:52

The Lyrebird, mimicking a number of natural and man-made sounds, and a reminder that our guests don't just have to take music to the island, one of the choices Sir David Attenborough broadcast in 2012, and truly one of my favourite ever interviews. You're listening to Desert Island Discs at 75 on BBC Radio 4 Extra, and do share the programmes that you found most memorable using the hashtag DID at 75.

Presenter31:19

It's time now to visit the next decade in our troll through the archives, the sixties, and an encounter with one of the decade's most successful singers in the UK, a very young sounding,

Presenter31:31

When did you first sing in public?

Presenter31:34

Um when at the age of sixteen

Presenter31:37

Uh I used to go around with a lot of girlfriends and we'd go to all these clubs and we got friendly with the boys and one night uh one member of a group came down from the stage and passed me a hand mic to sing just for a giggle. He didn't know I sang so I said, Well, all right mate, I'll show you and I just continued where he left off and it all happened from there. I joined another group. Yes. Which which groups did you sing with? Um the big three.

Presenter32:06

and another group called King Size Tale and the Dominoes. But I had to leave them because those groups were going to Hamburg, because it was very popular.

Presenter32:14

at that time and my parents wouldn't let me go to Hamburg'cause I was too young.

Presenter32:19

Yeah.

Presenter32:20

Were you paid for this or was this just for fun?

Presenter32:23

Well, the first night was just for fun. But then later on I got down to some serious thinking and was paid very handsomely thirty bob a night. Yes. In addition to what you were making as a clock type. Oh yeah.

Desert Island Discs at 7532:34

Oh yeah.

Presenter32:35

Which other groups did you see with?

Presenter32:38

I've sung with The Beatles, not permanently, I wasn't their permanent girl singer, but I did do a spot of singing with The Beatles, Joan and the Pacemakers, the foremost.

Desert Island Discs at 7532:40

That wasn't

Presenter32:47

And many other Liverpool groups, which are very famous. Are you working as a typist by day and and singing every evening? What did your parents think about this? You were working a very long day.

Presenter32:59

Yes, but I was young and healthy. Skinny too, but they didn't really mind anything for my, you know, my own good. They believed in me.

Presenter33:09

What was the big thing that happened that enabled you to stop being a typist and be a full-time singer?

Presenter33:15

Oh well one night I went to uh the Blue Angel Club in Liverpool and um

Presenter33:21

It was one of the batter clubs, you know.

Presenter33:24

The group there wasn't a rhythm and blues group, it was a modern jazz group.

Presenter33:28

and they asked me to get up to sing. So I got up and did a number, and when I came back to my seat

Presenter33:34

Who should be there but Brian Epstein, and he came right over to me. He'd already got the Beatles on the map by this time.

Presenter33:42

And he said, Sullah,

Presenter33:44

I have an idea and from then on I knew, you know, everything was going to happen. He put you under contract. Yes.

Presenter33:51

Scylla Black isn't your real name. Is it did he change it?

Presenter33:54

No, no, it was a misprint in the paper.

Presenter33:57

Very bad mistake really,'cause I would have liked to have Scylla white. Mm. But it couldn't be helped. Everybody knew me as Sulla Black and that was it.

Presenter34:07

Or what next? Your first record? Was that a success?

Presenter34:11

Uh well it was a big success to me, but not to other people. It went to number twenty five.

Presenter34:17

in the chart and then drop

Presenter34:19

But big enough for you to be able to go out on the road doing one night's dance. Oh yes, I did my first tour with Joey and the Pacemaker.

Presenter34:28

All over the country? Yes, yes.

Presenter34:30

It was marvellous really because I widened my geography knowledge, especially Carlisle.

Presenter34:37

I didn't know, I thought that was in the Chester area and found out it was on the way to Scotland.

Speaker 334:41

Uh

Presenter34:42

You thought that journey was going on rather a long time.

Speaker 334:44

Yeah.

Presenter34:46

And then came your very big record that took you to number one in the chart. Oh yeah.

Presenter34:52

Anyone who had a heart.

Presenter34:54

It was uh my first record to get to number one and I was so pleased, you know, because everybody told me that girl's a failure in show business.

Presenter35:04

Their records held how many.

Presenter35:06

Uh 800,000 copies in England.

Presenter35:11

And you were the first girl to be number one for how long?

Speaker 335:14

Uh

Presenter35:14

Two years

Presenter35:16

But that record wasn't really an original one, was it? In other words, it was pretty well a copy of one that had been made in America.

Presenter35:23

Oh yes. Well I wouldn't say a coffee really. Um I did

Presenter35:27

I ver my version of Deion Morrick's Anyone Who Had a Heart and recorded it here because it was so beautiful, you know, the song was.

Speaker 335:34

Yeah, this

Presenter35:36

Very pretty, and the moment I heard it, you know, I just had to record it.

Presenter35:41

Anyone who ever loved

Presenter35:44

Good luck, Eppie!

Presenter35:47

And know that I love you

Presenter35:51

Anyone who ever dreamed

Presenter35:54

Good luck at me.

Presenter35:57

And no

Speaker 335:57

I dream of you.

Speaker 336:02

Knowing I love you so much

Presenter36:16

Anyone who had a heart, chosen in august nineteen sixty four by the late Scylla Black, and illustrating one of the joys of the Desert Island Discs archive, hearing from hugely successful people at the very start of their career.

Presenter36:30

Iain Fleming is of course best known for writing the James Bond books, though he also penned Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

Presenter36:37

In nineteen sixty three Roy asked him whether James Bond was based on anyone in particular.

Presenter36:43

No, not really. He's a sort of mixt a fictional mixture of commandos and secret service agents that I met during the war, but of course entirely fictionalized. Yes, is there much of you in it? I hope not. I mean people do connect me with James Bond simply because I happen to like scrambled eggs and short sleeved shirts and

Speaker 336:53

Is there much of you in the

Presenter37:03

some of the things that James Bond does, but uh I certainly haven't got his guts nor his uh very lively appetites. Now the first James Bond book was an immediate success.

Presenter37:13

Yes, it was. How long do these books take you to write?

Presenter37:16

Uh, six weeks to two months the actual writing, but I never correct as I go along. I try and get pace into the narrative by sitting straight down at the typewriter.

Presenter37:26

But then of course I do two or three months correction afterwards, so it takes about a year altogether, let's say. Are you a systematic worker? Can you work so many hours a day regularly? Yes, I find I have to. I I work for about three hours in the morning and one hour in the evening, and I find unless I stick to a routine

Presenter37:43

If I just wait for genius to arrive from the skies, it just doesn't arrive. I I just uh get on with the work.

Presenter37:50

You write these books always at your vacation home in Jamaica. Yes. Do you look forward to writing a new one every year?

Presenter37:57

Well, I don't really, unless I've got it firmly fixed in my mind, and of course, uh, this is a very bad period for me this time of the year, because I'm trying to

Presenter38:06

work out the next adventure of James Bond, which has got to be written in January and February.

Presenter38:11

And I'm always rather in despair, thinking that I'm not going to have enough book to write. Yes. There's been a a cumulative rise in sales and success since the first book. I think there has, with the exception of the last one, which was, um well, let's say last year's one, which was The Spy Who Loved Me.

Presenter38:27

Well I try to break away from my normal formula.

Presenter38:31

But the readers were so furious that James Bond didn't appear until about three quarters of the way through, and that it was written ostensibly by a girl in the first person that I must confess that it wasn't a success and it took a quite a beating from the critics.

Presenter38:47

And now the books are being made into films? Yes, they've uh made Doctor Know already, and it's been a tremendous success in England, and even more of a success, I think, in in America, where it's opened uh several weeks ago, where it's breaking records.

Presenter39:03

They're now doing From Russia with Love and I went out to see them in Istanbul and I was tremendously impressed and I think it's going to be an equal success. They're going to do the whole James Bond case. They've got an option on doing all the books, yes, one after another.

Speaker 239:12

Okay, we've got

Presenter39:16

Eleven birth sellers in eleven years and very profitable film sales. Now on the face of it that looks like unmixed success, but some of the press notices haven't been all that glowing.

Desert Island Discs at 7539:27

Yeah.

Speaker 339:27

Yeah.

Desert Island Discs at 7539:27

Yeah.

Presenter39:28

Um they've accused you of being sadistic and too much sex. Taking the charge of of sadism first, your your torture scenes are pretty beastly in some of the books. Well, I don't know how many of them you've read, but um of course they're nothing to w what they really are in real life. And I think the old days of the hero getting a crack over the head with a cricket stump have rather gone out. I mean we all have become considerably wiser since the last war. And I've tried to bring very similitude into these books, and um it's certainly true that th that the critics have occasionally found them uh

Presenter40:02

Pretty strong meat. What effect do you think these themes have on on the average reader? Are they going to give him

Presenter40:08

Unhealthy ideas or is this

Presenter40:10

Vicarious violence a harmless way of supplementing aggressive tendencies? Well, I think that's the way of putting it. Uh uh but I was brought up on what we used to call fourpenny horrors.

Presenter40:20

And I can't remember that any of the excitements ever did me any harm.

Presenter40:26

All history is sex and violence, and I think it's ridiculous to go on writing thrillers in the old Bulldog Drummond John Buchan way when life is uh

Speaker 340:29

Yeah.

Desert Island Discs at 7540:29

Now

Presenter40:38

come uh so fast past us. Yes, well sex. Bond takes his sex where he finds it almost as casual as he takes a drink.

Presenter40:45

Well, he has one girl per book approximately and and that's one a year. I think that's uh he's a bachelor.

Presenter40:53

And he moves round the world pretty rapidly, and um I don't see any great harm in that myself. Iain Fleming there.

Presenter41:00

In nineteen sixty nine there was a remarkably frank and fascinating interview with Field Marshal Montgomery of Alamein, or Monty, as he had been known in the Second World War.

Presenter41:10

He was the person who accepted the unconditional German surrender at Lundberg Heath on the 4th of May, 1945. He tells Roy Plumley that he donated that document to the Imperial War Museum. Born in 1887, he had fought in the Western Desert, Tunis, Sicily and Italy, and took part in the Normandy landings. By the fifties he was an instantly recognizable public figure with his Red Beret badges and flying jacket.

Presenter41:37

When they met, Roy put it to Monty that his childhood was, by modern standards, very Spartan and very disciplined. Yes, it was, and uh'cause my mother ran the whole house.

Presenter41:49

My father was a saint.

Presenter41:51

If any saints do walk about on this earth, I worshipped him. My mother was a disciplinarian. She was married when she was sixteen.

Presenter42:00

And she had her seventeenth birthday on her honeymoon.

Presenter42:03

And of course children began to appear, and she was the wife of a very busy London vicar, and shortly afterwards the wife of a bishop. And you there was no time to tend to the children, well she didn't know how to do it because she was so young, you see. Were you a rebellious boy? I was very rebellious, and when my mother demanded uh discipline from me, I refused t to give in.

Presenter42:27

I I said no and took my beating. Now I can tell you a story that's an interesting one.

Presenter42:33

that I was caught one day in the garden smoking.

Presenter42:37

I didn't want to smoke, but I just thought I would. I was smoking a cigarette beh behind a bush or something.

Presenter42:44

And I was caught and taken into the house, and my father heard about this, and he took me into our little chapel which we had in the house.

Presenter42:52

And we knelt down.

Presenter42:55

and he prayed to the Almighty that I might be forgiven this dreadful sin.

Presenter43:01

And then there was a little silence.

Presenter43:03

And then I thought that the matter was settled, the Albati had accepted my

Presenter43:09

Sorrow not at all.

Presenter43:11

When we opened the door and went out

Presenter43:13

There was my mother.

Presenter43:15

With a cane she thought a more earthly collection was needed as well, and I got beaten.

Presenter43:20

I took it.

Presenter43:21

But I think the point is really that

Presenter43:24

When people say to me, What makes you tick?

Presenter43:28

I think what makes me tick was that I absolutely refused to give in.

Desert Island Discs at 7543:34

Different.

Presenter43:35

When I thought there was no need to. For instance, my mother said to me once, Bernard,

Presenter43:41

You will sign the pledge.

Presenter43:43

I said, never will I sign the pledge. I don't want to drink. I don't drink. But I'm not going to sign the pledge. That was the sort of thing which uh which I think uh moulded my character. I'd like to think it did. And it was good for me. Yes. On both sides of your family there were churchmen, there were civil servants, traders, no military tradition at all. Why did you decide to be a soldier? Was it a a sudden decision?

Presenter44:05

Well, uh I I think

Presenter44:08

As far as I can remember, I wanted to be a soldier when I was quite young, about uh five or six.

Presenter44:14

And then I think it finally became finalized.

Presenter44:19

When the time of the Berg War, and I saw the soldiers going off to the Berg War.

Desert Island Discs at 7544:19

Mm-hmm.

Presenter44:24

in their red coats, of course, in those days, and I said, That's the stuff for me. Now that was very unpopular indeed with my family.

Presenter44:31

who wanted me for the church. Um I as always uh assumed, because I was like my father in face, that I must I must be a clergyman.

Presenter44:42

When I got St. Paul's and they said Borth could in London, what what you're going to be? I said a soldier. Yes.

Presenter44:49

You had an excellent school record at St Paul's, not quite such a good one at Sandhurst. Well, my school record at St Paul's was very good on the on the game side, but on the academic side it wasn't so good.

Presenter45:02

Sandhurst, no. Instead of being there a year, I say a year and a half.

Presenter45:06

And finally passed out a full private, which is all right. That's all right.

Desert Island Discs at 7545:10

That's all right.

Presenter45:12

And then the army in India. Now in Edwardian days the army in India was more equipped for ceremonial duties than as a a tough fighting force. Well I think in those days the army

Presenter45:23

I I think it's where it was more amateur. They they didn't understand that.

Presenter45:28

That uh war was a serious business and a life study, nor did I, at that time. Now, from that rather picturesque form of soldiering you went as a young subaltern in charge of a platoon into the first battle of Ypres.

Desert Island Discs at 7545:32

At that time.

Presenter45:40

Well, I went as a young subaltern in charge of a platoon in august nineteen fourteen, which which dealt with uh Mons and Laketto.

Presenter45:48

and commanded my batoon of the thirty men.

Presenter45:52

And uh

Presenter45:54

I went right through that war course. Yes. You were badly wounded. Well, very badly wounded at uh in the first battle of Ypres. Yes. And I was taken back to an advanced dressing station.

Desert Island Discs at 7545:58

Yeah.

Presenter46:04

And they thought I was dead.

Presenter46:06

And there was an officer there who was dead.

Presenter46:09

And they dug two graves,'cause I was just about to die. Well, I defeated them, I didn't die.

Presenter46:15

In nineteen thirty nine you were back in France in command of a division. Had you any inkling yourself that all was not as well as it seemed, that the Allied equipment was wrong, that the overall tactics were wrong, that the French army was wrong?

Presenter46:30

Yes, I had. Interesting point, that.

Presenter46:33

I better explain it by saying that uh

Presenter46:36

Neville Chamberlain, who was Prime Minister, it came out to uh

Presenter46:40

see the army in in the field.

Presenter46:43

And he came one day to have lunch with me at my divisional headquarters.

Presenter46:50

This was about

Presenter46:52

January or Febru or February of that winter. 1940. Yeah.

Presenter46:57

And he said, I don't think the Germans will attack, do you? And I said, Well, sir

Presenter47:01

You'll wait.

Presenter47:03

Viscount Montgomery of Alamaine, or Monty, as he was better known.

Presenter47:12

I see trees of green.

Presenter47:17

Red Brothers June

Presenter47:20

I see them blue.

Presenter47:24

Fuck me in here and I think to myself

Presenter47:31

What a wonderful world.

Presenter47:39

I see sky.

Presenter47:40

Desert Island discs.

Presenter47:51

Each week a well-known person is asked the question, if you were to be cast away alone on a desert island, which aid gramophone records would you choose to have with you?

Presenter48:00

As usual, the castaway is introduced by Roy Plumley.

Presenter48:04

Our castaway this week, ladies and gentlemen, is one of the great men of jazz and a celebrated entertainer, Louis Armstrong.

Presenter48:11

Satch, if you have ever imagined yourself as a Robinson Crusoe,

Presenter48:15

Absolute cruise up? Yeah. Do you like yourself on that road? I never thought of it that that way, but uh

Presenter48:22

I thought he had a beautiful, charm life.

Presenter48:25

But since I played music, I didn't want to be fooling around with them snakes and trees and all that no snakes. I'm a I'm a a city boy after all, you know Satch, both you and Jazz were born in New Orleans, Louisiana, right? That's right, Bob. That's the way it should be worded because that's where I...

Presenter48:45

When I was five years old, I used to hear buddy bowling and they used to play on the sidewalk before they go into the Funky Butt Hall on Saturday nights. So we couldn't go in there. We're too young, but we could hear that half hour they play before they go in.

Desert Island Discs at 7548:56

And yeah.

Presenter48:59

Satch, it would be a um an understatement, I think, to call your childhood underprivileged. You were brought up in the back of town district.

Presenter49:06

Is it Chad you don't hockey docks?

Speaker 349:06

Is it a chaddy?

Presenter49:08

When did you get a chance to learn music, to learn to play an instrument? Well, uh in the orphanage, uh when I was in the orphanage, you know, for shooting my father's gun celebrating uh New Year's Eve, you know. This was just everybody shoot their guns, uh, but if they if they get caught, that's a different story, and I got caught, so I stayed in the orphanage home.

Desert Island Discs at 7549:21

Yeah.

Speaker 349:22

Everybody's

Presenter49:29

which they called uh Colored Wave Home for Boys. And uh they had a little band there for which they made me the

Presenter49:37

The drama

Presenter49:38

And they hand me the bugle. That's when I

Presenter49:41

really shy'cause they couldn't eat, they couldn't do nothing till I blow them.

Presenter49:45

Uh calls, you know.

Presenter49:48

Are you paid on the river boats, too? Yes, sir. Whose band was that?

Presenter49:52

Fate Maribles Band. From 1919 to 1921, we used to play at the foot of Canal Street during the winter and then we'd go up the river all the way up to Davenport Highway.

Presenter50:05

That's where I've reached my

Presenter50:07

Big Spider-Bet

Presenter50:08

This little kid just coming up with his horn, he's come on the boat. Mhm. He used to come and listen to you. Yeah, and we used to sit around and blow a little

Presenter50:17

That's when Afanari could play that piano in the mist. That was a great kid.

Presenter50:24

What was the first break you had as a musician, joining King Oliver, was it?

Presenter50:29

Well, I think a whole

Presenter50:30

Whatever I ever done in music was my breaks,'cause uh I never did look back after I left the officers.

Presenter50:38

I used to

Speaker 350:39

Yeah.

Presenter50:39

Playing all him good

Presenter50:41

Yeah.

Presenter50:42

horn players place when they want to get off. It's a send l little lure in my place. I love little fella. You know. Never did weigh over a hundred and twenty pounds.

Presenter50:51

I don't know where I picked up all that weight to eating all the cabbages.

Presenter50:58

The jazz giant that was Louis Armstrong Satchimo, speaking to Roy in 1968, he chose five of his own recordings including What a Wonderful World, also chosen by, among others, Kylie Minogue, Nicole Kidman, Kiritikanawa, Frank Bruno, John Clees, Willard White and Nicholas Parsons. And as a luxury, Louis Armstrong took his trumpet.

Presenter51:20

So, as the sixties selection comes to an end, let me just remind you that we've just added new programmes to our archive. Among them, an interview with Lady Diana Cooper, socialite, writer, and sometimes silent movie star. It is a real window on a very specific slice of social history. She describes an aristocratic life and what she says is a vanished age. Her grandfather was the Duke of Rutland and lived in Beaver Castle in the days when they had neither electricity nor a bathroom. And she says there were enough stuff in the kitchen to make a choir.

Presenter51:54

For who knows what reasons, all the references to her musical choices have been edited out of the audio, but here is just a brief taste of the conversation. Do you think London has changed very much for the worse?

Presenter52:06

Yes.

Presenter52:07

Enormously, don't you?

Presenter52:10

Yeah.

Speaker 252:10

Yeah.

Presenter52:11

I think it's terrible that they didn't put all those huge buildings on the other side of the river.

Presenter52:17

and make made a new New York, which would have been very fine.

Presenter52:22

Instead of making all our pretty houses into pathetic pygmies.

Presenter52:27

And uh oh, yes, I think it's changed cruelly to look at.

Presenter52:32

Having been a swinging teenager yourself, do you think they're overdoing it to day?

Presenter52:38

It's too difficult a question.

Presenter52:41

I don't think I know,'cause i as you tell me, I was swinging then and I didn't know it.

Presenter52:47

I don't suppose they know it either.

Speaker 252:48

I don't suppose they

Presenter52:52

No, I don't think they are. I think they're all right. Well, that's a relief. Lady Diana Cooper, and as with all the newly discovered archive, that audio can be found, listened to, and downloaded at bbc.co.uk slash desert island discs. And do let us know which is your pick of the archive and why, using the hashtag DID at 75.

Presenter53:13

It's time for another one of my favourite encounters from my ten years presenting. I had long been an admirer of Dame Zaha Hadid's architecture. The London 2012 Aquatic Centre, Glasgow's Riverside Museum, the BMW car manufacturing plant in Leipzig, and the Cultural Centre in Baku, Azerbaijan. They're just a few of her iconic masterpieces.

Presenter53:36

Two time winner of the Stirling Prize, she was the first woman to win the Queen Elizabeth Medal for Architecture and part of an elite strata of so called starkitex. She arrived looking every inch the doyene of contemporary modernism and elegance. She explained where it all began.

Presenter53:53

I was a very curious child and

Presenter53:56

I used to, you know, press my parents all the time with questions. But I think my parents allow me to be very independent at a very young age.

Presenter54:04

and develop my own tastes and my own

Presenter54:08

Way of working, and so I was ver I'm very grateful to them. As you were growing up in those early years in Baghdad, in the 1950s, what what was expected of young women? What did people think that little girls would go on to do? To become architects, doctors. You know, I think there's a misconception about that society actually. I mean, women were very liberated, you know. I mean, all my friends, I don't have a single friend from Iraq who wasn't a professional. And what about your mother then? What was her life? Well, she was a housewife, but you know, she was a very strong woman and very opinionated, and she was the one who taught me to draw. But she has also a great eye. She has a great taste. She was always very nicely dressed. My mother's side of the family were like, honestly, like Hollywood actresses. You are a notably glamorous and flamboyant dresser yourself. You are wearing the most exquisite shirt and you've got brilliant jewelry. Do you think that, you know, describing your mother there, do you think people can be born with an eye? Is it something you innately have? I mean, I think.

Desert Island Discs at 7554:44

No.

Desert Island Discs at 7555:09

Uh

Speaker 355:09

Yeah.

Speaker 355:17

I mean I

Presenter55:19

I don't know. I think it's also acquired.

Presenter55:23

You know, you see things, you learn from people.

Presenter55:27

My mother used to call me Carmen Miranda, you know, because I always used to wear funny things and wanted to do funny things on my head. And nobody knows Carmen Miranda, who she is now. Oh, yes, we do. But I was watching T V the other day and there was a Carmen Miranda, and I can't believe she thought I was Carmen Miranda. She used to say, you know, d w why are you like that? You know, just be.

Desert Island Discs at 7555:37

Oh yes, we do.

Presenter55:47

elegant and whatever.

Presenter55:49

I mean, honestly, both my parents wanted me to meet

Speaker 355:52

Yeah.

Presenter55:53

Uh

Speaker 355:53

ladylike. My father wanted me to play the piano, do ballet, you know, and they used to always joke with each other that I wanted to do something else, but, you know, my my father always said it's okay.

Presenter56:06

Uh so you were born into this it was a a Sunni Muslim family by tradition. It was a secular family in the way it lived its life and you were taught by Roman Catholic nuns. What impression did you have? None of us knew whether we were Sunni or Shia or Christian or Jewish.

Speaker 256:16

With the

Desert Island Discs at 7556:16

Yeah.

Speaker 256:19

Right.

Speaker 356:19

Uh

Presenter56:21

I didn't even know I was Muslim till I was six, you know, because nana's made us cross our hearts. But I discovered one day that my parents are not crossing their heart and I asked them and they said, well, you know, we're not Christian. And I said, but why should I do this? So of course I went to school and I said, I'm not going to do it. And they had to call my parents saying she's troublemaking. So honestly, there was absolutely no difference. Sunni, Shia, you know, they were all the same.

Presenter56:48

That's the Iraq I loved and I know, you know. Let's have some more music, uh Zaha Hadiz. Uh this is your fourth choice. Tell me a bit about this.

Presenter56:56

Harry Nielsen, everybody's talking about me.

Presenter56:59

And why have you chosen it? It's one of my favourite films ever, Finn Nut Cowboy, and I love that song.

Presenter57:06

Everybody is talking at me.

Desert Island Discs at 7557:11

I don't

Presenter57:11

I don't hear a word they're saying

Presenter57:14

Only the echoes of my mind

Presenter57:22

People stop and stare at me.

Presenter57:26

I can't see the faces.

Presenter57:30

Only the shadows of their eyes

Presenter57:35

I wish nothing but the best of you too. Don't forget me, I beg.

Speaker 357:45

I remember you said Sometimes it lasts and loves, but sometimes it hurts instead Sometimes it lasts and loves, but sometimes it hurts instead

Presenter58:06

That was Adele and Someone Like You and Zaha Hadid. I have to say it's a it is a heartbreaking song. Are you a romantic person?

Speaker 358:15

Maybe.

Presenter58:18

You never been married? No. Ever been tempted?

Speaker 358:21

No, I

Presenter58:22

Yeah.

Speaker 358:22

Uh

Presenter58:22

No.

Speaker 358:23

I'm sure when I'm eighty, if I'm around, I'll regret it, but.

Presenter58:27

Yeah.

Presenter58:29

No. But I'm not against marriage. I mean, for for people. I just didn't for myself it didn't happen.

Presenter58:35

What do you think the biggest misconception about you is?

Presenter58:42

'Cause you know people say I mean, I've f found you to be very solicitous and chatty and open today, and people say about you that, you know

Presenter58:51

You're you're tough and you have a temper. I mean, it's just, you know, nonsense. I think it's my shy side.

Presenter59:00

I mean

Presenter59:01

Because I don't like overdo the flattery and complimenting, they almost think it's rude. Because they're so used to people.

Presenter59:11

you know, astlicking and all that. They think it's rude not to do it.

Presenter59:17

I mean, you you clearly do think you are judged a lot more harshly because you are a woman in a profession that does not.

Speaker 259:23

I think so.

Presenter59:29

what people say or think. So, I do what I like. You know, people are not used to that. If somebody bothers me, I tell them to pull off.

Presenter59:37

But I know I'm not nasty to people. I'm very nice to I mean, actually, I'm too nice. That's that's the the truth.

Presenter59:46

Are you saying that with your tongue in your cheek?

Presenter59:49

I'm taken advantage of all the time.

Presenter59:51

The people who who are people who say these things about me, they don't know me.

Presenter59:55

You have built, of course, this formidable professional reputation. You were made a dame in twenty twelve. You've recently been awarded the Reba Gold Medal. To what extent now?

Presenter1:00:07

Do you feel you are part of the establishment?

Presenter1:00:11

I don't really feel I'm part of the establishment.

Presenter1:00:14

You still feel outside.

Presenter1:00:16

No, I'm not outside. I'm on the kind of edge.

Presenter1:00:20

And undangling there.

Presenter1:00:22

That doesn't sound like a comfortable position.

Presenter1:00:27

I'm not against the establishment per se. I just do what I do and that's it.

Presenter1:00:33

The late Dame Zahar Hadid confounding expectations to the last and it's often, indeed, at the last moment that castaways come a cropper. The question of which luxury to choose can be a vexed one.

Presenter1:00:52

And your luxury. What can we supply you with?

Speaker 21:00:53

Well, I gather that's got to be uh an inanimate luxury.

Presenter1:00:57

Indeed it has.

Speaker 21:00:58

I can't take another human being with me.

Presenter1:01:02

Certainly not. Male or female.

Speaker 21:01:02

Male or female? I think I'll choose a shortwave radio set.

Presenter1:01:06

I'm not sure you're allowed that either.

Speaker 21:01:08

Why not?

Presenter1:01:10

Well, because then that defeats the whole object of having eight records, because then you could listen to uh lots of other music.

Speaker 21:01:15

Well, that was precisely why I chose it.

Presenter1:01:18

And what about your book? You've got the Bible and you've got Shakespeare. Which book are you taking? Uh the complete works of William Morris. He embodied what for me is true, that socialism is about building beauty. Is there any one section of it you'd like better than the other? Because I'm not really allowed to give you a complete work. Not complete works? Well then, you must give me the collected works. No, you can't have that. A volume. Oh, but I can't just have one poem.

Presenter1:01:44

I want to take with me, and not for the reasons you shall imagine, a mirror.

Presenter1:01:49

Well, what's the other reason?

Presenter1:01:53

I want to take a mirror for lighting fires, Roy, and for sending flashing messages to passing ships. Could I take a flagpole with me, do you think? A flagpole? Yes. And the Union Jack. And run up when I pick up something with a mirror attached to the bottom of it. No, no mirror.

Presenter1:02:06

I would take a stick of the

Presenter1:02:08

The very best marijuana I could find.

Presenter1:02:10

And I would save it for years and hope it didn't get too stale.

Presenter1:02:13

Because I'd know I would have one opportunity to smoke it and only one. And so I'd wait for that perfect day on the desert island.

Presenter1:02:19

when all the conditions were right.

Presenter1:02:22

This is a legal talk, mister Mailer. Well, but uh here we are in trouble again.

Presenter1:02:29

The voices there of Norman Mailer, Russell Hartie, Barbara Castle, and Sir Robin Day.

Presenter1:02:35

You're listening to Desert Island Discs at seventy five on BBC Radio for Extra. Time now to pop on our high waisters and platform boots and head into the seventies. Although, given that this slice of archive is from the first female leader of the opposition here in the UK, maybe a pussycat bow and pearls would be more in keeping.

Presenter1:02:54

misses Thatcher, how important to you is music?

Presenter1:02:58

It's what I go to.

Presenter1:03:01

when I want to take refuge in something completely different.

Presenter1:03:05

when I really want to.

Presenter1:03:07

Get away from worries and go from

Presenter1:03:10

the very logical life that I've lived.

Presenter1:03:13

And I've always been trained to live.

Presenter1:03:16

really to a different depth of experience.

Presenter1:03:20

How well could you manage in a practical sense as a castaway? Did you ever go camping?

Presenter1:03:25

No. Uh I I haven't had much experience of camping and I just am a little bit worried about how I'm going to manage, but I am pretty practical.

Desert Island Discs at 751:03:33

You could put up some

Presenter1:03:35

Oh, I think so. I do like doing things with my hands. So I think I would just about be all right. I'm quite a fast learner. Would you try to escape?

Presenter1:03:44

I don't think so, because a desert island just all sounds very much of an island, and I'm cautious by nature.

Presenter1:03:52

And I would just hope that some one would come and rescue me. My dreams would go that way.

Presenter1:03:57

The Right Honourable Margaret Thatcher was interviewed by Roy in nineteen seventy eight.

Presenter1:04:01

Now, as a schoolgirl, what were your ambitions, misses Thatcher? Why had you set your heart on going up to Oxford?

Presenter1:04:08

I had some very strange ambitions.

Presenter1:04:11

In my church life I well remember missionaries coming and talking to us of their experience.

Presenter1:04:16

And I remember that

Presenter1:04:18

In the early days I wanted to go into the

Presenter1:04:21

It existed, then, the Indian civil service, because there was a tremendous desire to serve.

Presenter1:04:28

And I knew that to do that you had to go to university. But quite apart from that, you know, the opportunity to go to university was to us a chance almost undreamed of.

Presenter1:04:40

My father had never done it, and I was lucky I was quite good at school, and so it was assumed that I would try to go to university. The subject was clearly marked out for me, and so it just seemed perfectly natural. And what was there? Oxford or Cambridge were to me worlds that I'd heard about.

Presenter1:05:02

And it's always a good thing to aim for the top, and I did.

Presenter1:05:06

So a scholarship to Somerville College. And you read chemistry and what was your first job when you came down?

Presenter1:05:13

My first job was in a factory making plastics.

Presenter1:05:19

And it was in the development section. We were developing new plastics.

Presenter1:05:24

Taking them through the pilot stage and then thinking what they could be used for and where they could be sold.

Presenter1:05:32

Sometimes I tease some of my

Presenter1:05:35

Labour members of Parliament, friends.

Presenter1:05:38

And say you know, I've had more experience of working in a factory than you have.

Desert Island Discs at 751:05:41

Who have?

Presenter1:05:42

You went to work for Lions afterwards? Afterwards, yes. That was food processing and food processing and control.

Presenter1:05:49

And I also did quite a bit of research work there into what's called surface chemistry. You had a nagging ambition to take a law degree. How does law tie up with chemistry?

Presenter1:06:00

I went about a lot with my father, as you probably know.

Presenter1:06:03

and when he went to sit on the magistrate's bench, I used to go along in the school holidays with him.

Presenter1:06:11

And I met the

Presenter1:06:13

A person who was a chairman of the bench, a silk, they were Casey's in those days, QCs now.

Presenter1:06:20

Who was a lawyer? The chairman of the bench had to be a lawyer.

Presenter1:06:23

And I talked to him and realized that

Presenter1:06:26

Law itself was having a very great fascination for me.

Presenter1:06:31

And I remember at the age of seventeen saying to him, But you see, I'm already on the science side.

Presenter1:06:37

And I can't change now. And he said, But don't worry, I took a physics degree at Cambridge.

Presenter1:06:43

I started that way. And he said the thing to do finish your chemistry degree.

Presenter1:06:49

And then do law.

Presenter1:06:51

You won't be able to afford just to do another degree, but work at it in your own spare time.

Presenter1:06:56

Because you'll find there's a whole branch of law for which you need both a science degree and a law degree, and that's the branch of law dealing with patents.

Presenter1:07:05

Well, a lot was to happen before you were called to the bar. Before we talk about all that, let's have another record. What's next?

Presenter1:07:12

What's next? Well, I just cannot um live without some humour there, and I love dry humour. Now there's a marvellous record.

Presenter1:07:22

It's the imagination of of what happened had Walter Raleigh been able to ring up and announce that he'd made a discovery of tobacco.

Presenter1:07:31

It's Bob Newhot.

Desert Island Discs at 751:07:33

You can chew it.

Desert Island Discs at 751:07:35

Or put it in a pipe.

Desert Island Discs at 751:07:39

Or or you can shred it up.

Desert Island Discs at 751:07:42

and put it on a piece of paper.

Desert Island Discs at 751:07:45

And roll it out.

Desert Island Discs at 751:07:47

Don't don't tell me, well, don't don't tell me.

Desert Island Discs at 751:07:59

Uh Uh

Desert Island Discs at 751:08:02

You you stick it in your ear, right, Walt?

Desert Island Discs at 751:08:05

Uh

Presenter1:08:06

Bob Newhart with Introducing Tobacco to Civilization, one of the choices of the late Lady Thatcher. The Hollywood star Lauren Bacall was known for her sensationally sultry looks and distinctive voice. Whisked off to Hollywood, aged just 17, her debut film role was in To Have and Have Not opposite Humphrey Bogart, who she described as a good actor, but not my type. Roy asked her if at first she saw herself more as a dancer than an actor.

Presenter1:08:36

No, I saw my I mean, I I first wanted to be a ballerina and then of course I realized at a very early age

Presenter1:08:43

That's with the help of uh of a pronouncement of a famous Russian teacher named Michael Mordkin, who had been a a dancer.

Presenter1:08:51

That I really didn't have the feet for it. I was just in constant pain when I was on point. No Margot Fontaine, I.

Presenter1:08:59

Now you went to the American Academy of Dramatic Art, but money ran out after only one year.

Presenter1:09:04

When you left, were there any jobs going?

Presenter1:09:08

Um, well, no. I mean, I was hoping they'd give me a scholarship, but they needed they needed young men more than they needed girls, so they, uh they gave the scholarships to the males, I'm afraid.

Presenter1:09:19

Um no, I just started to to look for work and then I went went into modeling because I had modeling on Seventh Avenue because I had to make some kind of money. And the usual things of up and down the agent stairs and auditions. You had one good idea to sell theater papers outside a theatrical restaurant, outside Sardi's. Yes. So that your face got sort of familiar. That shows that I was crazy from the very beginning, doesn't it? That I was just determined that I was going to be noticed as I was going in and out of those producers' offices.

Desert Island Discs at 751:09:36

So that you're failing.

Presenter1:09:46

Pounding pavements, looking for work.

Presenter1:09:48

And I decided that I was not just going to be one of the actresses that was just oh yes, come back tomorrow or come back next week or whatever and I said they're going to remember me somehow differently and I

Presenter1:10:00

prevailed upon the um the man that published Actors Q, his Actors magazine, giving tips as to what was being cast. And I sold it outside of Saudi's during my lunch hour. I would come up from the garment center,

Presenter1:10:11

Rush into Walgreens, get the actors' cues, stand in front of Sardis, and buttonhole anyone that I recognized at all, hoping they would never forget me.

Presenter1:10:19

Your third record, what's that to be?

Presenter1:10:22

Sir John Gilgood reading a sonnet from Ages of Man

Presenter1:10:28

Because I have seen the production of Ages of Man, I saw it several times, because I love John Gielgud on the stage and personally.

Presenter1:10:36

And because it's it is a record of such variety that on that island I could go from youth to middle age to old age and I could let my imagination

Presenter1:10:47

Run wild.

Presenter1:10:49

Yeah.

Desert Island Discs at 751:10:49

My mistress's eyes are nothing like the sun.

Presenter1:10:51

Yeah.

Desert Island Discs at 751:10:52

Poddle is

Presenter1:10:52

Is far more red than her lips red.

Presenter1:10:55

If snow be white, why then her breasts are done If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.

Presenter1:11:02

I have seen roses, damask red and white, But no such roses see I in her cheeks And in some perfumes is there more delight Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks. I love to hear her speak, yet well I know That music hath a far more pleasing sound I grant I never saw a goddess go, My mistress when she walks treads on the ground And yet, by Heaven, I think my love as rare As any she.

Presenter1:11:32

Belied with false compare.

Presenter1:11:37

Sir John Gielgood. Now you were launched with a a terrific publicity barrage w with your first picture. The look. There you were looking sexily from under your eyelids. Whose idea was that? I mean, was th this was the studio's

Presenter1:11:51

Rather desperate thing. How are we going to launch this girl? No, no, no, no, no, no, no. You've got it all wrong.

Presenter1:11:58

Yeah.

Desert Island Discs at 751:11:58

Wasn't the studio at all. It was Howard Hawkes.

Presenter1:12:00

But it

Desert Island Discs at 751:12:01

But it also was because I was a nervous wreck.

Presenter1:12:03

Because I used to shake.

Desert Island Discs at 751:12:05

Yeah.

Presenter1:12:05

all the time. Now I only shake some of the time.

Presenter1:12:09

But in order to keep my head still I discovered that if I held my chin down I was able to keep my head a bit steadier. And then I looked up at Bogart and

Presenter1:12:22

That became the look. That combined with Howard Hawkes' placement of the camera and angle and all of that, and then he decided that he liked it, and that's the way we did it.

Presenter1:12:32

But that was Howard, that wasn't the studio. Well, that tilled you, Roy, a wonderfully assertive Lauren Bacall back in 1979.

Presenter1:12:41

When Jacqueline Dupre was cast away in nineteen seventy seven, Roy interviewed her in what he describes as a Muse house not far from Hyde Park. In choosing her eight discs, she says her aim was to bring my friends with me to the island.

Presenter1:12:56

Her mother had been a professional musician too, and fostered the love of the cello in her daughter by composing her pieces and creating pictures to accompany them.

Presenter1:13:05

She would then leave them by her daughter's bed at night.

Presenter1:13:09

Jacqueline was aged just four when she first heard the cello, and immediately told her parents she wanted one. Roy asked her when she played in her first professional concert.

Presenter1:13:20

I remember giving a concert when I was six, but I cannot remember where.

Presenter1:13:24

Except that it was in London.

Presenter1:13:27

and it was in a hall which had a lot of paintings.

Presenter1:13:31

which had to be covered because they were of nude females and this was not considered proper for a six-year-old to see. But I was fascinated. What's your second record going to be?

Presenter1:13:43

Brums, sonata for cello and piano.

Presenter1:13:46

This because my first meeting with my husband was at a party. I had just returned from abroad, was intensely shy and this very vital, entirely non-shy person walked in, took a look at me and said, you don't look like a musician. So I thought, help, there's only one thing to do. Take out my cello.

Presenter1:14:09

So we sat down and played Brahm's E minor.

Presenter1:14:13

And it was as if we'd known each other all our lives. There was absolutely nothing to say.

Presenter1:14:18

My second record was going to in fact be the Brahms E minor sonata with my husband. But since then we've listened to the slow mood of the F major, so the E minor has had a strange transformation, become F major. Right. And you haven't mentioned your husband's name. It is, of course, Daniel Baron Boy. It happens to be Daniel Baron Boy.

Presenter1:15:35

The opening of the slow movement of the Brahm's F major cello sonata, Barrenbohm and Duprui.

Presenter1:15:42

Jacqueline, in July 1971 it was announced that you had nervous exhaustion and were going to rest for a year and everyone said, oh, poor girl, she's been overdoing it.

Presenter1:15:51

You were back in the concert hall the following year, but

Presenter1:15:54

Only for a few months. Then we realized that it wasn't just nervous exhaustion. No, it turned out in fact to be multiple sclerosis.

Presenter1:16:02

which has rather taunting and elusive symptoms, it can suddenly present itself in a certain form and then take itself off, leaving you free of

Desert Island Discs at 751:16:12

Leaving

Presenter1:16:14

The Simplins for a while. But it struck you down right at the peak of your career. It must have taken a tremendous effort to come to terms with it.

Presenter1:16:22

It does take a tremendous effort because one is naturally very frightened by it, and I was very frightened by it. It took me a long time to come to any kind of grips with what had happened. But then I can say that, in a sense, I'm lucky because the cello repertoire is small. I had done most of what I loved, and I can look back on a full musical cellistic life. And some excellent recordings. And you are very busy teaching.

Presenter1:16:54

I'm quite busy teaching now. It's something I realize that I love very much and to my surprise and gratification I'm able to

Presenter1:17:05

put into words what I tried to say. I thought previously that it would need my instrument.

Presenter1:17:11

to illustrate what I was trying to

Presenter1:17:13

get over to the student, but I can do it in words, and this gives me great pleasure.

Presenter1:17:18

Jacqueline Dupre's luxury was pen and paper because she said her latest kick was writing poetry.

Presenter1:17:25

Because of her illness she was allowed to break that golden desert island disc's rule and take her husband, Daniel Barramboyne, to the island with her.

Presenter1:17:34

She died aged just forty-two in October 1987.

Presenter1:17:38

And throughout the years her legendary recording of Elgar's cello concerto has been chosen by many other castaways as one of their discs. You're listening to Desert Island Discs at seventy five on B B C Radio four Extra.

Presenter1:17:53

It's time for another of my personal pics from the archive, and in 2012, I was delighted to cast away Dustin Hoffman. His track list of 20 arrived the day before we were due to record, but thankfully, by the time he arrived in the studio, it had been whittled down to the requisite eight. For my part, I found it an utterly fascinating encounter. The star of The Graduate Midnight Cowboy, All the President's Men, Marathon Man, Kramer vs. Kramer, Tootsie, Rainman, and many more hit movies was in a pretty thoughtful mood. Born in LA in 1937, his father had, in fact, spent some time working at Columbia Pictures. I asked Dustin to tell me a little bit more. My father was a very serious young man who had

Presenter1:18:39

I guess what turned out to be delusions of grandeur or whatever, because he came to LA from Chicago with no money and I think $50, which was probably a lot of money during the Depression, with my older brother, my mother, and her mother, and I wasn't born yet. I have a photograph of him helping to build one of the freeways in Los Angeles with his shirt off and holding a shovel with a bunch of other guys. But somehow he was able to, he had a lot of drive to get himself to Columbia Pictures before I was born. And he got a job as an assistant prop man and then a prop man and then an assistant set decorator and a set decorator. And then he was fired for reasons I've never learned. He wanted to be a director. This is all told to me much later. He spent his lunchtimes watching Frank Capra direct. And he loved Frank Capra.

Desert Island Discs at 751:19:25

Right.

Presenter1:19:31

Then he was fired and he went from set decorating into selling furniture. And he was Willie Lohman in a sense. And it's one of the reasons I wanted to do Death of a Salesman.

Desert Island Discs at 751:19:38

Yeah.

Presenter1:19:41

When you did it on Broadway indeed, to great acclaim, he came to watch. He came to see it. I was very nervous. These are good questions, Christy. And I was very nervous. And he came back. I was hoping he wouldn't put it together. You know, that I was making a comment on him. And the first thing he said to me in the makeup room, he says, boy, that guy is some loser.

Desert Island Discs at 751:19:57

Trim.

Presenter1:20:03

Oh

Presenter1:20:05

I've never forgotten that.

Desert Island Discs at 751:20:05

I've never

Presenter1:20:07

Were you able to look did you look away? Did you how did you that's a very poignant moment, isn't it? Yes. My father d didn't have a a happy time of it. Uh as you said, I'm foul-mouthed and uh I'll I'll say a word you may uh uh blip off from the BBC, but uh we had the same birthday. So uh when I was fifty, he was eighty.

Desert Island Discs at 751:20:09

That's fine.

Desert Island Discs at 751:20:11

Yeah.

Desert Island Discs at 751:20:22

Yeah.

Presenter1:20:29

And we were walking on the beach actually and we stopped and I said, Dad, you're eighty today and I'm fifty. Do you have any words uh you can give me? And he looked at me and he said, Yeah, it's all bullshit.

Presenter1:20:41

And he turned around and walked away.

Presenter1:20:43

So he lived as a sort of thwarted man, did he? He he had anger in him.

Desert Island Discs at 751:20:46

Yeah.

Presenter1:20:47

Yes. And as a little boy, you were the funny guy. You were the guy in class who would make people laugh. Is that right? Well, it's a kind way of putting it. I was a very bad student. And in those days, I would be called, you're a real comedian. Oh, yeah. Which was a nice way of saying you're a loser. Did you feel like a loser? Oh, to say the least. Your family's, well, your father's fortunes as a salesman, and indeed this will hit home with plenty of people who are salespeople. Life goes up, life goes down. So you would move in and out of neighborhoods.

Desert Island Discs at 751:21:02

Which is a nice way of saying you're a loser.

Presenter1:21:16

You moved schools a lot. That's a significant thing for a child to move schools a lot. I didn't think of it.

Presenter1:21:23

Are you a therapist? Because I need one in London. Anytime. Anytime. For free.

Desert Island Discs at 751:21:27

Anytime.

Presenter1:21:29

What what was the impact on you though? All that moving around?

Desert Island Discs at 751:21:30

Ah.

Presenter1:21:32

The reason for it was, which I didn't know at the time, is my father was always dreaming of being uh living a lifestyle which wasn't real. Uh he didn't have the money to move to Beverly Hills and he and he we would move to Beverly Hills and he lasted six months before he went bankrupt and then we'd move somewhere else. And he was tr always trying to improve his lot in life. This is fascinating uh a character of my father.

Presenter1:21:58

As indeed was the son, another of my favourite castaways, Dustin Hoffman, reflective and hugely likable, talking to me back in twenty twelve.

Presenter1:22:07

Let's head to the eighties now, and the very first visit of a member of our royal family to the island. It was nineteen eighty one, and it was Her Royal Highness Princess Margaret being cast away.

Presenter1:22:18

After her you'll hear from chat show host Russell Hartie, recorded at the Ideal Home exhibition, and then Roy travels to Northumberland and the home of the novelist Katherine Cookson, but first our Princess.

Presenter1:22:31

Few people have suffered more than you from wild and inaccurate and irresponsible press stories, especially in foreign papers. Can you laugh at them, or do you find them aggravating? I find them extremely aggravating.

Presenter1:22:45

Of course, if they're absolutely invented, like sometimes they are, of course one can laugh at them with one's friends. But, um

Presenter1:22:55

I think since the age of seventeen I've been

Presenter1:22:58

misreported and misrepresented. A lot of it is beneath contempt and of course you can't keep on issuing denial.

Presenter1:23:06

Well, they're not worth denying, really.

Presenter1:23:09

Zajle

Presenter1:23:11

inaccurate.

Presenter1:23:13

Well, let's get back to music. What's record number seven?

Presenter1:23:16

Well, this is a a record, quite an old record, I think, about nineteen forty eight when I was

Presenter1:23:22

A young

Presenter1:23:23

Thing

Presenter1:23:25

And

Presenter1:23:26

Quite enjoying life.

Presenter1:23:28

Called Rock, Rock, Rock. They call it Rock, Rock, Rock and it started in Kansas City.

Speaker 31:23:40

He played a one night stand

Desert Island Discs at 751:23:42

And then it landed in

Speaker 31:23:42

And then he landed in Tennessee

Presenter1:23:47

The people yelled who

Presenter1:23:49

Now Russell, you're a Lancastrian. You said you're from Blackburn and your father sold fruit and vegetables and you helped him. Willingly? Very unwillingly. Very unwillingly. I was pressed going into helping with the tea jugs and the coffee jugs and I could never work out change properly. Decimalisation was an immense relief to me because I couldn't work out pounds, shillings and pence or even weights and measures terribly well. And I dare say I lost my mum and dad quite a fair amount of money.

Speaker 31:23:59

Yeah

Presenter1:24:19

What else have I found out about you? You used to go to the music hall with your father every week to the Blackburn Grand. Yeah. Who were your favourites? Well, my favourites were Nat Mills and Bobby. And I played Bobby to Nat Mills two weeks ago, which is a great joy for me. And I once saw Charlie Chaplin. This is driving back a bit in the midst of history. And I once saw Hetty King.

Desert Island Discs at 751:24:29

I know.

Desert Island Discs at 751:24:35

Uh

Speaker 31:24:35

Ah

Presenter1:24:43

Where did you see Charlie Chaplin? At the Grand Theatre, Blackburn. He was making a sort of a- He was making a racial charity comeback in about 1937. Did he do an act? Yes, he sort of waddled across the stage and threw a stick around, and his moustache was there. Did you go to the straight theatre too? No, never at all. My first venture into straight theatre was at Queen Elizabeth's Grammar School, Blackburn, where I played the part of the villain in the Tempest. And the Evening Telegraph of Blackburn said that my performance bore no relation to anything else that was going on on the stage at that moment and was a cabaret turn of its own and a terrible distraction to the rest of the people who were there for a serious purpose. Was that after you had taken your elocution lessons with the Mrs. Marks or before?

Desert Island Discs at 751:24:43

Yeah.

Speaker 21:24:43

Why did you f

Desert Island Discs at 751:24:49

Uh

Desert Island Discs at 751:24:50

Yeah.

Presenter1:25:29

I didn't really want to talk about my elocution lessons because they were, I think they cost three shillings an hour and clearly had no effect at all. My sister discovered that there was a bedroom upstairs with a very bouncy bed and that if it wasn't your turn to be elocuted, you could go and bounce on the bed. So for three shillings we bounced on a lot of beds and kept our bad accents. Now you belonged to a gang. Where did you meet? Oh we met in the two places. We met in the arid shelters which were very smelly places because dogs used them a lot and we had a little gang of our own there and we used orange boxes for furniture and we had deep and dark initiation ceremonies. You were very popular socially. I mean you used to tie doorknobs together of neighbouring houses. That's that's called knick-knacking now. Are we allowed to say that? Yes of course you are yes. Knickknicking is when

Speaker 21:26:13

Yeah.

Speaker 21:26:15

Yeah.

Presenter1:26:18

Two front doors were together in a in a terraced row. Uh you would secretly on an October night tie the two front doors particularly if you didn't like the people who lived there you tie the doors together with rope and then you bang hard on each door and run away and hid over a garden wall and watch the neds fight to get out.

Desert Island Discs at 751:26:34

Okay, now

Presenter1:26:36

And you challenge each other with dares to do outrageous things. What was your best contribution? I I can't talk about that because they were sort of

Presenter1:26:45

minor adventures into into incipient sexuality. Yes. And I think at twenty-five minutes past six at the Ideal Home exhibition you wouldn't want to hear a little bit more of that anymore. Let's avoid that. Uh now you went to the grammar school. Was it your idea to go on to university?

Desert Island Discs at 751:26:50

Yes.

Desert Island Discs at 751:26:55

Live and

Speaker 21:26:56

Yeah.

Presenter1:27:03

It was a kind of drift, don't you know? I mean, all my friends were clever, and a lot were cleverer than I, and they were all going off to Oxford and Cambridge. And it never entered my head that I should not do that. And when I actually passed an entrance exam into Exeter College, Oxford, my mother and father yawned a little and said, oh dear me, we're going to have to buy him a teapot, because you had to take a teapot with you, and some clean sheets. You had sat for a scholarship to Cambridge, which you failed, but you got one to Oxford in a spirit of settling the second best. What's your next record?

Speaker 21:27:15

Yeah.

Desert Island Discs at 751:27:27

It's

Speaker 21:27:28

Uh

Presenter1:27:37

Thank you very much. I presume that you went to another place, did you? You did. My next record is a record of George Formby singing when I'm cleaning windows, because when we first got posh at home, and my father bought our first motor car, we used to go out on a Sunday afternoon. We would all sit around at the table at lunchtime on Sunday and say, Where shall we go this afternoon? And my mother would say, Let's go and look at Beryldine. Now, Beryldine was George Formby and Beryl Formby's house at Lithamson Downs. And we got into the car on Sunday afternoon and drove over and looked at a pile of Accrington brick.

Desert Island Discs at 751:27:41

My name is

Presenter1:28:11

On the front at Lytham, stayed there for half an hour, gazed at this stuff and then came back again. So I'd like to hear George singing when I'm cleaning windows.

Presenter1:28:27

Now I go window cleaning to earn an honest bob For a nosy parker it's an interesting job Now it's a job that just suits me A window cleaner you would be If you can see what I can see When I'm cleaning windows Honeymoon in couples too You should see them bill and coo You'd be surprised at things they do When I'm cleaning windows In my profession I'll work hard but I

Presenter1:28:57

Well this week I'm visiting a fascinating house in Northumbria.

Presenter1:29:02

From the windows one can see Hadrian's wall.

Presenter1:29:05

and there's a very picturesque stretch of the River Tyne, and there are forests and fells in the distance. It's the house of a novelist, author of over sixty romantic and historical novels, Catherine Cookson.

Speaker 31:29:19

Mary Cole Le Roy.

Presenter1:29:21

Please do, Catherine.

Speaker 31:29:22

I just wanted Nobi placement.

Speaker 31:29:26

And I'm going to pull you r up straight away, Roy. I do not like that word romantic.

Presenter1:29:28

I do know.

Speaker 31:29:31

Uh

Presenter1:29:32

As I see a romance, anything goes. Everything's got to be larger than life. But in a novel you've got to be realistic, and I am very realistic.

Presenter1:29:41

Catherine, this is your native country, isn't it? You come from Tyneside.

Speaker 31:29:45

Yes, yes.

Presenter1:29:46

And you were Katie McMullen.

Speaker 31:29:47

Muller, yeah.

Presenter1:29:48

In your childhood you knew poverty didn't

Speaker 31:29:51

Very much so, yes.

Presenter1:29:53

And you never knew your father? No, I didn't. And in those days, of course, illegitimacy had a kind of stigma.

Speaker 31:29:55

Yeah.

Presenter1:30:01

Oh yes, it certainly had, yes. Your mother brought you up she went out to work?

Speaker 31:30:06

Oh, very much so. Yes, you worked both inside and outside the house.

Speaker 31:30:10

Fourteen hours a day.

Presenter1:30:11

as a result of which he had an unfortunate character fault.

Speaker 31:30:15

Yes, Kate had one fault. She liked a tipple.

Speaker 31:30:19

And that upset me a very

Presenter1:30:21

very much. I think that I must have been highly sensitive, because other children could put up with their parents' drinking, but to me it was a a great shame that my I well, I didn't consider her my mother, you see. She was our Kate.

Speaker 31:30:34

Hmm.

Presenter1:30:34

For years I thought of her as my sister.

Presenter1:30:37

And uh it it wasn't until I was seven years old and discovered that uh she was my mother.

Presenter1:30:43

But I still called her our Kate.

Speaker 31:30:45

Mm.

Presenter1:30:45

That the shame sort of increased. I knew our Kate drank, but she was only a sister, it didn't matter. But when she was a mother and she drank, that became unbearable. And that feeling increased with the years. It didn't uh diminish. I didn't see it in a different light as I got into my teens.

Presenter1:31:02

Did you sometimes go to bed hungry?

Presenter1:31:05

No, no, I never did. There was always food, and nearly as often there was drink. The rent mightn't be paid, but uh those two necessities were seen to. Were you were you bright at school?

Presenter1:31:17

No, I certainly wasn't. I certainly wasn't bright because I was full of fear. I feared the drink. I and from I was seven and a half, I was taken away from the Protestant school, the only school at which I was happy. And I was made to go to the Catholic school because, as my granda said, I had a lawn of faith.

Presenter1:31:36

And it didn't take me away from there to just learn the faith. It was so I could go to church and pray for his soul. He used to give me a penny on a Sunday and say,

Speaker 31:31:44

Yeah.

Presenter1:31:45

Yeah.

Speaker 31:31:45

There's a penny for the plate.

Presenter1:31:46

Yeah.

Speaker 31:31:46

Say safe prayer may save me so.

Speaker 31:31:49

And you know there's no justice. And oh, he used to finish up with saying, Prayer may die a happy death and he and he did die a happy death. And uh I remember uh Kate cried when he went.

Presenter1:32:00

And she had looked after him for ten years. And she should have really she should have had a brass band out. Isn't cool.

Speaker 31:32:06

Yeah. Uh Yeah.

Presenter1:32:06

Uh

Speaker 31:32:06

Yeah.

Presenter1:32:06

Uh

Speaker 31:32:06

Uh

Presenter1:32:06

No, but He cried. Yeah.

Speaker 31:32:09

Uh

Presenter1:32:09

He had his good Yeah.

Speaker 31:32:10

Sounded great.

Presenter1:32:11

I look back and there were terrible times, yes, but there were these bright moments that

Speaker 31:32:13

Uh

Presenter1:32:16

Shine above them now.

Presenter1:32:19

The late Catherine Cookson talking to Roy in 1984. The following year would be Roy Plumley's final as host of Desert Island Discs. By the time of his death on May 28th, he had presented 1,787 programmes, bringing to an end an era that had lasted an astonishing forty-three years.

Presenter1:32:58

Our Castaway is introduced by Michael Parkinson.

Presenter1:33:01

Autobiography can be stranger than fiction. Indeed, it would take a novelist of exceptional imagination to invent a story as extraordinary as our Castaway's.

Presenter1:33:10

And even if he came close, the chances are he wouldn't be believed. And Castaway's first volume of autobiography, called I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, was a bestseller both here and in her native America. Her fifth volume, called All God's Children Need Travelling Shoes, has just been published. The books begin with a child growing up with prejudice and abuse in the American South, and end in Ghana, where the adult seeks a homecoming in what she imagines to be the promised land.

Presenter1:33:38

In between times she's been a writer, a stripper, political activist, waitress, editor, singer, actress, and a dancer, and a few more things besides. She is Maya Angelou.

Presenter1:33:50

Maya, we're going to put you on this desert island with these eight records. Now, I assume, coming from where you did, which from the deep South of America, that music in fact has played a very significant part in your life. Very, yes. When do you first remember its influence? How old will you be? Oh, probably about four or five.

Desert Island Discs at 751:34:00

Bury.

Presenter1:34:09

My grandmother had a wonderful voice.

Presenter1:34:12

and she sang in church.

Presenter1:34:14

And she'd sing around the house, unless she was asked to sing. If um I'd ask her, Mamma, would you please sing? She'd say, Now goin', girl, you know mamma can't sing.

Presenter1:34:27

But if you'd leave her alone, she'd open this magnificent voice up and put it out in the air like hot gold.

Presenter1:34:37

you know, like melting gold, it seemed to me.

Presenter1:34:41

Maya Angelou described herself as mute at the age of eight. Michael asked her what the circumstances were that had led her to not speak, and I should warn listeners that this is a stark and violent tale.

Presenter1:34:56

Pretty dreadful. When I was seven and a half I was raped by uh my mother's boyfriend and the um rapist

Presenter1:35:09

was killed.

Presenter1:35:11

The policeman told my grandmother my mother's mother.

Presenter1:35:15

with whom I was staying.

Presenter1:35:17

That um

Presenter1:35:18

The man had been kicked to death, they thought.

Presenter1:35:24

And I heard that and somehow with my seven and a half year old logic I decided that my voice had killed him.

Presenter1:35:37

That um because I told who did it.

Presenter1:35:43

that my voice was the culprit.

Presenter1:35:46

And so I decided that um I'd better not talk, because anybody whose name I called or who heard me

Presenter1:35:56

might die.

Presenter1:35:59

So I stop.

Presenter1:36:00

And how long did that last? About five years. And what rescued you from that silence? Poetry. Yeah. I loved poetry.

Desert Island Discs at 751:36:08

Yeah.

Presenter1:36:12

And a woman in my town, black lady,

Presenter1:36:16

started me at about eight.

Presenter1:36:18

to reading the books in the library.

Presenter1:36:21

I kept a tablet.

Presenter1:36:23

and I would write on the tablet whenever anybody asked me anything.

Presenter1:36:28

And in the schools, because mamma, my grandmother, owned most of the land, and lots of the land rather than that,

Presenter1:36:35

People

Presenter1:36:36

sort of couldn't be too unkind, you know,'cause I was her California grandbaby.

Presenter1:36:42

Although out of her hearing they would say things to me about me like this Mm mm It's a shame sister Henderson's California granddaughter done gone mental. Them brutes.

Presenter1:36:55

But um finally Mrs. Flowers, this lovely lady, had me over to her house. I was about almost twelve.

Presenter1:37:08

And

Presenter1:37:09

She would ask me about things I'd read and what did I like, and I'd write.

Presenter1:37:14

And she said, You think you like poetry, you don't like poetry.

Presenter1:37:19

Well, I couldn't believe that. She knew I loved it. She said, No, you don't like poetry. I was writing furiously. I love it.

Presenter1:37:26

She said, You'll never like it until you speak it, until you feel it come across your tongue, through your teeth, over your lips. You will never love poetry. I ran out of her house.

Presenter1:37:39

I ran to the store. She came to the store.

Presenter1:37:43

And she pointed her finger at me, which is a very serious thing, Michael, for black Americans.

Presenter1:37:49

We have a saying that goes from Jesse Jackson to the Wino on the street corner.

Presenter1:37:56

Don't put your finger in my face. That is very serious.

Presenter1:38:01

She pointed her finger at me, which is r I mean, she knew better. But just to really shock me, she said, You don't like poetry. She continued harassing me for months.

Presenter1:38:13

until finally I went under the house.

Presenter1:38:16

And I tried to speak poetry. And I had a voice. And um

Presenter1:38:24

So I misses Flowers and Poetry returned my voice to me.

Presenter1:38:29

Maya Angelou was speaking to Sir Michael Parkinson in 1987. Michael presented ninety six editions before handing on the baton to Sue Lawley in nineteen eighty eight.

Presenter1:38:40

In September of that year she interviewed someone she described as elusive, the writer of Walking Guides to the Lake District, Alfred Wainwright. He declined to go far from his Lakeland home, let alone anywhere near London, where he had been only once in his life, but eventually he agreed to be interviewed in Manchester, on condition that his journey home took in the famous Harry Ramsden's Fish and Chip Restaurant on the edge of Leeds.

Presenter1:39:05

Unusually for a castaway, Wainwright professes no special fondness for music. And prefers silence.

Presenter1:39:13

I think I should make it quite clear that music has never played an important part in my life. It's never been an inspiration to me.

Presenter1:39:22

rather an irritation very often the tinkle of a mountain stream, the twittering of birds, the rustle of leaves in a forest in autumn, the sound of the wind sighing across the mountain tops.

Presenter1:39:39

That's music to me.

Presenter1:39:41

Well, now, as I understand it, the young Alfred Wainwright was a bit of a clever clogs and destined not to go to the cotton mill, is that right?

Presenter1:39:50

I think I think I must admit that that that is right.

Presenter1:39:54

I did very well at the board school and the teachers all said you ought to go to the central school in the middle of the town, which I did with considerable apprehension because I had no decent clothes to wear, no clo no shoes, but there I did extremely well and came first in every subject in the first year.

Presenter1:40:19

There wasn't much money coming in at all.

Presenter1:40:22

I wanted to help out and uh at the age of thirteen there was an advert in the local paper for an office boy in the town hall and I applied for that and got it.

Presenter1:40:36

Whereas everybody else that I knew was going into the cotton mill.

Presenter1:40:41

I wouldn't have liked that.

Presenter1:40:43

How much did you get a week to remember? Yes, a magnificent sum.

Presenter1:40:48

I started at fifteen shillings a week and I was only thirteen years old and I remember running all the way home to tell my mother who had a hard time really. I used to waking up in the middle of the night and I could hear the mangle going in the kitchen downstairs because to make things meet she had to take in washing from rather more affluent neighbours.

Presenter1:41:16

So that was sad.

Presenter1:41:18

Well now let's move on to to nineteen thirty, when you were aged twenty three and you took your first holiday away from home. By that age I'd saved up five pounds.

Presenter1:41:30

and I'd heard a lot about the Lake District, which until then had been a world away.

Presenter1:41:36

Although there are only sixty miles between us.

Presenter1:41:40

I did as everybody told me, went up to Orest Head, which overlooks Windermere.

Presenter1:41:47

And I I just couldn't believe that such beauty could exist. It made a whole world of difference to me.

Presenter1:41:55

That did change my life.

Presenter1:41:57

I decided then that this is a place I wanted to live.

Presenter1:42:03

Nineteen forty-one.

Presenter1:42:06

I applied for a job in Kendall.

Presenter1:42:08

and the town halling candle.

Presenter1:42:10

And got it.

Presenter1:42:12

And that was the beginning of the next part of your life.

Desert Island Discs at 751:42:13

And the next point.

Presenter1:42:16

You were thirty four years old and um at last you'd managed to get to live in the place where your heart was in the Lake District. But you still hadn't written anything more than a government report at this stage, had you?

Desert Island Discs at 751:42:23

Yeah.

Presenter1:42:29

No, I hadn't.

Presenter1:42:31

No, not really. So when did you decide on this project to write all about the Lake District in such detail? Well.

Desert Island Discs at 751:42:38

What

Presenter1:42:39

I was trained as an accountant.

Presenter1:42:42

And uh when I came to the Lake District I had a golden opportunity of getting out walking on the fells. And although there weren't many people walking in those days, I was always coming across people who who were lost.

Speaker 31:42:57

I was wrong.

Presenter1:43:01

There were no guide books to the fells, and it was important that there should be.

Presenter1:43:06

So more for my amusement than anything else, I started to write the guidebooks. I thought when I'm an old man and I can't walk the hills, these will be memories for me.

Presenter1:43:18

I finished the first volume after two years working everyday night on them, so I I really got obsessed by what I was doing.

Desert Island Discs at 751:43:22

Bye.

Presenter1:43:27

I was able to illustrate them with drawings. I was able to give features, nat the natural features of the mountain, the w routes of ascent, the ridge routes to the next one, the view, the summit. Dealt with them all like that, one after another.

Presenter1:43:46

I finished the first book of uh some two hundred pages and uh I thought uh

Presenter1:43:53

These might be useful to other people, too.

Presenter1:43:57

And uh

Presenter1:43:59

I let half a dozen people see them, and they all, without exception, said you ought to get this published.

Presenter1:44:06

You used the word obsessed just now. I mean, it it was a kind of obsession, wasn't it? It must have dominated your life. It did.

Desert Island Discs at 751:44:09

Yeah.

Desert Island Discs at 751:44:11

She wasn't.

Presenter1:44:15

Nothing mattered to me except getting these books done. I had a single track mine.

Presenter1:44:20

And it ended finally with my wife walking out and taking the dog, and I never saw her again.

Presenter1:44:26

And did you blame her?

Presenter1:44:28

Not at all.

Presenter1:44:30

God now she's stuck it for thirty odd years.

Presenter1:44:35

No.

Presenter1:44:41

No.

Presenter1:44:42

No, unfortunately my eyes have gone in the last two or three years and uh

Presenter1:44:49

I mean, I always counsel people to watch where they're putting their feet on these rough mountain tracks.

Presenter1:44:55

Now.

Presenter1:44:57

The last time.

Presenter1:44:59

that I I did a fellow.

Presenter1:45:02

It was a pouring wind day. Terrible.

Presenter1:45:07

and I was stumbling and slipping all over the place, and it wasn't because the my glasses was mistied.

Presenter1:45:14

It was because I couldn't see what I was putting my feet.

Presenter1:45:19

And that's the last time I did a follow-up.

Presenter1:45:22

and the mountains

Presenter1:45:24

wept tears for me that day.

Presenter1:45:27

Never stop running.

Presenter1:46:00

Let's see.

Presenter1:46:12

That was the choice of the former leader of the National Union of Mine Workers, Arthur Scargill. He was interviewed by Sue in nineteen eighty eight, just three years after the end of the miner strike. Tell me about your father, Arthur. He was a miner.

Presenter1:46:25

Yes, he was, and he has been a lifelong Communist as well.

Presenter1:46:31

My father, in many ways, was the very opposite of my mother. My mother was strictly non-political. My father was very political indeed.

Presenter1:46:38

And I was brought up in a in a household filled with love, but also uh filled with this um marvellous contradiction. My mother who used to go uh to church and my father who used to go to the Communist Party meeting and to the meetings of the National Union of Mine Workers. Were there lots of arguments in the house then? Oh no, there were no arguments in the house, funnily enough. My mother s totally supported my father, absolutely loved him, and uh of course it was reciprocated. But um I found that I used to have lots of discussions with my father, although he never ever tried to persuade me to adopt his political persuasion.

Presenter1:47:14

He thought it was best that I make up my own mind.

Presenter1:47:17

And it wasn't till I was about fourteen that I asked him if I could go to a political meeting with him. So what was it like, that that first descent into your your father's habitat, if you like?

Presenter1:47:28

The first day at work was almost indescribable. I remember walking the pit yard at Woolley, which is a a colliery to the north of Barnsley.

Presenter1:47:38

And it was a dank, dark morning, and I was put into the engineer's office to await the big man coming along.

Presenter1:47:45

There were about six of us waiting.

Presenter1:47:47

Andy Dooley came into the office about ten minutes to six. He was wearing a pork pie hat.

Presenter1:47:53

And it says, what we got here?

Presenter1:47:55

And uh what we got here, of course, was six young lads who were terrified.

Presenter1:47:59

And he told his assistant to take us down into the screens. Our screening plant was a

Presenter1:48:05

An area where you had a job picking out the rock from the coal as it went past on a conveyor belt.

Presenter1:48:10

and we went across the pit yard and down some steps.

Presenter1:48:14

Under some very dark areas and then down some more steps.

Presenter1:48:19

into an area which I can only describe as being comparable to Dante's Inferno.

Presenter1:48:24

The dust was so thick you couldn't see

Presenter1:48:26

more than about a foot or two foot in front of you, and the noise was so intense that I actually learned within the space of three weeks to speak with sound language.

Presenter1:48:37

I had to exist in that atmosphere for nearly a year, and it certainly had a tremendous influence on the way that I reacted towards other people.

Presenter1:48:45

Why is it, Arthur Scargill, then, if being down the pit is such a a noisy hell as you describe, why is it that it has such a romantic image?

Presenter1:48:56

If it's not being sexist, I suppose it's like being married. You have amazing rounds, but you always go back.

Presenter1:49:03

I think what it is, is that there is a degree of comradeship in the mining industry that you'll not find anywhere else, probably apart from, say, the the fishing industry.

Presenter1:49:14

And it's because of the closeness of the people in the environment in which they work.

Presenter1:49:20

And I recall vividly working with these young lads in real dangerous circumstances, and feeling a sympathy for them and them for me, so that um if one of them was threatened with anything,

Presenter1:49:33

Say discipline by the management.

Presenter1:49:35

We saw it as an attack upon ourselves. And how quickly did you spot amongst these these six young boys you describe you go down the pit with, how quickly did you spot that what they needed was a champion, a leader, somebody to stand up for them?

Presenter1:49:49

I think um

Presenter1:49:50

relatively quickly. I mean, I felt the d the uh

Presenter1:49:54

Circumstances in which we were working were so appalling that they needed challenging.

Presenter1:50:00

But uh what happened uh when I went down the pit itself? I was working with a whole group of young lads.

Presenter1:50:06

And I found that before the holiday period everybody else in the pit

Presenter1:50:10

When they finish work we're allowed to go home.

Presenter1:50:13

immediately prior to the holiday commencing.

Presenter1:50:16

But for some inexplicable reason the young lads were not allowed to do this, even though they finished their work they were compelled to stay down.

Presenter1:50:24

and so the lads asked me if I'd been the spokesman.

Presenter1:50:26

And I went into the manager's office, and it seemed to me that the manager's office was about three hundred feet in length. It seemed to take me so long to walk across the room.

Presenter1:50:35

and the manager was sitting there smoking a pipe.

Presenter1:50:38

And he said, What's tha want, lad?

Presenter1:50:41

And I said, Well, I've uh I've come to represent all the lads in the pit bottom.

Presenter1:50:46

Oh, hi.

Presenter1:50:48

About what?

Presenter1:50:50

And so I explained to him the case, and I said, And what we're asking, mister Steele, is for permission for us to go home when we've completed our work just to day.

Presenter1:51:00

He says, Thou knows I can't give thee that permission.

Presenter1:51:04

And just as they were going to the door, he said

Presenter1:51:06

Thou'd be better off than o's training in Moscow, thee, rather than here.

Presenter1:51:10

And I went out and I thought

Presenter1:51:12

I haven't succeeded in those negotiations.

Presenter1:51:15

And I suddenly realized he hadn't said no.

Presenter1:51:18

It simply said it couldn't give us permission.

Presenter1:51:21

And so when the time came at the end of the shift for us to come out,

Presenter1:51:25

I promptly led them all out with the rest of the men.

Presenter1:51:29

And to everybody's astonishment we all got paid our full wages, and from that moment on I was regarded as something of a champion in the pit.

Presenter1:51:35

Arthur Scargill Speaking to Sue in nineteen eighty eight You're listening to Desert Island Discs at seventy five on BBC Radio four Extra. It's time for another of my personal pics from the archive.

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The vast majority of our recordings take place at B B C Broadcasting House in London, but for one of my most memorable, I travelled to Myanmar or Burma to talk to opposition leader Ansang Su Ki at her home in Napiadore back in twenty twelve.

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So having launched yourself then on the political stage and formed with your supporters the NLD, the National League for Democracy, you began to campaign for elections that were coming in 1990. But before the elections themselves took place, many of your supporters were thrown into jail and you yourself were put under house arrest. Of course you had no freedom. The only freedom you had was the freedom to think. What did you think about that situation in 1990?

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The first thing that I thought was how very quickly I adjusted to house arrest. This is a nice surprise. I didn't feel it a burden at all. I realized then immediately that I was perfectly capable of living alone. What about communicating with your family back home? First we did exchange letters, but they censored all our letters and I didn't like that. And I had problems with my how shall I put it, with my security personnel. And so we stopped communicating. Prior to your house arrest, Orsu, on one occasion you faced down the guns of the army. You walked among

Desert Island Discs at 751:53:00

Nice.

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Soldiers who'd been given the instruction to shoot to kill. I wonder what it was that gave you the nerve and the courage to do that.

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I'm a very practical person and uh the captain who was threatening to shoot us down said that he would shoot if we didn't move away from the centre of the road. So I thought, well, no point in getting shot down simply because I wanted to keep to the centre of the road, so we moved to the side. But then he said, well, we he's going to shoot anyway, so I thought we would better move back. There didn't seem any point in sticking to the side of the road when we were going to get shot anyway.

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But we had to go through the line of soldiers and many of them their hands were shaking. I don't think they particularly wanted to shoot us down.

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There was another point in 2003 where you were again campaigning and as I understand it, your car and your entourage was surrounded by a mob of a couple of thousand people. Many of your supporters were killed on that day, upwards of seventy people. And you yourself insisted at one point to the driver that he should not pull away from the crowd and that you would stay where your supporters and where your people were. That would not be most people's instinct. Well, I would like to put the record straight. First of all, I don't think there were thousands surrounding our cars and trying to beat us down. People have said seventy died, but we have never been able to get this confirmed. I think fewer died. But well, yes, I said that I wouldn't go away and leave everybody else to be beaten.

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By anyone's estimation, it was a very perilous situation. Where do the reserves come from? Where is that strength from? Well, I would say my upbringing most of all, and of course, my Buddhist philosophy, my Buddhist faith as well. And also meditation. I never used to meditate before I was placed under house arrest. And constant meditation does heighten your awareness. You are aware when you're getting angry, for example, so you know that you have to start controlling yourself. And this is a great help in coping with what most politicians have to cope with. Yes, I am immediately thinking of the moment then when you walk into the Parliament building and you are surrounded by all of those generals who over the years have been responsible for so much of the punishment that has been meted out to you and your fellow supporters. And to look at those pictures, it's a woman with grace and serenity and dignity who is able to walk in there.

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Of the m

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Apparently, without any rancor or ill feeling towards the men that surround her. Is that simply a carapace, or is that genuinely how you feel? It's genuine. I'm fond of the army. People don't like me for saying that. There are many who have criticised me for being what they call a poster girl for the army. Very flattering to be seen as a poster girl for anything at this time of life, but I think the truth is that I am very fond of the army because I always thought of it as my father's army. You will be aware, of course, that that is a very controversial thing for you to say. Of course. But I have to say, this is the truth. I was taught that my father was the father of the army and that all soldiers were his sons, and therefore they were part of my family.

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Yeah.

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But the atrocities that have been meted out by the Burmese military to the people not just torture but the use of child soldiers as young as eleven rape as a weapon of war you will be familiar with all of these appalling things that have taken place in Domain and it's terrible what they've done and I don't like what they've done at all.

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Of course.

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But if you love somebody, I think you love her or him in spite of and not because of, and you always look forward to a time when they will be able to redeem themselves. Does your forgiving nature and the fact that you are comfortable looking them in the eye and shaking their hand make them uncomfortable?

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Well, they don't actually spend a lot of time shaking my hand. I wish they did.

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But I don't feel uncomfortable with them. Time for some music. What's next?

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Well, the next is a piece of music which I've never heard before, and I'm not sure whether I'm going to like it or not. This is a first for Desert Island discs, I have. I'm surprised. Don't people ever choose something they've never heard before? They never do.

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Well I'm

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Well, I've chosen this for my personal assistant, Dr. Tema Ah. I asked her which piece of music she'd like to choose, and she said the green, green grass of Hoba. And she explained to me that when she was working as a doctor in England, it used to remind her of Burma. And I hope I like it.

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As I step down from the train And let him meet me

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