Sue Perkins

Sue Perkins0:00

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. This is an extended edition of the original broadcast. For rights reasons, the music choices are shorter than in the radio broadcast.

Presenter0:17

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

Presenter0:45

My castaway this week is the T V presenter Sue Perkins. With her ready wit and genuine warmth, she is one of our most recognisable small screen stars. Plying her trade for twenty years now, it was, of course, the irresistible recipe of steaming great puds and saucy quips that ensured her household name status. Along with her long term comedy partner Mel Gedroich, she made the great British Bake Off so much more than just another disposable telly format, turning it into a rating sensation and a national obsession.

Presenter1:19

These days she wears her considerable celebrity with wry aplomb, and her Travel Odyssey documentaries and best selling memoir hints at some one keen as much for understanding as approval. She says I am an appalling, appalling

Presenter1:35

But somehow somewhere along the line I've learned how to hide it, hide that sentimentality and vulnerability.

Presenter1:42

I do it with words. Bluster. It fortifies me against the outside world. Take away the words and I am lost. So welcome, Sue Perkins. Um plenty of words to day.

Presenter1:55

Uh when you think about a sojourn onto this island all alone, how how does it leave you feeling?

Presenter2:01

Pure terror. Does it? It does because I'm never alone. I've rather happily constructed a life where I'm always with another, a partner, with friends and family, where my work is incredibly sociable. And my entire reason for being is to connect with people and to understand what makes them tick. And to just be around palm trees and water, much as I love nature, will be so disorientating. And I have a sort of almost a sort of shimmer of anxiety thinking about it. It's gone into Shoba's legend now that you and Mel famously turned down the great British bake office. How are you with decision making generally? Terrible. Absolutely terrible. I'm such a prevaricator. I only see grey. I'm very glad. I'm always very glad I'm not responsible wholly for my own career choices. We know you are not, as you famously said with Mel in that statement that ran almost top of the news. You are not following the dough.

Sue Perkins2:39

How

Presenter2:58

Paul is going off to this new series on Channel 4, Paul Hollywood, of course, at Mary is staying with the BBC.

Presenter3:04

Um

Presenter3:05

I mean, how much of a wrench was it, or and I wonder, after so many series of doing it, was there a bit of you that thought

Presenter3:12

I'm sad, but really I I feel like I could do with a bit of freedom now.

Presenter3:16

It's a complicated brew, actually, that there was lots of things going on. I think it was an extraordinary chunk of my life, and it shepherded me through. It was one sort of continuum in a seven years that were full of quite a lot of upheaval in my own life.

Presenter3:34

I think

Presenter3:35

We were running out of puns. I'm not going to lie, Kirsty. There's only so many in the tank. I think when we had a Croatian bun, and I said rather loudly it had split, and I thought I have really, really sunk to the very bottom of what is possible in my, you know. And, you know, every bap pun, every Hungarian ring pun was just mind and mind and mind. And we did a Tudor week, and some of the puns there were absolutely horrific.

Presenter4:04

That's an Aragon.

Presenter4:06

Absolutely terrible.

Presenter4:09

A really awful, really awful. But I would have carried on doing it, I think. It was a really sweet show. I loved the crew, and I loved the director, and I loved the bakers, and I sort of loved all of it. But there was one point, I will be honest, where I did think, can I do this forever? Which was when I had come back from my travels, and it was a programme I did in the Mekong River, and I had been travelling from the mouth in Ho Chi Minh to the source in Tibet. And four days before I came to the Bake Off tent, I had been with the first family of the Mekong in Tibet who had no electricity and no running water. And they would have yak butter and barley, and that's all they ate. And they would meditate and be in bed by six. And then four days later, I was in a tent where somebody was crying because they couldn't find the packet of marong glase. And I did think, how can I rationalize these two worlds? But I miss it, and I also wish it well. There's no point in rancor. Let's turn to the music, Sue Perkins. Tell me about the first one we're going to hear this morning then. Well, for someone who just gases off continuously, the only time when I'm not talking is when I'm dancing, and I love dancing. And I'm not a great dancer. I think you might have witnessed some of my dancing. I mean, it's expressive, is it not? I think that would be one word. I don't do things by halves. So I'm like this sort of electrocuted octopus when I go on the dance floor. And I'm not a young buck anymore, but it doesn't matter. I will just go for it with the same vim and pep as I had when I was in my twenties. And this track is Sylvester, You Make Me Feel.

Sue Perkins5:23

Yeah.

Presenter5:42

Open brackets, IT reel, closed brackets. I think out of all the dance tracks that I love, this is the one that is most likely to get everyone at home, you know, moving their hips like a gyroscope, so just go for it.

Speaker 45:55

Out there dancing on the floor, darling, and I feel like I need some more. And I feel your body close to mine. And I know my love, it's a part that time made me feel not real.

Speaker 46:15

Am I gonna be

Speaker 46:17

Yeah.

Presenter6:31

That was Sylvester, and you make me feel mighty real. Um your memoir, Spectacles, when it came out in twenty fifteen, I read it at the time and it was it was funny enough not to be safe to read on public transport. You know that thing. I might laugh explosively at any point. What ma you're able to write in a very funny way. What makes you laugh?

Sue Perkins6:43

Oh music unlike

Presenter6:53

I have sort of a bro a broad taste, I suppose. Sometimes a really nuanced, really fillesced satirical kind of sentence can make me guffour, but equally just a really well timed burp.

Presenter7:07

Do you know what I mean? It's just a beautiful, beautiful. I once accidentally did a burp whilst opening the fridge that sounded like a fridge door opening, and I laughed for 15 minutes. I thought I was going to die. And I think.

Presenter7:20

The great thing about humour is it connects you to your childish self. I'm not snobbish about jokes and I'm not snobbish about where they come from. And if something makes me laugh, I'll accept it for what it is and be truly grateful. What are you looking for in your work? I mean, you mentioned the Mekong Delta tour. You've been to so there's Vietnam, there's China, India, Alaska, making these documentaries that take I imagine what you must be shooting those for two or three months at a time. It's a huge commitment. You're away from friends and family. I imagine often in quite difficult conditions shooting them. What's the appeal for you? Why do you put yourself through that?

Sue Perkins7:44

Yes, I

Sue Perkins7:46

Yeah.

Presenter7:57

I ask myself that a lot, and people who care about me ask that a lot. And there's this sort of perverse need always in me to push myself. I come back always with, you know, a sort of payload of E. coli or some such. But what I get from it is a sense of connecting with people who

Presenter8:18

I am sort of practically as far removed from as po my my life is as far removed from theirs as it's humanly possible to be. I can flick a switch and I have light. I can turn on the shown and I have warm water. There was one time when we were travelling and we were in Ratnakiri in northern Cambodia.

Presenter8:36

and all the translators just left.

Presenter8:39

It's the Kurung tribe I went to to see and in order to understand to get the translation across, we'd need to go from English to Khmea, from Khmea to another tribal dialect, and from that dialect to Kurung. But there were no translators. So you're stuck in this clearing with

Presenter8:54

Thirty women looking at you.

Presenter8:56

And you have to find a way of saying we're all the same.

Presenter9:01

And it was a fart gag that did it in the end. But also, I managed to sit down, they asked me to sit down, and I managed to sit down on an enormous pile of pig poo. And that was a real icebreaker. And they thought I was a spectacular idiot. But through just looking, just looking at them and holding their hands and laughing, I managed to spend nearly three days with them. And I was walking through a cashew forest with one of them holding my hand. And I just loved this woman so much. I thought, how can I feel so strongly about a stranger with whom I don't share a language?

Presenter9:34

And um I just said to her, I really f feel I've known you all my life and she muttered something back. She was smoking a very long pipe, I remember.

Presenter9:42

And about two months later when the translation came back and the show was ready to be sort of edited and voiced.

Presenter9:47

They wrung me up and said you need to watch this.

Presenter9:49

And there's me saying, I think I've known you all my life, and the translation came back, and she said

Presenter9:53

I think I've known you all my life.

Presenter9:55

And that's why I do it, because in all the hardship and madness and all the filth.

Presenter10:00

There's just this reminder that we're all the same, and there's this reminder that you can have these immense, profound moments of.

Presenter10:09

Solidarity, and I and I that's what I always look for. Now we're going to hear some more music, Sue Perkins. Tell me about this.

Presenter10:16

Why have you chosen this?

Presenter10:17

So this is the first track I ever remember hearing. And this is Lonnie Donnegan's Rock Iron and Line. And my dad was a great dancer and it reminds me of him.

Presenter10:28

This track builds and it's that sense of excitement that I get if I go clubbing when you're waiting for the deep bass to kick in. It's about waiting, it's about pleasure delay, it's about seeing for me my dad just gently sort of bouncing up and down and corralling all of us kids to get ready for the big moment when the song explodes and I just love it and it reminds me of family and I can see our front room with that awful swirly 70s carpet and the stink of sort of frayed bentos pie simmering in the 1970s oven and overcooked cabbage sort of limp and beige and just pure joy at having the privilege of these people being my blood relatives.

Speaker 311:10

I'll tell you where I'm going boy. Down the Rock Island Line, she's a mighty good road. The Rock Island Line is a road to rhyme. Yes, the Rock Island Line is a mighty good road. And if you own the ride, you got the riding like you find to get your ticket at the station on the Rock Island Line. I may be right, maybe wrong. You know you're gonna miss me when I'm gone.

Speaker 411:24

Yeah.

Speaker 311:29

Down the rock island line, she's a mini girl road, the rock island line, the road tonight, the rock island, the money can road and if you move such a riding, got a fighting light to find a get your ticket at the station down the rock island line

Speaker 311:41

Hallelujah, I'm Stephen Sin. Good Lord's coming for see me again.

Speaker 311:47

Down the rock and then

Presenter11:49

That was Lonnie Donegan and Rock Island Lying. You surely did enjoy that, Sue Perkins. You certainly did. You were born at the end of the sixties. You were brought up in Croydon. You've described it as less of a place, more of a punchline. Your dad, Bert, was a car dealer, and your mum, Anne, was a secretary. Just tell me more about them. So they had this extraordinary, peculiar, and eccentric marriage that was a beautiful thing to behold. My mum is fiercely bright and very creative.

Speaker 311:53

Yeah.

Sue Perkins12:22

Fiercely

Presenter12:25

And my dad was sensitive and funny. And what they shared, and I think what welded them together, apart from love, pure love, was a total lack of self-esteem. And that I look on it and I think I sort of see that as the cement. And they sort of shepherded each other through decades and decades and decades, the three unruly kids and the highs and lows of life. And dad sort of felt too much. He sort of relied on data. He would keep lists and lists of what? Anything. He would keep notes on the fluctuations in temperature, on when the sun rose and when the sun set. He collected stamps and would make huge long lists about watermarks and perforations. He would catalogue everything because that was a way of.

Presenter13:16

Providing order in a universe that is essentially chaotic. And your mother was a catastrophiser. A total catastrophiser. So during the anthrax scare, she opened all of her mail with marigold gloves. Did she really do that? Because I read that in your book, and of course I laughed, but I wasn't sure if you were doing it. So it's all true. I mean, it's all, you know, and would ring me up. I remember when I was at college, I just had an answering machine message which said, just so you know, the latest thing that's going on in London is that someone will flash their headlights at you and when you stop the car, they'll pull you out the car and carjack you. And I don't know where she'd read that, but I think she'd in her head it happened.

Sue Perkins13:28

Did she really do?

Sue Perkins13:32

Oh, it's old.

Presenter13:56

all the time. And everyone who was driving was going to be sort of subjected to this. And what about the way you you see yourself? You you said that as a kid you were freakishly pale and perpetually odd and terribly shy.

Presenter14:08

Those those those things exist to this present day. It's just I'm better at I'm better at masking them. I mean, that's that's all you can hope for uh in terms of maturity. You don't those feelings don't go away, but you learn coping mechanisms. What do you feel your oddness to be?

Sue Perkins14:21

What do you

Presenter14:24

Same as everyone else's oddness, that that sense of being outside, looking in. And I used to think that was a peculiar thing to being a teenager, but of course it sort of endures. I'm sure everybody would say that. Sometimes I felt like an outsider because I was a woman, sometimes uh because I don't have kids, sometimes because I'm gay, sometimes because I'm not twenty any more.

Presenter14:45

It there's always a reason to be outside the glass. And so you went to a Catholic school at one point. How did you get on with the nuns? How were the nuns?

Presenter14:56

Well, I mean, I you'd be hard pressed, I think, to to listen to any story of a of a young girl and nuns that that turned out well. I mean, the nuns were terrifying. They would sort of appear like sort of strange elderly bats and corral you and make you do things you didn't want to do. And in my case, it was I'm left-handed and they it it was I mean, it's strange to think. I mean, this is this is the mid-seventies, but you were you were hit if you if you ate your

Presenter15:22

Food left-handed, then then they would swoop down. And um was that a sort of daily that sounds like a daily trauma for a little girl to go into that environment.

Presenter15:34

I don't see it as such. I think it gave me the feeling of being watched and being scrutinized, which isn't particularly healthy. Yes. And I suppose, you know, mine's greater than mine could then extrapolate as to, you know, why I do what I do for for a living now. But

Sue Perkins15:39

Yeah.

Speaker 415:39

Yeah.

Presenter15:46

I did get my own back though. I was eating um I was being forced to eat some mashed potato, which was delivered rather lovelessly from one of those ice cream scoops. It was this perfect semicircle of sort of rock hard starch, supposed to be plonked on your plate. And I flicked it and Sister Mary Dorothy was walking past and slipped on it and skidded and shattered her leg against the wall.

Speaker 415:52

Yeah.

Sue Perkins15:52

Yeah.

Presenter16:08

And for a brief second, I thought, I am, I really am.

Speaker 416:11

There is a quality crisis.

Presenter16:14

Let's have some more music, Sue Perkins. We were talking about being on the outside looking in, and I don't think anybody describes what that feeling is like better than Morrissey. I love the Smiths. But I've picked how Sudan is now simply because of the lyric I'm the son and heir of a shyness that is criminally vulgar. I'm the son and heir of nothing in particular. And a big shout out to Johnny Maher, who just provides these searing guitar moments that just elevate that song into something truly, truly special. And I don't think anyone can listen to a Smith song and not scream your lungs out in recognition of what it's like to feel odd.

Presenter16:53

Uh

Speaker 416:53

I am the sun, I am the air.

Speaker 417:01

I'm a shiny status criminal in border I am summoner

Speaker 417:08

There might be nothing particular.

Speaker 417:16

Shut your mouth, I'm happy.

Speaker 417:21

I go about things the wrong way I am human and I need to belong

Speaker 417:30

Just like everybody else

Presenter17:33

How soon is now? That was the Smiths. Um, Sue Perkins, what made you decide to study English at Cambridge?

Presenter17:41

Genuinely?

Presenter17:42

It's because one of my teachers told me

Presenter17:45

that I should study something other than English.

Presenter17:49

at a polytechnic, or maybe not bother.

Presenter17:53

And all my life I have I'm a contrary soul, and if I'm told I can't, I will.

Presenter17:59

And why were they telling you that? Was it the poverty of expectation at your school, or was it the belief that you were not up to the job? I think it was a combination of of of the two.

Presenter18:09

I certainly at school was um

Presenter18:15

not a consistent people. So your report cards would have been sort of all A's and all E's, would they? Exactly that. Right. Exactly that. And I certainly was unruly, and particularly in science and math, which I didn't fully embrace.

Sue Perkins18:21

Exactly that.

Presenter18:30

And I think because there was that huge bandwidth between me doing, well, you know, the A's and the E's.

Presenter18:36

I think they'd never thought I'd I'd amount to very much. I mean, f m one of my report cards I remember saying, What Susan lacks in intelligence, she makes up for in stupidity.

Presenter18:49

I'm not joking. I'm not joking. That stayed with me, you know. I hope you framed that and put it in the moo.

Sue Perkins18:52

I hope the

Presenter18:54

Well, for for a for a for a long time I had that that that thing um that I said about, you know, I I need to go to a you know, a college and not do English. That was on my wall for a while. And I just sort of as soon as I'd been told I couldn't, I took myself slightly out of school and I started to read a lot on my own. And and I remember going to my dad and I said, Dad, what's what's the best university?

Presenter19:15

And neither of my parents went to university of my mind said, so I think Cambridge is the best.

Presenter19:20

And so I said, All right, I'll go there then.

Presenter19:22

And because I was so unaware of what that would involve and I was unaware of the magnitude of it and that there wasn't any pressure on my shoulders to do anything or be anyone, I did it. But you had to br did you have to work very hard to get in? Did you have to really sort of apply yourself with determination to get the results? Well, the thing is, I remember my dad driving me, put on his best camel coat, and he got in the car, which was a knocked old Peugeot, and we sort of

Presenter19:47

puttered up to Cambridge and I'd got an interview and we just thought we'd be there for half an hour. And then it transpired that actually it was a whole day of interviews and an exam.

Presenter19:57

And

Presenter19:58

Those interviews, as terrifying as they were, were the sort of making of me because they got to see who I was. And.

Presenter20:05

because I had been spending a lot of time th you know, really considering what I felt about Wuthering Heights or what I felt about Tess of the Derbville or what I felt about Hamlet, I was able to talk about it. So they actually gave me an offer that was achievable.

Presenter20:18

It was 1988 when you went there, and I understand that at the time your dad said to you, don't become posh. Yes.

Presenter20:28

How how did you fit in when you first got there?

Presenter20:31

I was sort of overwhelmed by the beauty of the place.

Presenter20:34

And

Presenter20:35

I had no context for that kind of majesty, really. And I felt very cowed by it at the beginning. But very quickly, I just started meeting people that I fell in love with. So the first moment I walked into my room, they'd said, Do you want to share a room? And I thought, well, I might as well, because I'll know somebody then. And then this.

Presenter20:57

Mad, flame-haired Welshwoman arrived called Shayla, and I shared a room with her in the first year, and I just loved the bones of her. And she thought that everybody from the south of England owned their own pony. And she used to speak in Welsh quite a lot. And we were so different, but we just loved each other. And from that moment on, I just relaxed. And I really loved college. And I met the people there that I will know and love for the rest of my life. And how did a young woman who had described herself as a kid as shy end up at footlights on stage? Because of Shayla. And because of this strange compulsion in me to do what is least expected, to challenge myself, to take on dares. Did she tell you you were funny, that you needed to share the funny? No, I mean, I think she found me faintly idiotic, not necessarily funny. And there was a comedy night going on, and I said, oh, I want to go. And she went, just do it.

Sue Perkins21:45

Uh

Speaker 421:45

Uh

Sue Perkins21:45

Yeah.

Presenter21:58

And I said, What do you mean? She goes, just do a slot.

Presenter22:00

I'll give you a tenor. Tenner was a fortune there.

Presenter22:02

And um

Presenter22:04

Because she challenged me and because

Presenter22:08

It felt like the most exciting and frightening thing to do. I did it. And I stood there that night in a very itchy lamb's wool jumper under a single very bright spotlight and just improvised some stuff. And that was the first time I'd ever stood in front of an audience. What was the sensation?

Presenter22:23

Fear, a prickling of fear, giving way to an extraordinary sense of freedom.

Presenter22:29

You have that moment of oh my God, I am I am going to do this and then you set yourself free and you're just buffeted by the currents, in this case the audience, and you don't know where it's going, but you just have this blind faith that everything's going to be okay. And whereas some people might ascribe

Presenter22:46

That to a feeling of pure terror, to not know where you're going, to not know the destination. Weirdly for me, I just find that.

Presenter22:55

That's my safe space. God, I sound mad now. I sound properly insane. But when it goes well, when you're just improvising and playing with an audience, it's just it's so liberating. I love it.

Presenter23:08

Let's hear your fourth, Sue. What are we going to hear now?

Presenter23:12

Well, now this has a very very special place in my heart. This is T-Rex, 20th Century Boy, and this track reminds me of an old Polish woman I know called Melanie Gedrocz. And sometimes we will just leave messages on one another's phone, which will just be, ah! Which will mean that, you know, the singers in this track. So this is for her.

Speaker 423:50

I moved like a cat charge, like a resting, like a baby live, I wanna be on

Speaker 424:05

Learning to see you around on the end.

Presenter24:15

Do it for us again. That was T-Rex and 20th Century Boy. As Sue Perkins, there is this beguiling ease between you and Mel Gedroych when we watch you on screen. It's a kind of sisterly partnership, like all good double acts. You seem to not just be able to finish each other's sentences, but make the best of each other and make each other, I'm guessing, funnier than you might be if you were just on your own. I mean, you've been together, what, thirty years as a partnership? Yes, next year it'll be thirty years since we met in that at that gig, at that very gig. And what was your first impression of Mel?

Speaker 424:38

Yes.

Presenter24:44

The first thing I noticed was she had some dusky pink DMs, eight whole DMs. I just thought I want those more than I've wanted anything in this world. And then I looked up and I saw the shock of sort of bleach blonde hair and this sort of this profusion of teeth, like a sort of broken piano, and this hearty laugh. And I just felt compelled. I'd never met her before to just move into her orbit. And I just knew we'd know each other forever from that moment, really. And people talk a lot about falling in love and romantic relationships, but they didn't talk about platonic friendships and how powerful they can be. You know, we have seen each other through such highs and lows. And above and beyond our working relationship, we are friends and we love each other and we want the best for each other. When you were first gigging together, 1993 was the first Edinburgh Festival you did and this was at the time of emerging talents like Joe Brand and Steve Coogan and Lee Evans. How did it go for you, that first festival?

Presenter25:43

That's a big moment to put yourself up on stage. But in classic Melsue fashion, we were a total shambles. It's a wonder that we've managed to make anything of ourselves because we're so haphazard. You know, our partnership looks inward. We look at each other and we never look outwards. It's like two twins in a cot just marvelling, just marvelling at each other. And I think sometimes that's our greatest strength and our greatest failing because I think if we'd been more able to sort of see the wood for the trees, then I think our careers would have gone a bit smoother. But we decided we wanted to do Edinburgh quite late in the day, and the only time they had left at this venue was 10.05 in the morning.

Sue Perkins26:21

Oh.

Presenter26:22

So, not even 10 o'clock, which is a time that people can remember to be at the vet, 10.05.

Presenter26:28

And we hadn't finished writing the show. We put it on. Nobody was in the audience. And we performed to two people, three people for the entirety of that festival until I think maybe day 20. And an article came out talking about new acts on the fringe, and we were mentioned. And then our little room was full. By 1997, you'd made it onto television. You were the name Light Lunch as a T V show evokes a certain sort of misty-eyed fondness in certain people. I have to admit to being one of those people. And it was 1997 on Channel 4, and that was really your big break. I have been told that there was a considerable degree of chaos between you as a partnership, including, you can put me right here if this is wrong, somebody saying, yeah, I mean, they they don't have a clue. The truth is we're having to buy them underwear. Is that true? Yes. I don't know if that book bought his underwear, but and I think the production company had never come across anybody.

Presenter27:22

Anyone liked the pair of us, because we were so

Presenter27:25

Blissfully unaware of the sort of the jazz hands element of television, you know, that we had to have sort of makeup and you know our hair had to be properly styled and you know we had to have a proper fitting bra and it probably wasn't a good idea you just wore your old grey pants. But I'm happy in old grey pants and that's just the way we were. This is why I love Mel is that the people on the show they gave us this incredible break but they were very well put together, very kind of West London kind of media people and they slick. Slick. And at the end of the first series, because it seemed to be going well, they bought us each a Prada purse.

Presenter28:04

And I looked at this Prada purse, and I just thought

Presenter28:07

Who's that for?

Presenter28:09

And Mel looked at it separately and said, Who's that for? and without saying anything

Presenter28:14

We both gave it to the charity shop the next day, and it was only a month later that we confessed to each other. And that's happened a billion times in my relationship with Mel, including, of course, when

Presenter28:23

Everything happened with Bakoff. I didn't need to ring her and say what are you going to do? because I knew what she was going to do. It was merely a question of

Presenter28:29

How we were going to do it.

Presenter28:31

Time for some more music, Sue Perkins. Tell me about what we're going to hear now. This is the fifth of your choices this morning.

Presenter28:36

Kate Bush is an artist that I have loved, loved since I was a child and her music has always been with me. When I talked about, you know, applying and getting into Cambridge, it was Hounds of Love that I would listen to. And I would turn the record over and over and over and over. And I love her because she's wistful and sentimental. I love her because she loves family. I love her because so much of her stuff is rooted in nature and the environment and what it is to feel in awe of birdsong and the rustle of trees. This is moments of pleasure because it's such so exquisite, but also it's just about looking back on one's life, just cherry-picking those single moments that give you pause and make your heart sore.

Speaker 429:22

Some moments that I've had

Speaker 429:26

Some moments of pleasure

Speaker 429:40

I think about us lying, lying on a beach somewhere I think about us diving, diving off a rock into another moment

Presenter29:59

That was Kate Bush and Moments of Pleasure. You're a very quotable person, Sue Perkins, and yet another funny and interesting thing you've said is that

Presenter30:06

Being gay is about the forty seventh most interesting thing in my life. You are part of that generation that has witnessed an incredible sea change in society's attitude towards our sexuality. Growing up, did you know anyone who was gay?

Speaker 430:17

Yeah.

Presenter30:23

Do you know, I don't think I did.

Presenter30:26

I don't think I did.

Presenter30:28

Um and then when I was sixteen

Presenter30:32

I met this boy and I f completely fell in love with him.

Presenter30:38

And we were together sort of six and a half years, and we really loved each other.

Presenter30:44

And then I suppose I was at college and he he was away, he was working and he said, I'm I'm not very well and I need I'm just going through some stuff and the stuff that he was going through

Presenter31:01

Was the same stuff that I was going through, and we were both gay. And.

Presenter31:05

Some people might not recognize that as thinking, Oh, you're just both gay, it's not real. It was so real. You know, it was a sexual relationship. It wasn't that we were bearding one another.

Presenter31:14

But slowly we evolved. I came to my evolution quite late, you know, and I was I I remember I was doing um uh a sort of uh theater and education show and I remember saying to my friend God I'm just not eating I don't know what's I don't know what's happening I just I can't sleep and I can't eat and then my friend said you're in love and I just thought I'm gonna I just want to throw up

Presenter31:36

And I was. And it came to nothing. It was an unrequited passion. And you wanted to throw up because you thought I'm in love with a woman. Yeah, I just thought that's what it is. You say, Did I know anybody that was gay? It was so far from my frame of reference that when it was presented to me as a truth, I had that violent reaction.

Presenter31:53

And then it all made sense. And because I came to it quite late, I was in my twenties. It's like having a second adolescence. You know, you think you've gone through being a teenager. And I was, you know, I was a stroppy teenager and I acted out, but I wasn't, I didn't really rebel. And yet when I was in my twenties and I had this second sort of outsider moment, I really rebelled. And that's when I shaved my hair and I dyed my hair blue and I went nuts and I started drinking and going out all night and, you know, that was it. And you drank quite you say you drank quite heavily. In your memoirs you talk about drinking heavily. Yes. Because I was shy. And I would go from being the shyest person in the room to being the person standing on a table dancing. And I became very, very sick. I got stomach ulcer. And I'm grateful to that stomach ulcer because I think it was too easy. It was too easy to be that drunk, actually.

Sue Perkins32:31

Hmm.

Presenter32:46

And I'm not sure that I would have escaped its clutches.

Presenter32:50

And what about the fluid nature of sexuality? I mean, do you think if you'd been in a different generation, the generation now that is coming to sexual maturity, you would have felt the need to come out as lesbian, or do you think you just would have been a lot more? It would have been, you know, it absolutely. I mean, I I laugh and yet I'm hugely cheered by the fact that my my goddaughter

Sue Perkins33:04

Yeah.

Presenter33:12

Is at school and and she's fourteen and some of her friends identify as pansexual. What even is that? I don't know, but it d but it doesn't matter, but it's just like good for you.

Sue Perkins33:18

I don't know.

Presenter33:22

I've always thought it's a spectrum and I've been slightly dumbfounded and made furious by the fact that I was forced to make a binary choice. Because it's always about the person. But for me, I don't have any regrets, you know. What I try to do in interviews and stuff, and I am noticing it's happening less anyway, is to just downplay it as a thing. Because the more I can downplay it, the more that everyone else can. It's not... Why should people have to go through this painful, stressful, archaic ritual of going home to their parents and telling them that they're having sex? Because that's all they're doing.

Presenter33:57

You know, it the you know, it's did you officially come out to your parents? Well, listen, my magnificent friend Sarah, who has no truck with with with this sort of stuff, said, Look, if you don't tell them, then I'm gonna go and tell them. So the gauntlet was laid down. So I rung up my I I was like 28, I rung up my mum and I said, Mum, can I can I come home for tea tomorrow? She's like, she was eating toast. I remember she was like ar arr arr crunching on the toast.

Presenter34:23

He said, Why do you want to come home? I said, Well, I just, you know, I just want to come home and just talk to you and dad and have tea and just sit down and chat about stuff and

Presenter34:32

carried on munching, and she went

Presenter34:34

Is this because you're gay?

Presenter34:36

Just was furious. I was trying to

Presenter34:39

And I was like, yeah, it might be. She went, oh, well, that can wait. And that was my coming out.

Presenter34:46

Everyone should have that experience of just their mum eating toast, going, Oh God, it can wait. It can wait Tell me about your next piece of music then, Superkins. What are we gonna hear? It's your sixth.

Presenter34:56

Sometimes I think I I talk.

Presenter34:58

And I'm sociable to avoid

Presenter35:00

Silence and solitude.

Presenter35:03

Because those are the times where I'll really feel the stuff that's happened to me. And this is Pergoles' Starbat Martyr. This is a piece, the architecture, which is very much based on sort of.

Presenter35:12

Pain and resolution, pain and resolution, pain and resolution, a crunching together and then a release. That's what life is of course, but I listen to it and I give myself permission to cry and I give myself permission to go to those dark spaces that words can't possibly hope to describe.

Speaker 436:15

Explore.

Presenter36:37

That was part of Pergoles' Stub at Martyr. Singing there were Emma Kirkby and James Bowman, with the Academy of Ancient Music conducted by Christopher Hogwood. Sue Perkins. It's not every castaway that I would ask what the most revolting thing they've ever put in their mouth is, but I'm going to ask you.

Presenter36:57

I've put terrible things in my mouth as well. Well, you know, I've okay, I did a show with the food critic Giles Corran. It was called Super Sizers. And in the course of that programme, which I loved doing, I had the restoration dish of bread and butter pudding with spinal cord.

Presenter37:12

I've eaten peacock, which was like shoe leather.

Presenter37:16

I've eaten duck tongues, fallopian tubes. That was interesting. I mean, really. Is there anything you've refused? Do you know no, I haven't but I've no capacity for refusal. You know, I've travelled a lot and you go into a village and somebody offers you something. It's possibly a rat. But they've offered it. That's all they've got.

Speaker 437:20

I mean, really.

Presenter37:32

It is beyond rude and ignorant to say no. The purpose of these documentaries was social history through food. One of uh the series was about the Victorians, and there was a a set of blood tests that you did. Do you do them every week?

Sue Perkins37:37

Yeah.

Presenter37:45

Yes, so the sort of bookend of the show was that we would get a blood test going in and then we would eat that diet for a week and then your bloods would be measured at the end to see what effect the copious eating of meat and drinking of alcohol had on your system. And then a moment came when you had the test done and one of the medics, the doctor involved, said, I need to talk to you about something else. Can you tell me about that?

Speaker 437:45

Yes, it is.

Sue Perkins37:46

The

Presenter38:10

So the Victorian show that we did, they wanted to focus on women and they did a a hormone profile and as you say I was asked to stay behind and I just didn't think anything of it. And in this small very clinical white little side room this woman said your bloods are very awry and you have a brain tumour.

Presenter38:33

And

Presenter38:34

There's always a delay for me.

Presenter38:37

It's only really now that I consider the epic destruction this tiny little rice shaped thing in my pituitary glance has caused.

Presenter38:47

And so I said, Oh, thank you very much and I went away and I don't even think I did anything about it for months because I didn't want to know. She had, I think, said it would was benign, but of course benign is very different from non-symptomatic.

Presenter39:04

So I had a benign and extremely symptomatic brain tumor, which then started to kind of make its presence felt. I then went and had an MRI eventually, and then I went and had a a consultation with a very eminent endocrinologist

Presenter39:21

He asked me if I had kids and I said no I don't and he said well you can't have them.

Presenter39:27

And then I went out. And I think then I did cry and I wrung my my ex. I sat on a pavement.

Presenter39:33

And um it was the beginning of a very, very dark time. And of course when you've got something in your head, you don't know whether what you're feeling is real or not. And I got diagnosed when I was thirty-eight. By the time I was forty, I literally destroyed my life from the inside out. And it was only six months ago when I went for a second opinion and started medication. And the second endocrinologist looked at my bloods and said, But you must have behaved in ways that would confound people who loved you. And you must have been in such unimaginable confusion and anxiety and delirium.

Presenter40:10

Did you do something that you regret? And I just lost it. I just lost it.

Presenter40:16

I always like to think I'm accountable for everything that I do, good and bad. But I'll never understand how I did some of the things that I did. You know, I walked out of my life, I ended a relationship. One day I'd be catatonic with depression, the next I'd be at heart attack levels of anxiety. I would one day be showing a hormone profile that was just zero. Zero estrogen, zero progesterone, zero testosterone, with huge levels of prolactin. And the next day I'd be completely normal.

Presenter40:45

And

Presenter40:47

Because I put up and shut up, because this is another challenge that that must be met, I did nothing about it. And it's as I say, it's taken this time to kind of look at the wreckage and to piece it together and to say sorry and to make amends and to be healthy and to be better and that's a lifelong battle I think. The problem with this condition is there's no continuum. But God, I'm lucky because it might be symptomatic, but it's benign. What I'm thinking about is that, you know, the the demands that are put on you professionally where you are as well known as you are and where you are scrutinized, indeed when you are reported for things that you might say or things you might do or how you act and react. Handling the condition you have, that's a very, very difficult

Presenter41:29

Professional position that you are in? And have you thought about stepping away? I think now I'm starting to get to that position.

Presenter41:36

But I think

Presenter41:38

I didn't have enough self love for such a long time to take it seriously. And it was only through seeing somebody I really loved having a non benign brain tumor that I thought this was father. And we talk about the clash, the collision between

Sue Perkins41:50

And then I thought this was far.

Presenter41:55

The the personal and the public.

Presenter41:58

The the most profound example of that, and one that caused me such unimaginable pain, was when the book came out. I had written about the brain tumour that I have.

Presenter42:08

And the day that the papers got hold of that story, they published it on the front page, I think it was five national newspapers, was the day or the day after that I discovered that my dad had a terminal.

Presenter42:20

Branching.

Presenter42:22

And so it was bake off star in brain tumor shock or whatever. And I stood in a news agent and I just thought I'm going to lose my legs because no one knows what's going on. And I just wanted to scream, saying, But I'm okay and my dad isn't okay. And it was immensely painful. I this extraordinary

Speaker 442:26

Mm.

Presenter42:38

Brilliant man who taught me how to ride a bike and

Presenter42:44

made up stories when when I had the mumps, and who had such a an extraordinary, precise, brilliant, funny way about him, started to lose his mind.

Presenter42:56

Although rather brilliantly, I said to him, I think he maybe maybe it was a month before he died. I said, you know, Dad, you've always promised you'd you'd play chess with me. My dad was a brilliant chess player.

Presenter43:05

And I'm useless.

Presenter43:07

And he beat me in twenty moves. And they said, Oh, come on, old girl, try. And then he beat me in nine. And I just loved him for that.

Presenter43:15

But um yeah, so it has been a very challenging time and I think the best thing that I can do to honour him is to get myself sorted and to take that time knowing it's not a life-threatening condition to at least make myself right. Let's have some music soon. Tell me what this is. This is an extraordinary track for me. This is Northern Sky by Nick Drake. It's one that makes me cry a lot. But also when I was going through this really difficult time when I was 40 and I'd ended this big relationship and was slowly going mad, I would listen to it. And then years later, I saw a picture of Nick Drake. And Nick Drake is walking his dog and I love dogs. But he happened to be walking his dog past the exact flat that I was living in when I was losing my mind. And the synchronicity of the universe is a source of wonderment. This is a very special track for me.

Sue Perkins44:12

I never felt magic crazy

Sue Perkins44:17

I never saw moons knew the meaning of the sea.

Sue Perkins44:22

I never held the motion in the palm of my hand

Sue Perkins44:28

I felt sweet breezes in the top of a tree, but now you're here.

Sue Perkins44:35

Bright in my northern sky

Presenter44:41

That was Nick Drake and Northern Sky. So Sue Perkins, your partner is the documentary maker and T V presenter, Anna Richardson, and you've been together about three years. You've said she's good at allowing me to have fun. So when you are not working, how do you enjoy your free time?

Presenter44:55

We just play. There's a lot of stress involved in life, and she's just been extremely good at puncturing that side of me that wants to analyse and that wants to fret and giving permission to the toddler in the same way that Mel does. We love just being in nature. I'm happiest when I'm in a wood or a forest and I can just sit for hours and look at bluebells or wonder if I should eat that mushroom without any degree of knowledge about which mushrooms are poisonous or not. And, you know, we love animals and it's a lovely thing, really. We don't talk about work. My job is my job, and God, I love it. But I really do leave it at the front door because the commissioning structure of the BBC or ITV holds no interest for me. And office politics, it's a real privilege to do what I do. But then I can leave it behind and go, right, what's for dinner? Can I ask you about the dog thing? Yes. Because those of us who've got the dog thing in our life feel very strongly about it. And I see photographs of you sometimes with your dog, and it seems to be. This will sound weird to some people, but it seems to be a big thing in your life. Huge thing in my life. I never had pets because, well, this sums up my parents perfectly. My mum just thought that they would bring me out in hives, so the catastrophising parent thought, you know, I'd get, if I had a cat, I'd get immediately get toxypasmosis. And so when I got a dog, I couldn't believe how joyous it was. My dogs helped me through the darkest time. And when my dog died, a bit of me died.

Presenter46:20

But, you know, there's another dog in my life now, and just sort of big, silly, coquettish rescue mutt. It's just brilliant. To give an animal a second chance to rehome a dog is a great thing. There's been a great deal of speculation about what you will do next, given that you are not going to grace us with your presence on Bake Off. What are you going to do next professionally? As ever, I don't really know. I finished recording this big trip to India, which was very, very challenging. And I went very shortly after dad died to the Himalayas, and that was a place of total isolation. And it really, really properly messed me up. There's no airs and graces, it's all on camera. Altitude sickness and throwing up and crying and really feeling at one with nature and being profoundly kind of overawed by it all. Next, some more travel, and I'm very hopeful that Mel and I will do some pratting about. But I couldn't tell you exactly what yet. It's all to play for, it's all alright, it's all okay. Pratting about BBC One prime time, I'm imagining. Possibly prime time pratting.

Presenter47:22

Already, it sounds like some of the reviews come out of the corner. That's the title, right? Democratic. Now, I get the impression that food has played a big part in your life, not just the cakes, but all the stuff we were hearing about. If you were to imagine a desert island dish, what would be the thing that would be your sort of final meal? What has been the most surprising? Before I head off. Yes.

Sue Perkins47:24

That's the title right there.

Sue Perkins47:40

Before I head off.

Presenter47:42

Oh, I mean, oh, that's difficult. I've been lucky to eat in so many brilliant places and to try the most extraordinary, rarefied cuisine. But I would really have to be true to my heart and go fur just something that reminded me of home. I would go for one of my mum's soups. If it's a really good, hearty lentil soup. Oh, I'd go for a roast chicken dinner. But I'd have Yorkshire puddings because I'd come on, it doesn't have to just be for beef. And I'd end oh, I'd end with a trifle.

Presenter48:11

Who wouldn't want to go out in a blaze of trifles? Oh, I'm coming to your house. Tell me about your final piece of music then. What are we going to hear?

Sue Perkins48:14

Tell me about it.

Presenter48:17

This last piece of, I love Philip Glass, I think Philip Glass is just the gateway to so many interesting different types of music, but I'm picking him because of a very particular evening in Edinburgh. And Anna and I just got together, and it was a difficult time. And I thought, I think she likes Philip Glass, and Philip Glass is playing. It was just one of those moments where everything comes together. And we sat down and we were in the circle of the King's Theatre. And Philip Glass came out and he played what I now know is Anna's favourite piece of music and one of my favourites too. And without having to even look at each other, we were holding hands and we just cried our eyes out. And at that moment, that piece of music was being played just for us. And in all the horror of sometimes what it's like to be alive, isn't it just wonderful?

Presenter50:02

That was Philip Glass playing the opening from Glass Works. At Sue Perkins, it's time for me to give you the books. I give everybody the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare, and they get to take a third book. What's yours gonna be? How to Clone a Dog.

Presenter50:17

So I'm going to ask you what your luxury is and I what is it related to that? Yes. What is it? Some of my dog's hair.

Presenter50:25

My deceased dog's hair. You might need a whole laboratory, and I'm not giving you that as well. No, but I will find a way. Love always finds a way, Kirsty. I admire you. So, my luxury item would be.

Sue Perkins50:30

No, but I will find a way

Speaker 450:34

So my luxury.

Presenter50:36

A little bit of hair.

Presenter50:38

From my naughty ex-Beagle pickle. Okay. The book would be.

Presenter50:44

Alright, both of those things you must have then. Finally, which... Victory! Did you think they wouldn't get through? I was really worried. Maybe because there isn't a book called How to Clone Your Dog. But there might be. In an act of blind faith, I'm going to imagine that somebody somewhere is at least writing that book as we speak. Which track of the eight would you save? I would save Moments of Pleasure by Kate Bush, because she's the artist that has followed me through my entire life. And in listening to that track, I'd be able to think of all that she represents and all the ways that she's been my mate, despite the fact I don't know her. I'd just like to thank her, and so I'd like to take her with me. It's yours. Sue Perkins, thank you very much for letting us hear your desert island discs. Thank you so much.

Sue Perkins50:48

Sorry.

Speaker 450:51

Yeah.

Presenter52:12

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

Presenter52:44

This is the BBC.