75 Years of Desert Island Discs

Speaker 10:00

This is the BBC.

Presenter0:03

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young. Welcome to Desert Island Discs, where every week I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, the book, and the luxury item that they'd want to take with them if they were cast away on a desert island.

Presenter0:16

For rights' reasons, the music on these podcast versions is shorter than in the original broadcast. You can find over two thousand more editions to listen to and download on the Desert Island Disc's website.

Presenter0:49

Hello, and thanks for joining me. As some of you may remember, twenty seventeen was a special year for Desert Island Discs. We celebrated seventy five years of casting guests away to that tiny, deserted island, with just a few treasured recordings, three books, and a luxury to keep them company. Well, to day we're going to mark the end of such a special milestone by hand picking a little festive selection box of archive goodies from some of the three thousand guests who have been cast away over the past three quarters of a century.

Presenter1:21

Among the voices you will hear Sir David Attenborough, Dame Zaha Hadid, Jacqueline Dupray, Louis Armstrong, and Dame Judy Dench, and I'll be sharing just a few of my personal favourite moments.

Presenter1:35

One of those was meeting 97-year-old Eric Winkle Brown. Born in 1919, he was one of the very few recent castaways who was old enough to remember our programme's very first broadcast. As a pilot, he held the world record for the most flight deck landings, 2407, and he held that record for 65 years. An absolute delight to meet and interview. He had a real twinkle in his eye when I asked him to introduce his sixth disc, Andy Williams, singing Call Me Irresponsible.

Speaker 12:10

When I heard it, I thought to myself, well, yes, I have my irresponsible sides too. Let me tell you one of the things I did which will demonstrate this. I was asked to do the first landing on a small carrier off a Spitfire or a Seafire.

Speaker 12:31

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.

Speaker 12:55

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 RF and they were accused of it. I wasn't caught out there. If I had been I think I'd have been court martialled.

Speaker 13:15

They might still be after you, Relic.

Presenter3:17

Yeah.

Speaker 13:17

Yeah.

Presenter3:19

Yeah.

Speaker 13:20

Uh

Presenter3:20

Call me irresponsible.

Presenter3:26

Call me unreliable.

Presenter3:32

Throw in

Presenter3:34

Underpendable to

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I foolish aloof.

Presenter3:50

By you.

Presenter3:57

Well

Presenter3:58

I'm not too clever. The late, great Eric Winkle Brown demonstrating how asking my guests to choose the music that has been meaningful in their life takes us to some of the most surprising places. Eric was already a young man of 23 when the first Desert Island Discs was recorded in a bomb-damaged BBC studio at Maida Vale. The creator of the programme was, of course, Roy Plumley. In 1958, he himself was cast away for the second time. This is the BBC Home Service.

Presenter4:38

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. This week's castaway is introduced by Eamon Andrews.

75 Years of Desert Island Discs4:53

Now please don't be alarmed.

Presenter4:53

Uh Nothing's the matter with him except that he's now on the island. And thank you for being sport enough to do this, Roy. I suppose I had this coming to me, Emma.

Presenter5:03

Now where to begin, I don't know. I've been checking up on Roy Jer

75 Years of Desert Island Discs5:06

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.

Presenter5:16

Sure.

75 Years of Desert Island Discs5:16

Yeah.

Presenter5:16

And now castaway. Is that me?

Presenter5:19

Well, since we have got you on the desert island, would you like to tell me how this idea started? 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.

Presenter5:41

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

Presenter5:44

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. I've picked up all sorts of tips like if you want fresh water, you cut a hole in dead fish and you get fresh water. But how I'd manage when it came to the point, I've no idea. Have you ever built anything? I can build a garden shed. Well, you've given away so many first-class castaway badges yourself that I'm presenting you with one straight away. I shall wear it with pride, Eamon. Thank you.

Presenter6:12

My guests no longer receive a castaway badge, if ever such a thing existed. The man responsible for it all there, Roy Plumley. When he first sold the idea of those six programmes, he couldn't possibly have imagined that this genius format would still be going strong three quarters of a century later, or that there would be a downloadable online archive of interviews, free to listen to forever.

Presenter6:37

Some things haven't changed, however. How's the Castaway going to survive?

Presenter6:41

How do you do, ladies and gentlemen? Our castaway this week is a star of many films in the United States and in Britain, a star of variety in television and radio. It's B.B. Daniel.

Presenter6:50

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 16:54

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

Speaker 16:56

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

Presenter7:00

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

75 Years of Desert Island Discs7:03

I think I could. When I was a little girl in my grandmother's ranch I used to make things. I'd make the walls probably of rocks and uh bamboo sticks. I'd put them closely together and maybe filled them in with a little dried seaweed, you know, to keep the rain out.

Presenter7:15

You know, he

Presenter7:17

Could you start a fire?

75 Years of Desert Island Discs7:18

Oh, yes, I think I could start a fire all right for my well, I could use my engagement ring.

Presenter7:20

All right, am I

Presenter7:23

Can you cook?

75 Years of Desert Island Discs7:24

Oh yes, I'm not a bad cook at all. I could get some wild grain. You have wild grain on your island?

Presenter7:28

I hope so.

75 Years of Desert Island Discs7:29

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

Presenter7:36

Yep, my salt

Presenter7:40

Fish?

75 Years of Desert Island Discs7:41

Oh yes, I love to fish. But I

Presenter7:43

I hate to uh put the bait on.

Presenter7:45

The worms wiggle. I think you've got things pretty well taped in it. Maybe I can get a teacher monkey.

Speaker 17:45

Yeah.

75 Years of Desert Island Discs7:45

The plan

Speaker 17:45

Uh

75 Years of Desert Island Discs7:48

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

Presenter7:50

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

75 Years of Desert Island Discs7:54

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

Presenter7:57

Mm-hmm.

75 Years of Desert Island Discs7:58

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

Speaker 28:04

Yeah.

Presenter8:04

Splendid.

75 Years of Desert Island Discs8:05

Yeah.

Presenter8:05

Oh, another thing that I can make is a comb out of a fish skeleton. Well, I didn't award you your castaway's bash before, Beebe, so here it is and the highest possible grade. Well, thank you very much, Roy.

Speaker 18:15

My

Presenter8:16

The actress Beebe Daniels recorded in nineteen fifty eight, who had clearly given the idea of surviving on her island a great deal of thought.

Presenter8:26

The only change to the programme format in its seventy five years was the introduction, in nineteen fifty one, of the luxury item. The first castaway to be granted such an indulgence was the actress Sally Ann Howes. Her little treat garlic quite an exotic choice for post war Briton.

Presenter8:44

Sadly, none of the programmes from the nineteen forties were archived, and very few editions from the fifties exist. One that has survived is an interview with Richard Dimbleby, father of David and Jonathan, who was cast away in the late fifties. He had joined the B B C in nineteen thirty six.

Presenter9:02

I went on the first big Royal State visit abroad to Canada, 39. 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 we're concerned, 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 then for the first part of the war I spent in Europe. I was transferred to the Middle East in the spring of 1940. Had two and a half years out there, going almost everywhere from Greece right down to Abyssinia. I read that you did 22 operational flights with the RAF, including a mass raid on Berlin.

Presenter9:47

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

Presenter9:54

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, we 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.

Speaker 110:23

Uh

Presenter10:27

RICHARD DIMBLEBY, with an amazing first hand account of the earliest days of war reporting.

Presenter10:33

In its seventy five year history, Desert Island Discs has only had four presenters, Roy Plumley, of course, plus Sir Michael Parkinson and Sue Lawley.

Presenter10:42

In the eleven years I've been presenting I've been lucky enough to meet people that I have long admired. One such was the world-renowned architect Dame Zaha Hadid.

Presenter10:51

Among her beautiful iconic buildings are the London twenty twelve Aquatic Centre, Glasgow's Riverside Museum, the BMW car manufacturing plant in Leipzig, and the Cultural Centre of Baku in Azerbaijan.

Presenter11:05

A two time winner of the Sterling Prize, she was the first woman to win the Queen Elizabeth Medal for Architecture. She was cast away in February of twenty sixteen.

Speaker 211:15

I was a very curious child and I used to, you know, pester my parents all the time with questions. But I think my parents allow me to be very independent at a very young age and develop my own tastes and my own way of working and so I I was ver I'm very grateful to them. Uh

Presenter11:33

As you were growing up in those early years in Baghdad, in the nineteen fifties, what was expected of young women? What did people think that little girls would go on to do?

Speaker 211:39

Young

Speaker 211:45

So 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 I don't have a single friend from Iraq who wasn't a professional.

Presenter12:01

And what about your mother then? What was her life?

Speaker 212:03

No, she was a housewife, but, you know, she was a very strong woman and very opinionated and she 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.

Presenter12:21

You are a notably glamorous and flamboyant dresser yourself. You are wearing the most exquisite shirts 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?

Speaker 212:28

Keep it going.

Speaker 212:36

I mean I think

Presenter12:38

Uh

Speaker 212:38

I don't know. I think it's also acquired. You know, you see things, you learn from people. 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 TV 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.

Speaker 112:54

Uh

Presenter12:54

Oh yes, we didn't have to.

Speaker 213:04

elegant and whatever.

Speaker 213:07

I mean, honestly, both my parents wanted me to be 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, I my father always said it's okay.

Presenter13:23

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.

Speaker 213:32

Yeah.

Presenter13:32

What in front of the

Speaker 213:32

None of us knew whether we were Sunni or Shia or Christian or Jewish.

Presenter13:33

Window

Presenter13:35

Right.

Speaker 213:37

I didn't even know I was Muslim till I was six because Nana's made us cross our heart. 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 gonna do it. And they had to call my parents saying she's troublemaking. So honestly, there was absolutely no difference. Sunnishia, you know, they were all the same. And that's the Iraq I loved and I know, you know. Let's have some more music, Zaha Hadith. Tell me a bit about this. Harry Nielsen, everybody's talking about me.

Presenter14:13

And why have you chosen it?

Speaker 214:14

It's one of my favorite films ever, The Nut Cowboy, and I love that song.

Speaker 114:20

Uh Uh

Presenter14:21

Everybody is talking at me.

Presenter14:25

I don't hear a word of saying

Speaker 114:25

I don't

Presenter14:28

Only the echoes of my mind

Presenter14:36

People stop and stare at me.

Presenter14:40

I can't see the faces.

Presenter14:44

Only the shadows of

Presenter14:47

For many people of my age, Barbara, you were the first real woman MP up there in the cabinet with the men holding the the big offices employment and transport which was seen as a much bigger job really in the sixties I think. Were you aware of breaking the conventional female mold? I mean was that part of what you set out to do or didn't think about not as a gesture but instinctively. For instance I was elected St Pancras Borough Council as one of the youngest members in nineteen

Speaker 115:15

nineteen thirty seven. 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. You're both. Um I well they said, What do you want gone? I said, Highways, sewers and public works.'Cause that's what makes a city tick.

Speaker 115:32

And so I never wanted.

Presenter15:34

A woman's job.

Presenter15:37

I I wanted a job at the heart of all the problems of the world and of society. And I was lucky in the Prime Minister Harold Wilson because he really believed

Presenter15:47

In the abilities of women, and so that's why he made me Minister of Transport. I was the first ever woman to Minister of Transport in this country. Weren't you the first Minister of Transport not to have a driving licence?

Speaker 215:54

Uh

Speaker 115:54

She lived

Speaker 215:54

Yeah.

Presenter15:58

Well, I

Speaker 115:59

don't know because uh there might have uh been earlier ones who had had chauffeur driven cars but certainly I couldn't drive. And you can imagine what that did to the m the men because uh a woman who comes between a man and his car is risking her life.

Speaker 116:13

But if she doesn't try

Speaker 116:16

Well, that's really adding insult.

Presenter16:19

The formidable Dame Barbara Castle, who was Sue's guest in nineteen ninety.

Presenter16:24

Most guests are of course only cast away once, but there are a few notable exceptions. Only two people, the comedian Arthur Askey and Sir David Attenborough, have been banished to the solitude of the island four times. David has been thrilling us all again this year with Blue Planet Two. Back in twenty twelve I asked him how old he was when he set up his own little museum at home. Well, I collected things. I mean, kids do collect things. Certainly by the age of ten or twelve. What what was in your little museum?

Presenter16:57

Uh there were lots of ammonites and fossil and bellamnites and various and brachiopods.

75 Years of Desert Island Discs17:02

Uh

Presenter17:03

Um the left Slush Jurassic. Upper Laias. Oh, there were bits of Roman pottery. I had a grass snake skin from a hu from a whopping grass snake, I must say. I remember it was about 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.

Presenter17:41

Oh, well that was one of his yes, he also put on shows. Of course he did, yes. And um and recruit

75 Years of Desert Island Discs17:44

Of course he did, yes.

Presenter17:47

To me as a song

75 Years of Desert Island Discs17:47

Yeah.

Presenter17:48

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.

Presenter18:00

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

Presenter18:06

Well, if I'm on a desert island, the desert islands I know are 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.

Presenter19:00

What

75 Years of Desert Island Discs19:13

I see skies of blue

75 Years of Desert Island Discs19:18

And drives a white

75 Years of Desert Island Discs19:21

The bright blessed day.

75 Years of Desert Island Discs19:24

The dogs say goodnight.

75 Years of Desert Island Discs19:27

And I think to myself

75 Years of Desert Island Discs19:32

What a wonderful world.

Presenter19:37

Seth, both you and Jazz were born in New Orleans, Louisiana, right?

75 Years of Desert Island Discs19:41

That's right, Bob. That's the way it should be worded, because that's where you're at.

75 Years of Desert Island Discs19:47

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.

Presenter20:01

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.

Presenter20:08

Is it in shared data?

75 Years of Desert Island Discs20:08

Is it a chair editor?

Presenter20:09

When did you get a chance to learn music, to learn to play an instrument?

75 Years of Desert Island Discs20:14

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.

Presenter20:23

This was

75 Years of Desert Island Discs20:23

Yeah, everybody shoot their guns but if they if they get caught there's a different story and I got caught. So I stayed in the oven's home.

Presenter20:23

Yeah, everybody's shit.

75 Years of Desert Island Discs20:31

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

75 Years of Desert Island Discs20:39

The drama

75 Years of Desert Island Discs20:41

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

75 Years of Desert Island Discs20:43

Really shy'cause they couldn't eat, they couldn't do nothing that I blow them different uh calls, you know.

Presenter20:49

The inimitable jazz giant Louis Armstrong or Satch speaking to Roy in 1968, he chose five of his own recordings, including What a Wonderful World, a track chosen by, among others, Kylie, Frank Bruno, John Cleese, and Nicholas Parsons. Now, the opera singer Elizabeth Schwartzkopf chose a total of seven of her own performances, and you can now hear her explain why, as her programme re-emerged from the archives this year and is now online.

Presenter21:19

Sometimes, sitting opposite a castaway, an entirely unexpected moment can unfold, and the reaction from listeners is often remarkable. It happened last year, when I interviewed the surgeon David

Presenter21:34

I should warn you now that what follows isn't an easy listen. Throughout his career in the NHS David's regularly taken unpaid sabbaticals, travelling to some of the world's most dangerous places to operate often on the front line.

Presenter21:49

I asked him about his first such trip to Sarajevo in nineteen eighty three.

Presenter21:54

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

Presenter23:19

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

Presenter24:26

So you must tell me what happened. What happened to the rest of the world?

Speaker 124:28

So

Presenter24:29

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

Presenter25:38

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

Presenter25:45

Jacqueline, in July 71 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.

Presenter25:55

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

Presenter25:58

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

Presenter26:05

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

Speaker 126:15

Leaving

Presenter26:17

The symptoms 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.

Presenter26:25

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.

Presenter26:57

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

Presenter27:09

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

Presenter27:15

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

Presenter27:22

The chalice Jacqueline Dupre speaking to Roy in nineteen seventy seven.

Presenter27:27

Because of her illness, she was allowed to break that desert islandist golden rule and take her husband, Daniel Barrenboyne, to the island with her. She died aged just forty two, in October of nineteen eighty seven.

Presenter27:40

Her most famous recording, Elgar's cello concerto, has been chosen by many, many castaways throughout the years.

Presenter28:35

You came to England, Archbishop Deutero, in the sixties and you studied and worked here in London and in Surrey. The contrast between life as a second class citizen, third class, fourth class in South Africa and and swinging London in the sixties must have been colossal. Unbelievable.

Presenter28:53

Mind-blowing.

Presenter28:55

To walk the streets of London just to savour this thing of being free and and it would be we.

Presenter29:03

who would cross the street to accost a police officer. And and and in the early days we would walk even very, very late.

Presenter29:13

Which would have been careful time in South Africa.

Presenter29:18

Ask

Presenter29:20

for directions, I always told people we we would ask for directions even when we knew where we were going, just for the incredible fun of having a police officer and a white police officer at that.

Speaker 229:35

Yeah.

Presenter29:35

Speaking to you courteously, Sir, Madam, and that he was not going to ask, Why are you here? Where is your pass that gives you permission to be here at this time? Incredible. I mean again, how do you describe it to someone who's never had the experience, the other experience?

Presenter29:58

Archbishop Desmond Tutu speaking to Sue Lawley in November of nineteen ninety four, a mere seven months since all South Africans had queued up to vote in their first democratic election.

Presenter30:11

In the years since the programme was first broadcast, there have been huge social as well as political changes.

Presenter30:18

In nineteen forty two the country was three years into the war we were thirty seven years away from our first woman Prime Minister, and very few homes had a T V.

Presenter30:28

Social attitudes have changed a great deal, too, over the past eight decades. For instance, it would have been impossible to have had the totally open and straightforward conversation that I enjoyed with Welsh rugby referee Nigel

Presenter30:42

His edition of Desert Island Discs prompted a huge appreciative response on social media from people profoundly moved by what he said and by how he said it.

Presenter31:05

that I was suddenly finding myself attracted to to men.

Presenter31:09

And this was totally alien to me. Brought up in a small uh village, I had never met or seen or known a gay person in real life. The only gay people that I knew were the odd one or two

Presenter31:21

Camp characters on the television programmes, like Are You Being Served? and sort of something totally alien to me. I was becoming somebody that I knew nothing about and somebody I didn't want to be.

Speaker 131:24

being served and

Presenter31:32

And then in that getting me down, you you comfort eating, and then I got bigger and overweight, and uh I decided, right, if I'm gonna try and get men attracted to me then, and I'm gonna have to try and lose weight, and then

Presenter31:43

I made myself ill I became bulimic.

Presenter31:46

So now I wasn't feeling good. I was really thin and and looking drawn. And then all right, I need to go to the gym then and try and put some weight on. So I went to the gym and started doing weight training and I started using steroids, so I got hooked and steroids. So

Presenter31:59

I went to the doctor and said, Look, I think I'm gay. I don't want to be gay. Can I get chemically castrated?

Presenter32:05

And I would have done anything to be

Presenter32:08

Normal in what pe in people's eyes. You spoke then to the doctor. Had you spoken to anybody? No, nobody at all. No y nobody at all about it. And uh I did something one night that I

Presenter32:19

that I will regret for the rest of my life. I left a note from my mum and dad. Um left the house at about four o'clock in the morning. I used to work on a farm, so I had a shotgun in the house. I loaded the shotgun, left with haracetamols and a bottle of whiskey and um

Presenter32:33

For what I put my mum and dad through when they must have woken up and saw that note and knowing that they were.

Presenter32:38

Probably never going to see their only son ever again. I overdosed on the paracetamols and the whisky and uh slipped into a coma.

Presenter32:46

And then my mum and dad obviously phoned the police. There's a police helicopter out looking for me, and farming and friends and everybody searching for me. And by this time, you were out in the fields? I was out in the mountains, right above the house, looking down at where I was brought up in the mountains above me. And if I hadn't gone into the coma, I have no doubt I would have ended my life, because the shotgun was lying on my chest underneath my chin, ready to pull the trigger. And because I slipped into a coma, I couldn't do it. Doctor told me, Look, another twenty minutes, and it'd have been too late to save you. And my mum said, If you ever do anything like that again, then you take me and your dad with you because we don't want to live our life without you.

Speaker 132:53

And by the

Speaker 132:54

I was a

Speaker 132:57

Yeah.

Presenter33:26

I sat up in bed and and cried that night really and and realized I need to grow up. Refereeing that World Cup final between Australia and New Zealand in front of 85,000 people and millions of people watching at home, scrutinizing every single decision you make under a huge amount of pressure was nothing compared to to the challenge of accepting who I was and and in accepting who I was then

Presenter33:53

Save my life.

Presenter33:55

Nigel, I have nothing to ask and nothing to add. I just want you to tell me about this next piece of music. Tell me what we're gonna hear. Well it it leads perfectly into the song really. My Angen Agan is the Welsh version'cause it's a Welsh song by Bryn Vaughan. I need the song. The words are in Welsh. If you translate them they say you know, you know you turn to the song and and the song will will get you through it and this song got me through the darkest times of my life.

Speaker 134:00

Yeah.

Presenter34:21

Amateurski to zandker.

Presenter34:25

Not you the style PM suit I travel

Presenter34:30

Hi Kairiangarfish, Strayon String

Presenter34:39

Nigel Owens, my guest earlier this year, illustrating again the power of music in our lives. And it's always a treat when a guest chooses something completely unexpected as one of their tracks. Here's comedian Sarah Millikan. My sixth disc is the Frog Chorus and Paul McCartney with We All Stand Together. And this is kind of slightly inspired by Desert Island Discs because I listened to Cathy Burke's episode. And she said that there was a Frank Sonatra song and it was in the order of service of a wedding that she was at. And it said that everybody must sing with gusto. And I remember listening to that and had no plans to get married. And I'm not religious, so I wouldn't really necessarily want to sing a hymn. And I thought, how lovely to just go, we love this song, we want all of our friends and family to sing it, how awesome. And when I married my husband Gary, when we were sort of planning our wedding and thinking, what could we pick, what could we pick that everybody would sing, he started playing this. So I started to laugh. And he said, listen to the lyrics. And I started to cry. So we played this at our wedding and the whole congregation sang, including all of the noises. We made sure all the noises were in the order of service as well. And this is what we walked out of the wedding to.

Presenter35:59

Or lose, sing or swim. One thing is certain we'll never give in. Side by side, band in band, we'll all stand together.

Presenter36:24

So, Val McDermott, you'd been to England just once. You went on a week's holiday to Blackpool. And you decided that you were going to go to Oxford University based on one week in Blackpool. Yes. That's quite a leap at the age of. Well, you went for the interview at 16, you were offered a place, you attended Oxford University from the age of 17. How did you find it?

75 Years of Desert Island Discs36:35

Yeah, so that that's obviously

75 Years of Desert Island Discs36:41

Yeah.

Presenter36:47

It was a complete culture shock. It was unlike anything I'd ever experienced. I mean, I ended up going there because of the books I'd read from the library, you know, because I'd read the Shaley School books. And when people left the Shaley School books, they either went to the Sorbonne or Oxford or the Kensington School of Needlework. And I knew I wasn't even going to the Kensington School of Needlework. And my French wasn't good enough for the Sorbonne, so that only left Oxford. Everything was different. Even the vegetables were different. The accent was different. Nobody understood a word I said. You know, I come for fife, Ken, where folk talk like that. Where the Spiags fly back with Skita Stewart Drain. Aye. And nobody understood what I was saying. Ken? Tell me about the vegetables. Well, things I'd never seen before. I mean, mushrooms came out of a tin. I'd never seen a mushroom as a mushroom. I'd never seen red peppers or green peppers. I'd never seen watercress or celery. First time we went to an Italian restaurant, I looked at this and pasta, what the hell's this? I knew what a pizza was, though. So I ordered a pizza. And this round flat thing came and I'm like, that's not a pizza. And everybody's looking at me like I'm completely mad. I go, it's not a pizza. Pizza's half moon shaped and covered in batter.

Speaker 137:20

Tell me.

Speaker 137:28

I was never seeing

Presenter37:47

And everybody's like, she is just seriously from another planet. There will be a few people listening who actually know what we're talking about. Deep fried pizza. The marvellous writer Val McDermott on some culinary Scottish treats.

Presenter38:02

At the end of every edition of Desert Island Discs, my fellow presenters, Roy Plumley, Sir Michael Parkinson, and Sue Lawley, asked our guests to choose a book and a luxury item that will help soften the hardship of life on the island.

Presenter38:15

The rules for the luxury are that it should be inanimate and of no practical use, although I have to admit that over the years that rule's been broken from time to time.

Presenter38:30

And your luxury. What can we supply you with? Well, I gather that's got to be an inanimate luxury.

Speaker 138:31

We're living.

Presenter38:35

Indeed it has. I can't take uh another uh human being with me. Certainly not. Male or female. No. I think I'll choose a shortwave radio set.

Speaker 138:40

Male or female?

Presenter38:44

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

Presenter38:48

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

75 Years of Desert Island Discs38:53

Well, that was precisely why I chose it.

Presenter38:56

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 eye. A volume. Oh, mate, I can't just have one poem.

Presenter39:22

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

Presenter39:27

Well, what's the other reason?

Presenter39:31

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 here with a mirror attached to the bottom of it. No, no mirror.

Speaker 139:42

Uh

Presenter39:44

I would take a stick of the

Presenter39:46

The very best marijuana I could find.

Presenter39:48

And I would save it for years and hope it didn't get too stale, because I'd know I would have one opportunity to smoke it and only one. And so I'd wait for that perfect

75 Years of Desert Island Discs39:55

Day on the Desert Island.

Presenter39:57

Uh

Presenter39:57

Uh

75 Years of Desert Island Discs39:57

when all the conditions were right.

Presenter39:59

This is a legal talk, mister Mailer.

75 Years of Desert Island Discs40:01

Well, here we are in trouble again.

Presenter40:08

The voices of Sir Robin Day, Dame Barbara Castle, Russell Harty, and Norman Mailer. Well, that brings us nearly to the end of this glimpse into the Desert Island Disc's treasure trove. You can listen to all of these programmes online. Do join me next week, when for the first programme of our seventy-sixth year, my guest will be the satirist Charlie Brucker. Until then, have a wonderful New Year's Eve.

Presenter40:33

And one of the disks to save. Which one of the list would you save in your grimacing now?

Presenter40:39

Because you're worried that you've chosen far too downbeat a list, but I'm going to force you to choose one. I shall want something very upbeat.

Speaker 240:43

Bishop?

Speaker 240:47

Um I will take

Speaker 240:51

I'm so sorry. I don't want any of those.

Speaker 240:57

I don't want to go to the Iron. I don't want any of those records with me.

Speaker 241:02

Uh, what'll I take?

Presenter41:03

Yeah.

Speaker 241:04

I'll take

Presenter41:04

Yeah.

Presenter41:05

Sinatra. Right. It's yours then. I've got you under my skin. That's yours. Dame Judy Denge, thank you very much for letting us hear your desert island discs. Thank you, Custer.

Speaker 241:18

What a lightmare!

Presenter41:39

I hope you enjoyed this edition of Desert Island Discs. You'll find more interviews at bbc.co.uk/slash desertisland discs. And I have a favour to ask: if you could rate and review the programmes wherever you download your podcasts, it'll really help other people find us. Thanks for listening.

Presenter42:01

Hello, I'm Michal Hussain and just before you go, I want to tell you about the Best of Today podcast. It's where you can catch up on the biggest interviews with newsmakers, top politicians, A-list actors, business leaders and the best of the BBC's reporting from around the world. Don't worry, if you've had a line and missed us this morning, it does happen, you can catch up anytime, anywhere, at home, on your commute, while you're out and about. So why not join those who listen daily and subscribe to Best of Today from wherever you get your podcasts and start downloading now.

Speaker 142:47

This is the BBC.