Dame Esther Rantzen

Presenter0:01

BBC Sounds, Music, Radio Podcasts. I'm Lauren Laverne and this is the Desert Island Discs Podcast. Every week I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, book and luxury they'd want to take with them if they were cast away to a desert island. This is an extended version of the original Radio 4 broadcast and, for rights reasons, the music is shorter than the original broadcast. I hope you enjoy listening.

Presenter0:45

My castaway this week is the broadcaster and journalist Dame Esther Ranson. Her television career has spanned five decades, but it was as the presenter of That's Life that she became a household name. Launched in 1973, it was an eclectic mix of consumer news and investigative pieces on serious subjects alongside talking dogs and indecently shaped vegetables. It was also hugely successful, pulling in 20 million viewers at its peak. An episode of That's Life inspired her to set up the first of her charities, Childline, in 1986. Since then, it's cancelled almost 5 million children and young people. In 2013, she set up a helpline for older people, Silverline, offering information, friendship, and advice to people experiencing loneliness. Despite being part of the age group Silverline aims to serve, its founder shows no signs of slowing down herself. She says, I need to be needed. It's what makes you get up in the morning and makes you feel when you go to bed that the day has been well spent. There's a real pleasure in feeling somebody needs your help and that you've actually made a difference. Dame Esther Ranson, welcome to Desert Island Discs. Thank you, thank you very much. So your diary sounds formidably packed. You're still heavily involved with your two charities. I think the adjective would be indefatigable. But where does that energy come from?

Dame Esther Rantzen2:06

I had a very energetic father. He was quite sporty. He played squash well into his 70s. His brain was always working. And my mother was extremely energetic and appearing in my various talk shows when she was in her 90s. She always got a round of applause usually by sending me up rotten. So I suppose on both sides, genetically, I have that inheritance.

Speaker 12:25

Uh

Presenter2:25

So

Presenter2:29

Many firsts on your C V, including being one of the very first women to produce as well as present their own T V show with That's Life. Were you aware of being a Trailblazer at the time?

Dame Esther Rantzen2:39

I was. I was terribly aware that if I didn't do a job well, preferably better than a man would, then I would make it much harder for the next generation of women. And I did know that women weren't given this responsibility before. And I also knew that a lot of the programmes that fascinated me, which were very often about people's emotional life, were not considered suitable for broadcast by gentlemen. So I was making programmes about things like postnatal depression and stillbirth and things that affected people's real lives. And because I was trained by my late husband, Desmond Wilcox, always to get first-hand experience, I was not getting experts to tell me what it was like to lose a baby. I was actually listening to the people who'd had that experience.

Speaker 23:32

Hmm.

Dame Esther Rantzen3:32

And I was aware that I had to do it just

Presenter3:35

That extends to the consumer journalism aspect of the programme as well. And additions of that SLIFE would lead to policy change, to the introduction of things that we take for granted these days. I think there was an increase in the number of organ donations. Children were able to give evidence via videolink in court. How did those successes become possible, do you think? Yeah. Uh

Dame Esther Rantzen3:56

Well, the secret is, if you are lucky enough to work on a program that gets 20 million viewers, and I don't like to contradict you in any way, but at our most it was 22.5 million viewers. I do apologise. I hope that's quite right. The people who make the laws have to pay attention because they know so many of their voters are watching you. So we were influential. The other great stroke of luck was that we were transmitting on Sunday nights. And that's when MPs watch television, if they do at all. And sometimes they would arrive in our office and say, saw that item you did. I think we can change things. We're going to turn to your music now. Tell us about this. Why have you chosen it?

Speaker 14:08

It is on

Dame Esther Rantzen4:36

La vi enrose, édit Pieff. I have my indiscreet moments, and one such moment I was at a party and I met the gentleman, Matthew Kelly, who was presenting Celebrity Stars in their eyes. And I found myself saying, and I hadn't drink taken, I don't know why I said it, I said, Tonight, Matthew, I will be Edith Piaf. And he looked at me the way a snake looks at a rabbit that is begging to be eaten. And lo, he told his producer, and I sang this song. And if ever a song sums up what it feels like to be a woman in love,

Dame Esther Rantzen5:09

So she wrote it, and then this little woman sang it, having tried to copy her, I know.

Dame Esther Rantzen5:16

The energy She sang it from the soles of her feet. She was extraordinary, that little vulnerable beggar who stood in the gutter singing for money.

Dame Esther Rantzen5:29

She died, I think, at forty six, and the whole of France came out into the streets to mourn her.

Dame Esther Rantzen5:36

So it's a song about love, and it's a song about an extraordinary performer, and it reminds me of a very indiscreet moment when I tried to copy her badly.

Presenter5:45

Oh, kill him up for all the seven, kill him up.

Presenter6:17

La Villon Rose by Edith Piaff. Esther Ranson, you performed that on Celebrity Stars in Their Eyes, as you said, and you've said I'm the godmother of reality T V and I do not apologize. You've also appeared on I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here. You love the genre, you love reality T V. Why?

Dame Esther Rantzen6:36

Well, I do. I love the fact that real people are funny and clever, and we discovered some stars on that Slife. When I did Celebrity,

Dame Esther Rantzen6:46

in the jungle. It was because it's an extremely popular programme and I am a television producer by trade and I love to know how they put them together. And did you enjoy Exploring the Nuts and Bolts? Was that enough reality? What I enjoyed was having my watch taken from me, my mobile phone taken from me and we were in this lovely green valley.

Dame Esther Rantzen7:10

and there was a little river running through it, and the only sound were the cicadas in the evening, and cameramen belching when they were hidden in rocks. And it was absolutely delightful. So I suppose I might actually enjoy your desert island.

Presenter7:26

Well, we can't promise the belching, but the rest of it we might be able to give you. Never know. Let's go back a bit to your early life. You were born in nineteen forty in Berkhamstead, and your parents had moved the family out of London because of uh the war. How would you describe yourself as a kid?

Dame Esther Rantzen7:40

Um, my mum tells me that when I was being pushed around in a pram, aged eighteen months, I used to wink at passers-by, which must have shown a natural predilection for talking to strangers in the street, I suppose. An extrovert? You might say that, probably. My father and mother were absolutely terrific. I mean, they never thought my sister and I should be educated differently from boys, which some people of their generation did. You know, their ambition was not for us to get married.

Dame Esther Rantzen8:09

Their ambition for us was to get educated and have careers and so on. And I was terribly close to my sister. And it is a real loss in my life that she lives 12,000 miles away in Australia. So a happy childhood. Yes, a happy childhood. Also, a healthy one, because we had the wartime diet. So I suppose I had one egg a week and a fragment of butter and hardly any meat, but quite a lot of cheese, rosehip syrup for vitamin C, and some extraordinary malt mixture. I don't know what that did. But isn't it interesting? Now everybody is saying this is the way we should all nourish ourselves. And what about your...

Presenter8:46

Cheeky extrovert streak. Did it extend to performing? Were you that kind of kid who'd get up and do a turn at family do's?

Presenter8:54

Ice

Dame Esther Rantzen8:55

To sing a lot. And tell jokes a lot.'Cause I got fat.

Dame Esther Rantzen9:00

So I relied on being entertaining, trying to be entertaining. So I suppose being funny was helpful.

Dame Esther Rantzen9:07

Yeah.

Presenter9:08

Tell me a little bit more about your dad. Henry, your father was an engineer at the BBC, and I think he was in this building that we're in now when it was bombed.

Dame Esther Rantzen9:15

He certainly was. He told me about it. I think it brought down a floor, the bomb in Broadcasting House, but people leapt under a large metal table and were saved. He through the war we were in the country, but he used to work here at Broadcasting House, working for Lord Reith, whom he respected enormously. Lord Reith was not anti-Semitic. Previous employer was, so my father was very aware of that because obviously we're Jewish as a family.

Presenter9:16

Yeah

Dame Esther Rantzen9:43

He wasn't the most practical person. He was an inventor, which was what he did at the BBC. He was an electrical engineer. He would mend something, take it a bit, mend it, and then always find he had a screw or a washer left over. Bless his heart. Very, very clever man. Not the most practical.

Presenter10:02

What about your mother?

Dame Esther Rantzen10:04

Well, she was a narcic. She was mischievous. When we did a party for New Year's Eve and the guests refused to go, she got the Hoover out. She she was fine. She had a terrific sense of humour. Dimples.

Presenter10:17

And you said that their aspirations for you weren't typical of those of many parents at the time.

Dame Esther Rantzen10:23

Right. My mother had never had

Dame Esther Rantzen10:26

a job. I think in very early days she was somebody's secretary in a charity, but then from then on it was all voluntary work. And she wanted my sister and me to have careers and uh I think got a lot of satisfaction out of the fact we both did. It's time for your next piece of music. Tell me about your second disc to do.

Presenter10:43

Okay, why have you chosen this?

Dame Esther Rantzen10:45

Well, one of the things I'm doing on my desert island, I've decided to survive, and I think it's wonderful performance, human voices that will keep you in touch with humanity on this island. And Nina Simone, I came to very late, but I adore the woman, she's fantastic. And if I get depressed, I'm not usually depressed, but I could see sitting on a rock looking out at the horizon, I might get depressed. This song would immediately cheer me up.

Dame Esther Rantzen11:23

Scarlet, when you shine, you know how I feel.

Dame Esther Rantzen11:30

Scent of the pine, you know how I feel

Dame Esther Rantzen11:35

Freedom is mine

Speaker 111:38

Yeah.

Speaker 111:39

Uh

Dame Esther Rantzen11:39

Uh

Speaker 111:39

And I know how I feel.

Speaker 111:42

Some new

Dame Esther Rantzen11:42

Done, it's a new day, it's a new life for me.

Dame Esther Rantzen12:16

Uh

Presenter12:16

You're just staggering. Absolutely extraordinary. Feeling good. Nina Simone. So, Esther Ranson, you've described your time at school as very happy, thanks largely, I think, to your principal, Dame Kitty Anderson. Tell me about her. Well, Dame Kitty

Dame Esther Rantzen12:32

She was round. She had hair in a bun. She had sticky out teeth. She had a great big smile. She quite often wore a hat with a veil. When she got the job, the governor, she once told us, asked her to take her hat off, because they couldn't really see her. She knew every girl. There were 900 girls in the school. She knew their boyfriends. And she liked people who

Dame Esther Rantzen12:58

were a little bit off-piste, as I'm afraid I was. And she came into my life at a very important moment. I had been at a little school in northwest London, which was owned, founded, and run by a lady who didn't like children. And her ambition was that she would eventually call all of us into her study one by one and reduce us to tears. And we knew, aged six and seven,

Dame Esther Rantzen13:22

That the sooner we broke down in tears, the sooner we'd get out. But I was a bit stubborn, so I didn't actually burst into tears soon enough. Anyway, to go from that to Dame Kitty Anderson, who talked to me about the things I loved, which actually were trees at the time and cedar trees. She was also very democratic. She taught me the importance of women voting. She taught me about propaganda. So the thing she told me really lodged. I think I owe so much to Dame Kitty. I want to ask you about.

Presenter13:50

Another experience, something that was difficult and it didn't return to you until many years later. You had an experience with a distant relative that remained buried for a long time. What happened and what prompted you to recall it?

Dame Esther Rantzen14:05

Yes, he was no blood relative, and I can see him to this day. And he used to call me Bright Eyes, and he had one of those creepy smiles. He took me out to buy me a present, and he found a way of getting me a loan, and he sexually abused me. Not the most serious of salts, but still horrible.

Dame Esther Rantzen14:28

And then he told me not to tell anyone, and I ran to the train.

Dame Esther Rantzen14:33

And I told my l lovely mum

Dame Esther Rantzen14:37

And she didn't really believe me. So that was educational.

Dame Esther Rantzen14:41

And as you say

Dame Esther Rantzen14:43

Whether I blocked it or whether I chose to forget it, is that the same thing, maybe? It really didn't occur to me, even after we set up Child Line, even after those children were talking to me about terrible things that had happened to them.

Dame Esther Rantzen14:59

But then some one asked me the question.

Dame Esther Rantzen15:01

And the answer was yes, I have been.

Dame Esther Rantzen15:04

How extraordinary

Dame Esther Rantzen15:05

And you see, my mum, like many parents, cared about the social circle she moved in, cared about not making problems.

Dame Esther Rantzen15:18

and in a way wanted me to carry on meeting him.

Dame Esther Rantzen15:22

Really? And I said under no circumstance.

Dame Esther Rantzen15:25

So didn't. When I was eighteen. I did up to then.

Presenter15:31

Let's have our next piece of music, Esther Ranson. It's time for your third disc. Why have you chosen this one?

Dame Esther Rantzen15:36

Well, I'm trying to survive on this desert island, and I get night fears. Once I was on a rather primitive safari in Africa.

Dame Esther Rantzen15:49

And there was only barbed wire around the camp, and a hyena broke in and staggered around the kitchen and mashed a tin sugar bowl flat as a pancake, just with the strength of his bite, while I was lying trembling in my tent, visualizing what would happen if he mashed me. And this might happen to me on the desert island. You know, the rustling of the bushes, could that be a hyena?

Dame Esther Rantzen16:14

So I thought

Dame Esther Rantzen16:16

Ella.

Dame Esther Rantzen16:18

Singing Blue Moon will calm me down.

Dame Esther Rantzen16:21

And then there suddenly appeared before me The only one my arms will ever hold I heard somebody whisper, Please adore me And when I looked, the moon had turned to go

Dame Esther Rantzen16:54

Now I'm no longer alone.

Speaker 116:57

Uh

Dame Esther Rantzen16:58

Uh

Speaker 217:01

Without a dream in my heart

Speaker 217:08

Without a wall of my own

Presenter17:24

Ella Fitzgerald and Blue Moon. Esther Ranson, after school you read English at Oxford. How diligent a student were you there?

Presenter17:32

Yeah.

Dame Esther Rantzen17:32

Well, put it this way, I think the day after my finals I was appearing in The Importance of Being Earnest, and I knew my part very well. So every single exam paper I managed to drag in Oscar Wilde and The Importance of Being Earnest.

Presenter17:48

What were your aspirations for yourself at the time? What what were you hoping to do?

Dame Esther Rantzen17:51

Well, I applied for a job at the BBC to be a studio manager, Sound Effects Girl. My father gave me a huge respect for the BBC. I wanted somehow or other to be able to tell stories, real stories, that would make a difference. I don't know why I thought that. I don't know why. That was an ambition. But I got into making sound effects. So then, a lady producer who always wore a hat, even in the studio,

Dame Esther Rantzen18:21

I did a drama I was in drama where there was a distant skating accident.

Dame Esther Rantzen18:27

and I had to make the sound of the skating accent. I thought it would be skates falling on ice. She thought it would be flesh. So I had to fall over on a plank five times before she got I got the sound that she accepted. And then I limped up to the office and resigned in triplicate.

Dame Esther Rantzen18:44

But um it was fun actually. It was fun.

Presenter18:47

After that you landed a clerical post in the Current Affairs Department working on satirical shows with Ned Sharon. So this is Peak Swinging London. It's the sixties and he must have been the kind of coolest cat in the building at that point.

Dame Esther Rantzen19:02

It was the center of the universe and I was a researcher so I had to do things like he would have arrived in the office about eight in the morning and he'd be off playing squash or having breakfast with celebrities. He did very famous breakfasts with prime ministers and heaven knows who. And part of my job was to collect the cartoons that people were drawing about his programmes because his programme and the series on which I worked was the one that the F word was first said on television. And I remember that moment. Kent Einland said it.

Dame Esther Rantzen19:41

And I was sitting in the back of the control room, and he twirled round in his chair and said he was very patrician, he said, Is that some kind of a record? and then turned back again. And of course I had to collect all the cartoons about It's funny looking back now. Things have changed so much. Have they changed for the better?

Dame Esther Rantzen19:59

The jury is out? Yeah, it was it was really

Presenter20:02

Exciting.

Presenter20:04

So you are at the cutting edge and you were also a a a woman in a presumably a very male dominated environment. How would you describe the culture that you were working in?

Dame Esther Rantzen20:14

Well, it was taken for granted that it was okay me being a researcher, but I would not be promoted. And when I was a researcher for two consecutive years on the same show, and the men working with me said, you should have been promoted this series, I went to my producer. He said, well, the thing is, Esther, you see, I don't see you as producer material. And in order to promote you, I'd really have some sort of feeling that you had that capacity. So I went away and resigned from his department and went and joined one run by a gentleman who was completely gender blind, whose name was Desmond Wilcox. It's time for your next piece of music. Tell me about your family. Boom.

Presenter20:54

Okay.

Dame Esther Rantzen20:54

Yeah. Yeah.

Presenter20:54

Uh Today.

Dame Esther Rantzen20:55

Well, this one is entirely about Desmond, because Desmond used to sing this song to me.

Dame Esther Rantzen21:03

It's the September song and it's sung by a gentleman who does sound effortless. And what I know is that he took singing lessons, he read each lyric as a poem before he sang it, he practiced and practiced and practised in order to make it sound effortless and that was the wonderful Frank Sinatra.

Presenter21:26

For it all

Dame Esther Rantzen21:29

A long

Speaker 221:34

Uh

Dame Esther Rantzen21:34

From May to descend

Dame Esther Rantzen21:40

But the days grow short

Speaker 221:46

When you reach September

Speaker 221:51

And they all

Presenter21:53

Autumn weather

Presenter21:58

Frank Sinatra and September Song. Esther Ranson, your first on camera appearance, I think, was on a show called Brayden's Week, and you were doing what's known in the industry as Vox Pops. Tell me a little bit about the job and what sort of qualities you need to be able to do that.

Dame Esther Rantzen22:13

I was first of all hired as a researcher, which is what I had been doing. And the producer, Welsh wizard called John Lloyd, decided on this show he would put researchers into vision, into the studio. So that was me and my lovely friend John Pittman. And I did the street interviews, which was the box pops. You have to wear thermals. You have to get up very close to people because you must never say, excuse me, may I ask you this question? Because by the time you've said that, they've run. And you must put up with being kissed by a lot of drunks.

Presenter22:49

Yeah.

Dame Esther Rantzen22:49

But apart from that, it's wonderful.

Presenter22:52

And it was that's life, of course, that put you on so many television screens in so many homes up and down the country. That began in nineteen seventy three, and you were producing the show as well as presenting it. So that's a a double responsibility. I mean, that's a lot of pressure. How did you

Dame Esther Rantzen23:08

The budget wasn't my responsibility, fortunately, in those distant days. My challenge was to tempt people into watching. It's a water cooler moment, they call it now. I just wanted them to have something in every show that they would remember, whether it was a dog that said sausages or the story of a little boy who needed a transplant and who got a transplant as a result of us. We wanted them to be cross with themselves for not having seen it. And we had some very tough stories. Whether it was the seat belts in the back of cars which children were not being strapped in at the time, or whether it was the prevalence of child abuse, or whether it was that children's playgrounds were really dangerous because they were surfaced with concrete and tarmac, and our viewers were sending us thousands of letters, 15,000 letters a week at our peak. They were our citizen journalists. They were the people who were telling us the stories that we were putting on the screen.

Presenter24:09

And it was during this time that you'd begun a relationship with Desmond Wilcox, who as we know you'd go on to marry. And the relationship was a secret for eight years. He was married to another co worker who was a friend of yours at the time in a very complicated situation on top of that high profile, high pressure job. How do you look back at that time now?

Dame Esther Rantzen24:28

Yeah.

Presenter24:28

Well

Dame Esther Rantzen24:29

I wish it had been different.

Dame Esther Rantzen24:32

Of course, I didn't want that to happen, and nor did Desmond. Um.

Dame Esther Rantzen24:37

I suppose if he or I had been tougher we would have emigrated or done something drastic, but we just fell deeper and deeper in love.

Dame Esther Rantzen24:48

And

Dame Esther Rantzen24:49

Our marriage lasted, and we have three wonderful children, so I don't regret it.

Dame Esther Rantzen24:54

But I wish it had happened differently.

Presenter24:55

Probably.

Presenter24:57

And when his marriage ended and the relationship became public knowledge, it was you that bore the brunt of some very negative criticism in the press. What was the impact of that on you?

Presenter25:07

Oh

Dame Esther Rantzen25:07

It did feel like having your guts pulled out of your stomach and examined. It was horrible. And at the time I didn't see that this was the inevitable price of being well known. Now

Dame Esther Rantzen25:26

It would be so much worse now.

Dame Esther Rantzen25:28

I only had newspapers to deal with and occasionally people saying rude things to me in life.

Dame Esther Rantzen25:35

I didn't have these horrible anonymous trolls pursuing people in the way they do, so I suppose I should count myself lucky.

Dame Esther Rantzen25:44

It's time for your next piece of music. What are we going to hear for your fifth disc today? Well, I am Jewish and the piece of music I've chosen is not written by a Jew, but it was the music for a film about Schindler, Schindler's List. And it's about two things. It's about hope at the darkest time.

Dame Esther Rantzen26:05

And it's about the fact that one man, in this case Schindler, could make a huge difference. Now I was very lucky because on that Slife we featured a man called Nicholas Winton, who some people call the British Schindler because he saved a generation of Czech Jewish children and I got to know him very well. So when I hear this bit of music, I think about him, I think about hope and I also recognize how much I owe my Jewish heritage. It's really important to be a member of a minority because it teaches you so much about the importance of tolerance.

Dame Esther Rantzen26:42

And the importance of diversity. This is a tragic piece of music, but it is also a hopeful one.

Dame Esther Rantzen27:12

Uh

Presenter27:52

The theme from the original soundtrack of the film Schindler's List, composed by John Williams with Itzak Pullman on violin. Esther Ranson, you've talked about and described your guilt about working long hours when your kids were little and I think your daughter Rebecca has written about her side of that experience and her pride and your achievements, but also, you know, missing you sometimes when you weren't around.

Presenter28:15

How do you feel reflecting on those seven day weeks that you sometimes had to

Dame Esther Rantzen28:19

Do now.

Presenter28:19

Yeah.

Dame Esther Rantzen28:20

Well, what we tried to do, Desi and me, is we tried to alternate during the year. So when he was away making his documentaries, I would be in a break between series of that slife. That's what we tried to do, and I stopped making documentaries so I could be at home. But that didn't really help because I was writing scripts at seven in the morning and doing something, sorting out news cuttings or something at seven o'clock at night. So my elder daughter Em told me not all that long ago that when she was about two or three, she'd wave goodbye to me and then trot up to her bedroom and sit looking out of the window for me to come home again. Now that's not good, is it? So perhaps it's not surprising that my daughter Rebecca is a full-time mum. She hasn't delegated her mothering. So would I have done things differently?

Dame Esther Rantzen29:09

Possibly not, being the generation I was and the kind of person I am. Do I think my children missed out? It is possible. A woman's place is in the wrong.

Dame Esther Rantzen29:22

Uh

Presenter29:22

In 1986 there was a special, a That's Life special, investigating child abuse and after that you came up with the idea for a telephone helpline that would eventually become the counselling service ChildLine. I think there were 50,000 attempted calls on the first night that ChildLine launched. How shocked were you?

Dame Esther Rantzen29:42

Well, when we opened the helpline after the edition of that Slife, and it was absolutely jammed with children describing sexual abuse, which was the great taboo at the time.

Dame Esther Rantzen29:54

which they had never been able to disclose to anyone else. I knew there was a demand. Did I predict 50,000? No. Did I predict that 50,000 would stay at that level for six weeks? No. Did I predict that mobile phones would be invented and replace the landlines and the phone boxes children had to run to? Absolutely not. Or the fact that now three quarters of our children contact Childline on the internet? Absolutely not.

Dame Esther Rantzen30:23

When we opened, it was mainly problems to do with horrible things people were doing to children, be it physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse, whatever it was, bullying. Now so much of it is about unhappiness, anxiety, depression, self-harm, eating disorders. And of course bullying has changed. It's become cyber-bullying that you can't escape from.

Dame Esther Rantzen30:45

So I think the need is as great as ever. And we've now helped nearly five million children, but I reckon that we're going to have to be there.

Dame Esther Rantzen30:54

Forever. I think children will always need the capacity to talk to a stranger about something they can't talk to at home.

Presenter31:03

In twenty twelve, in the light of the horrendous revelations about Jimmy Saville in in the media.

Presenter31:08

You said of the media we are all culpable. You know, you were talking about attitudes in the media that enabled him to go undetected.

Presenter31:17

How confident are you that things have changed and that the same situation couldn't happen today in this

Dame Esther Rantzen31:25

Paedophiles need access to children. In order to gain access to children, they will persuade the people who guard the threshold to let them through it. So whether we're talking about priests or teachers or people who work in care homes or people who work in the entertainment industry, we have to be aware that there may be paedophiles who are trying to use us. But on the other hand, really important to remember that most people love children, most people care about children, most people protect children. So we're talking about a minority, a horrible minority.

Dame Esther Rantzen32:01

Let's take another track. Tell me about your next disc today and why you've chosen it.

Dame Esther Rantzen32:05

Well, I am a Jew, but Christmas has always been very important to me. It's always been a family celebration when the whole family got together and children make Christmas. And I'm so lucky to have five grandchildren, two girls, three boys. They're all glorious. So, Christmas for me is Snowman. I know Raymond Briggs. He helps Childline and he's created this beautiful story which was animated so well. And this is the voice of a lovely little boy singing a fantastic Christmas song, walking in the air.

Speaker 132:44

We're walking in the air

Speaker 132:49

We're floating in the moonlit sky

Speaker 132:57

No people far below are sleeping as we flow.

Speaker 133:07

I'm holding many

Presenter33:12

I'm riding in the night.

Presenter33:19

Walking in the Air composed by Howard Blake sung by Peter Orty.

Presenter33:23

Esther Ranson, it was in the year two thousand after many years together that your husband Desi died. A very traumatic experience, but one that you chose to be open about it. You wrote about it and talked about it. Did doing that, writing about his death and your grief, help you to process it?

Dame Esther Rantzen33:43

The thing that really helped me most was the number of people that talked to me about him, about how they loved his work, about the kind of man he was. Spontaneous, warm, generous, funny. The other thing he did was he spent a lot of time planning his memorial service. It's so nice to be able to do a memorial service that you know is exactly what he would have wanted. The three children, they've been an enormous support. They were when I lost Ezzy.

Speaker 234:11

Mm.

Dame Esther Rantzen34:11

Even though they were hurting themselves. And it's a thing you don't get over. You manage it. For me, it's actually the happy times I find hardest. He loved sailing. And when I go somewhere abroad and there's a marina and the sun's setting, and I know he would be wandering around saying, I think I would buy that one. No, maybe not that one, but that one.

Dame Esther Rantzen34:35

Those are the things that are tough. And when the grandchildren were born and they didn't know him. But my children are making sure that they know exactly who he was and what he was like. He's very much alive in our lives.

Presenter34:47

It was many years later that the idea for Silverline came to you, and that was after a newspaper interview that you'd given talking about your own experience of loneliness. What made you want to speak out? And what was the reaction when you did?

Dame Esther Rantzen35:03

What happened was that I downsized from the family house to a flat, and I'm an agnostic, but my older daughter is religious.

Dame Esther Rantzen35:13

So I was a little shocked to hear myself saying to her, You know, Em, I think God wants you to move in with me. And fortunately she laughed, and I did what I always do when I need therapy. I rang the Daily Mail and said,

Dame Esther Rantzen35:28

I'd had this conversation. They said loneliness, good topic, write about it. So I wrote about it, and was inundated with response. More response than anything, I think, that I've ever written.

Dame Esther Rantzen35:39

Some of it from people who said it was brave of me to admit to it, because there's a stigma attached to loneliness.

Dame Esther Rantzen35:46

Some of it from people saying, don't know why you're complaining, suppose you were disabled like me and looking at the same four walls day in, day out. Some of it saying, but we keep trying to reach out to isolated older people. It's just so difficult to find people because once loneliness strikes you, you shut the front door, it becomes so difficult to get out through it because you lose confidence, you think nobody wants your company, you stop taking exercise, you stop eating properly. I was living on cheese and biscuits. So there's every reason to try and combat loneliness. And when I wrote about the piece, I was invited to a conference to talk about loneliness, and that's when I had my second light bulb moment. First one with Childline, second one with the Silver Line. So tell me about starting Silver Line. What was the initial aim? The Silver Line is really offering friendship and advice if it's needed. So we've now got nearly 5,000 trained volunteer befrienders, our Silver Line friends. We do conference calls and we've got our helpline, which is free, confidential, open 24/7. And we're getting a huge number of calls. We've taken more than 2 million calls, so there's a huge amount of loneliness about.

Dame Esther Rantzen37:02

Uh

Presenter37:02

I read a a description. You were quoting someone else, but you said that this described loneliness perfectly, having plenty of people to do something with, but nobody to do nothing with.

Dame Esther Rantzen37:13

Absolutely. It's very powerful. It is. I mean, there are some people who are alone day and night. Other people manage to get out and about a bit. But you come home to an empty flat, it's dark, it's cold, and you can't sit on the sofa and shout at the television with someone. And when you're used to a very close companion, it's a big loss.

Presenter37:36

Let's have our next piece of music, Esther Ranson. Tell me about your seventh disc to day.

Dame Esther Rantzen37:41

The children are great dancers. I, as poor Anton Dubeck discovered, am not a great dancer.

Dame Esther Rantzen37:48

But I will do it if I'm pretty sure no one's watching or to keep my grandchildren company. Now they introduced me to a song called Happy by someone called Pharrell. And I know that if I am sitting gloomily on my desert island with nobody to talk to, if this music starts to play then I will start dancing even if Anton isn't there to tick me off.

Speaker 138:13

Might seem crazy what I'm bout to say

Speaker 138:18

So shy she's here

Speaker 138:20

Take away

Presenter38:24

Uh

Speaker 138:24

Hot you

Speaker 138:26

Go straight

Speaker 138:29

With the air, like I don't care, baby, by the way.

Speaker 138:35

Because I'm the happy

Dame Esther Rantzen38:37

Come on, yeah.

Speaker 138:37

View.

Dame Esther Rantzen38:38

Feel like a room without a room

Dame Esther Rantzen38:41

I'm happy about long

Dame Esther Rantzen38:44

Feel like happiness is the truth because I'm

Presenter38:48

Pharrell Williams and happy Esther Ransom, when are you happiest?

Presenter38:53

Oh

Dame Esther Rantzen38:54

What a very good question. When am I happiest? Well

Dame Esther Rantzen38:57

I'm really happy when I'm with my grandchildren.

Dame Esther Rantzen39:01

Because there's no question, I am the funniest person in the entire world when I'm with my grandchildren. It is blissful. One of my daughters recently had a birthday, and we went to an exhibition at the British Museum and we went to see a musical. That made me very happy. So I'm very lucky with my family. They make me happy. Yeah. And we've been

Presenter39:21

Looking back, of course, today at the variety of experiences that life brings with it, do you have any regrets?

Dame Esther Rantzen39:29

In my whole life have I any regrets? Ooh, I regret I never learnt knitting. That's'cause I was left-handed and I couldn't find anyone left-handed to teach me. I regret I never learnt to dance, but I think that was beyond me. I could do a waltz. The thing is, nothing I've done except these records that I've picked has been planned. And in a funny way, if the whole of your life is a series of accidents, which mine appears to be, you just pick yourself up and keep going, or feel very grateful. I think I've been very lucky. I think my career was immensely lucky. Happening at the time it did, you know, a few generations earlier, I don't think I could have done it. A few generations later, I wasn't nearly pretty enough. So um I think uh

Presenter40:17

Uh I think I've been very lucky. And what would you say to a young woman who might be listening to this and wants to follow in your footsteps and wants to make it in broadcasting?

Dame Esther Rantzen40:26

If I'm talking to a young woman who wants to make a success of their career in anything, I would say: follow your hopes, and if you fail, don't get disheartened, because that's how you learn.

Presenter40:41

Looking to the future, what what do you see there? What is there anything left that you'd like to complete on your list? I mean, I know that you stood as an MP in Luton in twenty ten. Perhaps you might consider it reentering politics? Yes, politics

Dame Esther Rantzen40:56

Is so enticing at the moment. There's nothing that seems more fun, I think. Well, it might be. You like a challenge, Esther? Mmm, there's challenge and challenge.

Presenter41:00

Well it might

Dame Esther Rantzen41:07

Yes, I've got plenty of ambitions. I want both the Silver Line and the Child Line to be able to answer everyone that needs them. The demand outstrips what we can do. I particularly want the Silver Line to become self-sustaining because it's so difficult to fundraise for older people. Shocking but true. Um what else? I want to become a better gardener and I want to dance at my grandchildren's wedding.

Presenter41:32

That sounds like a fantastic list of ambitions. And how do you think you're going to manage on our desert island? It is actually your second time as a castaway, so you've had a bit of practice.

Dame Esther Rantzen41:42

It is. How old was I first time around? Something like 33, something like that? So much hadn't happened in my life that I could not have anticipated. I didn't know I was going to get married, have children, child lime, silver lime. I had no idea. So, I don't know whether I thought I could survive then. I think with the help of my music I'll survive now. I think my experience in the jungle has taught me I love a green thought in a green shade. I think as long as I've got a Christmas song to remind me of the seasons, as long as I've got May to September to remind me of Frank Sinatra and Desi, that'd be great.

Dame Esther Rantzen42:21

I shall miss England. I really will miss England. And on that note, I think we'd better hear your eighth disc today. This is your last. It's by Elgar and it's Champson de Matin. I think I once set a film about a pig that thought it was a dog to this music. But please don't let that distract you. I think this is a wonderful lyrical description of the English countryside.

Presenter43:38

Elgar's Chanson de Matin, performed by the B B C Concert Orchestra, conducted by Barry Wordsworth. Esther Ranson, it's time now for me to cast you away. I send you to the island of Course with the Bible and the complete works of Shakspere to read. You can also take a book of your choice. What will it be?

Dame Esther Rantzen43:55

Well, I've wrestled a bit trying to choose that, and then I thought what I would have is an anthology called Poem for the Day with a foreword by Wendy Cope. And I will sit there trying to learn them all by heart, which will be good for my brain. I'll be eating fish, which will also be good for my brain. The thing about poetry is that it is emotion recollected in tranquillity. It does cover the whole range of feelings. And so I will use it. I will plunder it. What about a luxury to soften the blow of being cast away on the island? Well, now, I don't know if I'm allowed this. I would like a bath. And I would like a bath that can sometimes be hot water and sometimes be cold water, depending on the temperature.

Dame Esther Rantzen44:43

And sometimes be champagne, which I'm allergic to, but I would like the sensation of having a bath in it. Am I allowed? You're allowed. Three pipes.

Presenter44:53

It's yours. Thank you. Finally, if you could only keep one of these tracks, which would it be? Wow.

Presenter45:01

It'll have to be September song for Desi.

Presenter45:05

De Mester Ranson, thank you very much for sharing your Desert Island discs with us.

Dame Esther Rantzen45:09

Thank you.

Presenter45:09

Yeah.

Presenter45:19

As we leave the indefatigable Dame Esther Ranson luxuriating in her champagne bath, this is just a quick reminder that there are many more formidable campaigners available in our back catalogue. Among them, you can listen to Dame Cicely Saunders, the founder of the hospice movement, Marjorie Wallace, the mental health campaigner, Baroness Newlove, the victims commissioner, Baroness Doreen Lawrence and Bishop Trevor Huddlestone. In 2017, Kirstie interviewed the midwife, Edna Adnan Ismail. Edna became Somaliland's first female foreign minister and fulfilled a lifetime's dream by opening her own maternity hospital in 2002.

Dame Esther Rantzen45:57

It was a a relatively privileged environment you were born into. Just tell me a bit about your family circumstances.

Speaker 246:02

When my father was a doctor, my father was somebody who was known as the father of health care. I was privileged to go to school, went to school in Djibouti because there were no schools for girls in my country, British Somaliland Protectorate.

Dame Esther Rantzen46:13

And you say your father was this very prominent physician. Did did you spend any time with him at his work?

Speaker 246:18

I used to hang around the hospital and give him a hand and he would say, could you go and wash those forceps for me? And if he had to travel overnight in two or three days, he'd leave me a little list and say, while I'm away, make sure they do this, release the scatheter, make sure they remove the sutures tomorrow. So as the boss's daughter, I would make sure that the instructions were followed and he was my hero, still is.

Speaker 246:41

I will never be as compassionate as he was. I was never I will never be as kind and generous with his time, with his emotions, with his affection.

Speaker 246:50

A good man. What did he teach you about how patients should be treated? With respect.

Dame Esther Rantzen46:52

Yeah.

Speaker 246:55

And there was a particular incident. He was opening, Lansinger an abscess, and of course a dirty, elderly, unclean person, and I was holding a bowl under the jaw so that, you know, whatever was coming out should go there.

Speaker 247:09

and it must have shown on my face.

Speaker 247:12

And when the patient was cleaned and was out of the room, he closed the room.

Speaker 247:16

And he said, Don't you ever dare show such an ugly face to my patients

Speaker 247:22

That old man was even more precious than his first born, me, the person whom he referred to as the apple of his eye.

Speaker 247:30

But the patient came first.

Dame Esther Rantzen47:32

You have said that the idea of building your own hospital began to germinate when you watched your father going about his work as a doctor.

Speaker 247:40

At who

Speaker 247:41

As a doctor. So when, can you place that? I think I was about 12 or 11.

Dame Esther Rantzen47:43

I'm not sure.

Speaker 247:47

And I would often hear my father voicing a wish and saying, Oh, I wish I had a better forceps than this I wish I had a pair of scissors that would cut I wish I had a better hospital.

Speaker 247:58

And I just made a mental note that one day I would build the kind of hospital my father would have liked to work in. How I would do it, I didn't know. What I would use to make it happen, I didn't know. But I carried it in my mind and in my heart. And when I retired at the age 60, that's when I had the time and I had the opportunity and I had the means and the resources in which to do it.

Presenter48:19

Edna Adnan Ismail talking to Kirstie. I do hope you'll join me next week when my guest will be the Booker Prize winning author Marlon James. His music is amazing, so do not miss it.

Speaker 148:50

Hello, I'm Greg Foote and I am hosting a new Radio 4 podcast called The Best Thing Since Sliced Bread. Have you ever wondered what's fact and what's fad when it comes to wonder products, face creams, activated charcoal, kombucha, turmeric shot? That's what I'm trying to find out with the help of leading scientists and special guests. If you want to separate benefits from bunkum, subscribe to the best thing since sliced bread on BBC Sounds.