Lauren Laverne picks some of her favourite episodes

Presenter0:01

BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts.

Presenter0:25

Hi, I'm Lauren Laverne. Welcome to an extra special edition of the Desert Island Discs podcast, where guests are invited to choose the eight tracks, book, and luxury item that they'd want to take with them if they were cast away to a desert island. There are over 2,000 archive episodes on BBC Sounds, that's a lot, and whether you're a regular listener or new to the programme, you might not know where to start. Well, the good news is, I'm here to help. I'm going to share with you some of my favourite editions from our incredible back catalogue. I hope they'll bring you as much joy as they bring me. I'll be bringing you a world-renowned pianist, an award-winning African-American writer and poet, a best-selling crime author, a star judge from Strictly, and one of the most inspiring personal stories you will ever hear anywhere. And of course, some fantastic music. So, let's start with the dancer. Len Goodman, former head judge of Strictly, was born in London's East End and he sold veg from his grandfather's stall and became a welder in the docks. But every Saturday, he'd don his glad rags and go off dancing. Kirstie cast him away in 2011, and she asked him about growing up in London's Bethnal Green.

Lauren Laverne picks some of her favourite episodes1:31

Well, it was Bethnal Green. We actually moved when I was quite young out into Kent, when I was four or five. However, my mum used to take me all the time back up to Bethnal Green, and I used to play with all the kids in my street and so on. So my early memories are of being round Bethnal Green in our little house there, my grandparents' house. Saturday nights, my nan and one of my uncles were great on the piano, just self-taught and having a sing song, and my mum used to teach me a little s you can roll a silver dollar down upon the ground and I'd be sitting there on the f by the fireplace skipping my little bit. It was just wonderful memories.

Presenter1:35

Right.

Presenter2:09

And you did you like a bit of an audience? Were you a bit of a show off?

Lauren Laverne picks some of her favourite episodes2:12

Always. And yeah, I was quite gregarious and outgoing and uh

Presenter2:16

Your grandfather's business then was a fruit and veg business? Yes, right.

Lauren Laverne picks some of her favourite episodes2:16

And your gun

Lauren Laverne picks some of her favourite episodes2:19

And then once I became about eleven he he'd got a shop. Before that he had a stall, and on a Saturday and and during the school holidays I'd be in charge of the salad stall, and that would be my job. And I think that helped me as well to get to chat with people and and not to be shy and and outgoing.

Presenter2:38

And what about was your grandfather a bit of a I mean, the image we have maybe a cliched one of of people who run those businesses, certainly back in the day, is that, you know, bit of bit of a dellboy, a bit of a mover and shaker.

Lauren Laverne picks some of her favourite episodes2:46

Do you know I remember one of the earliest memories I have of him, in his shop he used to have two, they call them bins, where they used to put the groceries and stuff. And he had a big hundredweight sack of potatoes and he chucked one half into this one bin and the other half into the other bin. And on one he put a penny a pound, and on the other it said selected penny halfpenny.

Lauren Laverne picks some of her favourite episodes3:09

And I'll say but Grange out there this time.

Lauren Laverne picks some of her favourite episodes3:12

Potato. He said, Yeah, but you watch the one and a penny halfpenny ones always go first. And and that's you know, they so they were like that.

Presenter3:19

A lesson in life.

Lauren Laverne picks some of her favourite episodes3:20

Yeah.

Presenter3:20

Yeah. And what about the B-troop boiler? Did you have a bath in the B-Troop boiler? Yeah, I was doing that.

Lauren Laverne picks some of her favourite episodes3:23

My nan's job was to get the raw beetroots, and they had this like cauldron that had like six gas rings things that went underneath, and they used to boil that up, and then the beetroots would go in. Well, when it was tepid, my nan used to just put me in it and scrub me up, and of course, I was always filthy, dirty. We used to go and play on the debris from the ward, and of course, out I'd come and it would be covered in scum, and then in would go the beetroots. Is that true? Yeah, truly. And everybody used to say how delicious they were. I think it was probably.

Presenter3:50

Is that true?

Presenter3:57

That special stock. Yeah. That special little lens stock. That's delicious.

Lauren Laverne picks some of her favourite episodes3:58

Yeah. That special little lens stock. That's right. And quite often I'd have a P in it as well, of course, as you do.

Presenter4:04

I wasn't going to ask that, but I'm glad you mentioned it.

Lauren Laverne picks some of her favourite episodes4:04

Well not.

Presenter4:06

Let's have some music, Lane Goodman, what's next?

Lauren Laverne picks some of her favourite episodes4:08

Well one of my earliest memories is my dad taking me into the front room where he had a most marvellous record player, Grundig. One side there was a cocktail cabinet.

Speaker 14:17

Oh.

Lauren Laverne picks some of her favourite episodes4:17

It was very posh. And the other side was the record player. And he used to play all his favourites from the war and before the war and he used to love the Mills brothers. Uh they're only backing his guitar and everything else you hear is just them making the noise with their mouths and it's just happy, happy music. And I think if I'm stuck on a desert island I'm gonna get glum and I wanna be cheered up. And I think this is the sort of music that just cheers you.

Speaker 14:46

Hold a tiger, hold a tiger, hold a tiger, hold a tiger, hold a tiger, hold a tiger, hold a tiger.

Speaker 14:58

Where's that tiger? Where's that tiger? Is that tiger? Where's that tiger? Is that tiger? Where's that tiger? Is that tiger?

Presenter5:16

That was the Mills Brothers and Tiger Rag. So you were an only child, Length. Yes, I was. Dostapon, yes.

Lauren Laverne picks some of her favourite episodes5:21

Yes I was. Doted upon, yes. Doted, totally doted upon, spoilt rotten.

Presenter5:26

Where are you?

Lauren Laverne picks some of her favourite episodes5:26

Oh yeah, lovely, wonderful.

Presenter5:29

Isn't it true? Did your mum buy you a very fancy car when you were in the middle of the morning?

Lauren Laverne picks some of her favourite episodes5:31

When I was seventeen you know, we'd made it by then. We had seven green grocery shops and this and that and plenty of money coming in. When I was seventeen, my mum was worried that I'd uh learn to drive and have a crash, so she said, I'm not having that. You're going to have a nice sturdy vehicle. So for my seventeenth birthday,

Lauren Laverne picks some of her favourite episodes5:50

Brand new Jaguar

Speaker 25:52

Oof.

Lauren Laverne picks some of her favourite episodes5:52

Yeah, Mark Two. Thing like morse drives, you know, proper thing. And then I had a little accident, not a big one, in a car park.

Lauren Laverne picks some of her favourite episodes6:00

A car backed into me and uh just knocked it slightly and I got home. I said, Mum, look, a car backed. She said, You're not driving that. It might have knocked the wheels out of line or something. Bought me another one.

Lauren Laverne picks some of her favourite episodes6:11

Yeah, look at me. See? Like, you can't believe it, but I've turned out absolutely fantastic.

Presenter6:17

Clearly. And i before you were seventeen, your parents had divorced when you were how old?

Lauren Laverne picks some of her favourite episodes6:18

Um

Lauren Laverne picks some of her favourite episodes6:21

When I was about ten, my uh parents divorced. They split split up, but in in not in a horrible way. They split up and I still saw my dad and I lived with my mum and and it was fine.

Presenter6:35

Nonetheless quite unusual in that that would have been the early fifties, was it?

Lauren Laverne picks some of her favourite episodes6:38

Yeah. Oh, it was a big shock horror.

Presenter6:40

Yeah.

Lauren Laverne picks some of her favourite episodes6:40

It was oh, yeah, it was, yeah, middle fifties, I guess, something like that. But, d'ye know, I'll tell you a little anecdote regarding all this. My dad found a l my stepmother, who's still alive, ninety five now, hopefully listening in, but my mum was on her own, and I went to a Danson Park swimming pool and cut my leg, quite badly, on a stone step.

Presenter6:43

Right.

Lauren Laverne picks some of her favourite episodes7:00

I went to the first aid man. So he went on the tannoy in this open air pool and said anyone leaving could take a little boy to the hospital. Well, a man came along and said, I'm just leaving, I'll take him. And he took me to the hospital. And he said, Where'd you live, son? and I told him he said, I'll run you home. So he took me back to my house and by then it was swelling up and throbbing and I was crying a bit. So he picked me up and carried me to the front door of my house, knocked on the door. My mum said, Hullo he said, Your son's injured himself So she said, Come in and six months later she married him. Really? That's how they met. How extraordinary. It's a good story though, isn't it? And it is true.

Presenter7:35

Yeah, that's How they met.

Speaker 17:36

How extraordinary. Hello.

Presenter7:39

It is a great story, Len, the legend that is Len Goodman, speaking to Kirsty Young in 2011.

Presenter7:47

Up next, Maya Angelou, the American writer and poet.

Presenter7:51

Although everything that she did was poetic, as you will hear, she was brought up by her grandmother in Arkansas in the South of America during the Depression and was interviewed for Desert Island Discs by Michael Parkinson in nineteen eighty eight. Here she is. I remember my grandmother owned a store. It was the only black owned store in the town.

Presenter8:10

And so we had

Presenter8:12

goods on the shelves. Mamma, however, was a typical West African market woman. I never knew that until I moved to West Africa.

Presenter8:22

But she sold things, so the people had no money, but the poorer people would go down and get the handouts, um powdered eggs, powdered milk, lard, um margarine, which was white j just like lard, but with yellow stuff you could mix with it, make it buttercolor.

Presenter8:47

And they would bring that stuff back to the store and swap with my grandmother. She would give them tins, so many tins of mackerel in exchange for so many buckets of powdered eggs. Well, it turned out my brother and I were the only kids in the school who were eating powdered eggs.

Presenter9:08

Everybody else if we wanted peanut butter, we'd have to go round to somebody's back door because mama would have traded our peanut butter for some powdered milk, which was horrible.

Lauren Laverne picks some of her favourite episodes9:21

Uh

Presenter9:21

Uh

Lauren Laverne picks some of her favourite episodes9:22

Was it very r rigidly segregated?

Presenter9:24

Mm.

Lauren Laverne picks some of her favourite episodes9:24

Absolutely. Wha did what when did you first come across directly racial prejudice?

Presenter9:31

Well, I guess I was about.

Presenter9:35

We went to the movies, my brother and I.

Presenter9:39

And

Presenter9:41

There was a girl, a white girl, behind the in in the box office.

Presenter9:47

Who would take the dimes of all the white kids?

Presenter9:52

Take them by hand.

Presenter9:54

But when my brother put our dimes up, she had a cigar box, and she would tell him rake them into the cigar box.

Presenter10:03

Now, mind you, she was from a family so poor they lived on my grandmother's land.

Presenter10:09

And I couldn't believe this meanness And then all the white kids would go right in through the front door, and the black kids would have to go up a very rickety outside staircase. It was very dangerous, I thought. I mean, it was so shaky.

Presenter10:27

and then sort of almost crawl into a roof.

Presenter10:30

which hadn't been swept, I guess, since um the place had been built. So there were peanut shells and paper and all that stuff on the floor.

Presenter10:40

It was pitched so I mean, it was at such a rate, at such an angle.

Presenter10:45

this balcony, which they called the Buzzard's Roost.

Presenter10:51

It was pitched so that you had the feeling you might topple down on top of all those white folks. You know. It was just terrible. And I cried. I I couldn't believe that

Presenter11:03

I was such a nice girl, you know. By that time I'd stopped talking too, so I was really nice. I didn't lie because I couldn't speak, you know.

Presenter11:12

And there I I I was being forced to

Presenter11:15

Live like that.

Lauren Laverne picks some of her favourite episodes11:16

Well let's talk about the reason why he became mute in a moment. Let's now have another choice of record, please, Maya.

Presenter11:22

Well, I would choose Roberta Flack's Killing Me Softly.

Speaker 211:26

Singin' clear and strong Strumming my babe with his finger

Speaker 211:33

Singing my life with his words

Speaker 211:37

Killing me softly with this song Killing me softly with this song Telling my whole life

Speaker 211:46

His words giving me something

Speaker 211:51

With this song

Lauren Laverne picks some of her favourite episodes11:55

Roberta Flack and Killing Me Softly. Maya Angelou, you mentioned there just before we played that record that uh at the age of about eight you were mute. What were the circumstances of that?

Presenter12:06

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

Presenter12:15

And

Presenter12:16

The um rapist

Presenter12:19

was killed.

Presenter12:21

The policeman told my grandmother my mother's mother.

Presenter12:25

with whom I was staying.

Presenter12:27

That um

Presenter12:29

The man had been kicked to death, they thought.

Presenter12:34

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

Presenter12:48

That um

Presenter12:49

Because I told who did it.

Presenter12:53

that my voice was the culprit.

Presenter12:56

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

Presenter13:07

might die.

Presenter13:09

So I stop.

Presenter13:11

And how long did that last?

Presenter13:13

About five years. And what rescued you from that silence? Poetry.

Speaker 113:19

Yeah.

Presenter13:20

I loved poetry and a woman in my town, a black lady,

Presenter13:26

started me at about eight.

Presenter13:28

to reading the books in the library.

Presenter13:31

I kept a tablet.

Presenter13:33

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

Presenter13:38

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

Presenter13:45

People

Presenter13:47

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

Presenter13:52

Although out of her hearing they would say things to me about me like this. Mm-mm, it's a shame Sister Henderson's California granddaughter done gone mental. The brutes But finally, Mrs. Flowers, this lovely lady, had me over to her house. I was about almost twelve.

Presenter14:19

And

Presenter14:20

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

Presenter14:25

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

Presenter14:29

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

Presenter14:37

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

Presenter14:50

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

Presenter14:53

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

Presenter14:59

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

Presenter15:07

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

Presenter15:11

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

Presenter15:24

until finally I went under the house.

Presenter15:27

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

Presenter15:34

So I miss Flowers and Poetry returned my voice to me. And what a voice it was Can't get enough of it. A stunning listen recorded back in nineteen eighty eight when Sir Michael Parkinson was presenting the programme.

Presenter15:49

Next, we have another very talented artist for you, though in a completely different discipline and with a very different story. The pianist Lang Lang was a child prodigy and classical music phenomenon, and his talent and showmanship have earned him worldwide renown. He's played for presidents, royalty, and a global audience of four and a half billion at the opening of the 2008 Beijing Olympics. But when he was interviewed by Kirsty Young in 2010, he very movingly talked about the cost of all that and the price that he had to pay for his success and gave an insight into the dedication that his father would demand from his only child.

Presenter16:35

Chopin's waltz in D-flat major, known of course as the minute waltz played there by Arthur Rubenstein. You were saying Lang Lang that that memorably was uh your first recital, that was one of the pieces that you played. Um and you said that you and your father uh talked about this idea of being uh the number one pianist in China. It was it was an intense relationship from the beginning, was it? In the very beginning it was okay, actually. The relationship became pretty tough when my mom stayed at home and my father quit his job to be with me in Beijing to prepare to take audition to the best conservatory in China. At that time it became very intensive.

Speaker 117:14

Very

Presenter17:15

Y your parents were artistic people themselves, uh your father being the leader of the of the local orchestra. What about your mother? My mom actually loves music. When she was very young, yeah, she wanted to be a musician, but of course, I mean, in the end, she uh turns to a

Presenter17:30

To have a decent job, but it's nothing exciting and n nothing musical. Um did you get a sense that that uh in a way you were sort of expressing their artistic passions, that these were two people who very much had had to more than knuckle down? You know, they absolutely had their paths worked out for them by the community and the time that they lived in, but you could express yourself musically and and artistically.

Presenter17:51

Yeah, I mean my parent had a huge dream, but uh that generation of people, I think many of them just achieve their dream in halfway, you know, because the the revolution really, you know, that that's disturbed. After the reform's time, which is after seventy nine, we are actually only allowed to have one kid, so only in child generation. So so therefore, I mean, I felt

Speaker 118:03

Yeah.

Speaker 118:11

It's a whole

Presenter18:15

Uh in my generation that the the parents put a lot of pressure on the kid, because first of all many of them didn't achieve their dream. And then now they have a chance, but only one chance one kid only, so so you can imagine it's a it's a very unusual time.

Presenter18:34

But in in the other hand, if I have a like, let's say four siblings like my mom, or like five siblings like my father, then I don't think I will have the chance to study piano, because that's involved with a lot of money and efforts and education and uh focus. So in in a way it worked for me.

Presenter18:54

I won I certainly did. I want to ask you a little bit more later about your journey to Beijing and leaving your mother. That happened when you were round about nine. Um there's something now in China I understand called the Lang Lang effect, which is that there are estimated to be more than thirty-five million young Chinese piano players. Uh how are you treated by those young piano players when you go home? Are you able to to to walk down the streets? Are you I mean seriously piano become some real phenomenon in China. I don't know whether it's to do with me or not, but

Speaker 118:55

Yeah.

Speaker 119:01

Bye.

Speaker 219:24

Uh

Presenter19:27

piano be became the number one instrument. Of course I can I can't walk through the street without security, but I mean I got a lot of pictures taken. So that's that's actually nice.

Speaker 219:35

Right.

Presenter19:37

When I go out for a coffee or something, people stop and then take a picture or asking for autograph, and sometimes I got mobbed. But it all feels good because if classical musicians can also be loved by the general public, it's a great thing. Okay, let's have some more music then. We're on disc number three now. What are we going to hear?

Speaker 119:54

That's hard.

Presenter19:58

Now we're going to listen to my favorite singer, Luciano Pavarati and his most famous song, Solomia. This one really inspired me to start listening to classical operas and Pavarati is the first classical tenor to reach out to millions of people.

Presenter20:21

Quebellados Ana Yurna desol.

Presenter20:27

Nariaska Naria Fresh Bare Joanna Festa.

Speaker 220:37

What is one of it?

Presenter20:41

Quebella Cosana Uran.

Speaker 220:41

Well like oh you remember

Presenter20:58

Oh, so I never

Presenter21:12

Sign from Tat Saint Frontier

Presenter21:21

Liuciano Pavarotti and Osora Miyo, my son. So Lang Lang, you say you were nine then when you moved from the family home in Shenyang, that's just northeast of Beijing, to Beijing itself. You moved with your father and the purpose there was to get you into the conservatory. Yes. I remember the first day I I got so depressed because we moved into a real small and very poor and dirty neighborhood. I think six families share one toilet. Is it true that your father would get up at five in the morning and go to this communal toilet area and lock himself in?

Presenter22:01

In order that when you woke a couple of hours later you didn't have to queue to use the bathroom. Is that a true story? Yeah, not every morning, but sometimes. Yes, it is. Most uh neighbors understood, but some neighbors hate it, you know.

Speaker 122:06

Is that a true story?

Presenter22:15

This was to do then about the management of your time. That you could not spend an hour queuing because that was time that you could be practicing. Was that? Right, right. I mean, there are things that I've read that sometimes seem difficult to believe. Did he also, when you were practicing, because the flat that you lived in was so cold, is it true that he got into bed to warm your bed? Yes. That's true.

Speaker 122:17

But you could

Speaker 122:22

Right, right, yeah.

Speaker 122:31

Practice.

Presenter22:35

Yeah.

Presenter22:37

What do you make of that?

Presenter22:38

I think that that's father's love. I think that's um that really shows his love for me and his support, you know, as a father. I got very emotional when when I remember those things. But in the same time my father was very tough, you know, and so it was like real love and hate relationship.

Presenter22:58

The remarkable Lang Lang in conversation with Kirsty in 2010.

Presenter23:03

Now to Scotland, and Val McDermott, a fantastic writer. I just loved her programme. It was such a vivid depiction of a young woman finding her voice and finding a path in a world that didn't necessarily seem like it was going to provide one for her.

Presenter23:19

As a crime fiction writer, her stories certainly don't spare the reader. Domestic violence, murder, abduction, it all features. She was the first state school educated Scot to win a place at St Hilda's College in Oxford when she was just 16. And when Kirsty Young cast her away in 2013, she talked about her childhood growing up in Kirkardy, Fife. Val McDermott, you were a clever girl, and at one point your family moved opposite the library, and I understand that you were in and out of that place on a daily basis. What were you reading? Crime fiction? Anything? No, there was no crime fiction, unless you count Eunid Blyton really, and the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew. I just worked my way round the fiction shelves. And although you could take four books out at a time, two of them had to be non-fiction. Heaven forfend, you should just have unmitigated pleasure.

Speaker 223:49

And the

Speaker 123:49

Yeah.

Presenter24:05

So I was reading really anything I could get my hands on and the library did become my second home. Growing up in Fife, you've said that you felt different from other people. Can you articulate that feeling? I felt like an outsider. I didn't feel that my concerns were the same as the concerns of my contemporaries. I grew up in Kirkorie and I went to a school that was very strongly academic. But Fife was in many ways quite a parochial, quite a closed world. And generally speaking, in Fife, if you were bright, you went to Edinburgh or St Andrews University. If you weren't quite so bright, you went to Dundee or Stirling. And then you came back to Fife. Probably 85-90% of the people who taught me were from Fife. And I wanted something beyond those horizons. But I just assumed that was because the one thing I really wanted was to be a writer. Because in the 1960s in Fife, there were no lesbians. They didn't exist. It wasn't even a word that crossed people's horizon, really. So I had no way of realising what my sexuality was and what that that meant for me. Did you spend a lot of time alone?

Presenter25:12

Yes. I had a big Labrador retriever, and the two of us used to often just go off for the day by ourselves, me and the Doug, and a book. Now, here's something from your younger years that might help us figure out a bit more about you. 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 weekend at 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?

Speaker 125:36

Yeah, so that that's

Speaker 125:42

Yeah.

Presenter25:48

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 from Fife, Ken, where folk talk like that. Where the Spugs fly back with Ski the Stewart Rain. 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 in. 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 126:21

Uh Yeah.

Presenter26:48

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. Delicious. Let's have some music then, Valmont Dermatch. We're on your fourth choice. This is the Allegro from the Brandenburg number six, and it's a wonderful piece of music. But this was one of my first experiences of classical music. And when I went to Oxford, one of the things that people tended to do was after dinner and evening, you'd go back to somebody's room and they'd put on some music generally. And this was one of the first pieces of classical music that I heard that actually something went ping inside my head, and I thought, that is amazing. There was something about the way that the music was constructed that really.

Presenter27:30

Seemed to feed into my brain in a way that made everything sharper and brighter. And this also I have to say I associate with my first love because my final year at Oxford I finally actually managed to fall in love with someone who fell in love with me. And when I hear this music sometimes I can still picture sort of an autumn afternoon with the sun fading from the sky sitting by a gas fire toasting crumpets and you know and and and and so it takes me back in a good way as well to those years.

Presenter29:03

Part of the allegro from Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No. Six, played by the English Baroque soloists conducted by John Elliott Gardner, chosen by crime writer Val McDermott, whose cultural métier includes both Bach and Deep Fried Pizza, my kind of woman.

Presenter29:19

Christmas 1992, Sue Lawley's special guest was Professor Stephen Hawking. The world-renowned scientist was told at the age of twenty-one that he had motor neurone disease. His best-selling book, A Brief History of Time from Big Bang to Black Holes, had been published in 1989, and ten years later, when he recorded his Desert Island discs, he was almost completely paralyzed and was using a voice synthesizer to speak. Sue asked him about going up to Oxford to study maths and physics, where he admitted to working for only an hour a day. Why couldn't he be bothered to work? she wondered.

Presenter29:53

It was the end of the 50s, and most young people were disillusioned with what was called, the establishment.

Presenter30:01

There seemed nothing to look forward to, but affluence, and more affluence.

Presenter30:07

The Conservatives had just won their third election victory with the slogan, You've Never Had It So

Speaker 130:14

Good.

Presenter30:14

I

Presenter30:15

And most of my contemporaries at Oxford were bored with life.

Presenter30:21

There didn't seem anything worth working for.

Presenter30:24

Nevertheless, you still managed to solve in a few hours problems that your fellow students couldn't do in as many weeks. They were obviously aware, from what they've said since, that you had an exceptional talent. Were you aware, do you think?

Presenter30:39

The physics course at Oxford at that time, was ridiculously easy.

Presenter30:45

One could get through, without going to any lectures, but just by going to one or two tutorials a week.

Presenter30:54

You didn't need to remember many facts, just a few equations.

Presenter31:00

But it was at Oxford, wasn't it, that you first noticed that your hands and feet weren't quite doing what you wanted them to do. How did you explain that to yourself at the time?

Presenter31:11

In fact, the first thing I noticed, was that I couldn't row a sculling boat properly.

Presenter31:18

Then I had a bad fall, down the stairs from the college junior common room.

Presenter31:23

I went to the college doctor after the fall, because I was worried that I might have brain damage.

Presenter31:31

However, he thought there was nothing wrong, and told me to cut down on the beer.

Presenter31:37

After my finals at Oxford, I went to Persia for the summer.

Presenter31:44

I was definitely weaker when I came back, but I thought that was caused by a bad stomach upset that I had had.

Presenter31:52

But at what point did you give in and admit that there was something really wrong and decide to get medical advice?

Speaker 131:58

I went home for Christmas.

Presenter32:02

That was a very cold winter of 62-63. My mother persuaded me to go and skate on the lake in St. Albans, even though I knew I was not really up to it.

Presenter32:15

I fell over, and had great difficulty getting up.

Presenter32:19

My mother realized there was something wrong. She took me to the family doctor. And then three weeks in hospital and they told you the worst.

Presenter32:29

I was in for two weeks, having tests, but they never actually told me what was wrong, except that it was not MS, and that it was not a typical case.

Presenter32:41

They didn't tell me what the prospects were, but I guessed enough to know that they were pretty bad, so I didn't want to ask.

Presenter32:51

And finally, in fact, you were told that you only had a couple of years or so to live. Let's pause at that point in your story and have your next record, Stephen.

Presenter33:01

The Voggy React 1. After I was diagnosed with motor neuron disease in 1963, I turned to Warner, as someone who suited the darkened apocalyptic mood I was in. Unfortunately, my speech synthesizer is not very well educated, and pronounces him Wagner.

Presenter33:22

I have to spell him V, A, R, G, N, E, R, to get it to sound approximately right.

Presenter33:32

The four operas of the ring cycle are Warner's greatest work.

Presenter33:37

I went to see him at Barrett in Germany, with my sister, Philippa, in 1964.

Presenter33:44

I didn't know the ring well at that time, and the Voguri, the second opera and the cycle, made a tremendous impression on me.

Presenter33:56

Yes, nice to hear.

Speaker 134:09

I must say no I'm a mother

Presenter34:10

I don't know.

Speaker 234:13

Last Vishtier by the

Speaker 134:15

Yeah.

Speaker 234:15

Who is the singer man?

Speaker 234:35

They still have a fire.

Presenter34:40

Hermenna sits here in Sal von Hunding Zurhait Geladem.

Presenter34:47

E frightened vibe, the zunger frocked, shakalim shanken so fro.

Presenter34:57

Lotter Lehmann and Laritz Milkjor singing part of Act One of Wagner's De Valkyrie with the Vienna Philharmonic conducted by Bruno Walter.

Presenter35:06

Reading about you, Stephen, it almost seems as if that death sentence, being told you had only a couple of years or so to live, woke you up, if you like, made you concentrate on life.

Presenter35:17

Its first effect was to depress me. I seem to be getting worse fairly rapidly.

Presenter35:24

There didn't seem any point in doing anything, or working on my PhD, because I didn't know I would live long enough to finish it.

Presenter35:34

But an inks started to improve

Speaker 135:36

Prove

Presenter35:37

The condition developed more slowly, and I began to make progress in my work, particularly in showing that the universe must have had a beginning, in a Big Bang.

Presenter35:49

But you've even said in one interview that you thought you were happier now than before you got ill.

Presenter35:56

I certainly am happier now. Before I got motor neuron disease, I was bored with life.

Presenter36:03

But the prospect of an early death, made me realize life was really worth living.

Presenter36:10

There is so much one can do, so much that anyone can do.

Presenter36:15

I have a real feeling of achievement, that I have made a modest, but significant, contribution to human knowledge, despite my condition.

Presenter36:28

Of course, I am very fortunate, but everyone can achieve something, if they try hard enough.

Presenter36:35

The late and truly inspiring Professor Stephen Hawking. Do listen to the whole of that programme. It's an absolute joy. And as with all the extracts I've brought you today, you can find it on BBC Sounds. I hope you've enjoyed this extra podcast from the Desert Island Discs back catalogue. There are so many to choose from. And if you have favourite editions that you think other people might enjoy, please do share them on social media using the hashtag Desert Island Discs. That's all from me for now. I'll be back with a new edition of the programme on Sunday at 11:15. I hope you'll join me then.