Steve Backshall

Presenter0:01

BBC Sounds, Music, Radio Podcasts. Hello, 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. And, for rights reasons, the music is shorter than the original broadcast. I hope you enjoy listening.

Presenter0:43

My castaway this week is the naturalist, broadcaster and author Steve Backshall. His BAFTA winning programmes bring viewers of every generation closer to nature, from kids' series Deadly Sixty via the spectacular Blue Planet Live to the pleasures of Spring Watch. Though if you've only seen the latter, you might be surprised to discover what this naturalist action hero gets up to when he's not keeping an eye out for badgers or filling you in on bird life in the Chilterns. His big break arrived when National Geographic offered him the post of Adventurer in Residence, and he's been taking on the most gruelling challenges and toughest environments on Earth ever since. He ran a marathon in the Sahara, has swun cage free with great whites, anacondas and crocodiles, and earned a red beret by completing the Israeli Special Forces Selection Course at the Negev Desert boot camp.

Presenter1:35

Despite many near death moments, he broke his back while rock climbing and almost drowned while kayaking in Bhutan his appetite for adventure is as keen as ever, though finding it is increasingly tricky.

Presenter1:47

He says, It's one of the things that sets us apart as a species, our desire to understand, to push back new frontiers. There is an assumption that all of that was done years ago, that there is no more exploration to be done, but there is. You just need to look a lot harder nowadays. Steve Bakshall, welcome to Desert Island Discs.

Steve Backshall2:07

Yeah.

Presenter2:07

Thank you very much.

Steve Backshall2:08

What an amazing introduction

Presenter2:10

So much, Steve, of what you do is about discovery, that idea of being first. What is that feeling like?

Steve Backshall2:16

There's something quite unique to the moment where you walk into a cave and your torch illuminates darkness that has never before seen light, not in millions of years, especially if it turns out to be beautiful. That sense of being the first, of placing the first ever footprint on a mountaintop or alongside a jungle river is something that I have been lucky enough to do many times in my career and it is just the most extraordinary experience. I think it's one of the things that has made us so successful as a species, that desire to explore, that desire to find out new things about our world, to see it as something that requires an explanation.

Presenter2:56

You mentioned casting your torchlight round a cave. I know there was a particular trip to Borneo not long ago when you made an amazing discovery in in a cave system there.

Steve Backshall3:05

Yeah, Borneo is a very special place to me. Some of my first expeditions in the early 1990s were there, and it's a troubled jungle island. It's one that is being deforested at a frightening rate. And last year we did an expedition there into an area of mountains about the size of Belgium which remains pristine, perfect rainforest.

Steve Backshall3:23

And in these glorious limestone mountains in the interior of this jungle, after a couple of weeks of hacking in through the forest, we found caves which were unmapped and emblazoned on the walls were handprints which had been left there by our ancestors at least 40,000 years ago when we here in Europe were still living surrounded by short-faced cave bears and mastodons and you know and it just absolutely blew our minds. But I think the thing that more than anything stood out was the fact that they placed those handprints in exactly the same place that we would do now. They placed them in the spots where you got the most aesthetic beauty that we would appreciate as modern humans. And there was a timelessness about that place. With all of the great changes that are sweeping through our civilization now, there is something uniquely human that remains unchanged all the way back from prehistory.

Presenter4:18

So let's turn to your music choices, Steve. I'm assuming that it's easier for you to imagine life as a castaway than it is for most of the guests who who come on the programme today. How did you decide on today's selection?

Steve Backshall4:28

Oh, it was so hard. I could quite easily have given you a hundred different tracks. But what I've tried to do is think of really special, particular moments back through my life and the songs that really sum them up, or the songs that I was playing at those moments, and go for those. And that's definitely true of my first track.

Presenter4:46

Well, tell us about it, then, I think we'd love to hear it.

Steve Backshall4:49

I couldn't possibly do this without doing at least one Kings of Leon song because they are awesome.

Steve Backshall4:55

But in the expedition that I was just talking about in Borneo, where we were in these caves and we just discovered these 40,000-year-old works of art, which was a discovery of quite genuine import. And we all came back that evening, we put up our hammocks in the jungle and we were shaking with excitement. And I can remember after we'd sat around the bonfire chatting, I got into my hammock and I, you know, put my headphones in and I listened to this song and I just punched the air. Kings of Leon and Beautiful War.

Speaker 45:25

Bye to your town.

Speaker 45:29

Don't make a scene dear.

Speaker 45:32

Everybody's been in here.

Speaker 45:36

These ones before.

Speaker 45:40

But we've in him more

Speaker 45:48

Your heart breaks?

Speaker 45:52

Rolls down the window

Presenter5:56

Kings of Lyon and Beautiful War. So Steve Baxchell, you've recently been closer to home, presenting Spring Watch from there during lockdown, and we saw a splendid heronry not far from where you live on the Thames. Has what some scientists are calling the anthropause made a difference to what's been happening in the natural world around you at home?

Steve Backshall6:16

It made a colossal difference on my river. I call it my river. Obviously, it's mine. I'm pretty sure it belongs to the Queen.

Steve Backshall6:23

During lockdown, all of a sudden we went from being one of the busiest navigations in the country to being totally silent. And my portion of the Thames was transformed into what appeared to be a wildlife refuge. Every single night we were treated with these velvet calm waters and wonderful sunsets. All of the nesting birds, particularly those that nest down at water level, have had unparalleled success. And it did feel like a time when nature was given a chance to surge forward.

Steve Backshall6:54

And also, I certainly received an awful lot of feedback that it was a time when we began to appreciate nature as a nation, and I hope. As a population across the world,

Steve Backshall7:05

More than we ever have done before. People were savouring the birdsong in their back gardens. My sincere hope is that we can hang on to those connections because I've spent my entire life living outside, working with nature, working with animals. I know how much it can give us in terms of well-being. It is a potential panacea for so many of our ills. And people have been discovering that. They've been really feeling it through lockdown. And I hope that we don't lose it now.

Presenter7:34

Now I know, Steve, you haven't had a very quiet lockdown yourself. You're a dad to twins who were born in January, and your eldest son's almost two, I think. Are they of an age where you can start to introduce them to the natural world?

Steve Backshall7:46

It has been a wild, wailing lockdown for me, that's for sure. You know, so many of my friends have been talking about the fact that during lockdown, they've read all these books, you know, written their magnum opus, whereas I've basically been changing nappies. But Logan, my oldest, who is two very soon, he really has switched on to nature and wildlife. And seeing the joy on his face when he gets to feed the cynets that have nested on the edge of our garden and gets to see the ducklings coming in along the river and gets to feed them. You know, his favorite phrase in the world is dragonfly lava, dragonfly lava, because we went out and we caught a bunch and we put them into a tank and we saw them sort of like growing and we've seen them emerging alongside the river. And he has massively connected with nature.

Steve Backshall8:31

It's time to go to the music, Steve. What are we going to hear next and why have you chosen this one? So my second disc is all about family. I'm very lucky in that I grew up on the edge of Woodlands and the Surrey Heaths and my parents are both massively into the outdoors and they very much led the way for myself and my sister. And I have incredibly fond memories of sitting around the bonfire with my parents and particularly my dad playing the guitar and singing songs. And he's a big, hefty, rugby playing guy. He has massive fingers and he was terrible at playing the guitar, but he has a surprisingly soft and kind of beautiful voice. You just wouldn't imagine you'd hear that voice coming out of my dad. And he used to sing lots of old folky songs. So things like Peace Paul and Mary, Ralph Mattel, John Denver and Cat Stevens.

Speaker 49:22

I listen to the wind, to the wind of my soul.

Speaker 49:31

Where I'll end up well I think, only God really knows.

Speaker 49:39

I've set upon the setting sun

Speaker 49:44

But never near for never

Speaker 49:48

I never wanted water once

Speaker 49:52

Uh

Presenter9:52

But never know.

Speaker 49:53

May heaven

Presenter9:54

Never

Presenter9:56

The Wind, sung there by Cat Stevens, but also by your dad, Steve Baxchell. So let's go back there to the beginning then. That sense of adventure that has been with you since an early age. Did it come from your parents?

Steve Backshall10:09

It did, yeah. My mum and dad have always been great travellers. They've always been incredibly adventurous people. My dad worked for British Airways for 43 years. My mum also worked for them. And that gave us the ability to travel. So despite the fact that we weren't exactly loaded, we got to go on safari in Africa and to South America and India as youngsters and to see an awful lot of the world's most exotic side. But once we got to these places, you know, we didn't go and stay in fancy hotels. We either camped out or we, you know, found ourselves cheap lodging and actually really, really lived the places that we went to.

Steve Backshall10:46

And that was really, really, I think, transformational and certainly had a massive role to play in how I've ended up living my life. But also, they were adventurous in their life choices as well. So when I was about four, my mum and dad pulled into a small farm nearby where we lived because they were there to buy some manure for the roses and came away having swapped their two up, two down for a 12-year lease on this small holding farm. It was a massive, massive gamble for them, but it transformed our childhood into something very, very special.

Presenter11:22

You were living on this small holding, so I'm assuming surrounded by a certain amount of nature, how many animals?

Steve Backshall11:28

We were filled with mostly rescue animals. It was more like a guest sort of self-sufficiency, you know, like the good life kind of idea. Okay. But we had an asthmatic donkey called Barney Rubbles who could never get all the way through a bray without collapsing in asthmatic coughs. We had two psychotic guard dog geese called Victoria and Albert. There was a little duckling called Twit who would follow my mum around including sitting in the washing up bowl while she did the washing up and the amazing experience of having goats and my mum actually helping with a breech birth while my dad sat with the self-sufficiency manual next to her open at the page of breech births and my mum elbow deep inside this goat trying to get her to have a successful kid. And us charging around outside like this was totally normal while my mum must have been having a fit. Think we'd better have

Presenter12:20

Have a break for the music, Steve. It's time for disc number three. What are we going to hear?

Steve Backshall12:24

I was in my early 20s and I tried to walk across New Guinea, the western half, the Indonesian half, on my own. I failed catastrophically. It was a travesty of an expedition from start to finish. I was frightened. I was lonely. I made endless bad decisions. When I failed to walk across the island, I tried to walk the length of its longest river and I failed at that too.

Steve Backshall12:49

And my one bit of company was my Walkman and the cassette that I had inside it, which was the greatest album ever made, The Bends, by Radiohead. And I could choose any single song from that album, but I've gone for this one, Fake Plastic Trees.

Speaker 413:08

She lives with a broken mind

Speaker 413:15

Crackpot style

Speaker 413:20

Just crumbling.

Presenter13:38

Radiohead and fake plastic trees. So, Steve Baxchell, you'd already caught the travel bug growing up, but what were your plans at that age, as a young man?

Steve Backshall13:47

Well, I think at the time I was mostly focused on writing. I thought that writing was going to be my future. I'd studied English at university. I found writing quite easy and it seemed like a relatively natural way for me to go. But I wasn't really connecting with my big love, which was wildlife. And so my next thought was... how can I start to steer this towards what I really really want to be doing which is going out and working with wild animals and learning more about them in their environment and that's when I came up with an idea for a series which I went out and I made myself and sold to National Geographic and then they took me on as the the greatest job title I have ever had adventurer in residence it's preposterous isn't it I I can remember having business cards printed with Steve Baxhaw National Geographic Adventurer in Residence written on them and pretty much just going up and giving them to everybody I met in the street but I had some amazing times there you know they gave me a tremendous amount of leeway to do whatever expeditions I wanted to do they had so much trust in me and it was certainly the beginning of my career as a broadcaster in learning what it was to tell a story in televisual form because it's not the same as doing it on paper and it was a great learning experience

Presenter15:07

We will take a second for some music. This is your fourth disc today. Why have you chosen it?

Steve Backshall15:12

I spend a lot of time on my own. I spend a lot of time in my own head. And I've become quite good at finding ways of manipulating my own mood. So I know that if I'm feeling a little bit down, then I can

Steve Backshall15:25

Take myself out for a bike ride in the driving rain, or get up early to see a sunrise, or use music. I find music incredibly powerful as a way of turning my mood the way that I would like it to go, particularly if I'm feeling lonely, or sad, or down. I can listen to certain tracks and I can make that just go away. And this is the track that, you know, for decades now, I've used for that exact purpose. This is Finley Quay, and Even After All.

Speaker 415:55

Even after all

Speaker 416:01

The murdering

Speaker 416:06

Even after all

Speaker 416:11

You're suffering so

Speaker 416:16

You know I love you so

Speaker 416:20

You know I love you so and so.

Presenter16:22

Love so and

Speaker 416:27

Even after

Presenter16:28

Finlay K even after all.

Presenter16:32

So Steve Bagshaw, one of your big T V hits is Deadly Sixty, and that's been shown in more than one hundred and fifty countries. It's aimed at children. Why do you think it's been so successful?

Steve Backshall16:43

When I came up with the original idea that led to Deadly, I was very, very calculating about what I wanted it to achieve. And that was a universality of appeal. I wanted it to be watched by young people who have no idea that they even like wildlife. And to do that, I use the stuff that everybody is interested in. Love it or hate it. You start talking about sharks and snakes and spiders and scorpions and the most venomous this and the most poisonous that, the most toxic this, and people pay attention. And the idea was always to kind of snag into as many people as possible and switch them on to wildlife. Now, the trick of the series has always been that it's not about animals being dangerous to us as human beings. Far from it. It's all about how animals are deadly in their world. So yes, we can draw them in with bull sharks and tiger sharks, but we end up talking about dragonflies and kestrels.

Steve Backshall17:39

And it worked, it clicked. And like you say, it's gone to well over one hundred and fifty countries around the world and it's been going for thirteen years now. It's taken us to, I don't know, thirty, maybe forty countries and is still going strong.

Presenter17:52

Now it's probably easier to name a dangerous animal that you haven't encountered on camera than to run through the entire list here to date. We simply haven't got time, but I mean just an outline. Crocodiles, polar bears, venomous snakes, sharks, and often while also dangling from a rope or whitewater rafting in a bid to find the animal in question. Were you always physically brave? Were you the kid doing the biggest wheelies and climbing the tallest trees at school?

Steve Backshall18:16

Yeah, I guess I probably was. I think that though, after a little while, once you start working with animals, you kind of realize that there are certain limits and there are certain rules, and that experience and confidence are much, much more important than bravado. Certainly, when you're working with things like sharks and crocodiles, you just have to make the right calls because in certain situations they can be absolutely safe, and in certain situations, they're not. And it's knowing how to tell the difference.

Presenter18:50

But your heart must be pumping when you're in the middle of that moment, when you're face to face with such powerful animals. What does it

Steve Backshall18:59

I think the heart pumping is a really important distinction to make because if your heart's pumping, then you probably shouldn't be in that situation. You need to be calm, you need to be relaxed. It's an old cliché that animals can sense fear. Well, they absolutely can. If you're working with big sharks, big crocodiles, big cats, you have to have confidence, you have to have calm. And if not, then you really must not be in that close encounter situation.

Presenter19:30

It's time for your next disc, Steve. What are we going to hear and why?

Steve Backshall19:34

The most perfect day of my life, here I am, massive cliché, was my wedding day and it came three weeks after my wife Helen won gold at the Rio Olympics. She's Cornish, so we got married on a clifftop above Prussia Cove, looking down on St Michael's Mount. There was no stress because, you know, she just won the Olympics, so she was...

Steve Backshall20:00

There was nothing that could stress her out. And we had everybody that we loved in one big tent on a perfect blue sky day. A kestrel hovered over our heads as we said our vows. And then, at about half, four, five o'clock in the morning, as the sun was just coming up and the light was illuminating the sky behind St. Michael's Mount, we sat round a bonfire. And my dear friends, Rachel and Ash took up a guitar and started singing and sung this song.

Presenter20:00

Dip.

Speaker 320:00

Elliot.

Presenter20:00

Yeah.

Speaker 320:31

When I wake up, oh I know I'm gonna be I'm gonna be the one who wakes up next to you.

Speaker 320:42

When I go out, I don't wanna know who I'm gonna be. I'm gonna be the one who goes along with you.

Speaker 320:53

If I get drunk

Speaker 320:55

Yeah, I know I'm gonna be, I'm gonna be the one who gets strong.

Presenter21:00

Next to you.

Presenter21:02

Five Hundred Miles, sung by your friends Steve Baxchall, Rachel Hornt and Ash Cutler. And as you said, your wife Helen, still in the afterglow of her experience at the Olympics. Tell us a bit about the medals that she won there.

Steve Backshall21:16

She is the first female British rower to defend her title. She won gold at London Twelve with her wonderful partner Heather Stanning, and then they won again in Rio in the the women's pair.

Presenter21:31

Earlier this year, Steve, we saw you on T V with your expedition series, and that saw you go on ten different expeditions around the globe into uncharted territory. It must have taken a huge amount of preparation.

Steve Backshall21:42

It was over 20 years. Some of the expeditions were ones that I had in my little black book that I've been preparing since the 1990s, since I got started on expeditions. I was able to work with my partner in crime, Wendy Dark, who was also the person that I got Deadly 60 started with and became the first female head of the BBC Natural History Unit. And then we set up this project together to do 10 expeditions, all of them world firsts, in the course of a year.

Steve Backshall22:12

It was massive. It coincided with me becoming a father for the first time. I was away for months upon end, often without any communication with back home. It was a revelationary, spectacular and very, very emotional year.

Presenter22:27

Now there was one particular episode that I know you'll never forget. You were kayaking down rapids in Bhutan and you almost didn't make it out. Tell me about that day.

Steve Backshall22:37

We were making the first descent of a river in the Himalayas in Bhutan and we came to the end of one day. We'd been forced into a tight gorge with rock walls that were several hundred meters high on both sides. And normally we would wreck each rapid before we ran it, but at this particular one we just couldn't. You couldn't see what was ahead. And we took the unprecedented step of just going for it and running it. And that just was retrospectively a really, really bad call. I dropped down into this kind of gullet of churning white water at the bottom of a small water fault hall. And I just got it wrong. I didn't put enough forward momentum in and it sucked me back in. And then I was in big trouble. I was held in the rapid for about four and a half minutes. And this is glacial meltwater. It's not much above freezing. And the big difference to this and any other close calls I've had in the past is just the amount of time that it took. You know, four and a half minutes is enough time to think and enough time to process what's happening to you and realize I haven't got enough strength to get out of this myself. This wave has got me. It's holding me. It's not going to spit me out. And then to think what that meant. You know, I was drowning. This was how it was going to end. Enough time to process that I wouldn't get to see Logan grow up, that I was never going to see Helen again. I mean, it sounds so melodramatic saying it now, but it certainly wasn't at the time in that dark gully in the middle of the Himalayas.

Steve Backshall24:09

And then my shining light, Sal Montgomery, my dear, dear friend and our safety kayaker, somehow got back upstream against the rapids, got a safety line out and threw it to me and dragged me out. Battered and bruised, I survived. And it's a really rare thing. You know, we may say day and day, oh, you're a lifesaver. Someone gives you a cup of tea or a chocolate hobnob. But to say it and really mean it, that's something pretty special. And I know that everything else that happens in the whole of the rest of my life is thanks to Sal. And there are very few weeks go by that I don't just send her a little message and just say, thanks, Sal.

Presenter24:48

You were incredibly emotional on camera afterwards, but interestingly you described that day as the best day of my life, even though it was almost the last.

Steve Backshall24:57

There's something very liberating about getting a sense of being close to death because it kind of gives you such a greater appreciation of all you have to live for. The sense of gratitude, of friendship, of just how much I owed to these people who were part of my team was massive, was overwhelming. And yeah, I will always see that as being one of those big turning points in my life when everything's changed.

Presenter25:29

And what happened afterwards it changed how.

Steve Backshall25:32

I had a much greater appreciation of what I had and what I had to lose and what was really important. And increasingly, that is fatherhood, that is having the opportunity to see my babies grow up. And I think I've always, up until that moment, really been a bit of a searcher, you know, being looking for, trying to figure out what life's all about and what life's for. And I'd sort of thundered around the planet, desperately doing all these crazy things in an attempt to find out what I was put here for. And then found it in something as simple as becoming a dad. And it was such an emotional moment.

Presenter26:12

It's time to hear some more music, Steve. This is disc number six. What are we going to hear and why?

Steve Backshall26:16

In my tent the night after my close call in Bhutan, I sat down on my own with a bottle of scotch and I listened to some of my favourite but most poignant tunes and this one is definitely the most melancholy. Uh

Speaker 426:33

This is Alaska

Steve Backshall26:37

Uh

Speaker 426:37

I hate to feel the love between us now

Speaker 426:43

But it's over.

Speaker 426:46

Just do this and then I'll go You gave me mortally fold More than you ever know

Presenter27:05

Jeff Buckley and The Last Goodbye. Steve Bachel, you've traveled the world with so many experts in the pursuit of wildlife and of exploration, often in extremely inhospitable places. What have you learned during that time about human endurance?

Steve Backshall27:21

Well, one of your former castaways, Joe Simpson, famously said that when you think you're done, you're only fifty percent of the way. And he would know.

Steve Backshall27:32

I think that what I've learnt is that we have depths that we can plumb when we have to, that can drag us out of the most cataclysmic situations. The human body is an extraordinary thing, and the human mind is even more potent a tool.

Steve Backshall27:49

And if you can learn how to train it, then you can

Steve Backshall27:56

Genuinely conquer fear, you can conquer stress, you can achieve things that you may not actually be physically capable of.

Steve Backshall28:03

And I guess I've actually experienced that myself, you know, and I don't consider myself to be a particularly hardcore endurance athlete, but there have been times when I've pushed myself so far beyond what I've thought I was capable of doing or achieving, and it's all down to the little grey cells.

Presenter28:23

Time for some more music. This is your seventh today. What are we going to hear?

Steve Backshall28:27

You wouldn't know it, but I am actually, particularly when it comes to Helen, a bit of an old romantic. And when we started dating, I was probably the most sickeningly romantic human being on the planet. I would like to warn many of your listeners now that they may need to get a sick bag out before I tell this next story, but

Steve Backshall28:46

We were coming up to our first period of time that we were going to be spending apart. So, she was going out to row in the World Championships. I was heading back out to New Guinea to redo with considerably more success the expedition that I failed at in the 1990s. So, we're going to be apart for about six weeks. And I knew I wouldn't have much communication with back home, so I left her a treasure trail around the house so that she would find every other day a little message, a little poem, maybe a card, a box of chocolates, or something that would just remind her that I was there.

Steve Backshall29:20

And one of those things was an iPod with some headphones and just one song on it. And it was this. Retch 32, six words.

Speaker 429:35

Wrong notes, but the melody's so clear.

Speaker 429:39

When I'm lost, I'm still close to gold, cause I found my treasure in you. And that's priceless minded.

Speaker 429:50

Let me count my blessings One life, two children, free time, four dreaming, five senses, six words I found

Presenter30:01

Wretched three two and six words. Steve Baxhall, I'm about to cast you away then to a solitary life on your desert island. What sort of island are you hoping for?

Steve Backshall30:11

One with a nice beach, with a good source of fresh water and lots of coconuts.

Presenter30:17

Now obviously your survival skills are pretty good. What do you think the biggest challenge that you will be facing is on the island?

Steve Backshall30:24

Anyone that that's listened to this will know it's going to be missing Helen and missing the twins and Logan. Everything else I think I'll be able to deal with, but that bit's going to be tricky.

Presenter30:35

What do you learn about yourself when you are isolated?

Steve Backshall30:39

You have to be disciplined. You have to have a plan. You have to check yourself regularly. If not, then you can, you know, end up talking to a volleyball called Wilson and going a little bit loopy-loo. The people that deal with things best are the ones that make sure that they've thought it through beforehand.

Presenter31:01

You once wrote that my defining characteristic is overenthusiasm. But of course, as you know, some challenges they're about acceptance, aren't they? Coming to terms with the way that something is, even though we find that very hard. How do you deal with those kind of problems?

Steve Backshall31:16

Usually, with my enthusiasm, it's both my biggest curse and my biggest blessing. I think anyone that's known me for a long time.

Presenter31:21

Yeah.

Steve Backshall31:23

will take the Mickey out of me relentlessly for the fact that every single thing I do is the best ever. It's not an affectation. That is how I genuinely feel at that moment in time. And that ability to kind of reset myself and find something good and positive in every sunrise and every sunset has done big things for me.

Presenter31:45

It's time for your last disc today, Steve. What are we going to hear and why have you chosen it?

Steve Backshall31:49

So this comes from the first night that Helen and I spent in our first house together.

Steve Backshall31:56

It was completely bare of furniture. There was nothing, not even a sofa. We were going to be sleeping on camp mattresses that night. But myself and Helen and our little boy Logan put on some music and he was chuckling away. His eyes were just lit up. And it was the most content I have ever been in my life, jiving along to this life by vampire weekend.

Speaker 432:21

Baby, I know pain is as natural as the rain I just thought it didn't rain in California

Speaker 432:32

Baby, I know love.

Speaker 432:34

Is it what I thought it was? Cause I never know love like this before. Oh yeah

Speaker 432:49

I'm no dreams, ten

Presenter32:52

This Life by Vampire Weekend. So, Steve Bachel, it's time to embark upon your island adventure. I'm going to give you the books to take with you. You'll have the complete works of Shakespeare and the Bible. Which other book would you like to take?

Steve Backshall33:05

I'm going to go with A Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, because it has so much magic, so much mystery, and it's probably the book that I can reread most over and over again and still find new wonder in.

Presenter33:21

You can also choose a luxury item what would make life on your island more bearable for you.

Steve Backshall33:27

So I've always been a little bit disappointed that I never learnt how to play a musical instrument. Uh so I'm gonna take a guitar. I will probably be just as bad as my dad. So when that happens and when I'm rubbish, I can smash it up, use it for firewood and use the strings to catch fish.

Presenter33:42

Well, ever practical, I mean, perfect. It's yours.

Presenter33:45

Finally, if you could only save one of these eight discs, which would it be?

Steve Backshall33:50

No doubt, for the magical moment it has to be my friends Rach and Ash singing 500 Miles.

Presenter33:56

Steve Baxchell, thank you so much for letting us hear your Desert Island discs. It's been such a pleasure.

Presenter34:16

Hello, I really hope you enjoyed that interview with Steve Baxhaw. I'm rather hoping he manages to learn to play the guitar instead of ending up using it for firewood.

Presenter34:24

We've cast many explorers and naturalists away to our island, including the climber Joe Simpson. You can find his programme in our archive and if you search through BBC Sounds. Next time, my guest will be Maria Balshaw, the Director of the Tate Art Museums and Galleries. I do hope you'll join us.

Speaker 434:54

From the one village behind the mountain. Imagine you're living a very different life on the other side of the world. You feel I cannot do anything. You live silently in the shadows. Just stay home, bring children, make food. And then someone takes your child, disappears into the night with your little girl. And you can't stay silent any longer. And you'll do whatever it takes. Travel thousands of miles across the globe to find your missing daughter. This is my child. I look after this child like tigers. Just go everywhere.

Speaker 435:32

Join me, Sue Mitchell, for this gripping new BBC Radio 4 podcast series. Subscribe to Girl Taken on BBC Sounds.