George McGavin

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.

Presenter0:44

My castaway this week is the entomologist, explorer, and broadcaster George McGavin. A naturalist for over 40 years, he's enjoyed a lifetime of adventures that are the stuff of childhood dreams. He's lodged up a tree with Gibbons in Thailand, discovered new species in the rainforests of Borneo, and observed the nocturnal jaunts of Chilean vampire bats. Yet, unlike others in his line of work, he is equally happy on expeditions that, rather than taking him away, take him within. He spent a year exploring the mysteries contained in a single English oak tree, created a mock house full of decomposing rubbish at Edinburgh to study the cosmos of bacterial life. He's made it his life's work to uncover the mysteries of the largely uncatalogued animals that make up an amazing 77% of life on Earth, invertebrates. He says, Everyone wanders around looking for the blackbirds and owls, but the interesting stuff is the things you can barely see. If I had a load of money, I would buy a hand lens for every child under the age of 10 so they could look at insects, bark, and flowers. George McGavin, welcome to Desert Island Discs. Thank you very much.

Presenter1:53

So, George, you do sweat the small stuff. How would you make the case for creepy crawleys to budding naturalists who have yet to be convinced of their charms?

Presenter2:02

If you want to find out about the natural world, looking at insects and other small creatures is definitely the way to go. We don't know anything about them at all. We've only described about a million. There are probably eight million insects alone undescribed. There are twenty thousand species of bees on earth. I mean, everybody knows about the honey bee, but there are thousands of solitary bees and other bumblebees and other things that pollinate the majority of the world's flowering plants. And without them, we would have no fruit, no nuts, no seeds. We would lose

Presenter2:38

A large amount of our food. We'd be reduced to eating grasses and stuff. So, the fact that we have a rich diversity of species and food on earth is largely due to bees. So, that's just one organism, but there are many, many other insects that are incredibly useful. And, of course, they are the food of the world. Most higher animals eat insects. I mean, a blue-tit chick will eat thousands of insects in its life. A bat, a single bat, a tiny bat flying in the evening may eat 10,000 small flies and moths. The ecosystem would simply collapse, simply collapse, like a pack of cards. And that's why we have to sweat the small stuff. If we don't sweat the small stuff, the big stuff's going to come tumbling down.

Presenter3:28

So George, the beauty of your approach is that of course you can make discoveries everywhere, but you know does it does it mean that you're always on? If you're always searching for an intriguing specimen or one might pop up anywhere? Yeah, I'm always on, basically, yes. I'm switched on. I'm like a Spaniel, basically, you know, and they don't have off switches. I read an early school report of yours. A great quote from it. George needs to concentrate more. A fly going past would distract him. How prescient. I remember that. I think it was in class five, actually, I got that one. And of course, absolutely. And I continue to be distracted by flies going past. And with very good reason.

Presenter4:08

Let's dive into the music then. Disc number one. What are we going to hear and why have you chosen it today? Disc number one is Rain Over Me by The Who. The mid-60s was a time when I was at school and very busy and even if I'd wanted to be a mod or a rocker, it simply wouldn't have been allowed. I just think the Who are one of the most amazing groups and I've picked it because I want to hear it if I'm on this island for any degree of time, any length of time, I want to have things that I can hear over and over again.

Presenter4:44

We love

Presenter4:46

And make it rain in!

Presenter4:50

The way the beach gets kissed by the sea

Presenter4:57

Only love can make it ring in like the sweat of love

Presenter5:05

Laying in the field

Presenter5:14

Love reign o'er me, the who.

Presenter5:18

So, George McGavin, you were born in Glasgow and grew up in Edinburgh. Your parents were both artists. Was it a creative household then?

Presenter5:26

My parents were oil painters and watercolorists and they did sculpture and stained glass. So yes, it was it was extremely arty. Uh not bohemian though, I have to say. Okay, so explain that distinction for me. Yeah, yeah, you can throw out uh any sort of caftans and wild parties and stuff. No, it was it was a pretty sort of standard middle class uh

George McGavin5:37

Okay, so I

George McGavin5:43

Yeah.

Presenter5:49

A thing. How would you describe your relationship with your parents?

Presenter5:54

difficult. My father was very authoritarian to me and um he used the strap or the tows as it was called, which is a hideous implement which

Presenter6:07

Was used on occasions on me particularly, but only on me. Only on you and that. Only on me. And I did rankle, it really did.

George McGavin6:13

Yeah.

Presenter6:18

I don't know, of course, because he isn't around anymore, but um.

Presenter6:23

I think he was embarrassed about my stammer and he would make allusions to it on occasions. I remember being about 10 and what I wanted for Christmas was a Timex watch, because there were adverts on TV, ticket, ticket, Timex, ticket, ticket, Timex. And I wanted one. And I asked my father, I said, can I have a watch?

George McGavin6:40

And take

Presenter6:46

And he looked at me and said, George, you can have a watch when you can speak properly.

Presenter6:53

And I knew, I just knew that I would never have a watch because I couldn't imagine a time when I could speak properly. And even to this day, I could go out tomorrow and buy an Omega or a Rolex or any expensive watch I chose to buy if I wanted to. But deep down, deep down inside me, my ten-year-old heart says, Well, you shouldn't really have that, George, because you can't speak properly.

George McGavin6:53

And

Presenter7:25

So that that's still with you? That's still with me, yeah, yeah. After after all these years. So you had this very difficult relationship with your your dad. What about your mum? What was her attitude?

George McGavin7:25

So

Presenter7:35

I

Presenter7:36

Overshadowed by my father, I think.

Presenter7:40

I wish I'd got to know them a little bit more perhaps. Perhaps it was me, I don't know. But John, my my older brother, four years older than me, and Anne, who is my twin, I I don't think they had the same experience that that I did. You know, so your your experience of what happens to you is is very individual.

George McGavin7:40

In what way?

Speaker 37:41

Uh

George McGavin7:41

I

Presenter8:06

Okay, George, let's take a moment for some more music. This is disc number two. Tell us about this track. What are we going to hear?

Presenter8:13

Well, this is the Dark Island. This is a theme, an air played on the Great Pipes, which was the theme to a 1962 TV drama series for kids of the same name. And it's a haunting, haunting air. And I watched the program, I think it was on every week or something. And I'm hoping that if I get anybody trying to invade the island, I can play the pipes and they will retreat.

Presenter9:17

The Dark Island, the Pipes and Drums of the Black Watch. So, George McGavin, there was so little understanding of speech disorders in those days, and the mistaken assumption of many people was that they could be overcome somehow if just sufficient effort was put in by the person suffering. Was that your parents' attitude? I don't really know. I mean, I know that it got to such a point when I was about 14 that it was virtually not worth speaking. And in fact, for about a year, I was a self-imposed mute. So I would, you know, if I'd be out in Edinburgh, I would always have a pad of paper and a pen. So if anybody asked me something that I really had to answer or had to interact, I would write it down on a piece of paper. But eventually, you know, something had to be done, and I was dispatched to the Edinburgh School of Speech, which I attended every week for about a year, I think. What help were you offered there?

George McGavin9:30

That's right, come on, snap out of it.

George McGavin9:33

That's a good idea.

George McGavin9:34

By the person.

Presenter10:19

One of the things I had to do at the Edinburgh School of Speech, which was utterly terrifying, was the phone, the telephone. I could not use the telephone, not in a million years. I mean, it was just one it was an instrument of utter torture. I might answer it, but I wouldn't say anything at home. It was on my own. So every Tuesday, I had to ring Waverley Station in Edinburgh, and I had to inquire about the train to Leeds. And I had to say, Yes, can I ask up a train to Leeds, please? And where does it stop? And is it a boofy car? And how much is the fare, first class and second class?

Speaker 310:28

Uh

Presenter10:54

Week six, I was getting the hang of this, you know, it was g getting a bit easier, you know. So I was I was on the phone and the speech therapist was there beside me and I was going, Hello, um, could I inquire about the train to Leeds? And this voice came down the phone saying, Have you not bloody gone yet?

George McGavin10:58

I was g

Presenter11:10

And I I just I froze like every every muscle just went into spasm and and I my face went white and the speech server said, What's wrong? What's wrong? And I I

Presenter11:23

I mean, you're laughing about it now, but it must have been so traumatic at the time. Utterly traumatic. Utterly traumatic.

George McGavin11:24

Some

George McGavin11:27

Actually,

Presenter11:29

Despite everything that you were dealing with, apparently you were always a bit of a show off.

Presenter11:34

Yes, I know everybody thinks, oh, he's got stamina, he'll be shy retiring, he'll be introverted. Well, no, not really. Okay. If I hadn't had a stammer, I would probably have been an actor, which would have meant I'd have been out of work for 80% of my adult life. Because I do like an audience, and my cousin, Leslie, said to me, what are you going to miss if you're on this island? And I said, oh, I don't know. And she said, I know what you're going to miss. An audience.

Presenter12:03

And she's probably right.

Presenter12:05

It's time for some more music. Disc number three. What have you chosen?

Presenter12:09

Well, I've chosen Edward Elgar's cello concerto played by Jacqueline Dupray because it is just so hauntingly beautiful. I love all of Elgar's stuff and I can see me having this on ad nauseam.

Presenter13:27

Edward Elgar's cello concerto in E minor Jacqueline Dupre with the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sir John Barbaroli.

Presenter13:36

So George, you're about eight or nine when you really started to develop an interest in the natural world. Can you remember the trigger?

Presenter13:43

I remember an Attenborough programme, and I've tried to find it again, but I can't find it. It was a a sequence about a garden spider and the male spider was just about to mate, and it was just captivating. And his he was saying,

Presenter13:59

And the male spider charges his pulps with sperm.

Speaker 314:02

That's

Presenter14:03

and advances towards the female. And I was just oh my goodness Not only was it about sex, which I only vaguely knew about, but spiders were doing it.

Presenter14:16

I thought, whoa, this is this is cool, yeah.

Presenter14:20

So you were hooked. How did you explore your interest? Where where would we have found you?

Presenter14:24

Well, you know, on school holidays, the family would pack up and we'd head off to the west coast to Kintyre or Arran or sometimes on the east coast. And that's pretty much how I spent my holidays. One of the most beautiful things to do is just to get down, lie on a rock and just stare into a rock pool or just lie on a piece of grass, head down, hand lens if you have one, and just part the grass and just look at everything that's going on in there. It's a different world, but it's our world. Well, your passion stayed with you and you enrolled at the University of Edinburgh to read zoology and the seeds of your future career were planted there when you went on a field trip to the west coast of Scotland. What happened?

Presenter15:13

We had a week away, it was absolutely glorious and all my classmates, and I mean all of them, were looking for badges, owls, eagles, anything with a spine, anything with feathers or fur and of course it's not that easy to find them. Where at our feet were literally hundreds of thousands of ants doing amazing things and I just thought why are you wasting your time, you know, hanging about waiting for eagles to come past when there are all these things at your feet?

George McGavin15:25

Cause

Presenter15:41

I know that your relationship with your parents didn't improve and eventually you felt you could no longer allow them to be in your life. You cut yourself off from them. Was it freeing to step away on that? I was 40 and I remember this distinctly because it was the last time I spoke to either of my parents and I was on this one of these awkward calls home. You know, how are things just fine? How are you fine? And of course I was stammering because I always stammered much worse with my father than everybody else. And he went.

George McGavin15:44

You felt you

George McGavin15:51

Step away.

Presenter16:12

You know, George, you're really going to have to do something about that stammer. You're never going to get anywhere unless you do something about that stammer.

Presenter16:20

And

Presenter16:21

I hung up. I I didn't say anything.

Presenter16:24

I just put the phone down, because I in my head I was going, I've got a job at Oxford University, I've written three books, I have a beautiful wife, I have a stepchild, I have a daughter of my own, I am doing very well, thank you. How dare you How dare you say that?

Presenter16:41

And I knew that I would never speak to him again.

Presenter16:45

And it was liberating.

Presenter16:47

Yes, it was freeing.

Presenter16:50

Let's take a break for some music, George. Yeah, I need a break. I'm exhausted. What are we going to hear next?

George McGavin16:51

To the

George McGavin16:52

Exhausted.

Presenter16:55

Well this singer I I've only I only heard it for the first time about two years ago, but I just went, Oh my goodness, she's got a gorgeous voice

Presenter17:06

And this track.

Presenter17:08

I think I would play in the evening.

Presenter17:11

And all triumphant as each night is more

Presenter17:24

I'm from ancient King

Presenter17:29

The tempest sings through every tree and feel the

Presenter17:42

Night Lament by Kate Rusby. So, George McGavin, you moved to London after you graduated and you were offered a PhD position at the Natural History Museum. How did you get it?

Presenter17:54

Very strange. I was walking down Bucclew Place in Edinburgh and I walked past the Edinburgh Careers office, you know, University of Edinburgh office and I went in and I said, hello, I'm George McGavin. He said, hang on a minute, I'm on the phone. He said, what do you do again? I said, I'm a zoologist. He says, oh, okay, hang on. Yes, yes, I have a candidate right here. Yes. Yeah, on the train. Yes, he can come down on the train. He's going, yes, train, train tonight. Yeah, get on the train. I'm going, what the hell are you talking about? Yeah, he was on the phone to the NHM in Museum, the Natural History Museum, who were offering studentships. And I was going to be interviewed the next day for two of them on the strength of absolutely nothing, the fact that this guy just happened to walk in when he was on the phone to them. And I was sent, dispatched off on the train. First time I'd ever been on the train all the way to London.

George McGavin18:22

Yes

Presenter18:50

Just a different world. Just a different world.

Presenter18:53

You met your wife Lois a few years later when you were working for Imperial College as a research assistant based at Silwood Park and you proposed just two weeks after you met? Oh yeah, I just knew. You know, one of those things, I mean, when you meet the right person, oh, that's it. Bing! And after a couple of weeks, I said, you know, might you consider, you know, possibly marrying me? And she went, I don't know, I don't know. I'll think about it, sort of thing. And then five years later, I'm still going, don't marry me, for goodness sake. Look, look, I said, look, if you marry me, I will bring you a cup of tea in bed for the rest of your life.

Presenter19:29

And she paused and said

Presenter19:31

Okay.

Presenter19:32

Why didn't you say earlier? And that that was it?

Presenter19:35

And I have and t to be fair to myself I have kept my promise, except if I'm away, of course.

Presenter19:42

Ever since.

Presenter19:44

George, in 1984 you got what you called your first dream job as assistant curator of entomology at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History. So it was everything your heart desired. Why? Biology, finding out about the natural world, working out how it works, that was really the only thing I wanted to do. You were in charge of the collections, you could do teaching, you could do research, you could do pretty much anything you wanted to do. It was utterly glorious. And I do remember saying, and I don't believe, of course, in a God or any gods, but I do remember leaving the interview and saying to myself, you know, if I get this job, I will be a very good boy the rest of my life.

Presenter20:30

Time for your next disc. What are we going to hear and why have you chosen this one?

Presenter20:34

How a person's voice sounds to me is very important indeed. And when I proposed to my wife, she did say to me that there were three men with whom she would elope if the opportunity arose. Richard Burton was one of them, Anthony Hopkins and Attenborough. And I said, why are those three? And she said, well, it's the voice. It's the voice. It's just so wonderful. Richard Burton has one of these voices. And under Miltwood, the 54 recording with him, I would have to take to my island because you could just listen to that again and again and again.

Presenter21:15

To begin

Presenter21:17

At the beginning.

Presenter21:19

It is spring, moonless night in the small town, starless and bible black, the cobbled streets silent and the hunched, quarters and rabbits' wood limping invisible down to the slow black.

Presenter21:32

Slow

Presenter21:33

Black

Presenter21:34

Crow black fishing boat bobbing sea

Presenter21:38

The houses are blind as moles, though moles see fine tonight in the snouting velvet dingles. To begin at the beginning from Under Milkwood by Dylan Thomas, read by Richard Burton.

Presenter21:50

So, George, in 2007, after many happy years in your tenured post at Oxford, you chose to resign. Why?

Presenter21:58

I know, crazy, huh? Well, I realized I was on the way home on a Friday night and I realized that if I had a tutorial class, I would have an audience of one, two, three, or perhaps four. I sometimes did cruise ship talks, which I don't do anymore, but you might have an audience there of 400. But if you did something on television, you might get an audience of four million.

Presenter22:24

So I got home, had a beer, and I typed out my thing just saying, Dear Director, I resigned my post forthwith, bloody bloody blah handed it in the next day.

Presenter22:34

And to my eternal shame, I did not tell Lois for about six weeks. I know, I know, I know. It was how did that go down?

George McGavin22:43

How's it that?

George McGavin22:45

Plus

Presenter22:46

So you made the leap, your second dream job, television, and it offered you the opportunity to travel to remote areas of the world, from volcanoes to rainforests. You know, you'd made your first trip to the rainforest in Papua New Guinea, I think, when you were in your 20s. Yes, I was 28 or so, and I got it completely wrong. All the things you can do wrong, I did. I was very excited, like Darwin or Wallace on their first trip to the rainforest. And I just parked the Jeep up somewhere and I thought, right, I'll just walk in a straight line for an hour and then I'll come back and I'll make a little mark with my knife in the edge of trees on the right-hand side and I'll turn around, I can follow them back out, and that was it. So off I went for an hour, finding stuff. Oh my god, look at that, look at that, look at that, oh god, what's this? Oh, and eventually after an hour, I turned around to come back, couldn't find any mark on any tree, wandered about in the circle, completely lost for about five hours. And it was becoming dark and there were things going

George McGavin23:01

Uh

George McGavin23:26

Look at that. Look at that.

George McGavin23:38

Come on.

Presenter23:41

I had no food with me, I didn't take water, I hadn't told anybody where I was going, we had no cellphones in those days, no GPS. Disaster, total disaster.

Presenter23:52

Luckily, you live to tell the tale, and no matter how many trips you've made since, the thrill of discovery must never leave you. Can you describe what one of those moments is like?

Presenter24:03

One of the things that you will always get on these trips is diarrhea. Eventually, I mean you'll spend at least a quarter of your time on a toilet or wishing you were on a toilet. And it was on one of those days that all the crew went off to film something large and hairy. And I was in camp when a spider came down on a thread about six inches from my nose. And I looked at it and it looked at me and I said, you're a new species, aren't you? I haven't seen anything like you ever before. What was different about it? Well, it was an ant spider. So it looked so like an ant. It looked so incredibly like an ant that if it hadn't had a silk thread

George McGavin24:30

What

Presenter24:40

Coming out of its back end, I would have sworn any money I had that it was an ant. That must be just the biggest thrill.

Presenter24:48

It is exciting, it is very exciting, and I knew in that very instant when this thing was just dangling on its thread in front of my face, I was a hundred percent sure it was an undescribed species of spider.

Presenter25:02

It's time for some more music, George. Disc number six. What is it?

Presenter25:05

I love Pink Floyd and one that I heard that made a huge impact on me is Keep Talking, which has the voice of Hawking on the track.

Speaker 325:19

For millions of years, mankind lived just like the animals.

Speaker 325:29

Then something happened, which unleashed the power of our imagination. We learned the talk.

Speaker 325:37

Uh

Presenter25:37

Solid surrounding

Presenter25:42

I can't seem to think straight.

Presenter25:46

Uh

Presenter25:49

Keep Talking by Pink Floyd. So George McGavin, not all of your programmes have been in far-flung, exotic locations. Some of them haven't even been about the natural world. In 2018, you were diagnosed with a rare form of melanoma, and the following year, you made a documentary about your experience called A Year to Save My Life. Why did you want, in that situation, which must have been so stressful and such a time of uncertainty, to turn the camera on yourself? Lots of people said, oh, that's very brave of you, George. Actually, it wasn't brave. What it was, was a way of my dealing with it. Almost I was becoming an outsider. I was viewing it from the outside. And just to tease apart the science was wonderful. And at the end of making the film, and I wish we'd begun it a bit earlier, I felt at peace with it because I knew that all that could be done was being done. And I'm now two years in. I'm on these amazing drugs, which I've been on for two years. They're still working. And I'm still going.

Presenter26:59

And you are, of course, such a great advocate for appreciating the richness of the environment that surrounds us, whether it is in something that we might not see as beautiful or interesting or just something that we might walk past without realizing.

Presenter27:13

Is that an ability that anyone can learn or develop or are you born with it, do you think? Just walk slower. Walk slower. People go for a walk and they power walk past lichens and fungi and all kinds of wonderful stuff. Just okay, have a power walk, but every other walk you do, go really slowly and just look carefully at bark. Look at the moss. All you've got to do is just go slower.

Presenter27:41

No slowing down for us now though, because we've got to get two more discs in. Number seven, what are we going to hear?

Presenter27:47

Very appropriately, this is Alone, Lost, Abandoned from an opera by Puppuccini, performed by the legendary, the one and only Maria Callas. Up until I was 40, I thought opera was a complete and utter waste of time. And I don't know why I thought that, but I just thought, what are they singing about? Are they singing about their shopping list, getting their underwear washed? I don't know. It's all ridiculous. And then suddenly, like a switch was thrown. And after I was 40, I realized I understood opera. It's about the human condition. It's about love and death and hate and longing and all the things that we feel.

Presenter29:28

Alone, Lost, Abandoned, from Pacini's opera Mana Lesco, performed by Maria Callas, with the Philharmonia Orchestra, conducted by Tulio Seraphin. So, George McGavin, we live in environmentally challenging times. How optimistic are you about the future? What's coming not?

Speaker 229:45

One

Presenter29:46

I oscillate between feeling optimistic one day and then feeling completely the opposite the other day. What we've got to bear in mind is that we as a species have been around on Earth for a vanishingly short time. And if you look at the fossil history, the amount of time spent on Earth by any largish species is between 1 million and 10 million years. We're not going to be going on forever. There will come, our time will come.

Presenter30:16

We are unfortunately, in my opinion, hastening that end by our own actions, and that is the thing that we're just not addressing.

Presenter30:26

George, I know that you take comfort from the story of a microanimal called, I think, the tardigrade. Tardigrades. Tell me why do they console you when you worry about this kind of thing? The tardigrade is a wonderful little arthropod that lives in soil, in mosses, in wet areas. They are indestructible virtually. They've been sent into space. When they become dry, they form a very resistant state called a ton, which can be heated up to above 100 degrees, I think just. They can be frozen in liquid helium. And then you can put them in a droplet of rain water, and within half an hour, they have rehydrated and are wriggling about again.

Presenter31:12

If we could unlock the secrets of the tardigrade.

Presenter31:16

Wow.

Presenter31:18

It won't happen, of course, but I mean I I think when the end comes, when the end comes, when we are no longer around, which will happen, it isn't a question of if it's when, there'll be plenty of target raids around.

Presenter31:32

You've experienced a lot of discomfort on your travels. You've been cooped up in a hollowed-out tree in total darkness, been at the mercy of leeches, bitten, stung, scratched. George, I'm imagining that our desert island will hold no fear for you. The desert island will be rather nice, actually. By comparison. By comparison, it'll be rather nice. What do you think you'll miss?

George McGavin31:48

By comparison.

Presenter31:53

Well, obviously I'll miss my wife and the grandchildren, Eloise and Ambrose, Sam and Emma, because uh watching them growing up and finding excitement in the world is is an utter joy.

Presenter32:05

But, you know, I'll also miss having an audience.

Presenter32:09

Hehehehe

Presenter32:10

But before you go, we've got one more disc before we send you away to the desert island. What are we going to hear next and why have you taken it today? Despite the fact that I love a jungle, I do love a jungle. I'm drawn to Finland and Sweden and Norway, Arctic things. And there's a piece of music I heard a couple of years ago, a few years ago, by a guy from Finland called Ratu Bara. And this is a concerto for birds and orchestra. And supposing I don't find anything on this island, this track recorded near the Arctic Circle in a bog

Presenter32:49

It will just take me, transport me completely to these cool, gloriously bleak and rather wonderful habitats.

Presenter33:58

The Bog from Cantus Arcticus composed by Eino Johanni Rautavara with the Leipzig Radio Symphony Orchestra conducted by Max Pommer.

Presenter34:07

So, George McGavin, I'm going to send you away to the island. I will give you the books, the Bible.

Presenter34:13

Which I don't want, actually, if that's all right. I'll take it for other things. Okay. The Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare. You can also take one other book. What would you like?

Presenter34:25

I'm going to take The History of the World in a Hundred Objects by the wonderful Neil McGregor. Basically, it explains in a hundred objects how we came to be here, how we are, why we are. You can also have a luxury item, what you fancy. Hot sauce. Hot sauce? Hot sauce. And I'll tell you why. Yeah. I don't know what's on the island to eat, but from my expeditions, I've eaten some pretty rum things and had to on occasions. And a bit of hot sauce will make just about anything edible.

George McGavin34:43

Yeah.

Speaker 234:45

Yeah.

Presenter34:57

Absolutely, it's yours. And finally, which one track of the eight that you've shared with us today would you save from the waves if you had to?

Presenter35:06

I think it would have to be the Eldar.

Presenter35:09

George McGavin, thank you very much for letting us hear your desert island discs. Thank you very much.

Presenter35:26

I hope you enjoyed my conversation with George and I hope he manages to find an audience, possibly some receptive dolphins, somewhere on the island. Over the years we've cast away many zoologists and biologists including Desmond Morris, Professor Alistair Hardy, Dame Miriam Rothschild and Dr. Richard Dawkins. You can hear all of their programmes on the Desert Island Discs website and on BBC Sounds. Next time my guest will be the activist Malala Yousafzai. I do hope you'll join us.

George McGavin36:04

Hi, I'm Zand Van Talliken.

Speaker 236:06

And I'm Kimberly Wilson.

George McGavin36:07

And we're here to tell you about our podcast, Made of Stronger Stuff.

Speaker 236:11

I'm a psychologist and Zand is a medical doctor and we're bringing together our specialties to take a tour of the human body.

George McGavin36:18

Each week we hone in on a specific body part, from the eyes and lungs to the appendix or the vagus nerve, and we ask how we can understand it better, ourselves more, and combine the body and mind to produce positive change.

Speaker 236:32

So subscribe to Made of Stronger Stuff on BBC Sounds.