Dame Jo da Silva

Dame Jo da Silva0:01

BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts.

Presenter0:04

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. For rights reasons, the music is shorter than the original broadcast. I hope you enjoy listening.

Presenter0:43

My castaway this week is the engineer Dame Joanna De Silva. In the beginning her job was making architect dreams real. You may have set foot in one of the structures she helped to create anything from bus shelters designed by Norman Foster to Hong Kong's International Airport or the National Portrait Galleries on Dachiwing.

Presenter1:02

She might still have been realizing beautiful architectural visions if not for a trip to Tanzania in nineteen ninety four, where she worked in the refugee camps which had sprung up after the genocide in Rwanda.

Presenter1:14

She came home with a new purpose, to use engineering to improve the quality of life for the world's poorest, and a second career began, one that in her words has spanned design, disasters and development. Her humanitarian work has taken her from Sri Lanka in the wake of the tsunami to Pakistan and Haiti to help with their post-earthquake recovery. In 2007, she set up Arab International Development, a not-for-profit business focused on addressing population growth, climate change and poverty. Her pioneering work analyzing the resilience of cities to those challenges earned her the gold medal from the Institution of Structural Engineers and a Damehood in this year's honors list. She says, I don't feel brave. I feel lucky that I chose a career which has given me the skills that are really useful and can help save lives and reduce suffering.

Presenter2:05

Joe DeSilva, welcome to Desert Island Discs.

Presenter2:08

Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here.

Presenter2:10

So, Joe, you began your career realizing the beautiful dreams of others. I wonder how much your ideas about what constitutes a beautiful structure have changed over the years.

Presenter2:21

Like many people of my vintage, we were brought up believing in high design, sort of glass and steel buildings that looked fantastic. And as my career has evolved, I've got less interested in what buildings look like, but really about the role that they play. You know, do they work as teaching environments? Do they make it easy for people to get to work? Are they hospitals that actually help people get better?

Presenter2:47

I think you once said we as engineers create the stage set in which the play happens. And that's thrilling, but it's also a huge amount of pressure. Which is it for you? Is it a thrilling possibility or a nerve wracking responsibility when you start out on a project?

Presenter3:04

Oh, it's a definitely a you know, a thrilling possibility. It is like designing the stage set on which life plays out. I remember going to the National Portrait Gallery when it was finished.

Presenter3:15

And

Presenter3:16

There was a class of school children sitting cross-legged in front of a giant portrait of Henry VIII, with the teacher telling him the story of Henry VIII and all his wives. And you could tell they were transfixed. And I knew that that portrait had sat in storage for decades because there had been nowhere to hang it. And I felt so thrilled that I had had a part to play in creating a building that had enabled it to come out of storage and was making history real for children.

Presenter3:47

And how magic to be able to go back and visit one of your projects and actually be in it while it's doing its job. Yes, it's great fun and on a very practical level it means that when I go to airports like Stanstead and Checklacock Airport I always know where to find the shops and the toilets.

Presenter4:03

Let's get going then. What have you chosen as your first disc and why are you taking it with you today?

Presenter4:09

David Bowie has really been the soundtrack to my life. My sister, who sadly died two years ago, introduced me to David Bowie when I was at school. I sneaked out of school to go and see him live at Milton Keene's Bowl on his serious Moonlight Tour. We didn't have any means to get there, so we booked a driving lesson and persuaded the instructor to drop us off.

Presenter4:32

And then later when I was living in Berlin, I got very into his early electronic music. And this is sound and vision.

Speaker 34:40

What's the colour of my room where I will live?

Dame Jo da Silva4:52

Pale blinds, drawn on days.

Dame Jo da Silva5:00

Blue Blue

Speaker 25:05

I will sit right down, waiting for the gift of sound and vision.

Presenter5:12

Sound and Vision by David Bowie. So Joe DeSilva, you were born in Washington DC where your father John was a diplomat. His father was Portuguese and his mother American, I believe. He was brought up in England though. How do you describe the cultural outlook at home? Dad was originally born in America and he came to the UK when he was eight and was educated here. And he had really become an English gentleman.

Presenter5:39

But he didn't have sort of deep English roots. And my mother, in contrast, came from an English family where there's a sort of family home up in Lancashire.

Presenter5:49

So I grew up with this mix of real Englishness, but at the same time a recognition that there was a bigger world out there.

Presenter5:58

And was it the kind of house where, you know, you talk about big ideas over dinner? Was it uh you know intellectually free and and had that broad outlook?

Presenter6:07

Yes, my father was almost fifty when I was born.

Presenter6:10

Dad was intellectual, he was always reading books, and he really encouraged us to develop a sense of responsibility, not just for ourselves but for our opinions. And there was very little tolerance for an opinion that was just based on emotion. He'd make you feel a bit stupid if you weren't thinking.

Presenter6:32

But he was very special when I was about fifteen.

Presenter6:36

I think I sort of challenged him on something.

Presenter6:38

And he just very calmly said to me, Joe, you're my third daughter.

Presenter6:42

and I know a lot about sixteen year old girls, and I know that you won't listen to me. I'm not telling you what to do, I'm giving you my advice. And then he said And my advice is you take my advice.

Presenter6:57

But of course he didn't really mind whether we took his advice or not, because he was very clear, it's your life, it's your responsibility. And we were very much encouraged to just go out and live life. Other people's parents were stopping their children smoking and drinking, and my parents said, smoke and drink whatever you want, but you have to pay for it.

Presenter7:18

Your mother, Jennifer, was your father's second wife. He was a widower with a grown-up daughter when they married. And you describe yourself and your brother and sister as his second family. So you were the middle child. Were you happy with your place in the family hierarchy? Yeah, I think I'm very much a middle child. My sister was very ill for about four years when she was a child because she had problems with her kidneys.

Presenter7:41

And

Presenter7:42

Had numerous operations and fought for her life. And I think she then.

Presenter7:48

really decided, I think, as a child that she was going to live life to the full.

Presenter7:54

And

Presenter7:55

I think that enabled me to sort of follow more quietly in her footsteps. She sort of paved the way.

Presenter8:01

And I didn't have to do that. I didn't have to be the pioneer.

Presenter8:06

Joe, it's time for your second track today. What's it gonna be and why have you chosen it?

Presenter8:11

My second record is Mozart's Clarinet Concerto in A. This music just simply reminds me of my childhood. I learnt to play the clarinet at school and loved it. It just brings back memories of being in my bedroom at home practising mum's cooking, family life, and it's the piece that my brother and I chose last year for my mum's funeral.

Presenter9:42

Mozart's Clarinet Concerto, played by Jack Brymer, with the London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Sir Colin Davis. Joe DeSilva, when you were four, the family came to the UK and you went to an old girls' boarding school in Kent. If we'd met you back then, would we have identified a budding engineer, do you think?

Presenter9:59

I loved making things. I took up dressmaking when I was about ten and made all my clothes. I go to Oxfam and get the evening dresses and chop them up and remake them into clothes. And I used to make models for my brother's train set. But I really sort of fell into engineering. Yes, I think this happened while you were studying for your A levels. I went to the the library to sort of look at all options for careers and there was a Rolodex and I started at A for accountancy and then it got B for banking, C for chemist and it wasn't until I got to E and engineering that anything sparked my interest and it said that engineering was really about making things and that civil engineering was about designing buildings and bridges and water systems and I thought right that's what I'll do. So I told my parents that's what I was going to do. And how did they react?

Presenter10:55

Well, at the time I thought that they were supportive, but after dad died, I was shown a letter by my mother.

Presenter11:02

that he had written to my head master, questioning whether it was a wise decision.

Presenter11:08

And he didn't think that engineering was an appropriate choice for a young woman. And did that shock disappoint you? How did you feel when you read it?

Presenter11:15

No, I thought it was rather lovely, actually, that he was interested and concerned, but hadn't interfered. He had

Presenter11:23

He just sort of got more information to reassure himself.

Presenter11:27

And

Presenter11:28

Then when I got into Cambridge to study engineering, he was very supportive.

Presenter11:33

And what do you think his concerns were about? Engineering is a subject which isn't taught in school.

Presenter11:41

And then it's sort of associated with sort of men in hard hats with big beer bellies and steel toe capped boots, working on building sites. I think his concerns probably

Presenter11:55

came from not really understanding what engineering was about. And I think they're concerns that perhaps parents have today when their daughters think they're going to go into a field that is male dominated. Time for disc number three. What are we going to hear next and why are you taking it with you?

Presenter12:14

All the World is Green by Tom Waits. The lyrics in this song are really mourning for a world that we've lost, where all the world is green and the environment comes first.

Dame Jo da Silva12:28

Fell into the ocean

Dame Jo da Silva12:33

You became my wife

Dame Jo da Silva12:38

Rest it all against the sea

Dame Jo da Silva12:42

Have a better life

Dame Jo da Silva12:47

You all the wild blue sky

Dame Jo da Silva12:52

Men do foolish things.

Dame Jo da Silva12:57

Zen to begin

Dame Jo da Silva13:01

Now you're in to king

Presenter13:05

All the World Is Green. Tom Waits. Joda Silver, at Cambridge, only eight per cent of the people on your engineering course were women. Later when you started working, you discovered that women were in such a minority that you faced more practical challenges. What kind of thing were they?

Presenter13:20

When you're on a building site, you have to wear steel-capped boots and a high-vi jacket. And it's the contractor's responsibility to make sure that that kind of safety equipment is there on site. But because I'm only five foot five and I've got small feet, I'd turn up and the only jacket that would be there would be sort of several sizes too big for me. And you'd have to put on a pair of wellies that were sort of two or three sizes too big. And then, of course, there was never a female toilet anywhere. And there's it, you know, we were laughing about it, but that is tough because it can kind of compromise your authority. If you're there to be the engineer and play that role and say, well, no, this isn't going to work and here's why. You don't want to look like you're drowning in somebody else's clothes, like a little girl who's sort of dressed up.

Presenter14:04

No, I think you're very right. And I think these are the subtle things about discrimination that don't surface too often. Are things changing though? Do you feel optimistic about the direction things are heading in now?

Presenter14:18

When I look at the statistics about how many women are in engineering, I get very depressed. It was about seven percent of technology and engineering graduates in my day, and in the UK it's only now about fourteen percent, which is much lower than most other countries in Europe.

Presenter14:36

But on a day to day basis, it's changed radically. Within the company I work for, we've taken diversity very seriously over recent years, and there are now several women on the main board. About fifty percent of our new graduates are women.

Presenter14:54

And so

Presenter14:55

That just changes the culture of the workplace.

Presenter14:59

It's time for some more music now, Joe DeSilva, disc number four. What have you gone for and why?

Presenter15:06

This next song is Weird Fishes of Peggy by Radiohead.

Presenter15:11

This one is for my partner Graham, who I met fifteen years ago.

Presenter15:17

He was divorced with two small children and

Presenter15:20

Overnight I became a stepmum.

Presenter15:23

We listened to Radiohead a lot and when they played at the Roundhouse in Kentish Town we had three computers going to try and get tickets and then we didn't get tickets and about three days later Graham shouts at me and says do you want to go to Iceland to see Radiohead? I said yes of course and it was the most amazing concert at the summer solstice and they played for two hours and we came out at midnight and there was a midnight sun.

Dame Jo da Silva15:50

In the deepest ocean

Dame Jo da Silva15:56

But I'm not a singer

Dame Jo da Silva16:08

The truth

Presenter16:15

Why should I stay here?

Presenter16:19

Radiohead and Weird Fishes are Peggy for your family, Joe Da Silva.

Presenter16:25

Joe DeSilver, I want to ask you about a year that you say completely changed your life. This is nineteen eighty eight, and just after you graduated, you traveled to India, where you worked at a wildlife camp set up by the conservationist Bob Wright on the edge of the Connor National Park.

Presenter16:43

Why was it so transformative?

Presenter16:45

I saw tiger cubs grow up over that year. I saw the seasons change.

Presenter16:51

And I lived with nature in a really intimate way, and that really.

Presenter16:57

It is seeded a deep love for nature, for the natural environment.

Presenter17:02

It was a light bulb moment in terms of engineering for you as well. Why was that?

Presenter17:07

Well, I realized that I had these very sort of practical skills. I'd you know, I'd read engineering at university, but I hadn't really registered how practical it was. And

Presenter17:18

There was no running water and there was certainly no hot water unless we heated it up over an open fire. And I realized that I could make a sort of solar powered shower panel with some glass sheet and some copper tubes and put it on the roof of the washroom. But what was really interesting is when I extended my house there, and it was a house that was made out of a sort of timber frame and

Presenter17:45

Mud walls, but I put sort of three or four courses of brick at the bottom.

Presenter17:50

to prevent the water getting in and prevent the rain eroding the bottom of the walls. And when I went back to the village about ten years later, I noticed that most of the buildings in the village were now doing that. When you came back to the UK, Joe, you got a job with the design and engineering firm Arab, and your first project was a bus shelter designed by the architect Norman Foster. What were your instructions? He told me what he wanted me to do, and I said, well, where do I begin?

Presenter18:18

And he said

Presenter18:20

B S five nine

Presenter18:21

Eight O, and I said, What's that?

Presenter18:24

And it was the steel design standard.

Presenter18:29

He expected me to know, and then he looked at me and he said, Oh, God, you didn't go to Cambridge, did you?

Presenter18:35

And that really was a great way to start because, you know, it knocked all the sort of stuffing out of me. And I thought, okay, you know, I may have an education, but I've got to start at square one.

Presenter18:45

It's time for some more music, Jo. What are we going to hear next and why?

Presenter18:49

So this next song is really to remind me of an amazing period of my life.

Presenter18:55

where I was living in London, designing buildings, really enjoying being in my late twenties and early thirties. Life was about work, but it was also about clubbing and climbing. And this is a song that I've danced to many times. It's Shudder, King of Snake by Underworld.

Presenter19:47

Shudder, King of Snake, by Underworld. Joda Silver, in nineteen ninety one you worked on the new International Airport in Hong Kong, and later helped redevelop parts of the Royal Geographical Society and the National Portrait Gallery, but buildings in themselves had started to lose their appeal for you. Why?

Presenter20:05

I loved designing Chetla Koch Airport. It was really technically challenging, but it was pretty remote from people.

Presenter20:12

And when I came back to the UK,

Presenter20:15

I wanted to sort of refocus my career and design buildings that really created sort of social value much more, obviously.

Presenter20:24

So you started volunteering for a charity called REDR, Registered Engineers for Disaster Relief, and in nineteen ninety four they flew you out to Tanzania. So your job was to help in the Banako refugee camp, which had been set up after the genocide in Rwanda. What were your first impressions?

Presenter20:41

There were several hundred thousand people there. All they had was what they'd managed to carry with them over the border. And in those early weeks I saw the forest walk backwards like a retreating army as the refugees chopped it down for firewood.

Presenter20:59

And I saw the water in the lake sort of go down, like watching someone drink a pint of beer.

Presenter21:05

sort of two things that are really, I think, been fundamental to everything I've done since. The first really is the sort of relationship between human beings and how we rely on what the planet provides. And the second being

Presenter21:19

That actually it's engineering and the infrastructure that engineers design that enables us to sort of share out those resources. And what was your role?

Presenter21:28

I was building distribution centres for food out of local materials. So I was using eucalyptus poles, plastic sheeting, corrugated sheeting. And we were building latrines, hundreds of latrines. And then I realized that actually probably the biggest difference I could make was to sort out the roads because the camps relied on food, medical supplies, building materials, all coming in by roads. And these roads were just dirt tracks. And so I started by sort of doing patch repairs on the roads and then decided to sort of come up with a scheme to upgrade the roads because I could see that in about four or five months time there was going to be a serious problem because the rainy season would arrive.

Presenter22:13

And these roads were just going to become impassable. They would become just so muddy and so full of potholes because of the additional traffic.

Presenter22:22

And I did the design.

Presenter22:24

And several months later, a team was sent out to implement it.

Presenter22:30

The scale of the engineering challenge is hard to overstate really. But when you add to that the human trauma that you were faced with, I think that would have broken a lot of people. How did you cope and what were you faced with?

Presenter22:45

You know, I realized that

Presenter22:48

I was sort of bottling a lot of what I was seeing.

Presenter22:52

In fact, what happened is I got cerebral malaria. And so when I came home, the thing that was most immediate was the fact that I'd had cerebral malaria and been very ill and nearly died. And it wasn't until two or three years later, when a boyfriend asked me the question that you've just asked, the lid came off all the

Presenter23:12

traumatizing things that I'd seen just in that moment.

Presenter23:16

Yet just in that moment I suddenly was taken back to

Presenter23:21

trying to I was trying to build a

Presenter23:24

Raft bridge across a river between Rwanda and Uganda so that we could get food supplies in from Uganda.

Presenter23:32

And

Presenter23:33

I thought that what I was seeing in the river was the hippos, and then I realized that it wasn't. It was it was tens and then quite soon after hundreds of dead bodies that were coming down the river.

Presenter23:46

And I'd sort of blocked it.

Presenter23:49

You did save your time in Tanzania that you weren't the same person that you were before. How did the experience change you?

Presenter23:57

I think I grew up a lot in a very short period of time.

Presenter24:01

I had the privilege really of being able to use my skills and expertise and knowledge to, you know, to save lives and to reduce suffering.

Presenter24:10

I think that that was the moment really I decided to be an engineer. Up until that moment, I had sort of drifted from school to university, to a job.

Presenter24:20

And I'd enjoyed my job. I enjoyed my job very much, but I don't think I decided I want to be an engineer. And I think that's what happened in Rwanda.

Presenter24:29

We'll find out what happened next after your next piece of music, Jorda Silva. What's it going to be?

Presenter24:35

Big Yellow Taxi by Joni Mitchell. The lyrics are just fantastic. They just sum up so brilliantly the absurdity of the way in which we destroy nature in order to build the world, the man-made world, that we think we want.

Dame Jo da Silva24:56

They took all the trees, put them in a tree museum.

Dame Jo da Silva25:02

And they charge the people a dollar and a half just to see'em.

Dame Jo da Silva25:07

Don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you've got till it's gone They pay paralyzed

Presenter25:21

Big Yellow Taxi by Joni Mitchell. So, Joe DeSilva, as you mentioned, when you came back from Tanzania, you had a very serious case of cerebral malaria and the psychological side of what you'd seen and been through to contend with. When it came to tackling that second part of what you'd experienced, how did you do it?

Presenter25:44

I realized that I needed to talk to someone.

Presenter25:47

and I found a very lovely counsellor and spent about a year reliving

Presenter25:57

the experiences and really coming to terms with them and realizing

Presenter26:01

how I changed as a result of those experiences and absorbing them into, you know, who I am and and you know, they dissolve, you know, they become part of you.

Presenter26:12

That's what enabled me to move on.

Presenter26:15

And also to step back into disaster zones and to continue to try and help people. I mean, was that scary to choose to do that again after what you'd experienced? I know in 2004 you went out to Sri Lanka after the Boxing Day tsunami hit the Indian Ocean. I had a part-time fellowship at Cambridge. So I developed an expertise in post-disaster shelter. And when the tsunami happened, I realised that this was the biggest natural disaster that had ever occurred and it was going to be all hands on deck and inevitably someone would call me up and ask me to go and help.

Presenter26:52

My first instinct was to not go.

Presenter26:56

To help other people go. And then I was called up and.

Speaker 226:58

Mm-hmm.

Presenter27:01

Asked to go and work for the UN.

Presenter27:03

and thought, you know, this is an opportunity that I really have to take up.

Presenter27:07

So tell me about it. What work were you taking on there?

Presenter27:11

About five hundred thousand people were displaced as a result of the tsunami in Sri Lanka.

Presenter27:17

And my role was to get people out of tents into temporary or what we call transitional shelter before the rainy season began in November. And everyone rose to the challenge and

Presenter27:34

Six months later.

Presenter27:36

I realized we've done it. I've seen some really beautiful photos of families smiling as they settle into

Presenter27:42

the new homes that you created, which must have been very rewarding. Which of those stories have stayed with you most, I wonder?

Presenter27:51

Yes, you're so right, because on the surface a temporary shelter looks like a sort of garden shed, but actually for the family who lives in it, it's a home.

Presenter28:01

And I have so many memories of handing over the keys to shelters, and they were just so grateful. And you'd seen them like two or three weeks before, you know, sitting on the floor in a tent, trying to look after a small baby on a dirt floor. And then they had this very basic building. And you go back two months later, and they'd painted the outside of it, and there were flowers in flower pots and laundry on the line. And you just saw normal life returning. It was wonderful.

Presenter28:34

Joe, we've got to make time for some more music now. Disc number seven. What's it going to be and why are you taking it with you to the island?

Presenter28:42

I did four mountaineering expeditions to Kyrgyzstan.

Presenter28:48

And the song that I've chosen is Not Dark Yet. And I remember listening to this in 2001.

Presenter28:57

We had just climbed a mountain that no one had climbed before.

Presenter29:02

and we were celebrating at the camp.

Presenter29:05

when a message came through on the radio saying that the Foreign Office said foreigners should leave Kyrgyzstan.

Presenter29:12

Uh we had no idea that the Twin Towers had been

Presenter29:16

Destroyed.

Presenter29:17

And when we got back to the capital, there was a big conference going on between the various countries in the region to see whether they were willing to put an American air base in Kyrgyzstan.

Presenter29:30

That was really the beginning too of a chapter in my life where I decided that

Presenter29:36

I really wanted to use my skills to try and create a a safer and fairer world.

Presenter29:42

And I've taken this song on almost every trip I've done.

Presenter29:46

and listen to it watching the sunset.

Presenter29:49

On the one hand it's about

Presenter29:50

Despair about humanity, but on the other, it's not dark yet, and there's hope.

Speaker 229:57

Shadows are falling

Speaker 230:01

And I've been here all day

Speaker 230:06

It's too hard to sleep.

Speaker 230:10

Time is running away

Speaker 230:16

Feel like my soul has

Speaker 230:19

Turn into steel.

Presenter30:25

Bob Dylan and Not Dark Yet. Joe DeSilva, in two thousand seven, you founded Arup International Development, so that's a not for profit subsidiary of Arup, and it comes up with humanitarian solutions for vulnerable communities. What's the biggest challenge that you're tackling at the moment?

Presenter30:41

climate change overlaid on

Presenter30:45

the challenges of rapid urbanization, people moving into cities and cities growing very, very fast without time to plan them properly.

Presenter30:54

And that's resulting in an awful lot of poverty and inequity. And it's a huge challenge because we've got a very limited amount of time to

Presenter31:05

really changed the situation.

Presenter31:07

There will be a future, you know, for our children, for our children's children.

Presenter31:13

But the quality of that future will be determined by actions we take over the next ten years. Now Joe, I'm pretty confident that when we cast you away today, you're going to be able to design and build a shelter. Have you thought of the design already?

Presenter31:28

If it's an island with palm trees, I'll probably make a shelter out of palm leaves. But if it's a rocky island, I might have to see if I can go and find a cave.

Presenter31:39

Before you go, Joe, one last track to choose today. What are gonna be and why.

Presenter31:44

My last track is Crying Shame by Jack Johnson. This song really sort of sums up everything I feel, which is that it's such a shame that we as a human race can't wake up to the shared problem that we have, which is making the resources of this very precious planet stretch to meet the needs of everyone on the planet.

Presenter32:11

and that we address climate change at the same time.

Dame Jo da Silva32:13

It's such a tired game

Dame Jo da Silva32:16

Will it ever stop?

Dame Jo da Silva32:19

How will this all play out of sight out of mind?

Dame Jo da Silva32:26

By now we should know how to communicate instead of coming to close We're on the road And there ain't no stopping us now

Dame Jo da Silva32:35

Burning under control

Dame Jo da Silva32:38

Isn't it strange how we're all burning under the safe somebody now save it's a war for peace? It's the same

Presenter32:45

Jack Johnson and Crying Shame. So, Joe De Silva, it's time to send you away to the island. I'm going to give you the books to take with you, the complete works of Shakespeare, the Bible, and you could take one other. What will that be?

Presenter32:59

I hope you're going to allow me to take the Boardman-Tasker omnibus, which is in fact a compilation of the four books that Pete Boardman and Joe Tasker wrote about their attempts to climb really challenging unclimbed peaks in the Himalayas in the 1970s. And they're just astonishing stories of human endeavour and survival. And I think it will just be an inspiration and keep me going. They're yours, absolutely.

Presenter33:26

You can also have a luxury item. What would you like to make life a little bit more livable?

Presenter33:31

I'd like a charpoy, which is a traditional Indian rope bed. I think it's better than a real bed, because I worry that a real bed will just get very soggy when it rains. You can have that, absolutely. It sounds like the perfect choice. Finally, which one track of the eight that you've shared with us today would you save from the waves if you had to?

Presenter33:53

I think it has to be all the world is green.

Presenter33:57

Dame Joanna De Silva, thank you very much for letting us hear your Desert Island discs. Thank you. It's been an absolute pleasure.

Presenter34:25

I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Jo. I'm convinced she'll be able to put those palm trees to good use. We've cast away other engineers, including Professor Daman Dowling and Doctor Dame Sue Ian. Radiohead's Tom York's in our archive too, and you can hear these programmes on BBC sounds.