Jon Ronson

Jon Ronson0:01

BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts.

Presenter0:05

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 castaway 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 writer and broadcaster John Ronson. His best-selling books and award-winning programmes tell stories about people on the fringes, from internet trolls to porn stars. His choice of subjects has been prescient. Them, Adventures with Extremists, published in 2001, introduced the conspiracy theorists and radicals who would go on to dominate the news agenda. In 2011, the psychopath test debated the narcissistic tendencies of political leaders. The characters he interviews are not always likable, but he doesn't judge them, preferring to use a mixture of curiosity and empathy instead to reveal what he calls their human side. He used this technique to great effect in his podcast and Radio 4 series Things Fell Apart, which investigated the antecedents of today's culture wars. He says, I can only write about a world that's a mystery to me. Trying to solve the mystery is what I enjoy most about writing. John Ronson, welcome to Desert Island. Hi, Lauren. Hi, thank you. So, John, how do you prepare when you're about to interview a new subject? Oh, I tend not to prepare. I don't have a list of questions. I want to be like a trapeze artist without the thing. That's the thing that they found. The net. The net. Okay.

Jon Ronson2:01

Yeah.

Speaker 32:01

The net

Jon Ronson2:01

The mats.

Presenter2:04

Because I think if you don't have a list of questions, then you really have to listen. And then if you listen, you become a twig in the stream of the conversation and you can go to other places. You don't see yourself as adversarial, but you do often interview people with very extreme views, many in complete opposition to your own. How do you keep your personal opinions in check when you're in those situations? I always approach people hoping for the best. You've got to have your rationality intact. Like, you don't want to give anyone a free pass for any kind of abhorrent or controlling or behaviour where there are victims. But at the same time, I think it's good to go into a situation and just try and connect to somebody on a human level because you just make it something completely unexpected.

Jon Ronson2:47

Because you just

Presenter2:50

You once said all human stories are valid, John. Does that mean there are no limits to what you will consider covering?

Presenter2:58

I won't do stories that are just perpetuating what we already think about someone. So for instance, I won't do a story about a neo-Nazi who's just a neo-you know, I want to surprise people. I want to try and find counterintuitive stories, stories that shed light on the world. So I'm not one of those people who just want to say, oh, he's a terrible person. I'll go and spend enough time with them to portray them as being terrible and then we'll put out a documentary about a book about how they're terrible. Like I won't do anything like that. It's time for your first disc. What have you chosen and why do you want to take it with you today? Well, when I was 12, my permissive mother dropped me off at Sapphire Gardens in Cardiff by myself to see the specials. And I decided to pretend to faint. So in the hope that I would be lifted over the barrier and I could watch the show from the side of the stage. Did it work? Like a dream. Terry Hall said, Are you okay? And I said, Are you in the specials? And he said, I'm the singer. And for the whole show, it was like Alice through the looking glass. For the whole show, I was standing on the side of the stage watching the specials. It was magical. It was the first time I saw what it was like to be in the other world. Stop being missing around.

Jon Ronson4:13

Better think of your future

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Time you straighten right out

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Creating problems in town

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Uh

Jon Ronson4:30

What message to you rooting?

Jon Ronson4:34

A message to you.

Presenter4:38

The specials and a message to you, Rudy. So, John Ronson, let's go back then to your upbringing. You were born in Cardiff in 1967. Your dad, David, ran a warehouse, and your mum, Paula, was a social worker. If we'd met the young John, what kind of impression do you think you would have made on us? Oh, as a very young child, I think I was very insular. I had a lot of imaginary friends. Do you remember any of them? What kind of imaginary friends? I remember their names. They were called Ziggu, Half Belower, and Tomborough. I've not said those words out of my mouth since I was four. Wow, Ziggu, Half Baloa, and Tomborough. Where did the names come from? God knows. I don't know. I remember we had very rounded conversations. They were good relationships.

Jon Ronson5:15

Ew.

Jon Ronson5:16

But what?

Presenter5:26

And what about your parents? How did you get on? My mum still is, really great, was always very supportive. My dad was great. He was very solid and would instill in me things like always pay your taxes on time, never get into financial difficulty. And so my life has transpired. These were the times when your parents would just let you get on with things. That free-range kind of 70s and 80s parenting. So for instance, when I was about 10 or 11, my grandparents lived in London. So we'd go to London and I had this thing that I would do that they'd all be chatting, all the adults would be chatting, and I'd sneak out of the flat and I'd get on a bus and just stay on the bus until the bus driver would come towards me, you know, the conductor would come towards me. Then I'd jump off the bus, then get on another one and I'd end up, you know, all over London. I'd just go from bus to bus to bus, all over London for hours. And

Jon Ronson5:50

Experiencing.

Presenter6:24

After a while I'd think, Oh, I better find my better find my way back now, they're probably worried about me. So I'd I'd somehow find my way back to the flat and I'd come in and they'd go, Oh, hi and they hadn't really noticed they'd been so engrossed in their conversations they hadn't really noticed I'd been gone.

Presenter6:40

Alright, time for some more music, John, your second choice. What is it and why are you taking it with you today? I'm a huge fan of cabaret. It's like my favourite thing. The most recent production in New York I saw five times. I guess being Jewish has got something to do with it. The powers, the authoritarian powers encroaching on people who just want to live free is very, very moving to me. And in the original Sam Mendis production, Jane Horrocks plays Sally Bowles and the way she sings cabaret, particularly the last verse. When you think about it, everybody thinks of Liza Minelli's version of cabaret, but when you think about it, she's just had an abortion, the Nazis are taking over Germany, and the way she just shrieks out cabaret is like a primal scream from her soul. It just takes the breath out of you.

Jon Ronson7:01

Mm.

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Uh

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Run crazy at home.

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Here's the

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Hands of cats.

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Only I Yeah

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Goosebumps Cabaret performed by Jane Horrocks in the Don Mar Warehouse production of the musical directed by Sam Mendes. So John Ronson, let's talk about your school days. That was when things got difficult for you in your teens. You were bullied quite badly. What form did the bullying take? Kind of all forms really, both physical and psychological. It was like three bad years of kind of relentless bullying. Yeah, from like 15 to 18. I mean all sorts of terrible things, like grabbed and blindfolded and had my hands tied behind my back and then stripped and thrown into the playground. That was probably the most dramatic.

Jon Ronson8:14

Come on.

Jon Ronson8:25

Bye.

Presenter8:40

I've w you know, so I've always been awkward socially and I think that was clearly something that they smelt at the time.

Presenter8:50

How did you deal with it? Who did you talk to?

Presenter8:53

I don't really talk to anyone. That's it. I really appreciate the fact that my parents allowed me to do things like get on buses and lose myself in London and go to the specials and so on. I really appreciated that. But I suppose the downside of that is you're also on your own to deal with the bad stuff. So I didn't, I haven't really talked to anyone about it. I remember.

Presenter9:15

After a while it was kind of it's numbing. I remember thinking, Okay, I'll put on an imaginary suit of armour and that'll protect me. So I remember walking around in an imaginary suit of armour, thinking, Well, they can't get me in here. Did you get the chance to have a conversation with your parents about what had happened to you later once you'd grown up?

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My father apologised to me for not being there for me.

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When I was in my twenties. Did that help?

Presenter9:44

I mean, obviously, I said, oh, don't worry about it. I never resented my parents. And they were who they were. You know, my dad had his interests. He would play bridge and he'd play golf. And anyway, but he apologised for not being a more hands-on father. It's probably not too much of a stretch to say that what you went through at school went on to massively influence your work as a writer. How do you see it as shaping your approach to your subjects and the areas that you're interested in, too? Maybe the thing that annoyed them all about me is the same thing that's made me good at what I do. Yeah. Tell me more about it. Well, which is not because I'm not.

Speaker 310:21

Yeah, tell me more about it.

Presenter10:25

naturally a social person. I don't walk into a room and know exactly what to do. I think I'm better at sort of trying to figure out why people behave the way that they do. Like if I just knew it, I wouldn't have to work so hard to try and figure it out. So I really, really think about these things. Why did that person act that way? I think it's given me a higher emotional intelligence than I think I would otherwise have have had.

Presenter10:51

It's time for your next disc, John. What are we going to hear? Well, when I was around 15 or 16, when the bullying was at its worst, a guy from my class called Will Davis invited me back to his house and he played me this album he'd just got and it was Swordfish Drum Bones by Tom Waits and the first song on it was like a beacon. I mean you'll hear it's so strange, it feels like it's coming from another dimension, but also what it's about, that there's a world going on underground. And it was almost like, that's what I want to do with my life. I want to explore the worlds that are going on underground.

Speaker 211:30

I dare say.

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Joe

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The rum

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Yeah.

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Run.

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Yeah.

Speaker 211:35

Down below

Jon Ronson11:38

Uh That's not big.

Jon Ronson11:41

Tone it's a place for

Jon Ronson11:45

There's a world going on underground.

Presenter11:57

Tom Waits and Underground. Joan Ronson, in 1985 you started a media studies course at the Polytechnic of Central London and this was in your imagination going to be the time when everything changed and you've said that it did. Your life totally changed overnight. What happened? The minute my mother dropped me off at the Halls residence and the guy in the next room, Dipper Joshi, said, oh come out with us. And that was it. Click of the fingers my life just totally changed. I left it all behind. I was where I belonged. It was exciting. I became the social secretary of my college. And yeah, I was in the office one day. The phone rang. I was shadowing my predecessor. And this voice said, Frank's playing at your bar tonight, but our keyboard player can't make it. He's got medical issues and so we're going to have to cancel unless you know a keyboard player. And I said, I play keyboards. And he said, can you play C F and G?

Jon Ronson12:13

I mean

Presenter12:56

Yeah. He said, Well, you're in. Luckily CF and G. So that's how I ended up quitting college and moving to Manchester and being in Frank Zeitbottom's band. I remember him from the music scene of the nineties, but for listeners who don't,

Presenter13:10

Talk us through the character, the concept and and very importantly, the large papier mache head of Frank Seib. Yeah, Frank well a big fake head that he never took off. Certainly never took off in public, but sometimes in private too.

Jon Ronson13:13

Very

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A front side.

Presenter13:24

Now, if we were going to turn up at the gig, what would we have seen? Well, lots of cover versions of pompous pop classics, which he would then skewer because his character was this sort of weird man-child, a cartoonish man-child from South Manchester, from Timpoli. And so, you know, most of the songs would be all C F and G and it would be things like

Speaker 313:46

Things like oh we will we will rock you

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Or

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I should be so lucky.

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Or

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Borden Temple.

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You get the picture. Eventually, I got fired from Frank's band for tax reasons. He owed £30,000 tax. He stood up in court. The judge said, This is very serious. You owe a lot of money. £30,000. Have you considered a payment plan? And he said, would a pound a week suffice my lud? And the judge said, no, it would not. Anyway, so we got fired because Frank needed the money. He couldn't afford to pay us any more.

Presenter14:24

Time for your next piece of music, John. It's number four. What have you got? The band that I just loved more than any of that follow me around was The Pixies. In fact, I'd go and see them all over the place. But I haven't chosen a Pixies song. I've chosen a song by The Breeders. Which a member of The Pixies is in, obviously. Kim Deal, who was just, she was like, you can hear her smile in the song. She was like the most smiley of all the grunge post-punk people. Just so warm and delightful. So I wanted one of her songs on the island. And this is Driving on Nine by The Breeders.

Jon Ronson14:38

Yeah.

Jon Ronson14:39

Okay.

Jon Ronson14:40

Who

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Driving on night

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You could be a shadow.

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Yeah.

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Uh

Speaker 215:05

Yeah.

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Beneath the straight line

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Behind my

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My

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Uh

Speaker 215:13

Driving on night

Speaker 315:14

Yeah.

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I sure miss ya.

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Pass a motel

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Look at it.

Presenter15:28

Driving 09, The Breeders. John Ronson, you stayed in Manchester and worked as a late-night radio presenter before moving back to London. There, you wrote columns about family life for The Guardian. Did you ever worry that you might be revealing too much of yourself and your personal life in those pieces? No, not about my own life, but about my family's life. In fact, I've often thought it's good to write about your own absurdities, your own ridiculousnesses, because I like journalism to not be hierarchical. If I'm going to interview somebody and

Presenter15:59

Maybe I will highlight some absurd aspects of their story. You have to do the same thing for yourself, to yourself. So you're happy to take it as well as dish it in that way. Yeah, I've never wanted to be high up in some kind of hierarchy. I've never wanted to be the representative of righteous society, going into the fringe world of the crazy people and being the right person. Like I'm right, they're wrong. And I've never wanted to be that. Hence, the fact that I've quite often put in my own absurdities into stories. And if I got really in the 90s, me and Louis Thru had a big rivalry, yeah. And I, and I, and even though it was kind of embarrassing that we had this rivalry, you know, I would talk about it because it was so absurd. I used to have this joke on stage that me and Louis were like conjoined twins and that for one of us to grow stronger, the other one had to die.

Jon Ronson16:06

Yes.

Jon Ronson16:08

Yeah.

Jon Ronson16:35

We had a bit of a rivalry.

Presenter16:53

But I would deliberately put those things in for that reason. Like, I didn't want to be the sensible one who's beyond reproach.

Presenter17:02

Your first TV series, The Ronson Mission, started in 1993. It was on BBC Two. How did you get it commissioned? My old college lecturer, Frank Hatherley, I'd started writing a column in Time Out, which was a narrative. I'd go off on a little mini-adventure and I'd write about it. So my lecturer, Frank Hatherley, said, you know, I think you could make a TV show. I'll try and set you up a meeting with the BBC. So I went into the BBC and Janice Street Porter was sitting there, was the head of youth television at the time. And she went, you know, I think it's a fantastic idea. And I sat there saying nothing because I actually had no idea what the idea was, like what they were talking about. I was being commissioned to make a show and I didn't know what the show was. So you were going to meet people. It had a bit of a kind of gonzo feel. You said that you take something that is a huge, albeit extremely questionable, ideology, and then you puncture it with something colloquial and a bit absurd and silly. You're right, skewering pomposity.

Jon Ronson17:49

Mm-hmm.

Jon Ronson17:54

It's a

Presenter17:59

So that was that was an attraction for you.

Jon Ronson17:59

So

Presenter18:01

It was more of an attraction than being ideologically against it. I thought it was more it was more fun to it was more human and fun and revealing and funny and nuanced and something to connect to. I always preferred that gentle, absurdist comedy to polemicism.

Presenter18:18

All right, it's time for some more music, John. Your fifth choice today. Tell us about what we're going to hear next. Well, Randy Newman's my hero and always has been. I started listening to him when I was 18 when I first moved to London. And he's the first singer who I knew who really taught me about nuance, unreliable narrators, ambiguity. Maybe what you're hearing isn't what you're actually hearing. And the first time Randy Newman did that.

Presenter18:50

He told me when I interviewed him, was with this song, Simon Smith and the Amazing Dancing Bear. It's a song that isn't really about what you think it's going to be about. I think it's a song about a lovably deluded guy who thinks that if he goes to a restaurant, all the rich people will applaud him, but in fact, they're just exploiting him and laughing at him, and he thinks everybody loves him, but actually they're laughing at him. And so the last line of the song is very plaintive and bittersweet.

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Blue means

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Money

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When you

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Funny.

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Big attraction everywhere will be Simon Smith and his dancing bear is Simon Smith and the amazing

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Dancing

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Simon Smith and the Amazing Dancing Bear. Randy Newman. John Ronson, in 1997, so a few years before the 9-11 attacks, you made a film for Channel 4 called Tottenham Ayatollah, which you say was your breakthrough film. It was about Omar Bakri Mohammed, a radical Islamist preacher. What exactly did it involve?

Presenter20:14

We spent a year with Omar and his various jihad warriors while well, in retrospect, I mean, a bunch of them ended up blowing themselves up. So it was serious. It was serious stuff.

Jon Ronson20:24

Who knows?

Presenter20:27

Obviously, Omar Bakri Mohammed had some extremely unpalatable views. Do you think that you got the balance right in terms of poking fun at him and bringing out the absurdities that you were encountering while also addressing the dangerous things that he talked about? 9-11 and 7-7 happened a few years later.

Presenter20:48

I remember Mike Wine from the Jewish Board of Deputies, Board of Deputies for British Jews, said to me during that process, he said, I think the world hasn't woken up to the dangers of militant Islamism. And I didn't know. You know, I know that 9-11 was going to happen five years later. And what about in terms of the conversations that you had? Were you able to challenge him? Were you able to or was that not what you were trying to do?

Presenter21:15

I think that's probably not what we what I was trying to do there. We uh we were just making a kind of gentle comedic look at somebody trying to start a jihad campaign and having to use our symbols to destroy them.

Presenter21:32

How do you look back at it now? Only positively. I I'm really pleased that we did it. We we caught this moment of the nascent British militant Islamism movement a few years before anything happened, and we caught it at its very beginning. So I'm proud of that.

Presenter21:50

A few years ago you made a podcast series called The Last Days of August about the porn actress August Ames who took her own life in twenty seventeen. You went into quite a dark place making that series, I think. Why did working on it affect you so much?

Presenter22:06

The ethics of that just got too much for me. I realized I was in a... It was an almost impossible ethical situation.

Presenter22:14

How can I do this story? She's just died. There's people around her who could have acted differently, but they've just lost a loved one. What do you do with that? I think the worries of that rattled around my head so much I had like a, I guess you'd call it like nervous exhaustion. I got diagnosed with something called adjustment disorder. Okay. Which I have to say is a kind of disappointing name for a disorder. It sounds like accountancy. Yeah, it must have felt more dramatic than that. Yeah, it was situational depression.

Jon Ronson22:37

Okay.

Jon Ronson22:41

It sounds like

Jon Ronson22:45

Yeah.

Presenter22:48

Which is, I think, the best sort of depression to get, because once you the situation changes, the depression goes away. That's the only time that's happened, though, where it just got too much. It was too hard.

Jon Ronson22:48

Which

Presenter22:58

I mean, I had to take about a year off, to be honest. That's how long it took me to get my strength back.

Presenter23:04

It's time for disc number six, John. What's next? Well, when my son was born, for some reason, the only person who would get him to sleep was Fiona Apple. There's something about her voice, it's like cowpo. So I have memories of holding my baby in my arms while Fiona Apple played, and he's finally going to sleep. So I really wanted one of her songs, and I've chosen Extraordinary Machine.

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I certainly haven't been shopping for any new shoes.

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And

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I certainly haven't been spreading myself around.

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I still only travel by foot and by foot it's a slow climb But I'm good at being uncomfortable So I can't stop changing all the time

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I notice that my opponent is always on the go.

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Won't go slow so's not to focus. Fiona Apple, an extraordinary machine.

Presenter24:05

John Ronson, you're very open about living with anxiety and yet your work often puts you in extremely stressful situations. How do you manage your anxiety at times like that? There is a funny thing. I noticed this at the beginning of the pandemic that it was the people with anxiety disorders who seemed to be the calmest. It's like we've waited our life for this. This is the moment we've been waiting for. So we'll have this much hand sanitizer. You know, we figure these things out. Went straight into coping mode. Yeah, straight into coping mode. And isn't that odd? And it's certainly not true of everyone with anxiety disorders, but it's true more than I think people would think. We spend our lives having these ridiculous what-if worries. I can't get my wife on the phone. She must be dead. You know, there was a time when I was writing my book, Them. I was trying to sneak into a Bilderberg meeting. So these were like this powerful secret group who were meeting in a five-star hotel. I was trying to sneak in and infiltrate their meeting. Was I worried about that the night before? No.

Jon Ronson24:32

Uh

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Listen

Jon Ronson24:37

Yeah.

Presenter25:06

I was in my room in a hotel, and this is the day before cell phones, trying to reach my wife on the phone, and I couldn't reach her, and I was panicking. I started phoning the police, I started phoning well, in my mind's eye, she'll have been first time I phoned her, she will have walked to the phone, fallen down the stairs, she'd be lying dead at the bottom of the stairs, and my son.

Presenter25:29

who would have been about two at the time, would be reaching up for the flecks of a just boiled kettle. Sure. Yeah. So the full disaster scenario from the very beginning.

Presenter25:41

When I checked out of the hotel the next morning, my phone bill from that one night was $900 just trying to reach my wife. It's interesting though that you've said actually going into those very kind of high stakes interactions professionally, you're much more comfortable than, for example, being at a dinner party and having to make small talk with the person next to you. Like you feel more comfortable.

Jon Ronson25:59

Yeah.

Presenter26:04

On on the background of a porn set, you're making a documentary about that, where situations that other people would have anxiety dreams about. For you, you're more comfortable there. Much more comfortable. What's that about, do you think?

Jon Ronson26:14

What's that?

Presenter26:15

I guess you got something to do. You're gathering material.

Presenter26:20

Whereas, when you're at a dinner party, you're just you.

Presenter26:26

I'm not talking about just not liking dinner parties. I'm talking about hating them so much you feel like physically propelled out of the room. Like you need to leave the room and sit in the toilet for twenty minutes or to get your energy back. Extroverts don't know what this is like.

Presenter26:43

John, it's time for your seventh choice. What is it and why are you taking it with you to the island? So our last summer in Britain before we moved to New York was the summer of 2012, which everyone will remember was just the magical summer. It's the Olympics, Danny Boyle's opening ceremony, and Paul Simon played in Hyde Park. And I went with my son, and it was just so magical. So I wanted to choose a Simon and Garfigur song, and I chose this song, America. It's a song you can hear a million times and think, ah, it's fine. And then on the million and first time, you think, this is the greatest song I've ever heard. Kathy I must die, why do she was sleeping?

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Found empty in Uh

Jon Ronson27:28

King and I don't know why Counting the cars on the new jersey turn back they've all come to look for America

Presenter27:49

Simon and Garfunkel and America. John Ronson, you once wrote a piece called Things to Do Before I Die, in which you said you'd like to reach the moment when you feel happy with what you've got. How close are you? Have you got there yet? Yes. You're there. I think so. I think so. Yeah, I do. I remember my mother saying to me, you get less ambitious as you get older, less driven. And I think that's happening. I'm really happy.

Jon Ronson28:04

I think so.

Presenter28:15

Being completely alone, just constructing my non-fiction stories and polishing them. Once I've done that, I don't really care what happens to them. I don't really care whether they're successful or not successful. For me, the pleasure is all in the putting together the story. And that's that's enough. That's you know, there's a um phrase in Judaism, Da'enu, that is sufficient, and that's like sufficient for me.

Jon Ronson28:38

That's

Presenter28:39

You've talked a lot today about how important it is to you to chronicle your own quirks and strange obsessions. You alluded to the very amusing beef between you and Louis Theroux back in the day. That's concluding now long behind you. You're actually quite good friends. Yeah, yeah. I luckily matured my way out of that destructive thought spiral. And now I think the world of Louisiana. And it's so nice to sit and watch one of Louis's documentaries and not feel anything other than just, you know, enjoying watching it. Yeah. You know, one time I was being chased by the Bilderberg group and their security guard started chasing me and a car chase ensued. And I was like driving through the street. I mean, I say a car chase. I was going 30 miles an hour, so the guy behind me was awesome. But if I'd gone faster, he was... A low-speed car chase. Yes. So I phoned up the British Embassy and I said I'm being followed by the Bilderberg group. And the woman from the British, this is in Portugal. And she said, what are you doing here? I said, I'm essentially a humorous journalist out of my depth. Maybe you can phone the Bilderberg group and explain that. And she was sounding puzzled. So I said,

Jon Ronson28:51

Can

Jon Ronson28:52

You're actually quite good.

Jon Ronson28:57

Play out

Jon Ronson29:21

And it was also.

Jon Ronson29:23

Hello

Jon Ronson29:24

Yes.

Presenter29:46

I said, I'm a bit like Louis Threw. And she went, oh. And I said, but actually, I was doing it first. Even in the moment. I thought these could be the last conversation I have about I could die. I want it on record. Yeah. I was going to use my last breaths on earth.

Jon Ronson29:58

To get it in.

Jon Ronson30:01

I want it on record.

Presenter30:06

Well, John, I'm about to send you off to the island. How do you think you'll handle it?

Presenter30:10

Uh I I think I'd handle it with a plum. Go on.

Presenter30:14

I can imagine myself like, you know, spearing fish topless.

Presenter30:19

I could do that.

Presenter30:21

It's doable. Well, before you go, we'll let you have one more tune. What's it gonna be?

Jon Ronson30:21

It's doable.

Presenter30:25

So I live in New York now and we've got an apartment in Manhattan and we live on the river and I overlook New Jersey and I very often sit there listening to Bruce Springsteen. I've become very Americanised because I practically listen to Bruce Springsteen and nothing else at this stage. I always get very moved when a singer does a live version of their song and the audience cheers when the singer name checks the place where they're from. I always found that very moving for some reason. It chokes me up and nobody loves that more than when Bruce Springsteen mentions New Jersey in one of his songs. The cheers are just incredible.

Jon Ronson31:05

Tonight I'm

Presenter31:06

I'm gonna take that run.

Presenter31:11

Cross the river to the Jersey side

Presenter31:17

Took my baby to the card of all

Presenter31:22

Uh

Jon Ronson31:22

Then I'll take her.

Jon Ronson31:24

All the rights Cause down the shore

Speaker 231:30

Or everything's alright.

Speaker 231:34

You have it.

Presenter31:36

Jersey girl, Bruce Springsteen. So John Ronson, I'm going to send you away to the island. I'm giving you the Bible, the complete works of Shakespeare, and you can take one other book of your choice. What will it be? I'm going to choose the biggest book of Magnum photographs that you can find. Hopefully ones that don't have too many war scenes. I'd like photographs, I'd like amazing photographs. I came from a family of non-writers and so on, except my Auntie Mavis, who was a photographer, and she went around the world and she met the Dalai Lama and stuff and she worked for Magnum. So maybe one of her photographs will be in there. Some of her pictures will be in the book. Fantastic. Well, it's yours. You can also have a luxury item. What would you like?

Jon Ronson31:52

Uh

Jon Ronson32:11

So

Presenter32:16

I'm sorry to say I want very well made, proper legal medical weed made by a bespoke weed manufacturer somewhere like Massachusetts. So that means I can sleep at night, which means when I'm trying to spear fish the next day, I'm gonna, you know, I can do it. I want it all jangly. There's plenty of precedent, so that's yours. And finally, which one track of the eight that you've shared with us today, John, would you save from the waves if you had to?

Jon Ronson32:36

And what they call Jan

Presenter32:46

Jersey Gill by Bruce Springsteen. Because of the cheering. Yeah, you want a crowd uh on your island. And it's the perfect kind of crowd because you can hear it, but you don't need to be right in the middle of it. If you don't want to, you're getting all the pleasure without any of the uh awkwardness.

Jon Ronson32:50

Because you pull out.

Presenter33:04

John Ronson, thank you very much for letting us hear your Desert Island discs. Thank you, Lauren. It was a pleasure.

Presenter33:30

I hope you enjoyed my conversation with John. We'll leave him enjoying the sound of the crowd on his desert island. We've cast away many non-fiction writers, including Malcolm Gladwell and Michael Lewis. John's friend and rival Louis Theroux is also in our archive. You can find those episodes in our Desert Island Discs programme archive and through BBC Sounds. The studio manager for today's programme was Sarah Hockley, the assistant producer was Christine Pavlovsky, and the producer was Paula McGinley. Next time, my guest will be Francis O'Grady, the General Secretary of the British TUC. I do hope you'll join us.

Presenter34:15

Uncanny is bad.

Speaker 234:17

Uh

Presenter34:17

Uh

Speaker 234:17

The Hit Paranormal Podcast returns with a summer special that will chill you to the bone.

Speaker 234:23

It was a real dream holiday, really. The family trip of a lifetime becomes the holiday from hell.

Jon Ronson34:31

Whatever was in that room wanted to do us harm, they wanted to frighten us.

Speaker 234:35

Yeah. Uncanny Somerset

Presenter34:36

Special

Presenter34:38

Out now.

Speaker 234:39

Yeah.

Speaker 234:39

Uh

Presenter34:39

What do you think was in that house?

Speaker 234:42

Six very frightened tourists and something else that didn't want us there.

Presenter34:46

Subscribe to Uncanny on BBC Sounds.