Peter White

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.

Presenter0:41

My castaway this week is the broadcaster Peter White. He's the award-winning voice of Radio 4's In Touch, the programme for blind and visually impaired people and the consumer series You and Yours. He was the BBC's first disability affairs correspondent, the first blind person to host a daily live radio show and the first to produce as well as present reports for television news. In 1998, he was awarded an MBE for services to broadcasting and in 2024 he will celebrate 50 years presenting in touch. He was born in Winchester in 1947 and like his older brother had a rare genetic anomaly that meant his optic nerve hadn't developed properly. Back then expectations of disabled children were low, though luckily not in his house. His parents encouraged his sense of adventure and the self-confidence they instilled gave him the courage to pursue his dream and more. He says, being blind is normal for me. It's difficult that people still don't understand. It's possible to be comfortable in your skin as a disabled person. Peter White, welcome to Daz Island Discs.

Peter White1:45

Thank you. Great to be here.

Presenter1:47

Peter, you spent a lot of time talking to disabled people who'd become very successful about the routes they took to get there in the Radio Force series No Triumph, No Tragedy. What motivated you to make it?

Peter White1:59

I got very fed up with people either casting blindness as a triumph or a tragedy. Certainly we wanted to talk to disabled people who'd bucked the trend, but also to show that it wasn't about triumphing or being a tragedy, but being yourself. I mean, people always talk about vulnerability with an assumption that you're always vulnerable. Disability doesn't work that way. You can't classify. We're no more classifiable than non-disabled people. We differ enormously, differ in the amount of confidence you've got, vary in the amount of abilities that you've got. That's why I did that series, and it was great, because I got to meet all sorts of, you know, extraordinary people. They weren't extraordinary because they were disabled, they were just extraordinary.

Presenter2:47

You have some uncompromising views on life as a disabled person, and I know that your attitude towards guide dogs has often surprised people, so talk me through it.

Peter White2:57

Well, it is this attitude that some people have, which I guess puts me off a bit, that it's the dog that's looking after you. I don't find that a comfortable idea. But good guide dog owners don't treat it like that. They know who's in charge.

Presenter3:13

Yeah, and I'm wondering if if you also don't like the the expectation that some people have that you will have a d a guide dog. Like if people say, you know, wh where is your guide dog? That's happened to you before.

Peter White3:23

That's happened to you today. The most dramatic was on one occasion I got off the tube at Waterloo doing my usual run and I was talking to a bloke who was giving me a hand to the escalator and he said, Where's your dog, mate? And I couldn't help myself. I said, oh my God, I must have left it on the train. And before I'd had time to stop him, he'd rushed off, he'd alerted people, he'd alerted the transport police, and they stopped the Bakerloo line, basically. Peter White. I know, it's a dreadful thing to do. I thought there's two things I can do here. I can either dash up the escalators while they're all doing this and get on my train home to Winchester, or I can go and confess to what I've done. And it's the bravest thing I've ever done. I think the only brave thing I've ever done. I went and confessed, and they couldn't believe it. And they said, well, why did you say that you had got one? And I thought there's only one way out of it, because I'd always wanted one.

Peter White4:25

Anyway.

Presenter4:26

You couldn't, you didn't confess that you were just seized by devilment, which would have been.

Peter White4:30

Which would have been the truth.

Presenter4:32

I mean, obviously, a note for our listeners, Desert Island Discs does not condone such behaviour.

Peter White4:36

Absolutely.

Presenter4:37

No, not that you're DVC.

Presenter4:40

Let's get on to safer ground, Peter, with your your music choices today, Peter. What's disc number one?

Peter White4:45

I love Joan Armor Trading and I've been following her career. And not all that long ago my wife got me tickets to go and see her. All all this time I've not been to see her, but she did not disappoint. I've chosen somebody who loves you.

Speaker 45:02

I don't know what you're thinking

Speaker 45:07

Should I stay or say goodbye?

Speaker 45:14

You blow smoke on the ceiling

Speaker 45:20

You don't wanna look into my eyes

Speaker 45:25

You've got somebody who loves you.

Presenter5:31

Joan Armitrading and somebody who loves you. Peter White, you were born in Winchester, 1947, and you've said that you started life with two pieces of good luck, your parents and your big brother, Colin. So let's start with Colin. Why were you lucky to have him?

Peter White5:45

Having a blind elder brother is fantastic because it means that your parents get a dummy run, basically. And the other thing that was good is Colin was very capable, and still is. He's still around. We're still mates. He was very competent as a blind person. And what that did, it raised my parents' expectations of what I should be able to do. So a phrase that rings through my early childhood is: Colin can do that. Why can't you? And I would say, of the two of us, although he's the more competent, I'm the more confident.

Presenter5:58

Some

Presenter6:19

And that confidence also came from your rather extraordinary parents, who I think we should talk about. Your mum, Joan, was a secretary before Colin arrived. Your dad, Don, was a military policeman in North Africa during the war, and Colin had been born during wartime. He became a carpenter when he came home, your dad.

Speaker 46:34

Yeah.

Presenter6:35

So they wanted another child after calling, but they were apprehensive and they'd asked about whether that next child might be blind.

Peter White6:42

They did, and uh they were told it's a million to one chance. I've always been rather proud of that, that I am, therefore, a million to one chance, and I've tried to behave like it ever since, with possibly a certain amount of arrogance, maybe.

Presenter6:56

Me good on that on that shot on the roulette wheel.

Peter White6:59

Absolutely. So tell me more about your mum, Joan. She wasn't frightened of letting us go out. We both used to ride bikes around the area. We used to roller skate around the area. We used to play football and cricket with the other kids, with rattling balls. We would do all those things. My dad was a bit more nervous. And my mum used to say to him, they've got to have a life. They've got to learn. And they'll get knocks. But, you know, that's what has to happen.

Presenter7:28

Did you ever wish that they would make more allowances for you? Is that ever difficult for you?

Peter White7:31

Good Lord, no. I nagged and nagged my mum because although she understood it, she was still worried about things like crossing roads. I whereas most kids hate to be sent out to do the shopping for their mum, I was nagging her to do it,'cause Colin was allowed to do that and I wasn't. How old were you when she let you?

Peter White7:50

I was about eight or nine, I suppose. But Colin went when he was six. Yeah. And I still resent it.

Presenter7:58

How did it go?

Peter White7:59

I it all went it was going okay, and I'd got everything and I'd just gone into the grocer's, I think, and I'd put the eggs on the top and I came out and fell down a bank.

Peter White8:13

And that was the end of the eggs. So the lady in the shop came out and she patched me up. But the extraordinary thing about that is that the first couple of few times I went to shops, my mum followed me a long way behind. And she saw all this happen, but she was no way going to give a clue that that's what she'd done. So she waited to make sure I was all right at a distance and then dashed home. So she was back home when I got back, never admitting until about 30 years later that she'd actually followed me all the way.

Presenter8:45

Well done, Joan.

Presenter8:47

I think we'd better have some more music, Peter. Your second choice today, if you wouldn't mind, what's it going to be?

Peter White8:51

There was a lot of laughter in our house and there were people who we really admired and I still feel that Tony Hancock is probably one of the, if not the greatest, comedian this country's produced. So I've picked Sunday afternoon but it reflects how boring Sunday afternoons in the fifties really were.

Speaker 39:16

Your dinner wasn't worth getting up for, I'll tell you that for a start.

Speaker 39:20

Well, I don't know. I ate all mine.

Speaker 39:23

That is neither here nor there.

Speaker 39:26

You also ate Bill's and Sid's and mine.

Speaker 39:31

I thought my mother was a bad cook, but at least her gravy used to move about.

Speaker 39:42

Yours. Yours just sort of

Speaker 39:44

So the lies there and set

Presenter9:47

An extract from Sunday Afternoon at Home, Hancock's Half Hour, starring Tony Hancock with Sid James, Bill Kerr, Hattie Jakes and Kenneth Williams, written by Ray Galton and Alan Simpson and produced by Tom Ronald.

Presenter9:59

Peter White, your parents sound like remarkable people, but they must have worried about you, and they must have found parenting really challenging at times. Did the stress ever show?

Peter White10:09

The thing that probably gave them strain was not so much the kind of things we've been talking about, like riding bikes and getting on roller skates, it was what the future was going to be. They couldn't perhaps think what sort of jobs we would get. They couldn't visualize us getting married, you know, they would have thought what woman's going to have one of them, you know. And I think that was what was bothering them most.

Presenter10:34

Did you ever reflect on your upbringing with them and talk to them about it as you grew older and were more able to have those conversations and ask them what it was like?

Peter White10:44

Yes, perhaps the most startling thing that happened.

Peter White10:49

to me about that was I was talking to my mum one day and the question of not having a sister cropped up, because I would have liked to have had a sister, and she said she said, Well, actually, you might have had a sister.

Peter White11:05

And I wondered what on earth she meant. How old were you? I would have been about fourteen or fifteen, probably.

Peter White11:11

And she explained that not all that long after I was born.

Peter White11:16

She got pregnant again.

Peter White11:19

And they were just worried, very worried, about the idea of having a third blind child. I mean, we were living in a prefab where a lot of people lived after the war. My dad couldn't predict how much he was likely to be able to earn. There wasn't a lot of space. And it was just this idea of having another blind child. Now, she had a doctor who understood.

Peter White11:43

The issue knew the family and he supported her in this and she did have the abortion.

Peter White11:52

But she was not told whether it was a boy or a girl. What went through your mind when you were hearing that?

Peter White11:59

I was I admired her. I mean, I grew up obviously believing that blindness was not a reason for terminating a pregnancy. So I believed that from a sociological point of view. I believed it because I know what blind people can do.

Presenter12:12

Yeah.

Peter White12:15

But they didn't know that at that time they didn't know what the prospects were, and I just thought for her to try to deal with that then, I just admired her.

Presenter12:26

I think it's time to go to the music, Peter. What's your next disc, and why are you taking it with you today?

Peter White12:32

I have got a great affection for the real songwriters, the people of the sort of 20s and the 30s, and female voices as well. And quite a lot of these would pop up on Housewives' Choice that I used to listen to with my mum. And this combines them. This is Ella Fitzgerald, every time we say goodbye.

Speaker 412:54

Every time we say goodbye, I doubt a little

Speaker 413:07

Every time we say goodbye

Speaker 413:14

I wonder why a little Why the God's above me

Presenter13:24

Anna Fitzgerald, and every time we say goodbye, Peter White, when you were just five, your parents made the very difficult decision to send you away to boarding school, the Royal School of Industry for the Blind in Bristol. And now, it is so difficult to conceive of tearing a five-year-old away from a loving family these days. Why did they think you should go there?

Peter White13:44

Well, I think it really is important to say they didn't have a choice. That is what you did. It's what the local authority would tell you you have to do. It was what your social worker would tell you you had to do. And I think my dad certainly said we just thought you would learn to do the important things that you needed. But

Peter White14:03

They didn't have a choice.

Presenter14:04

Yeah.

Presenter14:05

It must have been incredibly difficult for them, but also hugely traumatic for you. How do you look back on your time there?

Peter White14:13

I absolutely hated going away from home. Escorts used to take us back to school, so we would go down to Southampton, get the train from there. I'd been crying for about 24 hours. I'd been being sick. And then I got on the train and I would lean out of the window. And as the train set off, I would grab hold of my mother's hair. She had to run along the platform to free herself. Oh, poor both of you. I know, well, and it's terrible. But I call it insensitivity, if you like. But I went through that stuff. But I think Colin thought about what it was like for her. And what do you remember about the school itself? It was quite grim. You know, I remember the sort of corridors with wooden floors with splinters in and hard beds. And they were described as nurses. I suppose they'd be like nannies, I suppose. But even that was quite abrupt and rough. Colin was at this school.

Presenter14:27

And then I

Presenter14:36

The self-paid.

Peter White15:11

But he was four years older than me and I'd been there about 24 hours and he wandered out he came ac across and said, How are you doing then? Are you all right? and I said yes, which was not true and he said good and went away and I didn't see him till the the end of term. No, I don't think that was his I suspect that he was told to do that. You know the idea that I would couldn't rely on a a brother or someone I knew.

Presenter15:38

Sink or swim, just for a winning defense.

Peter White15:39

Sink or swim, you just have to get on with it, you know.

Presenter15:42

One thing that that you learned there that did change your life was Braille. You could read with both hands, which is very unusual.

Peter White15:50

What I did, and nobody taught me to do this, was I would start the line with one hand halfway along it and one at the beginning, and then I would read the second half of the first line. I'd do that with my right hand, and my left hand would go down a line and start to read that, and then the other hand would join it. So, what I was actually doing was reading half a line with one hand and the other half of a line with the other hand, but reading them simultaneously and then putting it together. And I gradually got faster and faster. My teacher, first of all, would not believe that I had read. I would say to her at two o'clock, can I have another book? And she said, I gave you a book at 10 o'clock this morning, you haven't read that. And I said, I have. So, what did they do? They put me in for competitions for the first thing. And I went and won all these competitions for reading. So, this was something which it changed the way I was seen, I think, at my school. So, they started to think, well, this kid is obviously going to do something and go somewhere.

Presenter16:42

Tell me.

Presenter16:53

I think

Presenter17:01

Peter, it's time to hear some more music. Your fourth choice today. What have you gone for?

Peter White17:06

This is Badge by Cream. This is after I'd left school, after I'd had one bash at university and made a mess of it. And I went to work at a place called Youth Action York to get kids to do things that were useful in the community. Our office was in a basement and one of the things that we did there was I was going to my first all-night party because I was a bit of a late developer, didn't go to many all-night parties. So this is the piece of music that actually brings back the memory of that first party.

Speaker 417:46

Thinking about the times you drove in my car

Speaker 417:55

Thinking that I might have drove you too far

Speaker 418:03

And I'm thinking of the love that you laid on my table.

Presenter18:11

CREAM AND BADGE. Peter White, you tried university not once, but twice. Southampton first, then Kent, but both times you left without getting a degree. Why didn't you stay?

Peter White18:21

I wanted to do something normal. I wanted to do I didn't want to be at university. I'd spent thirteen years in institutions already, and this was just another one to me. I mean, all the people who were there with me were so excited to be at university. I thought I want to be out doing a job.

Presenter18:37

Uh

Peter White18:38

Nope.

Presenter18:38

I can understand that, but but your parents must have been a bit worried, having gone through everything they'd gone through to get you the education and make sure, you know, that you had the prospects and and all of that.

Peter White18:41

Yeah.

Peter White18:47

And all of that. They were very worried. And the only way I think I really got through to them when I'd been out with them one night and got home and burst into tears and said, This is not working. I don't want to do this. There's only one thing I want to do. I want to work in radio. That's what I want to do. What did they say?

Peter White19:07

My dad said, If that's what you really think, and you've been thinking about this for a long time, that's what you should do.

Presenter19:13

As a boy you had a tape recorder and you used it to record interviews with your school friends. Then in nineteen seventy, when B B C Local Radio was taking off, you travelled to Southampton and presented yourself to the receptionist at the all new Radio Solent. What happened next?

Peter White19:30

Well, I just walked in with me white stick and I said, hello, my name's Peter White. I'd like to work for radio. And she said, well, I'm sorry. All the appointments have been made. But she said, leave us your phone number and we'll call you if anything should arise. And I mean, I just thought that was the brush off. So I went home to Winchester and the phone rang.

Peter White19:54

And it was a man called Ken Warburton. And he said, I've got to do this programme for blind people, and I don't know any blind people. I saw your white stick trailing into the lift. Would you come down and see me? And I said, Well, I should tell you, Ken, I don't want to do a programme for blind people. I want to do ordinary programmes, news programmes, sports programmes, all that sort of thing. And he said, Well, that's all very well, but a programme for blind people is what I've got. And I realized, I was sensible enough to realize that this was an opportunity.

Presenter20:27

We've got to make some time for the music. This is your fifth choice today. What have you gone for next?

Peter White20:31

Yeah.

Peter White20:33

This is something that's really special to me. It was actually in the period when I was struggling with university and I'd been away for the weekend.

Peter White20:44

And I'd been thinking, God, this can't go on. I've got to do something about this. And I came back to my little cell of a room. It was about eleven o'clock at night. I had nobody there to welcome me back or anything. I went in, I put the radio on randomly and I hit a French station.

Peter White21:00

And I heard this fantastic voice, this beautiful voice, and this song it's Albatross, it's Judy Collins, and I just thought if there's music like this in the world, maybe it's not such a bad place after all.

Speaker 421:18

Many people wander up the hills from all around

Speaker 421:22

Making up your memories and thinking they have found you.

Speaker 421:28

They cover you with veils of wonder as if you were a bride.

Peter White21:28

Cover you with veils of wonder as if

Speaker 421:34

Young men holding violets are curious to know if you have cried And tell you why and ask you why either way you answer

Speaker 421:44

Lace around the collars of the blouses of the lady

Presenter21:48

Judy Collins and Albatross. So Peter White, in 1974 you started presenting In Touch, that's Radio 4's programme for blind and visually impaired people. You were in your mid twenties by then. And you said that at that point you saw blindness as a a nuisance that shouldn't be dwelt upon. But I know that working on InTouch was what started to unlock and change and mature your thinking.

Peter White22:11

Well, I think just the stories we were doing. I mean, I started to realize that things like only about three in ten of all blind people of working age actually had a job. And that shocked me.

Peter White22:25

And I did an interview with a man who had been blind and then went deaf.

Peter White22:31

That really reached me and made me think, I can help tell this person's story.

Presenter22:37

Peter, you talked about those individual encounters, and there's one in particular that I want to ask you about. I'm sure you'll remember this. This is the 90s by now, and you were presenting the programme No Triumph, No Tragedy. And there was one programme, you had a tricky encounter with the controversial pornographer, Larry Flint. So he'd been shot and paralysed in the 70s. He used a wheelchair.

Presenter22:57

How do you remember it? What do you remember about it?

Peter White22:59

He kept talking about cripples. You know, I don't want to be a cripple. I don't want to be associated with cripples. And I suddenly thought I've had enough of this. I said, But Mr Flint, you are a cripple. And he hadn't expected that and he wasn't quite sure how to take it.

Presenter23:16

Was it called?

Presenter23:17

That language obviously is offensive. Many people would find it offensive, but it created this amazing moment. But as a broadcaster, we're not sitting there thinking, I don't know if I can use this.

Peter White23:27

No.

Peter White23:28

I knew I had every right to point out to him that he was the word that he was negatively using about other people. And what did he have to say about that? Well, he blustered really, but he didn't have a justification for it. And in a way, I didn't think he needed a justification for it, because he he was showing his frustration. The whole point about No Triumph, No Tragedy was that it was trying to get the truth out of people about how they felt about disability.

Presenter23:59

Peter, it's time for some more music. Your sixth choice today. What have you chosen?

Peter White24:03

Ah, well, this was my first signature tune for my own show. Nothing to do with blindness. I sort of got my way on that, on Radio Solent, when I said I don't only want to do programmes about blindness. So I did this programme about just, it was visiting villages. Really, like there was a programme on Radio 4, a very famous programme called Down Your Way. What was your programme called? It was called Talk About.

Presenter24:25

What was your programme?

Peter White24:29

And this was its signature tune, its Banks of Green Willow, composed by George Butterworth.

Presenter25:35

The Banks of Green Willow, composed by George Butterworth and performed by the Academy of Saint Martin in the Fields, conducted by Sir Neville Mariner.

Presenter25:43

Peter White, you met your wife Jo in 1970 and got married the following year. Now, you'd always wanted children. Why was having a family of your own so important to you?

Peter White25:53

It was the same as the normality that I said I wanted in terms of the jobs I did, the interviews I did.

Presenter25:57

Yeah.

Peter White26:01

what I saw as normal the normality of family life.

Presenter26:05

So you went on to have three children together. How much thought did you give to the possibility that they might inherit the condition that had caused your blindness?

Peter White26:13

Not a lot. Yeah.

Peter White26:15

We did think about it, of course. And my wife, Jo, she got asked this. I think she was asked by her mum, which wasn't surprising.

Peter White26:25

And she said, I'm hardly going to marry a blind man and be that worried if I have a blind child. She said, obviously, I know the difficulty. I'd much rather it didn't happen, but if it did, we'd know what to do. Well, he would. And that was it as far as she was concerned.

Peter White26:43

My to be fair, my brother had already had two daughters, and they didn't have any eye problems. So we had a little bit of history on our side.

Presenter26:53

Colin went first again.

Peter White26:54

Testing.

Peter White26:55

Yes, Colin went first, yeah.

Presenter26:58

Peter Jo died in twenty sixteen. She'd been ill for some time with lung cancer. How did you cope with losing her?

Peter White27:07

Um

Peter White27:09

Jo didn't want a lot of fuss about this, she didn't want a lot of deep discussion about it.

Peter White27:17

She was very adamant that I shouldn't stop working and she said, I don't want you hanging around here wondering what's happening to me and you know, can you do anything?

Presenter27:26

I mean, I can understand that. It's hard enough anyway, right? You don't want to then spend the time that you've got.

Presenter27:32

Being upset necessarily and having those very difficult conversations. But what was that like for you? Were you okay with that?

Peter White27:33

Yeah how

Peter White27:38

Yeah, I I was,'cause I knew that was her.

Peter White27:42

And when she did die, I mean

Peter White27:45

People s said, shouldn't you take time off? Shouldn't you? And I said, Look, I've been grieving for this for three years. I have grieved. There was nothing more I could do. I just have to get on with

Peter White28:01

My life.

Presenter28:01

How quickly we are back on air.

Peter White28:04

Oh.

Peter White28:05

Three days.

Presenter28:06

What were we working on?

Peter White28:07

The Paralympics, I went to Rio and broadcast for a fortnight.

Peter White28:11

How was it?

Peter White28:13

Um odd.

Peter White28:15

It was odd, but I was doing my job, and I always thought that's what Jay would have expected me to do.

Presenter28:22

Let's have a minute for some music, Peter. Your seventh choice today. What are we going to hear?

Peter White28:27

This is about Joe, really. We came back from our honeymoon, so we're going right back, 44 years, and we had thirty five quid in the bank.

Peter White28:38

I'd just about managed to take her to the Channel Islands for a honeymoon and we had our first flat. We hadn't lived in it. We came back from the honeymoon and I got the key.

Peter White28:51

And we walked in.

Peter White28:52

And I had acquired Blue by Jonie Mitchell, which is a brilliant album. I could have picked anything from this. But this was the first record I put on the old Dancit record player in our new flat.

Peter White29:12

In uh

Peter White29:14

1971.

Peter White29:16

And it's My Old Man.

Speaker 429:18

My old man, he's a singer in the park.

Speaker 429:26

He's a walker in the rain, he's a dancer in the dark.

Speaker 429:35

We don't need new pieces of paper from the city hall.

Speaker 429:40

Keepin' us tight and true

Presenter29:48

Joni Mitchell and My Old Man. Peter White, your mum lived to see you receive your MBE in nineteen ninety eight. Sadly, your your dad had died by then. What do you think you would have made of your achievements?

Peter White30:03

He'd have been very pleased. I think the one thing that I really regret that he didn't see, my dad was like a lot of people in Britain. You know, when he got home from work, he would go in the kitchen, rinse his hands under the tap because he was a carpenter, so he was all covered in wood and sawdust and stuff. And then he would go in and sit and turn on the six o'clock television news. And I did my first broadcast for the six o'clock news in 1995. And my dad would have said.

Presenter30:31

Ah.

Peter White30:35

Oh yeah, that's not bad, kid.

Presenter30:39

You married again, Peter, your second wife, Jackie, in twenty eighteen. How did the two of you meet?

Peter White30:45

On a tram. Um I'd gone up to Manchester.

Peter White30:49

Got off the train at Manchester Piccadilly, ran and I used to run because I always used to miss the tram. So I ran down onto the tram stop and ran into this woman and said, Is this the Media City tram? And she said, I don't know. I don't normally catch these trams. Anyway, we got on the tram together and we started to talk and the rest is history. I feel lucky to have had a...

Peter White31:15

A second chance at happiness

Presenter31:17

Mm-hmm.

Peter White31:17

And Joe was the least jealous person I've ever known, so I think I'd get the nod for that.

Presenter31:25

So, Peter, it's time to get ready for the island. How are you feeling about the prospect of being cast away?

Peter White31:30

I'll be completely useless. I think I'll I'll probably starve to death, basically, because I won't know what plants are safe to eat. I couldn't catch a fish to save me life. Um I I think I'll be emaciated and dead within weeks, basically.

Speaker 431:41

Yeah.

Peter White31:45

So, you know, but if you're going to send me, well, you know, it's your privilege.

Presenter31:51

Well, I've got to do what I've got to do, Peter, but you can have one more track before you go, so we can postpone the trip. What will that be?

Peter White31:59

I could not go to the desert island without at least one Beatles record. And I thought, should I take it from the really early stages or should I take it from the later, more kind of reflective? And actually, I've taken it from the middle. It's we can work it out. It's optimistic. It's try to see it my way. And it just sounds as if they can work it out, which has been my motto. It just feels like it's my kind of song.

Speaker 432:30

Try to see it my way Do I have to keep on talking till I can go?

Speaker 432:37

While you see it your way, run the risk of knowing that our love may soon be gone. We can work it out, we can work it out. Think of what you're saying, you can get it wrong and still you think that it's alright.

Speaker 432:55

Think of what I'm saying, we can work it out.

Presenter32:59

The Beatles, and we can work it out.

Presenter33:02

So, Peter White, it's time to send you to the island. I'm giving you the Bible, the complete works of Shakespeare. You can also take one other book with you. What will it be?

Peter White33:10

You've said you've given me the Bible. Wisdom is the cricketer's Bible. I would love to have taken the whole series from 1864 up to the present day digitised so I could read them in Braille on this machine that's sitting in front of me. I'm told I can't do that, so I will take one year digitised so that I can read it in Braille. I would take 1962 because it would therefore relate the year 1961 in which my team Hampshire won the county championship for the first time.

Presenter33:42

You can also have a luxury item. What do you want to?

Peter White33:43

If I could have an inexhaustible supply of pear drops, but not any old pear drops, the big pear drops that they used to do in the old days, you know. When I was at Bristol, my mum would send me these parcels and in there there was always,'cause she knew I loved them, there was always a bag of pear drops.

Presenter34:03

Well, we'll send you a geroboam of pear drops, the very biggest we can find.

Peter White34:07

Thank you. That'd be great.

Presenter34:09

And finally, which track of the eight that you've shared with us today, Peter, would you rush to save from the waves? If you had to.

Peter White34:15

Because it almost saved my sanity. I think it would have to be Albatross by Judy Collins.

Presenter34:22

Peter White, thank you very much for letting us hear your Desert Island discs.

Peter White34:25

Thank you.

Presenter34:35

Hello, I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Peter. He's a resilient character, and I'm sure he will survive on the island. We've cast many broadcasters away, including Jeremy Bowen and Lise Dousette. And you'll find the teacher and writer Sinead Burke and the actor Liz Carr in our archive too. They both campaign for the rights of disabled people. Find all those episodes in our Desert Island Discs programme archive and through BBC Sounds. The studio manager for today's programme was Emma Hartz, the assistant producer was Christine Pavlovsky, and the producer was Paula McGinley. The series editor is John Gowdy.

Presenter35:16

Hello, this is Marion Keys. And this is Tara Flynn. We host a podcast you might like for BBC Radio 4 and BBC Sounds called Now You're Asking. Each week we take real listeners' questions about life, love, lingerie, cats, dogs, dentists, pockets, or the lack of, anything really, and apply our worldly wisdom in a way which we hope will help, but also hopefully entertain. Join us, why don't you? Search up Now You're Asking on BBC Sounds Tanking You.