Norma Percy

Presenter0:01

BBC Sounds Music Radio Podcasts. Hello, I'm Lauren Laverne and this is the Desert Island Discs podcast from BBC Radio 4. Every week I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, book and luxury, that they'd want to take with them if they were cast away to a desert island. For rights reasons, the music's shorter than on the original broadcast, but you can find a version with longer music tracks on BBC Sounds. Listeners will also get access to episodes 28 days earlier than everyone else. I hope you enjoy listening.

Presenter0:51

My castaway this week is the filmmaker Norma Percy. She's been called the preeminent political documentary maker of her generation. Her films tell the story of the conflicts and political upheavals of our times, from Watergate to Putin's Russia, taking viewers into the room where big decisions were made with the people who were there. Her programmes feature world leaders of all political persuasions, from Bill Clinton and Jerry Adams to Mikhail Gorbachev and Slobodan Milosevic, allowing their own words and their sometimes conflicting perspectives to take viewers closer to the truth. She was born in New York and after a visit to London at 15 became a committed anglophile. She later studied at the London School of Economics and became a House of Commons researcher before a chance encounter with the journalist and producer Brian Lapping led to her start in television. Her productions have won many prizes, including an Emmy, two BAFTAs and four Royal Television Society Awards. In 2010, she became the first TV documentary maker to win the Orwell Prize for Lifetime Achievement. She says, I'm not a big one for issues, and I don't do this to change the world, but there are things I want to know, and I like to produce evidence for the things I find out. My main motivation for wanting to do what I do is that I want to know what happened. Norma Percy, welcome to Desert Island Discs.

Norma Percy2:11

Thank you for having me.

Presenter2:12

Thank you for joining us, Norma. So you've been fascinated by politics and the workings of power since you were just a student. Why exactly?

Norma Percy2:20

Yeah.

Norma Percy2:21

I'm not so s sure it's politics. It's it's secrets maybe. It's it's secrets, gossip. It's um wanting to know what really happened and particularly anything that anyone wants to try to keep from me.

Speaker 12:25

Maybe.

Presenter2:38

So that behind closed doors thing, behind the scenes.

Norma Percy2:39

Yeah.

Norma Percy2:41

Yes, I think that's the motivation.

Presenter2:43

No matter how do you get people to open up to you for example, the big political hitters I think you've said anyone worth having says no at least three times.

Norma Percy2:53

Yeah, I shouldn't have said it because it probably encourages them to do it. But how do you get them? Well, we say, and we mean it, that we give everybody a level playing field. We ask what happened, what did you say, how did he reply? We don't point fingers and say, you are a terrorist. Generally, if they are, it will probably come out and the viewers aren't idiots and they'll be able to see from what they said and how they described it, that they are. But we give them a chance to put their point of view. And persuading them that we're going to make the program, the other side is talking. You should as well. And it's worth the trouble. You'll have a wide audience because it is trouble to answer our questions because you have to do research in your papers. You can't just turn up and say, I believe the solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict is that. You have to say, I was at that meeting when he said. And so you have to research it. It's hard work. But nowhere will you get a fairer hearing. We're not going to make it totally from your point of view. There are ways. People who've been Prime Minister can get their own account. But their own account, well, everybody looks at it sceptically. That's how they saw it. When we make a multi-sided account, it gets believed. And if you convince them of that, of course it's the most important thing that happened in their lives and they want the story to get out.

Presenter4:37

It's time for disc number one, Norma. What are you taking and why have you chosen it?

Norma Percy4:41

Well, my father died when I was young. My mother, who had started life as a fifties woman who expected to work until she had her children, became a working mother and we children were sent to summer camp. And one summer she had to work in Puerto Rico all summer and I went at the age of I can't remember whether this was eight or fifteen, but there's two summers. And I had a camp counselor who loved the songs of Tom Lirau. And when we went on these long walks, he taught us to sing his songs. The wonder of Tom Lira is that he takes this very sardonic, surprising lyrics, but it goes to s very nice, stirring tunes which are just the thing to keep you marching on a long walk. So it's be prepared.

Speaker 45:49

Be prepared.

Speaker 45:51

That's the Boy Scouts marching song, Be Prepared.

Speaker 45:55

As through life you march along, be prepared to hold your liquor pretty well.

Speaker 46:01

Don't write naughty words on wall.

Speaker 46:08

It's Don't Make Book.

Presenter6:11

Be prepared. Tom Lehrer. Norma Percy, you were born in New York City in 1942 and spent your early years in the suburb of Long Island. You're the eldest of two daughters. Your father, Joseph, was a research chemist and your mother, Constance, a statistician. Now, as you mentioned, your father died when you were very young. You were just four. He was killed in a plane crash along with 38 other people. What happened?

Norma Percy6:35

Gosh, it was extraordinary. I learnt about this mostly when my mother died going through her papers and finding the newspaper cuttings and things. He was a chemist working for Colgate Pomolive. He invented a kind of detergent hand soap and things like that. But he was a very brilliant chemist. And he was going with a group of American scientists after the war to Germany to try and steal industrial secrets. And the plane took off from what was then Idlewild Airport, Kennedy Airport. And there's a picture of me and my one and a half year old sister holding his hand, saying goodbye to him at the airport, which is my strongest memory of him. I saw that. It's so poignant. Every time I look at it. And the plane took off from Kennedy. It stopped to refuel as planes did then in Newfoundland. Perfectly nice, clear day. And then it took off again and the pilots flew straight into a rock and the plane fell into the sea and everybody on it was killed. And I think it was the biggest commercial air disaster at the time. It was on the front page of the New York Times.

Presenter7:22

I saw that, it's so poignant.

Norma Percy7:53

But I was four and you know you don't from the perspective of being four I don't remember very well. My memories also come from an incredibly detailed baby book that my mother kept and you come to the entry for the 3rd of October 1946 and it says a very sad thing happened today. My father died.

Norma Percy8:18

They told me he was in hospital, but my friends said, no, they were lying. He was dead. And it took a while for me to accept that my friends were right. But my only other vivid memory is, of course, we moved to New York City again because my mother was now a working mother and had to find a job to support us. So I have very few memories of him. I read everything I know. My mother would answer direct questions, but she closed the chapter. And the most amazing thing is that the job that she got, she was a statistician for the first American Cancer Society, who traveled around the world making sure that people coded death certificates in the right way, so the statistics really were the same all over the world. And she was never off an airplane and just never translated to her to be afraid of flying.

Speaker 18:46

Hmm.

Presenter9:22

You ended up becoming one of the first people to to spot the link between smoking and lung cancer.

Norma Percy9:27

Yeah, in the 50s she worked on a study which asked a large sample of men between 50 and 70 all about their personal habits, whether they drank and smoked and everything. And the evidence after one year was so clear that they announced the result of the study. It was called Hammond in Hoard and her name was on the front cover. Again, when she died, we found amongst her papers an essay she wrote that said, my biggest disappointment. She expected, of course, back in the early 50s when they announced this people would suddenly stop smoking. And sadly, she died in 2004 and it really hadn't taken hold the way it is today. She would have been very pleased. But I certainly knew her as a militant anti-smoker. And she had a big sign up that said, I advise my patients not to smoke in the front of the living room.

Speaker 19:48

Yeah.

Speaker 110:16

And so

Presenter10:26

It's time for disc number two, Norma. What's it gonna be?

Norma Percy10:29

It's Chopin's Walsingham C-sharp minor, which stems partly from my very sophisticated school time in New York. And after school, every day we had a activity, and my favourite was ballet. But I am not the nature's most graceful person. And I remember the moment when the ballet teacher was trying to make us all go twice a week because we would be much better. And then she looked at me and said, it will make everybody really much better, but I'm not sure there's much hope for Norma. Heartbreaking. Well, it wasn't so bad, really. I mean, I really realized I'd rather watch ballet than go through it all. But Chopin's Walsingham C-sharp minor, which was introduced to me by one of my sophisticated friends when I was in high school, also was the music for one of our recitals, of which I can still see a picture of me in a pink tuti, and realize I was kind of in the bottom of the chord of ballet rather than the star.

Speaker 111:11

I mean

Presenter12:42

Chopin's waltz in C Sharp minor Oprah sixty four number two performed by Katia Bunyateshvili.

Presenter12:49

Noah Percy, after your father's death, as you mentioned, your mother took you and your sister back to New York City to be closer to your grandmothers who could help to care for the two of you. So they both sound fascinating. Let's start with your paternal grandmother, Grandma Percy, who came to live with you.

Norma Percy13:04

What was she like? She was a Russian immigrant who came over in 1905. And in those days, the American melting pot was you came from where you came from, and you didn't talk about where you came from. You became an American. So she very rarely talked about what it was like in Russia, or I think it was Belarusia in the end. And she was lovely. But she spent a year going to visit relatives in California. And we got a nanny from my mother's childhood who was a real disciplinarian and was my first brush with real authority. How did that go? Well, I thought I won every battle. The one I remember was at one point I wouldn't finish my meal and she said I couldn't leave the table until I did. But I knew that evening there was a birthday party. It was my grandfather's 50th birthday party and I had to be there and it was her job to make sure I was there. So I knew I would win in the end. So I guess there you are. If you think out and prepare your strategy, you can win against authority every time. You were made for politics, Norma.

Presenter13:42

How did that go?

Presenter14:14

You were made for politics, Norma. Right at the beginning, it's obvious. So tell me about your mother's mother then, Lucille. She sounds like quite a trailblazer because she had studied at Columbia University. Uh

Norma Percy14:24

She graduated from Barnard College, the Women's College of Columbia University, in 1912. And she'd studied English, I believe. Yes, she studied English, but we found her diaries after she died, and they were fascinating when she was a young woman, very lively. And then they became much more. I went to the park with my children, and so this amazing education, she never thought to make it into something professional. What was her?

Presenter14:31

And she'd studied it

Presenter14:54

What was her influence on you?

Norma Percy14:56

Well, she took me to museums and to the theatre and generally told me to stand up straight and took me shopping the annual visit for the winter coat. But my grandfather's hobby was umpiring at tennis and he would go to Wimbledon every other year. And his claim to fame was he was chairman of the umpires one year. And when he went to Wimbledon, he umpired the Wimbledon final. And this was the first time a foreigner ever did it. And he made terrible mistakes in it. That was on the front cover of the London Times. And I think it took them about 30 years to ever allow a foreigner to do it again. But nonetheless, he went to Wimbledon every other year and took a grandchild who reached the right age. And for me, it was 15. And wow, that was an experience.

Presenter15:51

So, this is the trip that made you a committed anglophile. I mean, tell me about it. What do you remember? For sure.

Norma Percy15:56

Yeah, I was interested already, but we sat in the international box at Wimbledon and we would get a Wimbledon car and I stood three or four people behind Princess Anne who was going to get her car. And then I went to the Wimbledon Ball and I had crushes on tennis players the way most teenage girls have them on movie stars. But the annual tennis meeting, which was after Wimbledon, was in Monte Carlo. And sitting three tables away was Grace Kelly, who not very long before had starred in my most favourite movie of all time, High Society. And my next record has to be a song from that, which my sister and I knew by heart, and we performed it this fantastic duet, Well, Did You Ever.

Speaker 416:52

I have heard among this clan You are called the Forgotten Man. Is that what they're saying? Well, did you ever?

Speaker 417:01

What a swell party this is! And have you heard the story of a boy, a girl, unrequited love? Sounds like pure soap. I may cry. Tune in tomorrow. What a swell party this is!

Speaker 417:19

Swap frogs.

Presenter17:22

Well Did You Ever from the soundtrack to High Society composed by Cole Porter and performed by Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra.

Presenter17:30

So, Norma Percy, what was your relationship with your mother like as you were growing up?

Norma Percy17:35

She had had no religious training because her parents in this small town in Long Island had quarrelled with the rabbis. So she was totally secular and we had very little religious education. But she had every characteristic of a Jewish mother. So my rebellion, of course, which is a typically stupid one, was I started smoking at university. Oh dear. Which, if you could pick one thing to upset her. But of course, being a wishy-washy rebeller, I thought I kept it from her. When I stopped smoking, I discovered that she must have known all along, because you can tell when you're around a smoker, even if she never smokes in front of you. She chose not to know. She looks the other way. Yes, or sniff the other way.

Speaker 117:54

Yeah.

Speaker 118:02

Oh.

Presenter18:03

Dear

Presenter18:25

She looked the other way.

Presenter18:30

So, I mean, you know, she sounds like a very dynamic character. You obviously had a very clear idea of what you were interested in, who you wanted to be. Did you clash then?

Presenter18:39

Uh

Norma Percy18:39

In one sense, I was a goody-goody. I wanted to do well in school. And of course, she would have liked me to be a scientist. I think she really would have liked to become a doctor. She worked with doctors. But she got a Master's in Statistics to work her husband through his PhD. And never thought she'd have enough time from her family to be a doctor. She was quite a good mother. But I did obviously chafe against this loving closeness of my family, because I chose not to go to an Ivy League school that my parents had met at Cornell, but to go to Oberlin.

Presenter19:24

In Ohio.

Norma Percy19:25

in darkest Midwest. And I knew that Cornell, which is a huge university, was probably too big and too much for me. I w I was a quiet little thing.

Presenter19:36

One of your teachers there had a profound impact on you. Who was he and why did he play such an important part in your life?

Norma Percy19:44

George Lanyi. He was a Hungarian who made international relations as much fun as gossip. And it was the time of the Cold War, and it was a truly interesting time to be studying international relations. But he had a weekly seminar for honour students that flouted all the conventions of boring lectures. His wife would make you cookies and he would sneak a gin and tonic to someone who was nervous when about to give a seminar paper. And he knew when you broke up with your boyfriend. And he really did treat his students as family. And he was the one who would find

Presenter20:28

advised you to come to the LSE.

Norma Percy20:30

Yeah.

Presenter20:30

Uh

Norma Percy20:30

Yeah, he asked me what I really wanted to get out of graduate school. We all went to graduate school. And I said, well, I guess I want to find out how politics really works and get as far as possible from my family. He didn't stop to think for a minute. He just suggested the LSE, his alma mater, the London School of Economics. One of my first seminars at LSE was Lady Violet Barnum Carter, Prime Minister Asquith's daughter. And she told the most amazing stories. Like when she was a teenager, she was seated next to Mr Churchill, and Mr. Churchill ignored her. She was but a girl. He ignored her through the soup and the fish course and the main course. But suddenly the pudding was brought in. He turned and he fixed her with a stern look and said, I do believe we are all worms going slowly to our grave. But then he perked up. But I do believe I am glowworm.

Norma Percy21:47

So you learn that in seminars. It really gets you interested in politics. But I really hit an interesting time. I mean, my first lecture, Professor Robert Mackenzie said, I'm sorry I'm cancelling my lecture tonight. Harold Macmillan has resigned, and I'm going to talk about it on the BBC. Honestly, I felt like I was from the center of the universe.

Presenter22:11

Norma, let's have a break for some more music. It's your fourth choice today. Tell us about this next disc.

Norma Percy22:17

I arrived at LSC on the night that Harold Macmillan resigned, and the next year or so London was in fact transformed from the quaint place that I had thought I was coming to study in to swinging London and the Beatles and all they stood for. So when I went home, and I still thought of New York as home after my first year, but not much longer.

Speaker 122:36

Yeah.

Norma Percy22:49

Well, I kind of felt I brought the Beatles to America because Hard Days Night opened that summer in New York and I took my sister and our two closest friends to see it.

Speaker 423:03

Been a hard day's night

Speaker 423:06

And I've been working like a dog It's been a hard day's night

Speaker 423:13

I should be sleeping like a love But when I get home to you I find the things that you do will make me feel alright

Speaker 423:23

You know I work all day To get your money to buy a

Presenter23:30

The Beatles and Hard Days Night

Presenter23:34

Norma Percy, you weren't able to complete your PhD because student fees went up and you couldn't afford to continue your studies. What did you do?

Norma Percy23:44

Well, I had to get a job. In those days, Labour MPs couldn't really afford researchers. They had a third of a secretary. But there'd been a Labour landslide in 1966, and John P. McIntosh, a Glasgow professor, had got elected in one of those seats that he had just stood in order to see what it was like. And he was in the middle of writing a book and had a research grant to pay a researcher. So there was an advertisement in the Times. And I was absolutely determined to get the job. He was researching a book on parliamentary scrutiny of the government. But he used me for everything. The first thing was to revise his book on the British Cabinet, which had been my Bible when I was studying comparative government. So this was really exciting. But the task I liked most of all was he liked to sit in his office and write his Times articles in his books. But he still was interested in the gossip, so I took it as my job to sit in the stranger's bar every night and catch the gossip and report to him in the morning. And the PhD was soon abandoned. But I truly never remember being as happy in my work. I just sort of walked round the House of Commons smiling all the time.

Speaker 124:02

Yeah.

Presenter25:05

You mentioned stories and gossip earlier, that that's part of the attraction for you of what you do. You just love finding out what happened. I mean, I'm picturing you as a young woman in the Stranger's Bar. What kind of stories were you hearing there?

Norma Percy25:18

A young woman in a very short mini skirt. It was absolutely that time. Once the rather, rather inebriated Member of Parliament looked at me and said, What is a woman dressed like that doing here? And I was really shocked because, you know, everybody dressed like that then. But I guess he never left the House of Commons. But I was so happy, but it was a five-year grant and it was coming to an end. And I think my poor Professor McIntosh was afraid he'd never get me off the premises. And I was really beginning to panic about how I was about to lose my ringside seat. There just weren't researcher jobs going. I couldn't be an MP because I was an American citizen and anyway I was no good at making speeches.

Norma Percy26:11

So I thought, well, the only thing to do was to marry an MP. So I got as far as actually leaping through the Times Guide of the House of Commons looking for a suitable candidate.

Presenter26:23

Any eligible bachelors in there?

Norma Percy26:26

One or two, but I'm not going to tell you who I picked out. But just at that moment, Brian Lapping appeared, and he worked for Granada, and they hired Brian, who was a print journalist, to do unusual ways of making politics on television. And he was in the middle of trying to stop a series about what was wrong with Parliament, and needed a researcher who knew about Parliament. And there I was. And I soon discovered that television was an even better way of discovering political secrets. And we decided we would make a fly-on-the-wall film of one clause of a bill going through the House of Commons. And we asked for access for ministers and civil servants and how they reacted with MPs wanting to change the bill. And we got it. And that had been something that we had been trying to get when we were writing his parliamentary books. And they wouldn't do it. But the thing about television is that politicians really need television. I mean, they need to persuade the public that what they're doing is right. So they have to give some access to television. And maybe that's something I've been playing on ever since.

Presenter27:49

Norma, I want to find out what happened next, but I'd love to hear your fifth disc before we do that. Tell me about this next one. Why have you chosen it?

Norma Percy27:58

At Oberlin we had a very good theatre group. They did things like Gilbert and Sullivan and musicals. And my favourite performance during my time at Oberlin was a show called The Fantastics. And the story of this musical is two fathers, friends, wanting their children to get married. And they came up with a brilliant strategy. They forbid them having anything to do with each other. And the reasoning is explained in this very charming song, Never Say No.

Speaker 428:27

The

Speaker 428:33

Children, lovers, fantastics, geese, how clever we are, how crafty to know To manipulate children, you merely say.

Speaker 428:47

Dog's got to bark, a mule's got to bray, Soldiers must fight, and preachers must pray, And children, I guess, must get their own way The minute that you say no

Speaker 429:03

Why?

Presenter29:03

Never say no from the musical of Fantastics, performed by the new Off Broadway cast. Norma Percy, your first job with Brian was on the series State of the Nation. Now the first programmes were about Parliament, and I know that you had some strong views about how you should approach the work that you were doing. What exactly were you pushing for?

Norma Percy29:22

They were set to make a series about what people thought was wrong, ordinary people thought was wrong with Parliament. I was shocked and horrified. What do ordinary people know about how Parliament works? I mean, if you want to interview ordinary people, you should ask them about their weddings or things that happened to them. But the people who know what's wrong with how Parliament works are the MPs that work there. So what we should do is go to the MPs themselves and ask them. And when you ask MPs, it's improving the ability of the backbencher to have some say on what Parliament does. And I, of course, with my training from working in Parliament and President McIntosh, knew the answer, which was select committees. So what had been a series that was going to go to ordinary punters, just like they do on the news, became a strong argument for select committees.

Presenter30:23

So that's quite a big shift. I mean, you know, to redirect the programme in that way. Where did your self-confidence come from?

Norma Percy30:31

Oh, firm belief that I was right.

Presenter30:35

Tell me about the the Norma Percy method, because you developed that quite early on. Talk me through it, if you wouldn't mind.

Norma Percy30:43

The essence of the method is what we do is try and show what goes on behind closed doors inside the room when the big political decisions are made, by getting people who were there, only those who were there, and asking them what happened. But there are lots of things that are important, but perhaps I think the most important is speaking to everyone first off the record and getting them to tell the story and edit their stories together to make a script, and then we start to film.

Speaker 131:08

The whole thing.

Presenter31:18

Your approach of bringing all sides and often conflicting versions of events so that you allow and create this complexity. You're in the room where it happens, to quote Hamilton, you hear the story, viewers hear that and they're in the room too. But they can judge for themselves.

Norma Percy31:35

Yeah. Uh

Presenter31:36

Yeah.

Norma Percy31:36

What we find is people's stories do.

Norma Percy31:40

support each other as to the facts, although the interpretation and the spin differs. So the viewers should be clear as to the facts and they judge who was right in the spin.

Presenter31:54

Do you remember when you realised that you'd you'd hit upon a kind of mechanism, an approach to making films that was going to be very special?

Norma Percy32:04

I wonder if this way of making programmes would ever have been developed if it wasn't for the luck of the first one, which was a series called End of Empire, which looked at how Britain left each of its top colonies. And in that case, it meant looking at it from the British officials who ran the empire, but also from the other side. And it meant that we talked to people who were terrorists at the time the programme were made, who, when it was over and the flag came down, they became police chiefs and presidents. And I became hooked on this sort of method because I made the first programme about Cyprus. And the moment it really started was when I realized that when the governor's wife told us there was a bomb in the bed and it was planted by her butler, that you could go to the butler and find out how he did it. And that's kind of been the way we made these programmes ever since.

Speaker 132:18

Mm-hmm.

Presenter33:15

Norma, in 1991, you produced the award-winning Second Russian Revolution that chronicled Mikhail Gorbachev's attempts to reform the Soviet Union. Now, at the time, people told you you wouldn't be able to get members of the Politburo to speak, but you did, and you tried a technique that had stood you in good stead with British cabinet members in the past. What was it?

Norma Percy33:35

Well, Brian's thought was we would start with the Politburo meeting that selected Gorbachev. And we managed to finally, after probably on our second or third trip, sit in front of a Politburo member. So I used the technique, worked quite well with British cabinet ministers and officials. Tell me about the night you selected Gorbachev. You know, like you went home and told your wife that evening. And the look of such complete horror about telling anybody, particularly their wife, of what happened in Politburo made me pause. But the real luck was that Glasnos was really starting to move apace. And by the time we had done our preliminary recies and went for our serious first research trip, they were starting to be able to speak freely. And in a way, they spoke much more freely than any Western politician because they didn't have the sort of rules that we have of what you could say and what you couldn't.

Presenter34:43

Norma, it's time for your sixth choice today. Tell us about the next piece that we're gonna hear. Why are you taking it to the island?

Norma Percy34:49

This was this very important coup against Gorbachev. When the coup happened, the signal to the people of Moscow was suddenly the ordinary programming stopped. And until it was sorted out whether the coup was going to work or not, there was Swanley on the television. So our programme eight had, you know, starting with quite tough coup platters talking and then suddenly the screen was filled with swan like. The director Angus McQueen thought of using it and this has come to be called when we're editing one of Angus's ballets.

Presenter36:31

An extract from Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake performed by the London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Richard Bonning.

Presenter36:38

Norma Percy, in the mid nineties you interviewed the former Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic for the BBC series The Death of Yugoslavia. This proved to be a challenge for you and your methods. What happened?

Norma Percy36:51

First of all, television is absolutely a completely communal activity. So Angus and I were really up all night arguing about what questions. So we arrived at the Presidential Palace, which was a huge marble hall which didn't seem to have anybody there. And he suddenly came and sat down in front of this round table and put his clock on the table. He said, right. go ahead. He spoke good English because he'd been a banker in New York in the 70s. And so I put my hand in my bag to try and get these very carefully worded questions. And he just fixed me with a with a stare. I mean he really locked me in his grace and I couldn't get my hand on the head.

Presenter37:42

You couldn't break iCar. Attack.

Norma Percy37:44

Yeah, exactly. And so I fortunately we'd spent so long discussing these questions I had them in my head. So Angus stood there laughing to himself. Well, but I managed to ask the question. With your hand in your bag. With my hand in my bag and my not breaking the eye contact. And then after the time elapsed, he looked at the clock, said, That's it, and off he went. So when we came to film, we had no idea whether we'd get Milosevic or not. This was a couple of months later.

Presenter37:59

With my

Presenter38:16

The interview itself, I mean, how did it go? How did he conduct himself?

Norma Percy38:20

Well, this time Laura Silver, the FT reporter there, who did it, because we thought if we she could do it in Serbo-Croat and he would be less defensive than if it was in English. But as we were going into the interview, his press officer said, Well, you're going to get the interview and you can use it in your programme, but you have to agree to broadcast the interview live, full thing, on the BBC, as programme seven of your series. And at that point, if he said you have to sell me your sister, I would have said yes. We hadn't been working so hard for this interview. So I said yes, and we did the interview. And my first reaction to the interview was he was economical with the truth, to such a great extent that it really was going to be hard to use. So I tossed and turned in my bed in the hotel that night thinking, my God, I've got an interview with Moss, which is filled with lies. And I've told him rather economical with the truth thing, because I have no ability to make the BBC transmit an interview in Serbo-Croat live. So when we got back, I thought Brian would want to call BBC Two. He said, no, no, dear, you do it. So with real trepidation, I rang the controller of BBC Two.

Speaker 138:56

So

Norma Percy39:48

Well, B V C Two had just gone twenty four hours and they were desperate for things to broadcast in the small hours of the morning. So he said, Well, you know, stick some subtitles on.

Presenter39:59

We'll put it up.

Norma Percy40:01

Yeah.

Presenter40:01

I mean, what was it like, Normas, sitting there watching this interview unfold, knowing that he was lying to you?

Norma Percy40:07

Uh

Norma Percy40:08

I was pretty worried.

Norma Percy40:10

But in fact

Norma Percy40:12

When you cut what he said with his sidekick, Borijovich, who was incredibly frank, and most of the Yugoslavs had been very frank, as well as the wonders of the Yugoslavia programme was they filmed everything, so that when you put it all together...

Norma Percy40:34

It somehow worked.

Presenter40:36

In two thousand two you made the fall of Milosevic, and around that time the Hague War Crimes Tribunal was pursuing cases against Serbian figures, including Milosevic. They asked you for the tapes of your research interviews. How did you respond?

Norma Percy40:50

We make a promise to our interviewees that these off-the-record research interviews would be property of the team who are making the programme and nothing would be used unless you said it again on film. And we made this to the Serbs as well as to everybody else in the programme. So I considered the off-the-record research interviews sacrosanct. And in order to stop some enthusiastic researcher just sipping them to the Hague, I took them home and put them under my bed. To tell the truth, people pretty much usually say things in the research interview that they're going to say again in film. And I can't imagine it would have done them much good anyway.

Presenter41:38

Let's go to the music. It's your seventh choice today. What's next and why are you taking it with you to the island?

Norma Percy41:44

Well, I was at Oberlin in the 60s and it was a time of civil rights movements and folk songs and I was particularly keen on the culture that was symbolized by Gen Bias. It was hard to pick a Gen Bias song, but the one I've chosen is It's Not Rebec.

Speaker 442:18

Go away from my window.

Speaker 442:23

Go at your own chosen speed.

Speaker 442:28

I'm not the one you want me.

Speaker 442:33

I'm not the one you need.

Presenter42:38

Joan Byers with It Ain't Me, Babe.

Presenter42:41

Norma Percy, I know that your your mother continued working until she was eighty seven. Has she been an influence on you in your approach to the way you live and work?

Presenter42:52

Oh, yeah.

Norma Percy42:53

It does give me impetus to go on. I mean, she worked for the American government at the end and it was considered an ageist to make people retire. And she would say, Well, if I retired, I'd have to pay for my own travel and there wouldn't be anyone interesting to meet me at the airport. And well, I kind of agree with that sentiment. So there will be a natural time when the BBC stops commissioning me. I'll have to read the writing and the war.

Presenter43:24

You're married to the geneticist broadcaster and former Desert Island Disc castaway, Steve Jones. Did you ever give him any advice about the broadcasting side of his career?

Norma Percy43:34

Actually, that's the way we met. We had a mutual friend, and Steve, who was a geneticist who had been approached by Granada to do a series of evolution and action schools programmes, was sent by our mutual friend Jill Brown to ask me how much he should charge. He was offered a flat fee of £400, which was an extraordinary amount of money in those days, or a lesser fee in residuals. So I said, without having to think about it, well, oh, take the bigger fee, because, I mean, my programmes are never repeated, which was true at the time. I used to finish a programme and go off to the pub in Manchester and watch it, and that was it. Of course, the schools programmes were repeated and repeated. I think you might even see them now, this young man with green paint under his fingers. It's the worst advice he ever got, but it took him a long time to find out.

Presenter44:25

Yeah.

Speaker 144:25

Uh

Presenter44:29

Dot

Presenter44:33

Norma, it's almost time for your next adventure. We're going to cast you away to your desert island. How will living there test your resolve, do you think?

Norma Percy44:41

Oh, I'll be hopeless for someone who is used to working in communal activities and being on my own. I think I would get tired of my own company quite quickly. But the idea of having to feed myself or, you know, build somewhere to live, well, I wouldn't know where to start.

Presenter45:02

Well, we'll let you take one more song before you go. Your final choice today, Norma Percy, what's it gonna be?

Norma Percy45:08

It's Randy Newman, and you could say he's almost responsible for me never getting together with my husband, because the first time he approached me was to invite me to a dinner party. And I said, I'd love to come, but I've got tickets for a Randy Newman concert, thinking any serious person would be absolutely understood why that was so important. And he said, who? And I thought, well, I certainly have no interest in this chap. And nothing happened for a couple of years.

Speaker 145:39

Uh

Speaker 445:39

Uh

Speaker 445:46

Short people got no reason.

Speaker 445:50

So

Speaker 445:52

No reason.

Speaker 445:54

So people got

Speaker 445:56

No reason to live.

Speaker 446:01

Got little hands.

Speaker 446:04

Little eyes

Speaker 446:06

They walk around telling great big lies They got little noses and tiny little teeth They wear platform shoes on their nasty little feet Well I

Presenter46:17

Uh

Norma Percy46:17

Randy Newman and Short People. You shouldn't have to ask me why that's my anthem, but.

Presenter46:23

You are quite small yourself?

Norma Percy46:25

No.

Presenter46:25

Oh.

Norma Percy46:25

Mm-hmm.

Presenter46:25

Right.

Norma Percy46:25

As well.

Presenter46:25

Well, I mean, did that land with you a satire immediately, or was there a an intake of breath when you first heard it?

Norma Percy46:25

Alright.

Norma Percy46:31

Of course I knew it was satire, but in fact I do sometimes think that I do look so amazingly unfrightening that maybe and and once it really happened to be true. We did an interview for the fall of Milosevic with Milosevic's foreign minister and he was terrible, he was very, very defensive. So I first of all did my thing of asked him for a second interview and instead of my fierce looking male director, I did the interview and he was a different person. And I mean that was one moment when I realized that perhaps looking like I wouldn't hurt a fly has stood me in good stead. But it's awfully hard reaching to the top shelves.

Presenter47:19

Well, no shelves to worry about on your desert island, Noma, and it's time to cast you away. I'm going to give you the books to take with you. You can have the Bible, the complete works of Shakespeare, and one other book of your choice. What's it going to be?

Norma Percy47:31

Well, I've chosen Proust in Search of Lost Time because my husband and I have completely different tastes in books, but we had both read Anthony Powell's Dance to the Music of Time, which people said was based on Proust. And it was something we had to talk about when we first met. And then everybody said that was really not as good as Proust. So when we first went on holiday, I took it under my arm and I carried it everywhere. We had a nice two-week holiday on Greek Island, the most unusual thing in our relationship. But I never got past page 50. So I thought, well, this is the moment to read it all.

Presenter48:20

You can also have a luxury item. What will that be?

Norma Percy48:24

I'm quite an enthusiastic swimmer, but I'm it's not cold water swimming pools for me. I I like warm water and sunbathing. But it it will be salty water, of course, so I think I'll need a shower if I could also have a fluffy toweling robe and maybe some sun tandlers.

Presenter48:44

Oh, that sounds like a lovely little kit. A little post shower solve and and robe. Why not? And finally, which one track of the eight that you've shared with us to day would you save from the waves first?

Norma Percy48:56

Uh

Presenter48:56

Uh So much.

Norma Percy48:56

I think probably Joan Byers just listening to the music gives you shivers, and it is also a memory of a very happy time with Doverlyn and my the friends that I still have today.

Presenter49:11

Norma Percy, thank you very much for letting us hear your Desert Island discs.

Norma Percy49:14

Thank you. It was a wonderful experience. I really enjoyed it.

Presenter49:40

I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Norma and that she finally gets past page 50 of In Search of Lost Time. We've cast away fellow documentary maker Asif Capardia and two of Norma's music choices, Tom Lehrer and Randy Newman. Norma's husband, the geneticist Professor Steve Jones, is in our archive along with them too. The studio manager for today's programme was Sarah Hockley, the assistant producer was Christine Pavlovsky, the production coordinator was Susie Roylance, the content editor was Mugabe Turia, and the producer was Paula McGinley. Next time, my guest will be the theatre director, Sir Gregory Doran. I do hope you'll join us.

Speaker 150:26

Hello, I'm Nick Robinson.

Speaker 150:28

You might be tired of switching on the news, hearing those pre rehearsed sound bites, the lines to take from those who shape our lives. When politics is as fragmented, as unpredictable, as fraught as it is now, it can be hard to cut through the noise.

Speaker 150:42

That is precisely my aim on Political Thinking, my podcast from BBC Radio 4. I have extended conversations with those who shape our political thinking. I try to get to the heart of what makes these people tick. What lies behind what you're seeing or hearing on the news. That's Political Thinking with me, Nick Robinson. You can listen on BBC Sounds.