Gordon Buchanan

Presenter0:00

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.

Presenter0:48

My castaway this week is the wildlife broadcaster and filmmaker Gordon Buchanan.

Presenter0:53

Viewers will know him for getting up close and personal with his subjects, sneaking up on a lioness in the Kalahari Desert, breaking down in tears when he became the first person to capture footage of tigers in Bhutan and, in an encounter that went viral, keeping his cool inside a perspex box while a hungry polar bear spent the best part of an hour trying to break into it. His love of the outdoors goes back to his childhood on the Hebridean island of Mull. He was only 17 when he got his first break, assisting on a shoot observing chimpanzees in the bushlands of Sierra Leone. It was an experience that changed his life. He says, I'm lucky that I've found a job that's pretty much a continuation of what I used to do when I was nine or ten years old, being out in the wilds watching the world go by. Gordon Buchanan, welcome to Desert Island.

Gordon Buchanan1:41

Thank you very much.

Presenter1:42

So Gordon, you've been called fearless many times, are you?

Gordon Buchanan1:46

No, I'm not without fear. I don't know. I think it's just sort of animals are quite easy to predict. Most animals are easy to predict. Human beings, on the other hand, are kind of the most unpredictable creature on earth. So I'm more on edge walking through the streets of London, like walking through Euston. I'm much more on edge than I would be out in the wilds of Africa. So I think it's just because I've been doing this job for, yeah, since I was 17, my norm is not that normal for a lot of people. And you do everything you can to avoid getting into trouble. Or if you're scared, generally you've done something wrong or not been observant enough. But yeah, I'm kind of fairly... I'm laid back. In wild places, I'm laid back. But in the kind of modern human world, I'm not that laid back at all. So it's the urban jungle that's a problem. Yeah, definitely. Got it.

Speaker 12:14

Is

Presenter2:38

Now to many of us, Gordon, the idea of sitting in a cramped hide for days on end, just kind of waiting for something to happen sounds like a bit of a nightmare. But I know that you don't see it that way at all. You've talked about it as an escape, in fact. Tell me about that.

Gordon Buchanan2:50

Mm-hmm.

Gordon Buchanan2:52

Well, sitting in a hide, and you sometimes have to do that for a couple of hours, a couple of days, sometimes I've done it for 30 days in a row. And it is, it's small enough that you could touch all four walls from your seated position, and you leave behind a lot of human problems. I do when I go into that space, it's like you become invisible. You know, you're sitting in there waiting for the animal that you're interested to come along, or you're waiting for the behavior to unfold in front of you. So there's lots of little clues and signs that often sort of happen in the lead up to that. So you have to really tune into that frequency, and you're tuning into the frequency of nature. Yeah, it's kind of almost transcendental meditation. You just, I don't really worry about much when I'm in a hide.

Speaker 13:12

Yeah.

Presenter3:39

I wonder which animals have surprised you the most? Do they often kind of not do the stereotypical thing that you would expect of a wolf or a leopard?

Gordon Buchanan3:48

Yeah.

Presenter3:49

Whatever.

Gordon Buchanan3:49

I

Presenter3:49

Yeah.

Gordon Buchanan3:49

Yeah.

Gordon Buchanan3:50

I did a two-part series back in 2014 and was filming wolves up in Ellesmere Island, which is way up in the Canadian Arctic. And the wolves there have never seen human beings before. So they hadn't learned that really fundamental lesson that a lot of wildlife has to learn, which is to fear human beings. And because we weren't a threat to them, they kind of just accepted us. And then it was one day, the one day I thought something is going on here, was ordinarily when all the wolves went off to hunt, they would leave one of the wolves with the cubs at the den to keep an eye on them. And there was this one day, all six adults just went off hunting. And I sort of looked around and think, who's left to babysit? And I realized that I was the honorary unpaid babysitter for these wolves. And I think it was just they thought, okay, with these guys around.

Speaker 14:39

That's it.

Gordon Buchanan4:43

Other wolves are unlikely to come in, so it wasn't like, Yeah, we'll get Uncle Gordon to to look after the cubs, but it was definitely a level of acceptance that they were happy that and f comfortable enough with me being there that I wasn't going to do anything and their cubs weren't at risk and there might have been a little bit of an umbrella of protection.

Presenter5:00

We've got to make some time for the music, so I think we should get started with your first disc today, Gordon Buchanan. Disc number one, what is it and why are you taking it to the island?

Gordon Buchanan5:09

It's Take Me Home, Country Roads, by John Denver. I love this, it's an amazing song, but it reminds me of my mum, and it reminds me of happy times in my mum's life that I was aware of. I suppose my mum had a lot of challenges. I suppose from the moment she met my dad and became a parent. So there was a lot of, I think, difficult times for her. But this song reminds me of the times when things were good. It always makes me happy. And she's a farm girl as well, so it's a nod to that. Do you remember?

Presenter5:38

Do you remember her listening to it?

Gordon Buchanan5:40

Yeah, I I remember it being on and we didn't have a kind of huge record collection, but what we did have was a lot of country and western Sydney Divine that is so not much that a kind of young person could leaf through and go, I'm desperate to find out what this sounds like, but actually the John Denver album I was more than happy to listen to time and time again.

Speaker 36:02

Almost heaven.

Speaker 36:05

West Virginia

Speaker 36:08

Blue Ridge Mounts, Shenandoah River.

Speaker 36:15

Life is all there.

Speaker 36:17

Older than the tree.

Speaker 36:20

Gone to that amount

Speaker 36:23

Rollin' like a breeze, country road, take me home.

Presenter6:31

John Denver and Take Me Home Country Roads. So Gordon Buchanan, you were born near Dunbarton in the west of Scotland in nineteen seventy two, the third of four children. So tell me more about your mum, Margaret. She was quite young when she had the four of you, wasn't wasn't she?

Gordon Buchanan6:45

Yeah, I think she met my dad when she was 19 and she was married within a year, had my brother within a year of that and then had another sort of three kids by the time she was maybe 24. And my grandfather had a farm, so my mum kind of was from farming stock and you know, also her mum died sort of at the start of her 20s. So she'd gone, had sort of this blissful sort of upbringing on a farm, carefree, surrounded by her family and sort of out in the countryside. And then she found herself in a town with a husband that didn't often come straight home from work and go to the pub a lot and having lost her mum at that point. So she had a real... You would not know this if you spoke to her because she's a very positive person. But yeah, she had a tough time.

Presenter7:35

And and what about your dad, Gordon? He was a mechanic.

Gordon Buchanan7:37

Yeah.

Presenter7:37

How would you describe him?

Gordon Buchanan7:39

He was just one of those kind of Peter Pan type characters that not a bad bone in his body, I have to say. Yeah, my dad was in a band, so he was a drummer. They were called the Big Six, and the photographs of that time look as if they're all living their best lives. And they're all kind of really sharply dressed, all really handsome, and just kind of like being young and having fun. But I think that period from doing that to becoming a father of four kids was too much for him.

Speaker 18:01

But

Presenter8:01

Yeah.

Presenter8:10

Um so it was too much for the marriage. Your your parents split. You were just four at this point and it was a few years after that that your mum decided to take you all t to live in uh Tobamori on the Isle of Mull. So did she have a connection to the island?

Gordon Buchanan8:24

We used to, my grandparents had a caravan up in Tobromori and we'd spend these lovely, you know, a week or maybe a couple of weeks in the summer in Tobromori. And it's a very holiday-ish place and it's brightly coloured. And I think because by this point we were living in a little flat in a council estate with social problems growing around us. And my mum, I think, realised that this probably wasn't going to give us the best start. All of her family were on the mainland, all of her friends, so she completely restarted for us. And it's a huge change going from a town or going from a council estate to living in a little caravan in the woods, which we did for the first two years. It's this scene in The Wizard of Oz when it goes from Kansas and it's black and white and then it goes into sort of technicolour.

Presenter9:10

It goes in.

Gordon Buchanan9:12

That's kind of what it felt like.

Presenter9:14

Were you able to keep up your relationship with your dad?

Gordon Buchanan9:17

We would go and see my dad once he kind of sort of was more settled and we were allowed to go and stay with him. But I suppose ultimately if you don't share the same roof, there's a void there. Not at all that I kind of when I was younger I wasn't like think, oh, I'm looking for a you know a father figure looking for male role models, but everyone needs that. Boys and girls sort of I think need a kind of good strong male role role model in any in any form and I kind of lacked that.

Speaker 19:30

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 19:36

Looking for me.

Presenter9:46

Let's have some more music, Gordon. It's your second choice today. Disc number two, what is it and why are you taking it?

Gordon Buchanan9:52

This is Brandy in the Ary by Pete and Diesel. This is about Chukda Pride. Do you know what Chikukda Pride? I do. Well, my dad was from Dingwald, so I know that it is.

Presenter9:59

I did. Well, my dad was from Dingwald, so I know that it's in the Highlands. So it was, yes, it's country folk.

Gordon Buchanan10:06

Yeah, country folk. I mean kind of d a derogatory term.

Presenter10:08

It is a derogatory term, isn't it?

Gordon Buchanan10:10

But when we were growing up, we would call people, you know, we lived in Torpomuri, the big bright lights of the big town, but we'd call someone that lived in Dervick a Tukter or someone. But we were all Tukhters because we were all country folk living on an island. And in the 80s, it didn't feel that cool to be an islander. And it really, it really was. And with Pete and Diesel, they are this really bonker's phenomenon. It's like a kind of electric Kaylee. It's a bit like a Hebridean form of the Wurzels. The Wurzels album my mum had, which I used to, few albums in the house, but I used to listen to the Wurzels. I was like, that's pretty good. That's a good, that's a good album.

Presenter10:17

But we

Presenter10:51

Why is it taking so long for a Hebridean Wurzel to emerge? Is the only question.

Gordon Buchanan10:54

Bad.

Gordon Buchanan10:55

But they are, I personally, and to any traditional Scottish music devotees, a lot of them are not fans. But I went to see Pete and Diesel at the Barrowlands. First time I'd ever been there. It was just as things were unlocking after COVID. And the place was full of all sorts of folk, but a lot of kind of Hebridean types. And Pete and Diesel came on. Our kids were with us. It was the first gig that we'd ever been to with our kids. And we had one of the best nights ever. The air was livid with Hebridean saliva because everybody knew every single word to every single song. And it was the best place to catch COVID because that's what I came away with. But it was an amazing night. And they're a really cool band. Being a Chukter is cool.

Speaker 311:44

But it was an amazing night.

Speaker 311:47

We're the P and the D from storn away town. We're an a higher van that better not break down. We'll stop for a smoke, some coffee and tea. We'll reach in Brisneggy, grab a burger with cheese. Well, go and pour yourself a little brandy, take it to the Abbey and give it lardy. Go and pour yourself a little brandy, take it to the Abbey and give it Lee.

Presenter12:18

Peat and Diesel and Brandy in the Arry. So Gordon Buchanan, tell me a little bit more about growing up on Mull. This is the late 70s and 80s.

Gordon Buchanan12:26

There was no downside to it at all. You know, for a kid that loved being outside, that place was just an amazing, you know, an opportunity to kind of just explore the woods, sort of go out and boats, sort of visit islands, like walk up into the hills. So that was all good in my book. It was a paradise for me. But at school, it wasn't my place. And I think I'm fairly sure that I'm dyslexic. So I think kind of the issues and problems that I had was probably because I had some learning difficulties that weren't recognised. So I just tried to fly under the radar and my days in school were kind of slightly spent planning what we were going to do after school and what we were going to do at that weekend. And it all was about doing stuff outdoors. I felt more at home there than I did, you know, anywhere. It was just my place.

Speaker 113:01

Do I

Presenter13:25

And and the need to escape was because life at home was quite turbulent. So I think you were eight when your mother met and married a local man called Alastair.

Speaker 113:35

Uh

Gordon Buchanan13:35

Mm-hmm.

Presenter13:36

When did you first realize that he wasn't everything he seemed to be?

Gordon Buchanan13:40

With Alice in the beginning, I think because I had this sort of empty space and probably and was looking for a kind of sort of a father figure, you know, I think initially hoped that he could fill that void. But I think really quite quickly I sensed there's something off about him. He kind of was, I think, really good at masking his issues and sort of his violent tendencies. But as it just played out within, you know, really quite early on in the relationship, there was sort of domestic violence that escalated at home.

Presenter14:16

Did you witness what was happening? Did you hear it? Were you, you know,

Gordon Buchanan14:20

Yeah, I heard it. And then there would be sort of could see that mum had bruising, she had a kind of a a wrist splint on, and then it got to it got to a point that it couldn't it really couldn't go on any longer. He was kind of

Presenter14:26

Yeah.

Presenter14:34

What was that? What was the the worst point?

Gordon Buchanan14:37

I had come home, I must have been

Gordon Buchanan14:39

Maybe about 14, 15, thereabouts. And I came home and there was blood coming down the stairs. The front door was open, I think. And I went up into my mum's bedroom and it was, yeah, there was sort of blood-soaked pillow and blood all over the bed. And I thought, he's done it. And then the neighbour came over and had seen me and said, She's in here, she's fine. And then that, I don't remember what happened that night, but I remember the next day just saying to my mum, it's like, let's go to the we'll go to the police, let's do it, because

Gordon Buchanan15:16

Next time it could be much, much worse.

Presenter15:19

He detected while she was sleeping.

Gordon Buchanan15:20

Sleeping, yeah, yeah.

Presenter15:23

And it was at that point that she kicked him out.

Gordon Buchanan15:25

Yeah, yeah.

Presenter15:26

That must have had a a profound effect on you.

Gordon Buchanan15:29

Yeah, I don't know what effect it has had on me and I kinda l I lost myself in in the outdoors. I think that sort of it all adds up that, you know, my love of the outdoors was about get away from get out the house and get away from all of this.

Presenter15:41

And what about your sense of yourself? Because, you know, feeling that being having a scary guy in the house when you're growing up into being a man yourself.

Gordon Buchanan15:50

Alpha

Presenter15:50

Uh

Gordon Buchanan15:50

That's quite challenging.

Presenter15:51

Did you

Gordon Buchanan15:51

It kind of wasn't a challenge in so much as I had a plan, and the plan was to get bigger month by month, year by year. I don't mean with working out, but just becoming an adult. I thought, as soon as I'm able, I'm going to sort of exact my revenge physically on him. And I carried that feeling and that hatred of him for years, or certainly for a few years. And then I got to a point, and it's like I saw him one day, and

Speaker 116:20

No.

Gordon Buchanan16:24

And I thought he doesn't give a damn about me. He probably hasn't thought once about me, and yet I'm the one that's walking about with all of this anger. And so I kind of just let it go. So that was kind of a really valuable life lesson. It was like, why am I the one that's sort of twisted in knots here? I haven't done anything wrong. So I kind of just sort of let that slip away. Yeah, that's a form of forgiveness. And in some ways it's kind of really valuable. All of these sort of harder stones that life throws at you, you learn the most from. So I think, yeah, I can in some ways be grateful to them for kind of some valuable life lessons.

Presenter17:05

Gordon, it's time for some more music. Your third disc today. What's next?

Gordon Buchanan17:10

Purple Haze by Jimi Hendrix Experience. And it must, I'm thinking it must have been like the 20th anniversary of the Monterey Pop Festival. And it seemed, so I didn't have any, I didn't have any kind of like decent records in the house and didn't have any money to buy. And there was no record shop on them all, so it was limited opportunity to listen to music. But I watched this documentary and I'd heard of Jimi Hendrix, but I kind of didn't really know anything about him. And that performance, I just thought he was the most charismatic man I'd ever seen and just so flamboyant. And the way that you know his guitar playing really kind of sung to my heart. And I thought, I'm gonna emulate him. So I bought a handmade guitar off of a boy at school for £10 and I plugged it into my mum's hi-fi and did my best attempt at trying to emulate Jimi Hendrix playing, which funnily enough I never succeeded in doing that.

Speaker 117:46

You know, has

Speaker 318:22

Wildlife.

Presenter18:38

The Jimi Hendrix Experience and Purple Haze. Gordon Buchanan, tell me more about your time at school because you said it was tortuous. You've described it as tortuous. You said you were pretty sure you had undiagnosed dyslexia. It wasn't the right place for you.

Gordon Buchanan18:54

Yeah, I just would I was probably late for school every day, messed about every day and spent every day daydreaming about getting outside. But then bizarrely, once I sort of got to sort of the end of fourth year when I could have left, I ended up staying staying on because I thought I wouldn't mind arsing around for another year because I don't know I haven't got a clue what I'm gonna do.

Presenter19:17

So by the time you hit your teens then, your future prospects weren't looking great. But things turned around for you when you met a wildlife cameraman, and his name was Nick Gordon. How did you meet?

Gordon Buchanan19:28

I met Nick through his wife, Anne, her wife at the time. Anne ran one of the restaurants on the Main Street and I'd actually spent from the age of 11 until I was about 16 working at a trekking centre, completely falling in love with horses but not making a penny. So I asked Anne Gordon if she had any jobs going in the restaurant. She gave me a job washing pots and pans in the kitchen and then I got to know about Nick and this very charismatic, windswept and interesting character that would sort of show up, tanned and sunbleached hair and then he'd disappear off for another few months and he was a wildlife filmmaker and I thought that just sounds like the best job.

Gordon Buchanan20:10

In the world, and he had a den, so his little office was full of all of these. He'd mummified piranhas' heads, huge anaconda skins. There was all of the camera equipment, which is, I felt really glamorous. That was like, I'm actually seeing a camera that is used to make TV programs here. And loads of books and loads of really interesting photographs. And I just sort of thought, this is what I want to do.

Presenter20:35

It's Indiana Jones turn.

Gordon Buchanan20:36

Tat

Presenter20:37

Isn't it? It's just I mean, that must have just seemed like such an adventure.

Gordon Buchanan20:40

Well that that Nick was someone described him as as was Biggles but better, Indiana Jones but true and he he loved that more more than he should have. But yeah, it was very intoxicating for a kind of a kid that had no academic prospects but had this desire and kind of self-belief. And I kind of knew that I

Speaker 320:49

Yeah.

Speaker 120:49

Uh

Speaker 120:49

Uh

Speaker 320:53

But

Gordon Buchanan21:03

could do something and I could do something well, I just had to kind of bite my time and wait for it to drop on my lap.

Presenter21:09

And then Nick made you an offer that changed your life. How did he pitch it to you?

Gordon Buchanan21:14

Um he one afternoon randomly he said, How would

Gordon Buchanan21:18

How would you like to be my assistant? You know I've got this year and a half long project coming up in Sierra Leone. How would you like to come with me and be my assistant?

Presenter21:27

So Sierra Leone. Had you been anywhere else apart from, you know, going to visit your dad at this point?

Gordon Buchanan21:27

So see

Gordon Buchanan21:33

No, I'd never been on a plane, had never been to um I'd been to Glasgow by this point, never been to London, so yeah, I other than a school bus trip to Germany, I hadn't been abroad.

Presenter21:47

And what was he actually going to film out there?

Gordon Buchanan21:50

We were based on an uninhabited island in the middle of the rainforest, and the trip was split into kind of I did come home halfway through, which kind of in some ways made it all the worse because I had to go back after spending two months at home with all my friends. But we just based ourselves on this island, it's called Tiwai Island. It's got the highest population of primates in the world, so there's 11 different species, but the most sort of noisiest and the most charismatic were chimpanzees. So we wanted to film chimpanzees and all the other, as many other primates and as many other strange creatures that we could.

Presenter22:25

Well, I'm desperate to find out what happened next, but first, I want to hear your next piece of music. It's disc number four, Gordon. What have you got?

Gordon Buchanan22:33

My next choice is Heart Shape Box by Nirvana. This song and it it really reminds me of that era in the sort of early nineties once I'd finished working with with Nick and I came back from having spent two years in Brazil back to my family home.

Gordon Buchanan22:52

And my mum had left. So we didn't move out, but my mum moved out. She remarried a wonderful man who's been my stepfather for over 30 years. So I came back home to house with just Sandy, Stewart and Maggie. And there's a four of us as four siblings. And that time was when we got to know each other as friends, not as siblings. That's when we got really close. And Nirvana and all of that music that was on MTV in the early 90s is kind of the theme track to actually really getting to know and understand my siblings in a much, much deeper way.

Speaker 323:26

She has me like a Pisces well when I am weak.

Speaker 323:36

I've been locked inside your heart-shaped box

Speaker 323:46

I've been drawing to your magnet

Presenter23:56

Heartshaped Box by Nirvana

Presenter23:59

Sol Gordon Buchanan, at the beginning of nineteen ninety, when you were seventeen, you arrived on Teey Island, where you and Nick pitched your tents and set up camp. What were the conditions like?

Gordon Buchanan24:11

We built a kind of a little sort of kitchen area. We built a shower out of a 45-gallon drum. So we made it really comfortable. In the old Tarzan films, it had its kind of posh pad when Jane used to go and stay with them. It was kind of a bit like that. I mean, initially, we bought a load of food from Freetown, but we had, I think, like, I'm going to say about 800 Frebentos pies that.

Gordon Buchanan24:33

And not not the best when you even have an oven to cook them in.

Presenter24:37

I feel we like we should contextualize this. It's a pie in a tin.

Gordon Buchanan24:40

It's pinea tin that actually can be quite tasty, but we didn't have an oven. So trying to cook a Free Bentos pie over an open fire, campfire. It's not campfire food. So we ended up actually just kind of the local guys that were working with us, they were eating all this kind of really delicious looking food and we were like, so can we just eat with you? So after I think after the first six months, yeah, we ended up eating with the men.

Presenter25:05

But what about the emotional wrench of being away from home for the first time? How did you cope with that?

Gordon Buchanan25:10

Yeah, I I think that because the story was good, and even in the local paper in Orban Times, there's a local lad is given the opportunity of a lifetime.

Gordon Buchanan25:21

So that story is good and you don't really want to spoil it for anyone by saying I was desperately homesick. Like more nights than not I was crying myself to sleep. It was really tough because 17 is young and having no form of communication other than writing letters. It was really just and I was cut off from everything and everyone that I knew and I spent my 18th birthday in Sierra Leone and Nick said just think in the future you'll be able to tell people. I spent my 18th birthday on an uninhabited island in the middle of the Gola rainforest and I was thinking I want to spend it in a local pub with my friends drinking cider and blackcurrant.

Presenter26:02

What about the highs? What were some of the best moments that you and Nick got to capture?

Gordon Buchanan26:06

I mean there were so many of it and it's it's sort of I definitely don't want to sort of leave a big cloud over that period of time because I witnessed some incredible things. I mean walking down a path one day and bumping into a fully grown male chimpanzee is just extraordinary. I think even just to sort of you know wake up in the morning to this dawn chorus of the wildest weirdest sounding creatures every single morning and then some night times waking up with these huge thunderstorms like just sort of like these electrical storms that are right overhead yeah incredible moments incredible experiences and because I promised Nick that I would see this year and a half through he was pretty tough you know he became one of my best friends but he was tough on me I kind of forgotten about this I looked back at my diaries when I was like God he was really he really hard on me but he was quite it was quite early in his career so he was worried about whether he was going to be able to make this film work or or not but at the end of the the year and a half he said you've done incredibly well and I'd love you to work with me and the next project was a sort of two and a half months in in Venezuela and I thought that's that's easy so did that and then I sort of went on to do another sort of two years in Brazil in the Amazon where I was really cut off so from the age of 17 until I was 23 24

Gordon Buchanan27:29

I spent

Gordon Buchanan27:30

the bulk of that time just in the middle of the middle of nowhere.

Presenter27:36

How did that shape you? I mean, that's the time when most people are making mistakes, learning to socialize, as well as kind of deciding what they want to do with their lives.

Gordon Buchanan27:44

Yeah, I learnt about I suppose the the the benefits and and beauty of of solitude and self sufficiency and not having to rely on on other people. And I never find myself

Gordon Buchanan28:00

Alone and think, I really need to be around people right now. But I often find myself surrounded by people thinking, I really need to be alone right now.

Presenter28:09

Let's take a break for some more music, your fifth choice today. What's next?

Gordon Buchanan28:13

Um, Fifth Choice is High and Dry by Radiohead. For me it was about being young. I was away for much of my kind of my youth or that time when I should have been kind of hanging out with my mates and sort of or, you know, at college.

Gordon Buchanan28:29

In 1994, I came back. I went to Tea in the Park 1996. I'd never been to a festival before, and I went, and Radiohead were playing at it. And literally and metaphorically, the clouds parted as they started playing this song because I thought this is what it's like to be a young person. This is kind of what being young should be like every single day. If you can wangle a world where you don't have to work and you can just sit in this moment, I was coming out of a kind of hard place. I had alopecia at one point, so most of my hair had fallen out.

Gordon Buchanan29:07

On that day I was like, before going to the festival I was like, oh, it's looking good now, it's kind of grown back. So I was like, I think that whole day kind of it wrapped up a huge amount, but just listening to Radiohead play that song on that day was nothing short of magic.

Speaker 329:21

Two jumps in a week, I bet you think that's pretty clever, don't you boy?

Speaker 329:33

Flying on your motorcycle Watching all the crown beneath you drop

Speaker 329:43

Kill yourself for recognition, kill yourself to never ever start.

Presenter29:51

Radiohead and high and dry.

Presenter29:54

So Gordon Buchanan, in 1994 you decided to strike out on your own as a wildlife cameraman. How difficult was it to get started?

Gordon Buchanan30:02

I mean

Gordon Buchanan30:04

Naivety is a wonderful thing. I thought that all I needed to do was scrape the money together, buy the camera equipment and start touting myself to natural history producers. But, you know, I could have built you any number of towers up into the canopy of the rainforest in West Africa. I could have paddled you out to find giant otters in the Amazon. But when it came to being a wildlife filmmaker, I realised I hadn't been paying enough attention. I had a camera, but a camera does not make a cameraman. So the first day, in fact, that I went out with the camera, I was like, oh my God, I don't know what I'm doing. So I faked it until eventually I got offered a year-long contract up in the Highlands of Scotland. And I thought, okay, this is really make or break. I need to make sure this works. Because the last previous two years, it was horrible.

Presenter30:56

It sounds like in incredibly stressful. I mean, you mentioned, you know, talking about Radiohead that your hair had been falling out. Was that was that why? Was that where the stress was coming from?

Gordon Buchanan31:02

Falling out

Gordon Buchanan31:05

Yeah, it was a period of time. I suppose from the age of 17, I'd had this sort of pretty crazy, fulfilling, stimulating existence all over the world. But I hadn't, and I'd grown up in some ways, but I was still, you know, a kid. And I think, you know, that's when you're like, oh, this, okay, this is me out in the big, the big, bad world. And I suppose that just coincided with me spending money that I didn't have on camera equipment and stress and inexplicably, well, maybe explicably, my hair started to fall out. And I kind of lost a bit of self-belief. But I think maybe there was always this little burning ember of like, okay, you can do this, you can do it.

Presenter31:50

So you as you mentioned, you got a contract with a Scottish production company and that turned everything around for you. What was the job exactly?

Gordon Buchanan31:57

It was to make three half-hour wildlife documentaries based up in the Cairngorms. So they had like a little cottage that they rented for the whole year. They were paying me as a proper wildlife cameraman. So in the blink of an eye, when this contract was faxed in, I saw the sum that they were going to pay me and I was like, oh my, just it was like all of my dreams had come true because it meant that I could just pay off all of the money that I'd owed. So all of the stress that I'd been under for the previous two years was kind of gone in an instant. And I got to spend a year living in a little cottage out on the, out on a moor. So the nearest neighbour was maybe like a mile away, nearest town was like five miles away. And I got to kind of ramble the Cairngorm Mountains and got to kind of just sort of explore Abernethy Forests, these old Caledonian pine forests and try my best to film everything that I could. And more importantly, to kind of learn my craft.

Presenter32:56

And what about making the transition to being on-screen? I know that happened later, but from cameraman to presenter is another leap, isn't it?

Gordon Buchanan33:04

The decision to kind of step in front of the camera again, I suppose, was also a new challenge. And even like even now, I still, you know.

Presenter33:13

You're wincing as you say this. What is the wincing and what didn't you like about it?

Gordon Buchanan33:13

Wing Sing

Gordon Buchanan33:17

Well, even now, I still don't think I'm very good at it. I still think there's a lot of room for improvement. Yeah.

Presenter33:21

Well

Presenter33:25

It's time for some more music. Disc number six, if you wouldn't mind. What are we going to hear?

Gordon Buchanan33:29

It's Last Night by The Strokes. This kind of wraps up a really exciting period of our lives. It was just before me and all of our kind of mates in quite quick succession all got married.

Gordon Buchanan33:43

This song was played at every single one of our wedding dances, but just prior to us kind of growing up, a couple of friends were in a band called the Mull Historical Society and had just been signed. Their first big tour was with this kind of new band, The Strokes. And I was like, oh, haven't heard of them? Oh, yeah, they're pretty cool from New York. And that tour that the Strokes did with the Mull Historical Society was just, it was really exciting because obviously you weren't just going to see this one exciting band from New York. You were also seeing this really quirky, unique little band of

Presenter34:15

What young sound of mull

Gordon Buchanan34:17

Yeah, and it was yeah, and yeah, music journalists were all over it. And I remember going to several of those gigs and just it was a really exciting time and I got to play it being in a band.

Gordon Buchanan34:29

Not playing a band, but playing being in a band.

Presenter34:31

It's just hanging out. Even better, no pressure.

Gordon Buchanan34:32

Yeah, groupy.

Presenter34:34

Up

Speaker 334:37

She said

Speaker 334:39

Man, but I feel so down.

Speaker 334:42

When turn me off when I feel left out so I

Speaker 334:48

Aye.

Speaker 334:49

I turn it round.

Speaker 334:51

Oh baby, I don't care no more

Speaker 334:53

I know this for sure.

Speaker 334:56

I won't get out that door.

Speaker 334:58

I've been in temperature

Speaker 335:01

Minutes now, oh baby, I feel so down.

Presenter35:05

The strokes and last night. Gordon Buchanan, over the years you've had many adventures with animals. You've been chased by elephants, had close encounters with leopards, grappled an anaconda with your bare hands, but it was a polar bear that you genuinely thought might finish you off. Now I've seen the footage and it is absolutely terrifying, but for those who haven't, talk me through that 45 minutes.

Speaker 135:20

Now

Gordon Buchanan35:30

So the box was it was a sort of transparent filming hide designed to be able to be out on the ice with polar bears and be completely safe. But this bear, instead of going to the seals breathing hole where I was kind of set up to film it behaving naturally, it came over to the ice cube as we christened it and spent almost an hour trying to get in with the sole purpose of consuming me. It's very something very strange about looking closer around to you, looking at animals like that is desperate to eat you. Obviously that was a production that had done all the health and safety and all the risk assessment and it was 100% safe and the rest of the crew were about 200 meters away so had she got hold of me I'm hoping that they could have got to me quick enough before anything vital had been chomped on.

Presenter36:22

Do you remember how you felt?

Gordon Buchanan36:26

I d

Gordon Buchanan36:27

It's funny because I do appear very calm in it, and in some ways I was. I think it's kind of I went into kind of.

Gordon Buchanan36:35

Wildlife presenter overdrive. Probably David Attenborough wasn't probably far from my thoughts. What would Sir David do? Not that he would ever do anything as stupid as that, but I was like, just do your job, you're here to do a job. And it was an opportunity to talk about what it's like to be in such close proximity to something as impressive as a polar bear.

Speaker 336:42

Not that you'd ever do that in

Speaker 136:44

Uh

Presenter36:57

You and the team came under fire afterwards, Gordon. There were claims that you disturbed the bear and the producer was fined six thousand pounds. What was your response?

Gordon Buchanan37:06

That's the kind of golden rule in filming wild animals. You can get as close as they allow you to be, but you don't want them to start behaving differently because of you being there. So I was kind of like, when anyone ever mentioned, oh, please, not this again. But the reality is, with polar bears, they're such an inquisitive animal that if you enter their world, whether you're in a cruise ship, whether you're in a sort of a rib without an outboard, if there are polar bears about, they will change their behaviour because not every in every occasion, but polar bears will often change their behaviour because of the presence of something new and something different. And somebody said that polar bear was using up kind of valuable resources, energy, trying to sort of get at something that it couldn't actually get to eat. But the reality before that episode happened, we'd nicknamed that polar bear Fat Frida because she was the fattest polar bear. So I think my defense is like, I think she was like, I could probably, I've got a bit of energy here. I'm just going to see if I can get into this thing. But yeah, it's one of these things you have to embrace because there's absolutely no escaping it. But it's not something I'd ever do again. And I have to accept the fact that I'm best known for the dumbest thing that I've ever done.

Presenter38:27

And I mean, the ethics of all of that are very complicated, aren't they? So David Attenborough said while life camera operators should be observers, they should keep their distance. What's your view of that? To what extent are you willing to kind of get involved with the natural world when while observing it?

Gordon Buchanan38:45

Yeah, I mean most of the time you are watching an animal that is completely unaware of your presence. So you could be up a tree on a tree platform or in a hide or watching from a distance. But there are occasions in places like in safaris and sort of habituated gorillas and other habituated animals that they know that you're there, but they're just not bothered by you at all. So the proximity is really, in my book, it's down to the animal. And at the point that you start to affect its behaviour, that's when you're too close.

Presenter39:21

There was another bear, though, that you saved from starvation.

Gordon Buchanan39:25

This was sort of me actually stepping over that ethical line because I did get involved in the natural course of things. This baby bear had been abandoned by its mum, and we thought, okay, well, as wildlife filmmakers, we just stand back and we do nothing, we just film what happens. And I was like, if we do nothing, we know what happens. This baby bear is going to die a very slow and unpleasant death. And I was like.

Gordon Buchanan39:53

I feed the birds in my garden, so I'm giving them an unfair advantage. So I'm already kind of meddling in the course of nature. I was like, well, I'm going to get involved here. So we started putting food out for this baby bear. Just for a two-week period, every night this little bear would sort of, and it was all by itself, it was like the most heart-wrenching thing you've ever seen, this little tiny little bear. But then eventually, yeah, it came in every night and then stopped coming because it started finding all the natural food, so it figured it out for itself.

Presenter40:22

Gordon, it's time for your next track. Your seventh choice today. What's next?

Gordon Buchanan40:26

This song is Electrical Storm by U2. It kind of makes me slightly cringe, not because it's U2, but because of the memories that it throws up. When I proposed to Wendy, I did it at a New Year's party. She said yes, and then we spread the news throughout this quite drunken New Year's party. And somebody put on Electrical Storm and before we knew it, we were all slow dancing with our partners.

Gordon Buchanan40:54

Friends living room that at the time felt the most beautiful, the most right thing to do, but then the next day went, oh my god, that was.

Gordon Buchanan41:03

What happened? But so this song sort of, I suppose, just reminds me of making a decision and knowing that it's the right decision.

Gordon Buchanan41:13

Yeah.

Speaker 341:13

See it swells like a sore head, And the night it is aching.

Speaker 341:23

Two lovers lie with loose sheets on their bed And the day it is breaking

Speaker 341:33

On rainy days we go swimming out on rainy days swimming

Presenter41:40

You two and Electrical Storm taking you back to proposing to your wife, Wendy, Gordon Buchanan. You are married with two grown up children now. How did having a family change your attitude to risk?

Gordon Buchanan41:54

I'm not a thrill seeker. There's sort of stuff that I do that might appear to be really, really dangerous, but I I d kinda do know what I'm what I'm doing. But yeah, once you've got a a family, you need to be there for them. And I didn't want to be one of those dads that put their work before their family and friends. Um,'cause it's a common thing and and certainly in wildlife filmmaking it's a common thing for sort of people not to sort of make it through their first second marriage.

Speaker 342:17

Yeah.

Presenter42:17

Uh

Speaker 342:17

Uh

Presenter42:23

Um Gordon, you went through a a difficult time in twenty eleven. You had a a severe bout of depression. What had triggered it, do you think?

Gordon Buchanan42:35

I think I've always

Gordon Buchanan42:38

Had depression in one sort of way, shape, or form, even as I thinking back to sort of me as a as a kid. And I remember kind of looking about at kids just being kids and skipping and being happy, and I was like,

Gordon Buchanan42:50

They're putting that on. That's not what childhood is about. And I think as I got older, I probably was very good at distracting myself and spending all the time through my kind of late teens and 20s. I kind of, yeah, I was busy enough to kind of not look in that direction. But then I think maybe just too much. It was brought on by burnout. I think I just had a period of time when all of the projects that I kind of, you know, that were... that I wanted to work on were coming thick and fast. And I was saying yes to kind of practically everything that I thought was going to take me one little step further in my career and not putting Wendy and the Kids before that. It all just came at once, sort of burnout and this sort of

Speaker 142:52

I am

Gordon Buchanan43:35

depression that really came on like a big w it was sort of growing at the start of the year but then within a couple of months it was sort of a I kind of couldn't get out of out of bed and I was like oh this this this is this is depression but I think it's just one of these things I don't think it's about necessarily about childhood experiences I think it's part of my my makeup

Presenter43:57

Does spending time in nature help?

Gordon Buchanan43:59

Spending time in nature, that's a reset button for me. You know, if I felt low and gloomy and feel that feeling of kind of falling backwards almost, if I can just force myself, especially in Glasgow, so it's really easy to get out onto the hills. If I can go out and do that, I will end the day with a spring and my sep. And wherever you are, whether you're in cities or whether you're in the countryside, there's always things bumping and flitting about. And if you pay attention to those things, it just takes you out of yourself. And you think, okay, because it's sort of, you know, in some ways, and it's not. But for me personally, it's so self-indulgent to talk about my mental health problems. So I think if you bump into other animals and you see other things, you're like, okay, that's given me the opportunity to kind of not think about myself in that moment.

Presenter44:50

Gordon, it's almost time to cast you away to your desert island. I imagine that life as a castaway holds very little fear for you, so I'll just ask what kind of island you would like to be on.

Gordon Buchanan45:01

Mountains, forest, forest full of like crazy creatures. Like the kind of the the island unlost would be really good. Seasonal, but with s interesting stuff under the water.

Presenter45:15

And how do you see yourself spending your time?

Gordon Buchanan45:17

If I had a decent amount of time there, they would probably turn it into a resort after I was done with it, because it would be kind of little luxury shacks, sort of hammocks. I've already got a plan. If this does ever happen to me, first day, find some shelter, find some food, find some water, but then I'd probably start doing some major renovations, like a beach hut, maybe a little place up in the mountains, running shower.

Speaker 145:36

Uh

Presenter45:37

And

Gordon Buchanan45:39

So yeah, I kinda relished the thought of actually

Gordon Buchanan45:42

That experience.

Presenter45:44

Well, Gordon, we'll give you one more track to take with you before we cast you away to your desert island to start work on that rather fabulous sounding resort. Final choice today. What are you going for?

Gordon Buchanan45:55

Final choice is Single Ladies by Beyoncé. I don't think it needs any explanation. It's the it's not so much this song as the effect this song has on people and I love it. And if it can come with like a compendium that shows you all the dance moves, I would take that.

Presenter46:12

Can you do the dumps?

Gordon Buchanan46:14

My daughter's friends when they were 16 said to Lola, I didn't realize your dad could do such a great slut drop.

Presenter46:21

It is a dance move, to be clear.

Gordon Buchanan46:22

Come on.

Gordon Buchanan46:23

It is a dance move and I'm particularly good I did before my knees were so bad.

Presenter46:28

That's how they got there.

Speaker 346:32

All the single ladies, all the single ladies, all the single ladies, all the single ladies, all the single ladies, all the single ladies, all the single ladies. Now put your hands up.

Speaker 346:42

Up in the club, just come up I'm doing my all the thing You decided to dip him Now you wanna triple Another brother notice me I'm up on him You're only doing any attention Just crying my tears here Three good years

Presenter47:00

Single Ladies by Beyoncé. So, Gordon Buchanan, I'm going to cast you away to the desert island. I'll give you the books to take with you: the Bible, the complete works of Shakespeare, and one other. What would you like?

Gordon Buchanan47:11

Uh

Gordon Buchanan47:12

Teach yourself tap.

Presenter47:13

Oh.

Gordon Buchanan47:14

I was like when I was rescued, people just maybe sailing by and I'd just be a couple of coconuts on my feet, tap dancing on the dance floor that I've made by myself. And you've whittled. He's used that time well.

Presenter47:21

On the

Presenter47:23

You whistled.

Gordon Buchanan47:27

Look at him go. Look at him tap.

Presenter47:28

Yeah, you can have it. Wonderful.

Gordon Buchanan47:30

Watch this piece.

Presenter47:31

Uh what about a luxury item?

Gordon Buchanan47:34

Mask, snorkel, and fins. Yeah. I think if I if I didn't have an ability to kind of go underwater, you're missing like two-thirds of the

Speaker 147:36

Yeah.

Gordon Buchanan47:43

The most amazing things of the island. So, yeah, if I could, that would be, yeah, I'd want to stay there quite a long time if I was rambling through the forest, splashing through the surf, seeing the things in the deep.

Presenter47:55

And finally, Gordon, which one track of the eight that you've shared with us today would you save from the waves of heat?

Gordon Buchanan47:59

Oh my, oh my

Gordon Buchanan48:03

I think high and dry, if it could take me back to that moment, um, yeah, it would provide a lot of happiness for many years.

Presenter48:13

Gordon Buchanan, thank you very much for letting us hear your Desert Island discs.

Gordon Buchanan48:17

Thank you very much, Lon.

Presenter48:28

Hello, I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Gordon and I'm very happy that that resort is going to keep him nice and busy on the island. We've cast away many wildlife experts and broadcasters including Dr. George McGavin, Professor Carl Jones, Dr. Jane Goodall and four times Sir David Attenborough. The studio manager for today's programme was Emma Hart, the assistant producer was Christine Pavlovsky, the executive production coordinator was Susie Roylands, the content editor was Mugabe Turia and the producer was Paula McGinley. Next time my guest will be the writer Margaret Atwood. I do hope you'll join us.

Speaker 149:11

From BBC Radio 4, a near-future murder mystery in the remotest possible location.

Speaker 349:17

When I grow up, I want to live on Mars.

Speaker 149:20

Mars, 2048, the first settlers, and the first unexplained death.

Presenter49:26

What do you mean you don't know how he died?

Speaker 149:28

Can Rita and Jazz solve the murder, or will the murderer find them first? How much is a room worth? A room full of air?

Speaker 349:36

I'm afraid Mr. Hickson the price is rather high. It may even cost you your life.

Speaker 149:46

Listen to Murder on Mars first on BBC Sound.