Richard Dimbleby

Presenter0:00

This download is the only extract the BBC has of this edition of Desert Island Discs. The presenter was Roy Plumley.

Presenter0:08

Now Richard, we've long ago established pretty definitely that nobody, at any rate, of our generation, started out as a boy with the ambition of being a professional broadcaster when he grew up. Broadcasting seems to be something that just happens to people. What was your ambition? What did you want to be?

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Well originally I wanted to be a surgeon. I would still like to be a surgeon, but I haven't got the time left to do it.

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Um I didn't go to Oxford where I was going for family reasons.

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And I turned to the family occupation of journalism. I I became a reporter on our own family newspapers, which I now am the boss of. You're in London, are you?

Richard Dimbleby0:40

You're a lover.

Presenter0:41

Yes, I have. Yes, I have.

Richard Dimbleby0:41

Yes.

Presenter0:42

And um then from that I went to provincial newspapers and from there to Fleet Street and Fleet Street to BBC in that order.

Richard Dimbleby0:47

Yeah.

Presenter0:48

Well let's going back a bit on that. What sort of um papers did you do in Fleet Street? Well in Fleet Street I worked on a on a specialist paper in the advertising um line which gave the news of advertising. As a matter of fact I worked on it about four months after you Mr. Plumley. You may not know that. Well let's draw a veil because I was sacked after six weeks. You will be.

Richard Dimbleby1:04

No that

Richard Dimbleby1:07

That wasn't.

Presenter1:10

And then and then I was living there in a in a bed sitting room in Bloomsbury, very hard up.

Richard Dimbleby1:14

Play harder.

Presenter1:15

And I was listening one night to the nine o'clock news, heard the announcer, this was in 1936, heard the announcer give the usual credits before the news to all the news agencies who'd supplied the news. And I suddenly thought, for no reason at all, why don't they have a man of their own who goes out and reports things and comes back to the microphone and gives his story?

Presenter1:33

Wrote to the BBC and said, wouldn't it be a good idea? And to my amazement they wrote back and said, We hadn't thought of that, it would, and I got the job. Just happened like that. What was the very first broadcast you did, do you remember?

Richard Dimbleby1:39

Yeah.

Presenter1:42

Uh it was an interview with a cow.

Richard Dimbleby1:44

Hello.

Richard Dimbleby1:46

Was she a good broadcaster? She was a jolly good broadcaster. I put her microphone up and said moo, and she mooed. I can't.

Presenter1:51

Now down at Amesbury in Wiltshire called Cherry. I remember him very well. 1936 you joined the BBC News Department. That job took you all over the place, did it? Yes, it did.

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I went on the first big

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Royal State visit abroad to Canada, thirty nine, I went down to the Spanish Civil War, mm. A good good many places in Europe. And then the war came along and you really began to go places.

Presenter2:13

Yes, I had to work jolly hard. I was the BBC's first war correspondent. Actually, two or three days before the war itself began, as I was working so and it was obvious it was coming, we took a recording car quietly over to France and hid it in a garage in Paris. So we were all ready, and we then took it up to the BEF headquarters, and we were there when the BEF arrived, so we got away to a good start.

Richard Dimbleby2:33

There

Presenter2:37

And then for the first part of the war I spent in Europe. I was transferred to the Middle East in the spring of 1940.

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Had two and a half years out there getting

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They're almost everywhere from from Greece right down to Abyssinia. Yes. You cover just about all the war, for instance.

Presenter2:52

Except I wasn't in North Africa, the west part of it, or in Italy. Otherwise, I think everywhere. Yeah, Lieutenant. I read that you did 22 operational flights with the RAF, including a mass raid on Berlin.

Presenter3:04

Yes, I did. That was with Bomber Command in 1943. I used to fly alongside Guy Gibson, the VC. Wonderful man.

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And stood at his side and tried to take pictures of the raids, the one on Berlin in particular with his Cine camera, but we were always flying so high and the air was so cold that the oil in the camera froze. I never got a single picture. You ended up in Berlin yourself at the end of the war in Europe? Yes, I did. I went in very early on before the British Army went in, was arrested briefly by the Russians, we managed to get out, and then they took me down into the bunker where Hitler committed suicide, showed me it, and I pinched a knife and a fork and a spoon of his, which I've got at home now with his initials on the handle. When anybody comes to dinner I don't like, I give them the spoon to eat the soup with. What happened when peace was declared?

Presenter3:48

Well, I left the regular staff of the BBC in the end of 1945 and began freelancing. I had to go really because I became a director of the family newspapers.

Presenter3:58

where I'd started and being a director of a firm I couldn't very well work for the BBC as well. So I started off on my own in Broadcast. Well since then I think we know most of the story. Hundreds of appearances on 20 Questions and Down Your Way we've already talked about. Television of course London Town and Panorama and countless commentaries including perhaps the most exciting commentary ever of The Coronation.

Presenter4:21

Well, that was a wonderful occasion, you know. I i if if one had gone wrong on that, it would have been a disaster. One had no excuse for going wrong. We rehearsed it and we knew it all in detail. It was a wonderful day. I'll never forget it.

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And you have visited a good many countries since the war.

Presenter4:34

Yes, uh I have. I go about a lot now. Um I do a good deal of filming abroad with my own company and uh my wife films with me. In fact, we we've just come back from a trip abroad to make a television programme with my wife and the four children, six dimblebies in one programme. Out of all the the broadcast assignments you've done, which do you look back on as the trickiest?

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The trickiest.

Presenter4:57

Well, uh the trickiest idea of all uh was the marriage of Prince Rainier and Grace Kelly and Monaco, if you remember it.

Presenter5:05

Yeah. For the delay, they were supposed to come out on a balcony, remember? And they were thirty-seven minutes late.

Richard Dimbleby5:07

Supposed to come out on a balcony, remember?

Presenter5:11

And with nothing to look at with the cameras but a group group of people in a square, I had to fill in for 37 minutes without any communication with the producer. So he didn't know what I was going to say and I didn't know what pictures he was going to show. And I wondered how long any human being could go on waffling. Agony of that much. You're also a farmer, of course.

Richard Dimbleby5:26

Rule

Presenter5:28

Yes, we have a a small farm in Sussex where we raise a little herd of beef and we keep some pigs and some poultry. Hm. And somehow you you still find time to write novels as well as all this.

Presenter5:38

Well, I've yes, I've written four books. Only one was a novel. That was five years ago. I must take it up again one day.