Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Desert Island Discs
Presented by Roy Plomley
Broadcaster, journalist and author, best known as a radio critic and columnist for The Sunday Times.
Eight records
Clarinet Concerto in A major, K. 622: II. Adagio
I think it suggests... As well as anything that Mozart writes, his feeling towards life that it has infinite disadvantages, but somehow all the disadvantages are better than any possible alternative. It's what I call what he does He offers us a kind of grave optimism.
It's really a fantasy vision of Europe. When I was about 16 or 17, this is what I thought Europe would be like, smelling of all those Galwa cigarettes, that kind of thing. And the section I choose is Lust, and it's Lottie Lenya, who sings it.
The keepsakes
No book or luxury recorded for this episode.
In conversation
Presenter asks
What would be the worst thing for you about being on a desert island?
Well, I think it would be the loneliness. I think I should be panic stricken. I think it would be like being caught in a lift halfway down, that it jammed. It would be agoraphobic, I suppose, since all the world would be around me. But it would feel that way to me. I should be intensely frightened.
Presenter asks
Is music important to you?
Well, it is, but people who claim that it is, you know, claim a special niceness when they say that. And I like playing over and over the sort of music I've always played over and over. And I don't know that that would be said to be important. I mean, it's like pepper and salt condiments, that kind of thing. I could do without it, but I'd be sorry to.
Presenter asks
Are you a Londoner?
Well, I I am by adoption. I my native place is Liverpool, and I always feel that uh there's a kind of umbilicus between me and that place forever. But uh yes, I suppose I am a Londoner.
The recording
Timestamps play the recording from that turn
Speaker 3
BBC Sounds, Music, Radio Podcasts. Hello, I'm Lauren Laverne, and this is the Desert Island Discs podcast. This is the only extract the BBC has of this episode, and for rights reasons, the music is shorter than on the original broadcast. The presenter is Roy Plumley. I hope you enjoy listening.
Robert Robinson
Our castaway this week is the broadcaster, journalist and author Robert Robinson.
Robert Robinson
Robert, apart from the loneliness and isolation, what would be the worst thing for you about being on a desert island? Would the situation start up any irrational fears?
Presenter
Well, I think it would be the loneliness. I think I should be panic stricken. I think it would be like being caught in a lift halfway down, that it jammed. It would be agoraphobic, I suppose, since all the world would be around me. But it would feel that way to me. I should be intensely frightened. Is music important to you? Well, it is, but people who claim that it is, you know, claim a special niceness when they say that. And I like playing over and over the sort of music I've always played over and over. And I don't know that that would be said to be important. I mean, it's like pepper and salt condiments, that kind of thing. I could do without it, but I'd be sorry to. What's your first record? Well, it's a Mozart record, Clarinet Concerto. And I would like a touch of the slow movement of this particular concerto. I think it suggests...
Presenter
As well as anything that Mozart writes, his feeling towards life that it has infinite disadvantages, but somehow all the disadvantages are better than any possible alternative. It's what I call what he does
Presenter
He offers us a kind of grave optimism.
Presenter
What's your second record? Well, I'd think some Kurtweil, and the one I'd choose is the single record on which the whole of the opera and the ballet is contained, the Seven Deadly Sins. It's really a fantasy vision of Europe. When I was about 16 or 17, this is what I thought Europe would be like, smelling of all those Galwa cigarettes, that kind of thing. And the section I choose is Lust, and it's Lottie Lenya, who sings it.
Speaker 4
Undwir van den einen Mann in Boston Werbet Salter, Gutenst Zwaraus Lieber.
Speaker 4
Undichemein od mid anna nenaus libte te aber einen andarm und dain bertzal tesie und a
Presenter
Uh
Robert Robinson
Robert, are you a landlord?
Presenter
Uh
Presenter
Well, I I am by adoption. I my native place is Liverpool, and I always feel that uh there's a kind of umbilicus between me and that place forever. But uh yes, I suppose I am a Londoner. What was your first ambition?
Presenter
Well, I think I always thought I'd like to write something. I suppose I wanted to see my name over the top of something. I was just rather good at what we used to call composition at the elementary school. Yes. You were good at school, were you? Oh, I think I was reasonably clever. And from school, you went to do your national service? Yes. And I went to Nigeria, spent a year there. Then the cloistered calm of Exeter College, Oxford. What did you read? Well, I read English there. It seemed a pity to take the money I should have paid them, you know, as it were. But great pleasure. You took part in university theatricals? Yes, getting worse and worse, more and more self-conscious.
Robert Robinson
A notable performance is Birkin
Presenter
More bit. If I remember an old chum of mine, if he doesn't mind me calling him that Alan Bryan, he spoke of me mouthing this fustian verse, profile turned to the crowd. What a wretched fellow to write such a thing. But the thing is, it hadn't been performed, this play by John Ford, for 400 years, and after the first night, we knew why. It just put people to sleep.
Presenter
Well, every paper I seem to have worked for seems to have sunk. It's as though I jumped aboard and they went under gurgle, gurgle, under the water. And so I became a show business columnist, which is a polite way of saying that you go around and butter film stars up or thereabouts. And at the same time, joined the Sunday Times as a radio critic, and then I did an Atticus column for them. And that still survives that paper, I'm rather surprised to see. And you were writing books? Well, that's again awfully kind of you to put it in the plural. I wrote a book, a detective story, just to see if I could write 70,000 words and keep it grammatical and so on. And I did do that. And then later on, there was a collection of columns I wrote for the Sunday Times, put out by Penguin. And then I wrote another book, a real book, at least I thought it was, about real people. Yes. So that was three, but that's just about plural. That's the complete library. Oh, I'm afraid so, yes.
Presenter asks
What was your first ambition?
Well, I think I always thought I'd like to write something. I suppose I wanted to see my name over the top of something. I was just rather good at what we used to call composition at the elementary school. Yes.
Presenter asks
What did you read [at Oxford]?
Well, I read English there. It seemed a pity to take the money I should have paid them, you know, as it were. But great pleasure.
“He offers us a kind of grave optimism.”
“Well, every paper I seem to have worked for seems to have sunk. It's as though I jumped aboard and they went under gurgle, gurgle, under the water.”