John Pardoe

Speaker 10:00

Hello, I'm Kirstie Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Disc's Archive. For rights' reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen seventy six, and the presenter was Roy Plumley.

Presenter0:30

Our castaway this week is a politician. He is economic spokesman for the Liberal Party, John Pardo, MP. Mr Pardo, could you endure extended loneliness?

Presenter0:40

Yes, I suppose I could endure it for a while, that is to say, a few years but um I don't know that I could endure it for ever.

Presenter0:47

What would you be happiest you got away from? Oh, the telephone, without any doubt at all.

Presenter0:52

Uh you are a musician. You come from a musical family. Yes. My father did a lot of singing. My two brothers both sang a lot when they were boys. Um I wouldn't say we're musical in the sense that we're great instrument players, but we sing. And at the age of nine you became a chorister at King's College, Cambridge. Yes, I followed both my brothers there, so all three of us had been choristers at uh King's College Choir School and

Speaker 10:55

Yeah.

Presenter1:14

I suppose in a sense it's really enough in one's life to have touched excellence once, and I think probably if one had to say, Well, what does Britain do really well? we do choral music very well indeed. How much rehearsal did you have to achieve that magnificent sound? What percentage of your schooling was musical? Well

Presenter1:33

We practised twice a day. We had an early morning rehearsal first thing in the morning, in which the organ master or the organist used to come up and uh rehearse the boys alone, and then we had a um rehearsal in the afternoon for about an hour before the service, um, where we practised the music of the day. Is the choir school in the college grounds? No, it's about um, I suppose, what, three quarters of a mile walk, and we used to walk it uh across the playing fields and down the road and across the river Cam.

Presenter2:00

And we all were in crocodile, you know, dressed in top hats and eaten suits and gowns. It was um rather romantic. Have you chosen a disc by the King's College Choir? Well, yes, I have. I've chosen In the Bleak Midwinter, which is a carol. Most people know it in a different version. But this is by Harold Dark, who was in fact organist at King's while I was there during the war, because Boris Ord was away in the Royal Air Force. And Doctor Dark is still alive, and I'd like to hear that conducted by David Wilcox, who was organ master there when I was there. You're not on this disc? No. They hardly had the gramophone in my day, you know.

John Pardoe2:45

I would make my

John Pardoe3:00

I would stole my

John Pardoe3:05

It's what

Presenter3:34

In the bleak mid winter by the choir of King's College Chapel, Cambridge. It must have been a very small school, in choir school. Not really. In fact, it was a ordinary prep school. Um there were about a hundred and twenty boys when I was there, and only sixteen of us were choristers, and there were four probationers, that is to say, boys who were waiting to become choristers, too young to be in the choir.

Presenter3:54

The choristers weren't chosen from among the schoolboys in other words, the choristers were chosen from across the whole country, but you then became a member of the school. And the schoolboys were from the town or or wherever? About half and half, half from the town, and half were boarders.

Presenter4:07

So your voice broke and you took common entrance and you went to Sherburne. Is Sherburne a musical school? Yes, it had a good musical tradition. In fact, my voice hadn't broken when I got to Sherburne, and I did a lot of singing while I was there, and I played musical instruments as well. Which? Um well, I played the bassoon in the school orchestra, and I played the euphonium in the school band, the military band, and I also uh tried to play the piano, very unsuccessfully, I'm afraid.

Presenter4:31

Let's have your second record. What's that?

Presenter4:34

Well, I think I'd like to um take the Bark Christmas Oratorio. I've thought about which bit of bark to take.

Presenter4:40

But uh in the um Christmas Oratorio there is a marvellous tenor solo, which is a kind of duet with the flute, and somebody once described Bach as uh celestial mathematics, and I think the two, the flute and the tenor, working together here, show this only too clearly.

John Pardoe5:31

In Year of Islam for fire.

John Pardoe5:38

I'm a square cleaned tolls in the

John Pardoe5:46

I drop high.

John Pardoe5:49

Christ the Sword and Kings to fail.

Presenter5:58

An excerpt from Bach's Christmas Oratorio, Fritz Vunderlich the Tenor, Paul Meissen the Flautist.

Presenter6:05

Pardo is an unusual name. What's its derivation?

Presenter6:08

Well

Presenter6:09

If you'd take the E off.

Presenter6:11

Um it is about as common as Smith in England, in Spain. And uh nearly everything that ever happened happened at the Treaty of El Pardo, and of course that's still where the uh head of state in Spain resides and and does all his government. But in fact if you look it up in the um dictionaries of these things, they don't give the Spanish derivation at all, so I'm a bit uncertain. They give the Norman derivation, which is from pardieux, which was a kind of uh Norman swear word, by God. You're from Somerset, of course. Yes, uh born and bred there. Sherburne, of course, is in Dorset. But for your university you went to East Anglia. You you chose Cambridge? Yes, I went back to Cambridge, having been there at school. Um there was a fairly close connection between Sherburne and Corpus Christi College in Cambridge, and um I think in a way I went naturally there. What did you read? I read economics and English literature. I had intended to read the law. I did read it for one term. Actually I didn't really discover where the law schools were in that time, but I did discover that I didn't like law. Had you any idea then what you wanted to be apart from law? No, absolutely none at all. I mean I had in fact been nursed along by my father who was a solicitor to the idea that I was going to be a barrister, but it was a it was a very sort of romantic childhood notion and frankly I didn't like the law and uh

Presenter7:25

So I really had no idea at all what I was going to be when I was at Cambridge. Politics hadn't come to mind at all? No, not at all. Um my family had no political tradition whatever. I don't think Appardo has ever even been a member of a parish council. Now you took a lot of interest in university theatricals. Yes, I became a member of um the Cambridge University Footlights in my first year and also the Musical Comedy Club. In fact, you played in the West End on a couple of occasions. Yes, a couple of occasions. I came with the Footlights reviews.

Speaker 17:48

Uh

Presenter7:52

To the West End. It was a sort of vintage period in many ways. Um I know everybody who's ever been in Footlights claims it as having been a vintage period, but uh Jonathan Miller and uh Frederick Raphael who's just written the uh Glittering Prizes and Leslie Brickers who seems to write every musical that Hollywood now produces, they were all in it the year that I was in it. You haven't recognised yourself in Glittering Prizes? No, I'm still waiting for my Glittering Prize, I think. In your second year you wrote a show.

Presenter8:18

Yes, I wrote a a musical comedy. I wrote the the book of it, the book and lyrics, with someone else and it was put on in the Arts Theatre in Cambridge by the Cambridge University Musical Comedy Club and I in fact played um a fairly major part in it. And in your third year or last year? Oh, I worked. I did a bit of writing for Footlights and some of the sketches in fact appeared again in the West End, but I I resigned from the stage, so to speak, and got on to w get my degree.

Presenter8:44

Record number three.

Presenter8:46

Right.

Presenter8:47

This is really a recent discovery in some ways, um and it's a discovery because of the BBC Third programme, particularly in my car.

Presenter8:56

And this is Marla. I've become a a Marla addict, I suppose you could say, and I would like to hear a bit from the Titan Symphony, the Symphony No. One.

Presenter10:08

The beginning of the second movement of Mahler's first symphony, George Shelty conducting the London Symphony Orchestra.

Presenter10:14

When you came down from Cambridge you joined the RAF.

Presenter10:18

What were you doing? You you took commission? Well, of course, luckily having had a degree first, um I was able to go straight through to officers' training course, and it only took me three months in the Isle of Man, therefore, to become an officer, and uh that made life a little easier.

Presenter10:31

Were you by now taking any active part in politics? No, I wasn't. I suppose you could say that my economics at Cambridge had um stimulated an interest in the economic side of politics, but it wasn't until I got into the Royal Air Force that I really became politically motivated, and that was because um it coincided with Suez, and Suez was the great political watershed of my generation, and I remember being so angry and furious that I decided that it was time people like me did something. So what did you do? Well, I joined the Labour Party, actually. I mean, I hadn't really heard of the Liberal Party in those days. It sort of hadn't been around in my uh background or anything like that. How long did that loyalty last?

Speaker 111:07

How long did

Presenter11:09

Well, I was in the Labour Party, a very active member of the Labour Party, though not a candidate in any way, until about nineteen sixty.

Presenter11:15

And then the change? Well, I decided to give up politics, actually. No, it wasn't a straight switch from Labour to Liberal at all. I decided just to get out. I was fed up with the whole thing.

Presenter11:24

And uh I went off and did nothing politically for nine months, and then

Presenter11:28

It was really Joe Grimmond, his speeches and and books and writings, that brought me back into uh an interest in it and I joined the Liberal Party at the late late nineteen sixty. When were you invited to become a candidate? Nineteen sixty one. I became um a candidate in Finchley in North London. I was living in London at that time and uh in the nineteen sixty four election I actually fought um Margaret Thatcher. She beat me but I managed to halve her majority.

Presenter11:55

What jobs were you doing at this time? How were you keeping yourself? I started off in um a firm called Television Audience Measurement, which as the name might imply was market research into um television audiences for commercial companies of course and um really spent most of my time in market research for the first few years and then I joined the Liberal Party to run the Liberal News which is its weekly paper. Mm-hmm. And when did you enter Parliament?

Presenter12:18

Oh, I got into Parliament in 1966. I became the candidate in North Cornwall after the 1964 election, early 1965, and uh won the election in 1966. A safe seat? Oh, no. North Cornwall um has been marginal since nineteen eighteen. That's the reason why it has the highest turnout of any constituency in the country. Um but it's uh it's still marginal. I would never claim it as safe.

Presenter12:40

Let's have record number four.

Presenter12:42

Well

Presenter12:44

Since we're talking about Cornwall, um there is a moment once a year in Cornwall, in my own constituency in North Cornwall, which I cherish very much. I always try to get there and I hope I shall be there this time on May the first, May Day, and that's in Padstow, where there's a great obios festival. It lasts for one day and everybody forgets their marriage vows and their Methodism at least most people seem to anyway and it's about the last great pagan folk festival and whereas elsewhere in the country it's usually school kids got up to dance round the May pole in a rather phony atmosphere in Padstow it's the men who dance in the street and it's a it's a splendid festival and I'd like to hear the Padstow May song.

John Pardoe13:25

You guys have that for your night for summer in Jake of Run.

John Pardoe13:35

We are going to

John Pardoe13:48

I mean it's got any more

John Pardoe13:50

Or somewhere in the crowd.

John Pardoe13:55

I might have children here, family.

Presenter14:05

The Pabsto May song sung by some of your constituents. Why has the Liberal tradition

Presenter14:12

lasted so well in the West Country.

Presenter14:14

It it's not, of course, only in the West Country, but it is true that it's it's lasted there uh more strongly and the revival there has been stronger than it has elsewhere. Um I think that it's something to do with uh Celtic non-conformism. Certainly Wesley had a great deal to do with it. One of the traditions in Cornwall, for instance, is that um the Cornish don't take sugar in their tea and I always wondered exactly why this was and it's always said that it was because Wesley was against the slave trade and he told them not to take sugar in their tea because this was this was undermining the slave trade and that kind of moral imperative probably is is common to a lot of people in Cornwall certainly. How long can you stay in your constituency during the year? It's a long way from London.

Presenter14:56

Yes, it is. Indeed, I sometimes think that I live care of British Railways Western Region, night sleeper, usually. Um in fact, if one does it by night sleeper it's not too bad. But I suppose I spend about um a third of the year there altogether, and the family are there in the holidays, and um

Presenter15:13

We're in London during the term. Are you convinced that there's a future for a third party? Oh, yes, I'm absolutely convinced of that. Indeed, I'm more strongly convinced than I've ever been that um if Britain is to get the sort of stability and continuity that we can see in some other European countries in running its economy particularly, we need a third party in order to hold the two from

Presenter15:32

doing sort of zigzag and somersault politics. With so few Liberals in the House, it must keep you all very busy if if the party's view has to be expressed on every issue. Yes, we do try to express it on every issue and uh for that reason I suppose Liberals speak much more often than uh other members of parliament. Also there is a great deal of work to be done around the country. With a party where only a very few people are in Parliament and therefore get the public eye. Um the party in the country uh makes great calls on one and so one is both jumping up and down in the House of Commons and tearing around the country making speeches. Are you an optimist? Do you think we're going to get out of the glue?

Presenter16:07

No, I don't think we are necessarily. I sometimes am an optimist, but I'm only an optimist when I believe that people will do what I tell them to do, and on the whole, on the whole, I think I've made something of a political career out of always foretelling the worst in the British economy, and if you foretell the worst, it usually comes about in Britain, alas.

John Pardoe16:15

And on the whole

Presenter16:26

Prophet of Doom, do you still keep up your singing? Do you sing what would obviously be sad songs?

Presenter16:32

Um, I do sing, but I don't know that I sing sad songs. I used to do quite a bit of singing in Cornwall at harvest festivals and that sort of thing. I find it more and more difficult to keep the voice in trim with all the speaking engagements. I don't think the two things go together. But, yes, I do do some singing, and indeed I shall be singing um in Cornwall this Easter, um, where the New Key Choral Society will be doing the Messiah, and I shall be singing there. But I I I try to keep it up. I sing in my bath, I suppose, mainly. You do a lot of walking.

Presenter16:59

I walk a great deal. I walk every day with the dogs in London on Hampstead Heath, where I try to put in at least three quarters of an hour.

Presenter17:07

And in Cornwall I walk a great deal. Of course we've got the marvellous Cornwall coastal footpath. I walked a hundred and sixteen miles of it in four days last summer and I think the h four hottest days Britain has ever experienced. That's the whole length. Well, no, it's just the length of my constituency, in fact. The whole length you can go right round the peninsula from what? Minehead to Lyme Regis, if you're so minded, and there are lots of splendid pubs on the way. Splendid. Right, record number five.

Presenter17:32

Well

Presenter17:33

In Cornwall we have um a a poetic tradition, I think one can say, and we have in fact teaching in a local primary school in Launstone a man who is in my view the best English poet writing in the language today. He won the Queen's Prize a few years ago for poetry. He's done a lot of reading, a lot of um reciting, both broadcasting and that sort of thing, and he's just had his poems published this year, his collected poems, and his name is Charles Cawsley, and I'd like to hear the seasons in North Cornwall read by him.

Speaker 218:01

Oh, spring has set off her green fuses down by the Tamar to day, And careless, like tide marks, the hedges are bursting with almond and May.

Speaker 218:12

Here lie I waiting for old Summer, a red face and straw coloured hair as he.

Speaker 218:18

I shall meet him on the road from Marision and the Mediterranean Sea.

Speaker 218:23

September has flung a spray of rooks on the sea chart of the sky.

Speaker 218:28

The tall ship masts crack in the forest and the banners of autumn fly.

Speaker 218:34

My room is a bright glass cabin.

Speaker 218:37

All Cornwall thunders at my door

Speaker 218:40

and the white ships of winter lie in the sea roads of the moor.

Presenter18:45

Charles Cawsley reading his own poem The Seasons in North Cornwall. Let's go straight into your next disc.

Presenter18:51

Well, I said just now that um this Easter I would be joining the New Key Choral Society and singing the tenor line in the Messiah, and that'll be a very enjoyable experience. I try to do that as often as possible at Easter, and therefore I would like to hear something from the Messiah.

Presenter19:06

And I think something from the Easter music would be appropriate.

John Pardoe19:43

I family loves all the reds of the world.

Presenter20:04

Part of the Easter music from Handel's Messiah, the choir of King's College, Cambridge, with the Academy of Saint Martin in the fields, conducted by David Wilcox.

Presenter20:13

How much practical skill do you have for the cast week? Would you look after yourself all right?

Presenter20:17

Yes, I think I could. Um my wife and children certainly think I could. They regard me as a kind of splendid do-it-yourselfer, and I have built a lot of things around the house and made the kitchen and all the units and things like that, and I usually spend uh a part of any weekend that I am at home, either here or in Cornwall, doing things like that. Yes, I think I could survive very well, actually.

Speaker 220:34

By the house.

Speaker 120:34

Yeah.

Presenter20:38

Fishing. Obviously. You with all that Cornish coastline you must have been out fishing quite a lot. Well, that's perfectly true. Um I have a little boat in Cornwall, and we do in fact um pull a spinner through the water and catch mackerel. There are lots and lots of mackerel, of course, off the Cornish coast. So yes, I think I can probably survive on fishing.

Speaker 220:41

Yeah.

Speaker 120:41

Yeah.

Presenter20:55

And would you try to escape?

Presenter20:57

Well, not to start with, as a matter of fact. Um

Presenter21:01

No, I think in fact I'd probably stay there and slog it out for a bit. And of course the thing is that I would be very optimistic because I suppose there's no desert island that's very long way from the shipping lanes and so I'd have smoke signals and things like that when I wanted to, but only when I wanted to escape. I'm glad that optimism has grepted. Record number seven. Well, I would want to know that Western civilization was still alive and well.

Presenter21:25

And I think the high point of Western civilization in music is Beethoven's Choral Symphony, and I'd probably play it to myself over and over and over again.

Presenter22:35

Part of the last movement of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony conducted by Herbert von Karijan, which brings us to record number eight.

Presenter22:43

Well, Mozart. One would have to have Mozart with one.

Presenter22:46

And I think the magic flute.

Presenter22:49

And there is the marvellous duet between Papagena and Papagheno just after he's uh decided not after all to commit suicide, where they have a great reconciliation at the end, and I'd like to hear that.

John Pardoe23:11

Bro.

John Pardoe23:14

Yeah.

Speaker 123:28

Yeah.

Speaker 123:30

You think

Speaker 123:35

You can help insight in

Speaker 123:47

Um

John Pardoe23:53

Uh

Presenter23:59

The Papagena Papageno duet from the last act of Mozart's Magic Flute, sung by Hermann Prai and Renata Holm.

Presenter24:08

If you could take just one of these eight discs, you've lost seven in the surf. Which one would you hang on to? Oh, the Beethoven Choral Symphony.

Presenter24:15

And one luxury to take with you? I think a piano. I've always threatened that when I finally retire from everything, I will again start to teach myself to play the piano, which I do very badly, and I would actually like to sit there and practise for hours on end. And one book to take with you apart from the Bible, Shakespeare, and big encyclopedias? I think, in fact, one would want to spend the time thinking about the infinite and making one's soul, and really one would want a lot to think about. And so I would certainly take Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy. Right. And thank you, John Pardo, MP, for letting us hear your Desert Island Discs. Thank you very much. Goodbye, everyone.

Speaker 125:03

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Islandists Archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk/radio4.