Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Desert Island Discs
Presented by Roy Plomley
An athlete and one of the two top men in the world at the 400 metres hurdles, headed to the Montreal Olympics.
Eight records
Any record collection of mine would have to have something from Rod Stewart in it.
Looking for SpaceFavourite
This goes back to training in Australia and the spaces out there, a shared uh belief in conservation that uh John Denver puts across in so many of his songs.
This record obviously brings back all sorts of memories of of those Olympics.
You Are the Sunshine of My Life
This always brings back memories of a wonderful month that we spent out there.
This is a Beatles number actually, Lucy in the Sky with Diamond.
This is one of the big relaxations for me is uh after a meeting, to get away from it all and perhaps go to a disco which uh is the usual entertainment after a big athletics meeting, say at Crystal Palace. And uh the dancing record has to be the Rolling Stones Brown Sugar.
One of the fantasies I think I would always uh like to live out would be conducting a large orchestra for a very dramatic number, something like uh Tchaikovsky's Eighteen Twelve Overture.
This brings to mind all of the sorts of things that one really would miss from home, and some of the things that you wouldn't miss as well.
The keepsakes
The book
Reader's Digest Gardener's Year
Uh I think I'd have the Reader's Digest uh gardeners' year because I hope I could grow something there and uh that uh that's my as I've said, one of my main interests at home.
The luxury
Um I think I'd have to take a diary and something to write in it with a pencil. Um I've got such a poor memory I'd need to record everything that I did and didn't do. Anything that goes back three or four weeks I begin to struggle with. I d I don't know what would happen in my life at the moment if I lost my diary. I would uh have to let so many people down because I'd just forget all of the engagements that I was supposed to be going to.
In conversation
Presenter asks
How would you be at enduring solitude?
I don't know, never having really been put in that position, I suppose the only um time in in my situation where I come into that uh area is in the morning before a race, when you're laying on your bed wondering what the devil's going to happen at three o'clock that afternoon.
Presenter asks
Do you drink at all?
Yes, uh it's not a cheap round when you ask an athlete for a drink. I I enjoy uh wine and particularly with my meals.
Presenter asks
You and Della used to travel together all the time, but now she's given up athletics, hasn't she?
Yes, she r she retired two years ago after a lot of injury problems had kept her out of the the Commonwealth Games. And uh it it was fortunate for me in many ways, being very selfish about it, because it was just at the time that I was breaking into the public landline and winning a lot of races, um having moved up to the 400 metre hurdles. And uh I think now much of her energy that she originally channelled into her own athletics is is channelled into my performance and all of the problems that that go with it.
The recording
Timestamps play the recording from that turn
Speaker 3
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.
Presenter
Our castaway this week is an athlete. He's one of the two top men in the world at the four hundred metres hurdles, and we shall be thinking a lot about him while he's in Montreal. It's Alan Pascoe.
Presenter
Alan, this is a case when the short distance runner experiences loneliness. How would you be at enduring solitude?
Alan Pascoe
I don't know, never having really been put in that position, I suppose the only um time in in my situation where I come into that uh area is in the morning before a race, when you're laying on your bed wondering what the devil's going to happen at three o'clock that afternoon.
Presenter
What would you be happiest who got away from?
Alan Pascoe
Oh, London traffic, I think, definitely.
Presenter
Is music a big thing in your life?
Alan Pascoe
Yes, it is, really, particularly at home, um and particularly as a form of relaxation after athletic competitions. And I have used it uh when I've been training for doing weight training, circuit training in gymnasium.
Presenter
How did you set about choosing
Alan Pascoe
Yeah.
Presenter
Record
Alan Pascoe
Uh
Alan Pascoe
Um they all come from personal selections at home, and most of them have some connection with athletics and my sporting life, or trying to get away from that side of my life.
Presenter
What's the first one?
Alan Pascoe
Rod Stewart. Um, still love you. Any record collection of mine would have to have something from Rod Stewart in it.
Speaker 4
I was told.
Speaker 4
By a good friend.
Speaker 4
You are untouchable.
Speaker 4
Out of my reach.
Speaker 4
But the first time.
Speaker 4
Ever I saw you.
Speaker 4
I spilled my cherry wine.
Presenter
Rod Stewart. What's your second choice?
Alan Pascoe
That's Looking for Space from John Denver. Um this goes back to training in Australia and the spaces out there, a shared uh belief in conservation that uh John Denver puts across in so many of his songs.
Speaker 4
Space and find out who you are When you're looking to dry breaths the stars It's a sweet, sweet, sweet dream
Speaker 4
Sometimes I've almost made some.
Presenter
John Denver looking for space.
Presenter
Alan, you're from a naval family, aren't you?
Alan Pascoe
Yes, I was born in Portsmouth and and lived there for the first 11 years of my life. Did you show an aptitude for athletics very early? I could run a little bit, I could sprint and long jump when I was in the junior school and I very much enjoyed it. But I was an asthmatic and it was the doctor really that encouraged me to do a lot more sport. And particularly when I was eleven we went out to Malta for two and a half years and that helped me quite a lot, particularly doing a lot of swimming. And when you were left school you joined a local club did you? Well when I came back to England I went to the local grammar school and did a little bit more athletics there and it took me about a year actually to get back into things. I don't know whether it's a change of climate or what. I started training quite hard just the last few years at school. In fact I was an international athlete before I left school and joined a local club there.
Presenter
You start it as a sprinter.
Alan Pascoe
Well, there's a sprinter and uh basically a hundred and ten meter hurdler. It's sh that's the short sprint.
Presenter
Hm. And it was while you were training at Portsmouth as a youngster that that you met a girl who was training for the hundred metres.
Alan Pascoe
Yes, Della, my wife. In actual fact I I first met her because I asked her father if he'd coach me, and uh it was through that that uh we sort of went around a lot more together and eventually ended up in getting married in nineteen seventy.
Presenter
And I believe your first flat was near the Crystal Palace, so that you were handy for training facilities.
Alan Pascoe
That's right. It coincided with uh leaving Borrow Road College where I'd studied for four years in physical education and got my degree. And uh I had to move to what was then the only Tartan track, that's uh the synthetic surface that we run on these days. Uh I had to move as near to that as possible. How much training do you do? At the moment, building up to the Olympic Games I've been doing ten sessions a week, which is obviously two sessions every other day. But in my past history it's just been one session per day because I just haven't had the time to fit more training in. What about diet? It's not perhaps as technical as people think. Um I don't count every calorie. I try to keep a good balanced diet, plenty of vitamins, plenty of proteins. But uh because we burn off a lot of the carbohydrate through all of the training.
Presenter
Of course. Do you drink at all?
Alan Pascoe
Yes, uh it's not a cheap round when you ask an athlete for a drink. I I enjoy uh wine and particularly with my meals.
Presenter
Of course, in addition to your training sessions, your job all day is physical education. That must keep you jumping about a bit.
Alan Pascoe
Yes, um it it did certainly when I was teaching, um particularly chasing around and motivating other people to become involved in sport. But now that I'm lecturing in physical education at Borrow Road, a lot more theory work is involved, and so I'm not doing quite so much practical work myself.
Presenter
Before that you were at Dunwich College.
Alan Pascoe
Yes, I taught there for three years. Um very very very enjoyable and very good facilities there obviously.
Presenter
Let's have record number three. What's that?
Alan Pascoe
That uh goes back to very early on in my career. Um I became an international festival in in February 1967 and by nineteen sixty eight I was going to the Mexico Olympic Games. And the number one record then was the Beatles Hey Jude and this record obviously brings back all sorts of memories of of those Olympics.
Speaker 4
Hate you
Speaker 4
Don't make it bad
Speaker 4
Take a sassa and make it better
Alan Pascoe
The s
Speaker 4
Remember to let her run to your skin
Speaker 4
To make it better, better, better, and better
Presenter
Hey Jude, by the Beatles. So you were an international runner while you were still at school. How many times do you compete abroad in the course of a season?
Alan Pascoe
It varies very much. This particular year, building up for the Olympic Games, I haven't competed abroad as much for two reasons. Firstly, I didn't do a winter competitive season either abroad or indoors in this country, because I wanted to concentrate on training. And also because in the early part of the season I was injured and I missed the matches in Russia and in Yugoslav which was rather sad. But in an average year I would think I would compete abroad perhaps a dozen times and travel abroad or anything upwards of thirty or forty occasions.
Presenter
It is a very long season now.
Presenter
Yeah.
Alan Pascoe
Very long. In fact, it's it's virtually the year round. I mean training has always been a twelve month of the year uh ongoing situation. But uh now with the indoor seasons and the opportunities to compete uh as far afield as Australia and New Zealand during the winter, it really is um all year round.
Presenter
Hm. You and Della used to travel together all the time, but now she's given up athletics, hasn't she?
Alan Pascoe
Yes, she r she retired two years ago after a lot of injury problems had kept her out of the the Commonwealth Games. And uh it it was fortunate for me in many ways, being very selfish about it, because it was just at the time that I was breaking into the public landline and winning a lot of races, um having moved up to the 400 metre hurdles. And uh I think now much of her energy that she originally channelled into her own athletics is is channelled into my performance and all of the problems that that go with it.
Presenter
Why was it you decided to increase your distance?
Alan Pascoe
Well, I'd had eight years before the Munich Olympic Games as a 110m hurdler. I'd really gone as far as I could do without the aid of various extra supplements which I wasn't prepared to take. I'm talking about drugs now. For the 110m hurdles, I needed to be more powerful, and I couldn't really bring that on naturally. I'd done as much work as I could. I was under a lot of pressure from people whose opinions I respect, like David Henry and Ron Pickering, to move up to 400m hurdles in the same way as Henry had done. It's a much more grueling. Uh
Presenter
Uh Yeah.
Alan Pascoe
Wasn't it? Yes, it was. That's what um made the decision very difficult.
Presenter
Yeah.
Presenter
Well, your career has been building recently in a in a very satisfactory manner to a peak. Munich, seventy two, right, you brought us the silver medal for your part in the four hundred relay. In seventy three you were awarded a Winston Churchill Travelling Scholarship and you were able to investigate training methods abroad. That must have been very useful.
Alan Pascoe
Yes, I spent a month in California and then six weeks in Italy with the top coach probably in the world for hurdles, Calvese. And it was a useful opportunity for me to train consistently abroad. It's the first time I'd been abroad for any length of time to train. This of course now has become accepted preparation, but at the time it was virtually unknown. And it was useful to see the way that the Americans approach their very competitive attitude towards athletics and to look at the technical side of things with the Italians who are very very good as far as the hurdles are concerned.
Presenter
And'seventy four was a cracking good season. Two goals. You you got a gold medal in the Commonwealth Games in New Zealand, where you did all right until you ran your lap of honour.
Alan Pascoe
It wasn't really meant to be a lap of honour. I'd been visiting some New Zealanders that I'd met out there and I knew they were delighted just to be associated with anybody that was in the games. And I knew just how pleased that that's one of the strange things that goes through your mind immediately you finish a race. I knew they would be absolutely delighted that someone that they'd known had won a medal, a gold medal in fact. And I was really running back to the other end of the home straight to wave to them. And it was a natural reaction I suppose to jump a hurdle seeing it there. But I can't really remember what happened and at the time I remember being terribly embarrassed about it and wondering how the hell I was going to face people when I got home. But eventually I realised I was going to have to live with it and looking back now I think it was one of the best things and the nicest things that ever happened to me because it made people realise that we are just normal human beings and we make mistakes and
Presenter
That's right.
Alan Pascoe
But uh eventually they they don't they never show this on television, but I did go back and clear it on the third attempt. Um but uh I nearly broke my back doing it. If I I hadn't been so relaxed and so tired I think I'd have injured myself quite seriously.
Presenter
And you brought home another gold medal from the European Championships in in Rome.
Alan Pascoe
Yes, that was in September at the end of the season. That was very significant for me because uh I'd spent the last three weeks before that championship injured, um rather like this season really, and uh I just hope that Montreal goes as well as uh those games.
Presenter
Indeed. And last year you met all the top men in the world and you beat the lot.
Alan Pascoe
This was a conscious effort just to learn as much about the event and my reaction to it over a long season as possible, including the technical problems of how many strides we were going to put between the hurdles, to find out how other people ran the race, whether it was a fast first 200 metres, whether they were strong in the home straight, how they coped and how I coped with the various weather conditions, because obviously in a situation that we're in where your stride pattern is crucial between the hurdles, a very strong headwind down the long straits is very detrimental to your performance.
Presenter
Who in the opposition are you most concerned about?
Alan Pascoe
Well, there's John Akiboa who who won in Munich with a world record time. It's a case really of who adapts to the conditions on the day.
Presenter
Let's have record number four.
Alan Pascoe
That's uh Stevie Wonder. We talked about uh going to California for a month and at that time Sunshine of My Life was was the record out there which all the local radio stations were playing and this always brings back memories of a wonderful month that we spent out there.
Speaker 4
You are the sunshine of my life.
Speaker 4
That's why I'll always be around.
Speaker 4
You are the apple of my eye.
Speaker 4
Forever you'll stay in my heart.
Presenter
Stevie Wonder.
Presenter
Alan, as well as being a runner, you've taken an administrative part in athletics. You're on the Sports Council, the British Amateur Athletic Board.
Presenter
What about the setup of British Athletics? Are there enough facilities? Is there enough encouragement? How's it going?
Alan Pascoe
Well, there can never be enough of anything in this situation. But we are falling behind still, unfortunately. I don't think we're falling behind quite as rapidly as we used to be. In terms of the facilities and the opportunities that we're giving young people in this country, I'm a big believer that we should find something for the young people of this country that they can do well, whether it happens to be in the arts or sport or whatever field they happen to be good at. We should allow them some channel to develop that. I think it's important for them and I think it's important for the country. And this is why I feel that more money and more effort should be spent in sport. How much is industry helping?
Alan Pascoe
It's helping to a degree through both the British Olympic Association Appeal Fund, but particularly through the Sports Aid Foundation. This is geared towards industry. And this is associated perhaps with my next record. We've encouraged the pop world to become involved in it, and particularly Arton John, who is of course very much involved with sport generally, recently put on a tremendous concert at Elles Court. And all of the proceeds went to the Sports Aid Foundation. What's he going to see?
Alan Pascoe
This is a Beatles number actually, Lucy in the Sky with Diamond.
Speaker 4
Power
Speaker 4
Oh, we are here.
Speaker 4
For the girl with the sun in her eyes, when she was gone.
Speaker 4
You see in the sky
Presenter
Elton John.
Presenter
Alan, what are you going to do when you're over your peak? Now teaching is fine at the moment, it gives you the necessary time off and so on. But with all your administrative experience, obviously you want to do something more widely based.
Alan Pascoe
Yes, I'm hoping to retire at the end of this season providing it's uh been relatively successful. Uh I'll have had ten years as a full international athlete and a couple of years struggling to get to the top and training full time so I think that's uh a fair quantity of my life spent on it. Um and I shall be leaving lecturing in physical education and moving into sports promotion and management and I can I hope I'll be able to continually be involved through the Sports Council and other channels in promoting sport and involving young people in sport.
Presenter
You've done some television commentating in the past. Is is that going to play a part?
Alan Pascoe
Yes, I I enjoy working with the media and and particularly I see this as uh the the main vehicle really to mass involvement in sport.
Presenter
How do you like to relax at the moment, to get away from all the stress? What do you do?
Alan Pascoe
I suppose the the biggest relaxation for me is just going home and shutting the door and just being myself, um being able to live my own life and particularly getting out into the garden which I enjoy um greatly. One, because I enjoy the gardening, but also because once I'm out in the garden I can't hear the telephone ringing.
Presenter
Record number six. What's that?
Alan Pascoe
This is one of the big relaxations for me is uh after a meeting, is to get away from it all and perhaps go to a disco which uh is the usual entertainment after a big athletics meeting, say at Crystal Palace. And uh the dancing record has to be the Rolling Stones Brown Sugar.
Speaker 4
Old Slave, she found the cotton fields. Sold in the market down in New Orleans. Scott Old Slave but no it's doing alright Here and with the whammy just around midnight
Speaker 4
That you love me, I warm your dance for good.
Presenter
The Roaning Stone.
Presenter
Now you talked about an interest in gardening. I was glad to hear that, because it would be useful on a desert island. What other skills do you have? Could you run up some kind of shelter?
Alan Pascoe
I think I could improvise fairly well in that situation. Uh I I think I could cope with building a a hut and uh fishing and I can swim, which would be fortunate.
Presenter
Any ideas on escaping?
Alan Pascoe
Escaping from the island? Well unless I could swim that distance I don't know uh how one would get away. Depends what sort of island I was on, but I don't know that I'd want to get away really.
Presenter
Yeah.
Presenter
Let's have record number seven.
Alan Pascoe
Um one of the things I'd like to do, or I'd need to do, I think, is to uh sort of disappear into a fantasy world, and one of the fantasies I think I would always uh like to live out would be conducting a large orchestra for a very dramatic number, something like uh Tchaikovsky's Eighteen Twelve Overture.
Presenter
Tchaikovsky's eighteen twelve overture, played by the London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Andrei Previn, a disc that could be heard on most neighbouring islands.
Presenter
Now we come to your last record.
Alan Pascoe
This is uh Home Thoughts, which uh comes from a uh an LP of the same name, uh by Clifford T. Ward. This brings to mind all of the sorts of things that one really would miss from home, and some of the things that you wouldn't miss as well.
Speaker 4
How is Worcestershire?
Speaker 4
Is it still the same between us?
Speaker 4
Do you still use television?
Speaker 4
Send you fast asleep?
Speaker 4
Can you last another week?
Speaker 4
Does the system still leak?
Speaker 4
Or have you found a man to mend it?
Speaker 4
Oh and by the way, has your broken heart?
Speaker 4
Is that mended too?
Speaker 4
I miss you.
Presenter
Clifford T. Ward. If you could take just one disc out of that eight Yeah.
Alan Pascoe
But Uh
Presenter
Would it be?
Alan Pascoe
It would have to be a John Dlenver record, I think, uh and that the one that we played uh right at the top of the programme, Looking for Space.
Presenter
And one luxury to take with you.
Alan Pascoe
Um I think I'd have to take a diary and something to write in it with a pencil. Um I've got such a poor memory I'd need to record everything that I did and didn't do. Anything that goes back three or four weeks I begin to struggle with. I d I don't know what would happen in my life at the moment if I lost my diary. I would uh have to let so many people down because I'd just forget all of the engagements that I was supposed to be going to.
Speaker 4
Yeah. Uh
Presenter
God
Presenter
Yes, looking on the pessimistic side, we'd better give you diaries for the next few years ahead in case you're stuck there for a long time.
Alan Pascoe
Yes, either that or I'd have to think of some novel ideas of getting away very quickly, I think.
Presenter
and one book apart from the Bible and Shakespeare and big encyclopedias.
Alan Pascoe
Uh I think I'd have the Reader's Digest uh gardeners' year because I hope I could grow something there and uh that uh that's my as I've said, one of my main interests at home.
Presenter
Alright, the Tropical Edition.
Alan Pascoe
Well, hopefully so. I I wouldn't mind the warm weather, that's for sure. I enjoy travelling abroad and getting to the warmer climates.
Presenter
Yeah.
Presenter
Well, thank you, Alan Pascoe, for letting us hear your Desert Island Disc and the very best of luck in Montreal.
Alan Pascoe
Thank you very much.
Presenter
Goodbye everyone.
Speaker 3
You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.
Presenter asks
Why was it you decided to increase your distance?
Well, I'd had eight years before the Munich Olympic Games as a 110m hurdler. I'd really gone as far as I could do without the aid of various extra supplements which I wasn't prepared to take. I'm talking about drugs now. For the 110m hurdles, I needed to be more powerful, and I couldn't really bring that on naturally. I'd done as much work as I could. I was under a lot of pressure from people whose opinions I respect, like David Henry and Ron Pickering, to move up to 400m hurdles in the same way as Henry had done. It's a much more grueling. Uh
Presenter asks
What about the setup of British athletics? Are there enough facilities? Is there enough encouragement?
Well, there can never be enough of anything in this situation. But we are falling behind still, unfortunately. I don't think we're falling behind quite as rapidly as we used to be. In terms of the facilities and the opportunities that we're giving young people in this country, I'm a big believer that we should find something for the young people of this country that they can do well, whether it happens to be in the arts or sport or whatever field they happen to be good at. We should allow them some channel to develop that. I think it's important for them and I think it's important for the country. And this is why I feel that more money and more effort should be spent in sport.
Presenter asks
What are you going to do when you're over your peak?
Yes, I'm hoping to retire at the end of this season providing it's uh been relatively successful. Uh I'll have had ten years as a full international athlete and a couple of years struggling to get to the top and training full time so I think that's uh a fair quantity of my life spent on it. Um and I shall be leaving lecturing in physical education and moving into sports promotion and management and I can I hope I'll be able to continually be involved through the Sports Council and other channels in promoting sport and involving young people in sport.
“I think now much of her energy that she originally channelled into her own athletics is is channelled into my performance and all of the problems that that go with it.”
“I'd really gone as far as I could do without the aid of various extra supplements which I wasn't prepared to take. I'm talking about drugs now.”
“I was terribly embarrassed about it and wondering how the hell I was going to face people when I got home. But eventually I realised I was going to have to live with it and looking back now I think it was one of the best things and the nicest things that ever happened to me because it made people realise that we are just normal human beings and we make mistakes”
“I suppose the the biggest relaxation for me is just going home and shutting the door and just being myself, um being able to live my own life and particularly getting out into the garden which I enjoy um greatly. One, because I enjoy the gardening, but also because once I'm out in the garden I can't hear the telephone ringing.”