Godfrey Talbot

Speaker 10:01

BBC Sounds, Music, Radio Podcasts. Hello, I'm Lauren Laverne, and this is the Desert Island Discs podcast. For rights reasons, the music is shorter than on the original broadcast. The presenter is Roy Plomley. I hope you enjoy listening.

Presenter0:29

This is an occasion of the year when our Delphi Island seems very far from being deserted, because I am speaking from the National Radio Coast at No Port Lunch.

Presenter0:38

We're on the grandstand surrounded by a very large crowd of people.

Presenter0:42

However, this week's calculat is a man who's used to working in the middle of crowds.

Presenter0:46

He's the possessor of a very familiar voice. We've heard him give many vivid and exciting commentaries from a good many plants of the world in both peace and war.

Presenter0:54

DBC in Euroford, not spread forward.

Presenter0:58

I thought in your travels have you had any experience of solitude, not necessarily on a desert island?

Presenter1:04

No, I don't think I have, not absolutely alone. In fact, I'm sure I haven't. Why do you think it stays up?

Presenter1:10

Well, I think I'd spend most of my night trying to get a bit of peace and quiet, and I think I should be delighted at first. I like getting away from it all. I like to walk and be in the country alone, but whether I'd welcome absolute solitude.

Godfrey Talbot1:16

Mm-hmm.

Presenter1:23

Uh, yeah, for a long time, it's quite another matter. Do you consider your dilvers a neutral sir?

Presenter1:29

No, I don't really. I'm probably tone deaf and tune-deaf. I do like music. It says a tune in it.

Presenter1:35

I make bull-like noises, which I call singing, but from which my family run in all directions.

Presenter1:40

As a matter of fact, they let out hoops of derision when they heard I was going to appear on this program. In their opinion, I'm the last man to be let loose with Grammar for Risk War. No, it doesn't stand for that.

Presenter1:50

You didn't have music lessons at the time? Oh, yes, I did. I was the in the usual bluebell that's got the piano learning stage, but I'd hear hear the sound of a cricket bat when I was practising and I'd be off.

Presenter2:02

My music taste is capricious and corny. I think I'm idiot simple and I don't go beyond melody.

Presenter2:09

As a child, I was cradled in non-conformity and brought up on hymn tunes, and I still think that hymn tunes are some of the best melodies in the world.

Presenter2:17

Now how did you set about choosing these eight records for the desert island? Are they records the service from memory? Well

Speaker 12:23

Well

Presenter2:24

Although either consciously or unconsciously, I'm sure I'd avoid certain music which would evoke memories that might prove, well, two point-only textile music that would bring to my memory moments of great happiness.

Presenter2:36

It would be so much beyond recapture that the music would be unendurable. What's the first break or do you said?

Presenter2:43

At a fairly early age, there was pitched into quite a lot of opera going, and I'm going to start with an excerpt from an opera from Fox. How do you mean pitched into opera going? Oh, it was during my early days in journalism. Tickets used to come my way, and it seemed a pity to waste them, and so I grew to go to and to like opera. The provinces used to get a good deal of opera in those days, largely from the British National Opera Company.

Presenter3:07

And one of my favourite was, and is, Tuscan. Which part of it you took? Oh, right at the beginning, almost, where Angelotti has come into the church looking for a hiding place, and now you hear the sacristan come to figure in.

Godfrey Talbot3:34

Excellent.

Godfrey Talbot3:37

Only pendant wrestlers.

Godfrey Talbot3:41

You stop you, soul.

Godfrey Talbot3:44

Signor Vittore

Godfrey Talbot3:47

Miss them.

Godfrey Talbot3:50

Abre trato que poser ritornato il cavalier cavana hopski.

Godfrey Talbot4:03

No.

Godfrey Talbot4:05

Espalio il panieren ta co

Speaker 14:05

Valley of Il Ponyere in Tam.

Presenter4:13

This is the opening theme of Foster, a Carl and the Lamb recording done by Finelskio Luis.

Presenter4:19

What do I think of it?

Presenter4:20

The wall.

Presenter4:21

Secondly, in my exile, there's always something lifting about a waltz, and here's one of my favourite Rosen Cavalier waltzes, one that I could bear to listen to any number of times.

Presenter4:32

This lovely small pool recording by the Hollywood Bowl Or

Presenter5:34

On a mix from Delhi Caballery, by the Hollywood Mill Authorities were conducted by Felix Flapp.

Presenter5:42

Okay, what's our temptative jump from?

Presenter5:44

The West Riding of Yorkshire. Now, I've yet to meet broadcasters who sent out to be one of the child. What was your first ending? To be a journalist. And what was your first job? Journalism. Spend it.

Presenter5:57

Curious how strong that ambition was, at school I remember as speech days I used to watch the reporters, with Henry to help me, sitting in the front taking notes, and I learnt shorthand in my spare time. What was your first job in journalism, sitting in front taking notes and speech days? Oh no. I had to begin as an editorial office boy.

Presenter6:15

making the tea and learning the business from the bottom. Lives within your

Presenter6:18

This was in fact on the Yorkshire phone. And then I was promoted to be a reporter, and I did all the usual jobs, you know, reporting police courts, flower shows, church balls. How long were you with that paper?

Presenter6:29

Five years, I think it was. Now, by the end of that time, had you started satellite?

Presenter6:34

Partly, though knowing jolly little about it at first, I became, so help me, a dramatic critic. Oh, yes.

Presenter6:42

I remember savaging one four companies that came to me. With all the precocity of youth and inexperienced, I really tore them apart. And the next day, the manager of the theatre company and the principal actors all turned up in my editor's office, demanding my head that another terror notice should be written for my editor, great editor, Arthur Maff, that there couldn't be another notice because the papers stood by what representative had written.

Presenter7:06

By golly, when he visited the gone, he sent them to me and he gave me the biggest and the most salutary wigging that I've ever had.

Presenter7:14

But on behalf of actors and say rights everywhere, may I say good for him?

Presenter7:19

What was the next book? Well, I went to a weekly paper in Manchester to see modernized, and I was hired as an assistant editor. They thought that being a young man, I'd have to modernize Jews, and then the editor retired, and I took over his chair, and I became an editor at the age of 24. Much too young.

Presenter7:36

And now how did the paper do? Well, we did all right, as a matter of fact, very well, but after a while there was a financial reorganization of the group.

Presenter7:43

It belonged to and the paper died under me, though.

Presenter7:46

Well, I went back quite happily to being a reporter with a big Manchester Daily Paper group. I went there for a couple of years and then I joined the BBC. Well, now what inspired that move? Believe it or not, I wanted to get away from news. Well, that you certainly failed to do. What did you join the BBC at? A public relations officer. A public relations being more or less a polite name for public... Oh, more or less. Royal. Well, now, having got too as far as the BBP staff, I think we'll talk to another record. What's it going to be?

Presenter8:13

I mentioned earlier my lout for the old evangelical hymn. Well, here's a favourite of mine, not quite a bad kind of hymn, but I've always found it very moving. It's the metrical setting of the 23rd Psalm, The Criminal City, beautifully done by the Glasgow Horseby's Quilt.

Godfrey Talbot8:59

That is all bright just now.

Godfrey Talbot9:08

Be the fire base.

Presenter9:22

Part of the criminal setting of the 23rd trump done by the Glasgow Orchestra Pro. Now, picking up on your life story, Glasgow, you just joined the BBC. Carry on from there.

Presenter9:31

Well, I worked in our public relations department in Manchester and then in Birmingham and after a couple of years the war broke out. Well, the authorities said that everyone who was skilled in a needed trade must go into that trade, so I was directed into the DBT news department in London, and I became one of the sub-editors. When did you start broadcasting yourself? Well, soon after that, they began to try me out with an occasional talk in the news bulletin. Then, just after Dunkirk, I was accredited as a war correspondent, first of all with the home forces. And then, just about the time of the fall of Tobruk, they sent me out in the Middle East. Then you followed the Eighth Army from Alamein right out into Italy. I did, and that, of course, was broadcasting like mad because the desert war was the war then, and the Eighth Army was the news. Well, one broadcast of yours from North Africa that very many people remember was the good news from Alamein, the breakthrough.

Presenter10:22

I remember recording that dispatch because I was standing out in the desert with the tanks grinding past on both sides of me, looming up out of the fog of sand that they were throwing up, and I couldn't see them until they were practically on top of me, and now I was leaping from one side to the other, still talking, as I heard them coming, and I remember one of them cut the cable between me and my recording truck.

Presenter10:41

One of the other big stories you remember from the war. Oh, the entry into Benghazi, the fall of Tripoli, Churchill's visit, the Axis forces being cleared out of Africa, the Mediterranean free, and then the war in Italy, of course, the entry into Rome, the Fall of Castilo. Where did you go up to when the war ended? Um, the envy day, I was up near the Brenner Perns. Directly, home. Right. Well, at this point, I think we'll stop for another record. What are we going to have now? We've been talking about the war. There's one record that never failed to take me back, and many other people too, I think, to the Western desert. It was one of the enemy songs to begin with. It used to be put out the German forces' radio. And in the hope that our side would listen too, and it would seduce them, perhaps, from their duty. Well, they did listen, but what they did was capture this song from the Germans and made it the Eighth Army song. It is, of course, Lilly Marlane, and this is the original German record with Laula Amberson.

Speaker 211:34

Voider Kazerne, Voidim Broßentor, Standanel, Und steitzinofta for, Zo vohen wir und stab, Male, Wie einstrilli Mali.

Presenter12:02

Lily Marlene, sung by Nala Anderson and Chap.

Presenter12:07

Now what happened to you after the war, Coppette, when you got back from visiting?

Presenter12:10

Well you are asking me to talk shop. I had to decide whether I wanted to stay with New BBC and stay in numbers and I decided that I did. I set the work.

Godfrey Talbot12:19

Yeah.

Presenter12:20

who found that to build up our Look 14 unit. And I also became the BBC correspondent accredited to Buckingham Terrible. Now, what did that involve?

Presenter12:30

Well, obviously there's so many big royalty that he marked cover and I agitated that there should be a suitable chap appointed especially for this work. The powers of fee at the time thought this was a very good idea.

Presenter12:43

And they got the post approved and then they said to me, all right, you can have your chap. It's you. Well, I didn't joke because that coincides with an upsurge of a feeling that I always have, a dislike of sitting at a desk. I know I'm sitting at one at this moment.

Presenter12:57

It meant that I could get out into the field again. Yes, well it certainly meant you would get out into quite a lot of fields. How many royal furs have you been on?

Presenter13:06

I don't know an awful lot. I've been round the world and to very many countries.

Presenter13:11

Fifty thousand miles, one trip alone. I don't

Presenter13:15

And I've been to Canaveral, the USA, on four occasions, and to many parts of Africa, and I've visited almost the whole of Europe here. I gather that these tours are by no means the joyright of the sequels of the reporting.

Presenter13:26

By no means a joyride for anybody at all. You see, the Queen of the Royal Party usually put in about a 12-hour day on these jerseys. The journalists have to put in a much longer one because they've got to be there wherever it is when the royal party arrives and at the end of the day they have to stay and get off their stories, get off their poem or their tape. And as far as radio's concerned, they may be circuit scrum.

Presenter13:49

Wherever it is to London at all hours of the day and night. Quite honestly, I don't know of any assignment at all in journalism that is so rugged as a major royal tour. And of course, you're moving on to somewhere different practice every day.

Presenter14:01

Certainly I'm always on the move, but it makes it difficult to organise yourself, speaking personally, in that shopping phrase.

Presenter14:09

Each town that the Queen visits is having the one big day of its lifetime, and nobody's going to open a shop. They'd consider it almost high treason to do any buying or selling on that particular day. If you run out of, say, toothpaste, well, you're in real trouble. I remember once in New Zealand trying every day for three and a half weeks to buy a few of toothpaste. But pretended laundry, as you can imagine, is an even worse problem. Well, I think most of us would risk laundry troubles to go on. Some of those do.

Presenter14:37

What have you lined up with Yoko?

Presenter14:40

Well, next year looks like being a tremendous year. I do know this is a reign of royal power. Her Majesty isn't just Queen of the United Kingdom, she's Queen of the whole Commonwealth. And already we know that in 1961, the Queen will be going to India, Pakistan, Persia, Italy, Ghana, Sierra Leone, Gambia. You'd better get yourself a good supply of tooth, please. Not something on the regular.

Presenter15:04

Well, of all the of

Presenter15:06

First warm music Oklahoma, my favorite is one that I think was the most rich in good numbers there ever was. It's called Kiss Me Kate. I saw it three times in New York and twice in London.

Presenter15:19

And, more or less any stormflip that would seize me on my desert island, one snented number is, Why Can't You Behead? And here it is, sung by Lisa Kirb of the New York Sun.

Godfrey Talbot15:43

Can you be hurt?

Godfrey Talbot15:50

After all the things you told me and the promises that you

Presenter16:00

These are collecting why can't you behe from the New York production of Kiffly Cake.

Presenter16:05

The Out of Endemic by Carl Ford.

Presenter16:07

What next?

Godfrey Talbot16:07

Yeah.

Presenter16:08

Well, on my desert island, although there's some tunes I couldn't bear to hear again, the big two pointers, as I've said, I would want some chunks of nostalgia, so Pete, can I have one now? Some straightforward, pumpty-tongue piano pay. I used to love the regular beat of Charlie Koot. On this dip, keep saying a couple of tunes which take me back the second time to the war, yes. The era that was horrible, of course, but...

Presenter16:32

They had tunes which bring back some associations that weren't altogether unsuitable.

Presenter17:06

Charlie Tunes playing Dearly Beloved and as time goes by.

Presenter17:11

I thought we're turning to the lighter side of your job.

Presenter17:14

What's your favorite story?

Presenter17:16

My decide, this sounds like the most embarrassing moment department, is that it? That's exactly it. Most embarrassing moment. What was it? Wait.

Presenter17:24

There's one incident that still makes me prickle with embarrassment whenever I think of it.

Presenter17:29

It was in the outer Hebraine.

Presenter17:31

Now it's covered in a royal did it.

Presenter17:33

Queen and the Duke were touring the island, and I was by the side of the road, recording a description

Presenter17:38

people who were waiting for the royal party to arrive, and there were a number of very worthy but rather inconsiderate people who kept crowding round and rather pestering me and asking me questions in loud voices. I was getting rather ped up with them and I asked if they'd I asked politely, I take it they'd leave me alone. And I was there adjusting my recording machine.

Presenter17:56

And I heard footsteps stop immediately behind me. I didn't look up, but I said rather crossly, actually, do you mind moving away? I don't want to talk to anybody just now. Then I looked up.

Presenter18:06

And I thought I'd been addressing Cleveland the Duke of Edinburgh. How much do you think you're going to be at looking after yourself on separate islands?

Presenter18:18

Oh lord. I don't know. I'm not a handyman at all.

Presenter18:22

I was once a keen but rather impompetous Boy Scout.

Presenter18:25

Any hobby might be your

Presenter18:28

Well, I'm not the last of fishermen. I can dig a garden. I have to. My wife has me dig it for her.

Presenter18:34

Uh certain experiences in the war days made me able to dig a foxhole and a slip trench very quickly, so I might dig a shelter to live it, I suppose. I think I could sense myself up to a point.

Presenter18:47

I do know about the topic sun and it's useful though to talk to the sun dead.

Presenter18:52

Right. Well, I think we're letting it further interrogate.

Presenter18:56

Well, I'd like a comedian from one dating from before the war. A comedian perhaps many people won't remember because he had a very brief professional career. To my mind, he was one of the funniest men I ever saw. His name was John Tilly. Ah, we've just been talking about my undistinguished career as a boy's cows, so let's have John Tilley's that's coat mask.

Godfrey Talbot19:20

Batmoose, Batmoose, Batmoose.

Presenter19:22

Uh

Godfrey Talbot19:22

Rally, rally, rally, rally to me, oh Buffaloes, rally, boys, rally, ooh, to me.

Godfrey Talbot19:32

Yeah.

Godfrey Talbot19:34

Those buffaloes Excuse me, have you seen any buffaloes about here? No, I'm a teetotaler.

Godfrey Talbot19:40

Ready boys, buffaloes to buffaloes to me, let's ready.

Godfrey Talbot19:46

Later death I'm very sorry, but I'm afraid I've lost my scoop of trout.

Godfrey Talbot19:50

Yeah.

Presenter19:51

I'm kidding. I have a gut mark.

Presenter19:53

And now we come to your last trickle, we'll take it.

Presenter19:55

Well, this is one that is to be taken seriously. Very lovely record, very well known. Closing passes with Rack Maninoff's second piano concerto, played by Eileen Joyce. Glorious music played by a great artist. And I would be there, Groy, that I'd been playing this particular one long after I found that I couldn't bear the sound of the other seven.

Presenter21:11

The finale of Rachmaninoff's second piano concerto with Eileen Joyce, Sir Lewis.

Presenter21:16

Well, now that we like every north away, you're allowed to take one luxury to the desert island with you.

Presenter21:21

One.

Presenter21:22

Paper and something to write with, an unlimited supply. And what would you write? Oh, I'd write everything and anything. Words, drawings, not diary, calendar, books, all sorts of things. Writing materials I think would save my standard days.

Presenter21:36

All right, and you're allowed one book apart from the Bible and the works of Shakespeare in any book you write yourself. Oh, you like? Well, Macaulay's essays, a lot of them. It's fashionable to sneer at them, historically inaccurate and all that, but they do bear some relation to truth. And I love Macaulay's picturesque, great ruling phrases. Old-fashioned if you like, but I'm old-fashioned.

Presenter21:57

Both my sons regard me, and they certainly will after this program, as the arch type of an early Victorian twelve.

Presenter22:04

Well, thank you, Godfrey Thorbert, for letting you bear your choice of desert island here. Thank you for indulging my very odd taste and forgot to meet a government. Goodbye, everyone. Goodbye.