Peter Blake

Speaker 10:00

Hello, I'm Kirstie Young, and this is a download from the Desert Island Discs archive. This edition may be slightly different from what was actually broadcast, but it is the only version we have. It comes from the British Library's radio collection.

Speaker 10:15

The recording didn't contain the guests' eight music choices, so we've rebuilt the original show by using discs from the B B C Gramophone library. For Wright's reasons we've had to shorten the music.

Speaker 10:26

Full details can be found on the Castaways page on the Desert Island Disc's website.

Speaker 10:31

The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen seventy nine.

Speaker 10:35

And the presenter was Roy Plumley.

Presenter0:54

This week our castaway is the artist Peter Blake.

Presenter0:58

Of course, painting is a lonely business, Peter, so you're used to solitude, aren't you? Yes, I am. Yes. I'm I'm in the studio by myself lots of times, so I'm quite used to being alone.

Presenter1:09

How important to you is music? Quite important. I play records when I'm working usually and there's lots of music in the house. I mean, w I have a certain taste and my wife has a another taste and the children other.

Speaker 11:14

Same?

Presenter1:22

play other things. So there's music all the time. What's the first record you've chosen to take with you to the island? Sergeant Pepper by the Beatles. Now that's an important record in your life because you designed the cover, didn't you?

Presenter1:34

Yes, I did. It it it isn't why I chose it, in fact. I mean

Presenter1:38

The reason I've chosen that one really is it was a very important period in my life. To hear it every morning would be very exciting anyway, as a kind of overture to the day. But it is one of the best records from that time. Now, going back to the cover, to remind listeners who haven't seen it or who don't remember it, flowers in the foreground spelling out the word Beatles, and the Beatles themselves standing behind a drum in rather garish uniforms, and at the back, hundreds and hundreds of faces of well-known people. This was what, a collage?

Presenter2:12

No, it was actually built and most people think it was a collage, but we actually constructed the whole thing in in a photographer's studio. So all those cut outs are life size heads and the flowers are real and the Beatles stand on a little stage where they came and

Peter Blake2:23

The beat will stay.

Presenter2:27

and got dressed in their Sergeant Pepper costumes and and then posed for the photograph. That must have been quite a production because there are hundreds of heads there. It was a a big difficult job. I I did it with my wife.

Speaker 12:33

And there

Presenter2:37

Jan Harworth and she she did most of the physical work in fact. I mean she painted all the heads and and did a lot of it. It was fun. Well let's listen to the music that supported your cover.

Peter Blake2:53

Uh

Peter Blake2:56

We need to style

Peter Blake2:58

Getting the rays of smile

Peter Blake3:01

So may I introduce to you?

Peter Blake3:04

Your number always in the sky

Presenter3:17

Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club band.

Presenter3:20

Now, Peter, you're a a Kentish man, or is it a man of Kent, which I'm never quite sure. I come from Dartford. I should know, but I'm never quite sure which I am. Was there a background to the arts in your family?

Presenter3:31

Not really. Um my father drew trains for me and that kind of thing. He drew rather well, in fact, and long after he died we found a little drawing book that he'd done when he was at at the sort of National School in Dartford as a as a child, and they were very good, but of course he didn't ever have the chance to go to art school.

Presenter3:49

What were you going to be? What did you want to be as a youngster? I don't know. I didn't

Presenter3:55

I didn't ever want to be anything else, but I also didn't want to particularly want to be a painter. It w it was chance, really. I was evacuated in the war, like most children, and when I took the examination for grammar school, I failed it. So I came back to Dartford after the war and went to a rather hard secondary school. And then, after a year there, had the chance to take the examination for a technical school, which included the chance to go to art school. So it really was chance that I went. How did you visualise your career as an artist? Did you want to be a a portrait painter or a commercial artist or what? I didn't know. When I first went to art school, I was very young. I was only fourteen. I went to a junior art department. I mean, I actually started art school in short trousers, which is odd to think of now. Most of my contemporaries wanted to be, I mean, the big th thing to be was a cartoonist at that point. And oddly enough, most of them went into animation. I didn't know. I was advised to be a commercial artist because I wouldn't ever make money as a painter. I wouldn't make a living. But I think it's just something you evolve, really. In fact, the question was put aside for some time because you had to go into the REF to do your national service. Did they do anything intelligent, like putting you into camouflage or designing the scenery in the unit theatre or anything like that? No, not at that point. The the reassuring thing about that was that I had already got into the Royal College, so I went into the Air Force knowing that it was just two years to kill in a way, that when I came out I'd be going to the Royal College and it was neither awful or a nice experience. It was just you know what was nice, I met lots of people that I certainly wouldn't have met otherwise. But you didn't do anything in particular while you were in the middle of the day. No, I think I did murals for a Sergeant's Mess dance once or something. I was a

Speaker 15:13

Yeah.

Speaker 15:28

But it's

Speaker 15:38

I think I

Presenter5:44

I mean again it was completely arbitrary because I chose the job I wanted to do um for two reasons. One was that the training was relatively close to home and the other was that my mother did it and it that was to be a teleprinter operator. So that's what I did and once I was that I could sit in the office and it was very quiet and I drew quite a lot and tucked the drawing under a a a folder if if an officer came in or something.

Speaker 15:57

So

Presenter6:09

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

Presenter6:12

Well the second record is by the Everley brothers and they're singing a song called Lucille which is written by Little Richard and this again sets up a train of thoughts and memories and if I can play this I can then think about other great rock and roll singers like Chuck Berry and Jerry Lee Lewis and I can go through all their songs in my mind and this would just trigger off the whole thing.

Peter Blake6:36

Perceived.

Peter Blake6:38

Yeah.

Peter Blake6:44

I'm sorry.

Peter Blake6:46

You don't do your bad as we

Peter Blake6:53

Yeah, but I love you still.

Presenter7:07

The Everley Brothers, Lucille.

Presenter7:10

What date was that?

Presenter7:12

I think 1960. Oh, by that time you'd left the Royal College, hadn't you? By that time I'd left the college. In fact, the first record I bought by the Everley Brothers, I think I still was at the college, which would have been in 1956. You did rather well at the college. You got a first class diploma. And what happened next? I got a scholarship for a year to study popular art in Europe. I leave a Hulme scholarship. You could go where you liked? I could go wherever I wanted. I had to write a report when I got back. But of course, I mean, until then, all the scholarships had been very, very sort of specialised and academic. I mean, I I seem to remember the year I I tried for it. It was the first year they'd given it to painters. But when they published the list of scholarships, I mean very, very sort of specialised things. And to study popular art as opposed to pop art meant that what I did was went to wrestling matches and folk museums and picked up chip packets and cigarette packets and things like that. Where did you go? I went to Amsterdam first, where I lived for about six weeks, and then down through Belgium, where I was extremely lonely, I remember in Belgium. And then to Paris, where I lived for about another six weeks, then came home for Christmas, then back to Paris, then down to the south of France, into Italy, and did the sort of grand tour, really, in Italy, um, along the coast to Spain and home from Spain. How long did you make the money last? It lasted a year. Did it? It was five hundred pounds and it it it lasted a year.

Speaker 18:36

Yeah.

Speaker 18:37

Yeah.

Presenter8:40

Were you painting and and selling your work as you went? Did you spit it out that way? No, I drew a lot and I'd painted a few pictures, but that wasn't the main point of it. It was much more research. Now what did you come back from your ground tour to? You had already exhibited at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition before you were in the middle of the year. Yes, I had. In in fifty four and in fifty five I'd exhibited. And also an exhibition called The Observer.

Speaker 18:57

Yes I had it.

Speaker 19:01

Uh

Presenter9:05

Portraits of Children in nineteen fifty five, I think.

Presenter9:09

But when I came back I

Presenter9:11

My diploma composition had been a picture at the Royal College, had been a picture which is now in the Tate called On the Balcony, which I'd worked on for three months. When I came back from the scholarship I lived back with my parents and finished that. And I didn't want to teach for some reason, so what I did was I kept house while my mother and father went out to work, and for this stayed at home and painted. And obviously this wasn't satisfactory for very long, so I I slowly drifted into teaching. Tell me about that first important painting on the balcony. What was it? What style was it?

Presenter9:46

Well, it was a set subject. It was it was the diploma composition which you had to do at the end of your second year at the Royal College and the choices were, I think, a scene from the story of Lot or or on the balcony. And I suppose it was it was really the first statement I made in in a movement which became pop art. So it was the first really of of my pop art pictures. Right. Your third record.

Presenter10:11

The third record is Max Miller, um tremendous favourite of mine. When I was at the Royal College I went to the music hall a lot and saw all the greats, Max Miller and Max Wall and Frank Randall and Norman Evans and they the music hall was r really literally dying at that point. And what they did with with poor old Max is that he closed the halls. I mean when they knew they were going to close, he played the last week, often to about twelve people. But at his best he was incredible. And this this excerpt is from playing at the Metropolitan Theatre and it's a bit where he's um he's gone off stage at the end of the first act and returned to do his own thing.

Peter Blake10:50

You see, it doesn't take a lot to bring me back.

Peter Blake10:55

No, keep bobbing in and out they don't get any more money.

Peter Blake11:01

You tie yourself out.

Peter Blake11:04

He's a boy, isn't he?

Peter Blake11:06

Hope so.

Peter Blake11:09

I never fall in love with the first girl that I meet. I like to find out first if she lives down my street. I play the way it's game, on that you may depend, to find the girl I'm looking for, I'll get her in the end. I don't like a girl too short, I don't like a girl too tall. As long as she's a sport, for me she's bound to fall. I don't like a girl with brains. I much prefer the dance. Who'll stop me and buy one? She'd like to try one and I'll try anything one. Here!

Presenter11:50

Max Miller recorded at the Metropolitan Music Hall Edgeware Road on November 30, 1957.

Presenter11:59

Now you were teaching, where?

Presenter12:01

It started very slowly. I my first job was at the art school I'd gone to as a student, which was Gravesend. Um and I assisted somebody for half a day and eventually it led up to three days. I taught St Martin's on Monday, Harrow on Tuesday, and Walthamstone on Wednesday. I suppose the next step was to assemble enough work for a one-man show. Was that a logical thing to do? I don't think it was ever that conscious. I was working all the time and

Speaker 112:25

Uh

Presenter12:29

putting pictures together, but it it was never offered really. You know, it wasn't no, it wasn't quite like that. Presumably we had to get onto the books of a dealer.

Presenter12:37

Or a gallery owner who would do the business side for you. At that point, I wasn't with a gallery, no. Um, what I did.

Presenter12:45

When I left Gravesend School of Art I tried to keep

Presenter12:48

The three elements go in that I painted pictures which hopefully I would sell and I I taught a bit and I also did work which I mean to call it graphic design is much too grand. It was pure sort of commercial art. And I kept these three three things going in the the hope that if two failed the other third would would um keep me going. You did quite a lot of work with the Sunday Times one way or another. Yes, that was all a bit later. I did about five covers for them. I featured in the very first one. They they they um had a series of articles on people who were sort of currently in vogue at that time, a footballer and an artist and you know various people. I was the artist. And then I did some covers for them. And one very nice thing I did for them was that they had this idea of commissioning

Presenter13:36

an artist, to go wherever he wanted in the world, and it would be a set fee for doing it.

Presenter13:42

I think it was three hundred pounds. And I chose to go to Hollywood, in fact. My my wife is from Hollywood, and we'd only been married a few months, and it was nice that she went back, and it was a place I wanted to see very much. So we went there, and I I did a portfolio of drawings, and and that was published.

Presenter13:59

We talked about um dealers. Obviously you you hooked up with one sooner or later. How does the artist dealer relationship work? Um the way it works is that I'm paid a certain amount each month and eventually I have to sort of balance the books with paintings to that value.

Presenter14:15

That simply is how it works. Which he will put on display in his gallery. This happens in various ways. Um either it will be they'll be shown as a as an exhibition or certain pictures might be sold between exhibitions in which case they might not be available to show and one's producing them I mean I hope not purely as a product but they might not be shown. When did you give your first one man exhibition?

Presenter14:39

In nineteen sixty, I think. No, nineteen fifty eight. It wasn't quite a one man. It was at the ICA and it was a one man with four other people. So we each had a one man at the ICA altogether. Your share of a five man. My share of five, yeah, a space on my own with four others.

Presenter14:56

Record number four. What's that?

Presenter14:58

Well record number four is a is a love song. It's by Doctor Hook and the Medicine Show, who are actually a very hard rock and roll band, but they also do some of the most beautiful love songs being sung at the moment.

Presenter15:10

And I'm playing this because...

Presenter15:13

Or simply, I love my wife and children very much, and it's played in a way for me to be reminded of them, but also in a way it's rather like sending a message in a bottle, as I hope she'll either find the bottle or or hear the record, and um realise I love her very much.

Peter Blake15:35

When nobody's had enough of me and I'm laying

Peter Blake15:42

Flat out on the floor

Peter Blake15:46

When you think I've loved you all I can, I'm gonna love you a little bit more.

Peter Blake15:57

Come on.

Presenter15:59

A Little Bit More by Doctor Hook and The Medicine Show.

Presenter16:03

Now, Peter, you had become a pop artist. How to describe that I don't know, except to say that you had become fascinated by and immersed in the the ephemera of life fairground trinkets, picture postcards, brightly coloured advertisements, pop music.

Presenter16:18

Can you elaborate further on that?

Presenter16:21

Yes, I can. It it's quite difficult to explain the phrase. No one ever really has. I mean, its origins are are slightly lost now. Um it it's thought that Lawrence Alloway coined the phrase to describe a certain kind of work. But what I can do is explain how my version of it came about. There were two or three things that happened all at once. In a way, I started a certain branch of it at the same time Richard Hamilton was starting another branch which was slightly more intellectual than mine, and in America were the first sort of rumblings of it at the same time.

Presenter16:55

But what my

Presenter16:57

part of it was about, really, was that

Presenter17:01

I'm working class and my heritage until art school had been very working class and I went to wrestling with my you know my mother and my aunt and I went to jazz clubs a lot, I went to fairgrounds and and you suddenly realize what your sort of heritage is and that's what happened that I started to paint about it. It it's a very easily understood art and it got some of the old guard uptight. You you aggregated matters at a time when you were a brand new ARA and for the first time it was decided that certain young artists could be commissioned to send contributions to the summer exhibition. I mean be commissioned and not just send stuff on spec. And you were given the job of picking out which young artist.

Speaker 117:39

Yeah.

Presenter17:44

Well the st the story of that really is that as a new ARA I was on the council of the Royal Academy that year. So really I put forward the suggestion and as part of the council I helped to pass it and then I was offered the job by the council which I was a member of to do it. It did upset a lot of people and and and looking back I can quite see why. I mean in a way the Academy ought to go on at its own pace and in a way I mean I was new and I think it was a good idea. I mean the idea actually was that I hung a whole room by invitation and this entailed hanging a wall of the Brotherhood of Ruralists of which I'm a member and we were quite sort of newly formed then and and friends and other artists whose work I respected very much. So what it really meant was that people like

Presenter18:33

Hockney and and Kitty and John Hoyland were showing at the Academy and were very unlikely to do otherwise. So if someone came to the summer exhibition that year they could see some art that wouldn't normally be there. But some of it by

Presenter18:47

R A standards was pretty wild. Not too wild. I mean, I I suppose no, there I mean, there is a certain amount of abstract art shown there anyway. No, I think it was the principal of the thing that people got upset about. That one was doing something different.

Presenter19:02

Record number five. This is a record I play a lot. It's called Pony Express by Danny and the Juniors and I think it's one of those sort of classic rock and roll records and the reason I'm playing it is that I I like to dance to it. When I'm on my own in my studio I sometimes sort of dance around to it and I'd have great fun on the island dancing in the sand to to Pony Express.

Peter Blake19:29

Put on your dress

Peter Blake19:32

Holy Express Sweep the sawdust pump to the floor Spend the spurs until they glide the door Saddle up

Peter Blake19:41

By the cup.

Peter Blake19:42

For the Pony Express, yes, the Pony Express Diddy up, giddy up, giddy up, giddy high ho, silver

Peter Blake19:50

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

Presenter19:57

Pony Express by Danny and the Juniors.

Presenter20:01

You're very fond of of colours, aren't you? You you like to stick things together and make patterns and

Presenter20:08

Exciting designs.

Presenter20:10

Yes, I do. There are some items in in in your exhibition. I'm I'm thinking one in particular, which was an assembly of old picture postcards stuck into a frame. Now

Presenter20:20

Is this art? is the question that

Presenter20:23

Has been asked.

Presenter20:30

I think a definition of what is art is that if if an artist makes it, it's art. But then one has to qualify who is an artist. It's almost impossible to say to answer that really, but um

Presenter20:44

I mean i if if I can explain it a little bit. I I do do a lot of work which relates to postcards. Um some of the versions I've done I mean I've painted paintings in in paint on board that that assimilate um postcards, but they might be four feet high and I'll drill holes in them which are the drawing pin holes and I I'll make a sort of giant postcard. And then other things I've done, I use actual postcards.

Presenter21:12

I've painted from postcards. I've done a big um print which is called Studio Tackboard, which is I made up a tackboard which was then printed commercially, PhotoLitho. Um so I I work in in the medium a lot. Um that particular picture you mentioned is a difficult one because it's what it actually is is a real notice board with a series of of um postcards pinned to it. And I think the point of it is that it's called Couples and they're all postcards I collected. In fact, in nineteen fifty six when I was on the the scholarship, um I suppose it's just the idea of taking a real notice board and and pinning them down. And what happens I mean a lot of people have said, well, you know, I could have thought of that and the only answer to that is well you didn't and it's easy to do something after the event. Did you sell it? No, I kept it. It's never been for sale. It's one I liked and I've always kept it. Tell me about the Brotherhood of Ruralists. You mentioned them briefly. It i i is it a what a a commune of artists or what is it? No, we all live separately.

Speaker 122:16

Yeah.

Presenter22:18

The definition of a ruralist is someone who's from the city but moves to the country. So what we're not, in a way, is self-sufficiency people particularly, although we do grow a lot of our own vegetables and things like that. But that's beside the point, really. Um it's just a group of people who are s in sympathy with each other. It's something that exists outside the sort of mainstream of the art world. It's rather nice to to have a family of other artists that you can show your work to and that you know will perhaps like what you do and you like what they do. It's very comforting.

Presenter22:56

We're not making great claims. I mean, it's existed for five years now, and we have exhibitions as the Royalists, quite separate from our exhibitions as individuals.

Presenter23:06

And we one of our aims is to sort of carry on

Presenter23:10

certain traditions which I think are are dying quite fast. I mean it might help to just list a few of the people we like, that we're very much in sympathy with John Betcherman for instance and Lord David Cecil and we like Stanley Spencer very much, Cecil Beaton's photographs. I mean it's a it's a mood that we're con Thomas Hardy, Elgar.

Presenter23:33

I mean, one way I could have chosen my records was to choose them as a ruralist, but I chose not to. I chose them as an individual. Do you work towards a common style in in in painting, in in in draftsmanship? No, the common sympathy existed already. Um Yeah, we all worked in a certain way. We're all rather figurative. You know, my wife, um, Jan is a sculptor, so she always works as a sculptor. And there have to be links with the Pre Raphaelites. I think that we obviously admire them tremendously. And and w we played a game once of which Pre Raphaelite were we, and I decided I was, um I was Millet. So of course Jan has to be Walner a as the as the sculptor.

Presenter24:10

Right. We got to record number six, Peter.

Presenter24:14

Record number six is another one to to remind me of of my family in a way. My daughter's name is Daisy, and this is a song called Whoops a Daisy by a friend of mine called Humphrey Ocean, and it's it's a pretty little song that I like very much.

Peter Blake24:29

When we met my heart fell off my mind went blank.

Peter Blake24:33

I've only got you to thank.

Peter Blake24:38

To be quite frank, my ego shrank And started to walk the plank And just before I sank I said

Peter Blake24:46

I wish I could sing as sweet as Perry, Make you laugh like Tom and Jerry, Love you till you're crazy, Swing you like a baisy, Rock and roll you like Chuckberry, Look as very good as Carrie, But I can't cause I'm shy and lazy And a lazy cake would

Presenter25:03

Humphrey Ocean whoops a daisy.

Presenter25:06

Now a painter has to have manual dexterity, obviously. He has to be able to do a little simple carpentry. Do you think you could qualify as a do it yourself man on a desert island?

Presenter25:17

I think I could. Um my family will laugh that I say yes, because again it's hypothetical in a way. I in the house I never do anything because it's it's easier that I don't. But I do quite enjoy um woodwork. I I think I'd get along quite well. Yes. Well you've talked of an interest in growing your own vegetables so you could cultivate.

Speaker 125:32

Yeah.

Presenter25:37

Would you try to escape?

Presenter25:39

Yes, I would. I'm sure I would. I I I like my life and my family too much to to stay willingly. Right. Another record. Well the next one is is is an interesting story because as as I was about to board the the ship that was to take me on the voyage which then sank and put me on the desert island, um my friend Ian Jury was on the dock to say goodbye to me and he slipped an advanced copy of his new long plane record in into my bag and when I got to the island I only found it then. I hadn't looked in the bag until then so I'll play a track from that.

Peter Blake26:17

Here I stay, with a donut for a brain, On my life, I must see you again.

Peter Blake26:25

I should think that's my new favourite way.

Peter Blake26:31

Is it easy or is it a dungeon?

Peter Blake26:36

To leave it out or turn it out.

Peter Blake26:40

What I did.

Peter Blake26:42

Don't ask me.

Peter Blake26:45

Don't ask me.

Presenter26:50

Don't ask me, Ian Dury and the Blockheads. That would also remind me of my other daughter, Liberty, who's a great Ian Dury fan, as I am. Right.

Presenter27:00

Where's your base, Peter? You you're no longer in London.

Presenter27:03

No, I I live in um it's actually called Avon now, but I still call it Somerset'cause I don't like Avon very much. So I live in Somerset. Right. And I believe you have the

Speaker 127:08

Yeah.

Peter Blake27:08

What?

Speaker 127:08

Um

Presenter27:14

Yes, I do. We we in in the village where I live we um we bought an old station on the Somerset and Dorset Joint Railway and and we live in that, yes. And your studio's part of the railway station? No, my studio is a is a Wesleyan chapel, which we bought later on. Yes. And and apart from that my wife runs her own school, the Looking Glass School, of twelve children in a granary, which we bought later still. And of course she does her sculpting. You've been doing some wood engraving lately? Yes, I think. I actually started them four years ago.

Speaker 127:46

Yes, it's a very good question.

Presenter27:50

And it yes, it is a new departure, and it's sort of tied up.

Presenter27:54

With

Presenter27:55

being a ruralist in a way that there isn't a medium that

Presenter27:59

in a way my contemporaries were using very much. You know, I mean it it's it's a dying medium and and I did it hoping that it would keep it going. Now you you said that um going back to the ruralist you you you don't group together much of the time, but you do meet and and and live together a certain time of the year. We meet every solstice. We have some kind of um feast or meeting or or discussion um where we all meet in alternately in in our various houses. In fact Jan and I live in Somerset.

Presenter28:29

and David Inshaw,

Presenter28:31

and Graham Arnold.

Presenter28:33

and Ann Arnold live in Devises and Graeme Ovenden and Anne Ovendon live in, um, Cornwall. Oh, so so it's a West Country group? It's a west country group. And each year we we go on holiday to Cornwall and have a sketching holiday in October.

Presenter28:48

Now we come to your last record. What is that? It would be very nice to hear a woman's voice on the island, and it would also be very nice to have an erotic record. So I've chosen a beautiful record. It it's the Molly Bloom Soliloquy from Ulysses read by Siobhan McKenna. And if we could have the bit running up to the end.

Speaker 229:10

Iron and the wine shops half open at night in the castanets and the night we missed the boat at Aliciras. The watchman going about serene with his lamp.

Speaker 229:19

And oh, that awful deep down torrent. Oh, and the sea, the sea crimson sometimes like fire, and the glorious sunsets, and the fig trees in the Alameda gardens, yes. And all the queer little streets and pink and blue and yellow houses and the rose gardens and the jessamine and geraniums and cactuses and Gibraltar as a girl where I was a flower of the mountain, yes. When I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used, or shall I wear a red, yes, and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought, well, as well him as another, and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again, yes. And then he asked me, would I, yes, to say, yes, my mountain flower. And first I put my arms around him, yes, and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume, yes, and his heart was going like mad. And yes, I said, yes, I will, yes.

Presenter30:09

The closing passage of Molly Bloom's Soliloquy from James Joyce's Ulysses, read by Siobhan McKenna.

Presenter30:17

Could I just say at at this point that I start each day on my island with Sergeant Pepper as a sort of overture to the day, and it would be very nice to to end the day going to sleep to the sound of Siobhan McKenna. Right.

Presenter30:30

If you could only take one of the eight discs you've chosen, which would it be? I think I would take the last one. I think I would take the Ulysses. It it also, in fact, would be my book. Your one book? It would be my one book. There are two books that I was torn between. One was The Great Gatsby by Scott Fitzgerald. And although it's a perfect little book, I think I would become bored with reading it quite quickly. And Ulysses, I've attempted to read about four times and got three quarters of the way through. Usually on holiday, and the holiday comes to an end, and I never finish it. So I'd have plenty of time to read it and break it down and understand it. Right.

Presenter31:09

And you're allowed one luxury to take to the island? Well, I thought I would take David Hockney as my luxury. And before that's misconstrued, the reason I'd like to take him is he's the artist that stylistically I'm closest to, and we could have a very nice time just talking about art, and he'd be very good company. But I believe I'm not allowed to take a person. Well, then what I would like to take

Speaker 131:31

Now I

Speaker 131:32

Yeah, but a rule.

Presenter31:35

Would be artist materials. If that could perhaps include a few bags of cement and some to I mean, this is cheating a bit. It sounds like it, go on. Well, if I could take some bags of cement and a few basic tools like shovels and trowels, and I would spend most of my time building a wonderful folly. There'd be plenty of sand and water and coral reefs and wood to build from. And I promise I wouldn't live in it, but I'd build the most wonderful folly on my arm. A folly as an objet that we must admit.

Speaker 132:02

A fall

Presenter32:06

You can have that.

Presenter32:07

And thank you, Peter Blake, for letting us hear your Desert Island Discs. Thank you for inviting me. It's been a great pleasure. Goodbye, everyone.

Speaker 132:22

You've been listening to a download from the Desert Island Discs archive.

Speaker 132:26

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