Ted Allbeury

Speaker 10:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty 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's the only version we have. It comes from the British Library's radio collection. It was archived without the music, so although the Castaways choices are introduced, they're not part of this recording. Full details can be found on the Castaways page on the Desert Island Discs website.

Speaker 10:26

The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen seventy nine.

Speaker 10:30

And the presenter was Roy Plumley.

Presenter0:33

Our Castaway this week is the writer of Spy Stories, Ted Albury.

Presenter0:37

Now, Ted, you write spy books. You've also been in the intelligence business yourself.

Ted Allbeury0:42

Yes, I was in the intelligence corps.

Presenter0:43

During the war. We'll talk about that later. Musical side first. Have you any musical prowess? Do you play an instrument?

Ted Allbeury0:51

Uh I used to play the cello very badly, and play it worse now. I play the piano very badly, sort of uh

Ted Allbeury0:57

Very low grade, Pat Swaller, left hand to keep you from falling off the piano stool.

Presenter1:02

Have you ever played either instrument in public?

Ted Allbeury1:04

No, not knowingly anyway. They may have had the French windows open, but not not beyond that. No. And what's the first disc you've chosen? The first disc I've chosen is uh by Harry Roy, marvellous man, great romantic, despite the kind of music he played. And it's Twelfth Street Rag. I hope everybody notices the beautiful piano bit in the middle, which was the tiger ragamuffins Ivor Morton and Dave Kaye, who once pushed me aside at the stage door of the Hippodrome and made the whole of my next three months glamorous.

Presenter1:39

Twelfth Street Rag by Haddy Roy and his band, recorded in nineteen thirty three.

Ted Allbeury1:42

In

Presenter1:44

What part of the country do you come from, Ter?

Ted Allbeury1:46

Born in Stockport, which is Cheshire, of course, nothing to do with Manchester whatsoever, as my mother would point out,

Ted Allbeury1:53

Brought up in Birmingham. I think I went to Birmingham when I was about two. You were brought up by your grandparents? By both lots of people. My father died when I was very young and my mother was dependent upon my grandparents, so uh I sort of lived at both places, both at my mother's house and my grandparents' house, according to the nearness to the school I was going to at the time. What did you want to be as a boy?

Ted Allbeury2:14

Left alone, I think, is the only thing I can think of. I had no ambitions. I I

Presenter2:17

But

Ted Allbeury2:19

If anything, I wanted to be a band leader.

Presenter2:21

What was your first job?

Ted Allbeury2:22

My first job was was working in a foundry. I worked in the works for two days a week and because I'd been to a grammar school and spoke with not too edgy a Birmingham accent and was clean behind the ears, I worked the other days in the drawing office doing uh blueprints and that sort of thing, slaving around for draftsmen. Did you read a lot?

Ted Allbeury2:43

Yes, always read a lot.

Ted Allbeury2:45

What?

Ted Allbeury2:47

Oh, uh let's say The Rover, The Wizard, Gem, Magnet, Hot Spur. And then I made a very big leap actually and I can remember going along to Mrs Trappitt's sweetie shop with a friend of mine and between us we bought four loose cigarettes, went into Brookvale Park to smoke these and generally loll about and the piece of paper that Mar Trappitt had wrapped these in was in fact two pages from The New Statesman and it sounds like uh the guy landing on the moon and making a big step. It is a big step I'm sure from The Rover to The New Statesman but that's the step I made and that started me reading a much wider variety of books. You became interested in languages.

Presenter3:28

Uh

Ted Allbeury3:29

Yes, or always was, and uh I found I could learn languages quite easily. I taught myself French and German.

Ted Allbeury3:37

And a bit of Dutch from Hugo's Teach Yourself books. Did you go abroad?

Ted Allbeury3:42

Uh yes, I went to uh in those days you had marvellous things which I think were called students' tickets and for something like four pounds you could go anywhere on the railway from London as far north as Malmour, as far east as Warsaw and as far south as Rome, I think. So I quickly learned all the railway stations of Europe. I couldn't bear to to not go on to one more town, so I'd hop off at a station, have a sandwich and get back on the next train and so on, to get the most from my ticket. It was very easy to travel in those days.

Presenter4:20

Well, that takes care of you up till the outbreak of war. Let's have your second record.

Ted Allbeury4:24

The second reckon I've I've chosen is Love is the Sweetest Thing. Not only do I like this very, very much indeed, but my aunt and my mother were very fond of this and I was always very pleased that they had moved onto something more modern because they used to swoon around about Harry Welchman and the desert song and I felt they'd made a a definite big step forward onto getting to Love is the Sweetest Thing.

Presenter4:50

Ray Noble and his orchestra with Al Boley, Love is the sweetest thing. Now, war broke out. You had got ambitions to be a a fighter pilot, hadn't you?

Ted Allbeury4:59

Yes, just before the war they said the RAF started a thing called short service commissions for fighter pilots and that's what I wanted to be, to escape from the drawing offices which I didn't like. And I went through all the palava. An uncle of mine told me about this and arranged for me to speak to various people who would tell me about what the life was like. Sounded great to me. Went through the exams, medical and educational and so on and so forth. But then unfortunately for us all the war started and they introduced a thing called reserved occupations and that meant that was the end of that. You couldn't leave your reserved occupation without the permission of the Ministry of Labour.

Ted Allbeury5:37

And unless they could get a replacement, your employers weren't going to let you go, so mine wouldn't let me go, and that put the tin hat on that. So what happened?

Ted Allbeury5:46

Well, I very much wanted to be in it one way or another, so I went along to the recruiting office in Birmingham in James Watt Street and saw a very sweet, Evelyn warish type colonel there, who said, Oh, well, don't worry about that. How about going in the army? I think he hadn't had all that many volunteers up till then, and he was pleased to see one roaming into the premises. And I said, Well, we've got this problem of the reserved occupation. He said, Oh, don't worry about that. Let's just put down labourer. And he said, I tell you what, I'll do it now. I'll give you a a shilling day's pay.

Ted Allbeury6:19

And a shilling's attestation money, and he said, Believe me, when the army has given you two shillings, the good lord himself couldn't get you out. So that's what we did, but but unfortunately the Ministry of Labour wanted to make an example of somebody or other and and I was the only one to hand about not leaving reserved occupations without permission. So proceedings were brought uh uh against me, uh which meant that I couldn't have a job, uh you couldn't have the dole even and the army didn't want to know you until the dust had settled.

Ted Allbeury6:49

And I read in Erdington Library one day in the Times when the personal bits were on the front page.

Ted Allbeury6:57

Something to the effect of uh linguists required for special work in army, no promotion beyond Lance Corporal, box number, and I wrote off to that and two days, three days later I got a reply which said go up for an interview and I had a couple of interviews and was in and uh was then a a member of the intelligence corps.

Presenter7:18

Now obviously they tested your language and so on. What other sort of aptitude tests did you take for intelligence?

Ted Allbeury7:25

Mm. Yeah.

Ted Allbeury7:26

Oh, you took all of the normal psychiatric things where they flash pictures up on screens and you have a picture of a naked lady on a bed and a naked man and you have to write down immediately what you think it is and you've got all these healthy young men busy writing down, you know, this is a nurse attending the wounded and things like that. As you go through the ramifications of things like the intelligence score, you you get to know what what the desired answers are and you give them to them.

Speaker 17:44

Yeah.

Ted Allbeury7:54

Oh, w would you enjoy sleeping all night in a a wet ditch in only your uniform, and you swear that there's nothing other than that that you've ever wanted to do in your life?

Presenter8:05

Then did you do the the country house bit where they taught you to put silencers on guns and talk

Ted Allbeury8:10

Ah yes, you obviously know about this because one of the great features of the of the intelligence departments wa was their their instinct for country houses. The first part of my training was done at a theological college in Winchester, which I subsequently tried to find and couldn't find. But I'm sure it does exist. It does exist, yes. You do three months' infantry training first because they are very, very keen that you should know how to salute and stand to attention and

Presenter8:28

It does exist.

Ted Allbeury8:39

not fall over when looked at by superior officers and so on. Then it's done in a module system so that uh depending upon what you're like and how far you get, you never quite know whether you ever finished the course because people disappear and I guess people who are perhaps not going to be physically very active go off to do interrogation, camp work and things like that.

Ted Allbeury9:01

And I then went to uh a big hotel in uh Matlock then, which was given over to the next part of our intelligence training.

Ted Allbeury9:09

Then you do s specialist things like the small arms course, um bit of jungle warfare stuff, a bit of self-defence, that sort of thing. Commando type stuff as it was in those days.

Presenter9:17

Command.

Presenter9:19

When you were trained, were you doing intelligence or or counterintelligence work?

Ted Allbeury9:24

Well, you're trained on both. But my first job was port security at a a place in Scotland in Fife called Methel, which was the convoy collecting point for most merchant convoys at that time. But after that, I was almost entirely employed on counterintelligence work. Which areas did you serve in? In Africa, East Africa, North Africa, Italy, and Germany. And a spell in Ethiopia, I see. Yes, I did. I was military liaison officer to the Emperor of Ethiopia, and I ought not to laugh when I say it, I realise that.

Presenter9:51

But yeah.

Presenter9:59

And of course there was plenty of work in post-war Germany. You did stay in uniform.

Ted Allbeury10:02

Yes, I stayed till 1940. We saw it.

Presenter10:04

Seven.

Presenter10:05

And despite the War Office ruling, you did, in fact, rise above Lance Corporal. Yes, I did.

Ted Allbeury10:11

did rise above level.

Presenter10:11

Let's go.

Ted Allbeury10:12

Cool, yes.

Presenter10:12

Half kernel. Half kernel. Very good.

Ted Allbeury10:16

Right. Disc number three. What's that? Disc number three is French. It's sung by Jean Sablon, and it's La Chanson d'Erue. I haven't heard it for a long while. I'd love it on a desert island.

Presenter10:31

Jean Sablan, The Song of the Street

Presenter10:35

Now you stayed in after the war. Did you sicken of the work? I mean, it it was in

Ted Allbeury10:40

Interesting, but

Ted Allbeury10:41

Yes, it was jolly interesting, and it sounds a bit pious or something or other if you say you did get sick of it. Obviously, in the beginning, it's jolly interesting reading other people's letters and dashing into people's houses at two o'clock in the morning.

Ted Allbeury10:54

But um it rather changed when we got to Germany. Doing it in Italy, it was all rather sporting and word of honor and uh that sort of jazz. Everybody was rather nice about it and and they were sort of vaguely becoming on our side anyway, and Italians are of that sort of spirit.

Ted Allbeury11:10

So that was quite enjoyable, a touch of the desert song. But when you got to Germany it was really rather more real there. It was all being done in earnest.

Presenter11:20

Yes.

Ted Allbeury11:20

One did go in at two o'clock in the morning because people's spirits were low, so that you could interrogate. One of the things that always used to haunt me was sitting around before going out on a raid to arrest people.

Ted Allbeury11:31

That you knew they were wasting their time. They were probably arguing the toss with their wives or something, or reading some trashy book. And you felt it it ought to be possible to say, Look, fella, you know, you only got three hours left before you go in the bag. Don't waste it. You know, be nice to the old woman or do something that's enjoyable. And you knew they were wasting their time. Another record.

Ted Allbeury11:54

This is one that I hadn't heard until fairly recently. I think it's absolutely beautiful. It's called I Breathe on Windows. It's from a show I think it's called Over She Goes.

Presenter12:09

Adele Dixon singing I Breathe on Windows as she did in the pre war show Over She Goes. Right, you are out of the intelligence service. What happened next? Did you go back to the drawing office? But

Ted Allbeury12:26

Um then decided.

Ted Allbeury12:29

That that was not really for me.

Ted Allbeury12:31

And uh I went into sales management, having no experience whatsoever of sales management. Did you find yourself a good businessman?

Ted Allbeury12:39

I was enthusiastic. Ignorance to some extent is a great help. The first sales management job I had was for a leather firm in Dudley in Worcestershire. And they had all these forms, buff forms, green forms, yellow forms, brown forms, red forms and so on, all saying the same things on them. And I was so ignorant I didn't know the difference between an invoice and a statement. So I always inquired what these were for. Discovered that in fact you could get by perfectly well and more efficiently with two forms which cut out all the rest of it and all the administration that went with it. And people said, you know, this is absolutely brilliant. And in fact, it was just ignorance by saying, you know, what are they for? And people not being able to provide an answer, one was able to say, well, let's not have them then.

Speaker 113:14

Yeah.

Ted Allbeury13:20

Yeah, I got by. And then you went into business on your own account.

Ted Allbeury13:24

Well, I got into the advertising business and uh became creative director of an advertising agency and then managing director of an advertising agency. Advertising agencies are are full of creative people with temperaments prone to quarrel and rush out and I kept to the tradition and did that and in fact went farming.

Ted Allbeury13:44

and I farmed down on the Romney Marshes, uh which I thoroughly enjoyed for about three years, setting it up and so on, but I found once I could do it I found it fairly boring and then started a a business with a a past client of mine and uh

Ted Allbeury14:00

I'm still there. You played a part in the pirate radio boom. Yes. I had a station, Radio three nine zero it was called. Where was your site? On a fort, in the mouth of the Thames.

Presenter14:13

Yeah.

Ted Allbeury14:13

Who did the fort belong to?

Ted Allbeury14:15

I don't know. I don't think anybody knows even now. I know they've tried to blow it up since we left it and failed miserably. You just commandeered it?

Presenter14:18

I know they

Ted Allbeury14:23

Yes, there were people on it already doing a a pirate radio thing unsuccessfully and uh that was available so I took it over.

Presenter14:27

Yeah, that's

Speaker 114:28

Uh

Presenter14:28

I was

Ted Allbeury14:30

There was no swashbuckling about it. I never had a patch over my eye or anything like that.

Presenter14:31

There was no

Presenter14:35

But the competition was

Ted Allbeury14:37

Cut throat, wasn't it, between the pirate stations.

Ted Allbeury14:40

Well, it was cutthroat perhaps between Caroline and London because they both played the same kind of music, pop. Mine was sweet music, the kind of music that we're playing today in this programme. We had quite as large an audience as they did. It was very BBC in a way. I can remember Frank Gillard saying yes, oh yes, we we listened to it and it reminds us all of the BBC in 1940. And I I I know he meant that as a compliment.

Presenter15:03

Pove

Presenter15:06

How long was Radio 390 on the earth? Just over two and a half years.

Ted Allbeury15:10

That was until when the whole thing broke up. They brought in the Marine Broadcasting Offences Act uh seventeenth of August, if I remember rightly, nineteen sixty seven. Still get lots of letters on that day.

Presenter15:12

But

Presenter15:19

Still get

Presenter15:21

Ted, when did you write your first book?

Ted Allbeury15:24

And how did it come about? Crikey. Uh if I say I can't remember, it isn't because it was so long ago, it's just that I can't remember. Uh it came about because something very dud had happened in my private life.

Presenter15:24

Ugh.

Ted Allbeury15:37

And I was very depressed and uh you know, in a proper, I suppose, medically depressed sort of stage where you take the

Ted Allbeury15:44

blue pills for surviving the day and the yellow pills for surviving the night or whatever. Gave up bothering about work because I was so unhappy.

Ted Allbeury15:53

Had to do something that I could do sitting down. I wrote four chapters of a book. I never particularly wanted to be a writer, or thought that I could be one never thought about it at all.

Ted Allbeury16:03

And my partner in the public relations company took it away and showed it to a friend of his who was in publishing, who passed it on to an agent who a week later phoned me and said, Would you mind finishing that book because we've sold it to an American publisher? On four chapters. On four chapters, yes. You know, it ought not to happen, but I guess every now and again the good Lord says, Oh, well, give him a break. And it happens. And what was this first book?

Presenter16:30

Uh

Ted Allbeury16:31

A choice of enemies.

Presenter16:33

Well, before we talk about it and the other books you've written, let's have another record. Number five we've got to.

Ted Allbeury16:38

Because of what we've been talking about, Three nine O, the first piece of music I insisted that the very first piece of music that was played both in the trial period and when it officially went on the air on Three nine O was Glen Miller's Moonlight Serenade, and uh as they say, I think it knows needs no more introduction than that.

Presenter16:59

Moonlight SERNADE The Glen Miller Orchestra

Presenter17:02

How many books have you written?

Ted Allbeury17:04

I'm just on my twenties now.

Presenter17:06

All spy stories.

Ted Allbeury17:08

Uh spy stories or thrillers?

Presenter17:10

Yes. You also write under another name.

Ted Allbeury17:12

Yes, I write under the name of Richard Butler. I haven't done those for quite a time. They were thrillers rather than spy stories.

Presenter17:18

This is because you're so prolific.

Ted Allbeury17:20

Yes, it was also a a lighter way of writing. You know, my dark, grim Moscow bit needs a bit of relief for me every now and again, and these were set in Italy with pretty girls and sunshine and boats.

Ted Allbeury17:32

What's your next one to come up? It's called Consequence of Fear. It relates to an explosion that apparently occurred in nineteen fifty seven in the Soviet Union, and I made the story hang on. Was it a deliberate explosion to find something out, or was it not?

Ted Allbeury17:48

Uh starts in the

Speaker 117:48

Nice.

Ted Allbeury17:50

latter period of the of the Second World War and then comes up to date.

Ted Allbeury17:56

Record number six.

Ted Allbeury17:58

I wonder how many people will remember Jack Buchanan and El C. Randolph as an elegant, nice man, perhaps not the best singer in the world, but sang in that nice musical comedy thing, and it's called Let's Say Good Night Till It's Morning.

Presenter18:16

Let's say goodnight till the morning from Sunny in 1927, Jack Buchanan and Elsie Randolph.

Presenter18:24

Now your sales figures are are very nice, thank you. But uh you've kept on your advertising firm, your public relations firm.

Ted Allbeury18:32

Yes, well, that would go on even if I were not there. But um I like the people, and I'm a bit of a peasant, and if you come from

Ted Allbeury18:40

The less posh parts of Birmingham. You tend to feel that two incomes is better than one. Uh if you're a writer you always have the fear that you'll dry up and if you uh stick to the PR you always feel that your fellow directors might vote you off the board or something. So I I've stuck to this.

Presenter18:56

Doing two seemingly full-time jobs, how do you plan your week? Do you go into your office every day?

Ted Allbeury19:01

I go into the office every day. I don't travel around as much as I used to and I don't do things that I don't like doing any more. I'm home generally by half past five or perhaps a little before. Uh we generally eat together if it fits in with everybody's planning, the two little girls, Sally and Lisa, my wife and myself. My wife is in her last year of an open university course, so she there goes off to her room to do that. I've got a shed up the garden in in which I write, which sounds primitive, but it's rather a nice old apple shed covered all over with ivy. And I write from then till, say, about ten for um a news programme which we'll perhaps look at together.

Speaker 119:08

Yeah.

Ted Allbeury19:42

And uh then I'll write on till one o'clock, and all day Saturday and all day Sunday.

Presenter19:48

What time are you in the office in the morning?

Ted Allbeury19:49

About nine.

Ted Allbeury19:51

This is really a double day's work, isn't it? Yeah.

Ted Allbeury19:54

Yes, but if you get double money you expect to work double the time. You'll take holidays?

Ted Allbeury20:00

No, neither of us are all that keen. Uh our experience has has been that uh for very small girls as ours are, the sand at Bexhill is pretty well as good as the sand on the Algarve. There is no sand at Bexhill, is there? Oh yes there is. Is there really? Yeah, don't say a bad word about Bexhill.

Presenter20:12

Oh yes there is no

Presenter20:15

Yeah.

Ted Allbeury20:15

Yeah.

Presenter20:15

I thought it was all shingle. No, lovely. Record number seven.

Ted Allbeury20:20

Record number seven is uh a nice Viennese song, very old-fashioned one. It's called Sach beim Apscheet Leiser Servus. It's Viennese. Oh, it's when you say goodbye, say Servus. Servus is a Viennese word, which means you're not saying goodbye forever. And instead of saying, as it says in the words Apscheet or Adieu or Alfiele Zehen, you say Servus if you're Viennese, because you hope to see them again.

Presenter20:29

West Jane is

Presenter20:51

Sagbaim Abshid Sangbai Peter Alexander.

Presenter20:54

I'm sure survival drill must have played an important part in your training. Yeah.

Ted Allbeury20:58

Yeah.

Ted Allbeury20:59

Yes, it did. I didn't listen very carefully, but when I needed to I got by.

Presenter21:04

Could you live off the land, on a desert island?

Ted Allbeury21:08

I may poison myself in the course of doing so, but I sh I think I could, yes. I should try very hard, anyway.

Presenter21:14

You know a bit about small boats, I believe.

Ted Allbeury21:16

Yes, my family and I lived on a seagoing boat for for some time, because we fancied the change. Uh so I'd be reasonable on navigation, providing the sun was shining. So you'll try to get away in one way or another. Oh, you betcha. Yes, I'd be absolutely homesick from the first hour.

Ted Allbeury21:33

Right. Record number eight. Record number eight is again in German. It's from the Schadas Fürsten, the Gypsy Princess. Uh it's called Thausenkleine England Zingen, Thousand Little Angels Singing, which i isn't a very good title of the song. It goes with a real swing. Everybody will know it, I think, anyway.

Presenter21:55

A song from The Gypsy Princess sung by Annalisa Rotenberger and Nicolai Gedder. If you could take only one disc of your eight, which would it be? Love is the sweetest thing.

Presenter22:06

And one luxury to take to the island with you.

Ted Allbeury22:09

Like everybody else, I'd like to cheat on this. It's a packet of ten W H Smith jumbo pads with say twenty five pencils, four B's. It will the four be Do you like to write big? I write very quickly, yes, and I have'em already sharpened so I can sort of throw'em on one side and then have a big sharpening session.

Presenter22:27

I think just to be on the safe side we'll double that quantity for you so that you can continue your your output.

Presenter22:34

And you can take one printed book with you, apart from the Bible and Shakespeare, which are already on the island, and we frown on big encyclopedias.

Ted Allbeury22:42

Oh, well, mine's a very skinny little book, but a very worth while little book.

Ted Allbeury22:47

I wafted around with Montaigne's essays, but in fact chose

Ted Allbeury22:51

Cyril Connolly's An Unquiet Grave, a favourite book of mine. Yes. Tell me about it, Ted. Oh, uh Cyril Connolly was a a very fine writer, as you know. Loved Paris.

Ted Allbeury23:02

Never really I think in his lifetime quite made it. I think he died about 1976, something like that, not not too far away anyway. And it's personal reminiscences. It's all the best of a writer's thinking. I think perhaps creative writers are not very good at extending essays of their thoughts, but they're quite good at paragraphs and three paragraphs at a time. That's what he did in this book.

Presenter23:24

Yes, The Unquiet Grave by Cyril Connolly. And thank you, Ted Albury, for letting us hear your Desert Island Discs.

Ted Allbeury23:32

Thanks very much for having me. Goodbye, Bill.