Fay Weldon

Speaker 30:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive.

Speaker 30:05

For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in 1980, and the presenter was Roy Plumley.

Presenter0:30

And this week, our castaway of the novelist, playwright and scriptwriter Faye Weldon.

Presenter0:35

Miss Weldon, have you ever imagined yourself as a

Presenter0:38

FEMALE ROBINSON CRUSO

Presenter0:40

I think I probably have, yes, because you identify, don't you, even though he was male and you're female, you always think how much better you would have managed them.

Presenter0:49

He would have. You would have been just that much more sensible. You would have thought quicker. You would have done it. You would have survived better. Yes. Could you endure loneliness? I would find it very difficult, but if you had to, you would.

Presenter1:03

How much does music mean to you?

Presenter1:05

I don't think it means very much at all. I use it to change mood. I often write to music, in fact, and I write to rather kind of plaintive female songs most of the time. I like that. And especially if they're very familiar, they don't obtrude on you too much, but they keep a sort of memory of going which you use when you write. Have you any musical proers yourself? Do you play an instrument? No. Sing? No.

Fay Weldon1:27

No.

Presenter1:28

You have a lot of records.

Fay Weldon1:28

You have

Presenter1:30

Oh, we have an enormous number of records. Yes, we do. My husband, um

Presenter1:35

I've been collecting records for a long time. There's a lot of old ones.

Fay Weldon1:38

You keep

Presenter1:39

Oh yes, oh yes, yes, you keep things, but that's rather different from from

Fay Weldon1:39

Oh yes.

Presenter1:44

Loving music. Was it a difficult job to narrow your choice down to just eight?

Presenter1:51

No, I don't think it was. I don't think I had any hesitation at all. I just went rapidly through my life, picked out records which seemed to me to actually be capable of

Presenter2:01

reminding me of something and changing my mood as required, and I thought if you didn't have any people on the island you would actually have to have all these voices, you see, going to the market.

Fay Weldon2:10

Someone

Presenter2:13

What's the first one you've chosen? The first one is uh Schumann's piano concerto, played in the old way. What do you mean by the old way?

Presenter2:24

Because pianists my grandmother, in fact, was a pianist.

Presenter2:28

and didn't much like the modern way of playing the piano. She was a pupil of Clara Schumann's.

Presenter2:36

And my childhood was in fact

Presenter2:39

filled with her her piano playing. I mean, it made a kind of background to my life in the early days. And and I I it's wrong to say that music means nothing to me because it does, but I think

Presenter2:51

If you have a feeling that you share things out in a family, well, somehow the music was hers and it wasn't yours, therefore she did all that, and I, as a little girl, did something else.

Presenter3:01

And um so I leave all that to her somehow still in my mind. Who would you like to play it on your recording? Well, we're going to have Fanny Davies, who herself was a pupil of Clara Schuban, and it's the first movement of the concerto in A minor for piano, fort and orchestra.

Presenter4:12

The opening of the Schumann Piano Concerto in A minor.

Presenter4:16

Fanny Davis, a soloist with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Ernest Onsomet.

Presenter4:21

Now you have a number of musicians in your family. Yes, I do. Their their talent has all bypassed me, but um actually gone to my children, in fact, which I believe happens. The eldest one plays them.

Presenter4:36

jazz piano professionally and the middle one.

Presenter4:39

Can play the trumpet extremely well, only he chooses not to. And the other one can get four notes and a clarinet.

Fay Weldon4:42

And the other way.

Presenter4:46

Oh, that's very good.

Presenter4:48

But you you had a a composer? Yes, my great grandfather, Henry Holmes, and his brother Albert were both musicians, and started out as itinerant.

Presenter4:58

Violin players and ended up very grand indeed in the world of music.

Presenter5:04

Now, as well as coming from a musical family, you come from a literary family. Yes. My grandfather wrote best selling novels in the twenties. His name was Edgar Jephson. Yes. And um there was a series of books called Polly Ullie.

Presenter5:17

And Miss Knoggs, I think.

Presenter5:20

And then his son, my uncle Selwyn, also writes.

Presenter5:24

Selwyn Jepson is a very familiar.

Fay Weldon5:24

The sailwind jabs are not available.

Fay Weldon5:26

Uh

Presenter5:32

Stage five.

Presenter5:34

which Hitchcock bought.

Presenter5:36

And is a very good novelist indeed. And your mother also wrote novels when she was a young woman and

Fay Weldon5:38

And my mother.

Presenter5:44

extremely popular romances which were serialized and had people queuing up, I believe, outside the newspaper offices waiting for the next instalment, you see. And she's she's started writing again recently.

Speaker 35:54

And she's

Fay Weldon5:55

Yeah.

Presenter5:57

Good. Are you a Londoner?

Presenter5:59

Yes, I'm a Londoner by instinct. I mean, I come from all over, really. And well, I was born in Birmingham and brought up in New Zealand and educated in Scotland, but always felt that I'm a Londoner. I live in London. I just like it. I like the pollution and I like the gases of the cars and it seems to work in my lungs and

Speaker 26:03

And the

Speaker 26:10

Felix.

Presenter6:19

Make my brain function properly. Yes, I belong to that. What are your memories of New Zealand?

Presenter6:24

Oh, mountains and rivers and nature and boredom

Presenter6:28

Boredom.

Presenter6:30

Well, I think no, I don't know really that was anything to do with the country. I think it was just the sense that children have that you're waiting to grow up. Yes. And that until you grow up, nothing happens, nothing starts, you see. What started working in you? What sort of ambitions did you have? Did music come into it? Writing obviously came into it. Oh, I just wanted to be a ballet dancer. Did you? Yes.

Fay Weldon6:49

Oh, I just

Fay Weldon6:51

Did you?

Presenter6:54

No, I thought other people were writers. I mean, I thought men were writers. Uh writing plays was something which just it didn't occur to me that women did it because there weren't any. And so I left all that and and and tried to write novels unsuccessfully and then started writing plays and found I could do that.

Presenter7:13

Now you took a degree in economics and psychology. Why did you choose those subjects?

Presenter7:18

Uh I seem to remember it was something to do with the time tabling, and the most convenient arrangement for getting to parties or not having to get up in the morning.

Presenter7:30

No, no, that's being frivolous. Um because I went to a university which had a foundation course and there were a number of subjects.

Presenter7:41

Which you had to do beyond the subjects which you thought you ought to do, which would be English literature or Latin, things like that. And I put a pin in and chose these to make up a course and actually found that that this was what I really enjoyed. And I did. I found it most extraordinary in easy. The university in question being St Andrews. Yes. Now you already had a child at that time, the responsibility.

Fay Weldon7:55

An idea

Fay Weldon7:57

The use of a

Presenter8:03

No, no, no. The child came afterwards. The child came afterwards, yes, yes. But the responsibility started um started very early. I had an MA when I was twenty. See, I was quite clever. I didn't think I was clever. I didn't

Fay Weldon8:05

Okay.

Fay Weldon8:07

But there is

Fay Weldon8:12

I was quite clear.

Presenter8:16

They want to do.

Fay Weldon8:16

Do you

Presenter8:17

There you were at twenty with an air. Um well I did what what um

Fay Weldon8:19

Uh

Presenter8:23

Women graduates did in those days. You became a waitress.

Presenter8:27

There was nothing else to do. There was no career structure. Most of my friends then took shorthand typing and became secretaries and pretended they didn't have a degree.

Presenter8:37

Uh and then followed whatever course their life took them in, which was mostly to get married and have children and give the whole thing up.

Speaker 28:43

Yeah.

Presenter8:45

You certainly did that, but then you you were doing various jobs. You you worked on the data mirror for a while, didn't you? Yes, I did. I answered Reader's Problems, and I seem to remember I got paid seven pounds a week, and I worked incredibly hard. It's a job you must take very seriously. I was a hard purchase expert, and you don't really have to take that quite so seriously. But people used to send me the legs of their old rotten chairs full of woodworm and old pies that they'd found things in. And we would have to reverence these objects and never, never be tempted to drop them into the waste paper. This was something to do with your economics degree.

Fay Weldon9:15

This was a

Presenter9:19

No, I think it was something to do with sheer desperation.

Fay Weldon9:23

It's a

Presenter9:24

In which I seem to remember I wrote sixty letters in one week, trying to get some sort of job, any sort of job, in which

Presenter9:35

Do you know a general intelligence was required because I certainly had no specialized abilities at the time. You worked for the Foreign Office for a while. Did they need intelligence? I think that was even earlier. Oh, they certainly did need. Yes, they certainly did, because I worked in the department and I I was fresh out of out of university. I was a temporary assistant clerk and again I was getting six pounds a week.

Fay Weldon9:44

I think

Presenter9:55

And I was monitoring reports from Eastern Europe on the other side of the Iron Curtain, which was what we had. Oh, goodness me, it's probably very still secret, but I know I was writing reports on the state of affairs in Poland, and they were bypassing everybody else in the department and going straight to Churchill.

Speaker 210:00

The cottony house goes.

Presenter10:11

And they would come back initialled by him, you see. It was like how interesting And the awful thing was that I did realise then, you see, that though what I was writing

Presenter10:23

wasn't false it certainly wasn't true, because I was abstracting out of all this information what I knew everybody required, so that what was presented in the end was not in accordance with the actual truth of the situation.

Presenter10:36

But being very young I didn't do much about it. I just went on doing what was required. So one way or another you were pretty well running the country.

Presenter10:44

Feel like it. Certainly didn't pay me as if I was. I did get slightly indignant from time to time. Let's have another echo. We're going to have.

Presenter10:54

La Ronde, because it was at about that time, I think, that I began to think I could write, or to see that it was possible to write. And this particular song

Presenter11:05

Always

Presenter11:06

stuck in my mind because it seemed to me it was the raw material of the writer's craft. It set up.

Presenter11:12

a situation out of which everything was going to develop.

Presenter11:16

And and

Presenter11:17

It just stayed with me always, still does.

Speaker 211:20

Tourmet, too, met personage.

Speaker 211:25

Later too.

Speaker 211:30

Low degree.

Speaker 211:32

The George Honiard.

Speaker 211:35

Ellen Jr.

Speaker 211:41

Palm on it.

Speaker 211:43

Grisette de Tentre.

Speaker 211:46

Aristocrat Souvier.

Speaker 211:48

Solda.

Presenter11:50

Anthony Wilbruck.

Speaker 211:51

Yeah.

Presenter11:51

La Ronde.

Presenter11:53

So we left you working for the Foreign Office. You moved into advertising as a copywriter. What what sort of products were you advertising? Well, I was advertising very healthy things like eggs and milk. And I thought I was probably doing the world a good turn by suggesting that milk was good for you and eggs would make a good breakfast. And so they do in moderation. But there's a whole other school of thought now which thinks that cow's milk is the source of most evils and that

Presenter12:22

Eggs are full of cholesterol and all sorts of things, and you better not eat them either.

Fay Weldon12:25

Yeah.

Presenter12:26

Do we owe go to work on an egg to you? Well, I think you do more or less. Right, you are writing to this effect.

Presenter12:34

When did we start writing?

Presenter12:36

something that somebody else wanted to publish.

Presenter12:40

Mid sixties.

Presenter12:41

I wrote a television play.

Presenter12:43

While waiting.

Presenter12:44

for my second son to be born, and he was three weeks late.

Presenter12:48

And I had three weeks.

Presenter12:50

patch off work when I hadn't expected to be, so I thought I mu must put this time to good use.

Presenter12:57

and wrote a television play because it seemed the only thing I could finish and sent it in and they did it. And that was the first thing that you have written that you sent around?

Presenter13:06

Yes.

Presenter13:07

Mine knew. I mean, I say they did it. They ran up and told me they were going to do it and they were going to pay me two hundred and something pounds to do it. And I thought, How wonderful and went out and spent it. And then they ran up a week later and said, Sorry, we've changed our minds. We're not going to. And it then took me two years.

Presenter13:24

idly sending this play around and nobody wanted to do it and then

Presenter13:28

A director.

Presenter13:30

found it in a drawer.

Presenter13:32

and sent for me and said write another play, because you can write plays.

Presenter13:37

And I was feeling very uppity at the time, and said, um no, that's a perfectly good play. If you want to play, do that one. People would behave like that in the sixties, you know. It wasn't a very serious decade.

Presenter13:48

And amazingly enough they did it. And the actors could act it, you see, was the main thing, I think, and and it was successful. And after that, if you can write one, you can write another. So that really was the last time you were on anybody's payroll, you became a a self-employed writer? Oh no, I went on in advertising for some time after that because writing radio and television plays.

Fay Weldon14:07

But was writing.

Presenter14:10

was, and goodness me, still is, a fairly a precarious occupation. So I went on working in advertising, and looking after children, cooking dinners, and all the things one did.

Presenter14:20

And um

Presenter14:22

writing television plays as asked. And then I wrote a novel and then I was a consultant by that time and then I just asked for too much money and did too little work and advertising was fire. Your your first novel developed out of one of your television plays. Yes, it did, yes it did. Well in those days it used to upset me because because there was so much you wanted to say, you see, and and television

Fay Weldon14:36

Yes, it did, yes.

Presenter14:44

Uh though a far more wordy a medium then than it is now, still didn't allow me enough enough room to say what I wanted to say, so I used, as it were, all the off cuts of the original play and put it all into novel form, and lo and behold, there was a novel, and at last I discovered how to write them, you see, or how to get through from the beginning to the end. Once you've done it once, you can do it again. This was what Fat Woman's Joke was. That was Fat Woman's Joke, which is coming out again, I see, in Holland.

Presenter15:09

Isn't that nice?

Fay Weldon15:10

Isn't that nice?

Presenter15:12

Right, your third record, what shall that be? Judy Collins singing Liverpool lullaby, because this will remind me on my desert island.

Presenter15:21

of the main preoccupation which I have when I write, I suppose, which is the situation of women having a hard time in relation to their children.

Presenter15:31

and doing the best they can for them. So we have Liverpool parliament.

Speaker 215:34

Oh, you are a monkey kid.

Speaker 215:39

Dirty as a dust bin

Speaker 215:43

Uh

Presenter15:43

When he finds out the things you did

Presenter15:47

You'll get a belt from your dad

Presenter15:51

Oh, you have your father's nose So crimson in the dark it glows If you're not asleep when the boozers

Speaker 215:58

Uh

Speaker 216:00

You're not

Speaker 316:02

Close, you'll get about from your dad.

Presenter16:08

Liverpool lullaby sung by Judy Collins.

Presenter16:12

Now your first novel, about the condition of women, a woman's lot is not a happy one.

Presenter16:18

You've written six novels, I think, since Fat Woman's Joke, and they could all be classed as as feminist. Yes.

Presenter16:26

You have a rather personal style, short staccato passages, deaded paragraphs. Your novels look different to other people's novels. This is something you've worked on, or is it just

Presenter16:38

Part of being a uh an advertising layer layer do you? It it's only occurred to me lately that that's what it is. If you do work in this extraordinary business of advertising, uh when words every word costs a lot of money, it has to be placed properly, it has a lot of space around it,'cause space is cheaper than than typeface. And and it has to look good, and it makes a point by virtue of the fact that there's space around it. And when you write a novel, it seems to me you must really do the same thing. You place it like poetry upon a page and give it a different value and a different weighting according to the

Presenter17:12

Amount of words there are around it. And they all have this personal style, and they all have.

Presenter17:19

An aggressive and unfavourable attitude to men. I don't think that's so at all, you see. It doesn't seem to me to be aggressive or unfavourable. I think I deal with them very kindly indeed. That wasn't my impression. I've been through three of them.

Presenter17:34

No, and and uh

Presenter17:36

It struck me that you thought they were exploiting, unscrupulous, and selfish.

Presenter17:41

No but I do.

Presenter17:45

Doesn't it worry you that you may be casting aside fifty per cent of your prospective readership by antagonizing males? No, not at all. I mean, a lot of men would say, I didn't buy this book to be insulted. Then they shouldn't buy it. They don't have to read it. Let them throw it away. No, I I mean, I'm I'm overstating the case. Uh well, I hope what I write gives perhaps a new perspective on

Presenter18:08

the way things run in general in the world and are actually perfectly interesting for men and as as well as for women. I find in fact a lot of men do respond to them very well and are interested and don't feel persecuted. They just say, Oh, your latest book, Puffball, is very concerned with obstetrics.

Fay Weldon18:21

Yeah.

Presenter18:25

Um not really a man's subject.

Presenter18:28

Well, I find that quite an extraordinary thing to say. Margaret Drabble keeps saying men have babies too, and it's quite right. If you think about it, men have babies. They grow them somewhere else, but they claim them once they're out. And if you're interested in the working of a car

Presenter18:44

Yes. I think the working of women's insides is far more interesting and far more marvellous. And men's insides I go into as well. They have them, you know.

Presenter18:54

We're not just shells. No, no, that's quite true.

Presenter18:58

It don't really provide a a cosy read for either sex, though.

Presenter19:03

Well, no. If you want a cosy read, there's any amount of literature you can read, but who wants to read it? No, you know, I mean, the purpose of literature, really, is not to.

Presenter19:13

Not to underwrite people's misconceptions or prejudices or cosy feelings. Let's have record number four.

Presenter19:23

Isabel Bailey, singing Angels Ever Bright and Fair. She sang it a long time ago, but again my grandmother used to sing it, and she sounded very like this when she did.

Fay Weldon19:34

Here in the boys. Uh yes

Fay Weldon19:39

And what you might

Fay Weldon19:43

And in home the world

Presenter20:29

Angels Ever Bright and Fair from Handel's Theodora, sung by Isabel Bailey.

Presenter20:35

Now you have been writing for the theatre.

Presenter20:38

Um how many planes we were on that?

Presenter20:40

I don't know, really. I've done I think

Presenter20:44

Three full length plays and probably about six.

Fay Weldon20:47

Yeah.

Presenter20:48

And and your players?

Fay Weldon20:48

Uh

Presenter20:49

Reflect the same attitude as your novels. You're fighting this battle for your sex. I'm not fighting a battle for my sex. I'm writing radio plays and stage plays. Do you know they involve the craft, and of course they involve an attitude of mine. But I'm not a you know, I'm not a crusader. I am a writer, and I happen to be a feminist. And what has made the feminists so strong and so angry are probably

Presenter21:13

Is the same thing, probably, as what animates me, but I don't.

Presenter21:18

Right, in order to put a point of view.

Presenter21:21

You've also worked on on series on television, upstairs, downstairs, for you.

Presenter21:27

If if there was feminist propaganda in that, it was pretty subtle. No, I think it was very much there. There was upstairs and there was downstairs and upstairs, if you like, was exploiting downstairs.

Fay Weldon21:37

But then when

Presenter21:40

Your men are? No. What seems to happen in the outside world is that there one class I mean those who are powerful exploit those who are helpless, and that includes men and women, and there is a subclass, if you like, or even a greater class, in which fifty per cent of the population, that is the men, tends to exploit the other fifty half. Who are helpless? The women.

Fay Weldon21:41

Probably no.

Fay Weldon21:58

Who I helped.

Presenter22:00

Ah, they are helpless inasmuch in a Western society as they don't get equal pay, they are doomed

Presenter22:08

boring jobs which men won't take.

Presenter22:11

And in fact, are. I know it's very hard for you to accept this. Yeah, you're generalizing a bit, I guess.

Fay Weldon22:14

Yeah.

Fay Weldon22:15

Uh

Presenter22:16

No, I am not generalising, because the wages women are paid are something like forty per cent of the wages men are paid, and yet they are born with equal brains and equal capacities and equal intelligence.

Presenter22:30

And it all ends up um

Presenter22:33

I'll start all that again. Right. Let us change the subject a little.

Fay Weldon22:38

Uh

Presenter22:40

You you've adapted Pride and Prejudice recently to that for the second one.

Fay Weldon22:42

Yes, sir.

Presenter22:44

That took you rather a long time.

Fay Weldon22:44

Uh

Presenter22:46

Yes, it did. It took me ever such a long time. It took me about four years, I think. But it was very nice because people, when they're they asked me what I was writing, I would say I was adapting pride and prejudice and it sort of put a full stop on the conversation. They'd go on to talk about washing machines or something really more interesting, you know. It was one of those jobs you had at the back of your mind. It was one of the jobs I had at the back of my mind and and things happened to BBC and departments ch heads changed and it was always something which, you know, wasn't sort of urgent but would be done one day and then all of a sudden they needed to do it in a hurry.

Fay Weldon23:06

This was

Fay Weldon23:15

You know

Presenter23:21

One thing that surprised me is that while adapting it, you were knocking it. You said in the press that Jane Austen's plotting was lazy and bad.

Fay Weldon23:25

Uh

Presenter23:30

and that the book contained a lot of long gurs and stodgy bits.

Presenter23:34

Yes, if you are actually working on a book and you have divided it into five parts, you will begin to make comparisons between one part and another. And section four of my five parts was actually not

Presenter23:47

It by comparison to the other parts so well constructed. You look at it as as as a work, as something written by somebody fallible, which all human beings are, and you make comments about it. And this I feel perfectly entitled to do. And yes, that part of the book was was was not as good as the other parts of the book. But I must say I do feel, you see, in all this, that I am speaking, if I do appear to know Jane Austen sometimes, that I am speaking for quite a large, hidden minority of sensitive and intelligent people who were expected to enjoy Jane Austen, especially at school, and in fact didn't, and so thought there was something wrong with them.

Fay Weldon24:26

Bam.

Presenter24:26

Instead of daring to think there might be something wrong with Janost,

Presenter24:31

And you've been able to correct a lot of that in your adaptation, I'm quite sure.

Presenter24:35

That is no vote.

Fay Weldon24:35

That's just the

Presenter24:37

Where do we go next?

Presenter24:39

We're going to go next to Never Let Your Braces Dangle, which is Harry Champion, which is always good for a laugh. You might say it made me laugh because what happened to this unfortunate man, but I don't think so.

Fay Weldon24:51

I was one of eighteen boys, then we all were called a roys. I was the roughest of the gang, cause my braces used to wing. Dangling all around my feet, my mother used to fall. Pointing towards only she'd hung up on the wall. Never let your braces dangle, dingle, dingle, jangle. Never thief, don't deceive, never row or wrangle. Take to the right, keep away from the bag. Don't get tight like a poor old man. But the greatest model of the lot, my lad. Never let your braces dangle.

Presenter25:24

Harry Champion singing Never Let Your Braces Dangle.

Presenter25:28

Now how do you write? Are you are you a disciplined writer? Do you work set hours every day, or how do you go about it?

Presenter25:34

Well, I wish I did, but in fact I don't. I mean, I I kind of drive myself into a corner so far as time and money and other people's opinion is concerned, and then I write.

Presenter25:44

as it were, when driven to write, and I meet my deadlines more or less, and I get it done somehow, but I'm never quite sure how.

Presenter25:52

You're quite prolific, aren't you? I mean, you get through a lot of work in the course of a year. How long does a novel take?

Presenter25:57

Well, there's thinking time and there's writing time and you start a novel in your head, I think really, a good six months before you begin. Uh then it probably takes about three months. But other things happen at the same time. I mean I write other things as well. How many drafts do you do of a novel? Uh one, two, three, probably. I mean an original copy, then a typed copy, then a then a corrected copy of that and then

Presenter26:21

Usually at that stage I think everything's fine, and then I look at it a bit later and I realize it isn't, and I have to rewrite the whole thing.

Presenter26:28

What have you got on the stocks at the moment?

Presenter26:31

I have two television plays in production and I have

Presenter26:35

A love story in four parts on film derived for the B B C.

Presenter26:40

Which worries me a little because I'm not sure that their idea of love is the same as my idea of love.

Presenter26:47

And then I'm going to write I'm writing a thriller, which actually I'm looking forward to in six parts again television. So you're going to be busy. Yes.

Presenter26:55

Another echo.

Presenter26:56

We're gonna have

Presenter26:58

Buffet Saint-Marie.

Presenter27:00

singing Little Wheel to remind me on this desert island that perhaps it's not such a bad place to be after all, if only for a rest.

Speaker 327:09

Merry Christmas, jingle-bells! Christ is born and the devil's in hell! Hearts they shrink, pockets swell, Everybody know and nobody tell!

Presenter27:17

Yeah.

Speaker 327:18

Little wheel, spin and spin, big wheel, turn round, round, Little wheels, spin and spin, big wheel, turn around and round All the sins of Caesar's men, Cry the pious citizens Petty thieves, the five and tens, And the big wheel turn round, round Little wheels spin and spin, big wheel, turn around

Presenter27:39

Buffy's aunt Murray's little wheel spin and spin. Now on this desert island.

Presenter27:45

Are you going to be resourceful, do you think?

Presenter27:47

In a practical sense, look after yourself.

Presenter27:50

Oh, yes, I think so. Yes, I'll do what's required. You could rig up a shelter of some sort? Yes, I could, yes. Yes, I was brought up in New Zealand and learned to share a sheep and milk cows and things like that. Yes, I doubt if you'll be doing it.

Fay Weldon27:57

Yeah, so

Fay Weldon28:03

Yeah.

Presenter28:06

No fusion.

Fay Weldon28:06

Fields.

Presenter28:07

Whitford

Presenter28:09

Would you try to escape?

Presenter28:12

No, I don't think I would. If a ship passed I'd wave at it. But I don't think I'd go to any great lengths to get off it.

Presenter28:20

Not none none none that were risky. None that were risky. Very sensible. We've got to number seven now.

Presenter28:26

Number seven.

Presenter28:28

is some

Presenter28:30

Well, part of looking after myself physically would actually be the need for exercise, you see, of a of a kind of concentrated nature. So uh we're going to have a disco version of Over the Rainbow and to wake us up and keep us going.

Presenter29:12

Over the Rainbow by Meko

Presenter29:15

Are very different from Judy Garland's version.

Presenter29:17

Now we come to your last record. What's that?

Presenter29:20

It's Caroline Hester singing'Tis the Gift to Be Simple, which I think I would play quite often in order to reconcile myself to my lonely lot.

Presenter29:30

Tis the gift to be simple,'Tis the gift to be free. The gift to come down where we ought to be. And when we find ourselves in the place just right,'twill be in the valley.

Presenter30:07

Carolyn Hester,'Tis the gift to be simple. If you could take just one disc out of the eight, which would it be?

Presenter30:14

I think it would be the last one.

Presenter30:16

Carolyn Haster.

Presenter30:17

And one luxury to take to the island nothing of any practical use.

Presenter30:21

Ah.

Presenter30:22

Extremely good quality felt tip pens, practical, and shiny white paper. Yes, indeed you could have that. I could have that. I could have that.

Fay Weldon30:27

Yes

Fay Weldon30:29

I

Presenter30:31

To carry on business as usual, yeah.

Fay Weldon30:33

Oh yes, oh yes.

Presenter30:37

And one book apart from the Bible and Shakespeare is the conventional choices, and we don't allow big encyclopedias.

Presenter30:44

Well, if I'm allowed to be able to take an improving book, it would be Kennedy's Latin Primer, which actually gave me a great deal of pleasure when young. Uh I don't want to waste time, really, and I can

Presenter30:55

Relearn Latin.

Presenter30:58

Right. Well, we'll we'll give you an ovid as well so that you can

Presenter31:01

Have something to read as well as learn the language. No, I don't feel the need for anything to read because what I.

Presenter31:09

Want to read is what I write.

Presenter31:14

And thank you, Faye Weldon, for letting us hear your Desert Island Disc. Thank you, and goodbye.

Presenter31:19

Goodbye, everyone.

Speaker 331:27

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.