Clive James

Clive James0:00

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

Clive James0:06

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.

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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.

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Full details can be found on the Castaways page on the Desert Island Discs website.

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The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen eighty.

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And the presenter was Roy Plumley.

Presenter0:52

This week, our castaway is the critic, poet, feature writer, autobiographer and television personality have a left-in-thing out, Clive James.

Presenter1:02

Clive, among your many interests does music play a part?

Presenter1:06

Yes, it plays a profound part. I think I love music more than any other of the arts. I can't sing even a simple phrase. On what basis have you chosen your records? Is it nostalgia, inspiration, exhilaration? No, it's I'm I've chosen them on the basis of that I'm a castaway alone on a desert island. And so I've chosen nothing but women's voices because I think I've got a feeling that's what I miss on a desert island. What's the first one you've chosen?

Clive James1:29

Because I think

Presenter1:33

Well, I was in two minds about this. I wanted to choose uh the Bach Magnificat, the second soprano area on it.

Presenter1:40

which is a lovely thing, and I think the first piece of serious music that ever thrilled me.

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But it's only one voice, and um I think on a desert island you want value for money, so I thought I'd start off with something for two voices. And the nice thing about Scarlett is

Presenter1:53

cantatas, as they are for two voices. This one was written in seventeen hundred and seven, when Scarletti was at Urbino, and it's called Floro etirsi, and here's just a fragment of this lovely cantata.

Speaker 42:08

He's

Presenter2:53

An excerpt from one of the Scarletti Duet Cantatas

Presenter2:56

Elsie Morrison and Jennifer Vivian in a fragment from Floro A. Dercy.

Presenter3:02

You've never kept it a secret, Clive, that you're an Australian.

Presenter3:06

Well, for a long while I didn't emphasise it, because I think there's it's a bit suspect to come to Britain and set yourself up as a professional Australian. I didn't think much about it. Uh I think I was very lucky in that by the time I came to Britain it was no longer necessary for an Australian who wanted to work in radio and television and things like that to have to kill his accent.

Presenter3:24

So I could stay as sweet as I was, however sweet that was. And I've never consciously worked on my voice. I think over the course of 20 years it has mellowed a bit, to the stage where any Australian would consider that I was trying to imitate a pom. But I never really thought about it. But as for making a business out of being Australian, I don't think I've ever really done that. I've just written this book about my early life called Unreliable Memoirs, if you don't mind me mentioning it, which is all about growing up in Australia. You call a disguised novel? Yes, I call it a disguised novel because I've told so many lies in it. It's a pack of fibs from start to finish. On the other hand, I think the central story is probably true. And that's about growing up in Australia. But that's about as Australian as I am, I think, anyway. I think I probably live in two countries, if anyone can live in two countries. You come from the burlios of Sydney, New South Wales. I had no idea the countryside was so dangerous. I knew about the sharks off Bondi Beach. I didn't know about the tiger snakes and the taipans and the redback spiders and the...

Clive James3:58

And that's

Presenter4:18

Funnel web spiders, it must be awful though. Well, I think the Australian Tourist Bureau will tell you that I'm probably exaggerating a bit. But that's the way it seemed to me when I was young. The point about the book is it's through young eyes when the whole landscape is crawling with danger. Mad dogs, too. That's right. I think to any adult, these dangers wouldn't be anything like as closely packed together as they are in my memory. Are you exaggerating all the way through? I'm prepared to believe that we're all pretty horrible as small boys, but your candid confession showed that you were well on the way to being an infant hoodlum. Yes, I think I was. You're the only small boy I've ever heard of who could demolish a building site.

Clive James4:32

That's

Clive James4:49

How do you

Presenter4:52

Oh, no, I I had help. That was the point. We all demolished it. We used to work in gangs at sunset, dismantling what the builders had put up during the day. So those building sites took a long, long time to complete.

Speaker 45:02

Um

Presenter5:02

Um I I've got a feeling that most young boys probably would be destructive if they were given the chance. We were given the chance up to a certain point, not to the point of active delinquency, we caused a lot of mischief. The memory is with me still. I still feel a bit of a debt to society, if I can sound pompous. You want to return all that building material? Exactly. I have to return all those tiles and bricks I smashed. I think I'm returning them in written form.

Clive James5:19

Yeah.

Presenter5:24

It's like conscience money. You know, people send checks for one pound thirty p to British Rail because they scaled on a train twenty years ago. Maybe my book's a bit like that. One curious thing, you changed your Christian name to a to a more masculine name. What I thought was a more masculine name.

Clive James5:36

What I

Presenter5:38

I was first called Vivian. I was named after an Australian tennis player called Vivian McGrath, who was a hero of the 1938 Australian Davis Cup squad.

Presenter5:47

I was born the following year and christened Vivian, and then Vivian Lee got the role of Scarlet O'Hara in Gone with the Wynn, and that was it. No matter how you spelled your name, Vivian was a girl's name from then on. And I used to get into terrible trouble. I was always put on the wrong lists at school, ended up in sewing classes and dancing, that sort of stuff. And I got sick of it. I got sick of fighting my way home from school every night.

Presenter6:06

And at the age of ten I told my mother, Look, I've had enough of this and she said, All right, you can have any name you want. Pick one out And like a fool I picked Clive out of a movie that I'd just seen the previous night. Clive of India or something like that? Well no, actually it was the character called Clive was being played by Tyrone Power in a movie that's been justly neglected ever since.

Clive James6:17

That's all it's going to be.

Presenter6:23

Unfortunately, of course, I was that made me the only Clive in Australia, because it wasn't an Australian name, so I had to go on and on fighting my way home from school. But at least in the long run, it worked out, because it gives me a two-syllable name, one syllable for the first name, one syllable for the second.

Presenter6:36

Which is sounds like a sort of door slamming I I find quite quite easy to write down, doesn't take up much space.

Presenter6:43

One reason for your childhood difficulties, if difficulties they were, was that you had the misfortune to lose your father on his way back from a prison camp at the end of the war. It was an accident, uh and that's what I keep on telling myself. At the time it seems like fate.

Presenter6:58

You feel as if you're part of some Greek play and the Furies are chasing you. And I suppose someone not being there is probably still the central experience of my life, even though I'm now forty years old. But I've since come to terms with it, and it's just an accident, it's just luck.

Presenter7:10

Well, bringing the luck angle into it, being the son of a war casualty helped you into Sydney University at any rate. It did, it did. Uh I mean to a marvellous organization called the Repatriation Commission, because I had a very, very bad uh leaving certificate. That's

Clive James7:11

Like the last

Presenter7:24

The Australian equivalent of A levels and O levels. And I wouldn't have got to university otherwise. And it was when I got to university that I finally discovered what I wanted to do. And I've got a feeling that if I'd never gone there, I might have done something else that might have been a lot less useful to society. I'm not so sure how useful what I do now is, but I can be reasonably certain that whatever I would have done instead would have been a lot less useful. Breaking up even bigger building sites. Breaking up bigger building sites, but better instruments.

Clive James7:46

Breaking up bigger building size, but

Presenter7:49

Yeah.

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Well, I think I'd like to move on chronologically a bit, uh and hear from another girl. And this is Carabino in uh

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Marriage of Figaro.

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It's played by a girl. It's supposed to be a man's role, but luckily it's always sung by women.

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And it's Carabino's aria, non so pure, and it's sung on this record by Teresa Berganza, who I think is an amazing singer who drills every note right through the middle. And the aria is so great anyway, and she sings it in one just continuous liquid flow that's just perfection.

Speaker 48:21

No sofio pasazon, paso vacho, honifo, parazon, a viocio, honi lo.

Speaker 48:51

Armoda Marson

Speaker 48:57

WENTERBOL FELL!

Speaker 49:05

Uh

Presenter9:20

Nonsopio from The Marriage of Figaro, sung by Teresa Baganza. So, University of Sydney.

Presenter9:27

You had no idea what you wanted to do.

Presenter9:30

Absolutely none. In fact, I enrolled in the arts faculty under the impression that I would be allowed to draw.

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I thought that's what arts students did. And it was some way during my first year before I discovered they had to read books instead. You were reading English eventually? Yes, I was reading English eventually, but we s we had the American system there more than the British one. In other words, you read a lot of subjects. And in my first year I read English, psychology, anthropology, modern history.

Clive James9:43

Uh

Presenter9:54

And I was really didn't know anything, so I was sorting myself out, and I can remember now, distinctly, how it felt.

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to be at sea and and and thrashing about. You were helping to run the Film Society? I almost helped to destroy the Film Society uh because I was a very, very bad projectionist. I joined every society, um including the speleologists and the Parachute Club. I never got round, thank God, to jumping or caving. But I did get round to being a film projectionist in a film society.

Presenter10:20

And I had a bit of a disaster, because I could never really keep my attention on the projectors, and I was left to look after both projectors. They were real full size thirty five millimeter projectors with fires inside them.

Clive James10:29

Fires in

Presenter10:30

It was so hot in that projection booth that we had to work stripped to the waist, and I was supposed to be supervised by a senior member, but he was outside in the gallery palpating his girlfriend, and he left me alone with the projectors. And the take up reel broke on one of them. I think the film that was being screened was um

Presenter10:47

And the take-up reel spindle broke and I had a choice of two things I could do. I could shut down the projector immediately, or I could let it run and just let the film accumulate on the floor.

Presenter10:57

And like a fool, I chose the second course. And a whole reel of 35mm film fills an unbelievable volume when it's unwound. Oh, it does. And by the time it would

Clive James11:04

Yeah.

Presenter11:06

The senior to come back into the booth to relieve me on the next reel change. When he opened the door, he expected to see me and the projectors. All he saw was a pulsing, writhing wall of surliloid. I was walled in by it. And that was the end of that day's projection. The audience was extremely displeased. I can remember it now. You also had to do your national service, which you could do more or less in bits and pieces at the same time. You could do it in bits and pieces, but you had to start off by doing 77 days' basic training, and that was the real thing. They really tried to get you into shape.

Clive James11:24

Same time.

Presenter11:32

And I never had time to think. It was a very, very fierce seventy-seven days. Especially since we were shouted at continuously. That was part of the psychological treatment, is to be confronted by an endless succession of screaming sergeants. And the man who was screaming loudest was a warrant officer called Warrant Officer First Class Ronald MacDonald. I can remember his name, I can remember his face. My God, his face It was a nightmare. It was always near yours, shouting at you.

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And he was famous throughout the Australian Army. He was called Ronnie the One. And he was the chief exponent of the drill book in the Australian Army. And he could walk at a regulation pace of 39 inches forever. He could walk.

Speaker 412:05

Uh

Clive James12:05

Yeah.

Presenter12:06

off o over the horizon and every pace would be thirty nine inches. You rather hoped he would. Yes, we rather hoped he did, but he never did. In fact he used to lurk around waiting to spring into our our huts unannounced and throw all our equipment on the floor, that sort of stuff. It was a it was a mild taste of what

Presenter12:20

Life must have been like in a totalitarian state. It was meant to disabuse you of your notions that life was fair and comfortable and so on, and it worked. And gradually when one's mind unfroze and began to work again, one started to become rather more cunning about life.

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But in every other respect I quite enjoyed the army. It's an awful confession to make. I can only make it now. You're supposed to hate it, because Australians are supposed to be free, untrammelled spirits.

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In fact, I quite enjoyed it. When you began to settle down at the university, you worked on the university newspaper. It was called Honni Soie, and it came out every week. And I started off writing little fillers for it, and bad jokes, and terrible poems. And I worked on it for years and worked my way up to literary editor. At that stage, I was writing the whole literary page under various pseudonyms. And I even wrote letters of complaint about my own work and sent them into the letters column in an effort to build up the proportion of the newspaper I was actually writing. It was pretty nearly 100% by then. The work I did was so bad that I even now, when I think about it, I let out an involuntary yell of horror and embarrassment. And I just hope that none of it will ever come to light. There's no reason why it should, of course. By the time you'd graduated, had you made up your mind what you wanted to do?

Presenter13:29

I knew that I was going to be some kind of writer, but only because I'd already worked out for myself that I wasn't good at anything else. So what did you do? What what job did you take? I became a journalist on the Sydney Morning Herald, a big newspaper in Sydney.

Presenter13:40

And I worked for a year as the assistant editor of the magazine page and that was invaluable experience because I got the job of rewriting unsolicited articles. And any newspaper gets unsolicited articles in stacks every day from people who are mad or sane but can't write or mad and can't write or always these categories. And to get their work into publishable shape is invaluable training. It teaches you the sheer mechanics of writing, the the business of getting things in the right order for example.

Clive James14:00

Uh

Speaker 414:00

Always these categories.

Presenter14:11

I learned more in that year than any other year in my life, I think. What brought you to this country? Having learned that, I thought perhaps there wasn't anything more to learn in Australia at that time. This is 1960-61. This was before the Goff Whitlam government. Australia was a very, very conservative country. It was sort of stiff as a Manchu dynasty. It was nothing altered. It seemed that the Liberal Party, which was of course the Conservative Party in Australian terms, would rule forever. Nothing happened and everyone who had any ambitions at all in the arts of any kind always thought of fulfilling those ambitions abroad. That was the way everyone thought.

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So one simply went and tried one's hand. At which point, let's have record number three. Well, I think.

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After Mozart, I'd like to try something a bit more obscure. It's by Charpentier from one of his operas, which are now all neglected.

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It's called Louise.

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And this is an aria from it, and it's sung incomparably by Kalas. And it's towards the end of her career, but she was in great, great voice. And I think she sung this marvellous, really marvellous aria with extraordinary sensitivity. She had great, great drama, this woman. And I think if I had a fleet of tankers, I would have given them to her any day of the week, just on the basis of this track alone, which I've worn out. I've got two records with this track on it, and I've worn them both out. Here's Kalas singing from Louise.

Speaker 415:42

God is believing.

Speaker 416:04

Yeah.

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Oh Jesus

Speaker 416:18

Yeah.

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Maria Calla singing Depuit le jour from Louise.

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So you arrived in London, Clive. Had you contacts here?

Presenter16:32

None. I think I had one letter of introduction which I lost, together with the only ten pounds I had in the world. I still don't know where I lost. I think they fell out of my pocket. I had a Gabardine overcoat, and the inside pocket had a a tear along the bottom. Anyway, that went, and there I was, stranded. And uh I still can't decide whether that was the best thing that ever happened to me or was an unmitigated disaster. What I do know is that over the next few years I had about a hundred jobs, that many addresses, averaged about nine pounds a week, and I'm afraid was the kind of visitor to Britain which Britain has subsequently learned to regret, someone who's actually not really contributing much. You got up to Cambridge. How did that happen? Well, that was a strange...

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business too, because I decided after a few years of absolutely getting nowhere and feeling a bit of a burden on the State,

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that I'd like to go back and study again and do it right, because I'd been a bit of a wastrel when I was a student in Sydney.

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So I wrote to my professor in uh Australia, who had always promised me if I wanted to study again that he would uh try and do something about it, because he thought I

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had promised as a student if ever I could settle down, and that was ten years later and I was ready.

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to settle down and he wrote to a friend of his in Cambridge who was in charge of a college and I was invited to join them as an affiliated student, which meant that I was came in as sort of as a mature student. And on the basis of having a place, I was able to get a grant from uh the LCC. And I'm still very conscious of the fact that this was a supremely generous

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Gift

Presenter17:56

Because I'd done nothing to deserve it. And so that's something else on my conscience. That's more conscience money. I think that's another set of broken tiles and bricks that I'm trying to pay back. You made a contribution. You were President of the Footlight.

Presenter18:07

That was later. I mean, I didn't know until I got to Cambridge that I was going to do anything with it. And even then, I was not a very good student again. You're supposed to read books when you go to Cambridge. And although I read them, the ones I read usually weren't on the course. And I went off and got stuck into the Footlights Club. And I did a lot of reviews for them. I directed about 22 separate shows in various forms when I was in Cambridge. I appeared on stage myself rather clumsily many times and eventually became president of Footlights which is something I'm very pleased to have done and that was really my Cambridge. That was what Cambridge for me was about. I graduated and I was given leave to sign on for a PhD, which I did and I did two years of that. I'm afraid I didn't do much on my actual thesis but I did settle down to learn some of the modern languages and things like that. And I gradually mastered the art of using my time.

Clive James18:15

And although I remember

Presenter19:02

But uh it came very late. I mean I spent an awful lot of my early life wasting time, which bothers me still, because we went only got so much of it. And I think one of the great misfortunes of life is you only you find out later that you should have been using your time earlier. And there's no way to convince a young man of this.

Clive James19:06

Bond is

Presenter19:18

When you came down from Cambridge, what was the first break you had? Well, I had the break before I came down. I was still doing my PhD and I was invited by a marvellous man called Nicholas Tomelin, who's dead now. He was killed in the Middle East. But I was invited to write for The New Statesman when I was still at Cambridge. He'd he'd come up to do a debate and I'd debated on the same team and he'd he'd read some of my work in the Cambridge magazines and he asked me to write for him. And I suppose that's how it started. And then one editor picks you up and then another editor does. It all happens very gradually. But then the time came when I was doing more work for Fleet Street than I was on my thesis and I had to make a choice. And I think rather typically I I chose what seemed like the next

Presenter19:58

thing to do. Perhaps I should have stayed and finished what I was doing. I've only later come to believe that one should finish things. But I left my PhD undone and I walked away from it. Yeah, to Fleet Street. You're renowned as a witty and or wounding critic of books and and and television programmes. Now is there any point in being a television critic? The stuff's gone by, there's nothing you can do about it.

Clive James20:07

The play stream.

Presenter20:19

Absolutely not. There's nothing you can do to influence the course of television or even uh what programmes get put on, because programme controllers are listening to ratings, not to critics, and they're right. That's what they should listen to. They should listen to the mass.

Presenter20:32

But yes, I granted all that, I still think there's some point because television is something that happens to everyone. Everyone's got opinions on it, and a lot of people are grateful to have their opinion in print, expressed by someone whose professional job is to put that opinion down in its sharpest possible form. Also, you can give encouragement to program makers who may have done something that hasn't found favor with their bosses and so on. It often gives them encouragement to find that their work is appreciated. But also a lot of television, because there's so much time to fill.

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necessarily hoodwinks the public to some degree, and I think the critic can help protect the public by at least raising a laugh at what is solemn and deserves to be exposed.

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But I see my main task as celebrating my own enjoyment of television, which I enjoy very much.

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I'm one of those people who switches the set on when they come into the room. The other kind of person switches off when they come into the room. I just keep it running. Now in your critical pieces you show extraordinarily wide literary scholarship and an extraordinary vocabulary. Obviously you would do a great deal of reading as well as writing still.

Clive James21:27

I am

Presenter21:36

Yeah, I've I've made up in later life for I think my early

Presenter21:40

tendency to read off the course. Now that I've stopped being a student I've become a bit more of a reader on the course. And I read uh as much as I can in in English and some of the modern languages too. Not very well but uh but I I do what I can to uh to try and give myself a grounding in the other literatures. And I usually read in the early morning to before I start the day.

Presenter22:02

It's time for another record. Another lady's voice? Well, this time three ladies, because I think it's time for value for money again. And because I.

Presenter22:09

I simply had to have something by Richard Strauss, who was the first opera composer I listened to. Seriously, I came to to opera quite late, too, in my early twenties.

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And I can still remember the day I first heard the trio from Rosen Cavalier.

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I had never, ever heard anything like it in my life, and to day, now twenty years have gone by, the hair on the back of my neck still rises when I hear the trio.

Presenter23:31

Part of the closing trio from Der Rosen Cavalier with Elizabeth Schwartzkopf, Krista Ludwig and Theresa Stitch Randall.

Presenter23:38

Now, Clive, you've published three long satirical epics in rhyme couplets, of which you gave the first performances yourself. Media, politics, and the literary scene were the subjects. What inspired you to tackle this what must have been a s a very, very difficult

Presenter23:56

Long drawn out tasks. Rhyming couplets are difficult to write, and they're especially difficult to write if you're going to make them look effortless, which I strove very, very hard to do. I wanted to make them sound as easy as speaking. But I never doubted that I wanted to do something like this, because I simply like the idea of public poetry. This doesn't mean that I have anything against the idea of private poetry. I think necessarily the best poetry is only for a few people, because it's such a condensed form of speech. And a lot of ordinary people have got a good reason to be frightened of the idea of reading anything so concentrated and so difficult. On the other hand, that aside, I think there's a good case for writing the kind of poetry that a lot of people can appreciate and understand and enjoy, especially if it can be humorous. So I just thought I would like to do a long, extended, humorous epic about life in London.

Presenter24:46

Because the only thing an outsider can bring to London is the outside overall view. And I simply saw.

Presenter24:52

London is this vast glass house full of amazing marionettes and mannequins. So I started to write these epic, and I've since started a fourth one. I'm working on it now. It's on a subject that I'm not at liberty to reveal at this stage. It's all heavily under wraps. But let's say that it has something to do with someone quite close to the throne. And I regard him, oops, I shouldn't have said him. I regard this person as a comic hero of great potential. And I'm even now forging the first couplets of what I hope will be an epic that leaves the others gasping in the shade. Another record, number five.

Presenter25:28

Yes, well after the the three voices of Strass, I think it might be time to try just the single voice again in a rather unknown song by an almost unknown composer. The composer is Reynaldo Hahn, or Ann.

Presenter25:42

This is a lovely, lovely melody, and it's sung by an amazing lady whose English Maggie Tate.

Presenter25:48

who was an exquisite singer right through her career. And this was recorded quite late in her life, in nineteen forty one, quite well on in her career. And it's it's just a beautiful, beautiful little piece, and it's called Ensordine, which means muted, not much noise. And she doesn't make much noise, but listen to the sound she makes. It's so perfectly shaped.

Speaker 426:08

Almordon le derni.

Speaker 426:19

Benetoro Toramu.

Speaker 426:26

The sus

Presenter27:00

Maggie Tate singing Ensur Din, a setting by Ronaldo Arne of a Verlaine poem. Now yet another of your accomplishments, the the talking head on the box. You used to have a beard, didn't you? I did. When the first T V series I ever did was cinema. That's right. And I had a a beard later on. I never quite understood why I wore that beard. I think it was a way of hiding while on television. And I did thirty-nine episodes of cinema and decided that that was

Presenter27:26

quite enough of of having being recognized for my beard. So I quit the programme and shaved off the beard and there thereby vanished. Because of course if you're famous for having a beard, all you have to do is get rid of it and you're gone.

Clive James27:33

Because of course if you're famous

Presenter27:36

So I returned to anonymity, which I thought at that stage I preferred. Then later on I sort of crept back into television again, but always doing one show or one series at a time and then

Presenter27:46

Popping back into Fleet Street, which is the strategy I've maintained ever since. You said it was about sex with Anna Rayburn. Yes, that was most enjoyable. It was very difficult to do.

Presenter27:54

It was the first time I'd ever walked and talked in studio, and walking and talking is ten times as difficult as just talking. And I had to sort of talk to the audience and this sort of thing. And we had a disaster with our first program. I can reveal this now. It never got transmitted. It had live baboons in it. And the baboons didn't arrive from Africa until the tape. I mean, they weren't even there for rehearsal. They were sort of demonstration. In rehearsal, I went up and pointed to two stage hands who were pretending to be baboons. And I said, Note how the male baboon is so much larger than the female baboon.

Clive James28:15

Yeah.

Presenter28:24

And then the the night came and the audience was in.

Presenter28:28

And uh at the moment for the Baboons game the back curtains open and a cage rolled in.

Presenter28:32

With two baboons in it, and that's when we found out that baboons don't like to be televised. They go to the back of the cage where the camera can't see them.

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And so people appeared and coaxed them with bananas and so on.

Presenter28:41

And finally the whole thing just degenerated into shambles, and that was the end of that. And we simplified. And after we finished simplifying, a question of sex assumed the shape that the the world subsequently saw, which I think did a fairly good job of making a very complicated subject.

Presenter28:57

intelligible. And uh I've seen it the series right through twice now. And although I'm still slightly ashamed of my own clumsiness in it, I think it was well worth doing, yes. Now recently um a Saturday night mixed bag

Presenter29:09

That was Saturday Night People, which is my favourite show that I've been involved in yet, and I hope it goes on and off and on and off forever. It's not just because I have to sit there and say my piece and have an easy life. It's because it's not quite like any other television I've ever seen anywhere in the world. It's actually the flavor of the talk of the day. And it it happened in a funny way because it was an invention of the

Clive James29:18

Just be quiet.

Presenter29:34

Current Affairs Department and Not Light Entertainment. As it turned out, I think it was an entertaining programme, but it was started as a current affairs programme. And so what's basic about the show and strong about it is that it actually does news stories. And around those stories one can venture the occasional

Presenter29:51

witty comment or would-be witty comment. But I think that saves it from this deadly thing you get when you try to go on and be funny in a funny programme. The challenge is too great, the attention on you is too strong. And and wit and humour are really delicate little flowers who come into being best when they're not being encouraged to that extent. And I think what made Saturday Night People amusing was that it was amusing incidentally by accident.

Presenter30:16

Another record. We've got to number six now. We're doing very well. Well, I think it's time to leave classical music because although I love classical music, I love jazz and uh rock and roll too, and I sort of I want all those voices on the desert island because you don't just want variety but

Clive James30:19

Well

Presenter30:34

The people who sing them are different, and although Maggie Tate is very rightly called the Exquisite, there's all the difference in the world between her and Billy Holiday.

Presenter30:42

who was exquisite too, but just so vital.

Presenter30:46

And it was an embarrassment of Richard's. I didn't know which Billie Holiday track to choose. I ended up choosing Pennies from Heaven from 1936 because as well as Billy singing superbly, there's just a staggering group playing behind her. Teddy Wilson's on the piano, Cozy Coles on drums, and there's a clarinet solo from Benny Goodman in the middle. I think it just beggars description.

Speaker 431:19

Don't you know each cloud contains any from heaven?

Speaker 431:27

You find your fortune falling all over town.

Speaker 431:35

Be sure that your own brother is both daddy.

Presenter31:52

Billie Holiday, Penn is from Heaven, 1936. Let's go straight into your next disc. What's that? Well, this was a real problem because I have to choose one rock and roll disc, and I had enough trouble choosing my one jazz singer because Billie Holiday had to stand in for Bessie Smith and everybody because I adore them all. With rock and roll, there's so much rock and roll that I think is just marvellous. I wanted to have.

Presenter32:13

Ike and Tina Turner doing River Deep and Mountain High, which has got a fantastic piece of singing by Tina Turner on it. I wanted Aretha Franklin singing Spanish Harlem. I ended up choosing one track from, I think, the greatest single rock record that exists, and that's The Supreme's Greatest Hits. And this is the original Supremes, headed by Diana Ross. This is Tamla Motown at its greatest, and I think this is one of their greatest songs. It's called Baby Love, and I think this is just sheer beauty from start to finish.

Speaker 432:47

Need ya, oh my wife, need ya.

Speaker 432:51

But all you do is treat me well.

Speaker 432:55

Break my heart early in the stair

Speaker 432:58

Tell me what did I do wrong To make you stay away so long Cause baby love, my baby love Been missing you, miss kissing you

Presenter33:12

Diana Ross and the Supreme's Baby Love. Now, you've described in detail in unreliable memoirs your childhood aptitude for demolishing things. How are you at putting things up? A hut, for example, on this desert island? I've got a terrible, terrible feeling that I'm going to have to live in the open air on the desert island, so I think I hope it's the right climate. Well, you should know about beach life.

Presenter33:33

I spent a lot of time on the beach.

Presenter33:35

When I was young, until I left Australia, I suppose I spent half of every day underwater. And it's a wonder that my toes aren't webbed. And it's it's a wonderful life. Skin goes brown and stays brown and always sort of dried salt on the shoulders and zinc cream on the nose.

Presenter33:53

But then the time comes when you want to put away all that and do something serious. But you must remember about fishing, small boats, that sort of thing.

Presenter34:00

What's this leading to? This is leading to what kind of castaway you're going to be. Are you going to get your castaway's badge for efficiency? No, I'm afraid not. I was rather depending on having food flown in, actually.

Presenter34:12

Or airdropped. Would you try to escape? An awful lot d would depend on what else was going on on the island, but I've got a feeling it'd be a bit short of nightlife. Yes, I think I would try.

Presenter34:21

to get out at an early stage. Unfortunately I'm not much of a practical hand.

Presenter34:25

I think I'd need help, and I was going to say if you asked me what book I would have on the island apart from the Bible and Shakespeare, I would ask for a copy of How to Build Your Own Single Seater, Long Range Monoplane out of Palm Fronds and Coconut Fiber by Billy Mesherschmidt.

Clive James34:39

But if you message me.

Presenter34:40

If you can find that book, you can have it. Now you're a qualified pilot. That would be in the book. But failing that, I think I would probably have a copy of Montaigne, because there's so much about in him about how to live alone. And it sounds as if I'd have to do a lot of that. I'd cheat a bit and have a parallel text because I I love the original French. The nice thing about 16th century French is nobody really sure how it was pronounced. So an Australian can read it aloud without making a fool of himself.

Clive James34:45

But salient.

Presenter35:05

And also they have Florio's English text on the opposite side, because that's great English. And I would try to content myself with that and study the art of solitude.

Presenter35:14

For the rest of my life, which of course would last for a long time because I'd magically be able to feed myself off coconuts and stuff.

Clive James35:17

Good.

Presenter35:19

We still haven't had your last record, number eight.

Presenter35:22

I'm treading a narrow line with record number eight because the lyric of the song is actually written by myself. It's sung by Julie Covington on the first LP she made and for many reasons the album's deleted so I can confidently recommend it to all those people out there knowing that they won't be able to go and buy it and therefore this is not a plug. But I'm still very fond of some of the songs on it. The music is by my collaborator Pete Atkin and I think some of the melodies are marvellous. Julie sings them with a wonderful simplicity and especially this one and I think it's an appropriate lyric for someone who is reflecting on his own life as he sits on a desert island with the sun sinking slowly in the west and one palm tree outlined against the stars. It's called If I Had My Time Again.

Speaker 336:08

If I had my time again

Speaker 336:15

There'd be no days wasted.

Speaker 336:20

In playing hard to get

Speaker 336:25

That's for now all I regret

Speaker 336:29

Are the joys untasted?

Presenter36:33

A 1971 Clive James lyric with a tune by Pete Atkin, If I Had My Time Again and Julie Covington was singing it.

Presenter36:42

If you could take just one disc out of the HU played us, which would it be?

Presenter36:46

It's almost an impossible question to answer, but I think it would have to be the Supreme's greatest hit, because every track on it is so danceable, and I've got a feeling on Desert Island you do a lot of dancing alone.

Presenter36:57

Especially towards sunset. Very sad. And one luxury, one inanimate object. This is another difficult one. I did think of asking for the Lysergus cup, because it looks so beautiful as you lift it and it changes from green to a lovely rose colour. And this would give you something to think about and appreciate, because you'd be filling it with coconut milk. There'd be nothing else to drink for decades. So I think the drinking vessel would be important. But on the other hand, that's not quite enough. And then I thought of asking for a chess set. Except I play so badly I couldn't even beat myself.

Presenter37:28

I can't think more than one move ahead. So I think I would ask for a game of Space Invaders. It's a fantastic amusement parlor machine. And people who are crazy about it play in every city they go to. I would like one of those, plus its own generator, because it needs a small electricity supply. And a supply of ten P pieces. One ten P piece would do it because I have it rigged so the ten p piece fell out at the bottom after each game. But I would attempt to get better at Space Invaders. So far I can only shoot down one battle fleet. Experts can shoot down five. I find that endlessly amusing and it would have to be endlessly amusing because one is on the desert island for a long time.

Clive James37:47

Now it

Clive James37:51

Right.

Presenter37:58

Right. And thank you, Clive James, for letting us hear your Desert Island diss. I've enjoyed it very much. Thank you. Goodbye, everyone.

Clive James38:14

You've been listening to a download from the Desert Islandists archive. For more downloads, please visit the Radio 4 website.