Barbara Woodhouse

Speaker 10:00

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

Speaker 10:05

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

Presenter0:29

Our Castaway this week trains dogs and dog owners her own way. It's Barbara Woodhouse.

Presenter0:36

Now, misses Woodhouse, you have many interests is music one of them?

Barbara Woodhouse0:40

Listening but not playing. I used to play the piano very badly, but I can't play anything really now. But listening I enjoy very much, but I don't get much time, I'm afraid, these days. So if I'm stuck on a desert island, at least I shall have time to listen to my favourite tune, shan't I?

Presenter0:54

Indeed. What's the first one you've chosen?

Barbara Woodhouse0:56

Well, I've chosen one that takes me back to my college days. It's called Inner Monastery Garden because it's a tune that was played perpetually in the women's hostel at the Harper Adams Agricultural College when I was a girl and took agriculture. And there were only very few records, and we all quarrelled over what should go on, but Inner Monastery Garden always won.

Barbara Woodhouse1:14

And it will take me back to very happy days of my youth, back to nineteen twenty-seven.

Presenter1:19

Here it is, conducted by the composer himself, Albert Catilby.

Presenter1:52

In a monastery garden, Albert W. Catalbi and his concert orchestra on a seventy-eight record. You're Irish by birth, aren't you?

Barbara Woodhouse2:00

I'm not Irish, I'm English, but I was born at a boys' college, St Columbus College, near Dublin, Rathfarnam, County Dublin. Well, my father um was headmaster of the school. The school was sister school to Radleigh and Glenarmond. There are three in the group St Columbus founded them, I suppose. And I was born there, lived the first nine years of my life there.

Presenter2:06

How did that come about?

Barbara Woodhouse2:19

Many happy days.

Presenter2:20

Do you consider yourself a country girl?

Barbara Woodhouse2:22

Oh, absolutely. My mother used to call me a horny handed member of the soil, because that's where she really thought I belonged, and I do. I've been mad on animals and farming all my life, and I farmed for twenty one years.

Presenter2:33

As a child you used to ride a heifer.

Barbara Woodhouse2:35

Oh, I I have even when I've been grown up. I've ridden my cows when they didn't give milk any more. I've gone my daughter's ridden her pony, and I've gone out on a cow. I never see why poor cows should be left to end their days just grazing. Why shouldn't they come out and see the world? Oh, I only had a heifer when I was a little girl. That's all. We didn't have a pony, so I saddled the heifer up and she jumped beautifully. My ambition was to go to the White City against Pat Moss. That would have been fun, wouldn't it?

Speaker 42:48

Oh, I only have

Speaker 12:49

Uh

Presenter2:58

Not very comfortable to ride, Shawty, rather a bony backbone.

Barbara Woodhouse3:00

No, not a bit uncomfortable. You have a saddle, but their heads are very low. When they jump they put their heads on the ground when they land, and if you're not careful and lean back. It wouldn't do for the modern uh horse jumping that you see at Wembley and places. You'd be off in no time. Or a heifer jumped. Oh, they jumped beautifully. A heifer can easily jump well over five feet from a standstill.

Presenter3:12

Yeah.

Barbara Woodhouse3:18

Oh yes, they're better than horses.

Presenter3:20

Well, you told us you went to an agricultural college. Then what?

Barbara Woodhouse3:23

Well, I did so many things. I ran a riding school and uh later on I went to the Argentine and then I came home and we imported polar ponies and I played polo at Oxford.

Presenter3:32

Right, well, let let let's take it step by step. Let's rush here. Uh I have a note here that you bought a pony for thirty shillings and broke him.

Barbara Woodhouse3:40

Yes, it was unbreakable. It was sold for thirty shillings in the market because nobody could break it in. It chucked me off three times. But the third time that it chucked me off I landed with my legs round its ears you know, just behind its ears, and that stumped it,'cause I weighed quite a bit, and it couldn't do anything. It was only a tiny pony. And after that it became a very nice little pony, and in my riding school it taught all the two year olds.

Presenter4:01

Your writing school got quite big.

Barbara Woodhouse4:03

Oh, it was enormous. I had seventeen horses, yes, and I used to teach all the undergraduates all sorts of famous people.

Presenter4:08

And then you began to board dogs.

Barbara Woodhouse4:10

Yes, had twenty six dogs, and I used to take them all out into the orchard and train them all, so that when their owners came they were all beautifully trained, but unfortunately they got to love me too much. And after they had gone home they all came back, and the next morning you'd find perhaps twenty two, twenty three dogs unless they lived too far away back on my lawn. And in the end the owners used to ring up and use bad language to say you can keep the something something dog, it doesn't love us any more. So in the end I gave up because of that.

Presenter4:36

Now you told us he went to the Argentine.

Barbara Woodhouse4:38

Yes. Went to the Argentine, where, of course, I had all the horses in the world that I wanted, because there were six thousand on the Estanzia I went to.

Presenter4:43

Tell I

Barbara Woodhouse4:45

And in the in the end I only went out as a visitor, but in the end I got the job of breaking them in for the company, Liebig's Extractor Meat Company, and they paid me ten shillings a head to break my neck or breaking the horse.

Presenter4:55

Now it was there that you started this hazardous business that you have talked about on several occasions, of making friends with the horse by blowing up its nostrils.

Presenter5:03

No.

Barbara Woodhouse5:03

Well, that's not hazardous at all. It's an ordinary how do you do greeting in horse language. And horses, of course, do it naturally to each other. And if you do it, you blow down your nose, a horse comes up and breathes up yours and thinks you're just another horse, and likes to go with you everywhere. They'll never chuck you off. I've never been chucked off an unbroken horse, but I've been chucked off many times by a broken horse with a lot of vice and wickedness. An unbroken horse is a very pleasant thing. They have no reason to hate human beings. It's only human beings that make them

Speaker 45:23

Yeah.

Speaker 15:23

Anand

Barbara Woodhouse5:30

Dislike them with their cruelty, with their awful bits, and their bad hands, and their spurs, and everything else, making them do endless things that are not really natural to a horse.

Presenter5:39

It sounds like an adventurous life that you had in the Argentine. You you you experienced what it was like being at the centre of a whirlwind.

Presenter5:47

You got tangled up in a smallpox epidemic. You were also on the the ranch on Rivet and and and in fact doctor for the community.

Barbara Woodhouse5:50

You were all

Barbara Woodhouse5:56

I think more doctor than vet. I I stitched up a horse once that t tore its uh skin right down from its eyes to its uh nose with an ordinary darning needle. And uh people, of course, were always coming to me'cause they thought the Englishwoman probably knew the believe me, the English woman didn't know. But she'd done a bit of vet. I did two years of vet, and of course once I stitched up a couple of natives who'd knifed each other, and I didn't know where all their gut went because it was all hanging out, but I put it back and stitched them up as I thought should be, and they were taken to hospital sixty miles on a bullock cart. And when they got there, they sort of had a look inside and said it's okay. Stitch em up again, send em back.

Presenter6:29

Well done.

Presenter6:32

How long we were there?

Barbara Woodhouse6:33

I was out there nearly four years. I had enough by the time I came back. It's it's a wonderful experience, but it's not something I'd like to do as a as a life job.

Presenter6:42

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

Barbara Woodhouse6:45

My second record is Charmagne, which of course brings very pleasant memories holiday memories actually because we all played an instrument of some sort or other, and when we used to go to the seaside, as we did every August, we all took our instruments with us. Our entertainment was always in the family. We never had to go to the cinema or do anything. My sister played the mandolin, mother played the guitar, my brother played the banjo, I played the piano, and we used to have various friends with us, all played instruments, and Charmayne was in that day rather a lovely tune.

Presenter7:14

Well, it was the family's string orchestra, and I see you've chosen a string orchestra here, Manta Verney.

Barbara Woodhouse7:18

This

Speaker 17:18

Exactly.

Presenter7:50

Mantovani and his orchestra and the familiar signature tune Charmagne.

Presenter7:54

What did you do when you returned from the Argentine?

Barbara Woodhouse7:58

I horse dealt. I bought and sold horses because I couldn't really think what to do.

Presenter8:02

Success is

Barbara Woodhouse8:02

Yes, yes, very successful. I liked used to buy all the rubbish. I used to go to markets and buy all the horses that were no good to anybody for anything between fifteen quid and twenty five. And then I'd rebreak them and sell them for enormous sums of money. But the funniest thing I ever did was resell a man his own horse. I bought it in the morning as a robe, and I sold it back to him in the afternoon as a perfect horse. I didn't guarantee it. I told him to try it. I clipped it out and titivated it up, and he looked over the horse box, and he said, What a pretty horse that is. I said, Would you like to try it? and he said yes. And he took it out and he he paid me forty pounds more than I had paid him in the morning. He didn't know it was his own horse and I laughed my head off, because he'd always boasted that he knew his horses and he had a good laugh in the end.

Presenter8:36

I'm not

Presenter8:41

Oh, well done. You did some school teaching, too.

Barbara Woodhouse8:44

Oh, well, that was only when my sister was ill. I wasn't a school teacher, but she was ill, and I rang up the headmistress and said I'd take her a place if they couldn't get a teacher, and so I went on over there to the school at Bister.

Barbara Woodhouse8:56

forgot the name of it now, but it was a girls' school, and uh I taught them agriculture because I didn't know anything much much else, but they were nearly all farmers' daughters, and one farmer wrote to the headmistress and said what on earth was this child learning at school? He seemed to be more about agriculture than school work. But the children enjoyed it, and so do I, but I got the sack.

Barbara Woodhouse9:13

Very quickly, because there was a horse dealer's yard opposite, and in the break time I went over and bought a horse, and the headmistress didn't think that was suitable for her girls, so she gave me the chuck.

Presenter9:21

I'd think it eminently suitable for anybody.

Presenter9:25

Well, you then went into cattle dealing later because you you started up a farm, didn't you?

Barbara Woodhouse9:29

Yes, I had the top cows in Bucks and Heart, the top milk eels, for twenty-one years, and they were Guernsey's, and again I bought only cheap ones because we didn't have much money. And all sorts of people used to ring me up, complete strangers, and send me blank cheques and tell me to go and buy their herd for them, to start herds with. And I always wonder what they looked like. I thought it was very trusting to send me one man, send me a blank cheque to go and buy ten heifers for him, and I've never met him. His name was Ben L. And if he's listening to this, I wonder whether he he remembers. I thought it was very nice. It was great fun, you know, buying and selling. I can understand Petticoat Market. Another record, Barbara. Watch for weeks.

Presenter10:02

How did you get another record, Barbara? What we

Presenter10:06

What shall we have now?

Barbara Woodhouse10:07

Um now we're going to have Victor Silvester, which takes me back to another entirely different period.

Barbara Woodhouse10:13

My sister ran a dancing school. My sister Hazel ran a dancing school at Oxford, and I used to have my riding school during the day and teach everybody riding and join her teaching dancing every night. And when I first met my husband Michael, I taught him to dance, and the tunes that we used were all Victor Silvester as far as possible, and this whispering takes me back to nineteen thirty nine when I met Michael.

Presenter11:04

Victor Silvester and his Ballroom Orchestra in Whispering.

Presenter11:08

Now, we haven't talked about dogs yet.

Presenter11:11

Which was the first important dog in your life?

Barbara Woodhouse11:14

Oh, the first really important dog was a gorgeous, terribly nervous Alsatian, which was given to me because it was going to be put down. It was so nervous it was no good to anybody, and it had one ear flat and one ear up, which of course it shouldn't have had. And I simply adored it, and I called it Kazan after the book. I can't remember the author of the book. It was a lovely book about the wild wolves and things, and one of the favourite dogs in that was called Kazan. And we were absolutely inseparable. In fact, if ever I was missing, I was in its kennel. It had one of those outdoor kennels with a sort of round hole in the front, do you remember? Yes. And I just lived with him all the time when I wasn't at school, which I hated school anyway. And I was with Kazan all day long. And unfortunately, I was very ill one day and taken to hospital, and he died in forty eight hours of a broken heart, and he was only two.

Presenter12:04

You have been especially devoted to great Danes.

Barbara Woodhouse12:07

Yes, there again it was a sad dog that was given to me in the first place. Jeanne, whom I took to the Argentine with me, she was going to be put down. I went to a cocktail party, and this lovely big great Dane was lying on a sofa, and they said she was six years old, but was going to be put down. It wasn't theirs, they'd only just taken it in temporarily she was going to be put down next day. So I said, Well, could I have her?

Barbara Woodhouse12:26

And they said of course I could, and when I took her home mother wasn't at all pleased to have a great dog like that in the house, but she soon got to love her, and I went to the Argentine, and eventually she came out to me on the boat.

Barbara Woodhouse12:36

And she died at thirteen and a half. I when I came home, I couldn't bring her home because of quarantine, and I didn't find out who'd given her a home, because I ordered her to be put down when I wasn't going back, but they didn't put her down. And then, curiously enough, twenty years later, my grandson in the Argentine my daughter lives in the Argentine now was at school with the father of the man who'd adopted my gene, and she died at thirteen and a half. Now, wasn't that nice?

Presenter12:59

Nice.

Presenter13:01

Several of your dogs had very successful careers in films.

Barbara Woodhouse13:05

Oh yes, they were known as Take One, Juno, and Junio in every big studio in the country. They never had to be spoken to, never given signals. They picked everything up by telepathy, and they starred with people like Alec Guinness and Peter Finch, and in The Avengers,

Barbara Woodhouse13:19

Oh, they were beloved in all the studios, and when uh Juno died I got cables from all over the world in memory of my dog. Isn't it funny that a dog could become belonging to the world, as my dogs did?

Presenter13:29

It's my dog's.

Barbara Woodhouse13:35

Well, a brave one, when Juno was on with Morkham and Wise in a sketch, and she was waiting to go on and attack them, when a studio hand passed her carrying a twenty five pound weight, like they prop the scenery up with, and by mistake he hit her on the jaw.

Speaker 113:46

Yeah.

Barbara Woodhouse13:48

She hesitated for a second and went straight on, and when she came out she had the most enormous lump on her jaw you've ever seen, but she was the show must go on.

Presenter13:56

Yeah Of course you've produced films yourself.

Barbara Woodhouse13:59

That was great fun and great worry. At first, of course, I met a a cameraman on appointment with Venus at uh Pinewood, and he said he was out of work after that.

Barbara Woodhouse14:08

show, and I said, Well, come on, let's go and make films. So we set off with my two children, six and seven, and my dog, invented the script as I went along, and they all went on the cinema, and I've only just got them back after twenty one years.

Presenter14:19

They've been on distribution for twenty-one years.

Barbara Woodhouse14:21

They've wrista on distribution ending up on the children's Saturday morning cinemas, and many people who have now got children of their own say they saw them when they were little girls and boys.

Presenter14:30

When was your introduction to television?

Barbara Woodhouse14:33

I went on uh what's my line? The first one, with Lady Barnett Gilbert Harding, and everything else and I beat the panel. I've got the diploma hanging up in my room. They thought I was pulling cabbages and I was rarely pushing a dog into the sit.

Presenter14:39

Everything else.

Presenter14:44

He was pulling

Presenter14:48

Now, training, that really started with road safety lectures, didn't it?

Barbara Woodhouse14:52

No, it started when I went to a an agricultural show and saw a dog doing this, this obedience training. I went home and tried it out on my Great Dane, and she did it so well that I took her into competitions, and she won a lot of major competitions, and then I started a club of my own. I put an advertisement in a local paper and asked if anybody'd like to be trained by me. And six people turned up, and it ended up that I trained seven thousand people in seven clubs. I used to run one club every day of the week, and one on Sunday included.

Presenter15:18

It is, of course, very important that dogs are trained. I mean in this country there are

Presenter15:22

What is it, six million?

Barbara Woodhouse15:23

Five and a half million. Five and a half million. And getting a very bad name because of horrible people saying horrible things about them, which is quite unnecessary. Well behaved dogs are are made by well behaved owners and if the owners have the right ideas the dogs need be offensive to no one.

Presenter15:37

Yes, there are a lot of dirty and untrained dogs too, which is a reflection on the owners of horns.

Barbara Woodhouse15:42

For all the owners, the dog can only do what the owner says, isn't it? I mean, you can't have a clean dog if the owner won't train it, can you? I put the blame entirely for all this beastliness about dogs on the owner's shoulders, and I think it's time they pulled their socks up and and got the the the right ideas on how to keep their dog.

Presenter15:57

What do you think's the answer? What about putting on a walloping grit licence fee? W would that make the owners appreciate them more and and take better care?

Presenter16:25

Yes, a good idea.

Barbara Woodhouse16:27

Or what about the stocks?

Presenter16:28

The stocks, yes, or the ducking school.

Barbara Woodhouse16:29

Yes, or the ducking school.

Presenter16:34

Another record problem.

Barbara Woodhouse16:36

Well, the next record I would like is Janet MacDonald and Nelson Eddy in Maytime. I still love it. I think it's a gorgeous thing. I think they had gorgeous voices.

Speaker 416:45

Freedom, freedom, freedom.

Speaker 417:06

And we walked.

Presenter17:16

Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald singing Will You Remember from the MGM motion picture Maytime.

Presenter17:23

Is every dog trendable?

Barbara Woodhouse17:25

Oh, no, far from it, I'm sorry to say. There are an awful lot of mental dogs in the country to day, because they live such awful lives, full of stress. They're left at eight thirty in the morning, people going to work, and don't see their owners till five o'clock in the evening. Lots of them are fed all wrongly these days, and they're getting schizophrenia. I see an awful lot of problem dogs. But I suppose I'm rather like a doctor. I probably see more uh troublesome dogs than I do good dogs because people want to get them right, and if they don't, of course, it means putting them down. And I think about three hundred thousand a year are put down. But most dogs ninety nine per cent of dogs, I should say, give an early training, and this I emphasise, train them when they come into your home at eight weeks old. Don't wait till three months or six months to take them to a class. You can do it yourself now.

Presenter18:08

You claim to train a dog in six minutes.

Barbara Woodhouse18:11

Yes, oh yes, I've done that in public all the time. I uh in basic obedience, it's very easy with the right tone of voice, the right signals.

Presenter18:11

You say great.

Barbara Woodhouse18:18

You can get them to walk to heel, sit, to stay, to down, to wait, and to come, in six minutes. I have taken the challenge many times, and I shall go on doing it as often as I can.

Presenter18:28

Now you've had

Presenter18:29

Enormous popularity with your with your television programmes on on Training Doc.

Presenter18:34

You'll become a a great celebrity and everybody all over the country, we hope, is doing something about their doc.

Presenter18:41

How do you feel about

Presenter18:43

being pursued by cries of Walkies, do you mind?

Barbara Woodhouse18:46

No, I think it's terribly funny. I got it on the tube yesterday. I my postman left our house this morning, and as he went out, he turned round and laughed and said, Walkies And I think it's very funny. As long as we m amuse people as well as educating them, isn't that the happiest thing of all? There's part of a little laughter in this world today. Let's laugh with the dogs. Dogs adore being laughed with, but hate being laughed at. If you go to a show and laugh at a dog because it looks funny, like some of them do, I think it's very cruel. They got they're very sensitive, but laugh with them, and it's lovely. I if my series has given people pleasure and education, I'm all happy.

Speaker 418:55

BAAA.

Presenter18:55

And I

Speaker 118:55

Yeah.

Presenter19:21

Great.

Presenter19:22

What next?

Barbara Woodhouse19:23

Well, the next one is Acabilk, and I adore Acabilk, and this is a particularly nice recording, and it's Stranger on the Shore, and as I'm chucked on a desert island, I'm hoping some stranger will turn up on the shore to keep me company.

Speaker 419:42

Yeah.

Speaker 419:44

Uh

Presenter20:02

Akerbilk, one of his first successes Stranger on the Shore.

Presenter20:06

Barbara, you've written a number of books, none of which is issued by a professional publisher. You're your own publisher. How do you manage that, and how did it all start?

Barbara Woodhouse20:16

Well, it started with being professional publishers, and then I decided to do it myself, hoping that uh I'd have fun out of it and perhaps produce more sales, because I think very often in publishing they bring a book out and then they forget the old titles, and it's always that they have so many new ones that we get forgotten. So I decided to do it myself, and I've had enormous fun. I know nearly all the book bars in the country, and I used to go trotting round. I'm sure some of them thought, Poor old girl, she can't sell a book, we'll take a copy, you know.

Presenter20:44

He used to go to all the bookshops all over England, all over the United Kingdom.

Barbara Woodhouse20:45

All over England, all over the world.

Barbara Woodhouse20:48

Oh, yes, I know them all. But I don't have to do that now. It's them that has to ask me for my books now, instead of me begging them to buy mine. But it was a lot of fun, and they were great fun to meet. And uh it's been an experience, a difficult experience, because not all the printers do write, and you have the uh awful business of seeing your cover perhaps printed in the wrong colour, or mistakes, or something. It's quite a worrying job, but I can recommend it to anybody who wants the challenge.

Presenter21:13

And then you've chosen the typefaces and

Barbara Woodhouse21:15

Chosen everything

Presenter21:16

Taken the photographs and done the log.

Barbara Woodhouse21:18

Well, I haven't taken the photographs. I've chosen the best photographs that have come to me, probably through the press from experts. And I hope that the main thing is it'll give they'll give pleasure to people as well as educate them.

Presenter21:29

Fine, cut out the middleman. You do the same thing with your records.

Barbara Woodhouse21:32

No, that my new record, Training Dogs Her Way, is done by professional people, and it's great fun because I've r had recorded a class on one side and straight instruction on the other, and I think the people will laugh at the class to a certain extent with me, like on the series. And I think the straight instruction will should be used when the puppy comes into your home. I think it's fun, the twenty four pictures on the sleeve.

Presenter21:53

Uh

Presenter21:55

Yes, I think the way you treat the owners is is is fascinating.

Barbara Woodhouse21:59

I don't know how the owners put up with me.

Presenter21:59

I don't know how the owners put up with me. Yes, you're going back to what I said, your first record you did indeed publish yourself.

Barbara Woodhouse22:05

I did a little record on my own, yes, years and years ago. It was rather fun.

Presenter22:07

Yes, yep.

Barbara Woodhouse22:10

But it it led the way to a proper professional one, didn't it?

Presenter22:13

Deed.

Presenter22:14

We've got to record number. I don't know, I've lost count. What's the next one you've got?

Barbara Woodhouse22:17

The next one I've got is Turner Leighton singing My Blue Heaven and Bye Bye Blackbird. Everybody used to tease me at college because my name maiden name was Blackburn, so they always when I passed used to sing Bye Bye Blackbird. But I think they're two old songs that my generation anyway will will love and I used to strum them out on the piano after rugger matches'cause I used to go to all the rugger matches as I was the only girl with sixty men in college.

Presenter22:40

At the Agricultural Co.

Barbara Woodhouse22:41

Yeah, yes, and they used to take me into the pub in the end, and I'd go to the piano and strum out Bye bye Blappers. It was the only thing I could play.

Speaker 422:47

When Whipple Wheels Go

Speaker 422:51

And evening is nigh.

Speaker 422:55

I hurried over

Speaker 423:00

Well but

Presenter23:16

Turner Leighton singing and playing My Blue Heaven and Bye Bye Blackbird.

Presenter23:21

Barbara, you're one of those people who have a degree of extrasensory perception, aren't you?

Barbara Woodhouse23:25

Oh yes I know the future very often, and I can always pick people and dogs and things up by telepathy, and the dogs do exactly what I I want. In one class I said now we won't say sit, come, stay, wait, etcetera. We'll use vegetable names, asparagus, carrots, onions, and cauliflowers but you'll be thinking what the dogs are going to do, and every dog obeyed. If you said carrots, it sat if you said asparagus, it lay down.

Barbara Woodhouse23:48

And so it just shows it doesn't matter what you say. On television the other day I uh spoke in Spanish.

Barbara Woodhouse23:54

to a dog to give it commands as a trial out. I had never done it before, not in Spanish, and the dog obeyed me perfectly. We decided what we wanted the dog to do.

Speaker 124:01

Yeah.

Barbara Woodhouse24:02

And I gave it the Spanish words, not the English, and it obeyed perfectly, so it shows it's what you're thinking that matters. So it's no good calling your dog in a nice voice, as I've told you to do, and then be thinking the beastly brute I hate it for not coming, because the dog picks up the beastly brute I hate it, and naturally won't come to you. You've got to have nice thoughts if you want to train a dog.

Presenter24:20

Have you the same gift with people?

Barbara Woodhouse24:22

Oh, yes. I'm always picking up people. I save my telephone bill by doing that. I pick up a friend of mine to phone me, and within ten minutes she'll phone me.

Barbara Woodhouse24:30

My children do exactly the same. I couldn't possibly afford all the telephone bills if I didn't have extra sensory deception and pick them up. And also, I used to know in the practice when my husband his doctor, I used to know exactly what was wrong with the people when they phoned. I always answered the night calls. I had the telephone by my bed. I woke very quickly, and I would tell my husband what was wrong with them. And one day he he said to me, Will, is it bad? Do you think I ought to go? and I said, Oh, no, it isn't. But he went just the same. He wasn't going to trust my ESP, I can tell you. But it it always works. I was at a meeting once, talking to a ladies' club, and I said I always knew what was wrong with humans and what was wrong with dogs. And a lady at the back of the hall said, What's wrong with my husband? and I said, Madam, your husband's got cancer of the jaw. And she said, Yes, that's right. Well, how did I know? It's a horrid thing. I wish I hadn't got it.

Presenter25:17

You had a premonition of a railway crash once.

Barbara Woodhouse25:19

Oh yes. My husband always travelled on that train, and I told him not to go on it that morning it was going to crash, and I tried to warn all the station masters and things, and they just thought another lunatic on the line. Oh, yes, madam, we take great care of our passengers, but they didn't. The train did crash, and there were a lot of casualties, and it was very sad, but I saved my husband going on it.

Presenter25:38

Let's get back to music. What next?

Barbara Woodhouse25:40

The next is the Skyboat song. A little bit hopefully on a desert island that a skyboat might sort of be misrooted and rescue me. It's a lovely song and a very peaceful one. I think I'd be quite happy to stay on an island with that if I could hear it quite often.

Speaker 425:46

And the

Speaker 425:56

Good.

Presenter26:29

The Skyboat song played by Adrian Brett.

Presenter26:33

Now obviously on this desert island

Presenter26:35

You could cultivate, you could get food.

Presenter26:39

Ever done any fishing to bear to your diet?

Barbara Woodhouse26:41

Oh, no, I couldn't fish. I wouldn't like that at all. But what I will do on the desert island, I'm going to tame everything that's on it. If there are any insects or birds, or I might even get rescued by clinging on to a turtle, if I could train it. What do you think to get to the next

Presenter26:53

What happened in what? Swiss family robins.

Barbara Woodhouse26:55

Oh, did it? Well, I'll do that again, I think. But I had a spider at home years ago who used to come out every night and sit on my lap, a lovely big spider. I love spiders. And I heard.

Presenter27:06

A tame spider. I've never heard of that sort of thing.

Barbara Woodhouse27:07

I've never heard of that sort of thing. Well, actually he eventually got an a wife and he brought her out one day, a small, rather miserable looking spider, and she took one look at me and said, Never again I never saw him again So it shows how wicked women can be if they're jealous, doesn't it?

Presenter27:19

Yeah.

Barbara Woodhouse27:20

She just took him home and that was it. We never saw a spider again. It's rather peculiar.

Presenter27:23

Would you try to escape?

Barbara Woodhouse27:26

I don't think I could from a desert island. I used to be a first-rate swimmer, but I doubt if I could escape now. But I would, of course, likewise.

Presenter27:31

Small bitch, any experience with small boots.

Barbara Woodhouse27:33

No, no experience at all. I'm not a handyman at all. I mean, give me a hammer and I just hit my thumb and that would be it, I'm sorry to say. No, it would have to be something to do with animals. That tame seagull or something entire message to his leg and hope it landed and somebody saw it. I don't know. I don't know how I'd escape from a desert island. I might be happy, I don't know. I don't think so, though. I like company.

Presenter27:39

Uh

Presenter27:53

Your last record.

Barbara Woodhouse27:54

My last record, of course, is my signature tune on the series Sweet Talking Rag. I think it's a lovely tune, and the stories I hear from dog owners are very amusing. A poodle lady has just written to me.

Barbara Woodhouse28:07

and said that every time the signature tune comes on the poodle rushes to the television and sits in front of it. But unfortunately the other day my signature tune, which I'm very jealous of, came on another programme, and the poodle apparently rushed to the television, sat in front of it, saw what came on, and put his tail down and disappeared.

Presenter28:24

Well, I hope he's listening now.

Speaker 428:28

Uh

Presenter28:59

The poodles and people everywhere sweet talk in rag.

Presenter29:03

I don't know who the pianist is, but the tune was composed by Sam Fontaine.

Presenter29:08

If you could take only one disc out of the eight you've played us, which would it be?

Barbara Woodhouse29:12

I would take the Skyboat song,'cause, as I said, the word boat does mean rescue, and it's a very peaceful tune. If I couldn't be rescued, at least I think I could go to sleep to that in the evening and have a peaceful night.

Presenter29:25

And you're allowed one luxury to take?

Barbara Woodhouse29:28

Well, my one luxury would be my clock. It's a wonderful humelu clock that belonged to my mother, and it's over a hundred years old, and it's still ticking away on my mantelpiece.

Presenter29:38

Good, and we'll give you a special box to keep the sand out. One book apart from the Bible and Shakespeare and big encyclopedias.

Barbara Woodhouse29:46

Well, I'm going to be very conceited. I hope my listeners won't think I am. But I'm going to take my own book, Talking to Animals, because it's an early autobiography which gave me enormous pleasure, not only to write, but to the memories of my early days, and my days right after I married my husband, and that sort of thing, would give me the pleasure. If there's nothing on Desert Island but blank Desert Island, at least I can go back into the past and remember all the very happy life that I've had by reading it.

Presenter30:14

Right. Talking to animals.

Presenter30:17

And thank you, Barbara Woodhouse, for letting us hear your Desert Island Discs.

Barbara Woodhouse30:22

Thank you for having me.

Presenter30:23

Goodbye everyone.

Speaker 130:31

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