Tom Lehrer

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 is the American composer and singer of cynical songs. It's Tom Lehrer.

Presenter0:36

How do you view this Robinson Crusoe business, Tom? Could you stand loneliness? No, I don't think I could.

Presenter0:43

What would you be happiest to have got away from?

Tom Lehrer0:46

Oh, I I hate to say dogs because then everybody will write in. Let me think. Well, say dogs, then say something else. All right, then I better say something else, yes.

Presenter0:50

Well say dog, let's say something

Tom Lehrer0:54

No, just noise, and uh that that's the part I think that I would most like, is the silence. Right.

Presenter1:00

Now, we know you, of course, for your songs at the piano. Have you a a wide taste in music?

Tom Lehrer1:06

Not that wide. I think most of my interests are in the field of musical theater, one type or another, ranging from music hall to opera, rather than orchestral music. What's the first one you've taken?

Presenter1:17

Person.

Tom Lehrer1:17

Yeah.

Presenter1:17

Uh

Tom Lehrer1:18

The first one I've chosen.

Tom Lehrer1:20

is anything by Gilbert and Sullivan. Unfortunately we're forced to narrow it down to something, and so I have just arbitrarily picked the entry of the peers for myolanthe.

Tom Lehrer1:29

But almost any selection would do just as well. All right. Would you like a Deinecart production? Definitely.

Tom Lehrer1:35

Of what sort of date? I think the uh the earlier the better. I mean, I realize the sound recording is not as good, but I think the the feel is is better.

Presenter1:43

There's one here dated nineteen twenty nine. How does that graph?

Tom Lehrer1:45

Participants, yeah. Uh Perfect.

Presenter2:43

An excerpt from Gilbert and Sullivan's Iolanthe recorded itself in the small Queen's Hall, London, in the latter part of 1929.

Presenter2:52

You're a New Yorker, Tom, right?

Tom Lehrer2:53

Originally I was born in New York, yes, Roy, but I've lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts, most of my life.

Presenter2:55

The map.

Presenter2:57

Which part of New York?

Tom Lehrer2:59

The residential part, Manhattan.

Presenter3:01

How do you Your music

Tom Lehrer3:02

develop where you put to the piano

Presenter3:04

I know what.

Tom Lehrer3:04

Did you take to it? I took to it. I used to sit there and pick out little tunes, I guess, and then my parents gave me piano lessons and uh classical regular serious music, Chopin and all that stuff, and then uh and I would dutifully do the minimum practicing that I needed for that, and then in my off hours I would go and pick out popular tunes, and they finally realized that uh that was where my interest lay, and so they found me a popular music teacher, which was very rare in those days.

Tom Lehrer3:28

You were very bright at school.

Presenter3:30

What did you want to be? What was your ambition?

Tom Lehrer3:33

I don't think I ever thought in terms of ambition, everything always seems to have happened to me, including my present circumstances, that I just enjoyed school and I would have liked to have stayed in school. I would be a graduate student at Harvard today if they didn't have those silly rules about satisfying requirements and so on. That was an ideal life. Right. Off you went to Harvard very young, I believe. I was very young, yes.

Presenter3:54

Yeah.

Tom Lehrer3:55

Hello.

Presenter3:55

Hello.

Tom Lehrer3:56

15.

Presenter3:56

Was that permitted at at that age or did you get in under the fence?

Tom Lehrer3:58

That is under the fence? No, at that time uh they believed in skipping, what was called skipping. I don't know if you have such a phenomenon here of if you're doing well in a in a class to the extent that you're disrupting things for the for the other students, then they would push you forward to another class, which uh I don't think is a good idea. But uh made it easier for them to in academic terms. Yes, uh mathematics and to some extent statistics.

Presenter4:18

Academic.

Presenter4:23

You began to entertain your fellow undergraduates at the

Tom Lehrer4:26

Pm.

Tom Lehrer4:27

It was more of my fellow graduates when I was a graduate student, because as a graduate student, I had much more free time because we didn't have all those silly requirements.

Presenter4:34

It's said that in your sophomore year you wrote a rather bitter pastiche of a Harvard football song, Fight Fiercely Harvard. Were you kicking against the sporting establishment?

Tom Lehrer4:42

I never did understand sports, I'm afraid. I don't uh participate and uh

Tom Lehrer4:48

I prefer l to lie down whenever possible. But I never understood that fervor for or the w the concept of what's called in America rooting, that is where you have some team and just because you happen to go to the same school that the members of the team go to, therefore you prefer that they win the game. I never understood that.

Speaker 14:57

Done.

Tom Lehrer5:06

As another

Presenter5:06

Undergraduate

Tom Lehrer5:06

Don't I do

Presenter5:07

who take part in Harvard Theatricals.

Tom Lehrer5:08

No, I didn't. I was n I was never in theatricals at all. I i in in high school I I did a couple of plays, but that was a long, long time ago. Straight plays. Uh no, I did the Pirates of Penzance. I was the Pirate King. I suppose everybody has played The Pirate King at one time or another. And I was also in a play called Dead End. But that was about it. I'm not a good actor and I'm not comfortable acting, so I've never done that.

Presenter5:28

Anyway, after graduating in Harvard, you stayed on to teach mathematics and statistics. That's right. At which point, let us break for your second record. What will that be?

Tom Lehrer5:37

Ah, the second record. Well, another one of my idols and early influences after Gilbrid and Sullivan was No Coward. And again.

Tom Lehrer5:45

I could probably select any one of the several dozen numbers, but I would certainly take an L P of mister Coward's and for our purposes let's play Nina.

Presenter5:56

Yeah.

Tom Lehrer5:56

Uh

Presenter5:56

Ritanina from Argentina knew all the answers. Although her relatives and friends were perfect dancers, she swore she'd never dance a step until she died. She said, I've seen too many move is, and all they prove is too idiotic. They all insist that South America's exotic. Whereas it couldn't be more boring if it tried.

Speaker 16:19

Yeah.

Presenter6:20

She added firmly that she hated the sound of soft guitars beside a spell logo. Noel Card singing his own song Nina from his review Sigh No More.

Presenter6:32

Now you had this considerable success with your songs at the piano uh in college.

Presenter6:38

You began to make discs.

Tom Lehrer6:40

About 1953, I realized that everybody that w was interested in these songs around Harvard, which was the only place I'd ever performed, was pretty sick of them. So I decided that I would make a record. Fortunately, technology had advanced to the stage where the LP was possible. See, again, if we only had 78s, this whole thing would never have happened. I wouldn't be here today.

Presenter6:58

Hedgehog tried to sell them to the established companies.

Tom Lehrer6:58

Headbutt.

Tom Lehrer7:01

No. I di it never even dawned on me that there was any commercial value in these things. I I recorded and paid for myself a few hundred copies to sell around Harvard. But I did take the precaution of putting my address on the back of the jacket so that the mail orders began coming in.

Presenter7:08

Yeah.

Presenter7:15

What was the financial outlay?

Tom Lehrer7:18

The initial financial outlay was something like $700 for 400 records, I think everything. Again, it's impossible for somebody to do that today. If somebody says to me, well, how did you get started? I'd like you to do the same. Just last year I found the bill for my original recording session in the studio, and it was $15 total. Start everything.

Presenter7:35

That's a historic document.

Presenter7:39

But then what happened? There was a steady queue outside your study door to buy a record.

Tom Lehrer7:44

Queue of bizarre people. But what really happened is that people began taking them home. Students took them home for vacation and

Tom Lehrer7:53

Um summer went past and I began getting mail orders from various places and then record shops began saying, We've heard of this, people have come in asking for it, what is this? And then uh I'd set up the whole distribution. Then I took it around to record companies and they all said, Oh yes, marvelous and then they listened to it and then they said oh no, this isn't the quite sort of thing we want on our label. So uh that and I continued handling it myself.

Presenter8:13

But you you surely weren't equipped to handle nationwide distribution. I mean, you were up all night putting the

Tom Lehrer8:19

No, it turns out that one can farm this out to the company that pressed the records. You just send them the orders and they'll do it. So eventually I got the hang of it and a s very small staff was able to do it without actually seeing any records. It's all done by pieces of paper in the mail.

Presenter8:19

Yeah.

Tom Lehrer8:36

Another record. Watch your third one.

Tom Lehrer8:39

Third one is again another I wouldn't say early influence because it's more recent than that. Most of my most of my favorite things that I like to listen to are probably Broadway shows, and this is one of the early great ones and probably one of the great musicals of all time, Guys and Dolls. I would certainly pick that.

Tom Lehrer8:54

And uh from that, for today's purposes, uh I have picked Luck Be a Lady.

Speaker 29:00

Be a lady to love

Speaker 29:10

Be a lady tonight

Speaker 29:15

Luck letter, gentlemen, see how nice a dame you can be I know the way you've treated other guys who've been red Lucky or late

Presenter9:28

Robert Alder from the New York cast of Guys and Dolls. Luck be a lady. Now the Tom Lehrer cult grew up very quickly. I remember your discs had a big impact in in Britain.

Tom Lehrer9:40

Originally they were smuggled over or brought over by various unsavory characters and um it took me a long time to get a British company interested in releasing them. I kept sending them over and they kept sending back saying no this will never sell in England and finally uh I guess they were convinced in some way or other and they Deka released the first record in nineteen fifty seven here.

Presenter10:00

In fact, it took off rather more quickly per capita.

Tom Lehrer10:04

The sales in the UK are definitely higher than the sales in the United States, given the difference in population.

Presenter10:09

The deck

Tom Lehrer10:12

That I think is what made some of the difference, is that in Britain they did play them on the radio and I think even Desert Omnib Discs occasionally had a a number from them in those days, but in America they would not uh consider that.

Presenter10:23

No, there are still a few of your songs that the B B C are a bit talking about. How how many L P's were?

Tom Lehrer10:26

So I understand.

Tom Lehrer10:33

Three L P's, thirty seven songs, and that's it.

Presenter10:36

Thirty-seven songs

Tom Lehrer10:38

The first two L P's were released as concert versions and studio versions.

Presenter10:41

Yeah.

Tom Lehrer10:41

Separately, but uh the same songs.

Presenter10:43

And it was as a result of the boom in in the disc that you became, by popular demand, a performer.

Presenter10:49

That's about

Tom Lehrer10:49

About it, yes. After the success of the first record I began getting offers to perform in nightclubs and do concerts, and I did that for about three years until I'd been to everywhere that I that I wanted to go. You came over here, I think. I came over here in'Fifty Nine, yes, and uh opened at the Palace Theatre. I remember it well. Yeah. Sunday nights.

Presenter11:00

A chemical

Tom Lehrer11:06

And then I did another tour in sixty, and then in nineteen sixty I uh I gave it up. You had in the meantime been where, to Australia? The whole idea was to quit and uh that kept getting postponed because I got an opportunity to go to different places. And Australia and New Zealand were the were the final places, and then I came to the UK and I guess my last

Tom Lehrer11:24

The public concert was in Glasgow.

Presenter11:26

How did you find this affected your status as a as a mathematician?

Tom Lehrer11:30

Yeah.

Presenter11:30

At the

Tom Lehrer11:30

At that time I took those that was about three years that I was doing performing full time and I was not in the university and not connected with the university at that time. I realized I b I couldn't do those. But then in nineteen sixty when I

Tom Lehrer11:42

When I quit, I went back and re-enrolled as a graduate student at Harvard.

Tom Lehrer11:47

The dead didn't seem to mind the fact that the prodigal son returns there. I was glad to see.

Tom Lehrer11:53

Record number four.

Tom Lehrer11:55

Record number four is from one of probably my two favorite show records. Not necessarily my favorite shows, but

Tom Lehrer12:02

The discs that I would definitely take. And the first one is a show called She Loves Me.

Tom Lehrer12:07

With songs by Sheldon Harnick and Jerry Bach. And the particular song I have chosen is called Ice Cream.

Speaker 112:13

Ice and cream

Speaker 112:16

He brought me ice cream, vanilla ice cream.

Tom Lehrer12:17

I'm not sure.

Tom Lehrer12:18

Great.

Speaker 212:18

Uh

Speaker 212:20

Dream, imagine that.

Speaker 112:22

Yeah.

Speaker 212:24

Ice cream and for the first time we were together without a spell.

Speaker 212:32

He was so friendly. That isn't like him. I'm simply stunned. Will wonders never cease? Will wonders never cease? It's been a most peculiar day. Will wonders never cease? Will wonders never cease.

Presenter12:48

Barbara Cook sings Ice Cream from the 1963 New York show, She Loves Me.

Presenter12:57

You wrote and performed a number of songs in the

Presenter13:00

The United States version of our television show, That Was the Week That Was.

Tom Lehrer13:04

Yeah. That was in 1964 and 65. David Frost came over and started an American version, which was considerably watered down from your version. As the producer said at the time, we're going to be a biting, satirical, hard-hitting, no-holds, barred show. But on the other hand, we don't want to offend anybody. And with that as the premise, it was very clear that the program was doomed.

Speaker 113:22

Of that as the premise.

Tom Lehrer13:26

And uh sure enough, it did die after a while, and much to my amazement, these songs which I had written as topical songs just referring to some event that had happened that week, by the end of the of the show's run I had almost enough for an L P, so I did it.

Presenter13:40

So this was fuel.

Tom Lehrer13:41

For the Tom Blair Boom. That was 65. So for five years I had not performed or appeared anywhere. And at that time I decided to try the songs out in front of a nightclub audience because that's the only way you can really try new material. NBC did the television show and they make a point of cutting the best line out of each song. So another reason that I made the record was to put the lines back in. And the engagement at The Hungry Eye in California, a now defunct nightclub, led to the third LP. That was the year that was.

Tom Lehrer14:12

Uh

Presenter14:12

When did you stop writing? Because we have the sad fact that you've stopped writing songs. In fact, you did quite some time ago.

Tom Lehrer14:18

Yes, I stopped essentially after that, sixty five. Since then the only things I've done

Tom Lehrer14:23

Well there's a children's television program in the States called the Electric Company under the auspices of the people who do Sesame Street and it was designed to teach little children to read and they called me and asked me if I'd be interested and I said of course. See most people who ask me to write things want me to write things in the style of what I used to do and I th I don't think my mind works that way anymore. But if somebody comes up with a a different idea then uh it's fine.

Presenter14:41

Anymore.

Presenter14:47

I mean why did you stop this?

Tom Lehrer14:48

So nine years in California where I can do terrible things to a man's brain.

Presenter14:48

So

Tom Lehrer14:53

And so I think it's it's I hate to use the word maturity because that's something I've always tried to slip through unobtrusively and go right from adolescence to senility. But I think one of the things that maturity does gives you a little perspective and you begin seeing both sides and then you can't really attack anybody anymore because it's not a good idea.

Presenter14:56

I

Tom Lehrer15:12

I was just there half the year. I just decided that at a certain point I I'd been teaching at MIT at Massachusetts Institute of Technology for nine years, and it just got to be less and less fun. I began taking it more and more seriously.

Tom Lehrer15:25

Uh this was in the political science department. I was teaching quantitative courses and they began to take the science part of their name much more seriously than it deserves. And so I decided at a certain point that I was too old not to have fun. And so I decided to go someplace that would be fun. And Santa Cruz, which is a branch of the University of California, was set up for fun. And so I have been there ever since.

Presenter15:47

It sounds a great institution.

Tom Lehrer15:48

Uh Yeah. And uh

Presenter15:49

Now, not writing for fifteen years meant that um things began to sag a bit. The reputation was going downhill, you could say.

Tom Lehrer15:56

Well the the int curious thing is that the records continued to sell not the way they did uh when the when they first came out of course but once they had leveled off to a plateau they've remained just about constant for the past let's say twelve years. And then came a revival. Then uh a certain revival. I think what happened is partly the younger generation grew up because I've heard many reports of young people, say uh late teenagers uh who uh rummaging through their parents' record collections come across this peculiar ten inch disc and they can't imagine what it could be and they put it on and then they

Tom Lehrer16:30

They uh find it hard to believe that this was done so long ago. And so I I think the market now is uh largely younger people, which I'm delighted. I mean, certainly when I did those records I had not the faintest idea that they would sell at all at the time, let alone that twenty-seven years later people would still be buying them.

Tom Lehrer16:47

Your next record, what now?

Tom Lehrer16:49

The next record is from the other.

Tom Lehrer16:52

show, the other show uh L P that I think I would most like to have with me, and that is Candide, the Leonard Bernstein operetta. The particular song that I have chosen for this program is called Bon Voyage.

Tom Lehrer17:06

It's sung by William Olvis.

Presenter17:09

I'm so rich.

Speaker 217:09

That my life is an utter bore. There is just not a thing that I need. My desires are as wry as an apple core. And my only emotion is greed. Which is why, though I

Presenter17:10

Life is an utter bore.

Presenter17:19

Nothing to spend it for. I have swindled this gold from Candy Diddy Diddy Diddy Diddy Diddy Diddy.

Speaker 117:26

We the broken

Speaker 117:31

But I never would swindle the humble poor.

Speaker 217:33

For you can't get a turnip to bleed, when you swindle the rich, you get so much more, which is why I have swindled candy. Oh, dear, I fear he's going down, he's going to draw Uh

Tom Lehrer17:48

But the crossing will not prove to grieve. You seem to be in

Presenter17:56

What a dumb goat, what a dumb goat, handing me a portion for a perfect regular boat.

Presenter18:06

Bon Voyage from Condide, Sangh By.

Tom Lehrer18:09

William Olvis. I think it's an amazing score. That whole record is fantastic.

Presenter18:14

Oh it is. It's it's a lovely score and giving credit where credit is due it's by Leonard Bernstein. Right, with words by Richard.

Tom Lehrer18:19

Wilbur, I always want to credit the uh the librettists'cause the

Presenter18:21

Yeah.

Tom Lehrer18:22

The uh the lyricists, that is. They never get enough credit. So you're teaching, what, six months in the year in California? I teach six months, yes, at the University of California at Santa Cruz. I teach a course in applications of mathematics to social science. Don't ask me.

Speaker 118:35

Don't ask.

Tom Lehrer18:37

There are very few of them. It's mainly a device to proselytize for mathematics, in which I have a great interest, to show people that mathematics, contrary to a very popular belief, is not just a collection of methods for solving problems, but is a way of looking at things and a way of looking at the world. And so I can use as my text anything from the newspapers or magazines, which falls under the heading of social science very roughly, which means essentially everything.

Tom Lehrer19:02

And you're also taking another course. The other course is a course in the American Musical. At last, something that has been my hobby and interest for s so long is now uh paying off.

Tom Lehrer19:11

Do you mean the

Presenter19:12

Do you mean to say that that your students can major in in this?

Tom Lehrer19:14

No, they can't major in it. This is just one course. I wouldn't recommend that. I don't think it should even be given for credit myself, but as long as the university is willing to grant credit for it, I'm delighted to.

Presenter19:17

Right.

Presenter19:23

What is the uh official title of the

Tom Lehrer19:25

The official title is The American Musical. Yes, and we we study the genre. We do reading performances of

Presenter19:25

The cause

Tom Lehrer19:31

Musicals won every two weeks.

Presenter19:32

Right from the beginning, what was the first New York

Tom Lehrer19:34

The black crook. But no, I the history is not doesn't concern me so much as the uh as the literature. I mean it's I study it as one studies any kind of dead art form historically, but I feel that the essentially the golden age is over and so yeah I'm mainly covering the years from Pal Joey to Fiddler on the Roof roughly, forty two to sixty five, something like that.

Tom Lehrer19:55

But where do we go now?

Tom Lehrer19:57

Where do we go now? Well, let's see, a change of pace, as they say in the show biz, uh a pop record. There are very few of the current pop singers or performers that I admire because I usually I don't just don't understand the words and being a a word man there are many people, Delton John and the Bee Gees and so on, for example, that I like the music of, and of course the Beatles, that goes without saying, but very few of the current singer-songwriters can I understand. And one of the few that I do and sympathize with is Randy Newman.

Tom Lehrer20:26

And he's written many, many marvelous songs, and I think he shares a certain cynical attitude that I have. And uh the song that I have chosen is from the LP that I would choose, and it's the title song Sail Away.

Speaker 120:39

Ain't no lion or tiger

Speaker 120:42

Mom a snake

Speaker 120:46

Yeah.

Presenter20:46

There's a sweet watermelon in the buckwheat cake

Presenter20:53

Everybody is as happy as a man can be.

Presenter21:01

I'm a boy, little walk, stay the way with me.

Presenter21:06

Sail away

Tom Lehrer21:08

Randy Newman, Sail Away. He tries to do some of the sort of thing that I like to do, which is to take some sardonic or biting subject and uh or attitude and set it to very pleasant music, uh thus disguising.

Tom Lehrer21:23

The uh phone.

Presenter21:24

Yeah.

Tom Lehrer21:24

Yeah

Presenter21:24

Uh Yes, indeed. And these cynical lyrics of yours are still relevant to day. I mean as a result of the Lera revival there is now a Lera show.

Presenter21:35

Playing in London Tom Foolery.

Tom Lehrer21:37

I thought you'd never mention it. Tom Foolery is the name of it, and a man named Cameron McIntosh, a producer of Exquisite Taste, decided that this might be a good thing to take these old songs and put them together into a review. And he has done so, and Jillian Lynn, the director, has done marvelous things interpreting the songs. And there they are, a marvelous cast of four people. I'm using words like marvelous and wonderful too much, but I really am overcome with the How much have you had to change the lyrics to update them? We tried very hard not to update them in the sense of trying to pretend that they are of the 80s. They're not, definitely. The only changes that had to be made were certain references which either would be incomprehensible to British audiences or references which were so rooted in their time that everybody's forgotten what they were. So minor little changes of that nature. Also, I have written a few little verses here and there. Basically, I'll.

Presenter22:03

Much of that.

Presenter22:29

The the original thirty-seven songs.

Tom Lehrer22:31

Uh not all of them. There are about there are twenty seven songs in the show and uh twenty five are from the three records. There's uh one from the Electric Company songs too.

Presenter22:38

Basically,

Presenter22:40

So you're saving the other ten for the second edition when that comes? Yeah.

Tom Lehrer22:44

Yeah. I don't think, no, I think we we really weeded out the ones that would be totally incomprehensible to a British audience.

Presenter22:48

Tell me, were you tempted to take part yourself? I mean, the fact that you you did your five years shows there's a certain amount of the ham in you. I mean, can you really sit back and watch these people singing your songs and you're not up on the stage I'm doing it too.

Tom Lehrer23:03

I can't tell you what a relief it is to be in the audience. I've sat through many rehearsals and many performances of this show before it opened and an opening night. I did take a bow opening night. I did get on the stage to that extent. But at no point watching these people do the songs did I ever think

Tom Lehrer23:19

Gee, I wish I was up there doing that.

Tom Lehrer23:23

Well, another one of my great idols, current current idols, is Stephen Sundheim, most brilliant lyricist that ever lived, I believe. And uh so again, it's very hard to choose something, and I have chosen

Tom Lehrer23:36

A particular song. I guess I would pick the LP side by side by Sunnheim, but for our purposes I'm picking a song from uh A Little Night Music.

Tom Lehrer23:44

Which is probably the most popular song that Stephen has written with words and music by him, is uh called Send in the Clowns.

Speaker 223:52

And it rich.

Speaker 223:56

Are we a pair?

Speaker 224:00

Me here at last on the ground, you in mid-air.

Presenter24:00

Here is

Speaker 224:08

Send in the clouds.

Speaker 224:12

Don't bother.

Presenter24:20

Glynn S. John singing Send in the Clowns as she did in the New York production of A Little Night Music.

Presenter24:26

For six months of the year term you're a beach boy.

Presenter24:29

Well not how

Tom Lehrer24:29

Well not California. But I uh I do stay in California and the weather isn't that marvelous in Santa Cruz. It's far enough north. It's not quite a surfing country.

Presenter24:30

What?

Presenter24:41

Well, what this is leading up to is how would you make out on the beach of a desert island? Could you look out for yourself?

Tom Lehrer24:46

I see. No, not at all. I d I don't know how I would manage. I would probably be able to manage if the fruit fell from the trees without my having to climb them and uh if I could make get some water somewhere, but uh it would be pretty boring.

Presenter24:59

Could you build any kind of shelter? Are you good with your hands? Totally impossible.

Tom Lehrer25:02

I assume if one is stranded on a desert island forever, uh one learns pretty rapidly with through experimentation. Can you cook?

Tom Lehrer25:09

I don't cook very much. I thaw and uh unfortunately we probably couldn't manage that on a desert island. So I could probably manage. I wouldn't know about how to light a fire though. I it's been years since I tried that. So I would hope that there would be some matches there, but

Tom Lehrer25:24

I suppose if one could figure out how to do that.

Presenter25:26

Twelve.

Presenter25:30

Would you try to escape? Do you know anything about small craft, about navigation? No, I know.

Tom Lehrer25:33

Navigation.

Tom Lehrer25:37

No, and the mathematicians don't. You're thinking of engineers, I believe. Mathematicians don't know anything about anything. You see, we don't even deal with things like one, two and three. We deal with X, Y and Z.

Presenter25:40

The mathematicians

Tom Lehrer25:47

And that's quite a different concept. So I could probably imagine a theoretical uh procedure for escaping from a desert island. But as far as putting it into practice, I'm afraid I'd be hopeless. All right, well we'll try and get you fetched before too long.

Presenter26:00

Got it. And we've come now to your last record. Number eight.

Tom Lehrer26:02

Last record was intended to give a little class to the proceedings here. It's uh from my favorite opera. I I do like operas too as an example of musical theater. And uh I would choose the Rosen Cavalier. And uh the selection in particular that we have here is the duet at the very end.

Speaker 226:31

Uh

Speaker 226:32

I asked me to give you my love.

Speaker 126:53

God's word.

Presenter27:10

Krista Ludwig and Theresa Stitch Randall in that closing passage from Der Rosen Cavalier, Herbert von Cadillan was conducting the Philharmonia Orchestra.

Presenter27:19

If you could take only one disk out of the eight you've chosen, which would it be?

Tom Lehrer27:23

Now, you've got me. I I think it I would not have too much trouble now to get down to Candide or the Rosen Cavalier, and I think if you really press me, I would pick the Rosen Cavalier, not because I necessarily prefer it, but because I'm less familiar with it and there would be more there to entertain me for a longer period of time.

Presenter27:39

You are allowed to take one luxury to the island, any one object of no practical use which would give you pleasure.

Tom Lehrer27:46

Well, I would I would certainly pick uh a piano of some sort, whatever sort of piano one could be managed on a desert island. I'm sure it would go out of tune in in an instant, but on the other hand, uh that's the way I sing.

Presenter27:51

Yeah.

Presenter27:55

All right, you can you can take a set of tuning instruments as well. That's fine. And it has to be an upright piano. You understand?

Tom Lehrer27:58

That's right.

Tom Lehrer28:01

I understand, so you can't sleep.

Presenter28:03

That's right.

Tom Lehrer28:03

That's right.

Presenter28:04

And one book apart from the Bible and Shakespeare, and we don't encourage multi-volume encyclopedias.

Tom Lehrer28:10

No, I th I think there would be no hesitation there. I would take the Oxford uh English Dictionary, either the full version or some condensation thereof, some unabridged dictionary anyway. Right. It would give me many hours of pleasure.

Tom Lehrer28:21

And thank you, Tom Le

Presenter28:23

Thank you very much, Ryan.

Presenter28:27

Goodbye, everyone.

Speaker 128:34

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