Derek Tangye

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.

Derek Tangye0:29

This week, our castaway is the author, Derek Tangey.

Derek Tangye0:33

Now, Derrick, you've already left the hurly burley of London for the delights of the Cornish countryside. How do you feel about taking things a step further and being marooned on a tropical island?

Derek Tangye0:43

Well

Presenter0:43

Well, I was marooned once upon a time on a tropical island, yes, near uh Tahiti.

Presenter0:50

And uh

Presenter0:52

Well, I had to leave it. I I left in rather curious circumstances. I I had to continue on a trip round the world.

Presenter0:58

And uh suddenly um off the island appeared a yacht of millionaires and their daughters, and um they gave me a lift to Suva and I got away from this island. But

Presenter1:08

This is the strange thing. Although physically I got away from that island, mentally I never did.

Presenter1:14

And I started looking, as soon as I got back to civilization, for an equivalent island.

Presenter1:20

And I was lucky enough one day to find this spot in Cornwall which is near Nan's End.

Presenter1:27

How important is music in your life?

Presenter1:30

Emotion there.

Presenter1:32

It's had tremendous importance ever since um

Presenter1:35

Well, I was I suppose I was about a child of eight. I was being uh brought up I was brought up in Cologne. How was that? Well, my father was uh in the army there.

Presenter1:44

and both my mother and father were very, very fond of music.

Presenter1:47

and they used to take me to the Klohn Opera House, which is of course one of the famous opera houses in Germany.

Presenter1:53

And um

Presenter1:54

I used to go there, oh, three or four times a week, and of course I never understood a word anybody was singing.

Presenter2:00

But I got tremendously emotionally excited. You're choosing a record to remind you of those days. Yes. I was a fairly lonely boy and I used to invent friends.

Presenter2:11

And one of the friends I invented

Presenter2:13

was the shepherd's boy.

Presenter2:15

who sings a fragment of a song.

Presenter2:18

at the beginning of Act Three in Tosca. And he's out there, dawn is breaking over Rome, looking after his flock of sheep. And I always thought what fun it would be to be a shepherd's boy. And uh this is the record I would like to play.

Derek Tangye3:29

The Shepherd Boys song from Tosca.

Derek Tangye3:32

And the boy's name, on this recording, Alvaro Cordova.

Derek Tangye3:36

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

Presenter3:39

I am a consummate.

Derek Tangye3:40

Yeah.

Presenter3:41

And um my family were born well, my grandfather was born in a lagan near Red Ruth.

Presenter3:46

And uh he founded the great Henge engineering firm.

Presenter3:50

Then they went to Birmingham, but my roots were always in Cormor.

Presenter3:53

You were at Harrow. Did you do well there?

Presenter3:56

No, I was hopeless.

Presenter3:58

I failed at every examination, but um I remember

Presenter4:02

consoling myself because I had a a wonderful precedent about somebody failing in the examination, that was Churchill.

Presenter4:09

So I always said to myself, Well, look, it doesn't matter, but of course my housemaster didn't think that.

Derek Tangye4:13

Yeah.

Presenter4:13

They never do. He, um, said I was useless to society one day after I'd missed a catch in a house match. Unforgivable. Yes, it's nasty.

Derek Tangye4:23

Yeah.

Presenter4:23

When

Derek Tangye4:23

When you left school, what did you do?

Presenter4:26

Well, I got a job as a clerk in Unilever.

Presenter4:30

And um I was uh did all sorts of jobs, like

Presenter4:35

Tea trays and so on.

Derek Tangye4:36

Did you visual

Presenter4:37

Yeah.

Derek Tangye4:38

Myself is a captain of industry.

Presenter4:39

Were you going to work your way up? Oh yes, I had that period of of great ambition. I had a lot of courses I went t through, but and I even sort of d tried to develop a sales organization of my own outside my work.

Presenter4:52

One time I sold to all my friends electrolyte palms. Successfully? Well, Thorns are now one of the greatest of all the companies.

Derek Tangye5:03

And you were selling for them? Yes. Did you keep your friends despite the fact that you sell them? Oh, yes, they were a lot.

Presenter5:07

Yeah.

Presenter5:09

Love.

Derek Tangye5:10

Yeah. Uh

Presenter5:11

How long did you stay as a clerk?

Presenter5:13

I stayed about um three and a half years, four years. What enabled you to give it up? Well, it was a tremendously uh strange experience. At the corner of Lagy Circus at that time there was a phrenologist. Do you know what a phrenologist is? Bumps your head. Yes.

Presenter5:27

And um one lunch hour I went uh and had my head bumped and uh

Presenter5:33

I was told exactly what I wanted to hear, that I was unsuited for being a clerk, and that I ought to be a journalist or an interior decorator.

Derek Tangye5:43

And which did you fancy?

Presenter5:44

I fancy to be a journalist.

Derek Tangye5:46

Next.

Derek Tangye5:47

Right. Well, let's break off at this point before further things happen to you and have your second record.

Derek Tangye5:53

Well

Presenter5:53

I've chosen Reff Le Don Low from the image of the Bussy. It's a lovely piece of music reflecting water and uh I think it'll be suitable for a desert island.

Derek Tangye7:01

Raffle Don Low from Debussy's Image, played by Baltic Gieseking.

Derek Tangye7:07

So the phrenologist had said you should be a journalist, and you agreed with him.

Derek Tangye7:11

So what, freelance journalism?

Presenter7:13

No, I didn't have freelance journalism. I had no job at all. My father gave me two pounds a week.

Derek Tangye7:18

Yes.

Presenter7:19

and I had a a bedset off King's Road.

Presenter7:22

And, um, I did write because nobody published anything. What it happened to be at the time, I happened to be at Deb's Delights, you know, well it is.

Presenter7:30

Young men who were always going to all these parties. Yes. And that is very, very useful because I had no money really to buy food. You had a good tailsuit and a pleasant manner and a lot of contacts. It had nice pockets in my tailsuit, and I used to fill them with food from the buffet at the end of the dance. And that kept me going during the day.

Presenter7:53

that uh there was one terrible occasion when

Presenter7:56

At the end of one ball the daughter of the hostess invited me to dance a very vigorous NAS dance, and as we flung ourselves round the floor, so also did my recently acquired food fling itself out of my pockets.

Presenter8:12

That was

Derek Tangye8:13

Tomorrow's lunch. Yes.

Derek Tangye8:15

Ha ha

Derek Tangye8:16

So you couldn't sell any stories or articles that you wrote.

Presenter8:19

Yeah.

Derek Tangye8:20

When did you start to write and have your stuff pre

Presenter8:23

Printed.

Derek Tangye8:23

Yeah.

Presenter8:24

It is them

Presenter8:25

The occasion when I got to Manchester.

Presenter8:28

And um

Presenter8:29

I was lucky enough to get a introduction to Max Aiken and uh he gave me a month's trial in Manchester. On the Daily Express. On the Daily Express. What was the very first assignment?

Derek Tangye8:37

On the day expense.

Presenter8:40

Yeah.

Derek Tangye8:40

But they said you are John.

Presenter8:41

Yeah.

Presenter8:42

I had a friend, oh well he wasn't a friend then, he was just a very superior being, a reporter, senior reporter called Guy Morgan. And um he took me out to the town clerks.

Presenter8:53

And on the way, before I had even got out of the building, he said, Listen, let's go and have a drink first and that of course was my entry into the kind of uh life I was going to lead for the next two or three years.

Speaker 49:03

Yeah.

Derek Tangye9:03

Yes, you began the way that.

Presenter9:04

Is that

Derek Tangye9:05

You thought journalists should go on?

Presenter9:07

How long did you s

Derek Tangye9:08

Play with the exper

Presenter9:08

I stayed there about two years and went to London.

Presenter9:13

No, I was suddenly plucked out of being a non-entity, into becoming a sort of celebrity on the Daily Mirror, and I had my picture on the buses.

Derek Tangye9:21

Oh then

Presenter9:22

That's right. You you took over Godfrey Wynstey. Yes, yes.

Derek Tangye9:23

Yeah.

Derek Tangye9:25

How long did you stay?

Presenter9:25

Okay.

Derek Tangye9:26

But

Presenter9:26

Yeah.

Derek Tangye9:26

Mm-hmm.

Presenter9:26

I stayed there several months. It was a marvellous experience. It woke me to all sorts of things which I never expected to be open to.

Presenter9:34

And then one day I was just about to go to round the capitals of Europe, all excited.

Presenter9:39

And I was called in by the editor and said you're fired.

Presenter9:42

And of course that was a tricky situation.

Presenter9:45

So I went to Elvino's across the way and had a couple of drinks, came back and I said to him, Look, can I write one more article? I'm going round the world. And that's really the only reason why I got round the world.

Derek Tangye9:55

Well, even then that was a very expensive operation. Had had you saved up, or or did you work your way round?

Derek Tangye10:00

Yeah.

Presenter10:00

I more or less worked the way round. I went by bus across America. I went by steerage, various places like Tahiti, Japan, all the way round, finished up on the Siberian Express. But it only cost in those days, you see, um, ridiculous sums of money. Yes. Whole year cost me five hundred pounds.

Presenter10:18

Your third record. What's that to be? The third record is Chil Domfant.

Presenter10:24

And that is the memory that I have of that music of the hot July, way back in the early thirties, when the Belarus came over and startled London with these young Russian dancers, Baronova, Trubanova, David Lishin.

Presenter10:40

And I remember one night going with three young friends and seeing Putushka

Presenter10:47

Les Pressage and Je d'Enfoil. When the Je d'Enfoit was finished,

Presenter10:52

We all stood up in our chairs. It was the most exciting and wonderful evening, and I'd love to hear the gallop from the Ger d'Aufront.

Derek Tangye11:56

The gallop from Pizet's Je d'Enfant, Anse Me conducting the Swiss Roman Orchestra.

Derek Tangye12:03

Now, Derrick, you had hardly got back from your circumnavigation when the war broke out.

Presenter12:07

Uh yes. I joined up at the outbreak of war in the Duke Cormacide Infantry.

Presenter12:13

and sent to guard um farmer's dock.

Presenter12:16

Yeah.

Derek Tangye12:16

Uh

Presenter12:16

You were also at that time writing a book about your will. Uh Yes, at late nights I read a book called Time is Mine.

Presenter12:22

And uh that came out in the second year of the war.

Derek Tangye12:26

Was it that book which led to your meeting your wife, Jean?

Presenter12:30

Well, it was really, because she was the press officer at the Savoy at the time.

Derek Tangye12:31

Really?

Derek Tangye12:34

Yeah.

Presenter12:35

and uh rather brutally, I I suppose in retrospect.

Presenter12:39

I was introduced to her and immediately said, as your press officer, can you put my book on the bookstall? And um she did immediately, fortunately. So then I got a little bit further with her and asked her her name, her full name, and she said Jean Everold Nicholl. And I said, Good God.

Presenter13:01

I said you're the girl I'm going to marry, and the reason was that on my world tour I'd had my hand red on a boat.

Presenter13:08

And

Presenter13:09

Small and dark, which is quite reasonable. But the man said her initials will be JE.

Presenter13:15

And I said the whole thing was foreordained.

Derek Tangye13:19

meeting people who've got the whole thing mapped out for us.

Derek Tangye13:22

Now you switched over to intelligence work. Although Jean didn't know it, you were using your frequent visits to the Savoy Hotel in your work.

Presenter13:31

Yes, indeed. I was um

Presenter13:34

started looking after the West End of London in a variety of ways.

Presenter13:39

Which spread en enormous different things like um politics, potential spies, the lot.

Speaker 413:47

Mm-hmm.

Presenter13:47

And um I I began to have a very, very fascinating time. And uh of course the Savoy Hotel with all its American correspondents was a f hive of information

Presenter13:58

And also you could help a lot of the American correspondents who were having difficulties getting permits and so on. I had a very wide syllabus. And you and Dean were married while the war was still on. Yes.

Derek Tangye14:06

Yeah.

Derek Tangye14:08

Yeah.

Presenter14:08

Now let's have your fourth record. What's that to be?

Presenter14:11

Uh Jeannie with the light brown hair. Yes. And the reason for that is that Jeannie was a very, very successful PRO at the Safari and everybody loved her. And uh all the American correspondents always used to call her, Oh, there's Jeannie with the light brown hair and uh often when she came into the restaurant at night

Presenter14:33

Carol Gibbons would see her coming down steps and wave a hand.

Presenter14:38

And then start playing Genie with the Light Brown Hair.

Presenter14:42

And that's the record I like to have.

Derek Tangye15:14

Jeannie with the light brown hair, chosen for obvious reasons and played by Carol Gibbons as he used to play it at the Savoy Hotel.

Derek Tangye15:23

Noderic, the war was over.

Derek Tangye15:25

But as a civilian you were still in M I vibrant.

Presenter15:29

'Cause I look back on those years when MI5 with um fascination now with all the various revelations.

Presenter15:35

And I used to remember I used to walk down the corridors and and say to myself, Now I wonder which person is the spy.

Presenter15:42

You know, sort of joke.

Presenter15:44

But uh I did come across one or two of them. I mean for instance Philby. I always remember going back to seeing Jeannie after having a session with Philby.

Presenter15:51

And saying, listen, I just met one of the most hateful men I've ever met in my life. Now, listen, there's no reason for me to say that, because I mean, he'd been charming to me. But there was something in the air, something funny. And then, of course, there was Anthony Blunt. I never thought he was all that important. I mean, he had access to information, and of course, he had access to a lot of information I was able to talk to him about. And I think this is one of those sort of emotional things you feel about. I mean, you people read about spies, but they don't quite understand what it means when there's deep portrayal. Do you think Blunt was a deep spy? Did he do a lot of damage?

Presenter16:27

I think he did quite a lot of damage, but at the same time, um from my point of view I always thought he was just an overgrown schoolboy.

Presenter16:34

Did you go back to journalism uh as a job?

Presenter16:38

Yes, I went into the express. Yes. And I was asked to do this column. William Hickey. The William Hickey.

Derek Tangye16:44

That that's a plumb job.

Presenter16:45

Yes, well that in those days of course you had to do it yourself. There wasn't anybody else. Tom Dryberg was before me. And um I didn't want to do it, knew I wasn't going to do it. And after three days, after being tailed to change my stories two or three times and attack people which I didn't want to attack, I uh resigned. With a great gesture, I walked into the office and said, Take my resignation, I don't want any of your money.

Presenter17:12

Went out feeling very relieved. So what did you do in today?

Presenter17:15

Then I read for um the Continental Daily Mail column and I also did a lot of other freelance work, magazine work. And then I thought, ah, I have a brilliant idea to make a fortune and Jeannie and I set up uh a takeaway food shop and I think we've been the very first people ever do it, now everybody's doing it in Kingston.

Derek Tangye17:36

Where?

Presenter17:38

But we far beyond our time.

Presenter17:41

And I thought a manager would do the job and I wouldn't be seen hardly. But of course this didn't work out. And I ended up behind the counter and I used to I owe the customers

Presenter17:52

And I'd say to a woman who was looking at the menu and saying, Shall I have this? And I'd I'd say, But surely I can tempt you, madam, with something So the enterprise wasn't really a success? No, it wasn't, but we had a lot of good food ourselves.

Derek Tangye18:01

So the end of the

Derek Tangye18:06

So what was the next project?

Presenter18:08

The next thing we did was to um one day we found what everybody wants to find, or not everybody, a lot of people want to find is the perfect home, the the escape route. And that is this uh cottage called Meinock near Land's End, overlooking Mounds Bay. An old cottage. Old cottage, dare lick.

Presenter18:25

All the land was derelict, everything was it looked absolutely crazy, it was. So you decided to abandon the rat race?

Presenter18:32

abandoned the red trace and uh

Presenter18:34

We had water coming through the roof and Jeannie, you know, one day in a sweet Savoy, next day with the water coming through the roof, how she didn't mind. So back to your Cornish roots. Yes. How were you going to live? By by growing flowers? Growing flowers, yes.

Presenter18:48

Daffodils? Daffodils and and violets in that time.

Presenter18:52

And um potatoes. That was a very exciting, that was, except of course that whenever we seem to have a good crop, it's always a glut.

Speaker 118:52

And

Presenter18:59

Did either of you know anything about any any sort of a wild stupid enthusiasm. And did you have any time to write at the beginning?

Speaker 119:01

No, many

Presenter19:07

No, um, Jeannie did because uh she had this book which she f wanted to write about the war of the Savoy.

Derek Tangye19:13

That was meet me at the squad.

Presenter19:14

Meat Savoy, yes, and we had a chicken house where we used to bunch the violets and uh I used to lock her in there because she was very lazy and uh she finished the book of course after of course, being locked in the chicken house.

Derek Tangye19:22

And

Derek Tangye19:24

Yeah.

Derek Tangye19:26

And she's written several more in that chicken house session.

Presenter19:28

Two novels that is after that.

Presenter19:31

And when did you start? I started after I felt I'd really got the feel of the land in my bloodstream, and I must have been seven or eight years before I read a line.

Derek Tangye19:42

So you wrote what are now known as the Meinach Chronicles, the first of the books about that Cornish home and and the way you live and survive and your animals and and and whatever.

Presenter19:52

Yes, that was the gun on the roof. And uh you probably can imagine the tremendous excitement we took it to the post office and put it in the envelope and sends it off and waits for the result. You see, and I always remember the result and we really both of us were practically in tears.

Presenter20:07

Because the agent.

Presenter20:09

A red back.

Presenter20:10

Fractally saying it's unpublishable.

Presenter20:13

And that's always to me is a tremendous lesson, Roy, about anybody writing, that uh you always have to get your book, or whatever it is, to somebody on your wavelength.

Derek Tangye20:23

Hmm.

Presenter20:23

And if they aren't on your way, it doesn't matter what you're going to do, you're never going to have it published or reviewed.

Derek Tangye20:27

Yes.

Presenter20:27

Keep going till you find the right people.

Derek Tangye20:29

There is.

Presenter20:31

And I was lucky enough in in in in due course to get the right people.

Presenter20:35

And then I had that blessed piece of luck.

Presenter20:38

Again I wouldn't have been anywhere without it.

Presenter20:40

Beverly Nichols was writing a column in one of the magazines, Woman's English ones, and he was in the editor's office.

Presenter20:46

Waiting for the editor to come back, not knowing what to look at, and he picked up the proof copy of Gull on the Roof.

Presenter20:52

And he started reading it, and wow

Presenter20:55

Then he did a most terrific piece about it. And then of course that excited the publishers and what one thing or another the whole thing went off. Yes, indeed. The first

Derek Tangye21:03

Hmm. Yeah. Now after a hard day's physical work digging up

Derek Tangye21:07

Daffodils and potatoes and violets and packing em up and sending em off to Covent Garden. Could you really settle down to the the typewriter? Not really, no.

Derek Tangye21:16

I always have to force myself to do that.

Derek Tangye21:19

How many volumes are the Meinek Chronicles?

Presenter21:21

Uh well there's been one omnibus.

Presenter21:23

Of course somewhere a cat is waiting. But in actual fact, there have been twelve.

Presenter21:28

Write another record. Number five.

Presenter21:30

What I'd like to have now is the Adajo movement from the Rashbanov Second Symphony conducted rather excitingly by Prevan.

Derek Tangye22:39

The adagio from Rachmaninoff's Second Symphony.

Derek Tangye22:42

Previn conducting the London Symphony Orchestra. Write twelve volumes about your cottage and life on your little farm.

Derek Tangye22:51

You've struck a a a rich literary vein there. Your your animals have become much loved characters. Monty w w was your first cat, wasn't he?

Presenter23:00

Yes, um well, I hated cats. I was a dog person.

Presenter23:04

And then gradually I became very much a cat that

Derek Tangye23:06

Monty was a town cat. He'd been a survivor, hadn't he?

Presenter23:08

He'd be here in Savoy. I met him first in Savoy. But then he became acclimatised to the country life too.

Derek Tangye23:14

He resigned himself quite quickly.

Presenter23:15

So

Derek Tangye23:16

and he was succeeded by by Lama.

Presenter23:18

Llama, yes, because I said I'd never have a cat again after Monty died, unless it was a black cat and came to us in a storm. And believe it or not, it did come to us in a storm. Just turned up like that. A magic thing. And then now we've got another cat now called Ambrose.

Presenter23:33

And that is really an uncanny story because I was standing by where Monty's buried, at a place called Monty's Leave.

Presenter23:42

It's rather nice. And I was standing there when out a hundred yards away came a tiny ginger kitten.

Presenter23:50

few years ago, exact double of Monty.

Presenter23:53

Now there was no genetic connection at all, years in between. And yet out of that bracken came this little kitten, Lisbeth's night.

Derek Tangye24:01

And your donkeys are they working donkeys? Do they have anything to do on on the small hill?

Derek Tangye24:06

Uh no. Like I'm sure they do.

Presenter24:08

I can say they do. Um, they give pleasure, yes, yes.

Presenter24:12

How many do you eat? They eat it. Yes.

Presenter24:18

Are you mechanized?

Presenter24:20

Very much so, yes. We have forty acres now, yes, and we have no help.

Presenter24:24

And uh although a lot of it is in our nature reserve, all of dairyls, which are a tremendous amount, we do ourselves.

Derek Tangye24:32

When do you start with the daffodils? When do you start telling you?

Presenter24:33

We start picking about the end of January. We start picking ri with with daffodils right down the cliff called Magnificent, and then we go from variety to variety.

Presenter24:43

And then our main vari uh variety is the thing called Joseph MacLeod, which is the most beautiful yellow daffodil. And if it's a normal spring, well, I suppose by the middle of March we finish.

Presenter24:53

Record number six.

Presenter24:55

Well, I'd like to have this Haydn uh quartet played by the Avidias, which is opus seventy six, number five. And which part? And and what? And I'd like to have the finale. And the reason why I'd like to have it is that we've had kind friends who really have come right out of the book.

Speaker 125:05

And I like

Presenter25:14

Who have given us records, and I've never really been very partial.

Presenter25:19

To chamber music until a few years ago, and now I've become very educated to it. And this particular Haydn's got a rather.

Presenter25:26

An exciting beat to it.

Derek Tangye26:17

The finale to Haydn's string quartet in D major, opus 76, number 5, played by the Amadeus Quartet. Now, you mentioned kind friends. The.

Derek Tangye26:27

My neck chronicles have made lots and lots of friends. You've never disguised the location of the cottage, and you get a lot of callers, don't you?

Presenter26:34

True. We've never disguised it, although it there's nothing on the map, there's no signposts or nothing, and we're a mile off the main road.

Presenter26:41

And uh we don't have a telephone. That is one of the essentials of of living in English desert island.

Presenter26:49

And um we do have a lot of people who've become friends as a result of this because uh the kind of books I'm writing I think people get involved in. They just come and bang on the door and and see. Yes, it's I I I I'm afraid that we never like people to say, Oh, well, we are coming like they we much prefer people just thinking arrive and they do, they come from all over the world.

Speaker 126:54

Yeah.

Speaker 126:59

Yeah. Uh

Presenter27:07

We've got to record number seven.

Presenter27:09

Well, I have really no reason for this record.

Presenter27:12

Uh except I'm absolutely enchanted by Greg.

Presenter27:16

And instead of using the usual Grieg,

Presenter27:19

I've chosen this prelude of the Holberg, sweet.

Presenter27:22

And um I think you'll agree when you hear it. It has got something very, very special.

Derek Tangye28:26

Prelude to Grieg's Holberg Suite, The Northern Symphonia conducted by Paul Tortellier.

Derek Tangye28:32

Now, on your desert island, how are you going to manage? Can you look after yourself? I mean, obviously, if you're the horny handed son of the soil these days, you should be able to put up some sort of shelter.

Presenter28:42

Well, I had to cheat on this, really, because I have had experience of putting up myself.

Derek Tangye28:46

Well, in in the southeast I mean

Presenter28:47

It's an island called Tupua. It's only a mile long. And um I put up a very excellent shelter and it's very not so difficult because you have sand as a floor, so you don't have to worry about that. And you have your bamboo sticks and your pit and bandanas roof and palm leaves.

Presenter29:04

And uh the sort of difficulties I had on this I mean, uh, if I ever get on this desert island again, the only one objectionable thing I ever had was the um land crabs, great big, huge things which just waddle around and wake you up in the middle of the night. I didn't like them. Are they dangerous? No, they just tease you.

Derek Tangye29:22

What about food? What did you eat? Did you have supplies?

Presenter29:24

Yes, well, I had a um glasses, fishing glasses. So I used to

Derek Tangye29:29

Sorry.

Presenter29:30

Dive into the water with a spear, called a patia.

Presenter29:34

And it was great fun because you see all the colours of fishes there and very clear water and I'd say there's an I think I'll have a blue fish for breakfast or a red fish and dive after it. That was great fun. Yes. Then I eat it raw with coconut juice called mitihari. Didn't you do any cooking?

Presenter29:50

I had a rather elaborate way of cooking because you c cooked in the in the soil, called a Himalaya. You had wild pig and uh chickens. On the island already? On the island there were, yes. And on the um I suppose again I'm cheating, there was another island a mile away who had even more pigs and more chickens.

Derek Tangye29:59

On the island.

Derek Tangye30:08

Yeah.

Derek Tangye30:11

Would you try to

Presenter30:11

Okay.

Derek Tangye30:12

Yeah.

Derek Tangye30:13

What would be the chances of making a fair sized raft?

Presenter30:16

I don't think there would have been any chance at all on a raft. I suppose you could have well, of course, you haven't allowed me to have a canoe, you haven't allowed me to have anything.

Derek Tangye30:24

You could burn a dug-out or something of that.

Presenter30:26

Yes, yes. But there wouldn't be any difficulty in in getting away, I don't think. It's just a question whether you mentally wanted to get away, because I found a sort of peace that came over one made one feel, Oh, golly, I never want to leave here.

Derek Tangye30:42

Hmm.

Presenter30:42

So I would have just the physical wish to get away, but not the mental wish.

Derek Tangye30:46

Right. Here we have a contented castaway. Let's have your last record.

Presenter30:49

Yeah.

Presenter30:51

Well, my last record is Vivian Ellis's music and A. P. Herbert's words of This Is My Lovely Day from Breast the Bride. A. P. H. was a very great friend of ours and used to stay with us. And um he was um one morning having breakfast with us and didn't know what to write and uh Jeannie said um well why didn't you do the water chipses? and he wrote the water chipses at Manich.

Speaker 431:19

There.

Presenter31:19

But uh the song that I would most prefer is This Is My Lovely Day because we wrote the first night.

Derek Tangye31:26

Well, here it is. This is my lovely day from Bless the Bride, sung by Lisbeth Webb.

Speaker 431:33

This is my lovely day This is the day I shall remember the day I'm dying

Speaker 431:46

They can't take this away.

Speaker 431:53

It will be always mine for son and

Derek Tangye32:03

Lisbeth Webb, this is my lovely day.

Derek Tangye32:06

If you could take only one disc instead of eight, which? Oh, I think we're.

Presenter32:10

Without any hesitation.

Presenter32:13

I would take Theodaggio from Marshmanov's second symphony.

Derek Tangye32:17

The Adagio from Rachmaninoff's Second Symphony, and you're allowed one luxury.

Derek Tangye32:22

Well, could you give me a leg

Presenter32:23

Because

Derek Tangye32:24

Seriously

Presenter32:24

Large telescope to study the stars. Oh, yes, that's all right. Oh, that's that's good, because I think that would give me a lot of. Comfort.

Derek Tangye32:31

Right. And one book, not the Bible or Shakespeare, and we don't like big encyclopedias.

Presenter32:38

I rather fancy that uh Remembrances of Things Past by Poost is probably littered on your islands, but I feel I really must have that book, because

Presenter32:48

It has had such terrific influence in my life, right from a teenager, when I suddenly realized that all my own inhibitions were shared by other people.

Derek Tangye32:58

It's a good long read. Would you like it in English or French? In English, please. Write. And thank you, Derek Tangi, for letting us hear your Desert Island Discs.

Presenter33:06

Well, thank you very much for inviting me here.

Derek Tangye33:08

Goodbye, everyone.

Speaker 133:16

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