Angela Rippon

Angela Rippon0:00

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

Angela Rippon0:05

For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in 1982, and the presenter was Roy Plumley.

Presenter0:30

And in Plymouth I'm happy to say that our castaway is the West Country writer, journalist, and broadcaster, Angela Ripon. Angela, with what degree of dread do you envisage isolation on this island?

Angela Rippon0:43

Quite honestly, I do.

Angela Rippon0:44

view it with any kind of dread at all. I think perhaps by nature I'm a loner, and certainly there'll be people and places and memories that I would want to take with me in my mind.

Angela Rippon0:54

But actually being on the desert island itself doesn't bother me at all, no.

Presenter0:57

How important is music to you?

Angela Rippon1:00

Well, it's very important, I I think probably because it's always been there since I was a very little girl when my mother took me to ballet classes when I was three years old.

Angela Rippon1:08

And it may have only been a piano plonking away in the corner, but from I suppose

Angela Rippon1:13

A very, very early age I associated

Angela Rippon1:16

music with movement, with dance, and as I got older it certainly became something that

Angela Rippon1:22

for me at least, always stimulated the senses and and

Angela Rippon1:26

And the emotions and and I love it and my life being surrounded by it. It's been very difficult choosing eight records, I might tell you.

Presenter1:31

I know. Do do you play any music yourself? Do you play?

Angela Rippon1:34

No, I don't. No. I started to learn to play the piano when I was a little girl, but uh

Angela Rippon1:38

I don't think I was ever very good at it, and I would try and learn a new piece of music, and I was so bad at it my mother would always say to me,'Play something you know, dear' so I never actually got to know anything.

Presenter1:47

Yeah.

Presenter1:49

Now what's the first record you've chosen?

Angela Rippon1:51

The first one that I've chosen is Holst's Planets, and this was a record that I bought with my very first wage packet ever when I left school, when I did my first job on a newspaper here in the West Country.

Angela Rippon2:03

And I bought the record because I wanted Jupiter Bringer of Jollity. It's it's full of so much hope and promise that I can just see myself playing it very loud on my desert island and dancing down the sands to it.

Presenter3:14

Part of Jupiter from Holst's The Planets suite, Sir Malcolm Sargent conducting the London Symphony Orchestra. Now, as a Devonian, were you brought up as a country girl or a town girl?

Angela Rippon3:26

Combination of both, really. We lived in the city of Plymouth, but I am very fortunate that my father particularly is is very much a countryman at heart. He was born in Durham.

Presenter3:35

He was a naval man.

Angela Rippon3:35

He was a naval man. He was in the Royal Marines, in fact, and when he was at home, I had a bicycle, and at weekends we used to go cycling off into the South Hams, and then, when I was a bit older, off into Dartmoor. And through him, I think I gained an enormous appreciation of countryside, and learnt, without really knowing I was learning, how to recognise bird song and bird flight, and to distinguish between different wildflowers and trees. So, from that point of view, although I lived in the city

Angela Rippon4:02

I think probably from about the age of five or six I had already got a yearn for the countryside.

Presenter4:07

What were you good at at school?

Angela Rippon4:10

I think I was all like

Angela Rippon4:11

Not really very good at anything. I think I suppose when you're very little you're just one in a class. Um as I got older I I certainly enjoyed history and geography, and at one stage thought that I'd like to teach history and geography, but uh

Presenter4:13

But

Angela Rippon4:24

I found that it was the subject that I enjoyed rather more than the thought of teaching, and so.

Presenter4:28

And what what was your later ambition?

Angela Rippon4:31

At one time I desperately wanted to be a professional dancer. I'd been to ballet school from the age of three until I was about seventeen. But I don't think I would have I I certainly don't don't believe I had the talent or the ability or even the drive, I think, to have made a professional dancer.

Angela Rippon4:46

And if I'd done it, I would like to have been Shirley MacLean. I admire her so much that I think if if I couldn't have been Shirley McLean, I don't think I would have wanted to have been anything else. But then when I left school,

Angela Rippon4:58

I had a very keen interest in photography and in writing, and I wanted to be a photojournalist. So I joined the staff of the local morning newspaper, the Western Morning News and Evening Herald, and I went to work in their photographic department and I was there for two and a half years. They, I'm afraid, wouldn't give me a job as a reporter, so I kept banging on the door of the local Sunday newspaper until they finally gave me a job.

Presenter5:20

As a reporter.

Angela Rippon5:20

As a reporter, yes.

Presenter5:21

Well that was an important point in your life, so let's break off at that point and have your second record.

Angela Rippon5:27

It's the Bacchianos Brasileieros by Villa Lobos, the version that's sung by Victoria de Los Angeles. I think that.

Angela Rippon5:35

There are times, certainly, when I find it's important to sit quietly, be at peace perhaps with the inner person, and on those occasions music is a marvellous companion, and this is one of those pieces of music that always make me feel very much at peace with the world.

Presenter6:49

one of the Bacchianos Brasileieros of Villa Lobas, sung by Victoria Los Angeles.

Presenter6:56

So, a junior reporter, Angela, what did you do on your first day? Do you remember your first assignment?

Angela Rippon7:02

Yes, I do. My first assignment was actually um

Angela Rippon7:05

Not on the Sunday paper, but on the sister paper that was part of the group, which was a little weekly paper for the countryside around Plymouth.

Angela Rippon7:13

and I was sent out to Ivybridge, which is about fifteen miles away from Plymouth, where the paper was printed, and where that newspaper had its offices.

Angela Rippon7:20

and I spent my first day rewriting small stories that had appeared in other newspapers that would be of interest to the people in that locality.

Presenter7:28

So that's how it's done.

Angela Rippon7:28

Yeah.

Angela Rippon7:30

Yes, there there was no big story to be sent out or nothing like that, I'm afraid. But uh later there were there were many, many stories of gossip.

Presenter7:34

Technology.

Presenter7:37

Yes, of course you had to do your share of flower shows and sales of work. Do you remember any particular

Presenter7:43

Difficult or sensational stories. Did they send you out on any any murders?

Angela Rippon7:48

No, no, we don't have that many down here in the West Country, fortunately. No, I think probably the most exciting thing that I did when I was working for

Presenter7:51

Awesome goodly.

Angela Rippon7:56

the Sunday paper. They sent me to Aden with Forty three Marine Commando for two weeks. I was the services correspondent on the newspaper, and that was very exciting because it was when the troubles there were

Angela Rippon8:08

just beginning to boil over. It was in the days before Mad Mitch and his famous entry into Crater, and that was extremely exciting and totally different from anything I'd ever covered. It was a a minor war, but it was totally different from anything I'd ever covered at home. And for four glorious weeks I was the serv the rugby reporter for the paper.

Speaker 28:28

The panel.

Angela Rippon8:30

Only because the we had a very small staff and the three men that were on the staff at that particular time all knew about football and cricket and darts and snooker, but didn't know anything at all about rugby. And my boyfriend then, who is now my husband, was and is a rugby fanatic. So I'd stood on the touch line and knew all about things like line outs and prop forwards and things. And so for four weeks I was the rugby correspondent. But then they took someone on the paper who who had played rugby at school, so I'm afraid I was kicked out.

Presenter9:00

Were you casting envious eyes at Plymouth television stations, the BBC and the late Westwood?

Angela Rippon9:06

No, I wasn't.

Angela Rippon9:08

What I wanted to be was what I started out to be, which was a photojournalist, and I was on the verge of going to London to one of the magazines owned by the group that owned the newspaper.

Angela Rippon9:18

To actually be a photojournalist, to take photographs and write my own copy.

Angela Rippon9:22

and I only got into television literally by chance, by a telephone call.

Angela Rippon9:28

That had come from the then editor of programmes here at BBC Plymouth, a man called Terry Dobson.

Angela Rippon9:34

who rang me and said I've seen some of the stuff that you've written in the newspapers. Do you think you might like to work in television?

Angela Rippon9:41

And I at that stage finished my three and a half year apprenticeship in newspapers and I thought, well,

Angela Rippon9:47

I can always go back to earning my living on a newspaper, but no one may ever ask me again if I'd like to work in television, and so I accepted and came here to work at BBC Plymouth for two and a half very happy years.

Presenter9:59

Yes. Once again, what was your first assignment?

Angela Rippon10:01

My first assignment was to go down to the shores of the River Tamer,

Angela Rippon10:07

to a town called Salt Ash, which used to have oyster beds, and the oyster beds had been contaminated, so they hadn't been in use for many years, but there was a scheme afoot to restart them, and I can be absolutely certain about that.

Angela Rippon10:19

Because, sentimentalist that I am, I still have

Angela Rippon10:23

The very first television script that I read with all the words and all the Q's and all the Q cards and it's tucked away at home somewhere in a scrapbook.

Presenter10:31

And have this restarted those oyster bits?

Angela Rippon10:33

Well, they they made a few attempts, but they really never got under way again, though.

Presenter10:37

I would do it.

Presenter10:38

Another record we got from number three.

Angela Rippon10:41

Jack Jones is a

Angela Rippon10:43

One of my favourite men singers.

Angela Rippon10:46

And the record if is what you might call our record. It's the record that my husband and I both love, and if you listen to the words very carefully, they say all the things I think that two people who love each other would ever want to say to each other.

Speaker 310:59

Here for me.

Presenter11:03

Could be two places.

Presenter11:07

At one time

Presenter11:10

I'd be with you.

Presenter11:16

Tomorrow and today

Presenter11:23

Beside you all the way

Presenter11:28

Jack Jones singing If.

Presenter11:31

Now working here in Plymouth on BBC television, the great advantage of working on a small station is you could do everything, write, produce, direct.

Angela Rippon11:40

Absolutely. I think it's marvellous training and I'm very grateful for the years that I spent not just here at B B C Plymouth, but uh down the road, as they say, in the I T V station at Westward.

Presenter11:50

Yeah.

Angela Rippon11:51

Because you really did have to do, and still do have to do, everything.

Presenter11:54

All sorts of programmes, women's programmes, current affairs.

Angela Rippon11:57

Well here at the BBC I was a reporter and a presenter and a newsreader. I worked on radio and television for the local BBC station and of course for the network and it was very exciting to get stories, for instance when the Torrey Canyon went aground in 1967, to have my stories on the BBC National News. That was a really great milestone for me as a young reporter. And then when I went to Westwood I went to start with as the editor of women's programmes, but then took under my own department children's programmes and a network programme that we did for people who were preparing for retirement.

Angela Rippon12:34

children's programmes, and then I started producing and writing documentaries.

Angela Rippon12:39

And that, I think, probably brought together all the things that I wanted to do originally. Wanting to be a photo journalist meant that I enjoyed taking pictures and writing, and to do exactly that same job in television was a step further on. It meant that I was thinking up ideas for programmes.

Angela Rippon12:57

doing all the research for them, seeing the pictures start to form in my head, then going out with the film crews, making the film and seeing the final thing on celluloid on television.

Angela Rippon13:07

That for me was total professional and personal fulfilment and satisfaction, and it's the thing that I still enjoy doing most.

Presenter13:13

And then came the opportunity to go onto the BBC Television's national news team.

Presenter13:18

That meant moving up to London.

Angela Rippon13:20

Not moving totally, it was a very funny situation that I was offered the job to work as a reporter for National News.

Angela Rippon13:29

But my husband at that time was building up a small business of his own, and obviously it wasn't fair to say to him, Look, just because I want to go and work in London, we've all got to move, lock, stock, and barrel.

Angela Rippon13:38

So we agreed that we would go on living here in Devon.

Angela Rippon13:42

and that I would drive backwards and forwards to London, which is how I do this sort of mammoth forty five thousand miles a year. And that's what I've always done.

Presenter13:48

Yeah.

Presenter13:50

Well, it works very well, it seems.

Presenter13:52

Let's have another record, number four.

Angela Rippon13:54

which is the overture from Donadiana by Reznicek. I don't think Reznicek intended that it should conjure up ideas of riding a horse very fast over Dartmoor with the wind in my face, but whenever I hear this marvellous galloping music I can see those rolling acres of open, beautiful Dartmoor in front of me.

Presenter15:14

The Overture to Donna Diana by Resnichek.

Presenter15:18

Played by the Vianophilonic Orchestra conducted by Villy Boskovsky.

Presenter15:22

Now, we've got as far as you joining the BBC national news team. What were the big events there?

Angela Rippon15:30

Well, there were many. Um I suppose going to Northern Ireland um made a very deep impression on me and as

Angela Rippon15:36

has left me with a

Angela Rippon15:37

A great sadness for that country. I made a lot of friends there, and uh whenever I go I'm always made to feel so very welcome, but I come away feeling

Angela Rippon15:46

I do wish that the vociferous minority would allow.

Angela Rippon15:51

the majority to go on living their lives as they would wish them to without all the horrors that surround them. I also saw a lot of Northern Europe through BBC television news because they sent me to Denmark and Norway and Sweden to France to Italy to Belgium. I did a sort of uh cook's tour of Europe via the BBC.

Presenter16:12

Yes. You were always on call. You never knew where you were off to next.

Angela Rippon16:15

No, that was the very exciting thing about being a news reporter, that I would go up to London to do a four day shift.

Angela Rippon16:21

And I could end up, as I did on one occasion, spending two weeks away in Italy.

Angela Rippon16:25

You never ever knew what was going to come up.

Presenter16:27

Yes.

Presenter16:29

And after a couple of years of that you became one of the anchor people on News Extra. Did that make life a little easier for your commuting backwards and forwards to Devon?

Angela Rippon16:39

No, it was exactly the same. The difference was that instead of doing four days on and four days off, which was the shift that we worked in those days for television users' reporters, I worked every Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday one week, and Wednesday, Thursday and Friday the second week.

Angela Rippon16:55

doing the late night programme on BBC TIL News Extra and that was again great fun because although I was the presenter of the programme, not quite a newsreader but a presenter, which meant that we didn't just read the news, I also went out and still did news reports and interviews that went into the programme. So that was a combination of reporting and presenting which I enjoyed enormously.

Presenter17:15

Yes. And then in march nineteen seventy six you became a solo performer as as a newsreader. And really you made television history. You were the first woman professional newsreader.

Angela Rippon17:26

Well, um I'm always very flattered when people say that, but of course, years before me a lady called Nan Winton had actually been the very first lady newsreader on national television, but that, I think, was in the mid fifties, and it hadn't lasted for very long, so I was the first one certainly to do it for any great length of time. And it all happened so very casually. It was just a a question of

Angela Rippon17:47

Me sitting at the desk one day in the newsroom, and one of the senior editors strolling up behind me saying, Um, We've popped you in for one or two nine o'clock newsies. All right, and I said, Yes, and that was it.

Presenter18:00

Well, your reception by the viewers was far from casual. We'll talk about that in a minute. Let's have record number five.

Angela Rippon18:07

which is by Neil Sadako. I've been a a fan for years, and I think he has so much rhythm and writes such beautiful songs.

Angela Rippon18:15

And last year I went to see him in concert in Birmingham, and the highlight of the evening for me was Superbird.

Angela Rippon18:32

When I was young, no worries in my head.

Angela Rippon18:40

I used to flap my arms and fly around I'm a bad Just like a super bird zoom

Presenter18:50

Super

Presenter18:50

So

Presenter18:51

Neil Sedaka singing Superbird. And that's what a tremendous lot of people were calling you, Angela, because.

Presenter18:58

Overnight, as a newsreader, you became a national figure. You made a tremendous impact. How did you react to that?

Angela Rippon19:06

In a way, I suppose I knew that

Angela Rippon19:08

Obviously I would have been terribly naive if I hadn't thought that it was going to cause some kind of effect.

Angela Rippon19:13

But I really didn't believe that it would go on for as long and reach the sort of proportions that it did. It just seemed to go on and on forever. It was an enormous compliment, obviously. I mean, I'm I'm not saying that it wasn't, but uh after a while I really did begin to think that uh perhaps if I had just blown my nose in public it would have appeared on the front page of the thing.

Presenter19:33

Now seeing you sitting at at that desk reading the news, there was national curiosity about the lower half of you. Did you in fact have legs, and if so, what they were l what were they like? And all that was revealed on the Morecambe and Wise Show.

Angela Rippon19:47

Yes, it it really started ever so slightly before that. Um I was reading the news on the evening of the Royal Variety performance when Max Bygraves was the the compere and it was done live, and in the middle of the variety performance they had to stop and come back to the newsroom for the news.

Angela Rippon20:04

And Max Bygraves introduced me by saying to the audience in the Palladium We're now going over to television news for the news from Angela Ripon. She hasn't got legs, you know, they wheel her on on casters.

Presenter20:16

Ha ha ha ha ha.

Angela Rippon20:16

So I think that sort of put the little seed in people's mind. And when I was asked to do the Morecambe and Wise show, uh lots of people had done the show before me and the whole joy of it was that they were doing something that people didn't see them do normally. Dickie Baker I think was was playing the piano and and singing songs and and interviewing them um and when they asked me if I would do the show they said well what can you do? And the only thing that I could honestly do with any kind of professional certainty was dance. So I think Ernest Maxon the producer felt that this would be the fun of it to see me dancing and the legs thing didn't occur to them. It wasn't until the press picked it up and said she's dancing and we can see her legs that suddenly the whole thing just took off.

Presenter20:57

But suddenly

Presenter20:58

Yes, and of course you were going back to an earlier ambition, and and and you danced very well. One thing's also I've always been curious about is for lady newsreaders. What about wardrobe? You you had to wear something different on each appearance. Did the BBC provide clothes, or did you get an Lance to go out and buy them? How does it work?

Angela Rippon21:16

Oh no. Um they're all your own clothes. Um there is a massive wardrobe at the BBC, but that's only used really for for drama productions and light entertainment. Newsreaders, men and women alike, have to turn up for work in their own clothes and uh you're quite right, we we did have to always wear something different, because it wouldn't have mattered if I was reading a story that was terribly grave, terribly important, really national disaster, international disaster. You could bet your boots that I'd get somebody writing the next day saying, Oh, we did like that blouse that you were wearing or oh, we couldn't stand the way you did your hair and I always had this image in my mind of me sitting there saying good evening and here is the news, being terribly serious, and half the nation at home saying, Oh, what has she done to her hair?

Speaker 221:50

Stand the way you did your hair.

Presenter22:03

Course you weren't only newsreading, you you were still doing well, for example, in the country you were doing.

Angela Rippon22:08

Yes, it was very nice, because certainly from a national point of view a lot of people got the feeling that I was a newsreader and that I'd never done anything before, and probably couldn't do anything else at all either. But of course I am a a journalist. I always think of myself as a journalist and a broadcaster.

Angela Rippon22:25

And because I'd work

Angela Rippon22:27

Then, what, for six or seven years in television, I'd had an opportunity of doing so many different things and enjoyed doing all of them that I didn't really want to lose track of all those other

Angela Rippon22:37

Areas of my work.

Angela Rippon22:38

That really gave me a lot of pleasure. So as well as reading the news, yes, I did in the country. I started working on a series of programmes here at BBC Plymouth called The Ripon Reports, which meant that I could still go out and direct my own films, which I enjoyed enormously.

Presenter22:52

They still go on, don't they?

Angela Rippon22:54

Very much so, yes. In fact, I'm just about to start another four or five of them for BBC Plymouth this year, and a series of countryside programmes, so

Angela Rippon23:01

Always, although I've been reading the news, I've always uh kept on the other things as well.

Presenter23:06

and the Antiques Road Show with Arthur Neagot.

Angela Rippon23:08

Mm-hmm.

Presenter23:08

And a major role in the royal wedding.

Angela Rippon23:12

Yes, that that was lovely. It was such a happy day, and we set everyone off at half past seven in the morning with our breakfast show.

Angela Rippon23:19

And uh it it was absolutely glorious. It was like letting the cork off a bottle of champagne, I think, and starting the day for everyone. And uh

Angela Rippon23:26

It was marvellous because although we were on the air with the show that I did with Michael Wood from half past seven until quarter to eleven.

Angela Rippon23:33

I actually had to stay in that wedding studio for the entire day because all the programmes were being fed through that studio from our outside broadcast unit.

Angela Rippon23:41

And if anything had gone wrong,

Angela Rippon23:43

with any of the lines or any of the cameras during the day, then they would have to come back to the studio. So I sat in glorious isolation in T C seven at Television Centre, which is a bit like an aircraft hangar.

Angela Rippon23:53

Surrounded by I think it was twelve Mitsubishi screens, each of them giving me a different picture of what was happening on the route and in the Abbey.

Angela Rippon24:00

and with about four monitors around me as well, and all the technicians who were also s sort of sitting on the floor with cups of tea and their sandwiches. And it was like having a marvellous party. It was really glorious.

Presenter24:10

Mm-hmm.

Presenter24:11

Well, there's so many things we could talk about, but we've got to get on. What's record number six?

Angela Rippon24:16

I'd like the duet from the Pearlfishers sung by Jussip Björling and Robert Merrill.

Angela Rippon24:21

I think that if I'm going to be alone on this island for a long time the companionship of the human voice is going to be very, very important.

Angela Rippon24:28

And I don't think that musically there's a better example of perfection of human voices than this particular record.

Speaker 224:35

A prot

Speaker 224:40

Let us see.

Speaker 224:43

Ah

Presenter24:44

Passage on Isaiah.

Angela Rippon24:55

Yeah.

Angela Rippon24:56

Moraga.

Speaker 225:06

We said that.

Presenter25:10

Have all the rest of the heavens here.

Presenter25:24

All of our

Presenter25:33

That celebrated duet from the first act of Bizet's The Pearlfishers sung by Jussie Bjöling and Robert Merrill.

Presenter25:41

Now, Angela, you've signed up with T V A M, the commercial breakfast time television service which is to start next year. In the meantime, you're very busy, and one of your activities is writing books. Now that's not something new for you. You've written several in the past.

Angela Rippon25:57

Well, the first one that I wrote was just called Angela Ripon Riding, and was really the story of how I came by my horse, Katie, and some of the things that we've got up to since. And that of course was a great pleasure to write, because what I hoped that I'd be able to do was pass on some of the fun and enjoyment that I've had as a a weekend amateur rider to those people well million of them, I think, in the country as a whole, who go out at weekends and enjoy the fresh air and the countryside and the companionship of horses. And I tried to include in it something for people who perhaps have never ridden at all, people that just enjoy watching

Angela Rippon26:30

three day eventing or show jumping on television, and also to help people understand about some of the work that's done for the disabled through the Writing for Disabled organization. So that that was a great pleasure to write that book.

Presenter26:40

Yeah.

Presenter26:42

And you've written a biography of Captain Mark Phillips, and of course horses come into that a very great deal.

Angela Rippon26:47

Oh, very much so to such an extent, in fact, that it's the nearest I've ever got, writing that book, to having a really working holiday, because as well as spending hours and hours, of course, talking to Captain Phillips, doing the research for the book, it meant that I also got to do an awful lot of writing, and I can't think of a nicer way of mixing business with pleasure.

Presenter27:06

No, indeed. Well, let's have record number seven.

Angela Rippon27:10

Well, I'd like uh Round the Horn, please, which as far as I'm concerned is the funniest radio programme that there has ever been on the BBC. And I think it's important, if I'm going to be on my own, to keep my sense of humour. I think we all need a good laugh from time to time, and I can't think of a better record than this. I'd like um Kenneth Williams, because I'm a great fan of his, S Julian and Sandy, as boner law when they were going to defend Kenneth Horne for a parking offence.

Speaker 227:37

So that he can look the world in the face and say, I name this ship HMS Ark Royal and God bless all who sail in her. Bravo sands! Bravo sand!

Speaker 327:50

Yeah.

Speaker 327:52

Could have been a Queen's Council.

Speaker 327:56

Well, Miss Tolm, what'd you say?

Speaker 327:58

Have you got Quincy Hogg's phone number?

Angela Rippon28:07

Yeah.

Angela Rippon28:08

So funny.

Presenter28:10

Gorgeous stuff.

Angela Rippon28:10

Gorgeous stuff.

Presenter28:13

Well, there we are. That was uh Kenneth Williams, Hugh Paddock, and of course Kenneth Horne himself in an excerpt from Round the Horn recorded just fifteen years ago.

Presenter28:23

Now, could you look after yourself on a desert island? Could you rig up some sort of shelter?

Angela Rippon28:28

Well, I think I'd have to, wouldn't I? I've I used to be a bit of a do it yourself fanatic. I'd certainly done all the wallpapering at home and uh laid two floors, two tile floors, one in the dining room and one in the kitchen. Oh, that's right. I I think we'd be a bit short on tiles, but yes, I think I'm sure I could build a sh a shelter of some sort.

Presenter28:39

Oh, that's a help.

Presenter28:44

What about fishing?

Angela Rippon28:45

No, no. I'd have to become an absolute vegetarian, because uh, although I enjoy eating fish, I'd simply am too squeamish. I don't have the stomach for catching and killing things, so I would not be able to live off the land in that respect, but I'd enjoy gardening and growing things and

Angela Rippon29:01

It would be rather interesting, actually, nut salads and

Angela Rippon29:04

Berry dishes.

Presenter29:05

Delicious. Do you know anything about small craft? Would you try to escape?

Angela Rippon29:09

No, I wouldn't. I that I'm absolutely positive about, because I think I would find the terror of the unknown sea far worse than staying put and making life as comfortable as I possibly could where I was. But I'd I'd certainly try and and do everything I could to make people find me. I'd I'd be a bit quick to light fires if I saw a plane or a a boat on the horizon.

Presenter29:26

Yeah.

Presenter29:28

There are an awful lot of people who'd love to come and rescue you.

Presenter29:32

Let's have your last record.

Angela Rippon29:34

Yehudi Menuin, playing the last movement of the violin concerto in E by Mendelsohn. Very happy memories this. I heard Yehudi play it in the concert hall at Monte Carlo, with my husband sitting beside me, and it would bring back so many, many lovely, lovely memories.

Presenter30:50

Part of the third movement of Mendelssohn's violin concerto in E minor, Yehudi Menuen, with the Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Ephraim Kurtz. If you could take only one disc out of the eight you've played us, which would it be?

Angela Rippon31:02

I think it would have to be Jupiter Bringer of Dolity, because it has everything in the music that I would want. There are the quiet passages when I could sit and be

Angela Rippon31:11

contemplative, and there are the happy moments when I'd want to dance.

Presenter31:14

And you can take one luxury to the island, any one object of no practical use.

Angela Rippon31:19

I would like, if I may, please, a collection of paper and watercolours, so that I could draw and sketch and paint, which I haven't been able to do for a very long time.

Presenter31:29

Right. And one book apart from the Bible and Shakespeare which are already planted for you on the island.

Angela Rippon31:34

Well, as you've got the complete works of Shakspere, if I could ever so slightly cheat and have the complete works of Jane Austen, that's what I'd like. But if you really tie me down to one Pride and Prejudice, please.

Presenter31:44

We'll bind several together.

Presenter31:47

And thank you, Angela Ripon, for letting us hear your Desert Island Disc.

Angela Rippon31:51

Oh, it's been my pleasure to enjoy the music and your company. Thank you very much.

Presenter31:55

Goodbye, everyone.

Presenter32:03

Uh

Angela Rippon32:03

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