James Fox

James Fox0:00

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

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For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in 1983.

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And the presenter was Roy Plumley.

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This week, our Castaway is the actor, James Fox.

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James, how well do you think you could endure loneliness for quite a long time?

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Well, I quite enjoy being alone.

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And

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Although I think it'd be a bit rash to say I would enjoy enduring loneliness.

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I don't think that I would

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be too upset at the thought, because I don't mind my own company and I think I should en enjoy that. How much do you think your eight records would help?

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Yes, I think they'd help a lot.

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I should enjoy playing them and replaying them, because I have done that already quite a lot. Music means a lot to you.

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I would say it does. I mean, I'm I don't have the music on all day long, but it does mean quite a lot to me, yes. Have you any musical skill yourself? No. I tried to play the trombone when I was young, which is in some connection with my first choice. But, um

Presenter1:21

I don't really have a talent for it. It's my brother Edward who really has the talent for music in our family. Well, he plays the piano. You sing?

James Fox1:24

What is music?

Presenter1:28

No, I don't. You've never had to sing in a production.

Presenter1:31

In Thoroughly Modern Millie, the film I made with Julie Andrews, I sang, but then I was cut out. I thought it was an awful shame, because um I practised with a disc. It was terribly off putting really. They gave me a disc.

Presenter1:43

Which had the musical introduction and then I had the lyric to sing. And I practised at home rather half-heartedly thinking, well, this isn't very easy to do. Perhaps it'll be easier on the day when we're with the orchestra. I went to the studio and had the orchestra and came in to do my bit and did it. And presumably they weren't satisfied with it and put a rather perfect Hollywood tenor on, which I think spoiled it. Spoiled it tremendously, the singing bit, my dance, the tapioca. But they couldn't dub your dancing, that was you. That was me. They couldn't dub the dancing. Exactly.

James Fox2:04

Uh

Presenter2:15

Well what's the first record of this eight?

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The first record is Jellyroll Morton and his Red Hot Peppers playing Dead Man Blues. Why do you choose it? Well, in the nineteen fifties there was a revival of traditional jazz, and it was the time when I was young.

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growing up, and this was the first musical influence I would say which had a real influence in my life. I was a great Humphrey Lyttelton and Chris Barber fan, but somehow the original nineteen twenty six artists were something else.

Speaker 32:47

What's that idea? 12 o'clock in the daytime. Church bells ringing? Oh, man, you don't hear no church bells ringing 12 o'clock in the day. Don't tell me somebody must be dead. Ain't nobody dead. Somebody must be dead drunk. Don't tell me. I think it's a funeral. Then look here. I believe I do hear a funeral. I believe I hear that trambone phone.

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Jedder Ole Morton and his red hot peppers, Dead Man Blues. Now you're one of three talented brothers all in the theatre.

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How far back does the theatre tradition go?

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Well, it certainly goes back beyond my parents. But going back to them, my mother was an actress, and my father was a theatrical agent.

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My mother's father was a writer, Freddie Lonsdale, a very distressed one.

James Fox4:09

My father's

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My father's mother was an actress Hilda Hanbury.

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And my father's grandfather was a patron of the arts and gave money to the Royal College of Music and was himself an amateur musician. So it goes back on both sides. So you grew up with that feeling of of the theatre around you? Absolutely, yes. Did you go a lot? Were you taken to matine? Yes, yes. We went a lot to the Theatre Royal in Brighton and we went to shows in London. Particularly to see the plays of Robert Morley. My father was his um agent and friend, and we saw all of Robert Morley's plays of the fifties from the box and from the uh stalls. Now, you're the middle brother. Yes. The elder one, Edward, the actor. Right.

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He's most famed, I suppose, for his television performances of the Duke of Windsor, and the film The Dare the Jackal. Yes.

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And the younger one? Robert, who's twelve years younger than me, and he's one of the leading uh theatrical producers in London.

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Now, you started very young. There's a story about your father taking you on to a film set when you were, what, about nine or ten? Nine or ten, yes. He.

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must have been representing as an agent with MCA. Somebody connected with the film which Greer Garson made, the Miniver Story, and he took Edward and I down there. We met Irene Howard, who was the casting director at MGM Studios at Borenwood. Leslie Howard's sister, if I remember right. That's right.

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And we went on the set and we met Hank Potter, who was the director in Greer.

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And they were looking for a boy to play the part of Toby misses Miniver's son.

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And they liked us very much. I don't know whether we were taken down there to audition or to see over the studio. I thought to see over the studio.

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Anyway, we uh Edward was first of all asked if he'd like to test for the part, and he got very shy and didn't want to do it, and then they asked me, and I said yes.

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I didn't hesitate at all. I thought it would be great fun. So I did test with Greg Arsen that that afternoon and I got the part. How long were you on the film? I think it was probably about three weeks. Time off from school? Oh, yes. And you did another one afterwards, didn't you? I did. I had more time off from school. Almost immediately. Ealing Studios were going to make the magnet, and I did that. So it was about a year off from school in all.

Presenter6:27

The magnet, you you played the starting part. It was a children's film, it was.

James Fox6:30

Yeah.

Presenter6:31

Was that the end of your career as as a child actor? Yes. Then my parents sent me back to finish at my preparatory school and I took the common entrance into Harrow School. Like the other. You went to Harrow. Like the other male members of your family.

Speaker 36:41

And went to Harrow.

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Did you do well there? No, I did very badly at Harrow. I passed in very low, and I left very early and under a cloud, I seem to remember. You won an award for writing a play, so the Lonsdale blood was was bubbling. Yes. Had you made up your mind that you wanted to follow the tradition? I think so. I think that I made up my mind probably when I made that second film that there was something about acting in front of a camera and something I was able to do that uh I enjoyed doing and that it it must have

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You've mentioned my theatrical background that must have had a great influence. But uh then having done those two things, and then being well received, I think that's when I decided. And then failing at school

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I left at seventeen to go to Central School of Speech and Drama. I decided to go there. Well, at this point, let's break off your second record.

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Record number two is Chopin Nocturne, and it's number three in B major, opus nine number three.

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Played by Stefan Ascenazi. Why do you choose it?

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It's connected with Harrow, really. I met a at Harrow, one of the senior masters, who was called mister EV C. Plumtree, who was a a musician himself.

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And he introduced me really. He used to play, and I would have tea with him, and he'd play Chopin, and we would talk.

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and he would play gramophone records and play music, and I think he introduced me to uh the classical composers. And this particular one I don't think he played himself, because it's rather a hard piece. But um at that time I I certainly grew to love Chopin.

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The opening section of Chopin's Nocturne in Be, opus nine number three, played by Stefan Ashkenazi.

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So you were at the central school, a very good school of drama.

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Very good, yes. I was again a disaster at that as well. Were you? Yes, I a bad student. But we had some illustrious students at the time. Vanessa Redgrave and Judy Dench were in the final year at the time, and I watched their final performances and saw them go through the school. But I thought there's nothing I could learn there at all. I did I didn't feel it was in touch with what I was most interested in, and certainly I think it was the American films of the fifties that were coming over which had the biggest influence on me.

James Fox9:41

Mm.

Presenter9:59

Voice training and um movement class and prologues and epilogues and anything but getting down to the real thing. You wanted to get down to real professional practical work.

James Fox10:08

What is it?

Presenter10:10

What was your first engagement when you left the

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I think it was to be a an assistant stage manager on my father's production of Six Months' Grace with Ivon Arno and Michael Shepley. I was engaged as a six pound a week ASM and was touring with him. Callboy callboy and packed the trunks for touring to the next thing.

James Fox10:25

Touring

James Fox10:27

Yeah.

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Bro, boy.

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Disconnected a cleat or two and

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Back to flat, I expect. But you weren't understudying. No, I wasn't, no.

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Now you had your national service to do.

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So, what did you do about that? You went. I went. Yes, I didn't dodge. I went.

James Fox10:46

Yeah

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My mother's sister was married to the Colonel of the Coldstream Guards, Richard Colbs.

James Fox10:53

All that crowd

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It helped a lot. And I thought the Brigade of Guards was a very exciting regiment, obviously, to serve national service with. So I was interviewed and went through their basic training at Caterham and was commissioned after about sixteen weeks and served in London and Kenya. In Kenya?

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Did you see actions this, eh?

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No, the emergency was over, and it was just prior to independence. We saw action in the Methaga Club.

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drunken parties, but there wasn't there wasn't any military action that I remember. We we did sort of do mopping up exercises round villages and things like that.

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We were battle trained, but I'm awfully glad we weren't thrown into action. How long were you in uniform? Two years, National Service.

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I gather your first concern when you got out of uniform was to pay off a rather large mess bill which you'd run up. How did you set about that?

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Well, I had to get a temporary job as a salesman in Fortnum and Mason. Now that was near where my father lived, in Old Burlington Street.

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And he said you'd go and get a job immediately to pay off this rather large mess bill that you've mentioned. And I became a salesman on the biscuit counter. Were you good? I was quite good, but the men in frock coats, they get the big customers, and if you sort of move down towards the counters which sell the more expensive items, the caviar and the foie gras,

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You soon find yourself moved off that pitch. So I mean one's pushed to the back of the store where biscuits and things like that were. You got an awful lot of biscuits, didn't you? A lot of biscuits. I was on commission and I mean one wasn't going to make a fortune at it, but it was fun.

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And then you were in advertising for a bit. Yes, I was as an assistant account executive. But this was a move back into acting again, I think. I wanted to use uh my creative talents, but the army had got me sort of more straight and suited and generally I I rather looked down on acting, I think, at that time, and hadn't got it straightened out or sorted out. But I spent a year in advertising.

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And uh I didn't do much creative, no, as an assistant account executive. What brought you back to the theatre? Was it the offer of a job or?

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It was really. I was going out with my girlfriend at the time, was Sarah Miles, and

James Fox13:10

And

Presenter13:11

And that brought me back in touch again with the whole student crowd. She was at Dorada and the whole drama world. And it was through the offer of a job by Tony Richardson in a film called The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner. Yes. He had a small part for a public schoolboy runner and interviewed me while he was making the film and offered me four days' work for £120. And I had to weigh up whether I was going to leave my advertising firm for four days' work or not, and I didn't have any difficulty deciding what I was going to do. You had to run against Tom Courtney, if I remember right. I did. I did. I ran and I won, but only because he refused to take the prize himself.

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You had to run against Tom

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And my, they did make us run. We ran for miles. Real stuff. Real stuff behind Tony Richardson in his waggon, making us run faster and faster.

James Fox14:04

Fast

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Enjoying every minute of it. Well, there you are. You've made your real professional debut, so let's break for another record. What next?

James Fox14:11

Yes.

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The next record is Dylan Thomas' reading of his story A Child's Christmas in Wales.

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Well, it's irresistible. I mean, it's one of the great stories, I think, and wonderfully told.

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Yeah.

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It was on the afternoon of the day of Christmas Eve, and I was in misses Brothero's garden, waiting for Cats with her son Jim. It was snowing it was always snowing at Christmas. December, in my memory, as white as Lapland, although there were no reindeers. But there were Cats. Patient, cold, and callous, our hands wrapped in socks, we waited to snowball the Cats.

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Dylan Thomas A Child's Christmas in Wales.

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So, James, you've done your first grown-up film. Then there was a bit of television that came along that was rather useful to you. What was that?

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You mean uh the Ann Todd play, The Door for Angler Television, which Dirk Bogard saw? Yes, it was.

James Fox15:09

Yeah.

Presenter15:14

It happened, I suppose, about a year after the loneliness of the long distance runner, and it was a very nice two hander for Anglia, and it was seen

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As you say, it did me a bit of good. It was seen by Dirk Bogard, who was at that moment thinking about doing the servant, and he liked me for the part of Tony.

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And this was a very distinguished, an early Pinter effort, a Harold Pinter script.

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and Joseph Losey directing.

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A very thorough man. You had to work on that part, didn't you? Yes, tremendously. And of course I had to make up for a lot that I lacked in experience. But I worked very hard with an acting coach, Vivian Matlon, before we shot. And because the Pinter script was very theatrical, very well constructed,

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There was a lot of scenes to work on and to work right through, like preparing a play or rehearsing a play. So when I came to do it I was well prepared, and I think that put me in good stead for the future.

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The servant, you were what? You were an upper-class Chelsea character. Playboy. Playboy.

James Fox16:13

Eventually

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A rich young man who hires a servant to run his house for him.

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and who has a girlfriend, and the servant comes in and begins to influence the young man as far as taste and food, and the young man becomes dependent on him and the roles become reversed.

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And it's a fascinating switch in the whole idea of servant-master relationship. A very interesting film indeed.

James Fox16:36

Yeah.

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And then in in lighter vein you did those magnificent men in their flying machines.

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Some pleasant locations on that? Yes, lovely. Uh lovely locations down at uh Booker uh Aerodrome near Oxford. But the real stars of that were the machines themselves. They stole the show and uh we were the props really, the actors going around. But it was a hit film. It was lovely film. What was your first Hollywood film? King Rat, which was a very British film to make in Hollywood. It was about a prisoner of war camp.

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With many British actors, but the leading actor was the American actor George Siegel. There was a British director, of course. And British director Brian Forbes.

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And I think that'll bring us to record number four. Well, since we're in America, that is appropriate because record number four is from Dream Girls. Well, tell us about Dream Girls. Dream Girls is a Broadway musical based loosely on the singing group The Supremes and how they rose to success in the 1960s. It's a backstage story.

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And uh it would remind me on the desert island of everything to do with show business.

Speaker 317:48

And I am telling you.

Speaker 217:53

Oh my god, wait.

Speaker 217:57

You're the best man I'll ever

James Fox18:00

No

James Fox18:02

There's no way I can ever go.

Speaker 218:10

Please I'm gonna

Presenter18:18

Jennifer Holliday singing and I'm telling you why I'm not going from Dream Girls.

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So King Rat in Hollywood, James, you quickly became part of the Hollywood scene, so much so that in your next film you were cast as a Texan.

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Very unusual, isn't it? Were you coached? Yes, coached again. And these are the strange workings of Hollywood.

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How I got the part, I don't really know. What is the film? The Chase. It was about.

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A young man who escapes from prison, Robert Redford no, doesn't he's in prison, is returning home and his wife is Jane Fonder, and I played the part of a rich young Texas oil millionaire who was involved with Jane Fonder at the time.

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And there's a background to this whole story, Marlon Brander was a sheriff in this southern Texan town, and there was a a riot, a racist riot. He got.

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Punched up.

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And it it was a bit of a muddle as a story.

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And it was a strange muddle as to how I got into it, really. One of those things you can't quite uh work out. We want an Englishman who can do Texan.

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Well, the story is is is a bit more comprehensible than that. They wanted O'Toole for it, because O'Toole and Brando were due to make a film together by Spiegel, who was the producer, and O'Toole obviously thought the probably thought that the part wasn't good enough.

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So I um was called my services were called upon, I suppose.

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the connection being we were English and I just made Kingrat for the same studio. But there was a funny story actually that happened. The first read through of The Chase, we we were all round trestle tables at Columbia, and I'd not met any of the cast, and we had a read through with Arthur Penn.

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and Marlon Brander was sitting opposite Sam Spiegel.

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And before the read through began, Brando said to Spiegel,

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Where's O'Toole?

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And Spiegel said

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Uh you know, Marlon that uh

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that our tool is not playing th this part.

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Then Brander said, Well, I'd not been told that.

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Yeah

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He's expecting to embarrass me. So uh Spiegel said, Well, we'll talk about it later or something like that. And then Branda said, What are you kicking me for, Sam?

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He was stirring it up and enjoying every minute.

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And then Isadora, the film about Isadora Duncan.

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Now, that was a very interesting film. You still had a sequence to finish on that film, but in an untypical and rather undisciplined way you elected to go up the Amazon instead. Yes, that's right.

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There was a sequence to shoot in Pompeii. It was about three weeks before I was due to do it from the time that I had finished the last sequence, and I was invited to the Rio de Janeiro Film Festival.

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And when I was there I met a

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a fellow down there called Peter Clifford, who wanted to go to the Amazon and go

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on Colonel Fawcett's route down the Benny, which is a tributary of the Amazon. And he invited me to go and I

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I said yes. I knew I had this sequence to go back and do. I knew it was unprofessional, but I just thought I must go and do this adventure of a lifetime. My father came out, of course. He was my agent as well by then.

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and tried to persuade me not to do it. That I did. I went and did it. Was it rewarding? Yes, it was. It was rewarding.

Presenter21:39

James, you were in rather an emotional mess at that time. You had had one or two rather unsatisfactory love affairs, and you were also on drugs.

Presenter21:46

Yes. And your next film, a Low Life One with Mick Jagger about London's underworld, wasn't very uplifting. That wasn't anything to

Presenter21:54

make you feel better about life.

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Well, as a matter of fact, at the time that I went up the Amazon I probably wasn't on drugs and wasn't in the biggest mess. Probably the biggest mess was before that, when I was living in Rome.

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Just before Isadora.

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But by the time I was going up the Amazon I was certainly searching for some adventure and some reality through testing oneself, if you like. So I was off at drugs and through the worst bit. And in fact I came back to do performance, which was a although it was, as you say, a low life film

James Fox22:19

Yeah.

Presenter22:27

It was a film which I had to put a maximum amount of discipline and preparation into, and which was a rewarding acting experience.

Presenter22:37

Record number five. What next?

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Well, next I would like to take with me the Birds recording of Mr. Tambourine Man, because Bob Dylan was the

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A favorite recording artist of the sixties in California when I was working, and in fact, he influenced me tremendously. I think.

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And this whole period is is is summed up by

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His writing and this particular group's recording of Mr. Tambourine Man, The Birds.

Speaker 223:11

Mr. Terry

Speaker 223:14

But yes I

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One night sleep began, there ain't no place hello into

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Hey

Speaker 223:27

Mr. Tamarin

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The Beds Mr. Tabourine Man.

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Now you were having this rather low period, which might have been helped by that Mick Jagger film, but after it there wasn't much workabout for you. You were rather depressed.

Presenter23:46

Well

Presenter23:48

I think you're right, Roy. I mean, I I think that I I wasn't uh myself. I wasn't happy at that period, regardless of the film performance, which was probably quite a satisfactory artistic experience. I wasn't at a high period at all, as you rightly say. And you were just getting odd weeks in provincial theatres?

James Fox23:53

You regardless.

Presenter24:04

No, that wasn't true. I was in terrific demand. I was at the best point of my career. I could have taken film work, any film work I'd wanted. But what had happened was I thought that I needed to lay the foundations of a serious theatre career, instead of going on in film acting.

Presenter24:19

And uh so I took a contract with Glasgow Citizens' Theatre, but immediately prior to that I went to Blackpool to do a Christmas show. But I didn't have to go into the theatre. It was really a conscious uh shift of emphasis to try and become a theatre actor and not just a film actor.

Presenter24:36

But something very important happened to you in Blackpool. Yes, indeed.

Presenter24:40

Something unexpected in that I'd been thinking about Christianity probably for about a year and a half, and hadn't worked out how one could become a serious or real Christian. But I'd begun to read the New Testament and things like that. But in Blackpool I unexpectedly met someone who was a committed Christian, a real Christian, and he asked me if I'd be interested in discussing and discovering what a real Christian is. And I was naturally very open and interested, and I didn't know there was anything to be discussed, actually. I thought I probably was a Christian. But it it came to light as we talked that I wasn't a Christian in the sense of the New Testament word.

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and I was most interested and made many spiritual discoveries at that time in Blackpool of all places.

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You joined a group called the Navigators. Uh tell me about the navigators.

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Well, the Navigators are a an international Christian organization.

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And uh they were helping students and young working people at that time in England and still are.

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To live their Christian lives as effectively and meaningfully as possible.

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and I met someone who'd been helped by them.

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This is, I presume, a voluntary organisation? Yes. Well, how did you live? Were you living on capital or were you doing jobs while you were working with the navigators? Well, that's a story of ten years. But at that time, as I mentioned, I went to Glasgow Citizens' Theatre to fulfil my contract there, although I was sacked after a couple of plays. And then.

Presenter26:11

Struggling a bit with how to resolve my Christianity and my acting, I then left acting for a while and did go to Sheffield to work in another job. And I lived off capital, yes. What sort of jobs were you doing? The first job I did there was as a telephone sterilising service salesman. But how did you think that being a sterilizing service salesman was more useful to the world than being an actor? Surely you could have kept on being an actor and still done Christian work with the Navigators or some similar group. Yes, I could.

Presenter26:44

I could, and uh and it's only something that I can answer, sort of looking at the context of the time. As I mentioned, there was some tension between my Christianity and my acting, which I hadn't got resolved at that time, and I thought I needed to devote time

Presenter27:00

I thought God wanted me to devote time, if you like, to to my Christianity time which I couldn't share with the theatre being an an evening activity and requiring so much of my time at that period of my life. A period that lasted ten years.

Presenter27:16

Yes, initially it lasted two years before I met my wife, and then we had to decide what we were going to do next, to come back into film acting again, or to go and

Presenter27:27

As it were, become Christian workers ourselves, and we felt that that's what we should do. You married a fellow navigator.

Presenter27:33

Yes. And you now have four children. You did do one film for Billy Graham. I did, yes. It was called No Longer Alone, and it was the story of an actress, Joan Wynmill, who was converted at one of Billy Graham's Crusades.

Presenter27:48

Why did you change your mind and and come back to your first vacation?

Presenter27:54

After six years in um student Christian work, I had to decide is my calling to go on as a Christian worker, perhaps become ordained or go on working amongst older people and not students, or are there other avenues that I should

Presenter28:11

go down. And of course, having been trained and brought up in the theatre, this was the obvious choice that I could make. And at that time too I began to want to again. I got back some of my desire to. I recognised it was something I enjoyed and something I was good at.

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and I thought that by that time, too, I had resolved some of the difficulties.

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about being a Christian and being an actor, and the timing seemed right.

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Record number six.

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Well record number six.

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reminds me of my days in the north of England, and in Sheffield particularly, a little village near it, called Ootybridge, where I lived for a couple of years with a family, and its the Bolsterstone Male Voice Choir. Tell me about them.

Presenter28:59

Well, they're a well known male voice choir from one of the villages near to Ootybridge, probably made up mostly from the workers in the British steel industry at Stocksbridge. As you know, Yorkshire is a very musical county, and I enjoyed the musical life that I had up there, or at least the music that I heard in that family. And this is so typically Yorkshire.

James Fox29:12

Night.

Speaker 229:40

I'm seeing

Speaker 229:57

I see.

James Fox29:58

You like what?

Speaker 230:00

Oh trends of

Speaker 230:06

Uh

Presenter30:22

The Bolsterstone Male Voice Choir, conducted by Alvin B. Tipple.

Presenter30:27

and it was often the stilly night. So ten years or more doing missionary work, mainly in the north of England.

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You decided to take up your acting career again, but on your own terms. You turned down the leading part in The French Lieutenant's Woman.

Presenter30:44

Why was that?

Presenter30:46

One of the best film poets for years. Yes, exactly. Yes. Oh, it was it was very difficult indeed to turn it down, as you say, but I I must tell you that I was not offered it. I was asked to read it with a view to chatting about it with Carol Rice.

Presenter31:01

But um

Presenter31:03

It was a terrific wrench.

Presenter31:05

I think it was because the character of Charles developed an absolute fascination with the French lieutenant woman that, as you know, becomes an obsession.

Presenter31:15

And

Presenter31:16

Because the film contained this whole idea of a man totally obsessed with this particular woman.

Presenter31:24

And because it culminated in in, as I read it in the script, a frankly quite explicit sex scene I don't know whether in fact that's the way they shot it I thought this would be very difficult for me to act, very difficult at coming back into acting, and I suppose my conscience was was not at peace about saying yes, I could do it.

Presenter31:45

And um for that reason I regretfully said to Carol Rice that I I didn't think I could do it.

Presenter31:52

But the news that you were coming back in into the theatrical business was greeted with some acclaim. You were offered a lot of other work. You did some television almost immediately. Yes, I'm glad to say I did. I did some television and then went on to make two feature films which hadn't been seen yet. You played Waldorf Astor and the Nancy Astor.

James Fox32:08

Uh

Presenter32:12

Television series. That must have been rewarding. It was, yes. He was a a very nice character to play, and it's the first time I've played anyone quite like that. It was.

Presenter32:22

An interesting experience.

Presenter32:24

And what else is in the book? I'm just about to play Lord Esker in Greystoke, Tarzan, Lord of the Apes. Oh, splendid. What fun Yes. You're in the jungle. Yes. Well, no, no, I'm in a rather grand Scottish castle.

Presenter32:39

They've been in the jungle, and they come out to civilization, Tarzan, back to his ancestral roots, and there, of course, he meets Jane, and I'm madly in love with Jane, so it's very off putting. Record number seven.

Presenter32:53

Record number seven is as far away from the jungle as you could imagine. It's Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony, Number Six. Why'd you choose it? Well, to me it's the

Presenter33:03

Greatest piece of classical music ever written, if you have to.

James Fox33:06

You have to

Presenter33:07

Make

Presenter33:08

A dogmatic statement like that.

Presenter34:12

Beethoven's Sixth Symphony in F major.

Presenter34:15

Pastoral, conducted by Karl Bohrman played by the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra. How efficient do you think you'd be as a desert island castaway? Do you think you could look after yourself well?

Presenter34:25

No, Roy, I don't think I'd be terribly efficient.

Presenter34:29

I think I'd look after myself well, but I I can't see myself building any elaborate houses or being terribly practical. Can you do anything useful, like fish? No. Good in small boats?

Presenter34:42

Rather good in a small boat. I remember being on a small boat on the um river Amazon at Manaus, and they said there were some piranha fish swimming around, and very foolishly. I got in one of these small boats just with a paddle and paddled around to sort of see if I could do it. I didn't fall in, and here I am, but not bad in a small boat. Could you make a small boat? No. Do you know anything about navigation? Did that come into your military training? Well, I should with the navigators, know all about it.

Presenter35:12

Yes, of course. But that didn't come into the navigator syllabus.

Presenter35:19

Ha ha ha ha.

Presenter35:20

Could you find your way back if if you did build a boat? Do you know wh where the sun sets and the north star rises and all that sort of thing? Not at all, no. But I there again I had a bit of experience in South America building a balsa wood raft. I could certainly build a raft and tie it together with tree bark. I could do that. You're halfway there. I thought there was a lot of things.

James Fox35:39

Yeah.

Presenter35:41

I think I am. Good. Your last record.

Presenter35:45

The last record is from Bob Dylan's album Slow Train Coming, and the the track is I Believe in You. Why'd you choose it? Well, I mentioned earlier I think that of all living artists Bob Dylan's my favorite, and of course he's gone through a a pilgrimage himself, coming to faith in Christ, which he has.

Presenter36:04

And this was his first album as a as a believer, and on it there's this terribly moving track.

Presenter36:11

He writes, of course, about his experiences of the misunderstanding of those who now see him as a turncoat from what he was, and I think he writes it so well.

Speaker 236:22

Play

Speaker 236:24

Ask me how I feel.

Speaker 236:27

Death my love is real

Speaker 236:31

Oh, I know I'll make it through

Speaker 236:39

They look at me and frown.

Speaker 236:43

They like to drive me from this town

Speaker 236:46

You don't want me around.

Presenter36:51

Bob Dylan, I believe in you.

Presenter36:53

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

Presenter36:58

I would take the last one. Right. And one luxury to take with you, something of no practical use.

Presenter37:05

Well, I would like to take a drawing pad and some watercolours, because I should like to paint. I I've often got started and tried and done bits and pieces, but I should have the leisure time.

Presenter37:18

And I should enjoy just trying to develop creatively as a painter.

Presenter37:29

Well

Presenter37:31

Could you get me a book that contained some wonderful colour pictures of the great artists of the Renaissance, Michelangelo, for example, so that I could see his paintings and sculptures and architectural design and read some of perhaps his letters and his thoughts, as well as some of the other great Renaissance artists. I don't know of this book and I haven't got it, but I should love to have something pictorially beautiful. I'm sure there is such a book, and we will send our scouts out and do the best we can to provide it. And thank you, James Fox, for letting us hear your Desert Island discs. Thank you very much. I've really enjoyed it. Goodbye, everyone.

James Fox38:34

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