Terry Wogan

Terry Wogan0:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Disc's Archive. For rights' reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen eighty three.

Terry Wogan0:11

And the presenter was Roy Plumley.

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This week we've offered our Desert Island to someone who most of the year is mopping up part of our audience on our Friday morning repeat. A small part, I hope. It's the housewife's choice, Terry Wogan. Terry, could you endure the loneliness of a Desert Island? First of all, let me repudiate your suggestion about my small parts.

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Now could I endure the loneliness? Yes, I could. I quite enjoy my own company. For six years I was an only child, and I think those are important years. And so I think I would be able to sit on my own without feeling too much angst.

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or pain, or I'm not very gregarious anyway.

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And obviously the nature of my job means that I avoid large crowds of people. So I wouldn't find that aspect of being on the desert island too wearing. Right. Now we're letting you have eight records. Do you like music? I love music.

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Obviously you couldn't do what I do for a living and not like it. Do you play an instrument? I mean even badly. One of the greatest regrets of my life is that we were too poor to have a piano.

Terry Wogan1:29

I mean

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No. I didn't have the mental discipline to actually learn the piano. I'd love to have read music, but I I never have the discipline to do anything unless I'm absolutely forced into it and my parents were a bit too kindly. And to be honest, I do the same with my children. I should have made them learn an instrument, and I didn't. They've all picked up the piano. They're burly for their age.

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and the guitar and everything else, but they've put them down again very quickly as well. But you never know. I hope that they will learn to love an instrument. I do love music. I I just wish that I could at least read music, but I I never learnt the skill.

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I never learned this skill.

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I sing like a bird.

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Now, you've got eight records, and this is the programme on which you choose them yourself. Now, what have you chosen first of all? Well, the problem is the forest and the trees, isn't it? When you're exposed to so much music as I am, or when you've got so much music around you, or when you find yourself lost in the BBC Grammophone Library, you are spoilt for choice. It's very difficult.

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But I hope I've got a selection that you'll enjoy.

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The first one is

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by the man I regard as the greatest romantic singer in the world and being

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a rapidly aging romantic myself.

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And I think you do go more in for the model and romance the older you get. I I've picked Nat King Cole.

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In my heart it

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Will remain.

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My stardust melody

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The memories

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Of love.

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Really?

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Nat King Cole, Songs for Rapidly Aging Romantics, Stardust. Now, Terry, from the other side of St George's Channel, what part of Ireland?

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I come from Limerick, which is on the mouth of the Shannon.

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and a place which many other people in Ireland regard as being far from the Athens of the South.

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But it's a strange and and in a sense lovable little place. Very parochial when I was growing up there. Did you go to school there?

Terry Wogan3:52

Bad.

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Yes, I did. I went uh under the aegis of the Jesuits there. You went to school with James Doyce, didn't you?

Terry Wogan3:57

You went to school with

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Uh nearly. That was only when I got to Dublin. I went to school, nearly, with Richard Harris, the film actor when I was in Limerick. And he is he is the archetypal Limerick man. Mercurial.

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And and romantic.

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I'm given to outbursts of poetry and heavy drinking. What were you good at at school?

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I wasn't bad at sports.

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I wasn't a bad student. I had no application. I still haven't. I know people find that hard to believe, because I appear to be working a great deal. But I have what Shaw said was the constant application of the congenitally lazy. You're a Leo, aren't you? Yes, I am. If you believe all that stuff, Roy. What did you want to be?

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Nothing.

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I could never actually define what I wanted to be. I think I wanted to be a writer or a journalist. I think I still want to be a writer. You did some amateur theatricals, didn't you? Yes, I did.

Terry Wogan4:52

Yes, I did.

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Initially I did a lot of debating when I was in Limerick. There was a great debating society in the school and I did a lot of debating which is where perhaps I gained whatever confidence I have in addressing a microphone or addressing a group of people. And then when I went to school in Dublin I did a number of musicals, the usual Gilbert and Sullivan stuff. And then when I went to work in a bank in the evenings I used to sing with the musical and dramatic society, the Rathamayans and Rath Gar, a very good class of person, most of them singing in unison. Not all in tune but in unison. Did you take leading part? I was the second lead.

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I can never remember the musical about the I could I could sing you a burst of the song, but I can never remember the name of the musical. But I was a Bella called Sir Harry in that, who was a stage Irishman. Now if you've ever played a stage Irishman to an Irish audience, you'll know how parless that can be. Yes, I can imagine. Great deal of rotten fruit.

Terry Wogan5:43

Play the stage Irishman

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Coming over the f the footlights and the mm-hmm.

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Never. Yeah. Uh my mother always, because mothers remember things like that, remembers me doing commentaries along with the radio. And I was always obsessed with the radio. My schooling was in fact the B B C Light programme. Rather than R T E, which was Radio Air and the Irish Radio Service, I was brought up

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on the Light programme. I'm a child of the radio and the film generation. What taught me more than anything, apart from books, was the radio and films. That's where I got my awareness of the world outside the little parochial town that was Limerick.

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Now you're in this bank that was in Dublin. That w I left Belvedere College in Dublin, having done a year's philosophy course, because I had finished my exams very early. I was barely seventeen and I had done all my exams. I didn't want to go to university, I knew that.

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Because

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I just could not face.

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three more years of studying.

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And I knew I'd get a degree, but it wouldn't be a particularly good one, because

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I have no

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Application, really.

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I have to be, as I said, beaten into things.

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and without the heavy hand of a of a Jesuit behind me.

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I don't think I'd have got a particularly good degree anyway, so I went back and did philosophy for a year because I was very young.

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And then I just thought...

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I'll join a bank.

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Because those are the things you do if you go to Belvedere in Dublin, if your father is not an accountant, lawyer, surgeon.

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Professional man whom you follow into his profession, you either join an insurance company or you join a bank. I did the latter. Did you work on the counter? I did, oh yes. I was a very kindly teller. It was a jolly bank I used to work in. We used to spend many a happy hour. We'd a bit of a martinette of a manager. He used to wear children's sandals and an ill-fitting hopsack suit, and who used to run the place rather like Adolf Hitler or Genghis Kahn. His name was Robertson, and he had a rough voice. He used to always get things wrong. He used to come up to me he'd send me down to the safe, which was a bad move because I used to be able to lure the typists in there. But he'd send me down to wrap up last year's lodgement dockets prior to an inspection. And these I would wrap up as neatly as I possibly could, having shown me how to do it in every small detail. Then put the sealing wax on it. And he'd come down, and if I'd done a good job, he'd put his arm around me, he'd say, Good man, Wogan, he'd say, well done.

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But always remember, there's no business like show business.

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I'd look slightly bemused at this piece of knowledge and they'd say, And there's no people like show people. They laugh when other people cry.

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Which left me with a very strange view of show people being a bit um

Terry Wogan8:39

Yeah.

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Hard, you know. Also a strange view of bank managers.

Terry Wogan8:42

Also a strange

Speaker 48:42

Uh

Terry Wogan8:42

Uh

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Ah, he was very winning, and in fact, because he ran the place like a martinette, we had hours of endless enjoyment, flinging wet sponges. Whenever a pretty girl would come in, with a lodgement, you could always rely on one of the other tellers sneaking up behind you.

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with the large broom handle and letting you have it.

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In the behind, so that you would spring out over the counter. And this rather.

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Frightened girl.

Terry Wogan9:06

Brian, I go out.

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So, I mean, fun, fun, if not romance, blossom there. We have I had a lot of fun in the bank. I wouldn't have regretted if I'd stayed in a bank.

Terry Wogan9:11

Awesome there.

Presenter9:16

And you played rugby on Saturday afternoons? Yes, I I used to train maybe two days a week and then I'd play for Old Belvedere Rugby Club on a Saturday. What position? Prop forward, which is in the front row, where the bullets fly. Well, there's a picture of young Wogan. Let's have another disc.

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I love Sherizade.

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And it was only, in fact, when I was talking to my wife about doing this programme,

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And I said to her, uh, picking the music, and it's not easy,'cause there's so much music you could pick.

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And I said I was listening the other day to Rimsky Korsakov's Sherezad, and it's such a lovely piece and the everything in the piece is lovely. There isn't a weak spot in the whole work.

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And she said, That's funny, that's my favorite as well, so it's a doubly good reason for me picking it,'cause it would remind me of her.

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The Young Prince and the Young Princess from Sheherazad by Rinski Korsakov, the London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Bernard Heitink.

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Now, you used to listen to the radio, particularly the BBC. When did you first decide I want to do this?

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I saw an advertisement in an Irish newspaper for an announcer newsreader required for RTE, which as the national service they had to advertise nationally.

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And I just applied, along as it turned out, with about five thousand other people, because this was in the beginning of the sixties in Ireland. Everybody wants to get into radio and television.

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You know, Ireland was just coming out of a depression.

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And so I applied. For some extraordinary reason, because I didn't have a university degree, I was given uh an audition. Now, again, my Irish is not very good. I've got a good accent, I can read Irish fairly well, but from the point of view of the audition I'm really not a fluent Irish speaker. And yet I was asked

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again for reasons that escaped me.

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to go and do a training course with RTE for six weeks, after which they would pick you to be either a temporary announcer, give you the elbow, or give you a job. So every evening I would finish my work in the bank, which usually finished about four o'clock, then an exhausting game of shove hate me until half four, and then down to Irish Radio, which was housed in the General Post Office in Dublin at that time.

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And I would do about a three-hour training course in announcing with about twelve other people who had been picked, wide range of of people.

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At the end of that training course I was offered a temporary announcing job.

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Yeah.

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And at the end of about three months, to my astonishment, I was offered a job.

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So I resigned from the bank, joined RTE as an announcer at the princely sum, I remember, of £1,500 a year, which was a.

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KING'S RANSOM

Presenter13:01

In I think it was about sixty one. A king's ransom because I was only earning five pounds a week in the bank at the time. Yes. It was regarded as a privilege to work in the bank. Your parents had to subsidize you, you know. When did you start auditioning for the BBC? When did you make your first approaches? Well, I d I had done about uh five, six years in RTE and

Presenter13:22

Television had started and I bec became a newsreader and then I moved on to quiz shows and I suppose I was one of the most popular people there. They had never had any homegrown stars in Ireland. Suddenly the television came and you were a a major star in this little

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Island

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Then I thought, well, I'm a big fish in a small pond, and anyway, I'd like there are things I can do.

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I'd thought I could do in Britain.

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that I could not see myself doing in Ireland. The bigger the organization, the bigger the market, the more scope there is for being yourself.

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Strangely, the more freedom there is in a bigger market. I could see that there was going to be more freedom for me in the BBC than there would be.

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With Irish radio and television. So it's proved. So I made the right decision there. So you sent the BBC a tape? I sent the BBC a tape.

Speaker 314:08

I said that the

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Of a radio programme, which was, of course, when it got to Mark White, to whom I sent it here, it was back to front.

Speaker 314:11

Yeah.

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And he had to re spool it. And and to his eternal credit, thank God, he re-spooled it. And he offered me from that a midday spin series, which I did on a line. I would do the announcements from Dublin. The music would be played here. Then I did a couple of Housewives' Choice.

Terry Wogan14:26

Yeah, I

Presenter14:30

Then Radio One started, and I auditioned for Late Night Extra, which was the late night show from ten to midnight, or ten to one.

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And they offered me Wednesday or Friday night.

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So I have my photograph taken here with all the other Radio 1 disc jockeys.

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The B B C I like the B B C

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had failed to clear us with Rte.

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and the Director General of Artie properly said to me, Well, you're the senior announcer for Irish Radio.

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You're now going to work for the BBC. I'll allow you to do it for six weeks, but no longer than that. So I resigned from Irish Radio and Television and took my chances. No, I worked.

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For two years as a freelance in Ireland,

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Flying over here every week.

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At a cost of

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about forty pounds by the time I paid for my hotel and the flight.

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And the BBC generously paid me thirty five pounds a programme. So I actually lost money every week working for the BBC. That can be done, Terry.

Terry Wogan15:30

Yeah.

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Yeah.

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I've made them pay for it heavily ever since. Let's have another record. Yes, I'd love to.

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It it wouldn't be fitting.

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for me not to have a piece of Irish music.

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And anyway, some pieces of Irish music are so haunting, and I have such an affection anyway for Ireland.

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Um a typical Irishman's feeling for Ireland, which is a mixture of the cynical and the romantic.

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And this is for me one of the loveliest Irish airs. It's called Carrick Fergus.

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CARIC FERGUS BY THE CHIFTANS. So you were under contract to the B B C. When did they give you your early morning stint? The one that you've made so much your own? Well, again it was Mark White to whom I owe it all, the man who now lives in retirement in the Isle of Man.

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and he was in charge of of Radio Two, which had come a little after Radio One. I was doing the afternoon show on Radio One and Two, which is where we started Fight the Flab and all those appalling afternoon devotions.

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And he just said we're starting a separate programme on Radio Two in the morning, and I'd like you to take it over.

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Now

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Again, that was a bit of a challenge and a change. And when I took it over, for the first six months,

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Of this program, I got a great deal of abuse. How long ago was it, Eddie? April 72.

Terry Wogan17:50

Published.

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Eleven years. There was an element of resentment among the people who had been listening to John Donne and Ray Moore beforehand and a certain style of presentation. I was perhaps a little too abrasive, a little too fast.

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a little too talkative for them. The papers I remember the Sunday Express taking grave exception to me. But I never

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had any lack of self confidence. I never felt any more than I did when I came o had come over here to live two years before that I was going to fail. Don't ask me why, because self confidence is not a

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A tray I admire very much, and it's not something that I have to any great extent in myself. But

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I never thought it was going to fail, and it didn't, because I had had the experience of working in Ireland at that level. I knew how to communicate with the radio audience.

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I'd nearly always known that. Um radio has always been my medium rather than television.

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It's a medium I'm much more at home with.

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Because of being self-conscious.

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Talking to a microphone for me is the easiest thing in the world. You had to make this a way of life. For eleven years you've been getting up five days a week at well, you live thirty miles out of town, you have to get up at what, five? No, I come in like a bat out of hell. So I get up about six o'clock in the morning. I get down, have a little fresh fruit, a cup of coffee, and then drive into London. It's no trouble at that hour of the morning. The M4 is very fast from the West. Right. And I get in at thirty-five minutes. I get into my studio, put the first two records on, put the cassettes on, take out the mail.

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And start the programme. And just a quick doze while the records are playing. That's right, and naturally I have to identify with the listeners, and they're all half asleep anyway. Yeah, of course. And in two and a half hours, you have to keep going until Jimmy Young feels like starting. That's true, and until they wind him up, actually, or get the old commode moving. I don't find it a great strain, because don't forget, what I'm doing is not earth-shattering.

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Uh I'm only communicating on a very, very everyday and ordinary basis. I'm seeking that the listener identify with me and the way I do that is I rely a great deal on the listener's letters and reactions to things.

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I act as a kind of catalyst on some subjects. The listeners supply me either vertically or laterally with material. The great thing about a listener writing in is that, unlike a script writer who has to be funny all the time,

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The listener script need only be funny once, and that's what makes them.

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So funny and so amusing, and you get a really good listener's letter.

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No scriptwriter could be funnier.

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Record number four.

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Record number four.

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is by possibly the greatest natural bass singer of all time, in my humble opinion. The reason I've picked Paul Robeson is that he was a great favorite of my father's as well, and my father

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always thought he personally had a very fine bass voice.

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And he used to serenade the neighbours,'cause my father was the kind of man who would shave the night before.

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He wouldn't shave in the morning. He was a man who liked to take time doing things, and he would spend two hours shaving. He would spend four hours getting ready to go fishing, but two hours shaving in the evening, while he serenaded from our little semi detached in Limerick all the neighbours with Valentine's goodbye from Faust, or the Floral Dance, or some other crowd pleaser.

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And he loved Paul Robeson, and so do I. My father always wanted me to be a singer.

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Unfortunately, I never had the application. I'm not even sure I had the voice.

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But I thought you'd like to hear Paul Robeson singing this particular one, the cobbler song.

Speaker 321:37

I sit on cobble and

Speaker 321:41

Sandshole from the rise of sun to the set of moon.

Terry Wogan21:42

Boys

Speaker 321:47

Cobble and cobble the best I may Cobble all night and

Terry Wogan21:47

Yeah.

Speaker 321:53

Cobble all day, and I sing as I cobble in.

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The Cobbler Song from Chu Chin Chow, sung by Paul Robson. Wogan, it has been my impression sometimes on your programme that you lack reverence for the corporation. There's even a lack of respect sometimes for the Director General. Have you ever.

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Had any memos about that? Oh, yes, yes, indeed. I yeah, from the secretary at one time it was pointed out to me that perhaps a slightly less derogatory tone might be taken.

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And I mentioned this to Douglas Mugridge, who was the controller of programmes then. He said, Don't mind them, he said, they they mean well, he said, but actually the D G because everybody is in initials here in the BBC, the D G he said, speaking for myself as CP two, he said, don't pay any attention. I said, that'll be fine by me, CP Two. So I never said anything. You know, I never paid any attention. I continued to josh the D G with his putting the old teeth in the in the glass by the windowstill, the fungus growing, you know, easing the block and promotion by hurling various disc jockeys off the roof, the dance of the BBC virgins, all those strange things, this strange and unbelievable happenings that used to go on. I used to get letters from people saying I deliberately

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booked a room in a hotel overlooking the B B C so that I could have a view of the roof.

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with its many acres of rolling green pasture land, cattle lowing and swimming pools, and merry secretaries diving in and out of the swimming pool and and gaily striped awnings, all this kind of thing, people hurling themselves off the roof to ease the block and the motion. And all there is there

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is a couple of yards of sloping tile. And that's what comes of taking things too literally. And that's the beauty of Rayleigh, of course, being able to to let the old imagination run free. I remember when Sir Charles Corran was the D G

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Getting a phone call from Lady Curran, the late Sir Charles, who is a lovely man.

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I was doing the programme, I got the phone call on the Sir Charles, she said, is in the shower at the moment, she said, it's his birthday today. Would you ever play him a request? she said, in about ten minutes when he comes out. So I mean

Terry Wogan24:12

Ten minutes

Presenter24:15

He couldn't have disliked me that much.

Terry Wogan24:15

You couldn't have just

Presenter24:17

No, I'm sure. He was a bit cautious. There was that time when you took a tour of the B B C and broadcast your findings. The D G did go on holiday that week. Oh, that was old AA Milne, who's our present incumbent, you know. Yes. And who writes those funny books about bears and everything.

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And of course plays plays the Peebroch. He's given to the Peebroch of A Mill, you know. Seriously. Oh, you'll hear the skull of the pipes up on the dreaded third floor from time to time. And he forces the secretaries to listen and everything. He gets the various controllers to get into kilts and walk up and down waving their ski and doos, which is a fairly frightening sight. I should imagine. Of course this is where the where the putsches come in, you know, where the where there's been a great deal of blood let on the corridors of the BBC, particularly lately. See, it's been very fortunate that all that stuff about T V A M has come out, because I can tell you there's been a couple of revolutions, little palace revolutions been going on here lately.

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Blood in the corridor.

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Well, you seem to be remarkably good as a survivor. I mean, you're very seldom suffering from deep wounds yourself. Well, I never sit.

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With my back to the studio door. I always face the studio door and I usually bolt the door.

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And I also never leave the studio. I never go very far. I tell people I go home, I don't. I sleep near the warm air vents just outside broadcasting house, so that I'm able to get in before anybody else gets to the studio. Because if you're not in there, the seat's gone, you know. You have some.

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A revist comes in. Next thing you're out of a job.

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There's a great deal of bloodletting, of course, you're field with Jimmie Young. Well, yes, there would be if he had any blood. Ah. But uh very, very little blood, I'm afraid. I mean, anyway, I can't get near him because the nurse usually puts the screens around him very early.

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Whereas if she doesn't, it's usually too late. Well, he does bring the mail in. I mean, it's it's useful. Yes, yes, he does, and uh

Terry Wogan26:15

Yeah.

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Comes in on the old mobile commode. He's a dear old chap, really. He may seem irascible, bad-tempered, mean, nasty.

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And you know, by God, he is.

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Well, let's give em another record to listen to. What's your fifth one for The Desert Island?

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This one is a very important piece of popular music, if you can have an important piece of popular music, for people of my generation. I remember coming home from Belvedere, cycling home, in bare feet of course, as I always tell my children, through the snow.

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Coming in through the door.

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licking the kippah, because uh that's what we would have for tea, was a kippah, hanging inside the kitchen door, and then we'd all get a lick when we came in from school, and that was tea. And I remember turning on American Forces Network and hearing this extraordinary rack.

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I didn't catch the name. I didn't know who the name was. I didn't even catch the title, because it's fairly indistinct, or it was, to my untutored ear.

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And I went into school the following day and said, I've just had the most incredible record.

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And I think even then I knew that popular music would never be the same again, and it never was.

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'Cause it was Elvis Presley and Heartbreak Hotel.

Speaker 427:36

Oh, though it's always crowded, and you still can find some room for broken-hearted lovers to crowd. It's so lonely, baby, well it's so lonely.

Speaker 427:52

They'll be so lonely they could die

Presenter28:01

The Voice of Elvis Presley.

Presenter28:04

Terry, although you said that television doesn't mean as much to you as radio, you have done blankety blank, of course, on the box, and the chat show, and you're the only interviewer not to use a clipboard, to my observation.

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Well, that's I suppose I wouldn't like th that to become too important. The reason I don't use a clipboard.

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is because I like to keep eye contact.

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I want to keep in touch with the person I'm interviewing all the time. I do not want him to feel that he's lost my attention while he's making an answer. Which has been your most awkward moment while interviewing? Have you had any?

Terry Wogan28:38

And it was a moment.

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most app appalling embarrassments. I think the most difficult was, um, Jerry Lee Lewis, who is the rock and roll pianist.

Presenter28:51

Who

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I had the greatest of difficulty in understanding his replies. Now he obviously thought that he was reposting like a gooden.

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Because you could see from his expression that he thought I got a good one off there.

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But between his brain process and what was coming out the other end, oh I thought take up power was a bad idea. Well I got something

Terry Wogan29:15

Something is getting lost.

Presenter29:18

You take the rough with the smooth. You still do the Eurovision Song Contest. I love doing that. It's a piece of self indulgence, as the viewer has or indeed the listener has readily appreciated and knows. I take it with a pinch of salt. The Eurovision Song Contest is a monument to banality and mediocrity.

Presenter29:38

And everybody knows that. I give the viewer and the listener credit, and so I

Presenter29:44

Don't take it seriously. I send it up. And occasionally um people write to points of view on television given off because I'm

Presenter29:52

Talking too much and I'm interrupting.

Presenter29:54

You see, I don't believe it's a piece of Wagner. I don't believe it's a piece of art. I believe it's a piece of rubbish.

Presenter30:03

Yes, we agree about that. Let's have another record.

Presenter30:06

Well, I love opera, and I love good singing.

Presenter30:10

And

Presenter30:11

The more popular operas appeal to me more than anything, and I I'd I'd like to play this because if I sat on the desert aisle

Presenter30:18

It would remind me of an hilarious experience, which I'll tell you about when you've heard it.

Presenter30:23

It's the Easter Hymn from Cavaria Rusticana.

Speaker 430:30

We see you love everyone that you see you in his love.

Speaker 430:40

Oh Jesus is the mother

Speaker 430:44

I am a man of dream.

Presenter31:27

The Easter hymn from Cavallodia Rusticana, sung by Victoria at Los Angeles, with the chorus and orchestra of the Rome Opera House. And you were going to tell us a hilarious experience about this particular opera.

Presenter31:40

You don't need to build it up quite that high. It'd probably be very deflated after that.

Presenter31:45

When a when a lad, when when working in the bank in the early days,

Presenter31:50

I was very keen on opera, and a pal and myself managed to get an entree into the Dublin Grand Opera Society, where, if we were prepared to dress up as Egyptian slaves in Aida, or Hebrew slaves in Aida, or Venetian doges,

Presenter32:05

In Otello

Presenter32:06

or waiters in La Traviata.

Presenter32:10

We could get into the opera for nothing because we were extras. Right. And it was a wonderful way to do it. And I saw a lot of smashing operas.

Presenter32:18

And I remember when we were all due to parade, I was I was a priest and I was sitting with the bishop and several altar boys in the green room of the Gaiety Theatre.

Presenter32:27

While

Presenter32:28

Cavaleria was going on, and we were due to parade for the Easter hymn. We were carrying the crucifix there's only about a half dozen of us. We would carry the crucifix in a sedate manner across the stage, then go like the clappers round the back

Presenter32:41

and joined the end of the parade, and so making it look as if it was a very impressive Easter procession.

Presenter32:46

And we were all in the green room drinking a bit, and the Italian producer came in and said, So, he said, you like to drink your beer?

Presenter32:55

Drink it!

Presenter32:56

The procession she is over. You can go at home All that had appeared for the Easter hymn procession, with all that magnificent singing, was one altar boy. The bishop was drunk, and so were the priests. Oh, that's opera.

Presenter33:13

Terry, is this the pattern? Radio television? I mean, you're a a youngish lad. Are you set for another thirty years? No, no, not at all. Certainly over the last couple of years, the exposure that I've been getting is so intense. And the

Presenter33:30

for want of a better word, and and in all modesty the popularity level that I have reached.

Presenter33:35

Is such that it cannot be sustained. Do you want to get on to the administrative side? I mean, do you want to be a tycoon? No, I have Frostwogen Productions.

Terry Wogan33:41

I have frost

Presenter33:43

I wouldn't mind being a tycoon, not at all. And obviously I would have to diversify from what I'm doing because I can't continue doing it indefinitely. Yes, I wish I had the acumen or the persistence or the determination to do these things, but if it happens for me, it'll be largely by accident, or largely by having people who are good around me, which is incidentally the secret of Frost's success as well.

Presenter34:05

Other activities. You write books, or rather you you publish books. I mean, you make them up from listeners' mail, which is a a labor saving way of doing books. Well, Bob Muckhouse says that I've got it sewn up because my radio program is based on scripts provided by my listeners. the unpaid scriptwriters, and then I take these unpaid scripts which they write for me, put them into a book, and sell them back to them. This is very ingenious.

Presenter34:35

I suppose it's true. Right, completely unscrupulous. Record number seven.

Presenter34:43

Frank Sinatra must be the greatest song stylist ever.

Presenter34:48

the greatest interpreter of a song.

Presenter34:51

and Rogers and Hart are legitimate genii of popular music.

Presenter34:56

And for some reason this song has always meant a great deal to me.

Presenter35:00

Again it's the old romantic in me.

Presenter35:02

My funny Valentine

Speaker 435:05

Stay little Valentine.

Speaker 435:10

Stay

Speaker 435:18

Is Valentine

Speaker 435:22

Dr.

Presenter35:34

My funny Valentine from Babes in Arms. Were you ever a Boy Scout? Never. We didn't have Boy Scouts in Ireland. We were too poor.

Presenter35:43

Oh, that's sad.

Presenter35:46

I'm not a joiner. No. I would never join anything unless I was forced into it. Well, that solitary image fits this situation. There you are on this desert island. Could you look after yourself? No. You have no practical skills with your hands. No skill whatever with my hands. You said your father went fishing.

Terry Wogan35:59

Laihan.

Terry Wogan36:02

Do you

Presenter36:05

Did you go with him? Do you know about fishing? It left me with a deep and abiding hatred of fishing, because my father, as I said, used to take about six hours to get ready. That's what he loved doing, getting ready for things. Tie the flies, and then, just as the sun was going down, he'd start to fish.

Presenter36:22

Then we'd have a half an hour of fishing and go home, and it put me off fishing completely. And I also got a hook in my finger one time fishing for mackerel. That put me off, too. Would you try to escape? A raft? No.

Presenter36:34

I would not have the patience to build a raft, and I would not have sufficient self confidence in my ability to build a raft. But I know where low pressure is. If you face the wind, low pressure's always on your right. What's that got to do with it? Nothing.

Presenter36:50

Yeah.

Presenter36:52

Right, your last record, your very last record. Well, something inspiring, I thought. I'm a great lover of.

Presenter36:59

Like musical comedy. I love musicals. I used to love when I was a lad Donis Day.

Presenter37:07

And I loved Oklahoma and my fair lady and

Presenter37:10

This is my particular favorite.

Presenter37:13

Because I think it's the epitome of Rogers and Hammerstein and their ability to write something simple.

Presenter37:20

But not to to devalue it.

Presenter37:23

A marvellous piece of music, carousel it is, and every song in it is wonderful.

Presenter37:29

But this one would inspire me to keep going when all appeared to be lost. You'll never walk alone. And who's singing it? Nearly everybody.

Presenter38:00

Shirley Jones singing You'll Never Walk Alone from Carousel. If you could take only one disc of the H who played as Terry, which would it be?

Presenter38:08

I think I'd take Sherizand.

Presenter38:11

And you're allowed one luxury on your island, one object of no practical use that it would give you pleasure to have by you. Could I have a couple of cases of vodka? You can have as many cases of vodka as you like. Because I feel that there are oranges on this island, and at least I'd be able to have a vodka and orange. Smash a few down at six o'clock. You would. The old chota peg. Yes, six AM and six p.m. To the sound of the jungle drums. And one book. You already have the statutory ration of

Terry Wogan38:29

You would choose to

Presenter38:39

The Bible and the works of Shakespeare.

Terry Wogan38:42

Haido.

Presenter38:43

All right, well you can I find the works of Shakespeare terminally boring when read. Wonderful when performed, boring when read. Well you can perform them for yourself.

Terry Wogan38:51

What do you think?

Presenter38:53

Now I bore myself to death.

Presenter38:55

Can I take P. G. Woodhouse's collected works in place of Shakespeare? No, that would uh you may take your favourite three or four novels of P. G. Woodhouse. We'll bind those together for you. How kind. Not a bit. And for my book I would like to take uh You've just had your book. No, that's in place of I'm sorry to quibble with you, but that's in place of Shakespeare.

Speaker 439:06

No.

Terry Wogan39:07

Not a bad thing.

Presenter39:16

No, no, no, no. Shakespeare and the Bible already there. I mean it's in the room. I'll take At Swim Two Birds by Miles Nagopolin, which is the funniest book ever written.

Speaker 439:17

Shocks

Speaker 439:18

Yeah.

Terry Wogan39:18

Yeah.

Terry Wogan39:20

Okay, well look I can't argue with that.

Presenter39:27

We'll bind that in with the woodhouse, but don't tell anybody. And thank you, Terry Wogan, for letting us hear your Desert Island disc. It's been a pleasure, Roy. Thank you. Goodbye, everyone.

Terry Wogan40:02

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