Tom Sharpe

Tom Sharpe0:00

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

Tom Sharpe0:05

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

Presenter0:29

This week our castaway is the writer of comic novels, Tom Sharp. Tom, could you endure loneliness for some considerable time? I think I probably could, yes. I'm not sure. One's never sure until one's tried it.

Presenter0:42

How much does music mean in your life?

Presenter0:45

But I l tend to listen to it when I'm drinking of an evening. Have you any musical skill yourself, Mr. Speaker?

Presenter0:52

I sort of whistle very badly.

Presenter0:55

Do you play discs? I play discs, yes. When you're working? Never.

Presenter1:00

Right, well you've got just eight to choose to last for a long, long time on this desert island. Did you find that difficult? Not at all, no. The fact it'd be very easy.

Presenter1:11

That's not the answer I usually get. What's the first one you've chosen? The first one is Lidbelly, the Rock Island Lion. Why do you choose it?

Presenter1:20

Well, I was in uh New Orleans.

Presenter1:23

When? Earlier this year.

Presenter1:25

And I just I like Southern Jazz, I like New Orleans Jairs very much.

Speaker 21:29

The rock on a line, it's a mighty good road, or the rock on a line, it's a road to ride, or the rock on a line, it's a mighty good road, if you wants to ride, you gotta ride it like you find it, get your ticket at the station on the rock on a line.

Speaker 21:46

Jesus died to save our sins, and pray that God was going to meet him again.

Speaker 21:52

Or the rag on a line, it's a mighty good road Or the Ragana Line, it's a road to ride Or the Ragana Lan, it's a mighty good road If you want hooch to ride, you got to ride it like you finally get your ticket station on the rag on

Speaker 22:07

I may be right and I may be wrong Do you wanna miss me when I'm gone?

Speaker 22:14

Or the Raga Line, it's a mighty good road Or the Rock on the Line, it's a road to ride Or the Rock on the line, it's a mighty good road If you want who's to ride, you gotta ride it like you finally get your ticket at station on the Raga Line

Presenter2:28

Ledbelly, Haddy Ledbetter, singing Rock Island Line. Tom, what part of the country do you come from? I was born in Holloway.

Presenter2:36

It was Royal Free Hospital, North London Hospital. And for years on my passport at Holloway, and I used to get rather done over by the customs. I've changed to London, but in fact my mother's living in Croydon. Your father was a minister? He's a Unitarian minister, yes.

Speaker 42:46

Perfect.

Presenter2:52

And he developed some rather unusual ideas in in the thirties.

Presenter2:57

Uh

Presenter2:57

That's a tactful way of saying the man became a Nazi. Yes, he did indeed. Yes. If you can take a man who was pacifist and a socialist.

Presenter3:08

and who never, after the First World War, after all he was born in eighteen seventy two, believed anything that he read in the papers, but who was nevertheless seen to believe that Adolf Hitler was a nice bloke.

Presenter3:21

I think he must have gone dotty, but it was no I

Presenter3:24

He didn't know what was happening. He never believed. Did his ideas influence you? You you were very young. Yes, horribly.

Presenter3:30

Oh, yes. Where were you during the war at school? Yeah, that was up at Lansing in Shropshire. It is, of course, a Sussex school, but they were evacuated there, but yes, because the Navy had taken over the college. Well, if you um expressed some of your father's ideas at Lansing, you must have met with some embarrassment.

Tom Sharpe3:37

They evacuated the

Presenter3:47

Well, I didn't express them.

Presenter3:49

Yes, it was peculiar, actually, when I look back upon it. It was quite mad.

Presenter3:53

I used to learn off German radio broadcasts, the things that came over. There was an air raid warning thing. Well, it actually wasn't. It was to say that there was nothing coming over Germany.

Presenter4:03

Wen Achtung Achtung, herstein Luftlag Meldung.

Presenter4:07

U benehm naish kabiet befinders kinda finally katkamfa bender.

Presenter4:11

And it was repeated. And I had a radio, I was in the what was the junior training corps, and I went into the woods one day. These things only went about

Tom Sharpe4:11

This is ripped.

Presenter4:20

could be picked up about two miles, and I broadcast this several times. There was another one too.

Presenter4:26

And um one of the m masters happened to be on the same wavelength. Was convinced it was a German spy hiding out within two miles of Dudley, you know, the school at Ludlow. It was a very reassuring broadcast on that. It was indeed, that would have been slides. Did you do well at Lansing? No, I never did well anywhere. What was your ambition as a schoolboy?

Presenter4:48

At that time there'd been Obergruppen Fuhrer.

Presenter4:52

Difficult. Unfortunately, extremely difficult.

Presenter4:56

But uh you passed all your exams? I did my um school certain ones. Yes. Then I went in the marines. But before that, you see, my father died in nineteen forty four.

Presenter5:06

And I saw the Belson films, and I discovered that Hitler was not the man I had been led to believe that he was. I mean, you know, in other words, my my mind was blown, really.

Presenter5:17

By the horror of what what what had been happening.

Presenter5:21

And uh I then went to the Marines and had another very salutary lesson, which was that I was no soldier at all. Well, we'll talk about the Marines in a minute. Let's have your second record. Well, my second record is uh King Oliver, and it's the Tom Cat Blue.

Presenter6:31

King Oliver with Jelly Roll Morton playing Tomcat Blues.

Presenter6:35

So you went into the Royal Marines. Where did you train? Down at Limston, near Exeter. Did you serve overseas? I served on ships, yes.

Presenter6:44

I went out with the king in'forty seven to Sierra Leone on an escort cruise of the Cleopatra. What was your job? Well, uh it was just scrubbing flats mainly. Did the discipline worry you?

Presenter6:54

Well, it only worried me in so far as I went always went on the flank.

Presenter6:58

I once paid a man called Whiting ten shillings do my uniform,'cause he always got a recommend every morning.

Presenter7:05

And the next morning I did his uniform, you see, and the next morning he got a recommend and I went on the flank. One hour's extra drill, one hour's expirade or whatever it was. This is uh a bit um confusing, Tom. You went on the flank and he got a recommend. Now what what does that mean? Well, it meant it meant I got punished.

Tom Sharpe7:17

Oh yeah, yeah.

Presenter7:21

Because your uniform wasn't smart enough. It wasn't that. I was the only public school boy in in fifty men.

Presenter7:27

thirty five Glaswegians, about five Welshman, and the rest English, and they were just knocking the hell out of me, which was a very good thing to do. I see. I was an extremely arrogant young man.

Tom Sharpe7:32

Hmm.

Presenter7:37

You have a story about a drowning sailor which is frightening. It was the Duke of York.

Presenter7:46

And it was make and mend afternoon, we were in Portland harbour.

Presenter7:51

which meant that you could sleep.

Presenter7:53

And two marines were leaning over the side watching a man sailor on a boom on one of the launches, and he fell into the water, and they could see he was going to drown. So they rushed onto the quarter deck, just as the Admiral of the fleet, Sir Neville Seiferitz, came on board after a golfing weekend, this being a Wednesday, and there was a Guard of Honour, Marine Guard of Honour, and the officer of the watch called them to attention, and the Admiral was piped aboard. Two Marines stood to attention, saluted, and after the Admiral had

Presenter8:21

Inspected the Guard of Honor and had a chat with the officer of the watch.

Presenter8:25

The guard was dismissed, they rushed forward and they said, Please, sir, there's a man overboard And I remember this reedy voice coming over the tannoy system, attention, attention, powerboat cruise away, powerboat cruise away, man overboard, man overboard. Well supported every was dead by then. Well, the National Service was was only a year or two, had you any idea what you wanted to do afterwards?

Tom Sharpe8:45

Uh

Presenter8:45

Well, I was going up to Cambridge anyway. To read what? To read history.

Presenter8:49

By this time I'd changed my v

Presenter8:52

Vocation, if you like to call it that. I wanted to ride

Presenter8:56

What I wanted to write, I wasn't too sure. What gave you the inspiration to write any particular writers or something like that? I've been writing poetry, you see. I mean, I think it's very simple.

Tom Sharpe9:00

I've been writing broke.

Presenter9:04

in this world, I think. And therefore, at the same time that I wanted to be an A S S man, not knowing what an S S man was actually doing, I was writing poetry.

Presenter9:15

And um

Presenter9:16

I didn't know what I w no, I had no idea what I wanted to actually write. But this seemed a good idea to sit and write as a correct.

Presenter9:26

Right, let's have your third record. My third record is Miriam McCaber, singing the Retreat Song. Why do you choose it? Well, this is South Africa. Which we haven't got two yet. No, we haven't got yet.

Speaker 49:36

Oh, Jinkle Movie Ninja.

Speaker 49:40

Jingle and Morgan India or Jingle and Mawin India.

Speaker 49:48

I'm not going to be able to do it.

Presenter10:01

Miriam McKaba The Retreat Song

Presenter10:04

What happened to you when you came down from Cambridge?

Presenter10:06

I went through that to South Africa.

Presenter10:08

Why? Because my grandfather had been one of the first builders in Johannesburg before the Boer War, and my mother was evacuated from Johannesburg. She was in African. Yes, in the last train, proper train, out of Johannesburg. And most of my relatives still live in South Africa. Where did you go?

Tom Sharpe10:17

He was out of Africa.

Presenter10:25

I went to Jobo.

Presenter10:27

Well, I had no intention doing anything very much just to get a job. What did you do when I was a job?

Tom Sharpe10:32

I got a job.

Presenter10:36

Because I'd been to Cambridge, I was obviously an educated man, and they put me on the current account books. What does this mean, advising people where to invest their money? No, no, no, not at all. It just meant putting numbers into into columns.

Presenter10:47

Well, after the first month

Presenter10:49

I'd lost thirty six thousand five hundred and fifty five pounds. Of your money or the firms?

Tom Sharpe10:52

You want money or the f

Presenter11:02

I think it took the accountants ten nights working late to find out where the devil that Tuppence Happening got to. They suggested you moved on. No, they didn't, actually.

Presenter11:10

They were still under the illusion that if you've been to Cambridge you were an intelligent culture. I moved on. I moved on. I moved on into the non-European Affairs Department in Johannesburg. What is that?

Tom Sharpe11:18

I'm

Presenter11:23

It's the organisation which runs the black townships. It's the municipal.

Presenter11:29

Non-European Affairs Department. Well, social work? Well, I was doing social work, yes, but I mean they were doing a great many other things. Yes. Collecting rents, uh, sending people back to where they'd never come from.

Presenter11:39

implementing a part type.

Presenter11:40

about which I knew nothing. Yeah. I mean, when I went out there, you must remember that

Presenter11:44

I mean, South Africa was still regarded as a sort of respectable place. People didn't know about apartheid. So you were helping. I mean, you were.

Presenter11:51

I was implementing it in the end.

Tom Sharpe11:51

Uh

Presenter11:54

My first job actually was collecting people from the hospital when they had

Presenter11:57

Terminal TB.

Presenter11:59

but when it was declared they were incurable.

Presenter12:01

They were sent home. And you took'em home? I took'em home and then I went to see them every fortnight to see whether they were alive or not. There were four women there with me. Was there any particular section? Was there any back up team to help? There wasn't any intention to help.

Tom Sharpe12:09

Uh

Speaker 412:09

Was there a

Tom Sharpe12:09

Yeah.

Presenter12:14

and they were expected to die. Sometimes they rather disappointed the authorities.

Presenter12:19

So this was a pretty unrewarding job. It was rewarding when they lived. Yes. I mean, I remember a coloured girl who.

Presenter12:27

who was adopted when she was about sixteen by another coloured woman.

Presenter12:31

And the family.

Presenter12:33

And she survived, she was fed up and she was cleared.

Tom Sharpe12:36

It was pretty

Presenter12:39

How long did you take it? Oh, about six months. And then? Then I went down to Natal to teach. I again I w I was I wanted to write. Who were you teaching and what? I was teaching rich white children whose parents had aeroplanes.

Speaker 412:56

Hmm.

Presenter12:56

Yeah.

Presenter12:57

I'll teach you everything Latin, maths?

Presenter13:00

And were you doing any writing? Oh, yes, all the time. What? They were all plays. By this time I decided the play was the answer. Yes. So I wrote plays at night and early in the morning. You're also doing some photography.

Presenter13:13

Well, that came a bit later, yes. I got rather fed up with

Presenter13:17

People who are only interested in small boys and whether they won the house match or whether they beat the next school. And I I took up photography and I was photographing in the townships. Were you selling the photographs? Was this news photography?

Speaker 413:27

Were you setting

Presenter13:30

It wasn't a begin with it, but it became that, yes. You were writing these plays. There was one play, The South African.

Presenter13:36

Which uh was performed in London. Mm. Not in South Africa. No, no. Well, they wouldn't never be put on in South Africa.

Tom Sharpe13:39

Not in South Africa.

Presenter13:44

That was put on at Quest as an ealing and the following week the Special Branch raided me. The authorities had read the notices. They'd read the notices, yeah. Well, what could they do? They hadn't seen the play, and it hadn't been performed in South Africa.

Presenter13:59

No, you've never lived in a sort of state like South Africa. I can see that, mister Plumber. So what did they do to you? Well, they didn't do anything to begin with. They raided the house and they went through all the books that I had there, turned everything upside down.

Tom Sharpe14:04

But what did they do to you?

Presenter14:11

I mean they were trying to put the frighteners on. Yes.

Presenter14:14

And nowadays they succeed as far as I'm concerned, because nowadays they torture whites, but in those days they didn't.

Presenter14:20

They did just torture the blacks. You finished up in jail. What was that for? Oh no, that was I was only being deported.

Presenter14:26

I mean, I wasn't really in jail for any length of time. But they kept you shut up. No, they locked me up, yes. I mean they put me into Marritzburg jail.

Tom Sharpe14:30

Shut up.

Tom Sharpe14:31

Man.

Presenter14:34

And then they took me down to Durban and they put me in another one down there and then they put me on a ship. What were the conditions like in the jail?

Presenter14:41

Well, very interesting. You've never been to jail, obviously. Not in a South African jail. Well, not in any jail, as a matter of fact.

Presenter14:49

Well, there's always hope for you, you know.

Presenter14:52

And my advice if you do go to jail is do pick a murderer, because a murderer is, first of all, he's very clean, and he's not a professional criminal, is he? Now burglars tend to be rather dirty in my experience, and rapists are not particularly pleasant of people either. You mean as a cellmate? As cellmates, exactly. And I was in a cell with four other men in Cape Town, two of whom were murderers.

Presenter15:13

They weren't really murderers, this is where it really gets sick.

Presenter15:18

It was unlikely they were going to be hanged, although they hang about a hundred and thirty-nine people a year in South Africa, because they had killed a black.

Presenter15:27

But you see, uh with murderers who might be hanged even.

Presenter15:32

You're safe from the other prisoners, who tend to be rather unpleasant.

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Or can be.

Presenter15:37

Every week I learn some useful information on this break. Well, do pick a murderer, I do recommend you. Anyway, they did deport you. They they slung you out. Yes, I was slung out. And under reasonable conditions?

Tom Sharpe15:40

Mm-hmm.

Presenter15:48

I mean, they didn't put you in a sort of a hulk or a jail ship. Oh, n none at all. No, they put me on the Union Castle liner. And they did b give me the worst cabin they could, but then the purser was a very nice man.

Presenter15:59

whom, whenever I came out of a prison, I mean I was in Port Elizabeth or East London or Cape Town, would immediately take me up to his cabin and feed me with a great deal of booze.

Presenter16:10

And it's moved me into a very good cabin, in fact.

Presenter16:13

Record number five.

Presenter16:17

Cicalella Africa. It is a song actually of the African National Congress. And I knew President Letulli, Chief Letully.

Presenter16:27

Who

Presenter16:28

was the last South African to get the Nobel Peace Prize.

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And who was a wholly non-violent man?

Presenter16:37

And it means God free Africa.

Speaker 416:38

Course to seek a memory of free car.

Speaker 416:43

Malu pakani supondoloyo izwaimitanda zoyetu kosi sikela kosi sikena kosi sikke le afrika malu pakani supandoloi.

Speaker 417:11

So yeah, check

Speaker 417:14

Causi si que le la kosi si que le la

Presenter17:22

Sicalali, Africa. God bless Africa. So you're back in this country, Tom. What did you do?

Presenter17:29

Well, I got a job teaching first of all. Where? In Aylesbury. Um that was sort of supply teaching. And then I went back to Cambridge and did an education certificate. And I got a job in the uh Cambridge College of Arts and Technology. And I stayed there for the next nine years, eleven months. Were you writing any more plays?

Presenter17:49

No, I'd given that up because I had to work.

Presenter17:51

Yes. I had to learn all the history I was supposed to be teaching. But you wrote a short story that turned into a a book? Yes, it was Rioters' Assembly. Writers' Assembly, yeah. That was the first novel I wrote. What was it about? Well, it really began off with the idea of

Tom Sharpe18:00

That was a

Tom Sharpe18:02

Yeah.

Presenter18:06

A true story of a white woman in South Africa who lived near a police station who was eighty years old.

Presenter18:13

And who knew if she complained about the noises coming from the police station of torture that they wouldn't do anything about it. So she wrote a polite letter to the Commandant and said, Dear Mr. Commandant, you know, I'm eighty years old, and I like to have my little nap in the afternoon, and I really can't, because the noise is coming from your police station. And the Commandant came shooting round like a shot, most upset that she was being inconvenienced in any way, and promised that there wouldn't be any noise. So whether in fact they gagged the prisoners or what they did.

Presenter18:41

Well, anyway, I started to tell the truth really about that that, and I thought instead of having that, let's have an old lady who rings up and says she shot her cook. Hideous old woman.

Presenter18:52

And the police in those cases in South Africa would say, Well, you've had an accident. She says she's murdered a cook. But you can't murder a black cook. It's impossible. So it's an accident. Then the logic of this whole this South African police mentality, you see

Presenter19:08

Develops whereby they just say, Well, the body is in the house, and you say, No, it's not, it's on the lawn.

Presenter19:13

They said, Well, it will be in the house by the time we get out.

Presenter19:16

We'll be up in forty minutes, only five minutes away. You'll have plenty of time to do it.

Tom Sharpe19:21

Nobody

Presenter19:23

Nowadays I think you only have to take a cap in, or a hat, or some proof that the man was in the house or and this dev anyway, this develops into this this farce, a hysterical farce.

Presenter19:33

A dementia, if you like. How long did it take to write? It took me about three weeks to actually get it done on paper. That's not long to write a book, is it? It was a hundred and ten thousand words and then I cut twenty thousand words out of it. And your second book was also about South Africa?

Tom Sharpe19:39

Long.

Tom Sharpe19:40

Good.

Presenter19:48

I followed Constable Els, yes. I'm very sorry to have to announce the word that Constable Els, made inspector, and he died on the seventeenth.

Presenter19:58

of September of this year. So he was based on a real person? No, he wasn't. The real person turned up afterwards, and I got a letter from South Africa the other day, to say that Inspector Else

Presenter20:10

head of the South West Africa Task Force, was killed during a mock battle at Omararoo, two hundred miles north west of

Presenter20:20

Wintock?

Presenter20:21

Because a thunder flash failed to explode.

Presenter20:24

It was a mock battle. And when it failed to explode, this was a signal for the attack. He stood up in his Caspia armoured car and was immediately shot in the back by a machine gun.

Presenter20:32

He was to be buried with full military honours. In the book there was a mock battle.

Presenter20:38

History of

Presenter20:41

I'm very sorry about his family. You'd given them the idea, perhaps. I don't think somebody like Konstable Els will

Tom Sharpe20:42

His family.

Presenter20:48

We inspect the else. Well now since then you've written one book a year. How many altogether? More or less, yes.

Presenter20:55

I've written 11 altogether. How many about South Africa? Just those 17? Just those two, yeah.

Tom Sharpe20:58

That's a

Presenter21:00

Let's have another record.

Presenter21:02

Well, the next one is another one of these jazz ones, which is Johnny Dodd's Hen Party Blues. Why particular to this one? It's one I play at home over and over again.

Presenter22:08

End Party Blues, Johnny Dodds with the Dixieland Jug Blowers.

Presenter22:14

What's your writing discipline?

Presenter22:16

Well, I mean I'll write anyway.

Presenter22:18

What discipline? When I get up in the morning I have breakfast and then I go and write. I go to a hut. Where's the hut? Hut in the garden. When I was living in Cambridge it was I used to cycle three miles to a garden and there was a hut there and I'd I'd work there all morning. Do you write a set number of words a day? No. Just as much as you feel like. Well as much as I can, but I've scrapped far more than I write. Now you write in your hut in the garden, but I read you have thirteen typewriters. Are they all in the garden? No, no, seventeen, I'm afraid. Seventeen. Yeah, they've been added to since. Are they all in the hut?

Tom Sharpe22:46

No no no.

Presenter22:51

No, they're not. There's some in the server, some are all over the house. So wherever you are, there's always a typewriter. Yes, absolutely.

Tom Sharpe22:55

Time Brat

Presenter22:58

Your books are comic books, but do they still have a serious content? Are you still campaigning?

Presenter23:03

I'm not campaigning. Well, you were with the South African Book of the United States. No, no, no, that was Axon.

Tom Sharpe23:06

No, no.

Presenter23:08

You see, one's opinions are implicit.

Presenter23:10

In the situation they're not explicit, if it's explicit, it's propaganda.

Presenter23:15

If in the course of writing a book certain things are stated from your own experience,

Presenter23:21

And the characters, after all they're fictional characters, as your island's a fictional island then the characters may say out of their own character, you know, out of their own personality, things that that they feel.

Presenter23:33

This is I mean, it's a great difficulty, this one, because the difference between propaganda and

Presenter23:38

If you like fiction, I'd hesitate to use the word art.

Presenter23:42

It's a very difficult one actually. What's the latest one about? The latest one is about my friend Wilt, who teaches at a tech. Which you've done. Which I've done, yes.

Presenter23:52

He teaches more or less the same things that I had taught.

Presenter23:54

And he has the same uncertainties about the world that I have, but um he then carries them a bit further than I ever carry them into sort of

Presenter24:03

Enactment of fantasy.

Presenter24:05

Not that I have his particular fantasies.

Presenter24:08

And when that happens, he tends to run into trouble.

Presenter24:13

None of your books have been made into films, which is strange because they're very filmy. They move fast, a lot of action. No, blot's been made into a film. Blot on the landscape, yes. And that will be coming out.

Tom Sharpe24:18

Look at action.

Tom Sharpe24:22

No.

Presenter24:25

In January on B B C. It's a a television film, yeah. Not a picture film.

Presenter24:32

You've got to throw the book away in the first place. Yes. And then you've got to compress it into one and a half hours of visual entertainment. But this is compressed into one hour. And I don't see how to six hours, yes. Did you do the adaptation yourself? No, Mark and Bradbury did. Why didn't you do it?

Speaker 424:40

And I don't see how it's

Presenter24:48

Malcolm Bradbury is better at it than writers hate to have their characters tampered with. No, we don't, not at all. No, I say throw the book out the window. A book and a and a film are two different things. Totally different. Well, it isn't really a film, it's a television series then. Still, I say throw the book out the window and use the character.

Tom Sharpe24:48

I think

Tom Sharpe24:50

Iraq

Tom Sharpe24:53

No, we don't, not at all, no.

Tom Sharpe25:01

So

Tom Sharpe25:02

Dill

Presenter25:06

Alright, let's have record number six.

Presenter25:09

Well record number six is Bill, Helen Morgan singing Bill Woodhouse's lyrics. From Sherburt. From Sherbert, yes. Why do you choose it? Because without Woodhouse's Performing Flea, a series of letters he wrote to Bill Townsend, a friend of his, I doubt if I'd written anything after the first two books. It is a wonderful book. I think it's a wonderful book about how to write.

Speaker 425:33

Yeah.

Presenter25:33

Yes. You can look in there and see, Oh, I've had to cut out forty thousand words. I'm writing heavy weather, which happens to be appropriate in nineteen thirty four. And immediately you think, Well, yes, if he can do it, then so can I. Forty thousand go out the window. It doesn't matter. Let's listen to Bill.

Speaker 425:52

Don't explain, it's surely not his brain that made screams rim.

Speaker 426:04

I love him.

Speaker 426:08

Because he word your love Because he's done

Speaker 426:17

Woo b

Presenter26:21

Helen Morgan singing Bill from Showboat with a lyric by P. G. Woodhouse.

Presenter26:28

You don't write your books anymore in three weeks, do you? Well, I never did. I mean, I used to get the book down in three weeks, if I was lucky. But it was a draft. Yeah, that wouldn't be a draft. But the story was there.

Speaker 426:37

But it was a

Tom Sharpe26:37

Yeah.

Presenter26:41

That's only happened twice.

Presenter26:43

The rest of them you have to work at. And anyway, uh, once you've done your three weeks, you see, you then at least in my case, I then spend five or six months working the stuff over.

Tom Sharpe26:45

And anyway.

Presenter26:53

Where do you live now? I live down in Bridport in Dorset. You have a very big garden. Do you spend a lot of time working in it? Well, I used to, yes. I used to spend quite a lot. I like making things. I like planting things. So I planted a thousand or more roses. And I buil put greenhouses in and uh miss propagators. And you're a great believer in in compost gardening. Yes. I believe you've got to put more back into the soil than you take out. You make a lot of it. I make a lot of it, yes.

Tom Sharpe27:13

Love

Presenter27:18

Bi and manure as well.

Presenter27:20

You married an American lady? Yes, in 1969. How many children do you have? Three. Are they trained to keep out of Dad's way when he's writing? Oh, yes, absolutely. Well, the hut, you see, was very conveniently placed across a path. Now, the path is a dividing line between my section of the garden and theirs. And they don't move across it unless something desperate happens. Record number seven. Well, record number seven is Mozart Piano Concerto in D minor, it's number twenty, and it's played by Alfon Brendel. Why do you choose this? I play a lot of Mozart. Were I to be stuck on this island for forty years?

Presenter28:02

I'd want some mozzare, but I wouldn't want too much, because by the time I came off it

Presenter28:06

I'd have come to loads of men, if I ever got of it.

Presenter28:10

I'd never be able to listen to it again. Not like having something very good, like caviar every day for breakfast.

Presenter29:11

Mozart's piano concerto number twenty in D minor.

Presenter29:15

The Academy of Saint Martin and the Fields, directed by Neville Mariner, with Alfred Brundel as soloist.

Presenter29:21

Tom, living in South Africa should have got you used to a hot climate, and being in the marines should make you a pretty handy man as a castaway. Do you agree with those two statements? I was born a castaway in Northumberland as a child.

Presenter29:36

My parents used to go on holiday.

Presenter29:38

Being elderly, they didn't want me about. And I I went to stay with a very nice couple who were on the water works up there by a reservoir. So from at a very early age, I think I was eight when my father gave me well, I was eight, when he gave me a four ten bolt action shotgun. Did you know?

Presenter29:56

So the character Lockhart in the book when I wrote The Throwback had certain things in common with me. Well, I'm afraid we can't give you a shotgun, that's against the rules. But I should think you could light a fire and rig up a shelter. If you've got a bottle or glasses, you can light a fire, I think. Well, the bottle would be washed off.

Tom Sharpe30:10

Yeah.

Tom Sharpe30:14

Clear.

Presenter30:15

Would you try to escape? I mean, did the marines teach you to navigate?

Presenter30:19

Didn't teach me to navigate, no. Um, I'd certainly try to escape, wouldn't you? Yes, yes.

Presenter30:25

Could you build some kind of craft?

Presenter30:27

Yes, I think I could. Right. Give you something to do. You have to escape. And in the meantime, record number eight. Well, record number eight is Mozart yet again. And this time it's an aria from The Marriage of Figura. Which one?

Speaker 430:31

What did that

Presenter30:43

It's that one where that woman blatters on about love.

Presenter30:47

Which one? Boycase, Petit.

Speaker 431:06

Yeah.

Speaker 431:07

Five days of faith they came towards our heart.

Presenter31:32

That was Frederica Von Stada blathering on about love. She was singing Boyque Sopeti from The Manager Figura.

Presenter31:40

If you could take only one dis to the island, which one would it be out of your eight? Oh, I think it'd be the Mozart piano concerto. The piano concerto and one luxury to take with you, one object of no practical use. Well I thought about this and

Presenter31:55

I ought to give up snuff, but I think I'd take a ton of snuff. A ton of snuff, right. And one book. You already have the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare. One other book. Well, here again there's some difficulty. It it would have to be poetry. It would I think it'd be the Oxford Book of English Verse.

Tom Sharpe32:06

Now the

Presenter32:12

The old one or the new one? The old one. The one you can learn things off by heart and repeat to yourself as you stalk across the moors. The original Oxford Book of English Verse. And thank you, Tom Sharp, for letting us hear your Desert Island discs. Thank you very much, Roy. Goodbye, everyone.