Selina Scott

Speaker 30:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music.

Speaker 30:08

The programme was originally broadcast in 1986, and the presenter was Michael Parkinson.

Presenter0:29

Our Castaway Today was once described by a writer on The Times as being the comely maiden of modern technology. The Daily Express, on the other hand, said she was the woman that men yearned to find laid out on their breakfast trays like a long Yorkshire rose. Well both descriptions might be a sufficient excuse for welcoming a stint on a desert island. As it is she's hard at work on breakfast time and her own series of documentaries called Scott Free. She is Selena Scott.

Presenter0:56

Selina, would you welcome a stint on a on a desert island?

Selina Scott0:59

You bet I would, Michael. Right now I would love one.

Selina Scott1:02

But I'm quite a dab hand at islands, you know. I've lived on one before.

Selina Scott1:06

and I think that if I was found on a South Sea Island I would just enjoy every single minute of it.

Presenter1:11

What is it you like about islands?

Selina Scott1:14

I suppose I like them because of my romantic nature. I like the feeling of being cut off, away from everyone else.

Selina Scott1:20

and having lived on an island before, I know what it's like.

Selina Scott1:23

So once the fairies stopped on the island I was once living on.

Selina Scott1:27

In a funny way, you knew that people couldn't get to you, and so you enjoyed your life, and I love islands because of that.

Presenter1:34

All right, now we're going to find out about how you would adapt to life on this island. We're also going to find out the kind of music that you'd like to take with you. So let's have a first choice of record then on this island of yours.

Selina Scott1:43

My first record would be Willie Nelson and City of New Orleans.

Selina Scott1:47

It's a record about a train rushing through the American countryside in the early hours of the morning.

Selina Scott1:52

And it basically sums up my life right now. I'm travelling through London in the early hours of the morning to the studio.

Selina Scott1:59

And I'm in that mood.

Speaker 22:01

At the end of the day. The city of New Orleans.

Speaker 22:07

Illinois Central, Monday Morning Rail.

Speaker 22:14

Fifteen cars and fifteen restless riders.

Speaker 22:20

Three conductors and twenty-five sacks are made.

Speaker 22:26

All along the southbound I see the freight pulled out

Presenter2:27

Southbound Hall.

Presenter2:32

Selena, you you were born in Yorkshire. What what kind of a background did you come from?

Selina Scott2:36

I came from, I suppose, a country family background. I was brought up in the North Riding of Yorkshire, as far as I'm still concerned. There's a North Riding, there's a West Riding, and there's a East Riding. No nonsense about North Yorkshire and Humberside and all of this.

Speaker 22:47

Yeah.

Selina Scott2:49

Well of course you call yourself a Yorkshireman, but in fact people in the North Riding look down on those guys who come from the West Riding just across the Fenines.

Presenter2:55

We're not quite Yoshi, not probably Ocean.

Selina Scott2:56

Not proper yet, then.

Presenter2:58

Julia, I mean, do you think of yourself as a Yorkshire woman? When people say where do you come from? Do you say Yorkshire?

Selina Scott3:03

Yes, I suppose I do. Half of my family, you see, is Scottish, and the other half is Yorkshire. My mother's family came from Yorkshire.

Selina Scott3:11

And I often go back to Yorkshire now because they live in the North Riding.

Selina Scott3:16

But the other half came from Scotland, and so I have an affinity too with North East Scotland, which I suppose tears me sometimes.

Presenter3:22

What kind of family was it? Your father was in police, wasn't he?

Selina Scott3:24

That's right.

Presenter3:25

And and your mother?

Selina Scott3:26

My mother was a journalist. She came from a a long line of journalists. My grandfather was an editor of a local paper.

Selina Scott3:33

I suppose you could say I got my bug for writing and journalism from that side of the family.

Presenter3:38

Was it always a very early ambition to be a journalist?

Selina Scott3:41

Yes, always. I mean, I remember when I was fourteen years old.

Selina Scott3:45

going along to funerals and weddings and flower shows and taking down the names of the people as they walked out and

Selina Scott3:51

Finding that I could make a penny a line off these guys, and that of course got me hooked.

Selina Scott3:57

At that time I was, I suppose you could say, learning the early lessons of my childhood which would stand me in good stead in later life.

Selina Scott4:03

I remember I asked for a pay rise at that time.

Presenter4:05

When you're fourteen.

Selina Scott4:06

when I was fourteen years old, and I went in and I said, I want sixpence more.

Selina Scott4:11

And he gave me the sack.

Selina Scott4:13

And you know, from that day to this I've never ever asked any one for a fair since.

Presenter4:16

That's true, coward.

Selina Scott4:18

Yeah.

Presenter4:19

What about before that, before the the age of fourteen? Did you never go through that young girl thing of wanting to be, I don't know, a ballet dancer or a singer or something?

Selina Scott4:27

You got it in one.

Presenter4:28

With a ballad dance.

Selina Scott4:28

My ballad answer.

Presenter4:29

So of course I

Selina Scott4:31

And that was the end of that dream.

Selina Scott4:33

But, sir.

Selina Scott4:35

My grandmother on my father's side had a lovely voice.

Selina Scott4:38

And she used to be a popular singer in the north east of Scotland, and used to wow them all in the music halls at the turn of the century.

Selina Scott4:44

And I just wished I'd had that kind of talent, because certainly it would have been a far better career to go into, wouldn't it? A proper job to go into rather than a journalism job.

Presenter4:53

Yeah, I think it's a good idea.

Selina Scott4:55

I reckon so. After all these years I'm beginning to realize that I think it was probably a mistake.

Presenter4:59

We'll talk about that a bit later on, I'm sure. What about the next choice in music, then?

Selina Scott5:03

Well, my next record is something that my grandmother loved. It's a tune, it was her favourite tune.

Selina Scott5:09

It's The Lord's My Shepherd. It's the tune by Crimond. Crimond, in fact, was composed by the daughter of the minister of the next door parish where my grandmother lived, and so it has two meanings for me, and I I'd like you to play this. It's the Glasgow Orpheus Choir.

Speaker 35:38

Uh

Speaker 25:48

Yeah.

Speaker 25:50

God's yours believe.

Presenter6:16

Selena, you were saying there that uh when you were a child you grew rapidly too tall to be a a ballet dancer. Were you a gawky child?

Selina Scott6:24

Yes. I have to say that openly and honestly.

Selina Scott6:28

I

Selina Scott6:28

That was awful. I had short straight hair.

Selina Scott6:32

long thin legs, and it seemed I was forever complaining about how thin I was at that time.

Selina Scott6:40

I don't remember any one else saying I was horrible, but I certainly thought so myself. You wouldn't have looked at me twice, Michael.

Presenter6:45

I do know, I've always been short-sighted.

Presenter6:48

What about at that time? You mentioned there also too that you would perhaps have liked to have had a career following your grandmother.

Selina Scott6:55

Hmm.

Presenter6:55

Ah, as a singer. Did you want to be famous? Did you want to be well known?

Selina Scott6:55

Uh

Selina Scott6:58

No, I didn't want to be well known or famous.

Presenter6:59

Never be famous.

Selina Scott6:59

That came about almost as a secondary thing to the job I was doing at the time, which was then writing for a living.

Selina Scott7:06

All this has come since I've been in London, and I can truly say it was something I never sought, even as a child.

Selina Scott7:13

I loved performing on stage as a ballet dancer, but most young girls did and do still now. But it's got more to do with music and expression than it has to do with being famous.

Presenter7:24

And what about the area that you came from? I mean, you left it to go to university, which we'll talk about in a moment, and then you've rarely been back to it, certainly not in a professional capacity. Do you still yearn for it?

Selina Scott7:35

No, I don't yearn for it,'cause I get back occasionally and

Selina Scott7:39

I think I take the best of the area away with me whenever I go.

Presenter7:43

The next piece of music, of course, you've chosen th reminds you of that area, doesn't it? And you've chosen it specifically for that.

Selina Scott7:46

Yes.

Selina Scott7:48

It's Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony.

Selina Scott7:51

I chose it because I remember it being played to me as I travelled over the North Yorkshire Moors, in a car, and you come over the top and you see the Dales Glaisedale, Rosedale, Farndale, Rye Dale.

Selina Scott8:03

And the patchwork fields and little pan-tiled roofs seem to me to sum up what is Yorkshire and the best of Yorkshire. And this-

Selina Scott8:11

Beethoven's pastoral symphony said it all for me.

Presenter9:14

Selina, when you first left home and you went to university, did you go there because you wanted to or because you were good at passing examinations? It seems a silly question, I know, but a lot of children do do that. They go to university because it seems just a thing to do.

Selina Scott9:22

Yeah.

Selina Scott9:27

It was a bit of both. I wanted to go.

Presenter9:28

Yeah.

Selina Scott9:30

But I could only go obviously if I passed the exams at the right grades and

Selina Scott9:34

Happily it coincided, and yet I enjoyed my university life.

Selina Scott9:38

Although I went to a modern university, the university East Anglia University, the UEA, modern university.

Presenter9:40

Uh

Speaker 39:40

Yeah.

Selina Scott9:45

Malcolm Bradbury and Angus Wilson were the literary giants at that time, and

Selina Scott9:49

It was an experience, to say the least.

Selina Scott9:52

It was the first time I had experienced large numbers of people living almost on top of one another, and

Selina Scott9:58

It taught me an awful lot. I can't say I look back on it with much fondness.

Presenter10:02

But I mean, did you take it seriously? I mean, were you a diligent student?

Selina Scott10:05

I was forced to be a diligent student. They had their what they call continuous assessment, which was, as far as I was concerned, the worst thing that had ever happened to me, because I had to settle down every three weeks or so and write an immense essay which would be marked for the final exams. So it had to be on top form all the time.

Presenter10:24

What about when you left university, then where did you go to then?

Selina Scott10:27

Well, I came to London for a very brief spell and then as soon as I could I went to get a training in journalism in Dundee with DC Thompsons. Have you ever been to Dundee?

Presenter10:36

Yeah once.

Selina Scott10:37

It's a place that knocks you out, isn't it, when you first see it?

Presenter10:38

I see it. It's unforgettable.

Selina Scott10:40

It's got the most natural setting of any city I think, including San Francisco.

Presenter10:44

But I mean you worked up there as a junior reporter, I assume, a trainee reporter.

Selina Scott10:47

That's right. I was working on a newspaper, collecting stories for the most widely read newspaper in the world. It's in the Guinness Book of Records, the Sunday Post, and I worked on magazines as well.

Selina Scott10:59

At that time I lived in a tenement, because Dundee is a city of tenements stone stairs and apartments on each floor and an outside lavatory and

Selina Scott11:08

I finally left the block I was living in when a mouse jumped into my bed and took its sooty foot marks right across my white sheet and then disappeared up the chimney again.

Selina Scott11:18

That drove me out, but not before I'd had a real taste of Dundee life, and I mean Dundee people are lovely, but uh if you think Barnsley's rough you ought to see the barracuda on a Saturday night in Dundee that says everything.

Presenter11:29

But what about the journalism? Because I always think that being a trainee in journalism, as you were, is designed to push you off being a journalist.

Selina Scott11:37

Do you know?

Presenter11:37

Do you know what I mean? It's boring routine work, isn't it? Did you find it that way?

Selina Scott11:41

Yes, and I was a university graduate, so I I mean at that stage you considered yourself to be a cut above.

Presenter11:43

Yeah.

Selina Scott11:46

the other guys and suddenly I was put into an office and I was brought right down to size and

Selina Scott11:51

told a sub and to read stories and rewrite stories and then go out and report simple things, following fire engines around and and all of that, for about a year, so that it taught me the hard way, and yes, it it put me off to a degree.

Selina Scott12:06

But a lot of good people came out of Dundee. I think James Cameron is just one person I can talk to you about who

Selina Scott12:13

made his name in journalism and had his grounding in Dundee. I don't know whether he'd thank me for saying that it was there and there alone. But it had that reputation, and and I felt in a small way glad to be there because of it.

Presenter12:25

Well, I mean, Cameron, who of course was a remarkable and special kind of of journalist and a special man too. He, of course, came down to Fleet Street. He was always destined to do so. Was that what you wanted to do? Were you looking all the time when you were in Dundee toward Fleet Street?

Selina Scott12:37

Yes, I think I was. Reporting, not doing

Selina Scott12:41

feature writing, not being involved in

Selina Scott12:43

in heavy journalism, but reporting and getting involved in stories and people making those stories.

Selina Scott12:50

And certainly that was an ambition of mine.

Selina Scott12:53

until I had an accident with my neos, went skiing and ended up in hospital bed for three months, so that

Selina Scott12:59

Within three months my whole world had turned upside down, and I had to think of something to do, to make up for the time I'd lost in hospital.

Presenter13:07

Let's talk about that in a moment, after we hear your your next choice of record.

Selina Scott13:11

Well it's everybody's talking at me. It's uh Harry Nielsen. It's from the theme from the Midnight Cowboy movie.

Selina Scott13:18

It sums up for me the time I was at university, when it seemed everyone was talking at me, all the bright young things were there, and I discovered for the first time perhaps that I was.

Selina Scott13:26

Really quite a private person.

Speaker 213:29

Everybody's talking at me.

Speaker 213:33

I don't hear a word they're saying

Speaker 213:37

Only the echoes of my mind

Speaker 213:44

People stopping staring.

Speaker 213:48

I can't see the faces

Speaker 213:52

Only the shadows of their eyes

Presenter13:58

Selena, we were talking about a skiing accident that changed the course of your life. Why? What what happened?

Selina Scott14:05

Because I was literally off my feet for it turned out after I'd been in hospital for three months a whole year.

Selina Scott14:12

and couldn't go back to walking around collecting stories for the Sunday Post.

Selina Scott14:16

And so I came to an arrangement with my employers and said, Look, I've just got to take this time off to physically get myself put together again and they agreed, and we left the arrangement on very amicable terms. I could go back and work for them.

Selina Scott14:30

But I took myself away to an island after that and spent three years there, as it turned out, promoting the island of Bute. So you're talking to a girl who knows a thing or two about islands, as I said at the beginning of all of this.

Presenter14:40

What is there to promote in the Isle of Bute for three years?

Selina Scott14:43

Well, let me take you there, Michael, and show you one or two things about Rothsayn Beauty beautiful place to begin with.

Speaker 214:49

Cool.

Selina Scott14:51

It's also

Selina Scott14:52

Got an awful lot going on, which, in these days of jet travel and everything, mean still a lot to people who want to get away from it all, and it was that side, the flip side of the tourist business, that I suppose you could say I was promoting.

Presenter15:07

How did the television then come out of that? Because Grampian television, which was your starting point in the business, that came after the Isle of Butte, didn't it? So so how did you get into that?

Selina Scott15:15

Okay, so

Selina Scott15:17

Through an advertisement in a newspaper.

Presenter15:20

The

Selina Scott15:20

I'm sitting on the ferry. Is it a good way, isn't it, to move on?

Presenter15:22

Yeah.

Selina Scott15:23

Sitting on a ferry going back to the island, feeling that it was time I pull myself out of this lovely island, but which really was something for a retired person rather than a young vibrant thing like me

Selina Scott15:34

And I saw this advertisement and it said Reporter for the Highlands and Islands of Scotland and I took off.

Selina Scott15:40

and went to Aberdeen and did the interviews and I didn't know the first thing about television. I remember going in and doing an interview and it was just like this, you and me in a studio.

Selina Scott15:51

And I did my bit, and when I came out and suddenly realized that the entire building had actually been watching, and that the directors had something to say, and oh, the whole place was abuzz with it. I then started to wonder whether it in fact was the right job for me after all.

Presenter16:03

Well, because you mentioned earlier on, you see, that you said that you're a private person. And there's a kind of uh an oddness here, isn't there? Here's a private person who is actually choosing a job where you do get the maximum exposure.

Selina Scott16:10

The private

Selina Scott16:15

Well, you're looking at a very naïve, very private person, honestly. I really hadn't a clue about what was in store, about the exposure, the publicity that comes when you do a job in television. And in my defence, in Grampian television, there really wasn't the fuss that there is here in London. You used to go and do your job and everyone used to say like the report you did, if you ever met anyone in the street who liked anything you did.

Selina Scott16:41

And there was much less fuss generally.

Presenter16:43

Let's take another record, Selena. What's your next choice of music?

Selina Scott16:46

I'd Like Piezo is from the Foray Requiem, and is sung by Robert Chilcote from the choir of King's College, Cambridge.

Presenter16:52

And why do you want this particular record?

Selina Scott16:53

It's simply a very special record to me.

Presenter17:54

So there we have you then up in in Grampian, a local reporter up there. How do you make that big leap from there to ITN?

Selina Scott18:01

It's quite simple, I suppose. It's through the video machine.

Selina Scott18:06

I didn't have to do an interview for News at Ten. Some one saw me somewhere and asked me to come down to London and talk to them, and that was it. It happened because Anna Ford left to uh go to breakfast television.

Presenter18:19

I remember it well, Snee. I remember it very well indeed. Yeah, the scars are with me still. Were you nervous about the exposure that that you would get on on ITN? I mean, it would turn you overnight and did into a a national figure.

Selina Scott18:23

Yeah.

Selina Scott18:31

That's looking back on it.

Presenter18:32

Uh

Selina Scott18:33

At the time I didn't think it would.

Selina Scott18:35

I took it because it was something new. It was a challenge to me and it was exciting.

Selina Scott18:40

But I again naively thought that Anna had done it. So what's new about someone taking over from Anna, another girl? Nothing new at all. And

Selina Scott18:50

That came as much as a surprise to me as it did to most people, but

Selina Scott18:54

But there was still interest in a woman doing a job like that.

Presenter18:56

Did you feel the the new pressure of press interest in you straightaway, immediately when you did the job?

Selina Scott19:01

Yes, I felt the interest in me as a woman. But I was protected to a great degree by ICN. They helped me through those early days.

Selina Scott19:09

And I got on with my job. The job was more important than anything else and and actually still is.

Selina Scott19:15

Believe it or not, I don't worry too much about what people say professionally about me. I mean, I'm in a public job and they can do whatever they will in the papers. But I

Selina Scott19:25

I kind of feel strange when it touches me privately. I don't think it's right to have that happen.

Selina Scott19:32

But as far as the pressure's concerned, I don't feel the pressure.

Presenter19:35

But do you feel nonetheless that there is certainly more press interest in a woman doing a job than a man doing the equivalent job?

Selina Scott19:42

Sometimes I do. Terry Wogan's getting lots and lots of publicity just now because of the job he's doing. He's in the public eye. But

Selina Scott19:51

If you go to anyone's home and you watch women watching television, and particularly watching females on television, the most remarkable comments come out, ranging from what she's wearing.

Selina Scott20:01

to what she's saying, to how she looks. And I suppose, in a way, it it reflects that kind of interest. Women sometimes in certain jobs in television are still a novelty. But I think in the news area it's lessening and it's getting less and it's getting better in that sense.

Presenter20:16

It's observable too, of course, and I mean I could probably say this and you can't, so I'll say it for you, that in fact the abitious remarks made about you, or indeed any other woman on television are made by other women. I mean, they are the worst culprits of the lot in in in Felicity. Now this could not have avoided your attention.

Selina Scott20:31

No, but again, I know where some of those women have come from. I know particularly where one of them came from in Fleet Street. She writes a particularly bitchy column.

Selina Scott20:38

But if you look back to the kind of frustration she must have felt as a woman trying to make her way back in the local newspaper or whatever, then you can understand it, I suppose. And I don't take too badly to it. They say what they say, and and you just don't have to believe it.

Presenter20:51

I think you're being very saintly when they do. What about another choice of records?

Selina Scott20:53

Yeah.

Selina Scott20:56

Okay. What about Sweet Roths Invade by Kenneth McKellar, just for a bit of schmaltz, huh?

Presenter21:00

And by not.

Speaker 221:02

Is the brokest field align the source of blind And I'm a pair hair slading for stands the kneeling day Am I cornering's oar

Speaker 221:29

Harvan a sweet ross.

Presenter21:34

Selena, you made the point there that anybody who's in the public eye, as you are, uh got to be able to sort of stand the heat of the kitchen and the old saying. But you also made the point too that there was a dividing line, that there was that area of your privacy which in fact you feel that in times they encroach upon.

Presenter21:50

What's been the worst example of that? I mean, I mean, how do they encroach upon your privacy?

Selina Scott21:55

by looking up friends, by talking to friends of mine, both men and women, and asking them very personal questions, and by employing devious methods to get the response they want, which is usually sensational.

Selina Scott22:09

I think that's an example of the kind of invasion of privacy I'm talking about, because you see.

Selina Scott22:15

It's all very well for me. I'm a public figure now. People

Selina Scott22:18

have made me that way the press have made me that way, and I've got to take it or get out if if I want to get out. But as far as my friends and family are concerned, well, they're not public figures, and they should be, I believe, left to their own devices. But I'm used to it, and I'm actually used to an awful lot. I mean, I'm used to getting up.

Selina Scott22:37

on a Saturday morning and discovering the massed ranks of Fleet Street sitting on my doorstep you know and they're cheeky as well. I mean you can't help but laugh, because they'll ring the bell and you'll answer it and they'll say, you know, so and so here and I've got my photographer, Jim Bloggs. Fancy coming down and having a photograph taken. This is and I've just got out of bed, you know, my

Selina Scott22:54

Dressing gown on and everything else. On one level it's amusing, and on the other, well, it's sometimes a bit of a bind.

Presenter23:00

Do they follow you?

Selina Scott23:02

Yes. More often than not they doorstep me. But I think what's worst of all is the way they don't think any further than their own noses, and not so long ago I had a crank.

Selina Scott23:15

Who followed me?

Selina Scott23:16

and put an advertisement in a newspaper with my address in it. Instead of the Fleet Street just ignoring it, they built it up, and of course

Selina Scott23:23

plastered my address right across page three of whichever paper it was, and I have ended up since then with you no idea.

Selina Scott23:31

People ringing, people calling, people feeling they know where I live and therefore should stop and say hello to me. And it's not just nice helloes, it's uh worse than that sometimes.

Presenter23:40

Yes, I'm sure. Of course there's a great speculation in Fleet's because you're single. Have you ever thought about getting married just to send them home? Happy?

Selina Scott23:47

Oh, that's the kind of question that you would never ever get me on, Michael Parkinson. It's like me asking you how many mistresses you've got. It stops the conversation absolutely dead.

Presenter23:55

No, at present none at all, Sunina, but if you're in the market we could do a deal.

Selina Scott23:58

Yeah.

Selina Scott24:00

Afterwards.

Presenter24:02

What about breakfast time? Now the next important step in your career was was from I T N to breakfast time.

Selina Scott24:07

Uh

Presenter24:07

Great opportunity, but uh I know only too well the pressure it puts on you, the physical pressure, just because of the lunatic hours that you have to work. Has that got better or worse, the working pattern for you?

Selina Scott24:19

Well, I think the lines on my face tell it all, actually. I I was looking at a clip from the first programme three years ago, and I mean, there's that young, bright thing, untested, untried, and here I am at the end of it all.

Selina Scott24:30

But it has got better. I mean, it's better getting up at three o'clock in the morning. That's no problem now. And the trouble is going to bed at eight o'clock at night.

Selina Scott24:37

That gets no easier.

Selina Scott24:39

But I'm just not a morning person. I've told everyone time and time again, and it's now beginning to sound like some awful, long running refrain. But I my mouth and mind don't work together in the morning.

Selina Scott24:50

And I don't think I'll ever get them whacked into shape, but I keep on trying, that's for sure.

Presenter24:56

Let's have another choice of uh of records, Lena.

Selina Scott24:58

Well, this is Yehodi Menuin. It's Mendelssohn's.

Selina Scott25:01

violin concerto which I remember particularly from my days back in Aberdeen and I lived there in a house, Haddow House, on the outskirts of Aberdeen. It was uh run by Lady Aberdeen, and she used to hold classical music gatherings, and this was a refrain, too, that came over the lawn often on a winter's night, and it takes me back to that time.

Presenter26:22

Selena, recently you you went off to Ethiopia and did a series of reports from there. I wonder what kind of impression that made on you?

Selina Scott26:30

A very strong impression. I went when the worst of the famine was over, but still met people who were having to walk two days to find food, and then walk two days back again over many miles with heavy sacks of corn on their backs,

Selina Scott26:45

I suppose it left an impression of

Selina Scott26:48

Well, sadness in one respect, but also, you know, dignity in another. These people are struggling against it all to get to wherever they're getting. Coming back to this country it struck me that we're so bound up in trivia, and the news is so full of so many silly happenings that that it took me a while to become acclimatised again to this country.

Presenter27:09

What about the series that you're doing now, the documentaries that are currently on BBC scot-free? Now, where did this idea come from? Was it your own idea?

Selina Scott27:16

Yes, it was. It was something that I

Selina Scott27:20

thought of in a very short space of time and managed to persuade the BBC to let me go and film with Bristol.

Selina Scott27:26

It's a series of six and uh I'm basically following the concept of freedom with these people. They've chosen a way of life which is different from other people's way of lives. They don't live in a city, they often have a peculiar lifestyle.

Selina Scott27:39

And I enjoyed last summer very much filming and helping to

Selina Scott27:43

put it into context and writing the films when I came back and

Selina Scott27:47

All told, it was a very enjoyable period of my life.

Presenter27:49

Who the most uh ex or who was the most extraordinary person, or group of people perhaps, that you met on this tour?

Selina Scott27:56

For the first time I managed to get into a monastery in Pluskarden in Murrayshaw, and met a group of men there who at first terrified the daylights out of me because they were very severe with their hoods and their prayers and their songs and then after a day or two they opened up and were just people, but also special people, and I think they were the most remarkable.

Presenter28:18

What do you want to do in the future?

Selina Scott28:20

Well, there are a whole host of options I'm exploring just now, because I suppose I've come to the time in my career when

Selina Scott28:27

It's time perhaps to change and to learn some more about television because there's so much happening.

Selina Scott28:33

So I can't give you an open and and direct answer to that question, but there are plenty of things that are intriguing me just now, and which no doubt I'll follow through.

Presenter28:41

Final choice of record

Selina Scott28:43

Well, this reminds me of the sadness of Scotland the sadness of Scotland being, I suppose, the way people were cleared off the land over the centuries and

Selina Scott28:50

and remains now in the songs that are sung, particularly the Gallic songs of the Outer Isles.

Selina Scott28:57

This song is sung by Gillie and Daly Mackenzie.

Selina Scott29:00

And it's a Gallic air.

Speaker 229:04

Uh

Speaker 229:05

Chi ga vatiar gainoina mara.

Speaker 229:21

One chig.

Speaker 229:30

Mi les jud warn hale.

Speaker 229:37

Aha chil mugragu.

Speaker 229:47

Unilucal.

Presenter30:03

Selena, would you try to escape from this desert island you're on?

Selina Scott30:08

I'd give myself a year or two.

Selina Scott30:10

Maybe then I might start flashing out more signals to any passing ship.

Selina Scott30:15

But I don't think I would, actually. I think I'd probably get down to the business of enjoying it, and the solitude is something that I might relish.

Presenter30:25

Could you manage in a practical sense? I mean, could you light fires, could you build yourself a house?

Selina Scott30:30

I'm a very practical girl.

Presenter30:31

You are.

Selina Scott30:32

Yes.

Presenter30:33

What about the book you take with you? You've got the works of Shakespeare, you've got the Bible there, you'll add one other book.

Selina Scott30:39

I think a book to remind me of what I have left behind.

Selina Scott30:43

I think it would have to be Sam Shepherd.

Selina Scott30:46

And his short stories Hawk Moon perhaps?

Speaker 230:48

Plot.

Presenter30:48

Bah?

Selina Scott30:50

Sam Shepard's a man who's been to the very edge of it all, on a very personal sense, and he's also one of the most powerful writers in America just now.

Selina Scott30:58

He sums up, for me, the urban condition.

Selina Scott31:01

And it's a book that would take me right back to where I've come from.

Presenter31:05

And what about one record, right, seven are wiped out?

Selina Scott31:09

Alright.

Presenter31:10

If you've got one left, what would it be?

Selina Scott31:11

Well, the one that does not remind me of any particular place and any particular time in my life so that it would stop me from being nostalgic, would be The Lord's My Shepherd.

Presenter31:20

And you're allowed one luxury object, one inanimate object. What would it be?

Selina Scott31:25

I think I'd try to improve myself in some way on this desert island, and try to make good so many of the criticisms that have been made of me before.

Selina Scott31:33

One of them is that I have shredded wheat for hair, so that I try very hard, and therefore, as my hair grows longer and longer and longer on this desert island, I take a hair brush.

Presenter31:42

Uh

Selina Scott31:42

How's that?

Presenter31:42

Oh, very practical.

Selina Scott31:44

Yes, that's it. Practical girl and a romantic girl at heart.

Presenter31:47

Selena Skop. Thank you very much indeed.

Selina Scott31:48

Thank you.

Speaker 331:55

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