Jackie Stewart

Speaker 10:00

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 10:08

The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen eighty six, and the presenter was Michael Parkinson.

Presenter0:30

In the colourful history of Formula One motor racing, our Castaway has his own very special place. When he retired from the sport in 1973, he'd been the world champion on three occasions, and he crossed the line first a record twenty-seven times in ninety-nine races, and that record still stands. Nowadays, the racing driver is a successful businessman, forever on the move, traveling 360,000 miles a year, nowadays reported more in the Glossier gossip columns than on the sports pages. He is Jackie Stewart.

Presenter1:01

Jackie, welcome. I would imagine that you make a fairly restless castaway, wouldn't that be true?

Jackie Stewart1:06

No. In fact, after about four days, maximum five days, I truly become a vegetable. Uh and I really don't think very much, I don't want to think, I get right inside myself, I relax totally. So I think this this island life is gonna probably suit me quite well, really. Few people might agree knowing me as I am today, but if they were really to know me, I think they would see that side too.

Presenter1:36

Of course it it is a hectic lifestyle that you've devised for yourself nowadays, but in fact life began in fairly tranquil surroundings, didn't they, in Scotland?

Jackie Stewart1:43

I suppose so. Thinking back, it was Dumbarton, a wee village called Dumbuck in those days, which has been lately renamed. But growing up, a very normal life to be the son of a garage owner in Scotland. But, nevertheless, quite an exciting life from the very beginning because of cars and working in a garage and being next door to the garage. There was always a buzz going on. What about school?

Jackie Stewart2:10

School was pretty much a disaster really.

Jackie Stewart2:14

I was really very poor at school, but it turns out that I had a learning disability that I was not aware of, and neither was the school aware of at that time, because those were early days for diagnosing this trouble. I have dyslexia.

Jackie Stewart2:27

And I had it quite badly. I've overcome it now in the sense that I get around it, but I've actually still got it.

Jackie Stewart2:33

Yeah.

Presenter2:33

What does that mean that you can't do?

Jackie Stewart2:35

I can't absorb information quite often. It it's strange because it's not across the board. If you start talking motor racing with me or something that I'm directly concerned with, I can understand quite quickly. But there are other areas, the written word, for example, to consume it. Or if somebody tells me, please repeat after me this, I will probably not be able to do it. But if I write it down longhand and then I say it a few times, I will always be able to do it. I can do today, for example, T V commercials very well, and I seldom take more than one take. But it really was a problem in my learning process, and still to this day I'm very much affected by it. So my early days at school were just the saddest, most difficult, and most unhappy times of my life. I I played football quite well and played for my school and accounty at one time and did all of those things that I could do. And that was my only hold in life, so to speak, at school, because

Jackie Stewart3:34

Amongst your own peers you become suffocated by your inabilities.

Presenter3:39

Let's have a first choice of record.

Jackie Stewart3:41

I've always liked pipe music, being a scod.

Jackie Stewart3:45

And

Jackie Stewart3:46

When Amazing Grace is played, it reminds me of my country, and I'm a proud Scot.

Jackie Stewart3:51

And it has a secondary element to it because

Jackie Stewart3:55

And I think it was nineteen seventy one or seventy two, probably seventy two, that the Canadian Grand Prix I won the race in a race shortened by fog.

Jackie Stewart4:05

and I had to wait amongst the crowd until they had dispersed, afterwards in a mobile home type place, and when I finally left the track the whole place was shrouded in fog.

Jackie Stewart4:17

and I suddenly heard Amazing Grace being played on a single set of bagpipes, and I had to stop the car and see what a man would be doing in what was a wee wooden hut. And here he was on his own in the kilt, playing Amazing Grace. I went in and

Jackie Stewart4:32

Apparently he had wanted to come up to the winners' rostrum.

Jackie Stewart4:35

play the bagpipe for a Scotsman winning a race abroad. Was never allowed to do so, and here he was playing his heart out. So I invited him to the next race, which was at Watkins Glen. He piped me onto the starting grid with amazing grace, and he piped me up to the winner's rostrum because I won that also. So it has a special meaning apart from taking me home.

Presenter5:45

Amazing Grace, to remind you of your background. When we look into that background again as a young man, what were the influences upon you, apart from obviously your you you mentioned your parents and school and that sort of thing? Were there other things that affected you?

Jackie Stewart5:58

Well, I was the grandson of a gamekeeper.

Jackie Stewart6:01

My father had been brought up as a gamekeeper's son, and I was brought up with a gun and a fishing rod in my hand, in a very rural way.

Jackie Stewart6:10

And fairly early on in my life I got involved with other gamekeepers, deer stalkers, and ghillies who look after salmon rivers, for example. And there was a lovely deer stalker on the side of Loch Lomond who keepered for Survivor Coque called Duncan Macbeth. And from about the age of fifteen I shot with Duncan stags, deer, on the upper slopes of Bendoo above Lus.

Jackie Stewart6:40

And he would talk, and he was a wonderful philosopher, and he would teach me such a lot from my later life, because when you're stalking stags, they're sensitive to wind and smell, scent, and their hearing is very clear, and you've got to have patience. And Duncan Macbeth was a man of patience, and he had all day and all season.

Jackie Stewart7:03

And this was his only task in life, so

Jackie Stewart7:06

I think he taught me a lot about how to

Jackie Stewart7:09

wait for the right moment to do things. Timing in life is everything. And in his life it was timing to get the right stag in the right stance with the right head. He never wanted me to shoot a good stag.

Jackie Stewart7:24

Because he was a wonderful environmentalist. They had to be killed because they did a lot of damage. But

Speaker 17:27

Because

Jackie Stewart7:29

Why kill a good stag with a good head and a good body? Because that was to morrow's young stag or young hind?

Jackie Stewart7:37

So you should kill the poor stags, the ones that were clearly not as healthy or as well endowed. I think he taught me a lot, and and I fished a lot on the salmon of the River Spey with my father, and Gillies again.

Jackie Stewart7:51

You sit with a ghillie for hours upon hours, and some of the great success stories of the world have enjoyed salmon fishing. And these ghillies have a privilege

Jackie Stewart8:01

that no one else can. If one thinks of a a baron of industry or a member of the royal family, their ghillie will sit and be with them longer than anyone would ever be any politician, any leader or statesman. That gilly has more insight into that person's

Jackie Stewart8:18

Beliefs in Lives and Opinions.

Jackie Stewart8:21

And they're wonderful people. I I think they're just about the wisest people I meet. Of all the barons that I meet in a year are people of importance or power or money.

Jackie Stewart8:32

I would pick a gilly, a keeper, or a stalker.

Presenter8:35

When was the last time that you shot uh a stag or a hind?

Jackie Stewart8:39

Many years ago I went off shooting animals very badly. I was brought up, as I say, to think positively about the need to keep under control these herds because of the damage they did to forestry and so forth. But I had a hind, what they call go sick on me, and I shot it, but I shot it badly, a little low, and it punctured the lung. And instead of falling over, it splayed its legs and would not fall, although it was by now dead. And I had to go up to the hind and literally push it over.

Jackie Stewart9:12

And it was a touching moment for me when I was still quite young, and I've never forgotten it. And I never really wanted to do it again. I don't mind other people doing it, they have to do it. But for me it w I had had enough.

Presenter9:24

Let's have a second choice of record, Jackie.

Jackie Stewart9:26

Well, it's a change of pace because

Jackie Stewart9:29

By this time I I saw my life developing into motor racing, away from the early days and

Jackie Stewart9:35

The Beatles played a great part in the period that I was also developing as a racing driver and coming into the success that was to arrive later. And they were creators of a new sound, of a new lifestyle almost.

Jackie Stewart9:51

Sargent Pepper is such a wonderful LP, maybe the greatest that I think has ever been produced, in the production of that, and the sounds and the numbers that are on it. So Sargent Pepper, the opening of that I would choose to be synonymous with that part of my life.

Speaker 410:17

Sergeant Bubble told the man

Speaker 410:20

We're going in the nature style.

Speaker 410:23

Guaranteed to raise a smile!

Speaker 410:25

So may I introduce to you?

Speaker 410:28

Actually, number one, Sergeant B.

Presenter10:34

Was there a sense in which you always knew that you you were a racing driver?

Jackie Stewart10:38

I don't think so. There was a time when I very much envied the sport, because when I was very young I got intoxicated by reading all the magazines, and my brother was a racing driver. He's eight years older than I, so when he started to race, even on a club level, I was allowed to go along, and that was when he was seventeen. So

Jackie Stewart10:56

There was I at the age of nine.

Jackie Stewart10:58

wanting to see him do well. And I still have an autograph book to this day when I was ten years of age with some terrific names in it.

Jackie Stewart11:07

So I always looked up to it, but

Jackie Stewart11:10

I was surprised when I started to do it that I was

Jackie Stewart11:14

let's say reasonably successful, even in the early days

Jackie Stewart11:17

And when I got to a little higher level than that,

Jackie Stewart11:20

And I found out that I could do it maybe better.

Jackie Stewart11:24

Than some of the folks that I thought were my heroes. That was an enormous shock. I mean, I don't say that for the effect. I mean, it was an enormous shock. I suddenly thought.

Jackie Stewart11:36

My God, he's so and so, and I'm quicker than him. It was almost a disappointment.

Jackie Stewart11:42

Because it was a surprise. And I think Scotsmen, mind you, I think have a thing about that. I think we're basically pessimists as people.

Jackie Stewart11:52

And we don't want to think ourselves to be better. There's a belief in sport particularly that you've got to believe in yourself and you've got to think that you're the best, and therefore you will become the best. I was quite the reverse of that, both in shooting, which I did a lot of competitively before my racing,

Jackie Stewart12:09

And my racing.

Jackie Stewart12:10

I was always convinced that the other person had a better car, better tyres, or better talent, or better something.

Jackie Stewart12:17

And then when I won oh, I'd be awfully pleased.

Jackie Stewart12:20

But I never went in thinking that I was going to do well. And I think that's a very Scottish trait. And I think it's part of the determination of the Scots who.

Jackie Stewart12:29

In motor racing we've won so many things. Jim Clark, Innes Ireland and myself, I think have won about fifty three Grand Prix victories with only three people and a wee land with only five million people in it. So

Jackie Stewart12:43

I think it has something to do with the mentality of the Scotch.

Presenter12:47

Let's go to record number three. What's that to me?

Jackie Stewart12:51

Well, I s I just called to say I love you, and I there's

Presenter12:54

This is for Helen, isn't it?

Jackie Stewart12:54

Yeah.

Jackie Stewart12:55

Well, there's a group of people in my life who think I'm locked to a telephone in my ear. And I do phone home a lot because the people I love, I like to phone. Paul and Mark also, as well as Helen at home.

Jackie Stewart13:09

I've used the telephone a great deal and when Stevie Wonder, who I adore as an artist, when he wrote that, it was such a nice number and it seemed to be synonymous with my life also. Here I am on the phone, but I just called to say I love you.

Speaker 413:23

I just go

Speaker 413:26

To say

Speaker 413:28

I love you.

Speaker 413:32

I just go.

Speaker 413:34

To say how much I care

Speaker 413:40

I just got

Speaker 413:43

To say

Speaker 413:45

I love you.

Speaker 413:49

And I mean it from the bottom of my heart.

Presenter13:54

So that's your musical tribute, in fact, Jackie, to wife Helen and your two children who are at home. Let me ask you about your children, because you've got two sons. I read that one of your boys, in fact, wanted to be a racing driver. What was your attitude toward that?

Jackie Stewart14:08

I sort of discouraged it. It w it was a period of an unhealthy interest as I saw it. Uh it's selfish of me to say that from what the sport has given me. But on the other hand, I've seen the other side of the coin.

Jackie Stewart14:24

And never mind the accidents, the sport has left a lot of carnage around of people's lives because it takes them on a magic carpet, as many sports does, and then deposits these people

Jackie Stewart14:39

When they don't have anything else to do.

Jackie Stewart14:42

And they have been intoxicated by the lifestyle, by the jet planes and the sunshines and the beaches of the places that we go as sports people go to participate. And then they're left for the rest of their life as wrecks because they don't want to fit into society. They've already seen that light that they're stars a little bit and they get the fulfilment of driving cars to the ultimate limit of their ability, which is a unique experience.

Jackie Stewart15:07

and living on the very edge of life and death almost on a daily and weekly basis, certainly.

Jackie Stewart15:12

And it's a very unsettling experience. And for those few that make it to the so called big time, there's so many more who gets discouraged by life and thereafter never gets a full satisfaction from life.

Jackie Stewart15:26

So I was reluctant for Paul to go in, and it was he, my elder son, who was now twenty.

Jackie Stewart15:31

that wanted to do it.

Jackie Stewart15:33

If he had really wanted that badly to do it, Michael, he would have done it.

Speaker 415:36

Titan.

Jackie Stewart15:36

I didn't see that. I refused him the opportunity of doing it. But I wasn't going to help him at that stage. I wanted him to complete his education, to find an anchor in life, even find a job, and then decide if he wanted to do it, because I never drove a racing car until I was twenty three. So it doesn't have to be done when you're seventeen or eighteen.

Jackie Stewart15:56

So I I was reluctant to allow it. And for Helen it would have been very cruel, I think, because she's been through that trip before and we have lost a lot of friends. So therefore it would have been an awful thing to be the mother of a a racing driver after having gone through the pains of being the wife of a racing driver. So really I discouraged it because I love them so much, both of my sons.

Presenter16:19

Let's have another choice of records, I think.

Jackie Stewart16:21

Well, at the end of my racing career and after my racing career, Queen came in.

Jackie Stewart16:27

And they, like the Beatles to me in many ways, were creators of sound.

Jackie Stewart16:32

And I just liked their sound and it was representative again of my time of life. And on this island I want to be able to relate back to eras of my life. And Queen represents that because I I love their music, I still do today. But when they had Killer Queen and Bohemian Rhapsody, I just thought they were so creative.

Speaker 416:54

Just killed a man.

Speaker 416:57

Put a gun against his head

Speaker 417:00

Pulled my trigger, now he's dead.

Speaker 417:04

Bye-bye.

Speaker 417:07

Life had just begun.

Speaker 417:13

Put it all in way.

Presenter17:21

Our castaway this week is Jackie Stewart. Jackie, what was the most frightening moment that you had? Because, I mean, you were a safe driver and you believed in safety, didn't you?

Jackie Stewart17:29

Well, I I worked very hard to hopefully make the sport safer and it is today than it was, so I hope I contributed to that. Fear is a peculiar thing.

Jackie Stewart17:38

While driving or while racing you don't often have it.

Jackie Stewart17:42

But I I was frightened from time to time. But I remember once it was the French Grand Prix at Rouen and I was driving in the rain and my car was unsuitable on that particular day. The tars didn't marry to the road very well and I finished third in the race, but there were so many times in that race that I truly was frightened. I couldn't see for spray and the tars the car weren't going where I wanted them to go and I nearly hit a couple of people in the middle of the spray in the mist that comes out from behind those cars in great plumes. And that I remember is the only occasion where I can remember being frightened for a prolonged period. And that's one of the only times that I would have said I had any courage, because bravery is different than courage in my book. And I I I completed the race and I finished third, controlling my fear, which I think amounts to courage. So that's as I can remember it the only time where I think that came into play, where I was truly frightened.

Jackie Stewart18:38

Apart from that, there were moments of oops, but but nothing drastic.

Presenter18:44

Let's have another record.

Jackie Stewart18:46

My Catholic tastes bring me from one end of the scale quite often to the other, and and this one is we are the world, because it was a unity of so many different people for some good that was being done, clearly.

Jackie Stewart18:58

And it's the United States edition of USA for Africa. And it just seemingly symbolizes the goodwill that does exist. And it was a very catchy number. And in that one record, you see I'm cheating because I get all of those stars that performed in it all on my island to play one number.

Speaker 419:23

We are the ones to make

Speaker 419:25

Okay, so let's start dealing with

Presenter19:50

Jackie, you retired from Formula One Racing.

Presenter19:53

Many people thought too early. I mean, you were at the height of your career. You could have continued.

Presenter19:59

Why did you stop then?

Jackie Stewart20:00

I was burned out. I had put into what I think was tunnel vision an enormous part of my life, burned out such a lot of energy trying to succeed. And when you get to a certain level of success, to win the World Championship isn't very difficult. To win it once. To win it twice is more difficult. To win it a third time is even more difficult, particularly in a very competitive time.

Jackie Stewart20:24

And I think I had just lived with blinkers on for too long. I was now at the end of my career.

Jackie Stewart20:31

getting more aggravation from the activity than I was satisfaction. And that was the one thing that had stimulated me all my time, was this great feeling of high and this marriage between man and machine and doing to the limit what I could best do.

Jackie Stewart20:48

And at the end I was travelling too much, I was doing too many appearances, I was doing too much testing. Whatever I did I was expected to be the best at, not so much by everybody else but myself.

Jackie Stewart21:02

And that, I think, was more demanding than anything. I had lost the competitive instincts quite a long time before I retired. I was no longer interested in competing with people, because I think that's hopelessly immature. I had started very much competing against myself to eliminate those errors that we spoke of earlier and to try and clean my act up to be, if you like, the perfect race driver. And that wasn't going to happen, I didn't think. But I was just so tired I had to get out. And there was accidents blamed for my demise, there was all sorts of things blamed. But

Speaker 121:30

Do that.

Jackie Stewart21:35

In the end I made my decision.

Jackie Stewart21:38

I remember on the 5th of April of 1973 to retire at what would have been my hundredth Grand Prix, which was at Watkins Glen for the American Grand Prix in October the seventh. And that would have been a wonderful round of. I won the World Championship that year. I had already clinched the title by Monza in September, and it would have been the round one hundred. It would have been very nice to leave.

Presenter22:00

Did you make this decision and tell about yourself, or did you seek counsel from other than family, perhaps?

Jackie Stewart22:05

No, I decided entirely on my own. I told three people in April that I was going to retire. Ken Tyrrell, who I drove for. Uh we had no written contract, but I said I would obviously drive throughout the remainder of the year. I told a man called Walter Hayes, who's with Ford Motor Company, and and a man who still is with Ford, a man called John Waddell, because I thought I deserved to tell them.

Jackie Stewart22:27

I didn't tell Helen, I didn't tell anybody else because I didn't want ten green bottles standing on the wall and the fear that with two more to go I might have made a mistake and why do two more? At the end of that season after that race I was going to hand over the number one position in the team to my own teammate Francois Severt who was a very glamorous, colourful, exciting and very nice man to be number one and this would have been his life because he was being offered all sorts of jobs elsewhere to drive because he was so good and I had talked him into staying as number two to me but I knew he was going to be number one and it would have been nice to finish on that basis of handing, if you like, the crown over because I think he could have been world champion the following year. But that was not to be. Sadly, the day before I was going to retire he got killed while trying to qualify for the US Grand Prix.

Jackie Stewart23:24

It was one of the biggest shocks of my life. People thought that that was the reason for my retirement, but it wasn't. Uh he died and I had I was on the track, so I stopped and I went to him, and it was a horrific accident, the worst kind of accident you could ever see.

Jackie Stewart23:42

He was an important part of my life, my team's life, my family's life, and Helen's life. And it was a big wrench, but that certainly wasn't the ris I mean, it was a way to leave, but it wasn't a good way to leave. But uh that's how it turned out to be.

Presenter23:57

And this next piece of music in fact is a tribute to that drive, isn't it?

Jackie Stewart24:00

Yes, because he was a pianist, and he played the piano very well, and the thing that he played best and that I will always remember him by, this is it.

Presenter25:14

Part of Beethoven's Snot number eight in C minor the Pata T played by Danal Barnboim.

Presenter25:19

You were of course asked to come back into Grand Prix Racing, weren't you? A couple of years ago. You offered it was reported three million pounds to come back. First of all, was that offer correct? Was it that that amount of money?

Jackie Stewart25:29

Yes. The number in fact came up to six million dollars for the year. But it wasn't anything that I truly considered for any length of time. I felt so comfortable with the decision that I made when I did retire that it didn't make any sense at all for me to change that. If it were the right decision then, why was it no longer the right decision?

Jackie Stewart25:48

And the money, of course, I mean, it's not much to you, Michael, being English, but to a Scotchman it was a lot of money. I don't know who dared say that. So I I had to look at it in the face. But for me,

Speaker 125:53

Yeah.

Speaker 425:54

Uh

Speaker 125:54

And I'd just say that.

Jackie Stewart26:01

I can make money doing other things. That's not a problem. So it wasn't really considered.

Presenter26:07

I mean, I n don't know anybody who's got a more active retirement than you, Jackie Stewart. I mean, you complain earlier on about the amount of traveling you had to do as a Grand Prix racing driver. I mean, now you travel three hundred and sixty thousand miles a year as a retired man. I mean, how many jobs have you got as well?

Jackie Stewart26:22

Well, I represent a lot of multinational companies and that I enjoy. I love the kaleidoscope of my life because if I'm testing cars, new prototypes that will be tomorrow's cars tomorrow, and I'll be testing a car that won't come out for five or six or seven years. If I test tyres three days later, it's a new prototype tyre that I'm creating and helping to conceive before the creation of this prototype sometimes.

Jackie Stewart26:49

And then I'm involved with marketing and sales and still public affairs to some extent. And occasionally I'm still called Jackie Stewart. And I still have to go and do things that are strictly public appearances. But I meet a lot of very enjoyable people in my life. And I do so many different things all of the time, whether it be through television or film or whatever else I'm doing.

Jackie Stewart27:12

And that's very invigorating. And I funny enough don't think that the pace of life is one that's easily monitored. I I believe there's only two speeds, and that's forward and back. And I'm I'm still young and I still have ambitions and I still want to do other things and I don't quite know what yet, but they all fit into place and I get immense satisfaction from what I do.

Presenter27:37

Let's have another choice of record jacket, please.

Jackie Stewart27:40

It's the Beatles again.

Jackie Stewart27:42

Because I remember seeing that great programme that was boomed by satellite around the world, and they were a part of that, and they sat in the middle of a studio or a great big room somewhere.

Jackie Stewart27:54

And it's all you need is love, and and the words that they speak are so true, and it's true, all you need is love.

Speaker 428:02

No one you can save but don't you say

Speaker 428:06

Nothing you can do but you can learn how to be you in time

Speaker 428:10

See

Speaker 428:15

All you need is love.

Speaker 428:20

All you need is love.

Speaker 428:25

I need this love.

Speaker 428:29

Love is all

Presenter28:32

Jackie, you seem to give every indication to me, anyway, through this interview of being unstoppable in your retirement. I mean, I don't think you're ever going to really retire ever, are you?

Jackie Stewart28:40

I hope not. I think people decline in retirement. I think they their minds stop. And in most cases, as people mature in years,

Jackie Stewart28:49

They become more expansive mentally because they've accumulated all this enormous experience and those lessons that they've learned, those mistakes that they've made.

Jackie Stewart28:59

This must surely be one of the the most important times of someone's life if they continue to forge ahead. And I think that's the important thing. That's what I want to do. I want to die standing up.

Jackie Stewart29:12

doing something that that that I'm planning for tomorrow. When I meet

Jackie Stewart29:17

Elderly people who are still young.

Jackie Stewart29:20

I think I get so excited by them as long as they can communicate. I think that's maybe why I chose Horowitz to to play some piano music. He's your last choice. Because he's that. He's a symbol of that. I saw him on television the other day playing in Moscow.

Presenter29:27

Your last choice, yeah.

Jackie Stewart29:33

And what a wonderfully relaxed man he was because he had that knowledge that he was great. He knew he was great, but he didn't have an ego anymore. And he didn't have to prove it to anyone. All he had to do was interpret his music and the creator of that music the way he, through experience, could do. That's great.

Presenter30:54

Vladimir Horowitz playing the piano sonata in C major by Mozart.

Presenter31:00

Jackie Stewart, we've now got you finally on this desert island. Now, are you a practical man? I mean, could you survive?

Presenter31:07

You could build a hut and you could make fires and you could, well I suppose catch fish and things like that.

Jackie Stewart31:11

I do all sorts of things.

Presenter31:13

Try to escape?

Jackie Stewart31:16

I probably would after a while. I'd get bored with myself maybe, but with all these nice records to keep me company, I could probably stay there quite a long time.

Presenter31:24

Now, you have to imagine that seven records are wiped away in some awful disaster. You're left with one of the eight you've chosen. Which would that be?

Jackie Stewart31:31

I would choose Sergeant Pepper.

Presenter31:33

And what about the book?

Presenter31:35

Which would take?

Jackie Stewart31:36

since I'm such a poor reader, I would probably choose something that I'll have to constantly be able to refer back to and learn from and I would become the the eventual expert in trivia maybe, but

Jackie Stewart31:49

Just as fun, I would probably take the Guinness Book of Records. Now all the scholastics of the world have already switched off anyway, so it doesn't matter to them. But really, as I sit here, it's the only book I can think of that would give me interest because it's not just of sport, it's of everything in life.

Presenter32:04

Besides, you're in it.

Jackie Stewart32:05

Well, I am, yes.

Presenter32:07

And what about uh luxury objects?

Jackie Stewart32:10

I'm a modest man when it comes to luxury, and I think what I would choose is a very beautifully bound with wonderful paper book of nothing with an excellent pen, everlasting pen. And I would like for once in my life to have the time to write down everything that I had ever thought about, learned, or would want to pass on. And I'm being very pompous saying that, but I think there are some things that I would like to put down on paper.

Jackie Stewart32:40

And it would consume me to do that. And I may have to write them over a few times, but since this is an everlasting book of paper that I'm having brought in in first class, it doesn't matter. And that's what my luxury item would be.

Presenter32:52

Jackie Stewart, thank you very much indeed.

Speaker 133:01

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