Richard Condon

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 1986, and the presenter was Michael Parkinson.

Presenter0:30

Our Castaway started work in the film industry, retired at the age of 42 and commenced a new career as a novelist. He became an international bestseller with a Manchurian candidate and since then has written a further 22 successful works. He was once described as a tender-hearted cynic, a manic depressive optimist, an entertainer who nonetheless makes you wake up in the early hours in a sweat of fear. He is Richard Condon.

Presenter0:55

Richard, do you think you might look forward to an exile on a desert island?

Presenter0:59

Oh, indeed, yes. We lived overseas for 27 years. I say overseas from New York, which was where we started from.

Presenter1:06

And suddenly I got a perspective on my own country, just from being away from it, for months and months at a time.

Presenter1:15

And I think to be on a desert island that same kind of objectivity would return to me. I say return because now we live in Dallas.

Presenter1:23

But but would I I wonder, being a novelist, would would the isolation equal inspiration for you?

Presenter1:29

No, I I don't believe in inspiration. It's really uh a motor habit. It's something that you do every day of your life. Now, I I work about uh seven and a half hours a day and uh I do that seven day days a week so that uh after twenty-nine years, if I'm not writing at the time of day when I uh usually am writing, I become very restive and very nervous and and uh

Presenter1:52

Uh the fact of inspiration, my gosh, uh I I don't think you'd be able to pay the grocer if you if you relied on inspiration. Well, no, in your desert island, the only uh company we've got are these eight records. Did music play any part in your in your life growing up at all? Were you from a musical family, for instance?

Presenter2:07

When I was b

Presenter2:08

about between six and ten.

Presenter2:11

The elevator men in our apartment house were jazz music mus mus musicians, and my mom m mother had this idea that I should learn to play an instrument or several. So the different elevator men would come twice a week into the flat and give me lessons on the saxophone, the clarinet.

Presenter2:30

The violin and the piano, and as a result, I can play a piece called Chasing the Fox on the Piano.

Presenter2:37

Give me your first choice of record.

Presenter2:39

The first choice would be

Presenter2:41

The g great

Presenter2:43

Jack Teagarten playing his lovely trombone in Body and Soul

Speaker 13:05

Mm-hmm.

Presenter3:42

Richard, you were born in in New York. What sort of a family did you come from? Well, my father was an attorney.

Presenter3:49

He was also a captain in the United States Naval Reserve, which came directly out of World War One.

Presenter3:55

And they were a comfortably placed middle class family who enjoyed wonderful harmony.

Presenter4:03

Now

Presenter4:05

I stutter, and the re the reason I stutter, it said, was because my father shouted when he ate chicken. But in any event, although I can recall my father shouting, I find it very hard to believe that I've been stuck with this for this long time. Can you control it now? I mean, how bad was it when you were a child? Until I was 18, I couldn't speak on the telephone. And then my mother took me to a gigantic hospital complex called the Neurological Institute, and they decided that I should have been left-handed instead of right-handed.

Presenter4:41

So they invented a series of exercises which were to train my motor move move move move move movements with my brain.

Presenter4:49

which was reading aloud for one hour each day, and writing down just the first letter of each word as I said it.

Presenter4:57

After thir thirty days

Presenter4:59

A motorhave habit was formed.

Presenter5:01

So that when I spoke on the phone, I would write

Presenter5:05

The first letter of each word I said on my

Presenter5:08

Trouser-like.

Presenter5:10

And it worked. Well, at least it worked to the point where I could speak on the telephone. What about the ambition though, as a child? Do you want to follow your father into the into the law or what? Well, my father wanted me to follow him into law, so I made certain that I couldn't even qualify for UH University. He then wanted me to go to Anatonopolis, which is the Naval Academy, and I arranged it so that it was out of the question.

Presenter5:36

And I got into writing right from the beginning. I I got a job for ten dollar dollars a week writing package inserts, which are those little things they wrap around toothpaste tubes and they're printed in in four point type and no one ever reads them, but they would take sometimes weeks to write.

Presenter5:54

So from there, I went into the advertising agency business and wrote advertising copy.

Presenter5:59

Eventually into the film business. Best to have another choice of record.

Presenter6:03

Well, th this this goes back to uh when I was 18. It's called Vals Vanite.

Presenter6:08

And it's an alto saxophone performance.

Presenter7:06

It's a rather melancholy choice of of music for a young chap who's eighteen when that swam into your view. How did it happen? Well, the day I heard that tune, I was being deported from Bermuda for assault and ba battery.

Presenter7:22

And it was all very embarrassing, but it fits being eighteen, I'm happy to say. It was for striking two chaps who had taken the name of a young woman in vain. Oh, chivalrous. So wonderful. Oh, it's I I'm blushing right now and then very embarrassing.

Presenter7:39

Now let's go back to this film industry because in fact when you first went into the film industry, we're now talking about with the thirties aren't we? Yeah, oh yeah, thirty thirty seven. Well, we're talking about when the great golden ages of the film industry, the studio bosses were still the huge film stars. Did you get to meet?

Speaker 17:44

Yeah.

Speaker 17:48

Do you hear ball?

Speaker 17:50

Lawyer

Presenter7:53

And work with many of these legendary names. Oh, yes, quite a few. I I work closely with DeMille.

Presenter7:59

with Zanik before he went on to the wars.

Presenter8:03

With Samuel Galdwin.

Presenter8:04

With Howard Hughes

Presenter8:06

With Harry Cohn.

Presenter8:09

And any number of men like Stanley Kramer and other straight producers. But of the Tycoons, I I think those five five five or six I did the most work. Was there any one one uh discernible uh gift any of them had or attitude?

Speaker 18:19

Worth.

Presenter8:24

You could discern. I mean, they they all come across Dilton as being uh

Presenter8:28

I suppose of slightly so sinister men in the sense, you know. Really the only word to describe those men is that they were unilateral. They only thought in terms of things that went into them, and they never thought in terms of things that that went out from them.

Presenter8:43

Now, they were all wonderful editors. I mean, they understood the telling of stories as well as.

Presenter8:49

Well, I suppose we've had in the culture because they

Presenter8:55

For example, Zanek had a picture called Orchestra Wife.

Presenter8:59

Mm-hmm.

Presenter9:00

With one of those big band pictures and so forth. And the titles were all finished on the picture. The advertising was completed and shipped.

Presenter9:08

It was a big operation when he decided to change the title from Orchestra Wife to Orchestra Wives.

Presenter9:15

Now you have to know a man like that is a brilliant man.

Presenter9:20

What about Hughes?'Cause I mean he remains the most enigmatic of the lot. Well, he's not enigmatic. He was really, I think, uh unbalanced.

Speaker 19:24

Well he's

Presenter9:31

He was unilateral to an amazing degree.

Presenter9:34

And

Presenter9:35

He was in the film business.

Presenter9:38

Really for one single

Presenter9:41

Re re reason, his father, whom he adored, and with whom he competed all of his life to the last day of his life,

Presenter9:50

Met a lot of pretty girls.

Presenter9:52

Howard always wanted to do better than Dad.

Presenter9:55

And Howard wanted to set up some kind of a business where he could meet more pretty girls than his father met.

Presenter10:00

And he did, he succeeded.

Presenter10:03

But what was it like? I mean, you worked for him, didn't you? Yeah. No, it's alleged he had this extraordinary attitude toward the people who worked for him, used to spy on them and and wouldn't that be true? Well, I I came into RKO when

Speaker 110:11

Would that be true?

Presenter10:16

He had sold the company to a group of uh oil people from Texas.

Presenter10:22

And it's amazing. He was out of the company. He had taken his eight million do da dot dot dot dot dollars and was very pleased and

Presenter10:31

The first picture that came up was called Androcles and the Lion, and

Presenter10:36

The advertising was terrible. So I I changed the advertising campaign and did an entirely new

Presenter10:42

Well, I had a call from a friend in California at the studio, who said

Presenter10:46

Listen.

Presenter10:47

Please don't change it, he said. Howard is furious.

Presenter10:52

So I said, well, I don't work for Howard. He says, shh.

Presenter10:55

He was calling me at home think of this, he said.

Presenter10:58

He may have a tap on on your phone at home. He said, I know he has a tap on the phone at the office. That's why I didn't call you there. Well, in any event, I held that job about four months and uh Hughes made sure I was fired because I changed all of the advertising he had done. And the closest thing, the dearest and dearest thing to his heart w was uh

Presenter11:20

His creative accomplishment in writing ads

Presenter11:24

So you have to know he was a brilliant fellow.

Presenter11:27

Let's have another choice of record.

Presenter11:30

Now this goes back

Presenter11:32

For me, uh to fantasia, it's called uh Night on Bear Mountain by M muzorke.

Presenter11:38

And we're we're going to hear the

Presenter11:41

Most despairing passage ever ever done. It's it's the Oboe from Night on Bear Mountain.

Presenter12:46

That of course was used in the Walt Disney production of Fantasia, that marvellous film. Which in fact you were involved with Disney for quite a while, weren't you? Yes, I was with Walt for about five and a half years. What sort of a man was he? I mean, was he like the the other people we've been talking about? Oh, he wasn't. Oh, not a bit.

Speaker 112:50

Yeah, son.

Speaker 112:54

Yeah.

Speaker 113:00

I'm talking about like

Presenter13:03

Walt was a uh a very pure man, and I must say a very uh

Presenter13:08

innocent man in the sense that he was childlike in the way he discovered things and the way he developed things.

Presenter13:15

Well, for example, uh when I uh went to work there and um

Presenter13:19

They were the last of a series of shorts about to start the big program of Snow White and Pinocchio and so forth.

Presenter13:28

One of the shorts was called The Practical Pig, and it was based on the three little pigs of the depression years: Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf, and all that business?

Presenter13:36

I was in charge of publicity and I made a tie-up with National Pork Week.

Presenter13:42

which rep represented eighty seven hundred retail display windows in the United States into which they were going to put two big framed one sheet cards that that were going to sell the practical pig.

Presenter13:56

Whew

Presenter13:57

Walt came to New York.

Presenter13:59

I was working in New York, he was working in California, he came to New York.

Presenter14:04

And he said, Dick, how could you do such a thing? He said, There are actors.

Presenter14:10

He said, How would you like it if you were working for Louis B. Mayer?

Presenter14:14

And you went to Mayor and you told

Presenter14:16

That you'd made a tie up with the National Undertakers of America for Clark Gable and Greta Garbo. How do you think he'd like that?

Presenter14:26

Wonderful, wonderful man No, but the most wonderful part about the guy is he didn't fire me.

Presenter14:31

But he went through life believing that the pigs were going to cut. They were his actors. We had a wonderful thing called the Museum of Science and Industry in New York, right down the street from Radio City Music Hall. And this was at a time when the Disney brothers were

Presenter14:46

so low on funds that it was possible that they weren't going to be able to continue.

Presenter14:51

And we got all of these animation drawings and all of this artwork from the studio, and they put it on display in this museum, and it ran for six weeks.

Presenter14:59

Now it was shipped back to the street.

Presenter15:02

Roy Disney called me one day and he said

Presenter15:05

The shipment of the artwork

Presenter15:08

Burn down, he said. Two freight cars filled burn down, he said, on the Arizona border. And I said, Oh, my God.

Presenter15:15

He said, How much did you insure it for?

Presenter15:18

I said, wow,

Presenter15:20

Look it up.

Presenter15:23

Anyway, I called the museum. They had to insure it for a quarter. I had to insured it for a quarter. And

Presenter15:29

I had to call the man back.

Presenter15:32

And believe me, they were in dire straits.

Presenter15:35

and say, No insurance, Roy.

Presenter15:38

Said, well.

Presenter15:40

Said those things happen.

Presenter15:42

Oh, they they were lovely men, those brothers.

Presenter15:47

Right, let's have another choice of records.

Presenter15:49

This is the master of all

Presenter15:51

Francis Albert Sinatra singing Bad Bad Leroy Brown.

Richard Condon15:57

Well, the south side of Chicago, it's the baddest part of town.

Richard Condon16:03

And if you go down there, you better just beware of a man named Leroy Brown.

Richard Condon16:10

Now Leroy more than trouble.

Richard Condon16:13

He stood about six feet four All the downtown ladies called him street top lover All the stunts they called him sar And his bad bad

Presenter16:27

Our castaway this week is Richard Condon, the the novelist. Richard, we've now got you established within the film industry. You've worked with all the greats there, the film industry's booming, and then all of a sudden, age of forty-two, you decide to retire. Why was that?

Presenter16:41

Well, I got three duodenal ulcers.

Presenter16:45

All at the same time. And my wife, the sensible one in the family, said, Well, you can't go on with this kind of work.

Presenter16:54

The only thing I knew how to do was spell, so I decided to take a shot at writing a novel.

Presenter17:01

Now I work for a marvelous man named Max Youngstein, who was the Vice President of United Artists.

Presenter17:09

And I went in and told him I was going to leave, and very solemnly he said

Presenter17:13

Come back at two o'clock, he said. I'll look in the file and see if you have a contract.

Presenter17:18

So I came back at 2 o'clock and he said, Well, what do you know? He said, I found a contract.

Presenter17:25

This contract, which he had dictated between the time I left and came back, provided six months' severance pay, and it was enough time to finish a novel

Presenter17:36

To sell it to the hardcover people, to sell the paperback rights and to sell the film rights, and I never look back. That's wonderful. So you didn't have any of that problem that the new grocery normally has. No, I didn't ha have any at all.

Speaker 117:44

You know, sir.

Presenter17:47

I got off to a a flying start and I really never have to look back in that now it's twenty nine years. Your second novel was a Manchurian candidate, wasn't it? Second. Yes, that was fifty-nine. Which which made in a huge international success, but a novel.

Speaker 117:56

Yes, that was a good idea.

Speaker 118:01

Oh yes, oh yes, yes.

Presenter18:03

It's a wonderful dark story that where did you get that idea from?

Presenter18:08

At the time, the press was filled with stories about uh brainwashing.

Presenter18:14

And the idea of people invading your mind was abhorrent to me, and I must have decided it would be to any reader.

Presenter18:22

Then I began to think of all the ways we are brainwashed, positively instead of negatively, oh, like oh, traffic lights. I mean, right now, as I snap my f f fingers, perhaps two hundred million people are stopping on a street corner because a light changed colour.

Presenter18:37

Oh, there are many, many examples of it, and and uh

Presenter18:41

Brainwashing just fascinated me, and because I had learned about that from Korea in the Korean War, I set the opening of the book in Korea and then worked

Presenter18:51

Well, I must say that in writing that book

Presenter18:53

I had to decide the ending, as I do in any book.

Presenter18:56

And then I worked backward from the ending. So it's like a m a million military campaign in a way, because if you work backward, everything that the character does is automatically logical and and uh

Presenter19:08

Justify. There are no no surprises in it for the writer. Isn't that how you you actually plan every book? Do you actually want to? Well, I suppose all but two or three. So you actually do the last chapter first? No, no, I just have this thing in my mind of how it's going to end and then and I have an idea vaguely what the middle is and then I know what the the beginning is going to be.

Speaker 119:13

Well, I I suppose

Presenter19:26

Well let's let's come up to date. I mean Pritz's Honor and here's another book that you wrote and you've just done a sequel to it called Pritz's Family. Pritz's Honor again became a wonderful film, got uh Oscars. Uh you wrote the screenplay for that too. Yes, yes. Now again where did that idea start from? Here's a wonderful, crazy notion seemingly the the love affair between these two professional assassins. Where did that start from, that idea?

Presenter19:49

Well, I suppose it starts on Madison Avenue because in every uh b b b b b business it involves opportunism and most commercial bus businesses do.

Presenter19:59

Someone has to go to the wall. There's n no two ways about it.

Presenter20:03

And in the case of thinking of two people who are flung on the stones and they have to pick themselves up and and help each other up and and get the thing all together again, only to have

Presenter20:15

That single thing happened where either he has to kill her or she has to kill him.

Presenter20:20

It's that survival thing that ha happens a great deal in the film business, in the advertising business, and many, many other b businesses, except those that you and I are in. Of course.

Presenter20:31

Let's have another choice of record. I wonder about this marvelous Ray Charles, who just about eight months ago appeared in the state legislature of the state of Georgia

Presenter20:44

and sang this wonderful song.

Richard Condon20:47

Georgia

Richard Condon20:51

Georgia

Richard Condon20:55

The whole day through

Richard Condon21:00

Just an old sweet song.

Richard Condon21:05

Keeps Georgia on my mind Georgia on my mind

Richard Condon21:15

Accident Joe

Presenter21:17

Richard, an intriguing thing about several of your books is it's about power and it's about the abuse of power. It's about power being where one doesn't imagine it to be. It's about the the sort of shadowy figures manipulating the politicians. I mean uh in what, Mile High, wasn't it? You had the uh group of businessmen manipulating prohibition into the United States uh deliberately for their own profit. Do these people exist?

Presenter21:44

Oh, indeed they do. I always think of them as uh the owners of a country, and and they're the ones with the most at stake from their own subjective point of view.

Presenter21:53

And uh the rest of the nation are their employees.

Presenter21:57

So that the idea of power plays is really just good business planning. But who are these people? I mean, what are they?

Presenter22:06

They're the men who uh

Presenter22:09

are on the fringes of being

Presenter22:11

White House Aides

Presenter22:14

I think there are men who are bankers and insurance executives and aerospace and oil particularly.

Presenter22:22

Who are always kind of moving lightly around New York and Washington, particularly. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, Washington.

Presenter22:30

Let's have another choice of recording.

Presenter22:33

But this time

Presenter22:34

The

Presenter22:35

Most adorable men of the century.

Presenter22:38

The Beatles singing When I'm Sixty Four

Presenter22:42

Which isn't likely to happen again.

Richard Condon22:48

When I get older losing my head many years from now

Richard Condon22:55

Will you still be sending me Valentine, Birthday greetings, bottle of wine, If I be out till quarter to three?

Richard Condon23:05

Would you lock the door?

Richard Condon23:08

Will you still need me, will you still feed me, When I'm sixty-four?

Presenter23:14

You describe the Beatles there as being the most adorable men of this century. Wh why?

Presenter23:19

Oh, I I have a kind of sentimental reason. They bought the film rights to a book of mine called A Talent for Loving.

Presenter23:26

And ordinarily in the film business it takes uh about four to five months for the check to arrive, and with the Beatles it took three days. Let's be friends ever since. And they they were always enormously courteous

Speaker 123:34

Yeah, yeah.

Presenter23:39

And cheerful one around the old gentleman.

Presenter23:44

I went to San Moritz with John, and uh he just wanna wanted me to tell him the story of Italian value, loving in detail, so that he could reserve the best part of the story for him.

Presenter23:54

You've lived now originally in Ireland. You've lived in Switzerland, Mexico, Spain, as well as as here. And France too. And France too, yes. Do you have a favorite of all that?

Presenter24:03

Switzerland, very, very much so. Well, I don't know. The people are cheerfully responsible.

Presenter24:09

And they do what they say they're going to do. I I'm talking now about things like uh the refrigerator breaks and and you ask the man if he can come and fix the refrigerator and he said, I'll be there at eight twenty five tomorrow tomorrow morning and he's there at eight twenty five and he fixes it by a quarter to nine.

Presenter24:25

In Ireland, he might come a week later.

Presenter24:30

In Mexico, well maybe

Presenter24:33

A yearly

Presenter24:35

Well, a month, anyway.

Presenter24:37

But in in the United States

Presenter24:40

He weighs it carefully over the possibility of other jobs he might get and which would pay the best and be the most comfortable. And he he might not show up at all. And what about but part of the creature comforts? What about working in different places? Did you find it easier, more conducive in certain places than others to write? Well, you see, my wife speaks three languages. My younger daughter speaks three, my older daughter Deb speaks five.

Presenter25:04

I speak one.

Presenter25:06

So that when I rode in a bus and two women were sitting directly behind me and they were complaining about the butcher, and if he ever gives me a chicken like that again, I'm going to hit him right across the face with it, it sounded like music to me. I couldn't understand a thing about it. So no matter where we lived in a foreign language country, I was able to concentrate at all times on my work.

Presenter25:24

Because I couldn't understand anything and I didn't have any of the diversions about having to go to cocktail parties and dinner parties and yak. So you could concentrate. Yes. Yeah, so it didn't matter really where I was. You've said that you don't sit there waiting for the inspiration to hit you, you actually sit down and treat it as a practical seven-day a week job, eight hours a day. Do you actually write it in longhand or are you one of these high-tech novelists? Oh, high-tech. I was the second novelist in the world to use what they call a dedicated word processor. This was in 1976.

Speaker 125:32

Yeah.

Speaker 125:33

Didn't matter where

Speaker 125:40

Yeah

Presenter25:54

The first one was a novelist named John Hersey, who borrowed his from Yale University. He was an officer at Yale University.

Presenter26:03

So I I I own my own and I've been on uh these word processors for all these years, my word, uh, almost ten now. Oh, exactly ten now.

Presenter26:13

And I couldn't do without it. Well, I mean they can't write for you, obviously not. I mean No, but the slave lay l l labor is gone. You see

Presenter26:22

Rewriting any manuscript, let's say you do it four times. Now, let's say the manuscript is 500 pages. That means retyping 2,000 pages.

Presenter26:31

Now with one of these, you type it once and it's on the screen. Now you rewrite it ten times, but you're only changing little words. You don't have to retype the whole thing in order to have a clean uh TypeScript.

Presenter26:43

Then you can move paragraphs from page 2 to page 12. You can eliminate sentences, paragraphs, words, arrange them all.

Presenter26:52

And then the machine types it for you at five hundred and fifty words a minute.

Presenter26:57

Makes it sound so very easy, doesn't it? Oh well, yes, I'm glad that Farfella invented it.

Presenter27:02

Right, Richard, let's have another choice of record, number record number seven. Well, this is that marvelous married couple of Las Vegas, Nevada.

Presenter27:11

Lulului Prema and Keely Smith singing Embraceable You.

Richard Condon27:17

My heart goes.

Speaker 227:18

Uh

Richard Condon27:19

Chipsy in

Speaker 227:20

Yeah.

Speaker 227:22

You and you alone bring out the

Speaker 227:29

Jeepsy

Speaker 227:32

Uh

Richard Condon27:33

I love all

Richard Condon27:36

Those many

Richard Condon27:38

Charms about you.

Richard Condon27:41

Yeah.

Presenter27:47

Richard, you didn't start working as a novelist until you were 42. Yes. You've written 23 novels or 23 books since then. Is there a sense in which you look back at your life and and think that perhaps all that work in the film industry was was wasted, that if you'd been writing novels and you'd now written forty novels or forty? Oh no. When I was in the film business we had to see about eleven competitive films a week.

Presenter28:10

Now that meant I learned more about exits, entrances, dialogue.

Presenter28:15

Instant character development.

Presenter28:17

Just by absorption. I didn't even know it was ha ha ha ha happening, and most of them were terrible films. But they all had this constant surging locomotive of a storyline that was going straight toward the end. What about in the future then? What's to be the next novel? I have been hooked on this theory for some time that uh

Speaker 128:32

Well

Presenter28:37

Violent people, criminal people, eventually find their place in society.

Presenter28:43

Up toward the top of society because they're the most mobile people in the world because the enormous amount of wealth that they've acquired has been tax-free. And now that they have all this mo mo money, they feel that they ought to get a new suit and then they they ought to give a big dinner party, and the first thing you know,

Presenter29:00

Going back to the robber barons of the United States in the eighteen seventies and eighteen eighties, they were called at that time the robber barons, and they were Rockefeller, Harrim, and Mellon, the people who are the great social leaders of to day.

Presenter29:13

And it's my feeling.

Presenter29:15

that in a matter of uh say

Presenter29:18

thirty to forty years, that the mafiosi of today will be the social leaders of tomorrow.

Presenter29:24

What a thought.

Presenter29:26

And that's what I'd like to disclose in my next book. And which will be a continuation of the Pretzy. Yes, yes, yes, it is. Let's have a final choice of record, which is number eight. The beautiful Peggy Lee singing baubles, mangles, and beads.

Richard Condon29:42

Baba

Richard Condon29:44

Bangoo

Richard Condon29:47

Hear how they jing, jingle.

Richard Condon29:52

Barbos, bango.

Richard Condon29:56

Bright shiny bee.

Richard Condon30:01

Sparkles, spangles.

Richard Condon30:06

My heart will sing, singalanga.

Richard Condon30:11

Wearing?

Presenter30:13

Richard, now now you're on the desert island. You have your eight records. You have to imagine that a tidal wave comes along and it sweeps away seven of them and you're left with a bun.

Presenter30:22

Which one would you choose to keep?

Presenter30:25

Well, I think because it makes me feel pure.

Presenter30:29

The Peggy Lee Record.

Presenter30:30

Peggy Litch shall be there. Now, what about the book you take with you?

Presenter30:34

I wanted to take the Boy Scout's manual. Why?

Presenter30:37

Well, it has an answer for every problem, mental, emotional, mechanical, or in terms of shelter. It's one of the s soundest books and best reading that I've ever read. And what about the inanimate luxury object? What should that be? Well, I thought I would like to take one of those patio eternal calendar watches.

Presenter30:58

As the year years go by, when you come to leap year, the watch now just leaps the time and it becomes the correct day, date and year. So I'd always know what year it is. That's kind of important. So you see yourself staying on this desert island for some time. Oh, yes. If I can only find a way to get my wife there.

Presenter31:17

Richard Gondon, thank you for asking me. Thank you, Michael.

Speaker 131:26

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