Frank Bough

Frank Bough0:00

Hello, I'm Kirstie Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive. For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen eighty seven, and the presenter was Michael Parkinson.

Presenter0:29

A castaway was once described as Auntie's breakfast time uncle, the most unassailable performer on British television. Since joining the BBC some twenty five years ago, he's been the unflappable, assured anchorman of Sports Night, Grandstand, Nationwide, and latterly, Breakfast Time.

Presenter0:46

I've always thought that if my life depended on the smooth handling of a T V show, our castaway would be my first choice to be in charge. Here's Frank Boff.

Presenter0:55

Frank, as I say, you're perceived as this unflappable in-charge character. Would that make you good on a desert island, do you think? Well, I don't think it would. I've got a very long fuse. And when the roof starts falling in, I quite enjoy that. But they pull my leg on all the programmes I've worked on. I suddenly kind of change gear and I really do enjoy that. It's a curious kind of skill, really, which has nothing to do with any sort of homework or professionalism. That sort of comes to you. And I suppose if you've got it, then you're very, very lucky. Whether it would see me out on a desert island, I'm not quite certain, because practically, I'm not very good. You couldn't build yourself a boat or something like that. Well, I would have to, but I'm the sort of laughing stock at home about... I mean, give me a hammer and I will destroy the house. And I still don't know how to change a plug, all those colours, you know.

Frank Bough1:29

Well I would have

Presenter1:38

What about being lost and lonely? Would you be lonely? I mean do you like your own company? From time to time I do, enormously, and I suppose I could put up with it for a while. But um oh there's nothing like a few people round a table, is there and a bottle of wine, and I don't know what I'd do uh without that kind of uh of happiness. But the music I think will see me through.

Frank Bough1:53

But

Presenter1:54

That's the next point. I mean, how important to you would music be? I mean, do you find solace and comfort in music? Yes, I mean, I've chosen a list which is both uplifting and depressing, because I believe in life you have to have the ups and the downs. And I play depressing, but occasionally, and then revive the spirits with something a little more joyful. They are purely on a personal basis, an utterly romantic basis. What about the first then? I mean, what category does that come into? This is quite joyful, isn't it? Yes, yes, it is. It's a Beatles record because I was a kind of late son of the Beatles, really. And it reminds me of the time when I was starting in this business in Newcastle. In the north of England, it was all happening. Brian Redhead was there, the Spinners were beginning to start up. The young chap called Colin Welland started Look North Manchester, the same time as I did in Newcastle. So it has to be the Beatles. And twist and shark will bring it all back.

Speaker 32:59

Shake it up, baby, twist that shout, twist that child. Come on, come on, come on, come on, baby.

Presenter3:11

Beatles and Twist and Shout

Presenter3:13

Frank, whereabouts were you born?

Presenter3:15

In a two-up, two-down terrace with a loo down a backyard in Fenton, Stoke-on-Trent. And what would your father do? Well, he was an upholsterer and he worked as a jobbing upholsterer for a firm in Stoke. And then around about the late thirties, he lost his job, found another job in Osbestry, which was about 48 miles away. They thought he was mad moving so far. He might have gone to the colonies. And he got a job there. So it's Osbestry where I was really brought up with my sister from the age of six. When you look back there, were there good times, close family times? Yes, they were. We were never a very articulate family. I sometimes think now that we didn't talk enough. I was the first educated generation of the family. They'd both left school very early on, and my father was an upholsterer and took an apprenticeship and so on. And my mother worked in pot banks in Stoke-on-Trent. But it was a very, very happy time. A really happy time, yeah. What about you as a child? I mean, were you an ambitious child?

Presenter4:09

Not really. I can't ever remember saying to myself, that's what I want to be, because life was full of such joy. The town of Oswestry, where I was brought up, and I went to school there, never even had a school lunch, you know, walked home to lunch. And my father, eventually after the war, got a little shed and he did the upholstery, the tax on the webbing. He spent his life with tintax in his mouth because they spit him out and banged him. That's why he didn't have much conversation. Absolutely. And my mum made the loose covers and curtains. And I'm, to this day, terrifically adept at getting very large three-piece suites through very small Welsh cottage doorways. I can do that for anybody. But they were very happy days indeed. But what about your feelings as a child at Tammy? What were you drifting toward in your mind? Was it sport, perhaps? Well, I don't know. I got into the local grammar school and that was a joy. I'm sorry. I'm not being very helpful in this matter, but it was a great joy because there were so many things to do. And I played a lot of sport and I did a lot of drama. So there was always a touch of the ham in me. We had a very good Shakespearean tradition at Oswestry Boys High School, as it then was. And in four consecutive years, I played Macbeth, Hamlet, Malvolio, and Shylock, which is terrific for a young lad. Great range, yeah. It is, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's the only thing the BBC have never asked me to do, actually play for their drama department. I think I'm a bit old for Hamlet now. But they were very happy days.

Frank Bough5:16

It is, yeah.

Presenter5:24

Another choice of record, please, Frank. Well, my wife and I are both exceedingly fond of France, and we go there when we can. It's very close. And it's a country with enormous elbow room. That's what we like about it, apart from the wine and the food. And it's got an Alpine border and a Mediterranean border. A well-blessed country. And if you say hello in French, they actually speak to you. It's most amazing. It's Songs of the Auvert.

Presenter5:45

A lovely, lovely song about a rejected shepherdess.

Frank Bough6:10

I sweethe lies a

Frank Bough6:21

Yeah, no, no, no.

Frank Bough6:23

Abisro Mio Galon praise you, Babo, eto de la Mi.

Presenter6:45

That was the Rejected Shepherdess from Songs of the Auvergne, sung by Natania Durad. Romantic, eh? Very.

Presenter6:52

How you could sort of fall asleep by this now, couldn't be wonderful.

Presenter6:56

Frank, let's pick you up now, continuing your sort of c scholastic career. You got a scholarship to Oxford, and you must have been a very bright boy. Not particularly, no. At school I did a lot of things, and therefore I went to university at a time when Oxford valued the all-rounder, to leaven the bread, as it were, and my intellect wasn't of the greatest. I did have a stroke of luck because I went down to Merton College for four days of exams to get a place. I'd already got some money from the county in Shropshire. And they laid great store on your use of words, imagination and invention, in the essay, which was always the great thing. And I had a stroke of luck there because there were two subjects. One was orthodoxy, and I suppose 99% of the entrants launched into that boringly. And the other one was furniture.

Presenter7:39

I blessed my father and tore into, you know, how a chair was put together and and the again, the flock and the webbing and the tintax and so on.

Presenter7:46

Of course at Oxford too you you've got to blow to soccer.

Presenter7:49

Yes, I got one blue. I would have got it the second year, but uh I I smashed a leg in and wasn't in the running for that. The match was a disaster for me. I was playing stopper centre half. This is the game at Wembley. Yeah. Great to play there, in front of my mum and dad.

Frank Bough8:00

Yeah.

Frank Bough8:02

Uh

Presenter8:03

Stopper centre half and uh we were 2-0 up with the wind at half time and we lost 3-2 and the opposing centre forward got a hat-trick. Oh dear. I crept off.

Presenter8:13

Do you still watch soccer nowadays? Only on the tally. You don't feel the urge to go any more.

Presenter8:19

I don't really. It's nice to be asked occasionally and watch it in style. But, um

Presenter8:24

I'm sorry, but I'm still very much a Corinthian, and I just don't like some of the kind of habits that have crept into the game. Pity what supposed happened to it. I agree with you. Let's have another choice of record, Frank, please. Well, the next one would remind me, and as I said, they're all tremendous memory records, of perhaps the best time of my life, and professionally speaking, and despite the fact I've done Olympic Games and World Cups and all the things that Grandstein did. But when we launched Breakfast Time, it was a time of particularly acidic pleasure.

Presenter8:52

And it just so happens that this was a silly pop record. It was very popular at the time, but it would bring back to me all the things about the great flush of a brand new programme, a clean sheet of paper, a great success, some fantastic comradeship. There's something about working in the night which really wells people together. It's called Africa by Toto.

Speaker 49:21

There's nothing that a hundred men or more could ever do

Speaker 49:26

I let some rains down and out

Speaker 49:31

Make some time

Presenter9:41

Africa by Toto from the album Toto Fall. Brown, let's talk a little bit about those days which which we both shared indeed of uh opening uh breakfast television. I suppose a lot of people might have thought, why why did you want to get up at three in the morning and go into this new unexplored area of uh of breakfast television?

Presenter9:59

Well, for the seventies I had done both nationwide and grandstand and Olympic Games and and major output from the BBC television sports department.

Presenter10:08

And that was great, and it was wonderful when

Presenter10:12

It was Cup Final Day or Grand National Day or an Olympic Games or a World Cup or a Test match. But I began to feel myself really play acting when it came to, you know, November the 3rd. It was Battley vs. Widness and, you know, the the the light was running out and the budget had gone, you know, everywhere and damn all else, you know, God rest his soul. So I was looking for something else to do anyway, and I I bumped into Ron Neal, who was an old mate of mine who had been charged with setting up the VC's breakfast time programme.

Presenter10:38

And uh everybody wanted to know what it was going to be like. And I said, What's it going to be like?

Presenter10:42

He told me what it was going to be like, and I said to him, Well, that's me You know, how dare you start that programme without asking me to do it And then we went out and had a a sort of uh of spaghetti uh somewhere in West Twelve in London.

Presenter10:54

And um then I went on holiday, and round about August when I came back there was this note saying, Dear Frank

Presenter11:00

Last time we had dinner.

Presenter11:02

May we now have lunch to talk about breakfast. And uh I jumped up and down and uh it was uh a great success. Why were you so certain it was your programme? What what was it about it that that appealed to you? Because it was very much a presenters' programme. I'm leaving the present programme at the end of this year, largely because

Presenter11:18

It's five years. It will be five years. And I think that's long enough to get up at that time of the morning. The other thing is that it's moved away from what I do best. It is now much more a locked-in newsreaders program. Perhaps listeners and viewers in television terms don't appreciate the vast difference between a presenter and a newsreader. And I'm a presenter, and the format as devised by Ron Neal.

Presenter11:41

enable me to flex my muscles and ad lib and contribute and steer and do all the things you said at the beginning about holding a programme together. The options now are very, very tight indeed. But there we are. I'm delighted to have been associated with part two of the programme. But it was that element of part one, the original breakfast time, that really appealed to me and I did enjoy. In any case, if somebody says to you, do you want to work with David Coleman or Selena Scott, you don't agonise too much over the decision, do you?

Presenter12:08

Well that that brings me on to a point actually because I mean uh it was a time of maximum bally who wasn't and of course the the the people who were exposed most of all, in fact suffered most of all in my view, were were the women on both sides. Yeah, absolutely. Selena is a very private woman and she wouldn't say anything about her private life. And the press don't like that very much. Perhaps she'd have been wiser to have fed them a titbit or two from time to time. But

Frank Bough12:13

Oh yes, people.

Frank Bough12:20

Yeah, absolutely.

Presenter12:32

You know, they used to park outside her house in plain vans, and uh I mean, they just wanted to know all about her private life. And I've always admired her for the fact that uh, you know, she kept it absolutely locked, even from me in the sense that we got on famously, uh we were terrific mates, but I mean

Presenter12:47

Uh professionally we would discuss many, many things, and personally many, many things, but always the drawbridge would come down. I mean a typical Monday morning conversation at 4.30 I'd say, Hello, Scotty, nice weekend.

Presenter12:58

Where have you been?

Presenter12:59

Uh here and there. Company good.

Presenter13:02

Hmm, not bad. And I was admired for that. They did take

Presenter13:07

A lot of slack. Any gossip writer listening to this programme now will be sort of gnashing his teeth, Rank. Yes, well, I don't know a thing. I really don't know. Of course, you don't.

Frank Bough13:11

Yes, well I don't know a thing. I really don't know.

Presenter13:15

Right, let's have another choice of record.

Presenter13:17

Sinatra, of course, it has to be, because uh he's he's lived through all our lives and this is a a rather soft, nice thing. It sort of spans a lifetime, which I suppose I'd spend a good deal of time looking back on my lifetime. It was a very good year.

Frank Bough13:30

It was a very good year.

Frank Bough13:36

It was a very good year for blue-blooded girls of independent mien.

Frank Bough13:45

We'd ride in limousines

Frank Bough13:51

Their chauffeurs would drive

Frank Bough13:56

When I was thirty-five

Presenter14:01

Frank Sinato it was a very good year and that was accompanied on that record by the Count Basie band.

Presenter14:07

Fran, let's go back a little bit. How did you first start on the BBC? Because in fact, you worked for ICI for a while when you came out of the National Service, didn't you? I think they asked me how to play football for Billingham Synthonia Recreation or the Synthetic in the Northern League. Again, when amateur football was very big and there was Flash Ari Sharott and Bob Hardesty and it was terrific. They used to, I mean, kids won't realise now, they used to fill Wembley with 100,000 people for the amateur cup final. But those days are gone. And I went up there at their invitation and got a job because it was a time when they thought arts graduates could become captains of industry. And many were, but I'm afraid I didn't. It didn't click with me and I was dying over five years. Lovely part of the world, mine. Billingham in County Durham and the North Riding.

Presenter14:47

So I started hammering my way into the BBC, and it took me about two years to get a hearing.

Presenter14:53

And uh that's where it began really. And it's rather like

Presenter14:57

I'm sure you get dozens of letters a week saying, How can I be like you, or join the BBC, or get into broadcasting, or the media, as they call it these days? It's like assembling the various slices of a cake. You've got to have your own input is very important, that you beaver away and knock at doors and make a thorough nuisance of yourself. There's a slice of luck, a slice of who you are, somebody else's decision, and that all coincided together. And I was the first presenter of Look North in Newcastle. Obviously, you were determined to get in. You weren't going to take no for an answer. Did you ever get no for an answer in the other days? Oh, yes, I did. Yes, I came to this very building where we're speaking now, Broadcasting Houses. This temple of the music. Yeah, absolutely. And all I saw was the commissioner who.

Frank Bough15:23

Oh yes I

Frank Bough15:26

It was temporary.

Frank Bough15:27

Yeah, absolutely.

Presenter15:30

who led me into a room with a a lector and all sorts of sheets on it, like a music score and and a concert list and cachaturia and sans sans and all that.

Presenter15:40

And I was talked to through the wall, and uh all throughout my life I've got this extraordinary name B O U G H, which is pronounced BOF if anybody's taking any real notice. But the permutations of the pronunciation are endless, you know. Through, though, thou, thorough.

Presenter15:54

And if paged in hotels, I answer to anything. You know, bog, brooge, bug, it's it's invariably me.

Presenter16:00

And this blake said, Thank you, Mr. Bogg, that'll be all. And off I went back to Newcastle to get this little rejection slip saying, thank you very much indeed. But no.

Presenter16:09

Another record, please Frank.

Presenter16:11

Well, I've got to have a big symphony.

Presenter16:14

A big, noisy, long record, and uh Beethoven's pastoral, and if you can find me the bit with the French horns.

Presenter17:22

That was part of the third movement of Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony, played by the London Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Klaus Tenstedt.

Presenter17:29

Frank, you've spent many, many years now observing the best and the worst of of sport throughout the world. I'd like to sort of take you back, refresh your memory about one or two of those moments, because to performers as well as viewers, television is about great moments. What are the ones that that stand out in your mind you think about the sporting moments I'm now talking about, the ones that you remember forever?

Presenter17:49

Well, I think um some of the most vivid are associated with with cricket, because I started uh presenting cricket on B B C Two when the Limited Overs game first began about nineteen sixty nine and did that for two years.

Presenter18:02

And at that time there were very few foreign players playing in this country. We only saw the West Indies, for example, when they came on tour.

Presenter18:08

And therefore the Cavaliers put together this amazing team and it included

Presenter18:14

People like Lance Gibbs and Gary Sobers and we used to do interviews as they came off the pitch and I remember this long-armed gangling guy.

Presenter18:24

Who'd came come from uh the West Indies and he was very, very young indeed, and this was Clive Lloyd, and uh somebody said, My God.

Presenter18:31

Where'd he come from? You know, he started thumping the ball with his huge heavy bat. So those were great memories. In a wider sense, the Olympic Games always stood out and and

Presenter18:41

They were very special indeed. None more vivid in a way than the Munich Games. And the utter silliness and craziness of having to present Olympic sport while the Israelis were locked up in the village. And we had this most bizarre situation. It arrived because the Israelis said the sport, the games, must go on. If these guys win, we've all lost. So and they insisted that the coverage of the games went on. And you had this ridiculous situation where David Coleman, who was looking after the events in the village, and every time there was a deadline for them to be murdered or shot,

Presenter19:15

I'd say now going over to David, and David do this immensely difficult job of covering that, but equally difficult in a way, was coming around to me and saying, meanwhile, back in the basketball hall, you know, the Americans are leading the Russians, whatever. So those were very sharp moments.

Presenter19:28

No choice to record, please Frank.

Presenter19:30

This is quite different from the last one. It's a very depressing record, this, but I think a super piece of pop music. And there's a big argument in our house as to whether I came upon it before my my sons did. And that's always a big score if that happens. It's a Pink Floyd thing, shine on you, crazy diamond. It starts very slowly and builds up and it goes to the soul, I tell you.

Presenter20:18

Pink Floyd Shine On You Crazy Diamond from the album Wish You Were Here

Presenter20:22

Frank, you specialized at this beginning of your career, I'm now talking about your network career, the BBC, in doing sport. Then you made the switch to current affairs. Was there any kind of adverse reaction within the BBC, or within the industry, about this man from sport taking over current affairs? Well, there was some. It it happened because Nationwide at the time was running three nights a week and being very successful, and they wanted to move it to five nights a week. And Mike Barrett was doing three. And I'm not quite certain whether I recollect properly, but perhaps he didn't want to do five or they didn't want him to do all five.

Presenter20:56

So they asked me to do the other two, which was terrific. I mean, based on the fact that my non-net network life had started with a a kind of multi-magazine programme, using current affairs in Newcastle.

Frank Bough21:04

Yeah.

Presenter21:06

And I'm certain that there were reports that one rather ferocious lady said, Why do we need this crud from the sports department? You know, what the hell does he know about current affairs? As if people who are interested in sport are not interested in life. It's a curious kind of thing. But that's a BBC thing, isn't it, in a way? It's also a very British thing. Yeah. It doesn't happen in America. I mean, the highest-paid sports or highest-paid journalists in America are sports. Yes, that's true. And the tradition of great novelists coming from sports writing, Henry Way, Steinbeck, people like that. In the end, of course, it's whether the audience will take it from you. If a number of people write in and say, you know.

Speaker 421:29

Yes, that's true.

Frank Bough21:30

That's true.

Speaker 421:30

Yeah.

Frank Bough21:33

Yeah.

Frank Bough21:35

In the end.

Frank Bough21:38

Uh

Presenter21:40

We can't take this guy interviewing the Prime Minister because he's a sports commentator, then of course you've lost. So it's that credibility which carries you through. I might say that it's the variety of my life which has given me the real pleasure. I'm often asked which do I prefer, you know, the sport and will I go back to sport? Or the current affairs and breakfast time and the nationwide area, but it is the variety to be able to lurch, as it were, from Olympic Games and World Cups right across the board to all the living Prime Ministers, which is...

Presenter22:07

Great fun, if you can handle it.

Presenter22:09

Well, now that if you can handle it, you see now that's interesting too, because the the other thing about handling it is handling all the kind of

Presenter22:15

attendant fame and nonsense that goes with being television and I've observed with you,'cause I've known you for a long, long time, that all the people I know, you cope with it best of all.

Presenter22:23

Why is that?

Presenter22:25

Well, because most people are very nice. There are people in this business, as you know, who won't go on the tube or on a bus and uh want minders all the time. I've never found that a problem. Most people pop up and say

Presenter22:37

You know, I enjoyed what you've done, or do you think leads are going to win the cup, or whatever. And most of them are terrific, and they say hello, and you say hello to the kids and sign an autograph. Now, the odd Burks, who really try and dominate your lives and take you over, you learn ways of disentangling, as I'm sure you know, in about a minute and a half flat without giving offence. I mean, if you tell them to clear off, or where's that effect? That that bad news spreads very, very rapidly. You know, Frank Boff couldn't be bothered to give Willie an autograph, and that sort of thing travels very quickly. On the other hand, I do enjoy it, and I do that fairly easily, really. It does it's not no great problem to me.

Presenter23:11

Another choice of record, please, Frank.

Presenter23:13

Well now then we're up to uh the Algar Violin Concerto. I don't know quite uh how popular this is or how often it's been chosen. The cello concerto of course is the great one, but this is a superb piece of music. And uh a bit of conbrio, a little bit of uh bravura out of this record will give me a lot of pleasure.

Presenter24:32

Part of the finale of Elgar's Van Inconcerto played by Pinka Zuckermann and London Philharmonic conducted by Daniel Barrenboim.

Presenter24:39

Frank, you're celebrating, if that be the word, twenty-five years in this crazy industry, uh this very year.

Presenter24:45

Looking back on on on that career and and assuming that somebody starting just now wanting to get into television and do what you've done, what would be the advice?

Presenter24:54

Well, assuming they can get a hearing, which is the first problem, they've got to hammer away and get a hearing. And it's like getting your fingers on the wall. Once you've got your fingers on the wall, then the best thing that anybody can say of you after some years is that you are professional. That's a very boring concept in a way. But to be professional is not some kind of abstract quality. It's very, very fundamental. It means basically turning up on time, sober, well prepared, and doing the best job you can, and not just grabbing your money and going, but saying thanks.

Presenter25:26

Doing various polite things. And if you go on doing that, assuming you've got the other thing which is indefinable, the trouble with this business is that people say that I come through the glass and other people who are stayers come through the glass. And that's the one thing over which we have no control whatsoever. I mean, I sit and watch a television programme and I see a guy. He's articulate, he's intelligent, he's always done his homework, he's asking the right questions, but he doesn't come through the glass. Now, the thing is, he never will come through the glass. So that's part of it is very rare in a sense. But if you do come through the glass, you've still got to do all the other things, the homework, the preparation, turning up on time, and so on. So that is really my definition of professionalism. And you then gain a reputation for being reliable and you don't let anybody down. I get very cross when I turn up a minute late. I mean, I was here for this programme precisely on time this morning. We were late.

Presenter26:15

I mean are you like me? Do you not want to be a sort of a 60-year-old presenter or what? It's very difficult, isn't it? It is. I'm finishing with breakfast time at the end of this year. And I've got the holiday programme, which is very good to do. It's got a big audience. It's just that I want to get off the early morning shift. And of course I have done for most of those years daily television, daily live television. And that I enjoy. There's nothing quite like live shows because if you're recording something, you say, well, I will treat this as a live transmission, but you know darn well in the back of your head there's a little corner which says if you muck it up you can start all over again and a live programme it's rather like feeling in the slips you know every second there's an opportunity whistling past your front to be to be lost or taken and at the end of a programme you end up with a fistful you you've taken and you think I was good there I reacted properly got the facts right smoothed over the cracks bought them time to sort themselves out and then you look at the left hand and you say damn

Presenter27:12

the ones I dropped and you say, well, never mind, next time I'll get it right. And of course you've got a very quick opportunity to get it right. And I should go to my lord saying, give me one more day to get it right. Right. What about a final choice of record?

Presenter27:25

Well

Presenter27:27

I'm not a great theatre goer. We keep on saying in our family we will go to the theatre more often, and every so often we have a great splurge and we we belt the West End or whatever the theatre is. But we did get some tickets some time ago for this amazing show Les Miserats.

Presenter27:40

And I've rarely experienced such a terrific night of entertainment. And there's so many good songs in it and good music. They don't speak at all. There's no speaking in this thing, which is, in a sense, a kind of operatic performance. But it's a wonderful thing. The sets are stunning. And this is a delightful song from Les Miserable. It's sung by Fontine, the character Fontine, and it's called I Dreamed a Dream. It's another piece of wonderful romanticism.

Frank Bough28:06

But the time has come at night.

Frank Bough28:14

With a voice as soft as thunder

Frank Bough28:20

As they tear you hope apart

Frank Bough28:28

Has they turn your dream to shame

Presenter28:36

I dreamed a dream from Les Miserables, sung by Patty Le Pomme.

Presenter28:40

Brat, you're now on this desert island. You have to assume that you've lost seven of your records, washed away a tidal wave. Which one would you want to keep?

Presenter28:48

Well, I I'm reading a marvellous book by Bernard Levin at the moment, and he just manages to remark us he walks up and down the bridges of London. He starts at one end and he's a terrific walker, and he says Rossini is the thing to walk to. And I would pick the uh uh the violin concerto, the Elgar, because uh

Presenter29:05

I could uh yomp and swim and walk and whistle,'cause I'm an inveterate whistler to that. So that would be the one,'cause it's a marvellous record, and I had no problem in in selecting that one. Stood out head and shoulders above all the rest. What about the book? Assuming you've got the works of Shakespeare and the Bible? Which book?

Presenter29:20

Do you know the Barclays world of cricket? I do indeed. Very thick, big book. I know, it's wonderful. And I would reminisce over that. Like, for example, the marvellous article by JJ Waugh. There's some terrific uh biographies in it. And Waugh writes about Compton.

Presenter29:33

And we all know the great Compton innings, uh with 147 and the bandage and all that, but uh Wall says that one Saturday evening

Presenter29:40

A Middlesex match. Compson went in at six o'clock.

Presenter29:43

And at six thirty he was sixty six, not out. Now that wasn't in any record book, but I would love to have seen that any so I will reminisce over that, and that will bring me back a lot of pleasure. And there's a hell of a lot of reading in this as well. And the luxury object?

Presenter29:55

Well

Presenter29:56

The hair is gone, and I've given that up.

Presenter29:59

The tongue is spreading, but I think on the desert island, I might get rid of that. You know, it might be quite a starving diet. But in order to read the book, I would need some contact lenses because the eyes are going, there's nothing I can do about the eyes. So, if you could fix me up with a kind of series of prescriptions so that as the eyes went, I could switch to another set of contact lenses. Those would be an enormous luxury, because without them.

Presenter30:21

I'll be lost completely. Right, Buff, thank you very much indeed. My pleasure, Mike.

Frank Bough30:32

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive.

Frank Bough30:36

For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk/slash radio forward.