Peter West

Peter West0:00

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

Castaway has for more than thirty years been the voice of cricket on television. He's also covered twenty-seven Wimbledons, six Olympics, and spent fifteen years presenting Come Dancing. Indeed, it's doubtful if any broadcaster has worked on a greater range of programmes. All that apart, he's also written about rugby and cricket for The Times and the Daily Telegraph. He is Peter West. Peter, welcome. Know what about this Desert Island? I mean, have you ever pondered in your busy life, travelling around the world, that in fact the Desert Island would be the ideal place for you to settle in? No, it wouldn't be the ideal place, Michael. I don't think I'm a particularly lonely sort of person. I think I could be reasonably practical if I had to be. I'm the worst do-it-yourselfer. I can do menial jobs like gardening and mowing the grass and that sort of thing. But if you're stuck on a desert island, it'd be damn silly, wouldn't it, just to moan and sit on your backside and do nothing about it. So I like to think I could have a shot. Now you've got the music then on your desert island. You've got your eight records. I'm interested to find out how you chose them. Are there particular memories associated with these tunes, or are they just pleasant tunes that you like? Mostly pleasant tunes. One specific memory of uh the war years. I have to admit that I'm not a particularly musical person, Michael. It hasn't really played a governing part in my life.

Presenter1:45

I had the opportunity of learning to appreciate good music when I was at school. My headmaster, who was a marvellous man, was passionate musician and loved his Mozart, but it never seemed to rub off on the Philistine P West. Well, what about your first choice of music, then? Is that a memory or just a nice tune? It's a nice tune. I suppose really that one ought not to have on a desert island a a theme which I think is of uh haunting solitude, but I love the music. It's Lara's theme from uh

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Doctor Shimaga.

Presenter2:49

That was Lara's theme from Doctor Giivago, played by Percy Faith and his orchestra. Peter, you mentioned their um school and the musical influence that it it ought didn't have on you, but ought to have had. And reading your your autobiography, A Flannel Fool and Muddied Oaf, lovely title. In that case, you see, on cricket and rugby. Exactly so. It sums up the entire life. But in that book, I mean, you're that rare person. You actually enjoyed going to school, didn't you?

Peter West3:06

Yeah.

Presenter3:13

Yes, I I did. I look back with considerable affection and pleasure on my years at Cranbrook in Kent. It was a small public school.

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The staff was full of characters, I think, in those days. I've mentioned the headmaster, Russell Scott, who was a nephew of CP Scott of the Guardian Manchester Guardian fame, of course, in those days.

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and I had a housemaster

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Called uh Frank Evans.

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who was the mister Chips of Cranbrook School. He was housemaster for well over thirty years, ran the cricket for thirty years, the hockey and the rugby for an eternity, and was a totally dedicated man.

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uh a bachelor confirmed bachelor

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When he retired, we had a tremendous dinner in his honour, and the response was quite enormous. Not everybody liked him, of course. He could be very severe, but he was a character, and he epitomised some of the old-fashioned virtues like integrity and loyalty and hard work and dedication. I'm only sorry that so far as the hard work went in my last year at school, I idled my time away and didn't do as well as I should have done. But he had a profound influence on you, on your day in your life, obviously. What about your parents? My father was something in the city, in quotes, I suppose, at quite a young age in the oil business and had done well enough to retire and buy himself a thirty-acre farm just outside Cranbrook in the Weard of Kent in 1924. And he took up chicken farming and a few cattle.

Peter West4:20

Yes, you did not.

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worked his skin off the bone, and by the time of the Depression, round about nineteen thirty, thirty one had lost every penny he'd got.

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and then had to go back into the city, and it took him a long time to get back. He eventually did so, but it left his scars on him.

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In what way? I think the disappointment of not having succeeded. A very, very able man who wrote quite beautifully. I wish I could have written English like he did. He never did it professionally, yes. Wrote the most marvellous letters, and I haven't kept many of them.

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My mother was much more gregarious my father was rather inward looking, and not so easy to know, but a very generous man. I

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My mother was extroverted and gay, and a very, very attractive woman in her youth, and I can remember that before the money ran out, they bought a De Soto car, which was quite swish in those days DeSoto Chrysler, I think it was called.

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And she used to take me up to the suburbs of London to see her parents. And there was a hill outside Cranbrook at Gowdhurst, about five miles outside. And I can remember we got up there, changing gear only once, and that was a tremendous thrill. Sixty miles an hour at top speed. No heater, and you froze on cold days. It was funny how these things stick in the mind. Another choice of record, please, Peter. I think that Edith Pieffe was unique as an entertainer. Never been anybody quite like Edith Pieff. What can I have from her? Whatever you want. No regrets? Absolutely, sir.

Speaker 46:08

Hurriado Friad!

Speaker 46:16

Calama V, Galameshawa, O Rodi.

Speaker 46:25

Sa comments moire.

Presenter6:36

Peter, when you were at Cranbrook, you were a good athlete, weren't you? It must have appeared when you were at school that a career in sport was something you might want to do. Well, I think that every young cricketer or rugby player or whatever has his ambitions. Of course, I wanted to play for England, but they were quite absurd. I was a bit of a big fish in a small pool. I was in all the teams. I don't think I would have had the patience to get too far beyond club cricket, but I'd like to think that had it not been for

Peter West6:48

Well, I think

Presenter7:06

rheumatism in my backside, which started at the age of sixteen, that I might have been able to make the grade at rugby football. I'll never know. It's not at sixteen, is it? This this year. It's it's a form of of

Peter West7:14

This is too high.

Presenter7:16

Well, it was diagnosed then as fibrositis and then it went through sacroiliac arthritis and eventually was uh was termed spondylitis, which is basically a stiff spine with aches and pains in the lower back.

Peter West7:16

But it was darkness

Presenter7:28

Don't want to make too much of it, but it really knocked for six any pretensions I had to go on playing sport. But of course that was one stroke of luck in a way that having to give up playing my beloved cricket and rugby or whatever else, hockey, I was determined to look for maintaining a link with sport in other ways, and that led me eventually into journalism and into broadcasting. Via of course Sandhurst. You went to Sandhurst, didn't you? That's right, yes. My tutors and my uh father had hoped that I might get a scholarship in classics to Oxbridge.

Peter West7:50

That

Presenter7:58

And I'm sorry to say I've already mentioned that I I was pretty indolent in my last year. I think I probably stayed on one year too long. And I didn't get uh a scholarship or an exhibition. And in nineteen thirty eight, the Royal Military College Sandhurst,

Presenter8:11

Was opened to candidates who had a higher certificate without need of taking the examination, which struck me as very inviting at the time, just a viva voce. So I went to Sandhurst, one of the last so-called gentleman cadets, in early September or late August 1939. I remember that, of course, we had to get our riding kit so that we could learn to ride a horse. And the war started, and the horses disappeared overnight, and I never actually got mounted. What effect did your illness have on your army career? Well, I was invalided out after a quite unheroic three or four years, around about the end of 1944. Of course, th this illness that you have, of course, has never left you, has it? It's not curable, no, it hasn't. What have you tried? Have you tried all kinds of things to affect a cure? Yes, I'm uh the medical profession, osteopaths, and I went under a faith healer once. I was so desperate, around about 46 or 7, I think.

Peter West8:50

No, no, it has.

Presenter9:03

That didn't do any good.

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But eventually I went back to see the surgeon who treated me when I was in hospital in Oxford during the war, a chap called Michael Cramer.

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at Middlesex Hospital and God bless him, he gave me what then was the treatment that helped to stem the onset of spondylitis. He gave me some deep x-rays and that settled it down. It's never got worse since and you like everything else you get to learn to live with it. Just means you don't do certain excitingly athletic things, otherwise it's going to hurt. Another choice of record, please begin. My wife and I had a lovely evening. I can't remember how many years ago it was, Michael. We went to see the film A Man and a Woman and I can remember we held hands and we said afterwards, how lovely to go to see a film that is just a simple love story. I love the theme music for it.

Speaker 49:57

We don't never know

Speaker 410:01

Do you know?

Speaker 410:05

Yeah.

Speaker 410:18

Yeah.

Presenter10:19

There's a haunting theme from The Man and a Woman by Francis Lye from the original soundtrack of the film.

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Peter

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Let's now talk about journalism. You mentioned there that that you you actually went into it because your sporting ambition, because of illness, was denied you and the army and all that sort of thing. What was your big break in journalism? Well, you started off on a local paper, didn't you? No, I didn't. Oh, you didn't? No, no, I was very lucky indeed. I was told I went round Fleet Street.

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and was told, of course, to go off and learn the trade in a local paper, but I persisted and eventually got taken on by the Exchange Telegraph Agency.

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And it was while I was working for them as a young reporter with an L plate on my back that I was sitting at Taunton next to who else but the one and only CB Fry. Well, it was like akin to sitting next to God. And I I think, Michael, that he in the most genuine sense he must be the greatest all-rounder of this century. If he wasn't a double first, he was very nearly. He was up at Wadham College, Oxford, with FE Smith, Lord Birkenhead, and somebody else who escapes me who also got into the government.

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thirty thousand runs plus for Sussex and England, with Rangy in the golden era.

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Corinthian football, England football, Mr Rugby Blue only because of injury, and the world long jump record holder and was offered the Prime Ministership of Albania. It's a wonderful story. And his boy's own, isn't it? Well, I mean to be sitting next to this chap with his monocle.

Speaker 411:40

And his boy is owner.

Presenter11:46

in his eye. He was writing then for the Sunday Graphic, long since defunct, and his telephonist didn't turn up on Saturday to phone it through, and so sycophantically I said, Can I phone phone it through for you, sir? Well, I thought it would be a great honour, it would, wouldn't it? You'd have done the same, absolutely.

Peter West11:59

And you did on the same apps.

Presenter12:01

So I did, and uh the next morning I think it was, he said, I thought you did that quite well.

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He said, Have you ever thought of being a cricket commentator on the radio? And I said, No, sir.

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I had to admit that about a year earlier I'd had an audition as a news announcer and had failed quite lamentably. I was so full of nerves. You can't broadcast if you're nervous, can you? Because you can't get your breathing right. Anyway, he sent my name in to the head of Outside Broadcast, Sound Radio, Lobby, Seymour de Lobinier, a great man of six feet six inches, tremendous man, yes, who uttered the immortal dictum later that so far as television was concerned, that a commentator on television earns his fee as much by silence as by speech. I think we've all forgotten that in our time.

Peter West12:31

The legend

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Anyway, I was given a test eventually by dear old Rex Austin.

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who was the senior cricket uh commentator on the staff, I think, at that time. They gave me a test, it was terrible, and then they gave me another test because it rained the first time, and I thought that was equally bad, and I didn't hear anything for six weeks. And then Rex rang me up and said, We're going to throw you to the Lions, Warwickshire against the South Africans at Edgbriston, 1947. And that was my debut, mostly in the overseas service, happily, and so not too many of my friends could hear how bad I was. So it started from there.

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Another choice of record, please, Peter. Where have we got to? Number four.

Presenter13:23

Something a little more upmarket, I think, uh Michael. My son Simon, who's a solicitor our son I should say, took us to see Verdi's Requiem a while back, and I thought that uh the D A's Era from that was a marvellously uplifting piece of music, and uh that perhaps would be good for my soul when I'm uh observing the breakers and

Presenter13:45

Thinking of home.

Presenter14:47

The Ds Eri from Verdi's Requiem, a performance by the chorus and orchestra of La Scala Milan, conducted by Claudio Abado.

Presenter14:55

Peter, let's now talk about the the st well, we've got the start of the broadcasting now, as you said, that's how you came into broadcasting in 1947. But from that point on, not only have you been involved in sport, but you've been involved, as I said in my introduction to the programme, in a greater range of broadcasting than anywhere I can think of. I think it's on the drama department of BBC, you've not worked for, isn't it? I think that's probably right. I think it's part of the fact uh well it's wholly or almost wholly due to the fact that being a freelance there wasn't uh enough sport for me to make an honest living.

Presenter15:26

Early on in radio I di it was quite clear to me that I wasn't going to get on the test match panel with uh luminaries such as Alston, Swanton, Johnston and Company up there, and Arlett, of course, the great John Arlett.

Presenter15:38

I managed to cross the Great Divide and get stuck in on television round about nineteen fifty.

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But even then, in the early 50s, there wasn't enough to keep one wife and three children.

Presenter15:51

Another point in my life which I suppose turned a key was appearing on What's My Line just once in 1953, thanks to uh Eamon Andrews.

Peter West15:56

Just one.

Presenter16:00

Jerry Desmond

Presenter16:02

was ill and uh Amon suggested to the producer that uh young Jack Olwest might go on the show.

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God I was nervous.

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Uncle Gilbert Harding. Very nice. He was just like an uncle. My boy, my boy, don't be nervous. We'll look after you. And Barbara Kelly was on it. So people forget you see, you see, in those days, I mean, that that was uh I mean, uh well about seventy-five percent of the population used to watch that for T V channels in those. That's right, and what Gilbert uh his insults on.

Peter West16:18

You see in those days, I mean that

Peter West16:24

There's anyone

Peter West16:25

We channel in those that's right.

Presenter16:30

Sunday night were front page news and the tabloids next morning, weren't they? That's right. Did you get to know him at all well, Pete? No, I didn't. No. No. The thing that people always associate you with as well, as well as a sport, is come dancing. Yes, indeed. And you did that for 15 years. Yes. And I can see that wary look in your eyes now as I'm talking to you about it, because, in a sense, it I mean, you obviously enjoyed it, otherwise you would have done it for 15 years. But it did become a kind of cross, didn't it? In a way, yes, because it's still a bit of a cross. People I ought to be flattered, really. People still remember it, although in fact I haven't been associated with programmes since 1972, which is a long time ago.

Presenter17:03

And occasionally wandering round a cricket field or a rugby pitch, I hear a voice in the background. Hi a Pete going dancing to night.

Presenter17:11

I enjoyed it. Um the public thought that I knew what I was talking about, which I didn't. Uh my wife wears shimpads and I'm a very bad dancer indeed, but I don't think I was hired for my Terpsichorian uh

Presenter17:21

I think I was probably hired because they thought I knew a little bit about television.

Presenter17:26

And in the early days it was live, and uh if anything went wrong then I think it's the anchor man's job, isn't it, to get you out of a hole. And that was a bit of a challenge.

Speaker 417:32

Yeah.

Presenter17:34

Then, of course, like everything almost everything else, it became recorded, and that was less of a challenge.

Presenter17:40

Then I was offered the job of rugby correspondent of the Times, and I didn't think quite that the two activities exactly mixed.

Presenter17:47

So uh I uh hung up my uh pumps and retired as the undefeated Char Char Champion of the South East. I was very, very sorry to lose Barry Edgar, the producer who'd first been instrumental in getting me on the show fifteen years earlier. He was a superman to work with. Another choice of record, please, Vida.

Presenter18:04

I think uh for number five I'd like to evoke wartime memories, Michael, if I may. This uh almost more than any other record

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Reminds me of the war years, deep purple.

Presenter19:14

Deep Purple recorded in nineteen thirty nine by Artist Shaw and his orchestra.

Presenter19:19

Peter, what about cricket memories now? Let's look back over all this long, long time you've been associated with the game. It's observable, I mean, because I share your passion for the game. There aren't actually the characters in the game any more than th th they used to be. There are still characters, but not they're of a different kind of characters. Yes, I just wonder whether it's because you and I well I mean certainly I'm getting a lot older, I don't know about you, Michael. I just wonder whether as you get older you feel there aren't the characters in your youth. I just feel that a young man now of twelve years old he may think that the game is just as full of characters as it ever was. Except of course the game's changed, hasn't it? It's not the same game that that we watched. And I thought that I think that that kind of game produced a different kind of character perhaps. I'd like to take you back to the the early association you had with Somerset Cricket. I mean it's always had its share of character, Somerset Cricket. And I wonder if you remembered any

Peter West19:49

Oh yeah, yeah.

Presenter20:04

people particularly from that period? Well, in the post war years, of course, Harold Gimlet. I wouldn't say that Harold Gimlet was uh a character, as I think you you uh meant it a moment or two ago. He was a magnificent batsman, a a very i indrawn, uh, introverted character, and had, of course, a very sad ending.

Presenter20:23

To his life, but my God, couldn't he play?

Speaker 420:25

Uh

Presenter20:26

I always remember the story. Bill Andrews Wellard and Andrews were the Somerset opening pair. Bill Bill Andrews is still going strong just outside Western Supermare. Great character, enormous feat.

Presenter20:38

He put his feet into it occasionally. I mean, he boasts of being the only man who'd been sacked by Somerset four times. He always came back.

Presenter20:45

In those days, of course, the professionals were only paid a penny or two, weren't they? And they had to uh they they shared beds in lodgings on tour, and I think Gimlet no, not Gimlet, he was making runs, he was allowed a bed of his own, and Wellard and Andrews had to share a bed with Horace Hazel, who was very rotund, tubby character, left arm slow bowler.

Presenter21:06

And uh

Presenter21:08

Hazel or Andrews were woken up in the middle of the night by a piercing pain in the middle of their spine, and it turned out to be Arthur Wellard's dentures that had come loose. You can't imagine professional cricketers sharing a bed these days, can you? It's not the kind of shock horror story associated with our stars today, is it? Bitten by a pair of false teeth in a hotel bedroom. Other things bite them nowadays, apparently. But what about the other people, too, that have gone from the game? Of course, are the amateurs, the great amateurs, and they had an extraordinary influence on the game, of course. I mean, people like Tennyson, for instance, you saw him play, didn't you? I only saw Lord Tennyson play once before the War at Canterbury. Jim Bailey, the Rubicund former Hampshire slow left-arm bowler, again going very strong. Always liked his story. He was bowling under his lordship. I don't know against whom, not bowling very well.

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and I think he sent down a full toss, and the batsman hit it a tremendous crack at Lord Tennyson, hit him on the shins at forward short leg, or somewhere adjacent.

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And his lordship had had enough of Jim's boning by then. He said,'Jim,' he said,'I've had enough. Leave the field.

Presenter22:12

And Jim said,'My lord, I can't do that, I haven't finished the elder yet.

Presenter22:18

Yes, amateurs. It was a different era. Yes. Fancy hats. I was brought up on those in Kent, you see. Kent always had amateurs in the side when Frank Woolley and Leslie Ames and Titch Freeman were the great pros, Percy Chapman, F.G. H. Chalk, Brian Valentine. I know they're names of a different era, but Brian Valentine to me epitomised everything that was good about amateur cricket. He loved the game. He played it for sheer fun. I think perhaps a little bit of the fun has gone out as a result of the loss of the amateur. Let's have another record, please, Peter.

Presenter22:49

The uh American comedian Shelley Berman I don't know what's happened to him. I thought he was marvellous in his prime. Um

Presenter22:57

He had these one ended telephone conversations, didn't he? And I can't remember um I tried to find it amongst my records the other day and I couldn't. But it's the one where he's conducting a telephone conversation with a lady who's threatening to fall out of an apartment window, and I think I can't remember what it's called.

Speaker 223:12

The emergency! Emergency! Hang on there for just a second. This is an emergency, and I'll let you go in just a second. See, here's the thing. See, you don't know me. I work in the office building right across the street from your store, and I was, no, the Southwest. And I was just sitting, I was looking out of my window, and I noticed there's a woman hanging from a window ledge on your building about 10 flights up, and she's no, operator, you're missing the point. I don't wish to speak to the woman. No, I just you know, I'd like somebody to go up there and pull her in.

Speaker 223:41

Well, I don't care uh who, you know, how about you? You're over there. Uh what what about yourself? I oh I what time is your coffee break?

Speaker 223:50

Well, I don't think she can wait till then. You know, who knows how long she's been hanging there before I noticed her. I can see her from here, and her knuckles are very white. The woman's been hanging there for hours, obviously, and I'm afraid she'll slip, you know, before your break comes. I say, well, do you think that department could help? Well, all right, would you connect me, please? Thank you.

Presenter24:07

That was Shelley Berman and a sketch called Hold On.

Presenter24:11

Peter, you've in all your career now, I suppose you you can say with some honesty that you've you've met most of your sporting heroes. Who would they particularly been in cricket, say? I mean, who would have been the people you've particularly most admired?

Presenter24:24

So many out there. I mean, in the amongst the post-war generation, in in the sense that most of his career was after the war, Dennis Compton was a great hero. Marvellous gaiety with which he played in total unselfishness. Before the war, Les Ames was my number one hero, Frank Woolley and Kent, Walter Hammond another. Incidentally, I had the privilege of a rather brief, just one rather brief

Presenter24:46

Conversation with the great Wally.

Presenter24:48

In nineteen forty six when I was working with the Exchange Telegraph, the sports editor said uh

Presenter24:53

At the end of the match I'd like you to find out from the Gloucestershire captain, Walter Hammer, what his team is, and we'll put it out on the tape for the provincial papers. So I knocked on the door, and a voice peremptorily said, Come in and there he was, with a towel round his waist. He made a hundred, quick hundred in the morning. What do you want? and I explained the purpose of my mission, and he said Off.

Peter West25:02

I'm a

Speaker 425:02

Uh

Peter West25:06

What do you

Speaker 425:06

Uh

Peter West25:06

One

Presenter25:10

And that's the only conversation I ever had with Hammond. And I'm making a documentary, or hoping to make a documentary about him for HTV, which I hope will be coming out sometime this summer. And I'm not sure whether I should suggest that or not. If I were your producer, I would absolutely insist upon it. I think there's kind of salty arrest in there, isn't it, about your heroes? It also, of course, I suppose it was a fair lead-in to the kind of abuse inevitably you get as a TV performer. I think we all get that, don't we? We do indeed. And I mean, you've had your fair share of it because you've been at the at the job longer than most. Do you have any particular favourites of abusive male or?

Presenter25:47

Yes, I've got one. I I think you learn very early in life if you're on television that the old uh truth of the old saying, you're not going to please all of the people all of the time. I I I've always treasured the one from a viewer somewhere in the north who said, Why don't you take up advertising birds' eye peas? They're full of wind as well.

Presenter26:07

Another choice of record, please, uh Peter.

Presenter26:10

Can I please have a little Rachmaninoff at the closing bars of Rachmaninoff's second piano concerto?

Presenter27:18

The closing bars of Ratmaninoff's second piano concerto, played by Murray Limpany, with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Sir Malcolm Sargent.

Presenter27:27

Peter, you've just achieved at your late stage in life one of your great ambitions which is to cover a a cricket tour abroad. I was so lucky having given up fronting television cricket last summer and going into a semi-retirement and I suppose my wife expected to see a bit more of the breadwinner than usual and suddenly out of the blue I had an offer from the Daily Telegraph whose cricket correspondent had resigned.

Presenter27:50

Asking me whether I'd like to cover the tour. And I had never ever done a cricket tour in my life. Being a freelance, I'd always been doing rugby here in the winter. I'd been on rugby tours, short rugby tours abroad, never a cricket tour. It was a lifelong ambition fulfilled, and I was very grateful to the Telegraph for giving me the opportunity. Well, the sense of enjoyment comes through actually, because you've got kept this diary, didn't you, which you publish in book form, called Clean Sweep, and uh there's a wonderful sort of enthusiasm. You've no never lost that, have you, that enthusiasm? I hope not. No, I don't think I ever will lose my enthusiasm. Cricket has to be very, very boring to turn me off, um, Michael, and I think with you too. I d I mean, I don't mind slow cricket if it is absorbing. I think sometimes the greatest cricket in the world is slow, isn't it? When you've got uh a great struggle going on in the middle, that's what makes Test cricket so riveting.

Speaker 428:05

It was

Peter West28:05

Yeah.

Peter West28:15

I hope not.

Speaker 428:28

Mm.

Presenter28:34

I have to admit that seeing the pyjama game, the so-called pyjama game, for the first time live under those spectacular lights. We mustn't knock it, must we? Mo my

Presenter28:43

Gideon, it rings the till. Tremendous, isn't it, for the shekels that come in from it. I only hope that Australian cricket doesn't overdo it.

Presenter28:50

Dude, you count yourself finally can I ask you a a lucky man, in the sense that I mean, quite obviously with you, the the job's the hobby, and the hobby's the job, isn't it? Oh, absolutely. How lucky can you be? In that case, on cricket and rugby, getting free seats at Trickenham and Lourdes and wherever. Yes, I think I've been the envy of my sporting friends, I can't complain.

Presenter29:08

Final choice of record, please, Peter.

Presenter29:11

The last one I think would be one that was used for theme music for the A Needed Line.

Presenter30:17

Music from the ballet Spartacus by Catachurian, played by the London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Stanley Black.

Presenter30:24

Peter West, you're now on your desert island. Now you have your eight records. Along comes a wave one day, seven are washed away. Which form would you choose to keep? Jolly difficult, isn't it, Michael? I think I'd go for the last one, Spark Tuckers. I think it's suitable as you look out over the glassy sea to the distant horizon. It's lovely music, too. Beautiful music. And what about the book? Assume you've got the the Bible and you've got the works of Shakespeare.

Presenter30:45

I just wonder whether I was left with any crosswords to finish when I got marooned on this desert shore. I'd like to take the Oxford Book of Quotations, because if it couldn't answer the crossword clues for me, at least I think it would improve my mind in many ways. And what about the luxury object inanimate? Well, I'm a nutcase on gardening as well. Am I allowed to take a set of gardening tools? Absolutely, sir. You're very kind. Peter West, thank you very much indeed. Thanks for asking me.

Peter West31:16

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Islandists Archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk/radio4.