Bamber Gascoigne

Speaker 10:00

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

Our Castaway is a versatile fellow. He's written plays and review, as well as histories of the theatre, China and India. He's been an actor, disenchanted, a guards officer, conscripted, and a publisher of Rare Prints, very exclusive. On television, he wrote and presented the acclaimed documentary series The Christians, but he's best known as a quiz master of University Challenge. He hosted the show for 25 years. One critic described it as the mousetrap of television. The show made our castaway a celebrity. His statement, Here's your start of a ten, became a national catchphrase. When Liverpool Football Club had two graduates in the team, the fans gave them the nicknames of Little Bamba and Big Bamba. Their namesake is Bamba Gascoigne.

Presenter1:13

Bamber, you've chosen the most unusual way of selecting records for your desert island. In fact, your wife has chosen them, and it's to be a guessing game.

Bamber Gascoigne1:21

Well, we've always felt that any respectable wife for many years, knowing that her husband was going on a journey, would always nowadays put eight records in his luggage in case he should end up on a desert island or indeed on your programme. Uh-huh. You've got a rough eye.

Presenter1:32

Yeah, but they might be of the same thing.

Bamber Gascoigne1:32

Well, we share a lot of musical tastes and presumably she has selected them from the records we have at home. We're both great opera fans, so I'm sure she'll put in quite a lot of opera. And we both are great fans of female singers as well.

Presenter1:39

Well

Presenter1:42

Right, we're looking through the list. In fact, you're right about the opera. There are four or five records here of opera. But the first record, let's try you out. It's a

Presenter1:50

A record of jazz flavour, if I say crisp barbecue.

Bamber Gascoigne1:52

Ah well when we first met Chris Barber was very much the flavour of the moment back in nineteen sixty. Everyone was mad about Chris Barber. Um and I was also and um Ottilie Patterson was his lead singer at the time.

Presenter2:03

So have we got that? Well you got yes you've got that, so you're right so far and the the record chosen, you might get to elaborate on this, is Make Me a Palette on the Floor.

Bamber Gascoigne2:11

I don't think that has any particular family historical connotations in our relationship, no, but I'm delighted she's chosen.

Presenter2:16

Not like

Speaker 22:22

Me my mother

Speaker 22:25

A palette on the floor

Speaker 22:32

Oh, make me

Speaker 22:37

A palette on the floor

Presenter2:42

Make me a palette on the floor out of Lipatison with Chris Barber's Jazzman

Presenter2:47

Bambo, d where do you get the name Bambo?

Bamber Gascoigne2:48

Bamba. Is it a family name? It's a family name. There was a f a Gascoyne in the eighteenth century married a Miss Bamber from Ireland and they called their son Bamber Gascoigne. He was actually quite a rogue. He um

Bamber Gascoigne2:58

I think achieved the ultimate in pocket boroughs. He once represented in Parliament a a borough which only had two electors. It was the the roughest borough he could possibly find.

Bamber Gascoigne3:06

called Bossiny. Um and he was he made a lot of money in in Parliament that everyone did in those days. How far back can you trace your your family? A long way? A long way, yes. They came over soon after the Normans. They came in about twelve hundred. I reckon they waited till it had settled down a bit and the serious fighting was over and then they went to Yorkshire, your your territory.

Bamber Gascoigne3:23

To Harwood, in fact. We lived for about four centuries in Harwood. There are wonderful alabaster monuments of.

Bamber Gascoigne3:29

A lot of gas coins in the church at Harwood from about fourteen hundred. And every generation since, until my grandfather and my uncle had been soldiers.

Presenter3:37

You you were a soldier, weren't you, for one brief moment in the middle of the morning?

Bamber Gascoigne3:39

I was a grenadier. They were all grenadiers many generations, yes, the gas coins have been. I loved it.

Presenter3:43

But you're a National Serviceman, and obviously got into the Grandees because of the Association.

Bamber Gascoigne3:44

Yeah.

Bamber Gascoigne3:47

Exactly. I mean, as as long as one passed the the tests, I was virtually assured of a place, I think.

Presenter3:47

Exactly.

Bamber Gascoigne3:53

I had a fascinating natural service. I spent the first six months, of course, being bashed around on the square, which is pretty unpleasant, true of everybody. I then had an extraordinary six months dancing with the Debs in London, guarding the Queen at Buckingham Palace on my off moments. Uh I then went to Berlin, which was extremely interesting. The wall was not then yet built.

Bamber Gascoigne4:10

And then had six months in Dusseldorf, which was perfect for weekends in Paris and so on. It was a very good national service.

Presenter4:15

Let's go to another choice of record now. Again, your your wife's chosen this. You don't know what it is. Um you said you said that she might choose women singing. Um this in fact's uh a duet uh from a show called Gypsy.

Bamber Gascoigne4:26

Gypsy. Ah, well, Gypsy when I was this is before I met her actually, but it's always been a favourite man. I was a a student in New York in fifty eight to nine when Gypsy was new.

Bamber Gascoigne4:35

And it's the m it's the most incredibly wonderful musical. It hasn't had the the success over here that others of that period have. Yes, I'd love to hear some gypsy.

Speaker 24:42

Let me entertain you. Let me see you smile. I will do some kicks.

Speaker 24:54

I will do some tricks for now and I'll tell you a story.

Speaker 25:02

Happy morning morning, catch up, catch up. By the time we're through entertaining you, you'll have a barrel of fun.

Presenter5:12

Caramore Jacqueline Mero singing May We Entertain You from Gypsy with interruptions from.

Bamber Gascoigne5:17

Ethel Neumann in the valley.

Presenter5:18

Background

Bamber Gascoigne5:18

Yelling at them.

Presenter5:18

Yelling at them. Wonderful. Unmistakable voice, that melon voice, wasn't it?

Presenter5:23

Let's go back to the beginning before the army. I I think I'm right in saying that that you wanted to be an actor, didn't you? That was your first ambition.

Bamber Gascoigne5:29

Yes, at school I most wanted to be an actor. I played Mark Antony at school and I remember the school newspaper said a a born actor appeared on stage when Mark Antony appeared. It was actually the only successful performance ever.

Bamber Gascoigne5:40

And at Cambridge I was in a Marley Society production, but got very I found a week was too long. Julian Pettifer was troilous and I was Paris in a production.

Bamber Gascoigne5:48

And then I took to directing and then finally arrived at writing which just suits me better.

Presenter5:52

But I mean why do why how do you give up the the thing about acting? I mean we walked.

Bamber Gascoigne5:55

Um well I just knew that. I mean I'd never before been in more than two performances and it was always so exciting the first night and then the second performance was, you know, relaxed a bit.

Presenter5:55

Well I just knew that I mean

Bamber Gascoigne6:03

And I couldn't believe the paralysing boredom that descended upon me on the third, fourth and fifth nights whenever anyone else was speaking on the stage. It was fine when I was speaking, but uh the gaps between seemed to me to get longer and longer. And I realized this was not the profession for me.

Speaker 16:11

Uh

Presenter6:11

Yeah.

Presenter6:16

So what what sort of writing do you do?

Bamber Gascoigne6:17

Yeah.

Bamber Gascoigne6:18

Well, at that time, perhaps still in a way, um what everyone at Cambridge wanted to do was write review scripts for the footlights, the famous way to fame and fortune in London.

Presenter6:19

Well, at that

Bamber Gascoigne6:27

So I, my first year, applied to join the Footlights and wrote review scripts for them.

Bamber Gascoigne6:31

And then in my second year I wrote a college review.

Bamber Gascoigne6:33

Um we'd never done a college rule in Maudlin before, but somebody suggested it. And um that took off in a big way and and came to London. That was called Share My Lettis. That was called Share My Lettis. Michael Codron saw it up at Cambridge and put it on in London with Maggie Smith and Kenneth Williams.

Presenter6:41

That was cool.

Bamber Gascoigne6:48

and always maintains, bless him, that if that hadn't succeeded he was going to leave the theatre as that he'd had two flops beforehand. So I can claim in a way to have kept the great Michael Codron in the theatre. How old were you then when you wrote that? I was twenty two, I suppose, and Michael was about twenty six. He seemed unbelievably old and wise to me.

Presenter7:02

It was a wonderful start, wasn't it? Your first venture, I mean, into Williams and Maggie Smith. It ran for what now?

Bamber Gascoigne7:05

I ran for all my last nine months, all through my last year, exactly. I had a huge roll to check, it seemed, of £80 a week coming in. Money was no object.

Presenter7:09

Yeah.

Bamber Gascoigne7:14

I bought an overcoat for six pounds, which deeply offended all my friends,'cause it was such a flashy thing to do. A Harris Tweed overcoat, a green one I remember.

Presenter7:21

At that particular moment in time then, you could env visit Bambagasco and writing reviews of for the Western States, the rest of the world.

Bamber Gascoigne7:27

No, I I think I was then planning to move on to the more serious stuff pretty quickly. I mean, it was me, Jean Osborne and Hanoi Pinter who was the relevant way, so

Presenter7:33

Well of course it was a very heady time, wasn't it?

Bamber Gascoigne7:35

Absolutely. Everyone wanted to be writing theatre.

Presenter7:38

Another choice well, I'll take another choice of record. Let's take your your wife's third choice of record. It's opera and it's uh Cosifantuti.

Bamber Gascoigne7:45

Well she would have chosen that because in fact but it's certainly my favourite opera. I think it's near the top of her favourites. But actually it was a production at Glenborn that I think first really hooked us both on opera about ten or fifteen years ago. We'd quite liked it before that, but uh suddenly realized that this was special for us. So perhaps she'd chosen a bit from that. It's the trial from Mactvon. Wonderful.

Presenter9:05

The trio from Act One, Mozart's Cosifantutti, from a recording based on the Seventy Eight Linebaum production, conducted by Bernard Heitink.

Presenter9:13

Bernard Gascoyne, you became the theatre critic of the spectator and then later the the observer. Is that a classic case of those who can do

Presenter9:22

Do, and those who can't become critics.

Bamber Gascoigne9:25

It probably was at that time in that I had lots of um unperformed plays in my suitcase, so to speak, and I knew they weren't going to be performed'cause they weren't very good, and um needed to earn some money, so managed to get this job as a theatre degree, which I loved doing. I mean, I did enjoy writing the reviews.

Bamber Gascoigne9:38

Um

Bamber Gascoigne9:40

But yes, I my ambition at that time was to be a playwright and it never it never was fulfilled. What happened to your plays? Because you you had a well you've certainly had plays in the West End. Yes, I've had a a couple of occasions, um plays started in the West End but ended rather soon. Um th my plays seemed to be becoming more and more impossible to get on and I found eventually I was writing one which had a cast of forty pygmies and I th thought, well enough is enough and wrote that as a novel. It worked rather well as a novel.

Presenter10:04

Well I I suppose that management would would have a blue fit if you put for the proposition of forty pigments appearing on the London stage.

Bamber Gascoigne10:09

Absolutely. That was out of the question. But that that term is novel writing, which I must say did suit me better. And I've I've written three novels now, none of which have exactly made much money, but I I quite like them.

Presenter10:18

When you look back at that time, the sixties though, I mean, d how do you how do you recollect them? Do you remember them fondly? Di I mean, people who lived through them have sort of varied r uh reactions to them. Some say it was a terrible waste of time, it was just about fashion and nothing else. Others say it was it was a wonderful time, it'll never be repeated. What do you think?

Presenter10:34

Yeah.

Bamber Gascoigne10:34

Well, I think that one's the memory of anything is so tremendously subjective, isn't it? That to us I thought it was a time when we were in our sort of round thirty and um

Bamber Gascoigne10:43

That's an exciting time. I mean, certainly I felt, we felt that things were very exciting. I remember my wife and I going down the Kings Road looking for a dress for her for a dance. This is late fifties actually. And sort of Mary Quant was on one side of the Kings Road and Kiki Byrne was on the other. And it it seemed very exciting to choose between these two shops. We'd never bought that sort of dress before. And lo and behold, within years, Mary Quant in particular was suddenly a sort of international name. And it it did feel as though

Bamber Gascoigne11:09

People like us, all the same age at that time, could if they turned a particular corner suddenly make it in an amazing way.

Presenter11:17

Was it better?

Bamber Gascoigne11:17

Well, you mentioned fashion. I didn't I didn't, apart from that one trip down the King's Road to buy a dress, really ever noticed the fashion. I think one was living my own life and I was starting on television, so I was more interested in television with University Challenge and um

Bamber Gascoigne11:28

I th I d again, television was terribly exciting then. That was the week we had a feeling in those days that

Bamber Gascoigne11:34

You really ought to watch almost anything that came on in television in case it was going to be very good, because so much of it was good. Now television has taken its place like everything else, just one of the things you might happen to see.

Bamber Gascoigne11:44

Um in those days I think you would expect your friends to see something you did on television. It would be ridiculous to expect them to know.

Presenter11:49

Let's have an another record uh and another clue for from you, for your or for you, from your wife's choice. This again is is is opera, uh, Dutch de la Memo.

Bamber Gascoigne12:00

Ah well, we saw an absolutely wonderful lichia recently with Joan Sutherland, who's been singing it for a great many years, and we saw it's said to be her last performance, I don't know what, and she was still in incredible form, so I'm delighted she has chosen something from that.

Presenter12:12

It's a duet in fact Sutherland and Pavarotti. A beautiful one.

Speaker 212:22

Peace now

Speaker 212:23

Uh

Speaker 212:54

What is it?

Speaker 212:57

Oh yes, the first one.

Presenter13:18

I'm a guest going.

Presenter13:20

Is there any particular significance in the in the title of that song?

Bamber Gascoigne13:23

Well, I dread to think that she might have chosen it for this reason. The words do mean my sighs shall come to upon the breezes. Let's leave it at that. Who knows?

Presenter13:29

All the way from your desert island. In fact, that was a duet from act one of Donizetti's Lucida Lamar with John Sutherland and Luciano Pavarotti.

Presenter13:38

Let's talk now about University Challenge. How, in fact, did it enter your life? What happened?

Bamber Gascoigne13:42

Well, we have an old mutual friend you and I called Barry Heads who was instructed by Cecil Bernstein in nineteen sixty two to find a new face for this quiz game.

Presenter13:45

What is this

Bamber Gascoigne13:50

So he wrote out to about fifteen people, journalists and actors, saying, Well, actually, the letter came through the letterbox. I've often said it this way. It was rather extraordinary to open it. It virtually said, If you want to be on television, ring this number. So I hurriedly did.

Bamber Gascoigne14:01

And we all went on audition.

Bamber Gascoigne14:03

And I happened to win it, but it was just then for a summer job, it seemed.

Presenter14:05

Yes. Uh how many shows were planned?

Bamber Gascoigne14:08

I think it was thirteen. It was it w it we we began in in August, I remember. I think it was just sort of through the autumn season. Um but nobody would really plan more than thirteen of a new quiz. I suppose everyone was hoping it might go on a bit.

Presenter14:18

And we lasted in the end for what? How many

Bamber Gascoigne14:20

Well, it's it's been twenty-five years. I mean it has I think ended now. This last this last summer.

Bamber Gascoigne14:25

The Independent ran a front page news story, would you believe it, saying this quiz show's ended? And Granada didn't really deny it. They never make up their mind really until, you know, later on. We wouldn't be doing one until next summer again, so who knows? But I think it's ended.

Presenter14:36

But I mean, you must have seen some remarkable changes over over that twenty-five year span. I mean, just in the faces in front of you. Well, hairstyles have gone up and

Bamber Gascoigne14:43

quite extraordinarily. Um the oddest visual change when we see the first early programmes actually the the audience are all sitting in black stark suits. It's quite amazing, an audience audience of students in sixty two.

Presenter14:56

Yes.

Bamber Gascoigne14:56

Rows and rows like sort of officers from some Kafka-esque state.

Bamber Gascoigne15:01

Um but actually under all that, uh bright students are bright students. It doesn't seem to me to have changed at all, except that I was once their age and now I'm twice it. They're brighter nowadays, you think? Well, they're brighter only for this very simple reason that they've watched twenty five years of university challenge, it wasn't available to their predecessors. I mean

Presenter15:16

Yeah.

Bamber Gascoigne15:17

Airwaves are now full of quiz games, aren't they, which they they've grown up with and we didn't. And general knowledge is sort of a game all the time available.

Presenter15:24

There was anything I'm right in saying that some some resistance was not from students themselves when this game first started.

Bamber Gascoigne15:29

There was early resistance just on the grounds that television must be a bit suspect, you know, it couldn't be um couldn't be respectable, uh which was predictable. That came particularly from Oxford and Cambridge.

Bamber Gascoigne15:39

There was later resistance, particularly not from Oxford and Cambridge.

Bamber Gascoigne15:43

On the grounds that we were elitist.

Bamber Gascoigne15:45

And we were thought to be at least for two reasons. One, quite a good one, that there were far more Oxford and Cambridge Colleges, so they kept on coming on.

Bamber Gascoigne15:51

Which I saw the point of. The other one less attractive was that since we had a winner each week we must be elitist, but that seemed to be a bit over the top.

Bamber Gascoigne15:57

Yeah.

Presenter15:57

Did di were there any kind of demonstrations on air to prove that?

Bamber Gascoigne16:00

Uh well we had the fa the most famous one was Manchester University, behaved rather badly. Um they came on in order to wreck the show and answered silly answers. They turned out to be a very nice team actually. They'd opted out of university and were living in a

Bamber Gascoigne16:10

um, a working class street doing social work and they're on their grants. They're sort of idealists. And part of their idealism was to come and wreck universal challenge. But that was the most famous occasion. Then there there have always been some people who fool around. But, you know, as you know, one has the whip hand if it's not a live show and you can always stop it and say, Shut up.

Presenter16:26

That's right. There was also a time too, I believe, when in fact the Dons, the tutors were persuaded on to compete. How did they do?

Bamber Gascoigne16:34

Yeah.

Presenter16:34

Yeah.

Bamber Gascoigne16:35

Well, they've they've come on many times. Um the most memorable occasion I rem know was a Don who when I asked a rather complex question.

Bamber Gascoigne16:42

about four names in a book by a woman called Margaret Murray, pressed his buzzer and before answering said, Is it fully established, mister Gascoigne, that if if I give you these names, it in no way applies my agreement with Margaret Murray's outrageous thesis?

Presenter16:57

Wonderful. Now, another choice made by your wife in your absence. And in fact, absence is a very good clue to you here. It's Dame Maggie Tate. Why would that?

Bamber Gascoigne17:05

Our day Maggie Tape was a great discovery of hers rather than mine actually. She came back with a record of I think this incredible singer from the thirties, wonderful singer of chanson.

Bamber Gascoigne17:14

And in fact the songs are so sad that my wife banished it from the house. She knew I loved it, but she in fact wouldn't have the record'cause it made her so sad. But knowing that I loved it, she's a very sweetly chosen one.

Presenter18:23

De Maggie Tate, singing Absence by Berlios. Bama Gascoigne, one of the things that happens to you of course when you go on television, and particularly if you appear for as long as you have, twenty-five years, is you become you become famous, you become a face. I suppose the great thing about it is, uh, looking back at your career, it's given you a kind of financial independence, hasn't it?

Bamber Gascoigne18:42

So I mean it's it's been wonderful. It's like been like having a sort of rich um godfather or something who's given me some money for very little time, spent a year, and I've spent the rest of the time writing unprofitable books.

Bamber Gascoigne18:53

The strange thing about one's own modern attitudes, as I've sometimes said before, is that odd enough, if a rich godfather had given one that money, when we'd be so embarrassed about it, when we'd have gone out and worked flat out all day long as a social worker or something.

Presenter19:03

Uh

Bamber Gascoigne19:03

Yes, but having so-called earned it by doing a quiz game, I feel free to spend the rest of the time writing.

Presenter19:08

But I mean, d do you think in in a sense that that it has distracted you from a a main purpose you might have had in in life otherwise?

Bamber Gascoigne19:14

I think if if it hadn't happened I'd have gone on being a journalist presumably and a a theatre critic and and um I mean I I suspect I'd probably have gravitated to television anyway because I find I love it and would have discovered that.

Bamber Gascoigne19:25

But on the other hand, I've always wanted to write books. I chose to be a theatre critic in order to have time to write books. I I deliberately balanced between being a teacher, an academic and a theatre critic and chose that. So the books I've written are are definitely the ones I wanted to write. It isn't that I've been kept from doing anything else by being free to.

Bamber Gascoigne19:43

Uh

Presenter19:43

Yeah.

Bamber Gascoigne19:43

Do

Presenter19:44

Well, let's take the books apart. I mean, let's take the novels on one side and let's look at the other books. I mean, what.

Bamber Gascoigne19:44

Uh

Presenter19:50

What guided you toward writing a book, uh A History of India, the Mughals?

Bamber Gascoigne19:56

Well, that was a very precise reason that um I had previously done for a firm called George Rainbird a book about the history of the theatre, which again was my own subject, my own passion. They suggested that and I found I loved writing history which I didn't know before.

Bamber Gascoigne20:07

And at the same time Christina became a photographer and we wanted to do a book together.

Bamber Gascoigne20:11

So we quite deliberately sort of searched the the world to see like clear subjects that would make a beautiful illustrated book that could also be serious history.

Bamber Gascoigne20:18

And to our astonishment, um there wasn't a book about this amazing imperial dynasty in in India.

Bamber Gascoigne20:24

who built the Taj Mahal and everything else. And it so it made a a natural book, which in fact has has been in print ever since, and we're going to make a television series, six programmes about it, in a couple of years. So it it was a a right subject, and it was literally sought for and found in order to find an excuse to do a book together.

Presenter20:39

And what about Chino?'Cause again that was a book that you could have.

Bamber Gascoigne20:41

Well that exactly followed on. We did it a year after and the same firm, George Rainbird, um China was just opening up, the exhibition was coming to London, and he said to us, Look, if I get you to China, will you write a book about China? and we both rather gasped. Nobody had been to China in those days, really, in seventy three.

Bamber Gascoigne20:56

And so we did it all rather a rush, but managed it.

Bamber Gascoigne20:59

So again, it just came up as a result of a previous thing, but was exactly what we wanted to do at the time, illustrated books together.

Presenter21:04

And what about the television series you did again, which a book came out of? The book came first actually, The Christians, which is a huge project done by Granada Television.

Bamber Gascoigne21:12

Well that again was exactly that, that that Dennis Foreman, a great guru in my life and whom you also know from Granada days.

Bamber Gascoigne21:19

had seen and liked our two previous books, and so he summoned me one day to his office and said, I want to do a big series on the history of Christianity. Will you do it and write a book with Christina?

Bamber Gascoigne21:27

And of course again it was an incredible project and very exciting. I partly cursed him because that stopped me doing all sorts of other books I was writing at the time. And it was very frightening because one can fall flat on one's face in thirteen hours with television.

Bamber Gascoigne21:38

But um it arose out of the other ones and and proved the most extraordinary adventure and experience to do it.

Bamber Gascoigne21:44

Did it change your life at all?

Bamber Gascoigne21:46

Um it changed my life, strange enough, for the next ten years in that it turned me off doing big scale television because it had just been so exhausting. I'd done nothing but fly around the world seven days a week for four years. And I thought this is not for me, and I went to the other extreme and wrote books that only sold one hundred and seventy-five copies.

Bamber Gascoigne22:02

It didn't in religious terms. I was started as an agnostic and ended as an agnostic, but a perfectly friendly agnostic. I have nothing against religious people. I f find them as sympathetic as anybody else. So it it made me in no way different.

Bamber Gascoigne22:14

except that I knew rather more of the history of Christianity.

Bamber Gascoigne22:18

Yeah.

Presenter22:18

Let's go again to this list, your wives. Provided a more opera, um La Traviata and Callas.

Bamber Gascoigne22:25

Oh well that's interesting. We have we have Calla singing our triviata in fact from a performance on stage I think in Lisbon way back.

Presenter23:31

Is there any particular reason for that opera and that particular aria?

Bamber Gascoigne23:36

It's my favorite aria I think in the opera. I think for me it's probably the single most moving opera there is, and that's the single most moving aria for me. It's when Violetta has decided, been persuaded by Alfredo's father to give up Alfredo for this slightly unconvincing young girl who's supposed to be suffering.

Bamber Gascoigne23:52

And it's just uh in the film particularly, Zephyrid's film, I mean that moment, Sanbetereza Stratas in that case, was overwhelmingly weepy.

Presenter23:59

The singer there, of course, is Maria Callas.

Presenter24:02

Well, just let's do a recap here, as they say. You've written a review for Kenneth Williams, you've written histories of China and India and theatre, you publish novels, you plays.

Presenter24:11

You've written and introduced a documentary history called The Christians for Television. What about the the the prints? When did they come into your life and what kind of prints are we talking about?

Bamber Gascoigne24:19

The prints came in through moving to Richmond, which we did twenty years ago, and discovering that there were most wonderful prints of our little patch of the river, and I began collecting them.

Bamber Gascoigne24:28

Then after collecting them I realized I wanted to write a book about them, which I did, and had to publish myself because nobody else would publish that.

Bamber Gascoigne24:35

Then got interested in prints as a subject, and this year published a book called How to Identify Prints, which is a very hard thing to do, and I'd sort of discovered.

Bamber Gascoigne24:42

And now my latest passion is nineteenth century colour printing, which I'm beavering about when I have any spare time. But it was just discovering really a subject that um is not much treated by academics, but is capable of great uh research potential.

Presenter24:55

What's the fascination of them?

Bamber Gascoigne24:56

I mean, for example

Bamber Gascoigne25:00

Nineteenth century colour printing, which I'm now doing, it goes from children's books, one famous extreme, Cape Greenwyn people.

Bamber Gascoigne25:05

through lovely natural history books, butterflies and birds and things, to all sorts of extraordinary quasi religious books, sort of imitating mediaeval illuminated manuscripts. And so you're studying a subject which actually itself is a gateway to infinite other subjects, and you're constantly surprised by

Bamber Gascoigne25:21

The sort of byproducts of it. And that's true of any sort of print, you know, the caricatures, they're all prints.

Bamber Gascoigne25:27

And so you can be going in any direction within the history of mankind really, of of the last three hundred years, four hundred years.

Bamber Gascoigne25:33

Right.

Presenter25:34

Another selection from your wife. This time it's not opera. It's uh in fact ruthetting.

Bamber Gascoigne25:40

Rutheni is a great favourite, uh discovered fairly recently a wonderful voice from the flapper period of the twenties.

Bamber Gascoigne25:46

Um and d d d t tell me about you from Tommy, because uh there's many on the record.

Presenter25:50

Button up your overcoat.

Bamber Gascoigne25:51

Oh well that's a particular favourite of mine. Fr from back at university days, there was a film called The Best Things in Life are Free, the uh Lo Life of S to Silver Brown and Henderson. And this is my favourite theme from that. It's also rather good for Desert Island,'cause it's full of good tips about how to look after yourself on a Desert Island.

Speaker 226:06

Eat an apple every day. Get to bed by three. Stay good care of yourself. You belong to me. Be careful crossing streets. Ooh, ooh.

Speaker 226:19

Don't eat me.

Speaker 226:21

Ooh, ooh, cut out sweet. Ooh, ooh, you'll get a pain and blue in your tum-tum. Keep away from bootleg things when you're on a tree.

Speaker 226:34

Ah

Speaker 226:35

You belong.

Presenter26:39

Ruthetting, singing button up your overcoat. Full, as you said, ma'am, of uh good advice to somebody on a desert island. Well, are you practical man enough to to survive on this island, do you think?

Presenter26:49

Yeah.

Bamber Gascoigne26:49

I like doing things rather house. I must say, I mean I I like I know how the inside of a tap works and can change the old washer and things. I mean I I I do enjoy practical things and I would rather like the challenge of in fact Robinson Crusoe is is is a favorite book of mine, but I realized long after I first had enjoyed it that I was reading it for do-it-yourself reasons and everyone else was reading it for philosophical reasons, yeah.

Presenter27:08

What a manual.

Bamber Gascoigne27:08

Yeah.

Presenter27:08

Before we send you out there on this desert down though, I mean, what about ambitions? I mean, what's left now for you to do? What's the future?

Bamber Gascoigne27:18

Well, my immediate uh excitement is is I'm preparing a quiz game at the moment for BBC Two coming on next spring. And um again, going really with the interest in prints, I find more and more in middle age that that painting is what absolutely stirs me, painting and architecture and sculpture, the visual arts.

Bamber Gascoigne27:34

And this is a quiz I suggested to the BBC, which is called Connoisseur, and it's going to be like

Bamber Gascoigne27:39

If You Like Mastermind, a serious contest between real people not celebrities.

Bamber Gascoigne27:43

And actually we're looking now for contestants, anyone who feels that they um are good at painting or sculpture or furniture, china, all those things, decorative and fine arts.

Bamber Gascoigne27:51

If they're right to me at BBC Bristol, we're beginning to try and sift through and get some really good contestants. And that's I'm finding it incredibly exciting. I'm spending my days browsing through art books, setting the questions.

Presenter28:00

And only real people need a pl

Bamber Gascoigne28:01

But Only real people need to apply. Should they turn out to be celebrities after having presented themselves as real people, they will not be refused. But principally it's real people I'm asking

Presenter28:02

On it if

Presenter28:09

What about uh what about the writing though? I mean, what uh the quiz and television apart? What what what's coming up on that?

Bamber Gascoigne28:16

Well, the the particular th th at the moment um prints are rather dominating my activity. I mean I think I will write more novels just because it's terribly exciting activity dreaming of these people and and letting them develop.

Bamber Gascoigne28:28

But in a more practical way, I know that the next books I'll be doing are actually to do with the history of prints and things, because I I find I'm discovering.

Bamber Gascoigne28:36

areas of enormous interest that just haven't been written about and that's always very exciting.

Presenter28:41

Right, the final choice of record then. Let's see if you can get it. If I said puccini to you, what would you say?

Bamber Gascoigne28:48

Puccini, well I love many Puccini. M most recently there's been a splendid production at Covent Garden of Turundot which I'm mad about, which I've seen a couple of times. Within the whole of Turundot, who knows? Um what what Turin actually tells us about? Well the finale is unbelievably stirring of Turundot. I mean the music is very stirring. It's also made more stirring by the fact that Puccini didn't finish it. He died I believe with the uncomplete manuscript in his hands and and his notes were used to finish the last scene.

Presenter29:00

Well the finale is on the

Bamber Gascoigne29:14

Remembering the finale is just the most incredibly stirring piece of music, and she must have put it in to cheer me up on bad days.

Presenter30:21

Part of the finale of Cini's tour and dot with Joan Sutherland, the John Aldis Choir and the London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Zubin Mehta.

Presenter30:29

Bambagascon, you're now on your desert island. Do you think you could cope with the with the solitude?

Bamber Gascoigne30:35

I think I probably could. I I well, I guess I'm not who knows. I've never actually been been alone. I d I really don't know. And that would be a an alarming thing to discover. I I've certainly never been um alone for

Bamber Gascoigne30:46

For more than a couple of days, so to speak. I I can't quite imagine. I would be s it would be interesting to discover.

Presenter30:51

Then imagine then you're the only company who have the records, and seven are washed away, one you retain. Which one would it be?

Presenter30:58

I

Bamber Gascoigne30:58

I think it would probably be the Mozart. Just because it's so extraordinarily beautiful, I think one would need to be cheered up by sheer beauty. Suave sio vento. It's also rather appropriate. It means uh may the wind be calm uh and gentle and the waves calm, which will be nice.

Presenter31:10

And what about the book? Assume you've got the

Bamber Gascoigne31:12

The works of Shakspeare and the Bible on the island.

Bamber Gascoigne31:16

I th and all your people must think a lot about this. I I eventually decided on Tristram Shandy for this reason, that it's a book which is absolutely enraging to read in a hurry just once because it's so full of mad loose ends and odd digressions.

Bamber Gascoigne31:28

I then read it much out later in life very slowly and found it utterly enchanting. And I think read Wonderful on the Desert Island, because of all those loose ends, you could begin to dream the digressions would lead one off into whole new areas of fantasy. Wonderful book.

Presenter31:40

And what about the luxury object inanimate?

Bamber Gascoigne31:42

Yeah.

Bamber Gascoigne31:43

Uh if I'm allowed it I would take a set of carpentry tools because I'm I love carpentry. Indeed I like making objects almost as much as I like writing books, but um that somehow ends up diverted into books and I really would I couldn't wait to get cracking on the driftwood.

Bamber Gascoigne31:56

Baby Gaska and thank you very much indeed.

Speaker 132:05

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