Sue Lawley

Speaker 40:00

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.

Presenter0:30

Our castaway is that rarest of all television performers, the one who almost never gets a bad review. Whether presenting nationwide or the Six O'Clock News, standing in for Robbinday or Terry Wogan, she's defied the critics with her untroubled manner and seemingly effortless professionalism. Indeed, she moved one hard-boiled journalist who had inspected her for faults and found none, to observe, and I quote, can she really exist, or is she some kind of ideal dreamed up by the BBC's Audience Research Department? She is Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:59

So just in case you come across to the public as being too perfect, I mean, has there been anybody said anything about you that's really upset you?

Sue Lawley1:06

They always upset me whenever they write something about me, because it it's usually wrong, and um I I find it all pretty distressing stuff. I don't know how really one expects to be in the public domain and not be written about, but um if that were possible that's what I'd like more than anything. But I remember once somebody um saying that I was the kind of girl you'd take home to mum. I mean a chap would take home to mum and uh she would approve. And I knew somehow I knew I I should have liked that, but I knew when I read it that that meant the man didn't like me, that he thought I was, as you say, a bit too perfect or something. So that hurts, actually.

Presenter1:44

Really? D if that hurts you, I mean, what are you going to do when they start really writing really nasty things about you?

Sue Lawley1:48

Hide in a corner, Michael. I can't bear it to tell them all to go away.

Presenter1:50

Uh

Presenter1:52

Still on this on this thing about what people imagine you to be. I mean, part of the son you project on television is of this very self-possessed and collected woman, very much on on top of the job and that sort of thing. I mean, th therefore, could you, uh do you think, make a go up living on a desert island? Are you that self-possessed, that self-contained?

Sue Lawley2:10

No, of course I couldn't. And I I need people too much. I'd I'd like it for a while, as I dare say all of us would who lead very busy lives, and there's nothing I like better than my own company on occasions. But I think I'd uh I'd get pretty miz pretty quickly.

Presenter2:24

And what about music? You've got these records to keep you company on the desert down. I mean, h has music always been a a companion for you in your life?

Sue Lawley2:32

Yes, but not in any hugely serious sense, no. But I'm the kind of person whose tummy goes ping when she hears a certain tune and thinks, Ah, yes, I remember that just brings back lovely memories.

Presenter2:43

So all these eight records are pings, are they?

Sue Lawley2:45

All all pings in their own right, a a Catholic set of pings coming up.

Presenter2:49

Alright, the first record then.

Sue Lawley2:51

Well, the first record is a school ping, really, and it's something we used to sing. It's Purcell's Sound the Trumpet. It's a lovely kind of choral work. I was always a second sop at school, and I always wanted to be an alto, but I didn't have quite a deep enough voice. I thought on my island I could sort of sing along with all the parts and learn them. What's very complicated take me an awful long time and use up a lot of long, boring hours.

Speaker 43:17

Uh

Speaker 43:17

More than that's fine!

Speaker 43:24

Trumpet, sound the trumpet, sound the trumpet, sound, sound the trumpet tear and all you make the music.

Speaker 43:36

Sweet charge when you shall be all you can charge me wrong

Speaker 43:45

Okay,

Speaker 43:52

Uh

Speaker 43:56

The trumpets are the trumpets of the song, song, the trumpet deal to make them

Speaker 44:06

Before

Speaker 44:09

The Mr. George and you are going to end.

Presenter4:16

First I'll sound the trumpet, sung by Charles Brett and John Williams. Sue Lawley, it must be said, was singing away like a good one. In fact, you had your first ambitions, I think, to be a singer, I think.

Sue Lawley4:25

Yes, they were. I'm I'm not quite sure why now, but I did do a bit of it in um

Sue Lawley4:30

Willen Hall Pally of a Saturday night for about um I think it was about twenty-five Bob at the time, and my dad used to take me. I answered an advert in the Wolverhampton Express and Star, and I used to go along and um and sing Lollipops and Roses and Up on the Roof, and I used to um to shake the maracas and walk about the stage and actually in the end feel pretty awful. I got it out of my system very quickly.

Presenter4:53

So there's no not really a real ambition there to be a singer.

Sue Lawley4:56

Blah.

Presenter4:56

No, it's just a bit of fun.

Sue Lawley4:58

Yes, I I suppose I quite like being on the stage. I quite like singing. I would sing on this island quite a lot.

Presenter5:04

Mm-hmm. What about the background you came from? You mentioned there, Willenhall. That's the black country, isn't it?

Sue Lawley5:08

Mm. Yes. Born and bred, Dudley, Worcestershire.

Presenter5:09

What do you

Presenter5:10

What about your parents? What what what did they do?

Sue Lawley5:14

My father, um, his family were dairy farmers, but he gave that up when I was quite small, and he then had a a series of jobs, one of which was running a petrol station. He owned a petrol station, and I used to go and work on that. I was the the greatest expert at the age of ten on on how to fill up oil in all the consoles and zephyrs that came by, and where where the petrol tanks were, and so on. And my mother always ran a shop, really, um, in the beginning.

Sue Lawley5:40

It was a a cafe and then it was and then we sell lollipops and ice cream and then it was a grocery shop and finally it was a a drapery shop. So my early childhood was spent behind the counter as it were when when other friends from school went to work um in Woolworths or on the post at Christmas, I would be found behind the counter selling the ounces of wool and the baby's rompers and all the haberdashery bits and pieces.

Presenter6:04

What about the the ambitions in those days? I mean, singing apart. What was the real ambition? I mean, was it university and then you didn't know?

Sue Lawley6:10

Was he

Presenter6:10

Yes.

Sue Lawley6:12

No, university and I didn't know. I went through all those those girlish things of of uh thinking that I would be a teacher or a hospital hommoner and all those kinds of things. Never really knew what was going to come out the other end. And indeed even when I got to university I I didn't really know when I started applying for jobs. Uh it was strange. I I considered myself to be part of the general arts dustbin, as it were. I did modern languages, English, French and German.

Sue Lawley6:39

and thought that if I kind of spread the applications around to to publishing and advertising and and television indeed the B B C turned me down, it has to be said that that somewhere in there there would arise something from it that might just suit.

Presenter6:55

Another choice of record.

Sue Lawley6:57

Well, the next one, I think I mean, I'm a child of the sixties and and no person who was a teenager in the sixties could go without a Beatles record. And this is my token Beatles, and it's a lovely one. It's called Hey Jude. And uh

Sue Lawley7:10

I always remember uh a reporter in the next valley to mine when I was the district correspondent in Merthyr Chidville, a chap called Chris Corrigan, who was the district correspondent in Abertillery, and used to ring me up'cause he couldn't sing a note, and he used to say, Sue, how does it go? How does it go? and uh on this little telephone from Merthyr I would sort of sing out, Hey, Jude, you know, and he said, That's it, that's it, wonderful.

Sue Lawley7:32

Uh

Speaker 47:32

Uh

Speaker 47:34

Don't make it bad

Speaker 47:38

Take a sad song and make it better

Presenter7:38

Uh

Sue Lawley7:38

Cause I

Speaker 47:45

Remember to let her run through your skin when you begin.

Speaker 47:53

To make it better, better, better, and

Presenter8:02

Hey Jude from the Beatles. Let's go back for a minute to to the university days. I mean, did you fit in at university, this child from Black Country?

Sue Lawley8:10

Not really. Uh I didn't think. I suppose if I'd had more guts I'd have realized that it um I did. But I felt that I didn't because I went to Bristol University, which was full of

Sue Lawley8:20

um, home counties people who spoke posh and I didn't. At least I don't know any more, Michael. I I would like actually to be hypnotized and discover how I really do speak. I suspect there'd be a Black Country Lilt somewhere in there.

Sue Lawley8:37

As I recall, when I went to Bristol, I probably spoke about like that, you know, there would be that sort of black country lilt. Now, whether I said country or country I mean, I never spoke like Marlene, you know, it was never that kind of thing. But I expect that I had that sort of lilt, and I certainly said short A's, and uh so I would have said bath and path and things. So I went to Bristol and thought, Well, I better sort of flatten it out a bit, and I rushed round saying long A's in everything, and even got as far as saying kind of Santa Claus and Gasto, which was even worse, and I used to go pink every time I opened my mouth, thinking that all these people around me were looking at me and thinking that I was some kind of misfit. Very silly, really, but it was very real at the time, I tell you, I suffered.

Presenter9:16

Yeah.

Presenter9:18

Hm, very nice. So how do how do you get out of it then? Just by by camouflaging yourself, I suppose?

Sue Lawley9:23

Yes and you see, my mother didn't come from the black country, my father did. She, I think, spoke with a southern countess thing, and I suppose I just slipped more into her and less into him, as it were, and found my way through.

Presenter9:36

It's interesting what you say there because, I mean, we're now talking about the sixties and I mean that was a a great sort of a floodgate opening up for all kinds of people, particularly the broadcasting. I mean it used to be before those days that you had to speak proper to get on the BBC. And certainly it for men in those days you had to have an accent to get on the BBC. It was never the same for women though, was it?

Sue Lawley9:48

It on the beat.

Sue Lawley9:55

No, I'm not sure.

Presenter9:55

A woman's accent is almost regarded differently to a man.

Sue Lawley9:57

That's right. I I mean, I suppose in that sense you have to be a bit more faceless. I have attempted

Sue Lawley10:03

to do the very straight things, the very straight journalistic

Sue Lawley10:07

Current Affairs Presentation and now News Presentation, which is straight stuff, and frankly there shouldn't be any quirky, idiosyncratic little bits of me that come through when I do that.

Presenter10:17

But having said that then, so here's this very straight, very straight image that we've got them, but is there a clown bursting to get out? Is there another person?

Sue Lawley10:23

Yeah.

Sue Lawley10:24

Of course there is.

Sue Lawley10:26

I'm the sort of person who when I finish the programme at night walk down the corridor and sort of turn lights on and off and knock on doors. I'm a sort of born apple scrumper.

Presenter10:35

That's another choice of record.

Sue Lawley10:37

Um well, I'd like to have a bit of rachman and off.

Sue Lawley10:41

Because

Sue Lawley10:42

I remember when I first came to London and was working on nationwide.

Sue Lawley10:46

We used to make it was the days when we made wonderful films and these great macho men um would sort of walk the Pennine Way and we had um great

Sue Lawley10:54

Tumbling helicopter shots of them, and as the helicopters pulled away and this man with a rucksack on his back strode across the hilltops upward rise, Rachmaninoff's rhapsody on the theme of Paganini, and I thought, This is television, this is life, this is terrific.

Presenter12:10

That was part of Ragmaninov's rhapsody on a theme by Paganini. The pianist there was Vladimir Ashkenazi.

Presenter12:16

Sue Lowley, let's go back to before you came to London. Let's go back to the days of being a newspaper journalist.

Presenter12:23

In those days did you always have an ambition to to get on to television?

Sue Lawley12:27

No, not at all. Um I I thought that I was going to be the world's greatest investigative reporter on the Sunday Times.

Sue Lawley12:36

And um I went I joined the Thompson Organisation, who then owned the Sunday Times. I went to the Western Mail and Echo in Cardiff. And I mean this was the great carrot they held up for us, of course, that if we were good enough and actually scratted around the South Wales valleys for long enough and hard enough and well enough we would end up on the Insight team. So that was really the great ambition.

Presenter12:58

So how did television come into your life then?

Sue Lawley13:01

Purely by chance, like all of these things, I um having done this three years in in newspapers, my family had moved to Devon from the Midlands, and I used to go down there at week ends. Beautiful place to be, and I suddenly thought, Hey, hang on, you know, this is quite nice. Why don't I come and work down here? So I wrote to the B B C in Plymouth.

Sue Lawley13:21

And I also actually wrote to newspapers in Exeter and that kind of thing, went to see them all. And the BBC in Plymouth had recently lost their women reporters, two in a row. One was called Angela Ripon, the next was called Jan Leeming. And they didn't have a female around. And they said, Well, you can come and do it, but we haven't got any money. However, there's this new programme that's been invented, it'll never work. It's called Nationwide. This was nineteen seventy. And Nationwide is paying us, all the regions of the BBC, twenty pounds a week to do a bit of research. But you can have that twenty pounds a week if you like, but you may not do research for nationwide. You you may write the news, you may anything. Will you come and be a freelance dog's body? So that's what I went to do for for a thousand pounds a year.

Presenter14:05

So, uh, given that situation, then you need something of a break, don't need your big break in that, because a lot of other people vying for position. What was your big break?

Sue Lawley14:12

Hmm.

Sue Lawley14:14

Oh, I think Hugh Scully went ill.

Sue Lawley14:17

And they did, well, no, to be fair, before that, I think I'd gone out to make a film. A reporter was ill.

Sue Lawley14:23

And um they needed someone uh to go make a a film about oyster pies somewhere down in the depths of Cornwall.

Presenter14:32

Another choice of record.

Sue Lawley14:34

This one is a a a haunting record by a woman called Dorrie Previn. She began, I think, as a poet, and it sounds like that, because the words are lovely. It's called Lady with the Braid, and it's all about a young woman who's begging a man to stay the night with her because she can't better be alone.

Speaker 314:51

Now I leave the window open so if you

Speaker 314:56

Happen to get chilly, there's this coverlet, my cousin, hand crochet, hand crochet.

Speaker 315:06

Would you mind if the edges afraid? Would you like to unfasten my

Presenter15:18

Dorry Previn, the lady with the braid.

Presenter15:21

Sue, let's talk a little bit about Nationwide, because it occupied a very important and and a part of your life, and quite a time in your life too, didn't it? How long was it that you worked for Nationwide on and off?

Sue Lawley15:30

Oh, on and off for some fourteen years, I should say. I mean, I stopped and had a baby in the middle and and went back again. Terrific programme, I mean.

Presenter15:32

Yeah.

Presenter15:36

Terrific.

Sue Lawley15:38

The most marvellous launching pad for any journalist, really, because there was something for everyone in it.

Speaker 415:44

Yeah.

Presenter15:44

Ah

Sue Lawley15:46

I think it was one of the best programmes that the BBC's ever put together. I would say that, wouldn't I? Um but I do think that it's a great shame that it died, and I suspect one day, you know, some bright young producer will come along and say, I've had this wonderful idea. Why don't we try and get all the nation's studios on the air at the same time? Wouldn't it be wonderful? And we'll have some people sitting in London and they'll be able to call in all the read you know, and it will happen as sure as eggs one of these days, because it was the most

Speaker 416:08

Yeah.

Presenter16:08

And

Presenter16:11

These days.

Sue Lawley16:12

Perfect vehicle for daily current affairs journalism.

Presenter16:16

Yes, it was. I share your enthusiasm for it. And of course, it's a show too that only the BBC can do, because only the BBC has got the structure to demand that programme.

Sue Lawley16:23

Exactly. And the sorts of people that I worked with, like Michael Barrett and Bob Wellings, I mean, we remain friends and will be friends forever. And the public sensed that, you know, they liked that sense of family, that sense of happiness, the sense that we enjoyed each other's company and wanted to share it with them. And that's the great secret of a successful programme, if you can actually come through the screen.

Speaker 416:40

Uh

Presenter16:40

Yeah.

Sue Lawley16:45

And lend that warmth to the viewer. That's what they like, and why shouldn't they? And that's what we like.

Speaker 416:48

The

Presenter16:51

Good.

Sue Lawley16:51

It's enormously fulfilling.

Presenter16:54

Another choice of record, please.

Sue Lawley16:55

Well, this is just um a deliciously romantic bit of opera. It's um Mimi's Farewell from Labo M. This is tingle down spine time and perhaps tear down cheek.

Presenter18:07

Mimi's farewell from La Boheme singer was mirror frainy.

Presenter18:11

Sulole, did you want to be famous?

Sue Lawley18:16

This is an impossible question, Michael.

Sue Lawley18:19

I don't think I actively wanted to be, but if I'm being very honest, as people always are when they sit in this chair.

Sue Lawley18:27

Something deep down inside me perhaps knew.

Sue Lawley18:32

That I might.

Presenter18:35

And then we do it in Japan.

Sue Lawley18:35

Kick out of that what you'd like.

Presenter18:36

Well, no, I d I d I think that uh I think I understand that. But I mean, do you do you enjoy being famous? Do you enjoy being recognized?

Sue Lawley18:46

I don't not enjoy it, but I don't entirely enjoy it, no. I

Sue Lawley18:51

Do not like the invasion of my privacy.

Sue Lawley18:53

But as I've said to you, I don't think really one can do what I do and and not have that. So I try to keep it in control.

Presenter19:01

Is it more difficult, though, do you think, being a f famous woman on television than a famous man? Are there more pro problems attendant upon that?

Sue Lawley19:10

I suppose the answer to that question is if you are um

Sue Lawley19:14

a famous I'm not sure sex makes any difference, but I suspect if you are famous and you are not entirely, entirely and totally orthodox, that is to say, you l live with your husband and you're tucked up with two and a half children

Sue Lawley19:27

then obviously there will always be a kind of prurient interest in you. And um as I say, that does distress me a little.

Presenter19:37

And in the industry that you're in as well, um there was a programme recently done on BBC television which tried to prove conclusively that women were discriminated against within the industry. What are your views on that?

Sue Lawley19:48

I don't believe that they are at all, and I think in the end that if you can do it, you will get there. I think there are fewer women knocking on doors.

Sue Lawley19:57

I think that women need to be encouraged to knock on doors. A lot of women don't do it because they don't think they'll get there. In other words, what I'm saying is I think a lot of it is born

Sue Lawley20:06

in the women themselves. I do not think that there is

Sue Lawley20:10

um a set bias within the management on the whole.

Sue Lawley20:14

I think it it's there for the taking, and it is actually being taken. I do believe that the cause of women gets overstated these days, because if you pull the whole business apart and take a close look at it, women are there, and there are more and more of them every day.

Presenter20:29

And what about the other accusation, a counter accusation to that, that a lot of women are hired because they're token women?

Sue Lawley20:36

I think there's a bit of that. And I think'twas ever thus. I think what Peter Wood said the other day is probably quite right, that it does matter more. It is a sad fact of life. It matters more what a woman wears and what a woman looks like than it does a man. I mean, had there been a female equivalent to Peter Woods with the baggage round the eyes, she would never have been given a job in television. So I suspect he he he was thinking about that when he made his comments. I think there always will be an element of that. I think it is up to us as individuals.

Sue Lawley21:07

If we do not wish to be used in that way, to make sure that we are not. I have to say I don't think I am. I hope I am not. I don't believe I am.

Presenter21:16

Since we're talking about people with baggy eyes, I can tell you again personally, so I'll ask you when you've got a choice of record.

Sue Lawley21:19

So I'll ask you about

Sue Lawley21:21

Ha!

Sue Lawley21:22

I think a little spoken voice. I think I would miss the spoken voice, and what better one than that of Alec Guinness? And I think a bit of poetry, because I do rely on a bit of poetry. And I thought we'd have T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets. And I'd like a a piece from the second part of the Four Quartets, The East Coca. It sounds a sad little piece, but it's fundamentally optimistic. And I think I'm fundamentally optimistic, and I would need to be on this island.

Presenter21:52

I said to my soul, Be still.

Presenter21:55

and wait without hope

Presenter21:57

For hope would be hope for the wrong thing.

Presenter22:00

Wait without love.

Presenter22:03

For love would be love of the wrong thing.

Presenter22:06

There is yet faith, but the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.

Presenter22:12

Wait without thought.

Presenter22:15

for you are not ready for thought.

Presenter22:18

So the darkness shall be the light,

Presenter22:21

and the stillness, the dancing.

Presenter22:25

Those are lines from T. S. Eliot's fourth quartet spoken by Alec Guinness.

Presenter22:30

Sulolle, what I can't understand about you is that given all your talents and you proved them in question time and in in Signing for Terry Wogan, I mean you were a very good television all-rounder, I can't understand why you relish so much the job of being a news presenter, because it always seemed to me that that that really is is a kind of boring job to do on television. I mean it's a proper job, but it's a boring job.

Sue Lawley22:51

You don't mince your words, do you?

Sue Lawley22:53

Well, if I if all I did was present the news, then yes, I would be deeply bored, because it would just be a matter of reading the autocue very nicely. That, of course,

Sue Lawley23:04

Is not what I do, and is not what fascinates me. What fascinates me is being where the action is. I have always been.

Sue Lawley23:12

for seventeen years in daily television.

Sue Lawley23:15

where everything is happening. And of course, to be in the newsroom and to work in the newsroom and actually be at the receiving end of everything that is happening across the world is fascinating. And I love all of that. And

Sue Lawley23:28

Of course we write a lot of of the news that we read. We have quite an editorial say in its ordering. People seem to think somehow that the news is handed down in tablets of stone by someone called Mr Reuter or Mr UPI and and that nice people like me and with their best bibs and tuckers on sit and read it out prettily. Um it ain't like that. It's actually quite a hot, sweaty job that takes all day, and I love all of that. What I do at the end of that day, walking in at six o'clock and presenting the news, is not particularly stretching in the um professional television sense that you mean. But all the rest is, and getting it right is, and being able to understand it as I say it and be able to turn it around because someone is muttering in my ear that something else has happened or I've got to turn and do an interview about something being on the ball, up to date, where it's at.

Sue Lawley24:23

is terrific and endlessly fascinating and you know that, Michael Parkinson.

Presenter24:27

Well, no, I I I've I've never done it, so I'm talking through my hat basically. But I mean, it just seems to me that that it's a it's a job that uh that most people who could read AutoQ could do. Now writing it, of course, is a different thing altogether. But let me ask you something else. I mean, it seems to me the excitement of the job is doing the programmes like the say The Robin Dip or whatever, or you know, interviewing people like Norman Tebbit.

Presenter24:45

Now, mister Tebbit, of course, you were you were criticised for your attitude toward mister Tebbit. You were said to be too aggressive and rude and that sort of thing. To to start with, I mean, wh what what attitude do you have toward interviewing politicians? Do you think they're fair game?

Sue Lawley25:00

Fair game would imply that I'm out to get them, or to trip them up, or to ambush them in some way. No, not at all. Uh but

Sue Lawley25:08

What I do believe very firmly is that I must not be in any way intimidated by them.

Sue Lawley25:16

in anything that they have said or done in the past, and that I must not be o'erwhelmed by them and their office, because at the end of the day I am there

Sue Lawley25:27

in place of the viewer to ask of them and to press them on the things that the viewer wants to know. And if they are ducking and weaving, as politicians do, and if they are giving long, garrulous answers and not getting to the point and fudging it, then one will press and one should press, and that is what the viewer expects and wants, I think, of of its television presenters, television interviewers who deal with politicians. We've got to a point now, actually, in television interviewing, where we can actually find something out. And that is our duty. It's our duty to the viewers.

Presenter26:00

Exactly so. Another choice of records.

Sue Lawley26:03

I would like to have a Christmas carol, because I think this is a hot island, isn't it?

Speaker 426:08

Hmm.

Sue Lawley26:09

Yes, and I thought it would be nice to think of winter and if you think of winter you think of Christmas and if you think of Christmas you think of children and I wouldn't half miss my children on this island. I mean they are in the end what all of this is all about, you know. And I would quite like to have in the bleak mid winter

Speaker 426:26

Or the news will be in stars.

Speaker 426:31

God's sleeping day drowned.

Speaker 426:50

A fire snow and snow.

Speaker 426:56

Snow and snow.

Speaker 427:02

In the wind is with.

Presenter27:13

Sue Loli, wh what about the future now? Um, I mean you're still young, you're still ambitious. I mean, where do your ambitions lie? Do you want to d do the five night a week talk show, or do you want to do the Robin Day programme? Or what do you want to be? What do you want to do?

Sue Lawley27:27

I haven't decided. It's rather nice at the moment that I'm allowed to do a a a bit of both of those. It's strange really,'cause they are sort of two ends of the spectrum. And I do you know, I really can't decide. I suppose perhaps what I want in the end is what I was hinting at earlier, is some kind of return of some kind of nationwide. I rather like the early evening. I feel very comfortable.

Sue Lawley27:50

On the tele. I like live tele. Whatever it is, it must be live. I cannot stand recording things. There's a kind of spontaneity about live television, and I like real people. I think I

Sue Lawley28:01

when I say that I mean not necessarily famous people or showbiz people. I like talking to people who've got a good tale to tell and are in the news for that reason. And I suppose in the end

Presenter28:08

My dog

Sue Lawley28:12

Those are the kinds of things that interest me most, making television, live television, with those kinds of people.

Sue Lawley28:19

In the early evening, when I think that I know a bit after all these years about the kind of people who are out there watching. Do you know that feeling? That you you sort of feel as if you know them, and I think they kind of know me at the end of the day.

Presenter28:28

Mm-hmm.

Sue Lawley28:33

And I like that.

Presenter28:35

Final choice of record.

Sue Lawley28:37

The final choice is is a bit of classy schmoltz, really. It's Ella Fitzgerald. I adore her voice. If I if I could sing, I'd like to sing like Ella, and I adore it particularly when she sings Cole Porter. So I'd like her to sing every time we say goodbye.

Speaker 428:56

Lock somewhere Begin to sing about it There's no love song final But how strange the change From major to minor Every time we say goodbye

Presenter29:25

Ella Fitzgerald, and every time we say goodbye, Suloli, you're now on your desert island. And you have to imagine that uh

Sue Lawley29:30

You have

Presenter29:32

A wave comes along and washes away seven of your records. You're left with one. Which one would it be?

Sue Lawley29:37

It has to be the Rachman and Off, I think,'cause in the end it it's it's the most varied, it's the most durable, and I might be stuck for a long time.

Presenter29:45

What about the the book? Assume you've got the Bible and the the works of Shakespeare.

Sue Lawley29:50

Well, I thought, and it may seem like an odd choice, but I think that I would like Elizabeth David's French provincial cooking.

Sue Lawley29:58

Not just'cause I could salivate over the recipes, but actually because she writes about it very beautifully, and I think therefore one might be able to imagine the food. Because having caught the fish, you see, I'm not going to be able to cook them because I couldn't kill them. I can catch them, but I can't kill them. And I I would like to sit and read about her onion tarts oozing with cream and um the little curls of whiter than white butter in little crisp dishes, you know.

Presenter30:22

But he lost weight at the same time.

Sue Lawley30:23

Uh

Sue Lawley30:24

I can't afford to do much more with that.

Presenter30:24

Yeah.

Presenter30:26

And what about the uh luxury object inanimate?

Sue Lawley30:30

Well, I I don't know whether this is permitted, but I would like to have an endless supply of freshly laundered white linen sheets. I'd like clean sheets every day. Do you know when you go to those old fashioned English hotels and you slip between the sheets and there's that wonderful smell that they've been out drying in the sunshine on the line, and and they're all ironed beautifully and slightly starched. I'd like an endless supply of those. And I mean, you can give me the iron as well. I find ironing extremely therapeutic. I'll launder them myself, and then there'll be plenty of sunshine in which to dry them.

Presenter31:02

Sue Loli, thank you very much indeed.

Speaker 431:11

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