Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Desert Island Discs
Presented by Michael Parkinson
American-born restaurateur, broadcaster and writer who made food fashionable in Britain, credited with improving restaurants and public enthusiasm for food.
Eight records
the first choice reminds me of downtown Manhattan because uh I was born in Tarrytown, New York, and uh I very soon uh went downtown to New York because it it's a magnet, you know, for all young kids.
I'd like to play the music from the Ballet Les Fauins, the Moscow Radio Orchestra.
I got fascinated by Weil and all the things he did. And I love that kind of raucous singing voice, speaking voice of his wife, Lottilene.
Piano Concerto No. 2 (Third Movement)
Vladimir Ashkenazy with the London Philharmonic Orchestra
I think that Bartuck typifies that kind of mad, exciting, explosive talent that Paris had in those days.
Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Sir Charles Groves
I think I'll go back to that coronation and play something from the coronation, huh? Because it was that that really made me feel... that fabulous magic of of uh Queen Salati and all the great Kirkhas and God knows what and the costumes and the panoply
I want to go to one of the greatest singers of all time who I really got to love here in her concert. I went every night to her concert uh in London, and it's Peggy Lee, one of the greatest singers.
she sings in the best way possible of all the songs about New York, she sings New York, New York.
Toi qui sus le néant (from Don Carlos)Favourite
I wanted someone who's done with her life what I hoped to do with mine, which is she started out as a very ugly girl, big, fat, pimpled girl from Brooklyn. And she became one of the most beautiful women in the world, and one of the most talented women in the world, and one of the greatest singers in the world.
The keepsakes
The book
Lawrence Durrell
I think I'm going to pick Lawrence Derrell. And I think it's going to be the Alexandria Quartet, because do you remember it's four separate stories of the same people... I could write my own version of the whole thing.
The luxury
a tagine is a great clumsy cooking pot from Morocco... you cook on an open fire, so that's perfect for Desert Island, innit?
In conversation
Presenter asks
Are you going to be pernickety about the food on this desert island?
I don't think I'm going to find [a three-star restaurant]. This is true. Unless it's a very strange desert island. I don't think I'll be pernickety. I think it's going to be quite exciting to find out just how somebody like me can cope with whatever's there.
Presenter asks
What kind of a family did you come from in New York?
My father was a lawyer and a judge... He was Irish uh descent, and uh my mother was German, and she was a great cook. And a very free and easy lady. She was a great party lady. She was very beautiful. And she treated her three boys like adults.
Presenter asks
How did you stop being the editor of [the newspaper in Paris]?
Oh, it failed. He failed. He'd got what he'd wanted, uh, which is, you know, and uh they just withdrew the money. And uh I s after about a year and a half of very hard work and uh loving it actually. And I sat back like a little king. I'd never asked for a job in my life, right? And I thought everybody was going to offer me a job. Nobody did. So I thought I was a failure, a failure at the age of twenty five.
The recording
Timestamps play the recording from that turn
Robert Carrier
Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive. For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen eighty seven, and the presenter was Michael Parkinson.
Presenter
Our castaway could justifiably claim to be the person who made the subject of food fashionable in Britain. When he arrived here from his native America he surveyed a gastronomic waste land. Today, twenty five years on, the improvement not only in restaurants, but also in our enthusiasm and awareness of food, are in no small way due to him.
Presenter
As a restaurateur, broadcaster, and writer,
Presenter
His name became synonymous with good food he is Robert Carrie.
Presenter
Robert, I must ask you on this desert island, I mean, are you going to be pernickety about about the food? I mean, would you require a three-star restaurant to be there to be happy? I don't think I'm going to find one. This is true. Unless it's a very strange desert island. I don't think I'll be pernickety. I think it's going to be quite exciting to find out just how somebody like me can cope with whatever's there. I mean, a turtle egg if there's a turtle.
Robert Carrier
Yeah.
Presenter
Palm oil, I hope. I'm not sure whether we'll have palm trees on my desert island or whether it'll be really a desert island with nothing, and then I'll be in trouble. Well, what about music then? You know, your companion on this desert island is music. Now, how have you gone about choosing it? And w what approach have you had to the eight records? You know, I thought if I'm gonna be there forever on this island and no friendly boat is gonna come along and save me within a week.
Presenter
That I might like to remember every major part of my life, wherever I have lived, my native America, Paris, England, Morocco, and that I would have
Presenter
Fabulous warm memories of all these things to play and also, incidentally, fabulous music. So the first choice then, what does that remind you of? Well, the first choice reminds me of downtown Manhattan because uh I was born in Tarrytown, New York, and uh I very soon uh went downtown to New York because it it's a magnet, you know, for all young kids.
Presenter
And uh I loved New York. New York was a very safe place then.
Presenter
And when I was seventeen and eighteen we used to go to Harlem every uh weekend. We used to go to Small's Paradise and and something called the I think it was called the Elks Rendezvous. And sometimes we'd stay all night in Harlem and we'd have uh breakfast at Mom Baker's kitchen. I mean you couldn't cope with that now. I mean it would be so dangerous and you know, it wouldn't be wouldn't be right now. But it was such an innocent city, believe it or not.
Presenter
You'd wander, you know, we we like all kids, I used to stay out late and go to the discos. There weren't any discos then, but we considered discos late night bars and things. And we'd all walk back laughing and chatting down Eighth Avenue at uh three or four o'clock in the morning. Again, you don't really do that all the time now. And the music was jazz, of course. And the music was jazz. And the choices is uh Bud Johnson's quintet playing downtown Manhattan.
Speaker 4
Mm-hmm.
Presenter
Bud Johnson Quintet and Downtown Manhattan.
Presenter
Robert Carey, tell me a bit more about this background of yours in in New York. What kind of a family did you come from? I my father was a lawyer and a judge. We lived twenty five miles up the river, up the Hudson River from New York. He was Irish uh descent, and uh my mother was German, and she was a great cook.
Presenter
And a very free and easy lady. She was a great party lady. She was very beautiful. And she treated her three boys like adults. This is, I think, the remarkable thing about her. And she was the daughter of a self-made millionaire. He came in the usual American way from Germany. He was the black sheep of a German family from Hamburg. And he came on what we used to call a pickle boat, some kind of tramp steamer, I suppose, with the proverbial five dollars in his hat, a little cardboard suitcase. And he was a woodworker. That was the only thing that interested him. He didn't want to be in the family business. He didn't want to do any of that.
Presenter
And he either invented or he was instrumental in creating the humanoid. Do you know what a humanoid is? Yes, it is indeed. It is for cigars. It's for cigars. It's a little fancy thing like that everybody had in their house then. Like we have a television set or a great video set now.
Robert Carrier
Yes, I do indeed.
Robert Carrier
I
Presenter
Every man had his humidor with little holes for about nine pipes, and then the in the humidor, and this was the invention, a little wet sponge. And that was it. And by God he made millions out of that. I don't know how. He had a great factory and, you know, all that.
Robert Carrier
Hmm.
Presenter
And so she was a very spoiled young girl.
Presenter
And everything went fabulously for her. She proposed to uh her husband, because otherwise she had to marry Charlie Shraft and open a chain of restaurants. It would have been fabulous for me. But instead of that she had she married this very handsome guy, this older man. She was seventeen. He was thirty two.
Presenter
And she said, Ray, if you don't marry me, I'm gonna have to go to Europe with my father. When I come back, I'm gonna have to marry my father's choice. And so Ray said, Oh, all right, I'll marry you Well, everything went well until the Depression. Oh, yes, yes, you lived through those years. That must have been quite grim, actually. And I was six and we had a very huge house and a handful of servants, and of course all that went. The house still lasted for about a year. And she was clever enough not to cry, not to worry about it, but to get her three boys to help her. And I was six and I used to wash the lettuce leaf by leaf and dry each leaf. I used to set the table. My brother Jack uh used to make the salads. My brother Bud, who loved to cook and was older, used to cook Sunday lunch. She was really quite a clever lady. I let some other choice of recognition. Okay. What about uh going to Paris? Because I lived in Paris next after the war, huh?
Presenter
I was twenty two when I arrived in Paris and I got all mixed up with uh a lot of theatre and uh creative people because I ran a newspaper for de Gaulle called Spektat, which was a little weekly newspaper, kind of a PR event, uh trying to interest the technicians of the cinema industry and the ballet industry in his uh political movement, the RPF. And I'd like to play the music from the Ballet Les Fauins, the Moscow Radio Orchestra.
Presenter
Robert Carey, if we find you now in Paris, I I suspect, and obviously from the background you came from, that in fact you've always felt at home in Europe.
Presenter
I always looked forward to coming to England and to Europe because my family were European oriented. My father was a great reader and a gardener and a fisher. He was a very quiet man. And he made me love all the literature that he loved. We used to fight after lunch for the chair, his chair. And whoever got the book and the chair first could have it. Which, you know, I was quite agile at the time and I get a cuff on the ear occasionally. But we used to share this great love for all of your great writers. And I was itching to get here. And so when the war came on and I was in the army, we were interviewed by the OSS, the Office of Strategic Services. You'd never believe it, but I have a very high IQ and I was picked out for this. And I was taught French to be a spy, I think. And then that didn't seem necessary. And I became a cryptographer because that's the way my mind works. So I was a cryptographer in Paris.
Presenter
And I got to know lots of the people in the resistance.
Presenter
After the war I was invited back by the people from De Gaulle's uh group.
Presenter
And I had a fantastic time doing Radio Back to America.
Presenter
And uh then I did this newspaper, which I think was the best job I've ever had in my life. But how did you stop being the editor of a newspaper? I mean, what happened? Oh, it failed. He failed. He'd got what he'd wanted, uh, which is, you know, and uh they just withdrew the money. And uh I s after about a year and a half of very hard work and uh loving it actually.
Robert Carrier
He failed.
Presenter
And I sat back like a little king. I'd never asked for a job in my life, right? And I thought everybody was going to offer me a job. Nobody did. So I thought I was a failure, a failure at the age of twenty five.
Presenter
And I went off to my little house in Saint-Tropez and I stayed after the season and I drank. I went out every night until about four in the morning. I'd come back absolutely looped and with friends, without friends, or to somebody else's house, and we'd get up again about four o'clock and we'd start again. And I used to go to this tiny little restaurant called Fifines in Saint-Tropez to have the one meal of the day that Bowsies allow themselves. And she was very sweet to me and thought it was silly that November and December that I was still there and I hadn't gone back to Paris. And she said, Bob, get up early to morrow. Don't stay out too late tonight. Get up early to morrow and come to the market with me.
Presenter
And then I'll teach you how to make, and then we'll have we'll eat it, so that she made sure I had two meals and that I got up early, and then I got interested, and I didn't stay out until four, I stayed out till two, and then I stayed out till one, and then I sat out till twelve, and she uh cured me and helped me back to a sane and serious life, and taught me love of cooking.
Presenter
Next choice of record, please. Uh the next one is uh we're still in Paris because I also did an American Theatre of Paris there. I helped run the American Theatre of Paris. And one of the musicals we did was uh Kurt Weil's Knickerbocker Holiday. And so I got fascinated by Weil and all the things he did. And I love that kind of raucous singing voice, speaking voice of his wife, Lottilene.
Speaker 3
Oh show us the way to the next whiskey bar.
Speaker 3
Oh don't ask me
Speaker 3
Yeah.
Speaker 4
No, don't ask why.
Speaker 3
So we must find the next whiskey bar For if we don't find the next whiskey bar
Speaker 4
Tell you we must die.
Speaker 4
Tell you we must die.
Speaker 3
I tell you, I tell you, I tell you, we must die.
Presenter
That was Lottie Lenya singing Kurt Vowell's Alabama song.
Presenter
Robert Kerry, that was a reminder for uh for you of the time you were involved in Paris uh with the theatre. Were you in fact you were a performer of any sort? I mean Yes, I used to be an actor, you see. I started out as a as a child actor and uh
Robert Carrier
Yeah, so
Presenter
In America I was in a couple of shows just before I joined the army. And uh when I got to Paris I did uh a lot of radio and uh I did a radio show, a regular weekly radio show with uh Maurice Chevalier called This is Paris with Maurice and Bob and I did another one with a marvellous beautiful girl, Countess. And uh that was breakfast in Paris. And then I created um a programme uh for women because uh in America we've always known that women ruled the world, but Paris hadn't discovered it yet. They were things of desire and beauty, but they're not, you know, the the tough buying public that we know they are. And uh so I did a programme called Bonjour Mesame. Hello ladies from Paris. And it had three lovely hostesses and we presented the best in French living, food, fashion interviews, an interview show with a bit of music between, very similar in a funny way to Zidane on disc.
Robert Carrier
Interviewers and interviews.
Robert Carrier
between very similar in a funny way
Presenter
And it went out over 387 stations in America and won a big prize and all that. And I met everybody in Paris through that show because obviously we wanted the best. And I learned about public relations on that show, too, because if they came prepared and had a story to tell, I let them get their plug-in. If they did not come prepared and we had to dig it out of them, I made sure that Paris or France was a plug and that they didn't get a single plug.
Presenter
In those days, percussive and modern and minimalist music was just becoming famous. And the Paris itself, the scene, the musical scene, was and the literary scene, was full of uh people from other countries. Paris seems to be kind of a magnet again of all kinds of talents. And uh Henry Miller did all his writing there, James Joyce was first discovered there, Anna Snien, the great marvelous diarist, uh lived there for many, many years. And I think that Bartuck typifies that kind of mad, exciting, explosive talent that Paris had in those days.
Presenter
That was part of the third movement of Bartock's second piano concerto played by Vladimir Ashkenazi with the London Philharmonic Orchestra.
Presenter
Robert Carrie, when and why did you first come to Britain?
Presenter
You won't believe it.
Presenter
But I came to see the coronation. When I was a kid
Presenter
At the earlier coronation, much earlier coronation, I used to cut out the king and queen and all the courtiers of the royal court in uh soap, ivory soap. And uh I was mad about it and I painted them with watercolours and I went crazy about the whole thing. So I was in uh Italy at the time and uh ready to go back to America to be honourable and honest when uh friends of mine came on a holiday and I went off with them to uh Ischia, as a matter of fact.
Presenter
They had problems with their business and I kept saying,'cause I love business, I kept saying, Why don't you do this? Why don't you do that? and they said, Oh, if you'd only come and do it for us And I said, Well, you know, the coronation's on
Presenter
And if you keep very mum about this, I'd love to come for a month and see the coronation and help you with the business, which is what I did.
Presenter
But I loved it so, and I really enjoyed living here, even in those
Presenter
The Knighted Times. Well, they were, weren't they? Let's talk about it because when you came here, I mean, as I said in the introduction, it was a gastronomic wasteland, wasn't it, Mr. It was after living in France and Italy.
Robert Carrier
Yeah, but
Robert Carrier
It wasn't certainly a matter of
Presenter
Uh and travelling a lot in Europe. It was the most startling thing that I ever known. But I thought it was beautiful. You know, all the funny little things that I take for granted now, the little mews with their window boxes full of flowers, uh the fabulous green, green, green countryside, the hospitality, the hospitable nature of of everybody in England, how kind they were to what was really quite a brash Italian suited uh young man, you know, when I came here.
Robert Carrier
You know what?
Presenter
Next choice the music.
Presenter
Well, I think I'll go back to that coronation and play something from the coronation, huh? Because it was that that really made me feel I mean, the way I was up on Piccadilly looking down on this great parade and uh it it was that fabulous magic of of uh Queen Salati and all the great Kirkhas and God knows what and the costumes and the panoply if that's the word that I saw that made me realize how fabulous this country was and how they could put on a show like no other country in the world.
Presenter
That was part of Sir William Walton's coronation march Orb and Scepter played by the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Sir Charles Groves.
Presenter
Robert Kerry, I think I'm right in saying that that first of all your first real success, the thing that really made your name in
Presenter
in the food industry. Was in fact your writing, the book a book in fact that you wrote, wasn't it? Great Dishes of the World was my first book. I think it was the Sunday Times that really brought me to uh the attention of I'd written for Harper's Bazaar, but that's an elite uh, you know, uh publication. And then I moved simultaneously to um the Sunday Times and to Vogue.
Robert Carrier
Where else?
Presenter
And introduced the cookery cards in Vogue. And I think that was what awakened everyone to my kind of cooking. What about the restaurants? Where did it in what place, what sequence did they come in? The cookery cards came next, because I was going to do the restaurant, and I found I looked in both pockets and I didn't have enough money, so I went to my publisher, who was Nelson's, and I said, God, we gotta do something. How about doing my cookery cards? And he was a a fabulous Jocelyn Baines, a remarkable publisher. And he said, sure.
Robert Carrier
My kind of cool
Presenter
And we did it. And we s again, we'd had hit records with that. We sold four hundred thousand packs of them in um just a few years. And uh that paid for the restaurant and and let me get on to that. Which opened in nineteen sixty three, Carriers.
Presenter
How much of a I mean, it's a dream of a lot of people to open a restaurant. I mean, um, restaurants and pubs, excuse me, people go around in some daydream longing for the day when they might own one or two of them. But I mean, what's it like being a restaurant owner? I mean, would you advise people to be a restaurant owner? I would, because I think it's fantastic. Yes. If you're willing to work very, very hard. And if you're willing to take full responsibility. Nobody can come in the restaurant business and think it's just saying hello to people and having a drink with them, because that's the least of it. The most of the work is behind the scenes. It's like theater, very much like theater. I'm a perfectionist. I mean, I get kinky if things aren't right. And I think this is why I like restaurants, is because it's never perfect. Something can always go wrong with every single dish that you present. And we used to rehearse for two weeks with the chefs our new menus. And then we used to change the menu every three months so the chefs wouldn't get bored. Because if a chef thinks that he knows how to do it and is used to doing it, I think he gets slightly, I mean infinitesimally less good at it each day because he's cutting a corner without even knowing it. So I think that what one needs to do is change the menu often, rehearse the dishes often, make sure that the staff is as pleased and as happy as you are with what you're doing, and then you can go out and smile at your customers.
Presenter
Next joint record, please. Uh well, I want to uh go to one of my favourites, because we've had a very varied list of music, haven't we? Full of jazz and oomph and wildness and batuck. Uh I want to go to one of the greatest singers of all time who I really got to love here in her concert. I went every night to her concert uh in London, and it's Peggy Lee, one of the greatest singers. I want her to sing that fabulous song which called Is That All There Is?
Speaker 4
Is that all
Speaker 4
Is that all there is?
Speaker 4
If that's all there is, my friends.
Presenter
Where is my f
Speaker 4
Then let's keep dancing.
Speaker 4
Let's break out a boo!
Speaker 4
Who's there?
Speaker 4
I'm a ball.
Speaker 4
That's all.
Presenter
Peggy Lee, and is that all there is? Robert Carrie, you've sold up your restaurants now and you're you're living a very different lifestyle. Uh living in fact part of the time in Morocco. That's right. Wh why particularly Morocco? Well I needed sun, huh? And when I bought Hindlesham uh I needed the the furniture and the paintings from uh my house in Saint-Tropez and I needed the money.
Presenter
So I sold Saint-Roupe and I really felt lost without a something in the sun. And that year, this is about oh, fourteen years ago, I went in January to Marrakech and we swam every day because Marrakech is a cold country with a hot sun. But even in winter, if that sun is there, it's boiling hot. And I thought, this is it. You know, this is this will be my new Saint-Repe. Property was wonderfully cheap. I mean, I bought a house there for practically nothing. I had traveled there and I'd written articles about it before, but I had never dreamed of living there. And I must say it's fabulous. You've also written a book about it called The Taste of Morocco. Taste of Morocco. I have to confess that I never thought of Morocco and and grand cuisine in the same sort of bracket at all. It's one of the great cuisines of the world. Why? Because it's so rich. They've had so many invasions of rulers in Morocco, from the original Berbers to the Phoenicians to the Greeks to the Romans. They themselves conquered the Mediterranean. I mean, they they went into Spain for 600 years. And Andalus, everything that we think of as Spanish, is is Moroccan is Arab inspired. The whole southern coast of France, the Saracens, the whole southern coast of Italy, many of the dishes from south of France and Provençal cooking are really Arab.
Robert Carrier
Taste of Morocco
Presenter
Sicily, Sardinia, they were Arab and they're still very heavily Arab influenced. And this rich, rich cooking, you know, they went everywhere. They were the most incredible people, and they still are. They went to India, they came to England, they went to China. And much of the cooking is Chinese-influenced. All the porcelains they have even today are Chinese. And so you have a mix of black, white, Spanish, French. For the French were there for 40 years. It's a fabulous cuisine. Yeah, I mean, still in all, there aren't too many Moroccan restaurants listed in Gurfood Guides, are there? There aren't. So where is the cuisine then? This is one of the sad things, because every cuisine has its time. For example, if you go to America and go to Italian restaurants of
Robert Carrier
Uh
Robert Carrier
So where is the cuisine then?
Presenter
the last thirty years, you'd think there was no such thing as an Italian cuisine, and when Italian cuisine again was one of the great beginning cuisines of the world, huh? Uh Moroccans cuisine hasn't yet happened abroad in a big way. There is one restaurant in in the west coast of um America which is
Presenter
Very, very good. Uh there's one restaurant in Marrakech which is fabulous called uh Dharmajana. Uh but where you eat Moroccan food is in homes and palaces and in street markets. Now if you go to Morocco you've got to eat in the street markets. You know, it you you don't worry about hygiene and all that. The food is fresh, fresh, fresh. The the fish come from the sea two hours ago. Uh the meat is killed that day. Vegetables come in from market that morning and fruits. And the ethnic cooking of the street markets is wild and wonderful. I've had some of the most, you know, tantalizing, mouth-searing experiences from brochettes and hot sauces and fresh fish on in the seacoast of Safi, for example, in Eswira and Agadir, just eating on the market right with a fisherman, the fish is loaded onto the table and is cooked for you.
Presenter
Another choice of record, please. Well, uh after having Peggy Lee, I want someone with an equal personality to keep me company on this desert island, and I want some really wild, uh, lovely ladies, and I've chosen Liza Minelli.
Presenter
'Cause she sings.
Presenter
In the best way possible of all the songs about New York, she sings New York, New York.
Speaker 4
I'll make a brand new start of it in all New York.
Speaker 4
If I had break it there, I'd make it anywhere. It's up to you, New York, New York.
Presenter
Liza Minelli, New York, New York.
Presenter
Rubber carried
Presenter
What plans do you have for the future? I mean, are you going to go back into the restaurant business?
Presenter
Do you know, I was just offered one in New York and I was very, very tempted. But I decided that I would withhold for a little bit longer.
Presenter
Because I want to try some whole new career.
Presenter
I want to prove I've never been educated for anything. I've never gone to university. I've never learned to write. I've never learned to cook. I've never learned PR. I've never learned speaking on radio. I want to prove that if you want to do something and you're willing to give it all your attention and willing to give up everything else for it,
Presenter
Uh you can do it. So I've decided in my old age I'm gonna be a painter.
Presenter
And uh'cause that's very practical and you can see, right, whether you've achieved what you want.
Presenter
And I am going to paint very large canvases of food.
Presenter
And of nude women.
Presenter
Because the light falls on female flesh in the most extraordinary way. And I think it's that layer of fat just under that we don't have. Do you know what I mean? That a man makes him of a stature.
Presenter
Uh because he's muscular and and he has uh tension in his body. But a woman makes the most marvelous colouring in a painting, because on her body parts of it go yellow in reflection, parts of it go pink, parts of it go blue, parts of it go green, and it gives you this wonderful area of of reflecting light to play with. That's not bad to look at either.
Presenter
And so I thought I'd do that.
Robert Carrier
And so
Presenter
Do you have a talent for this? Well, we're going to see. I can draw. I can draw. And I know perspective and I know composition because I'm always taking photographs, food photographs and things. I know home decoration because I've decorated houses everywhere. And when I was a kid, I drew. I just have to rediscover that innocence and that childhood and stop being self-critical. I have to accept that we're children.
Presenter
And that color is it, and that expanse and light is it, and I think I'm gonna have a fabulous time.
Presenter
Final choice of record. My final choice of record, after having all these uh sexy ladies, I wanted someone who's done with her life what I hoped to do with mine, which is she started out as a very ugly girl, big, fat, pimpled girl from Brooklyn.
Presenter
And she became one of the most beautiful women in the world, and one of the most talented women in the world, and one of the greatest singers in the world. And I thought to have this self made goddess as a companion would be something really terrific. And it's Maria Callas, of course, singing the role of Queen Elizabeth from Verdi's Don Cardos.
Speaker 4
Uh
Speaker 4
Can't signal.
Presenter
Maria Carlos singing the role of Queen Elizabeth from Verdi's Don Carlos.
Presenter
So, Robert Carrie, you're now on your desert island. You have to imagine that a tidal wave comes along, it sweeps away seven of your records, you're left with just one. Which would it be? It's gonna be the Callus. I've thought for a time that I was gonna have Peggy Lee, because she's so central and so warm.
Robert Carrier
It's gonna be the callus.
Presenter
And I thought, you know, summing up my life, uh I could say with her, is that all it is?
Presenter
But then I decided I'd go for the real talent and I'd have uh Kellis. And what about the book? Assume we have Shakespeare and uh and the Bible.
Presenter
Well, if I had that, perhaps the thing that I oughta pick would be a great dictionary so that I could understand both Shakespeare and the Bible. But again, I don't think I will. I think I'm going to pick Lawrence Derrell.
Presenter
And I think it's going to be the Alexandria Quartet, because do you remember it's four separate stories of the same people, seen each through the eye of Judith or of Belthazar or of Mount Olive. And I thought after I read that and really got into their characters in this rounded way, then I could take a piece of charcoal that I'd make myself, and I could take a dried banana leaf, or a dried palm leaf, or a bit of dried skin, like the Aztecs did, and I could write my own version of the whole thing, the Alexandrian Quartet, which would take me a week or two, I'm sure. Maybe more than that, I would write it. And the luxury object, inanimate. A luxury inanimate object. Well, talking about objects and being animate or inanimate, I thought that since Robinson Crusoe had Friday, maybe I could have a lissome eyed, tiny, waisted, voluptuous Thursday. Not allowed, sir. Not allowed. Okay. Well, then I'll have I'll have a tagine. What's a tagine? Well, a tagine is a great clumsy cooking pot from Morocco.
Robert Carrier
Nana
Presenter
And it's made of uh earthenware, glazed earthenware, and it's round, and it has a conical pointed, almost pyramidal top.
Presenter
And you cook on on an open fire, so that's perfect for Desert Island, innit? And you actually serve the dish in the same pot that you cooked it. And everyone eats, I mean if there are any animals who are gonna share this meal with me on this Desert Island, everyone eats from the same dish. So I won't have any washing up. I won't have to worry about different table settings and spoons and forks and napkins,'cause that's it. And it also, there's not going to be any ice on my desert island, but in Morocco I use this fabulous thing and it must be the pyramid uh principle to keep bread fresh for a day.
Presenter
To keep ice out in the sun. This is really a fantastic cooking pot. The ideal implement for Desert Islands. Robert Kerry, thank you very much indeed.
Robert Carrier
Uh
Speaker 4
Did I
Robert Carrier
Brilliant
Robert Carrier
That's
Robert Carrier
You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Islandists Archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk/slash radio four.
Presenter asks
When and why did you first come to Britain?
You won't believe it. But I came to see the coronation... I was in uh Italy at the time and uh ready to go back to America to be honourable and honest when uh friends of mine came on a holiday and I went off with them to uh Ischia, as a matter of fact. They had problems with their business and I kept saying... Why don't you do this? Why don't you do that? and they said, Oh, if you'd only come and do it for us And I said, Well, you know, the coronation's on And if you keep very mum about this, I'd love to come for a month and see the coronation and help you with the business, which is what I did.
Presenter asks
What is it like being a restaurant owner, and would you advise people to be one?
I would, because I think it's fantastic. Yes. If you're willing to work very, very hard. And if you're willing to take full responsibility. Nobody can come in the restaurant business and think it's just saying hello to people and having a drink with them, because that's the least of it. The most of the work is behind the scenes. It's like theater, very much like theater.
Presenter asks
What plans do you have for the future, and are you going to go back into the restaurant business?
Do you know, I was just offered one in New York and I was very, very tempted. But I decided that I would withhold for a little bit longer. Because I want to try some whole new career... I've decided in my old age I'm gonna be a painter.
“I want to prove I've never been educated for anything. I've never gone to university. I've never learned to write. I've never learned to cook. I've never learned PR. I've never learned speaking on radio. I want to prove that if you want to do something and you're willing to give it all your attention and willing to give up everything else for it, uh you can do it.”
“I am going to paint very large canvases of food. And of nude women. Because the light falls on female flesh in the most extraordinary way.”
“I just have to rediscover that innocence and that childhood and stop being self-critical. I have to accept that we're children. And that color is it, and that expanse and light is it, and I think I'm gonna have a fabulous time.”