James Burke

Speaker 30:00

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 eight, and the presenter was Michael Parkinson.

Presenter0:30

On television our castaway is immediately recognizable for his boundless energy, his brisk delivery, the confidence with which he tackles the most obscure subject. One critic observed that his stocking trade is enthusiasm. Another remarked, he turns science into showbiz. He is James

Presenter0:46

James, people would assume, of course, seeing you on on television explaining all these inexplicable things, that you'd be very good on a desert island, that nothing would be beyond your uh capability.

James Burke0:55

They'd be quite wrong. I'm immensely impractical. I have the great good fortune to be married to a woman who has two qualities I don't have good looks and immense practicality.

James Burke1:04

She does everything, I think in the background.

Presenter1:07

So she's not allowed in the Desert Army, so in fact it'd be a total disaster, would it?

James Burke1:11

I think so, yes. I mean, if I survive it'd be

Presenter1:13

Because of accident of circumstance, sure. What about music too? I mean, you've got this the company of eight records. Is music something that's uh important in your life?

James Burke1:22

Yes, I was planning to be a a musician when I was young. I took singing lessons from a very early age, as soon as my voice broke.

James Burke1:30

And I played the clarinet for about ten years.

James Burke1:34

And I conducted local orchestras and I did music to S-level and all that stuff. And I was planning to be a musician, well, a singer.

James Burke1:41

And an English master said to me one day, How far forward in the chorus would you like to end up? and I said,

James Burke1:49

A front and he said, Well, do something else.

James Burke1:51

He said you can always sing for fun, but you'll never sing for money. And so I quit and switched subjects at the age of about seventeen and ended up doing an academic subject instead. And he was quite right. I've had music all my life.

James Burke2:04

As a pleasure without the the you know the burden of having it as a failure as well. So what about the first choice of record then?

James Burke2:11

Well, this reflects those early years, you know, because the very first public performance I ever did was uh of Mozart's Lennart quintet. So my first choice is part of the first movement of that quintet.

Presenter3:24

It was part of the first movement of Mozart's trinette quintette played by Jack Brimer with the Allegri Quartet.

Presenter3:30

James Burke, what kind of background do you come from?

James Burke3:32

It was very musical. My my father wasn't very musical, but my mother was extremely musical. She sang as long as far back as I could remember. And I had a brother one year younger than me for a long time. Then mother more brothers came along after the war. He played the cello and I played the tarinet and he and I and my mother used to sing a lot together and harmonize. She being Irish had a tremendous fund of folk songs which we learned.

James Burke3:58

And as long as I can remember, we sang and played music. So, yes, music was a sort of m uh the headmaster at the school hammer to said once that the only thing that stopped me being a hooligan to my mother was music. It kept me off the streets, yes. But what kind of background was it? Was it a poor background?

Presenter4:10

Yeah.

James Burke4:13

They weren't very well off, no. They married each other against everybody's wishes and were thrown out, and in fact left Ireland and came to live in England after the war.

James Burke4:21

And had a rather difficult time. I don't remember us ever having any spare money.

James Burke4:25

But we were a very tightly knit family.

James Burke4:28

And uh it was a very valuable upbringing, I felt, because

James Burke4:32

They imposed no presuppositions on us. You were what you were, and you became what you became. And I remember going in and

James Burke4:39

saying to my mother one day that I had gone into Oxford, and she said, Oh, that's nice.

James Burke4:43

There was no pressure of any kind whatsoever. And I remember I was given the front door key, as it were, when I was about eleven or twelve.

James Burke4:51

And just told to be careful.

Presenter4:52

Getting into Oxford of course, I mean the no money in the family, that must have been quite difficult. Uh I mean, you you'll have to be very bright, I suppose, and pass over

James Burke4:59

Yeah.

Presenter4:59

Yeah.

James Burke4:59

I'm a product of the 1944 Education Act. I think without that, I would not have ever been able to go to Oxford because whatever money they might have had, they certainly never got.

Presenter5:00

Product of the nineteen four

Presenter5:01

No.

James Burke5:07

So I was a scholarship boy, yes. I mean, uh which in those days was was fine. I mean, I you didn't need very much money and what you needed you got from the state.

James Burke5:19

So that's how I got through. Another choice of record, please, James. Well, now what happened about clarinet playing was that when I went into national service I ran up a large mess bill one day and I had to pay it because you had to pay it. And so I sold the clarinets to pay the bill and with the money left over I bought a guitar and I've played the guitar ever since.

James Burke5:38

And, as you know, in the business we're in.

James Burke5:41

You spend a lot of time traveling and a little time practising. And somehow my life goes in waves professionally. I'm at home doing a lot of research or writing, and then I'm away doing a lot of filming. When I'm at home, I practise. This piece, this next piece, is the

James Burke5:55

The apex each time of the curve. I never get any better than this, but I'm almost always worse than this. It's Tarega's Caprico Arab.

Presenter7:03

The soloist there was Eric Hill.

Presenter7:06

Jensberg, after Oxford you went into teaching, didn't you? You went in fact to to Italy.

James Burke7:11

Yes, I like many people who who did a a degree in the arts side in ox at Oxford in the early sixties.

James Burke7:17

There were no obvious jobs besides selling margarine for ICI, you know, management training, and that didn't appeal.

James Burke7:23

And

James Burke7:24

So in an effort really to avoid a decision, I took a job at Bologna teaching at the university.

James Burke7:31

and running a language school, about which I knew almost nothing, but since the language was my own I felt I was a step ahead of the game.

James Burke7:38

And I learned fairly rapidly. And I went there for one year and stayed just under eight.

James Burke7:43

Halfway through switching to Rome, where the Language Institute had a bigger setup. I went down there. And they were probably the happiest years of my life, except, of course, since being married. Why was that? Why would have taken you happy? Well, because I think at that particular time it was the part of the great economic miracle of the sixties, whether it happened here or in Italy. So the world was in a kind of onward and upward mood. There was nothing you couldn't do. There seemed to be opportunities to earn lots of money and live a wonderful life and have a good time and so on and so forth. And at the age of twenty something, to be dumped into a foreign culture.

James Burke8:18

Where the food is the best in Italy and the women are the most beautiful perhaps in the world. They have curious blue-black hair and fluorescent green eyes in Bologna, and it's a mixture hard to resist. So I had a pretty good time for a number of years, lotus eating. And you know that it's going to stop. So that makes it all the more enjoyable. That's why I regard Italy as a disease rather than a country for which fortunately there's no cure. And I go back there any time I can.

Presenter8:42

And in a sense, of course, too, although you didn't know it at the time you were preparing yourself for for the future, because in fact teaching is what you've done on television.

James Burke8:48

Yes, I suppose so. I'm really a teacher writ large or writ something on television to bigger classroom, yeah.

Presenter8:49

Yes.

James Burke8:54

Another choice of record, please. Well, that's tied to Italy. It's a piece of music called Ieti Veria Vazzar.

Presenter9:00

Devariamazo.

James Burke9:02

which is in Neapolitan dialect means that I I it means I want to kiss you. And it's sung by a woman called Miranda Martino who has a wonderful voice and I think it's her voice uh brings back for me all that tremendous the strength of the emotions of the Italians which I admire so much.

Speaker 49:19

Pietavur vasa

Speaker 49:33

Mauruma Disha er Shada.

Speaker 49:42

And I should

Presenter9:47

James Burke, so now you're in in Italy. I mean, how on earth did television come into your life?

James Burke9:51

Uh

Presenter9:52

I was on a b

James Burke9:53

I was in Rome once with a Canadian journalist friend of mine and moaning and groaning about the fact that the students were stupid and I was fed up with the job. And he said, There's an ad in the back page of the local paper. It says British television company requires director reporter and I said, I can't do either of those jobs. And he said, they don't know you can't. And as a sort of dare, I went to an interview and they said.

James Burke10:14

We only care that you speak Italian. And I said, I do. And they said, they all say that. And we'll have to test you. Now you can leave now with no loss of face. And I said, no, test me. And they brought an Italian film crew and said, speak Italian to them. So I went into Roman dialect. And I said, listen, fellas, I don't know one end of a camera from the other, but if you teach me everything you know, I'll buy a big we'll have a big party at the end of the first film. And they said, good deal. So when asked if I spoke Italian, they said yes very well. Like a native it. And I got the job and went to Sicily and the cameraman, who was brilliant, taught me everything he knew and I don't think I've learnt anything since.

Presenter10:39

Yes.

James Burke10:46

Uh

Presenter10:46

That was Granado's television, wasn't it? Yeah, it was Granado.

James Burke10:46

That was gonna

James Burke10:47

It was Granada, World The World Tonight, now called The World in Action.

Presenter10:49

That's right. And and uh you change your name to the

James Burke10:50

That's right.

James Burke10:52

Oh, yes. The man who was running the programme in those days was a wonderful Australian, I think one of the foremost influences in my television life, called Hewitt. And he said to me, Well, I'm going to give you the job, but there's only one thing wrong, and that's your name. Because of all first sons in my family being called John James, I was known as Jack, because grandfather and my father had James and John Sheared between them. And he said, Jack Burke sounds as if you've had a bad meal. And I said, It had never occurred to me. And he said, Well, it had occurred to everybody. Have you got anything else? And I said, Well, my name's John James. And he said, Well, John will send them all to sleep. James Burke sounds like a defrocked Protestant priest. We'll call you James Burke. So I became James Burke. Another choice of record, please. This next bit of music, it doesn't remind me of anything. It's just a piece of music I like very much. In fact, I like any of the last quartets of Beethoven. This particular bit is a bit of the fourth movement from.

Presenter11:30

Bit.

James Burke11:41

Uh They're one of the last Beethoven string quartets.

Presenter12:44

That's part of the fourth movement of Beethoven's string quartet in A minor op. one hundred and thirty two, played by the Amadeus Quartet.

Presenter12:51

Jinnsberg, let's now talk about that moment in your life when you became, in quotes, the household name or the household face. I mean, the utensil, yes. Talking about Tomorrow's World, of course, which you made very much your own and developed this very unique style.

James Burke12:56

I mean all

James Burke12:58

A utensil.

Presenter13:07

performance that you have. How did that come about?

James Burke13:10

Was that similar boat from the blue or? Yes, it was a boat from the blue. I was living in Italy and uh doing work for Granada and they asked me if I'd come back to Manchester to work and I said Rome to Manchester didn't appeal and so I gave up a television career as soon as I'd started it.

Presenter13:11

Yes, it was

James Burke13:21

And about three or four months later, Tomorrow's World contacted me and said, We're doing some stories in Italy and we'd like you to just fill in and I said, Fine and and then after they went back and looked at the stuff, they said, Would you like to come back to England? and I asked for a return ticket just in case. And I've never spent the other half, as it were. And I came back and started uh

James Burke13:41

It could as easily have been a programme about the arts or a programme about religion. I mean, it was broadcasting. It it fascinated me at the time. So I took it whatever it was. But you had no no particular interest in science at all. I found that extraordinary. I I dropped science when I was sixteen, fifteen, before O level well, you have to do math, but that's the minimum. I did that.

Presenter13:53

I find that extraordinary.

James Burke14:00

And then I was arts all the way. I I was in the sort of radar side of the Air Force and I suppose a bit of that rubbed off. But I was more interested really in in what happens w in television and radio rather than the material. In other words, the I suppose ultimately the educative, informative side of it.

James Burke14:16

And in the sixties, of course, Harold Wilson's White Hot Technology Revolution and so on. So there's very much that feeling in the air anyway. So it's an attractive proposition.

Presenter14:24

Was it, as I mentioned at the beginning of the programme in the introduction, that some critic said, was it to showbiz into science? I mean, you bridled a little bit, I saw when I read that out. Do you object to that?

James Burke14:34

I think it's very unfortunate that in this in this in these decadent times it's very fashionable to sneer at enthusiasm.

James Burke14:41

It's very fashionable to sneer at people who take things too

James Burke14:45

Interestedly.

James Burke14:47

I suppose they did the same thing at the end of the Roman Empire, really. But I I it's not enthusiasm, I think, that I try to project. It's interest. Uh I believe that if I watch somebody doing something on television or listen to them on the radio and they look or sound bored with the material, why on earth should I be interested?

James Burke15:03

And the other thing I try to do is

James Burke15:05

Especially with scientific material, which becomes increasingly complex for ordinary people to handle, and yet they increasingly have decisions to make in their lives which relate to science and technology.

James Burke15:15

I think you have to try and make the material as accessible as possible, and to that end I use the kind of language that many of the critics don't like.

James Burke15:22

You're not allowed to scratch your behind when you talk about Aristotle that basically in a nutshell.

James Burke15:26

And I believe unless you do such things

James Burke15:29

You frighten people. Our educational system

James Burke15:32

Many educational systems around the world shut out

James Burke15:36

the vast majority of people at a very early age and label them failures.

James Burke15:39

And their brains are the same size as mine and the same size as Einstein's.

James Burke15:43

The system cannot fit each p person individually, and so it labels them failures. They're out there with inquisitive brains and intelligences, and I think you have to do something for those people.

James Burke15:53

And that's why I suppose I I have become what is known as enthusiastic.

Presenter15:57

It's interesting that you thought that what I quoted was a criticism of you. I didn't see it as complimentary.

James Burke16:03

Oh, well the trouble is, you see, I always associate the word enthusiasm with the most destructive criticism of my work ever by Clive James, and he set the tone years ago when he referred to something called the Burke Smirk.

James Burke16:15

And it's very hard to live that, Dan.

Presenter16:16

That's just a clever remark. Well, not even clever, that's just a remark. But uh interesting about this this thing about informing on television, I mean I suppose a lot of people would say that uh what television does is it it it can tease an informing

James Burke16:28

Interest. But it can't fulfill its. Oh yes, I don't think you can confer degrees on television and that's precisely why I've never gone and worked on programming that you see, for example, on BBC Two.

Presenter16:29

Oh yes, I did.

James Burke16:38

You you can dip into that kind of stuff if you're already motivated. You can watch a professor speaking about ancient Greek culture if that's what you want. But on on a mass channel, I think

James Burke16:47

The most you can do is is stimulate, and you can hope that uh people will go in.

James Burke16:54

Take a little more interest or maybe even read a book about the subject. The best kind of letters that I ever get are letters from people who never say, I have understood this subject or you have made me understood totally what this is. That you get letters that say, I didn't think I was capable of understanding this. I don't know if I am now, but I'm I'm gonna have a go. That's the ultimate accolade, I think, for the work one tries to do.

Presenter17:15

Yeah.

James Burke17:15

No.

Presenter17:15

What chose a record?

James Burke17:16

But Please

Presenter17:16

Uh

James Burke17:17

But

James Burke17:17

This is a piece of music that I suppose reminds me of the early folk singing days, um because it's a very beautiful folk song from the Uver uh sung by Kiriti Kanawa.

Presenter18:28

That was the ballero from Songs of the Auvern sung by Kiri Takanawa.

Presenter18:32

James, I I think that uh in a in a fairly impressive career on television that the the thing that uh that most people would remember about you is is your commentary on the Apollo mission. What kind of

Presenter18:43

What part has it played in your life, and how significant is it in your life?

James Burke18:46

How creative?

James Burke18:47

Well, there's no doubt in terms of career that it made my career. I mean, I I was on television so frequently as to become a part of the furniture. So there's no doubt that that that did it. I think it um it moved me away from Tomorrow's World, it moved me away from uh shop window technology because because of I suppose the feeling I had that the whole Apollo mission was understood wrongly by the public, it was understood as soap opera, it was understood as showbiz, in fact.

Speaker 419:13

Hmm.

James Burke19:13

And that that's ultimately why public attention shifted from it and why the American taxpayer refused to go on paying for it, because it was sold as a bit of showbiz. And when you've seen the same plot f five times round, why should you be interested anymore? You know, the rocket goes bang, they go to the men and they come back again.

James Burke19:28

So in a sense in my own career it moved me towards larger projects, towards more complicated subjects if you like and away from gee whiz technology.

Presenter19:31

Dodge.

Presenter19:37

But going back on that and and and remaining on the point you made about it being sold like soap opera, in fact you made yourself quite unpopular, didn't you, at the time, with one or two people, by actually suggesting that this was so, that it was a public relations exercise.

James Burke19:48

Well, there's no doubt I mean, historically there's no doubt it was a public relations exercise. Uh Jack Kennedy was looking for something to take the heat off him on the Bay of Pigs fiasco, and when Johnson suggested the moon, he said, Great. I mean, wherever it is, great.

Presenter19:49

Uda

James Burke20:01

And uh

James Burke20:02

There was that, and that was very unpopular to say that at the time. Also.

James Burke20:06

The moon itself.

James Burke20:08

Was questioned seriously by many scientists I talked to: the value of going to the moon, and in fact.

Presenter20:11

Value of

James Burke20:13

Over the years very little of value came back from those missions.

James Burke20:18

Because it did not hold the secrets of the cosmos. It didn't hold the secrets of the beginning of the solar system as they thought it might.

James Burke20:26

Many scientists believed that before they went, but they were not listened to because it was a major PR exercise. Apollo eleven itself, the great historic l step forward mankind.

James Burke20:35

Was scientifically virtually valueless. In terms of engineering, of course, getting there was a great thing to do.

James Burke20:40

But I'm afraid I've always felt very strongly with the scientists that we can do a great deal more.

James Burke20:45

Without men in space, uh it costs so much more to man-rate a rocket and when it goes bang like Challenger did and people are unprepared for it.

James Burke20:54

I mean, all that counseling in America for those kids who were watching when it blew up.

James Burke20:58

I believe that all that counselling was necessary because they had never ever been taught to conceive of failure, that it was a kind of Hollywood thing, that people didn't get hurt.

James Burke21:07

And it was a deep shock to America because America had had regarded the whole thing as soap opera, and in soap opera nobody really dies.

James Burke21:14

So I was unpopular in some areas for saying that throughout the missions.

James Burke21:18

But it's a great pity

James Burke21:20

That that more of the scientific community was was not was not listened to because America goes in great waves.

James Burke21:27

And at the time it was felt, well, we've got to ride this bandwagon as far as we can, get the public interested in science. But then of course if you soap opera it and interest goes, it plummets. So following Apollo, the scientific community has suffered terribly because of reaction.

Presenter21:41

I suppose though from the from the sort of very simplistic point of view, I mean there was that moment in time, wasn't there, when we all looked at that moon and thought, Struth, they're up there. It kinda somehow put you in perspective, didn't it?

James Burke21:50

Uh

James Burke21:52

Yeah

Presenter21:53

Yeah.

James Burke21:53

Yes. So there was a moment I felt when we all felt we lived on on a small ball of mud, you know, instead of uh living in s one hundred and seventy different countries. But it faded fast. And I think it faded fast because of the PR exercise that accompanied it. It

Presenter21:54

Uh

Presenter21:59

Instead of

Presenter22:03

And I think

James Burke22:08

It was never really properly sold to the public and to the world at large for its potential scientific benefits. I don't mean going to the moon, I mean going into space.

James Burke22:16

And the potential scientific benefits are quite great if you don't spend massive amounts of money putting people up there, I believe. Although it has to be said that in the same ten years

James Burke22:26

During the Apollo missions, American women spent more money on lipstick.

James Burke22:29

So it's all a matter of relative free.

Speaker 422:31

Your relative.

James Burke22:33

Relative value. They spent more on lipstick than on the space. More than $24 million. Another choice of record piece, yeah. This is a piece of music that I think I would like to sit and listen to as the sun goes down and feel, as I often do. I think it's perhaps being Irish. I think we tend to loneliness from time to time, introspection and all that. And this piece of music, while it's not very Irish, is intensely introspective. It's the Swan of Tornela.

Presenter24:00

That was part of the swana tionello by Sebelius, played by the Halley Orchestra, conducted by Sir John Barbaroli.

Presenter24:07

Jasper, you you've got my award, I think, as the bravest man on television because

Presenter24:12

There's one particular show I do remember, one Burke special, where you you stood in front of a live studio audience at peak viewing time and tried to explain the theory of relativity.

Speaker 424:19

Uh

Presenter24:20

There's one thing to be said about you, Jason. I mean you're not predictable, aren't you?

James Burke24:23

I think the easiest way to get ideas into people's head is to approach them from what the Americans call left field. You know, being unpredictable is part of the technique, I think, of teaching. But with a live audience, the saddest thing about that particular night was that I looked around as we went along and I could see some of them just were not going to get it, or I was going to fail to do it for some of them, and that's very hard to take. When there's nobody there, you just go blithely on thinking everybody at home is loving it.

Presenter24:46

Uh

James Burke24:46

Uh Brilliant.

Presenter24:46

In no way dampened the the your attitude toward this kind of television programme or the need

James Burke24:51

I think that w we desperately need to understand the educative potential of television and desperately need to to stop using it to sell soapflakes or find ways of using other other parts of the the wave band to use it educatively.

James Burke25:07

You know, increasingly it becomes necessary for people to re-skill themselves through their lives. The era when the old medieval testing of your memory and giving you a degree or a qualification is going very fast. And when it's gone, people will have nothing to hang on to. A qualification will become meaningless in ten years after you get it. And it seems to me that unless we have some kind of

James Burke25:28

Permanent education available.

James Burke25:31

people are going to find themselves in very dramatically difficult situations. And I believe that, um

James Burke25:39

That the only medium really to use f for this is television. The Americans do a little of it. The great thing about television is that you can give great teachers to many, many people without them either having to pay his fees or go to where he teaches.

James Burke25:51

You can give people the experience of the world, not just in terms of gee whiz, look at this condor soaring, but in terms of of enhancing their lives and giving them I mean, knowledge is power, I think.

James Burke26:03

power to make of your life what you want it to be. And the educational system, through no fault of its own, is incapable of giving that power to everyone. It can only do what it can manage to do with the limitations of the money and the and the techniques available at the time. How do you handle the vast mass of people for whom this gift cannot be provided? I believe the only way in the future is through the use of television, whether it is narrow casting or cable vision or broadcasting. The the thing that worries me a little bit about the

James Burke26:31

The tendency th towards fragmentation in the more general sense of television broadcasting today.

James Burke26:37

Is is where will the sense of community go?

James Burke26:40

I mean, I don't just mean sitting in the pub talking about last night's episode of whatever.

James Burke26:45

But there is a sort of commonality of experience when you see broadcast programmes. And in the in the old sense of the B B C there if I felt there was a great commonality of of culture, the B B C Rhe the Rethian mission.

James Burke26:58

To educate. Okay, it was a little oligarchic, but but it provided things that in people's local communities with the limitations of funding and so on and everybody, they could never have otherwise.

Presenter27:09

Another choice of record, please Jamie.

James Burke27:10

This is something that will remind me on my island of all the stuff I've just said about television because it's a piece of music that we used after Apollo had landed on the moon, but for many of the rest of the missions. And it will remind me of that adventure, I suppose, in a rather sad sense because of what happened to it. It's um Copeland's fanfare for the common man.

Speaker 428:05

Uh

Presenter28:25

Copeland's fanfare for the common man played by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra conducted by Antel Durati.

Presenter28:30

Jamesburg, let's now talk a little bit about the future, because you've not been on television for how long now?

James Burke28:34

About a year and a bit.

Presenter28:36

And so when are we going to see you next then?

James Burke28:38

Uh october nineteen ninety.

James Burke28:41

Uh

Presenter28:41

So what was taking so long to to produce?

James Burke28:44

Well, these large mega bores, you know, ten hours long, take about three years to make. And I'm just beginning I've spent the last year getting together I believe the fan fancy phrase is getting the financing together. But it does take an awful long time.

Presenter28:58

So that's not a B B C venture then?

James Burke29:00

No, it'll be financed entirely from America, although it will go on the air in this country. And it's taken me about a year to get it together because these things do.

James Burke29:07

And it will take three years to make, one and a half years to research and write, and one and a half years to shoot and edit.

James Burke29:13

And it's about

James Burke29:15

information but

James Burke29:17

It I it's not really about information in the sense of computers and and gadgets, but I want to really try and look at life on the planet in terms of the extent to which information is life.

James Burke29:28

That that it is information that is the structure and the process and the and the way life functions and develops and how why evolution is what it is. And that the way in which uh the kind of information and the way it is passed structure what a society does and thinks and what it believes knowledge to be and why and how it directs itself. So that's what it's about in a nutshell. At least I think that's what it's about. I'll let you know in three years' time.

Presenter29:52

And what about uh p p projects beyond that? I mean, do you do you think beyond that? I mean, have you got a list of things that you want to do?

James Burke29:58

Well, I oddly enough, as as it happens, I'm going to the States uh to talk to um

Presenter29:58

What I

James Burke30:04

A chap I did a programme with a long time ago, a well-known American actor whose n I can't name'cause we haven't had a contract yet, but we're going to set up a company, an international company, to make fairly large scale international documentary programming because we feel that as the national networks increasingly perhaps can either not afford

Presenter30:15

Don't

James Burke30:25

or become slightly less interested in documentary work and the educational type of stuff, that there will continue to be a market all round the world and that somebody has to make these things. And unless you work on a sort of umbrella international scale,

James Burke30:36

the funding will not be worth it.

James Burke30:39

That that should keep me going till the year 2000.

James Burke30:43

Toward

Presenter30:43

To

James Burke30:44

Yeah.

Presenter30:44

Yeah.

James Burke30:44

Yeah.

Presenter30:44

Uh

James Burke30:44

Uh

Presenter30:44

Yeah.

James Burke30:45

Yeah.

Presenter30:45

Final choice of record

James Burke30:46

Cool.

Presenter30:46

Okay.

James Burke30:46

Uh Okay.

James Burke30:47

I think on the island I would probably have to have a bit of music that would just m make me think, and this music always does. It's uh I put it on when I've got a knotty problem, as it were, to unknot.

James Burke30:57

It's um the beginning of the prelude from Bach's number one suite of the suite for unaccompanic cello.

Presenter32:05

The soloist was Paul Tortellier.

Presenter32:07

Jamesburg, you're now on your desert island. You've got your eight records. Imagine that seven are washed away, you're left with one. Which one would

James Burke32:14

Oh, the the tortillier, the the cello sweets. I mean, I could probably last the rest of my life on those sweets. And what about the book? Assume you've got the works of Shakespeare and the Bible?

Presenter32:14

Oh, I heard.

James Burke32:23

I would like to take the works of Homer in the original with a built-in grammar, because.

James Burke32:28

One of the things I was always sorry about was that the school I went to stopped making Greek uh mandatory the year before I got there, so I didn't learn Greek.

James Burke32:35

And I've always wanted to, so I use the time to do that. And what about the luxury object inanimate? Oh, a guitar and an inexhaustible supply of strings. I've got to get beyond the Capriccio Arab.

Speaker 432:45

Hmm.

James Burke32:46

Yes, but thank you very much indeed. Thank you.

Speaker 332:55

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