Neil Kinnock

Speaker 10:00

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.

Speaker 10:08

The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen eighty eight, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:28

My castaway this week is a man who for nearly twenty years, from the moment he became President of his students' union to the time he was made leader of his party, seemed to enjoy a life of endless success. Luck walked with him, they said. Since then, however, success has proved rather more elusive, which is one of the reasons perhaps he remains the leader of Her Majesty's opposition. He is of course Neil Kinnock.

Presenter0:54

mister Kinnock, you've been leader of your party for four and a half years. You've lost one general election, and Downing Street looks as distant as ever. Do you get the feeling that your luck is running out?

Neil Kinnock1:04

No, I don't think so. I've been lucky longer than that twenty years, actually. I was very fortunate in my upbringing, the kind of community and family that I belong to. And it continued to run on, and in many, many ways I'm still a very fortunate person in my family particularly, but also with my friends, and I think too with the kind of ideas and opportunities that exist. So whilst not depending totally on luck, I think luck comes out of hard work as often as not. Then it's always useful. Napoleon said, Give me lucky generals. I believe the same thing.

Presenter1:37

Do you believe in fate, though, in destiny, that somebody up there has got it all worked out for you?

Neil Kinnock1:41

There have been some incidents in my life in which uh the first thought that has occurred to me after

Neil Kinnock1:48

Escaping, getting out of it.

Neil Kinnock1:50

There's been somebody up there uh loves me. But I think that to depend on fate is a mistake. Just let it come along in uh those respects. Other things possibly can be planned. There can be great strategies. Some of them come to nothing. Others actually work. So it's a mixture of luck and planning, I think, right down the line.

Presenter2:10

Well now fate has decided in the meantime that you should be cast away on this um the BBC's desert island with eight records. Have you found it difficult to choose them?

Neil Kinnock2:18

Impossible. And I can get a hundred replacements for every single one that I'm going to take to the desert island with me, simply because of the Catholic nature of the taste that I've got. And the fact that for every one record here that evokes memories and I think could give me three or four minutes worth of pleasure and a half an hour's worth of reflection, there will be many, many, many others that could do exactly the same thing. So we could do a series.

Neil Kinnock2:47

Yeah.

Presenter2:48

Let's have the first recording.

Neil Kinnock2:50

The first record is Bryn Calvaria and it's conducted by a great friend of mine, Owen Awell, who's in university with me, and it is a magnificent hymn. There's a chorus in it, Tie gest ange, Tie gest Ifern, Tie gest satan, dande droid, which essentially says that Christ will trample evil and the devils and Satan under his feet. It evokes much more than musical ideas with me.

Presenter4:04

The hymn Bryn Calvaria performed at the 1978 Great Welsh National Singing Festival. The conductor was Orwine Arwell Hughes. Neil Kinneck, your socialist pedigree is impeccable. You were born the son of a miner and a district nurse in the Welsh Valleys. And more than that, of course, in the constituency of one of the great British Socialist heroes, Aniron Bevan.

Neil Kinnock4:27

Persh.

Presenter4:28

Did you know him?

Neil Kinnock4:29

No, I met him once or twice, but uh never in any sense intimately. He was always a great figure up there as far as I was concerned, both physically and uh ideologically. You speak of a worse socialist pedigree. I actually think that people can have a good socialist pedigree wherever they come from. But there was this coincidence of fate again, possibly, that gave me marvelous parents, people who

Neil Kinnock4:52

were totally committed to me and to the family and to the community and were always outward looking.

Presenter4:58

Were they politically active?

Neil Kinnock4:59

Not active, not until my mother retired. She was a district nurse and worked for the Monmouth County Council and had decided very early on, despite being a very strong socialist, that she'd never join the Labour Party whilst working for the County Council because she didn't want anybody thinking that she'd gained preferment as a consequence of political contact. The idea that anyone would think my mother got preferment as a district nurse was daft. But the moment that she finished work, she and my father went down to the ward and joined the Labour Party. And it was typical of them to do it in that way.

Presenter5:33

What sort of household was it that you lived in? How poor were you?

Neil Kinnock5:38

Oh, we weren't poor. Both my mother and my father were working. My father

Neil Kinnock5:42

was a stakhanovite. He worked and worked and worked, literally until he dropped, and he always had tough jobs.

Neil Kinnock5:50

He always worked long hours. As long as they were paying him, he was prepared to go to work.

Neil Kinnock5:55

He's good trade unionist, uh but not terribly active.

Neil Kinnock5:58

And my mother worked as well'cause she was a district nurse, so that most years we had a holiday, for instance, and our house was uh comfortable. We lived in a prefab and I was never conscious of any real shortage of money. I mean, we never had a car, and I was fifteen when I bought our first television set for ten quid a second hand set. But it couldn't have been thought in any way as a poor household.

Presenter6:23

Let's have your second record.

Neil Kinnock6:25

The second record is an aria from Il Travattore, Di Calapira, see the pyres burning, and sung by Luciano Pavarotti. And the reason for having this in is I simply like it. I like a great deal of opera. But this one again is evocative, and we also saw it performed in the Vienna State Opera in 1985, sat in Maria Theresa's box, which is a special thrill.

Speaker 16:57

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 17:05

Where is this one?

Speaker 17:07

For God's alpha.

Speaker 17:28

Mm-hmm.

Presenter7:40

The aria di Quella Pira from Verdi's Il Travattore, sung by Luciano Pavarotti.

Presenter7:47

Neil Koenig, we're not exactly a a model schoolboy. You you were in fact a bit of a flop at school.

Neil Kinnock7:52

Oh yes. It would irritate me immensely if my own children took the same attitude towards school. Uh I think one of the problems was I did very well at the eleven plus.

Neil Kinnock8:03

And like a lot of other people of that kind of success and that kind of generation.

Neil Kinnock8:09

I decided subconsciously that that was it. That here we were, we were in this super duper grammar school and a smart uniform and everybody calling each other sir and teachers in guns and a terrific emphasis on academic success and it was all going to be all right. And when I woke up three years later, of course it wasn't all right. I was having a lot of fun.

Presenter8:30

Osmosis has not occurred. You've not sort of taken it in with no work. What what did you think you were going to do at that stage? I mean, were you going to to leave as soon as you could and go down the pit like your dad?

Neil Kinnock8:40

Not at that stage. When I got to s fifteen I d disliked school intensely. I liked the lads, liked a lot of the teachers, had a lot of uh good times.

Neil Kinnock8:50

But I didn't think it was going anywhere.

Neil Kinnock8:52

And I wanted to be a coal miner, I wanted to be a soldier, I wanted to be a policeman.

Neil Kinnock8:58

I think for similar reasons in all cases, and actually took all the initial steps in every single case when my parents discovered there was hell.

Presenter9:08

So if your parents hadn't pressed you to stay on, you would have ended up now being a a a decent beer swilling, rugby playing Valleys lad?

Neil Kinnock9:17

That's possible. I think unlikely. Because there were always some other purposes. Uh it sounds pious to say so, but uh since I think it I might as well say it.

Neil Kinnock9:27

There were always other things to be done, uh targets to be achieved. And I think the main thrust was a political commitment.

Presenter9:36

Oh, you felt that even then?

Neil Kinnock9:36

Yeah.

Neil Kinnock9:37

Oh, sure. Yes. I I joined the party when I was just under fifteen.

Presenter9:41

So you knew then you were going to do something. Neil Kinnock of Tredega was going to get out there and do something about it all.

Neil Kinnock9:48

Yes, but I never made a calculation uh about levels of doing it.

Neil Kinnock9:54

The idea of being an MP, for instance, was very distant. And even the members of parliament I came to know very well, like Jim Canahan and Claudian Hughes and Michael Foote, all great friends, all ultra decent men, apart from their political accomplishments.

Neil Kinnock10:12

were still a distance away when I was in my early twenties and knew them properly first. So that the idea of becoming a Member of Parliament, let alone leader of a party, of the party, the only one that's ever existed as far as I'm concerned,

Neil Kinnock10:28

Was simply not within the realms of thought, really. I thought that the activity would be at a different level.

Presenter10:36

Let's have your third record.

Neil Kinnock10:38

The third record was my mother's favourite, Hedel Nash, singing the serenade from the Fair Maid of Perth, and it is a beautiful song, but it's so

Neil Kinnock10:48

reminiscent of uh so much about home that it would be the kind of thing I'd want to take me if I was going to be stuck by myself for a long time.

Speaker 110:59

Let my song to fit him.

Speaker 111:05

The oh thee welcome.

Speaker 111:12

Yeah.

Speaker 211:16

Oh, look at God in Him, the power to see Him.

Speaker 111:23

Yeah.

Speaker 211:23

Uh

Speaker 111:24

And paradise bring to me here on earth.

Presenter11:49

The serenade from Bizet's The Fair Maid of Perth, sung by Hedel Nash. Now you mentioned that that that that serenade from The Fair Maid of Perth was your mother's favourite aria. Can we talk for a moment about your parents?

Presenter12:01

They both died in nineteen seventy one with within a few days of each other.

Neil Kinnock12:05

Yeah.

Presenter12:05

How did it happen? And it's a most terrible coincidence that they should die within a few days.

Neil Kinnock12:10

I don't think it was a coincidence. I think my mother literally died of a broken heart. She had suffered bronchelasma very severely right from the winter of 1947. She was a district nurse and caught pneumonia twice in a couple of months. Never properly looked after herself, always kept on working. And that gave her various kinds of uh weaknesses.

Neil Kinnock12:30

And uh my father had uh suffered from hypertension and some heart trouble, right from his late fifties. Not unusual.

Neil Kinnock12:38

Uh he eventually um died after a week in hospital. And then I think that strain and the awful sense of grief was too much for my mother. And uh she died

Neil Kinnock12:49

In seconds. And whilst I was with my father when he died, I I didn't get to my mother until just after she died.

Neil Kinnock12:57

And it was a searing experience, and obviously, the memory.

Neil Kinnock13:02

always lives with you. But I think the main memory for myself and everybody else who knew them is of them

Neil Kinnock13:09

Alive. Very much alive.

Presenter13:11

By that time, of course, you you were an MP. You'd been an MP for a year, so that they'd seen that. They must have been very proud of that.

Neil Kinnock13:15

Yeah.

Neil Kinnock13:17

They were, but typically they took it on the chin. When I was selected for what is regarded as a very safe seat, then called Bedwesti, I called my mother from the selection meeting and said I won.

Neil Kinnock13:30

And Glennys, of course, was six months pregnant, then Stephen was on the way. And she said, Oh, that's excellent, that's very good. Now she said, You go home and make a nice cup of tea and get Glenys to put her feet up. My father's reaction was, I said to him, Westminster next stop, Dad, because we had a twenty five thousand majority. You know, it was reasonably safe.

Neil Kinnock13:49

Amdy said, Oh, you don't know, he said, People can be funny.

Presenter13:53

Do you think they would ever have guessed that you would be leader of the party?

Neil Kinnock13:58

No. My mother did have a speculation when I was a child that the family used to rag her about that I would be Viceroy of India.

Presenter14:08

Let's have another record.

Neil Kinnock14:09

My next record is An Inevitable.

Neil Kinnock14:13

It's the finale from uh Brahms Symphony No. One with uh George Schulte uh conducting. It's the tape that was uh

Neil Kinnock14:22

being played when I turned the car over at slightly

Neil Kinnock14:27

in excess of seventy miles an hour on the M four back in july nineteen eighty three, just after the general election, in the middle of the leadership contest, and the car was scrambled.

Neil Kinnock14:38

When I took the tape out of the car and put it in the tape deck the next day, it played. Now, that's one reason for playing it, but the other reason is that when we started to change organization style presentation in the Labour Party, something I'd always wanted to do and could do as leader, we decided to use as our theme music these few bars from the Brahms number one.

Neil Kinnock15:06

And off they went with the idea and came back with it pushed through a synthesizer or some such apparatus, I don't know what they call them.

Neil Kinnock15:14

and it comes back clonk, clonk, clonk. And it's very evocative, and people quite like it. But I swore then that one day I would get the Brahms number one played properly on the radio, or at least on a desert island.

Presenter16:23

Part of the finale from Brahms Symphony No. One, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sir George Schulte. You kind of expect you and Roy Hattersley to walk in with Red Roses in the back.

Neil Kinnock16:33

Michael White wrote the commentary on the launch of our election campaign and dun, dun, dun, dun, dun behind. And Roy and I walking on carrying the election manifesto. Mike White, who's a dear friend now stationed in Washington, said a gay wedding.

Presenter16:53

Talking of weddings, we've rather glossed over how Glenys arrived on the scene, your wife. You met her at University, Cardiff University.

Neil Kinnock16:59

Here's that.

Presenter17:01

She says that she remembers a loud ginger person who offered her a leaflet and asked her for a date.

Neil Kinnock17:07

Flattering as always, Dennis. That was just how it happened in the lunch queue. And uh.

Neil Kinnock17:13

She, as it were, took my eye immediately, and has been taking it ever since.

Presenter17:18

And they called you together the power and the glory. What was all that about?

Neil Kinnock17:22

Well, one of the chaps there, John Collins, wrote a profile for the student newspaper in which he coined this phrase, the power and the glory, in which I figured as the power and her as the glory. Subsequently, more mischievous profilers have turned it round so that she's become the power and I've become the glory. But the original, she insists, sticks.

Presenter17:43

Some people say, I mean, uh perhaps that's where this comes from, that that that she in a way is um and I don't want to be insulting, but she's cleverer than you she's more canny than you are.

Neil Kinnock17:54

Um

Presenter17:54

Do you think that's true?

Neil Kinnock17:56

I don't know, I've no idea. She's got

Neil Kinnock18:00

All of the qualities that make women superior in so many departments. Of that, there is no doubt. And I think probably a little fae gift as well. Possibly something to do with coming from the Druids country, Anglesey. I don't know what it is. A bit of second sight, I guess. I don't be too mystical. Sometimes she will admit that I get things more right than she does more quickly. But getting an admission like that out of Glennis is quite an achievement. As cunniness.

Neil Kinnock18:31

I think really it uh boils down to attitudes toward people. There's a tendency for her to think the worst and then be delighted when people demonstrate that they are of the best.

Neil Kinnock18:41

My attitude is to look for the best and then be.

Neil Kinnock18:47

pretty vengeful when I discover the worst.

Presenter18:50

Let's have another record.

Neil Kinnock18:51

The next record is a kind of compendium.

Neil Kinnock18:55

It pulls together the fifties, not only in terms of music but in terms of sentiment. And it also pulls together the late 60s and early 70s, the kind of music we were playing then and enjoying very much when we just got married, when the kids were born, when the kids were starting to grow up, and is also great music. It's Simon and Garfunkel.

Neil Kinnock19:17

Uh Uh

Speaker 119:18

Was it so hot?

Neil Kinnock19:19

It didn't have much of a plot We fell asleep Our boosters booked our reputation and shot Wake up with little Susie Wake up tonight

Speaker 219:30

Susie

Neil Kinnock19:31

Yeah.

Speaker 219:31

What are we gonna say more? What are we gonna do?

Neil Kinnock19:37

What do we wanna tell our friends?

Neil Kinnock19:42

La la wake up a little Susie Wake up little Susie

Presenter19:48

Simon and Garfunkel with Wake Up Little Susie.

Presenter19:52

Neil Kenneth, do you think you're going to get very lonely on this island? I mean, you're a gregarious chap.

Neil Kinnock19:57

I'll be off in forty eight hours. I can take a day, or possibly a bit more, by myself, not hearing the news, not knowing what's going on.

Neil Kinnock20:05

But I would bend everything. I'd play the records straight off, read the book.

Neil Kinnock20:10

And then I'd be looking round for ways of getting off, even if it meant that I had to extend my swimming from a mile the first day to two miles the next day, and then at the thousandth day make it.

Presenter20:21

Can we talk about your passion for speaking? I mean, when did that begin? When did you know that you had this power of Welsh oratory?

Neil Kinnock20:30

I have no passion for speaking. I look forward to the day when I'm going to make another single public speech. I suppose it first occurred to me, to some extent a bit in school. We had a very good debating society in school. But then when I got to university, in order to impress Glennis, I, who had made no contribution at all to the debating society in my first year, she turned up, told me that she quite liked people debating and so on. And I thought, right, this is it. I can clinch the deal. So I made a speech, which apparently went down rather well, and from then on kept on doing it.

Presenter21:05

How do you feel? Are you um upset, embarrassed, vengeful, when people accuse you of being a bit of a windbag?

Neil Kinnock21:15

Yes, because it, generally speaking, comes from people who have never been confronted with a requirement to make a real public speech in their life, not some rehearsed and formal speech, or some witty

Neil Kinnock21:31

After dinner knockabout, but to really take issues head on and have nothing.

Neil Kinnock21:37

but words and commitment to try and convince.

Neil Kinnock21:41

and advance. And consequently, therefore, since they're paid, generally speaking, say those kinds of things, that's up to them in entirely. It j makes me a bit fed up. It'd be silly to say that it doesn't. But it can't be allowed to deflect or to diminish or to depress. That would be foolish.

Presenter22:00

Let's have another record.

Neil Kinnock22:02

The next record is, I think, inevitable again for someone of my generation and views.

Neil Kinnock22:09

And it's John Lennon's Imagine.

Speaker 122:15

What do you think?

Speaker 122:19

But I'm not the only one.

Speaker 122:25

I hope someday you join the

Presenter22:37

John Lennon with Imagine.

Presenter22:39

People have called you all sorts of things compassionate and caring, firm, determined. They also call you, and it's an adjective that arises again and again when I read about you, ruthless.

Neil Kinnock22:51

Hmm.

Presenter22:51

Do you think you're ruthless?

Neil Kinnock22:54

Only to the extent

Neil Kinnock22:55

that there are objectives that need to be achieved in order to make our country more just and more productive.

Neil Kinnock23:04

And there are inhibitions to that that are largely self-inflicted by some people in the labour movement. Of that, there is no doubt.

Neil Kinnock23:12

And we've been through years of attempted persuasion, of inducement, of encouragement.

Neil Kinnock23:20

of conversation, and it still comes back to the exercise of vanity.

Neil Kinnock23:27

and people putting uh their short term interests, or what they believe them to be, before the objectives of securing that change. So when they do get in the way of that objective not of me, that doesn't matter very much, I am fairly direct, yes.

Presenter23:44

You also therefore need

Presenter23:46

great patience, which is something you seem to have been saying you haven't exactly got, that you want to rush out and bop somebody who attacks you. I mean, you do need enormous patience, don't you? Because of what you say, that if there's one thing the Labour Party needs to do now, it is to present a united front, which is something that it does seem to find really quite impossible.

Neil Kinnock24:05

Yes, and not just the front, because that won't be terribly convincing for an electorate whose memory has been scarred.

Neil Kinnock24:12

by disputation that appeared to lead absolutely nowhere. It's got to be a real bone marrow feeling. And that's the kind of unity, not some cosmetic idea that I want. So getting in the way of that is

Neil Kinnock24:26

a nuisance, a distraction. It doesn't actually determine the outcomes, but of course the impression generally given is that there's some influence being exerted, and that that makes the Labour Party basically not dependable.

Presenter24:39

But have you got the patience?

Neil Kinnock24:42

Hmm.

Presenter24:42

To wait for that to happen, or don't you, Neil Kinnock, as described heretofore, feel angry and exasperated by it?

Neil Kinnock24:52

That I'd admit to. You see, the the problem is with this job, I've had to exercise a degree of patience.

Neil Kinnock24:59

That I've never ever had to exercise in my life before. And the patience has had to be exercised in order to ensure that when a purpose is set, it is actually achieved. Now, it doesn't consist of a series of death or glory rides, much as the press and other elements would quite like that. Life to them is a series of gunfights at the Old K Corral. And life isn't really like that. So, consequently, patiently.

Neil Kinnock25:26

And I use the word prudently.

Neil Kinnock25:29

you set the objective and then you try and work things to get agreement, see that people will accept it and then implement it, rather than take drawing your sword and dashing at it, which temperamentally is what I'd much, much prefer to do.

Presenter25:40

Which temperament

Presenter25:43

Exactly. I mean, that that's the theory, but can you, Neil, can it carry that out?

Neil Kinnock25:47

Oh yes, it's being carried out. And I think too that the advantages of that system will be apparent when we form the government.

Presenter25:57

Your seventh record, please.

Neil Kinnock25:58

The seventh record is one I don't particularly like.

Neil Kinnock26:02

But I'll tell you why I'm going to ask it to be played. It's called Yada Dada by a lady called Dorrie Previn, who I've met and is a lovely lady, a very inventive and creative lady. And the reason I played is, if you're having people for supper on a Saturday night,

Neil Kinnock26:18

You know, everything's set out.

Neil Kinnock26:20

Cooking's been done, not that I've got much to do with that, but

Neil Kinnock26:23

Everything is ready to receive, and you've got twenty minutes, half an hour.

Neil Kinnock26:28

Have a drink.

Neil Kinnock26:30

And the first to the tape deck determines what's played then in that really quiet twenty five now, if it's me, it's going to be Beethoven or Haydn, at least, you know, Chopin. If it's Glenis, it's Dori Previn.

Neil Kinnock26:44

So what playing this will evoke for me

Neil Kinnock26:48

is that twenty-five minutes of total peace and confidence that comes before people knock on the door.

Presenter26:57

Let's stop talking, talking, talking, wasting precious time.

Presenter27:03

Just a lot of empty noise That isn't worth a dime.

Presenter27:10

Woods of wonder, words of weather, Should we, shouldn't we, be together?

Speaker 127:16

Yada yada, yada yada yada yada.

Presenter27:16

Yada yada

Presenter27:22

Dori Previn with Yadi Yadala Scala from Mythical Kings and Iguanas.

Presenter27:28

You once said that you would only be happy as leader of the Labour Party when you saw the furniture van moving into Downing Street. Do you think that will ever happen?

Neil Kinnock27:38

Oh, it's going to happen, very definitely, for an assortment of reasons that I can muse on in the couple of days I'm on the desert island. But it will happen because of basic values and senses and needs.

Presenter27:53

But will you be able to bear it if it never happens for you?

Neil Kinnock27:57

I don't think that the possibility arises. And in the meantime, the development of democratic socialism in the Labour Party in order to ensure that it's a compelling attraction and a dependable political direction for the British people to take is a real challenge, which

Neil Kinnock28:17

is being fulfilled, and I'm pleased to see that.

Presenter28:20

Your final record. Uh

Neil Kinnock28:22

My final record comes from an eminent artiste, my own daughter Rachel. Back when she was two and a half, I used to play her under the tape and record her saying things. Same with Steve, but very few have survived for a variety of reasons. And her great favorite at the time was a song called Horace the Horse.

Neil Kinnock28:42

And although she was positively adenoidal with a dreadful cold, I recorded this.

Neil Kinnock28:49

Everybody who hears it still these years later can't help laughing. And I think that laughing and loving are the two greatest things that human beings can do. And I really need a laugh on a desert island.

Speaker 229:03

Always saw us on the Merry-Go Rank.

Speaker 229:07

Boundar, round a round. He feeds us today found. He's the very last sauce on the very go round. The music began and the way they go. High and low, to a fro. Pero toys would always say, I'm the very last sauce of good today. Hurry quite a cry. Can he do that?

Speaker 229:33

Horace cried and cried and cried, But all the horses were head of him. Then came the day on the merry-go-round. Horace turned, looked around, Then said Gosh old G. I'm the very first horse on the merry-go-round. They were done following me.

Presenter29:53

Horace the Horse by Rachel Kinnogg.

Presenter29:59

I've often thought, you know, that at this point there should be an extra luxury, which is that one should be able to ask the castaway which person they'd like to nominate to be castaway on a desert island. I mean, is there is there anyone from the the Neil Kinnock list?

Neil Kinnock30:13

There's a very short list, all of it libeless, so I I'll wait until I'm on the desert island before announcing it.

Presenter30:20

But is it from your own party or another one?

Neil Kinnock30:23

Bits of both.

Neil Kinnock30:25

And some of them

Presenter30:27

Right. We better have the record that you would keep if seven were washed away.

Neil Kinnock30:31

I dared go home if it were any other than Horace the Horse. And given the fact that I intend my sojourn to be so short, there'll be just time to play that.

Presenter30:42

And your book? You've got the Bible, as you know, you've got Shakespeare.

Neil Kinnock30:43

You've got the Bible, as you've got Shakespeare. Which Bible and Shakespeare would actually do, I guess. But for two days, this.

Presenter30:49

For two days this

Neil Kinnock30:50

Well, perhaps a little bit longer.

Neil Kinnock30:54

I think R. H. Tawney's essays on equality, partly because they're inspirational, partly because they're so incisive and partly because in bits they're funny. And I think that would keep me going. It wouldn't send me off to sleep, which is always a great advantage.

Presenter31:09

And your luxury.

Neil Kinnock31:11

The luxury no, uh I couldn't take Radio Four with me, could I?

Neil Kinnock31:15

I think as long as

Presenter31:15

I think as long as it's a receiver and not a transmitter.

Neil Kinnock31:18

Yes.

Presenter31:19

You're kind of okay.

Neil Kinnock31:20

Yes, uh I well I think I'd take Radio Four and anybody who listens to Radio Four would know why.

Presenter31:25

Uh

Neil Kinnock31:25

Terrific.

Presenter31:25

Terrific.

Neil Kinnock31:25

Sing along a bray

Presenter31:28

Neil Skinnock, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs.

Neil Kinnock31:32

Thank you.

Speaker 131:40

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