Jeremy Isaacs

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.

Speaker 30:08

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

Presenter0:29

My castaway this week is a man who belongs to what appears nowadays to be a dwindling group of people, much loved broadcasting executives. At ITV, in the BBC and latterly as chief executive of Channel Four, he has stoutly defended the principles of public service broadcasting and been responsible for a wide range of distinguished television programmes, from Panorama to The World at War.

Presenter0:52

At the beginning of this year he deserted the minefields of the Telly for the equally treacherous territory of international opera, where, as general director designate of the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, he could enjoy influence over the other great passion in his life.

Presenter1:08

He is Jeremy Isaacs.

Presenter1:10

I wonder, Jeremy, if if you had to choose between producing a great opera or or a powerful documentary programme, which would it be?

Jeremy Isaacs1:18

If I had to do it myself, of course, I could only do the documentary because I wouldn't begin to know how to produce opera. But I mean, I haven't exchanged making programmes for making opera productions. I have exchanged presiding over a channel in which people could make decent programmes for an opera house in which I hope people will put on splendid operas and splendid ballets, because of course I've got the Royal Ballet and Sanders World's Royal Ballet as well as the Royal Opera to look after.

Presenter1:45

But let me ask you first about the island and and music, and presumably it will be your salvation.

Jeremy Isaacs1:51

Yes, it would, absolutely. I would hope to enjoy the island, but um in some weathers more than in others perhaps. But music would keep me sane, yup.

Presenter2:00

So how have you chosen the eight records?

Jeremy Isaacs2:01

I've I th I thought that at this particular point in my life, if I had to choose what to take away with me, I I could be allowed to see music as being part of the story of the loves of my life, and so I've chosen pieces that um I love and would very much want to hear again and again and again, but nevertheless pieces which remind me of how I came to be involved with music.

Presenter2:23

Shall we have the first one?

Jeremy Isaacs2:24

Yes, the first one is the quartet from Verdi's Rigoletto. And the reason I realized afterwards how much it meant to me is that there was a marvelous radio program called Much Manning in the Marsh with the late beloved Kenneth Horne and Richard Murdoch and Sam Costa.

Jeremy Isaacs2:41

In between their their jokey bits they had this marvellous music in the middle and they had a singer called Gwen Catley that used to do the interlude and for years it seems to me and I've no doubt some historian could work out exactly how long they drove me at least, Potty, by promising, because she was capable of doing the soprano part to sing next week. But it was always next week, the quartet from Rigoletta. Eventually, but I think after years of temptation and frustration and tantalizing actually, they got round to doing it. And um but it may have been the first bit of opera that I really uh heard.

Speaker 43:14

Happy Trail

Jeremy Isaacs3:34

Leg left so hard.

Speaker 43:51

I'm not sure if I can do it.

Presenter4:08

The quartet Bellafilia della More from Rigoletto, sung by Luciano Pavarotti, Huguette Tourangeot, Joan Sutherland, and Sheryl Milnes, the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Richard Bonning.

Jeremy Isaacs4:20

Uh

Presenter4:21

Jeremy, where did your love of music begin? Was it endlessly played in your house when you were small?

Jeremy Isaacs4:26

I used to listen to the radio a lot. Um in those days I believed that every single second of my life was wasted unless I was either listening to music or reading.

Presenter4:35

This was at home in Glasgow.

Jeremy Isaacs4:36

This was at home in Glasgow. And actually my first memories of listening to music on the radio would be in Bear's Den, which was just the northwest of Glasgow in Dumbartonshire. And from there we used to go in, first of all driven by my mum, on a Sunday afternoon to the subscription symphony concerts after lunch on Sunday, which took place in an amazing building called Green's Playhouse, which was actually the biggest cinema in Europe. It seated 8,000 people and it went up and up and up and up and up.

Presenter5:05

How old are you then?

Jeremy Isaacs5:06

I suppose I was uh ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, that kind of thing, or thirteen.

Presenter5:11

And who was we? You had brothers.

Jeremy Isaacs5:12

Like two brothers, yeah.

Presenter5:13

What sort of little boy were you then at school? Were you an achiever?

Jeremy Isaacs5:18

I was a would-be achiever. I think I worked quite hard, hoping to do well, and I played quite hard, hoping to be picked for the cricket team and that kind of thing.

Presenter5:27

For your second record, please.

Jeremy Isaacs5:29

Ah, my second record is a moment from which I now like to date my absolute sort of knockout thing with opera. One of the great things about Glasgow, it's a very bold thing for a Glaswegian to say, but I'm now going to say it and hope that I'm not thrown out of the list of those that belong to that city, is that one of the great things about Glasgow is that it's very close to Edinburgh.

Jeremy Isaacs5:54

years immediately after the Second World War, the Edinburgh Festival um was literally the greatest single musical event in the world. We used to take a five shilling day return on the train from Glasgow and go and hear chamber music in the morning and a a play after I heard John Gilgood's voice in in

Jeremy Isaacs6:12

I saw in the Winter's Tale at the Lyceum Theatre there or a or a symphony concert or a piano recital. I heard Solomon play the last three Beethoven Somatas. I'm in the Usher Hall in the afternoon and go to the opera at the King's Theatre for eight and sixpence in the evening. And the opera that we heard was not, of course, Karl Rosa or a sort of

Jeremy Isaacs6:32

British touring company, it was Gleinborn there. And one of the pieces I heard was Ariadne of Naxos. And in the prologue to Ariadne of Naxos, the composer who's fighting to defend her work against the cuts that people are insisting on making in it, and she says, You can't do this to me because music's not like that. It's not for fun. It's r you know, it's terribly, terribly serious, it's a holy art. And I heard Sena Jorinat sing Mosie Gestein Heiligerkunz. And at the moment she sang it, I and you wait for this wonderful phrase, which of course I had no idea was coming, and it came. And I literally think I rose out of my seat in the circle and bumped my head on the ceiling, and I've been dizzy with opera ever since.

Speaker 47:42

The God who seeks

Presenter8:14

Jermgaard Seyfried as the composer in Strauss's Ariadne Aufnaxos, singing Musik ist eine Heiliger Kunst in the recording with the Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Herbert von Karian. Musik ist eine Heilige Kunst a holy art. You really believe it is holy, dear Jeremy?

Jeremy Isaacs8:33

Uh no, no. For the composer it's holy, but for me it's pure enjoyment. Actually w I also heard M. Gard Seyfried sing at the Edinburgh Festival, conducted by Brunewalta. What I mostly remember about her is her de colletage and her suntan, which I'd never seen the like of before.

Presenter8:47

Unholy, perhaps. But how do you how do you take it and I presume you now see it as part of your job? How do you bring opera to to the masses? How do you teach them that wonderful emotional, intellectual enjoyment, whichever it is?

Jeremy Isaacs9:02

You can't bring the masses to an opera house which seats two thousand people unless you're prepared to define the masses, as I do, as meaning thousands of people. I mean, I used to take producers or commissioning editors from Channel Four to Wembley, who are worried about only getting audiences of a few hundred thousand, and say, look at this. I mean, just imagine your programmes being seen by two or three times as many people as are in the stadium. I think opera is enjoyed by people in hundreds of thousands and millions. I mean, you find that out if you put it on television. When we put um the rosie film of Carmen with Placido Domingo and Julian McGuinness Johnson on Channel Four, we got two and a half million viewers. But that's the masses. That's not somebody who's elite and different from you and me. That's us. And people who say they don't

Presenter9:42

But but

Jeremy Isaacs9:51

Care for opera can actually sometimes sing and certainly recognize some of the great grippy tunes.

Presenter9:57

Another record, please.

Jeremy Isaacs9:58

Morse Strauss. This is the trio from Rosen Cavalier which I remember on a little yellow Deutsche Grammophone 45 RPM EP which friends of mine at Oxford used to play late at night four floors up I think in St John Street and it was so beautiful that we used to play it over and over and over again.

Speaker 410:55

Each says it's time here.

Presenter11:16

The trio from the last act of De Rosen Cavalier with Tiana Lemnitz, Elfrida Turchill and Georgina von Milinkovich, the Württemberg State Orchestra conducted by Ferdinand Weitner. That was played four floors up in Jeremy Isaac's Oxford digs to where you'd won an exhibition, Jeremy. Now, you you said that you you did too much while you were at Oxford in to enjoy it. What do you mean by that?

Jeremy Isaacs11:39

No, no, I enjoyed it enormously, but um the the fact is that I've my main memory of the place is of always being in a hurry because of trying to cram in everything I possibly could. It seemed the most marvellous good fortune to be i i in so beautiful a place and in a place where in addition to my studies which I enjoyed though I don't think I was ever terribly good at them I won an exhibition in classics and we I partly studied classics because the school was pretty clearly of the view that the best way of winning an award to Oxford was was to was to study it since there were so many awards going. I mean I got the eighth out of eight at Merton College. But I was in student politics, I tried to speak at the Union, I wanted to go to all the films, I wanted to hear all the music, I heard marvellous music in Oxford, and I wanted idiotically to play football and cricket. And so it was always I was always I had friends who would say, come and have a cup of coffee, by which they meant

Jeremy Isaacs12:38

and to chat for two or three hours and after about forty five minutes or less I used to say, Well, I've got to go to a lecture now or something else.

Presenter12:44

Are you still like that? Are you still avid to do everything?

Jeremy Isaacs12:46

I think in retrospect that's right, you know, that I'm I.

Jeremy Isaacs12:51

I still find myself in a hurry to get from one appointment to to the next today.

Presenter12:55

You went off from Oxford, you did your national service, and then you decided with your classics degree, you decided on a a career in broadcast journalism. Why did you decide that?

Jeremy Isaacs13:06

Well, because you see, arts graduates um and really didn't have much idea what they were going to do when the university

Jeremy Isaacs13:14

ended, and um I had sort of two years in the army to think about it. That was so boring, frankly, although in a way enjoyable and instructive, that I knew after that that I must

Jeremy Isaacs13:25

take a bit of time to find something really interesting to do. And I tried, therefore, thinking how much in the politics of a labor club at Oxford, or whatever, that I had enjoyed

Jeremy Isaacs13:36

being sort of close to politics and and not having to do it myself, but interested in what and in how society was going and and and the people that did that, I thought I would try to become a journalist or a or a or a broadcast journalist and I applied to a newspaper uh and then started applying to the BBC and to the ITV companies and got hired uh by Granada.

Presenter14:00

There was of course so much room then for innovation in in news and counterfeits. There was so much to be done and we we've come a long way since then. At that time every idea w seemed to be a novel idea.

Presenter14:13

What about now? What do you think about it all now? Is it a tamer business again now?

Jeremy Isaacs14:18

No, I don't think it's tamer at all. I think that some new ground has been broken, but I always think as a journalist that there is more ground to be broken.

Presenter14:27

Your fourth record, please.

Jeremy Isaacs14:29

A lovely piece of the marriage of Figura.

Jeremy Isaacs14:31

I remember hearing that for the first time, I think, at Covent Garden. Um and um this is the bit where and you see how wonderfully relevant in all our lives opera is where um the Countess says to Susanna, Take a letter.

Speaker 414:56

Small body.

Speaker 415:00

We saw this in the

Speaker 415:28

It is no spirit of spirit art.

Presenter15:45

The letter duet from the marriage of Figaro with Jesse Norman and Mirella Freine in the recording conducted by Colin Davis with the BBC Symphony Orchestra. Jeremy, you you have so many programmes to your credit, as we were just saying. You started with what the papers say, all our yesterdays went on to this week, and then of course the world at war, which took three years of your life.

Jeremy Isaacs16:06

And of many other people's lives, by the way. You know, b I talk about the world at war, or people talk about the world of war as if I did it. I I helped to do it. But it took it took fifty people three years to make the world of war.

Presenter16:16

But you are patently, it seems to me, a a man who who puts

Presenter16:21

all of himself, sometimes his very soul, into his work.

Jeremy Isaacs16:24

Mm.

Jeremy Isaacs16:26

I don't know I don't know about that, but uh I do find that that I couldn't be content with The World at War unless every syllable of the text and every um second of the soundtrack and every frame of the film had been right.

Presenter16:42

You once said, and I think it was when you were speaking at the Edinburgh Festival, and it seemed to come from the heart, television is only television.

Presenter16:49

No programme, however fulfilling, should keep us from those who love us and need us most.

Jeremy Isaacs16:55

Yes, well I I I do feel that and I d I don't know how anybody who's captured by th the passionate interest of a job can save enough of himself or herself for

Jeremy Isaacs17:07

One's family or one's loved ones, but one should certainly try to do so. I mean, I had two bad periods, I think, from one was Panorama, because Panorama is a Monday programme, and that meant that Saturday and Sunday were easily the busiest working days of the week. And the the BBC's line, of course, was you can get Tuesday or Wednesday off, which was nonsense. There was no way anybody got Tuesday or Wednesday off, but even if I had done, it wouldn't have meant anything to children who were at school. So that was a period where I saw far less of my family than I would have liked to do. And I'm afraid the World at War meant weekend working for almost the whole of those three years. Not good.

Presenter17:40

And so it was you came to be, seven years ago, appointed as chief executive of Channel Four with a brief to invent what the other three channels didn't do. It it must have seemed like the perfect job. It was designed for you, a blank sheet of broadcasting paper.

Jeremy Isaacs17:55

Yes, I think that is right.

Jeremy Isaacs17:58

Obviously, one answers to a board, and the board answers, in a sense, to the public through, in this case, the Independent Broadcasting Authority, but nevertheless, it gave one a great deal of freedom to

Jeremy Isaacs18:08

Uh to invent, but not I hope to invent in a self-indulgent kind of way. I mean it's always plain to me and to my colleagues that the channel, however innovative and experimental as Parliament asked it to be, had to somehow meet viewers' needs. One did have a tremendous opportunity to say what I think they need because we never did any market research. What I think they need is the following, and here we w off we went.

Presenter18:33

Another record, please.

Jeremy Isaacs18:35

Ah, a b uh Beethoven's Fidelio, please. The the opera which uh more than any other expresses um ideas about the things that really matter in life, freedom and sacrifice and heroism and uh and the triumph of good over evil. And this is the bit, Miris this is the quartet where having started as a sort of light comedy almost, so that uh all of a sudden you realize that it's going to deal with mar things that that that touch the soul.

Speaker 419:12

This hear is all

Speaker 419:19

Yeah.

Speaker 419:30

Here is the hand of soul by the God.

Speaker 419:41

Please wait.

Speaker 419:50

Uh

Presenter20:12

Mir Istso Wunderbar from Otto Kemperer's recording of Fidelio. The singers were Ingeborg Hausstein, Gerhard Unger, Christel Ludwig, and Gottlob Frick, the Philharmonia Orchestra.

Presenter20:24

So Jeremy Isaacs, you're the man responsible for bringing American football to our television screens? The tube, the price, comic strip, diverse reports, film enforce. I mean, everything experimental, innovative, as you say. Did you set out to do that, to to push back those barriers of taste, decency, political reporting?

Jeremy Isaacs20:44

Well, there's nothing about any of those that involve with the possible exception of bits of the comic strip that involves pushing back a barrier of decency. I'd I'd set out to cheer people up and give them things that that they would enjoy, and I'm actually

Jeremy Isaacs20:57

If you look at the advertising poster sites of this country today and the banks are now advertising themselves in terms of American football, it is extraordinary, isn't it? Because people thought I was potty, you know, about that. I just thought it would be fun and good. But in a sense, I did, yes, choose. There were two important general points that I wanted to get across in some of the in the mix of the totality of the programmes that Channel 4 offered. One was the idea that the Channel should carry, as a contribution to the democratic process, a wide range of coherent opinion, because I felt that there was a sort of conformism in broadcasting which was perhaps eliminating radical opinion of either side of the spectrum. So I said let's have a go at doing that. And then the other thing that I felt was that

Jeremy Isaacs21:48

The notion of the mass audience, the notion of the family audience, the notion that we mustn't offend, the fear of offending anybody in that audience, and particularly an audience in which different generations were watching a television programme together and were embarrassed not so much for themselves about hearing difficult subject matter discussed, but, you know, hearing it discussed in front of Granny, or although Granny, of course, the most resilient member of the family, having seen it all. And every time we had to put out a television programme with you know, this programme may contain scenes that will or language that will offend, I always used to think of people rushing out the front room and yelling, Granny, you know, come downstairs, there's going to be something interesting on.

Presenter22:29

Channel four w was handed over to Michael Grade, which was um a decision you didn't much care for at the time. You thought he was too populist in his approach. Nevertheless, the board heeded you not.

Speaker 422:40

Mm-hmm.

Presenter22:40

Were you very hurt?

Jeremy Isaacs22:41

Yeah.

Jeremy Isaacs22:42

Yes, I was at the time. Yes, I was. Um

Jeremy Isaacs22:46

I wanted to be heeded, but you know, people take decisions. In life one has to accept facts and get on with it. And I wished Michael well immediately his appointment was made. And I still do wish him well. And I also accept, perhaps more readily than I did at the end of last year, that the channel needs a new boss with new ideas. And as long as he is interpreting according to his lights the requirements of the Broadcasting Act and Channel 4's remit, I wish him good luck.

Presenter23:23

Another record, please.

Jeremy Isaacs23:25

I thought that I ought to have some music with me on the island that isn't opera, because of course it is music I love and not just opera. And the music that has meant most to me in the private moments of my life has always been chamber music in the private moments that I've shared with others, including my first wife. And so I'd like to have a bit of a Mozart quartet, please, the dissonance.

Presenter24:52

Part of the first movement of Mozart's string quartet, the dissonance, played by the Amadeus Quartet.

Presenter24:59

Now, Jamie, if we promise that M. Grade Esquire is not on a passing liner while you're on the Desert Island, would you like to be picked up by it? Or would you like to stay?

Jeremy Isaacs25:09

I think I would like to stay for a while. I've got I'm actually one of those romantics who thinks that life would all be different if I were closer to nature and um I do find the city more and more um closes in on me and I'd enjoy it whenever I can get to the country. So I would I would certainly let the first passing liner, whoever was on it and I may say that I'm good friends with Michael Crit, but I whoever was on the first liner, I think I would let it pass by and stay a bit longer.

Presenter25:36

But would you have uh would you be starving by then, or would you have fended for yourself and hunted and killed?

Jeremy Isaacs25:41

Oh I'd be hur I couldn't kill. I I mean, I'm afraid uh I would be grubbing for vegetables and fruits, but there's no way I don't think there's any way I would be killing to eat.

Presenter25:53

Well now you you were leaving Channel Four and you were going to become General Director of the Royal Opera. That was more or less in the bag when suddenly your telephone rang and um a dramatic turn of events was set in train. What a

Jeremy Isaacs26:07

I was sitting I was I was I was still at Channel Four and I had been told by the Royal Opera House that subject to the new chairman thinking I was up to it, which I'm not sure at that point he did um I would I please be general director and I was off to see him that evening to make certain uh at his request that we could talk the thing through and make sure we could work together. And a chap put his head round the door and said Alastair Milne has left the BBC and I sort of swallowed hard and went down the road to see John Sainsbury and for all of forty-eight hours I you see I did feel that having gone through the selection process at the Royal Opera House I owed it to them not to start swithering and dithering at this point.

Jeremy Isaacs26:51

But I'd been a broadcaster all my life. This was the pinnacle of the of the broadcasting profession in this country. Uh that I wouldn't forgive myself if I didn't apply for it.

Presenter27:02

And what happened? Well, we know what happened. You didn't get it. But why didn't you get it?

Jeremy Isaacs27:03

But we

Jeremy Isaacs27:06

Well, I didn't get it because the governors didn't think I was up to it. I suppose I ought to have understood at the interview that it wasn't exactly going my way. Mr. Isaacs, said Sir John Boyd, Mr. Isaacs, you don't seem to me like a man that would take very kindly to discipline. Now I see by the smile on your face that you take that as a compliment, but I can assure you that I and others here see it as more of a criticism.

Jeremy Isaacs27:29

I try to explain that um I actually was um utterly prepared uh to accept the discipline of any job that I did in the sense that I would answer to a board and would in a sense answer to the public within um clearly defined um areas of responsibility on policies that of course have to agree be agreed by the board but

Jeremy Isaacs27:52

I have the impression that um

Jeremy Isaacs27:54

Um some governors of the BBC had been reading the popular newspapers about Channel Four rather than watching the channel.

Presenter28:01

Your seventh record, please.

Jeremy Isaacs28:04

Um

Jeremy Isaacs28:06

Rossini has a tremendous particular appeal for me because of the

Jeremy Isaacs28:12

not just the dazzling brilliance of it, but the energy of his music and um

Jeremy Isaacs28:17

The great um mezzo soprano parts in Rossini have never, I think, been better sung than by Teresa Baganza, and here she is um hav just having been told by Figaro that Lindoro loves her.

Speaker 428:32

Who you're so

Speaker 429:08

Jamenoi Node Sovereign, John Oso Bead.

Presenter29:23

Teresa Berganza and Manuel Arsinzi in the Barber of Seville, Dunque Iosone in the recording conducted by Silvio Valviso with the Rossini Orchestra of Naples.

Presenter29:34

Jeremy, no one could dispute your your love of opera and music. But you had never worked in it professionally in your life. It was entirely different from television. Why did they choose you? What were your qualifications to be General Director of the Royal Opera?

Jeremy Isaacs29:49

Well, I'm responsible for ballet as well as opera, and I and I know as little about ballet in a way as I know about opera, perhaps even less. And so the Board of the Royal Opera House was quite clear that they weren't getting an expert. What they want is a general director whose function is partly administrative. That is to say I have to set policies and goals for the House. I have to balance the House's budget. I have to plan for the closure of the House, which is a big thing that's ahead of us because we've got a 19th century stage which has lasted throughout the 20th century, but is jolly well not going to survive into the 21st century.

Presenter30:31

Temporary closure, we should say.

Jeremy Isaacs30:33

Temporary closure for yeah, but for quite a long time. But anyway, we r we're going to rebuild. But the fact is, you know, that the function that I shall perform there is not all that different from a function in broadcasting because

Jeremy Isaacs30:47

It isn't a question there of making programmes myself, of being a programme producer. It's a question of clearing the space in which other people with great creative talent can do their best work. That's what I see as my goal.

Presenter31:00

Do you have the final say in what is then produced?

Jeremy Isaacs31:06

Yes, I do, but I wouldn't be such an idiot as to as to take any decision without the the advice and the consent of m of my colleagues. I mean they're ha uh and a very splendid lot they are. Um and in particular on the operatic side one has to work with the music director Bernard Heitink and he and I have to agree on what we do. Um in ballet um it really is much more a matter for the artistic director of the company Anthony Dahl and all I can do for him is to do what I succeeded in doing for example for the comedy people at at Thames Television is be a sort of sounding board of which he can bat ideas and go away thinking okay well if he says

Jeremy Isaacs31:50

It might work. Let's do it.

Presenter31:51

We better hear your eighth record if we may.

Jeremy Isaacs31:53

My eighth record testifies to what I think is one of the great facts of operatic life, namely that as great operas have been written in the twentieth century and are still being written, as have been written in any other century. And so I'd like to take with me an opera by one of the greatest of all opera composers, Janacek. And the bit I've chosen is the end of Janufa, when again

Jeremy Isaacs32:24

Um

Jeremy Isaacs32:26

One two people who've gone through the most appalling crisis together in which he loved her and his love was spurned and she loved someone else and she had a child and the child has died and she thinks that life is over and he has to say to her, it's not, you mustn't give up, we must go on, I love you still, love me back and let's let's get on with our lives.

Speaker 432:51

Don't make your loss, I'm gonna change it, to be aware of the money.

Speaker 433:00

Oh sister

Presenter33:46

The last moments of Janacek's Jennofe with Elizabeth Serderstrom and Wiesław Ochmann in the recording conducted by Sir Charles Makeras with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra. You've been incredibly precise about who should sing your music and which exact piece it should be. Presumably choosing which piece stands above all the others is very difficult.

Jeremy Isaacs34:06

Yeah.

Jeremy Isaacs34:07

Oh no, it isn't difficult. It's got to be figura. I mean, I'm not talking about a particular bit of it. I've got to have the whole opera, please.

Presenter34:13

The hell bit. And and your book.

Jeremy Isaacs34:16

Ah.

Jeremy Isaacs34:17

Well, I thought about I wanted to take um something very big that I haven't read, and I thought very hard about Terry Colemartyn's translation of of of Proust.

Jeremy Isaacs34:27

which I'm ashamed to say I haven't yet got round to reading. But in the end

Jeremy Isaacs34:31

Um what I'd really like is to have a set of of Benny Green's compilations out of wisdom, because um I could spend ages and ages and ages um just reading about different cricket matches.

Presenter34:44

And your luxury have you chosen?

Jeremy Isaacs34:46

I like to take a wife.

Presenter34:48

You can't. No, I'm sorry she you can't. She m it it must be inanimate. Of spiritual value only.

Jeremy Isaacs34:52

At the spirit of

Jeremy Isaacs34:54

Uh well, in that case, um

Jeremy Isaacs34:57

I'm not a very good swimmer. In fact, I'm a rotten swimmer, but I promise to learn to swim before I go on this island properly. And so what I would then like to have is all that frogman snorkel stuff, so that I could um explore the beauty around and under the island. Well, not under it, but you know what I mean, under the sea.

Jeremy Isaacs35:15

I think that would add a whole new dimension of exploration to my time there.

Presenter35:21

You shall have it. Jeremy Isaacs, thank you. Have a wonderful time. And thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your Desert Island discs.

Jeremy Isaacs35:28

Thank you.

Speaker 335:36

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