Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
A writer known for witty newspaper columns on food, television, and travel, and author of novels.
On the island
Eight records
This is um from Jeule Jim, the the song from Jules Jeime, which reminds me so strongly of my parents and being little in the sixties and I've had it in my head, one of those songs in my that's been in my head all my life and mostly songs that are in your head are really annoying and this one I'm really pleased, it's just lovely.
This reminds me incredibly strongly of Edinburgh and my um grandmother and my aunt Netta. They they went together and my mother who would all all sang and all sang quite operatically, and would all sing at me, to me, at the drop of a hat.
This is just a great, great, great pop song. There are an enormous number of songs that are written for about and for people who've been dumped. And there were very few about people who were doing the dumping, and this is one of the best.
Chris Difford / Glenn Tilbrook
This is just is so evocative of getting ready to go out in the evening and and I love these particular sort of English patter songs. And this is also about television, which has to be a big bit, it was always a big bit of my life.
Nick Banks / Jarvis Cocker / Candida Doyle / Steve Mackey / Russell Senior
This is just one of the best pop records ever as common people by pulp and and uh it starts off in St Martin's which is where I started off.
Uwe Fahrenkrog-Petersen / Carlo Karges
My s my small secret embarrassing vice is that I'm a solitary dancer and and I would never dance in public, but but when this comes up, I I comes on, I tend to get up and jig about.
Turn! Turn! Turn! (To Everything There Is a Season)
It reminds me very strongly of a trip that that Nicola, the guy I live with, and I made up the Pacific coast. We drove from Los Angeles to San Francisco up the Pacific in an in an open top car and we had this on the on the stereo and and it was one of the best trips.
The Canoe SongFavourite
This last one I will never regret. This is the most beautiful love song ever from one of the most astonishing voices. And This this is just it. Poor Robeson's love song from a really dreadful movie, Sanders of the River.
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:45Is [your feeling that you weren't given the script of the world] the words of a recovering alcoholic looking for another excuse?
Um well, I am a recovering alcoholic. Um yes, I don't think I do look for excuses. I'm I'm not terribly interested in in why I drank. I'm much more interested in how I avoid drinking again.
Presenter asks
1:54Is it as if you've had two lives, the life until you were thirty, and the successful life since?
Oh yeah, I mean there is a a really strong sense of having been given a a second chance. I mean I I still have a feeling that I'm gonna wake up one morning there's gonna be a recording angel at the end of the bed saying, Look, I'm terribly sorry, but um there's been an awful mistake. You've been given someone else's life.
Presenter asks
19:30What did [the GP] say that did it for you? Did he tell you you were going to die if you didn't stop?
Yes, but that isn't it. I don't know, there's a moment and and all recovered drunks or recovering drunks have this moment where something clicks. And he was very calm and he just said and he asked me that there were there were a classic twenty questions … and he just said you're you know you're lucky in the sense that you're absolutely straight down the line you are a classic alcoholic. I actually honestly didn't believe there was any other way. I didn't believe that I would ever have any other sort of life. I was just I would have done anything just to have stopped the the intensity of the unhappiness that I had.
The keepsakes
The book
Captain Slaughterboard Drops Anchor
Mervyn Peake
it terrified me so much. As a child I had to have it hidden under all the other books in my bedroom. But I think I'm going to have to take it with me.
The luxury
Because if you've ever slept out, you know that the one thing you really miss is a pillow and I'd want to have theirs.
Presenter asks
26:41What do you believe [about your brother Nick's disappearance]?
You know, and y you can you can believe all sorts of things and I I choose to believe that he's happier and that he's found something that you know, I think it's everybody's right in a sense to cash in their the hand they're dealt and say, I want a completely new hand. … I understand that Nick wanted a new start and that the what he had around him was too painful and too uncomfortable. It doesn't stop me I miss him enormously. Um I'm also furious with him.
Presenter asks
28:55Do you think of yourself as an angry man?
Um A, I think that's a perfectly fair criticism. And I think that all books, in a sense, are as much about the author as they are about anything else, and that's obviously involved. … yes, of course, it's about me and the things that I choose to write about.
“It starts off as being the key to everything and it ends up being the jailer.”
“I do think that words on a page are are dried speech. You know, they're desiccated speech. You should be able to add your own head and what what you should get back is a voice.”
“I think everybody I think if you believe in freedom then you must have the freedom to say, I I I want a completely new life.”