Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Author, journalist and broadcaster with a background in film and show business reporting.
On the island
Eight records
Sir Adrian Boult conducting the London Symphony Orchestra
it would remind me of England and I'm a great anglophile and when I listen to this it reminds me of old green fields, country pubs, playing cricket on the village green.
Once more unto the breach, dear friends (from Henry V)
I think probably because films have always dominated my life one way or another. And that film, Henry V, was one that I remember had the greatest, most vivid effect on me soon after the war when I was a kid.
The Lion in Winter (Film Theme)
I think I would like something that would remind me of my wife. And so I picked the film music from The Lion in Winter by John Barry, because she is a great devotee of the 12th century.
Troika (from Lieutenant Kijé Suite)
to remind me of home because the first record that my daughters ever bought me was a record called Prokofiev's Greatest Hits ... If I can listen to that, then I can remember my children as I like to remember them fondly.
Symphony No. 5 in C minorFavourite
Otto Klemperer conducting the Philharmonia Orchestra
general nostalgia because I remember it. Obviously, it has associations with wartime for very, very obvious reasons. But I think mostly because, as I said, I came very late to music and I can still remember very vividly about 15 years ago at least, I was at home by myself one day and I suddenly had a hankering for some music.
It's a beautiful arrangement and she sings beautifully.
Symphony No. 41 in C major, K. 551 ('Jupiter')
Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Herbert von Karajan
It seems odd to say that it actually reminds me of driving over the Pyrenees ... on a recent holiday we were driving over the Pyrenees and we played this on the car stereo, both going down and coming back. It was a smashing holiday, lovely family time.
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:31How well could you adjust yourself to loneliness?
Well, not very well to loneliness, but to solitude I think I could adjust myself fairly well because [as] a child I was a fairly solitary person. I used to spend ages in my room by myself writing the most appalling short stories ... solitude and being alone, yeah, I can cope with that.
Presenter asks
3:26Didn't you want to follow [your father] into the film industry?
I did for a while and ... I had a vague ambition of going and working in the cutting rooms ... but the film industry was in one of its periodic slumps and so I had a long chat with with my father and he said you know there's really not much future in this why don't you think of something else and writing was something that had always occupied me so I thought journalism might be the thing for me and so I drifted casually into that.
Presenter asks
4:56Was [working in South Africa] rather like the Kensington News with a better climate or was it different?
Oh, journalistically, it was much different because it was a daily paper ... It was very different in that one was dealing all of a sudden, you know, with Afrikaners, with Africans, with Indians, and suddenly I was hurled, a naïve 19-year-old who'd really never thought about politics or race or anything, into this maelstrom. It had a really quite traumatic effect.
The keepsakes
The book
P. G. Wodehouse
Every time I read those Jeeves stories, I fall about with mirth. And every time I read them, I learn just a little tiny bit more about the art of comic writing. I mean, the man is the master. One bows down in front of him. So I could read that both for entertainment and for enlightenment. And I could read it and re-read it.
The luxury
a large supply of cricket balls
I intend to cheat by swimming to this desert island with a typewriter and an inexhaustible supply of paper strapped to my back, because these are not luxuries, these are necessities of life, because one of the things I would do there is to try and write all the books that I want to write and never had time to do. So, having got all that, what do I want for luxury? Well, I was going to say one cricket ball, but one cricket ball's not enough because I'd then have, having bowled it, I'd have to go back and bowl it back again. So, I'd like a large supply of cricket balls.
Presenter asks
12:31When did your broadcasting career start?
Well that started ... at the end of 1971 ... I did this programme for late night line up and enjoyed myself immensely and picked up twenty quid and a couple of drinks and went home happy. And a couple of days later a man called Ian Johnston phoned me up and said, I'm the producer of a programme called Film Seventy Two. Would you like to come and present it for me? And I said, Well, I'd love to do that, but I've never done anything like it in my life.
Presenter asks
23:43Could you organise somewhere to live [on the island]?
Oh no, no, no chance whatsoever. I mean there would have to be a cave there or some previous castaway would have to have left a hut because otherwise I would just die of exposure.
“I have absolutely no musical talent whatsoever. And in fact I came extremely late to any kind of appreciation of music. I think largely because I was taught it rather badly at school.”
“Cricket seems to me to be the finest way of wasting time that man has ever devised. Of course you can't explain it to anybody who isn't himself passionate about the game, but it seems to me to be the closest thing to human chess that anybody could think of.”
“I would go for The World of Jeeves by PG Woodhouse because every time I read those Jeeves stories, I fall about with mirth. And every time I read them, I learn just a little tiny bit more about the art of comic writing. I mean, the man is the master. One bows down in front of him.”