Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
He is a journalist and broadcaster.
On the island
Eight records
This will remind you, me, of school dances. Now, I used to lead the school dance band, and in Penrith we were evacuated, and there was a slender girl and a plump girl who we used to call Body and Soul, and I used to grin at them and play this.
Clarinet Trio in E-flat major, K. 498 "Kegelstatt"
the first thing I ever played in public, and almost the last incident, was I played the Mozart Clarinet Trio in E-flat when I was 12 in the Wordsworth Hall in Penrith. And I was so small, my feet wouldn't touch the floor when I sat on the channel. I was terrified.
Clarinet Quintet in B minor, Op. 115: II. AdagioFavourite
Well this is the one bit of music I was never allowed to play in public and which I could never play. And I tried very hard. There's something about Brahms that even though you know all the notes and you think you've got it right, you always finish up at cross purposes with the other people who are playing.
Symphony No. 4 in F minor, Op. 36
Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra
I used to look forward to Arvid Janssens coming and conducting a Tchaikovsky symphony because he made a noise with the orchestra that nobody else made. Sadly, I can't find a record by Janssens, but he was a conductor of the Leningrad Philharmonic. So here is the Leningrad Philharmonic, not conducted by him, playing that marvelous bit towards the end of Tchaikovsky's fourth symphony, where he has to stop the orchestra twice.
Choir of King's College, Cambridge
I began to get interested in singing when I had children. And the first concert at Stephen's School this is Cheelyhume School and Warehousemans, you know, Manster where all my kids went, the first thing I remember hearing them perform was the Foray Requiem.
Sarah Vaughan & Oscar Peterson
I've always liked jazz singers, women jazz singers. I once was waiting for the lift in the Algonquin in New York and it opened and Ella Fitzgerald stepped out and I I was me, I was dumbstruck. ... I like her, I like Billie Holiday, but I think the greatest of them all is Sarah Vaughan.
Harry wrote this thing, I imagine that I've had the record for 10 or 12 years, and he's now got this opera Orpheus, and I see this as really early work for that opera. It's called Nenia the Death of Orpheus. It's sung by Jane Manning, who is the most remarkable soprano.
String Quartet No. 14 in C-sharp minor, Op. 131
Well, I think still that the greatest piece of music ever written in the sense that it's the piece of music which reaches out to kind of infinity. if not indeed to eternity, is the Beethoven Quartet Opus a hundred and thirty one.
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:34Would it be true that you knew from a very early age that you wanted to be a journalist?
Oh yeah. Ever since the age of eight, I read a story in The Hotspur, remember The Hotspur about a man called Scoop Mallory, Ace Reporter, and I vowed there and then that I was going to be a journalist. And at the age of ten, I must have been being interviewed for the grammar school ... And he said, What are you going to be when you grow up, Brian? And I said, A reporter, a newspaper reporter.
Presenter asks
1:16What was it about the job [of journalism] that attracted you?
The nosiness. I mean incorrigible gossip, and that's all journalism is, isn't it? It's kind of structured gossip that you get paid for. And I've always been nosy, always wanted to know what was going on.
Presenter asks
6:26Did you enjoy national service?
Fine. ... Very much. ... I got posted to Singapore, to an army education centre in Singapore and I worked part-time for Radio Malaya. I used to say this is Sergeant Brian Redhead, introducing the records that you have chosen. And then I used to play things I'd chosen.
The keepsakes
The book
Peake's Commentary on the Bible
Arthur Samuel Peake
I've been reading or using Peake's commentary on the Bible while I've been working on these Bible programmes. ... I would feel that they were good companions. So I think the thing to do is to take that and have the Bible, then you can read a bit of the Bible, read what one of those said, disagree with him, go back to the Bible, and you could really have a dialogue going.
The luxury
I would like the Taj Mahal, because I think it's wasted where it is. It's the most beautiful building in the world. Imagine if you had it on a desert island to yourself. You could sit in it and read the Bible in Peek's Commentary. When you turned up your toes, eventually you could be laid out in it. ... And in a thousand years, people would come and they would say, How did that funny little bloke build that thing all by himself?
Presenter asks
10:41How important was it to you in your career as a journalist to get a job in The Guardian?
Well, it goes on but I didn't believe it. I mean we all applied, all the bright little lads running round Cambridge at the time, well we all applied and I got it and I couldn't believe my luck. And the only reason I think I got it was because I'd already had some concrete experience on newspapers and I dreamed about for days what would it be like to work on the Great Manchester Guardian.
Presenter asks
16:10What happened with your career [on the Tonight programme]?
Tonight was a great programme, it's true, and there was an incredibly talented bunch of people on it ... And it was overstuffed. There wasn't anything to do. I used to reckon I did a two and a half minute day and I got paid two pounds a second. Now, as I was used to working about a 16-hour day, I was bored stiff. ... So after a year, I signed a three-year contract, and after a year I said, please, I would like to depart, and I went back to the Guardian.
Presenter asks
20:11How did it come about that you joined [the Today programme]?
I actually got fired as editor of the Manchester Evening News, and I decided there and then at 45 that I would become a freelance. ... But you have to eat. ... And today it asked me, and I thought, I don't want to get up at that hour of the morning. But I went to see them, and there were a couple of very nice blokes that I met. And I was persuaded instantly by them. Then I met John, and I thought, right, I'll have a go at it.
“I've always been nosy, always wanted to know what was going on.”
“I've very much have been a person who lives in the present, always.”
“If you start on a little local, you can't get anything wrong, because the people you're writing about you meet on the pavement. So you've really got to be accurate.”
“The best journalism is daily journalism. Weekly things come round too quickly. You don't seem to be ready for it before it's upon you. A daily journalism has a lovely, steady routine and you've got to keep yourself up to date because you automatically top yourself up every morning.”