Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
A world-renowned fashion designer known for dressing celebrities including Joan Collins and Princess Diana.
On the island
Eight records
I love it because it's so different, because we were talking about going to church and singing in choirs. I think if the church service had been presented this way, I would have a much better response to some religion, I think.
Soave sia il vento (from Così fan tutte)
It was really, I think, the first opera that I... bought. Certainly I think it was the first time that I heard some opera and liked it, and it was in a film called Sunday, Bloody Sunday
I bought this record, I think, in my last year at Saint Martin's. And um the music I used for my first fashion show as I left Saint Martin, so it has a great sort of sentimental um attachment.
I love Maria Callas because she is more credible as a as an artist, as a soprano, than any of the other sort of big lumbering ladies that you see on the stage.
Academy of St Martin in the Fields conducted by Neville Marriner
I thought that if I was on my desert island I'd want to listen to a nice piece of English music. I love that sort of pastoral, choir, gentle, you know, the rolling hills, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.
The Magic FluteFavourite
It's another piece of opera, again from Mozart, who I really love
Record number seven is a Joni Mitchell track, which was very hard to choose because I've liked Joni Mitchell for the last sort of fifteen years.
Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Sir Georg Solti
I've only just come across this piece of music. I've I've known it for years and years and years, but never knew what it was called. And I was coming back from Australia not too long ago and I heard it through the terrible um earph earphones
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:30How old were you when you were taken into care by Dr. Barnardo's?
I think about six weeks old. But I spent a lot of time in convalescent homes down in the south of England because I was a bit poorly.
Presenter asks
0:30Do you know why your parents abandoned you?
I think it was just the circumstances. I mean, I was a love child, as they—I don't think they called it that in those days. And obviously my mother couldn't cope with me, so there you go.
Presenter asks
0:30Do you know who your mother is?
I have names, but I've never really bothered to sort of, you know, search too deeply into it. ... I think now and I've got to this stage in my my life. I don't think I could cope with the um the responsibility of finding parents. I really don't need it.
Presenter asks
2:16Was [the Barnardo's home in Ripon] grim and nasty and horrible?
The keepsakes
The book
The Destinies of Darcy Dancer, Gentleman
J. P. Donleavy
Because it's romantic, it's funny, it it would remind me of sort of cold, drizzly days, because it's all about sort of cold, drizzly days in Dublin, and it's a fantasy and it's something I could read over and over and over again.
The luxury
everlasting supply of cigarettes
it would give me the incentive to be creative and learn how to make fire. Well, it's supposedly a useless item, and I can think of nothing more useless than an endless supply of cigarettes.
Absolutely not. ... it was clean. It was a charming Georgian house in its own grounds in in Ripon in Yorkshire ... I think that the atmosphere of the Bernardo's home was rather like the boarding house of the school that I went to. ... I didn't go home in the holidays, you know. It really wasn't bad. It was not a Do the Boys' Haul at all.
Presenter asks
9:17Did you want to be a teacher?
To be perfectly blunt, not really. When I did my A levels, I didn't get good enough grades to go to university. ... I just felt that there was something more out there for me and I wasn't quite sure what it was. I was determined that I was going to be a success. And really, I think at about the age of 20, I wasn't quite sure in which field I would find this success, but I was determined to be a star.
Presenter asks
25:17Does fashion matter?
I don't think it matters. I think it makes people happy. I think it would be awful to be in in China and all be running around in little blue suits. ... I wouldn't go as far as to say it's an art form. ... but I think it's necessary to change to experiment with new things. I mean, it's yeah, I think clothes are very important.
“We were all half caste. I'm half Jamaican. My brothers, one is half Nigerian, one's half Pakistani, and the girls are half Malay. ... It never really occurred to us that we were anyway different from anybody else. You know, we had a very, very good home environment.”
“I left New York with my tail between my legs, as it were, in the November on a bus. So it it's an object lesson really in in not believing your own publicity.”
“The single aim is to flatter the material that you have in front of you, you know, to bring out the good points and to conceal the bad with um as much flair and style as is humanly possible.”
“I found in Bernardo's, which I I think is is the same in every institution, is that they don't encourage individuality, you know, and I found that so much of the time they wanted you to become the same as everybody else. And that I think I fought against more than anything else”