Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Cook best known for the television series Two Fat Ladies, partnered with Jennifer Patterson.
On the island
Eight records
I'm a great fan of country and western music and uh I suppose people always used to say to me, you know, are you a gambler? and I said, No, no, because I don't gamble on the horses or the tables or whatever but I realized that I actually take quite considerable risks with myself and with um my career and um I think this this sums up the the philosophy of my life.
Étude Op. 10, No. 5 in G-flat major
My second sister, my sister June, who is I think probably the the cleverest member of my family married as her first husband a a delightful man called Byron Janis, who at the time was tipped as the the man most likely to succeed in piano playing circles... and um when I went to the Brussels exhibition I suppose it dawned on me why he spent so much time practising.
is the first record I ever owned. Bill Haley's Rock Around the Clock, which for my generation is a great sort of breakthrough. It's the real first rock and roll record, you know, the the jiving years and all the excitement about it. And um it just opened my eyes to a whole different type of music.
Lament for Donald Ban MacCrimmon
My mother always had a piper for parties, and he was a lovely old boy called Pipe Major Robertson... And my mother and he always used to argue, and she would say, You will play the Lament for the Clan Chief at my funeral and he said, I will not, I will not, you know, you're not a man, you're not a clan chief, there's no way I can play this
that's for my dear Clive, who was really, I think, the man I love best in all my life, um and he died. Uh and the first time I met him he was standing in Jules' Bar with a chef's hat on, handing out gulls' eggs to unsuspecting Americans... and then he turned away and he was humming as time goes by and um it was his favorite tune
RasputinFavourite
although it may not be obvious from my my current appearance, I I'm a great dancer. I love dancing... And when I had my fiftieth birthday a couple of years ago, it was the last tune they played at about a quarter to four in the morning. And I thought, right, let's really go for it.
Libiamo ne' lieti calici (from La Traviata)
Montserrat Caballé & Carlo Bergonzi
This is, I think, the the ultimate party song. I want it at my funeral. It's the drinking song from Traviata. I I love Verdi. Verdi's my favourite operatic composer
Dear Lord and Father of Mankind
when I was in my treatment centre in Promise I used to go every Sunday to Yvenson, and um every week probably just for me, they sang Dear Lord and Father of Mankind, which is a perfect song for a for an alcoholic, because it has that wonderful line in it, and somewhere amid this turbulence the still small voice of calm.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:44What is it that you have against the humble carrot?
I just as I get older I have this more and more pathological hatred of them. My father used to pull them out of the ground and sort of dust them off and feed them to me, still with the slugs on them. Um and so I think I got sort of put off them.
Presenter asks
4:03Did you know [Jennifer Paterson's death] was coming?
No. Um, when we were filming at Nazley Safari Park, which was the last one we did, she was in cracking form... and three and a half weeks later she was dead. But she died magnificently. She was wonderful. I mean, she was an example to all of us.
Presenter asks
13:27How did your father's drinking affect home life?
Well, as in any alcoholic home, there was always this tension. There was always this feeling of waiting for the other shoe to drop... And of course he was, when he was very drunk, extremely violent. So he would come home and um [one] would take cover.
Presenter asks
The keepsakes
The book
Hector Hugh Munro
I took that book everywhere with me police cells, upside down, motor cars, anything you'd like, you know.
The luxury
When did [alcoholism] begin for you?
It began for me when my mother died. Um I was, if anything, perhaps too close to my mother... And I came home and I found her dead and it was a a shock I I simply couldn't handle. And I went round to to this friend's house and I poured myself a large whisky... And from there on in I drank very heavily, very quickly, getting to two bottles of gin a day and and the rest.
Presenter asks
21:00When came the moment that you decided you should do something about it, or could do something about it?
I never really decided I could. I think I decided I I I couldn't go on... because I was on my knees, I said, Dear God, if you're up there, I really can't go on. Please do something. And it was really from the heart. It was a cry from the heart.
Presenter asks
24:01Why didn't you marry?
Well, marriage isn't really for me. I've I've never taken to the idea of marriage. I've never wanted to have children... because I feel rather that I've come to the end of my genetic pool. I'm a bit like a panda. I'm better off if I don't breed, red.
“I would rather eat a cream cake than take... Prozac. You know, the only thing that that that stimulates the serotonin in the body is animal fat. And I'm quite certain that the increase in antidepressants is directly relatable to the decrease in eating fat.”
“I think if you grow up in a violent environment there is this predisposition to violence because it's something you understand. And there is a a uh an enormous simplicity about violence, you know, i it it is an it's an instant answer. You know, it shuts everything up, at least for the time being.”
“I blew it and I blew it unashamedly and we had a lot of fun doing it and we went to great places and did great things and um you know, it's now the the basis of what I talk about, what I write about, all the things I've done. So if you like it, it was an investment. If I'd had another hundred thousand I'd have been dead, so it's just as well I spent it.”
“I love my life now. I'm incredibly happy. They they have this saying in in in the Twelve Step Fellowships that things will happen beyond your wildest dreams... my life is just amazing.”