Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Only man to have climbed the highest peak on all seven continents and reached both magnetic and geographic North and South Poles.
On the island
Eight records
Scenes from an Italian Restaurant
I asked for ketchup and I got the ketchup bottle and shook it and the actual top came shooting off and this stream of ketchup went about 20 feet down the aisle up about five different people. And I always, whenever I hear this record, it takes me straight back to this restaurant.
I've chosen uh just purely from Everest and this used to remind me of home for two reasons. One because I used to play Peter Gabriel at at home, but also he's my neighbour so I'd always used to play this at night and I used to think of home
Votre toast, je peux vous le rendre (The Toreador Song) from Carmen
Tom Krause, Manhattan Opera Chorus, Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, conducted by Leonard Bernstein
What he loved was opera and he would always put on Carmen. And when he died w he died very young and he died of leukemia and it was wi it was it was such a tragedy to see this fella um going through this illness. Um and for years I just couldn't listen to Carmen.
this Van Morrison um again this just reminds me as Carsten's Pyramid.
South Pole was a solo trip, as I said, and to keep myself, I suppose, sane, I used to read the book and I used to listen to The Walkman, and this was uh this is the one I loved on this trip.
Runa would get into the sleeping bag, light up a cigarette, and he'd put his walkman on. And whenever this came on the Verve, he used to he used to wake me up. ... And so the Verve reminds me of Runa waking me up in the North Pole and freezing.
Manhã de CarnavalFavourite
if you're going to stay on a desert island for whatever amount of years or whatever, uh I would take this one.
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:31Why you, do you think? What's in your genes that makes you the great adventurer?
I don't know, I mean my father ... [the most] adventure he ever did was probably getting across Swindon in the traffic jam. So I'm not really sure. I I certainly know that when I did the bronze award, Duke of Edinburgh's award, that was an eye opener for me.
Presenter asks
2:11Why do you link that [attention from your teacher] to the divorce?
Uh because I think he uh saw a vulnerable lad and I think he he sort of put me and my brother under his wing and uh gave us a bit more attention.
Presenter asks
2:23Did you was there a moment when you said, This is what I am going to do with my life? I am going to be an adventurer?
No, not at all. It was something that I enjoyed and I knew I would like to carry on doing that. And I've always been pragmatic even in later life. I've always tried to do the adventure as a hobby and have a business background as well. I think if you do adventure full-time ... you lose part of why you're doing it, and I think perhaps it then becomes a job like any other job.
The keepsakes
The book
Richard Bach
the one that had a big influence on me when I was a youngster was Jonathan Livington's Seagull by Richard Back and that was a lovely book.
Presenter asks
15:09Do you ever feel what am I doing here and what am I putting them [your family] through?
Yeah, you do, but you try to put it out of the back of your mind and I think you've got to be singularly selfish and go and do these things. ... because otherwise um you wouldn't do them. Other th you know, if you did have a I suppose a conscience, you wouldn't do them.
Presenter asks
22:19You've said, David, that it was Mrs. Thatcher who got you to the South Pole. How so?
I was reading Margaret Thatcher's book ... and this isn't a political statement at all, but I picked up her book in Heathrow Airport because it was the thickest book for the cheapest price. ... I was using this book as toilet paper as well. ... And just at the top of the page, just before I went to use it ... I started reading that her father said to her as a youngster, it's easy to be a starter, but are you a finisher too? So I whipped that page out and used another page. And I put it in my top pocket and I read that every morning and every night on the whole trip.
“I think if you do adventure full-time ... you lose part of why you're doing it, and I think perhaps it then becomes a job like any other job.”
“And as you get higher and higher, the sky changes. It goes from a light blue up to a completely dark, dark virtually to space. So it's virtually black. And as you get higher, there's less atmosphere. So when the stars do come out, it's as if you could actually cut the stars with a knife. It's just so beautiful.”
“I think what's very difficult is for the children because when they see rucksacks in the hallway they immediately think, Oh boy, the the old boy's going away for some time and that's that's very very difficult.”