Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
2 appearances
A painter best known for his wildlife paintings, especially elephants, whose work has raised millions for conservation.
On the island
Eight records
Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor, Op. 18
classical/named – no quote given
The Pastoral Symphony (Symphony No. 6 in F major, Op. 68)
classical/named – no quote given
The Planets, Op. 32: Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity
classical/named – no quote given
Symphony No. 1 in E minor, Op. 39
City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Simon Rattle
I can't paint when I hear people like Sebelius, for example. And Sebelius was the first classical composer I was introduced to when my mum and dad gave me the old seventy eights of his first symphony in my stocking at Christmas, centuries ago.
London Festival Orchestra, conducted by Stanley Black
And there was a film I made by the Crown Film Unit called Western Approaches, and this is a very little-known piece of music. It fitted the documentary of these old tramp steamers chugging across the Atlantic, waiting to be torpedoed. You know, it was an incredibly evocative film. And the music fits so well, Western Approaches.
Al Bowlly with the New Mayfair Dance Orchestra
This is what we used to neck to, you see this awful word neck, which we don't use any more now. Albelly singing Good Night, Sweetheart,'cause that's the record I courted her to.
Piano Concerto No. 1 in B-flat major, Op. 16
Stephen Coombs with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Jerzy Maksymiuk
I caught a record which I'd never or a composer I'd never heard of, a chap called Borkovitz, who wrote the most gorgeous piano concerto, as good, I think, as the Rachmaninoff second. And so I'd love that because I love choosing different bits of music.
Henry V: Once more unto the breach
Sir Laurence Olivier's Half Leur speech in Henry the Fifth is so moving, so exciting, I don't think anybody could do it better.
Glenn Miller and His Orchestra
Erskine Hawkins, Bill Johnson, Julian Dash
Well, I'm a Glenmiller nut and we became friends from that moment. So I and it reminds me of Steam Railways, of course, too. So I have Glenmiller playing Tuxedo Junction.
The Light of Life, Op. 29: Meditation
London Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Sir Adrian Boult
I'm not, not not going to choose Nimrod because everybody does. I've chosen the most lovely piece from his Elgar's Light of Life.
Symphony No. 8 in E-flat majorFavourite
Tiffin Schoolboys Choir, London Philharmonic Choir and Orchestra, conducted by Klaus Tennstedt
And Marla, I just claps in a heap when I hear this. The end of Marla's Eighth Symphony sums up everything, and all my feelings.
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:13Was to become a painter a very early ambition?
Half-hearted, yes. I was at Stowe School and there was a marvellous art department at Stowe and it… gave me a tremendous interest in painting, but it was certainly not a serious one to the extent of wanting to make a career out of it, because there's never been any art in my family at all.
Presenter asks
6:27Do you work from quick sketches or from photographs?
Combination of both. I rely to some extent on photography, but I must make the point that I take the photographs myself. You have to go to Africa yourself and see what you're photographing. And your camera is rarely a means of mechanically recording what you see for convenience. But the whole atmosphere you can only get if you go there yourself.
Presenter asks
7:13You paint elephants and so on – do you want to ensure there is a supply left to paint?
Conservation, yes. Well, you know, I've been going to Africa for twenty years. And you can't help getting wrapped up in this ghastly mess that it all is… the animals are being poached out of existence… a giraffe that takes perhaps a week to die in the heat. In a wire snare, it struggles and the wire goes right down to its bone, the neck bone. And then it dies in the heap with its eyes falling out, and the poacher will come along and cut the tail hairs off, to make a bangle… and the rest of the animal is wasted. And when you see this, you obviously want to do something about it.
The keepsakes
The book
Beatrix Potter
I think I'm going to have something which takes me back to my childhood.
The luxury
Video recording of the programme 'This Is Your Life'
and that will remind me of all my family, my children, visually, with my wife as well and remind me of everything.
Presenter asks
8:14You gave some paintings to be auctioned in the United States to buy a helicopter – to catch poachers?
Yes, well, this is of course the greatest thrill of my life… I've raised managed to raise about eighty thousand pounds altogether now, and I only boast about it because it gives me such a tremendous kick. I haven't given away anything. The pictures were going to be painted anyway. And the helicopter was the ultimate. We raised forty six thousand pounds in one evening in America last year. We being a lot of artists, not just me by any means. And this helicopter is now working. I handed it over to the President a few weeks ago in Zambia. And it's catching poachers at this moment, I hope. It's so exciting.
Presenter asks
9:29You also paint portraits – who, for example?
Yes, I've painted five portraits altogether… starting with Christ, I did this painting of Christ, life size painting of Christ for the army. It hangs in the Garrison Church, Borden in Hampshire. This really was the most… memorable thing I've ever painted. … President Kaunda of Zambia… my Stowe School headmaster… Sheikh Zaid of Abu Dhabi… and my wife. Oh, and the Queen Mother, bless her heart. I nearly forgot the Queen Mother.
Presenter asks
3:39What was different about you? How come you got off the railings and laughed all the way to the bank when others did not?
Well, one of one of the things that happened was that I met my publishers there thirty eight years ago, goodness knows when. Um they came walking through the gardens in the sunshine, in the lunch hour, and they met me and I've been with them ever since.
Presenter asks
4:18Were you that much better, or were you just luckier?
I think I was luckier. But how do you judge what's better? I mean, some people loathe my work, some people like my work, some people like Damien Hurst and some people like me. Gosh, there can't be more different than [that].
Presenter asks
7:27What is it about the elephant?
Well, it's coming back to my earlier remarks, I get excited about anything big and dramatic, and I will never ever to my dying day forget when I saw elephants for the first time in the wild. That I mean, I you can't describe the feeling when you first see those marvellous gentle giants in the wild. You feel so blummin' small for a start.
Presenter asks
9:49How do you explain [being rejected by the Slade School of Art]?
Well, if you saw my very first bird painting, which I have, the only painting I've ever done of birds, you would say, My God, you're right, you haven't got any talent.
Presenter asks
11:54Why did [the thought of going to art college] come back into your head?
Well it was the l the lesser of two evils, really it was. And so daddy said, Well, if you really want to be an artist old chap, you've got to have some training. Uh go to the slade and they saw this bird picture and they said, Go and drive a bus. End of story.
Presenter asks
27:04Why do you think that the art establishment is so sniffy about your work?
I think it goes deeper than that. I paint for the public. I'm popular with the public, and that condemns me in the eyes of the art uh art establishment. I have nothing to do with the art establishment at all.
“I was a Londoner. I was born in Hendon in North London, Earth.”
“I went straight out to Kenya with this extraordinarily arrogant idea that I was God's gift to the National Parks of Kenya, and all I would have to do was to knock on their door and say, Here I am and they would say, Welcome, be a game warden and they didn't. They said, We don't want you and that was the end of my career.”
“I spent the whole of that year at London Airport of all strange places. I was an aviation painter to start with, specializing in stratocruisers and comic ones and all those funny old things.”
“I have indeed sat up in front of an elephant… we got to within 40 feet of two bull elephants with my easel. Absolutely mad. I mean the elephants I'm sure went home and told their chums that they'd never had an experience like it setting up an easel in front of an elephant.”
“I painted him [President Kaunda] in the middle of a national park with hippos making vulgar noises about 20 feet. Completely mad, but I did it.”
“I am the luckiest man alive, I honestly am, because I'm doing something I love and above all else I'm managing to return something to wildlife.”
“I get excited about anything big and lovely and preferably old rather than modern.”
“I have to repay my debt to wildlife. And it's the motivation ever gets stronger as I learn more.”
“I want to go on striving for better quality of my paintings until I die of old age, people wanting my pictures and pouring my heart and soul into every picture I do.”