Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Journalist and broadcaster who edited the Daily Express, Daily Star, and News of the World before becoming a popular BBC Radio personality.
On the island
Eight records
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:56Do you still feel you have to struggle to prove that you're not a nobody?
Totally, yes. I am a poor working class lad from the slums of London, and every time I open my mouth people discriminate against me. They don't think I'm clever, or I've done anything, or I've succeeded. They think it's that Yobo Derek Jameson.
Presenter asks
9:33How did you go down in Bishop Stortford when you were evacuated – cheeky, rough, illegitimate?
Well it wasn't easy because people used to whisper things like, I know all about you and you little tyke and all that. And I had this wonderful story, Sue. My father was an air hero. He was killed in the First World War, you know, the old air flying corps. It was a battle over the trenches in Flanders, shot down in flames, a great war hero. Sadly, at the age of 9, 10, 11, I didn't realize that if my father died in World War I, which ended in 1918, what was I doing being born 10 or 11 years later? And that, so, so that, of course, was my ruin. Yes, everybody knew I was a liar.
Presenter asks
23:39Why did you react so strongly to the 'East End boy made bad' line on Week Ending – why sue?
All I had done to come from that total, utter poverty, hardship, deprivation, no family, no money, no food, and to have clawed my way up from that to become the editor of several newspapers and all the rest of it, and all they could say is summing up my career, an East End boy made better. What a bunch of toffee nose twits. So I thought we'd go for an apology … The lawyers got hold of it in 1980. I parted company with The Express in 1981, I think it was, or around that time. I was on my own.
The keepsakes
The book
John Steinbeck
the writer who had the most effect upon me was John Steinbeck. So I would take his greatest work, The Grapes of Wroth, about the Dust Bowl in Oklahoma, and that would keep me going.
The luxury
I'd like a word processor to play with. I can make my own newspaper, write novels, send off imaginary letters to people I want to complain about.
Presenter asks
26:36As a broadcaster, do you feel you know who your audience is – any similarities with newspaper editing?
Oh yes. I've always had this uh thing for the public, you know. You see, right at the beginning I wanted to communicate. I wanted to reach out and touch people. I felt abandoned, rejected, uh uh an outsider. … The only thing that I could reach out and sort of get strength from was the feeling that I must make people like me or even love me, shall I say. Well, I needed the love of people. I needed support. That's what drove me as a newspaper editor and I suppose that's what drives me as a broadcaster.
Presenter asks
27:27Do you see yourself as some kind of proof to disadvantaged people that they can make it?
I'd like to feel that uh someone looks at me and says, My God, he did all right for himself from a very poor start, then that's a good thing, isn't it?
Presenter asks
30:58You still have this inferiority complex, this chip on your shoulder – what price have you paid?
No, it's it's not inferiority complex. God forbid, I don't consider myself inferior because I happen to come from the working class. What I would say to you, Sue, is that I have this feeling that the class system in this country matters a great deal, and if you happen to be born at the bottom of the heap … Then, of course, you do feel that the working class, the poor, get a rough deal in this country. … Look at the price you have to pay. Look at the struggle. Look at the effort. … I've been working flat out since I was fourteen years of age. Nothing ever came easy. I became a newspaper editor because I had done every single job on a newspaper, from making the tea to laying out the front page.
“I am a poor working class lad from the slums of London, and every time I open my mouth people discriminate against me.”
“I was born in the Hackney Hospital in 1929 … discovered as I got older, three, four, five, that I was one of a large group of children, waifs and strays, the rejects of life.”
“It occurred to me around the age of seven or eight that Elsie was in fact my mother. I didn't call her mother until I was well into my thirties.”
“My whole childhood was just a bed of pain, and that was one of the most painful episodes.”
“All I had done to come from that total, utter poverty, hardship, deprivation, no family, no money, no food, and to have clawed my way up from that to become the editor of several newspapers and all the rest of it, and all they could say is summing up my career, an East End boy made better. What a bunch of toffee nose twits.”