Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Nuclear scientist, first woman to win the Royal Academy of Engineering's President's Medal, persuaded Tony Blair to change nuclear policy
On the island
Eight records
Well my first piece of music is a piece by John Miles called Music and it's from the album Rebel because when I graduated from my university my dad was very kind and bought me a record player and I didn't have any records at the time and my then boyfriend, subsequently my husband, loaned me his Pride and Joy which was the John Miles album.
Chorus and Orchestra of the Deutsche Opera Berlin
It was what was sung by our school choir when it was Prize Day in Preston Public Hall. And as head girl at the time, I had to give a small speech and I was so nervous because it's the first time I'd ever done anything like that. So whenever I hear that music, I get a shiver down my spine and I can envisage the audience at the Public Hall in Preston.
One of our good friends in the 1990s decided he was going to get his qualifications as a skipper for a yacht, so he coerced the other five to become competent or semi-competent anyway crew members. And we started off in Scotland. So sailing down the west coast of Scotland past the Sands and Moora playing Mark Knopfler's theme was just ideal.
Gloria in excelsis DeoFavourite
I've chosen that because when I went to the school I had the opportunity to learn to play the violin and I sat next to a girl called Dorothy who was an oboeist and she encouraged me to go with her to join Preston Youth Orchestra and the first piece that I ever had to play as a member of the orchestra was Vivaldi's Gloria.
The track I've chosen, because I was really struggling to pick one, is in fact Radio Gaga. It sticks in my memory because it was played at Live Aid with Freddie Mercury literally with the audience in his hands. And the only reason we saw it was because we'd been on a camping holiday with my cousin near Hexham and the weather was so awful we packed up and went home and Live Aid was on the TV that afternoon.
Well the next one is an Elton John song, your song in fact, because it brings back memories from my university days when I was doing a PhD here in London. And I shared a flat with an American called Gracie and she was a passionate Elton John fan and it brought me into contact with him and his music and I've been a fan ever since.
My seventh piece is actually the link to skiing which uh we have uh and it's uh Bruce Hornsby and the Range the way it is and it and it's because uh on one of our skiing holidays there was a fantastic pianist playing in a piano bar in Valdez Air and that was what he was playing and so every time it plays I think of ski slopes.
My final piece is from a group called Journey, Who's Crying Now from the album Escape. That brings back memories for me of a grand tour that John and I did of the northeastern US and Canada back in the 1980s. So it was a driving marathon and at the time this band and the song was top of the charts in North America. So it was being played every couple of hours on the radio and it was an American car with an absolutely amazing stereo system compared to the ones that we had in the UK at the time. So that's the memory that it brings back for me.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:22How much do you think the public understands? I mean, it is a pressing need now for us to solve the problems of where we get our energy supply from.
I think the public are probably more aware now than they were say 10, 15 years ago because they've woken up to the fact that there's a link between the price that they pay for their electricity and oil and gas prices and also are getting more concerned about the security of supply. I think many people know now that we are actually importers of oil and gas, not exporters anymore.
Presenter asks
2:19When you hear a breaking news story about nuclear power, like Chernobyl or Fukushima, what is your initial gut reaction?
Your heart usually sinks, but then you have to look at the facts. So, from that point of view, there was a very big difference between Chernobyl, say, and Fukushima, where people right across the globe were concerned about Chernobyl, and here, of course, we were concerned because of the impact it had on, for instance, lamb and agriculture at the time. But Fukushima was different because people understood it was a tsunami and an earthquake that caused the tsunami, and so the impact on our power stations wasn't there. And people actually understood it was more an ecological disaster than it was a radiation disaster.
Presenter asks
The keepsakes
The book
Alfred Wainwright
I'd actually like to take the box set of Wainwright walks. These are exquisite and accurate illustrations with full descriptions of the routes of the walks in the Lake District with many of the walks that I've done over the years. And I thought that would be great to be able to look through those and have the image in my mind of the walk up through the fells in the Lake District with family and friends.
The luxury
I'll plump for a guitar because music does mean a lot to me and I'd like to learn to play it properly. So a guitar with a set of uh music from beginner all the way up to something better.
Only eight percent of engineers in Britain are female. What's the problem?
Well, the problem is the lack of girls doing A level physics that's the problem. The way the subject is taught and the the topics that are within it don't appeal as much to girls as they do to boys, and also for girls that it's not cool to do physics.
Presenter asks
8:48You were born in 1955. What was it about your upbringing and schooling that made it prejudice-free regarding engineering?
My mum and dad had uh two daughters and so we were always uh treated equally and my dad used to have us help in whatever he was doing. I was quite happy to help him dig the garden and to uh get a hammer out and a saw and he was quite happy to have me in the garage messing about with him. I can remember, you know, building a go-kart out of bits of old pram stuff that we got from a scrapyard to compete in a go-kart race down the road, yeah.
Presenter asks
13:15When did you first come into contact with atomic energy and why did it interest you?
maybe fourth or fifth form as it was at the time at school. And it was just a topic that was on the news at the time. It was the beginning of atomic energy in the UK. And it was seen as a great, exciting, great advance for science. I thought it sounded really good, really cool.
Presenter asks
16:33You taught in inner city comps while doing your PhD. What did you learn from the pupils about their lives?
So completely different from anything that I'd ever experienced. It was at an all-girls school, but boy, was it a tough all-girls school down between Brixton and Clapham. I can remember at the time going for an interview with the head and her saying to me, Well, we need you to teach physics from Easter, and this was February, but will you start next week and teach the first and second years maths? … And I said But I haven't done any teaching. So I went home that weekend and rang up my old headmistress and said, Help. And she opened up my old school, Pemerlam Girls' School, and sat me down and said, This is what you got to do to get by for the first couple of weeks. … It was really, really tough because they were unstreamed kids and so you had some who were actually pretty well qualified kids and you had other ones that just weren't interested in learning at all. The kids used to have to walk around with all their bags and coats and things because there wasn't adequate provision for it and the labs were very, very poorly equipped. In the end I took some stuff down from Imperial College so that we could teach physics stuff properly.
“I think many people know now that we are actually importers of oil and gas, not exporters anymore.”
“Your heart usually sinks, but then you have to look at the facts.”
“The problem is the lack of girls doing A level physics that's the problem.”
“If you don't actually make or do things in an applied sense, you just lose the feel and the sense of what it's all about.”
“It was really, really tough because they were unstreamed kids and so you had some who were actually pretty well qualified kids and you had other ones that just weren't interested in learning at all.”
“I'd actually like to take the box set of Wainwright walks.”