Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Forensic psychotherapist treating the most dangerous violent offenders at Broadmoor Hospital and researching the nature of evil.
On the island
Eight records
And it brings back very happy memories of going to a Rolling Stones concert. A friend of mine was roadieing for them, so I was backstage for the whole of the day.
Cello Suite No. 1 in G major, BWV 1007: I. Prélude
It's just one of the most perfect pieces of music. I give this music to people that I care for. I don't know who it was who said that the cello is the voice of the heart, but I think there's no doubt that it is.
Chas Jankle, I think, is a musical genius, and this is one of his best. But Ian Dury was a wonderful singer, and I saw him when I was at medical school, and I saw him not long before he died. And everybody of a certain age in their jeans and T-shirts just dancing away was fantastic.
I chose this because it reminds me of the times at medical school when we would dance. Dancing has been a very important part of my uh enjoyment of my life and uh this weather was great fun to dance to.
Don Giovanni, K. 527: Mi tradì quell'alma ingrata
reminds me of many things. Well, first that I heard Kiri when I was ten years old in our local town hall, but also because she was one of my father's favorites. And my father taught me about opera, and this was the first piece of opera music that I really got when I understood why people love it.
Shower the PeopleFavourite
I used to listen to this all the time at school. James Taylor's greatest hits was Our Record that we played in the Juniors' Common Room all the time. And my children like him, and this is a song which I think really exemplifies everything that I think is important about relationships.
The Choirs of St Peter's, Caversham and St John's, Mortimer
I sing in a choir in my local church and we sing with another choir and we often get together and sing evensong in cathedrals around the country and it's an enormous pleasure. And every year at Candlemas we sing this motet
Requiem in D minor, K. 626: Lacrimosa
Academy and Chorus of St Martin in the Fields, conducted by Sir Neville Marriner
Again, this is a piece that I've sung, and it has a memory for me of being in New York in two thousand and two, the first anniversary of 9-11, when I went to the Juilliard School of Music along with hundreds of other people with my own score, and we came together for a spontaneous singing of Mozart's Requiem to commemorate 9-11.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:34There must be moments when you contemplate what the people you talk to have done and you are a little scared at least?
Yes, well, not, I think, scared because of course I'm working in a very secure and safe environment. And so I think it's sad, really, because particularly in the hospital where I work, many of our people are are very disabled. I mean, not only have they done terrible things, but they've often been through terrible things as well, which has left them very psychologically disabled. And the rehabilitation process is a very slow one, so I think not so much fearful as just sad.
Presenter asks
2:54When you say survivors of a disaster, do you mean the disaster of the lives that they've had... or do you mean the disaster of what it was they did that landed them in Broadmoor?
Both. ... Many of our people have come from the most disastrous of lives in terms of abuse and neglect, real extremes of abuse and neglect. But also often for many of them what they've done is a trauma. ... we don't seek to excuse people. But I think it's crucial to remember that these patients are people. They once had lives. ... They were once small boys, they were once uh young men who were hopeful. and whose lives went terribly awry.
Presenter asks
The keepsakes
The book
The biggest possible volume of collected poetry
If I'm going to have to sit and wait to be rescued, I'm going to need poetry and the consolations of poetry while I wait.
The welfare of the patient and the safety of the public... can't have equal status, though, I'm imagining, do they?
Well, I think within the secure perimeter of a hospital, we know that we're working safely. We know that there's no danger to the public. So in that sense, we're not taking risks on a day to day basis. But nobody moves on from Broadmoor without the issue of the risk to the public being considered very carefully.
Presenter asks
17:04Do you think our expectations culturally right now are at a point where we expect too much happiness?
Yes, I do. I I sometimes wonder whether we don't prepare enough. For the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Or rather, I think that we don't understand that pain and suffering and rage and distress are as normal a part of life. as the happiness and the joy.
Presenter asks
20:45Do you actually talk to your patients at Broadmoor about the things that they've done?
Oh yes oh yes uh very much so. Then it's always quite a moment, I think, when one does do that. When one says, well, when you killed so-and-so, when you actually use that phrase, it's always quite a moment.
Presenter asks
33:20Did it become harder your job when you became a mother?
Yes, I think it did. It became a bit sadder recently. ... Because I began to see all these men as the small boys that they once were. And about how they might have been with all that promise that children have.
“I sometimes think that they're like survivors of a disaster, where they were the disaster.”
“When you kill somebody, you've changed the universe.”
“Hope is a very important part of the work that I do. I always think that there's a duty to be hopeful.”