Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Author of irreverent cricket tour books, including 'Cricket Bloody Cricket', who became a best-selling celebrity.
On the island
Eight records
I spent my childhood immured in an Ursuline convent in Chester, and uh I had quite a good dose of what I think we can generically call church music, and my first solo was Ave Maria, Gunod's Ave Maria, and I really like Plathido Domingo singing Ave Maria.
Well, I think it's a sort of metaphor from moving to this convent where you're cloistered for 10 years of your formative existence and then you move on to Cambridge where I went in 1970. ... Anyway, brown sugar to me represents those years of 1970 and 72 to 73 when I was at Cambridge and it was a real riot.
Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125: IV. Ode to Joy
Well that's the European hymn and in 1973 when I graduated from Cambridge I really didn't know what to do next as most people don't and it was fortunate that that the United Kingdom had acceded to the European Communities in 1973 and I was headhunted over to Brussels where they trained me to be a conference interpreter which I did and still do to a certain extent until this very day.
Three Little Maids from School Are We
Valerie Masterson, Peggy Ann Jones and Pauline Wales
Well, I love Gilbert and Sullivan, and so my fourth record will be from The Mikado: It's Three Little Maids.
Well, I would really like Edith Piaff. Je no retretrien, no regrets, basically because it's the complete antithesis of myself. I think I regret more or less everything I've done thus far.
Elaine Paige and Barbara Dickson
Benny Andersson, Björn Ulvaeus and Tim Rice
When Phil was on Desert Island Discs and and didn't pick a song written by Tim Rice, he was much miffed. And I would not like to miff Mr. Tim Rice, otherwise he might not invite me to any more of these Heartaches Cricket Club thrashes, which are so wonderful.
Panis AngelicusFavourite
It's sung by Count John McCormack. Count John McCormack was uh a hereditary count of the Holy Roman Empire, and it was my father's favourite song and it still brings a lump to my throat.
In conversation
Presenter asks
3:35What kind of an education was it [at the convent], did you enjoy it?
No, I didn't enjoy it at all. It was extremely strict, although well meant. ... I was completely hopeless at all all games, um a bit of a swat really, and uh I really didn't enjoy it. No, I was one of these people that whenever the teachers used to say, Is there anything wrong with the lesson? ... All the girls used to say to me, You say we don't like it and I used to say we don't like it and then there would be a dreadful hush when you would put your points forward and you would cop the flack and I've continued doing that all my life.
Presenter asks
4:28What about your parents? What kind of background did you come from?
Well, my father was Irish. My father died last year in May, and he was uh a doctor. And I have three brothers. They're all medics of one sort or another scattered around the world. ... we had a very happy childhood. The three boys constantly took the Mickey out of me. I don't think if you're a a single girl in a family of three boys that you grew up with any big ideas about yourself. ... And I've really enjoyed that. I I've always enjoyed being with male company because of having three brothers.
Presenter asks
6:07Did you know when you were at university what you wanted to do? Had you always had a career plan?
The keepsakes
The book
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Douglas Adams
Well, I gave this great thought. I'm a person whose neurosis is basically self-improvement. I wish you wouldn't look at me as if you to suggest there were plenty of room for it. But I thought I ought to take Dante's Inferno, or or should I say the Divina Commedia, particularly The Inferno, and I thought, oh, the hell with it. I'd rather have Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy because I think it's important on a desert island to keep yourself amused, to keep laughing, to keep in good spirits. And I've read that book a hundred times and I still open it and laugh out loud, so it would have to be Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
The luxury
Well it could be Phil, couldn't it? I gave this again great thought and I thought a cordless phone, but you know I spend my life on my own, yeah, uh with a cordless phone, so it wouldn't be much different from the life I'm already leading. And therefore I thought unless Alan Lamb and David Gower have finished it off, which is eminently possible, I'd like a plentiful supply of 69 Bollinger.
Oh, absolutely not. No, I just went up to university, first of all, to read classics and after a week changed because everybody else reading classics was either going to end up a priest or a classics teacher and I couldn't see myself in either of those genres. And I changed to modern languages. And it was up at Cambridge that I met my husband, Phil Edmonds.
Presenter asks
14:51When did the idea first come to you to do this [writing books about cricket]?
What really happened was that the publishers, Kingswood Press, very much wanted Phil to write a book, one of these usual sort of ghosted biography books. And Phil said, Right, I want a two-book deal, and they said, No, you can have a one-book deal. And he said, I'm only signing on the dotted line if this here wife of mine can write a book. And that was the truth of it. It was Phil's idea. Phil actually realised that I was a sort of frustrated writer and that I really ought to be writing a book.
Presenter asks
20:36What opinion do you form of cricketers themselves? I mean, do you admire them?
It's a very mixed bunch. It's not an homogenous bunch. They're all extremely different. ... take the current England side. You've got people who would be merchant bankers or stockbrokers if they weren't cricketers. You've got some who would be plumbers if they weren't cricketers. You've got a real mixed bunch. And that, I think, is perhaps the hallmark of cricket, more so than any other sport.
Presenter asks
22:03What do you make of the country [Australia]?
It's a marvellous country. It's an epic country still looking for itself. But the thing that I think struck me most about it is that they are putatively so brash, so outgoing. ... And yet I found a s a prudish streak in them, which I found quite surprising. ... But there's Sydney, big, brash, cosmopolitan, happy to be Australian, and I love the place.
“I've always enjoyed being with male company because of having three brothers.”
“I don't ever say anything behind people's backs that I wouldn't say to their front. I don't believe in stiletto jobs behind the back. I'll say it to your face, and I'll say it with a smile on my face, and it's it's meant in fun.”
“I think women who make it to the top there are very punchy ladies. ... if they manage to amalgamate charm, with steel ... I think they're unbeatable forces.”