Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Journalist and BBC security correspondent who, after being shot and paralyzed in Saudi Arabia, returned to reporting on the Middle East from a wheelchair.
On the island
Eight records
Slovak State Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Alfred Walter
my parents gave me this C D and it actually reminds me of very happy trips I've done to Bavaria, where I took my family skiing only last year. I can't believe it was last year when I was still able-bodied. And I listened to this a lot in hospital last summer in some pretty dark days, and it cheered me up.
Alla Marcia (from Concerto for Oboe and String Orchestra)
Andrew Knight, with members of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Barry Wordsworth
This is a composition by my father who really got into composing after he retired from the the diplomatic service and this was something he composed and it ended up being performed on the South Bank at the Festival Hall and I actually went to the concert it was being played which made me very proud.
I really like All Saints, and it's just it's a wonderful bit of escapism. You know, you listen to this and you just you think of some wonderful hidden island in Thailand somewhere, and when you're sitting in London at your desk in the rain, it's a great way of escaping.
I've always loved Bond films, who doesn't? A friend of mine sent me this cassette when I was living in Bahrain, and I I put it in the car. I went to fetch a friend from the airport.
This is a track by a Lebanese singer called Farouz, and it's called Habaytik, meaning I loved you. And I I love a lot of Arab music, and I used to listen to her music a lot when I was living in the Middle East.
Brandenburg Concerto No. 2 in F major, BWV 1047Favourite
The English Concert, directed by Trevor Pinnock
This is a very uplifting piece of music, I think. It's um one of the Brandenburg concertos, and it's impossible not to like Bach, I think. I mean my mother tells me that Bach was quite close to God, and it's just so uplifting this music. It's just wonderful. I could listen to it forever.
She's a great singer. Used to listen to this sometimes in Cairo when I was there a second time. We had a relatively big flat that overlooked large parts of Cairo and we'd play the music, crank out the music, open the windows, we lived up on the 18th floor, amazing view right over this historic city, over the Gazira Island in the middle of the Nile, over the river, over the citadel, out to the Makutam Hills.
This last record is Cumbia. It's Colombian Cumbia, which is a a form of music they have out there. And I just think it's great. I I went I've been a lot to Latin America. I've done a lot of travelling there, fortunately, and I loved Colombia. It's such a wild and exotic and exciting country.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:27Have you discovered depths of determination in you that you never knew you had?
I've had to, Sue. Um I mean there are really two choices when you're made suddenly paraplegic. You can lie in bed and feel sorry for yourself and say, Oh no, I don't feel like doing physio today, I can't be bothered or you can get up and try to think positively, to think, Okay, if I really work on this, perhaps I can build something up from the muscles that I still have got in my upper legs. The the problem with it is that it's there is no obvious light at the end of the tunnel.
Presenter asks
7:52Why had you decided to do [Arabic and Islamic studies]? What had inspired you?
Well, initially it was Sir Wilfrid Thessinger. My mother knew him, I think, in the fifties, and we bumped into him on a bus. ... Yes, I mean he he wrote uh the Arabian Sands and the Marsh Arabs and he did all these epic crossings of the empty quarter of Arabia in the forties and fifties. And we went to tea with him in his his pad in Chelsea and he had all these great photographs up on the wall and of trains of camels crossing dunes in Arabia and I just thought wow
Presenter asks
15:19Why after nine years of [investment banking] do you chuck it all in and decide to become a journalist?
The keepsakes
The book
E. M. Forster
I think I'd probably take Ian Forster's passage to India. There was a sort of I don't know, a kind of ethereal, otherworldly quality to that India that he described.
The luxury
I think I would go for some sort of solar-powered buggy. And one of the things I miss about being disabled is that I can't birdwatch in the way I used to. I used to love getting out into wild country. The wilder and rougher terrain, the more I liked it. But if I had the solar-powered buggy, on the island, I'd be able to kind of whiz around and watch pelicans diving for fish and that kind of thing. That'd be fun.
Um, it's what I always wanted to do. Um I mean all this time that I was working in banking, I was writing articles for freelance for magazines, usually travel writing. So I thought time for a big switch. Let's do it now before it's too late.
Presenter asks
18:28So what happened exactly [during the attack in Riyadh]?
The first I knew was a car drew up near by, a young man got out smiling, looked quite a nice guy, and said in Arabic, Salaamu Alaikum, peace be upon you and then he pulled out a gun. And that was a bad moment, because that was just the the sense of betrayal there. You know, when you say peace be upon you, that is you know, it's I wish you no harm, wish you no evil. He said that to get me off guard, to try and get closer to me, so he could kill me. I saw him pulling out the gun and I ran and uh he fired, hit my shoulder, I carried on running. Somebody else fired there was a second group, and uh they got me down on the on the ground and uh I pleaded for my life, but they still put four bullets into me.
Presenter asks
20:32Did you in that moment of lying there, you know, did you reconcile yourself to death, as it were?
No, I went into survival mode. Play dead. Shut my eyes, stop breathing, don't move, don't move a muscle. And I could feel them sort of walking around me. And then they got back in the car and went. By this stage, I was already paraplegic, and I propped myself up on my hands so that I could shout better. And initially, my thought was to cry for help, but it soon developed into just cries of pain. It was just indescribable. But part of me, I think, the sort of survival mode in me was saying, gotta stay conscious, get word to the British Embassy, get help, to survive.
Presenter asks
23:40Do you got have you got [a faith] of your own?
Oh yes, I believe in God. I must admit, I was too busy thinking of the practical business of survival to be praying at the time when I was lying there bleeding to death in Riyadh. Since I've thanked God for staying alive and thanked God for the fact that my injuries aren't worse, I spend quite a lot of time on a spinal injuries ward and I'm the only person who can feed himself, who can get in and out of a wheelchair and I'm very lucky in that sense. I mean I wouldn't be able to do this without my wife who acts as a carer in many ways. But I've got away relatively lightly so yes I thank God for that.
“We in the West make more of an effort to understand what are the roots of this anger and this desire for revenge that Islamist extremist militants have. And of course, that's made all the more pertinent by the London bombings. They didn't just come out of nowhere. There are reasons for this. The people who shot me didn't know that they were trying to kill Frank Gardner. We were just targets of opportunity.”
“You can never win or lose a war on terrorism. You can only reduce incidents of terrorism to a sort of manageable level. I mean, that's an awful expression, that, because for those who are caught up in it, of course it's not manageable, for those who've lost people, but it can be reduced. But it's, I'm afraid, a war without end.”
“Anybody who says, oh, it's still you, you're still the same person, after paraplegia, is talking nonsense. You're never the same person, really. In some ways, you can be a better person. You know, I've learnt a lot of patience, a lot of humility. I've had to.”