Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
A great figure in cricket, one of the best fast bowlers of all time, and a Yorkshireman.
On the island
Eight records
1812 Overture (closing passage)
London Symphony Orchestra, Band of the Grenadier Guards, conducted by Kenneth Alwyn
Well, I thought uh I'm supposed to be a fiery character. Uh this is supposed to be my image, which of course is completely wrong, but uh so let's stick to the image, shall we?
I had 20 years with Yorkshire and definitely the last 10 years of that career with the lads like the Don Wilsons and Phil Sharps and Jimmy Binks's and these type of lads, Jackie Hampshire's absolutely fantastic. The years were so happy that if I'm going to be on a desert island, I want to be able to listen to their voices and reminisce over the years of those great happy years that I have.
Ray Conniff's Orchestra and Singers
I first heard this record ooh a long long time ago now and it reminds me of the beautiful West Indies which I loved playing cricket in the West Indies and I liked the people there, I got on with them very well. I could have a joke with them and a laugh with them and they loved it and so I like blue Hawaii so I could sit down and remember some of the great times I had in the West Indies and the lovely cricket that I enjoyed.
I chose was something else trying to remind me of my life, of the many Christmases I spent away from home... And when you sit there in a hundred degrees, it's not quite the same. And I used to think and dream of the white Christmas in England and when you phone the poem sometimes it was a white Christmas and you say, Oh God, I wish I was there just to see it, you know.
French National Radio Orchestra, conducted by Sir Thomas Beecham
That's the one I want to listen to. I think that's beautiful. 'Cause that you see that just gets you going a little bit. That gets you marching up and down that beach and keeping fit.
A young lady that I followed her career since I first heard her sing many, many years ago, and for me I still think she's the greatest female singer in the world.
Another artist who I had the great privilege of seeing one night at the Hilton Hotel in Sydney. What a super guy, what a wonderful artist.
Largo (from Symphony No. 9 'From the New World')Favourite
London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Kertész
As we were saying before, I'd be looking to escape. I want to go home. And so I thought that a lovely piece, the old Negro spiritual song of going home, and I'd love to hear that.
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:39Fred, whereabouts in Yorkshire do you come from?
Well, I was born in a little village called uh Stainton, down near the bottom end of South Yorkshire, uh just the other side of Maltley, towards Bortry. So you're a country boy? Oh, yes, very much so. And of course now I live in the Yorkshire Dales, which is also very country up there.
Presenter asks
2:37Your father was a miner, but you don't really come from a mining family, do you?
Well no, my father comes more from uh the racing background. Horses. The horses, yes. And uh of course in the uh late twenties when things were bad, uh and especially with the advent of the motor car and the horse traffic starting to die away, uh he's a buyer and a seller and things like that, uh he moved into the Yorkshire coalfields and so that's where I was born, in the coalfields.
Presenter asks
4:46How early did [your father] start you [at cricket]?
Oh, I can remember playing a sort of cricket on the field when father was playing, possibly as way back as three or four years of age. And especially by five or six, I could bowl at a dustbin lid on two bricks, and that's what I learned to bowl.
The keepsakes
The book
Harold Macmillan
I met the great man in a test match at the Oval years ago now and was taken by him straight away. What a wonderful man and I think in my own opinion the last statesman that this wonderful great country that I belong to had.
The luxury
I love wildlife, I love birds and I love animals, and so what I would like, so I could study them, would be a pair of very good high-powered binoculars.
Presenter asks
10:21You had a telephone call one day that they'd applied for leave for you to play in your first Test while you were in the RAF?
When I look back on my RAF days, you know, they were absolutely fantastic. And I received a phone call from somebody to say, Congratulations, you've been picked to play for England... I thought it was just one big hoax, yes. I mean, never dreamt of playing for England. And then a bit later on a great lifelong friend rang me, called Bill Bowes, the old Yorkshire and England fast bowler. And when he rang me and told me I'd been chosen to play for England, of course I knew it was true.
Presenter asks
13:04Now from what you say, Yorkshire wasn't a very happy club in those days. The old sweats didn't really encourage the youngsters?
I didn't say they wouldn't en they didn't encourage them. They probably didn't help them as much as they should have done. And I thought in the fifties that we had a great side, and we really did have a great side... And we won nothing. I always thought that we wouldn't two or possibly three camps in one team.
Presenter asks
14:20At one time you were offered terms by Lincoln City as a soccer player. Were you tempted to do the double?
Oh, yes, very tempting. I would love to have played soccer as well as cricket but I was asked by certain people in the hierarchy to think of England and England cricket and my career. So I thought about it very seriously, turned soccer down and went to Australia and left me at home for the winter without a job. So I finished up selling furniture.
“I could never say yes if the answer was no and I could never say no if the answer was yes. So it d I I probably made things a little bit difficult for myself, but at least I could put my head on the pillow at night and go to sleep with a clear conscience.”
“I always have one stock answer, and that is every time I put on a Yorkshire or England sweater. That was a great thrill for me, just playing cricket. I just wish I could turn the clocks back twenty years and play again.”
“One day you've got six for twenty against a good side, you think you're bowling against a poor side, I'll get a stack of wickets. Every day you get one for a hundred, your feet are back on the ground. It's like batting, you've got a hundred and fifty against a good bowling side, you'll go against a poor bowling side and think, Oh, I should get a hundred in, you get out for naught, or two or three, and you've failed and your feet are back on the ground again. That's the great thing about cricket, it's a great leveller.”
“I'd be looking for ways to get off that island, to get back to see my family because they are the people I really miss, the family.”
“I think in my own opinion the last statesman that this wonderful great country that I belong to had.”