Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Former MP, minister, author, and broadcaster, best remembered for wearing colourful jumpers on breakfast TV.
On the island
Eight records
There Are Bad Times Just Around the Corner
This song, written about 60 or more years ago, seems as relevant to me now as it was when it was first created.
I've Grown Accustomed to Her FaceFavourite
Together we listened to records of Noel. You can imagine what we were like, aged 12 and 14, doing our impressions of Noel Card, Flanagan, and Allen, and we could do the whole of My Fair Lady. We competed as to who was the better Henry Higgins.
Dear Lord and Father of Mankind
The Choir of St Paul's Cathedral
I was brought up in London and when I was a little boy I was in two church choirs and I was also a server at St Stephen's Church in Gloucester Road and I was a choirboy and I loved being a choir boy.
It's from a show called The Vacques, which I saw at Godolphin and Latimer's school, where my daughter... Aphra, my youngest daughter, was in this show, which is why I went to see it. But I just fell in love with the show, and I was bowled over by this particular number.
I saw Olivier perform Othello several times in the early 1960s, and this is him in fact this was recorded, I think, while he was still rehearsing for the part of Othello.
Andrew C. Wadsworth and Shona White
I created this show called Zip. And we did 100 musicals in 100 minutes... And every night during the show, we had a Sun-Time moment. And here is Andrew C. Wadsworth, who was our leading man in the show from the start, and Shona White. I heard this time and again, hundreds and hundreds of times. And I think I've never been happier.
If You Go in to Go-In for This Sort of Thing (from Patience)
John Reed and the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company
I'm a huge Gilbert and Sullivan fan... And this takes me back to the 50s when my parents first took me to the Savoy Theatre to see Doily Cart. I loved Patience. It's the opera that satirizes Oscar Wilde and the aesthetic movement.
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:34Does that irk you [that the first line of your obituary will be that you wore silly jumpers on breakfast TV]?
I accept it completely. I mean, it is more than twenty years since I last wore a colourful jumper on T V, but people do remember them.
Presenter asks
2:23Are you happy with where you're at right now?
Yes, I think, funnily enough, I've always been happy with where I am on the day. I'm quite good at living in the moment.
Presenter asks
6:44Why was it a private thing [your marriage]?
Well, it if you're getting married, it is it's actually about the person you're marrying, it's about the relationship, it's not about... the party... I think I'm professionally gregarious, but actually at home I'm quite quiet.
Presenter asks
17:36The keepsakes
The book
Anton Chekhov
Because I fell in love with the theatre, I think, properly, seeing the production of Uncle Vanya with Laurence Olivier and Michael Redgrave. And Chekhov's plays, well, they're just wonderful.
The luxury
I've just come back from the Vatican and I came face to face with Michelangelo's Pietà in St. Peter's.
Is it the case that you waited [to be an MP] because your wife said to you, I don't want you getting involved in politics when we have a young family?
Michel said families and politics don't mix, don't do this well until the children are at least teenagers. And the day my youngest daughter became a teenager, I applied to be a Member of Parliament.
Presenter asks
18:05The job of the whip famously is to stay in the shadows and twist the arms. How did you get on with that?
Quite the reverse. That's part of the job. But of course the more important part of the job is to be liked. I'm much more likely, Kirsty, to persuade you to vote with me on my side if you like me, know me, trust me, love me a little, than if I'm just some fierce barking person who twists your arm. It was the happiest experience of my life, being a government whip.
Presenter asks
19:40Do you think you were a bad MP?
No, I think I was a good MP. I was a very I believe I was a good MP. When I lost my seat in 1997... my wife said to me, Listen to the people, Giles. They have spoken. They don't want you. So I decided not to go back into politics.
“the joy of a woolly jumper is that you can take it off at will, whereas the blight of a woolly mind is that you're lumbered with it for life.”
“I think basically what I've done through all my life is or certainly the first thirty or forty years, was trying to fulfil my parents' ambition for me.”
“I notice only oft in retrospect that all my choices for these records, and indeed all my references in my life, are to people, personalities who would have been contemporaneous with my father, not with me.”
“I think greatness would always have eluded me, because I don't have physical courage.”