Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Broadcaster, best known as the tenacious host of the Today programme and Grand Inquisitor to politicians.
On the island
Eight records
I have been terrified by two interviewees in my whole life, and I mean terrified. One of them was Margaret Thatcher, you'll not be surprised to hear. The other was Ella Fitzgerald. The problem with Ella Fitzgerald was that I failed to interview her. I was the editor of the teenage page of the Cardiff and District News. And Ella Fitzgerald came to Cardiff and I went into her dressing room and I was so scared and clumsy, imagine it, that my elbow caught a mirror, knocked it to the floor, smashed it, and she looked at me with rage and contempt and said, Get that kid out of here. So I never actually did interview her. But to this day, I tremble at the thought of it.
My first um job outside Cardiff was in the Welsh Valleys, and one of the things I had to do was follow around the labour of love this, follow around the Penderrus male voice choir. The music was wonderful, but even more moving was the sight of these miners,'cause they were all miners of course, standing on stage looking utterly immaculate with their crisp blazers and white shirts and carefully knotted ties, and the veins of the the lines in their hands and on their cheeks where the coal dust over the years had had become ingrained.
When I was in the valleys, one of my closest friends was a chap called John Jones who worshipped Duke Ellington, and I used to go with him to the concerts. In fact, it's one of my very proud boasts that many years later, when I was in New York, and I went to an Ellington concert in the Rainbow Rooms at the top of the Rockefeller Centre, and I went for a wee in the interval, and there was the great man, and I stood next to him.
Next piece of music is connected with America. Um Don MacLean, um most famous at the time, I suppose for American Pie, but I think his most beautiful song was Vincent.
From the States I wanted to come back to London, but they said, No, would you mind going down to South Africa to open a television bureau there? Which uh I did. And it was at a time when apartheid was at its height, ghastly, ghastly time to be there in lots of ways, but of course a wonderful story for a newsman, and the resistance movement was in full flood. And this was their song
Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 61: II. Larghetto
Itzhak Perlman, Philharmonia Orchestra and Carlo Maria Giulini
Classical music for many years has played a huge part in my life. I I now listen almost to nothing but classical music. One of the pieces that turned me on to it was the Beethoven Violin Concerto, which struck me at the time, thirty-five years ago, whenever it was, as being the most beautiful piece of music I'd ever heard.
Cello Concerto in E minor, Op. 85Favourite
Mstislav Rostropovich, Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra and Gennady Rozhdestvensky
My son Christopher is a professional cellist and when he was a youngster he played for the Reading Youth Orchestra and his first solo performance was the Elgar Cello Concerto and I can remember sitting in the front row squeezing my upper arms with the tension of it
Well, it's because of Owen. He, um bizarrely, I suppose, at a very early age showed huge enthusiasm for rock and roll. This takes me full circle, really, because I suppose I started my musical career, if that's what you can call it, with rock and roll, and um he absolutely insisted... it had to be great balls of fire.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:13Was it a strong sense of social injustice that propelled you into journalism in the first place?
A bit of that, a bit of jealousy, a bit of anger, a bit of frustration, a whole combination of things. You never quite know, do you, until much later.
Presenter asks
2:16What did you make of Jonathan Aitken's accusation that you were poisoning the well of democratic debate?
Oh, I was terrified at the time. ... I actually thought that my career, such as it was, had come to an end at the Today programme. Because if others in the cabinet ... did not want to be interviewed by me ... I couldn't continue to present the Today programme. That would be an end to it. And it wasn't really until the Monday when Ken Clark ... and Douglas Heard ... both got on to the Today programme and said, look, we're not a part of this ... that we realised it was going to swing in my favour.
Presenter asks
13:08Why was being a district reporter for Liverpool and the North West the best job you ever had?
Just because it was my own patch, I was my own boss. And it was just a fabulous place to be. Liverpool was so exciting at the time. Beatles and dock strikes, mostly dock strikes. ... But it was great to be independent, have your own patch, uh, at a time when there was a lot of news.
The keepsakes
The book
The biggest poetry anthology you can lay your hands on
I've never given enough time or attention to poetry. Uh one novel would drive me mad after a week, so it's got to be poetry.
The luxury
I doubt that I'll be quite up to Rostropovich's standard by the time I leave the desert island, but I want to give it a go. I had tried in the past, failed miserably, but I want to try again.
Presenter asks
14:57How much time did you actually spend with your children when they were small?
I missed seeing my children grow up to some extent because I became a foreign correspondent quite early on and from then on spent oh six, seven, sometimes eight or nine months of the year abroad. So I miss seeing my kids a lot. ... I miss seeing her growing up and the first bits of the walking and things and it that's sad. You shouldn't do that. That's I wouldn't recommend that to anybody.
Presenter asks
24:23What do you say to people who say your interviewing technique on Today generates more heat than light?
That would be true. If you make the assumption that the politician is always there to tell it like it is, to answer your questions fully, frankly, and freely ... Mostly, for perfectly obvious reasons, they don't come in to do that. They come in to deliver a message. ... Now it's not your job to stop them delivering that message, but it is your job to ask them what lies behind it, to challenge it if necessary, and to pick them up. If they repeat the point they've already made, if they try to dodge the question you've asked them ... it's your job to say, Come off it, squire, let's have none of that. Now, how about answering this question?
Presenter asks
30:14Were you ready to embark on fatherhood again [at age 57]?
Absolutely not. Absolutely not. I was ready retire to retire from all that and look forward to my grandchildren. And I was deeply reluctant to start on it all over again. But it's been utterly, utterly Glorious. Been wonderful. ... Having children as I did at the age of 21, 22, 23, was one thing. Having a child at the age of 57 was something quite different. ... other things in your life are less important. Your career doesn't matter any longer. ... all your attention is is focussed on this little chap. And uh I just have found myself utterly, entirely captivated by him.
“You sort of began to get a feeling at that time that there was another place, that that you weren't being admitted to, that there were other good things happening, and that you weren't being um allowed to share in them. And you you you felt, I felt, a bit puzzled at first, and then, I suppose, increasingly cross, and, yeah, jealous that that we didn't have all of that.”
“I am very, very, very conscious of waste, and I regard waste as as as wrong, morally wrong. And waste is waste is a moral issue, not not just a matter of practicality, but it's wrong.”
“I do start with the assumption that they are there for their benefit rather than necessarily for the benefit of the audience, for the elucidation of the public as a whole. And it's my job often to try to get them to be a bit more candid than perhaps they intended to be.”