Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Conservative MP known for irreverent observations and never holding government office.
On the island
Eight records
Romeo and Juliet: The Knights' Dance
Chicago Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Sir Georg Solti
It's just extremely pretty. It is the most elegant and marvellous tune. It's also described as modern music, and it's as close as I get to modern music.
Instead of doing national service I fell ill, and when I recovered I went to Paris to the Sorbonne and spent the most marvellously romantic year. First Love in Paris in nineteen fifty one, and this was the tune that was being played everywhere.
Which is that lovely Greek song which for no particular reason except that whenever I listen to it I would like to be in a bunk. On board ship, on the Mediterranean, sailing into the sunset.
Symphony No. 1 in A flat major: IV. Lento - Allegro
London Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Sir Adrian Boult
Because of my love for Shropshire, which is my mother's county, and I hope one day to retire there, the last movement of Elgar's first symphony.
Flute and Harp Concerto in C major, K. 299: I. Allegro
James Galway, Fritz Helmis and the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Herbert von Karajan
Because, as I said earlier on, I think this is the piece that everybody puts in in order to show off. And anyway, it's a martha's tune.
Symphony No. 2 in D major: I. Allegro non troppo
Cleveland Orchestra, conducted by George Szell
Because I had it on tape in my my motor car. And when I return late at night from some drafty village hall, from making some great speech to a very small audience, I play it in order to recharge my batteries.
In the early sixties I fell in love with my wife and uh she went back to the United States leaving me here and I pursued her to America. And uh in every airport lounge and in every hotel bedroom they were playing Fly Me to the Moon.
September SongFavourite
After all, I'm fifty-six and this um. This song sums it all up, you know, and there's not much time left, etc., etc. says he miserably. It is a marvellous song.
In conversation
Presenter asks
4:11Was your father a plainly a remarkable man? I mean, uh, was he uh an influence on you?
Yes, I think he was. I always admired him immensely. My mother kept saying, Your father is a very clever man, which he is. So clever that this stopped me going into medicine. I felt that if I went into medicine too and attempted to become a neurologist, I would be always compared unfavourably to my father, so I had to go into politics instead.
Presenter asks
10:12Did you share the same political ambitions [at Oxford] with Michael Heseltine?
Very much so. We worked together, as it were, for three years, although Michael was by far the more successful. I had never met anybody as ambitious as Michael, and I can remember going to um a restaurant, having dinner, and Michael lifting out of his pocket an envelope and writing on the back of it all the decades of the twentieth century, against each one the position which he would hold. And of course in the nineteen nineties it was Downing Street.
Presenter asks
13:28What kind of fame did you mean [when you said you wanted fame]?
I think I was a very crass young man ever to have suggested at the time that I wanted fame. I suppose I want it to be. Well known. and I would like to be well known and respected by my peers. as being able to do something reasonably well, like writing, for example. But I would hate to be so well known as to be instantly recognizable in the street.
The keepsakes
The book
An Omelette and a Glass of Wine
Elizabeth David
An omelette and a glass of wine. Elizabeth David. Who has done more for middle-class English cooking than any other person, and it is a marvellous book, and I would sit on the sand covered with ants, reading these marvellous menus, and I'm thinking of lost opportunity.
The luxury
Case of Chambolle-Musigny Les Amoureux 1978
A case of Chambol Mussigny les amoureux seventy eight. to be drunk at the rate of one a month, and if at the end of twelve months there was no boat in sight, there would be a revolver at the bottom of the case, and I would blow my brains out.
Presenter asks
18:40What advice were you given as this very young man going into [the House of Commons] for the first time?
Doctor Charles Hill later to become Lord Hill. walked over to me and said, Young man, he said, You must never appear to be clever, he said. Advancement in this man's party is based firmly on alcoholic stupidity, and I haven't opened a book since.
Presenter asks
21:33When did you start putting your foot in it, so to speak?
I think it probably started in nineteen sixty one when Michael Heseltine, who was then the owner of Town Magazine... did a feature of a suit for a politician... and I had my photograph taken... and then, of course, all hell broke loose... I was summoned to see the chief whip... He didn't ask me to sit down, and he he picked up Town Magazine between finger and thumb, and he said, Are you hard up? ... I think the fact that I had modelled a suit rather um disqualified me as a serious contender amongst the old Tory party.
Presenter asks
24:56You've been in the House for more than twenty years. You never had government office. Isn't there a sense in which that makes your career a failure?
I think that is true. I think to have been in the House of Commons on the back benches. and not to have been a minister however junior, for however short a time. Must be a bit like being a soldier in a war who's never seen or heard a shot fired in action. I think to that extent I probably have. What I've had to do is to compensate. I mean, I hope I've been a good constituency MP, but on the other hand, I've become a a writer, a political commentator. a satirist of politics...
“I felt that if I went into medicine too and attempted to become a neurologist, I would be always compared unfavourably to my father, so I had to go into politics instead.”
“The question that all politicians hate being asked, because it's difficult, is why did you go into politics? And the only honest answer is a combination of service and ambition.”
“I think to have been in the House of Commons on the back benches. and not to have been a minister however junior, for however short a time. Must be a bit like being a soldier in a war who's never seen or heard a shot fired in action.”