Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
A Labour MP known for his campaigning work for the deaf, thalidomide victims, and other causes after losing his hearing.
On the island
Eight records
The reason I really like this very much and very fond of it is because it was one of the great tunes and I could almost Feel the Danube flowing as it was played in the olden days.
This happens to be uh a song that I loved in my younger days, and it was something that my family in Witness always sang on special occasions. My sister Mary used to sing it as well, so it's very special to me.
this is because in those days when I was uh a boy, a lot of the men had been killed in the First World War or badly wounded, and the families used to talk about the Somme and Passchendaele and Wipers and Mons and Flanders. That was part of our heritage, and they used to sing Lilly Malayne. We knew the Germans sang it also. It was a kind of international brotherhood after the sadness of the war.
And uh there's so many uh songs about the war, countless songs, but I think that we'll meet again reflects a kind of aching void of those days of separated families, men in the army and the women at home, and it has that message of hope of we'll meet again some sunny day.
this song reminds me of when I was a young man, just beginning to start dancing, going out with what we call girls then, but uh ... And they remind me of warm summer evenings with the summer dresses of the girls and the dancers and an age of innocence when during the interval we'd have lemonade and crisps and that kind of thing. And when you took a girl home then you would kiss her on the cheek and say good night and that was that.
I used to thrill to the power of Gili when he used to sing this, and um I thought there was an air of sort of controlled desperation with the way he sang this song.
Hallelujah Chorus (from Messiah)Favourite
Academy and Choir of Saint Martin in the Fields
It's a song of great beauty signifying unison rarely, but for me the most important thing about it is it seems to represent the triumph of the human spirit.
Sunbury Junior Singers of the Salvation Army
This to me represents the gentleness and the kindness and the warmth of Christmas. And I love children, as everyone does, of course. I love them very much. And I think Silent Night is particularly applicable to children. For that reason, it's my very great favourite at representing Christmas and all that Christmas means.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:29What did your four-year-old grandson say when you first heard him?
What he said was a very simple sentence. We were at a pond together, and I said, Look at the flies, Harry. and magically I heard him say, They're not flies, grandad, they were some other kind of insect and I was bowled over.
Presenter asks
6:06Can you explain how the operation to restore your hearing works?
It is a very complicated thing, but uh oversimplifying. There are twenty two electrodes connected to the remaining neurons of my hearing nerve. The electrodes go in the inner ear through the skull and then you wear a speech processor rather like um an old-fashioned mediocre hearing aid, but of course much more sophisticated. And the miracle, when this when I this was first switched on, I was so disappointed because all I could hear when people were speaking and it was Pauline's voice I first heard happily was D duh duh ps ps ps. I thought, My God, I've made an awful mistake with this it's terrible. The surgeon said our brain gradually gets used to these old sounds. and he began to relearn, to understand. And it's an operation that costs about twenty-five thousand pounds. ... which is buttonless compared with heart transplants and all that kind of thing.
Presenter asks
7:49Is there less sympathy for deafness than for blindness?
The keepsakes
The book
John Keegan
The whole of human life is written in warfare, and that's really why I'm interested.
The luxury
I would want some means of smoking salmon on my island. And if I could have smoked salmon with some white wine, that to me is the greatest luxury in the world.
Precisely what I'm saying, and the lack of understanding as well. People are patronizing and they look down on deaf people. It's a very strange quirk of human nature, and it's time it was rectified.
Presenter asks
8:49What was the last thing you heard properly before you lost your hearing?
Well, I remember it very vividly. I'm a great rugby league fan, the proper rugby, not the union, the nonsense about rugby union. And uh the last voice I heard was Eddie Warings on Boxing there, and I couldn't understand his voice fading and fading and fading, and that was when I discovered within minutes that my hearing had gone completely.
Presenter asks
27:16How different do you think your career would have been if you hadn't become deaf?
It's not possible for me to say so. Uh at the time I lost my hearing, the uh Newspapers and magazines were forecasting that these backbenchers would get office Roy Hattersley, Eric Heffer and Jack Ashley and David Owen, and they did in fact go on to get office, those three, but I didn't. I was disappointed over not becoming a minister, but in fact the campaigning for the things I believed in for disadvantaged and disabled people was something I found very worthwhile.
Presenter asks
32:17Do you look back on your life with anger or are you philosophical about it?
I don't look back either with anger or regret. Um I did have regrets at the time, but I've done my best. It's not a marvellous best, but it was my best, and um there's no point in pining. All you can do is to do what you can do.
“What he said was a very simple sentence. We were at a pond together, and I said, Look at the flies, Harry. and magically I heard him say, They're not flies, grandad, they were some other kind of insect and I was bowled over.”
“I was so disappointed because all I could hear when people were speaking and it was Pauline's voice I first heard happily was D duh duh ps ps ps. I thought, My God, I've made an awful mistake with this it's terrible”
“I wrote my letter of resignation from the House of Commons to the local Liber Party, and I posted it with a very sad heart. I didn't think one could carry on with no hearing in what, in the best sense of the term, is the greatest talking shop in the in the land. I didn't think it was possible, but of course my constituents in Stockholm's Fence and my Parliamentary colleagues and above all my wife Pauline persuaded me it was possible, and incredibly it turned out to be so.”
“Walking into that chamber with total silence, and the MP s looked as if they were miming silently, Was a an astonishing experience”
“I don't look back either with anger or regret. ... All you can do is to do what you can do.”