Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
President of the International Olympic Committee from 1972 to 1980, also a journalist, soldier, filmmaker, author and businessman.
On the island
Eight records
The first uh choice, I said Tea for Two, is one of the earliest musical comedies I saw. I played the ukulele, which is then in instrument today in the little school band, and one of the first tunes I can remember.
Well, I think uh as we were talking about r rowing and my my rowing scholarship, I think of nothing which would be m more suitable than the Eaton Booting Song, which is sung by the Eton College Music Society, and which last time I sang it I was a treble.
During the war I I one was very conscious of music, which war music, both from the First War and the Second War. Before the war I had also been connected with the the theatre and had a great friend called Vivianellis who wrote a tune called Spread a Little Happiness.
Polonaise No. 3 in A major, Op. 40, No. 1, 'Military'Favourite
After the w the the war I got married and uh at uh our wedding my wife, who was dancing very musical, Shitcha is uh the Chopin's Polynes Number Three in A. which was uh brings me back uh very happy memories. We've been married forty plus years now, and it's uh it's a tune that we we both r brings us back sentimental memories.
Olympic Hymn
I think uh th th that uh probably I should ask for the Olympic hymn. I I've always wished that that tune was played instead of the many national anthems. When I hung the medal round people's neck I've often felt that there was so much chauvinism, so much nationalism, that uh neutral hymn would have been better.
I used to go up to see the Saddlers Wells a lot, and I became very interested and very fond of ballet. I knew Constant Lamottre well, who was a conductor. And I used to go and visit him in Hanover Lodge, off Regents Park, and Freddie Ashton, who was still with us, thank God. The ballet I remember best, and I saw it again after the war, was Tchaikovsky's The Sleeping Beauty.
The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem
Throughout The Quiet Man, Jack Ford, who was a was incidentally an Irish speaker, was very fond of The Wild Colonial Boy, and it appears very much in the in the in the film, so I suggest that that is a suitable, fairly neutral Irish song.
Where the Streets Have No Name
Well, Omni Island, a Desert Island, I think that I would like to update it a little and suggest a tune where the streets have no names by the U Two, who are illustrated in my book and I I admire very much both musically and the fact that they they many of them I don't agree with all their views are singing with a social conscience.
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:56What kind of family background did you come from?
My family came from Galway, where we were merchants, Norman origin, and we've never really left Galway City except when my family married in the 17th century into the O'Flauties, and we got three acres of land. It's always said to me, whatever things I did wrong in Ireland, I'd never be shot for my land. Everyone thinks that I have a title, that I come from behind a big wall. Well, that's right, I would have done too. So why didn't you? Why don't you have more land? Well, because I happen to be a papish, and during penal times, we weren't allowed to have land.
Presenter asks
7:50Were you a pacifist at Cambridge?
Yes, I think I was a pacifist. I certainly went round with Julie Birdwood, who was the daughter of Field Marshal, and one two other people, to discourage people from joining the OTC. I was not politically minded as some of my friends were. I didn't realise how much they were, like Burgess and Maclean. Donald MacLean was an exact contemporary of mine. Guy Burgess was a bit older, but I knew them all. I was never politically involved, other than the fact that one just didn't want another war. One had suffered. One had this blackness all the time.
Presenter asks
19:51What did you make of President Carter?
When I went to the White House and flew Concord, the White House, and saw President Carter, I really left very worried because he hadn't been properly briefed on the details of what you can do, what you can't do, and trying to stop the games. And I must admit, I remember very well giving a very big press conference after it, but thinking all the time, I only hope that the White House is better briefed on things that really matter rather than on sporting matters.
The keepsakes
The book
R. B. Cunninghame Graham
I've always found it an extremely interesting book.
The luxury
Presenter asks
20:17Is there any way in which you think you foresee in the future that politics can be kept out of sport?
I think sport, especially the Olympic Games, have been involved in politics since the beginning. ... What I dislike is intensely is that the game is being used for political purposes, such as the boycotts, being told we couldn't go to Moscow by certain politicians or that the nationals of the country couldn't go, but when they were doing nothing else about it, it's the easiest game of politics to play and the people who suffer are the athletes.
Presenter asks
23:53What makes Ireland magical for you?
Well, I I I like it because it's small. I I l I like it because the people, I like it because of its music, I like it because it's literature and what it what it produces. And um I I like living at home. I I think I'd be miserable not living although I s I'm cockney born or Belgravia born. But uh that that's just by chance.
“I succeeded at the age of thirteen. My father, who was killed in the commanding the Ashgar's First War, never succeeded. I didn't know my father. I was born a month afterwards.”
“I came up in a generation of really one-parent families. I I'm really conscious all the time of blackness, widows, widows, widows. And even when I went on to school, that was still the case. Some people like my mother had remarried. But a tremendous number of us did not have fathers. And I think this later had considerable effect on one's attitude towards war at my Cambridge generation.”
“I've had a fairly wide life, and I'm writing about my Fleet Street days, the stories I covered, like the abdication and Chinese-Japanese war and things like that. ... But I I I hope it's a a book of a a happy man.”