Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Television presenter best known for hosting 'Through the Keyhole' and 'MasterChef', offering commentary on taste and style.
On the island
Eight records
The first time I heard this record by the Kinks, it was like being a witness to some sort of phenomenal artistic event. … I knew when I heard this record on the radio, I knew that everything I thought about music was going to change forever.
He has I mean, to me, he's got one of the most extraordinary voices of the 20th century. … Smokestack Lightning is one of those songs that just sends shivers up and down my spine. It's frightening.
A song I remember my father singing. He actually sang very well, and I d to me the crowning jewel of his repertoire was uh this song, which has the most wonderful lyrics.
Sam Cooke, Arthur Conley, Otis Redding
To me, a song that absolutely encapsulates everything that's wonderful about soul music, as well as being an amazingly generous tribute from one artist to a lot of others, is this Arthur Connolly recording.
Martin Fry, David Palmer, Stephen Singleton, Mark White
Every now and again a band comes along who are so brilliant and so exciting and so different that they just drive you crazy. And one of the bands that completely drove me crazy from the first time I heard them was an English group. Cold ABC.
Zaide, K. 344: Act I: Duet: Meine Seele hüpft vor Freuden (Zaide, Gomatz)
Edith Mathis, Peter Schreier and Staatskapelle Berlin, conducted by Bernhard Klee
It is still Mozart who gets to me more than any other composer.
Girls Just Want to Have FunFavourite
Girls just want to have fun is a single that is so astonishingly exuberant that the first time I heard it, um and I I just felt wonderful. … And I'm I'm thrilled to say that my my daughters, my two perfect daughters, Florence and Constance, are tremendous music fans. And their idea of bliss is putting something like this on the stereo, very loud, and jumping around the sitting room.
I always felt, you know, when the terrible day came around, when summer was shutting down and it was getting time to go back to school … that fan de saisant thing has a very bittersweet quality, which I think this song captures.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:42Do you think you have to be a foreigner to say the things that you do [on television] without being accused of being snobbish?
Yes, I d I think it it helps to come from a different culture if you want to make trenchant and amusing and entertaining observations.
Presenter asks
8:28How did you get on to all of these things [like the Chelsea Hotel and touring with Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf]?
Well, I mean, one of the things is that uh that I I suppose characterizes uh me is is that I'm an enthusiast. I'm a real fan. And when I had the opportunity through writing to meet various musicians and travel to various places, I was so enthusiastic about it and so excited about it. I would go almost anywhere.
Presenter asks
13:30How big a disappointment was it to you and your family that you didn't make it [to Harvard]?
When you grow up in uh in in Boston, around Boston, Harvard is sort of where you want to go, but uh it was not for me. … I did very well in my uh in a what uh college boards, which are like our A levels. I did extremely well in them, in fact. But I had a had a bit of bother with uh our principal and vice principal. … A couple of friends and I put together a little proto Underground magazine. … And we were regarded as pretty unacceptable troublemakers. So there was a little cloud.
The keepsakes
The book
Robert Louis Stevenson
It's one of those books that I reread every couple of years, because I'm a great re reader of of the books I love. It is the most wonderful story, and it is also as a piece of writing a great, great work of art which you could study forever.
The luxury
The only real benefit of being stuck on a desert island for me would be some opportunity to practice my casting, and finally get it up to scrap. For me, fishing is fishing for fishing's sake. It's got nothing to do with catching things, largely because I'm not really that much of a catcher. But so a fishing rod to perfect my casting.
Presenter asks
15:40What made you abandon the ambition of being a rock star?
Probably that I wasn't very good at it. And also, I I began to feel that, uh, you know, the lowest form of human existence is the unsuccessful rock musician.
Presenter asks
23:37How did you get into television by accident [in 1983]?
TVAM … was just getting together to go on air in february 1983. … One of the producers said, Oh, I know, I know what you should do. You should get there's a guy with a really stupid name who wrote, oh, I can't think of his name, but it's a really ridiculous name. He writes about restaurants for one of the glossy magazines … And someone said, oh, I know. It must be Lloyd Grossman at Harper's and Queen. … Subsequently, I found out they weren't looking for me at all. They wanted to get Bevis Hillier, who was the restaurant critic for Vogue. … So by accident, sorry, Bevis, by accident, I got this job at TVAM.
“I think because I don't know, because I i it was perceived by some people that, oh gosh, maybe I ought to be doing something else. They thought, well, what is he doing mucking around with populist television? There's something wrong here.”
“I do I do very little um I d I don't know, I do very little of that sort of personal publicity type of stuff. I just don't like it. I suppose I've got this idea that because I am quite a sort of public figure in a way. Maybe I just feel that you have to draw the line somewhere and I have to have there's got to be part of my life that is just for me and my close friends and my family.”
“I think uh pretentiousness is is one of the cardinal sins, because it's merely a way of making other people n feel inadequate. And it's it's merely a way of I don't know, of of of using nonsense to uh attack people and make them feel not not up to your standards.”