Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Newspaper editor best known as the editor of the Daily Mail, with influence over six million readers.
On the island
Eight records
During my university years I I had a brief love affair with Jazz. And this music seems to me more than anything to sum up newspapers there. Petitive, metallic, coming out every day, a remorseless energy.
Well, as I say, it's a a a tribute to my father. My father was a A great newspaper man. But he was also a frustrated newspaper man because his his great love, his first love, was was writing songs and lyrics to songs. And the last one he wrote happened to be the last one that Bing Crosby sang and he wrote the lyrics for it and it's called That's What Life Is All About and my father died last year and I'd try to play this for him.
Symphony No. 12 in D minor, Op. 112 "The Year 1917"
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Vladimir Ashkenazy
I've chosen Shosofovich's symphony of number twelve in D minor, known as The Year nineteen seventeen, and the reason I've chosen it is, I say, they were great heads. Great left-wing stuff. Look great left-wing stuff, but I like the Russian Revolution. I do wonder whether we throw out the baby with a bath board.
New York Philharmonic, conducted by Zubin Mehta
I've chosen for my next one the overture to to Wagner's Tannhauser. It is the first opera. I really ever saw it was at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York. And it was the most spectacular production and I fell in love with opera at that moment.
Variations on a Rococo Theme, Op. 33
Mstislav Rostropovich, Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Herbert von Karajan
Is Rostovovich playing part of Tchaikovsky's Rococo variations? I learned the piano and the cello, and. played it up to s to school age, and I've always loved the cello. I think it's it is the most emotional instrument, and this pu was one of the first pieces of music I learned and I love it for its simplicity.
London Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Carl Davis
Record number six is Aaron Copenhagen's fan pair for the common man. And perhaps it's our greatest campaign uh uh the one perhaps I'm most proud of. was our campaign on behalf of Stephen Lawrence.
Theodora, HWV 68Favourite
Roberta Alexander, Arnold Schoenberg Chor, Concentus Musicus Wien, conducted by Nikolaus Harnoncourt
I've chosen it in tribute to the The the relatives of the Omar victims with the male has been Very robustly campaigning on. On their behalf.
London Symphony Chorus and Orchestra, conducted by Richard Hickox
My last record i i is Verdi's Requiem. This particular music, I think, brings out the and represents the god in man, and I'd like to. I play it as tribute to the many, many great journalists I've known.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:24Is the Daily Mail's view of the world entirely yours, born from your gut instinct?
To a certain extent, I must say I am the conductor of a very considerable orchestra of talents, and the Daily Mail is a representation of the broad views of some very, very clever journalists and executives, and and their consensus and their views.
Presenter asks
2:50What would those talented journalists say about you?
I think they say he's a hard bastard, but he leads from the front, and that he works as hard as them, and possibly harder, and that he's fair. I'd hope they'd say that anyway.
Presenter asks
8:17Did you join in with the student activism and sit-ins at Leeds University in 1967, and were you on the left?
I'm afraid I did. I mean, like most sensible young people that age, I was left wing. And of course we went to London on anti Vietnam marches … and we all chanted. For the life of me I'm not quite sure why, ho, ho, ho, chi, min. They were wonderfully heady, liberated days.
The keepsakes
The book
A-Z Encyclopedia of Garden Plants
Royal Horticultural Society
And if I promise not to read any of the horticultural notes and just look to the pictures, it would give me great happiness reminded me of my garden in Sussex.
The luxury
A year's subscription to The Guardian newspaper
It's a brilliant paper in so many ways, but it's patronising right on sanctimonious political correctness. [it] gets me so angry and it [gives] me the energy and the willpower to get off that island, come back to England.
Presenter asks
12:31Did the reality of life on the front line in Northern Ireland dampen your enthusiasm for the job?
No, I mean clearly Belfast was the big story uh at the time, those early seventies. … I got to see [a shot Catholic girl] and she was, you know, a lovely girl, and it was such a tragic story, and it was a great, great interview, and I came out of the front door … and out of the shadows, out of two alleyways on either side, suddenly A group of men emerged. Kind of pinned me against a wall with guns. pressed against my ribs. … Terrifying. Well, it showed how ambitious I was in those days.
Presenter asks
19:04How do you know what Middle England is thinking when you are so much above and beyond all of that?
Well, I have I am for the last few years of my life. But I grew up in the in the in the suburbs of North London, in Arnas Grove. … and we had a pretty ordinary lifestyle and … I hope I have [a line to them]. I hope if I'm blessed with vulnerability to empathise with with the readers that early emails values, and those frankly the values I I I have always subscribed to.
Presenter asks
27:42Why is it that the Daily Mail is disliked by some and labelled as far too negative and manipulative?
Well, I I think that's a charge that I would be very foolish to reject out of hand. I've come to two conclusions that the people, by and large, who who lay that charge in the mail are people who have aggressively pursued. … I think it's possibly has the best professional journalists in Fleet Street, that we are sometimes overzealous in our pu uh our pursuit of of stories.
“All my life I've wanted to be a journalist, and if I'm being honest, all my life I've wanted to be an editor.”
“I do firmly believe that you cannot become a strong editor unless you have a strong family behind you, and you understand the problems of a family, and no man be can become a success. Uh unless he has a wife to to pick him up when he's down.”
“I don't feel powerful now. Actually, I feel rather humble. I I re my job is to represent Millions of people who don't have a voice. Who whose lives are mucked around by innate politicians, or an unfair judicial system, or a corrupt businessman. And my my job is to give them a voice.”
“I went into my room at about nine o'clock. I call it the lonely hour between nine and ten, because ultimately only one man can make. made decisions. In the end we decided to go for it.”