Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Adventurer who became the first man to walk alone and unaided from Canada to the North Pole.
On the island
Eight records
Enigma Variations, Op. 36: IX. Nimrod
City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Simon Rattle
For me, it says everything says British. And also for me it has a sort of family significance because I was brought up very much to believe that to be a Haddo meant something.
Theme from The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe
Gian Piero Reverberi and Robert Mellin
I absolutely adored this. I I can't describe how much of it. It just transported me away to a place that I I've so wanted to be uh at since I was about five years old and I love this music with a passion.
My great thing uh is club anthems. I'm a great dancer, as uh my friends know, so I thought I'd better pick the queen of them all, um Kylie Minogue, and what is recognized worldwide as her greatest single feat, which is Can't Get You Out of My Head.
I enjoy it because he is so brilliantly talented. And I very much at Harrow was aware that uh I had some talents, but I didn't think that they were being deployed in the right sports or the right areas.
Piano Concerto No. 2 in B-flat major, Op. 83Favourite
Vladimir Ashkenazy, with the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Zubin Mehta
And this has become my favourite piece of music.
I think that Peter Jeffs has a voice that is liquid gold.
It's just a fabulous track. It mixes um dance with a seriously uh groovy beat. Somehow this is me. It's sort of very individual, independent. I love it.
You're the First, the Last, My Everything
This one... is the family anthem really. And we'll always have intensely happy memories of Mary with Freya and me with Wilf whirling like dervishes around the kitchen table to this song.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:22What was the thing you were most frightened of during that journey [to the North Pole]?
Failure. Absolutely failure. It was my third attempt, for me it was imperative that I succeeded. So I think fear of failure was probably the the scariest thing.
Presenter asks
3:45Can you describe the emotion of completing the four hundred and seventy eighth mile?
Two um huge emotions swept over me. The first was utter, utter relief that it was finally over. I had spent fifteen years and hardly a day passes... when I didn't spend a considerable amount of time thinking about it, planning how to do it... almost immediately followed by My God, I'm going to have all that time that I've spent over the last fifteen years free... And I can march forwards unshackled by this what had become a a real uh albatross round my neck.
Presenter asks
6:17Just give me the circumstances of that pledge [to your father at his death].
I made this post to my father because a big part of me thought that this is what I was here to do and that it would in some way reward him and my mother for everything that they had put into my upbringing. I don't thi I actually know that if my father had been alive... he would not have wanted me to do this because he knew of the dangers involved and he would have been, I think, very upset to think that he had set in motion this level of expectation.
The keepsakes
The book
The Oxford Book of English Verse
Arthur Quiller-Couch
I'd take the Oxford Book of English Verse. I've discovered on my expeditions that novels don't really work. ... Poetry is a sort of it's reduced like a sauce, it's rich. And I would really enjoy working my way through understanding and appreciating what they've achieved with the English language.
The luxury
I'm aware of a group of Russians in the thirteenth century, five of them, who were shipwrecked. They'd survived for six years and the only thing they had or found was a six-inch nail in a bit of driftwood. And that was the start of their recovery. So that would be my starting point.
Presenter asks
18:31Did you get quite low [during that dark period after failing to get into the army]?
Uh yes, I to be honest, I don't think it was the the fact that I didn't get into the army, but since I was about thirteen... I started to feel that I was meant to be doing something in particular... And like a dog with a bone... it gnawed away at me throughout university.
Presenter asks
22:57How on earth did you manage financially [during those fifteen years]?
I um have my wife Mary to thank for mainly. She shouldered the responsibilities financially for our household. She realised that I had to do this thing, that was the next step for us.
Presenter asks
30:51What do you say to Wilf when you're going off [on expeditions]?
I've seen a seed in his head that, um If every he wants to know where I am when I'm not around. He knows how to find the Pole Star which sits over the North Pole and that that's where Dad will be. When I went off for the North Pole... I gave him a little pet talk and said, Look, I'm going to be away for a long, long time... I said, Look, you've got to look after mum, after Mary and uh your sister. You're the man of the house now.
“I've hit a bear on the head with a saucepan when uh I opened up the zip of my tent. Had heard some crunching going around outside... and the bear's head was about a foot from the tent zip.”
“I am a tortured soul and as we were saying earlier uh I had had hoped, half hoped, that having reached the the pole and and then the south pole that life would somehow become easier and softer and but uh I now know that that's not going to be the way it's going to be and that I will continue to be very uncomfortable inside unless I'm actually out and achieving something.”
“I'm not interested in a hot, cosy island with a palm tree and a little waterfall. I want this to be a as hard as it can be ice-capped island. I'll enjoy that, unlike as that may seem. And uh after a year having um worked out how to survive, I'll make it my business to escape back to my family.”