Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Award-winning broadcaster, voice of Radio 4's In Touch and You and Yours, BBC's first disability affairs correspondent and first blind person to host a daily li
On the island
Eight records
I love Joan Ar[m]atrading… my wife got me tickets to go and see her… she did not disappoint.
there was a lot of laughter in our house… Tony Hancock is probably one of the, if not the greatest, comedian this country's produced.
I have got a great affection for the real songwriters… female voices as well… this is Ella Fitzgerald.
This is after I'd left school… I went to work… this is the piece of music that actually brings back the memory of that first [all-night] party.
AlbatrossFavourite
I put the radio on randomly… I heard this fantastic voice, this beautiful voice… I just thought if there's music like this in the world, maybe it's not such a bad place after all.
Academy of St Martin in the Fields (cond. Sir Neville Marriner)
This was my first signature tune for my own show… a programme called Talk About.
This is about Jo[e], really… this was the first record I put on the old Dansette record player in our new flat.
I could not go to the desert island without at least one Beatles record… It's optimistic… it just sounds as if they can work it out, which has been my motto.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:47Peter, you spent a lot of time talking to disabled people who'd become very successful about the routes they took to get there in the Radio 4 series No Triumph, No Tragedy. What motivated you to make it?
I got very fed up with people either casting blindness as a triumph or a tragedy. Certainly we wanted to talk to disabled people who'd bucked the trend, but also to show that it wasn't about triumphing or being a tragedy, but being yourself… That's why I did that series… I got to meet all sorts of… extraordinary people. They weren't extraordinary because they were disabled, they were just extraordinary.
Presenter asks
2:47You have some uncompromising views on life as a disabled person, and I know that your attitude towards guide dogs has often surprised people. Talk me through it.
Well, it is this attitude that some people have… that it's the dog that's looking after you. I don't find that a comfortable idea. But good guide dog owners don't treat it like that. They know who's in charge.
Presenter asks
7:28Did you ever wish that [your parents] would make more allowances for you? Was that ever difficult for you?
The keepsakes
The book
Wisden Cricketers' Almanack (1962 edition, digitised for Braille)
You've said you've given me the Bible. Wisdom is the cricketer's Bible. I would love to have taken the whole series from 1864 up to the present day digitised so I could read them in Braille on this machine that's sitting in front of me. I'm told I can't do that, so I will take one year digitised so that I can read it in Braille. I would take 1962 because it would therefore relate the year 1961 in which my team Hampshire won the county championship for the first time.
The luxury
Pear drops (large, old-fashioned)
If I could have an inexhaustible supply of pear drops, but not any old pear drops, the big pear drops that they used to do in the old days, you know. When I was at Bristol, my mum would send me these parcels and in there there was always,'cause she knew I loved them, there was always a bag of pear drops.
Good Lord, no. I nagged and nagged my mum because although she understood it, she was still worried about things like crossing roads. I whereas most kids hate to be sent out to do the shopping for their mum, I was nagging her to do it,'cause Colin was allowed to do that and I wasn't.
Presenter asks
9:59[Your parents] must have worried about you, and they must have found parenting really challenging at times. Did the stress ever show?
The thing that probably gave them strain was not so much… riding bikes and getting on roller skates, it was what the future was going to be. They couldn't perhaps think what sort of jobs we would get. They couldn't visualize us getting married… and I think that was what was bothering them most.
Presenter asks
30:39You married again, Peter, your second wife, Jackie, in twenty eighteen. How did the two of you meet?
On a tram. I'd gone up to Manchester… I ran down onto the tram stop and ran into this woman and said, Is this the Media City tram? And she said, I don't know. I don't normally catch these trams. Anyway, we got on the tram together and we started to talk and the rest is history.
“Some people have… that it's the dog that's looking after you. I don't find that a comfortable idea. But good guide dog owners don't treat it like that. They know who's in charge.”
“My dad said, If that's what you really think, and you've been thinking about this for a long time, that's what you should do.”
“I started to realize that things like only about three in ten of all blind people of working age actually had a job. And that shocked me.”
“Jo didn't want a lot of fuss about this… She was very adamant that I shouldn't stop working… People said, shouldn't you take time off? … I said, Look, I've been grieving for this for three years. I have grieved. There was nothing more I could do. I just have to get on with my life.”
“I'll be completely useless. I think I'll starve to death, basically… I couldn't catch a fish to save my life… I think I'll be emaciated and dead within weeks, basically.”