Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
The best-known freshwater angler in the country and an authority on angling.
On the island
Eight records
Covent Garden Opera House Male Chorus, Niccolo Rossi-Lemeni
It is the sort of thing one would want to sustain one's spirit because these were men who were fighting against an oppressor.
Over the Gate (The Old Schoolmistress)
Well, this would be pure nostalgia, again linked with the hope of escape. I want to hear Sir Bernard Miles doing his old Charlie bit. Especially the one about the old school mistress. I reckon that's a smashing bit of Buckinghamshire.
I love this Song of India because it's... Exotic and rich, and perhaps some people would say even treatly, but I like it anyway, and I want to take it to the desert island with me.
I think it would be important on a desert island to have a satisfied mind, and I love the sentiment in the song of that name, which Joan Byers sings so well. Not in the sense of being satisfied with one's lot, but satisfied with one's progress in one's endeavours to escape
I would like Marlena Dietrich singing Sacht mervoude Blumenzint, Where Have All the Flowers Gone. I love it.
I'm not a very religious man, but I like the holy city.
Nessun dorma (from Turandot)Favourite
I want it for very personal reasons which I shall not discuss in this programme.
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:43Does [being an angler] mean to say that you'd be good castaway material, you could take the loneliness for an extended time?
I'm sure I could.
Presenter asks
4:53When did you start fishing? How old were you?
I was about four.
Presenter asks
5:07Who started you [fishing]?
My paternal grandfather was a very keen angler. He was an Oxfordshire man who'd moved into Hertfordshire. He also was involved in the printing industry, which may have had some influence on my subsequent journalism. He used to take me fishing when I was very tiny.
Presenter asks
5:50When you weren't fishing and bird watching, what were you doing? What did you want to be?
Oh, I want it to be something to do with growing things in the broadest sense. If I'd been able to choose my career exactly, I would have been a farmer, but I should have wanted very much. To be a mechanised farmer, and I think farming can be mechanised without destroying its soul. As it is, I turn out to be the designer of horticultural machinery, mainly for mowing sports turf, which is not really very much different, and it's a career that I've been very happy in.
The keepsakes
The book
Rudyard Kipling
It's got some nice poetry in it. And it's all about England, the England that I know and love.
The luxury
Benvenuto Cellini's Golden Salt Cellar
I have never seen it. I've seen a great many pictures in monochrome and colour of it, and I think it's an expression of civilized craftsmanship that's never been surpassed by anyone.
Presenter asks
6:48And you've written a column about fishing for how many years?
Oh, I started this column at the invitation of the people who began publishing Angling Times in July 1953 and I've done this column once a week without a break. I'm very proud of this. I don't mind boasting about this a bit, because it's taken a lot of doing. I've written this column now for nearly 21 years, every week without a break. And it isn't writing the column that's the hard chore. It's answering the 70 or so letters I get from readers every week, and I do answer every single one of them.
Presenter asks
18:05Could you make a small craft? Would you try to escape?
I'd escaped. I promise you. ... Well, presumably I'd have to make a boat. Presuming that there were flints or some other very hard stone on the island, I can make a stone tool, a variety of stone tools. I'm not just saying I'd try to escape. I would escape. I've got too many things that I want to come back for ever to to ... Waver in that resolve.
“There are fewer unpleasant people per thousand in angling than in any other sport or indeed field of human endeavour that I know, possibly because it stops people from being grizzly and unpleasant if they've got a thing to do that they enjoy.”
“This is the one sport where the public won't tolerate an armchair writer. In every other sport, a man who's never kicked a football in his life can tell the England manager whom he should pick.”
“I'm not just saying I'd try to escape. I would escape. I've got too many things that I want to come back for ever to to ... Waver in that resolve.”