Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Explorer who became the first person to walk unaided to both poles, later an environmental campaigner.
On the island
Eight records
Scott of the Antarctic (film excerpt)
This is the bit that got me as a kid.
This song just really encapsulates for me that feeling of longing for home, emptiness, and the overpowering... beauty of the Antarctic.
Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves (from Nabucco)
Chorus and Orchestra of the German Opera of Berlin
In many ways our team of eight from seven nations were slaves to the place we were in, the Arctic Ocean.
This was my introduction really to to young people today. It opened a a door for me.
This record sums up for me the moment where I arrived back and I had no idea who I was at all. This was the beginning of a mad period in my life.
I just feel that one must celebrate friendship because friends are what it's all about really.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:22Are you saying that [physical courage] is the easy bit?
It really is actually the easy bit, when you're saying you're going to go to the South or North Pole. If you have the right mindset, you start your journey and you either get there or die. It's actually really quite simple.
Presenter asks
5:07How old were you when you saw that film [Scott of the Antarctic]?
Well, I was roughly about eleven years old when I saw that film and it just g it just grabbed me. I mean, it really grabbed me. Out of the screen, wham, I was hooked.
Presenter asks
9:06Can you describe to me what that [flawless gaze of young men in the South] is?
It's far distant. It's rather cold, actually. But if you look look at it long enough, there is a... There's an inner warmth there... I think it's... It's burnt hearts. Because it is all a bit too much. It's a kind of long distance view. It's almost like they're looking through you out... And on to the horizon.
The keepsakes
The book
The Times Comprehensive Atlas of the World
The Times
No question I would take [a] giant special version please of the Times World Atlas so I could see where I'd been in my life … and just for once know where I was on my desert island
The luxury
I think definitely it has to be a course and a very good course on accountancy. … So it'll be a great luxury for me to sit there on the desert island and think, right, at last I understand what all these people have been telling me for the last 40 years
Presenter asks
How far down was [your breakdown]? Was it a full-scale breakdown?
Well, no... It was a full scale breakdown between nine o'clock at night and six o'clock in the morning, but from six o'clock in the morning to nine o'clock at night I still played the game as it's supposed to be played... And gradually I felt this hand coming from way down below saying we're going to get this man. And it just it blew my marriage apart, it blew every single thing that I'd held close to me apart. And most importantly of all, I believed I was living a lie.
Presenter asks
28:34What about Barney? Having a hero for a father can be an awkward legacy, can't it?
Absolutely. Uh and I had the privilege, and it was a privilege, to talk to Sir Peter Scott, Captain Scott's son, Eddie Shackleton, Lord Shackleton, Sir Ernest Shackleton's son, and they both said to me, Robert, for goodness' sake, make sure that you don't push it on your son. I'm aware of it, fingers crossed, I hope I can make it easy for Barney, but whatever happens, it won't be easy.
“I am an obsessive person, I'm trying not to be... It's got me to both poles. It's also got me into a few problems in my life. But in order to pull off something... As big as that, you have to have a single focus, a single aim that you cannot move away from.”
“I think actually deep down it's it's that I have been... very isolated as a person but I suppose to stay alive under hostile circumstances it probably helps that you're a bit thick skinned uh and you are rather insensitive.”
“I think the the last true greatest exploration left on earth is to survive on it. And I believe those people will come from industry, business and commerce actually. There's where our future heroes and heroines come.”