Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
A sports coach and BBC commentator, known for preaching sport's virtues and outspokenly revealing its problems like racism and drugs.
On the island
Eight records
Chris Barber's Jazz Band with Ottilie Patterson and Lonnie Donegan
Well, I go back to the early fifties when a group of us, a gang of guys, you know, the gang, the peer group was the thing of the time. And they were into music and all of them, it seemed to me, had abilities. And my best friend played the piano and they played jazz, traditional jazz, in a lovely way. And I thought I'd start off with Ottilie Patterson, with Lonnie Donegan playing banjo before he started singing really, Chris Barber's band and Care This Love.
Well, I we'll move up market a little. We'll go for Domingo from Boem, and it's Che Gelida Menina.
Well, of course, being in the communication business, I have to pick someone that makes the hair in the back of my neck go up when I hear them speak. It could have been Churchill, it could have been John F. Kennedy, but I've chosen Martin Luther King. I had a dream.
Doebell's jazz record shop in Charing Cross Road, where we used to gather around ... And the great Billie Holiday. It was between Billie Holiday and Bessie Smith, but Billie Holiday's recordings have lasted just that little bit longer. And I think I'll choose her singing. I'll be seeing you.
It's the only piece of music that would really encourage me to get up and run. I hate jogging, I loathe it. But I mean, I really if I was on a desert island and there was a sandy beach, I think I'd have to have Vangelis' chariot of fire. It would move me to get up and really start running again.
Oh, I think I've got to go for Streisen. Somewhere in this eight she has to be because she sustained me, I suppose, for something like fifteen years, and uh her tapes are in my car, and I've chosen the love inside.
Nessun dormaFavourite
Now we've had Barbara Streisen and uh and I'm going to go back uh to the opera and this time it's Pavarotti. Magnificent voice and I've chosen the aria Nessendorme.
Well, I always think that the youth of today are really much more responsive than we ever give them credit for. Most of the time they take the lead. They've never let me down. I think they're magnificent. And when Lennon writes lyrics like the lyrics of Imagine, then I think he's telling us that we maybe have let them down and we ought to look at what they've got to say. I'll choose not John Lennon's recording of it, but really the beautiful voice of Randy Crawford.
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:30Did your passion for sport start as a very young man?
I guess when I was a kid in school in the East End of London growing up, the lack of facilities ... that was part of it. Plus the fact that most of the PE teachers had gone off to the war, so by the time I was in the sixth form of the grammar school, I was running junior school PE and I was always the teacher and the coach rather than the performer ... And what I loved about it as well was that it was based on this lovely ethic that it's about fair play and you make it up as you go along.
Presenter asks
1:53Was your father an influence in the sporting side?
Well, as a bare-knuckle fighter and a pool room blazer, I suppose, yeah. My father was a hard man in every sense, a tremendous influence, a great principle man ... So I could never live up to his standards of toughness, of macho. You know, he expected me to take on the world and come out the winner almost every time ... He worried me because I couldn't maintain those standards.
Presenter asks
4:28Why do you believe that sport is so important?
Well, I don't think anything else, no human institution would have survived thirty-three centuries ... Unless it was based upon idealism. I think if it was just competition, the cup final would have survived about twelve years, ten years. It was handed on by philosophers and educationists that said, Look, this is the greatest thing we've got to hand on to the next generation.
The keepsakes
The book
I can delve into that any time, anywhere, and look to see why man is the competitive animal that he is, why Decouverton's challenge to the youth of the world to push back those boundaries has never ceased to amaze me. It's done in every walk of life. And I think that would sustain me greatly.
The luxury
Might have to be a typewriter if there was sufficient paper to keep me going, and that might give me the ambition to get down to write the book that I feel I ought to.
Presenter asks
5:23How much does sport reflect what's happening in society, generally speaking?
Totally ... and this is why it's absurd for politicians to point the finger at sport and say, clean your game up and get rid of violence in soccer. How can you ask soccer to get rid of violence when violence is in our society and nobody in society, not the politicians, can't get rid of it? So that's a nonsense.
Presenter asks
7:44Why don't politicians use sport properly?
Well, I suppose if they're dealing with the day-to-day matters of war and peace and poverty and starvation and taxes, they all, on the face of it, are obviously very much more important. Sadly, though, we have to put the other things into a perspective as well and look in the long term. And I don't think they ever do that.
Presenter asks
19:24How big a problem is the use of drugs in sport today?
It's a huge problem and it's growing all the time. And what's more, it's a problem which, like drugs in society, is seeping down and down the age group until the youngsters are involved. And there, of course, the damage is critical ... Part of success, part of pushing back the boundaries, and part of the pressure of greed and in terms of the rewards means that the boundaries blur and the values slip.
“Anybody can cheat if they want, but really the rules are about it being fair and equal for all, that you've got to be the guardian.”
“I stay out of the establishment in order to fire bullets because I think I'm better value outside the establishment.”
“I'd be terribly lonely because I'm not good on my own. So it would be hell on wheels for me, I think.”