Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Breakfast television presenter and documentary maker, best known for her series 'Scott Free'.
On the island
Eight records
It's a record about a train rushing through the American countryside in the early hours of the morning. And it basically sums up my life right now. I'm travelling through London in the early hours of the morning to the studio. And I'm in that mood. At the end of the day. The city of New Orleans.
The Lord's My Shepherd (Crimond)Favourite
Well, my next record is something that my grandmother loved. It's a tune, it was her favourite tune. It's The Lord's My Shepherd. It's the tune by Crimond. Crimond, in fact, was composed by the daughter of the minister of the next door parish where my grandmother lived, and so it has two meanings for me, and I I'd like you to play this. It's the Glasgow Orpheus Choir.
Symphony No. 6 in F major, Op. 68 'Pastoral'
I chose it because I remember it being played to me as I travelled over the North Yorkshire Moors, in a car, and you come over the top and you see the Dales Glaisedale, Rosedale, Farndale, Rye Dale. And the patchwork fields and little pan-tiled roofs seem to me to sum up what is Yorkshire and the best of Yorkshire. And this- Beethoven's pastoral symphony said it all for me.
It sums up for me the time I was at university, when it seemed everyone was talking at me, all the bright young things were there, and I discovered for the first time perhaps that I was. Really quite a private person.
Robert Chilcott, Choir of King's College, Cambridge
It's simply a very special record to me.
Violin Concerto in E minor, Op. 64
which I remember particularly from my days back in Aberdeen and I lived there in a house, Haddow House, on the outskirts of Aberdeen. It was uh run by Lady Aberdeen, and she used to hold classical music gatherings, and this was a refrain, too, that came over the lawn often on a winter's night, and it takes me back to that time.
Well, this reminds me of the sadness of Scotland the sadness of Scotland being, I suppose, the way people were cleared off the land over the centuries and and remains now in the songs that are sung, particularly the Gallic songs of the Outer Isles.
In conversation
Presenter asks
2:32What kind of background did you come from in Yorkshire?
I came from, I suppose, a country family background. I was brought up in the North Riding of Yorkshire, as far as I'm still concerned. There's a North Riding, there's a West Riding, and there's a East Riding. No nonsense about North Yorkshire and Humberside and all of this. … Half of my family, you see, is Scottish, and the other half is Yorkshire. My mother's family came from Yorkshire. And I often go back to Yorkshire now because they live in the North Riding. But the other half came from Scotland, and so I have an affinity too with North East Scotland, which I suppose tears me sometimes.
Presenter asks
3:38Was it always a very early ambition to be a journalist?
Yes, always. I mean, I remember when I was fourteen years old. going along to funerals and weddings and flower shows and taking down the names of the people as they walked out and Finding that I could make a penny a line off these guys, and that of course got me hooked. … I remember I asked for a pay rise at that time. When you're fourteen. when I was fourteen years old, and I went in and I said, I want sixpence more. And he gave me the sack. And you know, from that day to this I've never ever asked any one for a fair since.
Presenter asks
13:58What happened with the skiing accident that changed the course of your life?
The keepsakes
The book
Sam Shepard
I think a book to remind me of what I have left behind. I think it would have to be Sam Shepherd. And his short stories Hawk Moon perhaps? Sam Shepard's a man who's been to the very edge of it all, on a very personal sense, and he's also one of the most powerful writers in America just now. He sums up, for me, the urban condition. And it's a book that would take me right back to where I've come from.
The luxury
I think I'd try to improve myself in some way on this desert island, and try to make good so many of the criticisms that have been made of me before. One of them is that I have shredded wheat for hair, so that I try very hard, and therefore, as my hair grows longer and longer and longer on this desert island, I take a hair brush.
Because I was literally off my feet for it turned out after I'd been in hospital for three months a whole year. and couldn't go back to walking around collecting stories for the Sunday Post. And so I came to an arrangement with my employers and said, Look, I've just got to take this time off to physically get myself put together again and they agreed, and we left the arrangement on very amicable terms. I could go back and work for them. But I took myself away to an island after that and spent three years there, as it turned out, promoting the island of Bute. So you're talking to a girl who knows a thing or two about islands, as I said at the beginning of all of this.
Presenter asks
16:03You said you're a private person, yet you chose a job with maximum exposure. How do you reconcile that?
Well, you're looking at a very naïve, very private person, honestly. I really hadn't a clue about what was in store, about the exposure, the publicity that comes when you do a job in television. And in my defence, in Grampian television, there really wasn't the fuss that there is here in London. You used to go and do your job and everyone used to say like the report you did, if you ever met anyone in the street who liked anything you did. And there was much less fuss generally.
Presenter asks
19:35Do you feel there is more press interest in a woman doing a job than a man doing the equivalent job?
Sometimes I do. Terry Wogan's getting lots and lots of publicity just now because of the job he's doing. He's in the public eye. But … If you go to anyone's home and you watch women watching television, and particularly watching females on television, the most remarkable comments come out, ranging from what she's wearing. to what she's saying, to how she looks. And I suppose, in a way, it it reflects that kind of interest. Women sometimes in certain jobs in television are still a novelty. But I think in the news area it's lessening and it's getting less and it's getting better in that sense.
Presenter asks
26:22What impression did your trip to Ethiopia make on you?
A very strong impression. I went when the worst of the famine was over, but still met people who were having to walk two days to find food, and then walk two days back again over many miles with heavy sacks of corn on their backs, I suppose it left an impression of Well, sadness in one respect, but also, you know, dignity in another. These people are struggling against it all to get to wherever they're getting. Coming back to this country it struck me that we're so bound up in trivia, and the news is so full of so many silly happenings that that it took me a while to become acclimatised again to this country.
“I suppose I like them because of my romantic nature. I like the feeling of being cut off, away from everyone else.”
“Yes, always. I mean, I remember when I was fourteen years old. going along to funerals and weddings and flower shows and taking down the names of the people as they walked out and Finding that I could make a penny a line off these guys, and that of course got me hooked.”
“Yes. I have to say that openly and honestly. That was awful. I had short straight hair. long thin legs, and it seemed I was forever complaining about how thin I was at that time. I don't remember any one else saying I was horrible, but I certainly thought so myself. You wouldn't have looked at me twice, Michael.”
“Well, you're looking at a very naïve, very private person, honestly. I really hadn't a clue about what was in store, about the exposure, the publicity that comes when you do a job in television.”
“A very strong impression. I went when the worst of the famine was over, but still met people who were having to walk two days to find food, and then walk two days back again over many miles with heavy sacks of corn on their backs, I suppose it left an impression of Well, sadness in one respect, but also, you know, dignity in another.”