Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
A soldier who survived the bombing of his ship in the Falklands War, became a celebrity through TV documentaries and an autobiography, hosts a local radio progr
On the island
Eight records
When I first started getting out of the hospital with any sort of conviction really and a belief in myself that I just wanted to live my life, I used to go out with a guy called Mark Pemberton who was a corporal and if I'd have listened to him and gone and got a cup of tea that he wanted me to get for him, I'd have probably had very minor injuries. And we used to go out and this record came on the radio in his car and from that point on although this record is full of nonsense, it just made me feel, yeah, I mean, it's making a nonsense of everything which is the right way to look at it until everything is sorted out until I can get my my life back on the tracks really.
Goes back to when um my family lived in Nocton Hall because uh I come from a service family, I was a service brat. My first memories of when I used to get into bother as a kid... Then I just remember this this song was the first song I can remember in my life.
It just reminds me of when we were training in a very happy time, although very hard, and I cried to my mother after seven weeks I wanted to get out of the army and it was too tough for me and this man kept shouting at me and I wasn't used to it. But I met a lot of good friends, I had a lot of good fun, um and it was the first time I probably started to discover the the real me and the one that perhaps I wanted to be.
I've we've stuck with the Welsh Guards because being my regiment, I suppose it's it's quite fitting and you have to be loyal to the regiment, as they say.
I first heard this record in Berlin. Berlin for a seventeen year old, being paid wonderfully well, being able to do everything you wanted to do. The music and the memories of that time will always live on with me. It was it was a wonderful, magical time for me.
It's a song that um when we were in Kenya. We sung it everywhere we went. I mean it just brings back so many lovely, lovely, funny memories that like most of my life it's been quite good with just one major interruption now.
My stepdad was like my real father, lofty. I loved him very, very much and he passed away two years ago. And every time I hear Match of the Day theme tome now, I just laugh and I think of the times when we used to argue about football and I never knew as much as he knew, but um it was always worth arguing about and I owe an awful lot to him.
What a Wonderful WorldFavourite
This is pretty much how I feel about it. Um I just like life and I like people and I like the efforts that the good are trying to do to overcome the evil. I'm genuinely just a happy guy who goes through life, hopefully, with a smile on his face and and not too many worries or cares in the world.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:15Does living with your disfigurement for fourteen years mean you're used to it, or do you still look in the mirror and wish it wasn't there?
I think you tolerate it. I don't think you ever totally get used to it, um, because it's not the person you want it to be, but it's the person I am, so I suppose I live with it and just accept it to a to a degree.
Presenter asks
3:24Is it true that your mother didn't recognize you when you first arrived back?
That's right, yeah... when I came off the ambulance after being brought back, my mother and my grandmother were standing out waiting for me to be taken off one of the ambulances and um they said, Oh, look at that poor boy and I said, Ma'am and the you know, their faces were were dead, there was no expression, there was no life there. It's like as if their world had gone
Presenter asks
6:59Did you have any serious thoughts about the nature of the task ahead, about the cause that you were being sent to fight, or about the men you were going out there to fight?
We didn't know much about them... We pretty much knew the stories that were going around about the the Falkland Islands. It could have been stopped, this could have been prevented and most of us took the opinion that, okay, so whether politicians decided not to, or they failed to do it, or they just didn't want to do it, or they made a mistake and slipped up, or whatever it was, at the end of the day they hadn't done the job. So it was the time for talking was finished by now. It was the time for action and w the this is why we went to do our job.
The keepsakes
The book
Bernard Cornwell
But I would take one of Bernard Cornwall's books, Sharp's Eagle, pooling simply because I I've got into the series of books now and I really enjoy the way he's written them. It's just dead interest and I'm I I like history anyway, so what he's he's written about is really good.
The luxury
I'd like to take a newspaper. I'd like to have a daily newspaper if I could. I wouldn't want to be out of touch that long. I'd like to be able to to read and I wouldn't be there for too long because uh I'd I'd miss too much. I wouldn't take photographs of my family'cause I'd miss them too much.
Presenter asks
13:15Can you describe to me what happened when [the bomb] hit?
I just remember this like great grey streak. It was like a a shark almost coming straight across in front of us'cause it was a shape... the main explosion happened inside an engine room and that's why so few of us were killed... But some of it did blow back out through the hole and the flame and the diesel oil and such like whatever caught the light came back out over us and created a fireball and the colours were I don't think the colours will ever leave me... I once described it as the dance with the orange really because when you saw the flames licking around and the fearsome fire that existed and the people on fire and everything else and people seemed like they were dancing.
Presenter asks
18:51When you say [the depression] was more life threatening, did you consider suicide?
The thought of suicide crept upon me and I I did try with a crossbow. I tried to cock a crossbow. I don't know whether I'd have put a bolt in it, but I did try to cock the crossbow, but the the twine came back on my fingers and um it hurt. And I thought if I put a bolt in and I miss, you know, it's gonna be awfully painful. You know, and I think I've been through enough, I can't be bothered with it, it's just not worth it.
Presenter asks
20:14What was the turning point? What got you out of all of that [depression]?
Um my mum. My mum, I suppose, my strength and saviour, really. Uh she phoned up the regiment... Everybody has a a key to their depression. Mine was simply the regiment and going back and watching them play rugby. It's as simple as that... I survived probably because of my mother's wisdom and the regiment.
“I think you tolerate it. I don't think you ever totally get used to it, um, because it's not the person you want it to be, but it's the person I am, so I suppose I live with it and just accept it to a to a degree.”
“I was embarrassed by me, by the way I looked, by by the way I acted, because I'd l I'd allowed myself to believe that I was as terrible as I looked. And I began to behave like that as well.”
“I was able to turn over a complete new leaf. I was to I was able to become somebody different. Nobody expected me to be the same. And because of that, I didn't have to solve all my old problems with strength and muscle or aggression. I could be a gentle person. I could be the person probably that was really inside me all the time anyway.”