Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
2 appearances
An explorer who navigated the White Nile by hovercraft, crossed both poles, discovered a lost city in Arabia, and nearly perished in Antarctica.
On the island
Eight records
The theme to the television series The Flame Trees of Thica.
The Pipes and Drums of the Royal Scots Greys
The Scotts Greys became quite famous from a record called Amazing Grace which they played. They start hitting the the pop charts. And a later record which I particularly like is The Blue Bonnets and the Drum Prelude which ties in the pipes and the drums quite strongly.
I watched a film recently called Harry's Game where there's a a lilting sort of song which ties in with this poor fellow who's stuck in a land where he's very much a loner and very much a loser and it rather reminds me of that time.
I think for me, expeditions is all about competition, not with other people, but with yourself and with the elements. And I think the. Competition really is summed up by a nice little record Chariots of Fire, which is the first film we saw when we got back from the last three year expedition.
Well, we went down to Antarctica to cross Antarctica, and for eight months we sat at 6,000 feet above sea level in a little hut, just four of us together. And there's a little song which sums up many of those days with outside temperatures at minus 138 degrees Fahrenheit, and that's by Elaine Page, a song called Memory.
The Band of HM Royal Marines and the Ship's Company of HMS Ark Royal
Roaring Forties was very interesting, not only because of the ice mucking around, some of which were millions of tons the ice flows it was a time when I was very worried. I don't like the sea. And there's a a record which we never heard until we got back, called Sailing, which reminds me very much of the Roaring Forties and what we felt like when we came out of the storms.
There's a song um Beethoven's Pastoral No. Six, The Shepherd's Thanksgiving After the Storm. Which was really how I felt when we got to the edge of the Arctic Ocean after that rather nasty part of the journey.
This is just a little song which often sitting on the ice floe I suppose it got a little bit homesick. and a little song called Annie's Song, James Galway, which I often thought of in my head over those months.
music which reminds me of the better feelings going in cold places.
Love Changes EverythingFavourite
an important part of all my life for about twenty three years now, and the expeditions as well, has been uh my wife, Ginny, who I met when she was about nine and I was about twelve, and this particular record makes me think of that.
Massed Pipes and Drums of the Scottish Regiments
remind me of very happy days in my father's old regiment, the Royal Scots Greys, in Germany during the sixties.
Les Troubadours du Roi Baudouin
It's something which serves to remind me of South Africa, and it's just an atmosphere to it, the music, which reminds me of of those early days.
Original London Cast of Les Misérables
a archetypal chant of students at a time when they're feeling they must make their impingement on the world and in this particular way they didn't do it very well, but it reminds me of when I was a student wanting to make a mark.
not really from my own choice, but because the boss that I was talking about, doctor Armand Hammer, ... he was potty about Barbara Streisand, particularly singing that particular song.
which although it's I suspect Gaelic sounds to me very like the Maoris in New Zealand. It's an exact replica of a very haunting song which was sung to us by a girls' school of Maoris when we left New Zealand after the crossing of Antarctica in 1981 and before we went up to the Arctic to cross that.
Cello Concerto in E minor, Op. 85 (part)
She, to me, was a very, very brave person. She did have multiple sclerosis, and multiple sclerosis is something which I've been involved with as a result of Prince Charles, our patron, asking us to raise money to start Europe's first MS Research Centre in Cambridge, which we have now done.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:44How much does music mean [to you]?
Not very much, to be honest, right. Music is something which I hear a tune in the background, and whether it's jazz or classical or pop or whatever, if it's a nice tune I like it, and if it isn't I don't.
Presenter asks
4:09Did tanks appeal to you [when you joined the Scots Greys]?
In fact, no. Tanks Did not appeal to me remotely.
Presenter asks
7:04What was going on out there [when you were seconded to the armed forces of the Sultan of Oman]?
The problem was that the people from Aden, who'd been trained in Odessa and in Peking, were coming over in increasing numbers over the border and were altering the religion of the people of Dofar from Muslim, which they always had been, to Marxist, which was the new religion. And so we were trying to stop this unsuccessfully because we lost all the mountainside and we ended up, certainly by the second year I was out there, with nothing but a short strip.
The keepsakes
Presenter asks
How many sponsors did you get in your backup [for the Transglobe Expedition]?
By the end of the seven years we had eighteen hundred sponsors from nineteen countries, and the whole effort had not cost a penny.
Presenter asks
16:00When you got on to the ice, did you plan to use machines or dogs?
Dogs were definitely preferable in the Arctic Ocean. Machines are not good in the Arctic Ocean. The rubble is too great. They won't get over it. They break. And in Antarctica it's very, very cold and machines won't start at minus fifty, minus sixty without an awful lot of problems and cold hands, whereas a dog at minus sixty will start same as if it's minus twenty. ... we ended up without dogs because nowadays, unlike the great age of exploration sixty years ago when they didn't really worry about public opinion, nowadays if you've got dogs dying off left, right and centre, which they doubtless would do on a three-year expedition involving Antarctica and the Arctic in the same expedition.
Presenter asks
0:30Do you genuinely think of exploration as a job, or is that an affectation?
Well, I suppose it would be an affectation if I could stop doing it and still pay the bills. But if I wasn't to do an expedition next year, I'd find paying the gas bill the next the year after that extremely difficult. So without the expeditions, I would be on the dole, which I couldn't afford. So I think the definition is a fairly accurate one. It's certainly been in my passport for over twenty years.
Presenter asks
1:35Is there a greater motivation than making money? Do you do it for fame or for your country?
The fame of it is a very dubious thing. I mean fame is a very double-edged weapon as such. I think whereas being known about is of course an enormous help because most of the income to be made after an expedition comes from giving lectures and the people are looking at dozens of lecturers and so you have to be known about in order to beat the other people going for it. In terms of the jingoistic side, i.e. for the country, I suppose the answer would be yes, because the last expedition I wouldn't have done because mathematically I didn't consider it was feasible. And I know that what changed my decision not to do it was Ollie Shepherd, one of our polar group, said, well, if if you don't do it, then the Norwegians will have a completely clear field. And that wasn't a very rational reason for doing it, but it was a sufficient of a spark to make sure that we did do it.
Presenter asks
7:54What drives you on when you're in that kind of condition?
It's your profession, you're proud of it, and you are worried about the last four which haven't succeeded, and it needs to be successful. So … you must flirt with the problems of actually physically fading out altogether, right up to whatever the limit happens to be.
Presenter asks
9:04Your relationship with Mike Stroud deteriorated badly on that journey. Did you hate each other out there?
Yes, I think not only on that expedition, but on the previous five as well. But we continue to keep going on expeditions together because we get on, when all is said and done, far better than anybody else ever has got on together in these circumstances.
Presenter asks
11:50Do you regret threatening to go without Mike Stroud? Was that what a leader should do?
No, I don't regret anything like that because I accept the fact that we're not two saints, we're not two monks. And what what I'm very proud of, and Mike is very proud of, and that's why we will go on expeditions together again, is that we got on enormously well together. And the amount of stress and strain which we suffered, which didn't come out into arguments, into the silent hostility and competitional urge, yes, but not into rows which have been suffered by all previous Antarctic expeditions enormously.
Presenter asks
17:50You had a terribly unhappy experience at Eton, didn't you?
Yes, and I was there for about five years. The first two and a half years were about the worst of any time I can remember. Why? I went there very young, and although it's difficult to believe now, I was sort of pretty. And the bigger boys, not now at Eton, but in those days, whatever it was, forty years ago, were very catty. … [1119] Teased verbally, nothing physical about it. … [1137] Yes, because I wasn't used to it. I'd I'd been with um a family of females, my sisters and my mother, and had no uncles or brothers or father around the place, and so I didn't have to be nasty back all the time, like one is presumably if you've got brothers. And so having not learnt to be nasty, it was probably a very good thing to go to Eton where you did have to learn to try to be nasty back.
“expeditions is all about competition, not with other people, but with yourself and with the elements.”
“And for seven years, we worked without any pay. So did the people who joined us. And this meant working to earn a living, to pay the gas bill, at the weekends and in the evenings. So we had no family life, no entertainment for that period. Just one idea, which is to try to get going.”
“And it was, I think, for us the most wonderful moment was when we saw the masts of the ship over the horizon and knew that this three year sort of expedition was actually possible. Till then one could never say to yourself we might make it because always nature could get the upper hand of you tomorrow.”
“It's your profession, you're proud of it, and you are worried about the last four which haven't succeeded, and it needs to be successful. So … you must flirt with the problems of actually physically fading out altogether, right up to whatever the limit happens to be.”
“Yes, I think not only on that expedition, but on the previous five as well. But we continue to keep going on expeditions together because we get on, when all is said and done, far better than anybody else ever has got on together in these circumstances.”
“No, I don't regret anything like that because I accept the fact that we're not two saints, we're not two monks.”
“I never considered running away, which would have been a sensible thing to do. I but I did consider jumping over the nearest river, which was the Thames on Windsor Bridge, and I never had the guts to actually do it, I'm very glad to say, but it got that bad.”
“it it suddenly did have a very awful effect, and I found that the only way of being able to deal with the situation was to eradicate it from your mind, and when you find yourself starting to think of it, to quickly stop yourself doing so.”