Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, best known as head of London's police force.
On the island
Eight records
it's the very, very first uh musical recollection I have. I can see myself as a small boy under the dining-room table whilst my eldest sister banged this out on the piano with all the delicacy uh of a battery bricklayer.
The Magic Flute: Duet of Pamina and Papageno
Pilar Lorengar and Hermann Prey
This has a um a particularly sentimental, if perhaps rather painful, memory for me, because we we did, if that's the proper word, the magic flute whilst I was at school, and I still boasted a treble voice. And I in fact sang Pamina.
Band of Her Majesty's Life Guards
it evokes very, very uh strong memories of Sandhurst.
George Baker with Men at Queen Mary's Hospital for Limbless Men
I happen to believe still that um This country went into the last war not for reasons of self-advantage, but for very high reasons of good sound principle. And I believe that many men who were my contemporaries who died in that war genuinely believed in the cause for which they were fighting... And there is there's one hymn which sums this up, I think, in both words and music, and which I find particularly moving.
I'm one of those people who feel that the United States of America are really rather hard treated by their television and cinematographic image. And I I believe that a nation that can produce Tom Lair and Damon Runnyan can't possibly be as bad as as the image which it projects on the television screen.
Vltava (The Moldau) from Má vlastFavourite
Boston Symphony Orchestra conducted by Rafael Kubelík
I've chosen the Muldow because I I really believe that there is no such thing as good taste or bad taste or highbrow or lowbrow in music. Music is a matter entirely of emotion.
Fantaisie-Impromptu in C-sharp minor, Op. 66
A day or two after the end of the war, I was recalled from the Czech frontier to 21 Army Group Headquarters... I managed to fight my way in and get reasonably near the piano. And Solomon came in and was entirely informal... And I managed to get this shout in for Fantasy Impromptu, and he played it like an angel.
Band of Her Majesty's Royal Marines
When I think that I've spent nearly thirty-nine years now in uh service life of one form or another, and I still retain a considerable affection for the services... I'd I'd rather like uh the Royal Marines band playing Sunset, because uh I I think on the whole um It incorporates the most beautiful of all the bugle calls of any arm of the services.
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:31Have you ever experienced loneliness?
No, I don't think so.
Presenter asks
0:43What would you be happiest to have got away from?
Well, uh uh the list would be so long as to monopolize the the remainder of this half hour... Really, the atmosphere of doom and gloom, and general pessimism, I think, which seems to pervade this country at the moment.
Presenter asks
4:30What was your first ambition as a boy?
Well, I really ra was rather a mixed-up kid. I enjoyed school life so much... The only thing I didn't enjoy was work. And uh like many boys of of those days, I didn't really think very much about uh what I should do until it was too late.
Presenter asks
5:05What did you do when you left [school]?
I w I I worked for a Scottish carpet manufacturer's for two years. Um and then I decided that uh this was not for me... So I wrote to the Colonial Office to see if I could join the colonial police, and I was told I was two years too young. And they suggested I should try the police in England. And I applied to the police in Manchester and was accepted.
The keepsakes
The book
Not recorded.
The luxury
a television set in mint condition that didn't work
I derive great pleasure from thinking of the number of party political broadcasts or unofficial strike leaders or instant wiseacres whom I wouldn't have to watch and once a day I would look at this thing and reflect that sometimes there is no sight more beautiful than a blank television screen.
Presenter asks
10:41Had you set your sights at that time on the Metropolitan Police, on Scotland Yard?
Not at all. I I never had the faintest intention of coming to Scotland Yard... you must remember I I'm only the second professional police officer from the provinces without previous experience in the Metropolitan Force to come to the Metropolitan Force since 1829, so it just simply wasn't a a a prospect that one contemplated.
Presenter asks
16:04Are you getting the support you need from magistrates and judges?
I don't think there's the slightest doubt at all in any policeman's mind that we get proper support from the judiciary... So far as the magistry is is concerned, of course I'm a very, very uh strong uh believer in the lay magistrate uh uh system, which I think on the whole works uh very well indeed.
“I think you'll find the records will show I did four months on night duty in the slums of Manchester as a kind of an introduction to policing.”
“We're a kind of uh shock absorber. We're the oil which allows the machinery of society to work without too much friction.”
“Music is a matter entirely of emotion.”