Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Aviator, inventor and arts patron best known for founding a toy company and rescuing the Roundhouse as a performing arts venue.
On the island
Eight records
This is a French sort of love song that I used to play with Anne, my wife, in St. Bart's when it was totally undeveloped.
The core music that we liked was Bob Dylan and all my children when we used to drag them off to bed in the middle of the night driving along and so and went to bed with with this in their minds.
Nobody Knows You When You're Down and OutFavourite
On a couple of occasions in my life, once in the toy industry when I was out of a job, it was very interesting to see how people's attitudes change towards you. And then when the Roundhouse was going through five, six years of having no land and no money, and there were hard times then.
It's a lovely record. My kids always have a good laugh. I don't think my feet are particularly big actually.
I spent two years at the beginning of the war in Virginia, which not very far from the Shenandoah River, but it was just so lovely.
Anne and I both loved listening to Edith Pieff, and this was one of her favourite songs.
All these Irish ballads were core listening to for going to sleep to in the past.
I consider to be a really a love song. and I'd like to dedicate it to Eager.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:33Are you just somebody who's terribly enthusiastic about life?
I have to say that I'm interested in almost everything. I've no idea what's going to happen next. I hardly ever look backwards, and I'm very, very lucky in that way.
Presenter asks
3:05How much of your own money has gone into the Roundhouse?
Well, I put about a third of the shares that we had in the toy company. So it was like a third for the kids, a third for us, and a third for the charity. So I didn't feel that I was being in the least philanthropic.
Presenter asks
5:23What were your feelings [on the night the Roundhouse opened]?
I enjoyed it enormously. But the fact is my main um emotion at the time, I remember, was one of relief. For about seven years people had been telling me it's the stupidest thing anybody's ever done. We'd never get the money. We'd have to give back all the money we'd been given. It had no chance of success.
Presenter asks
The keepsakes
The book
Nigel Norman
I think I'm going to take a book of verses which my father wrote throughout his life, and which I know most of them by heart, but it's full of wonderful poems and verses that he wrote, and that would give me a lot of pleasure.
The luxury
small still with an ice-making unit
I think what I would like to take is a small still with an ice making unit attached to it, because I believe on this island there will be all kinds of fruits and vegetables and things, and I would like to develop as many different kinds of gin as I could possibly manage, and I could then sit in my home made deck chair, looking out over the sea with a with a dry martini in my hand, and when I was eventually rescued I could be the most famous bowman in the world.
What do you remember of [your father] as a father?
He was I mean, he was a sort of perfectionist. He he loved fishing, for example, but he he tied all his own flies. He um used to send my brother and I out to shoot rabbits, but we were only given one bullet. So the fact is if we didn't come back with a rabbit then it wasn't too good.
Presenter asks
26:37When was the point at which you thought [your wife Anne] doesn't know me any more when I walk into a room?
It's very difficult. I'm not sure when that moment is, and I'm not sure it ever arrived actually... I noticed, even at the really the last few years of her life, when she had ceased really to recognise anybody, as far as one could tell, but I noticed that when I kissed her good night, tears would come to her eyes. Now I even at the very end and so I d I actually believe that she had much more understanding
Presenter asks
30:48Was [starting a relationship with Iga while Anne was ill] a tricky thing to deal with?
It was extremely tricky. It w it was a one felt completely torn up inside somehow. I don't know how. And my uh love of Anne never has changed and and will always be there. But I l love eager too, so I'm capable of some r very odd emotions, but I I didn't feel it was wrong because I was actually cracking up a bit at the time.
“I've retired several times and the and the whole fun of retirement is uh thinking about what you do next.”
“I didn't have a sort of shock, horror moment at all. I hardly knew him really. It just gradually sunk in over the following months.”
“I'm absolutely sure she didn't enjoy bringing me up. I was a total handful. The it was ridiculous. I was aged ten or something.”