Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Television presenter known for presenting Nationwide and the Six O'Clock News, acclaimed for her untroubled manner and effortless professionalism.
On the island
Eight records
Charles Brett and John Williams
Well, the first record is a school ping, really, and it's something we used to sing. It's Purcell's Sound the Trumpet. It's a lovely kind of choral work. I was always a second sop at school, and I always wanted to be an alto, but I didn't have quite a deep enough voice. I thought on my island I could sort of sing along with all the parts and learn them.
Well, the next one, I think I mean, I'm a child of the sixties and and no person who was a teenager in the sixties could go without a Beatles record. And this is my token Beatles, and it's a lovely one. It's called Hey Jude.
Rhapsody on a Theme of PaganiniFavourite
I remember when I first came to London and was working on nationwide. We used to make it was the days when we made wonderful films and these great macho men um would sort of walk the Pennine Way and we had um great tumbling helicopter shots of them, and as the helicopters pulled away and this man with a rucksack on his back strode across the hilltops upward rise, Rachmaninoff's rhapsody on the theme of Paganini, and I thought, This is television, this is life, this is terrific.
This one is a a a haunting record by a woman called Dorrie Previn. She began, I think, as a poet, and it sounds like that, because the words are lovely. It's called Lady with the Braid, and it's all about a young woman who's begging a man to stay the night with her because she can't better be alone.
Mimi's Farewell (Donde lieta uscì)
Well, this is just um a deliciously romantic bit of opera. It's um Mimi's Farewell from Labo M. This is tingle down spine time and perhaps tear down cheek.
East Coker (from Four Quartets)
I think a little spoken voice. I think I would miss the spoken voice, and what better one than that of Alec Guinness? And I think a bit of poetry, because I do rely on a bit of poetry. And I thought we'd have T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets. And I'd like a a piece from the second part of the Four Quartets, The East Coca. It sounds a sad little piece, but it's fundamentally optimistic.
In the Bleak Midwinter
I would like to have a Christmas carol, because I think this is a hot island, isn't it? ... Yes, and I thought it would be nice to think of winter and if you think of winter you think of Christmas and if you think of Christmas you think of children and I wouldn't half miss my children on this island.
The final choice is is a bit of classy schmoltz, really. It's Ella Fitzgerald. I adore her voice. If I if I could sing, I'd like to sing like Ella, and I adore it particularly when she sings Cole Porter. So I'd like her to sing every time we say goodbye.
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:59Has there been anybody who said anything about you that's really upset you?
They always upset me whenever they write something about me, because it it's usually wrong, and um I I find it all pretty distressing stuff. ... But I remember once somebody um saying that I was the kind of girl you'd take home to mum. I mean a chap would take home to mum and uh she would approve. And I knew somehow I knew I I should have liked that, but I knew when I read it that that meant the man didn't like me, that he thought I was, as you say, a bit too perfect or something. So that hurts, actually.
Presenter asks
1:52Are you that self-possessed and self-contained that you could make a go of living on a desert island?
No, of course I couldn't. And I I need people too much. I'd I'd like it for a while, as I dare say all of us would who lead very busy lives, and there's nothing I like better than my own company on occasions. But I think I'd uh I'd get pretty miz pretty quickly.
Presenter asks
5:10What about your parents? What did they do?
My father, um, his family were dairy farmers, but he gave that up when I was quite small, and he then had a a series of jobs, one of which was running a petrol station. ... And my mother always ran a shop, really, um, in the beginning. It was a a cafe and then it was and then we sell lollipops and ice cream and then it was a grocery shop and finally it was a a drapery shop.
The keepsakes
The book
Elizabeth David
Not just cause I could salivate over the recipes, but actually because she writes about it very beautifully, and I think therefore one might be able to imagine the food.
The luxury
Endless supply of freshly laundered white linen sheets
I find ironing extremely therapeutic. I'll launder them myself, and then there'll be plenty of sunshine in which to dry them.
Presenter asks
8:02Did you fit in at university, this child from the Black Country?
Not really. Uh I didn't think. I suppose if I'd had more guts I'd have realized that it um I did. But I felt that I didn't because I went to Bristol University, which was full of um, home counties people who spoke posh and I didn't.
Presenter asks
18:36Do you enjoy being famous and being recognized?
I don't not enjoy it, but I don't entirely enjoy it, no. I do not like the invasion of my privacy. But as I've said to you, I don't think really one can do what I do and and not have that. So I try to keep it in control.
Presenter asks
24:45What attitude do you have toward interviewing politicians? Do you think they're fair game?
Fair game would imply that I'm out to get them, or to trip them up, or to ambush them in some way. No, not at all. Uh but what I do believe very firmly is that I must not be in any way intimidated by them. in anything that they have said or done in the past, and that I must not be o'erwhelmed by them and their office, because at the end of the day I am there in place of the viewer to ask of them and to press them on the things that the viewer wants to know.
“I considered myself to be part of the general arts dustbin, as it were. I did modern languages, English, French and German.”
“I'm the sort of person who when I finish the programme at night walk down the corridor and sort of turn lights on and off and knock on doors. I'm a sort of born apple scrumper.”
“I do believe that the cause of women gets overstated these days, because if you pull the whole business apart and take a close look at it, women are there, and there are more and more of them every day.”