Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Radio broadcaster best known for presenting Woman's Hour for 15 years and the Today programme on Radio 4 for 18 years.
On the island
Eight records
First record, Ella Fitzgerald, she is the supreme jazz artist, and this is a song from her very popular Rogers and Hart song book, You Took Advantage of Me.
My second record is The Click Song, which is in the Khosa language, as you'll hear. Now my Cosa click is not very good, but there are three clicks in the Khosa language... And whenever I go back to South Africa, the moment I hear the wonderfully hard percussive clicks. I know that I'm home in a way. So Miriam McKebre and her click song were really part of my youthful time in Cape Town.
I Feel Pretty (from West Side Story)
Joshua Bell, Philharmonia Orchestra & David Zinman
Westside's story was really quite in a funny way iconic for me as a musical. And I went to see it, I think, two or three times, and I particularly like this version of I Feel Pretty.
Jessye Norman, Gewandhausorchester & Kurt Masur
the ineffable Jessie Norman. I've admired her for many, many years and have more than once had the great pleasure of interviewing her. And I've chosen a Richard Strauss song called Zu Eignong. Then this is a wonderfully complete in itself song.
The Sleeping Beauty, Op. 66: Rose Adagio
St. Louis Symphony Orchestra & Leonard Slatkin
I'm somebody who adores ballet, and Sleeping Beauty is of course one of the most delightful of all and most approachable of all ballets, Tchaikovsky's great score. And when somebody like, for instance, Darcy Bussell Dances Sleeping Beauty and Princess Aurora to this music, it's almost literally heart-stopping.
Serenade No. 10 in B-flat major, K. 361 "Gran Partita": III. AdagioFavourite
London Mozart Players Wind Ensemble & Jane Glover
Record number six is Mozart. A great friend of mine, Jane Glover, the conductor, when she was running the London Mozart players, often used this in programmes that I used to as a friend of hers used to go and listen to at the Festival Hall or wherever. And it is simply one of the most wonderful pieces written for wind instruments.
Piano Sonata No. 21 in B-flat major, D. 960: III. Scherzo
Record number seven is another musician friend of mine playing Schubert impeccably, Imogen Cooper. Although it's a It's a merry piece you can hear the darkness coming through in a most intriguing way.
St Matthew Passion, BWV 244: "Mache dich, mein Herze, rein"
Walter Berry, Berlin Philharmonic & Herbert von Karajan
As I've got older I've found Bach more and more essential, and I suppose the greatest choral work ever written. Is the St. Matthew Passion, and from the St. Matthew Passion. I've chosen the base area Machedig Meinherze Rhein. And it's such a gorgeous tune, I think this is one I couldn't do without.
In conversation
Presenter asks
2:19What goes wrong [on the Today programme]?
Well, lots goes wrong technically. There's a great deal of waving of arms about, saying, you know, what's next? I don't know what's next. There's also, you know, the egos are around in the studios, mine and other people's, and we all like to get the best interview and do the top interview... Brian [Redhead]... liked having companions in the studio, people like me, as long as they knew their place. But if they showed any signs of wishing to do interviews of equal length or equal importance to Brian, he could be a rather different person... I cried privately once or twice, very unlike me... he once... thrust the piece of paper under my nose, with written in capital letters on it, the word fool... But actually Brown was kindness itself.
Presenter asks
7:07Don't you look back and think, how could I have just gone along with all of that [working for the SABC during apartheid]?
Well, you know, I suppose it it's not quite as simple as that... I do have to justify those five years that I worked for the SABC to myself. But the English service of the South African Broadcasting Corporation in Cape Town was a... little island of almost liberalism... we were working within the apartheid agenda, but we weren't doing overtly political programmes... the answer must be that I didn't at the time feel it was wrong. I felt It was possible. To work in a radio organisation and believe that the politics didn't actually quite touch you, I think that's as honest an answer as I can give.
The keepsakes
The book
J. M. Roberts
I'm deeply in many respects. Uneducated because I never went to a proper university. And my knowledge, particularly of European history, is quite limited. So I would take J.M. Roberts' magnificent history of the world, and if I ever left the desert island, I could sort of mark all the bits I wanted to find out more about. So that would be the start of some sort of private degree for me, maybe.
The luxury
My luxury, I've mentioned my pale skin and reddish hair, and it would have to be some sunblock. Because when I was young in South Africa, such things didn't exist. You put on sort of oil that made you fry in the sun, which was terrible. So I take some nicely scented, very effective sunblock.
Presenter asks
10:57What did they finish you in [at finishing school]?
The woman who ran it, who was a remarkable woman called Dorothy Neville Rove, called it a beginning school. What it really was, was you could take a course there, either secretarial or arts... And it was a sort of stop gap before university, or a polishing off for girls who weren't going to university. But Miss Neville Rofe said that she was preparing you for life, not for marriage... The truth is I never found anybody that I, I suppose, clicked sufficiently with to want to spend the rest of my life. with and that I know is a fault in me and not in anybody that I you know might have thought of marrying me.
Presenter asks
22:18Why [is the division of labour on the Today programme biased in favour of male presenters]?
Well... there's no doubt that both Jim and John are brilliant political interviewers, and if the editor thinks that they are the ones to take on, for instance, the Prime Minister, or a minister who needs to be, Harried and chased through an interview, then they quite often think that Jim and John are the ones to do it... over the years I've actually given up being terribly cross about it because one can't go on working for a programme if you come in every morning thinking, why don't I have the ten past eight interview?... I have asked editors in the past who have said, look, if we want a bit of theatre, and our programme is about entertaining people as well as informing them, it's often the case that John Humphries will do a cracking good interview that's great fun to listen to. If we want facts to be drawn out of somebody in a more dogged way, then perhaps you're the one, me, Sue, is the one to do it. Or it could be that the listener doesn't like women being aggressive... until we can get over that sort of hump of women when they're tough, being perceived of as being unfeminine, then I'm not sure that there ever will be true equality.
Presenter asks
27:45I'm asking if you have any regrets about [revealing your affair with Leonard Rossiter in your autobiography]?
I of course i it was it was hugely difficult to write and as I say, not least because of the effect i it would have on others... I thought I can't just write about my professional life, because people will then say, Well, hasn't she got a private life and what was it like?... It's a portrait of me warts and all, and I think I've got to try and be honest about it... I suppose I regret the yeah, the uh the affair and the unhappiness it caused both me and, more importantly, his family, but... There we are. It happened, and I've written about it as honestly as I as I could.
“It was dinned into you that you weren't the important person in an interview, it was the person you were talking to. And part of the skill of talking to people was subsuming your own personality.”
“When the red light says go, you've got an adrenaline rush such as one seldom gets in life.”
“until we can get over that sort of hump of women when they're tough, being perceived of as being unfeminine, then I'm not sure that there ever will be true equality.”