Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
A playboy and journalist who wrote the Spectator's High Life column and was imprisoned for cocaine possession.
On the island
Eight records
which uh in a way it's nostalgic. It has a message to the girl, you came easily, and let's break up easily. But it's very romantic.
Lili MarleenFavourite
I remember the soldiers we had officers staying with us and below there were the soldiers. They were singing the German version of Lillie Marlene which is a very sad one, unlike the English one, because the soldier knows he's gonna lose the girl and he will die. It's this extreme German romanticism.
Madamina, il catalogo è questo
I love that it's immortal Aria, and it's great. La Porella is great, Don Giovanni is great. And the first time I saw the opera, it was just after the war, I went completely crazy. He became my hero, Don Giovanni, of course.
Artie Shaw is a hell of a man. First of all, he was married to Eva Gardner, the most beautiful woman as far as I'm concerned. And he was a great intellectual. ... And his idea of fun was to read Wittgenstein and educate these dumbos. But he sure had good taste, and his music is the best known.
This of course reminds me of the fifties. By this time I've escaped boarding school, I've come down to New York. And I know my father has charge accounts in various nightclubs and I'm hitting the nightclubs every night at Morocco. And of course the lyrics are so sophisticated. ... it just reminds me how wonderful popular music once was.
It's wonderful and you can see the uniforms, brilliant uniforms. People wouldn't shoot prisoners. Women were ladies. Officers would salute each other.
the best trumpet that's ever been played by any anyone playing any instrument.
Non so più cosa son, cosa faccio
All my fantasies, all my things all go into it. And it's written by Mozart.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:26The jet set I mentioned there sounds such an old fashioned phrase these days. Does it still exist?
It does, but in a completely different way. The Jet Set sort of became famous because of Fellini, Dolce Vita, the first Jets that people started traveling. Um there was much more substance then to the Jet Set. It doesn't have it doesn't have the connotation that it used to have, sort of tough playboys who chase women, race cars. We're mostly sportsmen.
Presenter asks
6:10What was Christmas like in the jail house?
It's a very sad time to be because the poor the um the salvation army comes in. And every single person, except for myself, I think, was screaming. to bugger off because they don't want to be reminded that it's Christmas and of course they we yell abuse and those poor people sit and they play. It's it's a sad time, and you do get some extra they gave you some sugar, extra sugar. which in fact I bargained off for I wanted paper hankies because you're dying to be clean. And they wanted sugar, so.
Presenter asks
11:06But weren't you always terrified of your father?
I yes, I was. Yes, I was was. And even worse, I hate to admit, uh I was terrified that he would cut me off because he was always very generous.
The keepsakes
The book
Ernest Hemingway
It's got um the sun also rises in it, it's got fifty grand. boxing, bullfighting. Uh men chasing women, fighting nature.
The luxury
I have a boxing bag which I've had for twenty-five years and everywhere I go I hang it with me… I'll hang it from a coconut tree and I'll just hit my bag and get my son to have a swim and eat my coconuts and it'll remind me of home and so I'll stick with my old boxing bag.
Presenter asks
15:18But what about, in your individual case? What is the hook? Is it the thrill of the chase, or is it simply sex? What is it?
No, well sex of course'cause the but the thrill of the chase comes into of course, but the thrill of the chase is like w the when the people who hunt foxes. I mean it's the thrill of the chase, isn't it? Poor fox at the end. I don't hunt and I don't shoot. But I chase one. No, because a woman likes to be told that the man is in love. And if she's intelligent and I I prefer intelligent women to dumb ones It's nice to hear a man, and especially it's a Greek way, we're Greeks, we say I love you immediately. It's better than saying, let's go, baby. You say, I love you.
Presenter asks
18:15You were about thirty when you decided to go into journalism. How did it happen?
Tennis was finished, couldn't play any more, skiing couldn't the knees wouldn't go down anymore, and my first wife had left me. Uh she's had enough. And journalism was just then starting to become a heroic profession because of Vietnam. You went to Vietnam. Yes, I did, yeah. I saw those ghastly Americans come back and so pompous and full of themselves, telling them telling them what great heroes they were, so I figured you could pick up some more girls by with a camera and a typewriter. I'm sure there there was something more serious. Sure there was. Uh but um the world is so full of serious people talking seriously about the seriousness of life. It's nice to to give it uh to play the buffoon at at times because Precisely. I mean, you are playing the buffoon, aren't you? Yeah. You know, um as I said to this journalist the other day, would you really tell a perfect stranger and I'm I don't mean you she came to interview me would you really tell a perfect stranger what you really believe? I wouldn't. I mean I I find it an invasion of privacy. You just you present a sort of a facade. And uh as I'm not in politics, um I don't feel bad about I pre pretend to be what amuses people.
Presenter asks
25:50You said that there were two moods that prevailed in prison, hostility and apathy. Was that generally true for everybody?
Generally true, for that. There was just total apathy or the blacks were mostly hostile because they blamed it politically. The whites, funny enough, were mostly apathetic. And uh once when I was working in the shop sewing buttons for the army. They said to me, Uh go slow So I was going slow, I didn't mind going slow. Then the man came over and said to me, You're slagging and I said, Well, I can't do any better. And he said, Well, you're going to go to the punishment cell if you don't work any harder. So I said to him, Well, could Oscar Wilde do any better? Because I'm pretending to be a writer. He said, if you think I know who's coming in and out of this prison, you've got another thing coming.
“I didn't cry about things about myself, you cry about uh hearing marches and seeing soldiers, things like that.”
“I think one of the reasons I've never followed the rules since then is because we had such a strict upbringing.”
“I will die, Playboy. I don't want to I don't want to join the great proletariat, but I'm not ashamed of working, nor am I ashamed of playing.”
“Would you really tell a perfect stranger ... what you really believe? I wouldn't. I mean I I find it an invasion of privacy. You just you present a sort of a facade.”
“It just moves me enough to get me off the island.”
“I have a boxing bag which I've had for twenty-five years and everywhere I go I hang it with me.”