Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Javelin thrower who won Britain's first Olympic throwing gold in 1984, and set a record for most Olympic appearances.
On the island
Eight records
Well, you know you have friends that friends you tend to forget, and sometimes you sit in a quiet moment and and remember all this. My family in Jamaica, my Gran, and those who I live with. It's so fantastic to sit back and reminisce about it, and this record just takes you back, I think, to those times and wonderful times.
Not just because it reminds me of Jamaica and all the running about and all the togetherness that family have when they're in Jamaica, because I just loved Bob Marley.
(Everything I Do) I Do It for You
I'm very much a family person and a lot of the things I do is for me and my family and people close to me because I think it's important to have a family bond and my mother and father really is my backbone, so I I really think this is for them.
Now I think this is fantastic because you know we we can't all be winners. And I think the words say it brilliantly. You know you try, and we all hope to succeed, but if you don't, you know, you you try and try again, and I just thought the wording of this was fantastic.
She is just great. She's very punchy, rocky, looks fit... And I chose simply the best because I think, you know, whenever you're going to do anything, it's like your exams or anything like that, it doesn't have to be competition. You've got to feel that you are up there because you are just as good as the next man and you might come out being better than they are.
I just love this because now and then you like to go out and kick your heels up, like I did for my fortieth birthday this year, I had a whale of a time, and I just love Tempo Records and she's great.
I've chosen soul provider because, again, you know, my family, I provide a lot for my family, and I'm happily happily doing that because my sister, more or less, although not financialist or well up there, she does everything for me and she is just fantastic.
I Will Always Love YouFavourite
Whitney Houston because she to me is one of the best female vocalists out. I mean this girl came up from church and as you will know a lot of the black singers I think will have come up from church and she is just fantastic.
In conversation
Presenter asks
4:57Tell me about the day you arrived [in England from Jamaica]. How did you come? Who were you with?
I was with my older sister, Pat, but um it was an incredible move because I don't know if you know sort of the life of of black kids in Jamaica, but the majority of us who come here would have already been living with our grandmothers or grandparents because my parents had to leave to come and find work… got to Manchester Airport and it was unbelievable. The first thing that struck me was, you know, there were so many white faces, and then the language opened their mouths and started speaking… And then it was so freezing cold and the fog and everything like that, and the smoke was coming out of my mum's mouth. And I thought, God, what's happening here? You know?
Presenter asks
6:23What give me your first impressions of the land you saw around you that you had come to live in?
I hated it. I mean, there was so much smoke, smoke coming out of chimney pots and it was very bleak and it was snowing as well. I'd never seen snow before in my life… I thought it was darn cold… And then what was even more incredible, as soon as we got home to Wolverhampton, brick houses, you know, and and the heating, you had to put heating on, all these sort of things was just incredible because you don't have this in Jamaica in most places then.
The keepsakes
The book
The history of the world, I think, because so many times I've travelled to other countries and it's just been off the airport, out of the suitcase, come peek, come back home. And I think all this will give me the time to sit and read up on things that's gone on in those countries, what's happening in the countries, it'll teach me about how to make things, you know, so I don't miss out on anything. And, you know, that will give me a good challenge too.
The luxury
I think I'd like to have a whole sort of like tons and tons of euthymal toothpaste and maybe a maybe maybe a foundation. ... Oh, okay. You can tooth have a toothbrush to go with a toothpaste.
Presenter asks
8:58Was that, do you think, one of the reasons that your parents didn't want you to concentrate on athletics? Because they because you were black, really, then they wanted you to prove that West Indian girls could also achieve academic [success]?
That was exactly the reasons. And my mother and father told me themselves they wanted me to be a nurse because a lot of the black people's people or black women were nurses and it was like a career move for them and setting a precedent for a lot of other people. But the thing is, I knew in coming on now to the 1970s that I wasn't a bookworm. You have to study darn hard for nursing. I wasn't that.
Presenter asks
11:40How much was your determination to win fueled by the idea of escape, really, of travel, of broadening your life and perhaps eventually of money?
Well, first and foremost, um why I really, really started athletics to do athletics because I mainly wanted to travel… in my school days, my my mother and father was a very working class family. We didn't have a lot of money. I remember my my first training gear, remember I had to borrow. And when the school decided to go to Potheli at that time, remember those trips to Wales, Potheli? There a couple of them I couldn't even go to. And I felt very, very downhearted about it. And I thought, well, you know, there's something more. I've got to do something here to be able to go and see the world, which is what I want to do.
Presenter asks
20:25Why did you [sue Mirror Group newspapers for libel]? Why did you feel so strongly about a piece of gossip which would have been forgotten in a matter of days?
Well, I don't think you would have been forgotten in this sense. And also, you see, what you have to realize is that sometimes when you strongly believe that you've been wrongly done by, then you have to stand up and have your say… Because it was wrong. I I I w it was something that I would never have done, and also because I had been working with a lot of young people at the time who who really, um, I suppose, in one term, put me as an example or something to learn from, and I felt, no, this is definitely wrong.
Presenter asks
24:13You'd actually been retired for some years before you went out to Atlanta this time, before you started getting ready for Atlanta. Why did you do it?
In February last year, Sir Anthony Tippett, who used to be chairman of Great Ormond Street Hospital, wrote me a letter and said he wanted to see me… Anyway, he sat me down and he started talking about this new charity called um Children in Hospital and they were trying to raise money for it and and all that sort of thing… And then when he said to me, No, my dear, he said, We want you to make the Olympic try and make the come out of retirement, try and make the British Olympic team and and hopefully get a medal. Well, I mean, I nearly fell off my chair. I just could not believe it.
“I threw it and I felt my whole body go into the throw and I thought, yes, that's it… I have won the Olympic Games. I've beaten them all. You know, you know, I've kicked their butts. They didn't kick mine this time.”
“It's all in your inner self, how how much you believe in yourself, how mentally and how how much you want it.”
“It was like a war between us. You didn't speak to each other. It was pretty bitchy stuff wasn't it? It was, yeah, you can say handbags are being thrown, but you know, um hers may be a little bit bigger, but I threw mine further.”