Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
A journalist, novelist, and agony aunt, best known for her advice columns in The Independent, Woman, The Sunday Mirror, and The Today newspaper.
On the island
Eight records
I just love this record for I think one reason and one reason only is which is that it's terribly sexy.
my father used to play the piano,'cause he was a bit of an old Renaissance man, my dad, and he this was one of the things he really loved, and I just remember him sitting at the piano that I used to practise on at school, trying desperately to hammer out Hong Kong blues.
What's Made Milwaukee Famous (Has Made a Loser Out of Me)
this is my my um ode to drink because I felt I couldn't have a list of records without having one which was solely devoted to drink since it's been such a very big part of my life.
this is a lovely um Choir from South Africa, and I went there last year to see my half-sister and I just adored this particular track because it's the sort of record I like dancing to in my car.
Hot TamalesFavourite
Will Grove-White and the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain
this is him singing with the ukulele orchestra of Great Britain. He got very keen on the ukulele, and I read that this band was um playing somewhere. And I remember thinking, Oh, I just wish Will could be a member of this band. It would be wonderful. And He did eventually join the band, and I remember getting to see him playing and you tears coming to my eyes.
what I love about this record is that it gives the feeling of being alone and on your own. And as an only child, I think I've often felt that. And I think this just always touches a spot within me of somebody on their own, and out there there's raucous jollity and fun going on.
this particular number I like because it signifies the end of something. And I feel that I have um quite recently come to the end of something. I'm middle aged, my son's no longer living at home. I've uh finished a long relationship and I love this. It's a goodbye to a past and you can't say hello to a future without saying goodbye to a past.
I've always loved Georgia on my mind, and it's a record that I've always said that I wanted played at my funeral, because it it says I remember the pines and the wind whispering through the trees, and that's where I want to be, and that's where I hope when I die, that I will go back to my own personal Georgia.
In conversation
Presenter asks
3:13Do you think life with an alcoholic mother prepared you for being a kind of one-woman support team?
Of course, and it's interesting again that other agony aunts often have similar backgrounds. I don't mean that their parents are all alcoholics, but they have often had quite difficult pasts and they've often been brought up to be the carers in their family. And so one has been trained by disaster and instability to be a rather controlling and caring person.
Presenter asks
5:23Why did [your father's death] hit you quite so hard, do you think?
I think it was because when I was young I was so very, very close to him. He was a mother and father to me, and in fact my mother left home when I was fourteen, and I was looked after by him completely and we were v he was a very, very dominating character, very, very clever, very attractive, very attalented and we were exceptionally close almost too close. And when you have a very dominating father who shapes your thoughts, who dies, you suddenly think, Well, hang on, who who on earth am I? And so you have to readjust enormously to find yourself rather late in life.
Presenter asks
9:36How old were you when you became aware that [your mother] was an alcoholic?
I must have been aware at some point, without being able to put my finger on it, at at a very early age, I think. But when I really realized she was an alcoholic was just before she left home, when I realized that she was just getting squiffy every Evening.
The keepsakes
The book
The Power of Positive Thinking
Norman Vincent Peale
What I'd like to take is the Power of Positive Thinking by Norman Vincent Peel. You may think this is rather an odd book to take, but I read it recently. It's the first of the self help books that ever came out. It's rather Christian, but he writes with such wonderful power and zeal and conviction. And at the very end of the book there's a lovely bit, a little P S where he says We've met never met in person, but we've met through the pages of this book, and we meet in spirit. And I remember having read the book and read that last bit at the end, I had a real sensation of the man being there and with me.
The luxury
I think what I'd like to take is an enormous bag of plaster. I would assume that there's clay on the island, and I'd like to make 'cause I'd have done a little bit of sculpting heads of all my friends, and then cast them in plaster, and have them all over the island like a field, rather like an Antony Gormley installation, so that everybody's there and I can pretend that I'm surrounded by all the people who love me and who I love.
Presenter asks
12:07How does being the partner of an alcoholic differ from being the child of one?
Well it doesn't very much, except what really throws one. is when you manage to succeed in getting an addict or an alcoholic to give up. And then something very strange happens, a sort of chemical reaction in the relationship. Because you've been cast in the role of saint, the good carer, the sensible person, and they have been the crazy, batty, wicked, hopeless, destructive ones. And suddenly they become clean and sober. ... And you are left, or what? I mean, let's be more honest, I was left. Feeling Absolutely redundant, because I had no one to care for. So all the saintly feelings are taken away from you. And y you're left with your own craziness and depression that was always very conveniently lodged in the other person.
Presenter asks
17:57What kind of single mother did you make?
I was very, very depressed, like a lot of single mums, but I've always I think probably because of my past I've always thought that I must be there for my son, whatever. So I've never taken a full-time job. I've always been freelance. And at that very early time I filled the house with lodgers, I remember. I r wrote the odd column, and I worked in a shop on Saturdays when my husband took Will out. Anything really to keep me at home for him.
Presenter asks
25:50Does all the therapy you've had get you out of [depression]?
It it gives you a sort of structure, rather like if you were going along in a bus which was rocking about all over the place, it gives you one of those straps to hold on to. There is usually a voice in one that says It's not always going to be like this. It has happened before. Although of course the overwhelming voice is At last I know what's true. Life is hellish and not worth living at all, and I don't know how I'm going to get through another forty years of this, and it just the prospect seems agonizing and cruel.
“I've never met an agony aunt who doesn't believe absolutely in what she's doing. Sometimes I think we may be a bit misguided, but we are very similar personalities and we have a slightly evangelical feeling about our work. And we do believe we help people. Otherwise, there'd really be no point in doing it. It's a deadly job.”
“I absolutely hated the sixties when I look back on them. And it's one of the reasons I haven't got a Beatles record in my list, because although I was actually working for the Daily Mail and interviewing all these rock stars, Beatles, Rolling Sands, Jimi Hendrix, and so on. It wasn't a thrilling life for a girl at all”
“I do quite regularly wake up Screaming with terror or panic or fear. But literally screaming. Not very loudly, but in my head I mean I ring the Samaritans quite frequently. I'm I'm often feel very unstable and unhappy.”