Castaway with my Desert Island Discs
Sun, Sea and the Wisden Almanack.
For the uninitiated, “Desert Island Discs” is a BBC radio show now in its ninth decade of production and first broadcast in the wartime year of 1942 on BBC Forces Radio following an original idea and creation of first host Roy Plomley. There have since been just four esteemed British broadcasters and hosts in the chair sat opposite and listening to the life stories of invited guests from worldwide public life, “celebrities”, actors and actresses, writers, poets, sports men and women through to politicians and people who have made their individual marks on public life either here in the UK or the wider world. From Michael Parkinson to Sue Lawley through to Kirsty Young and now Lauren Laverne, guests are invited to regale an ever growing legion of listeners with their life stories as well as their eight favourite songs or certainly pieces of music they hold close to their hearts before being castaway to a desert island with the complete works of Shakespeare, the Bible, a further book of their choice and a luxury item before the most agonising question of them all:
If the waves threatened to wash away their precious eight musical discs, which one would they try desperately to save?
"Desert Island Discs" link via BBC website
I first listened to “Desert Island Discs” way back in a different century when it was still simply a radio programme but as we entered a new Millenium as well as a completely revolutionised digital age, it has been a staple of my podcast diet for as long as I can remember and I rarely, if ever, miss a show. Today for instance I listened to the latest release and the moving life story of Peter White, a veteran BBC broadcaster celebrating his 50th year as a presenter of radio shows for the blind and visually impaired and this has certainly spurred on the brief article that follows as it’s been festering as an idea for some time.
Obviously I won’t be playing the part(s) of host and guest as that would be too surreal and silly even for me and so on with the show and with the highest of all recommendations possible for you to delve into this treasured radio institution linked above. I may be a gentleman in my sixth decade of travels around the sun and I may be, OK I am, more than a little sentimental, melancholic and an emotional old soul, but I can’t recommend this radio show highly enough.
Track One — “Embarrassment” by Madness
"Embarrassment" by Madness via Youtube
Being a rather insular child I was often found alone in a small concrete area below the block of residential flats where I lived, and lived incredibly happily, with my dear old Mum and Dad. I was the family “mistake” arriving as I did a full adult generation behind my three sisters who had long since left home when I came bouncing into the world and into a loving, nurturing existence whereby I assumed the persona of an only child with parents who may not have spoiled me materially but spoiled me with adoration and love I couldn’t possibly express any further in mere words. So this rather shy and singular young boy disappeared every day from the top flat to the concrete surrounds below to terrify local neighbours with his football, cricket bat and tennis ball! There was and still is a tiny enclosure where I played happily alone, honing my football and cricket skills for hours and days on end before making my first friends and the seemingly forever growing “Ferret” family who lived close by and through the eldest of the brothers I was introduced to music way beyond my tender years and the rebellious strains emanating from the bass guitars and guttural lead guitars of the British L'Enfant Terrible of their time, “The Sex Pistols”.
Although I shouldn’t have been listening to “Holidays in the Sun”, “No Fun”, “Pretty Vacant” or indeed “God Save The Queen” I was, and loving the anarchic sounds coming from the UK’s undoubted public enemy of the time, I can’t in good conscience choose any of these tracks to begin with and so, it’s the self proclaimed “Nutty Boys” of Madness that I turn to for my first track and first ever song, along with “Ghost Town” from The Specials, that I ever purchased with my own (pocket) money, and a track I’ll never tire of listening to. Such a percussive beat. The vocals and lyrics from lead singer Suggs and just an incredible three minutes of musical perfection.
“No commitment, you’re an embarrassment
Yes, an embarrassment, a living endorsement
The intention that you have booked
Was an intention that was overlooked”
Track Two — The Opening Theme Tune to “BlackAdder II”
"BlackAdder II Theme Tune via Youtube
Well it was either “Fawlty Towers” or “BlackAdder” and for both I turn with thanks to my oldest of all friends Marc who, along with his incredible family, introduced me to this all time classic UK television programme. I can still recall fondly sitting with Marc watching season two of BlackAdder over and over and over again as we tried our damnedest to wear out the VHS cassette tape that stored every episode from this season and memorising so many immortal lines we still, to this very day, quote back and forth to each other on text messages. I first met Marc in Junior School and became instant friends with the kid a year younger than me but whom was accomplished enough to play for the school football team a year his senior and I think it’s fair to say we both dreamed the same daydreams, when not watching BlackAdder or Fawlty Towers, or breaking his Dad’s treasured trophies or insisting his younger sister play goalkeeper for our indoor games of football (that destroyed his Dad’s trophies) or the countless hours we shared playing outside, that of the end of day school bell and the dash to the changing rooms to don the school’s football kit and play on our very own football field in a local league we’d win two years in succession.
I was rather highly thought of in my Junior School due in large part to my three much older sisters all attending the very same school a generation long since past but all under the tutelage of teachers and a Head Master still in residence when I arrived with my footballing presence. I was a “Milk Monitor” before Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher (“Maggie the Milk Snatcher”) dispensed with such school time luxuries and along with Lee Smith I was head of music for the day’s introduction to morning assembly. As well as being a right winger (oh the political irony!) for the school football team and oft reader aloud at morning assemblies after our triumphs of the night before, my dear old Mum, a volunteer on playground duty every day and a memory I’ll never tire of whereby she has a gaggle of school children wheeling around her on both arms, also enrolled me in the school’s first ever “Computer Club”. Against my wishes it has to be noted, but my dear old Mum was ahead of the curve yet again.
Thanks Mum.
Thanks Marc.
Track Three — “Nessun Dorma” sung by Luciano Pavarotti
"Nessun Dorma" by Luciano Pavarotti via Youtube
Until the mid 1980’s, every weekend, without fail, would follow the same pattern or routine. Saturday was my Dad’s day off and a day filled with trips to either the betting shop, the local pub(s) and always, always, after buying fresh cockles and mussels from a local seller on the high street where we lived. These would then be left to cook, filling the flat with an acrid smell of seafood before cooked merged with the rather more beautifully pungent smell of a bacon “hock” (now more commonly known as a “Gammon Joint”) roasting in the oven for later. Football or cricket scores were routinely checked on together with his losing horses and greyhounds before the night was filled with games of snooker in the spare room on a table that was envy of my small gaggle of friends, seafood, bacon, “Tales of the Unexpected” and “Match of the Day” on the television before Sunday was my Mum’s turn.
The smells of the day before were now replaced with the staple of the Sunday “roast” dinner under the care and attention of my Mum whilst the sounds were of her musical favourites, Plácido Domingo, José Carreras and the man who made her heart beat just that little bit faster, Luciano Pavarotti. More contemporary names would follow in the years to come but always, always of an operatic bent as the familial legend has it (and no doubt started by my dear old Mum!) that prior to meeting the man who would shape her life forever, she was training to be an opera singer. Now I’m all for printing the legend but let’s just say that Portsmouth, a seaside city separated only from France by the English Channel is the very last place you’d expect to find an aspiring opera singer, but my Mum, my incredible, somewhat taciturn misunderstood misanthrope with a heart of purest love, an opera singer?
My Mum was a shy retiring lady who grieved for the man for whom her world turned for far too long but that was my Mum, and I miss her more than words can express. Her final day of celebration was commenced with another of her musical loves, Roy Orbison and after Luciano Pavarotti was supposed to come an end with her contemporary loves of Michael Ball and Alfie Bowe singing a tune from “Les Misérables” but a malfunction ensured we listened to “Nessun Dorma” a second and final time, and it was all rather apt.
“Vanish, o night!
Set, stars! Set, stars!
At dawn, I will win!
I will win!
I will win!”
Track Four — “Abide With Me”
With the passage of time it’s far too easy to mythologise an event or occasion, a memory or a human being, but my dear old Dad really was the cliched “best of us”. The hardest working man I’ve ever known, father to four children, husband of 30+ years, a wink and cheery greeting for everyone he knew and a smile as big an ocean, my Dad left a hole as big as that ocean when he departed for the great beyond in 1986 and it’s undoubtedly shaped the bewildered, overly angry and emotional man penning these very words today. I had able deputies as fatherly figures, one of whom may read this and will know immediately that I’m referring to him without us having to acknowledge this fact, but something happened on 8th November 1986 at 1.10am that I’ve never fully recovered from and have no need to expand upon here.
He was the best of us.
My Dad wasn’t the musical kind but he adored “Abide With Me”, a hymn associated with the English FA Cup Final at Wembley every season and so this is the reason for the above inclusion. There are better versions available but I include it here as I was at Wembley on this very sunny May day in 1986 when my football heroes of Liverpool FC made history and I still recall returning from London to see my Dad eagerly awaiting my return to tell me all about the premier end of season game at Wembley that his son had attended for the very first time.
Track Five — “You’ll Never Walk Alone” by Gerry and the Pacemakers
"You'll Never Walk Alone" via Youtube
So a boy from the footballing hotbed of Portsmouth became an avid Red of the Liverpool faith? The answer is a simple one and all down to my Manchester United supporting Mum! Contradictions abound and I should of course have become a “Red Devil” with our Mancunian chums down the East Lancs Road but for reasons best known to my Mum (and because Liverpool were the best team in England and Europe when I was a mere boy) I was indoctrinated in the correct Red footballing faith in the shape of pennants, scarves, mugs, match programmes, kits and everything imaginable and available at the time, and soon enough Kenny Dalglish and Graeme Souness became the only posters adoring my bedroom walls. As soon as I entered my teenage years I was off following Liverpool around the country, a pattern that would shape my life for well over the two decades that would follow.
That are countless versions available of the Gerry and the Pacemakers version of the Rodgers and Hammerstein song that has become synonymous with the Reds of Liverpool and with some incredible ground shakers omitted in favour of the video above.
But this version is pure, in the moment, and quite extraordinary. It’s also a rendition I hold close to my heart for personal reasons and as a tribute to my dearly departed Mum.
Please treat yourself to two minutes of brilliance.
Track Six — “A Day Without Me” by U2
"A Day Without Me" by U2 via Youtube
Departing from the tributes to two people I was incredibly fortunate to call my parents, we find the next of my musical loves, but a love that has diminished over time and not because of their music. We’ll skip over my anger at a childhood hero who preached peace to cozy up to some of the world’s filthiest and bloodiest warmongers and return to their first album “Boy” and a song I’ve adored for nearly four decades and which when I heard for the first time completely astounded me. Larry’s drums. Adam’s bass. The Edge’s guitar solo inserts. And those lyrics
“Starting a landslide in my ego
Look from the outside
To the world I left behind”
I entered U2 fandom with “Under a Blood Red Sky”, played “The Joshua Tree” until there were no grooves left in my vinyl, “Rattle and Hum” was one of my very first CD’s and “Achtung Baby” was a radical departure I hated before falling head over heels in love with. I have every album, except the one they gave away on iTunes. I’m a contrarian after all and I’ll never change. Shame Bono did.
But their first album “Boy” is something else.
Track Seven — “Creep” by Radiohead
"Creep" by Radiohead via Youtube
Radiohead have dominated my musical life now for three decades and being the obsessive that I am I really should choose a more obscure song of theirs and more probably, any of their fantastic album closers such as “Motion Picture Soundtrack” or “Life in a Glasshouse”, a particular favourite. I could fill pages upon pages for my adoration for the boys from Oxford who have become men in line with my own ageing and who have, for good or ill, accompanied me through this strange journey we call life. Those pages upon pages have been filled previously should you wish to delve into my archives here with an album by album breakdown of my obessional love for this band, but I guess it has to be “Creep” even though I joined the Radiohead bandwagon with their second album “The Bends” and consider “OK Computer” hands down the greatest album of all time.
Why “Creep” is answered with my final song choice below as it simply talks to me, is me, and I adore it so.
“What the hell am I going here?
I don’t belong here”
Track 8 — “Feel” by Robbie Williams
"Feel" by Robbie Williams via Youtube
So there’s no Springsteen, Pink Floyd, The Beatles or The Doors and I end with a song that will travel with me for the rest of time. I think I’ll bring this to a close with Robbie’s own lyrics as I need not add anything further as it may be the words of a troubled mind from a troubled time, but it’s me to a tee.
“Not sure I understand
This role I’ve been given
I sit and talk to God
And he just laughs at my plans
My head speaks a language
I don’t understand
’Cause I got too much life
Running through my veins
Going to waste”
The song I’d rush to save from the waves?
It can only be “Nessun Dorma”.
The book I’d take with me would be?
A complete historical volume of The Wisden Almanack, the cricket bible.
And my luxury?
Even though I no longer partake, I’d request a lifetime supply of the most magnificent marijuana known to mankind.
Why?
Because I’d be useless on a desert island and instead I’d stretch out on the sand with my lifetime supply and read the cricketing bible to my heart’s content!
I’d also try and sneak a football, tennis ball and cricket bat into my luggage too.
Play out my childhood days in the sun, as the waves roll gently on by.
Thanks for reading. I’ve written and published four books in the past six months or so and here’s some handy links for some rather wonderful gifts this Christmas. Go on, treat a football or cricket loving loved one!
Peace.
"The Spirit of Cricket" Available on Amazon
"Chasing the Impossible and a Sword of Damocles" Available on Amazon
"Diary From The 2022 FIFA World Cup" Available on Amazon
"Ashes to Ashes" Available on Amazon