For any long-time Radio 4 listener there are a few questions which must surely spring to mind from time to time. What would you say to Brian Aldridge if you ever met him in The Bull? Why Robert Robinson? and of course, which eight discs?
Desert Island Discs was the child of Roy Plomley. He admits he didn't truly invent the format, but it was he who developed the idea into the programme and finally into an institution which outlived him. A format so strong that Michael Parkinson, surely one of the most accomplished and experienced chat-show hosts on the planet, could not mould it to his style, being replaced by the much more Plomleyesque persona of Sue Lawley.
It is a gentle and often whimsical programme, whose core premise is that you can tell as much about a person from their music as from their words. The tone is set by the theme music, Eric Coates' By The Sleepy Lagoon, a piece which is surely as deeply rooted in the psyche of those who have heard it as Barwick Green, Sailing By and the Berceuse from Fauré's Dolly Suite. The interviewer exists to coax from the subject their most cherished memories and the music they evoke. Sometimes it works brilliantly (Brian May springs to mind), other times less well (most notably when John Major was "done" while still Prime Minister. The spin-doctors were suspected of having made his choices for him).
In any case, you feel that being on Desert Island Discs is a recognition of lasting celebrity; the appearance fee is presumably small enough to deter the Beckhams of this world.
Here, should you be interested, are the eight discs, the book and the luxury which I would probably take with me to that fabled island. But it's a list which changes constantly, as it would for most of us. Still and all,
- Spem in Alium, Thomas Tallis
- Fantasia on a theme of Thomas Tallis, Ralph Vaughan Williams
- Requiem Mass, Antonin Dvorak
- Requiem Mass, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
- Praeludium in D-moll, Dietrich Buxtehude
- Organ Symphony, Charles Marie Widor
- Organ Symphony, Camille Saint-Saëns
- The Hitch-Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy by Douglas Noel Adams, the radio series in their entirety if I'm allowed.
The book (the Bible and Shakespeare being already provided):
- The songs of Michael Flanders and Donald Swann (with music)
And the luxury (which must not be of practical use)
I would have to forego my Harry Harrison books, the music of Bach and Handel and (worst of all) my bicycles. And the Internet. I don't think I'd enjoy it much, but at least I'd have Tallis for company. There is something infinitely soothing about listening to music which sounds as fresh today as it did to the ears of Queen Elizabeth I over three centuries ago.
Oh, and in case you were wondering, Barwick Green is the theme from The Archers, Sailing By used to be the last thing played on Radio 4 after the Shipping Forecast and before switching over to the World Service for the night, and the Fauré Berceuse was the story time theme from Listen with Mother. Are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin...
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