THE LURE OF THAT DESERT ISLAND.
What tunes to take...or not. Ever dream you may one day become so
media important that you will be invited by the charming Kirsty Young (above) to choose your eight Desert Island Discs and join her with them on
BBC radio 4?
Yes?
Well, it may be no more likely to happen to you
than to me, but it doesn't hurt to dream.
I dreamt my earliest Desert
Island selection way back in the nineteen forties when Roy Plomley
(who had the original idea) was presenting the programme. I think the
discs I chose then - it's a long time ago after all - included Bing
Crosby (Moonlight Becomes You), Jo Stafford (You Belong To Me),
Richard Crooks (Ah Sweet Mystery of Life), Kathleen Ferrier (Blow The
Wind Southerly), Beniamino Gigli (Che Gelida Mamina) and the pianist
Dame Moura Lympany playing Litolff's Scherzo (from Concerto
Symphonique No.4).
I believe Paul Robeson and Richard Tauber were
also in the running. Every one of them is of that era and,
surprisingly, can still be found on the net. (What a marvellous
invention utube is.)
(Do get off the bed, cat!)
Some seventy years on I am truly relieved that I
have never been - and am never going to be - even slightly media
important. It would be far too hard for me to choose eight definitive
discs now, let alone talk about why I had chosen them. Oh, I still
keep a list in my head, but only so that I may subjectively compare
it to most of the selections made by today's persons of media
importance.
My choices now could well be: Ethel Merman (There's No
Business Like Show Business). Richard Tauber (Bird Songs At
Eventide). Michael Bolton (If I Could). Barry Douglas (Rachmaninov's
Piano Concerto No. 2). Nigel Kennedy (Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto).
Michael Crawford (Put On Your Sunday Clothes). John Williams' Harry
Potter Theme Song (music used in first three films) and David
Whitfield (Maria).
Some of those could be jettisoned according to my
mood of the moment and any of the following could find their way in:
Ray Alan with Lord Charles (above) (World's Greatest Ventriloquist).
Jake
Bugg (Trouble Town), Jimmy Durante (Make Someone Happy), George
Guitary (I'll Build A Stairway To Paradise), Dame Joan Hammond (One
Fine Day), The Hollies (The Air That I Breathe), Red
Ingle & Jo Stafford (Tim-Tay-Shun), Anne
Lennox (Every
Time We Say Goodbye), Dean Martin (Just In Time), Al Martino (Here In
My Heart), Harry Nilsson (Somewhere Over the Rainbow), Callum Smart
(Mendelssohn Violin Concerto), Lars Vogt (Schumann Piano Concerto),
Barbra Streisand (Don't rain On My Parade), The Who (Who Are You?)
and Yes (Heart Of The Sunrise).
Try utube if you would like to hear
any of them: none may appeal of course, but it would be a dull world
if we all liked the same music, wouldn't it?
That's it for now. Humour me if this post is little more than a music list. I just
needed to get away for once from a tele scene packed with Brexit,
bloody Boris, cooks, bomb-happy headcases, desperate safety seekers,
cooks, puerile politicians, crap competitions, cooks, junk (antiques)
dealers, dumbed down quiz shows, cooks, property crooks and thrillers
where villains with imitation British accents head terrorist cells
all over the good old paranoid USA.
Happy viewing.
And a final thought for the month:
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