Gyles Brandreth
Desert Island Discs
BBC
4.4 • 13.7K Ratings
🗓️ 9 January 2011
⏱️ 36 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Kirsty Young's castaway is Gyles Brandreth.
A former Conservative MP, he is also a some-time actor, broadcaster and prolific writer who has authored biographies, diaries, stage plays and mysteries.
Pursuing a political career has been, he says, the over-riding ambition of his life. However the happiest moment came not from politics, but when he was performing in a West End show that he had written himself. These days, his ambitions are to return to the stage and the role he wants to take on is Chekhov's Uncle Vanya.
"I have no complaints" he says; "my life has been one long series of tomato and marmite sandwiches. I've always had what I wanted."
Record: I've Grown Accustomed to Her Face sung by Simon Cadell Book: The Complete plays of Anton Chekhov Luxury: Michelangelo's Pietà
Producer: Leanne Buckle.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, I'm Kirstie Young. Thank you for downloading this podcast of Desert Island Disks from BBC Radio 4. |
| 0:06.0 | For rights reasons, the music choices are shorter than in the radio broadcast. |
| 0:10.0 | For more information about the program, please visit BBC.co.uk. |
| 0:17.0 | Radio 4. My cast away this week is Giles Brandreth. He's had his fingers in more pies than most of us could hope to eat. |
| 0:40.0 | A former MP and a minister in John Major's government. He's also written biographies, |
| 0:45.4 | diaries, novels and stage plays. He has starred in his own West End Review, is a successful |
| 0:50.8 | broadcaster and accomplished speaker. |
| 0:53.2 | In his spare time, he set up a teddy bear museum, |
| 0:56.5 | started the UK Scrabble competition and campaigns for public spaces. |
| 1:00.5 | Yet, despite all this, he says the motto that has guided him throughout his life is |
| 1:05.3 | Don't Dabble Focus. Whilst at Oxford, he edited the University magazine, directed |
| 1:10.9 | the Dramatic Society and was president of the Union. |
| 1:14.0 | A glittering career always seemed likely, yet he acknowledges that the first line of his obituary |
| 1:19.4 | will be that he was the man who wore silly jumpers on breakfast TV. Does that irk you, Charles Brandras? |
| 1:26.5 | Because you're probably right. I accept it completely. I mean it is more than 20 years since I last |
| 1:31.7 | wore a colourful jumper on TV, but people do remember them. |
| 1:36.1 | And the story is true that when I turned up at the House of Commons wearing a proper, you know, |
| 1:40.9 | gray suit to look like one of John Major's men. |
| 1:44.4 | Almost the first time I rose to speak in the Commons, |
| 1:47.2 | John Prescott clocked me, leant forward, and muttered, |
| 1:51.7 | woolly jumper. Ha ha ha! I was thrown. and muttered, Woolie Jumper. |
| 1:53.0 | I was thrown, he kept this up, |
... |
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