0:01

BBC Sounds, music, radio,

0:03

podcasts. Hello, I'm Lauren

0:05

Laverne and this is the Desert Island Discs

0:08

podcast. Every week I ask my guests to

0:10

choose the eight tracks, book and luxury they'd

0:12

want to take with them if they were

0:14

cast away to a desert island. And

0:17

for rights reasons, the music is shorter

0:19

than the original broadcast. I hope you

0:21

enjoy listening. My

0:42

castaway this week is the broadcaster Peter

0:44

White. He's the award-winning

0:46

voice of Radio 4's In Touch, the

0:48

programme for blind and visually impaired people

0:50

and the consumer series You and Yours.

0:53

He was the BBC's first disability affairs

0:55

correspondent, the first blind person to host

0:57

a daily live radio show and the

0:59

first to produce as well as present

1:02

reports for television news. In

1:04

1998 he was awarded an MBE

1:06

for services to broadcasting and in 2024 he

1:08

will celebrate 50

1:11

years presenting In Touch. He

1:14

was born in Winchester in 1947 and

1:16

like his older brother had a rare

1:19

genetic anomaly that meant his optic nerve

1:21

hadn't developed properly. Back then expectations of

1:23

disabled children were low, though luckily not

1:26

in his house. His parents encouraged his

1:28

sense of adventure and the self-confidence they

1:30

instilled gave him the courage to pursue

1:32

his dream and more. He says, being

1:35

blind is normal for me. It's difficult

1:37

that people still don't understand. It's possible

1:39

to be comfortable in your skin as

1:42

a disabled person. Peter White, welcome to

1:44

Desert Island Discs. Thank you. Great

1:46

to be here. Peter, you spent

1:48

a lot of time talking to disabled

1:50

people who'd become very successful about the

1:52

routes they took to get there in

1:54

the Radio 4 series No Triumph, No

1:56

Tragedy. What motivated you to make it?

2:00

got very fed up with people either

2:02

casting blindness as a triumph

2:04

or a tragedy. Certainly

2:06

we wanted to talk to disabled people

2:09

who bucked for the trend, but also

2:11

to show that it

2:13

wasn't about triumphing or being a

2:15

tragedy, but being yourself. I

2:18

mean, people always talk about vulnerability

2:20

with an assumption that you're always

2:23

vulnerable. Disability doesn't work

2:25

that way. We're no more

2:27

classifiable than non-disabled people. We

2:30

differ enormously, differ in the amount

2:32

of confidence you've got, vary

2:34

in the amount of abilities that

2:36

you've got. That's why I did that series, and

2:38

it was great because I got to meet all

2:40

sorts of extraordinary people. They

2:43

weren't extraordinary because they were disabled.

2:45

They were just extraordinary. You

2:48

have some uncompromising views on

2:50

life as a disabled person, and I

2:52

know that your attitude towards guide dogs

2:54

has often surprised people. So talk me

2:57

through it. Well, it is this attitude

2:59

that some people have, which I guess

3:01

puts me off a bit, that it's

3:03

the dog that's looking after you. I

3:06

don't find that a comfortable idea,

3:08

but good guide dog owners don't

3:10

treat it like that. They know

3:12

who's in charge. Yeah, and I'm

3:14

wondering if you also don't like

3:16

the expectation that some people have that

3:18

you will have a guide dog. Could

3:20

people say, where is your

3:22

guide dog? I don't know what happened to you before. The

3:25

most dramatic was on one

3:27

occasion I got off the

3:30

tube at Waterloo doing my usual run, and

3:32

I was talking to a bloke who was

3:34

giving me a hand to the escalator, and

3:36

he said, where's your dog there, mate? I

3:40

couldn't help myself. I was like, oh my God, I

3:42

must have left it on the train. Before

3:45

I'd had time to stop him,

3:47

he'd rushed off, he'd alerted people,

3:49

he'd alerted the transport police, and

3:51

they stopped the Bakerloo line, basically.

3:54

People, right. I know, it

3:56

was a dreadful thing to do. I thought, there's two things

3:59

I can do here. I can either

4:01

dash up the escalators while they're all doing

4:03

this and get on my train home to

4:05

Winchester or I can go and confess to

4:08

what I've done and I, it's the bravest

4:10

thing I've ever done, I think the only brave thing I've

4:12

ever done, I went and confessed and

4:14

they couldn't believe it and they said well why

4:16

did you say that you had got one? I

4:19

thought there's only one way out of it because I,

4:21

because I always wanted one. Anyway,

4:25

uh, you couldn't, you

4:27

didn't confess that you were just seized by devilment

4:30

which would have been the truth. I didn't, I didn't tell the

4:32

truth. I mean obviously a note for our

4:34

listeners, desert island discs does not condone

4:36

such behaviour. Absolutely. Not really do I

4:39

now. Let's get on to

4:41

safer ground Peter with your music choices today

4:43

Peter, what's disc number one? I love

4:46

Joan Armour Trading and

4:48

I've been following her career and

4:51

not all that long ago my wife got

4:53

me tickets to go and see her all

4:55

this time. I've not, not would been to

4:57

see her but she did not disappoint. I've

4:59

chosen somebody who loves you. Joan

5:31

Armour Trading and Somebody Who Loved You.

5:33

Peter White, you were born in Winchester

5:35

1947 and

5:38

you've said that you started life with two pieces

5:40

of good luck, your parents and your big brother

5:42

Colin. So let's start with Colin, why were you

5:44

lucky to have him? Having a blind elder

5:46

brother is fantastic because it

5:49

means that your parents get a dummy run

5:51

basically and the other thing that was good

5:53

is Colin was very capable

5:55

and still is, still around, we're

5:58

still mates. He was very competent

6:00

as a blind person. And what

6:02

that did, it raised my parents'

6:04

expectations of what I should be

6:06

able to do. So a phrase

6:09

that rings through my early childhood of,

6:11

Colin can do that, why can't you?

6:13

And I would say of the two

6:15

of us, although he's the more competent,

6:17

I'm the more confident. And

6:20

that confidence also came from your rather extraordinary

6:22

parents who I think we should talk about.

6:24

Your mum Joan was a secretary before Colin

6:26

arrived, your dad Dawn was a military policeman

6:28

in North Africa during the war and Colin

6:30

had been born during wartime. He became a

6:32

carpenter when he came home, your dad. Yeah.

6:35

So they wanted another child after Colin,

6:38

but they were apprehensive and they'd asked

6:40

about whether that next child might be

6:42

blind. They did. And they were

6:44

told it's a million to one chance.

6:46

I've always been rather proud of that, that

6:49

I am therefore a million to one chance.

6:51

And I've tried to behave like it's

6:54

possibly a certain amount of arrogance, maybe. And

6:56

you're feeling good on that shot on the

6:58

roulette wheel. Absolutely. So

7:01

tell me more about your mum, Joan. She

7:03

wasn't frightened of letting

7:06

us go out. We both used to ride

7:08

bikes around the area. We used to roller

7:10

skate around the area. We used to play

7:13

football and cricket with the other kids, with

7:15

rattling balls. We would do all those things.

7:17

My dad was a bit more nervous and

7:19

my mum used to say to him, they've

7:21

got to have a life, they've got to

7:23

learn and they'll get knocks. But

7:26

you know, that's what has to happen. Did

7:28

you ever wish that they would make more allowances for

7:30

you? Was that ever difficult for you? Good

7:32

Lord, no. I nagged and nagged my mum

7:35

because although she understood it, she was still

7:37

worried about things like crossing roads. Whereas most

7:39

kids hate to be sent out to do

7:41

the shopping for their mum, I was nagging

7:43

her to do it because Colin was allowed

7:45

to do that and I wasn't. How

7:47

old were you when she let you? I

7:51

was about eight

7:53

or nine, I suppose. But Colin

7:55

went when he was six and I

7:57

still resent it. How did he go?

8:00

It all went, it was going okay

8:02

and I got everything and I'd just

8:04

gone into the grocers I think and

8:06

I put the eggs on the top

8:09

and I came out and fell down a bank and

8:13

that was the end of the eggs. So

8:15

the lady in the shop came out and

8:17

she patched me up but the extraordinary thing

8:19

about that is that the first couple of

8:21

few times I went to the shops my

8:24

mum followed me a

8:26

long way behind and she saw

8:28

all this happen but

8:30

she was no way going to give a

8:32

clue that that's what she'd done so she

8:34

waited to make sure I was alright at

8:36

a distance and then dashed home so she

8:38

was back home when I got back never

8:40

admitting until about 30 years later that

8:43

she'd actually followed me all the way.

8:45

Well done Joan. I think we're

8:48

going to have some more music Peter, your second choice today if

8:50

you wouldn't mind what's it going to be? There

8:52

was a lot of laughter in our house and

8:54

there were people who we really

8:56

admired and I still feel

8:58

that Tony Hancock is

9:01

probably one of the if

9:03

not the greatest comedian this

9:05

country's produced so I picked

9:07

Sunday afternoon but it reflects

9:09

how boring Sunday afternoons in

9:12

the 50s really were. Your

9:16

dinner wasn't worth getting up for I'll tell you that for a start.

9:20

Oh well I don't know I ate all mine.

9:23

That is neither here nor there. You

9:26

also ate Bill's and Sid's and mine. I

9:31

thought my mother was a bad cook but at least her gravy

9:33

used to move about. Yours

9:43

just sort of lies there

9:46

and sets. An extract from Sunday

9:48

afternoon at home, Hancock's half hour

9:50

starring Tony Hancock with Sid James,

9:52

Bill Kerr, Hattie Jakes and Kenneth

9:54

Williams written by Ray Galton and

9:56

Alan Simpson and produced by Tom

9:58

Ronald. So

10:00

why your parents sound like remarkable people,

10:02

but they must have worried about you

10:04

and they must have found parenting really

10:06

challenging at times. Did the stress ever

10:08

show? The thing that probably

10:10

gave them strain was not so much

10:12

the kind of things we've been talking

10:14

about, like riding bikes and getting on

10:17

roller skates. It was what the future

10:19

was going to be. They couldn't perhaps

10:21

think what sort of jobs we would get.

10:23

They couldn't visualize us getting married. They would

10:26

have thought, what woman's going to have one

10:28

of them? And I

10:31

think that was what was bothering them

10:33

most. Did you

10:35

ever reflect on your upbringing with them and

10:37

talk to them about it as you grew

10:39

older or were more able to have those

10:41

conversations and ask them what it was like?

10:45

Yes. Perhaps the most

10:47

startling thing that happened to

10:50

me about that was I was

10:52

talking to my mum one day

10:54

and the question of not

10:56

having a sister cropped up because I would

10:58

have liked to have a sister. And she

11:01

said, she said, well, actually,

11:03

you might have had a sister. And

11:06

I wondered what on earth she meant. How old were you?

11:08

I would have been about 14 or 15

11:10

probably. And she explained

11:13

that not all that long after

11:15

I was born, she got

11:17

pregnant again. And

11:20

they were just worried, very worried about

11:22

the idea of having a third blind

11:24

child. I mean, we were living

11:27

in a prefab where a lot of people lived after

11:29

the war. My dad couldn't predict how much he was

11:31

likely to be able to earn.

11:33

There wasn't a lot of space. And

11:35

it was just this idea of having

11:38

another blind child. Now,

11:40

she had a doctor who

11:42

understood the issue, knew the

11:44

family, and he

11:47

supported her in this. And

11:50

she did have the devotion.

11:53

But she was not told whether

11:55

it was a boy or a girl. What went through your

11:57

mind when you were hearing that? I

11:59

was I admired her. I

12:01

mean, I grew up obviously

12:04

believing that blindness was not a

12:06

reason for terminating a pregnancy. So

12:08

I believed that from a sociological

12:10

point of view. I believed

12:13

it because I know what blind people can do. But

12:16

they didn't know that at that time. They didn't

12:18

know what the prospects were. And

12:20

I just thought for her to try to deal

12:23

with that then, I just

12:25

admired her. I think

12:27

it's time to go to the music Peter. What's your

12:29

next disc and why are you taking it with you

12:31

today? I have got

12:34

a great affection for the real

12:36

songwriters, the people of the sort

12:38

of 20s and the 30s and

12:40

female voices as well. And

12:43

quite a lot of these would pop

12:45

up on Housewives Choice that I used

12:47

to listen to with my mum. And

12:49

this combines them. This is Ellis Fitzgerald

12:52

every time we say goodbye. I

13:00

know we say

13:03

goodbye. I know it

13:05

all. And it's true.

13:12

It's true.

13:16

It's true. Why

13:19

do you say goodbye? Ellis

13:24

Fitzgerald and every time we say goodbye.

13:27

Peter White, when you were just five, your

13:29

parents made the very difficult decision to send

13:32

you away to boarding school, the Royal School

13:34

of Industry for the Blind in Bristol. And

13:36

now it is so difficult to

13:38

conceive of tearing a five-year-old away from a

13:40

loving family these days. Why did they think

13:42

you should go there? Well I think it

13:45

really is important to say they didn't have a

13:47

choice. That is what you did. It's what the

13:49

local authority would tell you you have to do.

13:52

It was what your social worker would

13:54

tell you you had to do. And

13:56

I think my dad certainly said

13:58

you just thought you would learn to do the

14:01

important things that you needed but they

14:04

didn't have a choice. It

14:06

must have been incredibly difficult for them but also

14:08

hugely traumatic for you. How do

14:11

you look back on your time there? I absolutely

14:14

hated going away from home. Escorts

14:17

used to take us back to school so

14:19

we would go down to Southampton, get the

14:22

train from there. I'd been crying

14:24

for about 24 hours, I'd

14:26

been being sick and then I got on

14:28

the train and I would lean out of the window and as

14:31

the train set off I would grab hold

14:33

of my mother's hair. She had to run

14:35

along the platform to free herself. Oh poor

14:37

Bolsa. I know well and

14:40

it's terrible but I call it insensitivity

14:42

if you like but I went

14:45

through that stuff but I think Tolyne

14:47

thought about what it was like for

14:49

her. And what do you remember

14:51

about the school itself? It was quite

14:53

grim. I remember the

14:55

corridors with wooden floors with splinters

14:57

in and hard beds

15:00

and they were described as

15:03

nurses. I suppose they'd be like nannies

15:05

I suppose but even that was quite

15:07

abrupt and rough. Colin

15:09

was at this school but he

15:12

was four years older than me and

15:15

I'd been there about 24 hours

15:17

and he came across and said,

15:19

how are you doing? Are you

15:21

alright? And I said yes which

15:23

was not true and he said good and went

15:25

away and I didn't see him until the end

15:28

of term. Oh God. I

15:30

don't think that was his, I suspect that he was

15:32

told to do that. The idea

15:34

that I couldn't rely on a

15:37

brother or someone I knew. You think or swim, just

15:39

dream in a sequence. You just have to get on

15:41

with it. Something

15:44

that you learned there that did change your

15:46

life was braille. You

15:48

could read with both hands which is very

15:50

unusual. What I did and

15:52

nobody taught me to do this was

15:55

I would start

15:57

to line with one hand

15:59

halfway along it and one at the beginning and

16:02

then I would read the second

16:04

half of the first line.

16:07

I'd do that with my right hand and my left hand

16:09

would go down the line and start

16:11

to read that and then the

16:14

the other hand would join it. So what

16:16

I was actually doing was reading

16:18

half a line with one hand and

16:20

the other half of the line with

16:22

the other hand but reading them simultaneously

16:25

and then putting it together and I

16:27

gradually got faster and faster. My teacher

16:29

first of all would not believe that

16:32

I had read, I would

16:34

say to her at two o'clock can I have another

16:36

book and she said I gave you a book at

16:38

10 o'clock this morning you haven't read that. I

16:40

said I have. So what did they do with you? They probably were

16:42

in for competitions for the first thing

16:45

and I went and won all these

16:47

competitions for reading. So

16:49

this was something which it

16:51

changed the way I was seen I

16:54

think at my school. So they started

16:56

to think well this kid is obviously

16:58

going to do something and go somewhere.

17:01

Peter it's time to appear some more music. Your

17:03

fourth choice today. What have you gone for? This

17:07

is Badge by

17:09

Cream and this is after I'd left

17:11

school. After I'd had one bash at

17:13

university and made a mess of it

17:16

I went to work at a place

17:18

called Youth Action York to get kids

17:20

to do things that were useful in

17:23

the community. Our office was

17:25

in a basement and one of the

17:27

things that we did there was

17:29

I was going to my first

17:31

all-night party because I was a

17:33

bit of a late developer, didn't

17:35

go to me all night parties.

17:37

So this is the piece of

17:39

music that actually brings back

17:41

the memory of that first party.

20:00

and I don't know any blind people and

20:02

I saw your white stick trailing into the

20:04

lift, would you come down and see me?

20:06

And I said well I should tell you

20:09

Ken, I don't want to do a program

20:11

for blind people, I want to do ordinary

20:13

programs, news programs, sports programs, all that sort

20:15

of thing and he said well I feel

20:17

very well but a program for blind

20:19

people is what I've got. And I

20:22

realised, I was sensible enough to

20:24

realise that this was an opportunity.

20:27

We've got to make some time for the music.

20:29

This is your fifth choice today, what have

20:31

you gone for next? This

20:33

is something that's really special to me,

20:36

it was actually in the period when

20:38

I was struggling with university

20:41

and I'd been away for the weekend and

20:44

I've been thinking god this can't go on, I've got

20:46

to do something about this and I came back to

20:49

my little cell of a room, it was about 11

20:51

o'clock at night, nobody would dare to

20:53

welcome me back or anything. I went

20:56

in, I put the radio on randomly

20:58

and I hit a French station and

21:01

I heard this fantastic voice,

21:03

this beautiful voice and

21:05

this song, it's

21:07

Albatross, it's Judy Collins

21:10

and I just thought if

21:13

there's music like this in the world maybe

21:15

it's not such a bad place after all. Judy

21:49

Collins and Albatross. And

22:00

he said that at that point you saw

22:02

blindness as a nuisance that shouldn't be dwelt

22:04

upon. But I know that working on In

22:07

Touch, what started to unlock and change and

22:09

mature your thinking? Well,

22:11

I think just the stories we

22:13

were doing. I mean, I started

22:15

to realise that things like only

22:17

about three in ten of

22:19

all blind people of working age actually

22:22

had a job and that shocked me.

22:25

And I did an interview with a

22:28

man who had been blind and then

22:30

went deaf. That

22:32

really reached me and made me think

22:34

I can help tell this person's story.

22:37

Peter, you talked about those individual encounters and

22:39

there's one in particular that I want to

22:41

ask you about. I'm sure you'll remember this.

22:43

This is the 90s by now and you're

22:45

presenting the programme No Triumph, No Tragedy. And

22:48

there was one programme, you had a

22:50

tricky encounter with the controversial pornographer Larry

22:52

Flint. So he'd been shot

22:54

and paralysed in the 70s. He used a wheelchair.

22:57

How do you remember it? What do you remember about it?

23:00

He kept talking about cripples. I

23:02

don't want to be a cripple. I don't want

23:04

to be associated with cripples. And

23:07

I suddenly thought I've had enough of this. I said,

23:10

but Mr. Flint, you are a cripple.

23:13

And he hadn't expected that. And he wasn't

23:16

quite sure how to take it. That

23:18

language obviously is offensive. Many people would find

23:20

it offensive, but it created this amazing moment.

23:22

But as a broadcaster, were you not sitting

23:24

there thinking, I don't know if I can

23:27

use this? No. I

23:29

knew I had every right to point

23:31

out to him that he was the

23:33

word that he was negatively using about

23:35

other people. And what did he have to say about that?

23:38

Well, he blustered really, but

23:40

he didn't have a justification for it.

23:43

And in a way, I didn't think he

23:45

needed a justification for it because he was

23:48

showing his frustration. The

23:51

whole point about No Triumph, No Tragedy was

23:53

it was trying to get the truth out

23:55

of people about how they

23:57

felt about disability. Peter, it's time

23:59

for the next question. for some more music, your

24:01

sixth choice today, what have you chosen?

24:03

Ah, well, this was my first

24:05

signature tune for my own show.

24:07

Nothing to do with blindness. I

24:09

sort of got my way on

24:11

that on Radio Solent when I

24:13

said I don't only want

24:15

to do programs about blindness. So I did

24:18

this program about just it was visiting villages,

24:20

really like there was a program on Radio

24:22

4, a very famous program called Down Your

24:24

Way. And that was your program

24:27

called? It was called Talk About. And

24:29

this was its signature tune, its

24:32

Anx of Green Willow, composed

24:34

by George Butterworth. The

25:35

Banks of Green Willow, composed by George Butterworth

25:37

and performed by the Academy of St. Martin

25:40

in the Fields, conducted by Sir Neville Mariner.

25:43

Peter White, you met your wife Jo

25:45

in 1970 and got married the following

25:48

year. Now you'd always wanted children. Why

25:50

was having a family of your own so important to

25:53

you? It was the same as

25:55

the normality that I said I wanted in terms of

25:58

the jobs I did, the interviews. I

26:00

did and what I saw

26:02

as normality of family

26:04

life. So you went on

26:07

to have three children together. How much thought did

26:09

you give to the possibility that they might inherit

26:11

the condition that had caused your blindness? Not

26:13

a lot. We

26:16

did think about it, of course. And

26:18

my wife Jo, she got asked this.

26:20

I think she was asked by her

26:22

mum, which wasn't surprising. And

26:25

she said, I'm hardly going to marry

26:27

a blind man and be that

26:30

worried if I have a blind

26:32

child. She said, obviously, I know the difficult.

26:34

I'd much rather it didn't happen. But

26:36

if it did, we'd know what to do. Or he

26:39

would. And that was

26:41

it as far as she was concerned. To

26:44

be fair, my brother had already had

26:46

two daughters and

26:48

they didn't have any eye problems. So we had

26:51

a little bit of history

26:53

on our side. Colin went first

26:55

again. Yes, Colin went first. Yeah. Peter

26:58

Joe died in 2016. She'd been

27:00

ill for some time with lung

27:03

cancer. How did you cope with

27:05

losing her? Jo

27:10

didn't want a lot of

27:12

fuss about this. She didn't

27:14

want a lot of deep discussion

27:16

about it. She was

27:18

very adamant that I shouldn't stop working. And

27:20

she said, I don't want you hanging around

27:22

here wondering what's happening to me.

27:24

And can you do anything? I mean, I

27:27

can understand that. It's hard enough anyway.

27:29

You don't want to then spend the time that you've got

27:32

being upset necessarily having those very difficult conversations.

27:34

But what was that like for you? Were

27:36

you okay with that? Yeah, I

27:38

was because I knew

27:40

that was her. And when

27:43

she did die, I mean, people

27:47

said, shouldn't you take time off? Shouldn't

27:49

you? And I said, look, I've been

27:51

grieving for this for three years. I

27:54

have grieved. There was nothing

27:56

more I could do. I just

27:58

have to get on. with my

28:01

life. How quickly were you back on air? Oh,

28:05

three days. What were you working

28:07

on? The Paralympics. I went to Rio and

28:09

broadcast for a fortnight. How

28:12

was it? Um,

28:14

odd. It was odd, but

28:16

I was doing my job and I

28:18

always thought that's what Joe would have expected me to

28:20

do. Let's

28:23

have a minute for some music, Peter. You're seventh choice

28:25

today. What are we going to hear? Uh,

28:28

this is about Joe, really. We

28:31

came back from our honeymoon. So we're going

28:33

right back 44 years and

28:36

we had 35 quid in the bank. I've

28:40

just about managed to take her to the

28:42

channel islands for honeymoon and

28:44

we had our first flat.

28:46

We hadn't lived in it. We came back from the

28:48

honeymoon and I got the key and

28:51

we walked in and I

28:54

had acquired Blue by

28:56

Joni Mitchell. She's a brilliant album.

28:58

I could have picked anything from

29:01

this, but this

29:03

was the first record

29:05

I put on the

29:07

old Dan Sit record player in

29:10

our new flat in 1971. It's

29:13

my old man. Joni

29:48

Mitchell and my old man, Peter

29:51

White, your mum lived to see you receive

29:53

your MBE in 1998. Sadly,

29:56

your dad had died by then. What do you

29:58

think you would have made? need of your

30:01

achievements? It

30:03

had been very pleased. I think the one thing

30:05

that I really regret that he didn't see, my

30:07

dad was like a lot of people in Britain,

30:09

you know, when he got home from work,

30:12

he would go in the kitchen, rinse

30:15

his hands under the tap because he was

30:17

a carpenter, so he would cover him with

30:19

wood and sawdust and stuff. And

30:21

then he would go in and sit and

30:23

turn on the six o'clock television news. And

30:26

I did my first broadcast

30:29

for the six o'clock news in

30:32

1995. And my dad would have

30:35

said, Oh, yeah, that's not bad, kid.

30:39

You married again, Peter, your second wife,

30:41

Jackie, in 2018. How did the two

30:43

of you meet? On a tram. I'd

30:47

gone up to Manchester, got

30:50

off the train at Manchester Piccadilly, ran and

30:52

I used to run because I always used

30:54

to miss tram. So I ran down onto

30:56

the tram stop and

30:58

ran into this woman and

31:01

said, Is this the media city tram?

31:03

And she said, I don't know. I

31:05

don't normally catch these trams. Anyway,

31:07

we got on the tram together and we

31:09

started to talk and the

31:11

rest is history. I feel lucky

31:13

to have had a second

31:16

chance at happiness. And

31:18

Joe was the least jealous person I've

31:20

ever known. So I think

31:23

I'd get the nod for that. So

31:25

Peter, it's time to get ready for the island. How

31:28

are you feeling about the prospect of being cast away?

31:30

I'll be completely useless. I think I'll

31:32

probably starve to death, basically, because I

31:35

won't know what plants are safe to

31:38

eat. I couldn't catch a fish to save

31:40

me life. I think I'll be

31:43

emaciated and dead within weeks,

31:45

basically. So,

31:47

you know, but if you're going to send me, you

31:49

know, it's your privilege. Well,

31:51

I've got to do what I've got to do,

31:54

Peter, but you can have one more track before

31:56

you go so we can postpone the trip. What

31:58

will that be? I couldn't. not go to

32:01

the desert island without at

32:03

least one Beatles record

32:06

and I thought should I take it from the

32:08

really early stages or should

32:10

I take it from the later

32:13

more kind of reflective and

32:15

actually I've taken it from the middle if

32:17

we can work it out it's optimistic it's

32:19

trying to see it my way and it

32:22

just sounds as if they can work it

32:24

out which has been my motto

32:26

it just feels like it's my kind

32:28

of thing the

32:59

Beatles and we can work it out so

33:02

Peter White it's time to send you to the

33:04

island I'm giving you the Bible the complete works

33:06

of Shakespeare you can also take one other book

33:09

with you what will it be you've said

33:11

you've given me the Bible wisdom is the

33:13

cricketers Bible I would love to

33:15

have taken the whole series from 1864 up

33:18

to the present day digitized so I could

33:20

read the in Braille on this machine that's

33:22

sitting in front of me I'm told I

33:25

can't do that so I will take one

33:27

year digitized so that I can read it

33:29

in Braille I would take 1962 because

33:33

it would therefore relate the year 1961

33:35

in which my team Hampshire won

33:39

the County Championship for the first time you

33:42

can also have a luxury item if

33:44

I could have an inexhaustible supply

33:47

of pear drops but not any old pear

33:49

drops the big pear drops that they used

33:51

to do in the old days you know

33:54

when I was at Bristol my mum would

33:56

send me these parcels and in there there was

33:58

always because she knew I love them. There

34:00

was always a bag of pear drops. Well

34:03

we'll send you a gyrabome of pear drops,

34:05

the very biggest we can find. Thank you,

34:07

that'd be great. And finally

34:09

which track of the eight that you've shared with

34:11

us today Peter would you rush to save from

34:13

the waste if you had to? Because

34:16

it almost saved my sanity I

34:18

think it would have to be

34:20

Albatross by Judy Collins. Peter

34:22

White thank you very much for letting us hear your

34:24

desert island discs. Thank you. Hello

34:36

I hope you enjoyed my conversation with

34:38

Peter. He's a resilient character and I'm

34:40

sure he will survive on the island.

34:42

We've cast many broadcasters away including Jeremy

34:44

Bowen and Lee Stusett and you'll find

34:46

the teacher and writer Sinead Burke and

34:48

the actor Liz Carr in our archive

34:50

too. They both campaigned for the rights

34:52

of disabled people. Find all those episodes

34:54

in our desert island discs program archive

34:57

and through BBC scenes. The studio manager

34:59

for today's program was Emma Hart, the

35:01

assistant producer was Christine Pavlovski and the

35:03

producer was Paula McGinley. The series editor

35:06

is John Goudy. Hello

35:16

this is Marian Keyes and this is Tara Flynn.

35:19

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35:23

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35:25

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35:28

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35:30

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