Pod Insights Rosebud with Gyles Brandreth More Rosebud - Gyles's Diary episode 45 About this episode Gyles Brandreth's unique record of the late twentieth century continues, as he reads from the diaries he's kept since he was 10 years old. We're now reading from 1977 and 78. Gyles is forced to take the outrageous and unprecedented step of taking a day off a week, by his wife, Michele. He invents the Collins Academic Year Diary. He wears a novelty jumper for the first time ever. And he ponders the death of Elvis Presley. Plus chat with Gyles and Harriet about great British landmarks, dates, and being liked.
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Transcript 10,562 words · 3 speakers
0:19 Speaker 00 Hello again, or if this is the very first time you've come across Rosebud, hello. My name is Gyles Brandreth, and because this is the more Rosebud episode that we drop on a Tuesday, it's not just me here, my producer and friend Harriet Jane joins me at the microphone, and together we say hello.
0:40 Speaker 01 Hello.
0:41 Speaker 00 I wanted to ask you, Harriet, what would you say is the landmark that for you defines the British Isles? I ask for a reason, and our podcast goes around the world now, which is thrilling for us. Only about three quarters of our audience are based in Britain, the rest are overseas. And I came across a survey of the most iconic landmarks in the British Isles. And what do you think came first?
1:13 Speaker 01 Oh, was it Big Ben?
1:17 Speaker 00 It was, well done.
1:18 Speaker 01 Oh, wow, that's what I was going to say.
1:22 Speaker 00 What else would you have chosen?
1:23 Speaker 01 I was going to choose something like an oak tree, or a pile of rocks somewhere, because I grew up in Devon and there's some really amazing rocks on Dartmoor.
1:37 Speaker 00 Well, there were rocks, because the Giant's Causeway was in that list.
1:40 Speaker 01 Yeah, I've never been there, I'd love to be there.
1:41 Speaker 00 I've been there, it's fantastic, it's in Northern Ireland.
1:43 Speaker 01 It looks amazing.
1:44 Speaker 00 And I think the idea was that once upon a time you could go along that causeway from there to Scotland, before there was the sea there.
1:50 Speaker 01 Oh, how amazing.
1:51 Speaker 00 I think that's up there. I would have chosen, it wasn't on the list, the White Cliffs of Dover.
1:57 Speaker 01 Mmm.
1:58 Speaker 00 Is rather wonderful.
1:59 Speaker 01 Yeah.
2:01 Speaker 00 On my list too would be Salisbury Cathedral.
2:04 Speaker 01 Oh lovely.
2:04 Speaker 00 I visited Salisbury Cathedral this week because I am the chairman of something called the Edward Heath Charitable Foundation. Edward Heath was the British Prime Minister in nineteen seventy to seventy three and I knew him. He was an odd character, but he was remarkable. He probably was the first conservative working class prime minister, came from.
2:31 Speaker 01 Oh really? I didn't know he was working class.
2:33 Speaker 00 Well, he came from a straightforward family and I think they were working people. I think you could describe him as a working class boy, who was clever and, you know, got scholarships, went to Oxford University. What was also interesting about him is that he maybe was the last prime minister to have a proper life outside of politics. He, I think he won a big international yacht race while he was prime minister.
3:02 Speaker 01 Yeah, he loved sailing, didn't he?
3:04 Speaker 00 He loved sailing, he was a good sailor. He loved music as well, he conducted choirs. And I said to him once, you know, when did it all change? He said it wouldn't be possible now to follow the things, interests I had. And he of course blamed Margaret Thatcher, who defeated him and became the conservative leader in succession to him.
3:23 Speaker 01 Oh, how interesting, and she really was a workaholic.
3:25 Speaker 00 Absolutely. And he felt that from then on in, the, the prime ministers felt they had to work, you know, eighteen hours a day and be always on it.
3:33 Speaker 01 Oh, how interesting.
3:33 Speaker 00 And the twenty four hour news round, whereas he came from a tradition set by more patrician people like Harold Macmillan, where you could be in Downing Street reading a novel by Trollope, you know, two or three hours of an afternoon reading your novel.
3:46 Speaker 01 Yeah, wonderful. I mean, actually, it was one of the things I rather liked about Jeremy Corbyn when he came on, was he said, I think.
3:57 Speaker 01 You said something to him like, oh, you know, do you have a bit of a reputation of being awkward? And he said, oh, that's just because I am quite clear about setting aside time. And I just say, no, I'm not, I'm not working now. I'm reading for the next two hours. And I sit in the House of Commons library and I get a book off the shelf and read it. And I say, I'm going to my allotment for five hours this afternoon. Yeah, and I think you need to do that to remain sane. He said, you have to do that, otherwise you could spend 24 hours a day answering your constituents' complaints.
4:30 Speaker 00 Yeah, even as a backbench MP, which he now is.
4:32 Speaker 01 Yeah.
4:33 Speaker 00 But if you are a minister, let alone prime minister, the pressures on you, the international
4:37 Speaker 01 Yeah.
4:38 Speaker 00 pressures, the national pressures, the party pressures. They do, they completely take over your life.
4:43 Speaker 01 Yeah.
4:44 Speaker 00 Whereas Ted Heath was a bachelor anyway, had, well, a life with a variety of interests. And he felt that gave him the freedom, this is his view, to think big thoughts, to think long term, to actually do the strategic thinking required of a prime minister, not to get bogged down in detail. And he felt his complaint about Margaret Thatcher was that she got far too bogged down in detail. And his view, I think, about you get the right people in the ministerial posts, you set the general direction and you say to them, get on with it. And you don't then interfere.
5:18 Speaker 01 I think I performed in a choir and Ted Heath was in the audience at Balliol College. That was his college.
5:25 Speaker 00 Because it was his college, yeah.
5:26 Speaker 01 I think he was fast asleep.
5:27 Speaker 00 Oh, yeah.
5:28 Speaker 01 So I think he was thinking big thoughts, possibly quite a lot of the time while having a snooze after lunch.
5:33 Speaker 00 As the years went by, he didn't, he put on too much weight.
5:36 Speaker 01 Yeah, he didn't look to me like someone that was having big thoughts.
5:39 Speaker 00 He wasn't in the peak of fitness. But I liked him and Michelle, my wife, and I were lucky enough to go and have lunch with him. And people said he was always, he could be monosulamic, you know. Somebody, one of his private secretaries passed him a note, he was sitting next to the Lady Meress. And the note said, you know, please talk to the woman on your left, reminding him, talk to the woman on your left, Lady Meress. And he sent back a note saying, I have. You know, he could be truly monotonous, though when Michelle sat next to him at lunch, she found him good company.
6:10 Speaker 01 Mm.
6:11 Speaker 00 And he treated her properly. At the end of the lunch, he got up a box of cigars and offered her a cigar.
6:18 Speaker 01 Oh, really?
6:18 Speaker 00 Yes, saying, "Fidel gave me these," meaning Fidel Castro.
6:21 Speaker 01 Oh, yeah, he was proud of his.
6:23 Speaker 00 Friendship with Fidel Castro.
6:24 Speaker 01 Friendship with Fidel Castro.
6:25 Speaker 00 He also gave him the orchids that were in his garden.
6:27 Speaker 01 Oh, and did Michelle accept a cigar?
6:29 Speaker 00 I think she took her cigar and brought it back to London and gave it to my father.
6:34 Speaker 01 Oh, that's sensible.
6:35 Speaker 00 Which was a nice thing to do, because she's never been a smoker, let alone of cigars.
6:38 Speaker 01 Have you ever smoked a cigar?
6:39 Speaker 00 No.
6:40 Speaker 01 Never?
6:41 Speaker 00 I've never smoked a cigarette. I've never smoked anything.
6:43 Speaker 01 You've never tried smoking a cigar?
6:44 Speaker 00 Can I tell you, Harriet, you know, I have lived so little.
6:50 Speaker 01 I don't, you've said this before, Giles, you haven't. You've lived about twelve, twenty-seven lives compared to most people listening to this.
6:56 Speaker 00 No, I've been a busy fool.
6:57 Speaker 01 But you're just.
6:58 Speaker 00 In terms, I've never done anything daring.
6:59 Speaker 01 Yeah, but that's okay. I mean, you've, you're healthy because you've not been smoking cigars and taking.
7:05 Speaker 00 Anyway.
7:06 Speaker 01 What was it, Caitlin Moran's dad was up to, taking LSD and, and the church opposite him took off like a rocket?
7:12 Speaker 00 That was such a fabulous episode.
7:13 Speaker 01 Brilliant.
7:14 Speaker 00 We've had some, are we allowed to give people a sneak at what we've got this Friday? We're allowed to tell people, do you think, in advance to get them excited?
7:21 Speaker 01 Oh, yeah, because it's, that's what you do. You, um.
7:23 Speaker 00 Tease them up.
7:24 Speaker 01 Teasing, we're teasing them.
7:25 Speaker 00 We're teasing them.
7:25 Speaker 01 Yeah.
7:26 Speaker 00 This Friday, everybody, on Rosebud, we're coming up to the sixtieth anniversary of the World Cup when England won in nineteen sixty-six.
7:35 Speaker 01 Mm.
7:35 Speaker 00 And there's only one person left alive who was on the field of play that day.
7:40 Speaker 01 Mm.
7:41 Speaker 00 And it is Sir Jeff Hurst. And I'm pleased to say that he is going to be our guest on Rosebud on Friday. So if you want to know what it was like to play in the World Cup sixty years ago and to win the World Cup sixty years ago and to score three of the goals when we won the World Cup, come, join us on Rosebud this Friday because Jeff Hurst is completely fascinating. What you will learn about him and about football and about leadership, the way he talks about Bobby Moore, it is extraordinary. Also, you'll marvel at the, what the money they were paid back in those days. It's a really great episode.
8:19 Speaker 01 Mm.
8:19 Speaker 00 How do I get on to, how do I get on to Jeff Hurst?
8:22 Speaker 01 Oh, because I mentioned Caitlin Moran and you said, oh, shall we tease up the next Friday?
8:26 Speaker 00 Yeah, well, so that's this Friday. Right now, we're going to get into dowries in a moment, but I do want to finish this thing about going to Salisbury. So I went to Salisbury Cathedral because Edward Heath lived in Salisbury. He had a beautiful house in Salisbury Close called Arundles, which is now owned by a trust, and I chair the foundation. And we keep this open. About 10,000 people a year visit it. It's a beautiful house, Queen Anne House, but some of the origins go back to the 13th century. It's wonderful. And it's in the cathedral close. And I walked from the house to Salisbury Cathedral, and the beauty of that cathedral in the evening sunshine. I went to even song, which was spoken. There was no singing,
9:07 Speaker 00 which is possibly good because you know what my singing is like. And I thought, this is good. And I thought this building is one of the great buildings of the world. And it was put up, begun in the 13th century.
9:22 Speaker 01 Amazing.
9:23 Speaker 00 It's amazing. And it still stands, one of the great, well, great landmarks of our country.
9:29 Speaker 01 And it's near Stonehenge, which is another of the great landmarks. And it's a pile of rocks, which is what I was saying.
9:35 Speaker 00 Yes, exactly. So, so I recommend to anyone, if you want to feel good, find a building that, or, or a view or somewhere that is special, and just go and enjoy it. And I also recommend actually going to Evening Prayer, which they do, I mean, at Salisbury Cathedral, it's normally even song. I think they have girls singing one night, boys singing the next night. And the night I happened to be there, it was just spoken. And it was rather touching because at the end of the service, the, the priest, the clergyman who had conducted, came and said hello. And I said hello. And he said, I know your sister, because he used to be, I think, the vicar of my sister's church in St Albans.
10:15 Speaker 01 Oh, that's nice.
10:16 Speaker 00 That was rather nice, wasn't it?
10:17 Speaker 01 Yeah.
10:18 Speaker 00 And remembered her.
10:19 Speaker 01 That's a cathedral. I think St Albans is a cathedral.
10:21 Speaker 00 It is. And of course, St Albans is the great English saint.
10:25 Speaker 01 Oh, is he?
10:26 Speaker 00 Is he? Absolutely.
10:28 Speaker 01 Oh, good.
10:29 Speaker 00 I mean, move over St George, St Albans is your man.
10:33 Speaker 01 Oh, I live near St Albans, I must go up there.
10:35 Speaker 00 You must.
10:36 Speaker 01 Hmm.
10:36 Speaker 00 Didn't know you lived near, Crouch End is near St Albans, anyway.
10:39 Speaker 01 No, it's like, it's only a forty minute drive.
10:41 Speaker 00 Ah, there you go.
10:42 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah, it's where the Crouch Enders go when they want to leave London, St Albans, yeah.
10:47 Speaker 00 Have you had any good emails this week?
10:48 Speaker 01 Yes, very good one. I, I picked it out because it's rather exotic and I think it showcases the eclectic, fascinating, artistic and brilliant nature of the Rosebud listener. I think we've probably got the best listeners of all the podcasts. You're from all over the place, obviously lots and lots of people in the UK, so, you know, we've just been talking about British landmarks, but we know there's so many people in lots of amazing countries. And this email's from someone, I just thought, wow, I can't believe we've got this person listening to Rosebud, as they do this incredible job that you just wouldn't even think of.
11:29 Speaker 01 Hello Giles, I discovered your podcast two months ago and I'm already addicted to it. That's good. I'm British born, but live and work in the very southern tip of Israel as a date farmer. My days are spent tending to six thousand date palms, accompanied by my dog Lyra and the hot sun. I have many, many hours to listen to podcasts and so was excited to come across Rosebud. I adore your interview style, which gives the interviewee the space to tell their own story. As I work my way through the back catalogue, I have yet to find an interview that wasn't entirely absorbing, thank you. I thought I'd tell you my earliest memories.
12:09 Speaker 01 The first is in sixty eight or sixty nine, when my Uncle David took me to visit what was then known as the Post Office Tower in London, another great landmark. I remember running alongside a curved wall and jumping onto his lap. He sadly died during nineteen sixty nine of a sudden heart attack, but I've always imagined him as my guardian angel. The second memory is of sitting on the hovercraft en route to the Isle of Wight. The sea was rough and the windows were splashed by white foam. I think I was about three years old. Be well and thank you for keeping my ears happy. Sincerely, Penny Pitts.
12:48 Speaker 01 So that's cool, isn't it?
12:50 Speaker 00 It's more than cool, it's beautiful. And to think of her as a date farmer.
12:55 Speaker 01 I know. Have you ever been to a date, an oasis, a date?
13:00 Speaker 00 No, because you know I don't like dates at all.
13:03 Speaker 01 Well, it's funny, because today, on my way here, I opened Odd Boy Out at a random page. Because we always give our guests a copy of Odd Boy Out.
13:11 Speaker 00 Which is my sort of childhood memoir.
13:13 Speaker 01 Yeah. And as I put it into my rucksack, I opened it up and read you talking about eating some disgusting dates at the Lise. And they came from Algeria and you liked the box they were in, but they were stringy and this horrible taste and texture stayed with you ever since. Because I love dates, in fact, I ate one yesterday. Yeah. Very nice.
13:37 Speaker 00 I mean, I actually retch almost at the mention of the word date. And if I saw them, I really do back away from them.
13:44 Speaker 01 Oh, so you didn't like that email very much?
13:46 Speaker 00 I love the email, because I love the idea of her doing it and listening to us at the same time. I mean, and also her wonderful evocative memory of the post office tower, which I do remember going to as a child. And in those days, the tower revolved very, very slowly.
14:02 Speaker 01 Very cool.
14:02 Speaker 00 So slowly, you could hardly notice it was revolving. But I think I went with my parents, we had a meal up there, and in the course of the meal, you would go right the way around.
14:10 Speaker 01 So can you still go up it? Because I'd like to go up it.
14:13 Speaker 00 I don't think you can anymore.
14:14 Speaker 01 That's a shame. Is it still turning? No.
14:17 Speaker 00 Is it still turning? I don't think it is.
14:18 Speaker 01 Oh, God. Life has got less fun than it was in the sixties.
14:22 Speaker 00 In every way.
14:23 Speaker 01 The sixties was great. You know, my dad said that in the sixties, you could, in London, park anywhere. He said you could just drive around in your cool little car that you had, your MG or whatever you were driving around in, with your flares on. And you could just park on Oxford Street or, you know, God, life was free and easy, wasn't it?
14:44 Speaker 00 Well, let's discover what it was like in the 1970s.
14:47 Speaker 01 Oh, yeah.
14:47 Speaker 00 Because we've got my daddy here.
14:48 Speaker 01 Hooray. Yeah. Well, so thanks so much, Penny Pitts, for that email.
14:53 Speaker 00 If people want to send us emails, where do they write to?
14:55 Speaker 01 They write to [email protected] .
14:58 Speaker 00 Good.
14:59 Speaker 01 Yeah, but only if they're from. Like a date plantation, or the International Space Station.
15:07 Speaker 00 When people do write to us from all over the world.
15:08 Speaker 01 Yeah.
15:09 Speaker 00 Do any people write to us from the UK?
15:11 Speaker 01 They, they do, but we do, I think we do get a disproportionate number of people emailing from.
15:16 Speaker 00 From the world.
15:17 Speaker 01 From countries.
15:18 Speaker 00 Yes, maybe they just want to keep in touch with home.
15:20 Speaker 01 Yeah, I think possibly if you're living in another place, you're in the habit of sending postcards, aren't you, and we've, we've been added to the postcard list.
15:29 Speaker 00 Well, you know, the postcards are all over.
15:30 Speaker 01 Oh, it doesn't surprise me.
15:32 Speaker 00 It's, it's dead.
15:33 Speaker 01 It's dead.
15:34 Speaker 00 The postcard is dead.
15:35 Speaker 01 Yeah.
15:36 Speaker 00 Postcard, when do you think the first postcard was sent?
15:37 Speaker 01 Oh, that's a good question.
15:40 Speaker 00 Give us a guess. I know the precise year.
15:45 Speaker 01 Do you? Uh, the 18th century, 17th or 18th century?
15:50 Speaker 00 No, there was no postage.
15:51 Speaker 01 There was no post.
15:52 Speaker 00 Hey, exactly.
15:53 Speaker 01 My great, great, great, great uncle invented the post.
15:55 Speaker 00 What was his name again, Roland Hill?
15:56 Speaker 01 Roland Hill.
15:57 Speaker 00 This, listen to that. I mean, your producer, everybody, is a descendant of Roland Hill.
16:02 Speaker 01 Oh, so the 19th century.
16:04 Speaker 00 Yes, 1869.
16:05 Speaker 01 What, that recently?
16:07 Speaker 00 That's when postcards began.
16:09 Speaker 01 Oh.
16:10 Speaker 00 And, uh, yeah, and I love them, and sending people, you know, wish you were here, and all of that, and I love the cheeky postcards, those saucy McGill postcards.
16:17 Speaker 01 Oh, yeah, everyone loved those.
16:19 Speaker 00 Yep, it's all over, it's all over for the postcard.
16:21 Speaker 01 I still send postcards sometimes.
16:23 Speaker 00 So do I.
16:24 Speaker 01 Yeah.
16:25 Speaker 00 Uh, but nobody else is, we're the last two left sending postcards.
16:27 Speaker 01 Oh, well, we need to get that going. Rosebud listeners, make sure we send a postcard this summer, please. Let's have a campaign.
16:32 Speaker 00 Let's have, and where, they can either send it to us here in London.
16:35 Speaker 01 Oh, what, you want, no, I was just encouraging them to send them to their loved ones, not to us.
16:39 Speaker 00 Well, if you want to send a postcard to us, we wouldn't mind, you can send it to us in London.
16:43 Speaker 01 Yeah.
16:44 Speaker 00 At the Grosvenor House, Bartley, London.
16:47 Speaker 01 W1K70N, maybe?
16:49 Speaker 00 Oh, well done, that's impressive, Ariane.
16:51 Speaker 01 Not sure, you should check that on Google.
16:52 Speaker 00 Check the postcode, but it'll find us, it'll find us, you just send it to us, Rosebud, and it'll come to our studio, or they can find us in Edinburgh.
17:00 Speaker 01 Yes, I don't know what the address is.
17:02 Speaker 00 Well, the Gordon Aitman Theatre, George Square, Edinburgh.
17:06 Speaker 01 Oh, that would be fun. Yeah, send us one of those naughty ones, you know, with a man and wife in a bikini and something saucy written on the top.
17:16 Speaker 00 We love all that.
17:17 Speaker 01 Yeah.
17:17 Speaker 00 Then, then, yes, a rude postcard.
17:20 Speaker 01 Yeah.
17:20 Speaker 00 We love a McGill rude postcard. There was a museum of them in the Art of White, but I think even that may have closed.
17:26 Speaker 01 Oh, yeah, it's probably not very, it's been cancelled.
17:30 Speaker 00 We will give a prize for the cheekiest, but in our view, fun. It's got to be fun as well. Not, rudery alone is not enough.
17:37 Speaker 01 Okay.
17:37 Speaker 00 But a cheeky postcard that we get.
17:40 Speaker 01 Or a nice, just a lovely picture of somewhere. So are we, is this official now? We're actually starting a competition here? A postcard competition?
17:47 Speaker 00 A postcard competition.
17:48 Speaker 01 Because you know, we could end up with a huge sack. It'd be like Blue Peter.
17:50 Speaker 00 I would love that.
17:51 Speaker 01 I'll be up all night reading them all.
17:52 Speaker 00 Harry Styles has just got his Blue Peter badge, incidentally. That's by the by.
17:56 Speaker 01 Why did he get that?
17:57 Speaker 00 Well, for being Harry Styles.
17:59 Speaker 01 He is quite sexy.
18:00 Speaker 00 So is that what you, is that what Blue, that's what the Blue Peter badge has come down to?
18:04 Speaker 01 Well, I got one.
18:04 Speaker 00 You get one for being sexy.
18:05 Speaker 01 I got one.
18:06 Speaker 00 Oh, well.
18:06 Speaker 01 Not for being sexy, but I think all I did was send in a load of stamps or something. It wasn't very exciting, but I've got one.
18:13 Speaker 00 So we are launching the Rosebud Postcard Competition.
18:17 Speaker 01 Okay.
18:17 Speaker 00 You send a postcard to Giles and Harriet at Grosvenor House, probably the best address to go to.
18:23 Speaker 01 Yeah.
18:23 Speaker 00 Park Lane, London, W one.
18:26 Speaker 01 K seventy N, I think.
18:28 Speaker 00 Good. And we will pick out the best classical, attractive postcard and, in our view, the most amusing and charming saucy postcard.
18:39 Speaker 01 Yes, okay, great.
18:41 Speaker 00 And we'll put them on our website so people can see what we've chosen.
18:44 Speaker 01 And they're right, are they writing a message on there? You know, what they've been up to in their holidays? Weather's lovely, had a lovely meal last night.
18:50 Speaker 00 Memories, it's all about memories.
18:52 Speaker 01 Oh, okay.
18:52 Speaker 00 It can be their first memory.
18:54 Speaker 01 Yeah.
18:54 Speaker 00 Or a, or a, or a memory of a happy seaside holiday.
18:57 Speaker 01 Yeah, okay.
18:58 Speaker 00 Because you've recently been to Margate.
19:01 Speaker 01 I mean, there must have been some saucy postcards on sale there.
19:05 Speaker 00 There will have been scores of them.
19:07 Speaker 01 Yeah, Margate.
19:08 Speaker 00 Margate's the home of the saucy postcard. Did you go to, did you go to Dreamland?
19:11 Speaker 01 I walked past it, yeah.
19:13 Speaker 00 You should walk into it next time.
19:14 Speaker 01 I think it was closed.
19:15 Speaker 00 Oh, I'm sorry to hear that.
19:16 Speaker 01 Yeah.
19:16 Speaker 00 Oh no, Dreamland's closed?
19:18 Speaker 01 No, no, I think it was just because we were there midweek. Maybe it opens on a Thursday.
19:21 Speaker 00 No, Dreamland should be open three hundred and sixty five days a year.
19:25 Speaker 01 It didn't seem open, but maybe it was. We went on the beach. They've got a, um, we went somewhere called Walpole Bay. It is in Margate, but it's just slightly off from the main beach. And they've got one of those sea pools, you know, when they build the walls. It's a sort of, it's nice. You can swim around in there. Quite a lot of seaweed, but it was lovely. Nice and warm because it's so hot, Giles, isn't it?
19:48 Speaker 00 It is hot. I quite like it. I used to spend thousands of pounds taking my family to places that were even hotter than this. So why am I complaining if it's as hot as this here?
19:57 Speaker 01 No, this is hot. Yesterday in London was hotter than my daughter's in Sicily. She said it was hotter than Sicily. It was all, actually yesterday was awful, Giles, come on. Today's nice. Yesterday was like a furnace.
20:09 Speaker 00 Well, I coped.
20:10 Speaker 01 You were still wearing a jumper, you loon.
20:12 Speaker 00 I was. Okay.
20:14 Speaker 01 Yeah.
20:15 Speaker 00 Let's go back to nineteen seventy seven. It's Friday the twenty seventh of May. This is from my diary and I hope people have been following me. How many episodes have you done in the diary?
20:26 Speaker 01 I think this is episode forty five or forty six.
20:28 Speaker 00 Wow. Well, get with the program, everybody. I can't give you my life story up to the age of, uh, whatever age I am. I'm about twenty nine by now, aren't I?
20:36 Speaker 01 But honestly, do go back to the early years if you haven't listened from the start because the school days, they're captivating, aren't they, Giles? Don't you think?
20:46 Speaker 00 Yes.
20:46 Speaker 01 Yeah, they really are.
20:47 Speaker 00 And I think, and the more you know me, I think the more you think this, they formed me.
20:53 Speaker 01 Oh, yeah.
20:55 Speaker 00 I am still, I think, the boy I was aged eight or nine or 10.
20:58 Speaker 01 Yeah.
20:59 Speaker 00 Some people think their golden age was when they were 18 or 26 or even 34. I peaked at nine. No, maybe I peaked at 11, the year I played Rosalind in As You Like It in the school production.
21:11 Speaker 01 No, I thought it was when you had your own office at BDO.
21:14 Speaker 00 Oh, yes.
21:15 Speaker 01 How old were you then, 14 or 15?
21:17 Speaker 00 14.
21:18 Speaker 01 Running the school magazine.
21:18 Speaker 00 Yeah.
21:19 Speaker 01 That felt to me like you really were in your element.
21:23 Speaker 00 I was.
21:24 Speaker 01 You had a tight writer, you had your own office, you had a sort of staff, you know, you some girls from two years below. You were running the magazine.
21:31 Speaker 00 And do you know what I?
21:32 Speaker 01 You were standing to the conservative, you know, you were.
21:35 Speaker 00 Yes, I was.
21:36 Speaker 01 All the seeds were there.
21:37 Speaker 00 All the seeds were there. And shamefully, I now realise I had a girl who was my girlfriend, who actually was acting as my P A or now what they call an E A.
21:46 Speaker 01 Perfect, yeah. I mean, that's, that's, that's the Gyles Brandreth business model. Get your wife involved in, in the work.
21:54 Speaker 00 Oh, Jerry, me.
21:56 Speaker 01 Come on, Michelle, are you taking notes? Poor Michelle. She's up probably typing emails at three in the morning.
22:00 Speaker 00 Yeah, if only. If only.
22:04 Speaker 01 Oh, dear. She's slacking off.
22:05 Speaker 00 I'm barely sleeping at the moment, you know that. And I have to resist. I passed my, I think I did do it last night because I assumed, well, I knew you were asleep. I, I did send some work emails at about one or two in the morning. I know that. But then I assume you don't look at the emails for work until the following day.
22:21 Speaker 01 Well, if I wake up, I do.
22:23 Speaker 00 Yeah. So I apologise about that.
22:25 Speaker 01 Oh, it's all right. I was awake at four.
22:27 Speaker 00 Oh, were you?
22:27 Speaker 01 It was so hot, Giles. Yeah. I mean, I went back to sleep, but I just wake up at four for a little while. Yeah.
22:35 Speaker 00 We'll do another episode about that. We've got some plans for you, actually, to help people sleep in the autumn. Some September shows.
22:41 Speaker 01 Oh, yeah.
22:42 Speaker 00 Okay.
22:42 Speaker 01 Sorry, we keep.
22:43 Speaker 00 It's diary time. It's because we enjoy chatting. Okay. Friday, the 27th of May, 1977.
22:51 Speaker 00 All good. Tasty supper at the Greek place. Cuttings in from the National Scrabble Championships. Best coverage to date. For the London final at the Connaught Rooms, I wore my new Giles Brandreth Loves Scrabble jumper. A bright yellow, machine knitted jumper emblazoned with a complete Scrabble board.
23:11 Speaker 01 This is big news. This is the first novelty jumper, Giles.
23:15 Speaker 00 This is the day. I'm wearing a novelty jumper today as I record this with you. But on the twenty seventh of May, nineteen seventy seven, we must have, next year.
23:23 Speaker 01 Jumper day.
23:24 Speaker 00 Will be twenty twenty seven, so it'll be an anniversary.
23:27 Speaker 01 It's the fiftieth anniversary. Right, put this in the diary.
23:29 Speaker 00 Yeah, everybody.
23:30 Speaker 01 I'm putting it in right now.
23:31 Speaker 00 Never mind the postcard competition.
23:33 Speaker 01 Twenty seventh of May.
23:34 Speaker 00 Make a note, twenty seventh of May. Twenty twenty seven will be the half century of me wearing novelty knitwear.
23:42 Speaker 01 Everyone listening's got to be wearing a novelty jumper that day.
23:45 Speaker 00 Yep.
23:46 Speaker 01 And send in a picture.
23:48 Speaker 00 Oh, that's fantastic.
23:49 Speaker 01 Wait there, it's Giles Brandreth Jumper Day, Jumper Day.
23:55 Speaker 00 Twenty seventh of May. Fifty years.
23:58 Speaker 01 Wow.
24:00 Speaker 00 But the point is this, okay, Harriet, what do I say next? This bright yellow machine knitted jumper emblazoned with a complete Scrabble board. Lots of pics. And I immediately saw that it worked, meaning there were lots of pictures in the papers of me wearing this jumper.
24:16 Speaker 01 Yeah.
24:17 Speaker 00 We are on the trol for nursery schools. I tried to impress the heads by suggesting that I knew Maria Montessori personally. But the truth is, we've no idea what we're looking for. A good atmosphere, I suppose, and a teacher you feel is intelligent and alive and kind. I'm just in from Yule, where the atmosphere was musty. I took tea with Herbert and Audrey Lino, the son and granddaughter of the great Dan Lino, the funniest man on earth. This was a Victorian musical entertainer, who was enormously famous, and I wrote a book about him.
24:56 Speaker 01 Yeah.
24:57 Speaker 00 Dan, the king's jester, the champion clog dancer of the world, the greatest panto dame of them all. The six mile route of his funeral was lined with crowds twenty deep. He was the greatest star of his age, yet who has heard of him now? The Lino's were welcoming and helpful, but they don't have much material to give me. And they may have a slightly inflated view of the great man standing nowadays, to put it mildly. Friday, the twenty fourth of June nineteen seventy seven. A horrid experience. I went to Hamish Hamilton, the publishers of my Dan Lino book, to have lunch with my editor, John Henderson. I went up to his office first to show him some of the pictures.
25:42 Speaker 00 I was sitting opposite him at his desk when his telephone rang. He picked it up and I heard the voice on the line ask, is the appalling Giles Branford with you yet?
25:56 Speaker 01 Oh, poor you Giles.
25:59 Speaker 00 And that was the moment fifty years ago in my life. I realised that not everybody likes my style.
26:10 Speaker 00 You know, I think they probably thought I was bumptious. And I'd forgotten I put this down in the diary.
26:17 Speaker 01 Oh, I'm sorry you heard that.
26:19 Speaker 00 Yeah.
26:19 Speaker 01 Giles, no, it's never good to hear, I mean, obviously it's never good to hear someone say something like that about you.
26:25 Speaker 00 Maybe it's never good to hear the truth.
26:27 Speaker 01 But it's not the truth, it's what one person thought of you. But it's the price you pay for being known by a lot of people, which you are, and for being a personality, which you are. So that's good Giles.
26:40 Speaker 00 Good.
26:40 Speaker 01 I'm sure there are some people out there that don't like me, but there just won't be as many, because I don't know as many people as you.
26:45 Speaker 00 Moving on, nobody doesn't like you.
26:48 Speaker 01 Oh, come on.
26:48 Speaker 00 I have, can I say, I've yet to see one, we love people's comments that they leave on YouTube and when they, you know, watch us on Instagram and things. And we have that lovely Facebook group. I've yet to see anything critical of you at all.
27:03 Speaker 01 No, there was someone on Instagram and I blocked her.
27:07 Speaker 00 Oh.
27:07 Speaker 01 Yeah.
27:07 Speaker 00 What did she say?
27:08 Speaker 01 She used to, I mean, because I've, I think I stopped her from being able to do it. She used to comment quite regularly under things, oh, the diaries would be much better without Harriet. Why does the diaries need a second, a co-presenter?
27:25 Speaker 00 I know, because when we began the diaries, you said much less. In fact, at first, and I'll be honest, at first, I thought, why is Harriet the producer interrupting my flow? But one of the things I've learnt in the last three years is actually. Well, to let Harriet interrupt my flow. It's interesting, it's fun, actually. I mean, I hope I've learnt to listen. Mm. Anyway, on we go. I'm going to Glasgow now for the Night Children's Book Week. H E Todd will be there. He's a shoe salesman turned children's author, the creator of Bobby Brewster, and the best storyteller I know. He can take a room of a hundred noisy, fidgety kids and keep them spellbound for an hour.
28:10 Speaker 00 I like him, and he likes me. I've added in brackets, "Some people do." Oh.
28:22 Speaker 00 Tuesday the sixteenth of August nineteen seventy-seven. The King is dead. Elvis Presley has died at Graceland, his mansion in Memphis, Tennessee. He was forty-two. It's not clear whether it was drink, drugs, tranquilizers, or what, but it's a sad end to a life that, in its way, shook the world, literally. Danilino died at forty-three. These stars that shine so bright do burn out. I imagine Shawadiwadi and the Sex Pistols will now take a backseat to make way for an Elvis revival. I was never a fan of Elvis. I never bought a record, but I could see he had star quality and then some.
29:07 Speaker 00 And I never met him. I met Johnny Rotten in the lobby of the Midland Hotel, Manchester. "Oh, Mr. Rotten, I could, what an honour to meet you." "Fuck off, fuckface," he replied. Oh, dear. (laughing) The deal is done with Colin's diaries. The contract is signed, and I have a feeling that with these people, the royalties will be paid. I start work on the nineteen seventy nine range next week. They are sold in by reps in January. This is quite interesting, they were, I mean, as well as all the books I was writing and Scrabble competitions I was organising and plays I was putting on.
29:48 Speaker 00 I had this business where, well, I was creating here a range of calendars and diaries for Collins and in fact for more than, for thirty or forty years after that, they went on publishing them.
30:00 Speaker 01 Gosh.
30:01 Speaker 00 Yeah, I mean, the International Management Diary and the Academic Year Diary brought me royalties for forty years.
30:09 Speaker 01 What, you went to Collins and said, why don't you do a diary of the academic year?
30:13 Speaker 00 Yes.
30:14 Speaker 01 And they hadn't thought of doing that?
30:15 Speaker 00 They hadn't thought of doing one.
30:16 Speaker 01 And you get the money?
30:17 Speaker 00 And I got a little tickle of every copy sold. And an International Management Diary that competed with the Financial Times Diary, and we did almost as well as the Financial Times Diary, and it produced an income for forty years. There were lots of other diaries, I did calendars, we did fun, you know, of course I did an Alice in Wonderland calendar, of course I did. But I did, well, you name it, I did children's diaries, I did, we did a cookery diary, we did, oh, every kind of.
30:44 Speaker 01 Would you say first and foremost, you're a, an entrepreneur?
30:48 Speaker 00 I'm a failed entrepreneur. I was good at the ideas, I was not good at the follow through. To be serious, the reason we are successful is because I've learnt to share with good people. I think in those days I wanted to do it all on my own, and so, for example, we were joking earlier about at school I had my girlfriends acting as assistants. And when you and I began doing this, by then I'd learnt, actually, I can't do it all. I can have a bright idea, like Rosebud, but I will need somebody to make it happen with me, and that's, and I hope you feel we have worked as equal partners. I start work on the nineteen seventy nine range next week.
31:33 Speaker 00 They are sold in by reps in January. So isn't that interesting? A diary that you buy in the autumn has been sold in to the shops in January.
31:41 Speaker 01 Yeah, that makes sense, yeah.
31:44 Speaker 00 Odd how being a parent of young children changes your life completely. Michelle is insisting I take Sundays off, making me mark day off, or D O, in my appointments book. And the social highlight of our week? Claire Sainsbury's third birthday party on Saturday. Saturday the seventeenth of September nineteen seventy-seven. Maria Callas has died, aged fifty-three, of a heart attack in Paris. Who's next? I'm not feeling too good myself. The Morning Post has brought another communication from Cotton, Gummison and Palmer Solicitors on behalf of the unhappy Herbert Lino.
32:28 Speaker 00 In my book, I say that the great Dan Lino died, aged forty-three, of drink and exhaustion, shut up in an asylum, suffering from what his death certificate described as "general paralysis of the insane," a phrase commonly used at the time to suggest syphilis. His son will have none of it, and accuses me of recklessly rushing into print. But all the evidence is in my favour. The Solicitors say I'm a novice biographer, true, and that if my book is published, which it will be, they will be writing letters of protest to The Times, Daily Telegraph and Observer so that the family's denials can be heard and truth will out. Good, I think we could use the publicity.
33:12 Speaker 00 That said, I am sorry to have distressed the old boy. I believe I'm telling the truth, and it was a long time ago, seventy-five years, but it is his dad, I do see that. Life would be a lot easier if one could just go somewhere and lie quietly in a hole.
33:30 Speaker 01 Oh, yes.
33:33 Speaker 00 Humphrey Humphries, our gentleman gardener is here, doing three hours a week at three pounds an hour. He is so grand, it's very funny. Tomorrow is a day off. The highlight, Natasha Brown's third birthday party at three forty-five P M. Clearly, I found these taking Sundays off quite, um, quite trying, but I managed.
33:58 Speaker 00 Tuesday, the fourth of October, nineteen seventy-seven. We went to see Rachel Kempson in The Old Country by Alan Bennett. Alec Guinness, the star, is so good at making the ordinary sound elliptical and intriguing. We went round afterwards and had to wait for Sir John and Lady Mills, all Twinkle and Charm, to depart before we could open our bag of swag. We were taking Rachel her one thousand pounds in cash. This is the agreed fee for the Food from France poster campaign. The Redgraves love French cheese. The Dennis Nordens love French cheese. The Patrick Campbells love French cheese. I set it up, and my reward is one thousand pounds too.
34:41 Speaker 00 Plus a wheel of brie and two camembers per month for six months.
34:46 Speaker 01 Wow.
34:47 Speaker 00 So this is me.
34:48 Speaker 01 Pated in cheese.
34:49 Speaker 00 Wheeler-dealing on the side, setting up commercials for well-known people.
34:54 Speaker 01 Crazy, Giles.
34:55 Speaker 00 Rachel was anxious to have the loot in used notes. They're strapped for cash. The taxman is on their heels. They keep moving to smaller and smaller houses. Sir Michael is away in Canada doing his Shakespeare readings. I think he's fine, she said blithely. They are locked into one another, but I'm not sure how close they really are. Michelle said, messy lives these actors lead.
35:25 Speaker 00 Monday, the tenth of October, nineteen seventy-seven. Because I was working yesterday, Michelle has obliged me to take the day off today, a Monday. We are going to Harrods to buy crockery and find wallpaper for the hallway. Yesterday was good. Bonnie Langford came round to rehearse. She is the guest star on the Puzzle Party Christmas special we're recording on Wednesday. She's just thirteen and an absolute poppet. I love her. I like her. I respect her. She works so hard and she knows what she's doing. She came with her parents, her father Donald takes it as it comes, smiles gently and says not a lot. Her mother Babette is the driving force.
36:07 Speaker 00 Bonnie is her mother's creature, but she's also her own girl. She asserts her independence without being disloyal. She knows what people say about her. She made her Drury Lane debut, aged seven, in the musical version of Gone with the Wind. Famously Noel Coward was there on the opening night when one of the live horses disgraced itself on stage. He remarked, if they'd shoved the child's head of the horse's ass, they could have solved two problems at once. Except that I don't think he did. I'm not even sure he was there. Bonnie says he was there and what he said was, two things should have been cut, the second act and that child's throat.
36:50 Speaker 00 But I happen to know that Noel Coward used that line way before Gone with the Wind. Indeed, I have proof, which I produced for Bonnie. In The Wit of Noel Coward, on page fifteen, the exact story appears, word for word, except it's told by Griffith Jones about a play he was in with an insufferable fourteen-year-old infant prodigy. The book was published in nineteen sixty-eight, three years before Gone with the Wind. I shared it to Bonnie. I don't think she wanted to believe it. Wednesday, the fourth of January, nineteen seventy-eight. The New Year plan was clear. Weight bad, eleven stone exactly.
37:35 Speaker 00 Overdraft horrendous, action required. And then tonight, we had Hess, my sister, over for her birthday meal. Ate too much, drank too much, and ended up paying two hundred and eighty pounds for a pony for Bennett. The pony is called Tonka. Hess will look after him and we'll take Bennett over to Tooting for rides. Every child should have a pony.
38:01 Speaker 01 That's mad, Giles.
38:03 Speaker 00 Well, it was. Maybe I've been mad for years. I didn't get realised.
38:07 Speaker 01 A pony and you live in London?
38:09 Speaker 00 We live in London.
38:09 Speaker 01 No one's got a pony in London.
38:11 Speaker 00 And also overdraft horrendous. But what it was, Hester, my sister Hester, who was troubled in many ways, she had been a nurse, she was what used to be called a mental nurse. She dealt with people with psychiatric problems. But she also, her love of her life was horses. So she would have known a Staples, probably somewhere near Tooting, where they had this pony. So I imagine she was getting a cut of the £280 for the pony. I think we'll discover almost immediately the Tonka is virtually lame. And we've not bought a pony, we bought a pup. Anyway, let's see. But it was exciting, the idea, you know, here we are in London, we're young parents, we're in our twenties, and we've got this little boy, and he's newborn, he's gonna have a pony.
38:56 Speaker 00 You know, we're trying to live this sort of middle-class life, and we can't afford it. Overdraft horrendous. And my gosh, I thought the weight was too much at 11 stone. I'm now 12 and a half stone, Harriet.
39:10 Speaker 01 11 stone's quite light.
39:12 Speaker 00 I was, I was very light.
39:14 Speaker 01 Were you, very slim?
39:15 Speaker 00 Very slim and nimble.
39:16 Speaker 01 Yeah.
39:17 Speaker 00 Slim and nimble.
39:18 Speaker 01 Skinny, I would say 11 stone. Yeah. I think 12 stone's better.
39:23 Speaker 00 Thank you. I'm working towards that. Sunday, the 22nd of January, 1978. Michelle's father arrived with our first car. A third-hand Hillman Hunter with amazing, deep-purple Go Faster stripes. Michelle drives like a dream, of course. Now, I have to learn. What happened to my plan always to have a chauffeur? I'm writing this in my room at the Midland Hotel, Manchester. I've just had dinner with Derek Nimmo and Neil Shand, star and writer of Just a Nimmo, Derek's TV chat show. Derek is so convivial, such a happy bon vivant, and he knows his stuff.
40:06 Speaker 00 The Château Bataillier 1961 really was outstanding.
40:12 Speaker 00 I'm not sure where he gets his plummy voice and dandified manner from. He hails from Liverpool and lived in a caravan till about ten minutes ago. And I think his turned-up, silly-ass nose is the result of a nose job that went wrong. But he's fun. The theme of the show was after dinner speaking. "The best kind of evening," said Derek, "is the one you spend eating with beautiful people, drinking with beautiful people, and sleeping with a clear conscience." Neil Shan's theme was the nightmare of working in New York for David Frost. Neil ended up going crazy and flinging a television set out of his hotel window onto the Manhattan street below. David Frost was on the box at the time.
40:54 Speaker 00 "If anyone had been killed," said Neil, "it would have been Frost that killed them." "Tuesday the thirty-first of January nineteen seventy-eight. At ten-thirty this morning, in the company's court, before Mr. Justice Slade, we triumphed. We secured everything we asked for, every penny of royalties due to us, and every penny of costs." Simon Clarke and his dwarf girlfriend sat on the other side of the court, routed. "We didn't look at them, and they didn't look at us. I had to leave at lunchtime to come to Cardiff. Michelle went back in to hear the full judgment. She called me with the details. It's possible, of course, that we'll not see a penny of the money. They can just say the cupboard is bare or leave the country.
41:39 Speaker 00 But the point is, we won. Justice has been done, right has prevailed, victory this day. Fuck you, Simon Clarke." And while we're on the subject, I've just left Molly Parkin in the bar, offering to have it off with whoever's in the mood. She's blind drunk, boasting of having pleasured an entire Welsh rugby team, and assuring any who care to listen that the night is young and she's well up for it. She was in my room half an hour ago, just before I began writing this literary, crawling about on the floor. I'm at the Beverly Hotel Cardiff. We've been recording Cuckoo in the Nest at HTV. Neither is to be specially recommended. But I'm completely happy.
42:23 Speaker 00 We had our day in court and we won. Michelle and I are celebrating tomorrow with lunch at Quaglinos. I'm then going on to meet Mr Park at John Bell and Croydon in Wigmore Street to have my tubing fixed.
42:49 Speaker 00 Tuesday the fourteenth of February nineteen seventy-eight. Last night, at six thirty PM, I arrived at the High Park Hotel to make my second attempt on the world record for the longest ever after dinner speech. I first got into the Guinness Book of Records in nineteen seventy-six, when I spoke for four hours, nineteen minutes and thirty-four seconds. In nineteen seventy-seven, Nicholas Parsons established a new record by speaking for seven hours, eight minutes and three seconds. Last night, again, to raise funds for Action Research for the crippled child, we had a play-off. Nicholas and I, in adjacent rooms in the same hotel, vying to see which of us could speak the longer. My real anxiety had been the matter of going to the loo.
43:32 Speaker 00 I was confident I could talk through the night, but could I survive the night without needing a pee? That was my dilemma. Resolved by Action Research, who sent me to John Bell and Croydon to be fitted with a surgical appliance. At John Bell and Croydon's, kindly Mr Park explained, when he produced the extraordinary contraption, "This isn't just for the incontinent. This is used by generals and field marshals on parade grounds when taking the salute. Wear this and you can stand out in the freezing cold for hours without having to worry about a thing. The Duke of Edinburgh has one. They're invaluable." Essentially, the device is a lengthy piece of rubber tubing that you attach to your member and then strap to your leg.
44:15 Speaker 00 It has a four pint capacity and a no spillage guarantee.
44:20 Speaker 00 All strapped up, ready and willing, a little after seven thirty P M, Nicholas and I shook hands, smiled for the cameras, bowed to the toastmasters and adjudicators, and moved into our separate dining rooms. We were out of earshot of one another, but the audience could mingle between the rooms. I had a good and supportive crowd: Par, Noel Davis, plus Margaret Rawlings, Simon Cadell, Tim Smith, the Sarches, Derek Nimmo, Sally Ann Lasson, et cetera. It began well, it continued well. My voice held, I paced it nicely. At about two in the morning, I began to feel the need for the loo. I began to think, "When am I going to do this? What will it feel like? How much is four pints?"
45:02 Speaker 00 The more I thought about it, the more eager I was to pee, and the more inhibited I became. The problem, I think, was knowing that I would be peeing in front of people. Of course, they wouldn't be able to see what was happening, but would they be able to tell? And would there be a noise, a terrible swooshing? I thought I'd go for it at the end of a story, on the punchline, letting it happen masked by laughter or applause. Anyway, the moment came. I finished the story, there was laughter, a smattering of applause, and I said to myself, "Now, now Giles, now, let it flow!" Then I looked down and suddenly saw it, a long, thin sausage skin of pale white rubber tubing,
45:46 Speaker 00 snaking its way from my left trouser leg and slowly moving across the floor. My contraption had shifted its moorings and come adrift. At once, and oddly, without difficulty, I put the notion of peeing right behind me and forged on with the speech. Interestingly, it's now twelve hours later, I'm writing this at two P M, and still, I haven't been for a pee. Perhaps I never will again. But the pee that didn't come in the night was not the worst of it. The worst of it was this: at about six A M, one of the action research people passed me a note asking, "How are you doing? Are you ready to stop?" I read it out loud and declared, I was just warming up.
46:31 Speaker 00 Another note came, then another. Apparently Nicholas was still going strong and so was I. The organizers had therefore decided we should both stop simultaneously at seven o'clock and share the new world record, eleven hours. I thought, fuck that. I said, no, thank you. I'm here to win. I carry on. Another note came. We are worried about Nicholas's heart. We're a health charity. At seven AM, you must both stop. And we did. At seven AM, they forced each of us to stop. The toastmaster got up and said, it's over. I was very, very angry.
47:15 Speaker 00 I don't know how Nicholas felt, I didn't ask, but I was incensed. It was a challenge, it was a duel, and suddenly, out of the blue, for no good reason, the frigging organizers had decided it was to be a draw. I'm afraid I did not behave graciously or well. I gathered up my notes, collected my coat, and went. I did not say goodbye to anyone. I'm still angry now. Of course, it's only a stupid little competition to raise money for charity. I know it's not important, but I am angry. I'm going to have to share a world record with Nicholas Parsons. Of course, I'm effing angry.
47:54 Speaker 01 Oh Giles, that's a very dramatic evening.
47:58 Speaker 00 It was a dramatic evening. Do you think, I suppose I'm competitive. I wouldn't be like that now, I hope, or do you think I would be?
48:07 Speaker 01 I don't know, what were you talking about all night?
48:09 Speaker 00 Well, I was doing it, I think I did, I mean, as you'll see, I can't bear to share the record with anybody, let alone Nicholas Parsons, who actually was a friend of mine, and so eventually I break the record again. And I certainly know the last time I did, and I may have done it this way as well, I did a kind of A to Z in my head. So I did half an hour, let's say I chose that A was a letter, I did half an hour about America, all my story. Then I did B, I did my boyhood.
48:33 Speaker 01 Okay.
48:33 Speaker 00 You know, that sort of thing.
48:34 Speaker 01 That's a good way of doing it.
48:35 Speaker 00 Yeah, exactly. So, I managed to get myself through it there. And it was going well. Because I was speaking without notes.
48:45 Speaker 01 I know, it's amazing. And did everyone stay awake?
48:47 Speaker 00 They were sponsored as well.
48:49 Speaker 01 Ah.
48:49 Speaker 00 So we raised a lot of money for the charity.
48:51 Speaker 01 Yeah.
48:51 Speaker 00 And what they, I suppose I should have said, how marvellous to share the record with Nicholas and, uh. And, you know, but I just was furious because I'd psyched myself up. I got all this trouble to get it right. And I wanted to win. But they were anxious. Nicholas was much older than any of us realised. Um, because, you know, he, when he died, he was ninety six. Didn't he have a heart problem at all? What was all that about?
49:13 Speaker 01 Well, he must have only been in, in his fifties at this point. Um, and would you have minded if Nicholas Parsons had died of a heart attack and you'd won?
49:23 Speaker 00 That would have taken the guilt off the gingerbread, I suppose. It would have been a cake without a cherry on top. But I think I'd have coped.
49:30 Speaker 01 Yeah.
49:31 Speaker 00 Frankly.
49:31 Speaker 01 At least I won the world record.
49:33 Speaker 00 I mean, either you're, either you're competing or you're not competing.
49:36 Speaker 01 Come on, how seriously are you taking this competition, Nicholas?
49:39 Speaker 00 This record could no longer be broken because, do you know what happens nowadays?
49:42 Speaker 01 What?
49:42 Speaker 00 These endurance records, they oblige you every hour to take a break for your mental and physical wellbeing.
49:47 Speaker 01 Oh, a hydration break.
49:48 Speaker 00 Not just a hydration break, they want to take your pulse, make sure that you, I mean, what, what, I mean, I do say fuck that. I mean, to be honest.
49:55 Speaker 01 Yeah.
49:55 Speaker 00 Either it's an endurance record or it isn't an endurance record.
49:58 Speaker 01 No, it's true. I mean, I just called it a hydration break because to me that, the fact they've introduced that into the World Cup is emblematic of a slight sort of snow flakiness that we have now. But I've enjoyed the hydration breaks in the World Cup.
50:11 Speaker 00 Good.
50:11 Speaker 01 They play some music, don't they? You get to kind of, yourself, you can go and have a hydration break. You can go and make yourself a cup of tea while they do that. I think it's a good introduction.
50:21 Speaker 00 I have to tell you, I think you may hear something from the great Sir Jeff Hurst, who was there in nineteen sixty six, about hydration breaks and the way things are run nowadays. When we hear him on Fridays, our very special World Cup.
50:34 Speaker 01 Oh, I'm sure he's not a fan.
50:35 Speaker 00 He is not a hydration break man. No.
50:38 Speaker 01 No.
50:38 Speaker 00 You get out there, you play football, then you come off.
50:42 Speaker 01 Don't complain.
50:43 Speaker 00 And you don't jump up and down and hug one another. That is a useless use of energy during the game.
50:48 Speaker 01 Yeah.
50:49 Speaker 00 You possibly shake hands and then you move on. Yes. Is that where we're going to stop for today?
50:54 Speaker 01 Yes, yeah.
50:55 Speaker 00 Oh my gosh, you've left us with me sharing a world record with Nicholas Parsons.
50:59 Speaker 01 Hmm, and not having peed for over twenty four hours.
51:02 Speaker 00 That was very strange, that. It took me, I think it took me days to, we will, next, do tune in in a fortnight's time and discover.
51:10 Speaker 00 When and if I peed ever again, maybe I haven't, maybe I've been holding it in all these years, maybe it explains everything.
51:15 Speaker 01 It's interesting, once you do hold it in, because for some reason, you can do it for quite a long time, can't you?
51:23 Speaker 00 Yeah.
51:24 Speaker 01 Quite impressive.
51:25 Speaker 00 Has it been worse for you since having children, going to the loo?
51:27 Speaker 01 No.
51:28 Speaker 00 Because I always associated it with having the children.
51:31 Speaker 01 Oh.
51:32 Speaker 00 I started going, needing to go to the loo in the middle of the night, all those years ago, when we began having children. And I know it's something to do with having children, because now we have grandchildren, it's got even worse.
51:42 Speaker 01 Oh.
51:43 Speaker 00 Sometimes I now have to get up twice in the night.
51:45 Speaker 01 Oh dear.
51:46 Speaker 00 And we've got seven grandchildren. So I directly associated with the children.
51:49 Speaker 01 Oh.
51:50 Speaker 00 Once the children came along, I had to go up, you know, once in the night. I know this may be too much information, but, you know, we're all friends on.
51:56 Speaker 01 Well, don't have great grandchildren, Giles. You're getting up three times a night.
52:00 Speaker 00 Absolutely. But I'm not sleeping very well anymore.
52:03 Speaker 01 No, who needs sleep?
52:05 Speaker 00 Who, who needs sleep?
52:06 Speaker 01 Yeah.
52:07 Speaker 00 I'm loving this diary, because I'm discovering, I mean, I tell the story about this, long as ever, after the speech, quite often. But the version I tell is quite different from what actually happened. I've turned it into a, and I haven't, the version I now tell, it was the Duke of Edinburgh who sent me to John Bell and Croydon.
52:22 Speaker 01 Oh.
52:23 Speaker 00 Clearly it wasn't. When I got there, they told me the Duke of Edinburgh had one of these appliances.
52:27 Speaker 01 Yeah.
52:28 Speaker 00 That's how I got the Duke of Edinburgh into the story.
52:29 Speaker 01 I mean, that appliance sounds riddled with problems.
52:33 Speaker 00 Piddled with problems.
52:34 Speaker 01 Yeah. I don't believe it's.
52:37 Speaker 00 I've still got it.
52:38 Speaker 01 Failsafe.
52:39 Speaker 00 I've got it, I've still got it.
52:40 Speaker 01 I mean, how do they attach it well enough that it does that?
52:44 Speaker 00 There are straps. When I tell the version now, it's not a Mr Park.
52:49 Speaker 01 A strap's not going to attach it well enough.
52:51 Speaker 00 No, they, well, if you want to know, maybe you don't want to know, you don't need to know, there is a contraption which they apply, put right over your private parts.
53:02 Speaker 01 Yeah.
53:03 Speaker 00 And it engulfs your private parts. And attached to the contraption is the rubber tubing.
53:07 Speaker 01 Yeah, no, I can imagine, it's, it's attaching it, I think it's difficult to do.
53:11 Speaker 00 The attaching it, it's strapped in, it was probably now down on Velcro, but then it was actually like a belt.
53:16 Speaker 01 Mm.
53:17 Speaker 00 You put it on, you put it tight, so.
53:18 Speaker 01 Oh, right, yeah.
53:19 Speaker 00 And that, that's the way it worked. And obviously I didn't do the belt up properly, or maybe I was moving about, telling my funny stories and the belt came loose. Anyway, but I have kept it. I've been tempted to auction it to charity, but it's just part of my heart.
53:37 Speaker 00 Anyway, but I was just thinking about the diary and how great it is to have the diary and how I should probably try and get it fully indexed. Because you know, last week, we had the horrific news of the murder of Anne Widdecombe. And I've written a lot about Anne Widdecombe in the diary. I expect she popped up in the diary section about our time together at Oxford. I know she pops up later when we get to us being members of Parliament together. And I've talked a little bit about her in the last few days, not much. I've been asked to do, because we were contemporaries at university. People have said, you know, what do you remember of Anne?
54:19 Speaker 00 And what I do remember of Anne is that she was rather like Ken Clark, a politician who was at ease with herself. She was comfortable in her own skin. And I'm not sure how many politicians now feel able to be like that. I say, Ken Clark, her views and those of Ken Clark were totally different. But they were easy people to be with, whether you agreed with them or disagreed with them, because they were comfortable in themselves. And I first met Anne at the Oxford Union Debating Society when she was young and she was fun and she was feisty and she loved a good debate. She loved a good argument in debate. At the end of which, you know, plenty of ding dong, we'd go to the bar and have a drink.
55:02 Speaker 00 And only last year or the year before, the 200th anniversary of the Oxford Union, the debating society at Oxford, we went back and we had another debate. And there was more ding dong and then a drink at the bar. And she was like that. And I think maybe we've lost a bit of that. And interestingly, I mean, what have you felt of the obituary stuff or the pieces you've read about in the last few days? Have you got an impression of her at all?
55:27 Speaker 01 Well, she seemed a lot of fun. I love how much she got into doing Strictly and the life she had after that, the sort of more showbiz life that she had and how much she loved Anton. And so there was obviously.
55:41 Speaker 00 I once asked.
55:42 Speaker 01 Yeah, a real love of life.
55:44 Speaker 00 Her Christian faith was fundamental to her. And I said to her, you know, tell me the seven deadly sins, which ones are you guilty of? And she said, oh, it's very clear, I'm guilty of gluttony. Oh. Uh, she said, because I love my food, I am greedy, I am a glutton. And she said, I'm afraid there's a touch of pride as well. And she said that had come about because she so loved being recognised after Strictly. She really loved that. Yeah. And it was fun. And she, she loved, what is interesting is she loved the romance. She was a romantic soul in many ways. I mean, she loved dancing with Anton, but she told me The Prisoner of Zenda was her favourite novel, which is a great swashbuckling romantic story from the nineteenth century. Uh, and what was interesting about her was that she had very firm views. She was very clear.
56:27 Speaker 00 I mean, her, her collection of speeches which she gave me is called Inspired and Outspoken. And she was inspired in her own way, and she certainly was outspoken. But she didn't, she had very firm views. For example, she believed that the, what she called the great experiment of the nineteen sixties and nineteen seventies hadn't worked. She said, you know, there's more promiscuity, there are more children born out of wedlock, there's more divorce, there's more suicide. I don't think this is good. Hmm. That was her belief, but she didn't carry that over into her private life. She didn't vote for any of the measures to equalise, for example, same-sex relationships. She was against the whole LGBT movement, and yet some of her very closest friends were gay people. Hmm.
57:09 Speaker 00 So she as a person was empathetic, outgoing and fun, but she knew where she was. And I asked her, I said, what, what has life taught you? A question I might have asked her at the end of Rosebud. And she said that her philosophy was quite simple. Carpe diem, seize the day. And beyond that, she said, do in life always what you believe to be right and leave the rest to Almighty God. Cue the music.
58:31 Speaker 00 That's this week's More Rosebud with me, Gyles Brandreth, and my friend and producer, Harriet Jane. It's produced by Harriet, and I turn up too.
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