YouSaid · the spoken record

Andrew Neil

lines on the record: 37
first: 2007-02-25
most recent: 2007-02-25
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“But also I'd probably just cry. I think it would have to be Tsaikovsky because listening to this would cheer me up in this desert island.”
2007-02-25 · Desert Island Discs · Andrew Neil · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I couldn't bear to be cut off, that would be the worst thing, you know, so I would love even if it was just a wind up one that you can now get. I'd love a radio that could get me either the BBC World Service or radio for.”
2007-02-25 · Desert Island Discs · Andrew Neil · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I thought long and hard about this, I think it would have to be Adam Smith's wealth of nations. When you have both Margaret Thatcher and Gordon Brown claiming to be the child of Adam Smith, then I can feel you've got an influential book across the political spectrum.”
2007-02-25 · Desert Island Discs · Andrew Neil · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My final record is the Petop Boys. For me the Petro boys were to the eighties what the Beatles were to the sixties, and I've chosen being boring because it's kind of about how you never thought you would be what you ended up being. But above all, it says that whatever happened, good, bad, mistakes, failures, triumph, successes, we were never boring. And for me, life has never been boring.”
2007-02-25 · Desert Island Discs · Andrew Neil · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it is a regret though I wouldn't count it out There have been times when I've come close to getting married and I have times when I have been in love That's just the way the cards have fallen and I wouldn't rule out getting married at all and I'm very fond of children as all my friends will tell you children and me grow on very well together I'm very fond of John So in a way I regret what's happened What I don't regret is getting married having a family and then getting divorced. I kind of think when I look at the dysfunctional families around today. and the social problems that is causing, I think, if that's the way it's going to go, it's better to be single and not do any damage.”
2007-02-25 · Desert Island Discs · Andrew Neil · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, well, of course, if you do what I do and people want to put you down, then that's what they can say. Sometimes they may just be a little bit of jealousy coming into the copy.”
2007-02-25 · Desert Island Discs · Andrew Neil · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If it does is depressing, all I would say to those who do feel annoyed that someone like me can get on, and actually I don't think there's that many. They just happen to have access to pens and time practice they should relax because it's much tougher for people from my background now, the meritocratic revolution has come to an end, sadly, and those who think that they have the right to certain jobs, well, they should relax because they're going to get them again.”
2007-02-25 · Desert Island Discs · Andrew Neil · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm not quite sure and passing. I think there is a kind of the nastiness a bitchiness, but I use that across genders, that word in our journalism. And I've always been that kind of target, and you know, as I said, if you put your head above the parapet every now and then it is going to be shot off. And I've done stories and taken positions that have annoyed the little lady.”
2007-02-25 · Desert Island Discs · Andrew Neil · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If you come from my generation and have a love of music, then the Beatles were somewhere in it. And this second side of Abbey Road, I think, is one of the greatest pieces of popular music that's ever been put together on an album. And this is where it reaches a climax with golden slumbers and carry that weight”
2007-02-25 · Desert Island Discs · Andrew Neil · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because they hadn't stopped us getting the papers out. I mean, this was an army that had never been defeated, and in the end they knew they had lost, and in the end we paid them to go away.”
2007-02-25 · Desert Island Discs · Andrew Neil · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“All we wanted was legally binding agreements, which during the duration of that legally binding agreement. Say during a two year period which the agreement covered you could not go and strike, and if there were any disputes they went to compulsory independent arbitration, which was binding on management and the workforce, of course it was called in your strike agreement because that looked like it was some withdrawal of human rights, it was never. It's exactly the kind of arrangements that are in place in every major company America and Australia.”
2007-02-25 · Desert Island Discs · Andrew Neil · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I did spirit thought from, but it would be hypocritical for me to say that that I felt really sorry for them because I didn't they had taken the decision and had to live with the consequences of it. They could have come to Whopping. And when we eventually went we didn't go offering starvation wages and a non unionized labour force. Our labour force was unionized, and we paid the highest wages in the land.”
2007-02-25 · Desert Island Discs · Andrew Neil · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“For jobs that didn't exist. I'm Lloyd Mickey Mars from Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan. We employed about 300 people on a Saturday night, but only 50 or 60 ever turned up to do any work. The print room was like a bazaar you could buy fridges, microwaves, anorax, whatever you wanted. It was a white east end male monopoly.”
2007-02-25 · Desert Island Discs · Andrew Neil · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, but there were times when I felt it was very grueling the strike was going on and on and on I couldn't move anywhere. We had to go to work by a different route every morning when I came home at night I had to sit in a car half a mile away while my house was searched in case anybody was waiting inside it But that's the way it was”
2007-02-25 · Desert Island Discs · Andrew Neil · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We thought that they were out of the weight of people we thought the police lines were going to buckle, and we knew if they did that we would be killed. Simple as that. There would be a mob rampage. But I was genuinely in fear of my life.”
2007-02-25 · Desert Island Discs · Andrew Neil · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There were irregular personal threats against me, and there were times when I thought my life was in danger, and there was one night when I saw fear in my bodyguard's eyes. What happened? We thought they were going to break in.”
2007-02-25 · Desert Island Discs · Andrew Neil · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The atmosphere was very threatening I was surrounded then by two large men who followed me everywhere for the next thirteen months, and I had a special driver who was trained to reverse at sixty miles an hour as a former French paratrooper. Life became very different”
2007-02-25 · Desert Island Discs · Andrew Neil · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My next one is Rather more fun than talking about whopping. It's Taikovsky's violin concerto. Tsaikovsky wrote the violin concerto when he was in Italy, and he had just left his wife and he was with his boyfriend by then he was living the life he wanted to live. I know Beethoven's final movement of the ninth as an ode to joy, but I regard this as the real ode to joy. This is written with such happiness and ver for life that if I have ever felt unhappy, I play this and you can't naught but smile.”
2007-02-25 · Desert Island Discs · Andrew Neil · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, I didn't, but I felt we had to fight it. I felt that the future of my newspaper of the British newspaper industry depended on it.”
2007-02-25 · Desert Island Discs · Andrew Neil · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The seeds of that were partly me urging Murdoch to do it. He didn't want to do it. He didn't think we could do it on our own. And I then said, and it was something that made, I said, well, Eddie Shaw has. And Eddie Shah was the little businessman in Warrington in the north of England, who had taken on the might of the NGA and the London print unions, and he had won. And it was Shah's example that in a way shamed murder into saying if he can do it, we have to do something as well.”
2007-02-25 · Desert Island Discs · Andrew Neil · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think at the time he was given that at these times the Sandy Times was stuck in a kind of nineteen seventies time warp. I think he was just happy with anybody that may produce a paper that marginally resembled the planet he was on thinking someone to do his bidding was beyond as wild a stream.”
2007-02-25 · Desert Island Discs · Andrew Neil · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The opposite of a shoe in when I look back at it was a bonker's decision by Rupert Murdoch. I was only thirty four, not only had I never edited a national newspaper before, I never worked on a newspaper before. I guess Murdoch saw something in me that I didn't see in myself. I wasn't sure I could do the job, indeed the only anxiety attack I've ever had in my life was flying back to take up the job. I found it very hard to breathe and I sat at a hyperventilate and the flight attendant had to come and give me some watch. She actually held my hand for part of the journey and it was the apprehension at the thought of being offered a job that I was by no means sure I could do.”
2007-02-25 · Desert Island Discs · Andrew Neil · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I talked to him about the United States and for me the whole sense of promise and of opportunity and of wonder of the United States has summed up in the New World Symphony by Dvorak.”
2007-02-25 · Desert Island Discs · Andrew Neil · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, in fact, I think it was very healthy. I think journalism becomes dangerous when we think that we're part of the government. We are not we're outside them. It is not our job to be cheerleaders for them. And regardless of what we think, when we get a story that is factually correct, whether it damages the people you're supporting or not, you have to publish it. I publish the story queen dismayed by uncaring Thatcher. Well, the queen had let it be known she didn't like a lot of the changes that Mrs. Thatcher was introducing. Mrs. Thatcher sent word back that it had taken nine points off her in the opinion polls the publishing of that story. The royal family, the palace tried to get me removed as editor. By this time Alistair Burnett was a director of Times newspapers and he helped to save me. My old mentor was there when I needed him, and having managed to annoy both dining street and Buckingham Palace in one week, I then won the award that I'm most proud of, which was the editor.”
2007-02-25 · Desert Island Discs · Andrew Neil · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It wasn't to begin with I didn't vote for Mrs Thatcher in nineteen seventy nine, for when I got back to Britain in nineteen eighty two, I was With my experience of the United States, I began to see what she was up to, and although she and I had many fallouts, but that didn't mean any less than I saw that what she was doing in many areas, not in all, but in many areas had to be done.”
2007-02-25 · Desert Island Discs · Andrew Neil · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, I felt liberated and it changed my views as well what America gave me was a strong view both of the benefits of the free market, or of the market economy, but also of social liberalism, of the idea that people should be allowed to lead their own lives. And in London in the nineteen seventies I had been I had spent most of my time in a little wine bar in the King's Road, called the Nose Wine Bar, which was Britain's multiracial society before it was multiracial society, right from the start I felt most comfortable in a mixed environment. I hate all male environments, and I hate sort of monocolor environments as well. A like difference, and America gave me that difference.”
2007-02-25 · Desert Island Discs · Andrew Neil · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, I was, I joined the economist in nineteen seventy three, I was hired by Alistair Burnett, who was then the editor of the great broadcaster and great editor. And Alistair really became my mentor, and still is my mentor. But I did the winter of discontent, which was a miserable time in this country. I remember writing my stories by Hurricane Lamp, having to walk home because the traffic lights didn't work, because of par cuts, and when I was offered the opportunity to then go and be American correspondent in the United States for the economist, I took it with both hands. And there was just this sense of unbounded opportunity and of a can do mentality, and that if something is broke, we'll fix it.”
2007-02-25 · Desert Island Discs · Andrew Neil · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Or maybe not so far. I think it should be an inspiration to people. Elgar used to go there after his performances. It was a great benefactor of their own 22-1 street and they had big parties. And the kind of sounds of Elgar permeate through, I think it's very fitting for the spectator. I come from Scotland, but at heart I regard myself as British, and I'm proud to be British, and I see no conflict between being proud to be Scottish and proud to be British.”
2007-02-25 · Desert Island Discs · Andrew Neil · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It Elgar, which I think is fitting, I've just moved the spectator into a house in twenty two, O Queen Street, so you see I started my working life in twenty four, so in thirty five years I've gone down two blocks.”
2007-02-25 · Desert Island Discs · Andrew Neil · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Ah no, there were no great lines, and if there were he would have mangled them. But the more I was there doing it, the more I realized that the political life was not for me, at least not in my early twenties. I thought it would be crazy to go into politics right away. What I know about the world I should go and see the world first of all. But the moment I saw the world I realized I didn't want to be in politics. I wanted still to be involved in politics and to be riding about it and to be part of the debate, but I didn't in the end want to be a politician myself.”
2007-02-25 · Desert Island Discs · Andrew Neil · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Now let me tell you, that wasn't easy. I mean, you wanted to grab the speech from him and say, no, this is how you deliver it.”
2007-02-25 · Desert Island Discs · Andrew Neil · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Briefing MPs writing speeches for the then Prime Minister you had to wake up in the morning and prick yourself to make sure that it wasn't all the dream”
2007-02-25 · Desert Island Discs · Andrew Neil · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't think any of it was mapped out, but there was always an assumption that if you did these things you would get on, and don't forget that probably after Oxford and Cambridge, in modern times the University of Glasgow was a great forcing ground for debaters and politicians Don Duer, John Smith, Charles Kennedy, Ming Campbell. They all came from there in many others too. There was a kind of carve up there, though. The Federation of Conservative Students, which in these days was the fast track to being the next Conservative Party, when I was elected, I mean from a very non traditional background I was elected national chairman and they said to me well you have to come down to London now which for me was just a dream come true there I was in twenty four old Queen Street within the sound of Big Ben at the heart of Westminster as this young boy from Paisley and Glasgow University”
2007-02-25 · Desert Island Discs · Andrew Neil · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My next record, I mentioned earlier my interest when I was younger in modern jazz and of classical music as well. And this next one is Miles Davis, probably the greatest trumpeter the world has known, doing a classical piece Concato de Aranuez by Rodrigo, a very famous tune everyone will get it immediately, but it is normally played in guitar, whereas here Davis is playing fugal horn with a hat on the front of it to get that kind of tone, and it brings back many happy memories of listening as a youngster.”
2007-02-25 · Desert Island Discs · Andrew Neil · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, I was, but I don't know what, and I didn't know too what. But I did things that were in the public eye, I debated at school. Even when I got university I debated, I edited the university newspaper, I helped to start the university television service, so I was always doing things that were a bit in the public eye, and I think also the school that I went to encouraged that too. The school gave the impression that there was nothing that wasn't attainable if you had the ability and you put your mind to it and you worked hard for it. And I did.”
2007-02-25 · Desert Island Discs · Andrew Neil · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because I think it's part of our British culture that we're more obsessed with poor people come from than where they're going. There is still a huge class prism through which we see things in our country. I mean, and to some extent it's all right in that it's a kind of he fought against the odds. All I'm saying is that the odds were not as highly stacked up against me as some profile writers have made out.”
2007-02-25 · Desert Island Discs · Andrew Neil · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I was a hard working pupil. I wanted to get on. I think I was quite a popular pupil as well. I got elected a prefect, so the prefects were elected, not chosen by the teachers. And it was a great school. I mean, much has been made of my background being an ordinary background, and it was an ordinary background, but in many ways I had the most privileged background of all. I had two loving parents, I had a wonderful brother, I went to a sixteenth century elite school, and I went to an elite university to study economics where Adam Smith wrote the wealth of nations. Now to me that is as privileged as you can get.”
2007-02-25 · Desert Island Discs · Andrew Neil · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source