YouSaid · the spoken record

David Dimbleby

lines on the record: 35
first: 2008-02-24
most recent: 2008-02-24
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

“Oh, there's no question. I'd have to have memories of my family. So Kate would have to stand for my huge family of one, two, three, four generations Kate singing.”
2008-02-24 · Desert Island Discs · David Dimbleby · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Then I think I'll take a collection of drawing books, a supply of pencils, and some varnish so it doesn't smudge, and I'd spend the month doing what I would really like to do day in day out, which is draw, draw, draw. It's what my artist daughter told me to do. Just keep drawing, and that's what I'd take, and that would be my consolation”
2008-02-24 · Desert Island Discs · David Dimbleby · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'd take unhesitatingly the collection of Montaine's essays. sixteenth century French philosopher whose writing I've always found completely fascinating and intriguing and it would be stimulating and he's a wise man and he's a man of the world and he has a sense of humour and he's erudite and I can't think of better company.”
2008-02-24 · Desert Island Discs · David Dimbleby · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And it almost makes me choke when I have to say these words each year, but this is from Diodon Aeneas, when I'm laid in earth, may my wrongs create no trouble in thy breast. Remember me, but ah, forget my fate.”
2008-02-24 · Desert Island Discs · David Dimbleby · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“For several years past I've been asked to do thee commentary at the Cenotaph in Whitehall on Remembrance Sunday. It's one of the broadcasts, I think the broadcast above all else that I think is a huge privilege to be asked to do because you are then, in a sense, produced. trying to speak for the memories of millions of people in the country, and It also represents a side of Britain that is very powerful which is the The ability to behave bravely, courageously when threatened, and then to remember the debt we owe to the people who acted with such courage in those two world wars. So what I've chosen is a rather somber choice, but it's as a reminder of some of the things that I think Britain can be most proud of.”
2008-02-24 · Desert Island Discs · David Dimbleby · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, because I don't like hot. I hate beeches I like craggy grey, light, and shafts of sunlight coming through mist, which doesn't at all accord with palm fringe. I don't do palm fringe.”
2008-02-24 · Desert Island Discs · David Dimbleby · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“About seven or eight years ago we moved out of London and went to live in I don't think of it as the countryside I call it the landscape of the South Downs and one of the great advantages and pleasures of it is it's right close to Glinbourne so we've taken to going to the opera at Gleinbourne we took to taking my son when he was about seven and to my astonishment he rarely loved and loves opera so the piece I've chosen is because it was one of the things that rarely turns him on and I thought it would be a nice memory on the island to have of him and it's a particular performance of Julia Caesar which David McVicker put on this aria non despera quisa which is a beautiful marching backwards and forwards across the stage while it was being sung and when we play it at home Fred marches up and down the kitchen doing this”
2008-02-24 · Desert Island Discs · David Dimbleby · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't think I have any real regrets of that kind. We had this business, and I came back and ran it. I can't say I terribly enjoyed it. On the other hand, it allowed me to have blazing rows with the BBC without worrying where the next penny would come from, which is always a strong physician to be in.”
2008-02-24 · Desert Island Discs · David Dimbleby · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That may be why I think that if you can avoid tradition you're well out of it because of that choice. and because there was no choice.”
2008-02-24 · Desert Island Discs · David Dimbleby · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I find the whole shape of a family. but not as a tradition. I think traditionally It can be the absolute death of and energy and a fulfilled life.”
2008-02-24 · Desert Island Discs · David Dimbleby · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, I don't recognize it, but everybody else falls about with laughter. He does the spectacle trick, putting his spectacles onto the end of his nose”
2008-02-24 · Desert Island Discs · David Dimbleby · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He's yes he's the one I think who's most likely to do it because he's just fascinated by broadcasting loves it always wants to know about how it's done and all of that stuff but best not talk about it because his ears may hear and I wouldn't want him to know what I thought he might do.”
2008-02-24 · Desert Island Discs · David Dimbleby · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No it's not, though I have to say when my broadcast the other day about food on radio four. He did it so well that I was quite relieved that he hadn't gone into broadcasting. There's a missed career, whoever there was one.”
2008-02-24 · Desert Island Discs · David Dimbleby · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Families are very, very intimate institutions, aren't they, and they're very difficult to define and describe. And when it comes to private matters and personal matters, we're a very close knit and supportive and intimate family. When it comes to Our work it's less interesting to us in truth, and because it's a very competitive world, we also feel a bit awkward about saying what we're planning to do because you don't ever tell anybody what you're planning to do. So we don't much talk about broadcasting in truth. In fact, I'd say hardly at all.”
2008-02-24 · Desert Island Discs · David Dimbleby · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm taking this record with me because I'm rather fearful that it may turn out to be a desert island with palm trees and sandy beaches and sunshine, which I would hate from the moment I landed to the moment I escaped because that's not the kind of island I want to be on, and I just think this bit of music, sea include from Peter Grimes, is the most brilliantly evocative music about the sea that I've ever heard, and I love the sea, and I go sailing whenever I can And this swish of the waves at dawn just does it for me.”
2008-02-24 · Desert Island Discs · David Dimbleby · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, and I tell you why, I took a trappist vow. I made my pitch, and I swore after that I wouldn't go on about it. I said what I said to them, and I wrote about it at the time, and as far as I am concerned, it's a closed book. I mean, the people who run the BBC now can't be sniped at constantly, in my opinion, by broadcasters. Otherwise, the whole thing becomes just like Piranha Fish in a small pond. I don't think it's very seemly that.”
2008-02-24 · Desert Island Discs · David Dimbleby · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Directions at once. I quite agree. You're absolutely right, I must have been off my head. But I tell you why, on each occasion for one reason or another, I thought arrogantly, I suppose, that I knew what the BBC should do in a particular pickle it was in, and particularly, I think, that I could explain it to the licence payer. In other words, that I could articulate what the BBC was about to the people who were paying for it. And I think it's a huge relief not to have, because I mean, the years I've had since I first ran for the chairmanship in particular have been terrific. I've had the most wonderful time. I seem still to be at it, and if I'd been chairman I'd have been sacked by the government, I'd have had to resign three times over by now.”
2008-02-24 · Desert Island Discs · David Dimbleby · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This is a bit weird, really. I've always been very excited by the sound of the violin. For me it's the instrument of all instruments. And because of that, I like particularly the unaccompanied violin. And I suppose because of that the kind of extraordinary sound of Bartuk's unaccompanied violin sonata thrills me.”
2008-02-24 · Desert Island Discs · David Dimbleby · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That was an election program. Robin Day was always very cross if his interviews were interrupted. He was in the middle of an interview and they said Robin, Robin, stop, stop, you've got a hand to David for important information. So Robin, in the most portentous way, said I have to stop you there, Minister. I have to hand over to David Dimbleby for an important announcement, and they cut to me, and I was actually eating a Mars bar because it was, you know, one of those snack periods. And we were cutting back for nothing. I think it was a shot of Mrs. Thatcher getting into a car or something. So I laughed. I expected to get free Mars bars for life, but I didn't even get a letter from them.”
2008-02-24 · Desert Island Discs · David Dimbleby · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The excitement of live broadcasting is the chaos. It's only fun when things go wrong. I mean, if you get through an entire election program and there's never been a hiccup in it, you think, oh well, you know, what was in that? Now I do. I do like it when things go wrong. As long as you realise that the audience too enjoys the gay of your confusion,”
2008-02-24 · Desert Island Discs · David Dimbleby · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, going to make from a booking a nerve, you touch a raw nerve, sometimes inadvertently, and people explode. But afterwards he was sweet as pie, Clinton. So I never knew quite whether it was real anger or synthetic”
2008-02-24 · Desert Island Discs · David Dimbleby · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I thought he was a cool customer, and I was astonished, and he went off into a rant, really. So I was taken aback, but the odd thing is he was professional enough after he had done his explosion. I mean, I'm used to people exploding in front of me with rage Harold Wilson exploded in front of me with rage, and it sort of reverberated for months afterwards, and the BBC held an inquiry into the questions I'd asked him. Indeed, that was the case.”
2008-02-24 · Desert Island Discs · David Dimbleby · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This is a song I first heard sung in a concert in Dorset and it really struck me and it's Setting to music the words of Annabelle Lee by Agrellam Poe. To me it's the song of the The dangerous innocence of love.”
2008-02-24 · Desert Island Discs · David Dimbleby · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There wasn't any question about what I'd do then. My mother was widowed, my brothers were much younger. There was a business that had to be run, and I came back.”
2008-02-24 · Desert Island Discs · David Dimbleby · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I was sent to Belson by the BBC for the commemoration of the twentieth anniversary of VED, I think it was, and they did a huge link up with CBS and the BBC worked. Anyway, I had to do a report from Belson, and they listened to that, and they liked it, and sent me a cable saying, come and work for us. I couldn't have a serious career in Britain.”
2008-02-24 · Desert Island Discs · David Dimbleby · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, no, no. I wanted to make a bit of a splash, I suppose. Always have. I don't know why, Raleigh. I just to be truthful. You wouldn't go through broadcasting and all the difficulties of it as well as the excitement if you actually wanted not to be noticed, would you? I never had any fear of microphones or cameras, that's true, because I was used to seeing my father broadcasting, and I think that's the only link there really is. Whether this is going to create generations and generations of dimblebies at the microphone, I don't know, but”
2008-02-24 · Desert Island Discs · David Dimbleby · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When I left Oxford I in the ten years, fifteen years I used to go to the States a lot, and in fact when my father died in nine sixty five I was about to take up a contract to work in America and I think I would have actually ended up working in America but I went backwards and forwards. It was very exciting time in the States and I used to go to the jazz clubs in New York and in New Orleans and got a sort of taste for a particular kind of rather rough edged jazz. I particularly liked a blind boy fuller who had a rough old life and sings in a sort of way that appeals hugely to me.”
2008-02-24 · Desert Island Discs · David Dimbleby · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I was diligent at enjoying myself. I learnt to live a bit. I learnt to loosen up. And I think that on the serious side, I learnt about argument the first term I went to Oxford, I read logic with a brilliant teacher. And it just taught me about how to argue, and it rarely set me up, I think, for the career I had. I would never have been able to do political interviewing if I hadn't been through that process, which was to work out when an answer doesn't fit the question you've asked and keep pursuing the question until you get the answer you want. Not by bullying, not by emotional sort of displays of horror, but just by filleting the argument. It taught me a lot. Used to drive my father mad when we stop arguing.”
2008-02-24 · Desert Island Discs · David Dimbleby · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“She would mind very much, but she couldn't do anything about it. He was away for three years in the war. We went off and lived in the countryside, and while he was in the western desert. She kept the show on the road.”
2008-02-24 · Desert Island Discs · David Dimbleby · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My mother, whose now just celebrated her ninety fifth birthday, has always been has become increasingly, as a matter of fact, the cornerstone of the family, the matriarch. and I suspect always was, though my father was such a sort of big in every way character, that we assumed he ruled the ruse, but I think secretly my mother did because she handled him. she actually was his manager, and she devoted herself entirely to us, the children.”
2008-02-24 · Desert Island Discs · David Dimbleby · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, seven. It was a bit early I'm very against sending away children at that age. I was so homesick I used to get myself to sleep by imagining in my mind a little house that I lived in. And it wasn't where I was, it was somewhere else. There wasn't a great brain I didn't do well at school particularly at all. For me my life really began when I went to university kind of liberation from schools.”
2008-02-24 · Desert Island Discs · David Dimbleby · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I I remember just being Very happy? I remember that family life being very important. I remember loving it when my father came home when he'd been away,'cause he was a warm, warm character. I remember being sent away to school which I didn't like.”
2008-02-24 · Desert Island Discs · David Dimbleby · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I want to take my children to this desert island, and I know I'm not allowed to. And I've got four children. And my younger daughter is a singer, and this is one song of hers that I particularly like, which is If I wrote a song that you like, would you like me?”
2008-02-24 · Desert Island Discs · David Dimbleby · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think that's right. I think he had a strange career, on the other hand, which is maybe why he didn't want me to do it, to go into broadcasting, which he didn't. And there was a reason, I think, which was that he had had a very, very Tough war he'd flown missions over Germany, he'd been to Belson, he'd come back to the Very experienced, very well trusted, and in truth, looking back on it, I think the BBC couldn't find anything for him to do. You know, you can't estimate the effect of the war on people at the Second World War on people, the horror, terror of it. And I think afterwards everything seems a bit flat. When he died when he was fifty two, and he got ill when he was forty seven, so he only had a relatively brief career. And I think he would have, I don't know, I don't know what he'd like to have done.”
2008-02-24 · Desert Island Discs · David Dimbleby · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“television began. And rarely everybody knew him because there was one channel BBC, and there was about five hours broadcasting a night, and he did two hours a week or something. So I grew up with the idea that it was perfectly normal.”
2008-02-24 · Desert Island Discs · David Dimbleby · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source