YouSaid · the spoken record

John Stefanidis

lines on the record: 45
first: 2008-07-20
most recent: 2008-07-20
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

“were langered to have a sketchbook and lots of pencils, and I am going to end up drawing like Matiso Picasso, if not Michelangelo.”
2008-07-20 · Desert Island Discs · John Stefanidis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“She's pursued excellence, and she died very young, Jacqueline Dupre, and she plays the cellar like no one else has ever played that I know of or will ever play again. She moves me every time and I'm never bored. So she's essential on the island.”
2008-07-20 · Desert Island Discs · John Stefanidis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't really believe in that. I mean, it may exist, but it runs parallel to other things that are happening which are of note, and which will go down in cultural history as being important.”
2008-07-20 · Desert Island Discs · John Stefanidis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“With very much smaller than the house that I had before, which was on Cheney Walk, and I wanted it to be sort of streamlined and easy, rather like a hotel suite might be, but it had to have room for all my books.”
2008-07-20 · Desert Island Discs · John Stefanidis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well it has to be Prosper's Island, an atoll with a palm tree would be very nice for sunbathing, but quickly boring. So my island, I hope, is going to be like Prosperous Island in the tempest. The isle full of roses, sounds and sweet airs come up and give delight and hurt not.”
2008-07-20 · Desert Island Discs · John Stefanidis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“First of all it would come off the wall. Secondly, if you bought that amount of lazy it would be exorbitant and to trick the eye or amuse the eye is more. Stimulating you.”
2008-07-20 · Desert Island Discs · John Stefanidis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A love deadlines. My favourite expression is American The Drop Dead Date. It's very, very important because it's a tiresome process. Anything to do with building. And also there's one of the things that distinguishes you from other people who do the same thing is that you're efficient and that you deliver.”
2008-07-20 · Desert Island Discs · John Stefanidis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Will you do that if you're doing commercial work? If you're doing a show flat or something, that's really quite fun, of course, but otherwise it tends to be a more personal.”
2008-07-20 · Desert Island Discs · John Stefanidis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Hollywood veneers, is it? It's when you don't know that somebody had to wear a brace all summer. Because it's personal, my interpretation, the house belongs to them.”
2008-07-20 · Desert Island Discs · John Stefanidis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, you nay, you have to go to the dentist if there's something wrong with your mouth or if you want to smile nicely, or whatever you go to the dentist for, so your house is your smile.”
2008-07-20 · Desert Island Discs · John Stefanidis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“How do you work it out? Well, you've been telling an awful lot by what people wear. And also where they've lived their lives and what the influences might have been or not been, all that counts.”
2008-07-20 · Desert Island Discs · John Stefanidis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I tell you what happened is that Christopher Blackwell, who started island records, I did a studio for him and then later I did his offices. So that was one of my first commissions and then the other was a very frivolous thing which was a decoration for a ball.”
2008-07-20 · Desert Island Discs · John Stefanidis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“in Bostrich is a tall, lanky fellow, who I think was an academic who started to sing, and I got to know about him early on in his career, although I've never met him, I had a great feeling of pride when I saw him in Salzburg on the stage, and he has a very moving voice, and whereas I'm not given to being a fan. I am a little bit of a fan of his, and when that year that he was singing, I saw him in a cafe, behind glass he was inside I was in the street, and I was so excited that I went to look and knock my nose really hard wish Which rather surprised me on the glass.”
2008-07-20 · Desert Island Discs · John Stefanidis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, because that's my gift is that I interpret, and also I've assessed what the person is like and what they like. That's part of what I do.”
2008-07-20 · Desert Island Discs · John Stefanidis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well it happened two, three times. He told me the size he wanted for his living room, and how many bedrooms he wanted, and the rest he left to me. We had one meeting where I showed him my plans, and then next time he came to Partmon's house was there.”
2008-07-20 · Desert Island Discs · John Stefanidis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, but the reason that happened is that it was such a beautiful place, and I felt that my friends should buy houses, and they were very inexpensive. And so that's how it started. A friend from Oxford and then another friend from Oxford and so on. I did about ten houses on Patmos. Later I built a house for Axel Springer, the publisher. It was virtually carte blanche. I mean, he'd bought the land, and that was a sort of wonderful experience, but he was a man of vision because he built that great skyscraper as his headquarters of his publishing empire, right by the Berlin Wall, convinced that the Berlin Wall would come down. And this was a good decade after he died the Berlin Wall came down. So he was rather inspirational.”
2008-07-20 · Desert Island Discs · John Stefanidis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, absolutely. And we also sent a telegram to my friend Teddy, and we all three went to Mikonos. Happily, I started having a really nice time. We ended up on Patmos living Cela Biton in rooms. It was the middle of August and there was nobody on the island not from Athens, not from anywhere else. No, just remote and poor all the men in the merchant navy to make money to send home. The island is where St. John wrote Revelation, and it has a very Spiritual feel about it it's also immensely beautiful but for the first few years that I went it was very surreal because it was so empty”
2008-07-20 · Desert Island Discs · John Stefanidis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“with an Italian friend of mine on somebody's beautiful sailing yacht. And we were so bored we sent ourselves a telegram. and then went on the ferries which in those days were set of women being sick and chickens and so on.”
2008-07-20 · Desert Island Discs · John Stefanidis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, on the desert island one is going to indulge in quite a lot of nostalgia, and I am going to think about going to Zalzburg, which I have been going to for very many years. And where Ricard Strauss was a revelation.”
2008-07-20 · Desert Island Discs · John Stefanidis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sometimes they were villains of people that I knew or that Teddy Minton Drake knew or that it was taken for granted that you would go in a group and have lunch.”
2008-07-20 · Desert Island Discs · John Stefanidis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That was part of the curiosity aroused architecture, and also it's what we seem to do, just to look at all these wonderful examples of architecture.”
2008-07-20 · Desert Island Discs · John Stefanidis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think the dressing up really do happened in England because it was the sixties and people were in velvet and satin, and the appeal of coming back to live in England was partly that it was there was so much happening. Italy was still much more conservative.”
2008-07-20 · Desert Island Discs · John Stefanidis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, where she lived in Venice and she had these shitsu dogs that footfall her around, and she gave me one, which I carried, terrified of dropping it across the canal.”
2008-07-20 · Desert Island Discs · John Stefanidis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“was an actress who played Brecht and then became a sort of national institution really, so she's the sort of umkutom of Italy. And it always reminds me of my youth and the fact that I wasn't tremendously happy in Milan. It has a very unforgiving climate. It's a little doer as a city compared to other Italian cities. And I was happy to leave it when I left it. But she reminds me of everything that those days had to give.”
2008-07-20 · Desert Island Discs · John Stefanidis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The most memorable journey was India. Nothing had prepared me for India. Despite the streets of Cairo and the colour walking into the Middle Ages and the fact that the gods and their deities are actually a living part of people's lives.”
2008-07-20 · Desert Island Discs · John Stefanidis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I had heard of him at Oxford, and I asked a friend of his whether he was nice, and they said I wouldn't say nice. But in fact he was very charming and an artist, and I would say that he helped open my eyes. Well for contemporary art for one, and then participating in the birth of pop art which I did in a strange way because it was very close to the friends I had and if I went to New York there it would be and then there it was in Venice being shown and so on. So all of that was very formative.”
2008-07-20 · Desert Island Discs · John Stefanidis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, it was invaluable because I think that you saw the best of what Italy has to offer, so this wonderful Roman baroque unit has such huge vitality and has been such an influence all over the world.”
2008-07-20 · Desert Island Discs · John Stefanidis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I was really a trainee account executive, and so having been to Oxford where you're on top of the world and the world is at your feet, you're suddenly it's all nitty gritty. But it taught me to work.”
2008-07-20 · Desert Island Discs · John Stefanidis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think that Maria Calas was remarkable because of her determination to excel. She was so wholehearted in her love of music, and seeing her in Tosca at Covent Garden was something extraordinary.”
2008-07-20 · Desert Island Discs · John Stefanidis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think that they're very deep, and friendship counts for a lot, even though the family might count. It's not predominant in the same way that it might be in Italy.”
2008-07-20 · Desert Island Discs · John Stefanidis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I've thrilled. Because I was thrilled by everything to do with Oxford, and it was a new world that opened up, was a revelation of what life was about, and also to meet people of like mind to go to the movies and find everybody lost at the same place and so that was great fun.”
2008-07-20 · Desert Island Discs · John Stefanidis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But I did. I was obedient to my destiny. And then when my parents took me there at first term, we went up to my rooms which were wonderful because they overlooked the Radcliffe camera and all cells of a wonderful view, wonderful architecture, two little rooms, one electric bar fire, and my father said You don't have to stay if you don't want to.”
2008-07-20 · Desert Island Discs · John Stefanidis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Beautiful light well when I went for my entry exam you were given a room in college and the walls were dripping wet and damp on the staircase and there was no heating and I prayed I wouldn't get in”
2008-07-20 · Desert Island Discs · John Stefanidis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Indeed I can I arrived on PNO ship called Strathmore, which doctor Tilbury then got into a train, and then a taxi, and there I was in London, and in that first visit I think I went to twelve plays in ten days. So I was thirsty for what London had to offer.”
2008-07-20 · Desert Island Discs · John Stefanidis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“is and was a legend in Egypt. It said that four million people went to her funeral, and that's the sort of music is something that reminds me of my childhood because it was in the background. It's very nostalgic.”
2008-07-20 · Desert Island Discs · John Stefanidis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was very nice to see them, but I had extremely affectionate uncle and aunt, and I am very grateful to have been brought up by them because they were cultivated, and whereas I wanted to go to the movies I was dragged to the Cairo Museum by my uncle.”
2008-07-20 · Desert Island Discs · John Stefanidis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Not very much, but we would go on holiday together, or they would come and see me. It was all quite a long way away then,'cause when we first went we'd go in seaplane that landed on the Nile in Khartoum, spend the night, and then go in a Dakota to Asmara. That has nice memories because the hotel was on the Nile and next to it was Zoo.”
2008-07-20 · Desert Island Discs · John Stefanidis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My father went to Eritrea in the war just after the Abyssinian campaign, and we lived in Asmara, which is an exceptional town, built by the Italians as a show off fascist colony.”
2008-07-20 · Desert Island Discs · John Stefanidis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, no it wasn't. I didn't speak English until I was five. In my school in Cairo the rule was to speak English because otherwise it would have been the tower of Babel. And racism was completely alien to us because people were of such different backgrounds”
2008-07-20 · Desert Island Discs · John Stefanidis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But she was Sephardic Jewess who converted in order to marry my father who was Greek Orthodox. In those days Alexandra was a very cosmopolitan and it was taken for granted that people were of different backgrounds, different nationalities, and there was more intermarriage than would almost be possible today.”
2008-07-20 · Desert Island Discs · John Stefanidis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My mother was very good looking, but also very good at food cooking, embroidery, which has been a legacy because I have so many things done by her, and to this day I find it very tranquil if somebody is embroidering in my presence”
2008-07-20 · Desert Island Discs · John Stefanidis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's difficult because other people see it and I don't see that it's typical in any way because I pride myself on being very versatile.”
2008-07-20 · Desert Island Discs · John Stefanidis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“ghastly good taste when it's completely predictable it's a sort of received opinion. Do you have bad taste but it has spirit if it has energy, if it has reflects your personality, it doesn't matter about good taste. Their surroundings are their surroundings and they must be comfortable in their surroundings.”
2008-07-20 · Desert Island Discs · John Stefanidis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think there's a certainty of how something should look. Do you see, so given the choice you then make right choice?”
2008-07-20 · Desert Island Discs · John Stefanidis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it gives you a much wider outlook, and it makes you comfortable in different cultures. And also you are never quite conscious of when things kick in, but they're there. It's developing the eye.”
2008-07-20 · Desert Island Discs · John Stefanidis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source