YouSaid · the spoken record

Lynn Barber

lines on the record: 55
first: 2010-07-25
most recent: 2010-07-25
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

“Well there I thought a cyanite pill actually was shortened the agony rather than starving to death over however long it took you to starve to death I thought I'd just land on desert I and take the cyanide pill and then I wouldn't have to read Shakespeare all the rest of it.”
2010-07-25 · Desert Island Discs · Lynn Barber · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But they know I am, but I mean, well, eh, will I have my reading glasses with me and B, if I don't have any cigarettes, as I say, I shall just be curled up in a little ball and crying.”
2010-07-25 · Desert Island Discs · Lynn Barber · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, this is for David, and this is Count John McCormack singing Macushla and David on top of all his other talents also sang beautifully, so he would sing this and also makes me think of him.”
2010-07-25 · Desert Island Discs · Lynn Barber · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, not a minute I know I'm totally impractical I just well not having any cigarettes I just go into a sort of coma more or less immediately I wouldn't even attempt a sort of forage for food or build a shelter or any of those things I just could not survive”
2010-07-25 · Desert Island Discs · Lynn Barber · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, no, absolutely not. No, I really like smoking. I mean, if I had to give one up, I'd give up drinking, but luckily I don't have to.”
2010-07-25 · Desert Island Discs · Lynn Barber · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, oddly enough, actually it's funny with doctors. My doctors always nagging me to stop smoking, but he sort of just keeps stum on the subject of drinking.”
2010-07-25 · Desert Island Discs · Lynn Barber · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh yes but I mean so much so I mean it's only months since my father died my mother died six months before that so I'm still not used to it but I mean the fact I can go away for weekends without any sort of guilt is wonderful you know but I mean it has been a long haul they were ninety two you know and I feel Well, yeah, liberated actually.”
2010-07-25 · Desert Island Discs · Lynn Barber · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I mean what triggered it was that I was sent a photograph of him in which he appeared to be smiling slightly drunkenly and very lovingly at whoever was behind the camera. And it wasn't me but I mean it was more that I didn't think I was thinking very straight, but I mean it was more that I felt this incredible weight of guilt because I kept thinking there must have been something I could have done to have prevented it. Particularly I thought maybe if we'd gone to the Whatever, but anyway, I sort of had this whole guilt thing, and then from this photograph I thought, oh he's looking at somebody he's obviously in love with and it's not me, therefore he had affairs therefore I don't have feel at all guilty You know I'm not justifying this I'm just saying that that was the sort of madness”
2010-07-25 · Desert Island Discs · Lynn Barber · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, well, that was at the point where we've been told that he had two years to live. I mean that was such a sort of peculiar idea, sort of do carry on as normal. I had totally assumed that he would outlive me because he was so young looking and so healthy and you know he didn't smoke, he barely drank, he went for long walks and all the rest of it and I've always had a very unhealthy life style so it was just appalling to think that he might die first.”
2010-07-25 · Desert Island Discs · Lynn Barber · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, on the whole, he played much more classical music and I played pop music, but that was one that we both agreed on. So that was fine.”
2010-07-25 · Desert Island Discs · Lynn Barber · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I didn't at all. I think one of the other things about growing up with my father was that I was always been embarrassment proof, nothing embarrasses me.”
2010-07-25 · Desert Island Discs · Lynn Barber · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I left Penthouse in order to start a family. I did write a big serious book called The Heyday of Natural History, which was about Victorian Naturalists. I mean, that was what I was doing while I was raising the children. And before that, I'd written two sex books How to Improve Your Man in Bed and a Single Woman's Sextbook.”
2010-07-25 · Desert Island Discs · Lynn Barber · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, well that was a very good training. We had a series called parameters of sexuality. We always had a very pretentious title and everything, which was just interviews with people with a particular kink, like a foot fetishist or somebody who was planning a sex exchange. And all I had to do was sort of glean it from them and make sure I didn't sort of show any shock or disgust.”
2010-07-25 · Desert Island Discs · Lynn Barber · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, yes, that was one of the things you had to do on photo shoots and change the record so you sort of kept up a supply of suitable background music and I would do the Times Crossword as well.”
2010-07-25 · Desert Island Discs · Lynn Barber · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, writing. Well, not even writing, actually, editing more. I mean, I was literate a letters editor, reviews editor, everything that wasn't the girls, basically, and so that was a terribly good training in all sorts of aspects of journalism.”
2010-07-25 · Desert Island Discs · Lynn Barber · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Ah, well, this is something I very much associate with David, and it's Jean Cocteau, it's La Toisandor, and he had an LP which was his absolute favourite record. And in one of our many moves subsequently, knowing it was his favourite record, I packed it very, very carefully at the bottom of the suitcase, which apparently is just what you should not do. And that was the end of that. So I'm glad to rehear it now.”
2010-07-25 · Desert Island Discs · Lynn Barber · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I just wish you'd said your love, you know, and it was as if he still doubted that I loved him, and It goes along with something my father said about he said you only come and see me and your mother out of a sense of duty but then my parents had also said you know fine words but no parsnips that you can say that you love somebody but what actually counts is how often you go and visit them or whether you remember to phone them every day sort of thing so I'm not quite sure. I mean, I wish David had said love rather loyalty thus.”
2010-07-25 · Desert Island Discs · Lynn Barber · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, I couldn't do caring, you know, and I felt very bad about that, and I'd see other wives, you know, on the ward who never left their husbandside, and I was always dying to run away as soon as I got to hospital. And I'm very glad that right at the end when we thought he was getting better and was coming out of hospital, and I sort of said, Oh gosh, I hope I don't have to change any dressings or something. And he sort of said, oh no, that's not your job, we'll hire somebody. And it was as if he was saying it's okay, I know you're not that sort of wife and you're never going to be.”
2010-07-25 · Desert Island Discs · Lynn Barber · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, I mean he was told he had something called Marlow fibrosis which is a sort of leukemiaish thing. They said he would only have two good years to live unless he had a bone marrow transplant and then he died in the course of the bone marrow transplant. So I've always felt quite sort of cheated by that really”
2010-07-25 · Desert Island Discs · Lynn Barber · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He was Totally he was a really good person, genuinely kind, genuinely, totally honest, couldn't tell Lightsaf's life. And I just think that by living with him so long I gradually got better. I mean, I was never unselfish like he was. I mean, I'm still quite a selfish person, but it did bring a sort of new morality, I think, into my life.”
2010-07-25 · Desert Island Discs · Lynn Barber · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, absolutely. I mean actually that was right at the end of Oxford a friend brought David to my room in Oxford and I just saw him and thought that is the man I'm going to spend my life with and it was”
2010-07-25 · Desert Island Discs · Lynn Barber · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A sustained episode of Yes, it wasn't it wasn't that sustained. I mean, some people have sort of said that I was promiscuous the whole time at Oxford. It wasn't actually so. I had a boyfriend for my first year at Oxford or first year and a half even, but he then jilted me or dumped me or whatever the expression is. And so my thinking was I must find another boyfriend immediately, and I haven't got time to waste sort of going out to dinner with them or going punting with them. You know, why don't I just go to bed with them first and then if they're no good, I can just eliminate them and not waste any time, you know, which I suppose is a pretty bad attitude. So I did sleep with an awful lot of people in about two terms, and then I stopped. It was odd.”
2010-07-25 · Desert Island Discs · Lynn Barber · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This is a lovely, happy memory of Oxford parties and punting and gorgeous happy times. This is the Kinks. Thank you for the days.”
2010-07-25 · Desert Island Discs · Lynn Barber · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Do you think Absolutely, and sort of questioning everything I did believe, thinking, well, did I just get this from my parents, in which case it might well be wrong, and trying to rethink everything I thought which is a terribly difficult job. It was a real intellectual exercise, and I”
2010-07-25 · Desert Island Discs · Lynn Barber · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes. Well, I think there were two reasons one was that they were very ashamed of the sort of Simon Fiasco which they did regard as their fault, you know, but also because they both had this sort of worship for the idea of academic attainment, the fact that I'd got into Oxford made me automatically a sort of better person. Do you see what I mean? Yes. It was as if they then said okay. We don't know anything you know best you make your own decisions from now on, sort of thing.”
2010-07-25 · Desert Island Discs · Lynn Barber · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, I think that's right. I think I think it made me suspicious which I'd never been at all before, you know, but I mean a very typical thing was once David and I coming back from a dinner party I said you know why was that woman seeming to like me so much? And David said Maybe she did like you and maybe it's not a cunning flock maybe that is a genuine feeling but I always sort of look for the worst first and then sort of test against it.”
2010-07-25 · Desert Island Discs · Lynn Barber · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh yes, I just looked in the glove compartment of his car and there were a load of letters addressed to Mr and Mrs Simon Goldman. But my mother, just before she died, tell me this other jaw dropping thing, which is that he had asked my parents if he could marry me, and they said yes, yes, good idea, and take me to live in Israel, and he'd never nobody'd ever ask me if I wanted to live in Israel. And apparently that was what he was planning to do.”
2010-07-25 · Desert Island Discs · Lynn Barber · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, and my parents wanted me to marry him and urged me to marry him. That was the real sort of shock horror, but basically I then found out that he was married anyway. Can you remember?”
2010-07-25 · Desert Island Discs · Lynn Barber · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, one of the odd things was that because he was a landlord of these dodgy sort of beds and flats, first thing we do is sort of drive to Bayswater and he would go into these houses and collect some money, I suppose, and I'd wait in the car. And then we'd probably go to, there were one or two clubs in Bayswater that belonged to Perry Fragman or that Perry Fragman would turn up at. He was the sort of evil landlord who gave his full name to Rackmanism. If Simon wanted to meet him we would go to one of those places and just hang about, or we would go to expensive restaurants or we would go to see a sort of”
2010-07-25 · Desert Island Discs · Lynn Barber · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, they were just rolled over and waved their legs in the air. I mean, they loved him. It was extraordinary, and he went to enormous lengths to charm my parents. As he was for me, so he was for my parents, probably the most interesting person we'd come across, you know.”
2010-07-25 · Desert Island Discs · Lynn Barber · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, he told me he was twenty seventh, so I was sixty he was eleven years old of me, he said, but he told me he'd been present at some terrorist attack, I think, in Israel, which meant that he would have had to have been about five or six years older than he'd already admitted to. So the answer is I don't know.”
2010-07-25 · Desert Island Discs · Lynn Barber · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I fancy to live, and I mean the other thing is my yearning just to meet different people who were different who weren't from this sort of Twickenham suburban background. He talked with a funny accent. He told me very early on that he was Jewish and he was passionate Zionist so all that was interesting. He was interested in Bergman films, you know, all sorts of foreign films I first saw with him.”
2010-07-25 · Desert Island Discs · Lynn Barber · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, I've never played cello in my life. That was total, Nick Hornby. And that was to excuse the sluttiness of my behaviour in getting into the car. But I just got into the car because I wanted a lip.”
2010-07-25 · Desert Island Discs · Lynn Barber · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I was at a bus stop and he stopped his car and offered me a lift. And of course I'd been told not to accept lifts from strange men, but I thought, well, he doesn't look strange. He looks okay. And so I got into the car.”
2010-07-25 · Desert Island Discs · Lynn Barber · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This is the Rolling Stones and the last time. I mean, I did it with satisfaction, but this is less well known and actually fabulous too.”
2010-07-25 · Desert Island Discs · Lynn Barber · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, I mean, she didn't intervene enough, I think, and she would come up to me afterwards and apologize, but she didn't sort of step in at the time.”
2010-07-25 · Desert Island Discs · Lynn Barber · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, but I mean it wasn't that thing of I'm going to go and get a stick and beat you. It was just sort of a sudden swipe. But I mean I remember him doing it to my daughter, elder daughter when she was four, and David was so appalled, my husband, that he said right we're leaving the house now this minute and it was Christmas Day. We'd gone down there with all the Christmas food to cook my parents Christmas lunch and Rosie refused to eat her breakfast. My father hit her. Davis said we're leaving right now and we drove back to London to a foodless house but I mean that was what I'd remembered my father doing to me and my husband was very shocked by it.”
2010-07-25 · Desert Island Discs · Lynn Barber · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, we were having rows right through my teens probably from about 13 onwards. But then when Simon, the conman, turned up, my father sort of deferred to him, and he stood up for me so that my father, as it were, abdicated at that point.”
2010-07-25 · Desert Island Discs · Lynn Barber · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well much quieter occasionally she would try and control him, you know, finally when they were about 89 they couldn't cope anymore and I was moving them into a residential home in Brighton and I said, Dad, seriously you can't go into this shouting at everyone because they could kick you out, you know. And my mother told me off she said, Oh, he's your father, you stick up and said he's got to be allowed to shout at everyone, which sure enough he did. But by the time he died I was very touched that obviously the staff were very fond of him. He did have redeeming qualities, but the sort of social barrier that he put up was appalling.”
2010-07-25 · Desert Island Discs · Lynn Barber · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well very shouty and bad tempered indeed, and I said at his funeral he's probably the rudest person any of us had ever met, and you know there was warm agreement.”
2010-07-25 · Desert Island Discs · Lynn Barber · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In the film, do you mean? In Pretty good. I mean, because it's Nick Hornby and he's a nice person, it's a much sweeter version than my version that I wrote.”
2010-07-25 · Desert Island Discs · Lynn Barber · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, I'm sure it was that. And only child, and also I think particularly isolated because my parents didn't have any family in London. My father had some up north, but we never saw them. And they didn't seem to have any friends. So the only children I knew were at school. And I was intrigued to be able to watch the interactions of families. And actually, I never did until much later in life.”
2010-07-25 · Desert Island Discs · Lynn Barber · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, this is a bit of an odd choice, but it's because my father died very recently, and he used to sing this a lot, and we used to go on walking holidays in the late district, and it's a song that goes on for about a million verses. We won't play them now, don't we? But it's Abdul the Bull Bolomir by Frank Crummett.”
2010-07-25 · Desert Island Discs · Lynn Barber · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh good well both of those are good. I mean I was told off a lot at the beginning for being judgmental but actually people do want me to arrive at some conclusion about whether I like the person or don't like the person and that's why I say the hard ones to write are where I'm genuinely not sure or it's the sort of borderline thing myself.”
2010-07-25 · Desert Island Discs · Lynn Barber · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think I'm accurate for one thing. They can't complain that they've been misquoted. I think some people find it stimulating and challenging, and if I give somebody a sort of rave write up, it counts for more than if I was always giving people rave write-ups.”
2010-07-25 · Desert Island Discs · Lynn Barber · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, I mean it does slightly throw me, I suppose, but I think probably that that in a way has existed for some years before I wrote the book in that I'd got a reputation as an interviewer. And the big contrast for me was that I'd been working on the Sunday Express, but the Sunday Express was so unfashionable that nobody read it. And then I went to the Independent on Sunday and suddenly people were talking about me. So it was at that point that people started saying Demon Barbara and things.”
2010-07-25 · Desert Island Discs · Lynn Barber · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I have a few I mean Tracy Emman, probably best known and Nicky Haslam, but I mean that's certainly not the object of the exercise.”
2010-07-25 · Desert Island Discs · Lynn Barber · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I was thrown into it. The other thing is because I admired him so much, I mean, I was like a fan. And then I was sort of looking around my house thinking, oh God, that's so crummy, that terrible photograph there, you know. We ruined in the CDs. Yes, exactly. I was sort of thinking I would hide the entire lot. No, I mean, he was a lovely man, and actually he subsequently asked me and my husband to a concert.”
2010-07-25 · Desert Island Discs · Lynn Barber · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, and it was a really bad idea. I hadn't thought about it before, but he'd been sort of saying he wanted to meet at this greasy spoon cafe, and I thought I don't want to go to a greasy spoon. And so I said, well, if you want breakfast, come to my house and I'll make you breakfast.”
2010-07-25 · Desert Island Discs · Lynn Barber · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh this is wonderful, wonderful pulpes common people, which I think is probably the best pop single of my lifetime, actually.”
2010-07-25 · Desert Island Discs · Lynn Barber · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source