YouSaid · the spoken record

Vincent Cable

lines on the record: 46
first: 2009-01-18
most recent: 2009-01-18
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

“I think I'd have the Don Giovanni, partly because of the family connotations, but Mozart operas are the finest music, and I listen to them over and over again.”
2009-01-18 · Desert Island Discs · Vincent Cable MP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think one of the great advantages of being cast away and as I wouldn't have to worry about being politically correct and if this was a developed desert island with tarmac roads I would have a really fast car and Aston Martin and enjoy speed and if it was a less developed island I would have a fast horse and gallop along the beaches very fast.”
2009-01-18 · Desert Island Discs · Vincent Cable MP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I would take Stephen Hawking's brief history of time I got to page six and hit a brick wall and it's long been an ambition to understand it but more importantly it would enable me to have a proper conversation with my younger son Hugo who is a very bright mathematician, theoretical physicist is now based in Singapore and he talks to me about quantum physics and I nod without quite understanding what he's saying so having time to really get on top of that subject would be an ambition that I'd love to have.”
2009-01-18 · Desert Island Discs · Vincent Cable MP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This is my elder son Paul and Aggie, my daughter in law singing together, and they're singing in Don Giovanni. This is my favourite opera, I went to Prague with Rachel to listen to Paul singing the lead Roland Don Giovanni in the States Theatre which was Mozart's hill theatre. So there's a lot of parental pride as well as musical appreciation in this.”
2009-01-18 · Desert Island Discs · Vincent Cable MP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, but one of my frustrations is not having enough time to write which I enjoy doing, and I would love to write history, to write seriously. And to do that, you need to research and have time. So, no, actually, I would welcome the freedom and the time.”
2009-01-18 · Desert Island Discs · Vincent Cable MP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, I'm very romantic, and certainly when I met Rachel and we became close, I sort of rediscovered in my sort of late fifties all those emotions, love, romance, the things that you thought you've never found again. And it's been a wonderfully happy experience, and it's been a wonderful stage of my life.”
2009-01-18 · Desert Island Discs · Vincent Cable MP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, this just conjures up those recent romantic memories it's Pat Boone's love letters in the sand I was driving up on a motorway to some political meeting with Rachel and this came on the radio and we felt that somewhere this captured what we were all about.”
2009-01-18 · Desert Island Discs · Vincent Cable MP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, she wasn't, and I think when Olympia died I didn't expect to be married again, I think, like a lot of widowers. I assumed I'd spend the rest of the time alone. But a few months after Olympia died, I was giving a talk in the New Forest, and I launched into a sort of rance. And this very elegant lady on the front row started quarrelling with me, and it led to her inviting me back to see her cows, because the issue was about free trade and farming.”
2009-01-18 · Desert Island Discs · Vincent Cable MP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The fact that it's very good for your physical fitness and mentally as well you can completely switch off. I do the exams to keep me up to scratch but I'd mainly do it for pleasure.”
2009-01-18 · Desert Island Discs · Vincent Cable MP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's sort of international supreme or something like some ridiculous title. I bow in your presence. Well, no, no, it isn't all that. The important thing is not the awards you get.”
2009-01-18 · Desert Island Discs · Vincent Cable MP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, it started a long time before that Olympia and I when the kids had started to grow out we wanted to do something together and went along to the dancing school in the area and enjoyed it but became a bit obsessive we started doing exams and acquiring cups and things of this kind. Eventually she couldn't dance anymore, but it had got implanted in me and then when she died and I was looking for things to do and take me out of myself I went back and started dancing with my dancing teacher which I've done until now.”
2009-01-18 · Desert Island Discs · Vincent Cable MP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, she was very brave and very positive and never made a burden of it, and that made of course life easy for the rest of us. She was very positive, always wanted to be involved in what I was doing when I was an MP, even though she was very ill by that stage, tried to help me with my work and was absolute terrific. But it became very difficult, certainly for the last two years of my first term as an MP, she was disabled and at home, and I was trying to care for her while being the local MP. I did get a lot of help, my younger son took a year out of college to stay and help his mum, and we had friends and relatives who helped as well, but it was certainly probably the most difficult phase of my life emotionally as well as practically.”
2009-01-18 · Desert Island Discs · Vincent Cable MP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“though she was desperately shy of performance, she was a wonderful musician, large numbers of kids in Twickenham were taught the piano by her and sang very well, but did not like performance. She was happiest playing the piano on her own.”
2009-01-18 · Desert Island Discs · Vincent Cable MP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That this is Beethoven's first piano concertum, and it reminds me of an occasion when our daughter, Aida, went to the university at Cambridge and gave a concert, she played this piece beautifully, and I remember sitting next to Olympia and I saw the tears rolling down her cheeks of pride and joy as our daughter sort of played this piece, so it always comes back to me.”
2009-01-18 · Desert Island Discs · Vincent Cable MP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, it was, and I was, yeah, obviously elated, but there was a sort of unhappiness in the background because by this stage Olympi was very illegal for quite some years and I was always conscious that there was this lurking in the background and we didn't talk about it because you didn't want to talk about it. She didn't want it to be known. She didn't want to be regarded as a goner. She was a very feisty person. So I knew that the next few years, although it was great to have finally made it into Parliament, I knew that her health and the problems around that were going to be the dominant issues in my life and hers.”
2009-01-18 · Desert Island Discs · Vincent Cable MP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, there was a lot of music. Olympia was a very accomplished musician and music teacher all my three children were very good at different instruments. I was the listener in the family and I was the one who took the kids around to their lessons and to concerts of various kinds, but that was a role I was very happy to play.”
2009-01-18 · Desert Island Discs · Vincent Cable MP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, I got caught up as a lot of people did in the Civil War and the Labour Party between the really extreme left and other more moderate and I felt I had to throw in my lot with the Social Democrats.”
2009-01-18 · Desert Island Discs · Vincent Cable MP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's a 27 year gap between my first starting and eventually getting in the 80s I stood in York as a SDP Liberal Alliance candidate twice, and then I stood in Twickenham before I finally got in in ninety seven.”
2009-01-18 · Desert Island Discs · Vincent Cable MP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I didn't know him at all well, but he was clearly one of the rising stars of the Labour Party in Scotland, and this was the early seventies where there were some very able people John Smith, you had Robin Cook, and there was Gordon Brown and there were others, and these were the future stars. We didn't know that at the time, but it was an exciting political environment.”
2009-01-18 · Desert Island Discs · Vincent Cable MP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“while I was on the council one of the projects which Golden Brown launched was a book which came out as the red papers for Scotland, and he invited me to contribute to that.”
2009-01-18 · Desert Island Discs · Vincent Cable MP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, it's something I very much wanted to do, but I didn't see the way. for parliament in the nineteen seventy election and then got on to Glasgow City Council, and I got much more absorbed in that than I did in my professional work.”
2009-01-18 · Desert Island Discs · Vincent Cable MP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This is my doltrino, Agnesa Totova, married to Paul. She's a very fine singer, and she's singing the song of the moon by Vorgac, and this has particular significance because at Olympia's funeral she sang this beautifully, and it was a very, very moving occasion.”
2009-01-18 · Desert Island Discs · Vincent Cable MP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There was after a period of years, I think my father discovered that we were actually doing quite well and we had two young children, and he was curious to know what we were happening, so rather out of the blue he asked to see us, and he melted quite quickly, and he loved my elder son Paul and Ayida, the daughter, and invited them to stay with them, and in a strange way over a period of years he became very, very close to Olympia. He discovered that she had most of his values, and they really got on Agas and Far they loved music, and eventually, I think it got to a point where he was closer to her than to my mother. I'm never quite sure if he overcame all his prejudices, but it was a remarkable transformation and quite heartwarming.”
2009-01-18 · Desert Island Discs · Vincent Cable MP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, this was the time, of course, of the Kenyan Exodus, the Kenyanians who were being pushed out of Kenya. So it was a very emotive time, and when we arrived and we went to Glasgow, which is where we had a job, I'd got a job at university, it was in the middle of this intense racial feeling. So the context in which we started our life in Britain was not a happy one.”
2009-01-18 · Desert Island Discs · Vincent Cable MP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, it was grand, and it was partly, I think, Olympia wanting to say to the world, I'm proud of what I'm doing, and so she organized a wedding. She was a Catholic in the Grand Catholic Cathedral in the middle of Nairobi. The priest worked out, I think, that her motives were not totally religious, and he sort of took his revenge on us by withdrawing the choir and giving us in our marriage service a half hour lecture on the evils of communism. Quite why he did that. But anyway, at the end, Olympia stood up to him and they had a row in the vestry afterwards, but they shook hands and he gave us a frosty smile and wished as well.”
2009-01-18 · Desert Island Discs · Vincent Cable MP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, we didn't, and in fact, in a strange way it actually brought us closer together, you know, we felt we were kind of united against the world.”
2009-01-18 · Desert Island Discs · Vincent Cable MP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, this was not what he'd intended it was going to fail mixed marriages always failed, he argued. It would outrage the neighbours. What would they think about it, turning out with a lady with a different colour on the doorstep? You know, he just felt sort of disgusted and disappointed and didn't want to have nothing more to do with me.”
2009-01-18 · Desert Island Discs · Vincent Cable MP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, strangely, it was in a hospital. We were both nursing in a vacation and we met in the Common room and found we had a lot of lot in common, fell in love and it turned out that I happened to be going to work in the city where she came from, which was Nairobi. So we met up again a year later and decided we were going to get married. Both sets of parents were absolutely outraged. Her father was a very tough, unbending, but like my dad really, and I was certainly not what was envisaged. And so he forbade her from marrying me and tried to stop it. And my father was equally outraged and decided we would be excommunicated as well. So we embarked on married life with a lot of friends and a lot of love and hope, but having two alienated parents, sets of parents.”
2009-01-18 · Desert Island Discs · Vincent Cable MP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The next piece of music actually captures the character of my wife Olympia, who was a very beautiful, lovely woman who I adored throughout our married life, and this piece, the Epesianata, actually captures her character. She was a very passionate woman, and she loved the piano, she was a fine musician, and she was never happier than when sitting at home playing for hours bashing out Beethoven. And we had a little picture of Beethoven alongside the family. He was a great hero.”
2009-01-18 · Desert Island Discs · Vincent Cable MP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, and I think in that role I did actually make a difference. I have always been interested from the very outset in the practicalities of economic policy. I mean, there are a lot of people around who are far better economist than I am. But I think right from the very outset I've been interested in getting your hands dirty aspects of it and what you actually do when you're in a practical situation.”
2009-01-18 · Desert Island Discs · Vincent Cable MP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, it wasn't like that, it wasn't political. I was fairly junior treasury official in the finance ministry, but because most of the expatriates were leaving and the young African graduates hadn't at that stage arrived, I found myself in my mid twenties with a ludicrous level of responsibility. But it did get me into really exciting areas of policy this was in the Kenyatta government, the people I was working for, among others were Kibaki, who was the president president. It was a very exciting time.”
2009-01-18 · Desert Island Discs · Vincent Cable MP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think it was the closest link with the real world and the world of politics, and Cambridge Economics at that stage had a very high reputation. I had quite a short induction. I didn't do the full economics course, so I had to learn very quickly. But later in life, I've understood the importance of what I was taught, even if I didn't fully grasp it at the time”
2009-01-18 · Desert Island Discs · Vincent Cable MP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, I think so. I didn't have a very free willing lifestyle. I was pretty conservative and I wasn't into drugs or things of that kind. But I love the freedom of ideas and I spent a lot of my time going to very off-beat things and going to lectures on theology and things that just interested me. And I probably didn't do as well as I should have done in my science exams because I did all kind of unorthodox excursions into things which weren't going to help me with my degree.”
2009-01-18 · Desert Island Discs · Vincent Cable MP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This is Akabilk and its stranger on the shore, although most of my choices are classical music I love good popular music and this sort of conjures up so many romantic memories from my late teens and early twenties.”
2009-01-18 · Desert Island Discs · Vincent Cable MP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, it was yes, it was my father was enormously proud, and it was partly, I think, also getting his own back on all the teachers in his staff room who had degrees, and of course he didn't have a degree, and I think he'd felt throughout his life that he was struggling to prove his own worth and having a son who went off to university in some style was quite a comeback.”
2009-01-18 · Desert Island Discs · Vincent Cable MP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, but I'd sort of delivered. Where it became quite difficult was that I think I did have a talent for writing. I was passionately interested in history and politics and things of that kind, but my father insisted that there were no jobs to be had in what he called Artifarty subjects, and so I was told I had to be a scientist, and I did my A levels in science and went to Cambridge to do natural science.”
2009-01-18 · Desert Island Discs · Vincent Cable MP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, that's a fair level, I think he was chairman of his local ward and the delivered leaflets, and in fact he died getting pneumonia out in the snow delivering leaflets for Mrs. Thatcher. When that part of him I adored really. I mean, his commitments and passion. I mean, I totally disagreed a lot of things he was saying. But nonetheless, there's a really admirable streak in all of that.”
2009-01-18 · Desert Island Discs · Vincent Cable MP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I did, yes, I mean, I was absolutely terrified, and in fact I still am when I have a big public event, I am always very frightened. But I think having that experience as a teenager was a phenomenal breakthrough, and I'm debted for life to the teacher who gave me that break.”
2009-01-18 · Desert Island Discs · Vincent Cable MP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, I was a very, very timid, awkward teenager. What helped me to get confidence was when I was sixteen, I was picked out and I'll give them the lead in the school play, which was Macbeth. And I did learn over a period of months to look at an audience and to communicate. And I think ever since then I've overcome that basic inhibition, which very large numbers of people have about standing up in front of a large audience.”
2009-01-18 · Desert Island Discs · Vincent Cable MP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, this jumps to my present life I have a grown up family now, my eldest son Paul is a very accomplished musician, and here he's singing in Prague in the Rudolfinium with the Prague Philamonia Amarbent by Bach.”
2009-01-18 · Desert Island Discs · Vincent Cable MP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't want to exaggerate, but there was no sort of emotional warmth and there was quite a lot of tension. And I think probably I just learned to focus on the things that I could do, which was basically around school”
2009-01-18 · Desert Island Discs · Vincent Cable MP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“emigrated to Australia and lost contact largely. She had a breakdown she went away for hospital for a year or more and my brother was temporarily fostered and she never really quite recovered for some years, but gradually she sort of built up her self confidence that was always quite low through teaching herself through adult education and through becoming a minster guide.”
2009-01-18 · Desert Island Discs · Vincent Cable MP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“ambitious for me, and when I got an eleven plus and went to a grammar school, of course then subsequently went off to Cambridge my mother and father were very, very proud. It mattered an enormous amount to them.”
2009-01-18 · Desert Island Discs · Vincent Cable MP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think my father in particular was very class conscious. He gradually moved from a terrace house to a semi detached house and eventually the triumph of a detached house and that my sort of early upbringing was sort of marked by these progressions in the class system as we advanced.”
2009-01-18 · Desert Island Discs · Vincent Cable MP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm not moving away from the Liberal Democrats. I'm very happy with my party. I hope the outcome of the election We would perform the government and I would”
2009-01-18 · Desert Island Discs · Vincent Cable MP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“with his complim I think he's a very good leader, and I'm very happy being his deputy and speaking for us on economic politics. and that's where I expect to be”
2009-01-18 · Desert Island Discs · Vincent Cable MP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source