Next weekend marks the 75th birthday of Desert Island Discs, with David Beckham chosen as the landmark castaway. He will be the ninth footballer to appear. Songs by Frank Sinatra were chosen by four of the previous eight, while Elgar, Monty Python and, surprisingly, Judy Garland all received at least two nominations. Will Beckham, left, enjoy life on a distant atoll after spending 20 years in the limelight? I suppose the paparazzi will still find a way to snap him. When the singer Gracie Fields was on the show in 1951, Roy Plomley, the host, warned her that the island would be “quite deserted, nobody about, no warmth, no comfort”. That did not bother Rochdale’s finest. “It sounds like some of the places I used to play on tour,” she said.
Richard Chartres referred to Desert Island Discs in his speech at a Guildhall dinner this week to mark his retirement as Bishop of London. He recalled EW Swanton, the pompous cricket commentator, appearing on Radio 4 and being asked by Plomley how he would cope with being cast away on a desert island. “It all depends,” Swanton replied, “upon the character of the governor-general.”
UNLUCKY NUMBER
Going back to Gracie Fields, I’ve been running a series on inappropriate music at funerals. Paul Buckland emailed about an occasion when the deceased had requested Sally by Our Gracie (“when skies are blue, you’re beguiling/ and when they’re grey, you’re still smiling”). Alas, the crematorium assistant in charge of the CD player picked the wrong track and Sally disappeared to the strains of Wish Me Luck As You Wave Me Goodbye.
PARALLEL WORLDS
The class divide in the Commons is as cavernous as ever. Angela Rayner, the shadow education secretary, who looks and sounds like a Catherine Tate caricature, told the Huffington Post about going on a fact-finding trip with other MPs. Among them was a posh Tory of the old school whom she started to talk to about a group of travellers who had moved on to her estate and were causing mayhem with their horses. “Oh, yah?” he said. “We have llamas on our estate.” Rayner gave him a look. “I’m talking about a council estate,” she said.
The new US ambassador to London is the owner of the New York Jets American football team. A group of athletes so sensitive that they brought 350 rolls of American toilet paper with them when they visited London in 2015. It reminded Bill Bewley of serving in Borneo, where an American pilot, after a visit to a British latrine, declared: “You Brits are the toughest people on earth: the only ones who wipe their ass on wood shavings.”
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SKATING ON THIN ICE
Davos is over for another year. One TMS reader, Suzie Marwood, tells me that some years ago her skiing holiday clashed with the World Economic Forum at the Swiss resort and the hotel reception was chaotic. As she and her husband were ushered into a lift, a small man joined them, who they assumed was a bellboy. “I can manage the large bags if you take the lighter ones,” Suzie’s husband said. The chap said he was happy to help out but thought they should know that he was actually Warren Christopher, the US secretary of state.
