Guess who is 70 this weekend? (From Lancashire Telegraph)

Guess who is 70 this weekend?

3:21pm Friday 27th January 2012 in Sir Bill Taylor blog By Sir Bill Taylor, Lancashire Telegraph blogger

Guess who is 70 this weekend?

Not a person or a place. Not a building or an event.

A British institution…the BBC’s or is it Roy Plomley’s Desert Island Discs.

70! Older than the NHS! Nearly 1,000 castaways have put themselves on the island with 8 pieces of music, a book and a luxury.

I think Arthur Askey’s 4 appearances are a record.

Ode to Joy from Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony is the most requested piece.

A piano, champagne, pen and paper and photographs are the most popular luxuries.

Didn’t Simon Cowell chose a mirror?

Encyclopedia Britannica is one of the most frequent choices of book.

There have been 4 presenters in those 70 years.

42 castaways as diverse as Lord St John of Fawsley; David Frost, George Carman QC,; Stephen Hawking, and Arthur Scargill have all chosen Edith Piaf’s Je ne regret rien!

The top non classical choices are: 1. Edith Piaf – Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien
2. Frank Sinatra – My Way
3. Noel Coward – Mad Dogs And Englishmen
4. Edith Piaf – La Vie En Rose
5. Flanagan and Allen – Underneath The Arches
6. Judy Garland – Over The Rainbow
7. Louis Armstrong – What A Wonderful World
8. John Lennon – Imagine
So, what would I chose?
I’d have to have a “childhood song” like Uncle Mac would’ve played.

Sparky, 3 wheels on my wagon, or There’s a hole in my bucket.

Something from when kids had their own innocent music.

Then it’d have to be Bridge over troubled water by Simon & Garfunkel.

This kind of delineated my childhood and young adulthood when I became independent.

There’s a great but quite obscure song by the Pearls; G-U-I-L-T-Y!

I guess I’d have another Tamla type song or would it be Band of Gold by Freda Payne.

Who else? A track off Carole King’s Tapestry? But which one?

Something off Lou Reed’s Transformer, Perfect Day, probably.

Wot! No Beatles? Argh!

To remind me, as a spouse & parent, of great family times & long car journeys, it’s Paul Simon again…not Graceland but Diamonds on the souls of her shoes…a family sing along where we all had our parts…the Taylor family intro is legend… Any classical?

That may surprise you! The 1921 Holst music to diplomat Cecil Spring-Rice’s I vow to thee my country, probably sung by Katherine Jenkins.

I vow to thee, my country, all earthly things above, Entire and whole and perfect, the service of my love; The love that asks no question, the love that stands the test.

That lays upon the altar the dearest and the best; The love that never falters, the love that pays the price.

The love that makes undaunted the final sacrifice.

Book? There’s still too many on my “to be read” pile.

Luxury? Does no one ever ask for a record player?

Over to you now!