Friday, July 24, 2009

David Mitchell on Desert Island Discs

I very much enjoyed what I caught of comedian David Mitchell on Desert Island Discs this morning. Charming, amusing, interesting, honest, insightful. Excellent. Highly reccomended. I imagine you can get it on i player?

I have sometimes been likened to David Mitchell (and indeed to the chap who used to host Countdown) and I do not think it was intended as a compliment, but now I shall take it as such. Mitchell was intelligent and good on the lesson of being yourself. There is nothing wrong with wanting to be 50 and wear tweed (at least on the inside) and watch Star Trek. It is possible to have fun without discotech dancing.

Do you think Desert Island Discs should be Desert Island Media? I could live without some of the songs but it would be good to have more books, poems, plays and films and so on. People could talk about the media that most matters to them that they'd most like to take. I can imagine that there could me many people who would make most interesting castaways for whom music is simply not that important, or at least less significant than the other media in their life.

2 comments:

Ros said...

For copyright reasons to do with the music, Desert Island Discs is one of the few programs unavailable to Listen Again.

I have an embarrassingly huge crush on David Mitchell. I'm not sure whether that lends credence to it being a compliment or the reverse.

I have always thought that when I am asked to be on DID, I would be bartering my eight records for as many more books as I could get. A few people in the past have had recordings of spoken words - someone once chose Brian Johnston laughing, which was a fabulous thing to take.

Ros said...

Now that I think of it, I don't think it is the music copyright that is the problem; it is the DID format copyright. Something to do with the will of the person who first developed it. I say it would be worth the BBC paying whatever it takes to get that sorted out, but I think the legal situation is v. complex.