[Jayne Osborn]

Oh, a thousand apologies - I somehow neglected to put up the new comp. Better late than never!

I love Desert Island Discs and try not to miss it.
For those who aren’t familiar with this BBC Radio 4 programme here’s a link to it, which might help, or this.

In a nutshell, the ‘subject’, usually a celebrity or someone who’s had a remarkable life, chooses 8 records that they would take to their desert island, which are played, and the person is interviewed between each song. They’re allowed a copy of the Bible and the works of Shakespeare, and can choose one other book and one luxury on their island… hence this comp.

Jayne


The Oldie Competition
by Tessa Castro

Competition no 185

Prose this month! Jeffrey Bernard once said that the telling thing in Desert Island Discs is not the music but the luxury. So please send an extract from your Desert Island Diary recounting the consequences, once you’re marooned, of your choice of luxury. Maximum 150 words.

Entries, by post (The Oldie, 65 Newman Street, London W1T 3EG), fax (020 7436 8804) or email comps@theoldie.co.uk to ‘Competition no 185’ by 9th January. Don’t forget to include your postal address.

[Jayne Osborn]

So sorry for the late arrival of this thread, everyone. There's still plenty of time...

...though it is a prose comp which won't please some of us.

Jayne

[Adrian Fry]

Thanks, Jayne: I love prose comps and will give this a go. Nice to see, too, that it was inspired by my great hero Jeffrey Bernard's comment.

[Ann Drysdale]

I've done a couple of these, but nothing good enough to post yet. I've had many a G&T in the Coach and Horses and swapped the solemn coded query "Jeff bin in?"

[Adrian Fry]

Ann, I was almost a regular in the Coach & Horses in the early 1990s. Never would have dared speak to Jeff - he'd have (rightly) told me to fuck off. I have fond memories of talking to Paul Foot and Richard Ingrams, though

[Ann Drysdale]

The last time I was in the C&H, Norman was still in charge and for some reason took issue with the coinbox of a newly-installed payphone. He took an enormous knife and a great deal of colourful language to it and nobody dared interfere.

[Adrian Fry]

Ah, don't get me started on Norman stories. I recall an American customer asking if he could have some mayonnaise to augment the sandwiches he'd bought. 'What d'you think this is,' Norman snarled, 'the fuckin' Hilton?'

[John Whitworth]

Has no-one had a go. I expect Bazza, Bill and Chris are beavering away in secret!

Marooned on a desert island with the entire works of Proust in French, that looks like a downer, particularly if your French was never better than O level. But my choice, hubristic though I thought, even at the time, that it was, turned out a winner. A diet of coconuts and cactus juice makes it imperative I pass more than just wind daily to avoid la grippe. Helas! Yet my Crusoe soul abhors waste. Since my cheapskate Bible and Shakespeare lack both strength and absorbency it is necessary I decipher both obverse and reverse of at least one page of the divine Marcel – the Shakespeare of our inner world - every day. That fills in the time; it also adds to my education. Should my rescuers turn out to be matelots francais I shall be able to entertain the honest fellows with the truly intellectual conversation all Frenchmen delight in!