Hello, I'm Krestey Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive.

For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

The program was originally broadcast in 1996, and the presenter was Sue Lolly. My castaway this week is a colonial governor.

Next year with all due pomp and ceremony he will leave behind the Asian community he's ruled for five years and return to Britain. To do what?

This is no career diplomat coming home but a leading conservative politician who enjoyed a glittering career up until the last election.

It's his political instincts that have led him in his present job to fight for the protection of human rights even though he knows

that the Chinese who will succeed him will sweep away most of what he's tried to leave behind.

He is the 28th and last governor of Hong Kong Chris Patton or is it his

excellency Mr Christopher Patton what is it in Hong Kong it's Faye Pang which is

fatty Patton but in your in your own territory as they say, you're his excellency.

I'm his excellency, exactly.

Or I went to an old people's home the other day and they called me your majesty, which I thought was going

a bit far.

But in the main you've done away with all the pomp and ceremony and

feathers of it haven't you? Yes I think it's all part of my feeling that that was

pretty much old hat which is no reference to the plumed version,

and that it was the sort of expression of accountability that one could deal with most easily.

I thought I should look like everybody else looks in Hong Kong rather than a colonial

throwback. But you do go, I think instead on weekly tours around the colony, don't you? Pressing

the flesh? Yes, I do. I get out of government house at least once a week into the flesh. Yes I do. I get out of the government house at least once a week into the district, but I also go out and try

to do my own shopping and wander around a bit.

How important is it to you, that sort of warmth that you meet in the street because you've

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