Hello, I'm Kirstie 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 1977, and the presenter was Roy Plumlee. This week our castaway is the poet Danny Abse. Have you ever

day dreamed about being a Robinson Crusoe? No I've never you know I think it was

Dunne who said each man is an island so I've never, you know, I think it was done who said each man is in Ireland, so I've dreamt I'm a whole man, so I suppose I'm in Ireland in that sense.

Is music clear a big part in your everyday life?

More than it used to. In latter years I found myself listening to records much more than when I was more restless as a boy.

Have you any musical skilled you play the piano? No, when I was when I was a boy there was a

Miss Crouch a piano teacher used to come in the front door and I used to be leaving at

the back door she came in. He were never caught and put to it. No I used to bunk over the wall and play football with a tennis ball rather than do those exercises, I'm afraid.

What's the first record you have on that small pile of eight?

Well, I've come to like piano music a great deal since,

so I'd like Beethoven's pianist and art end D major, if I may. Oh, I'm going to The the Part of the second movement of Beethoven's piano sonata in D major,

opus 10 number 3, played by Alfred Rendell.

You're from South Wales, Danny, a member of a large family?

There are four of us, my eldest sister and my brother Wilfred and Leo who's the MP and then myself the youngest.

And your father was a showman?

Well, he managed a cinema in Aberramen that's near Aberder, and he was full of ideas and hopes and aspirations that never came off.

He failed marvelously.

But you saw plenty of films?

I did every Saturday night.

As a youngster, what did you want to be?

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