Hello I'm Kresti 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 1987 and the presenter was Michael Parkinson. Oh, The Our castaway was once described as a reforming radical, oft performing as a Cornish comic.

On the one hand, as the Liberal MP for Truro, he's won a reputation as a tough and capable

West country politician.

On the showbiz side, he recently became the only liberal chancellor in waiting to stand in for Jimmy Young

David my only looking forward to this desert island

No, not the least bit doesn't appeal to me at all. I think to be on an island with no human company at all is quite devastating thought.

But isn't it a sentiment? You're a Cornish man, isn't a sense in which Cornish people are born outcasts and therefore should welcome being on a desk

and understand the situation you see the very Cornish are born in the center of the

civilized world there's just enough people around to be pleasant it's when you get up in

these great urban areas where you get fed up with people.

And the Cornish have got the balance just right. There's enough people there to make life enjoyable, but there's also enough space that occasionally you can wander off and be with yourself.

But you do regard yourself, don't you, as being part of a special tribe?

Well, I mean, that's not regarding, that's a fact.

What could you define for me what this tribe is about?

Well, the courtisher is one of the Celtic origins of this country.

There was a language. Penhaligan is actually part of the Cornish language. It means head of the

Willow Valley. Nobody much speaks it now, but there is a sort of separateness and an identity of Cornish

which we feel and understand but are not always able to express very clearly as

is so many of these differences you come from Yorkshire so I suspect you know what I'm referring to.

So I'm interested in... Well there is a pride of being Cornish and a sort of independence.

...