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Desert Island Discs

Frances Edmonds

Desert Island Discs

BBC

Music, Personal Journals, Society & Culture, Music Commentary

4.314.3K Ratings

🗓️ 9 August 1987

⏱️ 33 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Frances Edmonds accompanied her husband Phil on two tours with the England cricket team and wrote books about the trips. In conversation with Michael Parkinson, she talks about the reaction she got from the chauvinistic world of cricketers and cricket writers, and also looks back on her schooldays at an Ursuline convent and at her career as an interpreter.

[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]

Favourite track: Panis Angelicus by César Franck Book: Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams Luxury: Bollinger '69

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

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

0:05.1

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

0:08.2

The program was originally broadcast in 1987, and the presenter was Michael Parkinson.

0:30.4

A castaway accompanied her husband on a cricket tour of the West Indies and wrote a book about it.

0:35.2

It wasn't the normal book about figures flickering all the green swad.

0:38.6

It was an irreverent, funny account of a group of athletes adrift in a foreign land.

0:43.6

The book was called Cricket Bloody Cricket.

0:45.8

She followed it with another book about the recent visit of the England team to Australia,

0:49.6

called Cricket 4x Cricket.

0:52.0

The books have made her both a best-selling author and a celebrity,

0:55.0

although several of the plays she wrote about have been heard to describe her in less complementary terms.

0:59.8

Indeed, when she departs for her Desert Island,

1:02.2

it's a fair bet that several may turn up to where it could buy.

1:05.6

She is Frances Edmonds.

1:07.4

Frances, before we get on to the controversial part of this Desert Islands program,

1:11.6

can I ask you, are you looking forward to your visit to the island?

1:14.0

Very much. I hope it won't be an infinite surgeon on the island.

1:18.2

I hope it will be rescued eventually,

1:20.0

but I wouldn't really mind some peace and quiet for a rather protracted period,

1:24.0

especially away from Philippe Henri at the moment.

1:26.8

Philippe Henri, of course, tell the people he's your husband, your betrothed.

1:29.8

Yes, the long-suffering for Edmonds.

...

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