Hello I'm Krusty 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. A castaway has always been an enterprising soul. At school he kept pigs to feed the pupils.

In the army he dealt in oriental carpets. It was, in the words of the immortal Arthur Daly,

a nice little learner. Today he continues a career as a successful farmer and is about to

discontinue his job as a member of parliament. He's been an MP for more than 25 years and has served

in two cabinets under two Prime Ministers, first Edward Heath and latterly Mrs. Thatcher.

A colleague once described him as being the acceptable face of conservatism, a moderate reformer

in the best Tory tradition. He is Jim Pryor.

Mr Pryor, first of all, could we get this entrepreneurial skills of yours into perspective?

What were the circumstances of keeping pigs at school?

Well, during the war we had rationing and if you had a pig club

you could keep half the meat as it were that you grew without having to give up

your rations. And so at school I started a pig club

and we thought everything was going well and we came to slaughter our first pigs. And then suddenly

we were told we had to give up all the rations and that was too much for us altogether and the headmaster invited the minister of food down because I think he would godfather to a boy at the school and sat me next to him and I told him that this was

absolutely scandalous and he got it all wrong and unlike most ministers

nowadays in my experience in government he went straight back and changed the rules.

So that was the first indication of Jim Pryor politician was it?

Yes I mean I didn't expect it to continue with a political as it were life but that's what happened.

Let's talk about your your taste in music.

Do you come from a musical background at all?

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