Peter Mayle
Desert Island Discs
BBC
4.3 • 14.3K Ratings
🗓️ 4 July 1993
⏱️ 37 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The castaway in Desert Island Discs this week is the writer Peter Mayle. Renowned for his best-selling books about life as an Englishman in France, he'll be talking to Sue Lawley about his years in advertising, and how he coined the catchphrase Nice one, Cyril', and also about the recent television adaptation of a Year in Provence, which attracted widespread criticism. Criticism and controversy have been a feature of his life since the massive success of his books and he'll be answering many of the charges levelled against him, amongst them the allegation that he has made fun of the French, presenting them as laughable stereotypes as well as attracting hordes of sightseers to disturb the peace of Provence.
[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]
Favourite track: Caruso by Luciano Pavarotti Book: The Leopard by Giuseppe di Lampedusa Luxury: The menu from his favourite Parisien restaurant
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, I'm Kirstie Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive |
| 0:04.9 | for rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The program was originally broadcast |
| 0:09.8 | in 1993, and the presenter was Sue Lawley. |
| 0:14.9 | My cast away this week is a writer. He's deployed his literary talents in a number of ways, |
| 0:34.1 | while working in advertising he came up with the phrase nice one, Cyril. Later he teamed up with |
| 0:39.2 | a cartoonist friend to produce a series of stories about wicked Willie. They sold well, |
| 0:44.0 | he's since been told that every lavatory and Wiltshire has a copy, but it was only when he |
| 0:48.0 | moved to France that he became a household name in Britain. The book he wrote about his experiences |
| 0:53.1 | there was called A Year in Provence. The rest is profitable if sometimes turbulent history. |
| 0:59.3 | He is Peter Male. Peter, let's talk about the turbulence first. The charge is that you've drawn |
| 1:04.2 | a kind of disney-esque portrait of a peaceful area of rural France, and you've attracted so many |
| 1:09.7 | tourists that the piece is no longer there, and what's more you've taken the Mickey out of the |
| 1:13.2 | locus to boot? What's the case for the defence? Right, well that seems sort of a very long catalogue |
| 1:18.0 | of sins and horrors. The first thing that I've been accused of is destroying Provence. It's |
| 1:22.6 | funny, I mean I don't read all the critical things because you just get fed up with reading |
| 1:26.1 | them after a time, but some of them I have read, and in none of them have I ever found any evidence |
| 1:31.9 | to support this terrific sweeping generalisation that I've revealed a secret part of the world. |
| 1:37.6 | I mean it would be nice if somebody wants to say he's ruined Provence, he's bought all his tourists |
| 1:42.6 | down there, let's say for instance, you know last year there were 3,000 British caravans and |
| 1:47.6 | people with British number plate cars down there, and this year there were 498,000, and then it would |
| 1:53.1 | be there would be somehow some substance to it. I suppose the one statistic that's being offered |
| 1:57.3 | is that now there's some wine museum and winery being opened in manoeuvre, which is the town that |
... |
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