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 1986, and the presenter was Michael Parkinson. The title of the recently published biography of our castaway tells it all really the books entitled a singular man

Singular in the sense of being unusual even odd his wife once said of I quote, he has a reputation for being awkward and

arrogant, mainly because he is awkward and arrogant. A writer also observed that he was the most

notable of cricket's awkward squad. It must also be said that he is a

cricketer of the highest class. And in the view of many, including myself, someone who

would make an ideal captain of his country. He is the Middlesex in England cricketer, Phil Edmonds.

Michael, it's a pleasure to be here.

Thank you, Phil.

Now your phone on tour of Australia, in fact it's going to last five months.

Does music play any part of your plans when you're going to tour like that?

Well, obviously there's a lot of tedium involved in touring, ones in coaches or on airlines.

I believe, I haven't looked at the itinerary in any great depth but I believe on this particular tour

We have 42 different flights around Australia

Much of that obviously cooped up very cramped and I think it is quite important to get away from the childish

behavior of some of my colleagues on occasions.

So yes I do tend to spend quite a lot of time listening to the likes of Beethoven or some of the

pop classics of Stevie Wonder or Simon and Garfunkel.

I spend a lot of time listening, yes.

But in the main, it's the classics that you take with you on tour.

Mainly, in fact, during the last tour of India, which was another four and a half month tour I took only the nine Beethoven symphonies so I got to know them pretty well and in fact my first choice is one of Beethoven.

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