Sacha Distel

Desert Island Discs

BBC

Society & Culture, Music Commentary, Music, Personal Journals

4.4 • 13.7K Ratings

🗓️ 15 February 2004

⏱️ 35 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This week Sue Lawley's castaway is one of France's best known exports - the singer Sacha Distel.

Born into a loving family in 1930s Paris, his father was a Russian émigré who'd fled the Red Army in 1917 and walked to Paris where he eventually set up an electrical goods shop. His mother was a talented musician and she instilled a love of music in her son at a young age - especially the piano. The family was traumatised during the Second World War, when his mother, who was Jewish, was interred in a Nazi camp for 19 months. After the war they were reunited but Sacha has said the experience left him with a long lasting sense of insecurity. He continued playing the piano but was increasingly drawn to the guitar, encouraged by the uncle who was the successful jazz band leader Ray Ventura. He soon demonstrated enormous talent for the instrument and, after graduating from college, he was playing with the likes of Lionel Hampton, Stan Getz, Dizzy Gillespie and Miles Davies. However it was his affair and engagement to Brigitte Bardot which catapaulted him to international fame. The liaison failed but he was to go on to become a household name, both in here and in France, with his distinct vocal style and image as a sex symbol. Now about to turn 71, Sacha is still touring and has just released a new CD.

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

Favourite track: Come Rain or Come Shine by Frank Sinatra Book: The Alchemist: A Fable About Following Your Dream by Paulo Coelho Luxury: Grand piano

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, I'm Krestey Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive.
0:05.0	For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.
0:08.0	The program was originally broadcast in 2004, and the presenter was Sue Lolly. My castaway this week is an entertainer. He is to the British at least the epitome of the romantic Frenchman.
0:37.0	Good-looking suave and with an alluring voice he's been in show business for 50 years now.
0:42.0	As a young jazz guitarist he almost married Brigitte Bardot. He had his own
0:46.9	show on French television and then in the 60s he found fame and affection on this side of the channel.
0:53.6	He's appeared on just about every television light entertainment program that's been made since
0:57.4	then.
0:58.4	He's done thousands of concerts and cabarets here and starred in Chicago in the West End.
1:03.0	And of course he sung his enduring hit single,
1:06.0	Rain Drops Keep Falling on My Head at every opportunity.
1:09.0	Now, 70 years old, a grandfather and a legionaire Donur, he says it's his ambition to be the prettiest,
1:16.5	handsomest 80 year old singer in the world. He is Sasha Distel. It is, I mean, it's shuddering to believe, Sasha, that you are a granddad.
1:25.9	You certainly don't...
1:26.9	I love it.
1:27.9	I love it, the only excuse.
1:29.9	I got a one, only one at the present time of seven years old little boy called
1:37.0	Alexander but you don't look like a granddad I mean you haven't got fat you haven't
1:42.4	gone gray I mean is that hard work well that
1:46.0	thank God what can I say for for the good side of it and but I've when I'm with him
1:52.2	I feel like a good granddad like like a how could I say an older brother
1:57.4	Yes, which is the way I feel with my two sons as well, you know, just we have
	...

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