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 1993 and the presenter was Sue Lolley.

My castaway this week is a politician. He enjoyed a glittering career in exhibition

to Cambridge at the age of 16, a double-first call to the bar, became an MP and at 41 the

youngest member of the cabinet who went on to become home secretary and secretary of state

for trade and industry. In 1986 however, the glitter faded. He resigned over the Westland

affair and was left to languish on the back benches. Three years later he became one of Britain's

European commissioners and has been in Brussels ever since. Next year his term of office comes to an

end. What will happen then to the man of whom one political commentator has said,

he is no extinct volcano. He is one of the least arrogant of politicians but has never learned

to appear that way on the public stage. He is Salion Britain. You laugh, Salion. Is there some truth

in that? I mean we'll leave the extinct volcano till later but do you think that you have given

the wrong impression of yourself publicly? Well that's what people say and it's always very

difficult to know what impression you do give. I just amused at the idea of not being arrogant

but seeming arrogant. It's usually the other way around that people try. Well it is but people

constantly say of you and write of you as you acknowledge that you are nicer than your image.

That must be, it's a bit of a backhand. It is yes and people say that I look better at the

flesh than on the television but what could you do about it? But has it worried you? Do you worry

about image? Not as much as all that perhaps less than I should but I can't see what you can do

about it. All ideas are welcome, write them on a postcard for Brussels. Does it no matter less now

now that you're in Europe, now that you're really rather more independent and not at the mercy

...