Hello, I'm Kirsty Young and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive. For tonight's reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast... 2007. you My castaway this week is the journalist and broadcaster Andrew Neil. As editor of the Sunday Times, he cut an unconventional swathe through the upper echelons of the broadsheet establishment responsible for not just... As well. Biggest stories of the day, he broke the notorious stranglehold of the unions too, abandoning Fleet Street to take the paper to whopping, in a fierce and often violent,

Dispute. So then Andrew Neill, editor of the Sunday Times for 11 years, presiding over a number of significant scoops. For you, what was the biggest? I think the biggest was probably revealing the full extent of Israel's nuclear arsenal. After all, it was big enough for our only source to be kidnapped by Mossad at the Israeli Secret Service. Spent 16 years in jail he's still effectively under house arrest in Israel now. How big a personal decision was it for you to run that story? It was a huge personal decision. And I remember sitting in my office at the Sunday Times, surrounded by my senior editors, and I told them all-- leave the room and I would give them a decision in half an hour's time and I walked out of the room and I said prepare pages one, two, three, four, five and six, we're going with the story and there was muttering at the background saying this will be Neil's Hitler diaries. Well, of course let's remind ourselves, I mean this was only a few... Short years after the Sunday Times had suffered as a result of the fake Hitler diaries.

It was not just in the significance of the story, but in the significance of putting the paper's credibility on the line yet again. Indeed, the Hitler diaries scandal had taken place in May of 1983. I became editor in October of 1983. This was 1986. It wasn't long afterwards. The paper could not have withstood. And other Hitler diaries. Mordechai Wernunu, the informer, as you've characterized him, spent the best part of 20 years in jail. Do you think about that often enough? course you've moved on but in essence he's been living with the consequences of being your informer ever since. There's not a time when I don't think when this issue comes up what we could have done that it wasn't so but we had warned him to be very careful we had tried

to look after him. Now we knew that he was in danger, but he wouldn't listen to us. And then he met this blonde in Leicester Square and she said that she liked him, but there was no chance of a sexual relation in London. But if he went to Rome with her, where her sister had a flat, then maybe things would develop there. A classic honey trap. Classic honey trap. And when he got off the plane in Rome, she hailed a taxi, but it wasn't a taxi. There were two MoSID agents in the back of the car. They chloroformed him and Woke up on a tramp steamer to Tel Aviv.

How heavily, I wonder, does it prey on you that actually what makes a brilliant story can ruin people's lives? Anything that we publish can ruin people's lives and I think if editors were always to think about the consequences of what they publish, you might end up publishing nothing at all. I'm afraid consequences have to look after themselves. Our duty is to establish the truth. And publish it. What's your first record? My first record is James Taylor, Fire and Rain. It is one of the most beautiful songs of the 20th century. My brother was a singer. And music was always being played in our house when he was around so I grew up with a love of And of lyricism and strong melody, and Fire and Rain for me brings back many memories of my younger life.

♪ Has got to see me through another day ♪ My body's aching and my time is at hand ♪ I won't make it any other way ♪ James Taylor in Fire and Rain. So Andrew Neil, you've been immersed of course in politics for a lot of your professional life. Was it a political home you came from? In the sense that my family was involved in politics but there were always political discussions going on. We were encouraged to talk and discuss these things. And what were your parents' political points of view? My parents were both working class Tories. He was quite a lot older, 10 years older. Ten years older. So in a sense I was a single child, but he was a very tolerant big brother. He was a great brother, is a great brother. Yes, my father had joined the army before the Second World War broke out.

And I think he saw the war coming. My brother was born in April 1939. My father didn't see him until he was four. Told the story of my father finally came back on leave, I think it'd be about 1942-43 by this time. Standing at the end of the station at Glasgow Central Station and my brother went 'So this man saluted!' He knew it was my father. Extraordinary. Your mother must have been some woman to keep the show on the road through all of that. Yeah, she had to work in the mill to make ends meet. And she had a job, she was one of the mill girls, she worked on the assembly line, whatever it is they do. Cotton spinning. And until I guess my father became an officer, as you know, in war, promotion happens quickly and promotion has to go to merit. And so my father quickly went through the ranks and I think things became better.

Early days when they had really nothing. My father, my mother had to move in with my brother into the local drill hall where my grandfather was based, where the local army was, because they couldn't afford to live on their own. The family life that you saw at very close hand from a very early age was all about stepping up to the mark, your father out there. In situations that one wouldn't necessarily want one's dad to be placed in. Your mother working hard in the mills. It was all about personal improvement, endeavour and hard work. Well you know I think for my parents it was for survival. They did work hard and they depended on nobody but themselves to get on. But they took good care of themselves. Great pleasure in watching myself and my brother take advantage of the opportunities that they never had. Tell me about your second piece of music. The second piece of music is Blatzweth. And tears, smiling faces. I'm always interested in music that mixes things.

Gemini and this mixes two things it mixes jazz which was modern jazz which was a great passion of mine when I was younger and It mixes rock music which always has been a great passion and they are consummate musicians blood sweat and tears And at university we listen to this because we as students knew we were a cut above the rest We didn't listen to the bubble gum music. That's what we thought anyway Listen to this kind of music.

tears and smiling faces. You were academic, yes, you passed the 11 plus, but you were listening there to the drums, you say you come to the drum. You were a drummer, you started a jazz band. Yes, I was, no, no, not a jazz band, a rock band. I do beg your pardon. Rock band. We did simpler things than that. I listen to these drums and wonder how he does it. Right. Well, let's talk about those earlier studies then. You passed your 11 plus, Grammar school, which was a very good school. What kind of a pupil were you? I was a hard-working pupil. I wanted to get on. I think I was quite a popular pupil as well. I got elected a prefect, so the prefects were elected, not chosen by and it was a great school. Much has been made of my background being an ordinary background and it was an ordinary background but in many ways I had the most privileged background of all. I had two loving parents, I had a wonderful brother, I went to a 16th century school and I went to an elite university to study economics where Adam Smith wrote The Wealth of Nations. Now, to me that is as privileged as you can get.

Glasgow University. You say much has been made of your background and it's true there's not a profile that's written about... You what a satirical piece where it's not brought up that you're this you know boy from the back streets which as you... Characterize it doesn't seem quite accurate but why do you think it is that people concentrate so much on your background? Because I think it's part of our British culture that we're more obsessed with where people come from than where they're going. There is still a huge class prism through which we see things in our country. And to some extent it's all right in that it's a kind of, he fought against the odds. ...that the odds were not as highly stacked up against me as some profile writers have made out. And Clearly you're a man of great ambition and you've done a great many things in your life, but as a teenager, as a young boy, were you conscious that there was something propelling you forward? Yes, I was, but I don't know what and I didn't know to what. But I did things that were in the public eye. I debated at school.

Even when I got to university I debated, I edited the university newspaper, I helped to start the university television service. So I was always... Things that were a bit in the public eye. I think also that the school that I went to encouraged that too. The school gave the impression that there was nothing that wasn't attainable if you had the ability and you put your mind to it and you worked hard for it. I did. What's your next record? My next record, I mentioned earlier that my interests were I was younger in modern jazz and of classical music as well. And this next one is Miles Davis, probably the greatest trumpeter the world has known, doing a classical piece, Concerto de Aranyuez by Rodrigo. A very famous tune, everyone will get it immediately, but it is normally played in guitar, whereas here Davis is playing fugal horn with a hat on the front of it to get that kind of tone. It brings back many happy memories of listening as a child.

As a youngster. Miles Davis and part of the Concerto de Rancho. It sounds as if you were... ...driving yourself out at university, this future career as potentially a politician but certainly somebody who was at the...

The heart of power. You were on the University Council, you were editing the student newspaper. How much of it was mapped out? And planned. I don't think any of it was mapped out but there was always an assumption that if you did these things you would get on and don't forget that probably after Oxford and Cambridge In modern times, the University of Glasgow was a great forcing ground for debaters and politicians. Donald Dewar, John Smith, Charles Kennedy. Min Campbell, they all came from there and many others too. There was a kind of Carved up there though, the Federation of Conservative Students, which in these days was the fast track to being the next Conservative Party. When I was elected, I mean from a very non-traditional background, I was elected... Chairman and they said to me, Well, you have to come down to London now, which for me was just a dream come true.

I was in 24-year-old Queen Street, within the sound of Big Ben, at the heart of Westminster, as this young boy from Paisley and Glasgow University, briefing MPs, writing speeches for the then Prime Minister. You had to wake up in the morning and prick yourself to make sure that it wasn't all a dream. I mean writing speeches for Ted Heath it would have been at that point. Let me tell you that wasn't easy. I mean you wanted to grab the speech from him and say no this is how you deliver it. Can you remember any of your great lines? No there were no great lines and if there were he would have mangled them. But the more I was there doing it, the more I realised that the political life was not for me, at least not in my early 20s, I thought it would be crazy to go into politics right away. What do I know about the world? I should go and see the world, first of all.

But the moment I saw the world I realized I didn't want to be in politics. I wanted still to be involved in politics and to be writing about it and to be part of the debate. But I didn't in the end want to be a politician myself. What's your next record? It's Elgar. I think it's fitting. I've just moved the spectator into a house in 22 Oak Queen Street. So you see, I started my working life in 24. So in 35 years, I've gone down two blocks. You've come a long way. Or maybe not so far. I think you should be an inspiration to people. Used to go there after his performances. It was a great benefactor of their own 22, Queen Street, and they had big parties. The kind of sounds of Elgar permade through, I think is very fitting for the spectator. I come from Scotland. But at heart I regard myself as British, and I'm proud to be British, and I see no conflict between being proud to be Scottish and proud to be British. At least something you have in common with Gordon Brown then.

Though some of us have always felt that way. So I've chosen Nimrod, which I think is quintessentially British.

*Music* From Elgar's Enigma Variations performed by the Montreal Symphony Orchestra conducted by Charles Dutroix. You moved on to... To work in America, you were in fact sent by The Economist. Yes I was, I joined The Economist in 1973. I was hired by Alistair Burnett who was then the editor, the great broadcaster and great editor. And Alistair really became my mentor and still is my mentor. But I did the winter of discontent, which was a miserable time in this country. I remember writing my stories by hurricane lamp, having to walk home because the traffic lights didn't work, because of power cuts. Opportunity to then go and be American correspondent in the United States for The Economist. I took it with both hands.

And there was just this sense of unbounded opportunity and of a can-do mentality and that if something is broke, we'll fix it. Yes, I felt liberated and it changed my views as well. What America gave me was a strong view both of the benefits of the free market or of the market economy, but also of the benefits of the free market economy. Also of social liberalism, of the idea that people should be allowed to lead their own lives. And in London in the 1970s I had spent most of my time in a little wine bar in the King's Road called the Nose Wine Bar, which was... Britain's multiracial society before it was a multiracial society. Right from the start, I felt most comfortable in a mixed environment. I hate all male environments and I hate sort of mono-colour environments as well. I like difference and America... Gave me that difference.

We had grown, we learned to work hard and play hard. - What did you like to do in your spare time? - Meet with friends and have a drink and dine and enjoy myself. Most of the friends I've had I've had for years and years. Of course the moment of sea change was Thatcherism. When you returned to Britain, was that a clear ringing voice to you? Did you think this makes sense and this will change Britain? To begin with, I didn't vote for Mrs Thatcher in 1979. When I got back to Britain in 1982, with my experience of the United States, I began to What she was up to. Although she and I had many fallouts, that didn't mean that she Any less that I saw that what she was doing in many areas, not in all but in many areas, had to be done. A lot of people... That I've encountered like the power of being an editor because it does open doors.

Them because they get to sit and have a whiskey with the Prime Minister of the day at midnight when he's tumbling through his thoughts and looks for that Those doors being slammed in your face, it doesn't seem to bother you at all. No, in fact I think it was very healthy. I think journalism becomes... ...interest when we think that we're part of the government. We are not. We're outside them. It is not our job to be cheerleaders for them. And regardless of what we think... I think when we get a story that is factually correct, whether it damages the people you're supporting or not, you have to publish it. The story Queen Dismayed by Uncaring Thatcher. Where the Queen had let it be known she didn't like a lot of the changes that Mrs. Thatcher was introducing. Mrs. Thatcher sent word back that it had taken nine points off her in the opinion polls, the publishing of that story. And the Palace tried to get me removed as editor. By this time, Alistair Burnett was a director of Times Newspapers and he helped to save me.

My old mentor was there when I needed him and having managed to annoy both Dining Street and Buckingham Palace in one week. I then won the award that I'm most proud of, which was the editor least likely ever to get a knighthood. Proved to be true. What's your next piece of music? Well I talked about the United States and... For me the whole sense of promise and of opportunity and of wonder of the United States is summed up.

In the New World Symphony by Dvorak.

Part of Dvorak's New World Symphony performed by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sir George Sholty. Andrew, you have touched on a few of those moments when, as editor of the Sunday Times, life was made very difficult for you. People try to get you out of your job. Let's rewind a little to the day... You were trying to kill me. Well, we'll talk about that. You were only 34. When you were offered the job by Rupert Murdoch, although you had a very good solid career you were by no means a shoo-in. I mean you were a surprise appointment. The opposite of a shoo-in. When I look back at it was a bonkers decision by Rupert Murdoch. Not only had I never edited a national newspaper before, I never worked on a newspaper before. I guess it was...

Murdoch saw something in me that I didn't see in myself. I wasn't sure I could do the job. Indeed, the only anxiety attack. I've ever had in my life was flying back to take up the job. I found it very hard to breathe and I started to hyperventilate and the flight attendant had to come and give me some water. She actually held my hand for part of the journey and it was the apprehension. At the thought of being offered a job that I was by no means sure I could do. But the reason that Rupert Murdoch may have chosen you was indeed because he you could do his bidding you'd be pliable enough to just sit down and say whatever he told you. I think at the time he was given that at these times the Sunday Times was stuck in a kind of 1970s time warp. I think he was just happy with anybody that may produce a paper that marginally resembled the planet he was on. I think getting someone to do his bidding was beyond his wildest dreams. And how did that actually begin? Where were the seeds of that? The seeds of that were partly me.

Urging Murdoch to do it. He didn't want to do it. He didn't think we could do it on our own. And I then said, and it was something that made... I said, well Eddie Shaw has. And Eddie Shaw was the little businessman in Warrington. The north of England, who had taken on the might of the NGA and the London print unions, and he had won. And it was Shah's example that in a way shamed Murdoch into saying, If he can do it, we have to do something. I said in the introduction that you are a man who not only, you know, it's not that you shy away from a challenge, you actively seem to run at a challenge. I did in these days. Not anymore? No, I don't think so. I think I've done the challenges. Did you think when you entered into the fight with the unions over whopping, did you feel we will all...

Win this I know how it's gonna turn out. No I didn't but I felt we had to fight it I felt that the future of my newspaper of the British newspaper industry depended on it. Let's take a break for some music there's a lot more to talk about what's your next record? My next one is is rather more fun than talking It's Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto. Tchaikovsky wrote the Violin Concerto when he was in Italy, His wife and he was with his boyfriend by then he was living the life he wanted to live. I know Beethoven's final movement of the ninth is an ode to joy but this is I regard this as the real ode to joy. This is written with such happiness and verve for life that if I've ever felt unhappy

You can't not but smile. You can't not but smile. You can't not but smile. You can't not but smile.

Nigel Kennedy playing part of the opening of Tchaikovsky's violin concerto in D major with the London Philharmonic conducted by Oko Kamu. So it was Sunday the 26th of January 1986 that the first Sunday Times was printed out of whopping with thousands of pickets around the gates. What was the atmosphere? Well the atmosphere was very threatening. I was surrounded then by two large men who followed me everywhere for the next 13 months and I had a special driver who was trained to reverse at 60 miles an hour as a former French paratrooper. Life became very different. Were there personal threats against you? There were regular personal threats against me and there were times when I thought my life was in danger and there was one night when I saw fear in my bodyguard's eyes. What happened? We thought they were going to break in. We thought that they were actually the fire, and the weight of people we thought the police lines were going to buckle. And we knew if they did that we would be killed.

As simple as that, there would be a mob rampage. But I was genuinely, genuinely in fear of my life. Were there any times during that period then when you thought actually it's not worth it? I know I'm right, but it's not worth it. No, but there were times when I felt it was very grueling. The strike was going on and on and on. I couldn't move anywhere. We had to go to work by a different route every morning. When I came home at night, I had to sit in a car half a mile away while my house was searched in case anybody was with me. Inside it but that's the way it was. And give us a flavour of the stuff that went on because now although it's a relatively short time we've come a very long way I mean you had people signing on as Mickey Mouse or Margaret Thatcher to collect paychecks for jobs that didn't exist. I employed Mickey Mouse, Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, we employed about 300 people on a Saturday night but only 50 or 60 ever turned up to do any work. The print room was like a bizarre you could buy

Fridges, microwaves, anoraks, whatever you wanted. It was a white East End male monopoly. The other side of a strike of course is that the people... Who bring home the bacon don't bring it home anymore and that families do suffer terrible hardship. Did you ever spare a thought for those people? Yes I did spare a thought. From. But it would be hypocritical for me to say that I felt really sorry for them because I didn't. They had taken the decision and had to live with the consequences of it. They And when we eventually went, we didn't go offering starvation wages and a non-unionised labour force. Our labour force was unionised and we paid the highest Wages and the land. Ultimately is a protest against their conditions. They don't have much to negotiate with. But that's not true. All we wanted were legally binding... Agreements which during the duration of that legally binding agreement, say you

a two-year period for the which the agreement covered you could not go on strike and if there They went to compulsory independent arbitration, which was binding on management and the workforce. Of course it was code on your... Agreement because that looked like it was some withdrawal of human rights. It was never. It's exactly the... Arrangements that are in place in every major company in America and Australia. Was there a... Point, or rather, what was the point at which you knew, we've won, we've done it? Because they hadn't stopped us getting the pitch. Was out. I mean this was an army that had never been defeated and in the end they knew they had lost and in the end we paid them to go away. What's your seventh piece of music? If you come from my generation and have a love of music, then the Beatles were somewhere in it.

This second side of Abbey Road, I think, is one of the greatest pieces of popular music that's ever been put together on an album. And this is where it reaches a climax with golden slumbers and carry that weight. *music* And golden slumbers and carry that weight. Your career has been incredible, Andrew Neil, we've touched on only some of the things that have happened throughout it and yet there continues to be...

From certain people in the press and in certain areas of the press in particular, a sort of sneery attitude towards you. They try to send you up as a bit of a joke. What do you think motivates them? I'm not quite sure and I think there is a kind of, there's a nastiness, a bitchiness, but I use that across genders, that word, in our journalism. Been that kind of target. And you know, as I said, if you put your head above the parapet, every now and then it is going to be shot off. And I've done... Stories and taking positions that have annoyed the left, have annoyed the right. I have no tribe of my own. It's just me. You see, I think you've nailed it there saying you have no tribe. You're not an old Etonian. You're not ex-Oxbridge. You're just a boy from a normal background who did incredibly well, and it rubs a lot of people up the wrong way. Quite considerably.

If it does, it's depressing. All I would say to those who do feel annoyed that someone like me can get on, and actually I don't think there's that many, they just happen to have access to pens and time practice, they should relax because it's much tougher for people from my background now. The meritocratic revolution has come to an end, sadly, and those who think that they have the right to certain jobs, Well... They should relax because they're going to get them again. - What about the playboy thing as well? I hinted at that, that you are known for turning up at all the right parties with... Young ladies, sometimes more than one, on your arm. Well I always think there's safety in numbers. Oh come on. That doesn't do you any favors though, does it? Well, it depends what you want to make of it. I mean, what's the issue?

I mean, what's wrong with it? Well, the issue I suppose, I don't have any personal issue with it. I wasn't asking you that, it was a rhetorical question. In terms of the way you are characterised in the press, the issue could be that he likes to think that we take him terribly seriously. Seriously and that he's terribly well educated and he associates with statesmen and politicians at a high level but really, you know, he just likes a bit of skirt and a few drinks. If you do what I do then and people want to put you down then that's what they can say Sometimes it may just be a little bit of jealousy coming into the coffee. You've allowed work to define your life and it has been a very rich working life. You've never been married and you don't have children, is that ever a regret? Yes, I think it is a regret that I wouldn't count it out. There have been times when I've come close to getting married and there have been times when I have been in love. That's just the way the car is.

Have fallen and I wouldn't without getting married at all and I'm very fond of children as all my friends will tell you. Children and me get on very well together. I'm very fond of Joan so in a way I regret what's happened what I don't regret is getting married Married, having a family and then getting divorced. I kind of think when I look at the dysfunctional families around today... And the social problems that is causing, I think if that's the way it's going to go, it's better to be single and not do any damage. What's your final record? Uh, my final record is The Pitcher. Boys. For me the petrol boys were to the 80s what the Beatles were to the 60s and I've chosen being boring because it's kind of about how you never thought you would be what you ended up being. But above all...

It says that whatever happened, good, bad, mistakes, failures, triumph successes, we were never boring. And for me, life has never been boring. Been boring. The Pet Shop Boys. And being boring. So of course we give you the Bible, we give you the complete works of Shakespeare. What book would you like to take? I thought long and hard about this. I think it would have to be Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations. when you have both... Thatcher and Gordon Brown claiming to be the child of Adam Smith, then I kind of feel you've

Influential book across the political spectrum. And what about your luxury? I couldn't bear to be cut off. That would be the worst thing, you know. So I would love, even if it was just a wind-up one that you can now get, I'd love a radio that could get me either the BBC... The world service or radio 4. We'll give you that then, the wind-up radio. And if the waves were to crash to the shore... Threaten to wash away your discs which one would you try to save? That's also, I'd probably just... Cry. I think it would have to be Tchaikovsky because listening to this would cheer me up in this desert island. - Roger Neil, thank you very much for letting us hear your Desert Island Discs. - Thank you. Thank you.

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