Desert Island Discs: To Be Young, Gifted and Black

Young, Gifted and Black - Aretha Franklin (1972)

Stories and selections

Listening through the back catalogue of Desert Island Discs on the BBC Sounds app has been a journey into enlightenment and recognition. Whether the stories told or the selections of music chosen by the guests, not only do you learn something about them, but you might also come away with insight and inspiration.

It was not until I was listening to the episode where Yvonne Brewster was a guest in 2005 that I began taking notes. I felt I should do a once-over of everything else I had listened to, but I did not have the presence of mind to do so.

This was before I went back to the beginning of the existing recordings, of which many have been lost or barely rescued in the first 25 years of broadcasting the programme.

It is a shame that no one at the BBC of that time thought this cachet of guests and interviews, many speaking with a received pronunciation accent harking back to a bygone age, should be recorded and preserved.

Pioneering, gifted and black

Yvonne Brewster was a pioneer as the UK’s first Black woman drama student; born to an upper-middle-class Jamaican family, she came to England to attend drama school at the Rose Bruford College where the proprietress thought she would unlikely find dramatic work in Britain, only for her to go on to achieve a distinction in drama and mime at the Royal Academy of Music.

Her achievement is exemplified in the third track she chose, To Be Young, Gifted and Black, which was recorded by Nina Simone in 1969. I was more familiar with the cover version by the Jamaican duo Bob and Marcia, however, the version recorded by Aretha Franklin won her a Grammy. [Wikipedia: Young, Gifted and Black]

While I knew of the music, I was not as familiar with the lyrics until I heard it clearly, a few weeks ago. From the 1950s onwards, we began to see such amazing talent and achievements from the global Black community, even as the civil rights movement took hold, and many African nations pursued the goal of independence from colonial rule.

We must remind ourselves

Blacks became known beyond the field of entertainment to academia, science, engineering, business, and politics. This was both a shock and a surprise to many Caucasians who thought otherwise.

I recall that my father’s white colleagues in the late 1960s sought to be derisive of his becoming a chartered accountant, having excellently passed his exams and had come third overall in England and Wales, along with winning the Foulks Lynch Prize. They sneeringly said they didn’t think he was that brilliant.

Yet, against all odds, we have striven, risen and shone, but that fact still needs to be instilled in us and our children, at every turn, it needs to get well beyond James Brown’s Say It Loud – I'm Black and I'm Proud, to the point that we know without a doubt from within ourselves, what it is To Be Young, Gifted and Black.

That is who we are, and too many times, we forget that we each have to be reminded, “Your soul's intact, And that's a fact!” No matter what age in life, this is our truth, one to live by and live out.

To Be Young, Gifted and Black

Young, gifted and black
Oh what a lovely precious dream
To be young, gifted and black
Open your heart to what I mean

In the whole world you know
There's a million boys and girls
Who are young, gifted and black
And that's a fact!

You are young, gifted and black
We must begin to tell our young
There's a world waiting for you
Yours is the quest that's just begun

When you feel really low
Yeah, there's a great truth that you should know
When you're young, gifted and black
Your soul's intact

To be young, gifted and black
Oh, how I've longed to know the truth
There are times when I look back
And I am haunted by my youth

Oh but my joy of today
Is that we can all be proud to say
To be young, gifted and black
Is where it's at

Is where it's at
Is where it's at

Songwriters: Nina Simone / Weldon Irvine – Source: Musixmatch

YouTube: Nina Simone - To Be Young, Gifted and Black (Audio)

YouTube: Bob & Marcia Young, Gifted & Black (Official Audio)

The Supreme Court judgement on WOMAN

An impassable terrain

The issue of access to women’s intimate spaces and the participation of natal males who have identified as female by gender reassignment in sport has been a controversial and sometimes impossible issue to discuss.

There are activists in what had become gender wars who had taken such implacably entrenched positions on either side of the debate, making those who even had the simplest, most innocent, or possibly naive questions feel silenced, for fear of being labelled phobic, exclusionary, bigoted or even worse.

Any opinion that appeared to go against the grain of the most liberal view of inclusion was an invitation to censure, ostracism, punishment, loss of status or livelihood, persecution, prosecution, and even death threats. I dare say, to the silent and quite likely reasonable majority, it was like the world had gone mad.

What is sex?

I awaited with anticipation and trepidation the judgement of The Supreme Court in the UK, framed in the context of what the protected characteristic of sex in the Equality Act 2010 explicitly referred to, was it biological sex alone or did it include certificated sex?

The section, as per what the Act refers to as sex, is Chapter 1, Section 11 shown below:

Sex

In relation to the protected characteristic of sex—

(a) a reference to a person who has a particular protected characteristic is a reference to a man or to a woman;

(b) a reference to persons who share a protected characteristic is a reference to persons of the same sex.

The Supreme Court in its 88-page judgement with 268 paragraphs exhaustively reviewed historical and superseded acts and laws that fed into the Equality Act 2010 and concluded that the definition of man and woman given in the Sex Discrimination Act 1975 had not been changed in either the Gender Recognition Act 2004 or the succeeding Equality Act 2010. [The Supreme Court – Judgement - For Women Scotland Ltd (Appellant) v The Scottish Ministers (Respondent)] PDF

In Part 1, Section 5, Subsection 2, the Sex Discrimination Act 1975 declares.

(2) In this Act—

" woman " includes a female of any age, and

" man " includes a male of any age.

There should be no doubt in anyone’s mind that in 1975, woman and man referred to biological sex. Every assertion and consequent interpretation derives full context from here.

An appeal to predictability

The Supreme Court was at pains to stress a particular point in Paragraph 12:

Lord Nicholls’ important constitutional insight in Spath Holme, that citizens with the help of their advisers should be able to understand statutes, points towards an interpretation that is clear and predictable.

In other words, there is a need for consistent, clear, and predictable interpretation of words, contexts, meanings, and intention, when citizens read statutes as promulgated by parliament.

That means, if a woman or a man had not been explicitly redefined in a subsequent Act, the precedent definition remains.

Another crucial point made is that the protected characteristic of Gender Reassignment remains valid by force of law in the Equality Act 2010, none of the rights of those persons who have undergone, are undergoing, or are in the process to undergo gender reassignment are impugned, they are protected against discrimination, victimisation, or harassment, as a matter of course.

The difficult question

However, the practical consequences of this situation and judgement will definitely leave people with certain protected characteristics who have had access to spaces of their acquired gender identity in a kind of limbo, possibly requiring a third space.

I would think, this is a matter for The Equality and Human Rights Commission to address, in terms of the changes to rules, regulations, notices, texts, and policies, along with the kinds of accommodations and exceptions that will continue to safeguard the protected characteristics of those whose biological sex has by gender reassignment acquired a certificated sex.

Knowledge is power

It is incumbent on every activist and advocate to study The Supreme Court judgement to appreciate the rationale behind their summation and conclusion.

At the very least, read Section 22, Summary of our reasoning, which contains Paragraph 265 on Pages 84 to 86; the attendant paragraphs informing their reasoning are suffixes to the respective subsections.

While I am not a lawyer and obviously not as emotionally invested in this situation, my reading of the judgement is that it is sound, based on unimpeachable legal precedent, and argued with due consideration of all parties involved, that they have stated, it is not a victory for either side.

It provides clarity that would roll back some unfortunate and extrapolated interpretations of the law that have both advantaged and disadvantaged certain groups with common characteristics; that would always be the result of a petition for interpretation made to the highest court of the land.

The fight for exclusive and/or inclusive places for protected characteristics as per the Equality Act 2010 must advance beyond protest to provision. I also do not believe the slippery slope argument is relevant to this case.

References

The Supreme Court – Judgement - For Women Scotland Ltd (Appellant) v The Scottish Ministers (Respondent) [PDF]

BBC News: Five key takeaways from Supreme Court ruling

Observer Editorial: The Observer view on Equality Act ruling: A dignified compromise that respects the rights of everyone

Desert Island Discs: Connecting stories

Their Interesting Stories 

I began this blog days ago after weeks of wondering how to approach the subject. Over time, it dawned on me that what I had to say might not fit into just one blog; there were simply too many interesting things to discuss before the blog began to resemble a soporific treatise. 

How people have lived their lives and how they have impacted others or humanity always fascinates me. Friday evenings represent a time to reflect on the lives of the recently departed when, on BBC Radio 4, I play back the latest episode of Last Word. 

This is a weekly obituary programme that highlights the life stories of four people, along with notable mentions of two or three others. After an introduction, people shed light on the lives of these personalities, eliciting interesting facts about who they were, what they did, and the significance of their existence among us. 

Music for Solitude 

A couple of months ago, during one broadcast, a rather unfamiliar but interesting name came up. I cannot remember which name it was, but upon searching for it, the first result was their appearance on another BBC Radio 4 programme, Desert Island Discs. 

Desert Island Discs was first broadcast in January 1942. A guest is invited to imagine being a castaway on a desert island like Robinson Crusoe but with the provision of eight chosen audio recordings, the complete works of Shakespeare, and a religious book of their choice. 

This programme follows an interview format interspersed with the guest's chosen music or audio recordings. It can be quite intrusive, and the light banter allows for probing and interesting questions. Even the choices may hold intriguing stories about the person’s life. At the end, guests are asked to choose just one of the eight audio recordings to take with them, along with a luxury item, a tradition that has been in place since the late 1950s. 

Over 3,400 episodes have been recorded, but some are lost. Others can be recovered or contain fragments from episodes previously thought to be lost, sometimes as brief as two minutes, while typical episodes run around 40 minutes. 

An Event of Propinquity 

I recently started playing back the episodes from the very beginning of those that could be found, and what an experience it has been; it is like a history of popular culture told from the perspective of individuals, many of whom, including some of the earlier hosts of the show, have passed on. 

I plan to cover this in subsequent blogs, but I was inspired to complete this blog because I am now in the middle of 1971. Earlier this morning, I heard the Desert Island Discs episode featuring Clodagh Rodgers, only to log on to the BBC News website to learn that she had just passed on. [BBC News: Eurovision singer Clodagh Rodgers dies aged 78] 

It is quite remarkable how the various ideas, events, and individuals that shape history can have a significant impact, create memorable moments, or become notorious. These elements weave together to form a fabric of the human narrative that deserves greater appreciation for its instructional value or as cautionary tales. 

I have begun to take detailed notes and establish connections between different observations, sounds, and memories. These reflections may be incorporated into future blog posts.

And so he blogs daily

Without much conniption

It can be so easy to rest on one’s laurels, then, maybe having a rest to reassess what new laurels to pursue is a good thing too. However, it was gratifying this weekend to read an interaction with a published author and a great social media following that my blogging had inspired him to blog daily.

What a lament that caused me, even as I appreciated that the little I do inspires others. Writing daily can be a goal, and it is not the absence of things to write about that is the problem. When it comes to blogs, there is enough muscle memory to start and go without the encumbrance of writer’s block; the problem is more one of lethargy.

Creativity is sacrosanct

Beyond lethargy, you wonder if it is worthwhile just banging out anything. The advent of Generative AI provides such an opportunity to manufacture offal without attendant rumination or thought, but God forfend I resign my creativity to the cutting floor of prompt engineering. I have other uses of Generative AI; it won’t be for my blogs.

One key detail in my interlocutor’s comment was that he wrote a blog daily, regardless of the length of the blog. I know a few people who if they stop overthinking their copy and simply proofread the blogs in draft, they might rise to publishing at least once a month rather than every five or so months. I’ll be circumspect and not mention names.

It speaks for itself

I do wish I could blog daily, and I have done before. What saddens me is the many who blogged over a decade ago that have abandoned this theatre of sharing ideas for all sorts of reasons. The Internet rarely forgets as you stumble over crumbling tombstones of their once commendable activities.

The way social media works, you are either doing it because you enjoy it for your own leisure, or you are farming engagement to eventually gain some pecuniary benefit. I enjoy this stuff, and what would not happen is an upstart magazine inviting me to write for them and then sending me a style guide to conform to their way of thinking. I try not to take it as an insult.

I do it my way

On my blog, I have my own space, set my own rules, and after sampling a few of my blogs in all that time, it is impossible to gauge how I write, it is unlikely you will like my style, and we shouldn't waste each other’s time. Thank you.

Then one final note of gratitude to my readers and those that have been inspired in a small or large way by what I do.

Thought Picnic: Big Brother contributing to the decline in human civilisation

An appeal to the savage

If reality television had an audience like me, that genre of entertainment would have long since died out like the dodo, never to be revived again, except for a retrospective on one of the darkest ages of humanity, where the surfeit of education and enlightenment, along with significant technological innovation, has made our behaviour resemble that of wild animals driven by nothing but survival instinct.

Readers of my blog are likely aware that I am hardly a fan of these unscripted interactions that caricature the worst of a few for the spectacle of the many. I have allowed myself the occasional glimpse into talent shows, experiencing some surprise or shock, especially from the unexpected gems that can bring tears of sadness or joy.

Our escape is not enviable

Everything I observe is usually through snippets and playback on YouTube, because something has crept into my social media feed, or it has been granted more importance in the news than is ever necessary, considering everything else happening in the world. Yet, these are seen as an escape or distraction, and somehow these fleeting shots of the dehumanisation of our civilisation have become hot topics of public engagement.

By now, you may have realised that one aspect of this reality television series encompasses every variation of the Big Brother shows, whether featuring celebrities or everyday people. At times, one might think that the money paid to celebrities to subject themselves to scrutiny, or the prize offered to public participants, lures them into this macabre theatre where humans are caged for titillation and entertainment. It is popular culture, sadly.

There is more to this—a quest for a spectrum of notoriety, alongside the cohesion or dispersal of virtue, expressed in word, deed, contest, chicanery, or some other unwholesome thing. People have gone on to forge careers from either fame or infamy displayed in these settings.

This theatre of the worst

In my view, Big Brother represents the absolute worst of everything; the house is, in fact, a cage. The 24-hour camera focuses on everyone, with edited versions of the sensational and controversial being spewed from a broadcast drainpipe, reeking of sickening human waste on our televisions.

It contains every element of an animal zoo, where curiosities taken from their natural habitat are brought to a location for our fascination. I have long since eschewed visiting zoological gardens or sea life centres that are nowhere near the sea.

I see in Big Brother a schemed setup that gathers many people with issues and problems better kept from view—opinions that should barely be invited into thought, fragile egos, those too easily offended, and others with rather forthright views considered too confrontational for the baseline of the insipid inclusivity that defies essential common sense.

Imagine placing a chicken, a fox, a cat, a mouse, a crocodile, a venomous snake, a mongoose, a lion, a deer, an elephant, a horse, and a hyena in the same cage and observing what occurs. Like prey and predator, the vulnerable and the inviolable, the aggressive and the docile, the fearful and the bold—every characteristic on display, all while the intervention against nature punishes each animal for acting out its known role.

Utterly thin-skinned lionhearts

Everyone knows that Big Brother does not present a paradise of easy coexistence, and this is where it gains its gawping audience, peering through the cages to observe examples of themselves portrayed by others. It is utterly, utterly loathsome, but then, each to their own.

The current Celebrity Big Brother, which features a range of forgettable has-beens, has invaded my timeline, leaving me to wonder how people fall apart at simple criticism of their abilities. The truth cannot be told about too many individuals who, due to their lack of communication and basic social skills, take offense at a look or a comment. The total absence of nuance or irony in a situation that participants have willingly subscribed to shows how ill-prepared they are for the kind of life many of us face.

Is that all he said? Or is that what they did? Then, there are many more questions along that line of thinking within the context of feigned political correctness, orchestrated niceness, and playing to the gallery.

Big Brother is both a reflection of a microcosm of the basest instincts of its participants and, for those of us engaged, either explicitly or by scant observation, we have become so civilised that we have lost all means of understanding what the advancement of civilisation truly means. Our brains are better stimulated by this tragedy of the jungle in a zoo of humans.

One is hardly sleeping enough

Another remedy to try

A hot bath with Epsom salts and English mustard comes from the yet unwritten book of Brian' s remedies. He has similar ideas that I have sniffed at which might even work, but I am always a sceptic first until persuaded.

Beyond that, he has recommended chamomile tea; his advice is an earworm. However, when I think of chamomile, I think of a lotion, and the last time I applied it to soothe my skin was during an episode of shingles in June 2009.

Obviously, I need to find something to deal with insomnia; in fact, sleep seems to arrive at any time rather than at designated times for that activity. I use my weekends to catch up on all the sleep I could not get during the week.

Keeping awake doing

While I do not feel the same level of fatigue I had during and for the few months after radiotherapy, there is still a lot of tiredness that hits you in the middle of the day, no matter how much you try to stimulate yourself. With the lack of caffeine, you just depend on nature to stay alert and focused.

Then, in my waking hours deep into the witching hour, I cannot idle about; I just completed five difficult Sudoku puzzles, as if that would tire out my brain. Besides, nocturia is an issue too; whenever I get some sleep, I wake up to pass water, usually four times during the night. I have hit the litre mark a few times this week, and I do not drink as much water as Brian insists I should.

It will get better

I have made a few adjustments, like taking my pills earlier and resisting the urge to drink late into the evening, but I sometimes have a dry mouth, for which swilling cranberry juice might be too great a luxury if you do not swallow after you taste it. I used to drink sparkling water, but I stopped because fizzy drinks do not help urinary function after radiotherapy.

I hate still water, yet I find myself having a glass or two, but never as much as necessary. What I have avoided all along is medically induced sleep; however, the insomnia is a long- term side effect of radiotherapy. I know sleep will eventually come, but I must find ways to prevent this from ruining a productive day.

Men's things - XXIII

Ignoring the specifics

I was looking forward to my hospital appointment set for Friday, the 4^th of April 2025, though I seemed to have a different level of expectations, for my last visit to The Christie Hospital was the 9^th of October 2024, when I took my last session of hypofractionated radiotherapy to the prostate gland.

In my euphoria about what the visit might entail, I was already announcing to others that it was going to be a conclusive kind of meeting, ignoring the fact that it was a nurse-led urology clinic. Maybe I chose to ignore the details, expecting something that was not on offer.

I was neither consulting with a doctor nor an oncologist; I was meeting with a nurse from urology when every other consultation I had attended from July last year was with a multidisciplinary team with an oncology perspective.

My engagement with urology ended in another hospital after the referral for the multiparametric MRI scan of the prostate gland, which led to an ultrasound-guided transperineal biopsy of the prostate, indicative of cancer, after which I was handed over to The Christie Hospital.

A name mangled

On arrival at the hospital, I was electronically checked in and ushered into the waiting room through a labyrinth of passages in Department 22. This visit was not as daunting as the very first, the place was familiar enough, buzzing with activity and full of medical personnel and the many who required their expertise.

When the nurse called my name, I heard another mangled version of it, a steady reading of the arrangement of vowels and consonants would have garnered applause for a brave attempt, but it was such that I had to mutter to the hearing of others, that name has been murdered again. However, there was no doubt that I was the patient being called to an examination room.

She offered to have another go at my name with my guidance, if she deigned to get much better, I doubt it could be achieved without a major surgical intervention. Even Brian’s attempts at Yoruba words and phrases bring such mirth, for the jollity he presents, we can overlook his incapacity.

Assessing the PSAs

When the urology nurse arrived some 15 minutes later, it became obvious that this was just an assessment meeting, one to determine how I was coping to the symptoms around radiotherapy and to enquire whether I needed additional support medically or mentally, and to answer any questions I might have.

It seemed they had lost the test results for the bloods taken on the eve of commencing radiotherapy when I attended the planning review in late August. She was using the readings presented in March last year, which on the surface suggested a considerable improvement, but I knew that there was a slight change in relation to the blood work done last week.

The Prostate-specific Antigen (PSA) result was slightly elevated but within range and higher than the result in August, but well below that which set us on this journey in March 2024. We agreed to have another meeting in four months rather than another six months, and I left to bask in the sunshine of beautiful South Manchester.

Lest I forget, I had a conversation with the Uber driver about Men’s things. I find that I am also being asked to share my experience; I might have to create slides to explain the intricacies of the prostate and the reasons for having early investigations and interventions on intimate issues.

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