Sunday, October 22, 2006
FISK BULLIED
Miranda Sawyer reviews Robert Fisk’s bizarre Desert Island Discs performance, and regrets that the program’s previous host wasn’t on deck:
I once met Fisk, at a dinner party in Beirut, and his self-satisfaction filled the room like cigar smoke. It quite put you off your food. Sue Lawley, who, you suspect, has a robust ego of her own, would have skewered Fisk’s pomposity with pinpoint precision. She would also have picked up the enormous leads Fisk kept leaving around for Kirsty to trip over: he didn’t visit his dad on his deathbed; he was bullied at school; only one book has ever made him cry. You waited for her to say ‘Why?’, occasionally, but it didn’t happen.
And those records! Barber’s Adagio for Strings, Pachelbel’s Canon, Winston Churchill’s ‘finest hour’ speech, Donovan’s ‘Mellow Yellow’. Rarely have I heard such a romantic, yearning selection, such an obvious attempt to fill a love-shaped hole in the heart, yet Kirsty made no comment.
One weird guy, that Fisk.