Comrade Cameron

BBC Online has just provided a further preview of David Cameron's Desert Island Discs interview (due for broadcast at 11.15am tomorrow morning after the Archers omnibus (Where is Edward by the way?  Poor, poor Clarrie.)).

Mr Cameron tells Sue Lawley that he may have been approached by the KGB whilst he was on a gap year between Eton and university.  This is how the BBC tells the story:

"[David Cameron] met a friend in Moscow and went to Yalta on the Black Sea coast, where two Russians speaking "perfect English" had turned up on a beach mostly used by foreigners.  "They took us out to dinner and interrogated us in a friendly way about life in England and what we thought and politics," he said.  "We were obviously very careful and guarded in what we said but later when I got to university my politics tutor said that was definitely an attempt.""

We already knew about Mr Cameron's liking for Ernie The Fastest Milkman In The West.  Other music choices are:

• Tangled Up In Blue - Bob Dylan
• This Charming Man - The Smiths
• On Wings of Song - Mendelssohn
• Wish You Were Here - Pink Floyd
• Fake Plastic Trees - Radiohead
• Perfect Circle - REM
• All These Things I've Done - The Killers

Mr Cameron also talks about his severely disabled son, Ivan:

"Mr Cameron also spoke of the shock in finding out about his son Ivan's disability.  He said the news hit "almost like mourning the loss of something, because you are mourning the gap between your expectation and what has happened," he said.""

Margaret Thatcher will be delighted with the Tory leader's choice of luxury: a crate of whisky.   If he'd chosen vodka we would have had to start worrying about that KGB contact.

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's River Cottage Cookbook is Mr Cameron's mouth-watering choice of book.  As Amazon.co.uk points out, the book is much more than it seems from the title:

"Although it calls itself a cookbook and does contain a large number of fine recipes, the book's scope is much broader. Really, this is more like one of those "Enquire Within on Everything" volumes 19th-century settlers used to take to the outback with them, full of instructions for mixing whitewash, worming dogs and making a bag pudding. Starting with vegetables, proceeding to livestock and fish (River Cottage does indeed have a river and is only five miles from the sea) and concluding with the wild food, floral and faunal, of the hedgerow, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall explains how he grows, gathers, kills and cooks his own food."

Comments

[JP]

A commie, a pot-head, AND an SAS wannabee! Still, he's the best we've got.

[Daniel Vince-Archer]

"A commie, a pot-head, AND an SAS wannabee! Still, he's the best we've got."

But John Reid is a Labour politician...

[Two Ton Ted from Teddington]

I got Ernie first. Dave is next!

[G-MaN]

Well, at least he didnt choose anything by Pete Burns or Jimmy Somerville.

[Andy Peterkin]

CND = KGB

[John Hustings]

Well, the Mendelssohn piece is rather pretty.

[Chad]

Ya nye ponimayu. Dave govorit po ruskii?

[Jack Stone]

The only thing to say about those comments is that with so called friends like that the Conservative party doesn`t need enemies.

[Always Aamazed]

Could someone please tell Cameron that it's not a good idea to keep using his platform to push the wares of his friends and family (this time it's Eton pal Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall). Someone's going to notice and complain and it will become an embarrassment.

[Editor]

I've just listened to DIDs and was hugely impressed with David Cameron's performance. Every parent in the land would have empathised with him talking about Ivan and he came across as very likeable. There was no policy beef, of course, but this wasn't the forum for it. This was a forum to show the British people that David Cameron has a non-political hinterland. He really succeeded in that.

[Graeme Archer]

He was great wasn't he. Even though his taste in music is awful, at least it was obviously genuine and not focus-grouped to extinction like Blair's and Brown's. Just imagine the contrast with Brown. I can't wait for them to go head-to-head, because Dave doesn't just have a head, he has a heart as well.

[blogga]

Chad,

ya ne znal chto ti govorish po russki? Ti izhuchal russki yazik po universitete?

Not surprised by Cameron having been approached by the KGB in Russia. I studied the language at university and it sounds like a standard Russian year abroad story. It reassures me, since it shows that he has actually been hit at some point by a grittier world(ie something that was not eton, oxford, CCO, Carlton Television) .