Arnold Zwicky's Blog

The Wayno/Piraro Bizarro of 10/19, with yet another variant of the Desert Island cartoon meme:

(#1) (If you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 5 in this strip — see this Page.)

The allusion is (ultimately) to the BBC 4 radio program(me) Desert Island Discs.

On Desert Island Discs, from Wikipedia:

(#2) Illustration from the Daily Mirror site, “70 years of Desert Island Discs – what did George Clooney, Elton John and others choose?” by Steve Myall on 1/28/12

Desert Island Discs is a radio programme broadcast on BBC Radio 4. It was first broadcast on the BBC Forces Programme on 29 January 1942.

Each week a guest, called a ‘castaway’ during the programme, is asked to choose eight recordings (usually, but not always, music), a book and a luxury item that they would take if they were to be cast away on a desert island, whilst discussing their lives and the reasons for their choices. It was devised and originally presented by Roy Plomley. Since 2018 the programme has been presented by Lauren Laverne.

More than 3,000 episodes have been recorded

… Guests are invited to imagine themselves cast away on a desert island, and choose eight recordings, originally gramophone records, to take with them; discussion of their choices permits a review of their life. Excerpts from their choices are played or, in the case of short pieces, the whole work. At the end of the programme they choose the one piece they regard most highly. Guests are also automatically given the Complete Works of Shakespeare and either the Bible or another appropriate religious or philosophical work. They are then prompted to select a third book to accompany them. Popular choices include Charles Dickens and Jane Austen. Actress Judi Dench, who has macular degeneration, was permitted to take an audiobook in place of a printed manuscript.

Guests also choose one luxury, which must be inanimate and of no use in escaping the island or allowing communication from outside. Roy Plomley enforced these rules strictly. He did, however, grant a special dispensation to Princess Michael of Kent, who chose her pet cat. The rules are, however, less strictly enforced today; for instance, Lawley allowed John Cleese to take Michael Palin with him, on the condition that he was dead and stuffed. Examples of luxuries have included champagne and a piano, the latter of which is one of the most requested luxuries.

This entry was posted on October 20, 2020 at 1:31 pm and is filed under Comic conventions, Linguistics in the comics, Movies and tv. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.