The desert island discs
of David Betts
Learn my story through my eight favourite tracks, book and luxury item!
Hi, we're Andrew and Emily Betts, and this website is about our Dad.
David Betts was born in 1949 in Finedon, Northamptonshire. He grew up in Raunds, and moved to London to study for one of the UK's first Computer Science degrees at City University.
This site explores Dad's life, career, hobbies and interests through his choices of desert island discs.
The family didn't have a lot of money but had a good life. He visited his Grampy, on the other side of the town, every Sunday. Grampy was always doing the crossword in the News of the World, and gave him a threepenny bit (1.25p in decimal money, 30p in 2020 with inflation). This bought 12 farthing chews, and was Dad's main source of income at age 10.
There was no pop music on the radio locally but you could listen to Radio Luxembourg - on shortwave, so sometimes hard to tune into - but it was visits to the local funfair that sparked a musical epiphany. The funfair would play Cathy's Clown, by the Everly Brothers.
You could apply to up to six universities. In 1967 there were only six teaching computer science, so Dad applied to all of them. He got into City University in London.
He had seen the bright lights and fancy escalators as a kid, but it was a different story to get on a bus and move to the city. Arriving at Kings Cross, he walked to Moorgate, not knowing how to use the tube (to be fair, it's not very far!).
A grant covered the cost of rent, and living was pretty cheap. He even managed to buy a car for £38 (£700 in 2020).
City were good at organising cultural programmes. Dad recalls seeing The Who perform there, but has especially fond memories of a concert by the Moody Blues at Sadlers Wells. It was a unique sound. "They had been known as the Moody Blues for a while but Justin Hayward had just come in as lead singer, and they added the Mellotron".
The job was interesting. Ministry of Defence contracts included work on RAF stations, and required signing the Official Secrets Act.
One day, required to go to Liverpool for a meeting with the salary department, Dad found himself on a plane for the first time. After a gloriously sunny day in Liverpool, the return flight couldn't land in London due to thick fog, so this otherwise high-class day ended on a charter bus crawling its way into London at 1am.
The Beatles had landed in a very big way, and Dad was no exception to the phenomenon. 50 years on, he is sad he never got to see them live, but at the time you wouldn't have heard them for all the screaming anyway.
Years later when Emily took Dad along to a Liverpool University open day, it turned out to be a shameless plug for Beatles connections.
He might not have been well prepared for Kubrick's ultra-violence, but it did at least introduce him to a new kind of music. Beethoven, Rossini and Elgar all feature strongly in the soundtrack and started a love of classical music.
Today Dad's favourite classical piece is Jupiter from The Planets by Holst.
Andrew would later study Computer Science at Brunel University, whose buildings provide several of the most iconic sets in the film.
Dad lived in a house share in Hemel Hempstead. A work-life balance was pretty easy to maintain in the pre-cellphone era, and parties started to fill his spare time. At one house party Dad recalls the moment he first heard Tubular Bells:
I found it amazing. The record player was downstairs and I was upstairs, there were so many people there it spilled over into all of the rooms. I remember sitting on the floor in one of the bedrooms and the sound from the music downstairs was reverberating and it almost made the floor move. So I thought this piece of music was mesmerising.
He describes the work being hard but they took time to enjoy themselves, including going to the pub every Friday lunchtime.
One lunchtime, Dad discovered an album in the local shops - called Gorilla by the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band. He thought it was really fun and raved to colleagues about it, finding that a lot - well, some - of the guys in his team loved it too. He says it used to make him smile and they were often quoting bits from the album. Some of songs were quite short, and pastiches on famous songs but one particular song he liked the best out of the whole album was called Mickey’s Son and Daughter.
Mum had recently bought her first home, in Twickenham, and had two lodgers, while Dad was still in Enfield.
They went to the Mermaid Theatre in London. It was a successful date as it led to a string of dinners and parties.
At one party in the summer Mum and Dad danced outside to American Pie by Don McLean.
When Mum next came to dinner she brought a copy of the album.
The chore of commuting across London to see each other quickly got tiresome, and Dad resigned from STL to get a job closer to Twickenham. They moved in together and got married in 1976.
He realised retirement offered an opportunity to indulge his love of music. He had never learned an instrument (Andrew and Emily were both encouraged to learn - and chose the piano and violin respectively, but neither of us kept it up), but he had a good singing voice.
Dad first joined Strawberry Hill House choir and later another choir at Princess Alice Hospice in Esher. In 2019 the two choirs teamed up for a performance at the Cadogan Hall in Sloane Square, singing a series of musical theatre songs from Phantom and Les Miserables. As a tenor, Dad featured heavily in the choir's rendition of Bring Him Home from Les Misérables.
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
Dad first discovered Catch-22 in the 70s, and describes it as "fascinating and quirky", with amazing characters. One of those books you have to keep returning to and re-reading.
An unlimited supply of Fray Bentos steak and kidney pie.
Dad describes himself as 'very fond of food', so it may seem surprising that he would choose a lifetime's supply of a well known but much maligned (rightly in our view) brand of tinned steak and kidney pie. He even wanted a tin opener, which feels like stretching the rules, and we're fairly sure there's no oven but perhaps a campfire is just the ticket for a Fray Bentos pie.
About this site
David's son and daughter put this project together to celebrate his 71st birthday. Words and music selections by David Betts, interview and recording by Emily, layout and design by Andrew, with special thanks to Lucy K for editing.