With books, TV shows and multiple related products in her portfolio, mary berry is one of the country’s most trusted voices when it comes to culinary opinions.
The icon has written over 70 cookbooks, presented the Great British Bake Off and has established her empire across generations of brits, from chef hopefuls to everyday people on dinner duty.
However, it was during her 2012 participation in the long-running BBC Radio Four programme Desert Island Discs – in which guests pick eight songs they would take with them if they ended up stranded in a desert island – that she showed audiences she can be trusted with her musical opinions, too.
Then, she chose Rod Stewart’s ‘Sailing’ as her favourite of all time. The song, part of his 1975 album Atlantic Crossing, and it is a newer version of the Sutherland Brothers original 1972 track – which has a “celtic feel to it”, according to its composers.
Stewart’s cover, though, brings his signature rock undertones to it, and was done with the original authors’ blessing.
“It was something that the boys when they were back from school they would have it on full blast upstairs”, said Mary Berry about her choice.
She went on to reference her son, who passed away after a car crash in 1989: “And when [my son] Will’s funeral came, not only did we have onwards Christian soldiers but we finished with ‘Sailing’ to remember him”.
The song seems to hold special significance, since its writer Gavin Sutherland uncovered its spiritually deep meaning in a 1975 interview with the Scottish Daily Express: “The amusing thing about ‘Sailing’ is that most people take the song to be about a young guy telling his girl that he’s crossing the Atlantic to be with her”.
“In fact, the song’s got nothing to do with romance or ships; it’s an account of mankind’s spiritual odyssey through life on his way to freedom and fulfillment with the Supreme Being.”
As well as ‘Sailing’, Mary chose to take pop tunes like ‘Mamma Mia’ by ABBA, Cliff Richard & The Shadows’ ‘Summer Holiday’, Gracie Fields’ ‘Wish Me Luck (As You Wave Me Goodbye’ and Susan Boyle’s ‘How Great Thou Art’ with her to the hypothetical desert island.
She would also play Antonio Vivaldi’s ‘Spring (Allegro)’, Salvation Army New York Staff Band’s ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’ and Sydney Carter’s ‘Lord of the Dance’.