Practice English Speaking&Listening with: Harry Reveals His Past: Vocabulary & Extended Listening Practice

welcome back to real English with real teachers we are Harry and Charlie in

case you're confused and on our channel we always like to introduce you to our

favourite British television and radio shows that we think will be interesting

for you and through those we like to give you great listening practice to two

native speakers talking at their natural speed but also introduce you to lots of

useful vocabulary of course yes so this one that we're talking about is called

Desert Island Discs and it's a program on the radio on Radio 4 at the moment

that's been going for years and years it's got thousands of episodes yeah it

does go on for a while so we're gonna shorten it a little bit but the basics

are that someone is going away to a desert island forever and they need to

choose some songs in the actual thing it's eight songs and then you get a

luxury item and a book of your choice so we're going to interview Harry for this

one and see what options he has to whisk him away to the desert island lovely

yeah you ready let's do it yeah and these songs should like define my life

should they they should yeah okay yeah shall I go get ready go get ready yeah

get your appropriate outfit for your desert island is it a hot one very

very nice what do you think

yeah did you go to one more button it's pretty hot keep the button up well

alright so you're off to the desert

island soon yeah let's start with your preferred music okay what what would

your first song be that you would take to this desert island okay so my first song it

was my first ever album that I bought oh right yeah I went to WH Smiths with my

dad good shop yeah is it still running yeah it's still

running yeah yeah it's still going from strength to strength it's gone from strength to

strength yeah my first ever album was the Smurfs go pop and the Smurfs go

pop was an album done by The Smurfs of cover songs of very famous English

and American pop music and this is my first ever album and I really liked the

Smurfs oh right Papa Smurf and Smurfette and

all those guys the blue guys they're kind of make-believe

yeah I thought they were I didn't know they did songs yes mainly cover songs

right they didn't have much original content but they were you know they weren't

actually real so hard for them to create actual music yeah did they go on tour at all

well I took them away with me wherever I

went so you could say they they traveled the globe yeah they travelled boy I took them to

Greece actually we're currently in Greece and as a kid I used to go to

Greece a lot right and I took this album with me on a holiday okay and and this

album was just so PG it was just unbelievable okay

my first my favorite song it was called Mr. Smurftastic

playing on the Mr. Boombastic exactly by Shaggy yeah and it was it was rapped by Papa Smurf

of course yeah they called him Mr. Smurfastic

so that was when you were how old I was six when that came out you were six yeah

okay and what were you like in Greece as a

six year old were you tearing up the town well I was six so not really

I was I was quite I was probably naughty but this song for me kind of marks the

end of my innocence as a child your innocence stopped at six

yeah because after that my next album was an Eminem album and I started

listening to hip hardcore hip hop a lot of swearing you know the Smurfs didn't

contain one swear word okay so it was all really like PG and I was like yeah the Smurfs go pop

right and then I turned a bit bit darker bit ruder and I learnt all the fun stuff Mr. Slim Shady

so you've got a brother and anyone else yeah I got my brother he's

older than me he's called Luke and he's getting married in a week Wow f***in hell yeah he's

getting married in a week and and he's a bit older than me and then I've got my

sister as well and she's not getting married in a week that would be quite

confusing yes and stressful for your parents yeah that would be terrible of her wouldn't it

you would have to choose who do I prefer yeah yeah

it'd be really really not very nice of her to book her wedding on the same day as her brother

yeah that would be the definition of stealing one's Thunder definitely yeah

your brother's the oldest and your sister is the middle child middle child

and then the your the little wee baby I'm the wee babby yeah yeah yeah yeah

did you feel like you were the little child all the way throughout or were you

trying to beat your brother to things and and show who's boss in some

respects I yeah I did feel like the youngest and I probably got away with

the most I was I think I was the naughtiest out of the three right and yeah

I really I remember I really looked up to my brother like literally and

metaphorically but I yeah I was really like wanting to follow his footsteps

yeah I went to the same university as him I did the same sports that he did

oh of course of

course yeah because he came to visit us yeah at Nottingham Trent yeah he did and he had long hair

like a girl he did he did but weirdly I saw the resemblance very very clearly

really yeah what's your next song I think it's time to go on to another one

move away from the Smurfette's hopefully hopefully there's not a second album

that you're gonna mention no no okay so the next one came in it was 2002 right so I

was 12 years old yeah so six years after the Smurfs go pop

was released okay and and this was around the time were I was like discovering

that girls existed ding dong yeah and that ties in really well with what the song

is I remember listening to this sitting by the radiator in my old house

cos that was my favourite place to watch the TV I used to just sit against the radiator

sometimes on it on it sometimes yeah on the radiator apparently that's really bad

for piles that's what they say who's they my mum used to say it to me she said if you sit on there you get piles

wow she's spot on well yeah cos you ended up having to go to the pharmacy a

year ago not now hemorrhoids can happen yeah yeah it's a real thing guys stay

off the radiator yeah okay so you were on the radiator

yeah assisting your piles along yeah and what were you listening to I love you

and I need you baby I love you I do dilemma by Nelly which is on the Nellyville album

and I remember I fancied two girls at the

the same time at school one was good Charlotte Lant and the other one was

called Danielle Rousseau not naming names no we'll cut them out but yeah and I really fancied them

right what did they have to offer other than other girls in your class why were

they so special why were they they were very pretty

Danielle Busan was more of the sporty one is that all you look for

no no no Daniela Rousseau wasn't as

naturally pretty as Charlotte but she was very sporty and boisterous and fun

and I really liked that she was great fun like you treat her like one of the lads

one of the lads love that at that young age yeah of 10, 11

no 12 you said 12 yeah okay so okay she was a bit of a lad at 12 but she

was still you know pretty put together yes sophisticated women she was a

sophisticated teenager yeah she was yes yeah yeah so I felt like I had a dilemma

like Nelly in the song but Nelly's dilemma was different because he had a

girlfriend and another girl moved up onto his block into his neighborhood and

he was like oh no what am I gonna do but my dilemma was very different because I

didn't have any ladies in my life except for my mum and my sister so I was just like ah

what do I do do I tell Charlotte that I like her and get rejected or do I tell

Danielle I like her and get rejected it's so hard you could have helped them

empathize perhaps by sending them the song perhaps and just said look guys or

girls this is my situation hopefully you'll get my reference from this song

yeah and you'll be able to help me out a bit you know send me your pros and cons

via email that would have been good yeah was it email back in those days probably

not probably MSN MSN I don't know if I was on MSN by

then at 12 I was yeah are you yeah yeah you probably had a PC before I did

you still don't have one though I don't no takes him ages to edit a video it does yeah you

try using a Nokia for that so you were listening to Nelly at the age of 12 did you ever put the plaster on

to sort of pretend no I didn't but he looked really cool didn't he very cool he was wicked yeah he apparently

did that because his brother was in prison it was like to remember that his brother's in prison

don't know why a plaster does that yeah well band-aid...

if I fell seriously ill would you wear a plaster on your cheek and

just wear it for videos until I return we could do that yeah that can be arranged

if that's your wish being in the sickbed or your dying wish I think I'd like you to

grow a full beard for I think other people would as well mm-hmm another

person in this room would like that very much yeah you definitely want that

so you had your dilemma with those two pretty girls

they were so pretty oh I'm sure they were and they not now have you followed up no I don't know

actually they probably are pretty yeah I don't know them now yeah I think one of

them's married and the other one has a baby is it yours no we did kiss though well

I've heard that that is another way to fall pregnant but about I want to ask

you a question when um when I was in that stage of you know dating girls in

middle school yeah I remember that we used to all huddle together and there would

be these arranged moments when you would kiss your partner just a peck on the

lips for example yeah I had one snog in middle school that was my best moment that was

in a of like a language classroom after school we arranged it a big with

tongues and everything and they're like yeah come on Harry Harry and I was kissing her

how long did this snog go on for

20 seconds you counted it was like okay they're

gonna snog for 20 seconds oh wow yeah it was mad and no one looked away

because you know when everyone's like excited for the moment and then you

realize oh that's disgusting did they not turn their backs I don't

know I was so engrossed in the kiss I wasn't looking around I was just like

and your eyes were shut how longs left probably yeah yeah that was with Angelina that was year six

Angelina that was amazing that was really nice yeah did you have

that kind of thing when everyone would push you together and you'd have to kiss

we did yeah I actually have a horrible memory of that because I was going out

with this girl who at the time was very attractive and now is still very very

attractive and all of our friends think she's hot okay and we gathered round she

was ready to kiss me no no I was ready to kiss her and then she kind of backed

out and she said I'm really sorry you're too small ahh no!

I was quite small in year 7 yeah so she was like that height and I was like that

height ah so it was kind of like a kiss upwards ahh that's so harsh yeah

had you how long had you been going out before that we actually went out for

a long time for like nine months and we were on the phone every evening for

about an hour just waffling but you can't tell how tall someone is over the

phone yeah we were at school together so we knew we knew each other and we spent

lunch times together and everything but this kiss came after nine months nine

months of courting and then that happened so I think we split up from

that after that I got my not revenge but I got what I wanted let's say cos

the girl in my classroom heard that I was single and she said d'you wanna kiss me d'you wanna kiss me

so I went out with her and had my first snog in a disabled toilet at a party toilet was it a toilet for very

short people well she was even taller than the last girl and I actually we had the light off

and I was doing it with another friend with his girlfriend they were on the

toilet and we were in the other bit of the room you know urgh it's like an orgy it

was a bit of an orgy yeah but we had our clothes on sure and I actually put you know you went on

your tiptoes I went on my tiptoes oh wow but is in the dark so no one saw that's

great yeah anyway back to you this is the interview for you yep so that was the second song Nelly Dilemma

yeah let's go on to your next so now we're going to a song that was released

in 2004 but it continued to be an important song in my life even right up

until now to be honest yeah but especially up until like 2010 and

the years where I started consuming alcohol and going out on the pull or you

know going out to try and meet girls and things like that with my best

mate Sims okay did Smurfette introduce you to women do you think because ever

since that song you've been talking about women interest you should say that

because there are lots of other songs on that album and it's all about y'know find

fine find the Smurfs find the Smurf um where can the Smurf be hiding and

there's some quite loving songs Wondersmurf sounds a bit rapey like Wonderwall Wondersmurf

okay there were a lot of songs that were kind of lovey-dovey and Smurfette

was the kind of subject of those songs she was the sexy Smurf that everyone

wanted to get she was the only Smurfette wasn't she was yeah she was the only one so

she was she played hard to get she certainly did yeah I remember

that yeah okay okay so Papa Smurf bit of paedo really yeah Papa meaning

he's her father right yep ah yeah potentially that's

disgusting yeah or like the Pope of the Smurf world oh okay

still he should be celibate yes yeah he shouldn't be smurfing anybody

so it's an Usher song from the album confessions and the song has got the same name confessions

he cheats on his girlfriend mm-hmm and the girlfriend the person he cheats with

falls pregnant and then that's he's kind of in a dilemma as well really but this

was a song that I used to listen to always with my mate Simo before we'd go out

right the album was amazing it had so many bangers on it and I loved it and

I used to just get very drunk with my friend in my room yeah we used to play the xbox

burnout oh yeah good game and we used to play drinking games to that so if we took the

other person out the other person would have to down their beer and my

parents hated it they hate it cos' we were binge drinking like idiot upstairs

listening to this album shouting being really loud lairy and um drinking way too

much three adjectives for Usha um cool modern I was gonna think smooth ah yeah guess so

cheating yeah disloyal yeah but is it is it real or is he just creating material

for his lyrics I reckon this probably happened in his life I mean not a lot of

writers song writers will write about things that have happened in their

life that's a shame maybe it's something he deeply regrets yeah and he wanted to

sort of confess to her yeah and the kid that's now

gonna grow up with a single mum yeah you know stacking shelves in Lidl

well that's assumptions. That'll be his next album haha the fourth song then I

probably first heard this in my first year well my only year when I was living in

Spain so this is an important song for me because I had worked for a year and a half

in England in a job I hated I'd been traveling came back worked another

job I hated became a teacher and then moved to spain it was my first teachers job

yeah my first proper teaching job okay yeah yeah so your first first

gig out in a foreign country yeah you did have some experience I remember in

Thailand or yeah another country in Asia yeah Cambodia in Cambodia sorry yeah and

you taught some very happy little children yeah some basic English mm-hmm

and that's when you sort of got a glimmer of hope towards a job that you

quite like exactly yes spot on yeah yeah so uh and also is that trip that maybe

think I wanted our language ah yes yes I remember

skyping you from America and you were in Cambodia you picked up a few words and

you were quite excited by it all yeah I was yeah it was amazing yeah I could

have a basic conversation with someone at the market just with just like in

in Cambodian in pidgen Cambodian (Khmer) really yeah we just like no grammer at all

just just words just vocabulary that's still very impressive it was great because you

weren't there for too long I think I've spent like three months there or

something in total so I returned home from that trip yeah and then was kind of

a bit down for a bit boohoo worked in another job that I despised became a

teacher and was asked what was that job roughly about I was a charity fundraiser

charity fundraiser on the phone working with a third party agency that was calling on

behalf of charities I was proper depressed but during that

time every day every morning for about three hours I was

learning Spanish yeah and that takes me onto this song yeah nice very nice so

what's this song so it's a song by Los Panchos which are Mexican bolero group

they sing like kind of what their version of ballads they're kind of

really love lovey-dovey songs right it's like a mariachi band

so three guitarists singing and harmonizing it's really beautiful and

they did a song called algo contigo okay which is something with you umm

something romantic and my Spanish teacher yeah in Spain introduced

me to this song and we learned it and did a listening exercise in a class

so very very romantic oh my god yeh so romantic ok

and musical as well hmm oh yeah yeah it's really beautiful so beautiful I'd

love to be able to like play the guitar like they do yeah but I can't well maybe maybe you

could while you have some time on the desert Island mmm what a bloody good idea OK so

so that's that's your fourth song right but let's just talk about that moment in your life so you said

that you were learning Spanish everyday for a couple of months or maybe more and

then you moved to Spain and did some teaching yeah and what happened in Spain

was a good experience for you it yeah it was a good experience yeah because I

learned what I like and what I don't like about teaching yeah I don't really love

working for an academy where your hours are all over the place yeah I was working some

hours at 8 a.m. in the morning and up to like 9 or 10 p.m. right with kind of

big gaps between classes that was awful okay and I meanwhile I was speaking

with you on skype between lessons yes and you were like man you should just

start working for yourself yeah I work like four or five hours a day I choose

when I work it's so chilled I don't have to teach anyone that I don't like and I was

like oh my god I hate you cos' I was I had some kids classes and these kids

literally hated my guts it was horrible he sent me a video of them just running

riot in the class and you just sat there like I can't do anything the worst thing

is they didn't speak in Spanish in the school they talked in Basque so I didn't

understand a word where is the basque region in Spain and it's kind of to the

east of Galicia and Asturias mm-hmm and then to the west of Catalonia

I always remember Bilbao Bilbao yeah great city I was about an hour

from there okay yeah and Bilbao is within the Basque region

it is right yeah yeah and Basque is not Spanish totally different okay in fact

the language is a complete mystery no one knows where it came from

do the Basque people speak Spanish yeah yeah okay pretty much all speak Spanish you

might go to a really small town yeah a small community where they can't speak

Spanish but it's quite unlikely Wow yeah okay so that was your fourth song yeah

now I am whisking you away to the desert island we have those four songs you've

got those four so you can listen to them as as up as often as you like okay okay

and of course you get what you've been waiting for the complete works of

Shakespeare oh good yeah good yeah can I have them in Spanish yes yes I'll give

you that and you also get the Bible or another religious book of your

preference that's guaranteed yeah it's in your suitcase already so you can't

sort of lob it out okay which which religious holy book would you like I'd

like something related to Buddhism like I don't know if they have a kind of

religious manuscript no they don't actually I was looking they don't have a

holy book but there are Buddhist books that you could take can I can I take the

writings of the the kind of best quotes of Buddha yeah in Spanish yes in Spanish

always in Spanish audiobook do you think you'll forget English because there's

been no one there to speak to you in English and I just have loads of Spanish

yeah loads of Shakespearean yes but maybe I need a bit of English I think

I'll be fine I don't think you forget your mother tongue

do you I'm going there I'm 27 nearly 28 I don't think I'm gonna forget

English how long do you reckon you'll last on this island yeah it depends on the

island how many coconuts they've got they've got a sufficient amount of

coconuts good amount of fish and stuff yeah yep they've got enough

fish I think I'll be all right you think what for as long as you will live

No I mean I'll probably end up killing myself I don't know until I get completely bored

you know there's there's illnesses that probably could kill you that are very

minimal in civilized life like just a little cut infected BAM lose you lose

your foot blood everywhere dead well that's something to look

forward to yeah but if you took the Bible maybe could rip out the pages and

of use it as a band-aid or find salvation in God in which case I wouldn't really fear death anymore

Umm so your last luxury item what's it gonna be now just to say this luxury item if

you haven't ever listened to the Desert Island Discs this item shouldn't allow

you contact with the outer world nor should it allow you ways to escape the

island so you've got to stay there you can't really speak to other people but

it's a luxury item I'm willing to give to you to send you away to this

island I think maybe a photo album of friends and family that I love very nice

because otherwise over time eventually maybe I'd forget what these

people look like and that would be horrible yeah so I'd have to try and draw them on pieces of

rock with a bit of chalk or on a Wilson volleyball yeah so if that's my mum yeah

I'm actually maybe I should just think of what Wilson volleyball you never know

you might find one of them yeah they do tend to leave them lying around

on desert islands yeah and you wouldn't lose your mind?

I can't promise that but it could well happen I don't know how long it's

gonna happen but I think the photos will help me I'll look and think

what would your Mum say yeah good thank you very much thank you well we're gonna send

you on to the desert island but it's been very interesting hope you've

enjoyed it guys right wish me luck

so if you enjoyed that give us a little thumbs up and leave us a comment as to

what you think about Harry's choices and whether you think he will survive for very

long see you in another video Bye for now