Transcript: BBC Gagarin Interview July 11, 1961

Richard Dimbleby:  “We have a saying around here, when you are nervous about something, that you have butterflies in the stomach or butterflies in the tummy. Can you really honestly say that you really didn’t have butterflies in the tummy before you started?”


Gagarin through Belinsky: “I can assure you that there where no butterflies, moths or anything else in my stomach.”

Tom Margerison: “Your American astronaut colleague spent an unfortunate 3 hours or 4 hours in his space ship before he started off did you have a comparable wait before the take off?”

Belinsky:  Will you repeat the later part of the question please?

Margerison: “did you have a comparable wait sitting in the spacecraft waiting for the thing to take off?”

Gagarin: “Ah you see, we are not in the same position, Shepard in the Mercury spaceship and myself in ours.  There was no need for me to spend several hours in the Spaceship Vostok before the take off.  The brief period of time I did spend in the spaceship before the actual take off, I think I spent quite a normal condition I think the scientists who were in charge of the flight will confirm this by producing the records - the objective records they have of my pulse count and so on

And I don't think there any grounds for me to be seriously anxious either at that period or at anytime throughout the flight.

Dimbleby: Umm and you were saynig a moment ago about the objective record - scientist's objective records - makes me think of something ah - when are we going to see the color film which everybody here is most anxiously waiting to see?

Gagarin nods:  Umm . . . It's difficult to give you an exact time because its not really, it does not really depend on me.

Yuri Fokin: With great success, I feel . . .

Gagarin:  Yes but now this film is now being shown in the Soviet Union.

Dimbleby:  It is?

Gagarin:  Yes.

Dimbleby:  Would, would, will you when you get back home, say 'please we would like to see it as quickly as possible?"

Gagarin: Yes, I will be sure to do so

Margerison:  If we could talk just for a moment about the spacecraft itself, was the cabin on view of the Tushino Air Show, the one up there on the board that's behind you was that the actual Vostok?

Gagarin:  The capsule as such is not shown but the space ship itself was shown at Tushino.  As to the other part of your question.  I can't say exactly whether it was the exact same space ship or a republica.

Margerison:  Could you give us some idea what it's like to be in this space shop, how much room you have in it?

Gagarin:  Yes, it was quite roomy in fact it is far roomier than in a cabin of a jet plane.

Dimbleby: While we have been talking about the ship in flight, umm there's one small mystery which I think possibly you may be able to clear up for us but perhaps not but I’d like to try try. On the day when you were making the flight, on the day when Moscow Radio was describing you making the flight, there appeared in our Communist Newspaper 'The Daily Worker' the report that the flight been made successfully and that the flyer returned to the earth and that report was dated for Moscow the day before. I am sorry to put this at such length.  But this created the impression of course part of another flight had taken place and that you had flown second.  And nobody has ever dispelled this yet.  Will you do it now?

Gagarin:  No, I can assure you quite authoritatively that evidently the correspondent of that paper felt he was better informed than the actual people who are in charge of this work in the Soviet Union.

Yuri Fokin: May I have a question?

Gagarin: No previous flight of this kind in fact taken place in the Soviet Union or in any other country.

Thank you.

Gagarin: The flight made on April 12 was the first flight in history of this kind, the first manned space flight ever.