Rowland Emett

Rowland Emett0:00

This download is the only extract the BBC has of this edition of Desert Island Discs. The presenter was Roy Plumley.

Presenter0:09

Uh

Rowland Emett0:09

Where were you born, Mr Emmett? I was born in London and curiously enough

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on the very day, month, and year that Cezanne died.

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Now I think there ought to be something here, by rights. It should have made an a difference or had some effect, but

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Quite honestly, it didn't take.

Presenter0:27

Which came first in your life, drawing or mechanical things? Mechanical things, always. I believe you had already patented some.

Rowland Emett0:33

Some inventions while you were still at school? Well, they were patented for me by my father. Yes, I was twelve or thirteen at the time. Improvements to the ordinary acoustic grammar phone. Yes, indeed.

Presenter0:42

Yeah.

Presenter0:43

Yeah.

Rowland Emett0:43

What was your first job when you were at school? My father thought that I should have some uh befitment towards the

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uh business world which he was engaged in, he thought that was the thing. I should have something solid. So I was doing two finger typing in his office for him until I made so many mistakes that I had to really think of doing something else. No, I went actually I went into an advertising studio. I think that is the at a quite an early age.

Presenter1:09

And in an advertising studio one has to do everything, drawing pictures of the product, drawing pictures.

Rowland Emett1:13

Absolutely.

Presenter1:14

F

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everything. You had to be everybody and do everything. And it was soul destroying in lots of ways. But I wouldn't have had it otherwise. The um experience gained and the

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The way it made you think quickly and produce ideas absolutely on the spot. It's a thing that stood me in very great stead ever since.

Presenter1:33

Were you selling humorous drawings as a freelance?

Rowland Emett1:36

Never done anything

Presenter1:36

Bumres

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Drawing a

Presenter1:37

My life.

Presenter1:38

Before that.

Rowland Emett1:39

Uh

Presenter1:39

Uh

Rowland Emett1:39

How did that start?

Rowland Emett1:41

Well, it st it started with punch straight away and uh really it started through spite.

Presenter1:48

How is that?

Rowland Emett1:50

We had a friend, a copywriter, at this studio, and one morning he came in very full of himself, and threw down a manuscript.

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And we said, what's this?

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He said that.

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It's a humorous story. I've written it and I think it's jolly good. So we

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mildly interested. We we said, well, what are you going to do with it?

Rowland Emett2:09

He said send it a punch, of course. So of course everybody roared. I mean, you don't do that sort of thing. If you're going to be a humorous writer, you begin with titbits and you work up several years, and in the end you might get something in. However, he sent it, and, as you might imagine, it was accepted and printed the following week.

Rowland Emett2:28

But of course I was absolutely livid. I couldn't take this at all. And

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Although I had never done a humorous drawing, never had any inclination, I thought

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I will do a funny drawing.

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I will send it to Punch, they will print it next week, I can throw down the paper in a nonchalant sort of way, and honor will be served, and I can get back to work.

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I did my funny drawing, and of course it didn't quite work out like that. I got a rejection slip.

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But on the bottom of this rejection slip

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was a little pencilled note. It said, Very ingenious, though, try again. KB

Rowland Emett3:01

I didn't know who KB was. It turned out to be Kenneth Bird, the then art editor of Punch, and I was so overwhelmed at this that I thought, well, I'd better do some.

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So I did seven finished drawings and sent them off.

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And they bought five, and it simply went on and on and on from there.

Presenter3:17

Yes, you've been drawing for punch ever since.

Presenter3:19

Yes. How long was it before you felt you could throw off the chains of commerce?

Rowland Emett3:24

Well, i i it it wasn't quite like that, you see, the war.

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intervened. This was the beginning of the war.

Presenter3:29

Yeah.

Rowland Emett3:29

And I got impressed into something which was laughably called aircraft design. What they wanted me for, I don't know. I enjoyed it very much, though.

Rowland Emett3:39

I was keeping punch

Presenter3:42

Going in the evening, yes. And in a surprisingly short time your your trains and and trams and so on had become a byword.

Rowland Emett3:48

Yeah.

Presenter3:49

The yes

Rowland Emett3:49

They seemed to take on. I didn't start doing vehicles and things like that. My early drawings, the first three years, were all kinds of subjects, even political, some of them. But one week I did a drawing, a full-page colour drawing, featuring a railway situation. I can't even think what it was now. But that started it off. I got my first fan mail. I had a bank manager, a bishop, one or two assorted old ladies and others. This fascinated me. I was absolutely taken with it. And I started to do more.

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And I don't know how it was that they they got more long funnelled and snuffling each one that I did and went on and on and in the end they were doing themselves and it became a system of their own.

Presenter4:25

And if

Presenter4:27

Yeah.

Rowland Emett4:28

You

Presenter4:29

You have a fascination for the Edwardian era.

Rowland Emett4:31

Yes, it does fascinate me. I can't recall pictures with any clarity of what happened last week or the week before last or even yesterday, but I can get absolutely vivid, complete mental pictures of things that happened when I was about twelve. I don't know if there is it, what do they call it, arrested development or something like that. It's very pleasant, though.

Presenter4:40

Yes.

Presenter4:52

Yeah.

Presenter4:53

All these glorious machines of yours are indeed practical and in fact the Far Twittering and Oyster Perch Railway did a very useful job at the Festival of Britain. It did, yes, that was great fun.

Presenter5:02

And not all your inventions uh are to do with transport. For example, th the hogmuddle all-purpose rotatory niggler and fidgeter. That stays still, I believe.

Rowland Emett5:05

I'm so

Presenter5:10

Well, that's the technical point. It stays still.

Rowland Emett5:12

Well it quivers and

Presenter5:14

And

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I like that machine because it had a very neat feature. It had a large hole in the centre to let the hunt go through. If it were w at work in the field, it took up too much space and they couldn't you couldn't expect them to all go around. So we had to leave this.

Presenter5:27

So we had to leave this.

Rowland Emett5:28

Uh

Presenter5:28

I think you're absolutely right. Are you a systematic worker, mister Emmett? Could you work regular hours every day?

Rowland Emett5:33

Yes, I do. I have to. Otherwise you'd get absolutely out of step. Uh it's done for me. Uh the family keep me in order and my wife sees to all the

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nonsensical part, the business and and and the nice fees and things like that, which I should be quite hopeless at and leaves me free.

Presenter5:50

And these

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You know, too.

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But uh one has to be orderly.

Presenter5:55

You live in London.

Rowland Emett5:55

No, thank goodness. I live in Sussex, in the South Downs, a lovely little village.

Rowland Emett6:00

Now you make these big exhibition models yourself. Yes, indeed. With the help of a team of dedicated madmen, of course. Yes. Not on entirely by a

Presenter6:09

Yes, you have your own forge, don't you?

Rowland Emett6:10

Oh yes, yes. We have a forge in a neighbouring village and I'm not going to tell you where it is because it's absolutely a secret forge. Another shadow factory. It's another shadow factory but the shadow falls from the opposite direction. You're doing more model making than drawing nowadays. I'm doing very little drawing. I'm doing uh a little for American magazines and one or two things for the continent. But these uh enormous constructions seem to take up all the time and of course I'm fascinated by them and for me it's it's it's a new thing and you know when I go into a new thing I'm all out and everything else goes by the board.

Presenter6:43

Yes, that these exhibition models, they're they're really for industry from the public relations angle. These firms find it a good thing to have one of your inventions that burlesques whatever it is that they make.

Rowland Emett6:52

That is their main purpose. Government departments and big organizations have these purely for that reason. And they they go round on exhibition almost interminably at various cities.

Presenter7:04

Uh

Rowland Emett7:04

Have British Railways ever invited you to do anything of this sort? No, they haven't, and I'm very sad about it. I can't think why. I think I could give them one or two pointers.