Stephen Fry

Speaker 20:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

Speaker 20:08

The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen eighty eight, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:29

My castaway this week is a funny man, a writer and a performer. His pedigree is of the best. He was in the Cambridge Footlights and is, he would claim, a typical product, sarcastic, cruelly rational and very tall. You've seen him in The Young Ones, Black Adder and on Saturday Night Live and most recently as television's spoof investigative reporter David Lander. This is Stephen Fry.

Presenter0:54

Stephen, you are very tall, aren't you? I mean, how tall?

Stephen Fry0:56

Six foot four and a and a little bit, which is the approved Cambridge comedian height roughly. Um Douglas Adams, Graham Chapman, John Cleese um actually has a few extra inches in the same as he has a few extra laugh glands as well.

Presenter1:12

It's a serious point, is it, that all all Cambridge men are lanky.

Stephen Fry1:15

They seem to be Virginia Woolf made the point about tall, um, languid, lanky Cambridge people and Oxford seem people seem to be rather short and dark and uh partly because of their Welsh um element, I suppose. It's always you know, the Welsh man always goes to Oxford because it's a bit nearer, and the other side of London seems like hell to them. They're probably right.

Presenter1:33

And who are they? Who who's typical of the Oxford men in in this analysis?

Stephen Fry1:37

If you were to look in the Pyson world, Terry Jones and Michael Palin, and they're warm and they're imaginative and they're visual.

Stephen Fry1:45

And worldly, and Clees and Chapman are ascetic and monkish and rigorous. And it's this tradition that goes back, I one could explain it, I suppose, by the weather or something, the sunny Thames Valley that Oxford is in. And they've provided Prime Ministers, they're worldly people. And also, of course, the Puritanism of Cambridge. Cromwell was there, it was parliamentarian, Oxford was royalist. There was Cranmer, Latimer, Ridley, those monks and priests and chaplains who were prepared to die in flames rather than recant what was asked of them by any current monarch and his absurd religious fascinations of the day. It just is extraordinary how many parallels you see all the time. Oxford is primarily known for its politicians and its historical people, and the kind of poets are like Wilde, Oscar Wilde. I mean Cambridge it's people like Milton and George Herbert and it's the so many mathematicians and scientists.

Presenter2:40

The other qualification of the Cambridge man according to these definitions is that he gabbles.

Stephen Fry2:46

Yes, that's right. Well, if you compare Jonathan Miller with Alan Bennett, it's a very good example. It's that very sort of high-fast, very, very sort of very, very quick sort of Jonathan Miller thing. And it means sort of so much to say and so many sort of Alan Bennett, you know, sort of drawling a bit of the northern, but nonetheless it is a very typical, I think. I used to get also that.

Presenter3:01

It works, this analysis. It's very good. Well, now you you've got to throw off all this um logical, rational.

Presenter3:10

Cantabridgean reasoning and enter the mythical world of the island, if you will. Are you looking forward to it?

Stephen Fry3:16

No, I'm I'm not really looking forward to it. I I don't like loneliness at all. I I like to be alone when I know there are people within call, but I can't bear the idea of being on my own.

Presenter3:26

And music?

Stephen Fry3:28

I decided um on on eight records after much much pain uh and all I could think was that I I had to choose records that all had the human voice in them somewhere. Abstraction is something one'll get plenty of on a desert island and the one thing you won't have is people and and so I do demand i as many human voices as I can.

Presenter3:47

So what's the first one?

Stephen Fry3:49

Well, the first one I've chosen is is from Mozart's Don Giovanni, which is I think one of the towering achievements of man, to be bumpers for a moment, and the also the first opera I ever saw.

Speaker 23:55

The

Stephen Fry4:00

and I've chosen a bit from it which is a sort of whirling, fantastic frenzy called Fincan dalvino, which Don Giovanni sings as he basically says let's pour out some wine and have a good time.

Stephen Fry5:02

You see that every time

Stephen Fry5:16

Let's

Presenter5:17

Eberhard Wechter singing Fincan d'Alvino, the champagne aria from Mozart's Don Giovanni, with a Philemonia chorus and orchestra conducted by Carlo Maria Giulini.

Presenter5:28

Stephen, let's take a a trip through your childhood, if we may. All sorts of similar words and phrases crop up at this stage. Bit bright, very naughty, truancy, expulsion.

Presenter5:38

You were not the most cooperative of children.

Stephen Fry5:40

I was a terrible child. I was a rat, really. Uh I don't know why. Um my brother was eighteen months older than me and uh was and remains very good. N not boring at all. I mean there's there's nothing wrong with being good. And he was sensible and co cooperative and decent and I was

Speaker 25:51

Yeah.

Stephen Fry5:56

Ghastly. One can't explain it by environment because we both had a similar upbringing. It's just some devil I always had in me as a child. I was always one of those people who was described as the bad influence, as it were, you know. Um I was very uncoordinated and uh and bad at games, which I loathed, um really, really, really loathed, and would expend far more energy, physical and mental, uh in trying to get out of games than I ever would have expended if I'd actually played the game.

Presenter6:24

What did your parents think about it all?

Stephen Fry6:27

Well, o obviously in turns um angry, distressed, saddened, embarrassed, and and all the things that I would be if I had a child uh who who was as dreadful as that. But they were at least an endless well of of sympathy and and

Stephen Fry6:40

of a kind of support. That's not to say they endorsed everything I did and clapped me on the back and said, Well done, it's all right, but the the sort of support that one needs then, which is to say that they weren't actually just going to throw me out and they weren't they weren't going to beat me.

Presenter6:52

But are they surprised after all this recalcitrant childhood that suddenly you are an apparent success? You are doing well in advertising?

Stephen Fry7:01

Good.

Presenter7:01

Uh

Stephen Fry7:01

I I think probably not, because I think what most frustrated them when I was so bad is that they did know that I I had, you know, the ability to to get on and do things that I wanted to. Um because I was fairly bright when I was young and and could do most work and particularly good exams, which is really a revelation of the facile, flip nature of my mind that I can sit any exam and do well. And it was a pastiche sort of mind, really. I could copy other people's modes of speech and expression. And I really I don't suppose I ever actually sat down and thought about anything until I was about nineteen. Um and I think my father knew that because he was a man who thinks a great deal and he knew that my academic success such as it had been all depended on basically flair and I had never actually thought and I never actually worked.

Stephen Fry7:46

And uh he he always argues that the two are simultaneous, he'd be right.

Presenter7:50

But a lot happened before you were nineteen, which I want to hear about, but we're going to stop and have another record.

Stephen Fry7:55

When I was at school, um it was a great period of sort of lead-zipping and you're right heap and heavy rock, but my rock music has always been comedy, basically, and comedy albums filled my shelves while everybody else had rock and roll. But a sort of mixture, I suppose, was the great Bonzo Dog Doodar band, Vivian Stanshaw and all and the first just about the first record I ever had was one called Tadpoles, which had written on the top of it, Tackle the Tunes You Tapped Your Tootsies to on Thames T V's Do Not Adjust Your Set, which was a a forerunner of Python. And this particular number, Shirt, I think kind of converted me to the idea of comedy more than anything else I've heard before and possibly since.

Speaker 48:32

And here comes a lady with an enchanting little

Speaker 48:35

Kangaroo

Speaker 48:37

And I'm going to ask her something about chats.

Speaker 48:41

No, I'm not.

Speaker 48:42

Because she's giving me rather a bowl this sign.

Speaker 48:45

Would you excuse me? W would you mind with talking about shirts? About shirts.

Speaker 48:52

Shirts? Yes, the problem of shirts. The kind of um you know, are they necessary? Shirts.

Speaker 48:59

There it is.

Speaker 49:00

Where it is? Yes. Where where is Shirt? Don't know.

Presenter9:04

Shirt from the L. P. Tadpoles by the Bonzo Dog Bat. What happened to the doodar? It was a Bonzo Dog.

Stephen Fry9:09

Yes, they lost that duda fairly early on.

Presenter9:12

They decide to drop it.

Stephen Fry9:12

They decided to drop it.

Presenter9:15

Now, we're talking about you playing Truant, and of course, while you were doing that, you did actually get into some serious trouble and ended up imprisoned in the future.

Stephen Fry9:21

Yes, so having gone after school in Norfolk to a college in Kings Lynn where I was to do a two-year course in A-levels, but this time I'm

Stephen Fry9:30

I ran away to London and uh eventually appropriated a wallet containing some credit cards and then

Stephen Fry9:38

went ape around five or six counties of Britain, uh spending wildly on uh on hotels and suits and pointless things like that.

Presenter9:45

How did you get caught?

Stephen Fry9:47

Well, I got caught by a lynx eyed receptionist at the Wiltshire Hotel in Swindon, who saw that my shoes were extremely shabby, and also thought they was very young to have this sort of suite of credit cards, and so checked up, which no one else bothered to do when I bought these things.

Presenter10:00

So how long did you get?

Stephen Fry10:02

Well, um it was in fact two years' probation, but the police needed a long time for the paperwork to catch up, as it always has to on these occasions. Um so I was inside, banged up for about a couple of months, I suppose.

Presenter10:15

What sort of place we put in?

Stephen Fry10:16

Most of the people there were under under twenty, and there were a smattering who were between twenty and thirty.

Stephen Fry10:23

And

Stephen Fry10:24

They were mostly Welsh and West country and it's very hard to believe in the criminality of anybody who goes, Well, you know, I'm a th you know, I'm a thief, but I'm an honest thief, you know, or well, you you know, you just took away his car, you know, you know and and it you know, if it's done in a London accent, you believe this person is is a villain, but somehow those soft country birds don't sound right in a prison.

Presenter10:43

And and did you get on with them?

Stephen Fry10:44

Tremendously. I mean, it was really absurdly easy for me, as someone who'd been at a boarding school from the age of seven. A prison was perfectly easy to adjust to, and some of these poor poor chaps at seventeen was the first time away from home. It sounds silly. I mean, of course, they were criminals, and I dare say they deserved it, etcetera, etcetera. That's not really the point at issue here. But it was strange how much easier it was for me to adapt to something like that.

Presenter11:05

So you were found out, really. I mean the naughtiness turned to crime. You were found out. Did did that have any effect on you? Did did that mean that was an end of that then?

Stephen Fry11:07

Benticrap

Stephen Fry11:14

I think so. I don't want to make a great heavy social point because it's so obvious. But there is something faintly distasteful about someone using that kind of criminality as a method of improving his life and coming to terms with himself because he's so easily able to afford to step out of it in the way that I was, but largely, of course, thanks to my parents' continuing support. And so I think as much as anything, I felt guilty about that rather than guilty at what I'd done. And so I just simply decided I really want education. I want to learn. I want to do things. So I wanted to go to Cambridge.

Presenter11:45

Shall we have record number three there?

Stephen Fry11:46

I've always found comedy much more moving than than tragedy and a perfect example is this wonderful array from The Marriage of Figura, about the most perfect work. I probably said Don Giovanni was, but so is The Marriage of Figura, about the most perfect work devised by man. And this is supposedly a comic song, but it always makes me cry because I always think of poor little Carabina getting sent off to the walls. It's the non piandrai from the first act of The Marriage of Figura.

Stephen Fry12:21

Fun only four

Stephen Fry12:28

One for reports.

Speaker 412:36

Erubinua Lavicoria!

Speaker 412:39

And the glory of the whole!

Speaker 412:42

There be one glory for you, Allah Gloria Meli.

Speaker 412:50

On the go, yummy.

Presenter13:11

None pew and dry for Mozart's Marriage A Figaro sung by Giuseppe Tadei with the Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Carlo Maria Giulini again.

Presenter13:20

Stephen, you said that the idea of of being cast away is a bit of a a threat to you. Um that you need people, but you do like your own company, presumably.

Stephen Fry13:28

Yes. I don't like loneliness, but I I don't mind being solitary from time to time, as long as I have a sort of control over it, if you see what I mean. Um uh as long as I know that there's a telephone or that I can go round and see someone.

Presenter13:40

You announced recently I don't know if you announced it, but it it it appeared anyway that you had stated you were celibate.

Stephen Fry13:46

Yes, I said it wasn't an announcement. Call the press as if they'd be interested.

Presenter13:50

Well, they seem to be very interesting.

Stephen Fry13:51

Well it it happened because actually someone from some years ago, someone from the Tatla in in the way they do had the the jolly idea of a series of articles for the Christmas edition on things people don't do. And they rang me up on the off chance that maybe something I didn't do and they said so-and-so doesn't drive and is writing about that, so-and-so doesn't watch television, is writing that, so-and-so doesn't go on holiday. Is there anything you don't do? And I thought a bit and scratched my head, I do almost everything. Oh, well, I don't have sex. Is that an interesting one? And they said.

Stephen Fry14:20

I wrote this article about uh how repellent, which, let's face it, sex is, in all those horrible, damp, tufted areas of the human body.

Stephen Fry14:27

Um uh are not particularly pleasing to me. Um I mean friendship is enormously important to me, but um and I have many, I think, good friends who are very dear to me and I mean whom whom I couldn't bear to lose as friends. And that is one of the reasons uh I don't like sex, it's because it's so often one sees people losing friendship. I think liking is is s such a tremendous human um quality and very often there are a lot of people who who who love each other and don't like each other and and and that's that's where it always gets very sad.

Presenter14:55

You've also said though I don't know whether it was announced in the same article that you were ninety percent gay. I'm not quite sure I know what that means. I mean, does it mean nine times out of ten you prefer a man?

Stephen Fry15:05

Well, no. What I said was it was an interview for a a Channel four programme called Network Seven, where they have their version of Anthony Clare, though I would hate to be described as such, I think, Oliver James, was asking me about my life. And I said that at Cambridge I had been, I suppose, ninety percent gay then.

Stephen Fry15:23

And uh obviously now being celibate, uh it's rather strange really, but I suppose I r would reserve the right not to go to bed with people of either sex if that's an important right.

Presenter15:33

Let's have another record.

Stephen Fry15:35

Well, um I tried desperately to find some way of getting both Cole Porter in, who is w my favorite modern uh or twentieth century sort of American songwriter uh and Frank Sinatra, and so I've chosen something which combines them a wonderful live recording at the Sands in Las Vegas with um the Camp Basie Orchestra of I've Got You Under My Skin.

Speaker 415:54

But you know, you fool.

Speaker 415:57

You never can win.

Speaker 416:01

Use your mentality.

Speaker 416:04

Wake up to reality.

Speaker 416:09

Time I knew just the thought of you makes me stop before I begin.

Speaker 416:16

Cause I've got you.

Speaker 416:19

Under my skin

Presenter16:23

Cole Porter's I've Got You Under My Skin, sung by Frank Sinatra with the Count Basie Orchestra, arranged by Quincy Jones, and all that was done live at The Sands, Las Vegas.

Presenter16:34

So, Stephen, um, the facility to pass exams you were talking about, you and you got a scholarship to Cambridge, having decided to become a good boy?

Stephen Fry16:41

Yes, that was a a tre a tremendous surprise. I was absolutely bowled over that they I wanted the scholarship. Um and again I thought this was a you know just a a mistake, a clerical error, basically of some kind, and that there was going to be a tremendous disappointment when I arrived. And I said, Oh no you're you're not S. Bry.

Stephen Fry16:59

of of, you know, the the the Perth school who won it? I said, No. I said, Oh, I'm so sorry, I'll have to go you know. I was so convinced that was going to happen and I just couldn't believe that they really meant me. So it was it was very exciting.

Presenter17:12

And it was at Cambridge, wasn't it, that you um you met Emma Thompson and Hugh Laurie, the whole generation then of footlights.

Stephen Fry17:19

Yes, Emma also did quite a bit of straight acting, which is what I started to do. I was cast as the king in almost every production of any Shakespearean or similar play because I was. It's not. Exactly. And sometimes the king's a fairly good part in a meaty, and sometimes it's just an old fool who dodders onto the stage and blesses the happy couple at the end and then dodders off again.

Presenter17:27

That's because you're tall, isn't it?

Speaker 417:38

Yeah.

Stephen Fry17:39

But uh I'd I'd written this play in my second year called Latin, inspired by experiences the the year before going to Cambridge teaching at a prep school and and I'd read this play which was a comedy which went to to Edinburgh and uh and Emma saw that and and and thought I ought to meet Hugh and and so uh sh so she took me round to t to meet him at his uh at his rooms and we just got on t tremendously straight away.

Presenter18:02

And you two wrote a review which which won an award at Edinburgh.

Stephen Fry18:05

That's right, it was the first year of the Perrier Award, which they still have at Edinburgh.

Presenter18:08

I have to ask you, I mean, do you prefer writing or performing? I mean, you do both so well.

Stephen Fry18:12

I sort of prefer the one I'm not doing. That's not uh as arched as it might sound really. It's that when you're when you're writing you do envy actors the fact that they're bossed about, that they they're told when to go and rehearse, they know when they have to be in the theatre and they know when they have to you know do everything. And they don't wake up in the morning thinking, Oh

Stephen Fry18:31

This, I've got to spend how am I going to do this? And you think you're so envious. Then when you're acting you envy writers the freedom. You know, you're there every night at the theater or you're you're forced from pillar to post and so on. Then a writer can say, Well, I think I'll do the writing this evening actually, or I'll go out tonight, and and they can at least make their own timetable.

Presenter18:49

But you wrote you wrote the um script for Me and My Girl, didn't you? I mean, which was a great hit in the West End and on Broadway. That must have been the most lucrative job you've done.

Stephen Fry18:59

Yes, it has turned out to be. Certainly. I had no idea that it would. I thought it would be one of the most embarrassing things I'd done. I thought, oh, dear, are my friends are going to say you're doing this cheeky, chappy, cockney musical with Pearly Kings and Queens?

Stephen Fry19:10

What on earth are you doing, Steven? You know nothing about this world, for goodness sake and I was all prepared to be very embarrassed. But um but fortunately it it it seemed to work. And yes, it's it's endured in in a number of strange tongues. Iome Chikita in uh in Mexico City and it went very well and Hung Hungarian productions, Japani Japanese all-female production as and it was a great hit in Tokyo.

Speaker 219:22

You may

Stephen Fry19:31

And yes, it it's been very fortunate.

Presenter19:34

Another record, I think.

Stephen Fry19:36

I've chosen this record partly because it is a stunningly outrageous, driving piece of rock music, which is not my absolute favorite kind of music, but this one is just it's it's somehow funny, it's so splendid, and also because it reminds me greatly of Hugh Laurie, who plays it on the piano a lot, so on my Desert Island, be able to think of Hugh playing the piano as we hear Meat Cliff doing Bat Out of Hell.

Speaker 419:58

Gone in the morning toll!

Speaker 420:02

But when the night is up

Speaker 420:05

Be gone, don't go!

Speaker 420:11

We got

Speaker 420:14

When the day is dawn and the sun goes down and the moonlight's shining new

Speaker 420:20

Here I go soon.

Presenter20:24

Meatloaf and bat out of hell.

Presenter20:27

Stephen Fry, the work I know doesn't stop coming in. Are you one of those people who finds it impossible to say no?

Stephen Fry20:33

That's absolutely right, I'm afraid. I'm saying yes to that, aren't I? I should say no. And it's it's apparently in a kind of insecurity. I again can't quite believe that that uh it's going to carry on. And that same feeling of being fanned out that is apparently very common in particularly in men, we all dread this idea that someone's going to say, No, you're you're just Stephen Fry. What on earth do you think you're doing there?

Presenter20:55

I think it's common in women too.

Stephen Fry20:55

It's common in women in the middle of the middle.

Presenter20:57

It's obviously a very natural talent that you have, but it is interesting that that you still have to put in all of the hours and you still have to do all of the worrying, don't you? It's not something you can just do off the top of your head.

Stephen Fry21:05

Same thing you

Stephen Fry21:07

It it is one of the the world's great cheats, really, when you're a child, adults consistently telling you that there are no shortcuts and and the work is the only thing. You grow up and not only do you think well at least I've put the final full stop on the last exam I'm ever going to do in uh in my life, or the last essay I have to hand, and you then discover life is actually full of worse i exams and worse essay crises than you ever had when you were at school.

Presenter21:27

But if you are so hardworking and so meticulous, which you obviously are, I mean, does that one can one extrapolate from that, that therefore you're going to have the tidiest hut on a desert island that ever was? Or are you chaotic?

Stephen Fry21:36

Or are you chaotic? I think the reverse. If if there is a meticulousness there, I it's only a reaction to the fact that I know I have the least meticulous mind uh of anyone I know, and therefore I'm meticulous in order to stop myself being not meticulous. And that's why it works hard, because I know how lazy I am.

Speaker 221:50

Yeah.

Presenter21:50

Chaotic.

Stephen Fry21:54

And no, I I have bedrooms and everything always a terrible mess.

Presenter21:58

What do you spend your money on?

Stephen Fry22:00

Well, I pour it into um cars and computers, which sounds terribly dull to people who don't like cars and computers, but I love the computer I work on and it actually makes me more productive and I really enjoy it.

Presenter22:11

But aren't you also a shirt man? I've spotted you know, you you like you like a good shirt.

Stephen Fry22:16

Well, that's true. I do. And I think that's partly because of a sense of physical embarrassment. Is that.

Stephen Fry22:25

pullovers and shirts, the sort of top bit. If they if one can draw attention to oneself there, whether it disguises the shape a bit and some people don't look at these ridiculous long legs and this

Stephen Fry22:36

pointless, sort of stoop and and and so on, and this absurd nose.

Presenter22:40

Let's have another record.

Stephen Fry22:42

Well, uh some people will groan with horror now, but I'm insanely uh in love with the master, the great Richard Wagner and uh the ring. Let's have from from Die Valkura, the second um in the cycle, the music where uh the god Vautin sadly sends his daughter to eternal sleep, ringed by fire, the music that's called the magic fire music.

Speaker 423:20

Easy far and four

Speaker 423:25

Uh

Presenter24:04

The magic fire music from Wagner's Die Walkura sung by Hans Hotter with the Vienna Philharmonic conducted by Sir George Schulte.

Presenter24:12

Stephen, your latest piece of television i is as a spoof investigative reporter David Lander. Who is he? What sort of mixture of people is he?

Stephen Fry24:22

He's the kind of mixture of people, really, that almost any journalist who who decides to go in front of the lens is bound to turn into, if you see what I mean. There's a a style of talking as a journalist that happens.

Stephen Fry24:33

And it's not based on one person at all. It certainly isn't based on on Roger Cook. There's an unfortunate sort of misapprehension that it's supposed to be a spoof on the Roger Cook um partly result of the first one going out, I think, which was quite Roger Cook's style of confrontation.

Presenter24:47

So what what happens, Stephen, when your fans accuse you of spreading yourself too too thin, acting here, writing there, radio here, telly there, a bit of film, West End for three months, as you did earlier this year? What do you say? What do you promise them, more of the same or some kind of specialization?

Stephen Fry25:05

No, I mean one is obviously sorry if people people think that, but in the end really the only thing one can do is is do what one believes in. And at the moment I have no particular um sense of I must stop all this and just write plays or I I must forget all this writing nonsense and just um be in situation comedies or something. I haven't really come to any decision. I have no sense of future at all. I know what I'm going to do next week, let alone in two years' time.

Presenter25:30

What about in your personal life? Do you have a sense of future in that?

Stephen Fry25:33

No, none whatever. Um I have which is a little ironic because I'm aware of basic biological laws, I I do have this vague broody desire to have children, um children other than

Stephen Fry25:44

um my my my sketches as an artist might call his paintings and I would like to have a family which is um an outrageous really um because I am aware that there are various sort of things that motions that have to be gone through in order to have such a thing and obviously um no woman would would wish to be joined to someone uh as as selfish as me because that's you know uh uh and that's why I I long in a in a naughty and and very wrong way for a for for a sort of Victorian arranged marriage in which you know you you come home to a wife and and and three little Moppets and you don't have to you don't have to work at it and and so on. But I know that's bad.

Presenter26:22

You sit in your own judgment. You mean you you arrange all of that and then return to your celibacy?

Stephen Fry26:27

Yes, in a sort of way. But you know, it's it's terrible, I know, isn't it? It is awful.

Presenter26:32

So it may be something you have to do without.

Stephen Fry26:33

Yes, yes.

Presenter26:34

And that's sad for you.

Stephen Fry26:36

A little, yes. I I would I would I would like the idea of having having children. I mean, I enjoy godchildren and friends' children very much, and and there'll always be a a pleasure in that. It's of coursen quite the same, but it's it's better than one might imagine.

Presenter26:50

Seventh record, please.

Stephen Fry26:52

Well, this is uh just a marvellous piece of um combined singing from Act Three of Rigoletto, and Jen Sutherland has never been in better voice than this uh uh recording by her husband Richard Bohning. Richard Boying, I always thought his name was for a long time, because it's spelt with a Y.

Speaker 427:50

And

Presenter28:08

The quartet from Act three of Verdi's Rigoletto sung by Joan Sutherland, Hugette Tourangeau, Sheryl Milnes, and Luciano Pavarotti, with the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Richard Bonning.

Presenter28:21

Stephen, your friends say that you're unpredictable, that you could as easily flee the country tomorrow and never be heard of again, or or fly to the moon and be become an astronaut. None of these things would be a surprise to them.

Stephen Fry28:33

Gosh, well I'm surprised to hear that. Perhap perhaps it's true. I I suppose I am a bit. I I'd

Stephen Fry28:39

I do occasionally get restless, not necessarily um filled with a kind of wanderlust or or globe trotting urge, but um a need to change myself somehow. I mean, this year I I I sort of uh

Stephen Fry28:52

suddenly bought a motorbicycle and for the first time in my life used aftershave. Insignificant details in themselves, but I just never thought a year ago I'd be the kind of person who would be wear aftershave or have a and I think I did it because I wanted to escape a what was beginning to annoy me, this idea of being a a tweedy uh person in in brogues and green cordroys, and so I wear leather jackets now and

Presenter29:13

So you don't you don't like being called a gentleman, but you wouldn't want to be called a slob either?

Stephen Fry29:17

No, no, I'd I'd like to be called Stephen and and for people that's

Presenter29:22

But you don't like being called um an alternative comedian, do you? You just don't like labels perhaps.

Stephen Fry29:28

Yes, I think that's right. It's it's always of course been very useful to have a an image that is given by by voice or height or bearing or something. And that that's I I think typical of of the sort of the footlights tradition. You know, Gleese is is everyone can see in him straight away this man ought to be a barrister and somehow he isn't and and that's what's so wonderful about the way he d he does everything.

Presenter29:50

I was going to ask you who whom you most admired in your business. I presume it's him, isn't it?

Stephen Fry29:54

Yes,'cause he's enormously. I mean, he's he is the the god that stalks our particular universe.

Presenter29:59

And if this weren't radio, I'd ask you to do John Cleese's silly walk right now, which I know you can do very well.

Stephen Fry30:02

Challenge.

Stephen Fry30:03

F

Presenter30:03

Uh

Stephen Fry30:03

Uh

Presenter30:04

I shall ask you for your eighth record instead.

Stephen Fry30:07

Well well this is the most supreme piece of romantic, indeed erotic music really, which is from Tristan and Isolde. And it it's known as the Liebestote. It's what Isolde sings just before she dies. And this particular climactic piece of music is is something one couldn't live without.

Presenter31:22

The final scene from Wagner's Tristan and Diesold are sung by Kirsten Flagstadt with the Philemony Orchestra conducted by Wilhelm Furtwengler.

Presenter31:31

Stephen, which of those eight records is the one you really couldn't do without?

Stephen Fry31:36

I think if I were to be on a desert island

Stephen Fry31:39

I would have to choose the ring.

Stephen Fry31:42

It's there's just simply everything there and and that would be the there's just more people there than anywhere else.

Presenter31:48

As long.

Stephen Fry31:48

Yes, good enough.

Presenter31:50

Your book, you can have one of those as well. You've got the Bible and you've got the complete works of Shakespeare.

Stephen Fry31:56

Well, the greatest um pleasure I have ever gained from reading, I think, has been from the master, P. G. Woodhouse. And so what I would ask for is is an omnibus of his Jeeves stories, which are they exist in in in published form, all the all the Jeeves stories together, I think.

Presenter32:13

How many volumes are there?'Cause there's a bit of a ban on more collected works, really, you see.

Stephen Fry32:18

Oh, right, we shouldn't be collected. Well, the Jeeves omnibus

Stephen Fry32:22

Is is all the short stories put together.

Presenter32:25

But it's in one bow. Oh, too, which is definitely in one bowl. Well, you can have it then. That's all right. We'll turn a blind eye as to what's inside the cutting.

Stephen Fry32:26

Oh two, which are definitely one balloon.

Stephen Fry32:30

Yeah.

Presenter32:32

The luxury.

Stephen Fry32:33

Now, this is where you may think I'm getting a bit morbid, and you may ban this, because it's it's it's terrible. But I I think I would like a suicide pill. I know that sounds terrible, but

Stephen Fry32:44

I would urge anyone listening to believe that in fact it's a very optimistic thing to want to take, because I I think the fact that I couldn't be on my own shows that I was reasonably happy with other people, and I think it's a great compliment to society that I enjoy it so much that to be banned from it would be a kind of death for me. And I would be much happier to put the final scene from Goethe Demerung on my little record there and hear Brunhilde riding into the flames while I sunk slowly into oblivion, quite cheerfully. So that would be my luxury. Is that allowed?

Presenter33:15

I think one one has to say it's not of any practical constructive use, and therefore perhaps you should have it.

Stephen Fry33:21

Thank you.

Presenter33:22

Stephen Fry, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs.

Stephen Fry33:26

Thank you.

Speaker 233:34

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Islandists archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.