Ned Sherrin

Speaker 30:00

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 30:08

The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen eighty nine.

Speaker 30:11

And the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:28

My Castaway this week is a broadcaster, a writer, a producer, a director, a performer, what you might call a show business all rounder. After reading law at Oxford he was called to the bar, but abandoned the legal profession without a backward glance when television beckoned. He was the moving spirit behind That Was the Week That Was B B C Television's first and most famous venture into satire.

Presenter0:51

After television he turned to films and to the theatre. He devised and directed side by side by Sondheim, and also appeared in the show himself.

Presenter1:00

Now fifty eight, he continues to work at a furious pace, and enjoys nothing better than teasing his guests and his Radio four listeners with his wit and his gossip. They call it loose ends they call him Ned

Presenter1:14

They might have called you Ted Sherrin, I understand, which wouldn't have been the same at all.

Ned Sherrin1:18

No, I was called Ted in the uh in the army and I hated it. I'd always been called Edward at home, and my initials are EGS, so I was called Eggy at school. But I went in the army and uh Ted descended on me and I didn't like that at all. So when I went up to Oxford I decided drastic steps had to be taken. My father had always called me Ned. Uh I think he rather resented the fact that I then made it public. He thought it was sort of his special copyright. But uh anyway, Ned has stuck.

Presenter1:42

What's the G for? You said it's

Ned Sherrin1:43

George.

Presenter1:44

Edward George Sherron. Right. Well you stand accused, Edward George Sherron, of of being a workaholic. If your work weren't your work, they say, it would be your hobby. Do you plead guilty?

Ned Sherrin1:53

Yes, I it's I I all the work I do is extremely enjoyable, so it would be a it would be a hobby. I d it doesn't seem like a workaholic, and uh you've only got to look at uh those protean figures like Melvin Bragg to realize how little I do. In fact

Presenter2:07

Waspish already. But that doesn't mean, does it, surely, that you never suffer the pain and the misery of the word that won't come or the show you can't get right.

Ned Sherrin2:16

I've often suffered the misery of the show you can't get right, but since I usually work in collaboration, uh there's always somebody else there to supply the word that won't come, so you you you get less writer's block if there are two of you.

Presenter2:27

I want to talk about that later, but let's we ought to hear your first record. But just tell me before we do how you imagine your island to be. What's it like?

Ned Sherrin2:35

It's going to be like the that one in the in the Blue Lagoon, I think. It's going to be there's going to be a great deal of sand, a great deal of blue sea. I can't swim, so but I shall be able to paddle, and I shall sort of make little inroads into the land so that the fish will be sort of trapped in them. I love fish, so I'm going to have an entirely fish diet for a long time.

Presenter2:54

You're quite a cook, I gather. Your friends say you do interesting things with fish.

Ned Sherrin2:58

I like cooking. I don't really like cooking for other people because so often it goes wrong. But uh you know if if it's just one or two people and their bed put their life in my hands, I don't mind.

Presenter3:06

Let's have the first record net.

Ned Sherrin3:09

The first record is naturally my roots in Somerset. I had sort of two thoughts about this. My favourite songwriter almost of all time is Ray Davis of the Kinks and I nearly played, to give a rural background to the show, his record Village Preservation Society, but I've decided we'll go the whole hog with I think it's Peter Dawson singing I Just Come Up from Somerset.

Speaker 23:30

Oh, we've come up from Somerset where the cider apple grow. We've come to see your majesty and all the world of good. And when you're wanting anyone, have you kindly let us know? We'll all come up from Somerset because we love you.

Ned Sherrin3:56

No chance of forgetting my roots there, I didn't

Presenter3:58

Peter Dawson singing Up from Somerset. Do you still feel them strongly, the roots or?

Ned Sherrin4:03

I think I'm inescapably somebody who did come up from Somerset. I don't think I very often lapse back into the accent, but uh it's um I you know, my brother is still farming down there at least he's just still farming. He's decided to retire, which makes one feel extremely old,'cause he's only three years older than I am.

Presenter4:20

Is that that's the family farm?

Ned Sherrin4:22

No, it's uh the f the family farm was where I was born, halfway between Low Ham and High Ham. But um we moved uh my uh father became a tenant farmer in uh the village of King Weston, which is about seven miles up the road from there, uh when I was about three, and uh they've been there ever since.

Presenter4:38

So you were a farmer's son, I mean, involved in the haymaking and all the things that you mentioned.

Ned Sherrin4:42

Yes, I I didn't like getting my hands dirty, so the the question was to try and get away from it as quickly as possible. But all through the war one had to work on the farm. It was uh a great deal of harvesting. Usually I didn't like haymaking very much. It was so dusty. Uh mostly that came during term time to a great extent, but there was no escaping the harvest.

Presenter5:00

And and what about your parents? Um, were they in any way theatrical, witty, or?

Ned Sherrin5:05

No, not at all. My father was uh it was a uh

Ned Sherrin5:09

a sort of country character. He was one of those uh people who would always uh keep you amused over the over the garden gate. Mind you, if you if you live with that sort of relentless humor, uh it can become a little uh uh little more wearing.

Presenter5:23

You you devote, I think, almost less than a couple of paragraphs to your mother in your memoirs, and yet you were obviously deeply fond of her.

Ned Sherrin5:31

Yes, she was splendid. I mean, she um she was um a solicitor's daughter from Castle Carey and married my father. I don't think uh I think she must have been nearly nearly forty when she had Alfred, my older brother, and uh so more so when she had me. And uh I would imagine going from I think she'd done a bit of sort of secretarial typing, that sort of thing, from doing that into running an enormous farmhouse with sort of echoing flagstone passages and things. And uh in those days one used to, during the harvest and haymaking, provide huge meals at lunch time for the chaps who worked on the farm. It was um it must have been an incredibly hard life, but uh she was very saintly.

Presenter6:13

Your parents, though, um lived to see you become famous and and see you on the telly. What did what did they think of what did they make of all that?

Ned Sherrin6:18

No, well my father had my mother was always uh philosophical about it. My father my father's fair his reaction used to depend on what programme I was doing. If I was doing Ask Me Another with Nice Franklin Engelman, that was all right, or Tonight with Cliff Mitrimore, provided we didn't go over the bounds, was all right. But that was the week was a great problem for him. I always remember getting a call before he went milking one morning. I think it was a Friday morning. And on Thursday night the BBC had put out a a documentary about exposing Freemasonry. And my father was a Mason and he rang up. I I was woken at about half past five or six in the morning saying, here, son, don't you be putting any more of the the about the Freemasons out on the on the on the television on Saturday night. We've had quite enough about that for for quite a long enough time to be going on with.

Presenter6:19

Uh

Presenter7:06

Let's have your second record, what is it?

Ned Sherrin7:09

It's Elizabeth Welsh singing As Time Goes By. I wanted to have Liz Welsh singing I Can't Give You Anything But Love Baby, which she sang for me on a disastrous television series I produced and directed with Henry Hall. I'm afraid I I finished dear Henry's broadcasting career by being such an inefficient producer, but after we'd done a couple of episodes and it was obviously awful we had to have a a stiffening of more senior and uh better performers and it was the start of a long friendship with Liz. Uh in the case of As Time Goes By, it's a song which she almost single-handedly kept going through the thirties. It came from a a review called Everybody's Invited. Unfortunately nobody came and the review was a flop, but Liz kept on singing the song and eventually it was picked up in Casablanca.

Presenter7:55

You must remember this.

Presenter7:57

A kiss is still a kiss, a sigh is just a sigh.

Presenter8:04

The fundamental things apply as time goes on.

Speaker 38:12

And when two lovers woo, they still say I love you.

Speaker 38:18

On that you can rely.

Presenter8:20

Yeah.

Presenter8:22

Elizabeth Welsh singing as time goes by. Now, before we rush you off into television, Ned, um, we just must hear about your decountrification, I think you've called it. This this began, this process in the army.

Ned Sherrin8:36

I'm not conscious of it at all. I'm only aware of the one word. I I did realize suddenly in the army that I was saying garage and everybody else, or at least all the all the public schoolboys who'd gone into the army were saying garage. And so I changed that to garage, only to find when I got to America many years later that they were all saying garage. So it had had to but it's back to garage now. If I retire to Somerset it'll be garage again.

Presenter8:59

You learnt somewhere to call lunch dinner or dinner dinner lunch.

Ned Sherrin9:02

Yes, I think we always used to call um lunch dinner at home, and then because it would be a sort of big lunch, uh, heavy tea and then usually bread and ham supper. We didn't we didn't do dinner. Except I think during the war I remember my father being very irritated because the other two farms in the village decided we should all exchange dinner parties and uh so we used to have to put on suits and go and then ask the others back. They were they were very nice. I have a vivid memory actually of the ladies leaving the gentlemen uh when they came to our house and then I think we all wanted to, as it were, go to the loo. So all the gentlemen then went out onto this dark, dark lawn and there was a sort of wonderful sort of murmuring echo of I'm here, I'm here, I'm here to make sure that nobody actually got confused with anybody else where they were directing it. I'm here, I'm here, Tom.

Presenter9:52

Tell me about the Army. This was the uh the Royal Corps of Signals, National Service.

Ned Sherrin9:56

Yes, I went straight from Sexes, which was the school I went to into the signals, went to Catterick and went into an officer training course, Aldershot, and then back up for uh more officer training at Catterick, and then I was I got lucky and went abroad for the first time to Australia, which is a sort of land of milk and honey.

Presenter10:15

But you thought you toyed with the idea, didn't you idea, didn't you, of becoming a professional soldier? Well

Ned Sherrin10:20

Well, I I think only in the sense that if I get involved in anything I tend not to see past that and it uh at one time it seemed quite uh quite easy to carry on being being a soldier, but I'd already sort of been booked for Oxford, and so um it it never became a serious thought.

Presenter10:36

So you went up to Oxford, and and you tried quite hard to become an actor.

Ned Sherrin10:40

Well, first of all, John Wood, who's now quite a good actor, was directing Tis Pity She's a Whore and I got the part of the Cardinal who finishes it with that splendid couplet of One So Young, So Rich in Nature's Store, who would not say'Tis Pity She's a Whore. And I thought this I was going to be a sensation in this one speech. However, after the first day's rehearsal I was sacked by John Wood and the priest who opened the play was promoted also to be the Cardinal who closed it, which must be one of the quicker cases of promotion in the Catholic Church. So I had to go away and do do reviews with a friend of mine, Desmond O'Donovan. We started doing reviews for the Experimental Theatre Club and a Catholic group called the Candlelight Theatre Club, which was a nice lucky break.

Presenter11:20

It all came much more naturally, though, to you review.

Ned Sherrin11:22

Well, I didn't have to appear in the reviews, you see, because uh I that's not my forte. I d I can't move and I can't sing, so uh this is a tremendous handicap if you want to be a pretty good

Presenter11:32

But you've appeared since, as I was saying earlier, I mean, suddenly you appeared in side by side by sun.

Ned Sherrin11:36

Yes, but I was only sitting on a stool and chattering away.

Presenter11:40

Shall we have the third piece of music?

Ned Sherrin11:42

Well, The Next Choice is part of my musical education. Carol Browns used to take me to see uh some opera and a lot of ballet. And uh I loved going to the ballet and uh this is a ballet that Fred Ashton made from called Monotones uh and the first piece is uh bits Sati's gymnopidi.

Presenter13:00

Herikzati's Gyminopedie number one, played by Pascal Roger. Um you mentioned Ned Carol Brahms there, with whom you had uh a long and fruitful writing collaboration until she died in nineteen eighty two.

Ned Sherrin13:10

Yeah.

Presenter13:14

How did you uh meet her? Or how did it come about?

Ned Sherrin13:16

I'd always wanted to do a musical of two things, one of uh uh Zuleika Dobson and one of uh No Bed for Bacon. And when I was at Oxford I was furious one day'cause I'd always thought, oh, you know, Max Bierbohm's far too important and uh can't write to him. And I read a piece in the paper saying that Cambridge was going to do one and that Max Bierbohm had given his blessing delightedly, saying he'd always been so disappointed that uh Oxford

Ned Sherrin13:40

Hadn't asked. So I thought, well, the moment I came down, I thought Carol Brams is still alive. I'll write to her. So I wrote off saying, what about doing a musical of that? And the very next morning there was a a phone call. I was rushed down to the phone and it was Carol who had got the definite idea that we'd met before. So she kept saying, but I know you, Mr. Sherry. No, you don't. And we went through this sort of cack-handed conversation for quite some time. Anyway, we arranged to meet and got on quite well. She had decided, I think, after her great collaborator, S.J. Simon died, that she wouldn't have another collaborator, but she sensed, I think, immediately that I challenged no comparisons with Simon, and it might be an easier working relationship, therefore. And so we started to work on it together. We never got it right. However, it had started us off in a collaboration.

Presenter14:28

So what did you write together of which you're most proud?

Ned Sherrin14:31

On the whole, we were tremendously proud of practically everything we did, because you do get affectionate about things, especially the ones that don't go so well. But we adored working on one, A Life of Murray Lloyd called Sing a Rude Song. We had a wonderful time doing a television play with Donald Wolfit called Benbo was his name. And the last two things that we did together were The Mitford Girls, which was a very happy experience, and also with Timothy West's thing that they're going to televise later this year a sort of two-man show based on the the wit and wisdom of Tommy Beacham.

Presenter15:04

But how do you write together? I mean, who puts the words on the page?

Ned Sherrin15:08

Well, I think in the case of um Brahms and Simon, I think that Carol used to do most of the physical writing down. In our case, we almost invariably sat opposite one another in a room, and I had the pad, because I wrote more quickly than she did. The other thing we loved doing was uh was working in the car, because there's something about it the rhythm and the changing scenery which in which you don't feel quite so so trapped staring at each other and at the the blank page.

Presenter15:35

But you don't drive, do you never know?

Ned Sherrin15:36

No, Carol used to drive and I used to sort of shout at her angrily when she was trying to negotiate a a long vehicle and I was sort of wondering why she hadn't come up with an adjective.

Presenter15:46

But you've obviously written alone as well, but you intimated earlier that you don't like the loneliness of that. Perhaps the panic sets in more easily.

Ned Sherrin15:54

Yes, I haven't really um written much alone. I'm if I've I've done an autobiography in which I suppose one's memories are one's collaborator. And similarly I've done a a collection of uh other people's wit and again you have the the collaboration of them and uh also editing Carol's memoirs. Uh there was a another voice going on the whole time.

Presenter16:15

But you prefer to have someone there to save you from the panic.

Ned Sherrin16:18

Yes, I I don't think I'm a I'm a fully fledged writer. Carol used to get very annoyed when I used to say that. Uh but uh I don't think that writing is my particular spech.

Presenter16:28

What is?

Ned Sherrin16:29

I I think fiddling around, poking one's nose in, sort of activating things probably, w but without the sort of business nonce that makes one a a properly successful producer.

Presenter16:38

We were going to have, I think, some music from your Singarude song, weren't we?

Ned Sherrin16:41

Oh, good. Yes. This is this is uh Barbara Windsor singing a song I particularly like called uh You Don't Know What It's Like to Fall in Love at Forty. I'm I sort of I sort of did. It did uh finished disastrously, but uh the song is uh gives some of the sensation of what one feels like when you have a late fall.

Presenter17:01

You don't know what it's like to fall in love.

Presenter17:06

Forty

Presenter17:10

Don't know what it's like to fall in love.

Presenter17:16

Like me.

Presenter17:18

It takes you by surprise and then

Speaker 217:24

You realize that the look you saw

Presenter17:31

Barbara Windsor singing You Don't Know What It's Like to Fall in Love at Forty.

Ned Sherrin17:34

I think I'd have to have Barbara with me on the island. I mean, not in the flesh, but uh she's so wonderfully funny. I would uh play that and then go racing around the island booming with laughter, memories of Barbara, none of which I'm afraid I can repeat on this programme, which is Family Listening.

Presenter17:50

Now, Ned, we've come all this way and we haven't talked about that was the week that was. Now, you are the man who gave us this programme. You are indeed the man who gave us David Frost, are you not? Yes.

Ned Sherrin17:58

Yes, I've never regretted it.

Presenter18:00

And this was 1962. You were a a thrusting young producer of what, thirty-one? Yes, I am.

Ned Sherrin18:06

Yes, I'd had two years with ATV. Then I was told that I went to them and said I'd like to come back f to London and they said no, we see you as a Birmingham person. So Carol got me an introduction to Cecil McGiven and Cecil McGiven sent me on to Grace Wyndham Goldie. She dispatched me to the Tonight lot and I was Tonight for two years. I then applied for Light Entertainment where I went across and had this wonderfully disastrous two years career after which I was sacked and went back to Tonight and they were looking for a new time slot to conquer and they thought that there hadn't really been any programme specially designed for sort of eleven o'clock on a Saturday night and so we devised or I devised that was the week in order to fill that slot. Satire then became the label that was applied to it but I think satire which is a very difficult word to define was really only one of the one of the facets of the programme. And you know I think the satire occasionally did come up to the good standards. I remember a brilliant piece of writing by Christopher Booker when Alec Douglas Hume succeeded to the leadership of the Conservative Party. He wrote this splendidly elegant piece delivered forcefully but not quite so elegantly by David in the person of Disraeli and ending up with David's own joke about the difference between Harold Wilson and Douglas Humes, the difference between smart Alec and dull Alec.

Presenter19:24

It was also a programme I think that's what's most impressive about that era that launched so many careers, not just yours and David Frost's, I mean Lance Percival, Willie Rushton, Eleanor Braun, Millicent Martin.

Presenter19:37

Lots of writers too, weren't there? Yeah, their names, yeah.

Ned Sherrin19:39

Yes, Dennis Potter did some of his earliest work there, writing with David Nathan, who was a journalist. I think they were both on The Herald. And of course we were able to find a whole new generation of talkers then, Paddy Campbell, and Harvey Orkin and Dennis Norden, and that was fun too. And also one was able to commission music as well. John Scott, John Dankworth, Duncan Lamont, lots of jazz people used to write songs for us. So just to have the opportunity of introducing performers and creators to the screen was heady wine.

Presenter20:12

Marvellous quote from Millicent Martin. If I'd known I was making history I'd have taken more notice.

Ned Sherrin20:17

Yes, we w one of our big sensations was a a sort of consumer guide to the various religions, which was a again a a pretty funny and very shrewd look at the various qualities of religion. But it did create a huge sensation. Milly, when interviewed about it, said, No, it's nothing to do with religion. It was a satire on those consumer guides.

Presenter20:39

Let's have your fifth record.

Ned Sherrin20:41

Fifth record is one that I commissioned for for That Was the Week. Uh it was originally a duet which Millie sang with Cleo Lane called Woman Talk, Cleo then. Cleo then recorded it by herself and so did Carmen McRae. They both called their their LPs after it and it's fascinating. I wish we could play both because uh uh Cleo's is a wonderful silver interpretation and uh uh Carmen McRae's is like some great brass gong. Anyway, because uh I'm much more fond of Cleo and hardly know Miss McRae, we'll have Cleo's version of Woman Talk.

Speaker 221:11

Uh

Speaker 321:11

Woman chattel

Speaker 221:13

So

Speaker 321:13

Yeah.

Speaker 321:15

Oh man.

Speaker 321:18

For men are to blame, not understanding They take, they break, they're so demanding Always they take, always they break, always they play the clown

Presenter21:37

How impossibly lazy that's how lazy that it's

Presenter21:41

Cleo Lane singing Woman Talk, lyric by Carol Brahms, music by John Scott.

Presenter21:47

You did, did you not, Ned, preside over the famous television programme on which Kenneth Tynan uttered that four letter word?

Ned Sherrin21:55

Yes, it came in the most curious circumstance. There'd always been a feud between Ken Tynan and Mary McCarthy, but they'd never met. So they were both going to be in the country at the same time, and it seemed a good idea to let them fight it out. I had a sort of sixth sense which told me that sometimes when people actually meet there there is no feud, and this is indeed what happened. We had luncheon at the Cafe Royal, when it was quite clear that it had all been that sort of venom that goes into the pen and not stemming quite from the head. We then found it terribly difficult to find a subject on which they could disagree. And the only thing that we could was censorship. And Ken was prepared to say there should be absolutely no censorship at all, and Mary felt that there should be some parameters. Ken then I hadn't realised until I read Kathleen's book, because he'd always said that it it cropped up, but apparently when they all went back to Ken's flat afterwards and Kathleen greeted Ken at the door by saying, Well, you said it then, didn't you? So plainly it had been a matter of debate in the Tynan household. He certainly didn't tell me beforehand, because I imagine that he would have assumed that I would have had to tell him not to say it, so so it was kept a secret from me.

Presenter23:04

But it was

Presenter23:06

But again a piece of of television history. And and still, I mean, it is simply not said.

Ned Sherrin23:10

No, I we had a case on loose ends the other day when Elaine Stritch uh in the course of the story said that same word and uh and then sort of realized that maybe she'd caused some embarrassment and said, Oh, you can always cut that out, can't you, darling? And uh I said, Well, we are actually live Elaine She said, Oh, live television and I said, No, live radio, Elaine She said, Oh my God, I needn't have made up my face, need I?

Ned Sherrin23:34

Yeah.

Presenter23:35

Ned, we've mentioned we haven't mentioned yet a whole chunk of your life, which was when you went into um film production, making such films as Am I allowed to say the title is all we do?

Ned Sherrin23:42

Oh yes, yes, people always use them when they introduce me for after dinner speeches. They know it's an easy laugh, don't you?

Presenter23:46

Yeah.

Presenter23:48

Up the chastity belt you are rude.

Presenter23:52

And Rinter Dick, which I I can only hope was about a private detective.

Ned Sherrin23:55

It was indeed about private detective, yes. I enjoyed making the change. I felt I'd become rather typed on the television shows as a late night trouser dropper. But although I I enjoyed the time, I was lucky in having um extremely good partners because somehow the my instinct has never been for film making. Uh I liked the immediacy both of the the the reaction of a theatre audience or the immediacy and size of a of a live television programme. When the film industry gave me up in the early seventies, it was not with too much of a sense of regret.

Presenter23:57

I mean

Presenter24:30

Some more music.

Ned Sherrin24:31

The next one takes us on to the next career jump side by side by Sondheim. And I had this is you know how people on this programme always say they had the most tremendous problem choosing their eight discs. I didn't have a tremendous problem overall, but Stephen's output, I was hosting, sort of presenting a concert at Drury Lane the other day and we were doing an all Sondheim night for an AIDS charity. And the amount of sheer sort of wealth of music that wells up is extraordinary. I think for sentimental reasons I'd better have Millie and David Kernan and Julia Mackenzie singing side by side from our original production.

Speaker 325:10

Uh

Speaker 225:10

His answer in rosy side by side

Ned Sherrin25:22

I saw

Speaker 225:25

Or in a star Comfy and cozy, side by side.

Presenter25:39

Stephen Sontime's Side by Side, sung by Millicent Martin, David Kernan, and Julia Mackenzie. A show which you did both here and in the States.

Ned Sherrin25:47

Yes, it was a total change of life. You know, uh normally one thinks what shall I do this evening at about seven o'clock? And uh suddenly I realised for a year in England and then six months in America that I had very little choice about what I was going to do at seven o'clock. It was quite funny also trying to make the the difference between having done it here and jokes about Mary Whitehouse or Jeremy Thorpe, you know, would bring the house down. Uh they didn't of course go very well in America, so I had to have have them all all translated. But I thought it was all going quite well until one night I was coming racing down the steps of the music box theater and I went flat o on my on my back. I tripped. I was quite sober, but I I tripped, went flat on my back in the gutter and the audience was still coming out past me down the down the street and I always remember these

Ned Sherrin26:33

Two young men looking down at me in some sort of disgust, and uh in retrospect I can only describe them as vicious queens, I think, but they took one look down and said, funnier than anything she did in the show.

Presenter26:46

Ned, you've talked a lot about your your failures and your sackings as well as your successes. You you did of course last year have quite a big flop, which was Siegfeld.

Ned Sherrin26:57

Yes, it was. It was interesting and salutary. I did it in collaboration with Alastair Beaton. I don't think we realised immediately just how great the problems were. Siegfeld was a tremendously unattractive man in many ways, but he was he had enormous taste and did bring about a revolution in spectacular revue theatre. But somehow we were never able to crack the the fact of making this this unattractive monster into anything other than a dull and unattractive monster on the stage. And so sadly it went down the chute.

Presenter27:32

But did did that hurt you? Did it trouble you?

Ned Sherrin27:34

No, I think we had a clear enough idea of where we'd gone wrong.

Presenter27:38

So there's not uh not a lot of damaged pride there.

Ned Sherrin27:41

Uh n it was that was the week was a very good training ground, you see, because unlike most programmes where you get a notice at the beginning of the series and perhaps a notice at the end, or perhaps a notice in the middle, we used to get the full blast through all those programmes practically every Monday morning. So I think my skin is probably thicker than most

Presenter27:42

Was it?

Presenter27:58

Let's have your seventh record.

Ned Sherrin28:00

Well, this is another particularly happy memory. We had a wonderful cast, Six Marvellous Girls, and Oz Clarke, who's now doing more wine criticism than acting, in a play called The Mitford Girls, which we started off tremendously happily in Chichester. I also became particularly fond of Patricia Hodge, who sings this song. She's playing in the show Nancy Mitford, whose love life was never quite as happy as she would have liked it to have been. And so this is Pat Hodge, the reincarnation, I suppose almost of Gertrude Lawrence. As Nancy Mitford, she sings Why Do People Fall in Love?

Ned Sherrin28:35

Why do

Speaker 328:36

Who people fall in love

Speaker 328:41

That's a mystery, so say I.

Speaker 328:47

I found it all so easy.

Speaker 328:51

It happened nowhere for now

Ned Sherrin28:54

Yeah, why do

Ned Sherrin28:57

People fall in love That's a miracle which goes by

Presenter29:06

Why Do People Fall in Love from The Mitford Girls sung by Patricia Hodge?

Ned Sherrin29:10

Yes, the other alternative might have been the composer was Peter Greenwell, and he's infinitely the best exponent of uh coward patter numbers, and I I shall probably be in disgrace for not having paid one of his uh one of his own records, but at least it's one of his tunes.

Presenter29:23

I think you managed to choose two for every one throughout this program.

Ned Sherrin29:26

Throughout this program.

Presenter29:27

Connect.

Presenter29:28

Let let me ask you finally, you you implied earlier that uh the role you're best at really is that of the impresario, bringing together talents and uh of various forms and nurturing them, which is what you did after all in in that was the week twenty-seven years ago. In a way, of course, it's what you do today in Loose Ends with the likes of Robert Elms and Emma Freud.

Ned Sherrin29:46

Yes, the difference is that I don't I didn't have the choosing of them. I mean, I approve of all the cho of the choices, but that's uh nice Mr Gardhouse, who's uh uh who has perhaps taken on that mantle, at least in radio, because he t seems to turn up more interesting voices and interesting minds.

Presenter30:03

But you are with them rather like a a kindly father, albeit with quite a sharp tongue.

Ned Sherrin30:07

Yes, no, I I I do like that. I mean it it keeps one on one's toes oneself. You know, they they mock me a great deal, but uh one can always mock them back a little.

Presenter30:16

Do you think he would have liked to have had children?

Ned Sherrin30:18

I like other people's children very much. I've got a new uh I've got a new godson. I've just started a sort of second generation of godsons, a baby Bunn, Charlie Bunn, down in uh at Hickstead. And uh it's interesting watching him grow up. I've got uh the others have all gone out into the world. I have this wonderful system with uh godchildren which I learnt from Edith Evans, which is that uh I don't give them presents on their birthday, I give them presents on my birthday, it which means that they get a sort of extra present day. They don't have to give anything back to me, but at least they get a they get a present when they're least expecting it.

Presenter30:47

And you only have to remember something once. Right.

Ned Sherrin30:49

Right.

Presenter30:50

Should we have your last record?

Ned Sherrin30:52

Yes, this is one that comes from a musical that Alistair and I wrote for the GLC called Small Expectations a few years ago. And we wrote individual songs. This is one I wrote with Gerard Kenney, who wrote the score. It's a sort of love song, but funnily enough, it was based, I think, on the working relationship that I had with Carol. There was never a romantic relationship between us, but there is a funny way in which when you work with somebody and you fight and argue about songs or shows and that sort of thing, and then suddenly they aren't around to fight with anymore. You do get a sense of loss. And I suppose on the island, there will only be the wildlife to fight with. And so Not Funny is a sort of congee to Carol for the amusing and fights that we had and those that I still miss. A funny thing to be alone.

Ned Sherrin31:48

Not funny.

Ned Sherrin31:53

Funny when you have no one to talk to

Speaker 231:57

Yeah.

Presenter31:57

Not funny.

Presenter31:59

A funny thing when I've go Yeah.

Speaker 332:06

Who's wrong?

Speaker 332:09

Uh

Presenter32:09

You hear no s

Speaker 332:12

Sympathetic sound

Presenter32:15

Not Funny, sung by Marion Montgomery, music by Gerard Kenney, words by mister Ned Sherin.

Presenter32:22

Which of the eight records then Ned is the special one?

Ned Sherrin32:24

I think I'm going to take uh Liz Welsh. Uh I think uh the the L P that it's on uh i includes also Solomon and Keep My Love Alive and The Nearness of You and uh almost all the songs I like hearing her sing best.

Presenter32:36

You've now had twenty-two records.

Ned Sherrin32:38

That's a good one.

Presenter32:39

And your book, what is it?

Ned Sherrin32:41

Again, there'll be thunderbolts if I don't take one of Carroll's, I think, so I'll take uh I'll take no bed for Bacon. It is a it is a wonderfully wise and funny book. Neville Coghill always used to say that it uh it should be put into the Oxford English syllabus for for the sake of balance for Shakespearean scholars, and uh I love it.

Presenter32:57

And your luxury.

Ned Sherrin32:58

Obviously one can't have a telephone, can one? No. I think it it's going to have to be a very varied sack of seed potatoes, uh a sort of varied selection, you know, from King Edwards onwards, upwards and outwards, uh, because I'm going to rely a lot on the uh I suppose it'll be it'll be fish and uh potato chips cooked in coconut oil, I suppose, won't it?

Presenter33:18

You're not the kind of man one would have imagined ending up on a desert island with fish and chip.

Ned Sherrin33:22

and a sack of potatoes.

Presenter33:25

Ned Sharon, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island disc.

Ned Sherrin33:28

Thank you.

Speaker 333:36

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