John Sessions

Speaker 40:00

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 40:08

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

Presenter0:29

My castaway this week is an entertainer. On television you may have seen him as Zipser, the sexually retarded academic in Porterhouse Blue, or heard him as the spitting image of Norman Tebbit and Lord Olivier.

Presenter0:41

On the stage he's enjoyed great acclaim playing Napoleon, and about forty characters in the supporting cast as well. Good going, you'll agree, for a man who began his professional career only eight years ago. His success lies in his individuality. Accurate observation, born out of wide reading and quickness of mind, gives him all the characters he needs as an actor, comedian, writer and mimic. He is John Sessions.

Presenter1:07

A John of all trades, they say, on the stage at least. Is that how you like it? Or do you find yourself, John, beginning to lean towards one particular bit of your talent?

John Sessions1:15

Well, I'm not quite sure what to do at the moment because I've always I always felt certainly th through the first few years it was good to

John Sessions1:23

get her finger into as many pies as possible, then after a while

John Sessions1:27

You wonder whether you've dissipated your energies and perhaps you should just concentrate on the one thing. For example, I go with improvisation. Then you think, oh dear, then you'll be like, you know, Percy Edwards is down as the man who does the bird impersonations. Then there was that lady who used to tear up telephone books and they'll say, Oh, he's the little bloke with the big nose who makes it up, which sort of puts you out of the running for Hamlet. Although I'm not sure I'm in the running for Hamlet, but

Presenter1:53

But you have a a a fear of being slotted nevertheless, I mean pigeonholed.

John Sessions1:57

Yes, and uh not quite sure how to go about subverting that or changing that perception of me, you know.

John Sessions2:03

But I do keep trying to do different things while being aware, oh dear, should I just stay with the one thing? And if I really do want to do straight acting for any period, I should put down the improvisation boots and do it.

Presenter2:15

But we'll talk about that in a minute.

John Sessions2:15

We talk about

Presenter2:16

I wonder if you fit into the castaway pigeonhole in any way. I mean, what image have you conjured up of yourself as you've thought over the last few weeks about rocks and desert islands and palm trees and wind up gramophones?

John Sessions2:28

There's a part of me that quite likes solitariness.

John Sessions2:31

Although, you know, there's that paradox as there's with a lot of people that uh

John Sessions2:36

I consider myself to be gregarious, and yet

John Sessions2:39

I do quite like having part of my life where I'm on my own, you know. So to that extent, although one can't really imagine what it's absolutely going to be like, I um I think I might fare quite well. On the other hand, I'm so impractical. I mean, fixing a plug is the maximum, and everything else is a telephone call, you know, for a man or a friend often. to come and do the most laughably simple things. So I wouldn't be great in the way of um building houses or

Presenter3:06

But how would you manage mentally? I mean, do you fit into one of those kinds of pigeonholes? Are you the brooding artist who sits and reviews his life and thereby refreshes himself? Or are you um are you the suicidal maniac?

John Sessions3:19

I said, Well, I hope not the latter. I'd probably spend a lot of time talking to myself, but I do that anyway, particularly when I'm tired. You know, sometimes when I'm very tired, get up one morning and go into the kitchen and say, Right, um, make yourself a cup of tea and I have to say things out loud because

John Sessions3:32

If they just stay inside, it's like voices lost in a pile of pyjamas, you know.

Presenter3:37

I can see from your list of music that uh the music is going to play an important part on the island.

John Sessions3:42

Very much the man.

Presenter3:42

Very much so, yeah. Let's find out then, um, or begin to find out what kind of picture it paints. And we'll have your first one.

John Sessions3:48

My first choice is I Live for Art, I Live for Love from Tosca.

John Sessions3:54

With Maria Callas. I knew I was gonna have to uh have a Puccini and very very difficult to pick, you know, because there are so many good tunes.

John Sessions4:02

But uh this song particularly and her particularly singing it, because I think among certain singers she was regarded as, I don't know, not singing quite right or something, but as so often is the case with the unorthodox, uh it's special and that voice

John Sessions4:17

It's so beautiful, but it's so painful at the same time.

Speaker 44:54

Uh

Speaker 44:56

Everything is everywhere.

Presenter5:10

Maria Callas singing the aria Vissi d'Arte, Vissi d'Amore, from Pacinis Tosca, with the Oquares de la Societe des Concerre du Conservatoire, conducted by Georges Pretre.

Presenter5:22

You only set out on your professional career, John, as I mentioned, about eight years ago in your late twenties. Why did you leave it so late?

John Sessions5:29

Because I'd no idea what to do with my life. I'd left school. I'd just got into university.

John Sessions5:34

I mean for somebody who has

John Sessions5:37

A reputation for being a big intellectual. I'm not really, I'm a bit of a thickie, really. I just love books and the way that some people like steam engines or whatever.

John Sessions5:46

So I did a BA. A real drudge, you know, did all my homework, did lots of notes, you know, believed all the critics.

John Sessions5:52

So then I went on to do my MA.

John Sessions5:54

I had to disbelieve some of the critics by then, of course, it wouldn't be taken at all seriously.

John Sessions5:58

I was twenty-two then, and um

John Sessions6:01

I thought I must travel, you know, go West, young man, and all that. So I wrote off to these North American universities and, cut a long story short, ended up at this university in Canada where I did a doctorate.

John Sessions6:11

which I wrote but never got fully vivid at the end of the day.

Speaker 46:15

So you don't have a PhD?

John Sessions6:16

No, I don't have a PhD. I've come clean on that one before, but let's come clean again. But I did write the thesis and I taught undergraduates while I was out there.

John Sessions6:24

And then I met this pal of mine, Leon Rubin, who's a director over here now. He was doing a doctorate out there, and he said, Look, you've really got to use 80s parlance, go for it.

John Sessions6:33

and tried to get into drama school. So I wrote to several places and I thought, if I get into Radha,

John Sessions6:38

I'll do it. If they say, No, you're not up to it, I'll think, Well, that's it. I'm not up to it, and I'll just stay doing the Chiltern Hundreds at the local whatever, you know.

John Sessions6:47

So that was it. I went to Radha.

Presenter6:48

Did you know before you went there that that comedy in its various forms was what was in you, what was your talent? Or did you think or hope that they might discover the big straight actor, the

John Sessions6:59

I suppose I wanted the big straight actor. I I do hope there is a Richard III in me.

John Sessions7:05

Very

John Sessions7:06

Very deep, dark part, but

John Sessions7:09

could also be given a lightness'cause he's got a Machiavell quality and the Machiavels in Shakespeare should always be funny. Richard the Third is the funniest part in Shakespeare. He's very unfunny when he does his clowns, by and large.

John Sessions7:21

They're about as funny as a I don't know.

John Sessions7:24

A fortnight inside a sock, but uh

John Sessions7:27

You know, Richard III and Yago, they're just hysterical. They should he should have written a play with just the pair of them, you know.

Presenter7:32

Let's have your second record then.

John Sessions7:34

My second record is Brahm's Piano Concerto No. 1.

John Sessions7:38

In D minor, played by Vladimir Ashkenazi. I was very lucky when I was a little boy. I got interested in classical music when I was about seven or eight because my brother, who was in the Navy, got very interested in it. He'd come back with all these records, and I would just rifle his records and go through and listen to them all. And this is one of the first ones that really

John Sessions7:54

Hit me.

John Sessions7:55

And I've loved it all my life.

Presenter8:58

Vladimir Ashkenazi playing part of Brahm's Piano Concerto Number One with the Concert Gabar Orchestra, conducted by Bernard Heiting.

Presenter9:06

It was quite a surprise, John, when I first heard you on television as yourself, to hear that you had a Scottish accent.

John Sessions9:11

Yes, and very odd because I've spent most of my life in England.

Presenter9:14

You left Scotland when you were two.

John Sessions9:15

Yeah.

John Sessions9:16

And um it's not that I go around waving tartan scarves or anything like that, but you know, I'm just very aware of being Scottish and

John Sessions9:26

Yes, it isn't, you know, Scottish Soldier or Song of the Clyde or anything. You just know you are and um

Presenter9:31

What is it then? What are the characteristics you think you've got?

John Sessions9:33

No, no, I mean certain ones that are probably perceived as being

John Sessions9:38

slightly cliched, like, um, cautious and

John Sessions9:42

thrifty and uh

Presenter9:44

God-fearing

John Sessions9:46

Oh, definitely. An Old Testament God is up there, you know.

Presenter9:49

And

John Sessions9:49

Man with dark Dennis the Menace eyebrows, you know.

Presenter9:51

And strong work ethic?

John Sessions9:53

I would think so, yes. I mean, there's a little voice going inside, You're so lazy all the time.

John Sessions9:59

It's like please don't think I'm making some great comparison here, but Dr. Johnson worked so hard because he knew that

John Sessions10:06

He said to somebody I've been an idle fellow all my life, and I felt that as well. I think it's because I'm so temperamentally bone idle.

John Sessions10:12

That I have to pick myself up with the scruff of the neck and force myself to do things. I don't spend all day watching old pictures.

Presenter10:15

Yeah.

Presenter10:17

What is it that's driving you then? Is it is it more uh fear of failure than desire for success?

John Sessions10:21

Absolutely that. Rather than I see what I want, it's more a case perhaps of seeing what I don't want.

Presenter10:28

Do your family enjoy your success?

John Sessions10:30

Yes, I think they were very

John Sessions10:33

Understandably very worried. My father, particularly, because I'd been at university for ages, there was obviously no prospect of an academic career, I'd lost all sort of.

John Sessions10:41

Sent for that, and it's highly competitive, as much, if not more so, than their acting games, certainly in English.

John Sessions10:46

and I came back, was at Radar. I think his heart was in his boots at that stage. But then, I suppose, a couple of years ago I mean, it's not like I'm Frank Sinatra or anything, but um, there was enough success for him to feel well, he might just be able to pay the rent.

Presenter11:00

And of course if you embarrass them too much they can hide, can't they?'Cause you changed the family name. You changed your name.

John Sessions11:05

Yes, not out of any I didn't I was very foolish actually. My father's name is Jack, Jack Marshall.

John Sessions11:12

And uh if I'd had any sense at Radha. You see, we did we were told by the principal there that if

John Sessions11:18

If our names were inequity already we had to go and change them and there was apparently a John Marshall.

John Sessions11:23

So if I had any sense, I'd just to change my Christian name and

John Sessions11:27

There was an actor in London, Bob Sessions, American actor who works over here.

John Sessions11:32

And I thought that's an interesting name. I mean, it's not too daft or peculiar, like John O'Forgetme-Not or something.

John Sessions11:39

But it's just it's got a funny slight sort of shiny feel to it, and just a bit unusual.

John Sessions11:44

But there are people who know me as John Marshall and people who rib me, you know, oh, as we must call you now or whatever, you know.

Presenter11:50

Let's pause for record number three.

John Sessions11:51

Record number three takes me back to my dim and distant teenage youth of lots of parties and shouting in people's ears to try and hear what they were saying as the record was playing. Autist Reading, I've been loving you too long.

Speaker 412:05

I've been

Speaker 412:07

Loving you

John Sessions12:18

To stop the man

Speaker 412:32

You want to be

Presenter12:35

Otis Reading, I've been loving you too long. So, John, your your parents, your family moved south when you were tiny, as we said, to Bedford and then to St. Albans. I have to say your comments I've come across describing

Speaker 412:41

Yeah.

John Sessions12:41

To

Presenter12:47

What you were like then, a kind of an exercise in self-deprecation. Let me quote you some of them. Insufferably snobbish, unspeakably precocious.

John Sessions12:56

Yeah.

Presenter12:56

Culture conscious.

John Sessions12:59

Oh, terrible. I mean I I used to sit in the garden. I think when I was about eight, I wrote a series of biographies.

John Sessions13:06

based on lots of reading and encyclopedias, and a wonderful magazine which no longer exists called Look and Learn.

John Sessions13:14

And I was decided I decided I was going to be a great writer. Now, and all the encyclopedia's great writers are always sitting on tables with bits of paper just hanging off the edge, leaning back in the chair. So I got the kitchen table out in the garden.

John Sessions13:25

Um just like the man in the book. I think it was a picture I had of Keats.

John Sessions13:28

He was one of these very kitsch pictures where he's writing Wood to a Nightingale and he's in the garden, the Nightingale's up the tree of course, like with Isaac Newton and the apple.

John Sessions13:36

So I was sitting there swanning away, being pretentious, and I decided that I would have a French title I knew no French, not a word of French, and wrote this complete garbage, uh this woh wohl sort of noise as the title. It was about a high woman.

John Sessions13:48

I got to about chapter five and

John Sessions13:51

Got him to France just before the French Revolution and suddenly realized I was writing Tale of Two Cities and that was the end of it.

Presenter13:56

And what were you snowbishy about?

John Sessions13:58

Oh, it's terrible. This Bedford Modern School where I went to nineteen sixty three, sixty four.

John Sessions14:04

We did a school magazine. It was a very like a lot of public schools, when they weren't beating you, you were playing cricket.

John Sessions14:09

I remember writing a piece in the school magazine about if only

John Sessions14:12

Everyone would listen to Beethoven and Schubert instead of the Beatles reactionary.

Presenter14:17

But also, you you again we slip into a cliché, really, because as I read about you, it seems that you were.

Presenter14:23

Again, the comic being born to try and stop himself from getting duffed up.

John Sessions14:28

Well, it happened very suddenly. We had an extraordinary religious knowledge teacher at Bedford Morton called Dan Dickey.

John Sessions14:36

Who used to, he looked like Sherlock Holmes. He's got this wonderful swept-back black hair. He was just a great guy.

John Sessions14:42

And he used to get us to act out a scene from the Bible. I think it was Pharaoh and the Ten Plagues of Egypt and stuff.

John Sessions14:51

And I just went into this sort of big thing about the pharaoh and blathering and blathering, and all the boys laughed and everything. And I suddenly discovered a sort of a weapon, or rather a means of defence, which I'd hitherto not had, because it was a terrible fighting school. I mean your teeth were grinding along the tarmac morning, noon and night, especially with the boarders who were all like Mike Tyson. You had to have a fight all the time.

John Sessions15:10

And I wasn't keeping up with this. I was beginning to look like a Henry Moore sculpture. So I thought it was about time just.

John Sessions15:16

That'll make them laugh or you'll have no face left, you know.

Presenter15:19

So you entertain the six former, the big boys?

John Sessions15:21

I did that at the Nick School and I went to St Albans. Second year I was sort of taken up.

John Sessions15:26

By the sixth form, who were all these extraordinarily exotic characters. Some of them had extraordinary names. There was a boy called Marlon Pugsley, who used to go around with a Rolls-Royce spark plug round his neck, and they all had exotic girlfriends. If they didn't have Scandinavian girlfriends, they looked as if they did. They're very rock and roll and very funky. And they'd grab me off during lunch hour to a classroom and stab me on a desk, and I'd have to do sort of workers' playtime for half an hour every lunch hour. Then they'd just kick me out the door again. But I loved it.

Presenter15:52

Your fourth piece of music.

John Sessions15:53

My fourth piece of music is

John Sessions15:55

Lgar's Enigma variations.

John Sessions15:58

uh conducted by Sir Adrian Boltwy was considered the greatest Elgar conductor.

John Sessions16:03

And I was going to pick the cello concerto, but this piece has got a particularly poignant...

John Sessions16:08

memory for me because

John Sessions16:10

My dearest and best friend Alan McWalter, who've been best friends for over twenty five years,

John Sessions16:15

In our mid teens, his father died very suddenly and um

John Sessions16:20

We I think we got a lot closer as a result of that and we I remember sitting and talking it through in the way one has to after a bereavement.

John Sessions16:28

And we used to listen to this piece of music quite a lot and I always think of that time when I hear it.

Presenter17:35

The London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sir Adrian Bolt playing the introduction to Elgar's Enigma Variations.

Presenter17:41

Let's talk, John, about your powers of improvisation.

John Sessions17:45

Towers and

Presenter17:46

I mean, it's very difficult to describe, really, for anyone who hasn't seen it. I mean, it is not like just a minute, is it?

John Sessions17:53

Um no, it's taking an idea and not just chatting for a wee bit, but

John Sessions17:58

Developing a situation, a place, characters, people, taking them on to somewhere else.

Presenter18:03

So you you could walk on the stage and someone could say to you, one person says Aloofa, another person says Scunthorpe, and another person says Marco Polo.

John Sessions18:10

And another

John Sessions18:11

Yeah.

Presenter18:12

And and then you start talking for the next fifteen minutes.

Presenter18:16

You're gonna do it now, then? Not for fifteen minutes.

John Sessions18:18

Um, am I? Okay.

John Sessions18:20

Um

John Sessions18:22

So I started off going for China, yes?

John Sessions18:25

And, um, I thought of China very much in terms of of of pottery. Yes. What do you mean,'cause they make pottery? No, I thought it was pottery.

John Sessions18:32

And Ardusuka took a cup of tea into the bath.

John Sessions18:35

And uh I was sat there for ages, and I had the loofah in my hand, which I thought was a whale quiet,'cause it was on drugs, I see.

John Sessions18:41

And uh the next thing I realized that uh I wasn't actually in China at all, I was actually in the bathroom. I hadn't left the house at all, you see.

John Sessions18:48

And um at the weekend I'm going to Scanthorpe, which is in the loft.

John Sessions18:52

Thank you, Marco Polo, for your Desert Island discs.

Presenter18:55

But how do you do it, John? I mean, I it's an impossible question. Do you just press a button, tap into some

John Sessions19:01

I think

Presenter19:01

Bit in your brain.

John Sessions19:03

It's is much to do with all the doors in the brain being open at the same time. It's like in the post office, all those little pigeonholes and every bit of daft information which I've sucked up over the years, it's all available at the same moment. That's my sort of rationalization of

Presenter19:20

But there has to be more to it than that because that would be just a very tedious stream of consciousness then, wouldn't it?

John Sessions19:24

Oh drop the hand.

Presenter19:26

Problem if I had no problem.

Presenter19:27

But you've got to make it funny as well. So you're kind of editing and selecting as you go for these open pigeonholes.

John Sessions19:29

So you're you're

John Sessions19:32

Yeah.

John Sessions19:33

Yes, um it's very odd. I mean, sometimes when it works at its best.

John Sessions19:38

It's as if somebody else is in charge.

John Sessions19:41

It's as though you were doing it in a dream.

John Sessions19:45

Now I hope that doesn't sound pretentious, but that is exactly what it's like.

John Sessions19:49

And um there's no sense of conscious thought or conscious editing or um manipulation.

John Sessions19:55

You're just going from one thing to another like a a tennis player.

John Sessions19:59

Hitting the ball.

Presenter19:59

But it there must be a consciousness of the of the reaction you're getting from the audio.

John Sessions20:03

Oh, completely, and it's somewhere sort of in the stomach region.

John Sessions20:08

You sense what they want.

John Sessions20:11

And uh you can't actually put it into words, but it's just following an instinct.

Presenter20:15

But what happens if you leave them behind? I mean, you throw in all sorts of classical illusions.

John Sessions20:19

No, I'm trying to stop that. Um I'm actually writing a series at the moment.

John Sessions20:25

Before the television, what I'm deliberately forcing my I mean the language is very large and baroque.

John Sessions20:30

And it's talking about very ordinary things, sort of.

John Sessions20:32

Day to day suburban England.

John Sessions20:35

But I'm really trying to stop the thing of when in Dad drop a big name.

John Sessions20:39

Because not only on the short term does it play into the hands of critics who are then wholly justifiable in their criticism.

John Sessions20:46

It just becomes a mannerism.

John Sessions20:48

and a reflex action.

John Sessions20:50

which can become tiresome.

Presenter20:53

I want to talk a bit more about your audiences in a minute, but I want to pause for some music. What's this one?

John Sessions20:53

Talk about

John Sessions20:58

Uh this is the um A minor quartet by Beethoven, the penultimate quartet which he wrote.

John Sessions21:04

Between the Ninth Symphony and his death.

John Sessions21:07

I would single it out as the most extraordinary piece of music I've ever heard.

John Sessions21:11

I've listened to it many times, and when I play it to friends

John Sessions21:14

You you sit there you're quite stunned at the end of it because

John Sessions21:19

You don't it's one of those things, you know, some music paints pictures of sunshine and hills, and you don't you can't actually tell what this is depicting.

John Sessions21:26

But it's getting to the absolute essence of what spirituality is about. I'd even go so far as to say.

John Sessions21:33

It's like being in the presence of God.

Presenter22:35

Part of the third movement of Beethoven's string quartet in A minor, opus one hundred and thirty two, played by the FitzWilliam Quartet.

Presenter22:43

Talking still, John, about holding the attention uh of your audience, trying to appeal to all of them. One of the tricks you pull, isn't it, is to kind of combine the different ends of the culture market. I mean, one minute you can be taking a character out of EastEnders, and then it can be Lord Olivier.

John Sessions22:56

There's a medicine

John Sessions22:58

Yes, I I've been beating this drum recently.

John Sessions23:01

Some time about uh homogenizing culture, that we shouldn't have this bifurcation of high culture and low culture.

John Sessions23:09

But sort of hearing myself back as it were, I do sound a little bit like Cromwell chopping down the Maypoles. Who am I to say you cannot watch neighbors? And to be very s snotty and highfaluting, I'm actually implicitly being as exclusive or elitist as some of the things I'm actually trying to subvert.

Presenter23:26

But there is there is a truth in it, isn't there? We do compartmentalize ourselves.

John Sessions23:27

Yeah.

John Sessions23:30

Yes, and it's very tricky because culture is not necessarily quartets or very difficult pieces of music or painting or whatever.

John Sessions23:39

It's holding the mirror up to nature. It's showing how varied life actually is. You know, that um a man who is an accountant isn't necessarily wearing horn room spectacles. I mean a lot of people are, but some of them come home and do, I dunno, calligraphy or they

John Sessions23:52

they're really experts on Charles Dickens or or their he and the wife go rumba dancing and.

John Sessions23:59

Any sort of

John Sessions24:00

Entertainment that reflects that as a a reality. That's serving art as far as I'm concerned. I just feel it's a shame a lot of people are put off culture because of some of its presentation, that it does tend to be people waving their arms, gesticulating, being terribly sort of moving and intense. You know, and you think, oh gosh, that's got nothing to do with me, that's as much to do with me as the planet Saturn.

Presenter24:21

Let's have record number six.

John Sessions24:23

Record number six is an excerpt from William Faulkner's acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1950.

John Sessions24:31

It's not often you hear a great writer talking about what makes art great and doing it so eloquently.

John Sessions24:39

But here for me is the textbook example.

Speaker 224:41

Our tragedy to day is a general and universal physical fear, so long sustained by now that we can even bear it.

Speaker 224:49

There are no longer problems of the spirit. There is only the question, when will I be blown up? Because of this, the young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself.

Speaker 225:01

which alone can I make good writing, because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat.

Speaker 225:08

He must learn them again he must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid.

Presenter25:13

Part of William Faulkner's acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize for Literature in nineteen fifty.

Presenter25:19

We must talk a bit about spitting image. I've said that you've done Olivier and Charles Bronson you've done and Norman Tebbit. I must ask you for a bit of Norman Tebbit.

John Sessions25:28

It's the tone of the voice. It's that thing of um

John Sessions25:32

I don't think I really have to explain this again. I've explained it several times.

John Sessions25:37

Do I really have to say this to you?

John Sessions25:40

Is everybody in this country a complete mental defective?

John Sessions25:43

Well, obviously so. It's that awful implicit arrogance. And it's it's that tone that's completely captured in the voice, you know.

Presenter25:51

And Billy Connolly, of course. He must be very easy for you.

John Sessions25:54

No, really. Sometimes you know, some days it's

John Sessions25:57

You know, it's like plain darts, you know, you can get it in there.

John Sessions25:59

Right in the in the treble. On other days you're in the twenties and on very bad days uh you get in the five of the ones. I had to do Anthony Hopkins and a clip from this Napoleon show on the South Bank show over Christmas and it was garbage, it was terrible.

John Sessions26:11

Billy Cornley's got a sort of falling.

John Sessions26:14

Manner like that, you know, almost a bit of a laugh in the voice as it's coming down.

John Sessions26:20

And you're in the midden and you're looking for last night's shoes and it was all that sort of thing, you know.

John Sessions26:27

But I wouldn't like to think I was just going round and round in the same rut, and just farming out the same old stuff.

Presenter26:32

Indeed you're not,'cause you're about to become some more things. First of all, film star, I think, this summer. Yes? Sweet Revenge with Carrie Fisher.

John Sessions26:38

Okay.

John Sessions26:39

And so

Presenter26:39

And then a lead.

John Sessions26:40

And the lovely Rosanna Arquette, yes. Yes, says, um they obviously I don't know, picked the wrong look, I dunno.

Presenter26:47

And then adding to the list of comic and actor and film star there's another title, Playwright.

John Sessions26:54

Playwright single

Presenter26:56

Single voices.

John Sessions26:57

Oh yes, yes, that's coming out shortly. A very hard act to follow, mister Bennett.

John Sessions27:03

In fact, uh when I was writing, this is is a monologue, and I slavishly modelled it upon his.

John Sessions27:10

pieces, you know. But I kept his picture by my typewriter, so every time I wrote a line that I thought was funny or good, I'd look at the face and almost be saying, No, it's not quite good enough, I'm afraid, you know.

Presenter27:20

What kind of character are you?

John Sessions27:22

I'm a very sort of bitter brittle a musical director from New York City called Bobby Buffett.

John Sessions27:28

And um I come to London to put on a show called Fly Me High, which is about a window cleaner.

John Sessions27:34

Who wants to become a pigeon?

John Sessions27:36

And it's a dreadful, as you can imagine, a completely run-down naffal musical. And he arrives in the world of total Weberism where the Brits have taken over the musical, the news sort of.

John Sessions27:46

uh attenuated type of musical. The whole cast has been recast by people like, I don't know, Imogen Stubbs and Rupert Graves and Helena Bonham Carter, you know, young British stars and everything.

John Sessions27:57

and a young Brechtian director, and he's just driven completely round the bend. But it ends very sadly as well. But I mustn't say what happens.

Presenter28:04

And then there's another title which is Novelist.

John Sessions28:07

Yes, I signed the dotted line just last week to write a novel, which will be a comic novel centering around the Bloomsbury Group.

John Sessions28:15

But I'd better say no more at this stage.

Presenter28:17

You don't think you're in danger of overexposure, John?

John Sessions28:21

Well, maybe over extension it's very important for me not to do any more sort of appearance, you know, oh oh, there's that bloke again, why is he there again? You know. I should really get lost in a theatre company uh like the Royal Shakespeare Company or the National.

John Sessions28:37

who of course are always knocking at my door.

John Sessions28:39

All was knocking on my door.

Presenter28:40

Asking you to play Richard the Son.

John Sessions28:41

Oh, all the time.

Presenter28:43

Okay, record number seven. Ah, the Rolling Stones.

John Sessions28:46

Has to be the now. This was almost the most difficult. How do you pick the Rolling Stones' best record?

John Sessions28:51

When there's at least fifty legitimate contenders for that title. I mean they for me are the greatest group.

John Sessions28:57

I mean, I know.

John Sessions28:58

Keith Richard has not lived the life of um a jogger.

John Sessions29:02

But he for me embodies rock and roll and I love him and Jagger. I l I love the Stones being interviewed. I think they're great fun when they're interviewed. They're such camp old queens now, you know. They're like old m they're like an old music hall act Jagger and Richards. I mean they're always making cracks about each other. Apparently they even refer to each other as she. Keith Richards said once in an interview, um I mean we'd be on the road now if Her Majesty would just get off her high heels So they are like they're like the Sunshine Boys almost.

John Sessions29:29

But anyway, I I singled it down eventually to Gimme Shelter.

John Sessions29:34

Possibly their most exciting song.

Speaker 429:56

He's got the shadow, his cat is shallow.

Presenter30:01

The Rolling Stones and Gimme Shelter. I think, John, I have to conclude that you're going to go mad on the desert island if only because there's just not enough for you to do.

John Sessions30:10

I would just have to split myself into 50 personalities and walk around talking to myself all the time. But I do that anyway. You can talk to yourself anyway. I know.

Presenter30:15

I'm gonna do that anyway. I know. But can you switch off your mind easily? Or d is there even talking a constant hum in that?

John Sessions30:20

Oh very much.

John Sessions30:22

I can go around like a pile of carpets quite easily for long periods of time. Be deeply dense. I am actually deeply dense in a

John Sessions30:30

sort of logical way.

John Sessions30:32

I had got a new typewriter the other day and reading the instruction manual it would

John Sessions30:36

trying to get it to work and sobbing and Basil faulting my head into the ground

Presenter30:39

That's just age, John.

John Sessions30:40

Well, there's age as well, you know, a lot of senility to worry about now. But uh very impractical.

Presenter30:44

Very impractical. I do seem to have spent the whole programme trying to categorise you, and as I said at the beginning, it's impossible to do that. And do you get tired of people?

Presenter30:53

Saying Will the real John Sessions stand up, please?

John Sessions30:55

Not really, but I I do feel that um I I've got a lot yet to prove. I look back um on the eight years and

John Sessions31:03

I I feel the Napoleon show I did in the West End was that was a good achievement.

John Sessions31:09

But I need another seven or eight of those. I mean, I would like to do a show like that, hopefully, very different each time, every two or three years for the rest of my career. If I were to do that, I would leave a cannon of work.

John Sessions31:20

That I'll be very proud of.

Presenter31:21

If the real John Sessions.

Presenter31:23

Doesn't have to stand up in public because he he likes to stand up in a different way every time.

John Sessions31:25

Sip

John Sessions31:28

Peace.

Presenter31:28

Um what about in private? Does he know exactly who he is?

John Sessions31:32

I would think so, yes.

John Sessions31:35

Yes, I think so.

John Sessions31:36

Yes, I mean I a lot of my social life um is with people who have

John Sessions31:41

Nothing to do with the business at all.

John Sessions31:43

It's very good for me because I can I mean one of them said to me recently, John, have you any idea how boring you've become? Because I just talk about work all the time. And when you're with people, you you know, when you are away from the business, as I'm sure you know yourself, you quickly realize that despite the fact that it's television and everything can be a big part of people's lives and is very pervasive, it can be a bit of a sort of a hothouse. I mean you're away from it, you realize that. And it's very good to be out of a hothouse theatrical entertainment world so you can be in the real world in order to get the raw material to do something about the real world. Otherwise your work becomes more and more rarefied and it's

John Sessions32:18

basically just going up itself.

John Sessions32:21

Officer

John Sessions32:22

I'll come quietly.

Presenter32:24

Your last record.

John Sessions32:25

My last record is a real

John Sessions32:28

ELD Knees UP by Gustav Mahler, the funniest man in Vienna.

John Sessions32:32

It's the Resurrection Symphony, his second symphony, which I'm going to commit the ultimate blasphemy, and I actually think this is better than Beethoven's Ninth. Just, only just.

John Sessions32:41

But it's a real old kicker.

John Sessions32:43

Man, it's one to get your hair down to.

Presenter33:35

The End of Marler's Symphony No. Two, played by the New York Philemonic and the Westminster Choir, conducted by Leonard Bernstein.

Presenter33:43

You've got to choose one of the eight, John. Difficult.

John Sessions33:46

Very, very difficult. Almost impossible. Um I think it would have to be the Mahler.

John Sessions33:52

Because it's big both lengthways and depthways. It's there's an awful lot in it.

John Sessions33:58

It's full of triumph, sadness, you know.

Presenter34:01

And the book. We we are supplying the Shakespeare, as you know, so you can learn all the parts you want to play.

John Sessions34:05

Mm-hmm.

Presenter34:06

And we're supplying the Bible.

John Sessions34:08

Right.

Presenter34:08

Um what else to

John Sessions34:11

David Copperfield by Charles Dickens.

John Sessions34:14

I would have to have a Dickens and I think that's his greatest book and uh

John Sessions34:18

You can read it again and again and again and every time you go through it.

John Sessions34:22

It just gets better.

Presenter34:23

And a luxury. Have you chosen one?

John Sessions34:25

Yes, I would like.

John Sessions34:27

Um

John Sessions34:28

A seventy-eight recording of The Laughing Policeman probably the most dreadful.

John Sessions34:32

Song ever recorded, and I'd smash it on a rock and I could lie there. When I was feeling depressed, I could go and look at it and think I'll never have to listen to this song ever again.

Presenter34:42

There's an improvisation for David Copperfield on a desert island with um a pile of old carpets.

John Sessions34:51

I came down that morning. My mother was sitting in an armchair.

John Sessions34:54

quiet and yet fretful, like a small harvest mouth, Jane Murdstone was of course in the other side of the island, playing with the palm trees, knitting them together.

John Sessions35:03

mister Birdstone stood in front of the rock, just by the rock pool.

John Sessions35:07

David, he said.

John Sessions35:08

You must be extra careful to day.

John Sessions35:11

and he brandished a large volcano over his head.

John Sessions35:14

Damn it.

John Sessions35:15

If a man takes a carpet of no specific size or dimension,

John Sessions35:20

and places it upon this island.

John Sessions35:23

What would be the area of that carpet were one to multiply it by the number of hits of julio wing glazes?

John Sessions35:31

I don't know.

John Sessions35:33

Well Brian.

Presenter35:36

That's wonderful. John Sessions, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs.

John Sessions35:41

Thank you, Sue.

Speaker 435:50

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