Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Desert Island Discs
Presented by Sue Lawley
A playwright best known for the musical Blood Brothers and the films Educating Rita and Shirley Valentine.
Eight records
In the Bleak Midwinter / Here Comes the Sun
Gustav Holst and George Harrison
segueing through to Here Comes the Sun
version recorded for the film Our Day Out
The keepsakes
The book
And I just a means of acquiring a base to understand many more languages, including English, of course.
In conversation
Presenter asks
Do you still keep your hand in [with hairdressing]? Do you do your wife's hair?
Uh no, I cut my dad's hair. I've always cut my dad's hair. Do that regularly. Um occasionally, yeah, I will do I'll I'll henna Nanny's hair or something like that. But it's not you know, I'm just not that good at it. I never was that good at it.
Presenter asks
You still live in or around Liverpool – you've never been tempted out by success?
No, never remotely tempted. Uh at the same time that I became successful, my first child, Robert, was born. And of course, once you have children, they set up their own social networks and what have you. So the decision to leave Liverpool and live somewhere else would not be my sole decision. I'd have to, you know, and certainly at the moment with Mulbean teenagers, I'm sure they'd set up a great sort of hubbub if I said, you know, we're moving elsewhere.
The recording
Timestamps play the recording from that turn
Speaker 3
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 3
The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen ninety four, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.
Presenter
My Castaway this week is a playwright. He started life as a hairdresser, and it was only when his future wife took him to see a play at the Liverpool Everyman Theatre that ambition stirred within him. Plays he realised could be about everyday life and everyday language. In 1974, he wrote John, Paul, George, Ringo, and Burt, which became a huge West End hit. It changed his life. Since then, he's written many popular and successful plays and musicals, often capitalising on his ability to write for women. Educating Rita and the one-woman show Shirley Valentine were both turned into highly successful films, and Blood Brothers is now in its 11th year in London and first year on Broadway. He is Willie Russell.
Presenter
Blood Brothers will be running successfully on Broadway despite a terrible mauling by Frank Rich, the butcher of Broadway.
Willy Russell
Frank Rich didn't give us a good review, but after receiving virtual cyanide pills from the rest of the critics, Frank's review looked like a fairly good review. But yet uniquely, really, Blood Brothers has managed to survive that sort of critical battering, and audiences have defied them.
Presenter
But why would you
Presenter
Weren't you in the middle of a wonderful party celebrating the great first night on Broadway when these returns?
Willy Russell
Oh, the the classic. It's the cl you have to go through that, you know, you have to sit there and uh what happens of course is it's not the newspapers that come in, the first reviews that come in are the are the T V stations, you know. And the first one duly came through and they called it
Willy Russell
bloody awful or twin reeks or something like that and I thought, Oh, here we go and sure enough, from from then on
Presenter
Yeah.
Willy Russell
Uh every review was damning, and I thought we'd be closed within the week.
Presenter
Despite the fact that the audience had s risen to its feet.
Willy Russell
Yes, but audiences can be very fickle. I mean, especially on Broadway, if they're told that they should not like a show, they can stay away in their droves. But Bill Kenright decided to just fight that whole critical avalanche and win, and he's won.
Presenter
Mm. Amazing, isn't there? Great feeling, though, when that happens, I presume.
Willy Russell
Yes, it is. Uh it it still doesn't wipe out the agony of that party though. I think I'll always remember that particular night.
Presenter
It all beats being a hairdresser.
Willy Russell
Oh, yes. I mean, and I I hope that I can write plays a little better than I can do people's hair.
Presenter
You no regrets about having left all that life behind, obviously, but do you still keep your hand in? I mean, do you do you do your wife's hair?
Willy Russell
Uh no, I cut my dad's hair. I've always cut my dad's hair. Do that regularly. Um occasionally, yeah, I will do I'll I'll henna Nanny's hair or something like that. But it's not you know, I'm just not that good at it. I never was that good at it.
Presenter
Rani
Presenter
But you don't cut your own, you're growing a ponytail.
Willy Russell
Oh, I do cut my arm when I have it short, but it's it's quite long at the moment, so I don't have to do much to.
Presenter
It's always said of you that you're unreconstructed sixties man, really.
Willy Russell
Yeah.
Willy Russell
Well, it's been said recently, but that's just because my locks are long. But I think it's a good age in which to have long hair.
Presenter
And you still live in or around Liverpool? I mean, you've never been tempted out by success. I don't see why you should have been, but you haven't.
Willy Russell
Go to me
Willy Russell
No, never remotely tempted. Uh at the same time that I became successful, my first child, Robert, was born. And of course, once you have children, they set up their own social networks and what have you. So the decision to leave Liverpool and live somewhere else would not be my sole decision. I'd have to, you know, and certainly at the moment with Mulbean teenagers, I'm sure they'd set up a great sort of hubbub if I said, you know, we're moving elsewhere.
Speaker 2
Yeah.
Presenter
Hmm
Presenter
Well now for the purpose of this programme you do go somewhere else to a desert island to be alone with your memories and your music. Does the idea appeal?
Willy Russell
Yes, it does in the abstract. Whether it would in actuality has yet to be seen. And what kind of music would you need? What I've done, I suppose, is just boil it down to eight that I know I would be happy with for this particular selection, but I could have chosen many others.
Presenter
And number one is
Willy Russell
Number one is Barbara Dixon singing In the Bleak Midwinter, segueing through to Here Comes the Sun.
Presenter
And why do you want that?
Willy Russell
Um it just reminds me of a a terribly intoxicating time when I went from being a teacher in Toxteth to walking down Shaftesbury Avenue looking at the whole thing in lights and a show that worked and it reminds me of Barbara Dixon's sublime voice.
Speaker 2
Uh
Speaker 2
Oblique Midway Montour
Speaker 2
Little darling
Speaker 2
It's been a long, cold, lonely winter.
Speaker 2
Later on.
Speaker 3
Lollo, it feels like innocent.
Presenter
Barbara Dixon singing In the Bleak Midwinter and Here Comes the Sun from My Castaway, Willie Russell's first big West End hit, John, Paul, George, Ringo and Bert. It was a terrific hit and she sat up the back uh uh on the piano, didn't she belting out all these Beatle numbers.
Willy Russell
almost hidden behind a huge sort of array of
Willy Russell
reddish hair and this sensational voice seemed to just come out of the corner of the stage.
Presenter
But where had you found her?
Willy Russell
Oh, I'd known I mean, I didn't find Barbara. You know, Barbara Dixon found Barbara, thank God.
Presenter
But you plucked her out, did you, to do this show?
Willy Russell
Well, no. We we we became friends and and when Barbara was playing the folk circuit around where I live, she used to stay with us.
Willy Russell
And I remembered saying to her one day, I was taking her to a gig in a place called Rainford, and I said, What I'd love to do, I'd begun writing plays, I said, I'd love to write a musical in which you would feature. And I'm thinking of trying to write a musical one day that's in some way connected with folk song. And so we had a gab about this, and she came back, went home. And I was then working on the play about the Beatles. And a week later, on a Sunday, I'll never forget, I was sitting, I thought, this is the show that Barbara should be in. I mean, it does a number of things. It immediately gets us away from the the comparison with the Beatles, because way back in seventy four, it was very difficult to recreate live on stage some of those Beatles songs, which the Beatles themselves had never played on stage, had only ever done in a studio.
Willy Russell
And by having a girl's voice we would get away from that comparison.
Presenter
It was commissioned though, wasn't it, this? I mean it w it it was Alan Dosser I think Liverpool Everyman who wanted a play about the Beatles because I suppose Liverpool and Merdyside couldn't go on not having a play about the Beatles.
Willy Russell
That's right.
Willy Russell
Well, Alan had had seen that Contact Theatre in Manchester had done a documentary about the Beatles. So he said to me, Would I he didn't know that I knew anything about the Beatles or that I'd been, you know, a fourteen year old had discovered the cavern when they were still playing there and that. And uh he asked me to go over to Manchester with him to see this documentary and asked me if I would adapt it. And Bernard Hill was playing Lennon in it.
Willy Russell
gave a an amazing performance, but I could see that it was a documentary. All the dialogue had been culled from the various biographies, and I rather arrogantly said, No, I won't adapt that. I'll write you a new play about the Beatles.
Speaker 2
Uh
Presenter
And you did, and it was a great success in Liverpool. How surprised were you when it transferred to London?
Willy Russell
Well, I I wasn't that surprised that it transferred to London. My surprise was when it ran in the West End, because I remember walking into the theatre the first night and thinking, This'll be closed in a week. Don't get carried away with it. Don't think that this is what you're going to be doing for the rest of your life.
Presenter
And then suddenly there were the crowds outside and you had a huge I mean the reviews were good.
Willy Russell
I know, they were staggering. But the first review I read was my own paper, then, The Guardian, a rather lukewarm review from Billington. So I went to bed really depressed, and in fact, had to be woken up by Bob Swash saying, What are you doing? There's a a celebratory dinner going on down at the Cafe Royale. Where are you? I said, What's to celebrate? There's a lousy review in The Guardian. He said, Forget The Guardian, everything else is a rave.
Speaker 2
Uh
Presenter
Array
Presenter
But did you know in that moment that this was, you know, the beginning of something big for you? This was your liberation?
Willy Russell
No, I mean I c I I carried on teaching. I didn't go back and pack up the job and move to the South or anything like that. I had by then anyway written a number of T V plays and I suppose I saw the success of John Paul Georgering on Bert as a bit of a sort of aberration and I shouldn't really think in those terms but should just sort of diligently keep writing what I was up to at that time.
Presenter
Record number two.
Willy Russell
Is Hoagie Car Michael singing I Get Along Without You very Well?
Presenter
Because
Willy Russell
Oh, because it it it goes back to, I suppose, my earliest musical influences, which were songs that my parents liked and sung, and in the case of my dad, and played.
Willy Russell
I get along without you very well.
Willy Russell
Of course I do.
Speaker 2
Yeah.
Willy Russell
Except when soft rains.
Willy Russell
And rip from leaves then hardly home.
Willy Russell
The thrill of being self heard in
Willy Russell
Uh
Speaker 2
Yeah.
Speaker 2
I do
Willy Russell
But I get along without you very
Presenter
Hokey car Michael and I get along without you very well.
Presenter
Where does your ability to write come from then, Willie? Can you pinpoint certain influences or remember talents that your parents had that you perhaps inherited?
Willy Russell
Yeah, I th I my my mum always wrote. Um she I remember her always, as many kids do, telling me stories when I was a young kid and enjoying stories with her.
Willy Russell
And uh she always wrote verse right up to the end of her life really.
Willy Russell
Uh my dad always played an instrument. Uh I remember when I was a little kid he used to play a massive uh accordion that used to drive me men play used to run a hide in the other room. Uh but he also played harmonica, which he he's taken up again recently, and he plays particularly well.
Presenter
And what did they do for a living, your parents?
Willy Russell
Oh, well, w my first memory is my mother worked in a mental hospital, a place called Rainhill, as an auxiliary nurse. And at that time my dad was trying to make it as the world's only cyclist librarian. He found a load of secondhand books going cheap and he got two suitcases, strapped them to the push bike and used to go around renting them out at a penny per book per week. And I think he dumped the books somewhere in Wiston one day when he realized that no librarian that he could think of ever became a millionaire on a push bike. And he he saved the money to buy a small shop in Kirby on the Industrial Estate that my mother opened as a draper's shop. And then a few years later he bought the shop next door but won and opened a fish and chip shop.
Presenter
So he wasn't becoming a millionaire by this statement.
Willy Russell
No, but it was sort of working class aristocracy run in a fish and chip shop.
Presenter
Plus Aristotle
Presenter
What about you as a child? Uh I mean, did you scribble a lot? Did you write? Were you good at compositions and stuff?
Willy Russell
I was. I mean, I do. I remember when I think I must have been about seven, having um begun to devour the Enid Blyton series, I remember thinking, Oh, well, when I next have to write a a story composition essay in class, um, I'll write it in that sort of way, you know, so that it has a beginning, a middle, an end, so that it has got some sort of narrative thrust to it. And I remember standing up in class and reading one such story that was about drugs, but I was using the word dope.
Willy Russell
uh which gave great amusement to the rest of the class. I realized then you've got to be very careful in the use of words. You can actually you can give the wrong impression. But I also remember out of that story having other kids in the class laugh where they were intended to laugh, you know.
Speaker 2
Hmm.
Willy Russell
And I suppose I knew from then on that it was something I could do. But it was the only thing I could do that was approved of. All the other things that I could do well were never approved of within that school atmosphere.
Presenter
But did did they recognize that you had a real talent? Were you encouraged in it at all?
Willy Russell
No, no, nobody. No, it w it would have been. Uh it wasn't that sort of milieu, it wasn't that sort of school, it wasn't that sort of life. You didn't you didn't have those sort of talents in the school I went to.
Presenter
And so the idea, the thought that you might make your living from writing was just way beyond anybody's ken.
Willy Russell
He never came up. Never came up.
Presenter
And and looking back on it then, you know,'cause you got there by default in the end, it d do you feel any small resentment that that nobody spotted or nobody would have encouraged, nobody sought to encourage, that they were kind of blinkered about?
Willy Russell
No, much later when I wanted to return to education, uh there was a terrible sort of anger at the the blocks that were put in my way. But no, I I didn't feel I mean I w when I failed the Eleven Plus, I was rather glad to have failed it because it meant that I didn't go off with uh another posh set of kids to a school that I didn't want to go to. It meant that I stayed within my own kind, you know. So i I don't blame school. I conspired in that. It was it was much easier to go out and take the football on the field. It was much easier to pick up the guitar when I was fourteen rather than actually study music within the school setup and
Presenter
Yeah.
Willy Russell
Uh
Presenter
Go to the cavern and listen to the Beatles.
Willy Russell
go to the cabin and not bother going to school and listen to the Beatles, you know. So I no, I don't but but I have a general rage and resentment and anger at the massive failing of so many people within the educational system.
Presenter
More music.
Willy Russell
This is uh it's Teddy Bear's Picnic, which takes me right back to being a child and listening to Uncle Macken, children's favorites, but the version that I've picked is uh a version that was recorded specially for a film of mine called Our Day Out that BBC did, and it's a sublime piece of guitar playing from Nick Jones.
Presenter
Nick Jones, playing the Teddy Bears' Picnic from Willie Russell's T V play Our Day Out, which was back in nineteen seventy seven. So you left school with uh one O level, Willie, in English. Was that lit or lang?
Willy Russell
That was Lang. They didn't do Lit at our school. No LID. No Lit.
Presenter
Where did the idea of hairdressing come from? Because that's a moment. Did it?
Willy Russell
My mum. Yeah, I'd left school and I hung around for most of the summer. I mean, I didn't want to go to work, to be quite honest. I mean, the idea of going to work, doing a job that I knew I wouldn't enjoy. So I just put it off and put it off. And it caused probably some friction within the house because, you know, I was brought up to believe that you have to earn. You know, you have to work for what you get in life. And.
Willy Russell
One day my mum suggested that uh I might like to become a ladies' hairdresser, and I thought
Willy Russell
What do we go to college for a while? Great. I can postpone going out into that world for
Presenter
Not too much night work.
Willy Russell
No. And and it's it's it sounded slightly arty, you know, it had a bit of sort of sensitivity to it. Certainly far more attractive than the idea of going to work in a bottle factory in St Ellens, which is what we'd been told we were down for. I remember as a as a sort of third-year kid being taken to a bottle factory to be shown the factory in which most of us, in fact most of us did, end up working, you know. And so I took this as a sort of bit of a a lifeline.
Willy Russell
Julie went off to a commercial hairdressing college for nine months and had a ball. I loved it.
Presenter
But you were in hairdressing for five or six years. Yeah, six years.
Willy Russell
Yeah, six years.
Presenter
It takes a certain sort of chap, doesn't it? I mean, you've got to you've got to like women.
Willy Russell
Well, I do like women, and I think that was my saving grace as a hairdresser. I certainly, as I say, was never a good hairdresser.
Presenter
But you've got to like all that chat as well, haven't you?
Willy Russell
You've got to be a very good listener. I remember there was a woman who.
Willy Russell
came once a week for a shampoo and set for about two years.
Willy Russell
And um she was then in her sixties, and her husband had once been presented to the Queen. He worked in the gunnery in the arsenal, and they'd moved up north, and this was the high point in her life. And she told me this story
Willy Russell
every single week for two years as if she'd never told me it before. And of course what I could never do was indicate to that woman that she'd told me this story before. Because I knew even then, even as a uh a fairly young lad, that there was something vitally important in this ritual that we both had to go through. Sometimes it was, you know, sometimes it was it was pretty difficult to
Speaker 2
Oh because
Speaker 2
Look at me both.
Speaker 2
Yeah.
Presenter
But sometimes
Willy Russell
feign surprise again when when the story got to its climax, but I did.
Presenter
And it was a woman, of course, Annie, who was to be your wife, who who who rescued you, in a sense, from the hairdressing, wasn't it?
Willy Russell
Yeah, she did really. I mean, she she was a great influence because she did things like go to the theater, the ballet, coming from a professional family.
Presenter
She was kosher than you.
Willy Russell
She was well, yes, she was poshi, but it it w it was a it was a family that prided itself on its professional academic status rather than on any sort of petty bourgeois values. And as I say, it was it was a family that regularly went to theatre and things like that. So I just went to the theatre with Annie as as a matter of course.
Presenter
But which was the one then when you thought, Hang on, I could do that?
Willy Russell
Well, I'd been by this time I'd I'd been writing all sorts of forms. I mean I'd written reams of poetry under the influence of the you know Brian Patton, Adrian Henry, Roger McGough, the Mersey poets. I'd tried to write a novel and I'd written many, many songs as a sort of performer as a part-time singer-songwriter. And I was fumbling towards the idea of trying to write in a dramatic form. I think I'd attempted a play for T V. And at about this time we went to The Every Man and I saw a play by John McGrath called Unruly Elements.
Willy Russell
And that really was sort of scales off the eyes time, because in my involvement with traditional music, folk music, I'd found a language which was not a self conscious art language. It was it was a language and it was a structure that came, as it were, from the people.
Willy Russell
And here was McGrath using that sort of language not a reduced, not a lowbrow language, but a language which was not self-consciously poetic.
Willy Russell
But was po he found the poetry, if you like, of common speech.
Presenter
Uh
Willy Russell
And it was that that led me really to try to write for the stage, and to write in a particular way.
Presenter
Go number four.
Willy Russell
Yeah.
Willy Russell
Our record number four is Randy Newman, Baltimore. Because of its haunting quality, it'd be nice to put this on at about six o'clock with a cocoanut full of home made wine.
Speaker 3
Uh
Willy Russell
Uh
Speaker 3
Happy old wedding
Speaker 3
The whole soul
Speaker 3
Uh
Speaker 2
They were in culture.
Speaker 2
Where the mountains are
Speaker 2
Never coming back, yo.
Speaker 2
To the day I die.
Presenter
Randy Newman and Baltimore. Let's go back to the chronology of your life, because eventually you went to night school, didn't you, and did your O and A la.
Willy Russell
I did. I went to Kirby College of Further Education to see if I could hack it really.
Presenter
And and you did?
Willy Russell
I did. I did O-level literature in a year.
Presenter
And then you after all of that you took a full-time teaching course.
Willy Russell
I did after a long, long battle with the education authorities. In those days, the idea of somebody of my age wanting to do O levels and A levels was anathema to the system really. The idea of return to learn, continuing education, access courses, they it just was not available in those days.
Presenter
And you were a married man, by
Willy Russell
I was a married man, and so trying to get a grant was almost impossible.
Presenter
There's a lot of all of that, of course, in educated industry, isn't there?
Willy Russell
That's what it isn't there.
Presenter
I mean, was it was it we should say for people who don't know about it, this was uh Julie Walters played the part, uh, the working-class liverpuddling girl fighting against the odds to get herself an education. Did you mean it to be no, I was not.
Willy Russell
No, I was not remotely conscious of writing uh autobiographically. It was only about three months after the play had been playing that I I went down to Birmingham to see the touring version. Kate Fitzgerald was playing in it and Tom Baker and I sat there and I thought, This is just glaringly how can you not realize that it's so autobiographical? But then again, if I'd had that awareness when trying to write the play, I never would have been able to write the play because I never feel confident in or neither do I ever want to say explore my own life on stage. I'm not into therapy writing, you know.
Speaker 2
In a draw
Presenter
As it turned out, of course, Educating Reader was quite a political play as well. Did you mean that?
Willy Russell
Yes, it was. Rita proved to be political in so much as it articulated and gave momentum to that whole movement of people returning to education, often working class people, often women, who arrive at a certain point in their lives and think I actually want something more. And it's not available down in a dress shop. And it's not available in a club or a pub. It's to do with some spiritual need, you know. And I'm very proud that, you know, now it's it's almost commonplace to have the idea of the the Rita, you know, doing a Rita, going back.
Presenter
Remember to
Willy Russell
Education.
Presenter
Yeah.
Presenter
That that of course Rita was was much later was 1980, but you back becoming a teacher.
Presenter
went to work in a comprehensive in Toxter thing seventy three, seventy four.
Speaker 2
Hmm.
Willy Russell
Uh
Presenter
struggling to earn a living as a teacher. How much were you earning then, do you remember?
Willy Russell
I think the take home was about twenty four pounds a week about twenty four pounds in those days.
Presenter
But it was during that time, of course, that John Paul George England hit the West End. How much were you then at?
Willy Russell
Yeah.
Willy Russell
Just in.
Willy Russell
I was suddenly earning hundreds and hundreds a week. But I I continued teaching, not because I was greedy and wanted the extra twenty-four quid a week, but but because I just didn't think that this thing would last, you know.
Presenter
Record number five.
Willy Russell
is a song that I love and have loved for many, many years and I when my kids were young, often on islands when we were away on holiday, I would sing this song to them and having three children as the first grew up and grew bored with this song the next one was coming along and was enchanted by the wilful wickedness of little Tim Maguire. Little Tim Maguire loved to play with fire.
Presenter
Always hated water, never used stone.
Speaker 3
The walk.
Presenter
Loved the smell of burning, of bonfires burning, Loved to play all day with his little tinder-box He chased the sparks as they flew into the evening, Hailed the flash of lightning and the burning sun.
Presenter
When I'm a man
Presenter
Yeah.
Speaker 3
Yeah.
Presenter
Going to Be a fireman.
Speaker 3
Um Then I can light.
Presenter
Yeah.
Speaker 3
A fire for everyone.
Willy Russell
Uh Yeah.
Speaker 3
He was poor, they dressed him in a uniform, sent him to a school with iron railings all around.
Presenter
Yeah.
Presenter
Hated the school and the rolls and the railings Took his little tinder box and burnt it to the ground. Tim McGuire, sung by Leon Rosselson. Your children are quite grown up now, aren't they? Thirteen, sixteen, and nineteen. And and Annie, your wife, works
Willy Russell
Mm.
Presenter
Uh sometimes producing your pieces, but you work quite separately.
Willy Russell
Oh, yes, we do work separately, but uh she produced co produced with Andre Molyneux, but it was her initiative, I suppose, a film called Dancing Through the Dark, which was based upon a play of mine called Stags and Hens.
Presenter
But you so you can't work together, or you prefer to work apart, separate offices, separate venues?
Willy Russell
Yeah, I don't think it's I don't think it's necessarily healthy both working in the same room and you know we spend a lot of time together because we're married and marriage tends to do that, you know. So we don't need to be working together in that way.
Presenter
But is she your nevertheless your professional sounding boarder?
Willy Russell
Oh yes, very much so. Very much about your script. Oh yes, yeah. And she's she's got a great eye for a script, you know, so I will often read to her sections of something that I'm working on at at any given time.
Presenter
You care what he thinks about yourself.
Presenter
So how did she react to Shirley Valentine when she first bumped into her, as it were?
Willy Russell
She was an immediate fan of Shirley, but I remember I was about
Willy Russell
I must have been about halfway through the second act and it was at the point well first act and it was at the point where I had to give Shirley's maiden name.
Willy Russell
And I said, I'm going to call her Shirley Smith. And he said, What are you doing? It's a terribly boring name, you know. Can't you think of something better than Shirley Smith? And I sort of wanted that anonymity. And I said, Well, at school, there was a Shirley Smith who used to sit next to a Shirley Valentine. She went, Call her Shirley Valentine, it's a much, much nicer name. Which I did, of course. And I'd assumed, I mean, ridiculous assumption, but I'd assumed that Shirley Valentine, the actual, would have by this time have married and changed her name. And so there wouldn't be that connection. And when the play originally opened in Liverpool, my sister Dawn was working at the box office, and she came home one night and she said, I've just had a call from a girl called Shirley Valentine who's booked 13 tickets. So I turned up on the Saturday and met again for the first time in 25 years. This girl whose name I'd taken. Yes, I'd recognize her immediately. And.
Presenter
Yeah.
Speaker 2
Did you recognize it?
Willy Russell
Fortunately, Shirle uh I mean really enjoyed the play, but made the immediate point that my creation, Shirley Valentine, was not remotely like her.
Presenter
Because Shirley Valentine, of course, is a middle-aged housewife who goes off to a Greek island and falls in love with a Greek waiter and is
Presenter
Desperate to be cherished, isn't she? You played her yourself, however, once, didn't you?
Willy Russell
I did. When in in the original production at the Everyman Theatre in Liverpool, Noreen Kershaw, who was playing it, fell ill and we didn't carry an understudy. Over the years I'd on a number of occasions given readings from my work. And so Glenn Wolford, the director, said, Look, if if I'm never thinking it would happen, if Noreen goes off, would you walk on stage with the script and read it? And I said, sure, you know, never thinking. Four o'clock one afternoon. I have to say I was recovering a bit from a
Speaker 2
Never think of
Willy Russell
A hangover. Uh will you come down to the theatre with the script, Nori and Zorfil? So I turned up and I I went on, uh just put the script on a lecta and said to the audience, Look, please lend me your imagination, believe that I'm a forty-two-year-old woman, believe that this wine in this bottle is Ribena and stick with us. I got through that first night. And then it was discovered that Norrie had peritonitis and wouldn't be coming back and I ended up doing it for about three weeks, you know.
Presenter
Not in the dire.
Willy Russell
Yes. Not in address. No, I just as I say I I asked the audience to fill in all those details. So it became a bit like live radio and people started turning up for this sort of strange event to hear an author read his play. And then at the end of the year Phil Key in the Daily Post gave me the Best Supporting Actress award.
Presenter
Record number six.
Willy Russell
Is uh the Smiths Panic?
Willy Russell
In recent years, through the influence of my son really, I've come to adore the work of Morrissey and here with Johnny Maher in The Smiths doing a song that it's probably the only song I've got on this list to which I could dance on the beach.
Speaker 2
You need high enough safety, so you run down to the safety of the town.
Speaker 2
On the streets of Carlo
Speaker 2
Godwin Dundee humbled, I wonder you might
Presenter
The Smithson panic. Um, how are you going to cope then? You're going to dance on the desert island from what you say, Willie, but are you going to cope with ease generally with life?
Willy Russell
I d I don't know. I don't know of the loneliness. I mean, certainly I would miss people terribly. But I could cope with things like uh food, cooking, shelter. I was a Boy Scout.
Speaker 2
I wasn't voice
Willy Russell
Uh yes, I do. I do I do most of the cooking at home. Um I'm, apart from eating fish, vegetarian, so I don't think I'd have much trouble there. I think one of the first things I'd get going would be the wine, actually. I'd I'd actually have a lot of home made wine on the go. And I try to live in a fairly sort of civilized manner, you know.
Presenter
And I mean, there's a lot of role reversal goes on in your house, isn't there, with with Annie being out at work and everything. So you're kind of practical in all sorts of ways, aren't you?
Willy Russell
Oh, not when it comes to light bulbs and plumbing and things like that. You're good at light bulbs. No, no, no, no, no. I'll I'll keep the food going. Uh, but n and, you know, I'll get the lawn mower out once every couple of weeks, but when it comes to anything like that, it's phone the builder.
Presenter
I'm good at lying.
Presenter
And will you be able to write or do you need people in life?
Willy Russell
That wouldn't bother me, nobody to write for. I mean, what'd be the point?
Presenter
Oh, so you don't do it for yourself, you don't do it because you enjoy doing it?
Willy Russell
Because you enjoy doing that? No, I write to engage with an audience and a vital element in the work that I do is the engaging with that audience. It doesn't take place my job doesn't take place until there's an audience. Probably what I would do though is write music.
Willy Russell
Because it's satisfying. It it soothes the soul.
Willy Russell
And so I would be able to be my own audience for music.
Presenter
But a lot of writers say that writing is satisfying and soothes the soul.
Willy Russell
When it's going well, it is. But I think.
Willy Russell
I would be relieved at being able to get away from those moments when it's sheer hell and it's a doggedly difficult job and you have to do it uh because you're facing that deadline. And without the deadline I doubt hand on heart that I would actually do it. Who knows? Maybe if I was away for a few years I would then try and find some sort of writing implement and start setting things down. Maybe I'd write letters.
Presenter
Number seven.
Willy Russell
Uh is Bob Dylan and a hard range gun of four. It's a bit of a cheat really this. When when he wrote it, I mean it was a very sort of sixties thing to say, but he said at the time that uh he felt that the Third World War was imminent and that he had to get a lot of songs written, so he wrote them all in one. So it means that I get about a hundred and fifty Bob Dylan songs in the one track.
Presenter
I've been out in front of a dozen dead oceans.
Presenter
I've been ten thousand miles on the mouth of a graveyard.
Presenter
And it's a hard
Speaker 2
It's hard, it's hard, it's hard.
Presenter
Uh It's a hard rain you're gonna fall.
Presenter
Hard rains are going to fall, Bob Dylan. I I presume, Willie, that um not even Andrew Lloyd Webber can sit down and say, Right, now I'm going to write a West End hit, but is that what you'd like to do again?
Willy Russell
No.
Willy Russell
No, I've never been able to I've never written uh a play in my life for the West End.
Willy Russell
Um it it's a bit of an abstraction, really. I've tended to write plays for specific theatres that have then gone on to play in the West End.
Presenter
What about Hollywood? Uh, rumour has it that Steven Spielberg has rung you up from time to time.
Willy Russell
Mm.
Presenter
No no go.
Willy Russell
Uh n well no, I mean we we met and we discussed the picture that he wanted to do and uh it was not s something that really engaged me. Um and and again it all comes down to the story. Uh I was very flattered to be approached by such a good filmmaker, uh but you can't write plays bec or films because you desperately want to.
Willy Russell
You have to write the story you have to write at a particular time. And Hollywood doesn't d doesn't attract me. My my dealings with Hollywood have been as a result of a play that has then become a film.
Presenter
Hm. But you're obviously
Presenter
Very much professionally and personally, I presume, uh but certainly professionally at ease with yourself. I mean, would it be almost uh fair to say you're not particularly ambitious?
Willy Russell
I'm extremely ambitious, but I'm ambitious in terms of the work itself.
Willy Russell
I'm always trying to
Willy Russell
Do that which seems to be undoable, if you like, not doable. And if you crack that, if you spend a day and you come away and you've got, you know, two sheets of paper full of words which you know are going to work, it is still the most satisfying feeling.
Presenter
It's all a a long way from the fish and chip shop and the hairdressing salon. Um not that it hasn't been hard work, but I presume you'd admit that that somebody up there's looking after you anyway.
Willy Russell
Oh, yes, yes, and being uh hyper superstitious, I'll uh readily concur with that.
Presenter
Uh
Presenter
Record number eight.
Willy Russell
Is uh the Beatles. Uh I'd have to have a a Beatles track.
Willy Russell
And uh it's in my life.
Speaker 2
Close the meaning.
Speaker 2
When I think of love as something new
Speaker 2
Oh I know I'll never lose affection
Speaker 2
People are faith.
Speaker 2
But when before I know I'll often stop and think about them
Speaker 2
Allies, I love you more.
Presenter
The Beatles and In My Life, if you could only take one of those records.
Willy Russell
I think would be the hoagie Carmichael.
Presenter
What is it? I thought we were gonna have the Beatles for a minute.
Willy Russell
Hmm.
Willy Russell
No, it would be the holy car, Michael.
Presenter
And your book?
Willy Russell
Uh a Latin primer.
Presenter
Oh, this is ambitious stuff.
Willy Russell
Never did Latin at school. What if you did?
Presenter
Well if you didn't do any lit you know, they should have lacked it.
Willy Russell
I know they didn't like it. And I just a means of
Willy Russell
acquiring a base to understand many more languages, including English, of course.
Presenter
And what about your luxury?
Willy Russell
Well, is it of no practical
Presenter
Hmm.
Willy Russell
Value, what you say? No practical use. Oh, no practical if there's no practical use whatsoever, I'd probably like to take the brains of the present cabinet. But they probably find another set of absolute no practical use, so I'd leave them where they are. And uh I'd like to have an English meadow with an oak tree in the middle of it.
Presenter
Oh, that's nice. I that's original. Oh, is it? Yes, I think we can ship one across well we'll try. Anyway, Willie Russell, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs.
Willy Russell
Corruption
Willy Russell
Thank you.
Speaker 3
You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Islandists Archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk/radio4.
Presenter asks
Do you feel any resentment that nobody spotted or encouraged your talent when you were young?
No, much later when I wanted to return to education, uh there was a terrible sort of anger at the the blocks that were put in my way. But no, I I didn't feel I mean I w when I failed the Eleven Plus, I was rather glad to have failed it because it meant that I didn't go off with uh another posh set of kids to a school that I didn't want to go to. It meant that I stayed within my own kind, you know. So i I don't blame school. I conspired in that. It was it was much easier to go out and take the football on the field. It was much easier to pick up the guitar when I was fourteen rather than actually study music within the school setup and … go to the cavern and listen to the Beatles. … So I no, I don't but but I have a general rage and resentment and anger at the massive failing of so many people within the educational system.
Presenter asks
Did you mean Educating Rita to be autobiographical?
No, I was not remotely conscious of writing uh autobiographically. It was only about three months after the play had been playing that I I went down to Birmingham to see the touring version. Kate Fitzgerald was playing in it and Tom Baker and I sat there and I thought, This is just glaringly how can you not realize that it's so autobiographical? But then again, if I'd had that awareness when trying to write the play, I never would have been able to write the play because I never feel confident in or neither do I ever want to say explore my own life on stage. I'm not into therapy writing, you know.
Presenter asks
Would it be fair to say you're not particularly ambitious?
I'm extremely ambitious, but I'm ambitious in terms of the work itself. I'm always trying to do that which seems to be undoable, if you like, not doable. And if you crack that, if you spend a day and you come away and you've got, you know, two sheets of paper full of words which you know are going to work, it is still the most satisfying feeling.
“Oh, the the classic. It's the cl you have to go through that, you know, you have to sit there and uh what happens of course is it's not the newspapers that come in, the first reviews that come in are the are the T V stations, you know. And the first one duly came through and they called it bloody awful or twin reeks or something like that and I thought, Oh, here we go and sure enough, from from then on … every review was damning, and I thought we'd be closed within the week.”
“Yes, it is. Uh it it still doesn't wipe out the agony of that party though. I think I'll always remember that particular night.”
“every single week for two years as if she'd never told me it before. And of course what I could never do was indicate to that woman that she'd told me this story before. Because I knew even then, even as a uh a fairly young lad, that there was something vitally important in this ritual that we both had to go through.”
“I'm extremely ambitious, but I'm ambitious in terms of the work itself. I'm always trying to do that which seems to be undoable, if you like, not doable. And if you crack that, if you spend a day and you come away and you've got, you know, two sheets of paper full of words which you know are going to work, it is still the most satisfying feeling.”