Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Desert Island Discs
Presented by Sue Lawley
Actor who became a cinematic symbol of a certain type of Englishman after roles in 'Four Weddings and a Funeral'.
Eight records
from The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies
The Reel of the 51st Highland Division
invented by his grandfather in a POW camp
Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves (Va, pensiero) from Nabucco
conducted by Lamberto Gardelli
We're Called Gondolieri (from The Gondoliers)
Richard Lewis and John Cameron
Arthur Sullivan / W.S. Gilbert
from his Nottingham Playhouse days performing the operetta
The keepsakes
The book
I'm gonna have to go for King [Ottokar's] Scepter, which is my favourite [Tintin] book.
The luxury
I have a terrible nose-blowing problem, and especially when I wake up. I think it would just be so miserable to have a runny nose and nothing to blow it on, apart from leaves.
In conversation
Presenter asks
Are you happy with that kind of description — a cinematic symbol of a certain type of Englishman, a curious cross between Tigger and Lord Byron?
Yeah, uh tigger certainly. Um the um quintessential Englishman is slightly annoying. I'm not going to get annoyed, but it's just it's slightly annoying because uh I like to think that my uh range is sensationally wide and um I'm extraordinarily versatile.
Presenter asks
What did the boys think of you at school?
Well, I I think I think I mean I think I had friends. They slightly despised me for for being a bit small, I think. And I think I went through one or two rather posy phases. I certainly had a communist phase, which was deeply embarrassing to everyone concerned. But I I think on the whole I had friends and I and I had an extraordinarily nice time and perhaps it's uh uncool but a a lot of my best friends are still my friends from from Latimer.
The recording
Timestamps play the recording from that turn
Presenter
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.
Presenter
The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen ninety five, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.
Presenter
My castaway this week is an actor. His career, as he cheerfully admits himself, has had its ups and downs, and by no means everything he's done has been of the best quality. But it seems unlikely he'll have to accept second rate work in the future. In films such as Morris, Remains of the Day, and most recently Four Weddings and a Funeral, he's attracted a huge following, playing parts which seem to correspond naturally to his school and Oxford background. He's now firmly established as a cinematic symbol of a certain type of Englishman, a curious cross, as someone put it, between Tigger and Lord Byron. He is Hugh Grant. Are you happy with that kind of description, Hugh? I mean, is that how you see yourself as a kind of English Carrie Grant denounce?
Hugh Grant
Well, um I don't know. There was quite a few things in that. I've got Carrie Grant and um Tigger and Bayer and well.
Hugh Grant
Yeah, uh tigger certainly. Um the um quintessential Englishman is slightly annoying. I'm not going to get annoyed, but it's just it's slightly annoying because uh I like to think that my uh range is sensationally wide and um I'm extraordinarily versatile.
Presenter
Well, maybe it's going to become that anyway. It's just how we've perceived you, I suppose, so far.
Hugh Grant
Okay, that's just
Hugh Grant
Well yes, I'm maybe in the films this would have been prominent. Uh that's
Presenter
But it seems to be where where you're heading and where people say you're heading is for that Carrie Grant, if you like, type of role, which is the intelligent comic leading man, which is you know, there aren't many of them around. Are there any of them around?
Hugh Grant
Yeah, I think uh you know that's sort of what Tom Hanks kind of does. But you're right, maybe that would account for the very surprising sort of sudden niceness of people, particularly in America, is maybe there's a a shortage of people who can handle light comedy.
Presenter
But your difficulty must be that because you now have this sudden celebrity, that Hollywood will just take advantage of the fact that they can put the name on the screen and they will get you into any role they can get you into.
Hugh Grant
Can we?
Hugh Grant
Well, that's certainly true, that the the offers that they they very kindly send me now are uh sometimes a little extraordinary. I mean for a time it was an awful sort of sort of wedding-y kind of script and uh and now it's just about anything that they have. I mean uh you know I get scripts in which the leading part is a uh an elderly Jewish lady and you sort of say, Well, why have you sent me this? and they say, Well, we can fix it, Hugh. Um and uh the other day someone pitched me the part of a
Hugh Grant
An an abominable snowman and stuff like that. And I do have to be very careful, particularly as everyone's, you know, watches very carefully now and has uh
Hugh Grant
Quite understandably dying from it a flop.
Presenter
And can you now name your price?
Hugh Grant
It's certainly it's gone up and um my very terrifying Hollywood agents um are very good at making me almost giggle when they mention figures now.
Presenter
Are are you willing to confirm or deny what you did or didn't get for four weddings? I mean, the the reports are that you got about forty or fifty thousand and and it's kind of grossed a hundred million or something, and you haven't got a cut of what it's
Hugh Grant
Well, no, I the forty thousand I think is about right, perhaps a bit less. And um
Hugh Grant
Uh which sounds like a hell of a lot, but isn't isn't particularly much for a film part. Uh I did actually have a one percent of the net profits, but uh I I'm no accountant. I mean the film was made for five million dollars and has since then made nearly three hundred million, but I'm told by the uh the backers that we haven't actually made a profit yet. But uh who knows, heck, what do I know about math?
Presenter
But you're better off than you were anyway.
Hugh Grant
Yeah.
Presenter
Let's let's get down to business. Tell me about your first Desert Island disc.
Hugh Grant
Well, w what we've got here is um We Don't Care, which is um my favourite track from The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies, which I'm sure the audience is familiar with, uh which is the Beatrix Potter story on record. Uh the the one I the record I had when I was little was bright red. It was always an enormous source of amusement to me, particularly when played at thirty-three when Vivian Lee's voice sounds like a man. We're going to play it at the real speed, I think. But it's it's almost better on thirty-three.
Speaker 2
When Benjamin Bunny grew up, he married his cousin Fopsey.
Speaker 2
They had a large family and they were very improvident and very cheerful. We don't care, we don't care, we don't care a big. There's a lettuce in the pantry though it isn't very big. It won't last tomorrow, I'm sorry to say. But tomorrow is another day, so we don't care, we don't care, we don't care a bit. Though we haven't any money, we could use it, I admit.
Presenter
We don't care from the tale of the Flopsy Bunnies by Beatrix Potter, narrated by Vivian Lee at The Right Speed. Um bunnies have obviously played an important part in your life, weren't you the White Rabbit at school?
Hugh Grant
Yes, I was, yes. That was my first dramatic role. I was the white rabbit in, um
Hugh Grant
Alice in Wonderlearn.
Presenter
How old?
Hugh Grant
I was twenty-eight. No, I was uh, I don't know, uh six or something like that, and um I thought terribly good. It's a role I've always wanted to um recreate.
Presenter
So you've kept the costume now?
Hugh Grant
I've got the costume, got the ears, um I'm just looking for the uh the right occasion.
Presenter
And then there was Hugh Grant, I think, as Brigitte, the second daughter in the Fon Trapp family in the sound of music.
Hugh Grant
Yeah, I think she's the fourth daughter actually, Sue, but um and uh yes, I was one of the uh girls in white dresses with blue satin sashes.
Presenter
And plat.
Hugh Grant
Oh no.
Hugh Grant
And plat, yeah.
Presenter
So you've had some success as animals and girls?
Hugh Grant
Animals and girls, yes, those were my favorite parts, but they are hard to come by now.
Presenter
And school productions generally are were your forte, were they? Is that what you did at school?
Hugh Grant
I had an extraordinarily high opinion of my own acting abilities at school, um not really shared by m the others, but people were very nice to me. I mean, I had a very good um English teacher who was a great guru of actors, and um he sort of helped Mel Smith into the business, and Alan Rickman uh and then myself.
Presenter
Um but apparently, sickeningly, you were brainy too. You were on you represented your school in top of the form, didn't you?
Hugh Grant
Well, I did. I'm ashamed to say I uh there was a big quiz to see who would go on it and I think this ver the same very nice master who was helping me into show business was so keen to have me on the radio that he cheated and put me on top of the form even though I really my general knowledge wasn't up to it. And uh it backfired. I was I was hopeless. I mean it got to the point where the question master actually laughed when he came to me. He'd go, um and now it's Hugh's turn. And um I don't think I got one question right. Mind you, they were very, very difficult.
Presenter
This was Latimer Upper School, Hammersmith, West London.
Hugh Grant
Yeah.
Hugh Grant
West London, yeah.
Presenter
The the teachers apparently thought you were wonderful, and the parents thought you were wonderful when you appeared on the stage and kept saying he'll go far. This is what I read about you.
Hugh Grant
Oh.
Presenter
What did the boys think of you?
Hugh Grant
Well, I I think I think I mean I think I had friends. They slightly despised me for for being a bit small, I think. And I think I went through one or two rather posy phases. I certainly had a communist phase, which was deeply embarrassing to everyone concerned. But I I think on the whole I had friends and I and I had an extraordinarily nice time and perhaps it's uh uncool but a a lot of my best friends are still my friends from from Latimer.
Presenter
You say you're a bit small. Um and this is your opportunity really to give heart to all those adolescents who think they're never going to grow up and be cool. You you wore, is this true platform shoes?
Hugh Grant
Platform boots. Well, so did everyone. Um so that it meant that even the boys who were tall were even taller, so I never caught up. Um but yeah, so I mean in those days you did at least have that option that you could go to uh Shelley's and get something for nine ninety nine made of plastic which made your feet smell very badly but
Presenter
And did did you fail to get the girls because you looked so
Hugh Grant
And um
Presenter
Sweeten Angelican.
Hugh Grant
Yes, to a certain extent I think that's true. I I remember one or two unfortunate dates. Yeah.
Presenter
What about your family? Tell me about them. What did they what did your father and mother do? What do they do?
Hugh Grant
Well, um mum was and still is a teacher and uh my um father was in a carpets business, but he retired as soon as he possibly could because his passion was always watercolours and uh and that's what he does full time now.
Presenter
And your mother apparently didn't or doesn't approve of the acting profession.
Hugh Grant
I think she was a little bit uh wary of me going into it. She used to say'Tis really prostitution, isn't it, darling? But I think she's come round to it a bit since it started to uh sort of go right for me.
Presenter
Tell me about record number two.
Hugh Grant
Well, this is the reel of the 51st Highland Division, played by Jimmy Shand and his band. My father's whole family is Scottish, and we used to spend all our holidays up there in the north of Scotland, near Inverness. And we used to go to these balls and dance these reels. And the reel of the 51st is particularly special because it was actually invented by my grandfather and his fellow officers in prison of war camp in Germany. And I always liked the image of them dancing around together in whatever it was, Offleg 54.
Hugh Grant
You can sit down again now, Sushin.
Presenter
The reload the fifty-first Highland Division played by Jimmy Shand and his band.
Hugh Grant
Freeze dancing happening.
Presenter
Tell me about Hugh Grant at Oxford. You you won a scholarship to read English at New College.
Presenter
What kind of figure did you cut?
Hugh Grant
I don't know. I think uh you know, I uh everyone's a little bit posy at that stage and um I think, you know, I was I could pose along with the best of them. I think I was fine for the first year and um stuck with my old school friends and was nice and diligent and everything. And then just slightly went off that track and um
Presenter
On to what kind of cap?
Hugh Grant
Well, I r I was uh I I think I got very into the thirties poets, into Orden and uh, you know, Isherwood and
Hugh Grant
spender on those people, and I'm afraid I used to do my top button up and wear lots of V neck jumpers and um smoke cigarettes even though they made me feel sick. It was the seediness of those poets I think that attracted me.
Presenter
Did you consciously work at your voice? I mean, uh, when you become famous, as you have, then all sorts of contemporaries come out of the woodwork now and then start writing about you or talking to the press about you. And what some of yours out of the woodwork have said is that you you your vowels made a rapid ascent up the scale at some point.
Speaker 1
Talk
Speaker 1
Uh
Hugh Grant
Well, I actually don't think that is true. I mean, I'm I'm you know, my my favorite game is to do myself down, but
Hugh Grant
I really don't think in that particular case it's true. I mean the way I speak now is more or less how my parents speak and that's how I always spoke at home. I think there was a phase at school where I, you know, went a bit more London and I remember my parents coming to speech day and and neither they nor in fact I realized that that's how I spoke at school to fit in and I remember um I recited Good Afternoon to Smash M Up, we're having till you do have a cup and th you know, they were very astonished and pointed it out to me. But but I think by the time I got to Oxford I was just with my own voice.
Hugh Grant
Um
Presenter
Why why is your favorite game to do yourself down? Self-deprecation is kind of your style, isn't it?
Hugh Grant
Well, I don't know. I mean, it's very difficult when you know when when you're doing interviews, what are you supposed to say, you know? Um it's very difficult to uh blow your own trumpet. I'm not saying I'm a naturally modest person, it's but it it's just a good uh interview gambit, I think.
Presenter
It's a way of getting around it.
Hugh Grant
Yeah.
Presenter
So you acted at Oxford, you were in Odds, and you made a film, I think, didn't you?
Hugh Grant
Yes, we did um a film called Privileged. I don't think the director would mind me saying that it was one of the most pretentious films ever made, especially as I've now made another film with him just this last year called Restoration. He's a big Hollywood uh director now. But um Privileged was was pretty awful, but got an extraordinary amount of attention when it came out.
Speaker 1
Teva m
Presenter
Next record.
Hugh Grant
This is a bit of
Hugh Grant
Nabucco, Verde's Nabucco. Uh it's the entry of the Hebrew slaves. But before I went to Oxford I I spent a lot of time in Italy. Um I was going through a very arty phase and um went round Italy looking at paintings and making embarrassing notes and I think this was one of the records that accompanied me.
Speaker 1
Spirit
Speaker 1
Swing is the born.
Presenter
I share the soul.
Presenter
The chorus of the Hebrew slaves from Verdi's Nabucco played by the Vienna Opera Orchestra conducted by Lamberto Gardelli.
Presenter
Was there a moment when you decided to become an actor then? Presumably you had to earn a living. There was no great family money, despite the image.
Hugh Grant
No, um there w there wasn't really any family money and uh it wasn't a big grand decision to suddenly become an actor. After I graduated I um
Hugh Grant
I actually had a place at the Court Old Institute in London to do a D fill in History of Art, and I was a little bit unsure about whether that's r what I really wanted to do. And while I was just sort of waiting to start that summer, um this form privilege came out and agents came up to me and said, Hey, you know, you can make a star and I suddenly thought, Well, maybe at least I can do this for a year while I make up my mind what I really want to do. So I did it, assuming that it would be I'd be a star overnight and, you know, that would be a cool thing to say at dinner parties. And of course it's not like that at all. You have to get into equity and all that kind of stuff. So um that's I ended up uh having to go into rep. I ended up at Nottingham Playhouse doing
Hugh Grant
Very, very small parts.
Presenter
What was your first role there, do you remember?
Hugh Grant
Tree in Wind was my first part, and uh then I did um Shouting Peasant.
Hugh Grant
And then I did um Footman in Lady Windermere's fan. There isn't a footman, but they had to write him in specially to give give me something to do.
Presenter
You you play a character in your your latest film, The An Awfully Big Adventure, Meredith Potter, who runs a kind of
Presenter
rep company like that, don't you? Did you base him in some way on someone you knew there?
Hugh Grant
Well, yeah. Um the director of Nottingham at that time I I now am very fond of in fact I was very fond of him by the time I finished my six month stint, but I think he would admit that he wa kind of enjoyed his power over the brand new actors and um he was something of a tyrant and, you know, was quite happy to say. Um
Hugh Grant
Hugh Grant, you're late. Your lines have been taken away and given to Paul Reeves. Or um you're very bad, aren't you, Ducky? You're pretty, but you're bad. But so a little bit of Meredith Potter in An Awfully Big Adventure is based on him.
Presenter
Meredith Pot is a pretty nasty piece of work.
Hugh Grant
Yes, he's foul.
Presenter
Makes a change for you to play somebody pretty nasty.
Hugh Grant
There were a few villains during my um
Hugh Grant
mini series phase, but um I think he's my first real villain on um the big screen, you know.
Presenter
And was this film underway before Four Weddings came out? I mean, was it sort of pre pre-mass stardom, pre-big stardom?
Hugh Grant
Well, yeah, it was we were making it this time last year in the spring in Dublin, me and Mike Newell who directed Four Weddings, and we kept getting these faxes every week saying uh Four Weddings has made another ten million in America and it's now number one at the box office and stuff like that. And it was a very odd experience while we were on a very, very shoestring budget, me, struggling to to make this very low budget film.
Presenter
Meanwhile, back in your life, aged twenty-three, um after the Nottingham Playhouse, you you became an alternative comedian.
Hugh Grant
Well, I w no, we w we weren't at all at all alternative. That was really um the point of us in a way. In fact, we used to do sketches about alternative comedians. But um we did uh it was a review. Actually it was it was quite good. It was called The Jockeys of Norfolk.
Presenter
Just two of you.
Hugh Grant
No, well it began as two while we were at Nottingham and bored and then um the a third guy came in and we did it on the fringe in London and then at um at the Edinburgh Festival.
Presenter
So you wrote it as well?
Hugh Grant
We wrote it and performed it and it sort of got bigger and bigger and it was a success. But then we went on the T V and um we didn't get it quite right, to say the least.
Presenter
You died.
Presenter
But you wrote commercials.
Hugh Grant
Yeah, then we went into more into the writ just writing rather than performing. We all got old and scared'cause it's very frightening, that kind of thing.
Presenter
And you were all of twenty-five, perhaps.
Hugh Grant
And so we write a lot of um radio commercials with uh Mel Smith and Griffies Jones's company.
Presenter
Can you give me one?
Hugh Grant
We did a lot for Brill Cream that I think we were quite proud of, which we were all about. And here we are in London's Soho district, and I'm talking to someone who's got very smart hair. And why do you wear Brill Cream? You know, all that kind of stuff. Um or here we are on in the cockpit of a B O A C airliner.
Presenter
But you enjoyed doing I mean, you enjoyed writing it.
Hugh Grant
Uh yeah, absolutely. And um
Hugh Grant
It's something I sort of um very much miss now because I'm so busy sort of acting, but
Hugh Grant
I do remember that, you know, at the end of a days writing commercials for Red Striped Lager or Dog Food, I somehow felt a bit more of a man than at the end of a days filming on even a big Hollywood film. Strange.
Presenter
Why?
Hugh Grant
It just takes a little more brain power, really, a little more effort.
Presenter
Record number four.
Hugh Grant
Alright, this is um Wham, which will be a treat for everyone, um with uh Wake Me Up Before You Go, Go, uh which is what we used to play to ourselves, uh the jockeys of Norfolk before we went on stage to try and uh get some energy together. And it worked so well that we started to actually play it to the audience as well, at full volume. The uh Edinburgh audience in particular hated it.
Speaker 2
Wake me up before you go, go. Don't leave me hanging on like a yo-yo. Wake me up.
Speaker 2
The fire goes
Speaker 2
Yeah.
Presenter
I don't wanna miss it, I hit that high
Presenter
Wake me up before you go, go Cause I'm not planning, I'm going solo Wake me up before you go
Presenter
Take me dancing tonight
Hugh Grant
I wanna hit that high
Presenter
Wham and wake me up before you go go. Your big break, Hugh Grant, came in nineteen eighty six, when you would have been twenty six, when you were offered a part in a feature film Morris by Merchant I Ivory. That's the uh the story of E. M. Forster's early homosexual experiences. That must have been very exciting. It's a beautiful film.
Hugh Grant
Well, it is a nice film, you're right. I'm very proud of it, especially now, you know, with a bit of distance between me and it. I can see that. I was very heavily into, you know, writing and stuff at the time. I remember my agent called up and said, you know, go and meet James Ivory and I said, well, I don't think so. You know, I'm a bit bored of acting now, I'm into writing. And he said, no, go on. I went and I got this part and um that put me on the uh sort of cinema track. Um it's a it's a strange system. Once you've done one film you're somehow qualified to do others.
Presenter
But do you become kind of typecast? I mean again
Presenter
You were there we it was Cambridge, wasn't it, not Oxford, but nevertheless rich, young, undergraduate, charming and good humoured and then of course Charles in Four Weddings is well heeled and charming again.
Presenter
And then there's Hugh Grant, who's well heeled these days, charming, good humoured. Where does the acting end and reality begin? Or are you these people or is part of you these people?
Hugh Grant
That's it's rather a difficult question. I mean, because there was something like uh seven years between those two parts and in between there were an awful lot of other things, you know, not at all sort of um upper class or quintessentially English or or particularly charming. And um so I think th that's to answer that bit. And I d uh as far as am I like that, um, yes, up to a point, but I think there's also a sort of darker side and um sort of perhaps colder side.
Presenter
Mike Newell has said, in fact, I think he's in print as saying that there is a
Presenter
A cold aside to you, that you don't suffer fools, that you I think he said you have a cruel streak.
Hugh Grant
Well, I think that's a bit unfair. Uh I think I'm quite kind actually, but um uh it's the maybe the suffering fools is true.
Presenter
What form does the darker side take, then?
Hugh Grant
Uh just I'm pretty irritable and I can um if I think people are being dim, um I'm quite ready to put them down.
Presenter
And it's that darker side that you don't want to reveal when you give interviews, therefore you take the wry, self-deprecating line, and then that can get you into trouble as well.
Hugh Grant
Well, alm as you probably know, almost anything can get you into trouble in an interview. Uh there it's a it's a a lose-lose situation, as the Americans say.
Presenter
But I presume there's part of you that would be perfectly happy if you never had to do another interview in your life.
Hugh Grant
Absolutely delighted, not part of me, an an entire part of me, I mean my my whole self.
Presenter
But would you be happier writing from everything you said? You'd probably
Hugh Grant
Well, um, maybe, baby. Maybe. I'm not sure.
Hugh Grant
I I think I have to certainly um cash in now that uh things are going well for me uh uh as an actor and uh you know it is interesting to to be in a situation where I can more or less do what I like, that's fun, but I think um i I would be quite happy if I ended up just writing uh
Presenter
Next record. Number five, it is, you know.
Hugh Grant
Yeah, this is um another favorite record from my childhood. It was always the the favourite on um Housewives' Choice and things. I don't know why I always listened to Housewives' Choice, but uh I did, and it's The Laughing Policeman, sung by Charles Penrose.
Hugh Grant
I know a fat old policeman, he's always on our street. A fat and jolly red-faced man, he really is a treat. He's too kind for the policeman.
Speaker 1
He's never known to frown, and everybody says he is the happiest man in town.
Speaker 2
Yeah.
Speaker 2
And what?
Presenter
CHARLES PENROSE AND THE LAUGHING POCEMAN. Wh when did you meet Elizabeth Hurley? Because you and she have been together for some years, haven't you?
Hugh Grant
Uh yeah, we met uh doing a film in Spain called Ramando albiento or um Rowing with the Wind, which was uh th the I think the first of my Euro puddings, which are these films which actually they make slightly fewer of them now than they used to, but they were quite fashionable in the eighties where uh they would be directed by a Spaniard starring uh some Spanish actors, some Italian actors, some English actors, written in in Spanish but translated incredibly badly into English.
Presenter
And what and what was this film like? Can you give me a flavour of it?
Hugh Grant
Well, it was heaven really. I I was playing Lord Byron and um Elizabeth was Clare Claremont and uh oh, I don't know, it'd be it'd be lines like um
Hugh Grant
Deep down in the lake there is slimy lichen, but when you look at the surface you see only your own reflection. That is how you are, Clare.
Hugh Grant
And uh and then when she undressed me, I remember the great line I uh she gets to my boots and I have to say, not my boots, ever, because of course I have a club foot, although in in Romano Algiento I had two club feet, because the Spanish director thought that was more interesting, but it made walking very difficult in the film.
Speaker 1
More than
Hugh Grant
But they're classic those films. I mean there are great ones. Eliz Elizabeth did a very good um German one. Uh the Germans are particularly
Hugh Grant
arrogant about their um uh idea of English. And I mean she had lines like, Don't look at me like that, shave pig And when she'd say to the director, you know, I'm not sure about this word shave pig, I it's not really very colloquial in English, they say, Oh, yes, no, it's good English, as you say shave pig.
Presenter
And she only fancied you because of your costume in the first instance, apparently?
Hugh Grant
Correct.
Presenter
She fancied Lord Byron, not Hugh Grant.
Hugh Grant
Absolutely right, and still does to this day.
Presenter
But um she now, of course, is famous in her own right because she's in case anybody hasn't heard the new face of Estee Lauder, it must be in
Presenter
An enormous pressure, living in a kind of goldfish bowl that you inhabit at the moment you do.
Hugh Grant
Uh it is quite tiring to tell the truth, yes. Uh I'm I'm relatively all right. I mean I'm the one that gets shouldered aside so they can get pictures of Elizabeth. Um you know, I'm I'm okay. But I think it's a bit miserable for her. To be honest with you, it's still quite um titillating as well, you know,'cause I've never h had any recognition before and uh
Hugh Grant
Uh so that you mean you you can't really moan and uh you know sometimes you you think, well it would be nice if the tabloids didn't dig up every skeleton and, you know, lie and smear and all those things. But on the other hand, when they lie and smear and poke fun at um other celebrities and uh it gives me enormous delight. So um I can't be too hypocritical.
Presenter
And I'm told clothes play an important part still in this relationship, not not not your Byron-esque stuff, but you you like buying clothes for Elizabeth, is that right?
Hugh Grant
Well, she's passionate about clothes, yes, and uh I developed a uh a taste for, you know, taking her out and sort of supervising her shopping. I love sitting on sofas in smart boutiques, being given cups of coffee by the assistants and, you know, her coming out of the changing room and
Hugh Grant
And you say, it's tacky, really, you know, anything a little lady wants, she can have. But that's that's me.
Presenter
And you say we saw this time.
Presenter
And and you aren't married. Like Charles in Four Weddings, he was wary of commitment. Is there an overlap there between reality and fiction?
Hugh Grant
Yes, I don't know. I don't know really. I haven't quite analyzed it, um, mum, but uh, I uh it it is it's a hard one.
Presenter
Pressure for mums.
Hugh Grant
Well, I um no actually that's not fair. There's may there's maybe been n no pressure from um at all, um but uh
Hugh Grant
I don't know. I don't I suppose it is a fear of commitment, or it just seems very grown up, really. I mean it's something we never talk about, either Elizabeth or me.
Presenter
Do you still feel very boyish? I mean, you you part of your act is boyish. Is that is that really you?
Hugh Grant
Yeah.
Hugh Grant
Yeah, I think it might be. It might be. I mean, look at my record little collection, for God's sake, you know, the flopsy bunnies and
Hugh Grant
The Laughing Policeman.
Presenter
And now what? What's number six?
Hugh Grant
Well this is a bit more grown up, but this is but this is um Elizabeth and mine's sort of theme song,'cause it was uh for some reason a a song that we were always playing when we were in Spain together and making Romandarbiento uh called Something Stupid which is of course Frank and Nancy Sinatra singing a minor third apart, which is something that uh Elizabeth and I have tried to do to the uh grotesque embarrassment of our friends.
Speaker 1
I know I stand in line until you think you have the time to spend an evening with me.
Speaker 1
And if we go someplace to dance, I know that there's a chance You won't be leaving with me
Speaker 1
And afterwards we drop into a quiet little place and have a drink or two.
Speaker 1
And then I go
Presenter
Frank and Nancy Sinatra singing something stupid. I can't leave questions about your love life without asking about Madonna. Is it true she rang you up and asked you for a date?
Hugh Grant
No, fiction.
Presenter
Really?
Hugh Grant
Yeah.
Presenter
That's interesting. You seem to have responded to it in the past and said, Oh, yes, you know, I'm I didn't mm but I didn't want to go or something.
Hugh Grant
No, no, no, I can thank the press for my response.
Presenter
Thanks.
Hugh Grant
Uh
Presenter
Um but Robert Redford asked you out at some point, and you did accept, is that right?
Hugh Grant
He didn't ask me out. Um I we were at the Sundance Festival last year with uh four weddings and a funeral and he h he hosts a lunch, a big lunch for all the filmmakers and I saw him heading in my direction and thought, Oh, this is great, Robert Refford's coming up to be nice to me and um he went straight past me to Elizabeth and invited her skiing on his private mountain. I'm afraid I tagged along, sort of sad, cuckled.
Presenter
You now have what what seems like a terrific deal, because you and Liz have your own company, set up in London, but backed by American money, to do what films you fancy. Is that about it?
Hugh Grant
That's exactly it, yeah, yeah. I mean, I didn't know that this was something that you could do, but apparently it is in Hollywood. It's quite common that uh actors who are sort of hot get these deals with the studios whereby the studio pays all your overheads and uh pays for your assistant and um will for instance buy novels that you want the rights to and things like that for you.
Presenter
But normally people stay in Hollywood and do it. You said you didn't want to do that.
Hugh Grant
No, no, well, you know, I wanted to uh I I I live here and also I thought it'd be interesting to try and winkle out other Richard Curtises and try and do more.
Presenter
Richard Curtis, who wrote For Weddings.
Hugh Grant
Yeah.
Presenter
So you can read any script you like or pick up any novel you like, and if you say to your American backers, Ted Turner is behind the money, isn't he?
Hugh Grant
Well, he owns Castle Rock. Uh, when it's it's Castle Rock as the company.
Presenter
But you can say to them, I fancy this, I fancy writing it, or directing it, or starring in it, or
Hugh Grant
Uh well no I d I can't say directing it necessarily. I mean they're interested in in me starring in it really. And um so I'll say, you know, we've found this fantastic novel, um let's adapt it into a screenplay and uh they will either buy it for me or not. If they don't believe in it then I have um a discretionary fund of a certain amount which I can use to buy it and then uh
Hugh Grant
Yeah, and then th then we find a good writer. But it's much harder than than I thought, to be absolutely honest with you. Really good, um
Hugh Grant
Screenwriting is a very rare talent, and we know Richard Curtis can do it, and we know Alan Bennett can do it.
Hugh Grant
There's not many other English writers who are that experienced in big screen writing.
Presenter
You made a very enigmatic remark to someone recently. You said I have a few more cards to play than people think.
Presenter
What did you mean by that?
Hugh Grant
Um I don't know. I I can't remember making it, but uh uh perhaps sometimes uh I'm a little you know I f or I feel a little patronized, you know, people think I'm just sort of a fluffy, charming, fluffy haired hugh. And uh I I I you know, I like to think there's a bit more to me than that.
Presenter
Bunt.
Presenter
Record number seven.
Hugh Grant
Oh this is yes, this is uh one of the choruses from the Gondoliers. It's not a chorus, in fact it's a duet. It goes uh we're called gondolieri. Again this is goes back to my uh Nottingham Playhouse days, which was this was one of the shows we did. I was something like 81st Gondolier and I had to mouth instead of sing'cause my singing's so bad.
Speaker 1
We'll call condogeri, but that's a vulgari, it's quite honorary, the trade that we park
Speaker 1
Uh
Speaker 2
Since we were shortcoated, we'll beauty devoted to Sammy and love.
Speaker 2
Red warning is break
Speaker 1
Taking our couches forsaking To greet and awaken with carols we
Speaker 1
At Summer Day's morning when we are going from Melanie's Dollar Table
Presenter
I'm in a
Speaker 2
Christmas I'm ringing to over the clinging with songs of a singing of angel begin.
Presenter
We're called Gondolieri from the Gondoliers, sung by Richard Lewis and John Cameron. You don't don't know how to play all this music, as I understand you have no facility for playing music. I mean you've never owned a record.
Hugh Grant
Well well I ha well Elizabeth has one now, but it is true that I've I've as people will have gathered by now, I've always been a terrible musical ignoramus really. I mean I still you know couldn't tell you for sure how to play a C D.
Presenter
Well, you get the wind-up job on the island, so it's all right. It's very simple. Yes, yes, yes, with the old needle. You had to change the needle from time to time out of the way.
Hugh Grant
Oh, is that what I got?
Hugh Grant
Okay, fine. And I can slay Flopsy Banners at the wrong speed, never mind.
Presenter
Exactly, exactly. It's time to set sail ready. What what are your regrets then as you leave the mainland? Leave all this great celebrity behind you?
Hugh Grant
Yeah.
Hugh Grant
Well, I mean, at this precise moment if I was getting on the boat, it would be nothing but complete and utter pleasure. You know, I I can't think of anything I'd I'd like to do more. As long as I had some sun cream, I think I'd be the happiest man alive.
Presenter
But you wouldn't you wouldn't be pampered. I thought you liked, you know, you like the sort of
Hugh Grant
Well, you see, I'm I'm imagining a very luxurious island. I keep thinking of um Club Med, but I think that's foolish.
Presenter
See y'all
Presenter
I got a
Hugh Grant
I've got to get it into my head.
Presenter
There are no native girls with fans and fresh pineapples. I mean, this is on your own stuff. This is, you know, SAS stuff.
Hugh Grant
Yeah.
Hugh Grant
Well, it is true that I do like to be pampered, but on the other hand, um a little bit of solitary confinement would be absolutely perfect, isn't it?
Presenter
And you'd have time to work out, to exercise, and look after your body, which is something I gather you never do.
Hugh Grant
Well, no, I I mean, I play football with the Victoria and Albert team, which is no mean team, every w every Wednesday. But otherwise I've never been a gym girl, really. No.
Presenter
And there's no beer on the island which you also like, which goes with the football.
Hugh Grant
Yes, that's hell.
Presenter
Yeah, it's gonna be hell.
Hugh Grant
Alright then, alright, alright. It's hell, I'm dreading it. I changed my mind. I'm miserable. And I'm blaming you.
Presenter
Last record.
Hugh Grant
Well, um football comes up neatly here because this is one of the great moments in my life when uh Fulham, my beloved Fulham, got to the FA Cup final in 1975. We lost to West Ham undeservedly. Uh and this was our FA Cup final song. It's rather beautiful.
Presenter
Down the Fulham Road we're burning with ambition The first division
Speaker 2
Is where we wanna be
Presenter
Uh
Speaker 2
And if you see what a team we've got this
Speaker 1
This season, you know the reason we'll get there easily
Speaker 1
The boats were heading down the Wembley Way
Speaker 1
To show the world that we can really play Oh this year we're gonna win the cup
Speaker 1
And be our L for a
Presenter
The Fulham Cup Squad and Viva El Fulham. Which which one of those is
Hugh Grant
Is that do you think that's the worst record ever to be on Desert Island Disc?
Presenter
No, I think it's terrific, it's got real atmosphere.
Hugh Grant
F
Presenter
I'm being very nice. Come on, which one of those eight, if you could only take one of them?
Hugh Grant
It's very hard, but I think it would have to be, um, Frank and Nancy.
Presenter
Something stupid.
Hugh Grant
Yeah.
Presenter
Memories of Elizabeth on your desert island.
Hugh Grant
Yeah.
Presenter
Um what about your book?
Hugh Grant
Again, it's tricky, but I'm gonna have to go for King Ottica's Scepter, which is my favourite tint in book.
Presenter
There's a lot of childhood in this discussion.
Hugh Grant
Yes, it's interesting, isn't it? I would like to have that analyzed.
Presenter
Thank you.
Presenter
Um
Hugh Grant
But it's a very special book. I don't know if you've read it.
Presenter
No, I haven't.
Hugh Grant
That's lovely. And I actually did a recording of it with my brother when we were about seven and nine in falsetto voices.
Presenter
What about your luxury?
Hugh Grant
But I think I'm gonna go for a hanky, because I've uh I have a terrible nose-blowing problem, and especially when I wake up. I think it would just be so miserable to have a runny nose and nothing to blow it on, apart from leaves.
Presenter
Any particular kind of hank? I mean, are you particular about these things?
Hugh Grant
No, no, just uh the big and cotton, you know.
Hugh Grant
No, I don't like that. I don't like that. It's too rough.
Presenter
There are my
Presenter
I see. Nice plain cotton blankets.
Hugh Grant
Can't have linen against my skin. Can't have woolen against my skin either. That's why I had to leave the SAS.
Presenter
Thank you, Grant. Thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs.
Hugh Grant
Thank you.
Hugh Grant
Pleasure. Pleasure. That was very nice of you to have me.
Presenter
You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Islandists archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.
Speaker 1
Uh
Presenter asks
Why is your favorite game to do yourself down? Self-deprecation is kind of your style, isn't it?
Well, I don't know. I mean, it's very difficult when you know when when you're doing interviews, what are you supposed to say, you know? Um it's very difficult to uh blow your own trumpet. I'm not saying I'm a naturally modest person, it's but it it's just a good uh interview gambit, I think.
Presenter asks
Where does the acting end and reality begin? Are you these people [the characters you play] or is part of you these people?
I mean, because there was something like uh seven years between those two parts and in between there were an awful lot of other things, you know, not at all sort of um upper class or quintessentially English or or particularly charming. And um so I think th that's to answer that bit. And I d uh as far as am I like that, um, yes, up to a point, but I think there's also a sort of darker side and um sort of perhaps colder side.
Presenter asks
What form does the darker side take, then?
Uh just I'm pretty irritable and I can um if I think people are being dim, um I'm quite ready to put them down.
Presenter asks
You made a very enigmatic remark recently. You said 'I have a few more cards to play than people think.' What did you mean by that?
Um I don't know. I I can't remember making it, but uh uh perhaps sometimes uh I'm a little you know I f or I feel a little patronized, you know, people think I'm just sort of a fluffy, charming, fluffy haired hugh. And uh I I I you know, I like to think there's a bit more to me than that.
“the theatrical [Hollywood] agents um are very good at making me almost giggle when they mention figures now.”
“I did actually have a one percent of the net profits, but uh I I'm no accountant. I mean the film was made for five million dollars and has since then made nearly three hundred million, but I'm told by the uh the backers that we haven't actually made a profit yet.”
“I do remember that, you know, at the end of a days writing commercials for Red Striped Lager or Dog Food, I somehow felt a bit more of a man than at the end of a days filming on even a big Hollywood film.”
“I think I'm quite kind actually, but um uh it's the maybe the suffering fools is true.”
“at this precise moment if I was getting on the boat, it would be nothing but complete and utter pleasure. You know, I I can't think of anything I'd I'd like to do more. As long as I had some sun cream, I think I'd be the happiest man alive.”