Jack Rosenthal

Speaker 20:00

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

Speaker 20:09

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

Presenter0:32

My castaway this week is a writer. His plays for television are a history of the medium over the past thirty-five years. He began as a scriptwriter for Coronation Street. He invented London's Burning, and in between came up with innumerable award-winning plays, such as The Evacuees, Bermitzfa Boy, and Spend, Spend, Spend. Much of his writing is semi-autobiographical, reflecting his Manchester childhood, national service, and his Jewishness. Eccentric, he says, means absolutely normal. Comedy comes from pain. The everyday is drama. He is Jack Rosenthal.

Presenter1:08

I is that what you do, then, Jack? You you write about what you see and what you experience. Simple as that, isn't it?

Jack Rosenthal1:14

Well, um yeah, not quite so simple, I suppose. I I always like to start with a character and then find a vehicle to put the character in so that you can illustrate the eccentricities that I go on about.

Presenter1:26

But would that be somebody you'd met or seen? I mean, are you

Jack Rosenthal1:29

Uh

Presenter1:30

Constantly observing people, looking for a

Jack Rosenthal1:32

Yes, I think I do do that. It's anything you've read, people you've met, stories you've heard, anecdotes you've heard, or things you've felt or experienced yourself.

Presenter1:41

But an essential element of what you do is that there's a lot of humour in it. Now, i is that you are you humorous when you're out and about, or is it when you go home and kind of work on it?

Jack Rosenthal1:51

I think I am, but I have a face that isn't at all humorous. And I am.

Presenter1:56

Lugubrious is a word to be

Jack Rosenthal1:58

That's the word. Yes, I notice that when I shave every morning, but I don't really think I'm like that.

Jack Rosenthal2:04

What I do try to do is write about serious things and make them comedies because this I think is what comedy should really be and I think it's the most effective way for me of writing about serious things.

Presenter2:10

How's that?

Presenter2:17

But you said that comedy comes from pain. I mean, can you give me an example of that? What does that mean, really?

Jack Rosenthal2:22

At its crudest, most obvious level, it's a man slipping on a banana skin, which is not the kind of thing that I'd write, but a lot of comedy is knockabout comedy in which people get hurt. Now if you think of emotional banana skins, this is really what I do like to write about. We're all very vulnerable, we're all pretty helpless.

Jack Rosenthal2:46

We're all a bit childlike and often childish and we do go through a lot of emotional pain and we all know the pains because we all suffer them.

Jack Rosenthal2:56

So you can suffer the pain and then fall into

Jack Rosenthal3:00

My

Jack Rosenthal3:01

Lugubrious stance, or you can laugh at them, and I think laughing at them helps you to get through them.

Presenter3:08

And the every day, you say, is drama. And I suppose you've proved that, really. I mean, I mentioned some of the Bermitzfa party, the preparations for it, and the fire station with London's burning. Or indeed a street in Lancashire, which is where you started, Coronation Street.

Jack Rosenthal3:20

Just

Jack Rosenthal3:23

Right.

Presenter3:23

Right. That was what, thirty-seven years ago, you wrote the thirtieth episode.

Presenter3:27

Did it come easily? Was it just something you could do like that?

Jack Rosenthal3:31

Well, I thought that it was wonderful when I wrote it.

Jack Rosenthal3:37

I've read it since and it's absolutely terrible. But yes, Tony Warren's invented street was really right up my street. It's it's hard after all these years to to describe the impact of Tony Warren's episode one even. It was like an explosion on the screen. Uh we'd never seen drama like that. We I think never heard such unique

Jack Rosenthal4:04

Singing dialogue.

Presenter4:06

Mm.

Jack Rosenthal4:06

And very, very funny.

Presenter4:09

Tell me about your first record.

Jack Rosenthal4:11

When I was a boy about 13 or so, and I was evacuated to Cone in Lancashire, I wanted to learn the violin.

Jack Rosenthal4:20

And I think I probably wanted to do this because everybody else is learning the piano. I'd heard Stefan Grappelli.

Jack Rosenthal4:27

And I'd heard of Yehudi Menuin, and I wanted to play as well as they did.

Jack Rosenthal4:33

It never quite worked out that way. I had lessons for about a year and at the end of the year I still couldn't

Jack Rosenthal4:41

Remember what finger you used if the notes went above the stave, and if I saw a flat or a sharp homering towards me, I really did panic.

Jack Rosenthal4:52

But I've always wanted to do it. And in fact, some years ago, I went out and bought a violin and started again. And I think it sounds beautiful, but I think Yehudi Minuin did it better.

Speaker 45:52

I'm not sure if I can do it.

Presenter6:04

Yehudi Menouin playing part of the opening of Bruch's violin concerto number one in G minor with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra conducted by Pierre Montu.

Presenter6:14

The first image one has of you, Jack Rosenthal, if one's watched your semi-autobiographical oeuvre over the years, is is as a young evacuee, nineteen thirty nine. You'd have been about nine, wouldn't you? And you were posted off to Blackpool.

Jack Rosenthal6:26

You are supposed to

Jack Rosenthal6:27

Yes, I think it was two days before my

Jack Rosenthal6:31

Ninth birthday or eighth birthday.

Presenter6:33

But set the scene for me.

Jack Rosenthal6:33

But so

Jack Rosenthal6:35

Well, it was uh chaos from beginning to end really. We had a rehearsal two days before the war began, and then two days later off we went to Blackpool.

Jack Rosenthal6:44

And as I wrote in the vacuees, when we arrived there

Jack Rosenthal6:48

There were no uh foster parents waiting.

Jack Rosenthal6:51

So our mothers and teachers wandered the streets, with this crocodile of kids behind them, knocking on doors.

Presenter6:58

And there you are with your labels, with your

Jack Rosenthal7:00

That's right. Tina corn beef and a gas mouse.

Presenter7:00

Right.

Presenter7:02

And in you went to a woman you called Mrs. Graham, who

Presenter7:07

Turned out to be a complete horror. Is that that's true?

Jack Rosenthal7:09

Well, she did treat us badly, not cruelly, but um it was things like before we had before we went to school how to polish all the furniture, clean the house. We did the same when we came back from school, and we did have to stand up for meals.

Jack Rosenthal7:25

So we thought

Jack Rosenthal7:27

Well, as it turned out in the end, this is what they thought you did with children. They thought that kids would appreciate this. So in her own strange Victorian way, she uh she did love us, or she claimed she did.

Presenter7:41

Of it.

Presenter7:42

Yeah.

Jack Rosenthal7:43

Uh but we didn't really love a bag.

Presenter7:45

I'm sure you didn't. And is it the case that you didn't tell your mum'cause you didn't want to worry her?

Jack Rosenthal7:50

Yeah, that was really David, my brother's um great forte,'cause I wanted to split on misses Graham and uh and go back home. But David said, No, that'll worry our parents too much. At the same time, of course, they were being bombed.

Jack Rosenthal8:07

And they didn't tell us, so everybody was keeping everything from each other.

Presenter8:09

And how did the your mother find out in the

Jack Rosenthal8:12

Um we sat round a table, misses Graham, David, my mother and I playing that little game that you play where you get a sheet of paper and you one of you starts a story. You write a couple of lines of a story.

Presenter8:26

Consequences.

Jack Rosenthal8:28

Is that what it's called?

Presenter8:28

Well

Jack Rosenthal8:29

Well, there was a consequence as it turned out. You fold the paper over, pass it to the next one, and they write a bit more, and there's no connection really between the stories. When it came to me, I wrote

Jack Rosenthal8:40

She hates us, she treats us badly, she keeps all the parcels you send us.

Jack Rosenthal8:45

She sends us all the letters we send to you, we want to come home. And that was when she found out about it.

Presenter8:51

But your mother opened it up and read it.

Jack Rosenthal8:52

She read it out aloud as the cyclide over the story.

Jack Rosenthal8:56

Very dramatic, you see, straight from ordinary life, and took us home.

Presenter9:01

Record number two.

Jack Rosenthal9:03

When we were evacuated to Cone and went to Cone Grammar School,

Jack Rosenthal9:07

Because we were evacuated again, there was a teacher called Terry Land.

Jack Rosenthal9:12

whose reputation went before him as a great teacher and a wonderful human being, and I think I owe him an enormous debt.

Jack Rosenthal9:21

uh beginning with a love of English literature and

Jack Rosenthal9:26

Very possibly, uh he's been a big influence on the things I write and the way I write.

Jack Rosenthal9:31

Now Terry Land, apart from being a genius in every other respect, could also play every instrument in an orchestra.

Jack Rosenthal9:38

And he used to conduct the school at the end of each term or at the end of each year, whatever it was, in singing Jerusalem, and insisted that the last word of the poem

Jack Rosenthal9:53

should occupy all whatever it is, four or five bars that the music insisted on. And of course the word was land, which was his name. So this we did with with great gusto.

Speaker 410:11

Patients are

Speaker 410:15

Oh come on, smile.

Presenter11:07

Jerusalem, sung by the Chapel Choir of Durham School, with the organist Gregory Williams, directed by Jonathan Newell, and memories of your grammar school which we saw, Jack Rosenthal, in P Dang Yang Kippabang, your play that went out on Channel Four.

Presenter11:21

Meanwhile, at at home life was undoubtedly a volatile business, wasn't it?

Presenter11:27

If your dad was lugubrious, your mother was a ball of mine.

Jack Rosenthal11:28

He wasn't really that.

Jack Rosenthal11:32

The Rosenthal side of the family, I suppose, are

Jack Rosenthal11:38

A bit door.

Jack Rosenthal11:39

A bit serious minded.

Jack Rosenthal11:41

Cautious, wary.

Jack Rosenthal11:43

maybe a bit scared of life. In my dad's case, I don't I I think it's very understandable. He'd been in the First World War. He was gassed. He was wounded. There was no work, either before or after. So it's not really surprising that this was a characteristic.

Jack Rosenthal11:58

Uh he was also a Yorkshireman. Uh however, the Miller side of the family, which were Lancastrians, were the very opposite. They effervesced and they bubbled with life and they grabbed life and they were very funny. So maybe they weren't totally compatible, but uh I think mostly the fights were about the sheer difficulty of

Speaker 412:11

Yeah.

Jack Rosenthal12:20

Getting from one payday to another.

Presenter12:22

Because they were pretty poor. But your wife, Maureen Lippmann, has said that your role in all of this was as peacemaker.

Jack Rosenthal12:30

Yes, I well it was. And this of course is part of writing, and a very important part, that you are able, or you do try, to put yourself in the shoes of other people. So that if you're writing a scene of confrontation between a character that you think is a goodie,

Jack Rosenthal12:48

And a character that you think is a baddie, it's up to you as the writer to be both, to be fair to both.

Jack Rosenthal12:55

So yes, I think I was at this rule.

Presenter12:56

But of course in in in Bermitzva Boy there's the character Harold who never has a view and at one point the the father, who's a baddie, if you like, says to him, you know, Speak, you know, for once in your life, upset somebody. I mean, I I I did wonder when I was watching it whether that was you. You were Harold really.

Jack Rosenthal13:08

Right.

Jack Rosenthal13:14

I don't think I was quite as bad as Harold, but maybe I am. I hope not.

Presenter13:16

I hope not. Tell me about record number three.

Jack Rosenthal13:20

This is uh

Jack Rosenthal13:22

Strange record. When I was a little boy, the family was split in who should support Manchester United, who should support Manchester City. My brother and my father supported City, my mother and I supported United. And I've been the United supporter ever since. And this particular team that is celebrated in this record was of course perhaps the greatest of them all, the famous Busby Babes.

Speaker 413:47

Now football is a pleasant game Playing the sun, playing the rain and the team that gets me excited Manchester United Manchester Manchester United A bunch of bouncing Busby babes They deserve to be

Speaker 414:07

Everybody play in your town, you must get to that football ground. Take a lesson, come to see football.

Presenter14:17

The Manchester United Calypso by Edric Connor with Ken Jones and his music. So after school, on to university, to Sheffield, Jack Rosenthal.

Presenter14:27

University. You've written two plays recently about this point in life, but from the point of view of of the parent whose kids are are going off and through this sort of rite of pa another rite of passage really, like the mitzvah. You wrote Eskimo Day and Cold Enough for Snow, and they seem to touch a raw nerve among the public.

Presenter14:46

Now Eskimo Day, I mean the fundamental message there is this legend about Eskimos. Perhaps you should explain that.

Jack Rosenthal14:51

Yes, well I think it's the false legend, but one that we're all brought up to believe, that when an Eskimo has fulfilled their use, i.e. as a parent, that all that is really left to do is go out and curl up in the snow and fade away. And this to me, this image summed up exactly the way I was feeling.

Presenter15:15

Hmm.

Jack Rosenthal15:15

that your job was over.

Presenter15:17

How badly did you feel that? Because again, in in the sequel, in Cold Enough for Snow, Bevis, the father there, I mean, it practically has a breakdown, doesn't it?

Jack Rosenthal15:25

Yes, it was it was very heartfelt. I did take it.

Jack Rosenthal15:28

badly and not very bravely. Um, I did in fact get so depressed that the doctor sent me to see quote someone.

Presenter15:40

Mm.

Jack Rosenthal15:41

The depression was when our daughter left to go to university and some years later our son left to go to university and I went took him to Cambridge because he could go to his interviews and as he was in each of the three interviews I spent the day wandering up and down King's Parade and noticed throughout the course of the day that the street was populated.

Jack Rosenthal16:05

with white faced parents with trembling jowls with a kid in between them looking just the same.

Jack Rosenthal16:12

But it was some time later I thought

Jack Rosenthal16:15

It would be good to do a play.

Jack Rosenthal16:18

In which you start in a state of very high tension, because normally.

Jack Rosenthal16:23

you would structure a play

Jack Rosenthal16:25

where you reach that point.

Jack Rosenthal16:27

Two-thirds, three-quarters of the way through. But wouldn't it be nice to start there and just twist the screw more and more throughout the play?

Jack Rosenthal16:36

And that's when I got the idea of writing this. Having got the idea to write it, the real therapy began. Writing it was therapy.

Presenter16:43

Really?

Jack Rosenthal16:44

Yeah.

Presenter16:44

Uh

Jack Rosenthal16:44

Oh yes.

Presenter16:45

I was going to suggest it would be a little bit more difficult. Yes, yes. And do you think looking back on it, that's probably what you've done about evacuation too?

Jack Rosenthal16:45

I was going to suggest that.

Jack Rosenthal16:53

Oh, now that you say it, maybe.

Presenter16:56

Mm.

Jack Rosenthal16:56

Maybe.

Presenter16:57

Make it a thorn.

Jack Rosenthal16:59

I joined Granada Television a year before they went on the air, and that was in 1956. And the whole place was alive and buzzing with very young people. Lots and lots of bright young things with clipboards click-clacking down the corridors and stopwatches around their necks, and men in yellow corduroy trousers throwing tantrums. And they were very, very exciting days. So, so many young people.

Jack Rosenthal17:29

All in this state of high excitement did of course mean

Jack Rosenthal17:33

lots of little glances and uh lots of little parties and affairs.

Jack Rosenthal17:40

And if you went to any party in those days, you heard one record, and that was Frank Sinatra s uh and his album Songs for Swinging Lovers.

Speaker 417:52

You make me feel so young.

Speaker 417:55

You make me feel there are songs to be sung, bells to be rung, and a wonderful fling to be flung, And even when I'm old and grey

Speaker 418:09

I'm gonna feel the way I do.

Speaker 418:12

Today Cause you make me feel so young

Presenter18:21

Frank Sinatra, and you make me feel so young. Now, just before all those affairs in swinging Granada land, you'd done your national service, of course, Jack, in the in the navy, which we saw in in the play Bye Bye Baby. Um you were sent to Germany this was kind of fif nineteen fifty three, fifty five.

Presenter18:38

And as a Jew, you found that very difficult, didn't you, to be in Germany?

Jack Rosenthal18:42

Yes, I did. Most of the time I was in England, and although I was in the Navy, I was almost never on a ship. But then we were sent to Germany, where we had to sit with radio sets, and we'd learn Russian to translator level, which meant we could listen to Russian ships and planes contacting each other. This was a great opportunity to learn German, of course, being there for a few months. It would have been so easy, and I refused to do it because I didn't want anything to do with them.

Jack Rosenthal19:14

A crucial thing happened, I suppose, in my attitude.

Jack Rosenthal19:18

which is when I'd been doing this for about six months, and you begin to go crazy after six months, so they give you an easier job. And the easier job I got was to act as guard, which is a bit of a laugh in itself, to the courier on the train each day going between Cookshaven and Hamburg.

Jack Rosenthal19:35

And part way along the line, schoolgirls used to get on the train, a little group of schoolgirls, and there had been a tradition among couriers and their guards to help these school kids with their English, and they would help us with our German, except of course I wasn't doing it. And I I actually got to the stage where I got very annoyed that the other boys were doing this. This was ten years or so after the war.

Jack Rosenthal19:59

And I finally asked one of the schoolgirls, what did your father do in the war?

Jack Rosenthal20:06

And she said he died.

Jack Rosenthal20:09

It just made me think how we do this all the time, if we're

Jack Rosenthal20:14

If we feel hostility to someone, we do fall into this trap of including an entire race or an entire religion, including totally, totally innocent people who happen to belong to that particular culture.

Presenter20:30

Okay.

Presenter20:34

You've said since that you you you grew up in the Navy. I suppose that's part of what you mean really.

Jack Rosenthal20:37

Well, I think that would I think that was a source of growing up that that did dawn on me, and that it was wrong to think of that girl as an enemy.

Jack Rosenthal20:47

and to think of German as a language that I shouldn't have learnt.

Presenter20:51

Tell me about your next record. Tell me about meeting Maureen. That's what this one is, isn't it?

Jack Rosenthal20:53

Tell me about

Jack Rosenthal20:55

Oh, right. I was writing and producing a comedy show at Granada.

Jack Rosenthal21:00

And Maureen came to Granada with a theatre company called The Stables attached to Granada.

Jack Rosenthal21:08

And I saw Maureen once in rehearsal, together with the rest of the cast, crawling across a rehearsal room floor

Jack Rosenthal21:16

All-chanting blue-green ultramarine. I never really understood why, but I sort of like the look of more ink.

Jack Rosenthal21:24

And then, sometime later, the Six-Day War broke out, and I thought it would be a good idea.

Jack Rosenthal21:31

With my naval background, to brush upon Hebrew and see if I could help in the Six-Day War. So I went to classes.

Jack Rosenthal21:41

And

Jack Rosenthal21:42

A day or two later, I got a phone call in the office, and I answered the phone, and I said, Who is it? And this voice said, This is Mrs. Schwartzkopp.

Jack Rosenthal21:50

Awesome.

Jack Rosenthal21:51

Sorry, I don't think I no, Missy. She said, I'm in your Hebrew class. I'm the one at the front with grapes in her hat.

Jack Rosenthal22:00

So I wrapped my brains. I couldn't think of anybody in the front with grapes in a hat.

Jack Rosenthal22:04

I can remember a couple of nuns that were there, but I couldn't remember this. And I said, Yes, what can I do for you? She said, Well, you looked a bit lonely. I wondered if you'd like to come to dinner on Friday night.

Jack Rosenthal22:15

So, thinking very fast, I said well actually I'll go and see my parents Friday night.

Jack Rosenthal22:20

She said, I see. Well, how about another night?

Jack Rosenthal22:23

And I said, Well, I'm doing this show at the moment and other nights I am I I work late and I am fairly busy. So you don't want to come to dinner at all then? And she slammed the phone down. Well, what am I going to do? Oh, God, what am I going to do when I go to the next Hebrew class? And there's this maniac of a woman with grapes in her hat.

Jack Rosenthal22:40

Who's going to harangue me?

Jack Rosenthal22:43

And at that moment the door opened and Maury walked in.

Jack Rosenthal22:47

And I looked and she looked at me and I said, ah, Mrs. Schwarzkop. And I was right. Yeah. This this next record isn't um isn't our official Our song, which is actually um The Witch to the Line Man. But this one to me summed up my feelings after I'd met Maureen.

Speaker 423:11

I can do a trick with my heart

Speaker 423:17

Watch it and see some

Speaker 423:25

When you smile at me I can do a trick with my heart Your kiss taught it high

Presenter23:41

Or Garner King and I Can Do a Trick. You've written several films, Jack, as well as television plays, including Yentle with Barbara Streisand in the early eighties. Um apparently that was quite a painful business.

Jack Rosenthal23:54

Yes, it it it wasn't easy. We wrote many, many, many drafts. Uh you have to remember that I was the writer and Barbara was co-writer.

Jack Rosenthal24:03

Director, Star and Producer.

Jack Rosenthal24:06

So we did have quite a few little altercations and gets you one. Absolutely right.

Presenter24:09

And get you one.

Jack Rosenthal24:13

It it's it's strange. It was very, very hard work and it never ever seemed to stop.

Presenter24:19

But how did it work? Did you write together or did you?

Jack Rosenthal24:22

We we met each day and went through a few scenes, and then I'd go home and write according to what we'd been talking about. Then I'd go back the next day and enact

Jack Rosenthal24:36

The scenes for

Presenter24:37

Well you acted them out together.

Jack Rosenthal24:38

Yes, I did. Well, she got a copy of the script and I had one. She did at one stage actually offer me every part in gentle.

Presenter24:46

Well,'cause you were so good at it.

Jack Rosenthal24:46

Well, because you were so good at it. I was just sensational.

Presenter24:49

Yeah.

Jack Rosenthal24:50

I think she thought she would have been better, but she didn't say so.

Presenter24:53

And did it always go down well then when you sort of

Jack Rosenthal24:55

No, no, it didn't always go down well. There was one particular moment, the actual big climax of the story, is when Avigdor, who is the man that.

Jack Rosenthal25:06

Yentel, played by Barbara Trice and is in love with, discovers that she's in fact a woman and not a man, because she'd been pretending to be a man throughout. So it was a very, very big confrontational scene. And I wrote this and went in the next day and I did it.

Jack Rosenthal25:25

And Barbara looked at me and she said, Well, it

Jack Rosenthal25:27

It's not strong enough. It it is angrier than this. And I said, Well, no, Barbara, this is Poland in 1900. This is the language that you'd use to express this kind of anger.

Jack Rosenthal25:38

And she said, No, no, this should be swearing and I said, you know, you're talking about a row happening today. This isn't today. So I said it's quite easy to do that. So I advanced across the room to her, swearing and yelling every obscenity I'd ever heard, including the two years in the Navy, all the way across the room until we were face to face.

Jack Rosenthal26:08

There was a long pause, and she looked at me and said

Jack Rosenthal26:11

Talking about me or the character.

Jack Rosenthal26:14

She won again. She won again. I changed it.

Presenter26:17

Tell me about the next one. What is it? Number six.

Jack Rosenthal26:20

Yes, this is the sixties, and to me it's encapsulated in the musical Hair.

Jack Rosenthal26:28

I'm no great lover of musicals, having written two of them, I can say that with emphasis, um but Hare was again a revelation and an explosion, much in the same way that Coronation Street had been on television.

Speaker 426:43

I met a boy called Frank Mills On September twelfth right here in front of the Waverley.

Speaker 426:55

But unfortunately

Speaker 426:59

I lost his address.

Presenter27:03

Sonia Christina singing Frank Mills from the 1968 musical.

Speaker 427:03

You're Christine.

Presenter27:07

Hair. You write um in long hand, first of all, Jack, and then you redraft and hone and hone and redraft and but but the soul of what you write must be in that first draft, isn't it?

Jack Rosenthal27:20

Oh, I think it is. Um but of course everything you write does go through many many drafts. I wrote um a television film called The The Knowledge some years ago.

Presenter27:30

About taxi drivers.

Jack Rosenthal27:31

Yeah, and uh it was commissioned by Verity Lambert and I delivered it to her and I was actually in the process of handing it over.

Jack Rosenthal27:40

when I thought this script wasn't right, and she had hold of one end and I had hold of the other, and we had a little tug of war, and I said, It isn't right, I'd like to do it again and she said, Well, let me read it.

Jack Rosenthal27:52

And I said, No, I don't want you to read it'cause it isn't right and I think I now know how to make it right. And she said, Well, no, just let me and we played at this for a little while and then she let me win and said, Off you go then and do it again, which I did.

Presenter28:04

But but

Presenter28:05

Is it very different these days? You know, handing in scripts uh single plays themselves are not as popular anymore, are they? They're broadcast as one series.

Jack Rosenthal28:13

I think the word single play is disappearing from the language. Yes, they do. Um it's a very different world. It uh in draw in television drama. It used to be writer led and it's now executive led and committee led and star led and most of all

Jack Rosenthal28:33

Profit-led

Presenter28:34

Which means it's viewing figure lead.

Jack Rosenthal28:36

Absolutely, ratings is all important. Once upon a time that really wasn't of uh

Jack Rosenthal28:42

any real importance in drama, in single drama. You didn't expect massive ratings, although in fact they were always events and big talking points. It's very important that writers were given those opportunities in those days. Most of them, most of one's work succeeded, but you did have the chance to fail. And this is important, but television has become tabloid.

Jack Rosenthal29:06

And it's like a tabloid newspaper, and there's very little room for new imaginative, inhibitive work.

Presenter29:17

Mecho number seven.

Jack Rosenthal29:20

Um this next record really is to remind me uh about the kids.

Jack Rosenthal29:26

Throughout their lives, whenever we've got in the car, the second the ignition's been switched on

Jack Rosenthal29:33

They start to sing. Maybe not now, because we don't have all four of us sitting at the car and I don't honestly think they'd be singing now, but I I think the last one that they did, which I thought they did beautifully, and they'll cringe at me saying this, was this next record.

Speaker 429:52

It's a little bit more than me must take your energy and be the soul.

Speaker 430:06

The doctor won't stand in.

Speaker 430:15

I know him so well.

Presenter30:19

Elaine Page and Barbara Dixon singing I Know Him So Well.

Presenter30:24

From what you've said, Jack, there have been a lot of strong women in your life, you know, from from your mother and and not least to your wife, Maureen Lippmann, and people like Ina Sharples and Barbara Streisand in between.

Presenter30:35

How are you going to manage on this island without any of these without the children? I mean, you're going to fall to pieces, aren't you?

Jack Rosenthal30:38

It's been without the ch

Jack Rosenthal30:42

How would I manage? Well

Jack Rosenthal30:44

If I can

Jack Rosenthal30:46

Catch the odd fish.

Jack Rosenthal30:47

I'm in fact the best chip maker.

Jack Rosenthal30:50

Probably on earth. Um, I don't want to

Speaker 430:52

Uh

Speaker 230:52

Uh

Jack Rosenthal30:54

Claim too much for myself, but probably the very best. So, if I could do that, that would keep me going for a little while.

Jack Rosenthal31:02

I'd like someone there to make me laugh, and they all would have made me laugh, I suppose. I do have to go, don't I? I mean, I can't sit in the garden and pretend it's a desert island.

Presenter31:10

No, no, no, no, no, no. You set sail immediately after this recording, right?

Jack Rosenthal31:12

I could sail immediately after this recording. After the recording. I could stand on the shore.

Jack Rosenthal31:17

and look for passing ships.

Jack Rosenthal31:20

I suppose, and wave.

Presenter31:21

But there may never be one.

Jack Rosenthal31:23

No, uh there may never may never be one. Um

Jack Rosenthal31:28

Yeah, yeah, I think you I might find it a bit hard.

Presenter31:31

Tell me about your last record.

Jack Rosenthal31:33

It's a song that's sung I should imagine.

Jack Rosenthal31:37

Most synagogues, but the synagogue I go to, which is the West London synagogue, it's a song that's sung there at every service. And it's, I think, a very beautiful melody and very beautifully arranged and very, very beautifully sung. And I always find it the most moving part of the service. And I look forward to it, and I would love to hear it always.

Speaker 432:20

His shares are me.

Speaker 432:27

I saw it.

Presenter32:59

For Shamru Bene Israel, performed by the Choir of the West London Synagogue. Now, if you could only take one of those eight records, Jack, which one would you take?

Jack Rosenthal33:07

I think I'd probably take the Yehudi Menu in, playing the violin concerto, uh, probably because it's the longest one, I wouldn't get quite so fed up with it. Uh but also I could pretend after a while, I could kid myself.

Jack Rosenthal33:21

that it was me playing and there'd be no one there to uh to argue.

Presenter33:26

What about your book?

Jack Rosenthal33:28

Now I take I'm not too sure if it's a good idea, because I think I may go crazier even more quickly than I would without it. I think I'd take James Joseph's Finnegan's Wake.

Jack Rosenthal33:40

I think that would be a huge treasure trove, apart from being the world's biggest crossword puzzle.

Presenter33:46

And your luxury.

Jack Rosenthal33:47

Uh, I've got one or two ideas for that. One was a homing pigeon, and I could find out how United had got on each Saturday and maybe how boring the kids were getting on. Um, I think probably in the end

Jack Rosenthal34:02

I'd like a few crates of clay so I could do some clay modelling.

Jack Rosenthal34:07

and populate the island a bit because I do love clay modelling.

Presenter34:12

Jack Rosenthal, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs. Thank you.

Speaker 234:24

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