Michael Crawford

Speaker 30:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive. For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen ninety nine, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:32

My castaway this week is an entertainer. His versatility he can sing, dance, act, and perform acrobatics have made him an international star. The child of a war widow from the Isle of Sheppey, he's come a long way since he adopted his professional name off the side of a biscuit van. He was playing leading roles in the West End and British films and had appeared alongside Barbara Streisand in Hallow Dolly by the time he was thirty. And then, as the hapless Frank Spencer in Some Mothers Du Avum on BBC Television, he endeared himself to the whole nation. And he went on in shows such as Billy, Barnum and Phantom of the Opera, to demonstrate his dedication to his art, of which he says, I am in the paradoxical position of being in a profession I love, but which forces me to confront my worst nightmare, making a fool of myself in public. He is Michael Crawford. Michael, I can't believe that you're worried about making a fool of yourself in public.

Michael Crawford1:27

Well, I I think that there's always the possibility of it happening every time you you stand in front of an audience, and I I prefer to work in the theatre than I do uh to work on on film, because it's the interaction between an artist and their audience is so exciting, it's so thrilling, it's uh it's organic.

Presenter1:48

So you like putting yourself on the line, but what you're saying when you say you don't like making a fool of yourself, what you mean is you want to make a fool of yourself properly, you want to do it to perfection.

Michael Crawford1:58

It has to be organized. I I'm not crazy about the word perfection, because it's always spat out and it's uh it's not um it it it's not a terrible word. It to try and do one's best is is what I was always taught, and so I've always tried very hard.

Presenter2:14

It's funny you flinch, though, because it has been used against you, hasn't it? In a kind of pejorative sense. Somehow that your your attention to detail, your demands of everybody that it be absolutely right.

Michael Crawford2:17

Oh yes.

Michael Crawford2:20

Now that you're

Michael Crawford2:25

Yeah.

Presenter2:26

It was never a joke and never easy.

Michael Crawford2:28

No. I mean comedy isn't funny. Uh

Michael Crawford2:32

It's a very serious business.

Presenter2:34

But do you think you've taken it more than many? I mean, there are stories, and they are legion, of your, you know, dancing on bleeding toes, so to speak, getting up out of your hospital bed, because the show must go on.

Michael Crawford2:46

That was Phantom, yes, when I developed hiatal hernia and I was in hospital overnight and then the person that went on for me, my understudy, got injured the very first night he went on. Now they'd sedated me, so I had to drink several cups of coffee to get myself together and I remember walking past two ladies who said, Oh, I think that was Michael Crawford. She said, I do hope not, he looked drunk. And this was two o'clock in the afternoon, just before the matinee time. So I got in, kept drinking coffee. They put the makeup on me. Within five minutes to go, I went on and did those two shows while they rehearsed rapidly to get the understudy ready.

Michael Crawford3:30

This made

Michael Crawford3:31

several newspapers, of course, and uh got quite a bit of reaction, but

Michael Crawford3:37

That was really all.

Presenter3:38

But there was another occasion, wasn't there, when you actually escaped from the hospital. You climbed out of the hospital window.

Michael Crawford3:44

Well, that was for Barnum. Yes. I I hadn't eaten for three days, and uh which I often forget to do if I've forgot an opening night and I suddenly lost all my strength. And poor Harold Fielding, who was the producer, had an awful lot of money at stake.

Michael Crawford3:59

He put me in hospital overnight so that they would at least feed me up and fatten me a bit to come back to work and so that we could open on our correct preview night. Then I climbed out of a window and ran to the theatre and and um and ran onstage in the middle of the dress rehearsal and this the understudy was just saying, Uh Barnum's the name, P T Barnum and I said, No, it isn't, I'm Barnum I ran on behind him and pushed him off the other side of the stage.

Presenter4:26

Tell me about your first record.

Michael Crawford4:28

Peggy Lee.

Michael Crawford4:29

Very special lady when I was when I was uh about twelve, fourteen, sixteen.

Michael Crawford4:35

I I adored the tone of her voice, the mellowness that that she brought forth. It was rather like a a wonderful saxophonist. There's this air, and it to me had great passion, and it had a I'm sure it had a great influence on me when I started singing myself.

Presenter4:54

Smile

Presenter4:57

Though your heart is aching, smile.

Presenter5:02

Even though it's breaking.

Presenter5:07

When there are clouds

Presenter5:11

In the sky

Presenter5:14

You get by

Presenter5:17

If you smile

Presenter5:20

Through your fear and sorrow

Presenter5:24

Peggy Lee singing Smile

Presenter5:26

Part of the perfectionism, Michael, has always been doing your own stunts, memorably in some mothers, roller skating under the lorry or being dragged behind the train. But most dangerous of all was was the one where you dangled from a window cleaner's cradle half way up a a skyscraper. That one nearly went wrong, didn't it?

Michael Crawford5:46

Yes, I had to fall out, pull my assistant with me, and we're wired very carefully to the to this uh cradle, and I I'm hanging underneath, and he's on my shoulders.

Michael Crawford6:00

Um we get the shot and they're supposed to bring us down to the ground. Well, it got stuck in the wall and wouldn't go up or down. So I I just hang there on the end of this wire.

Michael Crawford6:12

Looking at Harlesdon and Wilsdon and then swinging round the Houses of Parliament.

Michael Crawford6:21

Then the Houses of Parliament.

Michael Crawford6:23

The North Circular Road, Harlsdon and Wilsdon again. That was pretty uh

Presenter6:29

That was the scariest.

Michael Crawford6:30

That was the worst.

Presenter6:31

It was a very physical comedy, that that whole thing, Some Mothers, wasn't it? Were were you borrowing from people that that you'd admired as a boy? I mean, I one immediately thinks of Laurel and Hardy.

Michael Crawford6:42

I think Laurel and Hardy and Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd who are still funny today, that comedy, it doesn't even when you saw the piano appear with Laurel and Hardie and they look at each other, there's no dialogue necessary. You know exactly what's going to happen and you start to smile and and then you then you roar with laughter.

Presenter7:00

How much did Frank Spencer borrow, I wonder, from Michael Crawford himself? Because it was quite a lot of unit you had a lot to do, didn't you, with the planning of the programme, with the putting together of the script?

Michael Crawford7:10

Um as time went by I did, yes. I I think one puts oneself into into a role in in varying degrees, and also you borrow from friends and also you exaggerate.

Presenter7:20

Frank was also a Catholic. You're a Catholic, although he drove the priest mad'cause he went to confession every day, didn't he? But again it was you there

Michael Crawford7:28

There were par yes, there were parts of me growing up where I would go to church and I discovered girls and I used to go into the confessional sometimes a couple of times a day because I'd gone outside and I'd had an impure thought about someone passing by who looked particularly good and I'd have to go back in again and disguise my voice.

Presenter7:52

How much credit do you give that role in the sum total of your career? Do you see it as the big take off point?

Michael Crawford8:00

Yes. Um I I think I'd I'd established a name in theatre before that, but uh that's not you can work for four years in the theater and not get one night's well, not four years, much more than that, and not get one night's viewing figures. Twenty four, twenty five million viewers we we got, and that was uh it's just mind-blowing to think of that many people watching one programme.

Presenter8:24

Tell me about your second record.

Michael Crawford8:26

And

Michael Crawford8:27

Well, it it's really going back to where I started, my roots as a boy soprano and working with uh Benjamin Britton. I made a recording with him, the second job I ever did. It was uh a recording of A Boy Was Born and he actually conducted it and it's something that will uh live in my memory forever.

Presenter9:49

The Boys' Voices of the English Opera Group with the Purcell Singers and the Choristers of All Saints Margaret Street performing the Noel part of Benjamin Britton's A Boy Was Born, conducted by Benjamin Britton, and You're On There Somewhere.

Michael Crawford10:02

Yes, yes. Gosh, that was my I still have the score to that, or I've got my such such technical expertise. I've got a different parts slow down written on my score and look out. And when you hear where we were up there on the top, I mean you one tiny mistake and it would have been

Presenter10:21

Get the wrong no L and you're done.

Michael Crawford10:21

Oh no, yes, you're shot down in flames.

Presenter10:25

And you, as a very small boy, had been to choir school, of course. Were you, in fact, that little choir boy with the ruffle collar that we all love at this time of year, singing once in World David City?

Michael Crawford10:35

Yes, I had the solo to open the service at Dulwich College Chapel every year, and it was the first time in my life that I felt I had done something right, and it was it was very satisfying.

Presenter10:48

No nerves?

Michael Crawford10:50

Oh, terrible nerves. And as I got to the end, you say, Mary was that mother mild Jesus. So the mother and the Jesus were both on notes that were far beyond my everyday reach and and just to sit see my mother with a rosary in the in the in the pews there hoping that I was going to hit these notes.

Presenter11:12

Mm.

Presenter11:13

How did you speak, Michael? Was accent a worry?

Michael Crawford11:17

Our family were fairly working class, but my mother developed a sort of telephone voice from from about when I was about eight or nine onwards, and it didn't seem affected in any way.

Michael Crawford11:30

The only time it was affected was when she spoke to misses Gray, who lived on the right, who took the Daily Telegraph, and we were Socialists taking the Daily Herald.

Presenter11:40

And what did you dream of being? Did you have any great ambitions then?

Michael Crawford11:44

I think I w I wanted to be in aviation. Uh it was a dream of my my m the the man I I I thought was my father, I I my my mother's first husband.

Michael Crawford11:56

Um

Presenter11:57

And he was killed in the war. He was killed in the war.

Presenter12:00

He was killed in 1940 and you were born quite a bit later, in 1942. When did you eventually discover he wasn't your father?

Michael Crawford12:07

Well, it it so slowly revealed itself, I I suppose, through my teenage years. And again, going back to the the the more the working class side, it it's something that one never spoke about and it w there was a certain kind of shame there within the family.

Michael Crawford12:21

And

Presenter12:22

Because you were illegitimate.

Michael Crawford12:23

Yes, yes. And and so that was a word you couldn't possibly utter. And really, I I found I I couldn't say that either, uh unt maybe until a few years ago.

Michael Crawford12:36

Uh

Presenter12:36

That long?

Michael Crawford12:37

Yeah. And within those years it was far worse than it is now, and there was no one at school who didn't have two parents.

Michael Crawford12:45

If if if I hadn't had a stepfather, I would most certainly have invented someone and found an excuse that he wasn't at certain functions, that you know, he only had one leg and

Michael Crawford12:56

could only go round in circles or something, so you couldn't never get to the

Presenter12:58

They say

Michael Crawford13:00

School presentation.

Presenter13:02

Tell me about your next record.

Michael Crawford13:03

Uh well, the the the next record I I think is just the the love of uh of harmony and and uh the legacy of working, I suppose, with with Benjamin Britton. I did appreciate good voices when I heard them and and wonderful pieces of harmony. So uh uh The Pearlfishers, Bizet's The Pearlfishers is a is a is a fine example of that.

Speaker 113:34

He said he will sail our blessed.

Speaker 113:49

He said I said on this one.

Speaker 313:53

Yeah.

Michael Crawford13:57

Yes, love

Presenter14:23

Edmund Barham and Anthony Michaels Moore singing part of the duet aux du temp lessin from Bizet's The Pearlfishers with the English Northern Philharmonia, conducted by Paul Daniel.

Presenter14:34

So, Michael Crawford, you were you were semi pro while you were still at school. Made quite a few films, I think, about then as well. Were there any stunts in those films? Do you remember your first ever stunt?

Michael Crawford14:46

Uh yes, we w w we made films for the Children's Film Foundation. I got the opportunity to work in two. One was called Soapbox Derby and the other was called Blow Your Own Trumpet. And one of the things that I had to do in Soapbox Derby was dive into the River Thames and save this boy's apparently save this boy's life.

Michael Crawford15:08

So I dived in the Thames and pulled him out and everyone was was very happy about the take, and then we were we were taken down the local baths and stomach pumped or hospital because in case the water was too dirty or anything untoward in the in the Thames, heaven forbid.

Presenter15:26

But there was never any question of anybody else doing it. I mean, you had to do it.

Michael Crawford15:30

No, well, I don't think there was any question then. I mean, they didn't give me an alternative. They said that this is where you dive in the water, Michael.

Michael Crawford15:36

There was hardly any one with my shaped legs and short trousers who was a stuntman that was going to dive in the Thames.

Presenter15:43

The legs have played an important part in your life, haven't they, and career?

Michael Crawford15:43

Uh

Presenter15:47

Comedic, I think we call them.

Michael Crawford15:49

Comedic, they were. They're a lot better now. I'm not ashamed of my legs anymore. But, um,.

Michael Crawford15:55

But I was in those days when I did and when I did Funny Thi they were used in Funny Thing Happened on the Way the Forum.

Michael Crawford16:01

I I mean, it was very embarrassing.

Presenter16:04

You were, I think, in your twenty first year when you made your debut in the West End with um Come Blow Your Hall and the Neil Simon play with Bob Monkhouse and Naira Dormporter, I think it was.

Michael Crawford16:14

Yes.

Presenter16:14

Do you remember your first laugh on the West End stage? I mean, is that a a kind of moment that stays with you?

Michael Crawford16:21

I was twenty and I w I d I got the role and w we were it was a very large role. Um but this boy, he was leaving home and he went to live with his brother who was a Playboy and I played guess what, The Innocent. And uh I I turned up and he said, Buddy, he said, Y you've left home. I said

Michael Crawford16:45

Yes, he said, permanently? I said,

Michael Crawford16:49

I took eight pairs of socks. For me that's pretty permanent.

Michael Crawford16:52

That was my first laugh. You may not be laughing at home now, but

Michael Crawford16:57

In'Sixty One they laughed.

Presenter16:58

And your mum came first night.

Michael Crawford17:01

Yes, she did.

Presenter17:03

What happened?

Michael Crawford17:05

Um that night we celebrated and uh I stayed over uh at Bob Munkhouse's house and the very next morning I went home at the crack of dawn and no one was no one was up and I I w I went in my bedroom and on my pillow was this uh long uh manila envelope and it said uh my wonderful, wonderful son and uh I uh I have that to this day as a treasured possession. I keep it in a little uh a little another envelope and I keep it in the dark so that it won't fade.

Presenter17:45

'Cause in less than a year she was dead.

Michael Crawford17:47

Yes, sadly, um yes. Just one night I came home and and uh she had been taken ill and it was just so strange,'cause y you live in a family where I don't think anyone was ever unwell. Nothing untoward had happened health wise for any of us.

Michael Crawford18:07

And for some reason I I I thought she should have a second opinion and I w I I asked Bob

Michael Crawford18:15

Monkhouse about it, and he said, Most certainly you should do this, you should do this, and we were pretty unworldly.

Michael Crawford18:21

Uh we weren't very worldly wise as a family in that way, so you were frightened of the family doctor, which is quite ridiculous.

Michael Crawford18:30

So we got a second opinion from an expert, a in a specialist in in Harley Street, and he said immediately there was it was a wrong diagnosis and she had to be rushed to hospital in the centre of London. So I got her into the hospital and she was operated on, but

Michael Crawford18:51

Sadly it was uh it was too late.

Presenter18:55

Required number four.

Michael Crawford18:57

Um on a lighter note, the wonderful influence in my life uh when I met mister Gene Kelly, he was very dear uh and a a tremendous enthusiast uh and a hero.

Speaker 119:16

Bet Broadway River

Speaker 119:20

When I hear that happy

Speaker 319:24

Feel like dancing down the street

Michael Crawford19:29

At all with rhythm, writhing, beating, rhythm.

Speaker 119:34

Got a dance, got a day. Got a dance, got a day.

Presenter19:43

Gene Kelly singing part of the Broadway Melody Ballet from the original soundtrack of Singing in the Rain. Gene Kelly, who auditioned you, of course, Michael, for Hallow Dolly.

Presenter19:51

Auditioning for Jean Kelly, to sing and to dance for Jean Kelly, must have been terrifying.

Michael Crawford19:56

Yes. Imagine yourself. You arrive in a hotel, your jet lagged, and I'm standing in line at the desk and to t to check in. And he said name, I said Crawford. He said, Oh, yes, you have a message, mister Crawford. Jean Kelly called.

Michael Crawford20:10

And I looked round and there was a

Michael Crawford20:12

It's a bit of a cue behind me, so I said, right, I'll just fill in my details here.

Michael Crawford20:18

Any messages? And leaned to one side so that it would go over my shoulder to the she said, Yes, just that Gene Kelly called. I said, Oh, okay. Uh what was the name? She said, Gene Kelly. I said, Please, there's no need to shout. Um but I said if I could have that note, I'll take it with me and I that's another note I still have. So I went up to my room and the next morning.

Michael Crawford20:42

The doorbell went and I opened it and he said, Uh uh hi, I'm Gene Kelly and and it was just like the opening line in a movie I said, Oh, hawaha And he said uh let's cut the small talk, can you dance? I said, Well, no, no, I'm really quite new to this business. I've done well, I've done some radio and I've Shakespeare. I played Shakespeare on the radio in tights. Two pairs,'cause my legs were thin. So he's looking at me as I'm a complete

Speaker 121:03

My legs were thin.

Michael Crawford21:07

Lunatic, and which I was, yes, and completely gone to pieces. And he said, he said.

Michael Crawford21:14

What we're looking for is the potter Cornelius hackle. What we he what we need, he said, is an attractive idiot.

Michael Crawford21:20

My wife thinks you're attractive, and I think you're an idiot.

Michael Crawford21:24

And um

Presenter21:25

And you got the part, yes.

Michael Crawford21:25

I love the part, yes.

Presenter21:27

And you'll and you remain friends after that? You did a pastiche of him, of course, in Billy, a few years later, didn't you, in in the West End. Yes. Creation of Keith Waterhouse, of course, the the the northern lad who worked in the uh funeral poll or the undertakers and and fantasized about being all these these different people.

Michael Crawford21:45

Yes.

Presenter21:46

And

Presenter21:47

It it it really was a big turning point in your life because it made you a big West End star, but you really had to work at that and you had to give it your all to sing and to dance.

Michael Crawford21:57

I was living at the time in a very small

Michael Crawford22:00

and economical, shall we say, flat in in South Kensington railway station. And fortunately it was in a mews, so it was over a garage that wasn't used at night and or much in the day, so I could learn to dance in my kitchen on this linoleum floor.

Michael Crawford22:19

It was like four cookers across and and three three fridges to the left was the and I was thinking, I've got to fill the Drury Lane Theatre, and I'm trying to learn to dance in a width of four fridges and a cooker.

Speaker 122:29

In a w

Michael Crawford22:31

And when I got really good I used to open the refrigerator door and play with the light on, pretending that the Guinness bottles inside were my audience.

Presenter22:39

It worked.

Presenter22:40

But it all coincided all of that hard work with it with a deeply unhappy period in in your personal life, didn't it? Because you and your wife, the mother of your two little daughters, had separated, and that's why you were living in this little flat. Perversely, I wonder whether that situation helped you become the star that Billy made you, because you could you could give it your all. You had to have somewhere to put your all, really, didn't you?

Michael Crawford23:02

Maybe. I hadn't thought of it that way. I hadn't thought that uh I I I I think I would have I used to give as much time when I was married to

Michael Crawford23:10

to working. So I don't know that it th th that uh it really

Michael Crawford23:14

You know, the the the unhappiness added to my inspiration for myself to go to work even harder. So I no, I just gave it what I had to give it to learn to dance.

Presenter23:26

Record number five.

Michael Crawford23:28

The the great Frank Sinatra, another terrific influence when I was growing up. And um whoever said he wasn't a good actor, try learning the uh soliloquy from Roger Rogers and Haverstein's uh Carousel.

Speaker 123:42

My boy Bill, he'll be tall and as tough as a tree.

Speaker 123:48

He will, like a tree, he'll grow with his head held high and his feet planted firm on the ground. And you won't see nobody dare to try to boss him or toss him around. No flat-footed, flabby-faced bully or boss him around.

Presenter24:12

Frank Sinatra singing soliloquy from Rogers and Hammerstein's Carousel. Some years after Billy, you went on to do Barnum, of course, which was based on the life of the flamboyant American circus showman, for which you had to learn to walk a high wire. How long did that take, and how difficult was it, and how many times did you fall off, and how badly did you injure yourself?

Michael Crawford24:32

Oh, uh it was.

Michael Crawford24:35

Jolly difficult. You start at about two feet with the wire two feet off the ground and um and about twenty feet across, and you've got to just keep going until you can do it. Uh day after day after day and hour after hour after hour.

Michael Crawford24:52

Uh doesn't it cut the f

Presenter24:53

Because

Presenter24:54

Fee.

Michael Crawford24:54

It does a bit. I mean, uh you you end up

Michael Crawford24:57

With sort of grooves along the the centre of your feet because you've walked so far on this little thin wire.

Michael Crawford25:05

But uh um they soon toughen.

Presenter25:08

And when you fall?

Michael Crawford25:09

When you fall you always grab the wire so that you never get hurt.

Presenter25:13

But did you fall in the show? You must have done sometime.

Michael Crawford25:14

Yeah.

Michael Crawford25:16

Uh no, I only fell about seven times in the I s I think we did fourteen hundred performances, I I think I did, and I only I only fell about seven times. You in fact get better reaction if you fall and get back up and start again, but I was so scared I'd fall the second time and look utterly stupid that I I tried very hard to get across in one and sacrifice some applause.

Presenter25:40

When Barnum ended in in nineteen eighty three, your career went into a a kind of doldrum for a bit, didn't it? And I I think you've said that you even at one point considered um presenting the television programme The Price is Right.

Presenter25:54

I suppose that is the problem, isn't it, when you become as big as you became, and and and such a specialist entertainer, as it were, that unless the right vehicle, the right show comes along, what can you do?

Michael Crawford26:07

Um it can be that way. Uh I suppose I did have alternatives. I mean, one can always.

Michael Crawford26:15

I didn't want to do television again for a little while because I'd I really had to uh get away from doing some mothers. I mean I could have sat and done that for a few more years, but it's not what I wanted to do. My love was working on the stage. And yes, there are it's it's hard sometimes to find the vehicle that that will satisfy you.

Presenter26:42

You've also got to eat, so you've got to earn. How how worried have you been through all of this about the money? Or has that always been a secondary issue?

Michael Crawford26:51

It's always been secondary. If you choose to work in the theatre, you're not going to earn as much money as you are if you work in films. So you you um you you settle for for satisfaction in work rather than trying to earn a fortune.

Presenter27:07

Although rumour had it that at one point you were earning for Phantom of the Opera twenty thousand a night. Or is that is that fooy?

Michael Crawford27:12

But really.

Michael Crawford27:14

I think I'd like you as an agent.

Presenter27:17

Record number six.

Michael Crawford27:19

Well, it it I d I have to take something with me that was was to d was something to do with the musical, and one of the most impressive musicals uh that I ever saw, and I I must say it was it was the uh film version, was uh Gershwin's Porgy and Beth.

Speaker 327:37

Time and even time and summertime and winter time.

Speaker 127:44

Oh no.

Speaker 127:44

Time in evening time in summer time in winter time.

Presenter27:52

Dorothy Dandridge and Robert McFerrin singing Bess You Is My Woman Now from Gershwin's Porgy and Bess. And of course McFerrin was the singing voice of Sidney Poitier in the film, wasn't he?

Speaker 128:02

Uh

Presenter28:02

So Michael, Phantom made you truly international. I think in the in London, New York and Los Angeles you you did a total of some thirteen hundred performances of it. The last one was nine years ago. It said there's going to be a film, You're Fifty Seven. Could you still play him?

Michael Crawford28:19

Um I think I might manage it, yes. Um

Presenter28:23

Do you want to?

Michael Crawford28:24

Uh if I was asked to do it, I'd love to do it.

Presenter28:27

You haven't been asked.

Michael Crawford28:28

Uh it hasn't been there's no film in in production at the moment, so uh

Presenter28:32

No, but as you know, there's speculation.

Michael Crawford28:34

Well you can't speculate till you have a director.

Presenter28:34

Thank you later.

Michael Crawford28:37

And when is the director?

Presenter28:38

And Wayne is a director. John Travolta, Antonio Banderas have been mentioned. Would it break your heart if somebody else got it?

Michael Crawford28:45

No, no, it wouldn't. I mean, if I was a film executive and and and uh that you had some big name that was gonna draw a fortune for the film, I would employ them.

Presenter28:56

But you'd love to do it.

Michael Crawford28:58

Um I yes, I would love to do it. That's what I said.

Presenter29:01

You said all through your career that just when everybody began to say at any one point whatever happened to Michael Crawford, something

Presenter29:11

would come up, something would happen. Do you think that's gonna happen again now? Or or do you think by the very nature of everything that you've ever done, the sheer physicality of it, the the how demanding it is that that

Presenter29:26

Probably you've done.

Presenter29:27

As much as you're going to do, or is there lots more?

Michael Crawford29:29

This is the end.

Michael Crawford29:33

Well, I don't uh I don't feel that at all, no. I mean, I'm I'm doing concerts now all over the world with

Michael Crawford29:40

very hopefully, successfully. I mean, we have twenty thousand people. We had like two million people I played for last year, so I don't feel as though I'm uh I'm going anywhere out of sight at the moment.

Presenter29:51

No, no, no, you're huge and you sell so many albums and so on. But I wonder about the the physical side of it. You know, the the the actual doing of the musicals, the the leaping about on stage, the music.

Michael Crawford30:02

Oh, I don't think I want to leap around any more. No, I mean I qui whi one quietens down as one grows up and uh I you know, I I'll I suppose I'll end up reading the weather somewhere, but uh for the time being I think I want to keep I want to keep singing.

Presenter30:14

I think I want to keep

Presenter30:18

Number seven.

Michael Crawford30:20

Um

Michael Crawford30:21

Number seven is a beautiful piece that I heard and just offers hope and optimism about maybe if I'm on this island and it's nearly time to go, I would think this would be the piece that I would like to carry me across the waves possibly.

Michael Crawford30:48

And us the joy Which brightens earthly sorrow

Michael Crawford31:00

Grant us the peace Which comes all earthly strife.

Presenter31:14

My castaway Michael Crawford with the American Boy Choir singing Eternal Love from his album On Eagle's Wings.

Presenter31:21

Has it been a lonely business? You've never remarried, have you, since Gabrielle?

Michael Crawford31:24

No.

Presenter31:26

Has it been a lonely business, being a star?

Michael Crawford31:29

Oh no, no. I mean I'm never I'm v virtually never alone. I'm I'm always I'm always with other people.

Presenter31:35

But you know that's not what I mean.

Michael Crawford31:37

Oh, no, no, no. I don't I I mean I'm not uh my friends and family, I'm

Michael Crawford31:43

I'm sort of constantly with.

Presenter31:46

Yes, but sometimes you're in Las Vegas for, you know, two years on end doing I don't know how many shows a week, twelve shows a week. It's a solitary business, is what I'm saying.

Michael Crawford31:53

But you make friends.

Michael Crawford31:57

I haven't found that. I haven't found that.

Presenter32:00

And when you sit on your desert island and ruminate on it all, um will you decide that you should have played something differently, or are you kind of you sound as if you're generally reasonably content with the way it's gone.

Michael Crawford32:11

Oh yes, I wouldn't I wouldn't change I wouldn't change anything. I think I've done

Michael Crawford32:17

Certainly the best I could along the way, and what I haven't done correctly you try to correct at a later date.

Presenter32:24

And how will it be in the practical sense on this desert island, I wonder? Are we to imagine is it you know, are you is the real Michael Crawford Frank Spencer falling out of a palm tree while he looks for coconuts, or is he that rather cool and very well ordered person who knows that he's got to concentrate and get it right?

Michael Crawford32:42

Um I'm sure there'll be a combination of the two. Uh I but I I don't think I would

Michael Crawford32:50

I would panic too much unless something very large on two legs came looming towards me uh that was furry and had a very large mouth. I'm I'm pretty practical.

Presenter33:02

Last record.

Michael Crawford33:03

Um

Michael Crawford33:04

Bach's Mass in B minor is particularly

Michael Crawford33:08

Lovely peace.

Presenter34:04

The Munich Bach Choir and Orchestra performing part of the Credo from Bach's B minor Mass, conducted by Karl Richter. So, Michael, if you could only take one of those eight records, which one would you take?

Michael Crawford34:17

Oh

Michael Crawford34:18

I think that one.

Michael Crawford34:20

It is.

Michael Crawford34:22

as near to heaven as I can hear on all of them.

Presenter34:25

What about your book?

Michael Crawford34:27

John Seymour's Book of Self-Sufficiency.

Michael Crawford34:30

So uh when the um side of me that's not as adequate as the other side comes out, I've got pictures to show me how to dig holes and grow things. And uh when I find seeds I'll know what to do with them.

Presenter34:42

And what about your luxury?

Michael Crawford34:42

But you're lucky.

Michael Crawford34:45

Can I have pen and paper?

Presenter34:46

Mm-hmm.

Michael Crawford34:46

Yes. All right. Otherwise I could have a pen and write on leaves or something. But I I really now have a a love for writing and I didn't think I ever would after being wrapped over the knuckles for using my left hand when I was a child.

Presenter34:47

Otherwise I could have pen

Speaker 334:49

Uh

Michael Crawford34:59

I felt it was inadequate, but it isn't inadequate. You can write if you're left-handed as well, I've just found out.

Presenter35:05

Michael Crawford, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs.

Michael Crawford35:08

Thank you very much, sir.

Speaker 335:18

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