Simon Callow

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.

Speaker 30:08

The programme was originally broadcast in the year two thousand, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:30

My Costaway this week is an actor and director. Brought up in South London by his mother, grandmothers, and great-grandmother, and any number of aunts, he was, he says, always destined for adulthood. He managed this transition with ease and flamboyance, turning up to rep rehearsals in cape and fedora, his sonorous voice and extensive vocabulary carrying all before him. As Mozart in the national theatre production of Amadeus, he became one of the great young hopes of the British theatre. But in a long career since then, including a dazzling performance in the film Four Weddings and a Funeral, his versatility got the better of him. Far more than just an actor, he now says of his first profession, I've lavished my entire being on it, but I've never felt that it has loved me back in quite the same way. He is Simon Callow. That implies that you feel acting has let you down, Simon, has it?

Simon Callow1:21

Well, certainly when I wrote that, I did have a feeling that somehow I hadn't quite fulfilled my destiny as an actor. As you said, people were kind enough to say at the time of Mozart that I was, you know, going to be the very thing that I dreamt the next time. Next Olivier, yes. And that was what I expected. You know, that was all I wanted. That was my dream. When I was at drama school, I thought, well, if this works out, what will happen is that I go into rep.

Presenter1:35

The next Olivier, yes.

Simon Callow1:46

I then perhaps graduate into the West End, maybe go to the National Theatre or the Royal Shakespeare Company, will play a sequence of roles one after another, will become one of the leading actors of my day and all of that. But it just simply didn't happen that way, and life has a way of not happening the way you expect it to.

Presenter1:55

You've got it all sorts of.

Presenter2:03

But you've had these wonderful film roles since then, of course, and and not least Gareth in Four Weddings in a Fe yours was the funeral. You were this this large, genial, gay Scot in a kilt who dropped down dead at at one of the weddings. That must have brought you huge recognition.

Simon Callow2:05

Danis

Simon Callow2:13

Yeah.

Simon Callow2:17

Yes, that's, I suppose, the thing that people recognise me for most of all, and I couldn't ask for anything nicer to be recognised as. It was a sort of dream part. I discovered later, quite a lot later, after the agents had done the deals and so on, that Richard Curtis had actually written the part for me, which is fantastic to know and very flattered indeed. And also, it means that it fitted me like a coat. Do you know what I mean? So it was, as it were, a bespoke piece of writing for me.

Speaker 42:37

Hmm.

Presenter2:37

Which

Presenter2:40

Great company.

Presenter2:48

Lot of you in it.

Simon Callow2:49

I I think forty per cent of me is Gareth. There's another whole sixty per cent which has nothing whatever to do with Gareth.

Presenter2:55

But important for the gay part of you that he didn't die of AIDS, that he died of a heart attack.

Simon Callow3:01

Absolutely. I I had a sort of odd premonition as I I I looked at a script called Four Weddings and a Funeral. I thought, I'll bet I'm going to be the funeral, and so I was. But it was such a relief to discover that, as you say, that this gay man who was utterly life affirming and life enhancing, a huge, generous spirit,

Simon Callow3:21

Was killed not by AIDS at all, but by Scottish dancing.

Presenter3:26

And and by great weight and great

Simon Callow3:26

I'm not sure.

Simon Callow3:28

Yeah.

Presenter3:29

Bon vivarism.

Simon Callow3:30

Well, I prefer to think of it as a government health warning against the perils of Scottish dancing.

Presenter3:30

Hello?

Presenter3:31

I'm in health war.

Presenter3:34

Well, interestingly, I mean, di did that change you? Because I know since then you've lost about three stone in weight, haven't you?

Simon Callow3:40

Well, don't be deceived, because I was wearing a lot of padding, Miss Gareth. But no, the thing that made me really want to lose weight was uh doing uh a room with a view, in which I I I had a a naked scene running round a pond with two young gazelles called Julian Sands and Rupert Graves, the height of their youthful beauty, and this hippopotamus pursuing them was more than my self-respect could take.

Presenter4:00

Was born

Presenter4:02

Tell me about your first record.

Simon Callow4:04

This is not a terribly well-known piece by the most famous composer, I suppose, of all, Tchaikovsky, and it's a suite. He wrote four orchestral suites. And for me, it embodies everything that I think extraordinary about this composer, whom I love deeply. And I'm glad to say that it's not a stigma anymore to love Tchaikovsky. It was when I started listening to music, real musicians thought that Tchaikovsky was beneath contempt. But in fact, what you hear in this music is the exquisite craftsmanship, the wonderful sense of melody, the phenomenal orchestral textures that he creates, and above all, this rising sense of romance.

Presenter5:40

The new Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Antal Dorati, playing part of the first movement of Tchaikovsky's Suite No. Three in G. You mentioned Simon Callow the Scott Gareth's innate goodness, and I think the Reverend Beebe in a room with the View had it as well. That matters very much to you, doesn't it? That kind of decency of these characters.

Simon Callow5:57

Uh yes, it it sort of comes down in a way, in my mind, to us an innocence, and nothing moves me more than the idea of innocence. And I find myself drawn, whenever I'm playing a character, to finding the innocence in that character. Um the the one of the most extraordinary characters I played was in a a play by Manuel Pooch, the Argentinian writer, which is called The Kiss of the Spider Woman. And the character that I played was the m a screaming, screaming queen.

Simon Callow6:27

Inside whom it the play reveals was the most extraordinary tenderness and in and capacity for nurturing, and I I love to celebrate those things.

Presenter6:38

Is that the part you're proudest of?

Simon Callow6:40

I think it's the best piece of acting I've ever done. Because in a sense, it's a total transformation. Bec the physically I I think I became completely different. I I this is the absolute

Presenter6:40

I think it was it.

Presenter6:42

Bong.

Simon Callow6:51

wonder of acting is this capacity for transformation simply by by the power of the imagination. It's not really to do with makeup, makeup's a help, but something clicks inside you as an acting totally, and it must be a physical thing, and you'd simply change.

Presenter7:03

It's a physical thing.

Simon Callow7:08

Yeah.

Presenter7:08

Strange, isn't it, that it's so instinctive in you, obviously, from everything that you're describing there, that you didn't spot much earlier than you did that acting was what you wanted to do, because you thought you wanted to be a lawyer.

Simon Callow7:11

Uh

Simon Callow7:18

Yes, I think the problem is really one of simply no l no of a lack of role models. You know, you look around when you're a suburban boy of, you know, twelve, thirteen or something like that, and you think, I don't know anybody who's become an actor. I've I've never seen, you know, I've never met an actor. How do you become an actor? You know, it's like wanting to be the Pope. And not knowing what I wanted to do, I just left school. I found myself working in a very strange bookshop which specialised in wholesale books for libraries. And that meant lots and lots of Mills and Boone. And so I, who love books, started to turn against books as a result of this, and went to the theatre a great deal. And the theatre that I above all went to was the Olvik Theatre when Lawrence Olivier was running it. And that was what I wanted to be part of.

Presenter8:01

So you wrote to Lawrence Olivia.

Simon Callow8:02

I wrote to Laurence Olivier. I was a great letter writer in those days. I wrote to the Queen about something too. Anyway, the Laurence Olivier letter came straight back. I wrote him I wrote him a three page letter, ending up, I think, with the phrase, uh, The National Theatre as you have created, it makes one feel proud to be British, which was the sort of thing that Sir Laurence liked to hear.

Presenter8:19

You were 17 at the time.

Simon Callow8:19

I was in deal at the club. And he wrote back a very swift letter saying, Well, if you like it so much, why don't you come and work here? We have a job in the box office. So I I went along and got a job in the box office, and there was the first time I saw actors at close quarters.

Presenter8:21

Um

Simon Callow8:35

Yeah.

Presenter8:35

Yeah.

Simon Callow8:35

Two.

Simon Callow8:36

Uh this is the overture to Wagner's opera Tannhuze, and it's played by the Berlin Philharmonic, conducted by Rudolf Kempe.

Presenter8:44

And why do you want it?

Simon Callow8:46

Oh, well, Tan Huizer is intimately associated in my mind with my grandmother, who had been a singer herself, who was a wonderful singer, had indeed even been on the stage at one point, but she ran away. She was a chorus girl, but she couldn't quite handle that. She had a terribly personal relationship to music. Music above all evoked people or places or moments in her life. And I.

Simon Callow9:12

used to put on the record of Talois just

Simon Callow9:15

To provoke her into exclaiming, as she did without fail, Harry Baker

Simon Callow9:20

And Harry Baker was the organist of her local church and he'd always played Tanhuizette.

Presenter10:25

The Berlin Philharmonic, conducted by Rudolf Kempe, playing part of the overture to Wagner's Tannhuizer. And memories, Simon, of grandma, your maternal grandma, with whom you played. She was your chum. She was your playmate, your soulmate, wasn't she?

Simon Callow10:37

Yeah.

Simon Callow10:38

Yes. We used to dress up together and uh act out scenes and uh but she was um uh what the Victorians call a valatudinarian. I mean she was sort of a permanent semi-invalid, but you know, it was marvellous how she rallied at the thought of a party. But she would rarely dress until uh late afternoon, so she I always

Presenter11:01

Well you'd got all her clothes on at the

Simon Callow11:03

CAPSU

Presenter11:06

But did she teach you to act? Did she

Simon Callow11:08

Well, only by only by example. And but she was tremendously keen on the speaking voice and the beauty of the voice. And she had a particularly beautiful speaking voice. It it was exceptionally melodious. And uh um she she had huge faith in something that she called mystically was mystical for her personality, was everything and she knew that she had lots of it.

Presenter11:08

Well, only by

Presenter11:29

And and if you learned all that from your grandmother, what did you learn from your mother?

Simon Callow11:33

Ah.

Simon Callow11:34

Well, my mother is an extraordinarily focused woman who had the terrific challenge of not only bringing up me, which was a huge handful, because I was, to say the least, hyperactive as a child. I mean, I was just a tornado of unceasing energy and emotional extremes, always demanding attention, as we say in the acting business, on all the time. It was purely that.

Presenter12:04

It was purely that attention seeking. Yes, I mean. His father had gone, hadn't he? My father had.

Simon Callow12:06

His father.

Simon Callow12:08

My father had really disappeared out of my life uh the when I was eighteen months old.

Presenter12:11

But she also didn't much care for children, I understand. That she really which is why I said in the beginning that you were destined to be an adult. She wanted you to grow. She read you Times leaders or telegraph leaders.

Simon Callow12:16

Yeah.

Simon Callow12:18

Yeah.

Simon Callow12:21

She and I were of exactly the same opinion. The childhood was a boring condition to be in. The sooner one could get out of it, the better. And so she particularly was uninterested in and didn't wish to encourage things like baby talk or childish games. She wanted, first of all, she wanted to have somebody intelligent to talk to. And secondly, she was very, very anxious always. Again, this is a sort of sociological factor. She'd had to leave school when she was fifteen. My aunt left school when she was fourteen. They were both highly intelligent women, and both of them would have prospered wonderfully if they'd carried on with their education and particularly gone to university. And so she was very anxious that I wouldn't.

Presenter13:03

Hmm.

Simon Callow13:06

lose out on the educational process.

Presenter13:08

So they invested all of that perhaps frustration, the the the what they hadn't achieved in you. They wanted you to be something.

Simon Callow13:15

Yes, you could put it that way, or I would put it differently, which is just that that they she thought, now I have responsibility for another human being, I'm going to make sure that he doesn't make the not the mistakes,'cause she hardly made mistakes, but that that he doesn't have the disadvantages that I had.

Presenter13:30

I see. Tell me about your next record.

Simon Callow13:33

Record number three, uh and I sound like my grandmother, it because it evokes a period of my life. Uh my mother ever.

Simon Callow13:40

Ever interested in creating unusual environments for me, had taken on a job as a school secretary in a very, very rum establishment indeed. It was called Elmcroft School, and it was in Goring-on-Thames, and it was run by a gentleman called Roland Birch and his ancient mother. And these were almost Dickensian figures, but perhaps better, one should say, Evelyn War kind of characters. Roland always wore shorts, whatever the season, and his wonderfully hursute, warm mother backed him up. And she was something of an oh, she was rather rubber kind of cockney old lady. And Roland was sort of sort of middle class, but rather crabby, cantankerous man. And young Spaniards would come to this school to brush up on their English before going to Oxford or Cambridge. Normally they were the sons of diplomats or whatever. And one of the things they brought with them was an early LP of this Concierto de Aranjuet by Joaquin Rodrigo. And it's now one of the most overplayed pieces of classical music, but to hear it then in the early 50s.

Presenter14:33

Which normal

Simon Callow14:56

In that extraordinary and rather enchanted surrounding of the Berkshire countryside and this odd school and these exotic young Spaniards and so on, was quite something.

Presenter16:08

Natiso Yepes playing part of the adagio from Rodrigo's Aranjuelt guitar concerto with the Spanish Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Arta Ulfo Argenta.

Presenter16:18

Simon Callow, you obviously were rather an unusual young man. Nevertheless, you go to grammar school in London and you become head boy.

Presenter16:27

How do you manage that?

Simon Callow16:28

Nobody was more surprised than me.

Presenter16:29

Uh

Simon Callow16:30

Because I mean, in my school, as in most schools, head boys are appointed for their sportive capacities, and I had none.

Presenter16:39

But it sounds to me as if you were a bit like your grandma there,'cause you set up sort of literary and debating soci music appreciation societies and got the boys a sort of lecture

Simon Callow16:47

I should

Presenter16:47

Mm.

Simon Callow16:48

Yes, I announced the the the the uh the foundation of the Literary and Debating Society, and that there would be play readings every week, and that there would be debates uh every other week, and that uh actually there would be music appreciation as well, which was led by S. Callow.

Presenter17:03

When was the first time you walked out onto a stage with an audience and performed a part in a play?

Simon Callow17:10

Um, I suppose that must have been in uh in university?

Simon Callow17:14

I was

Simon Callow17:15

immediately given a small part which just sort of passed in a blur. I was hardly aware of that. And then, I think mostly on the strength of my having been at the box office of the old Vic, they said, Oh, well, we're doing the Sea Gull next, so why don't you play Trigorin? And uh um it was

Simon Callow17:31

When I stepped out onto the stage to play that part.

Simon Callow17:35

that the ground opened up underneath me, and I realized how unbelievably dreadful I was, how utterly

Simon Callow17:43

Ghastly. And I knew immediately that if I stayed in the university I'd sort of manage to cover up that knowledge and perhaps acquire a veneer of something or the other, but I wasn't going to learn how to act. And suddenly that seemed to me the only and most important thing in my life.

Presenter17:58

Tell me about your fourth record.

Simon Callow18:01

It's a concertaria by Mozart called Vore Spiagarvi Odio, and I choose it because.

Simon Callow18:08

Basically, the musical taste that I'd been brought up with was high romantic. It was Puccini, it was Verdi, it was Wagner, it was Liszt and so on. And the composers of the eighteenth century were unknown, more or less, and r very poorly regarded in my family circle. Tiddly pom music it was called, absolutely without exception. So when I discovered Mozart, which was such a profound dramatic experience, I started to listen to music not in terms of the the story that it told, which is really what all that romantic music was about, but I've discovered musical form, harmony, counterpoint, all of these things. Suddenly the the grammar of music began to mean something to me, and the abstract beauty of music began to reach me deeply. And I was completely overwhelmed.

Speaker 419:31

Oh, there we go.

Speaker 419:32

Factivity, collaborative, optimity, partivity, collectivity activity, what the

Presenter19:54

Margaret Price singing part of Mozart's concert aria Foray spiagavi odio, allow me to explain, O God with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by James Lockart. Um inter rep, then, Simon Callow a very traditional training by the sound of it plenty of disasters audience laughing in all the wrong places, what?

Simon Callow20:12

Yes, absolutely. Well, there were there were rep is just sort of made to for things to go wrong. And I more than my fair share of things. For example, falling through the stage completely in the middle of Christmas Carol. I was playing Mr. Fezziwig, and suddenly Mr. Fezziwig and Mrs. Fezziwig went through the floor, fell twenty foot. But being troopers, we climbed out again to carry on. But they're also they're very cruel sometimes, those audiences.

Simon Callow20:42

The Taste of Honey, which was the the first play that I did there, I played a character called Peter.

Simon Callow20:47

A man with an eye patch, and um he's uh seducing uh the uh the mother figure in the play and uh um uh it's this line which is uh Marry me, Helen, I'm young.

Simon Callow21:00

Good looking?

Simon Callow21:01

Well set up. And each phrase that I uttered produced more derisive laughter from the audience of schoolgirls. When I said, I'm young, they went

Simon Callow21:12

Well set up. Good looking.

Simon Callow21:16

Collapse completely.

Presenter21:18

But it obviously for you anyway, although you were this obviously very well read and ver and decently educated young man, you were obviously worried about your appearance. Again, I've come across your saying I I've always resented my looks, I've never felt desirable at all. So that when the schoolgirls laugh at you in the middle of a taste of honey, that must have

Presenter21:37

Cut.

Simon Callow21:39

Uh no, funnily enough, it's so it's so open, so public, so um um you know it it's so much to do with performance that that's

Presenter21:50

Okay, but then it takes if you're not confident with your appearance, which you've always said you weren't, it it took great courage to go on the stage.

Simon Callow21:55

Do you?

Simon Callow21:57

No, it's a paradox. I can't explain it, but it's exactly the same thing as Charles Lawton. For some reason or another, when feeling, as I certainly did, very unlovely physically, you you brazen it out. I don't know, it's something in you compels you to come on stage and exhibit yourself in some kind of way.

Presenter22:16

Also, you're somebody else, I suppose. Yes, that's awesome.

Simon Callow22:17

Yes, that's also not true.

Presenter22:19

You mentioned Charles Lawton and of course you've written a book about him.

Presenter22:23

You said that uh he i is intrinsic to the making of you. What do you mean by that you somehow challenge yourself against him?

Simon Callow22:32

I do. Um something to do with the performance of The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

Simon Callow22:40

was is all first of all i central to what I would wish to achieve as an actor, though God knows I haven't

Simon Callow22:47

come anywhere close to achieving a performance as remarkable as any of his.

Simon Callow22:52

But also

Simon Callow22:54

There was something in his emotional nakedness.

Simon Callow22:58

His vulnerability, the revelation of innocence at the heart of

Simon Callow23:04

his work.

Simon Callow23:06

formed me in life as well, and uh it has I I think manifested itself in a great concern for

Simon Callow23:14

Mm-hmm.

Simon Callow23:16

nurturing people. I I've I've tried or or always wanted to look for the

Simon Callow23:24

Wounded.

Simon Callow23:26

in people and to somehow

Simon Callow23:29

Salve it if I can, you know, as best I can.

Presenter23:32

As a direct team.

Simon Callow23:33

As a director, I think maybe in life as well.

Presenter23:36

Hmm.

Presenter23:37

Record number five. Tell me about that one.

Simon Callow23:39

The English composer now happily being heard so much more, rehabilitated if you like, Alan Rosthorne, wrote a just adorable pair of piano concertos, and the second one contains a movement which is

Simon Callow23:53

Just cheeky, crazy, funny. I defy anybody to listen to it without smiling.

Presenter23:56

Anybody?

Presenter24:58

John Ogden, playing part of the Allegro from Alan Rawsthorne's Piano Concerto No. Two, with the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sir John Pritchard. Tell me, Simon Callo, about your Mozart. That was 1979. You'd have been 30 years old. Peter Hall chose you to play him in Peter Schaffer's Amadeus. It was a terrific role, petulant Mozart, kind of giggling and farting his way around the stage. It was a brilliant role, and you played it brilliantly. You must have enjoyed it.

Simon Callow25:20

Obviously.

Simon Callow25:25

Oh, yes, oh God, yes. Uh um not only in itself, but because the play was the most enormous success of a kind that I don't think

Simon Callow25:34

we've really had subsequently. It was very, very hard to do, though, the part. Uh n not in performance,'cause once w one had sort of found out how to do it, it it it I think just then got better and better. But in rehearsal it was really, really, really difficult.

Simon Callow25:52

I I was playing the surface of it far too much, and Peter Hall kept on saying, And so it just became nasty, just an unpleasant, revolting spectacle. Just this foul little creature just running around, just being foul, and what's the interest in that?

Speaker 426:06

Peter kept on saying

Simon Callow26:07

Peter kept on saying to me, You have to make me believe that you wrote The Manager Figaro. I've got to believe that and uh which was a wonderful note and a wonderful piece of advice, but it was still a little bit intangible.

Simon Callow26:22

And uh then I uh

Simon Callow26:24

I read a book called Mozart a Documentary Biography by Otto Deutsch, and that contains the minutiae of Mozart's life insofar as it survives. So there are laundry bills in there, there are letters of complaint from landlords, there are reviews in newspapers, there are reminiscences by archdukes who had employed him, and so on. And little by little, I began to

Simon Callow26:49

Form an intimate.

Simon Callow26:52

sense of who Mozart was.

Simon Callow26:54

He became my friend, as it were. And so I stopped playing the play and started playing the part, which is what Peter

Simon Callow27:03

was pushing me towards, and how right he was, to think the thoughts of Mozart.

Simon Callow27:09

And Mozart's brain worked at such a velocity

Simon Callow27:13

Obviously, musically in compositional terms, but in daily conversation he was famous for s th thousands of words per minute. And completely unconsidered, he actually had literally now what we call Tourette's syndrome. We call it Tourette's syndrome now, which is a kind of failure of the censorship mechanism. So he just said anything that came into his head, and some of it was absolutely obscene, and some of it was sublime, and that it was all jumbled up together.

Presenter27:43

Record number six.

Simon Callow27:46

Jeff Buckley is a young singer, was a young singer, who died a couple of years ago, possibly.

Simon Callow27:54

Having killed himself, it he strode into the Mississippi singing and was never seen again.

Simon Callow28:01

I believe he has one of the most heart breakingly beautiful voices of the twentieth century. I'm I'm putting him therefore in the same league as Elizabeth Schwarzkopf and Tito Gobby and so on. I think it's as a sound, back to sound, it's just extraordinary.

Speaker 428:20

I lost myself on a cool damp night

Speaker 428:26

I gave myself in that misty lie

Speaker 428:29

Was hypnotized by a strange delight Under a lilac tree I made wine from the lilac tree

Speaker 428:45

Put my heart in its recipe

Presenter28:47

Jeff Buckley and Lilac Wine. There's a there's a sort of vulnerability in that music, Simon, and also huge amount of romanticism and um obviously both qualities.

Simon Callow28:55

Yeah.

Simon Callow28:57

Yeah.

Presenter28:58

In you. So much so that as a gay man of thirty you began a passionate friendship with a woman of seventy. Her name was Peggy Ramsey. Tell me about her.

Simon Callow29:07

Ah, Peggy.

Simon Callow29:10

Well, Peggy was the most famous play agent of her time, probably of any time really, because play agents tend not to be famous. But Peggy was because she was unique. She was an extraordinary creative force for her writers, who included Robert Bolt, Edward Bond, Howard Brenton, David Hare, Christopher Hampton. The list really goes on and on and on and on. Writers who in many cases she discovered, all of whom she nurtured, although nurturing is a rather kind of gentle word for what Peggy did, which was to sort of force them into taking their talent seriously and pushing themselves both emotionally

Simon Callow29:57

intellectually and technically to the utter limit of their capacities. So she's a unique figure.

Presenter30:03

So she's a big figure. Why would it be with you that she would choose to have this passionate friendship in the end because it was unconsumated, but but deeply passionate, writing to each other sometimes several times a day?

Simon Callow30:08

Yes.

Simon Callow30:09

Yeah.

Simon Callow30:14

Well

Simon Callow30:15

She never heard the lilac wine, but

Simon Callow30:19

She would have been.

Simon Callow30:23

Terribly moved man.

Simon Callow30:26

And

Simon Callow30:27

Her romantic spirit and mine just absolutely meshed. And she'd had many tremendously passionate sexual relationships, and she brought exactly the same passion to our non-sexual relationship, although I don't even know if the phrase non-sexual is correct in that sense. It was non-consummated, that is indeed the precise term, but it was a meeting of all of us, you know, all of her and all of me.

Presenter30:54

Is it pushing to me w was there any shade of your relationship with your grandmother coming?

Simon Callow30:58

Yeah, coming. That's just has been a running theme through my life, is I've been very, very drawn to older women.

Presenter31:01

Because I've

Simon Callow31:06

um and they to me. And I've had most wonderful and intense and continue even now to have those kind of relationships. So there's some some sympatica which just

Simon Callow31:17

I have for nothing. I I mean ladies of a certain age just immediately respond to me and I to them.

Presenter31:24

Record number seven.

Simon Callow31:25

It's the Schubert, the great Schubert String Quintet, which I first heard as a lad at school in South Kensington. I found myself wandering into the Victoria and Albert Museum, so there was a concert advertised. I sat there in that great room where the Raphael cartoons are and listened to this music and was taken to paradise, the way everybody who listens to it is. And this particular movement, the way we're about to hear a slow movement, was the music that I chose to

Simon Callow32:03

accompany her coffin as it came into the crematorium.

Presenter33:01

Isaac Stern, Alexander Schneider, Milton Katims, Pablo Casals, and Paul Tortellier playing part of the adagio from Schubert's string quintet in C major. So

Presenter33:12

Off to a desert island with you, Simon. Will you be able to hack it, do you think?

Simon Callow33:15

Yes, I'm quite practical and uh and I'm

Simon Callow33:19

As a as a an only child, I'm not unaccustomed to solitude, and I don't dislike it at all.

Simon Callow33:26

Um I'm a terrible cook, and all that would have to change.

Simon Callow33:30

If you could find it.

Presenter33:31

If you could find anything to cook.

Presenter33:34

What do you think you'd miss most?

Simon Callow33:37

Music

Simon Callow33:38

But I've got it with me, thanks to you. But I'm

Presenter33:39

Thanks, D.

Simon Callow33:41

I am sufficiently positive in outlook to see it as an opportunity rather than a problem.

Presenter33:48

So you wouldn't sit there regretting all the things you hadn't achieved and hadn't done or hadn't said.

Simon Callow33:54

Uh n no, I well, yes.

Simon Callow33:58

But I'd also try to make sense of them, you know. Making sense of things is uh is something I I'd spend a lot of my life trying to do with uh more or less success.

Presenter34:09

Last record.

Simon Callow34:10

This is a little exquisite fragment that I found. I mean, whenever I go to a foreign country, which I happily do a lot because of my work, um, I I try to find the music of that place.

Simon Callow34:24

And I've several times visited Ljubljana in Slovenia.

Simon Callow34:29

And the name of Zlonimir Tchiglich was given to me, and so I uh um ran out and bought a number of his uh um uh C D s, and uh they they are very, very interesting indeed. And right in the middle of one, though, was this little Adaggio Amoroso for harp.

Presenter35:46

Moitsa Zlobko, playing the Adagio Amoroso, by Zvonimir Chiglich. If you could only take one of those eight, Simon, which one would it be?

Presenter35:59

Schubert. Yes. Mm. And your book as well as the Bible and Shakespeare?

Simon Callow36:04

Well, I it would have to be a dictionary because I

Presenter36:07

Because you eat them.

Presenter36:10

Always have, since the age of ten, eaten dictionaries. And your luxury.

Simon Callow36:12

Exactly.

Simon Callow36:15

My luxury it's quite embarrassing really is um a a a a a nose hair trimmer. Because I just think there's nothing more atrocious than long tendrils of hair coming out of one's nostrils.

Presenter36:29

What's true?

Presenter36:30

Simon Keller, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island is.

Simon Callow36:33

Okay, sir.

Presenter36:34

Yeah.

Speaker 336:42

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