Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Desert Island Discs
Presented by Sue Lawley
Director, writer and actor; known for satirical sketches and political impersonations, later partnered with John Fortune.
Eight records
Octet for Strings in E-flat major, Op. 20
Smetana Quartet and Janáček Quartet
I would like to wake up in the morning and have a bit of um energy and a bit of Lightheartedly. This is the Mendelssohn Octet, an absolutely miraculous piece of music, uh which is so full. He wrote it when he was sixteen, and it's of Mozartian magic, I think this.
Havana-Song (from Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny)
The second record is um Lottie Lenia singing uh Brecht and Viol. And this is one of the records which will have great resonance with me because I I in the sixties worked with Lottilenya and uh it was uh one of the great working experiences of my l my life this.
String Quartet in D major, Op. 64, No. 5, "The Lark"
I've always loved Haydn. I've always loved his musical personality and his personality in general. I I knew when I was coming to do this programme I thought I I must have a Haydn quartet because nobody has ever done better than Haydn at writing quartets.
Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, conducted by Bernard Haitink
I love Debussy because of his slipperiness, the kind of ever-changing light in his pieces. I'm not a fan of Debussy the Impressionist. I'm a fan of Debussy the the transformer of material. And Jeur, which is his last orchestral score, is a wonderful example.
Gerry Mulligan and his Concert Jazz Band
Jerry Mulligan became a good friend of mine in New York. And this is the the record from that time. This is 1962 in his concert jazz band, The Wonderful Band, playing a piece by Bob Bruckmeier.
Piano Concerto No. 2 in B-flat major, Op. 83
Maurizio Pollini, Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Claudio Abbado
The lady I lived with, Libby, uh and uh we'd been together now for twenty three years when I met her well one of the first occasions which uh I remember was when she performed this uh in Southern Cathedral and uh this is Pellini who has a stab at it, but um I still like Libby's performance best.
The Rite of Spring (version for piano four hands)
Bracha Eden and Alexander Tamir
This next piece is another memory of Libby. Libby was a concert pianist, and uh she performed in piano du duets with her partner's um piano partner Ben O'King. And one of the things her p sort of party pieces was the d piano duet version of The Rite of Spring by Stravinsky.
RéponsFavourite
Ensemble Intercontemporain, conducted by Pierre Boulez
Probably because for the virtues which are the opposite of mine, for the kind of uh ration the ex The energy and the vigorous. application of uh principle to to everything. But what I admire about the music is the the brilliance of the invention and uh The wonderful, glittering sound world that is produced, and this piece is his masterpiece.
The keepsakes
The book
The Collected Poems of Wallace Stevens
Wallace Stevens
I would take the poems of Wallace Stevens because I'd have plenty of time to try and work out what they meant.
The luxury
Two thousand soft toilet rolls
My first thought was a feed from the Hubble Space Telescope and just have on the have a look at the universe, but I thought that would actually reinforce my sense of being alone. Um so it's gonna be down to two thousand soft toilet [rolls].
In conversation
Presenter asks
How does it compare now, attacking New Labour [compared to the Tories]?
Well, I think at first we did actually find it very difficult, partly because, of course, The nature of the end of the Tory regime was The same as it always is when empires collapse, that it becomes decadent and sort of shameless in a way. … Whereas everybody was so relieved when they went. and Tony Blair got in, but particularly when the other lot went, that certainly we found the first series within with a new labour quite difficult to do, because it's quite it It takes time for the character of a government to establish itself.
Presenter asks
What is most irritating about [New Labour] for you?
What is most irritating about it is its self satisfaction, its s self righteousness, um and what I suppose they would call its pragmatism, but what is what is in fact uh a desperate kind of l running round looking for uh what is the most um the most vote profitable uh line to take.
The recording
Timestamps play the recording from that turn
Speaker 2
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 2
The programme was originally broadcast in the year two thousand, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.
Presenter
My castaway this week is a director, writer, and actor. At Cambridge in the fifties, he was a star of the footlights and a young Turk of a director, so much so that he walked straight out of university into a job at the Royal Court Theatre. From there, he moved into writing and performing satirical sketches, first at Peter Cook's Club in Soho, and then on television in not so much a programme More A Way of Life. His impersonations of Harold Wilson, Jomo Kenyatta, and Edward Heath became part of the national diet, eagerly consumed by audiences enjoying the new found freedoms which satire represented. Then it all stopped. Satire went out of fashion, and by his own admission he went off the rails. But suddenly he came back. Partnered by his best friend John Fortune, he appeared on the Rory Bremner Show in a series of witty sketches sending up politicians, big business, and upper class snobberies. What I'm doing now, he says, is exactly what I was doing thirty years ago. I haven't developed at all. He is John Bird.
Presenter
Do you mind, John?
John Bird
But
Presenter
Do
John Bird
Quite, yes. I mean, I I enjoy doing what I do very much. Uh, but I always think that
John Bird
By now I should have a late period, you know, like uh Brahms had a late period, or, you know, where everything is very spare and abstract. Uh but I don't have a late period. I have my first my early period as
Presenter
But is it a more confident
John Bird
Period then.
Presenter
Because you've done it before.
John Bird
I suppose so, yes, I suppose so. Um
John Bird
One always says it never gets any easier doing what we're doing and and uh like most people
John Bird
when I've when I've done a piece, I always think I'm never going to get an idea again, you know, and that's gonna that's the end of it.
Presenter
Yeah.
Presenter
It's because it has to be so topical.
John Bird
Yes, it has to be topical. It also has to be.
John Bird
felt, otherwise you you're in the position of of kind of looking round for and manufacturing an attitude.
Presenter
And that is
Presenter
Hmm.
John Bird
But uh we both I mean John Fortune and I both have.
John Bird
Quite strong feelings from time to time, although not always about the same sort of thing.
Presenter
Bic well, which helps, of course, but by definition, because uh because you've been on the Rory Bremner show throughout the nineties, you've been attacking the Tories, whether it's sleaze or arms sales or or
Presenter
Racist ministers as you see them. How does it compare now, attacking New Labour?
John Bird
Well, I think at first we did actually find it very difficult, partly because, of course,
John Bird
The nature of the end of the Tory regime was
John Bird
The same as it always is when empires collapse, that it becomes decadent and sort of shameless in a way. And the feeling was that they had so completely lost their grip. And the only thing that they were interested in was kind of the last little bits at the bottom of the pig's trough for their friends in the city, you know, sort of selling off this and selling off that and doing this in the railway and getting the railways. I know, well, let's split the railways up into 62 different companies and this and the rest of it.
John Bird
Whereas everybody was so relieved when they went.
John Bird
and Tony Blair got in, but particularly when the other lot went, that certainly we found the first series within with a new labour quite difficult to do, because it's quite it
Speaker 2
And then
John Bird
It takes time for the character of a government to establish itself.
Presenter
And now it has? And it is a very good question.
John Bird
I think now it's now it has, yes.
Presenter
What is it for you?
John Bird
What is most irritating about it is its self satisfaction, its s self righteousness, um and what I suppose they would call its pragmatism, but what is what is in fact uh
John Bird
a desperate kind of l running round looking for uh what is the most um the most vote profitable uh line to take. I mean the the the particular example is of uh the pensions, you know, that that here we have Gordon Brown, a rigorous minister with a definite programme from which he will not be diverted, so that it puts the pensions up by seventy five pence a week.
John Bird
And then as another matter of principle, he says, No, that's not good because we lost the the those were the counter elections on the base of that, so we'll put them put them up by whatever it is. Not to say, well, old people should have a certain amount of dignity and they should they should be given assistance, but no, we need to be told
John Bird
by the election results that we have got our principles wrong.
Presenter
Tell me about your first record.
John Bird
First record. Well, this is me being on a desert island.
John Bird
Not a milieu, which I think would show me at my best.
John Bird
Uh but I would like to wake up in the morning and have a bit of um
John Bird
energy and a bit of
John Bird
Lightheartedly. This is the Mendelssohn Octet, an absolutely miraculous piece of music, uh which is so full. He wrote it when he was sixteen, and it's of Mozartian magic, I think this.
Presenter
The Smetener and Janicek quartets playing part of Mendelsohn's Octet for Strings in E flat. Music to help you start the day on your desert island, John Bird. Um do you always need music to start? I mean, you obviously you mention energy. You need to wake yourself up.
John Bird
Yes. And when I was directing at the Royal Court and I was on the staff there, um George Devine, who was the artistic director there, I remember he said he said it's probably you.
John Bird
You've got no energy.
Presenter
You uh you've said before now that you might have ended up running the National Theatre if if if if only you'd had Trevor Nunn's energy.
John Bird
But do you think
Presenter
But do you think it's hindered your career, lack of energy?
John Bird
Well, I'm I sort of make a living and I kind of carry on and I'm sixty three years old and I think, well, it's rather remarkable that anybody who's so so indolent as I am can actually s survive.
Presenter
So he decided to be proud of it.
John Bird
Well, I'm not so and I'm I'm not proud of it actually, but uh there comes a time when um I mean f there was a time in my life I didn't accept it and and that led to all sorts of uh problems.
Presenter
Okay. Oh, I want to talk to you about that, but I just want to just go back to one of ones well, certainly my very early memories of you, which was you as Harold Wilson, which absolutely struck a bell with us all in the mid sixties.
Speaker 4
And
Presenter
When you found him, I mean, was it love at first sight, as it were? Could you just do him?
John Bird
Well, no. What what happened was that we'd been doing cabaret theatre at at the establishment, uh which was a sort of nightclub c come theatre th in in Soho. And we used to do politicians, but because it was a sort of audience which, you know, it was a an audience of two hundred people or something, it was very sketchy. But when we came to do it when I came to do it on television,
John Bird
I thought, well, if I'm saying I am the Prime Minister, I am Harold Wilson, I really ought to make some sort of effort to try and be like him, because one of the great strengths of doing that satire on television is that you're using exactly the same medium as the politician is. So I was very, very lucky all through the time I was doing satirical programmes for the BBC because it is said that everybody can do somebody, and luckily I could do Harold Wilson. Doing that sort of satirical programme or doing satirical sketches like that on television, one of the advantages of it is that if you do something as Harold Wilson or like Rory does as Tony Blair,
John Bird
That there when people actually see the real Harold Wilson and the real Tony Blair, there and there's a sort of echo, you know, that that they say, uh, there's because what you sh what I was always trying to do with Wilson was to say those things which everybody knew Wilson was thinking, but which Wilson never said.
Presenter
5.
John Bird
Well I very long time ago see that I was doing this, but I I uh things like well um good evening. I'd like to speak to you tonight.
John Bird
sincerely, honestly and directly.
John Bird
Still you can't break the habits of a lifetime.
John Bird
And and that's the that's the only piece I don't remember.
Presenter
Tell me about your second record.
John Bird
The second record is um Lottie Lenia singing uh Brecht and Viol.
John Bird
And this is one of the records which will have great resonance with me because I I in the sixties worked with Lottilenya and uh it was uh one of the great working experiences of my l my life this.
Speaker 4
Ahmed Si Hariya Kok Shmi
Speaker 4
Aachbredenken sie was mann für dreisichteu lagri.
Speaker 4
See in Parstrum fer unsons licht.
Speaker 4
Peepy nose have a
Speaker 4
Main mutar war einer weisser.
Speaker 4
See Sagde oft to mir Mein kin for Kaufdichnich.
Speaker 4
Führer ein Pag dolloten so we gestad.
Presenter
Lottalenia as Jenny, singing Ach bedenkensee, the Havana song from Court Vars Mahagoni. Lottalenia, Royal Court, towards what, the end of the fifties, you were directing her in an evening of Brecht you would have been twenty two years old.
John Bird
Yes, I was tw I was twenty two. I joined the Royal Court Theatre from Cambridge as a director. I had the grand title of Assistant Artist Director at the Royal Court. It was a wonderful time to be there. It was actually
Presenter
But why am I twenty two years old? I mean, you must have been a prodigy of some kind.
John Bird
No, I don't I think it was it was like m like most things, luck, really. Um, that I'd I'd uh I I was up at Cambridge and I decided to be an academic, or at least, um
John Bird
I was thinking about it, so I started doing postgraduate work. And I'd happened to read a play that uh had won an observer competition by N. F. Simpson called A Resounding Tinkle. I thought this is a really funny, funny play and I said, I gotta do this. So in the middle of my first postgraduate year I took the theatre the on my own out here and
John Bird
Peter Cook was in it, Alan Brom was in it, um Timothy Birdslong whose diets was in it, Jeff Patty, who's a
John Bird
Conservative uh cabinet minister later on, uh was in it and um and we did this and and uh uh Bill Gaskell came up to see it from the royal court.
Presenter
From the Royal Family.
John Bird
And uh he was very generous, Bill Gassel, because he said you realize you've directed this completely wrongly Because it should have been taken very slowly and you took it very quickly. But that I was offered this job, so I gave up the academic life at after the first year.
Speaker 4
Hmm.
John Bird
And
John Bird
I I'd been there for a
John Bird
They went in nineteen fifty nine and
John Bird
We decided to do they wanted to do this Brecht evening of of excerpts of Brecht. And Lenya
John Bird
agreed to be in it.
John Bird
And I was getting more and more nervous. And George Ivine said, right, she was arriving on a Saturday night, so on Sunday you've got to meet her and take her out to lunch.
Speaker 2
Later
John Bird
And I went to pick her up in my old car. I rang the bell and she sat there looking absolutely very, very grim, very sort of a rosa crab. And I said, Hello, I'm John Byrne, I'm the director. And he said, Hello. And she came down and got into the car. We drove to Border Street, parked the car, got out, got in the restaurant. And apart from saying hello on the doorstep, we hadn't we sat down at a table and hadn't exchanged a single word. I couldn't I was too f nervous and she was too grumpy. And I said, What would you like to drink? She said, A gimlet. So I didn't know what a gimlet is. Luckily the waiter did. So he brought this little glass, put it in front of her. I thought, I've got to say something. I really have got to say something soon. Otherwise, this is not going to be good for rehearsal. So I said,
Speaker 2
Push.
John Bird
Actually just and I leaned forward I just I made a sort of sweeping gesture with my hand and knocked her gimlet all over her dress.
John Bird
Um
John Bird
Well, luckily she thought this was uh uh very, very amusing. And from that moment actually we got on terribly terribly well. We had a wonderful relationship. It was absolutely she was great.
Presenter
Been terrible.
Presenter
Tell me about your next record.
John Bird
I've always loved Haydn. I've always loved his musical personality and his personality in general. I I knew when I was coming to do this programme I thought I I must have a Haydn quartet because nobody has ever done better than Haydn at writing quartets. I mean Beethoven wrote quartets which equalled his, but as a body they're they are unsurpassed.
Presenter
The Giovanni Quartetto Italiano, playing part of the first movement of Haydn's string quartet number five in D major. What about your family background, John? Were there political or creative influences there?
John Bird
No, not really. My father was a chemist, had a chemist shop. Um
John Bird
And uh mine will ever just uh
John Bird
as people were in those days a a housewife.
Presenter
Where was this when Nottingham?
John Bird
In Nottingham.
Presenter
Mm.
John Bird
Hmm. Yeah.
Presenter
And you w you went to an ordinary school?
John Bird
I w I failed my eleven plus, uh and
John Bird
It was sent from primary school to a secondary modern school.
John Bird
And it's and it's a very kind of weird story thinking looking back at it now, because in those days probably that if you failed your eleven plus that settled you for life. If you went to secondary modern school you were your future was more or less mapped out for you. But if you went to a grammar school, possibilities were different. As I say, I failed my eleven plus. I spent my and then I went for a year to uh
John Bird
this secondary modern school and
John Bird
It was a sort of p piece of complete random chance that the the headmaster Michael Harry Davis, who took over the high pavement grammar school, where I would have gone had I
John Bird
I uh passed my eleven plus.
John Bird
He was a great opponent of it.
John Bird
And he said I would like to look at some of the papers of the borderline cases of that year, and I will pick out one, stick him into the second year at the bottom class, and I won't tell any any of the staff this he told me this after the day uh the day I got my scholarship to King's College, Cambridge.
John Bird
He told me this story.
Presenter
That you were an experiment.
John Bird
That I was an experiment and I was I suddenly uprooted, much to my dismay, from from the
Presenter
May.
John Bird
secondary one school where I'd settled in and I was stuck in two
John Bird
for the second year at um at grammar school.
Presenter
Record number four.
John Bird
De Bussy is a composer who I rather think of in the way I think of as Haydn, as being a sort of exemplar of what music can be. I love Debussy because of his slipperiness, the kind of ever-changing light in his pieces. I'm not a fan of Debussy the Impressionist. I'm a fan of Debussy the the transformer of material. And Jeur, which is his last orchestral score, is a wonderful example. It's very short, but in which
Speaker 2
Yeah.
John Bird
The material
John Bird
And some of the material is in itself very beautiful, but very fragmentary, constantly shifts. It's like seeing um sunlight in cloud glittering across a glittering sea.
Presenter
The end of De Bussy's Jeu, played by the Royal Concertgebar Orchestra of Amsterdam, conducted by Bernard Heitink. So, John Bird, Cambridge directing footlights, onto the Royal Court, couple of years there. During all this time you've you've written and you've directed, but you haven't performed. That doesn't happen until you get to uh join Peter Cook at his club in Soho, the establishment. Why did you suddenly decide to perform?
John Bird
Well, I didn't I didn't decide to to perform. Uh I was just going to write for it. That was the idea. And John Fortune was going to direct. Peter was also going to write.
John Bird
And we had auditions.
John Bird
But nobody who
John Bird
Either people weren't sort of flexible enough today, or actually, what it really was, is nobody who was any good would do it for the amount of money that we were offering.
Presenter
Does that include Barry Humphreys, am I right?
John Bird
I think that that includes I think it included Barry Humphreys, yes. So Peter said something which Peter has been said to me of various reasons, but why don't you do it just for the first three months and we can get somebody who can do it properly. You know. And so when the place opened
Presenter
And then
John Bird
Um I was performing.
Presenter
But it is what
Presenter
Funny men did then, as it were, isn't it? I mean, Alan Bennett and Jonathan Miller before you, and then Peter Cook and you, and John Wells, and so on.
Presenter
There was no division between the two skills, writing and performing. Does does the one, do you think, spoil you for the other? Or?
John Bird
No, the sort of stuff we do, I mean, the sort of stuff that I did then, and as you say, are still doing.
Presenter
As you say.
John Bird
As I say, yes. Um
John Bird
There's a great shorthand in involved. I mean, you have. It's something like you want to say something about something, and so.
John Bird
If you kind of sit down and write it for somebody else to perform.
John Bird
It's an enormous amount of of work really, and whereas if you s do it for yourself to perform, it's really easy.
Presenter
Uh
Presenter
Well but aren't you also saying if you sit down and write, it all gets a bit kind of plonky, whereas if you sit there and feel it and do it.
John Bird
And
John Bird
And do it.
Presenter
You are
John Bird
You are helping me, yeah, and I really need it actually uh because uh this is the great thing that working with John Fortune does. If when I'm working on my own writing stuff, which I still do.
John Bird
It's pulling teeth, it really is. But as soon as John Fortune arrives and because he and sits in the chair next to me, everything is much, much
Presenter
Two
John Bird
Easier.
Presenter
But it's not just that, it's all those little nuances. I just want to say that.
John Bird
Yes, absolutely. Yes.
Presenter
Just when you're focused up and you've got someone to bat off, like Fortune, all of a sudden.
John Bird
All of a sudden
Presenter
It all starts to happen. I mean, how much do you script it beforehand these days?
John Bird
Well, these days we script it more than we used to. I I I was looking back at uh some of the notes we had and they were just like four sentences on a sheet of paper. I th and we just would go in with that. And now we do although we don't script it in the dialogue sense, um we do write the points down much more um in a much more detailed way than we did.
Speaker 2
Nice.
Presenter
And i is it true that sometimes people ring in because they think you're actually reading out political transcripts?
John Bird
When we started that was the case, yes. Um I didn't know quite how to take it because you ca you thought, well, it can't be very funny in that in that case, but uh I was I suppose pleased for on the on the verismo level that we were getting it th the the style right.
Presenter
Echo number five. Tell me about this one.
John Bird
Well, when I was in the establishment, we took over a club in New York. We took over the old El Morocco nightclub, which was wonderful, and we opened it as the New York establishment.
John Bird
And we were also opposite on the other side of Fifty Fourth Street a club called the Embers, which was a big jazz club at the time. A lot of jazz people used to go. And I met Dizzy there. In fact, Dizzy Gillespie and I
John Bird
decided we were going to learn to play chess. So we got a chessboard and and sat and sort of taught ourselves chess. And we but we were so bad at it that unless if the game didn't end in fi within five moves, we had no idea what to do after that.
John Bird
And I actually played piano with the Oscar Peterson rhythm section, which that is to say I play piano. I played the occasional note while they kind of did their thing behind me. But this is Jerry Mulligan. Jerry Mulligan became a good friend of mine in New York. And this is the the record from that time. This is 1962 in his concert jazz band, The Wonderful Band, playing a piece by Bob Bruckmeier.
Presenter
Jerry Mulligan and his concert jazz band playing Bob Bruckmeier's Big City Blues and Memories of Bird in America. Meanwhile back here in England, mid sixties by now satire, Your Thing was well into its stride, and we'd fallen hook line and sinker, for that was the week that was.
Presenter
The first thing to say is that, according to Ned Sherrin, you thought up the title, is that right?
John Bird
Apparently so. It's not I must have done it in my sleep, I don't remember it.
Presenter
The second thing to say is you did a pilot for it.
John Bird
Yes, yes, I did one of the pilots, yeah, absolutely.
Presenter
Third thing to say is, you suggested David Frost should front it, not you.
John Bird
Well, I was offered Ned said um
John Bird
Would I like to front it?
John Bird
And at that about that time
John Bird
I'd agreed to go to Chicago with the establishment and I thought I thought it was a question of whether I should go to America and or front this new show and I
John Bird
chose to go to America.
John Bird
So I was sharing a flat with David Pross at the time and he was a researcher for ATV at the old IT V company.
John Bird
And uh he was doing cabaret uh two or three times a week on the
John Bird
at the Blue Angel and I said to Ned well
John Bird
Why don't you go and look at David Frost? And then we're going to look at David Frost, and as a result of that, he is now Sir David Frost.
Presenter
But in fact, you came when you did come back, you were in the sequel, not so much a programme more A Way of Life, also fronted by by David Frost.
Presenter
But then of course satire seemed to dwindle after that, didn't it?
John Bird
Yes, it did, because there'd been an awful lot of it. It had been very fashionable and because it was a television show and bid and that not so much programme was on
John Bird
twenty six weeks of the year three times a week, live.
John Bird
And he was an enormous consumer of material and and of
John Bird
you know, just energy and it it was just very, very hard to
John Bird
uh keeping up any kind of standard. And I think we just
John Bird
you know, weren't up to it really.
Presenter
Next piece of music.
John Bird
This is
John Bird
Brahms' second piano concerto. The um
John Bird
The lady I lived with, Libby, uh and uh we'd been together now for twenty three years when I met her well one of the first occasions which uh I remember was when she performed this uh in Southern Cathedral and uh this is Pellini who has a stab at it, but um I still like Libby's performance best.
Presenter
Maurizio Pollini with the Berlin Philharmonic and Claudio Abardo playing part of the final movement of Brahm's concerto for piano and orchestra number two in B flat major. Um the piece your partner Libby John Bird was playing when you met she kind of
Presenter
Rescued you, really, didn't she?
John Bird
Well, she did. I mean, that wasn't the purpose of our relationship. I mean, it was I'm very, very lucky because uh I imagine it's quite rare for s for a
John Bird
To kind of meet the person that you recognise as the person you want to be with and show your and that's and I soon and from the moment I set eyes on her, that's how I felt about Libby. And uh it was amazing that my judgment wa about that was was so right because I'd started taking pills to to keep this famous lack of energy, to counteract the lack of energy and and I'd become very addicted to amphetamine and I'm
John Bird
But th one thing I would say is that I did not take them recreationally, the very opp the opposite of that. I took them because I thought
John Bird
it would help me to work, I thought the ideas that um
John Bird
it was to give me this energy I didn't have and then I could sit up all night and work. But in fact w of course what happens is that after a very short time what that you do actually sit up all night and work, but you produce complete kind of rubbish. And I had a very bad time and I gave Libby a very bad time for it.
Presenter
How low did you get?
Presenter
I
John Bird
Got I got pretty
John Bird
Paranoid. Yeah.
Presenter
Suicidal?
John Bird
Yes, I would s say almost. Um
John Bird
Suicidal.
Presenter
And what would you put it all down to? What was it about fundamentally?
John Bird
I think it was fundamentally about I was terrified of just being, as it were, myself. I was terrified of that I just that I was a sort of empty person really, and that uh I needed all this this stimulant in order to do anything.
John Bird
And
John Bird
She
John Bird
I mean, I owe her everything really that, uh I mean, I owe her, um
John Bird
Being brought back from this.
John Bird
From this chasm.
John Bird
But much more importantly, I owe her
John Bird
the positive aspect of my life, which is, you know, to to really love somebody.
Presenter
Yeah.
Presenter
And this next piece is a mem another memory of her.
John Bird
This next piece is another memory of Libby. Libby was
John Bird
a concert pianist, and uh she performed in piano du duets with her partner's um piano partner Ben O'King. And one of the things her p sort of party pieces was the d piano duet version of The Rite of Spring by Stravinsky.
Speaker 4
Mm-hmm.
John Bird
Um
John Bird
It's a staggeringly difficult thing to perform. I mean, this is not even two pianos, this is one piano four hands. And so they're always crossing each other. Now, um.
John Bird
The most nervous I've ever been in public performance is at one of these recitals which they gave I because they their piano their page turned uh didn't turn up and uh they s they said, Would you like to turn the page of this?
John Bird
Now it was absolutely terrifying because as a page turner or you can only mess something up. You know, nobody ever goes to a concert and said I particularly enjoyed the page turning. But on the other hand, if you pa turn it, you know, five bars early or even worse, ten bars late, or perhaps even worse, it'll pull the whole score off the piano, which is quite possible to do, especially when there are two of them sitting there and not one. I thought this I could only make a complete hash of this.
Presenter
Brocker Eden and Alexander Tamir playing the end of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring. So, John Bird, as we've said, you're back where you started on television, a sitcom coming up for BBC One, I think, about lawyers called Chambers, which of course began here on Radio Ford, isn't it?
John Bird
That's right.
Presenter
Uh more Bremna shows, now called Bremna Bird and Fortune.
John Bird
Yes, I I Rory Bremner's insistence, I have to say.
Presenter
And um, therefore, a desert island not least for that, but certainly for that anyway, totally unappealing.
John Bird
I I'm I wouldn't be good, I don't think, at the building of shelters or uh no, absolutely not. Or life and I'm not sure. I don't think John Fortune I John Fortune's wife once buried his screwdriver in order to stop him doing DIY work. I don't think but luckily I wouldn't recognize what a screwdriver looks like.
Presenter
Oh really?
Presenter
Or life and the mm.
Presenter
But even with your favourite pieces of music, just you could not possibly flourish in that environment, could you?
John Bird
Not for a ver not for a any considerable period of time, I don't think. I mean, I don't mind particularly my own company for a bit, but um, no. Um but I w I'm intensely unpractical.
Presenter
Boulez is your last choice. Why? Why do you admire him so much?
John Bird
Probably because for the virtues which are the opposite of mine, for the kind of uh ration the ex
John Bird
The energy and the vigorous.
John Bird
application of uh principle to to everything. But what I admire about the music is the
John Bird
the brilliance of the invention and uh
John Bird
The wonderful, glittering sound world that is produced, and this piece is his masterpiece.
Presenter
Pierre Boulez conducting the ensemble ante contemporin, playing part of his composition Repon.
Presenter
If you could only take one of those eight records, John Bird, which one would you take?
John Bird
I said actually if I got if it's I took this really seriously I could only take one record I probably wouldn't take any of them I'd take the Art of Fugue which is um
John Bird
the kind of primer of Western music. But if if I had if I'm down and played by the rules and I take one of these, I take the boulevard.
Presenter
Right. And um what about your book?
John Bird
I suppose I one I was tempted to say, Well, I'll take one of those huge anthologists if I like the one, but but again, playing by the rules, I would take the poems of Wallace Stevens because uh I'd have plenty of time to try and work out what they meant.
Presenter
And your luxury.
John Bird
My first thought was a feed from the Hubble Space Telescope and just have on the have a look at the universe, but I thought that would actually uh reinforce my sense of being alone. Um so it's gonna be down to two thousand soft toilet rules.
Presenter
You've just managed to have two pieces of music, two books, and two luxuries on your way.
John Bird
From your way.
Presenter
John Bird, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert islanders. It's a pleasure.
Speaker 2
You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co. uk slash radio four.
Presenter asks
Do you think [a lack of energy] has hindered your career?
Well, I'm I sort of make a living and I kind of carry on and I'm sixty three years old and I think, well, it's rather remarkable that anybody who's so so indolent as I am can actually s survive.
Presenter asks
Why did you suddenly decide to perform [at the Establishment]?
Well, I didn't I didn't decide to to perform. Uh I was just going to write for it. That was the idea. And John Fortune was going to direct. Peter was also going to write. And we had auditions. But nobody who Either people weren't sort of flexible enough today, or actually, what it really was, is nobody who was any good would do it for the amount of money that we were offering. … So Peter said … why don't you do it just for the first three months and we can get somebody who can do it properly. … Um I was performing.
Presenter asks
How low did you get [when addicted to amphetamines]?
I Got I got pretty Paranoid. Yeah. … Suicidal? Yes, I would s say almost. Um Suicidal.
Presenter asks
What was [the addiction] fundamentally about?
I think it was fundamentally about I was terrified of just being, as it were, myself. I was terrified of that I just that I was a sort of empty person really, and that uh I needed all this this stimulant in order to do anything.
“I always think that By now I should have a late period, you know, like uh Brahms had a late period, or, you know, where everything is very spare and abstract. Uh but I don't have a late period. I have my first my early period”
“what I was always trying to do with Wilson was to say those things which everybody knew Wilson was thinking, but which Wilson never said.”
“I'm intensely unpractical.”