Richard Briers

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.

Presenter0:31

My Costaway this week is an actor. If you've watched television at all in the past forty years, you've almost certainly seen him in something. He's been a mainstay of British sitcom, particularly as that middle class hippie Tom Goode in the series still popular today, The Good Life. During the past decade, you may have seen him on stage or in film displaying his skills as a classical actor in the works of Chekhov, UNESCO, and Shakespeare. Much of his success in these is due to his relationship with Kenneth Brannag, who spotted his potential and drove him to critical acclaim in roles such as Malvolio, Uncle Vanya, and King Lear.

Presenter1:07

His delight in his success has not turned his head. I've never been good looking, and I'm no good at dancing, he says, but I've got the gift of timing, and I've had a lot of luck. He is Richard Bryars. You are a natural Richard, as you implied, but that's not to say there hasn't been a lot of hard work gone into it, because you were racked, as I understand it, with nerves in the beginning, weren't you?

Richard Briers1:28

Terrible nerves and the worst uh thing was I I spoke so fast that uh no one could quite understand me. And so I became an amateur actor at a very early age at fourteen, and I was fired from the amateur because they said you can't understand what you're talking about. So I met the director of the amateur group years later, he said, I'm awfully sorry.

Richard Briers1:47

I didn't know you were going to be good.

Richard Briers1:49

And I said, Well, it's not your fault. You can't hire actors you couldn't mean you can't hit them.

Presenter1:52

But you went on going talking to a demented typewriter, wasn't it? Your Hamlet, your first Hamlet, you know.

Richard Briers1:57

That's right, when I was twenty one and I knocked about forty minutes off the running time of an average Hamlet. And Darlington, the critic in the Telegraph, said last night Richard Bl Brice played Hamlet like a demented typewriter.

Richard Briers2:07

It was true, it was so fast.

Presenter2:09

You said of yourself, I think, since uh uh when you once revisited uh your early sitcom brothers in law, you said you were like a fast Byro, I think was your version of the phrase.

Richard Briers2:18

I looked like a barrow'cause I was about nine and a half stone and desperate to get on. And I've got on, I'm rather fat now. But uh so yes I speak colossal speed and luckily with Roger Thursby and brothers in law he's a very, very highly strung young man as I was, so not much acting required.

Presenter2:34

So you were thin, you were wiry, you were ambitious, you were talking fi you were kind of really, as you say, racked with nerves, desperate, desperate to do it, and it was hard work. You pulled yourself up rung by rung.

Richard Briers2:46

It takes you a long time, unless you're a born natural like Finney or O Two or something like that, out of drama school with but I think you've obviously got talent, but everything is pulling that talent apart. Nerves pull it apart, destroy it.

Presenter2:56

How to do it?

Richard Briers2:56

To wait for a laugh i is confidence.

Presenter2:59

Which is the timing. I want to talk to you about that. But I must say, what what of course has happened in this great success is you've ended up acting opposite Hollywood greats like Robert De Niro, I think. Frankenstein, Kenneth Brothers' Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, you were with him. Yes. What was that like? Because his methods, to coin a phrase, are rather different from yours, aren't they?

Richard Briers3:17

Yes, I learn the lines and say them, hopefully at the right time. But Robert is a deeply emotional method actor. One time when I was playing the old man in one of the scenes we had, and I have to hear that Frankenstein is outside the door and have to call him in.

Richard Briers3:32

And so I'm a dear old man who's blind. I can't see him.

Richard Briers3:35

So I say, you know, I know you are there. Come along. Come in, come in, come in. And nothing happened.

Richard Briers3:41

Now I've got contact lenses so I can't see anything uh for real.

Richard Briers3:45

And Branner's behind me saying, Look, he said, Don't be a fool, you've got to make him come on. He's not like you. I said I read the script. I say, come in. He comes in. He says, No, no, no, not with Robertson here. It's quite different. You've got to make him feel he must come in.

Richard Briers3:58

So I just wanted to go, you know.

Richard Briers4:00

Have you all come in please, please, please come in This went on for about, I suppose, fifty or sixty seconds, and finally I heard his footsteps coming in. So and then I held his hands I was holding Robin near his hands, having got him in the room to do the scenes I was very, very pleased and relieved.

Presenter4:17

Right. Tell me about your first record.

Richard Briers4:20

My first record was a very early recording of the great Enrico Caruso.

Richard Briers4:25

And I was introduced to his voice many years ago when I was about, I think, fourteen by a friend of my grandfather's. And I just fell in love with him and am still terribly in love with him. It's a miracle that this is you can hear this wonderful performance and it recorded in nineteen hundred and six.

Speaker 44:50

Uh

Speaker 44:51

Happy world, who

Speaker 45:04

And peace and ye are of your bravo.

Speaker 45:34

Yeah.

Presenter5:42

Enrico Caruso as Manrico singing Di Quella Pira from Act Three of Verde's Il Trovatore, and that was recorded in 1906. I have to say, Richard Bras, I noticed in an old episode of Ever Decreasing Circles I was looking at the other day that the character you played Martin had a soft spot for Caruso. He was talking about Caruso in the piece. Was that a bit of you coming through?

Richard Briers6:02

John Esmond and Bob Lubby wrote the series, and uh John knew that I was absolutely kinky about Crusoe. So he wrote that bit in, and Martin, I said, You know, you know, Anne, I said uh that my father

Richard Briers6:14

spoke to Caruso at the stage door.

Richard Briers6:17

She said, Well, sir, what he was trying to say is get this silly old man out of the way so I can't have a drink at the pub. We're very unimpressed, once he.

Presenter6:23

I also noticed in in playing through some old Good Lives, as it were, The Good Life, that your name was up the top. This was I mean, they went out first in the mid seventies, didn't they? It was Richard Bryars in The Good Life with Felicity Kendall, Penelope Keith, Paul Eddington. You were the star even then.

Richard Briers6:39

Well, I'd started in sitcom long before they had. They were all established actors, but mainly on the stage or the occasional television play. And they weren't friends of the family, which people in sitcom become, or not, as the case may be. So I was the biggest name on telly in that particular movie.

Presenter6:52

So what was your very first sitcom? That was Brothers-in-Law, was it?

Richard Briers6:55

Brothers in Law was the very first, yes, the very, very, very first as it comes with Jimmy Edwards, called The Seven Faces of Jim with Ronnie Barker and June Whitfield, and then came Brothers-in-Law with Frank Mew and Dennis Norton.

Presenter7:04

But of course in those days everybody watched them, didn't they? I mean the whole nation was watching so you would have been very famous very quickly.

Richard Briers7:07

The whole nation was watching

Richard Briers7:11

Very. I mean, there are two stations. You know, we finished at twelve o'clock.

Richard Briers7:15

So being on television was an event, and you were quite sort of somebody that said, My God, look at him over the road, he's on tele.

Presenter7:20

Do you remember the first time you were on or the first time that an episode went out?

Richard Briers7:25

Yes, I remember going outside the door of our semi-detached Stanford Brook and going down the road sheer megalomania I suppose, but then actors are like that and hearing my voice in one house out of every three coming through the lounge when my most peculiar on a summer night. I thought my God, this price of fame with those little rods on the roof, they can bring you to all these people. But of course it was a rare occurrence then, now everyone's on tele, all the time.

Presenter7:48

They were all kind of alike in in in their suburbanness, weren't they? The the George Starling from Marriage Lines, uh Tom Goode, obviously Martin in ever decreasing circles. He was less likable, of course. Although you have said yourself that that that Tom Goode was a kind of obsessive little git, I think, your friend.

Richard Briers8:04

I found Tom you know, I didn't like him at all. I thought I certainly wouldn't live next to him. I'd be like Political Keith and clear out than this awful sort of obsessive man getting up at five in the morning to do his goats and things.

Presenter8:14

And it's all going wrong all of the time. But but of course, to be serious about it for a second, they they all three, those characters, had had a certain vulnerability and certainly critics have said before now that you you have always had, quote, a curious empathy with failure.

Presenter8:29

Yeah, interesting. Where does that come from?

Richard Briers8:31

Probably because I was a pretty bad failure for the first, I suppose, twenty years of my life. So I knew what it was, and I always try to act from the person's point of view, not my point of view.

Presenter8:40

But anything to do with anyone in your life? I mean, what about your father?

Richard Briers8:44

My father was very happy go lucky. I think he gave us a sense of insecurity because he was too happy go lucky.

Richard Briers8:51

And my sister Jane and I we felt very near the sort of bill business, you were about knocking on the door you haven't paid the rent business.

Presenter8:58

What did he do?

Richard Briers8:58

He did everything. He did about 630 jobs, I think. But mainly he was in the bookmaking business, in the racing.

Richard Briers9:04

But uh he was a good time chap, but uh Lyft of the day, never mind so he made me as a person, and still I am a person, of very, very cautious.

Presenter9:14

Record number two.

Richard Briers9:15

Record number two takes me back to my uh first job as a jobbing clerk, because I was thrown out of school at sixteen. And so I used to do the uh make the tea and then wash up the cups in uh a little place an annex next to the gentleman's loo.

Richard Briers9:30

and which had a very, very fine echo.

Richard Briers9:32

So I used to do a very abandoned impersonation of Al Josen.

Richard Briers9:36

While washing the teacups up, so I feel a song coming on will be wonderful.

Speaker 49:40

You'll hear a tunable story.

Speaker 49:42

Ringing through ya love and glory, hallelujah And now that my trouble are gone Lettled heavily drum flowing drumming But I feel a power coming on

Presenter10:02

Al Jolson and I Feel a Song Coming On. A real send-up, that was, wasn't there?

Richard Briers10:07

Wonderful. It was right over the top, which I love.

Presenter10:07

Over the top stuff.

Presenter10:11

So there we are at Rains Park, suburb of South West London. You very anxious, debtors knocking at the door. Does that mean life was unhappy, or?

Richard Briers10:19

Pretty unhappy because I loath school. Never listened.

Richard Briers10:22

We had an extra class on a Saturday because there was a the headmaster knew I wasn't that thick. He thought he can't be that thick, he's not listening.

Richard Briers10:30

And so he put me realized I was an extrovert and wanted kind of to perform. I wanted to perform, but didn't know how to. So he made me sort of star in this discussion group on Saturday morning.

Richard Briers10:40

And I used to tell those uh class stories and we used to have mock trials and stand up and do things. And of course I was in my element. So he sort of was the first one to see that I had a dramatic intelligence but not a proper intelligence.

Presenter10:52

But where did that come from, do you think?'Cause your sister went into the theatre as well, didn't she?

Richard Briers10:56

Jane, yes, she still acts and she teaches drama now. I don't know where it came from at all.

Presenter11:00

But how did you know then? How did you know that was what you w did you go to the theatre? Did you go to the cinema? What?

Richard Briers11:05

Very little. I think what it was, now I come to think of it you prompted me, is that when we were arranged apart that we had a first floor flat and then there was a car park, a small car park, and then there was Riauto Cinema. So at night when I was in my bed, I could hear not exactly each word, but I could hear Bogart and Cagney, our game Schwain Hard and all this stuff, f from the back of the cinema into my room.

Richard Briers11:27

The first buzz I had in fact was reading the Bible. I j was connected with the church and became a server.

Richard Briers11:33

And I thought, ah this is wake what I was actually doing, of course, was dressing up.

Richard Briers11:37

in a period costume, and having one or two lines to say in the service. When I realized it wasn't to the glory of God, but the glory of myself, I I packed it up. But that's I was really an amateur actor from the age of fourteen.

Presenter11:40

The sailors went

Presenter11:47

But I presume you didn't really think that's what you could do for a living. You had to get a proper job and do a bit of amdram is really what you could do. That's all.

Richard Briers11:53

That's right, yes, I had no way of knowing how to anywhere to open any door.

Presenter11:57

So you left school and took up a career in filing? Yes. Let's have your third record.

Richard Briers12:01

This takes us on to Louis Armstrong. We saw Louis Armstrong at Hammersmith years and years ago live, so actually saw him do it. It's just so marvelous. And this one, he sings it, he knows that everyone knows this number Sunny Side the Street. So he kind of wings it.

Speaker 412:18

You

Speaker 412:20

Clap your hands.

Speaker 412:23

Relieve your worries.

Speaker 412:26

On the doorstep is a hand.

Speaker 412:31

Just a recovery.

Speaker 412:36

On the sunny side of the street pools are familiar.

Presenter12:47

On the sunny side of the street, Louis Armstrong and the All Stars. So, Richard Price, you did impressions of your teachers, impressions of Louis Armstrong, Al Jolson, all these but the person, as I understand it, you could imitate best was your cousin Terry, your saviour.

Richard Briers13:02

Yes, Terry Thomas, yes, my illustrious cousin, who came to see me with a couple of amateur productions.

Richard Briers13:08

And he said, Well, I think you're right. You've got some kind of a talent, and I I really think you need training, but you've got an awful lot of other unfortunate matters.

Richard Briers13:16

To do with your speech. So he was he was a very great help. And I think that's a good idea.

Presenter13:20

But he got you into Radha, did he?

Richard Briers13:21

He suggested I should try Varada, and I took an audition to Rada, and I just literally got a pass mark, because in those days you had marks out of a hundred, and I got sixty two per cent.

Presenter13:30

But you had no exact I mean, you had no GCSEs or anything akin, did you?

Richard Briers13:34

I never had anything, I haven't got an O level.

Presenter13:36

So how do you I mean you got in on sheer talent, did you?

Richard Briers13:38

I got in because they liked the acting, and it was a different gentler age then, you see. This is forty five, forty six years ago.

Presenter13:44

But you were there with Albert Finney, Peter O'Tour. Were you intimidated? Or you were really just trying to find yourself at the time, weren't you?

Richard Briers13:46

Yeah

Richard Briers13:51

Yes, very, very, very nervous, but in a strange way elated,'cause I did feel at the same time that I had actually found where I should be the right place to be, which was trying to be an actor.

Presenter14:02

So what is this timing? How can one ask what timing is? It's impossible to describe it.

Richard Briers14:06

So many people who communicate have got it, it's a sense of timing. But the first instinctive thing, you can actually feel it. And of course what is good practice to develop it is to do stage plays. And I was lucky enough to do a lot of very good comedies like Alan Aikborn stuff. And that rapport with a live audience every night sharpens you up and you learn to wait for the laugh, you learn to get and it is a physical feeling, it's a feeling, but I can't really describe it.

Presenter14:30

Hmm.

Richard Briers14:30

Unfortunately.

Presenter14:31

I always remember, I know it's an impossible question, I agree. I always remember someone asking Eric Morecombe that and saying, what is timing? And he sort of leaned forward.

Richard Briers14:35

It's named what is

Presenter14:38

pressed the spectacles on his nose like he did, and said

Presenter14:41

That is.

Richard Briers14:43

That's right.

Presenter14:43

It's that kind of thing, isn't it? It's just waiting for that moment.

Richard Briers14:43

Uh

Richard Briers14:44

Yeah, it's just way

Presenter14:46

But you came out of Rada and and you got work straight away and it seems to me you haven't been out of work since, have you?

Richard Briers14:52

Not much. I've been one of the very privileged few. And the result is when you get to my age now, you don't get such a buzz on. I mean, I met meet lots of my friends who haven't been as fortunate. They long to go and act. I say, Oh, God, have I got to act tomorrow? Because I've been thoroughly spoilt.

Presenter15:06

So was there a moment when you stopped yearning to go on the stage again tonight, as it were, and and it became a just a a chore?

Richard Briers15:15

Yes, I think the long runs in London now they don't have them because they're all musicals now, and if you do a play it's eight weeks, a ten week season, you're finished.

Richard Briers15:22

And we're going to do a play very shortly, a new play, with uh my wife playing my wife and my daughter playing my daughter.

Richard Briers15:28

And we're doing that in February in Southampton. But if if that d if it transfers to London, it'd be a short season, so that's fine. I can't any longer do long runs.

Presenter15:34

That's final.

Presenter15:36

Merely

Richard Briers15:37

No, life's too short.

Presenter15:38

Record number four.

Richard Briers15:39

Oh, number four. Now this is Alfred, the divine Alfred Brendel, who I made laugh like a drain when I played Malvolio in Hammersmith. And he was in the front row. We recognized him and everyone was terrified. That Alfred's in front. And I came on cross-guarded with this idiot smile of Malvolio's and literally leant forward. I thought his head was going to touch the ground. So one of my proudest moments of my career is that I really made Alfred Brendel laugh. And here he is, this beautiful man, playing this wonderful piece.

Presenter16:50

Alfred Brendel playing part of the second movement of Schubert's piano sonata in A. You mentioned playing Malvolio in in front of Brendel, but of course you had played classical parts, or the odd one, sort of during your sit comery, as it were, hadn't you? Didn't you play Richard the Third early on?

Richard Briers17:04

Yeah.

Richard Briers17:06

I had a go at that.

Richard Briers17:09

And uh

Richard Briers17:10

I had become well known as Tom Good, and I came on.

Richard Briers17:14

And I said, uh giving a rather bad impersonation of Lawrence Olivier, as one does when one tries to play Richard the Third, I said, Now it's the winter of our discontent, made glorious summer by this son of York And an old age pension about the second row said, Oh, hello, Richard, always like you and I thought, Oh Lord, this is very difficult I'm now a friend of the family, but still trying desperately uh be a serious sex being actor. It's very difficult.

Presenter17:35

Are you serious?

Presenter17:36

That's the point, isn't it? Trying to do it all. And you have done it all. I think it is the point about your career. You've also done voiceovers and commercials.

Richard Briers17:43

Yes, cartoons and all that stuff. I've done a bit of everything.

Presenter17:44

I'm gonna

Presenter17:46

Yes, you've not been proud about that. Some some actors are.

Richard Briers17:46

Not been proud.

Richard Briers17:48

No actors are. No, some actors are. But of course, you can't pay the mortgage and bring the family up on Shakespeare's.

Presenter17:52

It's part of that anxiety, is it?

Richard Briers17:54

Yes, oh yes. You can then have a luxury if you're very careful and don't spend your money when you're making it.

Richard Briers17:59

And somebody might say, Well, why don't you come do Richard the Third performance a week? And then you say, Yes, I can, I can,'cause I can afford to and or whatever.

Presenter18:02

Ooh.

Presenter18:04

I read that that I think it was Instant Coffee subsidized your Lear in the past few years.

Richard Briers18:08

Yes, I d I sold coffee and play King Lear, of course coffee played with the whole thing.

Presenter18:13

And Slumberland bought your house, I think, to go.

Richard Briers18:15

Slumbayan bought half the house in the first house, yes, very in Martha's.

Presenter18:20

I mean, that's absolutely right, isn't it? That you'll do anything and everything as long as it's decent quality for what it is, and you don't have to drop your trousers, really. No. You've never done that.

Richard Briers18:26

Yeah.

Richard Briers18:28

No. You've never done that? No, but dear actors, they're very brave people, but also they do we do subsidize the arts. We we're the people who subsidize the RSC, the Barbican, whatever, you know, fringe. We're always in there. And my daughter's just been in a Shakespeare play, you know, in a very, very good production on The Fringe. She made ninety pounds a week before tax. Now you see you can't save on that.

Presenter18:47

What did you make when you travelled the world with King Lear?

Richard Briers18:50

I was think I was on two fifty.

Presenter18:51

A week.

Richard Briers18:52

A week, yes. Which when you paid the tax about one three farthing?

Presenter18:55

Therefore, it's it's the commercial stuff, as you say. It's the ads, really, that make the big dosh, is it? Yes.

Richard Briers18:59

Yes, I mean advertising wonderful.

Presenter19:01

So were you therefore able, because everything had been so impecunious when when you were younger, were you able to help your parents in later life?

Richard Briers19:08

Yes, I was. Did you? When this sort of physical work collapsed and old age took over, then I was able to, you know, help help along. Good feeling. I couldn't solve anything. Very good, yes, but I was kind of always felt a bit like a guardian, really.

Presenter19:19

And

Richard Briers19:19

But it was great to do it, and we've been very fortunate to be able to do it.

Presenter19:23

Record number five.

Richard Briers19:25

Number five are, of course, the goons.

Richard Briers19:28

I didn't know which to pick. I mean there are thousands of little bits to pick, but um this is one from 1955.

Speaker 419:34

The stranger was a tall, hairy man wearing reversible Jewish socks.

Speaker 419:40

And an explodable spawn.

Speaker 419:43

Much I, Monemi, tis the bra brat moonlick nik this night.

Speaker 419:50

A Scotsman, by Jove!

Speaker 419:53

He approached with his kilt of the High Port.

Speaker 419:55

Achai! Achai, to be sure! Who are you? Allow me! The stranger stepped back, raised the tail of his shirt.

Speaker 420:03

And revealed a centrally heated brass nameplate.

Presenter20:08

The Goons, Harry Seacombe, Peter Sellers, and Spike Milligan in The White Box of Great Bardfield, originally broadcast in nineteen fifty five. Your latest television manifestation is Scottish, of course, so as Hector, the old laird in Monarch of the Glen.

Speaker 320:19

Kiss.

Presenter20:22

That's your first role in in television for some time.

Presenter20:26

When when you turned to Kenneth Branner, when he discovered you in inverted commas in the late eighties, was it you who was turning away from television sitcom, or was it turning away from you?

Richard Briers20:36

I felt that I spoke to Annie, my wife, about it, we thought, I don't think I can get a lot further. I had done such super material, good writing, and I thought, well, what I should do now I was then fifty, fifty five was to go full circle and go back to rep.

Presenter20:48

But you'd ruled out tragedy, as I read. You'd said, you know, tragedy is not in my range. Then along comes Brannagh and you discover you can do it. How did he know that potential was there, I wonder?

Richard Briers20:54

And you discover you can do it.

Richard Briers20:59

He saw me in a a production at Chichester.

Richard Briers21:03

uh the relapse playing Lord Foppington, a very affected uh fop, and thought, ah, Malvolio didn't think it right away, but about a year or two later, and then he said, Would you like to play Malvolio? I said, Yes, because Ken does like you to agree with him, he doesn't like any arguments and and it was just what I was looking for, so really it was like extraordinary happening of sheer luck of being at the right place at the right time and I was before I knew it, I was going right round the world playing King Lear.

Presenter21:26

But Noel Coward had told you you were capable of more, hadn't he?

Richard Briers21:29

Yes, he said you should be able to play everything, because you're a very, very emotional comedian.

Presenter21:33

But what about when you were doing Lear? I presume then

Presenter21:36

Again, completely different for you. You're used to working in miniature, and very real ordinary miniature. Here you are on the stage, required to literally go around.

Richard Briers21:42

Natural stuff.

Richard Briers21:46

Yes. What he realized is he had to really do some quite heavy work on me because I was still sort of a middle-class person from Wayne's Park. Now, King Lear's, you know, it's like Caruso, it's big operatic stuff. You can't come on and say, hello, Lawrence, it's a bit drafty tonight. Can't do that bit wet tonight. So he gradually pulled it, you know, pulling it out of me emotionally, more emotion, more emotion, more emotional. Then you reach as far as you can, then you pack it up and go back to sit calm.

Presenter22:12

Do you ever reach a point of enjoyment?

Richard Briers22:14

Yes, the great enjoyment of Shakespeare is that you always get a buzz because of that language.

Presenter22:20

But I mean of Lear, did you ever come off the stage in how many performances did you did you?

Richard Briers22:24

A hundred and fifty.

Presenter22:24

Did was there one when you came up and you thought, got it, well, at least got it as good as I'm ever going to get it?

Richard Briers22:29

Yeah, it's true.

Richard Briers22:30

And I think twice I got it. I didn't know I got it, but the company said, gosh, you were terrific tonight. What happened?

Richard Briers22:37

And apparently this does happen to actors in classical roles. It can actually uh suddenly something will happen and you'll be really terrific and the next night you'll be perfectly all right. It's very odd, nobody knows what it is.

Presenter22:47

It's very

Presenter22:48

But you got some great reviews for that, particularly for the end. I think they said you were as moving as anyone else. Yes, I did a good job.

Richard Briers22:50

Yeah

Richard Briers22:54

And yes, I did a good job on it as far as I could.

Presenter22:55

And quote.

Presenter22:56

What about making films with Bran? I mean, that must be very different from doing the stage productions, obviously.

Richard Briers23:01

Yes, the difficulty with me, because I'm a stage actor, is the lack of rehearsal, because you've got to be very quick. Most of your work's done at home.

Richard Briers23:08

Ken was lucky because he played Hamlet three or four times, so he was right on the text, just as well'cause he has to direct it as well. But I found Polonius quite nerve wracking because um I spoke to Ken about six weeks before we were filming. I said, You know, I know there's a there's a scene where I have to have a scene with this my servant, who has very, very few lines, and I have enormous speeches.

Richard Briers23:27

And I said, You will get somebody good because it's a small part, but his reactions are vital. He said, Well, I've got Gerard Aberdeer and I nearly fell off the phone. I said I said, You mean you've got the greatest French actor in the world opposite me? He said, Yes. I said, Well, that's going to make me very calm and very confident. So Gerard was jetted in from his vineyard and he had, you know, eight hours to do this scene, and if I mess it up, he's going to be rather fed up.

Presenter23:51

Because that's what happens with these people. They're kind of bums on seats in a way, aren't they? Absolutely, they're the world star.

Richard Briers23:54

Absolutely, they're the world stars.

Presenter23:56

Yes, so they come in just for the day. You've got to ante up the queue.

Richard Briers23:59

Absolutely, because they want to get away and they're taking a fraction of their salary because it's Shakespeare, you see, they're all in these huge stars, world stars, are doing it for next to nothing, so you've they've got to have proper treatment. They're kind of aging character actors messing it up on them.

Presenter24:11

So you do get nervous.

Richard Briers24:13

I got very nervous that day, I can tell you. The Chardonnay went down extremely fast after we finished.

Richard Briers24:19

Yeah.

Presenter24:19

Number six.

Richard Briers24:20

Six.

Richard Briers24:22

Oh, well now, to remind me of Kenneth Ranner and and uh Renaissance company and his new company and all the friends I made, I'd love the um the title music from Branner's Henry V.

Presenter25:00

Non Nobis Domine, the title music from Kenneth Branner's adaptation of Henry the Fifth, sung by Patrick Doyle, with the Stephen Hill Singers and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Simon Rattle. Will you do more with Branner, Richard? Have you got your eye on another part?

Richard Briers25:13

I'm hoping if he has a window, as they say, in that unfortunate phrase to day,

Richard Briers25:18

that we might do just on the fringe, as it were, The Tempest, and I've played Prospero. That would kind of be lovely if we could ever do that, because it would be a short season on stage, and it means I've kind of done it as far almost every part I could play I've done then done.

Presenter25:23

Dolly gun

Presenter25:31

And you're sixty six. You won't retire'cause actors don't.

Richard Briers25:34

No can't do that, no.

Presenter25:35

Worried about the money.

Richard Briers25:36

Oh, yes.

Presenter25:39

But the odd cameo in Hollywood wouldn't go amiss, would it?

Richard Briers25:42

Well, I mean, they all said I was rather good. Polonius in Ken's Hamlet, and I thought, well, I'll wait by the telephone. I've been waiting for three years. But I think they think of me I think the Americans think of me as a very sort of rather dignified, talented, old ancient character actor as far as they're concerned.

Presenter25:55

So you don't think it's going to happen?

Richard Briers25:57

Don't think so, but we have the highest hope. If Robert's Nero remembers me.

Richard Briers26:02

How hard I worked to get him on the set. He might give me another chance.

Presenter26:06

I can see reading profiles about you that journalists have done their damnedest over the years to find you kind of unpleasant evil yeah, evil, mad axemen of Turnham Green.

Richard Briers26:12

Unpleasant people.

Presenter26:18

I wonder why they've tried so hard. It's not there, is it?

Richard Briers26:21

I suppose it's difficult. No, it's not very fair. Because I've worked very hard all my life as an actor. That's really all I am.

Richard Briers26:27

And uh, you know, see, my shows are very pleasant. I mean, Monica the Glen, they said, you know, we really like it and I said, Well, awesome, it's unique and they said, What do you mean unique? I said, Because it's clean. One does that and you get a squeaky clean image of it.

Richard Briers26:40

It doesn't mean I'm not an irritable old git at home, because I am an irritable old git at home.

Presenter26:43

I can say what annoys you. What annoys you.

Richard Briers26:44

Oh almost everything modern.

Richard Briers26:46

Uh slovenly speech, bad presentation, overacting, amateurism, you name it, motorbikes.

Presenter26:53

And what gives you greatest joy?

Richard Briers26:56

Well, my family, obviously, I mean, I cling to very much. I'm useless without a family. I mean, pretty useless anyway, really. I mean, I'm as I say, I'm just an actor really, not a highly successful, resourceful human being.

Richard Briers27:06

So the greatest joy at the moment are definitely my grandchildren.

Presenter27:10

Record number seven.

Richard Briers27:12

Yes, I was having my usual nap before going on stage in Coriolanus at Chichester, in a part that I wasn't terribly good in, didn't not very happy, a bit tense, a bit nervous about it. And I had the third programme on it, because I'm Radio 4 Fiend, but I had Radio 3, and I suddenly heard this amazing sound, and it was Handel. And I became a fanatic about Handel, but this I just love. It doesn't have to cheer me up on that island.

Presenter28:32

Part of the second movement of Handel's organ concerto number thirteen in F major, The Cuckoo and the Nightingale, played by George Malcolm with the Academy of Saint Martin in the Fields, directed by Neville Mariner. So here comes the big role, Richard Robinson Crusoe. Can you play him?

Richard Briers28:46

Nope.

Presenter28:47

Yeah.

Richard Briers28:47

No. Absolutely hopeless.

Presenter28:47

No

Presenter28:49

Need a lot of the De Niro method really. You've got to get real in this one.

Richard Briers28:53

I don't know. I really don't know how I'm going to handle it at all. But I wouldn't. I know I wouldn't.

Presenter28:59

I suspect managing without Annie, your wife, is an impossible.

Richard Briers29:01

Hopeless am hopeless without yes without hope.

Presenter29:03

Can't do anything. I mean, what are the difficult businesses? Could you spear a fish?

Richard Briers29:08

Note.

Presenter29:08

Slit a rabbit's throat.

Richard Briers29:10

No, I'm very suburban. I I I I mow my lawn, but then you have to have a lawnmower, you know, and I do my edges, where you have to have a tr a trimmer. So without those two things, uh you know, it's not really I I wash up, but there's no sink, so

Presenter29:20

They couldn't cook.

Richard Briers29:22

No.

Presenter29:22

Couldn't rub two steps to get that.

Richard Briers29:23

It's your hotspot and you've got to kill animals because I don't know how you can do that.

Presenter29:26

You just have to keep

Richard Briers29:26

You would just have to keep

Presenter29:27

Rehearsing Lear and hope somebody hears you.

Richard Briers29:29

Yes.

Richard Briers29:31

It's all like a news rehearse.

Richard Briers29:33

And try and get better.

Presenter29:34

Oh dear. Record number eight. I don't think you're gonna last long in this place.

Richard Briers29:35

Yeah.

Richard Briers29:38

No, I'm afraid so I won't.

Richard Briers29:41

Mozart, of course.

Richard Briers29:43

Amadeus first saw that uh with Paul Schofield, the last, I think, great dinosaur of the great actors. So I would naturally have this amazing piece of Mozart.

Presenter30:44

The beginning of the third movement of Mozart's Serenade number ten in B flat, Grand Partita, played by the Amadeus Winds, conducted by Christopher Hogwood. Now, Richard, if you could only take one of those eight records, which one are you going to take?

Richard Briers30:57

It's impossible, but I will

Richard Briers30:59

Take the handle.

Richard Briers31:01

The Nightingale and the Watchers chime up in the morning first thing.

Presenter31:03

The cuckoo

Richard Briers31:04

The cooker, yes.

Presenter31:05

And, as you know, you've got the Bible, you've got the complete works of Shakespeare, much of which you could recite all by yourself without it anyway. Um what about your own book on top of the pile?

Richard Briers31:14

It has to be Dickens.

Richard Briers31:16

any Dickens, but I suppose it would be in the end great expectations.

Presenter31:19

And your luxury.

Richard Briers31:21

Well, I can't have a shed, can I?

Presenter31:23

Nava.

Richard Briers31:23

If Betty found a garden shows and even always putting up sheds.

Presenter31:24

Hot F is

Richard Briers31:27

Uh no kind of a building, no. Uh well, I I suppose

Richard Briers31:31

After much thought it would have to be an enormous supply of Chardonnay.

Richard Briers31:36

Then I could after I had perfected my impersonation of Al Jose and Louis Armstrong and finished the Chardonnay I could turn my face towards a palm tree and fade gently out.

Presenter31:46

Richard Bryas, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs.

Speaker 331:57

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