Griff Rhys Jones

Speaker 30:00

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

Presenter0:31

My Castaway this week is a comic actor and writer. His path to success has been one trodden by many of our most popular entertainers, Cambridge Footlights, Edinburgh Fringe, and writing and producing at the BBC. He was one of the four stars of Not the Nine O'Clock News, a show which revolutionised television comedy, and then with his partner Mel Smith, has been for the last twenty years half of one of the nation's comic double acts. He's also a prolific stage actor, describing his Mr Toad at the National Theatre as his Hamlet.

Presenter1:02

Having made a career out of playing silly asses or toads and bewildered innocents, he said of himself and his contemporaries in the business, others went off and took proper jobs, but we've all just continued to muck around like the lost boys. He is Griff Rhys-Jones. Lost maybe, uh Griff, but hardly destitute. Do I detect there an element of of of guilt that you should have made a decent living out of doing something?

Presenter1:27

You know, not that it was a pastime.

Griff Rhys Jones1:30

My f father was a doctor, so I always felt slightly that what I ended up doing was not quite valuable enough.

Presenter1:35

You tell him it's not hard work, or would you defend yourself? Oh, no, I don't. I think all of you are seriously.

Griff Rhys Jones1:35

I'm telling you guys.

Griff Rhys Jones1:38

Oh no, I don't I d I think all of those. Comedy people seriousness. No, well comedy is a serious people get very fraught about it, but I'm not sure that they can genuinely I don't feel ever that I've uh settled down and taken a job. But I think that's the great advantage because I did have a job once working as a handbag checker after I left university. I did that job for about six months and it does seem to occupy my mind a space of about five years. You were a bodyguard. I w but it was a sort of body I moved on to being a handbag checker from being a bodyguard. And even the bodyguard, there was an awful lot of sitting around. And I remember the people I worked with, some people thought thought this was the greatest thing that they'd ever done, was to take a job on where they had to do nothing at all of any kind whatsoever.

Presenter2:15

So that was your only proper job. Your trademark uh really obviously is that head to head with Mel Smith and in case two faces talking to each other against a black background, in case anybody's in any dark, you're not the fat one.

Griff Rhys Jones2:20

And with

Griff Rhys Jones2:26

No, I'm the I'm the other one on the one the one on the other side, the one who just really has to go, Yeah, go on, what?

Presenter2:31

Oh, yeah, is that the occasion? Is it sticking the punchline? The one with the jaw, the one with the black hair. I see. But it it was avant-garde in its time really, wasn't it? After all, Pete and Dudd would never have talked about body piercing and

Griff Rhys Jones2:32

Yeah, is that the occasion? Is it sticking the punch button?

Griff Rhys Jones2:35

Tell me that.

Presenter2:43

Flavour.

Griff Rhys Jones2:43

Flavour.

Presenter2:46

Yeah.

Griff Rhys Jones2:46

But on record, not on television. It didn't funny enough derive from Pete and Dutton. It derived from a series of conversations we've been doing in.

Presenter2:46

Yeah.

Griff Rhys Jones2:55

Commercials. We'd made a series of radio commercials and when we came to do it, we wanted to do something which had the simplicity of just two people talking to each other. And we'd always done them in a in a radio studio, facing each other over a over a microphone. And when we came to do it on television, I suggested that we did it and just lost the microphone, which we did. And so essentially it's sort of two people in a radio studio.

Presenter3:17

But was it was it written or was it Adley?

Griff Rhys Jones3:19

It was ad libbed, then it was written, then it was ad-libbed, and then neither of us could quite remember the line, so it was ad-libbed again.

Presenter3:25

But you're a comedian of many parts because you also act, as I said in the introduction, you write, you present book programmes and you run a production company. Although perhaps you don't do that now because you've sold it for many millions of pounds, is that right?

Griff Rhys Jones3:37

We did sell it, yes. Sixty-two of them. Yes, but it didn't all come to me, I'm glad to say. But in fact, it was a fair way.

Presenter3:40

Uh I haven't

Presenter3:43

But in fact it was a head of

Griff Rhys Jones3:45

So, yes, we did sell it and we did produce it, but we're continuing to run the company.

Presenter3:50

I want to know more about it in a minute, but I'm going to start you on your record because I know you've had incredible problems getting them down to eight. I don't want to hear mention of any of the ones you're not taking, because that's cheating. Let's have the ones you are. What's the first one?

Griff Rhys Jones3:57

I don't i

Griff Rhys Jones4:01

Okay.

Griff Rhys Jones4:03

Well, I think the first one, um, I'd like a little bit of Aretha Franklin. Simply and this is very much a desert island choice. I think if you're sitting on your desert island, almost invariably when Aretha Franklin comes on, your sort of spirits are lifted and you start jumping about. And I imagine there might be moments when

Griff Rhys Jones4:18

That was necessary.

Speaker 44:25

Yeah.

Speaker 44:34

Oh, and me and that man get to love it.

Speaker 44:38

Tell you girls, I dig you, but I just don't have time to sit and tip.

Presenter4:50

Aretha Franklin and Doctor Feelgood. With a name like Rhys Jones, Griff, you m you have to be Welsh, but I gather you're an Essex boy.

Griff Rhys Jones4:57

Yes, I'm a very bogus Welshman, I'm afraid, because I was born in Cardiff. But we moved away when I was six months old. Occasionally I'm asked to go back and do things. And I remember I did the Welsh proms once with Neil Kinnock and Victor Emmanuel was another famous Welshman designer of um Princess Dice dresses and there was a great deal of afterwards singing of rugby songs and standing on the side. And you didn't know the words. I didn't know the words, I didn't know the Welsh and Victor Emmanuel and I sort of sneaked away into the night.

Presenter5:18

And you didn't know the word.

Presenter5:24

You sound very posh. I mean, how did you get that? Between Wales and Essex. Yeah, this is the same thing. How'd you get this sort of...

Griff Rhys Jones5:27

Yeah, it's called

Griff Rhys Jones5:29

Well, my father was a hospital doctor, so he moved around a bit, and we lived in Midhurst for a while. I was brought up in a in a kindergarten, and then I was r ripped from that environment to go to school in Harlow, Newtown. I found that it wasn't a good idea to be posh in Harlow, Newtown primary schools, so I sort of had to affect a sort of Essex accent, which I now, I'm told, I veer between all the time. Between sometimes being a little bit posh, kindergarten conifers, you know, in Midhurst, and the rest of the time being sort of Harlow, Newtown.

Presenter6:00

And as a boy, apparently, you wanted to be Charlie Drake. I remember Mick and Montmorency, wasn't that he used to do? Kind of slapstick.

Griff Rhys Jones6:04

Uh

Griff Rhys Jones6:08

When I was chipping buckets, that's it. Yes, well, I think when I was about six, my mother pointed out to me. Later then I'd written an essay in which I claimed my ambition was to be Charlie Drake, but it didn't last very long.

Presenter6:21

But the interesting thing is that that obviously s something in you was inspired by that because you like slaps. You like I mean, you are very happy, so to speak, with your trousers round your ankles, as in wilt or in women's clothes, as in charge of the clothes.

Griff Rhys Jones6:21

Uh

Griff Rhys Jones6:27

Yeah, you

Griff Rhys Jones6:30

Oh yeah, I'm this I'm

Griff Rhys Jones6:33

Again, that was a sort of there was an accident element to that because I was asked by Peter James if I'd come and play Charlie's Aunt at the lyric. So I went along and I really didn't. I hadn't at that stage been in any professional production as an actor in any way. I played Charlie's Aunt and it was a fantastic success and thereafter pigeonholing began and I found I was asked to be in a series of farces, which I did. I enjoy coming on and doing running through doors and charging about.

Presenter6:56

Enjoy coming.

Presenter6:59

But didn't you famously break one of the great rules there? Because as you say, you'd never done anything before, you didn't realise you you do not add lib when you're on stage in a proper production without

Griff Rhys Jones7:06

On stage in a proper production. I think we do add lip from time to time, but I was in Charlie's Aunt. In Charlie's Aunt, he has a catchphrase which is, I'm Charlie's Aunt from Brazil, where the nuts come from, and it's sort of quite a famous thing. So I'd come on and say, I'm Charlie's Arn from Brazil, and the audience would wait, and then I'd say, Where the nuts come from? One matinee, we were doing this, and I came on and I said, I'm Charlie's Arn from Brazil. And I was just in the middle of my pause when a row of old ladies in the front row all chorused together, Where the Nuts come from?

Presenter7:11

Not in Charlie Garn.

Griff Rhys Jones7:39

So I sort of turned and glowered at them and went on. Every act he comes on says exactly the same thing. And by the time I got to the third act, they all chorused Where the nuts come from and I said where the Nazi war criminals come from And it just so happened that the assistant director Peter Wilson was in the audience and he stormed round and he was uh full of of wise words as it were.

Presenter8:04

Tell me about your second method.

Griff Rhys Jones8:06

I'm afraid I'm a terrible greatest hits person in opera, and it all dates from years ago when I was in a play in in Glasgow and I was very kind to lent a car and there was only one tape in the car and it was Averroes's greatest hits and I'd never listened to any opera before but I thought I'll put it on and listen to it and I became the sort of person who does listen to opera in the car. And um I'd like a bit of La Travelliata, my favourite bit, which is well when whenever I come to it I have to rewind and play it again, which is Undi Felice.

Speaker 48:43

Be slight.

Speaker 48:45

Oh, me sleddy old air.

Presenter8:56

Where did you

Speaker 49:02

There it seems.

Speaker 49:17

Yeah.

Speaker 49:21

He also looked at the

Speaker 49:32

Yeah.

Presenter9:35

Angela Giorgiou as Violetta and Frank Lopardo as Alfredo singing the love duet Un di Velice from Act I of Verdi's La Traviata with the orchestra of the Royal Opera House Covent Garden conducted by Sir George Schulte. Let's um go back to this this Peter Pan clique, this this lost boys theme as it were. What were you if you were the naughty boys, the ones who were mucking about a bit, what were the good boys doing?

Griff Rhys Jones9:56

Well, I d I'm I think probably w uh uh the headmaster once stood up uh in assembly and said something about he said there's surely there's nothing worse in life than listening to the sound of cliqueish laughter. We called ourselves the clique from then on, which uh sounds horrible and we were a bit of a clique, but we didn't look like being specifically not hearty. We had school on Saturdays and instead of involving ourselves in sport we'd go down to the changing rooms and when everybody else changed into their sporting gear and charged off to play football, we'd be round the back there putting on loon pants and frizzing back, combing our hair and fur coats and sneaking out the back to go

Presenter10:14

But we did

Presenter10:36

To get on the bus to go home.

Griff Rhys Jones10:37

Yeah, well no to go just go down to the roundhouse to listen to Pink Floyd or Quintessence.

Presenter10:42

Did you act at school?

Griff Rhys Jones10:43

I did. Yes, not at all successfully, really. I started very early playing series. In fact, I played a fair selection, women's roles. And I played Ceres, The Goddess of Plenty and Tempest. And I came on wearing a very flimsy night dress to a huge round of applause and laughter with my little poem. And I was only eleven. I never got given the huge parts. I nearly got as I think I got on the edge of being Lady Macbeth. And then I got older and I didn't get beefy enough to play the big parts. So I was wrote.

Presenter11:13

Are you female is part of the majority of the menu?

Griff Rhys Jones11:14

I know, I know, but that was the way it worked up until the age of about 16. And then I played Rosencrantz, and at that stage we got very interested in poker, so he spent an enormous amount of time playing for our bus fares. And I missed my cue playing Rosencrantz. And there is a moment where the king comes on and walks up and down the stage and goes, you know, who will rid me of this priest or whatever? That's another quotation altogether. What's happened to Hamlet? Rosencrantz and Gildenstone are supposed to come popping on. And Gildenstone, who was very conscientious, Woollard, came running down the thing and said, found me sitting there with a very good hand. Saying, we're on stage. So I ran.

Griff Rhys Jones11:51

Ran like crazy through the school,'cause it was always a classroom miles away. Runs, and straight on to stage, where the King had been sort of improvising or something, just stamping up and down for a fair amount of time.

Griff Rhys Jones12:00

And he said what news from England or whatever. And I complete no idea what the news from England was. It's vowed never to go.

Presenter12:07

So you vowed never to go on the stage again.

Griff Rhys Jones12:08

Um, well, I didn't vow never to go on the stage, but I sort of thought that maybe it would be

Griff Rhys Jones12:12

Necessarily not to think of myself as p possibly being a Shakespearean.

Griff Rhys Jones12:16

Hector.

Griff Rhys Jones12:18

Record number three.

Griff Rhys Jones12:19

Well, this is one that certainly dates from that period, and this is uh Jimi Hendrix's bold as well.

Speaker 412:27

Uh

Speaker 412:29

Well, fold us love with the help of love.

Speaker 412:36

I'm bold and slow.

Speaker 412:40

Just ask the answers.

Speaker 412:44

He knows everything. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Presenter12:54

The Jimi Hendrix experience and Boulder's love. You were to be a a starry bunch, I think, those of you who gathered in your generation at at Cambridge. Griff, drop me some names. I mean Douglas Adams.

Griff Rhys Jones13:05

Yeah.

Presenter13:05

Clive Anderson.

Griff Rhys Jones13:07

And John

Presenter13:07

Uh Right.

Griff Rhys Jones13:08

Yeah.

Presenter13:08

Nicholas Heitner, Jimmy Malgo, and some Amazing. I mean, f from all disciplines, actors, writers, directors, and so on. Did you do more drama than review?

Griff Rhys Jones13:08

Me please.

Griff Rhys Jones13:09

Yeah.

Griff Rhys Jones13:18

I wasn't necessarily going to do any theatre or anything. And I arrived and there was a note in my pigeonhole from Douglas Adams saying, Do you want to be in a play? And they were doing a very good production of the rivals and they needed somebody to play fag. And I turned up and did that. But the significance was that when I went to see my tutor, he said, Do you have any interests outside? And I said, Well, I thought I might do a bit of theatre. And he went, Oh, God. He said, Well, look, don't can take over people's life, they can do too much. And I said, Well, actually, funny enough. I'm in a play at the moment. Got a person.

Presenter13:52

Got a pass.

Griff Rhys Jones13:54

It just started moaning. Uh and that was it. And the trouble was that the system encouraged you to just uh do nothing but

Griff Rhys Jones14:03

Productions, one kind or another, just all sort of hammed in various

Presenter14:06

And then there was footlights as well, which presumably at that time, because we're talking now, what, turn of the decade between sixty late sixties, early seventies, you Monty Pyson would have overshadowed children.

Griff Rhys Jones14:10

Unzin.

Griff Rhys Jones14:12

Yeah, thanks.

Griff Rhys Jones14:17

Well Foot Thatcher was entirely overshadowed by its predecessors. The last big generation would be Clive James and people like that. And we were genuinely of the opinion that uh those golden days when people stepped on and into careers in thing had completely passed. Everybody was much more concerned with occupying the Cidwick site and just being cool. It was the seventies, it was Marg Margaret Thatcher's worst nightmare. We just wanted to go on being students for the rest of our lives.

Presenter14:42

Yeah.

Griff Rhys Jones14:44

There was a sit in, was the lark they were last sit in.

Presenter14:46

But then the irony of all of this is that you then go to Edinburgh with the footlights and you get offered a job at the BBC and you become a producer, which is frightfully soft.

Griff Rhys Jones14:54

What happened was that in those days the B B C was run more like a civil service department and they'd ended up with a corridor at light entertainment where all the cavalry officers and people who'd been right working as producers had all come up for retirement at exactly the same.

Griff Rhys Jones15:09

So Con Mahoney, who was famous for headlight entertainment, but he had of course been the chief of the military police on Gibraltar, which was his great claim to fame.

Griff Rhys Jones15:19

He looked down his corridor one day and saw that he didn't have anybody in his office in, so they were all leaving. So he thought, gosh, I've got to get some we've got to get some new young chaps in. And the only thing that was similar to radio comedy was student review. So they went up to Edinburgh and they brought in some people from Oxford.

Presenter15:34

What programs you produce?

Griff Rhys Jones15:35

I came out and did Weekend and Frankie Howard Show and uh Alfred Marx and then uh p produced a top of the form and Brain of Britain. And I started off six months sitting there being taught how to start a stockwatch.

Presenter15:48

Tell me about record number four.

Griff Rhys Jones15:49

Record number four is Bob Dylan, which I th I don't know whether it dates from this period, but anyway, this is a simple twist of fate, which is one of his most brilliant songs. As she was walking on by the arcade,

Speaker 416:00

Uh

Griff Rhys Jones16:00

Uh

Speaker 416:01

As a light bust through a beat-up shade where he was waking up.

Speaker 416:07

She dropped the coin into the cup.

Speaker 416:11

I love a blind man at the gates, And forgot about his simple twist of fate.

Presenter16:26

Bob Dylan and Simple Twist of Fate. Can you remember, Griff, the the first time you met the cast of Not the Nine O'Clock News?

Griff Rhys Jones16:33

Ooh, now. I don't know. I think was it all quite uh strange because we none of us knew what we were getting. And a lot of Iron Users were pretty much manufactured. I think um there was also a sense, and this is really weird to think now back in this day and age, there was a sense that had happened that they've sort of felt that um

Griff Rhys Jones16:48

Monty Python had set a sort of seal on sketch shows, and there would never be any more. Or young people shows. At the time.

Griff Rhys Jones16:55

You had to be over forty to have a television show. And the idea that there was going to be a young people's television show was, I'm sure, it was calculated, but when you think of television now, which is so fantastically youth orientated, it was not the micros that sort of started the idea that that would be a big thing.

Presenter16:58

Hmm.

Presenter17:05

She's a friend.

Presenter17:08

Oh goodbye

Presenter17:11

Because there was only kind of top of the pops, which I think had succeeded.

Griff Rhys Jones17:14

Chickbox Studio

Presenter17:15

Introduced by

Griff Rhys Jones17:15

Introduced by Alan Freeman.

Presenter17:17

But you're right. And it and that was the week and so on were really satirical poems late night. They were again were for grown-ups, weren't they? There weren't any youth programmes is what we're seeing.

Griff Rhys Jones17:18

And then that

Griff Rhys Jones17:22

Late night they were again

Griff Rhys Jones17:24

Yeah.

Griff Rhys Jones17:27

Well, Northern Ireland News didn't gear itself to towards young people. It wasn't a sort of b a programme which tried to b to be about youth. In fact, we parried a youth programme in it. It was a programme that just happened to be d done by slightly younger people.

Presenter17:38

But you, interestingly, I think, were were much more the straight

Griff Rhys Jones17:41

Man in this

Presenter17:42

Uh

Griff Rhys Jones17:42

Uh

Presenter17:42

Well, you will disappoint.

Griff Rhys Jones17:42

Well, you also have a white coat. It was disappointing to me because I'd been spending my time, as I say, with my trousers round my ankles sort of falling about and uh on this thing. And then when I arrived and uh i in a sort of grotesque way, I turned out to be the least grotesque of the cast.

Griff Rhys Jones17:58

Because standing next to Mel and Rowan, suddenly I looked ordinary. In the first series I played a series of quite sm small roles. I played dentists and milkmen delivering and things like that just as a backup. And then I was promoted for the second series after I did an impersonation of Donald Sindon. Donald Sindon investigating churches or something like that. And then so and I was promoted. And I used to do it, as I say, in my in my vacation.

Presenter18:21

I was told.

Griff Rhys Jones18:21

I'm still producing Frankie Howard back at the radio. So there's going to be...

Presenter18:24

But it means you gave out the debt.

Griff Rhys Jones18:25

And in the end I gave on the table.

Griff Rhys Jones18:27

Just about the point when Not Light News came to an end. I I do remember the meeting when it came to an end. And I think probably uh Mel and myself and John would probably have been content to go on and doing a few more series, but there were other forces at work, people who had other ideas.

Presenter18:43

Well, indeed, I think the young ones then took up after that and John Lloyd famously said that he heard it being edited in the next cutting room and thought, hang on, somebody's now had a newer and fresher answer.

Griff Rhys Jones18:52

Oh yes, well certainly that was a fantastic show. Um I think there was an enormous burst of stuff then through the eighties.

Presenter19:01

But you would claim that not

Griff Rhys Jones19:01

The nine o'clock news created the moment. Well, it's it had come after a sort of fallow period for that sort of stuff. And it released a lot of new writers rather like um that was the week that was, released a lot of writers into television.

Presenter19:14

Echo number five.

Griff Rhys Jones19:14

This is a very important record for me for three reasons. The first is because it's Elvis Costello and I love him singing. Second is because it's also a George Jones song and Elvis Costello sort of introduced me to George Jones and I'm a real I'm an absolute country music nut in a funny way. So this is a way of getting two things at once. And the other reason is because it relates very much to my honeymoon, funny enough. We used to play this a lot just after I got married so it's an important song.

Speaker 419:43

I guess the reason we're not talking, there's so little left to say we haven't said

Speaker 419:53

While a million thoughts go racing through my mind I find I haven't said a word

Speaker 420:03

From the bedroom the familiar sound Of one baby's crying goes unheard

Presenter20:11

Good Year for the Roses, sung by Elvis Costello, and a strange one to have on your honeymoon because.

Griff Rhys Jones20:15

It isn't yeah, all those songs, those country songs are all about them, the things misery of things going wrong, but they just in particular they always also

Presenter20:24

But yours hasn't gone round.

Griff Rhys Jones20:25

No, in fact, I am very happily married for twenty years.

Presenter20:28

Let me talk, let me ask you about the the nature of comedy, which sounds a bit grand, but it just seems to me put at its simplest. If you say I am a comedian. That's a pretty dangerous thing to say. Or I am a comic actor. I don't I'm not differentiating between the two.'Cause what you're saying is I will make people laugh. Unlike saying I am an actor, it'll be a matter of an opinion whether you're a good or bad actor, but it's a matter of fact whether you make people laugh. Yes, that sometimes it can be quite that can be quite

Griff Rhys Jones20:49

Okay, but it's

Griff Rhys Jones20:54

Quite dangerous in a funny way because some people sometimes say to you, Cool, you could just go on and walk on the stage and everybody starts laughing and that's unfortunately, alas, it's not the case.

Presenter21:02

But how do you make contact with that laughter, as it were? I mean, h how do you do it i is a simple question. It it it seems to me that uh you can't necessarily train for it and you haven't had any formal training. Is there a kind of instinct? I've I've I've heard you talk before now about there being a telepathy between you and I.

Griff Rhys Jones21:18

Oh, I think if you I mean uh every being successful is a fantastic kick and being unsuccessful is horrible. I don't know which is why people call it dying. But all comedians at some point die and they love to talk about it. Talk with Les Dawson, you know people love to sit and talk about the dreadful time I was doing it. I remember I was in America and I had to do the piano bit, it was just and they didn't know who I was. But if it does work and especially for some reason if somehow you know where you're going and at the time what people call timing is just time is knowing that somehow you're up on a raft and the audience are holding you up, you're surfing if you like on this wave and the very fact that they're up there gives you all the time in the world to to go on. I mean there was a there was a final act of Le Dando, uh An Absolute Turkey which was just it was just the way it was written, constructed by Faido, to come on and know that you were there in it and almost every twitch or movement or feeling that you ha that you were able to display to the audience would take them on to a new level of laughing because Faido had spent uh an hour and a half building to this fantastic mom.

Presenter22:22

So yes, it's in the writing, but it is also obviously in the doing. And it it seems to me

Griff Rhys Jones22:26

Yeah.

Presenter22:28

As you say, that little twitch, that little raise of an eyebrow, can can if you're in touch with your if you're on this raft, to continue your analogy, then you can manipulate the audience, you can almost make them laugh, can't you, once you're up there?

Griff Rhys Jones22:33

Anti-

Griff Rhys Jones22:38

I think a comedian spends an enormous amount of time onstage listening to the audience.

Griff Rhys Jones22:43

It's very strange to come off, as I did with an actor once, off stage after after a scene, and I said, I'm not sure it's going as well as it used to and he said, Oh, no, I don't think so, I think they love it And I thought

Griff Rhys Jones22:55

You strange man You've been out there and not even noticed. The sort of warmth of the audience has evaporated.

Griff Rhys Jones23:02

Record number six. Record number six is Cowboy Junkies, another good combination because it's a Lou Reed song, Brilliantly Done.

Speaker 423:13

Money's a dream.

Speaker 423:18

Anyone has ever played a pup?

Speaker 423:24

Anyone is ever

Speaker 423:30

And anyone is ever spitted about.

Speaker 423:36

Uh

Presenter23:36

Sweet.

Presenter23:39

Cowboy Junkies and Sweet Jane. Who do you admire, Griff, among modern-day comedians?

Griff Rhys Jones23:46

Uh well funny enough I've got involved with the Hackney Empire.

Griff Rhys Jones23:49

And I'm there as a sort of fundraiser, you know, a lot. And we had a series of benefits. Alan Davis did one, Roy Bremner, Junior Clary, and uh they were supported by comedians from the circuit.

Griff Rhys Jones24:02

And they were fantastic. The

Griff Rhys Jones24:06

Interesting thing is, though, that I don't think they necessarily all

Griff Rhys Jones24:10

have roles to play on television. That's a weird thing because

Speaker 424:13

Why did you say?

Griff Rhys Jones24:13

Well, because television is essentially a dramatic medium. Where comedians have sc have scored is i on panel games like um Have I Got News for You or They Think It's All Over or Jonathan Ross, you know, the television one. They they sit there and they have a great role to play, which is being funny and being comedians or or perhaps there's been a bit of work behind the scenes before they come on. But I hope so, yes, and so so there should be.

Presenter24:31

Spontaneously funny.

Presenter24:39

So they're still going to make it webinar.

Griff Rhys Jones24:40

Number

Presenter24:40

Yeah.

Griff Rhys Jones24:40

But the process that makes for great television is fictional in one way or another. Like The League of Gentlemen or Monty Python or Black Adder or Absolutely Fair, The Fast Show. These shows are essentially made by writer performers who write in forms of fiction because on television we like to watch things happening.

Presenter24:52

The function

Griff Rhys Jones25:02

If we don't just want to watch on television somebody talking to us for half an hour, it's difficult. You know, don't straighten it.

Presenter25:07

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Griff Rhys Jones25:08

Well, Ben does it, but I don't think it'll ever be a classic television show which goes down in the history of classic television shows. Frazier or something goes down as a thing which survives forever and ever, really, rather like Bilco survives forever and ever. People doing stand-up monologues, unfortunately, don't. The place to go and see them is to go to the Hackney Empire and see them there. That's an extraordinary experience.

Presenter25:27

Extraordinary experience. Television is a writer's medium, and therefore, what happens really when you

Griff Rhys Jones25:30

Yeah.

Presenter25:35

stop doing it. It seems to me that maybe you've been stereotyped as being half of a double act with Mel. Oh, yes. I mean, are you allowed to live by yourself, as it were, on the television? You're not, are you?

Griff Rhys Jones25:46

I'm not, are you? I don't know. Maybe I will be. I don't know. I mean, I think we had 20 years, and that's a fair old whack. I mean, it will be a rarity if we get back. I mean, I'm going to get back and do television. I'm writing stuff at the moment.

Presenter25:57

So do you think that Mel and you is that now over? No, I don't think so, no more.

Griff Rhys Jones26:02

Mel's making films at the moment, which t takes up a lot of his time, but I don't think it is overnight. We're not a double actor that lives on stage and therefore needs to you know goes off and does stage performance.

Presenter26:12

We did do it on six. Oh, we did tour. We did a lot on tours, yes, but.

Griff Rhys Jones26:13

Oh, we've done we did a lot of tours, yes, but uh

Presenter26:16

It's play down now.

Griff Rhys Jones26:16

How is it?

Presenter26:21

Well, I think that's the point, really. And I mean, I mentioned, and it's frightfully disgusting of me, that you made a lot of money out of selling your production company. I wonder if when you do become

Presenter26:31

I think rich is the word really, isn't it? I wonder if it takes the edge off it or takes the hunger off it.

Griff Rhys Jones26:32

Really?

Griff Rhys Jones26:35

Actually, what it's done for me is it's made me want to do specifically what I want to do. And I don't mean by difficult, because the programs I'm doing at the moment.

Griff Rhys Jones26:44

The show I do on radio 2 The Griffree's Jones Show and Do Go On. Are there any

Presenter26:47

Which was Radio Four, which is kind of parody of Start the Week, that's the first time.

Griff Rhys Jones26:47

This was Radio Four, which is kind of

Griff Rhys Jones26:50

Yes, and that's with Graham Garden, and that's fantastically good fun to do as well. What I've been asked to do in television is not what I want to do, and so I'm in a position where, probably fatally for my television career, I can say, No, I don't want to do it.

Presenter27:06

Record number seven.

Griff Rhys Jones27:06

We played a competition once about things that you could throw away and do without if the world went in a great big fireball. And you would throw an awful lot away, but I'm afraid you can't throw Puccini away. It's a difficult choice, but it it has to be Madam Butterfly. And this is just a little trio. It just shows the ability, I think, of Puccini to build an emotional moment out of a tiny start. So you feel as if you've heard about six great songs in about fifty seconds.

Speaker 427:43

Oh the

Speaker 428:03

Let's all speak.

Speaker 428:13

This is all

Presenter28:37

Juan Pons as the US Consul, Teresa Berganza as Suzuki, and Jose Carreras as Pinkerton singing the trio from Act Three of Puccini's Madam Butterfly, with the Philemonia Orchestra conducted by Giuseppe Sinopoli. So a lost boy on an island is all quite fitting, really, or will you miss all those creature comforts you put in?

Griff Rhys Jones28:55

Ooh, do you know, I don't know, because I'd be the first to say, Oh, no, I'd love being on a desert line, I'd want to be Robinson Crusoe, and I in fact in fact there's nothing I like better than going out and beating down a load of brambles with a stick. Uh but on the other

Griff Rhys Jones29:08

I'm also bizarrely quite social, so I w I would like to be on the desert island probably, say, about three or four days a week, and in central London the rest of the week.

Presenter29:16

And

Presenter29:20

But you're into gardening. I mean, and as you say, you you're good at beating the brown. You've got a tractor, I think, or something.

Griff Rhys Jones29:25

We will

Presenter29:25

Or your own digger.

Griff Rhys Jones29:26

Your own tipper trunk? No I have it's not my own digger, but I have I have to admit that I have hired a digger on occasions and learnt to d to dig things, and that's enormously sati. I was I've been out there once I hired this digger. My wife finally had to come in and drag me out of the garden with the headlights on, driving around in the middle of the night, digging this digging these ditches.

Presenter29:45

But if you sat on the beach on this island, which you will be on seven days a week, I promise you, not three or four, what what conclusions would you come to about your life? I mean, you obviously you you you agree you've had your fair share of lucky breaks, but would you look back on and think I should have done that, I should have or I should have been a history don? Or what would you what would you think of

Griff Rhys Jones29:48

If you're not

Griff Rhys Jones30:02

Last.

Griff Rhys Jones30:03

No, I probably look back and think, well, that was I I had a a lot of good funding that I've I've got more to do.

Presenter30:11

Have you?

Griff Rhys Jones30:12

Hmm.

Griff Rhys Jones30:13

No, not of the of the same ilk i in that world, performing and things, but I and I want to do it.

Presenter30:21

Last record.

Griff Rhys Jones30:22

Well, the last record goes right the way back to the beginning, I suppose. This is the this is the record which I remember my brother had, my older brother, and coming home from school, and there was a sort of um frissant about listening to this and thinking

Griff Rhys Jones30:36

Oh gosh, this is loud and noisy and very exciting and very

Griff Rhys Jones30:42

Much what?

Griff Rhys Jones30:44

Rock was about, as opposed to sort of pop. It was about bands playing very, very loud with electric guitars in big empty halls, and Janice Joplin singing Peace of my Heart and it would be for getting that stick and hitting the brambles down.

Speaker 431:04

Ain't no good enough

Speaker 431:06

But I'm gonna show you, baby that I'm

Speaker 431:10

Can't be tough.

Speaker 431:12

Watch your tip

Speaker 431:14

Really?

Presenter31:27

Janice Joplin with Big Brother and the Holding Company and Peace in My Heart. I'll take you back a bit, Griffin. If you could only take one of those eight records, which one would you take?

Griff Rhys Jones31:32

Hmm.

Griff Rhys Jones31:37

La Traviata, if if it was only one, because I think one would continue to listen to it and find more and more and more and more in it. So I'm only being practical there.

Presenter31:47

What about your b

Griff Rhys Jones31:47

Pickwick Papers. Because Pickwick Papers is the most joyous and I need to be lifted.

Presenter31:53

And what about your luxury? And this cannot be practical. This has got to be something. It can't be a truck.

Griff Rhys Jones31:56

It can't be a tractor.

Presenter31:58

No, certainly not.

Griff Rhys Jones31:58

In sound. Yeah.

Presenter32:00

Well, only if you n not if you're going to use it. It can't be a tractor.

Griff Rhys Jones32:03

Oh, okay.

Presenter32:04

No

Griff Rhys Jones32:04

No. It can't be a newspaper.

Presenter32:06

Oh, yes, why not?

Griff Rhys Jones32:06

Oh, a newspaper daily newspaper would would be fine, because then you could that would take up most of the morning just getting through that and doing the crosswork.

Presenter32:09

You crawl.

Presenter32:11

I'm doing the crosswork.

Griff Rhys Jones32:14

I would give him how yes a daily newspaper would be.

Presenter32:15

Yeah.

Presenter32:16

B

Presenter32:18

My luxury.

Presenter32:19

Referees, James, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs. Thank you for having me.

Speaker 332:31

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