Cameron Mackintosh

Speaker 20:00

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.

Presenter0:30

My castaway this week is an impresario. He's a one-man history of the British musical over the last twenty years. Cats, Les Miserable, Miss Saigon, Phantom of the Opera. They're all his productions. Stage-struck from the age of seven when he first saw the musical Salad Days, he put on his first show when he was twenty-three. It left him forty thousand pounds in debt. He's learned a thing or two since then. These days he shows not only Pack'em in the West End, but in Buenos Aires, Hong Kong and Broadway too. Success has brought both wealth and contentment. I've done it, he says. I recognize how lucky I am. I have no urge, no need to do it again. He is Sir Cameron Mackintosh. If you weren't quite so successful, I suppose, Cameron, one would say that was complacent. I can't really think the fire has gone out of your belly for the musical, has it?

Cameron Mackintosh1:17

Oh, far from it. In fact, I'm busier now than I have been for ages. I'm just having to put on my shows all the way round the world. No, I mean, I've always known that I was lucky. I mean, I I thought it was quite normal for a ten-year-old to know exactly what they were going to do when they grew up. By the time I was in my mid-twenties, I realized that very few people knew what they wanted to do. And luckily, I was able to do it all my life and have been and haven't had to grow up completely on the way.

Presenter1:44

Absolutely. Have these huge numbers of hits. So now you're 55. I mean, what are you saying that you don't want to do another new musical? That's all I'm doing.

Cameron Mackintosh1:44

Yeah.

Cameron Mackintosh1:50

That's all I'm doing. I'm not doing any new musicals for the foreseeable future.

Presenter1:54

But I can't believe, you know, if if the Andrew Lloyd Weber of the 21st Century walked through the door with a score and a good story, that you wouldn't want it.

Cameron Mackintosh2:03

My personal belief is that actually what the Andrew Lloyd Rubber of the 21st Century should do is find the Cameron Macintosh of the 21st Century.

Presenter2:09

But let me g let me really test this. What if somebody walks through the door and says, Okay, there's been a lot of wrangling over this for years now, but you can have Mary Poppins? Well, I've got

Cameron Mackintosh2:20

Mary Poppins looks like

Presenter2:21

Oh no, but it sits in the drawer. You can't do it. That's what I say. All the problems, fellows.

Cameron Mackintosh2:22

But it's got to be a meeting of the minds between Disney, who owned this wonderful film, and the P.L. Travers Estate, who P.L. Travers didn't particularly like the film, and she wanted something nearer the books. And my belief has always been that between the two there is a wonderful, magical, new musical to do. And you would do that. That's exactly how I do it. Of course I would. But I didn't I said new projects. I've had these rights for ten years.

Presenter2:43

And you would do that. That's exactly how I do it.

Presenter2:49

Hi, IT. Come on, tell me your first record on this desert isle.

Cameron Mackintosh2:54

Salad Days. Oh, well, what would have happened to my life if Salad Days hadn't been written, I don't know. It was extraordinary that, you know, that that show, which I didn't really want to go and see when I was first dragged by my aunt at the age of seven, and I was so captivated by the story of a magic piano that made all London dance, that I wanted to go back on my eighth birthday, which I did. And my mother came with me, and at the end of the show, I marched down the aisle because I discovered that the composer, Julian Slade, was sitting in the pit. And I introduced myself, and he rather taken aback, but was very nice. Instead of just brushing me off with an autograph, he took me backstage onto the stage and showed me how the actors mimed on Minnie the Magic Piano all the songs that he actually played in the pit. And he showed me how the flying saucer came in on wires and how the fences moved across the stage and where the scenery was kept. And I went, hmm, yes, this is what I'll do when I grow up.

Speaker 33:52

What's happening? I can't sit still, I stand, I walk against my will. What's happening? What can this be? My feet have got control of me. I can't control my legs and feet. They misbehave on every beat. I'm not so sure that I approve. Is this the seemly way to move? I've lost command and swept away. The feelings on but wrong again. The music took me by surprise. I hadn't time to realise what's happening.

Cameron Mackintosh4:01

Damn it.

Cameron Mackintosh4:07

I

Speaker 34:21

What's happening? What's happening?

Presenter4:22

Eleanor Drew as Jane and John Warner as Timothy singing Oh, Look at Me from the original production of Saladays and that was recorded in 1954.

Cameron Mackintosh4:30

And that's how I used to dance around my living room, tapping my toes.

Presenter4:33

I can see now.

Cameron Mackintosh4:34

See

Presenter4:35

But when you when you look back to that, Dan, you were putting on plays at home, weren't you? Everybody knew that's what you wanted to do. What's so you were writing and performing at home, weren't you?

Cameron Mackintosh4:39

Yeah.

Cameron Mackintosh4:43

I was writing bismally awful plays for the puppets that my brothers Robert and Nicky were cajoled into working with me, but we all got on like a house on fire.

Presenter4:52

But were you playing anything, can you?

Cameron Mackintosh4:53

No, no, I can't play. My brother, Robert, is brilliant. At me I can barely hum along. I'm the kind that gets nudged in church.

Presenter5:00

So you've never really wanted to perform, you never wanted to compose, you never wanted to you always did just want to be.

Cameron Mackintosh5:06

I just wanted to be a producer. And in fact, the only time I did perform was in Lana Bartz Oliver. It was my second job as an assistant stage manager on the national touring company back in, I think, 65 it was. And it turned out that one of the two ASMs had to be on stage and move things around and join in the chorus numbers. And I was slightly less tone deaf than the other ASMs, so I got the job. And I had a whale of a time overacting terribly and realizing that indeed being a producer was a much better idea for me than being a d actor.

Presenter5:37

Because essentially, of course, being a producer is being very bossy. Yes? Would you confess to that?

Cameron Mackintosh5:42

Um, I don't know.

Cameron Mackintosh5:43

Of course it is.

Presenter5:45

There's a wonderful spoof that that Andrew Lloyd Webber and Stephen Sondheim did, send in the clowns about you, which always began, isn't he rich? And halfway through it goes, always interfering. You know, I that that's exactly what your reputation is.

Cameron Mackintosh5:57

Exactly. It's why I think I like cooking, you see, because it's the same thing. You get all the ingredients, if it's the way you put them together. But the important thing is not to buy pedigree dogs and bark yourself, because I mean, I've always worked with the best talents, I've been very lucky, and you've got to get the best out of them. I always believe that the authors are the ones that have the inspiration. They're inspired, and then you have to make sure that they are inspired even more to make the work even better.

Presenter6:24

I got number two.

Cameron Mackintosh6:26

Ah, well, my wonderful dad, who was known in the family as Ian Mackintosh and known in the profession and most of the bars in the West End of London, as Spike Mackintosh, and he was a marvellous jazz trumpeter. In fact, Louis Armstrong gave him one of his trumpets because he did he was the nearest sounding to Louis of the sort of white black jazzers of the forties and fifties in England. He of course was at the same time trying to run the family business, the timber business, and he realized that it wasn't possible to carry these two completely polarized careers going on. And so he reluctantly gave up playing the trumpet, except at the weekends. And so I think because he gave up what he loved the best is why he encouraged Robert, Nikki and I to do anything that we wanted and we never had a problem in the family about going into show business.

Presenter8:17

High time, played by my castaway's father, Spike Mackintosh, and his All-Stars. So your father, Cameron, was a a wild jasmine at heart, and he was Scottish. I mean, one can see all of his input into you. What about your mother? What's she

Cameron Mackintosh8:24

He

Cameron Mackintosh8:28

Yeah.

Cameron Mackintosh8:30

My mother is the other half, and I think the other r reason that I've always been very practical in my life. My mother comes was from Malta, and she's Italian and Spanish and a little French. And she was she survived incredibly. It's quite difficult to get the stories out of her because she was there during the incredible bombing for two years of Malta and survived the most incredible hardships with her family as the blitzkrieg happened. And it's where she learnt to cook out of any scraps. And I always make the terrible joke about she used to make ratatouille out of real rats in order to feed the family. And of course she used to she didn't say she quite ate rats, but they certainly ate cats out there. It was the only way to survive. And she always used to make the family budget stretched far beyond any realms of possibility. Whereas my father would spend it down the pub.

Presenter9:15

Yeah.

Presenter9:17

So she's the practical one, as you said. And it seems to me that, because I know you went off to the central school of speech and drama, didn't you?

Cameron Mackintosh9:19

And it seems

Cameron Mackintosh9:22

Smash and drop.

Presenter9:23

You the reason you didn't like and you didn't last very long there is that there was nothing practical about it. It was a bit academic it was sort of more Sophocles than Binky Beaumont.

Cameron Mackintosh9:32

It was. I mean, you know, I was on a stage management course and I wanted to learn about the theatre because I'd only been an amateur at that point and I wanted to get some professional experience. But after the year and I worked out how to run a show backstage, the idea of worrying about what Euripides thought just didn't cross my mind. So I actually wanted to get into the West End, which is why I just tramped the streets until I got a stagehand job at Drury Lane. Well, yes, and then as.

Presenter9:58

Well, yes, and then as you say, you went uh out with Oliver on tour, I think, and did in the chorus as well.

Cameron Mackintosh10:01

Yeah.

Presenter10:03

Did you really think I suppose one does really when one's that young and innocent that it was just a straightforward line? All you had to do was get a bit of experience and I mean you could have a kind of game plan that in three and a half years you'd be putting on show, you'd be a producer.

Cameron Mackintosh10:13

I I'm afraid it's as arrogant as that. I I actually thought it I'd do it in five years, and I managed to do it in about two and a half or three.

Presenter10:24

Record number three.

Cameron Mackintosh10:25

Record number three. It's Elgar, Cocaine Overture in London Town. I love Elgar. I just think his music is one of the great British composers. It's full of theatre, it's full of great melody, it's full of exciting bombast. In fact, it's like one of my shows, and I'm sure if I was around in that time, I'd have tried to get him to write a few.

Presenter11:47

Part of Elgar's cockane overture in London town, played by the Rolf Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Sir Thomas Beacham. Um I said, Cameron, that you had this forty thousand pound disaster with Anything Goes when you were twenty three, but apparently you had some before that, anyway.

Cameron Mackintosh11:59

Yes, I'd managed not to lose forty thousand pounds before that. In fact, my first show was the ironically named Reluctant Debutante because I wasn't, which I did at Henley on Thames with a couple of other producers in nineteen sixty seven.

Presenter12:11

So you're 21. Yes, I was 21. Anything goes burnt your fingers. A lot.

Cameron Mackintosh12:12

Yes, I was 21.

Cameron Mackintosh12:16

I'm not.

Cameron Mackintosh12:18

And it taught me a very good lesson, too. Sixteen great Cull Porter songs and a ropey book don't make a great musical. The book is the key.

Presenter12:20

Yeah.

Presenter12:25

Yeah.

Cameron Mackintosh12:27

to What Makes the Musical Theatre Work?

Presenter12:29

The narrative The Big Story.

Cameron Mackintosh12:30

The narrative. The story of it. Verdi always used to say, What was the secret of a great opera, a great libretto? he used to say.

Presenter12:36

But then you have shows like Crazy For You and Forty Second Street, which are these kind of shows.

Cameron Mackintosh12:40

Yes, but they're re they're retro shows. They're not actually the cornerstones of what make the musical theatre go. I mean, musical m j people generally regard Showboat back in 1927 as the first great musical play. One of the reasons Rogers and Hammerstein are done again and again and again is that they're always the the best ones are always based on wonderful dramatic stories.

Presenter13:01

Mm people

Cameron Mackintosh13:01

Good stories.

Presenter13:02

People have got to want to know what happens next.

Cameron Mackintosh13:03

What happens next? And all the shows that I've enjoyed doing most have come from really strong material, Dickens, Hugo, T S Eliot. Very rarely do I do a show which doesn't have a classic base.

Presenter13:16

But one of those early ones was Side by Side by Sondheim, which confounds everything you've just been saying about narrative, because that was actually a retrospective of Sondheim tune songs.

Cameron Mackintosh13:25

No, no, you have missed the point of why it works. The reason Side-by-Side works so well, and I discover this in retrospect, is that each of those brilliant Sondim songs are a little play in themselves. They're not just a pile of tunes from shows that are thrown together in a nice order. The reason it was such a success with the general public, in fact the first Sondheim general public success in England, was that people got into the characters of the songs that Sondime had written without being overburdened by rather heavy books.

Presenter13:27

Right.

Presenter13:57

The interesting thing about that, of course, is that it was total luck'cause you bought it sight unseen, didn't you?

Cameron Mackintosh14:02

It's probably the cleverest thing I ever did.

Presenter14:05

Tell me about record number folding, because this is Santa.

Cameron Mackintosh14:08

Another show I did with Stephen was of course putting it together. We didn't do anything f with it for two or three years, and then we decided to do it off Broadway. We had a marvellous day just dreaming of who we'd love to be in it.

Cameron Mackintosh14:22

And I can't remember which one of us said, Oh, Julianders would be fantastic and I said, Well, why don't I ask her? And I asked her, and I asked her, and I asked her.

Cameron Mackintosh14:30

And thank God she said yes.

Speaker 314:34

Listen everybody, look, I don't know what you're waiting for. A wedding, what's a wedding? It's a prehistoric ritual where everybody promises fidelity forever, which is maybe the most horrifying word I ever heard, and which is followed by a honeymoon where suddenly he'll realize he's settled with a nut and want to kill me, which he should. Thanks a bunch, but I'm not getting married. Go have lunch, cause I'm not getting married. You've been grand, but I'm not getting married. Don't just stand there, I'm not getting married. And don't tell Paul, but I'm not getting married today. Go, catch, go, why is nobody listening? Goodbye, go and cry at another s ⁇.

Presenter15:02

Terrific, isn't it? Julie Andrews, solo version of Sometimes Getting Married Today, performed for for the Broadway premiere of Putting It Together.

Speaker 315:02

Uh

Presenter15:09

That of course was uh nineteen ninety three.

Presenter15:12

Thirteen years it was before that that the big one happened for you, which was cats, and that was the one that was going to make you a millionaire, and uh

Presenter15:20

I presume you need never have worked again after that, really.

Cameron Mackintosh15:23

Well, what Katz first did was pay off all the debts that I'd tried to keep away from the bank manager for the previous twenty years. But not only did it pay off my debts, but it gave me my creative independence. That was the thing I realized it was the best. From that point on, I didn't have to have another show in order to keep the turnover going. I could actually just do the shows I wanted. And that is a privilege which very few people are blessed with.

Speaker 215:43

Yeah.

Presenter15:43

I could

Presenter15:49

It's completely liberating, obviously.

Cameron Mackintosh15:51

Yeah.

Presenter15:52

But that show of course has been seen all over the world. I don't know how many people must have seen it by now, but fifty million more.

Cameron Mackintosh15:58

Millions and millions of people who I loved.

Presenter15:58

Yeah.

Presenter15:59

Also I lost gross to two billion.

Cameron Mackintosh16:02

So I'm told

Presenter16:03

More by now. Anyway, that and all of the others, Phantom, Miss Saigon, are seen all over the world. Now

Presenter16:10

They're kind of franchised in a sense, aren't they? But are they the same when they're seen in other parts of the world?

Cameron Mackintosh16:15

No, it depends on the show. The only show of of the great four, as it were, that has not yet been seen in a different version is Phantom of the Opera. Cats from a very early age, where it was appropriate, was done in different versions. I mean, I remember we went to see one in Hungary, where it was done set in the loft of a of an old opera house.

Presenter16:35

And somewhere there's a Miss Saigon that plays with a real helicopter, isn't there?

Cameron Mackintosh16:39

Again, that was Budapest. Budapest is the forefront of musical theater. Terrifying. Yes, they did it in a stadium of about eight or nine thousand people. And they they had this fantastic cast, a huge orchestra.

Speaker 216:52

You drop

Cameron Mackintosh16:53

And it was completely different. And I remember I was in the south of France at the time, and I said, Look, it's a bit of a tight connection to get there on the only plane I can get. And they said, Well, don't worry, we'll send a helicopter for you. And I said, Oh, that's very, very kind. And yes, they said, We've got one in the show. And I said, No, no, the one in the show doesn't actually fly. They said, This one does. And I remember myself and my assistant, Jenny, got into this flying petrol tank on the Budapest airport and flew the 45 minutes to this place. And then we came over this amazing old medieval town with this huge cathedral where the stage was put in the front. And we went, Oh, that's lovely, isn't that lovely? And then we saw this postage stamp down the side of this cliff-like cathedral, and we landed in it. And when the helicopter took off,

Speaker 217:39

Bandit it in.

Cameron Mackintosh17:42

It was literally eighteen inches either side of the blade as the actors climbed into it and it then hovered over the audience.

Cameron Mackintosh17:48

I can tell you I had several changes of pants when I got home.

Presenter17:50

Uh

Presenter17:52

Fine. But when they're when all these shows, your shows, which is what you're now doing as you say, are put on all around the world, how do you maintain quality control?

Cameron Mackintosh18:00

Well, if the shows are reproductions of my original London shows, then I have my own teams of people to do it. But over half the productions, or maybe two-thirds of the productions of Les Miserables, are done in a completely different way. I mean, I want the best equivalent of the local directors and designers, the Trevor Nunns and the John Napiers, to do it. And they will then send me the designs, and I will look at them. And if I feel that they have the right sensibility, i.e. as different to ours, but at the same time they capture the show and reinvent it, which is what excites me, then I say go ahead with it. And I approve only by videos and listening to recordings, the key principal casting of all the shows around the world.

Presenter18:43

Tell me about your next record, number five.

Cameron Mackintosh18:45

Les Miserables, I mean an extraordinary show for me. This was a show brought to me by a Hungarian director with the Fren original French concept album that they had done back in nineteen eighty. And he said to me, If anyone is mad enough to have done T S Eliot's poems for cats, might take on Les Meserabes.

Speaker 319:04

Day before the snow and go at the barricade of free shall

Speaker 319:15

Do I stand to I just?

Speaker 319:22

Take a place with

Presenter19:34

Monday Moore from Limizarab. Sangbaan all-star cast assembled for its tenth anniversary, and now it's been running sixteen years, s since 85. Um it's very interesting, isn't it, that it was panned by the critics in the beginning.

Cameron Mackintosh19:46

Yes, it wasn't completely pa I mean, the it was the initial reviews, the f the overnight reviews and I remember I assembled for my usual post opening lunch and we were all extremely gloomy because the night before you had seen the most extraordinary

Cameron Mackintosh20:01

happening in a theater. I mean people were completely coming out on air and you couldn't reconcile the two things that one was reading in the paper. And I thought, well I'll get the worst of it out of the way and I rang the box office just before lunch and they said to me, God, how did you finally get through? I said well they did make a few attempts and they said this has been the busiest morning in the history of the bargain. We'd sold five thousand tickets before.

Presenter20:21

Exactly, and that's what's interesting, isn't it? That that if something's good enough, it will triumph over the critics.

Cameron Mackintosh20:25

Not often. It sometimes doesn't in its own time. I mean, people forget that Porgy and Best failed when it first went on Broadway. West Side Story got good but respectful reviews. It only ran fifteen months and was thought too avant garde at that time for the general public.

Presenter20:39

What about Martin Guerre, which um flopped really? I mean, a tough word flopped. And it's it's it is amazing because it was out of the same stable. There's Les Miserable and Miss Saigon, it was Boubild and Schoenberg and so on. It should have been a huge success.

Cameron Mackintosh20:53

Yes, I've got a feeling sev well there were several things that didn't work for that at the time. One is I think that kind of musical was already we'd had too many of them.

Presenter21:02

What is that kind of musical?

Cameron Mackintosh21:04

An operatic sung through dramatic musical. I think it had been more than ten years since we'd started out with the musicals of the eighties and of Les Meserab at that point. And also the idea of the show, which I still think is a a wonderful idea,

Cameron Mackintosh21:19

Was very difficult. It's a show about the seat. The whole story, and it's a true story, which is again unusual for a musical, is about the seat.

Presenter21:26

Did you spot it coming? Did you, as you watch the rest of the day? You never do.

Cameron Mackintosh21:29

Watch the weeks discussing. I knew it was having difficulty coalescing, absolutely. And the reason we kept on with it was because I wanted to give them the opportunity to write the show that they wanted to write. And their problem was they didn't know how to write it early enough on. But I think it was an interesting point of view from the public's point of view. Up until Martin Guerre, they assumed that these big hits came down the pike like a sausage machine. And they don't. And I think the one good thing about Martin Guerre for the whole industry was to show that actually that is not the norm. What is abnormal is to have hits like Cats, Le Miserab, Saigon and Phantom.

Speaker 221:41

And they

Presenter22:06

Positive thinking.

Cameron Mackintosh22:07

No, it's true.

Presenter22:08

You're a bottle half full, man.

Cameron Mackintosh22:10

But look at the moment. At the moment what the theatre is going through everywhere is recycled old material. Great revivals, I am responsible for some of them. But even the new musicals, like Wonderful Mamma Mia, are based on material written 25 years ago.

Speaker 222:17

Yeah.

Presenter22:17

Uh

Speaker 222:17

Uh

Presenter22:25

I want to ask you about that. Let's just pause for your sixth record, and I want to talk about that. It's very interesting.

Cameron Mackintosh22:32

Well, my sixth record is the Marvellous Raw National Theatre production by Trevor Nunn and Susan Strowman of Rogers and Hammerstein's Great Oklahoma.

Speaker 322:43

There's a bright golden haze on the meadow. There's a bright golden haze on the meadow. The corn is as high as a elephant sigh. And it looks like it's climbing clear up to the sky. Oh, what a beautiful morning. Oh, what a.

Presenter23:12

Uh

Speaker 323:12

Uh

Presenter23:13

Hugh Jackman as Curly singing Oh What a Beautiful Morning in the National Theatre Production of Oklahoma.

Presenter23:19

So come and tell me is it then dull of us we the public, I mean, the musical theatre going public to only want regurgitations, revivals, Oklahoma, my fair lady, why don't we want anything fresh and new and different?

Cameron Mackintosh23:33

I don't think it's dull. I think it's something that we go through. I think it's a cycle that theatre has gone through on a regular basis. I mean, in the twenties there was a whole period of going back to see the old operettas. Then you got the sort of bright young thing of the thirties and the crash came. And then there was another area of seeing old shows. And then you went into a new period with Oklahoma. And at the end of the golden era of the American musical, which is thought to be 1965 with Fiddler on the Roof, then other than the odd success, an oddball show like Chorus Line, it didn't really get him to gear until the end of the 70s with Andrew and well, with Andrew and Tim first, with

Presenter24:08

Yeah.

Presenter24:11

With Evita.

Cameron Mackintosh24:12

A Vita and then shortly followed us by Andrew and myself and everyone else in the eighties.

Presenter24:12

Hmm.

Presenter24:17

So, what do you say now that we're in another dip at this point?

Cameron Mackintosh24:20

I think so. I think for the last two or three years we're at the end of a creative cycle where people in their thirties are going for it over the next twenty years. And a creative cycle of being innovative is usually fifteen to twenty years. It doesn't mean that any of us have lost our marbles or can't do it. It means that another wave of people are going to come forward.

Presenter24:40

You don't think it's got anything to do with the fact that, I mean, we all know about the international situation, that somehow we have just lost that desire to be.

Presenter24:47

Expansive and be liberal. You know, we're hunkering down. I think we're going to be able to do that. We want something more intimate.

Cameron Mackintosh24:51

I think that is nothing to do with the current situation. It's to do with possibly the end of the 20th century. If you look back at the history of the end of the first millennium, there was a great change that went on and people go, well, yes, they are excited about going forward, but they don't want to lose what they've got. So I think all of these shows, which have been in production for four or five years, you know, they've all come together and shows are often a catalyst for the time. I remember saying to Alain Babiel and Claude Michel Schmenberg in 1985 that how extraordinary it was that Les Miserables in the theatre and Platoon in the cinema about the Vietnam War, when Vietnam War films were a taboo, were both the popular hits of that year. And both of them had been drafted in Paris, I think, in 1978. They'd both been written there. And why, from a time that it was written, that they both landed in the world in the same year. It's funny, I think artists are catalysts for what's in the air.

Presenter25:49

Pull number seven.

Cameron Mackintosh25:51

The musical Oliver has been part of my life since I first queued at the wonderful price, I think it was sixpence gallery or something like that at the at the new theatre in London in St Martin's Lane and I saw Lionel Bart's extraordinary musical. And recently I put together an amazing team to do a great revival. The best thing about that production of Oliver was that it brought Lionel Bart back after a number of years where he'd basically drunk away most of his inheritance and had been forgotten for being

Cameron Mackintosh26:33

A genius. And what I loved about him all through those years, because I did know him a bit, was he was never bitter.

Cameron Mackintosh26:40

And he was a great person to know, and his music would go on forever.

Speaker 326:46

You see, Oliver, in this life one thing counts In the bank, large amounts I'm afraid these don't grow on trees.

Speaker 326:57

You've got a bigger pocket or two.

Speaker 327:00

Got to pick a pocket or two, boys!

Speaker 327:03

You've got to pick a pocket or two.

Speaker 327:07

Lord, your mouth don't grow on treats. You've got to pick a pocket or two. Let's show Oliver how it's done, shall we, my dears?

Presenter27:16

Jonathan Bryce is Fagin, singing You've Gott Pick a Pocket or Two from Lionel Bart's Oliver. There's only one thing it seems to me going for Cameron McIntosh on a desert island, and that is that he can cook. How good are you? I

Cameron Mackintosh27:27

Pretty good.

Presenter27:28

Are you?

Cameron Mackintosh27:29

But I'm a rascal.

Presenter27:29

I can.

Cameron Mackintosh27:32

I can. When I was a stagehand at Drury Lane, I used to earn £7 as a cleaner in the morning and £7 in the evening on the stage. And I used to be able to walk backwards and forwards to Half Moon Street, where I used to in those days you could actually buy things in Shepherd's Market that you could eat on. And there were butchers and fishmongers and things like that. And I used to manage to live on £1.50 and two Belling rings, cooking rings, in my flat next door. So you're right.

Presenter27:59

So you're all right with a clam and a bit of seaweed and coconut.

Cameron Mackintosh28:01

I can more or less you just throw me down and I will be able to I will be able to cook.

Presenter28:05

Ready, steady camera.

Cameron Mackintosh28:06

Yeah.

Presenter28:07

Um but otherwise it's the final curtain for you, isn't it? Because low boredom threshold. I mean you're just going to get out of your mind.

Cameron Mackintosh28:12

Well, except that I you know I've had this wonderful place I've been going all my life in Scotland, which is like a desert island. It's actually not an island, but it is beautiful. I love the solitude. I mean, I'm not sure how long I'd like the solitude for or how quickly I would be able to get all the animals into a show. But there was a point when I was on a holiday in Antarctica about nine years ago when as they clocked me in and they went, oh yes, well I hope you have a nice time and I went, what's the entertainment like on it? And they said, well we don't really have it because we don't have entertainers on this show. And I said, don't you ever do a cruise show? And they said, well we do that but we won't with you on board. And I went oh yes you will, I'm going to help you. And I put on this show called Ice and I re-choreographed the whole of one singular sensation from Chorusline with the entire crew other than the captain dressed as penguins which I'd studied during my ten days out there. But you've got no cast on this island.

Presenter29:08

But you can't.

Presenter29:10

Island.

Cameron Mackintosh29:11

No, but oh, but I'll I'll work at something. My dog is already ready to go into show business, and I will find something. I will find some animals there.

Presenter29:20

Sell me about you.

Cameron Mackintosh29:21

We lost record.

Cameron Mackintosh29:22

Well, my last record is written by one of the great composers that Britain's ever had, which is Andrew Lloyd Webber. And

Cameron Mackintosh29:32

The reason I've chosen the Piezu is that I so remember the day we were sitting round his kitchen at home, and instead of blasting me away with his super stereo, he'd just written this requiem for his father who'd died, and he wanted to write this in memory of his father, Bill.

Cameron Mackintosh29:50

And instead of playing it to me on his great big machine, he had this really cheap old cassette recorder. And he said, I want you to hear this, I want you to hear this, I I really like this and Sarah's just put a dummy track on it, and this was the early demo version of it.

Cameron Mackintosh30:07

And I sat there and

Cameron Mackintosh30:10

The music just blew me away and it made me cry, and it always will.

Speaker 330:25

Is the only

Presenter30:44

Sarah Brightman singing the Piezu from Andrew Lloyd Webber's Requiem, with Paul Miles, Kingston, and the Winchester Cathedral Choir. Now, if you could only take one of those eight, then, Cameron, which one would you take?

Cameron Mackintosh30:57

I'd take Pierre Yasen.

Presenter30:59

Hmm.

Presenter31:00

What about your book?

Cameron Mackintosh31:02

My book

Cameron Mackintosh31:04

I would take Delia.

Presenter31:05

D D Smith

Presenter31:08

What do you?

Cameron Mackintosh31:08

Yes.

Cameron Mackintosh31:09

The reason is everything is in Delia.

Presenter31:13

How to boil an egg is indeed a little bit of a majority of the mm-hmm.

Cameron Mackintosh31:13

To boy the

Cameron Mackintosh31:15

Yes, ab absolutely. There's not one thing that you can't go into the book to find.

Cameron Mackintosh31:21

And as none of my recipes ever come out the same, it's great to have one reference book where I can go, now how would I start that? And I half read it and I think, oh, well, I know I can improve on that and I will go on and do something else with it. But there's no other cookbook that actually has such a complete range of stuff. They have some wonderful other things to copy, but I never like copying. I like improving.

Presenter31:43

And what about your luxury?

Cameron Mackintosh31:45

Well, that is a completely selfish. It's a it would be a solar-powered magimix, because therefore it comes from the sun.

Cameron Mackintosh31:53

And will help me.

Cameron Mackintosh31:55

Get through some of my recipes and make new different things whilst I'm rehearsing my penguins.

Presenter32:01

Sir Cameron Mackintosh, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your desert island discs.

Cameron Mackintosh32:05

Thank you.

Speaker 232:13

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