Timothy Spall

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.

Speaker 20:08

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

Presenter0:29

Mike Costaway this week is an actor. He seems to specialise in likable idiots, social pariahs, and minor heroes. His performance in Mike Lee's film Secrets and Lies put him in the big league, but for many fans of British television he was there already, thanks to his role in Alphides and Pet, which first came to our screens twenty years ago. This year it was back again, and he was back with it, the in-between years filled with a huge variety of parts on stage, on television, and in Hollywood, where he recently appeared in Vanilla Sky with Tom Cruise. A completely natural actor, he failed all his O-levels but carried off his year's top prize at Rada. He believes that actors must serve the character they play. You shouldn't notice marvellous acting, he says. If you can see the strings, it's wrong. He is Timothy Spall. It's a fascinating line-up of ordinary characters you've played, Tim, from boring Barry in Alphides and Pet to the very decent Morris, the High Street photographer in Secrets and Lies. Not a lot of great romantic leads for you, it seems.

Timothy Spall1:30

No, there is a bit of an absence of romantic leads in that, but I'm building up to it, you know. Wait for the national taste to become slightly more perverted. I might get a few romantic parts.

Presenter1:39

Didn't you want to be Bert Lancaster when you were little?

Timothy Spall1:41

Well, I associated a little bit with him'cause I remember sitting at him thinking, I feel like I look like that, but then I looked in the mirror and I appatently don't, so.

Presenter1:49

So you got round to being boring Barry the electrician. It was a great hit, that series, because it was what the the nineteen eighties, three million unemployed, and these were guys going on the lump to work in Germany, pay no tax, our feeders end pet. How much was he your creation, Barry?

Timothy Spall2:05

Well, I mean, the thing is, what you've got to realize is that Dick and Ian, the writers, are two of the best writers of that kind of drama, comedy in the in the world, really.

Timothy Spall2:16

They created a wonderful character.

Timothy Spall2:19

with this very pronounced black country accent and the all the concomitant sort of um attributes of a a pedant and a well, he he they thought he was a pedant or a boar, he thought he was a bit of a philosopher. So quite a droll character in the sense, in the old sense of meaning not knowing as being annoying or funny.

Presenter2:36

Yeah.

Timothy Spall2:37

Yeah.

Presenter2:37

Yeah, loving to show people the photographs of where he'd been.

Timothy Spall2:37

Loving to show

Timothy Spall2:40

Oh, absolutely. And he would love to tell you about how he'd been to Bruges and how wonderful that was, you know. Would you like to see the pictures? Oh, absolutely. And he always prided him proud you know, prided himself on being slightly, you know, just a little bit above them, you know.

Presenter2:45

Would you like to see the pictures?

Presenter2:52

Yeah.

Timothy Spall2:53

the culturally and intellectual.

Presenter2:54

And of course he was when he came back this year. He'd made a mint, he drove a Benckley, got smart suits.

Timothy Spall2:57

What do you

Speaker 32:57

Revelation.

Timothy Spall2:59

Absolutely. Yeah, he was kind of languishing in his kind of um the centre of his own wealth, which brought out the his smug nature. But of course, as the as the series then later revealed it, his success was perched on very, very spindly pedestals that soon came crashing down.

Presenter3:15

Yeah, it all crumbled. And that's the point, really, isn't it? Because under it seems to me, although you played him very early on, Barry, he was symbolic of the kinds of characters you were going to go on to play. A kind of underlying sadness to them, and that's very much part of of your characterizations, isn't it?

Timothy Spall3:17

That's the

Timothy Spall3:33

Yeah, I'm I think I'm attracted to characters who have that. Well, I suppose it's vulnerability, uh, even if they're totally socially unacceptable or just downright boring or vile. I think it's you as an actor, it's your job to kind of find the humanity in there and find out why they are like that.

Presenter3:51

Tell me about your first record.

Timothy Spall3:53

Right. Now, the newfangled tango is uh

Timothy Spall3:57

Lena Horn. It's funny'cause I always used to think it was called the new Fango Danko, so that's how long ago I used to listen to it. And it every time I hear it, it just instantly takes me straight back to the front room, what we called the front room. Now we weren't really allowed in there, but I used to nip in there and play my mum and dad's record collection.

Timothy Spall4:15

And this is a fantastic song about a dance that Lena Horne is encouraging you to do, which is about moving without moving, taking a step backwards but doing it very slow, and there's something innocently fruity about it in that fifties way.

Speaker 34:28

The nice part about it, in this dance you don't need steps, you don't have to worry if you're dancing won't do. It's not

Timothy Spall4:34

Yeah.

Speaker 34:41

What you do do is more What you don't do You don't need a waltz or a fancy fandangle You just need a man and a new fangled tangle

Presenter4:58

Lena Horne singing the new fangled tango with the Nat Brandwin Orchestra conducted by Lenny Hayton, and it takes you back, Timothy Spoll, to your front room, you say, in in Battersea.

Timothy Spall5:07

It was a terraced house and it had my nan or grandmother, for other people who don't know what nan is, used to live on the top floor and every time it rained she used to have to put three saucepans out. My nan used to like um gorgonzola cheese, which my brother and I was something from another planet. And on a Sunday afternoon we used to creep up the stairs, lift her cheese dish, look at it, go, be frightened of it and run away. So um and my brother and I shared a bedroom. My brother Nick, I've got three brothers, Richard, Matthew and Nick. My brother Nick was closest to me and we shared a bedroom.

Timothy Spall5:42

In the winter you used to have icicles on the inside of the window.

Timothy Spall5:46

And we didn't have a bathroom and every Saturday we'd take the this sounds like a Hovis advert, I know, but we used to take the um tin bath out of the back yard and fill it from the asker in the scullery and we'd all get in it one after another. You know, it was a very happy childhood. When I think back though, you think, Good God, we didn't have a bathroom in the sixties. It sounds like more like the forties or the thirties, you know.

Presenter6:04

The house that you describe there is very much like the one, it seems to me, in Secrets and Lies, in which uh Cynthia, your sister in in in the film, lives. Presumably it's just sort of second nature to you to when you act in those kinds of films, therefore.

Timothy Spall6:19

You know, often in films, proper films, if they're about time and place, they're also about where people live and how it evokes memories and connections with those two. When you know, when Morris goes in, he gets the newspaper, she hands him the toilet roll and he goes and they start this conversation, and all of a sudden you get this

Timothy Spall6:37

In like three seconds, you get this back story of their entire relationship.

Presenter6:40

Then to

Presenter6:41

But were you aware I mean, obviously you were observant, you can tell from the way you talk about it as a child, but were you aware that you were kind of collecting observations that you might use later?

Timothy Spall6:50

No, I wasn't, but um

Timothy Spall6:53

I was a bit of a hypochondriac. I remember a man used to walk past our house with a big nose, and somebody said that he'd had his nose made out of his bum, as he had cancer of the nose.

Timothy Spall7:02

And because I had a big, very, very active imagination, I got a pain in my nose and I instantly thought, seriously, that I'd cancel the nose and I'd have to have my bum put on my nose. So I mean that remind that's a childhood memory that you think, well, you imagine that obviously the an actor's uh engine is his imagination to a certain degree. I remember the first time I ever really felt like I might

Speaker 27:20

To deserve degree.

Timothy Spall7:25

I have a bit of an odd, uh, quirky sense about the way people behave. Was my nan when we moved to our new flat, she used to come on a Sunday to us for lunch and then we'd go every uh month to hers, but in the evening it was my job and my brothers to walk her back the estate and then take her up to her flat so she got home safely. One day we I took her back and there was a very old man and we passed him and I just clocked him.

Timothy Spall7:48

And then I took her upstairs, and when I came back, and because it was a regular thing, it was quite tedious. I just started to walk like this old man I saw. And I sort of bent my back, and my arms started moving away, and my feet started to walk, and I started to become this man. And I wasn't doing it because I knew I was going to be an actor, I just decided to be this old man. I felt, although no one was watching and there wasn't, you know, there were no reviewers there, you know, I knew that I'd found something that was right and I'd made a connection by becoming somebody else.

Presenter8:21

Record number two.

Timothy Spall8:22

Yes, uh

Timothy Spall8:24

When you were Sweet Sixteen by Al Jolson, again this is my childhood, because on a Sunday afternoon you would all gather around the telly and watch the film, and my parents were very knowledgeable about who was in them. So

Timothy Spall8:38

From a young age I knew who was who and in connection with listening to their record uh collections like um Lena Horn and Brooke Benton and uh all sorts of like Judy Garn and people that my friends didn't really um weren't into because they had different tastes it was more of a taste of the thirties and forties in a sense because my mum also sung in pubs a bit and knew all these Sophie Tucker songs and uh I've always I mean I've loved Al Jolson since I was about six.

Timothy Spall9:05

And it just takes me straight back to the you know, to that period.

Speaker 39:09

I love you.

Speaker 39:11

As I never loved before.

Speaker 39:19

Since first I met you on the village green

Speaker 39:28

Come to me.

Speaker 39:31

And my dream of love is all

Presenter9:39

Al Jolson and When You Were Sweet Sixteen and Memories of Sunday afternoons in front of the telly. Your mother ran a a sort of hairdressing business from the house, didn't she?

Timothy Spall9:48

I caught I say she was she could do the best bouffon in Battersea, but she taught herself, she was self taught and

Timothy Spall9:54

She made a little salon in in one of the spare rooms.

Timothy Spall9:57

There were three dryers, I remember three blue dryers.

Timothy Spall10:01

When it was time for me to go to bed, I used to go in there and kiss all the ladies good night and th I always remember the smell of lacquer and the chatter and the and the hair dryers going on and seeing ladies in hair in curlers, you know.

Presenter10:14

What about you and the acting, though? I mean, how early on was your talent spotted? Was it spotted at school?

Timothy Spall10:20

I was starting to think about what am I going to do, what am I going to do um with myself and I had a real confusion because um I was in the Army Cadets which is like a boys' club in the evening. Instead of you know playing drafts you strip brain guns down and stuff. And also I I got very heavily into the art thing at school and I had some very nice um art teachers. I started to discover about Dudd Eiseman's surrealism and I was confused as to whether I was going to join the army or go to art club.

Timothy Spall10:49

It's an unusual

Presenter10:49

It's an unusual dilemma, though.

Timothy Spall10:51

A little bit of a unusual one and um

Timothy Spall10:54

And then I did the school play.

Timothy Spall10:56

And my drama teacher, Helena Mearz, who was lovely, and there were several teachers who are starting to treat me like a human being instead of a pupil. And she said I did the l I played the lion in um uh The Wizard of Oz.

Timothy Spall11:08

And afterwards, because it went down very well for me, she said I've never said this to any of my students.

Timothy Spall11:14

Because it's a very tough business.

Timothy Spall11:16

But I think you should be an actor.

Timothy Spall11:18

all of a sudden all these like this big bang had happened and it all go into that, that's it, I now know what I want to do And I did, I got into National Youth The Youth Theatre and then eventually at eight nineteen I went to Rada. So

Timothy Spall11:31

Thank you, Helena, for your listening.

Presenter11:33

Record number three.

Timothy Spall11:36

Ziggy Stardust. Um this is David Bowie, who

Timothy Spall11:40

At the time, when I was about thirteen, fourteen, I was trying to find my identity, me and my friend Peter Heisen.

Timothy Spall11:47

used to walk up and down the King's Road in he used to be a David Bowie impersonator and I found this old frock coat and a pair of glasses and I used to pretend to be some kind of

Timothy Spall11:58

It's pathetic when you think about a Dickensian character.

Presenter12:01

You were kind of Mr. Pickwick.

Timothy Spall12:03

Well, it was kind of we c I called we called ourselves extravaganza, right? How cheesy it was. So, um, it reminds me so much of that period when we were me and Pete were a pair of prats in the King's Royal.

Speaker 312:21

Sickie play for time Diving us that we wa-voodoo

Speaker 312:27

The kids would just cry.

Speaker 312:31

He was the nice

Speaker 312:33

With God given I have s

Speaker 312:37

He took it on to farm.

Speaker 312:40

But boy, could he play guitar

Presenter12:44

Ziggy Stardust from the Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars by David Bowie. Um so Timothy Spole, apparently you went off to Rada on the first day wearing your mother's jumper and clutching a bag of tights. Why?

Timothy Spall12:57

Well, I needed the tights to do the hoofing, but I just happened to be wearing my mum's jumper at the time. I'd found it was a fifties jumper. It was something that Lena Horn might have wore actually. Um and I wore I had a pair of platform shoes that I'd um

Timothy Spall13:12

that I didn't like so I painted blue with emulsion.

Timothy Spall13:15

And I had uh I can't remember what else I was wearing, but I wasn't very prepossessing and I hadn't combed my hair for about six months.

Timothy Spall13:21

I was a bit worried that uh

Timothy Spall13:24

A, they'd made a mistake when I got into Rada, and I'd get there and they'd say, No, no, no, no, he's Timothy Srawl. No, we didn't mean you. What are you doing here?

Presenter13:31

It's too posh for you.

Timothy Spall13:31

Yeah, but I expected to see people wandering around in smoking jackets and speaking like no old coward. But when I got there there was just a a big mixture of kids about my age from America, some from councillor states, some from public school. It was a real melange, you know, and it was

Presenter13:48

So you got on all right then?

Timothy Spall13:49

Oh yeah, it was it was a completely egalitarian place. It got rid of any sense of feeling that I would be stuck in playing working class parts, you know. I did check off, I played Othello when I was there, I played The Scotsman, I don't like saying the word, that's a bit lovely of me I'm afraid, but uh and I we we did restoration and it was a incredible comprehensive training in making you realize you can do what you want you can do what you want because a lot of the

Presenter14:15

'Cause a lot of those things you just hadn't concentrated on at school, I mean, when you were studying for O level English, which you didn't pass, you weren't reading the Shakespeare or the Chekhov or whatever were

Timothy Spall14:23

No, I wasn't. No. I mean, I started to read a bit quite early. I mean, I started off being blown away by Lord of the Rings when I was about fifteen.

Presenter14:23

Well I wasn't.

Timothy Spall14:31

At the same time I started to kind of see there was another world around me and I started this when I started to do art and go to the Tate Gallery and started to put things together and see that there was a whole world that I didn't know about. So I got an inkling of there being a cultural world that I hadn't really been introduced to. But the reason I failed more my O-levels was I knew I wanted to be an actor and I couldn't be bothered and I sort of went along and wrote things like yin bing pong on some of the questions. I mean I was maybe it was arrogance but I just because I'd been I knew that I was going to be an actor then or hoped to be an actor I didn't and I knew they didn't have to have any A levels getting to Rada. I knew I was on safe ground but I did take a I did take art A level and I got a grade A and it's the only exam I've got and it's of course on its own it's totally useless.

Presenter15:20

But you became the the most promising actor of your year at Rada, so that was better.

Timothy Spall15:24

Well, there you go.

Presenter15:25

There you go, record number four.

Timothy Spall15:27

Well, yeah, at record number four is Handel's Messiah and

Timothy Spall15:31

It's to go back to a little bit about what I was talking about, discovering reading for myself and stuff. I also started to.

Timothy Spall15:38

Discover classical music. And my mum, I asked, she said, What do you want for Christmas? I said, Well,

Timothy Spall15:44

I want Andel's Messiah. She said, all right, went and got it and got me this wonderful box set. My brother gave me, he'd been in the Merchant Navy and he gave me this funny old plastic stereo that folded out and I used to put my head in the middle of the two speakers on my bed and I'd play Jimi Hendrix, Star Spangled Banner, and then I'd take it off and then I'd play The Messiah, just lying there.

Timothy Spall16:06

And also later on so happens this from unto us a sun is born.

Timothy Spall16:11

Which is the one I've chosen.

Timothy Spall16:13

When my son was born and he was born at home, then the midwife gave it to me.

Timothy Spall16:18

I just walked around our house, which we'd only just moved into, singing that at the top of my voice, just holding my little boy, you know, my brand new baby, and it always reminds me of that as well.

Speaker 316:31

So that is the sun in all this

Speaker 317:16

Let's see.

Speaker 317:21

If anybody knows you fall

Presenter17:26

For Unto us a child is born from Handel's Messiah, sung by the Winchester Cathedral Choir with the London Handel Orchestra, conducted by Martin Neary.

Presenter17:33

So, Timothy Spole, you went um you came out of Radi, you were snapped up. After about a year you were work working for the Royal Shakespeare Company, and then another couple of years, spool on, and Alfida Zan pet uh picks you up and all of a sudden you're terribly well known. It seems that you were so well known that nobody offered you any work after that, because everybody thought you were Barry, the electrician from Birmingham.

Timothy Spall17:54

It was a terrible shock to be very famous and deeply unemployed. You know, um typecasting meant that you'd had it really. And I thought I'm twenty four and I've blown it.

Presenter18:05

And you'd blown all the money, hadn't you?

Timothy Spall18:06

Yeah, that's right. I had. Well, I thought it was mine. It turned out to belong to the government. And they took it away. So you were in Stuttgart? I was in Stuttgart.

Presenter18:10

The text match.

Timothy Spall18:15

But the the one thing I learnt during that period as well was that because the only thing that was coming my way was stuff that was very similar to Barry. I stuck fast and I wouldn't I wouldn't do anything that was similar, so I put myself out of work to a bit, but it I was very determined not to repeat myself because

Presenter18:31

So what rescued you in the end?

Timothy Spall18:32

I stuck out and I eventually went to the National Theatre, back to the theatre, which is I think is a kind of salutary lesson. If you if you're a bit lost, um, go back to where you're challenged. And of course the thing about the theatre is that

Timothy Spall18:45

Casting directors, people like that come and see it. So y you you just remind them that you're a actor and you're not a motorbike enthusiast from Birmingham.

Timothy Spall18:54

And I played the King of France, you see. I I played the Dauphin in St Jones, so um that kind of helped.

Presenter18:55

See I I applied to

Presenter18:59

Next piece of music.

Timothy Spall19:01

My next piece of music is Danny Wilson's Mary's Prayer. And this reminds me of my wife and I's young married life with our children growing up because we used to

Timothy Spall19:12

On a Sunday, because we had kids, you know, we had three kids and we were still young, we instead of going out, we used to invite friends over, have a bit of an open house.

Timothy Spall19:21

And you said hundreds of people come over, we'd have a big lunch.

Timothy Spall19:24

which my wife would cook, and we'd have lots of wine and we'd play music and we'd all get up and dance around and just basically get out of our heads and be young, but all in a domestic situation.

Timothy Spall19:35

We used to play hundreds and hundreds of different types of music from Rafi Shanka to The Gypsy Kings. But the one song that I love and reminds me of that period, and it's got some lovely lyrics, and reminds me of what fun we had when the kids were young, is this song, Mary's Prayer.

Speaker 319:52

Save me, save me.

Speaker 319:56

The wide mouth and the vaccine

Speaker 320:09

The fall

Speaker 320:11

Have to give the tree a shake.

Speaker 320:15

If you shake the tree too hard, why is gonna break?

Presenter20:21

Danny Wilson and Mary's Prayer. So i it's a really good story so far, Timothy, for your life, you know, you kind of get to do what you really wanted to do, slightly against the odds, and you know, you had a lovely childhood and a nice family and you marry and you have children and the career's going well, and then all of a sudden fate stopped smiling on you, didn't it?

Timothy Spall20:42

It did, yes. I got a very nice uh present from uh the fickled finger of fate, um and I became seriously ill, which was a terrible

Timothy Spall20:51

Shock.

Timothy Spall20:52

And speaking as a hypochondriac, it was the one thing I didn't think I was going to get.

Presenter20:56

Uh

Presenter20:56

How did it happen? I mean, what was the first you knew?

Timothy Spall20:59

I just didn't feel very well. I felt tired. I thought I'd been overworking and uh I thought I'd better go and see a

Timothy Spall21:05

doctor before I went off to Cannes and um he took a blood test and phoned me out one day and said, You've got to come immediately I said, I can't, I'm doing this job He said, No, I can't tell you this over the phone I said, Well, you must because if I don't finish this job I'm not going to get paid

Timothy Spall21:19

And uh it was a poor part of my process of digging myself out of the hole, you know.

Timothy Spall21:24

He said, Well, old boy, I'm sorry you've got leukemia.

Timothy Spall21:27

From 1 to 10, that's probably the worst piece of news I've ever had. It's pretty high up. Yeah, you know.

Presenter21:32

So you had all the you had the chemotherapy.

Timothy Spall21:34

I did, yeah. I had the chemotherapy, I was locked away and um

Timothy Spall21:39

Uh it went a bit wrong and I wasn't too good for a bit.

Presenter21:42

Did you think you were gonna die?

Timothy Spall21:43

I had to face that prospect, yeah, I did have to face that and it was very, very tough, but you you either get over it or you don't, and that's one thing I learnt. You either take it on the chin or you don't, and

Timothy Spall21:56

The only truly, truly painful part of it, in a sense, apart from the treatment, was that, you know, I fear of what would happen to my children and my family if I went.

Timothy Spall22:07

And that was really the only unbearable side of it. But I got better. And I'm talking to you.

Presenter22:13

You cured completely.

Timothy Spall22:14

Yeah, and when I came back well, it's yeah, I'm in remission, which means that I'm in it's nearly seven years, so um they reckon if it's uh after five years it's gonna be something else, probably a bus maybe that might get you.

Presenter22:27

But the approach to life changes, I'm sure.

Timothy Spall22:30

It does, it does, but not too much because another thing I discovered was if you come on like you're in a state of profundity, it's not really that profound. Because one of the wonderful things about getting better in life is that you don't feel guilty about being petty.

Timothy Spall22:44

and being annoyed at silly little things. When you're ill

Timothy Spall22:48

You don't want to offend, or you don't want to upset yourself or anybody else, because it's a bad karmic deal.

Timothy Spall22:54

So you go around a little bit, you know, wrapped up in a kind of

Timothy Spall22:58

feeling of profound um, you know, what's going to happen to me in this. But when you get better, you start shouting at people in traffic jams and uh I can be silly and I can be a bit grumpy without worrying about it.

Presenter23:10

Number six.

Timothy Spall23:12

Number six, my wife didn't want me to put this in because I said to her at the, you know, when I was getting better, I didn't say it at the time.

Timothy Spall23:20

I said to her, you know, you've got to play this at my funeral. And she said, don't even talk about it.

Timothy Spall23:26

So I said, look, I've I've

Timothy Spall23:28

I'm going to include it'cause I think it's fantastic, but I won't make it the last one. It could be an occasion to be sad, but

Timothy Spall23:35

Because I'm here and I'm not, you know.

Timothy Spall23:38

I'm not gone, it's I can enjoy it again just as a piece of music with without without not without look having a certain significance.

Speaker 323:59

May my walls free.

Speaker 324:06

Ah, yeah.

Presenter24:43

Dido's Lament from Purcell's Dido in an Ear, sung by Victoria de Los Angeles with the English Chamber Orchestra conducted by Sir John Barbaroli.

Presenter24:51

So, Tim, you did our mutual friend for the BBC, more or less the first job after you'd got better. You played mister Venus the Taxidermist, a man almost, but not quite, drowning in tea, melancholy, and the criminal milieu. He kind of got you going again, really, didn't he?

Timothy Spall25:07

He did, yeah.

Presenter25:08

It's Dickens, that's what you love.

Timothy Spall25:09

Yeah, because I use Dickens. Use it. I mean, when I was recovering and still undergoing treatment, I was out of hospital.

Timothy Spall25:18

Started reading again, and I I always used to say Dickens was my favorite.

Timothy Spall25:23

um writer and I then one day I realized I hadn't read any.

Timothy Spall25:27

So

Timothy Spall25:28

A lot of people like that.

Presenter25:29

A lot of people like that.

Timothy Spall25:33

And I'd seen ha ha playing Mr. Pitwick, but um

Timothy Spall25:37

I hadn't actually read any, so I my dad one day had brought home a.

Timothy Spall25:42

had a bound a leather-bound set of Pickwick papers, so I started to read that.

Timothy Spall25:47

And I absolutely adored it.

Timothy Spall25:50

So I finished that and then I started to work my way through the entire uh

Timothy Spall25:55

canon and um it really

Timothy Spall25:57

acted almost like living in a parallel universe because I've got stuck into this nineteenth century world and um

Timothy Spall26:05

And it was almost almost like a sound kind of a a tranquilizer against anxiety.

Timothy Spall26:11

Because I certainly couldn't have a drink. Um so I threw myself into Dickens and um

Timothy Spall26:16

And then I realize he is my favorite writer. His interests I've I under I think I really understand, which is

Timothy Spall26:23

Not only putting people at the center of these stories who are at the lowest rungs of society, but making them the most intelligent and the most surprising often. And I think the person who's the master of it really nowadays is Mike Lee.

Speaker 326:38

Hmm.

Timothy Spall26:38

Um and

Timothy Spall26:40

You know, I don't think people would associate him with Dickens, but I think he has a great deal of similarities in a sense.

Presenter26:46

And you've just done another fil you've got another film that you've done with him coming out. You've done half a dozen ones.

Timothy Spall26:49

You've done half a dozen on the side. Yeah, that's the sixth project I've done. Is it all or nothing?

Presenter26:51

This is all nothing. You're a a forlorn mini-cab driver.

Timothy Spall26:55

I am. I am a man with a big trouble and it's all set in Councillor State, run down Councillor State in South East London.

Timothy Spall27:06

It's

Timothy Spall27:07

It's bleak, but it's very funny in the deepest uh tragic comic sense.

Presenter27:11

And at the other end of the spectrum, you've been to Tinseltown, to Hollywood. You've done this cameo in Vanilla Sky with Tom Cruise, you're doing another one with Tom Cruise. How different is that from working with Mike Lee? Just a bit.

Timothy Spall27:22

Just a bit. Well it's a little bit different. I mean a film really is only a story. You get a group of people together who are going to make a story. They're going to make you try and believe that they're real. They're going to maybe make you think about these people's lives, be entertained by them and they just point cameras at you. Now the film could either cost a hundred grand or it could cost a hundred million.

Timothy Spall27:43

If it isn't any good, no one's gonna see it, so when you go to Hollywood, they're only trying to do that, but just a little bit bigger, with more money.

Presenter27:50

Echo number seven.

Timothy Spall27:52

Um this is Cowboy Dreams and this is my song by my dear friend Jimmy Nail.

Timothy Spall27:58

I said lots of my friends were particularly wonderful to me when I was ill. Jimmy was a shining light. I mean some people often think he's a bit you know rough and tough but he's actually a very very kind dear man who was wonderful when I was ill. He sang this at my 40th birthday party which was a celebration really of the fact that I survived and lots of friends sung songs and this was this reminds me of that very much and you know I also think it's a lovely lovely song.

Speaker 328:29

Cowboy Dreams

Speaker 328:33

Give me cowboy dreams

Speaker 328:36

I can make you happy, it's easier than it seems I'm gonna ambush you at sundown, gonna give you cowboy dreams.

Speaker 328:53

Yippee I

Presenter28:55

Cowboy Dream, sung by Jimmy Nail. What about you on on this desert island? What what uh how will you be there? What kind of part will you play? Will you be a a winner or a loser?

Timothy Spall29:06

Well, I don't mind my own company. I'm quite good at being on my own. Um

Timothy Spall29:11

I've got a lot of love around me, so I c I can go off and be morose and alone sometimes and quite enjoy it.

Presenter29:17

Are you practical? I mean, Dad was a practical man. He must have taught you how to do a bit. Well, I'm not.

Timothy Spall29:23

Particularly I never read instructions in things because I I always want to just weep with boredom as soon as I look at them. But I somehow get things to work without ever knowing how they do. So it's a mad I have a mad kind of logic about practical things. And I think I've probably proved to myself I am a survivor one way or another. So I think I'd be alright. I'd miss the burgundy.

Presenter29:40

On my own house.

Presenter29:46

Last record.

Timothy Spall29:48

The last record is um it's the Crash Test Dummies, which I think is a wonderful name for a band in itself.

Timothy Spall29:54

It's called swimming in your ocean.

Timothy Spall29:56

And basically it's about a man

Timothy Spall29:59

Who's

Timothy Spall30:01

Making love to his girlfriend or lover who he adores, but he can't help thinking about other things. And it and he tells you what he's thinking about, like UFOs and things. And he doesn't it doesn't mean he doesn't love her, it just means that he gets a little bit distracted while he's having sex. And it's not that's not saying what I do, but what I love about the the fact is that it's a song that

Timothy Spall30:22

Sums up a certain eccentricity in life that I adore.

Speaker 330:27

When I'm sembling from your bosom

Speaker 330:32

Sometimes I suffer from distractions like White Dance God Cause things like tornadoes

Speaker 330:44

Anywhere.

Speaker 330:47

What's that in hell?

Speaker 330:50

When we knew your ocean flowing off done creams And tend to blow the shines when bright

Presenter30:58

Crash test dummies with swimming in your ocean. Now, if you could only take one of those eight, Tim, which one would you take?

Timothy Spall31:04

I think it would have to be Mary's prayer.

Timothy Spall31:08

When I first bought it I played it about twenty six times.

Timothy Spall31:11

one after the other, and I never got tired of it.

Presenter31:14

And it's happy family memories.

Timothy Spall31:15

Absolutely. But I want to take'em all.

Presenter31:18

What about your book? You've got the complete works of Shakespeare, you've got the Bible.

Timothy Spall31:22

I think it'd have to be Pickwick Papers, because of what I said about it earlier. It says a lot about a loss of innocence that happened from the Georgian period to the um the Victorian period.

Timothy Spall31:33

I just think it's all in there.

Presenter31:35

And what about your luxury?

Timothy Spall31:36

I like to have a drum kit, because I've dabbled with drums. I've played a drummer in a film.

Timothy Spall31:42

And I did drumming at school. Not only is it

Timothy Spall31:45

Um

Timothy Spall31:46

Not only is it fun, it's also a great way of getting rid of aggression.

Timothy Spall31:50

And I think if I was on the island for a long time I might actually become quite proficient, which I've always wanted to be.

Timothy Spall31:56

Also, it might attract attention and I might get off.

Presenter32:00

Timothy's Paul, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your Desert Island discs.

Timothy Spall32:03

It's been a great pleasure, thank you.

Speaker 232:12

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