Bill Simpson

Bill Simpson0:01

BBC Sounds, Music, Radio Podcasts. Hello, I'm Lauren Laverne and this is the Desert Island Discs podcast. For rights reasons, the music is shorter than on the original broadcast. The presenter is Roy Plomley. I hope you enjoy listening.

Presenter0:24

How do you do, ladies and gentlemen?

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Our castaway this week is the Scots actor who plays the title role in the Dr. Finlay series on television. It's Bill Simpson.

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Well, how well could you adjust yourself to solitude?

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I think quite well. I enjoy very much being on my own sometimes. I would miss company, but I think I could put up with it.

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Are you an only child?

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No, five in the family all together, two brothers and two sisters.

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Is music an important thing to you?

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Yes, I think it is. It always has been since I was a child. I used to listen avidly to...

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BBC follows some kind of contact with the entertainment world. That was the main point of it, I think.

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How did you set about choosing your eight records for indefinite exile? Do you want them to evoke the past?

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Yes, I think so. I think each record that I've chosen is a little part of my life, something that was important to me at that time. What's the first one you have there?

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The first one is Wood Chopper's Bull. Woody Herman.

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Yeah.

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Why'd you choose this?

Bill Simpson1:25

Yeah.

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Well, it was the first record that I ever bought with my own money, and I must say I do regret the passing of the big band Noise, the Woody Hammonds of Dorsey's.

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The Harry James

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And the Lionel Hamptons, I think it's a wonderful song.

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Woody Hermann in his office.

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What's your second choice?

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It's a song called Le Bateau des Isle, sung by Tina Rossi.

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I don't know how this record got into our house, but we lived in a little house which looked over the Farth of Clyde to the southwest.

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and hearing this song.

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and looking out across the first to the islands of Aran and Eosa Craig.

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Seemed to me.

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Very much like the atmosphere.

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All the zero funds.

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It was one of these few days in the Fathers played when it was.

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reasonably warm.

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It had this marvellous, indolent kind of atmosphere.

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And I also love it because

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Recently, I went to the Circus of France with my fiancée.

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who has now become my wife.

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And this

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kind of song actually brought it all back to me all of a sudden it was so

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It's so very romantic.

Speaker 33:27

Le Baton desiders.

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Le bateaux des amoveur.

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Siro la mero tro

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Tino Rossi singing La Pato desile.

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Is this where you were born, in that little house on the Further Clyde? No, I wasn't actually born there. I was born in the town of Ayr, which is about six miles away, and I went to school there, first of all, but we moved to this little house in the fishing village when I was about nine or ten.

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Was there any precedent in the family for the art?

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No one on the tour as far as I know. I had an an uncle on my father's side who used to

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to assist in the local theater when we needed.

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extras and things but as far as I know that that's all. Did you see a lot of theatre as a child?

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No, I didn't see a play in the theatre until I was about 21. What did you do when you left school?

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I started working on my grandfather's farm and I worked there for about nine months. Did you want to be a farmer? Was this a vocational urge? No, it was more or less. It was sort of trying to help out. But that was all I...

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I had no desire to become a farmer really. My mind was still on.

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on this vague thing that I wanted to be something to do with acting. I didn't quite know what. What happened after the farming interview? Well, I was called up into the Air Force and I spent two years mostly in Germany as a clerk.

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Yeah.

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When you came out of the service, had you any clearer idea what you were going to do?

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Well, I'd had a bit more experience of life, I suppose, and I thought by then I was thinking there was a vague chance that it might happen, but it still wasn't very close. So what?

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So I drifted into the insurance business. I worked in an insurance office.

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For two years, I had to go to Glasgow for that. I was in Diggs.

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And because I had much to do in the evenings, I joined one of the

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Drama Clubs in Glasgow.

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It was while I was there that I realized this drama college had opened in Glasgow not very long before that and if one got a grant from the education authorities and also passed the audition.

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It was possible to learn to be an actor and this you felt was what you really wanted to do. This is what I really wanted to do. I had found out then that this is what I really did want to do. It wasn't a case of this is what I really wanted to do.

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I discovered it was

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It's back to the only thing I couldn't do, what you have here.

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Right, well this this very important decision. Let's break off for your third record. What next?

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Well, this is I need some real Jimmy Shand and his band and this brings back all the memories when I was working on the farm in the villages of Scotland when we used to get some of our bike.

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every Friday night and go to the local country dance. There was one on nearly every Friday night in one of the neighbouring villages and this was

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Great fun and

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You lost a lot of weight and

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And it wasn't the sort of refined Scottish country dancing, it was the farmers with the large boots and the dust come out of the floorboards.

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and screams the ladies being

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thrown off their feet in exuberance and the tea and buns in the interval and two o'clock in the morning cycling back home again to milk.

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At about half past four, the 60 cows on the farm.

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Jimmy Shand and his band Playing in the Apes and Real.

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You were at the drama college in Glasgow. Could you live on your ground all right, Bill?

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No, I had to take other kinds of work in the vacations.

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In summertime I went to work at Butland's holiday camp.

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Just outside here, which was about three miles from my home. We were red good.

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No, I finished off as a red coat, but I started off as a cashier, which meant that I took in all the money from the

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Campus. Yes. How long did you stay at the Glasgow Drama College? Three years.

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And then

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And then I went into repertory at the Gateway Theatre in Edinburgh as an assistant floor manager.

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Mm-hmm.

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How long were you there?

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Uh two years, not

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That's finished by

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A production of The Three Estates at the Edinburgh Festival by Tyrone Guthrie. Yes. You'd stop being a stage manager by now. You were... Yes, they'd let me play sort of larger parts at the end towards the end of the two years. Yes.

Bill Simpson8:12

Okay, so

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Okay.

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After that I went to Scottish Television as an announcer, newsreader.

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For two years. Were you doing any acting at all or was it just...

Bill Simpson8:26

Well, yes, the on the on

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BBC television player came up and also I did one player which STV did.

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and the odd broadcast.

Bill Simpson8:34

And the others.

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Now you were looking on yourself as a Scots actor working in Scotland. Had you considered coming south, storming the Citadel in London?

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No, I didn't think I was ready for that. I think as an actor you should first of all get to know your own dialect, language, know how you're expressing yourself in that before you go further afield.

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What decided you?

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I had to

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get away from television, get back into the theater.

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I'm done.

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I was working at the Citizens and I about six weeks off and I decided to go on holiday down to Brighton actually. I had friends down there.

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And when I got there, there was a message for me to fall in a Scott's director who was doing an episode of Zed Cars.

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James McTaggart and he asked me if I could take part in this which I could. I also did a play on the third programme and while I was rehearsing the Z cards they were looking for somebody to play Dr. Finlay. Did you know the Dr. Finlay book?

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No, not these particular ones. I had read quite a bit of Conan's work before.

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And how long was it before you knew you'd...

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Drop apart. Nearly a week from the first interview and then I was asked to come back and read again and then I was asked to come back and do a camera test and then eventually they told me after about a week.

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And this was just a holiday trip to Brighton. Yes, yes.

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Let's break off here for your false record.

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This is the Nocturne from Boridan's String Quartet. I choose this because while I was at Drama College, almost the first production we did was Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard, in which I was playing Gaev.

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And there is a scene.

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in which Madame Runiès goes.

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talking about her past life in Paris and Montour.

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and they played this music.

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As a background to this scene, it was supposed to be coming from the ballroom just off.

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And it was only when I heard this that I really think I understood what the play was all about.

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The nocturn from the second Bardadine string quartet played by the Bardadine Quartet.

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Bill, you were told you were going to be Dr. Finlay for six episodes. How many episodes of Dr. Finlay's case book have you done now? We've done just over 100 now. How many do you record in a series?

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26.

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This must be rather a strain doing 26 straight off. You must be very tired at the end of that. Yes, but it takes about nine months to do the 26 episodes and that's continuous work six days a week.

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Yes, it is. It's very tiring. How much location do you do? How frequently do you go up to Scotland to film exteriors? We go up about every three months, depending on the time of year, and film for about...

Bill Simpson12:09

We

Presenter12:15

Two to three weeks for about five episodes and then come back down and record them here. Yes. It must be rather confusing keeping all those episodes in mind at the same time. No, it's more confusing for the other people than it is for us, I can tell you.

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You married one of the cast of Dr. Finley's case book, Mary Miller. Is she a Scott? No, she comes from Great Yarmouth in Norfolk. I think she'd prefer to be...

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Known as one of the cars of the National Theatre and one of the cars at Dr. Finney's Gay School, but I don't know.

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Is Dr. Finley going to be something of a menace to your career? Are you going to be identified too closely with this character when it's all over?

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Well, I am going to be identified with the character for a long time. There's no doubt about that. From my point of view...

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This doesn't worry me in that there is plenty of other work.

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Apart from television work.

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So um

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No, I'm very pleased that I got the chance to do this and I don't think it can do me anything but good, quite honestly.

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What's your big ambition?

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Um

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Theatrically, I'm not very ambitious. I mean, there isn't any particular part that I'd give a lot to play.

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I'd like very much eventually.

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to have the chance to direct a film.

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Let's have a record number five now.

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Never on a Sunday from soundtrack of the film. I've chosen this because I feel that if I was on a desert island that this

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would be marvelous background music to what I imagine a desert island to be, that is all.

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Sunshine and

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blue lagoons and warm sands.

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From the soundtrack of Never on Sunday.

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Which brings us to record number six.

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Well, for this I've chosen the last part of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony.

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I don't know anything about Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, but when somebody

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talks about classical music, I immediately think for some reason

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of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. The reason is that I do know a bit about music and some of it, about classical music, I love some of it.

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But I never really have had time to listen to it.

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carefully and to know, to understand it really.

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So I think that

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There should be some

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bit of music on on this island which you could sit down and listen to and puzzle out why.

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This is great music.

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That is the reason I've chosen it.

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The closing passage of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, Otto Klempera conducting the Philharmonia Orchestra.

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What are your hobbies, Will?

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Um

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Well, they're mostly concerned with the job I do actually. I'm interested in films and...

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And writing, I do a little bit of sketching and painting sometimes. That spurred all apart from sport.

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Are you good with your hands and you've had farming experience? We're getting down now to this desert island.

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You could cultivate, obviously, having been a farmer. Yes. Could you build a shelter?

Bill Simpson16:44

Yeah.

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I think I could build a very crude shelter by tying things together, I think.

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Yes, done in the fishing.

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Yes, a lot. I was brought up in fishing boats. I've always went out in fishing boats on school holidays. My sister actually married a fisherman, so we're well in with the fishing. Yes. And you know about boats?

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Yes.

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Hmm? Could you build some kind of a craft?

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Yes, I could hollow out a bit of tree trunk, I think, if I made myself the right instruments for doing it. Without a very clear idea of where you were, would you try to escape?

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No, no, I wouldn't. Probably I wouldn't even try to find out what was on the other side of the island. I'm not the pioneer at all.

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I find myself quite happy and safe in one little spot. I'll be very inclined to stay there, I think. I think this is very sensible. Let's have record number seven.

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Oh, this is Roses of the South.

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by stroke. This is because then after spending

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a lifetime being brought up in the Scottish countryside.

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and that sort of thing. I suddenly found myself in the Air Force and was sent almost immediately to Germany.

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As um

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As a clerk.

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Fortunately, I was a leave clerk on this RAF station, therefore I managed to get about quite a bit. I got to know Germany and Austria quite well.

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And this music brings back the great sort of romantic quality of the people and the country.

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particularly in Austria. I also think

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They talk about sexy music nowadays. I think this is...

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One of the sixiest pieces of music that was ever written.

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Roses from the South, Joseph Cripps conducting the Piano Philharmonic Orchestra.

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What's your last one, Bill?

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Well the last one is the Mingale Boat song. It's sung by the Galliads. The Galliads are a group which includes two friends of mine.

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Robin Hall and Jimmy McGregor, who I've known.

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For a long time.

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I choose this because it brings back my favourite part of the world, which is...

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the northwest highlands of Scotland and the Hebrides.

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Mingale is a little Hebrewan island and this is a rowing song, the men going home from the fishing.

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It includes all the sentiment and the sweet sadness of the Scottish.

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Nature.

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and the nature of the highlands.

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Huge hoboise, let her bow boys swing her head round.

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And all together.

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Julia Hovoys left her girl.

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The Mingrole boat song sung by The Galleon.

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If you were to take only one disc, which would it be?

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I would take the

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The Beethoven

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the Fifth Symphony because uh

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I think

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would be much more interesting and last much longer than any of the others.

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And which one luxury would you like to take with you?

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But if I had the luxury, I'd think I'd take a case of sports equipment.

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What in particular?

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Well, in particular, a rubber ball.

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I can spend a lot of time.

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Um

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I have done in the past. Kicking it against the wall or throwing it or anything. And that's a Lord's Tableau's tie you're wearing, so you better have some cricket equipment as well. Oh, yes.

Bill Simpson21:19

Yeah.

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And one book apart from the Bible and Shakespeare.

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Well that

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Very obvious I take a book of Robert Burns songs and poems.

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Right.

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And thank you, Bill Simpson, for letting us hear your Desert Island Discs. And thank you very much. I've enjoyed it. Goodbye, everyone. Bye.