Rory Bremner

Speaker 30:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

Speaker 30:08

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

Presenter0:23

Mike Costaway this week is an entertainer. The BBC gave him his own show on television when he was twenty five. In those days he was an impressionist, wittily impersonating personalities in the great tradition of one of his childhood heroes, Mike Yarwood.

Presenter0:37

His move to Channel Four some years later taught him that his talent could be used as a satirical weapon, and these days his shows are laced with critical and often very serious intent.

Presenter0:48

The journey from popular comedian to witty satirist is perhaps a natural one for the Edinburgh schoolboy who always knew how to make his friends laugh but who suffered depression in his adult life. One voice impressionists don't use is their own, he says. It took me a long time to begin to use my own voice. He is Rory Bremner. It's one of the great tricks of light entertainment, or indeed I suppose serious acting really, isn't it? That it's easier to be somebody else than to be yourself.

Rory Bremner1:16

Very much easier, yes. I don't think I knew who I was until about four years ago, five years ago, really. A long time ago.

Presenter1:21

For long time.

Rory Bremner1:22

Oh yes, absolutely.

Presenter1:23

Well so you were hiding behind the voices, you know?

Rory Bremner1:26

To some extent, yeah. It was a combination of professional and personal happiness really. And I've been professionally happy in the last four or five years, particularly in the shows I've been doing with John Bird and John Fortune, and personally happy obviously with Tessa in the last four or five years and have felt kind of grounded and settled for the first time. And I suppose that gives you confidence to be yourself.

Presenter1:43

Tessa new wife of how many years? Two years? Three?

Rory Bremner1:45

How many years?

Rory Bremner1:46

Of four years.

Presenter1:47

Four years, and one little girl now, eight.

Rory Bremner1:49

Ava, that's right.

Presenter1:50

It was twenty-two months.

Rory Bremner1:51

Yes.

Presenter1:52

Uh and another one on the way.

Rory Bremner1:53

That's right, another one.

Presenter1:54

So it's taken all of that, has it? And that kind of stability and you reaching your early forties to find out

Presenter2:00

Who you are in it? It is a smile at the idea of you who are so many people not knowing who you are.

Rory Bremner2:01

Yeah.

Rory Bremner2:04

I'm not sure.

Rory Bremner2:05

Well I think I mean I used to always it's a very easy gift to entertain people if you do other voices because you can be other people all the time and it's a bit of a cliche and people say at school they'd start doing impressions or comedy as a way of avoiding being bullied. It didn't quite work that way. At school when I was actually it was only after I started doing impressions that people used to point me out to the school bully. So it was never quite the sort of easy car that I wanted it to be. But my childhood in Edinburgh was very much it sort of took off when I discovered that the festival hit town every year and I started to see these Oxford and Cambridge reviews and see these people doing wonderful shows. And I thought this is what I want to do and this is a way to do it and the voices were my way in to that particular career and in the personal life it had basically been parties and things like that that you could always make people laugh at parties or chat people up by doing voices and now I realize I don't

Presenter2:50

So

Presenter2:53

But at the same time, you you were hiding. It was a kind of displacement activity.

Rory Bremner2:57

It was an easy thing to do. I still find it quite easy to lapse into it, but much less so.

Presenter3:01

But

Presenter3:02

Who are you now then? Are you a political commentator? Are you the unofficial leader of the opposition?

Rory Bremner3:04

Are you a

Rory Bremner3:08

Well, no, you see, that says a lot about Ian Duncan Smith, doesn't it? Oh, Caspar the friendly ghost in his charming way. No, I'm all of these. I think in many ways I'm an amalgam and also a kind of combination of all the influences that have shaped me over the years. I'm sure we'll touch on various ones of them, but particular teachers, particular mentors, particular people that have influenced me and that I've met and actually have shown me different things to be interested in.

Presenter3:34

So you've adopted, have you, this kind of radicalism of your politics?

Rory Bremner3:38

I think I've been radicalised over the last few years, certainly by John Byrd and John Fortune in particular, but also because it would it's I started out from the premise of being able to do other voices and then doing the politicians because they're they're they're they're people who say something, they have something to say and therefore if you are a commentator you're able to use your voice to say something about the people who are in power.

Presenter3:58

We'll come back to you and your politics later on, but tell me about this first record, because this is quite personal, isn't it?

Rory Bremner4:03

Yeah, we're back to the beginning. We're back to Scotland where it started. It's a sort of beginning, middle and end really, because this reminds me of childhoods going to rugby matches at Murray Field and my childhood in Scotland and going back there various times over my years and also when I got married to Tessa, we played this as she walked up the aisle. So this is to me it's Scotland and it's childhood.

Rory Bremner4:55

Well, the thirty-third time these two countries have met together for a major international. Alan Hosey blows the whistle and we're away. It's still.

Presenter5:04

You can't hear it without thinking of Bill McLaren.

Rory Bremner5:06

Yeah. Yeah.

Presenter5:09

Of course, that was the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards.

Presenter5:13

How do you do it, Rory? I mean that's the question everybody wants to know.

Rory Bremner5:15

Couldn't

Presenter5:16

You know, when most of us want to do an accent, we just sort of think into a bit of Scottish or a bit of Irish or Welsh or whatever. I mean, do you just relax and move in, or is it the product of close observation?

Rory Bremner5:18

And we just sort of

Rory Bremner5:26

I think most people can do impressions who have a musical ear. I think it is it's just a musical trick, really. You register different sounds of the voice. I mean, if you're doing Ian McGaskill, you're aware there's a very kind of breathy kind of a voice. Or the quality of the voice, a very nasal voice in the case of Clive James. It was very much through the nose. Oh, Melvin Bragg was much more said about an idol. He always used to say his voice changed a lot after he'd had an operation to sort his nose out. Robert Day, which was when I started, was this sort of emphysematic, almost bronchitic voice that he had. They all had different qualities. And then you had the accents in. So that's the term.

Presenter6:00

And then you

Presenter6:02

But then there's the physical thing. I mean it's like when you do Gordon Brown, it's difficult to do on the radio because the most defining thing about him is that kind of opening of the laugh before he's

Rory Bremner6:05

Right, because the most difficult

Rory Bremner6:08

Indeed, I often wonder when he was auditioned for the job if they said name Gordon Brown, occupation, Goldfish. Because he has this tick. Well, it's mixed. I've always hated sort of practicing impressions in mirrors, but there is a very much a what happens as an impressionist is you have a film running in your head of the person that you're being at that particular time. So in your mind's eye, you're watching that person on a screen. So if I'm being Bill Clinton, I see what Bill Clinton would look like sitting here talking to you across this table.

Presenter6:38

And you do look like him in that moment. You see, it's just the physical things as well. And that's what makes us laugh, isn't it? It's that moment of recognition.

Rory Bremner6:39

Diamond

Rory Bremner6:44

Um in it is just deep within your head, you see the person and you're providing a soundtrack to that particular film.

Presenter6:52

But then the other the other trick is then to think up well, it's a bit of lateral thinking, isn't it? To think up an odd situation to put them in, which makes it doubly funny. And again, one thinks of your William Hague as a cab driver.

Rory Bremner6:58

Club.

Rory Bremner7:04

No, that's right.

Presenter7:04

Which was quite symbolic, actually, this kind of shouting through the glass and not quite getting through. Was that I mean, that's what I took from it.

Rory Bremner7:11

Well yes,'cause certain characters certain characters come to mind. I mean um

Rory Bremner7:16

Haig he just suggested himself as as a cow driver. I'm trying to think we we tried to do Murray put people in appropriate situations like Murray Walker doing Badger Watch. It was hello and welcome to Badger Watch and there it goes 48 in the b hours in the burrow. Did we see it? Did we? Hell. And that's it's a very easy way to get a laugh'cause you it just matter out of place. You put somebody into completely different contexts. And then over the years I suppose it's what's changed is I've made it much more linear. I've changed the way that I do impressions really because television has changed as well because when we were children and we enjoyed Mike Yarwood we all sat down to the same meal at the end of the day as it were from a television point of view because you just had BBC One, BBC Two and I T V and Channel 4 wasn't around in those days. And so the David Attenboroughs, the Earl Wakers, those characters were very, very familiar. But now television has completely fragmented and exploded in so many different ways. So I kind of focused more on what began to interest me more, which was the news and was the politics. And that's kind of where I am now.

Speaker 37:36

Yeah.

Presenter8:14

Record number two.

Rory Bremner8:16

As I've sort of looked back various times at childhood, I realized that the hours that I spent in my brother's bedroom listening to records were kind of what shaped me completely. We didn't have rock records, we didn't have Led Zeppelin, we didn't have Dark Side of the Moon, those kind of things. We had Day Medna Everge and Hinge and Brackett and records I'm just incredibly embarrassed about now, but they were spoken words records. And Danny Kaye, I haven't heard this record for 30 years, but thinking back before this programme, I thought, you know, this might be where all this thing for voices and playing with words and lyrics

Rory Bremner8:54

Began.

Speaker 18:55

A girl once went to the fair to hire herself for serving.

Speaker 19:01

and at last a funny looking old gentleman engaged her and took her home to his house.

Speaker 19:07

And when she got there

Speaker 19:09

He told her that he had something to teach her.

Speaker 19:12

for that in his house

Speaker 19:14

He had his own names for things.

Speaker 19:18

He said to her, What would you call me?

Speaker 19:21

Master or Mister or whatever

Presenter9:23

How you please, sir, says she. Master of all masters from six stories from far away places, told by Danny Kaye. Say, Rory, you were born and brought up in Scotland, in Edinburgh, in Morningside, in a house with a drive, all very posh, very sty.

Rory Bremner9:37

It's only a very small drive. But the gravel crunched. The gravel crunched, yeah.

Presenter9:39

Grab it.

Presenter9:41

Yeah.

Rory Bremner9:41

Yeah.

Presenter9:42

But it I mean, it w what what did your father do for a living?

Rory Bremner9:44

Well he I mean he was a soldier originally. That was his life until 1953 when he left the army to look after his father who was ill. And then he took a job as the appeals secretary in Scotland for the cancer research campaign. So he travelled throughout Scotland raising money for cancer research and then ironically he himself got cancer, had the operation and lost the job while he was in hospital. My mother was told you have to tell him that he has lost his job. He can't continue to work for us and I just remember how much that upset her, particularly because he was still just recovering. It had a profound effect on all of us I think. I wasn't told that he had cancer. I read it in a letter that my mum left lying around.

Speaker 110:20

Yeah.

Rory Bremner10:26

Um then the like the rest of it was four or five years of him sort of going in for check-ups and being okay and then not okay or okay or not okay.

Presenter10:33

How old were you when he died?

Rory Bremner10:35

I was eighteen, I was just doing my A-levels, and he was quite a bit older as fathers tend to be, but he was about seventy-one when I died.

Presenter10:41

So he's in his fifties when he did you quite lately. I I mean I do get the impression that you weren't that close'cause you went off to boarding school, to prep school at at age eight, didn't you?

Rory Bremner10:43

Yeah.

Rory Bremner10:49

Uh

Rory Bremner10:51

We were and we weren't. We were close and estranged sort of way because we shared a sense of humour and a love of sport.

Presenter10:55

But you weren't very good at sport, are you?

Rory Bremner10:57

No, um uh no, I loved sport. I was sort of second fifteen and second eleven level. No, I I wanted to be good at sport. I mean I I enjoyed rugby until somebody sat on me and broke my collarbone when I was fourteen. No, I've always loved it. I loved playing.

Presenter11:01

Go the

Presenter11:08

No, I've always loved it. I do get the impression of huge, warm family life and lots of lovely holidays, making sound castles, having picnics.

Rory Bremner11:15

No, we only ever had one holiday in to France and we actually um took a camper stove and cooked our meals in the room in the hotel. Except for one evening out where we went to the end of the pier and there was this extraordinary spectacle

Rory Bremner11:27

These French people coming out to sort of flan around in the evening, and they wondered what the smell was, and it was this strange English family with the primus at the end of the pier. Because, well, all the sacrifices were made to send my brother and I to school. And ironically, because we just missed each other, I thought about this only recently: that when I was three, my brother went off to boarding school. And when I was eighteen, obviously, I left. So that meant from three to eighteen, I only ever saw him during the holidays. So my relationship with Dad, he

Speaker 111:55

Mm.

Rory Bremner11:58

He just he liked to be away from home, I think, uh and he just did his own thing. And I mean, he would when he came back to watch sport or quiz programmes or things like that on television, that's when we sort of got on and he just he loved me doing voices and things. I think he either would have wanted me to go on the stage or go in the army.

Presenter12:14

So we encourage that. Encourage you to show off.

Rory Bremner12:16

He did encourage me to show off a bit, I'm afraid, yes.

Presenter12:18

A bit of a

Presenter12:19

And if you inherited your sense of humour and and love of sport from your father, what did you inherit from your mother?

Rory Bremner12:25

Well, ironically, the music thing, because she was tone deaf, she encouraged me to take up the piano and she sat there hour after hour just doing these sort of scales of piano. And I realise now I could have played anything because it would she wouldn't have known which were the right notes and which were the wrong ones. But she was dedicated. She was also very religious. She used to say these huge long prayers to protect us, you know. She'd say, save my children from drowning, from scolding, from accidents with their eyes, from road accidents, all this. And I always thought that what's going to happen is I'm actually going to be killed by a filing cabinet and she's going to think that's the one thing I didn't think of and she's got it's terrible guilt. But she was she held the family together in in every way and she made sort of her own sacrifices. And she only died sort of three or four years ago.

Presenter13:13

Record number three.

Rory Bremner13:13

This is something that really it's a very, very special moment. I can remember when this first happened about ten years ago. It's a piece of cricket commentary.

Rory Bremner13:21

And cricket has played a huge, huge part of my life. I mean, from school, although as you very kindly pointed out, I wasn't very good at sport. I loved watching it and I first of all did the cricket commentators and Richie Benno and Bill McLaren. So those were the first voices that I did on coaches on the way to matches. So this to me is about cricket, it's about summer, and it's really there because I would love to have on a desert island an example of a human being completely reduced by laughter to a state of total collapse.

Presenter13:53

Yeah.

Speaker 113:53

Then they have

Presenter13:53

I

Speaker 113:53

Uh

Presenter13:53

Uh Peace.

Speaker 113:54

Yeah.

Presenter13:54

He did very well indeed, batting one hundred and thirty one minutes and hit three fours. And um then we had Lewis playing extremely well for his forty-seven lot out. Aggers do stop it and uh um Lawrence uh always entertaining, batting for thirty thirty five.

Presenter14:14

But

Presenter14:17

Thirty-five minutes hit a four of the weekkeepers.

Rory Bremner14:23

Meggers, for goodness' sake, stop it.

Presenter14:25

There's Lawrence.

Presenter14:28

Technology.

Speaker 314:28

Uh

Rory Bremner14:29

Yeah.

Presenter14:35

He hit a fourth of the waykeeper's head.

Presenter14:38

And he was out for me.

Presenter14:41

Ha fuck.

Rory Bremner14:42

Yeah.

Rory Bremner14:43

Batted for twelve minutes, members caught by Haynes on Patterson for two, and Higlamoral out for 419. I've stopped laughing now.

Rory Bremner14:52

Brian John

Presenter14:52

Brian Jocelyn, Jonathan Agnew Aggers in complete collapse, 1991. It is a

Rory Bremner14:56

It's impossible not to laugh.

Presenter14:59

It's brilliant. Every time. I mean you can hear it again.

Rory Bremner15:00

I mean you can hear it again. Every time.

Presenter15:03

We're still talking about inspirations in your life. Like an awful lot of people, you had a school teacher who was very special, didn't you?

Rory Bremner15:09

Yes, I did, a very special teacher. Um as Wellington was it was quite a military school. I think there was a sort of chute down which boys went. You opened a flap and you ended up in Sandhurst three years later. And of course dad would have lo loved that. But somewhere along the way was this teacher called Derek Swift.

Rory Bremner15:23

And he was our language teacher, and he was quite superb. I remember the first lesson that we had with him, and he sat us down and he said, Right, now come on, um how much French have you spoken in your life? And we realized that in fact we'd spoken French the equivalent if we'd been French for ten days, you know, over our whole life at school. And he introduced me to not only to the language, but also to Voltaire and Condide, which was the original, I suppose, satirical inspiration. Here was this book written, which to me is still one of the best definitions of satire. And Derek took us by the hand and took us through that novel.

Presenter15:55

But you're obviously a very attentive pupil, very willing, wanted to learn.

Rory Bremner15:58

Well, I you see, my name begins with B, so I was at the front of the class and I think that's something to do with it. So and yeah, I was a bit sort of uh sort of goody goody'cause you just we you just want to get on well. You wanted to get on with the teachers, you wanted to get on with the subject.

Presenter16:00

Color

Presenter16:09

What did you think you were going to be and do with your life? I mean, did you think you were going to go into the flap to Santos?

Rory Bremner16:12

Well do I want to do that?

Rory Bremner16:14

I did one of those sort of like tests that you that you do and it came out I think it's a merchant banker, so it was completely wrong. Um I think uh I was pretty certain qui quite early on that I wanted to do sort of radio or television or stage in in some way. So were you?

Presenter16:27

Oh were you? You knew. You wanted to perform it was a show off bit was I'm afraid it was

Rory Bremner16:30

I'm afraid it was there. It was the gene was there.

Presenter16:32

It was the the

Rory Bremner16:34

Um or languages.

Presenter16:34

Uh

Presenter16:34

It's interesting that that you've gone back to use the languages'cause you've started to translate operas, haven't you?

Rory Bremner16:37

Yeah, that's what you've

Rory Bremner16:40

That's well that's right. It was like completing a circle.

Presenter16:43

But why would people ask you? You must have said I'm up for it. I know I would really like to and why opt

Rory Bremner16:46

I would really like to know.

Rory Bremner16:47

Well they picked up um because I'd I'd developed an interest in opera over the the last sort of seven or eight years or so and the conductor Charles Hazelwood got in touch with me and said I hear you're interested in opera and I know you do German at university. Would you like to translate this Kurt Waiel opera, Der Zilbeze? And it ended up being a wonderful partnership. He took me out to Leipzig in February nineteen ninety eight and we saw this first production of Silver Lake on the sixty fifth anniversary.

Presenter17:11

On the sixth

Presenter17:13

We should have a piece of it, really. You're taking it to your desert island. Yes, I am, absolutely. We should have it now, I think, too. Okay.

Rory Bremner17:15

Yes, I am. Absolutely.

Rory Bremner17:17

Okay. This is 1933, and Kurt Weil is more famous perhaps for the Threpanny Opera with Bert Oprecht, but this he wrote with Georg Kaiser. And it was very much a product of his time. It's the story of a policeman and a thief who he shoots during a robbery. And then, lo and behold, the policeman wins the lottery, puts up the thief in a castle, then they're cheated out of the castle, and the policeman and the thief walk off across a frozen lake to a better life together. Well, they think they're going to commit suicide, but because the lake freezes over, they're somehow saved, and there's this rather strange salvation. So this is the finale of Silver Lake.

Speaker 318:18

More trade story.

Presenter18:30

It is for the grand of Russia.

Presenter18:46

Part of the finale from Court Veil and Georg Kaiser's Der Zilbese with Hildegard Heicheler and the Cologne Radio Orchestra conducted by Jan Latham Koenig. So, Rory Bremen, you read French and German at King's College London and you started working on the Cabaret Circuit and going to the Edinburgh fringe I think during that period. It's sort of early.

Rory Bremner18:59

Gotcha.

Rory Bremner19:05

That's right. It was an extraordinary period. I mean, from seventy nine to eighty one, being in Edinburgh, I mean, at that time, everybody Rowan Atkinson, Stephen Frye, Emma Thompson, Hugh Laurie, Clive Anderson, Rick Mayle, Alexey Sale, they were all there in that sort of period of alternative.

Presenter19:19

But how alternative were you then? How did you differ from the people, you know, like Dave Allen and Benny Hill and Mike Yarwood and Stanley Baxter?

Rory Bremner19:28

Well, the vehicle wasn't an alternative at all. I mean, doing impressions because that had been I mean, it wasn't just Mike Yarwood. I think people like Kenneth Williams and people had done that before, funnily enough. I suppose what was different, and this is really where I the secondary education really began, was on the Cabaret circuit, because the voices became the vehicle for what I wanted to do, and what I wanted to do became

Presenter19:31

Yeah.

Rory Bremner19:47

commenting and observing. And for the first time I found a way of combining the joy really of doing voices with the academic exercise of trying to understand a subject and coming to terms with it.

Presenter20:01

You were discovered by Russell Harty, weren't you?

Rory Bremner20:03

I was lovely, Russell, who was um well, yes.

Rory Bremner20:07

He well, he had his chat show around about that time, nineteen eighty three, eighty four or whatever. He he was just tickled by uh the impressions and um he had that verbal tick. He would always put things in inverted commas and do his little sort of rabbits' ear inverted commas. And he said, That's Rory Brenda, by the way and he wanted to sort of get me to do his show, but Wogan sort of got in there first, somehow or other, in in nineteen eighty five.

Presenter20:09

By nineteen.

Speaker 120:10

Yeah.

Presenter20:27

So you were kind of subsumed by the B B C, but somehow the rot seemed to set in. I don't know what it was, but you sort of fell out of love with it. It didn't fall out of love with you, did it? It was you who took it in your head to go to Channel Four.

Rory Bremner20:33

It didn't

Rory Bremner20:35

One

Rory Bremner20:38

Well, there's a couple of things happened. Yeah, I wrote to the BBC at that time and said, Look, why don't we get together with the people who write my show and the people who are putting together news and current affairs, which is this huge empire that John Burt was building at the time. And I remember the head of Light Entertainment said, Well, you know, if I want two pints of milk, I don't have to move into the dairy. And I said, Well, no, why don't we try it? And he said, Well, I don't have to stick my hand into the fire to know it'll get burnt. And I thought, well, thanks very much indeed. What's the telephone number for channel four?

Speaker 120:39

Yeah.

Presenter20:39

Definitely. Uh

Speaker 120:40

Good.

Rory Bremner21:05

And off we went.

Presenter21:06

And off we went.

Rory Bremner21:07

Absolutely, and off we went to the city.

Presenter21:08

They were just very willing to cross fertilize in that kind of way.

Rory Bremner21:10

Well, we knew the programme we wanted to make. John Byrne, John Fortune were a key part of that. It was also to be a weekly show. It was to be recorded close to when we actually put it out. What it needed was it needed to have that element of research, and that's when we started to sort of take people out to lunch to understand what made politicians tick. Because there's a wonderful quote that Enoch Powell gave to Jeremy Paxman. Paxman was writing his book about friends in high places. And he was trying to work out who the establishment were. And Paxman said, who are these people? Who who are the establishment? And Enoch Powell said, You're asking the wrong question. You keep looking for the copper wire. You should be looking for the electricity.

Rory Bremner21:46

Because it was the relationships between those people in power and the relationships between the politicians that was more interesting than the people themselves. And so we started to actually

Speaker 121:54

Uh

Presenter21:54

Great quote. Yeah.

Rory Bremner21:58

What made people tick what and in in political stories?

Presenter22:02

Record number five.

Rory Bremner22:03

Right, we're going back now to Paris, I think. And towards the end of university I was doing lectures and uh essays and things during the day and in the evenings I was on the cabaret circuit. And the people I was with then included Tina May, who is a jazz singer and is a great brilliant jazz singer now. And she was a uh a great fan of the wonderful jazz voices Julie London, Peggy Lee. And so I wanted to have a piece of Julie London on the island because she sings this so beautifully and this will remind me of jazz in Paris and of Tina and it's Julie London singing I'm in the mood for love.

Presenter22:05

I think

Speaker 322:39

I'm in the mood for love

Speaker 322:46

Simply because you're near me.

Presenter22:54

Planny

Presenter22:56

But when you're new

Presenter23:01

I'm in the mood for love.

Presenter23:07

Julie London singing I'm in the mood for love and memories of Paris for Roy Bremlin.

Rory Bremner23:11

Absolutely.'Cause we then we did a show out out in Paris. We put a review together and we spent ages thinking of a title,'cause as you know, titles are the most important part of any show. Ha ha. And so we called it You Are Eiffel, but I like you.

Presenter23:19

But it

Speaker 323:19

Yeah.

Rory Bremner23:24

And we took it to Edinburgh.

Presenter23:25

Between Iraq and a hard place, really, isn't it?

Rory Bremner23:26

Fucking a hard place really

Presenter23:30

Tell me about you and and your m middle years at the personal level now, because I know in your mid thirties all of this on screen success when you got to Channel Four we've just talked about began, but somehow, for some reason, uh y you weren't happy. You've been divorced, you obviously had a sense of failure, but it was more than that. I mean

Rory Bremner23:44

Do you obviously have a sense

Presenter23:47

I mentioned depression earlier on me. How bad?

Rory Bremner23:48

Yeah.

Rory Bremner23:50

Well, I think I know I think I made a little bit too much of that. I mean, I did have time, so and I did feel very down, but I think they were much more to do with.

Rory Bremner23:57

A sort of restlessness and some rather strange relationships. I mean, um

Presenter24:00

And weren't you anorexic as well?

Rory Bremner24:02

Yes, I was. When I first got married, when I got married to Susie, that was in nineteen eighty eight. And I think I was rushing around. I've always done too much. And I became just very nervous. And so I would just be very nervous and shy of food. I'd open the fridge door and the the smell of the food would make me physically sick. I knew what I was doing professionally, but I didn't know what I was doing emotionally. Maybe that was the thing. And I married, as I say, when I was very young. And when we divorced, I was thirty one. And I think still at that stage I didn't really know that much about who I was. And I felt awful that this marriage had ended. And I felt very guilty about it, because we'd sort of drifted apart, we were doing different things.

Rory Bremner24:40

And I remember I went to see somebody to sort of help me get through it all, and he said, Well, you mustn't worry about this guilt. I know you feel very guilty, but why don't you leave the guilt to one side? Imagine it's in this box here. So I put my guilt, metaphorically, in the box in the corner of his room, and I never went back there. So it's.

Rory Bremner25:00

So it's sitting there in some therapist's room is this large bag of guilt. But then there was a sort of period of.

Presenter25:05

Was it as miraculous as that?

Rory Bremner25:07

No, it wasn't. No, I had f some strange years, just I think some strange relationships. I think that was just very, very low self-esteem. I would tend to sort of find the most the strongest person I could and give them a gun and say, Here, off you go. And um John Fortune was the person who saved me from all of that. Well, a combination actually,'cause I saw a a counselor who said, What is it about you always rushing around? and I said, Well, I am a bit of a chameleon.

Rory Bremner25:27

And he said, Well, you shouldn't sit on a patchwork quilt.

Rory Bremner25:31

And I laughed and laughed, and suddenly, again, laughter was the key because actually, if you learn to laugh, that's really the power. But it comes back to what.

Presenter25:37

But it comes back to what we were saying earlier. I mean, the patchwork quilt are all the voices that you do, exactly. So, and I think that's a very good idea.

Rory Bremner25:40

Did you do?

Rory Bremner25:42

I mean, if I was Diana Princess of Hearts, I'd say there's about twenty-five of us in this marriage. But John Fortune saved me. I mean, at the worst time, the time when it got to its really worst, I was in a very strange relationship, and I think I was trying to impress, and I was having helicopter lessons and riding horses and going off with, you know, golf lessons and stuff. And John Fortune sat me in a taxi on the bottom of Park Lane. And I said, What's going wrong with this relationship, John? I just, you know, it's really wrong. And John looked at me and said, Rory, look up in the sky. Up there, up there, are the words

Rory Bremner26:16

You are being taken for a

Rory Bremner26:20

And you're looking at the last word saying, what does that say? Is that red?

Rory Bremner26:25

Ripe and again I laughed and laughed. I could see exactly what he was saying and it was true. I was just in a ridiculous uh situation, in a ridiculous relationship, and that uh and and laughter o again was the way out.

Presenter26:39

With one bound you were free.

Rory Bremner26:40

With one bound I was free.

Presenter26:42

Record number six.

Rory Bremner26:43

Ah, yes, part of being free, really. A few years before that particular incident, I found myself on my own and I.

Rory Bremner26:51

I fell in with a group of friends, one in particular who is passionate about Alpha Ramaz.

Rory Bremner26:57

And he said, Well, why don't you come to Morocco?'Cause we're going on a rally and uh so six or seven of us set off and it was these old nineteen sixties and early nineteen seventies cars and off we went driving around Morocco for two or three weeks and I'm afraid one of the soundtracks to that has to be Frank Sinatra because again he has the power to give you a kind of positive energy and put a smile on your face. So this is sunny days, an open road, a smile on your face and Sinatra played a little bit too loudly.

Speaker 127:25

Don't you know, little fool, you never can win.

Speaker 127:32

Use your mentality.

Speaker 127:36

Wake up to reality.

Speaker 127:40

But each time that I do, just the thought of you makes me stop before I begin Cause I've got you

Presenter27:51

Under my skin.

Presenter27:54

Thanks, Sinatra, and I've got you under my skin. You were famously banned from the New Labour campaign bus at the last election, Rory. I mean, is it is it true that when Labour first got in in nineteen ninety seven that they thought you'd write jokes for the Prime Minister?

Rory Bremner28:09

Yeah, they did. It was a combination of things because I I think they felt because we'd done jokes about John Major, you know, you must be Labour, of course, absolutely, come and work for us and it was astonishing because you you thought they would realize that in fact whoever was in power would be the people who would be on the receiving end. In fact, one of the trips abroad I was in the south of France in ninety six and Blair himself was in the next village and somehow or other I don't know how it happened but the phone rang and it was Cherie Blair saying would you like to come and play tennis?

Rory Bremner28:37

We got on perfectly well. And I said at the time, I said, Well, you do realize that we're laughing much on major now, but in a year or two if you're Prime Minister, then the boot will be on the other foot. And he uh very interestingly he said, Oh, uh, how does Lord Bremner sound? And I thought what an interesting thing to say And it seemed very funny at the time, and it seems a lot funnier now, I can tell you.

Presenter29:00

That it immediately sprang to mind, even though as a joke in the Russell Harty.

Rory Bremner29:03

It was just

Rory Bremner29:04

How strange absolutely inverted commas uh to joke um about uh the way of controlling people would be to put them in the House of Lords.

Presenter29:11

Tony Blair, of course, is inevitably the centre of your of your satirical universe. How much do you think he's changed? You observe him very closely. The High Office has taken a huge toll on him, hasn't it?

Rory Bremner29:21

It has, it's incredible when you see pictures of and Clinton the same and you see pictures of them when they took office and and it was four or five years later. I mean I now have to wear eye bags for Tony Blair, uh which I didn't have to before and glasses indeed. I mean the eye bags themselves actually I then developed an allergy to the glue during the last series that I did so I didn't actually have to use eye bags because my own eyes were so sore and so puffy that actually Helen, our wonderful makeup artist said, look actually I'm going to throw these eye bags away and you can just use your own.

Presenter29:49

Record number seven.

Rory Bremner29:51

We talked about this rather strange period between the end of my marriage and meeting Tessa. And I met during this time Graeme Cowdry, the cricketer, and he and his wife Maxine took me under their wing really for a couple of years. And Graham was the best man at my wedding. And he is obsessed with Van Morrison. But it will not only be associated with them, but also with the road via them that led to meeting Tessa. And this is for her.

Speaker 130:21

I'm I told you lately then I

Rory Bremner30:26

Who you

Rory Bremner30:29

Have I told you there's no one of her

Rory Bremner30:37

We'll buy it! Big battery Uh

Speaker 130:39

Yeah.

Speaker 130:40

Take away my sadness

Rory Bremner30:42

Yeah.

Speaker 130:43

Yeah.

Rory Bremner30:43

Day's my trouble, that's what you do.

Presenter30:50

Have I told you lately, sung by Van Morrison, uh you're not gonna survive on this desert island without Tissa, are you? I can tell.

Rory Bremner30:56

It's going to be a bit difficult.

Rory Bremner30:58

Okay. Well you're going to this desert island and you're going

Presenter30:58

Okay. Well you're going to this desert island and you're going by yourself. You're not taking anyone with you. Um except of course all the people you are. Yeah. So which of them would you metamorphose into on the island? Which one which of them would cope with? Well David Attenborough would cope with it.

Rory Bremner31:05

In my head.

Rory Bremner31:11

Well, David Attenborough would go. I mean, I think, you know, um he would know what to do with the animals because I'd be hopeless, completely hopeless. I mean, I'm I'm quite impractical, I think. And I get scared very easily. I mean, I think I'm probably frightened of the dark. I mean, even at in our house in Edinburgh, I would go from room to room at night, thinking there was somebody in each room, and I would actually carry a b little sort of spray of antiperspirant, which I would go round the door and spray in the face of whoever I thought was there.

Presenter31:36

So you need to be somebody very brave, somebody fearless.

Rory Bremner31:40

Um who do we know that's brought well somebody who can cook would be a help. I mean maybe Anthony Wal Thompson could probably go there and he'd uh be able to cook things up. Uh but being practical, um or fearless, I dunno.

Presenter31:40

Uh

Rory Bremner31:53

Maybe I should go native and be Nelson Mandela and uh

Rory Bremner31:56

know that uh I could survive on an island.

Rory Bremner32:00

and come out of it stronger.

Rory Bremner32:02

And uh I Better Patterson. Last record.

Rory Bremner32:06

We're back to opera here and um with Charles Hazelwood and Mark Dawnford May the two um that I've been most closely involved with was Silverlake, uh which we've heard and uh and Carmen. So this particular piece is actually one of the best recordings of Carmen which is 1976 George Schulte and Kiri De Canawa is singing Michaela.

Speaker 332:36

Ready us, ready wall and war.

Speaker 332:53

Yeah.

Speaker 332:54

Are you good?

Speaker 332:56

But it's true.

Speaker 333:03

So you are mine.

Presenter33:27

Je dique rien n mait pouvante Kierie de Garnawa as Michaela from Bizet's Carmen with the London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Sir George Schulte. If you could only take one of those records for him.

Rory Bremner33:40

Well, I was tempted I was thinking about Brian Johnston and the need for laughter. He was very, very close, but at the end I've actually finally have a plump for Van Morrison.

Presenter33:49

Oh, that's a song, huh?

Rory Bremner33:50

Mm.

Presenter33:51

Hm. And what about your book, as well as the Bible of Shakespeare?

Rory Bremner33:54

It's a question of whether I wanted to take a book I read already or not. And actually there's so much that I don't know that I'd like to know more. And I think I'd like to know more about the old civilization, so I'd have to take Gibbon's Decline and the Fall.

Presenter34:05

Annual lunch

Rory Bremner34:06

Sorry.

Rory Bremner34:07

My luxury, if I'm allowed it, I hope, is to take a radio.

Rory Bremner34:11

Not so I can speak out, but just so I can hear voices,'cause I know it's not much of a defence, but uh rather like uh Peter Sutcliffe or these other terrible people say, I suppose I can look back on my life and say the voices made me do it.

Presenter34:26

Rory Bremner, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your Desert Island discs.

Rory Bremner34:30

Thank you.

Speaker 334:37

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