Raymond Briggs

Speaker 20:00

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

Presenter0:29

My Castaway this week is a writer and illustrator. His books have become classics of their kind, both for children and grown-ups. Father Christmas, The Snowman, and Where the Wind Blows are among his best known. He's been producing them since the 1960s. He was brought up in Wimbledon. His mother had been a lady's maid, and his father was the milkman. After leaving art school, he became an illustrator, but unimpressed with the quality of writing with which he had to work, used his love of the strip cartoon to add his own words to his pictures. His parents often appear in his stories. The simple, decent lives they led are a source of inspiration, and his work is always honest and unafraid of reality. Now seventy one, he lives simply, drives an old car, and apparently buys his clothes from a charity shop. On his gravestone he would like inscribed the opinion of a little girl he knows. I quote, He is not a normal person. He is Raymond Briggs. Why would she think, Raymond, that you're not a normal person?

Raymond Briggs1:29

Oh, golly, I don't know. It all seems very normal to the point of being boring to me, but um she was only three and a half when she said this. It was rather strange, all sitting round having lunch and slight pause, and then she just looked across the table at me and said, Raymond is not a normal person.

Presenter1:43

Rame does not.

Presenter1:46

But you quite like that.

Raymond Briggs1:47

Oh yes, brilliant.

Presenter1:48

Perfect.

Raymond Briggs1:49

Terrific. Best compliment I've ever had in my life.

Presenter1:51

Why?

Raymond Briggs1:52

Well, who wants to be normal?

Raymond Briggs1:54

Yeah.

Presenter1:54

Except that your very ordinariness and the simplicity, you know, and that of your parents and everything you've written about, I mean, it's like a sort of.

Raymond Briggs1:59

Your pairs.

Presenter2:02

Badge of honour, isn't it? Ordinariness for you.

Raymond Briggs2:03

Is it?

Raymond Briggs2:04

Well, yes, homely, I suppose. I'm homely and home loving and

Raymond Briggs2:09

Don't like jetting about the world or anything like that, so I suppose if that's not normal. Don't like holidays.

Raymond Briggs2:15

I I like charity shop clothes'cause they're more interesting than the things you see in ordinary shops.

Presenter2:22

And perhaps I was I mean, if she was only three she perhaps couldn't have analysed this far, but I mean I was thinking perhaps she thought you weren't normal because your children's books don't always have happy endings, do they?

Raymond Briggs2:32

Mm. No, usually sad endings, people tell me.

Raymond Briggs2:35

But most endings are sad anyway. It all ends in death. Snowman melts.

Raymond Briggs2:40

Only

Raymond Briggs2:41

Bear goes back to the Arctic and

Raymond Briggs2:44

Every one dies at the end of one of the windows.

Presenter2:47

Well, quite. But you think that's important?

Raymond Briggs2:49

Yes, absolutely. Cause that's what we've all got to face.

Presenter2:52

That that's the reality.

Raymond Briggs2:53

Mm.

Presenter2:54

And Father Christmas, according to you, is a grumpy old what's it?

Raymond Briggs2:57

Well, it's bound to be. It's only being logical. And we know if you treat it logically, all these things I do, you take something that's fantastical, like a bogeyman, Father Christmas.

Raymond Briggs3:09

And from then on, assume that they're real, and from then on, treat it completely logically.

Presenter3:13

So Father Christmas gets cheesed off getting dirty and coming down the chimney and

Raymond Briggs3:15

Getting dirty and kind of

Raymond Briggs3:18

Dreadful job. I mean, we know he's old, we know he's fat.

Raymond Briggs3:21

Who'd like to climb down one chimney, let alone hundreds, covered in soot, freezing cold, on your own?

Raymond Briggs3:27

A dreadful, dreadful job. He's bound to be fed up with it.

Presenter3:31

But the end is therefore often surreal, strange to say, isn't it?

Presenter3:35

Because Father Christmas isn't a grumpy old man who goes on holiday. We have him going on holiday in another book, you know, to New Yorker or something.

Raymond Briggs3:41

Yes, he does do that. Yes, that's'cause I was sent away that year or not sent away, it's the year my wife died and friends asked me to France, other people asked me to um Scotland. And the American publisher took me to um New York and Las Vegas.

Raymond Briggs3:56

God, awful places. Um but um

Presenter4:00

You hated it. Just like Father Christmas.

Raymond Briggs4:02

Yes, really. I mean, it's fairly ghastly.

Raymond Briggs4:06

But um

Presenter4:07

Are you telling me you're a grumpy old man then?

Raymond Briggs4:09

No, no, no, I'm very cheerful and light-hearted.

Presenter4:15

Not convinced, I hope. Let's have your first record. What is it?

Raymond Briggs4:15

You're not not convinced, I

Raymond Briggs4:20

Oh, this is the Bonzo Dog Band. I always still call them the Bonzo Dog Doodar Band. And the intro and the outro has made me laugh for years. I've heard it dozens of times, but it's still funny, terrific. Big hello to Big John Wayne, Xylophone.

Raymond Briggs4:35

And Robert Molly guitar.

Raymond Briggs4:39

Filly buttons, boom.

Raymond Briggs4:42

And looking very relaxed, Adolf Hitler unvives.

Raymond Briggs4:46

Fucking nice.

Raymond Briggs4:49

Princess Anne and Sousafron

Raymond Briggs4:54

Introducing Liberace Clarinet.

Raymond Briggs4:58

It's with Garnet Ted Armstrong on Vocals.

Presenter5:01

The Bonzo Dog Band and the intro and the outro. The result of your creations, Raymond Briggs, particularly The Snowman and Father Christmas and everything we've just been talking about, is that you have cornered the market in Christmas. I mean, both The Snowman and Fungus, I think, were

Raymond Briggs5:13

Yeah.

Presenter5:15

Fungus of Bogeyman were on this year and

Presenter5:17

I think the Bear was in concert in Scotland and the Snowman was in rep in Birmingham and and your Father Christmas was all over our stamps, wasn't he?

Raymond Briggs5:20

And it doesn't

Raymond Briggs5:23

And

Raymond Briggs5:27

Yes, that's right, yes. That was nice being asked to do the stamps, because that's usually looked upon as a plumb graphic design job and I'm the last person to be expected to do that.

Raymond Briggs5:36

But it was um quite good fun to do actually.

Presenter5:38

But the irony is that you you can't stand Christmas.

Raymond Briggs5:41

Mm, I'm not all that keen on it.

Presenter5:43

What?

Raymond Briggs5:43

I don't think I don't know anyone who does, except young children.

Presenter5:46

What's your ideal Christmas then, mummy? What don't you like about it? Where would you like to be?

Raymond Briggs5:50

I like to go down an Anderson shelter and wait for it to blow over.

Presenter5:55

You must have loved it as a boy, though. I mean, you must have loved all did you get lots of presents? You were an only child. Your mother.

Raymond Briggs6:00

I don't know.

Presenter6:01

Absolutely adored you. Didn't you didn't you love it?

Raymond Briggs6:03

Yeah.

Raymond Briggs6:05

Yes, I've I remember I felt very spoilt because the old idea was that you hung up a a stocking, but I hung up a pillow case, which was, you know, a great sackful of stuff. Very spoilt child. And I think my dad used to tiptoe in and put the stuff in on his way to the milk round at the crack of dawn, because he used to have to start work even earlier on Christmas Day to get home in time for the midday meal, which was murder. Didn't get days off in those days. Not like all these slackers today.

Presenter6:33

Were books your favourite presents, therefore?

Raymond Briggs6:35

No, not a bit. I hated books actually. I um I can always remember feeling a parcel.

Raymond Briggs6:40

And then finding that hollow.

Raymond Briggs6:42

concave edge down one side and thinking, Oh God, it's a book

Presenter6:46

But you knew early on what you wanted to do, so what inspired you then? What did you see that made you think I'd like to do that, or I could do that?

Raymond Briggs6:55

Well, cartoons uh the punch type of cartoon is what I wanted to do.

Raymond Briggs6:59

joke single drawings in black and white. And um it strikes me as very odd that I had something so specialized, just this commercial stuff for printing.

Presenter7:10

And did you have a talent? Were you a child who always had a pencil? Were you always doodling and drawing faces or?

Raymond Briggs7:16

Faces.

Presenter7:17

Characters

Raymond Briggs7:18

Yes, I think I did. I don't know any more than any other kid, though. When I was evacuated I illustrated my letters to my parents.

Raymond Briggs7:24

Um

Presenter7:25

Or did you draw? Where were you evacuated to?

Raymond Briggs7:27

in Dorset with two lovely old aunties.

Raymond Briggs7:31

I always look upon them as old ladies, but it only struck me a few weeks ago that they can only have been about forty. I thought they were about ninety when I was a kid.

Presenter7:40

Record number two.

Raymond Briggs7:42

I get crazes for different sorts of music. I had a craze some time ago for Tom Waits, and then I had a craze for um Knittin Sawney, and I've got a craze at the moment for Jan Garberik. And I also like Indian sounding music, not that I not that I know anything about it.

Raymond Briggs7:59

But this is Jan Gabrik playing with some Pakistan musicians.

Presenter8:32

Jange Barak and Fatter Alikon with Saga. You didn't hear that as a boy in Wimbledon Park named.

Raymond Briggs8:41

No, not remote. I didn't see the point of that. I thought the best thing to do was to go on playing the kind of stuff you're playing at home at the moment.

Raymond Briggs8:48

rather than listen to the first L P you ever bought in nineteen sixty one or something.

Raymond Briggs8:52

And uh

Presenter8:53

And yet your work is full of nostalgia. I mean, look at this book of Ethel and Ernest about your parents, which you produced only

Raymond Briggs8:54

Yeah.

Raymond Briggs8:58

Daniel

Presenter9:00

I think in the late nineties.

Raymond Briggs9:02

Yeah, that's a fine.

Presenter9:02

It's it's sort of soaked every detail in the in every picture, you know, you it's redolent of the nineteen fifties and old radios and coal scuttles.

Speaker 49:12

Uh

Raymond Briggs9:12

Yes, that's right.

Presenter9:13

I mean, it's your stock in trade, nostalgia.

Raymond Briggs9:16

Perhaps that's why I want to forget it when I'm on the island. Do something modern and new.

Presenter9:21

Tell me about those parents then, Ethel and Ernest. How did they meet?

Raymond Briggs9:27

Oh, that's what set me off doing that book. It's the way my mum and dad met. My mum was a maid working in a

Raymond Briggs9:34

big posh house in a posh square in Belgravia, and my dad was cycling to work.

Raymond Briggs9:40

It's the split second timing that gets me she was in the room, so Owen shake the duster.

Raymond Briggs9:45

He's coming down the road on his bike.

Raymond Briggs9:48

and opens the window, shakes the duster. That very second he's going by, looks up, sees this pretty girl waving a duster, being a bit of a lad, waves back, you know.

Raymond Briggs10:00

It's rather lovely. And then this goes on for about a week. They're all looking up for one another each morning.

Raymond Briggs10:07

And then on the Saturday he goes round there and says

Raymond Briggs10:10

This weaving's been going on long enough, Doc.

Raymond Briggs10:14

Why don't you come to the pictures with me on?

Raymond Briggs10:17

This is terrific.

Presenter10:18

So you owe your existence to a duster, you say? Yeah, yes, absolutely.

Raymond Briggs10:20

Yeah, yes, absolutely.

Presenter10:22

Door.

Raymond Briggs10:23

Mm-hmm.

Presenter10:23

And uh, you know, they married and lived happily ever after, really, didn't they? They bought a a an Edwardian house I know all this from this this book, Ethel and Ernest, in in Wimbledon Park.

Speaker 410:26

Yeah.

Speaker 410:29

Uh

Raymond Briggs10:29

Uh

Speaker 410:29

Yes.

Raymond Briggs10:32

Yeah.

Speaker 410:32

Yeah.

Presenter10:33

Um, with all those things in, we've talked about long terrace back garden, that sort of thing. Bought it for £800.

Raymond Briggs10:37

What do you think?

Raymond Briggs10:39

Eight hundred pounds here's fortune.

Presenter10:40

Yeah.

Raymond Briggs10:41

It took them twenty five years to pay it off.

Presenter10:44

Do you do you ever go back and see it? Because you lived there until you were twenty three.

Raymond Briggs10:47

Yes, that's right. Yes, I have been back and it's owned by an Indian lady now and uh

Presenter10:48

That's why

Raymond Briggs10:52

Had a look round, it's very moving seeing.

Raymond Briggs10:56

Things there.

Raymond Briggs10:57

She opened the uh landing cupboard and it's got the same wallpaper inside the cupboard that we had in the 1930s. Quite an extraordinary feeling to think this is still there.

Presenter11:09

All those memories. And and your mother appears here, you know, in her fluffy slippers with the pom-poms on and she's clutching her knitting and in her sort of wraparound pinafore. That's exactly how she was, yeah.

Raymond Briggs11:21

Uh

Speaker 411:21

Yeah.

Raymond Briggs11:21

Yeah.

Presenter11:22

But she because she'd worked as a lady's maid in Belgrave, you as I say, she she she

Presenter11:27

Thought of herself as quite refined, didn't she?

Raymond Briggs11:29

Oh yeah, she was always in in favour of refinement. I mean we always had milk in a jug, never milk in a bottle on the table and

Raymond Briggs11:39

All the stuff she learnt working for posh people.

Presenter11:41

But she was worried about the neighbours as well. Again, in the book, you know, When When You're Being Born,'cause we see you born in this book, uh she she's sort of worried about what the neighbors might think if she makes too much noise, isn't she?

Raymond Briggs11:44

And in the book

Raymond Briggs11:47

Yeah.

Raymond Briggs11:53

Oh yes. What will the neighbours think, I think, was the governing thing in her entire life. I mean even even the curtains always used to annoy me as an art student. The curtains, upstairs and downstairs, in the front, had to match. Never mind whether they matched the interior of the room. They look good from the outside. They look good from the outside.

Presenter12:08

They look good from the outside.

Presenter12:11

But they were, as we gather, decent, moral, hard working, respectable. People, is that is that what you are too, really?

Raymond Briggs12:21

Yes, I think so. Just uh ordinary, frightened of authority, hard working, uh dutiful, pay the taxes and do all that.

Presenter12:30

But you're not normal.

Presenter12:33

We shall come back to that. It's record number three.

Raymond Briggs12:33

We shall come back to that.

Raymond Briggs12:36

Oh, this is a uh extraordinary thing. I think it's a fourteenth century Italian dance called La Rotta. It's a wonderful bit of drumming and percussion, as good as any modern jazz, better than any modern jazz that I know anyway. It's terrific.

Speaker 212:49

Yeah.

Presenter13:19

Narotta, a fourteenth century Italian dance performed by the Dufai collective. Um your mother waited a long time for you to come along, Raymond. I think she was thirty eight when when you were born, and you were her only child. Um so she invested a lot in you, I dare say, did she?

Raymond Briggs13:28

Which when

Raymond Briggs13:35

Yes, too much, really. I felt a bit overwhelmed by it.

Raymond Briggs13:39

And I think a lot of the love that should have gone on my dad went on me, and he felt slightly pushed out because of that. And she was still regarded me as a child all my life, really. She used to lit me pull overs when I was twenty eight or thirty, and the sleeves would be about five inches too short.

Presenter13:55

Pfft.

Raymond Briggs13:57

Because she still had a mental picture of me as a little boy, I think.

Presenter14:01

But she she would have been thrilled to bits when you passed the scholarship. went to grammar school.

Raymond Briggs14:05

Yeah.

Presenter14:07

Presumably when you said you wanted to study art, she must have been a bit disappointed. Wouldn't she like you to have done something smart?

Raymond Briggs14:11

Yes.

Raymond Briggs14:13

Oh yeah, she wanted me to be a uh

Raymond Briggs14:16

Office worker really wear a suit and tie and a

Raymond Briggs14:19

leather briefcase and go off to the office every day and I think it was wonderful that they were so supportive really because they had no idea what

Speaker 214:25

Because they

Raymond Briggs14:27

Arts Arts Student Business Mint.

Raymond Briggs14:31

and also had no idea how long it would take. I spent four years at Wimbledon Art School and two further years at the Slade, so um I didn't leave school until I was twenty three, which when they left school at fourteen must have seemed to them absolutely um lunatic.

Presenter14:47

And all that time you were fighting against authority, weren't you? Because at at both of those art schools, Wimbledon and the Slade,

Presenter14:55

They didn't like what you wanted to be, did they?

Raymond Briggs14:58

No, that's true.

Raymond Briggs14:59

We had the Italian Renaissance thrust down our throats all the time.

Raymond Briggs15:03

Consequently I loathe it. I don't like any the Children of Renaissance paintings. All these Madonna's with fat little babies on their laps. I can't bear it.

Presenter15:14

So what did you like?

Raymond Briggs15:15

Uh

Raymond Briggs15:16

Well I I was drawn more to the northern painters, um Memlink and Rembrandt and people like that, the northern Flemish and Dutch people, rather than these.

Raymond Briggs15:27

Roman Catholic Italian stuff.

Presenter15:30

And one certainly can see that kind of um

Presenter15:33

Northern European genre painting influences Bruegel and so on in in your th those sort of plump peasants with sort of buckle shoes and big brown waistcoats or red waistcoats. That's that there's a strong influence there for.

Raymond Briggs15:38

Yeah.

Raymond Briggs15:42

The

Raymond Briggs15:47

I like that kind of thing, definitely. Paintings of ordinary people and not uh these idealized things of Michelangelo did with all these nude people rolling about. I find that a bit nauseating.

Presenter16:02

More of this to come, more grumbling to come, let's have record number four.

Raymond Briggs16:08

Number four is the uh Dave Brubik quartet playing uh Unsquare Dance. I like I like this and I thought it would be uh amusing on the island to give you something to do. It's also slightly humorous because the idea is you have to try and clap in time to this, because it gets very difficult towards the end. I think they even lose it themselves. Now I'd have

Raymond Briggs16:29

Plenty of time to try and learn to keep up with this.

Presenter17:29

Dave Rubeck Quartet and Unsquared Dance. You'd never clap to that. You just can't you can't keep going, can you?

Raymond Briggs17:34

You can if you relax and don't get tensed.

Presenter17:38

But you had to earn money. I mean, again, you are the son of your parents, and getting a proper job and bringing the money in was important. It started to come your way, didn't it? You started getting commissions. What sort of thing?

Raymond Briggs17:51

Oh, well just uh illustrating anything I could get really. There's three mainfield illustrators work in advertising, magazines and newspapers and books. Um illustration for advertising is always ghastly subject matter. And I didn't like the people either, I'm afraid to say. Um too commercial for you. Well yes, too commercial, exactly. Can't bear these commercial types.

Presenter18:08

Too commercial for you.

Presenter18:14

So by definition, really, you are into children's books, that's why, is it? Because grown-ups books aren't in the main illustrator.

Raymond Briggs18:17

That's why

Raymond Briggs18:20

No, that was an awful blow. When I realized this, I thought, well, really? I didn't want to do that.

Presenter18:24

No more.

Presenter18:25

Why?

Raymond Briggs18:25

Well, I had no interest in children and um

Raymond Briggs18:29

Didn't want to have any.

Raymond Briggs18:31

And I thought, oh, hell. But then I found when I was given fairy stories to do, the Oxford University Press gave me a book of fairy stories.

Raymond Briggs18:40

And the penny dropped. I realized this is wonderful stuff. Meat and drink to the Illustrator, really.

Presenter18:45

Absolutely. I mean Doctor Foster going to Gloucester, yeah. All that which you hadn't been brought up on by the sound of it.

Raymond Briggs18:46

Dr. F

Raymond Briggs18:47

Yeah.

Raymond Briggs18:49

It's on how

Raymond Briggs18:51

No, not really. I don't remember any books of that sort. The classic illustrated books, Winnie the Pooh, and all those. I didn't have those.

Presenter18:58

But then you did one. You you did the um uh Mother Goose Nursery Rhyme book, didn't you? Which won a Kate Greenaway.

Raymond Briggs19:02

Blanked.

Presenter19:05

I mean, how many illustrations in that book? Aren't you illustrated every nursery rhyme that ever lived?

Raymond Briggs19:10

Almost. Yes, it was that the American editor who thought of the idea wanted to do the biggest uh nursery rhyme book there'd ever been, and so I did about eight hundred for that, nearly cracked up doing it. The pictures get madder and madder towards the end because you're doing them with gritted teeth and thinking, Oh God, not another one

Presenter19:30

But what was the first book y you did on your own? Because I said in the introduction that that in the end you thought, hang on, I I could write this as well. Why should I be illustrating other people's writing when it's not too good?

Raymond Briggs19:38

This is what

Raymond Briggs19:41

Yeah.

Raymond Briggs19:42

Yes, I was um working for Hamish Hamilton at the time and uh

Raymond Briggs19:46

I thought that one or two of the ones I was given to illustrate were so terrible I thought, my God, I could write better than this, for God's sake

Raymond Briggs19:54

So I did one just for fun and to see if I could get some advice from the editor.

Raymond Briggs19:59

and to my utter amazement he said he'd publish it.

Raymond Briggs20:03

Good God!

Raymond Briggs20:04

Just shows the standard, you know.

Raymond Briggs20:07

Some amateur can come along and just bash one off.

Raymond Briggs20:10

And they published it. Incredible.

Presenter20:12

I haven't stopped since. No. Record number five.

Raymond Briggs20:13

No.

Raymond Briggs20:17

Oh, this is uh Tom Waits. I had a craze for Tom Waits a little while ago, and I still have. He's so over the top, you can't help but like him. Sometimes he's a caricature of himself. And uh this one is called Big in Japan.

Speaker 420:37

Bam, I can

Speaker 420:40

Man, but hey, I'm big in Japan. I'm big in Japan. I got the move.

Speaker 420:46

I got the cheese I got the whole damn nation on the n

Speaker 420:54

The Ugg got the crow.

Presenter21:00

Tom Waits and big in Japan. Um in the meantime, Raymond Briggs, you'd met and married your wife, Jean, who was also an artist, wasn't she? And and and

Raymond Briggs21:08

Chain

Presenter21:10

Beautiful and and talented, you said. I I read that she might have been a bluebell girl, is that right?

Raymond Briggs21:15

Yeah, she was accepted for it. He's very tall, long legs and everything, and um didn't want to do it because uh it meant going to Paris and giving up painting, and she was dedicated to painting and stayed uh stayed in England.

Presenter21:28

And she appears certainly in your book Ethel and Ernest when you bring her home to meet the parents, you know, as you're intended. But we only see her back. She never really appears.

Raymond Briggs21:32

Yeah.

Raymond Briggs21:34

Are we in

Raymond Briggs21:35

Yeah.

Raymond Briggs21:36

No, I didn't I tried to keep myself out of it and her out of it.

Presenter21:40

Well

Raymond Briggs21:40

Well, yeah, but gotta be, but um

Presenter21:42

The graph

Raymond Briggs21:45

I didn't want to be too much,'cause it's mainly about the parents, but obviously I had to be there, yeah.

Presenter21:50

But she was very ill, wasn't she?

Raymond Briggs21:51

Yeah, she has schizophrenia, which is not

Presenter21:52

Uh

Raymond Briggs21:55

Something that I wish on anybody. Absolute nightmare.

Raymond Briggs21:59

But that governed our whole lives, governed her life, of course, and governed mine for many years. She was constantly in and out of mental hospitals.

Presenter22:06

In and out

Raymond Briggs22:09

Bruh.

Presenter22:09

But you've also said that she was a an inspiration as well in in her

Raymond Briggs22:13

Hmm.

Presenter22:16

meanderings, as it were, sometimes.

Raymond Briggs22:18

Yes, well they're often very inspiring people because they have wild flights of imagination.

Raymond Briggs22:23

and tremendous enthusiasms and excitement.

Raymond Briggs22:26

And uh very

Raymond Briggs22:28

Stimulating to live with if exhausting.

Raymond Briggs22:31

But you have all the bad side of it, the agoraphobia, claustrophobia, and physical attacks rather like epilepsy to cope with.

Presenter22:39

Hmm. Yeah.

Raymond Briggs22:40

lying on the bed and shuddering and screaming. It's all rather alarming, really.

Presenter22:44

Hm. How long were you married then?

Raymond Briggs22:46

Uh, gosh, ten years, I suppose, and living together before that, so it's quite a time, yeah.

Presenter22:51

But you decided to spend your life with her. I mean, it w you didn't have a choice, I suppose, if you you loved her.

Raymond Briggs22:56

Yes, exactly, yes, yes. It's it was um the burden was for her more than for me, and mine was just helping to

Raymond Briggs23:03

look after and uh to deal with it.

Presenter23:05

What did she die of in the end?

Raymond Briggs23:07

Leukemia

Raymond Briggs23:09

Had both these things going at the same time, leukemia and schizophrenia. I wrote a a template, a poem about it when she was in hospital. These two things ravaging this person. There we are.

Presenter23:24

Next piece of music.

Raymond Briggs23:25

Oh, this is um uh Spiegel Im Spiegel by Arvo Pert, however you pronounce it, which I heard on Desert Island Disc actually. Um

Raymond Briggs23:38

What's his name, Hanif Qureshi had it on, and I've liked it ever since.

Presenter24:41

Part of Spiegel im Spiegel by Arvo Pert. Tasman Little was the violinist. Martin Roscoe was playing the piano. And you were still, though, able to write during all of this and um and you had lots of early success as we've discussed, but then your your

Raymond Briggs24:52

And

Presenter24:57

Parents both died in the same year.

Raymond Briggs24:59

Yes, yes as well, extraordinary, yeah.

Presenter25:00

Yeah.

Presenter25:01

Do you think

Presenter25:03

Your father died after your mother presumably did he die of a broken heart?

Raymond Briggs25:05

Yeah.

Raymond Briggs25:07

Oh no, I don't think so.

Raymond Briggs25:09

Well, it may have been partly that. I think he was over the usual cancer. Mum had the leukemia. Dad had stomach cancer I think. But um yes, he di she died in January, he died in uh the following September. And my wife died uh February of the year after that. Yeah, it was rather dreadful.

Speaker 225:27

That was a pretty

Raymond Briggs25:30

Sort of due myself in a few times, but um

Raymond Briggs25:33

One battled on.

Raymond Briggs25:34

Courageously?

Presenter25:37

Did you really think until yourself, then?

Raymond Briggs25:38

Yeah, it's like.

Raymond Briggs25:40

Yes, yes, I think so. Not very seriously, but you

Raymond Briggs25:44

Your mind turns to it, obviously, when you're going to this bloody hospital every night and seeing things getting worse.

Presenter25:49

Yeah.

Raymond Briggs25:51

Not a pretty sight.

Raymond Briggs25:53

So you were what?

Presenter25:53

You weren't forty, were you? And you'd lost everyone who was dear to you, really?

Raymond Briggs25:55

Are you a new do

Raymond Briggs25:56

He was dear to you, Rick.

Presenter25:59

And you've, as we've said, wrote uh about your parents, um but I mean, what, some twenty five more years later, before you wrote Ethel and Ernest, you've never written about Jean. Do you think you ever will?

Raymond Briggs26:07

Road test

Raymond Briggs26:13

No, I don't think so. I couldn't do a strip cartoon about it anyway. It's um it's too.

Raymond Briggs26:20

too often too sort of vague to have a pin down not particularly humorous really.

Presenter26:25

No.

Raymond Briggs26:27

Yeah, so I don't think I do any more about that.

Presenter26:29

When you say strip cartoon, I mean it's not it's it's a story in pictures. I don't know what what phrase you use. I mean but you've written about your parents' deaths here, haven't you?

Raymond Briggs26:32

Tell him what

Raymond Briggs26:37

Yeah.

Presenter26:38

Yeah. I mean, I don't know how difficult they were for you to draw, your mother on a hospital trolley.

Raymond Briggs26:42

Yes, that was that was a bit difficult. I used to do that in little bits, do about ten minutes and then leave it and do ten minutes more another day. Mum on that ghastly uh trolley. We went in at three o'clock in the morning and there she was dumped on this trolley in a sort of uh

Raymond Briggs26:56

Almost a corridor right near to some rubbish bags, and uh it's really rather dreadful.

Presenter27:00

Yeah, it's

Presenter27:02

And your father here, look, he's collapsed at the sink doing the washing up.

Raymond Briggs27:05

Yeah.

Raymond Briggs27:06

Yes, that's right. He uh battled on for a bit on his own.

Presenter27:10

But that's I I mean, as I say, hard to do, I would have thought. I mean, do you do you look at them now,'cause I know you don't really l look at the books.

Raymond Briggs27:13

Thought I lived.

Raymond Briggs27:18

I look at that one quite a bit actually. I don't look at any of my others, but that one's like um

Presenter27:18

I look at that one.

Presenter27:23

Mm-hmm.

Raymond Briggs27:23

Uh I don't know.

Presenter27:25

Yes, it's it must it must be like a family food growth album, really.

Raymond Briggs27:29

Yes, that's what I well, that's what I mean. That's why I look at it, I think, because it brings back memories and

Presenter27:34

And here's you in the garden on the last page, with Jean.

Raymond Briggs27:36

It was Jean.

Presenter27:37

Looking at an apple tree and the bubble says I grew it from a pitch.

Raymond Briggs27:40

And Pip, yeah. Absolutely. The Indian lady cut it down.

Presenter27:41

Is that true?

Presenter27:47

But that's I I mean and as you say, two years to do this, I mean eighteen months to do others. It's i you don't have a designer'cause you are the designer. You don't have a sub-editor'cause you are the sub-editor. So you don't have anybody in charge of layout'cause you lay editorial.

Raymond Briggs27:56

I need a

Raymond Briggs27:58

It is.

Raymond Briggs28:01

No, you do that thing, that's right. Making a film, you know, you write the script and then you become the director and decide who comes on from the left, who comes on from the right and who speaks first and so on. And then you have to become the set designer, saying where are they in this shot?

Presenter28:03

But no.

Raymond Briggs28:19

You do all these things yourself and then you become the book designer and say what's going on what page and how big it should be and what size.

Presenter28:25

And what the typeface is and you know, you decide all of it, don't you?

Raymond Briggs28:28

All that, yes. And then you do the hand lettering.

Presenter28:31

The hand letter is.

Raymond Briggs28:32

Which is the worst thing of all?

Presenter28:33

Why?

Raymond Briggs28:34

Well it's it's boring and it's very fiddle asking to do, trying to fit it in the space.

Presenter28:40

I'm not going to have to be a grumble at the end of all of that.

Presenter28:43

Well, it's very impressive, Mr Briggs. Record number seven.

Raymond Briggs28:47

Well number seven is uh Knitting Sornia had a craze for him lately. It's called uh River Pulse Rain Mix.

Presenter29:25

Knitting, sawny and river pulse rain mix. Your wife, Jean Raymond, died more than thirty years ago now. Yes. Something like that, isn't it? And you didn't have any children, because as you said, you didn't didn't want any anyway, weren't really interested. But you've sort of found a surrogate family since, I gather, haven't you? There are children and grandchildren in your life.

Raymond Briggs29:33

Um

Raymond Briggs29:35

Mm.

Raymond Briggs29:38

One

Speaker 429:38

Okay.

Raymond Briggs29:46

Partner has uh two children and uh the boy has three of his children who are surrogate grandchildren who are terrific fun, very always doing the most irritating things, you know.

Presenter30:01

Dirty

Presenter30:04

But are you looking at them all the time for inspiration? I mean it sounds as if your your your ideas come sort of from out of nowhere really, like a cameraman.

Raymond Briggs30:06

It sounds as if

Presenter30:12

Gives you an idea. I mean, are you looking at children and thinking, what can I write for them, or is it just not animal?

Raymond Briggs30:16

No, not like that. It's occasionally um this little boy um has come up with odd things he says and that that gave the idea for one I did lately called The Puddleman.

Raymond Briggs30:29

He had the idea of um gave all the puddles in the track outside our house names. This one's mummy, this one's daddy, paddling about in them.

Raymond Briggs30:38

And I think this one might be Auntie Clare, as he paddles doubtfully in it.

Raymond Briggs30:43

And then we came because they were all dry actually when we went out to look at them the next time, and uh he said, Oh, they haven't put any puddle in this one.

Raymond Briggs30:52

Which was wonderful, because in that one sentence you'll they haven't put any puddle in, nothing to do with water or rainfall or anything tedious like that gave you the idea that um somebody puts them in, and puddle is a substance in its own, in its own right.

Presenter31:07

Yeah.

Raymond Briggs31:07

Yeah.

Presenter31:07

And he's called the Puddle Man.

Raymond Briggs31:08

And so the man who does this is the puddle man. So that's where that one came to be anyway.

Presenter31:14

Would you admit to enjoying your success, or would that be asking too much?

Raymond Briggs31:18

Oh, blind me. I uh well some aspects of it I like, some

Raymond Briggs31:25

Don't like interviews apart from this one. It's very nice here, of course.

Presenter31:29

But you like your routine and you like you like things in their place.

Raymond Briggs31:31

And

Presenter31:34

No.

Raymond Briggs31:34

Oh yes, terrible routine. Yes, I that's one of the characteristics of old age is um having becoming absolutely uh tied to domestic routine. You know, tea at five o'clock on the dot, not quarter past, and lunch at half past one, not twenty five past.

Presenter31:51

Hot water bottle to go to bed.

Raymond Briggs31:52

Oh, hot water for hot yes, if it's cold.

Presenter31:56

It's quite reassuring, isn't it? What's wrong with that?

Raymond Briggs31:58

What's wrong with that? I know, why not?

Raymond Briggs32:00

Hmm.

Presenter32:01

Well, you don't get all that on a desert island. Last record.

Raymond Briggs32:03

Yeah.

Raymond Briggs32:05

Oh yes, this is uh Jan Garbrek again, but playing with the Hilliard ensemble. I never know how to pronounce the title, it's parche or parquet mihi domine. Wonderful.

Speaker 432:48

Yeah.

Presenter33:19

Part of Morales' Parche Mihi Domine, played by Jan Gabarek with the Hilliard Ensemble. If you could only take one of those eight records, Raymond, which one would you take?

Raymond Briggs33:30

Oh, it better be the last one, I think, definitely. Yes, it's um

Raymond Briggs33:33

the most moving and

Raymond Briggs33:35

Not that I'm very spiritual, but it's very spiritual, I think.

Presenter33:39

And what about your book, as well as the Bible and Shakespeare?

Raymond Briggs33:42

Oh yes, I'd uh have the complete works of Beechcomber, I think, because it yes the thing you'd lack on the island is anything funny, and if you had everything he'd ever written after about forty or fifty years of writing it'd be wonderful.

Presenter33:57

Beach Comers Collected Works, okay, and your luxury.

Raymond Briggs33:59

No figure.

Raymond Briggs34:01

Oh, that would be a full size billiard table.

Raymond Briggs34:04

Ah, Snookram Billiard Table.

Presenter34:05

Have you got one?

Raymond Briggs34:07

No, I had a

Raymond Briggs34:08

sort of half size or quarter size, whatever it's called, but I want it's got to be the big thing or nothing. And I want Radio 4 built into each of the legs.

Presenter34:20

Raymond Briggs, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your Desert Island desk.

Raymond Briggs34:23

Thanks very much for having me. It's wonderful.

Speaker 234:33

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