Frank Cottrell-Boyce

Presenter0:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young. Thank you for downloading this podcast of Desert Island Discs from BBC Radio 4. For rights reasons the music choices are shorter than in the radio broadcast.

Presenter0:10

For more information about the programme, please visit bbc.co.uk/slash radio four.

Presenter0:34

My Castaway this week is the writer Frank Cottrell Boyce. His film credits include Hilary and Jackie, Welcome to Sarajevo, and Twenty Four Hour Party People.

Presenter0:44

According to one critic, he's arguably the most original and versatile screenwriter in the UK.

Presenter0:50

He's also written T V soaps, radio and stage plays, and children's novels, picking up plaudits and awards along the way. Of the range of his work he says I sometimes think it's because I haven't found out what I'm good at. These days it's children who are his main audience.

Presenter1:06

And he should know what they want. A father of seven himself, he has a large and willing brute to test his tails on.

Presenter1:13

Of his work for young readers he says, It's amazing how much impact you can have. Not just an emotional impact, but you can light someone up. You can change someone in a moment. There was a moment, I think, Frank Cottrell Boyce, when you felt that you were destined to become a writer. You were eleven. Tell me about that.

Frank Cottrell-Boyce1:31

Yeah, I was in Sister Paul's class in St Bartholomew's School in Rainhill, and I'd had a really good friend all the way through school and he was off sick. His name was Graham, and I kind of poured all the energy that I used to pour into making him laugh during lessons into this piece of work. And at the end of the lesson, Sister Paul collects all the pieces of work in and she picked up mine and she looked at it and she looked slightly askance at it and she sort of looked at me and wondered where it had come from. She looked at me as though I'd laid an egg. And she went to the front of the class.

Frank Cottrell-Boyce2:01

And she read it out. I've always thought that if sh if she'd said, Frank, you come and read it out, I would have grown up wanting to be a comedian or an actor or a performer of some sort. But there's something really delicious about not being in the limelight, but still getting laughs.

Presenter2:11

Uh

Presenter2:15

And this was a tale about Vikings, actually. It was about Vikings, that's all I remember. It wasn't an automatic comedy moment. No, it wasn't actually.

Frank Cottrell-Boyce2:17

It was about Vikings, that's all I remember.

Frank Cottrell-Boyce2:20

No, it wasn't actually. No, I I should go back and kind of uh do a Viking process.

Presenter2:25

You said uh you felt at that moment like a magician.

Frank Cottrell-Boyce2:29

Yeah,'cause it was'cause it was me doing it, but nobody could see the strings and

Presenter2:29

Because it was

Frank Cottrell-Boyce2:33

Yeah, it was really kind of a very empowering

Presenter2:35

Does that suit you? Are you quite unassuming?

Frank Cottrell-Boyce2:37

On a sh well, not on a shimmer, but I'm a monstrous ego, but I don't like being in the the limelight. I like the kind of Cardinal Riesler role, you know.

Presenter2:44

Um the other astonishing thing about apart from your writing talents is, as I said in the introduction, you are a father of seven, aged between six and twenty-four.

Frank Cottrell-Boyce2:54

Yeah.

Presenter2:54

How many of them living at home right now?

Frank Cottrell-Boyce2:56

Oh, don't say that. That's a heartbreaking question. I think well, w one of them's a grown man, he's gone away and got a job, two of them are at university, so there's what's that? What's the math? Five. Four, that's four, I guess. Four up. So small, yeah. So small.

Presenter3:05

I think that's four, yeah. So small. You're very laid back then, are you? If that seems absolutely if if you wish that you had all seven at home.

Frank Cottrell-Boyce3:14

Oh, they're quite widely spaced and we didn't suddenly have a big family visited upon ourselves, you know, we just started having children, really liked it, carried on doing it, you know, and they're all wonderful with each other.

Presenter3:24

Where on earth then do you find the peace and quiet to ride?

Frank Cottrell-Boyce3:27

But I can't write in peace and quiet. Occasionally when I'm really up against it, they'll go away for a few days or something and I'm just useless. I need them in the house really to make sure that I'm not watching the telly or having a four hour bath or whatever. You know, the the fact that they're there makes me work, I think.

Presenter3:43

Let's have some music then. Tell me about the first thing that we're going to hear.

Frank Cottrell-Boyce3:46

on your uh desert island? The first thing is the Allegri Miserare. And I've chosen it because when I was growing up, church was a completely magical thing to me. I lived on a very sort of boxy little housing estate. It was very nice, but it was very

Presenter3:47

Still.

Frank Cottrell-Boyce3:59

uh flat, you know, and but the church at the corner was this sort of amazing kind of Byzantine thing. And we would never, ever have heard a piece of music like this in that church. But listening to that music gives me the feeling of stepping into a church full of gold and and lapis lazy like out of that housing estate.

Speaker 14:41

Yeah.

Presenter5:08

The Sixteen, led by Harry Christophers and Allegri's Miserary. You've said, Frank Cottrell Boyce, that I think the idea that people are rational is bizarre. What's really riveting about a character is that they don't change. They keep on making the same mistakes over and over again. As a writer, that's what interests you, is it people's foibles and frailties and failings.

Frank Cottrell-Boyce5:30

Well, and the fact that we still love people. I think film is incredibly conventional and you're always taught that characters have to be sympathetic. And I think really the point of writing the point of drama, the point of books, is to extend people's sympathies, not to sort of play to them. So to take p to to show people characters who they might not be immediately sympathetic to and find something to love in them. I think it's there you're there to extend love, not not to kind of narrow it down.

Presenter5:37

Yeah.

Speaker 15:37

Uh

Presenter5:55

I I mentioned that you were responsible for writing Hilary and Jackie about the life of Jacqueline Dupre. I mean, they're you know, uh, feet of clay. There was an idol, somebody who clearly managed to almost engender a kind of worshipful silence in an audience with her greatness and yet, in real life, riddled with a lot of things.

Frank Cottrell-Boyce5:58

Yeah, that's a disclaimer.

Frank Cottrell-Boyce6:03

Yeah.

Speaker 16:03

Uh

Frank Cottrell-Boyce6:08

See the

Frank Cottrell-Boyce6:10

Yeah.

Frank Cottrell-Boyce6:12

But does that diminish her, that she was a human being who produced something supernatural? If you just make her a supernatural being, then what does that say about the rest of us?

Presenter6:13

Yeah.

Presenter6:21

Were you anxious at all as a writer about taking on somebody who was so totemic?

Frank Cottrell-Boyce6:26

I'm not sure that it was because our first contact was was with her sister who wanted to reclaim her as her sister. And you know, family's really important to me. And when we went to the screening of that, I went with Hilary and she said to me afterwards, You've given me back my sister because neither side had seen the other side. And I think Hilary had a lot of hurt about Jackie. There's this great anecdote where she got very wound up about the fact that Jackie used to send her dirty washing home.

Presenter6:29

Yeah, see.

Frank Cottrell-Boyce6:50

And I remember her talking to me about that and thinking, Well, why if you were a superstar, would you need to send your dirty washing home? What does that say about how lonely it was on the road and how dependent she still was really? And of course, to Hilary it was just sort of a neglectful, presumptuous thing. So that became the kind of hinge of the film. This is a film about classical music that's set globally, but it ended up being about what conditioner we used on our clothes, which I think is great. That's about the the meat of ordinary life and and it kind of gave Hilary an insight into what it was like to be Jackie as well.

Presenter7:21

You say family is very important to you, and and more about the family that you've created a little later. But first of all, the family that that uh you were born into. It was Liverpool nineteen fifty nine. Tell me about your tell me about your home life.

Frank Cottrell-Boyce7:33

Oh, it was absolutely fantastic. I lived the first few years of my life in quite a small flat with my grandma in Liverpool. Then when I was six or seven we moved to this housing estate that had a little garden, which is about the size of this studio. And it just felt to me there would be alligators and caribou. It was just like the wide open spaces that we had a garden. So maybe it gets a bad name. But it was like centre parks, you know. We all played out together, we all went to church together on a Sunday. It felt very paradisal, really.

Presenter8:00

Uh you mentioned the possibility of the caribou in this uh ten foot by ten fruit garden. Did you have quite an imagination then?

Frank Cottrell-Boyce8:06

I didn't see, I didn't think it was imagination, I just thought this was a zoological possibility.

Presenter8:12

And you said we moved there. How many brothers and sisters?

Frank Cottrell-Boyce8:14

I've I've only I've got a one brother and one sister my sister was actually born there, so myself and my brother moved there.

Presenter8:19

And what did your mum and dad do? I mean your mum was a

Frank Cottrell-Boyce8:20

My dad was a teacher and you know one of the great kind of lucky breaks in my life is that he did an open university degree and I just thought that was fantastically exciting. And I just got up with him and I read all his units and I did this kind of module on Renaissance art when I was eleven or twelve by proxy because I wanted to be with my dad.

Presenter8:39

Tell me about your second piece of music. What have you chosen and why?

Frank Cottrell-Boyce8:42

I've chosen something from Noggin the Nog by Oliver Postgate and I think he invented these fantastic utopias, but they were tiny Welsh villages or Viking towns or Pogleswood and they were just idyllic and that's something that's really held on to me. I look I look for small utopias, I like parishes, I like suburbs, I like caravan parks, so this is Noggin the Nog.

Speaker 29:05

Listen, I will tell you a tale.

Speaker 29:08

Be still, and I will tell you of Noggin, Prince of the Nogs, the young king who ruled over a country of mountains, ice, and snow in the far north land.

Speaker 29:19

It was a cold winter.

Speaker 29:21

The snow had fallen early.

Speaker 29:23

The Nogs had gathered their corn and their fruit in the warm days of summer they had gathered wood for their fires in the autumn, and now, warm in their snug little houses, they were safe for the winter.

Presenter9:33

Oliver Pursegate narrating Nog in the Nog, with music composed and directed by Vernon Elliott. Frank Cottral Boyce, a few minutes ago you were talking about this almost Byzantine church that sat on the edge of the very modern and plain housing estate that you were brought up on. It was a very religious family that you were brought up in order

Frank Cottrell-Boyce9:51

Community. Not fantastically pious. It was a straight Catholic family, but it was like the majority of people on that estate were practicing Catholics. So you'd have this lovely paseo on a Sunday morning where everyone would file out up to Mass and chat and then all walk back. It was lovely. It was a lovely housing estate, but it was the least sublime place you're ever going to be, and that you could open a doorway. It's the magic wardrobe in Narnia, isn't it? And that there was this extra dimension that was just there for you. You could just open this door and there it was.

Presenter10:18

And you talked about Sister Paul and the influence that that she had as a as a teacher. Sh what was she, your form teacher or your former teacher?

Frank Cottrell-Boyce10:20

Yeah.

Frank Cottrell-Boyce10:24

She was at my primary school there were two nuns. There was a head teacher who was an uncle called Sister Thomasina and Sister Paul who was the year six teacher. And again, that sense that you were treasured, I think that was another thing that came from the church. You felt very nurtured.

Presenter10:39

And you went back to visit the school.

Frank Cottrell-Boyce10:41

I went back to visit the school a couple of weeks ago and it's the first time I visited the school and I went into her classroom where I'd had this epiphany expecting it to have you know interactive whiteboards and health and safety checks and all that and in fact there was this big kind of roller blackboard that used to pull down. We used to draw pictures and then push them up so that when she pulled the blackboard down everyone would laugh and this Belfast sink where she used to pour the ink because we had inks and ink wells and it was all still there and I'd gone in to give a talk, you know, an inspirational talk and went in and just cracked up as soon as I walked through the door. I just burst into tears. So I was hopeless really. But I'd been so happy in that class. Were you swatty, clever? Well the thing I had this again, these amazing lucky breaks all the way through my life or blessings and that one was that I was very young in that class and I should have gone straight on to secondary school but they kept back the three youngest and we did two years in Sister Paul's class which was great because she was a great teacher but I mean it must have just been incredibly dim but I did this year twice and I went through the second time through thinking I am a genius because these kids are having a lot of problems with long division they don't understand the cross section of the eye it's blindingly obvious to me and of course I'd done it before and I think I was about twenty one when it hit me that I'd done that year twice but it gave me this huge amount of confidence that I kind of knew all this stuff that nobody else knew.

Presenter11:11

Oh yes.

Presenter11:17

So

Presenter11:20

Yeah.

Presenter12:04

Yes, we'll talk more about the incredibly dim boy that went to Keeble College in just a moment. Not quite sure, I believe you. Tell me about your next piece of music then. What have we got?

Frank Cottrell-Boyce12:08

Pull it into

Frank Cottrell-Boyce12:12

It's the undertones of My Perfect Cousin. Punk Rock was a huge thing to me because it was about sort of doing it yourself. And that's what I love about Oliver Postgre. He just went and did it himself. And that whole thing of like, here are three chords, now form a band. And oh, it was so hard to pick a punk anthem, but in the end I've gone for My Perfect Cousin because it's funny and it will live forever.

Presenter12:34

Now I've got a cousin called Kenny.

Presenter12:37

Sure to go to heaven.

Presenter12:40

Always spotless, clean and mixed as smooth as you get him He's got a full line sheepskin jacket

Speaker 112:48

Uh

Presenter12:49

No seven cost of packets

Speaker 112:52

Yeah.

Presenter12:52

She won't even let me explain that me and Kevin were just not the same. Oh my perfect cousin What I like to do

Presenter13:03

The Undertones and My Perfect Cousin and you said Frank Cottrell Boys you could have chosen anything from that sort of era of punk, but that seemed to say it all for you. You you were a committed punk.

Frank Cottrell-Boyce13:09

Yeah.

Frank Cottrell-Boyce13:11

But yeah.

Frank Cottrell-Boyce13:12

Yeah, that whole call of just go and do it, do it yourself, that stayed with me, really. That's what I took from it.

Presenter13:18

So it w it wasn't the safety pins and it wasn't the slight.

Frank Cottrell-Boyce13:21

No, it wa it was there was this like gorgeous moment when it first started when because we were so uninformed, you know, it wasn't on telly, it wasn't getting airplay. You just sort of read about it and I was I became a punk on the basis of having heard about Ninety Seconds.

Presenter13:33

Did you go to gigs?

Frank Cottrell-Boyce13:34

Oh yes, to a lot of gigs. I remember going to see Iggy Pop at Eric's, having read screeds and screeds of stuff about horrendous stuff about Iggy Pop clawing his own chest open on stage and just thinking we were going to see the great Satan manifesting itself in Liverpool. And because we'd read, we'd only read, you know, there was nothing, there was no website, there was no tele. So going and just sort of being hunched up around the stage and thinking, this is just going to be astonishing, it's going to be astonishing. And obviously Iggy is great, but he pranced onto that stage much smaller than we thought he would be and quite camp, you know, and kind of minced onto the stage. And the guy behind me went,

Presenter13:38

Hmm.

Frank Cottrell-Boyce14:09

It's Melvin Hayes.

Frank Cottrell-Boyce14:11

It was Gloria in our potma. And the resemblance is really striking between Nicky and Melbourne Hays. Everybody kind of stepped back from the stage. It wasn't Satan at all, it was Gloria.

Presenter14:22

You went to Oxford then, to study English. I don't want to I mean, I'm I don't want to be too cliched about this, but I would imagine, given the the background and what you've described in terms of the housing estate, although although your your father was educated and your mum later went on to educate herself, that that must have been a big deal, was it, to go to Oxford?

Frank Cottrell-Boyce14:39

It didn't feel like a big deal to me at the time because I thought, well, my dad reads books, I read books, I'm clever, I'm going to do that. I thought we were middle class till I got there, if you see what I mean. I do. And I thought, oh, perhaps we're not that middle class. But it was an easy role for me to play, you know, to be the funny northern guy who's a bit smart. And that's an easy role to fit into. I had a great time. I was part of, again, that blessed generation where everything was sort of expanding. You know, my dad had started off at a very ordinary job. He'd become a teacher. I'd gone to Oxford. I fully expected my children to be dukes and earls. We just, everything just seemed to be getting better and bigger all the time. You know, and there was this moment, wasn't there, when the world just really felt like it belonged to us. I honestly felt like Sebastian Flights. I did feel.

Presenter14:44

Yeah.

Presenter14:48

I do.

Frank Cottrell-Boyce15:24

I just freezed it.

Presenter15:25

You keep using this word luck and good fortune and blessed. Are you are you not willing to take on the idea that it's your own talent and endeavour that allows you to be successful?

Frank Cottrell-Boyce15:29

Yeah.

Frank Cottrell-Boyce15:37

Well, I think if I have a talent, it's for recognizing that I've been blessed, if you see what I mean.'Cause some people I see people get lots of luck and walk past it. I can see when that's a good opportunity, that's that's come my way and I can make the most of that.

Presenter15:52

But your writing surely is hard work.

Frank Cottrell-Boyce15:55

Yeah, I find writing incredibly difficult. I do find it really, really hard. It's not something that comes easily to me at all. What's nice about being the screenwriter is that people moan about not getting credit as a screenwriter, but for me it's like who wants that credit? Who wants to be pointed at when it's a rubbish film? There's something great about the fact that you still get to go to Cannes, but nobody really wants to talk to you.

Frank Cottrell-Boyce16:16

Invisibility is a superpower.

Frank Cottrell-Boyce16:19

I mean, I've only been to Cannes twice, and it was both times we were in competition, which is a very different thing from just going to work there. So that was well.

Presenter16:25

So that was welcome to San Diego.

Frank Cottrell-Boyce16:27

Welcome, Sarah, and 20 Bizarre 204, which I have no idea what sort of bejewelled Riviera socialites got out of that film at all. But I do remember going to Mass at Cannes and wearing my badge, which is a different badge because you're in competition, and getting communion and the priest clocking that I was in competition. That's how much of a kind of mind in town it is. Bodie, you're quite, oh, well done. See you. Thanks. Amen.

Presenter16:28

Yeah.

Speaker 116:40

Yeah.

Presenter16:49

It's an extra wafer or something. That's right. Let's take a breather for some music then. Tell me about disc number four, Frank.

Frank Cottrell-Boyce16:57

This is big country in a big country. The most astonishing moment of my life was that was my honeymoon, which is great that it was that I'd never left the country and for our honeymoon we went to the Highlands of Scotland, we went to Fort William and then we took the road to the Isles and I had never dreamed that there was anywhere that was physically like that. We saw whales, we saw gannets, we saw seals and somehow little Stuart Adamson managed to kind of bundle all that up and put it into a guitar riff, which so I can play that and I'm back on my honeymoon.

Speaker 217:29

I'm not expecting to grow flowers in the desert But I can love and breathe and see the sun in winter time Uh

Speaker 117:38

Uh In a big country dream stay with you like a lover's boy's part

Frank Cottrell-Boyce17:44

Mountain Silene

Frank Cottrell-Boyce17:48

Speed on elevator

Presenter17:52

The big country dreams stay with you like a lover's boy's mother

Presenter17:58

Big country and in a big country and memories for you, Frank Cottrell Boyce, of your honeymoon in Scotland. And how could we get to the honeymoon without even getting to your wife? Before that, how how did you meet Denise's your wife? She was at college with me.

Frank Cottrell-Boyce18:07

Before that

Speaker 118:08

Uh

Frank Cottrell-Boyce18:08

Uh

Frank Cottrell-Boyce18:09

She was at college with me. She was studying theology. She was studying to be a nun. She was studying to be a nun? Well, she was intending to be a nun.

Presenter18:13

Um

Presenter18:15

Right, you persuaded her otherwise.

Frank Cottrell-Boyce18:17

Yeah, I said

Presenter18:18

It's me, Jesus.

Frank Cottrell-Boyce18:18

Come on, don't remind us.

Presenter18:21

If she was at college studying theology, she's obviously very serious.

Frank Cottrell-Boyce18:24

She was very ser I mean, she wasn't wearing a wimple, but she was pretty serious about it, I think.

Presenter18:27

Right. And did how does that sit with your religion, which is hugely important to you? Maybe we'll discuss that a little later. But persuading somebody not to become a nun is quite selfish, is what I'm saying.

Frank Cottrell-Boyce18:36

Yeah.

Frank Cottrell-Boyce18:37

It was quite selfish, is what I'm saying. I should have left it at Jesus, really.

Presenter18:44

And so at this time when you were newly married, you were in your early twenties and it was a time politically of this this is when Thatcher was in government and you started working for Brooksite and it was determinedly political. I mean Bobby and Sheila who were at the center of most of the storylines were people yes they had trade unions and were motivated by their politics. It was very real to them. So did it sit comfortably for you to be writing very much to the left?

Frank Cottrell-Boyce18:58

Yeah.

Frank Cottrell-Boyce19:01

Yeah.

Speaker 119:03

Yeah.

Frank Cottrell-Boyce19:06

By the way,

Frank Cottrell-Boyce19:07

We've got

Frank Cottrell-Boyce19:10

Oh gosh, yeah. Very much. Oh, um honestly, it was very, very exciting to be in that little group of writers. It felt like a little band, you know, wi w with a kind of a gender and we genuinely think that if you wrote the right episode, the government would fall. You know, if we just got the right line in the right place, it would all be over.

Presenter19:27

You had also thought that when you'd been in academia, had you not? You'd written about what was what was your thesis?

Frank Cottrell-Boyce19:32

I wrote about the um the English Civil War, and again I thought if I write the right line, the world will change. I have a very, very inflated view of of writing and particularly of my own ability.

Presenter19:44

And it was around about this time that you would have met Michael Winterbottom, who you went on to make we've already mentioned Welcome to Sarajevo, A Cock and Bull Story, Twenty Four Hour Party, People.

Frank Cottrell-Boyce19:47

Yeah.

Frank Cottrell-Boyce19:54

I think Michael was a Chinese editor at the time, and he was sort of

Frank Cottrell-Boyce19:57

bursting to get out and and make a movie.

Presenter20:00

It's very difficult for people who who don't work in film and who simply buy the popcorn and buy the ticket and watch the movie to understand how precarious the British film world is. It's it's all about funding or or the lack of funding.

Frank Cottrell-Boyce20:10

Well, it's but I mean, it's called the British Film Industry. It's not an industry. Or if it is, it's a cottage industry. It's it runs on goodwill and on people doing things for nothing and people just really, really wanting to do it. And it takes ages to get a film made.

Presenter20:23

Give me an example then.

Frank Cottrell-Boyce20:24

Well, Cock and Bull Story, I think the first thing I ever spoke to Michael about was wanting to make a film of Tristan Shandy. I think that must be fourteen years. It's nothing to spend six or seven years getting a film together.

Presenter20:34

14 years between talking to Michael Winterbottom and that it's a little bit more than a million.

Frank Cottrell-Boyce20:36

Yeah, and actually making the film. It takes a lot of self-belief, I think, for people to make films in Britain.

Presenter20:42

And what about how the writer is treated? I mean, notoriously badly, as I understand it.

Frank Cottrell-Boyce20:47

Well, I think that depends on how you relate to people. And I think with Michael and especially with Danny, that you feel like you're part of a band. This is Danny Boyle. Yeah. I think in Hollywood you'd be badly treated by law. But here it's like how clubbable, how affable, how sly, how cunning can you be? And that's how you get your power. Nearly always people have done something with my work that was better than it deserved to be.

Speaker 120:55

Uh

Presenter21:03

Big

Presenter21:10

Let's have some more music then. Tell me about uh your next disc, number five.

Frank Cottrell-Boyce21:14

This is a recording of some children telling Bible stories in Dublin in the sixties. It was made by a teacher called Peg Cunningham. I mean, that's a project that just, as you'll hear, unleashed amazing creativity. And as you'll hear, these children have a

Frank Cottrell-Boyce21:27

Fantastic grasp of what they're talking about and a brilliant gift for language.

Speaker 121:32

He called him John the Baptist'cause he used to go down and telling everybody baptising all the big people and kids and all and telling people to do penance and give up their own sin.

Speaker 121:44

And so then he comes to the terrible wicked woman and he said to her, do penance and give up your little sins. And so she knew penance was hard and so she said, no, I won't do penance and I won't give up my old sins.

Presenter22:02

The story of John the Baptist from Give Up Your Old Sins, children recorded in Dublin in the nineteen sixties, retelling Bible stories. Frank Cottrell Boyce, your joy was barely contained during that. What is it you particularly like?

Speaker 122:13

Yeah.

Frank Cottrell-Boyce22:15

I love the well, I just I wonder if that accent still exists, it's an amazing accent, and I love how alive that story is to that kid.

Presenter22:23

You've mentioned Michael Winterbottom and also Danny Boyle, people that you've collaborated with. It was it was Danny Boyle who suggested that you should write a book for children. But it came around in a rather cockeyed way.

Frank Cottrell-Boyce22:31

Yeah.

Frank Cottrell-Boyce22:33

Well when I had the idea for millions, which is just a very simple idea of two little boys to find a bag of money. I was a scriptwriter, so I wrote it as a script and it occ took ye nobody wanted to make that. Everyone r loved it, nobody wanted to make it, and nobody sent it to Danny because he made zombie movies and heroin movies.

Presenter22:49

Yeah, train sporting being the most famous about Edinburgh junkies.

Frank Cottrell-Boyce22:51

Yeah.

Frank Cottrell-Boyce22:52

So he'd be the last person.

Presenter22:54

It's not whimsical.

Frank Cottrell-Boyce22:55

And I think it was, he was literally the last person that got sent to. And he loved it. He loved it up to page 30, as he said. He said, this is a great script up to page 30. And.

Presenter23:05

How many pages did it have? 105.

Frank Cottrell-Boyce23:05

Pemma

Frank Cottrell-Boyce23:07

So there was a lot of rewriting to do, and we did a lot of rewriting. We went out for dinner, and he said, Why don't you write a children's book? And I said, Oh, but I'd love to, but I've never had an idea. And he went,

Presenter23:08

Yeah.

Frank Cottrell-Boyce23:17

Isn't two little boys to find a bag of money quite a good idea for a book, and you should do the book because we've got time. And sometimes you just need that push. And Danny is one of those people who if he tells you to do something you think, Well, I must be able to do it because he told me to do it. So he was very motivating and I wrote it really quickly.

Presenter23:34

You've said that children's books are like movies are supposed to be big, bold and connected to their audience. Do do you find children as a father of seven do you find children a more rewarding audience th than adults?

Frank Cottrell-Boyce23:48

Well, obviously a tougher audience because they're not polite. I mean, adults will come up to you, whatever you've done, and go, Love your work. Whereas children, if you get the right reaction, that is the best feeling in the world. But it's also a huge responsibility, I think, because I think what you read at that age has a massive impact on you. So I think even the most intellectual grown-up novel or film, it is a pastime really. Whereas with children, you still be informed and you are playing with live ammo. You're playing with a very, very dangerous chemistry set there, I think. But that's very exciting as well.

Presenter23:53

Yeah.

Presenter24:19

Playing with live ammo. What a great expression. A and as you go along, are you reading bits of what you're letting them read bits of what you do?

Frank Cottrell-Boyce24:25

I mean, I've only just started to do that. I was quite nervous about it. And I did read them a draft of Cosmic when it wasn't very good. And they were so sweet, didn't say anything, but they did keep going to the toilet or going, Oh, there's someone at the door. So that was a t and my teenage daughter, Chiara, she sort of stopped and kind of worked out what was wrong with it for me. And sort of said, Yeah, she was great actually. And since then.

Presenter24:46

What happened? You went back and rewrote it?

Frank Cottrell-Boyce24:48

Yeah, it was that the main character was just didn't interest her at all, and of course it has to. So, from then on really I've read bits to them.

Presenter24:55

Yeah.

Presenter24:56

Let's have some more music then. Tell me uh about your next piece. It's uh number six.

Frank Cottrell-Boyce24:59

I think I had to choose some Bowie. Bowie is a huge figure for anyone my age. I always feel lucky that I had a pop star that I idolised who read a lot, so it felt quite cool to me to be reading what Bowie was reading. Everything about him just said life can be a lot more. And I think of all the songs, this is the one that says life can be more.

Presenter25:20

Angles and pulling some strings Angels

Presenter25:27

In woke luck and you looked in time

Frank Cottrell-Boyce25:28

Fine. Everything. What the hell?

Speaker 125:31

Yeah.

Speaker 125:35

Oh shit!

Speaker 125:37

Save it for

Frank Cottrell-Boyce25:38

A thousand years of the tools of chewing these older years.

Presenter25:49

David Bowie and Golden Years. You seem to maintain, Frank Cottrell Boyce, an amazing innocence given the game you're in. A lot a lot of people who've made films on T V inevitably become rather

Presenter26:01

hard boiled. There is a sort of carapace of cynicism around them. That doesn't seem to be the case with you. Have you maintained that rather gleeful, joyful perspective on the world?

Frank Cottrell-Boyce26:12

That's a really difficult question. I mean, I'm.

Presenter26:12

Really?

Frank Cottrell-Boyce26:15

I think quite a lot of people still have that. I think if you're creative, if you're doing something creative and if you've got the scope to keep.

Frank Cottrell-Boyce26:21

Challenging yourself, then you do there is always playing in the end, it's always playing, it's not work.

Presenter26:27

You grew up in a house that was, it seems, it was thoughtful, it was religious, it was political. Have you tried to carry that on in in your own family life with your own seven children?

Frank Cottrell-Boyce26:38

I mean, tride is too strong a word. I think it is just what we are. And I think that that is what the house is like. You know, it's full of people talking a lot, having very strong beliefs and heated arguments and and sharing those things.

Presenter26:41

And

Presenter26:52

And what about religion in the family? How important is that?

Frank Cottrell-Boyce26:55

It is the D n A of our family. It dictates the rhythm of the year. This is Lent, you know, soon it'll be Easter. I love the seasonality of it and the flow and the rhythm of it.

Presenter27:05

Have you given up?

Frank Cottrell-Boyce27:05

I actually gave up coffee and you know I've just drunk a cup of coffee. You have, I saw you. I have given it up, and then this is such a nerve-wracking thing to be doing. I just thought this is the one. And I knew from the beginning that I was doing it. I thought, I'm going to have one cup of coffee this Lent and it's going to be. I feel He will.

Presenter27:09

That

Presenter27:19

May God forgive you.

Presenter27:22

And so with your children, of course, um our children naturally should rebel against us. I mean i with any of your older children have they said, All right, I appreciate your Catholicism is important to you, but it's not important to me and it doesn't speak to me and it's not relevant to me.

Frank Cottrell-Boyce27:35

Oh no, no, no, no, completely. I mean, sometimes the reverse. Because I think a generation has shifted, hasn't it? For us, it was like an ambient thing growing up, it was cultural. For them, they're they're aware that they're in a minority and it's it's a much bigger commitment and it's a much stronger part of their identity, I think.

Presenter27:45

Right.

Presenter27:53

Your three youngest children are educated at home. Yeah. Right, so that's Denise that's that's teaching. Yeah. How does how does that go?

Frank Cottrell-Boyce27:56

Yeah.

Frank Cottrell-Boyce27:58

Yeah.

Frank Cottrell-Boyce27:59

It's really lovely. It wasn't through any kind of ideological thing. We just had a son who would have been very young to go to school, so we kept him back for a year, and it was a really happy year. So it was just a very kind of organic, growing thing. And we're we're in a very lucky position that we're both at home. So the house feels full. It's not like she's on her own with some children.

Presenter28:19

Do you When did these have time to yourself?

Frank Cottrell-Boyce28:22

Do we have time to we do get time to ourselves, but I do think me time is very overestimated. I think me time and because you're worth it are the road to death, really. I think you've happiness is sharing stuff and doing stuff with other people. I think you know, I think me time is not a good thing.

Presenter28:37

Do do you feel old fashioned?

Frank Cottrell-Boyce28:40

Yeah, I think we live in about eighteen fifty two, something like that.

Presenter28:45

A lot of people would be very jealous if you. Let's have uh your penultimate track then. What are we going to hear?

Frank Cottrell-Boyce28:46

Yeah.

Frank Cottrell-Boyce28:50

We were talking about how boringly happy I am. We were on holiday and my older boys played traditional Irish music and it was a lovely summer evening and my second son went into the garden and started playing this tune which is called The Butterfly, it's a slipchick, just practising on his fiddle and his sisters who did Irish dancing came out and they had bare feet and they just started dancing on the lawn. I think some French cyclists went past and just stopped and stared and they obviously thought this was just fairies, you know, comely lads and lasses dancing at the crossroads. And we were kind of laughing at them thinking, ha ha, it's not. And then thinking, well actually it is. This is happy ever after. We are living in a fairy story and isn't that wonderful. So it's like a kind of epiphanic moment for me of like it's not enough to be happy, you've got to recognise when you're happy and I do always think of that moment and thinking quite unselfconsciously we wear this image from illuminated manuscripts.

Presenter30:13

That was the Bothy Band and Butterfly. Frank Kottrell Boyce, you wrote a drama called God on Trial, which was uh it was a discussion between Jews in Auschwitz arguing over whether or not God had broken his covenant with the Jewish people. You said that more than anything else that you've written, it left you feeling battered and bruised.

Frank Cottrell-Boyce30:32

What? What was that?

Frank Cottrell-Boyce30:34

Well, first of all, the the concept seemed blasphemous to me, you know, that you put God on trial and I felt very difficult about taking it on. And I spoke to a great Rabbi, Rabbi Dan Con Sherbach, who said, Well, you know, that's just part of Jewish tradition, wrestling with God. Christians' relationship with God tends to be please, oh, and thanks, and that's it. Whereas a Jewish relationship with God is much fuller, you bring much more of yourself.

Presenter30:56

It was brilliantly critically received. Did it change your relationship w w with God?

Frank Cottrell-Boyce31:02

Yeah, no, absolutely. And it it kind of left me in a very bad place for a while because it is that that endless question of like why does God let bad stuff happen? And you've you've got to kind of face that question at some point. Did you reach any useful conclusion?

Frank Cottrell-Boyce31:16

You know, suffering is used as an argument against faith, but the fact is, if you want to see somewhere where faith is really thriving, it will be in Haiti after the earthquake. It's people in the darkest times who have the fullest faith, and it's like it's an intellectual thing to say that's a stumbling block. People who are living a life, suffering opens a door for them a lot of the time, and that's a very hard thing to summarise, but I did kind of go through that, yeah.

Presenter31:44

And what about you living in Liverpool? Is that you being deliberately wilful in saying to London, You'll have to come to me?

Frank Cottrell-Boyce31:49

I mean, I think it probably was during the Thatcher years, you know, I was going to go back and be and save everybody just by being there. But, you know, once your kids start to grow up, they put down roots and we have a nice house. And I think if you want to see a lot,

Frank Cottrell-Boyce32:02

Standing in one spot is a really good way to do it.

Presenter32:05

I'm going to take you away from your family and I'm going to maroon you on this desert island. What sort of sense? I'm going to do it. What sort of sense will you make of that? I'm terrifically lonely, I imagine.

Frank Cottrell-Boyce32:16

I mean as a writer you're supposed to have lots of inner resources, but I am a big talker and I'm married to a big talker and I would really miss talking. In terms of survival techniques I'm completely rubbish with hammers and nails and things like that, hopeless. But I am a very good observer and I'm quite informed about the natural world. I think I'd be able to figure out where the animals were and what was good to eat. So I would have plenty to eat, but I'd probably die of cold.

Presenter32:44

Tell me then what you've chosen as your last disc today, Frank.

Frank Cottrell-Boyce32:47

I've chosen The Greatest Single of All Time, I've Chosen God Only Knows by The Beach Boys.

Presenter32:54

You should ever leave me

Presenter32:58

Your life puts to go on, believe me

Presenter33:02

The world could show nothing to me So what good would living you mean?

Presenter33:10

God only knows what I knew about you

Presenter33:18

And God only knows what I'd be without ya That was the Beach Boys, and God only knows. So, Frank, the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare and the other book is what?

Frank Cottrell-Boyce33:31

Well, I kind of thought, well, if I've got those two and I can't have all the other books, then that those two kind of might be enough, really. Really? And then I thought, well, I would really like to take, just to add to those two, Charles Darwin, I would take The Voyage of the Beagle.

Frank Cottrell-Boyce33:47

which is his notebook from when he wasn't the naturalist on the beagle. He was just sent to be jolly and keep Fitzroy happy. It's probably the journal of the most important journey ever taken in intellectual history, and he was just messing about, he was just having a great time. And it's just a book full of idleness and joy and hunting and shooting and fishing and it's a great thing.

Presenter34:06

That's yours, and a luxury.

Frank Cottrell-Boyce34:08

Well I mean my luxury is so obvious I can't understand why everyone hasn't chosen it. I want to take a Ferris wheel.

Frank Cottrell-Boyce34:14

You could use it as a lookout.

Presenter34:16

Yes.

Frank Cottrell-Boyce34:16

I could use it as a shelter.

Frank Cottrell-Boyce34:18

You could use it as entertainment, you could probably use it as a an astronomical instrument, and also it would have a tune playing, so I get an extra record which would be Ian Clute's Ferris Wheel.

Presenter34:28

You began to make it sound almost too practical there, but you persuaded me in the end that it's probably entirely useful. So you may have it. And if you had to pick just one of these eight discs today,

Frank Cottrell-Boyce34:31

Yeah, probably entirely useless.

Frank Cottrell-Boyce34:38

Oh, definitely the Allegri Miss Arari.

Presenter34:40

Frank Cultural Boys, thank you very much for letting us hear your Desert Island discs.

Frank Cottrell-Boyce34:43

Thank you very much. It's been a joy.

Presenter35:31

You've been listening to a download from the BBC.

Presenter35:34

You'll find more information on the Radio 4 website bbc.co.uk/radio4.