Jimmy Mulville

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.

Presenter0:33

My castaway this week is Jimmy Malville. He began his life in comedy as a performer and writer, but success in front of the camera clearly wasn't enough. His production company Hattrick has turned out more hits than is, frankly, decent. Have I Got News for You, Room One O One, Drop the Dead Donkey, Father Ted and Outnumbered are just a handful of its brilliant creations.

Presenter0:56

He says he sees his job as identifying the maniacs behind the next big show.

Presenter1:00

and his skill in managing unpredictability has doubtless come in useful away from the studio too.

Presenter1:06

He has triumphed over alcoholism and drug addiction, fought cancer, and even managed to keep running his T V hit factory with his one-time wife after their marriage collapsed. He says of himself, I'm completely obsessive. When I ask for tea and biscuits, I don't mean one cup of tea and a biscuit, I mean a pot of tea and a packet of biscuits, and the pot of tea is drunk, and the packet of biscuits is eaten. So you are very much an all-or-nothing kind of a guy to your

Jimmy Mulville1:33

I'm afraid I am. Yeah. I think um the idea of balance wasn't in the Melville DNA.

Presenter1:34

Yeah, yeah.

Presenter1:40

Uh

Jimmy Mulville1:40

Um I think that uh someone said that there was an there was an instruction manual that came with you and you just didn't bother reading it. And in fact I never read any instruction manuals for anything. I asked my wife.

Presenter1:50

Right.

Jimmy Mulville1:51

So, a bit like Ozzy Osborne, um, I'll be confronted by an inanimate object that's just not doing what I want it to do and I'll shout CARA!

Jimmy Mulville1:59

And uh Karen comes along and she fixes it. She's the she's the handyman in the house.

Presenter2:03

And working with the maniacs. Of course we all understand that the best comedy comes out of a a degree of unpredictability as well as talent and understanding what makes comedy work. But people aren't queuing up to say that Peter Cook or Hancock and so on were easy to work with. I mean working with the maniacs must be difficult.

Jimmy Mulville2:11

Yes, but

Jimmy Mulville2:21

Well, it can be. I mean, the truth is, there is a kind of

Jimmy Mulville2:25

restlessness and malcontentedness about people in comedy. They want to do things and say something difficult. And if I went to work thinking I need to work with spiritually balanced people all the time, I I wouldn't make any television programmes.

Presenter2:40

And what about not performing yourself? Given that you c you can do it and you've proved you could do it and you had a perfectly successful career before going into uh production and and starting up, Patrick. Do you ever feel I'll do it myself, I'd be better than you are?

Jimmy Mulville2:52

No, I don't. My boyhood dream was to be an actor.

Jimmy Mulville2:55

And I did that for a while. And then by the early nineties I realized that my acting career was sort of, if you like, flattening out. And Hat Trick was incredibly exciting. But I have to say I spent a year contemplating the death of my kind of acting

Jimmy Mulville3:10

dreams. And what I realized was that the that the acting dream was being turned into a fantasy and as a grown man I shouldn't be living in fantasy. But I it was so painful I couldn't speak about it to anybody for about a year. I just let it die inside me. And then bit by bit I stopped acting, I turned down a couple of jobs and made a conscious decision.

Jimmy Mulville3:29

Put my energies into hat-trick.

Jimmy Mulville3:30

Every now and again, I get an opportunity, I do a little part on Andy Hamilton's Old Harry's game, which is a Radio 4 show. I play a man in hell who used to run a utilities company and was killed by overtaking in his Porsche. And Andy rammed me one day, I've written this thing, it's set in hell about the devil with a midlife crisis. There's a guy in it with no redeeming qualities whatsoever. I thought of you immediately.

Jimmy Mulville3:51

Yeah, it's fine.

Presenter3:52

Okay, more to come, much more to come, Jeremy Martha. But for now, we're going to listen to your first track. What are we going to hear?

Jimmy Mulville3:58

Uh this is a duet. Shane McGowan and Kirsty McCall. It reminds me of growing up in Liverpool, strangely. My folks were party people and there's always parties at my house every weekend. Lots of drinking, lots of singing, lots of passion, sometimes lots of arguments and comings together and pullings apart and it was very very tumultuous. And this song sort of captures it for me. And also strangely we sing it every year at Hat-Trick of a Christmas carol service and we all sang Fairy Tale of New York.

Speaker 34:32

You were pretty queen of New York City when the banks dream they all love them all Sinatra swing

Jimmy Mulville4:33

Uh

Jimmy Mulville4:34

And the time finish

Speaker 44:38

All the junks we were singing, We kissed on the corner, then danced through the night The boys of the airline mini coil were singing, all everywhere And the bells were ringing

Presenter4:58

That was the Pogues and Kirstie McCall and Fairy Tale of New York. And you said, Jimmy Marvel, that it it was really to remind you of of the weekends and the atmosphere and the parties and the robustness of life at home with your mum and dad. Yeah. So they were big characters.

Jimmy Mulville5:10

Mm.

Jimmy Mulville5:12

They were, and um they both worked incredibly hard. My dad was a boiler operator, my mother was a waitress for forty years, and both worked extraordinarily hard.

Presenter5:19

And

Jimmy Mulville5:21

And and they played hard at weekends. And she was a waitress in what, a a restaurant? Well, yes, it was very posh in those days. It was the kind of John Lewis shop called George Henry Lees. And I remember dad and I used to go in and have these things called open sandwiches. Ah, the height of sophistication, yes. Oh my god, having prawn open sandwiches.

Presenter5:34

Ah, the height of sophistication, yes.

Jimmy Mulville5:38

and silver service and just clinking teacups. And she'd come home and tell stories about the girls in work. And I would say the girls in work are about sixty five each June. These are not girls. But you're an o an only child. I was an only child, yes.

Presenter5:39

Yeah.

Presenter5:51

Your father had come from a

Jimmy Mulville5:52

Big family, yeah. He was one of nine.

Presenter5:52

Big family, yeah.

Presenter5:54

And he was a bright man who never really got the opportunity to do it.

Jimmy Mulville5:57

My dad was like and and typically, you know, he was a man who had a kinda anger in him. He was bright, he was funny, he was quick to temper.

Jimmy Mulville6:06

He had an an overdeveloped sense of personal outrage, a bit like me.

Presenter6:10

Is it odd that you were an only child, given that it was a Catholic family?

Jimmy Mulville6:13

It was a bit weird. And I think my mother tried to have children, and then my grandmother was killed in a car accident, and my mother.

Presenter6:14

Right.

Jimmy Mulville6:20

I think took that very badly. And so, no other children arrived. Did you feel the weight of that?

Presenter6:25

expectation. Uh you know, sometimes only children that can be a part of the picture.

Jimmy Mulville6:29

Yes, I mean I I knew I was in the full glare of my parents' love. I knew that they loved me. And fortunately I was good at school, so I delivered a bit for them, you know.

Presenter6:32

Yeah.

Jimmy Mulville6:38

I was good at school. I had a very good

Jimmy Mulville6:40

Education. I mean, in 1966, when I first went to my secondary school at Olsop,

Jimmy Mulville6:45

And I had one particular teacher around called mister Cashing, who spotted um that I was quite good at Latin and then convinced me to do Ancient Greek. So by the age of thirteen I was doing probably more periods of Ancient Greek and Latin than I was of maths and English.

Presenter7:00

More on mister Cashen and more on your education in just a minute. For now that we should have some music, Jimmy.

Jimmy Mulville7:04

Come on.

Presenter7:05

Um tell me what we're gonna hear next.

Jimmy Mulville7:06

Well we're gonna hear um Dean Martin slur his way through that samore. It reminds me of my dad. At weekends he was Dean Martin and Frank Sonata all rolled into one and would sing these songs at family parties. And he'd sing it into the eyes of my mother who, depending on the mood she was in, would either laugh along with him or tell him to shut up, you're drunk. But also there's a very specific reason that I'm picking this, is that

Jimmy Mulville7:29

When I met my wife Karen, um she had a daughter called Paige who was three and she'd lost her father when she was eighteen months old.

Jimmy Mulville7:37

And it was decided, we had been seeing each other for a couple of months, that I should meet Paige. And I met Paige uh in an ice cream parlour on the King's Road, beautiful sunny day in June. And this little thing turned up in a wonderful little dress with her hair in ribbons, and I could tell Karen was quite nervous about sort of the first meeting. I was quite nervous, and I said to her, Paige, hi, do you want an ice cream?

Presenter7:50

The hell.

Jimmy Mulville7:59

And she pointed at me and said,

Jimmy Mulville8:01

Daddy.

Jimmy Mulville8:03

Karen died at the table and said, I don't think she knows what she's saying. She then repeated it and said,

Speaker 38:07

Daddy!

Jimmy Mulville8:09

And I always tell Paige this story that I met my three sons who were born in our house actually, and I knew I was their daddy.

Jimmy Mulville8:17

But actually with page.

Jimmy Mulville8:19

When I first met Paige, she knew I was her daddy, and there was no getting out of it. And you know, she and I have had a fantastically interesting relationship. She was three then, she's twenty now. I used to sing this song to her in the car, a full blast. She'd sing along with me. And at age thirteen or fourteen, when she was getting into M and M, she'd tapped me on the shoulder one day and said

Jimmy Mulville8:39

Don't sing it anymore.

Jimmy Mulville8:41

and a part of me died.

Jimmy Mulville8:43

Then when she heard I was coming on this programme, I got an immediate text saying, oh, by the way, don't forget that Samora is a very important song to you.

Speaker 48:51

When the moon hits your eye like a bigger pizza pie, that's more air

Speaker 49:01

When the world seems to shine Like you've had too much wine That's some old end

Speaker 49:10

Bells'll ring, tingle, linger-ling, tingle-ling-a-ling, and you'll sing beat of bell.

Presenter9:19

Dean Martin and Natsa More, and that's for your daughter, Paige. You also have three sons. Oh, I do.

Jimmy Mulville9:23

Oh, I do.

Presenter9:24

Um do you sort of do you envy them the camaraderie of of having siblings, having not had it yourself?

Jimmy Mulville9:30

I do a bit. I look at them sometimes, how they interact, and it's kind of baffles me. You know, I'm sort of like a nic scientist looking at some kind of experiment being um unfolding in front of me. They're very close. I I do like that feeling that they'll have each other forever.

Presenter9:44

When you were growing up then, the expectation you said by your parents was that education was was highly important and you were a clever little boy. You had a teacher who was very important in in fostering your interest in in furthering your education.

Jimmy Mulville9:51

Uh-huh.

Jimmy Mulville9:52

Yeah.

Jimmy Mulville9:57

Yes, and this man his name was Douglas Cashing and he was a classics master. He's teaching Latin and Greek in a Liverpool comprehensive in the sixties. I mean that's unbelievable isn't it? Yeah. When you think about it nowadays. And so he approached my my best friend, my oldest friend, David Hughes, and I and another chap called Al Radcliffe and said, look you three, you're quite good at Latin. How about trying ancient Greek? We thought ancient Greek?

Jimmy Mulville10:21

And we did? And he took you on a school trip to Cambridge? Yes, when I was thirteen, mister Cashin decided to take us all down to Cambridge to see the Greek play, which is performed by students in Ancient Greek. And it's a bit of a

Presenter10:34

Well yeah, I can't imagine you're running onto the bus to see that one.

Jimmy Mulville10:37

No, no. Um but we like the idea of going on a school trip.

Presenter10:37

Yeah.

Jimmy Mulville10:40

The effect it had on me was I never

Jimmy Mulville10:42

had before seen a place like Cambridge. I kept touching the buildings, expecting them to be like a film set. So it was the ancient beauty there. It was just the grandeur, the beauty, the students lolling about the place, the atmosphere. It just

Presenter10:49

It was just the green

Jimmy Mulville10:55

inspired me. And on the way back I said to Mr. Cashin in the school mini bus, So how do you get there then, sir?

Jimmy Mulville11:02

And he fixed me with his gaze and said, Well, Mulwell, you have to work very, very hard to get there.

Jimmy Mulville11:07

I remember turning to Dave and saying, Well, should we do that then?

Jimmy Mulville11:10

And they went, yeah, okay. David was also an only child, and by then was like my brother.

Jimmy Mulville11:16

We would revise together, so every evening, more or less every evening, we'd fire questions at each other. It was like a kind of a magnificent obsession really.

Presenter11:23

Did you keep in touch with mister Cashin afterwards?

Jimmy Mulville11:25

Well

Jimmy Mulville11:27

Like every nineteen-year-old young man, I just left school, probably without a thank you or a s whatever.

Presenter11:33

Whatever.

Jimmy Mulville11:34

And um many, many years later, I decided to get in touch with them again.

Jimmy Mulville11:39

And um he was

Jimmy Mulville11:41

Delighted to hear from me after all these years, and the voice was still the same, and I went to see him, had dinner with him and his wife, and my PE teacher, mister Lang, who I also loved, and his wife.

Jimmy Mulville11:51

And then an idea framed in my mind and I a bit later said to him, Look, you know I missed a school trip to Rome in 1971, two. Um I missed the school trip that summer. I said I'd quite like to have my school trip with you again. So that year we went to Rome and uh he did the school trip. He gave me the information pack. The following year we did Pompeii and then we did Athens and Delphi and I'm hoping our next trip might be to Jordan. So I have my school trip now virtually every year and every time we go into an ancient theatre he insists on standing up and reciting either Osimandias or a piece from the Iliad and it gets an interesting reaction from the German tourists and their Kaguls.

Presenter12:35

Let's have some music. We're on uh disc three. Well the next disc is the Beatles.

Jimmy Mulville12:39

Inevitably, coming from Liverpool.

Presenter12:39

Inevitably.

Jimmy Mulville12:41

The Beatles was the soundtrack to my youth. I could have taken the whole of Abbey Road, but I've chosen this because uh well it makes me cry actually.

Speaker 412:52

Wants to lose away.

Speaker 412:56

Get back home.

Speaker 412:59

Sleep, pretty darling, do not cry.

Speaker 413:05

And I will sing a lullaby

Speaker 413:13

You're gonna carry that weight.

Speaker 413:16

I realize

Presenter13:19

The Beatles and Golden Slumbers carry that weight. Jimmy Malvell, you did then get to Cambridge. It was 1974. David, your friend, got there too, but you went to different colleges. You were at Jesus College. And I'm wondering if this sort of inner city comprehensive boy wasn't rather cool in 1974 at Cambridge. People want to be your friend rather than how it might have been twenty years earlier.

Jimmy Mulville13:41

Don't know about that. I mean, I think it was um

Jimmy Mulville13:44

There were still colleges that were very, very public school orientated. In fact, the junior common room in those days was headed up by no other than Jeff Hoon.

Jimmy Mulville13:51

Our ex-Minister for Defence.

Presenter13:53

How did you get on with them?

Jimmy Mulville13:54

Fine. Um he used to wear a white suit in those days and played lots of David Bowie. You can see it in him now, can't you?

Jimmy Mulville14:01

Um, and were your parents terrifically proud that you were there? Oh, yeah. I thought they'd burst. They'd come down, they'd visit.

Jimmy Mulville14:08

And they were in awe. I mean, very quickly when you get to be a student, you get over it, the place, you get into the life, you know, you stop standing back in awe.

Presenter14:13

Cleanly

Jimmy Mulville14:16

But they were in awe of it really.

Presenter14:18

How did they behave when they came to visit you then? Was there a sense were they comfortable and at ease with the environment?

Jimmy Mulville14:22

I mean well we go out.

Jimmy Mulville14:23

Or with my friends to a pub, and we'd all get drunk.

Jimmy Mulville14:26

And then one night

Jimmy Mulville14:27

I got home with my mum and I realized my dad wasn't there.

Jimmy Mulville14:32

Oh, where's Dad gone? So I start looking for my dad.

Jimmy Mulville14:35

And I went to Emmanuel where we'd been having a drink, and I wandered around Emmanuel, and all my friends were: Roy McGrath is there, Griffiths Jones is there, David Hughes is there.

Jimmy Mulville14:44

And I could hear.

Jimmy Mulville14:45

A very familiar voice singing at the top of his voice in a college room. I went in, my father was standing on the table, singing some terrible old Irish song with my friends. Absolutely enthralled by this man.

Jimmy Mulville14:57

He was just charming and uh

Jimmy Mulville14:59

As the son, you're very easily embarrassed by your parents. Yes. And I think, I just thought, Dad, what are you doing? But they loved him. They loved my dad.

Presenter15:02

Yeah.

Presenter15:06

Um you rolled off a little impressive call of names there, the people that you were at university with. You were in the Footlights. Did did you join the Footlights in the first year? No no no.

Jimmy Mulville15:10

Title

Jimmy Mulville15:15

No, no, no. I was terrified of doing anything in in the first year. And I just thought, Oh my god, you know, these people are just so with it and I'm so not with it. And I didn't act or write or do anything for a year. Knowing that you wanted to, but couldn't. Desperately. I just didn't find a foothold. And I felt very

Presenter15:27

Desperately.

Jimmy Mulville15:32

Miserable about that, really. And then someone knocked on my door one night, and I opened the door.

Jimmy Mulville15:37

This guy said, Is you mean Melvin in? I said, Who wants to know?

Jimmy Mulville15:40

He said, Well, I'm I'm doing a play and uh it's written by the scaffold, so I'm looking for somebody with an authentic Liverpool accent.

Jimmy Mulville15:46

And I said, Oh yeah, okay, uh I'm Jimmy Mulville, and I got a part in a play called The Puny Little Life Show, written by Roger McGough.

Jimmy Mulville15:53

And somebody from the footlights was in the audience and saw it and then said, Oh, do you want to be in the footlights? And then that was it. Uh tell me about your next piece of music, man. Okay, um one of the benefits about being on a desert island, I suppose, would be that I won't have to worry about uh what I look like. And um the Mark Twain quote

Jimmy Mulville16:12

Dance like no one's watching, sing like no one's listening, and love like you've never been hurt.

Jimmy Mulville16:17

I think I could do two of those things. And I think on this island I need something to get off my backside and just dance. And I think I could just go berserk on the island. And that's why I want something very kind of get up and go. And so I've chosen David Bowie and the Gene Genie.

Speaker 416:32

Jing Jeanette lives on his back

Speaker 416:35

The ginging act, those chimney stacks The driveway dash, the screens and people

Speaker 416:43

But Jean General, let yourself go!

Presenter16:59

That was David Bowie and Jean Genie. One thing that we haven't mentioned, Jimmy Marvel, is you arrived at university already married. I did. That's unusual. You were nin nineteen when you were. I was. Right.

Jimmy Mulville17:08

Hamos.

Jimmy Mulville17:09

Yeah, I did I did a very um Liverpool thing really. Um I'd um met somebody when I was nearly fifteen in a school play and she became my childhood sweetheart, Julia. Looking back, you know, it probably had was a mistake to get married so young, but at at that stage in my life I was right about everything.

Jimmy Mulville17:29

I couldn't be wrong about anything, and the more my parents said this is a mistake, that was just further evidence that I was right.

Presenter17:36

Right.

Speaker 417:36

Uh

Jimmy Mulville17:37

And I was quite a compulsive spontane I like to say spontaneous, but actually I was quite compulsive. You know, if I wanted to do I had to do that. I then marshall the arguments on why why I should do that.

Presenter17:47

While you were at university, your father also became unwell. How aware were you of his illness while you were studying?

Jimmy Mulville17:50

Uh

Jimmy Mulville17:54

During my finals I was ringing

Jimmy Mulville17:56

up home regularly, and my father was never there, and my dad used to work shifts.

Jimmy Mulville18:01

And then when the finals were over, Cambridge was over, rang up mum and said they're over, she burst into tears and said, Your dad's very ill in hospital.

Jimmy Mulville18:10

But he insisted um on not telling me during my exam, so he'd been ill for three weeks.

Jimmy Mulville18:17

And he had this terrible virus called transverse myelitis.

Jimmy Mulville18:21

which came upon him like a flu.

Jimmy Mulville18:23

and rendered him paralysed.

Jimmy Mulville18:25

And then when the feeling came back, his whole nervous system was decoded.

Jimmy Mulville18:29

I drove back that night and went to see him and uh I instinctively just put my hand out to shake his hand and he couldn't move'cause he was paralyzed. I remember the

Jimmy Mulville18:40

It was a look of shame on his face.

Speaker 418:41

Mm-hmm.

Jimmy Mulville18:42

And I know this, having been ill myself, is that for some reason you think it's your fault.

Jimmy Mulville18:47

and I could see that the fact he couldn't shake my hand was breaking his heart.

Jimmy Mulville18:51

It was an awful, awful time because my dad was always just this very vibrant, funny.

Jimmy Mulville18:57

rather challenging man. And there he was, this kind of just this like lost little boy in the bed. And so he did go home. He he recovered from the paralysis. But there's a ver it's a very bleak prognosis.

Jimmy Mulville19:08

He had to leave his job, he was only forty-eight by this time.

Jimmy Mulville19:12

And um and he lasted for a year.

Presenter19:15

And in the end he took his own life.

Jimmy Mulville19:17

Yeah.

Presenter19:18

How did you

Jimmy Mulville19:18

You hear it. That he had committed suicide. Um my father-in-law, who very bravely called me, I knew immediately, immediately, I said, It's my dad, isn't it?

Jimmy Mulville19:26

He said yes.

Jimmy Mulville19:28

I said, He's dead, isn't he?

Jimmy Mulville19:30

And uh I went home that night. Um

Jimmy Mulville19:33

Uh in a daze.

Jimmy Mulville19:34

And that's what I found out.

Presenter19:36

In in the the intervening years then, what what what do you make of his decision to do that?

Jimmy Mulville19:42

Um

Jimmy Mulville19:44

I think that um for many, many years I was in denial about how I felt about it, to be honest.

Jimmy Mulville19:50

And that's when I my own kind of drinking and drug using in my twenties really took off.

Jimmy Mulville19:58

I remember on the anniversary of his death I would just get completely

Jimmy Mulville20:01

wasted and uh usually either pick a fight or do something inappropriate.

Presenter20:02

Then

Jimmy Mulville20:06

I was very angry for a long time. Really, really angry that he could He could leave myself and my mum.

Jimmy Mulville20:12

And for a long time I was very angry. And then once the anger lifts, of course, there's just this tremendous sadness.

Jimmy Mulville20:18

And you just want to stop people in the street saying, Why are you buying those clothes? Why are you getting on that bus? Don't you realize my father's died?

Jimmy Mulville20:27

So it was a huge change for all of us really.

Presenter20:30

Let's have some music, Jimmy. Uh what are we going to hear next?

Jimmy Mulville20:33

Well

Jimmy Mulville20:34

This is Squeeze and it's up the junction. It reminds me of when I first moved to London and began to run around London having a pretty good time, meeting some really interesting people. I got a job at the BBC.

Jimmy Mulville20:46

As a B B C radio writer then producer.

Jimmy Mulville20:50

And uh long evenings spent in the horse and groom and then off for a curry, putting the world to rights.

Speaker 420:57

With me and the girl from Clapham Out on the Wendy Common That night I ain't forgotten When she dealt out the rations With some or other passions I said you are a lady Perhaps she said I may be

Speaker 421:15

We moved into a basement, with thoughts of our engagement We stayed in by the Terry, although the room was smelly

Presenter21:23

That was squeezed and up the junction. So, uh, Jimmy Malville, let's work out exactly where you are. At this point in your life, you're at the BBC, you're making radio comedy, you're working alongside people like Douglas Adams, Rory McGrath, Geoffrey Perkins. Had you begun to dip into T V work too by that point?

Jimmy Mulville21:31

You make

Jimmy Mulville21:39

No, no, we were all cloistered on uh the corridor at sixteen Langham Street.

Jimmy Mulville21:43

The corridor was very interesting because

Jimmy Mulville21:45

There was the fire door halfway down, and this side of the fire doors, there was a kind of the genteel.

Jimmy Mulville21:50

producorial environment where people were doing things like Brain of Britain and lovely kind of uh light dramas and music programmes. And then beyond the fire door were the maniacs. There was Douglas Adams who had just written Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. There was Griffree Jones. John Lloyd was doing the news quiz. And at the far end there was a little room and they put me in there with Rory McGrath and Guy Jenkin on a writer's bursary.

Jimmy Mulville22:14

And that's where we were, all locked in together, and we had a fantastic time. We didn't realize at the time what a great time we were having, really.

Presenter22:21

It sounds uh Jimmy Malville well, you've described yourself as a workaholic and a ticking time bomb and somebody who is powered much of the time by anger and possibly frustration. That's all in the mix as well.

Jimmy Mulville22:25

Can it

Jimmy Mulville22:30

Yeah.

Jimmy Mulville22:33

Yeah.

Presenter22:33

Yeah.

Jimmy Mulville22:33

Yeah.

Jimmy Mulville22:36

Got that about yourself. You don't permanently go around in a rage. No.

Presenter22:40

No.

Jimmy Mulville22:40

Um I think you know it's like

Jimmy Mulville22:42

You know, it's like I discovered that I had a drinking problem, that I was an alcoholic, and the paradox is I don't drink anymore.

Presenter22:47

Yeah.

Presenter22:48

You were married for the second time by this point.

Jimmy Mulville22:54

Got married in a kind of dry patch, and I was desperately trying not to drink. And in the end,

Jimmy Mulville22:59

It all fell apart in nineteen eighty eight and I just completely fell off the wagon.

Presenter23:04

Drugs were in the mix as well.

Jimmy Mulville23:05

Yeah, no, I was introduced to cocaine when I was twenty seven, and I thought, well, how can I possibly have a problem?

Jimmy Mulville23:11

Page 27. I can handle this.

Presenter23:13

So what was it? It was the culture of television as well. Everyone else is doing it too.

Jimmy Mulville23:15

To be ours by use houses.

Jimmy Mulville23:17

I got my first job. Griffrey Stones and Mel Smith are very kind to me and said, Look, do you want to come and produce?

Presenter23:17

Uh I

Jimmy Mulville23:22

Ah, show. It was called The Last Smith and Jones in those days.

Jimmy Mulville23:26

And I was away filming in Newbury when I had my first taste of it and um fell in love, completely fell in love with it.

Presenter23:32

Um some comic once famously said that a cocaine habit is God's way of telling you you've got too much money. Uh how much money did you spend on cocaine?

Jimmy Mulville23:39

Oh, thousands. Thousands and thousands. I came out of Rehab Center owing a lot of money because of that.

Presenter23:46

How long were you in rehab for?

Jimmy Mulville23:47

Well, the average is like six weeks. Uh I was in for thirteen weeks.

Jimmy Mulville23:52

Um I had a carapace around me.

Jimmy Mulville23:54

And the carapace was held together by an easy charm and naked aggression, and depending on what mood I was in, you'd get either one or the other.

Jimmy Mulville24:02

But once you took away the drink and the drugs, you took away my medicine and then you were left with me in the raw and you put me in a treatment center for a certain amount of time and I'm gonna crack and I crack.

Presenter24:14

You mean you you had a breakdown while you were there? Yes.

Jimmy Mulville24:15

Oh, you were there, yes. What what happened to me was I basically broke down one day and began to tell the truth.

Presenter24:20

Ah.

Jimmy Mulville24:20

which the new experience to me.

Jimmy Mulville24:23

Um'cause I basically gave people a version of me that I thought they'd want as opposed to the to to the real me.

Presenter24:30

Let's have some music.

Jimmy Mulville24:31

We're at uh disc number six. This is the only classical piece I have.

Jimmy Mulville24:37

And my wife, Karen, introduced me to this piece of music and I have to say it is one of the most profound live experiences I've ever had anywhere in a concert hall. I don't believe in God, but this almost makes me want to believe. Uh it's called The Resurrection. It's Marlow's Second Symphony. I'm very interested in Resurrection in a secular way about

Jimmy Mulville24:58

The idea that you can actually let something die and something will renew itself. I think that's the journey of life for me.

Jimmy Mulville25:04

Out of terribly tumultuous music full of turmoil comes this fantastic choral piece at the end, which if it doesn't make you cry, you're not human.

Presenter26:13

That was part of the final movement of Mahler's second symphony, The Resurrection, performed by the B B C Chorus, the B B C Choral Society, Goldsmiths' Choral Union, and the Harrow Choral Society, with the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Leopold Stockowski.

Presenter26:28

Uh Jenny Malville, it didn't save your marriage, the sort of thing that you were hoping to do. You you you came out of treatment and

Jimmy Mulville26:34

Yeah.

Presenter26:34

Life was good.

Jimmy Mulville26:35

But and it's quite common I think that that um

Presenter26:35

Yeah.

Presenter26:36

Yeah.

Jimmy Mulville26:38

Denise and I were running Hat Trick by now, and the truth is that, you know, Hat Trick was put together in nineteen eighty five by Denise with Rory McGrath and myself, but she was the kind of genius behind it really. And so we were you know, we were a very close couple. We worked together, we lived together.

Jimmy Mulville26:55

Then when I got sober, I think and it happens to lots of couples, the dynamic changes in the relationship.

Presenter27:01

The thing that doesn't happen for a lot of couples, of course, is that they continue to work together. I mean, most couples who get divorced can't even bear to have a phone call between the other person and never mind going to the office with them every day.

Jimmy Mulville27:04

Well so

Jimmy Mulville27:16

So we stared at each other across the table.

Jimmy Mulville27:19

Seeing who's gonna blink first.

Jimmy Mulville27:21

And when it was decided that neither of us was going to leave Hatri, we then had to get down to it and

Jimmy Mulville27:26

We need to renegotiate our relationship.

Jimmy Mulville27:28

But it wasn't easy.

Presenter27:29

Um

Presenter27:30

We haven't spent enough time at all talking about your professional triumphs. It would be useful to start with have I got news for you? How many years has it been running now?

Presenter27:40

Three hundred and fifty years, I think, now.

Jimmy Mulville27:42

Um

Jimmy Mulville27:43

I mean Ian and Paul are cryogenically.

Jimmy Mulville27:46

Reconstructed every week. Twenty years now. Unbelievable.

Jimmy Mulville27:49

There were

Presenter27:49

That was the moment when uh Angus I don't know if he was sacked or I don't know if he chose to leave, but he certainly left.

Jimmy Mulville27:56

Yeah.

Presenter27:56

Afghanistan

Jimmy Mulville27:56

FDA

Presenter27:57

Yes. Yes. Did you think that was curtains? Well, he was stacked, wasn't he? Was he? Yeah.

Jimmy Mulville28:01

It wasn't a moral judgment at all, he was a fantastic host of that show.

Jimmy Mulville28:06

But because of the revelations about his personal life, he was wounded as the host. It was a big thing, you know, it was even one thought for the day. I remember having a shave that week.

Jimmy Mulville28:16

Living through the kind of the the media, it was on the news, it was

Jimmy Mulville28:20

I thought, oh, I'll have a quiet shade before I go back into the kind of maelstrom of this.

Jimmy Mulville28:24

And it was the Reverend Oobidum from Birmingham saying, Well, this week, of course, Angus Deaton I can't believe it.

Jimmy Mulville28:31

Someone's drawing some kind of moral succour from Angus's plight on Thought for the Day. I couldn't escape it.

Presenter28:37

L let's have some music. We're on disc number seven.

Jimmy Mulville28:40

Okay.

Jimmy Mulville28:41

So it's a second Beatles.

Jimmy Mulville28:43

Track. Um I can't be the only stroppy scouser on the island.

Jimmy Mulville28:48

And I think this track

Jimmy Mulville28:50

What I'm sitting there and I will look back is that I'd love to have this track playing while I think of all the people in my life who've meant a lot to me, not clearly my wife, my kids, but also people. I have a very special group of friends who meet we meet virtually every week and we talk about things. It's like food to me. I love a good conversation and I'd miss that on a desert island. So I think this track would remind me of those moments when I've enjoyed those conversations.

Speaker 429:17

And these memories lose their meaning.

Speaker 429:22

When I think of love as something new

Speaker 429:26

Oh, I know I'll never lose affection

Speaker 429:32

People are famous.

Speaker 429:34

But when before I know I'll often stop and think about them

Speaker 429:41

My life, I love you more.

Presenter29:45

That was the Beatles and in my life. Uh Jimmy Malvell, you have a couple of times mentioned your illness. I mentioned it in the introduction and you mentioned it a moment ago. When did you find out you had cancer?

Jimmy Mulville29:52

Yeah.

Presenter29:56

Uh

Jimmy Mulville29:56

Oh, it was about eight years ago and I was I'd had a lump in my neck and as a non-smoker I ignored it to begin with and um several teams of doctors ignored it.

Jimmy Mulville30:05

Um I'm a fully paid member of the Hypochondriac Society.

Jimmy Mulville30:10

In the end I sort of insisted, got it checked out.

Jimmy Mulville30:14

And it was indeed cancerous. It was a lymph gland that had gone cancerous. And then thereafter, I have to say, I was put into the hands of a brilliant man called Peter E. Sevens at the Marsden, who found out where the primary tumor was in my tonsil. It's quite rare.

Jimmy Mulville30:30

Uh which they removed and they stripped out some lymph glands, they radiated me, and that was eight years ago and and all's been well since, but I was lucky.

Presenter30:38

And you are running a big, busy company, one of the biggest and the busiest, and you are a father of at that stage uh three children four children, three children by that stage. Um what and you are not drinking. So what's your how how are you getting through it? What it where's where's your where's your anger? Where's your fear?

Jimmy Mulville30:44

Stage

Jimmy Mulville30:46

Yeah, four children.

Speaker 430:51

Yeah.

Jimmy Mulville30:56

Well, I am.

Jimmy Mulville30:59

First of all, you're in you're in shock. My wife.

Presenter31:01

Mm-hmm.

Jimmy Mulville31:03

You know, for her it was a terrible moment because she was hearing that her second husband, her first husband, died of cancer when she was very young, and he was very young.

Jimmy Mulville31:11

And here she's hearing the same thing again.

Jimmy Mulville31:14

So for her it was a very difficult time, but the news very quickly.

Jimmy Mulville31:20

Became better news and the prognosis became better and better. And I realized that actually, you know, with a bit of luck, it was going to be fine.

Jimmy Mulville31:29

I mean, I have to say, it was pretty terrifying too, and I think people project onto you your being brave when all you're doing what all I was doing was I was doing as I was told by the experts.

Jimmy Mulville31:39

And I did have moments of feeling sorry for myself, and there was a moment when my wife caught me in the kitchen.

Jimmy Mulville31:43

sort of staring off into the middle distance, and she knew I was sort of planning my funeral in that moment.

Jimmy Mulville31:48

And she quite rightly said to me, You know something, yes, you might die.

Jimmy Mulville31:52

But I'll be here with three children.

Jimmy Mulville31:55

So

Jimmy Mulville31:56

you know, snap out of it. And she was quite right to do that, I think. Um

Presenter32:00

Um I'm going to cast you away, of course, Jimmy. You're going to be on an island on your own. How how will you cope with that?

Jimmy Mulville32:06

Um

Jimmy Mulville32:07

I realize life is fragile. It's also very, very short. And I think that on a desert island, I'd have a lot of time to.

Jimmy Mulville32:14

look back on my life and to be grateful really. I mean, I'm enormously grateful. I am one lucky S O B when I think of where I could be and where I am now. You know, I can on Father's Day I had Joe and George and Jack jumping on me at seven AM. They just piled on top of me, and Karen took a picture of us all.

Jimmy Mulville32:33

And I've got this picture and it's just I think how lucky am I really? I know it's a bit soppy, but I think about those things on my island that if this was the end of my life, I'd like to look back on a life that I think I'm I'm very pleased I'm very pleased that I've had it.

Presenter32:46

Let's have your final disc then.

Jimmy Mulville32:47

What's it gonna be?

Jimmy Mulville32:48

Well, it's the Rolling Stones, and I've chosen this disc because it does remind me sometimes in my life.

Jimmy Mulville32:56

I haven't got what I've wanted, which I find

Jimmy Mulville32:59

Terrible.

Jimmy Mulville33:00

When when I don't get what I want, I live through the pain of that and sometimes I do get what I need.

Jimmy Mulville33:05

And that's a more valuable experience. So this is the Rolling Stones singing, You Can't Always Get What You Want.

Speaker 433:10

Can't always get what you want.

Speaker 433:16

You can't always get what you want.

Speaker 433:22

You can't always get what you want.

Speaker 433:27

But if you try sometime

Speaker 433:30

Oh, you're my friend. You get what you need.

Presenter33:38

That was the Rolling Stones, and you can't always get what you want. I'm going to give you now, Jimmy, the Bible and the Complete Works of Shakespeare. What's your other book? You get to take three. What's it going to be?

Jimmy Mulville33:48

Well

Jimmy Mulville33:49

Looking through my list of discs, um clearly there's a lot of sadness there, a lot of reflection looking backwards. I quite like feeling melancholic, but I do want to hear laughter on the island. So I've chosen the complete works of PG Woodhouse because

Jimmy Mulville34:02

That's a writer that can take me into a world of Blandings, Castles, or Dews and Worcester, and literally make me laugh out loud in a public place. So I would want him on my desert with me.

Presenter34:12

It's yours, and a luxury too.

Jimmy Mulville34:14

Okay, well people who know me will probably laugh at this, but um I don't want to be entirely chilled out on the island, so I'm going to take a solar powered espresso machine with a limitless amount of good coffee.

Presenter34:25

Right.

Jimmy Mulville34:26

So I feel edgy on the island.

Presenter34:28

Okay, it's yours. And if you had to choose just one of these eight discs, which one disc would you choose?

Jimmy Mulville34:35

Well, I think I'd choose the one that would give me that moment of reflection to look back on my life and to feel that sense of.

Jimmy Mulville34:42

Gratitude, and I choose John Lennon in my life.

Presenter34:46

It's yours, Jimmy Marvel. Thank you very much for letting us hear your Desert Immond Discs. Thank you.

Presenter35:36

You've been listening to a download from the BBC. You'll find more information on the Radio Four website bbc. co dot uk slash radio four.