Anne Wood

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 T V producer Ann Woods, the creator of Telly Tubbies, Rosie and Jim and In the Night Garden.

Presenter0:42

Growing up in a mining town in the North East, there were scant children's books and no money to pay for them, she became a teacher and an early champion of children's literature. She says she's always had a knack for knowing what a three year old wants, and has made big business out of tiny tots, creating candy coloured worlds full of sunshine and soothing landscapes, populated by spongy characters that exchange gobbledygook greetings and chubby cuddles. It's a world away from the harsh insecurity that she has faced as a businesswoman. Early on she put the family home up as collateral, and then watched as T V companies made themselves millions from her ideas.

Presenter1:19

No such problems these days. I felt I was being ripped off, she says. I started to go on business courses. I'm not going to be patronised whilst they take all the money. Reputedly then Ann Wood total Global Teletubbies related sales have topped a billion dollars, I read. Am I right?

Anne Wood1:35

To be honest, I couldn't tell you.

Anne Wood1:39

It's possible that they have. My interest is really with how will a three year old view what I'm making? Uh but it's very satisfying that it's making money,'cause if it wasn't we wouldn't be able to do the work, so one feeds the other.

Presenter1:54

You've said that of Tele Tubbies it was an overnight success based on thirty-five years of experience.

Anne Wood1:59

That's true, and I think most overnight successes are based on a lot of experience. I first made a programme for very little children.

Anne Wood2:07

From Nothing when I was at T V A M.

Anne Wood2:09

And although the most famous thing that I did there was Roland Ratt, of course, the thing that most interested me that I did there was Rubber Dub Tub. And it started with children in their pyjamas waving hello to what I imagined were other children in their pyjamas at the other end. And it worked brilliantly. And from then on I thought there's an audience here that um we could meet.

Presenter2:30

Uh

Anne Wood2:30

And where

Presenter2:30

When Telly Tubbies appeared on our screens, it was met with um horror. Yes, horror yes, I'm glad you said that. It was genuine horror. There were headlines day to day, people were outraged, American preachers were blaming you for the downfall of Western civilization.

Anne Wood2:35

Top.

Anne Wood2:36

Yeah.

Anne Wood2:39

Today people were outraged amazed.

Anne Wood2:44

I mean it was the most extraordinary experience because I wanted to make a programme that had love in it, that was about big hugs and and you know I had a wonderful writer in the shape of Andrew Davenport who who had a great instinct for this. You'd thought I'd have started World War Three, the response that happened. But there are people who are afraid of it for some reason. It's innocent fun. That's all it is.

Presenter3:13

It's interesting that you spent much of your early career promoting children's literature and trying to get books into households that might not normally have books. People often see books in the good corner and children's T V in the bad corner. It's interesting that your career has spanned both of them. Do you think people have a point that books in the end are much better for children than T V?

Anne Wood3:33

For me, you see, I believe that what matters is the child's imaginative development. The heart of a child is is in their feelings and their imaginative

Anne Wood3:46

uh capacity to make connections. And that's where true education comes from, is the making connections. And stories connect, stories connect. So stories for me have always been uh

Anne Wood3:59

I've just been passionately interested in stories and I think children find stories exciting wherever and however they encounter them.

Presenter4:07

Let's have your first piece of music, then, and tell us what we're going to hear.

Anne Wood4:10

Well, I love

Anne Wood4:12

Paul Robeson's uh songs, because uh in our household Paul Robeson was a great socialist hero. But I prefer to listen to Willard White now because I feel the backgrounds to the Ropeld Robeson recordings are a bit sentimental and uh one shouldn't sentimentalise a great man like Paul Robeson. So I want to listen to Willard White singing one of Paul Robeson's songs, Lazy Bones. I've always had to work and my children always say that I always have to have a project and I thought if I listen to Lazy Bones, perhaps I'll calm down a bit.

Speaker 34:43

Laisy bones, sleeping in the sun, How you'spect to get your day's work done?

Speaker 34:55

Never get your day's work done

Anne Wood4:58

Uh

Speaker 44:58

Mm.

Speaker 35:01

Leaping in the noonday sun Laisy bows Sleeping in the shade

Presenter5:13

That was Billard White and Lazy Bones. So knowing what children want and would, there are entire global organizations devoted to that. You are somebody who thinks what that that instinctually you you know what children want.

Anne Wood5:25

I know that I can watch uh what we've shot and instinctively edit like a three-year-old.

Anne Wood5:31

So it's um it's an editing capacity, I think, rather than knowing what they want.

Presenter5:36

So, explain a little bit more. Can you unpick that a little for me? When you're sitting in an edit suite and you're watching.

Anne Wood5:41

Well, when I'm watching I've made a great many programmes for children and we have at Ragdoll a children's response unit so that we're in touch with watching children watch. It's very easy to do that these days.

Presenter5:52

How do you do it?

Anne Wood5:53

Uh we leave a little D V camera on top of the television and obviously with the permission of the parents and it's all very properly done. And is this in their rooms? In their homes. It's not a focus group. Right. You know, because most people say, Oh, it's a focus no, no, it is not. There's all the difference.

Presenter6:01

And is this in their voice?

Presenter6:02

Right.

Presenter6:04

Right.

Anne Wood6:09

between a response and an answer. It's a question of observing what holds attention.

Anne Wood6:15

And what makes them smile?

Presenter6:17

It was interesting to hear you talk about um your writer and what a brilliant writer he was, because some people worry about the characters making sounds, not words. The uh oh and the la la and all that sort of stuff.

Anne Wood6:26

Well, Andrew, the writer, uh, has a degree in speech sciences anyway, so um he understood about emergent speech. And also a lot of people really overlook the fact that children are thinking

Presenter6:26

Uh

Anne Wood6:39

from the minute they're born, you know, they're thinking before they can articulate what they're thinking. I once had the experience of an American um commissioning editor saying to me, but how will the children know what to do if no one tells them?

Anne Wood6:54

And I thought I will never be able to sell you a programme because if you think like that, you know, if you don't trust that a child has instinctive responses to the world.

Anne Wood7:04

That are to be encouraged and developed from the inside.

Anne Wood7:09

You won't ever understand what I am trying to do here, so I had to give up on that lady.

Presenter7:13

Uh might that be though quite an idealistic interpretation of childhood? I mean if you're a very engaged parent and if you're also doing all the stuff with the the books and and taking them to the odd music class here and there and making the the pasta shapes for half an hour every day with the glue and so on, then that's all fine if it's part of their experience. But for so many children now of course it is their experience of life at home as sitting in front of the T V and hence we have

Presenter7:35

little children turning up at school that don't have much of a vocabulary, that are not able to communicate their thoughts in a coherent sentence, and so on. Do you think that television is an important part of that problem?

Anne Wood7:46

I think television is really important for children who don't have anything else because through television we can give them so much if we make the kinds of programmes that encourage that imaginative connection. I don't think you can ever say that children if they didn't have television would have speech if they're coming from the kind of household that gives them nothing. It's not the television that does it. It's the circumstances in which the child is growing up. It's too easy to make television a scapegoat which people want to do. It's an easy way out.

Presenter8:11

But what's the

Presenter8:16

Right, but but a lot of teachers, especially teachers with with plenty teaching experience over the decades, will say that anecdotally they notice many more children now turning up in nursery or in a preschool class with much less of an ability to articulate themselves than was, say, the case twenty, twenty five years ago.

Anne Wood8:33

Yes, I'm it this may be true, but this may be because the parent uh has the opportunity not to talk to the child.

Anne Wood8:41

because of the fact that they can put the television on. But that is not to say that television per se is the problem. The the whole circumstance of parenthood and family life has changed from twenty-five years ago. You know, people aren't there as much. Mothers work because they have to. I'm not saying mothers shouldn't work. Heavens, I've worked. But I think to say that and to say, well then television must be the problem is far too facile an answer.

Presenter9:08

Let's have some more music then, Anne Wood. What's next?

Anne Wood9:11

Oh, well, Dance with a Dolly is a very rare piece because my mother, who was not very articulate, my father was the great talker in the family, but my mother was the one who would be silly occasionally. It's hard for me to remember because she developed multiple sclerosis in later life. But when I was little, she would sing this song to me and her whole body would shake with it, and we would have a lot of fun. And I do this with my grandchildren now, so it's very special to me.

Speaker 49:45

I wanna dance with a dolly with a hole in the stocking while a knees keep a knocking and a toes keep a rocking Gon' dance with a dolly with a hole in the stocking Gonna dance by the light of the moon

Speaker 49:56

Cause my little dolly has a boots made of leather And she's light as a feather When we're dancing together Yes, my little dolly has a boots made of leather When we dance by the light of the moon

Anne Wood10:01

Never you smile or

Speaker 410:08

Mama, mama gonna go out tonight, go out tonight, go out tonight. Mom and mama gonna go out tonight, gonna dance by

Presenter10:18

That was Clinton Ford, and Dance with a Dolly. So, Anne would, these worlds, these candy coloured worlds, full of sunshine and light and smooth rolling landscapes, are are not the memories of your childhood. Tell me about you were born in nineteen thirty seven.

Anne Wood10:31

Yes, I was born in 1907 in Spennymore in County Durham. And we moved then to a place called Tuddacollierie which when I was very little which was just outside. And what was it like? Um well the pits were working. Um there was very little in the way of um entertainment apart from what happened in the house. Lots of you know singing round the piano and everything happened. My earliest memories are of the blackout and everything being rather dark.

Anne Wood10:56

I've always had a great love of gardens and flowers and all things that have colour. So I suppose I've always yearned for colour. Maybe that's deep in my saga. My house is full of colour. You hear it's full colour.

Presenter11:07

Your hair is full of colours.

Anne Wood11:08

That's true.

Presenter11:09

What have we got in there? We've got some.

Anne Wood11:11

It should be white. It should be white, and it's got red and brown and all sorts of colours in it. It looks wonderful. Thank you.

Presenter11:16

Looks wonderful. Thank you. And so is that that's why we see a lot of gardens, is it in your stuff? Because of course, but looking at the flowers, smelling the flowers, you know, that's a prominent part.

Anne Wood11:24

Some prominent parts. It could be. I mean, I wasn't aware of that, but yes, it might be. Certainly in the Night Garden, it was influenced by it.

Presenter11:30

Yeah.

Presenter11:31

But for sure. Uh you you said earlier uh that uh you know uh the children's world really is what's happening on the inside, not what's happening on the outside. So although it was a a world of black out blinds and and darkness and the pits were nearby, well it was a happy world?

Anne Wood11:44

Um it was a relatively happy world. I mean I grew up with my grandmother. My mother worked in a munitions factory and my father was in the Royal Marine, so um and I was an only child.

Anne Wood11:55

by accident rather than design. And I grew up very close to my grandmother, who had had uh a very difficult life in that her husband died down in the pit and she was left with

Anne Wood12:07

six children and one still to be born and she had to bring those children up without any support. So she was quite strict with me.

Anne Wood12:16

And we used to have some quite uh fun times. But she was lovely. I kind of had a twenties childhood in you know, in in the way that I was brought up, rather than a thirties childhood perhaps.

Presenter12:22

Right.

Presenter12:26

And you yourself had siblings that died in infancy, is that right?

Anne Wood12:29

Yes, well there would have been brothers, but I'm afraid they died when they were babies. And my poor mother was w I mean, again, it wasn't an uncommon thing. Indeed, infant mortality levels were very high. And there wasn't a care that there is now.

Presenter12:37

Indeed, infant mortality levels were very high.

Presenter12:42

Was it was it something that your mother spoke about or or not?

Anne Wood12:45

Nobody ever spoke about it. Uh I learned about it later. It was always there.

Anne Wood12:51

unspoken in a way. Uh and but I was in my teens before I really understood. And then did it mean that you were were you

Presenter12:58

You particularly call

Anne Wood12:59

Yeah.

Presenter12:59

Sit it.

Anne Wood13:00

As a child and

Presenter13:00

Uh

Anne Wood13:01

I wasn't cosseted because of my grandmother, and also because I was very lucky. In the community where I grew up, everybody played outside, and the entire community looked after all the children. So if you strayed too far at the end of the street, somebody would come out and say, You get back down home, shouldn't be here.

Presenter13:03

Are we

Anne Wood13:19

and used to go. So I w I took my chance along with everybody else's child outside and did all kinds of things that I'd blench if I thought my grandchildren were t

Presenter13:29

Let's have some more music then Anne. Disc number three. Why have you chosen this and what is it?

Anne Wood13:32

Well, the one thing that we had in our village was a Methodist chapel, which was just across the road from where we lived. And my father was a Methodist preacher. So the chapel was where I went, and that was a sort of social point of our village. So if you've been brought up like that, you still remember the hymns. But I thought this would capture the atmosphere, really, of the chapel-going days.

Speaker 413:59

As I went down in the river to pray, Studying about that good old way, And who shall wear the starry crown, Good Lord, show me the way.

Speaker 414:15

Oh sisters, let's go down, let's go down, come on down.

Speaker 414:22

Oh sisters, let's go down, down in the river to pray.

Presenter14:30

Alison Kraus, and down to the river to pray from the sound track to O brother, where art thou? And would you would have been around by eight when your father came home from war?

Anne Wood14:38

Yes. Do you remember that? Yes. Oh, I remember that. Absolutely. Tell me about it. Uh well, because we used to have the shed in the back yard to play in and when he came back we couldn't have it anymore.

Anne Wood14:48

Oh yes uh and I wrote him a letter of complaint, which became a family exhibit, I remember.

Presenter14:55

So you were quite a a feisty, articulate young child, weren't you?

Anne Wood14:58

I was, I was, I'm afraid. Yes.

Presenter15:01

I I got the impression from everything that I've read about you that there wasn't a lot of spare cash around, typical of all your neighbours, I imagine, too.

Anne Wood15:07

No, w we lived in a very poor community. Nobody had any money. Nobody had any money. The first time I became really aware of it was when I went to the grammar school and everyone else could go on the trip to France and I couldn't.

Anne Wood15:19

And I submit all ah. Now there's a difference.

Presenter15:22

You can be as a child.

Presenter15:24

Angry about that? You can feel ashamed? You can feel annoyed with your parents. What did you feel?

Anne Wood15:28

I just felt disappointment. I didn't feel angry with my parents. I understood why I couldn't go. And it was hugely disappointing. But you you know, you just got on with it. I never felt angry with them. They were wonderful parents.

Presenter15:40

Did it fire your ambition, do you think?

Anne Wood15:41

I don't know. You see, the trouble is when you grew up as a woman in the North East

Anne Wood15:46

I was always aware that there was a conflict between what I felt I ought to be able to do and what it was considered possible for me to do.

Presenter15:52

How interesting.

Anne Wood15:53

There was a lack of aspiration, and I think to an extent there still is.

Anne Wood15:58

Because it is a very depressed area and

Anne Wood16:03

My parents themselves had been so disappointed in life. I mean, they were wonderful, really joyous people, but they had had many, many disappointments in their lives. And they had accepted that there was no possibilities beyond for them.

Presenter16:18

And so this poverty of aspiration, you you were a smart enough girl to go to a grammar school. Presumably at grammar school they they did open your eyes to all sorts of possibilities.

Anne Wood16:25

At grammar school the boys were always favored. The school I went to uh it was a mixed grammar school. And so there was still a degree in the nineteen forties, fifties of chauvinism up there. Some decap lives.

Presenter16:40

I'm sorry.

Presenter16:42

And what about books in the house? There weren't books in the house.

Anne Wood16:44

There were there was the Bible, there were magazines, the magazines my grandmother read, there were things like John Ball, Picture Post that my father got, but there weren there was no range of novels or you know, that they hadn't uh you know, we didn't have a complete set of Dickens or anything, which some houses did.

Anne Wood17:00

And there was no library locally.

Presenter17:02

So who so you were only reading at school?

Anne Wood17:04

But when I went to grammar school, of course, then you could, you know, then you could read. Then it was a world opened up. Let's have some more music then. What's next?

Anne Wood17:12

Now, one of the things that did happen when I was at grammar school in the 40s

Anne Wood17:17

Uh the Arts Council.

Anne Wood17:19

was just getting underway again. You know, it's hard to remember that it was late forties after the war. And they sent an opera group and it really it was, I think, Four Singers and a Piano.

Anne Wood17:29

And they they came and performed Cozy Fantuti at Spenimore Town Hall. And it was the most

Anne Wood17:37

Eye-opening experience for me. I had never imagined anything like this.

Speaker 417:53

First.

Speaker 418:27

All praise in the world.

Speaker 418:35

God we love.

Speaker 418:40

Um

Presenter18:41

Suavi si ilvento, may the wind be gentle from Mozart's Cosy Fantuti with Carol Van Ness, Deborah Siegler and Claudio Desderi with the London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Bernard Heitink. You are then, Anne Wood, in your early seventies now, and you say that in spite of your family's protestations you you feel the need to to keep going, to keep working. I'm wondering if as a a young girl at grammar school you were very industrious.

Anne Wood19:07

We all worked hard. The capacity to work hard, I think, is built into the North Eastern psyche.

Anne Wood19:14

But yes, I did. I was terribly conscientious. But I actually became very interested in studying. My mother was a bit horrified.

Anne Wood19:22

And uh and she'd say to my father, things, I don't know where she gets her ideas from and he'd go from books, woman, from books'cause he was he was bookish and and very proud of the fact that I did well. But f to my mother it was a it was a bafflement.

Presenter19:35

Yes. Did that give you a sort of sense of s kind of separation, if you like, from your mother, that she was a certain type of person and you seemed to be quite another?

Anne Wood19:41

Yes, yes, there was there was that. I mean, I love my mother deeply, but, you know, my poor mother, you know, she'd had five um pregnancies and and lost children and she ended up with me. It must have been quite hard for her. I was I think she sensed I would leave home.

Presenter19:56

Right. And what what age did you leave home at?

Anne Wood19:58

I went to college at eighteen and I left home at twenty one.

Presenter20:01

And you were studying to be a teacher.

Anne Wood20:03

I studied, yes, because that's what you did. Uh you know, if you didn't want to be a nurse, you became

Presenter20:08

Yes, that's very interesting. I wanted to ask you you that and I and I don't mean it to be in any way insulting, but I'm wondering if it was just that's what you did more than you had a desire to teach.

Anne Wood20:17

Um, I think that I probably uh did want to become a teacher, but there wasn't really any other option offered up to me because university

Anne Wood20:29

One was very aware that socially it was a different world and it would cost more money to stay there longer, and I didn't feel that I was perhaps strong enough.

Anne Wood20:45

to go in myself.

Presenter20:47

And teaching you did go and teach, obviously.

Anne Wood20:49

I did go and teach and I enjoyed it very much'cause I I really love

Anne Wood20:53

I really love recognizing if I can. I mean, that sounds terribly

Anne Wood20:57

pompous, but I i if if you see a potential in a child and you can in some way encourage it to to come out, it's a lovely thing to do.

Presenter21:06

And were you one of those teachers I mean, because none of your former pupils are here, you know, I only have your word for it, but do you think you were one of those teachers who who's

Anne Wood21:11

P

Presenter21:13

Helped to open people's eyes to a love of literature who might not otherwise have had their eyes opened.

Anne Wood21:18

I'd like to think so. I mean, when when Teletopis hit the headlines, many of my old pupils wrote to me and one girl wrote and said, you know, you you changed my brother's life, he learned to love books. So I suppose I had one success. I'd like to think there were more than one.

Presenter21:32

And were you an unconventional teacher? I ask that because you you seem to me to be quite an unconventional woman. So do you think when you were in the school people sort of thought of you as, well, you know, that Anne would, she's a bit of an oddball.

Anne Wood21:43

Yes, they did, I think, probably. I would do things that were perhaps um not the easiest.

Presenter21:48

Okay.

Anne Wood21:48

But don't but you see, what you have to remember is that was the sixties.

Anne Wood21:52

Unconventionality and all of that in the sixties was encouraged, so we had fun in the sixties.

Presenter21:59

Let's have some music, Annewood, tell me about what we're gonna hear next.

Anne Wood22:01

Oh, well, this is from my lovely husband. Fifty three years ago or more we used to listen to Buddy Holly, and this song is just as true to day as it was then. And there there is a really romantic thing to say, but it's true. Sometimes we

Speaker 422:17

You sigh

Speaker 422:21

Sometimes he'll cry

Speaker 422:27

And we know why just you and I know to the way.

Presenter22:41

That was Buddy Holly and True Love Ways. I was wondering, listening to that, Anwood, there was your husband Barry fifty three years ago who married this young teacher from the North East, and here he is now, all these years later, married to this sort of supercharged Telly Bigwake who makes headlines. And I think, you know, by dint of your reputation is is a woman to be reckoned with within the the field of television. Uh how has he felt about that journey?

Anne Wood23:06

Well, I think you'd have to ask him. But he loves me. I'm sure he's tall. He loves me. He loves me.

Presenter23:08

I'm sure he's tools you have.

Anne Wood23:11

As I have.

Anne Wood23:13

But do you ever look at each other and say, Well, who would have thought?

Anne Wood23:17

Um, no, we don't look at each other you would have thought, because I'm always it it's just at home we're at home and and it's hard work. And he's a Yorkshireman. You know, one should be warned about um marrying a Yorkshireman. So he's still the same, he's still worries about money. It hasn't really changed him, and I think that's why we still love each other.

Presenter23:37

Right. Uh uh you say he worries about money and I said in the introduction that at one point you put your house up uh as collateral when you were beginning ragdoll productions. Uh so how did that conversation work?

Anne Wood23:44

Yeah.

Anne Wood23:46

Well, he has been wonderful about it. We had at that time got two children in further education and I had to work and and he trusted me.

Anne Wood23:57

To do it. I mean, I think h he must always have believed.

Anne Wood24:01

In me, but I'm also very stubborn, so it might have broken up if I

Anne Wood24:06

I don't know, but either way, uh we did it.

Presenter24:09

When you say you might have broken up, you were talking you're not talking there about ragdoll productions, you're talking about in the marriage.

Anne Wood24:13

Yes, in the marriage, yes. I mean, if I hadn't been able to do this, he I have this real need to do this work, you know, and and uh and he knows that and he respects that.

Presenter24:23

You had taken some time off work when your children were younger. You stopped teaching and you were a full-time mum.

Anne Wood24:26

You were a full-time mum? Well I was I was a full-time mum but I always worked. In order to keep you know earning my bread I gave lectures at an Adult Education Institute in the evenings about children's literature. And we set up a children's book group because I found when I had my first child that you got a lot of advice about this is how you bath a baby, this is how you do this, this is how you d nobody ever said, do you ever sing to your baby? or you know do you do finger rhymes you know

Anne Wood24:54

So we started this little magazine called Books for Your Children, which I ran for thirty years actually, and that in turn led to an organization called the Federation of Children's Book Groups. So I did that for thirty years, even after I'd started to work in television.

Presenter25:08

What about do you think the pendulum has swung maybe too far in the other direction, where when you have a child now, you know, it's it's the baby Einstein videos and it's the it's the the mobile above the uh the cot that will stimulate their thought processes and enable them to be, you know, a wizard at Mandarin Chinese by the time they're four? We we seem to be rather preoccupied these days with, you know, connecting with our children at an intellectual level at a very young age.

Anne Wood25:32

Yes, I think that's true. I mean there is an awful lot of anxiety being generated, which I think is a terrible thing. What I was talking about was just, you know, enjoying innocent fun, really, having a sing and playing round around the garden. I don't like the name Baby Einstein. The idea that there's only one way for a child to be intellectually developed is anathema to me, so I hate that. And I think it's, again, you know, making money out of people's anxieties, which is a shame.

Presenter25:57

Are you something of a celebrity grandma? Do you get sort of trooped round the playground and does your you what one of your granddaughters is six and th my grandma made up tellytub?

Anne Wood26:05

No, no, there is none of that. I don't live close enough to my grandchildren to be trooped round the playground or anything. All I can tell you is that I did an English adaptation of The Moomins years ago, which our son showed to our granddaughter, and she said, Is this Disney, Daddy? and he said, No, it's grandma. She said, Oh, well I don't want to watch it then.

Anne Wood26:24

Uh

Presenter26:24

Very grounding. Right, some more music then. What's next? We're on uh disc six.

Anne Wood26:24

Very grounding.

Anne Wood26:29

Um this is Vivaldi Gloria.

Anne Wood26:33

There are moments in life I find when if you've got twilight in the garden and you've had a really good gardening day and you're looking across at something that's really lovely, words cannot express what you feel. And this for me expresses what you feel. You know, you feel there must be a God. So this is for those moments.

Presenter27:47

Domini Fili Unigenite from Vivalde's Gloria, with the new Philharmonia Chorus and Orchestra conducted by Riccardo Mutti. You've won a huge number of awards and Wood. You've won BAFTAs for Telly Tubbies and for In the Night Garden, as well as knowing that lots of people, tens of millions of people, watch the programmes and they make good money for your company. Is it important that you get the artistic recognition?

Anne Wood28:07

I think it's very important for children's television that there is artistic recognition, because it's so often not recognised as an artistic medium. And one always feels that they really are on behalf of everybody who works with you, because it's a collaborative process ours.

Presenter28:23

Let's talk about the moment then when you thought you felt indeed that you were being taken for a ride by the big T V companies. There you were making product that was your idea, that was generated by the team, that you'd put your life and soul into, that indeed you'd put your house on the line for to start Ragdoll Productions. And there are the T V companies making a nice fat from it.

Anne Wood28:44

It does sound hard the way you put it, but um what happened was and what changed children's television was when the video market opened up. When the video market happened, which coincided with Rosie and Jim,

Presenter28:53

Try.

Anne Wood28:56

Two genre-made money films and children's programmes. So they started to make a great deal of money and the company that I made Rosie and Jim for chose not to share any of that with us. And I my whole Northeastern soul rose up in protest and thought, This is not fair.

Presenter29:16

So you decided that you wanted to get your business head screwed on and what did you do? You went on courses?

Anne Wood29:20

I went on courses I had business advisors in, but what it comes down to, you know, is you have to learn when to compromise and also then you have to learn when not to compromise. I've always been very lucky in that what's driven me has been this need to connect with the imaginative life of children. I don't know where that comes from or why or whether it was just an escape from the rather limiting circumstances of my childhood in many ways.

Anne Wood29:47

Uh, perhaps it's that. But anyway, that I will fight for. And and if I have to make money in order to go on making the programmes, then that's what I have to do. But you must enjoy making the money and I do. I do enjoy making the money because it's very satisfying because

Anne Wood30:01

Everyone treats you differently. You know, this whole idea that uh you can only make a contribution if you're rich is is what seems to govern our society. This is just how things are. Let's have some more music then, Anne. We're on disc seven.

Anne Wood30:15

Disc seven is from the Imagine project by Herbie Hancocks. I love jazz, but I chose this because fifteen percent of our company is owned by the Ragdall Foundation, which is dedicated to listening to the imaginative needs of children. And one of the projects we're working on at the moment is something that we set up with Save the Children some years ago, where we're making films with children in less economically developed parts of the world.

Anne Wood30:45

And, however poor their circumstances, they always have a story to tell. So it matters to me the imagining very much.

Speaker 430:56

Imagine there's no heaven

Speaker 431:00

It's easy if you try

Speaker 431:04

No help below us

Speaker 431:08

Above us only sky

Speaker 431:13

Imagine all the people

Speaker 431:16

Living for today

Presenter31:25

That was Imagine with Ceal and Pink from Herbie Hancock and the Imagine project. And Woods, as I've said, you're in your you're seventy three, to be specific. I am, yes.

Anne Wood31:33

I am, yes.

Presenter31:34

No no sign of retirement.

Anne Wood31:36

Well, no, because I am very fortunate in that I'm working with my son and I don't do anything other than the creative bits now. Quite nice actually. Lovely. I'm so lucky. No, I'm so lucky.

Presenter31:47

Quite nice, actually. Lovely.

Presenter31:50

And what about being comfortable with the affluence that your success has brought? I mean, Billy Conley says, you know, there's a point at which he just can't spend a certain amount of money on something because of where he comes from.

Anne Wood32:00

Well, I think the the idea that I am personally wealthy is is hugely exaggerated because the money is in the company being used, you know, so I don't have I'm not saying that I'm poor or anything like that, but I'm I don't have huge amounts of money. But what I have been able to do, that I've loved doing, and my great indulgence is my garden. I've been able to make a garden from nothing, and I spend far too much money on it still, and I couldn't have done that. I would never have done that had I not had the success I've had.

Presenter32:31

It's ridiculous. I'm picturing you, of course, in the night garden. Does it look anything like that?

Anne Wood32:34

No, no, it doesn't look anything like the night garden, but it's it's a very interesting garden in that it's got a little meadow and it's got a little bit of a tiny bit of woodland with a stream going through it, and I love it.

Presenter32:45

Um so you've got grandchildren now. You've had this very f very long marriage, fifty three years, very successful career. Life on an island for you would would it mean a lot of loneliness, or would you quite like sort of breathing out and taking some time to yourself?

Anne Wood32:57

Oh, I'd be terribly lonely. I need people, so I'd have to have a project to do. I'd have to think of something to do.

Presenter33:04

Right, tell us about the final piece we're going to hear then, and woot what is it?

Anne Wood33:07

The final piece is Hugh Laurie's version of St James' Infirmary because I thought and thought and thought about, you know, which New Orleans type jazz would I have, because I do love it so much, as it's so deeply emotional. And then I got so interested in the fact that there was he from Oxfordshire, able to play jazz piano and express this same emotion, and I really admire that. I'd love to have been able to play jazz piano, so I'd like that.

Speaker 433:45

I went down.

Speaker 433:49

To Saint James and Farmering

Speaker 433:56

Saw my baby there.

Speaker 434:04

She was stretched out on a long white table.

Speaker 434:13

So cold, so sweet, so sweet, so fair.

Presenter34:19

That was Hugh Laurie and St. James' Infirmary. So, Anne, this is the point where I give you the books. They're going to be the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare, and you get to take a book along with you as well. What would you like to take?

Anne Wood34:30

Well, I thought about this a lot, but then I thought, well, if you've got the Bible, the King James Version and the whole of Shakespeare, including the sonnets, really, you know, you don't want any more serious reading. And so I thought I'll go for guilty pleasure. And I discovered the romantic novels of George Ed Hare when I was twelve. And all through my life, in times of stress and sickness and illness and everything else, they've been a great resource as an escape. So I thought my emotional escape will be Cotillion by George Ed Hare.

Presenter34:58

Right.

Anne Wood34:58

That's yours, and a luxury too.

Anne Wood35:01

The luxury, well it would have to relate to gardening, but I thought well I could maybe improvise, you know, a garden. But what would be lovely to have as a project, which I have to have, is if I could make a floralegium of all the plants that might be growing. Let's hope there are some. So I'd need paper and pens and watercolours and anything that I can record the life of plants on the island.

Presenter35:26

You can certainly have that. And if you had to save just one of these eight disks, which one would you save?

Anne Wood35:31

I think it would have to be the Vivaldi just because it is so life-affirming, and you'd need that from time to time.

Presenter35:38

It's yours and would thank you very much for letting us hear your Desert Island discs.

Anne Wood35:42

Thank you. Yeah.

Presenter36:17

You've been listening to a download from the BBC. You'll find more information on the Radio 4 website: bbc.co.uk slash Radio4.