Mark Gatiss

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 actor and writer Mark Gaitis. His creative preoccupations seem rooted in the past, yet his reimaginings of Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Who for contemporary T V audiences have been huge hits, and he gives good comedy too. His very first day at Drama College would prove a turning point. He met the people with whom he created the award winning show The League of Gentlemen. A diverse output, yes, and a clue to his creative germination might lie in his childhood. He grew up living opposite a psychiatric hospital. From the word go, my mother used to say I had an old soul and that I was morbid, he says, adding, A healthy scare is as valid as a healthy laugh. Do you really think that's true?

Mark Gatiss1:17

Oh God, yes, absolutely. I think we've become s slightly too wrapped in cotton wool about especially the notion of frightening children. I think it's a happy release. And to go right back to sort of first principles, the idea of being in a group of people in a cinema and jumping out of your seat. And then what people always do straight afterwards is sort of laugh, because it is a release.

Presenter1:40

Please

Presenter1:41

And your mother said an old soul. Tell me more about that. What did she mean?

Mark Gatiss1:43

She did. I mean, I can remember going it must have been when I was about five. She she used to go and look after some pensioners and I remember once going to a sort of wartime sing-along.

Mark Gatiss1:53

Singing along to Bye Bye Blackbird

Mark Gatiss1:56

I'm not pretending I'm reincarnated or anything, but I had an immediate sort of affinity for it. I've always loved talking to old people about the past. I remember years ago talking to an old man.

Mark Gatiss2:07

who remembered the day

Mark Gatiss2:09

Someone ran in and told him the Titanic had gone down. I I found that impossibly romantic, you know.

Presenter2:14

And I'm quite surprised today, sitting opposite you, that you look entirely contemporary. I was expecting you to come in in a rather sort of swanky three-piece suit, maybe with a cloak and a really wonderfully fashioned

Mark Gatiss2:25

Well there's a word for that sort of person.

Mark Gatiss2:29

Though I must confess, I'm sure I was an intolerable

Mark Gatiss2:32

adolescent perfected because you have to go through this. I mean I do, I love clothes and I love dressing up for the right occasion, but I think you you know I think I I think I wasted an awful lot of my youth wanting to be older. In fact that's very true, I know I did. And uh I used to sort of look forward to the notion of a reunion, which is not the way to live your life.

Presenter2:52

I must remind people, you know, that it's the calibre and quantity that really strikes one when when we look at your C V. Sherlock, which has been hugely successful, picked up a BAFTA this year. The League of Gentlemen won a a BAFTA and a Royal Television Society award, I think. Yes, I think so. The areas of uh creativity that you stray into are often, you know, often in the past have been sort of quite kind of hammy, you know, with the swirly mist at the feet and the fuzzy shots along the alleyways. You you don't do that. You make your horror

Mark Gatiss3:07

I think

Mark Gatiss3:19

Um

Presenter3:23

Very real and all the more affecting.

Mark Gatiss3:26

If um when I was a kid, anything supernatural drew me. I would try and find it in anything, Gardner's Question Time. I would look for something. But actually the older I've got, the more I've got interested in in the idea of of keeping it contemporary and finding the the thrill and the and the scare.

Mark Gatiss3:45

And the laugh, actually, in in a sort of modern context.

Presenter3:48

Let's have some music then, Mark Gacis. We're going to start with what today.

Mark Gatiss3:51

We're going to start with a song by The Smiths called There Is a Light That Never Goes Out. Tell me why you've chosen this. Well, this reminds me of being about, I suppose, about 14. I was doing the same thing. I was slightly missing being young by wanting to be a lot older. But I always loved The Smiths. And actually, this song particularly I've come over the years to really love. I think it's a beautiful piece of poetry.

Speaker 24:16

Take me out tonight

Speaker 24:22

Where there's music and there's people in the young and alive

Speaker 24:29

Driving in your car I never never want to go home Because I haven't got one

Speaker 24:39

Anymore.

Presenter4:43

That was the Smiths, and There's a Light That Never Goes Out. Whenever I read anything about you, Mark Gators, it always says that you were brought up in the shadow of a psychiatric hospital. But uh that is indeed the case. It was across the road.

Mark Gatiss4:53

It was a cross road, yes. It's literally loomed large and and like Topsy, it has grown through various interviews over the years to become from a perfectly straightforward nineteen thirties brick building into some sort of Arkham.

Presenter4:53

He was a crazy.

Presenter5:06

Oh, I was imagining a huge great Victorian crinolated pile with no inside.

Mark Gatiss5:10

No, but it was an interesting thing and again, y you can deny a way and then and then think, Well, there must be something in this. Essentially my my dad worked there. He was a he was an engineer there. And my mum worked there for a bit as well. We used to go swimming there, used to get our hair cut there, we used to go to little cinema screenings and

Mark Gatiss5:30

it was quite normal to us and it was only later on, many years later, when you know I realized that all my school friends were were literally petrified of even walking past the gates that I realized it was just kind of part of my my um childhood.

Presenter5:42

And I'm calling it a psychiatric hospital, but what would you have called it among your mates? I mean, was it sort of the nut house? Oh, yeah, the loony bin. The loony bin.

Mark Gatiss5:47

Oh yeah, Looney Ben, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Although I worked there myself uh briefly as a gardener, something I'm not trained for.

Presenter5:52

Good.

Speaker 35:52

The game.

Presenter5:53

Pardon.

Mark Gatiss5:56

When I was weeding one day I uncovered a sort of plaque which has been the foundation thing which which called it a colony for the mentally defective. I wrote it down straight away.

Presenter6:06

Have you used that in any way?

Mark Gatiss6:06

Yes, I'm afraid I have.

Presenter6:07

Good, I'm glad. Um I mean, you never shy away from dark z I immediately I'm drawn to thinking about the League of Gentlemen, which, you know, to any of us who are fans, you know, we all know it's it's just like real life and then a step beyond.

Mark Gatiss6:08

Yeah.

Mark Gatiss6:20

Yeah, yeah. There's a sort of strain of Gothic in our lives, but it's very much rooted in real experience. One of my most vivid recollections is first seeing uh a play by Alan Bennett called Our Winnie, and it was Elizabeth Spriggs taking her mentally handicapped daughter to a crematorium for the day. And I remember just thinking, How does he know?

Mark Gatiss6:45

I just know all these people. I know everything about this.

Mark Gatiss6:48

I know the grimness of this Sunday. I know that big coat with the buttons that she put on. And years later, Anna Bennett's a huge influence on me. And uh

Mark Gatiss6:57

Uh reading his diaries when he was talking about when you find a passage in a book that chimes so perfectly with what you're thinking, it's like someone has reached out from the past and slipped their hand into yours, you know.

Presenter7:08

Do you find that when either writing or acting in the League of Gentlemen and all the other stuff that you've done, that you are connecting with your past in a way that sort of roots you as an individual more?

Mark Gatiss7:18

Yes, I would say so. I mean, I had a delightful and perfectly ordinary childhood. Uh but my my own sensibility, I think, just informs all that. I was always drawn, as I say, to to the supernatural and to anything a bit odd.

Speaker 37:24

Uh

Presenter7:24

Yeah.

Mark Gatiss7:33

But but that's that's actually I think I was able to do that because I was actually very happy. And I quite liked stepping out of the sunshine because that's what I was drawn to, not because I was miserable. And that was one of the fantastic things about meeting and working with Stephen, Rees and Jeremy in the league. All four of us were from different parts of the North. We had a sort of shared childhood and a shared sense of humour. We spent ages writing down this huge kind of Bible of what the town would be like.

Mark Gatiss8:04

literally the geography of it. And it was amazing how how easy it was to say, you know, there'd be a down by the swings, which are all a bit rusted and forgotten, there'd be a big concrete pipe full of wet pornography and one gym shoe and things like that, you know. We we just all have basically had the same childhood.

Speaker 28:15

Uh

Presenter8:15

Wet

Presenter8:23

Stepping out of the sunshine, what a great phrase. Let's hear your second disc for the day. Mark Gatus, what is it?

Mark Gatiss8:28

This is the theme to Honour Her Majesty's Secret Service by John Barry. This is my favourite James Pond film. I love it because it's a one off. It's the George Lazenby one. It's a brilliant film. Terribly sad. Strange downbeat ending. I just love this theme. It it drives along and it's so exciting.

Presenter9:16

That was the theme to On Her Majesty's Secret Service written by John Barry. Did you watch that as a little lad lots and lots of times?

Mark Gatiss9:22

Yeah, it's interesting. One thing I found very revealing trying to choose these records, I had a I had a sort of eight down and I looked at them and they were all terribly sad. And I thought I better put something in to cheer myself.

Mark Gatiss9:38

But the music I like the best it sort of makes me cry. That's not because I'm unhappy, I think. And do you cry easily? Is it quite close to the surface? God, yes. It's getting worse. You know, I can spend five minutes in the the company of a soap I never watch an Albian pieces these days. I don't know why. But I like I like it. I find it quite cathartic.

Presenter9:45

God.

Presenter9:55

And and your list is it is and I mean this in the nicest possible way it is quite a sentimental list, it's melancholic, it's quite romantic. Those are all things are they is that easy?

Mark Gatiss10:00

Yeah.

Mark Gatiss10:03

Is that weakest? Is that right? I hope so. I think it is, actually. Oh, no, I am. I'm very, very sentimental.

Presenter10:10

And romantic also, you say, What's the most romantic thing you've ever done?

Mark Gatiss10:14

Well, oh God.

Mark Gatiss10:17

I did once, this is what I uh a long time ago.

Mark Gatiss10:20

I was seeing a Canadian, because he was in Vancouver, we had to arrange when to phone each other.

Mark Gatiss10:28

And he rang me one morning and I said, I'm I'm just going away for a bit, I can't really talk and he said he was a bit off with me. What he didn't know is I was getting on a plane and I flew and arrived in the time zone on the same day. And I went to the place where he worked in disguise.

Presenter10:40

Yeah.

Mark Gatiss10:44

I went as a Mexican flower seller with a with a bunch of flowers, and then I revealed my disguise. That's probably the most stupid

Presenter10:52

Remotely, I've seen it.

Mark Gatiss10:57

Well not properly surprised.

Presenter10:59

I mean, you are part of you're in your mid-forties, so you are part of that. Aren't you? Yes. Yes. Part of that sort of what I would think of as a kind of transitional generation for people who, you know, in their teenage years were forming relationships. Certainly when I was at school, you know, being gay was not out there. I mean, were you in your teenage years, were you gay? Were you dating boys? Were you.

Mark Gatiss11:20

I did have a girlfriend for a while but um I was never really in.

Presenter11:22

Thank you.

Mark Gatiss11:25

to any of my friends. I think I had uh an afternoon of wrestling with with the concept.

Presenter11:27

Uh and I

Presenter11:31

Didn't last very long.

Presenter11:33

Time for some music, then, Mark Gaisis, what's next?

Mark Gatiss11:36

I've chosen If I Loved You from Carousel, and I discovered it because Carousel was one of my late mother's favourites, but it's also fascinatingly an example of a concept that Rogers and Hammerstein invented called the conditional love song. They realized they needed a big love duet earlier in the musical than the story would allow. So they came up with this, and subsequently, People Will Say We're in Love and all those kinds of things.

Speaker 312:09

If I loved you

Mark Gatiss12:10

I love

Speaker 312:13

Time and again I would try to say

Speaker 312:19

All I'd want you to

Speaker 312:30

If I loved you

Presenter12:32

I love

Speaker 312:35

Words wouldn't come in an easy way.

Presenter12:35

Ah

Presenter12:40

That was Shirley Jones and If I Loved You from the soundtrack to Carousel by Rogers and Hammerstein.

Mark Gatiss12:46

I know what they're thinking. They're thinking, what a show queen. That's what they're thinking. Is that fine?

Presenter12:49

That's fine, there's nothing wrong with it. It also is a song that's fu you know, she talks about not letting life pass you by and the golden moments that might be missed.

Mark Gatiss12:57

That's the phrase. Yes. It it kills me there. I mean, I find it quite hard to listen to, but in a good way, because it reminds me of of my my mother and uh

Presenter12:59

Yeah.

Mark Gatiss13:09

But also that sentiment, I I I love that. One of I one of the tracks I nearly chose, it's always it's always haunted me, is that wonderful song, Enjoy Yourself, it's later than you think.

Presenter13:20

I'm very interested to find out more about your mum and dad, because as you say, you know, you you were brought up in a happy working class uh environment. Your your dad was an engineer and he worked at the uh the hospital across the road. Your mum worked there too sometimes. What was she like, your mum?

Mark Gatiss13:34

Yeah.

Mark Gatiss13:34

She was lovely. Funnily enough, um I think I used to be more short tempered with my mum than any rest of my family, because actually we were very alike.

Presenter13:43

Right. Did she worry about her little morbid Gothic boy sitting watching the telly with the curtains closed?

Mark Gatiss13:46

Sitting watching

Mark Gatiss13:49

Well, I'm sure she did. She always used to worry I mean, in a very traditional way about not having a a proper job and all those things. And and happily I you know, I was doing pretty well by by the time she died, so that that fear had gone away.

Presenter14:03

And you're one of three, uh two two boys and a girl. How did you all get on? What what were the age differences? And where did you sit on the bottom?

Mark Gatiss14:06

Yeah.

Mark Gatiss14:09

So my brother's three years older than me, my sister was seven years older. Uh my brother and I used to fight like uh cats and dogs. But now we're we're m much closer.

Presenter14:20

And were they sitting watching Doctor Who with you when you were a little kid?

Mark Gatiss14:23

Oh yeah, my my brother used to torment me by reminding me of the stories he knew before I did. I always loved Doctor Who. But uh and I was quite I suppose Bophony is the way. Not particularly scholarly, but I collected fossils, I loved astronomy, all those kinds of things.

Presenter14:27

Two.

Speaker 314:28

Oh

Presenter14:39

Is there much of the train spotter in you, do you think? Are you sort of a- I'm a boy.

Mark Gatiss14:44

Therefore, I remember once watching a documentary about Asperger's, and uh there was this little boy on who was obsessed with Hoovers.

Mark Gatiss14:53

just collected them, you know. And his parents were on worrying themselves, si wringing their hands about it. And his mother was saying, I just don't understand where he gets it from and let it cut to his father with his extensive collection of radio mast photographs.

Presenter15:08

Let's have some more music then, Mark. We're on uh we're on disc number four.

Mark Gatiss15:10

We're on uh we're on disk number

Mark Gatiss15:12

Uh I've chosen um Fantasia and a Theme by Thomas Talis by Ray Fawn Williams, which um I regret to say is the only sort of classical choice on here. I I've always loved this, and it's it's it's entirely to do with the fact it it soars, it just sort of takes you up.

Presenter16:33

That was part of Phantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis, by Ray Von Williams, played by the Philharmonia Orchestra, conducted by Herbert von Kerrigan. Tell me about the early writing then. What were you writing about, and what were you reading when you were little?

Mark Gatiss16:46

Um well I I would twist every single assignment into a horror story. There was one called A Day at the Beach where a family at the beach found a severed head in a bucket.

Mark Gatiss16:58

I just couldn't not do it. I've still got somewhere a school report where my teacher said that they're very imaginative and excellent, even though they resemble scripts from hammer films. I remember that vividly. And then one parent's teacher's evening, my mum and dad came back and they basically seen that that's all I was interested in. And they banned me from watching horror films. It was a Friday night. It was an appointment with Fear Night on Tyne T's. And they were showing Revenge of Frankenstein, a very obscure hammer film which I'd never seen. It was like.

Mark Gatiss17:33

Not now.

Mark Gatiss17:35

And we had a screaming round. I was sent to bed.

Mark Gatiss17:37

and then heard them go to bed, and then realized that my sister and her boyfriend were staying up late, of course. So I just went downstairs and watched it anyway, and that was the end of that.

Mark Gatiss17:47

It was a short

Presenter17:48

Texile.

Presenter17:49

At the most recent the the Christmas special of the League of Gentlemen is where probably you most obviously explore that whole genre of of horror, I would say. It must have been a brilliant moment when you met um your fellows in the League of Gentlemen at college and realized that you were all interested in this thing. That is You know, it's it's quite particular in its flavour.

Mark Gatiss18:07

Well, it was created by our friendship because it wasn't something we thought there's a gap in the market here, we'll do kind of comedy, horror. It just came out of our our relationship.

Presenter18:14

Clara

Mark Gatiss18:17

We we realized it's absolutely true quite early on that we had all seen carry on screaming one particular bonfire night, think about nineteen seventy six. And and now you know, I have a picture of us all.

Mark Gatiss18:29

In separate households in front of the T V, not not watching the fireworks, but watching Oddbod.

Presenter18:35

Let's have some more music. Disc number five now.

Mark Gatiss18:38

Well, this is this is the complex one. I was genuinely torn between the Libus toad from Tristan and Isolt, or Sue Pollard's Come to Me, I am Woman, and Sue's one. Um the story

Mark Gatiss18:53

It's Wagner, I can't stand him.

Mark Gatiss18:56

There's a story here. The the interesting thing about the notion of going to this desert island

Mark Gatiss19:00

To me is that you actually start to think about it as if it might happen, which is ridiculous, I hope. But you the sort of songs that might do this, this and this, they might tick this box, you could find what I find interesting is there's lots of songs with stories in, but equally I want something that makes me laugh and this does it the best possible way. And it also reminds me very much of my partner, because it's actually a song originally recorded by Frida from ABBA.

Presenter19:10

Yeah.

Mark Gatiss19:26

Ian is obsessed with ABBA. This is Sue Pollard's cover version of it, and whenever it was we first came across it, it was a source of great delight to us.

Speaker 319:36

Come to me.

Speaker 319:41

I am woman.

Speaker 319:44

And I'm not sure if I can do it.

Speaker 319:47

All the came here.

Speaker 319:51

Take my love.

Speaker 319:55

I am over.

Speaker 319:57

Let me strong.

Presenter20:03

That was Sue Pollard and Come to Me You still laughing. Yes, yes. Um here you are then with this sort of incredibly, it seems sort of kind of nonstop roller coaster of work. Home life is not like that, it's it's a more settled business, is it?

Speaker 220:06

You still laugh.

Speaker 320:06

Okay.

Speaker 220:07

That's it.

Mark Gatiss20:18

Yes, uh happily. Ian is my uh absolute bedrock and I don't want that to sound in a sort of dull way. It uh our entire relationship is built on on laughter. I I really I don't know what I'd do without him.

Presenter20:33

And you've been together, what, eleven and twelve?

Mark Gatiss20:34

Yeah.

Presenter20:34

And you went through a civil partnership in was it two thousand and

Mark Gatiss20:35

Yeah.

Mark Gatiss20:38

Yeah, we went through it.

Presenter20:39

You you came out the other side, yes, yes.

Mark Gatiss20:42

Yes, yes. Yes, we do. We yeah, we were married three years ago, yes, uh, in uh Middle Temple. And by total coincidence, the room you you did the ceremony in that we were we were underneath a portrait of Sir Edward Carson, the man who prosecuted Oscar Wilde.

Presenter20:45

Advice.

Mark Gatiss20:56

So I I flicked the V's to him during the ceremony.

Presenter20:59

But that must be I mean, to be able to flick the V's to the man who prosecuted off

Mark Gatiss21:00

That must be

Mark Gatiss21:06

to do that but also to

Mark Gatiss21:09

To go through a ceremony and for my family and Ian's family to be there and for it to be

Mark Gatiss21:15

a wedding in that way. And my brother said it was the best wedding he'd ever been to, and and it was you know, considering that once upon a time it would have been inconceivable, and of course not even

Presenter21:16

Yeah.

Mark Gatiss21:25

Possible.

Presenter21:25

Yes.

Mark Gatiss21:25

Yeah.

Mark Gatiss21:26

In a way, I always fought shy of the idea. Because of being in that generation, the visible versions of gay marriage were always Californian, or they were always involving pink limousines and dyed pink poodles and things like that. And we did have a long series of conversations about what it was going to be like.

Presenter21:35

They were all

Presenter21:39

Okay.

Mark Gatiss21:46

Eventually uh Ian was sort of explaining this Cromwellian package we were putting together and uh and a friend of his uh said uh it sounds like you're sort of ashamed of it.

Mark Gatiss21:59

And actually, as soon as you said that, I thought, you know, you're absolutely right. So in the end, we had we had an opera singer, show tunes, we had uh our dog Bunsen was the ring bearer.

Presenter22:10

Not dyed pink though.

Mark Gatiss22:10

Not dyed pink though. Not dyed pink. Right. And we entered to the theme from upstairs, downstairs. So it was probably not quite the the austere version stripped down version I had originally

Presenter22:11

Yeah.

Presenter22:20

Down version I originally

Mark Gatiss22:21

Two.

Presenter22:21

And how is Ian being married to him? I mean, I I don't know if you're a workaholic, but I can't believe your your output is enormous. Is he involved in your work? Do you read things to him? Does he read it?

Mark Gatiss22:31

Oh massively. Uh writing can be very lonely. And not being in a group environment anymore, as I was with the league, it it would be extremely lonely if I didn't have a natural um sounding board. I do too much though, I do and uh it's not really being a workaholic or anything. It it's to do with the fact that the things I'm asked to do are very, very hard to turn down because almost without exception

Mark Gatiss22:55

They are of

Mark Gatiss22:56

You know, childhood dreams come true. I mean, I pinch myself every day. Someone says you want to do a three-part history of horror films. No, I'm not bothered.

Presenter23:05

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

Mark Gatiss23:08

This is Beautiful Child by Rufus Wainwright. I'm very h proud to say Rufus is one of the many people I forced to become my friend over the years. And this one I absolutely love. I was saying earlier on about the not wanting to be too melancholy. This I think is a very life affirming song.

Speaker 323:24

Uh

Speaker 323:33

We smoked on Cambridge Hill.

Speaker 323:42

There's no reason for

Speaker 323:49

My mind to this

Presenter23:55

That was your friend, Mark Gatis. That was Rufus Wainwright, and beautiful child. Um and he recently, I understand, I read, has become a father. He has a sort of surrogacy arrangement with rather spectacularly Leonard Cohen's daughter. Yes, th them was the genes.

Speaker 224:04

Arrangement with

Presenter24:10

Yeah, a musical dynasty in the making. I can't help thinking you'd make a very good father. Have you thought about it?

Mark Gatiss24:12

A new one is born.

Mark Gatiss24:18

Oh, yes. I I I got quite broody a few years ago, in a in a totally unexpected way.

Mark Gatiss24:25

In that sort of footprint in the sand, kind of way. It's very odd. But then.

Mark Gatiss24:30

That's one of the wonderful things about getting married. Ian and I were we're both very conscious of um the fact that over the years lots of people have disappeared from history who were someone's significant other because there was no facility to record them, you know. But um in terms of I know we we have a dog who is essentially our child.

Presenter24:45

In a

Mark Gatiss24:52

And you can leave them for longer.

Mark Gatiss24:54

I dunno. I love children and uh I think I'm I'm essentially just too irresponsible. But I mean the i the notion of it I th I think i is very appealing actually.

Presenter25:05

You sound to me like a person who has not ruled it out, you sort of think.

Mark Gatiss25:08

You're discovering things today. I don't know. I can't quite imagine the circumstances, as Michael Hazeltine used to say about going for the premises. But actually it's a it's a curious one. I mean, m Frank Steve Moffat, um, he has the ideal situation to be running Doctor Who'cause his two boys are his his audience, his perfect audience. You know, he can actually road test things. He's like Bunsen's not so useful for that.

Presenter25:11

I know I wouldn't

Presenter25:37

But do you I was wondering though, Road Test is a really interesting idea'cause I'm sure oh you know y there is a for a contingency of people, you know, you are writing the stuff that those well actually I was gonna say sort of twelve year old boys, but actually all sorts of people are watching. I love watching, everybody loves watching Doctor Who and Sherlock.

Speaker 225:49

Do not

Presenter25:52

Um do you talk to them about plot lines? Do you see what's acceptable? Do you have a little chat with your mates' kids just to see when you might be on the right or wrong track?

Mark Gatiss26:01

Well, with Do I mean writing Doctor Who, um

Mark Gatiss26:04

I I think that's probably the wrong way to go because uh the last thing you should do is give people what they think they want. Certainly in terms of frightening frightening children or frightening anybody, uh you just have to try and winkle something out. And having been brought up with the John Pertwee stories, which were set on earth and was like this could be happening down the road from you, these Taylor's dummies can come to life and that that I think has had a profound influence on what I find frightening.

Presenter26:32

Where does your ambition lie as an actor? Do do you think well, you know, clearly you love the Bond movies would you like to be stroking a cat in a big white leather chair at some point?

Mark Gatiss26:41

If I said no, yes. Yeah.

Speaker 326:43

Yeah.

Mark Gatiss26:44

Uh For ambitions, though, I mean, I've again, I've ticked an awful lot of them. I'd love.

Mark Gatiss26:49

More than anything.

Mark Gatiss26:51

To play Jacob Marley in a Christmas Carol.

Presenter26:54

There are casting agents listening.

Presenter26:57

Tell me about your next piece of music then, Mark Gators. What are we going to hear?

Mark Gatiss27:00

Um this is a song called Yes by McCallmont and Butler. It reminds me very much of the early nineties I can't believe I'm even using that expression not long after I'd left college and I was living in London. It again it's an enormously celebratory song.

Speaker 327:43

I'll be welcome to tell you I'm not

Speaker 327:50

We got to love

Presenter27:54

That was McElminton Butler. And yes, you mentioned, Mark Gaitis, that your mother has now passed away. It was your sister that nursed her through the the final stages of her illness. Can you tell me about that?

Mark Gatiss28:05

Yeah, well my sister was a district nurse and we were very lucky in that my sister was able to look after my mum so she died at home. And this is one of those things I find both kind of affirming and quite difficult to explain. The last week of my mother's life was a very happy time because we all sort of sat around the bed and we just swapped stories and we had a really good laugh. She was sort of just lying there, slipping away really and it was nice to think she might be taking some of that in or at least hearing us. And then you know someone would go down and make some sandwiches and some tea and come back and weirdly

Mark Gatiss28:51

When she went

Mark Gatiss28:55

One of the things we we all kind of missed was uh was that ritual. It was there for for a week and actually as a family it was quite a a bonding experience. Um and then it was over because there was nothing to to to justify it anymore.

Presenter29:01

And that

Presenter29:11

You you said earlier that you really think you were quite like your mother in many ways. Were you close as you got older and as you moved to London and you've had your big career? Did you talk to her a lot?

Mark Gatiss29:14

Yeah.

Mark Gatiss29:22

I regret greatly um, you know, not bringing home enough.

Mark Gatiss29:27

It is difficult because inevitably you e you lead a different

Mark Gatiss29:30

Life and the pace of life I think is one of those things you you can't quite time does pass differently in different parts of of your of the country and of your life.

Presenter29:40

And your sister died when she was I mean, by our standards these days, actually very young. She was only fif

Mark Gatiss29:44

She was only fifty. Yes, uh about eighteen months ago. And uh that was I mean, God, what can you say? The the the notion now that my sister was looking after my mother and already had cancer uh is very difficult.

Presenter30:00

Yeah.

Mark Gatiss30:02

You know, she was incredible, my sister.

Mark Gatiss30:06

My sister was seven years older than me, so when I was

Mark Gatiss30:13

five. She was already quite you know, it was that's quite a distance. She was a a very, very strong person and I realize now she's gone how how strong a bond she was. She was brilliant at keeping people together. I mean I just remember when she told me just thinking this this is just not fair and especially so close to to my mum going um

Speaker 330:33

Yeah.

Mark Gatiss30:37

But she was amazing, and she never really

Mark Gatiss30:42

Let it slip.

Mark Gatiss30:43

Um

Mark Gatiss30:45

And I do remember when we were plan you and I were planning our partnership and um one of the only times she ever sort of directly referred to it, she said, You better not be here.

Mark Gatiss30:56

And in that way you you don't want to hear it, you can sort of push it away as long as no one just says it like that. Um but she you know, she was there, she was on great form, and we all had a fabulous day.

Mark Gatiss31:11

And but it actually it wasn't that long afterwards you started to suddenly go downhill.

Mark Gatiss31:16

Something s gives, doesn't it? Definitely I think.

Presenter31:20

And what about you and your brother? Do you feel that I mean, that is and your father, too, who's who's now eighty that that's a in a relatively short space of time, in a six year period, to lose two women who were at the heart of the family. How does it are you sort of marshalling your resources? Do you manage to deal with it, or is it slightly fractured?

Mark Gatiss31:38

Well, it's odd it's become so male actually. I guess in that way men don't really deal very well with things. That that's how it feels a bit to me at the moment. Everyone's sort of bumping along.

Mark Gatiss31:50

I've got a lot closer to my brother over the years, which I really and we are we're still totally different people, but there's what you realize is um it doesn't matter at all.

Mark Gatiss32:01

I just want to say to people who are sweating the small things, don't worry, get on with it. And don't be nasty to people.

Presenter32:11

Done for your final piece of music, I'm afraid to say, in my case, it's not because it's not a great piece of music, but there seems so much more to talk about. Tell me about your final piece then.

Mark Gatiss32:19

Well, I couldn't go without co-porter, Kirsty, so I've

Presenter32:22

Yeah.

Mark Gatiss32:24

Uh no, well I I Co-Portra is a a genius, uh and these things should be celebrated. Not that it has gone unremarked. This again is another sad song, but I I love it and it's from Kiss Me Kate. So in love.

Speaker 332:39

Even without you.

Speaker 332:46

My arms fooled about you

Speaker 332:56

Burning war so in my

Speaker 333:03

Oh push you for

Presenter33:07

That was Marin Mazey and So in Love from the Broadwaycast recording of Kiss Me Kate. So, Mark, we come to the point then where I give you the books. Here we are yes, the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare, and one other.

Speaker 333:15

Yeah.

Mark Gatiss33:15

We have

Speaker 333:16

Uh

Mark Gatiss33:19

This is the easy part. I will I would like to take the book that goes with me every time I go on holiday or any length of time, and it is quite obviously The Complete Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Coendoyle, a book which has suckered and nourished me since I was a little thing, and never stops delighting me.

Presenter33:38

Right, that's yours, and a luxury too.

Mark Gatiss33:40

I found myself thinking I might take a telescope because as I said I've got quite back into the things I used to like when I was little and they give me a lot of pleasure in that way. So I thought, no, I'm not really going. I I'm allowed to choose something a bit more indulgent. So I've chosen a bath.

Presenter33:58

Ah, yes.

Mark Gatiss33:59

With a constant supply of hot water, because although I imagine there is a

Mark Gatiss34:04

A lagoon, indeed, a sleepy lagoon, to bathe in every morning. There's nothing like a hot bath, and I think best in the bath, and often sleep in it.

Presenter34:12

And I'm not imagining you in a sort of contemporary spa bath with sort of fizzing water and

Mark Gatiss34:17

No, I'd like one with, you know, claw and ball legs. Freestanding Victorian. Very deep.

Presenter34:19

Good, I'm so glad.

Presenter34:22

Yeah.

Presenter34:24

It's yours. And if you had to save just one of the eight discs from the waves, which one would you save?

Mark Gatiss34:31

Uh, I think it would have to be So in Love, the Co-Porter. It reminds me of Ian. And it's a story song again. I could extrapolate all kinds of things around it.

Presenter34:41

Right, for you and for Ian, that's the disc then. Mark Gaitis, thank you very much for letting us hear your desert island disc.

Mark Gatiss34:46

My absolute pleasure, thank you.

Presenter35:21

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