Tim Minchin

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.

Presenter0:35

My castaway this week is the writer and comedian Tim Minchin. Add to the list composer, actor, and musician, and you'll just about have the measure of him. He's had sat out performances at London's O Two, written the songs for the smash hit West End show Matilda, and collected an armful of awards along the way. And all before he's hit forty, it would be easy to hate him, if it weren't for the acute satirical insight of his lyrics, and the virtuosity of his musicianship. Another of his talents is undercutting all the success and acclaim, with lines like I thought fame would make me happy, but she's a fickle, cheap romance. What does make you happy, Tim Minchin, I wonder?

Tim Minchin1:13

Oh, that's a tough start. Um coffee, red wine, sleep.

Tim Minchin1:19

um you know, a a a limited amount of time with my own children.

Tim Minchin1:25

I I don't know talking about myself, you know, just the normal stuff.

Presenter1:28

We should have quite a good time then. Um do you think writing for children, as you very successfully have with uh Mathilde, d do you think you understand children? Was it easy to work out what would be appealing to that six-year-old audience?

Tim Minchin1:40

I didn't feel a real connection to my childhood self, although I did have a young baby and another one on the way when I wrote Matilda, and I think without that I would have really struggled'cause it it just

Tim Minchin1:51

Opened that door back a little bit and sort of reminded me how innocent innocence is. You know, I'm not a magical thinker. I don't think I need my special undies on or my special pencil. I'm the opposite of old dahl in so many ways, but I don't, I'm not superstitious about the process. I've always gone, I just need a quiet room. I just took my childhood of reading Dahl and went, I know what this is.

Tim Minchin2:15

Write some talk.

Presenter2:16

So the production has just won an extraordinary, what is it, seven, I think, Olivier Awards, including for Best New Musical. It's also been named Best Musical by.

Presenter2:24

The Evening Standard Awards, the London Theatre Awards and the The Critics' Circle Awards is due to transfer to Broadway next year. Um astonished? Not astonished, slightly surprised when all those started rolling in?

Tim Minchin2:37

I don't suppose when the awards started coming in I I was surprised any more because I'd seen what it did to people. I watched audiences come out with this look of glazed happiness on their faces and I thought this is working.

Presenter2:51

Can you explain that to me, that experience of did you s did you s sort of stand right at the back of the theatre and watch the audience? Were you sitting among them? Are you backstage?

Tim Minchin2:59

I I guess I get my impression from the audience of listening to the reactions. I always just sit in the in right in the guts of it because I want to hear I'm most obsessed by the sound, so I want to hear how the sound is sounding. You can tell in the theatre, that's the wonderful thing about theatre, you always and comedy, you know exactly what's going on, whether they're interested or not. And the laughter, always the laughter being the measure of whether or not your comic bits are succeeding. And it is I

Tim Minchin3:27

surely don't need to say um something that I am just one contributor, it's not magical because of what I did, it's magical because of what the team did together, sort of thing.

Presenter3:36

Time to turn Tim Mention to your choices for this morning. Tell us about difficulty with the choices, haven't you? It's been a.

Tim Minchin3:39

Tell us about it.

Tim Minchin3:43

I love that I got asked to do this because it's such an honour and you think, oh, this would be great. I get to trawl through the music I've loved and I have just hated it. So I love blues and stuff. I grew up listening to my uncle Jim who's a bluegrass slash blues musician playing in pubs in Fremantle. So I was trying to choose one and of course what happens when you're trying to choose you sort of feel like you need to pay homage to the history of it. So I went all the way back to Muddy Waters and I went with Mojo Working because it's an absolute classic.

Speaker 44:23

Got my mom working back. Yes, I'm working, yeah.

Speaker 44:30

Got my own job working but I just don't work on you

Speaker 44:36

I wanna love you so bad till I don't know what to do.

Speaker 44:44

Down in Louis Anna, get me a mojo.

Presenter4:49

Muddy Waters and Mojo working. You've said to mention, I passionately believe in not setting goals. You don't get opportunities if you think you know what you're meant to be doing. Tell me more about that then. You've just randomly embarked on that. You did say that.

Tim Minchin5:01

Tell me.

Presenter5:03

Do you want to change your mind?

Tim Minchin5:04

No, I I I believe that very strongly, but it's significantly influenced by hindsight because it's worked for me. I'm incredibly squeamish about this sort of I've always wanted this, this is my dream to be ex, you know, I'm going to pursue my dream, come what may, and all that sort of stuff. I hate that sort of nonspecific language. It doesn't mean anything, you know, to me. I don't get what you're saying. You have a dream and it seems to not be influenced by any other factors but your fantasy of it. Probably more of us have the sort of life where happily lots of opportunities come your way and you need to be ready to receive them by having your eyes not on the prize but on everything around you. And uh I guess if I had to impart uh wisdom to my children, which I hope never to do to them, I would just say work incredibly hard at whatever you're doing and then people will respect you and you then they'll ask you to do something else, you know. It sounds I I'm actually a terrible procrastinator and my mum and I shout at each other for ten years about me not doing my homework. I'm not I'm not disciplined at all, but if I've got a task in front of me I go pretty hard at it and I I think that works.

Presenter6:14

You have two kids, one five, one three this year, I think. And what about you with your kids then? Are you are you a terribly free and easy parent? You just let them kind of do what they want to do?

Tim Minchin6:23

Uh well well I guess they're not old enough to have challenged our sort of belief in in what parenting is or or anything. I don't know what I'm going to be like, I imagine'cause it's how I was brought up and it and it worked for me and I really appreciate it. I'll I will be demanding of my children that they do their best at anything they do, that old boring stuff. But um I'm certainly not I don't have them in music classes or anything and I'm not interested in trying to see how close I can get them to being prodigies. I I don't believe that early uptake of skills correlates with eventual happiness. You know, this sort of well, my kid can spell and she's four and my child goes to seven lessons and it's like, wa why? They'll they might enjoy that if you leave them alone.

Speaker 16:46

Yeah.

Tim Minchin7:05

Yeah. Let's have some more music, Tim.

Presenter7:07

A second disc, what is it?

Tim Minchin7:09

Well, I'm a huge Kinks fan. People ask me where I get my interest in musical comedy from and you know, did I listen to Victor Borger or Tom Lear or

Tim Minchin7:19

Weird Al Yankovich and I always say no, but I love the bands who use lyrics to satirical purpose, which happened and happens a lot. And of course Ray Davis was writing um dedicated follower of fashion and I'm an Ape Man and stuff at the same time as he was writing some of the most beautiful songs ever made.

Tim Minchin7:38

Uh I love him as a lyricist, I love his voice. So I went with my heart and went with probably one of my favourite songs ever written, which is Waterloo Sunset.

Speaker 47:50

Dirty old river must you keep rolling, floating into the night

Speaker 47:59

People so busy, make me feel dizzy, taxi lights shine so bright

Speaker 48:08

But I don't need those.

Presenter8:17

That was the Kinks and Waterloo sunset. So, Tim Minchin, you live in London now, but you grew up in Perth in Western Australia. What can you tell us about?

Tim Minchin8:25

Well I was in Perth till I was twenty six and my childhood is a childhood of school and beach and hockey basically. We were a hockey family and my sister played for the state and my dad played and and my brother and I and I played hockey five times a week. And your dad was is maybe a surgeon? Is, yep. What was his specialism? He trained as a general surgeon which I guess was defined by someone who has a knife and doesn't do hearts or above the neck sort of thing.

Presenter8:51

Okay, so did they expect stuff of you? Did did they expect stuff of all their children in terms of academic achievement?

Tim Minchin8:57

It's weird, isn't it? You feel like your parents are really heavy when you're young, but I look back and realise how, in my opinion, how right they got it, where they put their emphasis. I went to a boys' private school for 11 years and private schools in Australia aren't like the public public schools here, but they're still, you know, I was privileged to go to that school. But we didn't have fancy cars and we went camping and my granddad had a farm and we spent our weekends on the farm and they didn't

Tim Minchin9:25

ever say we had to be doctors and they didn't say we had to be professionals and none of us are um in the sense that we're not lawyers, doctors, vets and dentists. So they there was low amount of pressure in that regard, but a reasonable amount of pressure in terms of uh not letting yourself down. And if we came home five minutes late, our mum would be pacing the floor and she was not um at peace with risk, my mum.

Presenter9:49

Didn't she also tell you to shut the door when you were practicing piano so that you wouldn't disturb the rest of the house?

Tim Minchin9:54

And and well she might. I I sort of taught myself piano on a uh pianola, pedal piano, that belonged to my great grandmother and it it was an awful piano and I was an awful player of it, so it would have been uh and apart from her

Tim Minchin10:07

Boiling frustration the fa that that I wasn't in my room doing the essay she knew was du due tomorrow, so she would watch

Speaker 410:13

Just shut the door!

Tim Minchin10:15

And then they sort of did an extension that allowed there to be two doors between the piano and the kitchen, so she was happier then.

Presenter10:20

Um White Wine in the Sun is one of your best known uh recordings. It talks about the relationship between you and your family and uh it seems in the song, at least, in the words of the song, that it was motivated by looking at your first child and thinking, the circle has closed, I get it now. I'm wondering what your parents made of the song when they when they heard it.

Tim Minchin10:39

I think they really like it. Um w we're not a particularly demonstrative family. We're a hyper communicative family. We all talk to each other every week. But we're not emotionally demonstrative and that's a pretty emotionally demonstrative song. They they love it. It's very personal but that that that song wasn't an epiphany for me. I had my baby and I was in London and I was overwhelmed by a sense that I needed to get it home, stick it in the ocean and show it to my mum. And that didn't come as a surprise to me because you could have asked me five years before I had a baby and I would have said I love my family and I like going home and seeing them, you know.

Presenter11:17

Let's have some more music, Tim Minchin. The third track of the day is What?

Tim Minchin11:20

Oh, aren't you clever the way you've lined that up? Do you see that? You think this just happens by accident?

Presenter11:23

Um

Tim Minchin11:26

Um so this song is called uh Feel Like Going Home and uh I only know any music because of my brother. In fact, many, many songs that I love.

Tim Minchin11:38

I didn't even hear the originals. He just played them to me and I was like, that's awesome. And he'd be like, yeah, these are the chords, and we'd play it. And some years later, I'd hear the song for the first time. And this song was written by Charlie Rich. And it's a religious song, as far as I know. In the version we're going to play, it's got a slide guitar in it, which it's not my style. But when he's just playing and singing by himself, it's absolutely incredible. And it has that feeling of, look, I'm tired. I just need someone to look after me now. And if it's Jesus for Charlie Rich, then all well and good for me, I guess it's my family.

Speaker 412:13

Lord, I've seen like

Speaker 412:17

Going home

Speaker 112:27

I tried and I failed

Speaker 112:32

And I'm tired.

Speaker 112:36

We're ready.

Presenter12:41

That was Charlie Rich, and feel like going home. So, Tim mentioned your big brother was sort of your musical mentor, really.

Tim Minchin12:46

Yeah, he play he played guitar and uh we were in bands together from when I was fifteen or fourteen or something. We I mean, we played music together often in a sort of rather Brady Bunchy way, standing around the pianola singing piano rolls.

Presenter13:02

With your mum and dad?

Tim Minchin13:04

Yeah, with everyone and harmonies and stuff. But my brother and I always played music, you know, Beatles Bumper Song book and all that sort of stuff and Katie, the kid after me, Katie's a great singer. And my baby sister who's quite a lot younger, I sort of discovered a few years ago that she sort of writes songs and a lot of them quite satirical. She's got a much better musical ear than I have, but she doesn't have the temperament to face the slings and arrows of the music industry.

Presenter13:29

What kind of temperament do you need?

Presenter13:31

to survive.

Tim Minchin13:31

Survive.

Tim Minchin13:33

I think I think you need the temperament that drives people like me, which is probably a slightly um uncool thing, which is the need to be affirmed and show off and stuff.

Presenter13:44

What about your look? I'm sure you do wash your hair, but you deliberately make it look like you don't wash your hair. I don't wash it very often. No.

Tim Minchin13:50

Okay, how often we can go through it? Uh maybe fortnightly.

Presenter13:54

Okay, not very often. And you you're not wearing eye makeup today, but on stage you have some wonderful sort of sparkly with the liner on the inside of the eye and there's you know, there's quite a lot of work has gone into the eye makeup. Um is that to uh evoke the the sense that, you know, you're a bit edgy and rock and rolly and just be careful?

Tim Minchin14:00

Yeah.

Tim Minchin14:02

Yeah.

Tim Minchin14:16

And yet neither of them fit at all with the fact that I'm talking about cognitive dissonance and fallacies of logic.

Tim Minchin14:22

I'm more comfortable.

Tim Minchin14:24

The less genreable I

Tim Minchin14:27

And what I do is not hard to explain. I'm a cabaret artist, you know. I talk I just happen to talk about ideas. So I do a five minute bit in the middle of my show at the moment with a copy of the Koran on stage talking about the sacredness of objects. I also do lots of material, not about big ideas. I have a seven minute song about cheese and it's not rocket science, but it does allow me to be

Tim Minchin14:49

Slightly difficult to categorize in terms of comparisons, and that's a really wonderful thing.

Presenter14:55

We're gonna have some more music. Our next desk is is What Tim?

Tim Minchin14:59

I almost didn't put Ben Folds on the list because uh people compare piano rock players to other piano rock players'cause there's not so many of them. So anyway, I was going to avoid him so people didn't draw more comparisons than were there, but the fact is he is one of the greatest songwriters. There's something that just

Tim Minchin15:17

Feel so individual about him, like he's just expressing exactly who he is. It's called.

Tim Minchin15:24

One Angry Dwarf and Two Hundred Solemn Faces is just a cracking song.

Speaker 415:37

September 75, I was 47 inches high. My mom said by Christmas I would have

Speaker 415:45

Last mother G.I. Joe, for your little minds to blow. I still got beat up after class. Yeah, now a big and important. One angry four spent, two hundred solid faces in

Presenter15:59

That was Ben Folds and One Angry Dwarf and Two Hundred Solemn Faces. So, Tim Minchin, your breakthrough in this country at least came at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. It was two thousand five. By that time you'd been working for about a decade on your music and your stand up, and yet you were named Best Newcomer. Was there something a little bit galling about that?

Tim Minchin16:16

No, not really,'cause I'd actually only been I mean, uh, it was my first ever attempt at doing comedy that show. Uh, I wasn't new to the stage and I wasn't new to playing music.

Tim Minchin16:27

But I'd my twenties were spent sometimes composing for theatre, sometimes playing in cover bands, a hell of a lot of cover bands, piano bars, acting when I got acting work, and I'd had a great time. And then early 2005 I straightened my hair and put the eyeliner on and by Melbourne Comedy Festival two thousand five I kinda had what you would call a comedy show. And so I was new, you know, I was really new.

Presenter16:50

Um, to go and do your comedy at the Edinburgh Friend Show, that's quite a brave thing to do. I mean, that's where, you know, a lot of uh comedians live and die by their Edinburgh reviews.

Tim Minchin16:58

Yeah. Well, I didn't really know that. I didn't know anything about the reviewers. I didn't know any of the other comedians. I'd never heard of Bill Bailey or you know, I wasn't a comedy watcher. I'd never seen a stand up show in my life.

Presenter17:12

You got a very bad review at Edinburgh, which has since become infamous because it was by a man called Phil Doust. I don't know how many people read the review at the time, probably really not that many, but a lot of people know about it now because you wrote a song in response to his bad review of the songs called Song for Phil Doust. Brave, dramatic, and probably wonderfully petty that you did that.

Tim Minchin17:20

Yeah.

Tim Minchin17:34

So petty. Well, I don't know how I feel about someone anymore because I feel bad for Phil that if you type his name in or whatever, his name is associated with my song. Have you spoken to him before? No, I haven't, but a journalist followed him up and said, Have you ever heard this song? And he said, I hated his act when I first saw it. Why would I listen to another five minutes? So, but of course it then goes on the internet and four or five years later it's still there and that's the bit I don't feel great about because I'm beyond that period of my life and I think it's uh a real pity that both his review of me and my review of him are still out there. But I actually didn't write that song straight off the back of it. It really affected me and that's more because I was not ready for an article in a national English newspaper. That was just so awful. And that's a hard lesson to learn. I think all reviewers should write as if they're watching a friend of their sister's.

Presenter17:45

No, I haven't, but a journalist.

Presenter18:31

I shall play the part of reviewer here and say, Well, you know, do you know what? To mention you're charging tickets and you need to entertain me. If I'm not entertained, then I have the right to spread the word that you're not an entertaining performer.

Tim Minchin18:40

Yeah, but you're wrong.

Tim Minchin18:43

Because the arts are subjective, and there are great reviewers out there who would make that argument, and I would understand them because they know how to write about something that they don't think is achieving its goals. People are quite contemptuous of artists who are not good at dealing with reviews, but I think it's completely disingenuous because it hurts being told that what you've worked on is useless. And.

Tim Minchin19:10

I'm I'm probably particularly not good at it.

Tim Minchin19:13

Which is why I don't read them any more.

Tim Minchin19:16

Imagine you had to get up y you, the listener, dear listener, had to get up every night and do a whole lot of jokes that you already know you don't find funny anymore. Write a whole lot of songs that you don't like the tunes of anymore because you wrote them yourself. Sing with a voice that you loathe because it's your own voice. These are all normal human things, right? To not like your own material. And then someone in a national newspaper, your newspaper, the one you respect and read, makes specific criticisms of specific bits in the show and doesn't say this could do with work, but says this makes this person not deserve to be on stage. How would you feel at the point you get to that point in your show that night?

Tim Minchin19:51

How do you get up on stage and get to that joke again with that guy's words ringing in your head? The answer is toughen the hell up, it's not the worst thing that ever happened. You're you're not mining coal as a seven year old. And that's the answer I took back on to stage. It wasn't the worst thing in the world, but it is very, very hard to recover from when you're new to it.

Presenter20:09

You say you don't read reviews uh it you didn't read the reviews for Matilda then?

Tim Minchin20:13

Oh, I read the reviews material. Because they're not about me, they're about something I've created with a group of people. The trouble with comedy is it's all you.

Presenter20:21

Why continue to put yourself out there? Because it would be if if you feel it as as deeply as you've just described it, you know, the sense that

Tim Minchin20:26

It sounds a bit much, doesn't it? I'm sorry.

Presenter20:29

Don't be sorry.

Presenter20:31

But it's interesting that you still seem to need and want to go out there and put yourself out there to be judged.

Tim Minchin20:39

The air.

Tim Minchin20:40

Because I, while I don't like my voice and doubt my work, there's another part of my brain that knows that I'm good at it.

Tim Minchin20:48

I'm and I'm probably really good at, you know, and

Tim Minchin20:50

I love it. I absolutely love it.

Tim Minchin20:54

I mean I could not design my career to be better than it is. I get to play music, I get I get taken seriously, I can I make people cry in my shows, I make them laugh, I play my own material, I play pianos that are better than I deserve, with musicians that are better than I am, in rooms that I wouldn't have dreamt of. And then I get to write musical for as well. It's ridiculous. Why would you stop?

Presenter21:18

We'll have some music, Tim.

Presenter21:19

What are we gonna hear?

Tim Minchin21:20

Well, um

Tim Minchin21:22

I reckon I sang this song standing in my parents' lounge room to the vinyl original London cast recording version of JC Superstar maybe five hundred times, and subsequently got to understudy the role of Judas in two separate Perth productions of JC Superstar, but never played the role and it's uh it's I keep thinking, I'm gonna one day I'm gonna play Judas, but I just love it'cause it's just.

Tim Minchin21:47

Pain and rock, and this is Heaven on Their Minds, which is the first thing that anyone sings.

Speaker 421:53

I remember when this whole thing began No talk of God, then we called you a man.

Speaker 422:01

And believe me, my admiration for you hasn't died But every word you say today gets twisted round some other way

Speaker 422:15

And they'll hurt you if they think you blind.

Presenter22:21

That was Carl Anderson and Heaven on Their Minds from the soundtrack to Jesus Christ Superstar. A lot of your fans, Tim Minchin, might be surprised that you've chosen a track from Jesus Christ Superstar. And also we heard earlier on the the Charlie Rich Almost Spiritual song. You're not moving over from devout atheism to some other place, are you?

Tim Minchin22:39

Um, you can't be a devout atheist.

Presenter22:41

Well, I was trying to be a rock yesterday.

Tim Minchin22:43

Ah, yeah, um, yeah, the you know, people who are religious always think people like us are kind of just on our own journey to find Jesus. But, um, as you can tell from my material, I'm intrigued by belief and by religion. There are times when

Tim Minchin22:59

People's quirky magical beliefs anger me when they end up being used to pass laws that are bad for the rights of the individual. I only care about people's religious belief where it hurts other people, in terms of my comedy. In a broader sense, I'm just really interested in it.

Presenter23:16

You went on a tour of the Southern States of America last year, the sort of you know, the the home of the the very sort of right wing fundamental wing of of the church. How how did you get on there?

Tim Minchin23:19

Yeah.

Tim Minchin23:26

It it's incredible actually in America. I'm not

Tim Minchin23:29

Touring my show around, trying to convert people away from their faith. But America's got 350 million people in it, even if only one in ten of them are not religious. I've got thirty-five or fifty million people who might not hate my material. And they come. I've flown up from Kentucky and they're crying, you know, where school teachers and our family don't talk to us anymore. And, you know, they're there to hear me say.

Tim Minchin23:54

Not only is it okay not to believe what all your mates think, but you should be cross when they step on your toes, you know. And I don't only say that, and people come to my shows in the UK for all different reasons, but in America they seem to be those people.

Presenter24:07

Let's have some more music then, Tim Minchin. We're on your sixth choice.

Tim Minchin24:10

Well, um there are so many great Deep Purple songs, uh but this song is just ridiculously cool. It's from the era where Richie Blackmore was playing guitar and Ian Gillen was singing. And um I just love it. It just rocks, it's ridiculous. It's called I'm Alone.

Speaker 424:34

For my bed and my back in my head, I'm below

Speaker 424:44

I'm alone, so alone I'm alone, so alone I'm alone, so alone And I feel like going home

Presenter24:57

So that was deep purple, and I'm alone. So, Tim, is it true that when the RSC asked you to get involved in Matilda, your wife Sarah said, why don't they ask someone proper to do it?

Tim Minchin25:05

Yeah, of course.

Tim Minchin25:07

But it's it's true. It's absolutely true. I don't

Tim Minchin25:11

Sarah's question was my question. That's the thing with being with someone for twenty years. She just asked me what I was asking myself, which is why they didn't get someone proper to do it.

Presenter25:20

And you met Sara did you meet her when you were at school?

Tim Minchin25:23

Yeah, I I I I vaguely remember her from the school lawn, but it was really first year uni and we turned up at uh arts degree and we were doing a lot of the same courses so we started hanging out.

Presenter25:33

You wrote her the song If I Didn't Have You?

Presenter25:36

Someone else would surely do.

Tim Minchin25:38

Mm-hmm.

Presenter25:38

What does she make of that?

Tim Minchin25:39

Uh

Tim Minchin25:40

She didn't like it initially. I don't know what's wrong with the humorous cow. Uh the song is about statistical probability and the unlikelihood that of soulmates.

Presenter25:50

Yeah, you fall was in a bell curve I think is one of the lines.

Tim Minchin25:51

I think is why I said she falls within a bell curve and that she might be right out out the edge in terms of outstanding humans. Who's to say? But she might be out the other edge. But I was trying to write a song, a funny song, about how love is more valuable when you've chosen to be with someone, given that given a butterfly wing flap change in your past, you could be with someone else.

Presenter26:10

So why did the man with the the crazy hair and the eyeliner, who's an atheist, decide to get married? That seems very conventional.

Tim Minchin26:17

I don't think I ever was thinking of not getting married. I come from a family with a parents who are still married and Sarah comes from a family with parents who are still married and all the evidence points to the idea that my happiness and security and sense of belonging and confidence and all those things come from my family and I

Tim Minchin26:39

wanted that, you know. It would be absurd of me to turn my back on an idea that worked for me.

Presenter26:46

Useful that she knew you before you had the the fame.

Tim Minchin26:50

Yeah, useful for so many reasons. Useful for me and my sanity and making good choices in my life. Useful for us as a relationship because we were l locked in. To to sort of go back to your original question about marriage, I'm absolutely conservative of lifestyle. I don't think I'm intellectually conservative or socially conservative. I'm quite politically conservative, I guess. I'm a pragmatist. I don't take drugs. I like jogging. I've been mostly with one girl since I lost my virginity.

Tim Minchin27:26

Like my family, I don't swear in front of kids or name my children pizza. You know, I'm quite boring.

Presenter27:34

We'd better cut to some music then, given people will be bored to tears by what you're saying. Tell me about what.

Tim Minchin27:35

Yeah, you can't do it.

Tim Minchin27:38

Tell me about what

Presenter27:39

What are we gonna hear next, Tim?

Tim Minchin27:40

Well, I couldn't do a list without a Beatles song, but it it it was a I mean, I just found this so ridiculously hard. I to my surprise, I thought I would choose a McCartney song, but I chose a John Lennon song because uh it's just so cool.

Speaker 428:02

Was you so bad?

Speaker 428:10

Won't you say it's rather big and

Speaker 428:24

Oh watch yourself

Presenter28:27

That was the Beatles' and I want you, she's so heavy. So, to mention, it seems very unfair to continually quote your own work back at you, but it's a great place to start with so many questions. You you once said I hope you remember this I have one life and it's short and unimportant. Do you feel that you're sort of just here for a moment and gone, and that'll be that?

Tim Minchin28:45

It's not so much that I feel that as I know it.

Tim Minchin28:48

Our obsession with

Tim Minchin28:50

Surviving our own deaths, as Dawkins says, is uh

Tim Minchin28:54

I mean, the the very idea that it might not be the case just reeks so much of fantasy that it must be wrong.

Presenter29:01

But how we well, not how we, but how people like you live on is you live on in your art. You create stuff. For example, if you you know, if you I'm thinking um of Lionel Bart, I'm thinking of Oliver, I'm thinking of the fact that in 1960 it made it onto the West End stage, and if you walk through the West End tonight, you can buy a ticket and see that same hit show. There is a legacy there, a feeling that I have left something that is substantive and will tell people a little bit about who I am.

Speaker 129:05

Uh

Tim Minchin29:05

Yeah.

Speaker 129:10

All of the Rams.

Tim Minchin29:18

There is a

Tim Minchin29:26

It's a lovely thought and there's no doubt when um people you love die you take comfort in remembering the things they did, whether they're just you know making good porridge or whatever, you know, whatever it is, whatever small things you will remember about them. And to the extent that we are remembered, uh we can live for as long as those memories last uh in people's minds, but it it's sort of not of interest to me. Right. My legacy.

Speaker 129:50

Uh

Presenter29:50

Yeah.

Tim Minchin29:53

Even if you do live in the memories of a couple of generations it's so fleeting that it's insignificant. But none of this is depressing. In fact, it's awe inspiringly awesome that

Tim Minchin30:06

this event has happened, one's own existence. The idea that after all this space there's you and then there's not you and you are faced with the question of how you're going to spend that time. It's so much more profound than any hypothesis about some pathetic garden with unicorns and hugs that goes forever. I mean the

Tim Minchin30:31

People don't even know how to spend their Saturday afternoons. What what do I want with eternity, you know?

Presenter30:37

Uh, Casper and Violet, then, where are you with them on the Tooth Fairy?

Tim Minchin30:40

Um well I haven't lost any teeth yet, so I'm putting that one off.

Presenter30:45

But do you allow a little bit of magical non-realism to creep into to childhood fantasy?

Tim Minchin30:47

Unrealism

Tim Minchin30:49

Yes, I I hope they find their own ideas. Violet's incredibly inquisitive and she keeps asking me if Santa Claus is really real.

Presenter30:58

What do you what do you say?

Tim Minchin30:59

Well, I can tell her that Santa Claus is coming because it feels like telling a story, but if she looked she looked at me in the eye and said, Is Santa Claus real? I I couldn't lie to her, so I said, Well, he's real in the imaginary world.

Presenter31:11

I'm going to take you away from all these worldly concerns, of course, and dump you on an island.

Tim Minchin31:15

Oh yeah.

Presenter31:15

How will you be on the island?

Tim Minchin31:15

Uh

Tim Minchin31:18

I don't know. I don't suppose I'd do very well, um, on my own. I'm quite

Tim Minchin31:23

I'm quite social, I think.

Tim Minchin31:26

Part of having a brain wired like mine is hypotheticals, like being on a desert island. I just start asking I want to ask questions about logistics, you know.

Presenter31:35

You'll not find any answers from me, I'm afraid. You can tell us, though, what your final choice is going to be for the day, Tim. What are we going to hear?

Tim Minchin31:37

Yeah.

Tim Minchin31:41

This song my brother and I used to play it in pubs, and it's just such a great pop song, incredibly uplifting, and I guess uh it's it's a great love song, too. And it's Swedish.

Speaker 431:56

Who has when we fight?

Speaker 431:59

Kiss you once or twice, And everything's forgotten

Speaker 432:06

No, you hate that.

Speaker 432:09

I love you Sunday son

Speaker 432:13

Week's not yet begun.

Speaker 432:16

And everything is quiet.

Speaker 432:20

And it's always true and me, always

Presenter32:28

That was the one who dies, a new and me song. So, Tim, we come to the point now where I give you uh the complete works of Shakespeare, and I usually give people the Bible. Do you want to take the Bible?

Tim Minchin32:37

Oh, I think I could probably it's i i it's a bit dangerous for me taking the Bible because I fall asleep reading books and I often fall on my face.

Presenter32:46

Wouldn't that be the final irony?

Tim Minchin32:48

Yeah, if I got killed by the Bible, and it's incredibly soporific because it's so dull. So I'd almost definitely do me a uh a an injury of some sort. I guess the Bible's an interesting enough work, but I I'd rather take something else. But I'm not sure.

Presenter33:01

Well you you can take something else, but you can take the Bible as well as something.

Tim Minchin33:04

Okay, sure I'll have a Bible. I mean I'd take out the violent bits, I could use it for firepaper for months.

Presenter33:06

Amen.

Presenter33:10

The choice is yours, and also, you get to take a book that you want to take. What would you like to take?

Tim Minchin33:14

Uh I would I think it's Vonnegut.

Presenter33:17

But Uh

Tim Minchin33:17

Slaughterhouse five.

Presenter33:19

Okay, that's yours. You're allowed a luxury as well to take to this island.

Tim Minchin33:23

Yeah.

Tim Minchin33:25

Uh

Presenter33:25

Yeah.

Tim Minchin33:25

Uh

Presenter33:25

Yeah.

Tim Minchin33:25

Yeah.

Presenter33:25

Sounds good.

Tim Minchin33:25

I assume lots of people say robotic sex doll.

Presenter33:29

Probably.

Tim Minchin33:30

Yeah.

Presenter33:31

It's fifty of those.

Tim Minchin33:32

Yeah, but um but if if it wasn't something to occupy me in that way, I would I'd have to take my piano. Is that all right? Can I take a piano?

Presenter33:41

It has to be self-

Tim Minchin33:44

Would I take that's a good question. Would I take a piano over a robotic sextile?

Presenter33:48

But would you?

Tim Minchin33:50

Probably not.

Presenter33:52

The robotic sex doll is yours then, to mention. And if you had to choose just one of these eight to save from the waves, which one would you save?

Tim Minchin34:01

I'm gonna go with Waterloo Sunset.

Presenter34:04

Tim Minchin, thank you very much for letting us hear your desert island discs.

Tim Minchin34:07

It's a pleasure. Thank you for having me. What an honor.

Presenter34:46

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