Simon McBurney

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 director, writer, and actor Simon McBurney.

Presenter0:40

He wrote the screenplay for Mr. Beans Holiday, directed Al Puccino and Katie Holmes in New York, and on the small screen has been in the Vicar of Dibley and Rev.

Presenter0:49

so far so mainstream. But his natural habitat is at the margins. It is thirty years since he founded Complicite, a ground breaking theatre company which brought extraordinary physical deftness to the stage, and whose numerous accolades ranged from the Perrier Comedy Award to an armful of Oliviers, as well as collecting scores of other glittering baubles along the way.

Presenter1:11

Actor Mark Rylance says he has more capacity to deal with chaos, a wider love of randomness and impulse, than the rest of us. That he was right, was he, Mark Rylance? You do enjoy chaos.

Simon McBurney1:23

Well, that's yes, I do enjoy my brother calls me constitutionally disobedient, so um I d like doing things, I I like breaking the rules, yes, that's true.

Presenter1:33

Um so how does that work when it comes to the day to day? Because presumably you have to go through some of the well, many of the same boring rituals that most of us do, you know, getting up in the morning, getting the kids fed, getting to work on time.

Simon McBurney1:37

Well

Simon McBurney1:43

Of course. But I am lucky enough to be in a profession where I make up my own day. So famously I do cancel certain things because suddenly it's a sunny day and I wish to be with my children and

Simon McBurney1:58

Yeah.

Simon McBurney1:59

you know, n n not always, but uh um everything about your days is extraordinarily precious and life is an i a a constant improvisation. It's a creative act. It's like right now I feel the whole of my life has led up to this moment, you know, looking at you across this table.

Presenter2:18

And what about y you've said that you think, you know, at any point when we start to talk about our lives, we create our own narrative, which can be full of uh, you know, inaccuracies and flippancies, and we we're we're always telling a story about ourselves that might bear not that much relation to the truth as soon as we start talking. Is that fair?

Simon McBurney2:38

That's absolutely right.

Simon McBurney2:40

I've always had a sense of that, that that we are somehow living in a story. First there is a story, and story is a way of making sense of the world. And so above everything I sort of think of myself

Simon McBurney2:53

In terms of what I do as a storyteller, but then I don't find that different from living the rest of my life.

Presenter2:58

And so if life and work is, as you describe it, this constant improvisation, there can be times, as I understand it, when the improvisation even gets as far as your theatre company being on stage and not knowing what the end of the production is. I'm thinking particularly of the disappearing number when you went on stage one night, this was one of your productions, and you had to tell the audience.

Presenter3:20

We don't have the end yet, so you can have to bear with us on that. Did that happen?

Simon McBurney3:24

That has actually happened on more than one occasion. There was a production I did about memory called Mnemonic, where I had a sort of opening.

Presenter3:29

Yeah.

Simon McBurney3:31

Address to the audience and

Speaker 13:33

Yeah.

Simon McBurney3:34

I told the rest of the cast that I had written it, but I hadn't actually written it, so I improvised it on the first night, and it went frightfully well. And the second night I thought I'd do the same, but because I hadn't written it, I'd forgotten what I said on the first night. It went appallingly badly, and then they made me sit down and write it. But every piece of theatre that I try to make.

Simon McBurney3:54

has the possibility of changing. So even when it's a very

Simon McBurney3:58

tight piece into some of the pieces that we put on in the West End or

Simon McBurney4:02

you know, in and the national and so on. I always try to make things with the possibility of change.

Presenter4:10

It would seem an appropriate time then to introduce uh your first piece of music. Tell me about this and tell me why you've chosen it.

Simon McBurney4:15

Well, in the seventies I suddenly encountered a whole new world of music, amongst which were um voices who were not only extraordinarily musical, but who always had things to say. And one of uh those people for me who immediately not only had something to say but made me laugh like a drain, uh was Frank Zapper.

Simon McBurney4:40

And this piece is at most wonderful.

Simon McBurney4:43

Slicing satirical.

Simon McBurney4:46

Song which could not be more absite now.

Speaker 44:53

Please

Speaker 44:54

I'm obsessed and deranged, I have existed for years, but very little has changed. I'm the tool of the government.

Speaker 45:06

And that's good too.

Speaker 45:08

Or uh

Speaker 45:12

Yeah.

Speaker 45:14

Be vile and pernicious.

Presenter5:17

That was Frank Zappa, and I'm the Slime. So, Simon McBurney, your film credits include Harry Potter, The Golden Compass, The Last King of Scotland, Tinker, Taylor, Soldier, Spy. Movies are very.

Presenter5:28

Very expensive to make. I'm wondering about you, the person who improvises and experiments as a director. When you're on a movie set as an actor and you see the director, you know, almost the the dollar signs ticking by in his eyes as the lighting director takes too long and everybody knows what their words are going to be. That sort of environment. How do you find it constricting? Do you find it tricky to work within?

Simon McBurney5:49

Well, when thinking about films, largely my experience has been as an actor, and it's absolutely glorious. It's like a holiday because I'm not responsible. I watch the director uh looking paler and paler as I come into work each day, and I think, thank goodness I'm not him or her. I can just uh uh relax and uh um

Presenter5:54

And it's a

Simon McBurney6:08

Do what I'm told to do, and in fact, be, you know, continue to be extremely disobedient and enjoy myself.

Presenter6:14

Do you do you do what you're told to do by the director?

Simon McBurney6:17

Oh yes, no, I love that. Performing for me is something which is

Simon McBurney6:22

Just wonderful. It's not to say that I won't have an opinion on what I should do, but I'm really thrilled equally always to to do what somebody else tells you to do, because the moment you try it and you do it, then you discover something new, and discovering something new is the most thrilling thing.

Presenter6:40

Um, you know, you're a director of very great acclaim and I wonder sometimes if a director's directing you, you can sort of see a bit of a wobble in his in his lip.

Simon McBurney6:46

He's been for Warpa.

Simon McBurney6:47

No, not at all. I mean, happily when I'm working in films, nobody's ever heard of me. So it's absolutely wonderful because it is true. It is by and large it's true.

Presenter6:56

You've directed some very big American stars. I mentioned in the introduction there, Al Pacino and also Katie Holmes in two different productions, I should say. Both very well received.

Presenter7:07

Didn't you have to audition for Al Pacino though? He auditioned you as a director, did he not?

Simon McBurney7:12

I mean, I thought, I can't direct Al Pacino, that's ridiculous. And then everybody around me, my loved ones and friends, said, you're crazy, you've got to at least go to New York and meet him. So I did. And going up in the lift, I suddenly found I was absolutely terrified because he was a man whose films I'd admired from Dog Day Afternoon through to The Godfather. And he was a fictitious character for me. He wasn't real, and I didn't know what to expect. But then within ten minutes, he's like any other actor. He's farting around, he's playing, you're cracking jokes. And that's not to say that he was easy. We had a couple of run-ins on the show which were very difficult. How did they go?

Simon McBurney7:59

Well yeah, that would be telling, wouldn't it?

Speaker 18:02

Uh

Presenter8:02

Can't tell the bits.

Simon McBurney8:04

Well, he did like to do his own thing, and for a very long time he spoke incredibly slowly. In Aturu Ui, it's really machine gun delivery. And he began by saying, you know, talking, who's talking? And it's incredibly slowly. And it wasn't speeding up for weeks. So eventually I was extremely.

Speaker 48:15

Yeah.

Simon McBurney8:26

naughty, and I changed all the roles around. I said, John, I said to John Goodman, why don't you play his role? And you play and John Goodman did it incredibly fast, incredibly funny. And then I said, Now, in this game, we're going to imitate the people who imitated us. And to give Al his due, he then imitated John Goodman, and and suddenly

Simon McBurney8:45

He was very funny, but the next day he didn't come in till halfway through the rehearsal, and at lunch time he said, I've got to speak to you.

Simon McBurney8:54

And he took me out onto the fire escape, and you can picture this, it is New York, and we're ten stories up, and on the fire escape, and suddenly there's the godfather in front of me.

Simon McBurney9:02

And he's saying he can't do that to me.

Simon McBurney9:04

You gotta respect me.

Simon McBurney9:06

For the other actors, I am somebody.

Simon McBurney9:10

And uh it was a very sort of vulnerable

Simon McBurney9:14

Encounter

Simon McBurney9:16

And he wasn't easy, but then one night after sort of we'd opened three per four performances in, and he was still going slowly, he suddenly took my note to heart and doubled up the speed, and it was brilliant. It was absolutely incredible. And um he's been a friend ever since.

Presenter9:34

To your second piece, then, Simon McBurney. What are we going to hear now?

Simon McBurney9:37

Well, I suppose as well as becoming musically educated in the nineteen seventies, I also

Simon McBurney9:43

began my political education. Part of my education was through music. This particular song opened up a whole world for me. It's Gil Scott Heron and The Revolution Will Not Be Televised.

Speaker 19:57

You will not be able to stay home, brother.

Speaker 110:03

You will not be able to plug in, turn on, and cop out. You will not be able to lose yourself on Skag and skip out for bid during commercials because the revolution will not be televised.

Speaker 110:17

The revolution will not be televised. The revolution will not be brought to you by Zirox.

Presenter10:22

Gil Scott Heron and the Revolution Will Not Be Televised. You seem to be enjoying that as much now as you probably did the first time you heard it, Simon McBurney.

Simon McBurney10:29

Yes, his father, by the way.

Simon McBurney10:31

Gilscott Caron's father played for Celty.

Presenter10:34

I know. The first black player in Scotland. Yes, the first black professional football player in Scotland.

Simon McBurney10:36

Yeah, it

Simon McBurney10:37

Yes.

Presenter10:39

Anyway, moving on. You were born in Cambridge in the late fifties, nineteen fifty seven, Simon, and your father was a an academic. What was his area of specialism?

Simon McBurney10:48

He was a prehistorian, an archaeologist. What was he like?

Simon McBurney10:53

Well, he died in nineteen seventy nine, so it's

Simon McBurney10:58

curious thinking about him now, that he was an extraordinarily gentleman. He was an American, and he was passionate about his subject.

Simon McBurney11:10

I remember on his wall there was a huge section of mud, and in it you could see all the sections of sort of stratification of one of his digs. And so I remember thinking from an early age that time is somehow vertical rather than horizontal. And that has stayed with me a great deal when thinking about my own work.

Presenter11:20

Sort of stratification

Simon McBurney11:34

He would be very surprised to see what I am doing today, although he did see me on television before he died, actually, as he was dying.

Simon McBurney11:42

Now he has become, of course, in my mind yet another story, another mythic figure, because I need to tell his story to my children, who are very young, so that they feel somehow connected to him.

Presenter11:56

And your mother had children relatively late. You yourself have become a father relatively late in the beginning of your fifties. How do you find that? I'm I'm thinking now you see about a lot of the the chaos that you like to to have prof professionally. I'm wondering if that's transported itself into the rest of your life. How are you coping with that?

Simon McBurney12:15

It's wonderful.

Simon McBurney12:17

The little ones still sleeped in our bed and the slightly older one.

Simon McBurney12:22

Little one Teo and the older one Noma uh sleeps in the her bed beside our bed. So it's really an absolute riot in the morning. Everybody's jumping on everybody else, and it's wonderful.

Presenter12:35

And having been the child of older parents and being an older parent yourself, do you do you think you parent differently?

Presenter12:43

I'm thinking particularly there of time's passage. You know, you were in your early twenties when your father died and and there is a point, I guess, and and you're you I'm sure have reached it by now where you understand how quickly everything goes and possibly I'm wondering if that makes you a more appreciative parent, more ready to enjoy the chaos right.

Simon McBurney12:57

I think, yes, I think, I mean, everything is very urgent, and I don't want to miss a second.

Presenter13:02

Yeah.

Simon McBurney13:02

So they come on tour with me. They they sometimes come into rehearsal even at this age. Um but I mean, it is true that my parents had me when they were in in their middle age, and my mother's father was over fifty when she was born, and he was born in

Presenter13:05

They

Simon McBurney13:21

eighteen seventy. So he could easily have known somebody who'd been at the Battle of Waterloo. That's an extraordinary thought. Suddenly time collapses, I think. I think partly that I learnt from my father things in the deep past are actually very often very close to us.

Presenter13:39

We'll have some music. Your third uh disc is pot.

Simon McBurney13:42

This is uh Gyogi or Giorgio Lighetti. I was fortunate enough to meet The Love of My Life in the street, and it so happens that she's Cassie is a concert pianist, and she is working on this piece at the moment.

Presenter14:57

Pierre Laurent Amar, playing L'Escalier de Diable, by Georges Legoty. You said a moment ago, Simon McBurney, that your father would be very surprised if he could see what you were doing now. As a a young boy, wh where do you think he thought your talents lay? What did he talk to you about? What did he encourage you to do?

Simon McBurney15:15

I think I was very fortunate in that my parents always encouraged us all as children simply to be curious about the world. My mother, I would say, was of a passionate artistic nature. She always wanted to be an actress. So I think when I said that I was going to be an actor, he did say to me, Had I thought about being a teacher?

Simon McBurney15:38

But my mother was absolutely thrilled.

Presenter15:41

Been when you said I've decided I'm going to be an actor.

Simon McBurney15:43

A pat

Simon McBurney15:45

Eighteen, I suppose?

Presenter15:47

Your father died when you were in your early twenties, and were you aware at that time that he that he was unwell?

Simon McBurney15:52

Yes, uh I remember the day that we discovered that he was unwell. We were in Scotland and

Simon McBurney15:59

You know, I remember him coming downstairs and s saying

Simon McBurney16:02

There's a little bit of blood in my pee, and then a year later, um, he left us. Uh I feel incredibly lucky to have participated in his death, although at the time I found it very, very difficult to be there, and I kept on thinking while he was dying, if only

Simon McBurney16:22

He would hurry up and die, then it'll all be better. And of course, when he did die.

Simon McBurney16:30

That's when it all was much.

Simon McBurney16:33

more difficult. But to participate in the process of his dying, him dying at home, was for me has been an incredibly important part of my life. And so when my mother died uh all of us, all of us children we all participated in that too. She also died at home.

Presenter16:52

Um

Presenter16:53

You created uh um a piece of work that was, uh as I understand it, inspired by your father's death. I'm thinking of a minute too late. And that's right. When I read that, I couldn't

Speaker 117:02

That's right.

Presenter17:05

It was very interesting to me that that's what it was inspired by, because it's uproarious slapstick. I mean, it is a sort of crazy.

Simon McBurney17:10

Is this sort of

Presenter17:11

Yeah, yeah.

Simon McBurney17:13

There's nothing funnier than death. You know, we've always had this feeling that somehow tragedy is more serious, you know, and more profound about human life, and comedy is somehow light, artificial, and escapist. And I tend to think that the opposite is true, whereas tragedy, in a sense, is sort of rather good for man's dignity. It makes us feel we're really sort of important creatures. Whereas comedy reveals the absurd truth, which is why we hate being laughed at in real life. And when my father died, I had the experience of people crossing the road rather than talking to me. People would go into any lengths rather than mention the fact that my father had died. Excruciating. But also, after we'd done our crying, I remember standing behind the undertakers who were carrying the coffins, and we didn't know about coffins. And I remember my mother saying, I've ordered something called drop handles, I don't know what they are. And they turn out to be things like skipping ropes that hang off the side of the coffin. And one of the undertakers had enormous ears, and one of these skipping ropes kept on hitting his ear, and he got complete hysterics. And yes, it was very funny, but it turns at the end into just in one moment of tragedy.

Simon McBurney18:20

What I wanted to say, says the character that I play, was goodbye.

Presenter18:27

We'll have some music.

Simon McBurney18:28

Well, in contrast to what we've been talking about.

Simon McBurney18:32

But also uh

Simon McBurney18:34

In a sense

Simon McBurney18:36

in relation to it, because I think participating in somebody's

Simon McBurney18:40

Death, you can feel

Simon McBurney18:43

An extraordinary

Simon McBurney18:47

darkness and yet somewhere in all of it there is the question of hope. For me one of the things that my discovery of soul music in the seventies gave me was always this uh extraordinary sense of resistance and hope and continuity. And so I can't imagine being on a desert island without Aretha Franklin.

Speaker 419:14

This whole world, you know.

Speaker 419:19

And me as a boy that girl.

Speaker 419:22

Um yeah

Speaker 419:24

Hit there and button!

Speaker 419:27

For the golden tag

Speaker 419:30

And that's a fact.

Speaker 419:33

You are young, gifted everybody.

Speaker 419:38

We must begin to tell I ought.

Presenter19:43

That was Aretha Franklin and Young, Gifted and Black. So, Simon McBurney, you uh read English at Cambridge and and at Cambridge you were in the Footlights along with uh Emma Thompson and some other notables. Do you feel like you've sort of found your place?

Simon McBurney19:55

Uh no, not at all. I had bright pink hair and um and suddenly there were all these different opportunities. By the end of the year I had appeared on television for the first time and

Simon McBurney20:11

Peter Cook was in the programme and

Simon McBurney20:13

It was an amazing experience. And then I remember being rung up by an unknown radio producer called Griffries Jones. He said, Was I interested in doing something on the radio? And I had a very strong sense that I could easily, that could be the rest of my life.

Simon McBurney20:31

It was at that point that I thought home.

Simon McBurney20:34

would quite like to leave this country. It was not long after my father had died as well. So I made a

Simon McBurney20:40

B-line for the continent and spent the next four years in France.

Presenter20:45

And while you were in France you spent time in in Paris?

Simon McBurney20:48

That's right, if she lived in Paris.

Presenter20:48

And yes, you made the decision to to study at the Jacques Le Cork Institute, which is studying broadly studying mime. What what what drew you to that?

Simon McBurney20:56

Uh it's not actually studying maim and this is a a mis uh conception. It's a theatre school. He knew an extraordinary amount about the body.

Simon McBurney21:06

But he was also very interested in improvisation and playing and

Simon McBurney21:10

I remember meeting him when he was dying in his chalet in the Alps, and he said in the end he said, I am nobody, I am just somebody who puts obstacles in front of you for you to better find your path around.

Presenter21:20

For you performance began well, you started performing on the street, doing street theatre. Wha why did you decide to do that?

Simon McBurney21:27

Because I needed some money. Did you make any money? Yes, I did. Yeah. I got quite good at it.

Presenter21:29

Did you make any money?

Presenter21:32

Here's the thing. You see, I I I feel and this probably says more about me than it says about any street performer but quite often if one sees somebody performing on the street the immediate reaction is embarrassment and to try to get as far away from them as possible. Me too. Yes, right.

Simon McBurney21:43

Yeah.

Simon McBurney21:45

But that didn't stop me from doing it because I wanted to I wanted to perform and if if you can perform and get an audience on the street then you know working in the theatre's a dottle.

Presenter21:57

Let's have some music, Simon McBranny. What are we going to hear now? We're on your fists.

Simon McBurney22:01

Right. Well, this is I mean, a continuing very important element in my life has been my relationship with

Simon McBurney22:10

my brother, and around about nineteen eighty five, eighty six, he was studying the Tchaikovsky Conservatoire in Moscow, and it's through him and my journeys to the Soviet Union at that time that I really became exposed to the wealth of

Simon McBurney22:27

Russian music. Uh and this piece

Simon McBurney22:31

Became incredibly important to me and has remained this composer, Alfred Schnittke, has remained important to me ever since.

Presenter23:36

Guidon Kramer playing part of the fifth movement of Schnitzka's Concerto Grosso No. One. Um, the menacing archdeacon in Rev that you play so beautifully, Simon McBurney. He's

Presenter23:47

He's callous and he's venal and he's grasping and he's unforgiving of

Presenter23:52

Any human frailty. You sort of you play him like a banker, really, I think.

Simon McBurney23:56

Do I? I don't know. I have enormous sympathy for him, and I think that he's he's quite funny. I mean, he has a job to do. He's absolutely delicious to play. The beauty of that series, the writing by James Wood and Tom Hollander, is the fact that they have managed to make all of these characters, who seem a little bit larger than life, into real human beings. So that makes it an extraordinarily rewarding series to be a part of.

Presenter24:27

I was looking at something you said about when you began Complicité, which is you wanted.

Presenter24:31

to make theatre that you weren't seeing. And that's a very difficult thing to do, isn't it? To think that I'm somewhere in my head there's an idea of what I could represent here, what I could create, and yet I'm not sure what it is yet. It's very it's a very ambitious thing to do creatively.

Simon McBurney24:46

Yes my contention was always that what I remembered as a child going to the theatre was always not only what I heard, but what I saw, what I felt.

Simon McBurney24:57

But those were the things that I remember. In fact, if you ask anybody coming out of the theatre to night

Simon McBurney25:02

If you ask them to remember some of the lines from the show, they will almost uniformly be unable to do so. But ask them to remember what they felt or what they saw, and they will describe it immediately. In my own work on the stage, I see theatre more like a musical score, a symphonic score, in which there is the melody, yes, but not just that, there is the bass line and there are the harmonies. So it's really an experience almost like that piece of mud on my father's wall where there's a verticality to the experience, if you can if it doesn't sound too pretentious.

Presenter25:40

Mark Rylance, when he was working with you on Endgame, said that the actors were almost utterly without hope during the process of rehearsal. I mean, it's quite a painful birth that you seem to go through each time.

Simon McBurney25:53

Yeah, I I it's because I have no idea what I'm doing sometimes. So when I worked with Mark on the Beckett, I didn't know how we were going to do it, so we were just literally we were turning over the earth, trying to expose stuff, and then you make something from what you find, and then you try and make a structure from it.

Presenter26:11

Is there lots of tension? Are there often fights in in rehearsal rooms with you?

Simon McBurney26:16

Of course there are.

Simon McBurney26:18

You know, some people have said uh it's a little bit like going to the jungle with some mad explorer who everybody knows he doesn't have any idea where he's going, but somehow he gives people some sort of confidence to keep on going. Yes, there are tensions, but it's important they come out because they always lead to some other discovery and there's also an incredible amount of fun and just the joy of making things, of being in the sandpit.

Presenter26:46

Time for the music. We're on the sixth of your choices. What are we going to hear?

Simon McBurney26:52

Well, I made a piece gosh, nearly twenty years ago now, called Three Lives of Lucy Cabral.

Simon McBurney26:59

And we toured it all over the world, and in it we sang a song in an unknown Macedonian dialect. And the final

Simon McBurney27:09

Show of several after several years of touring took us to Macedonia.

Simon McBurney27:16

And we asked some Macedonians where does this si song come from? But they took us to the gypsy town on the edge of Skopje, and they introduced us to somebody who was in gypsy T V. We sang the song. He said, That's not an unknown Macedonian dialect. You're singing in Roma, and I know the person.

Simon McBurney27:36

Who composed it? We were taken to her house.

Simon McBurney27:39

We met her husband, she made us tea, and then she sang us this.

Speaker 427:46

Why are they

Speaker 427:58

I gave the Sotinger Mon to the Lord.

Speaker 428:13

Como caboo

Presenter28:17

Esme Rezhdepova and Hairi Madi de Yikaye. So, um, you said that you met your partner, who's the concert pianist Cassie Yukoa, just in the street. It was it was entirely random, was it?

Simon McBurney28:30

Yes, it was.

Simon McBurney28:32

Neither of us ever.

Simon McBurney28:35

Go to the Bar Italia in Soho.

Simon McBurney28:38

Yet for some strange reason that day we both had to change our plans to meet people in

Simon McBurney28:47

Soho and

Simon McBurney28:50

At a certain point something made me look along the line of tables, and I saw this woman laughing, and I had this very

Simon McBurney28:57

Powerful.

Simon McBurney28:58

Pain in my solar plexus and a really loud voice in my head saying, This is the person you're going to spend the rest of your life with.

Simon McBurney29:07

Anyway, I tried to forget about it, and a little bit later I looked down the table and I felt exactly the same thing. Anyway, I walked away, I said goodbye to the person who I'd just met,

Simon McBurney29:17

I walked back up the street and I looked.

Simon McBurney29:19

at this woman sitting at table, and she looked at me.

Simon McBurney29:24

We looked at each other, and then I walked on, and suddenly somebody rushed through the crowd of people and put her hand on my arm, and said, You're Simon, aren't you?

Simon McBurney29:34

She said, My name's Cassie. I was going to come and see the talk you were giving with Mike Figgis at the Barbicane. I said, When are you coming? and she said,

Simon McBurney29:44

Um

Simon McBurney29:45

I don't know, I haven't got my ticket yet, so I said, Well, it's sold out.

Simon McBurney29:49

And she said, Well, I'll kill somebody to get a ticket.

Simon McBurney29:51

And I said, You don't have to. You could just give me your phone number and then and then, you know, I could arrange for you to get in. Um and she did give me her phone number and

Simon McBurney30:06

Perhaps two weeks later we.

Simon McBurney30:08

met again, and we've been together ever since, and we now have two children. It's the most extraordinary thing. I'd never believed that such a thing was possible, and I still can't quite believe my my fortune.

Simon McBurney30:23

Um, you know, I didn't expect to be a father at fifty, and here I am.

Presenter30:28

Did you think maybe you wouldn't ever be a father?

Simon McBurney30:30

Yes, I did. I thought I wouldn't be a father. I thought it was very

Simon McBurney30:35

Unlikely I thought I was going to go on with the series of.

Simon McBurney30:40

wonderful encounters that I'd had through my life, but I thought that was the way that life would go on, and that I had probably missed the boat, but for some reason there was one boat still left in the harbour.

Presenter30:54

Do you think you're a daunting prospect for somebody to throw their lot in with?

Simon McBurney30:59

I think almost certainly.

Simon McBurney31:01

Gosh, she's brave, my sister said. She's a woman of extraordinary courage.

Presenter31:11

We have to go to the music, Simon McBurney, and we're on our penultimate disc of the day. What are we going to hear?

Simon McBurney31:18

The opening of the fifteenth quartet by Shostakovich.

Simon McBurney31:23

It's written right at the end of his life, so it contains an extraordinary delicacy which I associate now with the end of life, but it never ceases to offer new possibilities.

Presenter32:32

The Emerson String Quartet, playing the opening of the string quartet, number fifteen in E flat major, by Shostakovich. Um you were awarded an OBE in two thousand and five. Does that matter to you? Do you like that?

Simon McBurney32:46

Um my initial instinct was to turn it down because I didn't like the idea of the order of the British Empire with everything that the those words stand for.

Simon McBurney33:00

But I feel that it is a recognition of a collective effort rather than my

Simon McBurney33:06

Anything I've done individually.

Simon McBurney33:09

Perhaps if I'd refused it, that would have been...

Simon McBurney33:11

Just simply.

Simon McBurney33:13

Another example of my own petulant disobedience, and for once I towed the line.

Presenter33:18

It's time for your final piece, Simon. What are we going to hear?

Simon McBurney33:22

Well

Simon McBurney33:23

On the edges of this world, I think we can still hear something of our deep past.

Simon McBurney33:31

I understood through my father that in Neolithic times human beings felt that they were part of the world of animals, and the echoes of that time, the vestiges, can still be heard today, which is why I've chosen this piece, which is from the Chukchi people in the far north eastern part of Mongolia in the Arctic. And something of the past and of nature is present in the voice of this twelve year old girl.

Simon McBurney34:05

Yeah.

Speaker 134:16

Yeah.

Speaker 134:19

Yeah.

Speaker 434:22

And that and then pi and map and then p.

Presenter34:31

Veronica Ochulin and I Light the Fire. So, Simon, I'm going to give you the books. You get the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare, and you get to take along another book, too. What would you like to take?

Simon McBurney34:41

I would like to take a very small, slim volume written by my great friend John Berger, which is one of the most poetic meditations I know on love and the world, and it's called And Our Faces, My Heart, Brief as Photos.

Presenter34:58

It's yours.

Simon McBurney34:59

And a luxury, too. Ah, now this is oh, I mean, it's all very difficult, Kirsty. The whole thing is making these choices. But wonderful, wonderful to think about it, and thousands of things I thought of taking. But above all, I think what I would take is the pillow from my family bed, and on the pillow is the smell of my family. And I remember when my father died and his body was removed from his bedroom, my sister and I ran down. She took me by the hand, she said, Come, come quickly, she said, and we ran down.

Simon McBurney35:35

And we both buried our faces in his pillow, and uh we smelt him for the last time. So I would like to carry the smell of my family with me.

Presenter35:42

The pillow is yours. And if you had to save just one of these eight tracks from the waves, which one track would you save?

Simon McBurney35:49

I would save the final one because it would be uh something which would link me into nature. If I'm on a desert island I am completely in touch with nature, and so that when I'm lost on my desert island I will go back to nature and, I hope, be at one with it.

Presenter36:08

Simon McBurney, thank you very much for letting us view your desert island discs.

Simon McBurney36:12

Thank you.

Presenter36:49

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.