Craig Brown

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 Craig Brown. A satirist, columnist, and critic, with a prodigious output. He's best known for his skewering parodies, lampooning everyone, from DH Lawrence to Victoria Beckham. The warning signs came early. At fourteen he was writing spoofs of Haddold Pinter plays. By twenty he was being published in The Spectator, The New Statesman, and Tatler, swiftly graduating to The Sunday Times. He says I feel religious in empty churches, but atheist in a fool one. I'm left wing among right wing people. I am just contrary. You're comfortable with being a contrarian, are you, Craig?

Craig Brown1:14

I suppose so. I mean, if you're not comfortable by fifty five, then that's a very uncomfortable position to be in. Um but I I sometimes think I should have stronger held uh beliefs and opinions. But I always see the other side and then dislike the other side, so I'm always sort of bouncing off people.

Presenter1:31

And are there times when you think, Well, I wish I believed in something?

Craig Brown1:35

Well, I I believe in basic humanitarian virtues, but if you ask me

Craig Brown1:40

Do I believe in the EC? Or do I believe that cannabis should be legalised? Or even do I believe in God? I'd come up with different answers depending on the time of day.

Presenter1:50

Um the voices in your head, I wonder about, because of course what what you do so brilliantly is you capture the voice of the people you parody and and you manage to get it down on paper with with great uh wit and often a good deal of wisdom too. Are there voices in your head? Do you suddenly find yourself sort of

Craig Brown2:04

Well, sometimes I I think of myself as Doris Stokes. You remember the old psychic?

Presenter2:08

Oh yeah.

Craig Brown2:09

In that I I write those parodies best when I am sort in a way taking dictation. But of course it's not just parroting what you hear, it's subverting what you hear as well. It's like writing two articles at the time, the surface article which is their voice, and then the other article which is exaggerating all their deficiencies.

Presenter2:26

And what about being slightly on the outside? Do you feel like that? Are you one of those writers who feels like you're watching like

Craig Brown2:31

I think every human being thinks on the outside. I mean, there are lots of people now, like, say, Andrew Neal who are completely establishment figures, but they always feel on the outside. So I don't think it's anything special to feel on the outside. I'm I'm not a great joiner in. I don't belong to a club or anything. And I've never

Craig Brown2:50

properly worked in an office, so I've never been part of a team. Even with Private Eye, which is my kind of spiritual home, I feel awkward when I go in there and I only go in there about once a year, I suppose.

Presenter3:00

What is it that makes you feel awkward?

Craig Brown3:02

Um, with offices I don't know what the etiquette is, how long you're meant to speak to each person, uh, whether you're wasting their time, all that kind of thing.

Presenter3:10

Right. You were the first journalist earlier this year to win three separate prizes at the British Press Awards. They were they're they're the the awards, of course, for the for the industry. Um you won Best Critic, Best Columnist and Best Humorous. Yes. What did you make of that?

Craig Brown3:24

Um

Craig Brown3:25

I mean, I've been to countless of those awards and they don't really mean anything, but you're nevertheless disappointed when your name isn't called. And so having done my time of it not being called, I was quite um pleased. I also used to think it would guarantee your employment for another year, but actually that's not the case. Number of people are sacked within the year of getting an award.

Presenter3:45

Where are they? The awards.

Craig Brown3:48

Um they are in my office in uh London.

Craig Brown3:52

I used to not hang them up and I think it is a sign of old age that you want respectability in a way. And I think it's easier to write an article if you can look up and think, Well, I have done these before and some people have liked them.

Presenter4:04

Right, let's have some music. Craig Brown, let let's uh tell me about what we're going to hear first off today.

Craig Brown4:09

And we're going to hear Nina Simone, who I think had one of the two great voices of the twentieth century. She did quite a lot of quite depressing blues songs, but this is more of an uplifting one, and it's called In the Morning. And I I'm quite a a morning kind of person. I I wake up optimistic and go to bed pessimistic.

Speaker 14:28

In the morning.

Speaker 14:31

When the moon is at its rest, you will find me

Speaker 14:36

At the time I love the best watching rainbows play on Sunday

Presenter4:43

Light pools of water Ice cream cold nights in the morning, yeah, yeah, yeah

Speaker 14:52

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Presenter4:54

It's the morning of my life

Speaker 14:54

On it

Speaker 15:00

In the daytime I will meet you as before you will find

Presenter5:06

And me.

Presenter5:08

At the waiting by the ocean floor, building castles in the shifting Sam

Speaker 15:17

Uh

Presenter5:17

In a world that nobody understands

Presenter5:26

That was Nina Simone and In the Morning. So, Craig Brown, as well as Parodies, you've also created these two long running uh characters, the sort of hand-ringing Lefty who is Belle Little John, and the Tory duffer Wallace Arnold. Uh they managed to make it into Who's Who?

Craig Brown5:41

Yes, that was very uh nice. I think the Husu people um realized that they were fake. I think so. I mean, the good thing about those was that they were well very well positioned in journalism in that the

Craig Brown5:53

Parody left winger Bell Littlejohn was in The Guardian and Wallace Arnold for most of the time was in The Spectator. And so they were they were inhabiting the kind of uh clothes of right and left and yet um subverting them. And of course lots of readers did think on both papers did think that they were real.

Presenter6:12

Um you seem as at home parodying um Leo Tolstoy as you do um Michael Barrymore, and I'm wondering there aren't many people who are brave enough to do that, who don't mind being seen as somebody who ranges across the whole culture. You know, most people who are pretty brainy would rather be seen as pretty brainy.

Craig Brown6:26

Yeah.

Craig Brown6:29

Yes, and I think I think it's very odd that in that people will read grand novels, say um Crime and Punishment, they'll read about a kind of nerdy well like Raskolnikov as well and think, Oh, well it's highbrow, but then they wouldn't read Jade Goody's autobiography, and yet that's just as as rich in lots of ways. She had a completely Dickensian childhood in the nineteen eighties of having to inject her mother with heroin and things like that.

Presenter6:54

Do you think most people sort of lie to themselves then about what they properly enjoy culturally? Do you think that most people want to see their version of themselves reflected back on at them at what they do?

Craig Brown7:04

Well I do I'm very I like people to be aspirational, so I think pretension is often a good place to start, you know, and it'd be absurd to just read Michael Barrymore's autobiography or something. But I d I think the uh the line between them is much thinner than most people uh make out.

Presenter7:20

You've said that you don't like going into the office, that that sort of social interaction that surrounds the actual work makes you feel uncomfortable. What about socializing? Because, you know, if you do go to literary parties or book launches or, you know, swanky evenings out in London, as somebody of your stature would be invited to, you must surely bump in to quite a few of the people you've parodied.

Craig Brown7:39

Um, I mean the good thing about those is usually if you're avoiding someone, they're avoiding you.

Presenter7:49

What about Harold Pinter though? I mean, you've had a fair few goes at him over the years.

Craig Brown7:52

Um yes, well I was um in a way I was rather sort of flattered. I was once in a party in a huge, almost like a ballroom in a hotel, and I saw him the other side. He was doing a sort of gargoyle face at me with his thumbs in his ears and going uh wa waggling his fingers um and sticking his tongue out. And I thought that was very curious'cause there are about five hundred people. And then the uh hostess of that evening said told me later that he had said to her in his deep voice, Is that who I think it is? and she said, Uh oh yes, do you want to beat him up? and he said, I wouldn't dirty my fists. And but I felt in my sort of autograph hunting way, I thought that was rather a nice thing to be told.

Presenter8:32

And so I I said in the introduction that you started parodying uh Harold Plinter Place when you were just fourteen. I mean, most people, you know, who are fourteen and reading that sort of stuff feel rather smug about it, that they get it. Well you

Craig Brown8:43

Um yes, I mean I I actually I think angry people are very funny, like um you know, Basil Faulty and Pinter was an angry person. There's always comedy in anger, so I was just using Pinter's anger. It could almost could have been anyone.

Presenter8:57

One of your A levels was in theology. Is it right that you parodied the voice of God?

Craig Brown9:00

Pandit

Craig Brown9:02

Yes, I mean that that's jolly easy. I mean as easy as Aralpinter. Old Testament is very, very long and God is very uh repetitive and and bad tempered a lot of the time as well. And so I knew that the A level uh examiners won't if you said well Micah chapter two verse three so you know they're not going to check out and so you could if you wanted to prove God did this or that or whatever in answer to the question, you could always just make it up.

Presenter9:29

What grade did you get?

Craig Brown9:30

I got some hay.

Presenter9:32

Let's have some music then. Our second today, what are we going to hear?

Craig Brown9:34

Oh, Kathleen Ferriero, What Is Life? When I said Nina Simone was one of the two great voices, Kathleen Ferriero's the other. Uh and in many ways for though they're obviously incredibly different people, they both had a kind of basic warmth to their voice um and just profoundly moving, and especially on this song I think.

Presenter9:59

Oh to be what is length of God dead.

Presenter10:08

What is God?

Presenter10:11

I fear what we're willing.

Speaker 310:23

Here's my

Speaker 110:36

You're a dear friend.

Speaker 110:40

Uh

Craig Brown10:40

I feel like

Presenter10:54

Kathleen Ferrier and What Is Life from Gluck's Orpheus and Eurydice with the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sir Malcolm Sargent. We're going to take a little wander back then, Craig Brown. It was Surrey and it was nineteen fifty seven.

Craig Brown11:06

Yeah, yeah.

Presenter11:06

Yes. What are your memories of of early life at home?

Craig Brown11:10

Um, very happy. We lived in a place called Westcote outside Dorking, so my kind of roots are in Surrey. You're not meant to have roots in Surrey, you meant to have them in the north or the west or the east. But it's a very nice place, I think, and I still like it.

Presenter11:24

And as if to add insult to injury, your father was a stockbroker. Yes.

Craig Brown11:27

Yes, and we lived in a mock tutor house actually, so we sort of ticked all the boxes.

Presenter11:32

And what was your father like?

Craig Brown11:34

Um he was a very kind of decent man. Um

Craig Brown11:39

and kind. I think in a way he didn't want to be a stockbroker, but his brother had kind of had gone to Cambridge, had gone off the tracks and I think my father was rather a victim of that because th so then his father wouldn't let him go to university. So I think in some ways he wasn't a natural stockbroker.

Presenter11:56

And your mum? She was at home, was she? Yes.

Craig Brown11:58

Yes, because um she had six children to look after, of which I was sort of somewhere in the middle.

Presenter12:01

Yeah.

Presenter12:03

Right.

Presenter12:04

That's quite a lot.

Craig Brown12:05

It is it is a lot. One of the reasons, I suppose, for the uh quantity is that they were both very enthusiastic Catholics.

Presenter12:13

And so was Catholicism a big part of your uh big part of your upbringing actually.

Craig Brown12:16

Yes. Yes, and I went to a a Catholic prep school and would have gone to a Catholic public school, but my older brother, one older than me, wasn't enjoying it, so I was given the choice of not having to go there.

Presenter12:28

So I suppose unsurprisingly, given the background you were brought up in, you were you were sent to boarding school, I mean, in most people's sort of terms, pretty early. You were sitting there.

Craig Brown12:36

Yeah, I was seven, but my mother always says I wish you wouldn't say you were seven, because you're only two weeks off eight. And so anyway, put add that coder.

Presenter12:45

Right.

Craig Brown12:45

So as not to upset her.

Presenter12:46

Can you remember your first day at prep school?

Craig Brown12:48

I remember not necessarily the first day, but going back the first day of each term, just that kind of homesickness I think is unnecessary and uh doesn't help you and maybe makes you have a kind of emotional cut off later in life.

Presenter13:03

And the other one is a little bit more.

Craig Brown13:09

Boarding school.

Presenter13:10

Right, so you mean what you what you have as kind of carapace around your emotions just to try and protect yourself as you can see.

Craig Brown13:15

I think so. I mean, the trouble is you never know what your alternative life would have been. Um I mean I had good fun at school. I mean I had a great friend Charlie Miller and we used to have a tape recorder and imitate all the staff. You know, a lot of the time was spent giggling. But those early days of each new term were always rather painful.

Presenter13:36

Um, you once said that the teachers tend to be odder and more kind of grotesque at prep school, so it's quite a good recipe for humour.

Craig Brown13:44

Yes, I think by and large the teachers or suddenly then there were kind of very weird people. I mean the head master, he was sort of portly sixty-four year old, something like that, and he wore school uniform, which was um shorts and air tech s shirt and sandals. And the parents didn't uh think anything of it. I mean and so he had exa he wore exactly what the seven-year-olds were wearing um then there was a music master who used who had a girlfriend who worked for the bursa who was in a wheelchair and I remember he used to um come up this kind of long school drive and a little down the main road, um pulling her wheelchair behind his car on a on a rope. She was holding a rope and she was in the wheelchair. And so there were quite a odd things going on. So we'd we'd imitate them a lot into this tape recorder and uh and then there was a kind of form of voodoo, I think, now that you'd imitate them to kind of bring them down to your own size, make them less frightening.

Presenter14:27

She was in the week.

Presenter14:44

Let's have some music, then. We're on your third of the day. What are we going to hear now, Craig?

Craig Brown14:48

Ah well, this is one of the great times of my uh childhood, and of course you could only see it during the holidays. Crossroads, the great you couldn't call it a soap opera, you would have to call it a drama, set in a motel outside um Birmingham. Anyway, I'd better not go on about it, because I could be talking for about an hour. But um this is the theme tune from Crossroads.

Presenter15:43

That was the Tony Hatch Orchestra and the theme to crossroads. It did, genuinely, did it bring back happiness. It was your manager.

Craig Brown15:48

Yes, because, you know, the music would come on and then someone would shout, Crossroads is about to start, crossroads and we'd all rush downstairs and, you know, uh it was the sort of thing which linked us all in a way, because my brothers were very keen on sport and that kind of thing, which I wasn't. But everyone liked Crossroads.

Presenter16:02

And you went to Eton? Yeah. And and you've said of yourself as a schoolboy, I was in a little gang of cynics. We'd be the ones sneering round the edges, separate and sneery rather than cool.

Craig Brown16:10

Catches.

Craig Brown16:14

Yes. Um I was certainly in the sort of the non-players, you know, the ones who wouldn't join in, who didn't have team spirit.

Presenter16:22

So were you a good fag at Eton?

Craig Brown16:24

Um well the worst, the grimmest days of fagging were over, so uh so you weren't beaten or anything. Um I wasn't you had this my uh children were asking about it yesterday after they'd seen some documentary, they couldn't believe it that it was sort of going on in my lifetime, but um that a sort of senior boy would scream, Boy up

Presenter16:32

Uh What did you have to do?

Craig Brown16:48

um at the top of the stairs, and then everyone would have to come running and the last person there would get a job, which was usually just to buy, you know, a packet of cream crackers or send a message to someone else. But so it was a sort of nuisance, but it wasn't uh cruel.

Presenter17:02

And as a kid, and I I'm guessing this must have been at the time you you were eating, you used to write letters to Melody Maker.

Craig Brown17:07

Yes, my first published stuff I used to get all the uh there were four or five pop papers, weeklies, at that time, and I was completely obsessed by pop music.

Presenter17:17

And what was it useful criticism, then?

Craig Brown17:19

No, sort of like iniggly little things. I mean, the only one I can remember is John Lennon had given a

Craig Brown17:24

um an interview saying that

Craig Brown17:27

I think it was a word like just, I can't remember. It said, you know, one of those filler words. It was lazy songwriting and I found out that, you know, one of the Beatles songs had the word just in it. So I it was sort of clever dick stuff.

Presenter17:38

Right. And you like seeing your name printed out. Yes.

Craig Brown17:40

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I suppose by that stage I knew I wanted to be a writer, so that was a little step on the way.

Presenter17:46

And on the question of being sort of slightly separate and and sneery and not being a sporty boy, but being a wordy boy.

Craig Brown17:52

Yeah.

Presenter17:52

What about when it comes to your own children then? Because of course I think as parents what we really want is just, you know, for our kids to join in. That's what we want them to do. Yeah. Do you did you want, when your kids were school age, for them to join in?

Craig Brown17:52

Uh

Craig Brown18:01

We can

Craig Brown18:05

I actually when my daughter did at her very first school, little school, she we went to see her doing a kind of ballet or dance some dancey thing, um she was about five.

Craig Brown18:16

She wouldn't join in, and I was a little part of me was rather delighted.

Craig Brown18:21

But on the other hand, they're both much more social than I am, so I that's something to applaud.

Presenter18:27

Yes, that's progress, I suppose. Let's have some more music then, Craig Brown. We're on your fourth choice.

Craig Brown18:27

Uh

Craig Brown18:28

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Craig Brown18:33

Oh yes, well when I was uh talking just now about loving pop music, this friend of mine, Charlie Miller, he said there's this new album by a new band called Roxy Music and he played it and I just thought it was the most um amazing thing. I still think it's um an extraordinary album, the f the first Roxy Music album. I also thought it'd be appropriate to the Desert Island um Sea Breezes by Roxy Music.

Speaker 319:00

We've been learning now.

Speaker 319:05

In our present state.

Speaker 319:08

Hoping help will come from above.

Speaker 319:16

Believe angels that make the same mistake.

Speaker 319:25

In love.

Presenter19:30

That was Roxy Music and Sea Breezes. So, Eton to Oxbridge, that's how it goes, Craig Brown. Except it didn't go that way for you. You decided not to.

Craig Brown19:37

I don't know. I didn't I mean, I I I didn't mind Eaton.

Craig Brown19:42

But I wanted to get on and I just thought, Oh, well, Oxbridge is just more of the same, which I think is probably right. I was told then that you could do drama, and I thought, Well, this is glamorous, and it doesn't sound like work, and so I did drama at Bristol University.

Presenter19:55

And you thought you wanted to be a playwright.

Craig Brown19:57

Well, I still do actually. I mean, that was my original ambition. I think you should sort of.

Craig Brown20:04

Remember your original ambition, even if you're too uh lazy or cowardly to get down to it.

Presenter20:09

Right, it must be cowardly, it can't be lazy,'cause you work very hard.

Craig Brown20:12

Yes, but it's kind of mental laziness. I mean, I know how to do articles, I know how to do parodies, I don't know how to do plays. I mean, actually I have got an idea. Maybe this does done this will prompt me into writing one, because I have got quite a good idea, but uh, you know, everyone has quite a good idea.

Presenter20:28

And so after NME then and Melody Maker, when you were writing in little sort of pedantic letters as a schoolboy, when was your first piece of published work that you actually got paid for?

Craig Brown20:36

I think the very first published paid work was for The New Statesman. I left stupidly, I th well, semi-stupidly, I left the drama course a year before the end of it, slightly because I thought, well, it doesn't make any difference whether you have a drama degree or not. Uh and other reasons I can't even remember. Um and so I wrote an article and sent it into The News Statesman about why I'd left university. In fact, I now think that I should read the article and find out why I did leave university because I can't remember.

Presenter21:09

It's time now for some more music then, Craig. Um it's your fifth. What is it?

Craig Brown21:12

It's your fifth. What is this? Um was The Kinks. And this song uh is often in my head, and especially nowadays when we have a flat quite near Waterloo Bridge, and it's Waterloo Sunset.

Presenter21:36

Uh But I am so lazy, don't want to wonder, I stay at home and die

Presenter21:46

But I know

Presenter21:50

Be afraid.

Presenter21:55

As long as I gaze on Waterloo Sunset, I am in paradise.

Presenter22:02

That was the Kinks and Waterloo Sunset. Sir Craig Brown, you've uh written for The Times, the London Evening Standard, The Spectator, The Guardian, The Daily Mail, many others besides.

Craig Brown22:11

Probably easiest to say the ones I haven't.

Presenter22:11

Put

Presenter22:14

Do you have to ch change your voice? Do you have to change what you write for the audience?

Craig Brown22:16

I try not to. I mean, with popular journalism you for instance you you you'd have to say Henry James the author or something rather than just Henry James if you're writing the TLS. But so you have to there's a certain level of politeness. But I don't think I changed it any more than I would in conversations with people.

Presenter22:33

Newspaper editors, of course, these days are managing decline. That's what they're doing. Do you feel like you're part of a dying industry where people will pay to read what you have written?

Craig Brown22:42

Yes, I do. I used to think it would see me out. I um I suspect it won't. So I was thinking, well, I've got to go into books, but now you realize that books

Craig Brown22:52

Books are sinking even quicker. Um and so that might be a a reason for drama actually. I sort of think that drama will always survive. And so uh I think I might have to diversify before I hit the dust.

Presenter23:06

Your wife is a writer too. You've been married to Frances for is it twenty five years you've been married?

Craig Brown23:07

Yeah.

Craig Brown23:10

Yes, twenty five years this year, and she writes tragedy uh downstairs and I write comedy upstairs and we Does it feel like the perfect balance? I think it is. You could say I'm more tragic than her and she's more comic than I am.

Presenter23:16

Does it feel like the perfect balance?

Presenter23:23

And does she read your stuff and do you read hers?

Craig Brown23:25

Um if I think I've done a real dud, uh then I'll say, Look, what's wrong with this? But it'd be unbearable for her to read everything I wrote.

Presenter23:36

Um everybody who reads your stuff has their favourites, of course. I'm thinking of your your parodies now. Which which ones do you think have come off best? You you finished them, you thought, yep, nailed it.

Craig Brown23:45

Um well some I do quite a lot of literary festivals and sort of performances these days and so there are ones that I like reading out. Uh I suppose something like Duchess of Devonshire or um the sort of the aristocratic voice and and sort of say quite kind of sweet, it's not a really cutting one. So I like those ones which work on stage, I suppose.

Presenter23:57

With all the horrible messages.

Speaker 123:58

It's an ice.

Presenter24:09

Um you're quite bold at literary festivals. I mean these things do tend to be dominated by people either trying to make a name for themselves by saying something really outrageous or being very polite about everybody who writes, but but you recently rather I think humiliated would be a fair word. Kay Burleigh the sky presenter who've written a book. Tell me what you

Craig Brown24:22

I think

Craig Brown24:25

Yeah.

Craig Brown24:26

It was rather irresistible, and I've done it before. I'm not sure I would do it again. Basically, if there's someone.

Craig Brown24:32

In the audience, who you have parodied, well, you think, well, am I going to read out that parody or am I not? And Kay Burley had written an atrociously bad novel. I mean, it's.

Craig Brown24:44

It's just how it was published. Anyway, and I'd not only parodied it, but I'd reviewed it very badly.

Craig Brown24:52

Um but I anyway, I read it out, but actually it's it's awkward in those occasions'cause other times I've read it out and people have howled with laughter. But everyone starts feeling sorry for her and a little kind of laugh out. It it's it's not worth it, I don't think, in terms of kind of audience amusement. And then quite understandably she decided not to stay on for dinner at the literary festival.

Presenter25:16

Do you feel bad about that?

Craig Brown25:16

Yeah.

Craig Brown25:18

No, no, I think uh with someone at her level uh they should be told not you know do other things, but whatever you do, don't write another book.

Presenter25:28

To have some music, Craig. Um, what's next?

Craig Brown25:30

Oh, this is actually, it's not music. It's not music. So, in a way, I think you could with great comedy.

Presenter25:34

It's not in a way

Craig Brown25:38

There is something musical about it. This is Peter Sellars and Irene Handel doing a a parody of the critics. I think it was in then those days Critics Forum. Peter Sellers does all the voices. Irene Handel plays a kind of posh, I think it was sort of Dillis Powell she was probably imitating because this was in the fifties. And it's just very, very funny.

Speaker 325:59

Wasn't it La Roche called who said To jour la Mans fait and domes avec la sange?

Speaker 126:07

Sange. And of course, didn't I shall I have it? Des Ausskeschlagen. Auskelagen. Ausgeschlagen. Was in der Zeiten Ein Tag?

Speaker 326:20

Yes. Well, we appear to be agreed on essentials here, and divided only on minor points.

Presenter26:25

That was Peter Sellers and Irene Handel and the critics. So tell me, Craig Brown, a little bit more about offending people, because it's quite interesting to to hear how unabashed you seem to be about that. Mohammed Al-Fayyat was somebody else that you did you relish offending him or you

Craig Brown26:41

No, there are some people one does relish offending uh and I I think he was an awful or is an awful man. And so I was rather delighted when one day a uh solicitor's letter came with all my previous offences. And I thought, God, he you know, about a list of eight or nine. I thought, God, he's read all of them. This is marvellous. Uh um not that he did.

Craig Brown27:02

Altered his character, he's living proof that satire doesn't work.

Presenter27:07

Given that you've written for Private Eye for for twenty or so years now, and you you write the diary column in that, writing in somebody else's voice, there is a degree to which that is

Presenter27:16

Is it libel proof, would you say, you can get away with so much more?

Craig Brown27:20

Um, yes. I mean, it's particularly if someone

Craig Brown27:25

And I'm thinking now of someone like Heather Mills McCartney or Lord Archer. If they have a slightly shaky, that's how we say, hold on the truth, then parody is a brilliant thing. So you can have if Geoffrey Archer says, Oh, well, I was the third man on the moon or something like that, and there's no he can't libel you for if it's in his voice saying it. Whereas if you said Geoffrey Archer is a liar, you that would be libelous.

Presenter27:51

Um you've said that you write terrifically quickly and and actually that the m the more quickly you write the better things are. Explain a little bit.

Craig Brown27:57

Explain a little bit. By and large, by and large, you kind of riff on something. What I do with most of my parodies, I'll kind of assemble.

Presenter27:59

I just

Craig Brown28:05

the material. So I'll write down key phrases that they use. It's almost entirely the language and I'll write it down in this sort of rather librarian way, and then I'll just sort of soak it up and then I'll go with it. And I think in that way it is better to do it fast.

Presenter28:20

And what about the the ephemeral nature of modern day celebrity? You know, one moment somebody's on the cover of OK and then three months later nobody can even remember their name.

Craig Brown28:24

Cover.

Craig Brown28:27

I know, and it is rather frightening looking at uh I mean I've done a number of uh books of my

Craig Brown28:32

Journalism and you know you think, well, who was Stephen Byers? you know, and you can't remember, and yet he was obviously huge news that week. I mean, it's truer, oddly enough, of politicians.

Speaker 128:38

Ooch

Craig Brown28:42

uh you know, pe members of the Blair Cabinet than it would be of um pop stars. Uh pop stars seem to have a much greater shelf life these days than politicians.

Presenter28:51

Let's go to another one of your choices then, Craig Brown. What's next?

Craig Brown28:54

Oh, well, um, this is my daughter Tallulah singing a Van Morrison song Into the Mystic, um, accompanied by my son Silas and my wife Frances and two of

Craig Brown29:09

To Lula's singing group, The Trills. Into the Mystic by Van Morrison is a beautiful song, but I think when Van Van Morrison's voice is rather kind of screechy, uh whereas my daughter's voice is beautiful and it's um

Craig Brown29:28

It uh it brings tears to my eyes.

Presenter29:33

And when that fog home blows I'll be coming home.

Speaker 329:34

A come blow.

Presenter29:41

And when that far-home whistle blows, I got to hear it, I don't have to fear it.

Speaker 129:43

Almost.

Presenter29:50

That was Into the Mystic by The Browns and your daughter there on lead vocals, Craig Brown. Um you you are uncle to Florence Welsh, is that right, a Florence in the Machine?

Craig Brown30:11

Yes, I mustn't claim too great a connection, though I'd love to. She's actually my my wife's niece, so my wife's brother's daughter, yes.

Presenter30:19

Do you ever get together as a as a very big family, given you've got six? Yes.

Craig Brown30:23

Yes, we did a good um she stayed with us Christmas.

Craig Brown30:27

In fact, I in in in that way you could say it's drama. She acted um in my spoof of Downton Abbey. We did Brownnton Abbey.

Craig Brown30:36

And she's a very good actress. Yeah, and she's she joins in.

Presenter30:39

Easy to spoof, tempted and happy.

Craig Brown30:41

Almost pathetically easy to spoof. It is a spoof.

Presenter30:45

Um your daughter then, uh who we just had there, Tallula, she's twenty-four, is that right? Twenty-three. Twenty-three. And Silas is.

Presenter30:53

And are they showing any interest in what their mother and father both does?

Craig Brown30:57

My daughter is writing plays. So yeah, and I didn't, as far as I know, I didn't push her to write plays. And they're not the kind of plays I would write. They're very interesting. They're not sort of spoofs or, you know, they're the real thing. And they're being performed, are they? Um on and off. She did one at the weekend in Aldborough where we lived, yes.

Presenter30:59

So yeah.

Presenter31:10

And they're being performed, are they?

Presenter31:17

And was that a sweaty palmed moment sitting in the audience watching

Craig Brown31:19

No, I oddly enough, I've always had um complete confidence in her.

Craig Brown31:24

Strange enough, seeing Florence perform, which we do quite a lot, there seem to be more things that can go wrong for Florence. She wears very, very high heels, and I was thinking, Oh, God, she's gonna well otherwise she'll climb a ladder or you know, so uh it's slightly more unnerving. My daughter is incredibly sort of grounded and sensible.

Presenter31:24

Uh

Presenter31:41

And so you're going to be without them all, of course, on the island?

Craig Brown31:44

Yes.

Presenter31:45

The Lonely Writer. Will you be lonely?

Craig Brown31:46

It's very hard to say, because I've hardly ever been by myself. I'm I tend to be by myself at breakfast,'cause I get up earlier than the others. I suppose if someone said you are never going to be rescued, that that would that would be very peculiar. But um otherwise I suppose I'd get by.

Presenter32:01

Hmm.

Presenter32:04

Let's have your final choice then. What are we going to hear?

Craig Brown32:06

And my final

Craig Brown32:08

Choice is well, at the last minute I I had got down Saint Matthew passion.

Craig Brown32:15

But then I thought, no, no, I don't really have something to dance to. I'm in I'm in I'm a terrible

Craig Brown32:20

dancer, but one of the great joys being alone on the desert I can dance to my heart's content, no one can see me. I think this is also the the greatest pop record ever made. I Cantina Turner, River Deep, Mountain High.

Presenter33:03

That was Icantina Turner and River Deep Mountain High. The books, then, Craig Brown. You're going to get the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare. What else will you take?

Craig Brown33:10

Yes, and I don't I there's I've noticed a recent trend of people saying, Oh, I don't want to take the Bible. Well, anyway, I want to take the Bible, particularly New Testament, and the rest is lots of interest in it. It's over long, but and uh Shakespeare I love, because I haven't read enough Shakespeare. Slightly cheating, but I want to take the

Presenter33:16

Right.

Craig Brown33:28

Eleventh edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, which came out in nineteen ten. It's just beautifully written. People like Bertrand Russell were writing for it. Uh TH Huxley and Edmund Gosse. It would be a perfect Desert Island book, anyway.

Presenter33:41

Slightly cheating, as you say, but we'll allow you at home.

Craig Brown33:42

And

Craig Brown33:44

What I'd really like is a subscription to Private Eye. The way I see the world is the way the Private Eye sees the world.

Presenter33:50

You can't have it.

Presenter33:52

No. No. It's a link to the outside world. You've already been given your books.

Craig Brown33:52

No.

Craig Brown33:55

In my books.

Presenter33:56

I'm not going to give you more printed words.

Craig Brown33:57

Oh, okay. Well, I'll have um a really good conjuring set.

Craig Brown34:03

I like conjuring and I'd like my son's much, much better conjuring than I am. I quite like to kind of, in my competitive way, surpass him. So it would have to be a really good conjuring set.

Presenter34:13

No live rabbit for the hat, but everything else you can have. And if you had to choose just one of these eight discs, which one would you save?

Craig Brown34:21

Um, it would have to be my daughter and I have friends and my family with Into the Mystic.

Presenter34:27

Right, that's yours. Craig Bryant, thank you very much for letting us hear your desert island discs.

Craig Brown34:30

It's being bliss.

Presenter35:09

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.