Laurence Marks and Maurice Gran

Presenter0:16

My castaways this week are the writers Lawrence Marks and Maurice Grann. They've been at the Rock Face Mining for Laughs for over forty years and they've given us plenty of gems. Among them monologues in the seventies for Frankie Howard, the era defining character Alan Bastard, MP, Star of the New Statesman, and now the successful revival of their long running and much loved sitcom Birds of a Feather.

Presenter0:38

Grammar school boys from North London they first met as ten year olds at a Jewish youth club, growing up to have real jobs in the civil service and journalism.

Presenter0:45

Before finally embarking on the precarious business of making a living from putting words into other people's mouths. They say we're unusual as writers in that we cover the waterfront. We've written radio plays, written for the stage and TV, and written the worst film ever in history, and we're proud of that. So welcome to you both. You have this clearly successful, fruitful partnership. Are you actually friends?

Speaker 21:10

I suppose we are friends. We were friends before we were fellow writers, but now because we work so much together we have to

Speaker 21:18

Rasha now socializing, otherwise we'd be sick of each other.

Laurence Marks1:21

Right, Lawrence, how would you want to?

Presenter1:22

Yeah, I'm excited.

Laurence Marks1:25

You turn to one another in times of crisis, although we haven't had many. I was in hospital a couple of weeks ago and it was Maurice. I said, Can you come and collect me? I'm being discharged. And I said, No.

Presenter1:37

Um bad enough of course that we ask our single castaways to choose eight discs, but of course as a pairing we've asked you to choose eight discs and I'm guessing it looks like a kind of four fourths.

Laurence Marks1:46

We could have easily come in here with eight discs that we both love. Right. But we chose not to because our musical tastes have diversified over the years and I think that we wanted

Presenter1:50

Right.

Laurence Marks2:01

believing we were going to be on separate islands that we would wanted our own amusing.

Presenter2:05

Yes, you will indeed be on separate islands, but we might come to that later. And Morris, I'm going to ask you then to tell us about the the first disc we're going to hear, and it's one of your choices. Tell me about it.

Laurence Marks2:07

Well then

Speaker 22:13

Okay, well the first record is In My Room, which is a Beach Boys song. It's an album called A Jazz Portrait of Brian Wilson, which Lawrence gave me, and I was just bowled over by it. I like what people call dinner or lift jazz. I like everything about jazz except the improvisations and the long solos. So this is my sort of music. And also growing up on the Beach Boys and the Beatles, having the good fortune to grow up with that music. This song really reflects the sort of teenager I was at the age of sort of 14 or 15, morose and full of self-pity. And this is a beautiful song if you're morose and full of self-pity.

Speaker 42:56

There's a world where I can go and tell my secrets to

Speaker 43:07

In my room.

Speaker 43:13

In my room

Speaker 43:20

In this world I lock out all my worries and my fears in

Presenter3:32

In My Room Sung There by Marilyn Scott.

Presenter3:36

We've had a good few partnerships come to our islands over the years. We've had Mortimer Wise, Frank Muir and Dennis Norton, Anton Deck, the your fellow scriptwriters Dick Clement and Iain Lafrenay. I'm wondering if if you have ever written successfully on your own?

Laurence Marks3:50

Yeah.

Laurence Marks3:50

Well, I've written two books. I mean, I was a journalist, so I've written seriously on my own. But the thought of wanting to write comedy on your own.

Presenter3:53

So I've

Laurence Marks3:59

fills me with dread. Because what you need a sounding board? Well people often say to me how do you and Morris work? And I say he comes in around ten o'clock, we argue till about half past twelve, then we have lunch and he comes back and argues till five o'clock and then he goes home. We enjoy the argument if you like the Talmudic exercise of getting to a point and you couldn't do that on your own. I don't know how comedy writers write on their own.

Presenter4:24

Maurice, I'm so interested that Lawrence there used the word Talmudic, because one of the things I wanted to ask you is whether your partnership you see your writing in that brilliant tradition of Jewish comedy, which is such a sort of well, for those of us who love it, a very rich tradition that goes back very far, and much of it is about, you know, slightly argumentative talking.

Speaker 24:44

Yes, although you could say that step toe and son was extremely talmodic. I think we do see it in that tradition, and certainly when I was growing up when I wasn't being morose and feeling sorry for myself, I was listening to uncles and cousins telling jokes. Joke telling was a competitive exercise in my extended family.

Presenter5:00

There's a question I wish to ask you and I don't want it to seem rude, but all the comedy writers that I've ever met are quite miserable.

Laurence Marks5:07

I think that's very true. I mean, um we

Presenter5:09

I should say very good company and quite miserable. I mean, that's what I mean.

Laurence Marks5:13

Yes, I think that's true. We've been to many a BBC comedy writers' dinner where you wouldn't have imagined that the ten or fifteen people round the table had produced more laughter to the nation than anybody else.

Speaker 25:26

I think it's true of solo comedy writers, miserable or at least very internalizing. I don't think we're miserable. I don't mean that's all you are. No, no, no.

Presenter5:37

But you know, you understand it's that strain of sort of miserablist tendency.

Speaker 25:40

Well, you have to see the dark side in order to see the light side.

Presenter5:44

To write good comedy, and you've spent decades making millions of people laugh, and that is such a hard thing to pull off. Do you think it is the most difficult type of writing comedy? Oh, without question. Without question.

Laurence Marks5:55

Oh, without question. What interests me is that fine dramas on television, or indeed on stage, are lauded and applauded by critics, yet drama is easy to write once you've written comedy. It's writing fine drama and then having to make people laugh, and I think it's underrated.

Presenter6:14

Uh time for another disc. What are we going to hear now?

Laurence Marks6:17

Well, we go back to the middle 1960s. I went to see a film very popular at the time called Alfie.

Laurence Marks6:23

Lovely film, I enjoyed it enormously. But what I enjoyed more than the film was the soundtrack. It was this saxophonist playing this wonderful theme, in my opinion. And I thought from that point forth, A, I would like to learn to play the saxophone, and second, I saved up all my paper-round money to go to the old Ronnie Scotts Club in Gerrard Street to see Sonny Rollins play. And whilst there, with all these really cool dudes of the sixties, I heard him play this song.

Speaker 47:44

Yeah.

Presenter7:59

Chosen by you, Lawrence Marks, that was uh Alfie's theme differently from the Alfie film soundtrack performed there by Sonny Rollins. You've taken up the saxophone since.

Laurence Marks8:06

But a long time later, I mean, this would have been about 65, 66. I started in 88 and worked right through grade eight in 10 years.

Presenter8:16

That's very good. If you set your mind to something, you're one of those people. Yes. Uh Maurice, you were born in London then, where you both were, right at the end of of the forties. So you were the youngest of two children. And if you were writing the sort of setting the scene of your household, what instructions would there be to the director? How would you set the scene?

Speaker 28:35

The house I grew up in looked remarkably like the house that Harvey Moon moved into at the beginning of Series 3 because it was our house. Victorian semi-detached house in Finsbury Park that we owned, but we lived in about a third of it and Lodgers lived in the rest. You had to put two or three pennies in the a metre to have a bath. If you really want to luxuriate, you might put four pennies in the meter to have a bath.

Speaker 29:02

And my mother was a little bit frustrated. She was one of those women who had been whipped out of school at an age where she couldn't fulfil her academic possibilities, because this was nineteen nineteen. Her mother had died of Spanish flu, and

Speaker 29:18

She had to go and work behind a sewing machine, whereas what she wanted to do was to read books and write. Did she ever write? She wrote essays and poems and had the odd thing published in sort of youth movement magazines in the thirties. The most important thing I can say is that I grew up in the belief that the finest calling was to be a writer.

Presenter9:39

And Lawrence, what about you?

Laurence Marks9:40

Yeah.

Laurence Marks9:41

Well, I lived in a council flat, ground floor, damp.

Laurence Marks9:46

And uh

Laurence Marks9:47

The flat was depicted almost by Room in Get Back which we wrote with Ray Winston and Kate Winslow.

Laurence Marks9:57

I locked myself away in my room with books and an electric bass guitar and anything to get out of the eye line of my mother, who I think was crazy, and my father, who was who was quite a pleasant guy. I never really got to know them very well, I should say. I had a much older brother and sister, Shirley and Malcolm, who were much more like my parents than my parents were.

Presenter10:22

And would you ascribe that sort of semi-detachment from your parents as just something of the era? You know, peop people w weren't necessarily sort of sitting on the mail people.

Laurence Marks10:29

No, I think my parents were actually a bit off-centre, particularly my mother.

Presenter10:34

And you say she was a a bit crazy. Was she unwell?

Laurence Marks10:36

Oh. Was it no?

Presenter10:37

No.

Laurence Marks10:38

No, I think she was an angry and embittered woman that felt that life had treated her so damned bad that she's finished up in this damn council flat in Finsbury Park.

Presenter10:49

We could talk all morning, and we have to, I'm afraid, also fit in your music. So let's go to Morris now. Tell me about what we're going to hear next, Morris.

Speaker 210:56

I love pop music. I love soul music. All the music that I care about came out of Africa, of course. And having not even eight but only four songs, I've got to choose one that can remind me of everything. And the first time I heard Aretha Franklin, I just thought firstly, she was an artist supreme. And latterly, I was delighted to find out that the song was composed by two Jewish geeks, so there was hope for me in soul music as well. So it's Natural Woman, Aretha Franklin.

Speaker 411:30

Before the day I met you

Speaker 411:33

I was so unkind.

Speaker 411:36

You're the key to my peace of mind

Speaker 411:40

You make me feel, you make me feel, you make me feel like a natural woman.

Speaker 411:56

When my soul was in the lost and fine

Presenter12:01

And Morris, that was your choice. You make me feel like a natural woman. That was Aretha Franklin. So you were growing up then in the era of Abbott and Costello, a little latterly, the carry-on film. You were. I mean, you frown, but that's what they were making. That was what was called comedy in those days, at Jacques Taty, the Dean Show and all of that. What were you watching? Obviously not Abbott and Costello from the look on your face. No.

Laurence Marks12:12

You frown, but that's what was that's what they were making. That was what was

Laurence Marks12:16

Uh

Speaker 212:17

Yeah.

Speaker 212:18

Yes.

Speaker 212:22

Back on your fixes. No, the big treat for me was the Army game. That was a show I was very fond of, which when Lawrence bought me the D V D recently, I couldn't understand why we liked it, but it stated so much. It's interesting, I think radio was the influence on us, you see. And Round the Horn, which like the Army game, was written by Barry Took, who had played a big part in our lives. I enjoyed The Goons, although I was a little bit young for The Goons.

Laurence Marks12:51

I would never miss Steptoe and Son, merely because I identified with it so strongly about a young man that wanted to get away from a mad parent but just couldn't break the ties. I listened to Hancock's Half Hour Right Through the Nineteen Fifties, which was vitally important, and when I found out that the same chaps had written both shows, I think it was at that moment I thought to myself, I wouldn't half mind being a comedy writer when I grow up. But it was really the shows of the seventies that so influenced both Morris and I. We were blessed at coming through an era with shows such as Rising Dam,

Laurence Marks13:32

The good life. Porridge. Porridge. Especially porridge. I mean, porridge was it.

Presenter13:36

Oh well that's interesting that you bring up Porridge because you were saying that you know you watched something recently that you'd found funny when you were much younger and it simply wasn't funny anymore. Let's take a show like Porridge which is still being rerun and is certainly still making me and lots of other people laugh. Is the definition of good comedy that it doesn't date, that actually you should be able to watch it or listen to it many decades later and still have your

Laurence Marks13:47

Yeah

Speaker 213:48

They're not

Laurence Marks13:48

So what

Speaker 213:48

Thank you.

Laurence Marks13:48

Yeah.

Speaker 213:48

Yeah.

Laurence Marks13:48

Yeah.

Speaker 213:57

That's as good a definition as any. The question is whether it dates for a new audience, good stuff, survives.

Presenter14:06

Lawrence, it's time for your next choice. Now tell me about this and and what why you've chosen it.

Laurence Marks14:11

This takes me to 1985, Hollywood, when Morris and I went over there to work, and I had gone over there first because Morris's wife was expecting their first child. I didn't know anybody in Hollywood, but was invited one Sunday lunchtime to a barbecue party, and I was standing around the pool, not knowing anybody, until a blonde lady smiled at me and came over and said to me, Hi. She introduced herself as Cynthia.

Laurence Marks14:40

And she said, What do you do? and I said, I'm a writer. And she said, Oh, for whom? I said, I'm working at Paramount Studios. And you? And she said, Yeah, well, I'm a writer too. And I said, Which studio? So she said, No, no, I don't write scripts, I'm a songwriter. To which I said, Have you written anything I may have heard of? And she said to me, You may have heard of You've Lost That Loving Feeling. At which point I wished the earth had opened up and I just sunk down because it is my favourite pop song ever. And I met the composer.

Speaker 415:14

You're trying hard not to show it

Speaker 415:20

But they did.

Speaker 415:23

Baby, I love it.

Speaker 415:26

With all the sand of Jesus

Speaker 415:32

Oh, that love the world.

Speaker 415:37

You lost that love and feel and now it's gone, gone.

Presenter15:47

Lawrence, that was chosen by you. You've lost that loving feeling by the Righteous Brothers. Can you put your finger on what it was that made you want to leave and write comedy? Because you had an established and a well-regarded solid career in journalism.

Laurence Marks16:00

I suppose that Morris and I had been writing by the time

Laurence Marks16:05

The decision had to be made for about five years.

Laurence Marks16:09

Sending scripts into the BBC largely and getting nice rejections.

Laurence Marks16:14

I think that I always felt that and I think Maurice felt this too that if we were given this opportunity to do this thing that was beyond our realm, not to have done it would have been to have spent the rest of our life wondering what might have happened.

Speaker 216:30

Well, I was in a situation where if I had left, there was very little chance I could have gone back at the same level.

Speaker 216:36

So it was one of the few brave things I've ever done.

Presenter16:40

And let's just talk for a moment about this idea of encouraging rejections, because you know that seems in any writer's life, that seems to be a very important period. I think that.

Laurence Marks16:50

We have both

Laurence Marks16:51

Been blessed. Someone is up there looking down on us because from the moment that first rejection came from a guy called Jimmy Gilbert who was then head of comedy at BBC Television, the first script we ever wrote and sent in, he wrote back and said, There's something here, why don't you come in for a cup of tea? It's only now that we realize that's like forty-five steps up the ladder.

Presenter17:14

And your big break came writing for Frankie Howard. What about what he was like to work with?

Speaker 217:20

Well, Frank was pretty much like you'd expect him to be, sort of a shambling, morose genius with a dead hamster on his head that no one had the nerve to refer to. That was the funniest thing about him.

Speaker 217:36

I don't know whether it was funny that he wore it or that he thought no one noticed.

Presenter17:42

Let's talk for a for a moment about then the the mid eighties. You'd been invited by then to be scriptwriters to go to America, which surely seems like you know the golden land for for writers of T V and film.

Laurence Marks17:49

Which

Laurence Marks17:52

But for

Laurence Marks17:54

Hollywood came along because it had to. I mean, we had written by this time four hit shows, and we went. That was our mistake.

Presenter18:03

I mean, in a nutshell, what went badly, Morris?

Speaker 218:04

Well what no one told us that the working life and the whole ethos was completely different. We were two freelancers. You know, you arrive when you like, you go off when you like. If you think you've done enough work you might go and play a game of tennis. And they were working factory hours.

Laurence Marks18:21

We lived the Hollywood lifestyle. We had the convertible red sports car that we drove down Melrose every morning to work, playing Beach Boys out loud over the roof. We were we belonged to two tennis clubs.

Speaker 218:22

We didn't

Presenter18:33

Uh Maurice, it's one of your discs next. Tell me what we're gonna hear and why.

Speaker 218:36

Well, when when I was compiling my records, my daughter was over and she said, Well, you've got to have something from Into the Woods, because that was a show that my wife and I saw in London and loved. This is probably twenty years ago. And then the

Speaker 218:55

American version came on T V and our kids who were about eight and five just loved the show and learnt all the songs and still know the songs by heart and we've all been to see it whenever it comes on and it's just bizarrely the family sing-along. And so I've chosen the reprise of Agony because it's the best song in the show and it's the one they left out of the movie.

Speaker 419:23

While they lie there for years And you cry on their biers What unbearable bliss Agony that can cut like a knife

Speaker 419:37

Ah well

Speaker 419:39

Back to my one.

Presenter19:48

That was Agony from Into the Woods by Stephen Sondheim, sung there by Chuck Wagner and Robert Westenberg. So you come back from America, and it wasn't exactly a bruising experience, as you say, sort of tennis in the Hollywood Hills. And after a period of sort of lacking success, you suddenly have this great success. You invent Alan Bustard's MP, who I call the era-defining, and I don't think that was an overstatement. For a lot of people, he spoke of the very worst that we fear about politics and politicians. He was, of course, this sort of venal, egotistical, grasping.

Speaker 419:59

Yeah.

Speaker 420:04

Acting

Speaker 420:07

Yeah.

Laurence Marks20:14

Yeah.

Laurence Marks20:21

Cool.

Presenter20:23

Yeah.

Laurence Marks20:23

Boston. What actually happened was when we returned to England, it was like returning from Vietnam.

Laurence Marks20:30

In a senior position, having gone away as a a minnow, really, because people were saying, They've come back, they've come back. And suddenly we were invited to be

Laurence Marks20:41

Sort of groundbreakers and senior thinkers at conventions of IT V, etc., etc., just because we've been there.

Speaker 220:48

We met Rick at one of these conventions, so Rick said would we w write a show for him and we said to him, What sort of character do you want to play? and he said, I want to play a character that reflects the person I am.

Speaker 220:59

Which is depraved, cruel, vicious, some tongue-in-cheek.

Presenter21:04

Lawrence, how much do you think it contributed to this disregard that is generally out and about these days of politicians and what they get up to at Westminster? It was outrageous in its condemnation of our elected MPs.

Laurence Marks21:17

There are many stories I could tell about the New Statesman, not least that um much of what we wrote happened after we wrote it, and that a lot of MPs started modelling themselves on Alan Pastard. I mean, I remember Morris coming to work one morning with a Guardian and on the front page it was the what was it, the

Speaker 221:36

It was the Federation of Conservative Students' annual conference and they all looked like Rick.

Laurence Marks21:36

It was the

Laurence Marks21:41

At Lawrence it's time now.

Presenter21:41

Yeah.

Laurence Marks21:42

For your next choice to Tell me what we're going to hear.

Laurence Marks21:44

PICTURES AT AN EXHIBITION BY MAZORSKI. I, as a journalist, was visiting a woman that had been sentenced to death that was commuted, and she was serving life, and I became her power of attorney, and she asked me to take her few belongings home with me.

Laurence Marks22:01

for the day whenever she might come out. And amongst the belongings was a group of records and one of them was pictures at an exhibition. The opening movement stayed with me forever. It was so planted on my mind that when Morris and I came to write New Statesman, I said to Morris, this is the music I think gives it the dignity that Alan Bastard deserves.

Presenter23:13

Promenade from Pictures at an Exhibition by Mazworski, performed there by the London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Claudio Abado. Lawrence, you've referred a lot to feeling that, you know, somebody up there likes you and is looking down and how blessed you have been. There is a very sad episode in your life which involves, and you'll know I'm sure what I'm going to ask you about. In 1975, your father died in very tragic circumstances. It was the Moorgate tube crash. 43 people died. I think in addition to that, 74 people were hospitalised. At the time, you were working as an investigative journalist and you were commissioned by the Sunday Times, I think it was, to investigate this disaster.

Laurence Marks23:30

Do you know what?

Speaker 423:42

Yeah.

Laurence Marks23:42

Yeah

Speaker 423:43

Uh

Laurence Marks23:45

As an investigative journalist and

Laurence Marks23:48

Three times I think it was two.

Laurence Marks23:51

Uh

Presenter23:51

Bam.

Laurence Marks23:51

The editor, Harold Evans, had said that if they're going to talk to anyone, they'll talk to somebody that's in the same boat as they are. And he was right, as he was always right. It was a compelling investigation because I think I got to the bottom of what happened. At the same time, I was able to rid myself of the grief of the loss of my father. You were. Yes, because I was meeting other people who were I mean, people that just lost, people that were going to work that morning because a train that could have stopped didn't.

Presenter24:22

You spoke at the beginning today, but you know, very very readily and and openly about the fact that you know you you had this feeling of semi-detachment and really you felt like it was your brother and sister that were more parents to you.

Laurence Marks24:29

Thing you f

Laurence Marks24:31

Yes.

Presenter24:33

Your mother died when you were young, relatively near, twenty one.

Laurence Marks24:35

Relative.

Presenter24:37

Did you feel having had that difficult relationship and always feeling that you were fulfilling your father's ambitions for you, was there a sense, aside from the grief and it to a degree being dealt with with this work, where you felt sort of freed by your parents' death?

Laurence Marks24:50

Absolutely. I said to Morris, My mother's death was the first shackle off.

Laurence Marks24:55

And my father's death, and it's sad to say this, gave me all the freedom it's no coincidence that within two years of his death we were writing for Frankie Howard.

Laurence Marks25:05

It wouldn't have happened had he not died. In fact, I'd go further and say that Morris and my career would not have taken off had my father got off that train that morning.

Laurence Marks25:14

That's extraordinary.

Presenter25:16

Morris, what do you make of that?

Speaker 225:18

Well, I don't know. I think that Lawrence writing the article for the Sunday Times, as I remember, was what got Lawrence the job with This Week. And it was Job and This Week that got him bumping into Barry Took, who introduced us to Frankie Howard. So on a cause and effect level, I could see that happening. And I suppose because I I'm not a very dynamic or ambitious individual, I would have just stayed in the civil service writing unpublished novels.

Presenter25:26

Yeah, it was

Presenter25:43

It's very difficult to see somebody as successful as you are without ambition somewhere.

Speaker 225:48

Ambition without drive isn't much good, is it?

Presenter25:50

So is Lawrence the driver?

Speaker 225:52

Lawrence is in charge of luck. If you need a parking space outside the Palladium the night of the Royal Variety Performance, get a lift with Lawrence.

Presenter25:54

Yeah.

Presenter26:01

Lawrence, we're going to hear your next piece of music. What are we going to hear now?

Laurence Marks26:06

When we were asked on to Desert Island Disc, we knew we only had four records each. Had I been invited on my own, I would have had eight records, and one of them may well have been Paul Simon's American Tune. But because I only have four, I have to choose the piece of music from which Paul Simon took American tune, Lock, Stock and Barrel, and go with the chorale from St Matthew's Passion. But I also choose this piece of music because when my father died, the City of London, as they did with Seven Seven, had a memorial service at St Paul's Cathedral, and as we were walking into the cathedral, this was the music that was being played.

Speaker 426:52

A beautiful shiftful shape

Speaker 426:59

Scross a letter.

Speaker 427:05

In this sorrow.

Speaker 427:12

They missed those.

Speaker 427:32

Let's be small.

Presenter27:40

The chorale, O Sacred Head, Now Wounded, from Bach St. Matthew Passion, sung by the Monteverde choir, conducted there by John Eliot Gardner.

Presenter27:48

It is, Lauren Smarts and Morris Grant, a golden time for television now, really. It is, you know, unlike the movies, it's sort of where all the production money is and the whole box set culture. People now really feel invested in television. It's where a lot of great quality directors and actors are as well. What advice would you give to aspiring writers who now maybe more than ever think TV is where I want to be? They don't see it as second best to movies anymore.

Speaker 228:14

Well, we do talk to writers often and we say all sorts of things. I like to say to a room of writers that the chances are that none of you will make it. But if you want to make sure that you don't make it, stop trying. It's the only craft stroke art where you've got no excuse. You can't say I'm a sculptor, but I can't afford marble. I'm a musician, but I can't afford an instrument. If you can afford a pencil and a bit of paper, you can be a writer, so you've got to write. If you've got to write. The key to comedy, I suppose, is attitude. You have to have strong attitudes for your characters.

Presenter28:50

And then the dialogue comes because it's just how the character you make it sound you can't do.

Speaker 228:50

I'm Uh And the dialogue comes because it's just how the character

Laurence Marks28:54

I always think the key for comedy is a fantastic idea and not enough time. That usually gets you through.

Presenter29:01

Explain that to me.

Laurence Marks29:02

If you've got a great idea, someone's going to want it tomorrow.

Speaker 429:05

Yeah.

Laurence Marks29:05

And as hard as you argue

Speaker 429:05

Uh

Laurence Marks29:07

You won't be able to make them make tomorrow three months down the line. So you write it.

Laurence Marks29:13

with an intensity you wouldn't do if you were doing it leisurely to send it off to an uncommissioned piece of work.

Presenter29:19

Um you're going to be on separate islands.

Laurence Marks29:21

Yeah.

Presenter29:21

Which is a strange place.

Laurence Marks29:22

Uh

Speaker 229:22

Adjacent, is it like an archipelago? Can we sort of shuffle across at high tide once a month or low tide?

Presenter29:24

You might want to shout across.

Presenter29:29

I'll leave that entirely up to you. Um uh how will you survive without each other? Will you be g maybe glad of the break?

Laurence Marks29:35

No, I think not. No. And because for the last thirty five years, every morning Morris has opened the front door and come in, we share practically everything together and I'd miss that.

Presenter29:48

Do you think

Presenter29:50

that you know each other better than anybody else knows you.

Speaker 229:54

Yes. Possibly, yes. Possibly. That's a hard question to answer, but possibly.

Speaker 429:59

Uh

Laurence Marks29:59

Uh

Laurence Marks29:59

I can't think of anybody that would know me better than Morris, because I share

Laurence Marks30:03

the secrets and the desires and the ups and the downs and have done for thirty five years, or indeed longer than thirty five years, I would say forty years. I have no reservation about saying to him, I have a major problem, and this is the problem.

Laurence Marks30:20

and he to offer a very sensible and thoughtful reply.

Speaker 230:25

Get over it.

Presenter30:29

Maurice, what's your last turnic then?

Speaker 230:30

My last track is Asia by Steely Dan. I'm a huge Steely Dan fan. Steely Dan, our American group we've been going for about 40 years at least, and who encapsulate everything people hate about over intellectualized, wordy, obscure, West Coast, Ponce, American rock music, and I love it.

Speaker 430:53

Chinese music always hits me.

Speaker 431:01

La Benjo

Speaker 431:04

Sounds like

Speaker 431:09

Asia.

Speaker 431:12

And oh my god, that's English too.

Speaker 431:17

I want to

Speaker 431:19

Yeah.

Presenter31:23

That was Asia by Steely Dan, your final choice, Maurice Graham. I'm going to give you both the books now. You're going to each get the complete works of Shakespeare, and we give each castaway the Bible too, so you can both have that. And Maurice, you are looking at me as well.

Speaker 231:36

No, I'd rather not have the Bible. I quite seriously would like to take the Koran, firstly because it is culturally very significant, possibly the most significant book of the twenty first century, rather like Das Capital was to the twentieth. And also, if I were to be rescued by Somali pirates, I'd have something to talk to them about.

Presenter31:38

Rise.

Presenter31:50

Mm-hmm.

Presenter31:55

Right, okay, there you go, you may have the Quran then, of course, and uh

Presenter31:59

What book are you going to take to accompany these books?

Speaker 232:02

I'm going to take, if I'm allowed to, the collected works of Evelyn Waugh, or is it Evelyn Waugh? I've never known you pronouncing him.

Presenter32:08

I think it's even

Speaker 232:12

Many of which I've read and some of which I haven't, and I think as a wonderful example of how someone can be apparently quite a ghastly person and yet a stunning and moving writer.

Laurence Marks32:22

You may have that in Lawrence.

Laurence Marks32:24

I'm going to choose to take my

Laurence Marks32:28

Diaries. I started keeping the diary

Laurence Marks32:31

In the summer of'sixty three'.

Laurence Marks32:34

And it goes up to last night. But the reason I'm taking it is not because there are far better reads, I know there are, it's because within that book are all the people that meant something to my life and it was written at the moment that the event happened. And it would be lovely to return to people like Rick Mail, Adam Faith, Frankie Howard, Barry Took, and myriad others.

Laurence Marks32:59

Furthermore, I've never read it. Right. I've written it, but I've never read it, so it would be just perfect to relive my life on the island again.

Presenter33:06

All right, it's a book and it's yours then. And you're allowed a luxury too. Morris, what will your luxury be?

Speaker 233:10

Well, I'm a terrible fidgeter and tapper. I've been really straining to tap along here. I've always wanted to play the drums, but I'm embarrassed to do it in public, so on the island I forget a really, really big noisy drum kit.

Laurence Marks33:25

Certainly you can have that, Lawrence. I'm going to take a collection of Chateau de Chem Sauterne from nineteen hundred to two thousand and one, and I'd like, please, ten bottles of each of my choices, a refrigerator and Sauterne glasses.

Presenter33:43

Oh, you may certainly have that. And if I were to press both of you just to pick one of and of course only four discs. So first of all to you, Maurice, which one disc would you save from the.

Laurence Marks33:53

La Retha Franklin.

Presenter33:54

Right, no pauses there, you knew exactly, Lawrence.

Laurence Marks33:56

Saint Matthew's Passion

Presenter33:59

They're both yours. Lawrence Marks and Morris Gran, thank you very much for letting us hear your desert island discs. It's been his pleasure.

Laurence Marks34:05

Uh

Speaker 234:05

An honour.

Speaker 234:07

I wish you meant that. I do. I truly do.

Presenter34:09

Thank you.

Presenter34:50

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 4.