Patricia Greene

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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.

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For more information about the programme, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.

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My castaway this week is the actress Patricia Greene. As Jill in the Archers she has played the part of the most famous farmer's wife in Britain for nearly sixty years, the lynchpin and matriarch, with a voice and character as familiar and comforting as a slice of Madeira cake and a nice cup of tea.

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Jill Archer is the personification of caring common sense, and has steered the Radio Force soap through decades of Ambridge harvests, heart breaks, and hijinks. These days Jill is back where she belongs, at Brookfield Farm, tending her bees, popping a pie in the aga, and supporting her son David and his family with a warm embrace and a backbone of steel.

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That's just the part she plays, of course. So what about the real Patricia Greene, or Paddy, as she's better known? Well, as a child, she says she was a little show off, and her love affair with the world of make believe began in the bleak years of post war Britain, when she went to watch a performance of Oklahoma.

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As a young actress she toured behind the Iron Curtain performing in Czechoslovakia, Romania and Poland.

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It all sounds a long way from Borsetshire.

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She says of the archers and the role that has defined her career We all care about our characters. I feel I know my character backwards, and she is very, very good.

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So welcome, Paddy Green. It is so nice to have you here. So first conceived, of course, as this everyday tale of farming folk, as we know, um, january the first, twenty sixteen, will be the sixty fifth anniversary of its first broadcast.

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That's a long time. How how does it feel to be part of the Archers? You don't ask yourself how it feels, you just do it.

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After a lot of years, it's just second nature, really. Plus nerves. I was doing a charity thing a very long time ago standing next to

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Dame Sybil Thorndyke, and she said to me,'Are you nervous'? I said,'Yes, I am' and she said,'It gets worse.

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And if you know particularly that you are at the heart of a storyline that is causing great interest in Archer's listeners, does that make you more nervous, the fact that probably there are a few hundred thousand more people tuning in than there were the week before? You don't think about the numbers when you do it. You think about where you are in that kitchen, and mostly in the kitchen.

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and you try to be your character as hard as you can.

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It's just that one's own foibles, you know, will I fluff? Will I lose my voice? Things like that that make you nervous. Here's the thing, when you came in today, and I I have to fess up early on, I am a great Archers fan. When you came in today and you said, Nice to meet you, how do you do? I thought

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Goodness me, it's actually hurt. When when you go into uh an unfamiliar paper shop, or sit down to a pub lunch somewhere that you don't normally go and you open your mouth to order or to to ask for something, do people sort of start back? Sometimes they do.

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I was in Waitrose some years ago.

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And it was a very

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Difficult storyline between Brian Aldridge Charles Collingwood and an Irish lady he was having a love affair with. Siobhan. It was Chiobon.

Patricia Greene3:35

Shavu.

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And it was reaching a climax. And a lady I hadn't met ever before came up to me and waved her, she grabbed my arm and she said,

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I've been invited out to drinks on Friday. May I go?

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I said, yes, you may. We don't want to miss a thing. Almost the entirety of Jill's life, I mean, from a young married woman, has been broadcast. We know the intimacies. I can find almost nothing, really, about your life when I was doing research. Is that a deliberate strategy? No, it isn't. It it is the person I am. I was brought up. Children were then told, speak when you're spoken to and be modest. Will you let me blow your trumpet for you today, then? I'd be delighted. Thank you very much. Tell me about your first piece of music, then. What are we going to do? Okay, we're going to start off with.

Patricia Greene4:23

Okay, we're going to speak.

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Brush up your Shakespeare from Kiss Me Kate.

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I did have the most amazing love affair with American musicals. It was fairly drab during the war, and then suddenly one was taken to London, up in the Gods, of course, to see Oklahoma and the energy and the bizarre that these American musicals the colour, it was just amazing. And of course

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I've always been stage struck, so Shakespeare is my greatest love, and I think the Americans do it very well.

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So I'm quoting him now.

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Brush up the Shakespeare and the women you will wow

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With the wife of a British ambassador Try a crack at a troilis and cressida If she says she won't buy it or taiki

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Uh

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Uh

Speaker 35:20

Make her take it, what's more as you like it. If she says your behaviour is heinous, kick her right in the car, you'll lay it!

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Brush Up Your Shakespeare, sung by Emil Walken John Barden from the 1987 West End production of Cole Porters. Kiss me, Kate. You were enjoying that very much indeed, Paddy Green. All Archers fans have a view of what the village of Ambridge looks like. Do you have a notional map in your head? Do you know the colour of the stone? When you say map, my mind goes blank because I'm spatially not good. But yes, I know Ambridge.

Patricia Greene5:51

When you say map.

Patricia Greene5:52

Yeah.

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It's a Cotswold village, honey coloured stone, lots of trees, a little bit hilly.

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Darling little houses and a village green. There are some things happening there right now that are not very darling indeed. I'm thinking of Rob Titchener and his dastardly manipulation of Helen. Throughout the years, the Archers has had so many wonderful and often controversial storylines. Grace Archer's Death in a Fire, which led to your introduction as a character, through to Clive Horrebin holding up the village shop, there was Sid Perke's affair with Jolene, there was Brian Aldrich's, which you've already spoken about, an illegitimate child from an affair, Nigel Pargiser a few years ago falling off the roof, and so on and so on. What have been your favourites? I like them all. I'm really pleased about the the Titchener story because I think that this business about

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Bullying wives and being nasty to wives. It's time it was aired, and I'm fairly glad that we're doing it.

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My favourite, very, very favourite story was in the olden days I wasn't allowed anywhere near the animals really.

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But one day a golden eagle came into the yard at Brookfield, and Giles was the first person to see it. And that was quite thrilling,'cause I'm a bit of a bird watcher. And there are, as I understand it, sort of ten, eleven writers altogether. Do do they ever

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Ask for your input. Do you ever say to them, Can I have a word?

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I've never dared. I can't believe that over the years you haven't cracked open a fresh new script and thought she wouldn't do that. Oh, absolutely. And then, if it's something like going into the bull and saying, I'd like a sweet sherry, and you know very well that Jill drinks dry sherry, you say. All we do is twiddle it a bit sometimes. I think I gave Jill a giggle early on, which she didn't have. But, no, I think it's the editor's job to do the storyline. What about what's happening to Jill right now? She's back at Brookfield, as we know, and these are perilous times for her son's relationship with his wife. How invested do you feel in what's going to happen next? Because we listeners really care. Oh, so do I. I desperately care. And I'm really sorry for Ruth because.

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You know, you wouldn't really want your mother in law living with you, putting cakes in the oven and showing you up all the time, would you? But, you see, Jilly's a strong she is strong, and she is in love with that Arger at Brookfield.

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And I think short of it a lot of things, she will stay there.

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Tell me about your next piece of music, Paddy Green. What are we going to hear? Beethoven is probably my very favourite composer.

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When we were amateurs, and my father was an amateur, we did a play by Andre Obe called Noah, and I remember seeing this silver wig and a spotlight, and this lovely tune coming out after the flood, and noticing my father in the wings with a little tear on his face, and I

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I'd never seen him cry, and

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I thought this is what I want to be part of.

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The Shepherd song from the fifth movement of Beethoven's Sixth Symphony played there by the London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Bernard Heitink and chosen by you, Paddy Greene, because you say that you remember seeing your father shed a tear at a beautiful piece of Beethoven music and you've never seen that happen before. Your father was Edward, your mother Josie. You were born in nineteen thirty-one. You lived in Derby in those early years. Tell me about family life. It was always fun. We had no money. I was brought up in a terraced house for the first six years of my life, with a row of lavatories in the courtyard at the back. But my parents had charisma, no money, but charisma, and they seemed to gather towards them a lot of very interesting people. And it was always cheerful, and there was a little fire burning in the grate. My father distempered the house. And we had a gate leg table in the living room. And when the leaves were down, that was my space. Listening probably.

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to conversations I shouldn't have heard and didn't understand but remembered. And my mother took me to the cinema every week and it was mostly uh Hollywood love stories really. So this is what I thought life was about. And I mean the first comedy that I remember was Laurel and Hardy of course and I remember laughing and my father said he was

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Quite shy was my father, and he said he was r really quite upset by my horrible laugh. And and you say your father was quite shy. On your birth certificate it says that he was a piano salesman. My poor father, it was because there was a slump. It's worse than a recession, it sounds it, doesn't it?

Patricia Greene11:28

That might

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And um he really could not.

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Sell bread to a starving man.

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He left school at fourteen and became apprenticed to an engineering firm.

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And the practice was, as soon as they became qualified as engineers, they got the sack automatically. So um he went out to get money wherever he could. And I mean one of the jobs he told me about later was that he sold a penny life insurance to the people in the slums of Derby.

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And

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May I tell this story? Yes. He told me later. He said he knocked at the door one day to s get his penny.

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And the woman inside said, Just a minute, Master Green and there was a scuffle and he went inside and there was a BAAA coming from the cupboard and of course that was a rustled sheep. So that was it what it was like really in those days. So then the poor man got a job selling pianos. Goodness knows whether he ever sold one. And he was a keen amateur actor. He was very good amateur actor. He didn't start until he was nicely settled at Rolls Royce where he worked.

Speaker 212:33

What's that?

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Until the end.

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Even I joined him at the Rolls Royce Dramatic Society in some stupid play as a child.

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And when John Dexter, who later did Nors Entreobe, he got hold of my father and made my father the lynchpin really of his new amateur dramatic society, and we did a lot of very posh plays.

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Were you? I get the feeling listening to you you were a daddy's girl.

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Well, I spent more time with my mother, of course, and she was glamorous and naughty.

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I think probably there was a better bond between my father and me, yes. Let's have some more music. Tell me about your third. What are we going to hear?

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We're going to hear the theme from the film Brast Off.

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In Derby we had in the olden days we had pits all the way round, and I would see black faced miners on the buses because this was before pit bars, you understand. And so

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The awful

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thing that happened to them when they closed all the pits, it hurt, really. And my very first musical memory of live music was a brass band in Derby. I can remember it now. All the lovely silver instruments marching along and I s was so excited I followed them and they had to drag me back.

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On a ranqueth contour, composed by Joaquin Rodrigo and played there by the Grimesthorpe Colliery Band from the original soundtrack of the movie Brastoff. Patty Green, you said an intriguing thing a moment ago about your mother. You said she was naughty. Yes. Her mother had this almost French idea of you got your man and then you took a lover and I'm afraid my mother fell for that one.

Patricia Greene14:56

I'll come with

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Yes. Fortunately, they're all dead now, so it's not going to hurt anybody. How did you know that? Well, I could see.

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Don't forget I was under the table listening all the time.

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Goodness me.

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Was your father aware?

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This is a thing I've never asked myself, but

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I don't know. I really don't know. He never mentioned it to me, of course. And did you ever talk to your mother about it? She used to say, Don't tell your father.

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Not the best way to bring up a child, is it? Well, I'm glad you drew that conclusion. Yes, because I was certainly thinking it. Wh how do you think it made its impression on you long term? It's all to do with these things that I at the cinema, you see, I lived in this fantasy world about love.

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And make believe. Yes. Make believe being a little bit nicer than real life. What's that? Well.

Patricia Greene15:45

That wasn't well.

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Just another side of it.

Patricia Greene15:48

Yeah.

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Um you were a bright little girl. You won a scholarship to the local grammar school. Now, of course grammar schools require their children well, they did at least to be very smart, you know, with the hat and the blazer and the winter coat and the how did you afford all of that? Well, you see, they didn't afford that all that. My father was mean, partly because

Patricia Greene15:53

Not

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He'd suffered this business of being married and having a child when he had no money.

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and because there were no jobs about, so it made him careful, let us say, for the rest of his life.

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And so I had a blazer.

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But my blouses, which were supposed to be green, were recycled WAF blouses dyed.

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My hockey shoes were a pair of boys' shoes. They were quite heavy, that sort of thing. But I di it didn't in any way.

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make me feel strange or odd or anything. It was just life. Tell me a little bit about this man called John Dexter. He he would go on to become Associate Director of the Royal Court in the National Theatre. He had been invalided out of the army and he locally set up an amateur dramatic and for some strange reason and took up with us.

Patricia Greene16:54

To kill the mm.

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And Dexter was there every night for years and years, and until of course he went to London.

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And he started this dramatic society weaned my father off these.

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Very ordinary plays where it's two men and sixteen women, you know, and we'd started to do proper plays. And he took hold of me really and said, No, if you want to be in the theatre, you will never get a job, probably ever. And if you do, you'll do as you're told. You'll play as cast.

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And he taught me the value of being part of a team.

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Never trying to stand out, certainly never trying to upstage. A lot of very valuable things like that. Um you spent a few years at the Central School of Speech and Drama. You've described it as the most amazing three years of your life. What made it so special?

Patricia Greene17:46

What made it so

Speaker 217:46

Uh

Patricia Greene17:46

Actually

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We were in the Albert Hall for starters, right at the top, and I went to London in nineteen fifty one, which was festival year, so

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Britain was in festival mood and trying to throw off the bleakness of post war Britain, and it was just like champagne. I laughed for a term. Everything was new.

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It was the most exhilarating time of my life. Did you fall in love? I did. Tell me in a moment. Let's keep them wanting more. Paddy Greene, tell me about what we're going to hear next. You're going to hear Nat King Cole singing Unforgettable.

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Unforgettable

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That's what you are

Speaker 218:39

Unforgettable

Speaker 218:43

Oh, near our farm.

Speaker 218:50

Like a song of love that clings to me.

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How the thought of you does things to me.

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Uh

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That was natkin coal and unforgettable and I think Paddy Green a little shiver went up your spine there as you were listening to that. Yes, very special memories. Of first love and of that wonderful giddying time of being in London. Yes. What will you tell me? What are you prepared to tell me about your first love?

Patricia Greene19:07

To be indeed.

Patricia Greene19:11

Wonderful

Patricia Greene19:14

Yeah.

Presenter19:19

Very little really,'cause people are still alive. But I did fall in love with him and stayed really in like it became friendship later.

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All my life, and all his life.

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Um it was nineteen fifty seven. The Archers by this point had been going on for six years, I think, as a radio series, and you got the call saying would you like to come and be a temporary member of the cast? You were you were the love interest for Phil Archer, whose wife, Grace, had famously been killed in a fire on the night that I T V launched. How did you get on in those first few weeks and months? I was totally useless.

Patricia Greene19:52

But

Speaker 219:52

Uh

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They said you're coming in as a love interest for Philip, six weeks only, Sexy Blonde in the T-Tent. Was that in brackets, Sexy Blonde in the T-Tent? Well, yes, that's what the director said.

Patricia Greene20:02

Well

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Tony Shrine rang me up and said, Will you do it? and I said, No, I can't. I'm going on tour with the production and I can't and they said we'll wait for you. The BBC never said that ever again.

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But um so I went up for six weeks, and I was getting seven pounds a week in the theatre, and Tony Shrine said, You'll get seven guineas an episode.

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And that was a lot of money. And I spoke to the rest of the cast, and they said, Go and do it.

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So I did, and I went up there and there were six proper radio actresses before me, and I was the last. But I had been told by Tony Shrine that this was a sexy blonde in a tea tent. I got the script, and it said I represent the household drudge, uh um a machine that will do absolutely everything and of course that's how they read it.

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And I did Fenella Fielding. Oh, did you? Oh, how? And got the job.

Patricia Greene20:55

I've got the

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Can you do it now? How was your voice? Well, my voice won't do it now, but darling, I represent the household trudge. Then I did what I was told.

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Tried to. At the drama school we had been offered six classes in microphone technique. I had gone to the first, and the tutor whose name was John Richmond, and he was a broadcaster.

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I ha opened my mouth and did a little bit, and he said, You'll never broadcast.

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because you sound like a fairy in hockey boots. So I thought, goodbye, Broadcott. I wanted to be a classical actress. So that was it. So I couldn't do it. I had come straight from poor Norman. In the script, in my second day or something, it said

Presenter21:35

Jill throws a cup of coffee over Phil. And this was Norman Painting who played Jill. Norman Painting standing there being very kind. And I picked up a glass of water and threw it all over him. And it went down his glasses. Of course we had to stop the recording. I really didn't know anything. Lucky you didn't electrocute him. Absolutely. He was very kind.

Patricia Greene21:39

The Norman paint is Lazin.

Presenter21:53

Let's have some more music, Paddy Green. Tell me about this. It's your fifth.

Presenter21:57

Well, now I don't play cricket, but it does play a huge part in the arches, and it is one of the funniest things I've ever heard.

Speaker 322:06

And as he tried to, he knew, this is the tragic thing about it, he knew exactly what was going to happen. He tried to step over the stumps and just flicked a bale with his with his right hand.

Patricia Greene22:14

He demolished tried to do the splits over it and unfortunately uh the inner part of his thigh must have just removed the bail.

Speaker 322:19

Yeah, it just just didn't quite go his leg over.

Patricia Greene22:21

Anyhow

Patricia Greene22:22

He did very well indeed, batting 131 minutes and hit three fours. And then we had Lewis playing extremely well for his 47 not out. Aggers do stop him. And he was joined by DeFreitas, who was in for 40 minutes, a useful little part ship there. They put on 35 in 40 minutes and then he was caught by Dujan Falsch. Lawrence, always entertaining, batted for 35.

Patricia Greene22:52

But

Patricia Greene22:55

Thirty-five minutes hit a four of the wiki was

Patricia Greene23:01

Meggers, for goodness sake, stop it.

Speaker 323:04

It's f

Speaker 323:06

There's Lawrence Flight.

Speaker 323:09

Do me well.

Presenter23:11

That was the legover clip from Texas.

Speaker 323:12

Yeah.

Patricia Greene23:13

Uh

Presenter23:15

I should tell people, of course, for those who don't know, and there can't surely be a Radio 4 listener who doesn't. That was from Testmatch Special, and we were listening to Brian Johnson and Jonathan Agnew. I want to ask you about Godfrey Baisley, who was the first editor. Indeed, he was. Did you work under him then? Was he? Yes, I did. He was the man who gave me the job. After my.

Patricia Greene23:29

Well

Patricia Greene23:30

It's not data.

Presenter23:35

First six weeks, initial horrible and I couldn't do anything. He came in and he said, Congratulations, cut the sex, you're going to marry him.

Presenter23:43

That's cutting to the chase, isn't it? It is, yes, yes. And given that every actor spends much of their life worried about being employed, did you feel a sense of great joy? What I felt was I'd better learn it if I've got to do it. And I did have little times out when I went back to the theatre.

Patricia Greene23:44

It is yes yes.

Presenter24:01

Um you were married relatively briefly for the first time to a fellow actor. That ended in divorce. And you married for a second time in nineteen seventy two to Austin Richardson. Yes. And you had your only child, Charles, when you were forty one. Yes, I was. Yes. It was the most important.

Patricia Greene24:06

That end is an

Patricia Greene24:11

Yeah.

Presenter24:20

part of my life. Of course we all adore our children, don't we? And the onrush of hormones.

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was quite surprising, really.

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And so, my life after that, I've people say to me, Do you know this and me, this song, that song? No, I know.

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From nineteen seventy two onwards it was all bar bar black sheep and that sort of thing, you see.

Presenter24:44

And it was your husband died in nineteen eighty six and you he was a good bit older than you. At the time that he died you were fifty five and your son of course would have been around about fourteen. Yes. How on earth did you cope with that?

Patricia Greene24:48

That's right.

Patricia Greene24:50

It's a mother.

Presenter24:59

I was really more concerned with what it would do to him, and of course he would he wouldn't say.

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And then you see the guilt of being old and having a child.

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So the guilt became worse because not only had you to bring up this child with no money, but

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You had to stay alive because you didn't want to make him an orphan.

Presenter25:25

I've heard people who've been uh widowed and have young families say exactly the same thing as you've just said, that above all else, it is their survival that is imperative. Exactly. You must not go under. Did you talk to people about that at the time, or did you

Presenter25:42

Just get on with it.

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I tried to

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start a programme, I went up to the BBC and said, Look,

Presenter25:49

I know a bit about grieving now and that sort of thing, and please could I do a programme?

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Because people were writing to me and asking for my advice, strangely enough, and I was giving it, and I thought I'm not bad at this, and I thought I could do a little programme about grief and about that sort of thing, and they said no.

Presenter26:07

I heard you on Woman's Hour fairly recently talking about grief and loneliness. Yes. You were very wise about it. They might commission it now.

Patricia Greene26:10

Recently talking about

Patricia Greene26:12

Yeah.

Presenter26:17

Ah

Presenter26:17

Tell me about your next piece of music then. What are we going to hear? Well, now, as a girl I was always fascinated by France, because we couldn't go because there was war, but someone gave me some French gramophone records, the chansom, the ballad things, and I just thought that the clarity of their singing. And of course it all was to do with romance and French films and one thing and another. So I do want to have one French record, and it's going to be a happy one because of what happened in Paris recently. What I would like to hear, please, is Chartrenet singing boom.

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Uh

Speaker 326:56

La Pond du Le Fai.

Presenter26:57

Tick tick tick tick Definitely. Listen.

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Tuta vegrid boom, es cele mour qui seveille.

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Boom.

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Eel shot a loving bloom.

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Oh, it matters a boomer kirodi booma ah

Speaker 227:23

Lorraine, you

Presenter27:23

Charles Renee and boom. Um the the Archers get, I mean, a huge I don't need to tell you this, of course, a huge amount of attention, and it is not always positive. How often do you find yourself going out and having to bat for the Archers and having to defend it?

Presenter27:40

I don't ever defend it, but I do listen and everybody knows I listen and they know I take it very seriously, so that I don't think they'd ever dare criticise it to me. We actors, of course, knock it a bit sometimes in the green room, but in the nicest, gentlest way. June Spencer did quite an unusual thing. She sort of broke cover in twenty eleven and she said that of course she plays uh Peggy Woolley. She said that uh actors uh on the Archers didn't get paid enough. What what what do you make of that?

Presenter28:08

Well, we started off by being given what they called a special low fee because we were regular. Of course you don't argue with the BBC about money.

Presenter28:19

Um and so really one is just grateful for what one gets. And I think it's quite well paid now really when you work. Of course it isn't when you don't,'cause we're all freelance. You've played other uh roles aside from Jill Archer, of course. You appeared in the Arnold Westker film Kitchen in nineteen sixty one. You were Mrs. Gray in the T V Soap Crossroads in the late

Patricia Greene28:38

Boop!

Presenter28:39

Lovely.

Presenter28:41

It was such a giggle. Sort of wobbly doors and all that stuff. And do you know, one time we went along.

Patricia Greene28:44

Until

Presenter28:46

And Noel, bless her, she was such a good boss. Noel Gordon. Yes. She said, Now today we're going to have some virtual furniture.

Presenter28:56

And they were always trying to save money, you see. So just be careful where you walk. Don't walk through a sideboard. So for about a fortnight we had some virtual furniture on set, so that was tricksy as well. Um you were in the B B C T V show The Doctors, you've been in casualty. I'm wondering if you've ever seriously considered leaving the Archers?

Presenter29:16

Well, of course I couldn't now, because I couldn't do anything else. Now, there was a look in your eye that showed me that you had seriously cared. You see, I did go from time to time when they gave me a bit of time off, like not needed.

Patricia Greene29:22

You see I did go for

Presenter29:27

I went when Charles was about two, three.

Presenter29:31

And I went to Coventry'cause I knew the director and I said, Please can I come and do some? and he said, Yes, you can come and do two plays straight away.

Presenter29:39

He said to me at the end of come next season and do the first three plays and choose your parts and oh gosh, I was tempted But of course I couldn't go because I had

Presenter29:48

a little boy and

Presenter29:50

I have a loyalty to the programme. Time for some more music. Uh, Paddy Green, tell me about this. It's your seventh of the morning. I noticed that most of my stuff's been male-orientated, and I'm really quite a feminist, so I'm determined to have a woman's voice. So they call me Mimi from Boheme. I love opera, I love dance, I love art really.

Speaker 230:14

I joined the way.

Presenter30:20

Yeah. I will see the lucky body.

Presenter30:45

Be part of the wonder.

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We don't know if

Presenter31:09

Uh

Presenter31:11

I live in Terra.

Presenter31:20

Amazing.

Presenter31:22

They call me Mimi from Puccini's La Boem, sung there by Kiriti Kanuwa, accompanied by the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Kent Nagano. There are brilliant, strong and vivid female characters in The Archers. You know, you've got Linda Snell, we've got Ruth, we've got Helen, we've got Pat, we've got you. Being surrounded by other women working, is that an important part of your life?

Presenter31:45

I just think women are wonderful.

Presenter31:47

In every way.

Presenter31:49

I just adore it. And uh soap operas, really. They're the only programme where there are more parts for women than men, which is amazing, isn't it, really? Um it's more than your job's worth to leak any plot lines. But what would you like to happen? Ruth and David are going through yet another curiously sticky patch. What what about Jill's role in all of this? What would if you were writing it, what would you like her role to be?

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How can you interfere in somebody else's marriage, you see? I mean, everybody has problems, we know that.

Presenter32:23

I think they'll come through it. I don't know. I've no idea.

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But there will be trouble ahead, I feel.

Presenter32:32

And with that a cheer went up around the nation, on both fronts, I think.

Presenter32:36

Um what about you, Paddy Green, on this island? How would you how would you cope? Are you I mean, you know, you've been widowed for a long time. Are you good on your own? Are you somebody who likes your own company? Yes, I am, but I

Patricia Greene32:46

Yes, I am, but

Presenter32:48

I would miss terribly laughter, and I would terribly miss people. But you see, I've already thought about the food, and I'm going to find

Presenter32:55

an avocado tree and a lemon tree, and I would hope to find a little hut.

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that's been lived in by a previous person on the island.

Presenter33:04

Tell me then about your final piece of music. What are we going to hear? You're going to hear some Sibelius, the second symphony, which just overwhelms me.

Presenter34:18

That was part of the fourth movement from Sebelius's second symphony played there by the Vienna Philharmonic conducted by Leonard Bernstein.

Presenter34:25

It's time now, Patty, for me to give you first of all the books. We give every castaway the complete works of Shakespeare and the Bible, and they get to take one other book along to accompany those. What's your book going to be? I'd like to take Terry Pratchett, one of the Discworld books, with Granny Weatherwax. I'd like to have a cup of tea with Granny Weatherwax when I'm on the island. Right, that's yours then, and a luxury.

Presenter34:46

The luxury will be a sack of bird food, because I will want to attract some living thing.

Presenter34:53

To me while I'm there. And if you had to save just one of these disks, which one would it be?

Presenter35:00

See Belius.

Presenter35:02

It's yours. Patricia Green, Paddy, thank you very much for letting us hear your Desert Island discs. Custie, thank you very much indeed. May I say, what locks, Pip?

Presenter35:52

You've been listening to a download from the BBC.

Presenter35:55

You'll find more information on the Radio 4 website bbc.co.uk slash Radio4.