Hugh Bonneville

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.

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My castaway this week is the actor Hugh Bonneville. It really doesn't matter what your taste, if you've been watching any British film and T V at all for the past twenty years.

Presenter0:44

Then you've been watching him. As Lord Grantham in the worldwide hit Downton Abbey, his portrayal of a very particular type of fair-minded English top-tier toff even had the Democrats in the White House hooked. As Mr Brown in the movie Paddington, his heart was charmingly won over by a little animated bear from Peru. He played opposite Kate Winslet in the movie Iris to stunning effect, and as Ian Fletcher, head of values in the BBC's hit comedy W1A, he has nailed the nebulous existence of the modern manager. Clear then that he has the significant gift of range.

Presenter1:18

His first professional role was bashing a cymbal in a midsummer night's dream. As a child, he would often write, perform, and even create the tickets for his very own little plays, with family and friends dragooned into watching. He says, I wasn't born with a silver spoon, but I was born with a very nice set of crockery. I'm aware of the great start I was given. Solid, middle-class, professional parents, public school education. I've always been determined to make my parents proud, to show them they haven't wasted their efforts on me. So welcome, Hugh Bonneville. After six hugely successful seasons, the last episode of Downton Abbey Aired here in Britain, of course, just at Christmas. We all had to say goodbye to Lord Gransome, to Carson the Butler, to Lady Mary, they're all consigned to the box sets, to TV history. Honestly, is there a sense of wistfulness or a sense of relief as an actor that after six seasons you are free?

Hugh Bonneville2:12

I think I'm already sort of nostalgic about it. It was an extraordinary roller coaster of a show to be involved with, something that you thought was going to last, you know, six or seven episodes as we did in the first series. And then fifty-two episodes later we say goodbye, and those people involved, the I think there were about sort of forty or fifty people who'd done every episode, both in front of the camera and behind, and the hundreds of crew who'd come and gone over the six years. It does become a second family. So the final farewells were sad, but obviously, yes, the the freedom normally I'd be gearing up to don the uh thermals and start shooting again at Highclear Castle. Uh so it's a strange feeling not to be doing that, but uh happiness tinged with fond memories.

Presenter2:57

You've said in previous interviews that you find yourself and indeed I find that looking at photographs from throughout your career you physically change incredibly as you play the different parts and with Lord Grantham I'm wondering then if you know life sort of took on a slightly grander air. Did you find that you suddenly wanted a whisky and soda out of crystal and you've bought yourself a Labrador? I mean did you start to sort of feel it in your bones?

Hugh Bonneville3:18

Ne no, not really, no. Um it's funny though. I remember going on a chat show in America with uh you know the great Barbara Walters, who was she was really quite cross that I was wearing jeans, because Lord Grantham doesn't wear jeans. Um I don't have a Labrador, much as I love them. I have a nutty Tibetan Terrier. But no, I I certainly didn't take the job home with me.

Presenter3:36

Dame Maggie Smith, of course, played your mother, the Dowager Countess. She has a reputation not just for being one of the country's finest actresses, but also for being.

Presenter3:44

Well, you know, she doesn't suffer fools gladly. How did you get on with her?

Hugh Bonneville3:47

I can remember the very first scene I did with her, and I was absolutely terrified. And I think I can remember the last scene with her, and I was absolutely terrified.

Hugh Bonneville3:56

She is the most astonishing actress. Her wit is is legendary, as you say, and she doesn't suffer fools. And you raise your game, you have to. It's it's it's great acting opposite her because uh she's got extremely high standards for herself and expects them of others.

Presenter4:11

Um tell me about your first piece of music then.

Hugh Bonneville4:13

Since we've been talking about Downton, this piece of music seems very appropriate. In one episode, we had Dame Kiri Takanawa come and visit our humble twenty up, twenty down house.

Presenter4:23

She was playing Dame Nellie.

Hugh Bonneville4:25

She was playing dame Nellie Melbourne and uh she sang this song to us in the hall and I will never forget it. She was three feet away from me singing this wonderful song.

Speaker 34:53

We all saw our cold bed in the world.

Speaker 35:11

Yeah.

Presenter5:28

Uh

Speaker 35:30

Yeah.

Presenter5:32

Uh

Speaker 35:34

A per buta mieno.

Presenter5:39

Puccini's Omio Babino Caro from Gianniskiki, sung there by Dame Kiri Takanawa with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Sir John Pritchard. So, Hugh Bonneville comedy roles then have featured very highly in your output recently. The BAFTA winning 2012, that was all, of course, about London's preparations for the Summer Olympics. The spin-off from that then was the very successful W1A, your character, as I mentioned, called Ian Fletcher. He has moved on to become head of values at the BBC. He also arrives at Broadcasting House with this little fold-up bike. He spends his life in these sort of pointless corporate strategy meetings. And yet, here's the thing: he is not a stupid man. How would you describe his character?

Hugh Bonneville6:21

Well, he is the uh the audience's eyes and ears, really, and uh I think we all recognize Ian Fletcher as ourselves, because we all think we are the person in a meeting who is being sensible and everybody else is useless and uh going off topic.

Hugh Bonneville6:36

And I think anyone who's either sat on a FTSE one hundred board or indeed the Village Hall Committee will recognize the dynamics of these meetings of lots of people saying they're going to do things, but ultimately, you know, they're not.

Presenter6:47

It's very often the case in recent years. It seems fashionable to sort of bemoan the death of satire, and yet here we have, you know, towering.

Presenter6:54

comedies like The Thick of It, like W1A, like Twenty Twelve, that are a new type of satire. When those scripts come in, and W1A in Twenty Twelve was written by John Morton, how do you decode a comedy script? How do you know if it's a good one?

Hugh Bonneville7:09

Gosh, that's very hard. I mean, obviously, if it makes you laugh, is the first thing. With John Morton, I'd done three episodes of his radio version of a terrific concept called People Like Us. It was like a fly-on-the-wall documentary on radio. And I just loved his writing because it's so natural, naturalistic, but actually incredibly structured and therefore incredibly hard to learn and do. Every dot, dot, dot, and every um and uh is scripted and it has a particular rhythm to it and it makes me laugh. And when Paul Schlesinger, the producer of both the radio show of People Like Us, which then became a TV show as well, rang me six years ago now, he said, We've got this idea of doing something in the People Like Us style, but set against the backdrop of the Olympics. Would you and I said, Yes.

Hugh Bonneville7:56

So I because I just think John's writing is sublime and it's uh it's really hard to do, but it looks, I hope, relatively effortless.

Presenter8:04

Let's then go to your next piece of music, Hugh Bonneville. Tell me about this.

Hugh Bonneville8:08

Well, in thinking about me on my island, I'm not entirely sure I'd be brilliant at staying there doing twiddling my thumbs, doing nothing. So the movie that came out in the year of my birth, actually, has got me thinking that I could possibly tunnel out.

Speaker 38:38

Uh

Presenter9:01

Part of the theme from The Great Escape played by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra was composed and conducted by Elmer Bernstein. I said in the introduction to you, Bonneville, that you've always wanted to make your parents proud. Tell me a bit about your parents.

Hugh Bonneville9:14

Um my mum and dad met at St Mary's Hospital where my father was training to be a doctor and my mum was a nurse. Uh and they married in 1952 I think and my father then went on to become a surgeon, uh a urologist and my mum stopped nursing and followed him first through National Service to the Far East and then when three kids came along she became a full-time mum.

Presenter9:40

Oh, you say she worked as a nurse. I thought she worked at the Foreign Office.

Hugh Bonneville9:42

She did. When my father was out in Singapore doing his national service, she went out there and and did uh did some uh bit you know, sort of filing and stuff, whatever, you know, for the Foreign Office there. And then when I was about ten, she said, uh I'm going to go and take a job for three days a week. And I burst into tears and said, You're leaving me, how you hate me. I'm going to pack my bags and leave now, you awful mother. And it was a spin forward thirty more years, and she'd retired. Then we used to drop her off at her office sometimes at Lambeth North, and I opened the newspaper one day and it said Century House, MI6 building to be sold.

Hugh Bonneville10:21

And I looked at the photograph and I said, Mum, that's your office.

Hugh Bonneville10:24

And she said, Mm, yes, dear. And I said, You're a spy and she said, No, I'm not a spy, dear you know and and she passed away just over a year ago.

Hugh Bonneville10:33

And after she died I asked my father if she'd ever said anything about her work, and he said never.

Hugh Bonneville10:38

She just went to the office. So all I know is she didn't have special umbrellas or knives coming out of her toe caps or anything like that. She did just work in the office. But I'm extremely proud not only that she found fulfilment in that work as well as bringing up us kids, but that she.

Hugh Bonneville10:59

that she never spoke about it.

Presenter11:02

Is it true that in the valley that your parents retired to her nickname was the Colonel?

Hugh Bonneville11:06

Yes, I think I hope I like to think affectionately. She was a doer. She was an absolute doer and she was an immensely caring woman.

Presenter11:10

Yeah.

Presenter11:13

Your father the surgeon then. Um

Presenter11:16

How aware were you of this job that he had?

Hugh Bonneville11:18

Throughout my childhood my sense memory of my father was a man in the suit who smelt vaguely of hospitals. And he used to play the piano either in the morning before he went to work or when he got back when I was in bed. And he'd always come up and tell me a bedtime story, make one up on the spot. Always have the same introduction, but that gave him time to think of the story.

Presenter11:40

What was the introduction, Keena?

Hugh Bonneville11:44

Once upon a time, a long, long time ago, when Richmond Park was all forest, there lived in a clearing in the wood a family, and then he went on. Um, because we m our first house was in uh in East Sheen, on the on the s on the corner of Richmond Park. But the only time I actually saw him at work

Hugh Bonneville12:02

was I was about seventeen or eighteen. I had to go and pick up some keys or something.

Hugh Bonneville12:06

And they said, Oh, he's down in theatre. You can pop down and he'll come and meet you.

Hugh Bonneville12:11

And suddenly along the corridor came this man in scrubs, you know, the little hat on and and the, you know, green outfit.

Hugh Bonneville12:18

And I've suddenly, it really hit me that that's what my dad did. He, um.

Hugh Bonneville12:26

He saved lives.

Presenter12:28

Tell me about your third. What are we going to hear?

Hugh Bonneville12:30

Uh my childhood was peppered with great comedy, but Peter Sellers, because of uh films like The Pink Panther and I'm All Right Jack, became a favorite. And I'm going for the first of my bargain basements here because I'm getting three for the price of one with this record, Kirstie. Right. It's Peter Sellers impersonating Laurence Olivier,

Hugh Bonneville12:50

doing It's a Hard Day's Night.

Speaker 212:52

Clever you

Speaker 212:54

It's been a hard day's night.

Speaker 212:57

I should be sleeping like a log.

Speaker 213:00

But when I get home to you, I find the things that you do.

Speaker 213:06

will make me feel.

Speaker 213:07

All right.

Speaker 213:10

You know I work all day to get you money to buy you things.

Speaker 213:15

And it's worth it just to hear you say you are going to give me everything.

Speaker 213:19

That's why I love to come home. Cause when I get you alone, you know I feel.

Speaker 213:27

Okay.

Presenter13:31

Peter Sellers' version of The Beatles. It's been a hard day's night. Hugh Bonneville, your parents took you to well, a pretty famous actually, Peter Brooks' production of the RSC's A Midsummer Night's Dream. That was right at the beginning of the seventies. What do you remember about that?

Hugh Bonneville13:42

What do you mean?

Hugh Bonneville13:43

I can remember a ginormous red feather and finding it intoxicating. I certainly was under ten when I saw it, but that was my first Shakespeare.

Presenter13:51

Tell me about the play reading club at your at what was your prep school at?

Hugh Bonneville13:55

Yes, there was a play reading club, and I, from an early age, knew that I just loved doing plays. I just loved escaping into these characters, and that obviously at the age of eight I was bound to be playing the lead. You know, that was just a given. But it wasn't to be. My former drama club teacher just would not give me decent parts, and I credit him with my drive and ambition. I to this day feel that he knew my hunger to be in plays and my love for it, and he was damned if he was going to let me succeed.

Presenter14:23

Yeah.

Presenter14:27

Goodness me. Um, you do sound what I've read about this little fellow, you know, making his writing his own plays, performing in his own plays, making sure that his friends and family watched his own plays, even making the tickets indeed. That sounds like quite an earnest little fellow.

Hugh Bonneville14:42

Well, I was quite, I wasn't lonely, but I was alone. My brother and sister are six and eight years older than me, and they were really fine actors. I used to love going to see them at school. And so, when I was alone at home, as I often was, and I wasn't really into football, my mates up the road were into football, and I like building camps and that sort of thing. But I really got inspired by the dressing up box, and I dragged them. I'd say, Look, I'll come and play half an hour football with you, but then you're going to come and spend three hours in my play. And they'd stand there being lords or knights, and I'd sit on the throne in my granny's fur stole that we'd found in the dressing-up box. And as I say, you know, as you say, I've written the tickets. But my brother at the time was really, when he was home from school, say, he was much more interested in the police channel that he'd managed to get on my dad's FM radio. So he'd sit at the side listening, tuning in to what was happening in Deptford or Catford. And I'd get really cross and throw a tantrum and say, Look, I've put a lot of effort into this play. They were only about 10 minutes long. It wasn't that much to ask. But so I was quite a diva.

Presenter15:40

Let's have some more music, Hugh Bonneville, and we're on to your fourth of the morning.

Hugh Bonneville15:44

This is a late addition to the to the collection. I thought, oh, stuff it, I'll go for it. It's The Pet Shop Boys, and this particular song

Hugh Bonneville15:55

was released in the month that I got my equity card, my first job, which was at Regents Park and, as you say, when I bashed a cymbal and understudied Ray Fians, and I was on top of the world. I was an acting ASM. I had no lines in that first play.

Hugh Bonneville16:09

But I helped to set out the props every night and I remember playing this every single day as I drove into work thinking I'm the luckiest man on the planet to be paid to do what I love.

Presenter16:22

Sometimes you're better off dead There's a gun in your hand that's pointing at your head You think you're mad, too unstable Kicking in chairs and knocking down tables In a restaurant, in a west end town Call the police, there's a madman around Running down, underground To a dive bar in a west end town In a west end town, the dead end

Hugh Bonneville16:38

Ah

Presenter16:41

The Eastern Boys and Western girls

Presenter16:47

In a western town, the dead end wall

Presenter16:50

The East End Boys and West End Girls.

Presenter16:54

West End Good

Presenter16:57

That was the Pet Shop Boys and West End Girls and Chosen well, you already took us there, Hugh Bonneville, to those very early days of acting. But actually, before we talk more about that, can can I ask you a little bit more?

Presenter17:07

About school, because I had read that you wrote letters home to your parents whilst you were at boarding school, thanking them for the job they were doing. I I can't I have never heard of a of a teenager doing that. What were you thanking them for?

Hugh Bonneville17:22

The opportunity.

Hugh Bonneville17:24

There were kids in my part of Blackheath where I first grew up who didn't have those opportunities. And I think my first real thank you letter was after I joined the National Youth Theatre when I was about 16, 17. And that was the first time, having grown up in this very cloistered world really, of prep school and public school, of meeting kids from all over the country, kids who were miners' children from Newcastle, a bank clerk's daughter from Belfast. And we were all got together in this common enterprise of putting on plays with the National Youth Theatre in London, which I'm really proud now to be a patron of. And it was a big shift for me to really understand what was out there outside the walls of my idyllic little life. And I think that's when the realization of what my parents were doing for us kids really kicked in. And I thought I was going to be a lawyer, I thought I was going to do a proper job. And I didn't want to let my parents down on that score. And so my passion for acting was sort of under wraps and kept purely as a hobby.

Hugh Bonneville18:28

And it wasn't until my second year at Cambridge that I sort of came out of the closet.

Presenter18:33

At studying theology, though, not law.

Hugh Bonneville18:35

Yeah, yeah. Oh, I had it all planned out. I was going to do three years of something I really enjoyed and then convert and do a year's conversion course and do law and bore the ass off juries for the rest of my life. And even in my holidays, I used to go and sit in the law courts and not necessarily in criminal trials, which of course are meant to be the juicy exotic ones. I used to go and sit in chancery and and

Presenter18:36

Yeah.

Hugh Bonneville18:55

Listened to Lord Denning, who had this wonderful Hampshire burr, summing up some extraordinarily complicated and boring tax case, but I found it really, really interesting but actually, on reflection, it was his voice and his intonation and his style of delivery that I was interested in.

Presenter19:10

And why theology?

Hugh Bonneville19:12

I had a teacher at school who really lit the blue touch paper and made it a fascinating, fascinating subject for me, particularly the synoptic problem. I can see you ga glazing over right now. But I did do a lot of theatre at Cambridge and that again opened opened my eyes to what I wanted to do.

Presenter19:22

Sitting over right now.

Presenter19:23

Grasping for references here.

Presenter19:31

And brilliantly you described it as coming out when you when you actually came clean and said to your parents, I want to pursue acting and be an actor.

Hugh Bonneville19:36

Back to the

Hugh Bonneville19:37

What was their response?

Hugh Bonneville19:39

Um they said we've seen you in enough school plays and National Youth Theatre to say give it a go.

Hugh Bonneville19:47

But I had a very strict time limit on myself. I said if I don't get an equity card in three years then I'll go and do law.

Hugh Bonneville19:54

If I don't get to Chichester Theatre, my local theatre in five years, or the RSC in ten, these are my big ambitions, and if I don't do those I'll give up.

Hugh Bonneville20:02

Um I got my critic card, I went to the RSC, then I went to Chichesters. But ever since that production of Midsummer Night's Dream I wanted to be in the Royal Shakespeare Company.

Presenter20:11

Let's fit in the music, Hugh. Tell me about your next. Um, this is your fifth.

Hugh Bonneville20:15

This is another bargain basement I'm getting two for the price of one.

Hugh Bonneville20:19

I've been thinking about my island, and there's a good strong chance I may be there at Christmas. I was going to have, I saw three ships come sailing in, but that would be a bit of a bummer on Boxing Day. So, when they haven't arrived. And also, the soundtrack of much of my second year at university, I can remember this particularly, was the Eurythmics and Annie Lennox. And I was completely besotted with her and her voice. And I met her recently and became besotted all over again. So, Annie Lennox singing me a Christmas carol would be very cheering.

Presenter20:52

Gone rest ye merry gentlemen, let nothing you dismiss.

Presenter20:59

For Jesus Christ our Saviour was born on Christmas Day To save us all from Satan's powers when we were gone astray

Speaker 321:03

Chris

Presenter21:13

Glad tidings of comfort and joy, comfort and joy, glad tidings of comfort and joy.

Presenter21:26

That was Annie Lennox and God Rest You Merry Gentleman. What do you want to say something that you didn't say? What do you want to say?

Hugh Bonneville21:31

Yeah, just we were talking before about uh telling my parents what I wanted to do. rather than what I thought I ought to do.

Hugh Bonneville21:40

And I still wonder to this day if they'd said, Don't be ridiculous, don't do it, whether I would have had the guts to say, Well, stuff you, I'm off to join the circus And I often replay that in my head, because their support, as you can tell from everything I've said, has been such a bedrock to to my l

Presenter21:56

But

Hugh Bonneville21:56

But

Hugh Bonneville21:57

Um

Presenter21:57

Is that what moves you so much when you talk about them? Because throughout the morning

Presenter22:02

Whenever you speak about them they are

Presenter22:04

It's it's tangible in your person.

Hugh Bonneville22:07

Yeah, I'm sure, you know, there have been months, uh, possibly years, where I've uh, like every son, uh, thought they don't understand me, they're terrible parents and all that. But I think obviously with

Speaker 222:15

They're terrible.

Hugh Bonneville22:19

Maturity and the passing of time, and indeed the passing of a parent, your perceptions come into focus and.

Hugh Bonneville22:27

You know, mum's passing was a a huge impact on our family.

Hugh Bonneville22:31

And my dad is still alive and he lives very close to us, so we see him a couple of times a week and he's independent still. And I cherish that, and I cherish the relationship we have.

Presenter22:43

The paradox of your character seems to be, you know, I I meet you for the first time today and you you always have come across, whenever I've watched you not acting, you know, as rather a self-effacing person and yet you've described this early acting ambition where you gave yourself three years to do this and five years to do this. It's all very well to be rather sort of a modest person when you have a very high flying acting career and I'm imagining a very good agent. But when you were starting out and having to promote yourself and nobody knew what your capabilities were, how good were you at that at sort of blowing your own trumpet?

Hugh Bonneville23:17

I went to drama school for about five minutes. I went to Weber Douglas for a term and a half. And the day I arrived, I thought in the summer there's going to be several thousand young students leaving drama school, all looking for equity cards.

Hugh Bonneville23:31

And so I started writing letters immediately and uh I wrote two hundred letters. I didn't sort of photocopy them because I thought that was impolite and sent them out to every theater and casting director and producer I could find. And of those two hundred letters maybe a hundred replied and probably ninety of those were photocopied saying you're on file, I eat you're in the bin. Of those I got two auditions and one of them got me Regents Park.

Presenter23:57

And this was where you were understudying Ray Florida.

Hugh Bonneville23:58

And it was simply because I was slightly ahead of the ahead of the curve. I wasn't writing in June, I was writing in November, December, and got my job in April, so I left drama school.

Presenter24:07

And it it's the case, is it that Jonathan Lynn, the co-writer of Yes Minister, spotted you in that production and got you an audition for the National Theatre in London?

Hugh Bonneville24:17

Yes, once we'd finished the season at Regents Park I was promoted to play Lysander as Rafe was promoted to play Oberon, so we went on tour round Europe and it happened that Jonathan Lynn, who to this day I've not met, um came to see the show and he let it be known that he didn't think I was awful. And so I wrote to him at the National where I'd already had uh two assurances that my my details were on file and he got me yeah, that got me an audition uh and I went and uh joined as a as a sort of spearbearer.

Presenter24:44

I think you owe him a pint.

Hugh Bonneville24:46

I certainly do.

Presenter24:47

Let's then go to your next piece of music, Hugh Bonneville. It's your sixth of the day.

Hugh Bonneville24:51

Ah well this has a resonance for me because I saw, I was then in and I then co-produced a play called Beautiful Thing by Jonathan Harvey and the the soundtrack running through the play was various tracks by the mummas and the papas. But most importantly this reminds me of my wife.

Speaker 325:12

Stars shining bright above you

Speaker 325:17

Night breezes seem to whisper I love you.

Speaker 325:23

Birds singing in the sycamore tree Dream a little dream of me

Speaker 325:34

Say nighty night and kiss me

Speaker 325:39

Just hold me tight and tell me you'll miss me.

Presenter25:45

That was Mala Cass and Dream a Little Dream of Me. So, Hugh Bonneville, just to neatly get a sense of the path of your professional life in those early days, you left the National, you joined the Royal Shakespeare Company in I think it was 1991, and you were in Tis a Pity She's a Whore, the two gentlemen for Rona, you were Laertes with Ken Branagh in Hamlet. That sounds like it must have been bliss for a man who wanted to be in the Royal Shakespeare Company.

Hugh Bonneville26:12

It was. And I can remember the moment when we'd opened the first four plays. There was a point in, I think, October when we did one play after the other. And that was just the most fantastic feeling to be in this company, playing off each other. We'd often have audiences that were sort of become loyal to the company during that season. And I was in, you know, I was in paradise. I loved it. I loved it.

Presenter26:35

There's much discussion today.

Presenter26:37

about the dramatic community being populated by privileged people, somebody like yourself, we've spoken about your background. People who criticise it are not criticising individual people, but they are worried about the fact that the arts these days seems to be getting too exclusive because of the educational opportunities that people are given.

Presenter26:57

Is that something that strikes a chord with you, or do you just think, oh, shut up and get on with it like the rest of us?

Hugh Bonneville27:01

Um I d I am very aware of that.

Hugh Bonneville27:05

perception. And I think

Hugh Bonneville27:08

The arts in general are such a fundamental part of our existence or should be and to see them being sidelined through education cuts hurts, hurts the next generation and hurts me as someone who was lucky enough to be exposed to all those opportunities early on.

Hugh Bonneville27:26

I'm involved in, for instance, a charity called Primary Shakespeare Company, which introduces primary school age children to their first Shakespeare and gets them to put on a play. Now you may say well that's all a bit high for Luton. It's not. It's introducing children to the collaborative experience of putting on a play, even if you never step up on stage again for the rest of your life.

Hugh Bonneville27:48

So for instance, last year all the schools in these different boroughs across London came together and put on a production of Hamlet, each of them doing a segment of the play. And the confidence and sense of potential that this brings out in the kids is fantastic. There's another charity I'm involved with called Scene and Heard which helps mentors children from a a tough area of London and mentors them one to one, kids who've not had the best start in life, and gets them to write ten minute plays.

Hugh Bonneville28:16

And to see these young playwrights who are aged let's say nine to thirteen

Hugh Bonneville28:21

using their imagination to develop these these little playlets which are put on by professional actors and professional directors and then they take a bow at the end of this experience.

Hugh Bonneville28:31

And

Hugh Bonneville28:33

That sort of opportunity, again, I keep coming back to this word opportunity, is not given.

Hugh Bonneville28:38

As broadly as it perhaps could be. And so, for these kids to have that chance and to see the look on their faces when they realize they're being applauded for something they've done, which they may never have experienced applause or a pat on the back before in their lives, even if they never go on to write another word, but to see them have that little boost of confidence. And the problem is, things like that, cultural experiences like that, emotional experiences like that, can't be ticked in a box. You can't quantify that. And nor can you.

Hugh Bonneville29:10

extrapolate that to uh use of funds or how funds are used, you know, because you don't know if that memory, that experience will have an impact in in two years' time, in twenty years' time when they're either running a company or whatever they're doing in life.

Presenter29:23

Tell me what we're going to hear now, Dug Bonneville. This is your seventh.

Hugh Bonneville29:26

Ah, well this is a simple one, simply because this was playing in the delivery room when my son was born.

Speaker 329:32

Oh, what a night.

Speaker 329:34

Late December back in 63 What a very special time for me

Speaker 329:44

As I remember what the night

Speaker 329:50

Oh, what a die.

Speaker 329:57

But I was never gonna be the same.

Speaker 330:02

What a lady

Presenter30:07

Frankie Valley and the Four Seasons, december nineteen sixty three. Oh, what a night And you said, Hugh Bonneville, that that was chosen because it was playing in the delivery room when Felix, your son, was born. That was fourteen and a bit years ago. You you also chose uh Mamma Cast Dream A Little Dream of Me for your wife, Lulu. Is it true that your mother introduced you?

Hugh Bonneville30:24

Well, yes, it's a bit more complex than that, but we've known each other since we were about seventeen. A schoolmate of mine whose father knew her father, so we knew each other then, and then we lost touch, and then seventeen years or so later, Lulu was running a marquee company in the area, and my mum rang her to hire some chairs or something and said, Do you remember Hugh? And that was how we reconnected.

Presenter30:49

So it was given in a sense your mother's blessing, was it? She sort of thought now she seems like the light sword.

Hugh Bonneville30:51

She seems like the light source. It did infuriate me that it actually had to give full credit to my mum for reintroducing us.

Presenter30:57

Um I quoted you at the start as saying that you hoped uh to reassure your parents that they haven't wasted their efforts on me. I I'm assuming you've convinced yourself of that.

Hugh Bonneville31:07

Not no, I uh well, I don't know. I mean, they I know they've been proud of all of us kids.

Presenter31:11

But yourself worse of what you do.

Presenter31:14

It's what is what interests me.

Hugh Bonneville31:16

I had an email last night from a girl I was at school with telling me about the work she was doing last year with Save the Children in Sierra Leone, supplying the medical teams.

Hugh Bonneville31:28

During the Ebola crisis, she was also telling me about the work she'd been doing in Lesbos with the refugees.

Hugh Bonneville31:36

I prance around in tights.

Hugh Bonneville31:39

Go figure.

Presenter31:41

Let's do a little bit of desert islandry. Have you imagined yourself thriving and surviving? Or have you imagined yourself sort of curling up in a ball and rocking yourself to sleep?

Hugh Bonneville31:51

Kirsty, I'd be rubbish, I think, on this island.

Hugh Bonneville31:54

You know, I think I'd get up, I'd do my star jumps and my squats to The Great Escape. I'd then go and open up Tom, Dick, and Harry and start tunnelling again. Then by lunchtime I'd want a a stiff drink, swim around the island a couple of times. But I would be deeply impractical and I have to watch Bear Grylls and Ray Mears and all those guys with awe and envy.

Presenter32:16

I'm giving it six days. Anyway, tell me about your your final choice of the day.

Hugh Bonneville32:22

I've lived most of my adult life in a part of the world that I think is God's own county. I'm on the border of West Sussex and Hampshire and a stone's throw from the South Downs. And it's magical up there. And a couple of years ago, my great friend and neighbour, Damien Montagu, rang and said, I've been doing a lot of trudging up on the South Downs and some music's come to me. Do you want to hear it?

Hugh Bonneville32:45

And uh he composed this sort of thirty-five, forty-minute piece.

Hugh Bonneville32:50

which is called in a South Downs Way, and this is a track from that, and it reminds me of the place I am lucky enough to call home.

Presenter33:34

The Path Towards Tomorrow, composed by Damien Montagu, on piano was Robert's Sword, and on strings the Tippet Quartet. So, Hugh, we come to the point now where, of course, I must give you the books The Bible and the Complete Works of Shakespeare, which I'm sure you'll be familiar with much of it anyway, but we do give you it. What else would you like to take?

Hugh Bonneville33:49

Web

Hugh Bonneville33:51

I think I'd like to take A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens.

Presenter33:55

Right.

Hugh Bonneville33:55

The first Dickens I read, I just love it.

Presenter33:55

Yeah.

Presenter33:58

We shall give you that, then. Your life a luxury as well. What will yours be?

Hugh Bonneville34:02

I think I'd like to take the enormous pile of Lego that has been accumulating in the den over the last ten, twelve years. We have all the instruction books, but we have foolishly, having completed the uh building the sets, put them all back in a jumble. So I thought I could take this vast box and sort it out and rebuild these models. And if I couldn't quite do that, I could always build them into struts for my tunnels. You see, I've been thinking, Kirsten. You have. That's okay. Can I have the Lego then?

Speaker 234:20

In the jumble.

Presenter34:34

And I have the Lego then. Yes, you def and the instruction booklets, actually. Yes, that's yours. If you could only save one of the eight, which is the one that you'd save?

Hugh Bonneville34:44

Mamma Cass dream a little dream of me.

Presenter34:46

It's yours. Hubonville, thank you very much for letting us hear your Desert Island Discs.

Hugh Bonneville34:50

Thank you.

Presenter35:31

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.