Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Desert Island Discs
Presented by Kirsty Young
Actress best known for playing Dot Cotton in EastEnders, now in her 90s and still working.
Eight records
Because he doesn't really let people sing his songs, I've heard, and he allowed it to be played for me in their kitchen as Dot, and I did sing along with him in the sense of occasionally singing Living Doll.
The Kashmiri SongFavourite
My mother used to play very well. She was a very good pianist and she had a lovely voice. And when we were there, it's the first thing I remember. She would play in the drawing-room, play the piano, and we as small children would stand there and sing with her.
We sang it at school, and for some reason, it always stayed in my memory, and I even used to use it as a lullaby when I sang lullabies to my children. We couldn't find it anywhere, and so I asked the Ipswich High School, the music mistress, Mrs. Chillingworth, if she would get her choir to learn it and sing it, the school choir, and to record it for me.
Bing Crosby with The Andrews Sisters
And this is something we used to dance to. It's to do with the war. There are loads of lovely songs. And this one, I had a rather nice boyfriend at the time, Manpen, I don't like the word boyfriend, and he was a submariner. I used to go down the submarine and we'd have pink gin and things like that. And then we'd dance, and he'd throw me around the floor,'cause it was a bit sort of violent.
This is one of the songs that Johnny I'd say sing like George Guitari when we were in the Carney Wood. And then when I was in Lace in Chamonix, in the south of France, I was talking to a young man, and I discovered his name was Francois Guitari, and I said, Are you any relative to George? and he said, He's my father. And I told him this story, and he was quite surprised, because it is a long time afterwards that there were still people who remembered his father.
Actually I used to sing a lot of songs, you know. As each child came along that would be the baby would be on my lap and the children would be in bed and they had a large room that was a kind of nursery when they were small. And then I would sing. It would be Over the Sea to Sky because Carrie the Lad who's born to be king that was my son William and then I did for the others I just did, you know, Jesus Bids Us Shine and Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam and Oh Summertime. I used to ring. I had a good voice and I could actually go at the top of summertime down to the bottom, but I can't any more. I wish I could. And so I used to sing every night to them quite a long time.
We're back to the unrequited love, but it isn't actually it's a theme from it's one of those when they take a theme from the classical music and use it, so it's not really I'm not being very clever and having lots of classical music.
The keepsakes
The book
Axel Munthe
Um and the story of Sam Michaelie. I've got about three copies now and I'm trying desperately to remember who wrote it. Axel Munter, who was Swedish and a doctor, and it is very interesting because he did all sorts of exciting things.
The luxury
Well, I'm going to take a packet of tobacco seeds, I think, and grow my own. I'm not sure about the paper. I think I could probably make it out of very thin leaves, like you do a cigar. Or maybe even some of the tobacco leaves. Yes, that would be a good idea.
In conversation
Presenter asks
Do you still enjoy playing the character [Dot]?
I'm making faces now'cause I can't be I'm just an actress, you know, and I've been very fortunate and I'm well known. I don't talk about myself as anything more than well known, and I'm lucky.
Presenter asks
How do you keep the energy levels up? Where do you get your energy from to still be working hard?
Well, I haven't really got very much now, but I find when I get on set that my energy comes. It's a bit like Dame Edith Evans used to call it Doctor Grease paint. It's like people can go on the stage and break an ankle they don't notice till they come off. But as soon as I get on the stage, it's as if I have energy. I can be feeling like death warmed up when I sort of come in, the shoulders drooping down, and then then I'm I'm alive. So it it keeps me alive.
The recording
Timestamps play the recording from that turn
Speaker 4
This is the BBC.
Presenter
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.
Presenter
For more information about the programme, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.
Presenter
My castaway this week is the actress June Brown. It was on EastEnders over thirty years ago that Dot Cotton, trussed up in an overall with a fag in hand, entered the national consciousness as Walford's tragic comic Lady of the Laundrette. The storylines she's weathered throughout the decades are as nothing compared to the vicissitudes and triumphs of the actress's own life. A father who made and lost a small fortune, a sister, her best friend, who died in childhood, and yet, amid all this, she was a leading lady of stage classics, a mother of five children, and, of course, an award-winning TV actress, now about to turn ninety and still working. She says, I've never entertained the idea of retiring because I've never regarded myself as having a proper job. Anyway, retirement can be the death of you. And so, June Brown, we welcome you to our desert island. You have made Dot, I think it's fair to say, into one of the great iconic T V soap characters.
Presenter
You've been playing her for a long time. You you're you're sort of frowning as I say iconic there, but I'm afraid it's true. Um do do you still enjoy playing the character?
June Brown
I'm making faces now'cause I can't be I'm just an actress, you know, and I've been very fortunate and I'm well known. I don't talk about myself as anything more than well known, and I'm lucky.
Presenter
I know it is very indelicate to mention a lady's age, but it is worth letting listeners know that you are about to celebrate your ninetieth birthday. It's notoriously hard work being on a soap.
Presenter
How do you keep the energy levels up? Where do you get your energy from to still be working hard?
June Brown
Well, I haven't really got very much now, but I find when I get on set that my energy comes. It's a bit like Dame Edith Evans used to call it Doctor Grease paint. It's like people can go on the stage and break an ankle they don't notice till they come off. But as soon as I get on the stage, it's as if I have energy. I can be feeling like death warmed up when I sort of come in, the shoulders drooping down, and then then I'm I'm alive. So it it keeps me alive.
Presenter
Do you think that's genuinely true? You think I mean I said I used that quote in the introduction, that you you feel that work for you is is the reason to get up in the morning.
June Brown
Well, yes, I think that's why a lot of people are very lonely and get ill when they're older, because I think loneliness and having no uh motivation, nothing to work towards, I think it ills you.
Presenter
Yeah.
June Brown
But tell me.
Presenter
Tell me what we're gonna hear, June.
June Brown
Uh
June Brown
You're going to hear lovely Cliff Richard singing Living Doll. And tell me why is it on your list? Because he doesn't really let people sing his songs, I've heard, and he allowed it to be played for me in their kitchen as Dot, and I did sing along with him in the sense of occasionally singing Living Doll. And he's a very nice man. I've met him and I admire him. And he's I remember at some sober ward or other, you know, and he was being so nice to everybody, he wasn't eating, and I went and got him food and said, You must eat something.
Speaker 4
Got myself a cryin', talkin', sleeping, walkin', living out
Speaker 4
Got to do my best to please her just cause she's a living doll.
June Brown
Milk.
Speaker 4
Got a roving eye and that is why she satisfies my soul.
Speaker 4
Got the one and only walking, talking, living dog.
Speaker 4
Take a look at her hair
Speaker 4
It's real as Don't
Presenter
That was Cliff Richard and Living Doll. I sh you're having a little chuckle at that. You were having a bit of a laugh when that was being played. What was making you laugh?
June Brown
Well, I was thinking when I first thought of my choice, I looked at all the songs, and I thought, June, it's all unrequited love. It's nothing but misery, I thought. Well, you had better be careful. I'll explain why to you later.
Speaker 2
Yeah.
Presenter
Okay.
Presenter
Yes, well there's plenty of that to talk about, I think, the highs and the lows. And one of uh uh Dot's storylines is uh currently in EastEnders is of course that she is losing her sight. Now you yourself have partially been losing your sight a little bit. Is that fair to say?
June Brown
Uh
Presenter
Uh
June Brown
Uh yes. I'm quite upset about that because it wasn't it was done for other reasons, but everything has changed since the reasons. It sounds very mysterious. But the thing is that I feel that dottie is a very she's quick and she's quick moving and she's quick speaking. And if I become I do not want to become a dependent old woman, or otherwise my character is gone.
Presenter
Reclaim.
Speaker 2
Uh
Presenter
Uh
Speaker 2
Best
June Brown
And I might as well not be there.
Presenter
And you are talking there about your character in the soap, or you're talking about yourself in real life?
June Brown
I was talking about the character in the soap, that you know that I I can run as Dot. I find myself running across the road, you know. And and I don't want to
June Brown
I don't want to lose my character. It's like being in a wheelchair or something, you know, and not ever getting out of it.
Presenter
June, here's the thing. You arrived at our studio today, and as I say, you're a woman of a certain age. You arrived entirely alone. As we sat there listening to this first uh disc to the Cliff Richard, you were sort of soft shoe shuffling and bopping along in your chair. Your own independence, not in the soap, but in real life, seems very important to you. Is that fair?
June Brown
Yeah.
June Brown
It is extremely important to me and I hate to feel I'm losing it, you know, and if people put out hands to help me out of a car, I say, No, thank you, I won't accept it. And I get up and I don't push myself up from the arm of a chair. I use my thighs because you have to do that. You can act yourself into age. You can act yourself into anything you want.
Presenter
And do you maybe not argue the toss with the writers, but do you forcibly and reasonably put your case? Are you one of those actresses that feel you can engage with the writers?
June Brown
Not to the writers, it's only through the editor that you can talk about this. Yes, I will ring the editors to say that this doesn't r relate to that because my history suggests that I do this, that, and the other, and I've already said this about that. Therefore, I can't say this because we need to move on. And they're very good to me, they really are. They're awfully kind, they allow me. Because they know I'm not only doing it for myself, I'm doing it for the scene and the sake of the series and the truth of it. You see, I had a training where everything was the truth.
Presenter
Right.
Speaker 2
Yeah, that's it.
June Brown
June Brown, let's have some more music. We're going to have your second now. My mother used to play very well. She was a very good pianist and she had a lovely voice. And when we were there, it's the first thing I remember. She would play in the drawing-room, play the piano, and we as small children would stand there and sing with her. Pale hands I loved beside the shallimar.
Speaker 4
And beside the shrine well
Speaker 4
Where are your mouth arise within your star?
June Brown
Uh
Speaker 4
Gold o' your limb on rapture's roadway far.
Speaker 4
Yeah.
Speaker 4
Before we
Presenter
That was Deanna Durbin singing the Kashmiri song, also known as you said in the introduction there, June Brown, as Pale Hands I Loved. You were born in nineteen twenty seven in Suffolk. You were the second of five children. It was a pretty comfortable childhood, comfortably off, was it? Yes.
June Brown
Yes, but my father still had some money. He's had a lot of money when he was young. He'd made a lot of money in what we called the Far East. And he was a produce buyer. My mother thought he it was an immoral choice because you bought goods, produce, and you kept them until there was a bit of a drought or something and then you sold them at high. Would you call that futures now or something? Something like that. My mother didn't think it was very moral. So unfortunately he'd put all this money a long time ago in German banks in the 1913 sort of thing. And at the end of the war the mark was worthless. So his what was half a million then, which would be several millions now.
Speaker 2
I think he was
Presenter
Fortunes, really.
June Brown
Really? Yes, went down to twenty thousand pounds, which was still a lot of money.
Presenter
Now, of course, your EastEnder's character, Dot, is devoutly uh religious. As a little girl, you you went to evangelical meetings, and you it's interesting you say your mother thought your father's profession wa his fortune was made immorally. Religion was important.
June Brown
My sister, the one who died, Maurice, uh she was a very spiritual child, but I never knew anything about the spirituality. My mother told me that she'd asked for her Bible to be brought in, and she died very quickly, you know, and you were very close to
Presenter
Uh
June Brown
One year, four months apart, yes. And uh she was like my mother. Um I didn't really know my mother till later, because Maurice was my mother. Sh we were always together. She looked after me, she was never nasty, she never said anything horrid, she was patient.
Presenter
And how old was she when she died?
Presenter
It had a profound effect upon me.
June Brown
Yes, yes it did, because I was very lonely, because he'd always been there.
Presenter
You had a brother who also died in infancy, and and it's interesting to me that you say you feel you didn't see that much of your mother during childhood. Was that because you had nannies bringing you up, or was that because she was busy with the other children? Or?
June Brown
I was always with Marie's. I sort of have memories of my mother playing the piano, as I say, and at the side door of the house coming out with scissors and blue crepe paper to make us dresses to do these performances of uh oh, I don't know, fairy stories.
Presenter
So you do little plays as children?
June Brown
Oh, yes, yeah. But you see, I remember my mother coming and that was to make us costumes out of the blue crepe paper. And what else do I remember of my mother? Very little.
June Brown
June, we're going to have some more music. What are we going to hear now? We sang it at school, and for some reason, it always stayed in my memory, and I even used to use it as a lullaby when I sang lullabies to my children. We couldn't find it anywhere, and so I asked the Ipswich High School, the music mistress, Mrs. Chillingworth, if she would get her choir to learn it and sing it, the school choir, and to record it for me. And I'm very grateful. And the girls were all quite thrilled at doing it apparently. So they'll enjoy hearing themselves sing, O brother man, fold to thy heart thy brother.
Speaker 4
A brother.
Speaker 4
Hold to thy heart, my brother.
Speaker 4
Where pity dwells the peace of God is there.
Speaker 4
To worship Christ is to love each other.
June Brown
Christ He is to love each other.
Speaker 4
We spot a hill.
Speaker 4
Each one day.
Speaker 4
Oh with retest.
Speaker 4
The great example of Him whose holy work was doing good.
Speaker 4
So shall the brightness seem of the temple
June Brown
Shall the wide receiver fight?
Presenter
O brother man, full to thy heart thy brother specially recorded for this programme. That was the choir at Ipswich High School for Girls conducted by Angela Chillingworth, accompanied by John Chillingworth on piano. Uh, June Brown, you won a scholarship to secondary school. As a teenager, what did you think lay ahead? What did you think you might make your life doing?
June Brown
I was quite a clever child. I don't know what happened later on. But, you know, I was always top or second in the class. And, um I was very good at biology. I loved dissecting. I hate to say this, frogs underwater, rabbits that we guessed in a big biscuit box. People won't like that now. But we didn't think anything of it. I don't know what it was. We had a very pragmatic view of life. When I was at the high school I decided I wanted to do something medical. I wanted to do maybe osteopathy. And I needed to go to the school of osteopathy and it cost money. And my father did have it at the time. But when I said I wanted to do that, I couldn't have got a grant. And he said, no, I'm not paying you for to go'cause you're a girl and you'll only get married.
Presenter
In high school did you start doing drama? Did you go on the stage at any of the school productions?
June Brown
Not really, not of any no at the church school I played Alice in Wonderland in the party scene, you know. Then at the high school I think I played the Virgin Mary because Miss Catley thought I'd look beautiful in blue. I had to sing a lullaby and I think I got a frog in my throat, so that wasn't very successful.
Presenter
Let's jump a little towards um your time in The Wrens uh during World War Two. Um one of your roles there was, am I right, a cinema operator?
June Brown
Yes, I was a sinew. What were you showing? I showed training films, really, to the sailors. It was how to survive in the jungle, how to survive at sea if you're shipwrecked at sea, things like that.
Presenter
Right.
Presenter
Tell me about this next choice.
June Brown
Well, you see, this is partly why I said that most of my choices were unrequited love. He was somebody who had escaped from Belgium, Raoul Latermeid, and Raoul came and stayed. And father was sorry for him, because he was on his own in Diggs, and he said to Mother, can you come and stay with us? And he became like a brother, and he had a very good voice. And we all stand around the piano again, and mother would play, and he'd sing, and she'd sing, and we'd all sing. And I was very much in love with him. And he told his mother, because he took me up there to stay for a week, left me. He was by this time called up into the army. And he left me there, and he told her that he was going to marry me when I was 16. But.
June Brown
In that time they decided that they would use him in a better fashion, and he became a sp well, he was dropped into Belgium to join the Underground.
Presenter
So he became a spy.
June Brown
Just like that.
June Brown
Yes. And when he came back, uh, well, he was involved with somebody else whom he married. So that was very sad. Did it break your heart? Well, I suppose it did. I was stunned when I realised what had happened. But you see, this song was one we used to sing again. It's the song of the broken heart, this is called. What happened was we were always writing to each other and the letters just stopped. And I didn't know what had happened. And I did actually go up to London and I wrote and said I'll be coming up to Piccadilly and I'd be there all day, which I was. And apparently his mother came to meet me, but I'd just gone to see if he might be in a restaurant that we'd gone to in Orange Street, just off Piccadilly. We just missed each other. I stayed there all day and he didn't come.
Presenter
So this is a song for Roll.
June Brown
And I used to play this and sing it to myself.
Speaker 4
Right in June when first we might
Speaker 4
Will you remember love for words we spoke?
Speaker 4
Have you forgotten all the tender vows we made?
June Brown
You are good at all.
Speaker 4
In the silent magical moon.
Speaker 4
Golden brings with summer roses.
Speaker 4
And all our tenderest vows
Speaker 4
Me but to be cruel.
Presenter
The song of songs, Champson de Courblise, sung by Christine Brewer there, accompanied by Roger Vignol on piano. At June Brown, y y y you chose that for Raoul. That's more than seventy years ago, and as I watched you. Yes, as I watched you listening to that, you were in the m in the moment of it, I think. I'd like you, if you will, to share a few more of your wartime memories, indeed the closing days of the war, with me. You spent V J Day on the Mall.
Speaker 4
And as I went to the
June Brown
What do you think?
Speaker 4
Yeah.
June Brown
Well, it was euphoric. I just remember the feeling of the atmosphere. And it was as if you were swirling around in a kaleidoscope. And one moment you were in Park Lane, and then the next moment you were in the hay market. And I remember there was a little night drinking club called the Blue Ball. And I had exchanged my cap, my red cap, which is a very rather nice one, for a French sailor's cap with a red pom-pom on. I don't remember any immorality concerned with it. No, not as far as I was going. I believe it went on in the park, but I don't know.
Presenter
Oh
Speaker 2
Definitely.
June Brown
But it was such joy, because that war had gone on for a long time.
Presenter
By the time nineteen forty seven arrived you had applied to this brand new college. You were successful in getting in. You were only you were one of a very few students to get into the Old Vic Theatre School. What was it that had prompted you to think that this is what I'm interested in, this is my future?
June Brown
But because I'd done a play in the Wrens at the last minute I did a play called Call It a Day. I then w was demobbed and I didn't really know what to do.
Presenter
Yeah.
June Brown
And my sister came home with the Times an advertisement, saying there was this new school, the Old Vic Theatre School, which was starting up in January, and to apply.
Presenter
And after you had graduated, it is extraordinary to think that you were working alongside people like Edith Evans, John Gilgood, Alec Guinness, in those early years of your stage career. To look back on that, I mean, it seems like an absolute golden age of of British stage craft.
June Brown
I did play foiball, which was uh the restoration made, to Dame Edith Levins, and she gave me a lot of wonderful tips.
Presenter
What tips did she give you that you can share?
June Brown
Well, I went on. My first line was, Madam, I've seen him. So I just dropped it on the floor. Madam, I said, I've seen him. And she said, um, say, I've got the tickets. So I said, I've got the tickets. And she said, now, say, madam, I've seen him like that. So I said, Madam, I've seen him. That's it, dear, she said. You see, it's like music.
June Brown
We have to give each other the right note.
June Brown
I can't do it without you, and you can't do it without me.
June Brown
It's like music, you see, dear.
June Brown
And that was a wonderful note. I mean, it's all Johnny one note nowadays, isn't it, Larbury
Presenter
June Brown, it's time for more of your choices. We're on your fifth of the morning.
June Brown
Uh And this is something we used to dance to. It's to do with the war. There are loads of lovely songs. And this one, I had a rather nice boyfriend at the time, Manpen, I don't like the word boyfriend, and he was a submariner. I used to go down the submarine and we'd have pink gin and things like that. And then we'd dance, and he'd throw me around the floor,'cause it was a bit sort of violent. He wrote me lovely poetry, and I lost it.
Speaker 4
Uh
June Brown
I know.
Speaker 4
Better accentuate the positive E limb Find it the negative Latch on To the affirmative Don't mess with Mr. In Between No, do not mess with Mr. Inbetween Do you hear me?
Presenter
That was Bing Crosbie, with the Andrews sisters singing Accentuate the Positive. Um you met your first husband, uh the actor John Garley, at the Old Vic. What were the circumstances of your meeting? Were you playing opposite each other?
June Brown
No, no, he was just in the company, you know, and he was a very amusing person and he had an enormous personality. And I remember he had bare feet in it. It was twelve nights he was playing, and I remember his feet seemed to twinkle. I don't know. But he had a way of making every part different. He had a touch of genius, quite honestly. And that was it. It was nothing to do with the way he looked, because he wasn't very handsome. And when I was with him, I was with a lot of people,'cause he was an incredible impersonator. And he could do Churchill better than anybody I've ever heard. And there was an actor, a musical comedy actor, a Frenchman, called Georges Guitari. And I used to say it to him in the car, Sing like Georges Guitari, Johnny.
Presenter
And did you regard it as a happy marriage? Were they happy times as far as you were concerned?
June Brown
Yes, we were great friends, and we we enjoyed simple things. We'd go for walks in the evening. We always lived in other people's houses. If they went off on tour, the actors we'd live in their flats. So we were like gipsies. We'd played scrabble.
June Brown
And we drive, yes, you know.
Presenter
So as you describe it then, this sort of unencumbered life with two young actors who were busy enough and who got on and who didn't argue.
June Brown
Got on?
Presenter
And then the night comes suddenly.
Presenter
When your husband commits suicide, was it entirely out of the bl
June Brown
Blue for you? No, I don't think so. You see, he was always been
June Brown
put under somebody else who wasn't as good as he was and by this time Johnny had
June Brown
kind of lost heart.
Presenter
And how did you, as a young woman, recover from your husband's suicide? How did you put yourself back together again after it?
June Brown
Or friends were.
June Brown
Through my friends, and I was very tearful about it all. I used to cry in the car.
June Brown
all the time on my own, but I never showed it. And I think people used to say, Oh, isn't she marvellous, June? And a very wise old lady, Den Jilks, used to teach music and at Stratford she was lovely and she said, Well, I wish she would break down, because it will help me sometime. But it didn't seem to.
Presenter
And it didn't help her?
June Brown
Not really, no, because I married again quite soon after that.
Presenter
And we shall talk about that, June Brown, in just a moment. But for now we must fit in some more of the music. I want you to tell me about your sixth choice of the morning.
June Brown
This is one of the songs that Johnny I'd say sing like George Guitari when we were in the Carney Wood. And then when I was in Lace in Chamonix, in the south of France, I was talking to a young man, and I discovered his name was Francois Guitari, and I said, Are you any relative to George? and he said, He's my father. And I told him this story, and he was quite surprised, because it is a long time afterwards that there were still people who remembered his father.
Speaker 2
The beautiful Marguerite.
Speaker 2
In September when the grapes are purple, Margaret did pick the grapes like me. There are silver bells upon her fingers.
Speaker 2
The little birds come out to see
Speaker 2
Margarita, so beautiful to see Blem and Mapradita Margarita beaten grape sweet
Speaker 2
Killing, killing.
Presenter
That was Georges Guitarie and Mabel Marguerite. June Brown, you went on to marry another actor, Robert Arnold, and that was the same year I think that you played Hedda Gabbler. A huge challenge for any actor. You were you were thirty one, you were newly married, you had suffered a bereavement just the year before. How did you view the challenge, the immense challenge, in anybody's career of going on stage to to play the part of Heda Gabbler?
June Brown
I never think of anything as a challenge. It's a very modern word now, you see. How did you think of it? To me it's just a part. Right. Well, it was a leading part, and I looked at it and I thought she's a very empty woman.
Presenter
How did you think of it?
Presenter
Right.
June Brown
She was, you see. I said, how is this a great part? I thought to myself, she doesn't really say anything. She listens to other people. She's like a leech, really.
Presenter
The
Presenter
Then in your um second marriage you had is this right, you had s you had six children in seven years. I know one of your children died in in infancy, very early on, but that's a lot of pregnancy in a short amount of time. I know.
June Brown
Well it just happened, I don't know.
Presenter
Did you take much time off at all? I I don't get the sense that you did when I look at your C V.
June Brown
No, not really, but you see, I did a lot of television. I did do the stage as well. I used to take them to work with me sometimes, though.
Presenter
Where did you put them?
June Brown
in the dressing-room.
Presenter
When you were on stage?
June Brown
Hmm.
June Brown
And also when I was rehearsing one Louise, I I used to go g take her in the guards van, in a pram, stand up all the way from South Croydon it was at the time, and in up to Tarringcross, and wheel the pram up St Martin's Lane, and the body, very heavy in those days, lifted off, put into Irene Brown's dressing room. She never knew. And then I'd rehearse, and at lunch time, when they all went out, I'd feed the baby and get a sandwich and milk, and and then when they all went home, I'd feed the baby and then go home in the guards van. I don't know how I did it, quite honestly, now when I look back.
Presenter
No, I really don't know how you did it because I'd like to
June Brown
My third sister helped me a lot, Rosemary, because we lived very close, opposite, and she would look after my children for me, and then I'd have old pairs just when I worked, but not when I didn't. Did your husband help? He could do when he felt like it. He was very capable, and if I was out to work, he would look after them. But, you know, it was dropped tools as soon as I came in. It wasn't like nowadays, you know, we didn't have house husbands really.
Presenter
Right.
Presenter
It's time for some more music, Juden Brown. We're going to hear your seventh. Tell me a little bit about this next choice. What it is and why you've chosen it.
June Brown
Well actually I used to sing a lot of songs, you know. As each child came along that would be the baby would be on my lap and the children would be in bed and they had a large room that was a kind of nursery when they were small. And then I would sing. It would be Over the Sea to Sky because Carrie the Lad who's born to be king that was my son William and then I did for the others I just did, you know, Jesus Bids Us Shine and Jesus Wants Me for a Sunbeam and Oh Summertime. I used to ring. I had a good voice and I could actually go at the top of summertime down to the bottom, but I can't any more. I wish I could. And so I used to sing every night to them quite a long time.
Speaker 4
He pony bowled like a bird on the wing
Speaker 4
On what the sailors cry.
Speaker 4
Marry the lad that's born to begin.
June Brown
I
Speaker 4
Over the sea to sky.
Presenter
Okay.
Presenter
That was Barbara Dixon and the Sky Boat Song, and memories for Eugene Brown of all the lullabies that you would sing over the years to your children.
Presenter
Aged eighty two, you were back on stage stripping off for calendar girls. Are you by nature an exhibitionist?
June Brown
Well, no, but if you were on the stage it didn't matter. It wasn't like being in a room or a anything. You see, when I was in the Bic I played the vision at whoever's court it was in Faustus and I'd got this costume which was cut under the bust and there was a little bit of coffee coloured knit over your bosom and then I used to use coffee coloured make up anyway so it looked as if there was nothing on. It didn't worry me at all because I wasn't myself. So it's the same with calendar girls. We were supposed to be naked so I was the only one who had nothing on. But I had this big knitting bag over my er private parts and top of my legs, you know, my legs and my legs up and I had shoes on, that's all.
Presenter
When you say you were the only one who had nothing on, were the other because of course everybody older.
June Brown
Yeah. It's fine, you see. They're sitting there it looks about the s blessed coloured jacket.
Presenter
Yeah.
Presenter
Yeah.
Presenter
But you wanted to do it, make it.
June Brown
Well, I was what we were supposed to be doing, and then I had a couple of knitting squares, like you do for a blanket, and I had one on each needle that I held up in front of my bosom.
Presenter
Tell me about being in a theatre when you hear the laugh and you know it's for you and what you're doing and what you
June Brown
Oh, it is the most wonderful feeling to be, I think, to be on the stage, because you have a direct contact with the audience, which you don't have in television.
Presenter
I imagine there's not much point in asking you about the prospect of retiring. Are you interested in retiring at all?
June Brown
No, not at all, no, no. No, I couldn't possibly. What would I do?
Presenter
You've had that audience appreciation. I understand what you're saying. It's different on television, but th it doubtless it it has been there for your character over these last then thirty years, and indeed from the stage before and during that.
Presenter
I'm going to cast you away to a desert island, where you are going to be all alone no audience there to appreciate you, no fan letters, nobody coming up to you in the bar. How do you think you would cope alone on a desert island?
June Brown
I don't really know you think a party thing would be
June Brown
Quite a believe it or not, a solitary person now. I'm a lot on my own, and I like silence. I don't put the television on, I don't put the radio on. I do read an awful lot.
Presenter
Are you a practical person? Do you think would you
June Brown
Not really. I mean, I could light a fire, and I might be able to get at fire with sticks and things, and if I had a piece of glass, I could do it from the sun, probably. I don't know how I'd get rid of salt out of water. I don't know. I might be a bit scared. I used to be frightened of the dark. And if there were animals on it, if there were snakes, well, I'd be in the sea all the time, I think.
Presenter
It's time to go to your eighth, June Brown. What are we gonna hear now, and why have you chosen this piece of music?
June Brown
We're back to the unrequited love, but it isn't actually it's a theme from it's one of those when they take a theme from the classical music and use it, so it's not really I'm not being very clever and having lots of classical music.
June Brown
We're only popular today.
Speaker 4
Can all thy soness alone from hope I dwell we rift of gladness
Speaker 4
I cry to heaven of all, yet none can hear me.
Speaker 4
Oh, not the heart you know is.
Speaker 4
Yeah.
Presenter
With words by Goethe and music by Tchaikovsky. That was none but The Lonely Heart, sung by Leslie Garris, with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Peter Robinson there. So, June Brown, you will get some books on this island. You get The Bible and the Complete Works of Shakespeare, and you get to take another book along. You're frowning now. Do you know what your book's going to be? I just want a library. Can't I have a library? No, I've done that before and got into severe trouble. You're not allowed a library, you're only allowed one book. I don't know how addicted it is.
Speaker 4
Yeah.
June Brown
I
June Brown
I wonder how about an iPhone.
June Brown
Um and the story of Sam Michaelie. I've got about three copies now and I'm trying desperately to remember who wrote it. Axel Munter, who was Swedish and a doctor, and it is very interesting because he did all sorts of exciting things. Yes.
Presenter
You may have that book, then, and you're allowed a luxury, too.
June Brown
What
Presenter
What's your luxury?
June Brown
Good beginning. Well, I'm going to take a packet of tobacco seeds, I think, and grow my own. I'm not sure about the paper. I think I could probably make it out of very thin leaves, like you do a cigar. Or maybe even some of the tobacco leaves. Yes, that would be a good idea.
Presenter
We shall give you those uh tobacco seeds then. And one disc you're looking very naughty having said that one of the discs uh that you have. I have to try not to laugh. I know why. And I am making no comments on the tobacco seeds. And
June Brown
I've just got my
Presenter
One of these eight discs. If you had to save just one, June, which one would it be?
June Brown
I think it would be
June Brown
Pale hands I loved beside the Chalimar,
Presenter
So that is the Kashmiri song that was sung today by Diana Durbin. Thank you.
June Brown
Very first song I ever remember hearing.
Presenter
It's yours then, June Brown. Thank you very much for letting us hear your desert island discs.
June Brown
Thank you.
Presenter
You've been listening to a download from the BBC. You'll find more information on the Radio 4 website, bbc.co.uk slash Radio4.
Speaker 4
This is the B B C.
Presenter asks
Your own independence, not in the soap, but in real life, seems very important to you. Is that fair?
It is extremely important to me and I hate to feel I'm losing it, you know, and if people put out hands to help me out of a car, I say, No, thank you, I won't accept it. And I get up and I don't push myself up from the arm of a chair. I use my thighs because you have to do that. You can act yourself into age. You can act yourself into anything you want.
Presenter asks
How did you, as a young woman, recover from your husband's suicide?
Through my friends, and I was very tearful about it all. I used to cry in the car all the time on my own, but I never showed it. And I think people used to say, Oh, isn't she marvellous, June? And a very wise old lady, Den Jilks, used to teach music and at Stratford she was lovely and she said, Well, I wish she would break down, because it will help me sometime. But it didn't seem to.
Presenter asks
Aged eighty-two, you were back on stage stripping off for Calendar Girls. Are you by nature an exhibitionist?
Well, no, but if you were on the stage it didn't matter. It wasn't like being in a room or a anything. You see, when I was in the Bic I played the vision at whoever's court it was in Faustus and I'd got this costume which was cut under the bust and there was a little bit of coffee coloured knit over your bosom and then I used to use coffee coloured make up anyway so it looked as if there was nothing on. It didn't worry me at all because I wasn't myself. So it's the same with calendar girls. We were supposed to be naked so I was the only one who had nothing on. But I had this big knitting bag over my er private parts and top of my legs, you know, my legs and my legs up and I had shoes on, that's all.
Presenter asks
How do you think you would cope alone on a desert island?
I don't really know you think a party thing would be ... Quite a believe it or not, a solitary person now. I'm a lot on my own, and I like silence. I don't put the television on, I don't put the radio on. I do read an awful lot.
“I'm just an actress, you know, and I've been very fortunate and I'm well known. I don't talk about myself as anything more than well known, and I'm lucky.”
“As soon as I get on the stage, it's as if I have energy. I can be feeling like death warmed up when I sort of come in, the shoulders drooping down, and then then I'm I'm alive. So it it keeps me alive.”
“It is extremely important to me and I hate to feel I'm losing it, you know, and if people put out hands to help me out of a car, I say, No, thank you, I won't accept it. And I get up and I don't push myself up from the arm of a chair. I use my thighs because you have to do that. You can act yourself into age. You can act yourself into anything you want.”
“Through my friends, and I was very tearful about it all. I used to cry in the car all the time on my own, but I never showed it.”
“It didn't worry me at all because I wasn't myself.”
“No, not at all, no, no. No, I couldn't possibly. What would I do?”