Roy Plomley

Presenter0:00

This is the BBC.

Speaker 10:04

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. This is a recording of the programme made as it was broadcast, and so there may be some degradation in the sound quality. For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen fifty eight.

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This is the BBC Home Service.

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Desert Island Discs.

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Each week at this time, a well-known person is asked the question, if you were to be cast away alone on a desert island, which eight gramophone records would you choose to have with you? Assuming, of course, that you also had a gramophone.

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This week's Castaway is introduced by Eamon Andrews.

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Now please don't be alarmed at not hearing the suave, reassuring tones of Roy Plumley. Nothing's the matter with him except that he's now on the island to change it about. And thank you for being sport enough to do this, Roy. I suppose I had this coming to me.

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Now where to begin, I don't know. I've been checking up on Roy, journalist, advertising man, actor, member of a male voice choir, radio announcer, producer, writer, disc jockey chairman, collector of playbills, gramophone records, press cuttings of the theater, and now a castaway. Is that me? That's you. Well, now since we have got you on the desert island so far without your disc, would you like to tell me how this idea started? Of this program, I mean. Well, it started a long time ago, over 16 years ago, in January 1942. I was looking for an idea that we could do a series of gramophone programs on. And I sent this idea in thinking, well, we might be able to do six. Six? What number is this? This is the 387th.

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Now this is a hard question to ask a host of a programme, but could you pick the most interesting guest you've had out of the 387? Um well the most interesting from the point of view of choice of record I would say

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is Peter Ustinov, who actually has done the program twice within an interval of years.

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He's been collecting records for a long, long time and as you know he travels about the world a great deal and wherever he goes he buys new records and he's got a wonderful collection of most unusual stuff.

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And from point of view of story,

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I would say the late Captain Dingle, who wrote books under the name of Sinbad.

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who told us about actually being wrecked on a desert island alone.

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And for eleven weeks he lived on raw penguin flesh and rainwater and discovered treasure on the island.

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Well, I know that in 1942, no doubt when you thought the series was ending, you were on the island once before. How many of your original choice remain? There are two survivors.

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Well, I won't ask you what they are just yet, but this is the question you ask most of your castaways. How did you go about your choice?

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I think nostalgia comes into it not for particular events, but for particular phases of life, particular interests. For example, the first one I've chosen is the opening chorus from a show. I don't take it because of that show, but simply for opening choruses and the theatre in general.

Presenter3:14

On the island about half past seven or eight o'clock, I should think of the lights up in Shalftbury Avenue, the actors making up, the people flocking in. And that's when I'd like to play this opening chorus from Kiss Me Kate. Another opening, another show.

Roy Plomley3:27

Overture is about to start. You cross your fingers and hold your heart. It's curtain time and away we go. Another opening of another show. Another opening, another show. It will be boss and we're both in all.

Roy Plomley3:45

Thanks for staying

Speaker 33:45

Folks to say hello.

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Oh, yeah.

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The joke stand on the job and to hope at last will make your

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Another opening, another show from Kiss Me Kate. You know, I did want to ask you, Roy, it just occurred to me, I mentioned earlier on that you were a singer. This musical knowledge of yours, is it hereditary?

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Oh no, indeed. I have very little musical knowledge apart from a few singing lessons. All right, Roy, your second record.

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Um, second one, I think I'd like something I'd miss on the island, the sound of a piano.

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Most of my working life has been spent with a piano playing somewhere in a rehearsal room or a studio.

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I can't think of any particular piece of piano music that would stand the test of several years' constant playing, taking a rather pessimistic view of how long I'd been on the island.

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So I've looked for the vaguest piano record.

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the nearest to the sound of a of a good pianist just sitting down and letting his fingers wander over the keys.

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And I found this very old record made donkeys years ago by Fred Elizaldi of harmonizing.

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Well now that you've chosen Fred Elizalde harmonizing, we'll ask you, Roy, to harmonize on the theme of a career. How did you begin?

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Um

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I can't explain it, but as a small child I had a tremendous enthusiasm for the theatre. I used to get a thrill out of looking at a theatre poster. I used to read all the notices. I knew what was on and where and who was in it. I never saw them, of course. I don't know where it came from. It's not in the family. My mother's family are farmers, agricultural interests. My father's family have always been in some form of medicine, doctors, dentists, veterinary surgeons. My father was a chemist.

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But I just had this tremendous enthusiasm for the theatre.

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When I left school I I had no idea what I wanted to be. I remember my father gave me a book called Careers for Boys.

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I didn't even read it. I saw that the theatre wasn't mentioned, and all the other occupations, well, one was as good as another.

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So you finally picked on what then? That wasn't in the book. Well, I thought there'd be a theatrical journalist, of course.

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Um in my youthful ignorance I thought journalism was something you didn't have to train for, you just went out and did it. So I went out and I bluffed my way into film studios and theatres, and I wrote an awful lot of articles, not one single word of any one of which was printed.

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Then I got a job in an advertising agency as a copywriter writing advertisements about cattle foods.

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Then the advertising agency lost the cattle food account, so they lost me.

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And by this time I'd got to know a few people in the theater and I got a job as assistant producer with a small opera company that was putting on

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One opera for one night.

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It was an unpaid job, there didn't seem much future in that.

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Then I got a job in charge of classified advertising on a group of trade papers, including an advertising paper, and I put in an awful lot of advertisements for myself that I didn't pay for, I'm afraid.

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Young men go anywhere, do anything.

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And from that I got

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Quite hilarious job as general assistant to a male-order astrologer in Jersey. How long did that last? Well, that lasted for the summer. There didn't seem any point in staying in Jersey at the end of the summer. So I decided to take the plunge and do what I really wanted to do and be an actor. And I decided to start on the lowest rung possible in the crowd of films.

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Which is what I did. Well, now that we've got you in crowd work, we'll ask you to pick our next record, Roy.

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Yes, something from the most perfect score, in my opinion, ever written for any entertainment, Johann Strauss is Deflatemeis.

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I'd like the finale to act too, in English.

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Any time anybody records anything from Fredermas in English they seem to have new lyrics. So I'm going back to a very old record which is a very old friend. It's not by any means the best recording. There have been better ones since, but it's great stuff.

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Ah

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Oh.

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I have not lived in my time again.

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Oh, yeah, bro.

Roy Plomley8:27

Mm

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Uh

Roy Plomley8:28

Uh

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Five?

Roy Plomley8:28

Yeah.

Roy Plomley8:29

Yeah.

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With my hand.

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We have

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Well, just before you picked that early Cotton Garden Opera Company recording of De Flair de Mas, we had you in crowd work in films. What was it like, Roy? Oh, sometimes miserable, sometimes great fun. I remember being in one film, a film about Sir Francis Drake and Queen Elizabeth, in which I played four different parts through four agents. I was plainly visible in all four parts with no distinctive make-up.

Presenter9:21

I think you were using this aspect of your career to further another aspect, weren't you? You're singing. I was trying to be a singer at that time, yes. At Jubilee time, I was in a choir singing patriotic songs five shows a day in some cinemas, and I was in the chorus for a show, and I was in pantomime.

Presenter9:37

Jobs on the whole were pretty few and far between. In fact, one time I decided to cut out the middleman as manager, as nobody seemed to want to give me any jobs, and sing in the streets, which I did one day, just to see how it felt. If I was starting at the bottom, I thought I'd really start at the bottom. How did it feel?

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Oh, pretty terrifying, but I know how it feels now. I could do it again if necessary. And where did you do it?

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While I didn't dare do it in London, I got a cheap day return to Guildford and sang up and down the High Street.

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And then I in the crowd I saw someone I'd been at school with and lost my nerve.

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Well, you may have lost your nerve, but I think it probably built your nerve because it was shortly after that I think you went into radio, seriously. Yes, I began in radio when I took an idea for a programme to the London office of a commercial station, Radio Normandy. And they didn't want the idea, but they were looking for an announcer. And I got the job. I went to a little town in Normandy called Fecon, spent a very pleasant six months there.

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And then I went to a Post-Parisien, which was a wonderful job, English announcer, young man of twenty-two, alone in Paris, only half an hour's work to do every day.

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What sort of programmes did you do, Roy? We did relays from cabarets and nightclubs and record programmes. And after Paris? Then I came back to London as producer for Radio Normandy until the war. Then I went back to France to work on Radio International, which was a station putting out programmes in English for the British Expeditionary Force, and at night it became the Czech Freedom Station and the Austrian Freedom Station.

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Then on June the 11th, 1940, it became evident that it was time to get out.

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And it took me about seven days to get home, and I was very lucky to get home at all. You were, in fact, one of the last Englishmen to get out of Paris, I think. I believe I was.

Speaker 111:14

Yeah.

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Well then I came back to London and did a bit of work for ENSER. I did various war jobs, began freelancing for the BBC.

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I'm still freelancing for the BBC. But we're going to take you up on that point. Meanwhile, will you pick another disc for us?

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Yes, I've always had a fascination for Chinese music. I don't pretend to understand it, I just like it.

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I've never been to China.

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My wife is Chinese, and I've met a lot of Chinese people in Europe.

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And I think one of the outstanding

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events in my theatre going career was when the Pekin Opera Company came to London a few years ago.

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Uh I take this little piece.

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It's an instrumental piece from an opera called In the Shade of the Weeping Willow, and it would remind me of the incredible grace of the stylized gestures and the wonderful colour. This is a sort of Romeo and Juliet story about two cross-starred lovers.

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the love of Yang Chan Po and Chu Ying Tai. And Chan Po dies for his love of

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of Ying Tai who's got to marry a a wicked Mandarin or something of the sort.

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And on her way to her wedding, she stops her wedding procession to go and mourn at Chan Ho's tomb.

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Now Ying Tai begins to lament we might leave it there.

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I think so. Well, at least you've got nothing to lament about, Roy. Freelancing for the BBC is where we left you and where we find you, and you're probably one of the busiest men in radio today. Do you have, among all the different programmes you've done, any outstanding ambitions?

Presenter13:16

Um well my outstanding ambition I think is outside the field of radio. I I also write plays. I'd like to write a really successful one I think.

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By a successful one, do you mean one that will run and run and run? That would be very nice financially, although theoretically I'm against long runs. I think they're inclined to clog up the theatre.

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Have you a play in the making or a new one completed? Yes, I I've got one that's going to be tried out in the next few months.

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But one always hopes about every new play. Do you find any clash in your great love and interest in the theatre with your work in radio? I don't think so.

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I don't.

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After all, the theatre is the mother of all other forms of entertainment.

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It radio is just a branch of the theatre in a way.

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It's true. So in the future we have this new play of yours to look forward to, and whether you like it or not, we hope it'll run and run. Thank you.

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I want a hybrid.

Speaker 114:04

I will hide.

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What about your next record, Roy? Well, next record is for sheer personal nostalgia. It's a record of the late 30s. I think it's got the state of mind of the late 30s. It reminds me in particular of a holiday in Brittany. It's Bob Hope and Shirley Ross singing Thanks for the Memory.

Roy Plomley14:22

For the memory.

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Of tinkling temple bells

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I'm a mother yell, And Cuban rum and towels from the very best hotel.

Speaker 114:32

Very best hotel.

Roy Plomley14:35

Oh, how lovely it was.

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Of a memory.

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Of cushions on the floor, hashed with Didymore.

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Well, with Bob Hope and Shirley Ross saying thanks for the memory and recalling who knows what nostalgic memories of your own, Roy, I'll ask you straight away to pick another record.

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There are going to be times on this island when life is going to be real and earnest.

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Um I think I should like some music to accompany my devotions and contemplations.

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My personal religious philosophy is a bit of a mixture. I don't belong to any established church, although I was brought up in the Church of England. I haven't chosen any Church of England music.

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Because I'm not very fond of boys' voices. I think there's a a coldness about it.

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So I've chosen here a piece of the Mass sung by the choir of the Russian Orthodox Cathedral in Paris.

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It's the Eucharist Canon by

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Archingowski.

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And it's a glorious and moving sound and there are women's voices instead of boys'.

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Maroy, I think everyone is going to agree with you that that is a glorious and moving sound.

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Now to the hard question. How are you going to manage on this island? Oh.

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Well, I've probably got more theoretical knowledge about how to manage on a desert island than anyone in this country, because I've heard a lot of the best brains in Britain tell me about it.

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Uh I picked up all sorts of tips like if you want fresh water you

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Cut a hole in dead fish and you'll get fresh water. But how I'd manage when it came to the point, I've no idea. Have you ever built anything? I've I can build a garden shed.

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Well somehow Roy, I think anyone who's resourceful enough to sing on the streets, even in Guilford, deserves something. And you've given away so many first-class castaway badges yourself that I'm presenting you with one straightaway. I shall wear it with pride, Eamon. Thank you. What about your next record? Yes.

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I'll go out on a limb and say this is the most perfect record ever made.

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It's by Sacha Guittri and Yvon Pranton and it's from a French operetta called Mariette. Sacha Guittry is the Emperor Louis-Napoleon and he's making a parset.

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Mariette was a ballet girl.

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And he goes to see her in her dressing room.

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and asks her to go out to supper. And she doesn't know who he is and says no. And he asks again, she still says no. And then he shows her his name on a portrait. And she says yes. That's all there is to it. You have to know two words of French to fully appreciate this. Non, which I believe means no, and we, which means yes. And it's enchanting.

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Oh, Venet soup avec moi. Venet don't soup avec moi.

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No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

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No, no, no, forgot of the far

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Uh

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No, it's not.

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Sasha Gitri and Yvonne Prantam.

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Marriette.

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And I don't suppose anyone ever said no or yes more enchantingly.

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One other question while you're on the island, Roy. What is it you'd be glad to miss?

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Oh.

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Um

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Smoke

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Films, Fog.

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All noxious vapours.

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Uh right.

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And remembering that you've missed all that, you've still one more choice, your eighth and last record. Yes, my last record.

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Is what I think is a tremendously exciting moment in music. It's from Beethoven's Emperor Concerto.

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That's the

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End of the second movement and the beginning of the third, and it's played here by Rudolf Serkin with the Philadelphia Orchestra, conducted by Eugene Hong.

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Well that part of the Beethoven Emperor Concerto is your last record, Roy. I'm very interested to know how does this match up with your original choice of eight records some 16 years ago? The only two I've kept are the the sound of the piano

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Freda Lazelde playing Harmonizing and that old love of mine, The Peace of Fledermart.

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Well, I'm gonna try and work out later what that signifies, not now. Now luxuries, you are allowed some luxuries. What's your choice? Um well when I'm at home

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Working at my desk, I want to go out in the garden and build sheds or dig.

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Perhaps on the island when I'm building things and digging all day long I shall want to go and work at my desk. So can I have a desk?

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with the typewriter sunk into it, you know.

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and perhaps in the drawers some paper and a spare ribbon or two.

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Well, I think since you're the originator of The Island, we'll give you an endless supply of ribbons. Thank you very much. And perhaps a book as well, if you'd like to pick one. A book I'd choose, Who's Who in the Theatre?

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Nearly 2,000 pages of facts and figures.

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thousands of performances and hundreds of productions to think about. I think I'd

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get an awful lot of pleasure out of that.

Presenter22:01

One other question, Roy. Of all the people who featured in your 387 Desert Island discs, do you think that after six months or a year that they really would still be in love with the records they've chosen on this program?

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That's a a difficult point. If they rationed them, of course they would.

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But I find myself that the favourite records in my collection, I'll go to the cupboard and and take a disc out and I'll look at it and say well that's an old friend. I I don't need to play that. I know it so well. I think that would very likely happen on the island. It would be nice to have them though just in case, but you'll eventually know them so well there'll be no need to play them.

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Like people telling jokes by numbers.

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Well, thank you very much, Roy Plumley, for letting us hear your choice of desert island discs. Well, thank you, Ermond, for putting me through the hoop. Now, what about you being a cost-winter? Let's make a date for a few weeks' time, huh? Well, fair's fair. All right. Thank you, Emma.

Presenter23:09

The castaway in today's recorded program was Roy Plumley, the interviewer Eamon Andrews, and the producer Monica Chapman.

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Next Monday the castaway will be Agnes Nicholls and on Saturday at 2 o'clock we shall repeat a programme previously broadcast in this series in which the castaway will be Victor Sylvester.

Presenter23:28

The next programme in Radio Record Week is at half past eight this evening in the Light programme, when Vera Lynn presents her evening record album.

Speaker 123:51

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.

Roy Plomley24:01

This is the B B C.