Richard Wilson

Speaker 10:01

BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts.

Presenter0:04

Hello, I'm Lauren Laverne and this is the Desert Island Discs Podcast. Every week I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, book and luxury they'd want to take with them if they were cast away to a desert island. And, for rights reasons, the music is shorter than the original broadcast. I hope you enjoy listening.

Presenter0:43

My castaway this week is the actor and director Richard Wilson. His career on stage, screen, and in the director's chair stretches back over fifty years, but his star rose to new heights when, in his mid-fifties, he took on the role of perpetually apoplectic pensioner Victor Meldrew in One Foot in the Grave. In the course of just thirty six episodes, the series changed his life and spawned an unlikely folk hero. It's still frequently voted one of the best sitcoms of all time. I was, he says, always a late developer.

Presenter1:17

Born in Greenock, he nursed the dream to act from an early age, moving to London to be closer to the worlds of film and theatre. A chance encounter led him to jack in his steady job as a hospital lab technician and take up a place at Rada as a mature student. As an actor, he strives to keep a distance between himself and his characters for the sake of his craft. His focus rests on getting an audience to, to coin a phrase, believe it. He says, If the performance is going to astonish, if a human being is able to be truly metamorphic, then the less we know about the toenail clippings and belching of the person behind the mask, the better. Well, I do like a challenge. Richard Wilson, welcome to Desert Island Discs.

Richard Wilson1:58

Thank you, Lauren.

Presenter1:59

So, Richard, your theatre career has encompassed many of the classics, but as a director, you do favour new work by up-and-coming writers. Why is that?

Richard Wilson2:08

Yes, well I just believe that the writer should be writing about today, just so that we we know what's going on in the society we're living in. So I'm I'm slightly against the the classical uh playwrights in a way.

Presenter2:23

And the fact that these are living writers, presumably that gives you a chance to ask them what they meant and take in their perspective. Do you enjoy those discussions?

Richard Wilson2:30

Well, yes, exactly.

Richard Wilson2:33

Oh yes, oh yes. They can tell me what I'm getting wrong.

Richard Wilson2:38

And I just think it's good that they get every opportunity to tell us what it is they're thinking about.

Presenter2:44

Richard, you're in your eighties now.

Richard Wilson2:46

eighteen eighty five and July.

Presenter2:48

Happy birthday for July.

Richard Wilson2:49

Thank you.

Presenter2:50

Do you enjoy passing on the benefit of your experience and your love of the arts to friends?

Richard Wilson2:55

Yes, I I still think I have something to say and so I I think probably wrongly I think of what I have to say I have had fifty years to think about it and uh I'm pretty sure that I'm correct of most of what I say.

Presenter3:15

Well, we're hoping to find out today. We're also, of course, going to hear the discs that you've chosen. Let's get straight into your first. Tell me the story behind this one. Why are you taking it with you?

Richard Wilson3:17

We're all

Richard Wilson3:26

Well, there was a time when I was uh a teenager and not an actor that I wanted to be a an orchestral conductor. And I used to do a lot of conducting with my mother's knitting needle. And I was very fond of Sebastius' Sixth Symphony, and I thought it would be a good idea to buy uh a proper baton for it. So I went up to Glasgow, I went into this shop, and I was absolutely petrified, because if I asked for a a conductor's baton, she might say, So which orchestra are you conducting? So I said, Um, excuse me, could I have a a a baton, please? And she said, What do you want? Ten and six or fifteen shillings.

Presenter5:13

Part of the fourth movement of Sibelius's Symphony No. six in D minor, performed by the Berlin Philharmonic, conducted by Herbert von Karian. Richard Wilson, you had a heart attack in twenty sixteen, and of course life changed after that for you, didn't it?

Richard Wilson5:29

Yeah. I fell off this tiny balcony and hit my head, and that's what caused the problem. I can't remember quite so much now, and sometimes I do remember bits uh which I had forgotten about.

Presenter5:44

And has it changed your attitude? I mean, you're still working, but I'm presuming you're pretty choosy about the projects you decide to take on.

Richard Wilson5:52

Yes, I choose more carefully and I and and uh d doing theatre work, for example, is

Richard Wilson5:58

Anyway, eight shows a week is too much for me now.

Presenter6:02

So, Richard, let's go back a bit then. You were born Iain Wilson in nineteen thirty six in Greenock, a port and shipbuilding hub on Scotland's west coast, and I know that your father John worked at Scott's, which was the biggest of the shipyards, and he was head timekeeper. What did his job involve?

Richard Wilson6:19

I remember him he was quite a small man, my father, about five foot six, and I could remember being in the shipyard with him uh at knocking off time, which was five o'clock, and he used to uh get the big gates of the shipyard open and stand in front of the the open gates so that the men couldn't rush out.

Presenter6:42

And what was your dad like? Did you did you have a close relationship?

Richard Wilson6:46

I did have a close re relationship. My mother was the the funny person in the family. She was very amusing. My dad was more serious. She was allowed not to go to church by my father.

Presenter6:59

So he's a Presbyterian, quite strictly.

Richard Wilson6:59

So he said

Richard Wilson7:00

Presbyterian, one of the church orderlies, and

Presenter7:01

Mm.

Richard Wilson7:05

He wanted me and my sister to go to church with him, but my mother was always excused church, and I never really found out why and I suspect it was because she wasn't religious. But she was just very amusing and always telling her own little stories

Richard Wilson7:24

being very humorous about day-to-day living.

Presenter7:28

The games that you played with your sister Moira in the Garden Shed sound a bit like you know, they they indicate that you had a flair for the dramatic even as a kid. I I think one early role that you played was of the last baby in the world.

Richard Wilson7:40

That's right.

Presenter7:40

Which just sounds like a cracker for all.

Richard Wilson7:44

I was the last baby in the world and she chose me because there was nothing else there.

Richard Wilson7:50

And I think I remember playing her dog as well. My sister died recently, uh at ninety one. She did she did uh very well. But she was very g good with her uh instructions, like playing her dog and The Last Baby in the World. Yeah.

Presenter8:07

She's a natural casting director, perhaps.

Richard Wilson8:08

Maybe, maybe.

Presenter8:12

Alright Richard, it's time for your second piece of music today. What have you chosen and why?

Richard Wilson8:17

I've chosen Farewell to Stromness by Peter Maxwell Davis because I wanted to make sure I got some Scottish stuff in, because I've lived in London since nineteen fifty nine, so I've lived in England longer than I have in Scotland, which just still worries me a bit.

Presenter9:36

Farewell to Stromness Peter Maxwell Davis.

Presenter9:40

Richard Wilson, so you described your relationship with your parents, which sounds rather lovely, but you also mentioned that your your father had quite a strict Presbyterian faith. I wonder how that shaped your childhood?

Richard Wilson9:52

The rule was on a Sunday when my father was going to church, he used to say, Are you coming to church today? and I would say, No, I'm not and then he would stop talking to me and until after he got back from church and we we had lunch, he just wouldn't talk to me. But I I went

Speaker 210:06

Mm.

Richard Wilson10:13

past religion when I was quite young. I I s just stopped believing.

Presenter10:18

And did it bother you that you lost your faith?

Richard Wilson10:21

Yeah.

Richard Wilson10:22

No, it was a relief, a release.

Presenter10:25

You caught the acting bug quite young. That came to you I think when you were about eleven you made your debut in The Princess and the P.

Richard Wilson10:32

That's right. Well, well, well research.

Presenter10:33

Well

Presenter10:36

So tell me about that part.

Richard Wilson10:38

I put uh Ann Carey's knickers on as a pair of

Richard Wilson10:43

Trousers.

Presenter10:44

Kind of pantaloons.

Richard Wilson10:45

Pantaloons, that's the word, thank you. I was a very skinny child and I could get quite a good laugh, and it was uh very beautiful to get such such a a response.

Presenter10:46

Thank you.

Presenter10:58

And what were you like uh as a as a child yourself? Because as you say, you were quite skinny, I think self-conscious. Were you shy?

Richard Wilson11:05

I was shy. And it w I there's another terrible ad admission. As I grew older and then I started having a drink or two,

Richard Wilson11:17

I look upon alcohol as something that really helped me become

Richard Wilson11:25

somebody else uh and be somebody who had a bit more to say. I could make arguments when I had a few pints in me, which I wouldn't have dared say when I was totally sober.

Presenter11:37

So you used it to to lower your inhibitions.

Richard Wilson11:40

No, I haven't I've I've I brought in a a a flask right now, I'm uh which you haven't seen.

Presenter11:46

I thought I'd searched you thoroughly. How dare you? I thought we were friends.

Richard Wilson11:48

How dare you.

Speaker 211:49

Yeah.

Richard Wilson11:50

Ha ha ha.

Presenter11:52

And as you got a little bit older, you also started performing with amateur theatre groups. What kind of parts were you playing?

Richard Wilson11:58

I remember getting a my first sort of comedy.

Richard Wilson12:02

And I was I was in the the call house getting call in for the the fire and the the the Green Ork telegraph arrived.

Richard Wilson12:11

And I opened it in the in the in the bunker to read the review and it was very quite promising, I'm I I I say m with modesty.

Presenter12:21

It was a rave.

Richard Wilson12:22

But you were

Presenter12:25

But you were in the coal house.

Richard Wilson12:26

That's

Presenter12:27

That's surebiz in a nutshell, isn't it?

Richard Wilson12:29

Ha ha ha ha.

Presenter12:30

Yeah.

Richard Wilson12:30

Yeah.

Presenter12:31

Let's have some more music. Your third disc today. What's it going to be and why?

Richard Wilson12:36

The last four songs of Strauss.

Richard Wilson12:38

I hadn't listened to the last four songs for a long time and I played it.

Richard Wilson12:43

again and it w it was just

Richard Wilson12:47

I just loved it as much as ever.

Speaker 212:52

S Torres.

Presenter13:51

Im Arbentrot from Four Last Songs by Richard Strauss, performed by Rene Fleming with the Houston Symphony Orchestra conducted by Christoph Eschenbach.

Presenter14:01

Richard Wilson, by the time you reached your teens you'd secretly started to harbor the dream of being an actor. How did that go down with Mabel Irving, your drama teacher at the time?

Richard Wilson14:12

I remember her asking me, she said, Wilson, what are you going to do with yourself? And I got into a terrible flummox and I said, Please, Miss, I think I want to be an actor. And she said, Don't be stupid, boy, you can't speak properly. So which was not a great thing for a teacher to say to a pupil.

Presenter14:32

No.

Richard Wilson14:32

When I became well known, the the BBC uh interviewed Mabel in in the Greenock High School, uh my primary school, and she she claimed that she hadn't said that.

Presenter14:48

So after leaving school, you started work at a hospital in Glasgow. You were a lab technician there. What kind of work were you doing and how did it suit you?

Richard Wilson14:57

Well, I quite enjoyed it. I used to be in hematology at first, and I used to ha wear a white coat, as they don't do nowadays, and everyone thought called me doctor because I was taking blood from them. And I used to tell them, Look, I'm not a doctor, I I'm a lab tech. And then when I said that, they got a bit frightened of this person with a a big syringe who wasn't a doctor, so I stopped I stopped mentioning it.

Presenter15:29

So just leaned into the acting at that point.

Richard Wilson15:31

Yeah.

Richard Wilson15:33

So I enjoyed it from uh meeting the patients, I suppose.

Presenter15:38

I think observing patients helped you develop some of your acting techniques, didn't it?

Richard Wilson15:43

Yeah, yeah. It's the same with uh when I was in London, even when I could afford it, I never wanted to buy a car because I thought I won't see people any more and I've got to keep an eye on them.

Richard Wilson15:56

And you could do that in the underground.

Presenter15:58

So you didn't learn to drive till you were forty, as I understand.

Richard Wilson16:01

That's right.

Presenter16:02

Just so that you could uh keep taking the tube and keep people watching.

Richard Wilson16:05

Yeah.

Presenter16:07

Alright, Richard, it's time to take a moment for some more music. This is your fourth disc today. Why have you chosen it?

Richard Wilson16:13

I remember Alan Rickman rang me up one day and said, There's this dance company coming to Sadler's Wells called the Dance Theatre of Wuppertal, run by Pina Bausch. He said, Do you fancy seeing it? And I said, Yeah, I'll come along to that. And within seconds

Richard Wilson16:34

I knew I was watching a a genius. And so the music I'm going to choose just now is not of that first show that I saw, but is of another performance they did of The Rite of Spring by Stovinsky.

Presenter17:48

Part of Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring, performed by the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Sir Simon Rattle, taking you back to that Peenabausch performance with your friend Alan Rickman.

Presenter18:00

Richard, let me take you back to those years working in the lab in Glasgow. At the time, I know that a discovery that you made that changed your life again it was the Cosmo Cinema, and it opened up a new world for you.

Richard Wilson18:05

Uh

Richard Wilson18:13

Well we

Presenter18:13

What were you watching?

Richard Wilson18:14

Yes. The Cosmo was a a brilliant little cinema in Glasgow that showed a a a different foreign film every week.

Richard Wilson18:25

So I got into Swiss cinema, French cinema, Italian cinema, and I remember they showed um the French uh comedy star Michel Hullo's Holidays, and uh I I just thought it was so funny. It was wonderful.

Presenter18:45

In nineteen fifty six you were called up for National Service and you joined the Royal Army Medical Corps. You were posted to Singapore. What type of diseases were you dealing with there? And was the work itself much different to what you've been doing in Glasgow?

Richard Wilson18:58

Oh well, yes. I uh a lot of the the people I was dealing with in in Singapore were wounded soldiers because there was a war on in Malaysia.

Presenter19:08

Later in your career, you would go on to direct a play for television called Changing Step, written by your friend Anthony Scherr.

Richard Wilson19:15

That's right.

Presenter19:15

It's set in nineteen seventeen, and it tells the story of a group of wounded soldiers back from the front who are sent to a stately home to convalesce, as as people sometimes were at the time. Many of the young men you cast were disabled themselves and amputees and so on.

Richard Wilson19:30

Yes, I made it I made it clear that uh there would be no wounded soldiers, obviously badly wounded soldiers, who would be pretending they had to be real.

Presenter19:42

Why was that important?

Richard Wilson19:44

Well, because I'd seen so many war films where I just I didn't believe it. Uh

Richard Wilson19:49

There, that's the old catchphrase.

Richard Wilson19:52

I I always try not to say that.

Presenter19:55

Slipped out that one.

Richard Wilson19:56

I was slipped out. And I wanted the real stuff.

Presenter20:01

It's time for your fifth disc today. Tell us about this choice.

Richard Wilson20:06

Ah yes. This is from Almudava's film, Talk to Her. I would just like this one to be in because it it reminded me of my l great uh desire for cinema when I got to London.

Speaker 220:21

Dicen que por las noches, noma seleiva en puro yora.

Speaker 220:31

This end cannot come near.

Speaker 220:35

I am not a man.

Speaker 220:40

Juran que el mismosielo sextremes alloy suganto.

Speaker 220:53

Como su fría por ella, que hasten su muerte en la fuella mando.

Speaker 221:05

Aye, aye, aye, aye, aye.

Speaker 221:15

Go.

Presenter21:16

Uh

Presenter21:18

Kaitano Ovaloso and Kukuru Kuku Paloma from the soundtrack to the film, Talk to Her.

Presenter21:26

Richard Wilson, you decided to move to London. You arrived in the early 60s. Why?

Richard Wilson21:33

Well, I suppose to see cinema, really, and to see theatre. And I had this thought in my mind that I might I I just might become an actor.

Presenter21:48

You kept up the day job, worked at Paddington General Hospital, taking acting classes in your spare time. And at twenty seven you decided to audition for Rada. What made you decide to go for it?

Richard Wilson21:51

Taking a

Richard Wilson21:59

Well, I I remember talking to uh uh a Radha student at a party and she told me, she said, you know, you could get into Radha and get your fees paid because you've lived in London for over a year now and I had I had no idea about that. And so I thought, if I don't try now, I'm probably never going to try at twenty-seven. I thought I was getting a bit old.

Presenter22:27

And you got in. You made it to Radha. Of course, you had a broad Scottish accent in those days. And this is a long time ago when attitudes were quite different. This is the days of received pronunciation. Did your accent cause any problems for you?

Richard Wilson22:42

Oh gosh, yes, yes. Before I went to Radha it was even worse. When I when I spoke in London, I had to speak everything twice because people would say, What are you saying? My Rada English accent was so bad that they had to give me private lessons with the head voice teacher.

Speaker 122:53

Day.

Richard Wilson23:02

So that's why I was I was very good at mime. And that's what made me a director in a way, because I they don't do it anymore, but in in the final term the students were allowed to write and direct a mime play. So I was picked as director because my my English was so poor. And I always then had this idea that I would I would act and direct. I never wanted to change that.

Presenter23:33

So Richard, you graduated in nineteen sixty five and changed your name at that point from Ian to Richard Wilson because Equity already had an Ian Wilson listed on their books.

Richard Wilson23:42

This Ian Wilson was a very small man who had done a lot of films, but most of the parts he played, I think he had played about twenty Night Watchmen and he was

Richard Wilson23:58

He he was retiring.

Richard Wilson24:00

And I said to equity, I said, look, if he's retiring, I'll keep my name. And they said, no, you've got to wait for seven years.

Presenter24:09

Couldn't he have done the night shift? You could have done the dish.

Presenter24:13

So Richard, you got your first job on the television series Doctor Finley's Case Book. What was the part?

Richard Wilson24:18

I was playing Mr. McKeely, the Stonemason. This was with Andrew Cruikshank. The thing I do remember was going into the studio and I I saw this machine, this uh television, and it was me staring into it. I I realized of course then that uh ev everything wasn't in black and white, there was no colour television at the time.

Presenter24:42

So the studio monitors were in colour.

Richard Wilson24:44

Yeah.

Presenter24:45

What was that like seeing yourself on screen?

Richard Wilson24:47

It was absolutely frightening.

Presenter24:48

And

Richard Wilson24:51

I never wanted to do it again.

Presenter24:54

It's time for disc number six, Richard. What are we going to hear?

Richard Wilson24:57

When I first came down to London, I used to go to uh folk clubs with Ewan McCall and Peggy Seeger, and he had written this song for her. And then when I was planning to do uh Dis Island Dis,

Richard Wilson25:12

I I listened to Roberta Flack's version of it and thought, oh, that's better. So I love the song and it's a Scottish song, but I'm going to ask for Roberta Flack to sing it.

Speaker 125:28

Uh

Speaker 225:28

First.

Speaker 225:34

Ever I saw you

Speaker 125:44

Uh

Speaker 225:44

Uh

Speaker 125:44

Thought This is

Speaker 225:50

RUA

Presenter25:57

The first time ever I saw your face, Roberta Flack.

Presenter26:01

So, Richard, television viewers first got to know you more in 1973 when you starred as the sarcastic, sneery QC Jeremy Parsons in the very popular series Crown Court. So, the format was a fictional court case with actors playing the legal counsel and the general public as the jury. Now, many of your fellow actors apparently didn't feel the need to learn their lines because they could read from the written briefs from their props that they had with them, but you were very diligent and it ended up working in your favour. What happened?

Speaker 126:13

I see it.

Richard Wilson26:33

I wanted to look at the uh the witnesses and make them suffer from my questioning. Uh so I tried to learn as much as I could and uh um I wanted to be a a defence counsel and I I succeeded uh in defending most of the cases because I h I didn't like the idea of proving people guilty.

Presenter26:55

From then on, Richard, alongside your theatre work, you appeared in sitcoms and drama series, including Toottie Fruity, alongside Robbie Coltrane and Emma Thompson.

Richard Wilson27:03

Yeah. Uh

Presenter27:04

Just a wonderful part. And then in 1990, you were sent some scripts written by David Renwick about a grumpy pensioner who had just retired.

Richard Wilson27:12

Just retired.

Presenter27:14

But you initially turned down the part of Victor Meldrew.

Richard Wilson27:17

I did.

Richard Wilson27:18

It was stupid to say, but I didn't think I was ready to play old men. I think I was fifty five Victor was sixty, and I thought I've got another five years to go before I have to do that.

Richard Wilson27:32

The other reason I wasn't too keen to play it was I thought it would only be enjoyed by old people. But in fact, old people didn't like it because

Presenter27:40

There were a few complaints, weren't there?

Richard Wilson27:41

Yes, because first of all he swore a lot. The BBC wanted to stop him swearing and fortunately David Renwick decided to keep him swearing. But also the idea that a lot of old people had was one foot in the grave meant that they were going to die. But of course the whole point about Victor was it was the foot that was out of the grave that was the important one, that was still working away. But then Susie Belben, the producer, sent me some more scripts because she was determined to try and get me. So as soon as I went in, I knew I was going to say yes.

Presenter28:24

One Foot in the Grave was a smash hit. It regularly attracted audiences of seventeen million, and it's still regarded as one of the greatest British sitcoms of all time. You won two BAFTAs for your performance, but it did come to an end after thirty-six episodes. What happened?

Richard Wilson28:40

I remember I was doing my my second waiting for Godot in in Manchester when David came to see it and over dinner he said, I I'm thinking of killing Victor. What do you think? And I said, I yeah, I think we should kill him. I th I thought I'd had I had enough of him.

Presenter28:59

What was it like filming that last episode? Was it emotional?

Richard Wilson29:03

No?

Richard Wilson29:06

I think I was quite pleased that we were going to a a changing area.

Presenter29:12

You were ready to move on.

Richard Wilson29:14

I was ready to move on.

Presenter29:16

But it's pretty amazing that, you know, all these years later, just those six series have continued to have a life of their own and to be a part of popular culture.

Richard Wilson29:25

Yes, that's true. And I still get shouted at uh the catchphrase.

Presenter29:30

Did the people who were doing it always think they're the first person to do it?

Richard Wilson29:34

Yeah.

Presenter29:34

Yeah.

Richard Wilson29:34

Yeah, and I used to say, go to heaven. Do you know I've never heard that before?

Richard Wilson29:42

And they say, really?

Presenter29:45

It's time for your seventh disc today, Richard. What are we going to hear?

Richard Wilson29:50

Once I knew I was doing this, this and this of course everyone was asking me, what are you going to have? And then a writer friend, Ewan Armstrong, said to me, Have you got the roaches in? I'd remember enjoying the roaches hugely when they were popular many years ago. And I said, no, I haven't got them, but I'll put them in.

Presenter30:17

If you go down to Hamble

Speaker 230:19

Emma

Speaker 230:24

You'll never come back.

Speaker 230:31

In my opinion, you

Presenter30:41

Hammond's song, The Roaches. Richard Wilson, you do live alone at the moment, but I think at one point you thought about buying a big house in the country with your friend Ian McKellen.

Presenter30:51

Please tell me that's still on the cards.

Richard Wilson30:54

Yes, we had this idea of buying a very, very large house in the country and he would live on one side and I would live on the other side.

Presenter31:04

A wing each? What could be better?

Richard Wilson31:06

A wing each, but he's got more houses in London now, so he he got fed up with that idea.

Presenter31:14

I can't pretend I'm not disappointed, Richard.

Richard Wilson31:14

I'll pretend I've noticed.

Richard Wilson31:16

Ha ha ha ha ha.

Presenter31:18

So so much like Ian McEllen, you are a long time supporter of Stonewall. You actually hosted their awards show in two thousand eight. I did. But you yourself weren't officially out until twenty thirteen, and that was when a magazine included you in a list of influential gay people. What was your reaction when it happened?

Richard Wilson31:35

I was

Richard Wilson31:37

delighted that it had come out and

Richard Wilson31:40

I was a bit worried that my sister might find it difficult, but she di didn't didn't seem to worry at all.

Presenter31:48

And what about when you were growing up? I mean, the fifties wasn't the easiest time to be gay. Did your sexuality cause problems for you back then, as a young man?

Richard Wilson31:55

Yes.

Richard Wilson31:57

Yes. I I suppose that's true. Uh I did always have a lot of very close friends which were very important to me, gay and straight. That was very important to me.

Presenter32:10

Of course I'm about to send you off to the island.

Richard Wilson32:12

Oh yes.

Presenter32:13

What's your strategy for survival going to be, Richard?

Richard Wilson32:17

I don't know how good I'll be on on it in terms of I'm I'm hopeless at at building things. Um, but I have lived alone for a very long time and

Richard Wilson32:31

I quite like being alone at times.

Presenter32:33

You like your own company.

Richard Wilson32:34

Yeah.

Richard Wilson32:35

I quite like it at times. It it's just every now and again I feel I should have made a bit more effort to uh have a partner, but uh that never w really worked.

Presenter32:48

That never happened for you.

Richard Wilson32:49

Yeah.

Presenter32:51

Richard, we're going to hear one more disc before we send you off to the island. Your final choice today. What's it going to be?

Richard Wilson32:57

This is one of my favorite classical pieces, and I'm also a great fan of

Richard Wilson33:03

Young Musician of the Year competition on the telly. I I just get so impressed by them and so jealous of them. There was a a cellist called Sheikh Khani Mason.

Richard Wilson33:18

I I knew that when I saw Young Musician of the Year that year that he had to win it. I thought he was by far the best.

Presenter34:25

Part of the first movement of Elgar's cello concerto in E minor, played by Sheku Kennemason with the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sir Simon Rattle.

Presenter34:35

So, Richard Wilson, it's time. I'm sending you away to the island. You can have the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare, and you can choose another book as well. What would you like?

Richard Wilson34:45

Well, I I'm not interested in the Bible or or the Shakespeare too much, but I I wouldn't want to go away without the the poems of Robert Burns.

Presenter34:54

Any particular favorites? There might be sleek and timorous beasties on the island. You never know.

Richard Wilson34:57

Proven to

Richard Wilson34:58

It's on the

Richard Wilson34:59

Never know.

Richard Wilson35:01

Pervisliki current timeris visti, oh what a panic send thy bristi. Uh uh that's one of my favourites.

Presenter35:08

You can also have a luxury item. What would you like?

Richard Wilson35:12

Is there any chance that I might get copies of The Guardian?

Presenter35:16

Mm.

Richard Wilson35:17

Is that allowed?

Presenter35:18

Well, Richard, I happen to know that there is precedent for this. Castaways have taken newspaper subscriptions in the past.

Presenter35:26

So I can furnish you with one for your preferred choice, The Guardian. And finally, which one track of the eight that you've shared with us today would you save from the waves?

Richard Wilson35:37

Real

Richard Wilson35:39

I think I'm going to choose the last four songs of Strauss.

Presenter35:44

Richard Wilson, thank you very much for letting us hear your Desert Island discs.

Richard Wilson35:48

Thank you very much, Lauren.

Presenter35:55

I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Richard. We've cast many actors away to our island, including Whoopi Goldberg, Tom Hanks, Brian Cox and Samantha Morton. You can find their episodes in our Desert Island Discs programme archive and through BBC Sounds. The composer Peter Maxwell Davies is in there too. Next time my guest will be the publisher and editor Margaret Busby. I do hope you'll join us.

Speaker 236:29

The system

Speaker 136:30

A new six-part thriller from BBC Radio 4.

Speaker 136:34

Uh

Presenter36:34

What do you want to do with your life?

Presenter36:37

Do you want to spend your time glued to a screen, feeding the dopamine addiction you don't even know you've got, looking at pictures of things you'll never have, places you'll never go and people you'll never meet?

Presenter36:48

Yeah.

Richard Wilson36:48

Or do you want to exist in the real world? Do you want to be part of something? Do you want to use your body, the only body you'll ever have, gifted to you by millennia of evolution? Do you want to use it for something other than swiping and clicking and tapping and eating doughnut holes?

Richard Wilson37:07

If so, We may have something for

Speaker 137:10

The System, a new six-part thriller from BBC Radio 4. Available now on BBC Sounds.