Jack Thorne

Presenter0:01

BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts. 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. For rights reasons, the music is shorter than the original broadcast. I hope you enjoy listening.

Presenter0:43

My castaway this week is the screenwriter and playwright Jack Thorne. Millions of us watched his adaptation of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials on TV. For the stage, he scripted Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, a great critical and commercial success on both sides of the Atlantic. Alongside these family-friendly hits, his TV dramas often bring us face to face with life's grimmer, bleaker realities. They include the acclaimed series This Is England and this year's Help, set in a care home bearing the brunt of the coronavirus pandemic.

Presenter1:16

As an aspiring dramatist, he was told that every writer has a myth, a story they return to again and again. It's tempting to speculate that his is about power, what it means to have more of it than you can handle, what it means not to have enough. Luckily, he knows what he wants to do with the power he wields as a leading light in Britain's creative sector. He says, I think TV is beautiful, an empathy box in the corner of the room. I was very lucky to have great teachers at my school, but the best lessons were always from TV. TV is where we find our place in the world, and at a time of great cruelty, TV is vital at reminding people of what humanity is. Jack Thorne, welcome to Desert Island Discs.

Jack Thorne1:59

Thank you. This feels very, very odd.

Presenter2:01

Go with it. It's going to be fun.

Presenter2:04

Now Jack, I absolutely loved your description of T V there as an empathy box, but I was also very happy to discover that you are and always have had quite an omnivorous, even indiscriminate televisual diet in your life.

Jack Thorne2:17

My wife always says I have no critical faculty whatsoever. Basically, if it's on television, I'll enjoy it.

Presenter2:22

Your work has such a broad range, doesn't it? From gritty realism like This Is England to full on fantasy. And you always like to be working on a couple of projects at the same time. I mean, how easy is it for you to change gears from one kind of genre to the other?

Jack Thorne2:37

Very easy. In fact, it's vital. I stop sleeping if I'm working on one project because I become obsessed with it and not in a healthy way. I run into that block that happens where you go, I know I can write this better, but I'm writing it really badly. How can I help myself? And sometimes having something to swap to that you go, oh, no, I can still do this. I'm not terrible. I can sleep. I can turn my brain off is very good. When I was doing Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, for instance, the project I was writing alongside it was a show I did called National Treasure that was about historic sex crimes.

Presenter3:10

With Robbie Coltrain, you know.

Jack Thorne3:11

Exactly. And so n nothing has been starker, although I had Hagrid in it. You know, there was nothing starker in terms of, um, moving between the two and it kept my brain from rotting.

Presenter3:16

Darker in terms of uh

Presenter3:20

You're sharing the eight tracks that you take to a desert island with us today. I think we better have your first.

Jack Thorne3:26

It's Common People bipulp live at Glasgow Festival 1995 and I was there. There were cool kids at school and they were going and I sort of said I'll come and no one quite had the confidence to say we didn't invite you. I don't think they particularly liked me. I sort of felt that about most of my friends at school. Nice people, just not people that particularly got me and so I just was floundering a lot at that age and I was a skinny weird kid and then along came this skinny weird knight who was just magnificent and that person was Jarvis Cocker and when he sang this song on stage that night the moment just felt transcendent. It was one of the greatest moments of my life.

Speaker 14:07

I wanna live like common people I wanna do whatever common people

Speaker 24:14

Wanna sleep with covered paper I wanna sleep with color people like you.

Jack Thorne4:22

Well what else could I do? I said oh, I'll see what I could do.

Jack Thorne4:32

I took it to a supermarket. I don't know why, but I ha

Speaker 24:36

Two standards of work.

Presenter4:38

Pulp, singing Common People, live at Glastonbury Festival, 1995. Jack Thorne, your most recent T V drama, Help, was actually partly inspired by your mum, Maggie. She worked as a carer. Tell me a little bit more about her.

Jack Thorne4:53

We were brought up calling them Maggie and Mike because they are people that don't like titles, they like names. So, Maggie is a very, very caring person. And she worked in the day centre up the road and then she moved into residential care. And the public and the private, there wasn't any sort of like, no, this is work mum, this is non-work mum, you know, that we'd have, she called them clients, they were adults with learning difficulties, and she'd bring them to the house for coffee, or we'd go up there because we'd forgotten our key, or there was an event on, and we went to the event, and we were very much part of that world. It was all integrated. And it was lovely. And I knew the setup quite well. And when this crisis started, I lived in Luton for a long time, and there's a paper called Luton Today, and I just check it every now and again. And there was just a story about a care home that had lost an extraordinary number of residents. And I'd not understood that bit of the crisis yet. And then this care thing came, and it was just like, well, a story needs to be told about this because Telly can take you inside things well. And so we started researching it, and the more we heard, the more terrible it became. And the way this country behaved during that time towards disabled people, I mean, of the first 100,000 deaths, 60,000 were disabled, and towards care homes in particular is extraordinary.

Presenter6:11

The drama that you made has been called the most outstanding piece of television created during the pandemic. When it came to telling that story,

Presenter6:19

What was the research that you did? Who did you talk to?

Jack Thorne6:21

I've done a lot of quite hard-hitting stuff that involve talking to people who had quite a lot of trauma happen to them. This is the rawest I've ever heard people.

Presenter6:27

Hmm.

Presenter6:31

What was different about it?

Jack Thorne6:32

They were still going through it and they hadn't come to terms with what had happened. The thing that broke my heart more than anything else is they thought they were responsible. They were angry with the government and they were angry with this and they were angry with that, but they kept on saying I let my residents down. There was one woman who said, I let my gentleman down. And they're still carrying the burden for it and no one's looking after them. They're still going into work for £8.50 an hour. You know, there's a lot easier ways to earn £8.50 an hour than doing their job. And they do it because they know that if they don't do it, no one else will. And that they can do it to a ridiculously high standard. And that was my mum's reality. You know, my mum retired on £4.60 an hour. You know, that she never earned a lot of money, but she knew she was good at it and she knew that her clients needed her. And we would go over for Christmas at her home because she would do the Christmas shift because she wanted to be there for them. And that's who my mum is.

Speaker 17:17

Uh

Presenter7:17

Do.

Presenter7:25

It's time for your next disc, Jack. What have you got for a second up today?

Jack Thorne7:29

I come from a family of six. There's four of us kids. And we're all lanky and big. I'm six foot six. And we had a five seater car. So trips were always about either the four of us cramming together on the back seat or one of us in the boot. I was frequently the one in the boot, which actually was quite a nice gig, you know.

Presenter7:45

I was the one in the boot as well, so I feel quite touched to hear that.

Jack Thorne7:48

Quite touched to hear that, guys. Awesome. Awesome. And I still don't quite get how we had two weeks in Cornwall with a tent on our roof and managed to fit all the stuff in for six of us. So we'd all cram into this car and there were three tapes in the car, all supplied by my big brother Chris. And the three tapes were the pet shop boys, Abba and Jaomi Jaljar. And so this is the one where my little sister said, you've got to do Jaomi Jaljar. So yes, this is Jomi Jaljar, blah, blah, cafe.

Presenter8:45

Jean-Michel Jar and Blah Blah Cafe. So we talked a little bit about your mum. Tell me about your dad, Mike, as you would have called him. He also inspired one of your works. I know you co-wrote a musical called Junkyard, which was inspired by one of his creations. This was a kind of junkyard playground project, right? So really socially conscious, but also by the sound of it, quite dangerous.

Jack Thorne9:05

Yeah.

Jack Thorne9:09

Incredibly dangerous. He said he used to have to take someone to hospital once a week. The idea of the junk playground movement was that kids would build their own playgrounds to play in. And the kids built it with him. And they tended to be the sort of kids that didn't necessarily want to go to school. And Junkyard, this play, was a play about him. You know, he was from Walthamstowe. His mum and dad ran a post office, but trying to change the lives of other kids. And dad was a scout until he was 21 or something. You know, dad's very good at all that sort of thing.

Presenter9:38

Community, social conscience, all of that.

Jack Thorne9:41

And building stuff and making stuff and we did a lot of camping. And then on the first night, the kids knew him as Mick, not Mike, because that's what he used to be. And on the first night of Junkyard, there was the standard sort of director gives a speech, artistic director of the Bristol Old Vic gave a speech. It was all really lovely. And then this dude stood up and said, I want to raise a glass to Mick, and gave this speech all about how my dad had changed his life. And

Jack Thorne10:11

Ugh.

Jack Thorne10:13

I don't think my dad

Jack Thorne10:16

Sorry.

Presenter10:16

That's right, you took your time.

Jack Thorne10:19

I don't think my dad is someone that he's done a lot of that stuff, you know, that when dad, um

Jack Thorne10:27

Dad was at the Citizens Advice Bureau for for years after he retired, and then he stopped because he was knackered and he was seventy three or something. And then he went back six months later because he said I can't read the papers any more if I'm not Chin.

Jack Thorne10:46

If I'm not trying to change the world.

Jack Thorne10:49

And sorry.

Jack Thorne10:53

Uh

Presenter10:54

That's all right, Johnny.

Jack Thorne10:54

And and so uh

Jack Thorne10:58

I don't think that is someone that's had many people say thank you to it.

Jack Thorne11:04

You know, we live in a profession where we get loads of people saying loads of stuff about us all the time and sort of celebrating us and do you know what I mean? Like, you know, and all that stuff and just.

Speaker 111:11

Uh

Jack Thorne11:14

Being there that was in tears.

Jack Thorne11:17

Big that would

Presenter11:18

When that happened.

Jack Thorne11:19

Really nice. Yeah. You know, and I'm I feel very lucky. I feel very lucky to have them as parents.

Presenter11:26

It's time for some more music, Jack. What is it, and why are you taking it to the island?

Jack Thorne11:31

My mum resigned her membership of the Labour Party when Harriet Harmon sent her kid to a grammar school. And that night, I went to a party at our neighbour Yvonne's house. And a woman called Stevie talked to me there. And Stevie said, Your mum's left the Labour Party, so now it's time for you to join. I was 15, 16 years old, and she gave me this whole speech about, you know, you're better inside the tent than outside the tent. And I did. I joined and I became Young Labour officer for Newbury Constituency Labour Party and ended up going to the Young Labour Conference in 1997. And it was so much fun. I ended up being part of a walkout with Young Labour Left of Tony Blair's speech. He'd just become Prime Minister and we walked out. But in that 97 election, I was 18 years old. I was part of the Labour Party. I was canvassing for the Labour Party. And then we won and we won so wonderfully is just one of those moments of my life. This is the red flag by the brilliant Billy Bragg. The people's flag is feeblish red. It shrouded off the martyred day.

Speaker 112:35

Play this

Jack Thorne12:39

And ere the limbs grew stiff and cold, Their heart's blood died in every fold, Then raised the scarlet standard high, Beneath its folds will live and die.

Speaker 112:39

And air pilgrims

Jack Thorne12:49

Though coward flinch and treat a sneer, We'll keep the red flag flying here.

Presenter13:04

Billy Bragg and the Red Flag. So Jack, you grew up in a political household. You went on to study politics at Cambridge University. How did you take to student life there?

Jack Thorne13:15

I still wasn't very good at other people. It took me a long time to be very good at other people. I'm really awkward and I don't quite know how other people work. And I'm constantly sort of on the outside looking at them going, I understand how you're talking. I understand why you're talking, but I don't quite know how to get involved in this conversation. Put me in a party and watch me drown. And universities quite like that. I was very enthusiastic and I would, you know, try and read all the books as much as possible. I was very involved in the theater scene. I was trying to make plays and everything else. And then it all became too much. And I think I had a mental breakdown. And I think I didn't admit that I'd had a mental breakdown. And then I had a physical breakdown and my body just went, stop. And I ended up bedbound for six months at home on my own. And that was in my third year.

Speaker 113:56

Mm.

Presenter14:06

So you developed what something called uh cholinergic eutycharia.

Presenter14:10

What exactly is it and how did you deal with it? This would have been just after your twenty-first birthday, I think.

Jack Thorne14:16

It's very unglamorous. It's basically prickly heat. I'm allergic to radiators, sunlight, and body heat. And at my worst, I was allergic to movement. So every time I moved, I provoke an allergic reaction. So I was flat on my back with all the windows open in Wales in January. And it was a very strange thing. And certainly, one doctor told me I wasn't going to get better. And my whole body used to swell up red. It feels like you're burning from the inside. And

Presenter14:40

Oh god.

Presenter14:48

Oh, Jack. And to think that that was going to be it forever.

Jack Thorne14:50

Yeah. Interestingly I thought I'd write really well during that time and then I read it all back afterwards and it was so self indulgent. But I got better, slowly but surely. It took about twelve years, I'd say, to sort of feel like I was properly recovered.

Presenter15:03

That experience changed you and you underwent what you've called your coming out moment. That was thanks to Gray Eye, the theatre company that puts deaf and disabled artists centre stage.

Jack Thorne15:14

Yes, the wonderful Grey Eye Theatre Company. Jenny Seely ran and I think still runs these open days where anyone can come along. And I heard about them and I was intrigued and I didn't know quite where I fitted. And I went along and was full of the most wonderful range of people. And I said to a woman called Alex Bulmer, who later became a friend and a co-writer, in fact, and I said to her, I don't know whether I belong here. And I talked about what was going on. And she said, of course you belong. You're a disabled person. And honestly, it was like a weight was lifted. It was like, oh, right, okay. There's somewhere where my pain makes sense. The fact that I can do some things and can't do others is not only understood but facilitated. There's somewhere where there's people who've had to cope with a lot more than I have, a lot more, so much more. But they're prepared to say that they'll stand alongside me if I stand alongside them. And being part of that has never left me and is the reason why I keep trying to make disabled work and the reason why I'm now involved in a television campaign group and it's the best thing I do is being part of that world.

Presenter16:29

It's time for some more music, Jack. This is your fourth today. What is it and why have you chosen it?

Jack Thorne16:34

There's this song Spasticus Autisticus. It was written by Ian Jury in anger at the International Year of Disabled People in 1981. And it's still an anthem for disability. It's just the most amazing sort of noise of protest. And I love it. And at the Paralympic opening ceremony in 2012, Grey Eye, in collaboration with Orbital, did this incredible sort of celebration, this noise. And I knew most of the people on stage and it was one of the most moving things I've ever seen. That recording isn't available. But what is available is Grey Eye did a stage production of this show, Reason to Be Cheerful, and this is John Kelly singing Spasticus Autisticus, and it's brilliant.

Speaker 217:21

Yes, it's bad.

Presenter17:21

Spasticus, spasticus, sadisticus. I dribble when I nibble and I quibble when I scribble. Hello to you out there in Northern Land.

Speaker 217:32

You've made a comprehensive intelligence

Presenter17:34

Understand.

Presenter17:36

As I pull past your window, give me lucky looks For you can read my body, but you'll never read my looks I'm spat because

Speaker 117:45

Hisbasticus! Hisbasticus! Oh, Hispanicus!

Speaker 117:50

Fastakus! It's Bastikus all tips!

Presenter17:53

John Kelly singing Iain Dury's Spasticus Autisticus from Gray Eyes stage production of Reasons to Be Cheerful.

Presenter18:00

Jack Thorne, your first professional play was When You Cure Me, and that was staged at the Bush Theatre in London two thousand five. You'd been working as a support worker in a school for five years or so while writing plays in your spare time. How did it feel to sit down on that first night and watch it on stage?

Jack Thorne18:19

Terrifying. I don't think I adjusted to the feeling of being a professional playwright for a very long time. I felt like an imposter and I just expected it all to come tumbling down. I didn't enjoy it as much as I should have, but I was really proud of the show.

Presenter18:34

Jack, alongside a lot of humour, this vein of social justice obviously runs deeply throughout your work. You gave the 2021 McTaggart Lecture at the Edinburgh Television Festival, and you said quite bluntly that T V has failed disabled people, and I quote, totally and utterly. What needs to change in your view?

Jack Thorne18:55

Lots of things. The most telling statistic that Creative Diversity Network have got a set of figures, diamond figures, which monitor representation issues in television. And the most telling statistic, disabled people represent 20% of this population. There are 3.6% of television executives are disabled. So that tells a story of exclusion. And there has been historic exclusion for years. And there's been a lot of other people telling disabled stories. That question of authorship. And authorship goes from the producer to the director to the writer to the actor. This thing that people go, you know, oh, how do you feel about non-disabled actor playing a disabled role? That is not the only issue. The issue is that the director is also not disabled. The writer is also not disabled. And they are telling a story that they are poorly equipped to tell. And so there's no truth in it. And if there's no truth in it, then TV doesn't work.

Presenter19:50

Jack, it's time for some more music. What's disc number five?

Jack Thorne19:54

In 2016, I got very lucky and I became part of this show, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. John Tiffany, who's a close friend, invited me in. And it was a big old thing. And as part of making that show, we needed to make sure that the actors were incredibly fit. You're making tricks happen all the time. You know, you don't stop on that show.

Jack Thorne20:15

And so Stephen Hoggett, who's John's associate, did this keep fit session for an hour every morning. And I joined in and did it for the whole five months and became fit, but also did PE with other people for the first time since school. That

Presenter20:32

I love that you call it P E still.

Jack Thorne20:34

And I hated PE. I did everything to get out of PE. I was a skinny, undeveloped boy. Do you know what I mean? Like, you know, PE was a nightmare.

Jack Thorne20:42

But going to school with people that like you, which is what the process felt like, was really, really lovely. And towards the end of the process, Stephen started just doing a little bit of choreography. And he did this choreography to Lippy Kids by elbow. I was always right at the back. I'm six foot six. I'm useless. But there was a moment when the whole room felt beautiful and I felt beautiful. And I don't think I've ever had another experience like it. And I think it was just because I was happy.

Jack Thorne21:16

Rachel was pregnant.

Jack Thorne21:18

I was working with people I loved and just felt this joyous thing.

Jack Thorne21:26

Electric

Presenter21:27

We kids all

Jack Thorne21:28

On the corner

Presenter21:29

Again

Presenter21:35

Lippy kids on the corner begin Saddle in light clothes

Presenter21:46

The world Yeah.

Jack Thorne21:47

Perfected the similar stroke

Presenter21:53

Elbow and Lippy Kids. So Jack Thorne, Harry Potter and The Cursed Child, the two part theatre phenomenon has been running in the West End since twenty sixteen. It's also on stage in New York, Tokyo, Melbourne, several other cities too. It is huge. Did you have any reservations about taking it on?

Jack Thorne22:11

None at all. I should have had. I was approached to do it by John Tiffany and my trust and faith in him is so absolute that I was just kind of like, oh, it'll be fine. And I never really went, it's not going to be fine, until about a month before we opened when I suddenly went, what if it's awful? I'll never be forgiven.

Presenter22:34

You've been a longtime collaborator with Shane Meadows, including several series of This Is England. Lol Combo, Woody and Sean are this gang of lost kids coming of age during the the late eighties and into the nineties. And their life is a world apart from your own story. I wonder how you went about making the characters so authentic and bringing that kind of realism to it.

Jack Thorne22:58

I went to a comp, so it wasn't like so far away in terms of that. Writing is a strange thing in that it's not necessarily about the world people are from, it's about who they are underneath. And I've got to say, I love Lol, but my particular passion is and always will be Woody. I'm obsessed with people that are good. And I think Lol is beautiful, I'm conflicted, and brilliant. There's something about Woody that would walk into any fire. And I just love him. And for a moment, by the way, I thought that I was cool because I was with Shea Meadows and that I belonged in that world. And then he cast me as Carrot Bum in This Thing in 86 because, and I quote, he couldn't find an actor lonely or weird enough to play the role. So I was the lonely, weird actor that he was missing.

Presenter23:41

So

Presenter23:44

That's the sick burn, as the kids say, isn't it?

Jack Thorne23:46

Absolutely. And I love him dearly.

Presenter23:48

It's time for some more music, Jack. Number six, what is it and why are you taking it to the island?

Jack Thorne23:53

There was an extraordinary thing that happened when we started working on the virtues, which is a show I made with Shane after it. And Shane and I had our first meeting in a room in Nottingham. And he said, I'm ready to tell this story. And I listened as he talked about this incredible trauma that happened to him as a kid and the abuse that he suffered. It felt like he trusted me with his heart. And it's an experience I've never forgotten. So I wanted to have something that was Shane in this because he changed my life. He taught me how to write in a way that I think has never left me. He taught me so much about truth and about how you represent truth. And there's a song that they use in this England called 5446, that's my number by Toots and the Maytales. And this is my Shane Meadows song.

Presenter24:44

Give it to me, one time. Give it to me, two times.

Presenter24:50

Give it to me three times, yeah.

Presenter24:53

To me, watch out!

Presenter24:57

Oh, thirty-six was my number.

Presenter25:03

Oh, someone

Presenter25:08

I love it before.

Speaker 125:10

Uh

Presenter25:10

Yeah.

Speaker 125:13

Uh Bullet.

Presenter25:13

Uh

Presenter25:16

Two to the Maytals, fifty four forty six. That's my number. You've adapted uh several classics for stage, screen and T V as well, and you've described the process as a chance to escape into someone else's brain. Whose brain have you found the most interesting to inhabit?

Jack Thorne25:31

When you're doing adaptation, you've got to sort of ask a fundamental question, which is how loyal do I need to be?

Jack Thorne25:36

What responsibility do I have to the author? So his dark materials, it feels like TV is the best medium for his dark materials. And they may well remake it for TV, but it will be a few years before they do. And so that thing of going, we've got to tell this story as well as possible, became our sort of guiding light all the way through that process. It's not about me, it's about Philip. It's always about Philip Pullman. With Dickens, he's not short of productions of Christmas Carol. There's not like, if I don't tell this story properly, who will? It's like, he did it on stage. It's been done four million times. So then it becomes, what do I bring to this story? What's my take on this? How do I stretch the book to fit something that I'm feeling inside myself? So it's a very, very different process.

Presenter26:26

Hmm. Time for your penultimate disc.

Jack Thorne26:29

The biggest change in my life was when I met Rachel, my wife. I'd never really had a best friend before. She has a moral center that I envy and adore. I asked her to marry me a year after we went on our first date. And I wanted to give her this engagement ring in the park, but the park was locked when we got there. And so we climbed in and then I got down on my knee and it was lovely. But I'm afraid of heights, so getting out afterwards was really, really hard. Much harder than getting in. It ended up these drunks came and helped me get down. So Rachel jumped down elegantly, but I sort of fell down. So that sort of tells the story of who we are as people. And we're still those people. And despite my record on this show, I don't cry very often. And when we were choosing the music we wanted her to walk down the aisle to, we were really struggling with it. And it's a song by Meow Meow called Skeleton Key. And she said, what about this? And she played it. And we're in the car. And I just remember just sitting there, just sobbing, just going, oh, this is the one. One of her other best friends, Audrey, couldn't come to our wedding because it clashed with another wedding that she was due to go to, who was her other best friend. But Audrey said, I can't be there and I'm really sorry. And I can't remember who came up with the idea, but someone came up with the idea of what if she sings Skeleton Key. So this is our very good friend, Audrey Nugent, singing Skeleton Key. She's just got the most astounding voice. And this is really, really beautiful, I think.

Presenter28:03

I will be your singing bird

Presenter28:08

Your singing bird for all my days

Presenter28:14

If she let me be in love

Presenter28:18

Be in love with my cage

Presenter28:35

I will be your lying down Skeleton Key, performed by Audrey Nugent, who sang this at your wedding and recorded it specially for Desert Island discs.

Presenter28:46

Jack, we talked earlier about some of the influences from your life that have made their way into your work. You know, your mum and dad, to name two. What else inspires you, I wonder? Are you someone who goes and seeks inspiration out there? Or do you prefer to let it find you working?

Jack Thorne29:00

No, I'm not a sit under the tree and write poetry. I'm a sit in front of the computer and go, this is awful. No, I'm that kind of writer. No, I wish I was. Steven Polykoff once talked about taking buses when he got stuck and just taking buses around London and looking at the world and I always thought how poetic and beautiful that is and I tried it once and it was just like I'm just sitting on the bus.

Speaker 129:09

Bye.

Presenter29:24

Need to get back to my desk.

Jack Thorne29:26

Exactly.

Presenter29:27

In the seventies and eighties, many T V dramatists talked about the political power of the shared experience and millions of people sitting down to watch the same show at the same time and talking about it the next day. How does that play out now in our multi-channel, box set, non-linear viewing age? Are there still those big collective moments?

Jack Thorne29:47

I think there still are, but it's slightly different. I'd say it's about a wave is formed and it comes crashing down. And sometimes there are shows that make the waves that crash down. And it doesn't mean that everyone watches those shows, but those shows change the landscape of how stories are told. And because so many stories are told, it just sort of creates a ripple that just never stops moving. So the last show I think that did that was I May Destroy You, Michaela Cole's show, where I think that she just did something that was so different. She just changed the temperature of the sea. And things are still rippling out from that.

Presenter30:26

Well, talking about waves and talking about the sea, it is almost time for me to cast you away, Jeff.

Jack Thorne30:31

Yeah.

Presenter30:32

One more tune before you go though. What's it gonna be?

Jack Thorne30:35

I have a tattoo with be good written on my wrist. My son is called Elliot. He's called that because the film E.T. changed my life and I think it still does change my life every time I see it. I think that thing of how you tell stories and what stories mean, I don't think there's a more perfect example. And it's the best film about divorce ever made. It's the best film about loneliness ever made. And it's the best film about friendship ever made. And I love it. And I love my son. And this will make me think of my son. The thing that surprised me about parenthood more than anything else is how exciting it is. I knew I'd love him, but I didn't realise how much excitement I would get from seeing him grow. Just that thing of just seeing someone flower is just the most extraordinary experience. So it will make me think of him. I sometimes feel I thrust the film upon him and that it's not necessarily his choice of name. This is a love song for him, I think, and it's the end credits to E.T.

Presenter32:08

The end credits music from the film soundtrack to E T composed by John Williams.

Presenter32:14

Jackthorne, it's time to cast you away then. How do you picture your island?

Jack Thorne32:19

I sort of picture it like Castaway, the Tom Hanks film, because I've nothing outside the stuff that I've watched. I've got no sort of sort of imagination. And I sort of picture myself going full Hanks in that I'm going to be much more capable than I suspect.

Presenter32:22

Uh

Presenter32:31

And that's it.

Presenter32:36

So you spear the fish, you wear the grass skirt.

Jack Thorne32:37

You know,

Jack Thorne32:39

Exactly. I'm going to be properly hench. I'll look really good with my top off, which I've never looked good with my top off.

Presenter32:44

Bluff Built

Jack Thorne32:45

Built. Exactly. And you know, my hair will grow back. It'll be amazing.

Presenter32:49

And you seem quite up for it, yeah.

Jack Thorne32:50

Yeah.

Presenter32:51

Do you have any practical skills that might come in handy as a castaway? Not at present, but planning to develop.

Jack Thorne32:55

No, I I will die so quickly. But when Tom Hanks landed on that island he was a shrunken little man, and I'm a shrunken little man, so I'm hoping that a great change will happen.

Presenter33:07

All right, then we'd better get you there, Jack. It's time for the books. I'm going to give you the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare. You can take another two. What will that be?

Jack Thorne33:14

Arthur Miller's Plays One, which have the most remarkable run of plays that I think anyone has ever produced, one after another. I I do think in terms of the way of looking at politics and the way of looking at the world, he just was extraordinary and I love his work. I don't think I'd ever get bored of reading them.

Presenter33:35

What about a luxury item?

Jack Thorne33:37

I'd like a television with the entire history of Channel Four loaded onto it. Other people have had television.

Presenter33:42

Yeah.

Presenter33:44

There is precedent.

Presenter33:47

So you're citing that quite correctly.

Presenter33:49

So you can have a television set that has that archive on it. But it can't have anything else.

Jack Thorne33:55

That's fine. I don't want anything new happening. I want to watch the news on December the 13th, 1985, and see what tide Jon Snow's wearing and hear what's happening. I want to watch Countdown from 1988 and I want to watch their incredible drama output. You know, I think Channel 4 is one of the great institutions of our time. I'll just have a lovely time watching that.

Presenter34:18

Well, it'll be a good way to wind down after all that fishing and kind of buff stuff. Exactly. Yeah, sure, great.

Jack Thorne34:21

Exactly. Exactly.

Speaker 134:24

Sure.

Presenter34:26

And finally, if you could only save one of the discs that you've chosen today from the waves, which would you go for?

Jack Thorne34:32

I love my wife very much. I choose Skeleton Key.

Presenter34:35

Jackthorne, thank you very much for letting us hear your Desert Island Discs.

Jack Thorne34:39

Thank you.

Presenter34:40

Yeah.

Jack Thorne34:40

Yeah.

Presenter34:53

Hello, I hope you enjoyed that interview with Jack, and I wish him all the best for his Tom Hanks transformation on the island. Many have tried and failed. Maybe he'll crack it. We've cast away many screenwriters over the years, and if you search through our programme archive, you can hear Kay Meller, Russell T. Davis, Jed Mercurio, and Sally Wainwright's programmes. They're all available on BBC Sounds too. And if you'd like to find out how Tom Hanks got on when he was asked to take his eight discs to the island, well, he's there too. Join me next time when I'll be talking to Dame Prue Leith.

Speaker 235:34

Sideways is back for another season.

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with stories of incredible feats of endurance.

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Mountain climbers, we plod onward through avalanches and snowstorms and occasional yetis.

Speaker 235:50

I'm Matthew Side and in Sideways you'll hear stories of bold thinkers and amazing lives. Stories of seeing the world differently.

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