Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Desert Island Discs
Presented by Lauren Laverne
Actor best known for his debut in Withnail and I; Oscar-nominated for Can You Ever Forgive Me; also in Star Wars and a published diarist.
Eight records
Prelude in E minor, Op. 28, No. 4
first concert on South Bank; played after wife and daughter died
The keepsakes
The book
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Lewis Carroll
I've read that book every single year without fail subsequently and it is unofficially the most clear understanding of the English class system and the English imagination and sense of humour of anything that I've ever come across.
In conversation
Presenter asks
When does the excitement of a new role hit you? Is it on the first day on set, or when you first read a great script?
It's when you read the first page of a script and you know that you're compelled to read the second, third, fourth, and then get to page 110 because as much as you think that there are brilliant scripts out there, the amount of times that you don't want to throw everything in the fire after page five, that happens more than than not.
Presenter asks
Did you have a sense that Can You Ever Forgive Me? would be so successful when you first read the screenplay?
No, but I knew from the moment that I read it that it was something that I was very keen to do. And the first thing I said to my agent, because I sent it, and they said, You have twenty four hours to read this and make a decision. And I said, N why? Who's dropped out? And they said, Don't ask that, because it doesn't matter. Who is in it? They said, Melissa McCarthy. I said, I'm in.
The recording
Timestamps play the recording from that turn
Presenter
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. And for rights reasons, the music is shorter than the original broadcast. I hope you enjoy listening.
Presenter
My castaway this week is the actor Richard E. Grant. He took his first steps into the limelight in school plays while growing up in Eswatini, then called Swaziland, during the dying days of colonial rule. Opportunities to pursue his vocation there were limited, so he moved to London, rented a bedsit, and took a job in a restaurant. After waiting tables and biding his time, he bagged the part of a lifetime, the title role in Withnail and I. His big screen debut began a wave of success that continues to this day. In the last few years alone, he's been Oscar-nominated for his performance in the black comedy Can You Ever Forgive Me, played a dastardly Sith General in Star Wars The Rise of Skywalker, and drag queen Loco Chanel in Everybody's Talking About Jamie. Off-screen, he is a lifelong diarist, but dislikes keeping secrets, which may explain both why three collections of his writing have been published and their critical acclaim. He is as frank about the depth of his grief after the loss of his beloved wife Joan as he is about his enduring appetite for the acting life. He says, I'm always excited by a new job. That's never gone away, and I think the day it does is the day you have to hang up your tights and put away your makeup. Richard E. Grant, welcome to Desert Island Discs.
Richard E Grant
Thank you very much. What a privilege to be on here. Honestly, I've listened to it ever since it's been going, so I never ever thought that I'd actually be sitting on the island with you. Thank you.
Presenter
Well, it's a pleasure to have you. So let's start with that sense of excitement, Richard. When does it hit you? Is it a first day on set thing, or is it when you get a peek at a great script for the very first time?
Richard E Grant
It's when you read the first page of a script and you know that you're compelled to read the second, third, fourth, and then get to page 110 because as much as you think that there are brilliant scripts out there, the amount of times that you don't want to throw everything in the fire after page five, that happens more than than not.
Presenter
With that in mind, as I mentioned, you were nominated for an Oscar in twenty nineteen for your role as Jack Hawk in Can You Ever Forgive Me? Did you have a sense that that was going to be so successful when you first read the screenplay?
Richard E Grant
No, but I knew from the moment that I read it that it was something that I was very keen to do. And the first thing I said to my agent, because I sent it, and they said, You have twenty four hours to read this and make a decision. And I said, N why? Who's dropped out? And they said, Don't ask that, because it doesn't matter. Who is in it? They said, Melissa McCarthy. I said, I'm in.
Presenter
And you posted the most wonderful video sharing your delight at being shortlisted for the award. That immediately went viral. It was a joy. Did the ceremony live up to your expectations?
Richard E Grant
Yes, because it was like being in Madams of Swords for Real, where every single person that you could see to the left, right, centre, and up, down, sideways was famous either somebody I had followed their entire career or was newly famous felt like I was in the Swedish shop of fame. I had absolutely loved it.
Presenter
It's time to get into the music, Richard. We're going to start with your first disc. What have you gone for?
Richard E Grant
Which is
Richard E Grant
It is Barbara Streitan singing I'm the greatest star from the movie soundtrack of Funny Girl.
Presenter
Now your love of Barbara Streisand is long enduring and very much on the record. Why have you chosen this track and this version in particular?
Richard E Grant
Well, 53 years I'm counting. I first saw her in this movie when I was 12 years old in 1969. And.
Richard E Grant
Because she had an unusual face, like Donald Sutherland had a very long face, and I'd seen both of them in a movie that same year, and everybody had said, oh, you can never be a professional actor, and certainly not coming from Swaziland, as it was then called. So these are the two people that were my kind of load stars. I thought, well, if they can do it, and this is such a crie de cur of impassioned wanting to be successful, you know, it's the backstage rag to riches story of comedian Fanny Bryce. And I just thought that it encapsulated everything that a pre-adolescent wishing to be did, and nobody else has ever sung it like she has.
Speaker 4
Cause I'm
Speaker 4
The greatest star
Speaker 4
I am by far.
Speaker 4
But no one knows it why they're gonna hear a voice.
Speaker 4
I is a silver flute. Bell cheer each two. Hey, that care is terrific. Mm. When I expose it. Now can't you see to look at me that's crazy?
Presenter
Barbara Streisand, and I'm the greatest star. And we'll return to your lifelong devotion to Barbara Streisand later, Richard. For now, I want to know a little bit more about your early life. So you were born in nineteen fifty seven to Henrik and Leone in what was then Swaziland. Set the scene for us.
Richard E Grant
Um
Richard E Grant
Second.
Richard E Grant
It was a goldfish bowl in that it was hermetically sealed expat colonial life of people who, in retrospect, were very self-important about their roles in pith helmets and there was a very, very strict pecking order in The Last Gasp of Empire until independence came in 1968.
Presenter
And it sounds like you had aspirations for a very different life from an extremely young age.
Richard E Grant
There was an amateur theatre, the Swaziland Theatre Club, and there was one cinema, and uh so that was it. So being in plays and seeing them there was the only theatre that I had ever been exposed to.
Presenter
There's one
Presenter
Did you get there very much?
Richard E Grant
Oh yeah, I went constantly and uh I was a junior member and was in every play that I could possibly get into, every panto.
Presenter
So Richard, as I mentioned, you've always been a great diary keeper and some collections of your diaries have been published. But I believe you were first inspired to start keeping one when you were ten. What prompted you to first put pen to paper?
Richard E Grant
And
Richard E Grant
I inadvertently witnessed my mother bonking my father's best friend on the front seat of a car.
Richard E Grant
Late one evening we were coming back from a uh cricket match and I was obviously asleep on the back seat and then woke up to the rhythmic movements of the car, which is something that you can well imagine. So I tried God, got no response. I obviously couldn't tell my father or my mother or my friends, so I thought that to try and understand what had happened I started keeping a diary. And it it's continued to be something that I've done every day to try and make sense of the world that I'm I live in.
Presenter
Well, I can completely understand why. So, with that in mind, I think we'd better find out a little bit more about your mother, Leone. Tell me about her.
Richard E Grant
Tell me about
Richard E Grant
She is now 91, formidable. Chain smokes, she drives herself, she plays bridge three times a week, she reads five books for a publisher that she does ad hoc work for, so she is a force of nature. And we had a great estrangement for decades. And after I had psychoanalysis when I was 42 after a breakdown, I had this breakthrough with her in that I was guided by this psychoanalyst to try and get her to reveal her narrative of what had happened, to explain why she ended up.
Speaker 1
Okay.
Richard E Grant
In the front seat of the car, that thing that I mentioned earlier. And I got a very, very detailed, lengthy.
Richard E Grant
letter written with the voice of a young woman in the colonies, having a child and dealing with a pecking order not allowed to work and all those kind of restrictions. And once I understood that, I then reciprocated by giving her hammer and tongue of what had happened to me at the hands of my subsequently alcoholic father after she had left. So she was as astonished by that as I was by her revelations, convincing me that all secrets in families are toxic. She said three words to me when we finally had a face-to-face after these letters had been exchanged. I went out to visit her. And she leant forward on a table in a restaurant. I had never seen my mother cry before. And she said three magic words, Please forgive me. That instantly removed all these weights and pillars of prejudice and long-standing misunderstanding that we'd had between us. So it was incredible. I now Skype her once a week.
Presenter
Richard, let's hear some more music from you, your second choice today.
Richard E Grant
It's Nat Kinkole singing When I Fall in Love and in the first ten years of my life when my parents' marriage seemed all right from my point of view, this very nostalgic and sentimental music sums up and conjures up that era for me.
Speaker 4
When I fall in love
Speaker 4
It will be forever.
Speaker 4
Or I'll never fall.
Speaker 4
In a restless world
Speaker 4
Like this is
Speaker 4
Love is ended.
Richard E Grant
Having thought that I would never get married when I did fall in love and then had 38 years together with my wife Joan.
Richard E Grant
I felt that I'd reclaimed that song for the two of us.
Presenter
It's wonderful when that happens.
Richard E Grant
Yeah, exactly.
Presenter
Exactly. When I Fall in Love by Nat Kinkle. So, Richard E. Grant, we've heard about your mother. Tell me about your father, Henrik. He worked as director of education. Yeah, he was.
Richard E Grant
Yeah, he was incredibly witty, fast-thinking, dynamic person by day. And the moment that she left him, he hit a Johnny Walker bottle a day. So by nine o'clock at night, it was literally like a switch that he became a completely different character, very morose, very angry and often violent. And then told me on his deathbed at the age of 53 that he had never stopped loving my mother. And I thought he was referring to my stepmother who just walked out of the room. And he said, no, no, your mother. There was this, on the one hand, an incredibly charming...
Speaker 4
Born
Speaker 1
Uh
Richard E Grant
Articulate, provocative man by day, and then this absolute monster that would come out at night, which culminated when I was fifteen, when I
Speaker 1
Which
Richard E Grant
Naively thought that if I emptied all 12 bottles of scotch down the sink, he would somehow stop drinking. And I was on the 11th bottle and felt something very cold on the back of my head, and it was a gun. Ducked, ran into the garden, and then he chased me and flicked on the garden lights, and there were pool lights as well, and found me and then got hold of me and said, You know, I'm going to blow your brains out. And I said, You know, go ahead and do it. Just let's get this over and done with.
Richard E Grant
He missed because he was so drunk, and then I ran away from home for a couple of weeks. But having said that, my memory of him is so much more than remembering that part of him, because I knew that that was something that was entirely brought about by addiction, rather than the man that I absolutely worshipped and loved.
Presenter
But so difficult to have both of those sides.
Richard E Grant
And it helped keeping a diary.
Presenter
Richard, it's time for your third piece of music.
Richard E Grant
When a Man Loves a Woman by Percy Sledge. In 1970 Percy Sledge came to the Somme Schlo Law Independent Stadium in Swaziland. No international pop star had ever visited the country before, so I went to see him and got his autograph. And when Jo and I got married on the 1st of November in 1986, it was the first song that we'd danced to at our wedding party.
Speaker 4
Can't keep his mind on nothing else
Speaker 4
He changed the world for the good things he's found.
Speaker 4
Here she is but you can see it.
Speaker 4
She can do no wrong.
Speaker 4
Turn his back on his best friend if he put her down.
Speaker 4
Bremen!
Presenter
Percy Sledge and When a Man Loves a Woman, Richard E. Grant, after boarding school you went to study drama and English at Cape Town University and you started there in 1976 which was obviously a time of huge social and political struggle in South Africa. You know what was it like arriving in the city as a young student amidst all of that?
Richard E Grant
Yeah, sure.
Richard E Grant
Well, having come from Swaziland, which was completely multiracial, it was a real shock going into a city and a country that, you know, still had apartheid. But within a month of being at the university,
Speaker 1
Hmm.
Richard E Grant
Students were rioting about not being taught in Afrikaans, black students. It felt like we were in the crucible of a revolution. And it was, for a young student as I was, I thought, well, this is it. Everything is going to change. And finally, freedom would be for everybody. Equal rights, you know, all of that. A party would be completely dismantled. I naively didn't realize, and I suppose many people didn't, that the government was so...
Richard E Grant
Powerful that they squashed all of that for more than another decade.
Presenter
It's at twenty five that you decide to make the move to London.
Richard E Grant
I had intended leaving after setting up a theatre company for a year, and then my father was diagnosed with lung cancer. So I stayed another year. And then a few months after he died, I decided to emigrate with literally like Dick Whittington, with two suitcases and a box of cassettes and a Walkman, and came to London, rented a bed seat in Nottinghill Gate, it was £30 a week, and then worked as a waiter at a brassery in Covent Garden, which is still there, until I started getting acting work. So I didn't really have any contacts whatsoever, but just came over with blind ambition and hope. And I gave myself till I was thirty. I thought
Richard E Grant
If within five years I couldn't get regular employment I'd have to go back and open up a pineapple beer stall or something in Swasynad.
Presenter
It's time for your next piece of music, Richard Number Four.
Richard E Grant
Oh, this is Sweet Dreams Are Made of This by the Eurythmics, which I had listened to on repeat on my Walkman when I was a waiter in January 1983, and then subsequently became friends with Annie Lennox, who I met on a chat show. And then I discovered that she'd been to the same school that Joan had been to in Aberdeen, so they all knew the teachers in common, and we subsequently have become great friends.
Speaker 4
Sweet dreams are made of these. Who am I to disagree? I travel the world and the seven seas. Everybody's looking for something. Some of them want to use you.
Speaker 4
Some of them want to get used by you Some of them want to abuse you Some of them want to be abused
Presenter
Sweet Dreams by Eurythmics
Presenter
Richard E. Gran, early in your time in the UK you met your future wife, Joan. She was a dialect coach, sorting out your vowels, I think.
Richard E Grant
She was. I went to the actors' center where a very feisty.
Richard E Grant
Spike-haired, kicker-booted, boiler-suited woman called Joan Washington was doing a series of six regional accents. And after a couple of these, I said to her in the reception, I said, Would you teach me privately? And she said, What for? And I said, Well, to iron out my colonial accent. And she said, Well, it doesn't sound too bad to me. I said, Well, somebody's identified that sound like somebody speaking for the 1950s. So she said, All right. She said, But I'm very busy. And I said, Please, I beg of you. And she laughed. I got down on my knees and she said, Oh, get up, for God's sake. And I said, How much is it going to cost? And she said, £20 an hour. And I said,
Richard E Grant
I can only really afford twelve because it's I'm paying thirty pounds a week for my bed sit and I'm a waiter. And she said, Oh, okay, we'll do it on a deal. You can have some lessons, on the proviso that you pay me back if you ever make it. So she did get paid back, indeed.
Presenter
So obviously the two of you got together. As you mentioned, her career was up and running, but yours took a while to take off. In fact, you you hadn't worked for the best part of a year when, ironically enough, the part of Withnail, who is an out-of-work actor, came up. There was more than one irony about it. Another is that despite playing the alcoholic Withnail so convincingly, you're allergic to booze yourself.
Richard E Grant
So and then
Richard E Grant
Allergic.
Richard E Grant
Yeah, and I would have thought that, you know, with an alcoholic father that it would be psychosomatic, but I couldn't hold alcohol down for more than ten minutes, was the longest that I'd ever managed without being violently ill for twenty four hours. And so I went to a doctor, had a blood test, and he said, You have no enzyme to process alcohol. You can never ever drink. It's completely toxic to your system.
Presenter
But what about on the set of Whithnail? Because Withnail's chugging down drinks left, right and centre.
Richard E Grant
Oh, that's sadistic, Bruce Robinson.
Presenter
That's the director of Withnail and I.
Richard E Grant
He insisted that on the final night before we did the last day of rehearsals at Shepparton Studios, before going up to Penrith, that I had to experience what it was like to be drunk. So he said, Here's a bottle of champagne, go and get that down your gullet. So I did, and I threw up throughout the night and got to the rehearsals the next day. I was driven in because I was so drunk. And I managed to get through, I think, forty minutes of the script. And Paul McGann and Bruce were laughing. I remember them laughing all the time, and I couldn't really understand why. And then I passed out.
Presenter
With Nil was a huge breakthrough for you, but it did come at a very difficult moment in your personal life for you and for Joan. Just one week into the making of the film, you lost your first daughter, Tiffany. She was born prematurely and only lived for half an hour. It must have been absolutely devastating, especially as you were in the middle of this life-changing project. How did you deal with it?
Richard E Grant
The abyss of grief is something that you have to navigate your way through and around and I don't know that you ever get over it and I suppose there's a part of me that doesn't want to get over it because getting over it or people saying, Oh, well time heals everything. I don't agree with that because it's it then implies that you're forgetting about that person or that you're disregarding it whereas these things have such lasting impact on you that I never want to forget.
Presenter
Richard, it's time to go to the music. Your fifth selection today. What have you got for us?
Richard E Grant
It is the Chopin Prelude, opus 28, number 4, in E minor, and it's played by Ivo Pogarelic. It was the first concert that I went to on the South Bank when I had emigrated in the spring-summer of 1982, and he was a kind of rock god of pianists at that point, and this was a piece of music that I had on repeat after my wife died and after our daughter died, so that is why it means so much.
Richard E Grant
and played so much slower than any other interpretation that I've heard.
Presenter
I can see why you want to take it to the island.
Richard E Grant
Yeah. You went somewhere completely different during that piece. Absolutely extraordinary.
Presenter
Yeah.
Presenter
You went somewhere completely different during that piece.
Presenter
Chopin's Prelude opus twenty eight, number four in E minor, played by Ivo Pogarellich.
Presenter
So, Richard, with Nail and I was the turning point for you. Ever since, you've always been in work. You've had so many professional triumphs. You've also turned your hand to directing, too, when you made the film Wawa based on your childhood in Swaziland. What was it like putting your story on screen in that way?
Richard E Grant
It was the most creatively satisfying thing that I've ever done because.
Richard E Grant
Having been completely powerless to control anything when I was a teenager when all these things were going on, the opening scene of the film is what I mentioned right up front: that it was inadvertently waking up and discovering my mother infragrante on the front seat of the car. So going back as a middle-aged man to Swaziland, where a film had never been made before.
Richard E Grant
In the locations where all these events happened, I felt the writing process was painful and cathartic by turn, but actually shooting it was the most exhilarating thing that I've ever done.
Presenter
It's time for some more music, Richard. What's your sixth disc?
Richard E Grant
Oh, how appropriate. It's a track called Please Forgive Me and it's from the wonderful Pat Doyle, Glaswegian composer of the soundtrack of Wawa, my autobiographical film.
Presenter
Please forgive me from the film Wawa, the soundtrack composed by Patrick Doyle with the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by James Shearman.
Presenter
So, Richard E. Grant, we know that you've kept a diary since you were ten and you recently published a memoir, A Pocket Full of Happiness, covering your wife Joan's cancer diagnosis just before Christmas twenty twenty, and very sadly, her death last September. It's a very tender description of your lives together. Was putting everything down on paper and sharing it in public therapeutic?
Richard E Grant
Well, the same impulse that I had in recording what had happened that I witnessed when I was 10, of feeling completely having no control over anything, when she was diagnosed, by keeping a detailed diary of what happened on a daily basis, I thought, well, I have no control over any of this, and I know that she's terminally ill, but I wanted as detailed a record of the time that we had left together so that I would always have something that I could re-read or go back to.
Presenter
That's one of the strange things about dealing with a diagnosis of any kind is the ability you have to develop overnight to live in the moment, to stay in the moment, just as a means of survival.
Richard E Grant
Just as a majority of the
Richard E Grant
Yeah.
Presenter
Was that a new skill for you?
Richard E Grant
Yes, I suppose because of the nature of my job, because it's not regular, you never know what you're going to be doing next. So there's always a kind of low-level hum of anxiety of, you know, will I ever get another job? Or will the job that I'm going to get be worthwhile doing or whatever. So between COVID, where everything stopped and we spent that historically gorgeous spring that had never happened in England before for 300 years or whatever, spending all of that time together was an extraordinary gift. So that when she was then diagnosed at the end of that on her birthday on the 21st of December 2020 and was given 12 to 18 months and then, sadly for us, only managed eight months, it meant that you had to live in the moment for the moment as much as possible rather than trying to project
Speaker 1
Yeah.
Richard E Grant
Into the future.
Presenter
People's kindness during Joan's illness was very important to you. I mean, I think sometimes it can be difficult for friends to know what to say. What helped for both of you? And for people listening to this who have a friend who's going through Perhaps something like that, and they just don't know where to start. What would you say to them?
Richard E Grant
Well, can I preface this by saying that the only time that Ollie and I had a real contretin with Joan was
Presenter
Olivia, you call her oily.
Richard E Grant
Three weeks after she was diagnosed.
Richard E Grant
She was determined that nobody should know about this because she had the fantasy that she could carry on working remotely or via FaceTime. And we said it is too much of a burden to carry this secret because for me secrets are toxic and I dealt with too much of that in my growing up years. People want to help you and to show that they can, that they love you and all of those things. So she reluctantly agreed to this and was then astonished by the avalanche of support that we got from flowers to people bringing ice cream. Nigela Lawson sent us food. She cabbed over food that she cooked every Sunday, you know, which was practical, loving and extraordinary.
Presenter
So people should just do whatever they can, say whatever they can, start a conversation.
Richard E Grant
And don't cross the street and think, oh, if I say something to this person, they're going to fall apart like a blubbering jelly.
Richard E Grant
Don't
Richard E Grant
Ignore the fact that that person is either ill or that that person has died, because if you ignore it, it feels as though that person's life didn't count or didn't register, and that feels more hurtful. And it's I find it very difficult not to be judgmental towards people who flatly react as though it's never happened.
Presenter
I think we better have some more music, Richard. Your seventh choice.
Richard E Grant
What have you got? Oh my goodness. This is Eva Cassidy's version of Sting's song Fields of Gold. I've known Sting and Trudy Steiler for almost forty years, and I think he's a great singer songwriter. But when I heard
Richard E Grant
Eva Cassidy's version of this, it has never ceased to reduce me. It's the best interpretation of his song that I've ever heard.
Speaker 4
You remember
Speaker 4
When the West Wind moves
Speaker 4
among the fields of barley
Speaker 4
You can tell the sun in his jealous sky
Speaker 4
And we walked in fields ago
Speaker 4
So she took her love for to gaze awhile
Presenter
Eva Cassidy and Fields of Gold. It's such an emotional track that, Richard, and and you know, obviously hearing the the songs that you've chosen so far.
Presenter
There is that thread of emotion in there. I wonder if music's been an emotional support to you in your grief, in this moment in your life.
Richard E Grant
Yeah, it has, and I I'm sorry I've been a unable to sort of hold it together listening to that, but I think it's because especially that that song, that version of it, is that I have no religious conviction whatsoever. So but the fantasy of
Richard E Grant
Finding that person that you've loved.
Richard E Grant
Again, his
Richard E Grant
What you um oh sorry what you long for, so
Richard E Grant
I have I have found old yep, to answer your question, music is
Richard E Grant
the emotional wallop or or the key to
Richard E Grant
Understanding everything.
Richard E Grant
in a way that goes beyond language. Sorry, I've fallen apart.
Presenter
Oh, it's understandable. And that's what music's for, I think. It's to express the things we can't put into words.
Richard E Grant
Mm-hmm.
Presenter
That's why we give you all eight discs to take to the island if you need them, that's the bare minimum.
Richard E Grant
Whew.
Richard E Grant
Why did I choose that one? Goodness me. Undone.
Presenter
Honestly, it nearly started me off.
Richard E Grant
Okay.
Presenter
So Richard, looking to the future and to your next chapter, you've had a a hugely varied career, hugely successful one. I wonder if there's anything left on your wish list. The role that you've yet to play.
Richard E Grant
Oh, I have a fantasy that Quentin Tarantino is going to cast me as a sort of sleazy lounge lizard Vegas singer. But that has never come to pass. But that is what I would like. And to be in a Western.
Presenter
Oh, I would watch the hell out of both of those films. He could maybe put them together. He's done that before. He's done Westerns.
Richard E Grant
He should.
Presenter
So, Richard, the time's nearly upon us or should I say you, because we're going to cast you away to the desert island. I wonder about the practical side of this endeavour. Will you be able to fend for yourself in this new landscape?
Richard E Grant
Yeah.
Richard E Grant
Yeah.
Richard E Grant
Absolutely. I'm used to trying to solve problems and be practical because of where I grew up. There was no B and Q that you could go to to get stuff sorted out. You had to make do.
Presenter
You had to
Richard E Grant
I'd be ready for anything, and I love the heat, which is where I grew up.
Presenter
Well, we'll let you have one more disc before we cast you away. Your final choice. What's it gonna be?
Richard E Grant
Well, this is Barbara Streisand singing Don't Rain on My Parade, which is a battle cry for anybody who has been told no, you can't in your career. It's really the motor that I think any actor can identify with, of when you're told no, keep going and keep trying. So her interpretation of it is absolutely extraordinary, as is the final note.
Speaker 4
Look turn at bats At least I didn't fake it hats Guess I didn't make it get ready for me love cause I'm a comer I simply gotta march my heart to drum I know body no no
Speaker 4
Rainin'
Presenter
Don't Rain on My Parade, sung by Barbara Streisand from the film soundtrack to Funny Girl.
Richard E Grant
I have a two foot tall sculpture of her head, which I told her that I had commissioned when I had this two hour conversation with her.
Presenter
How do you slip that into a conversation? Casually?
Richard E Grant
Casually. She said, You know that you're crazy. And I said, Yes, I know. No, she said, No, no, you are crazy. And I said, I'm happy to be crazy. That's fine by me. So I see her every day. She's in my garden.
Presenter
So I see her every day. She's in my garden. How wonderful. And she's going to be on the desert island with you. So, Richard E. Grant, time to cast you away. I'm giving you the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare to take along with you to keep you busy. Which other book would you like?
Richard E Grant
Alice in Wonderland. I first read it when I was seven years old and I also had the LP as they were called then with Joan Greenwood doing the voice of Alice and Stanley Holloway doing all the male voices. I've read that book every single year without fail subsequently and it is unofficially the the most clear understanding of the English class system.
Richard E Grant
and the English imagination and sense of humour of anything that I've ever come across, so I love it for all of those things.
Presenter
You can also have a luxury item, what you fancy.
Richard E Grant
I would like a piano, please.
Presenter
Mm do you play well?
Richard E Grant
I don't play well, but I play by ear. And being at the sea with no piano tuner, it would certainly acquire a honky tonk quality which my piano at home has now acquired because of the central heating. So um I'd love that. Keep me entertained all day long.
Presenter
Oh, it's yours. And finally, which one track of the eight that you shared with us today would you rush to save from the waves?
Richard E Grant
WHEN I FALL IN LOVE by NATKINK COLE, because it would remind me of my parents in the best of their time together, and of my wife and our time of thirty eight years together.
Presenter
Richard E. Grant, thank you very much for letting us hear your desert island discs.
Richard E Grant
Thank you very much for having me.
Presenter
Hello. I hope that Richard's happy on his island playing away on his honky-tonk piano. We've cast many actors away over the years, including Dame Judy Dench, Tom Hanks, and Sir Michael Caine. You can hear their programmes if you search through our Desert Island Discs programme archive or on BBC Sounds. The studio manager for today's programme was Jackie Marjoram and the producer was Sarah Taylor. Next time my castaway will be the epidemiologist Professor Gene Golding, founder of the Children of the 90s study. I do hope you'll join us.
Speaker 1
Hello, Desert Island Discs fans.
Speaker 1
I'm Dr. Michael Mosley and I want to let you know about my new podcast, Sleep Well.
Speaker 1
In each episode, I'll focus on a scientifically proven sleep technique and guide you through it, all to help you drift off.
Speaker 1
It's designed to be listened to at bedtime or any time you want to really unwind.
Speaker 1
The idea is to get comfortable.
Speaker 1
Listen and let the cares of the day fall away.
Speaker 1
We'll take a sonic deep dive into the body and encounter some incredible sleep-related mechanisms.
Speaker 1
At play.
Speaker 1
From the breath.
Speaker 1
The powerful neurochemicals.
Speaker 1
The power
Speaker 1
of light.
Speaker 1
I hope you'll subscribe to the podcast on BBC Sounds.
Presenter asks
What prompted you to start keeping a diary when you were ten?
I inadvertently witnessed my mother bonking my father's best friend on the front seat of a car. … I tried God, got no response. I obviously couldn't tell my father or my mother or my friends, so I thought that to try and understand what had happened I started keeping a diary. And it it's continued to be something that I've done every day to try and make sense of the world that I'm I live in.
Presenter asks
Tell me about your mother, Leone.
She is now 91, formidable. Chain smokes, she drives herself, she plays bridge three times a week, she reads five books for a publisher that she does ad hoc work for, so she is a force of nature. And we had a great estrangement for decades. And after I had psychoanalysis when I was 42 after a breakdown, I had this breakthrough with her in that I was guided by this psychoanalyst to try and get her to reveal her narrative of what had happened, to explain why she ended up … in the front seat of the car, that thing that I mentioned earlier. And I got a very, very detailed, lengthy letter written with the voice of a young woman in the colonies, having a child and dealing with a pecking order not allowed to work and all those kind of restrictions. And once I understood that, I then reciprocated by giving her hammer and tongue of what had happened to me at the hands of my subsequently alcoholic father after she had left. So she was as astonished by that as I was by her revelations, convincing me that all secrets in families are toxic. She said three words to me when we finally had a face-to-face after these letters had been exchanged. I went out to visit her. And she leant forward on a table in a restaurant. I had never seen my mother cry before. And she said three magic words, Please forgive me. That instantly removed all these weights and pillars of prejudice and long-standing misunderstanding that we'd had between us. So it was incredible. I now Skype her once a week.
Presenter asks
Tell me about your father, Henrik.
Yeah, he was incredibly witty, fast-thinking, dynamic person by day. And the moment that she left him, he hit a Johnny Walker bottle a day. So by nine o'clock at night, it was literally like a switch that he became a completely different character, very morose, very angry and often violent. And then told me on his deathbed at the age of 53 that he had never stopped loving my mother. And I thought he was referring to my stepmother who just walked out of the room. And he said, no, no, your mother. There was this, on the one hand, an incredibly charming... articulate, provocative man by day, and then this absolute monster that would come out at night, which culminated when I was fifteen, when I naively thought that if I emptied all 12 bottles of scotch down the sink, he would somehow stop drinking. And I was on the 11th bottle and felt something very cold on the back of my head, and it was a gun. Ducked, ran into the garden, and then he chased me and flicked on the garden lights, and there were pool lights as well, and found me and then got hold of me and said, You know, I'm going to blow your brains out. And I said, You know, go ahead and do it. Just let's get this over and done with. He missed because he was so drunk, and then I ran away from home for a couple of weeks. But having said that, my memory of him is so much more than remembering that part of him, because I knew that that was something that was entirely brought about by addiction, rather than the man that I absolutely worshipped and loved.
Presenter asks
How did you deal with the loss of your daughter Tiffany while making Withnail and I?
The abyss of grief is something that you have to navigate your way through and around and I don't know that you ever get over it and I suppose there's a part of me that doesn't want to get over it because getting over it or people saying, Oh, well time heals everything. I don't agree with that because it's it then implies that you're forgetting about that person or that you're disregarding it whereas these things have such lasting impact on you that I never want to forget.
“I inadvertently witnessed my mother bonking my father's best friend on the front seat of a car.”
“He missed because he was so drunk, and then I ran away from home for a couple of weeks.”
“The abyss of grief is something that you have to navigate your way through and around and I don't know that you ever get over it and I suppose there's a part of me that doesn't want to get over it because getting over it or people saying, Oh, well time heals everything. I don't agree with that because it's it then implies that you're forgetting about that person or that you're disregarding it whereas these things have such lasting impact on you that I never want to forget.”
“Don't ignore the fact that that person is either ill or that that person has died, because if you ignore it, it feels as though that person's life didn't count or didn't register, and that feels more hurtful.”
“I have no religious conviction whatsoever. So but the fantasy of finding that person that you've loved again … music is the emotional wallop or the key to understanding everything in a way that goes beyond language.”