Stephen Mangan

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. And, for rights reasons, the music is shorter than the original broadcast. I hope you enjoy listening.

Presenter0:42

My castaway this week is the actor Stephen Mangan. He's best known for his comedies, but is as versatile as he is popular. As well as shows like Episodes and Greenwing, he's also taken on serious roles like the hit BBC drama The Split, and his long career on stage includes a Tony nominated run on Broadway. He's also the host of game shows and arts programmes such as The Fortune Hotel and Portrait Artist of the Year. He runs his own production company and is the author of a series of successful children's books, including the memorably titled The Fart That Changed the World.

Presenter1:15

Born in London to Irish parents, he won a scholarship to a leading boarding school. He always loved drama, but says that with his background, declaring he wanted to become an actor was up there with informing everyone that you planned to become an astronaut or president of the United States. So he read law at Cambridge. Then a family tragedy prompted him to take up acting. He graduated from Rada in 1994 and has pursued his creative passions ever since. He says, I have an itchy brain. If I get offered something I think might be interesting or looks like a laugh or is something I'm curious about, I find it hard to say no. Stephen Mang and welcome to Desert Island Discs.

Stephen Mangan1:53

Thank you.

Presenter1:54

So let's start with that itchy brain of yours, Stephen. You're reading prospective scripts. What gets it going?

Stephen Mangan2:00

I think you have to pick something that you think I would love to watch this because otherwise how do you have the right sensibility to be involved? So if it was a big superhero show or something which I have no particular fondness for or interest in, I probably wouldn't do it. Not that I've been offered that many. But I think just something you think there's something about this, the writing, the characters, the setting, I would love to watch this. And then you're in.

Presenter2:26

And obviously, in recent years, thanks to the hosting that you do, the presenting that you do, the public have maybe got more of a sense of you as a person, the affable man that you really are, which is it's a bit of a contrast to your early roles because TV shows like Greenwing, the characters you were playing in those early days, were often absolute swines. Is that something that you enjoyed, unleashing that dark side?

Stephen Mangan2:42

Yeah.

Stephen Mangan2:45

Oh, I loved it. I mean they're the best parts. You get to release all that stuff, those little bits of you, the little corners of your personality that you don't dare reveal or you just don't like to reveal or you keep hidden and you g get to give them full reign. Those parts are a joy, especially Guy Secretan in Greenwing. He was so obnoxious.

Presenter3:07

One of your big T V breaks was playing Adrian Moll in the two thousand one series The Cappuccino Years. The characters created Sue Townsend had the final say on casting. What do you remember about meeting her?

Stephen Mangan3:18

She was a hero of mine. I thought she was the most fantastic woman. She was so encouraging and welcoming. But when I auditioned for the part, she was starting to lose her sight. And eventually she lost it completely. But at that point, she could just still see, but not very well. And she explained to me in the audition that Adrian is just not a good-looking man. The actor who played him cannot be handsome. Adrian is a geek. He's pretentious. He's all sorts of things, but he's not good looking. And then she asked if she could have a good look at my face. She pulled out a huge magnifying glass. She came up to within six inches of my face and she scanned me from top to bottom and said, you're perfect.

Speaker 33:50

Uh

Presenter3:50

Yeah.

Presenter3:59

How did you feel in that moment? What makes you move?

Stephen Mangan4:00

Mixed emotions. I mean, mi a mixed emotions is right. Delighted to get the part. But yeah, it's not what you imagine when you're a child in your bedroom thinking, one day maybe I'll be bombed. And in that moment I knew I never would be.

Presenter4:11

And in that moment I

Presenter4:14

And what about music? How big a part does that play in your life? You're choosing your discs today.

Stephen Mangan4:18

Yeah, I chose music that reminded me of time and place and people rather than the eight tracks I love the most, even though these all have a special place in my heart. But yeah, it's quite a challenge. And it's quite interesting. I'm not someone who looks back a lot, so it was really interesting to look at that final list of eight tracks and think, wow, that kind of does sum up my life in a weird way.

Presenter4:26

Mm-hmm.

Presenter4:46

Well, I can't wait to get started to tell us about your first

Stephen Mangan4:49

My parents had an automatic record player, a red with a lid, and one of those you could pile seven or eight 45s on, and they would drop down. Fantastic. Yeah, and they had a whole box of 45s, a whole box of singles. And my sisters and I, Anita and Lisa, would play all the records all the time. And my mum was a big Elvis fan. There was a lot of early 50s and 60s American music. But there was one song we loved playing, which was King of the Road by Roger Miller. And it just reminds me.

Presenter4:58

Fantastic.

Stephen Mangan5:19

Of those hours and days and weeks and months that you spend with your siblings, being stupid with each other, being silly, making each other laugh, playing records and this was the one I remember the most, especially because of I ain't got no cigarette.

Presenter5:35

No cigarettes. So that would always make you laugh.

Stephen Mangan5:39

Yeah.

Speaker 35:40

Trailer for sale or rent.

Speaker 35:44

Rome still at fifty cents

Speaker 35:48

No phone, no poo, no pets.

Speaker 35:52

Ain't got no cigarettes all but two hours of pushing broom Buys a 8 by 12 4 bit broom I'm a man of means by no means

Speaker 36:09

King of the Road

Presenter6:11

Roger Miller and King of the Road. So, Stephen Mangan, you're the eldest of three children, born to Mary and James, in North London. Both your mum and dad left Ireland to make their lives here in the UK. How did they actually meet?

Stephen Mangan6:23

Well, they knew of each other. They're from villages two miles apart in Mayo, but they just went to different schools. Both came over here in their teens, as did all of their brothers and sisters. My dad has four brothers and four sisters. Mum, five brothers and a sister. Everyone migrated for economic reasons to London. All my uncles and my dad were all labourers. The thing you did was you went to the pub owned by someone from back home. And the pub that they would all hang out in was the Camden stores on Parkway in Camden. My mum was a barmaid there, and dad would go in there and then they go dancing at the Camden Palais or the Galtymoor. And they got married very young. Mum was only 21. But I think they both loved London. They really...

Presenter6:39

Mm-hmm.

Stephen Mangan7:06

blossomed here. That neither of them had a particularly good education. In fact, they had a terrible education. They left school at fourteen. They were both very bright and I think they were just bowled over by the food, the theatre, the cinema, the you know, the everything that London had to offer. So

Presenter7:23

And they took advantage of that too.

Stephen Mangan7:24

They really did, yeah. They were sort of autodidacts and travelled a huge amount and they loved life. They were really happy together, very much in love. We had a very funny, happy household and they traveled the world.

Presenter7:41

So they're both from big Catholic families. Were you and your sisters brought up going to church and all of that?

Stephen Mangan7:45

Oh, yeah, absolutely. Oh, you had to go to church. Mass at 10:15 every Sunday. I quickly realized that.

Stephen Mangan7:53

If I was gonna have to be there, it was better to be on the stage than in the audience. So I signed up to be an alter boy.

Speaker 37:58

Ah.

Speaker 38:00

Boy.

Stephen Mangan8:01

Just to be busy. I mean, here we go, the seeds of my life already. I didn't want to sit there for an hour doing nothing. I wanted to be out.

Presenter8:07

You get to do the swing the interns or anything?

Stephen Mangan8:08

I yeah, I had I I call it an incense solo. I had to come out to the front.

Stephen Mangan8:14

Bell ringing, preparing the communion, you know, you were busy.

Presenter8:16

So you mentioned that when your dad first came over, he was labouring, like his brothers, and and your mum was working in the bar. How did things progress for them? What what did they do for a living as you were growing up?

Stephen Mangan8:25

Dad and his brothers set up a company together, Mangan Brothers Limited, and they did start to do very well in construction, ended up building petrol stations basically. Mum had me a year after they got married and became a full time mum.

Presenter8:42

So, your sisters are Anita and Lisa. And I think Lisa was named after your mum's love of Elvis. You mentioned that it was a lovely love.

Stephen Mangan8:47

Yeah, Lisa Marie, yeah. Okay. Do you know, it's an interesting thing because they came over in the early 60s. At the height of that no dogs, no blacks, no Irish kind of... You know, I don't think it was... Yeah, it was a burden, I think, being Irish, or it was certainly not, you weren't made to feel that welcome. We're called Stephen Anita and Lisa. We're not called Bridget, Eamon, and Paddy. I don't know whether, you know, there was a...

Presenter8:49

Okay.

Speaker 48:57

You know, I don't think it was.

Presenter8:58

Yeah.

Stephen Mangan9:10

A subconscious wanting to free us from kind of what she felt was prejudice against her. The whole country was awash with Irish jokes about how thick the Irish were.

Presenter9:18

Hmm.

Stephen Mangan9:19

They were always proud of being Irish, but I suppose they didn't want us to inherit that burden.

Presenter9:24

The negative side.

Stephen Mangan9:25

The negative side of it, yeah.

Presenter9:26

And did you feel connected to Ireland culturally and

Stephen Mangan9:29

Oh, we were there all the time. I mean, we spent every summer there.

Presenter9:30

Yeah, we

Stephen Mangan9:33

The really long journey, you'd have to drive up to Liverpool, eight hour ferry from Liverpool to Dublin, six and a half hour drive from Dublin. It took a day and a half to get to the west coast, so it felt like you were going to the other side of the earth.

Stephen Mangan9:43

And once we were over there, often we'd just be left there for the summer and the last uncle or aunt coming back would would bring us back.

Presenter9:49

Time to turn to the music again. Disc number two. What are we going to hear?

Stephen Mangan9:53

So, my uncles, Eamon and Michael, had a dance hall, and we would go there from a young age. We'd get to go backstage into the band room. A huge dance hall. There'd probably be anything from 600 to 1200, 1400 people in this. Where was this? Was this?

Presenter10:07

Where was this? Was this

Stephen Mangan10:08

This is in Belmullet. This is in the sort of nearest big town to where my parents grew up.

Stephen Mangan10:14

We would go and either sit in the bandroom if we were very little and watch the action from the side of the stage, or when we got a bit older, we'd serve in the bar. But dance wouldn't start till midnight or one in the morning. The energy coming off this crowd of drunk, of lust, of excitement, all of that, which was just very eye-opening. And then travelling back to, often stayed with my uncle Michael who lived in Balina, it was about an hour's drive. And we would listen to this album, the Don Williams album, and all my uncles seemed to have this album. Don Williams' greatest hits. On my mum's side and my dad's side. I don't know what it is, it's just something about it. It's become a sort of family anthem, and we play it all the time. It just reminds me of sitting in a car late at night, going through the Mayo countryside with my family, feeling part of a family and loving it.

Speaker 311:04

I recall a gypsy woman.

Speaker 311:10

Silver spinkles in her eyes

Speaker 311:16

Ivory skin.

Speaker 311:19

Against the will to lie.

Speaker 311:22

And the taste of life's sweet wine

Presenter11:33

Don Williams, and I recall a gypsy woman. Stephen, you were eight years old when you first trod the boards. In a school play, the piece in question was Beauty and the Beast. Tell me everything.

Stephen Mangan11:44

Well, you know, a groundbreaking avant-garde paradigm shifting production of Beauty and the Beast. I mean, obviously, I played Beauty.

Stephen Mangan11:54

All boys' school. I had an auburn wig and an emerald green dress. I don't remember a lot about it actually. It wasn't a revelatory performance, but I do.

Stephen Mangan12:04

remember that I was hugely encouraged by one teacher in particular called Peter Nixon who I'm still in touch with and see all the time who you know just gave me more and more interesting parts and we made films, animated films, and he introduced me to books. So really the whole thing is sort of his fault.

Presenter12:21

And do you have that memory that actors often do of the first laugh, the first round of applause?

Stephen Mangan12:26

I don't have that memory because I was getting all that at home from my sisters, my parents, and we were all laughing at each other. It wasn't like I was standing on a table and everyone was applauding me. I think it's prized in Ireland. I think, you know, away with words, being good with words and being funny was always prized in our house.

Presenter12:30

From my sister's

Presenter12:33

But it wasn't like I was standing

Presenter12:43

And your mum absolutely loved the theatre.

Stephen Mangan12:45

Yeah.

Presenter12:46

Did she take you with her?

Stephen Mangan12:47

She took me all the time and mum and I would often go see two or three plays in in my half term. I queued up all night to go and see Anthony Scher play Richard the Third, and then it was so hot in the theatre and I hadn't slept all night that I fell asleep in the second half.

Stephen Mangan13:03

I mean, I must have seen twenty shows a year.

Presenter13:06

So ca quite a Catholic taste by the sound of it, as well a little bit of everything.

Stephen Mangan13:08

Yeah, a bit of everything.

Presenter13:10

And so at thirteen, you went to different school to your siblings. You won a scholarship to quite a prestigious boarding school, Haileybury College in Hertfordshire. And it had been your idea to apply, I think? What were you expecting?

Stephen Mangan13:21

Yeah.

Stephen Mangan13:23

I think I'd read too many Ene Bleighten books. I thought it was going to be fun and excitement and adventure. My parents didn't want me to go. It was so alien to the way that they'd been brought up. The idea of sending your child away just seemed weird and unnatural.

Stephen Mangan13:37

But I was adamant that I wanted to go and then because I won a scholarship I could and I hated it. I hated the first two years. I was really bullied. I was homesick.

Presenter13:43

I was really

Stephen Mangan13:46

I felt I couldn't tell my parents because I knew how upset they were that I was going in the first place and I didn't want to make them more upset by any

Presenter13:52

So you have to double down.

Stephen Mangan13:53

So I sort of double down and

Stephen Mangan13:55

It was horrible. Boarding schools I'm sure have changed a lot, but the problem is, you know, it's why shows like Big Brother work, because you're never off camera, as it were, and eventually you crack and you know you can't escape. And it's the same's true at boarding school. You're there twenty four hours a day, seven days a week.

Presenter14:11

So you felt that pressure cooker. You felt watched.

Stephen Mangan14:12

Yeah.

Stephen Mangan14:14

I felt that I couldn't escape and I was small for my age. You know, I was probably quite chatty and confident and, you know, just sort of a little boy ripe to be bullied, I suppose, really. And I probably didn't handle it very well. But then, slowly, I got older, the bullying stopped, I made friends and things improved. And I, you know, girls arrived in the sixth form. And that changed my world. In fact, I joined the choir as a smaller boy just to be around the older girls because it was a break from the dormitory and getting hit in the face with a pillow.

Presenter14:52

You said you made friends. I mean, who were your people? Was it a case of finding your tribe a little bit?

Stephen Mangan14:57

I started to get leads in plays because now I was now being considered for the school plays. I formed a band.

Presenter15:03

It was a prog rock band, I think.

Stephen Mangan15:04

Yeah, it was, yeah, yeah.

Presenter15:05

Tell me more.

Stephen Mangan15:05

Tell me more. Always on trend, me. We had several names. We were Dragonfly for a while. We ended up as Aragon.

Presenter15:11

Oh nice.

Stephen Mangan15:12

We released an EP called The Wizard's Dream.

Stephen Mangan15:16

With a fifteen-minute song called The Dragon, which was about the troubles in Northern Ireland, Reflections of the Reaper was another track.

Presenter15:22

What was your role in that?

Stephen Mangan15:23

I was the keyboard player and I think on the thing it said backing vocals, keyboards and jokes.

Stephen Mangan15:30

I blush now at that, but you know, it's

Presenter15:31

So you've always been multi-hyphenate then?

Stephen Mangan15:33

Yeah, yeah.

Presenter15:34

And that kind of adventurous creativity, it sounds like that was in you right from the beginning, was it? To try a lot of different things.

Stephen Mangan15:40

It was and I think the lesson I learnt was stop trying to fit in with what other people want. I think that's what I probably spent my first two years going, this is not working, what do they want from me? Trying to conform. Trying to conform. And then eventually you go, do you know what? I'm just going to be what I'm like. And if people don't like it, then, you know, what are you going to do?

Presenter15:56

It's funny that, isn't it? Because often that kind of integrity has its own power.

Stephen Mangan16:00

Yeah.

Presenter16:01

And actually then you find your strength inside yourself, but also people respond to you in a different way.

Stephen Mangan16:07

People know then what they're dealing with because you're saying, well, this is who I am. So they have something to, you know, and they keep.

Presenter16:08

Because

Presenter16:11

I'm an album. I'm the keyboard player from

Stephen Mangan16:13

I'm the guy with the eyeliner on playing uh keyboard solos. I had two keyboards. I put one on the left and one on the right so I could sort of rick wakeman it away.

Presenter16:20

I could sort of Rick Wakeman in a way.

Stephen Mangan16:22

Yeah, that was a

Presenter16:23

Yeah, that's it.

Stephen Mangan16:25

I didn't ever go as far as the Cape, but if I'd if I could turn back time

Stephen Mangan16:29

I would.

Presenter16:30

Yeah.

Presenter16:31

Well, I think as we've been talking about music, Stephen, we should have another track from you now. Your third choice to do.

Stephen Mangan16:37

This is a hugely important part of my life. Louise and I have got three boys, Harry, Frank, and Jack, and there is that wonderful time after your baby's born, from the moment it's born really, where you just fall head over heels and soppily in love with this little bundle of flesh. And you become one of those people who can't stop showing photos to everybody or talking about your child and how wonderful they are.

Stephen Mangan17:01

It's a magical thing. I remember my dad telling me when I was younger that he used to sit at the on the edge of my cot and just look at me and my sisters and just cry with sort of joy and overwhelm.

Stephen Mangan17:12

You know, the magic of it all. And I found myself doing the same thing. You just fall hopelessly in love with these beautiful, magical things that have appeared. And this is a very sentimental song. And it's John Lennon going through the same thing, you can hear. But I play this for my three beautiful boys.

Speaker 317:35

Before you go to sleep

Speaker 317:40

Say a little breath

Speaker 317:45

Every day

Speaker 317:47

Every way it's getting better and better

Speaker 317:53

Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful boy.

Speaker 318:02

FOL CULAFOL CU

Presenter18:06

John Lennon and Beautiful Boy.

Presenter18:10

So Stephen Mangan, after leaving school, you decided to study law at Cambridge University, which is obviously quite a different path from the career you've since created. Why did you choose that subject?

Stephen Mangan18:21

I really don't know. I did split A Love. I did I did maths, further maths, English and history. So I sort of did half arts, half sciencey kind of stuff. And people said to me, Oh, law's creative, but it's also logical and you like acting, then barristers get to stand up in court and I just didn't know what else to do, I think, really.

Presenter18:40

Obviously, a very prestigious course to take. I'm wondering if there was a sense that, you know, it was for your mum and dad.

Stephen Mangan18:46

I think that's a huge part of it. And I think as well my parents, having not had the chance to get any education, valued it hugely.

Stephen Mangan18:56

They were very proud and I think they also thought if you go to university, do something practical, something useful, because that's just the way they thought. They look at that's the way they look especially Dad would look at the world. And I think I knew within the first three weeks that it just wasn't for me.

Presenter19:08

Why not? What was it like?

Stephen Mangan19:10

certain parts of the law are about taking very human situations and trying to strip the emotion out of it and try and look at coldly at intention and what people were thinking to take the heat out of it. And to me the heat is the interesting bit.

Presenter19:24

It's the opposite of acting that isn't.

Stephen Mangan19:25

It's the opposite. It really is the opposite of acting. I think I needed to go to drama school afterwards partly to get that way of thinking out of my head. That very clinical, logical way of thinking is not particularly helpful always as an actor.

Presenter19:32

Yeah.

Presenter19:37

So at university, obviously, you know, there's a lot of extracurricular stuff going on at Cambridge, very famous for its Footlights group. It's launched many a show business career. Did you get involved?

Stephen Mangan19:47

No, I didn't. I went along for an an audition and I must have got somebody on a bad day, but it just struck me as incredibly cliquey, a clothes shop. I just felt so unwelcome and out of it. I thought, I'll just go and be in plays. So I did that. I think I was in twenty-one plays in my three years.

Presenter19:47

I went along

Presenter20:06

Oh, I so so where were you doing that? Who with?

Stephen Mangan20:09

All sorts of people. And I work with Jess Butterworth. Paul Ritter was a really good friend of mine. And some colleges have a little theatre. And so if you're a director, you apply to a college and say, I want to put on Hamlet. And they give you a little bit of money for some scenery. And then you go and cast it university-wide. So there's auditions going on all the time for various plays in various colleges. You become part of a gang.

Presenter20:15

Mm-hmm.

Presenter20:32

This little network. And also, you know, I'm wondering at this time how you felt about what you were doing, because when you were younger, it had been a hobby, but you must have been with people who were like, well, this is I think this is what I want to do. Did that start to rub off on you? Had you started to nurse ambitions of your own?

Stephen Mangan20:47

Completely. My friends there were people like Mel Gedroich and Sue Perkins, and Nicola Walker, who I've worked with recently on the split, Rachel Weiss, Tom Hollander, all these people are there saying, We're off to become actors. And you think, oh, all right, well, maybe that is something I could do if I can get around to telling my parents I don't want to do law anymore.

Presenter21:09

You did complete your law degree and I saw a lovely picture of you and your mum on Graduation Day. When you see that photo, what do you think of?

Stephen Mangan21:18

I think how

Stephen Mangan21:20

Incredibly different my life was from hers. It's really astonishing to think of the change in one generation. She was brought up in a one bedroom house.

Stephen Mangan21:31

Five brothers and a sister

Stephen Mangan21:34

Dad away in England working on the building sites. It was a one room that had basically room for two double beds and a fireplace. There was no running water, no electricity, no plumbing, nothing.

Stephen Mangan21:45

And to go from that to have a child that has the opportunity to end up getting a law degree is inc is an incredible

Presenter21:51

It is in

Stephen Mangan21:53

Leap.

Stephen Mangan21:54

I'd love for her to have had that chance.

Presenter21:56

She must have been so proud.

Stephen Mangan21:58

I think she was, yeah, I think she was.

Stephen Mangan22:01

I also look at that photo and she got ill shortly afterwards, so

Presenter22:04

Yeah.

Stephen Mangan22:05

I look at that photo and I can see that she's not well.

Presenter22:08

Yeah.

Stephen Mangan22:08

At the time we didn't realize that. In September of that year

Stephen Mangan22:12

We realized how ill she was, and the whole world changed.

Presenter22:17

So she was diagnosed with cancer, with bowel cancer, and you went home, you took a year out after you need to look after her.

Stephen Mangan22:23

Yeah. We were having dinner in September. Mum and I were alone and she got up from the table and I found her a few minutes later. She was doubled over in the in the living room. She had quite advanced bowel cancer.

Stephen Mangan22:38

and it just made sense for me to hang around and help out. I didn't want to go and do anything else. I wanted to be there at home, and I was lucky enough to have the chance to do that. What we didn't know in that in September was that she would be dead six months later.

Stephen Mangan22:54

And I'm forever grateful that I

Stephen Mangan22:57

could spend that time at home. You've got to remember I'd been to boarding school for five years. I'd been away at university for three years. So I hadn't been around that much.

Speaker 323:01

Uh

Presenter23:01

But

Stephen Mangan23:07

During the previous few years, so I took the opportunity to help out and be there with both hands.

Presenter23:14

I think sometimes people don't understand you know, when you say I'm grateful that I got that opportunity to care for her at the end of her life, people who haven't been through that might not understand what a kind of intimate privilege it is to do that for someone.

Stephen Mangan23:28

Yeah.

Stephen Mangan23:29

Yeah.

Stephen Mangan23:31

The person who brought you up.

Stephen Mangan23:33

and looked after you.

Stephen Mangan23:34

All your life.

Stephen Mangan23:38

And to

Stephen Mangan23:39

Yeah.

Stephen Mangan23:42

I think it's just to be there with them, part more than anything else.

Stephen Mangan23:46

to be next to them and to be there as a family and we would

Presenter23:47

Yeah.

Stephen Mangan23:50

You know, mum was young, she was forty-five.

Stephen Mangan23:53

So there's all sorts of people have a big family that people were coming over every evening, friends were coming over to see her. There'd be always dinners and laughter and stuff going on in the house. And I'm glad I got that opportunity. It's horrendous.

Stephen Mangan24:08

to be in that position that she was in and know that you're that ill and you don't have long left. And we didn't talk about it explicitly. But f for the family who left behind to have that chance to do something and to start that process of grieving and to say goodbye

Stephen Mangan24:26

Yeah, it's kind of priceless.

Presenter24:30

Let's have some more music, Stephen, your fourth choice.

Stephen Mangan24:34

I've always been conscious of time passing. I don't know whether it's a melancholy kind of whether it's an Irish thing, parents who had to leave home.

Stephen Mangan24:44

And move on, you know, that f slightly wistful feeling. Yeah, that longing. That's very much in me. And so who knows where the time goes? Fairport Convention.

Presenter24:48

Belonging.

Presenter24:55

I know that you've sung this at a folk festival.

Stephen Mangan24:58

Perhaps on this

Presenter24:58

This is Richard Thompson.

Stephen Mangan25:00

I mean Richard Thompson, who's a sort of godlike talent, he obviously played the guitar for Fairport Convention and sang on the version we're going to hear.

Stephen Mangan25:08

It's one of those ridiculous things you get to do when you're on the telly.

Stephen Mangan25:11

That you can't you can't believe your luck. But someone, you know, would you like to go and sing just the two of us, two guitars and and just singing. And he'd just done an entire set headlining the Cambridge Folk Festival in front of seven or eight thousand people. And at the end of his set, he said, Now Stephen Mangan and the crowd went, Hurrett, what?

Stephen Mangan25:30

And I came out and sang this with him. It's a very hard song to sing, but it's a beautiful song and feeling of time slipping away, I'm always conscious of it.

Presenter25:56

Wait till

Presenter26:12

Fairport Convention and Who Knows Where the Time Goes

Presenter26:17

So, Stephen, after your mum died you decided to go back to university. At this time, though, it was radar. What did your dad make of your decision?

Stephen Mangan26:25

My mum died at forty five. Her mum had died at forty seven.

Stephen Mangan26:29

So things didn't look good, you know, for R.

Stephen Mangan26:33

longevity and I think he just understood, you know, everything gets thrown up in the air when something like that happens. And I think the fact that I'd got a degree from a good university and taken that as far as I wanted to, and the fact I think I got into Rada as well was a kind of seal of official approval that actually this wasn't just a pipe dream. I just thought I can't if I really have twenty years left I want to be an actor. I'm going to do

Presenter26:56

Did you tell her about it?

Stephen Mangan26:57

I did tell her that I had an audition, yeah, that's as much as she ever knew.

Presenter27:00

She must have loved that.

Stephen Mangan27:01

She did, I think. And then I think the actual audition was 10 or 11 days after she died. And it's so unimportant at that point. You don't go in all a bag of nerves. You're like, well, here I am. Take me or leave me.

Presenter27:10

Bye-bye.

Stephen Mangan27:12

And it worked and um

Presenter27:14

And did you just feel like you'd found your groove? I mean, in terms of the actual work that you were doing, you must have relished that. To and to escape into that as well, I mean, when you're grieving, it's really powerful.

Stephen Mangan27:26

Yeah. I mean you have imposter syndrome walking in because you walk into this lobby and the all the names on the boards of all the famous actors who've been there and the busts, it's very intimidating and you quickly imagine that they're going to point at you and go, I'm sorry, we made a mistake. But I realized almost immediately that I was in the right place doing the right thing and that was a big relief.

Presenter27:46

And then after you graduated, you spent seven years working all over the country in theatre. Now, apparently, you turned down a lot of film and T V offers, everything else you didn't do. Tell me about that.

Stephen Mangan27:51

Yeah.

Stephen Mangan27:56

Yeah.

Stephen Mangan27:59

Yeah, well I wanted to be a good actor. That was the plan. I wanted to be the best actor I could be and I figured the way to do that was to play the great classical theatre parts. And I didn't want to be the fifth person from the right at the National or the RSC. I wanted to play the main parts. So if I had to go to York or Edinburgh or Norwich or wherever it was to do that, that's what I was going to do. And I did that for five years. And I got an agent at Rada and she would phone me every now and again and say, merchant Ivory are making a film. And I'd say, nope. I want to go and do a play at Salisbury Playhouse. All those books I'd read about actors and how they started, they all seemed to start in rep. So I was sort of trying to create my own version of rep.

Presenter28:37

And did it work? How was it? How did it feel?

Stephen Mangan28:38

Great, I loved it. Because you start again every place you go. You reinvent yourself, you get to try on a new way of being, you're playing a new part. I got to play all the sort of heroic juvenile leads because the audience are forty feet minimum away from you. They're not like Sue Townsend six inches from your face. So my slightly wonky face didn't matter. I could play the sort of heroic characters. And I loved it. And I think I learnt a huge amount.

Speaker 328:58

Uh

Presenter28:58

Yeah.

Presenter29:06

It wasn't all Shakespeare and Chekov for you, though, because I know you had a side hustle working on foreign commercials to pay the bills.

Stephen Mangan29:12

To pay the bills.

Presenter29:14

What kind of parts are we getting?

Stephen Mangan29:15

Commercials then tended to be a very beautiful woman and a, let me say, a characterful man who could drink a coffee or eat a slice of a cake or something and pull a face that made you laugh and made you think that looks delicious. And I seem to be able to do that really well.

Presenter29:34

Really well. So you were developing a niche?

Stephen Mangan29:37

My first audition was up some rickety stairs in Soho. There was a sweaty middle-aged man at the top with a camera. He said, Sit in the chair, take your top off, look into the camera, say your name, and growl like a tiger.

Speaker 329:48

Adam.

Stephen Mangan29:49

I thought, here we go. I ended up in South Africa advertising that was a chewing gum advert, wearing a thong in a jacuzzi with five beautiful women and me chewing chewing gum in a characterful way.

Presenter30:03

Is it on the Internet now?

Stephen Mangan30:04

Luckily, no.

Presenter30:07

So a little bit later, the TV roles started coming your way. You moved into that zone. One of your best loved characters was the anaesthetist Guy Secretan from the hospital comedy Greedwing. There was so much buzz about that show and it's still beloved by people. How did it feel to be part of it? Because it does sound like the company that you're part of and the creative process has always been a big part of the attraction of any given project for you.

Stephen Mangan30:33

It has, and it just had an incredible cast. We were all in it together. We all had a stake in making it work. We were involved in the writing.

Presenter30:41

And there's a bit of improvisation too as well.

Stephen Mangan30:41

And that's

Stephen Mangan30:43

Well, I mean it was the most expensive comedy I think Channel 4 have ever made because they had eight or nine writers who would each write a version of the scene. We'd then get together, we'd read all the different versions, we'd stand on our feet, we'd improvise our own version, they take all the best bits of all of that. That's a time-consuming process that doesn't happen because it's too expensive. But the results are there to see. It works. And I absolutely loved it. That to me was the perfect way of working. It was egalitarian, it was fun. You could throw out as many ideas as you wanted, and you had somebody with taste and comic brains to pick all the best ones. So you didn't have to worry about, you know, throwing out a bad idea because that process would be dealt with by somebody else. You know, when you're in a show like that, and all you're talking about, oh, you should see what Mark Heap did yesterday. He leapt out of a cupboard in his pants playing the recorder or whatever it was. We all knew it was going to be good. I was getting my revenge on the boarding school because I was playing that entitled, arrogant public school boy. Because remember, I'm sort of, I've got this split personality. I've got this sort of working class Irish family, but this posh public school schooling. So I was an outsider and an insider of that public school life. And I just had a lot of fun taking the Mickey out of it.

Presenter31:01

Yeah.

Presenter31:33

Or whatever it was.

Presenter31:59

It's time for some more music, Stephen. Your fifth choice, what's it gonna be?

Stephen Mangan32:02

One day filming Greenwing, we started an episode with a spoof of Staying Alive. I got to be John Trafolter in a white suit. It just typified the way we worked. There was a brilliant script written, but on the day, the floor is thrown open. Who's got a gun idea? Who wants to do this? Who wants to do that? And it's just a fantastic way of working. And whenever I hear this song, it takes me back to those glorious days of working on Greenwing.

Presenter32:29

And happily that clip is on the internet.

Stephen Mangan32:31

Oh yes it is.

Presenter32:32

Stay in the line, stay in the line.

Speaker 332:39

I, I, I, straight and I, straight and I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I

Speaker 332:45

Take it a lot.

Presenter33:03

The Bee Gee's and Stayin' Alive. Stephen Mangan, you went on to star with fellow Green Wing actor Tamson Gregg in five series of episodes, and that also featured friends star Matt LeBlanc. How did it feel to make that transition to LA?'Cause the show is about a husband and wife duo going to Hollywood to remake a hit T V series.

Stephen Mangan33:22

Yeah, the whole thing's set in LA. We filmed it all in Wimbledon.

Presenter33:26

Oh.

Stephen Mangan33:26

It's much cheaper to film over here. In fact, it's about half the cost. So there was a lot of time spent in convertible sports cars at 2 in the morning in a sort of polo shirt trying to pretend it's 30 degrees when it felt like 4 degrees. We started to go out there for the exteriors from the second series on. And in fact, one of the series was about half and half. But that world is so ripe for parody. But I think a lot of American writers and producers don't want to parody it because they don't want to bite the hand that feeds them. But David Crane and Geoffrey Clarek, who wrote it, I mean, David was one of the three creators of Friends. Jeffrey's had a huge career as a writer and creator in the States as well. They've made their millions and they had no problem in satirizing the ridiculousness of the sort of TV industry.

Presenter33:38

Yeah.

Presenter34:13

And how did you feel about it then? So, you started to go out there. How did you fit into the American machine? I mean, it is very different.

Stephen Mangan34:21

I found it very hard to tell everyone how great I was because that's what you kind of need to do. If you're diffident and British about it and they say you're amazing and you say, oh, well, I'm not that, they'll just move on to the next person who does think they're amazing. I met a manager who said, I've seen everything you've ever done. I said, oh, thanks very much. He said, I'm your biggest fan, Simon. Stephen. Stephen. All that sort of nonsense, I can't take seriously. It's sort of.

Presenter34:45

Bye.

Stephen Mangan34:47

Death by encouragement. I've had agents asking me to come and move out and managers saying please move out here. It just doesn't suit my personality. I'm sure I could have earned a lot more money, but the idea of sitting in a house and not working, but waiting for that one massive job, I'd rather be doing what I'm doing, which is all the little bits and pieces that I do. That makes me much happier.

Presenter35:12

Stephen, it's time to hear your next track. What have you got for us and why are you taking it to the island?

Stephen Mangan35:18

In 2005, my dad James, who was 62 in March that year, he started getting severe headaches and we discovered that he had a brain tumor. And in a really strange echo of my mum's story, he died six months after his diagnosis as well. And again, I was

Stephen Mangan35:43

lucky enough to be around to help him out. We were actually filming the second series of Greenwing and they shut the whole production down for ten days in order so that I could be there.

Presenter35:53

But that must have been very difficult for you going from a fictional hospital to your dad's bedside.

Stephen Mangan35:57

It was really really odd, especially in the early days of him getting diagnosed.

Stephen Mangan36:03

We'd go to a hospital and hear some very serious and awful news and then I would put on a white coat and go and be DAFT as Guy Secretan. So yes, again, I was lucky enough with my sisters to be there and to look after him. Brain tumors, they can be quite distressing. There's no pain for the patient, but they do have seizures and things that which are

Stephen Mangan36:26

hard to cope with. When Dad and I were alone, we would listen to this next track a lot. I think he found it quite relaxing. I know I did. It's the second movement of Ravel's piano concerto. And there's something about it

Stephen Mangan36:41

When you move from the world of the well into the world of the unwell, and they are two very separate worlds.

Speaker 336:46

Uh

Stephen Mangan36:49

Especially when things are getting pretty serious towards the end, you are living in this.

Stephen Mangan36:54

You're living from minute to minute, hour to hour, day to day, going through the various procedures and processes.

Stephen Mangan37:01

And it's just a case of putting one foot in front of the other.

Stephen Mangan37:06

It's very hard to sometimes take in the bigger picture of what's going on.

Stephen Mangan37:11

You just

Stephen Mangan37:13

living moment to moment. And there's something about this piece of music it feels like a musical

Stephen Mangan37:21

embodiment of that state.

Presenter38:26

The Adaggio from Ravel's Piano Concerto in G major, played by Marta Ahorich with the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Claudio Abado, for your dad, Stephen Mangen, and that time that you had together at the very end of his life.

Presenter38:40

You lost both your parents very young, that must have shaped your own outlook and who you've become.

Stephen Mangan38:46

Yeah, I th I mean I think

Stephen Mangan38:48

Having the parents that I have.

Stephen Mangan38:50

Shape me more. They were bright.

Stephen Mangan38:54

Life-loving, warm.

Stephen Mangan38:57

Delightful people.

Stephen Mangan38:59

But I can't get away from the fact that, yeah, I I never got to know my mum as an adult and that

Stephen Mangan39:06

hurts. Mum never met Louise, she didn't meet my kids. You know, and it's her loss. The the the loss for her has stuck with me. But I I'm grateful to have had them as parents.

Stephen Mangan39:20

Um

Stephen Mangan39:21

I lucked out, and I think I look at it that way.

Stephen Mangan39:25

Rather than have parents who live to be a hundred and ten who you don't get on with or you don't like.

Presenter39:29

And you've kept a very close relationship with your sisters, one of whom w you have a creative partnership with, Anita. She illustrates the children's books that you write. How have you managed to keep a sense of togetherness in the family?

Stephen Mangan39:43

Well, I think it's always there because we were so close as kids. When dad died, we bought a little place in the countryside, all three of us, that we could share and go to and use as a family. So because you no longer have a family home to go to or a place where you can gather, so we got somewhere and they are the people who made me, my mum, my dad, my sisters. From that little family unit, everything else in my life has sprung.

Presenter40:12

You're a dad of three sons yourself, your career can take you away for considerable stretches of time. How do you reconcile that with fatherhood and also your time as short outlook?

Stephen Mangan40:23

It's really tough. It's really tough on Louise. Having an actor/slash presenter, whatever I am as a partner is tough because there's no routine. Last year I was away out of the country for two or three months. This year I'm doing a play in the West End, and that means I'm out six nights of the week. It's really tough, and she's the one that fills in all those gaps.

Stephen Mangan40:44

I went to Broadway. I got back after six months away. They'd only been able to come out for a a week or so, and and my eldest, who was then three years old, called me Uncle Stephen when I got back.

Presenter40:56

Oh

Stephen Mangan40:57

But I then found out Louise made him say that for a joke.

Stephen Mangan41:00

So

Presenter41:00

You must have been crushed, though.

Stephen Mangan41:02

I was, but it's quite a funny gag.

Presenter41:05

With actors for parents, I mean two actors, have any of them expressed an interest in following in your footsteps?

Stephen Mangan41:10

I think they're all into it. I've become like my dad. I want them to get a good education first, so they're not being put up for child acting roles and stuff like that. But I would be I've listen, it's been a wonderful, wonderful life for me.

Stephen Mangan41:25

Why would I not wish that on them?

Presenter41:29

It's time for your next disc, Stephen Rangen, your penultimate choice today. What are we going to hear and why?

Stephen Mangan41:34

When I was at university, I became very good friends with Paul Ritter, who a lot of people will know from Friday Night Dinner. He played The Dad and lots of other parts. But we were mates. We were in a play together at university, and we used to sit in our rooms and try and imagine what it would be like to be professional actors. I remember one conversation in particular, we were saying how lovely it would be to just be leaving your digs on a Thursday morning in York or Liverpool or Wrexham and just going to the theatre to do a matinee, to be paid to be an actor.

Stephen Mangan42:08

How incredible and how unattainable that seemed at the time.

Stephen Mangan42:12

Twenty years later, Paul and I were in a play at the Old Vic, The Norman Conquests, that transferred to Broadway. It was a huge hit on Broadway. The play won a Tony. Paul was nominated for a Tony Award. I was nominated for a Tony Award. So it was a lovely moment of the two mates going from sitting in a room wondering if we would ever work as actors for a living and ending up on Broadway. And so I used to play this a lot when I was in America, when I was in New York. It's Rhapsody in Blue by George Gershwin. And I think it would be great on the island, partly because that first glissando is one of the most uplifting and joyful things in all of music.

Presenter43:51

Rhapsody in Blue by George Gershwin, performed by the New York Philharmonic, conducted by Zubin Meeter.

Presenter43:58

So, Stephen Mang and Radio 4 listeners will soon hear you in a brand new comedy series called The Island, which features previous castaways who've been on this very programme. Tell us about it.

Stephen Mangan44:09

Yes, so the idea is that there is an island, as we know there is, of course, and all of us castaways are there. I'm the new arrival.

Stephen Mangan44:16

And it's full of all the luxury items that people have brought. There's a lot of smashed up pianos and coffee machines. There's Bibles everywhere. And it's a wash with singles as well, all the records that have been chosen. Everyone's gone very feral. One person is sort of running a particular group with a rod of iron and a reign of terror. That's Sandy Toxvik.

Presenter44:40

Wow.

Stephen Mangan44:40

Yeah, so

Presenter44:40

Yeah, so quite a bit of artistic license taken there.

Stephen Mangan44:42

Yeah, Hugh Bonneville's gone rogue. He's got his top off. He's in the river trying to catch salmon. So yeah, it's fun. It's a really fun imagining of the island that you've created.

Presenter44:51

What made you laugh the most? I mean, you've got Delia Smith treating you quite badly, Martin Lewis starting up an a rival evil gang.

Stephen Mangan44:58

It's just the idea of all these people that have been cast away by you and all the previous Desert Island Discs hosts having to get on and descending into a Lord of the Flies, Chaos and Mayhem. It's just it's a treat.

Presenter45:12

Well, you've had a bit of practice for what comes next, at least, Steve, and you're going to be cast away on your desert island. How are your survival skills?

Stephen Mangan45:20

Survival skills are pretty good. I mean, being the son of a builder, I'm the only boy in the family. I was always purloined to help with plumbing, electricals, cement mixing, bricklaying. So I'm pretty good. You're handy. Yeah, I'm pretty handy. How will you be with the solitude? I like solitude. I'm an extrovert hermit. I quite like being on my own and I find I need it more and more. I think maybe because a lot of my work life is so social and gregarious that I need that time to be alone. I don't think I'll have a problem with being on my own.

Presenter45:55

What about eating, feeding yourself?

Stephen Mangan45:58

That might be a problem. Yeah. I well, firstly, I've no I can't tell a good berry from a bad berry, so I'll probably eat the wrong one and keel over in the first day. I'm not a great cook. I don't really have any interest in cooking. So I'm going to have to learn

Presenter45:59

Yeah.

Stephen Mangan46:11

Pretty sharpish.

Presenter46:12

What sort of island are you imagining?

Stephen Mangan46:14

I'm imagining somewhere lush and green, big, quite humid and warm, I can run around wearing a thong.

Stephen Mangan46:23

Uh all eating chewing gum from Estonia, probably, and growling at the camera.

Presenter46:27

Back in your loincloth at last.

Stephen Mangan46:29

Yeah.

Presenter46:29

Well, one more disc before we send you there, Stephen Mung, and your final choice today. What have you got for us?

Stephen Mangan46:34

My wife Louise, I've always wanted this song to be our song.

Stephen Mangan46:39

And she's always explained to me that that's not how our songs work. Uh there has to be some sort of history or reason behind it. So she's always resisted the idea this is our song. For her this is a song that she loved and introduced me to. But this is my island and my list. So this is our song.

Presenter46:54

Well, then now, you know, by the act of being on desert island discs and declaring it so, surely you're.

Stephen Mangan46:59

Shoo.

Presenter47:00

There's an inception point there, isn't there?

Stephen Mangan47:02

Exactly. Hear that, Louise? And it's for her because none of anything I've done could have been done without her. And she's...

Stephen Mangan47:11

not just held it all together. She's held it all together while pursuing her own career and bringing up our three beautiful boys. So it's Higher and Higher by Jackie Wilson.

Speaker 347:23

Oh, keep it up!

Speaker 347:26

You might desire

Speaker 347:29

And I'll be at your side forevermore.

Speaker 347:33

You know you're not

Speaker 347:36

He born in Denmark.

Speaker 347:41

I am I am I said you're love

Speaker 347:51

Tire and tire

Presenter47:54

Jackie Wilson, higher and higher. So, Stephen Mang, and the time has come. I'm going to cast you away to the island, and I will give you the books to take with you the Bible, the complete works of Shakespeare, and another book of your choice. What's that going to be?

Stephen Mangan48:06

I don't have enough time to sit and read poetry and I love poetry, so I'm going to have the time and I'm going to choose some Irish poetry. I'm going to take the collective works of Seamus Heaney.

Presenter48:15

Oh, lovely. Yeah, absolutely. And what about your luxury item?

Stephen Mangan48:19

I play the piano and the guitar, but I never get enough time to do that either, so I've got to bring a piano. I know a lot of people do, so there'll be lots of pianos on the island. But the thought of being able to sit, there's something so cathartic and joyful in sitting down and losing yourself in playing the piano. I've always felt that I a bit like those school reports, he could have done better, he didn't live up to his promise. I could have been a better piano player, and I want to be a better piano player, so this is my chance.

Presenter48:50

And finally, which one track of the eight that you've shared with us today would you rush to save from the waves first?

Stephen Mangan48:57

Let me think, I said, Wow, I'm going to take a joyful one. I'm going to take staying alive,'cause that's what I'm gonna be trying to do.

Presenter49:04

Stephen Mangan, thank you very much for letting us hear your Desert Island Disc.

Stephen Mangan49:07

Thank you.

Presenter49:20

Hello, it was lovely to chat to Stephen and I hope he's very happy on his island playing his piano.

Presenter49:26

There are more than 2,000 programmes in our archive that you can listen to, including Adrian Moll's creator Sue Townsend. You can hear her programme if you search through BBC Sounds or on our own Desert Island Discs website. The studio manager for today's programme was Sarah Hockley, the executive production coordinator was Susie Roylence, and the producer was Sarah Taylor. Join me next time when my guest will be the campaigner, Mina Smallman.

Presenter50:01

Stephen Mangan, thank you very much for letting us hear your Desert Islanders.

Stephen Mangan50:05

Thank you. On BBC Radio 4, there were timber shelters with roofs of what looked like black slate tiles, which I later realized were actually thousands of 7-inch singles.

Speaker 450:15

What happens to the Castaways after appearing on Desert Island Discs?

Stephen Mangan50:20

We stood for a moment watching Gok Wan stalking a corberant.

Speaker 450:24

Stephen Mangan finds out.

Stephen Mangan50:25

Paralympic swimmer Ellie Simmons was mending a bamboo rain gutter. And discovers he's not alone. Hugh Bonneville has become a problem. The eye.

Speaker 450:35

Listen on BBC Sounds.