Michael Bond

Speaker 10:00

Hello, I'm Kirstie Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Disc's Archive. For rights' reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen seventy six, and the presenter was Roy Plumley.

Presenter0:30

On our desert island this week is the creator of a well known bear. The bear is Paddington Bear and the creator is Michael Bond. Michael, have you the temperament which could endure loneliness, do you think? I don't know. I I've

Presenter0:44

I've been by myself and quite enjoy being by myself many times in my life. I've never been totally alone. I've always been a phone nearby, so I I I would have to go and find out, I think. What would you be happiest to have got away from? I think probably Oxford Street crowds. I love London and and I love people but I hate people en masse. I get very disenchanted with it. Oxford Street really goes too far. It does a bit, yes. How big a part in your life does music play?

Presenter1:07

Quite a lot. I can't picture life without music, certainly. I'm I'm not at all musical myself. I can't p play any instrument, but uh certainly

Presenter1:16

If ever I feel blue or downcast, music probably lifts me up. What was your plan in choosing your record?

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They're all records that I've played many times over and would be very happy to play over and over again. What's the first one? The first one is What a Wonderful World by Louis Armstrong and Louis Armstrong had this wonderful smile and wonderful personality and great feeling of exuberance and I think to start each day hearing his voice w would really cheer me up no matter what the weather was.

Michael Bond1:43

I see trees of green.

Michael Bond1:47

Red Roses Julia

Michael Bond1:51

I see them blue.

Michael Bond1:54

Family new

Michael Bond1:56

And I think to myself

Michael Bond2:02

What a wonderful world!

Presenter2:08

Louis Armstrong.

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What's the second disc you've chosen? The second one is a record by Edith Pieff, La Vienne Rose. It's really to remind me of my second favorite country in the world and and

Presenter2:19

Perhaps my first favourite city, Paris.

Michael Bond2:41

There's some fake room

Michael Bond2:45

Mm.

Presenter2:49

It did PF.

Presenter2:51

Michael, whereabouts in England were you born? I was born in Newbury, Berkshire. Mhm. I I left there at quite an early age. I went to live in Reading.

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where I spent most of my childhood.

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What sort of things interested you most as a boy? Did you read a lot?

Presenter3:04

I read a lot. I was I was lucky enough to have parents who who also read a lot. They weren't uh great literary people, but there were always books around in the house as part of the everyday furniture and so I was I was brought up in that kind of atmosphere. I I was very mechanically minded. I was always building radio sets and crystal sets and amplifiers and

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One of my great childhood works was to build an enormous marionette theatre with a revolving stage and spotlights and

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Uh I never had many marionettes. It was the mechanics of the theatre which interested me most. You left school quite early, didn't you? Yes, yes, I I left at the earliest possible moment. I I I wasn't a a terribly good pupil at school and and uh I really wanted to get out into the world. What was your first job? My first job was in a solicitor's office and I was there for a year and I I I think I was paid the princely sum of ten shillings a week in those days and I spent most of my time carrying deed boxes up and down from the basement and distributing them around and and and sticking stamps on on on letters and then after a year I asked for a raise and and

Presenter4:01

Uh I was given twelve and six and given to understand this would have to last me for a long, long time and I thought well this is not really for me. So so I I answered an advertisement in in a local paper which turned out to be the BBC and Did they pay any more? Pa B B C I think paid fifteen shillings in those days.

Michael Bond4:16

Yeah.

Presenter4:18

Yes, I was really on the up and up then. To do what? This was on a transmitter, a local transmitter, which they h had had in those days because the war was on, they had lots of little low-powered transmitters dotted around. And I was with them for about two years. And then you were called up, of course? Yes, well I volunteered for the RAF as a pilot, which was rather disastrous, because I had pictures in those days of being a fighter pilot at the very least and having my top button undone and so on. And at the very first time I went up in a plane I was terribly air sick. And this was the pattern of life for the next two years. I was a terrible air traveller.

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And and in the end got got thrown out because uh I I was a navigator by then and and couldn't care less where we were, which wasn't a wasn't it wasn't the best of things. So what did you do then?

Speaker 15:05

Yeah.

Presenter5:06

Well, I was given the choice of going into the army or the coal mines and I spent the whole of one

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Morning trying to decide whether I'd go in the coal mines or not.

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Um, and and then decided on on the army. I was rather relieved in the end I did, and and spent two years in the Middle East. When did you start to write?

Presenter5:23

I started to write when I was in the Middle East. I I wrote a short story.

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which I sent into London Opinion and and to my amazement about six weeks later I had a a letter and a cheque. I think it was a cheque for seven guineas as I remember it and the awful thing was I wanted to celebrate but I couldn't get it cashed because nobody actually believed it. The the Army Post Office wouldn't believe it and the the the Arabs wouldn't believe it because it said London Opinion we'll p we'll pay Michael Bond seven guineas and it s it seemed rather strange I suppose.

Presenter5:52

Well there you are, a a published writer, so let's break for your next record. Well the next one is a record called George's Wife, or or I'd say on your copy it's called Mrs. George. And it's really to remind me of holidays spent.

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in Greece, and in particular in Cyprus, where I had three very, very happy holidays.

Michael Bond6:18

Boyorgo Supupai

Presenter6:37

George's wife by Ianis Kalitsis and Litzed Yamanti.

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Now, we left you in Egypt. What did you do when you were demobilized?

Presenter6:47

I went back to the BBC and I was with the monitoring service of the BBC for several years and I went into television and uh I suppose I went in as a general dogs buddy and worked my way up through being a tracker and a cameraman until I was a senior cameraman. What sort of shows were you photographing?

Presenter7:04

Oh, many different sorts. I I I was very lucky. We did lots of plays and lots of light entertainment shows, uh quite a quite a bit of opera. Were you writing on your days off? Oh, yes, I was writing. By then I was writing radio plays and I was writing uh television plays, a lot of magazine articles. And I I was going through a stage when I thought if I sold one story in in in twelve I was doing very well and if I made

Presenter7:27

A hundred pounds a year is a bit that was a great deal, you know. Had you tried your hand at writing for children?

Presenter7:33

No, I I by then I'd acquired an agent and I I happened to write a play one day about a small boy who became radioactive and he thought it would make a very good children's play. And uh that really triggered off in my mind the thought of writing for children. So I I did one or two television plays in the days when the BBC television did did live action children's television plays. And then eventually by accident uh wrote my first children's book which was a bear called Paddington. Now how and where was was Paddington Bear born?

Presenter8:04

Well, it's quite by accident. I think many things in life are happen by by chance. I happened to be miss a bus and I went into

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uh at a London shop and and came across this bear who we left on the shelf so I bought it.

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Why Paddington? Because I was living near Paddington at the time. And in fact, he's from Peru. Yes, from from Darkest Peru. In fact, when I wrote the first book, I I put that he was from Darkest Africa and my agent wrote back to me and said, Well, he

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He liked the book, but P S there aren't any bears in Africa, so I had to go and do some research in the

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in a local library. Now Paddington always wears a duffel coat. That's right, a duffel coat and a hat and he's n never without his suitcase, which has a a secret compartment where he keeps all his important papers and so on in. Of course. Yes.

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And he lives with a human family? He he lives with a family called the Browns in in Nottinghill Gate in London.

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He he he leads quite a a very pleasant life, I think. It's sort of

Michael Bond8:53

Yeah.

Speaker 18:53

Is it eight a

Presenter8:56

Although he's a very contemporary bear, I mean, he he gets involved in um present-day things like launderets and so on. He he is also a slightly

Presenter9:05

pre-war existence, I suppose I

Presenter9:08

I draw on my own memories of life before the war when the muffin man used to come round on Sundays and so on. So he g he goes back to quite a

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a pleasant safe world. It's a it's a world of

Presenter9:17

Unvandalized telephone kiosks and so on. He gets into a lot of trouble. Yes. Um I think basically he's a small man up against life's problems and and he he's he's a little like um someone once described him as the the Harry Wirth of the the the animal world. I I mean th the audience can see it's going to happen and half the audience wanted to shout out to stop and the other half want him to carry on to see how he gets out of his problem. The Paddington Bear stories seem to come in in three sizes. It's longish story books and picture books and uh

Presenter9:48

Little books based on the on the television stories.

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I I I I wrote for quite a quite a long time. I I realized that people were buying the books for children.

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much too early in life and so I I decided to write some picture books for very young children to be read to and and to to to learn to read by.

Presenter10:10

And then the the small books are really adaptations of the television stories. I haven't seen the television stories. I is it puppets or animation? Paddington himself is a puppet. Uh it's it's it's a new system which was devised uh p for Paddington. V various people had attempts at filming Paddington. It's very difficult because unless you can find a

Presenter10:30

A bear with acting experience who doesn't belong to a union, you know, it's it's you have you have problems on your hands and so.

Speaker 110:31

The f

Speaker 110:34

Yeah.

Presenter10:34

Uh a midget in a bear skin always r rather depressed me because it was too big and and there were many many problems, uh silly problems like

Presenter10:44

Uh if you had a midget inside a bear skin he could take his hat off but couldn't put it back on again, you know, because he couldn't f find where his head was.

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all sorts of silly things. And so this was a system that was devised and it's a combination of of a puppet for Paddington and and cardboard cutouts uh for the figures, which are changed frame by frame. It's a very very long method of making the films, but it seems to work because Paddington

Presenter11:07

does stand out as a three-dimensional character and and the others are sort of

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As as they are really in the book, slightly cardboardy figures in the background. Michael Horton provides Paddington's voice. That's right, yes. Do you do uh play any of the voices yourself?

Presenter11:20

No, th they they auditioned me once, but no nobody ever mentioned it again. I mean th they said we'll ring you and nobody did, so I sat around for weeks. Right, record number four.

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One of the pleasantest things which I became involved in in television was working in opera, because I think opera people themselves are are fabulous people. They're different to anyone else. And and I think I love the combination of the music and the

Presenter11:43

the fact that it is a play. So I I would love something from La Boem and I think I would love the the love duet.

Michael Bond12:08

Yeah.

Michael Bond12:25

Hey, only one.

Michael Bond12:29

Final chances are among the

Presenter12:48

An excerpt from the first act of Puccini's La Boheme, Bidou Sayau and Richard Tucker. How many Paddington Bear books have there been now?

Presenter12:58

There have been eleven long books and six picture books and and uh four picture books from the television series and and there are four more of those coming out next year. You've also invented some other children's characters. The th there's a guinea pig. Yeah, there's a guinea pig called Olga de Polga, which was which is a slight departure because

Presenter13:16

This was based on a real animal which belonged to my daughter at the time. And there's Parsley the Lion. Parsley the Lion and the Herbs. I mean Parsley the Lion is really a an offshoot of the Herbs. The Herbs is is a family. Well no, the Herbs is is a group of characters uh from a television series I wrote for the BBC. Uh um I originally got the idea because I was looking out of the window one day for and for no reason at all thought Parsley would be a very good name for a lion.

Presenter13:42

and then began to look at books on herbs and and every herb I looked at started to suggest a character. There was Dill the dog and Bayleaf the gardener and

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I think there's about well over four hundred herbs, so I was I had a a host of

Presenter13:58

Characters I could practically fill war and peace with. Indeed. And there's a mouse called Thursday. Yes, yes, but Thursday I wrote because Paddington is is is a sort of character who's got his feet very firmly on the ground and and and lives in this fairly small environment around Nottinghill Gate, he doesn't go very far away from home and Thursday's

Presenter14:16

The very opposite of this. He he he will go to the moon or I don't I don't think Panin would ever go to the moon. He'd be the last person to go there.

Presenter14:23

What's your technique of writing, Michael? Are you a disciplined writer?

Presenter14:27

Yes, I am. I I I always start work at eight thirty in the morning. I get very uptight if I don't.

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I think simply because I I hate the actual act of writing. I mean, I think what is nice about writing is having an idea which you can

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dream up on top of a bus or sitting in a bath. I think the the dreadful chore of writing is

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is having to convey this idea in words to other to other people and and you know that the very first page that you do has to be torn up and you have to start again and so probably each Paddington book I write is is perhaps the twelfth attempt, you know. So it's it's I find writing a dreadful chore and therefore you you have to have disciplines and and there's so many

Presenter15:05

Are there nicer things to do? Have you settled for writing for children, or is there a great big important grown-up novel bursting to get out?

Presenter15:14

Oh, I I don't really write for children, I suppose I don't think of myself as a children's writer, because I think i if I did I would probably write down, which I think children hate. I mean to me a book is a is a book is a book, and yes, there is a a a a big

Presenter15:28

Uh not a big n novel, but a an an adult novel waiting to get out as a case of finding time to let it out, I think.

Speaker 115:33

Let it out.

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Do you sometimes feel that Paddington has taken over and is running you? In some ways. I went through a period um a year or so ago when when I got rather depressed about it all, but

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If if I was going to be taken over by anyone, I think Pennington would be

Speaker 115:44

If I

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A very nice person to take over because I think in many ways he's

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He he's what I would like to be in life. I mean, he has a strong sense of right and wrong, which which I may have, but I mean, whereas he does the the right thing, I don't always do that. Uh he's got his feet always paused very firmly on the ground. Uh yes, I think he's what I like to be.

Speaker 116:04

Yeah

Presenter16:05

Good.

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Record number five. Record number five, well, I don't think I could exist very long on a desert island without hearing the sound of human laughter.

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And I think that the one record which I can play over and over again, and in fact the more I play it,

Presenter16:19

The more brilliant I think it is in sense of timing and and the use of words. Is is The Driving Instructor by Bob Newhart.

Presenter16:27

Yeah.

Speaker 216:27

Howdy how do you do? Uh

Presenter16:29

Yeah.

Speaker 216:29

You're you're Mrs. Uh Webb, is that right?

Speaker 216:33

Oh, I see you've had one lesson already.

Speaker 216:35

Uh who was the instructor on that, misses Webb?

Speaker 216:39

Mr. Adams. I'm sorry, here it is, Mr. Adams. Just let me read ahead and kind of familiarize myself with the case.

Speaker 216:47

Um

Speaker 216:49

How fast were you going when Mr. Adams jumped from the car?

Presenter16:54

Bob Newhart

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And Mrs. Webb.

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Record number six. Record number six was really uh an essay on nostalgia. One day last year I was in Paris with my daughter and we happened to go past a record shop and we heard this record being played. And also it's it's uh I think it's a it's a desert island record and I I think if this island happens to be somewhere fairly exotic I might be able to ingratiate myself in any

Presenter17:19

visiting natives who who came my way.

Michael Bond17:22

Shigering it, getting it, till it holds my bow, till it hoards the mind for it, till it hoards a man for it.

Michael Bond17:30

Oh my god,

Michael Bond17:32

Oh, I got it, yeah, I got it.

Michael Bond17:35

I'm afraid I'm at the toka went to my favourite tug a random I'm afraid I'm the duke away the ma I'm a fervent took a random with the stable killing which it touched with the stable killing which it was

Presenter17:51

Mamma by The Sanganas Five

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We've established that uh you're very good with mechanical things. How are you with the basic crafts necessary for survival, like

Presenter18:02

Building a shelter, for example. Well, I think I could build a a root hut of some kind, yes.

Speaker 118:04

We're thinking

Presenter18:07

A road hut. I might even have a lo-fire table for the grammar phone to stand on. Well done.

Presenter18:13

What about food?

Presenter18:15

Food? Well, I I enjoy cooking very much. Would you try to escape? Now, you were a navigator. Um do you suffer from sea sickness as well as air sickness? Y yes, I've cured myself of air sickness. I'm I'm still terribly seasick. I I'm I'm

Presenter18:29

Terribly scared of deep water, so I think I would probably not attempt to escape. I think you're quite right. Record number seven, we've got to. Record number seven, well this is uh a record by Count Basie and Ella Fitzgerald. I've been enormous admirers of them all all through my life. This is a slightly unusual record. Ella didn't often sing with Count Basie. Uh also it's not the big band.

Presenter18:52

of Count Basis.

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There's it's a lovely record, I think, to dance to by oneself on the island. It's probably not a pretty sight, so I would do it by moonlight.

Presenter19:03

It's called Dream Little Dream of Me.

Michael Bond19:07

Stars shining bright above you

Michael Bond19:15

Night breezes seem to whisper I love you Birds singing in the sycamore tree

Speaker 119:15

Night

Michael Bond19:27

Dream a little dream a little

Presenter19:32

Ella Fitzgerald with Count Basie at the Electric Organ. Now your last record. What's that?

Presenter19:38

I think my last record would be have to be the Beethoven Ninth Symphony, because this is a work which never fails to make me feel

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great and humble at the same time, and I think it might restore any lost faith that I would have, and I would like to choose something for the last movement.

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The closing section of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony

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Furtwängler conducting the orchestra and chorus of the nineteen fifty one By Reut Festival.

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If you could take just one disc, which would it be? I think it would probably be La Vian Rose by Edith P F.

Presenter21:07

And one luxury to take with you. Are there any grapevines on this island?

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I doubt it.

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Oh, that's a snake, because I would love to um

Presenter21:16

Make my own wine and and and bottle Chateaubon for if I can plant some, that's what I would like.

Speaker 121:20

Come on.

Speaker 121:22

Yeah.

Presenter21:24

Right, well I look forward to tasting the 77 Chateau Bonne. It may well have got drunk by the time you get there, but. Oh, I shouldn't think it'll be drinkable for 87, would it? And one book apart from the Bible and Shakespeare and big encyclopedias. Would it be possible to have an enormous photographic album full of all the photographs that I've taken at various times in my life? Yes, of course. That can be arranged. Lovely, thank you. And thank you, Michael Bond, for letting us hear your Desert Island Disc. Thank you for having me. And my regards to Paddington. I'll pass it on. Goodbye, everyone.

Speaker 122:07

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