Alan Coren

Speaker 30:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive.

Speaker 30:05

For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in 1978 and the presenter was Roy Plumley.

Presenter0:29

Our castaway this week is the humorous writer Alan Corran, the new editor of Punch.

Presenter0:35

Alan, did you find this a hard job to choose just eight records that may have to last a long, long time? Enormously difficult. Starting off with the idea that I was going to be in one spot for this amount of time and be self-sufficient, which I can't be. There is no way in which I am self-sufficient, certainly not intellectually or musically. I found it extraordinarily difficult to start with the idea that I had eight records and that was it. How did you set about it? Are you looking for nostalgia or great performances or great music or what? Well, I thought the best thing to do would be to choose records which expanded from the music they were so that I could think about them. And if I chose records that had particular associations for me

Alan Coren1:09

Yeah.

Speaker 31:09

Mm-hmm.

Alan Coren1:09

But

Presenter1:13

Then the two or three minutes they played would only be a sort of token for the hour in which I could think about them every night when the sun was going down over the cocoanuts.

Presenter1:21

What's the first one you've chosen?

Presenter1:23

Well, the first one is a bizarre record.

Presenter1:25

It's by Emmett Miller and his Georgia Crackers.

Presenter1:29

And it's Lovesick Blues. I've never heard of mister Miller.

Presenter1:33

He was a failed vaudeville comedian.

Speaker 31:35

Oh no, I got so used to her.

Presenter1:39

Yeah.

Speaker 31:42

Gotta know about how to sag a papa now.

Speaker 41:46

It's awful when you're lonesome.

Speaker 41:49

You got them love big balloons.

Presenter2:06

Emmett Miller and his Georgia Crackers Love Sick Blues. You said that you didn't fancy your chances as a castaway somehow. You weren't going to be very efficient. This applies to physical matters as well, such as putting up shelter. No, I think I'll be quite efficient at doing those things. How about food? Can you cultivate?

Presenter2:25

Yes, I think so. Most of the things that I cultivate I cultivate by accident in my garden. I don't know whether you can eat the sort of things that grow up accidentally, but

Presenter2:33

There's probably a rule of thumb that you bite a little bit of it and if you don't throw up then you can cook the rest. Yes. Would you try to escape?

Presenter2:40

Oh yes. Do you know anything about small boats, navigation, anything useful like that? No, nothing at all, but anywhere will be better than the island. I should just point it towards something. Uh I think the sun at certain times of the day points either east or west, so I should point it at wherever the sun was and paddle towards it. Yes, one or the other. One or the other. Yes. But eventually, I'd gather that the world is round. Eventually I should arrive back at something even if it was only the island again.

Alan Coren2:54

and waddled

Presenter3:03

Record number two.

Presenter3:05

Yes, record number two has strong associations for me. It's the Bach double violin concerto. I could listen to David and Igoroi Strzok, and I choose them particularly because when I first went to America

Presenter3:17

In 1961, I went to live there for two years. I was studying there.

Presenter3:21

And I drove from New York to the University of Minnesota, which is fifteen hundred miles. And uh if you drive fifteen hundred miles from London, where I've been brought up, you end up in Istanbul.

Presenter3:30

The thing is, you still end up in America after 1500 miles. I drove all the way across the Midwest, with almost bizarre music coming out, and the Bach double violin concerto kept coming back time and again. I would be driving through these interminable wheat fields, having just heard an advert for Coca-Cola and a man advertising Nick's downtown car sales. Then the Bach would come on this marvellous sweep of music, and I saw these strange cultures, that odd cultural mix of Europe and America. Always remember that, driving this battered old Chevy and listening to the Oestrux. I would have it on the island. It would give me a lot to think about, apart from being a marvellous piece of music in itself.

Presenter5:01

The opening of the slow movement of the Bach double violin concerto, David and Igor Oistrach, with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Sir Eugene Guessens.

Presenter5:11

Are you a Londoner, Alan? Yes, I am.

Presenter5:13

East Barnard Grammar School. What was your ambition? What did you want to be? I think I always wanted to write. Perforce I always wanted to write simply because it seemed to be the only thing that I was any good at, the only thing for which I had any real interest. So you took an open scholarship to Wadham College, Oxford. What were your other activities in the university? Well, I wrote a lot there. I don't know whether that constitutes another activity. I went there to read English for three years, which is which is a delightful practice because it simply means that the State pays you three years to read the sort of books that you would want to read anyway. At the end of three years, you get asked questions on it, which is really quite nice.

Alan Coren5:35

Would you

Presenter5:46

And all the time that I was doing the reading, I was writing as well. I wrote a novel there and I wrote some short stories. Was it published? No, it wasn't, the short stories were.

Presenter5:56

You took a first and then you stayed on for a postgraduate year. What was that? Well, I did a year there. I wanted to do a thesis on the literature of the Spanish Civil War. But at that time in Oxford you could only study the works of writers who were dead.

Presenter6:10

And unfortunately, most of the writers in the Spanish say unfortunately, unfortunately for me, most of them were still alive. Hemingway was alive then, and Malro was alive, Kerstler was alive.

Presenter6:19

And every time I wanted to carry on with some branch of research, they would say, Well, I'm terribly sorry, you can't actually do that. That's taboo, because the bloke is still alive and kicking. And that was when I applied for a scholarship to go to the States so that I could carry on with this work there. In fact, you covered the continent, you went to two universities, Minnesota first.

Presenter6:37

I went to three. I went to Minnesota for uh one term and then I went on to Yale and then I spent a year at Berkeley in in California.

Presenter6:45

Because I moved my thesis by this time to the modern American novel and then dropped out of that because the whole object of doing a thesis was to take a PhD, was to come back to England and teach and then I could write in my spare time. In other words, you were to be an academic.

Alan Coren6:57

Yeah.

Presenter6:59

Yes. Uh w a a sort of academic um supporting a writer. But when I was in the States I started writing and it seemed to me then that I might be able to live by writing, so I packed up the idea of being a bad academic, which is a very good idea. I I shouldn't have made much of an academic. Apart from those short stories you told us about, what was the first thing you sold?

Presenter7:20

The first thing I sold was to Punch. In fact, in nineteen sixty one, uh I went to America and America was extraordinary. I I didn't realize that I wanted to be a humorist until I went there, and everything I'd always loved America is one of the reasons that I went there in the first place. I was steeped in the culture.

Presenter7:33

But I'd never thought about writing humorously. I got to this marvellous melodrama. There were two hundred million people.

Presenter7:39

living, permanent comic melodrama. Everything from the advertising to the media to the people that one met at parties to the whole physical scope of the place seemed to me set up for comedy and satire. I suppose it's why they've produced so many very fine humourists and very fine social and political satirists. And I started writing stuff there that I would never have uh written in England, and I sold all fifteen or twenty pieces to punch about the American social and political scene.

Presenter8:02

And now I got offered a job by Bernard Hollywood, the then editor, in 1963, and I came back home and went to work for them. Fine. Well, that's a very important turning point in your life. We'll stop there for record number three. Well, since we were talking about the American culture, I'll pull one straight out of the centre of that culture. It's a record by Bick Spiderbeck, the great Chicago white cornetist. It's Margie.

Presenter9:24

Margie by Bix and His Gang.

Presenter9:26

Now Punch offered you that job. You came back from America. In fact, they made you assistant editor. You were very young for a job like that, were you not?

Presenter9:33

It sounds rather more important than it actually was. It was a a a fairly small staff at Punch, so that everybody doubled as everything else. I was twenty five when I got back, so it wasn't really that young.

Alan Coren9:42

It wasn't.

Presenter9:44

Now something about punch. How old is it? Back to quite a bit.

Alan Coren9:48

1841.

Presenter9:51

What was its original intention? Did it start?

Presenter9:54

roughly on the same lines in which it's developed.

Presenter9:57

Its original intention was to be very caustic, very tough, very critical of the political and social scene of early Victorian England, and it was that for a long time. It was only later that its image of being a bland

Presenter10:11

Middle class.

Presenter10:13

Magazine developed. It wasn't really until the beginning of the 20th century that happened. For most of the Victorian period, Punch was a very aggressive, very attacking magazine, not entirely unlike Private Eye. It is.

Speaker 410:25

Mm.

Presenter10:26

returning to that sort of approach now, but certainly there there was a period of thirty or forty years when it was simply a comic magazine with no other excuse for the humour than that it made people laugh. And in recent years it's been very considerably tarted up with colour, special gimmick editions like the Playboy number and so on and a more international approach. I mean foreign correspondence and yes, I think that's so simply because England itself has become uh more international, because the sort of jokes that are made and the sort of comic approaches that are taken have to be internationalized. We live in an Anglo-American culture and now we live in an Anglo-American European culture, so that obviously Punch has had to look

Alan Coren10:48

Yes, I think.

Presenter11:06

to its new cultural trading partners, if you like.

Presenter11:11

Your fourth record him.

Presenter11:12

Well, my fourth record we haven't talked very humorously about humour. The best thing, I think, to do is to play a very, very funny record to make us all laugh, which I would need on this island.

Presenter11:21

I've chosen Mel Brooks, who is a very funny man, apart from having produced some very funny movies like Blazing Saddles and the Producers. He also.

Presenter11:29

first hit the the big time with a record called Two Thousand Year Old Man and uh

Presenter11:35

A piece from that will help me through the bad times.

Alan Coren11:37

So uh we there was little groups of us sitting in caves and looking in sun and scared, you know. We didn't know we were very dumb and stupid. You wanna know something? We were so dumb that we didn't even know who was a lady.

Presenter11:47

I think it's a

Alan Coren11:54

But they were they was with us. We didn't know who they were.

Presenter11:54

Uh

Alan Coren11:58

We didn't know who was the ladies and who was fellas.

Presenter11:59

Delay

Presenter12:00

You thought it was it was just different type of solid

Alan Coren12:02

Yes, just stronger or smaller or yeah softer. The softer ones I think were ladies all the time.

Presenter12:08

The 2,000-year-old man, Mel Brooks, with Karl Reiner. Now, Alan, you became assistant editor of Punch going back to your career. That was ten years ago. Then since then, you've been through literary editor, deputy editor, now editor. All this time you've continued to write your pieces for the magazine. Your best pieces you've collected into books. How many books of pieces? Eight. Yes. Eight. Eight. Isn't that awful? That's about 160 pieces. What are the last two? The most recent is one called The Lady from Stalingrad Mansions, and I've also collected the bogus letters from the President's mother to the President. They're called The Peanut Papers. You've also written children's books. Yes, I have.

Presenter12:47

Western books. Yes, well the joy of writing for children of course uh for me is that I can actually write narrative. Most of my humour is related to things in the news or or reactions that adults have to circumstances. It doesn't lend itself naturally to a narrative form. With children's books you can actually tell a story and it's great fun for a writer to be able to do this extra thing just for laughs because kids' books uh

Presenter13:09

Should only be written if they're very enjoyable for the adult writing them. You'll try them out on your own children.

Presenter13:14

They actually were germinated by my own children. It started off when I wrote these Arthur books that my own son seemed to me remarkably short of material at the age of six. They were very good.

Presenter13:25

uh tiny children's books and they were very good older children's books but at the age of sort of five to eight there were either anthropomorphic stories about Maurice the Weasel goes quantity surveying or they were those awful nineteenth century Central European stories about uh stepmothers dancing in burning shoes and wood choppers and frogs and people turning into princes which didn't really have much relevance to uh urban English children in the nineteen seventies. And I thought what I'd like to do is write the sort of books that'll pull them away from television. And the only way to do this is to beat Telly at its own game. And I thought, if I write six Westerns with a good Western background,

Alan Coren13:35

Uh Oh

Presenter14:02

they will act as an alternative to television. They will stimulate the same imagination that television stimulates. And I I think that's uh been a fairly successful formula. Record number five. Well, record number five is a record that um

Presenter14:14

I really couldn't tell you too much about, because it's full of sentimental and nostalgic uh touchstones for me. It's Marlena Dietrich singing Freuleinanie von Schoenlang nicht heer.

Presenter14:26

which anybody who understands very badly pronounced German will see as Annie doesn't live here any more. And again, it's a delightful clash of cultures, this marvellous German lady singing this American knockabout song, and I think it comes over marvellously in German.

Speaker 414:45

Warum Fragenzie est Heutner Ir.

Speaker 414:50

Siezen tochteensie unseem.

Speaker 414:55

Blauer augen frechemund der Treumerisch Bliep, so lang hat siege warte tund sie hate sie zo lie.

Speaker 415:06

Nein follin an ivon schoon lang nicht hier.

Presenter15:07

In four nine

Presenter15:11

Annie Doesn't Live Here Any More, sung by Marlena Dietrich.

Presenter15:15

There's a mass of odd journalistic jobs like T V critic for The Times, articles for everything from The Times literary supplement to one of the big circulation girly magazines. You you get through a great deal of work. Did you write with facility? Can you write quickly, straight on the Times? Or saying, Am I a hack? Well, if I couldn't say that. No, no.

Alan Coren15:30

Tor sang

Alan Coren15:34

Isn't it?

Presenter15:35

Seriously, Roy, there is an element of hack in all uh journalists. They they they do it because they enjoy doing it and they enjoy paying the rent with the results of what they do.

Alan Coren15:38

They they

Presenter15:44

I think that I'm really a careful enough critic of what I do not ever to it sounds a bit smug, but not ever to have put out anything that I was actually ashamed of. And some things obviously don't come up to scratch, but most of the areas I've written for, I've written because I'm, I suppose, a bit of an exhibitionist, and if there if I can appeal to the readership of the Times Literary Supplement and the following week can appeal to the readership of Playboy or Penthouse, I find that really quite an engaging activity. It's also a self-refreshing activity, that if you write a literary piece for one person and then you write a piece of high camp comedy for somebody else, it it tends to help you recharge the batteries and re-stimulate the imagination. And again, a simply professional thing, and that's, I suppose, the hack element, that if an editor asks you to write something...

Presenter16:34

You don't turn him down more than once, because he may not ask you again.

Presenter16:37

You spent um a few years as as rector of St Andrews University. You took that occupation, that honour, very seriously, didn't you? Yes, I did. I I took it seriously, I suppose, because it was an honour, rather than for the function of the job, which was an extremely difficult job. The rector is

Presenter16:52

A curious office. He's elected by the students. He represents the students on the governing body of the university. But he's also their open line uh to the faculty and vice versa. It's a it's a two-way circuit. You must be one of the very few men to have been a member of five universities.

Presenter17:09

Yes, it's awful. All these magazines and all these universes, ten minutes here and ten minutes there. Right. Master of no trade.

Alan Coren17:10

The whole

Alan Coren17:14

Master of Notes Dragon.

Presenter17:16

Record number six.

Presenter17:18

Well, record number six, since we've said master of no trade, I go to someone who is a great master of a great trade, I go to Alfred Brendel.

Presenter17:27

Perhaps the

Presenter17:28

to me certainly the finest interpreter of

Presenter17:31

Beethoven's piano music.

Presenter17:33

I went to

Presenter17:35

his recital of the complete sonata cycle this summer. It's a thing that I would like to remember as an event when I'm on this beastly island, the cackling of all the animals.

Presenter17:45

I have chosen just a piece from one of the sonatas, from the Hammer Clavier.

Presenter17:50

Sonata

Presenter17:51

It represents only a very tiny

Presenter17:54

A fragment of what Alfred Brendel can do, I would hope to have all of them with me on the island but for now this little piece must suffice.

Presenter19:02

Alfred Brendel playing the opening of Beethoven's Hammer Clavier sonata, opus one hundred and six. Now editor of Punch, a great magazine, as you say.

Presenter19:13

Your job your main job, of course, is to get the circulation up. Now, what plans do you have in mind? What reforms are you going to undertake?

Presenter19:20

It's very difficult to go about boosting circulation consciously, especially if you have a large circulation and you have what is basically a good magazine. What I inherited from my predecessor, Bill Davis, is a very good, very successful magazine. It will change.

Presenter19:36

Only so far as any magazine must reflect the particular predispositions of the editor, so it will change to be more like me.

Alan Coren19:40

That's over.

Presenter19:42

What I want to do is obviously to make it funnier, but that's a question like uh when are you going to stop beating your wife. Uh I I want to make it funnier. I would like to make it, I think,

Alan Coren19:45

Pex

Presenter19:51

A rather more sophisticated magazine, rather more literary than it has been up to now, but less journalistic.

Alan Coren19:57

Yeah.

Presenter19:59

Yes, we we've already uh printed some fiction. Uh we're going to print a short story every week. We've printed fiction by Melvin Bragg and Edna O'Brien and Jack Traverstory and there will be lots of uh fiction coming in by the best fiction writers. The joy is that there is really no other market for the short story. It's a fine

Presenter20:15

medium for for the fiction writer and I hope to make that a strong point of the magazine.

Presenter20:21

Number seven.

Presenter20:23

Record number seven, I don't think I need make any excuses for. It has all sorts of associations for me, but it's a very fine record. It's probably, I think, the most delicate, the most sophisticated of all the sophisticated stuff Coleporter did. It's Get Out of Town, and it's sung by the marvellous Ella Fitzgerald.

Alan Coren20:38

Get out of town.

Speaker 420:40

Uh

Speaker 420:41

Hello?

Speaker 420:43

Before it's too late, my love

Speaker 420:53

Get out of town.

Speaker 420:58

Be good to me please

Presenter21:07

The Marvellous Ella Fitzgerald.

Presenter21:09

A mutual friend told me that you're something of a practical joker, Alan. You you visited the Stock Exchange once disguised as a very influential Arab and uh affected the dealings of little Agamem.

Alan Coren21:20

Yeah.

Presenter21:21

Well, as with almost everything in my life, it was a

Presenter21:24

designed to an end. I wanted to write about it. It was during the oil crisis when uh the Arabs uh weren't in the sort of favor they are now that they're spending large amounts of money in England. And I thought it would be rather fun to dress up as a sheik.

Presenter21:39

And go to one or two sensitive spots like the Stock Exchange.

Presenter21:42

And I borrowed the Rolls-Royce that belongs to our managing director, and I turned up at the Stock Exchange and I went up to the public gallery and training stopped.

Presenter21:51

These awful people

Presenter21:53

I suppose the stockbroker's listening, or at least.

Presenter21:55

people who know stockbrokers, and they're all about six years old really, although they wear these very well cut suits. And they stopped trading and they came over to the floor beneath the public gallery, which sort of leans out over the trading floor, no trading at all, and they shouted Wog out, wog out. That was absolutely extraordinary. If I really had been an Abu Dhabi sheikh or whatever, I would have been out of this country like a shot with all the capacity for

Presenter22:19

Capacity for offence that uh Arabs take because they rather expect uh uh protocol and and decent behaviour and indeed so do I. I was appalled these people behave in this way. Quite extraordinary. So really it was an investigative journalism rather than a practical joke. Of a high order. Of a very high order. Very serious investigative. The the joy was I actually got into number ten Downing Street.

Speaker 322:35

Very serious investigation.

Presenter22:39

It was a time when well we as a shake, not a shake. And Downing Street itself was barricaded off by security men and uniformed policemen and we pulled up in this Rolls-Royce. It was a time when lot of sensitivity. People had been shot and bombs were going off in London.

Speaker 322:39

Yeah.

Speaker 322:41

And I should

Presenter22:53

and some Arab organizations were held responsible or alleged to be responsible for it.

Presenter22:59

And I pulled up in this rolls, and the copper just waved us through, and I got out at number ten, and I had a photographer with me, and I thought, Well, all I want is a photograph, you see.

Presenter23:08

And I wasn't allowed to get out of the car myself. The sergeant standing on the door leapt forward, opened the door, and saluted, and rang the bell. And the door opened, and uh it was mister Heath's footman at that time, opened the door and said, Come in.

Presenter23:20

Didn't really want to spend too long chatting with Mr. Heath, especially dressed as an Arab.

Presenter23:25

So I simply said, No, I've come here just to so I can have some photographs to send home and they took photographs and I got in the car and went away, but I suppose I could have walked in as a living bomb and blown Downing Street into the Thames. That was great fun as well. It was simply because I looked like an Arab sheikh that I was allowed through. I didn't have to pretend with accent or anything else. People

Presenter23:44

See what they want to see. That's a very useful tip. Thank you for that.

Presenter23:49

Last ray goes, what's that?

Alan Coren23:50

Big

Presenter23:51

Well, the last record has associations that I ought to explain. Um I assume that on this desert island

Presenter23:57

Nepotism will be live, as everywhere else. Uh this is a record by Instant Sunshine, which is a group of young men, one of whom is my literary editor, Miles Kinkton, at Punch.

Presenter24:08

It's a very funny record, and this particular one is about a a magazine called Tatler that I worked for for a time as a food correspondent.

Presenter24:16

And it's a record that I don't just enjoy listening to, but on this desert island it will remind me of much that is English, much that I miss and much that I abhor.

Presenter24:33

What if it's grim, it gets no space at all? If you're rich and slightly arty and you throw a cocktail party, you are guaranteed a picture in the mag of ball.

Alan Coren24:42

Uh

Presenter24:42

But it's a high, high, near my

Alan Coren24:44

Yeah.

Presenter24:45

High society rank

Alan Coren24:46

Mr. Sciences.

Presenter24:48

For it's a high, high meal I

Alan Coren24:50

Yo

Presenter24:51

My society rank

Speaker 324:51

High society

Presenter24:54

Instant sunshine. If you could take only one disc out of the eight, which do you choose?

Presenter24:59

Very difficult, but I suppose, simply because to me it's the best piece of music ever written, I would take the Bach double violin concerto. And you're allowed to take one luxury, something of no practical use, which you would like to have on the island.

Presenter25:12

Well, I don't know whether I'm ever going to get off this island, but if I do I shall have a marvellous story to sell. Or indeed to tell. Let's be nice to me. I can't write longhand, and I certainly can't write all I want to write with a stick in the sand, so I'd take a typewriter. And one book apart from the Bible and Shakespeare, which are already on the island, and we don't allow big encyclopedias.

Presenter25:32

You don't allow big encyclopedias, but I think you could allow me the what was called the new

Presenter25:36

English Dictionary. And I think of as the Oxford English Dictionary. It's 24 volumes. It's bigger than any encyclopedia. There's a lot of good reading there. That's all right. That's fair enough. I'll take that then. And thank you, Alan Corrin, for letting us hear your Desert Island Discs. Thank you very much. Goodbye, everyone.

Alan Coren25:37

And I think

Alan Coren25:43

That's all right. That's fair enough. I'll take that then.

Speaker 326:00

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