Derek Jacobi

Derek Jacobi0:00

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

Derek Jacobi0:05

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

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This week our castaway is the actor Derek Jacoby.

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Derek, have you ever imagined yourself as a castaway? No, not really. I don't think I'd make a very good one. Could you endure loneliness? Yes, I think I could. I could. Um I quite like being on my own. But always with the knowledge that at the end of a telephone or a five minute walk round the corner there's somebody and a friend.

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Were you an only child? Yes, yes. Is music important?

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Fairly? Yes. Have you any skill? Do do you play the piano? No, unfortunately. I did learn the piano when I was young. Um but uh my music teacher moved away. She lived next door, you see, and she moved away when I was ten.

Derek Jacobi0:59

Have you at his

Derek Jacobi1:01

The game

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Um by which time I was up to the standard of playing um in competitions in Bethany Green and that sort of thing and um and winning some of them. And you know, I cannot play on note now.

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And you

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What was your plan in choosing these records?

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Um, they were all highly talented people whose company

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I would like to share, and all the songs have some association for me.

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Where do we start?

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We start with Nell Coward. Why? Um because I worked with Nell um in in the uh mid sixties at the National and he was absolutely wonderful to all of us. He directed Hayfever. He directed Hayfever, yes, and I played uh Simon.

Derek Jacobi1:49

He directed Hafey.

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and uh as a treat he took us all out for a night on the town with Noel, um each member of the company and he took me to a play and then back to the Savoy and we had dinner and we stayed up till three in the morning talking and

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He was absolutely wonderful, the most kind, generous, marvellous man. Yes, indeed. And I'd love to have him around. And what's he going to sing? He's going to sing There are bad times just around the corner. Why'd you choose that one? Well, I think it's quite appropriate uh with me on a desert island because um I'm not good at roughing it and um I'm going to be rather nervous when I get to this island and I think I'll need a good laugh.

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And knows the best person to give me one. There are bad times just around the corner. There are dark clouds hurtling through the sky. And it's no good whining about a silver lining, for we know. Experience that they won't roll by with the scar and

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We'll keep our peckers down.

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Mm.

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And prepare for depression and doom and dread.

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We're going to unpack our troubles from our old kit bag.

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And wait until we drop down dead.

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Now of God.

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You talked about personal green. You are a Londoner, are you? Yes, yes.

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Leighton County High School. What were you best at at school?

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I think um academic work rather than sport. I uh I was hopeless on the football pitch. Um I quite liked uh tennis and swimming. I had unfortunate that I had rheumatic fever when I was um young and uh it sort of held me back sports-wise a great deal, so my time was spent really with my books. Did you go to the theatre much as a youngster? A great deal, a great deal. We had a very enterprising uh Englishmaster at school and we used to go to the gods at the Old Vic. Mm-hmm. Now, indeed you used to act at school. Yes. In a rather distinguished manner. A production you were in, I believe, popped up on the fringe at the Edinburgh Festival. Yes, it was indeed this same Englishmaster um who got us to the fringe.

Derek Jacobi3:48

In a route that is

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It was the first male role I'd played at school, because being an all boys' school, of course, um I had to do my stint of Lady Macduff's and Claffin Baligans and Abelins, and eventually, thank goodness my voice broke, and the first male part they gave me was Hamlet. Hamlet, you started at the

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Had you already ambitions as a result of that to be an actor? I had ambitions before that to be an actor. I think it sounds a terrible cliché to say it, but I I really do think it was something I was born with. I'd never contemplated ever doing anything else. I have no talent in any other direction at all. When you left school you joined the National Youth Theatre for a bit.

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Yes, but it wasn't uh the National Youth Theatre then, it was just the Youth Theatre, and uh we used to rehearse in Michaelcroft's flat in Lordship Lane, and we performed in Toynbee Hall. I only did one play with them. What was it? I did Henry the Fourth, Part Two.

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As well as having ambitions to be an actor, you also had an ambition to go to university. Yes. And you went to St John's College, Cambridge. What did you read? That's right. History. So I'm told.

Derek Jacobi5:01

So I'm too.

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You joined, of course, as a matter of course, the ADC and the Marlowe Society. Was there a lot of theatrical talent in your years? There was a great deal. People like Ian McKellen, Corinne Redgrave, Clive Swift, and there was a lot of directors too, like Richard Cottrell, Woyce Hussain, Trevor Nunn, writers Maggie Drabble. And my first year was the last year of that marvellous group of people, Peter Cook, David Frost, John Bird, Eleanor Braun, the Great Footlights crowd. Yes. These were very rich years. Yes, they were marvellous. Now they. What parts did you play? Um oh so many parts. I think my perhaps my favourite was Edward II, which I did with the Marlowe Society, which indeed played a part in getting me my very first professional job later on. Mm-hmm. In between times, you did take a degree.

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Again they tell me so. Yes, I yes, I got it by the skin of my teeth. Yes, I got what was called the actor's degree, which was a two two'cause it slapped plumb in the middle.

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And you decided against going to a drama school?

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Yes, I th I'd always wanted to go to a drama school, but I thought at the end of Cambridge I'd done three years there and it was like being in rap. And I'd acted a great deal and it had all been practical experience. And I thought if I can get into the business, I will. Of course it was much easier in those days and I'll bypass um drama school. What was your first engagement? My first job was at the Birmingham Rap. Uh it was being run at that time by Bernard Hepton. He gave me my very first job. It was in a an NF Simpson play called um

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One Way Pendulum. Ah yes. Well there you are, you're a professional actor. This is where we break for your next record. Watch that. Uh my next record is uh I like to have a clock dance from La Fimal Garde. Why? Because it was the very first ballet I ever saw. I came very late to an appreciation of ballet and I now know a lot of the people in the world of ballet and I think it's something that I perhaps would have liked to have done. I admire them so much. The technique, the discipline, the dedication and I just love watching ballet. And this was the very first one. It was a very good ballet for a child to see and this was a very funny moment.

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The clock dance from La Fie Malgarde.

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John Lanchbury, conducting the orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. So you were at Birmingham Rep?

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You had some very good parts there. Uh yes, yes I did. I was very lucky. I was there for uh two and a half years.

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and it was three weekly reps, so in two and a half years we got through quite a lot of plays. I was very fortunate in that uh that particular year they did the three Shakespearean plays that the rep had never done.

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And they were Troyes and Cressida, Henry the Eighth, and Titus Andronicus, and I got Troilus, Henry the Eighth, and Air on the Moor in Titus. So I had three spanking Shakespearean parts. It was lovely. You had one major disappointment at that time.

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appointment at that time.

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Yes, uh

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offset, I may say, by these three marvellous parts, because I wouldn't have got these three smashing parts if I hadn't had the disappointment. Therein must lie a moral. But the disappointment was not uh going to Strathflawn Avon, which seemed

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Certainly from Birmingham, the n the next natural step, but it didn't happen.

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What was the next step after Birmingham? After Birmingham the next step was uh the second Chichester season. Um it so happened that uh some people who were out scouting for Sir Lawrence saw me playing Shakespeare's Henry the Eighth, trying as

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much as I could do to look like the Holbein Henry, and Sir Lawrence came up to see it, and liked what he saw, and offered me a job at Chichester.

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playing Brother Martin in St Joan. Yes. Who else was in the company that year? Um Joan Plarite was playing Joan, Max Adrian was the Inquisitor. Um Sir Lawrence was in the company with Vanya, Michael Redgrave, then Sybil Thorndike, Rosemary Harris, uh Louis Casson, Fair Compton, the most incredible company. And I I got to understudy Sir Michael as Vanya, so I saw every performance.

Derek Jacobi10:07

So I saw it.

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There's a nice story you told me about the time that you were in hospital. You had some some tooth trouble. Oh, yes, I had wisdom tooth trouble and I ended up in hospital for two weeks. And this was my, you know, my first big, big job with all these

Derek Jacobi10:13

Oh.

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starry people and Dame Sybil and and Sir Lewis used to take their daily constitutional and stop off at the hospital and read poetry to me for a quarter of an hour and then

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Go back home, and that was their daily outing. They were marvellous to marvellous.

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I think it's time we had another record. What should we have now? Well, um since we've uh got to the stage of my going to the Old Bick, I'd I'd like to hear a scene from The Way of the World with uh Sir John Gielgood and Damien Thans, both wonderful actors, and I'd love to have them on my island.

Speaker 310:59

Good Mirabel, don't let us be familiar or fond, nor kiss before folks, like my Lady Fadler and Sir Francis, nor go to Hyde Park together the first Sunday in a new chariot, to provoke eyes and whispers, and then never to be seen there together again, as if we were proud of one another the first week, and ashamed of one another ever after.

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Let us never visit together, nor go to a play together, but let us be very strange and well bred.

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To Emediath Evans and Sir John Gielgood, in a scene from Congreve's The Way of the World, You were at the Old Vic, in the National Company, for quite a few years. What were the highlights? Hay fever you talked about?

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Um

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I suppose for me there was there were there were so many there were so many. I was very lucky in that I I started at the at the National um on a level higher than I normally would have done because uh Jeremy Brett

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who was who was in the company, was bought out by Warner Brothers to play in the film of My Fair Lady. So instead of starting my career at the National understudying Jeremy, I started playing his part. And for me I think the the the first great high was uh black comedy, the Peter Schaffer play. Yes. And then eventually I got the lead in a play. It was an adaptation of The Idiot.

Derek Jacobi12:16

Yes.

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Dostoevsky

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This is a very tricky part, uh an epileptic. Yes, it was very tricky. The the the whole production was very tricky actually because um we did have lots of problems with it and uh eventually we got it on and it went reasonably well. The critics didn't like it and I was heartbroken.

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Uh but the audiences that came seemed to like it and word of mouth got round and gradually the audiences built and built. And it was a marvellous part to play. I'd love to do it again, actually.

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You asked for a year off from the National. Yeah. After how long?

Derek Jacobi12:52

Yeah.

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After eight and a half years. Well, you're entitled to one. What was it for? Well, really, I suppose, because um I'd never been outside the secure bosom of a permanent company and I I really wanted to see what uh life was like on the other side of the fence. You

Derek Jacobi12:55

Yeah.

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In a sense, after spending a long time in one company like that, you began to feel that it was the centre of the acting universe, which of course it wasn't. And you did tend I can see now that one tended to lose a deal of bravery, a deal of daring, of courage, because it was secure. I'm not saying security is bad for an actor. I don't think it is at all. But I just needed to get out and um

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try to prove myself in a a harder world. Out of the subsidized theatre, into the hurlier burley of of the commercial theatre. Yes, it was for me a leap into the dark. It was like really leaving the womb.

Derek Jacobi13:42

Yeah.

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So what happened?

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So they gave me a year off, and uh I had no prospect of a job. I thought, well, this is it, I'll never work again. You know, you've just thrown away quite a promising career. And I was offered a BBC Two serial called A Man of Straw, which was an adaptation of a Heinrich Mann novel. And I did that, and that led to other things. It led, in fact, to you taking the leading part, the eponymous hero, if you can call him that, in the television iClorious. Yes. We'll talk about that in a moment. Let's have another record.

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Uh well, my fourth record, I'd like to hear my very favourite female singer, uh Cleo Lane.

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Um singing some of my very favourite words, Shakespeare, and uh

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She's recorded a sonnet on Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer's Day?

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and I'd love to be sitting under a palm tree.

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with a banana in one hand and a bunch of grapes in the other, listening to this.

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I compare thee to a summer's day

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Thou art more lovely and more temperate.

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Rough winds do shake

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Yeah.

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The darling buds of May And summer's leaves Hath all too short a day

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Cleo Lane.

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and a Shakspeare sonnet.

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Now iClaudius, how many instalments? Thirteen. A lot of airtime. There had been an abortive attempt to make a feature film of it back in the thirties with Charles Lawton. Did they show you that footage? That's right, yes, it was m it was um made in nineteen thirty eight. And uh of course w when one thought of iClaudius one automatically thought of Charles Lawton.

Derek Jacobi15:30

Well that's

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And uh one day they took me into a the studio and sat me down and they said, We're really showing you this to

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Lay the ghost of Lawton because it was becoming a theme in my mind that how can you

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Actor part that Charles Lawton has acted and

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And I saw it and uh it was marvellous and some of it was wonderful. It was very different from what we were going to do and

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At the end of it, uh I said, woo, wonderful limp and a wonderful stutter, and they said, No copying, it's got to be yours. Uh how did you approach the part, that very twitchy part? Oh, I think I'd have to say obliquely. Um physically it was very, very heavy for me, because one of the most difficult things was the fact that we did it in sequence. So the very first thing I had to do was to portray old Claudius looking back on his past, because the first two episodes took place before Claudius was born. So I had to create that old man right at the very beginning, before I'd been through the process of young Claudius, middle-aged Claudius. And of course by the time he was old he'd lost some of his stutter, he'd lost some of the twitch and it was a question of knowing how little to do, what not to do, and hoping that by the time we got to the old man in the sequence it was the same old man that I'd created at the beginning.

Derek Jacobi16:58

That I

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It's being shown now for the third time. Yes. And since then, of course,

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While we're on the subject of B B C television, you've been working on the B B C's project to film the whole Shakespeare canon. Yes, I'm I'm going to I'm very lucky. They've asked me to do Richard the Second, which is a part I've always longed to play.

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Um never. I've played it on radio in the Vivette Rex series last year and um I long to play it and they've asked me to do it. And any more? Um.

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Well, the there is there is another one, but I don't think I'm allowed to say that because I th I think they want to sort of announce it later. Well respect security, internal security. They might take it away from me if I tell you. And get on with record number five. Well, record number five um is another very favorite singer of mine.

Derek Jacobi17:41

They might take it away from me if I

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Um

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and a very lovely song, and it's a very strange treatment of the song, and a very moving treatment of the song. It's called The Impossible Dream.

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And it's sung by Roberta Flack.

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The Impossible Dream

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To fight.

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The unbeatable fall

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And to bear.

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With unbearable sorrow

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Roberta Flack, The Impossible Dream.

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Now for some time you've been working with another fine company, the Prospect Company, and you've been playing Hamlet for them. Yes. Now the Old Vic production, or the production at the Old Vic for Prospect, began as a a modest cut version, but it's grown. Um yes, it it was uh cut to about with an interval three and a half hours, whereas it would have run four and a quarter, four and a half. Um there were many reasons for this, uh one of which being that

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Prospect is a touring company.

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Although it has its base now in London. And when you're touring in in provincial theatres, uh

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Last buses go at uh quarter to eleven, eleven o'clock, and you know you have to.

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And you've heard it well, quite a lot of people.

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And uh all open air theatres. I mean we did play in some very unlikely places. Hamlet at the Theatre of the uh Sphinx out at Giza with the backdrop of uh the Pyramids and the Sphinx playing Hamlet. It is bitter cold and I I'm sick at heart and all that. It's a most unlikely setting. Yes.

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Record number six.

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Record number six. Uh I would like some Chopin, the fantasy impromptu, just because I like Chopin and I think it would be lovely lying on the beach listening to this. I s I seem to give the impression that it's all going to be l lying around and having a lovely time on this island. I hope you're right. Well, I have my dance, but Chopin will help.

Derek Jacobi19:58

I hope

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Chopin's Frontesie Impromptu in C sharp minor, played by Rubenstein.

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What are your hobbies outside the theatre day?

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Very few, very few. I fortunately don't have very much time for hobbies. But uh w if I have a hobby I suppose it would be mucking around in the garden. Oh, that's useful. I was looking for open-air pursuits that would be useful to the keen castaway. My g my gardening tends to um be sort of putting the flowers in and watching them die. My things aren't very green.

Derek Jacobi21:24

My

Derek Jacobi21:30

I think

Presenter21:31

Ah. But vegetables would be handy. Cultivate something or other.

Derek Jacobi21:34

Okay.

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Yes. Could you build a hut?

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Um yes, I could I yes, I could try. Hm. Would you try to escape?

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No.

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Not unless I was frightened.

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I d I don't know what might be on the island. And if there was something on the island that um was very dangerous and very frightening, yes, I would try to leave. I was a very strong swimmer when I was young. Um Olympic training and all that. Really? So did you win any championships? Um yes, I won I won some some cups and things and medals, but uh

Derek Jacobi22:04

Have you

Derek Jacobi22:05

Yeah.

Presenter22:10

I found the actual training so so um desperately boring with your ankles tied together and just swimming length after length and then your hands on a corkboard and kicking your feet length after length too much. I could try and swim off the island, yes.

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What's your next record? Uh my next record is uh Elizabeth Schwartzkov.

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Singing Im chambre separé, the voice just comes out of the top of her head and it's wonderful.

Derek Jacobi22:37

Achtzuriv Z and Tre.

Derek Jacobi22:46

Uh

Derek Jacobi23:06

Sea party?

Derek Jacobi23:10

Auchuriv Zurs and Torte.

Derek Jacobi23:20

Our motion pariah in the minds of the ocean.

Derek Jacobi23:33

Uh

Presenter23:37

Elizabeth Schwartzkopf, Im Chambre Separe by Heuberger. Heuberger. Thank you. And now your last record.

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My last record is my very, very favorite male singer, I think he's the greatest.

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popular singer in the world, and is Charles Asnaval.

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Singing a song called Yesterday when I was young.

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Yesterday

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The moon was blue.

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And every crazy day brought something new to do.

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I used my magic age as if it were a war

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I never saw the waste and emptiness beyond

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Charles Aznavour Yesterday when I was young.

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If you could only take one disk out of the eight.

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I think it would have to be no coward. I'd need a good laugh on that island. Right. And one luxury to take to the island with you? Well, the luxury, um, I've thought about and I'm very bad on uh coping, you know, by myself, and I I'm not good at roughing it. So I think I would like a king-sized water bed.

Presenter24:56

which I could perhaps use as a raft.

Presenter24:59

Well I could get a good night's sleep. Yes. It's very practical to ask for a water bed because you wouldn't have to build a hut to keep it in. It would be all in the open air. It wouldn't matter if it got wet. I'm not sure you're not trying to double-cross me with this idea of making a raft out of it.

Derek Jacobi25:06

Euro

Derek Jacobi25:10

Oh, you're not

Presenter25:14

Wait, what?

Presenter25:15

I don't think you. Oh, right. Yes, you can have a water dinner. And one book apart from the Bible and Shakespeare and big encyclopedias. I would like the complete works of Lord Byron. Yes, well, that's easy, all bound together. They are really in one book. Yes. Good. And thank you, Derek Jacoby, for letting us hear your desert islandists. My very great pleasure. Thank you very much for casting me away so pleasantly. Goodbye, everyone.

Derek Jacobi25:16

Do you

Derek Jacobi25:29

They are really a number.

Derek Jacobi25:49

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