Allan Prior

Speaker 10:01

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

Presenter0:31

This week, our castaway is the novelist and television writer, you'll remember Zed Cars and softly, softly, it's Alan Pryor.

Presenter0:40

Alan, could you adjust yourself to extended lendliness?

Presenter0:44

Well, I've got a fair bit of practice at it, Roy, because I've been a

Presenter0:49

professional writer for twenty five years.

Presenter0:52

And all professional writers have to sit at desks turning the stuff out. And you've got to do that on your own. Yes, seven days a week. Seven days a week as a rule. And if if if you can fit seven and a half in, that's what you do. And somehow uh you get used to it. You live with your characters, they people the room for you. And you come out of it after the given number of hours and the given number of pages back into the real world. So it I think I could get used to it fairly quickly. Is music an important thing in your life?

Presenter1:24

Well, it it is, but I have a a very low standard of of popular song. That's the kind of thing I like, I suppose, mainly because I was brought up with people who were some of them in the music hall and they sang to themselves or rehearsed the popular ditties of the day, and I suppose I got infected with them. And I always like popular pieces, and I like them sung. I like the human voice. What's the first one you've chosen?

Presenter1:51

The first one I've chosen is a very old music hall song. It's uh it's Lily Morris singing Why Am I Always the Bridesmaid?

Allan Prior2:01

Why am I always a bridesmaid, never the blacking a bride? Ding the dong, wedding bells, only ring for a girl. But one fine day, oh let it be soon. I shall wake up in the morning on my own handy moon.

Speaker 12:13

Well

Speaker 12:19

Find it.

Presenter2:34

Why am I always the bridesmaid? You said you mixed with music hall people. Do you come from a musical family? Yes, one of my grandfathers managed and owned a music hall, and indeed lost all his money in a music hall venture. Whereabouts? Uh, in Newcastle-on-Tyne. Is that your native Heath? I was born there. Did you go to the music hall a lot? Well, yes, I did. My first one of my earliest memories of music hall was seeing my uncle Harold, who was a a Scots comedian, perform at a theatre in Wall's End. I can't remember which one. I was probably about five. Was yours a happy childhood?

Presenter3:10

Yes, it was. I was the youngest of of three, and separated from my brother by ten years, so so to all intents and purposes, an only child. You were spoiled. I was spoiled. I was spoiled.

Presenter3:23

What's your second record?

Presenter3:25

The second record is Alan Jones singing Make Believe. From Showboat. From Showboat. Why do you choose this?

Presenter3:32

I think because i it somehow or other

Presenter3:36

Brings the time back, and what I think if I was on the desert island.

Presenter3:40

doing when I wasn't writing, I'd be doing my bit of memory, and it was my first romantic song.

Allan Prior3:46

As we

Allan Prior3:50

Good morning, love you.

Allan Prior3:58

It would make believe that you love me.

Allan Prior4:06

Fathers find a peace of mind in Britain.

Allan Prior4:15

Wouldn't

Presenter4:16

Make Believe, sung by Alan Jones, your first romantic song.

Presenter4:22

With this music hall background, did you want to be a performer?

Presenter4:26

No. I think all writers are denied performers. I think we we all would like to act and we'd all like to play it out. But instead of doing it that way, we write it down. I'd no idea that I had any of these uh feelings, uh artistic or what have you.

Presenter4:44

Because what I saw of music hall and what I saw of performers mainly was was poverty and people that weren't making very much money and my aunts and uncles were not making very much money doing it and I couldn't see any kind of living in the arts and indeed was pretty much in the family dissuaded from having any interest in them at all, in the performing arts. What was your first job when you left school? Well, my first job when I left school, and I competed with fifty six other boys for for the honour, was a job as a clerk in an office, and I was lucky enough to get it. I turned up and knocked the boss's inkwell over on his desk, blotted it with a blotter.

Presenter5:22

And this seemed to impress him.

Presenter5:25

And he gave me the job. It paid 15 shillings a week, and I felt rich. What was the firm?

Presenter5:30

The firm was a a a mail order firm selling all over the uh United Kingdom at radio and electrical equipment. It was uh not very romantic. These were hard times. But I I had a very, very good boss, uh an excellent businessman, and he taught me the basic rules of business practice, which when I became a professional writer I I needed very badly. What got you out of that?

Presenter5:54

Basically the war. Right. Well, at that point, let's break off for record three. What have we got? Our record three is a thirties record and it's Bing, Crosby and Louis Armstrong, and they're singing Gone Fishing.

Speaker 36:07

I tell you why I can't find you. Every time I go out to your place, you gone fishing. How do you know? But there's a sign upon your door. Uh-huh. Gone fishing. I'm real gone, man. You ain't working anymore. Could be. There's your hoe out in the sun.

Speaker 36:29

Where you left a row half done

Speaker 36:32

You claim that hoeing ain't no fun. But I can prove it. You ain't got no ambition.

Speaker 36:39

I'm gone fishing.

Presenter6:42

Bing Crosbie and Louis Armstrong gone fishing. Now the war came and and and swept you up. You were still in your teens. You went into the REF. Yes. And I went in in forty two.

Presenter6:55

I was uh a wireless operator and it was it was a technical thing again, which I hadn't done before. Uh and I liked it. I I became reasonably good at it. Were you flying? Uh no, I was a a ground operator. But I liked it and we were a mobile squadron, so we sort of went everywhere. We finished up in in Normandy. It was while you were serving in the REF that you began to write, wasn't it? Yes. How did it start?

Presenter7:20

Well, I'm sitting about in a dispersal hut and uh

Presenter7:24

Another airman came along to me and said

Presenter7:26

Would you read that?

Presenter7:28

and gave me a short story to read.

Presenter7:31

I read it through, and he said to me,'What do you think'? and I said,'Well, it's all right. What's it for? and he said,'A competition.

Presenter7:38

Then I said, being a North Countryman, is there a prize? And he said, Yes, it's fifty pounds.

Presenter7:44

I said, Is it open to anybody? and he said, Yes, it is.

Presenter7:48

And I said, When does it close? And he said, Tomorrow night. It must be in the Post by tomorrow night not realizing that in a sort of way

Presenter7:54

He was signing away his own chances because he came third in the thing and I won it.

Presenter7:59

I just happened to write a story. Yes, your short story written in His Majesty's time. Right. And what did that lead to?

Speaker 17:59

And I just uh

Presenter8:06

Well, that led to a a number of things. First of all, it led to being given the fifty pounds, and meeting various professors of English literature and so on, all of whom said to me, Well, you've got a talent, you ought to do more.

Presenter8:19

And so I took them at their word, and I sat around writing stories in dispersal huts and in uh naffies and all the rest of it, and sending the stories in to the editors of small

Speaker 18:26

Uh

Speaker 38:26

Now

Speaker 18:26

Yeah.

Presenter8:32

magazines, uh, mushrooming in wartime.

Speaker 38:35

Yeah.

Presenter8:35

you know, the new writings and that sort of thing. And I I just got them published and I realized that I could do it.

Speaker 38:36

You win a

Speaker 18:39

I realized that.

Presenter8:41

Well, that brings us to the end of the war and to your fourth record, which is what?

Presenter8:47

which is Anne Shelton, singing a song that always takes me back to that squadron. We all used to sing it as we worked, and that was You'll Never Know.

Allan Prior8:56

You never know just how much I miss

Allan Prior9:07

You never know just how much I care.

Allan Prior9:17

And if I try

Allan Prior9:21

I still couldn't hide my love.

Presenter9:27

Anne Shelton with Ambrose in his orchestra, Slow Foxtrot You'll Never Know from Hallo, Frisco, Hallo.

Presenter9:34

Now, if the war was over, what happened?

Presenter9:37

Well, I'd written the these few short stories, and I knew I wanted to be a writer.

Presenter9:42

But I found myself once again a clerk. Where? This time. I'm sitting in a in a an office of the ministry, would you believe, of agriculture and fisheries. And it's no place to be when you want to be a young writer and you think the world is waiting upon your word. Yes, by now you were married and you had a child. Yes. And so I had then to make up my mind what I was going to do with myself. I think I was getting five pounds a week.

Presenter10:09

At the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, and I really wasn't worth it. So it was about time I did something else. I stuck it out for about eighteen months, and then one day I just walked out. I I had a hundred pounds and uh I sat down and wrote a novel. That was a pretty slender capital. You were taking a chance, weren't you, with a family to look after? Well, yes, but I think at some point in your life you have to take a gamble, and I just happened to take it at that point. How long did that novel take? The novel took nine months. Which took you over your hundred pounds. My hundred pounds was well spent by that time. But

Speaker 110:43

Mahal

Presenter10:46

I'd also written one or two radio plays. I took myself over on the bus to Manchester. I was back in Blackpool again for five shillings return and saw various bewildered producers and sold them various plays. So I was sort of in business. What about the novel? Did you sell it?

Presenter11:05

I looked at the publishers' lists.

Presenter11:07

Um

Presenter11:08

Packed it up in brown paper and string and sent it off to the publisher at that time with probably the best list in London, Michael Joseph. Now, this wasn't really the best thing to do because that sort of publisher is full of good people and really doesn't need a new author. One should always go to the list, it has a hole in it where they can fit you in. I didn't know that. Anyway.

Presenter11:30

Two weeks from posting it, I got a letter back and a check for a hundred pounds and a letter of acceptance and all that. And I wasn't the slightest bit surprised, of course, because I was twenty six years of age. Uh now I'm astonished. Well done. You're first publisher. And then from radio you you moved to television.

Presenter11:47

Yes. It it was inevitable, I suppose. The television s had had started and was beginning to get going, and it was still just B B C. I T V had not arrived. And some very intelligent person decided to run a series of uh

Presenter12:02

of courses for writers, and the North Region of the BBC were invited to send one writer, and they looked around and picked the youngest writer, who was they thought, Well, this television's never going to come to anything, we'll send this young fellow prior. So off I went and landed it and uh

Presenter12:18

And there I was away. Yes. And then you began slogging away at television. Yes. It was it was something very new. There were no no ground rules. It was all pretty exciting. And it was all then, of course, live. So every uh production was a horrendous affair. You didn't even know if you're ever going to get it on the screen. I had a play on once in which a man, the props man, appeared with a tray with a number of glasses on it and a bottle. He was a bald-headed man in braces and a belt and a waistcoat, and nobody ever knows why he appeared in the middle of my play, looked around, said Gaw Blimey and walked off. But he was rather like that.

Speaker 112:50

Okay, look.

Speaker 112:52

Yeah.

Presenter12:56

It was a pretty hard slog to start with. What was your big break in television?

Presenter13:00

I suppose it was sad cars. Is that your idea? How did the whole thing start?

Speaker 113:02

Was that

Presenter13:05

Well, the BBC had a sort of special relationship with the Lancashire Constabulary and had done one or two programmes based on some of the Lancashire Constabulary's work, which was new. And one of the new things that they were doing was having police cars, which were not marked as police cars, with uniformed and sometimes ununiformed policemen in them, driving around the great new estates of the North, particularly at Kirby at Liverpool, as it were looking for trouble.

Presenter13:37

And it was suggested that there might be something in this. I was dispatched to the north of England, which was exactly like going home.

Presenter13:46

and was told that I needed to write three scripts in ten days, or there was no programme.

Presenter13:52

It seemed a a reasonable challenge, so I did it. Three one hour scripts? Yes, there were fifty minutes actually. Three fifty minute scripts. In ten days. In ten days. Yes, that included research, by the way.

Speaker 314:00

Perhaps

Speaker 314:03

Thoughts, yeah.

Presenter14:04

Two days of of drinking deeply with the Lancashire Constabulary took care of that. That was the research. And listening hard. And the rest really was the stuff I was carrying around in my head from the north of England.

Allan Prior14:08

Back of the roof.

Presenter14:17

Record number five.

Presenter14:19

Record number five is, uh almost inevitably, uh the theme from Zed Cars, Johnny Todd, sung by James Ellis Lynch of that series.

Presenter14:29

He said, Fair maid, why are you weepin' for your John?

Allan Prior14:32

Only gone to see If you wed with me tomorrow, I will kind and constantly

Allan Prior14:41

I will buy you sheets and blankets, I will buy you a wedding-ring, you shall have a gilded cradle.

Allan Prior14:50

Or to rock your baby in

Presenter14:54

James Ellis singing the theme from Zed Cars and it's called Johnny Todd. That's a Liverpool folk song, is it? Yes, as far as I know, that's exactly what it is.

Presenter15:04

Now you wrote her a vast number of Zedcar script.

Presenter15:08

Yes, a hundred and fifty over fifteen years. A hundred and fifty fifty minute script. Only ten a year, you see.

Presenter15:14

Well, yes.

Presenter15:16

Now, the Zedka stories were much more down to earth than most police series. How did the police take that?

Presenter15:23

Well at the beginning, all police officers over the rank of inspector hated them, and all police officers under the rank of inspector liked them very much. It was a sort of division. As soon as people got behind desks, they started being responsible for the force. But the people out in the street, from whom anyway one got the stories, seemed to be very happy with them. Any particular story about those days?

Presenter15:48

Well, one I liked very much a story in that I did later write.

Presenter15:52

I turned up and asked

Presenter15:54

An inspector, if anything interesting had happened to him.

Presenter15:58

that day, and he said no, it hadn't.

Presenter16:02

And I said nothing at all. And he said no, because I I'd already realized that you mustn't ask people if they know a good murder or a good rape or anything like that because they've seen so many they can't remember them. You've got to say, What happened today? He said nothing. Then he excused himself. I went out of his office, sat down, and a chap was brought in by two coppers. Ten minutes later he was taken out. I went back in the office. I said, What was all that about?

Presenter16:28

Well, he said that chap has a habit of of murdering people and burying their bodies just off the motorway. And I said, And nothing much has happened to you today. He said, Not a lot.

Presenter16:36

So really then I got the story from him and that is how one did it.

Presenter16:40

You you've written a novel about police procedure too. Yes, I wrote a novel called The Interrogators in the in in the sixties, which I suppose, because I had by that time probably been working on Zedcast for four years, I probably got it as right as anybody is likely to do, simply because I knew so much.

Presenter16:59

How many novels have you written? Uh, quite a number. Well, I think my latest one uh is is my twelfth.

Speaker 117:04

Is

Presenter17:05

The latest, that's about the music hall, about the music. That's the family background. That's the one about the family, yes. What's it called? It's called Never Been Kissed in the Same Place Twice.

Speaker 117:07

That's the family background.

Presenter17:14

Yes. And it it's a pretty long and comprehensive one. It's a quarter of a million words long, and if you drop it, you're in imminent danger of fracturing your big toe. But it's uh it did take a big chunk of my life. It took a year to research and a year to write. And you took the best advice about this apart from your own family. I believe you went to Wee Georgie Wood as well. Yes, and I'm very grateful to Wee Georgie. He gave me many an hour of instruction and delight. And he has, as you know, a great memory, a prodigious memory for detail. And I don't think I could have written it without him. I mean, a lot of the book, or some of it anyway, takes place in the United States.

Speaker 117:35

Yeah.

Presenter17:56

and um where my aunt and uncle did actually go, but I can't ask them because they're dead and gone. But I could ask George. And George had been to the States in nineteen twelve, nineteen fifteen, and was able to tell me. And so it was invaluable, because I don't know anybody else who could have told.

Presenter18:15

Record number six.

Presenter18:17

Record number six is Frank Sinatra.

Presenter18:21

Fly me to the moon?

Presenter18:23

Fly me

Allan Prior18:23

Me to the moon, let me play among the stars.

Allan Prior18:31

Let me see what spring is like on Jupiter and Mars.

Allan Prior18:38

In other words.

Allan Prior18:41

Hold my hand.

Allan Prior18:47

In other words, baby kiss me.

Presenter18:53

Frank Sinatra with the Count Basi band Fly Me to the Moon. Now we've heard about Pryor the Writer. What about Pryor the Practical Man? How are you going to manage on this island? Have you ever done any camping out? Well, I'm not going to manage very well is the short answer, but I have done a bit of camping out. I was a Boy Scout. Really? Well, that's splendid. What sort of badges did you have? Almost none. On the other hand, I have trotted about with the gypsies. How did you get tied up with them?

Speaker 319:09

I'm not sure.

Speaker 119:09

Uh

Speaker 119:12

Almost it

Presenter19:19

I happen to write

Presenter19:21

A BBC radio feature about gypsies some twenty-five years ago, the very first thing I ever wrote for radio. And I also wrote a little novel called One Away about them, which won several prizes and didn't sell particularly well, but was filmed and all that kind of thing. The gypsies have been to me a sort of lifelong interest. I watch them warily from afar, and they watch me just as warily. But you have travelled with them? I've travelled with them, and I talk a bit of romany, and I can get by. Well, all this must have helped you a great deal with knowledge of how to live off the land. Do you know anything about small boats? Not a thing. I think I'd have to wait, Roy, till in the words of Long John Silver, something tops the horizon. Yes. I'm just trying to think that your RAF experience will know about signalling, perhaps smoke signals in Moore's code? Just about remember SOS.

Presenter20:20

Right, we've got to record number seven.

Presenter20:23

Well, I have a daughter called Maddie and she's a singer and she's written some songs of her own and this is her latest. It's called Just the Tours.

Allan Prior20:36

Take a long boat along the canals, Free from the road and rain We'll sail along

Allan Prior20:53

Just the two of us who we are the one Just the two of us who we are and one

Presenter21:05

Maddie Pryor, just the two of us. You spent some time in Hollywood, didn't you?

Presenter21:10

Yes, for my sins. How did that come out? Well, I'd written something they liked and they bought, and they that is one of the big studios had the idea that I ought to go over and possibly write it.

Presenter21:23

So here am I. I turn up at the Beverley Hills Hotel in Los Angeles with my old Air Force valise and two bottles of scotch on it. As you know, this is a heinous crime in a large Amer and good American hotel. It's perfectly all right in a little hotel somewhere off Broadway, but to take two bottles of scotch into the Beverly Hills Hotel is not a thing that one normally does. So instantly it was thought that I was a chap who was pretty much a cheapskate, you see.

Speaker 121:46

Norm.

Presenter21:53

And look at my luggage, you see. Obviously it was twenty years old.

Presenter21:57

It so happened they didn't have for me a room, sir.

Presenter22:02

But they did have a suite, and Prince Philip had liked it very much indeed. S so, oddly enough, had mister Sinatra. So there I was who was ensconced. Ensconced.

Speaker 122:09

And scopes.

Presenter22:11

Well the studio you see. And that was a splendid thing too.

Speaker 122:12

Okay, yeah.

Presenter22:15

What happened after that was pretty much palf the course. I trotted down to the studio to see my producer.

Presenter22:23

uh went into a very large room, uh sat on a very large settee, we smoked very large cigars, we drank very large glasses of ice water, they're very puritan, you don't get too much drink.

Presenter22:35

And all the time I was puzzled by this very large photograph, or it may even have been a portrait on the wall of someone who seemed familiar to me.

Presenter22:45

It was only when I'd been in the room two hours and had said outlined to the producer how we ought to write this film, not, may I say, suggestions that immediately uh commended themselves to him, none the less I I I told him uh what I thought was wrong with Hollywood and things of that sort, and I suddenly realised this enormous photograph on the wall

Presenter23:07

was made.

Presenter23:10

Public relations splendid.

Presenter23:12

Did they make the picture?

Presenter23:14

Not that particular one, but they paid me, and uh and and one day it was over, as in Hollywood one day everything is over. And it's very pleasant, and it's a place a writer should go to once.

Presenter23:27

We've got your last record. What's that to be?

Presenter23:30

Well, I started with a music hall song and I'd like to end with one. And again, it's one that, uh, in a way I suppose I ought to apologise that my daughter has r has written it and and she also sings it. Uh and it's called Inevitably Never Been Kissed in the Same Place Twice or if you want the shorter version, Naughty But Nice. So this is Maddie's tribute to Daddy's book. Yes, that's a very a very kindly way of putting it. Exactly right.

Allan Prior24:09

We met a stage Johnny all up in Fleet Street He kissed me in Soho And wasn't it sweet He showed me his rooms in Leinster Square

Allan Prior24:21

But he kissed me all over before we got there Naughty but nice.

Speaker 124:22

Yeah. It's me all over before we got there, not even nice.

Presenter24:28

Naughty but nice, Maddie Pryor keeping up the family tradition of music hall.

Presenter24:34

Now, if you could only take one record out of that eight, which would it be, Alan?

Presenter24:39

Well, I think I'd like to take Maddie's naughty but nice.

Presenter24:43

And one luxury to take with you.

Presenter24:46

I think a looking glass, don't you? A looking glass? To look at yourself? Or? To remind yourself that you still exist. All right.

Presenter24:54

and one book, apart from the Bible and Shakespeare, which are already on the island.

Presenter24:59

And we don't allow big encyclopedias.

Presenter25:02

I think I'd have to take my favourite boys' book, which I probably know backwards and forwards.

Presenter25:08

And that's Stevenson's Treasure Island. I think it would make good reading on the island. It's a wonderful book. Incidentally, you talked about going ahead with your writing career on the island.

Presenter25:18

Where are you going to get the paper from? Where are you going to get the pencils from? Where you going to get that nice firm writer's table from?

Presenter25:25

Could that be my luxury? Could I throw the looking glass away? I won't bother with the looking glass, and I'll have the writer's desk, because without it I shouldn't feel alive. Yes, in and in the drawers, if you look among the paper, we might give you a very small looking glass. And thank you, Alan Pryor, for letting us hear your Desert Island desk.

Speaker 125:32

Perfect.

Presenter25:43

Thank you, Ra. I've enjoyed it. Goodbye, everyone.

Speaker 125:53

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