Timothy West

Timothy West0:00

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

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This edition may be slightly different from what was actually broadcast, but it is the only version we have. It comes from the British Library's radio collection.

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The recording didn't contain the guests' eight music choices, so we've rebuilt the original show by using discs from the B B C Gramophone library. For Wright's reasons we've had to shorten the music.

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Full details can be found on the Castaways page on the Desert Island Disc's website.

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The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen eighty.

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And the presenter was Roy Plumley.

Presenter0:54

This week, our castaway is the actor-manager, Timothy West. Tim, is music important to you? Yes, very important. Did you have any musical training? Do you play an instrument? Do you sing? I sing a bit. I I don't play a musical instrument properly, and I emphatically don't dance. Um but I am very, very fond of music, and have always been.

Presenter1:14

Did you find it difficult to narrow your choice down to just eight records? Very, very difficult indeed, yes. Yes, it is an awful question of what to leave out, and um I've just thought of individual things that have meant something to me at different periods of my life, really. What's the first one?

Presenter1:33

I think the first one stems from a period when I was very, very keen on jazz. I I still am. But I was born at a time when I was just a little too early for pop music. And when I was at uh college at the Polytechnic Regent Street, we were very much into jazz. It sort of went with um quoting T. S. Eliot and drinking that awful bubbly coffee, you know, that one used to get and talking about Tito. And I used to go into pubs and drink with Humphry Lyttelton and Wally Fawkes and all that lot. But I had a a great thing about the blues and I still think that Sarah Vaughan was one of the very greatest, most marvellous blues singers ever. And I I'd like to hear her singing Ain't No Use.

Speaker 42:20

It ain't no reason.

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I'm a hanging round Ain't no use

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I put you down, I put you down, I put you down. There's no love left in my heart.

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None left in my heart for you

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It ain't no use for you to cry, cry, cry. It ain't no use

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This is goodbye bye-bye bye-bye bye You've been gone and you've been wrong so many times Now I'm through

Presenter3:20

Ain't no use by Sarah Vaughan. Tim, you come from a theatrical family, don't you? Yes, I do, yes. Third generation. Third generation. Your father, Lockwood West, well loved actor.

Presenter3:33

And my mother, Olive Carlton Crowe, um who who gave up the profession when my sister was born and her father C. W. Carlton Crowe who um

Presenter3:42

worked a lot at the beginning of the century.

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plays with Nigel Playfair and other people.

Presenter3:47

So it's it's the family business. Now you were born in Bradford. Was that a question of family links or or because your parents happened to be there? I think it was where they were playing that week, actually. But uh I I don't have any special links with Bradford, although I have been back to play in in Yorkshire a great deal over the years, but Leeds rather than Bradford.

Presenter4:06

You went to more than one school, I'm told. A great many more than one school, yes. I I went in in all to thirteen schools. This was uh largely because of the same situation of of living among a theatrical family that kept moving around.

Presenter4:19

I stayed for longest at the John Lyons School in Harrow.

Presenter4:23

Not at Harrow, in Harrow. In Harrow. And uh I went from there to the Regent Street Polytechnic. Did you take it for granted that you were going into the profession?

Presenter4:33

No, I didn't. I I rather took it for granted that I wouldn't. At school, what were you most interested in?

Presenter4:39

I was interested in music, but I don't think I was interested in an awful lot else. I I yes, I was interested in drama, but none of the schools I was at latterly I mean the last five uh were were at all disposed towards drama, and I could never understand why it was that even those that were were so sexist. There seemed to me a perfectly good girls' school down the road, where the girls were facing more or less the same problems as us, and there's no reason why they shouldn't have come in to do the Lady Macbeth's and Lady Macduffs, and I said so to the headmaster, but got a short shrift. What was your parents' attitude? Did they expect you to follow the tradition? I don't know whether they expected me to or not. They rather wished I wouldn't, because they'd at various times, of course, the theatre having been at a harder time in their day.

Presenter5:28

thought that perhaps they owed it to me to give me a slightly easier life than they had had. And I went along with this for a time, and I tried doing other jobs. I I sold office furniture for a time in the You said you went to study at the Polytechnic in Regent Street. What did you study there? Modern languages.

Timothy West5:40

You said

Presenter5:46

It just seemed something useful to study, and uh and also English literature. Did you get a degree there? No, I didn't. No, no. So you sell furniture?

Presenter5:55

I sold furniture, not very successfully.

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a rather sort of beautiful Dickensian firm in in the city of London, which I was very fond, but it didn't seem to lead anywhere and um Dickensian sort of furniture.

Timothy West6:06

I can't do that.

Presenter6:07

Um yes, very Dickensian furniture. Yes, it was the real sort of Bob Cratchit high desks and things. But they they were a sweet lot of people and um I enjoyed myself very much. But I moved on to uh indulge my musical tastes to um EMI, who were looking for um a junior engineer to help them with their commercial tape recording enterprise that they were starting. Had you got any kind of technical knowledge? No, not really, no, no, no, they had to take me more or less on spec. I had a very good ear, uh both um musically and and technically, for which I was fortunate, but the musical element of it I had to sort of pick up as I went along and found it very fascinating. And uh we were involved, of course, at that time in the in the first experiments in stereo. What were you doing? Were you making the tapes, or were you demonstrating them, or you were selling them? No, we were making them, we were making them and copying them. Were there any celebrated recordings that you were associated with?

Presenter7:07

Oh, yes, a great many, and celebrated artists. And uh the one that we were all in love with the person who is going to sing on the next record that I chose was Elizabeth Schwartzkopf, and we all

Presenter7:20

thought she was quite wonderful. I I still think she was one of the greatest leader singers ever. And uh the younger ones among us had um fantasies about rescuing her from her husband Walter Legg and going off and living somewhere wonderful with her. And uh I'd I'd like now to to hear her singing one of the four last songs of Strauss.

Timothy West7:28

Yeah.

Timothy West7:30

Yeah.

Presenter8:40

Beim Schlafengen, one of the four last songs of Richard Strauss, sung by Elizabeth Schwartzkopf.

Presenter8:47

What took you out of the recording industry?

Presenter8:50

It was a kind of growing situation. While I thought I'd um not indulge myself professionally in the theatre, I did become a member of a great number of amateur dramatic societies with whom I spent a very great deal of my off time. And this off time began eating rather into my working time, and I began falling asleep quite a lot at work, and uh my boss and I uh chiefly him, I think, uh decided jointly that it might be quite a good idea if I changed my attitudes and uh began to.

Presenter9:24

be paid for the job which I obviously had my heart in. You moved on. And I moved on quietly, yes. Where did you start? I started um the geographically easiest place because I was living in Wimbledon at the time.

Timothy West9:27

I heart the two moved on.

Timothy West9:31

With

Presenter9:37

And a man called Peter Hatton was running a repertory company at theatre, a wonderful man. He ran it very well, yes he did indeed, yes, and achieved some amazing results. And he had a a vacancy, as I imagine he usually had a vacancy, for somebody to come and sweep the stage and make the tea and make a few props, play the odd butler. So I I came in at one pound ten a week and did that for a time. What was the first time you walked the stage as a professional?

Speaker 49:41

God bless his heart. He ran it very well.

Timothy West9:56

Yeah.

Presenter10:05

I played a character called The Farmer in a a rather nice play called Summertime by Ugo Betty. Yes. This would be in early nineteen fifty six.

Presenter10:15

I remember nothing about it except that I had conceived it, as I conceived most of the parts I played at that time, as a very, very old man, and got in about four o'clock to put on the make up.

Presenter10:27

How long did you stay at Wimbledon Theatre? About four months, and I then went to do some seaside rep on Yuki. That was pleasant. That was very pleasant. I I was an ASM there. My salary went up to six pounds a week, and I was playing quite a lot of leads.

Timothy West10:35

That was pleasant.

Presenter10:42

for that because it was a very very small company.

Timothy West10:43

Yeah.

Presenter10:45

And uh it it was all all experience and um I went on from there round various repertory companies in in in the country. Which in particular? Howell, Northampton. Lionel Hamilton. Lionel Hamilton, yes, yes. I did do homework, yes. Uh yes, yes, loved working with Lionel and uh had very happy memories there. What was your first London appearance?

Presenter11:08

My first London appearance sprang from my two years in Salisbury, where I settled and was finally given the accolade of being an actor with no stage management responsibilities, and an additional pound a week.

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And um a member of the company, um Geoffrey Lumsden, very distinguished actor, uh had written a a very funny farce, uh which we did there, and it was bought for production in the West End.

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And I moved with it. I I played um a character called Torque, who was a Bookies runner and spoke entirely in tic tac language, didn't talk at all. And that would have been very nice, except that it was nineteen fifty nine and, as you probably remember, an impossibly hot summer. And nobody came to the theatre at all, and we folded up. Oh, bad luck. Now, a a a a name to put on its tombstone. What was it called? Caught napping. Let's get on to our next record.

Presenter11:59

Yes, the next record is uh a beautiful piece of uh string writing which I associate with my early days of touring because it was one of the records that I hurriedly bundled into my suitcase as I set off. It's the Mendelssohn Octet.

Presenter13:08

Part of the first movement of the Mendelssohn Octet opus twenty, played by the Academy of Saint Martin in the Field. So, Tim, you're a West End actor. What happened next after that first unfortunate

Presenter13:21

Well, very little really. There I was with a a wife and a child and a flat in London which didn't seem to have any use for me. I spent most of my time doing special weeks away at Grateful Old Worthing and Northampton and various places I'd played before, and also doing small parts on television, until I got involved in the 1962 experimental season that the RSC did at the Arts Theatre.

Timothy West13:21

Then I'm not sure.

Presenter13:50

In A Fournight Come. Ah, yes. An important for you, and rather horrible play, wasn't it? It was a very horrible, very extraordinary play, and one that we didn't know what to make of at all, any of us, I think, when we saw the script originally. But it had an incredible fascination and worked terribly well. And I was very fortunate to be involved in it because it sort of put me on the map as an actor. You transferred with it to the Old Witch, to the main RSC theater. Yes, that was a couple of years later, actually. I did a couple of things in between, but it was well worth a revival, and that was my reason for being involved in the main company of theaters at that point. And you stayed with the RSC, with the Royal Shakespeare Company, for several seasons. That's right. Did you play at Stratford? Yes, I did. Yes, I did the 1965 season at Stratford. Was there a temptation to settle down with the RSC as one of the great national companies?

Timothy West14:17

Yeah.

Presenter14:43

I've always fought against being tied down to any long contract, particularly I think with a company which is moving in a certain sort of direction among the same sort of people. I I I was there for two years and I enjoyed my two years and I I thought that was enough and I w I wanted to see some other people and do some other things. Yes. It was about that time that the Prospect Theatre Company came into your life.

Presenter15:09

That's right. It uh we were quite a young company when uh when I did. That was in nineteen sixty six. And Toby Robertson in fact in invited me to play a a a leading part in one play, uh The Thieves Carnival, uh on we Now this began as as a as a touring company.

Timothy West15:14

Yeah.

Presenter15:25

That's been the policy of Prospect. That's right, that's right. Yes, it had always been a Turing company from its inception. It started from a tent in a field outside Oxford. And indeed, it it still is chiefly a Turing company. It is the the principal Turing company of Great Britain and it's only recently that we've begun to feel very strongly that the kind of people that we're attracting and the kind of productions that we put on demand that we have a a London base in which to mount them and in which to show them. Well I know that for about fifteen years Prospect has played a big part in your life. Before we talk about it in detail let's have record number four. Yes, record number four is a tribute really to a friend, Judy Dench, who I remember telling me just after she opened one of my favourite musicals ever, Cabaret, that she was sitting with the window open in her dressing room just before the first night at a preview, and she heard two ladies talking who were looking at the boards at the front of the theatre and one said, Judy Dench in a musical, that will never run.

Timothy West15:38

Very

Presenter16:25

And I just felt I knew exactly what she meant, and it was so wonderful to go into the theatre and see her being absolutely brilliant. It's always nice seeing a friend do something that you never knew they could do, and I'd love now to hear her singing Don't Tell Mamma from that show.

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Mama

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Thinks I'm living in a convent.

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A secluded little convent.

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In the southern part of France.

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Mama.

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Doesn't even have an inkling.

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That I'm working in a nightclub.

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In a pair of lacy pants.

Presenter17:10

Judy Dent singing Don't Tell Mamma from Cabaret.

Presenter17:14

No.

Presenter17:16

The Prospect Theatre Company started, you said, in a tent outside Oxford. How did you come to join?

Presenter17:22

Well, I was invited by Toby Robertson to come and do two plays, a large part in one play and and a small part in in the play that I was more interested in, which was um an entirely new

Presenter17:34

commissioned play about Doctor Johnson. And indeed you played The Doctor, didn't you? Well I did finally. I was um initially only going to play a very small part in it, but the um actor who was going to play Doctor Johnson fell ill just before we opened and I'd been reading it for two weeks at rehearsal and Toby said, Well, why not actually play it? And uh that was an enormous enjoyment for me and I I've played The Doctor on Various other occasions on television, on the stage and on radio. And I love him very, very much. What else did you play on that occasion? Well, we went on. I d I did Prospero for him and later Mortimer in Edward II and Polingbrook in Richard II with Ian McKellen. And I did King Lear the following year. Yes. And more recently Doctor Spigelski in Togenyov's Month in the Country. Now you had interspersed that with other managements. Oh yes, certainly. I remember you were a modern player at Wyndham's.

Timothy West18:27

Oh yes, I don't

Presenter18:31

Well, uh two. One was The Italian Girl, which was James Saunders from the Iris Murdock novel, which was a a character and a play which I very much loved doing. Enormously enjoyable that was.

Timothy West18:34

Yeah.

Presenter18:46

And then uh Abelard and Eloise.

Timothy West18:48

Yeah.

Presenter18:50

Now and from now on you are in and out of of Prospect.

Presenter18:54

Yes, I I thought about one go every two years was about right. You ran your own company for a while. Yes, I did. I I was asked to go up to um Billingham in um north east England, Teesside.

Presenter19:05

where they have a wonderful theatre, which is part of an enormous sports complex, and at that time was being paid a a great deal in rates by ICI, and run a a local company there. And it's it's it's a big stage and they have, as I say, um a certain amount of money to spare.

Presenter19:23

And we were able to do quite large-scale plays. We did Peter Nichols's National Health and Major Barbara and various other plays of that sort of scale. This is a very useful experience to get the business side of the theatre in. Yeah, I found it quite invaluable. My one fear was that I would never actually get any actors up there. I didn't, for some reason, worry about the audience. I thought they would come.

Timothy West19:28

Yeah.

Timothy West19:35

Yeah, I found it

Presenter19:45

But the the actors I thought wouldn't. I I thought when it came to it that there would be nobody on that train that I was going to meet from King's Cross, and I was amazed when thirty actors suddenly trooped in. And you've done a number of overseas tours.

Presenter19:58

Yes, I have. Yes. Yes, I like working overseas very much. It can't be easy to arrange. We know that you have a wife, none other than Prunella Scales, and a family. This can't be easy to say I'm just going off to Australia, darling. Not easy at all. No. We try not to be apart more than the very minimum. I suppose about eight weeks is about the maximum before it really gets complicated. Not from our own point of view so much as the children, I think. Yes. But it's something we both recognise the other one's got to do from time to time. In fact, you have done a complete world tour before now. Yes. Oh, yes. A couple of times.

Timothy West20:31

Yeah.

Timothy West20:34

Yeah.

Presenter20:36

Right, record number 5.

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Record number five, uh simply because I love Mozart and uh I've always had a a great passion for the magic flute.

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and particularly for the extraordinary character of Papageno, his first song.

Speaker 421:09

Die Fuge Venger Vi Icha, Tis Gunstikai Sunzasa.

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Gone, film, gone, gone.

Speaker 421:36

Rondi through sign And I believe it's in your mind.

Speaker 421:46

Uh

Presenter21:46

Uh Uh

Presenter21:49

Valte Beri as Papagheno in a recording of The Magic Flute conducted by Otto Clampere. Now so far we've only talked about the theatre team. We haven't talked about films or television. How about feature films?

Presenter22:03

Feature films have never been frightfully kind to me. I think I am not perhaps a very good film person. People who succeed in films are people who give visually a very, very clear impression of their personality, and whose voice and style matches up to that visual image. Mine doesn't. I'm slightly too complicated, I think, for them. And therefore I'm constantly playing rather dull parts that I can sort of get away with. I've done some very nice parts in films, but unfortunately they always seem to be the films that never actually get to the public. Is there any one in particular that you remember?

Presenter22:44

I did a a really I thought beautifully made film uh about William Morris about uh three years ago based on his trip up the Thames during which he wrote the beginnings of his News from Nowhere which was the title of the film. It was a low-budget film and um made very, very beautifully and shot enchantingly I thought. And it's uh been shown at the Little Bit Rixie in Brixton and um that's all. Yes, quite.

Presenter23:13

Now, television, a part that you will be identified with for a long, long time, King Edward VII. You played His Majesty for quite a long time. How many programmes in that series? Well, there were thirteen in the series. Of course, he started off as a baby, so I took over as soon or slightly sooner than was decent, I think, at the age of twenty-one in episode five.

Presenter23:36

But it was a beautifully paced serial in in terms of making it. We we were at it for fifteen months, which was a wonderful luxury, really, in television terms. A great deal of research necessary, of course. Quite a lot of research, yes. And a lot of magnificent locations. Yes, wonderful. And I think that the tacit approval and help given by the royal family was an enormous asset to the the the series because they allowed us to film in places that uh people had not normally been allowed to film in for for dramatic purposes and I think that must have been because they on the whole approved of the way the treatment was going. Such as, I mean, well, such as um Windsor Castle, such as um Sandringham, Balmoral, um, inside St George's Chapel at Windsor. Did you find thinking yourself into such a regal part had any kind of effect on you?

Presenter24:30

Um I think I may have got a little bombastic. But you don't expect people to open the door for you and call you sir all the time. I did at one occasion. Yes, I was buying some toothpaste in a chemist's during the lunch hour of a rehearsal, and I suddenly realised that everybody was looking at me, and why everybody was looking at me was because I was expecting somebody to open the door for me. I hadn't opened a door for myself in twelve minutes. His Majesty would never have bought his own toothpaste. No, no, that's true.

Timothy West24:52

Yeah.

Timothy West24:54

No, no, that's true.

Presenter24:56

You also played Winston Churchill, of course. Yes, yes, recently. And you are now playing Sir Thomas Beacham at the Apollo Theatre.

Timothy West24:59

Yeah.

Presenter25:04

Yes, all cigar smokers. I don't know whether that's a coincidence. Yes, well, of course. And that's where you got the habit.

Presenter25:10

That's why it's apart anyway.

Timothy West25:10

That's why I

Presenter25:12

These biographical performances raise a special problem how accurately does one impersonate?

Presenter25:19

I think that there's a responsibility towards a great deal of accuracy among people who lived within the living memory of the people who are liable to go and see it. On the other hand, I think one has to remember two things. First of all, you are not actually playing the person, you are playing somebody else's conception of the person, which is in a sense edited.

Presenter25:40

Also you mustn't forget, I think, that your personality is the instrument, the only instrument through which you are able to play that character. And therefore it is slightly a question of finding facets of of the person's character which correspond in some way, or can be made and forced to correspond to characteristics of your own.

Presenter26:04

Um so that it's you.

Presenter26:06

being somebody rather than doing a full Mike Yarwood, you know.

Presenter26:12

Record number six.

Presenter26:14

I I love the piano and I I I love Beethoven and uh his burgatelles seem to me the m the most extraordinary sort of concise and dramatic pieces and uh there's a particular one that I like to hear from Opus one nine.

Presenter27:25

A Beethoven bagatelle, number eleven in opus one one nine, played by Alfred Brendel.

Presenter27:33

Now, Tim, while playing Sir Thomas Beacham, you are also taking up the reins for your new job as artistic director of Prospect, which is now established as the Old Vic Company. Does that mean that Prospect tours no more? No, by no means. No, we shall tour, in fact, rather more than we have done. The name change is simply a way of making perhaps the Old Vic public feel that we are here to stay, which we are, we hope. And my plan really is to increase the amount of work.

Presenter28:07

Or increase the volume of work, perhaps I should say. So you'll have two companies, one at the old Vic. Three one touring companies. Three countries. Yes, because uh overseas touring we also feel is is important, so that they will dodge about and we will increase the number of weeks per year at which we'll be resident at the Vic.

Timothy West28:12

Three country

Timothy West28:16

This is important.

Presenter28:24

We will increase the number of weeks per year at which we tour in the UK, and we will also be doing more.

Presenter28:30

Turning overseas. And will the finance be forthcoming for for that programme?

Presenter28:34

We hope so. And an awful lot of it must come from the box office, of course. But I'm taking a gamble in assuming that if they

Presenter28:44

Plays themselves are attractive, and if the overall standard of presentation is very high, that we can perform each play for longer in each place. It seems to me that up to now we've perhaps been rather modest in the number of performances that we've given of each play, and I'm hoping that they will they will stand more. Do you enjoy administration?

Presenter29:07

I like it when it leads to something. Um we're going through a period at the moment which is for me slightly unsatisfactory because I have to plan my season, I have to have time to do it, and uh there is no way that we can get it off the ground before um the end of August. Yes, what are the first players you're going to do? Peter O'Toole is coming, I'm very pleased to say, to do uh Macbeth for us, and uh that will be in Repertoire of the Jew of Malta.

Presenter29:31

And then I shall be following that with my own production of Trelawney of the Wells. So you will be directing i in a producing sense as well as artistic director. Yes.

Timothy West29:39

Oh yes.

Presenter29:41

And writing, I hope. Yes, well I was I was going to ask how much is this going to restrict you as an actor?

Timothy West29:41

Promoting

Presenter29:46

I don't know. It's a rather curious situation, because I I kind of put my name on the list with all the others that I want to play something, and if it was a cricket team, I'd put myself in number sort of five or six, I think. Very modestly.

Presenter29:58

Record number seven I feel that if I'm on the desert island there are going to be moments when I'm going to feel lonely and miserable, and I'm going to be in need of some joyful music.

Presenter30:08

And I though not a religious person, I I can't think of anything more uplifting than a a piece of the B minor Mass Bach.

Presenter31:10

An excerpt from The Gloria from Bach's B minor Mass, a recording conducted by Karl Richter and the soloist Herte Toppe.

Presenter31:18

Now let me quiz you a little bit, Tim, on your capabilities as a castaway. Do you have confidence that you could look after yourself on a desert island? Yes, I think so. I think um

Presenter31:29

Given a few facilities, you know, trees and um something I could use as a tool, I build myself some kind of shelter. You're good about the hut, in other words. Uh yes, given an opportunity to do it my own way, I am, I think. Food? Can you cultivate?

Presenter31:45

I would have to learn. I'm not a good gardener. My wife is so good that I leave it all to her. I I think that would be a case of trial and error, rather. Would you try to escape?

Presenter31:55

I don't think I would. I'm a frightfully bad swimmer, and I I don't think I would trust my own boat building very much. I think I'd try and make a go of it where I was.

Presenter32:07

What are your hobbies?

Presenter32:09

Well, listening to music very much, reading, um

Presenter32:13

I'm very fond of architecture.

Presenter32:15

And passionate about old railways. Are you?

Timothy West32:18

Hmm.

Presenter32:19

I mean, are you a member of one word? You go to the next one. Oh, a number. Oh, yes. And you go and sort of spread new ballast on weekends. Well, no, I don't, alas, no, I don't seem to have the time. I feel I should. I feel very guilty about this. I just send the money and other people do it, I'm afraid. We've got your last record. Yes. Well, we've got to have a bit of Beecham. His Mozart, of course, was amazing, but so also was his Haydn, I think. And as we've taken one Mozart record with us, I'd like to hear a bit of The Surprise, Symphony No. 94 of Haydn.

Timothy West32:21

Oh number. Oh yes.

Presenter33:45

The closing passage of Haydn's Surprise Symphony, number ninety four in G major, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Sir Thomas Beacham.

Presenter33:54

If you could take only one disc of your aid, which would it be? Oh, very difficult. I think it'd be the Beethoven, the Bagatelle. Right. And one luxury to take with you?

Presenter34:05

Yes, this is extraordinarily difficult, isn't it? I uh I mean, one rejects all the sort of obvious things like a home made still or a

Presenter34:12

A wonderful box of cigars. I think a typewriter, probably. I think I might sit down and write that play that I've always meant to write. Good. Well, we shall give you all the other accessories you need for playwriting. A dictionary, a desk, and some paper. And one book apart from the Bible and Shakespeare. And we don't encourage a big encyclopedia.

Presenter34:32

No, I think it would be Mallory's Mort Dartha. Mm-hmm. I think I would never get tired of reading that. Could it be the theme for a play again?

Presenter34:41

It's the theme for a a wonderful programme that Gordon Hunnicomb has already done on the radio, and which I want very much to produce on the stage. I think it's a wonderful subject and one that appeals to everybody.

Presenter34:54

Well, thank you, Timothy West, for letting us hear your Desert Island discs. Thank you for asking me. Goodbye, everyone.

Timothy West35:09

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