Diana Dors

Speaker 30:00

Hello, I'm Kirstie Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive. The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen eighty one, and the presenter was Roy Plumley.

Presenter0:27

This week, our castaway is the actress, entertainer, and authoress, Diana Dawes. Diana, welcome ashore.

Diana Dors0:34

Thank you.

Presenter0:34

Do you play discs a lot?

Diana Dors0:36

I don't actually. No. I'd love to be able to say yes, but I don't. I used to a great deal because I I found that in those days I needed background music all the time to what I was doing.

Speaker 10:47

Timed.

Diana Dors0:49

Now, I suppose it's because I've got a teenage son, and many young people have actually worked for me as nannies and whatever, you know, in the last few years. And I find it very strange. Perhaps I was exactly the same. But everything they do, including the gardener, has to be done with a transistor radio blaring out ear splitting noise, regardless of what sort of music it is.

Speaker 11:09

Yeah.

Speaker 11:11

Uh

Presenter1:11

Regardless

Speaker 11:12

Uh

Diana Dors1:14

And I just love the peace and quiet of not having that sound, so I don't play records as much as I used to.

Presenter1:19

Well, you've got only eight on the island, and you don't have to play them except when you feel like. Oh, how lovely. What's the first one?

Diana Dors1:24

Uh

Diana Dors1:27

Well, I am an optimist, you see, so therefore I would be looking on the right side and hoping that somebody was going to come and rescue me. One of my favourite male singers is Tony Bennett. I've had the pleasure of working with him in strange places like South America. And so this record one of hundreds he's sung the best is yet to come I think is an optimistic message from someone like Tony Bennett.

Speaker 31:56

Out of the tree of life I just picked me a plum.

Speaker 32:04

You came along and everything started to hum.

Presenter2:08

Uh

Diana Dors2:08

Uh

Presenter2:08

Uh

Speaker 32:12

Still it's a real good bet the best is yet to come.

Presenter2:17

Tony Bennett, the best is yet to come. Diana, you were born in Swindon, Wiltshire. Tell me about your parents. Were they interested in the theatre, in music?

Diana Dors2:26

Well, they were both very interested in it. My father was an extremely talented pianist who could have become professional and was offered.

Diana Dors2:34

many times to actually go into concerts and to accompany uh well known singers of the time.

Diana Dors2:42

But he was a very sensible man, and he preferred a secure, comfortable, quiet existence in S in Swindon, which was then a fairly small town.

Diana Dors2:52

Not so any more, I'm afraid. My mother trained as a singer not professionally, again and they both did a great deal of uh amateur theatricals in Swindon. Uh my mother, I think, had many dreams of being all sorts of things in her life, and as I was an only child and I wasn't born until she was forty two, I think she lived out a lot of her fantasies in me. She was a great cinema fan. She took me to the cinema when I was three. Really? And that's where my first love of films and the lure of Hollywood started. In fact, Hollywood has a great deal to answer for because I actually thought people behaved like they did on the screen in Hollywood. I mean, I grew up with this sort of silly romantic idea that uh if a man took you out for the evening, apart from buying you an orchid to pin on your or dress and uh buying you champagne and caviar, he actually probably took you home and did a tap dance around the lamppost or sang you a song in the moonlight.

Presenter3:51

Have you never found that to happen?

Diana Dors3:54

No.

Diana Dors3:55

Most decidedly no.

Presenter3:57

Right, so you decided almost at the age of three that that that was for you?

Diana Dors4:00

Oh yes, I wanted to be a film star from that moment, and I was very much encouraged by my mother, who, as I say, obviously would like to have done all sorts of things in that direction herself, but never could.

Presenter4:11

Now you won medals for elocution very early on.

Diana Dors4:13

Yes, I did, yes and when I was thirteen I wasn't getting very far at school, and my father, who had been absolutely set against me ever going anywhere near the theatre, because he said he'd seen too much of it.

Diana Dors4:27

finally relented and allowed me to start attending the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art.

Speaker 14:32

Yeah.

Diana Dors4:33

where I used to go once a week for an acting lesson. And then when I was fourteen I came to live in London full time and lived at a a very prim and proper building, the YWCA, and attended the London Academy and I was there for about two years.

Presenter4:48

As a child I believe you had entertained the troops during the last year of the war.

Diana Dors4:53

That's right, yes. Well, my father being a pianist, you see, during the course of the war he was called upon to organise shows for troops who were billeted on army sites and under canvas all around Swindon.

Diana Dors5:05

And there were quite a a few talented artists in Swindon, amateur ones, of course.

Speaker 15:10

Yours

Diana Dors5:11

But if occasionally one of them fell ill or they couldn't do it, I was roped in at the last minute to give the troops my version of any Shirley Temple song that happened to be uh around at the time, like the good ship Lollipop. Uh oh, and Ma, I miss your apple pie. That wasn't one of Shirley's, but it was a great favourite with the troops in those days. And sometimes I'd throw in a recitation or two just for good measure.

Presenter5:34

Right, but you've moved on to Lambda, the London Academy. What was the first professional job you did?

Diana Dors5:42

When I was fourteen I was taking my silver medal for acting, I think. We used to do acting exams at the end of every term, and the adjudicator was a a film casting director called Eric LePine Smith. And he not only awarded me my silver medal, but he said that he had a small part that I could play in a film called The Shop at Sly Corner, which had been a famous stage play. Oscar Homolka was the star of it. He said, But for goodness sake, don't tell the director that you're only fourteen because it's the part of the Spivves girlfriend. There you are, that dates it to Spiv. We don't hear about them. And they were wide boys or gangsters and what

Speaker 36:16

Spiv, we don't hear about

Speaker 16:17

Uh

Speaker 36:18

Okay, so

Diana Dors6:20

And he said it's his girlfriend and he said, If I go back and tell him that you're only fourteen he said, I've seen you act, I know you can do it but if I tell him you're only fourteen, he'll say ridiculous'cause girls of fourteen were not as advanced as they are today and uh he would have just been laughed out of the studio and so would I. So we kept it a secret until I'd finished the film and then we told the director, who couldn't believe it.

Presenter6:41

And you were doing some photographic modelling for pocket money while you were at Lambda.

Diana Dors6:44

Yes, I used to be paid a guinea an hour by uh a very respectable uh establishment called the Camera Club in London, and uh I used to do that in the evenings when I wasn't studying, and of course I kept going back to Lambda.

Speaker 16:54

But I

Diana Dors6:58

when I wasn't filming, which was most of the time because the parts that I received after the shop at Sly Corner were very small ones. I did a couple more. I acquired an agent. And of course by the time I was fifteen years old, I was put under contract to the J. Arthur Rank Organization for ten years because I'd auditioned and done a screen test for a film which was being made by David Lean called Oliver Twist.

Presenter7:21

Div.

Diana Dors7:21

And I got the part, and so the rent contract was also part of the deal.

Presenter7:21

And I got

Presenter7:25

Let's have your second record. What's that?

Diana Dors7:28

That is a marvellous song from the show Annie, which I confess I haven't seen, but I think this song, the way it's sung by any child, just pulls the heartstrings of any adult. It certainly does mine. And although I was never a child like Annie, it sort of takes me back to my childhood.

Speaker 37:49

I'ma come out tomorrow. So you gotta hang on till tomorrow. Come what may tomorrow, tomorrow. I love ya, tomorrow. You're always a day away. Tomorrow.

Speaker 38:10

I love you tomorrow.

Presenter8:13

A song from Annie sung by Anne-Marie Gwatkin.

Presenter8:18

Now, Diana, you were a young contract artist with a huge rank organization. Did that mean you had to go to what the press called the Charm School?

Diana Dors8:25

Yes, well when we were not actually filming, we were required to attend what was originally called the Company of Youth. In other words, they were all Mr. Rank's young starlets, including boys who were under contract to the Rank organisation, and who were supposed to be taught at that school to act and do all the things that I had just spent two years at Lambda doing, so I found it a dreadful waste of time.

Presenter8:53

Now as a starlit who made a whole series of films with Jack Warner and Kathleen Harrison and Petula Clark.

Diana Dors8:58

Mm-hmm.

Presenter8:59

Uh what the something family

Diana Dors9:00

It was the the Huggett family, yes, yes, yes. I played the naughty niece.

Presenter9:05

What was the first film in which you played a leading part?

Diana Dors9:08

That was a film called Diamond City. I was seventeen and I'd made countless films by then for rank, and other companies, of course, because we were hired out to other companies.

Diana Dors9:19

And Gene Kent was set to star in this film, which is all about the diamond rush of eighteen eighty or eighteen ninety or something in South Africa.

Diana Dors9:29

Playing the saloon bar belle, who was pretty old and hard-bitten. Well, Jean Kent suddenly decided she'd had enough of playing these sort of parts, and so she announced that she wasn't going to do it so quickly. Rather, the way my father used to sort of grab me at the last moment when somebody fell out on those troop concerts. They looked around, quickly thought, now who can we get to play this? But oh, of course it has to be Diana Dawes because she plays all the bad girls. So in I went, looking as though I was dressed in my mother's clothes with my hair piled up high because it was a sort of period piece, you know. And when I say my mother's clothes, I mean these long dresses. I mean, I was seventeen and I was trying to play some sort of hard-bitten saloon floozy of thirty-five at least, you know. But it was my first starring role, and I had the excitement of seeing my name up in lights in Piccadilly when the film came out. It wasn't a particularly good film, but it was it was I was on my way to the stars.

Presenter10:24

Yes, they were good days, but uh the British film business was running into a serious slump, wasn't it?

Diana Dors10:30

Yes, yes, it was coming up to around about nineteen well, it was nineteen fifty.

Diana Dors10:34

And for some reason

Diana Dors10:37

The halcyon days of the British film industry which had been lifted up by J. Arthur Rank,

Diana Dors10:42

and created into a marvellous industry, was suddenly something like eighteen million in the red.

Diana Dors10:47

And I, along with most of the other rank contract artists, were told that we were being made redundant, you know, films were not being made, and they just they just had to cut back. And so suddenly at eighteen I was a has been before I'd been anywhere.

Presenter11:02

A good point, I think, to break off for record number three.

Diana Dors11:05

Well, this was a lady who was singing at around that time and is still singing and I think is quite unique.

Diana Dors11:12

And that's Peggy Lee. She's written many marvellous songs, and I thought that she'd written this particular one that I chose, but I I since find out that she hasn't. It doesn't matter. I love the song and I love her. I always have. Peggy Lee singing Come Back to Me.

Speaker 311:28

Hear my voice, where you are?

Speaker 311:31

Take a train.

Speaker 311:33

Steal a car, half a freight.

Speaker 311:36

Grab a star.

Speaker 311:37

Come back to me Catch a plane, catch a breeze On your hands, on your knees Swim or fly, only please Come back to me

Presenter11:52

Peggy Lee singing Come Back to Me and I see it says on the sleeve that the number was written by Burton Lane and Alan Lerner and it's from the show on a clear day you can see forever.

Presenter12:04

So the film industry collapsed.

Presenter12:07

Um you had married a bright and rather erratic young man named Dennis Hamilton, and he set out to promote you, to give you a big star build up. He certainly got you in the newspapers.

Diana Dors12:18

Oh yes. He announced that he was going to build me into the biggest female star that Britain had ever seen that I was going to be their number one blonde sex symbol in the same way that we'd had all the American blonde sex symbols up until that time.

Diana Dors12:33

And he also said he was going to make me into a female Errol Flynn. I wasn't too keen on that idea, you know, always getting into scrapes and getting my name in the paper. I was a little worried as to what my parents would feel about that, living in Swindon. Anyway, uh there wasn't very much I could say or do, because he was an extremely dominant, vibrant personality, and he set about doing just that, uh making me into a household word. We hadn't very much money in fact we had none when we first got married, and Dennis set about uh weaving this publicity spell in between films that he managed to get for me, whereby we were supposed to have vast property and wealth and live in great luxury in the way that Hollywood stars lived. And of course England at that time in the early fifties was still very much suffering from the hangover of the war. Things were still rather austere. In fact, up until nineteen fifty two there were still ration books for food.

Presenter13:33

Yes, it's a

Diana Dors13:34

So

Presenter13:34

So

Diana Dors13:34

All this sudden talk about a a blonde who'd sort of popped up although people had known me as Diana Dores, as Starlett with rank and so on, suddenly this blonde, a sex symbol who lived in great splendour and piloted herself to her own film premieres in her own plane and all this nonsense, of course, it just caught on. It was escapism, and the public lapped it up.

Presenter13:57

One good thing that came out of that period was your appearance in a West End review, Rendezvous.

Diana Dors14:01

Ah, yes. That turned the tide for me, really. That was in 1952. I'd never done a review before. It was great fun. And the show itself was not particularly successful, but I scored an incredible success personally in it. And for a while, tasted the the sweet smell of success. I had London at my feet, and it it actually rejuvenated my career and

Diana Dors14:27

was, in a way, because of various things that followed it, plus Dennis's ingenuity, the result of me attaining enormous star status and that second rank contract for one picture a year. It was a vastly different one from my Starlet contract.

Presenter14:43

Now you made some serious films.

Presenter14:45

Two or three the weak and the wicked.

Diana Dors14:48

The Week and the Wicked was all about a women's prison. Flynnis Johns was the star.

Diana Dors14:52

And the lady that wrote that, Joan Henry, whilst we were doing it in 1953, was busy writing another film which was all about a woman who'd been condemned to death, and the film took place in the death cell and she was subsequently hanged. And she wrote this with me in mind, and Yeal to the Night was the film. And I seized the opportunity to play that part with both hands because it was the first time in all this blonde glamour image and all the fun that had been going on and so on that I had had been given a chance to act. Prior to that, I was chosen by Sir Carol Reed to play the lead in A Kid for Two Farthings. And that was the film which I think was so artistic and so beautiful and people still speak of it fondly to this day. And indeed, as a result of A Kid for Two Farthings, that year I was the only woman in the top ten box office stars in this country.

Diana Dors15:48

So they were two monumental film successes for me.

Presenter15:52

Yes, indeed. Very different to your newspaper image.

Diana Dors15:56

Yes, yes.

Presenter15:57

Record number four.

Diana Dors15:59

Well, this is a classic piece by one of my favourite classic composers, Sibelius. I never really know which part of the symphony, or indeed which symphony, it is. I think it's symphony number two. But I remember that when Dennis and I were first starting out in our marriage together, and we had no money, and he was promising to make me that big star. It was one of the pieces of classical music that we used to play, and it's always been a favourite of mine.

Presenter17:25

An excerpt from the Sibelius Second Symphony in D, Parvu Berglund conducting the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra.

Presenter17:33

When did you go to the United States for the first time? When did Hollywood become

Diana Dors17:36

In 1956, I sat around after Yeal to the Night had been acclaimed by press, public, and everybody else.

Diana Dors17:45

waiting for another wonderful part like that to be offered, and nothing came.

Diana Dors17:50

And finally I received an offer to go to Hollywood, and I thought, well, I mean, I'd always wanted to go. It had always been my ultimate ambition to go there.

Diana Dors17:59

And it wasn't a particularly good script I went over to do. It was a a comedy called I Married a Woman with a comedian who at the time was the hottest thing in America, but never really made it over here, a guy called George Goebel. And I did the film and I followed it up with a dramatic film called The Unholy Wife with Rod Steiger, which was much more appealing to me.

Diana Dors18:22

But I never really attained the success in Hollywood that I had managed to achieve over here. And the simple reason was that there was a lady called Marilyn Munro. No one in America had ever seen anything that I had done, and they all thought that I was some British blonde who'd copied Marilyn Munro and jumped onto that publicity bandwagon.

Diana Dors18:44

So this made it very frustrating for me and very difficult.

Presenter18:45

Yeah.

Presenter18:47

And of course you had marital troubles which was making your life even more complicated.

Diana Dors18:51

That didn't help? No, that certainly didn't help.

Diana Dors18:54

I went back to Hollywood again in nineteen sixty with my second husband, who was known over here as Dickie Dawson, who was a comedian.

Speaker 319:03

Ooh.

Diana Dors19:04

who is now, I may say, the biggest television daytime host in America.

Diana Dors19:10

But of course he was an unknown comedian then. We went back uh because I was working in Las Vegas, in cabaret, because at that point, you know, I had actually started doing a cabaret act in England. And I worked in Las Vegas for ten weeks. And then we bought a house and I made a few films over there. Uh one of my sons was born there and I lived in Hollywood for four and a half years.

Speaker 119:32

Ha!

Diana Dors19:35

until about 1964. But then again, I never really got over this thing of wanting to come back to England. My then husband loved it there. It was a great climate for the children to grow up in, and we had a beautiful house in Beverly Hills, but I still had to work all over the world in order to pay the bills because at that point he had not managed to obtain any work there at all. And I was obliged to leave the two boys in Hollywood with him and a nanny whilst I did so.

Diana Dors20:08

Uh I never ever went back there to live. The marriage floundered. I was working over here, which pleased me from a work point of view. But of course the sacrifice that I made as far as my children was concerned is something that I could never ever

Presenter20:23

Yes, of course. They grew up in California. They're both in show business now.

Diana Dors20:25

Earth and chair business

Diana Dors20:27

Yes, they are. One of them the oldest one, Mark, still lives in Hollywood and works with his father on the television programme.

Diana Dors20:34

and has his own pop group. And the younger one, Gary, who is now nineteen, announced two and a half years ago that he was going to come back and live here with me, which is very, very comforting for me, having lost them both all those years. And uh he is a musician, plays piano, guitar, and uh hopefully will

Diana Dors20:53

do all kinds of things musically.

Presenter20:56

Record number five.

Diana Dors20:57

Well, Johnny Mathis has always been a a great favourite of mine, and I remember those early days in Hollywood in the in the sixties when I was living there, and it see I I was listening to Johnny Mathis then, and I'm still listening to him and loving him, and

Diana Dors21:13

Well, it's a different back cloth of my life now, but he's still the same. And uh this is one of the many songs he's recorded, which I love. It's called The Look of Love.

Speaker 321:26

Of love is in your eyes alert Your smile can't disguise Look

Speaker 321:45

I love

Presenter21:48

Johnny Mathis, The Look of Love.

Presenter21:51

I've been reading your book, Diana.

Presenter21:53

Dawes by Diana

Presenter21:55

Life certainly hasn't been easy for you. Money troubles, marital troubles, all sorts of complications, but you battled your way through, and it it's a very hopeful and exciting book.

Diana Dors22:05

Oh, thank you. I'm I'm glad you see it that way, because I wrote two other books and they were not autobiographies, obviously, but they were just aimed at making people laugh and amusing everybody with stories and behind the scenes anecdotes of

Diana Dors22:21

What goes on, in fact, the sort of things that one would like to write in an autobiography, but there really isn't space for it all.

Diana Dors22:28

And then one day a girl friend of mine who had been watching me on television doing some light hearted musical programme

Diana Dors22:38

said, You know, people see you on television and you look glamorous and you're smiling and you look as though you haven't a care in the world and

Diana Dors22:47

They all think what a fabulous life she must lead, and

Diana Dors22:50

If they only knew what really goes on and what has happened, and it was at a particularly traumatic

Diana Dors22:58

and bad time of my life that she said this.

Diana Dors23:01

A couple of years ago. And I suddenly thought, well, that is the trigger. That is the thing that.

Diana Dors23:07

Has made me now realize that I should write the personal story of myself, if one wants to call it an autobiography, by all means.

Diana Dors23:16

But it is a soul searching and, I hope, completely honest look at myself and my life, and that's why I'm very gratified that you should say what you've just said.

Presenter23:30

What have been the career highlights in recent years?

Presenter23:33

A few years ago you had a straight play success with Three Months Gone.

Diana Dors23:36

Yes. Well, my husband Alan Lake and I were offered this play. In fact, he was offered it first.

Diana Dors23:43

and then they asked him if I would read the script.

Diana Dors23:47

with a view to playing Mrs. Hanker, which is a marvellous part, and uh

Diana Dors23:52

In short, we opened at the Royal Court Theatre in nineteen seventy, early nineteen seventy. It was an overnight success, and it transferred to the Duchess Theatre, where it ran for the rest of that year.

Diana Dors24:06

And

Diana Dors24:07

Suddenly from having had a very bad career time in the late sixties, where I literally was down to going around doing cabaret in working men's clubs and cashing in on a screen name that had once been great.

Diana Dors24:23

I suddenly opened up a whole new decade for myself in character roles. It's been a marvellous situation for me, really. It's been a rebirth once again of my career. I've had a few rebirths of my career, actually.

Speaker 124:35

My

Diana Dors24:38

The seventies, personally, for me, were a ghastly time, but professionally they did open up a whole new decade, and one which I think and hope will go on until the day I die, because, you see, you can always go on playing character roles you can't continue playing blonde glamour girls.

Presenter24:58

It's time we have another record. What next?

Diana Dors25:01

Oh, this is a very sad piece of music, which I've always been rather partial to. It's by Ravel, and it's Pavan por un infante defunte.

Presenter26:11

Pavin pour an enfante d'éfante, by Ravel, the Concert Gabelle Orchestra of Amsterdam conducted by Bernard Heitington.

Presenter26:20

What are you up to at the moment, Dinah?

Diana Dors26:22

Well, I'm doing literally everything because not only do I play character parts on television and in films,

Diana Dors26:34

But I'm now very busy doing cabaret, which is completely at the other end of the scale.

Diana Dors26:40

I write books.

Diana Dors26:42

I write a column for a newspaper, I do after dinner speeches and personal appearances, and in fact, after thirty five years in show business, I've just made Top of the Pops because I did a a video film in connection with Adam Ant's latest record, Prince Charming, which went to number one on Top of the Pops. It was great fun to do. The producer rang me up one day and said Adam had always been a great fan of mine and they wanted me to play his fairy godmother in this little video film.

Diana Dors27:14

And so there I was on top of the pops.

Presenter27:17

Record number seven.

Diana Dors27:20

This is a piece of music called Volstrist. My father used to play this on the piano, and I remember, apart from the fact that I liked the melody, because once again I suppose a little bit like the last record we have, which is it has a sad, wistful quality, I think the story, unless I'm very much mistaken, is about a woman

Diana Dors27:42

Who dies and she dances with her son around this ballroom?

Diana Dors27:47

for the last time before she dies in his arms.

Presenter28:43

Sepellius again Walstries by the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Herbert von Karian.

Diana Dors28:49

I do seem to lean towards Sebalius, don't I?

Presenter28:52

Well, two out of eight.

Presenter28:55

Let's deal with the material side of surviving on a desert island.

Presenter29:00

Could you build a shelter?

Diana Dors29:01

Yes, I'm sure I would be able to do that, because I'm very good physically working at things. I I would have made a marvellous domestic cleaner, you know, if I hadn't been Dinodore's actress. I I rush around my house and I'm always cleaning and tidying up, so I'm sure that I would have the sense to build a shelter to uh protect myself from the elements.

Speaker 129:11

Yeah.

Presenter29:22

What about food? Ever done any fishing?

Diana Dors29:24

No. Now that's really where I would come unstuck, because you see I should I should be fancying all sorts of wonderful dishes and there's no way I'd eat, because I wouldn't last five minutes.

Presenter29:24

Good

Presenter29:34

Are you a good cook?

Diana Dors29:35

I am a good cook, but plain food, of course. Plain food, well that's all you're doing.

Presenter29:42

Well, they're coconuts and

Diana Dors29:44

Yeah.

Presenter29:46

Coconut gravy. Would you try to escape?

Diana Dors29:46

Coconut gravy is gonna be

Diana Dors29:51

If I could, yes, yes I would. I I don't know how I'd I'd manage to do it, unless, of course, I really had got clever and was able to make a raft which was was sea going. Yes, I would try and escape.

Presenter30:03

Record number eight.

Diana Dors30:05

This song, The Way We Were, was from a film called The Way We Were with Barbara Streisand, which I thought was a beautiful film. I love Barbara Streisand singing this song. In fact, I love anyone who sings this song because

Diana Dors30:19

It has such nostalgic feelings for me, and indeed I do it myself in my own cabaret act, interwoven with another song called My Way, which of course has been done to death by everybody, but I think uh Memories, The Way We Were, in this particular instance, by Gladys Knight, who I think does a marvellous job on it.

Speaker 330:42

Stories may be beautiful and yet

Speaker 330:50

What's too painful to remember?

Speaker 330:56

We simply used to fight

Presenter31:08

The Way We Were by Ladys Knight and The Pips. If you could only take one disc out of the H you've played, which would it be?

Diana Dors31:17

Well, I think it would be

Diana Dors31:18

That little child singing to morrow from Annie, because it's got such optimism, and it would also make me think of my youngest son, Jason.

Diana Dors31:27

and somehow or other I'd get off that island and I'd get back to him.

Presenter31:30

Right. And you're allowed to take one luxury with you to the island one object of no practical use.

Speaker 131:38

That'd probably be a box of black magic.

Presenter31:42

A box of chocolates, a big box of chocolates.

Diana Dors31:45

Well, why not?

Presenter31:46

And you're allowed one book you have the Bible and Shakespeare.

Diana Dors31:50

Well, I know it's perhaps an egotistical thing to do, but I I think I would take my autobiography because

Diana Dors31:57

If I died on the island, and whoever found me that skeleton that'd be lying there at least they'd know in centuries to come who I was and all about me from my autobiography.

Presenter32:08

Right. And thank you, Diana Dawes, for letting us hear your Desert Island Disc. Thank you. Goodbye, everyone.

Speaker 332:22

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