Mike Harding

Speaker 10:00

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

Speaker 10:05

For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in 1982, and the presenter was Roy Plumley.

Presenter0:31

On our Desert Island this week is the comedian Mike Harding.

Presenter0:34

Mike, I'm not betraying a confidence in saying that you come from Lancashire. No, I should think that would be fairly obvious to anybody who's listening. Sometimes my accent varies a lot, but when I'm back home it's even thicker than it is here.

Presenter0:46

How well could you put up with complete loneliness? I thought about this uh after I was first asked to come on the programme. I thought about it a lot and I do a lot of walking in the hills and I recently walked the Pennine Way from north to south and I was alone on my own then when I walked over the tops. This was a charity walk, wasn't it? Yes, I did it to raise money for mentally and physically handicapped children. And I was alone for about eight or nine hours a day walking. But by the time I'd done that I was beginning to talk to myself a bit and then I started answering myself back and even worse I started contradicting myself. So I think I could stand a certain amount of loneliness but I think that probably I would look to be rescued eventually I should imagine. Now you have eight discs. Did it take you long to choose?

Speaker 11:15

Poppet.

Presenter1:25

Not really. The hardest thing was not being able to take the eight hundred I would want to take,'cause I'm I I collect masses of records and at home I've got a huge library of grammar phone records, various things. Uh, my interests are very wide and varied. Um, the hard thing was finding

Presenter1:40

Eight records that I thought I couldn't really do without. That was the most difficult thing. What's the first one on top of the pile? Well, I want something that would remind me of home. I'm not particularly a nationalist, but I was born in England and brought up here, and it does mean a lot. The English countryside means a lot to me. So I'd like something that reminded me of England, and I would like to have Delius and Brig Fair, played by a Manchester group called the Halley Orchestra, under the severe conductorance of Sir John Barbaroli.

Presenter3:10

Part of Delius's Brig Fair, the Halley Orchestra conducted by Sir John Barbie Raleigh.

Presenter3:16

Now you have already addressed us on a number of occasions on life at the primary school you went to. Where was that? I went to Saint Anne's, Roman Catholic, mixed infants and secondary school. In fact, it was an all age school in those days, in Crumcell. People don't believe that Crumsell exists. They think that Crumpsell

Presenter3:36

uh North Manchester. They think that it's an area like Narnia in the CS Lewis books that you'd to get to Crumpslo you have to go through a hole in the back of a wardrobe or something like that. But Crumsley actually does exist. It's the site of a dark satanic cream cracker factory and a brake lining works and a I C I dye works and I was born there and um

Speaker 13:45

Come on sl

Presenter3:56

in Crumsall Hospital and brought up there. My family originally came from

Presenter4:00

Ireland on my mother's side and my father.

Speaker 34:04

We were taking truth.

Presenter4:07

Well, yes, I wa the the music hall was more or less dead when I was a child. It was pantomime and variety. And in variety I only remember seeing Norman Evans at the Queen's Park Hippodrome. Over the wall. Over the garden wall. I would have loved to have had one of his records on, but we hadn't got enough room within the programme. I loved Norman Evans and the old Lancashire comedians. And I also saw

Speaker 14:20

Okay.

Presenter4:30

Aladdin at the Queen's Park Air Patrol. When I was about three and a half, my mother took me to Aladdin and I think Jewel and Worris were in it as the broker's men. I only think that because I've got a vague memory of it. And um I remember I kept at the entire place totally amused because this little three-year-old suddenly saw the principal boy come on and

Presenter4:52

I said, who's this? And my mother said it's the principal boy, and I said, in a very loud voice, That's not a boy, that's a lady.

Presenter4:58

The principal boy said, It's no boy, it's got lumps on its chest My mother, very bright red, threatened to drug me out if I didn't set up. As a child, what was your ambition? What did you want to be?

Presenter5:11

I'd no idea what I wanted to be. Various times I wanted to be an engine driver, which everybody wants to be, and then I'll.

Presenter5:18

Almost wanted to be a policeman.

Presenter5:21

Lord knows what would have happened to me.

Presenter5:23

That took your second record, was it?

Mike Harding5:24

But uh

Presenter5:25

Okay, the Satan record again goes back to childhood. The first time I started making crystal sets, the old Cat's Whiskers crystal sets. And I used to make these things with a friend of mine called Worfie. And we used to use the bed springs as an aerial and fasten this crystal set, a primitive radio receiver, to the bed springs, and listen to the BBC. And um I was a Goonshow addict from a very early age so my Saturn record is uh Goonshow Classic, it's the

Presenter5:52

Batter Pudding Hurler of Bexhill on Sea.

Speaker 35:56

I'll shoot an elephant out of season. You can't shoot an elephant out of season. Elephants mustn't be hurt out of season.

Presenter6:05

Listeners who are listening will of course realize that Minnie and Henry are talking rubbish.

Presenter6:11

As erudite people will realize, there are no elephants in Sussex. They're only found in Kent, north north of a line drawn between two points, thus making it the shortest distance.

Presenter6:25

Thank you.

Presenter6:27

Lagoons. Now various people had given you, as a child, various musical instruments a mouth organ, a guitar. Was this your idea? Had you asked for them?

Presenter6:37

Not really. It was a tradition in in our household for boys to be given mouth organs. My uncles had all been given them and my granddad had uh sort of been given them and it was a cheap and easy instrument to learn, you know, so I I picked it up and could play it by ear right away. And other kids used to get me on the street corner and say, play us some tunes, you know, and I'd stand outside the off licence on a night time'cause we all met down there because it was a shop window that was lit in the dark winter's nights, you know, we used to meet under the either under the street lamp or outside the offee.

Speaker 17:01

Windows.

Presenter7:05

And I used to play all the tunes and then a kid came up one day and said, Can you play the guitar? So I said, No. He said, Well, I've got one and uh we went to his house and I started playing it and picked it up and found a good place. So I asked for one for my fourteenth birthday, got one and together we formed a group called the Irk Valley Stompers. It was a skiffle group.

Mike Harding7:23

Yeah.

Presenter7:23

The River Oak is a tiny muddy creek full of dead dogs and old prams and mattresses that runs the back of the biscuit and works in Crumsey. So it was a bit of a misnomer to go all the Vice Tampas. But we played all the Lonny Donegan skiffle hits. We used to play up and down the pubs and we used to get money and a hat we used to take around. Then also people used to buy us halves of beer. And unfortunately I didn't tell my mother where I was until I was going to Boy Scouts and she used to wonder why I used to wobble in down the lobby of a night time after I'd been to Scouts. She used to say things like, I think I should stop you going to scouts. It's making you awful tired of a night time when you come home.

Mike Harding7:31

Yeah.

Mike Harding7:37

Yeah.

Presenter7:58

Mobbling and semi-drunk. But then I went on from Schiffle to play in rock and roll bands. Had you left school, Banner?

Speaker 18:01

Had your levels?

Presenter8:03

No, I was still at school. I'd passed my eleven plus in the old days of the scholarship. It was the only way a working class kid could get a proper education. I passed my eleven plus and went to Saint Bede's College for young Catholic gentlemen in Manchester. And I was still supposedly doing O levels.

Mike Harding8:15

Uh

Presenter8:18

And playing in rock and roll bands at night time, playing in places like the cavern and all all round the country. You played in the cavern? I played one gig in the cavern. And there was a group who'd just come back from Germany at the time.

Mike Harding8:23

A mute plane.

Speaker 18:23

Red

Presenter8:30

called the Beatles and uh my own band when I say my band but the band I played with was dressed in silver larme suits with white winkle pickers and we looked like metallic penguins with the most ridiculous things you've ever seen in your life and um but we thought it was a group uniform and we were very swish we copied all the shadows stuff and things. Anyway the Beatles came on and wiped the floor. They were brilliant. Even in them days it was obvious that they had melody and and just chutzpah, you know, they had style. And so I went over to John Lennon at the end of the evening we were sort of leaning against these sweaty damp walls that they had there. And I said it was great. You know, you were terrific. I said but you know.

Speaker 18:42

Combat

Presenter9:07

If you're gonna get on.

Presenter9:09

You want to get on you you want to get some suits like ours.

Presenter9:14

He said a few words to me. Both of them connected with sex and travel and uh the rest, as they say, is pure history. Had you left school? No, I was still there, still slugging on doing O levels and A levels and oh, I was into A levels by then.

Presenter9:35

Oh, I was a packer in a ball bearing warehouse.

Presenter9:39

And um they say it's a very complicated job'cause some of those ball bearings are minute and you try wrapping them up and writing a name and address on them and sending them off to people. So I was a packer in a ball bearing warehouse and I I dug roads. I dug holes in the roads for

Speaker 19:47

Dollars.

Presenter9:51

Middleton Corporation and it was there I met my wife actually when I was she was digging a hole too? No, she was she was going past with her mother and it was in the days of the mini skirt and one of our perks, being road diggers, was to be below pavement level and

Presenter10:05

Clock for the uh Scotches, as they say, you know, have a look at the Scotch pegs, legs, it's rhyming slang, you see. And she was going past and I said, Does your mother know you're out? and she said, Yes, my mother's behind me and there was her mother glaring down the hole at me with the look of a gorgon and um

Mike Harding10:19

Uh

Presenter10:20

That's good, Gorgon. Old Gorgonzola. I must think of that then.

Presenter10:23

Anyway, from then on we started courting and uh eventually got married.

Speaker 110:24

Anyway, for

Presenter10:27

You also worked in a bookshop? Yes, because the big love of my life, I think apart from music, is books. I mean, I spend ridiculous amount of money on books. My accounting goes crazy. But I love reading and love books. So I got a job in a bookshop thinking that

Presenter10:42

It'd be easy, and I just would sort of read books, and if a customer came, I'd just sort of say, Yeah, that's

Presenter10:47

Twelve and six or whatever, you know. Unfortunately they sent me down into the scientific and technical side of the bookshop, which bored the pants off me. I was not interested in selling Gray's anatomy to anybody and, you know, I I was reading books on forensic science and frightening myself to death and not able to sleep at night'cause some of these books on forensic science, they look like books of m butcher technology, you know. And um I actually hated it. So uh eventually I had a row with the manager and he sacked me on a Saturday morning. Well, I walked out before he could sack me.

Presenter11:15

Let's have another record. Number three we've got. Well, it's got to be back to the rock and roll days, and rock n'roll's king for me, the man who had us all pressing our little sweaty noses up against music shop windows, unable to afford the Fender Stratocasters that lay there in pristine glory. A man who I think is Rock and Roll's greatest poet, Chuck Berry.

Mike Harding11:33

Uh

Speaker 311:33

Deep in the heart of tech theory.

Speaker 311:35

And round the fresco beat

Speaker 311:38

All over the world.

Mike Harding11:41

And down in New Orleans

Mike Harding11:44

All the cats gonna dance with

Mike Harding11:46

We love safety.

Mike Harding11:49

We little sexy.

Mike Harding11:52

She just got Uh

Speaker 311:53

Uh

Mike Harding11:53

To have a

Speaker 311:55

About a half a million.

Speaker 311:57

Faint autograph

Speaker 312:00

Her wallet filled with pictures.

Speaker 312:03

She gets em one by one.

Speaker 312:06

Become so excited.

Speaker 312:09

Watch her look at her room

Mike Harding12:10

Yeah.

Speaker 312:11

Oh mommy, mommy.

Speaker 312:14

Please may I go

Speaker 312:17

Such a sight to see

Speaker 312:19

Somebody steals your

Speaker 312:22

Oh daddy, daddy!

Speaker 312:25

I babe.

Speaker 312:28

Whisper to mommy.

Speaker 312:30

It's all right with you.

Mike Harding12:32

Yeah.

Presenter12:33

Chuck, very sweet little sixteen. You were doing all these jobs and uh playing in the group at night. How much money were you earning in the group? Were you getting paid? We did. We got paid weekly, very weekly, as the old guy goes. It it varied quite a lot, actually. You could do some gigs that were might be a youth club gig and of course they couldn't afford very much. They might pay you I think it was something like eight

Speaker 112:44

Oh no.

Presenter12:55

Pounds for a youth club you'd get between five of you.

Mike Harding12:58

Yeah.

Presenter12:58

But in them days a pint of beer and a woman was only one in touch, you know. But uh playing in places like Burnham Manning's Club, I think we got something like

Mike Harding12:58

What's your

Presenter13:06

fifteen pounds, which is about three pounds each. Now you were resident at Bernard Manning's. Yeah, but he still maintains he overpaid me.

Presenter13:13

How long were we there? Eighteen months. You don't get that for murder nowadays.

Presenter13:19

It was a salutary lesson, I'll tell you, it was a it was a good grounding. That was the reason why I left the rock and roll band, because I just did not like the um atmosphere of Clubland all that much. And it was a really hard school to play in. It's sort of the School of Hard Knocks. I mean, we played with

Speaker 113:29

Yeah. Yeah.

Presenter13:33

Bernard Manning, i if you were no good um or if you made a mistake playing on stage, he would get on stage and take the microphone off you and say, Get off, you're rubbish, get off. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, but I'm not paying money to rubbish in this club. Get off. You know, I've seen better turns in the Manchester Eye Hospital, get off And uh I saw people walk off stage in tears, you know, and I thought, well.

Mike Harding13:50

And

Speaker 113:50

Uh

Mike Harding13:50

Yeah.

Presenter13:54

It's not a great life this, you know. And one gig we played in a club in Salford, which I will not mention for libel purposes, at the end of the week we did there, I went up and asked for our money for the band and he said, You're not getting any.

Presenter14:06

And I think we were due about eighty pounds. So I said, Well, what do you mean? We we were okay, the punters liked us He said, But you're not getting paid?

Presenter14:14

So I said, Okay, well we don't leave here until we get the money.

Presenter14:18

And that was a very stupid thing to say,'cause it was just like a gangster film. He pressed a buzzer underneath his desk.

Presenter14:24

And uh two huge guys came in.

Presenter14:27

Enormous blokes with muscles in the spit, and they threw me out, and the band out, and our amplifiers, and

Presenter14:33

Guitars and drums just followed down the steps of the club outside and we never got paid. It was as simple as that. No contracts, no equity, no MU.

Mike Harding14:38

Yeah.

Presenter14:41

How'd you go? So, I washed my hands of it completely. I left the group that I was with at the time called the Renegades and.

Presenter14:49

I was working then, and I just carried on working, and I I completely forgot about uh rock and roll. I gave it all a mess.

Presenter14:56

And then I met a band called the Edison Belfs Basum Band.

Presenter15:01

who asked me if I'd joined them, so I joined them playing the guitar and mandolin.

Presenter15:04

And it was a really weird band. There was a fella played jug, another on washboard and a guitarist, and I played mandolin as well as guitar. Were you doing any singing or comicking? Well, that was the first time that I started doing singing and telling stories as well, because until then I'd just been uh a lead guitarist in a rock and roll band doing backing vocals. So I ended up doing front vocals with this band and the guitarist was tone deaf. And used to spend so long tuning up that I had to tell gags to the audience, you see. And one night at Leeds University it was the classic occasion. I've told this story many a time, but it's true.

Speaker 115:14

Well that was a f

Presenter15:38

I ran out of gags to tell.

Presenter15:40

I've got a very good memory for jokes and I could memorize sort of jokes and

Presenter15:45

just trot them out. Well, I ran out of gags and so I started ad libbing and uh one of the guys had a black and yellow sweater on in the band and stripes like a Rochdale Hornitz jersey and I said, Coming over the uh

Presenter15:58

A sixty two tonight, the car broke down, I said and he he lifted up the bonnet and he was bending over and wasp surprised him. I said, But never mind, it was the best thing that's happened to him this year and I started ad-libbing and and just throwing things off the top of my head and it went down better than the jokes so from then on I kept it in and eventually I sacked the band and went off on my own. Which is really how I started doing folk clubs and universities and what have you.

Presenter16:19

Let's break off there for your fourth record. What's that to be? I couldn't live without brass band music. I love the sound of brass being a northerner and um I in fact played in Besses of the Barn Boys band for a year and a bit myself, played the cornect. And so I've chosen a brass band record and it's the Black Dyke Mills band playing a tune that I love, Jerusalem.

Presenter17:42

The Black Dyke Mills Band.

Presenter17:45

There came a time, Mike, when you decided to settle down. You went to college. Yeah.

Presenter17:50

I'd really got fed up after four years of working on the factory floor, sweeping up and humping bags of chemicals about and doing the thousand and one jobs I did do, working on the buses and on the dust bins. I decided that I wanted to do something with my brain,'cause I I've always read a lot and I thought that was

Presenter18:08

capable of more. And I I decided I wanted to be a teacher, and there was a very personal reason for this. I'd been taught by a wonderful man who sadly died at the beginning of this year called Father Gus, or as we knew him, Foxy Reynolds. It was a gag really, Reynolds Reynard, you know, Latin was Fox, so we used to call him Foxy Reynolds. And he was a great teacher.

Presenter18:28

And a lot of the boys who were at my school remember him as being uh one of the greatest teachers they've ever met. And because of him I wanted to do English at university and and decided I also wanted to be a teacher. So I did four years and took a Bachelor of Education degree at uh Mother College, Manchester. Doing the folk clubs at night. And I paid my way through

Mike Harding18:44

Yeah.

Presenter18:51

'Cause I was married by that time with two small daughters and I paid my way through university by working about

Presenter18:58

I think one year I did three hundred nights at that time. You were obviously a very well thought of artist to get that number of dates. Oh, yes. I seem to have built up quite a good following over the years and uh

Mike Harding19:00

So you are

Presenter19:08

I think I was fairly cheap as well. I think that did help. And also I I used to make people laugh and give them a good night and I think that was important. So I used to have to get home from college about four in the afternoon and try and put a couple of hours work in before I went off to do the folk clubs at night, you know. But when you graduated, what happened? Well I had a choice then, Roy, of either going on the road full time as a folk singer because it had built up to the stage where I was working.

Mike Harding19:26

You wanna have a

Presenter19:33

A lot, or else I could go teaching. And it was a sort of watershed in my life, because I said to my wife, I'll do

Presenter19:40

a year and see how I go on from there. And at the end of the year it had already become obvious, really, that I had got a future if I wanted it in the world of entertainment, yeah.

Speaker 119:48

Isn't the world's mental

Presenter19:51

Well, that's a decision and that's a a turning point, a watershed, as you said. So let's break for record number five. Well, it leads into the record because during the the years I spent in folk clubs between seventy

Presenter20:04

And in 75, when I actually started to move into a theatre situation, I got to know a lot of people in the folks scene, and we became very close friends. There was a circle of us of about 30 performers in the country that were really became close mates over the years. And we used to stay at each other's houses when we were in towns. And one of them is a guy that I love very dearly, a great person, and I think a great singer.

Presenter20:27

I'd like to take to the island with me a record of Dick Gawkin singing a song that I love about an early Socialist leader in in Glasgow called John McLean.

Speaker 320:38

It's hard work the speakin'. Ockum share he'll be tired the nicht I'll sleep on the flare mac and geege on the bed.

Speaker 320:47

The Hail City's quiet new it kens that he's restin' At Hameways Glesgaffriens, their fame and their pride The Reds will bewarn, my lads, and Scott'll and will march again. New great John Maclean has come in, say the Clyde.

Presenter21:08

Dick Gockin, the John MacLean March. What was the breakthrough? I mean, there you were, slogging away night after night in the clubs.

Presenter21:16

Well, what actually happened was that I felt that I'd got to the limit in folk clubs and that by seventy five I'd I'd done a lot of the folk clubs three or four times a year for the last three years and it was getting to the stage where I felt that it wasn't challenging enough and I didn't want to sit back and start easy peddling and taking it easy and and vegetating. I wanted something to drive me on. And I did a couple of gigs that other people put together in theatres and I like working in the theatre situation. I did a late night show at the University Theatre in Manchester and I enjoyed it and then I did Birmingham rep and I said to my wife, well why don't I actually promote a couple of concerts myself?

Presenter21:54

So in seventy five, in the spring, we got together and printed the posters and the tickets and I hired Bradford Library Theatre, um, the Duke's Playhouse, Lancaster, and the Octagon in Bolton, and in a week I did those three and they sold out and

Presenter22:10

I thought, well, there's a future in this. Now, what was nice about the theatres was that I was in total control of the environment and it it brought me on, I think, in in a great way. So that was the beginning of a break from the folk club tradition. And then in that year as well, in seventy five, uh I released a record called The Rochdale Cowboy, purely and simply as a giggle, it was a

Presenter22:32

thing that occurred to me one night when I was driving over the Pennines to work in Leeds and I put the radio on and there was a local radio station on talking about a cowboy club from Rochdale that met every week and went up on the hills and some of them dressed up as Indians and some of them dressed up as cowboys and they rode all over the peat bogs.

Presenter22:49

or ran over the Peep Mugs, I should think, firing bows and arrows and shouting Bang, bang, you're dead And then they met in this converted barn, which they'd called the Ponderosa or something, and then they they drank red eye and

Presenter23:01

I I and I I just fell over laughing because, I mean, I know, all right, there's a sealed knot society that reenacts the battles of the Civil War and what have you, but it did seem funny to me, an outsider at the time.

Mike Harding23:01

Yeah.

Presenter23:11

So I pulled into a label and I wrote It's hard being a cowboy in Rochdale.

Presenter23:15

Spurs don't fit right on me clogs. It's hard being a cowboy in Rochdale. People laugh when I ride past on my Alsatian dog.

Presenter23:22

And I got to the club that night and sang the chorus.

Presenter23:25

And the audience laughed, and I kept it in just as a throwaway. But anyway, to to shorten the story down as much as I can, I went to Germany with a band called the McAlmans doing a concerts for the lads out there. And I used to sing this thing every night. And Ian McCallman said to me, Why don't you write some verses round it and turn it into a song? I did. We recorded it. It went out and flying back from the Persian Gulf, where I'd been working out in Salalah and Mazeira, I got off the plane at Brysnorton, and my wife had come down to pick me up, and she said the record's gone into the charts at number thirty, and it's rising. And then some radio and television happened. Then we did all the radio and T V. I did Top of the Pop, sat on a stuffed Dalsatian dog, which was beamed out to Australia and Japan. God knows what they thought of that.

Mike Harding23:55

Some radio and television have been.

Presenter24:05

And uh that seemed to get more people into the concerts. But from then on it was a you know, the same pattern, if you like, that I've been doing for the last six years. There's been a concert tour and then T V and then books and radio and

Mike Harding24:16

Yeah.

Presenter24:18

Irish fights, barmets for fish suppers, anything that comes along. Record number six.

Presenter24:25

I love Jacques Brell as a songwriter, the French singer songwriter. I think he writes absolutely incredible songs. And I also love the late Alex Harvey, who is for my money one of the most dynamic rock and roll singers to come out of Britain. So I'd like Alex Harvey singing next.

Mike Harding24:43

Naked, a sin, an army, towel.

Mike Harding24:48

Covering my belly.

Mike Harding24:51

Some of us weep, some of us howl, knees turn to jelly, but next

Speaker 325:00

I was just a child, a hundred like me I followed a naked body, a naked body followed me

Presenter25:14

Jacques Breil's next sung by Alex Harvey. Now you look after everything yourself, don't you, Mike? I mean you've you've no agent. No. I've not got an agent or a a manager. I have an agent for my plays and an agent who looks after the book side of it, but I don't have anybody handling my artistic career as a performer. You've even got your own recording studio? Yeah, and my own l record label as well. You've handled all the finance yourself? Everything, yeah.

Presenter25:41

I had one brief experience with an agent who was to entertainment what Cyril Smith is to hang gliding, and um I should have realized there was something drastically wrong when the first place he sent me to was Morecambe out of season to do a concert on the end of the pier in a Force Nine gale, the audience clutching the rails of the pier as they staggered down on a Sunday night, waves lashing at them.

Speaker 126:01

Deny the

Presenter26:03

Below me the seagulls clinging to the barnacle encrusted gantries of this Victorian establishment, the dressing room with three life belts in it. I was waiting for Grace Darling to roll up to the back door any minute in a rowing boat.

Presenter26:16

Right. Now you've written the books of sketches. Have you published those yourself? No, they're not published by me, but um I've written them all myself. And you've written the plays?

Presenter26:26

Right.

Presenter26:27

which have done exceedingly well in the north. One came into the west end, but the west end wasn't ready.

Presenter26:31

That's the best way I've ever heard of putting it. Yes, uh, One Night Stand, which was a play about the rock and roll game in Manchester in 1962, did very well in Oldham and got extended and had a lovely cast who really worked hard at it and made it live. Came down to London and it came at a time when everybody thought London was going to really swing. At the time of the royal wedding, and everybody thought there was going to be a killing made in the theatres. And what happened? People came to the wedding and then stayed away in vast numbers from the theatres. There was no more money to promote it, and it got pulled off, which was a shame. But it was a good lesson because I learned how to handle West End management. That's more than most people have.

Speaker 127:02

But it was

Presenter27:09

Record number seven we got to.

Presenter27:11

Well, I have a great collection of comedy albums at home and records of people like Richard Pryor and Woody Allen. I love Dearly. So I'd like to take some comedy with me that well, I've got The Goons, which would be British comedy, so I'd like to take some American comedy'cause I love American comedians and I I think one of the funniest men I only have to see him and I and I fall about laughing is Mel Brooks. So I'd love to do the bit he did with Karl Raynor when he imagines that he's a two thousand year old man.

Speaker 327:37

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

Mike Harding27:46

Is it not?

Speaker 327:53

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

Mike Harding27:54

Are you

Speaker 327:57

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

Presenter27:58

The light

Presenter28:00

You thought it was they were just different type of colours.

Speaker 328:01

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

Presenter28:07

Mel Brooks with Karl Rayner, the two thousand year old man. You've got to a kind of pattern with your year now, haven't you, Mark? I mean you do the tour round the country, that's three or four months, and then the books. And then we go usually in the autumn we do a T V series based on the tour. The live show is then taken into a theater somewhere like Buxton on Blackpool and the cameras come in and we have five nights recording and then that's put out as a T V series. And then there's charity work as well, the concerts that I do for mentally and physically handicapped children and Settle and Giggleswick Brass Band as well, which is another charity I about. And um so that takes up quite a lot of time. And then there's the writing of plays, which is quite time consuming. It takes me a couple of hours each play. Really? As much as that? Well, that's if it's a long play. Short plays are easy. Well it's a two act play. Three act play, three hours play.

Speaker 128:41

Yeah.

Speaker 128:52

Tenme

Mike Harding28:59

Yeah.

Presenter29:00

And you go on long bicycle rides, and occasionally walk two or three hundred miles. Could you make a go of being a castaway?

Presenter29:09

Yes, I think so. If I had to answer the question seriously, I I've got a I'm I I'm asking you seriously. The one thing I have got is a great will to survive. I mean I've always said I want to be beaten to death by a jealous husband when I'm two hundred and nine. I like life too much to want to lie down and take it, so I would I would really make a go of it. Yes, I'd I tell you I would try and be rescued very, very hard.

Speaker 129:13

Uh

Mike Harding29:13

Yeah, okay.

Speaker 129:27

You gotta be a little bit more.

Presenter29:30

Well, I think the best thing to do will be to try.

Presenter29:32

and carve the palm trees so that they looked like Sam missiles and the American spy satellites would probably discover me.

Presenter29:40

All right.

Presenter29:41

Your last record.

Presenter29:43

One of the characters I met in the folk world was Diz Disley. I met him at a club run in London called The Troubadour years and years and years ago when I first started. The guitarist. Diz Disley, the jazz guitarist. And Diz a very strange and very wonderful person. Born in Canada, lived in Ingleton for a while where his mother taught school, which is just round the corner from the place I've got in the Yorkshire Dales. He was educated at Leeds, he's a cartoonist and he's arguably one of the greatest jazz guitarists of all time. And I'd love to hear him playing with probably the greatest jazz violinist, including Stuff Smith, and that's Stefan Grappelli. So I love Stefan Grapelli and Diz Disley playing Pennies from Heaven.

Presenter31:27

Bennis from Heaven Stefan Grappelli with the Dis Disley trio.

Presenter31:31

If you could take only one of the eight discs you've played, Mike, which would it be?

Presenter31:36

I take the Melbrooks record.

Presenter31:39

Because time after time hearing it still makes me laugh. And one luxury to have with you, one thing of no practical use that would give you pleasure. I'd like a complete set of one-inch Ordnance Survey maps, the old type done on linen, so I could spread them out and relive a lot of the walks I've done. And I would also like, if it's possible, a complete edition of the works of A. W. Wainwright, who is a walker in the north of England, who's done a lot of books about the fells and he's done beautiful drawings. So I'd like a set of Wainwright's books and a complete set of one-inch Ordnance Survey maps of the entire country so I could sit and relive all those walks that I've done in the late 19th. Yes, don't go on too much because we're stretching a point here. I was going to ask you to choose one book and you've already chosen a set of books, but as they're to go with the Ordnance Survey maps, I won't argue. And I'll ask you to choose one book apart from the Bible and Shakespeare, which are already there. I thought a lot about this particular one because I love books so much. The hardest thing is just choosing one. And I like a book of poetry and I love Jeremy Manley Hopkins and I want a book with him in it and with John Donne as well. So I choose the New Oxford Book of English Verse edited by Helen Gardner.

Speaker 132:17

Yeah.

Speaker 132:23

Uh

Speaker 132:25

There

Speaker 132:31

Already.

Presenter32:54

Right. And thank you, Mike Harding, for letting us hear your Desert Island discs. Thank you. Goodbye, everyone.

Speaker 133:25

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