Keith Waterhouse

Speaker 30:00

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

Speaker 30:05

For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in 1983.

Speaker 30:11

And the presenter was Roy Plumley.

Presenter0:30

This week, our castaway is Keith Waterhouse, the novelist, playwright, and newspaper columnist. Keith, how important is music in your life? Well, it's never been as important as it ought to be, serious music. It's always been on that list of things to do, you know, like reading Decline and Fall, and I've never actually got round it. In fact, one of my earliest ambitions was to be a famous composer. And I did, as a child, teach myself musical notation. And in fact, I set off to write an opera called Robin Hood. But I got more interested in writing the words than writing the dots. So I think that was really the end of my musical career. Having written it, could you sing it?

Presenter1:11

I don't think I could even play it. I can play anything with one finger on a piano. I can pick out any melody. That's as far as it goes. Do you buy discs? I do. And uh I file them very neatly and I never play them.

Presenter1:25

Did you find it very difficult to choose just eight that would have to last for a long, long time? Yes, yes, I did. I can't say that I had any great thoughts, but I found that I did have a lot of favourite records, and I was very sorry to ditch a lot of them. What's the first one you've chosen? The first one is, well, it pretty well sets a style of my taste. I'm very fond of musicals, and one of the best musicals I know is Guys and Dolls, which was recently revived brilliantly at the National Theatre. And one of the wittiest numbers in Guys and Dolls is Guys and Dolls. And this is from which cast? This is from the American production with Stubby Kay and Co.

Speaker 22:09

When a lazy slob takes a good steady job and he smells

Keith Waterhouse2:15

From Vitalis and Barbara Sowell.

Keith Waterhouse2:18

Call it dumb, call it clever. I'll bet you can give odds for ever.

Speaker 22:23

Remember that the guy is only doing it for some dolls, subdolls, subdolle, the guy I saw me doing for some time

Presenter2:36

The title song from Guys and Dolls with Stubby Kay and Johnny Silver and the orchestra of the original New York cast.

Presenter2:45

Keith, where do you come from? I come from Leeds. I know your father was a a greengrocer in a small way of business. Does that mean that childhood was a time of hardship? I suppose it was, but it it was only retrospective hardship. I mean it seemed to me at the time that we were leading a very rich life. And of course, being the son of a master greengrocer, as he called himself on my birth certificate, I mean he soaked fruit and veg from a horse and cart, meant that we were the only family in the neighbourhood that got the pomegranate. So they were pretty good days, I thought. Later on, I learned that we were poor.

Speaker 33:15

Yeah.

Keith Waterhouse3:16

It's so

Keith Waterhouse3:21

Yeah.

Presenter3:21

Were you a big family? Uh yes, five. Did you do a lot of reading?

Presenter3:25

I did, yes. I still got permanently scorched knees from my public library reading. Reading everything. Reading everything that came my way, and simply by a series of ludicrous accidents, discovering the kind of writers that it's a good idea to read. You know, from very trashy sort of public school stories, finding a public school writer called P. G. Woodhouse, for example, and going on to him, and then getting into the adult shelves and looking for woodhouses and finding that there was this woman called Evelyn Waugh or Evelyn Woof, as she was known, you see, and you know, and then I went to all Evelyn Waugh without ever knowing he was a man, in fact, and real random readership, you know. There was no radio in the house, I believe. There wasn't until I was about 11. Why was that? Was there a kind of prejudice? Well, no, it was just, you know, we needed various things and a wireless we got at the beginning of the war. In fact, we had one of those old accumulator sets, and I had to go down and get the accumulator filled with acid in order to listen to bandwagon and stuff. Well, it did mean you had more time for reading and more concentration for reading.

Keith Waterhouse3:57

She will be

Keith Waterhouse4:12

Recorded here.

Keith Waterhouse4:30

Play Shoe

Presenter4:32

Now, obviously, you went to school. Were you bright at school?

Presenter4:35

I was good at the things that I wanted to do and uh I wanted to read and I wanted to write and I wanted to know things about places like geography and history and I wasn't good at adding up and stuff of that nature. You wanted to write. Now where did that come and was there any moment you can pinpoint? I can't remember when

Presenter4:53

I didn't want to write. I remember scribbling, you know, as as children do in uh imagined writing, because I so much wanted to write, and uh I was hawked off to school at the age of about three as a precocious child and delivered to a Miss Peace.

Presenter5:11

who took me, I think, quite illegally into the school and taught me to read simply to keep me quiet. I think I came out of the egg wishing to be a writer and knowing that I had to be a writer. You had a fascination with Edgar Wallace at one time because he was a lad who had sold newspapers and hadn't had the education you had had, but he succeeded. Well, I'd read very early on Margaret Lane's wonderful biography of Edgar Wallace. Great book. And a great book. And what influenced me greatly in that was that there was a picture of Edgar Wallace wearing a war correspondent's hat when he was in the South African Wars, a military hat that said war correspondent on it.

Presenter5:56

And I used to be taken into town by my mother and I used to see men selling the Yorkshire Evening Post and they wore these hats that said Evening Post and I thought these are clearly reporters, correspondents, who when they've done the reporting they go out and sell the paper. You know, it's seemed to be like that. I would love to do that. You see, I will be a reporter and I will cover fires and wars and things and then at the end of the day I will stand outside the corn exchange and sell newspapers. A wonderful life and I decided to be a reporter.

Keith Waterhouse6:11

No, it seemed to be about that one.

Presenter6:24

You left school, I believe, at fifteen. What was the first job you went of?

Presenter6:29

Well, I can't say that I went after a job. I was sent after a job. I I went a clerk in. I'd learned uh double entry bookkeeping. And I was sent to a firm called J.T. Buckton Sons, We Never Sleep, Limited, the Leeds Undertakers. And there were also by a curious intermarriage of firms, there were also estate agents and they also ran a taxi company. So I diversified quite early so that I was at one and the same time.

Presenter7:00

an undertaker's clerk and a garage hand uh and uh a rent collector. So it was a pretty uh interesting uh live, a lot going on. And I had the use of a typewriter, that was the main thing. That was invaluable. Yes, yes. Good. Let's have your second record.

Keith Waterhouse7:05

Interesting.

Keith Waterhouse7:09

That was

Keith Waterhouse7:11

Yeah.

Presenter7:13

When I was a young rent collector, when I when I wasn't uh undertaking, I used to get out a lot to the uh small Yorkshire woollen valleys. And that time you couldn't go ten yards with without hearing a choral society in one of the Tynroof tabernacles.

Presenter7:31

And uh as often as not they were singing uh Hannel's Messiah and belting it out. So I'd like to hear the Hallelujah Chorus done by the Huddersfield Choral Society.

Presenter8:40

A hallelujah chorus from Handel's Messiah, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Huddersfield Choral Society, conducted by Sir Malcolm Sargent. Did you get mixed up at all in the macabre side of undertaking?

Presenter8:53

No, I was more at the farcical end. Uh really. We were uh a number of clerks. The actual uh shifting off to the cemetery and the crematory and so on was uh uh that was the more serious end of the business. I wasn't really involved in that.

Presenter9:09

Now you had this typewriter at your disposal. What were you writing? I was writing everything I could think of. I was writing articles and short stories and I was sending them off to magazines and they were sending them back. Did you sell any? I did. I earned two guineas, I think, in the first year that I had the typewriter available. And I think I earned twelve pounds a second. Yes, I was making profits. Things were moving up. And you sell newspapers? Yes, yes. Did you collect them from the newspaper office? Did you get into the offices yourself? No, I didn't. I collected them from the news agents and then I delivered them round the estate, the housing estate where I lived. But I broke records then because I had four morning rounds and two evening rounds. I was doing six newspaper rounds. This was dramatic. I was earning a bust amount of money. I mean, I think upwards of a pound a week I was earning.

Keith Waterhouse9:57

This was dramatic.

Presenter10:03

And then, of course, you had to do your national service, so you disappeared into the REF. What were your duties there? Minimal. I was on light short story writing duties, I I think mainly. I enrolled as a clerk because, again, I always had to have that typewriter, you see. I didn't mind what I did, so long as the the typewriter was at hand, so I continued my great collection of uh rejection slips. And when you were demobilized, what happened? I'd been writing little bits and pieces for my local evening paper, the Yorkshire Evening Post, and uh they had

Keith Waterhouse10:13

I think mainly

Keith Waterhouse10:18

Yeah.

Presenter10:33

a mad editor at the time who actually took me on, gave me a job, took me on the stuff, which was a a a great slice of luck. I I had a mentor on on the Yorkshire Evening Post, Con Gordon, who's still there in fact, who persuaded the editor that I got some kind of talent and that he might be well advised to take me on for a month and he he did and I I stayed on for a couple of years.

Presenter10:55

Well, there you are. You've started as a professional writer. Yes. Your third record. Well, again, you see, I was going back to those wool towns now as a half-baked reporter and another sound was that was the great brass band sound which still goes on. I'm happy to I'd I would take anything by uh a brass band, but I I would settle for uh Blaze Away.

Presenter12:17

Blaze Away played by the grand mass bands of Fairey, Fodens, and BMC, conducted, of course, by Harry Mortimer. So at last.

Presenter12:26

You were a professional wordsmith.

Presenter12:29

What particular niche did you fill eventually on the Yorkshire Evening Post? I was a feature writer. I liked doing colour pieces and so on. I did for a while. It was a time when it was very difficult to get your name in the newspaper. You were called E.P. Reporter, you know. I thought, I've got to get my name in this newspaper somehow, because I want to go to Fleet Street, you know, and you have to have a batch of cuttings to take to Fleet Street, and they don't believe you if it says E.P. Reporter on them. And so.

Keith Waterhouse12:37

Uh

Presenter12:58

I hit on the idea of becoming the Yorkshire Union Post walking reporter. I walked to London and filed reports, each day progress reports. I then walked all the Yorkshire rivers from source to mouth. I walked the Pennine Way and had a very jolly year of it, in fact, simply wandering about and meeting people and filling a notebook and writing pieces. Better than doing the coroner's court. Of course. You were the countryman, Mano the Dales.

Keith Waterhouse13:26

Oh yeah, yes, yes, yes.

Keith Waterhouse13:30

Yeah, yeah.

Presenter13:32

Apart from the pieces for the newspaper, were you doing any other writing? Yes, I was. I was I was learning the craft of fiction. I was doing it very badly, but I was learning it and writing stuff and throwing it away. Or sending it off, which came to the same thing because people send it back. But I was I was gradually learning how to write. What was your first novel? My first novel was called There is a Happy Land, which was about Elide's childhood. That was after I suddenly found out that, you know, you didn't have to write about all sorts of romantic things that you knew nothing whatever about, that you could actually write about your own background and make it seem interesting. And your next one, Billy Liar, about a boy who lived in a fantasy world, to some extent you?

Presenter14:14

I suppose so. I suppose it was, except I I think I was a harder case than Billy because I was determined, whatever fantasies I had, I wasn't determined to make them come true, which was which was, you know, to get to London. Uh I mean, Billy never gets to London and uh you know make some kind of a career as a writer. That was all I wanted to do. Uh uh Billy had much grander ideas. He's a little upmarket from me, but yes, there is a lot of uh me in him, obviously. And Billy Lyre really took off.

Presenter14:41

Yes, it did. It seemed, still does, to uh hit a chord with people. Well, it was nineteen fifty-nine. It's been copied since, of course, very much. But then it went to the

Presenter14:51

He was a new kind of hero. I suppose he was, yes. So you gave up journalism right away? I'd already given up wage packet journalism before then, in fact, yes. And then came Jubb, which I haven't read. What was that about? Well, Jubb was about one of these very sad figures in raincoats and bottle thick glasses who haunts Soho and goes looking in windows. And I I wanted to write a sympathetic novel about a very unsympathetic character, really. Did you see? I think so. I think it worked, yes. A lot of people are quite fond of him. They don't want to meet him, but they're quite fond of him.

Keith Waterhouse15:19

Did you succeed?

Presenter15:26

What's your fourth record?

Presenter15:28

Fourth record is is well, it's really back to those Billy Liar days and my own kind of brilliant dance hall days, and that's Glenn Miller, American Patrol.

Speaker 316:07

Uh

Presenter16:39

The Glen Miller band playing American Patrol to remind you of your dancehall days. Would I be right in saying you've evoked those a bit in one of your recent novels called In the Mood? Yes, I suppose I have. It's it's a little uh later period. It's 1951, but in fact they're sort of pre-teenager teenagers, you know, bit when they were just youths rather than being uh a kind of consumer market. Yes, I have rather gone back to that uh that time.

Presenter17:05

Now, Keith, among your mates in Leeds was a character named Willis Hall. How well did you know him? Very well in uh in in Leeds, did I know him very well. Now, as youths, we were members of the sort of um

Presenter17:17

The Bloomsbury set of the Mukau Milk Bar, you know. There are about half a dozen of us who used to hang around with penguin books in our sight pockets talking about blank verse and all the things we were going to do when we got to Chelsea. Chelsea was the great goal in life. We went our separate ways. He had a success in the theatre with an army play, the long and the short and the tall. And you got together to adapt Billy Liar for the theatre and screen. Was that his idea or yours? It was Billy Lyre just happened to be pretty well concurrent with the long and the short and the tall. When Willis had come to London, he simply called me up out of the blue and said, What about us making a play of Billy Liar? And I said, Why not? You know, try anything. And we made a play of Billy Lyre. And while we were hanging around, we'd been talking about our old

Keith Waterhouse17:20

No, we would uh

Keith Waterhouse17:47

Yes, or yours.

Presenter18:09

Northern days, we wrote another play called Celebration and we somehow found that we were a firm, a company. You became known known as The Factory. You began to churn out very fast some very successful products. You had an office, I mean you did the thing properly. Oh, we did, yes, yes. We had, indeed, we had a flash office in Bomb Street, yes. A musical version of Arnold Bennett's The Card, I remember. Yes, yes. How did that do? Okay, I mean, not you know, it wasn't one of the the longest running ten musicals of all time, but uh we were very pleased with it. It was a very good production and uh uh we we were very happy with it. An adaptation of an Italian play did well too. We did two adaptations from uh DiFilipe's uh Philomena and uh Saturday, Sunday, Monday.

Presenter18:57

Which is still running in various parts of the world. Oh, that's handy. And original screenplays. Yes, several original screenplays and adaptations and so on. Oh, yes, we were a right little factory, as you say. How did you work together? Who held the pencil?

Keith Waterhouse19:00

And original screen.

Presenter19:11

It was uh well uh who was at the typewriter, it was who happened to um sit down at it and um the other would walk about. We'd take it in terms, really.

Presenter19:22

And uh in between times play Monopoly or Bagatelle. We're great games players, in fact. Uh uh it's great it helps the or we told ourselves it helps the thinking process. I think it it helps you get better at playing Monopoly.

Presenter19:36

Train cord number five.

Keith Waterhouse19:36

Five.

Presenter19:37

I would have loved to have been in London when it was smothered with music halls, but unable to do that I've built quite a collection of old music hall records, the thickness of soup plates of uh you know people like Little Titch and George Formby Senior. Um out of that batch I've taken uh Harry Champion of uh En Elder fame, and this is a very vulgar song, Cover It Over Quick Jemima.

Speaker 220:03

We'd like a garbage, so we popped into a plan. A chef he set the side of that she did upon me life. I pointed to the market base and handed to the wife. Cover it over quick, Jemima, cover it over quick. I've got tasters in the beans, I can double do what he means. Can't you see, we shall lose em in the dick. He's up in a look at your rubbish reports, the cover it over quick.

Presenter20:33

A rare and precious old record by Harry Champion. Cover it over quick, Jemima. Now you and Willis Hall, as a matter of course, moved south.

Presenter20:42

A very successful collaboration on many projects, but but your books remained your own.

Presenter20:48

Yes, well we we both continue to do our own things. I don't neither of us want it to be simply a pair all the time. Now your books are comedies, but treat them cautiously because they bite.

Presenter21:01

I think that's true, yes. I think I'm incapable of writing except in a humorous way. I mean, I I think a humour is is really the anaesthetic actually. You can cut quite deeply with humour and and people are laughing before they've notice how deep the cut has has gone, and they notice after how deeply the cut has gone, really. You did a sequel to Billy Liar. Billy Liar on the Moon, yes. And one called Office Life.

Presenter21:26

Yes, office life is uh is it's rather unusual for me. It's kind of fantasy well, it's not really a fantasy, it's about this vast bureaucratic building where nobody does any work. Why am I saying it's a fantasy?

Presenter21:38

One about Earls Court life. You live part of the time in Earth. I live part of the time in Earlscourt. I'm very fond of Earlscourt. I'm woken up by the four o'clock scream every morning there. It's a good roughish, lively district. And I read a novel called Muggy Muggins, which is set around Earlscourt. Sometimes funny, oh dear, rather than funny, ha ha. But the most interesting picture of Earls Court.

Keith Waterhouse21:42

I I live I live

Keith Waterhouse21:49

There's a

Keith Waterhouse21:55

That was

Keith Waterhouse22:00

Yeah.

Presenter22:03

And Not Matching the Others is is rather a sad book about Lost Innocence in the Mood, the one we've already mentioned. And you said that in the year before the Festival of Brittany. That struck me as being a very personal book. I suppose so, because it is about Lost Innocence, really, and we all have that. And I d I I wanted it to be a kind of bittersweet, happy book, which I think it is.

Presenter22:29

1951, it's not the time of my own adolescence. I deliberately.

Presenter22:33

I set it then because that was a an upbeat year for England. I want it to be a rather upbeat sort of book. Enjoyed very much writing it, but it was quite a deliberate journey, I think, into the past. And uh it was an antidote for me from Maggie Muggins, which really had me a bit on edge when I finished it, because that's rather a melancholy book at the end of the day. Is there a new one on the way? Yes. It's it's not a novel. I've I've just committed what may be an act of uh literary suicide, and that is the diary of a nobody, which many of your castaways have taken off to their desert island. Journal of Holloway Clark in Victorian Times, Mr. Charles Pouter. I have discovered that all the time that he was keeping his diary, Mrs. Pooter was keeping hers. What an excellent idea. And so I've done Mrs. Pooter's diary.

Presenter23:27

Mrs. Puta's Dari, that's going to be the title. That's the title. Great. Record number six. Just going back to music hall days, there was one music hall period that I did live through. That was the Days of the Empire Varieties Theatres. And of course the great radio varieties days. One of the stars, great stars, is Rob Wilton, the master of the unfinished sentence and the pause. And this this is one of his classic monologues, The Day War Broke Out.

Keith Waterhouse23:38

Yeah.

Keith Waterhouse23:56

The first

Presenter23:57

First day I got me home guard uniform.

Presenter24:00

I'm getting the trousers next year. But the first day I got my

Keith Waterhouse24:04

I went home and I slipped upstairs and I put it on.

Keith Waterhouse24:08

and I came down into the kitchen, and the missage looked at me and she said,

Keith Waterhouse24:13

What I supposed to be?

Keith Waterhouse24:17

I said, supposed to be I said, I'm one of the home god.

Keith Waterhouse24:22

She said what

Presenter24:23

One of the home

Presenter24:25

She said, What are the others like?

Presenter24:29

Rob Wilton.

Presenter24:30

Keith, you're working discipline. Now, really, you're working on two levels. You're writing novels. You're writing a column for the Daily Mirror twice a week.

Presenter24:39

How do you describe the content of that column, by the way? Did it social comment or?

Presenter24:46

What are your terms of reference? Well, my terms of reference are six inches by twelve. Really, I've got that oblong on Monday and and Thursday. It's it's a wonderful assignment because it's my own private little newspaper they've given me there and uh and I've I fill it as I will. What I aim to do is simply to um entertain. I mean, you know, not in the sense of doing a juggling act, but I mean in the way you you entertain someone in your home, you know, talk about the events of the day or whatever uh takes my fancy. Uh you know I take the view if it takes my fancy it will take other people's too. You've been doing that column a long time. I've been doing it uh

Presenter25:22

Thirteen years. Right, so that's novels, the Daily Mirror, and you're a regular contributor to Punch. Yes, I do a piece uh each three weeks for Punch. Which means that you're always dropping one job to take up another. Yes. Life's a series of deadlines. So do you work to a set routine or? No, I work to a ragbag routine.

Keith Waterhouse25:35

Yeah.

Presenter25:43

I put things down and I pick them up. I've got a very low attention span and I'm incapable of working on anything for more than an hour at a time and I think that's the reason that I've fallen into this way of life where I've got to be doing half a dozen things at once. I've noticed if I only have one thing to do, it doesn't get done. I have to wait until two other very urgent jobs come along. Is there some cherished product at the back of your mind, a big long novel, a blockbusting film, whatever? Is there something that you want to tackle when you can find time, when you can get the concentration? There isn't really. I did actually get that out of the way. I thought there was a kind of long novel, you know, the 250,000 blockbuster, and I started it and I realised this is not for me. You know, I'm 80,000 word length. So I got that out of the way some years ago. My long-term aim is always the next one, you know, clear the desk, get half a day off. Yes, does that ever happen? No. Record number seven.

Presenter26:44

Number seven is Vorczak's New World Symphony, which I I think is very visual music. You can you can just see the skyscrapers shimmering in the sea.

Presenter27:52

An excerpt from Vorschark's New World Symphony, the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Istvan Kirtesch. Now, Keith, you've been to the United States quite a bit, working on films. Yes, in fact, Willis and I used to do a kind of shuttle service between here and Hollywood at one time. Which ones do you remember particularly? It's not so much the films there that I remember particularly, especially as many of them were made. I mean, that's the way of the film industry. I think the actual trip I remember was one on which we didn't get a screen credit, one on which we were asked, or beckoned rather, into the presence of Mr. Alfred Hitchcock. Which film was that? Well, it wasn't one of his best. It was a film called Torn Curtain, which rightly was not happy with, and he wanted a dialogue polish, a doctorine job, and we were offered a vast amount of money to go over and polish the dialogue. Little did he know we would have done it for nothing, of course. Simply to go and sit at the feet of the master. We got there and found that he'd come and shoot in the film and found that he'd little interest in polishing the dialogue. What he wanted us principally to do was keep the actors out of his non-existent hair. I mean, you know his attitude about actors. Expendable. And to explain this rather complicated story to people who might be worried about it. Well, we didn't know what the story was. So, you know, we just hung around basically being paid a lot of money watching Hitchcock shoot. And we failed so utterly in our mission that in fact Paul Newman did go to Hitchcock and ask for an explanation of a particular scene which we ought to have given him. And it's a very simple scene when he is in some cafe or something and he's being handed a parcel by Julie Andrews. And he was doing very much the sort of actor's studio approach of what am I doing when I'm handed this parcel? Am I thinking about her? Am I thinking about the guy coming down the stairs? Am I thinking about what's in the parcel? Which we should have explained to him. So studio time was being wasted. We hadn't explained it. Hitch listened very carefully and this was for us a valuable lesson in filmmaking. He said, well, Mr. Newman, I'll tell you what I have in mind here. You'll take the parcel from Miss Andrews and as you do so you will look a little to the left of camera and then the audience will say hello, what's this fellow looking at? Then I'll cut away, do you see, and I'll show them what you're looking at. That's the whole art of film in one sentence. What was he looking at?

Presenter30:27

He was looking at a blank wall, but I mean Hitch put in the scene later.

Keith Waterhouse30:29

Hitch put in the sea later.

Presenter30:31

Right.

Presenter30:33

Now we've talked about your work a lot. What about play? Do you still walk the length of the Pennines for amusement? How do you relax? No, I walk the length of the Oscourt Road. I walk about a lot, but that's really working. That's working things out. That's thinking, Tom. That's me. That's thinking. My hobby is lunch. I love going out to lunch. Have you any leisure accomplishments, however minimal, that might be useful for a desert island? Could you put up a hut?

Keith Waterhouse30:54

Yeah.

Presenter31:07

I could design a hut.

Presenter31:09

Well, that's a start.

Presenter31:11

I could design a raft.

Presenter31:13

As a boy, I used to design rafts on Tom Sawyer lines. I even set sail on a door on the not very far on a stream. We took water in through the keyhole, but I was setting off to the North Sea. But I had a proper mast and all that, so I was, you know, I got that far. What about fishing? Done any fishing? No, too squeamish. No, I'd have to be a vegetarian for the duration. You're going to be a very uncomfortable castaway. Yes. And fruit. Fruit. I can eat fruit.

Keith Waterhouse31:20

On gap.

Presenter31:44

That's Californian salads I can make myself. Well, good luck. Your last record, what's that? Well, this is the uh freelance writers' anthem. It's Razzle Dazzle from the musical Chicago. Why do you say it's the freelance writers' anthem?

Keith Waterhouse31:46

Yeah.

Presenter31:58

Because it's all about um keeping balls in the air and winging it, which every freelance knows.

Keith Waterhouse32:05

Long as you keep them way off balance, how can they start you?

Speaker 232:06

But way off balance

Keith Waterhouse32:11

You got no talents. Razzle Dazzle. Razzle Dazzle. Razzle Dazzle.

Speaker 232:16

Uh

Speaker 332:16

So guys

Keith Waterhouse32:20

And they'll take it once on

Presenter32:31

Razzle Dazzle from Chicago by Jerry Auberbach and some of the New York cast. If you would take only one discard of the H who played this, which would it be?

Presenter32:41

If I take guys and dolls, can I have the L P surrounding it? Can I do it? Oh, yes, oh, oh, that's it. You'll get the whole I know it by heart, you see, and all those numbers are old friends. I would I would like guys and dolls.

Keith Waterhouse32:45

Oh yes,

Presenter32:51

And one luxury to take with you, one thing you'd like to have, but that it's of no practical use. If I could have a battery driven video recorder and television screen, could I take my eight Desert Island movies?

Presenter33:08

No. Well, I don't know. It would be mean to say you couldn't. Yes, eight movies on on a video machine, but I think we can power one with solar batteries. That'll be better than that. As long as I don't have to work the thing.

Keith Waterhouse33:18

The song was I don't know

Presenter33:19

Right. And one book. You have the Bible, the authorized version of the Bible, and your complete works of Shakespeare.

Presenter33:26

and one other book.

Presenter33:27

I'd want to be uh reminded of England, and the kind of England that I want to be reminded of is the England of backyards and allotments and worksheds and pigeon lofts and so on. I would like a year's bound volume of the Exchange and Motte.

Presenter33:44

We're right.

Presenter33:46

A year's bound volume of The Exchange and Martin. Make up your mind which year you'd like. And thank you, Keith Waterhouse, for letting us hear your Desert Island disc. Thank you. Goodbye, everyone.

Speaker 334:23

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