Peter Bull

Peter Bull0:00

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

Peter Bull0:05

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

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And the presenter was Roy Plumley.

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On our Desert Island this week is Peter Bull, who's an actor, author, autobiographer, and an authority on Teddy Bears. Peter, how well could you stand up to loneliness?

Presenter0:42

I don't think very well, frankly. I have a great many friends. I am very fortunate in my friends. And I find that when I am alone for more than about two days I am apt to start talking to myself, and a good deal of rubbish at that. Do you think music would be helpful?

Presenter0:59

I think music extremely helpful, but only certain types of music. Normally, is music important in your life? Do you have to have a ration of it every day?

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Yes, I do, but I'm afraid it's on rather a low brow key. I'm not a great classical addict. Have you any musical skill yourself? Do you play an instrument?

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I play the pianola beautifully.

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You sing.

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I'd rather not discuss that. Right. Did you find it difficult to choose just eight disks that may have to last a long time?

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Yes, I did. I spent really about three you'll think I'm exaggerating. I spent almost three weeks on it. Have you a big collection of discs?

Peter Bull1:36

Perhaps you will

Presenter1:38

I got an enormous collection of discs and I uh played them a very great deal.

Presenter1:44

Uh for a short time and then I don't want to hear them again for a long time and then I like playing them again. So what's the first one you would play on your island?

Peter Bull1:48

Yeah.

Presenter1:53

Well, the first one I'd play is is really a kind of sentimental thing because I fell in love with the theatre at a very early age. And in the holidays I thought about nothing except going to the theatre. And it was musicals that really attracted me, because it was the day of the great stars. And in those days you queued outside for your seat, for the pit or the gallery, which was all I could afford. And I sat on something called a camp stool.

Presenter2:18

and um sometimes, if it was her first night, I used to queue from seven in the morning until the actual doors opened. And the personality I remember almost most vividly of all was Josie Collins, and I my first record would be her singing From the Maid of the Mountains, Love Will Find a Way.

Speaker 32:37

But it catches a

Presenter2:40

Yeah.

Presenter2:45

Wait in the way.

Peter Bull2:46

Uh Yeah. Yeah.

Peter Bull2:48

Uh

Speaker 42:48

Uh

Peter Bull2:48

Fuck you.

Speaker 42:49

I've rewarded

Speaker 32:52

Oh god. Oh my god, and all my

Presenter3:05

The voice of Josie Collins.

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You are a Londoner, aren't you, Peter? Yes, always been. Your father was a politician and privy councillor. Are you a member of a large family?

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I have three brothers, one of whom was killed in the war and another one became very high in the Ministry of Transport well, London Transport actually, and my eldest surviving brother is a lawyer.

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Now, you were educated at Winchester. What were you good at? I don't think I was good at anything, frankly. I wasn't happy at school.

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And I kept on being beaten by my headmaster for sending to actresses for their photographs. You were beaten for that? Well, I was when a rather extraordinary picture of mister Lulabank had arrived.

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I was beaten for that, yes, because I because you forbid me to put it up in my study.

Peter Bull3:50

Because I

Presenter3:53

What did you want to be?

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I think I really wanted to be in the theatre then, but my my housemaster at Winchester, who is now deceased,

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I used to write in my reports that Peter really shouldn't show so much interest in the theatre because the other boys don't like it, but the other boys liked it frightfully because I had a lot of quite untrue and

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I'm afraid rather wicked stories to tell about. And the best collection of actresses' photographs in the lower fourth. Absolutely certainly.

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Now when you left Winchester

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You went to the University of Tours, which sounds rather grand. L'Axon etre pure en tour.

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But actually I never met any French people there. I mean I met a lot of Americans and Scandinavians and every other race, but it was very difficult to find French people there. But I did dance a lot there to Le Jaz and um unfortunately I wrote an account back to my father of a fancy dress dance in which I had gone dressed as a tomato and my lady friend had gone dressed, I'm afraid, in a top hat and a brussier and a very small pair of knickers. My father came out on the next train, I'm afraid, and took me straight back to England. That was the end of my university career care in tour.

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So you returned to London. What did you do? What was the first job you took? The first job, he he wanted me to be an accountant. I didn't want to be an accountant.

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However, he settled for putting me in in something called the Great Eight, which was the social society newspapers of the time the Tatar, the Bystander, The Sketch, the Illustrated London News, The Graphic, and The Sporting Dramatic. The Glossies. The Glossies. And I was in the editorial department.

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And for a very, very brief time, I'm here to tell you I was Eve in the Letters of Eve because my brother was a debutante delight, and so he used to report on all the dances he went to. And I used to put this in Letters of Eve. And I used to go to the first nights in the gallery and pretend I'd been sitting in the stalls and I described all the costumes and so on. But after four libel cases I was had to stop being Eve and I had to go back back to doing something else altogether. I was then put in the advertising department. Which was less rewarding, I presume.

Peter Bull5:45

Um

Presenter5:59

But it was awful. I had to go around collecting advertisements from people and I'm afraid I ended up always by asking for friends to put their advertisements into the Tatla.

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And then I got onto Graphic, which almost immediately after I joined went smash. And then I went on a paper called The Ideal Home, and that was awful. And that was the end of that. My father didn't want me to go on the stage, as is perfectly reasonable. But he died, and I'm afraid the moment after he died, I was on the stage, well, almost immediately, after I'd had a few lessons. Which was a turning point in your life and a point at which we might have your second record.

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Well, during this period it was a very curious period.

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And one of the most glamorous things I remember, although I suppose memory plays tricks.

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We must remember I was at seventeen and a half at the time, but I did have a dinner jacket.

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And I also had a dear lady friend called Mary Cook, who was teaching dancing at a dancing school, and all the girls at the dancing school had to turn up at a very smart night club called The Bat.

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There the girls and their partners were paid fifteen shillings a night.

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and their suppers were thrown in.

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and they had to start the dancing.

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and as soon as five couples were dancing we could sit down and have our supper.

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Harry Roy was in charge of the band, and the Duke of Windsor used to come quite often, and it seemed to be the absolute height of glamour.

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And I would really like to play a Harry Roy record, just to remind me of these incredibly glamorous times of me in my dinner jacket and Mary in her green dress and dancing round and longing for five couples to get up so that we'd get back to our scrambled eggs and bacon. What would you like Harry Roy and his band to play on this occasion?

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Well, it's Tiger Rag I I seem to remember so vividly.

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Tiger Rag by Harry Roy and his orchestra. So you quit the world of journalism, Peter? I did.

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For good.

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The first play I was ever in was a a colossal flop. I walked on in a play called If I Were You. Pirandello, isn't it? No, funnily enough, this was a play about the pogrom of the Jews. It was very gloomy, and it was at the Shaftesbury Theatre, the old Shaftesbury Theatre in Shaftesbury Avenue, and Sidney Carroll put it on. And I got thirty shillings a week. And I swung a champagne bottle around my head on the first act and played a very old janitor in the last act. And as I knew nothing about makeup, a very nice actor called Frith Bambre used to help me make up because he'd been to the Royal Academy and knew all about makeup. And that was the end of that. But then I got into a series of plays with a great Austrian actress, Elizabeth Bergner. Oh, yes, you were an Escape Me Nova, weren't you? I was indeed. I played four parts in that, exactly the same, although I was meant to be an old man in one scene, a drunk man in another scene, and a young man in another. And I think sort of middle-aged one in the other. But it was a very, very happy run. Well, there's glory for you, because it was a great Western success right at the outset of your career. Oh, yes, indeed, and it went to New York afterwards, and Miss Berg insisted on taking us on. I was her bodyguard in New York. And I used to have to guide her through the stage door through all the fans and get her into her she was a tiny figure to get her into her car. And after that you went to lesser things. You had a good spell of a weekly rep.

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Yes, in Coventry.

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for o about six months. I thought I'd better learn a bit about acting,'cause I really hadn't done an awful lot, as you can see, but I mean not actually with lines.

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And I was kept on there, I'm playing a series of butlers. I played so many butlers that I had a special suit made, which I still wear, to play butlers in. It came from Burton's, and that was where I first met Robert Morley. And um I'd been in this play called England Expects, which is about Nelson, and I only have one line. I played a sailor, a sailor, not in a butler's suit. And um I had to say, My Lord the Leviathan has been sunk and one night I said, My Lord the Lusitania has been sunk and and a afterwards my agent came round who wasn't less pleased and and the fat man said, That's the worst performance I've ever seen in my life and that's how my friendship with Robert Morley started.

Presenter10:46

You had one rather bad patch when there was nothing happening and you worked with a company presenting communist propaganda plays. Goodness me, that's bringing that up. Yes, indeed. We used to play the Phoenix Theatre on Sunday night and several town halls the following nights. I was always playing the capitalist monster, but I used to carry a copy of a tattler under my arm to make sure no one misunderstood.

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Well, let's have your third record. What's that to be?

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My third record is really to do with the beginning of the war, when I used to spend a great deal of a night dancing at a night club called The Nathaus with Miss Hermani Gingold.

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Now, Miss Gingell and I had known each other for quite a long time and it got in the papers that we were engaged. So indeed the engagement has been now going on since nineteen forty. And although the ring has been flung back and forth once or twice, we've somehow survived. She she is, I think, one of the funniest women I've ever ever met and she's still a remarkable and dear friend of mine. I see her whenever I go to New York.

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And I would love to hear her sing and one of my favourite numbers, which was written by her one of her husbands, who was who was marvellous writer called Eric Mashwitz.

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And she once sang a song which titled Has Found in a Ditch by Erich Mair Schwitz, but that is not the number I want to hear. The one I would like to hear is Queen of Song.

Speaker 312:17

Although I was born in Australia, and known there as Millicent Brown.

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No one could call me a failure, Under I was, but not dull.

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And Millie, I said, you've got plenty of push One night of love is worth two in the bush.

Speaker 312:39

Queen of Song, Queen of Song, I'm the reason the tenors go wrong.

Presenter12:45

Miss Hermione Gingold, Queen of Song. Peter, in your early days in the theatre, before the war, in fact, you became manager of a distinguished company presenting plays each summer in Perenporth.

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which previously had not had the reputation of being a theatre town.

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Oh, no. Uh it's Robert Morley and I decided on it and we took a Women's Institute which had about a hundred and ten seats, I suppose, and the stage was only six feet deep and in actual fact the back door of the stage went straight out in the open air, so that if we had ladies in very smart costumes and it was raining, we had to have a p posse of people with umbrellas to get them f from the back of the stage round to the dressing room. So there were difficulties. There were more than that, but we had Roger Furze as a designer for starters, so it was absolutely wonderful. We had a very, very distinguished cast. We had Pamela Brown and Frith Banbury and

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Pauline Letz, and all sorts of extraordinary people, and Robert himself, who was a tyre of strength.

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It was as a result of your Perrinport seasons that you first went to Hollywood. I suppose so. It was really sheer chance I first went to Hollywood, because Robert Morley had already gone there to play Louis the Si I think sixteenth. I always get the kings wrong. And I was suddenly asked to make a Test to play his great friend who was a blacksmith called Gamma.

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And I suddenly went out to Hollywood and joined Robert. I suppose we laughed more in the time we were out there than I certainly have I've laughed in my life, because it was so bizarre. It was the great days of Hollywood. And this was a great epic called Marie Antoinette.

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I was cut a clean out of the film, and very wisely, because I was made to speak American for the film, although I was playing a blacksmith at the court of Louis the sixteenth. I had to have lessons every day from a Swedish lady in American.

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And um I had to say things like the pack of rats, they can't do that to him and

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I'm very glad I wasn't in it. My elbow's in it, by the way. Oh, it gives a very good performance, but it doesn't get any residuals.

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Back in this country you did some pre-war television. Now that separated the men from the boys, didn't it? Well I think it did, because uh if you did a play, you see, it was repeated on a Thursday and I knew that there were only six people watching it, including my mother, who was watching it for free in somewhere called the Gramophone Shop in Stone Street. And so it didn't really matter what you did, we felt, and certainly Miss Hamani Bailey didn't when we did reviews together.

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and Hermanni Baddy, Nelson Keys and I, and and Valerie Hobson of all people. We were in a series of reviews directed by Dallas Barr. It was very, very carefree and it was very enjoyable at the Alexandra Palace.

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Well, then, of course, the war started, you disappeared into the Royal Navy.

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Well, you did very well. I mean, eventually you were given

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Command of a ship of your own, you saw a lot of action, and you came out with the DSC.

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Well, that encapsulates that quickly, and let's have your next record.

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Well, it was a very curious war for me. I was in landing craft and I was put in command far too early, very short of officers, and

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Really, everything that could go wrong went wrong. I think I am the only commanding officer who's ever actually asked a policeman the way, which I did once when I got lost on the way to the raid on Dieppe. But when we got out of the Mediterranean, suddenly the naval officer in charge at the African port we were at had a signal which said, Would Lieutenants Alec Guinness, who happened to be there at the time, was tied up alongside me in his ship, Lieutenants Guinness and Bull Bespared to come over and see the show. And it was signed Vivian Lee, Beatrice Lilley, Dorothy Dixon, and Nicholas Phipps. And Nicholas Phipps would be my greatest friend at Winchester College. Alec and I managed to hitchhike across to Bougie, which was the nearest town where this very distinguished company were performing. And Beatrice Lilly was in absolutely wonderful form. And I think it was during this show she sang a song which was written by my friend Nicholas Phipps.

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And it's one I'd love to hear, which is about Eli

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Halidical Maud.

Speaker 416:57

I was having lunch.

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With Maud the other day here.

Speaker 417:02

And I told her, Maud, I'm feeling kind of lone.

Speaker 417:07

My life is just too dreary and depressing.

Speaker 417:12

But why it is?

Speaker 417:14

I really do not know.

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Then as I spoke

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I saw the truth quite clearly.

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I saw myself a vulgar hollow fraud.

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Beatrice Lilly and Maud.

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Now, post war, back in the theatre, more management.

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More management and absolute disastrous. I've been in management three times now and it really hasn't worked. I don't think I'm a very good businessman. But I was a great friend of Noel Langley's who had written a very witty book called Cage Me a Peacock, which we turned into a musical with music by prisoner of war from Japanese camp. And he'd got a lot of friends who were in the theatre and we decided to put this on. We managed to get them backing and I put every penny I had into it. And the problem was to find a leading lady. It was a very difficult part. It had to be a a slave girl who becomes a rather grand lady.

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And we took a wild chance, and my goodness, it paid off and we found a delightful, delicious lady called Phyllis Robbins, who had made a great name in variety and sung with bands. And she was a very, very remarkable leading lady, and I can only tell you that she on the first night

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She was still still saying on the chorus girls' dresses, which weren't quite right. I mean, she was that sort of leading.

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And we took it on tour, to catastrophic tour, because it was quite a big musical and it was during a heat wave, and we broke every low record of Dudley Hippodrome. And that we couldn't find a theatre to put it on in London. But she remained a great friend of mine.

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She disappeared from the stage.

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And suddenly a very big television producer rang me up and said, I understand you're the only person in England who might tell me where we can find Miss Phyllis Robbins. I said, Well, why? And he said, Because if we can't find her, we cannot put on a very important play about Hitler starring Frank Fidley next week.

Presenter19:19

And I said, Well, why do you want Phyllis Robbins? He said, Because Hitler's favorite gramophone record was Phyllis Robbins singing Smoke Gets in Your Eyes. Really? So I said, Well, as a matter of fact, she's at the National School of Equitation, Leighton Buzzard.

Presenter19:34

That I must say threw into a loop. But she had married this great expert on horses and horsemanship, Derman Go Michael Hickman, and she was living quite happily in in the country and was able to give up a mission for the number to be played. And I would love to hear it because she sings it quite beautifully. And I'm sh I'm very I've my memories of her because I'm afraid she died last year and uh I would love to hear her sing Smoke Gets in Her Eyes.

Peter Bull19:50

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 420:03

How laughing friends deride, Tears I cannot hide

Speaker 420:12

So I smile and wake.

Peter Bull20:17

Uh

Speaker 420:17

When a lovely flame dies

Speaker 320:19

Please

Speaker 420:22

Oh, yes.

Presenter20:33

Phyllis Robbin singing Smoke Gets in Your Eyes

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You were in the Stratford upon Avon Company for a while?

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Shouldn't be after the war.

Peter Bull20:41

Plenty of

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For a while is right. I was given the sack, actually. Were you? Yes. My Sir Toby Belch didn't come quite up to expectations. The director said it was more like a burp than a belch.

Peter Bull20:46

Who are you?

Presenter20:54

So I left the building. Uh I've never been really very good at Shakespeare, to tell the honest truth, although I have appeared in two very bizarre Shakespeare films. One was As You Like It with Elizabeth Bergen and Lawrence Olivier, and the other was The Tempest.

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which finished with Miss Elizabeth Wirsh singing Stormy Weather.

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Well, it's it's the sort of thing that could cheer up the tempest. Well, certainly is. And twenty four sailors dancing the hornpipe now come to think of it.

Peter Bull21:11

Uh

Peter Bull21:14

Yeah.

Presenter21:18

Oh, a great big production it was indeed.

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And the lady's not for burning.

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Actors are inclined to say one's favourite part is I think in a funny way it was my favourite part. I played it at the Arts in the original production, and I was the only survivor when John Gielgud did it later on. We opened and one felt waves of happiness coming across the footlights and

Presenter21:44

It went beautifully.

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And you were in the original production of that rather controversial play, Waiting for Godo.

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Yes, I've heard of that.

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It was that was the unhappiest experience, I think, in my theatrical career. Because that is the one in which the audience shouted back at us a good deal.

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And it was this terrible night when the lady in the front row said um

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And I'd only been on the stage a very short time. She said, I do wish the fat one would go. And, um, you know, it's a bit disconcerting while we're at it.

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And we ran and ran and ran. You see, Kenneth Tyne and Harold Hobson said it would be a conversational necessity to to have seen Waiting for Goddard the next twenty years. So we ran all this time and

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I think the most boring thing about God though was people um

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coming round explaining what it meant to us. Did you know what it was about? Hadn't the faintest idea, no, and and indeed none of us did. I think some of the acts and I pretend they they knew what it was about, and now it's it's wholly writ and goes through without any kind of interruption. But even when we transferred the criteria, they didn't want a very big success.

Presenter22:50

Still, people walked out. I mean, it's quite usual to have opened a packed house and in the second half come on and see it half full. And then we went on this wonderful tour where we unwisely went to Blackpool, where the old-age pensioners who paid nine P for their seats were not best pleased. And there was a scene in the second act where one of the tramps says to the other, Why don't we hang ourselves? And the entire audience said, Why don't you? And we broke every low, low record in that territorial. Another highlight in your career was John Osborne's early play, Luther.

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Yes, Luther was a great challenge, I think Sir John would call it, because it was a very long part, a very important part. It was one of those fa funny occasions where

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I was sent for on the Friday by Tony Richardson, and he said we want you to play this part. We start rehearsing on Monday and I said, Well, who's turned it down at the last moment?

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And his own nobody at all. Obviously I found that thirty eight other actors had turned had turned it down, and somebody just turned down at the last moment.

Presenter23:54

It was a very exciting part and a very tough part and I was going through a crease de nerve at the time about remembering lines and I did get in a frightful state about it all and I did make this on the first night at the court. I made a bargain with God and I said, Look, if you'll get me through the first night I'm going to give up smoking and he did and I gave up smoking. And you'll feel all the better for it.

Presenter24:19

Well, I think I do. And also I made a a wonderful friend of Albert Finney's in it. And one of the funniest things was when we went to Paris with it, we we had a very curious tour. We opened in Nottingham and then we went straight to Paris where we s saw the bills which said Albert Funy, Don Luther, Epic Peter Dahl, which is which as Albert said was a very accurate accurate description of the performances. We've got to record number six, Peter. What's that?

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I am struck dumb every now and then by a new musical, whether it's Oklahoma, whether it was in this case Westside Story, but

Presenter25:00

This was Westside's story, and it so happened that the night after I saw it, I was walking down the King's Road to the bakery, and outside the bakery was Cheetah Rivera, with a pram.

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And I was so struck by seeing her there, I just said

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and the snow was falling to make it even more romantic and she had a fur hat on.

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And I said, I think one of the most wonderful things ever happened in London, I said, and I leant over into the prayer and I went like that.

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And that was that. And then I disappeared'cause I was all embarrassed by myself, quite rightly. So that was that. And then a few weeks later I was we were having dinner with our mutual doctor.

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And there was cheetah.

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And she said, Oh, you're the one who frightened my baby so much. And I said, Well, I said, I'm sorry, I was absolutely tongue-tied.

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But I came very, very

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We all we became terrific chums. I see that every time I go to New York and when she comes there, she absolutely adores London. And I'm afraid the baby in the pram is now a sort of semi-star in America called Lisa Modente. But in in West Side's story she I thought was absolutely electrifying and I'd love to hear her sing America, America.

Speaker 426:14

I like to be in America. Okay by me in America Everything free in America For a small fee in a merit

Speaker 426:27

I like the city of San Juan. I know a boat you can guess.

Speaker 326:31

Hundreds of flowers in full bloom Hundreds of people in each room Automobile and Mary got from me a moment

Presenter26:42

Cheetah Rivera, Marilyn Cooper, Reddy Grist and The Shark Girls singing America from West Side Story.

Presenter26:50

In recent years, Peter, you've diversified quite a bit. You ran an astrology shop for a while in London. Yes, it was called Zodiac, the Astrological Emporium. I really wanted to run some gypsy tea rooms, you know, where people tell um fortunes in teacups, but I couldn't find the right premises. So we had an astrology shop and I learnt a great deal about astrology and and indeed about shoplifting. That's the sense of the story.

Presenter27:15

And latterly you have become king of the teddy bears.

Presenter27:19

Yeah, well you're very kind to call me king of a teddy bears. It's a very flattering thing to say. I have got involved enormously with teddy bears now. How did that start? I mean obvi you kept your own teddy bear from childhood. I've still got mine too.

Peter Bull27:26

How can that

Presenter27:31

I'm very glad you have. I haven't. I mean, this is why it all started, because I came back and found that my mother had given my teddy bear away to a jumble sale. And as I was sixteen at the time, I couldn't show my full rage. And then years and years later, when I was in New York, we were having a little discussion, five of us.

Peter Bull27:33

But

Presenter27:49

And we're discussing traumatic childhood.

Presenter27:52

things that happened to us. And I told this story I said this was the worst thing that happened to me was when I came back and found my Teddy had gone.

Presenter28:01

And I found out of the five people, three people had similar stories. I thought there was something in this, and I wrote this teddy bear book.

Presenter28:09

About all the ins and outs of teddy bears, which is far deeper than anyone realizes, and I've been aboard about on basically all the media for many years now. How far back do teddy bears date? I think the first one was about nineteen oh five, not before. As recently as that. Oh, certainly, not not before then. It was Teddy Roosevelt that started it all.

Presenter28:30

And there was a cartoon of him not shooting a rail bear in nineteen oh two which started it all off. You have a very big collection now.

Presenter28:38

Well, I'm only about two fifty, but

Peter Bull28:39

Yeah.

Presenter28:42

All in your sitting-room.

Peter Bull28:42

Well

Presenter28:44

Well, some of them sit in the hall, and some of them are very small, but they're they're great comfort.

Presenter28:49

And uh

Presenter28:50

Yes, I'm not ashamed to admit it. I think one has to be very careful to tread the tightrope of um of whimsy and nausea and not be too serious about it. But then one has also to confess that they have fantastic therapeutic powers. And I sometimes go and give lectures to doctors about the therapeutic powers of a teddy bear. It's absolutely true. And a lot of children's lives have actually been saved by teddy bears. I mean, I have documentary proof and all that kind of thing. But one has to be rather careful not to because a great many people start yawning even before I mention a teddy bear. But apart from writing the history of teddy bears and and and the theories and and whatever of teddy bears, you also write uh children's teddy bear adventure books. Yes, they're about a a bear I invented called Bully Bear.

Presenter29:36

who was sort of founded on the hero Brideshead revisited, the Aloysius, who's also in my possession. Is he? Oh, yes, he goes out working for. Oh, yes, you're Aloysius Aloysius

Presenter29:48

You're his agent. I'm his agent. I'm his agent. And I and I and he he's left everything to me in his will and I take a percentage and uh

Peter Bull29:51

Yeah.

Presenter29:57

I seen him out to work quite often. He does a lot of modelling jobs, you know. Good.

Presenter30:01

Record number seven.

Presenter30:03

Earlier, I think I must have sounded rather rude. You were asking about singing, and um I've always longed to be in a musical, and it was with a great excitement I was engaged to play in the Harry Seeker musical, Pickwick.

Presenter30:15

But I had a sort of non singing part.

Presenter30:18

of Sergeant Buzzfuzz in the trial scene.

Presenter30:21

And I did ask the musical director and Harry I said, Look, can't I just sing in the chorus at the end? He said, Oh, yes, of course, Peter they said, Yes, of course, we'd love that.

Presenter30:29

So I sang this number at the end of the scene.

Presenter30:34

But after about five rehearsals

Presenter30:37

Marcus Dodds, the musicrette came with a peter. I'm frightfully sorry. The chorus say they can't sing if you do, because you change keys so often. So do you mind not singing?

Presenter30:47

And I I must look absolutely crestfallen. He said, I tell you what you can do, open your mouth and pretend you're singing So I said, That's fine So I opened my mouth and made

Presenter30:54

all the um appropriate faces. And then after a time he came to me and said, Look, you haven't noticed, we've changed the setting. One side of the stage singing one line and the other side of say singing the other line. So can't you keep your trap shut when your side isn't meant to be singing? So then it went up on the notice board that was go grammophone record going to be made. So I went into Harry and I said, Look, when do you want me the um recording?

Presenter31:17

And he looked rather blank. He said, Well, we don't really need you. I said, Well, of course you do. I've got to make those faces. And he said, No, no, honestly, we don't really need you. However, it was done on a Sunday, and on the Monday, I was called into his dressing room, and he said, We decided, because you've contributed to the success of the show, that you'll have a quarter of a quarter of a quarter, or whatever it was, of a point of the grammar phone record. And so every so often, only the other day I got 36p. I get money for not singing on a grammar phone record, and I think that's an absolute triumph. And I would love, just for the excitement of the thing, to hear the number in which I don't sing, but get the money for.

Peter Bull31:45

Money

Presenter31:55

And it's from Pickwick, and it's called That's the Law.

Speaker 431:59

That's the law, that's the law. It's a highly legal business, it's the law. Yeah, but right

Speaker 332:07

Uh

Speaker 432:07

Uh

Presenter32:07

The best.

Presenter32:09

to be the debtor of the law and that's And then download the

Speaker 332:11

Yeah.

Speaker 432:13

We are highly independent if we act

Speaker 332:16

Well done. Defend the tree.

Speaker 432:17

Yeah.

Speaker 332:18

Yeah.

Presenter32:18

Drop me fall. On the case we cannot lose it.

Speaker 332:20

Yeah.

Presenter32:21

But if they detect a faint if they switch over to the plaintiff, they have got a lot of influence

Speaker 432:26

Uh I've got a lot of influence we use in

Presenter32:28

That's the law, a number from Pickwick in which you don't sing, supported by Harry Seacombe and others who do.

Presenter32:36

Now you l live part of the year on an island, don't you? Not not a desert island, but a a nice sort of fairly underpopulated Greek island.

Peter Bull32:42

The sun

Presenter32:44

Yes, it all happened through Luther, and

Presenter32:48

Albert Finney had taken our house on Corfu and asked me to spend Greek Easter there, and he made a great friends with a Greek fisherman, who took us over to this island one day, and we got marooned there in an appalling storm for three days and three nights. And uh

Peter Bull32:58

Boond

Presenter33:04

I fell in love with the island and it it's a funny thing about if you want something desperately, if you make a shopping list, like, you know, go to laundry, buy toilet paper, change library book, get land in Greece, you cross off the things you do and eventually you jolly well go and out and do it. And they were digging for oil, the Americans in this particular island.

Presenter33:27

And uh

Presenter33:28

Land was very expensive that first year we went. And suddenly the Greek wrote to me and said, Americans no find oil, come quick. So I came quick. And I was taken up this little hill overlooking the sea. It's the most beautiful view I've ever, ever, ever, ever seen. And I said, look, I must have a bit of this land. And I bought a tiny bit of land for forty pounds. And I suppose in a way it's changed my life because I find incredible tranquility there. I find my friends love it too. It's very, very simple. In those days there was no electricity. The ferry boat was erratic. The food really wasn't available very much.

Presenter34:06

But it was marvellous.

Presenter34:08

Well, we're going to put you on a rather more primitive island than that. Could you look after yourself?

Presenter34:13

I think for a certain amount of time I could, because I have lived uh on this island for a certain amount of time. You could build a hut out of driftwood and whatever.

Presenter34:23

I'm the least practical person in the whole of the world, and I'm I don't know that I've even built a hut, frankly.

Presenter34:29

I think I just sit there quite quietly with my lovely records and

Presenter34:34

And just think about a very, very happy life. You'd need a meal occasionally. Can you fish?

Presenter34:39

I can fish, but I only catch very small fish. Would you try to escape? No, because I really wasn't very good actually at sailing a ship, so even if I made a boat, I'm sure I'd go right to the bottom within about a hundred yards of the of the island. That'd be hu very humiliating if there was nobody to see it. Stay where you are, and what's your eighth record?

Presenter34:59

Well, my eighth record is is a Greek record because I love the Greeks. I'll never consider myself one of them at all. I mean, can't, because they they behave in such an extraordinary way.

Presenter35:12

But when I was out there

Presenter35:14

The first few years there was a song that haunted me. It was called Cigar, Cigar, which means nothing to do with smoking, but is means slowly, slowly, which is exactly what I do when I go up my hill. And on certain nights after I've had rather too good a dinner, I have to go even more cigar than usual. And this is a record or rather tune that I remember very vividly.

Peter Bull35:38

I can't hold

Peter Bull35:41

Razors have four.

Peter Bull35:46

Ah it's the

Peter Bull35:49

We must have

Peter Bull35:56

Ah boy Uh Yeah. Uh

Peter Bull35:58

Uh Majority.

Speaker 435:58

Yeah.

Peter Bull35:59

Uh

Presenter36:07

Lola Zakiri slowly, slowly. If you could take only one disk out of your eight, which would it be?

Presenter36:14

Well, I think I'm going to say a very pompous thing, which is I think I would take the last trick, or which is the Greek rico, in the hope of learning a little more Greek, and one luxury to take with you, one object of no practical use at all.

Presenter36:27

Because you brought up the astrology thing, what I'd really like to take is a crystal ball. That's all right, by all means have a crystal ball. Because I think I would master that. And I think if I went mad, which I probably would do after a very short time, I would then be able to see in the crystal ball the things I wanted to see. And I think that would be an absolute lovely luxury. And one book, apart from the Bible and complete works of Shakespeare, which are already there.

Presenter36:51

Well, this again is a very pompous thing to say.

Presenter36:55

Uh we're back again at the discrete trouble. You see I I have a terrible guilt complex, having lived out uh on and off for eighteen years and I still can't really speak very good Greek.

Presenter37:04

My favourite book in the whole of the world, and it's nothing to do with my client, Eloysius, is Brideshead Revisited. And I think I would like to take Brideshead Revisited in Greek, because I know it so well. I think I really would learn Greek just before I was rescued, or I wasn't rescued, as the case may be. And that would be my book. Right. And thank you, Peter Bull, for letting us hear your Desert Island Discs. No, thank you. It's been a very great pleasure, I assure you. Thank you. Goodbye, everyone.

Peter Bull37:57

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