Michael York

Michael York0:00

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

Michael York0:05

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

Presenter0:30

This week, On Our Desert Island, is the actor Michael York.

Presenter0:34

Michael, you must live a pretty gregarious life in the theatre and on film sets. Could you take solitude?

Presenter0:41

A certain amount of it. I I think, yes, I would. I'd love to. You could adjust. Yes, I was a loner, very much a loner as a child, and I I enjoyed being alone. But since I got married I haven't been alone. I don't know whether I could really uh readapt to it. How much does music mean to you?

Presenter0:57

A lot.

Presenter0:58

Have you any skill? Do you play an instrument? I have memories of playing the violin at the age of eleven or nine in the school orchestra and playing the piano. But it never went further than that.

Michael York1:04

Yeah, I'm playing.

Presenter1:07

Hm. I just love playing.

Presenter1:10

The grammophone. Do you collect discs? Up to a point. Discs and and tapes. I very much listen to the radio, so that, you know, whatever

Presenter1:19

God bestows, I you know, I I pick up. How long did it take you to make out your list for the Desert Island? Did you make a long list and then cross them out, or did you just write down eight as they came to you? I thought that unless I did it off the top of my head, almost subconsciously, I'd never turn up with a list at all.

Presenter1:37

So it took me, I think, a minute. Well, you've changed your mind about several of them in the last half hour. Yes, I know. And if we hadn't had this deadline, this broadcasting deadline, I probably would have completely changed it all over again. But. What's the first one? Well, I thought something to make us all wake up. It's Wagner. It's the funeral music from Goethe Dammerung. This sounds a little somber for a situation like a desert island. I find that Wagner gets me going, he energizes me. In fact, this is the piece of music I was once I was playing in Bent on Broadway. Before going on, I'd put it on in my dressing room. And to the sounds of these enormous noises, these energizing, thrilling noises, I'd rush on stage and do my stuff. It seemed to work then. I hope it works on a desert. On a desert island. Yes.

Michael York2:20

By it

Michael York2:20

I'm a desert.

Presenter3:13

Siegfried's funeral march from Goethe Dammerung, the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Herbert von Carrion.

Presenter3:20

You were born in Buckinghamshire, Michael, but you moved about. Yes, yes, good training for an actor. I was born, in fact, in a manor house in Fulmer, in Buckinghamshire, which during the war had been turned into a nursing home for the wives of impecunious officers. But then I lived my early childhood in an Oxfordshire village, near the Cotswolds. Then I lived near London, then I lived near Brighton.

Presenter3:43

Then again in the suburbs of London again. So uh

Presenter3:47

As I said, it was the beginning of a peripatetic lifestyle that's stayed with me ever since. So this meant different schools, of course? Yes. Did you find that confusing? No, I found it rather stimulating. I must say that from

Presenter3:59

a critical age from about fourteen or fifteen, I did settle down. Were you at boarding schools? No. I was at a gr mostly grammar schools. Did you see a lot of theatre as a child? Were you taken on the holidays? Yes, I remember seeing a lot of school plays and then when I lived in Bromley in Kent it was near enough to London to be able to commute out and see a lot of things and I remember, you know, going to the Old Vic as a child and seeing

Presenter4:21

Astonishing things. Were you in the school players? Yes. I suppose that's how it all began, one started off playing.

Presenter4:28

young maidens and young heroines, and then progressed as the voice broke into the other sex, and uh I I was lucky I w I went to schools that uh had a good tradition of school blaze.

Presenter4:38

You decided to join the National Youth Theatre. This was a a sort of holiday job, wasn't it? Yes, again one of the virtues of living near London. Michael Croft had just then started this extraordinary company that that was to grow into the National Youth Theatre. Then it was on a make or break thing. There was abduction of Hamlet.

Presenter4:54

At the Queen's Theatre in the West End.

Presenter4:56

In which I was involved.

Michael York4:57

At

Presenter4:58

I played one of those ambassadors, Voltaman, that usually get and that and all things will I do my duty, I think, is the line.

Presenter5:07

And the idea worked, the youth theatre thrived, and it was a wonderful way to spend one's childhood. And we did tours of Romeo and Juliet to Italy, we toured Holland.

Presenter5:18

And the idea then and now is that, you know, the person playing Hamlet and the person sweeping the stage, it was just as important, and so on the idea was this great group effort. This cooperative. Yes.

Presenter5:28

Had you at that time, as a a teenager, made up your mind that that's what you wanted to do? Oh, by no means no. When did that inspiration strike you?

Presenter5:38

I think at university I knew that it was something that I had to do professionally. I had to get it out of my system, or I couldn't live with myself unless I'd put it to the test.

Presenter5:48

Well, I think at Oxford we took ourselves very seriously. We had a university theatre with fairly high standards and the Edinburgh Festival and lots of other things.

Michael York5:52

Yeah.

Presenter5:55

Well, let's talk about Oxford in a minute. Let's have your second record. What's that? God Speaking. Laurence Olivier.

Presenter6:02

Giving the Christmas Day speech from Henry V and hopefully a few bars of the William Walton music if we stay with the record long enough.

Michael York6:08

We studied around

Presenter6:09

Did this film make a big impact on you? I remember seeing it as a child in our local cinema and literally falling out of my seat with astonishment and pleasure, being totally thrilled. And I suppose it's one of those seminal influences, wanting to do what one saw up there.

Speaker 46:27

We few, we happy few.

Speaker 46:31

We band of brothers, for he to-day that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother, be he ne'er so base, and gentlemen in England now abed shall think themselves accursed they were not here, and hold their manhoods cheap, whilst any speak that fought with us upon St. Crispin's Day.

Presenter6:52

Listen to Crispians' Day speech, Laurence Olivier.

Presenter6:56

What were you reading at Oxford? English.

Presenter6:58

And you were mixed up not only with Ouds, with the Oxford University Dramatic Society, but also with the Experimental Theatre Company. Oh, yes, indeed, and elsewhere with College Plays and other ad hoc productions.

Presenter7:11

and also having the opportunity to take these productions.

Presenter7:15

in around the world.

Presenter7:17

I remember taking a production of Romey and Juliet to Israel.

Presenter7:20

The cheapest way, which was on a Greek freighter, where I remember I had a an air mattress sleeping on the deck that unfortunately was punctured, but it not to the degree that I could actually fall asleep and it would lower me gently onto this hard deck and I'd sleep the night. I mean, it was a wonderfully, in retrospect, a wonderfully romantic way to go about it. And in the vacations, you used to work for the BBC, I believe. Yes, I did indeed. I was in the property department at the T V Centre and Lime Grove. What shows did you work on? Do you remember? Yes, I do. I remember picking up something and looking as though I was doing something useful and watching Tony Hancock live.

Presenter7:59

And all kinds of interesting things were going on. As long as you're carrying something, it means you're welcome.

Michael York8:02

As long as

Michael York8:04

Well yes

Presenter8:05

It was a very lucrative time in many ways.

Presenter8:08

So when you came down from Oxford, did you go straight into the theatre? Oh, immediately. How did you set about it? The last University show that I did I asked some agents to come up from London.

Presenter8:18

And uh I was signed on, and I I got myself a job in Dundee, in Scotland. Very good rep. Excellent, yes. But uh about as far from civilization as we know it as you could get at that point. But yes, you're you're right, a rep with a reputation. What was it, weekly, fortnightly? They'd just started a system of repertoire.

Presenter8:36

which was an excellent way of doing things, like our national companies allowing productions to grow over a certain period.

Presenter8:43

But I found I'd work so hard and I'd come straight from doing university exams, straight into the theater, and knock myself out, but that by Christmastime

Presenter8:51

I was flagging and I was given the the the the pantomime off and I went down to London.

Michael York8:53

And I was given the

Presenter8:57

And while I was there my new agent said, Well, you should audition for the National Companies, the National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company. You were accepted by both, I believe. Yes, that's right. An embarrassment of riches.

Michael York9:05

Bruh

Presenter9:08

Yes, and one one was faced with this dilemma that besets every actor's life, that of choice, that you see your life going in one direction or another. What do you do? Would you toss a coin or look up your stars in the paper or or what? But some instinct made me go to the National Theatre.

Presenter9:22

to walk on, whereas in fact the Royal Shakespeare Company had offered me um some good little parts.

Presenter9:27

Your third record.

Presenter9:29

The third record is Mozart, and I remember hearing this record.

Presenter9:33

Once by moonlight, when I was very young, we were doing Romeo and Juliet down in Cornwall at the Minack Theatre, and someone had put this on and it floated out over the starry night.

Presenter9:43

And it it was so beautiful, it was the quintessence of beauty, that I broke down and cried, and as an Englishman I rarely do that, to be so moved. And the adagio from the clarinet concerto has always had that power to move me enormously.

Presenter10:53

Part of the adagio from the Mozart Clarinet Concerto, Alfred Prince with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra directed by Carl Bohm.

Presenter11:02

So the National Theatre. That was in Laurence Olivier's day, wasn't it? Yes, indeed. So you were treading the boards with the great man. For me, yes, indeed. It was a

Presenter11:12

Consummation devoutly to be wished. I was quite thrilled to be a young actor in such distinguished company. Were you given good parts? Very soon. In fact, the first play I worked with w was a production of Much Do About Nothing that uh Franco Zevarelli was.

Michael York11:19

There is

Presenter11:26

Directing.

Presenter11:27

I met him in the canteen a couple of weeks into the production. He said, Have you ever made films? I said no. He said, Would you like to? I said, Of course, it's everyone's dream He said, Well, maybe one day you should In fact, a year later he asked me to go and audition for him. He was doing a film of The Taming of the Shrew but uh meanwhile in that year I was very fortunate to play

Michael York11:31

Uh

Presenter11:48

Parts like in Trelawney the Wells.

Presenter11:51

The young Juve and

Michael York11:51

Yeah.

Presenter11:52

Albert Finney's brother in Armstrong's Last Good Night. The wonderful thing about the National is that besides the actual performing,

Presenter11:59

There were classes in voice and movement.

Presenter12:02

and uh other technical accomplishments, which maybe I felt I'd by not going to drama school that I I

Presenter12:09

I'd left out, and one was able to fill that in. You also had the chance of working at Chichester, didn't you? Yes, then the National Theatre had a summer season there.

Presenter12:18

I understood Derek Jacoby when he was

Presenter12:21

in an extraordinary Peter Schaffer play called Black Comedy which was more or less created at Chichester. So then in due course he went off to play in The Taming of the Shoe for Zephyri. That was made in Italy, was it? Yes. And then later he engaged you for Romeo and Juliet. Yes. He's a very persuasive man.

Presenter12:38

Did you need much persuading? Not at all, no.

Presenter12:41

The only thing was that I was contracted to do another film, luckily for Paramount. But Franco said, you know, there's no problem. It's a very small part I'm offering you. It's not the Romeo, for heaven's sake, it's uh two weeks' work. I think I was there six months of this absolutely enchanting summer spent filming in these wonderful Roman

Presenter13:00

Tuscan Hill Towns. He has a reputation as a perfectionist. Did you find him difficult to work with?

Presenter13:07

Not exactly difficult. Demanding, yes. And I love directors who direct and demand. But fundamentally I think what works so well is that when Zeffarelli is working with Anglo-Saxon actors is that they tend to damp down his slightly operatic excess, and at the same time he's capable of bringing out something over and above the English reserve.

Michael York13:22

And at the same time

Presenter13:28

But basically, Zephyralli has a a meticulous eye. I shall always remember getting up to

Presenter13:33

A little hill town to shoot a scene

Presenter13:36

And I found out that he'd sent someone on ahead to photograph every single person in this village and he hand-picked every single face. So it wasn't anything that happened by design, it was something, you know, very specific. Oh, he grouped. Absolutely, yes. And this is why I think his talent borders on genius.

Michael York13:50

Oh yes.

Presenter13:57

Between the two Zafrelli films, among others, you you you played in uh Joseph Lozzy's Accident. That was a great change of pace, wasn't it? Well, yes, I mean it was wonderful to play a contemporary part, and the pedigree of that film was quite impressive. Uh Joseph Lozzy directing, Harold Pinter provided the script, and with people like Dirk Bogart and Stanley Baker, my cup ran it over during those times and uh well it still does, but then I it was lucky that one thing led to another, and uh I had a wonderful time.

Presenter14:30

Record number four we've got to.

Presenter14:33

Record number four is of Maria Kallas singing Vicidarte from Puccini Scotosca. Why? For several reasons. I saw.

Presenter14:45

Callas giving this her last performance as Tusker in London at Covent Garden.

Presenter14:50

Again an event I shall never forget.

Presenter14:53

I also I'm crazy about the human voice. I'm mad about her voice, and I think on a desert island to have at your disposal the quintessence of beauty as distilled by the human voice will be quite wonderful.

Presenter15:14

Simple.

Presenter15:16

I'm not sure if I can do it.

Michael York15:27

A good sweet sleep dream

Michael York15:49

Helen Gore, Elector, praise it glory.

Presenter16:08

Maria Callas singing Vicidate from Tosca.

Presenter16:13

Films have enabled you to do a lot of travelling, Michael.

Presenter16:16

I remember seeing you quite recently on the box in a film you made some time ago for James Ivory Guru. That was made in India, of course. That's right, yes. And not just in Bombay, but all over India. Well, actually, I'd met her before. Had you? We'd worked together on in fact on Romeo and Juliet, and can you imagine? I mean, falling in love on that film. And then immediately afterwards we went to India. She was photographing Romeo and Juliet, yes, yes. And also on the Guru. Nagoru Leo sang

Presenter16:50

Oh, that's mean Well, I mean sang in inverted commas. You also played the sitar. Yes, I bet I did do. In fact, I was so good there's even a record of my sitting down with Ustad Vilayad Khan and playing.

Presenter17:04

But you can't do it any more because the fundamental thing you do if you play the sitar, you have to groove this kind of this hard groove in your finger, which is the one indispensable. So you really had to do some hard study on that phone. Yes, I've to learn how to handle the instrument.

Michael York17:15

So you've read

Michael York17:17

Yeah.

Presenter17:20

Yes, and I loved it. In fact, I wish I'd chosen a a sitar record. I I wish you hadn't reminded me, because it does bring back for me personally a lot of wonderful memories. There's still time. You can change that little list you've got if you want to.

Michael York17:30

Really?

Presenter17:32

Yes, I once one starts doing that. I mean, I could literally this could be a six hour broadcast. All right. Other films I remember. Possibly your most celebrated performance, opposite Liza Menellia in Cabaret. Cabaret was certainly a a success and a a worldwide success, and uh it seems to be holding up.

Presenter17:50

And I think this is bombs the danger. You get associated with a certain film. And uh.

Presenter17:57

I know that the image is very strong. It's certainly the same for Liza too. I mean, her her cabaret performance was so deservedly successful.

Presenter18:05

For myself, I've always tried to get away from that that kind of image, having played a lot of polite, shy, introspective Englishman teachers for a long time I I seemed to corner the market in them. And I've always tried to kind of ring the changes wherever possible.

Michael York18:16

Yeah.

Presenter18:19

How much of that film was made in Berlin? About three weeks of it, but mostly it was made uh in Munich, in the studios there, and a little bit in Hamburg.

Presenter18:29

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

Presenter18:31

On one's desert island one will think back to one's roots and to England, and one will need to laugh and to be silly and light hearted occasionally.

Presenter18:39

And uh there's one song I love. I mean I thought of no card, but there's one song that makes me laugh every time I hear it.

Presenter18:46

and an artist, too, that I admire very much. It's Jack Buchanan.

Presenter18:50

And he's singing a song called Everything Stops for Tea.

Speaker 318:54

Oh, the factories may be roaring with the boomba-lacka-zoomba-lacka-wee, But there isn't any roar when the clock strikes four, everything stops for tea.

Speaker 319:07

Oh a lawyer in the courtroom, in the middle of an alimony please, has to stop and help him, for when the clock strikes four, everything stops for tea.

Presenter19:18

Jack Buchanan singing Everything Stops for Tea from one of his films called Come Out of the Pantry.

Presenter19:25

Playing D'Artagnan must have been fun in Three Musketeers. It was.

Presenter19:30

It was a great way to spend the summer. You know, both parts of the film took place. It came out as three Musketeers and another bit of it as four Musketeers. It had started out as one film, had it?

Michael York19:34

Yes, both

Presenter19:42

Well, it certainly started out as one big enormous film and with a necessary break in the middle. And at some point the decision was made to turn them into two, which kind of paid off. A very energetic role for you. You never stopped jumping out of windows onto horses, leaping over windmills or whatever you're doing. But you were running the whole time. I was amazingly fit at the end of that summer. I had muscles, you know, on top of muscles. It was extraordinary. Very sad. I saw the exact correlation between exercise and working out.

Michael York19:45

Mm-hmm.

Michael York19:52

Which I can

Presenter20:14

The feeling of well being. I wish I'd kept it up in a way. You had a holiday after it instead?

Presenter20:21

What else? Conduct unbecoming. Back to India? No, actually not. Not. No, I think. Back to Teddington, in fact. It was.

Michael York20:26

I think

Presenter20:30

This was one of the last Gaspers of British Lion. It was filmed in the studio very quickly, because there had been plans, grandiose plans, to make this into a grand epic film shot in India.

Presenter20:40

But there wasn't the money at the time and this was done

Presenter20:43

Very quickly in four weeks. Mhm. W with a second unit sent to pick up shots of the real stuff. You haven't done a a lot of television. You were in the Forsyth Saga for a short while, weren't you? Yes, briefly, as Young Jollian.

Presenter20:57

I had my greatest success in Russia in the Forsight Saga. Really? I happened to be in Moscow at the Film Festival when the Forsight Saga was being shown.

Michael York21:00

Really?

Presenter21:04

And all the episodes were being shown back to back. And I happened to be there just as my two episodes were being screened. And I was stopped by people in Red Square saying, Zaga Vusa? It was so it was so lunis. And you've been doing a a B B C television film that's been shown quite recently.

Michael York21:16

So it was so

Presenter21:23

Yes, making a film of a Rosmond Lehmann novel called The Weather in the Streets. A wonderful piece of writing.

Presenter21:30

And something I've enjoyed doing enormously. It's something the BBC do enormously well. A piece of quality, prestigious.

Presenter21:39

Well cast and well directed.

Presenter21:41

Another record. Well, this one is a record of Glynnis John singing Send in the Clowns from a little night music. I've chosen this for several reasons. Because it represents a lot of friends. Glynnis is a friend. We work together in a production of Ring Round the Moon.

Presenter21:58

Hugh Wheeler who wrote the book was responsible for the book of a musical that I was in last year on Broadway. Hal Prince is an old old friend of mine. In fact, we did a film together called Something for Everyone. And Steve Sondheim, again is a New York friend. And I'd love to have the Broadway musical represented somewhere in this list. And I think this song, it makes me tingle. It's wonderful. All the elements work. It's delicious.

Presenter22:26

Isn't it rich?

Presenter22:32

Uh we

Speaker 422:32

You're paying

Presenter22:36

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 422:36

Here

Presenter22:37

There at last on the ground, you in mid-air.

Presenter22:44

Send in the clouds.

Presenter22:52

Linus John singing Send In the Clowns from A Little Night Music.

Presenter22:57

You mentioned having worked with Glynnis in Ring Round the Moon. That was in Los Angeles, wasn't it? Yes, at the Amundsen Theatre.

Presenter23:03

You've tried to, with all these films, to keep your theatre work going whenever you could.

Presenter23:09

Yes, I'd hate to lose touch. It's something not only that I enjoy doing, but but I think one needs to do, as I said. And in all sorts of places. Serrano de Belgerac in New Mexico. Yes. At Santa Fe.

Presenter23:20

And when you mentioned a a New York musical, you've had the distinction of being in a New York musical that that folded before it opened, which must be something to put in your three weeks and it it didn't open. We ran out rather ignominiously. We ran out of money, or the producer did, and no one could raise the wherewithal to keep us going.

Michael York23:31

Yeah

Presenter23:43

And so no one ever ever sat in judgment over us. We weren't kind of decimated by the critics. Because you know how the terrible thing there, things run for one night and they close. I mean, it's ghastly.

Presenter23:54

And the tantalizing thing was that

Presenter23:57

The last two performances one suddenly saw how it could be with more time and some more money. But anyway, heard melodies are sweet, those unheard are sweeter. What a pity you hadn't had it out on the road.

Michael York24:03

But anyway.

Michael York24:05

Paris

Michael York24:06

What are

Presenter24:09

And of course you played Hamlet. Yes, I had one stab at The Gloomy Dane. Which part of your career did that occur in? I know it was at Leatherhead. At Leatherhead, yes, this was about uh in the early seventies. Mhm. And I was asked to do it in fact last year in New York and would have loved to have taken that uh offer up and hope there will be a subsequent offer. Because I think to have had a decade between is interesting. One's perceptions are different and I think the performance would be

Michael York24:16

It left him.

Michael York24:28

Yeah.

Presenter24:35

Record number seven.

Presenter24:38

The Prince of Wales and Clive James and countless other people. I'm a huge, huge fan of Kirite Kanawa, and of her recording of one of Strauss's last songs, by M. Schlaffengen.

Presenter25:27

So my daughter.

Speaker 425:37

Boy to think.

Speaker 425:40

Uh

Presenter25:40

Bigish killed and lost, we murdered a skilled conflict.

Presenter25:55

Kirita Ekanu is singing one of Richard Strauss's Four Last Songs by Schlaffengel.

Presenter26:01

You say better now you don't bow to your serial pronunciation.

Michael York26:03

No, no, no. I thought it was a very good question.

Presenter26:07

Now, Michael, you recently made a film in which you played Robinson Crusoe. Where did you film that? Just about everywhere you can think of, where there's a desert island.

Presenter26:15

It was a French epic, basically.

Presenter26:18

The first time the in fact the French had gone into co-production and making a a bilingual version, because we've shot it in French and in English. It took six months again to make. Half of it was spent in Tunisia, on the island of Jerba. And then the other half glorious, crazy half was in the Caribbean, going from one island to the other, from Guadeloupe to Martinique to Saint Lucia.

Presenter26:43

Dominica.

Presenter26:45

and a month on a tiny trip of an island called uh Union in the Grenadines.

Presenter26:50

So I've gone through it, and even through the motions of like Robinson Crusoe being shipwrecked, having to make his own house, having to milk goats, and all those things. So I've done it.

Presenter27:00

I don't have to ask you any more questions, except would you try to escape?

Presenter27:04

Robinson Crusoe made a rough, didn't he? Yes, oh yes indeed. I can do that too. You can. Oh yes.

Michael York27:07

I can do that too.

Presenter27:10

And navigate it?

Presenter27:12

Not so sure about that. Oh, there's very little work to do, though. You're nearly there. I could drift along, I guess.

Presenter27:18

What's your last record?

Presenter27:20

The last record, and I wanted to have something by the Beatles for sentimental reasons that, you know, in this having lived through through the sixties in London, somehow their music was the quintessence of that experience.

Presenter27:31

I thought of, you know, Sergeant Pepper and the day in the life of him, then I suddenly thought.

Presenter27:36

The What John Lennon sang.

Presenter27:39

In that wonderful song of his, Imagine, is so important.

Presenter27:45

And the message is vital.

Presenter27:47

But I'd love to have that as my last choice.

Presenter27:50

He's an artist I admire.

Presenter27:52

I certainly admire what he's seeing.

Speaker 327:56

Imagine there's no heaven

Speaker 328:01

See if you try.

Speaker 328:09

No hell

Speaker 328:10

Below us

Michael York28:16

Bubbles only sky

Presenter28:21

John Lennon, Imagine

Presenter28:23

If you could take only one disc card of that age who just played us, which would it be, Michael?

Presenter28:28

Mm. I'd have to put on a blindfold and stab at it blindly. But I think on reflection maybe the Mozart.

Presenter28:35

And you are allowed to take one luxury on to your island.

Presenter28:39

I'd love to have a telescope a wonderful celestial telescope.

Presenter28:43

Because I think one would never get bored. It's one of those things I've been saving up to do, like gardening and golf, astronomy.

Presenter28:51

And one book you already have the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare. I'd like any book, say, written on vellum. Again, this is going back to the experiences of of playing Robinson Crusoe. But I'd go down to the ocean, I'd wash away the writing, I'd make my own little ink from squids or whatever. I can do all this. I'd sharpen my little quill.

Presenter29:11

And I'd either keep a diary, or I'd sit down and write that play that one's always been talking about writing about, or that novel.

Presenter29:19

I'm so impressed by your expertise. Well, I mean, there's a whole gap between wish fulfillment and realization, of course. Right, I look forward to reading it when you come back. And thank you, Michael York, for letting us hear your Desert Island Discs. Well, thank you so much for having me here. Goodbye, everyone.