Leo McKern

Speaker 10:00

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

Speaker 10:05

For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in 1984, and the presenter was Roy Plumley.

Presenter0:29

This week, our castaway is the actor Leo McKern.

Presenter0:33

Leo, how You take Uh

Leo McKern0:35

Loneliness.

Leo McKern0:36

Not too well. I fi I find the older you get, the less fitted you are.

Leo McKern0:41

And nowadays, if I have to go away out of the country to do a film, for example,

Leo McKern0:46

Unless there is some of the family with me, I'm inclined to get very depressed.

Leo McKern0:50

How much does music mean to you?

Leo McKern0:52

Well, it means a great deal, but on the other hand I don't listen nearly as much as I should to it. I must have a lovely stereotype, which is rather splendid.

Presenter1:02

Do you make music? Do you

Leo McKern1:04

To play the piano, do you sing?

Leo McKern1:06

No, I did learn to sing when I was quite a young man in Australia from a very good teacher, Welsh teacher, who taught the Belcanto method.

Leo McKern1:17

And uh it was very good, not for the singing voice so much, as it placed

Leo McKern1:23

My voice for acting, if you like.

Leo McKern1:26

I think it's very valuable.

Presenter1:27

Did you have any kind of scheme in in choosing your eight records, or is it a a haphazard choice, one from here and one from there and

Leo McKern1:34

Whatever. Well, it is pretty haphazard, Roy. I I decided that it was impossible.

Leo McKern1:40

to choose eight favourite records. And if you did and you were stuck with them, they wouldn't be your eight favourite records after the first four months. So no, what I've done, I've chosen things that simply remind me of parts of my life and of things that I've enjoyed.

Presenter1:58

What's the first one you have on that little pile there?

Leo McKern2:00

Yeah.

Leo McKern2:01

Well, we'd start off with something rather delightful and bright. The um Introduction and Rondo Caprizioso by Saint Sans and played by Jascha Heiferts.

Presenter2:13

Why do you choose this? Where does this take you mentally?

Leo McKern2:16

I didn't discover music until well into my teens.

Leo McKern2:21

when I met some young people who or you could say lived for it. And it was through them, in fact, that I discovered music at all. And um it was in their company and uh records that they played that uh led me to make all sorts of delightful and wonderful discoveries. And this was one of them.

Speaker 33:31

Yeah.

Presenter3:37

An excerpt from the Introduction and Rondeau Capriccioso by Saint Sans.

Presenter3:42

Played by Heifitz with the London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Sir John Barbie Raleigh.

Presenter3:49

Now it is no secret, Leo, that you come from Australia. Mhm. Which part of Australia were you born? In Sydney. So you were a beach boy as a kid.

Leo McKern4:00

Yes, I suppose there was. Every Australian boy is a beach boy. I don't know how they are now, but they certainly were when I was a lad. But uh we couldn't afford those beautiful surf boards. It was all body surfing then.

Presenter4:13

You went to Sydney Technical High School. You liked working with your hands.

Leo McKern4:17

Very much so.

Presenter4:18

Yeah. Mm. What was your first job?

Leo McKern4:21

I followed along in my father and brothers' footsteps and I went as an apprentice in electrical engineering, making electric motors for refrigerators and so on, in a big factory where my father and brothers both work.

Presenter4:36

But you switched from that to an art school.

Leo McKern4:39

Yes, I did. Well, there I had the accident that, you know, I lost my eye with cold chiseling.

Leo McKern4:45

And that, I suppose

Leo McKern4:48

I don't know, I suppose that was in many ways a good thing because it it switched my whole life, my whole career. I just

Presenter4:53

North Korea, I don't know. Nothing else.

Leo McKern4:56

Yes. I was never enamored of electrical engineering and certainly not being an apprentice in those days. I didn't really. I wasn't in love with the job.

Presenter5:05

What sort of art interested you? What did you want to do? Did you want to paint masterpieces or do commercial art? Or what was it?

Leo McKern5:05

What sort of

Leo McKern5:11

I wanted to paint, but I went to uh a commercial art school because there were pretty hard times.

Leo McKern5:19

I was born in nineteen twenty.

Leo McKern5:21

So when I was a young boy, of course, we went through, along with everybody else in the Western world, all sorts of unpleasantnesses in the Depression and so on. So it was obvious that whatever I did, it was uh something that was going to have to pay in some way or another. So uh I studied commercial art, in fact.

Presenter5:37

Well, let's pause at that moment for your second record. Watch that to be.

Leo McKern5:41

What's that?

Leo McKern5:42

Well, this record is my greatest favourite record of all time. It's not my favourite great, but it's my greatest favourite. It is, I think, the most completely successful selection of pieces of music that I think has ever been um recorded. It is the serenade for tenor horn and strings of Benjamin Britton with um Dennis Brain, the horn, and with Peter Peirce. This particular one piece is the Blake Elegy.

Speaker 36:58

The invisible one that flies in the night.

Speaker 37:07

In an awareness

Presenter7:11

The elegy from Benjamin Britton's Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings, with Peter Pears, Dennis Braine, and the composer conducting the Boyd Neal String Orchestra.

Presenter7:23

You left your commercial art activities, Leo, to join the army. What branch?

Leo McKern7:28

What else but the the engineers?

Presenter7:31

And it was in the army, I believe, that acting first came into your life.

Leo McKern7:35

Yes, I was in the uh Victoria barracks for a while. I was uh put into the engineers' stores, keeping store ledges.

Leo McKern7:44

And I met a a dear friend, an actor, who was also there, and he talked me into joining this amateur group, a group called May Hollingworth, who ran uh an amateur company.

Leo McKern7:56

In Sydney in those days, the only way into professional and commercial theatre was in fact through the amateur companies. Uh there were, to my knowledge, no schools of acting and very few teachers. So uh I joined and and enjoyed the people and the company and this uh silly business of standing up and pretending to be somebody else, which they are eventually are.

Presenter8:18

Then should we have

Leo McKern8:19

What's it going to do?

Presenter8:19

Even when you'd been through your amateur training, there wasn't a lot of opportunity in Australia in those days for young actors, was there?

Leo McKern8:26

Very few. Yes, very few. The the theatre was dominated by a company like J C Williamson's, who owned all the beautiful old Victorian theatres in every city. If you got into that company, you're doing very well.

Presenter8:33

Yeah.

Presenter8:40

Was there a lot of work in radio, in soap operas, and that sort of thing?

Leo McKern8:43

That was where all the work was done. That's where, in fact, we all got our training, in a way. Doing soap operas, usually syndicated stuff from America and England. If I remember rightly, we used to get a guinea per disc of fifteen minute episode. We would record six of those in three hours.

Leo McKern9:02

So that's a week's uh we did a week's work in three hours.

Presenter9:02

I said that's a woo.

Presenter9:05

That was learning the hard way.

Leo McKern9:07

Yes, but it was six guineas, and that wasn't bad in those days.

Presenter9:12

You came to England not just to act, you were in pursuit.

Leo McKern9:16

I was in pursuit, yes, indeed. That was in forty six.

Leo McKern9:21

Uh the girl I had met in May Hollingworth's amateur group.

Leo McKern9:25

I fell madly in love with her, and I did, I pursued her. She was determined to become an actress. She lived for acting.

Leo McKern9:32

And she saved up for years, doing a lot of work in radio and in the theatre. She saved up to come to England, which is of course the heartland of theatre, of of uh British theatre.

Leo McKern9:44

And I followed her. Yes, that's that's about it. What was this young lady's name? Her name was Jane Holland. That should ring a few bells, I think, with Australian contemporaries of mine.

Presenter9:54

Well, the very least the lady could do is accept you after you had chased her for thirteen thousand miles.

Leo McKern10:00

Yes, he did, I'm delighted to say.

Leo McKern10:03

We were made very welcome by a delightful family down in Kent.

Leo McKern10:08

And they put her up for a while.

Leo McKern10:11

I had landed in Liverpool with, if I remember, about two pounds ten shillings.

Leo McKern10:16

which was enough to pay my train fare to London. And quite frankly I was, I suppose, a sort of gigolo for a while because she supported me and uh found me room in Hampstead to live in.

Presenter10:28

Well, nevertheless, you're here, a professional actor, and married.

Leo McKern10:33

That's a good thing.

Presenter10:34

Let's have your third record.

Leo McKern10:36

This is old. It's a beautiful example of a male and a female voice complementing each other so absolutely beautifully. It's a garacurchi.

Leo McKern10:49

and Tito Schipa, and they're singing an aria from Act Three of Don Pasquale.

Presenter11:53

Amelita Gallicochi and Tito Skipa in a duet from the third act of Don Pasquale.

Presenter12:00

So a young married professional couple in London. Had you any contacts at all, either of you?

Leo McKern12:07

Yes, I had brought a few letters over. I used the first one.

Leo McKern12:12

Because it was from a an English actor that I'd met in Australia, a delightful man, who gave me a letter, assured me that the lady agent to whom he'd written the letter of introduction was an old frame of his. And they had wonderful memories to share. And I eventually got him to see this lady, who was very popular. And she opened the letter, read it, no change on the face at all, tore the letter up, dropped it in the waste paper basket.

Leo McKern12:40

and said, uh why do you well colonials come over here to take the bread and butter out of uh English actors' mouths?

Leo McKern12:49

And I stood up and said, Thank you very much for your time Walked out went back to my carpetless bareboarded room and sitting tore up the other letters.

Speaker 112:49

And I was

Presenter12:59

So for a start you had to take all sorts of jobs, not just acting jobs.

Leo McKern13:03

Yes, indeed. I got a job as a porter with Sainsbury's in Temporal Fortune, a marvellous Victorian shop.

Leo McKern13:11

Uh that was in the middle, I might say, of that terrifying winter, forty six, forty seven.

Presenter13:16

A very cold indeed.

Leo McKern13:18

Very cold indeed. My mother had given me three sets of long underwear.

Leo McKern13:21

I was wearing all three at once.

Leo McKern13:24

After having told her I wouldn't be seen dead in such terrible

Leo McKern13:28

things, I was wearing all three sets of ones, both day and night.

Presenter13:33

What was your very first acting job?

Leo McKern13:35

Yeah.

Leo McKern13:37

The very first acting job I got, I suppose, was a very small part in a play whose name I've forgotten, but was was with the Combined Services Entertainment Unit, the C S E U and uh we went to Germany with that. Jane got me that job, as a matter of fact, because she uh was in another company.

Presenter13:47

And

Presenter13:53

And of course at that time you must have had a slight Aussie accent.

Leo McKern13:56

Oh, slight's not the word. It was as thick as porridge royal, yes. It it was something that I knew I had to get rid of very, very quickly, or as quickly as I could. So I went around speaking very slowly and listening to all the lovely English voices round.

Presenter14:16

You did a number of tours.

Leo McKern14:18

Yes, indeed. I I was very lucky to do a couple of tours for the Arts Council. We went to the Welsh mining districts and we went up into the Yorkshire mining areas.

Leo McKern14:29

I was very fortunate to do a a play called The Miser, the Moliere play that was newly translated by Miles Mallison, new translation, and Tony Guthrie directed it for the Arts Council.

Leo McKern14:42

And that was included in a new Old Wick season, which I auditioned for and was very lucky enough to get in.

Leo McKern14:51

And lo and behold, Tony Guthrie reproduced The Miser and gave me my original part. That was, in fact.

Leo McKern14:59

Certainly the first London party.

Presenter15:01

Well, at this point, there you are, for the first time in London. Let's break your fourth record.

Leo McKern15:05

Now this is the Prokofiev Romey and Junior ballet music. It is the dance of the nights.

Presenter15:10

It is

Leo McKern15:14

Which is rather morous.

Leo McKern15:18

My wife introduced me to this particular piece. She'd heard it on the radio, B B C of course, and had gone out and bought the record and said, Listen to this marvellous, beautiful ballet music.

Presenter16:23

The Dance of the Knights from the Prokofiev Ballet Romeo and Juliet, Andre Previn conducting the London Symphony Orchestra.

Presenter16:30

So you were at the old Viclio. You stayed there for quite a long time, didn't you?

Leo McKern16:34

Yes. The first year was at the new theatre because the old wick had been bombed. But the following year, in fact, we went to the opening of the new old wick, as it were.

Presenter16:45

You played Guildenstern in Michael Redgrave's Hamlet.

Leo McKern16:49

That's right, yes, that's right.

Leo McKern16:51

Michael was very good to me, I must say. I had auditioned for the Uldwick from Nottingham and in fact we came down to London for the Repertory Festival. Our production of Othello, in which Michael Aldridge played Othello, was selected for the Repertory Festival, which we did at the Embassy at Swiss Cottage. Used to be done every year then.

Speaker 117:12

At

Leo McKern17:16

And uh after a performance there one night there was a knock on the dressing room door and I opened it and it was Michael Redgrave and I nearly fell over on my flat on my face. And he said, Oh, I'm so glad you'll be coming to join the company next year at Eurobeck. He was absolutely wonderful to me then and thereafter. A great, great help and a great uh

Presenter17:35

Uh

Speaker 117:35

Yeah.

Leo McKern17:38

Yeah.

Presenter17:38

Looking down your list of parts in your first season with Jolvik, you played the fool in in Lear. To who's Lear?

Leo McKern17:39

Come down your slip.

Leo McKern17:46

It was to have been Donald Wolfitz, but Donald left the company before the that production was started, and in fact it was Stephen Murray.

Presenter17:56

You did afterwards work with Wolfit and other productions.

Leo McKern17:58

Oh yes, indeed. I was uh had the fortune to be with him in the marvellous production of Temblé, which was uh I think well, I think for those who saw it, a theatrical experience. It was the first

Presenter18:12

It was the first production for several hundred years, wasn't it? Yes, it was. How did you get on with Wolf It?

Leo McKern18:18

I don't think anybody really got on with Donald at all. He was somebody to be somebody to be to be viewed and even talked to from a distance. He was a very strange man. His behaviour was monstrous on the stage. Absolutely monstrous.

Presenter18:35

How do you mean? He would upstage people?

Leo McKern18:37

Oh, upstaging, that was the smallest thing.

Leo McKern18:40

He became so bored with one of my longer speeches in Tamblane one night that when he got tired of fiddling with his costume, sent her upstage. Uh but one night he thought, Oh, really, this isn't enough, because he honestly and truly believed that nothing of any possible interest to any possible person could be happening while he was not either speaking or acting on the stage.

Leo McKern19:02

And he used to I'd start the speech and he'd just walk off.

Leo McKern19:05

And come back on again a line before his cue

Presenter19:09

Um

Leo McKern19:09

which was, you know, absolutely monstrous. But in a funny way I could you could never feel anything but a sort of stunned amazement. I mean I could never feel angry with him. Other actors and actresses certainly did.

Presenter19:20

Another error

Presenter19:22

There were occasions when he really rose to it and was magnificent, weren't they? Oh, unbelievable.

Presenter19:28

After the Olvic you went on to Stratford upon Avon, and you went with the Stratford Company to Australia. That must have been really something going back in triumph, as it were, with one of the senior English companies.

Speaker 319:34

Hmm.

Leo McKern19:35

Uh

Leo McKern19:41

It was. Of course. It was a sort of dream come true. It was the sort of thing that everybody would like to have happen. But

Leo McKern19:50

You've got to be a bit careful about going back to Australia with success from overseas. You tread very ginger indeed because the attitude from a lot of people is

Leo McKern20:05

Well, don't think you can come back here and tell us how to do it, Leo, just because you've happened to make it okay over there.

Leo McKern20:13

So you get a lot of that.

Presenter20:14

Uh

Leo McKern20:14

Yeah.

Presenter20:16

Record number five.

Leo McKern20:18

This is another oldie. It's by one of the m lovely ballad singers which now seem to have gone out of fashion and have been out of fashion for at least two decades. This is Laurence Tibbett, the American beautiful baritone, a singing Myself When Young, which is from the Rue Bayat of Omar Kayan.

Speaker 320:51

Myself, when young, did eagerly drink well Doctor and Saint and the great August

Speaker 321:05

Forevermore

Speaker 321:12

Came out by that same door wherein

Presenter21:25

Myself When Young sung by Laurence Tippett

Presenter21:28

How early in your career did you start in films, Leo?

Leo McKern21:32

Oh, golly, that was wild.

Leo McKern21:34

We were still, in fact, at

Leo McKern21:37

Did

Leo McKern21:38

Early days of the New Olvik. So it must have been fifty fifty one.

Leo McKern21:44

when four of us, in fact Michael Aldridge, Paul Rogers, myself

Leo McKern21:50

And one other actor. Cannot remember. We played the Knights in a film of Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral. Ah, yes. Which was made by a strange Czechoslovakian or a Hungarian director. We made that in a deserted church in Saint John's Wood. Mhm. And it was a very strange little affair.

Leo McKern22:11

I remember it chiefly for listening to a record of TS Eliot, who made the disc specially so that we could listen to the way TS Eliot's verse was spoke.

Leo McKern22:24

And I cannot tell you how awful it was. So we all we all uh just ignored it and went out. Ignored the author. Oh, Mark Dignum. That was the other land, yes.

Presenter22:30

It's not the author.

Presenter22:34

There was one film in which you made a lot of money and after it you sold out and went back to Australia. Were you intending to stay there?

Leo McKern22:42

Yes, I suppose I was. I didn't really know what I intended to do at all.

Leo McKern22:48

All I knew was that after eleven months on Ryan's Daughter, for that was the film

Leo McKern22:54

I wondered what I was doing. I'd just spent a whole year of my life making a film, which seemed to be a bit sort of absurd.

Presenter23:02

Why did it take me so long?

Leo McKern23:04

Well, I think mainly because we run out of weather.

Leo McKern23:07

We ran out of summer twice, and we also ran out of gales. For the first time on the west coast of Ireland went right through winter, without there being, in fact, a sustained gale of any size in about seventy years, I believe.

Presenter23:22

We were sitting about in a hotel waiting for the storm to get up.

Leo McKern23:25

That's right. Yes, indeed.

Leo McKern23:27

But the shots they eventually did were pretty marvellous. But it wasn't blowing more than about uh six at the time. But they used a lot of artificial aids. They used great uh airplane propellers and hoses, driven sand, they used water towers, and it I must say the whole thing looked absolutely fantastic.

Presenter23:45

But even so, eleven months waiting for the weather. What did you do in Australia?

Leo McKern23:47

What?

Leo McKern23:49

Well, the first thing we did was marvellous and I would very much like to do it again. I'd taken out there a big Volkswagen van and myself, the wife and the two girls round Australia. Yes, right round. We ended up in Cairns in North Queensland. We'd done about nine and a half thousand miles in

Presenter24:02

Your granddaughters.

Leo McKern24:12

Nine weeks.

Leo McKern24:14

I could have spent two years, three years during that trip. But the girls, I thought at the time anyway, had to have some sort of education. Not so sure now.

Leo McKern24:26

Whatever is a great experience.

Presenter24:26

The one that

Presenter24:28

One of them's doing very well as an actress.

Leo McKern24:31

They are both doing well, I'm delighted to say, yes.

Presenter24:34

I didn't know the second younger one had started.

Leo McKern24:36

She's doing photography. She's at the London College of Printing.

Presenter24:40

Mm-hmm.

Leo McKern24:40

She's making one of her projects at the moment. She's in her second year. She's making a video.

Leo McKern24:46

She's studying cinematography, photography, video, television. The whole gamut.

Presenter24:52

It's time we had another record, Leo. What's number six?

Leo McKern24:55

Well, we'll have to have something big, as they say. We'll have something from the pastoral symphony of Beethoven.

Presenter25:50

The Shepherd's Hymn After the Storm from Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony.

Presenter25:55

Carrion conducting the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra.

Presenter25:59

Leo, it was about nine years ago, and I had no idea it was so long, that you were approached about playing a barrister in a television series. Who made the first approach?

Leo McKern26:10

That was a a script sent by the BBC. Out of the blue.

Presenter26:13

Don't ship out

Leo McKern26:14

Oh, yes. And uh I read it. I said this is great stuff. Certainly. I should love to do it. Thank you very much.

Leo McKern26:23

Did it. It was a play for today, written by John Mortimer. I can't even remember the name of it. Must have had a title.

Leo McKern26:31

About a young colored black boy charged with knifing another lad after a football match.

Leo McKern26:37

But it was great stuff, and as I read it, page after page, the character made such an immense impression on me, I felt I'd known him all my life, and I dearly loved him, and I dearly wanted to act.

Leo McKern26:51

him in that way.

Presenter26:52

A character called Rumpole, was it?

Leo McKern26:54

Run.

Presenter26:56

Hold, yes. Uh-huh.

Leo McKern26:57

Uh

Presenter26:58

Uh

Presenter26:59

Whose idea was it that he should be a series? Did you suggest that? Or was it.

Leo McKern27:03

Well, there have been all sorts of different memories about this sort of thing. I'm quite content. Yes, I did.

Leo McKern27:10

I said to John one day, Look, this is such a lovely

Leo McKern27:13

February

Leo McKern27:14

And you must have innumerable stories, surely.

Leo McKern27:18

Could we do a a small bot? Could we do say half dozen? Yes. And that is in fact what we did.

Presenter27:25

How many series of rumpole have there been?

Leo McKern27:28

We have done three lots of six and one full-length film, which went out, I think, Christmas before last.

Presenter27:35

Now is that going to be the lot? You you have throughout, I think, put up a show of resistance to doing any more, but then you have weakened.

Leo McKern27:44

Yes, I did. I resisted it because I didn't want to be stuck with that character for the rest of my days.

Leo McKern27:50

Then afterwards realised that I was stuck with the character for the rest of my days. Therefore I agreed to do this last six. But I I can't honestly see them going on and on. We have lost, for example, some lovely people. We've lost lovely Peter Bowles and Patricia Hodge, who both have very big and important parts, and they now, seeing as it's many years since we did the first club, they've got their own series, and in all fairness one couldn't possibly ask them to come back.

Leo McKern28:18

and do sporting parts.

Presenter28:19

You willing to go on if John Mortimer can think up some more ideas?

Leo McKern28:23

I'd like to quit on the crest of the wave, I really would. This it's been such a marvellously successful series, especially in America. Did you notice this tie that I've got on, the old rumpo tie?

Presenter28:34

Yes, a nice blue tie with the monogram on it.

Leo McKern28:42

And that's the tie of the Rum Pole Association in America.

Presenter28:46

Is there a Rumpole Association in Britain?

Leo McKern28:48

Not to my knowledge.

Presenter28:49

The Americans leading the way again, that's a pivot. We have to match that.

Leo McKern28:50

That's right. Hundred dollars to join, defence attorneys only, and no judges allowed.

Presenter28:59

I'd love to know what happens to the $100. Let's have a record number seven.

Leo McKern29:05

Ah, this is lovely. It is the choir of the King's College, Cambridge.

Leo McKern29:11

It is one

Leo McKern29:13

Peace, the Allegri, Miserere, Psalm fifty one. There is a boy, Soro, Roy Goodman, whose voice, when you listen to this, I think, is a sort of proof of the existence of God.

Presenter30:25

The choir of King's College, Cambridge, directed by David Wilcox Allegri's Miserire, with Roy Goodman as the solo treble.

Presenter30:34

You're on this desert island. Now, as an ex-beach boy, you should do all right and and yes, you're a practical man, you can use your hands, you can put up a shelter.

Leo McKern30:40

You're a

Presenter30:44

Yeah.

Leo McKern30:44

Yes.

Presenter30:44

Can you cook? Done some fishing.

Leo McKern30:47

An enormous amount of patience, yes.

Presenter30:49

So there's nothing to worry about.

Leo McKern30:51

Could you escape? I could certainly build some kind of floatable craft, yes. Could you navigate it?

Leo McKern30:57

Uh, that would be difficult. Yes, that would be difficult. I'm not too bad at coastal navigation, but uh celestial navigation, yeah.

Presenter31:06

Well, you better brush up on your navigation before you go.

Leo McKern31:09

Yes, indeed.

Presenter31:11

And let's have your last record. What have you saved until the end?

Leo McKern31:13

Yeah.

Leo McKern31:14

The last record memories a very happy time. The time I made a film for and with the Beatles called Help was a very happy time for me and I think somehow too it was a good time for them.

Speaker 331:29

I need somebody help, not just anybody, help, you know I need someone, help!

Speaker 331:39

I was younger, so much younger than today I never needed anybody's help in any way

Speaker 331:49

Now these days are gone and I'm not so self-assured Now I find a change of mind and open up the door

Presenter31:57

The Beatles help.

Presenter32:00

Now you're currently occupied in a new play.

Leo McKern32:03

Yes, a French play, great success in Paris. Translated by Michael Freine, written by Henui and called Here, Number One.

Presenter32:12

And you're enjoying it.

Leo McKern32:13

Very much indeed. Yes, indeed.

Presenter32:16

And of course you've just published your first book. It is your first book, isn't it? Yes. Just Resting, which is not an accurate description of your career at all. You've been a very busy man indeed, through a long career. This is a a book of reminiscences.

Leo McKern32:31

Yes. It was begun actually in a period when I knew I didn't have work for at least a couple of months.

Leo McKern32:37

So I started it, and uh I found once I'd started writing, especially from memory, especially about childhood, that it started to just pour out so

Leo McKern32:47

It just went on and on.

Presenter32:49

If you could only take one disc of the eight that you played us, which would it be?

Leo McKern32:53

It would have to be the serenade for tenor horn and strings, because it contains every possible mood of music I think that I could choose to listen to.

Leo McKern33:05

Yeah.

Presenter33:05

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

Leo McKern33:11

It I did think of something earlier, but it's those words of no practical use whatsoever, which put a dapper on it. What I would like would be

Leo McKern33:21

some watercolours, and some Wattmann's hot press paper.

Presenter33:25

That's all right. What was the thing that you were going to ask for and changed your mind?

Leo McKern33:29

Well, I was going to ask for a sort of workshop. Oh, no, no, no.

Presenter33:31

Oh no, no, no, no workshop. What an impertinence.

Leo McKern33:35

Yes, I know. Awful, yeah. I could have built a railboat with that.

Presenter33:37

Yeah. I could have built a real pattern with that. Uh

Leo McKern33:40

One

Presenter33:40

One book apart from the Bible and Shakespeare, which are thoughtfully provided.

Leo McKern33:45

Oh Lord, I thought and thought. It was a toss-up eventually, but I must confess I heard somebody else ask on your program for the Dictionary of National Biography, which I thought was a pretty clever thing. But it was a choice between that and the encyclopedia, and quite frankly, the encyclopedia wins for me, because apart from just finding out about people, I can find about just about everything.

Presenter34:12

Right. And thank you, Leo McKern, for letting us hear your Desert Island Discs. Thank you, Roy. Goodbye, everyone.

Speaker 134:25

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk/radio4.