Willie Rushton

Willie Rushton0:00

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

Presenter0:29

This week, our castaway is the actor, humorist, artist, cartoonist and broadcaster William Rushton.

Presenter0:36

William, what are your feelings about uh a desert island? I mean, it suits some people better than others. How could you envisage the idea? I I'm frankly terrified. I mean, the thing that really worries me is how I got there. I think I mean, I don't take ships, so it has to be a plane crash.

Presenter0:52

So I see myself now, having done a Robinson Crusoe, alone on this beach, with six hundred plastic lunches.

Presenter0:58

Which are going to slowly decay as I sit and watch them. The other thing, of course, you you never tell us is what size this thing is. It is quite a reasonable but deserted desert island. But is the vegetation rock faces, perhaps? Oh, yes, rock faces, vegetation. You can pick your own island, please. The pinning is not too big. How about music? Does that mean a lot to you? It's a strange thing in my life, music. I am.

Willie Rushton1:10

Okay.

Speaker 21:10

Yes, I

Speaker 21:13

Provided

Presenter1:19

No real musical taste whatsoever. I think basically I like listening to the radio and being surprised. I mean what I enjoy most I think is driving down the motorway.

Presenter1:27

And just fiddling with this I have this one little button you can press at the least dangerous moments when I'm dragging it's racing on either side of you and see what comes up. I mean, I'm quite happy with it. It can be a bit of Mozart or it can be a showstopper or some meaningless pop number. Have you any executant skill? Do you play an instrument? Do you sing?

Willie Rushton1:39

Have you

Presenter1:43

I sing, I think, almost better than anybody else on earth, but there are disagreements with this. But I have rather a good bathroom baritone and an amazing repertoire. Did it take you a long time to choose just the eight discs that you were going to take for this indeterminate period? I was a bit worried about what eight it would be. It was clearly a moment of panic. Apart from getting the 600 lunches out, I would be seizing records in the plane. So what I did was I wandered around for about a day, and anything that I started humming was obviously something or sang in a bath, I wrote down immediately. So this is a purely gratuitous eight. Right. What's the first one? The first one is from Gypsy. It's the overture, and it's a wonderful showbiz noise. I think it would sort of remind me that many years ago, before I got wrecked on this lone strand, that I actually was in the theatre. And I think if I'd been sitting in a dressing room before I heard this over the intercom...

Presenter2:33

I would be immediately lifted. I would know that when I went out it was going to be terrific. I'd have to be Ethel Merman, admittedly, which I'm not. I never have been, although our voices have been compared over the years. But I I think this is the rousing grand show biz number, the overture to Gypsy.

Willie Rushton2:41

Bad if he is.

Willie Rushton2:43

I

Presenter3:17

The opening of the overture to Gypsy from the soundtrack of the film. William, where were you born? Chelsea. In London. Privately. Yes. In fact, um the family had a

Presenter3:27

My mother and father, I was an only. They they lived in an upper maisonet in Phil Beach Gardens, which is off the Warwick Road in Earl's Court, and a cage erected out of the back, in which the child rushed and was sunned and aired. And unfortunately, it had to be moved, because they started building the Earls Court Pavilion and the brick dust began to settle on my infant face. You were, in fact, born with ink in your veins. Your father was in the publishing business. He was a publisher, yes, he he worked for any number of publishers, I think. He he ended up with Caxton, I think it was, who do the dictionary's resident? Then you were educated at Shrewsbury, where you edited the school magazine. Was this the official magazine, or some jelly press job that was private enterprise?

Willie Rushton3:49

Leave it.

Presenter4:06

No, this was a before we got at it, was a very proper magazine, purely sort of sports reports and um reports of the debating society and the literary societies and visits by field marshals and that sort of thing. And um

Presenter4:19

Richard Ingrams and I and Christopher Booker and Paul Fotu ultimately.

Presenter4:24

moved into private eyes, had about sort of two years at it, and did change it to some degree. It became a rather livelier publication.

Presenter4:31

Much of the blame for private art can be laid on Shreisbray and were you drawing at that time?

Presenter4:36

Yes, more I I've always drawn more than I've written. So you'll put your own drawings in the magazine. Oh, absolutely. No point in being editor if you don't. Yes.

Presenter4:44

I wasn't very good. I mean, I wasn't bad, but I I definitely committed myself then to um black and white and caricature and I still call myself a cartoonist to this day, never an artist. I'm a cartoonist, and it's a proud label to mm wear. So one way or another that was a pretty distinguished school magazine, different to most school magazines. Very.

Presenter5:02

I think. We still had the debating society reports and supports, but the prose and verse columns were longer and it was generally perkier. And you used to illustrate the headmaster's speeches occasionally. To some extent.

Willie Rushton5:07

Yes.

Presenter5:14

He never liked us. Let's have your second record. The second record, well, this is having been born in London and raised in it and lived in it most of my life. The one that would, I think there's a moment of mawkishness required on my desert island. I won't listen to these records all the time, very rarely, probably, but there may come a moment when I would like a bit of deep nostalgia. So I think Neil Coward singing London Pride, which he composed, I believe, on Victoria Station while the bombs are raining down. For some strange reason, he was humming Deutschland, Deutschland, ooh about all, which is very similar, but it's a delightful song. It'll bring back the blitz to me.

Speaker 35:47

London Pride has been handed down to us. London Pride is a flower that's free. London Pride means our own dear town to us, And our Pride it forever will be. Hey lady, when the day is dawning, see the policeman yawning on these lonely beat.

Speaker 36:07

Gay lady, Mayfair in the morning, Hear your footsteps echo in the empty street.

Presenter6:14

Noel Coward bringing back the blitz to you. After Shrewsbury, did you go to university? No. I would have liked to, but you required mathematics and I took O-level maths, I think.

Presenter6:24

seven times and I'm I'm mathematically dyslexic, there's no doubt about it. In my last term they said, if you take biology they said um this will count. So I did a quick crash course in biology.

Presenter6:35

I went into the examination, and there was a terrible thing in a bottle.

Presenter6:38

And the first question was, What is this? And I put vile.

Presenter6:42

And at that moment my university career is ending.

Presenter6:47

So you left school under something of a cloud to do what? Well, first of all, I had to go in the army. Everybody did. I mean, you wouldn't get everybody to go in the army now, but I think we were born with this very big sense of duty, and most of our fathers had been in, and somehow you just did it. What did they give you to do in the army? It was very strange. I put down, I thought the education corps would be quite useful because you became a sergeant almost at once, sort of service corps and learned to type. So I put RAEC, RESC, and I threw in REF as a possible. And I got this letter one morning, report, 15th November 1956, I think it was, report to the 5th Royal Intercilling Dragoon Guards in Catterick. I was like, Arsh cavalry! Oh, Lord, I've been in charge of stuffing horses into tanks. I mean, it's going to be absolutely general. What have I got to do with this? And it was good fun, actually. I think I was in about 11 different regiments and units before I finally got out.

Willie Rushton7:24

What's your

Presenter7:31

Now had you any clear idea while you were sitting there in barrack huts what you were going to do when they took your uniform away? Absolutely none, I will admit. And I still don't know what I'm going to be when I grow up, I don't think. I didn't know what to do. I thought advertising might be it when I came out. I thought I can do half the time's crossword. I can do jokes, I know, and I can draw a bit. So I sort of volunteered my services all around. What I really wanted to know when I went to see these personnel men at these huge advertising companies was what you had to actually do to be an advertising man, which they

Presenter7:58

All ignored totally. He refused to answer this question.

Presenter8:01

And finally, an old friend of my father's my father was dead and he died in about my last year of national service and an old friend of his who was a solicitor said you need a qualification.

Presenter8:11

I don't really need a qualification, but at the same time I saw this seven years in which I didn't have to make up my mind what I wanted to do, and I ended up with a qualification.

Presenter8:19

So I went and became an article clerk to him. Did that interest you? Not a lot, but what it did give me, I think, which was quite useful and everybody should do it, is some idea of how offices work. That actually you can get away with murder.

Presenter8:30

I discovered being a solicitor really was just keeping up a bold front while people spoke to you about their wills or their conveyancing. And the moment they'd left the office, you rang for your managing clerk or you looked in a book on a shelf and you then sorted out what you had to do. And I think I could actually be quite a good solicitor now. How long did you say that? A year. Then then exams loomed and I thought, no, I can't go through all that again. I will not do that. And I took a it was a fairly bold decision to become a freelance cartoonist.

Presenter8:54

And the first job I got was um Michael Foote. Paul Foote got it for me, I think. He was in editing Tribune. They were looking for political cartoonists.

Presenter9:01

Uh I did a couple for him, I think.

Presenter9:04

But then Michael Foote said he was a great admirer of Vicky and I had this I couldn't actually put write depression on clouds and I hated putting the name of people on their coats or their briefcases and he was very into that. He liked that the old Vicky style of knowing what everybody was and having bulls running at red rags saying parliamentary left or you know complicated.

Speaker 39:13

Yeah.

Willie Rushton9:13

Uh

Presenter9:23

And I couldn't do that. So I left Tribune, voted Conservatively. I I think I was thrown out on a Tuesday, voted Tory on a Thursday.

Presenter9:30

And then went and joined the Liberal News, who were looking for a cartridge president. At this point, before we get a little dizzy, let's break the third record.

Presenter9:38

My great love in life has always been Broadway musicals, I will admit. I will go and see anything that comes out of the American musical stage.

Presenter9:45

And one of the great ones, I think, was um

Presenter9:48

The Music Man

Presenter9:49

And a song that very rarely heard from it, but which is wonderful in the bath, and I can sing it vaguely, but I think I have a lot of trouble with the band, is Marion, Madam Librarian, sung by Robert Preston.

Speaker 29:59

But when I try in here

Speaker 210:02

To tell you, dear.

Speaker 210:04

I love you madly, madly, madam librarian. Marion, it's a long lost cause I can never win. For the civilized world accepts as unforgivable sin, any talking out loud with any.

Speaker 210:20

Librarian

Speaker 210:22

Such is mad

Speaker 210:26

Yeah.

Presenter10:28

Marion the Librarian from The Music Man, sung by Robert Preston.

Presenter10:33

Right, William, you've been in three political journals of three political parties. What happened next? I got some children's books out of the Tribune. Because one of my cartoons had had this bull charging at the Red Rag, which is Tribune, I got some animal stories to illustrate for a Harrowp.

Presenter10:47

And

Presenter10:49

I wanted to keep on with that very much, illustration side, but I was also having a very good extramural university education in that I was going up at weekends, which is quite the best times to go to universities. You don't have to worry about the weekdays. I mean, there cast lectures and the rest of it, but I used to get enjoying all the social stuff.

Willie Rushton11:02

Right

Presenter11:03

Uh both of them I used to go to, which is what confuses people. Well, Oxford and Cambridge. Yeah, Oxford and Cambridge. Alternate weekends. Yes. So people ask me which one I was at. I'll be at whichever one you like. And when they ask me what I got, I always say a first in crates, because it pleases them to think that I did. And I've said to people I didn't go to university, they say, Oh, yes, you did.

Presenter11:20

So I fight them off because you know, I've given up fighting. I now say, oh, there's a. Which courses do they have on Sundays? Well, it was basically extensive drinking.

Willie Rushton11:23

It says it's

Presenter11:29

I can remember doing a survey of the pubs of Oxford for ISIS. That was a very interesting weekend. I think we covered some seventy pubs in a weekend. Oh, a lot of drawings I did for Mesopotamia, which is a magazine that we started up there, which um was run by a man called Peter Osborne who later started Private Eye, so that was cooking. Richard Ingrams and Paul Foote were up there doing another magazine which was constantly being sued called Parsons' Pleasure. And I did a lot of pictures for that.

Presenter11:51

And I also did a bit I did an Oxford review, a late night review, in a defrocked church in Edinburgh, at the Edinburgh Festival, which got a little bit of critical acclaim. I think I was disguised Portly Pontiff by Alan Brown, I think.

Willie Rushton11:58

Uh

Presenter12:03

It was a vague thing going in the back of my head that possibly there was something in this acting business, but I I was determined to draw at that stage. You were talking about the beginnings of of Private Eye. Now, this coalesced out of all these university magazines, did it?

Willie Rushton12:03

So it started the

Presenter12:17

It did really, because um they do in in the history of private irony now being produced, in which I disappear on page forty five, but have a tremendous first forty five pages, they do findly admit that I was the person who, when they all came down from the university,

Presenter12:30

I said

Presenter12:31

Take a year before you all become corroborists and um actuaries and go into the city and all that sort of thing, all the father's business.

Presenter12:38

Just take a and carry on doing what you did at the universities. I said, Why don't we start a magazine? You were a sort of father figure in this. In in a strange sort of way, except I had no idea how we would do it. And very luckily Peter Osborne was listening when I said this and said, This is very possible. And he found out how he could produce a magazine cheaply and worked out all we needed was eight hundred pounds.

Presenter12:57

And we could start private eye. And luckily sitting in another corner of the pub was a another ex-Oxford called Andrew Osmond, who said, I have eight hundred pounds.

Presenter13:06

Fortune in those days. And that was how we just started it. It sort of crept out, which I think is quite a good way to start things. What was the re the reaction to the first issue? We tried three sort of dummies out on people, which was quite clever on yellow paper.

Presenter13:19

and all stapled together by various debutantes that Andrew Osmond knew very saucy ladies in sort of Chanel dresses. Very useful contact. Very useful. Very hard working they were, and of course able to stay up all hours with their stapling machines. And then they used to distribute them on things like London Bridge. They handed them out free.

Presenter13:36

Because they couldn't get any money off people. And we did these three and then at about the start of 1961, I think it was, we actually produced issue four, which was the first one that went national. It was very well received. There was nothing like it. Now were you actually on the staff? Have you ever been on the staff? I was on the staff for yes, I I was officially sort of joint editor and then we created an editorial board in which I was art editor and food.

Speaker 313:49

I was on the staff for

Presenter13:57

We used to name ourselves at the start.

Presenter13:59

Then we stopped doing it after Randolph Churchill sued us,'cause he picked out everybody, including the secretaries and the distributors and everybody, and sued the lot, so then we went anonymous. But at one stage I I I think I probably worked for about four or five years as a

Speaker 314:06

I see.

Presenter14:11

Staff member, editor, art editor, come in, I think you want it to be, with Christopher Booker and Richard Ingram.

Presenter14:17

Well, let's change the subject. Let's have another record.

Presenter14:20

Ah, this takes me hurtling back down the gears. It's actually the end of my school days, I think we first got the record this record. And it's a very pleasant, relaxing one. It'll be good to lie on the beach and play this once a year. It's Louis Armstrong and Bing Crosby singing Gone Fishing.

Speaker 214:33

God

Presenter14:33

I'm fishing.

Speaker 214:35

Mm-hmm. Uh

Presenter14:36

Ah, you know

Speaker 214:36

Uh

Presenter14:37

Or there's a sign upon your door

Speaker 214:40

Uh

Presenter14:40

Gone fishing. I'm real gone, man. You ain't working anymore.

Presenter14:47

Could be. There's your hoe out in the sun.

Presenter14:51

Where you left a row, half done

Presenter14:55

You claim that Hoein ain't no fun. But I can prove it. You ain't got no ambition.

Presenter15:02

Gone fishing.

Presenter15:04

Bing Crosby and Louis Armstrong.

Presenter15:07

Now you are on the staff.

Presenter15:09

If we may put it that way, a a private eye. You also had these ambitions about acting. They weren't really ambitions. If I was to tell you how my acting career started.

Presenter15:19

I was standing in the King's Head and Eight Bells in Chelsea, proud I'd just started, and Richard Ingrams and another lovely soul who used to be a theatrical director and now has a second-hand bookshop in Leeds, had a bright idea. They had a a theatre company of prose who used to go round schools doing the shows, or bits of shows, and talking to the kids about it afterwards. It was called Tomorrow's Audience. It was ready to encourage children all over the country to actually enjoy theatre, because a lot of them never see it, and take it up in later life and go to the theatre.

Presenter15:47

And they had been given the Marlowe Theatre, Canterbury, for a fortnight, and weren't actually certain what to do. They had a sort of show of their own actually in the first week. And the second week they were given by Spike Milligan, who they approached, a play called The Bed Sitting Room.

Presenter15:58

And Graham Stark was gaming the lead of this, and fell out, and so they had about a week to go.

Presenter16:03

Didn't know what to do and suddenly I saw them talking about this and I realized they were looking at me strangely and they said, you'll do it, won't you? And I said, what?

Presenter16:09

They said, do this bed sitting room in Marlowe City of Canterbury for a week. I think they offered me something like twelve pounds, I think. Was it?

Willie Rushton16:15

Uh

Presenter16:17

£12. Well as private I was I was getting 8 quid a week. Suddenly that was 20 quid a week. I thought this is very good and anyway I'll be able to tell my grandchildren I've been on the stage for a week. I mean that's very you know so I went up and joined equity which required knocking on the door and saying I'd like to join equity please and I give them the nine quid or whatever it was but I was beginning to show a loss already. I think it was nine pounds then. And then off I went and I did actually get a sparkling review from Kenneth Tynan who came to see it.

Presenter16:41

And I think I was described as brilliant but spectacled.

Presenter16:44

Which was half right and half it was right. I won't well anyway, I don't wear glasses. And that led to a private eye review, a strange agent who later became a pimp.

Presenter16:53

came to me and said anything I want to do of a review nature or anything like that, he he would put up. And I said, well privately we could certainly do something.

Presenter17:01

And I was thinking of retirement anyway, but I thought, well, just this one last shot. It was a place at the room at the top of Ilford, which was about halfway up a furniture store. And it was like a fallout shelter, really. And we did this, John Wells, Richard Ingrams, and I, and Barbara Windsor, which is a strange quartet, but it was meant to be a sort of answer to Beyond the Fringe. But it was in that cabaret in Ilford that you were discovered. That was it. I mean, when I do the Broadway musical of my life, that is the moment when the producer leaps up, which was Ned Sherry and came in. And I was for some strange quirk during a Harold McMillan impersonation, and he was looking.

Willie Rushton17:21

That was it.

Willie Rushton17:24

Meta.

Presenter17:31

Idly for a Harold McMillan impersonator. It's the only impersonation I've ever done except for Billie Eckstein, which I won't bore you with. It's a terrifying sound. Oh, I also do Edmund Hockeridge, which is wasted on people. But Harold McMillan was what he was looking for. And so I was offered the pilot of That Was the Week. So you became a telefigure, but you threw it all up to fight an election. Was this political idealism? This was a terrible error of judgment, actually.

Willie Rushton17:38

Terrifying Zach.

Presenter17:56

We were sitting in the pub, saying, What a dreadful thing Sir Alec Douglas Hume taking over. We must do something about it. He was g he was going out to Kinros in West Perthshire to um Stand for Parliament, so he can descend from the Lords back among the minions again.

Presenter18:09

And while I was thinking, What on earth could we do about it? somebody threw in that somebody ought to go up there and stand against him. Then I realized all eyes were upon me, and I said, Well, all right, you know.

Presenter18:20

Oh, I'll I'll do it, vaguely. I thought I'll talk about it when we get back to the office, and the drinkers worn off, and the moment we got back to the office phone rang to the evening standards, saying, We hear you're standing for Parliament against and it was too late. I said foolishly said yes.

Presenter18:33

Uh it was quite funny that they sat our into the field, but it just happened to be the wrong field. You could have lost your deposit. Oh, the deposit went straight down the drain. How many votes did you get? Forty five, and I think I can name all of them. Uh most on a rather cheery gang of dustmen who I got on very well with in Creeff, I think it was.

Presenter18:49

William, let's have record number five. I think probably the best musical ever written, I think, was Guys and Dolls. I love it madly. And this was really a sort of keen contest between either the overture again, which has the lovely bit of a horse right here, his name is Paul Revere, that, or a marvellous song, which is very rarely sung by anybody.

Presenter19:06

which is more I cannot wish you, which is a sweet number. It's father addressing daughter, and father is played here by a deeply breathing old gentleman who sings well as I do, I think. I mean, I like people who sound as they've just got up.

Presenter19:16

when they're singing called Pet Rooney Senior.

Presenter19:19

I can wish you seven footmen all in red.

Presenter19:26

And calling calves upon a silver train.

Presenter19:33

But more I cannot wish you than to wish you find your love.

Presenter19:40

Your own true love this day.

Willie Rushton19:45

Uh

Willie Rushton19:45

Yeah.

Presenter19:47

Pat Rooney Senior in the song he sang in the Broadway production of Guys and Dolls. So, William, you gave up your

Presenter19:55

Political ambitions. You went back to television. You also did some films? Yes. Nothing but the best, I think was the first one I did, which is a lovely film. It was Frederic Raphael's first film. It was directed by Clive Donner. It was all very smart. Alan Bates was in it. Millicent Martin was in it. And I had what I think they referred to as distinguished cameo. I kept turning up at odd moments. It didn't actually appear a lot, but it was very pleasant. Funny little scenes.

Presenter20:19

I suppose the biggest one I did.

Presenter20:22

And the most joyous in a way was those magnificent men in their flying machines, which I thought was the start of a tremendous movie career and transpired to be voted at the end of it. But because I was very cheap,

Presenter20:30

They could keep me on. It took about six months to make.

Presenter20:33

And uh I was in the happy position of um being the the one that they

Presenter20:37

Pushed the plot along with. When they actually got towards the end of the film, most of the great actors, the Gert Frobes and the rest of them, had all gone back to their various countries.

Presenter20:45

to do their bit. So I was the only one who could do anything. So I'd be constantly little scenes where I'd leap into a tent and say, Ah, here we are in Calais or um hello, Paris or just plot moving. So I worked on it for about six months, I think. This this precarious life of of the stage and screen had you responsibilities. Were you married by this time?

Willie Rushton20:55

Clock moving.

Speaker 220:56

Yeah.

Willie Rushton20:56

But

Presenter21:03

Uh not yet.

Presenter21:05

No, I I got married in 67, I think. I had a lot of trouble with working out when I got married. You have a wife and you have a son now? A wife and a son, and two distinguished stepsons who live in Australia. And you began to write, publications? Yes, not very successfully at that stage. But I was getting into books. I suppose the first really successful book I did was Superpig, which was about the end of the 70s, towards the end of the 70s. And you became more or less king of the panel shows. You were on the air a great deal, sitting in a row with three or four other people. I think basically because I'm sort of cheap again and unscripted, I work quite well without a script. So I'm good for programmes. I don't want to expend a lot, but just fill the screens for half an hour. And my excuse for doing them is it buys you time to do all the other things. The theatre after Canterbury. It took a year or two, but you did make the West End.

Willie Rushton21:48

The theater.

Presenter21:53

Ultimately, twenty years later.

Presenter21:56

I finally got to the West End in in past the butler by Eric Idol. You did the tour as well. It didn't do too well in Poole. Poole? No, I I blame the theatre, not the folk. The theatre was one of these modern ones where I think to cut back on cost they'd actually done nothing about acoustics. And you would walk around the stage, one moment you fired a joke and it sort of whistled, ricocheted round the set and echoed throughout the theatre. If you moved a yard in another direction, it sort of fell like lead at your feet. I mean it was terrifying. And then when they opened the doors just for the interval, anything on stage sort of girls out the back would open the exit doors so they could make their way to the bars for the interval. Everything on stage began to blow away. There were a lot of newspapers in it and it was a bit weird, these newspapers flying past you. Of course we had poor father up the back in this life support system and he began to rattle and shake and the bottles hanging would bang together. Terrifying theatre. But you did all right in the West End. West End we did about four months. What did for us I think was um was the Falklands. After about three months the Falklands started and I think people stayed at home to discover how they were going rather than go and have a cheery night out at the theatre which I think was probably the better thing to do.

Presenter22:58

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

Presenter23:00

Now I think something I've been a bit laid back so far, but one of the ones I do hum quite frequently, and I actually once sang this to a room full of startled women at Girton College, Oxford, I think at a cabaret night. I thought I can't be funny all the time, I'll be sexy for once. And I sang The Night Has a Thousand Eyes, which was originally sung by Bobby V and Tim Rice speaks very highly of it, so it can't be all bad.

Speaker 323:21

They say that you're a run around love.

Speaker 323:28

So

Presenter23:30

What if you put me down for another

Presenter23:35

I know, really, I don't know.

Presenter23:39

Cover night.

Speaker 323:40

We've had a thousand eyes, and a thousand eyes Can't help but see

Presenter23:49

The Night has a thousand eyes.

Presenter23:51

You've recently published your first novel. Yes, it's taken a long time coming. The plot came from various areas and

Presenter23:58

I think basically it was after twenty two years of doing fact

Presenter24:02

Oh, the shedding joy of getting into fiction. This is beautiful.

Speaker 224:04

This is it.

Presenter24:05

A a comic novel. A knock'em down and drag'em out comic novel.

Willie Rushton24:06

It was

Presenter24:09

What I like about it most is they'll never be able to make a film of it. I think an awful lot of novels nowadays you can tell from the locations that the writer is rather hoping not only to sell the film rights but get to write the script and get to the locations he's written about. It could be a cartoon film, because you've done some very funny drawings yourself. They could animate it. That is true. I mean, it concerns basically Dr. W. G. Grayson, Dr. Watson, and Dr. Jekyll. And it's set in the 90s, and it's roughly, I describe it as a sequel to The War of the Worlds. I mean, H.G. Wells did end The War of the Worlds by saying there was no doubt that the Martians would come back. So it's a Victorian.

Presenter24:41

Knockabout set in that period. And what have you called it? Just W. G. Grace's last case, which I think is quite enticing. We haven't read about his first one yet.

Presenter24:49

That was it was true. Do you know Trent's last case, E. C. Bentley? Of course. That was his first book. Let's have record number seven.

Presenter24:55

Record number seven. I've never really heard all the way through. It's seven minutes long, but I've always liked the tune I find it extravagantly catchy, and the words cheer me up enormously. And I think this could be very good for dancing on the beach by myself or with the perhaps I'm a louder parrot or something of that nature. Anyway, it's Michael Naismith, who used to be one of the monkeys, and it's a song called Rio.

Speaker 325:15

It's only a whimsical notion.

Presenter25:20

Two five.

Speaker 325:21

Fly down to Rio tonight.

Speaker 325:25

That probably won't fly down to Creole.

Speaker 325:31

But when it came up to I just like

Presenter25:36

Michael Naismith Rio. I'm sorry you can't have another twenty minutes of that. It's good stuff.

Presenter25:41

Now you're on this desert island. Have you any manual skills that would help you? Could you build a hut?

Presenter25:48

I'm all right. At black and decoring.

Presenter25:51

And light bulbs and electric switches, but I'd be absolutely useless on Desert Island. Hopeless. I I ca I once caught a fish. I never felt so awful in my life, and I finally let it go and Could you catch another one if you were hungry? I think I'd have to go vegetarian.

Willie Rushton26:02

If we were hungry, I think I think

Presenter26:05

This may not be a bad thing. Would you try to escape? Could you build a craft? Could you build a raft? No.

Presenter26:11

No, that'd be far beyond me. Anyway, my navigation would be so hopeless, and I'd certainly have no idea where I was. Anyway, I might be beginning to enjoy it.

Presenter26:18

I think a little bit of solitude. What I'm working on is enormous Mount Rushmore-like cliff face. I mean I'm doing the cliff face. I've I've already done Clement Attlee and I'm working through the great prime ministers of my time. Where are you doing this? On this cliff face to the left.

Speaker 326:19

Whoever

Speaker 326:29

So far is it?

Presenter26:31

I see, yes. Well, that that'll be rather nice. That'll occupy the time. Of course it will. Yes, there are a lot of Prime Ministers to get through. Oh, heavens, I'm going to have a lot of trouble with Callan in rock, I think. Yes. Shin. You can do heads of the opposition and leaders of the opposition. Oh, it's endless. Until the island runs out, I could turn it into one great sculpture.

Willie Rushton26:45

Always.

Presenter26:50

Last record

Presenter26:51

Last record is the first song I could ever sing in my life. Now, you may think this is going to be something silly like Mary Mary quite contrary, as I mean, in factual fact, it's Ambrose.

Presenter27:00

My musical education started in about 1939, I suppose, when Hitler decided to try and kill me for reasons I could never understand at that age. And all I was left with to listen to on a wind-up gramophone were my mother's old dance band records of the 30s. So at the age of three, I could actually sing my way through Ambrose playing, I guess I'll have to change my plan, every bit of it, even the intro.

Presenter27:36

I guess I'll have to change my plan. I should have realized I'd be another man. I overlooked that point completely until the big affair

Speaker 327:47

Till the big affair began

Speaker 327:51

Before I knew where I was at, I found myself upon the shelf, and that was that. I tried to.

Presenter27:58

I try to reach the moon.

Speaker 328:00

Yeah.

Presenter28:00

Bob

Speaker 328:01

When I got there, oh what I

Presenter28:02

Oh, but I Good cat was the air. My feet are back upon the ground. I've lost the one girl.

Speaker 328:10

So I far.

Presenter28:13

Ambrose and his orchestra, I guess I'll have to change my plan. And the man that you used to imitate was Sam Brown. Was it? I didn't know that. If you could take only one disc out of the eight you've chosen, which would it be? That would be it. Right. Ambrose and his orchestra. And you're entitled to take one luxury, any one object that would give you great pleasure to have, but which is of no practical use whatever. This doesn't count the many chisels, which I've obviously had to do and do this rock face. No, no, no. Well, in which case you had to make your own chisels. In which case, as I am totally unmusical, I think the thing I would like, given a lifetime's ambition to be a Hoagie Carmichael figure in some low bar somewhere on a Pacific Island.

Willie Rushton28:41

No, no, in which case you have to make your own chisel.

Presenter28:53

I think crooning gently at a piano. I would actually try and learn the piano. I think this is a perfect opportunity. There's nobody there to listen except the parrot. Yes, I would teach myself the piano. And one book, you already have the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare. It's hard. It would be very tempting to say wisdom, because it's a good occupation I've found over many years, sitting in the bath, to actually follow the career of some unsuccessful cricketer in the 1920s and see just how awful he was. I mean, that's quite good. But I think I'd be slightly more educational. I've never read enough of G. K. Chesterton, and I love him madly.

Presenter29:25

And if my voice was slightly higher I could actually do a one-man show, but then everybody thinks he's got a deep voice because he looks like one. He looks like a basso profundo, but in fact he squeak like that really properly.

Presenter29:34

Um but I I could work on a one-man show of Chestertoniana, and I think that would be he's very funny and very good and infinitely wise.

Presenter29:43

And would perk me up. So, an anthology of the Father Brown books? No, all his other books, I think. I'm not so fond of Father Brown, to tell the truth, but everything else he wrote: The Pony of Notting Hill, the lovely books he wrote. Very funny man. As much as we can cram between two covers. Yes. And thank you, William Rushton, for letting us hear your Desert Island Disc. A pleasure. Goodbye, everyone.

Willie Rushton30:09

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