Jonathan Lynn

Speaker 20:00

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

Our castaway this week is the writer, director and actor Jonathan Lynn.

Presenter0:34

Jonathan, you not only play records, you have sold them, haven't you? Yes, I have. I did work for a brief spell in Selfridge's record department. When was that? It was in nineteen sixty six. When you were resting? When I was resting, yes. What was the top of the hit parade at that time?

Presenter0:52

We only ever s I ever sold three records really. I sold The Black and White Minstrel Show, The Sound of Music.

Presenter0:59

and a German dance band called Bert Kamfert and his Orchestra, which I had never heard of till I went to work at Soviets.

Presenter1:05

And if anyone ever came in and asked for anything like Mozart, you know, I wanted to leap over the counter and give them a kiss. Well, you've got eight to choose for this island, and I see there as your side. Did you find it very difficult to choose? Yes, I found it virtually impossible. You've done all right. You've got it down to eight. What's the first one? The first one is Eine Kleine Nachsmusik.

Presenter1:29

I have so many favourite pieces of music.

Presenter1:32

In the end I just opted for making a choice on the basis of of nostalgia really.

Speaker 41:37

Mm-hmm.

Presenter1:37

And this is a piece of music that my father used to have a record of or rather several records of,'cause they were seventy eights and they used to be played on the grammophone with fibre needles which he sharpened.

Presenter1:49

And uh I knew this piece of music when I was about

Presenter1:53

I don't know, three or four. It's the piece of music that I first knew.

Presenter2:51

The beginning of the second movement of Mozart's Eine Kleinenach Musik,

Presenter2:56

Played by the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, directed by Neville Mariner.

Presenter3:00

What part of the country do you come from, Jonathan? I I was born in Bath, Somerset. You come from a medical family, don't you? Yes, my father's a doctor, now retired.

Presenter3:10

And uh one of my grandfathers was a a doctor and

Presenter3:14

I have about

Presenter3:15

Eight or nine uncles who are

Presenter3:18

Doctors and countless cousins who are doctors. In your generation do you come from a big family, a lot of brothers and sisters. I have two sisters. You went to Pembroke College, Cambridge, to read what? Not to read medicine, obviously.

Presenter3:30

To read law. Why law? Because I think because it wasn't medicine, really, and it was the only.

Presenter3:35

other profession that my family could

Presenter3:38

Contemplate, really.

Presenter3:40

I didn't know that there were other things you could read, like fine art or archaeology or the whole world of subjects that I hadn't heard of. I came from the sort of family really where you had a profession when you grew up and if it wasn't medicine, law seemed the obvious alternative. Also I was interested in politics and I had a vague notion at that time that I would go into politics. Have you ever dabbled seriously? Only with Yes, Minister. We'll get to that presently.

Jonathan Lynn4:02

Okay.

Presenter4:06

Other activities in Cambridge. You did some drumming.

Presenter4:10

Yes, I was in the University Jazz Band.

Presenter4:13

And well, I'd always played the drums. I was in the

Presenter4:16

I was one of the people that started a youth orchestra in Bath, Bath Youth Orchestra.

Jonathan Lynn4:18

Mm

Presenter4:20

And I had sort of got into the National Youth Orchestra, though I never played with them. So I never really discovered whether I'd been accepted or I hadn't. When I went to Cambridge, I

Presenter4:29

I got more interested in jazz. You took some time off while you were in Cambridge to go and drum in the United States.

Presenter4:36

No, not quite. I went to America to listen to jazz and the first long vacation. I subsequently got a chance to play there a couple of years later when I was there with the show. But uh no, while I was at Cambridge I didn't actually manage to play in New York. On that you did manage to help build a theatre?

Presenter4:54

Yes.

Presenter4:55

That's a rather grandiose way of describing someone who works on a building site. Did you know it was a theater?

Speaker 45:02

Uh

Presenter5:03

Yes, I knew it was going to be a theatre. I was the world's worst bricklayer's mate. I was really weak.

Presenter5:11

Yeah.

Presenter5:12

ineffectual. And I could just about manage to carry three or four bricks around while better men than I were carrying forty or fifty. Did you have to take him up very high? Was it a high theatre? It was a high theatre, but I haven't got a very good head for heights. I was absolutely useless. I don't know why they employed me. Record number two.

Presenter5:29

Record number two.

Presenter5:31

It's uh a record that used to be called The Atomic Mr. Basie.

Presenter5:34

With modern susceptibilities about nuclear warfare. Perhaps that's the reason the title's been changed. It now appears to be called Basie Volume One. It was the first jazz.

Presenter5:45

album that I bought. I was about fourteen, I think, and I'd just become aware of mainstream and modern jazz. Which track are we going to hear? It's called The Kid from Red Bank.

Presenter6:54

Count Basie at the piano and directing The Kid from Red Bank.

Presenter6:59

As well as drumming at Cambridge, you also did some acting.

Presenter7:02

Yes, I didn't have the courage to join the ADC or or the Mummers or any of the acting clubs. I went to a meeting when I first got to Cambridge and they used words like tabs and floats. Tabs are the front curtain for people who don't work in the theatre and floats are footlights. Anyway, I was so impressed with the professionalism of these students that I didn't have the courage to audition. And it wasn't until I saw some student productions that I realised that perhaps I might be up to scratch. I then auditioned for the Marlowe Society and failed to get in. Oh dear. But I I subsequently did do some acting, yes. For footlights, for the lighter side. For the footlights. And oh, I did actually act in some plays as well. A few. With the footlights, you went back to America at one point.

Presenter7:43

Well, there was a review called Cambridge Circus which had John Cleese, Tim Brooke Taylor, Bill Oddy, Graham Chapman. Not a bad cut. Yes.

Presenter7:51

I was in the orchestra when it went to the West End, but then they all became comedy writers or assistants to David Frost or whatever it was that

Presenter8:00

People did in those days. And I went back to Cambridge and finished my degree. And then the week I graduated, I got a phone call saying, did I want to go to America with Cambridge Circus? So of course I accepted. So that's how I became an actor. And never an assistant to David Frost. Never an assistant to David Frost, no, that's right. And my first job was on Broadway and I've been obviously going steadily downhill ever since. Right. Well, let's have your third record.

Presenter8:26

While Third Record is another nostalgic choice, it's Beethoven's piano concerto number three.

Presenter8:32

It was the first piece of music that I ever played the timpani in in my school orchestra.

Presenter8:39

But this record is slightly better than that, and Solomon is uh the servless.

Presenter9:45

An excerpt from Beethoven's third piano concerto in C minor, Solomon with the Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Herbert Menges. You did some quite distinguished drumming, now I come to think of it, didn't you? Well, I did have the opportunity to play a few times with Ray Bryant, who had been Miles Davis's piano player, and who was a wonderful pianist. He allowed me to play with him a few times, which is very nice of him.

Presenter10:10

You had now graduated in law. Did you ever do anything? Did you ever appear in a court, or sign a tort, or do anything of that sort? No, ab absolutely nothing. What did you do?

Presenter10:21

Well, I became an out-of-work actor. I left the show in New York after a few months. I'd taken acting lessons in New York.

Presenter10:29

From a wonderful teacher who had been at the Moscow Art Theatre called Mira Rostova.

Presenter10:34

Hotaunt Montgomery Clift.

Presenter10:37

And a number of other very fine American actors. And I learnt a lot from her. And the others all wanted to be comedians, and I didn't think I.

Presenter10:45

I was going to say I didn't think I did. I think I would have liked to be a comedian, but I didn't really have the courage.

Presenter10:51

And uh I decided I wanted to be an actor. What was your first acting job as a professional, apart from Cambridge Circuit?

Jonathan Lynn10:56

The b

Presenter10:58

Well, it was a job at the Belgrade Theatre in Coventry.

Presenter11:02

In Becket by Henui, which was a curious production, because everyone except for the King and Becket and the French Princess were wearing masks,

Presenter11:13

And I played about four parts. I played one of the barons, in which I wore a lot of sort of very wrinkly chain mail that expanded as the run wore on.

Jonathan Lynn11:18

It rings

Presenter11:22

And I played the Archbishop of York, in which I wore a mitre and a cope.

Presenter11:27

And a mask on my face and gloves on my hands and boots. I was completely inv I mean, there wasn't any need to have an actor inside the costume at all. It sounds rather a rum production. But The King was played by Patrick O'Connell, who is actually in my production of Loot that's on at the moment. And there's something called Green Julia, in which you appeared at the Travers in Edinburgh. That's right. That was a new play by Paul Abelman with two parts in it, and I was fortunate enough to get one of them. I replaced someone actually about halfway through rehearsal. I don't know who.

Jonathan Lynn11:47

Glenmore

Presenter11:57

And it opened in Edinburgh and

Presenter12:00

Went extraordinarily well.

Presenter12:02

It it was a marvellous piece of writing and

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To my astonishment I found myself playing the part in London.

Presenter12:10

After only nine months as an actor. That's pretty good.

Presenter12:15

And then there was the the salvage bit selling record.

Presenter12:19

Yes, that was because after

Presenter12:21

Green Julia, I had the the misfortune to be nominated for an award, which is every action is the kiss of death. And so because I played a neurotic twenty-three-year-old botany student, and that was the only thing anybody had ever seen me play, of course, there weren't any other parts for twenty-three-year-old neurotic botany students, and so I didn't get any work at all. So I found myself at Selfridge's. It was a bit difficult because at the time you were growing a beard. Well, I started to grow a beard while I was at Selfridge's because I'd been auditioning for Fiddler on the Roof, and I got a part in it.

Speaker 412:56

Mm-hmm.

Presenter12:56

And a condition of the contract was I had to grow a beard.

Presenter13:00

So I came in to work looking very unshaven and, you know, those were the days when shop assistants had to wear sort of blue suits and collar and tie and

Presenter13:08

And the manager ticked me off and I said, Well, I'm growing this beard because I'm going to be a fiddler on the roof. He obviously didn't believe me, but he was very tolerant and he allowed me to. What other roles did you play at that time during your five years of acting, I believe? You played Hitler at one point. What was that in? That was in a play called The Comedy of the Changing Years.

Presenter13:27

At the Royal Court. That was very interesting. I spent a lot of time at the Imperial War Museum watching films of Hitler.

Presenter13:34

And uh I'm ashamed to say I look not unlike him. I'm about the same height and shape.

Presenter13:40

And it was it was, I think, a reasonably convincing impersonation. Did you enjoy that? Yes, I did really, except there was a sort of death scene in the bunker.

Presenter13:48

which was all in German, and I don't speak German.

Presenter13:51

And so I had to memorize this four-minute speech.

Presenter13:55

parrot fashion. That was

Presenter13:57

Pretty worrying. I should think so.'Cause you never know who was in front, who did speak German. That's right. You had to work on the assumption that the audience would understand it. And so of course I had a literal translation and everything, but Finally, you an actor knows if he dries he can usually pick up the sense of the speech and carry on. Well, it's very hard to do that if you don't understand the language.

Presenter14:18

I first directed in nine

Presenter14:20

Teen.

Presenter14:22

Seventy, I should think.

Presenter14:24

It was a revue at the North Cot Theatre in Exeter written by David Wood and John Gould. Uh And I don't know why they asked me to direct it, it was very nice of them.

Presenter14:33

And it went quite well. Did that give you a a taste for direction? Did you think that was where the future might lie? Yes. I'd always wanted to direct, never really

Presenter14:42

had the courage to do anything about it. She went out looking for direction jobs. You can't really. You can't walk around and say, Do you need a director? You know, it's it's not really the way it works. If you do, people don't ask you anyway, I guess. But you can let it be known. I suppose you can let it be known. I did let it be known with

Presenter14:59

Not a lot of result to start with, but I gradually over the next few years I directed um here and there. I directed at at uh Windsor and Leatherhead and assorted theatres. Sometimes I did quite good productions and sometimes not so good.

Presenter15:15

This is called I'm the Guy Who Found the Lost Chord by Jimmy Duranti.

Presenter15:22

I think if Music Hall hadn't died before I came into the business.

Presenter15:27

And if I hadn't grown up the son of a middle class doctor in Bath, what I would really like to have been was a kind of low comic. I think this record is really what I would like to have been if I'd ever had the nerve.

Jonathan Lynn15:37

What happened to it? I've lost a cord. A catastrophic lock the doors. Nobody leaves the place until I find it.

Jonathan Lynn15:45

Ladies and gentlemen, I'm gonna sit down on the keyboard of this piano until the court has returned.

Jonathan Lynn15:50

That's it, the lost cord. I found it by sitting on the piano keyboard.

Jonathan Lynn15:55

Very strange, I usually play by ear.

Jonathan Lynn15:58

So let's celebrate, I'm feeling great, I'm the guy that found the Lord's cord.

Presenter16:07

The great Schnozl Duranti.

Presenter16:10

You ran a company for a year or two, didn't you? Yes, the Cambridge Dead Company. I ran it for five years.

Jonathan Lynn16:13

Yeah.

Presenter16:15

As artistic director.

Jonathan Lynn16:15

As Autistic Direct.

Presenter16:18

At the Arts Theatre, Cambridge? The Arts Theatre Cambridge is the base for the company, but it is a touring company. It plays about. Ten or twelve weeks a year in Cambridge and the rest of the year on tour. And some of your productions came to London? Yes, I don't know exactly how many, but quite a few. Which ones in in in in particular come to mind?

Jonathan Lynn16:30

Yeah.

Presenter16:35

Well, we did a production of The Glass Menagerie, which came to the Shaw Theatre.

Presenter16:40

Songbook, which was a new musical, came to the globe.

Presenter16:44

The Unvarnished Truth, which was a farce by Royce Wright, with Tim Brooke Taylor and Graham Garden, Phoenix.

Presenter16:50

There were others, but I can't immediately have the company on your back, Reddit.

Jonathan Lynn16:53

Yeah.

Presenter16:58

Well, yes. I wasn't acting at the Cambridge Theatre Company. I mean, I never cast myself in anything. I did oc very occasionally act in a T V play while I was there. And I was writing. What? Well, an assortment of things, really. At that time, I think I'd started to write the first series of Yes Minister with Tony, Tony Jay. Yeah. And I was writing documentary training films for

Presenter17:20

A company called Video Arts, which was also run by Tony Jay. The reason I really went there was that I'd been writing for television for some

Presenter17:28

Yes.

Presenter17:29

a great many comedy shows, and I really had become bored with what I was writing and with this being a sort of sausage machine producing

Presenter17:38

You know television series has to be both different and the same every week and

Presenter17:44

After a while you can become rather bored with writing to a formula. And I've been writing a lot of television comedy shows.

Presenter17:52

And um I saw an ad in the stage for an artistic director at the Cambridge Theatre Company, and I applied.

Presenter17:59

really on a whim, not expecting to be offered the job, and to my surprise I was.

Presenter18:04

So I

Presenter18:06

really changed my approach to work at that stage.

Presenter18:10

Well, we'll we'll talk about your television work in a little more detail in a minute. In the meantime let's have your fifth record. Well, this is called Cour Guerre Jaluria

Presenter18:20

It's a Lithuanian folk song. Why do you choose that? Actually, I am also. All four of my grandparents were born in Lithuania.

Speaker 418:30

Really?

Presenter18:31

And uh

Presenter18:32

I discovered, after we were married,

Presenter18:35

The tip.

Presenter18:36

My grandparents came from a village about twelve kilometers from where my wife comes from.

Presenter18:42

She was born there and was a refugee from the Red Army in nineteen forty four with her parents.

Presenter18:48

So this is really because of the sentimental connection with both the country, which sadly no longer exists. Do you speak Lithuanian? No, I am sadly a very poor linguist. What is this record about? Well, it's just a folk song about Lithuania, about the forest and the river, and uh it's a very simple folk song.

Speaker 419:21

I lost.

Speaker 419:24

Day night with gold

Jonathan Lynn19:24

Happy night.

Speaker 419:34

Just love the

Speaker 419:41

You won't wait now. I will love thy name this day.

Speaker 420:00

His makes sin come.

Presenter20:10

A Lithuanian folk song Where the Forest is Green. Now you'd started in in television as an actor, Jonathan, and then you realized there was more to it than that and and you began writing. What was the first series you wrote?

Jonathan Lynn20:17

Then you

Presenter20:23

I'd been in a series called Doctor in the House and after I left it, George Layton, who was still in it, it was then called Doctor.

Presenter20:32

at large, I think.

Presenter20:33

The writers failed to deliver a script one week and he rang me up and said, How about having a go at writing one?

Presenter20:39

And I was on the point of giving up writing. I'd been writing for some years without any success.

Presenter20:43

Anyway, we had a go at writing script and it and it turned out to be funny and they used it. And we became regular writers on the programme, which went on for a very long time.

Speaker 420:48

Come on.

Jonathan Lynn20:48

Building.

Presenter20:51

And then you wrote My Brother's Keeper. What was that? My Brother's Keeper was a series about twin brothers.

Presenter20:57

The idea came from when I was doing criminology at Cambridge. You didn't tell us about that? Well, it was part of law. It was part of law, I see. Yes.

Jonathan Lynn21:03

Of lore.

Presenter21:05

I came across some twin studies, which as you know are the way in which scientists attempt to discover whether certain human behavior is hereditary or environmental in origin. And they try to find twins who have been separated at birth, identical twins, and see if they've grown up the same.

Presenter21:23

Or differently.

Presenter21:25

And there was a twin study done about persistent offenders, persistent criminals. They found thirteen persistent criminals who were separated identical twins, traced their twin brothers, and found nine of the brothers were also persistent criminals.

Presenter21:40

But the other four were policemen.

Presenter21:43

Ha ha ha ha ha.

Presenter21:44

And this struck me as the most intrinsically hilarious.

Presenter21:50

Facts that I learnt in my three years at Cambridge.

Presenter21:53

So we did this series about twin brothers, one of whom was a sort of anarchist and general troublemaker and the other was a police constable. And it was really an attempt to merge situation comedy with social and p political comedy. Now the television exercise that really took off was of course the series you've written with Anthony Jay.

Jonathan Lynn22:02

Cool.

Presenter22:16

Yes, minister.

Presenter22:17

Did either of you really know what happens behind the scenes in Whitehall, or was it all speculation?

Presenter22:25

No, it wasn't speculation. I think Tony may have known a little more about it than I did. But it was really research rather than speculation. All about the age old battles between the civil service and and the government. Yes.

Presenter22:39

We researched it in in some detail. We found people who would tell us.

Jonathan Lynn22:43

Add a number

Presenter22:51

I don't think so, no. In the early days of the series, civil servants used to describe it as healthy like cod liver oil, presumably, and they also used to say that it was novel and imaginative. But we survived those criticisms. How many series have there been? There have been three, and uh there's going to be a Christmas special this year. Good. And I think possibly another series next year.

Jonathan Lynn23:00

What a liver.

Speaker 423:10

How would

Presenter23:20

You've published a complete archive of Yes Minister in one monster book. Some of this printed, I noticed, on what looked like official ministry paper. I do hope it wasn't. I do hope you haven't been purloining the government stationery. Well, it is the Department of Administrative Affairs. If you can track them down in Whitehall, I think you probably ought to let them know that we've got their notepaper.

Jonathan Lynn23:40

Yeah.

Presenter23:43

Let's have another record. We've got to number six. This is Paul Simon's Greatest Hits. I wanted to have a pop music record and I was undecided initially between The Beatles and Randy Newman and Paul Simon, but

Presenter23:58

Paul Simon wins by a short head.

Presenter24:01

And the song I'd like you to play is called Stranded in a Limousine.

Speaker 424:04

They said Mama, oh Papa, oh see what I have seen. There's a new individual stranded in the limousine.

Speaker 424:13

Then everybody came running. Everybody said Lord Lord, everybody was gunnin'.

Speaker 424:20

Wanna delete the real

Speaker 424:24

Wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, nigga Sabina flashy lane

Speaker 424:28

But the mean individual would have vanished in the back of night.

Presenter24:31

Paul Simon Stranded in a Limousine. You mentioned Song Book, which came in with the Cambridge Theatre Company. That did very well, didn't it? Yes. I was very proud of that show.

Presenter24:43

And uh yes, it won.

Presenter24:45

the Sweat Award and the Evening Standard Award, which was a great tribute to the writers of it, Monty Norman and Julian Moore.

Presenter24:52

And of the cast, who were really brilliant, five of them played eighty-something characters between them.

Presenter24:59

It went to America.

Presenter25:00

It went to America, yes.

Presenter25:02

One thing that you have a reputation for, Jonathan, is you're expert at finding sponsorship. You can raise money, which is not very easy to do, but you have a very good record for doing that. Well, I did it at the Cambridge Theatre Company because that was raising money for the company, which was a charity. And I didn't find that all that difficult. I used to try and do it by finding jokes that would appeal to industrialists. Is that easy? Well, yes. I mean, we were doing a production of The Matchmaker by Thornton Wilder, and we got Bryant and May to sponsor it.

Jonathan Lynn25:34

Yeah.

Presenter25:37

who make matches. And uh we did the Master Builder and I think uh Sunley's, the builders sponsored that. And that was the system. Um because it that it also got them good coverage in the newspapers. I'm absolutely hopeless at raising money for commercial productions. I'm incapable of going to anyone and saying you should put money into this show and and if so it will make me a lot of money.

Presenter26:01

So I'm I'm not one of Nature's producers. Another record. This is the original cast album of Songbook, which we talked about before.

Presenter26:12

And I would like this because Monty Norman and Julian Moore are two marvellous songwriters there.

Presenter26:19

Friends for whom I have the most enormous respect, and this song, Don't Play That Love Song Anymore, Sam, is sung by Gemma Craven.

Speaker 426:28

Don't play that love song

Speaker 426:33

Any more sound?

Speaker 426:38

It sends a shiver down my spine.

Speaker 426:46

And if you want another score.

Speaker 426:52

The one I love's no longer mine

Presenter26:58

Gemma Craven singing Don't Play That Love Song Any More, Sam, from Song Book. Now your present activities, Jonathan, you've got a production on at the National Theatre.

Presenter27:08

Yes, that's A Little Hotel on the Side by Phaedo, which was translated by John Mortimer. There's no great fast tradition in the English theatre, so that means you must have had to do a certain amount of teaching.

Presenter27:21

Well, there is a fast tradition in the English theatre, of course, but it's an English fast tradition. And and French fast is different. It's it's less cosy, more

Presenter27:31

cruel, more more tough.

Presenter27:34

I think the main difference between English and French farce is that English fasce is about a lot of jolly nice people who get themselves into embarrassing scrapes and are misunderstood.

Presenter27:45

And French farce is about dreadful people doing appalling things and getting their comeuppance. And there's a a third type of farce with which you're connected in another production. Well, Lute. Loot, you mean, yes, Lute by Joe Orton. I think that's more like the French than the English farce.

Jonathan Lynn27:58

Absolutely.

Presenter28:02

It is about.

Presenter28:05

terrible people involved in tragic events, but Orton does make them extremely funny. You think there's a link between Orton and Faido? I think that Orton is more in the tradition of Phaedo than than of, say, Ben Travers, yes.

Jonathan Lynn28:17

Yeah.

Presenter28:18

And of course you had an awful blow with that production of loot. Yes, terrible.

Presenter28:23

Leonard Rossiter, who was playing Inspector Truscott, collapsed and died of a heart attack during her performance, and this was a terrible loss.

Presenter28:32

It was a great loss to me, personally, as a friend.

Presenter28:36

I was immensely fond of him.

Speaker 428:38

Yeah.

Presenter28:38

And uh it it was a loss to the production and I think a loss really to the the whole of the British public.

Presenter28:45

He was really a a a unique

Presenter28:48

and irreplaceable comic actor. I think he was one of the great

Presenter28:52

comic actors of our time, he had an extraordinary ability to be on stage, cruel, rapacious.

Presenter28:59

malevolent and yet somehow for the audience to laugh and to love him in spite of the characters that he played. And yet he made no concessions to

Presenter29:10

As it were, wanting to be loved by the audience. Wonderfully gifted character, very difficult to replace. But you have been fortunate in getting Dinsdale Lanton to come in and and finish the run for you. Yes, we've been uh very fortunate. It's very brave of Dinsdale to have come in at very short notice, but he is uh a superb actor, wonderful at fast, and he's playing the role.

Presenter29:32

quite differently, but very well and it

Presenter29:35

Yeah.

Presenter29:37

A great success.

Presenter29:38

Again.

Presenter29:39

Well, let's get back to this this desert island thing. We we've dumped you on this island. Could you look after yourself? I mean, are you good with your hands?

Presenter29:47

Putting up huts and whatever? No.

Presenter29:51

You said that rather tentatively, I think.

Jonathan Lynn29:53

Yeah.

Speaker 429:54

Yeah.

Presenter29:55

I said it rather embarrassedly. No, I I think I can firmly state that I would be absolutely useless at putting up huts.

Presenter30:05

Done any fishing? Can you catch some fish and I'm frightened of fish? Could you build a raft? Would you try to figure out? And that's a word, Dad.

Jonathan Lynn30:07

May I

Jonathan Lynn30:11

I'm that away.

Presenter30:13

No, I couldn't, and I don't sail.

Presenter30:16

And and I'm a rotten swimmer.

Presenter30:19

I think I'm good and stuck there. Well, let's get back to records. Another record to play during this very miserable and uncomfortable time that you're going to have on the island. Yes.

Presenter30:30

Well, as you can see, I already chose quite a lot of short records because I wasn't sure I was gonna last too long, but just in case, here is a long one. Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro. Yes, you're not gonna get all of it, it's not that long.

Presenter30:44

I thought I might get the whole opera. Well, if I'm just going to get one piece, it I would like it to be Figaro singing to Carabino before Carabino is sent off to war.

Jonathan Lynn31:04

One report

Jonathan Lynn31:10

We must

Jonathan Lynn31:11

One for me for

Speaker 431:25

Uh

Speaker 431:39

Obviously

Speaker 431:46

Which company?

Speaker 431:48

With the cure, with the ritual.

Presenter31:52

Giuseppe Tadai singing non puandrai from the first act of Mozart's The Marriage of Figura.

Presenter31:59

If you could take only one disc of the eight that you've played, which would it be? The Marriage of Figura. The last one. Yes. And one luxury to take with you to your very uncomfortable island, I'm afraid, with no modern facilities. One luxury that would give you comfort to have with you. Well

Presenter32:15

I discussed this with my son. How old is your son? Yes, because when it gets hot I could wind down the window.

Presenter32:25

But I'll I'm not sure about that. I think actually it would have to be.

Speaker 432:30

Yeah.

Presenter32:33

Pen and paper, really. Uh-huh. Boringly.

Presenter32:37

And one book you have the Bible and Shakespeare as a as standard issue. Well.

Presenter32:42

I think I would like a collection of

Presenter32:46

Jeeves and Bertie Wooster stories by PG Woodhouse. All right. We'll get your favorites bound together. And thank you, Jonathan Lynn, for letting us hear your Desert Island Discs. Thank you very much. Goodbye, everyone.

Speaker 233:06

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