Ray Cooney

Ray Cooney0:00

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

Ray Cooney0:05

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

Presenter0:30

This week, our castaway is the playwright, director, producer, and theatrical manager Ray Cooney.

Presenter0:37

Aure, we're taking you from the hurley burley of Theatreland. Could you endure loneliness on this island? Yes, I I could endure loneliness, but I think I also have an inventive uh streak in me, and I think I'd always be working out ways of how to uh escape. How important to you is music?

Presenter0:55

I tend not to listen to music overmuch because I find that it pulls on my emotional strings.

Ray Cooney1:05

Yeah.

Presenter1:06

I used to play the trumpet, and it very nearly blew my two front teeth out, and wh when I was a young man I was hoping to be uh either Clark Gable or Laurence Olivier.

Presenter1:16

I didn't think I was going to sort of you know turn out to be a cross between Groucho Marks and Bob Hope. And w so when I saw that my front teeth were being loosened by my trumpet blowing, I gave up playing the trumpet voluntarily. You've done a bit of singing. You you were in Charlie Girl?

Speaker 41:27

Volunteer

Speaker 41:30

Uh

Presenter1:30

For a while. A short while, yes. I I took over from Derek Nimmo when Derek went off on holiday. And I played in Charlie Girl, yes. Right, this little pile of eight records you've got there on the table, what's the first?

Speaker 41:30

After a while.

Presenter1:42

The very first record is Bing Crosby and Bob Hope singing The Road to Morocco. Why do you choose this? Well, neither of my parents were in the theatrical business, but my father introduced me first of all to Sid Field in the variety theatre, and I did actually fall out of my seat as a 12-year-old watching Sid Field and Jerry Desmond. And he was also a great cinema goer, as was my mother. And I was raised on Bob Hope and Bing Crosby and the Marx brothers. And I think anybody who sees my plays today can see from whence they came.

Speaker 42:17

Off on the road to Morocco.

Presenter2:18

Row

Speaker 42:21

Uh

Presenter2:21

Hooray! Blow a horn! Everybody duck at the green light! Come on, boys! We may run into villains, but we're not afraid to roam. Because we read the story and we end up safe at home. Yes! Certainly do get around!

Speaker 42:25

Come on, bro.

Ray Cooney2:30

Uh

Ray Cooney2:31

Uh

Speaker 32:35

Uh

Speaker 32:36

Sir

Presenter2:41

Like Webster's Dictionary, we're Morocco.

Speaker 32:44

Go.

Presenter2:45

Bye.

Presenter2:45

Bob Hope and Bing Crosby.

Presenter2:48

Whereabouts were you all going?

Presenter2:50

I was born in St Thomas' Hospital. Yes, no, that's evasive.

Speaker 42:53

Yeah. Uh

Ray Cooney2:54

Uh

Presenter2:57

We were living in Clapham at the time. I came from a very poor family. My father left Jarrow in the late twenties and met my mother, who was a cockney girl. And they had a very hard time of it, and they scrimped and scraped to send me to a good school because they were worried about me being brought up in Clapham. You were at Dulwich, weren't you? Yes, I went to Dulwich. Well, Allen's College, College, actually. And in those days, you could leave school at 14. And all I ever wanted to do was to be an actor. So the moment I was fourteen or approaching fourteen, I said, I want to leave school and go into the theatre. And my poor parents, who'd worked very hard to send me to this good school, said, well, we will back you in this if you can get a job. And so I walked round the theatrical agents of the West End in my summer holidays and I managed to get an audition for Emil Littler for a musical. Had you worked towards this? I mean had you taught yourself to sing or to play the piano or anything of that sort? No, I just wanted to be an actor. I I I found very early on at school that if you made people laugh especially, that this was rather a a good thing.

Presenter4:05

I can remember one of my first dreadful remarks at at school was when I was asked you've done cube roots and squared roots, what haven't you done? And I said beat roots. And it seemed to get rather my sense of humor hasn't changed much ever since.

Speaker 44:17

Death.

Ray Cooney4:17

As you may have.

Ray Cooney4:18

Perfect.

Presenter4:20

And so I performed for Mr. Emil Littler at my audition and did Bless This House. So I sang Bless This House and recited If by Rudyard Kipling. I think they were so bored with all this halfway through, they told me to stop and gave me the job. What was the production? It was called Song of Norway, which was a musical based on the life of Edvard Grieg. And what did you play?

Presenter4:42

I played a young friend and colleague of the young Edvard Grieg.

Presenter4:46

So at fourteen you had made your theatrical debut. There was something else called The Hidden Years that you were in. That's right, yes. I was fifteen then. It was a play about homosexuality in a in a in a public school. I think it was a little ahead of its uh time. And um I can remember at that time in the theater, both Annie Get Your Gun and Oklahoma were on in the West End, and we youngsters used to go up onto the

Ray Cooney5:05

The West.

Presenter5:08

roof of the Fortune Theatre and gaze at the chorus girls of Oklahoma sunbathing on the roof of Drury Lane. It was marvellous. I should think so. Good days. And of course as a boy actor you did a lot of films.

Speaker 45:16

I should think so.

Presenter5:22

Yes. I never became a uh a star, but I must have played in about uh oh, I would think eighteen to twenty films. A lot of the Ealing comedies. I was in Hue and Cry. And I was learning my profession. It isn't until of course you look back that you realize quite uh how much you've assimilated over the years.

Presenter5:43

Your second record, what's that?

Presenter5:45

Second record, I think, is Grieg's piano concerto, or some of it. To remind you of the song of Norway. Indeed.

Presenter6:46

An excerpt from Grieg's piano concerto, Claudio Arra, with the Boston Symphony Orchestra conducted by Colin Davis.

Presenter6:53

So you eventually had to give up your boyhood career to go into the army, I believe. Yeah, well in those days they had national service and I did my eighteen months in the Royal Army Service Corps and uh by the time I came out I'd grown a few inches and thickened out here and there and and you'd got a stripe on your arm, you were a Lance Corporal. Yes, I'd risen to the giddy heights, yes, I was a Lance Corporal.

Ray Cooney7:10

Right long.

Speaker 47:10

Uh

Ray Cooney7:10

Yeah.

Presenter7:15

But having lost all my boyhood charm and and looks, those connections that I made as a boy actor were no longer any use to me and I started from scratch as it were and I answered an advert in the stage, which is our theatrical journal, thinking it uh was a company in search of an actor to join a weekly repertory company. And I got the job and when I turned up at this place just outside Cardiff,

Presenter7:40

It transpired that I had joined the last of the fit up companies. Playing in halls and and and wherever Well, I didn't know what a fit up company was, but you did six plays a week. I saw this poster. Six plays a week.

Speaker 47:52

Yeah.

Presenter7:52

So I I couldn't believe it, you see, because I knew about weekly rep, which I thought was pretty difficult. And I was expecting to see uh a weekly poster. And then I looked at this poster more closely and saw Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, they're all different plays. And uh but I enjoyed it so much. I I learnt so much there. In that first week you had to learn a lot of lines if you had to go on in sixth plays. What sort of plays were they? Old melodramas or modern plays? Well, they were a wonderful mixture. Noel Coward, Wuthering Heights, The Seventh Vale.

Ray Cooney8:13

Yeah.

Presenter8:23

Yeah, some marvellous comedies and some classic pieces as well. But there were wonderful audiences because television hadn't got to the hinterland then. Was the company meticulous about paying royalties? Well, I used to wonder wh why why all the the scripts were written out in longhand and what the manager would do. He'd write to Samuel Frenches and say, Please send me your script of Noel Coward's Blythe Spirit. I'd like to read it to see if it's suitable for my company.

Ray Cooney8:38

Bye, why would

Ray Cooney8:41

Yeah.

Presenter8:49

And the script would arrive, and then he and his wife would sit down and write the whole thing out in longhand and send the script back to Samuel French's and say, Thank you very much for this script. It doesn't suit my company. And then they would sit round and write it out in heart for everybody and they'd perform the play without playing royalties. How long did you stay with the company? I stayed two years. Two years. You must have done a lot of plays in that time. Well, we had a basic repertoire of about sixty plays. Sixty. And we used to build the set in the morning, put the set up in the morning, borrow the props from the locals during lunch time, and then rehearse.

Speaker 49:12

Oh.

Ray Cooney9:12

Top

Presenter9:24

the play in the afternoon, and then sold the tickets before the show started.

Presenter9:29

It was wonderful. I would have stayed there forever, but the the company finally went broke and I was paid five pounds a week. How long did you stay in each town or village? Well sometimes you could stay as long as uh six or seven weeks. To get through the whole sixty plays. Well yes. It was amazing where they came from because you'd turn up in a Welsh village w which had a a a pub and a few houses and you'd think, oh well nobody's going to come to the village hall, but they would come from miles around.

Ray Cooney9:40

Skip through the whole sixty plays.

Presenter9:53

to see the shows. And then there were just such wonderful audiences. I can remember one one night we were doing uh Nurse Edith Cavell, the play. I was playing a German officer.

Presenter10:04

I was interrogating Nurse Edith Cavell and one night a woman stood up and waved her fist at me and said, You dirty German swine you, oh, take your hands off her. And she was actually going to set about me. You know, they got so engrossed in the play. Well, after two years, it was time to quit. So that meant more banging on doors and auditions and whatever. That's right. What sort of work did you do to start with, or didn't you mind? Would you do anything? No, I then progressed from my fit-up days to weekly rep, marvelous man called Frank H. Fortescue in the North. And I worked for Harry Hanson. And then in 19

Ray Cooney10:35

My sister.

Ray Cooney10:37

Oh, cool.

Presenter10:43

I auditioned for Brian Ricks, and that began a turning point, Ray. Let's break there for your.

Speaker 410:49

Turning right.

Presenter10:51

Third record. What shall that be? My third record uh is uh Elvis Presley singing Hound Dog. Why? For two reasons. Synonymous with my own career, Elvis Presley started and of course became this amazing star and he transformed pop music.

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Then when he died, so young and so tragically like that

Presenter11:15

The papers were full of nothing other than he took drugs and his lifestyle.

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And I felt very sad about that. And by this time I'm now going back about uh five years, I think when Presley died, six years we had recently taken over a theatre and we didn't know how to open it. We didn't have the first show.

Presenter11:38

And one morning I woke up and said, We're going to do a show called Elvis about Elvis Presley. And a lot of one's friends said, Well, that's a bit in bad taste, isn't it, to do that? And I said, No, I don't think it is, because it's going to be a celebration of Elvis's talent.

Ray Cooney11:46

Uh

Presenter11:53

And it's not going to touch on his personal life at all, but it'll be a celebration of the times and the music of Presley. And we got the show together. I got in touch with Jack Goode, and Jack and I put this show together with some other marvellously talented people. And it was a huge success in the West End, and to see the effect it had on audiences was wonderful. I'd never done anything like it before, but it was a great thrill, and I felt that in our own way we'd done a service to Elvis Presley.

Speaker 412:24

Well I said you as highlights But I like was just a lot

Speaker 412:29

Yeah, they said you tie glance, where that produce a lot.

Speaker 412:35

Yeah, you can have a quarter but then you ain't no friend

Speaker 412:40

You ain't nothing but a huh

Speaker 412:47

They've got a hall dog cracking all the time.

Speaker 412:51

Well you ain't never put a rap but then you ain't no friend no more

Presenter12:57

Elvis Presley, Hound Dog.

Presenter12:59

Ray, let's go back to your days in Weekly Rep. What got you out of that? Brian Ricks, in two words.

Presenter13:07

At that time Brian was running the Whitehall Theatre.

Speaker 413:09

Uh

Presenter13:10

And he'd had a huge success with his first play called Reluctant Heroes, and he was into his second one, Dry Rot.

Speaker 413:14

Yeah.

Presenter13:17

And uh he was looking for a replacement in Dry Rot and I went along and auditioned and got the part and that began an association and a friendship that's lasted until today. And uh it was during my acting career with Brian that I started writing. The play ran for four and a half years because in those days a run-of-the-play contract was a run-of-the-play. And uh this particular play uh ran for four and a half years and I was in it the whole time. And after a while I got uh a bit fed up during the day with just uh chasing the girl I wasn't married at the time. Cha chasing the girls and playing tennis and I thought I ought to do something a bit more useful. So I j I started scribbling, writing and I just began writing Brian Rick sort of plays, farties. That's right. What was the first one you wrote?

Presenter14:04

The first one was called One for the Pot. That was with Tony Hilton. Tony and I wrote that. I remember seeing you tried out that play at Richmond, I think, and the way that Rix liked to work. He liked to watch somebody else play the part he was going to play, to sit back and look at it. Well, it's something that stood me in good stead ever since. I think I must have now written about twelve plays. That was the way Brian worked. We tried them out, then I took it back to the drawing board, rewrote it.

Presenter14:35

tried it out again with one for the pot. We tried it out three times and each time I rewrote it and we got it stronger and stronger and stronger. So that by the time Brian came to do it in in the West End, it was a very fine, honed down

Presenter14:47

Piece of machinery.

Presenter14:49

And that's something that we've done ever since.

Presenter14:54

I'd like please Love and Marriage played by Mantovani. This is the curtain music on a number of your productions. It is. It's the curtain up music on all the plays that one's written since one realized that infidelity was a good thing to be on to.

Presenter15:12

Theatrical of me, of course. The other reason for wanting this record is because I've been very lucky in my own marriage.

Speaker 415:14

Come on.

Presenter15:20

And there's been a lot of love in in that and within my own family. How big is your family? Two boys. How old?

Presenter15:27

Danny is uh coming up for twenty one. He got married very early and emigrated to to Australia all in one fell swoop. So he must have been happy at home.

Presenter15:38

And Michael has just sat his A levels. Any theatrical talent or theatrical ambitions? I don't think so. I don't think so. No, Danny works for the RSPCA in Australia. He he's very fond of animals.

Presenter15:52

And Michael's very fond of his girlfriend at the moment, so I don't know what he might do. He might write funny farces. Right, love and marriage.

Presenter16:52

Love and Marriage, Mantovani and his orchestra. Now some of these dozen or so plays that you've written, Chase Me Comrade, that ran for about a thousand performances. Yes.

Presenter17:03

At one time when you were already a successful playwright and you got these plays around a thousand performances each, you took a year off to play in the mouse trap. You've dug deep, haven't you? Yes, I did. Well, I'm an actor at heart. I would have been totally happy, I think, to have at least I think I would.

Presenter17:22

My wife tells me I wouldn't, but I think I would have been happy to have b been an actor if I could have filled in all the hours that way. But I adore acting. It's a total relaxation. Nobody can get at you. The phone doesn't ring. And nobody comes up to you and says this won't just take a second. I know I've thoroughly enjoyed my stint in the mousetrap. And at the same time you were writing and directing. I mean, we can't go through the whole list. There was Charlie Girl, for example. That was a musical. Yes. It was my first involvement with a musical as a writer.

Presenter17:52

But from way back when I when I was fourteen appearing in Song of Norway, the experience of playing in a musical is amazing. It's a totally different feeling from any anything else, what music does. So to actually get involved with a musical as a writer was very exciting and it had a marvellous cast, uh Anna Neagle, Joe Brown, Derek Nimmo.

Presenter18:13

It was a a marvellous mixture. But we opened in London and we got the most dreadful set of notices. I mean they were they were unanimous in their disapproval of Charlie Girl. But it uh it just had something that the public adored and and it and it ran for five years. And not now, darling, that had a long run. That was a collaboration with John Chappelle. Yes, I'd known John for a long time and uh I'd I'd played in some of John's plays because John wrote for Brian at at the Whitehall.

Ray Cooney18:35

Yeah.

Presenter18:41

And uh

Presenter18:43

I'd been carrying around this newspaper cutting about a fur coat and a mistress and a wife who was suing the mistress for the return of a fur coat, and it had struck me as a rather silly situation to end up in court, and I'd carried this newspaper cutting around with me for years.

Presenter18:58

And then one day John rang me up and said that he was going crazy trying to fulfil his obligations in writing some television scripts. And was I available to sit down with him and write the television scripts? And I said, well, I was just about to sit down and write this play that I'm going to call Not Now Darling about a fur coat. I said, I'll do your television scripts with you if you'll sit down with me and do my play. And so that's how we came to collaborate. And it was a wonderfully happy time. How do you collaborate? Well, we do it exactly the way you and I are doing it now. We sit opposite each other, and you know, with the same blank expressions that you and I have on our faces. We sit opposite each other. But we don't sit down until we know exactly what the story is going to be, and then we sit down and map it out in some detail. A lot of writers sit down and just let it flow. But our plays are really concocted.

Speaker 419:30

I have a nice

Ray Cooney19:30

We sit opposite each other.

Speaker 419:45

Yeah.

Ray Cooney19:46

Yeah.

Presenter19:48

more than written, and we would sit down pr and probably spend the first three weeks mapping it out carefully uh before we ever wrote a word.

Presenter19:56

And then we just took it in turns to right.

Presenter19:59

And we would talk it through. We b both John and I being actors, w we would act it through. And w our plays have a lot to do with doors and and bedrooms and so on. So we'd be running in and around the door, slamming them. Yes. And unfortunately you might get a good idea the other side of the door, then you have to knock on the door to come in and tell your partner what what the good idea is. But

Ray Cooney20:07

So you think running on it around the door slamming it.

Presenter20:17

If you can collaborate, it's a very happy way to work.

Presenter20:21

Another record. We've got to your fifth.

Presenter20:25

Well, I think uh most appropriate would be a number from Charlie Girl, and one of my favorites from that was was Joe Brown singing My Favorite Occupation. When we can get together

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And talk about all those crazy dreams.

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We're hoping will come true

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Before our life is through

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And that's my favorite occupation.

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With you

Presenter21:00

Joe Brown, My Favorite Occupation from Charlie Girl.

Presenter21:04

Rare, you were writing, acting, and directing, but that wasn't enough. You went into management.

Presenter21:09

And that was enough. I think I would have been a millionaire if I hadn't got into management. And not only farces. You you did some um well, I won't call it a serious play, but uh Lloyd George knew my father, for example, which starred Rafe Richardson and uh Dame Peggy Ashcroft. And this was away from the farce scene.

Presenter21:27

I think the only talent I have as a writer i is to write these kind of comedies, but uh obviously as a man of the theatre I love every aspect of it and I was very lucky to produce two or three, I think, very, very fine plays. W one was um Whose Life Is It Anyway? by Brian Clark, which starred Tom Conte.

Presenter21:49

And another one was um Duet for One by Tom Kempinski, which starred Francis de La Tour. But since then my managerial career uh as an individual has ceased and uh

Presenter22:03

And I'm now the artistic director of the theatre of

Presenter22:08

Comedy

Presenter22:09

Well, we'll talk about the theatre of comedy in a minute. In the meantime, let's have your sixth record. What's that?

Presenter22:16

The Four Seasons The Second Movement from Winter by Vivaldi. This has really nothing to do with the theatre, is it? Or it's not the same.

Ray Cooney22:22

The

Ray Cooney22:25

Where is it?

Presenter22:29

and she adores to listen to it.

Presenter22:32

I find it over-emotional. I tend not to to listen to it when she is, because one's likely to burst into tears. And actually, we used it in

Presenter22:41

The production I was mentioning just now with Frances de la Tour duet for one, and she had a speech in it where this piece of music was played underneath, and it was the end of the first act.

Presenter22:51

And as the producer I used to sometimes go in just to catch the end of the first act and I would stand at the back

Presenter22:57

And when she came to this speech with this music underneath it, I used to cry every single time. And I used to think, This is ridiculous. I'm the produ what am I crying for? This is just a play. I I should be laughing'cause the house is full. And there I'd be with the tears streaming down my face. And of course th this is why the theatre will never die. You know, that there is no experience like it.

Presenter24:20

An excerpt from Winter from Vivaldi's The Four Seasons: The Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Karl Münchinger.

Presenter24:28

Ray, tell me about the theatre of comedy, of which we read quite a lot these days. It was an idea that had been

Presenter24:35

bubbling around in the back of my mind for about two years.

Presenter24:39

One was beginning to feel that comedy

Presenter24:42

was kind of placed in a in a second division to tragedy. And in in my opinion, it's just the reverse side of the same coin. There isn't any difference.

Presenter24:52

And uh

Presenter24:54

Again, my own view i is that the people who write it and play in it

Presenter25:00

need to be just as talented and professional as anybody who who plays in more serious works.

Presenter25:06

And I got together with a few like minded actors and writers and directors in the business, and discovered that one had just touched a cord that had been there ready to be plucked or struck.

Presenter25:20

for some time, because within a short period of time we had thirty two of the foremost.

Presenter25:26

People who deal with comedy in the theatre. We got together and formed the Theatre of Comedy Company and it's a unique thing to have done. There have been theatre companies formed by actors before and actresses, but usually it's been two or three. And here we have thirty-two of them, most of whom have now appeared in one or more of the productions. And they're not just names on the side of a piece of paper. A lot of them actually do a tremendous amount of work.

Presenter25:54

And it's been a very exciting venture to be part of. We we've acquired our own theater, the Shaftsbridge. You opened the enterprise with Run for Your Wife. That's right, yes.

Presenter26:03

Which, as you saw it was settling down to a long run, you you moved off to the criterion so that you could use the Sharpsbury for something else? Well the the policy of the Theatre of Comedy is to have limited runs so that we can uh retain the sanity of the of the actors and also keep the audience coming back frequently to the theatre so that they become part of what we're doing.

Presenter26:28

And well one of the things we've done is with I think we're the first commercial theater in the West End to have formed a theatre club and we have 5,000 theatre club members who are involved with us and support us. One of the other things that we've done in forming this kind of cooperative, we share our profits with the actors and the stage doorkeeper and the management.

Presenter26:48

I think it's a fine thing to have done, but in truth it comes down to what's on the stage, and now you're entertaining the public, and that's hopefully what we're doing. Well, what's on the stage at the moment is another of your own farces, two into one. I suppose when that's run long enough, you'll have to move that out of the Sharsby into another theatre. This looks like a kind of West End monopoly. Well, one hates to tempt Providence, but we have got off to a marvellous start. I've been in the business, as you know, a long, long time now, and it's the first time I've been involved with a show where every single critic has actually said it's good.

Presenter27:27

It looks like being very successful, and if it's successful as the earlier one, then hopefully we might transfer it because we're we are committed to doing the seasons and so in March

Presenter27:37

It'll have to have to move over. Yes, we've been talking, Ray, about your career and it's been success almost all the way. Just to change the pace, tell me about a flop that you're concerned with. Oh, I've had plenty of they keep me on the on the right uh equilibrium.

Ray Cooney27:48

Yeah.

Speaker 427:49

Yeah.

Presenter27:53

I suppose one of the biggest ones actually was was another musical. It was called Fire Angel. I don't remember that one. Well well, you were away that week.

Presenter28:01

No, it was based on Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice.

Presenter28:06

And I I thought it would be a good idea to to purchase a horse and call the horse Fire Angel, which would promote the show. So this we duly did, and it was a beautiful horse.

Presenter28:16

But unfortunately the the horse ran longer than the show and the show lost about a hundred thousand pounds and the wretched horse wouldn't stop winning. It won six races and well, I suppose won about

Ray Cooney28:20

The second

Speaker 428:20

Uh

Ray Cooney28:20

Does it

Presenter28:29

Six hundred pounds. So every time the horse won, I got furious, because by this time the show was well off. We've got your seventh record. What's that?

Presenter28:38

It's from their playing our song, one of our big successes, and it's Gemma Craven singing I Still Believe in Love.

Presenter29:15

Gemma Craven singing I Still Believe in Love from Their Playing Our Song.

Presenter29:20

How are you going to manage on this island? I mean, well, you've worked in fit-ups, you've been build sets, you've been stage manager, you should be able to build a a hut of some sort. I just don't know, because I'm useless around the house. Absolutely useless. At least that's what I've been telling my wife for twenty odd years, and I'm not going to change the story now. Uh.

Presenter29:40

I think I would need to get away. Do you know anything about boats, do you sail? No, nothing at all. No.

Presenter29:47

The family are all terrified uh of me when whenever we go on holiday and I get in a boat with a sail because I say I can do it and they know I can't. And we always end up by being towed in.

Speaker 429:56

He wouldn't know which way to go.

Presenter29:57

No, but I I think I'd do it.

Presenter30:01

I would have enjoyed it, but I know that I would would need to get away, because one would miss the laughter, I'd miss the theatre, I'd miss my family, of course I would.

Ray Cooney30:07

I'd miss

Presenter30:09

But there are a few productions you've got in mind that you want to get back to. Well, I want to revive Fire Angel.

Presenter30:17

Your last record. Well, this record I really would enjoy to have on the island, and I'd play it.

Presenter30:24

At the Going Down of the Sun every evening, and it's The Laughing Policeman by Charles Penrose.

Speaker 330:30

He laughs upon Point Beauty, he laughs upon his beat, he laughs at everybody when he's walking in the street. He never can stop laughing, he says he's never tried, but once he did arrest a man and laughed until he cried.

Speaker 430:51

Uh

Presenter31:00

The great Charles Penrose, the laughing policeman. If you could take only one disc out of the eight, which would it be?

Presenter31:09

Gosh, I can't have half of one and half of the other. No. No, I can't change the rules.

Presenter31:16

I think hound dog. Hound dog, Alice. And one luxury to take with you, one object of no practical use that you'd like to look at, to touch, to have around? I take a stone polisher. A stone polisher? Because my mother-in-law gave me a stone polisher for Christmas several Christmases ago.

Presenter31:36

Along with all the other useless things like advice she's been giving me over the years. And I want to get round to using this stone polisher, but I haven't yet found the time. And it seems like a very soothing hobby to have. Yes, and there are plenty of stones. Oh, that's what I would be banking on. Yes, I think I'd quite enjoy that. And one book. You have the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare as a standard issue. You can have one other work. I'd take the complete works of Neil Simon. That would keep me amused. That's a lot of plays. It's a lot of plays.

Ray Cooney32:05

It's a lot of

Presenter32:07

But I think he is the finest modern comedy writer, and some of his plays he moves you to laughter, which is really the secret. The collected plays of Neil Simon, somehow we'll squeeze them into one volume. And thank you, Ray Cooney, for letting us hear your Desert Island Disc. Thank you very much, Roy. Goodbye, everyone.

Ray Cooney32:33

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