Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
An actor.
On the island
Eight records
It has a certain ring and euphoria about it, which I think would describe how I would initially feel.
Fantaisie-Impromptu in C-sharp minor, Op. 66
My mother used to play this... part of my childhood.
My mother and father used to play together in public quite a lot.
Flute Concerto in G major (first movement)Favourite
I once had to learn the flute for a film... I found I had a certain facility for it... want a little inspiration.
She's singing a song from Hair... as appropriate as it's marvellously done.
Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 in G major, BWV 1048 (first movement)
We used it at the beginning and end of Life Class... association of music with work that I've done myself.
The message would be appropriate after a certain length of time on this island.
Cello Concerto in B-flat major, G. 482 (first movement)
My father played this a great deal... calls up very much my beginnings.
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:37Does the idea of loneliness attract you as a challenge or repel you?
Oh, it attracts me. I'm not averse to my own company. I don't find it intolerable or um I can enjoy life quite a lot on my own.
Presenter asks
0:47What would you be happiest to have got away from?
I think the pressures that evolve out of living in the society that we've all made, really, I mean, just the. The rat race, I suppose, and people's intolerance of each other and things like that.
Presenter asks
1:50What do you want your records to do for you on the desert island?
Well I thought about music that had been part of my life, in other words, I suppose nostalgia and uh evoking uh experiences and people.
Presenter asks
4:38Was there any one occasion or any one performance that prompted that decision [to become an actor]?
The keepsakes
The book
Not recorded.
The luxury
Well, it's better be the flute ... I don't think I'd ever make as good one as I could take.
Well, at school there was a lot of sort of dramatic activity at school, and verse speaking, and things of that nature, which I resisted wildly and wouldn't have anything to do with. And then suddenly I did want to. I found a sort of compulsion to do them. And I just remembered that feeling coming over me, and that really was the beginning of wanting to do it.
Presenter asks
5:39You had some national service to get out of the way. Where did you go and what did you do?
Er, rather ignominiously to Nottingham from Derby to spend an awful two years. I wouldn't try for a commission and I wanted to go abroad, but the two things I'm afraid went together and I would not try for a commission, something I just didn't want to do that.
Presenter asks
8:59When you rehearsed Look Back in Anger, did you have any idea that anything special was happening, that this play was a breakthrough?
There was certainly a feeling that it potentially was that, yes, amongst the company and the theatre, of course, which is one of the reasons why they were putting it on. But it opened without getting that kind of attention. Rather poor notices. Rather poor notices. And it's a rather poor note. We struggled on for the week and then Tynan and Hobson did what is now history for it.
“Oh, it attracts me. I'm not averse to my own company. I don't find it intolerable.”
“The rat race, I suppose, and people's intolerance of each other and things like that.”
“I had quite early formed this intention to act. And I just sort of narrowed all my energies into that.”
“It's an extraordinary thing to do. It is about almost everything to do with one's experience. It just touches on absolutely everything.”