Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Playwright and screenwriter best known for creating Z Cars and Softly Softly, and adapting The Barchester Chronicles and Fortunes of War.
On the island
Eight records
Duke Ellington and His Famous Orchestra
Just a sittin' and a rockin' seems fairly appropriate for a desert island.
Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night
It was the first and most powerful lesson in the strength of the spoken word.
This is a song called The L'Oreal Eye written by The Gershwins, which has, I think, one of the most perfect combinations of music and lyrics.
Alex Glasgow and John Woodvine
This is a song called When It's Ours, All Ours and it's two Pitmen celebrating nationalization.
This is Thelonious Monk and it's a piece called Mysterioso which uh I stole because all writers are thieves.
Frank Riccotti and his All-Stars (with Kenny Baker)
This is really to honour all the theme tunes, you know, from Zedcars to Fortunes Award to very British coup and it's uh the theme from the the the Beiderbeck series.
This is to celebrate my many years spent in Hull. And my ... friendship with Philip Larkin. And it's Philip Larkin reading a poem called Here.
Fine and MellowFavourite
Billie Holiday with Lester Young
This is uh the the last recording ever made together by Billy Holliday and Lester Young, and it's just a a one minute, twelve second fragment of Fine and Mellow.
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:29Alan, is that the work ethic in you that fiddling about with words isn't really a man's job?
I think it's a combination of things. I I I'm descended from a genera several generations of craftsmen. My father was apprenticed as a blacksmith in the shipyard. My grandfather was a steelworker. I've got a huge respect for things that are made and the word playwright is spelt the same as wheelwright or shipwright. And Play is made, it is not written, it's made in a rehearsal room, on the stage of a theatre, or in a studio. So that's part of it. The other thing is I get very worried about people who have Condition known as Art in the Head. The idea that I'm gonna make some art. In other words, Michelangelo was just saying, I'm going to make a really good job of this ceiling. So, that people will be pleased with what I've done. He didn't say, I'm going to make a great piece of art. He said, I'm just going to do the job. And I think to engage too self-consciously in the act of making art is almost always a recipe for disaster.
Presenter asks
2:18But is there a part of you too that is perhaps slightly surprised to find yourself, considering your background, making money out of doing something that is really rather less than physical?
Oh, I'm utterly astonished. Every day is Christmas. I wake up thinking, I'm writing and that's my job and Pay me to do it.
The keepsakes
The book
Sid Chaplin
When I feel a chill descending on my soul, I reach for it and I find warmth.
Presenter asks
5:25So tell me about life in Jarrow and Hull in the thirties and forties. The depression, the war and the blitz. I mean, it must have made it pretty tough.
I was born in'thirty five. We left Jarrow in' thirty eight,'cause my dad got a job in Hull. And the cute way I express it is we we waited until the depression was over and moved to hull because we wanted to be in good time for the blitz. The truth is it was a wonderfully privileged childhood. I've dis discussed this with my with my sister, who's a little older than I am. We were brought up in Hull during the war years and spent long hours in the air raid shelter. We don't ever remember being frightened. And I suppose intellectually we must have understood, broadly speaking, what was going on. All I remember is if there was an air raid after ten o'clock at night, we didn't have to go to school the next morning. So we'd kind of say, Oh, great, there go the sirens, we don't have to go to school in the morning. The immense achievement this represented on the part of our parents A they didn't evacuate us. Um So clearly they took an objective decision saying if we go we go together Having made that decision, they then manage to Turn the whole thing into an adventure. And that kind of courage is quite amazing.
Presenter asks
12:49So, how did Plater the architect become Plater the writer then, Alan? What was the big break?
Well, I s Spent say a year and a half in an architect's office. I then left and went freelance and through all that period I was moonlighting, I was writing pieces of journalism. uh trying to write plays. The first play I ever wrote, I think was around 1958, 59. For let's give them credit, the Cheltenham Arts Festival, who had a a television playwriting competition. The play I wrote that didn't win was actually about a discontented architect, would you believe? And I wrote three or four more plays, which again nobody wanted, and I shopped them around the B B C in the usual places. And eventually a man called Alfred Bradley, who was a B B C sound. drama producer in the North region, took an interest, came to see me, we talked, I showed him a short story I'd written. and he commissioned me to adapt it as a radio play, and that was nineteen sixty sixty one. And suddenly I was up and running and And you've never been out of work since? No, no. Um It's one of these strange things you think, will it ever happen, will it ever happen? And suddenly it's happened and you didn't quite notice. but it that it's taking place.
Presenter asks
20:54Alan, you've adapted many other writers' work, from Conan Doyle to Trollope, from D H Lawrence to Olivia Manning. But you don't like calling it adaptation, do you?
Yes, Chris Hampton has complained about this. People say to Chris, are you doing are you writing at the moment? Are you just adapting? And it's just a different discipline. And it's a it's a very privileged thing, I find, to take on the work of somebody like Olivia Manning or Trollope, any of these people, and spend a few months inside their heads.
Presenter asks
26:08What about the proposition, then, of going to a desert island? Could you cope?
Uh that's that involves physical bravery and courage, and I'm not very good at that. I think I'm a kind of quivering coward at heart. Uh I d I think I would cope exceedingly badly. A sitting in a rocking in the rocking chair I could that bit I could do. It's a disappointment, really. I mean, I'm sure your your forefathers on uh Tyneside would be deeply ashamed. Yes, they would. I mean, I suppose I could cope with the element of shelter. because I can remember enough elementary building construction to build uh a hut. The thing that would really terrify me would be the food element, because I'm not a vegetarian. On the other hand, I couldn't begin to kill anything. I would be utterly dependent on a lobster crawling up onto the beach and having a heart attack.
“Every day is Christmas. I wake up thinking, I'm writing and that's my job and Pay me to do it.”
“I always regarded my family as working class aristocracy.”
“We don't ever remember being frightened.”
“I've got two generations sitting on my left arm saying, Don't tell any lies, Alan, because we're watching.”
“I think it's all a a whole nonsense, this this thing of arriving, but ... the evening my sister phoned me ... she said, You are the answer to twenty-three across in the Radio Times crossword I thought this is it.”