Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Novelist and television writer best known for the police series Z-Cars and Softly, Softly.
On the island
Eight records
Why Am I Always the Bridesmaid?
The first one I've chosen is a very old music hall song. It's uh it's Lily Morris singing Why Am I Always the Bridesmaid?
I think because i it somehow or other ... Brings the time back, and what I think if I was on the desert island. doing when I wasn't writing, I'd be doing my bit of memory, and it was my first romantic song.
Bing Crosby and Louis Armstrong
Our record three is a thirties record and it's Bing, Crosby and Louis Armstrong, and they're singing Gone Fishing.
Anne Shelton with Ambrose and his Orchestra
which is Anne Shelton, singing a song that always takes me back to that squadron. We all used to sing it as we worked, and that was You'll Never Know.
Record number five is, uh almost inevitably, uh the theme from Zed Cars, Johnny Todd, sung by James Ellis Lynch of that series.
Frank Sinatra with the Count Basie Orchestra
Record number six is Frank Sinatra. Fly me to the moon?
Well, I have a daughter called Maddie and she's a singer and she's written some songs of her own and this is her latest. It's called Just the Tours.
Never Been Kissed in the Same Place TwiceFavourite
Well, I started with a music hall song and I'd like to end with one. And again, it's one that, uh, in a way I suppose I ought to apologise that my daughter has r has written it and and she also sings it. Uh and it's called Inevitably Never Been Kissed in the Same Place Twice or if you want the shorter version, Naughty But Nice.
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:40Could you adjust yourself to extended loneliness?
Well, I've got a fair bit of practice at it, Roy, because I've been a professional writer for twenty five years. And all professional writers have to sit at desks turning the stuff out. And you've got to do that on your own. Yes, seven days a week. ... And somehow uh you get used to it. You live with your characters, they people the room for you.
Presenter asks
4:22With this music hall background, did you want to be a performer?
No. I think all writers are denied performers. I think we we all would like to act and we'd all like to play it out. But instead of doing it that way, we write it down. I'd no idea that I had any of these uh feelings, uh artistic or what have you. Because what I saw of music hall and what I saw of performers mainly was was poverty and people that weren't making very much money ... and I couldn't see any kind of living in the arts
Presenter asks
4:44What was your first job when you left school?
Well, my first job when I left school, and I competed with fifty six other boys for for the honour, was a job as a clerk in an office, and I was lucky enough to get it. I turned up and knocked the boss's inkwell over on his desk, blotted it with a blotter. And this seemed to impress him. And he gave me the job. It paid 15 shillings a week, and I felt rich.
The keepsakes
The book
Robert Louis Stevenson
my favourite boys' book, which I probably know backwards and forwards. I think it would make good reading on the island.
The luxury
Could that be my luxury? Could I throw the looking glass away? I won't bother with the looking glass, and I'll have the writer's desk, because without it I shouldn't feel alive.
Presenter asks
6:55How did it start [your writing career while serving in the RAF]?
Well, I'm sitting about in a dispersal hut and uh another airman came along to me and said Would you read that? and gave me a short story to read. I read it through, and he said to me,'What do you think'? and I said,'Well, it's all right. What's it for? and he said,'A competition. Then I said, being a North Countryman, is there a prize? And he said, Yes, it's fifty pounds. I said, Is it open to anybody? and he said, Yes, it is. And I said, When does it close? And he said, Tomorrow night. ... he came third in the thing and I won it.
Presenter asks
13:00How did the whole thing start [with Z-Cars]?
Well, the BBC had a sort of special relationship with the Lancashire Constabulary and had done one or two programmes based on some of the Lancashire Constabulary's work, which was new. ... And it was suggested that there might be something in this. I was dispatched to the north of England ... and was told that I needed to write three scripts in ten days, or there was no programme. It seemed a a reasonable challenge, so I did it.
Presenter asks
15:16How did the police take [the down-to-earth nature of Z-Cars]?
Well at the beginning, all police officers over the rank of inspector hated them, and all police officers under the rank of inspector liked them very much. It was a sort of division. As soon as people got behind desks, they started being responsible for the force. But the people out in the street, from whom anyway one got the stories, seemed to be very happy with them.
“I think all writers are denied performers. I think we we all would like to act and we'd all like to play it out. But instead of doing it that way, we write it down.”
“I think at some point in your life you have to take a gamble, and I just happened to take it at that point.”
“I won't bother with the looking glass, and I'll have the writer's desk, because without it I shouldn't feel alive.”