Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
TV producer known for making hit British sitcoms and selling their formats to the US.
On the island
Eight records
When I had joined Robert Stigwood, we made a film called Tommy. Elton John was asked would he be the pinball wizard. I remember him arriving with a suitcase full of glasses. There must have been 300 pairs there so that the director could choose one which was suitable. We shot that in a theatre, mostly sort of people and he had these huge boots on and it was fun and it was extraordinary.
Well, I don't know much about classical music really, and I heard Ness and Dormer, as did millions of others, as the theme music for the world football. I thought, gosh, that's good. Of course, if you're going to have it sung, then three of the best tenors in the world, all in one go, singing that song. I think it's really good, so I'd like to hear that again.
Well, this is Moonlight Serenade by Glenn Miller. And this really was where my life completely changed. I met my husband when we were at school, fifteen. When we're grown up, we'll get married, we said, and so we did. And we decided that we'd go to Canada. That sounded like an adventure. But then something intervened, and one of the people that I used to type scripts for was my friend Alan Simpson. He and Ray Galton had met in a hospital where they got T B, and then they came out and started to write. Well, I worked too hard really because then I got T B. So we didn't go to Canada at all. But it actually changed my life. Off I went to the Sanatorium and the Isle of Wight. Bit like Wuthering Heights it was. But when I got a bit better and got up. I became a D J on the local radio for the hospital, and this was my theme music.
I've chosen the morning of my life by the Bee Gees, when I joined Robert Stiggle in 1967. He looked after and managed the Bee Gees, who I've adored ever since. And I knew them all, and and now there's only one, Barry, and I'm hugely sad about that. But their music is lovely, and you don't hear the Morning of My Life very often, and yet it's a song that they created and wrote when they were young boys in Australia and uh I just love it.
Original Broadway Cast of A Chorus Line
We're going to hear now. Sampering from a chorus line. And the story behind this is that I did a film called The Entertainer, which was based on the John Osborne play. And we shot it in a place called Santa Cruz, which was nor near San Francisco. And in Santa Cruz was this old village hall with a very battered piano. And Marvin Hamlish, the composer, used to come in some mornings as we congregated there for a coffee and say, I've just written a song. Do you want to hear it? And he would play this song to Jack Lemmon and I, and it turned out that it was chorus line.
And then Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice said one day they wanted to write a musical about Eva Perron, and we all went Good Lord, what's that going to be like, then? And then they did, and that was another big hit. Thrilling theatre. Don't cry for me, Argentina.
Well we're going to hear something from Sherlock now. This is a production that my company are doing, and I love the music from it. But this is from an episode called The Woman Scandal in Belgravia, and it's the nearest you feel. that Sherlock and this woman are attracted to each other.
What a Wonderful WorldFavourite
Bob Thiele and George David Weiss
I'm going to choose What a Wonderful World by Louis Armstrong. For no reason other than I just love it. and my eyes always fill with tears when I listen to it. Sue and Stephen played it at their wedding. I think it's. Lovely, Louis Armstrong smiling away. I enjoy it.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:34What gave you the nerve way back in the beginning [to break the rules as a female independent producer]?
I think because I came into this industry so much by accident, I didn't know what to fear, I suppose, and uh quite a few people said, you know, very difficult being a woman and I hadn't thought about it really
Presenter asks
5:25As your years have advanced, have you noticed as somebody behind the camera that there's been any prejudice towards you?
Yeah. Personally, I haven't. It's interesting what I've been called over the years. You know, I started off with young producer in her thirties and then skipped through middle age or something, and then I moved to being described as veteran producer. Currently I'm legendary.
Presenter asks
16:40When did you realise, Beryl, that being a very good secretary wasn't enough for you?
By accident, because I was in this office with all these writers and things, and then You did all the jobs and then one day Alan Simpson said to me, Oh, could you ring the BBC and because our contract's run out and we need another one. I said, Well, I don't know what to say and he said, Well, I I don't know, think of something. So I thought of something that there's two of them and it's hard and they're very good and I got a bit more money, five guineas more than they had been having. And so I started doing that for everybody. And then one day someone said to me, How long have you been an agent? I didn't realise that's what I was.
The keepsakes
The book
Well, I can't really think of a book that I want to keep reading over and over, so I would like to have a book of photos. Of my life, all the people, my family, and I just think I'd really enjoy that, then I could keep wafting off into daydreams.
The luxury
a guitar and a book of instructions
I've always wanted to play the guitar. And I can't cause I've never had a lesson or anything, but I thought if I had the guitar and a book of instructions, I could give that a bit of a go.
Presenter asks
17:23How well do you feel you got to know [Tony Hancock]?
Got to know him quite well. I don't think you ever got to know him very well. But he used to go to France a lot with his wife, um, Cecily, and one day he said Why don't you come as well? And Er, Alan Gorton and Simpson went and I went. and his mother went to this hotel in the south of France. We had such a funny time, and that was the the time where I enjoyed him the most, I think. He was very relaxed. We played a silly game of cards with matches for money, and um he kept saying, Could you see your way clear to advance me five matches? and thing. We were just in hysterics. Er it was the happiest I personally ever saw him.
Presenter asks
25:39Did you ever feel lonely [setting up Hartswood Films in the middle of your divorce]?
That was probably the unhappiest time of my life, because my husband Clem was, until he died a couple of years ago, always my best friend. But I think he probably found my life a bit hectic. But anyway, there I was with my two best friends. Not at my side, and I hadn't realized how much I had valued. their presence when it wasn't there. And I lost confidence a lot. I kept thinking I didn't know how to do things when really I did.
Presenter asks
28:26Despite all this experience, why have you never run a television station or put your hat in the ring to be Director General?
I've only ever worked with Gorton Simpson and that crowd of writers where I wasn't an employee. And with Robert Stigwood, he never made me feel an employee. I mean, he only ever said in the beginning, could you just get on with it? And I haven't got the patience to wait while everybody has a meeting to talk about it.
“I think because I came into this industry so much by accident, I didn't know what to fear, I suppose”
“It's interesting what I've been called over the years. You know, I started off with young producer in her thirties and then skipped through middle age or something, and then I moved to being described as veteran producer. Currently I'm legendary.”
“I think when I sold the first format I didn't get up in the morning and think I'll be a pioneer today what I was was an impatient agent at that time, representing writers with really good material.”
“My one regret is that I didn't keep a diary. How stupid is that? Because there's lots of little anecdotes I do remember and a lot I can't remember.”