Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
A theatre producer from Liverpool who has produced 500 West End shows, including Blood Brothers and Stepping Out, and was formerly an actor in Coronation Street
On the island
Eight records
How Can We Hang On to a DreamFavourite
He never ever achieved the commercial fame he deserved. He died from a heroin overdose in the early eighties and uh he's my favorite, favourite, favorite voice.
I haven't chosen The Beatles because that was just a bit too obvious for me. I've chosen probably my favorite record of that time, a Jackie Deshannon song, recorded by a wonderful group of searchers, Needles and Pins.
Original Broadway Cast of West Side Story
I went in, sat down at the end of a row all on my own, and I watched West Side Story. I remember sitting there... in the interval, and I didn't move,'cause I thought if I move, the spell will be broken. This is the greatest experience I've ever had in a theatre.
This is the theme from Zedkos, which is also the theme from uh Goodison Park at three o'clock on a Saturday afternoon. When if you want to see Bill Kenwright at his happiest, at his most content, um you'll see him as Everton kickoff.
Richard Swerun and Peter Lawrence
I wake up every morning literally and say thank you God for Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber and for Joseph and the Amazing Technical Dream Coat.
The National Philharmonic Orchestra
My favourite hundred and eighteen minutes of entertainment ever is the movie Shane... Wherever Shane was on, I used to follow. I used to go. I must have seen it seventy times in the cinemas
Bob Marcucci / Peter De Angelis
Anthony Newley, one of my inspirations... basically because he was an actor who sang rather than an actor who tried to be a singer. He was always an actor. He's been a huge, huge inspiration to me all my life.
This particular musical was I think the one that um established me as a good producer um and it's one that I even now I go and see it often, I'm the co-director of it and it never fails to move me or to thrill me
In conversation
Presenter asks
2:39How did you feel when you didn't become a film star, but you did produce your first film?
My first film was not stepping out. It was it was a film called Day After the Fair with Hannah Gordon and Anna Massey, and it was a a Thomas Hardy short story, and I filmed it about ten or twelve years ago.
Presenter asks
2:57How did your mother and aunt react to seeing your first big film [Stepping Out]?
They came to see it, yeah. We we we had a premiere at the Curzon Mayfair, they came to see it, and uh then the first big film, as you said, was Stepping Out with Liza Minelli... Again, didn't tell them what I was doing. That was a wonderful day. I sat them down, and as I sat them down, I gave them two postcards with movie stars, and on the back I'd written, When I was four years old, you took me to a world I've never forgotten. Tonight's for you. And the mo the screen came up, said executive producer Bill Kenwright, and the three of us cried.
Presenter asks
7:57How did you turn around the Broadway production of Blood Brothers after the terrible reviews?
I rang him [David Cassidy] up, I flew him to New York and I said, Would you play the narrator? because I didn't want to play one of the boys because he's forty-five... And at the end of it he said, Bill, I cannot play the narrator for you, but what I can do is play Mickey the boy the lead. And I said, David, if you can do it, you do it And then I got Flu Pachula over, who I was a huge fan of, and within two weeks we were sold out.
The keepsakes
The book
Steve Johnson
because it's my diary. I can pinpoint everything, and that's the reason.
The luxury
all my life I've wanted to play the guitar well, really, really well, so it would be a guitar.
Presenter asks
19:42What went wrong when you came close to owning Everton Football Club a few years ago?
I made a conscious decision with a week to go that what mattered most was not whether Bill Kenwright owned Everton... What was important was the supporters and the team... At that particular time we were heading for relegation, for the first real time in my lifetime of supporting them. And with five days to go, I said to Peter Johnson, If you love it, If you look after it the way I would, then I am going to bow out.
Presenter asks
23:45Is it true that you were going to go under if Streetcar Named Desire had failed?
That's not right. No, no. But street no, that's not right. But there have been no. But there is there is a bit of truth in what you're saying. If street car had failed, I had gone through A crisis period of confidence, nothing to do with money, because I'd put on four or five flops. I literally was losing my confidence. And bringing Jessica Lang over uh to do streetcar was vitally important to me, not only because it was a wonderful production, but because and she knows this, she sort of gave me my confidence back.
“I wanted to be a film star. I wanted to be Errol Flynn. I wanted to be a Stuart Granger. I wanted to win the war.”
“I'm a fifty two year old man who all of his life has loved pop music, and uh trying to find the very best of pop music was not an easy quest for me.”
“I am a gambler and I think the only way I can do as much as I do and as many shows as I do is with my own money.”