Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
2 appearances
A TV entertainer with faultless delivery and a memory for jokes; best known for The Golden Shot, Bob's Full House, and Celebrity Squares.
On the island
Eight records
There's a Cafe on the Corner (from Carmen Jones)
[Bob's first disc.] It would also make me feel very much at home if one's sitting on the island staring at Dennis through the hole in the center of the record I could feel there was a cafe just around the corner.
Living the Life I Love (from The Jazz Singer)
[Dennis's first disc.] He told [the audience] that he was away from home working for so many weeks in the year, his children referred to him as Uncle Daddy. And I've collected a number of his records since then.
Symphony No. 1 in D Major, Op. 25 'Classical': III. Gavotte
Ernest Ansermet; Orchestre de la Société des Concerts du Conservatoire
[Bob's second disc.] This makes me laugh, not, I think, only because I saw it first, heard it first as background music to a silent picture starring Buster Keaton, but partly because the music is so surprising and so gay that you almost, it's so difficult to hold back laughter when you're listening to it. … I'll be chuckling on my island anyway.
I Keep Her Picture Hanging Upside Down
[Dennis's second disc.] I'm a Jerry Lewis fan. In my view, he's one of the few present day clowns who is just as funny to listen to as he is to watch.
And This Is My Beloved (from Kismet)
[Bob's third disc.] I like classical and contemporary combined to devastating effect. … One of the happiest evenings I've ever spent in a theater was watching Kismet.
Ritual Fire Dance (from El amor brujo)
[Dennis's third disc.] A very stirring and warming piece of music to hear constantly on a desert island would be the ritual fire dance by Defayer. … if an aeroplane passes overhead, it might spot Defire.
Someone to Watch Over MeFavourite
[Bob's fourth disc.] I'd like to combine [Gershwin] with the piano playing of Ellis Larkins and a number that would remind me that somewhere some girl was still looking for a little boy like me.
The Dream of Love (from Seven Dreams)
Gordon Jenkins and His Orchestra
[Dennis's fourth disc.] My imagination would undoubtedly provide far more entertainment than my partner. And nothing could inspire my imagination more than something from Gordon Jenkins' Seven Dreams record, a musical interpretation of every man's dreams, and my wildest dream would be the final one, the dream of love.
Sinatra. It he is the voice of the century, he is the voice of my the populist voice of my entire life, Sinatra.
And this particular melody, it's a lovely melody, and it's something that brings up so many memories of my teen years in my mind, many of them utterly delicious and experimental.
Pavane pour une infante défunte
Ulster Orchestra conducted by Yan Pascal Tortelier
Well, I suppose arising out of my lack of melancholia is my fascination with things that are melancholy. It's as if I'm reaching for melancholy music in an effort to understand its inspiration.
Adagio for Strings, Op. 11Favourite
Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Geoffrey Simon
Samuel Barber, the American composer, was about twenty four when he wrote his A Daggio for Strings, opus eleven, and again it's a it's a melody that I find entrancingly sad but uplifting.
I'll need to laugh on my desert island, and there are certain things that never fail to make me laugh, never ever, ever let me down. And one of those particular things is Jonathan and Darlene Edwards recordings.
Orchestra of the Academy of St. Cecilia in Rome conducted by Franco Mannino
This never ceases to astonish me, no matter how prepared I am, for the passage in which. The music suddenly rises as if to the heavens. It still is a surging nutrient for my spirit. It's like um it's it's like vitamins for the soul.
I have a very happy marriage with Jackie, second marriage, twenty five years marriage.
You Have Cast Your Shadow on the Sea
But there's a lovely song called You Have Cast Your Shadow on the Sea, a most unusual little song, written by Rogers and Hart for their production of The Boys from Syracuse back in the 30s. And we revived that in 1963 and did it at Drury Lane.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:32How old are you?
Well, I'm just a year older than Dennis.
Presenter asks
4:58When and how did you two first get together? When did you first meet?
We should have met somewhere in the 1940s, I suppose, Roy, because both Dennis and I went to the same college, had the same friends, but never met until we'd both left, and Dennis was a radio salesman, and I was animating cartoons for Mr. J. Arthur Rank. … And it just worked out that we were telling different groups of people on either side of the room exactly the same funny story. … we both said the payoff line to the joke at the same moment, both said snap, and spent the rest of the evening talking to one another because nobody else would talk to us.
Presenter asks
6:25Do you prefer writing for yourselves or for other people?
Oh, no, definitely not, Roy. Um we find that we can assess another comedian's talent very much better than we can assess the absence of talent in ourselves.
Presenter asks
The keepsakes
The luxury
I think I'd like to teach myself to play. I always loved Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw... I could go snorkeling and use it.
Would you two call yourselves methodical writers? Do you start writing every day at a certain hour?
I wish we could work in a methodical way, but most of our best work is done in the wee small hours of the morning in Dennis's flat.
Presenter asks
12:44What sort of castaways do you think you boys are going to be on this island? … Who's going to build a hut?
Well, um, I'm not very practical, Roy, but when I was four years old I did win a Sandcastle competition.
Presenter asks
15:45You've each got one more choice to make, and that's your luxury object, one apiece. … What would you like?
I would love to have a complete set of the Encyclopædia Britannica so that I could truthfully say that I may be dirty, but I won't be ignorant. And since we've established the fact that we'll have to forget all about girls, Roy, I'd like a large coloured picture of Marilyn Monroe to remind me of what I'm supposed to forget.
Presenter asks
1:35How do you capture the magic of a live audience?
That's right, but then there are lots of ways of changing your grip on your opponent, if that's the way you view your audience. Or uh s some use the analogy of riding a horse to get that audience correctly paced so that you don't exhaust them too early. Try not to use your A material too soon. You save that for later. And in those first three or four minutes, you find what what the audience is like.
Presenter asks
9:31Why was there such a fuss when you lost your joke books?
Well, then the books was not they weren't just jokes. You can buy a joke book in a shop. It was material. Warp and weft of what I'd do for a living. It was cartoons, drawings of props. Whole scenes on on of sketches and plays, ideas for plays and plots, material that I intend to work on for the next ten years.
Presenter asks
11:26Is it true your mother came to your wedding in black?
Yes. I still have photographs of her stern-faced in that uh black outfit that she bought especially for it, I think. But what I never really understood myself until I had a kind of epiphany, I suppose, right in the middle of talking to Dr Antony Clare in a studio not unlike this. … And he asked me did I think my mother hated me? And he said he guided me into realizing that my mother's love for me was much greater than she could handle. And uh I had never seen it that way. In all those years I hadn't seen it.
Presenter asks
24:50What was your son Gary like as a character?
He's still with me every day. He he died five years ago. I can never get through a day without thinking of him and being inspired by him, too. He was a v he was an astonishing fellow. I mean, he could be Hitler on wheels sometimes, but um he had a knock down smile. He was very handsome. Um he couldn't hear and he couldn't speak. And he couldn't uh stand or sit or sit unaided, he had to have a strap. Around him to stay on his chair, and he couldn't use his hands, they had to be tied down, and he had to wear gloves at all times, because otherwise the fingernails would have uh torn at his palms. But he could control his right leg. His left leg he used as a kind of paper weight, but he could hold a pen between the big toe and the next toe of his right foot and draw. and he had a great sense of humour.
Presenter asks
29:47Why do you think you have attracted so much criticism and dislike in the press?
I've never figured it out. In all this time, I've never managed to work out quite what it is that arouses such venom in the press. And it seems to be. Extraordinary because uh uh the I don't get that from members of the public who seem to be Since to watch what I do, and either they find me funny or they don't. If they laugh, then to a certain extent they are committed to tolerating me at least.
“Flopsweat is cold. You feel it running down your back, but it's it's icy. And your suit gets too big for you. You feel as if you're rattling around in your suit. You feel as if you are shrinking as a person. And the one thing that I always tell young comedians that I've discovered is you must slow down when that happens.”
“I don't suffer from any kind of melancholia. I'm I'm never bored. And I don't get depressed.”
“Whenever anything has upset me greatly I mean, given me nightmares, or has troubled me. I've usually wrapped it in a joke. I've usually turned it into a gag.”