Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
2 appearances
Author known for intricately structured novels like Cloud Atlas and The Bone Clocks, blending genres and time periods with literary daring.
On the island
Eight records
And that was the music that Rob and I used to use uh to do our sort of bowing to at the end of our two-man shows, because it's it's incredibly upbeat in a in a pretty one-dimensional way, but a way you can't fail to enjoy, and it definitely made audiences clap more loudly.
The second track is Stranger on the Shore by Akerbilk, and that's a song that basically reminds me of my childhood because my mum loved that kind of mellow sound, and you know, I do as well. And when we came to try and think of a sort of theme tune of our radio show, which is called That Mitchell and Webb Sound, it struck me and Rob as a piece of music that definitely has a sound, a very sort of cheesy, lounge sound.
I just find the words that it's a brilliant song, but the words are so depressing. And I like to think of it as our school song. I would like one day, as a stunt, to arrange for all of the pupils in Abington School to stand up in chapel and sing a sort of organ arrangement of this song.
Concerto Grosso in G Minor, Op. 6, No. 8 "Christmas Concerto": V. Adagio
I know it as the music from Master and Commander, which is a brilliant film, based on a brilliant book. There's something seductive about this world of a ship that has a very definite task that has to be run in a certain efficient way and nothing else matters. It's the ultimate escapism for the anti-multitasker.
Next is a song called Mm Mm by the Crash Test Dummies, which I very much associate with my time at Cambridge because it was on the radio loads, and it always makes me remember that time when I was first living away from my parents and, to my immense surprise, really enjoying it.
Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass
Ah well, this is a piece of music that can never fail to cheer you up. It's Herb Albert and the Tijuana bras playing Spanish Flea. And I remember this from my childhood. This was played on the record player at home a lot. And it strikes me this would be a very appropriate piece of music to go mad to on a desert island.
Cello Concerto in E Minor, Op. 85
Well, this is a a piece of music that just always just always makes me feel very sad and British at the same time. It it's it brings out my kind of uh melancholy patriotism, and it it's absolutely beautiful.
The Rainbow ConnectionFavourite
Paul Williams & Kenneth Ascher
Well if anything could while away an eternity on a desert island, it's this fantastic and very moving song from the beginning of a comedy puppet movie. It's a Rainbow Connection, sung by Kermit. I defy anyone not to fall in love with this song.
I don't really wanna live on my island without a little bit of Kate Bush. ... This song will also remind me of my daughter because we went to see the Kate Bush concert at Hammersmith where she performed this and many of the great songs a few years ago.
I experience this as a kind of a lullaby sung by a parent who's in one world to a child who's in another world. It's a beautiful oceanic and bathibic piece of music.
Sufjan Stevens, Bryce Dessner, Nico Muhly, James McAllister
This is one of those time and place songs. If you're lucky, you have a few golden seasons in your life. And summer three years ago I spent in Chicago working on a screen project with a couple of friends, and this song came out at that time, and so ... this one's for us.
This fits into the sustenance category. It is utterly mysterious. I love this piece of music in part because I can't describe why or how I love it. It makes me feel things I can't quite name and gives me memories that I don't think I've had, which is utterly mysterious.
AnimaFavourite
This is a hymn to one's own soul. For me, the rhythm of the song it's the pulse of blood in your veins. ... And it was there swirling in the background when I met the young lady who I am still married to. So it's kind of a song for my wife and of my wife and of the soul.
My son has played this more often than Damon Albarn, who actually wrote the thing, has heard it, I'm quite sure. ... When you play something that often, then a little bit of your soul transfers itself into the song. So when I'm on my island, I'll play this and my son will magically temporarily appear in holographic form for the duration of the song.
Duke Ellington and John Coltrane
This is in the sustenance category, I think. Its composition's a bit like the TARDIS. It's simple, short and sweet on the outside, but inside it's got rooms and these rooms lead to more rooms, and it's really magical.
I'd love to write about [Domenico Scarlatti] one day and having this disc on the island would keep me putting wood on the rescue fire and keep the SOS shell pattern well maintained because I want to live long enough to get off the island and write my Domenico Scarlatti novel.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:17Are you a sort of glass half-empty kind of a guy?
No, I'm I am gl a glass half empty person, I suppose, but but I I like to think I I don't think it's the end of the world that the glass is half empty. I I do acknowledge that there's something in the glass.
Presenter asks
1:32How would you describe [your Peep Show character] Mark Corrigan? What sort of man is he?
primarily I'd say he's unhappy and he doesn't like himself and he feels he has an inability to do the things society requires of him, and his desperation is to break in and gain acceptance. I think he's neither loathsome nor commendable. I think he's like a lot of people, probably a little bit worse than average.
Presenter asks
10:18What do you remember of [when puberty struck]? What was particularly awful?
Puberty came at a time when I was also changing schools. And I was going from a small prep school which I really loved and where I'd been a sort of big fish in a small pond and loved doing the school play and that sort of thing, to a much larger school where I couldn't even be the best at lessons there anymore. There were too many other swats. Beforehand I'd completely when my parents said, Oh, well you know one day you'll want to have a girlfriend, this and the other, I said, absolutely not. Why would I? Well it's of no interest to me at all. I'm entirely independent person. I wouldn't want that. And then suddenly there are all these hormones and you do want that. And I couldn't bear the inconsistency in myself.
The keepsakes
The book
A book of Chinese kanji characters
I would like to use my time on the island to Fully master the Chinese characters so that when I'm rescued I will be able to read the Japanese classics and impress my wife with my beautiful, flowing, beautifully Calligraphed renditions of the Chinese characters.
The luxury
the archives of all episodes of Desert Island Discs
what I'd like to take are the archives of all episodes of Desert Island Discs so that this hunger for company and for voices that aren't my own will be assuaged.
Presenter asks
14:28Did you have a plan [at Cambridge]? Did you think right professional acting and comedy? I know it's going to be my life.
I think I decided I wanted to be a comedian in my first term at university. I I think that was the point when I decided.
Presenter asks
24:05Do you think other people doing those things, like dancing or wearing flamboyant clothes or even fashionable clothes, do you think they look ridiculous doing it?
I think some people do. I think the ones that aren't enjoying it look ridiculous. And I think that's why I was nervous of trying to affect enjoyment of those things. I think there are a lot of people that get dragged along and feel they should enjoy it, and I feel sorry for those people, and they should let themselves off the hook, put on a tweed jacket and watch Star Trek.
Presenter asks
14:03One of your novels, Black Swan Green, is semi autobiographical, and, like you, its narrator develops a stammer. When did yours appear?
It kind of got activated probably around age six or seven. Teacher asked a question, I remember this quite clearly at primary school, and the answer was Napoleon, and I knew the answer, and I put my hand up, and I couldn't say it. ... It's still here to this day. You live with them and you can come to better or worse working accommodations with them. ... I really couldn't say what I wanted to. I had not yet grafted on the coping mechanisms that I've grafted on now that allow me to do a radio interview, for example.
Presenter asks
15:32You've written very movingly about your experience with managing and eventually making peace with your stammer. What helped you find that working accommodation?
Well, writing Black Swan Green really got me thinking about it. ... once I started thinking of my stammer not as an enemy within, but as a fellow passenger in my mind who needed a bit of time to stammer ... if I gave him space and if I let him stammer and didn't hate him for it or didn't [feel] mortified by him then, he would give me space in return. ... it works now. And occasionally I'll stammer at ... an event and I'll just say, 'Hello, I seem to be stammering a little bit,' and the audience usually laughs, they're on my side, and I relax, and then I can move on from the block.
Presenter asks
22:31[The] song for your wife, Keiko — you met while living in Japan, and it was a definitive time because you also wrote your first novel there. Who did you send it to?
I wrote my first two novels in Japan. ... First novel, I thought 20 was a magic number, so I sent it to thirteen publishers and seven agents. ... I think I got about four replies back. ... what I did get back was a friendly reply from an agent at Curtis Brown. He was called Mike Shaw, and he said, 'The next time you're in London, just drop in and we'll have a chat' ... he became my first agent, and I'm still with the agency to this day.
Presenter asks
25:02How has being [your son's] dad changed you?
Well, my son's autistic and as anyone in these shoes can attest, I think, autism parenting is neurotypical parenting on steroids times 20. ... I hope, however, ultimately it's made me a better person than I otherwise would have been. It forces you to learn things just to get through to Friday ... You've got to be more patient. You have to not care about the weird glances, the weird looks you'll be getting from people if your kid has a meltdown in public.
Presenter asks
25:48There is a growing movement calling for better understanding of neurodiversity. What would you like to see change?
I would like to see special needs assistance in schools being provided as a matter of course rather than something you have to campaign for. That should be there for kids who need that help as a right. ... Could we please just have a society that is kinder and more tolerant ... and more understanding that we're not all the same, yet we still have value and worth even if we don't conform to the majority's idea of what is normal and what is ordinary.
Presenter asks
28:52Tell me about the book that you wrote that's due to be published in 2114.
This is all part of a long term artwork by a Scottish artist called Katie Patterson. The idea is to plant a small forest of trees in the outskirts of Oslo ... For the next hundred years ... one author will be approached and asked to contribute one piece of writing. ... In 2112, 2113, the trees ... will be turned into paper and a hundred years' worth of books will be printed on them. ... to hand over a manuscript that no one else will ever read ... is to believe there will still be readers and still civilization and still culture and still Norway and still trees and still libraries a hundred years from now.
“I love the fact that British sitcoms are an environment in which people like Mark Corrigan are the centre of attention, in which the sort of doubting mediocrity gets a bit of focus, because God knows they don't get it in life.”
“I'm sort of almost tweed on the inside in some ways and and and I would I would very happily live a long life of, you know, ninety years, but being fifty for the whole time.”
“I think anyone really intelligent understands and appreciates that the funny must be part of everything.”
“I have no skills in DIY or cookery or hunting or fishing, so I w I yeah, the the good thing is I will die of starvation and exposure probably before I can even whittle a tool sharp enough to kill myself with. But no, I I would hate that solitude. It's a nightmare, the idea of a desert island.”
“I've noticed that castaways choose songs for three broad reasons. One is to remind them of people that they're going to miss. Another is to remind them of particular times and places that were important to them. And the third reason is for some kind of sustenance.”
“My nervous, introverted, bookish, stammering, younger self. ... All the other selves I could have been. We're all a parliament of ourselves. No one self is always in charge. This is why we can so frequently appall ourselves with what we do and think, 'God, was that me doing that?' And yes, it was.”
“If you're a young teenager going to a comprehensive school, it wasn't that my school's particularly rough or anything, but it is deeply unwise to get a reputation as someone who likes either classical music or who who enjoys poetry, you simply can't.”
“They were teaching me that art is about the concentration. It's not about suddenly being kissed by the muse. It's work. It requires discipline and thoughtfulness.”
“I would like to see special needs assistance in schools being provided as a matter of course rather than something you have to campaign for. That should be there for kids who need that help as a right. ... Could we please just have a society that is kinder and more tolerant and more understanding that we're not all the same, yet we still have value and worth even if we don't conform to the majority's idea of what is normal and what is ordinary.”
“To hand over a manuscript that no one else will ever read, that there isn't another copy of anywhere, is to believe there will still be readers and still civilization and still culture and still Norway and still trees and still libraries a hundred years from now. And a part of me likes to think that by saying yes, by voting for that future, I make it ever so slightly, fractionally more likely to come about.”