Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
A very successful writer who has also done a little light acting.
On the island
Eight records
You Are the Sunshine of My Life
I'm ruled by two teenage daughters now. My sons are grown up and in in orbit, and the two teenage daughters play music so loud and all day long. And this is really my was, for a long time, my eldest daughter's favourite. So as I'm on my desert island and I want to think of my family, I'm going to have that, if I may, in honour of her.
The Pipes and Drums and Military Band of the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards
Because of my past in the Highland Brigade, it is amazing grace.
Gloria Gainor is a lovely singer, I think. I happen to love this record. Pushed down my throat, I must say, by my children, but but I personally love it.
This is a great favourite of mine because my wife is Swedish. And she adored this man, and adored this this particular piece of music. And when she got bored with me, or angry with me, she used to put this on when we were living in California, full blast. But it and I love it very much. This is this was this is a favorite piece.
Now this is my youngest daughter's hot selection. This is played day and night in my house to this minute, and so my ears are still throbbing for it, and I really love it myself.
Now this I choose because I'm on my desert island and I'm badly in need of a girl's voice. And if there's one great girl's voice in the world, it's hers.
Original Broadway Cast of South Pacific
First of all, I love the song, and I love the virility of that American chorus, but also I'm on my desert island. I'm getting a little sex starved.
Once more unto the breach (from Henry V)Favourite
First of all, he's a personal great friend and godfather to one of my children. and I think it's one of the most sensational speeches ever written by even Shakespeare. and a delivery that Shakespeare would have blessed by Larry. And I think I'm I'm in need of a friend on that island, and in need by this time of a little bit of guts, and I think it comes out of his speech.
In conversation
Presenter asks
3:49Why did you opt to go to Sandhurst and become an army officer?
This was decided by my my father was killed in the first war. My mother married again, a perfectly dreadful man. And really they wanted to get me off the books'cause we were very broke and very poor. And uh there was a s a schoolmaster at Stowe called Major Howarth, and he suggested I become a soldier. And the next thing I knew I was I was taking the exams to go to Santa.
Presenter asks
4:29Why did you leave the army?
I left the army'cause I made uh first of all I hated it. And uh I saw no future in it. For instance, um lieutenants had sixteen years' service in my regiment before they became captains, and this seemed like idiocy to me. I was getting nine shillings a day as a second lieutenant. And also I went to America on a holiday. As somebody's guest, and I saw the flash pots, and I feasted on the flash pots, and I and I couldn't face the discipline anymore. And couldn't wait to get out and I I was rude to a general among other things.
Presenter asks
5:30Why [did you become] an extra [in Hollywood]?
I think really I had a feeling that I might be able to do it, because I'd done some amateur theatricals. Of course, nonsense, fatal mistake. And I arrived in Hollywood, registered finally after a struggle as an extra, and there were twenty two thousand of us scratching around for eight hundred jobs. But I was one of the very, very few that got lucky.
The keepsakes
The book
because I have an urge to get off that island, and I'm going to build myself a boat at all costs and leave.
The luxury
Comfort is the keynote. And when I get sad and depressed when I hear Amazing Grace, which will make me weep, I'll turn my face into that non existent pillow.
Presenter asks
9:03Which [of your films] do you think was the best?
Well, the best film I thought was Around the World in Eighty Days, I think. It was a very good I thought a very good movie, and it was one of the six And a very enjoyable one. Yes, I think that was fun.
Presenter asks
9:15Which [of your films] was the worst?
I should think Bonnie Prince Charlie was the word. Unfortunately. A British film. Yes, oh dear. But it took six months to make and it was it was very peculiar. And we never were one never more than one day ahead of the writers. It was the most awful thing I've ever been through.
Presenter asks
14:22Was The Moon's a Balloon commissioned, or did you write it on spec?
No, I wrote it because my my old friend Roderick Mann, who's the columnist for the Sun Express, He's a such an old friend that he and he's interviewed me so often that he said, Look, I cannot do it any more. It bores me. I know you too well, so you'd write it yourself. And I did.
“I learnt the bagpipes at one point. Did you? Yes, when I was young, a uh a Scot, and I was very bad with that. I've done the Comb and Lew paper, that business. Do you sing? No, I can't I can't do it at all. In fact, what happened was that I was in the choir at school.”
“I think really I had a feeling that I might be able to do it, because I'd done some amateur theatricals. Of course, nonsense, fatal mistake. And I arrived in Hollywood, registered finally after a struggle as an extra, and there were twenty two thousand of us scratching around for eight hundred jobs. But I was one of the very, very few that got lucky.”
“I wrote a novel. I had the great conceit to think I could write. And I thought if Sam Goldwyn consigns me to barracks once more and won't pay me, I shall write a book. And I had the great conceit to think that's all you had to do. Well, I wrote the book. And it finally got published, and of course it was published long after I was back on the payroll, but I learnt the lesson of how hard it is to write by doing that.”