Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Comedian, composer, pianist, and actor, successful in all four careers.
On the island
Eight records
Kyrie from Mass in B minor, BWV 232
This always makes my hair stand on end. It it sort of… It makes me feel very refreshed and sane after I've heard it.
They appeal to me, especially because they're jazz musicians who are working in a pop idiom and that is interesting me very much at the moment. I think pop is… giving jazz a tremendous boost in spirit and this is why I'm particularly fond of this record.
Excerpt from Kindertotenlieder
She has one of the most moving voices I've ever heard and I think it's probably for the voice as much as the music that I've chosen this particular record.
Dudley Moore (from Beyond the Fringe)
It's a satire on the Benjamin Britton style of folk song writing with a Peter Peirce type voice. I must stress, however, I do this out of absolute love and admiration for Britain with no malice of forethought at all.
Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue
Duke Ellington and his Orchestra
because of the fantastic feeling of what can only be called swing, but is generated. It's an Ellington record, part of the Diminuendo and Crescendo in blues with the solo by Paul González. I think it's one of the most exciting jazz records I've ever heard and you can hear the crowd getting carried away in the background.
Six Bagatelles for String Quartet
I chose this because I first became acquainted with them through the Juilliard string quartet. I know the first violinist rather well and he sort of fired an enthusiasm for chamber music in me. They're pieces that are whispers and mutterings and grunts of a man who worked in miniature with great affection and I'm not totally familiar with these pieces and I would rather enjoy getting to know them on the beach.
I've chosen it really because it myself playing with a string background and it's a memory of the the thrill that I felt when I first heard this orchestration that I'd done coming back at me and it also has very sentimental associations for me.
Symphony No. 3 in E-flat major, Op. 55 'Eroica' – Marcia funebre (slow movement)Favourite
Otto Klemperer conducting the Philharmonia Orchestra
something that, again, makes my spine go a bit peculiar. It's the Beethoven Eroica Symphony, the slow movement and specifically the fugal part of it, which really sets my hair on end.
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:38Apart from the loneliness, what would be the worst thing about a desert island existence?
I don't know. The loneliness actually rather appeals to me. The only thing is that I do go a bit spare after about… 12 hours on my own. I went on holiday once to Positano for two weeks on my own. In fact, I spent two days there and I just went absolutely berserk. So I have a feeling that I'd start talking to myself or screaming from the top of lonely sand dunes and doing all sorts of peculiar things.
Presenter asks
1:26What would you want records to do for you on a desert island?
I think probably just remind me of the life I've left behind. I've chosen most of them for nostalgic reasons.
Presenter asks
5:06And then you gained an organ scholarship to Oxford?
Yes, I had a disastrous attempt for an organ scholarship at Cambridge, in which I was so nervous that I could hardly put one finger right, or even foot, as I was playing the organ. So the next time I tried at Oxford I thought, well, I'll just relax completely and luckily I got it.
The keepsakes
The book
Virginia Woolf (or various)
The luxury
But it'll have to be a piano, although I don't know how it's going to stand up to the hurricanes and so forth. It will be an upright piano, of course.
Presenter asks
8:16Now beyond the fringe, Dudley, how did that start?
Well, a friend of mine who was at Oxford with me became the assistant to the director of the Edinburgh Festival and the idea came up that a university review should be done as part of the official Edinburgh Festival. He asked myself from Oxford and Jonathan Miller from Cambridge to perform and asked us to suggest to other people. Jonathan suggested Peter Cook from Cambridge and I suggested Hannan Bennett from Oxford and we all got together. We provided our own solo material and then wrote the community pieces together. When it opened at Edinburgh, it was an hour long and when we came to London some months later we'd added another hour and made a set. Before we'd only had a piano on the stage and black velvet drapes and we wore sweaters but now we even had suits and we had a set built over the piano which was all very splendid. And it was a review of course that broke a lot of new ground.
Presenter asks
12:01Are you happy with all these careers? You don't want to specialise?
Not really. No, I'm not happy unless all these things that I do are simmering at the same time. I find that if I'm performing in a play, I have a yen to compose and play jazz. If I'm exclusively playing jazz, I then have a yen to perform on television or something like that. So they go together. Is there any one particular long-term ambition in any field? You talked about writing an opera at one time. Yes, I did. I talked about that till I bored myself stiff with it. I've never got round to writing it. And so I've dropped the idea, hoping that the notion will creep up on me without my being aware of it. Because if I promise myself to do something, I obviously never will.
Presenter asks
15:37How well could you cope on this island in a practical sense?
Very badly, I think. I can scarcely cope in normal society in a practical sense. So goodness knows what will happen on the island. I think I shall make do with they odd berries and I don't think I could fish or do anything like that. Shelter, I just try and find a a shady nook somewhere. I don't think I could build myself anything at all. And the prospect of escape? I wouldn't know how to approach it at all, unless I got into a fever of carpentry in which I could build myself a raft. Let's make it easy for you. Let's assume a raft was washed up on the beach. Would you take off on it? I don't know. I think I'd be rather hopeful that somebody would come across in a modern machine and pick me up rather than go out on some primitive raft. I think I'd stay put until rescued.
“The loneliness actually rather appeals to me. The only thing is that I do go a bit spare after about 12 hours on my own.”
“I wanted to be a maths teacher at first, but through sheer laziness, I think I finally turned to a subject that I did with most ease, which was music.”
“I had a disastrous attempt for an organ scholarship at Cambridge, in which I was so nervous that I could hardly put one finger right, or even foot, as I was playing the organ.”
“I'm not happy unless all these things that I do are simmering at the same time.”
“I think I'd be rather hopeful that somebody would come across in a modern machine and pick me up rather than go out on some primitive raft. I think I'd stay put until rescued.”