Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Screenwriter and children's author known for films like Hilary and Jackie and Twenty Four Hour Party People, and for award-winning novels for young readers.
On the island
Eight records
MiserereFavourite
listening to that music gives me the feeling of stepping into a church full of gold and and lapis lazy like out of that housing estate.
I think he invented these fantastic utopias, but they were tiny Welsh villages or Viking towns or Pogleswood and they were just idyllic and that's something that's really held on to me.
Punk Rock was a huge thing to me because it was about sort of doing it yourself... I've gone for My Perfect Cousin because it's funny and it will live forever.
The most astonishing moment of my life was that was my honeymoon... we went to the Highlands of Scotland... and somehow little Stuart Adamson managed to kind of bundle all that up and put it into a guitar riff, which so I can play that and I'm back on my honeymoon.
This is a recording of some children telling Bible stories in Dublin in the sixties. It was made by a teacher called Peg Cunningham. I mean, that's a project that just, as you'll hear, unleashed amazing creativity.
Bowie is a huge figure for anyone my age. I always feel lucky that I had a pop star that I idolised who read a lot, so it felt quite cool to me to be reading what Bowie was reading.
my second son went into the garden and started playing this tune... and his sisters who did Irish dancing came out and they had bare feet and they just started dancing on the lawn... This is happy ever after. We are living in a fairy story and isn't that wonderful.
I've chosen The Greatest Single of All Time, I've Chosen God Only Knows by The Beach Boys.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:13There was a moment, I think, Frank Cottrell Boyce, when you felt that you were destined to become a writer. You were eleven. Tell me about that.
I was in Sister Paul's class in St Bartholomew's School in Rainhill, and I'd had a really good friend all the way through school and he was off sick... I kind of poured all the energy that I used to pour into making him laugh during lessons into this piece of work. And at the end of the lesson, Sister Paul collects all the pieces of work in and she picked up mine... And she read it out. I've always thought that if sh if she'd said, Frank, you come and read it out, I would have grown up wanting to be a comedian or an actor or a performer of some sort. But there's something really delicious about not being in the limelight, but still getting laughs.
Presenter asks
3:24Where on earth then do you find the peace and quiet to write?
I can't write in peace and quiet. Occasionally when I'm really up against it, they'll go away for a few days or something and I'm just useless. I need them in the house really to make sure that I'm not watching the telly or having a four hour bath or whatever. You know, the the fact that they're there makes me work, I think.
Presenter asks
6:21Were you anxious at all as a writer about taking on somebody who was so totemic [as Jacqueline du Pré]?
The keepsakes
The book
Charles Darwin
...I would really like to take, just to add to those two [Shakespeare and the Bible], Charles Darwin, I would take The Voyage of the Beagle. ... it's just a book full of idleness and joy and hunting and shooting and fishing and it's a great thing.
The luxury
I want to take a Ferris wheel. You could use it as a lookout... I could use it as a shelter... You could use it as entertainment, you could probably use it as a an astronomical instrument, and also it would have a tune playing, so I get an extra record which would be Ian Clute's Ferris Wheel.
I'm not sure that it was because our first contact was was with her sister who wanted to reclaim her as her sister. And you know, family's really important to me. And when we went to the screening of that, I went with Hilary and she said to me afterwards, You've given me back my sister because neither side had seen the other side.
Presenter asks
7:21Tell me about your home life [in Liverpool in 1959].
Oh, it was absolutely fantastic. I lived the first few years of my life in quite a small flat with my grandma in Liverpool. Then when I was six or seven we moved to this housing estate that had a little garden... It felt very paradisal, really.
Presenter asks
15:25You keep using this word luck and good fortune and blessed. Are you not willing to take on the idea that it's your own talent and endeavour that allows you to be successful?
Well, I think if I have a talent, it's for recognizing that I've been blessed, if you see what I mean.'Cause some people I see people get lots of luck and walk past it. I can see when that's a good opportunity, that's that's come my way and I can make the most of that.
Presenter asks
23:34Do you find children a more rewarding audience than adults?
Well, obviously a tougher audience because they're not polite. I mean, adults will come up to you, whatever you've done, and go, Love your work. Whereas children, if you get the right reaction, that is the best feeling in the world. But it's also a huge responsibility, I think, because I think what you read at that age has a massive impact on you.
“I think film is incredibly conventional and you're always taught that characters have to be sympathetic. And I think really the point of writing the point of drama, the point of books, is to extend people's sympathies, not to sort of play to them.”
“Invisibility is a superpower.”
“I think me time is very overestimated. I think me time and because you're worth it are the road to death, really. I think you've happiness is sharing stuff and doing stuff with other people.”
“it's not enough to be happy, you've got to recognise when you're happy”
“if you want to see a lot, standing in one spot is a really good way to do it.”