Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Journalist and radio critic who pioneered radio criticism and created the series 'Hail Variety'.
On the island
Eight records
Hail Variety
The Fingers of Private Spiegel
Meet the Rev
The keepsakes
The luxury
Not recorded.
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:38How could you endure complete loneliness on this island?
I'd try, I'd have to, I'd endure it, but I don't like loneliness. In fact … my whole hobby has been collecting people because of my profession and because it's fascinated me. And that, of course, [is] the people who are associated with the records I shall choose, are to my mind rather more important, in fact, than the music itself.
Presenter asks
1:29You started work as a reporter on a Plymouth paper. Your father was a writer before you, wasn't he?
Yes, he was a solicitor who became an expert on copyright, and he was particularly interested in heraldry, and he wrote a number of books on heraldry, which I am glad to say are still regarded as authoritative.
Presenter asks
1:48Did you take it for granted, as a boy, that you were going to write?
Well, I think I always did. I edited the school magazine and all that sort of thing, and as soon as I'd won a penknife in a Titbits competition and got half a guinea for an article about a walk on Dartmoor, I knew there was no other life.
Presenter asks
3:11And when did you come to London to meet the giants of Fleet Street in person at last?
I came to London in nineteen thirty and went on the Star as a kind of general utility man specializing in the theatre and films and radio and that was thirty odd years ago.
Presenter asks
9:11And for the future, have you any one big ambition?
Well, I'd like to write a good play. My ambition is to do something once. I wrote a book. Well, that's fine. I don't particularly want to write another book. And I've written a reasonably successful film and I don't want to do another, but I would like to write a good play.
“Some people have said that I have no hobby at all. In truth, my whole hobby has been collecting people because of my profession and because it's fascinated me.”
“We used to marvel how you found a brand new plot for us every week.”
“I'd like to write a good play. My ambition is to do something once. I wrote a book. Well, that's fine. I don't particularly want to write another book. And I've written a reasonably successful film and I don't want to do another, but I would like to write a good play.”