Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Actor known for mournful expression and rich voice; starred in The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin, Butterflies, and As Time Goes By.
On the island
Eight records
I was lucky enough to be in that film and I just think it's wonderful. It's a wonderful combination of the sort of bitter cynicism of that film with that wonderful jumpy jumpy jumpy Alan Price tune, apparently cheerful and deeply cynical.
When Somebody Thinks You're Wonderful
This choice uh takes me back to when I was at school and actually to June the 6th, 1944. ... every one got quite excited, and then another boy wandered round and saying, Have you heard? Have you heard? Fat Swallow's dead. And uh it turned out that he was actually six months late with the news of Pats Wallace's death, but it seemed a nice sort of balance of priorities, I thought.
I remember my brother, who was three years older than me, having a sort of a party during the war, I suppose it was, and this was his favourite record, and it was probably just a few chums came round and uh a wound up gramophone and this was played endlessly late into the night
Berlin Radio Choir and Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Claudio Abbado
I first heard this driving to work. And I remember hearing this and being fairly overwhelmed by it and uh when I next came to a stop uh writing down what it was and bought it.
Albrecht Mayer and Markus Becker
Funnily enough, I heard this again in my car and listening to Sue Lawley and John Schlesinger on this very programme. John Schlesinger I had the privilege of working with. But that's when I first heard it, and I thought that's wonderful.
One O'Clock JumpFavourite
Benny Goodman and His Orchestra
Benny Goodman and his orchestra did this extraordinary concert at Carnegie Hall live January 1938. ... this is the the sound that's there, one o'clock jump, terrific.
Symphony No. 9 in D minor, Op. 125 'Choral'
Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century conducted by Frans Brüggen
for no good reason at all except that it's wonderful, no associations.
Four Last Songs: Beim Schlafengehen
Jessye Norman and Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra conducted by Kurt Masur
The last record is the third please of the four last songs sung by Jossin Omeg.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:07So it's comedy, but you play it straight, Geoffrey. You get more laughs that way, do you?
Well, I don't know whether I get more laughs, but uh it's the way I like to do it. I I hate the sort of uh comic actor who smiles or grins to show he's being funny, you know.
Presenter asks
3:31But isn't one of the downsides of that [playing it straight] that people have seen you working alongside Wendy Craig and Judy Dench as their kind of feed man?
You've said the dirty word, yes, yes. I do resent it bitterly, yes, when people have said for years. What's it like just being a feed to those clever ladies and not getting any laughs yourself? Rather arrogantly I would say, Well, listen to the show, or watch the show, and I think I get my share, really.
Presenter asks
7:28Why do you think you attracted these roles [of suburban reactionaries]?
Now there's a leading question. Why? Because that's what I look like and I'm middle class and uh not over bright perhaps. I don't know. No, I don't know how they how it happened.
The keepsakes
The book
Arthur Quiller-Couch and Philip Larkin
I want the Oxford Book of English Verse, the Quillacouche. I want the Quellicouch'cause I don't like the later ones. So I'm wondering if p if I ask nicely if I could have the Oxford Book of twentieth Century English verse Philip Larkin stapled to the back to make one. Would that be all right?
The luxury
Well, my luxury will have to be I'll have to go into exactly what I would need. It w it would it would be a fly fishing rod. So that I could uh entertain myself, because it's my great obsession. I only work now if it doesn't interfere with Fly fishing. And I could do that and catch all sorts of amazing fish. go into sort of sushi and stuff, you know, to look after my body.
Presenter asks
18:59Did anyone ever suggest to you that you should sort of think more strategically and become a bit more choosy, kind of elevate, raise the game?
Yes, I mean yes. I mean, around that time b well, before I was married, I shared a flat with um Michael Blakemore ... Michael used to wait around our flat in the wrong end of Chelsea and wait for the big job to come. And he said, Geoffrey, you do so much rubbish. You shouldn't do it. It's not doing your name any good. And I said, Michael, I want to earn a living and I haven't got a name, you know. And it was just two totally different ways of approaching the business. You want one person waiting for the right job to come along and the other saying, sorry, I'm a jobbing actor. I'll take the next job that turns up. And that's basically what I've done.
Presenter asks
21:34How did it happen that [Laurence Olivier] came to offer you a part?
My agent rang up and said, There's a script coming from the National Theatre ... Eden End, the old J.B. Priestley play that Sir Lawrence was going to direct ... And my wife was got flu or something in bed and I was cleaning out the grate of the fire one morning and the phone went ... and this very smooth voice ... Mr. Palmer, my dear fellow, I know your work awfully well. I don't I don't want to waste your time coming in here, you know, to um see me. If you'd like to play these scenes off Sit Johnny, I'd be very grateful, lovely to welcome you to the company.
Presenter asks
31:01Did your father, who thought the theatre synonymous with vice, live to see your great success?
No n no, not really, and nor did my mother well, my mother did a little bit. ... they were very supportive, but they didn't really see the the kind of breakthrough at all, you know. So my father probably went to his grave thinking, Nice chap, pity he didn't get a qualification.
“It took me a long while to find out, just have the truth, play it true, let everything else take care of itself.”
“I've spent years with truck drivers looking out of their cabs and saying, Cheer up, mate, it might not happen and all that, you know. Um, okay, I've earned a living thanks to it, you know. To the to the bloodhound look.”
“I can't join that thing of oh, I I go home and I'm such hell because I'm still playing the part, you know. I may be hell because I'm tired or neurotic about what I've got to do tomorrow, but I'm not carrying the part around with me. No, it's a job.”
“I have no idea. As far as I know, there is no job on the horizon ever. But something will happen, we hope. And they used to freeze and back off like you were a leper, you know, really.”