Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Television entertainer known for his camp, silly late-night chat show that won four BAFTA awards.
On the island
Eight records
I'm a big fan of hers, and she was sort of the first guest where the show really kicked in. It was Grace Jones and the Judith Chalmers together. And this song is it's The Apple Stretching, and I know there are lots of more famous songs about New York, but for me this is sort of the best love song to the Great New York that I know.
I was going to say it's the first concert I ever went to, was Janice Ian in Cork City Hall. But in fact it's about the only concert I've ever been to. Haven't been to many, that's my love of music coming out. And this song, i i it it just says everything there is to say about um teenage angs.
Islands in the StreamFavourite
Dolly Parton and Graham Norton
Barry Gibb, Robin Gibb and Maurice Gibb
I did a documentary with Dolly Parton. They s packed me off to singing lessons with a lovely lady called Pepe, uh who's obviously the person you go to when you're in trouble. She does the Spice Girls and the man in the Halifax ad. So and she beat me with a stick till I got as good as this. And uh uh we performed it floating in big rubber tires bobbing down uh a sort of little artificial stream in Dolly's water park.
This I love this song because it's all about how the heart is such an idiot um that it continues to hope uh even though it knows it shouldn't.
Record number five is in a movie called I forgot Oh, One from the Heart, that's what it's called. And it's Crystal Gale and Tom Waits, but th Tom Waits doesn't sing on this, but this is I really I'd like to take the whole album with me is what I want.
Tears Don't Care Who Cries Them
Fred Tobias and Charles Singleton
Katie Lang is the only person I know whose voice is better live. Records just contain her, they compress her. And this is uh I I also really preferred her when she was country and western, pure country, rather than now she's a bit loungy.
Now, I have to say there's been a lot of sad music today, but al all of them are actually kind of about happy memories. They bring back kind of joyful things to me. So this is a very sad thing, Sinead O'Connor, Nothing Compares to You, but it just reminds me of so many lovely times, particularly my friend Helen, she lives in Paris, and it there's one particular weekend in Paris. All the windows in our apartment were open and it was a gorgeous spring day and we were just blasting this out over and over again.
Barry Gibb, Robin Gibb and Maurice Gibb
Diana Ross Chain Reaction, and it just brings me to a very happy place. I once gave myself a black eye, such was my uh impatience to get on the dance floor to to dance to this thing.
In conversation
Presenter asks
2:34Why do people tell you these things [on your show]? This is being famous for 15 minutes gone mad.
Well, I think they're carried away by the mood in the studio, where it is a real party atmosphere. They're just telling the stories that they know go down well at the pub. We all have those tales that we tell at dinner parties.
Presenter asks
5:30Why would Joan Collins come on your show and agree to talk on the telephone to a glove fetishist?
Joan Collins was one of the she was a sort of breakthrough guest for us in a way because you know it's a new show and it looks like a very dangerous place… to go, I think before it gets it's not, though. The guests actually are very safe. I I always say this to the guests before they come on. I always kind of rub their arm, literally rub their arm, and say, Look, nothing bad is going to happen to you. Whatever happens to the audience, whatever happens… to the person on the end of the phone… all of that, you, the guest, is safe.
Presenter asks
8:37Does [Janis Ian's At Seventeen] give us a clue of what it was like for you at seventeen in Bandon in County Cork?
Yes, I was a bad categorical. I was going through that, but I think everyone goes through that. And it's a sort of odd. Sadness, in a way, that you go through, I think, in your teenage years, because. Even as you're going through it, you know it's going to end. It seems endless, but somehow it's it's a kind of hopeful sadness.
The keepsakes
The book
Jane Austen
I love that book. Um it's so neat and tidy and prim... And also I like there's an awful lot about performing in that book.
The luxury
I think it'd be quite good to to save your sanity. You know, see that you exist rather than just getting kind of lost in the trees.
Presenter asks
19:02How did you discover that you couldn't be a serious actor?
Because I was rubbish. I you know, people would laugh at me. If I attempted to be I would do audition pieces and I genuinely thought they were serious and people would laugh. And of course you just that sounds quite nice, so you go with it. You kinda oh, go is this funny? Okay, fine.
Presenter asks
20:30You're quoted as saying that you became the person you'd been terrified of becoming. Who was that?
Well, I suppose when I came to London first and started working in restaurants, I you know, you'd sit you'd meet someone who was like twenty seven and working in a restaurant. And suddenly I was thirty and I was still working in a restaurant with no real… end in sight.
Presenter asks
25:28What on earth are you going to do [at the BBC]? They hire you, who are incredibly dangerous.
Well, the the the timing probably isn't great, but there you go. I don't I it's odd the way that people discuss me going to the BBC'cause they talk about oh, he's going to have to tone it down. Well… I'm not going to tone it down. I'm making a different programme for a different audience. I mean, I would be mad and Lorraine Heggis would be mad to sign me up thinking I'm going to come bounding onto television at 7 p.m. on a Saturday night, you know, waving a marital aide and coming out with a stream of marital aid.
“I have no special skills. I can't sing or juggle or do anything. I can carry five plates still.”
“I think particularly older stars are far less protective of their image. Uh y it's it's very odd. It's the young stars with the entourage and the publicists. They're the ones who freak out.”
“I wanted to point at the television and say that I wanted to sit in the other chair. I wanted to sit in the chair I'm in today. I wanted to be the guest.”
“There are very few problems uh that you can't throw money at, and that's horrible, but true.”