Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
A comic actor and writer, best known for Not the Nine O'Clock News and his double act with Mel Smith.
On the island
Eight records
I think if you're sitting on your desert island, almost invariably when Aretha Franklin comes on, your sort of spirits are lifted and you start jumping about.
Un dì, felice, etereaFavourite
Angela Gheorghiu & Frank Lopardo
I'm afraid I'm a terrible greatest hits person in opera ... I'd like a bit of La Travelliata, my favourite bit, which is well when whenever I come to it I have to rewind and play it again, which is Undi Felice.
Well, this is one that certainly dates from that period, and this is uh Jimi Hendrix's bold as well.
Record number four is Bob Dylan, which I th I don't know whether it dates from this period, but anyway, this is a simple twist of fate, which is one of his most brilliant songs.
This is a very important record for me for three reasons. The first is because it's Elvis Costello and I love him singing. Second is because it's also a George Jones song ... And the other reason is because it relates very much to my honeymoon, funny enough.
Record number six is Cowboy Junkies, another good combination because it's a Lou Reed song, Brilliantly Done.
Juan Pons, Teresa Berganza & José Carreras
It has to be Madam Butterfly. And this is just a little trio. It just shows the ability, I think, of Puccini to build an emotional moment out of a tiny start.
Janis Joplin with Big Brother and the Holding Company
This is the record which I remember my brother had, my older brother, and coming home from school, and there was a sort of um frissant about listening to this and thinking ... Oh gosh, this is loud and noisy and very exciting
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:02Do I detect there an element of guilt that you should have made a decent living out of doing something [like comedy]?
My f father was a doctor, so I always felt slightly that what I ended up doing was not quite valuable enough. ... I don't feel ever that I've uh settled down and taken a job. But I think that's the great advantage because I did have a job once working as a handbag checker after I left university. I did that job for about six months and it does seem to occupy my mind a space of about five years.
Presenter asks
9:35What were you [and your friends] doing if you were the naughty boys, the ones who were mucking about a bit?
We called ourselves the clique from then on, which uh sounds horrible and we were a bit of a clique, but we didn't look like being specifically not hearty. We had school on Saturdays and instead of involving ourselves in sport we'd go down to the changing rooms and when everybody else changed into their sporting gear and charged off to play football, we'd be round the back there putting on loon pants and frizzing back, combing our hair and fur coats and sneaking out the back to go ... down to the roundhouse to listen to Pink Floyd or Quintessence.
Presenter asks
10:42Did you act at school?
The keepsakes
The book
Charles Dickens
Pickwick Papers is the most joyous and I need to be lifted.
The luxury
I did. Yes, not at all successfully, really. I started very early playing series. In fact, I played a fair selection, women's roles. ... And then I played Rosencrantz, and at that stage we got very interested in poker, so he spent an enormous amount of time playing for our bus fares. And I missed my cue playing Rosencrantz. ... Gildenstone ... came running down the thing and said, found me sitting there with a very good hand. Saying, we're on stage. So I ran. ... straight on to stage, where the King had been sort of improvising ... And he said what news from England or whatever. And I complete no idea what the news from England was.
Presenter asks
16:26Can you remember the first time you met the cast of Not the Nine O'Clock News?
I think was it all quite uh strange because we none of us knew what we were getting. And a lot of Iron Users were pretty much manufactured. ... there was a sense ... that Monty Python had set a sort of seal on sketch shows, and there would never be any more. Or young people shows. At the time. You had to be over forty to have a television show. And the idea that there was going to be a young people's television show was, I'm sure, it was calculated, but when you think of television now, which is so fantastically youth orientated, it was not the micros that sort of started the idea that that would be a big thing.
Presenter asks
23:39Who do you admire among modern-day comedians?
I've got involved with the Hackney Empire. And I'm there as a sort of fundraiser ... and we had a series of benefits. Alan Davis did one, Roy Bremner, Junior Clary, and uh they were supported by comedians from the circuit. And they were fantastic. ... Where comedians have sc have scored is i on panel games like um Have I Got News for You or They Think It's All Over or Jonathan Ross ... But the process that makes for great television is fictional in one way or another. Like The League of Gentlemen or Monty Python or Black Adder or Absolutely Fair, The Fast Show. These shows are essentially made by writer performers who write in forms of fiction because on television we like to watch things happening.
Presenter asks
26:21I wonder if when you do become rich, if it takes the edge off it or takes the hunger off it.
Actually, what it's done for me is it's made me want to do specifically what I want to do. ... What I've been asked to do in television is not what I want to do, and so I'm in a position where, probably fatally for my television career, I can say, No, I don't want to do it.
“My f father was a doctor, so I always felt slightly that what I ended up doing was not quite valuable enough.”
“I think a comedian spends an enormous amount of time onstage listening to the audience.”
“Actually, what it's done for me is it's made me want to do specifically what I want to do. ... What I've been asked to do in television is not what I want to do, and so I'm in a position where, probably fatally for my television career, I can say, No, I don't want to do it.”