Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Actor, entertainer and comedian, best known as the Hugh in the television series Hugh and I.
On the island
Eight records
Gene de Paul (music), Sammy Cahn (lyrics)
Errol Ghana playing Teach Me the Night
Ralph Vaughan Williams (music), John Bunyan (lyrics)
My very favourite hymn is He Who Would Valentine Be.
Combined Bands of Fairey, Foden's and Morris Motors
I'm very fond of Chester Football Club and I'd like some football match music so what better than Blaze Away?
Well, as we've been talking about Hancock, I'll have to take some of him to the desert islands. So can we have some of the blood donor?
Tony Velona (music), Larry Kusik (lyrics)
We used to hear a record play by a blended singer called Jack Jones called Lollipops and Roses. We play that a lot and I'd like to hear it again.
Well, I'd like to have the Lord's Prayer because I believe in it and I say in it and I think I will need it if I'm to be on that desert island for a long time.
Jule Styne (music), Stephen Sondheim (lyrics)
One of our favourite records is Gypsy, and everything that Ethel Merman does in it is marvellous. But I think the number that typifies the feeling of gypsy is sung by Sandra Church and entitled Let Me Entertain You.
Romeo and Juliet (Fantasy Overture)Favourite
Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Julia. Conducted by Sir John Barbirolli.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:10How musical are you?
I have quite a wide background for music because my mother was a music teacher in Chester and used to run a choir. And my wife is a very accomplished pianist and musician. And they have all the technical background to tell me what is good and what is bad, but I have the wide taste of what I like.
Presenter asks
4:40When did you first appear in front of an audience?
Oh, when I was about eight or nine, that was a sort of strictly invited audience. Captive audiences. Yes, uncles and aunts and everything who had to suffer this.
Presenter asks
8:19How did you evolve that rather sad deadpan approach, which isn't at all the real you?
Well, I think it started from my newspaper days when I used to go to the local theatre. And see all the comedians laughing at their own jokes. And I always used to think, Well, I'm not going to laugh at my jokes. Neither does anybody else actually, but still that was my own idea about it.
Presenter asks
The keepsakes
The book
An anthology of Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens
this man, you know, covered the whole gamut of every emotion, everything about human beings Dickens has written about
The luxury
At last I would be able to do some writing. I would have to do it because there'd be nobody else there
Was Hue and I an immediate success?
No. Uh we often think this is our great fortune. It's gradually grown on people. I think each time we've come back, we've averaged an extra million people. But nobody ever raved about it to start with because I think. If people rave about a show to start with, it means that it probably has a much shorter life than the four years we've had.
Presenter asks
12:53Have you any particular ambition, any big ambition?
That's a difficult question because I'm a very contented type of person. I've grown a more ambitious lately. There's one thing that I want to do very much, and that is to live by the sea, which is why the desert island, I suppose, is a possibility. Although I would like to live in Torquay, ideally, but you can't for business reasons live that far away. But I like that restlessness of the sea. It does something to me, you know.
Presenter asks
16:34Would you try to escape?
Try to, not try to, because I would know that if I tried to build a raft or a boat, it would be doomed to failure the moment that I started. I would want to, and I would expect to. I would think that there's a fail over the horizon every day. I would think every night, tomorrow it'll happen.
“I'd be absolutely horrified and petrified because I love people and to be cast away from them, unless I could take a certain selected few with me.”
“As soon as I pick up a thing, it says to itself, We've got a right one here and it generally has. It falls to pieces.”
“I'm not going to laugh at my jokes. Neither does anybody else actually, but still that was my own idea about it.”
“I like to be part of it and I like things that have got a little more depth in them than just making people laugh. I like to make them cry as well.”
“I like that restlessness of the sea. It does something to me, you know.”
“I think about people because I would have to create the people that aren't there.”