Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
A Scottish actor known for his stage, television and film performances.
On the island
Eight records
I must have made an appalling hash of it. But I've never lost my affection for the aria, especially when it sung with effortless beauty.
It's very important, uh particularly in my profession. to have a kind of emotional bolt hole. somewhere to take stock of what one is and where one comes from. And the Erskine Lovelot is the kind of music to induce in me a gentle state of self examination.
It's about a man whose wife has left him, who is preparing to gas himself. It's an outrageous piece of melodrama, and perhaps that's why I love it so much, being something of a ham myself.
Symphony No. 4 in G major (3rd movement)
Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Herbert von Karajan
I don't know what Mahler had in mind when he composed his third movement for his fourth symphony. But what it suggests to me is the vast awesome beauty of an ordered universe. and the music of the gods.
There Are Bad Times Just Around the Corner
Well, I've chosen my favourite no card song, sung by the master himself. It was written over thirty years ago. And the brilliant wit of the lyrics is still topical, and I think as well as cheering me up on the desert island, it will remind me that I am probably not missing very much at home.
We made the journey by car, stopping for one of the two nights such a journey demands, in a small village in the heart of the Auvergne. The room allotted to us was next to the linen cupboard. where a chambermaid was hard at work. She began to sing. and although not trained, quite a lovely voice, and her repertoire was exclusively folk songs of the district.
There's something so inexpressibly pure about the extraordinary sound. Produced by The Unbroken Male Voice. I think it really is the most precious of musical instruments, possibly since it is transitory.
Henry V Suite (The Agincourt Song)Favourite
Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Sir William Walton
This was the first Shakespeare I ever saw in performance as a boy in Edinburgh, where Shakespeare was not very often performed. And I can say without hesitation, that the profound impression it made was largely responsible For sowing the seed that grew into a long and fruitful association with the Royal Shakespeare Company.
In conversation
Presenter asks
3:57Was there any background of the arts in your family?
Absolutely none at all, and this presented problems for my parents, because they must have been aware that I was emotionally in search. Of something. And because there was no theatre background, the connection It was not possible for them.
Presenter asks
6:38Before you could do anything about going onto the stage you had to do your national service [first]?
Well yes, th you could do it two ways. Um you could either go to college or university first and then do your national service or vice versa. But either way, national service was compulsory and I decided to get it out of the way first.
Presenter asks
8:34So into the army. What happened to you there?
They didn't know what to do with me. I was a completely, utterly, hopeless soldier. and made the classic mistakes of all time, like dropping my rifle on some one else's boot, which he'd spent all night before polishing, whereupon he turned round and laid me out flat, unconscious on the ground, with a right hook to my jaw, not because I'd hurt his boot, but because I'd destroyed the sheen of the toe cap.
The keepsakes
The book
A comprehensive book of quotations
I would possess in one volume the cream of everybody's writing and all the best things that everybody has ever said.
The luxury
a large supply of paper and pencils or ballpoint pens
in every case of solitude one has ever heard or read about. The castaway, the prisoner, the recluse, whatever, has had an overwhelming desire to commit something of himself to paper, and I want to provide for this emotional need.
Presenter asks
11:07How long were you in uniform?
I had to stay in the army for three years, six months in all, because in order to get into this broadcasting unit, They double-crossed me into signing on for a short service.
Presenter asks
17:44Of your many roles [at Stratford] which were your favourite?
I think, in terms of personal satisfaction, Barone in Love's Labour's Lost. Richard the Third, because it's such a glorious piece for a piece of Breviora acting. And, curiously enough, Coriolenus.
Presenter asks
28:24Did you find rivalry creeping in between you [and Richard Pascoe when alternating Richard II and Bolingbroke]?
It didn't creep in with us backstage, but Dickie had his own fans and I had mine, and they would only come when they could be sure of seeing whoever, you know. ... So the only rivalry really was outside the box office.
“I play the piano, and um I use the piano exclusively for my own amusement. I don't ask people to listen to it because that would embarrass me, and indeed I don't play at all well if I'm aware that people are listening.”
“I stood away from the lecture so that I could be clearly seen in my grey flannel shorts and white shirt and tie. And halfway through what is after all a very short piece, I became aware of not just a silence in the church, but uh A silence that was filled with Chemistry, if you like. And I'm ashamed to say that I felt at the same time a surge inside me of of power, I suppose it was.”
“I have the scars to show it. I mean, I really have never had a weapon put in my hand and come out at the end of a season unscathed, ever.”