Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
A television playwright who scripted Coronation Street, created London's Burning, and wrote award-winning plays like The Evacuees and Spend, Spend, Spend.
On the island
Eight records
Violin Concerto No. 1 in G minor, Op. 26Favourite
Yehudi Menuhin with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Pierre Monteux
When I was a boy about 13 or so, and I was evacuated to Cone in Lancashire, I wanted to learn the violin. And I think I probably wanted to do this because everybody else is learning the piano. I'd heard Stefan Grappelli. And I'd heard of Yehudi Menuin, and I wanted to play as well as they did.
The Chapel Choir of Durham School, with Gregory Williams (organ), directed by Jonathan Newell
Terry Land, apart from being a genius in every other respect, could also play every instrument in an orchestra. And he used to conduct the school at the end of each term or at the end of each year, whatever it was, in singing Jerusalem, and insisted that the last word of the poem should occupy all whatever it is, four or five bars that the music insisted on. And of course the word was land, which was his name.
Edric Connor with Ken Jones and his music
When I was a little boy, the family was split in who should support Manchester United, who should support Manchester City. My brother and my father supported City, my mother and I supported United. And I've been the United supporter ever since.
If you went to any party in those days, you heard one record, and that was Frank Sinatra s uh and his album Songs for Swinging Lovers.
This next record isn't um isn't our official Our song, which is actually um The Witch to the Line Man. But this one to me summed up my feelings after I'd met Maureen.
Yes, this is the sixties, and to me it's encapsulated in the musical Hair. I'm no great lover of musicals, having written two of them, I can say that with emphasis, um but Hare was again a revelation and an explosion, much in the same way that Coronation Street had been on television.
Elaine Paige and Barbara Dickson
Benny Andersson, Björn Ulvaeus and Tim Rice
Um this next record really is to remind me uh about the kids. Throughout their lives, whenever we've got in the car, the second the ignition's been switched on they start to sing.
The Choir of the West London Synagogue
It's a song that's sung I should imagine. Most synagogues, but the synagogue I go to, which is the West London synagogue, it's a song that's sung there at every service. And it's, I think, a very beautiful melody and very beautifully arranged and very, very beautifully sung.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:08Is that what you do, then, Jack? You write about what you see and what you experience?
I always like to start with a character and then find a vehicle to put the character in so that you can illustrate the eccentricities that I go on about. ... It's anything you've read, people you've met, stories you've heard, anecdotes you've heard, or things you've felt or experienced yourself.
Presenter asks
2:17You said that comedy comes from pain. Can you give me an example of that?
At its crudest, most obvious level, it's a man slipping on a banana skin ... but a lot of comedy is knockabout comedy in which people get hurt. Now if you think of emotional banana skins, this is really what I do like to write about. We're all very vulnerable, we're all pretty helpless. We're all a bit childlike and often childish and we do go through a lot of emotional pain and we all know the pains because we all suffer them. ... laughing at them helps you to get through them.
Presenter asks
8:09How did your mother find out [about the bad treatment by Mrs. Graham]?
We sat round a table, misses Graham, David, my mother and I playing that little game ... Consequences. ... You fold the paper over, pass it to the next one, and they write a bit more ... When it came to me, I wrote She hates us, she treats us badly, she keeps all the parcels you send us. She sends us all the letters we send to you, we want to come home. And that was when she found out about it.
The keepsakes
The book
James Joyce
I think that would be a huge treasure trove, apart from being the world's biggest crossword puzzle.
The luxury
I'd like a few crates of clay so I could do some clay modelling. and populate the island a bit because I do love clay modelling.
Presenter asks
15:17How badly did you feel that [your children leaving for university]? Because in the sequel, Cold Enough for Snow, the father practically has a breakdown.
Yes, it was it was very heartfelt. I did take it. badly and not very bravely. Um, I did in fact get so depressed that the doctor sent me to see quote someone. ... Having got the idea to write it, the real therapy began. Writing it was therapy.
Presenter asks
18:38As a Jew, you found it very difficult to be in Germany [during national service]?
Yes, I did. ... we were sent to Germany, where we had to sit with radio sets, and we'd learn Russian to translator level ... This was a great opportunity to learn German, of course, being there for a few months. It would have been so easy, and I refused to do it because I didn't want anything to do with them.
Presenter asks
28:05Is it very different these days? Single plays themselves are not as popular anymore, are they?
I think the word single play is disappearing from the language. ... it used to be writer led and it's now executive led and committee led and star led and most of all Profit-led ... television has become tabloid. And it's like a tabloid newspaper, and there's very little room for new imaginative, inhibitive work.
“What I do try to do is write about serious things and make them comedies because this I think is what comedy should really be and I think it's the most effective way for me of writing about serious things.”
“If we feel hostility to someone, we do fall into this trap of including an entire race or an entire religion, including totally, totally innocent people who happen to belong to that particular culture.”
“I think I'd probably take the Yehudi Menu in, playing the violin concerto, uh, probably because it's the longest one, I wouldn't get quite so fed up with it. Uh but also I could pretend after a while, I could kid myself. that it was me playing and there'd be no one there to uh to argue.”