Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Comedy producer and founder of Hat Trick Productions, creator of hit shows including Have I Got News for You, Father Ted, and Outnumbered.
On the island
Eight records
It reminds me of growing up in Liverpool, strangely. My folks were party people and there's always parties at my house every weekend. Lots of drinking, lots of singing, lots of passion, sometimes lots of arguments and comings together and pullings apart and it was very very tumultuous. And this song sort of captures it for me.
It reminds me of my dad. At weekends he was Dean Martin and Frank Sonata all rolled into one and would sing these songs at family parties... But also there's a very specific reason that I'm picking this, is that when I met my wife Karen, um she had a daughter called Paige who was three... I used to sing this song to her in the car, a full blast.
Golden Slumbers / Carry That Weight
The Beatles was the soundtrack to my youth. I could have taken the whole of Abbey Road, but I've chosen this because uh well it makes me cry actually.
I think on this island I need something to get off my backside and just dance. And I think I could just go berserk on the island. And that's why I want something very kind of get up and go.
It reminds me of when I first moved to London and began to run around London having a pretty good time, meeting some really interesting people. I got a job at the BBC.
London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Leopold Stokowski
My wife, Karen, introduced me to this piece of music and I have to say it is one of the most profound live experiences I've ever had anywhere in a concert hall. I don't believe in God, but this almost makes me want to believe.
In My LifeFavourite
I'd love to have this track playing while I think of all the people in my life who've meant a lot to me, not clearly my wife, my kids, but also people. I have a very special group of friends who meet we meet virtually every week and we talk about things.
You Can't Always Get What You Want
I've chosen this disc because it does remind me sometimes in my life. I haven't got what I've wanted, which I find terrible. When when I don't get what I want, I live through the pain of that and sometimes I do get what I need.
In conversation
Presenter asks
2:03Working with the maniacs [in comedy] must be difficult?
Well, it can be. I mean, the truth is, there is a kind of restlessness and malcontentedness about people in comedy. They want to do things and say something difficult. And if I went to work thinking I need to work with spiritually balanced people all the time, I I wouldn't make any television programmes.
Presenter asks
2:40Do you ever feel I'll do it myself, I'd be better than you are [instead of not performing yourself]?
No, I don't. My boyhood dream was to be an actor. And I did that for a while. And then by the early nineties I realized that my acting career was sort of, if you like, flattening out... I spent a year contemplating the death of my kind of acting dreams... I just let it die inside me. And then bit by bit I stopped acting, I turned down a couple of jobs and made a conscious decision. Put my energies into hat-trick.
Presenter asks
6:25Did you feel the weight of that expectation [as an only child]?
Yes, I mean I I knew I was in the full glare of my parents' love. I knew that they loved me. And fortunately I was good at school, so I delivered a bit for them, you know.
The keepsakes
The book
P. G. Wodehouse
I quite like feeling melancholic, but I do want to hear laughter on the island. So I've chosen the complete works of PG Woodhouse because That's a writer that can take me into a world of Blandings, Castles, or Dews and Worcester, and literally make me laugh out loud in a public place.
The luxury
Solar powered espresso machine with a limitless amount of good coffee
I don't want to be entirely chilled out on the island, so I'm going to take a solar powered espresso machine with a limitless amount of good coffee.
Presenter asks
19:18How did you hear that [your father] had committed suicide?
My father-in-law, who very bravely called me, I knew immediately, immediately, I said, It's my dad, isn't it? He said yes. I said, He's dead, isn't he? And uh I went home that night. Um uh in a daze. And that's what I found out.
Presenter asks
19:36What do you make of [your father's] decision to do that?
I think that um for many, many years I was in denial about how I felt about it, to be honest. And that's when I my own kind of drinking and drug using in my twenties really took off... I was very angry for a long time. Really, really angry that he could He could leave myself and my mum... And then once the anger lifts, of course, there's just this tremendous sadness.
Presenter asks
23:47How long were you in rehab for?
Well, the average is like six weeks. Uh I was in for thirteen weeks... once you took away the drink and the drugs, you took away my medicine and then you were left with me in the raw and you put me in a treatment center for a certain amount of time and I'm gonna crack and I crack.
“I spent a year contemplating the death of my kind of acting dreams. And what I realized was that the that the acting dream was being turned into a fantasy and as a grown man I shouldn't be living in fantasy. But I it was so painful I couldn't speak about it to anybody for about a year. I just let it die inside me.”
“I was very angry for a long time. Really, really angry that he could He could leave myself and my mum. And for a long time I was very angry. And then once the anger lifts, of course, there's just this tremendous sadness. And you just want to stop people in the street saying, Why are you buying those clothes? Why are you getting on that bus? Don't you realize my father's died?”
“I don't believe in God, but this almost makes me want to believe. Uh it's called The Resurrection. It's Marlow's Second Symphony. I'm very interested in Resurrection in a secular way about the idea that you can actually let something die and something will renew itself. I think that's the journey of life for me.”