Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
2 appearances
Actress best known for playing Patsy in Absolutely Fabulous, with earlier fame in The New Avengers.
On the island
Eight records
We're in Malaya, where we moved after India, after Hong Kong, we had a little wind-up gramophone which we would sort of crank up and put on seventy-eight records. And one of them was a selection of beautiful Negro spirituals sung by Paul Robeson. And I've chosen one of the ones I love most of all, called Mary Had a Baby.
NBC Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Arturo Toscanini
Well, um, Rossini came into my life very early on. Not not quite as early as Malaire, but I loved him because he was so good natured and so happy. And I've chosen a part of the overture to Semiramede.
Nocturne in E minor, Op. 72, No. 1
Well, when I was twelve, I suppose, I met Chopin for the first time. I'd just come out of hospital where I'd had my appendix out, and it was Christmas time and I was given this little record for Christmas. And I played and played and fell completely in love with him.
This is one of my father's favourite players. Eddie Calvert, the man with the golden trumpet. I remember this so much from a lair when I was six or seven, and my mother didn't care for it much, and Daddy used to play it rather defiantly, and I'd like to hear him playing Cry My Heart.
Symphony No. 39 in E-flat major, K. 543
Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Karl Böhm
I've always loved Mozart, one particular piece that charms me enormously.
Well, I've got a music box at home. It's a sort of thing it's called um an Ariston organette... When I married Stephen he played me the real bit, the real sextet, which it comes from. And the record he played it to me had Maria Callas singing, who I think is quite extraordinary.
Violin Concerto No. 1 in G minor, Op. 26
Kyung-Wha Chung, with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Rudolf Kempe
This I heard um one of my twin cousins who'd who'd been out in Vietnam. said that it had become a great favourite with the war correspondents, he worked with writers. And um this piece touched me terribly.
Symphony No. 3 in E-flat major, Op. 55 'Eroica'Favourite
BBC Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Sir John Barbirolli
Well, the great great man, Beethoven, who is my great great hero, and I he's just stands like a giant above Everybody for all sorts of reasons, but um I think one of them that I fell in love with this particular piece of music when I was again quite young and impressionable.
Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Bernard Haitink
to wake up to Wagner and his Tannhuizer overture is absolutely beautiful. It really, I think, because the record I had when I was at school had pictures of mountains on it, and I adore mountains, and the idea of waking up to this sound and the idea of mountains is just blissful.
it's a lament called Tom Bowling, and Charles Dibdin wrote it at the end of the eighteenth century, he was a young sailor, about his older brother, who died out in the East Indian Ocean. And it's the most beautiful lament for a sailor that I've ever heard makes me weep every time.
Symphony No. 7 in A major, Op. 92: III. Presto - Assai meno prestoFavourite
Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Herbert von Karajan
Beethoven is stitched into my heart so much that sometimes I think I must have composed the music myself.
Last Christmas is quite simply the best Christmas record ever, ever made. I'm sorry George doesn't like it, because, George, you're talking you know in a minority here, sweetheart, because the world adores it.
Turandot: Perché tarda la luna?
Chorus and Orchestra of the Rome Opera House, conducted by Francesco Molinari-Pradelli
on the island, every night I think'cause Stephen, my husband, was conducting Tourandot at the time. Puccini's great piece when the terrifying crowd in China are saying perquetar de la Luna why is the moon so late? And they want the moon to arrive, so that, bloodthirsty crowd, the first execution of the night can take place, which can only take place by moonlight
This song absolutely breaks my heart that Elvis can't pluck up the courage to ask me out. I just love him for it.
I think Natkin Cole was one of the greatest singers who ever lived. The beauty of this song by Hoagie Carmichael is the perfect Desert Island song. It is the song. The sun is gone, it's dark.
Symphony No. 2 in D major, Op. 43
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Sir John Barbirolli
something I've dreamt of for ever is seeing with my own eyes the northern lights. And the idea of listening to Sibelius II, this phenomenal piece written by this gorgeous, grim, Finnish man who was so noble and so locked up
In conversation
Presenter asks
4:15What memories do you have of Malaya particularly?
Terribly vivid, immensely wet, being so tropical, it was it rained every day, it seemed, and was terribly hot, but sweaty hot... And I loved it there. I can just remember the noises and the smells. Everything was very vivid and immediate.
Presenter asks
8:46Did [turning into an unattractive teenager] destroy your confidence?
Hugely. And I still find it very difficult when people you know, I find it terribly difficult when people say, Oh, you look lovely. I tend to overcompensate still with makeup, and I always wear too much makeup now to cover up the frizzly hair and the spots.
Presenter asks
11:23What kind of ambitions did you have [when you were growing up]?
I suppose because I hadn't got at the head of a realist, I wanted to be all sorts of things... I wanted to be a surgeon... I wanted very much to be a Prime Minister, but that was because I was so bossy I couldn't see why I shouldn't rule the country. And then I discovered that all these things were probably that I just wanted to Be them and not really have to do any of the work. And of course, this all means an act is an actor's job.
The keepsakes
The book
because then I can remember the mountain ranges, see the rivers, and speculate on journeys I'm about to make.
The luxury
Film camera and the film Monsieur Hulot's Holiday
because it's so funny and so charming, and as most of my life I've wanted to be mistaken to be a French woman, a Parisian woman, um this could just make me think about France when everything was gentle and everything is very, very funny, and Jack Tatty is a genius.
Presenter asks
20:38What did [playing Purdy in The Avengers] do for you in terms of your career?
It was semi-permanent employment. Really, it was a job which went on for more than one week, and that was just thrilling... And the plus sides of it, I mean, there's always this debate: millstone or milestone, you know, and of course it was a milestone, it put me forward and... I've been reg regarded in a way that I wouldn't have been if my name hadn't become so well known.
Presenter asks
24:26How much has [being a single parent] been a problem to you?
Well, it's really only a problem... the problems are never whether you can think of a right way to guide your child or or moral dilemmas or whatever, it is always the practical problems, which is that you usually have to work, but you've also got to be a parent... As long as they're given lots of love and affection and encouragement, I don't think it is a problem.
Presenter asks
30:01How much has marriage changed your life?
Fantastically, in every way, yes, in every way. It's just been terrific. I walk about grinning, I wake up grinning in the morning and I'm as happy as a bee. And uh I can't think that that will be anything other than getting better and better all the time. It's wonderful.
Presenter asks
0:57What did you think when you first saw the character [of Patsy in Absolutely Fabulous] on paper?
Well, she didn't really emerge until sort of episode two or three, and even Nadina wasn't as kind of wild. They both grew like ghastly, sort of, septic funguses in the corner. You know, they just got worse and worse, and Patsy's hair got taller and taller, and the smoking became more and more obsessive … Their language got fouler, their behaviour got worse, but it kind of grew out of it. It grew out of uh performance, really.
Presenter asks
9:00What are your memories of Malaya?
Everything very vivid um the extremes of temperature very, very hot well, not temperature, but v very hot, very black at night, sunset coming, rather like on my on my desert island, exactly at six thirty, like a light being switched off, the sunset in a blaze of colour and then blackness, the sounds of night, the great sounds of birds, the torrential afternoon rainstorms, the vivid colours, the heavy smell of flowers.
Presenter asks
19:03What sort of reaction did you get from people [when you found yourself unmarried and pregnant]?
Well, my parents were absolutely brilliant and um Jamie arrived very early and and wasn't detected, as it were, until very late in the pregnancy. So I had a an an amazingly short pregnancy, about a month and a half of knowing I was pregnant.
Presenter asks
19:31How did they treat you in hospital [when you had your baby]?
I was put in a private room. Uh because they they d they said they it might upset the other p families. If they saw me on my own. without being visited by a man.
Presenter asks
22:55Did you ever worry about this very precarious life, especially financially, that you've chosen?
No, I love it. I think I love it. No, I like I like the danger of of the acting profession, the circus quality of it, that you pack up and leave town, the dogs bark, the caravans move on. I love the feeling that um we never know the second we're out of w the job stops, the curtain comes down for the last time, and you clear your things out of the dressing room, you're out of work.
“I find it very easy. I have an enormous recall from about five onwards, and glimmerings before then. What begins to happen, and might it be great age, Michael, is that the nearer we get to now, the dimmer it all becomes.”
“I think it's because I was a boarder. And being bad ish by nature, I found it very pleasant to be sent off to a place where I could be bad solidly for three months.”
“I got quite desperate bloody knuckles beating on the door.”
“But marriage is a very important step and you can only take it really with one person. And both of us having made mistakes before, I think we were both determined, you know, to make sure that it was the right one. So this was I mean, this is just magic. Truly, I believe in magic now.”
“I'm sixty-one, and age doesn't really matter to me. I mean, people um people I think are much more exercised about your age than you really are. I mean, I think it's just terribly funny to be able to muck around with age.”
“I just can't bear people saying no or you're bad. I tear up bad photographs, not only of me, but of other people. I tear them up. I don't want bad stuff around. And eventually, when I get to read critics who've written about performances I've done. If the bad ones are there, I rip them up, so they don't exist in my mind.”
“My job every day is smiling and loving people, and which I do, and I find that the more I smile, the more I love people, the happier I am, and the happier they are.”