Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
An entertainer known as an actor, comedian, writer and mimic, acclaimed for playing Napoleon on stage and Zipser in Porterhouse Blue.
On the island
Eight records
I knew I was gonna have to uh have a Puccini and very very difficult to pick, you know, because there are so many good tunes. But uh this song particularly and her particularly singing it, because I think among certain singers she was regarded as, I don't know, not singing quite right or something, but as so often is the case with the unorthodox, uh it's special and that voice... It's so beautiful, but it's so painful at the same time.
Piano Concerto No. 1 in D minor
I was very lucky when I was a little boy. I got interested in classical music when I was about seven or eight because my brother, who was in the Navy, got very interested in it. He'd come back with all these records, and I would just rifle his records and go through and listen to them all. And this is one of the first ones that really hit me. And I've loved it all my life.
Record number three takes me back to my dim and distant teenage youth of lots of parties and shouting in people's ears to try and hear what they were saying as the record was playing. Autist Reading, I've been loving you too long.
London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sir Adrian Boult
And I was going to pick the cello concerto, but this piece has got a particularly poignant... memory for me because My dearest and best friend Alan McWalter, who've been best friends for over twenty five years, In our mid teens, his father died very suddenly and um We I think we got a lot closer as a result of that and we I remember sitting and talking it through in the way one has to after a bereavement. And we used to listen to this piece of music quite a lot and I always think of that time when I hear it.
String Quartet No. 15 in A minor, Op. 132
I would single it out as the most extraordinary piece of music I've ever heard. I've listened to it many times, and when I play it to friends you sit there you're quite stunned at the end of it because You don't it's one of those things, you know, some music paints pictures of sunshine and hills, and you don't you can't actually tell what this is depicting. But it's getting to the absolute essence of what spirituality is about. I'd even go so far as to say. It's like being in the presence of God.
Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech (1950)
It's not often you hear a great writer talking about what makes art great and doing it so eloquently. But here for me is the textbook example.
Has to be the now. This was almost the most difficult. How do you pick the Rolling Stones' best record? When there's at least fifty legitimate contenders for that title. I mean they for me are the greatest group.
Symphony No. 2 'Resurrection'Favourite
New York Philharmonic and Westminster Choir, conducted by Leonard Bernstein
It's the Resurrection Symphony, his second symphony, which I'm going to commit the ultimate blasphemy, and I actually think this is better than Beethoven's Ninth. Just, only just. But it's a real old kicker. Man, it's one to get your hair down to.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:07Do you like being a jack of all trades, or are you beginning to lean towards one particular talent?
Well, I'm not quite sure what to do at the moment because I've always I always felt certainly th through the first few years it was good to get her finger into as many pies as possible, then after a while You wonder whether you've dissipated your energies and perhaps you should just concentrate on the one thing. For example, I go with improvisation. Then you think, oh dear, then you'll be like, you know, Percy Edwards is down as the man who does the bird impersonations. ... But I do keep trying to do different things while being aware, oh dear, should I just stay with the one thing? And if I really do want to do straight acting for any period, I should put down the improvisation boots and do it.
Presenter asks
3:06How would you manage mentally on a desert island? Are you the brooding artist type or the suicidal maniac?
I said, Well, I hope not the latter. I'd probably spend a lot of time talking to myself, but I do that anyway, particularly when I'm tired. You know, sometimes when I'm very tired, get up one morning and go into the kitchen and say, Right, um, make yourself a cup of tea and I have to say things out loud because If they just stay inside, it's like voices lost in a pile of pyjamas, you know.
Presenter asks
The keepsakes
The book
Charles Dickens
I think that's his greatest book and you can read it again and again and again and every time you go through it, it just gets better.
The luxury
A 78 recording of The Laughing Policeman
When I was feeling depressed, I could go and look at it and think I'll never have to listen to this song ever again.
Why did you leave it so late to start your professional career?
Because I'd no idea what to do with my life. I'd left school. I'd just got into university. ... So I did a BA. ... So then I went on to do my MA. ... I was twenty-two then, and um I thought I must travel, go West, young man, and all that. So I wrote off to these North American universities and, cut a long story short, ended up at this university in Canada where I did a doctorate which I wrote but never got fully vivid at the end of the day.
Presenter asks
10:17What is it that's driving you — more fear of failure than desire for success?
Absolutely that. Rather than I see what I want, it's more a case perhaps of seeing what I don't want.
Presenter asks
18:55How do you do your improvisation? Do you just press a button and tap into some part of your brain?
It's is much to do with all the doors in the brain being open at the same time. It's like in the post office, all those little pigeonholes and every bit of daft information which I've sucked up over the years, it's all available at the same moment. ... Yes, um it's very odd. I mean, sometimes when it works at its best. It's as if somebody else is in charge. It's as though you were doing it in a dream.
Presenter asks
28:17Don't you think you're in danger of overexposure?
Well, maybe over extension it's very important for me not to do any more sort of appearance, you know, oh oh, there's that bloke again, why is he there again? You know. I should really get lost in a theatre company uh like the Royal Shakespeare Company or the National.
“Richard the Third is the funniest part in Shakespeare. He's very unfunny when he does his clowns, by and large.”
“I think his heart was in his boots at that stage.”
“It's as if somebody else is in charge. It's as though you were doing it in a dream.”
“It's holding the mirror up to nature. It's showing how varied life actually is.”
“You can read it again and again and again and every time you go through it. It just gets better.”