Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Writer, actor and director who won an Oscar for Gosford Park and an Emmy for Downton Abbey, the hit TV series he created.
On the island
Eight records
Well, if you marry someone who is much younger than you, which is what I did, and my wife is fifteen years younger than me, you suddenly get reintroduced to a whole lot of new music. Then suddenly all these different singers and different sounds came into my daily life, and I find Maisie Gray a very witty performer. I I think she's quite distinct, quite unique and um marvellous actually.
I mean, the truth is, I do love England. I I love England, I love being English, and although we complain about it from morning till night, I think it is a love that will last my life long, and this seems a good expression of it.
You're now going to hear Joan Sutherland singing Sempre Libre from Traviata when I was about 14. We were having some conversation, and my mother said, Oh, well, you know something, brother. And she referred to something. I didn't know what she was talking about. And then she said, Well, surely you've heard of a clue. And she looked at my father and she said, We are raising a barbarian. And I have this extraordinary holiday when I was dragged off. I was dragged to the opera to see, you know, various things. Sutherland singing, certainly, and OM and Arabella, and I was dragged to the ballet to see Margot Fontaine, and I was dragged to the theatre to see Laurence Olivia doing Othello. And Maggie Smith, actually, my first experience with Maggie Smith, when I can honestly say, as Desdemona, she stole the evening. She stole the evening.
Uh well this is Love Walked In by Gershwin, which was absolutely my parents' favourite song. Um it's right to include it. I love them very much.
I Heard It Through the Grapevine
This is Marvin Gay singing I Heard It Through the Grapevine, which was very much a song we were dancing to at that time. I mean the whole of the Tamla Motown sound very much dominated actually my era as a kind of young dancing man, which rather again illustrates the two sides of that. There we all were bopping around in white and black tie and you know and there were they changing popular music forever.
It Might as Well Rain Until September
a bit of music is going to be Carol King singing It Might as Well Rain Until September, which was a big hit when I was in my sort of middle teens. For me, it's haunted me really because my teenage years were often rather sad, and at that time there was a great fashion, you know, for these sad songs, sort of Tell Laura I Love Her and Softu, Leader of the Pack. This isn't tragic in that sense. Nobody dies on a motorbike, but there is a sense of the fact that teenage love is not uncomplicated, and so it rather spoke to me and speaks to me still.
English Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Richard Bonynge
This is Handel's Arrival of the Queen of Sheba, which was the music to which Emma entered St Margaret's when we married. I had this best man, you know, who said, You can't stare at her all the way down the aisle. I said, No, but I want to have a look. And he said, You can turn now. And I turned, and there was this extraordinary vision. She very, very beautiful, in a wonderful dress by someone or other, and, you know, and all the children who were dressed as the flower fairies. And, you know, it was very romantic.
Quando m'en vo' (Musetta's Waltz)Favourite
Elizabeth Harwood, Mirella Freni, Luciano Pavarotti
This is Mosetta's Waltz from La Boheme. It's a piece of music that I have asked to be played at my own memorial, and happily Emma will outlive me by about fifty years, and so I know it it's in safe hands. Actually, in the opera, it's Musetta rather telling off the men, you know, Rudolphe and Evan, she's just sort of chastising them. But when you take it out of the opera, it has to me a wonderful kind of lyrical lament. I mean, I think I am quite a melancholic person in many ways, and I do seem to have this kind of attraction to this slightly tear-making music.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:30Was there a feeling of unreality about winning the Oscar, given that you had been making your living in show business for a while?
Well, the whole thing was very unreal, to be perfectly honest. I mean, I had I'd been an actor for, you know, hundreds of years, and I'd had a sort of reasonable career, you know, and I was sort of I had that level of fame where people think they met you in Norfolk when they were last there, you know what I mean. And then I was suddenly rung up by Bob Balaban, an actor-producer in America, and he said, Would you like to write a a script for Robert Altman? And it did come out of the blue. I mean, I'd written a script that was never made for Balaban, but it seemed so unreal. It seemed like the plot of a sort of Judy Garland musical. And yet, I knew that I had to take it seriously and do my best, because if the film got made and I hadn't written it, then I would have to kill myself.
Presenter asks
2:48Why do you think Downton Abbey hit people at the right time for a little bit of comfort viewing?
Well, of course, if I had a clear understanding of why it had done so well, I would continue to write shows that attracted record viewers for the rest of my life. I don't fully understand why it did so well. I think we did one or two things right, but for me, I think the main reason it was so popular is that we are allowed to give completely equal weight to all of our characters, and we don't set them off in a group, so we don't make all the toffs horrible or all the servants funny. They're just a group of people who are under one roof, and they are there in one capacity or another. And the romance between Bates and Anna is exactly as important as the romance between Mary and Matthew. There's no difference in dramatic weight. And I think that was in a funny way. Quite innovative in that we don't take either side, you know, we just show them all these people.
The keepsakes
The book
The Complete Works of Anthony Trollope
Anthony Trollope
I think he is a wonderful writer. He is absolutely my favorite novelist, because every one is painted in a shade of grey.
The luxury
I think what has to happen is by some extraordinary accident, as I fall from the deck of the yacht, or whatever has taken me to the to the desert island, by some chance two enormous casks of Chateau Margaux are also released from the deck, and they come bobbing towards the beach, as I feel then I could sort of stand anything.
Presenter asks
5:22Which class are you?
That's such a difficult question to answer really, because I don't know the answer any more. I'm always portrayed, or at least I have been portrayed, as a kind of snob for being interested in social difference. I don't see it like that. I I I am fascinated by the conditioning that changes us and and I am interested in that. I don't hide that. And I think for the British class sort of marbles practically every element of our lives. … I mean I think … Bottom end of the top. Lower upper classes. You know, the sort of. Landed gentry is a phrase that's often misused now to include the nobility, but the nobility are not part of the landed gentry, but but I feel that's the same as the upper-middle class now. I don't think there is a meaningful distinction between the lower, upper, and the upper-middle. I mean, still, in 2011, if you are born to be the Duke of Marlborough, then your life is to some extent steered and guided and made for you. Whereas I don't come from that group. I come from the group below who might be asked to dinner occasionally, but on the whole has to swim through the power of their own arms and legs.
Presenter asks
18:50Why did you feel you were unsuccessful [as a teenager]?
Well, I felt I was unsuccessful because I was unsuccessful. With girls, what else is there at that age? You know. I mean, I was good at school work and things, but I mean that didn't give you much to negotiate with. And and basically, if you're not very attractive, which I was not, you haven't got any of the currency.
Presenter asks
28:06How much does the criticism about historical inaccuracies in Downton Abbey get up your nerves?
Well, I think there's a bit pompous about it actually in the first year because I sort of did but in fact I think two things. One is I think there's a difference between there's a television area because either there is or there isn't and they wouldn't be dancing to that tune when in fact they would be because it wasn't that tune, it was this tune which was published in 1911. And in fact the tune complaint was wrong, the livery complaint was wrong. So you know what the annoying thing was that the newspapers would always assume the complaint was correct. But where I think I was silly was I didn't really understand that you know that papers are not full of complaints about a programme no one's watching. I think I misinterpreted what was an expression of the joint experience. But it's always irritating when the newspapers assume that you are wrong because they're lazy. Now I'm going back, aren't I, into kind of Miss Pouty? And I think I have to rise above that.
Presenter asks
32:32What do you think your parents would have made of your worldwide acclaim?
Obviously they would have been thrilled, and I'm terribly sorry they missed it. Of course, you know, the small Catholic voice in me uh tells me that they're adoring it, you know. But I I am sorry they missed it. I think particularly for my father. Because he was less kind of happy-go-lucky than my mother. I mean, my mother would have been more interested in whether I was happily married and, you know, whether I was living in a nice place, all those stuff. But my father wanted me to make my mark. And I remember I was doing, you know, reasonably well when I was doing the children's series and Fortner won its prizes and here and there and so on. And someone said to him, you know, isn't Julian doing well? He said, What? This is nothing. And I think he did have a great expectation, which, of course, you know, if he'd lived to be a hundred, you know, would have been fulfilled. But I don't know, you know, your parents are in you, aren't they, really?
“I had that level of fame where people think they met you in Norfolk when they were last there.”
“If I had a clear understanding of why it had done so well, I would continue to write shows that attracted record viewers for the rest of my life.”
“What I love about this question is if I did answer it, it would spoil it for everyone. Nobody would thank you.”
“She fell into a deep sleep, and there was a vision of a little girl walking away from her into the mist, and as she walked she turned and she said, Goodbye, mummy.”
“It's called love at first sight, but it isn't exactly love at first sight. It's knowledge at first sight, that you know this person is coming into your life.”