Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Novelist, playwright, and newspaper columnist, known for his work across these literary fields.
On the island
Eight records
Guys and DollsFavourite
The first one is, well, it pretty well sets a style of my taste. I'm very fond of musicals, and one of the best musicals I know is Guys and Dolls, which was recently revived brilliantly at the National Theatre. And one of the wittiest numbers in Guys and Dolls is Guys and Dolls.
Hallelujah Chorus (from Messiah)
Huddersfield Choral Society and the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra
When I was a young rent collector, when I when I wasn't uh undertaking, I used to get out a lot to the uh small Yorkshire woollen valleys. And that time you couldn't go ten yards with without hearing a choral society in one of the Tynroof tabernacles. And uh as often as not they were singing uh Hannel's Messiah and belting it out. So I'd like to hear the Hallelujah Chorus done by the Huddersfield Choral Society.
The Grand Massed Brass Bands of Fairey, Fodens and BMC
Well, again, you see, I was going back to those wool towns now as a half-baked reporter and another sound was that was the great brass band sound which still goes on. I'm happy to I'd I would take anything by uh a brass band, but I I would settle for uh Blaze Away.
Fourth record is is well, it's really back to those Billy Liar days and my own kind of brilliant dance hall days, and that's Glenn Miller, American Patrol.
I would have loved to have been in London when it was smothered with music halls, but unable to do that I've built quite a collection of old music hall records, the thickness of soup plates of uh you know people like Little Titch and George Formby Senior. Um out of that batch I've taken uh Harry Champion of uh En Elder fame, and this is a very vulgar song, Cover It Over Quick Jemima.
Just going back to music hall days, there was one music hall period that I did live through. That was the Days of the Empire Varieties Theatres. And of course the great radio varieties days. One of the stars, great stars, is Rob Wilton, the master of the unfinished sentence and the pause. And this this is one of his classic monologues, The Day War Broke Out.
Symphony No. 9 in E minor, Op. 95, 'From the New World'
Number seven is Vorczak's New World Symphony, which I I think is very visual music. You can you can just see the skyscrapers shimmering in the sea.
Well, this is the uh freelance writers' anthem. It's Razzle Dazzle from the musical Chicago. ... Because it's all about um keeping balls in the air and winging it, which every freelance knows.
In conversation
Presenter asks
2:45Does that mean that childhood was a time of hardship?
I suppose it was, but it it was only retrospective hardship. I mean it seemed to me at the time that we were leading a very rich life. And of course, being the son of a master greengrocer ... meant that we were the only family in the neighbourhood that got the pomegranate. So they were pretty good days, I thought. Later on, I learned that we were poor.
Presenter asks
3:25Why was there no radio in the house until you were about 11?
Well, no, it was just, you know, we needed various things and a wireless we got at the beginning of the war. In fact, we had one of those old accumulator sets, and I had to go down and get the accumulator filled with acid in order to listen to bandwagon and stuff.
Presenter asks
4:35You wanted to write. Now where did that come and was there any moment you can pinpoint?
I can't remember when I didn't want to write. I remember scribbling, you know, as as children do in uh imagined writing, because I so much wanted to write ... I think I came out of the egg wishing to be a writer and knowing that I had to be a writer.
The keepsakes
The book
A year's bound volume
I'd want to be reminded of England, and the kind of England that I want to be reminded of is the England of backyards and allotments and worksheds and pigeon lofts and so on. I would like a year's bound volume of the Exchange and Mart.
The luxury
battery-driven video recorder and television screen with eight movies
If I could have a battery driven video recorder and television screen, could I take my eight Desert Island movies?
Presenter asks
6:24What was the first job you went after [after leaving school at fifteen]?
Well, I can't say that I went after a job. I was sent after a job. I I went a clerk in. I'd learned uh double entry bookkeeping. And I was sent to a firm called J.T. Buckton Sons, We Never Sleep, Limited, the Leeds Undertakers. ... So I diversified quite early so that I was at one and the same time an undertaker's clerk and a garage hand uh and uh a rent collector.
Presenter asks
24:39How do you describe the content of that column [for the Daily Mirror], by the way? What are your terms of reference?
Well, my terms of reference are six inches by twelve. Really, I've got that oblong on Monday and and Thursday. It's it's a wonderful assignment because it's my own private little newspaper they've given me there and uh and I've I fill it as I will. What I aim to do is simply to um entertain.
Presenter asks
27:52Which [films] do you remember particularly [from working in Hollywood]?
It's not so much the films there that I remember particularly ... I think the actual trip I remember was one on which we didn't get a screen credit, one on which we were asked, or beckoned rather, into the presence of Mr. Alfred Hitchcock. ... we were offered a vast amount of money to go over and polish the dialogue. Little did he know we would have done it for nothing, of course. Simply to go and sit at the feet of the master.
“I think I came out of the egg wishing to be a writer and knowing that I had to be a writer.”
“I think I'm incapable of writing except in a humorous way. I mean, I I think a humour is is really the anaesthetic actually. You can cut quite deeply with humour and and people are laughing before they've notice how deep the cut has has gone, and they notice after how deeply the cut has gone, really.”
“I've got a very low attention span and I'm incapable of working on anything for more than an hour at a time and I think that's the reason that I've fallen into this way of life where I've got to be doing half a dozen things at once. I've noticed if I only have one thing to do, it doesn't get done.”