Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Dancer and former head judge of Strictly, best known for his role on the show.
On the island
Eight records
The keepsakes
No book or luxury recorded for this episode.
In conversation
Presenter asks
2:09Did you like an audience? Were you a bit of a show-off?
Always. And yeah, I was quite gregarious and outgoing and uh
Presenter asks
2:38Was your grandfather a bit of a del boy, a mover and shaker?
Do you know I remember one of the earliest memories I have of him, in his shop he used to have two, they call them bins, where they used to put the groceries and stuff. And he had a big hundredweight sack of potatoes and he chucked one half into this one bin and the other half into the other bin. And on one he put a penny a pound, and on the other it said selected penny halfpenny. ... Potato. He said, Yeah, but you watch the one and a penny halfpenny ones always go first.
Presenter asks
3:20Did you have a bath in the B-Troop boiler?
My nan's job was to get the raw beetroots, and they had this like cauldron that had like six gas rings things that went underneath, and they used to boil that up, and then the beetroots would go in. Well, when it was tepid, my nan used to just put me in it and scrub me up, and of course, I was always filthy, dirty. We used to go and play on the debris from the ward, and of course, out I'd come and it would be covered in scum, and then in would go the beetroots. Is that true? Yeah, truly. And everybody used to say how delicious they were.
Presenter asks
5:29Did your mum buy you a very fancy car when you were seventeen?
When I was seventeen you know, we'd made it by then. We had seven green grocery shops and this and that and plenty of money coming in. When I was seventeen, my mum was worried that I'd uh learn to drive and have a crash, so she said, I'm not having that. You're going to have a nice sturdy vehicle. So for my seventeenth birthday, Brand new Jaguar ... Mark Two. Thing like morse drives, you know, proper thing. And then I had a little accident, not a big one, in a car park. A car backed into me and uh just knocked it slightly and I got home. I said, Mum, look, a car backed. She said, You're not driving that. It might have knocked the wheels out of line or something. Bought me another one.
Presenter asks
6:17Your parents divorced when you were how old?
When I was about ten, my uh parents divorced. They split split up, but in in not in a horrible way. They split up and I still saw my dad and I lived with my mum and and it was fine.
“Well, it was Bethnal Green. We actually moved when I was quite young out into Kent, when I was four or five. However, my mum used to take me all the time back up to Bethnal Green, and I used to play with all the kids in my street and so on. So my early memories are of being round Bethnal Green in our little house there, my grandparents' house. Saturday nights, my nan and one of my uncles were great on the piano, just self-taught and having a sing song, and my mum used to teach me a little s you can roll a silver dollar down upon the ground and I'd be sitting there on the f by the fireplace skipping my little bit. It was just wonderful memories.”
“Do you know I remember one of the earliest memories I have of him, in his shop he used to have two, they call them bins, where they used to put the groceries and stuff. And he had a big hundredweight sack of potatoes and he chucked one half into this one bin and the other half into the other bin. And on one he put a penny a pound, and on the other it said selected penny halfpenny.”
“My nan's job was to get the raw beetroots, and they had this like cauldron that had like six gas rings things that went underneath, and they used to boil that up, and then the beetroots would go in. Well, when it was tepid, my nan used to just put me in it and scrub me up, and of course, I was always filthy, dirty. We used to go and play on the debris from the ward, and of course, out I'd come and it would be covered in scum, and then in would go the beetroots. Is that true? Yeah, truly. And everybody used to say how delicious they were.”
“Well one of my earliest memories is my dad taking me into the front room where he had a most marvellous record player, Grundig. One side there was a cocktail cabinet. ... It was very posh. And the other side was the record player. And he used to play all his favourites from the war and before the war and he used to love the Mills brothers. Uh they're only backing his guitar and everything else you hear is just them making the noise with their mouths and it's just happy, happy music. And I think if I'm stuck on a desert island I'm gonna get glum and I wanna be cheered up. And I think this is the sort of music that just cheers you.”
“When I was seventeen you know, we'd made it by then. We had seven green grocery shops and this and that and plenty of money coming in. When I was seventeen, my mum was worried that I'd uh learn to drive and have a crash, so she said, I'm not having that. You're going to have a nice sturdy vehicle. So for my seventeenth birthday, Brand new Jaguar ... Mark Two. Thing like morse drives, you know, proper thing. And then I had a little accident, not a big one, in a car park. A car backed into me and uh just knocked it slightly and I got home. I said, Mum, look, a car backed. She said, You're not driving that. It might have knocked the wheels out of line or something. Bought me another one.”