Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
An Australian actor known for his film and stage work.
On the island
Eight records
Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso
I didn't discover music until well into my teens. when I met some young people who or you could say lived for it. And it was through them, in fact, that I discovered music at all.
Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings (Elegy)
Peter Pears, Dennis Brain and the Boyd Neel String Orchestra conducted by Benjamin Britten
This record is my greatest favourite record of all time. It's not my favourite great, but it's my greatest favourite. It is, I think, the most completely successful selection of pieces of music that I think has ever been um recorded.
Amelita Galli-Curci and Tito Schipa
This is old. It's a beautiful example of a male and a female voice complementing each other so absolutely beautifully.
Romeo and Juliet (Dance of the Knights)
London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by André Previn
My wife introduced me to this particular piece. She'd heard it on the radio, B B C of course, and had gone out and bought the record and said, Listen to this marvellous, beautiful ballet music.
This is another oldie. It's by one of the m lovely ballad singers which now seem to have gone out of fashion and have been out of fashion for at least two decades.
Symphony No. 6 in F major, Op. 68 'Pastoral' (Shepherd's Hymn After the Storm)
Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Herbert von Karajan
Well, we'll have to have something big, as they say. We'll have something from the pastoral symphony of Beethoven.
Choir of King's College, Cambridge directed by David Willcocks
There is a boy, Soro, Roy Goodman, whose voice, when you listen to this, I think, is a sort of proof of the existence of God.
The last record memories a very happy time. The time I made a film for and with the Beatles called Help was a very happy time for me and I think somehow too it was a good time for them.
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:33How do you take loneliness?
Not too well. I fi I find the older you get, the less fitted you are. And nowadays, if I have to go away out of the country to do a film, for example, unless there is some of the family with me, I'm inclined to get very depressed.
Presenter asks
4:18What was your first job?
I followed along in my father and brothers' footsteps and I went as an apprentice in electrical engineering, making electric motors for refrigerators and so on, in a big factory where my father and brothers both work.
Presenter asks
18:12How did you get on with [Donald] Wolfit?
I don't think anybody really got on with Donald at all. He was somebody to be somebody to be to be viewed and even talked to from a distance. He was a very strange man. His behaviour was monstrous on the stage. Absolutely monstrous.
Presenter asks
23:45What did you do in Australia [after Ryan's Daughter]?
The keepsakes
The book
the encyclopedia wins for me, because apart from just finding out about people, I can find about just about everything.
The luxury
Well, the first thing we did was marvellous and I would very much like to do it again. I'd taken out there a big Volkswagen van and myself, the wife and the two girls round Australia. Yes, right round. We ended up in Cairns in North Queensland. We'd done about nine and a half thousand miles in nine weeks.
Presenter asks
25:59Who made the first approach [about playing Rumpole]?
That was a a script sent by the BBC. Out of the blue. … I read it. I said this is great stuff. Certainly. I should love to do it. Thank you very much. … as I read it, page after page, the character made such an immense impression on me, I felt I'd known him all my life, and I dearly loved him, and I dearly wanted to act him in that way.
“I decided that it was impossible to choose eight favourite records. And if you did and you were stuck with them, they wouldn't be your eight favourite records after the first four months. So no, what I've done, I've chosen things that simply remind me of parts of my life and of things that I've enjoyed.”
“I fell madly in love with her, and I did, I pursued her. She was determined to become an actress. She lived for acting. And she saved up for years, doing a lot of work in radio and in the theatre. She saved up to come to England, which is of course the heartland of theatre, of of British theatre. And I followed her.”
“I resisted it because I didn't want to be stuck with that character for the rest of my days. Then afterwards realised that I was stuck with the character for the rest of my days.”