Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Former farce actor and manager who became a groundbreaking disability rights campaigner, chairing Mencap and entering the House of Lords.
On the island
Eight records
Ella Fitzgerald & Duke Ellington
because it absolutely brought the audience to their feet when it was actually played at the Go Mont.
Itzhak Perlman & Janet Goodman Guggenheim
This particular piece of music has remained with me all my life. It still makes me weep when I hear it, because it's so evocative of my youth and it's so evocative of everything in those days, and it's a sad piece of music as well.
I'd always wanted a Basiban. So I put up the money and he did the arrangements and we recorded uh an acetate and Parlophone gave us a a a recording contract with George Martin as our A and R man...
As I started with uh Swinging the Blues and then Blues in the Night, I thought it'd be a good idea to put the two together in Learning the Blues.
L-O-V-EFavourite
So when I was eighty, we had a big do in the Chumley Room in the House of Lords, and Jamie, our elder son. put together a record of our years together, and the music he played was love, of course. So this brings back memories of our house in Spain, the first time we went there on holiday, it brings back memories of my eightieth birthday, and it's a great record.
Chicago Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Sir Georg Solti
I'm particularly fond of Mahler's Third Symphony because it's brassy. It's just like listening to bassist Swing Section or Duke Ellington or any of those. So I've chosen this as a memory of the proms which we love, and of course the fact we love them together.
playing something which he wrote himself, uh which is called um A dump truck baby.
Painted Emblems (from Ruddigore)
The D'Oyly Carte Opera Company
The first thing I remember my mother playing it was the the Amateur Offeratic Society putting on Ruddygore... as a young Kid of our separate It was had a huge impact on me. It's all there in this particular piece.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:01It is a very long time since you made your living as an actor. Does that seem like somebody else's life now?
I suppose it does to a certain extent, although I still do one-night stands occasionally, A for myself and B for Mencalf. The first half of the show is theatre, television, all the rest of it, and the second half uh is Mencalp and the House of Lords, and I try and get laughs in both halves, which I do succeed in doing, and it's called A Pier Round Whitehall.
Presenter asks
4:03I read, Brian Rix, that you can't bear rejection and you're hopeless at dealing with it. It seems, then, something of a rash decision you made to become an actor.
Yes, I suppose so. I couldn't bear bad notices. I remember my bad notices all all actors do, of course. But I also remember my good ones. Of course the tellies used to get good notices too.
Presenter asks
10:38Did you tell your parents [about being bullied at school]?
No. No, it's the sort of thing you didn't.
The keepsakes
The book
it would be A reading material, B history. I'm mad on history. And see, it would teach me a few things. It might even teach me how to get off the island, because I'd hate it.
The luxury
I also have very bad sciatica. Um so I think I ought to have a a proper orthopaedic cushion.
Presenter asks
13:49Why do you think that British audiences loved [farce] so much?
Well, it comes from the Middle Ages, very broad farce, as it were. All sorts of people have been farce writers... Our audience was from age of five to ninety. We were a family audience. We were clean as a whistle. You allowed one god And one bloody. That's all you're allowed in the script.
Presenter asks
20:12At the time [of your daughter's birth], of course, it wasn't known that this was a genetic disorder. What was the attitude of the doctors as the best course of action?
Oh, put her away, forget her and start again. That was the sort of general um advice which we were given in those days. You could ask any parent at that time, and this is what they were told.
Presenter asks
27:53Is there part of you that [feels] somewhere a little thread of regret at stepping away from the stage and not having the glory and the riches that it brought?
None, none whatsoever. Not at all... doubt in my mind that I made the right decision. Um ever. I I I never have any regrets. I've never had any regrets. I've always been a person who looks forward to the future. And I b I believed what I could do for Mencap in my mind, you know, and hopefully a lot of it's taken place.
“To hear laughter is is still incredible from my my point of view. But the extraordinary thing is, I'm still as nervous as I used to be on the first night of a of a play or or the beginning of a a television, because remember, my original televisions were all live.”
“I never liked the idea of, you said earlier on, rejection. I couldn't bear the idea of auditioning, auditioning, auditioning and never getting the part.”
“Shame, guilt, isolation, it was terrible. It was a very grim time, make no bones about it, but It started us then, I suppose, thinking about what one could do. So it was really the beginning of our um activities in regard to learning disability for for nearly sixty years.”
“Oh, God, yes. I'd hate it... I'd be hopeless, really. I wouldn't be able to make myself a raft. I I don't think I'd be able to even light a fire by rubbing two sticks together. I'm not not sure what I could do. I I think I would be a mess.”