Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Actor and writer best known for co-creating The League of Gentlemen and reimagining Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Who for TV.
On the island
Eight records
There Is a Light That Never Goes Out
Well, this reminds me of being about, I suppose, about 14. I was doing the same thing. I was slightly missing being young by wanting to be a lot older. But I always loved The Smiths. And actually, this song particularly I've come over the years to really love. I think it's a beautiful piece of poetry.
On Her Majesty's Secret Service
This is my favourite James Pond film. I love it because it's a one off. It's the George Lazenby one. It's a brilliant film. Terribly sad. Strange downbeat ending. I just love this theme. It it drives along and it's so exciting.
I discovered it because Carousel was one of my late mother's favourites, but it's also fascinatingly an example of a concept that Rogers and Hammerstein invented called the conditional love song. They realized they needed a big love duet earlier in the musical than the story would allow. So they came up with this, and subsequently, People Will Say We're in Love and all those kinds of things.
Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis
I've chosen um Fantasia and a Theme by Thomas Talis by Ray Fawn Williams, which um I regret to say is the only sort of classical choice on here. I I've always loved this, and it's it's it's entirely to do with the fact it it soars, it just sort of takes you up.
I want something that makes me laugh and this does it the best possible way. And it also reminds me very much of my partner, because it's actually a song originally recorded by Frida from ABBA.
I'm very h proud to say Rufus is one of the many people I forced to become my friend over the years. And this one I absolutely love. I was saying earlier on about the not wanting to be too melancholy. This I think is a very life affirming song.
It reminds me very much of the early nineties I can't believe I'm even using that expression not long after I'd left college and I was living in London. It again it's an enormously celebratory song.
So in LoveFavourite
I couldn't go without co-porter, Kirsty... Co-Portra is a a genius, uh and these things should be celebrated... This again is another sad song, but I I love it and it's from Kiss Me Kate.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:41Your mother said you had an old soul. What did she mean by that?
I can remember going it must have been when I was about five. She she used to go and look after some pensioners and I remember once going to a sort of wartime sing-along... I'm not pretending I'm reincarnated or anything, but I had an immediate sort of affinity for it. I've always loved talking to old people about the past.
Presenter asks
4:43You were brought up in the shadow of a psychiatric hospital. What was that like?
It's literally loomed large and and like Topsy, it has grown through various interviews over the years to become from a perfectly straightforward nineteen thirties brick building into some sort of Arkham... Essentially my my dad worked there. He was a he was an engineer there. And my mum worked there for a bit as well. We used to go swimming there, used to get our hair cut there, we used to go to little cinema screenings and it was quite normal to us and it was only later on, many years later, when you know I realized that all my school friends were were literally petrified of even walking past the gates that I realized it was just kind of part of my my um childhood.
Presenter asks
13:20What was your mum like?
She was lovely. Funnily enough, um I think I used to be more short tempered with my mum than any rest of my family, because actually we were very alike.
The keepsakes
The book
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
a book which has suckered and nourished me since I was a little thing, and never stops delighting me.
The luxury
a bath with a constant supply of hot water
Because although I imagine there is a lagoon, indeed, a sleepy lagoon, to bathe in every morning. There's nothing like a hot bath, and I think best in the bath, and often sleep in it.
Presenter asks
27:54Your sister nursed your mother through the final stages of her illness. Can you tell me about that?
My sister was a district nurse and we were very lucky in that my sister was able to look after my mum so she died at home... The last week of my mother's life was a very happy time because we all sort of sat around the bed and we just swapped stories and we had a really good laugh... weirdly when she went one of the things we we all kind of missed was uh was that ritual.
Presenter asks
29:40Your sister died when she was only fifty. How did you deal with that?
The the the notion now that my sister was looking after my mother and already had cancer uh is very difficult. You know, she was incredible, my sister... I just remember when she told me just thinking this this is just not fair and especially so close to to my mum going... But she was amazing, and she never really let it slip.
“I think we've become s slightly too wrapped in cotton wool about especially the notion of frightening children. I think it's a happy release.”
“I think I I think I wasted an awful lot of my youth wanting to be older. In fact that's very true, I know I did.”
“I was actually very happy. And I quite liked stepping out of the sunshine because that's what I was drawn to, not because I was miserable.”
“Ian is my uh absolute bedrock... our entire relationship is built on on laughter. I I really I don't know what I'd do without him.”
“I just want to say to people who are sweating the small things, don't worry, get on with it. And don't be nasty to people.”