Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Writer and performer best known as a star of Monty Python and Ripping Yarns.
On the island
Eight records
Things Ain't What They Used to Be
Duke Ellington and His Orchestra
Ellington's meant a lot to me and this particular one, Things Ain't What They Used to Be, is one of my favourites.
The goons were this is sort of in memory of those nights when I used to race home from school. If the bus didn't arrive on time, I would run almost two miles, arrive totally breathless, the taste of blood in my mouth, in order to hear this show.
Where I came from, South Yorkshire, brass band were very popular, you know, and I used to love listening and watching brass bands.
I feel I have to take Elvis with me because I think he was the first musician really of our generation.
Oh! What a Lovely War (closing sequence)
This is a musical which I think contains some of the most moving songs and scenes that I can remember.
Some of my favourite films and I would like to remember on any Desert Island the pleasure that they gave me. It also reminds me of New York, a city which I've grown to like very much.
I couldn't go to a desert island without something by the Beatles.
Nimrod (from Enigma Variations)Favourite
This is one which I always take when I go abroad anywhere on my little tape recorder 'cause it does remind me of home.
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:54To what extent would isolation worry you?
I think for the first two or three weeks I probably would really enjoy it, you know, I'd do all those things I really wanted to do. Such as swimming, making sand castles, those things, you know, without people watching all the time.
Presenter asks
1:34Did you find it very difficult to narrow your choice down to eight? How long did it take you?
I tried to do it very quickly because I thought well it's best to be just instinctive and there must be eight records which immediately come to mind and I've changed that list about four times since then. So it's taken me over a weekend to think about them.
Presenter asks
2:44You're a Yorkshireman, aren't you, Michael? Which part of Yorkshire?
Aye, Roy, that's very true, very true. Well, only just into Yorkshire actually. Sheffield, which was the southern, very southern tip. It used to be in the West Riding and now it's been reorganised as South Yorkshire, but I think it's still in the same place that I used to know. They haven't moved. I don't think they've moved it into Rutland or anything.
The keepsakes
The book
William Makepeace Thackeray
Well, after a lot of casting around and rejecting such great authors as James Cameron and Jane Austen, I have lighted upon Vanity Fair by Thackeray, which I think would last well. I think it's full of humour, insight, jollity. It would entertain me greatly. And it has a little passage in it which I really like, which goes, The world is a looking glass and gives back to every man the reflection of his own face. Frown at it, and it will in turn look sourly upon you. Laugh at it, and it is a jolly, kind companion, which I think is.
The luxury
Yes, I've thought about this. Now all food and drink would eventually go off and run out, leaving one with a terrible thirst for what you haven't got. So I chose in the end the most luxurious feather pillow that I could possibly have. A really beautiful feather-filled pillow.
Presenter asks
10:09How did Monty Python's Flying Circus all come together?
Well, I think mainly through disillusion at the other shows that we'd been doing before that, Terry Jones and myself and John Cleese and Graham Chapman and Eric Idle on his own had all been writing. We'd been writing for Frost, we'd also written for the other comedians, The Ronnies and Marty. We all knew each other. We knew and admired each other, sort of mutual appreciation society. And I think we felt we wanted to do something in which we had control. We could take all the risks ourselves. We didn't know what it was we wanted to do, but we approached the BBC via Barry Took, and he said he'd talk to a man at the BBC who would in turn talk to us. And … We had a meeting at the BBC and Michael Mills came in and said, what do you want to do? And we said, well, we'd like to do well, well sort of unison, some sort of shows. What sort of thing do you want to do? … He said, Right, thirteen shows, still pilot. No, no, went straight out the door. Couldn't understand it. … But we then got going on the shows and they were they had a rather checkered history in the first series. They always got taken off a Horse of the Year show when that overran and they were put on extremely late at night, sometimes quarter to twelve or twelve o'clock. So we didn't really expect it to catch on with any but a sort of few insomniacs and intellectuals.
Presenter asks
22:00You've all gone off in different directions. Now the direction you've gone off in recently is Ripping Yarns. Michael, tell me about those.
Well, I was asked to do a sort of Michael Palin show, and I asked Terry to write something with me, and we sort of cast around for ideas. I had given Terry a book one Christmas called I think it was called Ripping Tales, one of these wonderful old heroic stiff upper lip stories. … And Terry's brother noticed this … He said, Why don't you write that sort of thing? I mean something with that sort of title. So we call it Ripping Yarns, 'cause I think I misheard on the telephone and started to write one about a school, which turned out to be Tomkinson's school days, which was all about a rather savage public school. … And the BBC said, Well, we'd like to try and do some more in that style. So we just made a list of different titles, like Across the Andes by Frog and Escape from Stahlagluft 1012 B. … That became a series of six and I've just recently done three more. … I enjoyed the care and quality with which they were done, but I got lumbered with being the hero every time, which got very, very dull.
Presenter asks
25:31How are you going to manage on this island in a practical sense? Are you good at looking after yourself?
Well, only in my own way. I don't … do it by any of the rules. I'm very bad. I used to be brought up to mend bicycle punctures in sixty four different sort of special moves over a period of about two months to mend one puncture. And I much preferred rushing at things and doing them my own way. So I think left on my own I would eventually build a hut or eventually build some boat or anything like that, but it would take probably a very long time.
“I did have one piano lesson, but I was taught by somebody who grabbed each finger and rammed it down on the keys and that passed for learning to play the piano and so it rather put me off.”
“I can remember listening to Elvis and feeling that he was special. There was nothing I'd heard like him before. My parents couldn't have told me about him. There was nothing I'd heard before that, you know, even suggested you might be coming along. So he was very special.”
“It was a strength of the show that people didn't identify with one particular person. As soon as you identify, you expect the same thing from that person every time. And I think it gave us much more freedom, the fact that nobody knew who we were. It distressed my mother somewhat because she could never point me out to people.”
“The world is a looking glass and gives back to every man the reflection of his own face. Frown at it, and it will in turn look sourly upon you. Laugh at it, and it is a jolly, kind companion.”