Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Broadcaster, writer, producer, director, and performer; the moving spirit behind BBC's first satire show, That Was the Week That Was.
On the island
Eight records
As Time Goes ByFavourite
She almost single-handedly kept the song going through the thirties.
Part of my musical education; ballet Monotones by Fred Ashton.
You Don't Know What It's Like to Fall in Love at Forty
Gives some of the sensation of what one feels like when you have a late fall.
Commissioned for That Was the Week; lyric by Carol Brahms, music by John Scott.
Millicent Martin, David Kernan, Julia McKenzie
From the show Side by Side by Sondheim; sentimental reasons.
From The Mitford Girls; she plays Nancy Mitford.
Based on working relationship with Carol Brahms; a sort of congee to Carol.
In conversation
Presenter asks
2:07Do you ever suffer the pain and misery of the word that won't come or the show you can't get right?
I've often suffered the misery of the show you can't get right, but since I usually work in collaboration, uh there's always somebody else there to supply the word that won't come, so you you you get less writer's block if there are two of you.
Presenter asks
6:13What did your parents think of your fame and seeing you on television?
No, well my father had my mother was always uh philosophical about it. My father my father's fair his reaction used to depend on what programme I was doing. If I was doing Ask Me Another with Nice Franklin Engelman, that was all right, or Tonight with Cliff Mitrimore, provided we didn't go over the bounds, was all right. But that was the week was a great problem for him. I always remember getting a call before he went milking one morning. I think it was a Friday morning. And on Thursday night the BBC had put out a a documentary about exposing Freemasonry. And my father was a Mason and he rang up. I I was woken at about half past five or six in the morning saying, here, son, don't you be putting any more of the the about the Freemasons out on the on the on the television on Saturday night. We've had quite enough about that for for quite a long enough time to be going on with.
Presenter asks
13:14The keepsakes
The book
Caryl Brahms
It is a wonderfully wise and funny book. Neville Coghill always used to say that it should be put into the Oxford English syllabus for the sake of balance for Shakespearean scholars, and I love it.
The luxury
a very varied sack of seed potatoes
I think it's going to have to be a very varied sack of seed potatoes... because I'm going to rely a lot on the fish and potato chips cooked in coconut oil.
How did you meet Carol Brahms and begin your collaboration?
I'd always wanted to do a musical of two things, one of uh uh Zuleika Dobson and one of uh No Bed for Bacon. And when I was at Oxford I was furious one day'cause I'd always thought, oh, you know, Max Bierbohm's far too important and uh can't write to him. And I read a piece in the paper saying that Cambridge was going to do one and that Max Bierbohm had given his blessing delightedly, saying he'd always been so disappointed that uh Oxford [820] Hadn't asked. So I thought, well, the moment I came down, I thought Carol Brams is still alive. I'll write to her. So I wrote off saying, what about doing a musical of that? And the very next morning there was a a phone call. I was rushed down to the phone and it was Carol who had got the definite idea that we'd met before. So she kept saying, but I know you, Mr. Sherry. No, you don't. And we went through this sort of cack-handed conversation for quite some time. Anyway, we arranged to meet and got on quite well. She had decided, I think, after her great collaborator, S.J. Simon died, that she wouldn't have another collaborator, but she sensed, I think, immediately that I challenged no comparisons with Simon, and it might be an easier working relationship, therefore. And so we started to work on it together. We never got it right. However, it had started us off in a collaboration.
Presenter asks
14:28What did you and Carol Brahms write together that you're most proud of?
On the whole, we were tremendously proud of practically everything we did, because you do get affectionate about things, especially the ones that don't go so well. But we adored working on one, A Life of Murray Lloyd called Sing a Rude Song. We had a wonderful time doing a television play with Donald Wolfit called Benbo was his name. And the last two things that we did together were The Mitford Girls, which was a very happy experience, and also with Timothy West's thing that they're going to televise later this year a sort of two-man show based on the the wit and wisdom of Tommy Beacham.
Presenter asks
21:47Did you preside over the television programme on which Kenneth Tynan uttered that four-letter word?
Yes, it came in the most curious circumstance. There'd always been a feud between Ken Tynan and Mary McCarthy, but they'd never met. So they were both going to be in the country at the same time, and it seemed a good idea to let them fight it out. I had a sort of sixth sense which told me that sometimes when people actually meet there there is no feud, and this is indeed what happened. We had luncheon at the Cafe Royal, when it was quite clear that it had all been that sort of venom that goes into the pen and not stemming quite from the head. We then found it terribly difficult to find a subject on which they could disagree. And the only thing that we could was censorship. And Ken was prepared to say there should be absolutely no censorship at all, and Mary felt that there should be some parameters. Ken then I hadn't realised until I read Kathleen's book, because he'd always said that it it cropped up, but apparently when they all went back to Ken's flat afterwards and Kathleen greeted Ken at the door by saying, Well, you said it then, didn't you? So plainly it had been a matter of debate in the Tynan household. He certainly didn't tell me beforehand, because I imagine that he would have assumed that I would have had to tell him not to say it, so so it was kept a secret from me.
Presenter asks
27:32Did the flop of Siegfeld hurt you or trouble you?
No, I think we had a clear enough idea of where we'd gone wrong. … Uh n it was that was the week was a very good training ground, you see, because unlike most programmes where you get a notice at the beginning of the series and perhaps a notice at the end, or perhaps a notice in the middle, we used to get the full blast through all those programmes practically every Monday morning. So I think my skin is probably thicker than most
“I think I'm inescapably somebody who did come up from Somerset.”
“I don't think I'm a fully fledged writer. Carol used to get very annoyed when I used to say that.”
“I think fiddling around, poking one's nose in, sort of activating things probably, w but without the sort of business nonce that makes one a a properly successful producer.”
“I think my skin is probably thicker than most”
“A funny thing to be alone.”