Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
A wine expert and TV presenter, known for making wine accessible to the public and winning major wine writing awards.
On the island
Eight records
St Matthew Passion, BWV 244: Final Chorus "Wir setzen uns mit Tränen nieder"
Choir of King's College, Cambridge, Brandenburg Consort, Stephen Cleobury
Oh, my first record goes way back. It's when I was a choir boy at Canterbury, and we used to sing the Matthew Passion every Easter. And I'd like, I think, the final, final chorus, which of course is full of emotion and exhaustion and satisfaction. But to me of course I was just thinking, We've finished, I'm going to have something to eat and drink.
Ah, well this is Elvis. I missed Elvis really at uh at school. I was I mean, we didn't have a television at home, I was at a choir school. I never knew that this fantastic tide was actually building up and about to burst over the popular music world. And I think I want an Elvis Presley piece, an early one. Because he was that bridge between white music and black music, which had to happen.
La bohème: Act I - "Che gelida manina"
Jussi Björling, RCA Victor Orchestra, Sir Thomas Beecham
Oh well, record number three, this is UC Björling. And L'Aboem, which is, I think, one of the great great operas and Jussie Björling is this Swede who somehow yet manages to understand all the Latin temperamentality and passion, and yet puts a sort of Nordic control on it. Like a Swede with olive oil and garlic and chianti running through his veins.
Sweeney Todd: The Barber and His Wife
It is certainly for me one of the great moments in my life, in one of the great pieces of musical theatre ever written. Sweeney Todd by Stephen Sondheim. And for me I managed to get into the West End show ah as an understudy.
Thanks for the MemoryFavourite
Patricia Hodge, Lucy Fenwick, Julia Sutton, Patricia Michael, Colette Gleeson & Gay Soper
I've got to go back to the Mitford girls. It was Patrick Garland directing again got a wonderful bunch of girls together Pat Hodge, Colette Gleeson, Kay Soper, Liz Robertson, Julia Sutton. Pat Michael, and I played all the men. I played Uncle Favre, I played Unc you know, Unc Favre, Uncle Matthew, Peter Rodd, Esmond Romilly any Hitler, I think I played Hitler at one time. It was the happiest show I ever did.
I mean, I sound like an Englishman. I may even look like an Englishman. I sometimes behave like an Englishman, but my heart is Irish. My mother is Irish. My father had bits of Irish in him too, and I've got a a powerful streak of of the Celt running through me.
The Piano Has Been Drinking (Not Me)
Um, it's about drinking. It's about three in the morning in a strange town, in a strange bar, with strange people. This song is called The Piano Has Been Drinking.
The Crowd at Cardiff Arms Park
It's an emotional last record. It's I think one of the greatest hymns ever written. My father had it at his funeral. I'm sure my mum will have it at hers, and I bet I'll have it at mine too.
The keepsakes
The book
Elizabeth David
She taught me, and I have always tried to follow it in my books. Put yourself into the book. Tell the stories about your life. Tell the tell the the emotions and the experiences which brought you to where you are. And she does that with with her cooking books absolutely brilliantly. And French provincial cookery. I don't even need to eat. I'll just read about it.
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:32Was your palate always so sharp, or is it something you've cultivated?
I think it was always pretty sharp. I mean I remember being a a nuisance to my father, complaining about the quality of fish and chips, and I had a particular favourite shop and I always wanted to go to that particular favourite shop because the cod was fresher or because the potatoes were newer.
Presenter asks
5:19How did you get the nickname Oz?
My real name is Owen. I was called Oz because I used to go in and bat for the the cricket team at about halfway down a five or six or something. And normally against you know, we were choir boys, and the local schools thought we were terrible, terrible Nancy boys wandering around in cassocks and surpluses all the time. I used to bowl short at us and knock us all out. I mean, half the team was in hospital most weekends. And I thought, well, if you bowl at my head, I'm going to whack you to the boundary. And and the boys, because the Australians were touring England at the time, and they were swiping the English cricket team off the face of the earth as they normally did and do, sadly, they started calling me Ozzy because I played like an Australian.
Presenter asks
7:41Do you still go to church regularly?
Not regularly. I do go. I fret about it, I think about it, but if you said Do I absolutely believe in a God now? I think I'm in the same old agnostic state as I ever was.
Presenter asks
10:30Why did you weep at the age of thirteen because you didn't want to grow up?
I think I thought that childhood was the best possible thing that could be. ... And if it was that good, I didn't want to take the the step into being a thirteen year old, a teenager, going to a senior school, becoming this adult type person who had to have a job and all these kind of things. ... There's a fear. And I suspect there probably still is. I I um I still like to to lead as you know an irresponsible life.
Presenter asks
18:09Why were you disenchanted with acting and decided to turn to wine?
It goes back again to a long, long time back to childhood again. Um I remember saying to myself, when I decided I had to have some career of some sort that I would change my job every five years. And I'd done five years as an actor, and I'd done about five years as a singer by the time I came to to do Peron. ... I think I lost my way. And I think I began to realize the reason I went into the theater was not to sit on a stage doing the same thing every night.
Presenter asks
21:20When did you decide to become the champion of New World wines?
When I tasted them. Simple as that. It was actually when I was um with the Royal Shakespeare Company. We were doing a Heda Garbler World Tour. And our first stop you know, it was wonderful for a young actor, my our first stop from, you know, a week at Richmond, and then two days later you're in Melbourne in Australia. And they just said to me, Okay, you go and buy the wine and I thought, well, I'll have to buy the usual rubbish I get uh from from the corner shop in all around the sort of provincial towns of England. Not a bit of it. You go in and buy the cheapest wine in Australia, the cheapest wine as I then discovered in places like California, and it's gorgeous, it's full of fruit, it's full of ripeness. I remember coming back to England and saying, I can't believe this, I've discovered these amazing wines from Australia. Where are they in the shops? Not one.
“I think the whole point about uh taste is that that wine we have to borrow language for. There's no wi uh l wine language, and consequently you have to draw in. flavors from every part of life, and it's taste, it's food, it's also emotions, and it's also the way the wind blows on the cliff tops, and and the way you feel sick and sad about some love affair that didn't work, and all those kind of things all get back onto my taste book.”
“I see absolutely no benefit in being grown up whatsoever.”
“The point about these wines is that they're sunshine in a bottle. They burst out at you, and they're not subtle. But we've now got thirty million wine drinkers in this country. We'd never have thirty million wine drinkers if we were still sipping sort of Bordeaux and burgundy through our through our sort of upturned noses.”