Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
An actor, author, autobiographer, and authority on teddy bears.
On the island
Eight records
Well, the first one I'd play is is really a kind of sentimental thing because I fell in love with the theatre at a very early age. And in the holidays I thought about nothing except going to the theatre. And it was musicals that really attracted me, because it was the day of the great stars.
And I would really like to play a Harry Roy record, just to remind me of these incredibly glamorous times of me in my dinner jacket and Mary in her green dress and dancing round and longing for five couples to get up so that we'd get back to our scrambled eggs and bacon.
Now, Miss Gingell and I had known each other for quite a long time and it got in the papers that we were engaged. So indeed the engagement has been now going on since nineteen forty. And although the ring has been flung back and forth once or twice, we've somehow survived. She she is, I think, one of the funniest women I've ever ever met and she's still a remarkable and dear friend of mine.
And Beatrice Lilly was in absolutely wonderful form. And I think it was during this show she sang a song which was written by my friend Nicholas Phipps.
And I would love to hear it because she sings it quite beautifully. And I'm sh I'm very I've my memories of her because I'm afraid she died last year and uh I would love to hear her sing Smoke Gets in Her Eyes.
Chita Rivera, Marilyn Cooper, Reri Grist and The Shark Girls
But in in West Side's story she I thought was absolutely electrifying and I'd love to hear her sing America, America.
I get money for not singing on a grammar phone record, and I think that's an absolute triumph. And I would love, just for the excitement of the thing, to hear the number in which I don't sing, but get the money for.
Siga, SigaFavourite
The first few years there was a song that haunted me. It was called Cigar, Cigar, which means nothing to do with smoking, but is means slowly, slowly, which is exactly what I do when I go up my hill.
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:30How well could you stand up to loneliness?
I don't think very well, frankly. I have a great many friends. I am very fortunate in my friends. And I find that when I am alone for more than about two days I am apt to start talking to myself, and a good deal of rubbish at that.
Presenter asks
3:29What were you good at [at Winchester]?
I don't think I was good at anything, frankly. I wasn't happy at school. And I kept on being beaten by my headmaster for sending to actresses for their photographs.
Presenter asks
5:01What did you do [when you returned to London]?
The first job, he he wanted me to be an accountant. I didn't want to be an accountant. However, he settled for putting me in in something called the Great Eight, which was the social society newspapers of the time … And I was in the editorial department. And for a very, very brief time, I'm here to tell you I was Eve in the Letters of Eve … But after four libel cases I was had to stop being Eve and I had to go back back to doing something else altogether.
The keepsakes
The book
Brideshead Revisited (in Greek)
Evelyn Waugh
I would like to take Brideshead Revisited in Greek, because I know it so well. I think I really would learn Greek.
The luxury
I think I would master that. And I think if I went mad, which I probably would do after a very short time, I would then be able to see in the crystal ball the things I wanted to see.
Presenter asks
Did you know what [Waiting for Godot] was about?
Hadn't the faintest idea, no, and and indeed none of us did. I think some of the acts and I pretend they they knew what it was about, and now it's it's wholly writ and goes through without any kind of interruption.
Presenter asks
27:19How did [your involvement with teddy bears] start?
I came back and found that my mother had given my teddy bear away to a jumble sale. And as I was sixteen at the time, I couldn't show my full rage. And then years and years later, when I was in New York … I told this story … And I found out of the five people, three people had similar stories. I thought there was something in this, and I wrote this teddy bear book.
“I play the pianola beautifully.”
“I've been in management three times now and it really hasn't worked. I don't think I'm a very good businessman.”
“I'm the least practical person in the whole of the world, and I'm I don't know that I've even built a hut, frankly. I think I just sit there quite quietly with my lovely records and And just think about a very, very happy life.”