Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
2 appearances
Entertainer, Britain's biggest female recording star, known for hits Downtown and The Little Shoemaker, and West End lead in Sunset Boulevard.
On the island
Eight records
Peggy Lee has always been my favourite singer. I think she still is. N not for everything, but when everyone else was listening to Judy Garland and I suppose Virulin, way back then. I was listening to Peggy Lee and Lena Horne. They were always my favorites, and this particular album, Black Coffee, was sort of my Bible.
I love the Brecca brothers. They're two er American brothers. One plays Sacks, the other plays Trumpet. They're absolutely amazing. And uh they play what I call exhilarating jazz. It's it's very up. I could listen to this for hours.
I'd like a bit of humour with me on the island. I love to laugh. And I find it rather difficult to make myself laugh, so I'd like to have Dudley Moore and Peter Cook along with me.
Ein HeldenlebenFavourite
I'm changing around so much with classical music. I wanted a bit of bar talk and then I couldn't find anything that, you know, that I could just pick out of all of that. So I've picked a bit of uh Richard Strauss. It's a quieter moment in Ein Heldenleben.
I put a marvellous orchestra together recently of English musicians... and that's how I was introduced to the trumpet playing of Freddie Hubbard. I went to see him at Ronnie Scott's, and he's an absolute genius. It was very difficult to pick one record out, but this is one that I think would be nice on the island.
Well, I must have some pop music. There's an awful lot of good pop music around, but when I got down to trying to choose one... I thought maybe for a change I'd I'd play something from the Doobie Brothers album, um, minute by minute... I I love this group. For my money, I think it's the best group around at the moment.
I think I'd rather like to have that with me on the island to remind me because I am having the most marvellous time doing the show.
Lena Horne's an amazing woman. I've always adored her, and she's now back on Broadway in something which is virtually a concert, and it's, as they say, the hottest ticket on Broadway. And she just stands there and sings. And she's amazing.
Blood Brothers was a wonderful experience for me. I I performed it on Broadway a couple of years ago for ten months, and it was a fantastic experience.
I'm half Welsh. When I was a kid, uh well, my sister and I used to when the bombarding was bad in London, we would be sent off to Wales to stay with our grandparents in Pentrebach.
I remember when I first heard this track, No More I Love You's, I think I was in Atlanta in a record store, and this was being played in the store. And I stopped dead in my tracks and I thought, What is that?
Dawn Upshaw, London Sinfonietta and David Zinman
This is the kind of voice that I would love to have if I was going to sing this kind of thing. This is the way I would like to sing. It's very pure and and very, very moving.
I learned a lot there too, and I learnt a lot from Quincy. I got to work with him and he's just an amazing man.
Michael McDonald and Kenny Loggins
I've met some really great people through the years of my career. I've sung with some great people too. And I sing often with Michael MacDonald. I think he's just one of the greatest pop singers of them all.
this marvellous genius was was a Pet Clark fan, which is I found rather extraordinary.
Piano Concerto No. 21 in C major, K. 467Favourite
London Mozart Players and Howard Shelley
I think on this island I would like to have something that I could listen to at night. Under the stars. And Mozart's the Man.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:12How well could you endure loneliness?
I I actually enjoy being alone. ... But I don't know. I think I could probably cope quite well, actually. I enjoy having to cope.
Presenter asks
2:44I believe that you formed your ambition to be an actress very early in life?
Yes, I think I always wanted to be an actress, although I started off as a singer when I was about six, but I had really always wanted to act.
Presenter asks
3:43What was your first public appearance?
It was in Bentall's, in Kingston. There's a large, very good department store in Kingston called Bentalls, and I sang there with Harry Fryer's orchestra at the top of the Escalator Hall, would you believe?
Presenter asks
4:28Now tell me the story of how you were discovered by the BBC.
It was during the war, I suppose I was about nine. and I had gone along to the Criterion Theatre... during rehearsal there was an air raid, and the producer asked if one of the children would like to come up and sing a song and say a poem, do anything to sort of relax the atmosphere, and nobody answered, so I put my hand up. And I went along up to the stage and... I sang Mighty Lug a Rose into the microphone and they heard it in the control room and... the band joined in
The keepsakes
The book
Peter Ustinov
I need something funny, 'cause I really like to laugh. ... He's a wonderful man. I've spent many marvelous hours with him.
Presenter asks
8:03How did you manage about school [while under contract as a child star]?
Not terribly well. I missed an awful lot of schooling, and it was not easy. Yeah, I mean, it's very difficult for a child to miss two, three weeks of lessons and then have to go back and and try and catch up. I mean, I never did catch up. And the other children were not always very kind to me, because that was their way of getting back at me for being a star.
Presenter asks
15:28How did it happen [that you started working in France]?
Well, I had made a couple of hit records here. One was called With All My Heart, and the other one was called Alone. ... So when the French people came on to me and said, Now this is silly, why don't you come and record it yourself in French? ... I went over to do One Night at the Olympia Theatre... and I couldn't even say bonsoir... But I was singing some songs they had already heard sung by this other lady. Anyway, I sang for about fifteen minutes and pulled the place down
Presenter asks
0:45Do you resent being called "our pet"? Do you feel like the British won't let you grow up?
No, I don't know, I don't resent it, but I think I'm getting on a bit to be called our pet, you know.
Presenter asks
4:35What was the attraction of Sunset Boulevard and Norma Desmond for you?
Well, I didn't think it was very attractive at first, quite honestly. I d I didn't really want to do it. … I never saw myself in that role at all. I couldn't see myself playing this this monstrous woman, you know.
Presenter asks
5:11How did you feel when you first saw yourself in the full makeup [for Norma Desmond]?
Well, that helped a lot because I I looked in the mirror and I saw some someone else staring back at me and suddenly I didn't feel like me any more and that that was great.
Presenter asks
14:38Is it true that you came close to having a nervous breakdown [in your teens]?
Yes, it is true, yeah. I think I'm well I know I got close to to uh having a breakdown and uh I didn't know what to do about it. I I daren't talk to anyone about it and uh I kind of got myself through it.
Presenter asks
24:12How did you cope domestically [with children and a career in the sixties]?
I thought I was coping quite well, but uh I wanted it all. I w I wanted the career and I wanted a good marriage and a good family life. And I th I think having a good career is a full time job and having a good personal life is a full time job and two full time jobs, that's that's … Rough.
Presenter asks
27:01Your marriage is more than thirty five years old, but you live separate lives, really, don't you?
Yes, we we do. … I think marriage is a is a very difficult thing. It's wonderful, but even when it's wonderful, it's it's not easy. I'm I'm in a very demanding kind of uh profession. And we live apart in a way, but in a way, some strange sort of way it works.
“I don't play piano very well, but I play by ear. I hadn't really had a a formal education musically at all, when I come to think of it.”
“I was not allowed to grow up. I was, as you say, more valuable to them as a child than as an adolescent. And uh it was very difficult for me. I was not very happy during those years.”
“I don't know if I brought them up all that well. Actually, you know, seriously, it's it's very difficult doing those two things. 'Cause I think both jobs are full time jobs.”
“doing it [growing up] in front of millions of people is really bad news. But of course, every time I wore a dress that showed a little bit of cleavage or when I got out of my little white socks, people were not happy. They could see their own youth disappearing”
“I'm really basically very very shy, I think, uh like a lot of performers are. And um getting up and singing sort of got me over my shyness, I think.”
“I have to say I I don't think I've done anything particularly remarkable, you know. I think the the best is yet to come. I hope so.”