Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
3 appearances
A writer and illustrator, best known for Father Christmas, The Snowman, and Where the Wind Blows.
On the island
Eight records
That's full of drive and energy and enough to wake anyone up, I think.
about the first record I was ever aware of as a kid, about ten years old, I think.
This is a drum solo by Joe Morello with Dave Brubeck.
by the John Handy Quintet with a marvellous drummer called Terry Clark.
Clark Terry with the Bob Brookmeyer Quintet
by Clark Terry, who's a marvellous uh trumpet
the intro and the outro has made me laugh for years. I've heard it dozens of times, but it's still funny, terrific.
Jan Garbarek and Ustad Fateh Ali Khan
I get crazes for different sorts of music... And I also like Indian sounding music, not that I not that I know anything about it. But this is Jan Gabrik playing with some Pakistan musicians.
I think it's a fourteenth century Italian dance called La Rotta. It's a wonderful bit of drumming and percussion, as good as any modern jazz, better than any modern jazz that I know anyway.
I like this and I thought it would be uh amusing on the island to give you something to do. It's also slightly humorous because the idea is you have to try and clap in time to this...
I had a craze for Tom Waits a little while ago, and I still have. He's so over the top, you can't help but like him.
Tasmin Little and Martin Roscoe
I heard on Desert Island Disc actually. Um What's his name, Hanif Qureshi had it on, and I've liked it ever since.
Parce Mihi DomineFavourite
Jan Garbarek and The Hilliard Ensemble
Jan Garbrek again, but playing with the Hilliard ensemble. I never know how to pronounce the title...
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:41How important is music in your life?
Not very much. I'm not a great music fan. I've always found it rather complicated and uh… technical and rather intimidating.
Presenter asks
3:01Were you a bookish boy?
No, I didn't like books much as a child. I came to books and things very late when I was a student. I always rather despised booky things when I was young, and thought that it was only weeds that went in for books.
Presenter asks
3:53What did the principal say when you went for your interview [at Wimbledon Art School]?
When I went there for the interview, the principal said to me, Why do you want to come here? and I said, Well, I want to come to art school to learn how to draw in order to become a cartoonist and he said, Good God, boy, is that all you want to do?… So that idea was smashed right at the beginning.
Presenter asks
5:21Did you find your skill as an artist helped you in service life?
The keepsakes
The book
The Complete Works of Beachcomber
J. B. Morton
the thing you'd lack on the island is anything funny, and if you had everything he'd ever written after about forty or fifty years of writing it'd be wonderful.
The luxury
Full size billiard table with Radio 4 built into the legs
I had a sort of half size or quarter size, but I want it's got to be the big thing or nothing. And I want Radio 4 built into each of the legs.
No, I didn't do anything practical. It's best to keep your talents of that sort of thing quiet in the army, because as you say, you'd be roped in for doing all these unofficial jobs, and it's boring enough doing the official jobs without doing the unofficial ones.
Presenter asks
21:40Do you like children?
Well, not uh… Oh, mess at uh book signings and things. I I can't generalize about it really. I mean, it there's individual ones you come across that you like.… as a species, I suppose I don't really. I'm not drawn to them in the way some people feel drawn to be a teacher or anything. I rather prefer to keep away.
Presenter asks
27:00To what extent is [When the Wind Blows] a political statement?
Well, it's not political at all, I don't think. It's not wasn't meant to be. It's just meant to be a fairly objective uh study of what the ordinary chap does when you hear on the radio that uh war is coming in the next three days, and later on you get a three or four minute warning that the missiles are on their way. And I try to think what the average person would do.
Presenter asks
0:29Why would she think, Raymond, that you're not a normal person?
Oh, golly, I don't know. It all seems very normal to the point of being boring to me, but um she was only three and a half when she said this. It was rather strange, all sitting round having lunch and slight pause, and then she just looked across the table at me and said, Raymond is not a normal person.
Presenter asks
9:21Tell me about those parents then, Ethel and Ernest. How did they meet?
Oh, that's what set me off doing that book. It's the way my mum and dad met. My mum was a maid working in a big posh house in a posh square in Belgravia, and my dad was cycling to work. It's the split second timing that gets me she was in the room, so Owen shake the duster. He's coming down the road on his bike. and opens the window, shakes the duster. That very second he's going by, looks up, sees this pretty girl waving a duster, being a bit of a lad, waves back, you know.
Presenter asks
10:44Do you ever go back and see [your childhood home in Wimbledon Park]?
Yes, that's right. Yes, I have been back and it's owned by an Indian lady now and uh... Had a look round, it's very moving seeing. Things there. She opened the uh landing cupboard and it's got the same wallpaper inside the cupboard that we had in the 1930s. Quite an extraordinary feeling to think this is still there.
Presenter asks
11:41What do you remember about your mother's worry about what the neighbours might think?
Oh yes. What will the neighbours think, I think, was the governing thing in her entire life. I mean even even the curtains always used to annoy me as an art student. The curtains, upstairs and downstairs, in the front, had to match. Never mind whether they matched the interior of the room. They look good from the outside.
Presenter asks
13:19Your mother invested a lot in you as her only child. Did you feel overwhelmed by it?
Yes, too much, really. I felt a bit overwhelmed by it. And I think a lot of the love that should have gone on my dad went on me, and he felt slightly pushed out because of that. And she was still regarded me as a child all my life, really. She used to lit me pull overs when I was twenty eight or thirty, and the sleeves would be about five inches too short.
Presenter asks
21:50How did you cope with your wife Jean's schizophrenia?
Yeah, she has schizophrenia, which is not something that I wish on anybody. Absolute nightmare. But that governed our whole lives, governed her life, of course, and governed mine for many years. She was constantly in and out of mental hospitals.
“I think you'd go mad if you're at home all day on your own seven days a week. I think that would be a recipe for disaster. I think getting out of the house to… Meet these terrible people at the art school probably will keep you sane.”
“The thing about the length of time illustration takes that people don't always realize, and that you can write something so much more quickly.… and uh you don't need half the research for it that you do for illustration.”
“I turned to the snowman as light relief from the bogeyman, really.”
“Well, who wants to be normal?”
“But most endings are sad anyway. It all ends in death. Snowman melts.”
“I like to go down an Anderson shelter and wait for it to blow over.”
“What will the neighbours think, I think, was the governing thing in her entire life.”