Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
An actor best known as Tom Goode in the sitcom The Good Life and for classical roles with Kenneth Branagh.
On the island
Eight records
My first record was a very early recording of the great Enrico Caruso. And I was introduced to his voice many years ago when I was about, I think, fourteen by a friend of my grandfather's. And I just fell in love with him and am still terribly in love with him.
Record number two takes me back to my uh first job as a jobbing clerk, because I was thrown out of school at sixteen. And so I used to do the uh make the tea and then wash up the cups in uh a little place an annex next to the gentleman's loo. and which had a very, very fine echo. so I used to do a very abandoned impersonation of Al Josen.
On the Sunny Side of the Street
Louis Armstrong and His All Stars
This takes us on to Louis Armstrong. We saw Louis Armstrong at Hammersmith years and years ago live, so actually saw him do it. It's just so marvelous. And this one, he sings it, he knows that everyone knows this number Sunny Side the Street. So he kind of wings it.
Piano Sonata No. 19 in C minor, D. 958: II. Adagio
Oh, number four. Now this is Alfred, the divine Alfred Brendel, who I made laugh like a drain when I played Malvolio in Hammersmith. And he was in the front row. We recognized him and everyone was terrified. That Alfred's in front. And I came on cross-guarded with this idiot smile of Malvolio's and literally leant forward. I thought his head was going to touch the ground.
The White Box of Great Bardfield
Number five are, of course, the goons. I didn't know which to pick. I mean there are thousands of little bits to pick, but um this is one from 1955.
Patrick Doyle, Stephen Hill Singers, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra & Sir Simon Rattle
Oh, well now, to remind me of Kenneth Ranner and and uh Renaissance company and his new company and all the friends I made, I'd love the um the title music from Branner's Henry V.
Organ Concerto No. 13 in F major, HWV 295 "The Cuckoo and the Nightingale": II. AllegroFavourite
George Malcolm, Academy of St Martin in the Fields & Sir Neville Marriner
I was having my usual nap before going on stage in Coriolanus at Chichester, in a part that I wasn't terribly good in, didn't not very happy, a bit tense, a bit nervous about it. And I had the third programme on it, because I'm Radio 4 Fiend, but I had Radio 3, and I suddenly heard this amazing sound, and it was Handel. And I became a fanatic about Handel, but this I just love.
Serenade No. 10 in B-flat major, K. 361 "Gran Partita": III. Adagio
Amadeus Winds & Christopher Hogwood
Mozart, of course. Amadeus first saw that uh with Paul Schofield, the last, I think, great dinosaur of the great actors. So I would naturally have this amazing piece of Mozart.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:07You are a natural Richard, as you implied, but that's not to say there hasn't been a lot of hard work gone into it, because you were racked, as I understand it, with nerves in the beginning, weren't you?
Terrible nerves and the worst uh thing was I I spoke so fast that uh no one could quite understand me. And so I became an amateur actor at a very early age at fourteen, and I was fired from the amateur because they said you can't understand what you're talking about.
Presenter asks
2:59What was that like [acting opposite Robert De Niro in Frankenstein]? Because his methods, to coin a phrase, are rather different from yours, aren't they?
Yes, I learn the lines and say them, hopefully at the right time. But Robert is a deeply emotional method actor. One time when I was playing the old man in one of the scenes we had, and I have to hear that Frankenstein is outside the door and have to call him in. And so I'm a dear old man who's blind. I can't see him. So I say, you know, I know you are there. Come along. Come in, come in, come in. And nothing happened. … Branner's behind me saying, Look, he said, Don't be a fool, you've got to make him come on. He's not like you. I said I read the script. I say, come in. He comes in. He says, No, no, no, not with Robertson here. It's quite different. You've got to make him feel he must come in.
The keepsakes
The luxury
An enormous supply of Chardonnay
After I had perfected my impersonation of [Al Jolson] and Louis Armstrong and finished the Chardonnay I could turn my face towards a palm tree and fade gently out.
Presenter asks
8:29Where does that [curious empathy with failure] come from?
Probably because I was a pretty bad failure for the first, I suppose, twenty years of my life. So I knew what it was, and I always try to act from the person's point of view, not my point of view.
Presenter asks
8:58What did [your father] do?
He did everything. He did about 630 jobs, I think. But mainly he was in the bookmaking business, in the racing. But uh he was a good time chap, but uh Lyft of the day, never mind so he made me as a person, and still I am a person, of very, very cautious.
Presenter asks
20:26When when you turned to Kenneth Branner, when he discovered you in inverted commas in the late eighties, was it you who was turning away from television sitcom, or was it turning away from you?
I felt that I spoke to Annie, my wife, about it, we thought, I don't think I can get a lot further. I had done such super material, good writing, and I thought, well, what I should do now I was then fifty, fifty five was to go full circle and go back to rep.
“I speak colossal speed and luckily with Roger Thursby in brothers in law he's a very, very highly strung young man as I was, so not much acting required.”
“I found Tom [Good] you know, I didn't like him at all. I thought I certainly wouldn't live next to him. I'd be like Political Keith and clear out than this awful sort of obsessive man getting up at five in the morning to do his goats and things.”
“I'm as I say, I'm just an actor really, not a highly successful, resourceful human being.”