Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Actor best known for playing Mr. Penny on radio and Mole in Toad of Toad Hall, and for children's series like Rivers of England.
On the island
Eight records
CASTAWAY DISCUSSES, NOT PLAYED — no music identified in transcript
The keepsakes
No book or luxury recorded for this episode.
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:28What do you remember about playing Polonius to Wolfit's Hamlet, and being transfixed behind the scenes?
Uh I lay unfortunately I died that night in view of the audience, so I had to stay and bleed for first only slightly, for for about uh ten minutes. I usually used to die out of sight and creep off, but that day one of my legs was sticking out, so I couldn't move. He I think he rammed the curtain and uh it sort of tore my ear.
Presenter asks
1:24You made your first broadcast while you were still an undergraduate — what was that like?
It was right in the very early days, I can't remember, when it was on a boat race night. We were asked to break into this place at Svoy Hill and pretend we were all drunk. After the boat race, you see, and all that, and just interrupt the last uh five min ten minutes of the Savoy or Fien's band, was or one of those things that played at some hotel near the Savoyos there. And we broke in and gave this little impromptu concert. But we must our acting must have been very good, because um an old lady wrote in to the BBC afterwards and said she wished to sympathise with the BBC for the unmannerly interruption of the Oxford students, although they were Oxford students, could be no gentlemen.
Presenter asks
2:11You made a great success before the war with 'Goodbye, Mr. Chips' — how did that come about?
Goodbye, Mr. Chips. Yes, that was really the the first major thing I did.
Presenter asks
2:18Tell me about the success of 'Mr. Penny' — how did that character catch on?
It wasn't written for me, I just got cast for it. Nobody took much notice the first two times. … Suddenly, after three weeks, a newspaper rang me up and said, Is it true that you are Mr. Penny? As if they made a great discovery. My voice was quite well known then in the children's house. I said, yes. He said, well, why hadn't the BBC announced your name? I said, oh, hadn't they? I hadn't seen it on the radio time. The next day, to my horror, in large letters came out, Mr. Penny said he neither knew nor cared why the BBC had not advertised his name. I got a terrible state that the BBC would think I was being snorty with them.
Presenter asks
3:36What do you remember about children's programmes like 'Rivers of England' and 'Castles of England'?
Oh, it was lovely that was. … Middle aged people do nothing but come up to me and say how much I delighted their youth. Quite quite distinguished people whose family rushed home from school to hear these things.
“I lay unfortunately I died that night in view of the audience, so I had to stay and bleed for first only slightly, for for about uh ten minutes. I usually used to die out of sight and creep off, but that day one of my legs was sticking out, so I couldn't move. He I think he rammed the curtain and uh it sort of tore my ear.”
“We broke in and gave this little impromptu concert. But we must our acting must have been very good, because um an old lady wrote in to the BBC afterwards and said she wished to sympathise with the BBC for the unmannerly interruption of the Oxford students, although they were Oxford students, could be no gentlemen.”
“Suddenly, after three weeks, a newspaper rang me up and said, Is it true that you are Mr. Penny? As if they made a great discovery. … The next day, to my horror, in large letters came out, Mr. Penny said he neither knew nor cared why the BBC had not advertised his name. I got a terrible state that the BBC would think I was being snorty with them.”
“Middle aged people do nothing but come up to me and say how much I delighted their youth. Quite quite distinguished people whose family rushed home from school to hear these things.”