Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Comedian, actor and writer, co-creator and star of Catastrophe, author of A Heart That Works, and NHS advocate.
On the island
Eight records
I chose this song because the first time I heard it, it just nailed me to the floor. … this to me awoke something ancestral and powerful in me.
This Is to Mother YouFavourite
She's one of the better transmuters of pain into beauty that's ever existed. … she's my North Star.
Nocturne No. 11 in G minor, Op. 37 No. 1
I play Chopin's Nocturne all the time for my boys … it makes me think of my beautiful boys … he like plays a trick on the audience in this nocturne, and I love it.
It ends with him lamenting, why can't love ever touch my heart like fear does? … that was my big question.
I heard it regularly on my little iPod when I was trying to make a young woman fall in love with me in Massachusetts, who is now my wife of 18 years.
Fire in the Hole was the first song that took me off … I need to know more.
Elliott Smith's music was incredibly helpful to me during Henry's illness and after his death … he was very, very helpful to me.
This song is so weird and such an improbable, enduring hit … I love to dance to it.
In conversation
Presenter asks
3:11I wonder whether [writing your own story] has changed the way that you live and the way that you think about your life and yourself.
I do sometimes wish that I would just for once think of something to write that was about, you know, some weird herb farmer on a moon of Jupiter … The things that I've made that have connected with people the most have been mined from my own life at a cost. And I don't yet know how to do the other thing.
Presenter asks
13:22What was going on with you [in your teens], and how did it all start?
Very likely, it's nothing more interesting than garden variety alcoholism. … I first got drunk at 12 and then began to drink with more regularity at 14. … I had alcoholism on both sides of my family, and so then I got it too.
Presenter asks
27:09How bad did [the depression] get?
I would wake up and brush my teeth in the morning. When the toothbrush touched my tongue, I would vomit. My libido disappeared … I cannot sleep at all at night. … And then, mentally, my brain was telling me to kill myself all the time.
The keepsakes
The book
any Alice Munro short story collection
Alice Munro
I don't care which one, because they're all brilliant. ... Her books thrill me, and they're about normal people doing things in a world that you absolutely recognize.
The luxury
I now, as I get older, I don't care when I'm bad at things. ... So that would be very helpful to me on the island.
Presenter asks
29:02What was it about [your wife]?
I met her in the best possible circumstances for meeting a future partner. I met her taking care of a 17-year-old girl who had cerebral palsy. … I got to see her, you know, showing incredible day-in, day-out care for somebody. And also, she was in a bikini, and she was very beautiful and very funny.
Presenter asks
31:53What was the story that you wanted to tell about marriage and relationships [in Catastrophe]?
I think we were both had had enough of sitcoms where the husband was an oaf and the wife was overburdened and shrill … What seemed to be far more true was vacillating between being head over heels in love with your spouse and being thinking, how did I ever land this person? … To 20 minutes later being like, I'm going to kill them. … So the fact that people go between that, and that's in a normal, good marriage. So that's what we wanted to show. And we wanted to show like the blue-collar work ethic that's necessary to have a marriage endure.
Presenter asks
43:09How have you managed to [continue living fully] alongside honouring your grief and living with it? How have you managed to grow together as a family?
Henry's youngest brother was a big help with that. I remember thinking that when he was about to be born, I was like, well, my heart's been destroyed. … I don't know if I can [love him] anymore. And then the nanosecond he exited my wife's body, I looked at him and just, you know, started weeping and was so in love with him … And then you have to let, you have to feel and honor your pain. You have to let it hurt and you can't run away from it.
“I think if we can sit at a buffet in a strange hotel near some motorway and eat that and be happy, then you know we can live this brilliant and varied life. So, yeah, it's okay to have your comedy be sad. It's okay to have your tragedy be funny because so is life.”
“The cost is, because I do mine things for my own life, is that people will think that they know me or they know my story when they know the tippity tip of the iceberg and it's an occupational hazard, right?”
“I knew that any time I uncorked the jug, that anything could happen. So I did try to be somewhat disciplined about it.”
“I'm so grateful to be his dad. I'm so grateful he was or is my son. Don't know what words to use, don't care. I talk to him. I don't know if he hears me. It doesn't matter.”
“I like to go put my hands on slides at the playground that Henry slid down. I like to see nurses periodically bump into him that took care of him. So London is very important to me, and London took very good care of him.”