Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Creator and host of the radio programme where guests choose eight records for a desert island.
On the island
Eight records
from Die Fledermaus, in English
In the Shade of the Weeping Willow
Instrumental piece from the opera
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:38How did the idea for this programme start?
Well, it started a long time ago, over 16 years ago, in January 1942. I was looking for an idea that we could do a series of gramophone programs on. And I sent this idea in thinking, well, we might be able to do six.
Presenter asks
1:54Could you pick the most interesting guest you've had out of the 387?
Um well the most interesting from the point of view of choice of record I would say is Peter Ustinov... And from point of view of story, I would say the late Captain Dingle, who wrote books under the name of Sinbad, who told us about actually being wrecked on a desert island alone.
Presenter asks
5:18Harmonise on the theme of a career — how did you begin?
I can't explain it, but as a small child I had a tremendous enthusiasm for the theatre... When I left school I had no idea what I wanted to be... So I went out and I bluffed my way into film studios and theatres, and I wrote an awful lot of articles, not one single word of any one of which was printed. Then I got a job in an advertising agency as a copywriter writing advertisements about cattle foods... Then I got a job in charge of classified advertising on a group of trade papers... and from that I got quite a hilarious job as general assistant to a mail-order astrologer in Jersey... So I decided to take the plunge and do what I really wanted to do and be an actor...
The keepsakes
The book
Nearly 2,000 pages of facts and figures. thousands of performances and hundreds of productions to think about. I think I'd get an awful lot of pleasure out of that.
The luxury
A desk with a built-in typewriter, paper, and ribbons
Can I have a desk? with the typewriter sunk into it, you know. and perhaps in the drawers some paper and a spare ribbon or two.
Presenter asks
9:00What was it like doing crowd work in films?
Oh, sometimes miserable, sometimes great fun. I remember being in one film, a film about Sir Francis Drake and Queen Elizabeth, in which I played four different parts through four agents. I was plainly visible in all four parts with no distinctive make-up.
Presenter asks
13:09Do you have any outstanding ambitions?
Um well my outstanding ambition I think is outside the field of radio. I also write plays. I'd like to write a really successful one I think.
Presenter asks
22:01Of all the people who featured in your 387 Desert Island discs, do you think that after six months or a year that they really would still be in love with the records they've chosen?
That's a difficult point. If they rationed them, of course they would. But I find myself that the favourite records in my collection, I'll go to the cupboard and take a disc out and I'll look at it and say well that's an old friend. I don't need to play that. I know it so well. I think that would very likely happen on the island. It would be nice to have them though just in case, but you'll eventually know them so well there'll be no need to play them.
“I can't explain it, but as a small child I had a tremendous enthusiasm for the theatre. I used to get a thrill out of looking at a theatre poster. I used to read all the notices. I knew what was on and where and who was in it. I never saw them, of course. I don't know where it came from.”
“in my youthful ignorance I thought journalism was something you didn't have to train for, you just went out and did it. So I went out and I bluffed my way into film studios and theatres, and I wrote an awful lot of articles, not one single word of any one of which was printed.”
“If I was starting at the bottom, I thought I'd really start at the bottom.”
“I got a cheap day return to Guildford and sang up and down the High Street. And then in the crowd I saw someone I'd been at school with and lost my nerve.”