Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
2 appearances
One sixth of Monty Python, known as a scriptwriter, film director, lyricist, medievalist, and fish impersonator.
On the island
Eight records
Well, the first record I've chosen is really the the first record I ever remember actually seeing or hearing or feeling, and it was an old seventy eight. My brother bought it when he must have been woo five and I must have been three, and we were living in Colwyn Bay. And so this was what, nineteen forty five, I guess. And this record is by a chap called Tony Pastor.
Serenade No. 10 in B-flat major, K. 361 "Gran Partita": III. Adagio
London Wind Quintet and Ensemble, conducted by Otto Klemperer
I substituted Mozart's serenade for thirteen wind instruments. particularly the third movement, which I don't know any piece of music that speaks more to my soul than this piece of music. It just makes me cry.
The Story of the Wonderful Soup Stone
Well, I'm very fond of stories, Roy. I do like a good story, and I thought I ought to have one, and so this is by Doctor Hook.
Duet for Two Violins in the Sixth-Tone System
It was a a record that our music master used to play as an exercise. He used to play it to the whole class, and uh anybody who laughed during it would be given to detention. This is a slight exaggeration, And so we used to sit there trying not to laugh. And eventually I bought a copy of it and trained myself not to laugh at it. And actually I rather enjoy it now, as a strange thing.
Now I don't think I could possibly be on any desert island without uh the Beatles. It's difficult to choose any Beatles record more than another, but at this one I remember hearing when I was driving my car across London, I suddenly heard this song, and I didn't know who it was, and it just electrified me.
Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 77: I. Allegro non troppo
Ginette Neveu with the Philharmonia Orchestra
Well, this is really for the artist on it. It's a violinist uh named Jeanette Nevere. ... when I heard the records, I was just amazed by her violin playing. I'm I'm not a connoisseur of the violin, but it seems to me when I listen to her, there's this tremendous power and kind of forcefulness, almost sort of masculinity in what she's producing.
Well, this is a man I think is one of the uh the great songwriters of our time. Paul Simon. And uh this song actually I don't think is his best song by any means. But you know how sometimes somebody says something and it actually changes your way of thinking.
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:44Have you ever experienced loneliness in your life?
Well, I think as a child, although I wasn't lonely, I sort of had a very good family life really, I found isolation was something that I sought. I would sort of go away and hide upstairs and write poems.
Presenter asks
4:22What did you want to be as a boy?
Well, ever since I could write really, I was going to be a poet, I guess. I was always writing poems and scribbling verses onto bits of paper.
Presenter asks
6:47What did you read [at Oxford]?
I read English. It's the nearest thing to not reading anything, really.
Presenter asks
8:58At this time [after Oxford] were you resolved to make a living in the entertainment [industry]?
It happened kind of by default more than anything. Having always decided I was going to be a poet, or I have to say, an actor, I'm going through. ... But it was poetry I was interested in, but I saw the economic disadvantages of this course. ... Then after the Edinburgh Review that year, when I came down, we were offered to do a a run at the Establishment Club in London. and it seemed like kind of a natural progression, so I kind of fell into it.
The keepsakes
The luxury
Presenter asks
24:44Why [did you make Monty Python's Life of Brian]? The fact that Brian's life was remarkably similar to that of a divinity was hardly a coincidence.
Well, in fact, the film did start off. We were going to actually write A Life of Christ. We thought it would be quite interesting to write A Funny Life of Christ. When we actually started working on it ... I think we all very quickly came to the opinion that Christ was a very good bloke saying a lot of very good things that we we all agreed with. And the f humour wasn't in Christ at all. The humour was in the way in which somebody can come down, say things which are true and real, and then for the next two thousand years people go ahead fighting and killing each other because they can't agree on what this good person has said. And that is really what the life of Brian was doing, really.
“I wasn't doing self expression. I was writing poems about cowboys and trains going through tunnels and everything. To me it was just sort of making things, like making chairs. It wasn't self expression.”
“It was actually sitting in the Bodleyn library reading what somebody had written about, what somebody else had written about, what somebody else had written about, what Milton had written. And I I looked round all these other people who were reading what somebody else had written ... And it seemed remote. It seemed like I would rather be writing the thing in the first place.”
“I think to get really good organized protests, some group has to feel you're directly getting specifically at them, but uh everybody can see we're getting at everybody else.”