Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
3 appearances
Writer, actress, composer and stand-up comedian known for her comedy tours, sitcoms and award-winning drama Housewife 49.
On the island
Eight records
I when I was doing the sessions for the series I've just done, we had Jack Brymer in on the session and I was going to go up and say, Jack Brymer, I love your record. Well I didn't, I just said hello. But sometimes I've played this as a sort of tribute to him.
London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by André Previn
I was in a place which I can't even mention. I rented a flat with my husband. We were working somewhere and uh my husband was dying his stage shoes black. on a pale green carpet and he spilt the shoe dye. This is while this record was playing. He very cleverly spilt the shoe dye all over the carpet. So that was a very jolly evening and we nearly got divorced after that.
African RipplesFavourite
this is a brilliant tune called African Ripples which I've been trying to play for about two years and I can't play well I can play one hand at a time but not both. And he he plays it really fast and then about halfway through he suddenly whips into fifth gear and plays it nine times quicker.
I'm not a great listener to of songs and I don't like lyrics on the whole. But h him and Noel Coward are the only people's lyrics that I listen to. And I really love Chasjankle's music as well. And this is one of the tunes that I play over and over and over again.
André Previn with the London Symphony Orchestra
this is um Gershwin and this is the concerto in F, which is another great piece of piano playing.
the reason I've picked this particular one is it's him at Las Vegas, where he's obviously gone in to make a killing and make a few bob for his old age, and he's playing the most unlikely audience, and I'm sure he must have been shaken in his boots before he went on, but I mean he's just He was very clever and the the things that he's picked to sing to them about, especially in this song Let's Do It, he's really clever, the way he he works them up.
this is Bunny Berrigan, but he's playing a Bix by the Beck tune'cause I love them both and this is In a Mist and this is what I used to play every morning when I was writing the series. I used to put this on.
I'm a mad walker and I walk all the time and I play my walkman when I'm walking and this is my favourite thing for walking to which is the weather girls who are two enormous black women with enormous black voices and they sing Lock Me Up and it's a great ski to moving to.
I just find him very moving. And although he can write very complicated tunes, this song Marie is very, very simple.
It's Birdland, and it's not the version that most people know. It's the live version, which my son decided we should pick that of the two versions. And Birdland is great because you can sing along to it and it's very jolly.
I love tango music, I love violin music, so I'm trying to combine two things in one because I can only choose eight records and this is called uh Soledad and it just it lowers my heart rate, that's why I play it because it makes me feel relaxed when I hear it.
My son, luckily, being fifteen, is very uh to the minute with pop music and he said, Oh, I think you'd really like this and he he he put it on my uh on my iPod and it's Mr. Scruff and my favorite track, Getta Move On.
Misery Is the River of the World
It's called Misery is the River of the World. And I get a lot of the music that I know from listening to the radio sort of late night, and this was one I'd heard. But I just love this. It makes me laugh, even though it's so gloomy.
What a Fool BelievesFavourite
Michael McDonald & Kenny Loggins
This is my happy music, and I didn't even know who this was. Somebody burnt me this CD and I had to ask who the act was. I didn't know it was the Doobie Brothers, because I know this track as a warm-up track when we did Acon Artiques the Musical in the West End two years ago
This is something that I used to play when I went through a very bad time a few years ago, and it was the first time I really realized that music could express things that you perhaps couldn't express yourself verbally, or sometimes it would almost take away the feeling that you had.
Clare College Singers and Orchestra, conducted by John Rutter
I adore Christmas music. In fact, that's the best bit of Christmas to me, is the music. I like the music and making the cake, really, those are my high points.
In conversation
Presenter asks
3:34What sort of a background was it? Was it a very happy childhood, a very sort of contented one?
It was just very ordinary really. I was a very boring boring child. Youngest youngest of four occupations, playing the piano, eating, watching television, which is all I do now really.
Presenter asks
4:19When did you discover that you were funny?
About fifteen I joined a youth theatre, Rochdale Youth Theatre, and I started to get parts in the plays and they're always the funny parts and that's when I thought, Oh, I can do this,'cause I hadn't been able to do anything before that.
Presenter asks
6:34What kind of fame did you imagine [when you wanted to be famous as a child]?
I don't know what I imagined. I d I remember just remember thinking it about the age of five, but later on I didn't want to be famous. I just wanted to earn a living because it looked like this was going to be very difficult to do'cause I was on the dole for so long. So my ambition changed to just wanting to be in the entertainment business and earn money at it. And that being famous went out the window, except sort of it's useful for selling tickets. But I mean it's not how you envisage it because it's a nuisance.
The keepsakes
The book
The Complete Works of Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens
probably a cliché, I know, on this, but it would have to be Dickens, who I never managed to get on with, and I'd have no choice but on a desert island to have to really get stuck in. And he does write such nice big books.
The luxury
But they would have to have blank pages, every other page would have to be blank, and a nice black pen. So I could write if I wanted to.
Presenter asks
10:30What attitude did your tutors [at university] have to you? Did they think you had a shiny career ahead of you on the stage?
No,'cause they kept telling me not to do it. So they kept saying, No, please go into stage management. And I I auditioned for a part in Luke, well the only female part in Luke, Joe Orton's Loot, and I didn't get it. And they said, um, well what you can do is you can play the piano at the end of the the show while people are walking out. So I did that and I and as they were all leaving I stood up and said, Don't go and I wrote a song about how I should have had the part and that was what started me off doing the songwriting really.
Presenter asks
13:07After you left university, what did you do then to earn a living?
Well, I went in for talent competitions. I went in for the Pub Entertainer of the Year competition. I don't know why, because I never went in pubs and it wasn't entertaining. But I had this boyfriend and he ditched me. And I wanted to show him that I could get on without him. So I went in for this. I thought, well, I'll win and he'll come and see me being terribly famous and he'll be terribly hurt and wounded. Which I hope he is now, looking back. And I went in and I there were five acts and I came third out of five.
Presenter asks
24:09Of all the things that you do, which is the one you enjoy most of all? Is it live performance?
I think it it is because that's the hardest. That's where you really learn your job. You can I could do something on television and it might be really quite mediocre, but because it's awfully well lit and it comes, you know, as part of something else, you can get away with it. But if I come on on stage and do something that's not very good, then I instantly know. And you you really have to do your best because uh people are paying money to see and it's their night out. And that's when you're really tested, I think.
Presenter asks
1:13Why did you decide to take on [Housewife 49], which was so different from what you were very well known for?
Well, I didn't do it specifically to be different. I was very uh attracted to the diary of Nella Last, which was published in the early eighties after she died. And when I was asked to to do something for Granada, I thought, oh, maybe this would make a good make a good drama, I thought.
Presenter asks
2:33Are you comfortable with that sort of attention [from winning two BAFTAs]?
Yeah, I was very happy with that. Yeah, yes, obviously you go into television or show businesses because you like attention. I don't want to pretend I don't enjoy it. I was really happy to be on the front page of the newspapers with my two BAFTAs and then the next day I didn't think about it.
Presenter asks
5:22Were you conscious that [your childhood home] was an unusual setup?
Yeah, I was. I was. I used to go to other people's houses. I was amazed that the you know, that the house wasn't full of junk like our house was absolutely crammed with books and things that my mother would get off bombsites and things that she would buy from second hand shops
Presenter asks
17:48What was it that was so special about meeting [your husband, Geoffrey Durham]?
I met him he was an actor at the Phoenix Theatre in Leicester, and I was asked to be the musical director of a show he was in playing Buffalo Bill. … I can't really explain it was just one of those things. It was just one of those things where you click.
Presenter asks
29:12How helpful has therapy been to you in your periods of depression?
Well, at least you know you're not boring somebody, or if you are boring them, at least they're getting 75 quid, so you don't feel so inhibited. I did it during that time of my marriage break-up a lot, because I found it very comforting to talk to a therapist who had talked to lots and lots of people.
“I liked being on my own better than with other people.”
“I wants to be a boxer, first of all, and then I want to be famous. And that that's all I wanted to be. I wanted to be famous.”
“I think it's nice to be where everybody else isn't. I do like to keep away from other comics. I don't want to end up doing the same as everybody else.”
“I think she was neglected, really, looking back at her.”
“I did always feel I was very good at something and that I could be very good at being funny. That's what I always felt.”
“I think comedy is a very difficult thing to do without somebody in your corner, because it's really lonely to have somebody with you who says, oh, that was good, that didn't work, that was great.”
“I just suddenly found the way that you constructed a sentence so that people would have to respond with a laugh at the end. And there's a very fine line between something that's quite funny, quite amusing, and might provoke a smile, and something that actually lands and gets a laugh.”
“I felt like one of those cartoon people that steps over a cliff, really. … you know, their legs are moving and then s there's nothing there's nothing underneath. … twenty six years is a long time. … Your landscape … changes suddenly. I find that very difficult.”