Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Actor best known for creating the comic bigot Alf Garnet in a long-running BBC sitcom.
On the island
Eight records
David Healy, Barry Rutter and Kevin Williams
I love the musical, it's the great, great score and um guys and dolls. And and when it was done by Richard Eyre at the National, I I was so proud of this magnificent production
Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis
Academy of St Martin in the Fields, conducted by Sir Neville Marriner
I love England and I love the countryside and I love everything about it. I'll make myself weep in a minute. It's dripping all over the page here. Anyway, here's a piece of music that uh just says England to me.
when I heard him reading this The Four Quartets on radio I thought I'm gonna have that with me on my desert island.
The Song Is Ended (but the Melody Lingers On)
I'm going to do a lot of dancing on this. A lot of the music I've chosen is to dance. I mean, I'm, you know, my legs are not what they were, but I love dancing.
Youth and Age on Beaulieu River
I started sailing when I was forty, and I do love sailing. It's a most marvellous uh pastime hobby. And I suppose one of my favouritest, favouritest spots is the Bewley River, which is just magnificent.
Clarence Williams, Armand Piron and Chris Smith
not a bit of wonderful, bouncy, jazzy music that I want to dance to on this beach, and here's a lady who can really suck it to you.
Romanian Rhapsody No. 1 in A major
Scottish National Orchestra, conducted by Neeme Järvi
This is Middle Europe, which I somehow have a kind of empathy with. I don't know why or how. I can still see my grandmother, my mother's mother. Dancing the gazatsky
Der Rosenkavalier (Trio from Act III)Favourite
I vicariously get religious uh thrills from listening to sacred music. ... But here's something which really is quite sublime, and so it'll have to do for my out of body experience
In conversation
Presenter asks
4:49How Orthodox, how strict was [your family]?
Oh, it was the usual hypocritical thing. I mean, my w the house was kosher and we only ate kosher food, but every year we'd go on holiday to Clacton or Herne Bay to a boarding house and we'd have bacon and egg every morning so it came out of our ears. So we weren't all that str strict.
Presenter asks
5:54Did [your father] like it when you married out?
No, not at all. I think I sent him a telegram on the day I married this lovely actress, uh, who is still my wife ... I sent him a telegram saying I don't think you ought to be the first to know that I married Connie and uh I didn't hear anything for a while. I heard he was very upset ... and then eventually the invitation came to lunch. ... and it wasn't rudeness, but he couldn't look at her and he couldn't speak.
Presenter asks
11:17How did Richard Burton inspire you to go into acting?
Richard couldn't resist the platform. He was up there. ... All the great declamatory speeches and I looked at this man, this magnificent man ... and there were these goggle mouthed peop gob smacked people. I thought I wouldn't mind doing that for a living, to have people standing there with their mouths wide open, staring. And that sort of started me off, I think.
The keepsakes
The book
Patrick O'Brian
Well, a bit of a cheat here because I'm a fanatical fan of Patrick O'Brien. He wrote these wonderful books about naval warfare...
The luxury
A pipe organ with an instruction manual
could I have an organ on this uh with a book of instruction how to play it
Presenter asks
15:10Did you actually become a card carrying member of the Communists?
No, but I did uh I mean I was a real awful little Tory. ... But on the troop ship coming back I met a uh a wonderful man, Norman Melberg. He was a communist and he gave me all the literature to read and uh convinced me that this was the only ethical and moral way to run a the world, run the country, run a country.
Presenter asks
23:03Did you never have a qualm about playing Alf Garnett because his views are anathema to you?
I only really had a misgiving once when I said to Johnny Spate, You've never had Alf being anti-Semitic ... So he did. ... I suppose that I had such admiration for the writing because he. reflected how daft racism was. ... No, nothing that Johnny ever wrote was in any way, for me, unsayable.
Presenter asks
30:43Is it true that some time ago you thought about committing suicide?
Well, it did fleetingly cross my mind. I had a very serious illness in Australia about twenty years ago called transverse myelitis, and I was paralysed from the waist down, and no sensation below the waist at all. And I lay there in hospital in Sydney, and I thought Do I want to live in a wheelchair? and I thought, No, I don't.
“I think every actor, you know, there's there has to be that thing in you uh uh in in order to play the part, or at least you have to be able to envisage what it must be like. The the magic as if, I think Stanislovski called it.”
“The best things I've ever done were easy. Alf was easy, Willie was easy, Shylock was easy. The best things are I've never had to agonise about.”
“To wake up in the morning and know that I am going to play King Lear that night, however badly.”