Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
A playwright best known for the musical Blood Brothers and the films Educating Rita and Shirley Valentine.
On the island
Eight records
In the Bleak Midwinter / Here Comes the Sun
Gustav Holst and George Harrison
segueing through to Here Comes the Sun
version recorded for the film Our Day Out
In conversation
Presenter asks
2:46Do you still keep your hand in [with hairdressing]? Do you do your wife's hair?
Uh no, I cut my dad's hair. I've always cut my dad's hair. Do that regularly. Um occasionally, yeah, I will do I'll I'll henna Nanny's hair or something like that. But it's not you know, I'm just not that good at it. I never was that good at it.
Presenter asks
3:20You still live in or around Liverpool – you've never been tempted out by success?
No, never remotely tempted. Uh at the same time that I became successful, my first child, Robert, was born. And of course, once you have children, they set up their own social networks and what have you. So the decision to leave Liverpool and live somewhere else would not be my sole decision. I'd have to, you know, and certainly at the moment with Mulbean teenagers, I'm sure they'd set up a great sort of hubbub if I said, you know, we're moving elsewhere.
Presenter asks
12:40Do you feel any resentment that nobody spotted or encouraged your talent when you were young?
No, much later when I wanted to return to education, uh there was a terrible sort of anger at the the blocks that were put in my way. But no, I I didn't feel I mean I w when I failed the Eleven Plus, I was rather glad to have failed it because it meant that I didn't go off with uh another posh set of kids to a school that I didn't want to go to. It meant that I stayed within my own kind, you know. So i I don't blame school. I conspired in that. It was it was much easier to go out and take the football on the field. It was much easier to pick up the guitar when I was fourteen rather than actually study music within the school setup and … go to the cavern and listen to the Beatles. … So I no, I don't but but I have a general rage and resentment and anger at the massive failing of so many people within the educational system.
The keepsakes
The book
And I just a means of acquiring a base to understand many more languages, including English, of course.
Presenter asks
20:17Did you mean Educating Rita to be autobiographical?
No, I was not remotely conscious of writing uh autobiographically. It was only about three months after the play had been playing that I I went down to Birmingham to see the touring version. Kate Fitzgerald was playing in it and Tom Baker and I sat there and I thought, This is just glaringly how can you not realize that it's so autobiographical? But then again, if I'd had that awareness when trying to write the play, I never would have been able to write the play because I never feel confident in or neither do I ever want to say explore my own life on stage. I'm not into therapy writing, you know.
Presenter asks
32:14Would it be fair to say you're not particularly ambitious?
I'm extremely ambitious, but I'm ambitious in terms of the work itself. I'm always trying to do that which seems to be undoable, if you like, not doable. And if you crack that, if you spend a day and you come away and you've got, you know, two sheets of paper full of words which you know are going to work, it is still the most satisfying feeling.
“Oh, the the classic. It's the cl you have to go through that, you know, you have to sit there and uh what happens of course is it's not the newspapers that come in, the first reviews that come in are the are the T V stations, you know. And the first one duly came through and they called it bloody awful or twin reeks or something like that and I thought, Oh, here we go and sure enough, from from then on … every review was damning, and I thought we'd be closed within the week.”
“Yes, it is. Uh it it still doesn't wipe out the agony of that party though. I think I'll always remember that particular night.”
“every single week for two years as if she'd never told me it before. And of course what I could never do was indicate to that woman that she'd told me this story before. Because I knew even then, even as a uh a fairly young lad, that there was something vitally important in this ritual that we both had to go through.”
“I'm extremely ambitious, but I'm ambitious in terms of the work itself. I'm always trying to do that which seems to be undoable, if you like, not doable. And if you crack that, if you spend a day and you come away and you've got, you know, two sheets of paper full of words which you know are going to work, it is still the most satisfying feeling.”