Jonathan Miller on Desert Island Discs

[Emergency Lalla Ward Ten]

Today, which I completed missed. Repeated on Friday, and it's probably on Listen Again.

'So, Jonathan, where would you like me to stick this Bible?'

[skibz]

Unfortunately Desert Island Discs is one of the few R4 programmes that isn't available on listen again. What time is it on on Friday? I might try and capture it as an mp3 if it's any good...

[The Mumbler]

9.05am on Friday morning (slightly edited by a couple of minutes just because of a news bulletin).  I bloody missed this too.  The more waspish he is, the better - Lawley's an abominable presenter.  Hard to believe that when Parky did that show in the 80s for a couple of years, everyone accused it of being a tabloid shell of the Plomley original, but Lawley's dragged it kicking and screaming into the confessional age, God save us all.  Private Passions (R3) is much better - the guests actually talk about the music, shock horror.

Lawley's worst moment?  The Kenny Everett intro must be up there, but I'd like to select Hugh Laurie (1996) getting audibly fucked off by being persistently asked about "what Stephen must have been feeling like in Belgium".  Really rude.  You can hear the snap when he switches from a friendly but cautious "You'd have to get him in this room really" to essentially "I can't speak for him".  On hearing that, I'd like to think a nation cheered.

Oh, apparently, the reason it's not on Listen Again is due to some dispute/agreement with the Plomley estate or something.

[skibz]

Yeah, she's an obnoxious little bitch isn't she? One of the worst I heard was George Clooney's, with Lawley gushing praise all over him and audibly swooning at every joke he cracked - and on the other hand, she heaped scorn on Iain Duncan Smith for daring to suggest that he wanted to keep his children out of the press. She doesn't seem to understand that it's supposed to be a nice friendly interview programme, with bits of music in between, rather than fucking Newsnight or something.

[Bert Thung]

Sue Lawley gets criticised a lot, and it still isn't enough.  The Kenny Everett intro is a fine example of her vileness.  

All she seems interested in is "going for an angle", and even if the responses don't fit in with her "angle", she'll batter away at it relentlessly.

Remember her introducing Whoopi Goldberg as "ugly" when she stood in for Wogan, or these clips where she relentlessly went on about Pauline Collins age on TV Hell? Ghastly woman.  

My greatest ambition is to appear on Desert Island Discs, my smallest ambition is to be interviewed by Sue Lawley.  Since it  seems to be her only job nowadays, why can't she just be fired?  I doubt even the Radio 4 retired Colonels audience would mind that.

[skibz]

Hmm, what exactly happened with the Kenny Everett intro? I don't think I heard that one...

[The Mumbler]

Basically, before Everett even had a chance to speak, Lawley said something along the lines of "He's got the HIV virus", and launched straight into her first question which was, "In fact, Kenny you've had the virus for some time now".  Kenny's reply was "Yes, that's right, Sue.  [To listeners] Hello, by the way".  He was dead 18 months later.

[Bert Thung]

Paraphrasing from memory, but this is pretty close

Lawley -  Today our castaway is Kenny Everett, who has been diagnosed with Aids.  Kenny, when did you discover you had the virus?

Everett - Anyway, hello Sue.

[Pinball]

Gee, what a cow.

Anyway, by chance I caught the fact that Miller was on today's repeat broadcast, and I've MP2d it. Will be encoded & shared later today.

[Emergency Lalla Ward Ten]

Lawley didn't clock her insensitivity though - her second question was 'Whenever you get a cold, do you always think 'this time it might be fully-blown AIDS'?'. Horrible woman.

It got complaints on Feedback anyway - one of the few occasions where I agreed with the brickbats.

[benthalo]

I recorded it this morning and only listened to the end. Sue Lawley always makes me ill so I'm saving it up for a very strong stomach. She did John Fortune the other week and seemed annoyed with him whenever he tried to be spontaneous and veer away from her carefully policed programme structure.

[kidsick5000]

She doesn't seem to understand that it's supposed to be a nice friendly interview programme, with bits of music in between, rather than fucking Newsnight or something.

Now theres an idea...

"Minister, your policy is clearly illthought out, grossly mismanaged, you could well be revealed to have lied to the House, bringing so much criticism that your actions so far this week could well spell the end for the government!
However, the next clip youve chosen is of Limahl on Top Of The Pops in 1986 singing Neverending Story"

[Hoogstraten'sSmilingUlcer]

Interesting to see what Morris what do on Desert Island Discs. I feel he's more likely to go on a radio show that a TV one, and I'd hope he would bite back at Lawley. H'd either go for serious choices or deliberately stupid ones, like the 'Silence'  or 'Cop Killer' and justify them either brilliantly or just shrugging 'Well, I quite like them, Sue.' I'm rambling now.

I don't listen to Discs that much anymore, mainly because most of the guests don't interest me in the slightest, though Miller seems promising. I take a perverse pleasure in listening to Lawley's hideously awful interviewing techniques. I agree that there's far too much tedious chit-chat beginning 'Now, when you were five, your parents....' and an embarrassing lack of music-related talk.

Of especially dreadful episodes, Graham Norton's springs to mind. Though I'm not a big Norton fan, he can be amusing, but that show was just chockablock with strained, heaving silences between Norton cracking a gag and giggling and Lawley mumbling, 'And now your next choice...'

[phalmachine]

Linky here

The Harry Lime Theme and a book about invertebrates, he's my kind of guy.  
That's a great site, you can find all the embarrassing songs that politicians have chosen.

The worst clip I've seen of Sue Lawley was the one where she doesn't even try to pronounce the Indian cricketers name: '...and I'm sorry I can't pronounce THAT'.  She was pro Iraq war too, I remember Paul Whitehouse taking the piss out of her for it. 'Come join the love train, Sue!'.

[Clinton Morgan]

I only caught bits and bobs of the end. I thought I might be able to catch up on Listen Again but.............

What I did pick up on:

Jonathan Miller about how would he cope being alone on the island since he doesn't believe in God, " I don't think about not believing in God any more than I think about not believing in witches."

On his choice of Surfin' USA by The Beach Boys, " An America before anyone ever heard of George W."

He said he'd like to die to Bach's Goldberg Variations.

The Ravi Shankar music was taken from his adaptation of 'Alice In Wonderland'.

Sue accused Jonathan Miller of biting the hand that feeds him, "Most people in television have two degrees in media studies, that's like having a degree in stationary."

I came in the kitchen at the moment he was talking about holocaust deniers.

[Freezing]

Edit: double post.

[Freezing]

I came in the kitchen at the moment he was talking about holocaust deniers.

Sounds like an extreme reaction.  He's not usually that exciting.

[Freezing]

Edit: stupid computer keep posting same thing!  It wasn't even a very good joke.

[butnut]

I must make remind myself to listen to this on Friday. It'll be great to hear him talking. I like his music choices - I presumed they'd all be really pretentious ones for some reason, but they're not, and I like that.

It's really hard choosing things for this kind of thing. For about a week, I've been meaning to start a comedy desert island disks thread, where you have choose your favourite 8 episodes. I've got 5 at the moment, but picking the last 3 is really, really tricky. If I ever do it, I'll start the thread.

[phalmachine]

Dammit, you stole my idea! I was going to call it Desert Island Skits.  Clever eh?

[butnut]

Heh! That's good.

I'll be happy for you (or anyone) to start the thread, as it's going to take me awhile to get my final 8. I feel it should be specific episodes of shows, not series or anything, so that you can say why that show is so good.

[phalmachine]

I'm having the same trouble chosing too, and I'd forgotten it was 8 and not 10.  My book would definately be Woody Allen - Complete Prose.  Or would that come under the 'given', like the Bible/Shakespeare? Maybe I'm taking the change of format too seriously.

You go ahead and start the thread.  I'm a thread-killer. See...

[butnut]

Oh, you bastard. I hadn't even thought of the book - or the luxury. That's going to delay the starting of the thread by a few more days.

[Jemble Fred]

Lawley's worst moment?  The Kenny Everett intro must be up there, but I'd like to select Hugh Laurie (1996) getting audibly fucked off by being persistently asked about "what Stephen must have been feeling like in Belgium".  Really rude.  You can hear the snap when he switches from a friendly but cautious "You'd have to get him in this room really" to essentially "I can't speak for him".  On hearing that, I'd like to think a nation cheered.

I'd forgotten that bit – what stays in my mind is how Lawley continually took every self deprecating comment that the infamously self-critical Laurie uttered and twisted it against him. Other people could play piano better, the films he'd been in had been flops, he was afraid of audiences... it became like a Judgement Day trial. God, what a cow. I'd like to see more Hugh Laurie being interviewed and appearing on radio/TV generally, but it's interviews like that make him so loth to appear in front of an audience.

Remember the French & Saunders 'Hey Fatty Boom-Boom' Desert Island Discs sketch?

[kidsick5000]

Lawley's worst moment?  The Kenny Everett intro must be up there, but I'd like to select Hugh Laurie (1996) getting audibly fucked off by being persistently asked about "what Stephen must have been feeling like in Belgium".  Really rude.  You can hear the snap when he switches from a friendly but cautious "You'd have to get him in this room really" to essentially "I can't speak for him".  On hearing that, I'd like to think a nation cheered.

I'd forgotten that bit – what stays in my mind is how Lawley continually took every self deprecating comment that the infamously self-critical Laurie uttered and twisted it against him. Other people could play piano better, the films he'd been in had been flops, he was afraid of audiences... it became like a Judgement Day trial. God, what a cow. I'd like to see more Hugh Laurie being interviewed and appearing on radio/TV generally, but it's interviews like that make him so loth to appear in front of an audience.

Remember the French & Saunders 'Hey Fatty Boom-Boom' Desert Island Discs sketch?

I guess the worst thing you can do is invite someone onto your show, who has plenty to say themselves, and just ask them about someone the worked with afew years back. And clearly thaat is the person they tried to book and failed.

Desert Island Disks has never really interested me in that it usually seems to be an opportunity for the guest to lie about their choices. Either seeming more intellectual or more superior than anyone else.
Like those 'My kind of Day' articles where some bitpart actor claims that they get up at 6am, run 10miles, have a session of pilates and prepare their dogs muesli, all before attempting the times crossword.
The reality being they slump out of bed at 3pm having finished two bottles of johnnie walker by themselves before throwing up and peeling the remote off their back so they can catch countdown before the cartoons start.

[Emergency Lalla Ward Ten]

Didn't Laurie keep insisting in his DID i/v that he doesn't really enjoy performing and is only happy when he 'gets something over and done with'? That shocked me, although I'm not sure I believe him. He's clearly having a ball on A Bit Of. Isn't he?

Harry Enfield made the same claim, saying he's never happy performing comedy. What, including the 'George Whitebread' sketch? That's someone in their element if ever I saw it.

[The Mumbler]

My interpretation of Laurie's "hatred" of performing was that maybe he'd had terrible stage-fright.  It's like Douglas Adams really loathing the process of writing but usually doing a great job.  It's more to do with an insecurity - and for some people they'll have that, no matter how fantastic they become at it.   I got the feeling that Laurie had that with most things he was good at - but I also got the impression he was a chap rarely comfortable with what he'd achieved.  And while I hope very much that he's a happier individual than he seemed in that interview, the alternative to that sort of modesty could have been a dreadfully cocky performer.

[alan strang]

the alternative to that sort of modesty could have been a dreadfully cocky performer.

Ugh - the face of Adam Bloom rises over the horizon.

Somewhere on video I have most of an old episode of Wogan from early 1989 which featured several comedians plugging the forthcoming Night of Comic Relief. One section has Dawn French, Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie interviewed together. This would probably have been on of the first big live TV interviews Laurie had participated in and he actually looks quite nervous and uncomfortable throughout.

Incidentally, they mention that they were planning a Comic Relief 'Masterclass' sketch for that year's event which involved Fry teaching Laurie the correct way to ask people for money. There was no sign of it on the night however.

[The Mumbler]

I'm listening to the Miller repeat now.  Some time ago, someone at Radio 4 (maybe Sue Lawley herself) decided to muddy the waters of the programme, not just by discussing the music less and less but by giving the programme a psychoanalytic "respectability" like Anthony Clare's In The Psychiatrist's Chair.  You get Lawley delighting over subjects' difficult parental relationships and, setting aside a special bit (usually between "Record number four" and "Record number five") about "the big tragedy" of their lives.  The Plomley incarnation was much more about the selections - Lawley's bastardised version is a Frankenstein's monster of forced autobiography and poor research, like a middle-market tabloid's perception of "quality celebrity journalism".

In The Psychiatrist's Chair was often a brilliant series, but it only worked because it was Clare (ahem, an actual *psychiatrist*) actually conducting the interviews.  Lawley's an overpromoted simperer from local television news - yet another example of mediocre newspersons inheriting the earth.

[Emergency Lalla Ward Ten]

Lawley's over-loud sniggering at the Proust reference was irritating.

Miller was great though - I particularly loved his hatred of people who use the term 'Renaissance man' pejoratively, arguing that it suggests 'knowing more than one thing is somehow showing off', that natural curiosity is a bad thing.

Although my favourite bit was this, from memory:

SL: Why don't you get many offers of work nowadays?
JM: Oh, probably because I'm old, I'm not 'cutting edge'...I don't make 'must-see television', to use a vulgar phrase.
SL: Do you not think you're biting the hand that feeds you, saying these things?
JM: I might be, but I genuinely do see myself as surrounded by vulgar fools.
SL: Doesn't calling them 'vulgar fools' say more about you than it does about them?
JM: No, because if you keep your eyes and ears open it's clear that they are - objectively - vulgar fools. I may be a misanthrope, but the accused are guilty.