Speaker 1: You've done all the Harry Potter, how guilty as charged? Yes,
Speaker 1: my agent had read it, and so there's a children's
Speaker 1: book and they'd like you to do it for an audio.
Speaker 1: And I said, it's okay, thinking, you know this half
Speaker 1: a day's job, isn't it that the cat looks at
Speaker 1: the dog, the dog looked at the cat. It was
Speaker 1: nice the end, And that's a children's book. What could
Speaker 1: be better? It turned out to be a full novel length.
Speaker 1: But I started reading it and I thought this is
Speaker 1: about the good. So I agreed to do it. And
Speaker 1: I turned up and there was Joe Rowling and if
Speaker 1: she likes to remind you of this, I said, you know,
Speaker 1: I think this is just wonderful. People are gonna love it.
Speaker 1: It's such a great thing. If she said, well, I
Speaker 1: have to Chad, but I've actually I'd already written the
Speaker 1: second one and it's going to be publised in two months.
Speaker 1: And I said, good for you, Good for you? Why not?
Speaker 1: You never know you might get lucky. Oh my god, Hello,
Speaker 1: I'm Mini driver and welcome to many questions. I've always
Speaker 1: loved prus questionnaire. It was originally an eighteenth century parlor
Speaker 1: game meant to reveal an individual's true nature. But with
Speaker 1: so many questions, there wasn't really an opportunity to expand
Speaker 1: on anything. So I took the format of Prus's questionnaire
Speaker 1: and adapted What I think are seven of the most
Speaker 1: important questions you could ever ask someone. They are when
Speaker 1: and where were you happiest? What is the quality you
Speaker 1: like least about yourself? What relationship, real or fictionalized, defines
Speaker 1: love for you? What question would you most like answered,
Speaker 1: What person, place, or experience has shaped you the most?
Speaker 1: What would be your last meal? And can you tell
Speaker 1: me something in your life that has grown out of
Speaker 1: a personal disaster. The more people we ask, the more
Speaker 1: we begin to see what makes us similar and what
Speaker 1: makes us individual. I've gathered a group of really remarkable
Speaker 1: people who I am on a and humbled to have
Speaker 1: had a chance to engage with. My guest today is author, actor, director,
Speaker 1: and broadcaster intellectual explorer of rare talent, Stephen Fry. I
Speaker 1: grew up watching Stephen in the two genius British comedy
Speaker 1: series Blackadder and his show with Hugh Laurie. A bit
Speaker 1: of Fry and Laurie, but he's also memorably played in
Speaker 1: his Golden Globe nominated role as Oscar Wild in movie Wild,
Speaker 1: and he's been in numerous other fantastic films like Gossford
Speaker 1: Park and A Fish Called Wonder. He's fearlessly explored his
Speaker 1: own experience with bipolar disorder in the documentary The Secret
Speaker 1: Life of a Manic Depressive, and since two thousand eleven,
Speaker 1: has served as the president of the mental health charity Mind.
Speaker 1: Stephen is a prolific writer to boot and has four
Speaker 1: novels and three autobiographies in print. I was completely transported
Speaker 1: by our conversation. Talking to him is like trying to
Speaker 1: keep up with the shooting star. We talked about everything
Speaker 1: from Sherlock Holmes to Amazonian tree frogs to the time
Speaker 1: he went to prison for credit card theft. This is
Speaker 1: the first half of a wonderful two part episode. When
Speaker 1: I was thinking about the questions, because I really love
Speaker 1: Proust's question, I've always loved it. I've always loved listening
Speaker 1: to people's different answers. They do one in Vanity Fair,
Speaker 1: don't they? That might have been where I first discovered it.
Speaker 1: And then I went back and read this sort of
Speaker 1: full narrative, and then some really fantastically Victorian responses. I
Speaker 1: chose where and when you were happiest as the first question,
Speaker 1: largely because we put such a premium on being happy.
Speaker 1: But I also think that happy nurse. Maybe it's just
Speaker 1: from where I sit at fifty one. It includes so much.
Speaker 1: It's the balance to everything. So when I asked that question,
Speaker 1: I mean it as largely as you can conceive it. Really. Yes, Well,
Speaker 1: I remember there was a time a few years ago,
Speaker 1: maybe twenty, when I was desperately trying to give up
Speaker 1: smoking and all kinds of other things, and I looked
Speaker 1: into this, this thing called neurolinguistic programming. I'm sure you're
Speaker 1: aware of it. It's a grand title for a way
Speaker 1: of making your making your mind obey your will. If
Speaker 1: you like you you want to do something like giving
Speaker 1: up smoking, but something's getting in the way, both physical addiction,
Speaker 1: of course, and something else. We're all familiar with that.
Speaker 1: It's not easy to will, but it's easy to will
Speaker 1: to will. In other words, you want to want something,
Speaker 1: but it's very hard for it anyway. Neuro linguistic programming
Speaker 1: one of the things they do is they ask you
Speaker 1: to remember a time, just a snapshot in your memory
Speaker 1: when you know you were just unbounded in your happiness.
Speaker 1: You think of something a sunny day on the beach
Speaker 1: or in a park, maybe that you're very so your
Speaker 1: mother's let you skip along to buy an ice cream,
Speaker 1: and you're looking down at the ducks with your brother
Speaker 1: and everybody's with you, and you're content. You then do
Speaker 1: something physical like pull out your ear lobe while enjoying
Speaker 1: that memory, and you keep twisting your ema and you
Speaker 1: do that several times until the idea of being All
Speaker 1: you have to do is twist your ear lobe and
Speaker 1: you will get that memory. And I have to say,
Speaker 1: I still think to that moment in a park with
Speaker 1: a with a with an ice cream, and I can
Speaker 1: get what feels on the inside to be a beatific
Speaker 1: smile to spread across my face, and I remember happiness.
Speaker 1: And anyway, that's a thing, that's an exercise you do.
Speaker 1: So if ever I see you twisting your emb party,
Speaker 1: I'll know that you're secretly thinking about the ducks and
Speaker 1: the ice cream exactly. And the idea is you do
Speaker 1: that when you want a cigarette or you want something
Speaker 1: you know, because it fills you with the happiness and
Speaker 1: possibly even with the self supplied drugs, you know, the
Speaker 1: noor adrenaline, the serotone in, the metatone in all etcetera, etcetera,
Speaker 1: the endorphins and all that, and maybe it does work,
Speaker 1: but that was an interesting time. But of course that's
Speaker 1: a snapshot. It's a vertical moment of happiness, one little
Speaker 1: drop of bliss. But I would say probably, And this
Speaker 1: only works looking back because at the time you're young,
Speaker 1: and when you're young, you're never happy. You're always angst
Speaker 1: written or wanting to be better looking, or wanting to
Speaker 1: take someone to bed, or wanting to be asked to
Speaker 1: go to bed, or or you know, just not feeling
Speaker 1: clever enough or confident all the rest of it. But
Speaker 1: those three years I had at university, and particularly the
Speaker 1: last year when Hugh Laurie became my best friend and
Speaker 1: we started writing comedy and realizing that we were doing
Speaker 1: something that gave others pleasure. We could hear the laughter
Speaker 1: and we felt just charged with optimism and and it
Speaker 1: was just I you know, because we were very lucky,
Speaker 1: you know, with me and Hugh and Emma Thompson and
Speaker 1: Tony Slattery. Our year at university. It was a great
Speaker 1: footlights collection. I mean honesty, I still have to pinch
Speaker 1: myself to realize that. But for all kinds of extraordinary
Speaker 1: provisional contingent things, it might never have happened. I might
Speaker 1: have been a year earlier, two years earlier, or never
Speaker 1: have got there. And who knows. Did Rowan Atkinson go
Speaker 1: to Cambridge? He went to the other place, he went
Speaker 1: to the other place. We'll not mention that, but I'll
Speaker 1: tell you a scene which was one of the happiest
Speaker 1: moments of my life, was we were performing our review
Speaker 1: in Edinburgh. It happened to be that year in Edinbury
Speaker 1: eighty one was the first year of a new award
Speaker 1: called the Perrier Award, which was going to be given
Speaker 1: to supposedly the best comedy show on the fringe, or
Speaker 1: at least what the judges thought was the best one thing.
Speaker 1: We were certain obvious that they wouldn't give it to
Speaker 1: Boo Cambridge Nears snobs. You know all the horror of that.
Speaker 1: But anyway, we were doing the show and we finished it.
Speaker 1: We bowed and there was cheers and applause and all
Speaker 1: the things that you live for. And then suddenly the
Speaker 1: applause went wild while we were bowing, and I saw
Speaker 1: people looking what I thought behind me. So I turned
Speaker 1: around and that was the figure Rowan Atkinson standing back
Speaker 1: of the stage on our show. Now he was already
Speaker 1: a household name because not the nine o'clock News had
Speaker 1: had I think done too serious already and was a
Speaker 1: huge hit. And he was holding something and he came forward,
Speaker 1: um ladies and a gentleman, and he announced that we
Speaker 1: had won the Peri Award and handed it to us.
Speaker 1: And there were people waiting in our dressing room from
Speaker 1: the BBC asking if they could show up our review
Speaker 1: on BBC two and then the next nights, and people
Speaker 1: from I t V, which developed into a series with
Speaker 1: Robbie Coltrane and Ben Alton. And I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: I sort of resist telling this story because it cost
Speaker 1: me as the luckiest bustard in the world, and we were.
Speaker 1: It's as if it's sometimes that I've heard younger comics
Speaker 1: and actors saying this, that they could almost see the
Speaker 1: door closing in the eighties and nineties on that sort
Speaker 1: of thing, you know, graduate comedy from especially from Oxbridge,
Speaker 1: just waltzing into the BBC. I think it's great. I
Speaker 1: think so grateful that I grew up watching what you
Speaker 1: chaps were doing, and that that was a cornerstone of
Speaker 1: comedy for me, and growing up and seeing it's extraordinary
Speaker 1: because I was old enough to really laugh and really
Speaker 1: understand the jokes. But then to go and see what
Speaker 1: everybody did, what Emma did, what Hugh Laurie did, what
Speaker 1: you have done, what Rowan has done, what Simon Curtis
Speaker 1: has done. It's it's so inspiring because that's all I
Speaker 1: wanted to do, was be a performer. But I didn't
Speaker 1: have a gang. I always wish they'd had a gang.
Speaker 1: I was about to say, when I'm asked, and as
Speaker 1: I'm sure you are, by young drama students or teenagers
Speaker 1: hoping to go into some aspects of the performing arts,
Speaker 1: asked to give advice, I can only say, cluster around
Speaker 1: your friends who have a similar ambition and make your
Speaker 1: own shows, make your own whatever it is, and get
Speaker 1: your friends to come and watch them. Because the more
Speaker 1: you perform, even if it's barely to any kind of
Speaker 1: paying audience, but the more you do it, the more
Speaker 1: you get the confidence and the self belief and the
Speaker 1: idea in your head that you're allowed to because you know,
Speaker 1: we all grew up watching these glamorous figures. You know.
Speaker 1: I saw Peter Cook and John Clees on the Parkinson
Speaker 1: Show or Peter Sellers or whoever it might be, and
Speaker 1: they were behind the glass in every sense. The idea
Speaker 1: that one could from tread any aspect of their boards,
Speaker 1: as it were, was just out of sight, and slowly
Speaker 1: because of writing with friends and kind of finding out
Speaker 1: how audiences behave and feeling that one belongs on the stage,
Speaker 1: it gives one this fabulous idea that you could be
Speaker 1: part of that huge family of people who are the clowns,
Speaker 1: the circus and the entertainers. I was constantly deputizing dolls
Speaker 1: to be my audience, and they always loved everything I did.
Speaker 1: Of course, that was a standing ovation, as my mother
Speaker 1: used to say when I used to get my brother
Speaker 1: to do plays behind the curtain as well, and my
Speaker 1: mother used to say, without being aware of the preposterousness
Speaker 1: of the remark, you were both the best thing in it.
Speaker 1: So you know what. My mother actually said something somewhat
Speaker 1: similar after a particularly obscure film that I've done, and
Speaker 1: she was like, gosh, you know, both people who see
Speaker 1: that will love it. What relationship, real or fictionalized defines
Speaker 1: love for you? In fact, will you say real and fictionalized,
Speaker 1: because I want to hear about lovers and defining love
Speaker 1: with fictionalized characters as well as the real one. Well,
Speaker 1: I think first love is fictional love to some extent
Speaker 1: good one. It's so overwhelming, it's expectations are so high,
Speaker 1: it's consumes the self. It becomes so obsessive and infatuated.
Speaker 1: And when I was fourteen and a half fifteen, I
Speaker 1: fell in love with a boy at school. And I
Speaker 1: had no idea that I was capable of feeling such things.
Speaker 1: They weren't erotic. A part of them, I suppose, must
Speaker 1: obviously been erotic, but they were mostly to do with
Speaker 1: beauty and lyricism and absolute devotion. And every waking moment
Speaker 1: was concerned with trying to follow the path that I
Speaker 1: thought he would be taking between this school block and
Speaker 1: that school block, or he had games that day and
Speaker 1: so he'd be be on the ruggy field at this
Speaker 1: time or cricket field at that time. And you know,
Speaker 1: my whole life has diverted into it. And I suddenly
Speaker 1: realized that the thing I had hated as a child,
Speaker 1: this propensity of films to wander off into kissing scenes
Speaker 1: when there was a good adventure going. What mommy, why
Speaker 1: are they kissing? You know? The Germans areund the corner
Speaker 1: and though suddenly he's looking down into a face of
Speaker 1: that smooching and wasting time, and what's it all about?
Speaker 1: It just in all song lyrics were loving you, and
Speaker 1: the Beatles were around. You know. My seventh birthday treat
Speaker 1: was to go and see a hard day's night, you know,
Speaker 1: and I love that. There was none of that sopping us.
Speaker 1: But the lyrics were all she loves you and love love, love,
Speaker 1: and all you need is love and love this and
Speaker 1: love that. It made no sense, and the poems one
Speaker 1: was being taught at school and all about love. Then
Speaker 1: suddenly it hit me that it was the only thing
Speaker 1: in the world that mattered, That nothing else had any
Speaker 1: significance at all except this absolute loss of self into
Speaker 1: the idea of someone else, and this understanding of why
Speaker 1: beauty was so important. And it translated into a great
Speaker 1: sort of dippy adoration of spring and trees and blossom
Speaker 1: and birds. Did you get to tell him that you
Speaker 1: loved him? He knew I never quite expressed it in
Speaker 1: those ways. I think it's quite probably quite hard to
Speaker 1: to hide a little rumpy pumpy tussle in the grass
Speaker 1: once and that was good, oh it, But that was
Speaker 1: fictional inasmuch as it was. It belonged to a Petrarchyan
Speaker 1: idea of ideal love or Shakespearean's sonet idea or whatever,
Speaker 1: you know. It was absolutely nothing to do with what
Speaker 1: I now think of his love, which is naturally me
Speaker 1: and my husband, which is contentment, companionship. Yes, I mean
Speaker 1: all the all the joy were of our first meeting
Speaker 1: and realizing we were soul mates and made for each other,
Speaker 1: and the happiness and the extra special pleasure that it
Speaker 1: coincided exactly with the time when we could get married
Speaker 1: legally in this country, which was so fabulous. I think
Speaker 1: that's rather a good trajectory to begin with a fictionalized
Speaker 1: reality and to wind up in really something. You know,
Speaker 1: the marriage between two men or two women was a
Speaker 1: complete fiction until very recently. I think that's a wonderful
Speaker 1: path to have begun in that place and to have
Speaker 1: wound up in this other place. I think that's a
Speaker 1: beautiful bookend and should all be so lucky, And that
Speaker 1: you've got rumpy pumpy like the yeah, but the fact
Speaker 1: that it was actualized. There's an ideal devotion of you know,
Speaker 1: sneaking around buildings, staring at your your love. That it
Speaker 1: actually materialized into the long grass makes me very happy.
Speaker 1: It was mainly happy, as you can imagine. Underneath it
Speaker 1: was the misery of the realization that for him it
Speaker 1: might have been an amusing episode, but for me it
Speaker 1: was part of what I absolutely instinctively understood was my nature,
Speaker 1: which was that I would only ever fall in other
Speaker 1: people of my own sects, and that I was never
Speaker 1: going to be therefore accepted by society. Because that same
Speaker 1: knowledge had driven me to the library, because in those days,
Speaker 1: of course, there was no online there was no affirmation
Speaker 1: or vindication of sexuality available except in the forbidden by
Speaker 1: ways of literature, not pornography, but stories like Oscar Wilde's
Speaker 1: trial or various other people exiled to Rocco and Capri
Speaker 1: in the Mediterranean, generally where a slightly more LuSE lifestyle
Speaker 1: was acceptable, and otherwise it was skulking in the shadows,
Speaker 1: and it was you know, it was the terrible fear
Speaker 1: of the police, courts and and shame. Did you think
Speaker 1: of that at fourteen and fifteen when you first fell
Speaker 1: in love. I was aware that my whole interior life
Speaker 1: would have to be a secret. At least I thought
Speaker 1: that would would be a secret that I would never
Speaker 1: be able to share with anyone except through books. You know.
Speaker 1: And for all the horrors we attribute to social media
Speaker 1: and the email and the whole digital world, now, it
Speaker 1: had that been available to me, it would have completely
Speaker 1: altered the way I felt, because I would have been
Speaker 1: more instantly to discover that I was not alone and
Speaker 1: that I was not criminal, I was not creepy, I
Speaker 1: was not a pervert. You should be punished because I
Speaker 1: knew that although sex was important, it was really love
Speaker 1: that was the massive thing. And that's, of course what
Speaker 1: has been allowed by this acceptance and legislation and everything,
Speaker 1: is people can love each other. Yeah, exactly what is
Speaker 1: the quality, at least about yourself? I give answers that
Speaker 1: people can get very annoyed by because they sound like
Speaker 1: false modesty or surd expectations. But I know that, as
Speaker 1: far as other people canse, I'm not lazy, and yet
Speaker 1: I still feel lazy in myself. I still feel there's
Speaker 1: always more I could do. In my husband, it's driven
Speaker 1: crazy by my need not to see a single red
Speaker 1: notification badge in my email box. I have to answered everything,
Speaker 1: I have to have done the thank you letters and
Speaker 1: the bread and button letters, and I have to be
Speaker 1: on top of things. And I always say to him
Speaker 1: it's because I so hate it. I want to get
Speaker 1: it out of the way. I'm the same with washing
Speaker 1: up or anything. It's a peculiar, but that seems like
Speaker 1: a very good thing. That it seem like a bad
Speaker 1: thing at all. I wish I did the washing up. No,
Speaker 1: I know it's not a bad thing. That it annoys me,
Speaker 1: that I'm so that I'm so anxious about it, and
Speaker 1: I can't be more relaxed. But you're right, it's not
Speaker 1: the thing I hate about myself most. I think my
Speaker 1: anxiety to please, my inability to rest until I feel
Speaker 1: that everybody is unoffended by me and possibly even likes
Speaker 1: me or is pleased with me, and it doesn't come
Speaker 1: away with a wrong idea about me, or what I
Speaker 1: think is a wrong idea about me. And I'm aware
Speaker 1: that this desire to please is transparent. That's to say
Speaker 1: others can see it. I mean, I've actually happened. I
Speaker 1: don't seek them out but I've happened on the odd
Speaker 1: phrase online or in the press saying his overwhelming desire
Speaker 1: to be liked or whatever, and I think, yeah, that
Speaker 1: they're right, and it's you know, the people I most
Speaker 1: like aren't like me. I suppose that's the way I
Speaker 1: should put it, that you know, they it's not that
Speaker 1: they absolutely don't care who to what people think about
Speaker 1: them and are sort of quite happy to be cruel
Speaker 1: and unkind or dismissive or not to answer letters or whatever.
Speaker 1: It's not that, it's just that it doesn't seem to
Speaker 1: possess them quite as it does me. I don't know
Speaker 1: where it comes from, but it's a it's a desire
Speaker 1: to please. It's that little Jack Horner, what a good
Speaker 1: boy am I? Sort of thing that I know is
Speaker 1: very obvious in me. Well, I think you're great. I've
Speaker 1: done it. Can't cross that off the list, take at
Speaker 1: least until tomorrow. What person, place, or experience has most
Speaker 1: altered your life? Well, I think I would go back
Speaker 1: to an occasion my screw up in the country and
Speaker 1: quite a large house. It's not Tonton Abbey, but you know,
Speaker 1: it was big and it was very old fashioned. It
Speaker 1: wasn't on the mains water. We had sort of pump
Speaker 1: house somewhere in in the back to pump up the water,
Speaker 1: and the bread man would come on a horse and cart.
Speaker 1: You know. When I was young, it was a very
Speaker 1: rural and peculiar and fun sort of life I supposed
Speaker 1: to grow up in. But one thing my purchase did
Speaker 1: not like was television. There was one kept in a
Speaker 1: cupboard somewhere, was a tiny little thing, and if if
Speaker 1: a member of the royal family married or got or died,
Speaker 1: or Winston Churchill's funerals say, or the moon landing, the
Speaker 1: television would be got out and sat in a corner
Speaker 1: and told to behave itself, and then put away again.
Speaker 1: But occasionally my father that the stable block of the
Speaker 1: house had been converted to a laboratory for my father
Speaker 1: physicist inventor sort of figure, and so he would sometimes
Speaker 1: spend days over that would be like Sherlock Combs, you know,
Speaker 1: just completely lost amongst his equipment. And and then I
Speaker 1: would especially was raining and there's nothing else to do,
Speaker 1: I would take the television out and secretly watch it.
Speaker 1: One afternoon a Sunday afternoon, I turned it on and
Speaker 1: it something had just started, and people were talking to
Speaker 1: each other in the most extraordinary way. I've never heard
Speaker 1: anything like it. It wasn't Shakespeare, but it wasn't contemporary.
Speaker 1: I was not old enough to recognize it, but I
Speaker 1: was old enough to recognize that it was stunning. And
Speaker 1: I watched it with my mouth open because of the
Speaker 1: way people were speaking. And it finished with a curtain dropping,
Speaker 1: so the camera had sort of been inside in a
Speaker 1: real world. And then at the end it pulled back
Speaker 1: and the curtain fell, as if to suggest that it
Speaker 1: was a play. So I rushed off to see my mother,
Speaker 1: and there was a particular line in it. You know
Speaker 1: how something When a movie is really good, you remember
Speaker 1: almost every detail of it, and when a movie is
Speaker 1: colossal garbage, you cannot remember a single scene. And I
Speaker 1: remembered so much of this just watching at once, including
Speaker 1: this speech where a man whom I subsequently discovered was
Speaker 1: the actor Michael Dennison says to a woman whom I
Speaker 1: subsequently discovered was the actress Dorothy Tutin. He said, I
Speaker 1: hope I will not in any way offend you if
Speaker 1: I say that. You seem to me to be the
Speaker 1: visible personification of absolute perfection. And I thought that was
Speaker 1: the most extraordinary line I've ever It was funny because
Speaker 1: of course, if you declare love to someone, you don't
Speaker 1: use Latin at words like visible personification of absolute perfection.
Speaker 1: You say I love you. You're gorgeous, you know that's what.
Speaker 1: But and yet it was a beautiful compliment and courtly.
Speaker 1: And so I ran to my mother and said, mother,
Speaker 1: I hope I shan't offend it if I say that.
Speaker 1: You seemed to me to be, in every way the
Speaker 1: visible personification of absolute perfection. She said, what are you
Speaker 1: talking about. I said, I've seen this thing, and I
Speaker 1: explained it. She said, oh, that was the importance of
Speaker 1: being earnest. And I said, well, what is it? And
Speaker 1: she explained it was a play. Now, we were so
Speaker 1: deep in the country that were miles Sydney Smith once said,
Speaker 1: miles simply miles from the nearest lemon. But we were
Speaker 1: we were. We were also miles from the nearest library.
Speaker 1: And so what we what had in those days? I
Speaker 1: don't know if they still do this little gray vans,
Speaker 1: the kind that would be called antechnical news. We had
Speaker 1: a van like that, a library vane, a mobile library. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it would come too. There was a crossing of
Speaker 1: the roads about a quarter of a mile from our house,
Speaker 1: cut lanes met and it would stop there on Thursday afternoons.
Speaker 1: Would you wait for it? Yeah? I waited for it.
Speaker 1: On the corner. The driver got out and wheezed his
Speaker 1: way around the front bonnet and opened the side door,
Speaker 1: let down the steps, and patted my bottom as I
Speaker 1: went into the library. And and there was a little
Speaker 1: lady in there with powdery soft cheeks and little little
Speaker 1: glasses on a chain. And I asked her if she
Speaker 1: had the importance of being earnest by Mr Oscar Wilde.
Speaker 1: She gave me this collection of his comic plays, four
Speaker 1: of the Women of No Importance, Ideal Husband and Lady
Speaker 1: vander Meer's Win. I got this and um and I
Speaker 1: read them for I kept them for the week, and
Speaker 1: I read until I and I knew the importance almost
Speaker 1: off by heart. I could still quit most of it.
Speaker 1: And I just fell in love with the language. And
Speaker 1: then I went back and I said, have you got
Speaker 1: any more by this writer? And she stamped out a
Speaker 1: new book, the Complete Works of Oscar World. I took
Speaker 1: them home and I read these fairy stories as an
Speaker 1: amazing sort of the Happy Prince and the Young King
Speaker 1: and all these, and some I didn't understand. There were
Speaker 1: some very sort of grown up essays, like the Soul
Speaker 1: of Man under Socialism, and one which we should be
Speaker 1: reading now called The Truth of Masks, very appropriate. And
Speaker 1: then I went back the next week and I said,
Speaker 1: have you got any more? And she said, well, if
Speaker 1: that's ay the complete works, that that's probably the complete works.
Speaker 1: And I said oh, And I started to look around,
Speaker 1: and then I saw a book called The Trials of
Speaker 1: Oscar World, by a man called hell Montgomery Hide. And
Speaker 1: she said, I'm not sure that's appropriate for you. And
Speaker 1: I said, no, no, I'm I'm studying this writer even nothing.
Speaker 1: So she standed up, let me read it. And there
Speaker 1: I read about this extraordinary man is warmth, his generosity,
Speaker 1: his wit, his gift genius for friendship, and then I
Speaker 1: kind of lived with him as he was pulled down
Speaker 1: into the greatest and most terrible scandal of the Victorian
Speaker 1: Age and ended up in Paris, despised and rejected of men,
Speaker 1: as I puts it, and died a miserable death, thinking
Speaker 1: he would be perhaps forgotten or always in disgrace in
Speaker 1: men's eyes, and it just took the wind out of
Speaker 1: myself because I knew that I had that thing in me,
Speaker 1: that the reason he was pulled down would be the
Speaker 1: reason I might do this belief that I'd never been accepted.
Speaker 1: So there was on the one hand, there was the
Speaker 1: joy of discovering literature and how language can because many
Speaker 1: I can't. I can't dance, I can't paint, draw, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm not athletic. Those ways people have an expressing joy
Speaker 1: and delight and texture and thrill all for me are
Speaker 1: in words proceeding out of my mouth or put on
Speaker 1: a page. And in our culture, not uniquely, I think
Speaker 1: we're not encouraged to believe that language, which is the
Speaker 1: gift we all share, and there's a very strong dysfunction,
Speaker 1: is not just for saying past the mustard and where toileted,
Speaker 1: but it is actually something that can be used to
Speaker 1: entrance and delight and seduce and beguile and thrill and
Speaker 1: deceive and create as much art as a paintbrush or
Speaker 1: a cello can. Just in the sound of the tongue
Speaker 1: hitting the back of the teeth, there's a beauty and
Speaker 1: a majesty and a glory. That's one of the reasons
Speaker 1: I admired people like M and M and some of
Speaker 1: the great hip hop artists is because they have brought
Speaker 1: language really back into popular art in a strong way.
Speaker 1: And an Oscar was the first to do that. For
Speaker 1: lit that like many other things. So I think everything
Speaker 1: flowed from that. It woke me up, That's what That's
Speaker 1: what lit a fire in me. That still it still burns. Stephen.
Speaker 1: I end up that so much. I had. I had
Speaker 1: awesome wells reading a selfish giant on a record that
Speaker 1: I listened to and I was about five or six,
Speaker 1: and I this is my garden. It is. It is
Speaker 1: so brilliant. Anyone find it. Everybody should listen to it.
Speaker 1: The children are my flowers. Yes, it's glorious. I only
Speaker 1: have to hear those. And I can smell an old
Speaker 1: fashioned gramophone and the rest that went on, you know
Speaker 1: that dust it warmed up with little crackle. Join me
Speaker 1: next week for the second half of my conversation with
Speaker 1: Stephen Fry. Mini Quests is hosted and written by Me
Speaker 1: Mini Driver, supervising producer Aaron Kaufman, producer Morgan Lavoy, research
Speaker 1: assistant Marissa Brown, original music Sorry Baby by Mini Driver,
Speaker 1: Additional music by Aaron Kaufman. Executive produced by Me Mini Driver.
Speaker 1: Special thanks to Jim Nikolay, Will Pearson, Addison No Day,
Speaker 1: Lisa Castella and Annicke Oppenheim at w kPr de La Pescador,
Speaker 1: Kate Driver and Jason Weinberg, and for constantly solicited tech
Speaker 1: support Henry Driver,