Speaker 1: Steer when I end up that so much I had,
Speaker 1: I had awesome wells reading a selfish giant on a
Speaker 1: raca that I listened to, and I was about five
Speaker 1: or six. And this is my garden. It is. It
Speaker 1: is so brilliant. Anyone find it for everybody should listen
Speaker 1: to it. The children are my flowers. Yes, I only
Speaker 1: have to hear those. And I can smell an old
Speaker 1: fashioned gramophone and the reference that went on, you know
Speaker 1: that dusty smells. It warmed up with the crackle. Hello,
Speaker 1: I'm mini driver and welcome to many questions. I've always
Speaker 1: loved pruce 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 Pruce's questionnaire
Speaker 1: and adapted what I think seven of the most important
Speaker 1: questions you could ever ask someone. They are when and
Speaker 1: where were you happiest? What is the quality you like
Speaker 1: least about yourself? What relationship, real or fictionalized, defines love
Speaker 1: for you? What question would you most like answered? What person, place,
Speaker 1: or experience has shaped you the most? What would be
Speaker 1: your last meal? And can you tell me something in
Speaker 1: your life that has grown out of a personal disaster.
Speaker 1: The more people we ask, the more we begin to
Speaker 1: see what makes us similar and what makes us individual.
Speaker 1: I've gathered a group of really remarkable people who I
Speaker 1: am honored and humbled to have had a chance to
Speaker 1: engage with. In last week's episode, we heard Steven's answers
Speaker 1: to when and where were you happiest. You think of
Speaker 1: something a sunny day on the beach or in a park,
Speaker 1: maybe that you're very young, to your mother's let you
Speaker 1: skip along to buy an ice cream, and you're looking
Speaker 1: down at the ducks with your brother and everybody's with you,
Speaker 1: and you're content. You then do something physical like pull
Speaker 1: out your ear lobe the idea of being. All you
Speaker 1: have to do is twist your ear lobe and you
Speaker 1: will get that memory. What relationship real or fictionalize. It
Speaker 1: defines love for you and love love love, and all
Speaker 1: you need is love and love this and love that.
Speaker 1: And it made no sense. And then suddenly it hit
Speaker 1: me that it was the only thing in the world
Speaker 1: that mattered, That nothing else had any significance at all
Speaker 1: except this absolute loss of self into the idea of
Speaker 1: someone else, and what person, place, or experience has most
Speaker 1: altered your life. I said, I've seen this thing, and
Speaker 1: I explained it. She said, oh, that was the importance
Speaker 1: of being earnest. Here is the last part of our conversation.
Speaker 1: She could have any question answered, what would it be
Speaker 1: such a good question itself? This one answer this question
Speaker 1: for me. I mean, at the risk of sounding very uh,
Speaker 1: I've always got to sound pompous, but the extra pomp
Speaker 1: us I am very interested in those called philosophical questions.
Speaker 1: Instantly makes them sound like a sort of game or
Speaker 1: intellectual quest, and I think they're more exciting than that.
Speaker 1: Although those are exciting things in themselves, those do actually
Speaker 1: sound quite fun. Yeah, they do, I hope, so an
Speaker 1: intellectual quest. Yeah. It is the nature of consciousness. It's
Speaker 1: how it is that we can have this sense of self,
Speaker 1: of who we are manufactured in a wet but electrically
Speaker 1: sparkling object like a brain in our heads, that it
Speaker 1: can create such a powerful sense of self that is
Speaker 1: not just the thing you see in the mirror, whose
Speaker 1: voice you hear in your own ears, and whose effect
Speaker 1: you see in other people. That it's also the entire
Speaker 1: sense of moral obligation, guilt, shame, love, passion, all these
Speaker 1: things that animate us, and that drivers and I just
Speaker 1: feel very strongly that it won't survive after my heart
Speaker 1: stops beating, excepting other people's memories or recordings of this podcast,
Speaker 1: all the rest of it. And yet that that isn't satisfactory.
Speaker 1: It's still a mystery, and it is still the mystery.
Speaker 1: It's known in philosophy is the hard problem, the hard
Speaker 1: problem of consciousness, and people have come up with ideas
Speaker 1: that are crazy. I mean they're matrix like the universe
Speaker 1: itself is conscious. That there is a consciousness in the universe.
Speaker 1: And this is said by philosophers of great a clap
Speaker 1: in universities around the world. It just fascinates me because
Speaker 1: I good animals and I love animals. We have a sense,
Speaker 1: don't we. It's very hard to prove, but I think
Speaker 1: we prove it to ourselves in all the ways that matter,
Speaker 1: that animals don't share this particular quality of self consciousness. Yes,
Speaker 1: we've all seen a cat look a bit ruffled and
Speaker 1: embarrassed when it's fallen over, and it's sort of sort
Speaker 1: of proudly sits up, so you know, we impute very
Speaker 1: human ideas of dignity and self regard to certain animals
Speaker 1: that we live with closely. And of course animals that
Speaker 1: live with us closely mimic us in just as we
Speaker 1: mimic then, But the animal kingdom generally, I look, say
Speaker 1: this is the animal use because I'm so fond of them.
Speaker 1: But an Amazonian tree frog on a branch with that
Speaker 1: enormous grin on its face, and there's wonderful sort of
Speaker 1: silicon rubber fingers with a little round ends clutching onto
Speaker 1: the branch, And I see in that tree frog an
Speaker 1: animal that spends one of its time being a tree frog,
Speaker 1: achieving tree frog nous completely. And I am as certain
Speaker 1: as I can be of anything that it doesn't wake
Speaker 1: up in the morning thinking I was a terrible tree frog.
Speaker 1: Ust today I hate myself. Look what I did to
Speaker 1: to to my to Mrs tree Frog. Look Look how
Speaker 1: I ignored my children in any sense like that. And
Speaker 1: you laugh because it is of course preposterous to imagine
Speaker 1: a tree frog thinking that. But every single human being
Speaker 1: on earth does that all the time. We don't feel
Speaker 1: we are a hundred percent what we could be, and
Speaker 1: that's a most peculiar thing, a very very strange thing.
Speaker 1: If we accept that no animal has this sense of
Speaker 1: yearning to be better, yearning to have a greater moral force,
Speaker 1: yearning to to achieve more. Yes they want to have
Speaker 1: a full of belly. Yes they want to get their
Speaker 1: rocks off. Yes they want to protect that brood. Of
Speaker 1: course they have these urges instincts, but they're very clear,
Speaker 1: very evolutionarily and necessary and transparent as motives and energies
Speaker 1: as it were. But what philosophers called our deontic sense,
Speaker 1: this sense of obligation and moral purpose that we have
Speaker 1: within us. What the matter count said, this moral law
Speaker 1: within me. It's a very strong sense. And we can
Speaker 1: argue that it's all kinds of people do. There's a
Speaker 1: Freudian argument about it. There's a religious argument about it.
Speaker 1: There's all kinds of explanations for why we might have it,
Speaker 1: and they go back to Genesis. For Genesis is because
Speaker 1: they are the fruit. It's part of our particular evolution.
Speaker 1: It is it is something that evolved that the tree.
Speaker 1: For our gwen namic, I'm not evolving any moral nightmare.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to judge anything except how much I
Speaker 1: think I'm going to get to eat today. I feel
Speaker 1: like it's the gift and the curse that we carried
Speaker 1: on exploring. We carry it on growing, we carried on expanding.
Speaker 1: This speech is that we are part of and there
Speaker 1: is great joy on that, and there is awfulness in that.
Speaker 1: It's the experience. It's the will cut idea of learning
Speaker 1: to love the questions. Yes, no, that's right. We made
Speaker 1: at some point in our history what's some people called
Speaker 1: the cognitive leap, which involves both behavioral modernity. I think
Speaker 1: is the correct phrase for it, I tool making. So first,
Speaker 1: we started altering the environment around us to create objects
Speaker 1: and spaces that were useful to us in a way
Speaker 1: that was beyond animals. An animal might make a nest,
Speaker 1: but it's the same nest through the generations. That's how
Speaker 1: bluebirds make their nest. Whereas two different humans in just
Speaker 1: two generations can say, no, I'm going to build my
Speaker 1: nest like this and I'm going to use this, and
Speaker 1: another one will say I'm going to repurpose this whole
Speaker 1: in the ere I'm going to that's behavioral modernity, which
Speaker 1: is one branch of our evolution, and another, of course
Speaker 1: was language. But the big question, and part of the
Speaker 1: hard problem is did language come as a result of
Speaker 1: self consciousness or did self consciousness come as a result
Speaker 1: of language, which is what James would say, who wrote
Speaker 1: this fantastic Boo, which is a huge influence on me,
Speaker 1: called this is such a terrible title, that the origin
Speaker 1: of consciousness in the breakdown of the bicameral mind. I
Speaker 1: know it's an absurd title. I bet that doesn't come
Speaker 1: in a paperback. No, it's I think it's so inaudible. Okay,
Speaker 1: are you reading it, because I'll get it if you are. No,
Speaker 1: I'm not. I'd love to if it's but I'd recommend
Speaker 1: anyone to read it. It's not too tougher. It's beautifully written,
Speaker 1: and I'm not saying I agree with all of it,
Speaker 1: but it probably expresses these questions I'm trying to articulate
Speaker 1: better than any book I've ever read. And, like all
Speaker 1: things to do with learning, the more you know, the
Speaker 1: more filled with wonder you are, not the less explanations
Speaker 1: don't close down beauty and miracle, they open them up.
Speaker 1: That's my firm conviction. Another great here in mind, Richard
Speaker 1: Feynman had a fabulously famous not rant but sort of
Speaker 1: spiel about this where he's explaining to an artist why
Speaker 1: he finds a flower more beautiful than the artist does.
Speaker 1: And in fact, Fineman curse him was a wonderful draftsman
Speaker 1: that drew and painted fabulously, as well as getting a
Speaker 1: Nobel price physics and all the other things he did.
Speaker 1: But he explained how he had the sense of the
Speaker 1: flowers fragility, the beauty, the shimmering of the color, the
Speaker 1: erotic quality like someone like Mattlethorpe found in flowers, you know,
Speaker 1: all these things he could see. But then he also
Speaker 1: knew enough biology to have an understanding of the sepals
Speaker 1: and stamens and all the other But he could go
Speaker 1: deeper than that. He could look into the compillary system
Speaker 1: and see how the energy of the food and sugar
Speaker 1: and starches that were going from the ground, and how
Speaker 1: they were selected by the flowers roots and how they moved.
Speaker 1: And he could go deeper into that, and he could
Speaker 1: see the protons and the positives, and he could see
Speaker 1: the electrons. He see the whole miracle of the universe
Speaker 1: focusing its astonishing nature into the creation of a flower.
Speaker 1: And as he says, you know, we stop and look
Speaker 1: at a red flower? How is it red? When it's
Speaker 1: all very well to say it's DNA tells it to
Speaker 1: go red, But how does it then do it? It
Speaker 1: has to select out of the chemicals that are in
Speaker 1: the earth, only the ones which, when put together in
Speaker 1: its little factory, make the color red. If I took
Speaker 1: a handful of earth, I couldn't make a red diet
Speaker 1: of it, not as red as a dahlia. And it's
Speaker 1: two of the animals. All those colors come from the
Speaker 1: food and drink that they eat, energized by the sunlight,
Speaker 1: and and they can be that blue or that yellow,
Speaker 1: and they're just growing out of a garden in Dorking.
Speaker 1: You know, there's that color, and we don't even stop
Speaker 1: to think about where it actually comes from. It's fantastic.
Speaker 1: We are distracted. Yeah, And so I'd like to know
Speaker 1: why I'm aware of this. I'd like to know where
Speaker 1: my awareness comes from. I'm just so fascinated by it
Speaker 1: because it's so possible to live fabulous lives as a
Speaker 1: tiger can without it. I like that. I like that
Speaker 1: very very very very much. Can you tell me about
Speaker 1: one particular thing that has grown out of a complete disaster.
Speaker 1: Well yeah, I mean my whole life. Alan Cumming. I
Speaker 1: asked Alan this question and I said, so, so can
Speaker 1: you tell me something that's growing out of personal disaster?
Speaker 1: And he was like yeah, me, Well, yes, I've read
Speaker 1: his I read his incredible book about his father. I mean,
Speaker 1: the bottom man he is. He's such a fabulous Oh
Speaker 1: he's a man, amazing, he's amazing. But again, if you
Speaker 1: haven't read Alan Cumby's book, Not My Father's Son, heart
Speaker 1: wrenching and brilliant it is. And of course he's produced
Speaker 1: a line of fragrance. Yeah, of course he has. If
Speaker 1: your name was coming, you would want to advise people
Speaker 1: to spread coming all over their face when it's not
Speaker 1: tell me about growth and personal disaster. One of my
Speaker 1: passions was Sherlock Holmes at school, and I had been
Speaker 1: the youngest member of the Sherlock Holmbs Society of London
Speaker 1: and I got this request, not request, It was an
Speaker 1: invitation to all members to go to a meeting in
Speaker 1: London of the Shallockomb Society. And I was going to
Speaker 1: present a paper. I was going to do a talk
Speaker 1: on the correlation between T. S Elliott and Mariarty. Oh
Speaker 1: my god, yes, It was the fact that mccavity the
Speaker 1: Mystery Cat is directly based on Mariarty. A lot of
Speaker 1: not people hadn't noticed that, and I had. I didn't
Speaker 1: know that anyway, So so that was my big thing.
Speaker 1: And I got permission from my house master to go
Speaker 1: to London. People who read Harry Potter now what house
Speaker 1: masters are now, Thank goodness, they don't have to explain
Speaker 1: it's my Minerva McGonagle or whatever. My Severest Snape signed
Speaker 1: Maggie Smith. My Maggie Smith signed a chit so that
Speaker 1: I could go to London anyway. The idea was I
Speaker 1: go for this event, stay overnight, and then come back
Speaker 1: the next day. Well, the next day I went to
Speaker 1: the cinema. And in those days you could go into
Speaker 1: a cinema and sit there all day, and they just
Speaker 1: want to show the same film again and again. And
Speaker 1: I saw the film Cabaret again and again and again.
Speaker 1: It was absolutely overwhelmed by it. And then I went
Speaker 1: to the Sea the Godfather, and then I went to
Speaker 1: see Fritz the Cat, which was an animated adult cartoon.
Speaker 1: Rember that I was fifteen, but somehow I could pass
Speaker 1: his eighteen if I had quite my voice had just
Speaker 1: broken and it was quite deep. And anyway, I got
Speaker 1: expelled from the school. I was sent to another school,
Speaker 1: which I got expelled from, and then another one, and
Speaker 1: then I ran away to London, and then I stole
Speaker 1: some credit cards from a coach in a pub, and
Speaker 1: eventually I was caught by the police in Swindon, of
Speaker 1: all unromantic towns, and sent to a prison to await trial.
Speaker 1: How old were you by this time? I had seventeen
Speaker 1: a baby, yeah, I know, and you were sent a
Speaker 1: proper prison. Yeah. And I had spent this credit card
Speaker 1: over so many different counties that it took about two
Speaker 1: and after three months for all the paperwork to be
Speaker 1: assembled by the police for me then to go to
Speaker 1: a court. Now, because I'd run away from home, I
Speaker 1: originally not told them who what my name was because
Speaker 1: I didn't want my parents to get involved because I'd
Speaker 1: already called them enough trouble with all these expulsions. But
Speaker 1: eventually they found out who I was, and my parents
Speaker 1: got a friend of those who was a barrister to
Speaker 1: come and represent me when I was in court. And
Speaker 1: the fact that I've done three months in prison on remand,
Speaker 1: and that it was the first offense, and I guess
Speaker 1: that I had an expensive lawyer, which my parents tally
Speaker 1: wasn't charging. He was being a friend. Meant that instead
Speaker 1: of going down for two years detention center or Boston
Speaker 1: or anything like that young Person's Offenders institution, I was
Speaker 1: put on two years probation. And you can imagine the
Speaker 1: car drive home from Wiltshire to Norfolk, and that's just
Speaker 1: I mean. And my parents, you know, they're just wonderful, supportive,
Speaker 1: lovely people, and my mother never doubted somehow everything would
Speaker 1: turn out right, and my father was more taciturn about it.
Speaker 1: But they basically said it's up to me now. They
Speaker 1: put me through enough schools. And it was while I
Speaker 1: was in prison that something had snapped, and I think
Speaker 1: it was really that for about a month I was
Speaker 1: sharing a cell with this kid from Wales who was
Speaker 1: about sixteen and a half seventeen, was just a bit
Speaker 1: younger than me, and he couldn't read. He literally was illiterate.
Speaker 1: I had never seen anything. I just never occurred to
Speaker 1: me that someone would be and I taught him. I
Speaker 1: taught him the alphabet, I taught him to write it out,
Speaker 1: and I taught him basic words in that time. It
Speaker 1: was an extraordinary experience, and it hammered home to me
Speaker 1: like a sledge Hammond extraordinary, just how I had wasted
Speaker 1: these golden opportunities. Because you know, I'm not painting myself
Speaker 1: as some Francis of ASSISI or some albich fights. So
Speaker 1: you know, I wasn't suddenly turned into this humanitarian philanthropist.
Speaker 1: But I did see that my opportunities had been so
Speaker 1: much greater than anybody else's, and that it was a
Speaker 1: disgrace for me to moan inside and to think that
Speaker 1: the world was against me. I needed no more education
Speaker 1: than all of that, and so I said that if
Speaker 1: I get out, when I get out of this, I'm
Speaker 1: going to put myself through and get to university. And
Speaker 1: I'd always set my heart on Cambridge. A lot of
Speaker 1: my sort of hearers e m forced people like that.
Speaker 1: So I went to the library and took out past
Speaker 1: papers on Oxbridge Entrance and paid someone. I took jobs
Speaker 1: in restaurants and bars and things, and paid someone to
Speaker 1: invigilate because they didn't at the local college do Oxbridge Entrance.
Speaker 1: I paid him to invigilate, so he get the papers
Speaker 1: and make sure I wasn't cheating, and I'd hand him
Speaker 1: them and he'd send them. And my parents knew I
Speaker 1: was doing this and they were very supportive. So I
Speaker 1: was still living at home. And then I got fed
Speaker 1: up waiting for the results to come through my camidg entrance.
Speaker 1: So I went into Norwich one day and I was
Speaker 1: in a cafe and I told my mother, I said,
Speaker 1: I'm going in. If a letter comes for me and
Speaker 1: it looks as if it might be the results, you
Speaker 1: can open it and ring me at this cafe. And
Speaker 1: so she called. I was in the cafe with friends
Speaker 1: and I said, how did a letter I and she
Speaker 1: said no. I said, what are you calling me? She
Speaker 1: said no, it wasn't a letter. Was a telegram? Is
Speaker 1: it a telegram? What? My immediately feeling guilty, I've been
Speaker 1: found out about something, EXTRA said no, it says congratulations
Speaker 1: awarded scholarship Queen's College admissions tutor. I said, read that again.
Speaker 1: She read it again and not just got in the
Speaker 1: scholarsh And I said, slightly, making me cry remembering it,
Speaker 1: because it was those moments that there were the pivot
Speaker 1: which my whole life turned from from what had been
Speaker 1: failure and disgrace and sliding down into a sort of
Speaker 1: self pittying mess. I had just pulled myself up by
Speaker 1: by my fingernails in time, and then really going to
Speaker 1: Cambridge and as the same meeting Emma and then Hugh
Speaker 1: and loving it so much and feeling a part of it,
Speaker 1: feeling as if I belonged for the first time in
Speaker 1: a world where ideas were spoken about, and where I
Speaker 1: could perform and feel natural and be out. I could
Speaker 1: be gay and nobody minded. And so it was that
Speaker 1: it was being it was I presented as a cartoon
Speaker 1: of me lying face down on stone flags with straw
Speaker 1: and the shadows of the prisoner and a rat crawling
Speaker 1: over my back. It wasn't quite that bad, but you
Speaker 1: know what I mean, From that low point, it was
Speaker 1: a miracle that I was able, and fully aware that
Speaker 1: a lot of it was the advantage of my upbringing.
Speaker 1: But but I just don't think you can have one
Speaker 1: without the other. I just I don't think of it
Speaker 1: in terms of payment, that those hardships our payment for
Speaker 1: the good, but that they are inextricably linked. They are
Speaker 1: they are part of the same experience. I do wonder
Speaker 1: what happened to that Welshman who you taught to read. Yes,
Speaker 1: I lost touch with him. Of course, it must be
Speaker 1: funny for him to see you, because I'm sure that
Speaker 1: he's seeing you in his life. And yeah, they called
Speaker 1: me in prison, they called me the professor. That was
Speaker 1: my nick because I'm sort of new things and had
Speaker 1: read books. And I'm imagining you rather like Hugh Grant
Speaker 1: and Paddington too. I'd love to think I was a
Speaker 1: stylish but there was an element of that. And I
Speaker 1: also played the piano of the Sunday there were hymns,
Speaker 1: voluntary hymns in the association room, and I used to
Speaker 1: play the piano. And I'm not at all good, but
Speaker 1: you know, I'm a typical show off, so I you know,
Speaker 1: I learned these kind of our pagis and things. So
Speaker 1: I would end these ordinary hymns with this, these huge
Speaker 1: p edges, and then dumb, dumb the chaplain would look
Speaker 1: at me to check whether I'm finished. Very silly, but
Speaker 1: of course you know that fun in its way. So
Speaker 1: what would be your last meal? I love it because
Speaker 1: it's a pristing question, but it's also so fundamentally human.
Speaker 1: Yeah it is, isn't it. And I go two ways,
Speaker 1: and that strikes at the heart of what a lot
Speaker 1: of us are like. I think is that one part
Speaker 1: of me wants to say he had to vote ala
Speaker 1: Veronique or whatever, you know, some fantastic meal that I
Speaker 1: once had at the water side or the fat duck
Speaker 1: or some you know. And I've been lucky enough to
Speaker 1: have some great food in my time. But another part
Speaker 1: of me wants to say, I want beans on toast
Speaker 1: with a couple of poached eggs. Yeah, I want that
Speaker 1: right now, And yeah, I think I would probably go
Speaker 1: for that. And you know what once like that with
Speaker 1: music and literature, Do I want to listen to Wagner
Speaker 1: now or actually would just yeah exactly, with just some
Speaker 1: some silly, silly, charming music, do me quite happen it,
Speaker 1: but on the kinks, just for fun, you know. And
Speaker 1: the point is we're lucky because we can have both.
Speaker 1: I remember Richard Curtis set saying this to me, you know,
Speaker 1: the great writer of so many popular British films and
Speaker 1: of course a colleague of Roan's in the early days,
Speaker 1: and the found of comic Relief, and much as he
Speaker 1: has a passion for pop music, and in his youth
Speaker 1: he once it was possible. He recorded every single Top
Speaker 1: of the Pops and his close friend at Oxford with
Speaker 1: Rowan was Howard good All, the composer who wrote the
Speaker 1: Blackadder theme and the theme and other things that Richard
Speaker 1: had done, as well as many many other successful things.
Speaker 1: Is wonderful, talented manner, and of course he's also done
Speaker 1: documentaries about classical music for PBC two and Channel four.
Speaker 1: And I remember sitting in I was a bit junior,
Speaker 1: because I was two years below then when I was
Speaker 1: at Cambridge, and I've only just got to know them,
Speaker 1: and Richard was saying, how you know he was going
Speaker 1: to send some singles to Howard, you know of this
Speaker 1: particular bands that he should listen to, and how had said, well,
Speaker 1: I'll send you some Marla then, and you listen to that,
Speaker 1: which had said, well, I'll try and listen to it.
Speaker 1: But I should warn you that my mind and soul
Speaker 1: are not deep enough to appreciate it. I'm a very
Speaker 1: light fellow and all I need is light entertainment. And
Speaker 1: I remember thinking, how very charming to confess such a thing.
Speaker 1: This is a man who got a double First, he's
Speaker 1: no idiot, but also I wonder if that's true, I mean,
Speaker 1: I wonder if that is it, and I thought, well,
Speaker 1: maybe for him it is. Maybe also with Richard, he
Speaker 1: doesn't want to investigate shine tortures into dark and upsetting
Speaker 1: parts of his mind. Maybe there have to be people
Speaker 1: who are the champions of the confection that makes us happy,
Speaker 1: of the things which allow us to just remain. I mean,
Speaker 1: I feel like his films, particularly just allow you to
Speaker 1: live in a place where it's clever and it's funny,
Speaker 1: and there's community and ship works out, which is why
Speaker 1: I dorepg Wood has as well. I love wood Has
Speaker 1: for that reason. It's always sunny, and but Whild is
Speaker 1: the same things work out in Wild, and things really
Speaker 1: don't work out in Wild, I mean Wild. There's the
Speaker 1: nascent point of the Oscar, of course, put it very
Speaker 1: brilliantly into the mouth of Miss Prism in the Governors
Speaker 1: in the importance of being earnest, in a brilliant clever line,
Speaker 1: which she says, though she doesn't know how clever it is.
Speaker 1: As she says it, she's admitting to her pupil all
Speaker 1: sicily that she, in an earlier life, had written a
Speaker 1: three volume novel Do not speak slightingly of the three
Speaker 1: volume novels Cicily I myself in Happier Days wrote one,
Speaker 1: and Cicily says, oh did it end happily? And Ms
Speaker 1: Prison says the good ended happily, the bad ended unhappily.
Speaker 1: That is what fiction means, which is really that, and
Speaker 1: that is it. That's brilliant. I remember when I first
Speaker 1: read say Evelyn War, and I was shocked and it
Speaker 1: didn't work out how many times cruel and dreadful things
Speaker 1: happened to people who don't deserve it. I felt the
Speaker 1: same way reading Graham Green. I agree, why the terrible
Speaker 1: things happen to lovely people and the awful people don't
Speaker 1: get punished? And why the lovely things happened to terrible people? Exactly?
Speaker 1: I completely agree with you. And it used to make
Speaker 1: me crazy when I was a kid. That still does,
Speaker 1: by the way, and why Wild was pre figuring a
Speaker 1: twentieth century in which maybe the good wouldn't end happily
Speaker 1: and then and fiction wouldn't start to mean something else.
Speaker 1: But of course his joke of saying that's what fiction
Speaker 1: means is in other words, it's a lie. And so
Speaker 1: that's yeah, that's a very strong part of it. And
Speaker 1: I had the pleasure. It's one of the great joys
Speaker 1: of marrying someone younger than yourself is you can very
Speaker 1: often introduce them to things that have somehow missed and
Speaker 1: that you, of course have caught. And I think everybody
Speaker 1: in the world had seen it, but he had never
Speaker 1: seen Singing in the Rain, and we watched it together.
Speaker 1: He's now seen it three times because he was so
Speaker 1: overwhelmed button as he said, he said, I've never seen
Speaker 1: anything that so radiates joy from start to finish. It
Speaker 1: isn't joyful and iron thinking when he said it. Of course,
Speaker 1: that's right. That's what it is. To see Donald o'coma
Speaker 1: singing make them laugh, just fills you with joy. It
Speaker 1: is beautiful, every single number in that in that movie,
Speaker 1: In the way that it's working together, it is pure joy.
Speaker 1: And do you know, do you know the work of
Speaker 1: Preston Sturgis that I'm sure you do. And he was
Speaker 1: a writer director for those who don't know who operated
Speaker 1: in the forties and fifties and wrote some extraordinary masterpieces
Speaker 1: of film at which he directed as well with furious pace.
Speaker 1: And one of them is called Sullivan's Travels. And you
Speaker 1: may know something about it because it was a huge
Speaker 1: influence on the Coen Brothers. It's about a film director
Speaker 1: who's like Preston Sturgis and director of comedies. It's during
Speaker 1: the depression and he's determined that his next movie won't
Speaker 1: be a comedy because there are people out there suffering
Speaker 1: and you know, the bums on the trains a out
Speaker 1: of work. He's got to make a movie that is
Speaker 1: for them, and he's got the movie in his head.
Speaker 1: It's going to be called Oh Brother, were art Thou, which,
Speaker 1: if you remember, the camera went on to make as
Speaker 1: a fair. But that's the film he's going to make.
Speaker 1: And his girlfriend is Veronica La and he's got these
Speaker 1: he's got butlers, and that's wonderful Beverly Hills lifestyle. He
Speaker 1: decides to become a bum. He throws away all his
Speaker 1: good clothes and puts on tramps clothes, gets in a
Speaker 1: box car on the train and goes through a series
Speaker 1: of circumstances beyond his control. He gets accused of murder
Speaker 1: and no one believes that he's a film diriter, and
Speaker 1: he goes to a prisoner's hideous prison where he's chained
Speaker 1: up and he's beaten and he lives his terrible life,
Speaker 1: and the prisoners around him, of course, are absolutely at
Speaker 1: the lowest EBB, but human being can be in America
Speaker 1: chained together. And eventually he behaves well enough, he's tamed
Speaker 1: so that he's allowed a privilege of going. And you
Speaker 1: don't know what it is is you're watching the film,
Speaker 1: you see suddenly this church, a black church, a black
Speaker 1: Baptist church, where all the worshippers have just finished singing him,
Speaker 1: and the preacher gets up and says to his flock
Speaker 1: that we, you know, we have our guests now, and
Speaker 1: we're to treat them with great politeness. And someone is
Speaker 1: pulling a sheet down at the back of the hall
Speaker 1: and income chained all the listeners and they're welcomed by
Speaker 1: these church members and they're sat down and film begins
Speaker 1: and you see Joel McCrae, who plays Sullivan, sitting there
Speaker 1: looking angry, and all the prisoners around him, and they're miserable,
Speaker 1: miserable men. And they start with this Disney cartoon, violent
Speaker 1: silly cartoon, and everyone starts laughing and laughing and laughing,
Speaker 1: and you see Joel McCray is the only one not laughing,
Speaker 1: a face like thunder and slowly his face cracks and
Speaker 1: he starts to laugh, and they're all laughing and laughing
Speaker 1: and laughing and laughing, and his transformation anyway, Then the
Speaker 1: plot carries on and finally someone sees his photograph who's
Speaker 1: the friendly warden or whoever it is, and he tells
Speaker 1: the prison people and it's discovered who he is, and
Speaker 1: that the person he was accused of killing was himself.
Speaker 1: That was what he was trying to explain, that he
Speaker 1: was the one who was accused of killing. So it
Speaker 1: was all very complicated. He gets back to the studio
Speaker 1: and the producers, who so hated the idea of making
Speaker 1: her brother where up say, now you can make your
Speaker 1: brother where aren't you your world famous? You went down,
Speaker 1: you put the bum And John mccrazy is, no, I'm
Speaker 1: not going to make her brother where up there? I'm
Speaker 1: going to make a comedy. And then the film ends
Speaker 1: with this speech laughter may not be much, but it's
Speaker 1: all some people have in this crazy caravan. Boy, that's it,
Speaker 1: And then the fade in to the site of all
Speaker 1: those prisoners with tears running down at their faces, laughing
Speaker 1: and laughing and laughing. So basically, you want to be
Speaker 1: eating beans on tasts with two poached eggs. Watching Sullivan's Travels. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I love that movie, but I would venture that The
Speaker 1: Lady Eve is the beta film. I grant you, it's
Speaker 1: a must. It also made me feel, apart from that
Speaker 1: Henry Founder was was the most handsome person I was
Speaker 1: ever going to see in my life, unlovable. It made
Speaker 1: me believe that that odd people can find each other.
Speaker 1: And I knew I was odd, That's all I knew,
Speaker 1: and that just it always made me think that there
Speaker 1: was hope. And Barbara st Oh, my god, she's so divine.
Speaker 1: Was She really was clever and beauty when she trips
Speaker 1: him up on the boat. So that's if you're listening
Speaker 1: and you don't know the work of Preston Sturgies, treat
Speaker 1: yourself this weekend to a box set of the genuinely
Speaker 1: cannot thank you enough. I mean, it's been such a
Speaker 1: pleasure that I've taken notes as you were speaking. There
Speaker 1: are books I'm going to read, there are words I'm
Speaker 1: going to look up, there are movies I'm going to watch,
Speaker 1: and there's beans on toasts to be made immediately. I
Speaker 1: just completely adore you, and I so appreciate what you
Speaker 1: put out into the world. Genuinely, it's amazing thing. That
Speaker 1: is so sweet if you bless you, and I love
Speaker 1: you too, and thank you for inviting me onto your
Speaker 1: wonderful program and asking this question. Very very very welcome,
Speaker 1: so appreciative well. Stephen Fry's latest book, Troy, is out
Speaker 1: now from Chronicle Books in the US. It is the
Speaker 1: brilliant conclusion to his best selling Mythos trilogy. Stephen's next book,
Speaker 1: Fries Ties is out in November in the UK, published
Speaker 1: by Penguin Michael Joseph, and it is a witty, illustrated
Speaker 1: ode to his decades long obsession with Ties. Mini Questions
Speaker 1: is hosted and written by Me Mini Driver, supervising producer
Speaker 1: Aaron Kaufman, Producer Morgan Levoy, Research assistant Marissa Brown. Original
Speaker 1: music Sorry Baby by Mini Driver, Additional music by Aaron Kaufman,
Speaker 1: Executive produced by Me Mini Driver. Special thanks to Jim Nikolay,
Speaker 1: Will Pearson, Addison No Day, Lisa Castella and Annick Oppenheim
Speaker 1: at w kPr, de La Pescadore, Kate Driver and Jason Weinberg,
Speaker 1: and for constantly solicited Tex support. Henry Driver