Hello, I'm Kristy Young and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive. Since we've had to shorten the music, the programme was originally broadcast in 1980 Roy Plumlee. On our desert island this week is a broadcaster who's been around for quite a few years and it's not first time on the island before your very ears arthur askey for the fourth Is this a record? Yes it is. You're the first person to whom that's happened. That's marvelous. Thank you very much, Roy. We wanted you on, especially Arthur, to celebrate your 80th birthday. It's a bit late, so we'll celebrate your 80th birthday.

How do you remember your childhood Christmases in Liverpool? Oh, as being very, very happy. Of course, my first Christmas was spent in the Holy Land. In Liverpool. You know in Liverpool there's a little collection of streets called biblical names like David Street, Isaac Street, Jacob Street, Moses Street. Street. Well, I was born in Moses Street, so I was born in the Holy Land. But as a kid, it was just the usual family, rather Victorian, which I am. I was born in Good Queen Victoria's Golden Age, you know. Just. Only just, but I did it. And you had one sister at home? One sister. One father. Or another, you've got to go through the family. Here's a desert island Christmas for you Arthur and in your stocking we've stuck eight records which you've chosen, which one do we play first? Tchaikovsky's

Romeo and Juliet. Yes. I think it's a lovely piece of music. It's very corny, okay, but for me... Holds all the melody and especially... How much are we going to pay? About a minute, I would suppose. Oh, about two minutes. A couple of minutes. A bit of the lush melody.

Part of Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet Overture, the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Andre Previn. I've been rereading your autobiography before your very eyes Arthur. I read it when it first came out five years ago. There's a program of a very early appearance of yours in your teens when you're in the Welsh Regiment And why were you in? Welsh Regiment, by the way. - Influence.

I went along to St. George's Hall, Liverpool, to have my medical on my 18th birthday, 6th of June, 1918, and I thought they wouldn't for a minute take me. With my stature and my bad eyesight and one thing and another, but by golly! They did, they were taking anything then. And I found myself at Kinmel Camp in North Wales. In the Welsh Regiment for some reason, after which I was posted to the Far East, great And then in November, news had got to the Kaiser. I was in so he threw the towel in and I was back in the office about a month later. Well there was this concert and Private A. Askey was singing... Songs not the B song or anything like that but songs and Arias by Handel and Schumann and Schubert and Leon Cavallo and and Gu no you obviously had a very good musical grounding. I did well that was being

choir boy and to be a choir boy in those days really meant something. I was in Liverpool Cathedral Choir for a time and had a... Good voice and obviously a pretty good musical grounding and I also learned to play. I was lady next door, Miss Aspinall, and as we were in terraced houses. And she could hear through the walls very easily, although they were good thick cardboard. Hadn't done my hours practice she knew, so I had to stick at my hours piano playing every day. And the funny part was I got so good and proficient that I could read the magnet. The piano stand and play any of my pieces like the Mary Peasant, actually graduating up to the Russell of Spring, which was then a rather difficult piece with cross hands and I could play it.

Well, I see you've got that down as your second record. That is it. That's what I was leading to. And who would you like to play it? The bill was more than once with Mr and Mrs Preen, his son, Sam. He always used to include Russell of Spring in his repertoire, and if you've got a record of Sem playing it, I'd like to hear it.

Semprini playing Russell of Spring. Now you sang in concert as you said just now. And you ran a concert party you used to sing with Tommy Handley that's right that was during the war During the war, they organized concerts for the wounded soldiers, as if they hadn't suffered enough. Used to take us round to the various hospitals to entertain the soldiers. And at that time, Tommy was a barrister.

He was about eight years older than me, Tommy, but had a hell of a good, about his own voice, singing, Well, how the old men, the old men of England. And I was singing, Oh, for the wains, for the wains of the door. And we got away with it because the big thing was the bum fights after. You've got tea and buns and cakes and if the shows took place in the afternoon I was school and if they show to place in the evening I was excused homework. And I thought, aye, aye, there's something in this entertaining game. And I think that is what laid the germ of me eventually going into show business. Did Tommy become a professional before you did? When I came into show business, he was the only one in show business that I knew. The only person who was...

As we used to say in those days, on the stage. And when I thought of giving up my job to go on the stage, my father went berserk. He said, You've got a good job with a pension at the end of the day. It, you're giving it up to go into something you know nothing about. Look what happened to Tommy Handley. He had a lovely job selling premulators in Lisey Street. Doing now is in the chorus of 'Mate of the Mountains'. Now you went off to join a professional concert party against your father's wishes. What was the job you were giving to him? up. You mentioned you were in an office. I was in the Liverpool Education offices. Tonsils and adenoids department. In other words I was in the medical part of it. And I used to have to send out slips of paper saying, if Mrs. Murphy will present her daughter, Bridget, at the Stable Street Clinic next Friday, she will have a tonsils.

And Adam and I removed well as you know at Liverpool everybody suffers with tonsils and adenoids I had a very busy job. I'm sure. And I went off to the war in 1918 and came back to the, what, to the Tonsil. And adenoids. It was eight years growth then. If you had stayed another 60 years you'd have got a pension by now. I would have been well on the pension. Now you went off to this concert party. How old were you then? I was 24, 23 to be exact. I was 24 in the June. Up the job in the march and I got the usual gold watch and golden handshake. What was the concert party called at your That I joined, it was called Song Salad. Funny name and it was a funny little party actually. But my golly, I did learn my trade there. In that nine or ten months, I joined in the march and we went through till pantomime time.

And went all over the seaside resorts in this country. Where did you open? What was the first stage you strode professionally? The Electric Theatre Colchester, which ran silent movies three weeks of the month and the odd week they had a touring concert party and I was... This song shall at concert party and that is how I started or where I started. Let's have another record Arthur, what's number three? Well in the early 60s I was doing... Show for the BBC called 'Pop In' where they played records and a lot of A long haired boy came up to me and said, Excuse me, sir, I went to the same school as you did in Liverpool. I said, Oh, the Liverpool Institute? He said, Yes. He said, There's four of us from Liverpool and two of us went to the Institute. And I said, What do you do? He said, Well, we play guitars and sing our own songs.

Known in Germany I think we'll make it here I said oh good for you what do you call yourselves he said the Beatles I said them what he said the Beatles well I immediately thought of cockroaches and things as you would in those days Oh, I said that's a silly name son. You'll never get anywhere in show business with a name like that I should certainly change that and who was that? He was my dear friend Paul McConaughey And he said, he sat at the desk that I sat at because I must have been a vandal as a kid, I'd carved my initials on the desk. And he said we looked on it as a sort of shrine. So there you are two geniuses on the same seat. So what's this leading us to Arthur?

Well, it leads to what I think one of the best songs written for many, many years, and that is Yesterday. Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away. Now it looks as though they're here to stay. Oh, I believe in yesterday. Suddenly, I'm not half the man I used to be. There's a shadow hanging over me. Paul McCartney, yesterday. Well, just as so many theatres have gone. All the theatrical landlady's. Some of them were characters weren't they? Some of them, they were all characters. Which ones do you remember? Of varying quality. Oh, how did you know? I-- oh. Ha ha! Well, there's millions of stories about theatrical landlady's.

My favourite is not mine, it was really the Lake Bobby house, you remember Bobby? And Bobby was on tour. The Pallavas, and they went to digs in Manchester, and on the Monday they went to the bank-hall as usual, and then they went to... The pub next door and had a drink or two and went home to lunch and took a bottle of sherry with them. Well they'd had enough to drink so they didn't bother opening the bottle of sherry, they put it in the cupboard. The sideboard. And the following day they went and had a game of golf in the morning, had a few gin's up at the golf club, came back for lunch and thought... Oh, the sherry, we'll have a glass of sherry. They opened the cupboard, got the sherry out, and the bottle had been opened. And about two inches of it had gone down. And Bobby was furious, and as I said, he'd had a drink or two, so do you know what he did? He tinkled in the bottle and brought it up to the top, put the cork back, and he was

And put the bottle back in the cupboard. Well, the following day, the Wednesday, the same thing happened. Off the retina, they had a game of golf and had a gin or two up at the golf club. Came back. Let's have a look at the sherry. Got the bottle out there it was down a couple of inches again. So Bobby used to giving an encore Topped it up again put it back in the cupboard and this went on all week Well came the Sunday and they were moving off to the next town and the landlady said well I hope you've been happy with staying with me here and if you come to Manchester again I hope you stay with me and Bobby said yes, we were Lisa's but just one thing We won't bother bringing the bottle of sherry next time. She said why not? He said you know very well. Why not she said yes, but don't you remember? When you arrived here on Monday you told me We're very fond of trifle. I've been putting it in the trifle every day.

What, they call getting your own back, isn't it? That's glorious. You've been in so many pantomimes. Do you remember any particular Christmases you've spent away from home? Oh, I spent a lot of Christmases away from home, some of them very jolly, some of them a little on the sad side. For instance, when Anthea, my daughter, was born, that Christmas I was in Nottingham in Pantomime staying at a temperance hotel. To my little wife on the phone. Well, I'll get off early in the morning to get home for Christmas Day. ...in the car then and when the dawn broke it had been snowing... All night, it was freezing, there were no trains, it was foggy, and to go by road would have been impossible. So I had to get on the phone.

My little missus and say, I'm sorry, I won't be able to make it. And I was obviously with a new... Newborn baby round as well, bursting to get home. So there I was in this commercial hotel. It was quite a big one too. A temperance hotel was the – temperance was the pivotal word shall we say. That went from the manager down to the… the boy cleaned the boots. Anyway, I was on my own in this hotel and by 12 o'clock the entire staff that were on were plastered out of their minds. And I was sitting in this dining room, which seated about a hundred. On my own and I'd been given some cold turkey with hot gravy from yesterday you know. A staggering waiter and the dame in the pantomime, a fellow called Charlie Harrison, dear old Charlie, he was in digs round the corner and his wife had said to him, I'll bet you Arthur

attempted to go home today, pop round and see how he's doing. And Charlie tells... The story now how he looks through the window at this temperance hotel Saw this forlorn figure in the corner eating the cold turkey and hot gravy. So he crept in. The door I heard the door open I looked around and I just said to him and a Merry Christmas to you too anyway Charlie said come back to the digs with me so the rest of the passed off alright. But that was one of the Christmases I remember with a bit of morbidity, shall I say. Yes indeed. Well we got to regular... Number four very quickly. That way aren't we getting on? Now then I wonder what I better give you for number four. Well I'd like to have a record of a fellow I'd not met up to the time we're up to now in my life story and that is Jack Hilton.

Stilton I had already had a marvelous band and whenever he appeared anywhere I would go and see Jack. Little knowing that later in my theatrical career he'd have a big influence with me and we were great mates for 25 years. So if I was on a desert island, there's nothing I'd like better to bring back. Very many happy memories. Big eye and a great musician. Well, he wasn't a great musician but a great showman and that was Jack Hilton and his band. And the record I've chosen is perhaps not the...

Greatest one he made, but one I particularly liked, and that was Music, My Thrill, Please. Jack Hilton and his orchestra, Music Maestro, please, recorded in 1938. You had some very successful years in London as an after-dinner entertainer. You were king of the mouss I certainly was Stanley.

To Lola and Hardy in case you didn't get the implication. Yes, I was king of the masonics, no doubt. I used to do an average of, when I first started, two or three a week. Then I eventually worked up to two or three a night. I've done five on one night. And you did some pioneer television work. I started with John Logie Baird. I really did. Do you remember which year? Oh, it would be early, early 30s when I started working with him. He started in Long And it was a very bare studio and I looked into a very very bright light with sort of railings going past my eyes and he kept saying to me, Keep Arms in, keep...'cause I was singing B songs in those days and seagulls were flapping my arms around and he said 'keep your hands up to your face, keep close together', you know, I was an idiot, but I was getting a guinea and a half. - Oh, well, that's not to be described. - And it was in the afternoon.

I stuck to it, but I never thought it would get anywhere. All right, let's have record number five. Number five, and that goes back to my concert party days, because during those days I was doing everybody's material. In other words, I hadn't got all my own material. Anything I heard I'd pinch and do. And a lot of my repertoire I owed to a great mate of mine, a lovely fellow, a great artist, and the first star I ever met, and that was Stanley Holloway. I adored and do still. Adore Stanley Holloway, a wonderful fellow. He was very kind to me in my early days and of all his repertoire that includes Sam Sam Pekup the Musketon.

The one I used to love was Brown Boots, so I'd love to hear that again. Our aunt Anna's passed away. We'd her funeral today, and it was a posh affair. Met to have two policemen there. The earth was lovely, all plate glass. What a coffin, oak and brass, with pheasants weeping, flowers galore. But Jim, her cousin, what do you think he wore? Brown boots. I asked you, Brown Boots. Fancy coming to a funeral in Brown Boots? I'll admit he had a nice black tie, black fingernails and a nice black eye. But you can't see people off when they die in brown boots. Brown Boots by Stanley Holloway

For many of us Arthur, we'll always associate you most with with bandwagon just before the war. You hadn't done much radio before that had you? Spasmodic, Roy. I used to do things like Monday night at 8 or Monday night at 7, it varied. John Sharmon's Music Hall. I did a series called Eight Bells which didn't take off but it was just spasmodic and I suppose the money was too big. I was getting five guineas then. Were you? I had to have my signature witnessed on the contract. I always remember that. But in 1938 in this very building, Ban Wagon was born and the BBC through their own publicity

Dubbed me the resident comedian. That was their publicity not mine and I said if this show is going to take off if I'm the resident comedian I must live on the premises. They said oh you can't do that because this place was looked on then like Westminster Abbey you know this new wonderful building of the BBC but I put my foot down because the show was going to anyway so they thought they might save it and it did. You and Dickie Murdoch. My dear old mate Dickie. Yes. You hadn't worked together before. We'd never worked before we were thrown together. But you started writing the script. Well the scripts were again it was so bad that Dickie and I decided we could do better writing them ourselves. So in conjunction with Vernon Harris Who was brought in. We used to sit round a table like you and I are now in this studio and start writing next Wednesday's script.

And the show didn't run all that long. How many editions were there? - Oh, very, very short. Not like Take It From Here or Much Binding that went, or Itmar that went on for what, 15, 17 years. We were only that many months because the war broke out, you see. And Dickie Murdoch had to go into the Air Force or long to go into the Air Force. Are you listening, Dickie? And that split us up 'cause Dickie had to go into the Air Force, as I say. So that was the end of Bandwagon. - Well, it made both of your stars, and it was a lovely show. - Oh, it did it. It was a miracle how it happened so quickly to think that I was in concert. For my 15th season in 1938 at Hastings with the Folgerols with dear old Jack Warner and the late Walter Medjley, dear Walter, and in 1938 at the Seaside in concert party.

39 through radio and the successor bandwagon. Arthur Askey, the day war broke out, I was doing 14 shows a week at the Palladium, Twice nightly in two matinees and filming all day at Lime Grove Studios, including Sundays. It all happened very quickly. And all through radio. You see, we had it on the present-day television, fellas, because the public... See them. Now all we were were voices and they naturally wanted to see what we looked like. Well me, I've got a big voice, I'm talking subtle voshi now to match up with you. But I can, you know, let it go. And calling myself big-hearted Arthur and with this big voice people all thought I was a big fella and I used to walk on the stage, I could hear a gasp go round the theatre, and that was

to say, This is all there is, you're not being diddled. - Right, the gasp goes round the studio and the tab record. And it will go around the studio. There's only the two of us here, but I've done a little fixing Roy. I've brought a record along that I want to play because I'm not sure about your letting me do it if I asked you. So I'll ask the boys in the engineering here in the suit with the macabre. If they'll put the record What I Bought Along and see how you like this.

Amaze me Arthur, I had no idea that your tates lay in that direction. Isn't that marvellous? Are you going to identify those gentlemen? Yes, it's a new group called the Running Soars. The point being... If I was wrecked on a desert island and I was sitting very despondently one day and wishing I was back in... Civilization. When I hear records like that played I think, well I can't be so badly off being here, stuck on a desert island, nice and quiet. A few things in show business you haven't done. I know you haven't been in a pop group. You've made a lot of films, haven't you? - Yes. - And you've done musical comedies and straight plays. Well, fairly straight plays.

Like comedy. Are any other Askeys coming into the business? Your daughter Anthea of course is in Pantomime. Anthea is in Pantomime, she's here at Eastbourne. My granddaughter Jane, she's in Pantomime. Strangely enough a Colchester as a dancer. And the other two, well they're both at college so they're... Thoughts in that there. Although the 16 year old... He wants a sense of Thaisa, which only cost about £4,000, so if you've got a few odd balls with him. But he's thinking in that direction. So there are three generations of Aski's already? Of the Aski's, yes. Record number seven, what's that? Well now we've had a good selection. We started off with my favourite composer, Tchaikovsky, who I adore, everything of his. And my second favourite is Grieg. I adore Grieg. I'd like one of his little light pieces, like there's something to do about spring.

Last spring. That's it. That is the one.

Last spring from his two elegiac melodies played by the Northern Synthonia Orchestra conducted by Paul Tortelier. You're on this island, we picked a fairly comfortable one for you, and you like the sunshine don't you? Oh I do already. Are you a handyman? Look after yourself. Not very well, Roy. No, it's... I'm not really a handyman at all. Pity. What about fishing? You must have played a pier pavilion where you had a fishing line out of the window. Oh yes, I did. I used to have a dressing room at South Parade Pier at Southsea and I bought a fishing line. I found a loose board in the dressing room floor and used to leave the line in, baited, and then go on stage and do my next bit and then come and just feel the line. Oh, I've got one. and very often go back to the digs.

With about 12 herrings or something like that. I'm back, ma! I brought me supper in. All right, love, bring it in here, and that was it. So I could do a bit of fishing, I think. That's good. What about sailing? - Sailing? - Yes. - Could you build a boat or a raft or something? - No, I don't think so. And having heard that record earlier on, I don't think I'd be in such a hurry to get away from the island. Well, you'd keep your feet up for a bit. I think I would. Well now, we're on a desert island. One thing we are devoid of there is company and particularly female company. I can still think, you know, even at the age of 80. So please, could I have something from South Pacific? How about nothing like a day? a day. ♪ We have nothing to put on a clean white suit for ♪

♪ That's what there ain't no substitute for ♪ ♪ There is nothing like a dame ♪ ♪ Nothing in the world ♪ ♪ There is nothing you can name ♪ ♪ There is anything like a dame ♪ - There's nothing like a dame by members of the Broadway cast of South Pacific. Oh, there are your eight records, Arthur. If you could only take one, which would it be? - Tchaikovsky. - Romeo and Juliet. - Yeah, Romeo and Juliet. - And you're allowed one luxury.

Not even any practical use. One luxury. Well, you know the old gag, Roy, of the people who had a house and the river ran at the bottom of the garden. Yes. And it overflowed. And Mother floated out of the kitchen window on the kitchen table. And I accompanied her on the piano. So it shows a piano can float. So please can I have a piano? A floating piano. And then I will become Tchaikovsky II. And one book apart from the Bible and Shakespeare which we assume already on the island. I'll tell you what I'd like. The Guinness Book of Records. Yes. If only to see if they spelt my name right. Right, the latest edition. And thank you, Arthur Askey, for letting us hear your desert islanders once again. And what can I say to you, Robin? Thank you. Goodbye, everyone.

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