YouSaid · the spoken record

Allan Ahlberg

lines on the record: 56
first: 2008-11-14
most recent: 2008-11-14
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Yes, it was a poor family, yes. My father was a laborer, my mother was a cleaner. And there was no money, but then there was no money in any of the houses, in any of the streets where I lived. It was a pretty evenly poor population.”
2008-11-14 · Desert Island Discs · Allan Ahlberg · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I love all kinds of music and I couldn't narrow it down until I hit upon the scheme of choosing eight songs and eight singers that I would people my island with voices. My first song is Judy Garland, and she's singing the trolley song from Meet Me in Sidley.”
2008-11-14 · Desert Island Discs · Allan Ahlberg · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Often. You do laugh I do, really, yes, and initially I'm the first person to hear the joke, and I laugh at it. Sadly, quite often the thing that I most laugh at has to be cut because it doesn't stand up after six or seven readings, but it's essentially playing with words, and you come up with some comical absurdity, and you hope that a six year old will enjoy it.”
2008-11-14 · Desert Island Discs · Allan Ahlberg · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Collaborating with Janet was just wonderful because it was like a cottage industry. We made the book words, pictures, and we were obsessed with the entire book, the paper, the printing, the binding everything, and then we went to our publisher with it. I now work with an editor and a designer and an illustrator in a different way, and I enjoy that as well. But the real fun, the greatest fun is when the ink is still wet on the paper. Often you have to destroy it later because it isn't good enough, but at the time that's where the real hot excitement is. You said”
2008-11-14 · Desert Island Discs · Allan Ahlberg · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, and the thing is, I do find that when I sit down with a pen in my hand and a piece of paper in front of me that my own childhood increasingly comes up in front of me and I want to write about it, the power and drama of things that happen to you say before twelve registers and goes down deep and stays there, I think, continued.”
2008-11-14 · Desert Island Discs · Allan Ahlberg · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't think I had a dramatic childhood, and I think the quote that you just used comes from a story of mine called my brother's ghost. It does. Of course, that's a character in the book rather than me necessarily. But you have said the character.”
2008-11-14 · Desert Island Discs · Allan Ahlberg · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source