YouSaid · the spoken record

Danny Baker

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48

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2011-07-31

most recent

2011-07-31

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1

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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

1. “I'll save Bernard Cribbins. I've grown accustomed to her face because away from humanity it would remind me of the best aspects of humanity and the best aspects of the sumptuousness of its sentiment and the warmth of it remind me of the best aspects of life and family.”

   2011-07-31 · Desert Island Discs · Danny Baker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

2. “This was the toughest one for me, and so on the tube here I was looking down at my shoes, I said to myself I said I'll take these blue suede shoes. I'd love footwear, and these shoes I will wear into the ground. I treat these like everything else in my life. I like them and I wear them every single day until they fall to bit and then I'll buy another pair of os. I'll take my blue suede shoes. There's a lot in that both in the phrase and in the comfort of them.”

   2011-07-31 · Desert Island Discs · Danny Baker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

3. “I'm going to take the most of SJ Pereman, taking away that book which is a compendium of all his work, obviously, and taking that away would never ever tire. Even now I've read it and I've read it and I've read it and it's a touchstone to me. I am not familiar with some of the phrases they came and they hit you upside the head and you think whoa, I didn't know language could be used like that. Just simple things like he doesn't call it an overcoat or a raincoat or even a Macintosh. He calls it a mackinaw. And you think a Macinaw? I must salt that or why that's a terrific name for a coat. And so I continually read and reread the most of SJ Peremon, and I'm continually surprised by it. And it's a dear old friend, and so that's the book I take.”

   2011-07-31 · Desert Island Discs · Danny Baker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

4. “The last disc is, as you probably know, there's a thread of sort of 58 to 60. I'm trying to keep these eight records I heard before the age of six, which hopefully seeded and colored everything that came after it from big youth to tangerine dream, whatever love of disparate music I have since then must have been seeded by these records I heard before that time. The next one is the cusp of the coming era. It is just before the Beatles and this is the era before it which I have a lot of affection for but I'm aware it didn't change the culture and nothing sums it up better than Cliff Richard who has become a figure of fun but was an enormous tremendous entertainer and summer holiday the end of summer holiday when he's up on the Acropolis and singing the next time and it's a lovely song and it's but it is the last hurrah of a kind of innocence.”

   2011-07-31 · Desert Island Discs · Danny Baker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

5. “Yeah, okay no it's a disregard I wouldn't say it's a terrific one because you put my arm up my back and there's some of the scripts I've written I think that's pretty good as a byproduct my radio shows cheer people up and I know when I was ill the male I got and I don't underestimate that but neither can I gush about it because in the end it's self-regarding nonsense but what you can't do is dedicate your life to enriching strangers lives you can't if I sat here and said well you know what I wish I'd sacrifice more of my home life to actually make strangers happy what a bizarro world he's talking about there”

   2011-07-31 · Desert Island Discs · Danny Baker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

6. “Could be all right with that. Obviously, we're just doing a what if. Certainly nobody could live like I broadcast. You'd have a heart attack. That's all there is to it. So I'm pretty good on my own. I'm all right. I'll be all right.”

   2011-07-31 · Desert Island Discs · Danny Baker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

7. “This is the antithesis of what we're talking about. I love usually forced and er-sats in motion. I don't mind that. But I also am in awe of the majesty and elegance of the great songwriters as most people would be. And so I thought, well, I'd better choose what I think is the most beautiful song ever written. And an unusual performance of it is by Bernard Cribbins. But rather like the Peter Seller song was produced by George Martin before the Beatles, so was this. I believe this is the most beautiful song ever written and it's an absolutely sumptuous version as I've grown accustomed to her face.”

   2011-07-31 · Desert Island Discs · Danny Baker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

8. “We certainly went into pubs for a couple of hours, and poor Gazet couldn't pole can't drink, he never could drink, and literally he's one of them fellas who get and pour it away while you're talking to him, you know. Well, Chris certainly isn't like that. I had two kids at the time. And I'm not saying you used to come round and we used to sit there and read, you know, Keats and Shelley to each other, but given that we were three non-drug takers, we weren't cocaine takers, so we'd sit there with pints in front of us. You'd take a photo of that and they're out again. The lads are around. Unbelievable. By that time I'd been through a rock and roll background. So it was nothing to me to be suddenly represented as it's quite a flattering. I think it was 34, 35, to be a wild man, to be the new kind of, you know, Oliver Reed, Richard Burton and Richard Harris. I'll buy that. I'd now kind of half cultivate the idea that I might have been a wild man in my youth. That's good. That's a good thing.”

   2011-07-31 · Desert Island Discs · Danny Baker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

9. “Whole period when Yeah, some bend or somewhere. Yeah, it said some bend or somewhere. That's what you've got to examine. Three at the time very well-known working class fellows in a pub is a bender. And not only that, then it became a 24-hour and then a 48-hour.”

   2011-07-31 · Desert Island Discs · Danny Baker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

10. “Yep, pretty much. When you'd like to think she's more sensible and she's not quite as optimistic as me, but I genuinely I live like Bertie Worcester.”

    2011-07-31 · Desert Island Discs · Danny Baker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

11. “Supposing it had gone another way, which is the most polite way of saying it died. What I have said, wish I'd done all those tours with those rock stars, or blown all my money on extraordinary holidays where I took everyone I knew after these no, I don't see the point of having money in the bank. And equally, I've had no money, loads of times. I've got no money now. At this moment, I have no money, but I live like I've got twenty million pounds, and it's a tremendous trick if you can carry off.”

    2011-07-31 · Desert Island Discs · Danny Baker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

12. “Yes, this will fall right into her, cliche. It's Tommy Steele doing a cockney song. There's no point ducking this is the first record on all the way through. Watermouth by Tommy Steele, it was fun, and it cheered everyone up and don't come any more brawl than this.”

    2011-07-31 · Desert Island Discs · Danny Baker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

13. “The odd thing is wind my great love of going indoors overnight and knocking out wine has gone. I can't taste up brilliant at the moment, probably always will. But I can drink beer. Not a lot of it, but it tastes the same. A very little I can taste at the minute, but that is in that very thin band I can taste.”

    2011-07-31 · Desert Island Discs · Danny Baker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

14. “Yeah, and she's from an enormous family, and our house is often full of people and bikes and prams. It's a noisy big house. Same as the one I grew up in. I'm probably trying to replicate that and have done it. And yes, all I want to be away from any of that is a good host, I think is the most beautiful thing in life to be a great host.”

    2011-07-31 · Desert Island Discs · Danny Baker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

15. “You don't fight it. Got notice, it's nice if that helps you, but you don't battle it, you're the battleground. You are Normandy Beach. You are Hastings in ten sixty six. Science is fighting it. You're helpless. But a game is not an attitude I had to don or adopt.”

    2011-07-31 · Desert Island Discs · Danny Baker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

16. “It was horrible. It was the most disgusting thing. And they told me it would be the most grueling thing other than bone marrow, but the prognosis was good. But Daughter, do you want me to enlarge on that? No, but you know.”

    2011-07-31 · Desert Island Discs · Danny Baker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

17. “And head and neck is what they call. Cancer of the head and neck that laid me low for nine months. And, you know, it was a rotten, disgusting time, but it's a very small portion of a wider life. I didn't learn any lessons through it. I said, no damasen moment. People want there to learn. Truly no. It is just for whatever reason, Kirsty, for whatever reason. I am not like that.”

    2011-07-31 · Desert Island Discs · Danny Baker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

18. “That's four thousand seven hundred and fifty dollars before tax for the night and doesn't include breakfast. I said we'll have that, right? I barely had, I mean, I might have had that. But when I got home, people said we stayed in the presidential suite. Now I couldn't afford that right at the time, but you can't take that away from me. And yes, you know, you might say, well, say if things have gone wrong, we'll say if they did, but they didn't, and they haven't so far. You know, I think it's very bourgeois to fritter your money away in insurance. I've never lived like that. My dad had absolutely no fear of money, and he used to say to me, You're like me, boy. You'll always be able to forage around and find a few quid. And again, it annoys a lot of people I don't know why to be extraordinarily happy and to live have no concern or indeed respect for money drives a lot of people nuts, but I live like that and one day I'll die and what a what a giddy whirl it's been.”

    2011-07-31 · Desert Island Discs · Danny Baker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

19. “thirty grand of Chris, but that's because I was told I was going to be not going to go to work for seven months. Chris is my best friend. And once he got over the shocker that I was that ill. And I said, Chris, could you borrow us the money? And I'll give it back to you when I'm back at work. And I have. That is exactly what I do. I do very well in life, but I spend it immediately on the people around me and myself. And that's always done. I stayed once in when me and the kids went to New York years ago. And we got to the four seasons, which is a pretty swanky hotel. But they didn't have any family rooms. I said, what would you suggest? He said, We've got suites. So I said, okay, I will take a suite then. And this is the four seasons. He said, we've only got this suite and the presidential one on the roof. Wendy looked at me and I looked. I said, how much is that? And he said.”

    2011-07-31 · Desert Island Discs · Danny Baker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

20. “That's true materially. I live in a very nice house, house with good things in it, but I don't actually have any money. You mentioned”

    2011-07-31 · Desert Island Discs · Danny Baker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

21. “This is from my favorite film, which is The Road to Morocco, and again you may get a glimpse of role models here, seeing Bob Hope as that super confident, fast talking fellery played, that's the way to live. But in Road to Morocco, Bing Crosby never looked better. And when he sang this song, I thought, OK, basing myself on an incidental song from Road to Morocco. But if you listen to the words of this, I actually believe it, and I believe it is a terrific philosophy.”

    2011-07-31 · Desert Island Discs · Danny Baker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

22. “Absolutely none. And I don't say that just to be cavalier. I simply don't how could I? How could I? Because my children are bright enough and happy enough to turn around and say, But Dad, you left school fourteen. Simply what you do does not in our family does not define what you are one of the most outrageous things that's happened to us recently is one of the quotes I gave after being ill recently and mentioned that I borrowed money off Chris Evans. But that was because it was expedient. That was the easiest thing to do. But some insurance company online has said there's a lesson there for all of us. If you find that to me negates my entire philosophy.”

    2011-07-31 · Desert Island Discs · Danny Baker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

23. “On my radar, because at 14 I'm in the record shop with Elton John and Mark Bolan as customers coming in every week, a McCartney and people like that. And then Punk Rock comes along, then television get interested. And they say, why don't you come and work in television? Okay, let's go and work in television. And that then leads to radio and da da da and da da da. Now, that is why I believe I've never had a big red sports car. Despite reputations, I've never been someone who hung out at the Groucho Club with a lot of page three models. At every stage of my life, I believe I was doing exactly what you should be doing. I've never looked back and thought if I'd gone off to the States with the sex pistols, I could have been at Cambridge. A series of chances, but I don't feel somehow bereft that if I could have sat down with you now and said, you know, I was reading Beowulf last night, and I don't. I simply don't.”

    2011-07-31 · Desert Island Discs · Danny Baker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

24. “I know But that suggests a parallel life that somehow would have been fulfilling as opposed to this one I'm the other ton.”

    2011-07-31 · Desert Island Discs · Danny Baker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

25. “Yeah, but as I say, I just phoned exams fun, but all my friends were going to West Greenwich, which was the local comprehensive, and so I said I wanted to go there. And my mum and they said, all right, okay, sure. They never thought that academia could make you successful or brainy, as they used to say. And it's a philosophy I've totally embraced. If going to a good school made you bright, then parliament would be full of geniuses. It don't work like that.”

    2011-07-31 · Desert Island Discs · Danny Baker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

26. “Ah replied on the estate money there was a big gang of us and when we used to go out running around on the estate it was extraordinarily dangerous of course there were quite a lot of bombsights around to call them dumps but they actually were literally bombsights one of my earliest memories is sitting in a burning car there was an old full popular dumped on there it was just there this shell and we used to sit in it and use it as a base a lot of us and then one day about eight of us piled in this car and then set fire to the seat and see who would be the last one out played chicken now that is not typical of me I'm not like that but I remember that clearly never occurred to us for a second there might be still petrol in it didn't occur to us my brother Michael on that very same dump found some wire that we were going round using that evening it made a noise when you twirled it the feller in front of him did it it went across my brother's eye blinded him and out there for life so it was it was I don't want to give you the everyday was some kind of Vietnam but my overriding memories is man”

    2011-07-31 · Desert Island Discs · Danny Baker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

27. “This is Peter Sellers. I choose it because I do think it is an eternal truth in pop music. I think the lyrics of this, this is 1958, the words to it are as true as this series of X Factor as anything else. It's absurd. It's a terrific performance and it's Peter Sellers before he went nuts as well.”

    2011-07-31 · Desert Island Discs · Danny Baker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

28. “Everything, anything that came through the docks. Does anyone who's been a docked son or daughter knows, you bring stuff home. He brought him shoes you'd knock out around the flats, you'd hug around the flat sudden door to door. And it got so overwhelming at one time that they started shipping, literally shipping left shoes out through London and the right shoes out through Hull because they were losing too many shoes. He always had stuff. The airhouse was full of continental quilts and brandy for a while LP records and it was hell's a pop in time. Very funny.”

    2011-07-31 · Desert Island Discs · Danny Baker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

29. “Said he did use his feet. Yeah, oh God. I want to make that one impression. No, I get it. It was everything. It was the pub, the suit on Sunday lunchtime. He liked to run things. He was a very good comparing pubs. Very funny. My dad working in the dock ring and all those things home from the docks, fixing the gas meter, fixing the electricity meat.”

    2011-07-31 · Desert Island Discs · Danny Baker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

30. “Yes, it is. That's it. She was very tough. My parents were terrific people, extremely confident people. But my mum was as sweet as my dad was bumptious. But they remained together nearly sixty years. And she knew the lyrics to every single verse of a song. You know, she's got dementia these days, but even now, a song will come on. And she still can know the verse and every single word. And she'll say, oh, I can't remember what I did 10 minutes ago, but I can remember this. My mom was, by comparison quiet, but I've got to say that the Woolwich Fairy would be.”

    2011-07-31 · Desert Island Discs · Danny Baker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

31. “And she was a big matriarch, and the only time you ever saw my dad and his brothers cowed was in her presence. When she died, they named the bar across the road Mar Bakers, it still is on the Isle of Dogs.”

    2011-07-31 · Desert Island Discs · Danny Baker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

32. “Man and Bike was my main images, listen to her, listen to Brian Hayeshot. My name was sitting there and swear at the radio all day. In her life she worked everything from a docker during the First World War, she owned pubs, she ran shops, she did anything, and she was not a sweet old lady. She was the kind of old lady would stand in the street at closing time and sing.”

    2011-07-31 · Desert Island Discs · Danny Baker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

33. “This is Max Bygraves. It's a beautiful reading of a lovely Flanagan and Allen song. It's full of melancholy this again it populated, you know, the vibrations in my house for years and years and a lot of these songs, in fact all of these songs have been with me longer than any other songs and that's why they're entitled to be here.”

    2011-07-31 · Desert Island Discs · Danny Baker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

34. “We lived in a council flat. My parents came from the Isle of Dogs. From the moment they were married, they lived in single rooms and pretty cramped accommodation. Then I was born and within months of being born, they were allocated this flat on a brand new estate in Bermansey with a garden and an indoor bathroom, and suddenly their lives were like, we can't live three bedrooms in a council flat, so I knew nothing of the hardships beforehand, and I came along and coincided with that, and perhaps I couldn't help but feel partially responsible. So all I knew was this trump for the first decade of my life, this tremendous relief from my family, and people come round saying lovely flat bet, or you are lucky, and so I thought our house was a palace. And of course it's the baby boomer time, so the flats were full, the estate was full of kids my age, all out all day and all of that. It was a terrific place to grow up.”

    2011-07-31 · Desert Island Discs · Danny Baker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

35. “Good money for you, you've joined the middle classes. They want to assimilate and they don't understand that using that criteria, anyone who has a lucky lottery ticket overnight becomes middle class. It doesn't quite work like that. My children may be like that. You know, they were raised like that. But I certainly wasn't, and I retain a lot of the energies of my dad. And that is why people say, she walks out of things. He does his nut a lot with people in the business. I see no reason not to. This is an industry like any other. My dad once said to us, and this is not something I go along with, but the germ of it is true. When I'd received some stinker review about some talk show I'd done probably quite rightly, but my dad used to look at it and said, what can you do about that, boy? And I say, nothing. That's how this show business is, and my old man said Trouble you, boy, trouble your game. There's not enough right handers dished out. And I said, in the dock someone says that, you give him a right hand and they don't do it again. Now that of course is entirely wrong but were the world like that, I think. I think there's perhaps been.”

    2011-07-31 · Desert Island Discs · Danny Baker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

36. “He was a doctor. Yeah, my dad. See, I got that again for a while, there's suspicion. I remember when I was first in what we can loosely call show business. There was a suspicion of genuine proletarian people, and there still is a dearth of them and a suspicion of, but he really went to college. Oh, we find out he actually went to private school and all that. So finding out somebody actually left a comprehensive school 14, dad was a docker, mum worked in a factory. Somehow, middle class, and let's face it, you know, no inference, but this business is awash with them. They set their chin against that. Oh, here we go. He's a cockony, is he? But I think sometimes the suppression of working class culture and the aping of it and the cartooning of it was a certain way of distancing it by the middle classes in media. And you still get hideously patronizing things like first thing you notice about his house is it's not like Del Boy's flat. That happens. But just coming back to the idea of, yeah, I am from that kind of stock. And people say, but you live in a big pile of bricks on Blackheath now. You know, you've been.”

    2011-07-31 · Desert Island Discs · Danny Baker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

37. “Yeah, no, no, I think worst of me is a way of putting it, and I don't mean that in the sense of annoyance, hopefully. The old man was larger than me, put it that way. My old man was a huge personality. But my old man didn't care for the niceties of life or even show business. He didn't refine his personality to make it a career. My old man used it at home and all that, but he was a brawler as well, and I've never had that. It was a big union leader. And he had the volatile side of him. He was a doctor.”

    2011-07-31 · Desert Island Discs · Danny Baker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

38. “It was the most secure and happy childhood. You know, I was extremely popular. I was a good-looking kid. And that may give people an idea as to how come you can walk along with your hat on the side of your head. I don't think even this interview or anything else would give a reflection of how I live, and I don't ever intend to do that. Indoors were a clotheshop or a big family indoors and all of that. Unfortunately, as I say, what I can do for a living facilitates my private life.”

    2011-07-31 · Desert Island Discs · Danny Baker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

39. “This is a clear blue sky song. Most of these are. This is a song I remember we found at a chalet called St. Elmo in Potterheim on the Norfolk Broads. When we holidayed, we holidayed on the Norfolk Broads for two weeks every year as a family. And they had a record play and we played it over and over again. It's Dean Martin. But this song represents clear blue sky. And I've got to say, as a kid, I was extraordinarily happy, extraordinarily confident. I was extremely popular. I was the captain of the football team. I was the first in year in exams. People hate that and everyone's going, oh shut up. It's not a very English thing. But that's the fact. And I was the youngest of the kids. I might have been indulged, certainly wasn't Spoilber, but a very hard working class family. But I had a terrific childhood. There were no sad cellos in the background while I lonely looked at my feet and thought why don't I fit in? I fitted writing, not only that I led things. I had a terrific time I was wildly popular and this kind of song sums up my philosophy.”

    2011-07-31 · Desert Island Discs · Danny Baker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

40. “People think they're getting. That's one of the things they I think on the radio you've got a cartoon of us. I'm aware, and I get that from my dad, it is a pretty overwhelming and loud person. But hopefully it's not dumb either. If it wasn't linked to a certain linguistic acrobatics and stuff, it wouldn't.”

    2011-07-31 · Desert Island Discs · Danny Baker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

41. “Oh, my mind is whizzing with him now. Chuckled the bottom line, that was no good. I've done a thing called sitcom showdown. That was ridiculously but anything you do, and particularly in this game, you send out there with half a chance. But you don't think that represents me. God knows if I thought I was represented by any television show. If anyone thought this is me, now you're getting me. It's a hoopla. And we're knee deep in it. You can look at the CV of Fred Estair and find out he made some terrible films. That doesn't define either Fred Asteel or anyone else. I've put myself in with Fred Astair, by the way. But if you think it's going to be an unbroken chain of success.”

    2011-07-31 · Desert Island Discs · Danny Baker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

42. “Oh, I've had outright. Oh, please. I think it's about Tommy introduce some of my outrageous disasters Oh, some of the television shows I've done have been an appalling waste of time. But again, were they appalling wastes of time among a field of otherwise untrammelled success by other people? This whole thing, as I say, is chaos. I mean,”

    2011-07-31 · Desert Island Discs · Danny Baker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

43. “No, it isn't. And I've worked consistently all that time, but I'd hate anyone to think it facilitates my life beautifully. But I certainly don't know anyone else who does this outside of the people I work for. It's never mentioned indoors. But no plan, certainly no plan. It couldn't be. You've only got to look at the incredible way this is all botched together. And yet I don't feel that's somehow lucky when you look around some of the half wits and boss eyed bozos who people this business. And they are running departments. So all of this is an antil that somebody's kicked over. And I happen to be one of the more bumptious ants.”

    2011-07-31 · Desert Island Discs · Danny Baker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

44. “It's Helen Shapiro and it's a song called Marvelous Live, which is the B side of a record called You Don't Know, which was a hit. And Helen Shapiro represents that entire era between what we kind of think as the light operetta of having a novello and things and the proper coming of pop music. And she's got a terrific voice. It's a lovely arrangement. She was 13 or 14 when she made this, which again is a nice bellwether for realizing that nothing changes in pops hello Justin Bieber. This is 14-year-old Helen Shapiro before the awareness of pop music, pop culture set in.”

    2011-07-31 · Desert Island Discs · Danny Baker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

45. “Oh, it is impossible it's like naming children or performing surgery, I suspect. You say the enemy, but it wasn't the first job I was at 14 in a record shop. And so I was 14 and left school when the last year you could leave at 14 and went to a record shop, which I didn't know, but happened to be the hippist shop in the West End long before there were mega stores and all of this. And so music, and obviously growing up in the family, it was everywhere. Doing this was hard. That's why I've gone on a strategy here that I hope, I hope, will diffuse and make the journey easier.”

    2011-07-31 · Desert Island Discs · Danny Baker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

46. “Yeah, because there's not any money anymore in writing for people. Johnny Spate was an Alf Garnet, Clement and La Fren ⁇ weren't the likely lads. There are writers and there are performers and we seem now to almost expect, especially comedians, to write their own stuff or there's some kind of stigma to it. These days a radio is, it strikes me as the last thing in the profession I'm in that where you can turn up five minutes before it begins and go straight home again afterwards. And that, believe me, is the allure of radio. And I don't have meetings and I'm not asked to take part in any focus groups. Certainly not universally popular. But plainly, people employ me, so it works.”

    2011-07-31 · Desert Island Discs · Danny Baker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

47. “Yeah, oh yeah, there's no doubt about that, of course. Otherwise, you're full of false modesty. And I know sometimes when I've written four other people, I will walk around the house after a particularly good phrase in an algae of self congratulation. But that is, if you ask me bluntly, I also don't believe in that kind of, I think sometimes humility is the worst kind of ego. And I think if you'd have said to me then, are you talented and I'd have gone, oh, I don't know. People would have curled a lip. It happens to be that this is what I'm good at. And in the currency of modern culture, a lot of weight is given to that. But it's not surgery and it's not even digging coal out of the ground. And always remember it's only a couple of vowels from radio to rodeo in this Nitwick culture we have a gift for exploiting my personality to forward radio shows. How's that for damning it with faint praise?”

    2011-07-31 · Desert Island Discs · Danny Baker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

48. “Yes, and it sounds confrontational when you put it like that at the top, but I think it comes from a distant shame at doing this when you come from a family of manual workers. And when I say I make people sound as good as they ever did, that may not be any kind of boast, but it's purely and simply a working of the personality. And I don't necessarily see it as a noble craft. Right.”

    2011-07-31 · Desert Island Discs · Danny Baker · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source