YouSaid · the spoken record

David Mitchell

lines on the record: 54
first: 2009-07-19
most recent: 2009-07-19
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

“Before this programme was going to say the Elgar, but in listening to them it's not going to be that, it's actually going to be Rainbow Connection, because that of all the songs is the one that makes me feel that if I were on a desert island I might get rescued.”
2009-07-19 · Desert Island Discs · David Mitchell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I'll have a DVD player and television set and largest possible stack of DVDs. I think I have DVDs of sitcoms, please. As many episodes of as many sitcoms as I am allowed.”
2009-07-19 · Desert Island Discs · David Mitchell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think I should choose something funny because the Bible isn't very funny, and the funny bits of Shakespeare aren't as good as the other bits. That's my bit of literary criticism there. So I'm going to take decline and fall by Evelyn War, which is one of the funniest books I've ever read, and I think it's almost exactly the sort of novel I would like to have written.”
2009-07-19 · Desert Island Discs · David Mitchell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If anything could while away an eternity on a desert island, it's this fantastic and very moving song from the beginning of a comedy puppet movie. It's rainbow connection sung by Kermit. I defy anyone not to fall in love with this song.”
2009-07-19 · Desert Island Discs · David Mitchell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh no, no, I have no skill in DIY or cookery or hunting or fishing, so the good thing is I will die of starvation and exposure, probably before I can even whittle a tool sharp enough to kill myself with. But no, I would hate that solitude. It's a nightmare, the idea of a desert island. And no amount of music dissuades that pain.”
2009-07-19 · Desert Island Discs · David Mitchell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't think I have an ideal the women I have sort of become infatuated with in the past have been different. It's very much case by case. I don't think.”
2009-07-19 · Desert Island Discs · David Mitchell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I've been very busy, I think. I think I have focused entirely on work. for a long time and that's for a lot of the time it was the most important and it was stressful and difficult. I think now, even though obviously I'm still stressed about it and very focused and worried it's all going to go wrong, I do feel I've achieved a measure of stability in my success, still frightened to use that word, so I'm beginning to think about other things and I suddenly notice, yes, I'm living in basically like a student and I'm single and these are things I want to stop and I need to spend more time and thought on it and be less in denial of it as an issue.”
2009-07-19 · Desert Island Discs · David Mitchell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, I think I do. I certainly don't I don't want that not to happen to me without having made a definite decision I don't want to look back and say oh never had a family or children or anything at what point did the last opportunity for that pass you by? But I think so I think I'd like that”
2009-07-19 · Desert Island Discs · David Mitchell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I imagine it'll change it, yes, but I Rob's life will change more than mine, I imagine. In the way our partnership has sort of matured, we're more professional than we were, but I think now we've got the maturity for him to be a family man and for us still to get some work done.”
2009-07-19 · Desert Island Discs · David Mitchell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, this is a piece of music just always makes me feel very sad and British at the same time. It brings out my kind of melancholy patriotism and it's absolutely beautiful. It's Elgar's cello concerto played by Jacqueline Dupr ⁇.”
2009-07-19 · Desert Island Discs · David Mitchell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well if that's true the other half's the difficulty I don't think I ever consciously thought that. I mean, I think there's a showing off element and you want to show off in front of women you find attractive. And it definitely counts more when they laugh than when other people laugh. And when other people laugh, you want them to have seen that. But I don't think that was my primary reason for going into comedy. No. I think it's something that just has always a joke is something just pleases me more than anything else. And there are some people who think comedy is frivolous and is less important than other things. And I am horrified by that opinion. I think anyone really intelligent understands and appreciates that the funny must be part of everything.”
2009-07-19 · Desert Island Discs · David Mitchell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yet of course I worried about it a lot, but it wasn't a sort of immense regret, I think, as I was aware that I was at least addressing that as an issue and no longer hoping I'd return to my sexless ten year old self.”
2009-07-19 · Desert Island Discs · David Mitchell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I became able to have women as friends. I'd say unlucky in love, or certainly completely unenterprising in love. So, no, I mean, I didn't sort of form any nice relationships there. Yeah, I had some pointless infatuations and some pointless flings.”
2009-07-19 · Desert Island Discs · David Mitchell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, this is a piece of music that can never fail to cheer you up. It's Herb Albert and the Tiwana Brass playing Spanish flea, and I remember this from my childhood. This was played on the record player at home a lot, and it strikes me this would be a very appropriate piece of music to go mad to on a desert island.”
2009-07-19 · Desert Island Discs · David Mitchell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't know, I don't know whether we're in the majority, but I don't think we get as much access to the media as our more flamboyant friends.”
2009-07-19 · Desert Island Discs · David Mitchell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think some people do. I think the ones that aren't enjoying it look ridiculous. And I think that's why I was nervous of trying to affect enjoyment of those things. I think there are a lot of people that get dragged along and feel they should enjoy it, and I feel sorry for those people and they should let themselves off the hook, put on a tweed jacket, and watch Star Trek.”
2009-07-19 · Desert Island Discs · David Mitchell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I mean, I had sorts of different, I had fun, you know, watching television, playing with Star Wars figures, you know, going to the fair, that kind of thing I liked. But as a teenager, what I wanted to be was talking to friends I knew very well or at home watching TV. I was not at all gregarious and I learnt as a student how to have gregarious fun, how to enjoy going out and going to a party, and that this didn't necessarily involve dancing at a disco. That was great as well.”
2009-07-19 · Desert Island Discs · David Mitchell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, that was it. The interrailing trip, which was just before Cambridge, was a spectacular failure in having fun, I'd say, for me, and I didn't even know at the time it wasn't fun, I thought right, this is a great city, I can see that. I wish I wasn't here though.”
2009-07-19 · Desert Island Discs · David Mitchell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“and I felt guilty that I didn't, and I glumly went into railing with some friends, and was frightened the whole time that we'd have our money stolen and we'd be stuck and not able to get home, and essentially I didn't enjoy it, but I got through it out of duty, and out of the feeling that if I didn't go travelling then I wasn't an interesting person, and something that sort of university and afterwards has given me the confidence to say is it was okay not to want to go travelling it didn't mean I was boring, and there are a lot of other people who are frightened by change and by having to confront new situations, and I confront enough new situations.”
2009-07-19 · Desert Island Discs · David Mitchell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, I think I must be unconventional. I've chosen a very odd job, and that's what I tell myself when I'm feeling a bit. down on myself for being too conventional. I remember when I was my year off between school and university I felt very strongly that what I was supposed to want to do was go travelling.”
2009-07-19 · Desert Island Discs · David Mitchell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Next is a song called by the crash test dummies, which I very much associate with my time at Cambridge because it was on the radio load and it always makes me remember that time when I was first living away from my parents and to my immense surprise really enjoying it.”
2009-07-19 · Desert Island Discs · David Mitchell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I can remember we just scrabbled together enough money to put on a show in the cheapest way possible. And then I think we were beginning to make a living as sort of jobbing writers around TV and radio shows. I started to make a living in September 1998 and it was a tremendous excitement to suddenly be suddenly talking to my friends who had jobs and say, yes, I'm still doing the comedy thing, and look, I can get a round of drinks in.”
2009-07-19 · Desert Island Discs · David Mitchell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think in Edinburgh that's when you really question whether this can ever be a proper job because you're not making any money. You sort of think this is no industry. There are more performers and audience.”
2009-07-19 · Desert Island Discs · David Mitchell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I certainly stayed up late a lot and got drunk a lot, but not in a sort of exciting partying way, really, just in a kind of my God, this is stressful, and the only part of the day I can relax is the part of the day after the show, so I must try and extend that part of the day, go to bed as late as possible, wake up as soon before the show as possible.”
2009-07-19 · Desert Island Discs · David Mitchell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We went up year after year for ages, and kind of did all right there. You know, we had nice reviews and met producers, but we never had a breakthrough year.”
2009-07-19 · Desert Island Discs · David Mitchell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I did watch and it was terrific, and absolutely nothing I could ever imagine doing myself. Yes, I wondered about that. No, it's good to watch and say, well, we've got that side of the double act covered.”
2009-07-19 · Desert Island Discs · David Mitchell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think yes, I think Rob is a bit cool. I don't think he'd mind me saying that. He's certainly attempted to be cool and succeeded on various occasions. I dare say there were horrendous misses before I met him, but yes, no, he's a lot more comfortable in the world of cool and dancing and music and I imagine when he was a teenager happier to be openly a teenager.”
2009-07-19 · Desert Island Discs · David Mitchell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was nineteen ninety three in the first couple of weeks of my first term. It was in an audition for the Footlights Pantomime, Cinderella. And I remember being struck by his long hair and earring and thinking he is a scandalous man. But we didn't really get to know each other well until later that year when Rob came to see a little sketch show I put on with some friends of mine and he thought it was good and he asked me to do a two-man show with him and he was a year above me at Cambridge so he was a kind of established footlights man and so to you know to be asked to do a show with him was very flattering and also I thought he was funny”
2009-07-19 · Desert Island Discs · David Mitchell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“With the next face is the Adagio from Corelli's concerto number eight in G minor, which is I know it as the music from Master and Commander, which is a brilliant film based on a brilliant book. There's something seductive about this world of a ship that has a very definite task that has to be run in a certain efficient way and nothing else matters. It's the ultimate escapism for the anti multitasker.”
2009-07-19 · Desert Island Discs · David Mitchell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, I think I'd settle for that, absolutely. Or if we all had to wear a certain uniform. I'd love that. That'd be absolutely fine where you just standard issue clothing. Give us rules, please.”
2009-07-19 · Desert Island Discs · David Mitchell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, yes, I think I allow myself to sort of say, well, what I'm looking for is something. That's appropriate, but anything more, any greater attempt at style than that, I think is something I shouldn't allow myself. It's completely illogical, but I think it goes back to the kind of teenage feeling, well, I can't be cool, so I mustn't try.”
2009-07-19 · Desert Island Discs · David Mitchell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think so, not in an organized way, but I wouldn't buy any clothes. But I just hate buying clothes and trying something and it's on. It's frightening. It's humiliating. And I hate the thought that anyone could point at anything I'm wearing and say to me, you think that looks good, don't you? I think that whether or not it actually did look good, I'd find being in a position where that accusation was rightly made would be humiliating. I'm sort of very sensitive of any accusations of vanity, which I think that very sensitivity is vain.”
2009-07-19 · Desert Island Discs · David Mitchell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When I started setting it down because I met lots of people very quickly who were also saying that out loud, so it became an okay thing to say. So, you know, it suddenly felt while a distant goal, an achievable one.”
2009-07-19 · Desert Island Discs · David Mitchell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I wore clothes that my mother had bought for me, but you know, under some instructions from me, but just I would have looked incredibly conventional. I was very gangly and thin. I think I probably looked younger than I was. I certainly didn't look cool.”
2009-07-19 · Desert Island Discs · David Mitchell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, yeah, I had a lovely time in a weird way, that's where I felt I became the kind of mod and me, which is obviously ridiculous to draw an arbitrary line somewhere, but I think probably most people do.”
2009-07-19 · Desert Island Discs · David Mitchell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, they said yeah, they're lovely about it, and yeah, really, they've always been lovely about it, but they've changed. I can see that the weight has been lifted.”
2009-07-19 · Desert Island Discs · David Mitchell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it's impossible not to be pleased, but I think the main thing that matters professionally to me is that I'm allowed to continue to make programs. But nevertheless, when you get one, it's great. So I'm slightly disappointed in myself by how pleased I was.”
2009-07-19 · Desert Island Discs · David Mitchell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Ah, well track number three is creep by radio head, and radiohead actually went to the school I went to which is Abingdon School. It's a good school. I had a perfectly reasonable time there. But my God there was a lot of mopy cynicism among those teenagers myself included. And I just find the words that it's a brilliant song, but the words are so depressing, and I like to think of it as our school song. And I would like one day as a stunt to arrange for all of the pupils in Abington School to stand up in chapel and sing a sort of organ arrangement of this song. I'm a creep, I'm a weirdo. What the hell am I doing here? I think that's very much the attitude of a lot of the pupils.”
2009-07-19 · Desert Island Discs · David Mitchell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, they wouldn't have done. No, I think probably just the idea of even being remotely teased about that for a second was unbearable.”
2009-07-19 · Desert Island Discs · David Mitchell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I wouldn't want that. And then suddenly there are all these hormones, and you do want that, and I couldn't bear the inconsistency in myself. I had made various statements to my parents about the fact that I had no interest ever in even meeting girls, and suddenly this wasn't true. And I just didn't yet have the maturity to say yes I was wrong about that, because, you know, I was ten at the time and perhaps I didn't know everything about the world.”
2009-07-19 · Desert Island Discs · David Mitchell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Puberty came at a time when I was also changing schools and I was going from a small prep school which I really loved and where I'd been a sort of big fish in a small pond and loved doing the school play and that sort of thing to a much larger school where I couldn't even be the best at lessons there anymore. There were too many other swats. Beforehand I'd completely when my parents said oh you know one day you'll want to have a girlfriend this and the other I said absolutely not why would I? It's of no interest to me at all I'm entirely independent person.”
2009-07-19 · Desert Island Discs · David Mitchell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, no, it was nothing as grandiose as being a tortured teenager. It was just. I suppose aesthetically the idea of being a teenager or of youth or that kind of thing never appealed to me. I'm sort of almost tweed on the inside in some ways. And I would very happily live a life of ninety years, but being fifty for the whole time.”
2009-07-19 · Desert Island Discs · David Mitchell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, I think I hated being a teenager, and that's not to say that I hated my teenage years. I was sort of a bit miserable and a bit fine like most people, but the fact of being a teenager I hated. The fact of my mood clearly being changed by hormones, the arrival of which I hadn't expected. And I think I thought there was no way I could be cool. It would take too much humiliating attempts at wearing different sorts of clothes, at talking to people I was afraid to talk to, i.e. women. So I thought, well, I won't try, and then not being cool won't be a problem. I'll just try and be myself. And I think that's a pretty sensible approach, really.”
2009-07-19 · Desert Island Discs · David Mitchell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, well I'm very worried about this term cool, really, because it's taken us so important and there are more important things than being cool”
2009-07-19 · Desert Island Discs · David Mitchell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The second track is Stranger on the Shore by Akabilk, and that's a song that basically reminds me of my childhood because my mum loved that kind of mellow sound, and I do as well, and when we came to try and think of a sort of theme tune of our radio show, which is called That Mitchell and Webb Sound, it struck me and Rob as a piece of music that definitely has a sound, a very sort of cheesy lounge sound. Yes, I think it would create a sense of mellowness even in the sort of terrified isolation of a desert island.”
2009-07-19 · Desert Island Discs · David Mitchell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think so obviously those are the years where you're kind of allowed to believe you're the only person in the university who matters and I was very happy with that idea and I remember when my parents said I was going to have a brother or sister that they put it to me as if it was for me so I would have someone to play with and I immediately did some maths and thought well hang on I'm seven I'll be eight and he or she will be naught I don't want to play with six year olds let alone naught year olds when I'm eight and you know I sort of I think I actually worked out that by the time we'd be able to play properly together I'd be about the age I am now”
2009-07-19 · Desert Island Discs · David Mitchell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't think I certainly didn't feel I did as a young boy. I remember at the age of about ten or eleven thinking, wouldn't it be great to be funny? Obviously I'm not and not thinking that was bad because I had reasonable self esteem at that age before the horrors of puberty hit, and I thought I'm quite clever and good at lessons and this sort of thing and I have friends so I felt all right about not being funny but I remember very definitely thinking but I'm not that and then I think when I was a teenager in conversation would naturally put things in a way that would make them laugh so I think it was when I was kind of fourteen fifteen I began to think maybe I'm a bit funny.”
2009-07-19 · Desert Island Discs · David Mitchell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think fundamentally when it goes well and when you get laughs and people clap, that feels great, and you feel important and clever. I don't think it's particularly abnormal to feel that, but maybe it's abnormal to go through a lot of stress and risk of that not happening because you need that. And from a very young age I thought that making people laugh was about the cleverest thing anyone could do.”
2009-07-19 · Desert Island Discs · David Mitchell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't think my school's ever had disco's, actually. Certainly I would have danced to that, I think, at university, even though that's, you know, it's quite an old song by then. And also it's the first shows Rob and I did, or the first night of the first show we did was so horrendously under rehearsed, but we'd sort of got away with it, and the audience had laughed, and I really associate it with a massive wave of relief. But it's done, and they've laughed, and now they're going, they seem relatively happy. Why?”
2009-07-19 · Desert Island Discs · David Mitchell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, my first choice is walking on sunshine by Katrina and the waves, and that was the music that Rob and I used to use to do our sort of bowing to at the end of our two-man shows, because it's incredibly upbeat in a pretty one-dimensional way, but a way you can't fail to enjoy, and it definitely made audiences clap more loudly.”
2009-07-19 · Desert Island Discs · David Mitchell · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source