YouSaid · the spoken record

Frank Cottrell-Boyce

lines on the record: 55
first: 2010-03-21
most recent: 2010-03-21
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

“Well, I mean, my luxury is so obvious I can't understand why everyone hasn't chosen it. I want to take a ferris wheel. You could use it as a lookout. use it as a shelter you could use it as entertainment you could probably use it as an astronomical instrument and also it would have a tune playing so I get an extra record which would be Ion Klute's ferris wheel”
2010-03-21 · Desert Island Discs · Frank Cottrell-Boyce · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I kind of thought well if I got those two and I can't have all the other books then those two canon might be enough really and then I thought well I would really like to take to add to those two, Charles Darwin, I would take the Voyage of the Beagle, which is his notebook from when he wasn't the naturalist on the Beagle. He was just sent to be jolly and keep Fitzroy happy. It's probably the journal of the most important journey ever taken in intellectual history, and he was just messing about. He was just having a great time. And it's just a book full of idleness and joy and hunting, shooting and fishing, and it's a great thing.”
2010-03-21 · Desert Island Discs · Frank Cottrell-Boyce · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean Azerwitz supposed to have lots of inner resources, but I am a big talker and am married to a big talker I would really miss talking. In terms of survival techniques, I'm completely rubbish with hammers and nails and things like that, hopeless. But I am a very good observer, and I'm quite informed about the natural world. I think I'd be able to figure out where the animals were and what was good to eat. So I would have plenty to eat, but I'd probably die of cold.”
2010-03-21 · Desert Island Discs · Frank Cottrell-Boyce · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, I think it probably was during the Thatcher years, you know, I was going to go back and be and save everybody just by being there. But, you know, once your kids start to grow up, they put down roots and we have a nice house. And I think if you want to see a lot standing in one spot is a really good way to do it.”
2010-03-21 · Desert Island Discs · Frank Cottrell-Boyce · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, suffering is used as an argument against faith, but the fact is, if you want to see somewhere where faith is really thriving, it will be in Haiti after the earthquake. It's people in the darkest times who have the fullest faith. And it's like, it's an intellectual thing to say that's a stumbling block. People who are living a life, suffering opens a door for them a lot of the time and that's a very hard thing to summarise but I did kind of go through that”
2010-03-21 · Desert Island Discs · Frank Cottrell-Boyce · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, no, absolutely, and it kind of left me in a very bad place for a while because it is that endless question of why does God let bad stuff happen? And you've got to kind of face that question at some point.”
2010-03-21 · Desert Island Discs · Frank Cottrell-Boyce · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, first of all, the concept seemed blasphemous to me, you know, don't you put God on trial and I felt very difficult about taking it on, and I spoke to a great rabbi rabbi Dankon Sherbach, who said, Well, you know, that's just part of Jewish tradition wrestling with God. Christian's relationship with God tends to be pleased, oh and thanks, and that's it, with a Jewish relationship with God is much fully, you bring much more of yourself.”
2010-03-21 · Desert Island Discs · Frank Cottrell-Boyce · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We were talking about how boringly happy I am. We were on holiday and my older boys played traditional Irish music and it was a lovely summer evening and my second son went into the garden and started playing this tune which is called the Butterfly. It's a slip chick, just practising on his fiddle and his sisters who did Irish dancing came out and they had bare feet and they just started dancing on the lawn. I think some French cyclists went past and just stopped and stared and they obviously thought this was just fairies, you know, comely lads and lasses dancing at the crossroads and we were kind of laughing at them thinking it's not and then thinking well actually it is this is happy ever after we are living in a fairy story and isn't that wonderful? So it's like a kind of epiphanic moment for me of like it's not enough to be happy. You've got to recognise when you're happy and I do always think of that moment thinking quite unself consciously we wear this image from an illuminated manuscripts.”
2010-03-21 · Desert Island Discs · Frank Cottrell-Boyce · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Do we have time to, we do get time to ourselves, but I do think me time is very overestimated. I think me time and because you're worth it are the road to death really. I think happiness is sharing stuff and doing stuff with other people. I think me time is not a good thing.”
2010-03-21 · Desert Island Discs · Frank Cottrell-Boyce · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's really lovely. It wasn't through any kind of ideological thing we just had a son who would have been very young to go to school so we kept him back for a year and it was a really happy year. So it was just a very kind of organic growing thing and we're in a very lucky position that we're both at home so the house feels full. It's not like she's on her own with some children.”
2010-03-21 · Desert Island Discs · Frank Cottrell-Boyce · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh no, no, no, no, completely. Sometimes the reverse. Because I think a generation has shifted, hasn't it? For us it was like an ambient thing growing up. It was cultural. For them, they're aware that they're in a minority and it's a much bigger commitment and it's a much stronger part of their identity, I think.”
2010-03-21 · Desert Island Discs · Frank Cottrell-Boyce · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I have given it up then. This is such a nerve-wracking thing to be doing. I just thought this is the one. And I knew from the beginning that I was doing it. I thought, I'm going to have one cup of coffee this lent and it's going to be.”
2010-03-21 · Desert Island Discs · Frank Cottrell-Boyce · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It is the DNA of our family. It dictates the rhythm of the year, this is Lentz, you know, soon it'll be Easter. I love the seasonality of it and the flow and the rhythm of it.”
2010-03-21 · Desert Island Discs · Frank Cottrell-Boyce · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, tried as too strong a word, I think it is just what we are. And I think that is what the house is like. It's full of people talking a lot, having very strong beliefs and heated arguments and sharing those things.”
2010-03-21 · Desert Island Discs · Frank Cottrell-Boyce · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's a really difficult question. I mean, I think quite a lot of people still have that. I think if you're creative, if you're doing something creative and if you've got the scope to keep challenging yourself, then you do it is always playing in the end. It's always playing. It's not work.”
2010-03-21 · Desert Island Discs · Frank Cottrell-Boyce · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think I had to choose some Bowie. Bowie is a huge figure for anyone my age. I always feel lucky that I had a pop star that I idolised who read a lot, so it felt quite cool to me to be reading what Bowie was reading. Everything about him just said life can be a lot more. And I think of all the songs, this is the one that says life can be more.”
2010-03-21 · Desert Island Discs · Frank Cottrell-Boyce · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, the main character was just didn't interest her at all, and of course it has to. So from then on really I've read bits to them, yeah.”
2010-03-21 · Desert Island Discs · Frank Cottrell-Boyce · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, I've only just started to do that. I was quite nervous about it, and I did read them a draught of cosmic when it wasn't very good. And they're so sweet, didn't say anything, but they did keep going to the toilet or going, oh, there's someone at the door. So that was a, and my teenage daughter, Kiara, she sort of stopped and kind of worked it out what was wrong with it for me. Yeah, she was great actually. And since then.”
2010-03-21 · Desert Island Discs · Frank Cottrell-Boyce · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, obviously a tougher audience'cause they're not polite. I mean adults will come up to you whatever you've done and go love your work. Whereas children, if you get the right reaction, that is the best feeling in the world. But it's also a huge responsibility, I think, because I think what you read at that age has a massive impact on you. So I think even the most intellectual grown-up novel or film, it is a pastime, really, whereas with children you still be informed and you are playing with live ammo, you've played with a very, very dangerous chemistry set there, I think. But that's very exciting as well.”
2010-03-21 · Desert Island Discs · Frank Cottrell-Boyce · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“How many pages did it have? So it was a lot of rewriting to do and we did a lot of rewriting. We went out for dinner and he said, why don't you write a children's book and I think I'd love to, but I've never had an idea. Too little boys to find a bag of money, quite a good idea for a book, and you should do the book, because we've got time, and sometimes you just need that push, and Danny is one of those people who, if he tells you to do something, you think, well, I must be able to do it because he told me to do it. So he was very motivating and I wrote it really quickly.”
2010-03-21 · Desert Island Discs · Frank Cottrell-Boyce · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“One had the idea for millions which is just a very simple idea of two little boys find a bag of money. I was a scriptwriter, so wrote it as a script, and nobody wanted to make that. Everyone loved it, nobody wanted to make it, and nobody sent it to Danny because he made zombie movies and heroin movies. Yeah”
2010-03-21 · Desert Island Discs · Frank Cottrell-Boyce · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This is a recording of some children telling Bible stories in Dublin in the sixties. It was made by a teacher called Peg Cunningham. I mean, that's a project that just as you'll hear unleashed amazing creativity, and as you'll hear these children have a fantastic grasp of what they're talking about and a brilliant gift for language.”
2010-03-21 · Desert Island Discs · Frank Cottrell-Boyce · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I think in Hollywood you'd be badly treated by law, but here it's like how clubable, how affable, how sly, how cunning can you be, and that's how you get your power. Nearly always people have done something with my work that was better than it deserved to be”
2010-03-21 · Desert Island Discs · Frank Cottrell-Boyce · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think that depends on how you relate to people, and I think with Michael, and especially with Danny, that you feel that you're part of a band.”
2010-03-21 · Desert Island Discs · Frank Cottrell-Boyce · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Example then. Well, Cock and Bull story, I think the first thing I ever spoke to Michael about was wanting to make a film of Tristam Shanty. I think that must be fourteen years. It's nothing to spend six or seven years getting a film together.”
2010-03-21 · Desert Island Discs · Frank Cottrell-Boyce · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, it's, I mean, it's called the British Film Ministry, it's not an industry, or if it is, it's a cottage industry, it runs on goodwill and on people doing things for nothing and people just really, really wanting to do it. And it takes ages to get a film made.”
2010-03-21 · Desert Island Discs · Frank Cottrell-Boyce · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Academia, had you not, you'd written I wrote about the English Civil War, and again I thought if I write the right line, the world will change. I have a very, very inflated view of writing, and particularly of my own ability.”
2010-03-21 · Desert Island Discs · Frank Cottrell-Boyce · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Where people Their politics. Oh, gosh, yeah. Very much to the left. Oh, honestly, it was very, very exciting to be in that little group of writers. And it felt like a little band, you know, with a kind of agenda. And we genuinely think that if you wrote the right episode, the government would fall. You know, if we just got the right line in the right place, it would all be over.”
2010-03-21 · Desert Island Discs · Frank Cottrell-Boyce · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This is big country in a big country, the most astonishing moment of my life was my honeymoon, which is great, it was that. I'd never left the country. And for our honeymoon, we went to the highlands of Scotland, we went to Fort William, and then we took the road to the Isles. I had never dreamed that there was anywhere that was physically like that. We saw whales, we saw gannets, we saw seals. And somehow little Stuart Adamson managed to kind of bundle all that up and put it into a guitar riff, which so I can play that and I'm back on my knee.”
2010-03-21 · Desert Island Discs · Frank Cottrell-Boyce · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Welcome, Sariova, I'm twenty bizarrely. 24 parts people, which I have no idea what sort of bejewelled Riviera socialites got out of that film at all. But I do remember going to Mass at Cannes wearing my badge, which is a different badge because you're in competition and getting communion and the priest clocking. I was in competition. That's how much of a kind of mining town it is body quite, oh, well done. Thanks, amen. Yeah, that's right.”
2010-03-21 · Desert Island Discs · Frank Cottrell-Boyce · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I find writing incredibly difficult I do find it really, really hard. It's not something that comes easily to me at all. What's nice about being the screenwriter is that people moan about not getting credit as a screenwriter, but for me it's like, who wants that credit? Who wants to be pointed out when it's a rubbish film? There's something great about the fact that you still get to go to Cannes, but nobody really wants to talk to you. Invisibility is a superpower. I mean, I've only been to cant twice and it was both times in competition, which is a very different thing from just going to work there. So that was welcome.”
2010-03-21 · Desert Island Discs · Frank Cottrell-Boyce · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think if I have a talent it's for recognising that I've been blessed, if you see what I mean. Because some people, I see people get lots of luck and walk past it. I can see that's a good opportunity. That's come my way and I can make the most of that.”
2010-03-21 · Desert Island Discs · Frank Cottrell-Boyce · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It didn't feel like a big deal to me at the time because I thought, well, you know, my dad reads books, I read books, I'm clever, I'm going to do that. I thought we were middle class until I got there, if you see what I mean. I do. And I thought, oh, perhaps we're not that middle class. But it was an easy role for me to play, you know, to be the funny northern guy who's a bit smart. And that's an easy role to fit into. I had a great time. I was part of, again, that blessed generation where everything was sort of expanding. You know, my dad had started off at a very ordinary job. He'd become a teacher. I'd gone to Oxford. I fully expected my children to be dukes and earls. Everything just seemed to be getting better and bigger all the time, you know, and there was this moment, wasn't there, when the world just really felt like it belonged to us? I honestly felt like Sebastian Flight. I did feel.”
2010-03-21 · Desert Island Discs · Frank Cottrell-Boyce · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's Melvin Hayes It was glorious it ain't half hot and the resemblance is really striking between Icky and Melvin Hayes everybody kind of stepped back from the stage it wasn't Satan at all it was Gloria.”
2010-03-21 · Desert Island Discs · Frank Cottrell-Boyce · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh yes, we're to a lot of gigs, and when we're going to see Eggie Popper Eric's, having read screeds and screeds of stuff about horrendous stuff about Iggy Pop clawing his own chest open on stage and just thinking we were gonna see the great Satan manifest in itself in Liverpool because we'd read, we'd only read, you know, there's nothing, there was no website, there's no telly. So go in and just have been hunched up around the stage and thinking this is just going to be astonishing. This is going to be astonishing. And obviously Iggy is great, but he pranced onto that stage much smaller than we thought he would be and quite camp, you know, and kind of minced onto the stage. And the guy behind me went.”
2010-03-21 · Desert Island Discs · Frank Cottrell-Boyce · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, there was this gorgeous moment when it first started because we were so uninformed, you know, it wasn't on telly, it wasn't getting airplay. You just sort of read about it. And I became a punk on the basis of having heard about ninety seconds.”
2010-03-21 · Desert Island Discs · Frank Cottrell-Boyce · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But that seemed to say at all for you Yeah, that whole call of just go and do it, do it yourself. That's stayed with me, really. That's what I took from it.”
2010-03-21 · Desert Island Discs · Frank Cottrell-Boyce · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To Keeble College in just It's the undertones of my perfect cousin Punk Rock was a huge thing to me because it was about sort of doing it yourself. And that's what I love about Oliver Postker. He just went and did it himself and that whole thing of like, here are three chords, now form a band. And it was so hard to pick a punk anthem, but in the end I've gone for my perfect cousin because it's funny and it was live forever.”
2010-03-21 · Desert Island Discs · Frank Cottrell-Boyce · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, the thing I had this, again, these amazing lucky breaks all the way through my life or blessings, and that one was that I was very young in that class, and I should have gone straight on to secondary school, but they kept back the three youngest and we did two years in Sister Paul's class, which was great because she was a great teacher. But, I mean, it must have just been incredibly dim. But I did this year twice, and I went through the second time through thinking I am a genius, because these kids are having a lot of problems with long division. They don't understand the cross section of the eye. It's blindingly obvious to me. And of course I've done it before. And I think it was about 21 when it hit me that I'd done that year twice. But it gave me this huge amount of confidence that I kind of knew all this stuff that nobody else knew.”
2010-03-21 · Desert Island Discs · Frank Cottrell-Boyce · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Went back to visit the school a couple of weeks ago, it's the first time I visited the school, and I went into her classroom where I'd had this epiphany, Expecting it to have interactive whiteboards and health and safety checks and all that. And in fact, there was this big kind of roller blackboard that used to pull down. We used to draw pictures and then push them up so that when she pulled the blackboard down, everyone would laugh. And this Belfast sink where she used to pour the ink because we had inks and ink wells. And it was all still there. And I'd gone in to give a talk, you know, an inspirational talk and went in and just cracked up as soon as I walked through the door, just blessed in to see us. So I was hopeless, really. But I'd been so happy in that class.”
2010-03-21 · Desert Island Discs · Frank Cottrell-Boyce · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My primary school, there were two nuns. There was a head teacher who was an uncle, Sister Thomasina, and Sister Paul, who was the year six teacher. And again, that sense that you were treasured, I think that was another thing that came from the church you felt very nurtured.”
2010-03-21 · Desert Island Discs · Frank Cottrell-Boyce · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, we're not fantastically piteous, it was a straight Catholic family, but it was like the majority of people on that estate were practicing Catholic, so you'd have this lovely paseo on a Sunday morning where everyone would file out up to mass and chat and then walk back. It was lovely. It was a lovely housing estate but it was the least sublime place you're ever going to be and that you could open a doorway. It's the magic wardrobe in Narnia, isn't it? There was this extra dimension that was just there for you. You could just open this door and there it was.”
2010-03-21 · Desert Island Discs · Frank Cottrell-Boyce · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I have chosen something from Noggin the Nog by Oliver Postgate, and I think he invented these fantastic utopias, but they were tiny Welsh villages or Viking towns or Bogleswood, and they were just idyllic, and that's something that's really held on to me. I look for small utopias, I like parishes, I like suburbs, I like caravan parts, so this is knock-in knock.”
2010-03-21 · Desert Island Discs · Frank Cottrell-Boyce · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My dad was a teacher and one of the great kind of lucky breaks in my life is that he did an university degree and I just thought that was fantastically exciting and I just got up with him and I read all his units and I did this kind of module on Renaissance art when I was eleven or twelve by proxy because I wanted to be with my dad.”
2010-03-21 · Desert Island Discs · Frank Cottrell-Boyce · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, it was absolutely fantastic. I lived the first few of my life in quite a small flat with my grandma in Liverpool. Then when I was sixty seven, we moved to this housing estate that had a little garden, which is about the size of this studio. I just felt to me there would be alligators and caribou. It was just like the wide open spaces that we had a garden. So maybe it gets a bad name. But it was like centre parks. You know, we all played out together. We all went to church together on a Sunday. It felt very paradise.”
2010-03-21 · Desert Island Discs · Frank Cottrell-Boyce · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm not sure that it was because our first contact was with her sister, who wanted to reclaim her as her sister. And, you know, family is really important to me. And when we went to the screening of that, I went with Hillary, and she said to me afterwards, you've given me back my sister, because neither side had seen the other side. And I think Hillary had a lot of hurt about Jackie, just this great anecdotes where she got very wound up about the fact that Jackie used to send her dirty washin home. And I remember her talking to me about that and thinking, why if you were a superstar, would you need to send your dirty washing home? What is what does that say about how lonely it was on the road and how dependent she still was really? And of course to Hilary it was just sort of a neglectful, presumptuous thing. So that became the kind of hinge of the film. This is film about classical music that set globally but it ended up being about what conditioner we used on our clothes, which I think is great. That's about the meat of ordinary life. And it kind of gave Hilary an insight into what it was like to be Jackie as well.”
2010-03-21 · Desert Island Discs · Frank Cottrell-Boyce · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, But does that diminish her that she was a human being who produced something supernatural? If you just make her a supernatural being, then what does that say about the rest of us?”
2010-03-21 · Desert Island Discs · Frank Cottrell-Boyce · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, and the fact that we still love people, I think film is incredibly conventional, and you're always taught that characters have to be sympathetic. And I think really the point of writing the point of drama, the point of books, is to extend people's sympathies, not to sort of play to them, so to show people characters who they might not be immediately sympathetic to and find something to love in them. I think you're there to extend love, not to kind of narrow it down.”
2010-03-21 · Desert Island Discs · Frank Cottrell-Boyce · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The first thing is the allegri miseri, and I've chosen it because when I was growing up, church was a completely magical thing to me. I lived on a very sort of boxy little housing estate. It was very nice, but it was very flat, you know, but the church at the corner was this sort of amazing kind of Byzantine thing. And we would never ever have heard a piece of music like this in that church. But listening to that music gives me the feeling of stepping into a church full of gold and lappy out of that housing estate.”
2010-03-21 · Desert Island Discs · Frank Cottrell-Boyce · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But I can't write in peace and quiet occasionally when I'm really up against it. They'll go away for a few days or something. And I'm just useless. I need them in the house, really, to make sure that I'm not watching the telly or having a four hour bath or whatever. The fact that they're there makes me work, I think.”
2010-03-21 · Desert Island Discs · Frank Cottrell-Boyce · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source