YouSaid · the spoken record

Liz Smith

lines on the record
49
first
2008-03-09
most recent
2008-03-09
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

  1. “What about a luxury? I've neglected my painting dreadfully for years and years. I'd like everything paints, pencils, paper, everything.”

    2008-03-09 · Desert Island Discs · Liz Smith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “Ah, I would take a very large catalogue, and I'd go through it and choose something different every day to order as soon as I got back.”

    2008-03-09 · Desert Island Discs · Liz Smith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “Well, I wouldn't sleep at night I'd be frightened of something creeping out of the forest so I'd sleep all day and I think I could scrounge enough frozen little fishes and things like that Yes And of course I love I love being by the sea anyway Oh I love the beach I might not ever want to come back I think”

    2008-03-09 · Desert Island Discs · Liz Smith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “Now I've moved yes, because I found houses a bit heavy to keep going a motor retirement flat. It's a good idea because I've got a warden and I've got friends there, do you know they're so nice and friendly I feel I've got friends and neighbours”

    2008-03-09 · Desert Island Discs · Liz Smith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “Now this is Mendelsen's midsummer night's dream. This takes me back to my student days in the little theatre in Westbourne Grove, and when I went as a student and I was doing the stage management and I was dragging a curtain made of red felt up and down with a thick piece of wood at the bottom clanging it up and down and I had to drop the needle onto the music at precise moment and I never got it quite on the right moment and every night Titania used to rave at me for being so clumsy Oh but it was wonderful there.”

    2008-03-09 · Desert Island Discs · Liz Smith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “Yes I did that's what drove me on it really drove me on All I wanted was the chance and if the chance I'd got the thumbs down I think I'd have accepted it but I didn't get the thumbs down So it was wonderful really it was wonderful when it did have.”

    2008-03-09 · Desert Island Discs · Liz Smith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “Yes, I do. I do feel that, and I feel very grateful that I've been able to, because for all I know I might have gone on and on”

    2008-03-09 · Desert Island Discs · Liz Smith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “Yes,'cause I can pick up things that I shouldn't have done. Now, O mummy mustn't do that again Yes I like to criticise anything You know that should have been another second longer or something like that.”

    2008-03-09 · Desert Island Discs · Liz Smith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “The agent's doors, my whole life was in there. Only emotion and tragedy and laughter and everything else was in there. Oh yes.”

    2008-03-09 · Desert Island Discs · Liz Smith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “Oh this is just one very nice thing I did at the Royal Court it was called the chair by Carol Churchill and I remember I was projected into the audience by a piece of music and I found it so thrilling that it inspired me even as I was speaking It's just one long stream of beautiful music.”

    2008-03-09 · Desert Island Discs · Liz Smith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “Everything Well, after all those years have just been rejected and the poverty and you know scratching around for threatens it was just simply wonderful wonderful”

    2008-03-09 · Desert Island Discs · Liz Smith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “I'm not really sure really because they'd seen me dragging around in jumble sails and no money and I don't know really how they think about it.”

    2008-03-09 · Desert Island Discs · Liz Smith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “Bleak moment and hard labour. And that was it. That was it. I never went back to grotty jobs again, and I was aware that after all that time this was the magic thing that I was waiting for him. I did know that. It was just wonderful”

    2008-03-09 · Desert Island Discs · Liz Smith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “About six hours And he just had to do nothing except wait for an ambulance to come and take you to the outpatients. That's all I was doing.”

    2008-03-09 · Desert Island Discs · Liz Smith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “Just before Christmas. Selling toys little casks, you know, and somebody says there's a young director called Mike Lee who is making his first improvised film, and he wants some by that time I was about forty nine years old. He wants someone who is middle aged, so I went to see him and I got that part doubtless in his first film bleak moments.”

    2008-03-09 · Desert Island Discs · Liz Smith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “In the stage Charles Marvitz came over from America and he brought method that was about the end of the fifties and he chose just a handful of people to work together and we were together actually five years and I was doing these menial jobs to pay the fare in to go and a baby minder and all that kind of thing just to come and do it and”

    2008-03-09 · Desert Island Discs · Liz Smith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “Just tried everything I used to buy the stage, and I was always sending up my photographs and getting them back or not getting them back. It's always no, always no.”

    2008-03-09 · Desert Island Discs · Liz Smith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “This is wind up, grammophone, and the old records I bought from the jumble sales'cause I think on a desert island, you see, very nice not only to hear singing voices, but to hear speech. And here is a voice of speech that I like very much, and it's so English. Be lovely to have on a desert island.”

    2008-03-09 · Desert Island Discs · Liz Smith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “And I worked in shops, I learned how to work in a shop and so on. Anything to earn just a few pounds just to make sure we had enough to eat. That was my main ambition was to have enough fresh food to eat, and the clothes they could come from a jumble tale that didn't matter. And then you see, the man who'd bought my house couldn't get a mortgage on it because it was so moldy, and he was sending me ten pounds a month, and that saved my bacon. Always something comes and saved my bacon.”

    2008-03-09 · Desert Island Discs · Liz Smith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  20. “Very, very badly had very, very small amount of money. I did all kinds of Awful John, I was a postman, and I worked in a plastic bag factory looking for holes in plastic bags”

    2008-03-09 · Desert Island Discs · Liz Smith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  21. “I went to jumble sales well, most of the things we had were from jumble sales. Not food I always had lovely fresh food, but everything else was.”

    2008-03-09 · Desert Island Discs · Liz Smith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  22. “Oh yes it was a very unhappy state to be in and I used to go to Jumbletelles and buy about a two penny worth of broken china and I used to come back and throw it at the wall Things like that”

    2008-03-09 · Desert Island Discs · Liz Smith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  23. “No, my husband left almost straight away no money and no acceptance as well because in a very prim suburb to be on your own with two children you were ignored, people would cross the road rather than speak.”

    2008-03-09 · Desert Island Discs · Liz Smith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  24. “This goes back to India and I think one of the most beautiful pieces of music that blended in with the night, that blended in with the big moon and the smell of the jasmine and the romance was Terrazard.”

    2008-03-09 · Desert Island Discs · Liz Smith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  25. “An amount of time idiloke magic. Most magic life and just around the portabella road all round that area immediately after the war was the most wonderful place to be. Everybody was writing something, writing poetry, writing plays, painting pictures, dancing, everything. It was joyful, and it was like a huge village. It was wonderful.”

    2008-03-09 · Desert Island Discs · Liz Smith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  26. “No doubt on step and so he said thank you very much he took the cheque. And he said, Would you like to see it? I said Yes, yes I went in paper was peeling off the walls and there were mushrooms all over the kitchen Fantastic house though fantastic house”

    2008-03-09 · Desert Island Discs · Liz Smith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  27. “Quite how to behave, you see, really, I think and I bought a magazine call. I think it's called Holmes, you know, and it flocked home, and I just put a pencil on one'cause I didn't know London, you see, coming from the north, and it was actually just by the Potbella Road, and I got to this very large corner house. I rang bell, the man came and I said This house here in this magazine is this house and he said Yes. So I said Thank you very much I'll have it I got out my cheque book and I paid for it. It was seventeen hundred pounds, by the way.”

    2008-03-09 · Desert Island Discs · Liz Smith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  28. “poetic But I didn't meet him in this country. I had to travel to India. And it was there I met him. I Airfield and his tall dark and handsome poetic type.”

    2008-03-09 · Desert Island Discs · Liz Smith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  29. “Suddenly been surrounded by these gaggles of girls. I'd come straight away from this silent, dark house with just this one sorrowing lady just propelled into this life it's extraordinary I could hardly take it, you know.”

    2008-03-09 · Desert Island Discs · Liz Smith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  30. “Emory's there, Liz Smith of Jiving in these big areas. That was our main source of enjoyment, really, having the dancers.”

    2008-03-09 · Desert Island Discs · Liz Smith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  31. “Now just as I left school the war broke out, so I was in the navy. And I was in the fleet air arm. And what did we do there but dance and the aeroplane hang used to have lovely big bands and any one of those lovely big tunes I would love'cause I love big tunes.”

    2008-03-09 · Desert Island Discs · Liz Smith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  32. “I wonder Yeah, yeah, both of them, yes, all of them they'd be awfully pleased at last I had a good I had a chance, you see”

    2008-03-09 · Desert Island Discs · Liz Smith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  33. “Yes, I do. I do. But I think it's all part of this curious kind of caring, spiritual caring that has gone on. It's quite clear. Strange, really, but It's very comforting, really.”

    2008-03-09 · Desert Island Discs · Liz Smith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  34. “No, the voice of sense of good sense She had no defence against anyone in my future because she would die. So all she could tell me was really good sense by a house, and if you have a husband who goes, he must go, not you. And save my bacon my husband did go.”

    2008-03-09 · Desert Island Discs · Liz Smith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  35. “It still appeals to you all that. I love clothes and accessories and jewellery and pretty things, pretty things love them, yes.”

    2008-03-09 · Desert Island Discs · Liz Smith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  36. “In pretty short supplies Yes, that's right. I used to sell sort of rag bits from the factories, you know, in shops then, and it would buy a penny worth of this and that and the other and stick them together and make a funny frock and make people laugh.”

    2008-03-09 · Desert Island Discs · Liz Smith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  37. “Well, Lily, see granny. In order that I should mix with other children, it has been this lonely little girl, sent me to little classes, and I played the part of a woman of about fifty five, actually, in a little play, and the laughter was so wonderful I thought this is what I want to do all my life, and that fixed it, really. To go out and play to people and there was all the light and laughter. That was wonderful.”

    2008-03-09 · Desert Island Discs · Liz Smith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  38. “Oh is tiptoe through the tulips? This is what I used to play on the gramophone when I was waiting for the postman to come up the front path with the”

    2008-03-09 · Desert Island Discs · Liz Smith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  39. “I was her only child, so they're both gone so she said to me then I will I will try and stay alive until you're twenty because I consider that you will be. enough then to look after yourself, and she did diamo when I was twenty.”

    2008-03-09 · Desert Island Discs · Liz Smith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  40. “No my grandfather was sort of Amazing, I adored my grandfather I thought he was a brilliant man, but he died my grandfather and so things were difficult and she decided to adopt me so that I could Not be just taken away perhaps by my father to something”

    2008-03-09 · Desert Island Discs · Liz Smith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  41. “And then he just came to me outside Sunday school and he said to me I'm going away, kid I'll write and I said, all right, Daddy That was the last thing I ever saw of him. I wait for the postman to bring me a letter from him, and I waited in this window with a scramophone waiting for him for years. Anyway the letter never came.”

    2008-03-09 · Desert Island Discs · Liz Smith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  42. “Oh why I never saw dad, but then he would suddenly appear, and it might have come back with a brace of rabbits, his chotter or hare or something on the other hand he might throw me up in the air and then take me to the cinema. He was fun. He was a fun father that I hardly ever saw, but he was fun when he was there. And I adored him.”

    2008-03-09 · Desert Island Discs · Liz Smith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  43. “She did she did. She cooked everything with feather salt. What sorts of things did she mean? Brilliant cook. If Dad came round he would go out shooting and then we'd come out, we'd have hairs.”

    2008-03-09 · Desert Island Discs · Liz Smith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  44. “Very homely, wonderful food and nice trips to the seaside gave me a very, very nice time when I was a little girl, very nice.”

    2008-03-09 · Desert Island Discs · Liz Smith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  45. “That she was lovely she was a wonderful horsewoman, she was wonderful pianist, and very artistic, and it would have been great fun to have had her.”

    2008-03-09 · Desert Island Discs · Liz Smith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  46. “Yes, I have done a great deal during my life during the very difficult times that I've had. It's been her spirit, I think, that I've turned to. I've been inherited everything from her that I find good, so you know, I've got that.”

    2008-03-09 · Desert Island Discs · Liz Smith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  47. “No, but I'm very conscious of her. I wanted to let her go, you see, because I felt very often she was all I had to lean on and I have done.”

    2008-03-09 · Desert Island Discs · Liz Smith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  48. “I do that's right because you see I think I've had to be a little bit Batty in order to stay sane and manage'cause life's knocked me around and if I wasn't a little bit Batty, I couldn't cope. If I was really straight, life would be too difficult, I think.”

    2008-03-09 · Desert Island Discs · Liz Smith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  49. “He was a simply wonderful script by Carolina Hearn. I was just brilliant. I was very, very fortunate to have a script as good as that. She mixes sadness with humour in a way that no one else can.”

    2008-03-09 · Desert Island Discs · Liz Smith · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source