YouSaid · the spoken record

Martin Shaw

lines on the record: 49
first: 2009-06-21
most recent: 2009-06-21
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

“That would be so hard, wouldn't it? I would think the Messiah because it sort of is a condensation of all of my hopes and aspirations.”
2009-06-21 · Desert Island Discs · Martin Shaw · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, if there was some way of connecting up a synthesizer that has a sequencer attached to it or built into it, I would take that because then I could make up my own music because I play very, very badly and inexpertly with a synthesizer and a sequencer you can string things together.”
2009-06-21 · Desert Island Discs · Martin Shaw · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it would be one of Patrick O'Brien's Aubrey Maturin novels. I think Patrick O'Brien writes better than pretty much anybody in the English language. And there are twenty of these novels. So if I can't take them all, I would just take the thickest, which is post captain.”
2009-06-21 · Desert Island Discs · Martin Shaw · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Final track is the Chopin's piano concerto number one, and it's just so lyrical and relaxing and poetic, and if Mozart was the Shakespeare of music, then Chopin's the Shakespeare of the piano.”
2009-06-21 · Desert Island Discs · Martin Shaw · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, I don't think, I mean, in fact, quite the reverse. I mean, if I was... If I was more intent and fastidious on my spiritual journey, then probably it wouldn't have happened like that.”
2009-06-21 · Desert Island Discs · Martin Shaw · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Everybody I do try. And, you know, it's part of life's quest, you know, to be understanding and generous and be a good person, whatever that is. But experience has shown me that I must be difficult.”
2009-06-21 · Desert Island Discs · Martin Shaw · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No it doesn't the idea of being a castaway. I think would be incredibly difficult, and the prospect of never seeing anybody again and all the people that I love that would be amazingly difficult if I”
2009-06-21 · Desert Island Discs · Martin Shaw · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, it does have a spiritual element because you I mean the great philosophers and spiritual teachers have said no thyself, and you can't really do that with so much mental noise around.”
2009-06-21 · Desert Island Discs · Martin Shaw · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This is Jennifer Rush in the Power of Love. Sometimes other people's words express better than you can what you want to say, and this was given to me by my partner on a significant anniversary of ours, and I was very moved and touched by it, so I wanted to include it and indeed take it to my desert island.”
2009-06-21 · Desert Island Discs · Martin Shaw · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, maybe it's because I'm very different off stage and off screen, I don't know, but either I'm insensitive to it or I ignore it, or it doesn't happen, I think probably the latter.”
2009-06-21 · Desert Island Discs · Martin Shaw · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It depends on the approach. Sometimes it's terribly sweet and affectionate of the professionals, I've had it said that you're my childhood, and people have told me that there came to watch some filming in their street some guy said, Oh, you sat me on your motorbike when I was nine years old and I've never forgotten it. So that kind of stuff is very lovely to hear.”
2009-06-21 · Desert Island Discs · Martin Shaw · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I didn't mind at all, and I don't mind now. I mean it's just acting. I've never yet been in a TV or a stage fight where once it's over, the protagonists haven't stood up and said, Are you okay? You're all right. I didn't hurt you. Oh, that was well done. It's always very friendly and affectionate.”
2009-06-21 · Desert Island Discs · Martin Shaw · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, absolutely fine. I mean, it's sort of a myth that's grown that I don't want to talk about the professionals. I said I didn't want to talk about it because I was bored with talking about it. And the more I didn't want to talk about it, the more it seemed like this was something that was worth talking about.”
2009-06-21 · Desert Island Discs · Martin Shaw · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Next surely he hath borne our griefs from Handel's Messiah. I loved this particular recording. Handel after he'd written Messiah, the poor man walked hundreds of miles literally, trying to find a body of singers who were able to sight read, and he couldn't find them, and ditter with the musicians, and so he could never achieve his ambition, which was to have a huge orchestra and a huge choir sing this huge piece. Malcolm Sargent put this lot together. The music is great enough to withstand almost any interpretation, but this is what Handel himself would like to have heard, I believe.”
2009-06-21 · Desert Island Discs · Martin Shaw · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Probably, yes. I mean, I have been accused of it. But I think it's because people regard the antidote to boredom as lying in a bottle or the carcass of an animal. So I don't mind on those terms being regarded as boring.”
2009-06-21 · Desert Island Discs · Martin Shaw · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, the only outward manifestation I think really was the fact that I wasn't drinking, and the spiritual side of things it made no difference because I never force it on people, I only talk about it if they ask.”
2009-06-21 · Desert Island Discs · Martin Shaw · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Practically there are the precepts that we follow, which is teetalism, vegetarianism and meditation and a good moral life, and we all know basically what that means. And that's it, really. That's all you need to do. But you can travel to India and meet the master, and that's inspiring. But really, it's an individual internal practice.”
2009-06-21 · Desert Island Discs · Martin Shaw · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He at the moment I say at the moment because the Guru that initiated me died in nineteen ninety. At the moment he's an Indian man called Gurindasing, and my Guru is Charan Sing.”
2009-06-21 · Desert Island Discs · Martin Shaw · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think basically no one is ever really happy. Ever there is always something missing with everybody no matter what they get, and we all of us think that it lies in something material or in a person or a thing, and in fact we all know that that's never the answer. And it's the separation from our source, and you can call that source soul, spirit, God, soul. Christ anything do you want to call it, but there is something above beyond and outside of the physical for which we all have a yearning, whether it's conscious or unconscious. It doesn't matter how it's done, what the Lord is called, as long as there is someone who knows the way and can show us the way, and that throughout time has been a teacher, a living teacher, a guru or a master, and which of course Christ was a great example.”
2009-06-21 · Desert Island Discs · Martin Shaw · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's Kitty Takanoa and Lucia Pop singing Cosiminari from the Marager Figaro Mozart. These two singers just listening to each other so intently that their voices blend so beautifully, and there's something wonderfully liberating about perfect and beautiful music which relieves us all of our prisons.”
2009-06-21 · Desert Island Discs · Martin Shaw · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean my father wasn't the most extraordinary man, and I mean he was the sort of man that would pass a tree and say the energy coming off that tree and then he would go and put his hands on the bark and just remain there communing with the tree now as children we thought this was funny Now I know he was right so my father was predisposed to it so when I told him about this path that I'd heard about we had a three hour conversation and at the end of it he said you know I've been looking for that all my life. and that was nineteen seventy two. And then we told my mother and she said substantially the same, and so in a sense for all those years the three of us have trodden that path together.”
2009-06-21 · Desert Island Discs · Martin Shaw · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Will you become inured to it? Your body hardens up I mean now I think a sniff of the barmaid's apron and I'd be flat on my back.”
2009-06-21 · Desert Island Discs · Martin Shaw · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, there was at one point I was ill, and the theatre people sent me to see Sir Ronald Bodley Scott, who was an eminent Harley Street physician, and he prodded my spleen and said how much do you drink, and I lied and said half a bottle of Scotch a day. It was considerably more.”
2009-06-21 · Desert Island Discs · Martin Shaw · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I discovered a spiritual path which is still at the centre of my life and indeed was with my parents as well. We all sort of got it at the same time which involved teetotalism, vegetarianism, meditation, and so on, and it was literally like a light which was of understanding and I stopped overnight.”
2009-06-21 · Desert Island Discs · Martin Shaw · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It did until right up until about nineteen seventy. It was a kind of badge of office, you know, in order to be an important and exciting young actor. It was good to be a hell raiser. It's utterly ridiculous, and I blush to tell you. But that was the way it was seen, and especially if you were around the royal court a lot, which I was. And then thank God, fortunately, literally and figuratively I saw the light in nineteen seventy and stopped.”
2009-06-21 · Desert Island Discs · Martin Shaw · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Track number four is the Lacrimosa from Mozart's Requiem, and it just touches that innate sadness in me, which is not misery, but it's just that sense of contemplative missing of something that you can't quite put your hands on.”
2009-06-21 · Desert Island Discs · Martin Shaw · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes I was because my face was rather bent, but it didn't seem to matter too much. Reasonably, yes, I mean it is kind of lopsided and I have got this piece of silicone on one side of my face, but I think now at the age of sixty four slippage is inevitable anyway. Just let it go.”
2009-06-21 · Desert Island Discs · Martin Shaw · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, I wasn't mugged, it wasn't not as glamorous as that I met an old buddy from drama school and we got absolutely hammered and I was helping him home. When we got into a fight. But I have no idea what caused the fight, but I woke up in a doorway, grievously battered, and after two bouts of plastic surgery who I am.”
2009-06-21 · Desert Island Discs · Martin Shaw · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Absolutely, absolutely. But then of course part of the job is the apprenticeship and after I'd left drama school. I went to Horn Church Rep and was walking through French windows and making props and doing all of that stuff, but that very soon ended.”
2009-06-21 · Desert Island Discs · Martin Shaw · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Life in London since nineteen sixty three was very exciting. It was the beginning of change. I really didn't have enough money to participate much in the social side I just had enough to pay my rent and to buy some food, quite a lot of alcohol, and then work on building sites during the vacations. And of course there was the Royal Court Theatre and John Osborne and Arnold Wesker and so on. The whole theatrical movement was changing, and modern theatre and the method and Marlon Brando and the actor studio in New York was incredibly exciting time to be an actor”
2009-06-21 · Desert Island Discs · Martin Shaw · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was my last performance at drama school at Lambda, and Alec Guinness was associated with Lambda, and he sent this wonderfully encouraging letter, congratulating me on my performance and wishing me luck with my career. Yeah, deeply thrilling.”
2009-06-21 · Desert Island Discs · Martin Shaw · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What have I always thought about art and the expression of art is the marrying of the access to what you're feeling with the skill to express it? There is hardly any artist who can do it as brilliantly as Yevgeny Kissin, and when I first heard this recording and it came to an end, and I realized that it had been a live recording, it almost made me feel dizzy.”
2009-06-21 · Desert Island Discs · Martin Shaw · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I was very good at those subjects naturally, but I think also because those two teachers were enlightened and modern. When I remember teachers with chalky gowns and snotty moustaches and glasses that didn't fit, you know, all that dotty teacher stereotype, and I just used to think you an idiot. Why would I work for you?”
2009-06-21 · Desert Island Discs · Martin Shaw · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Import playtime, I suppose to be away from school. I hated school. Loth school with a passion. Why? Because I formed the impression that I was working for my teachers, not for myself, and so I missed out on a lot just through being willful and stubborn and rebellious, and I loved my English teacher, and I loved my drama teacher. And hey Presto, look, this is where I am.”
2009-06-21 · Desert Island Discs · Martin Shaw · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Regular and close contact with their grandparents. Absolutely. And I'm very grateful for it. My grandmother was a very jolly, warm sort of person. I remembered when she would make toffee, and then stooping down to chop firewood into sticks for lollipops, twirl these sticks around, and my grandfather was a block stock and barrel gunsmith. I used to stand at the table on tiptoe and watch him eating his tea, with the same penknife that he'd been using in his shed on the guns.”
2009-06-21 · Desert Island Discs · Martin Shaw · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh it was an enormous event, and my father died sadly in August, and my mother's been suffering from Alzheimer's for quite a long time, so when my dad went we had to clear out that house. It was and remains at an extraordinarily difficult and poignant thing to do to clear out and abandon that house.”
2009-06-21 · Desert Island Discs · Martin Shaw · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Crowded, but it worked. Did it? Yeah, yes, it was fine. But I remember the dream for all of us was a house and a car as if that was the”
2009-06-21 · Desert Island Discs · Martin Shaw · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so she said yes, and then on the radio came this piece of music. Then he said because she loved to dance, he said, Would you like to go to a tea dance? So they went to a tea dance, and the first thing that the orchestra played was Chate. Then he asked if he could write to her because he had no one to write to, and she agreed, and that was that, visited this little day together. And then three weeks later she had a letter from his commanding officer to say that he had been killed on his first mission in the bomber, and they had found her address in his personal effect.”
2009-06-21 · Desert Island Discs · Martin Shaw · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The second piece is to Tinorosi and Jatandre I will wait for you, and my mother told me an extraordinarily sweet story about this. She was seventeen during the war, and was in Erdington, which is a suburb of Birmingham, went to the milk bar, and there was a young airman who was seventeen years old and asked if he could buy her a cup of tea, and of course she rebuffed him, and he said, No, no, no, I'm not trying to pick you up, it's just that I have to leave.”
2009-06-21 · Desert Island Discs · Martin Shaw · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, but we didn't know it was austere There's a kind of satisfaction and simplicity in lack of choice. which is calm and peaceful. And there is a sort of a unity of purpose because everybody's in the same boat, and I suspect we shall all be back there before too long.”
2009-06-21 · Desert Island Discs · Martin Shaw · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I was born and brought up in Birmingham, which was heavily bombed, and the house that my parents lived in had been bombed out, so it was very present, and that sense of fear was very present, particularly in my mother who was fifteen when the war started. It sort of shattered her nerves, and she was fearful through most of her life.”
2009-06-21 · Desert Island Discs · Martin Shaw · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Meg and Thomas had a very close relationship, but also a closely critical relationship in a positive sense. And it just carried on from where we left off”
2009-06-21 · Desert Island Discs · Martin Shaw · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I have, yes, it was wonderful to do that, and I wondered how it was going to be, but it really only takes a few minutes. And then if you're concentrating on what you're doing, they just become another performer.”
2009-06-21 · Desert Island Discs · Martin Shaw · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“First choice is David and Igor Ostrach playing the Bach double violin concerto. I love this because of the sense of partnership. One of the first things I learned at Drama School we did improvisation classes was that you must be aware of and listen to the other person, and this is a prime example of two people working together.”
2009-06-21 · Desert Island Discs · Martin Shaw · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It doesn't sit well with me at all, you know, but I think that's really goes across the board, to tell you the truth. I mean, everybody I speak to basically has the same complaint, which is levels of management, filtering things through.”
2009-06-21 · Desert Island Discs · Martin Shaw · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When I first started to be successful you had the royal court and you had the movement of dissent and protest, and so people were writing plays to make a difference. You don't get that nowadays. The first consideration now is it going to be a commercial success, and that you have to filter it through layers of executive decisions, all based on economics.”
2009-06-21 · Desert Island Discs · Martin Shaw · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes it's been on my mind for a couple of years, but then of course, you know, there are financial imperatives as well. And because I believe it can be put right.”
2009-06-21 · Desert Island Discs · Martin Shaw · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think so, yes, for a start you can remain in the character for two and a half hours instead of sipping at it, you know, for one and a half minutes at a time. But also because you get an instantaneous response, and the choices are far broader on stage. You know, you can choose to be a lawyer, a doctor, or a policeman. That's about it nowadays. If you're going to work on television.”
2009-06-21 · Desert Island Discs · Martin Shaw · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It happened through a psychic who came to see me playing Elvis in I alonesome tonight, which was a tribute written by Allan Bleasdale, and it was one of the final performances and I got this extraordinary letter from a psychic. He said that he was aware that Elvis was on stage, that he'd been in touch with Elvis and that Elvis thought the whole thing was rubbish, but it was a gas.”
2009-06-21 · Desert Island Discs · Martin Shaw · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source