YouSaid · the spoken record

Peter Sallis

lines on the record: 41
first: 2009-05-17
most recent: 2009-05-17
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

“Oh yes, of course, yes. When I was a boy the finite piece of Macano that you could buy was a number seven outfit. It came in a wooden cabinet, and I remember seeing it in Hamley's or one of those shops once. I can't remember how much it was when I was a boy, but it was far beyond my father. But yeah, if I could take that with me to the desert island, I'd be very happy.”
2009-05-17 · Desert Island Discs · Peter Sallis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“These is that PG Woodhouse The trouble is of course I can't read, so I don't know quite how I'd manage it. Perhaps there's a recorded version of it.”
2009-05-17 · Desert Island Discs · Peter Sallis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh yes, I mean the great thing about that is it's full of hope. I'm looking for this ship, but it ain't arrived yet, but that music makes me feel it's going to arrive any minute.”
2009-05-17 · Desert Island Discs · Peter Sallis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sibelius was introduced to me during the war by Flight Sergeant Davidson. He had practically everything that had been recorded of Sibalius on records, and so we started to play them, and of course I realized that this man was next to Beethoven, I have to put Beethoven first, but if I had to choose he'd be the second. He just wrote stuff that was totally individual. Nobody has ever come near writing like Sibelius. What about that?”
2009-05-17 · Desert Island Discs · Peter Sallis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I should think very badly. I think I'd go screaming abdabs if I know I couldn't build a hut or do any of this I mean you wouldn't need a hammer and nails for a start where do I get those from, you know.”
2009-05-17 · Desert Island Discs · Peter Sallis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I can't answer it. I really don't know but I hope that we can do some more because it's wind in the willows, you know, it's a lovely pastoral piece.”
2009-05-17 · Desert Island Discs · Peter Sallis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“During the war, when I was in the RAF, we used to be in huts and so on, and we had Americans on the camp as well, so we used to get the American forces network, and I remember hearing this song. All I remember is you. It haunted me all this time”
2009-05-17 · Desert Island Discs · Peter Sallis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I can only repeat it I put it rather crudely I'm a smartass, or I try and be. I try and turn everything into a sort of a joke. It's so embarrassing talking about it, but I know that it's roughly true.”
2009-05-17 · Desert Island Discs · Peter Sallis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I don't think of myself as mischievous, I think of myself as trying all the time to be smart, which of course is fatal.”
2009-05-17 · Desert Island Discs · Peter Sallis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I better not say it isn't'cause tomorrow it's all going to change but so far no, I mean I can go out onto the street and I'm in one of the best places in London to get a taxi because they're all coming empty from Paddington.”
2009-05-17 · Desert Island Discs · Peter Sallis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I can't see to read that's the simplest way of putting it. I just know like sitting here now talking to you I can't actually see you if I was shown a picture of you tomorrow I wouldn't know who you were do you see? I think”
2009-05-17 · Desert Island Discs · Peter Sallis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, well, I read a book and it was called Beethoven The Romantics. and that very title, of course, intrigued me. One of the chapters or two or three of the chapters were devoted to the string quartets, and it was then that I started to collect them, and this opus one hundred and thirty, the Aladanca Todesca movement is quite comfortable going. Don't think you know, you don't feel it's very, very serious.”
2009-05-17 · Desert Island Discs · Peter Sallis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, they were kind enough to, I mean it was put up for the Oscar. When I knew that they'd been nominated, I phoned up Nick and I said, look, I'm going. I said, I don't have to come to the show, but I want to go to the party afterwards. Well, bless his heart, of course, he already obviously planned it, and so I went as a member of the team, really, and it was lovely, yes, and I loved the Oscars, and I didn't know anybody there, of course, and nobody knew me, but I did feel part of it, you know, by being there”
2009-05-17 · Desert Island Discs · Peter Sallis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, in nineteen eighty three it was, he said my name's Nick Park, and I'd like you to do the voice of a character in a cartoon thing I'm making, and I said right, and so I went to Beckonsfield Film Schools where he was, and there it was Wallace and Grummet, and it was called a grand day out, and it's how they achieve a trip to the moon and back, having built the spaceship all in the course of one weekend. I think that basically is the plot. And so I recorded it. That was nineteen eighty three, and in nineteen eighty nine he phoned me up and said I've finished it. That was the bit that got me.”
2009-05-17 · Desert Island Discs · Peter Sallis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I've been told that it is. It's run for thirty five years, and I'm proud to say that I'm the only person who's been in every episode just chance has worked out like that. Two or three times I know that in the course of filming I've just gone away and found myself a little rocky plateau somewhere and sat down there and thought you lucky sod. I've never really been very ambitious. I was just fortunate to be the right size mentally and physically to fit into the sort of parts that they gave me. Oh no, I mean you can't really be modest and play hamlet if you know what I mean.”
2009-05-17 · Desert Island Discs · Peter Sallis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, first of all, because I like the piece very much, but I have a sort of quirky reason for telling it, and of course my reason makes no sense at all, and that is that I've never actually heard it on the radio, and so I in the wildly mistaken idea that perhaps it's never been played, I thought I'd like to have it here, but it is a charming, charming piece.”
2009-05-17 · Desert Island Discs · Peter Sallis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To say that she was going to divorce him. I wouldn't be saying this if it wasn't such a long time ago and you know, it all doesn't matter now. But I think that's probably what it was, and in a sort of Stanislavsky like way, he took his anger out on me”
2009-05-17 · Desert Island Discs · Peter Sallis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This is the author, and there he was I and Esco, who's about five foot three, you know, but anyway, we did rhinoceros, it was a success, and I was acting with Olivier, and there was one scene where we actually had a row on one particular night when we were at the royal court, he turned it on, and he was really angry, and in fact I'd still say I don't know whether it was the lighting man or whether it really was him, but his face actually did go green. And I backed off a bit. I thought he's not really going to go for me, but I was really quite scared. I can say this now'cause it is such a long time ago, but I believe now that that day I think that Vivian Vivian Lee, his wife, had phoned him from America.”
2009-05-17 · Desert Island Discs · Peter Sallis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I first of all, the mere fact of actually working with him at all. The play was rhinoceros by UNESCO. It was a play which on the first night Nell Coward came into the dressing room when it was all over and said What a perfectly bloody play”
2009-05-17 · Desert Island Discs · Peter Sallis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“that in each other's company we just hit it up, but the great thing about Orson was, of course, that he needed an audience. He just wanted somebody to shut up and listen to him, and he never stopped talking. I wish to goodness, of course, that I kept recorded or something what he talked about. He was lovely.”
2009-05-17 · Desert Island Discs · Peter Sallis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I'd just finished a play called Into Thin Air, and it was the first and only time that I'd actually played an out and out lead in the West End. We did it at the Globe Theatre. It opened on Thursday, the notice went up on Friday morning, and we finished with the last performance on the Saturday. So that was the extent of my career as a leading man in the West End. But orson Wells was in town, holding auditions. And oh, I can see him now. I went on to the stage for the audition, and he came down to the floats. This great hand reached out for mine, and he squeezed my hand and he said I'm Orson Wells, as if I had any doubt, you know, and we hit it off immediately. I think we spent about four years something like that.”
2009-05-17 · Desert Island Discs · Peter Sallis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh well really it's because of Gary Miller, the first musical that I did was called She Loves Meller was first of all he was just a lovely chap, and it was my first musical which he quickly found out, you know, and so he sort of coached me through it and helped me to behave on the stage when I wasn't actually doing anything. And of course the secret to that is don't try and do anything just do nothing Just the way you look.”
2009-05-17 · Desert Island Discs · Peter Sallis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, fortunately we had our then wife, Elaine and I had a son, Crispian. But it wasn't so much that I didn't like them as I had no idea how to cope with them. I had no idea what to say to them or how to amuse them, but no I never really felt comfortable with children.”
2009-05-17 · Desert Island Discs · Peter Sallis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, no, I she couldn't travel very well she had a certain nervous complaint which I never understood and don't even understand now, but she came up to see three sisters and I think she probably thought well I've done it I've seen him, you know.”
2009-05-17 · Desert Island Discs · Peter Sallis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But those four ladies were the three sisters plus one, and my mother not only came to see it, but she wrote to them, and she wrote to them I don't know how often, but eventually Celia was kind enough to let slip, you know, the fact that got another one from your mother, Peter, and I said to her, I said, What does she actually write about? And Celia said, Oh, well, she just keeps on congratulating us four ladies that we've got you in the company That was my mother for you.”
2009-05-17 · Desert Island Discs · Peter Sallis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh she thought it was great. When I went into the west end with my first real big play with the three sisters, with Ralph Richardson as Versin, and then go.”
2009-05-17 · Desert Island Discs · Peter Sallis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I had no idea. I mean I had no idea First of all, acting as a matter of instinct. You've either got it or you haven't got it, and within seconds of going on the stage we'd rehearsed it, so I had some indication of what was going to happen. But as soon as I was on the stage, I just felt so at home. I wasn't showing off or anything, it was just self confidence. I just knew that this is what I could do better than anything else.”
2009-05-17 · Desert Island Discs · Peter Sallis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, I was teaching the theory of radio, and one day one of my class came to see me and he said, Well, I'm going to put on a production of hay fever by Noel Cowd, and I'd like you to play the leading man, will you do it? And I said yes.”
2009-05-17 · Desert Island Discs · Peter Sallis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, he was a great jazz pianist, that's the first thing to be said, and secondly, of course, he was a natural born comic. I mean the opening of this we're going to play now says it all”
2009-05-17 · Desert Island Discs · Peter Sallis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I volunteered, I just want to show off I volunteered for air crew. Dim, of course, really dim, I mean the easiest way of getting killed in the war was probably to be a rear gunner of a Lancaster. But I didn't think about it like that, I just thought it would be a great thing, and I was turned down for air crew because I had albumin in my water. To this day I don't really know what albumin is, but they explained to me that if I went above ten thousand feet I could black out, and so I failed air crew and went into the REF as a wireless mechanic and it eventually led to me becoming an instructor and teaching radio.”
2009-05-17 · Desert Island Discs · Peter Sallis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I wasn't bored, I was just mainly scared. I just didn't seem to be able to get anything right, and I'm jumping ahead of you, forgive me, but I have to admit that a lot of harsh things have been said about Hitler, and of course I am fully in agreement with them, but in a roundabout sort of way he did me a good turn.”
2009-05-17 · Desert Island Discs · Peter Sallis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was just that I had no alternative. I couldn't think of anything else to do, and that was when I started to earn money, of course, for the first time, and I was able to buy records. There was a lovely shop in Soho Square called EMG Handmade Gramophones, and those days of course they were vinyl discs, and you could, let's say there were usually five discs to a symphony, say, but they allowed you to buy them a disc at a time, and that was how I collected one of my first recordings, which was the pastoral symphony, by buying it a disc at a time.”
2009-05-17 · Desert Island Discs · Peter Sallis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, the score was mentioned and it was named after the Minchendon Oak in Southgate, which is in the Domesday book and presumably still is, and the staff were good they told us well, and we never had any canings well maybe the odd caning, but you know, that was just to keep his arm in, and I thought why leave You know, why can't I just stay here? I could marry one of these lovely girls, but they weren't all lovely, but at least they were girls, and I thought, you know, we could have a little home behind the bicycle shed, something like that. I knew enough about sex to know that we could even have a family. But when it came to it, headmaster, Mr AG Gibbs, lovely man said Peter, yes, yes, sir. Well, you don't seem to be doing anything. No, that's quite right. Well, I'm afraid I'm afraid you'll have to leave. And so”
2009-05-17 · Desert Island Discs · Peter Sallis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, I was very fortunate long after I'd become an out and out fan of his to actually meet Richard Rogers. We were doing a shot in the dark, a play that his company Williamson's managed. He came, Richard Rogers came to see the opening production, and he approached me and said. shorter than me only just but shorter than me but so dapper so smartly turned out pale I can see it now a pale grey three piece suit and I said Mr Rogers sorry to you know stop you but I just want to say thank you for your music it has meant so much to me.”
2009-05-17 · Desert Island Discs · Peter Sallis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh yes Oh the idea of me becoming an actor I mean she couldn't believe it She was a pianist not a not a great pianist at all but she could play the piano and she used to accompany singers so she must have been pretty good at it or she wouldn't have been doing that and she never said you must have lessons she didn't encourage me to do anything, but on the other hand she didn't discourage me”
2009-05-17 · Desert Island Discs · Peter Sallis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I know I was born in Twickenham, and my father was in the bank, Berkeley's Bank, and I assume, I presume, that he was moved from the south of London to the north of London, because all my early days at school and all the rest of it were in North London, in the Palms Green Southgate area.”
2009-05-17 · Desert Island Discs · Peter Sallis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh dear, I don't think I'm going to bear answer. I think the simplest way of saying it is I might be quite a good example. You know, there's something about England that sort of offers a form of security, I think. I'm making this up as I go along, but”
2009-05-17 · Desert Island Discs · Peter Sallis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because let me tell you that one day, few years ago outside Saddler's Wells Theatre I saw the great man himself, Vaughn Williams, and he was surrounded by a young ladies who wanted his autograph or possibly some other favour, and I just stared at him and thought this oak tree has written the most beautiful piece of English. symphonic writing that there has ever been the lark ascending is perfection.”
2009-05-17 · Desert Island Discs · Peter Sallis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“up after a few minutes of this and took them outside, and when he came back all was quiet, and later much later, I mean days, weeks later, I said to him what actually happened then and he said, Oh well, I took them outside and I said this has got to stop. He simply am going to have two of the cast going at it like you two have been going at it this evening, I'm going to pack up the whole thing and go back to London and that was all they needed really to shut up and they never talked politics ever again.”
2009-05-17 · Desert Island Discs · Peter Sallis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I certainly wouldn't have put any money on thirty five years, and to tell you the truth it's such a long time ago that I can't really remember the ifs and buts that went with it. I do know when we went up to Yorkshire to do this first one, we had Michael Bates Billowin and me as the three men, and Jimmy Gilbert was the director, and we had supper the first night that we were there. It turned out during the soup course that Michael Bates was slightly to the right of Margaret Thatcher, and Bill Owen was slightly to the left of Lennon, and within minutes literally within minutes they were shouting at each other, and it was not only embarrassing, but of course it was to me quite incomprehensible since I've never had a political thought in my life. But Jimmy Gilbert”
2009-05-17 · Desert Island Discs · Peter Sallis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When I had done Roy Clark the author, I had done his first two television plays which had no connection at all with Last of the Summer Wine, and indeed in one of them I played a homosexual transvestite, so'cause when he came to write Clegg in last the summer wine, I suppose I was the obvious choice.”
2009-05-17 · Desert Island Discs · Peter Sallis · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source