YouSaid · the spoken record

Richard Ingrams

lines on the record: 53
first: 2008-08-03
most recent: 2008-08-03
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, this is romantic music by the most romantic composer, I think, Schumann, who's piano music I particularly like playing now.”
2008-08-03 · Desert Island Discs · Richard Ingrams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It is a nightmare's. I think I'm going to end up rather like Ben Gunn, the man in Treasure Island, with a long beard and completely round the ben.”
2008-08-03 · Desert Island Discs · Richard Ingrams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I miss him very, very much, actually, particularly Poorfoot and Bronw, and know all of them, because I think I sort of relied on them for support, but also a sort of sounding board for my own journalism. I valued their take on what was going on very much, and I don't have that really any more.”
2008-08-03 · Desert Island Discs · Richard Ingrams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes. Well, it's quite strange household because there's an old man of seventy forty year old woman and a ten year old boy, but actually we seem to get along quite well, and it's been great actually having a son, even if it's not my son, in my old age, because it comes to keep me young. I spent a lot of time trying not to watch Top Ger, which is what Louis likes watching all the time.”
2008-08-03 · Desert Island Discs · Richard Ingrams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was, but you know, I think what people need to remember who've had that experience is how ephemeral publicity of that kind is and how quickly people forget what they've read in the paper even by the next day.”
2008-08-03 · Desert Island Discs · Richard Ingrams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, it was partly when I ceased to be the editor of Private Eye, suddenly aware that I was very vulnerable, because I think people refrained when I so long the editor. They refrain from saying anything, but immediately I stepped down. I became a target for attack.”
2008-08-03 · Desert Island Discs · Richard Ingrams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If I had my way, I probably choose all music by Bach to go on this program. I remember Pablo Casal saying Bach is my best friend, and that's how I always felt about him, and I've never been bored by any of his music.”
2008-08-03 · Desert Island Discs · Richard Ingrams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He did. It was partly because he decided that he wanted to earn newspapers, and he discovered that it didn't go down well with journalists, the idea that he was trying to have another journalist, however disreputable, put in prison. So he wanted out, and then he agreed to a very run of the mill kind of settlement, which let us off the hook.”
2008-08-03 · Desert Island Discs · Richard Ingrams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't think it particularly got his goat, but he used it as a means of sparking off the criminal law was the suggestion that he had played some part in helping Lord Lucan escape after the famous murder in nineteen seventy four, and that was one of those unfortunate mistakes that creep into an article because it wasn't the main point of the article really. It was enough for him to suggest that we had accused him of some kind of criminal offence”
2008-08-03 · Desert Island Discs · Richard Ingrams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, it was something that was used in the old days in the nineteenth century, particularly to imprison journalists who made trouble for the government.”
2008-08-03 · Desert Island Discs · Richard Ingrams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I mean, I think that the editor is simply a kind of conduit for other people's talents. I've tended with people like Paul and Auburn Moore and people like that to give them their say and just let them write whatever they want. I mean, maybe I was too lax in that way.”
2008-08-03 · Desert Island Discs · Richard Ingrams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was something that crept up on us in a way, but I satiated very much with Paulfoot, who joined the magazine in sixty eight, I think, and was with it I mean he kept leaving and then coming back. It was his spiritual home in Away privately because it gave him the freedom to write what he wanted.”
2008-08-03 · Desert Island Discs · Richard Ingrams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, Metzart is known to have therapeutic properties, and at certain low points in my life I find myself listening to Mozart's chamber music particularly, and this is part of one of his string quintets.”
2008-08-03 · Desert Island Discs · Richard Ingrams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It wasn't true that she had that trouble all her life, it was something that came on when she was quite old, confident. She was a lovely person full of happiness and laughter, and actually sharing with me a lot of tastes like well, like all this music. She loved all that, and the same kind of jokes and all that sort of thing. And of course, the awful thing about drugs is that the person. becomes a stranger, and also you have this feeling of helplessness that you can't. You can't really do anything to help them or get them to change. You know, it's like people say they have to want to do it.”
2008-08-03 · Desert Island Discs · Richard Ingrams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, it did in a way, but for a lot of the time he was in hospital, and so when he was a bit older, I don't think they saw too much of him. But it did impose a tremendous strain on everybody, because it's a bit like being an addict in a way. Only people who have that experience know what it's like to deal with a thing like that.”
2008-08-03 · Desert Island Discs · Richard Ingrams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The worst thing about it is if you have a child, a normal child half the fun of it is seeing it developed to walk and crawl and talk. In Arthur's case none of that happened, you see, and it takes quite a long time because doctors tell you, oh, you know, he's going to be all right, they try to give you some hope. And then it slowly dawns on you that actually it isn't going to be like that.”
2008-08-03 · Desert Island Discs · Richard Ingrams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“was her name, her family. Well, I did. The way private I developed, because it was a fortnight in magazine, it became a kind of alternate week sort of job, and it's remained like that too, and it's partly the reason why it's lasted so long, I think, because not just the editor, but the people working on it were able to go away and do something else.”
2008-08-03 · Desert Island Discs · Richard Ingrams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I was, yes. I got feeling very ill that she was convinced that I was dying. And the doctor said my liver was several sizes too big, and I should die.”
2008-08-03 · Desert Island Discs · Richard Ingrams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, it was very like that in the early days, yes And it was a very boozy place too, particularly when Peter was around.”
2008-08-03 · Desert Island Discs · Richard Ingrams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“for he had that feel a lot of the Peter's things were improvised was the kind of thing he used to come up with sitting in the pub. The off thing is that like with a lot of very funny people you fall about laughing and then afterwards when people say well what were the jokes well you can't remember anything?”
2008-08-03 · Desert Island Discs · Richard Ingrams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But this is just remind me really of the sixties and the years of satire. I think the funniest thing that came out of those years was almost certainly the TV show not only but also with Peter Cook and Dudley Moore.”
2008-08-03 · Desert Island Discs · Richard Ingrams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Actually, I know Mary for quite a long time because she was a family friend. Her mother had been one of my mother's paying guests when mother was short of money. She then worked with our theatre company, and also with private I. So there was a wasn't exactly courtship.”
2008-08-03 · Desert Island Discs · Richard Ingrams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I was very much helped by the advice of Claude Coburn, who is a veteran journalist who we brought in to do a guest issue, and he sort of changed the field of privat to a certain extent by starting sort of serious reporting in the magazine. So it became more of a kind of two edged sword privatized. Part of it was jokes and satire, but then there was another sort of. Sirius reporting side which developed.”
2008-08-03 · Desert Island Discs · Richard Ingrams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, not at all. I think there's a kind of feeling amongst us that we'd been having a lot of fun at Oxford, and it would be nice to go on having fun in later life. Now it seems extraordinarily arrogant thing to think that we could start a magazine just like that. But it's I think there was a feeling that if you were young maybe you could start something new.”
2008-08-03 · Desert Island Discs · Richard Ingrams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was a lot of difficulty finding the right name for it, but there were people I'd been At Oxford with, who'd done magazines, Peter Osborne particularly now a very successful book publisher, he was the sort of business brains behind it, and Chris Booker, who was another Shrewsbury friend, he came in on it. case of the old boy network. And did it?”
2008-08-03 · Desert Island Discs · Richard Ingrams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I did. I started a theatre company with a friend of mine who'd been at Oxford John Duncan. We formed a small company and we went round schools doing sort of theatrical anthology. John was a very good director.”
2008-08-03 · Desert Island Discs · Richard Ingrams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This is my link with the old country being on the desert island. It's the march from the Battle of Britain by William Walton.”
2008-08-03 · Desert Island Discs · Richard Ingrams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, that was the greatest you see I've been to an all boys school and three brothers. I had hardly any experience in the opposite sex at all. I mean, I remember Ken Loach saying that it was a kind of delirium. It was amazing the freedom and the fun and everything, and to be able to do what you liked and have your own room and everything. It was just wonderful.”
2008-08-03 · Desert Island Discs · Richard Ingrams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But one was called Parsons pleasure. Later on there was a magazine called Mesopotamia, which was in a way a kind of forerunner to privato.”
2008-08-03 · Desert Island Discs · Richard Ingrams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This was another of these chance meetings of my life which made a fantastic difference, and again we kind of teamed up together rather like Willie and I had done, and we did magazines and.”
2008-08-03 · Desert Island Discs · Richard Ingrams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, it's very hard to explain, but I think being in the army had a lot to do with it, and I think being in the ranks in the army made you aware very much of the differences in society and particularly the way the establishment, as it was called then, sort of operated.”
2008-08-03 · Desert Island Discs · Richard Ingrams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, I was very lucky in that way that I was posted to the educational corps in the end, but even then I ran into trouble with the authorities because I was sent out to Korea, and I remember having this chap who was very, very bulsy, and refused to do anything, and in the end I said to him, Well, just write down what you think of the army. And he seized a pen and began to write ferociously, and of course it was all four letter words and everything. And this got back to his commanding officers when I was put on a charge. and I thought it was my greatest educational achievement was actually getting this man to write something. I thought it was a great triumph.”
2008-08-03 · Desert Island Discs · Richard Ingrams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I was flippant as I often am. I remember they said to me You mean to Sharmy School he said you play soccer for your school and I said no, sir, he said Well, it's a soccer school, isn't it? What did you play? said And I said I played the cello and that didn't go down at all well”
2008-08-03 · Desert Island Discs · Richard Ingrams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We were all told at school that we were the leaders of the future, and it was assumed that when you did national service you would have a sort of tricky two months at the beginning where you did basic training, but then you would be made an officer, you would be mixing with your old friends and have a good time. And it didn't work out like that at all. I failed this original interview, which was thought to be just a pure formality. Nobody failed the interview. I don't think I've met anyone else who failed it.”
2008-08-03 · Desert Island Discs · Richard Ingrams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Very well, I was very lucky to find a very good teacher, Raymond Banning, and I've been doing it for about ten years now, and it's made a fantastic difference, actually.”
2008-08-03 · Desert Island Discs · Richard Ingrams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'd always wanted to play the piano from an early age, and I still do, and I've actually recently started having lessons again, but I was partly inspired when I was a boy by listening to Fatswalla, who's one of the great pianists, I think, of all time.”
2008-08-03 · Desert Island Discs · Richard Ingrams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of a heart attack? Yes, that's absolutely true. And of course in a way that was an advantage to us later because we didn't have fathers breathing down our necks, saying when are you going to get a proper job? I never had that, luckily. My mother was very easy going as far as I was concerned.”
2008-08-03 · Desert Island Discs · Richard Ingrams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What sort of publication was that? Well, it was very boring. I mean, it was almost all long descriptions of cricket matches, with the scores laid out taking up a whole page. There were sections of it where people were allowed to write jokes and poems and things like that at the back, and we used to do that. I've always worked best with other people, and having Willie as a collaborator, which we went on being until he died, basically. It was a wonderful God given opportunity.”
2008-08-03 · Desert Island Discs · Richard Ingrams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Willie Ruston was my exact contemporary at school, and we were in the same house together. Willie was one day older than me.”
2008-08-03 · Desert Island Discs · Richard Ingrams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I went to school originally at a prep school in Winchester called West Downs, which doesn't exist anymore. And then we went to Shrewsbury School, which was my father's old school.”
2008-08-03 · Desert Island Discs · Richard Ingrams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I suffered terribly from homesickness. My elder brother, who is a much stronger character than me, was very, very scornful, and embarrassed by having this younger brother”
2008-08-03 · Desert Island Discs · Richard Ingrams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Later on I used to play music with my mother, and it was really the happiest music experience I think I had was playing Valensinos, because I couldn't play the piano part well enough, but we managed to get through the slow movements, and this is one of Beethoven's slow movements that I used to play with her.”
2008-08-03 · Desert Island Discs · Richard Ingrams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, and this Catholic thing was in the background. I mean, I always had a problem and I still have slightly in confusing God and JSB. They were sort of mixed up in my mind.”
2008-08-03 · Desert Island Discs · Richard Ingrams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“She played the violin she was a very good violinist. She'd been taught music at St. Paul's Gustav Holst, and then she went to the Royal College of Music with her sister, and then they went to Leipzig and they studied, and she could rarely have been a professional violinist. But when she got married she gave it up.”
2008-08-03 · Desert Island Discs · Richard Ingrams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There was a lot of tension because of religious difference. My father was Anglican but very fiercely anti Catholic. My mother was a Catholic convert. But as far as we boys were concerned, they divided us up into two Catholic and two Protestant, and I was one of the Protestants. People forget how fierce anti Catholic prejudice there was in those days, particularly in the upper middle classes. My mother not just her husband, but her two brothers, for example, I think strongly disapproved of her religion.”
2008-08-03 · Desert Island Discs · Richard Ingrams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He was a quite a distant figure. I was always a bit scared when I followed him, and I think my mother was too. He was a very good looking. He had a lot of charisma, people who worked with him said that, but he was quite distant, and I always found him a bit scary.”
2008-08-03 · Desert Island Discs · Richard Ingrams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That was partly the case, but I also read in the diary of Bruce Lockhart, who was a big shot in the foreign office, that my father had been sent to the end of the war to interview all the leading Nazis in prison in Nuremberg, including Goering and all the others. It was the sort of thing that, if I'd been a small boy if I had known that about my father. so proud of him, but he never said anything about it.”
2008-08-03 · Desert Island Discs · Richard Ingrams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My father worked in the Ministry of Economic Warfare. which was a lot to do with this black propaganda that went on. Unfortunately he never spoke to me or to anyone very much about what he did in the war.”
2008-08-03 · Desert Island Discs · Richard Ingrams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My grandmother lived in Scotland, she'd been married to a Scottish doctor, called Sir James Reed, who lived in a place called Ellen, which is north of Aberdeen. He by chance became one of Queen Victoria's doctors at Balmoro, partly because I think he could speak German and the Queen Victoria had all these German relatives. My grandmother was one of Queen Victoria's maids of honour, much younger than him. Anyway, it was to her house that we were evacuated at the beginning of the war.”
2008-08-03 · Desert Island Discs · Richard Ingrams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, when I was young, which is a long time ago, I used to play the cello due to my mother's influence. This is a part of Rakmanoff's cellisonata which I couldn't play anyway. It's played by a man I greatly admired Paul Totelier, whose old people may remember doing masterclasses on the BBC. I remember him doing a masterclass in Rakmenov's Chelisonata, and he said It is Russian, it is sad.”
2008-08-03 · Desert Island Discs · Richard Ingrams · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source