Hello, I'm Kirsty Young and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music. Broadcast in 1980 and the presenter was Roy Plumlee. On our desert island this week is the actor Leonard Rossiter. Now Leonard, life must surely at the moment be rewarding. A very successful play, television series being repeated, a film on release. It seems a bad time to send you away from it all.

Think of any one thing you'd be happy to have got away from. There's nothing in life I would really like to get away from. Like any other human being, at times you're bored and at times you're elated. They balance each other out though, I think, over the years. You have eight records to take with you. Is music important? I am somewhat of an ignoramus I must admit, but when you first spoke to me about this, it had a very curious effect. I suddenly, very very quickly, suddenly realized what I really liked and what I would not particularly be worried about not hearing ever again. And I suddenly realized what I would like to hear again. So that was obviously how my choice was finally made. In principle, I think. Do you play an instrument? No. When I was very young, I was in the school choir. 500 recorders.

Been fairly horrendous to anyone. Innocent parents who turn up for the dress week. But I have no musical accomplishments of any kind. What's the first one you've chosen? First record is Alec Templeton's Bach Goes to Town. And I chose this because I mentioned nostalgia. It has great memories of my youth. And I think it's such a witty number and a very, very reverend sort of comment on the master himself. Who would you like to play it? This is Benny Goodman and I think the first recording is New York, December the 15th, 1938. Just before Christmas Mr. Goodman got down to having a go at this.

Bach goes to town. The Benny Goodman recording from 1938. Now Leonard, you're a Liverpudlian. Were you educated there? Yes, at the Liverpool Collegiate School. What were your best subjects at school? Languages. I was quite good at French and German. In fact, I intended to take a French and German degree. And in those days, the height of one's ambition was to go back to another secondary school and teach French and German, as one was being taught oneself.

And in fact, that's what my mother intended me to do, and I did myself. But my father was killed in an air raid in Liverpool in 1942. So my mother was on her own, so he really couldn't afford for me not only to be not earning money, but actually requiring extra to eke out the grant I would have got. So I looked for a job, and I went to work for an insurance company in Liverpool, the commercial union. I was there for six and a half, seven years. We're jumping head a bit, I think. You were called up, first of all. Oh yes, yes I did. Two and a half years in the army. I joined the intelligence corps, at which point the Japanese war finished. And we were all in because in the intelligence corps, language people like myself, to learn

Of course, this is going to be a spurious exercise from that point onwards, so we were all switched hastily to the education corps. And given the immediate rank of sergeant, in order to enable you to deal with unruly privates. And I spent most of the time in Bielefeld in Germany, teaching the new intakes to read and write. And there were an amazing number, because of the war, who had missed out on schooling. And then it was after your two and a half years in the army, you went back to Liverpool Insurance company. Were you selling insurance or clarking? No, I was in the claims, the accident claims department, so I dealt with burglary, motor insurance, plate glass, that sort of thing, which is actually the most interesting department to be in.

I knew I wasn't going to stay with insurance all my life. And during the time I was with them, I became interested in amateur theatre. Well, there you are. You're there for six years, more than six years. So let's break off at this point. Yes, right. Secondary. Well this is Mozart, the proper title is a serenade 13 in G major but it's known to everybody and certainly to me in my youth as Eine kleine Nachtmusik and I think this is, well...

The opening Allegro from Mozart's Eine Kleine Nachmusik, the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Herbert von Karajan. Now, you were in this insurance office, and you said you developed an interest in...

Yes, amateur theatricals. How did that come apart? Principally because of a girlfriend. It was a girl I went out with quite a bit at the time. And she belonged to an amateur group in Liverpool. And I used to wait outside the church hall where she rehearsed. And one particular night, it was probably a bit cold or something, I was a bit fed up. So I went inside and watched from the back. And when she finished, I passed some... Comment to the effect that if I couldn't do better than that I'd give up. And she challenged me. I don't think I said it in particularly nasty terms. But she challenged me to do better. And I joined that society. So started my interest. And within a year I think I belonged to three or four different companies, amateur companies in Liverpool, and started to pay more attention to that than my insurance exams. And were you better than she was? She was very lovely. She was better to look at than I was.

Then and now. She's still very pretty. Was it playing any particular part that made you decide that you were going to do this professionally? Er...no. I can't remember. My amateur days any particular part but all I remember was that everybody obviously thought I was quite good and I realized that I was quite good myself, amongst amateurs that is. Consequently I decided to write around in 1954 to various repertory companies and try and get a job. Scheme was successful. Well, I got a letter from a gentleman named Reginald Salberg at Preston. Whom I then worked over the next five, six years. It was a very short-lived success because he only employed me for Fortnite. - At Preston? - Yes, at Preston, in a play called The Gay Dog, which Wilfred Pickles had had a...

Success in many years before. At the end of the fortnight, Reggie said to me, If you want to stay on as an assistant stage manager, you can. And I stayed with the company for The end of the three months of theatre closed because of television was beginning to sweep up through the north and weekly wraps were closing one after another. And ours was one of them. So I was out of work after three months and then I began to have very serious doubts about whether I'd done the right thing in leaving the safe haven of the amateur. Societies in Liverpool. But Reggie, I think, knew that I ought to stay on and he got me a job with a cousin in Wolverhampton. I went there for two years. That the Wolverhampton Theatre has been allowed to close. Indeed, yes. It's an awfully lovely theatre, the Grand. I have very, very, very happy memories there. So you were there for two years? Yes, '55 and '56. And then? Then I went back to Salisbury I played at, the Alexander of Birmingham, which is Reggie's brother--

Eric Salberg. So you were with the Salberg family for a long time. Yes indeed, there's a lot of actors. One can never praise too high the Salberg family. Leon the father was a great theatrical figure, famous for giving rises when not asked. And Derek and Reggie are two great, great managers and have a great personal debt to Reggie, which I hope he understands, I appreciate. Let's break at this point for your third record. The third record is... The Schwarzkopf. When I first became aware of Schwarzkopf, I don't think I had ever heard or ever hoped to hear a voice as so clear, so limpid, is that the word? Beautifully simple and such amazing technical control. - And what's your singing? - It is Was bedeudet die bewegung. - By? - Not bad, not bad. Schubert? - Yes. - Not bad. My German's rusty.

Elizabeth Stratskopf with a Schubert song, Was bedeutet die verbegung. Very good, very good. Not as good as you I'm afraid. Now after your four or five years with the Sahlberg family, you played your first West End part. What was that? 1958, a musical I think. The first time I was in the West End. It was the Dorothy Reynolds, Julian Slade musical, free as air. Which was at the Savoy Theatre and ran for a year. And had the dubious distinction of receiving a notice from Ken Tynan at the time, because he hated the Slade Reynolds musicals. Salad Days had been running for about three or four years at the Vaudeville Opposite. And we all, I mean, we appreciated the humour of what he said.

Notice said something like, The two shows can now stare aghast at each other across the strand. To say the least unkind. Whether he ever knew it or not, I don't know, but Dorothy appreciated it. She thought it was a very good remark. She was a sweet person. Yes, indeed. Well, in 1959 I really made the best move I had ever made up to that time in the theatre. I had been wanting to get to a very strong repertory company that did three weekly or monthly work and I was successful at an audition for Bristol. So I went to the Old Vic in 1959 and I stayed there for two years. Beautiful old theatre. Well, the whole town now is my favorite. Character parts? Yes, but also being a semi-classical theater. Of course, we did Shakespeare, Shaw, Sheridan. So one was able to do character parts which were leads.

First character parts being the old man who came on at the end of the second act. And I began to realize that I had comedic abilities. I think I was given a few opportunities there to show that. And principally it was a great help because you played for directors who were making their career. And they are the people who employ you and they go off, move off to other jobs and then they employ you afterwards. Or not as the case may be. Then you began working a lot in... In films and television, but you never lost touch with the theatre, you're always going off to appear I've never been out of the theatre. In a single production somewhere. Yes, indeed. I've never been out of the theatre for more than, I think, about six or nine months at a time. Now there was one stage part, about twelve years ago, I think, which really gave

Your career a great lift. That was an in a Brecht play. That was a Brecht play, yes. Tell me about that. Well that was the first time I had played a part of any stature and certainly the leading part in a West End production. And it took a long time to get to the West End. It started life under Michael Blakemore's production at the Citizens Glasgow. We were asked to go to the Edinburgh Festival the following year, which we did. Then we got quite excited. Because one or two managers were interested in it, but nobody transferred it to the West End. And then a year again after that, I was asked to go to Nottingham Playhouse to do a production, and I said I didn't think I was quite right for this particular part that I'd been asked to do. And my agent suggested to Stuart Burge, I think, who was running Nottingham then, that perhaps he ought to revive Arturo Uy for me. And he did, and we did it again at Nottingham. And then it was transferred to the Savile Theatre in London. So it was three bites at the--

Really, which just shows the ups and downs. I mean it could well not have come in, I wouldn't have got the chance. And whatever. Yes, once every ten years if you're lucky you get a part like that. And another stage production which must indeed be a fond memory is the one man show you did, The Immortal Hayden. Yes, that was put together by John Wells based on the life of Benjamin Robert Hayden, a rather sad character who thought he was a great artist, he thought he was a Titian or he wasn't, he was a very very fine painter, very accomplished, but he was not the great artist.

Thought he was. But what he was, he was a wonderful diarist. He didn't realize. He left the most fantastic diaries. He was actually in other peeps. And his stories of the time and the people he knew, Keats, Wordsworth, Lamb. Fascinating in themselves and give a marvellous glimpse of life in that time. Did you find it very daunting to hold the stage on your own for so long? Oh, well, what I found about it, I didn't realize until I'd done it a couple of nights. There's nobody going to have a drink without me.

Which is, as anybody's been... Very lonely backstage. You're dreadful. You only realize then how much the social life in the theatre means to you when it's not there. Record number four, what's that to be? Now we're back to the Bach again, only this time it's Johann Sebastian himself, Sheep May Safely Graze. And this is the Philip Selig, this little Smith recording. I think on a desert island you would want a bit of solace from time to time, and I think this will probably give it your... Something pastoral. Yes, my thanks.

Sheep may safely graze, Cyril Smith and Phyllis Selig. Let's talk about films Leonard, what was the first one you ever did? Kind of loving, I think, yes. John Schlesinger was making his name and it was one of the sort of new wave of...

Country films like Billy Lauer which I was also in also John's life. And The Sporting Life. And The Sporting Life which was Lindsay Anderson yes, Carol Rice production. Quite early on you made one film in America. Yes that was Brian Forbes production of King Rat and six or seven perhaps a dozen. So English actors went out. They took place in Changi Jail, where the prisoners had a mixture of Americans, Canadians, Australians, English people. And that was a really marvelous experience because we spent three months living in Hollywood. And I learned to swim. At the advanced age of whatever it was, 40-odd, something like that. Yes, never having been able to.

To stay in English water long enough to learn to swim. That's one of my greatest memories of King Rat. Good. Now what else? 2001 you wrote. Yes, I've worked for Kubrick twice. 2001 Space Odyssey. Whenever I mention that, no, everybody says Unit quite rightly I don't you remember any of the actors in Space Odyssey it was such an extraordinary visual what was the other Cooper you the Barry Linden oh yes yes which had a big went to

Yes, I must go and see it someday. Everybody says it's very good. I'm not seen by Lynn. I went to Ireland for two weeks. And you know what Stanley was like. I knew the-- I'll get more money. We stayed six. I was there for six weeks in the end, so I got three times. Oh, he's an extraordinary man. He's an extraordinary man. I think some people consider him a genius. I don't know that I've ever met a genius, but I suppose he's about the nearest... to one I've ever met. Recently, you've been in a film which was a television spin-off... We'll talk about the television series presently, Rising Dam. Right too? I believe so, yes, yes. Which brings us to record number five. Five. Well now Elizabeth Schwarzkopf, here's another similar sort of voice, Max Miller. Not quite at this higher range but.

This is from a live performance at the Met. I never saw Max Miller, there's a great regret. Miller was probably the most extraordinary musical comedian. What an extraordinary personality. Listen to this. Now, when I started in this business many years ago, I started in circus. Billy Smart's service, Billy Smart. Not that Billy's smarter with his day, his father, because I'm much older than Billy. And I remember his father said to me one day, he said, Maxie, would you like to be a lion tamer? I said, I've no desire. He said, There's money in it. I said, What do I have to do? He said, All you've got to do is to walk in the lion's cage and put your head in its mouth. I should think so. He said, Are you scared? I said, I'm not scared. I'm just careful. He said, I shouldn't be scared of that lion, he said. That lion's name was a kitten. It was brought up on milk.

I said, So was I, but eat meat! Max Miller at the Metropolitan Edgware Road. Now, the box, television, how early in your career did that impinge? When I was working for Reggie's cousin at Wolverhampton... We were asked one day, 1955, we all went along to Goster Green Studios in Birmingham to do a half hour play. We were given this play and we rehearsed for a few weeks. And such are the conditions in those days. It was live. It was not a proper studio. It was a converted cinema. And 10 minutes into the play, a drunk wandered along the side of the... ...side of the cinema door, which some idiot in his wisdom decided to come... Up with corrugated iron and this drug beat on this door. That's my first clear memories of television. Ten minutes into the live play, there's this ahh, blah, blah that was going on. Our faces must have been a study. It hasn't changed.

But I suppose the 60s is when I really first started in Zeg cars. I did a three months stint in Zeg cars in the days when Frank Windsor and Jeremy Kemp. I was a detective sergeant or inspector. I think I was detective inspector. Rather sat in and individually came along to clean up that little bit of, I think I was a sort of a new broom. Who didn't sweep cleanly enough. You made an impact with that though. Oh yes, I mean in those days, well we still do, any series your face becomes very recognizable. People do tend to. And recently two you've made a tremendous impact in Rising Damp, a seedy landlord. What was his name? Rigsby. That's right. There's an interesting story about that. His name wasn't Rigsby. It was a play originally called The Banana Box and his name was Rooksby, which is a far more Dickensian flavour, obviously Rooking people.

And I was doing some filming in Scarborough, and a chap from the newspaper came along and asked me what I was going to do in the future, and I told him about this character, and he put it in the paper. Two days later, the Yorkshire television had an irate label.

Said, My name is Rigsby, I run a boarding house. If you do this, I shall sue you. So poor Eric Chappell, who wrote it, had to think of a new name, and he came up with Rigsby. Now, those were very happy, happy times. We used to go to Yorkshire every week, and it's very difficult to divorce yourself from something you've been so intimately connected with. But as objectively as one can, I think they were very funny, and I think they were very successful for one very specific reason. That was because Eric Chappell wrote four marvellously clearly delineated characters, very, very distinct characters, all of whom had marvelous cross relationships with each other. You can't just write funny lines and hope to sort of make an impact.

He wrote four characters and that's what the success lay, I think. And the other series for the other side, as it were, Yes. Reginald Perrin. Yes, well that was a novel by David Nobbs called The Death of Reginald Perrin. And the BBC bought it and asked David to slice it up into six or seven episodes. Which you did. We did it. And then the BBC said, 'Could you write a sequel to it?' He was loath to write six episodes. He said, I don't think I could actually sit down and just write a television serial. I'll try and write a sequel to the book. Which he did. He said, If my publisher accepts the synopsis of the new novel, then I'll write it and then I'll slice that. And that's what he did. And then he wrote a third novel. So he went through that.

Stage each time before they serious appeared. Record number six. Now here we hear a razor sharp voice of Robert Preston in a musical which had an enormous success many years ago, The Music Man. And this is, I'm never quite sure what the title is called, I always think of it as pool, but I think it's called Ya Got Trouble. Well, you got trouble my friend. Right here I say trouble right here in River City, why sure I'm a-

Robert Preston, the star of the New York production of The Music Man. Now, current matters Leonard, you're in Michael Crane's new play Make and Break at the Lytic Hammersmith, and that's obviously going to keep you busy for some months with a West End transfer coming up. That's a fascinating part you have there, is this remorseless, ruthless salesman. Yeah, but what is so wonderful about it is, it's awfully, it sounds like actors just praising things. I don't really mean that. It is a marvellous company. I mean, this is why the one notice that somebody has printed, I see in the advertisement, is so important. I think it is true to say that these are the best all-round performances in any play in London, and I think that is just like London. The truth. This is an extraordinarily well-picked cast by Michael Laimore and he has drilled us all into producing what Michael Flaim put down on paper and that's fairly...

Rare occurrence actually for an author to get exactly what he wanted. I think Michael's got it, as near as damn it anyway. Now your offstage occupations, you like sport? Yes, I very nearly became a cricketer when I was a kid. I was captain of cricket and football at school and I played for sort of Lancashire junior size under 14, under 15, that sort of thing. You still play cricket? Very rarely do I play. Now I play occasionally charity matches, but 15, 16 years ago I made a great discovery. That was the game of squash rackets. And I've become addicted to that and I am a bit of a fanatic about squash now. I really love it. We've got now to your penultimate record, what's that? That's seven then I guess. A bit of Beethoven. This is Hans Schmidt-Isser-Stilman.

Recording of the Symphony No. 5 in C minor, the Vienna Philharmonic. It's a very well-known piece but great writing of course. Extraordinary stuff.

The opening of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, Hans Schmidt is just dead conducting the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra. Now, your qualifications as a castaway, Leonard. Any skills at building huts, for example? I can sort of make shells and that sort of thing. I hasten to add that I am the last person who should ever be put on a desert island. I'm very gregarious and I will probably...

In a way within a week. So I think the first thing I ought to be allowed is a do-it-yourself getaway kit. No, well let's stay with this practical business. After all, a heart is only an extension of a shelf, isn't it? Yes, yes. I would look after myself reasonably well. What about cooking? Can cook. My mother was ill once. I cooked a Christmas dinner. Can fire cooker? Oh yes, I run to... And Fridays together and escaping yes now this would terrify me because I am a bit of a fatalist and I would reckon that if I was cast away on this island my chances of surviving the war Would be rather bad. So I would probably pine away on the island and not have the nerve to leave. I think I suspect. My fate would be that a helicopter would come to pick me off.

And I hate flying even more than the water so I wouldn't want to go that way. Well at any rate you'll learn to swim. Yes I'm going to stay there aren't I? Yes I'll learn to swim. Record number 8. The last one. Well, this is the record I first thought of when I was asked to compile my list. And it's quite simply because I think I've seen this film, My Fair Lady, three or four occasions, usually on television. And the demon Rex Harrison has made me cry Every time he is turned at the point where he says, I've grown accustomed to her face and just about to put the key on her face. In the door. And I think it's there in Robert Preston, this extraordinary economy and style and wit, but I think this is it, and it's perfection. Rex Harrison, I've grown a customer. To her face.

Like a habit one can always break. And yet, I've grown accustomed to the trace. Of something in the air, accustomed to her face. Rex Harrison in the film My Fair Lady. Leonard, if you could take only one disc out of your eight, which would it be? I think possibly I would choose Max Miller. For one very specific reason, I think you want to hear a voice. I think that would be a great comfort on the island. But not only do you hear his voice, you hear a lot of people laughing as well. And I think that might be a nice company. And you're allowed to take one luxury with you. Well...

Apart from my squash activities, I am very keen on drinking, particularly wine. And I realize that red wine, I imagine all these desert islands are fairly hot, so the red wine would be... I'd like to take some shadow of patrons, but I think they would probably be ruined within a day or two. So it would probably have to be white, in which case, I don't know... BBC run to a case but a bottle or a magnum or whatever it is of I think the white one I don't probably that would be a merso. A merso, yes. Well, we'll have to... We could keep it cool in the water, couldn't I? Yes, yes, yes, yes. And we'll give you a reasonable supply, longer than to last. Yes, you keep dropping them in. Of course, and fishing them out. And one book apart from the Bible and Shakespeare? No hesitation. What I was reading when I was 12, and I should have been reading schoolbooks, P.G. Woodhouse. Well, if I have to choose some of the very early ones, the master novels like The Little Nugget, Sam the Sudden, Girl on the Boat, preferably a collected edition.

No, we'll bind those three together for you. Mr. Mulliner speaking, anyways, yes. And thank you, Leonard Rossiter, for letting us hear your desert island disc. Thank you very much for asking me. Goodbye, everyone. Thank you. please visit... Vc.co.uk/radio4