Episode 1 My Life in Books

Thank you, hello and welcome to My Life in Books,

a chance for our guests to talk about their favourite reads

and why they're important.

My first guest is Pamela Stephenson.

Psychologist, former comedienne and, of course, a dancing star.

With Pamela is actor and comedian Alexander Armstrong,

famous for playing posh but dim characters,

plus he's now the host of the quiz show, Pointless.

-Welcome to you both.

-APPLAUSE

Anne, Alexander just asked me if you're going to be rude to us.

-No.

-You're not?

-No.

Can I just explain?

They don't pay me if I'm nasty.

-Oh, right.

-That's why.

-We can provoke you to nastiness?

Yes, but I also have to...

I knew if you got these two on, I mean, the show wouldn't be mine.

I just have to remind everybody... Sit quietly, please.

This series is part of the BBC's celebration of World Book Day.

Can we start, Alexander, with you telling us where you were brought up

and what sort of life it was?

I was brought up, thank you, I was brought up in Northumberland in the '70s and '80s.

Northumberland in the 1970s and '80s was much like Northumberland, probably, in the 1870s and '80s.

-You mean your dad wasn't in flares?

-No.

He was in stout tweeds. My father was a doctor.

He's just retired, actually.

My mother was a magistrate

and we lived in the middle of nowhere, near Rothbury.

Meanwhile, Pamela, where were you?

I was born in New Zealand - a place called Takapuna, near Auckland.

When I was four we moved to Australia

so I walk a tightrope between being a New Zealander or an Australian.

So a bookish family?

Erm, yes.

Because I'm terribly old, we didn't have television when I was growing up.

We barely did, actually. LAUGHTER

But I was very, very bookish. I spent a lot of time reading and quite solitary.

But not surprising because your parents were academics.

My father was a zoologist and my mother a biologist.

They were a cancer research team and were professors at two different universities in Australia.

You look quite twee here.

That's a studio shot, you see?

That's the kind of thing... My mother used to make clothes.

I was the oldest, and two sisters, and we were all dressed in exactly the same clothes.

At least you got them first(!) I was the youngest and I got everyone else's clothes.

-The hand-me-downs.

-All of them.

-Yours was a religious family too.

-Very religious.

My father also was the organist and choir master of our local church.

I had to sing in the choir and... yes.

Your mother was, in fact, the daughter of a missionary.

Yes. My mother was born in Fiji

and my grandmother ran a hostel

for young girls that she was trying to show the light to.

My mother had a very exotic upbringing in Fiji.

I think it was exotic - very exciting, very tropical.

So your first book - the myths of the Greeks and Romans.

My parents did provide me and my sisters with a wonderful library.

All the classics.

The Grimm's fairytales, Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan. All of those.

One of them, and my very favourite, was the myths of the Greeks and Romans.

My favourite story was the one about Cupid and Psyche.

How funny that I should become a psychologist. My favourite character was Psyche.

Remind us of the story.

Psyche was this beautiful young woman who couldn't get a husband.

It was very surprising. Men were frightened of her.

Finally, erm, Cupid, the son of Venus, was passing by

and he fell in love with her and wanted to be with her,

but his mother, Aphrodite, refused. Absolutely no way. She's immortal.

So he arranged a way for her to be wafted on a breeze,

carried down into a lovely valley and ensconced in a beautiful house

and he would visit her at night.

In the story here, they held hands and it was all very chaste at night

but we know what was really going on.

Erm, and she fell in love with him

and the rules were that she was not supposed to glance at him

but one night she did... she disobeyed.

She got up, she took an oil lamp and discovered who he was

and then she had to go through a lot of trials and do a lot of tasks

that were set to her by Aphrodite to be with him.

What I loved about this is...

there are very few adventurous women in literature.

When I was growing up, the boys had all the adventures.

Here was an example of this wonderful adventurous, brave woman, whom I admired tremendously.

And there's a lot of psychological depth in this

that I never understood at the time.

The idea of delving into the unconscious is all in there

and it would take too long to go into it but I do think there's so much in this story.

It's an amazing tale one hardly ever hears today, but I recommend it.

-Talking of adventure, Alexander, were you an adventurous little boy?

-I was quite adventurous.

We were living in the middle of nowhere

so we had to make our own fun.

I suppose I was a gopher for my older brother in many ways.

I was surprised to learn that you, from an early age, were tremendously good at singing.

-Yes.

-You were a chorister.

-I was a chorister from the age of 11.

I've kind of been a singer all my life, actually.

-But I can't remember seeing you on television singing.

-I've never done it. I do it on the sly.

Would you like to do some now as an audition?

Wouldn't that be excruciating?

-How did it come about?

-I went off to prep school at the age of seven.

If you live in the middle of nowhere, your choices are quite limited

and a brilliant headmaster's wife, Mrs Daykin,

who oversaw the music there and it was a fabulous school.

They had this ethos where everybody was felt they should sing

and, no matter who you were, it was a huge honour to be in the choir.

-You were talented because you went on...

-I do go on, yes.

..to Edinburgh to music school.

I went on to... I went on to music school in Edinburgh,

St Mary's Music School, and I was a chorister at St Mary's Cathedral.

And then I was a choral scholar at Trinity, Cambridge, as well.

At least you're a real boy because your first book is Mr Standfast by John Buchan.

-Why this one?

-This is a boy's own dream, really.

-I think...

-It proves Pamela's point. It's all male heroes.

Exactly, although we do get Mary Lamington in this, who eventually becomes Mrs Richard Hannay.

She appears in this, but she's slightly two-dimensional!

-Remind us of the story.

-It's part of the series of Richard Hannay stories.

He's fighting in the trenches in the First World War

and he's called back on very, very important, top secret spying.

There's a very, very dangerous German spy.

It is slightly absurd, actually.

It's utterly absurd. Utterly absurd. But it's absolutely wonderful.

I think the most exciting thing about this is,

this is the first faltering steps of crime writing and thriller writing.

Without a doubt, there would be no James Bond without Richard Hannay.

-Have you re-read it recently?

-I have. It's spectacularly dated.

But it's arresting and it's unputdownable still.

I mean, despite its...

You know, it's written in an age when people say "Great Scott",

pretty much every sentence.

-How were you doing at school?

-I was expected to do very well.

Huge expectations, coming from such bright parents.

My parents instilled this very, very strong work ethic.

-By the time you were due to leave school, did you want to perform?

-No.

I think that had been taken out of me.

I think I probably wanted to do something with English.

English was my favourite subject so I wanted to write or...

I wasn't really sure.

But then I went to university

and immediately was bored with doing an arts degree.

Then I began to think I wanted to perform, and went to drama school.

And then, a very courageous woman, you actually took the decision to come to Britain.

I decided to travel and absolutely loved it.

I did a very long trip, travelling overland through Asia and all through Europe.

-That was your route? That old route.

-It was the hippy trail.

-Fantastic!

I did it totally alone and it was just amazing.

I was looking at satire. Everywhere I went, I became more and more excited.

I'd done a lot of acting in Australia.

I'd done major...

I was at the... When the Sydney Opera House opened,

I was playing two leading roles with the main theatre company there.

But what happened was, I became excited about comedy and especially topical comedy.

So by the time I got to London, I was ready for "Not The Nine O'Clock News".

Alexander won't remember this because he was still in short trousers

but it was a period when London was just full of Australians.

I suppose it was.

I do remember people just thinking I was very funny

every time I opened my mouth.

The next choice of book, actually, is absolutely nothing to do with show business

and much more to do with what you came to do eventually,

which was "The Primal Scream" by Arthur Janov.

Tell us about the choice.

I don't know how I found this book,

but I found it just after it came out in 1970.

So, I must have been about 21.

And I picked it up and I just couldn't put it down,

for probably about a year.

I was absolutely entranced by it.

It was my first introduction to psychological notions.

My first introduction to the notion of the unconscious.

There was a lot of misunderstanding about it at that time.

Can you tell us the theory behind it?

The idea is really that many people, as adults,

are left with a wealth of traumatic, but hidden, trauma.

And that this is fixed, helped by, catharsis

and in Janov's case the catharsis is going to be helped by screaming.

So, there are all these people in the '70s

running out into the woods and screaming a lot.

And, actually, his theory was much more complex

and much more interesting than that.

But that's what it was in a nutshell.

So, I did have a few screams myself, mainly in my car.

Alexander, your next choice of book is not at all surprising,

the Great Gatsby.

-A very glamorous, rich, exciting, adventure story.

-Yes.

But, at its heart, barren, of course. Very sad in the end.

This is a great book, I read this first when I was about 14.

-Was it at school?

-Yeah.

-Was it in the school library?

I think so. I remember my sister had read it and loved it,

and I read it, again, and what was so strange is that, I read it now,

and I just misunderstood it, when I first read it.

I thought Jay Gatsby was incredibly glamorous,

and I fell for his riches, and his parties.

I thought that he was a wonderful, wonderful being,

I didn't know enough that, actually, behind all of the descriptions

of Jay Gatsby's parties is this...

-He's a mystery man, isn't he?

-Well, yes, and a soulless man.

We're lucky enough to have been to a few of those parties ourselves

and we know, for all of their glamour, quite often they're ghastly.

I don't mean that, if you were thinking of inviting me to a party(!)

Glamorous parties, I love them(!)

You know me.

Were you acting at school or just...?

A bit, yes. I was doing quite a lot of acting, but comedy had bitten me.

Music remained your passport, didn't it?

You got to Cambridge on a choral scholarship.

Yep, yep.

-But didn't study music?

-No, I didn't, I read English.

I think I wanted to spread my base.

Doing my commitment as a choral scholar was pretty substantial,

so, about 12 hours a week of singing,

plus all the stuff you have to do on you own,

to make sure you're not making mistakes,

I think, represented a good enough musical education.

I think doing English as well meant I covered a bit more breadth.

And I didn't really want to go into music.

You come to London and open a comedy club with some friends,

which seems very ambitious.

Yes. Well, I think it's the only way to get going in this business,

is actually to get on and do it yourself.

It was at this time that you chummed up with Ben Miller, wasn't it?

Around about now, yep.

Yes, we just put stuff on at this comedy club, every Saturday.

Pamela, having come to the UK, was it easy to get work?

Well, no, not really.

I kept trotting into the BBC and reading for parts

that were completely wrong for me because they were English flowers.

But then, eventually, I met a man called John Lloyd, at a party.

And he was desperately trying to find someone

to be in this new comedy show that he was doing with Sean Hardie,

for the BBC.

Not The Nine O'Clock News.

We've a picture of you there with the rest of the boys,

Griff Rhys Jones, Rowan Atkinson, Mel Smith.

-Was it an exciting time?

-It was, because the show was a huge hit.

Not immediately, worked terribly hard on it,

playing all sorts of characters.

I didn't just want to be "The Crumpet".

You sang. I remember you singing on this.

Yes, I did a lot of singing and all sorts of parodies.

It was the most exciting show, sorry, I just can't contain it.

-It was a time when music and comedy...

-Wasn't it a wonderful show?

..were just so brilliant.

Comedy, we have had hits since then, but nothing like it since then.

-Well, thank you.

-And that's where you met Billy, wasn't it?

That's where I met Billy, they were making such a fuss

about this Scottish comedian they wanted to have on the show.

I kept saying, "Well, we don't have guests on the show,

"why are we bothering about this?"

Then, finally, they dragged me along to meet him

and I thought he was a complete animal.

-Why?

-He was just this shaggy thing.

I didn't understand a word he said.

We went to lunch and he ate fish with his bare hands.

And, I thought, "Yum".

Yummy-yummy or Yum?

No, I just thought he was desperately attractive.

The choice of your next book is very much down to him, isn't it?

Because, it's unusual for a girl to choose this.

It's Carry On, Jeeves by PG Wodehouse.

When we first got together we used to read these stories,

the Wodehouse stories, to each other and we used to scream,

now, you might read this and it might be a lot more familiar.

-It would sound like him, actually, wouldn't it?

-You think?

For Billy and I it was so culturally different.

Just the language was so, so, silly.

Phrases like "Dear old Bicky, though a stout fellow,

"and absolutely unrivalled as an imitator of bull-terriers and cats,

"was in many ways one of the most pronounced fatheads..."

If you were just saying the word "fathead",

Billy and I would be gone for about five minutes.

It's just such a funny word, fathead!

"..that ever pulled on a suit of gents' underwear."

-"A suit of gents' underwear"!

-Alien to both of you, wasn't it?

It was just so alien.

Then there'd be all of these wonderful characters.

I love the female characters in it, because the female characters were

these big self-determined, strong, bullies.

And they would just making his life miserable. I just found it so funny.

Alexander, how did you move from comedy in Notting Hill,

at the Comedy Club you'd developed, on to television?

Awkwardly, by going to the Edinburgh Festival.

That's what you do. You just keep...

I thank God for the people, they lie of course, these comedy producers

who come up and say, "I think you'd be great,

"yes, I'd like to consider you for something."

They never mean it, but thank God for them

because, actually, they keep you going, you keep thinking

and eventually somebody does actually come up and give you something.

You were different from other comedians

in that you weren't working class.

At the time.

We were doing sketches. Stand-up was all the rage.

We've a wonderful clip here, that is more recent,

but it very much identifies the sort of comedy that you and Ben do.

Here, have you heard about Chalky and all this?

He's actually a spy for, like, that lot we're fighting,

the Germans, or whatever.

No way? Chalky, a spy? You mean, Chalky?

-Yeah, man, Chalky.

-Chalky Von Schmidt, a spy?

LAUGHTER

I swear down, he's been giving Germans, like, spoilers about the war and this.

Oh, my days, that is so two-faced.

Apparently he was caught nicking stuff

from the group captain's briefcase and sending it to his nan in Berlin.

APPLAUSE

-That's very John Buchan, isn't it?

-It is.

Well, there's quite a strong John Buchan theme

that runs through all our stuff.

Bringing you on to your next book which is quite recent,

published in 1996.

The Debt To Pleasure, by John Lanchester.

His first novel,

which gave him the Whitbread Prize.

Yes, best first novel, I think, and deservedly.

It's a brilliant, brilliant book.

If anyone hasn't come across this,

this, I can say with my hand on my heart,

is the funniest book I've ever read.

Well, that's quite a recommendation.

Seriously, I think it is dense with comedy. It's written...

Is it a boy's book?

No, I don't think it is, although the narrator is a boy.

Tell us about it.

He is called Tarquin, I don't know how you pronounce it,

It's Winot, maybe it's deliberately ambiguous, I don't know,

but Tarquin Winot, who's this grotesque invention.

He ostensibly sets out to write a cookery book.

A series of recipes, none of which I have tried,

but all sounding entirely plausible.

He is, John Lanchester, a restaurant critic for the Guardian.

-He does know.

-He clearly knows. He knows his food.

Brillat-Savarin gets a lot of acknowledgement throughout.

It's a journey, it's a recipe book and an unfolding story.

In the folds of this recipe book

drop out some just wonderful nuggets of comedy.

-Read us a small extract.

-I've got a little extract here.

There's a simmering enmity between him and his brother, Bartholomew,

I won't give too much away.

But you can always tell he is trying to edge his brother out.

"'You said once that peaches remind you of your brother,'

"my biographer remarked to me a while ago.

"I pretended not to be able to remember.

"The truth is that the furry fruit does indeed remind me

"of my sibling, thanks to an unfortunate event

"that occurred when we were both small.

"A near-fatal case of poisoning which resulted when I,

"in an early stab at culinary experimentation, prepared a jam

"made out of peaches but also peach stones.

"The latter containing, it turns out, cyanogen,

"a stable compound that,

"when broken down through contact with certain enzymes,

"(or when pounded up using a pestle and mortar)..."

Which he's clearly done...

"..produces that celebrated toxin, cyanide."

LAUGHTER

-It gives us a hint.

-Yeah.

It's lovely, it's just brilliant.

Pamela, you moved to LA at the beginning of the '90s.

Billy was asked to do a long-running television show,

and you have to sign a contract forever, so we all moved.

I had three children and two stepchildren at that point,

So, we all went there, and I got the kids into school,

then I decided I was a bit bored with show business.

Actually, I was very bored with show business.

I wanted to do something different,

something that meant I didn't have to travel.

I wanted to be stable with the family, so I went back to university

and got a PhD in psychology.

For the next decade, then,

-you opened your own practice, didn't you?

-Yes.

You specialised in human sexuality.

Yes, I'm an overall psychologist, but that's a specialty subject,

along with hypnosis and treating trauma and mood disorders and so on.

So, I had a practice in Beverly Hills for 15 years.

I was an adjunct professor at California Graduate Institute.

My life was totally about psychology.

Does it continue to be?

Well, very much so.

But, I don't have a practice at the moment.

I got to the point where I felt I needed to have a break,

and I think that's a healthy thing for psychologists.

I got in a sail boat and sailed round the world.

-How long did that take?

-Two years.

You are the modern Odysseus.

Which brings us to your 4th book. The Odyssey, by Homer.

If you said, "What is your all-time favourite book?"

I'd say it's this.

It's Homer's Odyssey.

Not only is it the adventure, the struggles,

all the trials that Odysseus was put through with his men...

I suppose, in parts of my life I have been Penelope,

weaving my tapestry at home while Billy has been striding out

doing his concerts and so on, but I much prefer the role of Odysseus.

Are you going to read us an extract?

See, I love the sea, I feel such an affinity with it,

I discovered a while ago that my great0great grandfather

was a sea captain during that wonderful spice trade period.

He actually got pirated, and died out in Indonesia.

I just feel so excited to think I have that ancestry

and it's inspired me.

"A tremendous wave swept him forward to the rugged shore

"where his skin would have been torn off him and all of his bones broken,

"had not they bright-eyed goddess, Athena, put it into his head

"to grab hold of a rock with both hands."

See, the woman at always saves him!

"As he was swept in, he clung there, groaning,

"while the great wave swept by.

"But no sooner had he escaped its fury

"than its backwards rush caught him with full force

"and flung him far out to sea.

"Pieces of skin, stripped from his sturdy hands, were left sticking

"to the crag like the pebbles that stick to be suckers of a squid

"when it's torn from its lair."

It just goes on and on like that, I won't read any more of it,

but I have caught in the sea a number of times,

and I've felt, I mean, I've been at sea and we've had a fire on board,

and I have faced the kind of things that the sea can bring,

and I have come to the conclusion that it's just life-affirming.

It's thrilling to pitch yourself against the elements,

and to actually survive.

I'm not just an adrenaline junkie, honest!

I just actually think that this is sort of important.

It does make you feel truly human and truly capable.

I just want to do it again, in a heartbeat.

Have you been travelling?

I have. I've sailed. I've done offshore sailing, but only once.

-Terrifying, but brilliant.

-You are never off television now.

I know, I'm sorry!

Don't apologise.

-And this as well now!

-Yes, this.

-Oh, Lord.

-And commercials.

-And now you're a quiz show host.

-Now I'm a quiz show host, yes.

-You're well into the run of it, now.

-I think so.

-Got the hang of it?

Let's have a look.

Anything else you've learned from your appearance on Cou... Countdown?!

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

It's going very well, isn't it(?) I think it is(!)

LAUGHTER

-Anything else you've learned from your appearance?

-A lot.

APPLAUSE

My brain just turns to cheese at times.

Because you've so many facts and things,

that doesn't surprise me at all.

Has your general knowledge increased?

You'd hope, but I don't know if it has.

Your final choice is The Complete Works of William Shakespeare,

a particular edition edited by Peter Alexander.

It is. I mean, that's the one I have.

It's very Desert Island Discs to have this as my final...

..in fact, we've both gone for quite light tomes for our final choices.

That's almost cheating.

It is, almost. I mean, you've got it all there.

The reason why I've said this is that I was of that generation,

I think the first generation to come through school,

educated in the '80s, where learning anything just didn't happen.

Children weren't made to learn stuff.

Parrot fashion was vastly discredited.

It was a byword for terrible previous ills, when, in fact,

parrot fashion is how we learn to speak.

There's nothing wrong with parrot fashion.

It is how we learn pretty much everything, actually.

My mother, when I did O-levels,

Mum found brilliant old RSC recordings in the library

that you can get out and we listened to them the whole time.

Much though I complained, a bit like with modern jazz,

once you've got to know it, you like it.

I often make that mistake on the radio.

You hear a song and think, "Oh, I like this."

Then you think, "Oh, no, it's Phil Collins."

What I meant was, "I know it and I recognise it."

But it stimulates a similar thing.

Getting to know this, by listening to it, or, in my case, singing it,

I've sung a lot of Shakespeare settings,

means it's drummed in there.

Now, in my forties,

I have got to a age where little snatches of phrases and lines

suddenly haunt me.

I think, "Oh, I must go and look that up.

"'The cloud-capp'd towers...'"

What came after that?

I'll go and look it up.

So, this is why I love this.

I don't sit down and read solidly through plays, but I refer to it.

-Is it on your bedside?

-It is.

-I love it.

-Who do you identify with most?

-Which character?

-Which character?

OK. I haven't prepared this one.

-Think quickly.

-Well, who do I particularly in, er...

-Right, well you've come up with that fast.

-Well, who on earth?

-I just stopped the whole thing, dead.

-He's a quick thinker(!)

Our time is up. Thank you both, very much indeed.

Alexander Armstrong and Pamela Stephenson.

APPLAUSE

Wonderful. And just to remind you,

details from this series are, of course, on the BBC website.

You can also hear our guests read a passage

from their favourite children's book.

Please, join me again tomorrow same time, same place.

Goodnight.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd