Episode 2 Talk at the BBC

Hello, everyone.

Some time ago, we televised a play called Adventure Story

in which the hero became a film stuntman and, incidentally,

he got very badly hurt while stunting.

That, of course, was only fiction

but as you were all so very interested in the play

I thought perhaps you might like to meet

some real-life stunt people.

I've invited along, to meet you,

Steve Donoghue and his partner Connie Tilton.

I met Steve on Caesar and Cleopatra,

when I was thrown off a parapet by Cecil Parker and Basil Sydney.

-Yes, I remember that, and quite a parapet too.

-Yes, it was 30 feet.

I remember one time I nearly missed and I saw the rocks down below.

I just turned on my side in time and hit the water.

Good for you.

And any other stars you've doubled?

Yes, I doubled Ann Todd in The Seventh Veil.

I jumped off Hammersmith Bridge and Richmond Bridge in a nightgown.

-Winter or summer?

-Winter, a February morning.

Oh, good heavens. I see, well, look,

if, by some extraordinary coincidence,

we had a flight of stairs at the other end of the studio

would you fall down them for us?

Well, I'd rather have my job than hers!

So for the past two weeks, we've opened our programme

with news of Joan Crawford

and her visit to this country.

It's a proud moment for Picture Parade

because Joan Crawford has joined us tonight

to tell us a little about herself, to talk too about her new picture.

I should tell you, it's her first appearance on television ever.

-Welcome, Joan.

-Hi, Peter, how are you?

-You're not frightened, are you?

-Yes, I'm scared.

-Really?

-Yes.

Joan, there are thousands of things I want to ask you

and I don't know where to start. First of all, let's take glamour.

Will you tell me what is your recipe for it?

-Just live.

-Just live?

-Yes.

-Simple as that?

Live with a lovely family, raising children.

I don't mean live gloriously

and make every day the 4th of July, I mean just live.

A perfectly ordinary life.

Tell me something about the young people of today because

I know you are interested in young people and encouraging them?

Yes, I certainly am, not because we want to find new faces,

because we always want to be there too.

Yes, I know.

It's just that you like to give, what shall I say,

a bit of encouragement when you can.

When you find a talent, you take it to a director and you say,

"Look, I've found a lovely, lovely girl here or a talented boy here" -

you can't say lovely boy -

You can, but it isn't nice.

Yes.

So they take tests, the director, if they believe in the talent

and if they believe in your word.

Today we chose the most lovely, beautiful child in the whole world,

except my own four children.

Yes, who is she?

Miss Heather Sears.

Heather Sears, meet our viewers and congratulations

on all our behalves on getting this rather wonderful part.

Thank you very much.

What do you have to do in the film?

I should say first of all I have to be a great pantomimist.

What exactly is that, now?

You've got to use your fingers a lot to...

Yes, I have to...

I have to communicate with my hands.

And you aren't allowed to talk?

And with your eyes.

With my eyes but not my voice

because Esther Costello is a blind mute.

My goodness me.

You've got a lot of work put in both of you, haven't you?

-Yes, we do.

-Yes, we have.

-We'll work together well.

I'm sure we will.

Before you go, how you both getting on with the film so far?

-You haven't actually started, have you?

-No, but we will.

-In a few days' time.

-Yes.

-Bless you both. Thank you so much.

Before you go, I just want one little thing, before you do leave.

Thank you very much indeed.

With our compliments, Joan Crawford, and thank you for joining us.

-Thank you.

-And Heather, likewise.

-Thank you very much indeed.

Good luck in the picture.

Thank you for joining us on Picture Parade tonight.

-You know you're going to be great.

-Thank you.

Miss Davis, you began your career in the theatre.

Did you intend to stay in the theatre

or did you just look at it as training for the films?

No, I actually started in the theatre to be in the theatre.

Because, of course, when I started in theatre, we had silent pictures.

I don't think any theatre people had any idea what would happen

-when sound came in, as we say.

-Yes.

It was a complete revolution, actually

because then they did need actors trained for the theatre

because of the sound.

So then there was an enormous trek to Hollywood by practically...

they signed practically all of us as tests,

to see who would work there or not.

Did you go into films

because you felt there was more scope for an actress

in films than in the theatre?

Well, I look back and I don't know.

I guess I felt it was an opportunity that I, as a very young person,

couldn't afford to miss, probably.

-I didn't go with great anticipation.

-You didn't?

No, not at all but I felt I was probably very fortunate

and I should give it a try.

Did you enjoy the change at the beginning?

No, I had a very difficult time in the beginning.

I was not welcomed with open arms.

As a matter of fact I arrived in the Los Angeles station

and had been told I would be met by the Universal officials,

which was my studio, and no-one was there to meet me at all.

So we kind of staggered to the hotel,

finding our way around, my mother and I.

I called the studio and said,

"Why wasn't anyone there to meet me?"

And they said, "We didn't see anyone get off the train

"who looked like an actress."

You starred with some very distinguished leading men,

what are the qualities you would consider the most important

in a leading man?

Well, I think, that he is a good actor.

He's a good actor

and I must say it's enormous help to me if he enjoys acting

because this makes the film a much happier thing to make.

Would you say it's important to like somebody you're playing with

off-screen or do you...

No, I think one would be very limited to think that way.

I think that's nothing to do with it whatsoever.

I think the talent is the whole thing.

Many sort of unpleasant people are very talented.

One would limit oneself very much, I think,

if one cared how much one liked somebody personally.

We look to the first Olympic meeting of modern times,

held in Athens in 1896.

Only a handful of British competitors took part

in the games of 64 years ago and, as far as we know, only one survives.

He is Sir George Stuart Robertson who represented this country

in the discus, putting the weight and lawn tennis.

-In those days, there was no official British entry was there, at all?

-No.

Did this mean that anybody could take part,

as long as he had the fare to Athens?

Everybody went out on their own, and nobody asked us to go.

-Did individuals have to qualify in any way at all?

-No, not at all.

How many British competitors were there in the 1896 games?

About six, I should say.

You represented this country at putting the weight and the discus

and lawn tennis, I believe.

-Now which of those were you best at?

-I wasn't very good at any of them.

Hammer was my speciality and there wasn't any hammer.

So in fact, you threw a discus instead, did you?

I threw a discus

and put the weight as being the only things there were to throw.

How, in fact, did you make out in it, did you do well?

No, not at all well.

How well-organised were they?

They weren't organised at all.

You see the Greeks had had no experience whatever

of running an athletic meeting.

The thing was happy-go-lucky from start to finish.

That's what made it so entertaining, it was a most amusing meeting.

A final question, Sir George, do you wish you were in Rome now?

No, I do not. I once threw a hammer in America at 104 in the shade,

I wouldn't say I'd go to Rome at 106.

Thank you very much indeed, Sir George.

I won the Olympic gold medal in Rome, Italy. Olympic champion.

The Russian standing right here and the Pole right here.

-Is Poland considered a Communist country?

-Yes.

I'm defeating America's so-called threats and enemies.

And the flag is going

ton-ton-ton-ton-ton

ton-ton-ton-ton-ton.

I'm standing so proud.

Ton-ton-ton-ton.

And I'd have whupped the world for America. Ton-ton-ton-ton-ton.

I took my gold medal, I thought I'd invented something.

I said, "Man, I know how I'm going to get my people free."

I'm the champion of the whole world.

Olympic champion, I know I can eat downtown now.

I went downtown that day, had my big old medal on, went in a restaurant.

At that time things weren't integrated,

the black folks couldn't eat downtown.

I went downtown, I sat down, and I said, "A cup of coffee, hot dog."

The lady said, "We don't serve Negroes."

I was so mad I said,

"I don't eat 'em either, just give me a cup of coffee and a hamburger."

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

You know, I said, "I'm the Olympic gold medal winner.

"Three days ago I fought for this country in Rome.

"I won the gold medal and I'm going to eat."

I heard her tell the manager, "He says..." "Well, he's got to go."

They put me out and I had to leave that restaurant in my home town,

where I went to church and served in their Christianity.

Daddy fought in all the wars.

I'd just won the gold medal and couldn't eat downtown.

I said something's wrong and from then on I've been a Muslim.

When was your first recollection, as a child,

of being a second-class citizen?

A second-class citizen?

No, more 16th class.

They used to always say we're second-class citizen.

I used to say, "Momma, how come we're second-class citizens,

"the African can go where I can't go,

"the Chinese can go where I can't go in America, the Englishman."

You can come to white America and set up businesses

and do things I can't do, and the Puerto Rican, the Hawaiian

and just about everybody came before the black people and more respected.

So I said, "If we were just second-class citizens,

"we'd be doing all right."

But we were wa-ay down from second class.

All right, if we were second-class citizens, we'd be driving

Cadillacs and living good.

First-class would be driving a Rolls-Royce,

but we'd still be doing good.

No, we way under that, but things are getting much better.

I always wonder when I went to church on Sundays.

I'm not just a boxer, I do a lot of reading, a lot of studying,

I ask questions. I go out, travel these countries.

I watch how people live and I learn.

I always asked my mother, "Mother, how come everything's white?

"How come Jesus is white, blonde with blue eyes?

"Why is the Lord's supper all white men? Angels are white.

"Pope and Mary and even the angels."

I said, "Mother, when we die, do we go to heaven?"

She said, "Naturally, we go to heaven."

I said, "What happened to all the black angels?"

"They took the pictures."

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

Oh, I said,

"I know, if the white folks was in heaven too,

"the black angels were in the kitchen preparing milk and honey."

LAUGHTER

Did you have a gang, when you were a kid?

-Were you running with a gang?

-No, I didn't, I didn't run with a gang.

I didn't have time. There were a few little street gangs,

people hanging around sitting under the spotlight at nights,

talking and shooting dice and playing marbles,

but I was so wrapped up in boxing since I was 12.

I'd always go to the gymnasium every day at six o'clock after school.

In the mornings, I would run,

looking forward to the future Golden Glove and Olympic tournaments.

I had something to do, which most kids really need,

something they can look forward to.

A goal, a purpose to work towards, something to achieve,

it keeps them out of trouble.

I'm lucky to be one, at the age of 12,

I had a good boxing talent, I was good for my age.

We had a local TV show called Tomorrow's Champions.

It comes on in Louisville, Kentucky, there,

every Saturday at six o'clock.

Three bouts and two-minute round bouts.

Kids and I had about 45 fights on the show. I came up on it.

I was so busy I didn't have time to run in street gangs.

Did you, at that time, though, when you were 12 and in your early teens,

did you ever imagine yourself as being world champion?

Well, it happened one night when I heard Rocky Marciano,

1954, 1953, sometime.

He had beat Walcott, or somebody,

and I was in the rain on my bicycle, leaning over

listening to a fellow's radio in a car and I got there too late

and I heard the fellow say,

"And still the heavyweight champion of the world, Rocky Marciano."

All the noise.

And a little skinny kid from Kentucky, who weighed,

I don't know how many stones it is, but 85 pounds, small.

I rode off in the rain on my bicycle, I could hear him saying,

at that time my name was Cassius Clay,

"And still the heavyweight champion of the whole world,

"Cassius Clay."

I heard it as I rode off in the rain and I said to myself,

"The champion of the whole world can whup every man in Russia,

"every man in China, every man in Japan,

"every man in Europe, every man in America.

"The champion of the whole world.

"I guess I'm big then."

So I kept working until I did it.

LAUGHTER

Not only champion of the whole world but better than all those before me.

LAUGHTER

APPLAUSE

I'm not going to argue with you.

You're not as dumb as you look.

LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE

You've got two gorgeous cars, you've got a gorgeous house,

you've got gorgeous clothes, I'm sure.

Um...

That's all I dreamt of, I mean, nice time and that, you know.

You see I get the impression, from what I read about you,

that in a way you're not enjoying it, that you're a bit lonely.

Well, I am, yeah, but I've got to put that on one side.

I've got the money, I can go out and buy what I want.

That's it, who's bothered about anybody else? I'm not.

What about friends, have you got any friends?

Well, I have one or two that I talk to and go about with.

That's how we leave it, we don't make a habit of, you know,

being friends, you what I mean, real friends staying in,

going off everywhere and doing everything together.

Would you say your win has brought you happiness?

Money creates problems,

you know, as well as it creates everything else and...

You've got to live with everybody else. I have.

I've got to please everybody else.

I've got to dress different from everybody else.

Why, why?

I don't know.

I went over to Sheffield the other week,

and his mother had an argument with somebody

because I'm always in jeans when I go over there.

"If I had her bloody money, I wouldn't dress like that."

Well, they're only talking. If they had the money, what would they do?

Before we won this money I used to talk about what I'd do with it.

I'd give this to that, and that to that.

Then when we won, we actually won it, we never thought we would,

I thought, "Bugger them, what's up with us," and that's it.

That's the way you look at it.

What's the best thing about it now you have got it?

You can buy anything you want, can't you? You don't have to save up for it.

You don't have to take your family allowance book down to your mother's and borrow off it. Do you?

It's true, it's silly but it's true.

Viv Nicholson still has money worries,

though today, unhappily, her problem is not too much, but too little.

Her husband, Keith, killed in his Jaguar, left her only £5,000.

They'd spent £60,000 in five years.

So she must sell this ranch house and get a job for, today,

her income is much as it was before the dream began.

Gina, you are now divorced, aren't you?

Yes, kind of divorced.

What does that mean?

Well, it means that we don't have divorce in Italy.

We're divorced but in Italy it doesn't...

No, Sophia had the same problem of course, with all that.

-Different.

-Well, all right, different.

Your new found freedom, do you like it?

Or, are you secretly longing to get a man in tow?

No, I enjoy to be like that, free, and happy.

No trouble. No men.

Many around but not someone that you can't just throw him out, I mean.

When you have a husband in your home and you want to send him away,

it's not easy.

Do you like being controlled by a man?

Do you like a man to dominate you, or the other way round?

Oh, er...

..you know, it is nice to have some men around,

they are funny for a little while, you know.

Would it matter if he was poor?

Poor? I am rich.

So, it's OK.

I enjoy getting older,

I'm 33 now, tottering along a bit,

and a little bit wiser.

For someone as attractive as you are, you can't mind being 40 at all?

Are the best years behind you?

Oh, you are obsessed about age.

Who is? I'm not.

Why do you think of people being young,

about how old they are?

I think people are young if they feel young.

One of the objectives of the women's liberation movement

is to attack the position of women as,

what they call, sex objects.

Now, that's exactly what you have been in many of your films,

Barbarella for example.

Does your new attitude mean that

you will no longer appear in motion pictures of that kind?

Yeah, I will not be making films like that any more.

I had never,

I wasn't really aware of...

..male chauvinism

and of myself as being a...

Tell me this, aren't you married to a male chauvinist?

I think that all men

are male chauvinists and, poor dears,

not because they mean to be,

but because that's the way we've all been educated.

Women have always allowed themselves

to be put into a subordinate position.

That's just, I mean, for centuries that's the way

we have been educated and raised.

But surely Vadim is a male chauvinist par excellence?

No, oh, no, not really.

It would seem that way but in fact it's not...

I would say he is no more guilty of male chauvinism than most men I know.

My God, he made Bardot into a sex symbol,

he made you into a sex symbol.

Yeah, I'm talking about the way one relates on a personal level

on a day-to-day life.

You once said that marriage is obsolete.

-You said that a long time ago.

-A long time ago.

-Yes, now, do you still believe that marriage...

-Absolutely.

I firmly believe it.

I didn't understand, this was 12 years ago, when I said it,

and I felt it for many years before I said that publicly.

The political ramifications of it,

but, of course, I think it's...

I'm sure that 100 years from now people will look back

over these centuries of marriage

and wonder what we were doing.

I think it is natural to couple,

for people to be drawn to someone who have similar tastes and desires

and beliefs and things like that.

I think there is nothing more important or beautiful than loving someone.

I think as long as a relationship between two people

exists in a changing, growing way where people are growing together

and learning from each other, it is fantastic.

That usually doesn't last for ever.

Let's talk about something that I know featured in The Ascent Of Man,

it's something James Coburn was talking about beforehand.

That's this thing about equality between men and women.

It's fascinating reading your book

which has been written about the series.

I didn't realise, and, in fact, as a species, physically,

we are closer together than any other, are we not? Men and women.

For instance, I didn't know that a woman, in our species,

is the only female in any species to have an orgasm.

Which is extraordinary, I didn't know that.

We are the only species that copulate face-to-face.

I always usually say, almost the only species in both cases.

There are some aquatic mammals, like the whales and the seals,

that find the other form inconvenient.

LAUGHTER

And it is also true, that it has recently been shown

that some of the bigger monkeys,

the females would be able to achieve orgasm...

..but don't, in the wild,

because the males don't keep at it long enough.

LAUGHTER

You'll pardon me for cutting the scientific jargon

and stating the plain facts.

I much prefer it, sir.

Can I talk to you about something that fascinated me in your series and in your book?

This is a theme that runs through your writing

which is the moral responsibility of the scientist.

You say that when you went to Hiroshima and Nagasaki

that this was a crucial point in your life

because this is when, one presumes,

you said you'd take no further part in creating weapons of destruction

and this sort of thing.

Isn't it the ultimate tragedy, though, of all science

that ultimately it is used to destroy?

I wonder if I could begin just a little earlier with some biographical details?

I have lived, you have lived,

most people here with us, here watching us

have lived through the two great catastrophes of the 20th century.

The coming to power of Hitler in 1933

and the dropping of the atomic bombs in 1945.

The two most ghastly events that have overtaken the human race,

I think, in the last 100 years.

Those two events made a deep impression on me

because in 1933 I was still a pure mathematician,

much devoted to the idea of doing mathematics.

I had never done a broadcast, I had never done a public lecture,

I had never spoken to anything but

a class of students in rather professional terms.

I was convinced in 1933,

that if the German people had known my fellow scientists,

had known the people that I loved and admired

like Einstein, and like Niels Bohr,

like 100 others.

Had known them, as I knew them,

had known their wonderful warm humanity,

that they could never have been deceived

by a cold, brutal, monomaniac like Hitler

to learn to hate them as if they were vermin.

And I was convinced at that moment,

that, those of us who could, had a duty to show

not only that science was wonderful

but that science was human,

that scientists had some right to say

that they were doing the most human things in the world,

the most natural things, and that we must stop being professionals

and become people.

On Thursday nights on BBC1 he is Napoleon Solo,

tonight he is Robert Vaughn.

Before you became noted and before you became a widely known figure,

were you then interested in politics?

Oh, yes, since I was a child.

What would you say are the issues that mainly concern you

and awaken your interest?

-Now?

-Yes.

-Vietnam.

Chiefly and all-consumingly.

You spoke on this subject, did you not, several times lately?

One was the Democratic dinner in Indianapolis,

where I gather you somewhat embarrassed some people at that dinner,

-some Party people?

-Yes.

Is this likely to cause some kind of break

between your association with the party,

in other words, the number of invitations you're going to get to speak on this issue?

The invitations have quadrupled since that speech.

So, obviously, there is no break, at least in regard to invitations.

But is it not so, that another speech of yours,

at Notre Dame University, was not widely reported.

It was not reported at all.

That was the choice of the Indiana newspapers.

That was called managed news blackout.

Your attitude to Vietnam is fairly straightforward.

That the United States should pull out, is it not?

Oh, no, this is one of the unfortunate conclusions drawn by the Indianapolis press,

who were not there, incidentally, at the time of the Indianapolis speech.

I feel that the policy of the administration of the United States

is indefensible in the situation, however,

that doesn't really apply because we are there and we are in it now.

In other words, we should not have been there to begin with.

At the present time that is of no great consequence

since we have a quarter of a million men there and growing every day.

The comment that the war is a limited war

just doesn't fit the record.

Men are arriving every day, fleets of ship are moving in with goods.

The war is not limited, it is expanding.

I am very concerned it is going to cause Third World War.

So tonight, in Line-Up review, we will be talking about television comedy

with six people who are all involved in providing it,

five of them as writers, one as producer.

Well, we have an extra guest with us who's just leaving.

Would you be kind enough to leave, please?

Would you please mind leaving the studio?

John, come on.

I would like to talk about comedy. I am a comedy writer.

John, cool it, for God's sake, love, you know.

Are we on?

As we will be pointing out later on, comedy is a serious business,

we never thought it was quite as serious as all that.

Right, could we start this ball rolling with this statement

about comedy being a serious business

but never as serious as in the electronic age.

That quote from The Times which you saw.

Marty Feldman, what would you make of that?

I have to speak personally, before this sort of rogues' gallery sitting around here,

but, for me, it isn't serious.

You write because you think it's funny and it isn't a business,

you know, business is something else.

Business is something your agent organises afterwards.

You write shows because you think they're funny.

The great fear, certainly at the back of my mind every time,

is the fact that there's going to be this controversial question

of a studio audience.

And they are our only, the only way we can judge,

the most immediate way and the nearest way we can judge

-whether the stuff is funny or not, whether they laugh.

-Oh, come on.

I do believe this.

They don't laugh, so it's a rotten show?

I think you write better knowing it's going to be played to an audience.

No, I don't think so at all,

personally I write what I think is funny myself, personally,

and if the audience don't laugh, well, sod 'em, you know.

-I'm not concerned with them.

-Johnny.

-I write what I think is funny.

You said you liked Marriage Lines.

Listen, Johnny...

-..it's great.

-Noel Coward... Marty what...

Johnny, Comedy...

THEY SPEAK OVER EACH OTHER

-..for God's sake, love.

-If you haven't got it, you'll die.

John, comedy without an audience just doesn't work,

comedy depends on an audience, you know. If nobody laughs.

It doesn't matter about the audience.

It doesn't matter about the studio audience?

-It matters if you have a studio audience, it matters about them.

-It's a criterion.

OK, you say this, Johnny, you write the damn thing, you get out there and perform it, love, it matters.

I'm a writer, I'm not an actor.

Right, quit the Patrick Campbell bit, you know.

If you're doing a bit, a comedy bit and the audience laugh.

Shoot me please.

Listen, love, if you're doing a comedy bit and the audience laugh,

this conditions the way you perform the next bit.

When you start writing for an audience, you're done for.

When you write for yourself you write novels, you don't write television shows.

We are having a spot of bother hearing what exactly is being said here

because it's a splendidly lively discussion, marvellously lively but just a little bit too lively

so nobody can hear what anybody's saying.

-You're on both sides.

-No, I'm not, love.

20 years ago comedy writers wrote jokes. That's it, love. End of argument.

20 years ago comedy writers didn't write jokes, please, get this out of your mind.

-Dickens was a comedy writer.

-Who was?

-Dickens was a comedy writer.

-Yeah.

-So don't say 20 years ago. It didn't start with you comedy, or me.

If Dickens had been writing today he would have been writing Coronation Street.

Don't say 20 years ago comedy writers wrote jokes.

He would have written Coronation Street and very well.

When you write as good as Dickens, you'll make a fortune.

-Well, don't knock Dickens.

-I'm not knocking Dickens.

OK, then, don't say that 20 years ago comedy writing started, it didn't start then.

-I didn't say that.

-It started with Jonathan Swift.

Are you deliberately trying to misunderstand me? I didn't say that.

Ian, what is it about a series like this...

I hate you...

We'll wrap this up in 60 seconds

if I can't make a point without being heard.

Do you judge your comedy by the laughs you get?

Well, I don't I judge it by how much I laugh.

-No.

-Say what you mean.

I am saying what I mean, love, if you are writing in television,

love, you are not working, this is not ivory tower.

Wherever I'm writing, I write for myself.

If I'm writing at home, or writing for television.

You get dodgy ratings, nobody asks you to write any more, there you go, Johnny Speight.

I write for myself. I have to live by myself.

If I'm writing rubbish I can't live with myself.

I write for myself.

I'm going to wrap this up.

Thank you very much, John Chapman, Ian Le Frenais, Marty Feldman.

Thank you, Duncan Wood, Richard Waring, Johnny Speight.

And if we've proved anything at all,

I think there's no doubt that comedy,

on tonight's evidence, is certainly a serious business.

When seven critics

and four comedians over a period of some 30 or 40 years,

all say exactly the same thing, in the same way, about the same woman,

they could be right.

And they say, with awesome simplicity,

that she is the funniest woman on earth.

She had to live up to that label once again last night

at the Edinburgh Festival when she opened, all by herself,

in A Late Evening With Beatrice Lillie.

This evening Miss Lillie is in our Glasgow studio.

Miss Lillie, this label has dubbed you for a long time now.

If you could change it, is there any label you would prefer?

Well, I don't like being called the funniest woman in the world.

I doubt very much.

Let me see, what would I like to be called?

Well, isn't she, get her,

isn't she wonderful.

You've been called the personification of uncomparable ineffectuality.

-Who by?

-Is that how you see yourself?

Naturally, I like that.

Now, your gestures are very much part of you,

if there was one gesture you could make to show

the personification of uncomparable ineffectuality, what would that be?

-Goodness me.

-Goodness you.

Miss Lillie, you have left your two homes in London to travel to Edinburgh.

Are you missing London very much?

-Yes, I miss Henley-on-Thames, really.

-Why is that?

Well, on account of Mr Lee, Mr Lee is my pet Pekinese.

And he watches Tonight every night, believe me he does.

And he can speak, he talks.

He can say "Joe DiMaggio"...

He can. "Constantinople".

And "I want the ball."

SHE BARKS

Shall I sing a little lullaby to him?

-Miss Lillie, of course.

-Thank you.

Mr Lee din, din, din, din.

# Mouse, mouse come out of your hole

# I will give you a golden bowl

# You shall sit on a tuft of hay

# I will frighten the cats away

# Mouse, mouse, when you've gone to bed

# I will leave you a large loaf of bread

# And you shall have cheese and a plate full of rice

# For I love to think of the dear little mice. #

Do you want it in French?

Miss Lillie, I think he's a very lucky dog and I don't think,

-unfortunately, we've got time to hear it in French. Thank you very much.

-Thank you.

Do you like talking about yourself or not?

Erm, yes, up to a point,

particularly in relation to what I do.

In relation to comedy, yes.

-All right, then, I'll ask you first of all, why are you a comic?

-Erm...

I think always certainly wanted to be

from the first time I can remember.

Perhaps looking like this,

it was perhaps the only thing I could do.

So I turned the deficiencies into a workable thing,

if you understand what I mean?

Yes, let's go bit deeper than that.

Do you think the world is a comic place or a tragic place?

I think it consists of the two things, both funny and sad,

which seemed to me the two basic ingredients of good comedy.

-Do you read criticisms about yourself?

-Reluctantly, yes.

Do they hurt?

Yes, they do, actually.

I try and eliminate that but it's not possible.

Do you find that the newspaper critics are to be taken seriously,

do you really think about the points they make?

As a matter of fact,

I think you think about the points anybody makes.

It would be nice to say you are beyond maybe that but you never are.

Now, you stay up talking far into the night,

do you as matter-of-fact, sleep well when you go to bed?

-No.

-Do you take sleeping pills?

-Mmm.

Why don't you sleep, do you think?

I think in these days,

with the challenge of this particular medium, anyway,

your mind works high, quick,

you are permanently on an edge, a good one, I think.

Therefore it is difficult to relax

while a thing is on, while a show is on.

But generally, not particularly well.

It's said about you that you worry a lot about your weight, is that true?

Mmm. Now, I've got it more or less sorted out now,

well, within reason.

I was about two and a half stone heavier than this at one time.

Do you follow stringent diets and all the rest of it,

to keep your weight down?

Shall we say for a time I do and then after a show is over,

after series is over, for instance, I do anything,

whatever I want, then I pull right down.

Why do you worry so much, funny men can be fat perfectly well without...

I think it makes you sluggish generally, your mind is sluggish.

I think it is a bad thing really.

-You haven't got any children, have you?

-No.

-Would you like to have?

-No.

Why not, I wonder?

I don't know, I don't know, really.

Do you have anything against children, flipping kids?

No, nothing at all.

Flipping kids doesn't represent any antipathy to children.

No, not at all, I love other people's children.

Some of the newspaper writers, who have tried to puzzle out what makes you tick,

have said that you're the angst man, the anxiety man.

Now, have you any notion of what your anxiety is, do you,

in fact, get a kick out of your anxiety?

Out of anxiety, would you explain that a bit more?

Well, something appears to me,

even at the end of this conversation, to be eating you.

You say that your happiness is just ahead of you still,

there's something troubling you about the world,

I'd like to know what it is.

I wouldn't expect happiness, I don't think that's possible.

But I'm very fortunate to be able to work in something that I like,

to work in something that is pleasure, is all anybody can ask.

In fact, you once made a living, didn't you,

by telling people's futures?

-Yes, that's true.

-What was that about?

Well, it was a terrible fake, of course.

But I do have a few clairvoyant flashes

but they are so rare that I don't trust them and I don't trust it.

I don't like clairvoyants because I know that people...

..when that flash fails them,

you know, as inspiration fails an artist,

even more often, the flash of clairvoyance fails the fortune teller.

When that happens

they fake,

-they have to keep faking till ready.

-Yes.

Well, of course, it means that people who believe in them

are putting their future and their destiny

and their decisions in the hands of people who,

even when they're honest, and don't know it,

-don't know it themselves they're faking it.

-Yes.

I got interested in it because I'm an amateur magician,

not because I'm an amateur fortune teller.

I made, in the course of being a magician,

friendships with professional fortune tellers, crooks in other words.

-True crooks, you know, who admitted they were crooks.

-Yes.

I learned cold readings, for example,

a whole lot of cold readings.

-Do you know what a cold reading is?

-No, no idea.

A cold reading is, for example.

It says, "Dr Swami will tell your past, present and future."

You come in, you sit down, I look at you and I say,

"You, you had a very traumatic experience

"between the age of five and 14, 15,

"is that right?"

Well, of course, everybody did.

You see, that's a cold reading.

In other words, I'm saying something that is beginning to convince you

-that I'm telling you remarkable things about yourself.

-Yes.

And there's a whole series of those.

You have a scar on your leg, there, I think it's the left leg

and by your eye I can see if I'm wrong.

I say, "No, no, it's the right leg."

Everybody has a scar on his left or right leg from playing games.

And that is what a fortune teller does.

And when he gets to be able to do that,

he begins to suffer from an occupational disease,

which is known in the trade as being a shuteye.

Shuteye?

Yes, and a shuteye is a fake fortune teller

who has begun to believe himself.

-That's the real word for it.

-Really?

And I began as a fake and I ended as a shuteye.

What about the stars, the great stars that they had in those days?

-That people always say we don't have nowadays.

-We don't.

We don't, that's true,

because they're not processed in the way that they used to.

-I don't think that, they don't exist.

-They don't exist?

-They don't exist.

-Why is that?

Because they exist, they're singers.

In the old days, the greatest thing in the world to be was a movie star.

-Yes.

-Today, the greatest thing in the world is to be a pop singer.

There will never be a great star

unless the greatest thing in the world to be is that kind of star.

I see.

At the end of the last century, and before the First World War,

-the greatest thing in the world to be was an opera singer.

-Yes.

People used to faint in the streets when they saw an opera singer.

Then there came the movie stars.

I think any form of entertainment only exists

because it corresponds to a moment in time.

So, of course, there are actors who are as good, or as remarkable,

or as space-displacing,

or however you want to describe a star,

but the world doesn't think being a movie star is the everlasting end.

-It used to and that's why they don't exist.

-That's right.

Nobody ever made fun of Hemingway.

Well, I did and he took it,

but he didn't like me to do it in front of the club.

We met in the projection of a movie which he had made,

and which he wanted me to narrate...

..and he had written the commentary.

This is many years ago.

We hadn't seen each other.

This is a dark projection room, and I was reading the text

and I said, "Is it really necessary to say this, do you think?

"Wouldn't it be better to just see the picture?"

And things like that. Then I heard this growl from the darkness.

"Some damn faggot who runs an art theatre trying to tell me

"how to write narration."

So I began to camp it up. I thought, if that's what I'm dealing with.

I said, "Oh, Mr Hemingway, you think because you're so big and strong

"and have hair on your chest that you can bully me."

LAUGHTER

So this great figure stood up and swung at me.

So I swung at him.

You have the picture of the Spanish Civil War, being projected on a screen,

and these two heavy figures swinging away at each other

and missing most of the time.

The lights came up and we looked at each other

and burst into laughter and became great friends.

Film critics would call themselves experts, one imagines.

Now, they've judged a film of yours, twice running,

the best film ever made.

That shows you how crazy experts are.

No, I think it shows you how fundamentally sound film criticism is,

in this day and age.

No, I never talk about critics

because there isn't anything to be said about them.

If they criticise you, anything you say is sour grapes.

If they like what you do, you should shut up, you know.

There's no way of criticising the critics.

Do they ever wound you?

Deeply, yes. I can remember every bad notice I've ever had.

I can remember one I got when I was 18 years old in Salt Lake City,

when I played Marchbanks with Katharine Cornell,

and I was described as a sea calf whining in a basso profundo.

I'm sure it's an absolutely accurate description of that performance,

which must have been abominable.

Turning for a final moment, if we may, Mr Callaghan,

to the problem of the parliamentary Labour party now,

following this overwhelming conference decision.

I don't know what problem there is in the parliamentary Labour party

because I'm not entitled to speak for them.

I'm speaking here tonight on behalf of the NEC

for who I made the speech this afternoon.

As a very wise, and experienced and senior member of the parliamentary Labour party...

Oh, come on, you don't catch an old bird like that.

Mr Callaghan, do you think

that Mr Jenkins should remain as deputy leader,

in these circumstances, knowing his views?

Mr Day, you've been an interviewer for a long time

and you knew, before you even phrased the question,

that you wouldn't get me to comment on that particular matter

in the light of what I've said to you.

Have another try if you like, but you won't get any further with it.

Why not turn to a more profitable line?

It's a matter of great interest to a lot of people.

You'd better discuss it with Mr Jenkins,

but you're not going to get me to make statements

that you'll then throw at Mr Jenkins and try to set us at each other's ears.

I'm not going to take part in that game to satisfy a television panel.

Now, let's turn to something else.

Do you think that a deputy leader, who is...

I'm not answering any questions about what a deputy leader should or should not do.

Please go on to something else.

-Do you think it's not a matter of public interest?

-Of course it is.

And it's a matter for Mr Jenkins if he wishes to discuss,

to discuss with you but I'm not Mr Jenkins.

Do you not have any views on the subject yourself?

Robin, why don't you turn to something

where you'll get a little more...

-Are you a candidate for the deputy leadership?

-No. You know I'm not.

-I don't know, I'm very grateful.

-Don't you?

-Do you think that...

-Now, Robin, leave it. Now, leave it.

-I haven't started yet.

If you haven't started, then I beg of you not to start

-and turn to something else.

-I was about to.

-You are really, you promise?

-Yes. OK, all right.

If the market minority in the Parliament decide to vote...

I believe this is going to be the same question phrased in a different way.

Give me a chance, Mr Callaghan.

Decide to vote, do you really think it is fair to say,

because a lot of them don't, do you really think it is fair to say

they are voting to sustain Mr Heath.

Voting for the Tories.

Well, I thought it was the same question phrased in a different way.

When the Parliamentary Labour Party meets it will take its own decision.

At that time you can ask the leaders of the Parliamentary Labour Party

what they have to say about that particular matter.

Thank you, Mr Callaghan.

Well, thank you, modified thanks.

You mentioned the press,

and you feel you've been hard done to by the press.

First of all,

don't you think at times you have played into their hands?

Don't you think you've more or less, you've courted disaster by your behaviour?

Yeah, when I first started I was the same as everyone else.

I loved to see my name in the papers

and I used to do things to make sure I got my name in the papers.

I still do because I know, at the end of the day,

I'm going to benefit from it, financially.

I mean, I think you've got to give and take.

I originally started it off and maybe courted disaster

but they went overboard. I mean, they really did.

One newspaper paid a girl £1,500 to sleep with me

so they could get a story.

-1,500 quid to sleep with you?

-Yeah.

I was annoyed because it was only 1,500 quid.

LAUGHTER

No, but things like that and they do it, seriously.

-Did she?

-No.

LAUGHTER

She phoned me up and told me when it happened.

They didn't know, but...

I already had.

LAUGHTER

Can I put something to you?

One of the most perceptive critics in British football is a man called Hugh McIlvanney

and he wrote this about you once.

He said, "I suspect that deep in his nature, there's a strong self-destructive impulse.

"Now and again he appears to have an irresistible desire to put up

"two fingers to the world."

How true is that?

When I see him, he's in trouble, if he wrote that.

I don't know, I suppose, it's 50-50.

I mean, I've done stupid things and, er...

I don't know, it's difficult to say.

To be quite honest, all I wanted to do is be left alone to play football

but I couldn't do it.

So I suppose if once in a while, if someone was having a go at me,

I'd stick two fingers up to them, because I didn't want to take it.

Do you regret now, that you broke the partnership with Galton and Simpson?

No, because we, I think, as a matter-of-fact,

it's probably been a very good thing for all of us.

After all, we worked for about ten years together and we mutually learned,

there was a lot of conversation, and some press reports about

the writer does it all, or the comedian does it all.

This is all nonsense because really, it's a thing that happens gradually.

One of the main things

is to share a similar sense of humour,

which we did from the start.

As I say, we worked together, and I think fairly successfully,

for this long time and then they suggested all sorts of things to me

and I said, "I'm sure I can't do that."

Then they said, "You've got to try, anyway."

I tried, sometimes it would come off, you see.

So we bred from each other, it's a communal thing.

You can't say a comedian

is not funny without a script,

sometimes out of desperation

he has to do something.

Or that a script writes itself, this is not true.

How do you feel, these days, about the show business press?

How do you think they've treated you?

Well, I think pretty well on the whole.

Shall we say it's rather difficult.

If you come out of, let's say a television show at a peak,

the one that follows that,

you really have got to perform a minor miracle for them to go.

There's no malice, they were right to say what they feel.

This I don't regret.

The worst criticism I ever had in my life was a paper seller,

I used to go and pick the papers up from him in the morning

and he was always marvellous, was a great fan, you see,

and we did one show.

We thought it was a little...not bad...

-But not good?

-Fair.

And I went round to him

and he's so enthusiastic about everything all the time.

He just gave me the papers and didn't say anything,

just took the money and he looked at me and said,

"What happened last night, then?"

This is the worst sort of criticism

because I knew nobody could have been more for me than him.

And if he didn't like it, then things had collapsed.

-This worried you?

-Oh, yes.

Have you felt frightened,

and even very lonely, in your position of leadership?

Yes, at times, I think honesty impels me to admit

that there have been those times that I actually confronted fear.

I don't think anyone, in a situation like this, can go through it

without confronting moments of real fear.

But I've always had something that

gave me an innocence of assurance

and an innocence of security in the final analysis.

Even in the moments of loneliness,

something ultimately came to remind me that in this struggle,

because it is basically right,

because it is a thrust forward to achieve something,

not just for Negro people,

but something that will save the whole of mankind.

When I have come to see these things,

I always felt a sense of cosmic companionship

so that the loneliness and the fear have faded away,

because of a greater feeling of security,

because of commitment to a moral ideal.

Were you conscious of colour discrimination in your own life?

Yes, I became conscious of colour discrimination

at a relatively early age.

I think the first time was when I was about six years old.

I had some friends who lived, well, they didn't live in front of us,

but their parents had a store, two white boys.

They were my inseparable playmates for the early years of my life

and I remember, when I was about six,

some things started happening when I went over to play with them,

they always made excuses, they could not play, they were busy.

Finally, I went to my mother with this problem

and she tried to explain to me

in the best way she could explain to a child six years old.

This was really the first time

that I became aware of the racial differences, the racial problem.

One of the most horrific moments for you, personally,

must have been going back to Auschwitz.

Did you have to steel yourself before you did that?

Well, I wasn't very keen to go.

I wasn't very keen to go

because many of my relatives from Poland had died in Auschwitz.

However, the point of the series was that it wasn't an entertainment

it was about life the way it is, the way it has been.

Erm...

..and we just made up our minds to make it as true as...

as we tried to do everything in the series.

That is...

I said I'll go for one day

and during the morning we'll walk round and in the afternoon

we'll do the one piece, by the pond, that we know we want to.

I had never seen Auschwitz.

You know, I had practically seen none of those places in the programmes,

for reasons that I'll be happy to tell you about afterwards,

but Auschwitz, I hadn't been to at all.

We arrived at this station,

which had been looked over by the producer in advance,

so he knew what we should see.

I went through these terrible wooden and iron gates that say

"Arbeit Macht Frei" at the top - "work makes free".

To these unhappy people, who went there to their deaths.

I looked at the gas ovens.

I was particularly keen to see bunker 12 and 11,

where people were...

..beaten and shot for breach of regulations,

because I sort of felt that you must see it all.

But it turned out that the things that were far more moving

were ones that I couldn't have imagined at all.

The Germans are terribly methodical.

So there would be whole areas which contained nothing

but old spectacles.

All been very carefully collected.

They weren't the slightest use, but the Germans weren't going to throw them away.

There were areas which were entirely full of human hair.

There was a terrible area which was entirely full of wooden legs

and crutches and artificial limbs.

And the most pathetic area of all,

an area which was just full of little tin chamber pots

the children who had come to the camp

had brought with them and the Germans had collected.

By this time I was in a pretty low frame of mind.

The most awful thing was that there were...

..pictures in the corridors of prisoners...

..which were just the ordinary picture, you know,

front, face, number on the bottom,

but many of them were pictures of quite young people, children.

To see these pictures of people taken as if they were criminals,

with the tears streaming down their face,

was just unbearable.

Then we drove over to the pond, and we had arranged

I was just going to say a piece to close that programme, at the pond,

which would arise out of what I had seen in the morning.

So I sort of walked up and down for five minutes,

making up my mind what I was going to say.

And then, we did it.

One take and we go home.

We had made up our minds

that it was a piece which you couldn't possibly do twice.

You just had to say what came into your mind.

The thing that came into my mind, absolutely out of the blue,

was the phrase from Oliver Cromwell that I quote,

"I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ,

"think it possible you may be mistaken."

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