More Rosebud - Gyles Diary, episode 53

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1:23I'm Giles Bradford this is Maul Rosebud coming to you from Grosvenor House on Park Lane in London's Mayfair More Rosebud is what you get if you listen on a Tuesday. You can actually listen to us any time, day or night, any day of the week. I say us because on a Tuesday, it's not just me. I'm always joined by my producer and friend, Harriet Jane. Harriet, how are you today? I'm fine, thank you, Giles. Good. Tell me, Harriet, how much sleep do you regularly get?

1:52Harriet: Oh, crumbs, not enough. Yeah. I mean, I've been thinking about this a lot. I've been monitoring my sleep, worrying about my sleep. and it's not because I can't sleep I can sleep really well when I get to sleep but I go to sleep too late and I get up too early because I'm just working too much so I think I get I'm afraid to say I get often six hours if I'm lucky I get seven and that's good and eight is once every three months and then I often feel a bit groggy for a bit after my eight hours but later in the day I really feel good well i've been thinking about this a lot for two reasons one i've been going out and about talking about the book that i've written with fenola burrell my physiotherapist about how to live the hundred year life and living well and obviously obvious things in it like you know be optimistic be happy uh keep breathing fun enough fundamental people don't breathe properly keep eating the right kind of thing keep drinking oh gosh people of my age are not drinking enough water because the thirst reflex diminishes as you get older we don't have the incentive to drink but anyway that's by the by but one of the things is keep sleeping and keep sleeping the right amount of time which is basically between seven and nine hours yeah it does vary and you are not getting enough of that i know yeah just don't have time to sleep unfortunately yeah but you know sleep when you're dead that's what my friend used to say absolutely and you can and you will and you get a lot of sleep then yeah but i do try to catch up i mean the other night for example i went to bed at 9 30 because i thought i'm just going to try and get eight hours sleep and i did and i felt absolutely awful when i got up in the morning but and then i thought oh maybe i had too much sleep so you can't win you can't you can't win i mean it's quite funny for notice vicky and her instructions you know you've got to be able to stand up and sit down get out of bed and get They're fundamental.

3:51You have to stand up and sit down.

3:52Harriet: I mean, these all feel like statements of the obvious. They are statements of the obvious. If you can't get off the floor, then you're not going to live till 100, are you? But most people cannot get off the floor unaided. No. Many people can't stand up or sit down. That means they can't get up and off the toilet. Many people can't get out of bed in the morning. If you start staying in bed all day, you're in real trouble. I add to that. Get out of bed in the morning without sighing. Oh, that is difficult. That is difficult. Get out of bed. I sigh and I think I say to myself, I'm exhausted. I've only just got out of bed.

4:22Harriet: Yeah, no, it's true. I have the same feeling. I mean, the question is, Giles, I mean, I don't want to put a dampener on your book. It sounds fabulous. But do you want to live to 100? I mean, obviously you do if you're in the absolutely brilliant shape and you're like Bear Grylls or something, who's coming on the podcast soon. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But if you're sighing when you get out of bed and struggling to get off the floor and can't get off the loo unaided, I think maybe it's time to say, well, I've had a great innings and I look back fondly at the years when I could get off the loo. As Kenneth Williams used to say, sayonara, which is different from cyanide.

5:04Sayonara, which is goodbye in Spanish, which is different from cyanide, which is goodbye in any language. Did you get that?

5:10Harriet: What was the relevance of that, Giles? It was just the chance we used to drop in a random Kenneth Williams joke. No, about putting yourself out of your misery. Oh, okay. You see? No, I'm not suggesting people... Okay, we can cut that side of our tablet reference. No, you can have it. But I'm not suggesting people put a premature end. I'm just saying, do you want to live to 100? That's what the whole premise of the book is. Yeah. It's the 100-year life. It's the seven secrets of the 100-year life, living well. But that is a big ask. I mean, we met Sian Phillips. She is living well in her 90s and looks and I think feels fantastic.

5:49Harriet: 20 years younger than she is. But not many people have got that sort of... On Rosebud, we've been lucky. We've been particularly women. We've had a whole raft of women in their 90s who really are razor sharp and living a full life. They really are. And, you know, they're fit and still mentally active. We have had centenarians. We've had at least two centenarians so far. and I think can we tell people we have lined up for New Year's Day certainly for the beginning of next year our oldest ever guest and he is truly remarkable well into his second century yeah and we'll be starting next year way so I hope he's sleeping well somebody said to me they wanted a late night rosebud people listen to us sometimes going for a walk beginning of the day I met somebody today coming in on the underground who actually took out his earphone and said i'm listening to you right now with bill bailey very funny put his earphone and walked on somebody else got in touch and said i listened late at night giles and sometimes you and harriet are a bit raucous for late at night so anyway have we had any interesting letters before because today's a diary day isn't it i love it when giles adds something to my to-do list let's let's do a late night episode.

7:05Harriet: I mean, why sleep when you could just be recording Rosebud all the time? The reason that Harriet is exhausted today is because last night, I do know, because we were in text contact quite late at night, she hadn't yet finished. She was doing the accounts for July, August. And it's now Narendra Dersomba, everybody. So that's why it is difficult. Thank you for all the work you put in. Oh, it's arduous. And I spilled a glass of water on my laptop, which has slowed things down. Yeah. You're exhausted. Oh, I know. But the good news is that here we are with more rosebuds. It's going to be diaries in a moment.

7:43Lots of lovely correspondence. Should we do have a bit of correspondence? Oh, I forgot about that. We don't have to.

7:48Harriet: Oh, no, we should. We love correspondence, everyone. So keep emailing us. Actually, oh, yes. And we love people coming to the party. Lots of people have joined the family. in order to come to the party at Christmas. So this is, we do an extra Rosebud episode every Sunday for people who belong to the Rosebud family. And if you want to join the family, you simply go to patreon.com forward slash Rosebud, P-A-T-R-E-O-N dot com forward slash Rosebud, and all the details are there. And we're having this party on the eve of the Feast of St. Nicholas. Oh, is that right? Yeah, which is rather nice. And amusingly, the following day, I've been asked to go on to Broadcasting House which is on the BBC with Paddy O 'Connell because I think he wants to be a guest on Rosebud.

8:34I haven't.

8:35Harriet: Oh, Laura Koonsberg said he'd be a brilliant guest. Yes, she did, didn't she? Yeah, and then someone emailed me to say he'd be a brilliant guest the next day. Oh, good, fine. He's getting recommendations from all sides. Good. If you have got guests you'd like us to have, let us know. Today, every other Tuesday, no guest, it's a diary and there's going to be more diary in a moment but immediately you have a letter you want to share with us. This relates to something that we played in in the last Diaries episode, I believe, which was Sue from Sooty and Sweep. Do you remember? We loved that. We'd been a bit disparaging about Sue because I'd gone to Sooty and Sweep and Sue at the Mayfair Theatre back in 1980, 81.

9:13And Sue, who was actually playing Sue in those days, wrote in. Yeah, Brenda Longman. Hi, Brenda. Good morning. And she sent us a voice note, featuring Sooty, Sweep and Sue.

9:27Harriet: I mean, it was brilliant. If you haven't heard it, you need to listen to the last episode. It's amazing. So this email came as a result of that. Good morning, Harriet and Giles. Listening to the message and email from Sue today in More Rosebud, thanks for a wonderful show, by the way, brought back memories. When I was a child, my family owned a kosher hotel in Bournemouth called the Cumberland, which was extremely popular with the British Jewish community. Everyone came to stay there and in its heyday guests would book their next holiday there literally as they checked out from their current one for fear of there otherwise being no space for the following year.

10:05Harriet: Anyway many great entertainers would come and stay and often perform. I don't remember many of them as I was too young but I'm told that the likes of Zero Mostel, Peter Sellers, Ron Moody in his Oliver Pomp and others would come. There are two I do particularly recall. One I remember meeting is Lionel Blair, since he was all the rage on Give Us a Clue at the time, which even as a sub 10-year-old I watched. My family sold the hotel when I was 10. I was very struck that as he spoke, he gestured vociferously with his hands, which never stopped moving, as though he were playing a non-stop game of Give Us a Clue in real life.

10:46Harriet: Oh, that's wonderful. I loved Give Us a Clue. This is Harriet speaking. Okay, back to the email. I love Lionel Blair. So few people know that he's actually Tony Blair's dad. Oh, every time he's mentioned, you make that joke. He's not, by the way, everyone. He's a star in his own right. And I've told you too about him having the affair. Yes, all right. Okay, keep going. Back to the email. The other guest I remember, of course, is Sooty. Oh. Or rather, Harry Corbett and his wife, who would come during the hotel's children's week and perform for us kids. Matthew was already doing the TV show and had officially taken over, but apparently his father would take his little yellow charge on outings to the Bournemouth seaside.

11:33Harriet: We would all sit on the large, polished floor of the hotel's ballroom, and this lovely elderly gentleman and his wife would bring to life the world of Sooty, Sweep and Sue. It was magical. The only thing decidedly not magical was that every show Sooty would ask for a helper from the audience and some unspeakably fortunate child was given that great honour. I dutifully put my hand up every time with such fervour that my arm threatened to leave its attendant shoulder socket, hoping and somehow knowing that my day would come. It never did. I asked him once precociously as he left the hotel why he had never called me up.

12:17Harriet: I vaguely remember him dodging the question it seemed to me. It was later that day that my father explained to me that I would never be called up. As the hotel manager's son the paying guests would have complained so apparently there was collusion between Sooty, Harry and my family. Well, I still loved Sooty, if ever so slightly less. All the best, thanks for a show that spreads happiness in difficult times. James Inverne. Well, there you go. Oh, dear James. Well, that's the reverse of nepotism. Oh, yes, exactly. I would have thought if it's the manager's son, well, of course, you get first dibs.

12:59Oh, well, yeah.

13:00Harriet: Do you know what that is? something called family hold back yes did people used to say that fhb at the table they would always say that my my parents were saying that constantly particularly but you know christmas we had lots of strangers there and hadn't prepared quite enough of the sprouts for the roast potatoes fhb would be muttered as we go rather even my father always whispered as he'd be fhb fhb yeah yeah don't eat all the pigs in blankets before the guests have had theirs yeah so james i'm so sorry I don't know what we can say to you really to make up for your years of not being called up on stage by Sooty.

13:36Harriet: Except, you know, Sue's listening. So Sue slash Brenda, if you want to invite James around to your house and give him a one on one performance of the Sooty and Sweep show, I'm sure he'd be thrilled. He can sit cross legged on the floor. Yes. I mean, this must have been a few years ago. If he's able to sit cross legged on the floor. Oh, good question. That's one of the tests of living a hundred year life. He may be able to get down, but can he get up? Can he get up? Unaided. That's the point. Yes. Because you may fall over as an old person. Yeah, yeah. Oh, I love that. Okay. Yeah. What a wonderful email.

14:08A lovely email. Yeah. If you've got recollections, in fact, let's collect. Anybody who has a good recollection of meeting Sooty, Sweep or Sue, let us know. Or indeed any of the other ones. Nookie Bear, you could have met.

14:20Harriet: Nookie Bear? Roger DeCorsi and Nookie Bear. I trust you to come up with some dodgy puppet from the past who's probably been cancelled. Nookie Bear was definitely cancelled. Roger DeCorsi, very kindly. He sounds like he was cancelled. Roger DeCorsi is alive and well. Oh, sorry, Roger. And has got very good lawyers. He's probably listening. Everyone, I mean, what I've realised is everyone's listening to Rosebud. It's quite uncanny, isn't it? I mean, Sue and someone that, you know, was in the audience of the City and Sweep show. I mean... It is a bit odd. You can't get away with anything. People on the underground are coming up and saying, I'm listening to it.

14:56So thank you, James, for getting in touch. Yes. Any other encounters with glove puppets in your past? Let us know. It's a little special corner that we have on More Rosebud for exactly that.

15:07Harriet: Yeah, Punch and Judy. There must be a lot of Punch and Judy anecdotes out there. There will be. I think we've had one before, actually. As you know, Alec Cadell, who edits our programmes on Fridays, his grandfather was David Croft, who created Heidi High, in which there was a very amusing Punch and Judy man who essentially, the essence of the joke was that he hated children. Yeah, that doesn't surprise me. And Punch and Judy, there's something quite sort of menacing about it. I mean, there's definite menace. There's violence in it. I think there's wife beating, isn't there? Yes, that's the main plot point.

15:43There's also a crocodile that comes along to... The police are involved, there's a hangman. And actually, it's a very macabre story.

15:50Harriet: Yeah, a lot of children's stuff was macabre. Yeah, I don't know. Anyway. Anyway, yeah, Sooty and Sweep was much nicer. If you've had a happy Sooty and Sweep, or you did any happy glove puppet encounter, do let us know. You simply write to us at hello at rosebudpodcast.com. Yes. Hello at rosebudpodcast.com. Now, shall we go and have some diaries? Oh, yes, that's what we're here for. Yeah. It's a Tuesday, and we've got to 1981. We're in the middle of the year and, well, you'll discover all the things that I am up to. Thursday the 14th of May, 1981. Pope John Paul II has survived an assassination attempt.

16:31We had a late night with Simon Cadell. We went to Le Détour. He arrived late and without Stephanie. That was his girlfriend. They are splitting up. It wasn't going anywhere. He felt closed in. He had to get out. He has. At the beginning of the evening, he was very twitchy. By bedtime, he admitted feeling mightily relieved. The deed is done. Oh. Gosh, it's quite something. Interestingly, I can literally picture where we were standing the moment he told me this. 1981, so how many years ago is that? 45 years ago. I remember him coming in, and I gave him a drink and we were standing by the window in the sitting room looking out over the garden and he told me we're breaking up I'm leaving her I've just told her today gosh isn't that interesting yeah that I should I can physically remember he's standing on the left I'm standing on the right I can actually see him it's interesting you can picture things when it's almost a traumatic moment or it becomes very very vivid yeah but I don't remember the rest of it at all I don't even know where this restaurant Le Détour was.

17:44But that moment, I do remember.

17:47Harriet: Because they'd been together a while, hadn't they? They had been together a while, and we liked her. I'm happy to say we still know her. The parents have returned from the US. That's my parents. We went to find them at their hotel in Lancaster Gate. Pa looks terrible, gaunt and yellow. He is in great pain. He could barely walk down the corridor. We drove him out to Totteridge to see Dr Simmons. Ma's osteopath. The parents trust Simi. That was the nickname they had for this osteopath. He's obviously a good and caring man. He looked at Pa's x-ray taken in America and told him to go and see his GP as soon as possible.

18:27Pa doesn't have a GP, so Michelle is going to take him to the Middlesex Hospital tomorrow. On the way back from Totteridge, he sat in the front of the car, his eyes screwed up, groaning whenever the car slowed or accelerated. Every sudden movement hurt him. At one point, he asked Michelle to pull over and said, you will look after Ma, won't you?

18:49Harriet: Oh, dear, that's awful. So, yes, they'd been in America for a while and obviously, as we'll discover, I think he's got lung cancer. Oh, wow, wow, wow. Poor him, gosh. Saturday 16th May 1981. In Northern Ireland everything is out of control. In my little life I think everything is a bit out of control as well. I spent the night sleeping at King's Cross station. Absurd but last night I was addressing the South End on Sea Law Society and my train back didn't get to Liverpool Street until 11.55pm so by minutes I missed the Scottish sleeper and had to sit at King's Cross for four hours waiting for the next train.

19:38I'm now on it, aching and unhappy, on my way to Edinburgh for the National Scrabble Championship's Scottish finals. It's all ridiculous, I know. Michelle took Pa to the Middlesex Hospital as planned. They admitted him at once. No one can understand why the American doctors didn't tell him how ill he is. The Middlesex are going to do tests next week. He's on painkillers now and much more comfortable. It's obviously very serious, very serious, but Ma still seems to think all will be well. Saturday the 30th of May 1981, a roller coaster of a day. We went to Nicholas Nickleby at the Aldrich. It was overwhelmingly wonderful, brilliantly adapted, staged and played, flawless and very moving.

20:31Towards the end, I began to cry. Tears just tumbled down my face in the darkness. It was the play. And Pa, I know he is dying and it is so sad. Ma cannot accept it, will not accept it. At the Middlesex, when we had our family conference with the consultant, she sat bolt upright on her chair and told him, this is Ma, he cannot be allowed to die. You must cure him. You must. I am so unhappy, but our evening was very jolly. We had champagne cocktails at the Royal Garden Hotel and dinner round the corner at Maggie Jones, a restaurant. We're going to part two of Nicholas Nickleby on Wednesday. Saturday, 6th June 1981.

21:19For some, the excitement of the week has been Shergar winning the Epsom Derby by the widest margin on record. We watched it on the box and it was exciting. But not that exciting. We didn't place a bet. We never do. For us, the excitement of the week was part two of Nicholas Nickleby. Just matchless. And might have been the Robert Maxwell party at Headington Hill Hall today. We intended to go. We dressed for the party. We drove to Oxford. And then we chickened out. There were picket lines at the gates. Michelle said, I don't want to cross picket lines to have lunch. So we drove on to the Sorbonne in Oxford.

21:57It might have been quite jolly, but Michelle's back has gone. We ordered some food. It came. But Michelle couldn't sit to eat it. She tried standing at the table to eat, but it was ridiculous. We paid the bill and abandoned ship. The truth is, we're both in a bad way. Gosh, it was a difficult, difficult time. Wednesday, 24th June, 1981. Hinge and Brackett are appearing at the Theatre Royal, Northampton. I've spent the day with them in a bedroom at the Saxon Motor Inn working on the first episode of Dear Ladies It's exhausting stuff How it works We agree on a basic story outline then Patrick Fyfe, Dame Hilda improvises the whole thing playing all the parts while I scribble notes and Peter Ridsdale Scott, producer sits on the sideline squealing with delight When we're done George, Logan, Dr Hinge sniffs, shakes his head and says, it isn't very funny, is it?

22:57Then we start all over again. We've scheduled two days for outlining each script. The idea is that I'll then take the notes away and turn them into a proper script. Hope it works.

23:16Hey, we're Nick and Jack, hosts of The Best One Yet. Behind every episode, there's research, email, spreadsheets, and our shared Google Doc, the headline hammer. With Google Workspace with Gemini, Google's AI is built right into the premium versions of tools we already use, like Gmail, Docs, and Sheets. No new tools or extra logins, just personalized AI for the way we work. That means less time on the work, around the work, and more time finding the stories worth talking about. Get AI tools for work. Upgrade to Google Workspace with Gemini at goo.gle slash workspace with Gemini. That's G-O-O dot G-L-E slash workspace with Gemini.

24:19Harriet: and availability. Terms at lowes.com slash shipping terms. With almost half a million customers and over a trillion dollars of secure payments, Bill isn't new to intelligent finance. It's the proven way to simplify bill pay and maximize cash flow. Want to learn more? Visit bill.com slash proven for a special offer.

24:42Wednesday, 8th July, 1981. Sports update. Ian Botham has quit as England cricket captain and I've taken part in the Norland Place School Sports Day. Bennett did well but for some reason I was determined to do better. When it came to the father's race I almost killed myself. There were younger fathers there, most with gym shoes, one with spikes and still I thought I might win and if I hadn't skidded as I neared the tape I might have done. Absurd. As I write there's rioting in Liverpool in the Toxteth area, and in Belfast, a fifth IRA hunger striker has died, so there will be more rioting there too.

25:25But we're just in from private lives in Richmond, with Simon as Elliot and Joanna Lumley as Amanda. Same country, different worlds. Saturday, the 11th of July, 1981. Pa's 71st birthday. After eight weeks and five sessions of radiotherapy. He's out of the Middlesex Hospital and back at 164 Chilton Court. We have moved his bed into the sitting room and he's quite cosy. He is on four hourly doses of nepenthe, which keeps the pain under control but leaves him, he says, feeling permanently fuzzy. His mood is relatively mellow. He's on Valium to help with that and he talks optimistically about the future.

26:11His feet are horribly swollen. Ginny cut his toenails for him. He liked that. He liked seeing everybody, though he tires easily. He's still preoccupied with his money worries, sending letters to his partners, to the DHSS in Newcastle about his pension, the doctors in the US about outstanding medical bills, etc. Ma is coping. He won't hear a word said against her they both talk about what they're going to do when he's shaken off this wretched thing oh dear yeah so he still doesn't really believe he's well i think he's taken it on board but she hasn't and he didn't want to upset her friday the 17th of july 1981 yesterday morning with germaine greer she is good value stimulating company and completely ridiculous for the original feminist, she is hilariously man-mad.

27:09Children's end-of-term treat, the Royal Tournament, still exactly the same after all these years. Today, lunch with the bank manager. I'm blessed in Eric Miller, a decent man who seems to accept that it will all come right in the end. Richard Goulden's memorial service at Chelsea Old Church, John Gielgud read the lesson, Harold Hobson gave the address, a touching occasion in a beautiful setting and truly celebratory because Richard was so delightful and had led such a long life evening alec mccowan's solo recital of saint mark's gospel at the globe theater extraordinary extraordinary as a feat of memory he just comes onto the stage puts a closed copy of the new testament on the edge of the table just in case turns to the audience and speaks it is mesmerizing and profoundly moving and at the end of it you begin to understand why Christianity is still with us after 2 ,000 years.

28:07Harriet: Wow, that sounds amazing. It was extraordinary. I mean, it really was. He did it all over the world. And he'd just come. And is Mark's gospel the one that begins, in the beginning was the word, and the word was, I don't know. Anyway, he just came on, stood there, wearing a suit, and spoke to us for two hours. And told us, and just spoke the words of the gospel. And it was like the most amazing drama. You were held, and of course he was a great actor, but you were held. He didn't do it in a very theatrical way. He did, you know, there were different voices of different characters, but he didn't move about.

28:40I mean, he just stood there, and we were completely held.

28:43Harriet: Wow, amazing. Gosh, you go and see a lot of good things, don't you? We went to a lot. I suppose it was our hobby. Going to shows was our hobby at the time. Wednesday, and maybe it wasn't so expensive. Well, I was going to say, I can only afford to go to about two things a year. Yeah. Yeah, it's so expensive, isn't it? I don't think it was nearly so expensive. Of course, this is nearly 50 years ago. Yeah. I mean, nowadays, if you want to go out, it's£200 or something to take you and your friend. And we'd got to the stage, when I was a kid, we always used to go to the gallery, right up in the Gods, you know, for a few shillings.

29:12And that was fine, a long way away, but you're young. By this time, in our 30s... You want to be in the stalls. You do want to be in the stalls. Yeah. Though for that, I do remember, I think we were in the dress circle, and we were looking down on him. He looked up at us. It was just amazing. Wednesday the 29th of July, 1981. We watched the royal wedding. Lady Diana Spencer married Prince Charles at St Paul's Cathedral, or did she marry his father? When making her vows, she got the prince's Christian names muddled up. I take thee, Philip. No other glitches. We are now packed and off to Corfu. A different villa, and because of power, just two weeks away.

29:52I'm taking Daphne du Maurier, C.P. Snow, J.M. Stewart, and Anthony Trollope for company.

30:00Harriet: I can't believe you didn't write more about the royal wedding. Yep. It's funny. That was such a big thing in my... Yes. And we watched it. We watched it and made a note of it. Oh, gosh. I was absolutely obsessed with that. Were you? Yeah. I mean, I was a kid. Well, you were a little girl, yes. And so... Yeah. I had the Lady Bird book. I pored over it. I knew all the bridesmaids' names. I looked at her dress over and over again. Yeah. They're still around, the Emmanuels, who created their dress, aren't they? They must be. Maybe we should have them as Rosebud guests one day. Yeah, I remember India Hicks saying how difficult it was to, well, it was very difficult to get it in the carriage, wasn't it?

30:39Harriet: Because it was so big, the train. And then when they got it out, you know, India Hicks and the other head bridesmaids spent ages trying to organise it and it was virtually impossible. And it did end up looking a bit crumpled, didn't it? Oh, I don't remember that at all. Oh, no, it was, yeah. I think lots of people felt her dress looked a bit... Maybe girls were really gripped by it. I don't think I was particularly gripped. Well, as you can see, the only bit I remember is getting the name wrong. I was utterly gripped, yeah, by Lady Di. Yeah. Oh, still, still am. Yeah. Friday, 11th September 1981.

31:17Parr moved into the hospice of St John and St Elizabeth on Tuesday. I went today and met with Dr Halbert. He said in hushed tones in the hospice Everyone speaks in hushed tones That they are doing their best to control Pa's pain That's all they really can do Pa is very weak, gaunt and weary And the hospice, though light and airy with kindly caring staff Is essentially grim Of course it is It is full of dying people And some of them are very young It's heartbreaking I left power to go to a meeting to discuss the new Tony Tiger promotion for Kellogg's Frosties and now I'm off to St Thomas's where I'm addressing the Hospital Caterers Association annual dinner

32:09Harriet: oh Giles I'm so sorry your poor dad yeah I'm just going to read these because I'm going to get distressed you know what I'm like yeah oh it's so sad gosh poor him gosh so it's September now. When did he come back from? He only came back in June, didn't he? Oh, June, July, August, September, so three months. But I don't know that there was much to be done. It sounds as if he was very ill when he came back, yeah. And I think I may come up in the diary again, I know it came up earlier, how he had this thing since he was a boy that he was going to die at 71 anyway. Yes, he'd seen a palm reader in Margate, hadn't he?

32:49Harriet: Yeah. Yeah, it's funny that. And were you talking to him at this point about things like his final wishes or saying goodbye? No. You just didn't confront? No. Yeah. It's very difficult to do it, isn't it? I don't know. I mean, if he'd wanted to, he would have done. I think the reason he didn't is that he really didn't want to distress my mother at all. And she couldn't accept it. We may get to some of that in the diary. She couldn't accept it. But could you have had a private conversation with him? Yes. And maybe my sisters did. I don't know. They might have done. I don't know. They were in some ways closer.

33:36They were physically closer. You know, they would hold him and hug him. My sister, Ginny, who's still alive, as you saw, cut his toes. She was a nurse. They were more comfortable with physical contact with him, so they might have been more intimate. But he and I never, I don't think we ever had an intimate conversation of any kind.

33:58Harriet: Yeah. Not that I'm complaining about it, not that I feel I missed out on anything at all. I think I knew what he was thinking. I think he knew what I was thinking. So I don't think I missed it particularly. But no, there was no saying goodbye. I think there will have been him saying, be sure to look after Ma and me saying don't worry everything's in hand yeah even though it wasn't and as we may discover in the diaries they they were in a pretty parlous financial state yes yeah one of the things is I think in a way it can't have contributed to it can it but they'd reached the end of their money um I mean they'd reached the end of the rope he had tied to knot they were hanging on but they didn't have any more money yeah so what was going to happen I don't know right gosh anyway it's very difficult to have the conversation people always say oh you should say all the things you want to say you know before someone dies but i can imagine not quite being able to do it somehow you should do it if you feel you're going to regret not having done it yeah but i don't i don't think you can necessarily well we often discuss this don't we on rosebud with our guests i don't think necessarily you can change gear suddenly at the end that's the thing yeah suddenly becomes a new relationship if you had a good relationship and my relationship with my father i think was a perfect relationship yeah um there is no need for that yeah i don't think there was anything that was left unsaid lots that was left unspoken nothing left unsaid that's a nice thing to say yeah yeah no that's nice but you know for example with my father there are some things i in another world i would love to ask him about but i don't think i ever will and i think the last time i would want to do it is when he's dying because i wouldn't want to distress somebody who's dying i agree by raising difficult things that they may not want to speak about and yes it's tricky isn't it yeah it is tricky i'm so looking forward actually that's what one of my treats for next year people who regularly listen to this know we've talked often about um harriet's dad um and i'm going to go and have lunch with our family in the spring and i'm very much looking forward to meeting him properly and he is going to come to see our show oh because he wanted to come to edinburgh but that was a bit far for him to go last year yeah and we're doing this ridiculous tour i call it ridiculous it's wonderful people already buying tickets um and we're going to yeovil which isn't that far from where he lives or he'll come to london um when london in september yeah they're all all over the place yeah anyway let's get back to the diary tuesday the 15th of september 1981 cabinet reshuffle mrs thatcher is purging her government three wets are out three wets are out with more to follow if they don't toe the line jim pryer goes to northern ireland to be replaced by norman tebbitt cecil parkinson is the new party chairman this is her moving things to the right a little isn't it it is absolutely the the wets were the softies yeah she was now gathering gathering pace i spent the day in manchester talking dear ladies and the railway carriage game with peter ridsdale scott the producer of both the series when i got back i went straight to the royal albert hall and arrived in time to wander in unhindered for the finale of Dame Edna Everidge's show.

37:24She is glorious. I caught a gladiolus, found Michelle, and went to the party at John Schlesinger's. Wondered about being genial with the stars, but essentially all I'm thinking about is par. Michelle has been wonderful, driving Ma in to see him every day. He is very weak. We've decided to cancel our trip to Venice.

38:03Harriet: We'll be right back.

38:20Harriet: $1 through 1118, while supplies last. Free tools vary based on battery kit purchase and location. With almost half a million customers and over a trillion dollars of secure payments, Bill isn't new to intelligent finance. It's the proven way to simplify Bill pay and maximize cash flow. Want to learn more? Visit Bill.com slash proven for a special offer. Hey, we're Nick and Jack, hosts of The Best One Yet. Behind every episode, there's research, email, spreadsheets, and our shared Google Doc, the headline hammer. With Google Workspace with Gemini, Google's AI is built right into the premium versions of tools we already use, like Gmail, Docs, and Sheets.

38:56No new tools or extra logins, just personalized AI for the way we work. That means less time on the work around the work and more time finding the stories worth talking about. Get AI tools for work. Upgrade to Google Workspace with Gemini at goo.gle slash workspace with Gemini. That's goo.gle slash workspace with Gemini. Monday, the 2nd of November, 1981. I travelled down to the Penguin Sales Conference at the Saunton Sands Hotel, near Barnstable, with Roald Dahl. He was not easy company. I think perhaps he likes to give off an air of menace. He sat, curled up, scowling in the corner of our railway compartment.

39:39He didn't read. He seemed to want to talk. But his conversation was awkward. Random. He did tell me his idea for the perfect murder. The victim is bludgeoned to death with a frozen leg of lamb. The murderer then cooks the lamb and serves it to the police when they come calling. So getting rid of the evidence by having the detective eat it. Gosh. He has a wonderful imagination, clearly, but a somewhat alarming manner. It's just occurred to me. Perhaps he's quite ill. He's the same sort of age as Pa and has a similar gaunt look.

40:17Harriet: Oh, that's fascinating to me because I absolutely loved Roald Dahl's books when I was young. But I'm not surprised to hear he was quite a difficult, an awkward customer. He was an awkward customer. Yeah. When we saw that play about him last year together. Yeah, and you can sort of tell in his books, you know, there's an edge to them, which I think makes them fabulous for children. but yeah, you could tell he had a kind of wickedness. And I don't think he did die that year. I think he died about nine or ten years later. Wow. In 1990. Yeah, I mean, he always looked gaunt. Yeah, he did. That was just his look.

40:52And he had some rare blood disease when he went.

40:55Harriet: It's funny, that hotel, the Saunton Sands, that's the hotel we were invited to. Do you remember we got that email earlier this year saying, do you want to come to the Saunton Sands hotel? You could have a rosebud weekend there. Oh, did you do that? and I don't think you remembered you've obviously been there before yeah with Roald Dahl yeah it's rather good going I know yeah well maybe we should do something maybe we should get to a children's author of today and they mentioned something about the Appledore oh the Appledore Literary Festival I think it's nearby oh well maybe that's what it was all about maybe that's why we were both going there anyway yeah no we were going to a sales conference he was published by Penguin Books and I was published by Penguin Books yeah so we were fellow authors but he was a world bestseller and I was just an aspiring children's author yeah amazing I'd love to have met him what an interesting man Thursday the 12th of November 1981 went to Manchester to be a guest on the Russell Harty show Russell is a generous and nice man he knows he's too intelligent to be doing this sort of TV but he still wants to do it he wants to be famous and funny and loved before he went on he stood in the wings and as the theme music for the show began to play he started to dance on the spot like a mad thing working himself into a frenzy for his entrance no wonder he always looks sweaty on screen The other guests were John Inman, who did a clever routine about being a shop window mannequin, and The Tweets, who sang the utterly ludicrous Birdie song.

42:16As we all danced around the studio inanely doing the Birdie song movements, and the credits rolled, Russell whispered in my ear, Is this why we went to Oxford, Giles? And he got a first. Wednesday the 2nd of December. Do you remember him, Russell Harty, at all?

42:35Harriet: Oh yeah, I used to watch it. Good. Wednesday the 2nd of December 1981. Went to the BBC Paris studio in Lower Regent Street at lunchtime to record two episodes of Just a Minute. Oh, wow. You were doing it back then. Yeah, 45 years ago. Nicholas Parsons said the only reason they hadn't asked me before. Oh, Harriet, this is my first episode. Yes, you're right. Oh, my. So, 1981. And funnily enough, this December I'm recording some more episodes. Wow. 45 years later. Congratulations. Yes. I think me and Sheila Hancock are the two longest-lived people who've taken part in just a minute now. You have to say players of the game.

43:19Harriet: Isn't that what Nicholas Barsons always says? Yeah, players of the game. The two longest-lived players of the game. Well, Nicholas Barsons said the only reason they hadn't asked me before is that I sound too like Derek Nimmo and they didn't want to confuse the listeners. The truth is I was only there because Kenneth Williams badgered them on my behalf. He's a good friend and a good son. He arrived for the recording with his mother in tow. He calls her Louis and installed her in her usual seat in the third row. The other panellists were Peter Jones, wonderfully droll, and Sheila Hancock. Sharp and good at the game.

43:52Harriet: How funny. Yes. Kenneth stole the show, of course, but I acquitted myself reasonably. Indeed, I won the first game. Though I know that's not the point. Being funny is the point. people don't necessarily like you if you win good point actually yeah i should remember that in life wednesday 16th december 1981 last night francis crowdy came over for supper we watched the penultimate episode of bride's head revisited it has been so wonderful there will be a yawning gap in our lives when it ends and then played bridge a perfect evening there's nothing like a game of bridge and an ice cold gin and tonic for shutting out all the worries of the world and now 6 p.m wednesday i'm writing this on the train from newton abbott returning home at the end of a memorable day oh that's my part of the world it is devon newton abbott's in devon what's interesting is we watched bridesmaid revisit and then played bridge you had to watch it at a certain time yeah couldn't record programs no it was on you had to watch it yeah for that hour yeah the tv everyone remembers that Giles yeah no not everyone does no well most people listening to Rosebud do no people like my children don't realise that you had to sit down at a set time at a certain time and if you came in five minutes late you would miss the beginning I know hopeless so if that was on at 8 o 'clock if you came in at 8.05 you'd miss the best bits yeah it's true yeah I mean the show the other day I've called someone and they said something like what's the time and I said it's neighbours o 'clock and they said what I said 5.35 That time is etched on my memory.

45:29Harriet: Every day I look forward to 5.35 neighbours. Neighbours o 'clock. Neighbours o 'clock. Yeah. This morning, as planned, Michelle collected the parents and took them to Waterloo to catch the 1148 train for the Isle of Wight. Oh, I remember this now. Oh, so your father's going away. He's come out of the hospice. Listen. A wheelchair, etc. had been arranged for par. They are going to Osborne House for a Christmas break at the army officer's convalescent home. It's the ideal solution. They will both benefit from a change of scene. They will both love the Queen Victoria connections. And it's clear from talking to the Osborne House people on the phone that they'll be completely on top of the situation with past medication.

46:12By complete coincidence, I discovered today that among the army officers who convalesced at Osborne House during the First World War were Robert Graves and A.A. Milne. I've spent the day with A.A. Milne's only child. Christopher Robin is 61 now, spindly, slightly bent, with owlish glasses and a charming, mischievous glint in his eye. I travelled down to Devon to meet him with Julian Slade. We came to talk about our play about his father. We arrived expecting to find him painfully shy, diffident and reluctant to talk about either Winnie the Pooh or his parents. Not so. His manner is gentle, but he was completely forthcoming.

46:56We must talk about Pooh, he said straight away. It's been something of a love-hate relationship down the years, but it's all right now. Believe it or not, I can now look at those four books without flinching. I'm quite fond of them, really.

47:10Harriet: Oh, that's nice. Those four books, the two Pooh books and the two collections of nursery verses, 70 ,000 words in all were published between 1924 and 1928 and have dominated Christopher's whole life. Until he was eight or nine he said he quite liked being famous. It was only when he went to boarding school to stow that the teasing from the other boys began to get him down. In his dormitory they played the record of Vespers. Little boy kneels at the foot of the bed and goaded him with it until he took the record and broke it into a hundred pieces and scattered it in a distant field. After the war, he accused his father of building a reputation by standing on a young boy's shoulders.

47:56As a small boy, the love of Christopher's life was his nanny. She was the centre of his universe. Apart from her fortnight's holiday every September, for eight years we were not out of each other's site for more than a few hours at a time. He was closest to his father during his adolescence, when Nanny was no longer there. What did they do together, father and son? The Times crossword, algebra, and Euclid. We looked for birds' nests, we played cricket, we caught things in the stream. But when Christopher went to Cambridge, they began to drift apart. It was after the war, when Christopher was in his mid-twenties, that his resentment of his father came to a head.

48:39Six years in the army didn't qualify a man for employment, and being a sentimental storybook hero doesn't help either. In 1948, Christopher married his first cousin, Leslie. He says the marriage saved him, but it distanced him further from his parents. Leslie's father and Christopher's mother, you see they were brother and sister, had not spoken to one another for 30 years. After Emil's death in 1956, Christopher's mother lived on for 15 years. In all that time, he only saw her once. His mother was the one area he didn't talk about. He implied that she was flighty, that he had been no more than a part-time hobby for her, but he didn't really explain his resentment of her.

49:25I suppose he had a choice to love his mother or his wife, and he chose his wife. The love of his life now seems to be his daughter, Claire. She has cerebral palsy. She has to be looked after all the time. When he was first married, he was fiercely independent. The idea of taking money from his fictional namesake was anathema to him. In the end, I had to accept it, for Claire's sake. He told us that his chief delight in life, greater than the satisfaction he survived from bookselling or writing, or from his lifelong love of studying insects and caterpillars and weeds, has been using his hands to adapt and make everyday things for Claire.

50:06A chair, a tricycle, an unbreakable plate, a special fork and spoon. He has this fantasy that one day they'll launch into business together. See our Milne and daughter. Makers of furniture for the disabled. We're reaching Paddington. The snow has cleared. I must stop. I can at least tell my children that today I shook the hand to tell the paw of Winnie the Pooh. And I've been using that line ever since, haven't I? And what's interesting is that incident, 45 years ago, led to all sorts of things. Julian Slade and I then wrote a play about the Mill family, and just this year I published, or a year ago, a biography of A.M.

50:57Milne and Christopher Robin and Winnie the Boo. And I later discovered much more about his relationship with his mother and the nature of all that. It was fascinating. But that's when it began. I'd forgotten that I made a note of it in the diary.

51:09Harriet: I can't believe he told you so much. Well, we went there to interview him. That was the idea because we were going to write this play. And the reason that he saw us is that he already knew Julian. They were contemporaries. And so he was comfortable. Because I was with Julian, I had a kind of licence. So I sat there writing notes, and I kept all the notes. And then I didn't realise that 40 years and more later, my publisher would say, it's Winnie the Pooh's 100th birthday, why don't you write a biography of Winnie the Pooh, A.A. Mill, Christopher Robin? And I was able to say, well, bingo, I've got all this material.

51:43Harriet: How fortunate. So it was good. I liked him very, very much. And what is, I think we can share this. Have we shared it before on Rosebud? What, that I knew him as well? It was around this time, 1981. Yeah. So we might have met at the same time. Yeah, I probably was in the Harbour Bookshop at the time. I was always in there. Because he had a, that's the point. Christopher Robin had a bookshop in Dartmouth where you were brought up. Yes. And your dad knew him. Yeah, because my dad ran a restaurant in, Dartmouth's a small town, you know, it's a small town on the mouth of the River Dart in Devon. and it's um it's a town where there's it doesn't go anywhere so once you drive into Dartmouth you can drive along the coast but basically you have to turn around and go back so what I mean is the people in Dartmouth spend a lot of time in Dartmouth they all know each other especially if you run a business so my dad because he ran the restaurant it was kind of the big restaurant in the town and it's a tourist town so restaurant was important he knew all the local businessmen shopkeepers because many of them would be customers of his or he would do business with them and because he liked reading and books he spent a lot of time in the harbour bookshop and on saturday mornings we'd spend an hour or two in there every saturday and around this time I entered a competition which Christopher would have told me about that was being run at the bookshop and it was a colouring competition and it was something to do with a book called Haffity Hamster it was a Haffity Hamster colouring competition and I won it and I actually think I was the only person that entered because I was in the bookshop so much that anything that was happening I did um you know encouraged by Christopher and my dad or whatever so I entered this competition won it and I was so excited because I didn't I hadn't won a lot of things and I probably was it probably rolls around 1981 and what I didn't realize was Haffity Hamster was it must have been a Christian book about God or something so I won all these books about the Bible, trees of the Bible, flowers of the Bible, birds of the Bible.

54:06Harriet: And I was so, apologies to God and Jesus. I was so disappointed. Yeah. I mean, I did read the books and I was thrilled to win things, but I hadn't realised I was entering a religious colouring competition and I was secretly a bit, oh no, I don't want to find out about birds of the Bible. But anyway, I kept all these books. And now I would be interested in reading them. I don't know where they are now. But yeah. So there you go. I was probably in the Harbour Bookshop colouring away when you were interviewing Christopher Milne. It's very strange, isn't it? We often say childhood lasts a lifetime.

54:43It's one of the things we've learned in Rosebud. But it really does last a lifetime. I mean, these things. And here we are, 45 years later, you and I are together. It's amazing. Yeah.

54:54Harriet: But I imagine you went to his house, didn't you? which was rather amazing and down a very, very wooded country lane in the deepest, darkest Devon. And after that first meeting, this is the first meeting, as you'll discover in the Dowdy, we get to know him better. And we meet him more often. But it is extraordinary. And one of the things, next year we're going, we did this show earlier this year in Edinburgh and during the show we talk a bit about Christopher Robin and Harriet brought along a copy of Winnie the Pooh autographed by Christopher Milne himself, dedicated to you, actually says, for Harriet.

55:32It's really lovely. It's a very special thing to have. And I hope next year, we're going on this tour together, you'll bring the book with you again because we can share it to people. Yeah, that's good for all to. People love to see it. So, well, that's it for today. if you want to join us on the show by the way next year you simply go to our website you can go to my website gilesbrandworth.net or to our website rosebudpodcast.co.uk and there's a little line that says if you want to see Giles and Harriet in their Up Memory Lane show in 2027 click here and that'll show you where all the different theatres are around the country and you can people have already booked you know Oh, that's good.

56:19Harriet: It is good. Actually, it's good. Also, we must discuss, Harriet, the meet and greet afterwards, because some people have asked me about that. Oh, right. I think they'll be able to meet us, which will be nice. We will hope to meet you. Thank you for listening. On Friday, we've got another very special guest. I have to say, Bill Bailey, last Friday, has been one of our whopping big successes. We've had some really great successes in terms of people tuning in recently, people discovering us on YouTube, which is nice. But Bill Bailey was so funny, wasn't he? We booked our seats. We're going in January, I think.

56:52He's on in the West End of London.

56:54Harriet: Yeah, he loves Bill Bailey. And we've got some very interesting women coming up on Fridays in the next couple of weeks. I think I'll just tease you with that. So that's it from more Rosebud. Thank you very much for your company. More diaries in a couple of weeks' time. This time next week, who knows who we will be talking to. Right now, I'm at Grosvenor House in Park Lane with Harriet, and I'm going to go and turn on the fire. Oh. Because it's a bit chilly in here. but it is November thanks for being with us cue the music yes

58:06That's this week's More Rosebud with me, Giles Brandreth, and my friend and producer, Harriet Jane.

58:43Harriet: We'll be right back.

58:4898 of the top 100 U.S. accounting firms trust Bill to simplify and secure BillPay. That's proven financial infrastructure built on over a trillion dollars of secure payments. Visit Bill.com slash proven for a special offer. Hey, we're Nick and Jack, hosts of The Best One Yet. Behind every episode, there's research, email, spreadsheets, and our shared Google Doc, the Headline Hammer. With Google Workspace with Gemini, Google's AI is built right into the premium versions of tools we already use, like Gmail, Docs, and Sheets. No new tools or extra logins, just personalized AI for the way we work.

59:22That means less time on the work around the work and more time finding the stories worth talking about. Get AI tools for work. Upgrade to Google Workspace with Gemini at goo.gle slash workspace with Gemini. That's goo.gle slash workspace with Gemini.