More Rosebud - Gyles's diary, episode 13: the second half of 1965 - adventures in Switzerland, school reports and a family argument

0:00It's Tuesday, the best day of the week, because it's More Rosebud. and now cue the music

0:25This is More Rosebud which means it's me Giles Brandreth with my producer Harriet Jane How are you Harriet? Yes I'm very well thank you We've had a treat this week because Flip Dunning, who got in touch with us, came to see you in a concert. You are in a choir in London, in Crouch End, near where you live? Yeah, North London. North London. And she came and she introduced herself. It turns out she knows one of the altos. She knows one of the altos. That's funny. So she, Flip, is a Rosebud listener and she'd written us a really touching email, which we read out at the end of one episode, the way we do, all about her first love, who was a boy at school.

1:10And in the end, he tragically was killed in a car accident. And you were moved to tears reading out this email. And it was really a lovely email, which people might remember if they've listened to all the episodes. Anyway, then I was at choir practice and one of the altos said to me, oh, I saw a friend of mine the other day. She listens to Rosebud and you read out one of her emails and it was flip-dunning and I remembered immediately who and I said wow that's amazing anyway then she came to my concert I met her and then she gave us this mushroom pate which has been delicious which we're very grateful you do not need to send us a gift to have your email read out on rosebud you definitely don't you definitely don't what do you sing in the choir what second soprano what does that mean as opposed to first soprano well most of the time we sing the same So the sopranos just sing all together.

2:03But if the sopranos split for any reason, which they sometimes do, the first sopranos would sing the higher line and we would sing the lower line. You don't have trebles like we had in my choir. Is that just boys or trebles? So that's young boys. So we sing the same register as trebles, but we're women. But if you were in a cathedral choir, for example, there probably would still be young boy sopranos who are called trebles. But in a choir like I'm in, which is of adults, the high voices are supplied by women. In the diaries, which we're going to read some more of, we're now in the mid-1960s, did we have me in the choir at one of St Mary Abbott's or Hildreth Brompton?

2:49Or was I in the choir before I began the diary? I think you'd... Because you begin going to prep school in Kent. Yes, and I'm in the school choir, of course, and the church choir at school. But I also was in the choir in London at two churches, St Mary Abbott, St Kensington and Holy Trinity Brompton. And I do remember vividly loving being in the choir because we were paid. Have I told you this before? We were paid, I forget what it was, something like two shillings for services, half a crown for weddings, but five shillings for funerals. And because of that, I organized this scheme where we would, the choir boys, we'd be kneeling and while we were praying, through our hands as we brought them together, we would form a kind of spyglass and we would survey the congregation and we'd look for the oldest looking person in the congregation and then together we would pray for them to die so that we could sing at their funerals and earn five things and god must love an entrepreneur because he rewarded us week after week whoever we'd focused on duly fell off the perch this is terrible this is a terrible use of prayer time, praying for old people in your congregation to die.

4:11Well, you're sending them to a better place. Life, after all, is a veil of tears. It's called paradise because that's where heaven begins. That's true. So we felt we were doing them a favour. Doing them a favour. That's very kind of you. I've sung at a couple of funerals and I can't do it because I just keep crying. Even though they're people I've never met, you know, I'm just hired in to sing. I mean, I'm such a crybaby, as you've seen from the episodes, and I often cry in the middle of the interviews, that I just kept weeping. It was hopeless. I would love one week for you to come and sing for us a cappella.

4:50Yeah, I mean, the choir would be up for that, probably. Oh, I didn't mean the whole choir. I mean, just you. No. Just you. No, it'd be too embarrassing. No, it'd be very sweet, very charming. Okay, talking of Flip Dunning, has anyone else been in touch with us? Yes, so we've had this nice email from someone called Jake Pryor who is only 16, which is good because I think sometimes we think we don't have really young listeners. Well, this is very relevant because I think I'm about 16 or just turning 17 and the doubt is that we're going to read to us today. So this is a 16-year-old Jake. Yeah, he lives in Australia in Adelaide and he's emailed us with some of his diary entries but because he's 16, these are from really quite recently.

5:29Oh, well, will you? Because I'm going to be reading an extensor in a moment. OK. Will you read this to us? I'm not going to do an Australian accent, Jake. You'll be pleased to hear. Jake says, I started writing my diary a while ago. I do so feel for Giles with his embarrassing entries because I have a few myself. The ones I'm about to share with you now particularly stand out. I was 14 at the time of writing, frightfully embarrassing now, but the names have been changed to protect the innocent. I can't wait for this. So this is the first diary entry. Tuesday, week seven, term three, 2023. On camp at Borough, no phones allowed.

6:11I can't stop thinking about Jay. Talent night was tonight and mock ballroom dancing was one of the acts. Everyone got up and joined in. I danced to a slow song with Jay and was so very surprised by my reaction, I turned beetroot red. I couldn't believe it. Perhaps I should tell her how I feel. Who knows what's around the corner. This is wonderful. I'm really reassured by this. Go on, please, Jake. Wednesday, so the next day, week seven, term three, 2023. told her blew it and ruined it i turned red again although this time it was closer to a plum jay said she likes me as a friend that old line went back to the cabins today face still red and all everyone asked was why when i told them they burst out laughing i saw the funny side and fell about laughing too how very silly i was i should have taken it slower thursday the next day week seven term three 2023 all good i've moved on heading to the flinders rangers tomorrow and new beginnings oh that's fantastic well i think jake keep in touch and do send us a few more extracts from your diaries i'm finding this terribly reassuring ariot yes and and jake seems it seems like you get on with him.

7:44He's going to the talent night. He's doing ballroom dancing. He's got a crush on someone and he goes straight up there and tells them about it. Well done him. Yeah. Good man. Well done, Jake. Eventually, I am going to get you one week to bring in your teenage diaries, if you don't mind. Oh, I do mind. Anyway, I... We'll discuss that. Yeah. But I think it would be nice because you reassure me that mine aren't that embarrassing because everyone has these. Yes. I mean, yours are unusual. You're an unusual teenager, definitely, Giles. I think even you must know that. But everyone has these crushes, I think.

8:23And I was saying to, I was thinking to myself that my diary is full of boys. Just, yeah, boys that I'm sure I wouldn't remember. Names of people I had my eye on or that I liked or I was chatting to or flirting with. Excuse me, Harriet Jane. Yeah. I think next time we meet, in a couple of weeks, just like a flavour of that, I said, dig them out. I need to see where they are. Yep, dig it out, please. In the loft. I have to say, though all the names I've mentioned, as we've read them, they've come flooding back. I can see them exactly as they looked. I've not forgotten any of them. I had forgotten them.

9:01But once I read the names again, they came rushing back. Because in the last episode, I mean, there were about 10. That's because I listed them. There were 11 in that list. I listed my friends. And some of them were just friends. Oh, yes. It's now the beginning of the summer holidays. 1965, I've just turned 17. Thursday, the 22nd of July, 1965. I am exhausted. Utterly. On Tuesday, I caught the 3.05pm boat train from Victoria, reaching Folkestone at 5.25 and Calais at 7.19. Then I crossed France, changing again and again and again until I reached Sion in the valley canton of southern Switzerland at 8.34 yesterday morning.

9:50I'm lying on my bunk bed in my little room up in the hills above Sion in the village of Arbaz on the second day of my holiday job as English tutor and companion to the children of Brigadier Maurice Juillant. he turns out to be the head of the swiss army wow yeah did he have a knife thank you did he have a knife you're going to find out a lot about this man yeah brigadier jvion that's why i'm exhausted this morning the entire family was up at 5 a.m so that the brigadier could lead us out into the woods to gather mushrooms for breakfast he explained that each of us has to eat the mushrooms that he or she has picked.

10:35He told me that he had found this rule very effective in ensuring that his troops learned quickly and correctly which fungi were poisonous and which were not. He is obviously very tough. He is quite old but quite jolly, so long as you do exactly as he says. Madame Jouillon is his second wife and much younger. She and I are going to be friends. The children seem okay. I think it's going to be all right. Significant news from home. Sir Alec Douglas Hume has resigned as leader of the Conservative Party. There is to be an election for the new leader. The first election in the party's history. I'm cut off from newspapers here, but we are able to get the BBC World Service.

11:20Wednesday, 28th July 1965.

11:33In the Gazette de Lausanne, Mr. Heath's victory is front-page news. Heath, 150 votes, Maudling, 133, Enoch Powell, 15. Maudling was the front-runner. But Heath was my man from the start. He looks new. He's the youngest leader the party has had for a century. He's a grammar school boy, which is good for us, and he comes from Broadstairs. Need we say more? I'm delighted. We are swimming in Sion, where I've bought the newspaper. Saturday, 31st July, 1965. Today is Sally Henry's birthday. She is camping in a tent in France, poor girl, but has written me a wonderful letter. She writes beautiful letters, very warm and real and full of detail.

12:24She awoke on the day she sent her letter to find a frog in her tent, a little creature, not one of the locals. She loves music and dressmaking and sunbathing. She says she always turns puce before she goes brown. She also, so she says, loves me. Yesterday we all went on a picnic, a raclette at Evolen, and I saw my first glacier. Tomorrow is the Swiss National Day and the brigadier as commissaire des guerres en chef will be away taking the salute somewhere. The day after we set off en famille on our national tour. We shall be going to Altdorf, Bern, Interlaken, etc. Both taking in the site and visiting military installations including a complete invisible town that has been built inside a mountain.

13:13It's a secret headquarters for the military complete with streets, houses, hospitals, everything really for use in the event of invasion. Sounds amazing. Yeah, and I think they didn't make me sign an NDA but I was told never to reveal this. It's 60 years later so I hope they'll forgive me. The brigadier has been explaining Switzerland's citizens army to me and encouraging me to advocate something similar in Britain. They've adopted the idea in Israel where he's been to advise them on how it works. Here, at 20, according to the Swiss Civil Code, the adolescent becomes a citizen and the citizen becomes a soldier.

13:51He remains a soldier for 30 years. Beginning with four months national service, he must return each year for three weeks until he reaches the age of 50. Only priests are exempt. According to the brigadier, we have not been invaded in Switzerland because we have an army that is ready for war at any time. Because every citizen is also a soldier, with his uniform, weapons and ammunition, sometimes even his jeep kept at home, we can mobilize an army of 700 ,000 by tomorrow. Not bad for a country of five million. What he says is true. I've seen the automatic rifles in people's houses hanging on the back of the kitchen door.

14:33The brigadier also believes that his kind of national service helps create a classless society and avoid the physical degeneration that will end in the collapse of Western civilization. He says that young people today rely too much on machines. In a hundred years' time, your grandchildren will be breaking rocks on some Tibetan mountainside because they won't be physically strong enough to defend themselves. Ooh, wow. He was an interesting character. And next door, before you go, I'll show you some of the gifts he gave me. It's a good idea, the citizens. It is a good idea, isn't it? Not sure how you'd have done in that, Giles.

15:14Oh, gosh. Well, I'd have been given a desk job, I think, quite early on, wouldn't I? Oh, I see. Or I'd have been entertaining the troops. Or could I have been a spy? Friday, 13th August, 1965. You wouldn't have been very good because you'd have written it all down in your diary and read it out on a podcast six years later. Exactly. And I just need Mata Hari to come up to me and I'd tell her everything. Friday the 13th of August 1965 Friday the 13th a lucky one for me letter from Mr Slack asking me to be a prefect letter from Rachel telling me that next time's play is to be a passage to India and that she has a part in mind for me that will challenge me to play for truth rather than effect letter from Sally telling me that she loves me very much and is missing me desperately.

16:09A lucky day and a memorable one too. I've just been playing cards with the president of Switzerland. I won, which I now realize was probably a mistake. This is ridiculous, isn't it? Oh, please. Monsieur Paul Schudde is 60 and looks like a friendly version of Adolf Hitler. He has warm eyes, but Herr Hitler's toothbrush moustache and unfortunate hairstyle. He is the Swiss defence minister and one of the country's seven federal councillors. They take it in turns to be president. He's an old friend of the brigadier's and has spent the evening with us here at the chalet. Madame Jouillon has been all over Twitter having such an important visitor and as a consequence at dinner the atmosphere was a little forced.

16:56When the brigadier gave me some wine and it was the last drop in the bottle he said I should kiss the bottom of the bottle. It's an old Swiss custom and means you'll be married before the end of the year. Madame was very shocked by this. After dinner, she was also very anxious to get us away from the card table and down into Sion. She had arranged for a special command performance of the Sion Sonne Lumière. The president and the brigadier wanted to carry on drinking and playing cards. So did I. Madame, however, insisted that we all clamber into the presidential limousine, flags flying on bonnet, and sweep into town.

17:34It really was a command performance. There were just eight of us to see the show. We sat on two wooden benches for a very long hour, listening to the incredibly dreary song and watching the far from exciting Lumière. It was not a jolly experience, and when it was over, though pressed to come back up to the chalet for a nightcap, the President and his wife decided to go home. Madame was mortified. The Brigadier was disappointed. The President was insistent. And that was that. Tuesday, 21 September 1965. The end of a good summer holiday and the arrival of a wonderful school report. Quite outstanding is Mr Slag's charming summary.

18:19And Hark at Hegg in my form report. For someone who gives so unstintingly to the life of the school, Giles has had a very good year in his academic work. He really is good for us. A rebel against so many Bedellian conventions. He is gracious and polite, neat and an enthusiast. I find him more aware of the moments when he almost caricatures himself, and well able to take a joke and make a joke against himself. I am very pleased, in fact, to have so many points of association with him, and to have such a frank and friendly relationship. It is boys like Giles who give me grounds for hope. Oh, Giles, that's lovely.

19:01Tissues at the ready. I'm honoured by what he says. This is me now. I'm honoured by what he says and will endeavour not to disappoint him. Actually, everything has been wonderful this summer. When I left Switzerland, Madame Rion, Gabby, gave me one of her most precious possessions, her own signed copy of Jean-Louis Barrault's autobiography, personally dedicated to her by the great man. She added a lovely inscription of her own. She was an actress before she married the brigadier, and Barrault, of course, is France's greatest actor. When I got back to England, I saw a joyous Trelawney of the Wells at Chichester and the Berliner Ensemble at the Old Vic, the Thropini opera and Coriolanus with Helene Weigel, Mrs Bertolt Brecht as Volumnia.

19:52This week I've been catching up with friends. A walk in Richmond Park with Pobs, lunch in Notting Hill with Jackie, supper with Penny at her parents in Kensington, and fun and games on several days with Sally in East Putney. Her parents are very nice, and Pobs's parents are charming too. Her father gave me a lift to Hammersmith, apparently unheard of. He normally hides in his study when Pobbs's friends appear, and according to Pobbs, since my departure, her mother has done little but praise my grand social manner, and ask Pobbs why she doesn't bring home more boys like me. At home, all's much as ever.

20:32Mars under the weather and in bed with a hot water bottle and lemon tea. Pa is in the kitchen sorting through the bills. Money worries have got worse now that Ben's gone to Ashfold. It's a boys prep school. More fees to find. Gin is as high as a kite and looking for love. Jen is lower than a snake's belly and looking for love. Jen and Hesse have fallen out very badly. They had a horrible fight, which I witnessed, with kitchen knives drawn and glass broken. Hester is a girl who likes girls, Figgy in particular, and Jen thinks it's disgusting and immoral. I must read Chekhov's play, The Three Sisters.

21:13Anyone who's seriously interested in this family dynamic here, I did write about it in, I wrote a sort of childhood autobiography during lockdown called Odd Boy Out. In fact, it's the book we give sometimes to our guests, don't we? Because I feel they've shared their childhood memories. I might as well share a few of mine with them. And Hester was my younger sister. She's no longer alive, nor is Jen. It's interesting, they fell out. and they had this terrible fight, I remember it now. I'd forgotten it until I read this because Hester was gay and Jennifer found that very uncomfortable. I think that's what the fight was about.

21:53Anyway, I explored that a little bit in my book. They were both wonderful people but they didn't gel and in fact they fell out for many years, for 20, 30 years. This lasted after this. Basically last, I suppose, from then onwards. Oh, that is really sad. Yeah, yeah. And so how recently had Hester come out? Has she just come out? I don't know. Is that the first reference to it in the diaries? I think, I mean, I must have been aware of it. I just hadn't possibly written about it before. You see, maybe, this is interesting. I mean, I was very interested in homosexual law reform, as you know. because I became the youngest member of the Homosexual Law Reform Society, etc.

22:42But that was because it was gay relationships between men were actually against the law. There was nothing against relationships between women. I suppose, I think, in fact, in fairness to my parents, I think they just took it in their stride. It was never an issue at home at all. So Hester did tell your parents? Yeah, I don't think she told them. I think it just sort of happened. She was at this stage. In fact, I think we'd referred earlier, didn't we, to her going out with an Indian doctor? Yes. And how that evening, and my father and I had to go and rescue her from wherever she was. She was phoning from a phone box.

23:25Yes, your dad was trying to sort of set her up with a suitable match, and she didn't like it. So, no, in fact, I think she was trying, Also, he was keen to get all the daughters off his hands, get them married. But I think she joined a dating agency or something and met a few blokes. But Figgy was her particular friend. And I think Figgy may still be alive. I hope so. Anyway, that's that. But if people want to read more about that, I do. Please, it's a book. It's out there, published by Penguin, called Odd Boy Out. That's my plug over.

24:10Shall I read on? Yeah. Sunday, 26 September 1965. A letter from Tim Slack, headmaster, awaited me on my return to school and began, My dear Giles, the ideas contained in your letter are very exciting. The ideas contained in my letter, which has been shown to several staff, head boy and girl, etc., all to do with creating activities for Block 2, the youngest year in the school. At present, they're given very little to do. I propose to change all that. I've already made a modest start. I have squeezed a plump six pounds out of the finance committee towards the cost of getting them a hut of their own.

24:46And on Wednesday evenings, Di Ambash and I organising a dancing activity for them, teaching the little darlings to dance. From the walls to the jive, simple rudiments only. Di is giving me a lesson this afternoon. We've been friends ever since Mr Payne apparently ordered her out of his chemistry class. And sheepishly, she went towards the door until I explained to her that he hadn't said, come on, die, outside. He'd said, carbon dioxide. He's very Scottish. Get it? Carbon dioxide. That's not true. Yes, she got up. She wasn't concentrating on the... He'd said, come on, die, outside. And she thought he'd said, come on, die, outside.

25:25So she got up and began to go. Anyway, I'm taking on more, I know, but then this term I have more time. Prefects have four late nights a week when we don't need to go to our dorms until ten. I have on my desk wise words taken from the library calendar on the 31st of July. Opportunities are swarming around us all the time, thicker than gnats at sundown. We walk through a cloud of them. Van Dyke. Oh, gosh. No pressure. Saturday, 16th October, 1965. As part of my programme of involving Block 2, Sally and I took two of the tiddlers to tea in Petersfield this afternoon. Patrick Cadell, younger brother of my friend Simon, and Thomas Graves, youngest son of the poet Robert Graves.

26:16Thomas is particularly amusing. He's 12, but very charming and cheeky, and keeps inviting me to come to stay with the family in Mallorca. I rather like the idea. Patrick is just like Simon but without the theatrical trimmings Simon is now my best friend we spend a lot of time listening to Flanagan and Alan and Noel Coward and planning our thespian futures he's only 15 but his way with wine and women is a wonder and I think he smoked too probably all the things you thought I should have been doing I think he was doing anyway Tuesday 9th isn't it funny I mean, I still, of course, know the family, and Patrick was a twin, and I'm seeing his sister, Selena, still a friend of mine, and I'm going this weekend to see her film version of La Traviata, the opera, which she's directed.

27:08So, there we are, see, some friendships last 60 years and more. Tuesday, the 9th of November, 1965. Everything went wrong with Sally last week. My fault. I was difficult. I am difficult Today she sent me a long and loving letter I am here if you want me, when you want me and not unless you want me I love you, I trust you It may be hard to believe, but I do and this love will weather anything I know I don't often say it In time I will get over my shyness Meanwhile, I don't mind the little girls on our supper table I don't mind walking over to Steephurst alone eight nights a week I don't mind foregoing any of the pleasures that convention and Joe Boyden say I ought to have because I prefer it the way it is I would rather you show your love your way as and when you feel it instead of keeping to any rules History, I write in the diary, ought to know about these strange Bedellian rules By tradition long established, a couple of B-Dales becomes established when the boy asks the girl if he can take her over, and she agrees.

28:26Taking over means walking with her from the main school to Steephurst, the girl's house. Taking over happens after breakfast, lunch and supper. It's fun in the evening when you chat and kiss before saying goodnight, but it's also very time-consuming when you've a crowded diary, as I do. Sally says she's happy for Paradise to be restricted to Steepcott, where she was working on the costumes for the school players, and whatever else we can manage. The supper table, after brekkie, exchanging letters. If I involve her in some of my projects, we can have more time together. I think that's the best way forward.

29:05Oh, I see. It's the beginning of an ongoing problem in your life, Giles, is trying to find time for... Relationships. your work and your relationships yeah is that what she means by what you mean by i was difficult i am difficult is that yes i think maybe she was wanting more i don't know so during the summer time more time during the summer holidays i remember when i put it in the diary about going to her parents house in putney and you know it was wonderful um but now back at school there was so much to do and i couldn't fit in all the time i was supposed to well that a decent person would have given her as clearly her friend joe boyden had told her oh i see her friend was saying you know he's not treating you properly tuesday 16th november 1965 a good evening on bbc one 7 30 p.m eric sykes and hattie jakes 8 p.m said cars 8 50 p.m the news 9 p.m play of the month A Passage to India with Siddle Cusack wonderful in my role Mr Fielding and Sybil Thondike as Mrs Moore 10.50pm 24 hours with Cliff Mitchell Moore & Co 11.20pm Bonjour Françoise French lessons 11.45pm weather and close down We were tuning in tonight because of Passage to India because a party from the school had actually been to watch the recording being made in October and it was a we were doing it as a school play and I was playing Mr Fielding The only programme we get to see regularly during term time, in the housemaster's room, in pyjamas, sitting on the floor with chocolate milk and biscuits, is Danger Man.

30:46When I'm not Laurence Olivier in Pride and Prejudice, or Danny Kay in The Court Jester, Pit the Younger, or Felix Krull, I'm ready to settle for being Patrick McGowan in Danger Man. Tuesday 30th November 1965 Tonight I took part in the Petersfield Rotary Club Schools Public Speaking Competition and happily came first. The prize was three guineas. I had to give a speech on road safety as the Minister of Transport. Have I also recorded that I've won the MacDonald Senior Essay Prize? Given by Malcolm MacDonald, ex-Bedalian, ex-MP, diplomat, son of Ramsey MacDonald. the junior prize went jointly to elizabeth bingley and sappho durrell sappho is 14 very beautiful amazing hair and eyes she's difficult to know but she thinks i'm funny and we're friends she's invited me to meet her famous father um when she died sappho uh she took her own life some said that the writing she left behind suggested a not healthy relationship with her father, the poet and novelist Lawrence Turrell.

32:08I explore that again in my book, Old Boy Art. She was incredibly beautiful. Anyway, I'm recording these triumphs, not in the spirit of boasting, but because I do try to note everything down. From the library calendar for Friday the 8th of October, now on my desk, there is something noble in hearing myself ill-spoken of when I'm doing well. Alexander the Great. Oh, that's very pertinent. Do you mean to Trump? No, or to me? Oh, no, to you, because you're doing well, and so... But who's speaking ill of me? Well, I don't know, but it's good to remember that it's good to be taken down a peg or two sometimes.

32:47And I'm probably about to do that, Giles, if I can think of something cutting to say. Well, you were about to say it's the end of the year, so shut up. We've nearly got to the end of the year. Friday the 31st of December 1965. Richard Dimbleby, who has died, the Big C, is to have a memorial service in Westminster Abbey. As usual, the Bradworth household will be seeing in the new year in front of the Gogglebox, first footing with Andy Stewart and fellow members of the White Heather Club. All's well on the home front. The year has ended charmingly, in fact, with the arrival of my report. Mr Slack has clearly forgiven me for the merry evening impression I did of him.

33:27His contributions all round have been quite remarkable. Much of the excellent tone at present prevailing in the school is due to his good sense and enthusiasm. And I'm happy with the look of the chronicle too. I probably shouldn't have included my play in its entirety. All the photographs of me and Sally outside the Natural History Museum. Barney at his best. All the references to yours truly on every other page. Oh, child. But I am happy with my interview with the president of Switzerland. Brandreth. Monsieur Shoday, in Switzerland, women do not have the vote. Can you tell me why? Shoday. Because men and women are not equal.

34:11Brandreth. Do you really mean that? Shoday. Yes, I do. The sexes may be complementary, but they are certainly not equal. Man is absorbed in his professional, political, social and military life, while the woman's place is in the home. Brigadier Jemian told me that in Switzerland, when they last had a general referendum on the matter of women's suffrage, he locked his wife in the bathroom from breakfast until the polls closed. Happy New Year. Incidentally, Harriet, you know, Swiss women didn't gain the right to vote in federal elections until 1973, eight years after this. Well, they were all locked in the bathroom, that's why.

34:53Isn't that extraordinary? Very old-fashioned indeed. What is interesting is how the world has changed in my lifetime. Well, the world has changed, but obviously some things about boys haven't changed. Anyway, that's the diary. That's the diary. I'm sorry about the boasting, etc. Are you exhausted by it? No, I love it. I mean, I love the fact you put references to yourself on every other page of the school. Oh, isn't that embarrassing? It is so... That is, and clearly when it arrived, I've kept it somewhere in the boxes downstairs. I've kept the school magazine. It really is embarrassing. I think when I got it, and I even put these pictures of Sally and me, you know, in the magazine.

35:35Yeah. And the interview and my whole play, oh, play by me. Oh, it's ridiculous. It's ridiculous. What the other children must have thought of me, I don't know. but I did have very good friendships with a few people Simon Cadell was my best friend yeah I was very good friends with an older boy called Peter Harris um and with Barney was called David Creamer describe you and Simon because you've told me before that you well I realize now we were like a couple of funny middle-aged old men really well sort of smoking jackets or yes I mean we did literally I think we did wear dressing gowns smoking I think we thought we were Noel Coward and Terence Rattigan.

36:19And we did impressions of, I mean, this is the era of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and all of that. And we were pretending we were Laurence Olivier, the leading classical actor of the day, and Sir Ralph Richardson, who was a character actor. And we could do good impressions of them both. Oh, hello. In fact, we often did Sir Ralph. We loved doing Sir Ralph. Oh, hello, cocky. How are you? Oh, he was 15. I was 17. and we were doing these impressions of actors who'd been born. Ralph Richardson was born in 1904. This is 1965. And Flanagan and Alan were popular in the 1930s and 1940s and they sang songs and we would sing the songs.

36:58We knew the Noel Card songbook by heart and we just, we were at ease with one another. So you found a real soulmate. Yeah, I found a soulmate. And I think Simon wasn't very happy at the school and his parents, to keep him at the school, I don't think I realized at the time, he ran away a couple of times, got a cottage, rented a cottage near the school grounds so they could come at weekends, so it could be like a weekly boarder. I see, yeah. Because they didn't have weekly boarding and he would go and visit them at weekends and I sometimes went. I may describe it later in the diary. I mean, such sophistication I'd never known because you'd go there and there would be wine, French wine with people who understood wine tasted it, smelt it, sniffed it looked at the legs in the wine they understood it they were quite sophisticated well they were theatre folk Simon's father John Goodell I think Simon pronounced it Goodell I think the father said cattle he was Scottish and John was an agent, a theatrical agent and Donald Sinden was one of his clients I remember the first time I went to a party at their house and I was still a teenager I think Peggy Ashcroft, who was the leading actress, the Judi Dench of her day, she was at the party.

38:16So I was going, I was being thrown into these extraordinary worlds. I spent the summer, when I turned 17, in Switzerland, in the home of the head of the Swiss Army, constantly meeting the president of Switzerland. I'm in this theatrical world, thanks to knowing Simon. I'm in my own little world, too, creating my world around me. and also finding my feet as a boyfriend because I think Sally succeeds Jackie as my second serious girlfriend. We may hear less about pobs. Who knows? Oh, I'll be sad about that. I like pobs. Yeah, and I loved pobs. Oh, God, she was fun. But they were all fun. These were fun times.

39:07Oh, well, I felt very nostalgic. Feel free. We read at the beginning something from Jake's teenage diary. If you've got extracts from your teenage diaries, maybe about your experiences with boys and girls when you were a teenager between 14 and 17 like me, feel free to send them in and we can share them with people. Then I think I won't feel so bad about being the sort of person I was because you're reassuring me. We were all like that once upon a time. Yeah. I think it's safe to say that no one that writes in will be anything like you, Giles Brandreth. Thank you, Harriet Jane. We've had a happy day.

39:45Thank you very much. There'll be a proper rosebud on Friday with somebody really interesting, really remarkable, an achiever. Till then. Bye from me and bye from... Me.

40:07Thank you.

40:37Thank you.