Patricia Hodge

0:00Hey, it's Paige from Giggly Squad. Summer gave your home a workout. Cookouts, long weekends, probably at-home improvement lists that never quite got finished. And now it's fall's turn. And Lowe's is making the changeover easy with their Labor Day deals. Right now, save up to 45 % off select major appliances. So if something's been on your list, this is the time. Doing laundry? You can save an extra$100 on select laundry pairs. And if you're getting the yard ready for fall, head over and grab three bags of Miracle-Gro 0.75 cubic foot garden soil for just$10. So don't miss these Labor Day deals at Lowe's.

0:35Valid through September 9th while supplies last. Selection varies by location. See Lowe's.com for more details. Soil offer excludes Alaska and Hawaii. I'm Jake Stouck, co-founder and CEO of Serval. We built Serval to automate the IT work that slows companies down. Onboarding, password resets, access to applications, my laptop stopped working. While employees wait for help, their real work is put on hold. IT desperately wants to automate this work, and that's why they need Serval. You just tell Serval what you want to automate in plain English, and it's built. No drag-and-drop workflows, no expensive consultants.

1:13Employees get unblocked, and IT teams go from drowning in tickets to building what actually matters. With Serval, IT becomes the AI engine powering the entire company. This is a new way to run IT. We guarantee you'll automate 50 % of all tickets and we'll prove it to you in a free four-week pilot. Go to serval.com slash tickets. That's S-E-R-V-A-L dot com slash tickets.

1:46you must remember this a kiss is just a kiss but rosebud well that's really satisfying that lasts i mean a kiss it comes it goes and who knows where it leads but rosebud well i hope you know it's going to lead to an interesting hour with an unusual person who has a remarkable story to tell today is no exception cue the music

2:30Hello again. This is Giles Brandreth here again with another very special guest. Yes, again, because this is Rosebud. and we like to introduce you to people whose faces and names may be familiar but about whom you don't know maybe as much as you would like. Well, the person I'm introducing today is one of my favourite people. I've known her for a very long time and I love her very much. She's a brilliant actress. It's Patricia Hodge, known on screen, well, I first, I think, saw her on screen, playing Phyllida Erskine Brown in Rumpel of the Bailey in the late 1970s. She went on doing that for years.

3:10Then, of course, Jemima Shaw in the Jemima Shaw Investigates series. Then, of course, people loved her when she played Penny in Miranda for quite a few years, playing, of course, Miranda Hart's mum. And currently, she is Mrs. Pumphrey in All Creatures, Great and Small. She's a brilliant actress. She's also a wonderful singer. I have heard her sing in cabaret and I would say she is perhaps the most exciting of her kind cabaret singer that I know she's a wonderful actress on stage, on screen she's been a friend of mine for I suppose half a century we first met through my childhood friend Simon Cadell they appeared together on stage in a show about Noel Card and Gertrude Lawrence anyway, that was then, this is now I've known her and her family for a long time I knew and liked very much her husband, who died in 2016, 10 years ago, with dementia.

4:06She's going to talk about that in this conversation, which I think will surprise you, because the beautiful persona of Patricia Hodge that you see on television and on the big screen is one thing. It's always stylish. She is such a perfectionist as an artist. She really knows her craft. She delivers brilliantly. but she's often cast as a certain type of person. She isn't that type of person. She is one of the warmest but also most interesting people I know and her telling her story of her unexpected upbringing, her career and her marriage, I think you will find fascinating, entertaining and ultimately very moving.

4:52This is indeed a special Rosebud with the great Patricia Hodge.

5:10Let's begin with your name. It's Patricia Hodge on the billboard. It's Patricia Anne Hodge. Is it Pat? Is it Trish? Is it Patricia? Is it Hodge? Is it Patricia Anne? What do you like? Why do you call these names? It's all of the above. really what happened I was called Patricia until I was 10 and then I went to the grammar school and from day one they called me Pat and I thought it was rather grown up and then I grew out of being called Pat because Pat Hodge is not the best sound in the world it has a lack of fluency so then when I went to drama school I was known as Trish from day one and there are to complicate it even more there are people that also call me tricia then when i was phoning people i didn't know what they knew me as so i started to say oh it's hodge and so a lot of people call me hodge but even that they there's hodglet that's hodgy oh yeah i quite like hodglet yeah it may be we'll begin with patricia when we're getting that's the safe one yeah but then we're getting a bit firm it'll be hodge and then when we're getting cheeky it'll be hodglet the ann where Where does that come from?

6:22Oh, just because, you know, my parents. That's the sort of middle name that you gave people in 1946. And 1946 is the year. My gosh, we're celebrating a special birthday. So it is... A bit later in the year, Giles, not just yet. The 20th of September. 29th. 29th of September, 1946. That's right. Michaelmas Day. Perfect. That's when you were born. But what I want to know, Patricia, is what is your very first memory? that's a fairly easy one i would take you back to um a large red brick house it was a large victorian house inst peters avenue in cleathorpes in lincolnshire which after the war my father and my my my mother's sister's husband so my uncle were both demobbed from the royal air force and looked and didn't know what to do and my a very wise grandfather who I never knew because he died the year before I was born.

7:25But he said people will always need to eat and drink. And so they bought this old house for flumpence and converted it themselves into a hotel, small hotel. And my first, my earliest memory of being in that hotel and being in my cot in my parents' room. I never had my own room there because there was no space. And hearing Put Another Nickel In In the Nickelodeon, which was the fashionable song of the time. How does it go? 1946? Put another nickel in in the Nickelodeon And my father used to sing it. So this would be about 1947, 48? Well, I doubt 47. It would be 48 slash 49. So I was probably two or two, three, something like that.

8:17So who are these parents of yours? Give us your father first. Who was he? What was his name? What did he do before the RAF? Well, he was called Eric. He was brought up in Southport. I know he left school at 16 and went to evening school to learn a bit more and joined the RAF very young and ended up in Palestine before the war. He was there for about four or five years. So when was he born? 1916.

8:47And the Royal Air Force became his career. And then, of course, you know, the war happened. But I have many, many photographs of him out in what was then Palestine. So he joined as a young boy. Yeah. Fresh from school, he joined the RAF. Absolutely. And that was the making of him, was it? Yes. I don't think he had the most illustrious career in the Royal Air Force. No, I don't think he got anything beyond flight lieutenant. but he did war service the whole other way through the war and that's how he met my mother because he was stationed in Immingham which is just right by Grimsby and Cleethorpes and it was a dance.

9:29What was her name? Her name is Marion Phillips. she was the daughter of Percy Phillips and Edith Phillips and they were, you know, my grandmother was born in 1893 and they brought up their family in Cleethorpes But your grandparents lived there, you didn't live there No, well I did for a while because my grandmother was on her own for a long time And when my parents, the hotel I've just told you about in Cleethorpe, they ran that for a few years. But then my uncle decided he wanted to go back into the Royal Air Force. He'd loved life in the forces. And my father, instead of buying it off him, which obviously he should have done, actually then went to work for a local catering company for a while.

10:20And I don't think he enjoyed that very much. And they heard that Hewitt Brothers, who were the local brewers who owned all the inns and the hotels and everything in the area, were looking for new hotel managers. So they applied and they got accepted to train properly to run bigger places. And I remember them coming to my grandmother's and they said, we've been accepted. The only thing is we've got to have six months training and we're not allowed to have the children with us. will you have the children so we lived there with my grandmother for six months so you know I was doing um I was doing that lovely um uh inheritance tracks the BBC inheritance tracks not long ago and my inheritance track and it was a Christmas one so it was it was very particular but my inheritance inheritance track was the Debussy um dolly no foray sorry the foray Dolly, because that used to introduce Listen With Mother.

11:22Oh yes, Hummit. I know what you mean. Ya ba ba ba ba ba ya da de de de da ba da de de de that one. Yes. And every day on her old Bakelite radio I would listen to that and there was the room in which I listened to it and used to rock my doll to it. So we're talking about rather a lovely childhood. Yes. Before we get to the detail of that childhood your parents you say met on the dance floor i think so they i think they met at a you know it was an raf all the all the lads that they are needed entertaining and all the local and how old were they at the time they got together my mother was 23 when she got married my father was 27 he was four years old and what what was your mother like as a person What was her personality?

12:10She was very vivacious. Oh. Much more than I am, I would say. She was a looker. Oh. She was always very, she was very artistic. If the war hadn't happened, she would have gone to art school. But because of the war, she couldn't. So she went to work for the telephone exchange and ended up in Chester, funnily enough. That's another place that we, and she was there for quite a, I think she was there for at least a year, if not two. In the telephone exchange, putting calls through, sitting in a line with other young women. Exactly, she was a telephone operator. Because, you know, you had to do things for the war effort.

12:57She was glamorous. I imagine at that period, was she somebody who smoked when she was younger? Yes, she smoked. I mean, I knew her as a smoker. Both my parents were. Did you drink? Ultimately killed my father. Well, yes, they did. But, well, I think my father probably lent into being a bit more indulgent. My mother was never. But if you run a hotel, that's, you know. But Depicta, if you were playing her, what notes would you give to yourself about how to play your mother? Oh, God. I think walking into a room and, you know, immediately sort of engaging with everybody, very bright and breezy and very, yeah, very positive.

13:43Very, very positive person. And did men have an eye for her? Yes. And did that have ever a problem for her or did she handle it well? Or did she give in to it? Oh, I think she loved every moment of it. I don't know how my father handled it, but, well, I don't know. Was it a bit, I mean, be serious for a moment, was it a bit of an issue for her? I mean, for him? Well, they were never going to tell me, were they? Did you ever observe it? I think I knew that there were probably infidelities that went on, on both sides. But it's not anything that I ever engaged with. And I look back and think, good for them.

14:28But overall, were they contented people? Oh, yes. Well, they had an enduring... Well, 44 years. My father died actually, sadly, a bit too early at the age of 72. But then, you know, he died as a result of a lot of smoking and too much drink, I think. I'm really asking, did they do better than rub along together? Well, they were partners in business. You have to remember that. And I think they did very, very well, if you think about it. Running hotels. Running and there was, you know, the flagship hotel of Grimsby. They got promoted very quickly once they'd done this training. I think we had about six months in a hotel that was called the Cliff Hotel.

15:10It doesn't exist now, but on the seafront in Cleethorpes. And within six months, they were promoted to the biggest hotel in Grimsby, which is where all the, any celebrity visiting Grimsby would stay there. And Grimsby in those days is an important place. It was the biggest, no, the busiest, should I say, the busiest fishing port in the world. What? Grimsby was once the busiest fishing port in the world. On planet Earth, this was the busiest fishing port. That's what I was always told. How extraordinary. And your parents managed but did not own the largest hotel. Exactly. So anyone who came to Grimsby stayed there.

15:50Stayed at the hotel. And so can you name names of the sort of people who were there? Well, gosh, out of a clutch, Katie Boyle, if you remember. There's a lovely story, which I'll tell you about her in a minute. Violet Carson, when Coronation Street had just started. And I always remember going in, and it was the wonder. This was where the whole world of theatre opened up to me. The wonder of somebody who was so different in real life from what they were on the screen. and she was beautifully made up and her hair beautifully coiffed and things and I'd seen, I saw the very first episode of Coronation Street.

16:30Gosh, 1958. And I even remember some of the lines from it. So it was extraordinary for me to see Ina Sharple sitting there and she spoke absolutely beautifully like this to me and she said, you enjoy, you enjoy? And I said, yes, yes. She said, now I'm going to tell you something. I don't just wear one hairnet I wear three because otherwise the camera wouldn't be able to pick up that I was wearing because of course you know it was fuzzy old black and white television and she told me these one or two secrets and I remember being full of awe and wonder at this whole marvellous thing called the theatre and the acting profession then we had people like the Man for a Man pop group stayed with us and Paul Jones was living it Yes.

17:17Oh, she was so good looking. He still is really good looking. And my sister always boasts about how she ended up sitting on his knee for a while. But then, here's the irony, that of course many years later, I played the lead in a show called Pippin in the West End, directed by Bob Fosse, and Paul Jones played Pippin, and I played his lover in it. And I'll tell you, rewind to Katie Boyle, who, for people that don't know, was a big, very glamorous artist. presenter wasn't she she was so glamorous famously she presented the eurovision song contest and she spoke about eight languages she did and she had a pretty lively love life oh yeah she was remarkable eventually married peter saunders the man who owned the mouse the mouse trap man and she advertised camé soap that's right but she was so beautiful so glamorous so delightful so she would always tell the story and goodness no i mean i think if my parents had known they'd have been very cross but of course it was the days when people had autograph books and didn't take selfies and we knew that she was staying and that unless we got her autograph that morning that she would have moved out by the time we came back from school so my sister and I went knocked on her bedroom door and this she opened and she was in a you know what would they would call then a penoir a negligee whatever and she said hello and we just said could we have your autograph please and she obliged She said, of course, which was jolly nice of her.

18:47Anyway, cut. I was doing, when Michael Codron bought the Vaudeville Theatre from Peter Saunders, I was doing a Michael Frayn play. And, of course, Peter and Katie were invited to the first night because it was the first time Peter hadn't opened the, you know, it was a courtesy thing. They invited him. And delivered to the stage door was a little bowl of African violets with a little note saying, this time I am the devoted fan from Katie. And honestly, I think it's one of the most moving things that ever happened to me in my life. It was so sweet. Very special person. I went to her funeral. And on one side of the church were a whole range of people who all seemed to come from the Philippines.

19:36And they did. They were people who had been her carers in the last 15 years of her life because she lived a long time and wasn't at all well in her last years. So one half of the church was full of people from the Philippines who had looked after her. The other half of the church was men, very elegant-looking men in their 70s, 80s, 90s, and there was one who was over 100. These were Katie's gentlemen admirers. It was fascinating. She was wonderful. Let's nail your childhood now, your early childhood. You and a sister, you're the only two children. Your parents who are in business together, she is the hostess the glamorous one uh he is more he's more shy how do we he was he was a very very sweet man my my father um the staff always adored him because he was very fair very reasonable um yes i think i think the balance was very good and he was very diligent and the thing you know we people say where where does work ethic come from and i think a lot of it comes from your parents and you have to remember they worked seven days a week 50 weeks of the year every single day and evening i think the probably a sunday night was the nearest they got to putting their feet up and um when these two weeks that we had as holiday came up they could not leave the hotel until the stockbrokers had been in and had done a complete stock take in case well well of course they it was you know part of the yes the the man because they were managing the hotel they weren't exactly so they weren't and they had to be had to be i mean you know you were sort of guilty until proven innocent that they had to look and see that all the books balanced and unless they did we were not allowed to leave the premises so my poor father had this whole thing that he had to go through i mean they were lovely the stock takers were lovely it wasn't an unpleasant but You could not go until.

21:37And we used to sit and wait with the car all loaded up ready for the holiday. And then he would finally leave the building and get in the car. And we'd drive down to Dover and get on the cross-channel ferry. And he would drive to wherever we were going because my cousins lived abroad for a while. And so we would meet up with them and, you know, wherever. Can you remember your first foreign holiday where you went then? Yes. The very first one was to Dinard. Oh, yes. In Brittany. A little hotel there. And I think, I think it's one, we went on something called Silver City Airways that for a short while took the car on the plane.

22:21Oh, I don't remember that. Yeah. You went to somewhere like Lyd and drove onto the aeroplane. That's it. Yeah. Those are the days. Yeah. Oh. So, your childhood. Ferryfield Airport. Ferryfield Airport. Now, why do I remember that? It's because we're talking about it. So you were brought up in a hotel. Yeah. What's it like being a little girl in a hotel? Well, of course, it gives you a much bigger perspective on life. And I've reflected on this a bit, that because I saw so much of human life there, and we talk about the class system in this country and there it was because the hotel had been built during Victoria and Albert's reign and they had come and opened this whole wonderful development in Grimsby because of the fishing industry.

23:20Everything was royal, so there was the Victoria dock, there was the Albert dock, there were the Royal Victoria Gardens, whatever and this was the Royal Hotel and it was right by the dock gates. So my sister and I had a bedroom. Which you shared. Which, well, we shared some of the time. It depends whether we were getting on or not. There were two bedrooms. Sometimes we said we wanted to be together. Sometimes we wanted to be miles apart. But immediately below was the street that went to the dock gates. So every morning we were woken by the dockers in their clogs, scraping their clogs along the pavement to show their passes at the dock gaze.

24:01And then also what you have to know is down below us was a door to something called the Vault's Bar, which was an old Victorian mirrored, you know, that old etched glass, all of that, with the big beer pumps and everything, run by a guy called George who had no teeth, mainly because they'd all been punched out. And I think the one time I was, they always kept me well away. You can't go in there. but there was usually blood on the floor because the skippers used to come off with their pockets stuffed with cash and they'd fall straight into this vaults bar and I mean it was, you know, it was rough and then if you came round the front then there was the lounge bar where ladies used to put their hats on in the evening and would sit and have a Dubonnet and lemonade or something and there were drafts and cards and all of that stuff.

24:57And all the drinks had a cherry on top. And then you went upstairs to the cocktail bar where all the elite went. And you were allowed, you know, to run around the hotel? Did you become favourites with some of the... Yes, no, we knew all the staff. They were very... I mean, I think people were very tolerant of us. We were probably pretty well behaved, except when my cousin stayed, when we used to do this very elaborate game of hide and seek. and it was a huge hotel. So you can imagine it was the best game of high... And we're talking about many rooms. Oh, yes. I think there were about 54 bedrooms.

25:34Right. And three, there was a banqueting, there was a whole ballroom. So this is a big business. And then a couple of banqueting rooms. It was big. I mean, if I showed you a photograph. Yeah. So it must have been built about 1840, I think. And then what had happened during the war, it had been requisitioned by the Navy and it was called Beaver 3. It was a naval base because of its strategic position. And when my parents took it over, the brewery had only just got it back a couple of years before and it obviously had to spend a lot of money reverting it. But the top floor still hadn't been done when we moved in.

26:12And I remember being taken up there and the walls were full of scribblings by the naval officers and all kinds of charts and, you know, relics of the war. So this is quite, I mean, I very much as a child associated hotels with romance in the broader sense. Agatha Christie, novel set in hotels. I read a book called The Confessions of Felix Krull by Thomas Mann, which has a waiter in a hotel who gets up to all sorts of things. Eloise at the Plaza Hotel in New York. Do you remember those books? I didn't know. Oh, they were lovely books. Anyway, the romance of hotel life. Is that where you began to have your romantic theatrical longings?

26:52Is that the origin of it? The ballroom? Well, the ballroom was, I mean, I used to put on shows in the ballroom. If you've got a space like that and you have this sort of, goodness knows where, you know, this performing thing. But I was always, I was passionate about dancing. I mean, that was my entry, really. There's no, in your forebears, the grand bones. No, no, no, no, absolutely. No, my mother and her sister were, my grandparents believed in education in all its sense. So they played the piano early and they did singing and they went to ballet and so on. So, of course, they passed all, they did all that with us.

27:32So I was sent to piano from the age of six and I had to beg to go to ballet classes, but I started that at the age of nine, I think. And they could afford this, even though they didn't own the hotel, they were reasonably, you were comfortable. Well, everything they had, they spent on us. Oh. They did. I mean, they never owned a house until they retired and then they could only afford a little sort of two up, two down. So their income, though okay, was entirely devoted to the girls. And my mother always dressed beautifully. She was always very, you know, her artistic. and she used to that's the other thing that my father was the one employed my mother had no employment at all she worked for nothing she was the landlord's wife she was but because she was so she used to do all the flower arrangements and she'd get paid a little bit for doing all of those the flowers all over the hotel she did and she used to as a sideline also there was a local department store called Petrels and they asked her in the days before photography became a thing, to do the line drawings of fashion for the next season and she would do all the she would be given the outfits and then she'd have to draw them So they were getting the plus one for free Yeah they were Fantastic

29:07Hey, it's Paige from Giggly Squad. Summer gave your home a workout. Cookouts, long weekends, probably at-home improvement lists that never quite got finished. And now it's fall's turn. And Lowe's is making the changeover easy with their Labor Day deals. Right now, save up to 45 % off select major appliances. So if something's been on your list, this is the time. Doing laundry? You can save an extra$100 on select laundry pairs. And if you're getting the yard ready for fall, head over and grab three bags of Miracle-Gro 0.75 cubic foot garden soil for just$10. So don't miss these Labor Day deals at Lowe's, valid through September 9th while supplies last.

29:44Selection varies by location. See Lowe's.com for more details. Soil offer excludes Alaska and Hawaii. In a world where AI is changing every role in every industry, knowing who actually has deep expertise matters more than ever. Upwork connects you with the highly skilled freelance professionals with proven track records, so you can hire with confidence. Upwork gives your business fast access to highly skilled specialists with deep expertise, so you can fill critical skill gaps, launch projects faster, and scale support up or down without committing to full-time headcount. With Business Plus, you can access the top 1 % of talent on Upwork.

30:21AI-powered shortlisting delivers a curated shortlist of top freelancers matched to your goals in under six hours. No endless searching required. Thousands of growing businesses already trust Upwork to hire highly skilled freelance professionals for everything from one-off projects to ongoing support. It's free to sign up, and posting a job is easy. Visit Upwork.com right now and post your job for free. That is Upwork.com to connect with top talent ready to help your business grow. That's U-P-W-O-R-K dot com. Upwork.com. Hi, guys. It's Paige from Giggly Squad, and oh my god, I've been binging the funniest TV show.

30:57fx is adult it's about five roommates living in new york i mean who would ever live in a house without many roommates they're leaning on each other to navigate love work friendship and family not relatable to me and hannah at all while tackling pressing questions of your 20s like what if the person who inherited your fake id is cooler than you ever were why does being around your family make you regress into your worst self and how do you tell your roommates that you have other friends. FX's Adults, all episodes now streaming on Hulu.

31:33But they were busy, they were happy, they were getting on with it. They loved it. Were they almost distant to you because they were working all the time? Well, I think they were incredibly loving parents. There's no question. We were very secure. but we didn't have the attention from them that a lot of people did and therefore in the evenings we were safe. We were in a flat at the top of the place but we would be left up there on our own and of course there was nobody invigilating homework or anything and so although we both went to the local grammar school I think we did not perform to the level that we should have done because, you know, I mean, unless you're in extremely bookish child and my head was always you know in creating a dance or you know doing and why do you think your head was why were you using the ballroom to put on your own shows what where does this come from i think i was so caught by anything by drama on television by we had a on the pier in cleathorpes for many years there was something called the east coast dance festival which was as I remember.

32:48I think it was in August. And I was absolutely, I was addicted to it. I took part in it a lot. But I used to go and watch the dancing. And there were all kind, you know, there was everything from soloists to groups to ballet. It was a wonderful thing. And I used to do my own marking of it. And I was just, how can one know? It's just, that's the thing that catches you. And who as performers were your heroines and heroes at the time that you'd seen on television? Well, obviously, people that ran children's television until a certain age. But the very significant thing that happened, my mother obviously cottoned on to the fact I was caught by performing arts.

33:34and she took me with another friend of hers who had a daughter one weekend to London. This is where my mother was so good. She was always, always the next thing, you know. Life was exciting. It was exciting. And it would always be something to look forward to. And she was very, you know, we're going to do this. And I think that's such a lovely thing to have. And they took us to London. and London was like the Emerald City to me and she took us to see a show called Where the Rainbow Ends. Oh, at the Scarlet Theatre. Well, then it went to the Victoria Palace when I saw it and Anton Dolan was in it playing St George.

34:18It included a pageant really of all of English history of life. Yes, it was like a musical, exactly. It was a celebration of, well, of nationhood. Yes, of nationhood, absolutely, with this fairy story about these children that lose their parents and find them at the end of the rainbow and their quest. So the romance of that just was inside you? Was inside. And I looked at the programme and it said children from the Italia Conti stage school. And I thought, oh, I didn't know the way. I didn't know children could be on stage. I didn't know. Oh, so then I said, this is where I want to go. I want to go to this school.

34:50And my parents both said, don't be so ridiculous. You're not going to go there. You won't learn anything. You're in Grimsby and T-Dobbs anyway. Exactly. You can't go. And so I had to, but that was the goal. And so really, my whole quest to go to drama school began with that at the age of 10. But then I started to get into school plays, but through my own endeavours, because again, you know, schools used to judge you on your academic performance because I was not performing to the best of my ability, for reasons I've told you. It was always the clever ones that were put into school plays. And so a couple of friends of mine and I got together and we wrote a review and we rehearsed it after school and we got given detentions for staying in school too long.

35:38However, we wrote this review and it was the early days of commercial television and we put adverts into it. We took off the adverts and we asked, went to the headmistress and said, can we perform this to the school at the end of term? She's certainly not. But she said what you can do. She said, we'll let you do it to the next door classroom. so we had to push all the desks back and we did this review to the next door class but and these are two people that I have continued to know all my life the two main English teachers in the school came and stood at the back to watch us and the next term our names were on a blackboard saying please see me and they called us in and they said we thought you'd like to audition for the school play and then I got into This is very moving Well and therefore I went on knowing them all my life because that's where it changed But it's interesting how a child can create her own life Well You and your friends by doing this review actually changed and made the rest of your life Yeah Well certainly did certainly did for me And the two children coming the two teachers coming in to support you them doing that Marvellous Yeah Just before we get into all of that as a little girl You obviously had the dolls.

36:55You loved the dolls. Can you remember your favourite doll, what she was called? Yes. There was a new thing that came out called Beauty Skin, which was a doll. They still had the sort of plastic head, but the body was covered in this. It was a sort of rubber, but it was very soft. So the baby was squidgy rather than the hard dolls that had existed. And I begged to have one for Christmas. I was longing. And I think that's right. I'd been, when my parents were doing all this learning, I think we were allowed to go and see them one day. And there was a little American girl staying in this particular hotel.

37:33It was one that they were doing relief work in. And she had this doll and she had come from America. And they hadn't quite arrived. But anyway, I got this doll for Christmas. And I called her Elizabeth because it was the Queen's name. And so I thought, if it's the Queen's name, it must be the most beautiful name in the universe. You're a sweet child. I know you very much. Who is your best friend outside of the family, outside of your sister, a little girl? Well, my cousin Richard, who had been born only 11 months after me, We were, he was, you know, he was the person I cared deepest about. And Rosemary, his sister.

38:21We were very close to those two. Give me, before we get to you at school, give me your best and worst adventure in hotel life as a girl before you left home in the hotel years. Well, apart from, you know, ogling the celebrities that came. Now, one of those was Billy Cotton, Billy Cotton Band Show. Oh, the father of Bill Cotton. Exactly. The television executive. His father. Wakey, wakey. Somebody stole my girl, wasn't it? That was his signature tune. And he, at the time, was, as often these band leaders were, their lead singer was their girlfriend. Ah. And he had, now what was her name? Doreen, somebody.

39:05Anyway, they arrived at the hotel. and I remember standing on the upper landing and looking over. There was quite a big staircase and they were coming up the stairs and she was wearing a fur coat and diamond earrings and all that and I thought, oh, that's the life for me. Because he was an unlikely prospect as a lover because he was a round man with owl-type glasses. Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. He wasn't necessarily a catch in that department. No, well, you know. But he had a band. And Katie would say to you about Peter Saunders but I always remember her saying to me, you know, he's not the best looking man but she said he's very nice yeah well that counts for a lot it counts for a lot so that was the sort of those were highlights really um and a bad moment any bad experiences any frightening customers being chased along mystery corridors in the hotel no i think i think if i'm being really honest this gets a bit dark but there was one Porter that worked for us who behaved improperly to my sister and I and we've talked about it since it didn't get he did improper he you know behaved like he was your best uncle but then things were going on you know but you coped yes actually yes and it hasn't has it destroyed my life absolutely not no you look back at it and say well that's what was happening was he found out and sacked and moved on Yes, absolutely, absolutely.

40:34But, yeah, there were the odd things like that. But really what I'm getting at is I think it's quite strange being brought up in a hotel. Yeah. Because you're meeting, well, as you say, you see all classes, but also you're seeing the grown-up world all around you. Well, being an observer of human behaviour. And I would, you know, sometimes hide behind a curtain and see the brides. There were a lot of weddings that happened and see beautiful brides. and it was an existence very rich. When your school, the grammar school, was it a girls' school? It was a girls' school then, yeah. When did boys come into your life?

41:16Can you remember your first crush? Well, probably too late, probably too late. I was at the grammar school until I was always a year ahead because my birthday at the end of September. At that point, the cut-off was on October 1st, so I only got in by two days so I was always a year more or less a year younger than almost everybody else so I did the 11 plus when I was 10 and I did O levels when I was 15 and by this time I think the limitations of living in a hotel I had no neighborhood near I couldn't go and knock on the door of a friend two doors away everything had to be at a distance and uh i'd i was very glad that i got into the school play um and i remember the headmistress who later sort of claimed me a lot but she stopped me in the car and said well patricia we've we found something you really can do which was backhanded compliment but she did later what was the play what was the part?

42:18Well, the play was, it's something that's never performed. Lady Precious Stream. Oh, a Chinese play. Yeah. Indeed. And you had the look for it and the demeanour. You probably won't be allowed to play it now. I played a character called Silverstream. There was Golden Stream, which was played by an older girl, Silverstream. And... His swing is the name of the author. That's right. Something like that. That's it. That's it. Gosh, I haven't seen that. Isn't memory extraordinary? I know. I know. So you say you came late to boys. So I came late to boys because then what I was going to say was then I did actually beg to go away to school.

42:55A lot of my friends from there were at boarding schools. And so I just went to do A-levels to a wonderful school in Northwood and Middlesex. Oh, a long way away from it. Yes, well, it was a boarding, yes. And I had the best two years of my life there. It was wonderful. How define the best two years of my life? Well, listen, at that point, I mean, certainly. And I would say that was a real game changer because we were a particularly wonderful year. And if I say to you that we're all of us still the best of friends and we get together as frequently as we can, even at our age, we're all devoted to each other.

43:41I was so lucky to land on that particular set of girls. What was the essence of the friendship? Why was it such fun? I think it was just, you know, we all had a shared sense of humour. And, of course, they were marvellous on plays. And so I did loads of stuff there. They really allowed me to survive. And we're getting to the first boyfriend. The first moment. Yes, yes. The first moment. The first crush, the first inklings of... Well, it took a while. It took quite a long time for me. I went out with people, but I felt I was doing it because that was what you did. But none of them particularly interested me.

44:26There was no stirrings? No, it really happened. And I can't name the person, but when I eventually got to Lambda, because when I left school, everybody said, don't be so ridiculous, you're not going to be an actress. So again, I was stopped and I was only 17. So I thought, well, I better do something. It shuts everybody up. And I always loved children. So I thought, well, I'll train to be an infant teacher, which I did for three years. And then I taught for a year. Well, that's a commitment. This is four years of your life. Yeah, exactly. But I was able to do drama as a main subject at the college.

44:59And then if you didn't do a year's probation, then you weren't fully qualified. So I did that. But in that year, it happened that a girl who'd been at the college with me was going out with a boy at a neighbouring college who got into RADA. And he helped me to know how to go about applying for drama school. So I got into Lambda in that year. Which is the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. To which I'm devoted still. And can you remember your audition pieces? Yes, I can. I did only because they were suggested to me. I mean, I didn't know where to look. If you can believe this, I did a bit of Martha from Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf.

45:42That was a tough one. Very strange. And I did some Rosalind. From As You Like It. From As You Like It. Actually, they're two good ones. Rosalind's Speech to Phoebe in Why I Pray You, who might be your mother that you insult, exult and all at once over the wretched. That one. So those were the two. And then I sang, I think I sang Wouldn't It Be Lovely, which was, you know. Why not, from my valet? Exactly. And if you ask me who was my inspiration for many, many, well, in fact, it's never gone away. From the first moment I saw her singing something on a Christmas show was our friend Julie Andrews, who I just thought was the most.

46:29And fortunately, I got to know her. I mean, later on. Well, tell us about her. I mean, she is and was impeccable in the way that you are often impeccable. Well, an aim for perfection and indeed purity of voice. How did you get to know her and what is your feeling about her? I got to know her because we had a mutual friend and we were introduced through the mutual friend. But what had happened was I'd done a film called Betrayal, which was just coming out. And Julie and Blake Edwards, her husband, her very brilliant director husband, happened to be in London. And they always were avid film buffs.

47:17Of course, it's the way the West Coast runs. and he saw me in Betrayal and said, oh my God, this is just what I need for a film he was making with James Garner and Bruce Willis. And so I went over to LA and played this role in the film. Once you're over there on the West Coast, then they embrace you. So within a day of arriving, it was come over on Sunday night, we're having supper, we watch a movie and so I spent quite a bit of time. And what would I say about her? I think I feel everything the same that I always did since I first saw her at the age of 11. She's absolutely the most enchanting and lovely person you could ever wish to meet.

48:05Yes, and I do think that there are aspects of her performance, the clarity, the perfection, the purity, all of that, that you think is important to do. You've emulated her in some ways. She's been a role model. Well, maybe, yes. I mean, you never want to copy somebody. I think subliminally that there's a degree of that, maybe. I think we're different. I don't want the name of this first boyfriend. What I'm wanting to get from you, because I can see you at the hotel, I can see you with your dolls, I can see you. I want to know the stirrings in you. if you can describe for us the loveliness, the excitement, why was it special, your first, having been out on dates and thought, oh, this is not very interesting, I can do better than this.

48:58What happened and why was it special? Well, it was somebody I was at Lambda with, but he was two years older.

49:10and it was just one of those things when you're not looking for it and he asked me out and I just remember sitting over the dinner table and just in that moment falling in love.

49:25And I thought, oh my God, that's what it is. Good. And as an actress, you're on screen. How do you, having had that experience, how do you recreate that so it's credible when we are watching it? Well, I think it never leaves you there, does it? So do you rethink it in your head at that moment? Yes, yes, yes. Yeah. Good. Did that out of interest? Providing you're getting the right thing back. Ah. And did you in that instance? Oh, yeah. Oh, good. So it was a two-way street. Oh, yes. No, no, no. No, it was. It was. I mean, ultimately it didn't work out. But it was, you know, it was. Yes, it was a major sort of experience in my life.

50:09And Lambda was a major experience. You had good time? Wonderful. What was your best moment of the Lambda years and your worst? Probably my worst was, I think I was about halfway through the second year, and there was a sort of hint that they didn't feel that they were getting anywhere with me and that, you know, maybe they'd done all they could. and that was very good. It was very good that I had that because it was a shock and I thought, God, I'd better step up. But there was one particular member of staff who said, if you lose her, you lose me as well. And I think that was a seismic change for me.

50:56What weren't you doing that you then had to do? Oh, I think I was just not opening up enough. You were containing yourself. Yes, there was an inhibition. Yeah, yeah. Which I think, to a certain extent, I lost a lot of it by the time I left Lambda. But the time that it changed more was when about, let me get this right, about three years after I left. And I'd done things in the West End by that time and so on. But I was asked to do a play at the Bush Theatre by a lovely director called Claude Watham. who'd done a lot in television. It's a small theatre in Shepherd's Bush. Very small, very immersive theatre in Shepherd's Bush.

51:37But when you've got the audience sitting as close as you are to me, which is a listener about just over a metre, you can't lie. You can't. You can't present. You have to be. And that was a major game changer for me. You can't present. You have to be. That is the essence of acting, is it? Yeah. Well, presentation has It has its place You're doing a huge show at Drury Lane And it's a big musical, you've got to present your number Oh, absolutely But inside all that You have to completely give yourself over And that was Anyway, but I had a wonderful time at Lambda So you asked me, my worst moment Best moment

52:24There's some good moments I don't know really there were several several high but was there a moment when you thought yes I can do it I'm not going to go back to teaching and I think once you'd worked in a fish finger factory that was way back that was a sort of holiday job I'm not going back to teaching this is me I can do it when was the moment in your head you thought it was gradual I think Clive Swift the actor Clive Swift directed me in a piece called The Duenna. Oh, yes. And he was terrifically supportive to me. I mean, he really, he made me believe something that I suppose I hadn't felt until then.

53:16And then that was added to later. We did a musical that was sort of written for us by the head of the music department there. But I had a part in that and I had a particular number to do. and there were some very grown up people in the profession that came to it and for years afterwards were so supportive to me and said we always singled you out, we knew. Which is a lovely thing, you know.

53:52I'm Jake Stouck, co-founder and CEO of Serval. We built Serval to automate the IT work that slows companies down. Onboarding, password resets, access to applications, my laptop stopped working. While employees wait for help, their real work is put on hold. IT desperately wants to automate this work, and that's why they need Serval. You just tell Serval what you want to automate in plain English, and it's built. No drag-and-drop workflows, no expensive consultants. Employees get unblocked and IT teams go from drowning in tickets to building what actually matters. With Serval, IT becomes the AI engine powering the entire company.

54:31This is a new way to run IT. We guarantee you'll automate 50 % of all tickets and we'll prove it to you in a free four-week pilot. Go to serval.com slash tickets. That's serval.com slash tickets.

54:51Think of a toilet as just an everyday object. Your entire perspective shifts the moment you experience a Kohler smart toilet. Design changes everything, transforming a basic routine into something extraordinary. With standout aesthetics and intuitive controls, these are functional works of art. Stunning design that never sacrifices performance. Enjoy customizable features for elevated comfort and convenience. It's more than a fixture. It's a cleaner routine and a more refined space. Experience the difference of Kohler Smart Toilets. Find more at Kohler.com. Hi guys, it's Paige from Giggly Squad and oh my god I've been binging the funniest TV show.

55:33FX's Adult, it's about five roommates living in New York. I mean who would ever live in a house with that many roommates? They're leaning on each other to navigate love, work, friendship, and family. Not relatable to me and Hannah at all. While tackling pressing questions of your 20s like, what if the person who inherited your fake ID is cooler than you ever were? Why does being around your family make you regress into your worst self? And how do you tell your roommates that you have other friends? FX's Adults, all episodes now streaming on Hulu.

56:10I think you've had the most wonderful golden career in many ways. I'm sure there have been times when you haven't been working, but to me you always seem to be working. I mentioned your name to people and they say two things in particular. You'll guess what they are. Can you guess what they are that people say? I've asked the last few days saying Patricia Hodge. They have said, depending I suppose on their age, either Rumpole of the Bailey, which is a long time ago now, and Miranda which you played Miranda's mum so I suppose that's obvious stuff for you if you want to put in a time capsule so that people can years from now they say oh Hodge what she put in this time capsule of her what she loved doing most either because the experience was great or she thinks she delivered most what's in your time capsule?

56:54Well obviously the film I mentioned Betrayal because it was the most brilliant Harold Pinter script And because I was working with two subsequent Oscar winners, Jeremy, Anne's and Ben Kingsley, that was an extraordinary experience. I thought Hotel Dulac was very special, actually. And, you know, Irene Handel, who became, she died not too long afterwards, but we became, she sort of reminded me a lot of my grandmother. and we became good friends from that. I think, you know, it's things that you make very special relationships with because you've worked together well and that then endures into life.

57:48I mean, there was a musical I did many years ago called The Mitford Girls. Oh, I love that. About the six Mitford sisters. Devised and directed by Ned Sherin? Ned Sherin and Carol Browns. Oh, Carol Browns. What a character she was. Oh, extraordinary. extraordinary but she was a dear ultimately she was a dear person but she was quite formidable we did that at Chichester and then we brought it into the West End and again you know the six of us one has just died we've just lost one of our dear but we've all called each other sister ever since and remained the best keeping in touch with people what is the trick of friendship?

58:34love

58:42so speaking of love you get married obviously not to the first guy charming as he was there we are there was that feeling that in the yes which you evoked so beautifully tell me about the moment you met your husband and how quickly it was that you felt there love well um he would always say when people said how did you meet he would always say we met in church which was true the third year that I was at Lambda the head of music was also he was he was very committed to a church in West Hampstead and he decided he wanted to create a choir for the church so he asked some of us that he knew were of musical had a musical ability to be in the choir and so he also one of his oldest friends was somebody he'd known since childhood and they'd been in a little band they formed together and then they were all academy music together and that was peter and he came to see the concert we did because and he was a music publisher he was no he was um a symphonic trumpet player and play with all the major orchestras and then ultimately he went into musical management so he used to produce orchestras for the West End for television and film themes and so on.

59:59But we met because I was singing in this choir concert and he came to see it. But, I mean, that was nothing more than fleeting, you know. And then we cut to about, I don't know, 18 months later, and I was doing a show in Shaftesbury Avenue, and he had done the orchestra for Jesus Christ Superstar, which was just opening. and then we met in that very famous The Coach and Horses Pub just behind the Palace Theatre where a lot of... I was there after my show one night and that's where we met again. And you were together for a long time. We were married for... Well, we were together for about 44 years rather than my parents.

1:00:43We were married for just... He died just before our Ruby wedding. Oh, gosh. And he was frail at the end, wasn't he? Yeah. He was very ill for the last few years, yeah. And was that like being a widow but alive, or was it a satisfying experience in the sense that you were able to be caring and therefore could repay some of the love? It was very difficult in this circumstance because his demise was, it had very difficult personality consequences. And so it became very, very challenging. So it's a kind of dementia where your nature changes and you are not the person you were. Well, he was, but it was the worst possible version.

1:01:35And so it was beyond. I mean, I tried for, you know, as long as I could, but it became impossible. To cope with. Yeah. So, no, I never, I mean, I hate the word widowhood, really. I don't think I've ever wanted to subscribe to it. I just had to learn to be more singular over a period of time. And you have two sons. I have two sons. And that helped. Enormously. Yeah. And so, are you in a good place now, do you think? yes oh yes i do and i think yes i don't think i've ever no that's not true there was a time i think particularly latterly when he was so ill that i i was in a bad place yeah but mostly i think i'm um i have i hope i'm a happy person and are you in a good place because of or the friendships you have and the love of that and your work or have you sought therapy Is the church important to you?

1:02:43Have they been other things that have helped you? Definitely. When I was in a very bad place, the person that I was dealing with for him was a psychiatrist. And she was an extraordinary and wonderful woman. And thank goodness I was referred to her. And she was there essentially to help with him. But she was also helping me. and she said, I want you to go, because obviously psychiatry is a different thing from therapy. And she said, I would like you to go to a therapist and it needs to be somebody who's near you so you don't have far to travel and leave it with me. And then she gave me the name of somebody and I started going to this person And it's been one of the most rewarding things of my life.

1:03:42And I have kept it up ever since. Well, we've almost reached the end. I tell you, speaking of love, we haven't touched upon our joint friendship with Simon Cadell. Yes. Because one of the things I love about you is your singing voice. Well, I think you're... You know that. You're probably in a minority. No, I'm not. There's a moment I remember of you appearing at Pizza on the Park and you began singing outside of the room. And I'm going to cry even if I try to evoke it. I don't know if it was a Noel Card number or a Cole Porter number. I'll tell you what it was. It was Where Are the Songs We Sung, Which Is Coward, When Love in Our Hearts Was Young, Where in the limbo of the swiftly passing years Are all our hopes and dreams and fears.

1:04:33I know. Well, strange how potent cheap music is. Yes. Because offstage you begin singing this and it's still in my head as a very special moment. Well, I think you're... Anyway, that was you alone. I think that was a solo night of you at the piano. But you and Simon did a Noel and Gertie show. What I'm leaning up to is what do you look for in your kind of favourite other actor to work with? what is it you are looking for? You're quite particular because I've known you over many years and sometimes you have reservations about other people in the play. And they will have reservations about me. They might.

1:05:12They might. I won't tell you if they did or do. But what are you looking for? What makes the chemistry? What makes it work for you? It's always difficult to define, But I would say it's enormously helpful if you work with people that think in a similar way. And that sounds unaccommodating, but I do think there's a difference between actors and performers. And the two do cross over. but there are some people that are much more driven by showing off let's say wanting to catch the you know having a love affair with the audience and i find that more difficult if their energy goes because it leaves you beached up on stage so really it's people it's it's people that will commit to the business of engaging with you it's very difficult to do both one of the few people i think who could do both was donald syndon oh yeah who could both be present yes and also out of the corner of his eye can, I mean, it's a most unusual gift.

1:06:19Yes, yes. And it's such a fine line to tread. If you can do that. But he was wonderful. Well, I think you're wonderful. We're reaching the end of the road now. Four quick questions. A moment, particularly from your earlier years, of joy. When I say joy to you, what suddenly comes into your head? A moment of joy. Gosh. I think probably that I was always put in for a lot of festivals and things, first speaking festivals. piano festivals, dance festivals. That's how Lincolnshire runs. It has nothing professional. It's as good as, you know, whatever they create themselves. And there were, you know, I was, I used to get incredibly nervous, sick with nerves, but I still went ahead with it.

1:07:06So I think that gives you a bravado, doesn't it? It gives you courage, it gives you courage. And the odd occasion when I did win a prize was a good moment. There was some validity in that. You've got to pick one moment. I've got to pick one moment that gave me joy. Oh, I think having my two children. That's a generalisation. Of course it's given you joy. I'm looking for a specific moment that you ate a peach. Maybe that first moment, the thing that you've expressed to me that summed up joy was your description of sitting at the table with the first proper boyfriend and thinking, I'm in love. I'm looking for a specific moment, only because actors can only give us...

1:07:58You've only got that one shot. You've got to tell us there. You can't say generally, oh, well, this is joy. So I'm wanting you, Hodge, to come up with a moment of joy, if you can.

1:08:11It's quite personal, this, But I think I would have to say that having been through a lot of issues with having children, the moment that I sat with my doctor said, just come with me and we'll... And he did a pregnancy test there and then. Yes, of course, because... And he was chatting to me. He did this, and he, again, to this day, is a great friend, he and his wife. Because you didn't have children in your 40s. No, yeah, exactly. That news was a moment. And so that was a long journey. And he made me on that, you know, I'd been through IVF, I'd been through everything. And then suddenly out of the blue, and it was strange because my father was dying at the time, so there was one life going, and then suddenly this, it was almost, it was sort of magical.

1:09:10and he just said come with me, follow me and I want to go to a particular place so we went to a totally different building and everything and he sat and he was just chatting away to me and it was the way that he did it he was in the middle of a sentence about something else and in the middle of this sentence he said and you're pregnant

1:09:33Well forgive me but it was worth pursuing remember the wonderful line from Winter's Tale I met with things dying and thou with things new born. Yes. So the moment of sadness, I'm guessing, is going to be the death of one or other or both of your parents. Or maybe not. Or maybe Peter. Or just a moment of sadness. They were each very different. I was filming at the time my father died. But we sort of knew there was no chance of saving him. I think I would say to you now this is very strange but the one that really kicked me in the gut was my mother even though she was 90 even though we knew that she hadn't got you know the illness she had but I had an experience after that that was I'd never experienced before this and I do think that the death of a mother has a very particular and if I say kicked in the gut I felt physically it was just like nothing I'd ever experienced.

1:10:44With Peter, I think I let out a cry that came from somewhere very deep. Okay. Finally, what a fascinating person you are, how gifted you are, how lucky I am to know you. What's life as you approach? incredibly your 80th birthday hodge people will be adjusting the set it can't be it's not possible i mean honestly you're sensational uh what has life taught you that you know that i'm sorry it's that that old saying it's not where you start it's where you finish and too many people say i've just come from them i only had this which is which is an important story but we all of us have stories we all of us do and there are very privileged people I know who've made nothing of their lives and very privileged people who make everything of their lives and I think it's you know it's within all of us we are the architects of our own life we can do it against a lot of odds we can whatever that may be and it's strangely I find although it's always within you it's not particularly helpful it's lovely to look back it's not particularly helpful because you are the person you are now and you have to live in the moment and deal with what's there.

1:12:25And I think when I went through a very, very, very bad time and I was doing a show, a musical, and I just kept thinking I would go on stage and I got through the scene and I'd come off and think, right, just get through the next scene and then just get through the next scene and just get through the next scene and that's it. Just put one step in front of the other and keep moving forward. It's not where you start, it's where you finish. Yeah. Thank you for sharing your stories and finishing up here. You're just the best, Hodge. Okay, we'll stop now and then I can burst into tears and we can have a hug.

1:13:04Thank you so much, Patricia. Thank you. What a joy for me.

1:13:12Oh, my thanks there to Patricia Hodge for, for me, a very special conversation. By the way, if they're actresses, actors, authors, anybody you think we should be having as a guest on Rosebud, particularly people like Patricia Hodge, who are known for having one sort of persona in public, but you've perhaps wondered, what actually are they really like? What is their background? What is the real person like? Just drop us a line, and we'll see if we can persuade them to come onto the podcast. You get a hold of us simply by writing to on email hello at rosebudpodcast.com and people are getting in touch oh look Harriet Jane the producer she chooses which emails we read and I think she thought oh yes today I'm going to cast a pearl before the swine that is Brandreth because this is from somebody called Alex Pearl let's see what Alex Pearl has to say dear Giles and Harriet having recently endured surgery oh is interesting.

1:14:11Having recently endured surgery, I'd like to thank you for providing me with the perfect antidote while recuperating in bed. But please don't make me chuckle too much, it hurts. Your Dreams podcast, in which The Wizard of Oz features, reminded me of my earliest childhood memory, which remains lucid and is rather dreamlike. At a very young age, I have a very clear memory of being taken by my mother during a particularly wet and miserable afternoon to the local cinema, the ABC in Ilford High Street. This is in England. My mother used to love the cinema, and this would have been the first of many such visits.

1:14:48The film screened was The Wizard of Oz, starring a very young Judy Garland. On taking our seats and being treated to the wonderful opening scenes of the storm, something really quite extraordinary happened. The real heavens opened up, and torrential rain hammered down with such force that within minutes, and just as the little wooden cabin on the big screen was being uprooted by the storm and tossed into the air, it began to rain, quite literally, through the light fittings in the ceiling. As a young boy of five years of age, it must have seemed all rather marvellous, until, of course, this indoor rain caused those sitting beneath it to put up their umbrellas and obscure the view.

1:15:30This surreal state of affairs was not to last for long. The film ground to a halt and the lights came on. In retrospect, I don't know how the lights didn't fuse with all that rainwater cascading through their housings. The dishevelled manager of this run-down flea pit eventually appeared from nowhere, and like a startled hare caught in the headlights of an oncoming car, made some kind of half-hearted apology to the audience and asked us, in no uncertain terms, to leave the auditorium and collect a refund from front of us. As it happens, I've never got round to seeing The Wizard of Oz, even though both of my children have.

1:16:10But from that inauspicious introduction to the cinema, the bug for sitting in the pitch dark and being mesmerised by moving images has taken hold. Warmest regards, Alex Poe. What a wonderful childhood recollection, Alex. Being in the cinema, The Wizard of Oz, the storm on screen. As I recall, that's the black and white sequence at the beginning of the movie. and the storm is taking place and suddenly rain is falling on your head, but not raindrops keep falling. No, a torrential downpour from the ceiling of the cinema. Extraordinary. Well, in some ways it was a washout, but in other ways it's something that's given you, well, something to remember all your life.

1:16:49But you must now get round to seeing The Wizard of Oz. It is one of, in my view, the greatest films ever made. Pity they weren't showing Singing in the Rain that day. all right that's it from me giles brandworth and from patricia hodge and from our producer the great harriet jane and from alec caddell whose father simon of course worked with patricia hodge it's alec who edits these special episodes that we also have featuring on youtube it's fun i think listening to rosebud and it's fun but in a different way watching rosebud maybe try both If you do, whatever you listen, if you've enjoyed it, please leave a comment because that helps spread the word, spread the message, because we love people listening to Rosebud.

1:17:34It's because of you that we do it. Thanks so much for being with us. If you want to join us on Sunday, you want to be a member of the Rosebud family. That's easily done. It costs, I think,$5 plus VAT a month, and you get ad-free listening, and you get bonus episodes every Sunday and possibly other little features as well. to do that you simply go to patreon.com forward slash rosebud that's p-a-t-r-e-o-n dot com forward slash rosebud and you'll find all the details there that's what we do every sunday but we are back for everybody next tuesday i'll be here with harriet i'm not sure what we've got in store for you will it be another interview will it be my diaries i hope it'll be fun whatever it is and then next friday well i think we've got a very very special guest next friday oh thank you too for all the people from Australia who got in touch when we had Geoffrey Rush on last Friday.

1:18:29I said our first Oscar winning Australian, which he was. And a lot of you have come up with interesting other Australian ideas. We may get to Australia. If not, whenever they are anywhere we are near, we will hope to catch more Australians for Rosebud. It's a global podcast. You're part of it. In fact, you're the essence of it. I'm Giles Brandreth. Thanks, Patricia Hodge. Thank you for listening. Until next time, bye. Oh, and cue the music.

1:19:42Rosebud is a Plain Jane production produced by Harriet Jane, hosted by me, Giles Brandreth, with music by Phil Leppard, and recorded this week at the JW Marriott Grosvenor House in London's Park Lane. Room service. Think of a toilet as just an everyday object? Your entire perspective shifts the moment you experience a Kohler smart toilet. Design changes everything, transforming a basic routine into something extraordinary. With standout aesthetics and intuitive controls, these are functional works of art. Stunning design that never sacrifices performance. Enjoy customizable features for elevated comfort and convenience.

1:20:23It's more than a fixture. It's a cleaner routine and a more refined space. Experience the difference of Kohler smart toilets. Find more at Kohler.com. This week on Get Real. I was like, no way. No freaking way. Bachelor Nations, Tyler Cameron. When you have a great girl, you sleep well. And podcaster, Connor Wood. I feel really good. I feel really confident. Day two, I was like, I have to die. The voice of season 35 of Dancing with the Stars. I found out he was on the show because I kept getting his mail. The fans of this show should be criminal investigators. Find and listen to Get Real wherever you get your podcasts and stream new episodes Thursdays on Hulu and Hulu on Disney+.

1:21:03Terms apply. I'm Jake Stouck, co-founder and CEO of Serval. We built Serval to automate the IT work that slows companies down. Onboarding, password resets, access to applications, my laptop stopped working. While employees wait for help, their real work is put on hold. IT desperately wants to automate this work, and that's why they need Serval. You just tell Serval what you want to automate in plain English, and it's built. No drag-and-drop workflows, no expensive consultants. Employees get unblocked and IT teams go from drowning in tickets to building what actually matters. With Serval, IT becomes the AI engine powering the entire company.

1:21:44This is a new way to run IT. We guarantee you'll automate 50 % of all tickets and we'll prove it to you in a free four-week pilot. Go to serval.com slash tickets. That's serval.com slash tickets.

1:22:04Thank you.