yes, do you need to.? take your jacket off. hello, i m john wilson, welcome to this cultural life, the radio four podcast, in which i ask leading creative figures to reveal the key moments in their life, and the most important cultural works that fired their own artistic imagination. my guest is director, screenwriter and playwright mike leigh. he s known for gritty social dramas, including vera drake and secrets and lies. domestic comedies, like life is sweet and happy go lucky, and historical stories, including mr turner and peterloo. i spoke to him in one of the many radio studios in bbc broadcasting house. mike, welcome to this cultural life. let s take you to the beginning. what is your earliest cultural memory? as a kid, we had, and i was exposed to. ..pantomime, live theatre of various sorts. circus. the circus was a big deal. variety. live variety, the old, you know, descendants of the music hall, including, at the age of nine, a trip to the ardwick hippodrome in manc
hello, i m john wilson, welcome to this cultural life, the radio four podcast, in which i ask leading creative figures to reveal the key moments in their life, and the most important cultural works that fired their own artistic imagination. my guest is director, screenwriter and playwright mike leigh. he s known for gritty social dramas, including vera drake and secrets and lies. domestic comedies like life is sweet and happy go lucky, and historical stories, including mr turner and peterloo. i spoke to him in one of the many radio studios in bbc broadcasting house. mike, welcome to this cultural life. let s take you to the beginning. what is your earliest cultural memory? as a kid, we had, and i was exposed to. ..pantomime, live theatre of various sorts. circus. the circus was a big deal. variety. live variety, the old, you know, descendants of the music hall, including, at the age of nine, a trip to the ardwick hippodrome in manchester to see laurel and hardy live on stage.
this cultural life. let s take you to the beginning. what s your earliest cultural memory? as a kid, we had, iwas exposed to pantomime, live theatre of various thoughts, circus, the circus was a big deal, variety, live variety, descendants of the music hall, including at the age of nine a trip to the ardwick hippodrome to see laurel and hardy live on stage on the famous tour, which i later realised was the famous tour, and the two important things about that were one, two extraordinary things, one was it was in colour they were in colour and two, that oliver hardy com pletely couldn t get his act together at all, he was absolutely out of control, and of course later we realised that that was because he was cracking up and it was the end of their of their career. were they funny? no. but i was fascinated, it didn t make any difference. of course, in school, from the earliest age, i was drawing, putting on sketches, generally wanted to be creative in all kinds of differen
and we were talking about having kids. indeed, my eldest son, toby leigh, the illustrator, is discernibly inside beverly s tummy when you watch the television version. i think i would have to say that the play worked as a piece and, you know, spoke to the audience really. what drives you on now, mike? well, i was slightly early here, and so i stood up at oxford circus for a bit and i did what i do, which is clock people walking past really. and then, because i knew i was coming here to do this programme, ijumped on the tube and i caught myself doing what i do, which is to clock everybody coming down the escalator. going up the escalator as we went down, just seeing characters, basically.
i used to watch westerns from the earliest age. i remember there were two things that one major thing that i always thought about films was, wouldn t it be great if you could have a film where the characters in the film were like real people, not like actors? and the other thing, which is of far, far less significance, or of no importance at all, is that watching westerns, you know, because of the nature of the number of frames on a length of film, the wheels on the, on a vehicle or a stagecoach would go around backwards. yes. and i used to think, sit there thinking, when i make films, they ll go round the right way. now that was from a very early age. the first big cultural influence that you ve picked, that you suggest has had a formative effect on your work, is ronald searle. illustrator, artist, best known for st trinian s, for creating st trinian s, and for the molesworth books, and also contributing illustrations and drawings to so many books and magazines over the years, in