Backlisted - The Moon's a Balloon by David Niven

Episode Date: November 26, 2024

Rupert Everett joins us to discuss David Niven's memoir The Moon’s a Balloon. This show represents the fulfilment of a long cherished ambition: to dedicate a whole Backlisted to a book that Andy and John consider to be the most entertaining ever written. And who better to join them as a guest than an actor, writer and director who has had his own tussles with Hollywood and who has published a series of bestselling volumes of memoir and short stories? First published by Hamish Hamilton in 1971, The Moon’s a Balloon has sold over five million copies and set the standard for actorly reminiscences for generations to come. But few have equalled Niven’s knack for combining hilarious anecdotes about the Golden Age of Hollywood with unsentimental and sometimes deeply moving incidents drawn from his own life. Has the book's charm endured?  Does it still seem, as the Guardian recently voted it, the number one Hollywood memoir of all time? We hope you have as much fun making up your mind up as we did during the recording - the episode is worth listening to for Rupert's readings alone. We also discuss our guest's latest collection of short stories, The American No, which comes highly recommended from us both. Think of this episode as Christmas come early, or better still, ‘the English Yes’. * To purchase any of the books mentioned in this episode please visit our bookshop at uk.bookshop.org/shop/backlisted where all profits help to sustain this podcast and UK independent bookshops. * For information about everything mentioned in this episode visit www.backlisted.fm *If you'd like to support the show and join in with the book chat, listen without adverts, receive the show early and with extra bonus fortnightly episodes, become a Patreon at www.patreon.com/backlisted *You can sign up to our free monthly newsletter here  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello and welcome to Backlisted, the podcast which gives new life to old books. Today you find us in the living room of a small flat above a tailor's shop in Cork Street in London. It's a winter's night in 1924. There's a strong smell of cabbage on a large divan piled with cushions and dolls. There sits an awkward, startled-looking teenage boy hiding a large photograph album. From the tiny bedroom there emerges a slim, pretty girl with blonde hair, dressed in nothing but pink shoes and stockings, held up by pink garters decorated with blue roses. She's holding a small towel.

I'm John Mitchinson, publisher of Unbound, where people pledge to support the books they really want to read. And I'm Andy Miller, the author of The Year of Reading Dangerously. And today we are joined by a very special guest making his backlisted debut. The actor and writer and director, Rupert Everett. Good afternoon gentlemen. Rupert Everett Welcome Rupert. Thank you very much.

Andy Miller Welcome. Thank you for coming to this small room that smells of cabbage. Rupert Everett Yeah, I'm right there. So that of course is a moment in the moons of Elune. And of course for today's audience, it's a rather shocking idea because David Niven at the age of what? 13 or 14 started following Nessie, a young girl with wonderful legs down the streets of Mayfair for weeks.

And finally she turned around and said, what do you want? And he didn't really understand. He had no idea what he was doing. And up he went to her little flat and had his first shag, dare I say it. And in that moment he invented stalking. Right. So there's two things that are absolutely unacceptable in today's world. Stalking and underage sex. And bang straight in there but also brilliant soundtrack. Do you remember the record that she puts on to put him at ease? Oh yes, yes we have no bananas. Yes we have.

Which she says she, although he said she had a she had a ready wit He thought that was just a coincidence that she hadn't put it into as it were get him in the mood. Hey, hey I I before we get Before we dig into this I haven't even introduced you Rupert has appeared in film and TV productions including Napoleon my policeman adult material the serpent queen funny an ideal husband, and my best friend's wedding. His stage work includes Another Country, The Vortex, Pygmalion, Amadeus, The Judas Kiss. His first memoir, Red Carpets and Other Banana Skins, was a Sunday Times bestseller, and its sequel, Vanished Years, won the Sheridan Morley Prize for biography. His documentary series, Love for Sale, won the Grierson Award and his film

of Oscar Wilde's later years, The Happy Prince, was released in 2018 to widespread acclaim. And you wrote, I've got my notes there, yeah. Your book about the making of that film, The End of the World, was the first book I read on public transport at the end of Covid. Oh, so you got back on public transport? I sat always wanting something sensational to read in the train. I took your book with me. So that book, apart from being a wonderful book about a fantastic film, a wonderful book about the difficulties of making that film, also is now seared into my memory as kind of like-

Something to do with COVID. Yes. I'm so sorry. Yes, you're right. And your latest collection, The American No, is a collection of autobiographical stories. Rachel Cook, a regular guest here on Backlisted, wrote in her review in The Observer that the collection showed that, quote, nothing and no one escapes his attention. However wasteful and capricious his first profession, we know that he is perfectly safe. The blank page will henceforth always be his. He is a writer to his aching bones." That's heady wine to drink, isn't it?

Oh no. And she's, let's be honest, Rachel, isn't a pushover. No, she's not. I was thrilled by that. I was going to say, do you read your reviews or is that the first time you've heard that? No, I like to kind of hear about them from other people, really, because you get shingles otherwise every time you read about yourself. But normally you can find someone who'll say it was very good and then you can have a little

peek. And also, could you, John and I were talking when we met earlier, the stories in the book are, I was going to ask you whether they had been collected over a long period of time or whether you had a deadline to meet or how you did it, but they're not are they? They were inspired by? Well, the inspirations for the story happened, they're just seven of the millions of stories I've pitched over the years in my slightly impotent desperation to keep going on in the screen trade.

So I wrote up about 12 of them, and these are the seven I thought were good for a book. But no, I only wrote them from, I don't know, a couple of years ago I started writing them. Can you tell there's a wonderful introduction to the book? I mean, there are two things I wanted to say. It would be great to explain the title just briefly because it's such a great title and even better when you know why. The American No is a title, a phrase coined by my great friend, a producer called Robert Fox and he has a kind of very good but slightly gallows-ish sense of humour and we've all noticed over the years, pitching is such

a peculiar thing in show business. You go in with your idea, there's a group of people. In America, there's normally a bigger group of people. And they're weird types of meetings because no one wants them to go badly, obviously, and most people's ideas probably are rather bad. But so there's a kind of egging on. Everyone's looking at you, hoping for the next punchline, and it goes terribly well, and you learn how to do it.

Normally, when you leave, inside everyone's breathing this huge sigh of relief, but outside they're going, we love you here at Bottomy Bay Productions. You're the perfect thing. We want Rupert Everett. And you leave walking on air, you fire everybody because you think everything's going to suddenly come up roses. And then of course you never hear another word. And that is called the American way.

And you also, the genesis of the book is that you're sitting in a place we all know well, Bar Italia in Soho. And the Hare Krishnas, as they still do, it's one of the book is you're sitting in a place we all know well, Barra Talia in Soho. Yeah. And the Hare Krishnas, as they still do, it's one of the few things about Soho. I saw them yesterday. They're still there. They're the only thing that's still there. One of them peels off and he is a producer, an old producer friend.

That I knew from a pitch and who turned me down a couple of years ago with his boss and he, his boss who was a kind of whiz kid had left the studio they were in and gone to work with another even better kind of person and this poor guy, my friend, who's actually a wonderful executive and a very great taste and everything, he was just kind of thrown on the trashy because that's, I mean, you know, show business is a ruthless mistress. And there he was, glumping along behind the conga line to Nirvana. And he said, but he suggested that you should think about

writing your, your, your scripts as, as a story. No, he didn't suggest that, what he suggested, and it was incredibly touching. And it kind of, it, it gave me that brain fart that took me onto the next step, which is what's so lovely in life when people inadvertently help you out. He just said, you've really got something. And there he was, almost a homeless person, so to be told by that person, you've really got something, keep going. Don't give up. something, keep going. It just felt wonderful and life enhancing and I noticed what amazing

eyes he had, which I'd never noticed before and they were covered in rain because it was raining and it was just one of those moments that was very beautiful. And then he left and after that I thought, God, they are good, my ideas, he's right. And what am I going to do about it? And then I thought, oh well, rather than churn out another memoir that's going to be from 9.30 this morning till five o'clock tonight, because I've kind of done everything else, I thought I'll try and write some of these stories down. At least they'll then have some kind of… The Krishna yes, the American versus the Krishna yes.

The Krishna yes, exactly. And they are, I have to say, they are wonderful. And you were talking about Happy Prince, but there's a sort of version of that, your Oscar in here, and the Sebastian Melmoth story in American No. Yeah, that was the only one that I wrote before, actually, because once I got started on the idea, which I had with Roger Michel, the director, who's now sadly dead, he then said, go off and write it, write a few pages of it and see what the tone is going to be like.

So I did. And so that's the only story I really wrote back in the day. And of course, it was just the beginning of a very, very long journey because then Roger backed out. And I went on alone. But no, I'm pleased to have written them, and I think I understand a little bit more why often they didn't go so well with executives.

I've got a question. So we recorded an episode of Backlisted a couple of years ago about De Profundis by Oscar Wilde and we also recorded a Christmas special, I guess that's what we do on this podcast, about A La Recherche du Tourn Pair Deux by Proust. Really? Oh my God, happy Christmas. Over the festive season.

But there's a story in here, isn't there? Yeah, the script is kind of taken from Swan's way. Well, it was the first episode of what was going to be seven or eight episodes of Proust. And I was commissioned, well, I wasn't commissioned. I made a great mistake because most people in show business, they say, no, show me the money first and then I'll go and do it. And I've always thought that's a rather mean, spirited way of going, vulgar way of going about things.

And I said to them, listen, I really don't know if I can write this because it's such a big thing. Why don't I just go away and try it and then when I know I can, we'll do a deal. And they said, fine. And then I spent months reading, racking my brain, writing. And then I rang one of the producers up and said, listen, I think I've got it.

I've written the script. And he said, oh, I'd love to hear your ideas. I said, my ideas? No, no, I've written the script. And this is another kind of, you know, oh, well, I don't think this isn't the right time to do it for us now, so there we go. C'est la vie. Anyway, that's the closing story in the book, in the script form, it's wonderful. Well we should get on to the matter in hand, shouldn't we? Yes. If you hadn't

already guessed, we're here to discuss what Andy and I have long considered to be the most entertaining book ever written. It's come up on this podcast at various occasions over the years. We never felt we'd quite found the right moment to do it, but this surely is it. It is The Moon's a Balloon, the memoir of the British actor David Niven. This is the point at which Rupert says, I didn't come here to talk about that. What are you talking about? I came to talk about me. First published by Hamish Hamilton in 1971, it sold at least five million copies and probably

been lent at about 15 million copies and set the standard for actors' memoirs for generations to come. Few have ever matched Niven's ability to combine hilarious telling anecdotes about the golden age of Hollywood with unsentimental and sometimes deeply moving accounts of his own life. Moving from his school days as a bright but unsettled schoolboy who lost his virginity at 14, as we already know, to Nessie, a piccadilly whore, to the tedium of his time in the Highland Light Infantry through various failed money-making schemes, he tries in Depression era New York until he finally

lands a small role in Hollywood. The book is rich in anecdote and buoyed up by Niven's seemingly bottomless enthusiasm for company, for high life, for telling anecdotes and the Saucy-osides. Once Niven's seemingly bottomless enthusiasm for company, for high life, for telling anecdotes and the saucy asides. Once Niven hits the Hollywood ears, the roll call of cameos becomes almost absurd in its star quality. Fishing with Clark Gable, cricketing with Ronald Coleman, playing tennis with Charlie Chaplin, hanging out with Errol Flynn, Douglas Fairbanks and Humphrey Bogart, flirting and

rather more with the leading ladies of the era, Merle Oberon, Eva Gardiner, Rita Hayworth, Grace Kelly, Marlene Dietrich, Elizabeth Taylor and on. Such is Niven's charm that when he rejoins the British army to fight in the Second World War, he becomes friendly with, yes, Churchill, who takes him into his confidence and discusses the finer points of the allied strategy. Despite all this, as subsequent biographies have revealed, Niven isn't altogether honest with his readers. There were dark occurrence running beneath the golden surface of his life. And how far this hidden narrative contributed to the fascination the book has exerted is something we will be discussing with Rupert. Has its charm lasted? Does it still seem, as The Guardian recently voted it, the number

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So that goal to be the ultimate soccer parent? Keep chasing it. Drive your ambition. Mitsubishi Motors. And we're back. Rupert, let me start with the usual question for backlisted guests. Where were you? Who were you? What were you doing? When either you first became aware of David Niven or you first read The Moon's a Balloon.

Very easy question. I first became aware of David Niven watching Wuthering Heights Starring a lot of Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon and I should say 1972 or three In those days as glorious days when television on the Sunday Yeah used to have old movies and there I discovered rainynoons. Betty Davis, Merle Oberon, Laurence Olivier, and I remember that film. I remember Olivier doing a brilliant thing with his hands on a broken window and cutting his wrists. And I was enraptured, not so much by David Niven, I didn't really notice him really. And then my parents had bought The

Moon's a Balloon, so that must have been 1972, 1973. And it was along with Jacqueline Suzanne novels on our shelf. And I read all of them. Valley of the Dolls. Valley of the Dolls, one of the great books, by the way. And I read all of those books together. And I think immediately, you know, I was already hell bent on show business, but I was also hell bent on a show business that didn't exist.

I loved that world of the 1930s. We're just gonna show that cover because I think if you're of a certain age, my memory, Rupert, is that everybody's parents had copies of Alistair Cooks America, the World Atlas of cheeses and The Moons of Balloon Every holiday cottage you ever stay in has got it

Every ice cream shack with the book spinner had a copy of that And as John was saying this sold how many copies in the 70s? Well, they say, I mean, they say it sold five million, but I don't think anybody really knows because it's been it's been re-released by Penguin and I think it's still, I looked the other day and I think that even that sold 20,000 copies of the re-releases. It's one of those books that is genuine kind of backlist gold. And I think also it really was the first kind of memoir of its kind. Maybe everything was kind of coming together, the interview culture was coming together, you know, Parkinson, all of that sort of celebrity stuff was coming together in a way. I think you're right, I don't think there really is one before

that because of course everything in show business in those days, we forget that in these days where everybody sells something, you know, be it shampoo or fashion, but in those days it was very, very rigorous. Strict, yeah. He was kept in the movies and that was it. So I think he must have been a precursor of things really writing that book. He's also about 60 when he writes it and therefore his audience and he are in you know not retirement exactly but they're reaching a point in their lives to look back and as you suggest John Parkinson of course in the 70s is

now such a rich archive because of all the Hollywood stars who were doing the final lap of honour. Right. Right. And so you have people like Niven and James Stewart and whoever was available because that was in living memory. I wonder, Rupert, when did you, can you remember when you first read the book or can you remember reading it in places where

you may have read it? No, I would have read both of them at home at my family's in Essex when I was about 15, I should think. Okay. Both books in the holidays and they provided... I didn't really understand him in the same way that I then began to understand him later. Because looking back on the whole thing now, he makes much more sense to me. I mean, the weirdness of his face, the weirdness of that kind of sexiness,

which is completely unwatchable to us really, because it's a kind of charm. Distinctly unbuff. Very unbuff, very weird. I was watching him before coming here on the Dick Cavett show. His face with that weird little mustache and the re-plumbed teeth. And also when you look at things like the first Pink Panther movies, he really is what we would now consider lecherous slightly and he's really, you know, he so is the generation of our fathers and mothers and that kind of raconteurishness. Well, we'll come on to

the raconteurishness is a specific thing I want to ask you about but maybe you could tell us then. He's funny looking. He embodies a type that perhaps we would, as you suggested at the end of the start of the show, we would think twice now about celebrating. As a screen actor, what has he got? What's he good at? Well, his greatest moment was obviously separate tables when he played the major in Terence Rattigan's adapted play.

He was- For which he wins an Oscar. For which he wins the Oscar. And he was good in it. He doesn't have, which he does as a writer, he doesn't have emotional depth so much as a performer. Yeah, it's got a dignity and he is, that's him at his very best. But he is an army officer, essentially,

you know, that's turned to acting. And so I think he made a lot with a little in a way, which is a great thing. Because he curiously isn't a character actor, like a lot of the brits in hollywood is he kind of always always. You always seems to be david niven in whatever as you say an army officer match of life and death love but i think i think now looking at it that there's definitely a darker side to everything and even in the story that we first discussed. a darker side to everything. And even in the story that we first discussed, in a typical Nivenesque way as a writer,

the end of it is very tragic. This girl just disappears. And she says, I tell you, I'm gonna get married one day and settle down, and that's it. He never hears from her. And so there's a wonderful bit of sweetness about the payoff of the story. I mean, it's one of the things about the book, going back to it, is it is, I think, exquisitely

structured. I mean, he really, really is a good writer in a way that, I mean, you know, if you're dealing with ghostwritten actors' memoirs now, that doesn't happen very often. But as you say, the Nessie story and not only obviously he has a relationship with it But they kind of all they live together takes her to school introduces it to the headmaster He said certainly at some point he feels that he's loved Yes, he feels he's loved You know someone who cares enough about him to come and see him because in terrible rackety childhood his dad dies in the first World War

And then he is sent to a selection of schools. He gets expelled from his first school and then it goes to this terrible Dickensian sort of crammer which is run by this terrible alcoholic couple. And then ends up in Stowe, this incredible model new school. It's very good on English public school life. So when you read it when you were young, presumably the thing that appealed was this and the sequel, Bring on the Empty Horses, presumably what appealed at that point was the Hollywood-ish next of it. Getting into Hollywood. And in fact Hollywood arrives only halfway through the moon's balloon. Yeah. But over the years, what are the writerly qualities

that you feel Niven has, that perhaps weren't visible at first? Well, I think obviously the raconteur, the past the portish type, after dinner conversation thing, that it's not actually that easy to transcribe. He does that very well. Underneath that is this thing

that you can't feel because it's not actually in the writing, but there is a darkness inside him and there's kind of holes in the thing that actually serve a great purpose. The story of Primi, the first wife, it's all so lighthearted, but then suddenly, you know, struck with tragedy. And you get a feeling of him, well, he's a kind of, you know, he's been through the first world, not been through the first world war, but been around it. He's just got a, he manages to keep carrying on. And it's very, the writing just takes you through it. And there's just something darker underneath it, I think.

Yeah. I was gonna say, Sioux, but I've got the section here. I wonder whether you would be willing to read this blind for us. Absolutely not. From there, this is the section you were just talking about about Primi. Oh yes. Ty Power and Annabella gave a small party for Primi that evening. John McLean had just arrived from New York and all my closest friends were there. As I looked around at them and at Primi's radiant

face, I wondered how it was possible for one man to have so much. Nearly everyone was working the next day, which meant being up at five or six o'clock, so we had an early barbecue round the pool. Ty cooked. Afterwards we went indoors and played some games. Someone suggested sardines, an old children's game played in the dark. I was hiding under a bed upstairs when I heard Ty calling me. come down quick, Primmie's had a fall. I rushed down. In the dark she had opened a door thinking it was a closet but it was the door to the cellar and she'd fallen down a dozen steps. She was lying unconscious on the floor. We dabbed her head with water and she started moaning and moving a little. Within 20 minutes

the doctor had arrived and within another half an hour she was tucked in bed in hospital. She's very concussed, the doctor told me after his examination, but it's nothing to worry about. She'll have to stay absolutely quiet and in the dark for a few days and she'll be fine. I went back to Ty's house and told everyone the good news. Then I went back to the Spanish house and Pinky helped me pack up a few things Primi might need, a couple of nighties, a toothbrush, some perfume. Back at the hospital they repeated that she was fine and said there was no good I could do by staying and to go home. If I wanted to, to drop by before I went to work

in the morning. I was back about six the next day. They let me see her. She looked beautiful but very pale. Her eyes were still closed. She's had a good night, said the nurse. All during the day I called from the studio. Nothing to worry about. It's a bad concussion. All she needs is complete rest and quiet. After work I went back to the hospital.

They were most reassuring. I sat with her for a long time holding her hand. She was very still. Suddenly she opened her eyes, looked right at me, smiled a tiny smile, and gave my hand a reassuring squeeze. Suddenly she opened her eyes, looked right at me, smiled a tiny smile, and gave my hand a little reassuring squeeze. It was the first time she had recognised me. The matron said, Why don't you go on home now and get some sleep yourself?

There's nothing you can do. We'll call you at once, of course, if there's any change. Go on home and don't worry. Bob Coote was in the house when I got back, waiting for news. I told him everything was going along well, that no one was worried, and we raided the icebox for a snack. About eleven o'clock the phone rang. It was the doctor.

I think you'd better come down, he said. There are certain symptoms we don't like. I've alerted the best brain surgeon there is. We may have to operate. Bob came with me. An hour later they started the operation. Two hours passed before the doctors came down. I knew as soon as I saw them come out of the elevator. I knew by the way they walked. I knew by the way they walked. I knew by the way they stood murmuring together without looking at me as I waited across the hall. She was only 25.

Very good. Rereading that was wonderful. One way, rereading that, it reminded me, John, of the surgery scene in A Matter of Life and Death, which Niven has made literally a year before this takes place, except there's no happy ending, there's no intercession, there is no intervention, there is no heavenly messenger. And I don't know, Rupert, if you've ever listened to Niven's reading of this book. I haven't heard it. It's an abridged audio.

Yeah. But when he gets to this part while he's reading, he cries while he's reading it. Does he? And a bit like with the book itself, you're laughing. You're the raconte. I'm charmed. I'm delighted. I'm laughing.

And then you suddenly go, that's... And there's another section, I recall it, Trubshaw, is it Trubshaw? Oh, Trub, yes. He's very moved. So this idea that it's all mediated, clearly some of it is mediated, but these are things that happen to him. That's the thing that always intrigues me about memoir is you can't tell everything. I just wondered if that's something in your own excellent writing of memoir.

Niven is quite discreet. I mean, you know, lots of the women who appear in the book we now know that he had affairs with, but he doesn't write about the affairs because presumably some of them are still alive and also because he doesn't want to upset his already quite difficult wife, the second wife, Hjordis, who he writes about with as much love and tenderness in this book as ... Well, of course, but that also, the writing about Hjordis is quite interesting because at a certain point in this book, she decides to leave him and goes and lives in another

house and he never goes into the reasons why, what's gone wrong. He's just made, he's put it all down to himself that he's too keen on his career. And you don't quite, I don't know how it is, that not knowing, you don't quite believe that's the whole story. And getting her back is so difficult. And you get a real picture of her as a kind of slight bitch already, because she's always sitting on a sun chair

when he comes around to her other house, having a perfectly nice time, and a manicure and all this kind of stuff. But yes, it's interesting. There's a lot that's unsaid and there's a lot that's exaggerated. I looked the story about him falling over at the Oscars and saying he was tanked. Then he said, I was the first actor who had actually admitted to being drunk. That's not how it was, because of course now you can watch the Oscars.

And he did say he was tanked up with good luck chumps, but he didn't fall going up onto the stage. And he didn't stop after he said I was tanked and the whole audience burst into spontaneous applause like they did in the book. But print the legend. Print the legend. No, but it's great.

I wonder whether one of the things as we know, The Moon to Bloom was a great bestseller, Bring on the Empty Horses. One of the things Cary Grant said about David Niven's authorial career was he thought that Bring on the Empty Horses was a terrific book, apart from that the best stories in it had happened to him, not David Nivett. So there is a kind of... That's funny. Yeah, right.

We do a thing here on Backlisted where we judge, and I will ask you to be our judge today. Blurb,b back jacket copy. Oh jacket copy. Right, so I've got here on my phone. Do you write your jacket copy? No I don't. Do you read it? No I'm not sure if I do.

I mean they ask you who you want for the quotations there. Yeah. Well, I've got the copy here that was attached to the first edition of the hardback of the Moons of Balloon. Oh, right. So I will read that to you both and then you tell me if on the basis of this... You'd read the book. You'd read the book. Okay.

David Niven has had one of the most varied lives as well as the one for the most spectacular film careers of our time. His father was killed in the First World War and later his mother, reduced to poverty, remarried a man whom David cordially detested. He was bullied at prep school, expelled, sent to a corrective school, refused communications with his mother, and when he finally went to an establishment where he was happy he was caught cheating with painful results. This isn't how I'd open it but okay. Meanwhile he had got a reputation as a humorist which anyone who has seen his films will know that he has kept up. As a result what might have been a Dickensian tale of woe and tribulation becomes a hilarious account of schoolboy adventures at Stowe,

which he loved. He distinguished himself as an athlete. Meanwhile, Nessie, the golden-arted oar, they dropped the H and the WH there, had given him his first experience of sex and proved a loyal as well as a presentable ally, welcomed by the headmaster of Stowe. She was to prove the precursor of a career as fabulous as that of Casanova. Wow. In the Highland Light Infantry, David meets the legendary Trubshaw,

a man after his heart, and together they enliven events in Malta. When Trubshaw left the army, David also threw in his hand and sailed for Canada. In America, where he was treated with endearing hospitality, he became a bootlegger, an organiser of indoor pony races, and finally, through a piece of luck which would seem impossible if it were not true, he sailed his way into Hollywood studios and starred from 1935 to 1939. His wartime experiences, he served with the legendary

Phantom, are treated with characteristic modesty and thereafter his return to Hollywood leads to a rather checkered career, including being fired by Goldwyn and winning an Oscar, and also to the greatest tragedy of his life, the death of his beautiful 25 year old wife Primi through an accident, leaving him with two small sons. In due course he remarries the lovely Swedish model Hjördis and they adopt two little girls. Spoilers. This is the whole plot. I was going to say. This is one of the most amusing, outspoken, self-revealing, warm-hearted and touching biographies which has come our way for a long time.

I like that a lot. I think it's good. I mean they're much longer than today's ones. Yeah. And you wouldn't be... They had a lot of flap to fill in those days. Like... As they were. As they were. No, I think it's a nice one. I like it. Do you?

Do you not? No. Oh, I think it's good. It's so windy and it leaves... If were I writing the blurb for it, I would definitely go Hollywood, Hollywood, Hollywood, Hollywood, Hollywood at the top. This is the story of one man's unlikely path to and bring it back around again. Right, okay. Not that I intend to go back through time and give notes.

That's the whole story is in there. Yes, right. But John, did they do that because they're saying if you buy this book you'll get sex? I wonder. I think, I'm guessing, okay, I might be wrong, but I'm guessing Christopher Sinclair Stevenson is at Hamish Hamilton at this point. Oh really? I was published by him once. Yeah, I mean, were your novels published by him? Yes, my first one was published by him once. Yeah, I mean, were your novels published? Yes, my first one was published by him. Okay, so quite high-minded, you know, Hamish Hamilton. So I'm wondering if they, it would be too vulgar to put lots of lists of Hollywood stars in there.

And was it published first in the UK? It was published simultaneously in the UK and the States. I'll say a bit more about this after the break. When we come back, we will hear a couple of minutes of David Niven himself, the man himself, reading from his audiobook. So please come back and join us after we hear this word from our sponsors. How can you be sure your child is making the right decision when choosing a university? The smart approach is to look at the facts, like the fact that York U graduates have a 90% employer satisfaction rate.

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and across the country access to free, 24-7, judgment-free support. Because at the end of the day, it's their thoughts that count. Donate at kidshelpphone.ca. And together, we can give their feelings a place to go. Goulding kept his word. He really did try to help me.

There are 22,000 extras, he said, looking for 800 jobs. You must have a good agent. So he talked to Bill Hawkes, an important man in that line, and I found myself with a representative. It was vitally important to have something on film, so I was delighted when I was given tests for various roles, but I was still a hopeless amateur, and in front of the camera I was still congealed with nerves.

As the weeks went by, I changed from being a new face to being a face that's been around and hasn't made it. Invitations to the houses of the great became fewer. Tests no longer came my way, and it began horribly to dawn upon me that after all, a movie career might be beyond my reach. Irving Thorberg had been the boy genius of Hollywood. Now, just in his mid-thirties, he was the undisputed master producer of Metro-Gollin-Mayer. Production of his epic mutiny on the Bounty was getting underway, and having been told by Goulding of my bizarre connection with his ship, Thorberg decided that as an additional drop in the publicity bucket,

it might be worthwhile signing me up as one of the non-speaking mutineers. He happened to phrase it more glamorously at some Friday night gathering. I'm thinking of signing David Nevin to a contract on Monday. That did it. The word went round. If the great Irving Thorberg was going to put me under contract, then I must be worth having. Goulding, striking while the iron was hot, fetched my original and only slightly relaxed test from the MGM studio vaults, put it in his car, and went directly to the house of Samuel Goldwyn, Hollywood's legendary producer. On Monday, Goldwyn sent for me. He sat behind a huge desk in a tastefully furnished office. He was almost entirely bald, very well dressed, with small intense eyes set in a brown face.

He was about 50 and looked extremely fit. He spoke without smiling in a strangely high-pitched voice. I'm giving you a seven-year contract, he said. I'll pay you very little. I won't put you in a Goldwyn picture till you've learned your job. Now you have a base. Go on out, tell the studios you're under contract with Goldwyn. Do anything they offer you. Get experience. Work hard. And in a year or so, if you're any good, I might give you a role. Having a highly publicized contract

with Goldwyn made it obvious that I was not about to parlay an invitation to dinner or tennis into an embarrassing hint for work. New doors were ajar. Then John McClain suddenly arrived from New York with a contract to write scripts for RKO and my cup overflowed. Well, there he is, the man himself, David Nibbon. I thought you might enjoy after with his charming tones fresh in our ears that you might enjoy this story. When The Moon's Bloom was first published in the UK, his editor, who is a man called George Greenfield, tells this story. This is reproduced in Sheridan

Moley's biography, The Other Side of the Moon, The Life of David Niven, George Greenfield says, Hamish Hamilton gave him a party at the Savoy with all their editorial staff, but David knew very well that once a book was published, they didn't matter at all. The people he took the trouble to go around the room meeting individually were all the sales staff and the people from WH Smith and the big bookshops.

He used to sidle over to them once I'd pointed them out and say, look, you don't know me and I'm sorry to interrupt your conversation, but I'm David Niffen and I've written this horrible little book which nobody wants. So please do try and sell it for me. And of course that worked wonderfully. So that idea of him performing David Niven, that comes over loud and clear when you read accounts of how the book was published. He was insecure. He was keen that everybody made as much money as they could which is fair enough.

There's a lot about money in the book. But even he was taken aback with the fact that it was an instant success. One of those things in publishing, I think John, where we don't really know why these things work, we can say after the event, otherwise we'd all be doing them all the time, that something about the combination of... Whatupert, what do you think? Perhaps Niven's status as a not quite a superstar is the thing that makes him seem... I think the age as well and the year. I think the 70s is such a good time for a little bit tell-all-ishness. I think also he was the first, like we said before.

There hadn't been much eye-openers into Hollywood up until then. And he does the whole thing. That's the extraordinary thing, isn't it? From sort of late 20s right through to late 60s. And covering also post-war people in the war who all read. I think that the army in the war

must have been very, very potent for him too. – But I wonder whether as well he is presenting himself to the reader as a participant, but he's not so starry and not so famous and not so wrapped up in how he delivers a performance that he doesn't also seem like an eyewitness. Yes and also because he's so self-deprecating for whatever reason it makes him very approachable. Yeah. He's not saying this was my greatest you know performance and he's demystifying a lot of things. I mean I funnily enough I I thought when he got to the war, he loses the plot slightly when he gets to the Second World War. I found I got a bit bored. I didn't quite

believe that all the endless walks with Churchill kind of slightly got me down in this second reading. But that must have been so much more resonant, exactly what we were saying, so much more resonant in the 1970s Oh, they must have loved it. Yeah, because it was only six five years after Churchill's funeral Yeah, all those people had all been in the war and understood it. That's the thing He's a peculiar kind of every man isn't he? He doesn't he's not as you say and he's not Glitzy enough to be kind of one of the untouchables

He's he's he's the the the strange kind of one of the untouchables. He's the strange kind of affable army officer who finds himself surrounded by all these extraordinary people. And because he's such a good storyteller, we sort of feel vaguely on his side through the whole way the book is written. I was gonna ask you about the British in Hollywood, which is very interesting, whether that was how that has changed, having been through, you've

been through that yourself. Well, one of the things he talks about, and I don't know whether this is true, but he says in this, that everyone knew each other, it was obviously a much smaller world, and everyone was very supportive of each other, and they all went to each other's premieres because they liked each other. I find that difficult. Maybe it was. I mean, it was a much smaller world and he does make it look like Bing Crosby is looking out for him and Fred Astaire is coming over to see if he's got any milk and maybe they

were like that. Anyway, it's a great picture and certainly isn't like that anymore. But then the English were much more of a kind of foundation stone of early Hollywood and the cricket club, which is also so beautifully written about by Evelyn Moore and in The Loved One, was this thing that you could really, you could fail in England at tons of things and get out there and somehow make a name for yourself. It's very compelling and very exciting. Yeah, there's that whole mad bit where he's running

that kind of strange racing thing, which I still can't imagine what this indoor racing. Oh, the pony racing. The pony racing. Yeah. And completely mad, and they do it in Atlantic City and the Mafia close it down. And that may well have happened, or at least a version of it will have happened.

I think he is tremendous company. That's the thing. When you're reading a book like this, and I wonder Ruper Rupert with your memoirs is this the voice in your head? Is this the foundational anecdotal voice? Well, certainly when I when I started my first book, this was my role model somehow to be charming Bitchy up to a point but not bitchy to the point where you alienate people and they say oh, that's really horrible to try and make it look like it's all fun, I suppose. And that's what he does too. It does all seem not effortless, but it all kind of falls into place. And I think that's what people like seeing. I felt they wanted someone who, I think self-deprecation is always a

good one to go for in a way. And you know, it's quite manipulative in a way. Alan Partridge says he doesn't like self-deprecation. True, true. But I'm very interested in this. To make it work like that on the page is difficult in my limited experience. Very difficult. And you're reaching for this easygoing, avuncular, and the story just fell out of me. Yeah, I don't think, I'm sure it didn't fall out of him. It's very organised writing and certainly, I mean, not that I'm trying to, I wouldn't compare myself to his work because I think it's much, it's much more immediate. But I mean, from my, in my experience, no, I had to work quite carefully to make sure, A, you know, it doesn't ramble on B, doesn't get technical to a point where people get bored, C, it has enough affection for the world. Even if maybe you don't, you know,

I can't believe Niven's feeling about Hollywood. Well, he says it wasn't, you know, it all seems like a very affectionate journey and it normally isn't, you know. It's a difficult job to do, to keep going in show business, and it kind of makes you, gives you lots of different things happening.

But I think he, it feels very affectionate towards everybody. And when you were working on the first volume of memoirs, did you share those with anyone? Did you read them out loud to see if they were having that desired effect? Well, no, I had a wonderful editor. Hello, Antonia.

Antonia. Well, not the first one, actually. The first one was Justine Piketty. And she was a good editor, too. And, yeah, and then we worked hard And she was a good editor too. Very good. Yeah, and then we worked hard at kind of honing them down. Yeah, yeah. John, I thought one of the things that was really, really, it's fascinating at this distance,

but also I think helps Niven in how he presents himself in the book, is it's terribly helpful that he was part of the studio system where he was a contract player, which allows a insights into how people were casting films and how films got made, but also exactly what you were saying, Rupert, that idea that Fred Astaire was on the lot or he was sharing digs with a certain person who was also tied up to the same film studio. I mean, even then in the 70s, was that well known, that side of the business? I don't know. I wouldn't know.

No, I wouldn't have thought in the 30s and 40s they promoted that side of it very much. No, no. I mean it was and it was all you know the the magazines were controlled, there was sort of Luella Parsons and Hedda Hopper. The whole way it was mediated was I mean I think that's the thing that you do get the sense in the book of the studio the control of the studios and he's his famous kind of battle with uh with Sam Goldwyn which is great comedic value, but you can sense that he, the feeling of having everything, the floor disappearing, you know,

beneath his feet, that everything he stood for was in the gift of one human being. One man. And yes, here it is indeed. Known how you can blow it all very easily and it can all go wrong. Yeah. Goldwinisms have been so widely quoted, include me out.

Actually, why am I reading here? Just read a little, just read the opening paragraph. Thank you. No, Goldwinisms- We'll use you well while you're here, don't worry. Goldwinisms have been so widely quoted, include me out, a verbal contract is not worth the paper it's written on, and of a 14th century sundial,

what will they think of next? That for a while I was suspicious that Goldwyn might foster the legend by dreaming up new ones for himself, but I don't believe this was the case. I heard him let loose many many of them But I think his mind was so far ahead of what he was saying that he left it to his tongue to take care of thoughts He left behind

In fact, he had great dignity but when thwarted he tended to shout loudly. I Mean he he massively I mean, he massively, Goldwyn hires him out to Powell and Pressburger to make a film called The Elusive Pimpernel, which I think we said on the show we made about Marco Pail, is inexplicably awful. Yeah, it's a terrible film. And he even behaves terribly badly, doesn't he? As a result of which Goldwyn fires him and stories circulate about how difficult he is to work with and how arrogant he is.

He says in there, I must have been mad. I must have been mad. And there you have the kind of thing that we then got used to later in the 80s and the 90s about when we started discovering about actors being difficult and needy and demanding and this is you get it but in a very kind of cushioned well if you think about it in 1971 this is right at the beginning of New Hollywood I mean the Godfathers released the next year you know that the whole that whole massive change in the way that that movies are made and the importance of directors and the really

that you know, the studio system is kind of disintegrating. And it's almost like he kind of comes in as this sort of affable, chummy, very trustworthy raconteur. And what I love about the book is he says good about the Trub Shores and the, you know, the masters at school or the people that he meets that are not famous, as he is about the Trub Shores and the you know the masters at school or the people that he meets that are not famous as he is about the famous people so I think that's partly why you believe his Hollywood anecdotes because you because

the attention to the other ones earned your trust although it's interesting isn't it the second book Bring on the Empty Horses is almost is almost all anecdotes about other people you know it's portraits I think it's portraits of other people and there I think they're he's got a lot of more confidence as a writer By that time he doesn't feel the need to drop Names in the same way and I think the the portraits are absolutely amazing Missy's my favorite missy, should we just find... I mean, don't you think he probably was a little... I mean, it sounds to me like he was surprised

by the ridiculous success that the book enjoyed. I mean, it's not that he's a modest person. He has enough vanity in him as a... Vivien Leigh. Yeah. I'm sure he knew it was gonna be a success. So when he's writing this book, John, he's making, he cap for wherever he's living. He's taking whatever parts he's offered in films and

Batlist of Listens will like this particular story for several reasons. One of the films he's casting is he's cast opposite Gina Lollobrig by Jersey Skolomovsky in an adaptation of Vladimir Nabokov's novel King Queen Nave. No. Yes. Early 70s and it's filmed in Cologne. Now operating in Cologne at that time is the progressive rock group CAN, labelled by the UK music crest in the 1970s as Kraut Rock, a classic Kraut,

one of the strangest, weirdest groups. And CAN had contributed to the soundtrack of Jersey Scholomowski's previous film, Deep End. So they'd have seen each other. So they're playing their first gig with their new singer the Japanese man Damos Suzuki in Cologne when they are filming King Queen Nave. And I will quote for you now Holger Chukai from Cannes who reports that very first gig with Damo Suzuki. This is what he says, about 30 people were left and one of them was David Niven. So I asked him, Mr. Niven, what did you think about this music? And he said, it wasn't great, but I didn't know it was music. I managed to bring together Nabokov, Kraut Rock and

David Niven in one anecdote. I'm very happy. Yeah, that's amazing. That's very good. And perfect. Perfect Niven kind of... Yes, charm but kind of... Yeah, I mean, yeah, why... He isn't Terry Thomas, is he? This is the thing about Niven. Although he has got that caddish kind of quality to him, he doesn't become a caricature in some strange way. He manages to have what you might call authenticity. But there's a lot of Terry, there's a side to him that is Terry, I mean, the tragedy of Terry Thomas and the tragedy of Niven is that they are similar

in a way that they have these fronts and that behind them these terrible things happening. I mean, he has to go and look after Missy for a weekend. And he's left with her for a weekend and she goes bananas and tries to shag him nonstop. And he eventually, I read the end, the pills did not seem to have much effect on Missy. She ate some cottage cheese around midnight, which contained a couple,

and drank some wine into which I'd stirred a third. But they only slowed her down for an hour or two. Then she was as bright and demanding and as terrifyingly unpredictable as before. I dared not go to sleep for five minutes, and as the long days and interminable nights melded into each other, a dreadful thought began to assail me. That it was not Missy whose mind had become deranged, it was mine. I became a hollow-eyed zombie, sleepless and utterly exhausted. But Missy never showed any signs of tiredness and harried me endlessly to play hide-and-seek with her, to flatter her, to comfort her, to fight with her or to go to bed with her.

Wow. That was wonderful. Brilliant. It's very good. The sort of writing that seems effortless, but we know it's not. No, it's not. Experimenting with brightly coloured-Eakfeller's bikes. Yes, I was thinking exactly that. Brilliant. But, you know, do you, I'm not sure you would quite get away with writing that in a memoir now in the same way. I mean, it's a very... In what way? Well, because it's funny at first.

I mean, it goes on being funny, even down to, you know, knocking her over as she's running around naked. And it's not funny. But so, yes, I agree. It's the effortless change that he, he's very good at that. He lures you in with the comedy and then sort of literally hits you over the head

with the pain. But again, it seems to me that's a very astute subversion of his strength. His strength is the charm, the anecdote, the laughter. And also observing a lot, observing so well her weird premonition that something was going to go wrong and painting a picture of her that makes her just so visible, although without a name. I've got another question then about your experiences in Hollywood. What has changed? If you were to say, well, my Hollywood was this, which is not there anymore, what would

it be? My Hollywood was the hangover of the 70s. I arrived in the 80s and the 70s had been such an extraordinary time, really when the clowns were running the circus, so to speak. And there were huge bowls of cocaine in the middle of boardroom meetings and everyone was, it was a really magical time. By the time I got there, all those people were in rehab and quite often the best way to get a job was to go to AA and tell some fabulous story. That brilliant story of cud Associates, where you get a job in the mailroom of William Morris Agency. My world was, actually the 80s look wonderful now in retrospect, but they were definitely

a hangover from an amazing era. The 70s really was its own golden era in Hollywood and they made so many amazing films there. The 80s felt a little bit tawdry at the time. There was those teen directors like John Hughes. They weren't really very good movies, any of those movies. But then other things like Sissy Spacek, completely forgotten now. What a wonderful actress she was. Because what happens is 76, it's Jaws in 75 and Star Wars in 76, 77. And Cabaret. And then the whole of the, it becomes summer blockbusters and the whole of the industry by the middle of the 80s is completely transformed again. And also it was a kind of two restaurant town when I got there.

Okay. Between the 80s and now. Then what happened in the 80s is they started publishing the box office receipts in the New York Times. And I think that was very much like Adam and Eve eating the apple. And it was a bad idea because as soon as the public... Knowledge is a dangerous thing. And this was like we were saying before about what did people know, but once they knew how much a film made and the grosses, everything became number one box office gross, which, you know, it changed everything. And then political correctness came in at the end of the 80s

and you couldn't smoke unless you were the villain, and then it was on the move to something different. I thought we might like to just hear this. This is a letter from David Niven to his publisher, James Jamie Hamilton, while he's writing it. So let's assume that his ears are still ringing from seeing Cannes in Cologne, and he sat down the following morning and he, this is what he writes to Jamie Hamilton. My dear Jamie, my so-called book is driving me mad. You do realize that, don't you?

There are so many characters bobbing up and they all seem suspiciously alike in the way I describe them. I need your advice. I ask for it shamelessly because if I ever finish the damn thing I do want to offer you the first hack at saying no. Oh so he's writing it on spec. Amazing. The American no. I vacillate between being all buoyed up at the thought of writing a full autobiography complete with I hope rather fascinating moments with some greats such as Jack Kennedy, Winston, and of course Flynn,

Bogart, Gable, Garbo, Cooper, Sinatra and Co. and feeling that it would become just another actor polishing his ego at the expense of those sort of people. Would it ever go into paperback? Would it be possible to write it as a novel and while lacking the loss of direct confrontations with entertaining friends, make up to the reader by adding all sorts of little spicy and scandalous happenings that could not be mentioned in truth and would probably amuse a far larger public? I also feel that it is terribly conceited unless one is a great statesman or author to write a straight autobiography. S.O.S. please, glorious weather, love David." Isn't that interesting? He

sort of covered many of the points we've talked about. Well it's like in the introduction bit he read he hit that brilliant line I adore which know, it makes little sense to write about the butler if Chairman Mao is sitting down to dinner, kind of covering his ass from the accusations of ridiculous name dropping. Tell me about, and of course there he does it with the Missy story, he does exactly that. Tell me about, I remember William Goldman

in Adventures of the Screen Trader. Yeah, wonderful. Wonderful, right, about again, in which we made an episode about, and he says in that, there's a brilliant bit where he says, when you see your favourite actor on a chat show and they seem like just the greatest guy and you think, wow, I'd like to hang out with them, I'd have a few beers and whatever, that isn't one of the things they are great at. That is their

performance. Oh, just making themselves look like. Yes, making you feel like you are their friend or you're enjoying it. Now Niven was clearly. Yeah, the past master at that. When you watch him say on the Parkinson clips, Parkinson does so little really,

except say, now David, you were in Hollywood. Well, as I was really. And one of the very that things happened there. No, amazing. He was a part, and also I don't think he, I mean, the thing is, you should never try and meet your heroes. They're always disappointing.

They always end up looking kind of like one of those Hollywood sets. You open the front door and then you fall 15 feet into a trash heap. But I think he probably Was quite fun to meet Yes, or maybe he wasn't maybe he was too concerned with you know, he ordered something Beaten him up. Yeah before that he was too

Strained and always worried about money. I think he was massively much Well, that's one of the themes of the book Isn't it that the money thing, and he makes bad decisions sometimes and then is also fortunate and catches a break. But I don't know, my hunch is that he is, from the beginning, immensely likable. I think he's immensely likable. I think he's much more ambitious than he lets us see. Everything is quite considered. His whole career is much more thought

out and much more, he's much more aggressive about it than we seem to see. Although if you look carefully at the sequences when he fights with Goldwyn, you realize actually that he was the same old difficult, needy and pushy person as the other ones probably. And indeed some of the reports in the biographies say that around publication he was exactly that. He knew what he needed to do which would be a pain in the ass to some people and an absolute delight to the ladies from WH Smith. The editorial people are dead to me now. I'm going to talk to the sales team. But also, the thing about money is true. They sold the...

He's saying that will it ever go into paperback, do you think? Because, certainly in that era, the paperback was where you made the real money, right? And he... I think his agent did a decent deal in the UK with Hamish Hamilton, but a lousy detail in the States. Oh really? Yeah, I mean they sold the US rights for maybe £30,000 and Niven is absolutely furious and threatens to sack the agent. This is what's so funny, under the guise of charm, he's not effing around.

But it's hard to find, I tried to research this, but I think he gets a massive second wind of fame through the book. I think by 1971 he's more or less a forgotten... Slightly washed up. In America. I think his reputation has always been slightly stronger in the UK anyway, because you know some of the films have become classics and he had all that weird 60s Jules Verne stuff, which I'm not sure. I think that was a pretty big movie.

Around the world in the 1980s. And also Casino Royale, that was 70s, wasn't it? He absolutely. 68. 60s. He gets a massive, he becomes an overnight star again because of the book and going on chat shows and being being urbane and and and

Very funny and very approachable. We need to wrap up in a minute But I wonder if I could prevail upon you just to read one more bit Which is the I wonder whether you could read us the introduction we'll end with the introduction. So this is oh, it's a great introduction Yes, yeah Evelyn war penned these words, only when one has lost all curiosity about the future has one reached the age to write an autobiography. It is daunting to consider the sudden wave of disillusionment that must have swept over such a brilliant man and caused him to write such balls. That's the moment you know this

is going to be a good book. That's true. Nearer the mark, it seems to me, is Professor John Kenneth Galbraith of Harvard University, who wrote, books can be broken broadly into two classes, those written to please the reader and those written for the greater pleasure of the writer. Subject to numerous and distinguished exceptions, the second class is rightly suspect, and especially if the writer himself appears in the story. Doubtless it is best to have one's vanity served by others, but when all else fails,

it is something men do for themselves. Political memoirs, biographies of great business tycoons, and the annals of ageing actors sufficiently illustrate the point. The italics are mine. I apologise for the ensuing name dropping. It was hard to avoid it. People in my profession who like myself have the good fortune to parlay a minimal talent into a long career find all sorts of doors open that would otherwise have remained closed. Once behind those doors, it makes little sense to write about the butler

if Chairman Mao is sitting down to dinner. And where was he? Oh, David Niven, Cap for Act. There you go. Cool. I mean, it's all part of it. Well, as David Niven would say, that about rounds it off. Huge thanks to you for helping us to fulfil a long cherished ambition and to our producer Tess Davison for pouring your strings.

I wish. I wish, yeah, for polishing our voices into this gorgeous oral luster that you are listening to. If you want show notes with clips, links and suggestions for further reading for this show and the 224 that we've already recorded, please visit our website at backlisted.fm. If you want to buy the books discussed on this or any of our other shows, visit our shop at bookshop.org and choose Backlisted as your bookshop. And we're still keen to hear from you on X, Facebook, Instagram, Blue Sky and wherever else you feel compelled to write from.

If you want to hear Backlisted early and ad free, subscribe to our Patreon, www.patreon.com forward slash backlisted. Your subscription brings other benefits. You subscribe at the lock listener level for significantly less than the cost of an old-fashioned upstairs at Romanoff's. You get not one, but two extra and exclusive podcasts every month. Lock Listed features the three of us talking and recommending the books, films, and music we've enjoyed in the previous fortnight. For those of you who enjoyed our What Have You Been Reading slot, that's where you'll now find it. It's an hour of tunes, musings, superior book chat. Plus, plus slot listeners get their

names read out accompanied by flashings of praise. I think we would be remiss if on this special occasion, we didn't ask Rupert to read out the listener names. I've got them here. Oh yes, come on then. Would you? So listen everybody, these 10 people are having their names read out. Thank you so much.

Brilliant idea. Trisha Chapman. Cindy read out. Thank you so much. Very lucky. Brilliant idea. Trisha Chapman. Hey. Cindy Brito. Thank you. Anne Kindleira. Thank you. Okay.

James Thorpe. Thank you, James. Julia Mastroberri. Oh, thank you. Amy Lawson. Thanks, Amy. Catherine Martoni. Thank you.

Claire Boffey. Yes. You're making these names up. David Melchior. And then? Amy Lawson. Thank you. Thank you. Claire Boffey. Yes. You're making these names up. David Melchior. And then?

Amarie B. Amarie B. Okay. Thank you. I would be disappointed if you haven't built your part up there. Thank you very much. Now am I getting these two books as my payment? You certainly are, yes.

Have we got anything? Oh yes, Rupert, there's one last question I want to ask you. Is there any last thought, comment, nugget, observation that we'd about David Niven or about these books that we weren't able to cover in the main show that you would like to leave us with? Well, I just think for me the glamour of him in Switzerland, Roger Moore coming to visit, Noel Coward, and the wonderful tragedy of his illness. I just adore the whole thing of the 1930s in Hollywood and I wish I'd been there. 1930s in Hollywood and I wish I'd been there. Okay, okay Yeah, I just there's one

He's so good at stories He even he can even do what I would I would have thought be the most dangerous thing in the world Which is to steal a story from someone else and there's a little bit towards the end Where no coward he says no coward had 27 godchildren Can you just read this little bit there that's in blue? It's a bit of Noel Coward. Oh yes, Uncle Noel, look at those two little doggies. What are they doing?

The little dog in front, said Godfather Noel, has just gone blind and his friend is pushing him all the way to St. Dunstan's. That's very good, yeah, that's a famous one. But that is, yeah, I think he's, that's a famous one. But that is I yeah, I think he's he's That's a famous story maybe that he made the story famous But it's hot it's hard to know as you say You know a lot of those a lot of the lines that you get in these in this book Do you feel like they've been around forever? Well, I I

Have so enjoyed the last hour or so. Thank you. Thank you for having me I've so enjoyed the last hour or so. Thank you, Rupert. Thank you for having me. Thank you very much. It's like a charm, charm, charm, charm. It's marvelous. Thanks, everyone. Thanks for listening.

Thanks, Tess, for looking after us. And we'll see you next time. We'll be back in a fortnight. Bye bye. Bye. Every two weeks? Yes. Oh my god. The End