How To Fail With Elizabeth Day - Sir Tony Robinson - ‘I learned comedy as a defence mechanism’

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Starting point is 00:00:46 slash fail 10 for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use offer code fail 10 to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Welcome to this super special episode with Living Legend, Sir Tony Robinson. This was recorded with a live audience from the Corn Exchange in Cambridge. Enjoy. Oh my goodness, it's so amazing to be in Cambridge in the Corn Exchange. The last time I was in this building, I was sitting my finals. and the corn exchange still appears in all of my stress dreams.

Starting point is 00:01:33 So I'm so thrilled that you're here and we can reclaim the memories together. Thank you, thank you, thank you for turning up. So my guest tonight has had a remarkably varied career as an actor, presenter, documentary maker, public educator, writer and political activist. I'm pretty sure that his sharp intelligence and rye, have had a formative influence on almost everyone in this auditorium.

Starting point is 00:02:03 Whether it was as Baldrick, the comedy stooge in Blackadder, who always claimed to have a cunning plan, or fronting the archaeological hit Time Team on Channel 4 for some 20 years, or creating, writing, and starring in the children's TV show Made Marion and Her Merry Men, which I personally loved. Sir Tony Robinson has been an integral cultural force over the last half century. Born the year after the Second World War ended, Sir Tony grew up as an only child in North East London. His first part, age 13, was as a member of Fagan's Gang in the original production of the musical Oliver. After drama school, he spent years as a jobbing actor

Starting point is 00:02:49 before being cast alongside Rowan Atkinson in Blackadder in 1983. Since then, Sir Tony has presented multiple documentaries, launched his own history podcast, cunning cast, written 18 children's books, and one a BAFTA. Alongside this professional success, he's made time for charity work, most notably as ambassador for the Alzheimer Society. Both his parents developed dementia in older age. In 2013, he was knighted for his public service. I feel my biggest achievement, though, is being the father of two fabulous children, he says. Nothing else I have done in my life even comes close to that. Cambridge, please welcome to the stage, the one and only Sir Tony Robinson. Oh, Sir Tony, thank you so much for coming on how to fail. Not at all. It really struck me

Starting point is 00:03:51 writing that introduction, how you've had such an impact on multiple generations. generations. My dad is a huge fan because of Blackadder. I'm a huge fan because of Maiden. And we're all huge fans here tonight. And I can't wait to get into your failures with you. But I wanted to end on that quote about fatherhood. What do you think fatherhood has taught you? Oh, I think you know how when somebody hasn't got kids and one of them gets pregnant and they say well actually we're going to be very firm when we have the kid we're going to

Starting point is 00:04:27 keep our own space and I'll probably go back to work after five days and all that stuff comes out but what nobody realizes until they have the child like that one

Starting point is 00:04:44 I know I'm so thrilled there's a child here what no one realises is that they will love you more than anyone will ever love you. You know that moment when the kid is born and it just looks up into your eyes and it goes, wow, you're just the absolute greatest and that is such an enormous present. And then ever after that, I think, there's something that's sort of slightly narcissistic about it is that you learn so much about your own development from seeing how your own

Starting point is 00:05:17 child develops and the changes in your relationship with the child and the way that both child and adults are constantly negotiating with each. I'm going to stop now. It's getting a bit tedious. But you know what I mean? I just find I found the whole thing. Of course a load of it was ghastly. Of course it was. I'm not being unrealistic about it. But it's so exciting. And now you have grandchildren. You have two granddaughters. And your daughter, Laura Shepard's Robinson is a very successful novelist. And you yourself have written a novel, Sir Tony, which has just been announced, The House of Wolf. What has that process been like for you? Did you feel competitive with your daughter? Oh, no, I didn't know. No, no, no. I remember saying to my

Starting point is 00:06:03 literary agent, whatever you and I do, actually, Laura is more important than me. What she does is, you know, as a dad, what I do, pulled into insignificance compared with what she's going to do. It was so, great. Can you imagine to have a daughter who suddenly becomes this hugely successful writer? What was the question? The question was about you writing your novel and how that process was I talked about hers,

Starting point is 00:06:28 yeah. What was the process like? Ah, well, it was weird. Lockdown, I said to myself, I want to have a crack at writing the novel that I've always wanted to write. I've written loads of stuff, but never a novel. And I've always been fascinated by

Starting point is 00:06:46 Alfred the Great. You know how, like the story of Alfred burning the cakes. And I remember as a kid, not really getting it. There was that image that you saw on the front of the Lady Bird book, of this really grouchy peasant, and Alfred looking all a bit dur. And it was about the fact that he had retreated from the Vikings, goes into this peasant hut. This old peasant woman says to him, while I go out and get the firewood, will you look after the cakes? He says yes, she comes back, he's deep in thought and all the cakes are burnt. And I remember thinking it's a great image, but what's it all about? What does it mean?

Starting point is 00:07:27 And then a bit later, I understood that he was the youngest of five kids. His dad was king of Wessex. He was never meant to be king at all. By the time he became king, the whole of Wessex had gone completely, it was wrecked. And yet he managed to turn it around, defeat the Vikings, become a king who reformed our currency, our legal system, our architecture. He was, to my mind, one of the greatest kings. He was the guy who really sort of started England. And I wanted to address that contradiction about the fact that he wasn't trained to do it.

Starting point is 00:08:08 And I was also, as I say, fascinated by this weird story. So I wanted to knit all that together. And during lockdown, I had five or six chapters. When it was over, I went to a literary agent, and he said, wow, I really think there's something in this. Let's pitch it to some publishers. And on the Thursday, he pitched it to 12 publishers. By the following Tuesday, 10 publishers had said they wanted to publish it, which was just like a dream come true. And then it went to auction, which is like, oh, I mean, you know what to...

Starting point is 00:08:49 I'm afraid I don't know, Tony, but I love how excited you're all by it. Man, I was so excited. Because, like, I was going around all these people like random house and, you know, publishers that I only just kind of heard of penguin and stuff. And they were pitching themselves to me about what they would do if we let them publishes. the novel. So eventually I went to Little Brown, who have turned out to me the most honestly great, great publishers along with my agent Anthony Topping. So I then had about three weeks where my head was like about this size, you know. All I had to do now was write a whole book and everything would be fine. But the thing is, I write by hand. I always have and I've never wanted not to

Starting point is 00:09:41 write by hand. My wife and I decided we would go over to Spain for three months. I'd got a few jobs to do, which I could fly back and do, but all the rest of the time, I would be out in Spain writing. We drove down through France with our little dog, and the first service station in Spain, someone broke into the car and nicked all the stuff I had so far written. no and it was you know you it was by hand and it wasn't it wasn't I mean the first five or so chapters were at home but the rest of it that I'd written since then had all gone but even worse than that all the research had gone because I'd written I'd just written it by hand and I plunged into such a massive depression depression I mean I know you've been through this before with other interviews but saying that my heart still goes. But I just had to get on with it. And what I realised was, and this is really weird, the chapters that I'd lost, I was able to write again very quickly, somewhere inside this weird

Starting point is 00:10:53 thing we call a brain. There is this thing that literally stores stuff. And I was able to write very quickly. But that was hard, hard, hard, and I lost a lot of confidence for a lot of time. Oh my gosh. I mean, I feel like we've done the podcast now. That was the most extraordinary failure that turned into a realisation of the depth of your talent maybe but that also happened to Jilly Cooper very similar writer she lost the manuscript for

Starting point is 00:11:18 riders I think on the 22 bus in London and she said the same thing when she rewrote it just it came to her and it was almost better your brain is redrafting but I think the thing that strikes me most about that story is the sweet innocence of your enthusiasm and excitement

Starting point is 00:11:34 that people would actually be interested in publishing your novel and even though you're immensely successful I feel like you've never lost that sense of excitement and disbelief almost and I remember reading that when you got the part in Blackadder let's do the Blackadder bit now you part of the reason that you loved it so much

Starting point is 00:11:57 and you were kind of surprised you got the part was because you got the sense of belonging with these kind of Oxbridge types who you didn't feel that you fitted in with Could you tell us a little bit about that? Yeah, it feels like I got the part by chance. I got this letter on the Thursday through the post saying we would like you to be in Rowan Atkinson's new show

Starting point is 00:12:21 in the pilot for Rowan Atkinson's new show. Now, if you get a script on the Thursday, when rehearsals start the following Monday, you know you were not the first choice. In fact, I think there was something like nine other people who said that they didn't want to play Baldrick, because honestly it was the part was only like about eight lines long and none of them were gag lines but i had always loved that kind of what i thought of as oxbridge comedy from that was the week that was in the what would that be oh it's the 60s wasn't it yeah um through to john wells and john bird and john fortune and then monte python and 40 towns they all seemed to me so golden so wonderful and there was a i always felt there was a part of me who really got that stuff. As a performer, I really got that stuff.

Starting point is 00:13:14 And like actors do, I wrote dozens of letters saying, you know, I'm like you. Can I be in your thing? And when I got this letter saying we would like you to be in it, it didn't matter to me that it was only eight lines. I just thought, I believed that if I could be among that group of people, they would get me. And it worked. It was just incredible. From the first morning that I walked in, I just felt at home. It was magic, magic, magic. It's extraordinary to think of the seismic influence that Blackadder had and still has, given that it was four seasons. And the last one, which I know so many of you will have seen, as I did, was set against the backdrop of the First World War. And probably has done more than any other piece of popular.

Starting point is 00:14:03 television to shape our understanding of the Great War, was part of the reason there was never a season five, because it was impossible to follow that? No, it was mostly because most of the people in it weren't talking to each other by then. Really? Tell me more, Tony. Well, that's a slight exaggeration. But I mean, the same was true with the pythons, wasn't it? You get a lot of incredibly bright people, very ambitious, very articulate, very opinionated, young people in the same room, when they have some success behind them, but not a huge amount of success, have an enormous amount of ambition. Often, I must say, when I say ambition, not so much like, you know, they're going to

Starting point is 00:14:55 be Brad Pitt or something, or even, you know, drive a Ferrari, but ambition for the work. you get them all in the same room which it's like a cooking pot always by the end of the first series it's very difficult to hold all those people together and it really took many many years before everybody was still mates again and I know that that was true with the pythons as well yeah do you hate Rowan Atkinson I'm kidding I'm kidding No, I said that that pause was not comic timing about irony. That pause was because I feel so soft about Rowan. I wouldn't have been sitting here now talking to you

Starting point is 00:15:45 had it not been for Rowan's artistic generosity. If you think about it, he was like at the top of the pyramid. I come in, I'm 38, I'm 10 years older than all that lot. But nobody knows who I am. I've just got the role as a service. and Rowan and I immediately understood each other. We worked-wise, we just knew. We knew the rhythms.

Starting point is 00:16:09 It was always, ba-da-pab-pab-da-d-d-d-d-d-d-be-be-bba-bba-d-d-d-d-d-bebe-bid-di-di-did-a-bbbba-pbba. You know, we just knew it. We just got it. And work-wise, we were very, very close. Not so much socially, because by that time, being that much older, I had kids, I was back in Bristol, so I didn't see them too much out of work. but Rowan's generosity was about the fact that he gave me space to play those rhythms

Starting point is 00:16:39 and he gave me permission to have those cutaway shots which meant that he would work really hard doing those long gags and I would get the laugh now there aren't many people who in his position who would have allowed that to happen but what going back to that thing about for those people work was all the all important thing. Roe is still like that. All he cares about is the work and if he has to sacrifice the applause and

Starting point is 00:17:08 pass the baton to the other person he will do so. And that generosity actually gave me the glorious career I've had so it forgave the pause it's not that I think he's a git because I don't. Get groceries delivered to your door from No Frails with PC Express. Shop online and get $15 in PC optimum points on your first five orders.

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Starting point is 00:18:06 See The Roses, only in theaters, August 29th. Get tickets now. Your first failure, wait for it. In Tony's words, I failed to grow tall. Does this actually feel like a failure to you? In many ways, yeah. I think I still carry it around with me. I think what first set me off on this

Starting point is 00:18:32 was there was a place which used to be called the Acton Hilton. It was actually the BBC rehearsal rooms over five floors and the top floor was a restaurant where all the different actors from all the different shows even if you didn't know them very well would meet up and we would get friendly. And this is like, I was in the lunch queue with Victoria Wood. Oh my God!

Starting point is 00:18:55 And we got talking and she said, me, you know, we'll never play Romeo and Juliet, because I'm too fat to be Juliet and you're too small to be Romeo. And, you know, it kind of hit me like a bolt from the blue, and yet it was so obviously true that although both she and I had all those feelings, all those emotion, carried all that weight that Romeo and Juliet had, there was no way that they were, that we were ever going to be given those parts and it took me back to my feelings at school and just all those humiliations and that kind of thing is still there. This is very weird. I've never talked about this out loud because, well, I think you'll understand why. Nowadays, you don't pick on people's looks,

Starting point is 00:19:54 do you? It's like it's kind of a new understanding over the last 10 or 15 years. You don't deride people for what they look like. There is a blind spot about men's height. And the shorter blokes here will understand exactly what I mean. And you kind of don't want to talk about it because, you know, what are you going to get back when you say that? But you look at Love Island. every woman who is asked what bloke they want they will always start by saying I want a tall man and then everyone everyone else will laugh in collusion if you look at those kind of either bleeding hearts comments exactly the same smart women who wouldn't pick out the fact that they didn't want I don't know didn't want to be married with a red-haired man or like a yes or a

Starting point is 00:20:54 or a blind person or anything else will laugh with their friends and say, oh God, he's got to be taller than me. Yes. And it's, I just, it really pisses me off, really, to be honest. My wife said, don't get crossed when you talk about this. Do you? Your anger is welcome here because I think it's an extremely good point.

Starting point is 00:21:17 And actually, I've had two men on the podcast before who are very, very tall, Richard Osmond and Stephen Merchant, and they said the same thing. They get it the other way where you might think, oh, you know, pass me the tissues complaining about your height. But they said that people quite often

Starting point is 00:21:33 comment on their height in kind of an insulting, slightly jokey way and that's still acceptable, which it shouldn't be. Do you still get comments on it? Well, yes, I do, but kind of as a performer, I've managed to turn it round in some ways

Starting point is 00:21:48 and now it's part of my definition as a performer. You know, why, how did I learn the comic timing for Baldrick? I think a lot of it had to do with the defence mechanism in the classroom of the, you know, going back to what I was saying about Rowan and I, the teacher would say something and I would go, ba-da-da-da-dun, poof. Just as Rowan, who was a chronic stutterer, would have used a very similar defense mechanism to cover up on, from his stuff. So as a child, being the recipient of these mean comments at school, was there anyone that you confided in? Because I know that you were an only child, you were your parents' only child.

Starting point is 00:22:34 Did you tell them? No, no. I never learnt to confide about hurt. I didn't, I didn't, it sounds mad, doesn't it? I didn't know you could. So I just developed whatever weaponry I could as a young child to push her. away that hurt. And of course when it came to adolescence, and I had to confront the fact that I wanted to court girls and that being a short man, I was by definition funny and not someone who most

Starting point is 00:23:12 girls would want to be associated with, because my height would rub off on them. That was very, very, very difficult. And, you know, if I could live my adolescence again, it would be to do exactly what you said and seek out people who I could share it with. Because it's not, you know, in the great scheme of things, it's not the worst thing in the world. It's not Syria or Gaza, is it? It's a little boy who's hurt and needs to find a vocabulary. Oh, gosh, I really feel for your younger self. I was also, I was the youngest child in my class, short-sighted, the small, the worst at games again

Starting point is 00:23:53 it's you know so what in a way but it certainly was never recognised in retrospect I think I had quite a tough time with myself you know yes and although I didn't

Starting point is 00:24:07 realise it at the time I don't think I didn't even realise what hurt was you know going back to you say were you hurt I didn't know well you probably didn't have the language that we have now around trauma

Starting point is 00:24:22 and also because you are being raised in the shadow of the Second World War you probably felt well this is small fry compared to what my parents might have gone through and all of that and I think my parents would have thought that my parents love me to bits but I don't think that they would have seen what we've just been discussing

Starting point is 00:24:37 as a serious an issue as getting good grades in my own levels for instance just quickly on this failure you have spoken about it being a defence mechanism and performance and comedy. So when you found yourself on stage age 13

Starting point is 00:24:53 in the first ever production of Oliver, was there a level of self-acceptance then? Absolutely. I think I was most at home from the moment I was an actor. And if you think about it, those kids in Oliver were cast because they were little. You know, you'd got to look younger than you were.

Starting point is 00:25:13 We'd all got to look cute. And I spent this bizarre four years after Oliver where half the time I was in the A-stream of a grammar school, the other half of the time I was going off to do bit parts in movies and on telly just because I was little. And at school I felt less than to use, you know, kind of today's cliche. But in the theatre, I was just alive, I was just there. And I think I still feel that to this day.

Starting point is 00:25:45 I mean, here talking to you now, it's not scary for me. Just before we came on, I just did that, you know, to make sure I was centred. But just having that little five-minute warm up with you beforehand. And we were both giving each other, sharing with each other those kind of friendly codes about, like, being on stage and just kind of patter. We knew it would be all right. and I knew I would be in the place where I feel safe and I knew this audience wouldn't turn on me, will you? You know, and all that, I think, comes about from the height thing too.

Starting point is 00:26:27 So there's a sort of huge upside about all that. Your second failure, which is a very intriguing one, I failed to win at Texas Holden. Not the Beyonce song, I'm imagining, but the actual poker game. Okay, tell us about this. So from about the age of 16, I loved gambling. I failed my maths O level, which was mad because I was the school bookie. I always knew that if someone came up to me and said,

Starting point is 00:27:04 I want to put two bob each way on Seabird the second at 7 to 2, I would know immediately how much I had to give them if they won because seven to two is three and a half to one so you've lost me Tony sorry stay with me three two bobs is six bob plus a half is makes it seven bob plus a quarter for the place quarter for the of seven bob is one and nine so that's eight and nine plus the original stake is twelve shillings and nine points ofs ofs so I mean that That may not be right now. It's a long time since I've done that stuff in my head.

Starting point is 00:27:43 But isn't it absurd that I failed my Mato level, even though I had enormous pleasure in doing that kind of thing. And when I went to drama school, I went when I was like 17 in a day, and there were a lot of older boys there, so they were always going down the betting shop, which I wasn't even supposed to at 17. So I learned a lot about bookies.

Starting point is 00:28:05 I learned how to play poker. and on Friday nights we used to go down to one of our teachers' houses and his name was Eric Thompson and Eric was at that time he had created the English version of Magic Roundabout This is Emma Thompson's dad. This is Eric Tompkins and Emma was seven years old at the time when we would be playing poker

Starting point is 00:28:28 and she would go around and sit on our laps and look at the cards and signal to her dad if you thought we'd got good cards. This is the best story ever. And you can't, you know, you can't tell off a seven-year-old, can you? So, and I got very good at poker. I won, let's say, two-thirds of the evenings. And I perceived of myself as a really good poker player.

Starting point is 00:28:54 And I played, you know, every other Friday night maybe, and most of the times I won. And the trick with a poker player is knowing you're not always going to win, but the skill is to minimise when you're losing and maximise when you're winning. A couple of years after I left drama school, I won a scholarship to be a theatre director at what's now the Mac, the Midlands Arts Theatre in Birmingham,

Starting point is 00:29:17 it then had its own professional theatre company, the Midlands Arts Theatre Company, and I trained to be a professional theatre director when I was there. And while I was there, a friend said to me there is a professional poker game in this room off the board, ring, I could get you into it. And I thought to myself, this is, this is it. I'm earning 20 quid

Starting point is 00:29:43 a week. If I, if I, on average, double it, you know, over the course of six months, like twice my earnings. So I went there, they were playing Texas Holden, which was a game I knew backwards, and I knew all the odds and everything. I played, and on the first night, I lost 20 quid. So that's a week weeks wages. So I thought, that's all right. I've minimised my losses. Second week I went, I lost another 20 quid. Breathe in deeply, go back the third week, I lost 40 quid. And at that moment, I knew I wasn't as good as I thought I was. I was maybe quite a good amateur poker a player, but in no way would I ever be a professional. And, you know, the thing about being a professional gambler, which I thought I would always be if I wasn't an actor, is it was kind of so

Starting point is 00:30:41 sexy, wasn't it? It didn't matter. I didn't, you know, I could be a James Bond quite type gambler in a casino. I could be dodgy with a brown Mac in a betting shop. I wouldn't have mind it as long as I could do it. Suddenly, all that had gone. And I had to play, I had to play, I had to face up to the fact that I was a failure as a gambler. So you come face to face with who you actually are rather than who you might have been slightly pretending to be, albeit with a foundation of talent. I'm very interested in your relationship with money, more generally,

Starting point is 00:31:15 because growing up, there wasn't a lot of it, but you must have been very aware of the value of it when you started earning age 13. I don't think I was, because I didn't have anything to spend. it on other than sweets and consulate cigarettes. Wait, were you smoking at 30? Oh, yeah, yeah, we all did, because we've got money, you know.

Starting point is 00:31:36 I earned 10 pounds a week when I was in Oliver, and this is when I learned about capitalism. It became the biggest hit that there had been for so many years in the British Theatre, so we had to get understudies in. They were paid £8 a week, and then they got the second trial. of understand this in and they were paid six pounds a week. People wanted to be in it because they wanted to be associated with its success but that meant that the people with the money were able to pay them less. But yeah my dad looked after my money and looked after it very honourably which a number of parents of child actors didn't at that time and I got like

Starting point is 00:32:21 an extra five bob a week but at that age how I keep talking about an old currency don't I do still think in old currency there was nothing for me to spend it on but fags and we all felt so cool you know we could stand outside the stage door with these Rothman cigarettes sometimes with long cigarette holders going

Starting point is 00:32:44 I'm sure you were terrible with sherbet lemons in our mouths at the same time that was really all there was to spend the money on and then when I was 17 my dad said I didn't earn that much much I was never a child star. I was a child actor, and like child actors today, the majority of them don't get that much money.

Starting point is 00:33:05 But there was enough when I passed my driving test for me to buy a car. And that was the present, apart from the experience of having been a child actor. Have you ever worried about not having enough money? All the time. My dad was brilliant about that. My dad was an administrator by trade.

Starting point is 00:33:22 And he was always, he wanted me to be an actor. But at that time, there was so many actors going back, because, as you know, I don't know if they could still call it, but we had to pay tax a year behind on Schedule D. And if you spend all that money, when the tax bill comes around, you go bust. And he was always terrified that I would do that. Can you remember a point in your professional life where you got to the stage and you thought, I don't need to worry about money anymore? I can see my bank balance and I'm okay. Yeah, it was funny, actually. It was the second, about the second series of

Starting point is 00:33:57 black adder. It was when, because I think time team had started by that, and suddenly there were the VHSs and they were flying off the shelves and I was just putting the money in my current account and my bank manager said to me, do you realize that you could at least put it into an account that gave you interest and shouldn't you get an accountant? Really, I was that naive about the whole thing. and I did and my accountant who I just very luckily turned out to have the accountant from heaven

Starting point is 00:34:32 and I'm still with the same accountants all these years later and he just kind of talked me through the whole thing and I realized I was in the process of earning more money than I could legitimately spend and that was absolutely great yeah what a wonderful present that is you know going back to that thing about Rowan

Starting point is 00:34:53 thank you Rowan for that thanks for the money Rowan. So what do you think your failure as a Texas Holden player has taught you? I think you you hit the nail on the head. It's about of course we're all going to have fantasies about what we can be. And actually I think being the only child of really loving middle class family who always told me I could be whatever I wanted to be, I think I've always had those fantasies. I always thought I could be a judge. I always thought I could be a politician. I always thought I could be a gambler. All of those things I may well have failed in. Had I done so, the great trick would be to let the

Starting point is 00:35:44 failure go. Now. Now? What about now? Whenever it hits you, wherever you are, grab an O'Henry bar to satisfy your hunger. With its delicious combination of big, crunchy, salty peanuts covered in creamy caramel and chewy fudge with a chocolatey coating.

Starting point is 00:36:13 Swing by a gas station and get an O'Henry today. Oh hungry, oh Henry. You speak so beautifully about your parents, and I know many of us here will have watched your astonishing documentary that you made with your mother about finding her a care home. Both your parents, as I mentioned in the introduction, lived with Alzheimer's and died with the disease, and it's an incredibly cruel thing for someone to go through and for their family to go through. As an only child, I imagine that weight must have been crushing at times. Yeah, it was. I've talked to a lot of people about this, as you can imagine, and they always say the same thing, that if you are an only child, it is very, very hard. I was lucky because both my kids were young adults by that time, and I was able to share some of that weight with them. But then I, as a dad, I didn't want to share too much of that weight with them, although when it got intolerable, I was able to, and my girlfriend at the time was great about it too. But I kind of felt it was my responsibility. I was their child. They had given me so much. And I think it was even worse then than it was now, in that nobody really knew anything about Alzheimer's. Their doctor didn't

Starting point is 00:37:36 know anything about it. I went to the doctor and it was like, oh, well, it's, your dad's just being a bit silly. That was kind of the message I was getting on. Often, you know, my dad went into see the doctor and my dad was suffering for such confusion when he went to see the doctor he pulled himself together people with Alzheimer's can be artful and I don't say that in a cruel way it's part of their way of coping he went to see the doctor and he was going yes doctor no doctor oh that is so silly doctor and a great charming smile on his face halfway back home again the confusion came back into his face and I felt so angry with my dad that's another thing about caring for people with Alzheimer's, and I think particularly when you feel on your own like that,

Starting point is 00:38:22 is that you do have these feelings of anger and worthlessness and all those other great, ghastly emotions that come surging up. So yeah, yeah, yeah, it was hard being done. Do you miss them? I'm trying to ease myself of the burden of missing them. I want to miss them in a relaxed way. And in some ways, I think I've been quite successful about that in that I don't dream of them constantly anymore. I've allowed them and they've allowed me to have that degree of freedom.

Starting point is 00:39:02 But even saying that to you, there's a tiny sob in the back of my throat. I can feel that. That's such a beautiful way of putting it. It leads us on to your final failure, I think, which is that you've failed, to deal with your failures. Yeah. Oh man, isn't that frustrating? What's the point of having them if you don't learn from them?

Starting point is 00:39:25 Time and time again. Just two little stories about ones that I didn't deal with. I'm 19. It's my first job in a rep out of drama school. And it's at the Lincoln Theatre Royal. And there was a coffee bar next door

Starting point is 00:39:41 and there was a girl serving in that coffee bar who was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen in my life. I couldn't take my eyes off her all the time. I was in that coffee bar, and ever she looked at me, my head went away from her. And I didn't dare show her how much I fancied her.

Starting point is 00:40:00 I was kind of slightly rude to her in a way that adolescent boys are when they're dealing with a girl they think is wonderful. But, you know, I was kind of friendly with her sort of a bit. And on the first night, after the first night, it was a panto. there was a party on the stage and we were all there and she was there

Starting point is 00:40:19 and it was kind of unbelievable she came up to me and she said Tony I've done this really done thing I've lost my keys would it be all right if I spend the night with you at your place and I said no

Starting point is 00:40:38 all those thoughts came through me, those terrors. What would I do? What should I mean? Could I do it? Would it work? Well, was she winding me up? All those things. I blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I just said no. I didn't say, I didn't say no in anything else. I just said no. And in my mind's like, I just turned my head away. And she just kind of went back to her friends. And you can imagine that night, lying in bed all on my own. You stupid bastard! And even now, you see,

Starting point is 00:41:14 and even now, again, I mean, I can say that. That's the funny thing about humour. I mean, that is like slipping over on a banana skin, isn't it? And I still carry that one with me slightly. And the other one is, I've left drama school for about maybe five or six years. Dennis Potter was the most famous and most successful and most respected television playwright of his generation

Starting point is 00:41:39 he just had enormous success with singing detective his new television play was called Blue Remembered Hills and I was cast in it I was completely unknown I'd worked with the director of it previously with some success but no one had any idea who it was I got there for the read-through. All the other people in it were people I really respected,

Starting point is 00:42:08 Colin Welland, John Wells, Helen Mirren, everybody that was there was like idols. And I was playing like the baddie, but I couldn't really see him as a baddy. It seemed to me that he was just misunderstood, which I argued in rehearsals, as one does. Anyway, the third morning, I was asked to turn up 15 minutes before the rest of the cast, and the director said, it's the worst words an actor can ever hear,

Starting point is 00:42:41 I'm sorry, it's not working, I'll have to let you go. You're not bad enough. The play only works. Some of you may remember it. All these adult actors were playing children but dressed in children's clothes. So adult dressing, so there was this strange. towing and throwing between being an adult and a child and it did actually need someone being a really stinker of a child and I wasn't that and so I walked away and I never kind of

Starting point is 00:43:12 spoke to them or saw them most of them again ever and the humiliation of being such a failure not only in such a potentially successful play but in front of my peers was massive and it took me an awful long time to shake the ghost of that out, you know, 20 or 30 years. So when you say this failure to deal with your failures, do you mean that you feel that you should be able to bounce back more quickly? Yeah, absolutely. That I should. And I think probably in all the questions that you've asked me that I've been slightly fending off because I wanted to be in control of this interview. This is part of that control thing, I guess, of being small and being perform, isn't it? You're pitching to me and I'm slightly trying to bend it in my direction.

Starting point is 00:44:05 Failures are fine, aren't they, if you triumph out of them, if you take the thing, if you take the lesson that they learn and integrated into your life. Wise people say there's no such thing as failure. Yes, there is. I've felt it for years. They're wrong, you know. And I think when you begin to learn the mechanism of dealing with those failures, it's an enormous liberation. And I think part of that for a lot of us, and again, you know, maybe this will come out in the Q&A or in the boozer afterwards if that's what we do.

Starting point is 00:44:40 I think growing older, things become less important. And I don't mean they have less meaning. I think Jennifer Saunders said recently, as you grow older, everything grows slightly less erotic. And she didn't mean just sexy things, you know. She meant things aren't so charged. And I think I can now, just as part of the growing older process, can look back at my earlier life and go, oh, bless him, it didn't matter that much. But I think the weapon, sorry, just quickly, I just think that the weaponry of learning that earlier in one's life is an enormous boon, and I wish I'd had it.

Starting point is 00:45:18 I think that is so well put. And I think also what you're getting at is that there are some failures that aren't easily assimilated, that you can't back. back from that might end up being a failure for the rest of your life but I truly believe that one can live alongside those failures and the trick if you can call it that is to be as that piece with it as you can be yeah that's right it goes back to that thing that I said at the start about not wanting to use the word God or not use wanted to use the word history I kind of want to make you redundant Elizabeth I know I love it that's kind of what this podcast is about I don't I don't want us to use the word failure because in a way

Starting point is 00:45:59 as soon as you use the word failure, you were wrong. It was bad, it didn't work. I love that metaphor of the oak tree, that if someone gouges the oak tree when it's young, that cut is almost obscene. When you look at it, it's horrible. But gradually as the oak grows older and wider and bigger and the bark becomes more twisted

Starting point is 00:46:29 and more sophisticated. That gouge becomes not only a thing of beauty, but probably the most beautiful and defining thing about that oak tree. Wow. That was so good. We're coming to an end of the first half, and I know you've wanted to be in control of this interview, Tony,

Starting point is 00:46:49 but there was one question that you said that you would answer later, which was about whether you found someone or somewhere to confide your... hurt to. You're now 78, I believe, so two years from 80. Have you found that place? I've got a couple actually.

Starting point is 00:47:09 One of them is my wife. Recovering alcoholics talk about talking the stuff and I think what they mean is that most of what we say basically is a bit of old rubbish, isn't it? It's just kind

Starting point is 00:47:25 of calming each other down, soothing ourselves, talking because it's terrifying when there's silence, talking because we're told we have to, talking to show off. But there is another kind of talking, which is the talking that has meaning. And to be able to share that with another person,

Starting point is 00:47:43 I think is golden, and to me, that is the mark of meaningful relationships. Of course, we talk at the Nodevold Twaddle a lot of the time. But talking the stuff, I think, is great. And I think when you find someone you can talk the stuff with, and not just talking about the stuff in relation to other people, which is kind of quite easy, really. Look at that guy over there.

Starting point is 00:48:06 Isn't his body language sad? Can you see his relationship? You know, that's interesting, but quite easy. But talking about why you behave the way you do and why you behave the way you do when you're with that other person, when you're being shitty to that other person, how you feel yourself, I think actually is an enormous liberation and a kindness both to you and to that.

Starting point is 00:48:28 other person. So you found your person and that's your wife. Yeah. What a beautiful note to end on. So Tony, you are a wonderful wise oak tree and it has been such a joy to talk to you. The fantastic Sir Tony Robinson. Please do follow How to Fail to get new episodes as they land on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music or wherever you get your podcasts, please tell all your friends. This is an Elizabeth Day and Sony Music Entertainment original podcast. Thank you so much for listening.

How To Fail With Elizabeth Day - Sir Tony Robinson - ‘I learned comedy as a defence mechanism’

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