BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts

Lauren LeVernier, we're taking our summer break so until we're back on air we're showcasing

a few programs from our wonderful archive. As usual the music's been shortened for right's

reasons. This week's guest is the writer and illustrator Raymond Briggs who died recently

at the age of 88. He was cast away twice and this is his second appearance from 2005.

The presenter is Sue Lawley.

My cast away this week is a writer and illustrator. His books have become classics of their kind,

both for children and grown-ups, father Christmas, the snowman, and where the wind blows are among his

best known. He's been producing them since the 1960s. He was brought up in Wimbledon. His mother

had been a lady's maid and his father was the milkman. After leaving art school he became

an illustrator but unimpressed with the quality of writing with which he had to work used his

love of the strip cartoon to add his own words to his pictures. His parents often appear in

his stories. The simple, decent lives they led are a source of inspiration and his work is always

honest and unafraid of reality. Now 71, he lives simply, drives an old car and apparently buys

his clothes from a charity shop. On his gravestone he would like and scribe the opinion of a little girl

he knows. I quote, he is not a normal person. He is Raymond Briggs. Why would she think Raymond

that you're not a normal person? Oh, Gully, I don't know. It's all seen very normal to the point

of being boring to me but she was only three and a half when she said this. It was rather strange

all sitting around having lunch and slight pause and then she just looked across the table at me

and said, Raymond, there's not a normal person. But you quite like that. Oh yes, brilliant. Perfect,

best compliment. I've ever had in my life. Why? Well, who wants to be normal? Except that you're

your very ordinaryness and the simplicity and that of your parents and everything you've written

...