Hello, I'm Krestey Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive.

For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

The program was originally broadcast in 2005, and the presenter was Sue Lolly. My castaway this week is an actor, his mournful expression and rich voice have made him a

household name. In television series such as the fall and rise of Reginald Perrin,

butterflies with Wendy Craig and more recently as time goes by with Judy Dench his

effortless seriousness has had the nation falling about with laughter.

He's a late-comer to such success. He joined the army after the war drifted into the theatre because a

girlfriend was keen on amateur dramatics and then when he was 44 began getting parts

in the West End and at the National Theatre alongside the likes of Ralph Richardson, Paul Schofield,

Lawrence Olivier and John Gilegood. Television had to wait until later.

He was 50 before that part of his career took off. Now 77 he's still acting. I like he says

to play comedy that doesn't look like comedy. He is Jeffrey Palmer.

So it's comedy but you play it straight Jeffrey you get more laughs that

way do you? I don't know whether I get more laughs but it's the way I like to do it

I hate the sort of comic actor who smiles or grins to show he's being funny

you know but you must have done it you must have learned it in rep I mean exactly how to do all

of these sort of double takes and these obvious things to get the audience

going. Yes I did I think I was absolutely appalling I mean I was never taught how to do it

I did it I followed other people and and in weekly rep you learned a lot of cheap tricks because you didn't

have time to learn the lines properly. And you learned what got a laugh so you

did pull faces and you did do monumental double-takes.

And upstaged people. I mean anything just...

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