Glenda Jackson MP

Desert Island Discs

BBC

Society & Culture, Music Commentary, Music, Personal Journals

4.4 • 13.7K Ratings

🗓️ 28 December 1997

⏱️ 36 minutes

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🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Sue Lawley's castaway this week is the politician and Transport Minister Glenda Jackson. Politics is her third job. At 16, she left school to work in Boots. But it was as an actor that she reached the pinnacle of her profession, becoming an international star and winning Oscars for her roles in Women in Love and A Touch of Class. On television, she was the formidable Elizabeth R, but won our hearts as Cleopatra in Morecambe & Wise. Despite her vast acting experience, she admits that when she came to make her maiden speech in the House of Commons she had the worst attack of stage fright in her long career.

[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, I'm Krestey Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive.
0:05.0	For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.
0:08.0	The program was originally broadcast in 1997, and the presenter was Sue Lawley. My castaway this week is a politician. She was born and brought up on Merseys, the eldest daughter of a bricklayer.
0:37.5	She left school at 16 to work as a shop girl in boots, but two years later won a grant to take her to Rada and went on in her late 20s
0:45.1	to join the Royal Shakespeare Company under Peter Brook.
0:48.2	Her career took off and in films such as Women in Love and a touch of class for both of which she won Oscars
0:53.6	and the BBC television series Elizabeth R she became an international star.
0:58.4	But politics always ran deep within her and in 1990 she was adopted as the Labour candidate for
1:04.7	Hampstead and Highgate becoming its MP two years later and joining the new Labour
1:08.9	government as a transport minister earlier this year. Her dramatic change of career is thus complete for, as she
1:15.8	says herself, you can't be a part-time MP and you certainly can't be a part-time actor.
1:21.8	She is Glenda Jackson. Have you then Glenda performed for the last time
1:26.5	on the stage? Will you never do it again? It's hard for me to be able to say categorically
1:31.6	never again because obviously I would like to be returned
1:35.8	to my seat at the next general election but if I'm not and I will still have to earn a living
1:40.6	then the only other thing I know is acting. But from everything you say
1:44.9	you are happy, very happy to go on being a politician you don't want to go back to the
1:49.8	theatre or film for the love of it at all you've no hankering?
1:53.0	No, I say that obviously from the perspective of having had several decades where I was extremely
2:00.5	fortunate both in the work that I was offered and the people with whom I was working.
2:05.0	Was there never any joy in it? Did you never feel any real pleasure or sense of satisfaction or
2:10.3	achievement? I can't believe you didn't. Well, you may have those feelings and indeed you do.
	...

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