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 1990, and the presenter was Sue Lawley. My castaway this week is an impresario. Over the past 30 years, he's risked hundreds of millions

of his own money and other peoples too, entertaining family audiences

with glittering musicals.

His successes are legendary, half a sixpence, Charlie Girl, Sweet Charity, and Barnum to name

but a few. His list of stars is dazzling. He even got Frank Sinatra to play Blackpool.

Like the best theatrical grandees, his failures have been on a large scale too.

His production of Zekefelt crashed two years ago at a loss of more than 2 million pounds,

and this year his new musical with Petula Clark closed early.

Nevertheless he remains optimistic. My shows are the purpose of my life he says and

always have been. He is Harold Fielding. So how did you persuade Sinatra to come to Blackpool

Harold with difficulty? Well with difficulty but he was marvellous and he gave me something

apart from the marvelous performance I'd never done before

the pleasure of dashing down the whole promenade at Blackpool in a police car

with all the sirens blaring and I thought that was that made my days how I always remember

son art but that's the only way he'd go to the show oh yes yes a demand a

demand on the contract nicely put nicely put I mean Marinarich, who I was another of the great stars that I introduced to Blackpool,

because I did concerts over 33 years. She was remarkable because we took her up in a very small plane,

which we used most Sundays in those days.

And I said, it's only 45 minutes from where we took her.

And she said, Harold, that doesn't matter.

...