This download is the only extract the BBC has of this edition of desert island discs. The presenter was Roy Plumley.

I was born in Suffolk and started life with a slight Suffolk accent which I think I've just about ironed out.

What in fact did you do when you left school?

Well, I sold lavatory paper and disinfectant and various things.

Very many unsuccessfully because instead of selling them in the morning I was going to Ziria Ray's dancing academy

and having bought some tap shoes I was trying to learn to dance. I really cut down my visits to the afternoon and I had very little success.

I had a bill out in an umbrella and although I was 19 I looked about four.

What was your first job in Muthierta?

My first job in Ziria was the background of the chorus at the London Hippardrum in a show called The Five O'clock Girl

which was George Bray Smith and Ernest Tricks and Jean Collin. I got the job. There were 16 chorus voice.

I think there were 142 for the audition and I just managed to scrape in World Up.

After that I was out of work for nine months after that brilliant success in the chorus

and having champed the agent's stairs for a long time I was finally in desperation by one agent sent to India

and I spent 18 months touring the far east.

What sort of place?

We did everything. We did music comedy. We did funny face.

So this is love, the girlfriend, stop flirting, Julia Caesar, Hamlet, the young Woodley, when nights were bold, no no no net.

When you name it we did it.

Something for all things. Something for everybody.

Is this the celebrated company which no card played with?

Yes, that's right. We were called the Quaints and no driving through Singapore in a rickshaw.

I saw the Victoria Theatre Singapore and it said the Quaints in Hamlet.

...