Hello I'm Kirsty 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 1995,

and the presenter was Sue Lawley. My castaway this week is a playwright. His elegant plots, scorching one-liners and sympathetic

characters have made him one of the most successful writers in American theatrical history. He was brought up in the Bronx during the Depression

and began his career as a gag writer for radio and television. And then in 1961 he wrote,

Come Blow Your Horn. It was an instant success. In 1961 he wrote, come blow your horn.

It was an instant success and since then he's produced about one play a year.

The titles read like a roll call of the popular and successful.

Barefoot in the park, the odd couple,

Plaza Sweet, as well as hit musicals such as Sweet Charity

and they're playing our song.

I believe he said that if I keep on working,'m going to unearth some kind of secret that will make it unnecessary for me to write again.

He is Neil Simon.

But after 29 plays you're're still searching, are you, Neil? The secret still eludes you.

Well, I don't think it's one secret anymore. I think new secrets come up.

You do unearth some and find that there are others so it goes on forever and you'll never really complete the cycle

So you have to keep writing well not necessarily I mean it'll stop sometime either by

By my not being able to do it anymore or we're still losing my enthusiasm. Of course all your plays are humorous even when the subject is deadly serious. Is that because you as a private

individual always see the funny side of life or is it simply how it comes out in the writing?

It's both. It comes out in the writing by itself. I'm not always looking for where it's going to be funny. It just seems to do that. But I do have sort of an oblique look at life. I see things askew and the comedy comes out.

But what about you in your personal life, when you're in the middle of personal misery, which you've had had we've all had in our lives is

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