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

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

The program was originally broadcast in 1984 and the presenter was Roy Plumlee. This week our castaway is the playwright, director, producer, and theatrical manager, Ray Cooney.

Now Ray, we're taking you from the Hurley-Bearly of Theatreland.

Could you endure loneliness on this island.

Yes, I could endure loneliness,

but I think I also have an inventive

streak in me, and I think I'd always be working out ways

of how to escape.

How important to you is music?

I tend not to listen to music over much because I find that it pulls on my emotional strings.

Do you play an instrument at all?

I used to play the trumpet and it very nearly blew my two front teeth out.

And when I was a young man man I was hoping to be either Clark

Gable or Lawrence Olivier I didn't think I was going to sort of turn out to be a

cross between Groucho Marx and Bob Hope and so when I saw that my front teeth were being loosened by my trumpet blowing, I gave up playing the trumpet voluntarily.

You've done a bit of singing. You were in Charlie Girl for a while. A short while, yes. I took over from Derek Nimmo when Derek went off on holiday and I played in Charlie

Girl, yes.

Right, this little pile of eight records you got there on the table, what's the first? The very first record is

Bing Crosby and Bob Hope singing the Road to Morocco. Why do you choose this?

Well neither of my parents were in the theatrical business, but my father introduced me first of all to Sid Field in the variety of theatre, and I did actually fall out of my

seat as a 12-year-old watching Sid Field and Jerry Desmond and he was also a great cinema

...