Raymond Briggs
Desert Island Discs
BBC
4.3 • 14.3K Ratings
🗓️ 20 March 2005
⏱️ 37 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Sue Lawley's castaway this week is the writer and illustrator Raymond Briggs. For millions of children, Christmas would be incomplete without Briggs's story The Snowman, which has been shown on television every year since its first release, in 1982, and his enduringly popular Father Christmas.
Raymond was born in 1934 in Wimbledon. His mother, Ethel, was a lady's maid and his father, Ernest, a milkman. He wanted to draw cartoon strips from an early age but, at art school, found his tutors looked down on his aspirations. After leaving, he quickly secured work as a commercial artist, doing illustrations for advertisements, journals and books. He said he was so appalled at the standard of the children's books he was asked to illustrate he thought he could do better himself. And he did - his first attempt was immediately accepted for publication and he went on to twice win the Kate Greenaway Medal - the principal award for illustration.
[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]
Favourite track: Parce Mihi Domine (from Officium Defunctorum) by Christobal de Morales Book: Complete Works of Beachcomber by J B Morton Luxury: A full-size billiard table with Radio 4 built into each of the legs
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, I'm Christy Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive. |
| 0:05.4 | For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music. |
| 0:08.4 | The program was originally broadcast in 1983, and the presenter was Roy Plumley. |
| 0:30.9 | Our cast away this week is the artist, writer and cartoonist Raymond Briggs. |
| 0:35.9 | Raymond, how would you view a spell as a Robinson cruiser? |
| 0:39.3 | I think I'd look forward to it really. |
| 0:41.7 | It's fed up with all the things we have to deal with every day, like paperwork and |
| 0:45.6 | telephones and form filling. |
| 0:47.8 | How important is music in your life? |
| 0:50.0 | Not very much. I'm not a great music fan. I've always found it rather complicated and |
| 0:55.6 | technical and rather intimidating. |
| 0:58.5 | Do you have any skill? Do you play any instrument? |
| 1:01.5 | No, nothing at all, never have. |
| 1:03.2 | Do you play music while you're working? |
| 1:05.1 | No, I listen to radio for more than anything. |
| 1:08.0 | I like to play music in the evenings, between about six and eight, I think. |
| 1:14.1 | Mainly chair-upping sort of music, such as I've chosen. |
| 1:17.4 | That's the time when you feel you want to be chaired up at the end of the day rather than the |
| 1:21.0 | beginning. Despite the fact you've done a good day's work. |
| 1:24.0 | Yes. Relief of the gloom that descends at that time when |
| 1:28.0 | day is all gone badly. |
| 1:30.4 | Right, what's the first record you've chosen to relieve the gloom? |
... |
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