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 1979, and the presenter was Roy Plumlee. This week our castaway is the state and screen star Rex Harrison.

Rex, do you have any musical skill yourself? I'm excluding your delightful but rather specialized style of singing. Do you play an instrument?

No, I've tried because Tarrinette was my favorite instrument in the world and I've got a lot of records to play on the subject because I love it very much.

I want to try to learn them to Taranette.

Sid Phillips was a phone of mine who was to play for years during the war and I bought a car clarinet and said gave me a couple of lessons and I did try but the noises that came out were really horrendous and it's a very difficult one to master with a Reed and I never really had time to play it properly. Do you play discs a lot?

A lot, yes. What's the first one you've got there on your list?

Well, it's a Barney Bigard who was a clarinetist who played with Ellington, and it's called

Lull at Dawn. Oh, And the Lala Dawn by Barney Biggard in his orchestra recorded in 1940. You were born in the North of England,

Mitchell? Yes, I was born outside Liverpool in a place called Heighten, which is a village

when I was born there, but is now famous for being Mr Wilson's

constituency and was being built up, considered it since I was born.

And you had two sisters and my information is that you fell in love for the first time at the age of six.

Well I suppose that was roughly correct, yes.

Yes.

Obviously a romantic.

When did you first get hooked by the theatre?

Well, I was 16, I've been 19 since I was 16, I went as a student

to the Liverpool rep because my family moved from Heiten to Liverpool and Sefton Park outside Liverpool and I acted at school. I went to school at the Liverpool College and I did plays there. Your performance of Flute in

Midsummer Night's Dream is still talked of. Yes yes. I did it with a lisp I remember.

So to the playhouse?

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