Samuel Beckett
Great Lives
BBC
4.2 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 21 December 2010
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Business guru Sir Gerry Robinson was born in Ireland but moved to England in his teens, and he chooses Samuel Beckett, another Irishman who lived away for much of his life - in Paris. Gerry, a late convert to Beckett's plays, loves him because he's accepting of the human condition: that we're all locked in this repetitive pattern. We don't want to keep on doing the same thing over and over again, but we do. Presenter Matthew Parris is also joined by Jim Knowlson, who was a personal friend of Samuel Beckett for 19 years, and is his authorised biographer. He reveals that Beckett was far from the dour gloomy figure of popular imagination, and was in fact very good company - as long as you didn't interrupt him when he was watching the rugby on the telly on a Saturday afternoon.
Producer: Beth O'Dea.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | My name is Annie Matmanis and my name is Nick Grimshaw. How long have we known each other babe? |
| 0:05.0 | Probably 20 years now and in that time we've always worked in and around music right? |
| 0:10.0 | We have. So it kind of makes sense that we do a podcast better. It sounds |
| 0:13.9 | like he's been 20 years in the making. It's not a avatar for podcasts basically, but it is good. |
| 0:18.6 | So we put the world to rights with regards to music. It's all the stuff that you'd want to chat to your mate |
| 0:23.5 | about over a pint. Sidetracked with us Annie and Nick, listen on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:29.0 | Thank you for downloading this great Lives podcast from BBC Radio 4. |
| 0:34.2 | For more information and details of other podcasts, just visit BBC.co. |
| 0:38.8 | UK slash Radio 4. |
| 0:40.3 | Today on Great Lives, I'm joined by the business leader and broadcaster Sir Jerry Robinson. |
| 0:46.0 | The man who was bold enough in his BBC 2 series Can Jerry Robinson fix the NHS |
| 0:52.0 | to attempt to reduce waiting lists at |
| 0:54.3 | Rotterham General Hospital. Yet he's chosen a great life and a body of work as far |
| 1:00.3 | from all this as it's possible to imagine, except geographically, Jerry, you were born |
| 1:06.1 | in Ireland but moved to England in your teens and you've chosen another Irishman who lived |
| 1:11.1 | away for much of his life. Tell us who he is. It's Samuel Beckett and there's |
| 1:18.6 | something about Beckett's position in Ireland that that kind of sense of his timing, |
| 1:24.0 | that this Protestant upbringing at a time when Ireland was changing, |
| 1:28.0 | that I can kind of relate to, so I could always relate, in a sense, to the man, |
| 1:32.0 | although, to be honest I absolutely loathed |
| 1:36.3 | his work when I first encountered it I saw Godo waiting for Godo at the Royal Court |
| 1:41.0 | I was about 24 25 at the time I came out of the theatre kind of furious |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.