The Forgotten History of WW2 Evacuees with Dominic Frisby
Episode Stats
Words per minute
175.59412
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Misogyny
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Toxicity
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Summary
Our brilliant and returning guest, comedian, broadcaster and author, Dominic Frisby, joins us to talk about his life story and how he became one of the funniest people in the world. He also talks about how he went from being a child soldier in WW2 to becoming a comedian and author.
Transcript
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The Germans are going to bomb the UK and so the authorities decide that all the children
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in the cities across the UK need to be evacuated. My dad was seven and his brother was 11 and their
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mother had to put them on a train and just wave goodbye and they didn't know where they were going
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who would be taking them in how long they would go for none of this stuff and who knows what kind
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of damage that did to families across the country my grandma decided to turn it into an adventure
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and what she did she gave him a postcard and she said write the address of where you end up
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on this postcard and if it's horrible you put one kiss and I'll come straight down there and get you
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back and if it's okay you put two kisses and if it's nice you put three kisses okay so it was
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their secret code and this first scene that I'm going to play you now um takes place on the first
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night when they're sitting there by candlelight, the two boys discussing how many kisses to put on
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of course trigger hello and welcome to trigonometry i'm francis foster i'm constantin
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and this is a show for you if you want honest conversations with fascinating people our brilliant
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And returning guest today is a comedian, broadcaster and author, Dominic Frisby.
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You've been working on a lot of different things since we last interviewed you.
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Remind people who haven't seen you on the show before, who are you?
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What has been the journey through life that leads you to be sitting here talking to us?
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OK, well, I'll summarise it as quickly as I can.
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and when I was a young man I saw that the best writers had all started out as actors
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Shakespeare, Dickens and many more besides and so I went to drama school and then when I was at
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drama school I found I was very for some reason I was always top in radio and so I've got a
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voiceover agent like as soon as I left so I started out just doing voiceovers. Life doesn't
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always pan out as you're intending then I started you have quite a lot of free time when you do
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voiceovers and I wrote this comic song and a friend of mine said he was a music agent I said
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can we get this release as a novelty song and he said no go and do it at my brother's club
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which was up the creek run by Malcolm Hardy and in those days if you did an open spot they gave
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you a paid work so I did an open spot with this song and they gave me a paid gig and suddenly I
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was a stand-up comedian it was quite a good life and so that was what I did stand-up comedy and
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voiceovers and then because I was working on this other thing that we're going to talk about in
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today's interview and we needed to raise three to five million quid to make it happen and I was
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trying to figure out how to make it happen how to raise this money and this was in the mid-noughties
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now so I started a podcast as a means to meet all these very rich people that I saw talking on the
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internet who'd made a lot of money and they were all talking about gold at the time and commodities
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and all this kind of thing and and it as i'm sure you know from doing podcasts it's just
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it's amazing how many people you meet and the how much you learn just by talking to all these people
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how much information you absorb but one of the people i interviewed was this woman called mary
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somerset webb who was financial times journalist and she ran money week and she said oh we need
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people like you to come and write for us and so i she started they just gave me a column writing
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for money week and i was like i don't really know what i'm talking about and she was like it's fine
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just write. And so suddenly I was a financial writer. So I've had this weird double life
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as a sort of comedian, author, songwriter, and a financial writer. And I sort of, bizarrely
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it works. And so that's how I've ended up where I am.
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Well, you're a man of many skills. But the reason we wanted to have you back is you've
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got this very interesting, very exciting story to tell. I don't want to talk over it a little
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bit. So why don't you tell us what you're up to?
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Okay, so this actually was something that my dad wrote.
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A guy called Terence Frisbee died a few years ago.
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And he wrote this story about his time as an evacuee during World War II.
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And he wrote it, and it was a radio drama on BBC Radio 4 in the 1980s.
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Immensely popular, and it was like it got broadcast more than any other radio drama
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got broadcast that year or something, and it won all these awards.
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and it got letters from people who'd been evacuated in Germany to escape English bombs
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and also people who'd been evacuated in Russia so the story of children being evacuated was a huge
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subject and I fell in love with it I was only about 19 or 20 and then he tried to get it made
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into a film for many years and I think it got optioned by Ken Loach but you know it got stuck
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in development hell and then in the early noughties a chance encounter on a golf course
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this guy from a regional theatre in Barnstable just said have you got a project for me and dad
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said actually I do and he was talking to his friend who'd always been going you should turn
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this thing into a stage musical and so they did it as a stage musical and then and it was just
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the best thing I ever saw and that was why I started to try and work out how to raise three
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to five million quid to bring this thing into the West End so that's the sort of background to this
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project and then during the lockdown and dad had died at this point and I was just like um
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I'd been going through his stuff and the script and the cd was I'd taken it home he was just
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sitting there every day I'd be sat on my desk during the lockdown and this script would be
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looking at me and I was going if I don't make this happen nobody's going to make it happen
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so during the lockdown um I decided I didn't have the means to turn it into a stage version
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obviously covid and all the rest of it didn't have the money or the means to turn it into a film
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and it's not just making the film you need powerful allies distributors and so on to get
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the film seen but I did have the means to turn it into an audio project so I set to work and we made
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an audio project of this musical four hours long I rewrote one of the songs with my songwriter who
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it turned out his dad had also been evacuated during the war so he had a similar experience
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and so and then because it was the lockdown and nobody was working we were able to get
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quite big stars involved in the project John Owen Jones who's a big like the greatest ever
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John um in Les Mis and various others and then by a chance encounter we were supposed to record it
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in one studio and they totally started breaking our balls about Covid and everyone had to be two
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meters apart and we were like well the orchestra can't sit two meters and all this stuff so we
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ended up changing studios and I just phoned around the studios at the last minute and and
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and I phoned up Abbey Road and they said well we've just had a cancellation um and if you like
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you can come and uh record it here and we'll give it to you at cost because the conductor's got to
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go into um quarantine for two weeks so we ended up recording the whole thing at Abbey Road and
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various other studios as well Abbey Road you know a Beatles famous horn so that's the sort of
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background to this project now I'm just going to tell you the the story the first like 20 minutes
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of the musical and then i'm going to play you the one video we've made of the musical and we're going
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to see what your reaction is okay so we're in it's um 1940 1940 and the last of the soldiers
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have just been evacuated from dunkirk world war ii and they know the blitz is coming the germans
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are going to bomb the UK. And so the authorities decide that all the children in the cities across
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the UK need to be evacuated. And I think, I'm going to say it's either 4 million or 8 million
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kids between the ages of 4 and 13 were evacuated to escape the bombing from the cities to the
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countryside it was the biggest wholesale of movement in our country's history and they were
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sent kids were sent from their families so you can imagine my dad was seven and his brother was 11
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and their mother had to put them on a train and just wave goodbye and they didn't know where they
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were going who would be taking them in how long they would go for none of this stuff and
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who knows what kind of damage that did to families across the country some people had happy experiences
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and other people had terrible experiences and it's just an incredible story and it's not a story that
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you hear told very often so um my dad was seven his brother was 11 they're at home in southeast
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london and their mum comes in and they have a little label on with their name and a gas mask
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and a bag with you know a change of underwear and some pajamas and dad and his brother jack
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um are going where are we going mum and she doesn't know and so she's they walk up to the station
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and as they're going to the station all the other kids from their school join them
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and there's this incredible crowds and the whole school puts their kids onto the train
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and just waves goodbye right that's you can imagine the turmoil and in order to
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lighten the situation for them my grandma decided to turn it into an adventure
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and what she did she gave him a postcard and the postcard said dear mum and dad arrived safe and
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well love jack and terry she gave him this postcard she said write the address of where you end up
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on this postcard and if it's horrible you put one kiss and I'll come straight down there and get you
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back and if it's okay you put two kisses and if it's nice you put three kisses okay so it was
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their secret code and so she turned the whole thing into an adventure for them and they go
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so they go onto the train and it's just they're two school teachers and all the kids on the train
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and they're sent, they get on the train at Deptford
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and then the train goes across South East London
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And Dad and his brother and about 50 or 60 other kids
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and they were sent off to go with these locals.
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and dad and his brother were taken in by this welsh couple who'd moved down to cornwall and he
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had been a soldier in world war one they would eventually learn and you can just imagine these
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strange accents these strange people what a traumatic experience that was for the kids
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but anyway dad was taken in by this welsh couple um auntie rose and uncle jack and uncle jack
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had um this was a huge thing people tried to separate dad and his brother and they were like
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we have to stay together we have to stay together this was the thing we have to stay together that
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was the instruction their mum had given him dad and his brother were taken in by this welsh couple
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and now he had been a soldier in world war one and he'd been in he was only five foot high and
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he'd been in this regiment called the welsh bantams which had come up against the prussian guard who
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were all over six foot and they were all involved in this massacre the mammoths wood massacre
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where only 17 of them survived 17 and he went back to his village and he was the only man from
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the village to go back and so as a result him and his wife they just had to leave the village because
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all the other women looking at him like that was just too much for them so they'd moved down to
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cornwall and he was now a plate layer on the great western railway dad and his brother loved trains
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steam trains and they went back to this house there was no electricity um and they walked in
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and there was a canary in a cage a cat asleep by the fire they went into the garden tiny little
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railway cottage they went into the garden there was chickens in the yard and a pig outdoor privies
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and they had this son gwyn who was sort of very funny and sang all the time and
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outside the house there was this huge valley with woods and rivers to dam and then the railway
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at the end of their garden with the trains going past and they thought they had died and gone to
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heaven they thought it was fantastic and this first scene that I'm going to play you now
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um takes place on the first night when they're sitting there by candlelight the two boys
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discussing how many kisses to put on their postcard.
00:15:38.340
Broadway's smash hit, The Neil Diamond Musical,
00:15:44.120
The true story of a kid from Brooklyn destined for something more,
00:15:47.660
featuring all the songs you love, including America,
00:15:53.380
Like Jersey Boys and Beautiful, the next musical mega hit is here,
00:17:35.360
If we put lesson three, Mum and Dad will think it's rotten here
00:18:16.860
But don't you see, the more kisses we put, the more happy they're going to be
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We don't have to stop at four. Let's do hundreds!
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00:18:32.340
Kisses on a postcard, one by one, all round the edges, this is fun.
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Kisses on a postcard, squashed up tight, telling mum that we're all right.
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Kisses on a third spot, kisses on a third spot
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Yeah, really, really enjoyable. And it's also powerful as well, because in many ways,
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you know, we molecule children in our generation. But what these young boys had to go through is
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something that we can't, none of us can comprehend, number one. And number two,
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certainly not children, being torn away from your families, going to places in the country
00:20:29.360
that you don't know of, that you don't know about. It's a completely different way of life.
00:20:34.160
it's it's very powerful and did that have a profound effect on your father i think so i think
00:20:40.740
so he used to talk about it and that whole generation most of them are dead now there's
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still you know a few in their late 80s and 90s but they all used to talk about it and yeah as i said
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some had good experiences like dad and others had had horrible times and basically but that story
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basically just tells the whole of their time during the war that's what you just saw there
00:21:06.420
So he had quite a positive experience on the whole.
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He did, but I can't see how it didn't mess him up.
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And other than the occasional postcard or letter,
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I think mum and dad came down a couple of times
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because there are some photos of them down there.
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went back sooner but basically he didn't go home until after they started invading sicily
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because the man gwyn who was the son of auntie rose and uncle jack went off to fight in sicily
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did he ever talk about it his experiences he did but most of it's in you know he wrote a book about
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it so everything was distilled into that book but yeah he talked about it a lot
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the impact that must have on a young child it's a whole country it's a whole country
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and the impact that must have in not seeing your parents for four years and the impact on the
00:22:18.200
parents i think some people never found their parents again because they will have died or
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just lost contact so there were some children who never found their parents so there were
00:22:28.160
Someone just ended up staying forever where they went.
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You know, one or two, not, I mean, not everyone.
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because I imagine that one of the things we associate
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with your father's generation is this kind of stoicism
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that perhaps people now like to hearken back to.
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So I don't know whether that's accurate, of course,
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but going through things like that as both parents of children
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and children themselves, when we say impact, what do you think it was?
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I think people then were definitely mentally tougher than we are now.
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And they were literally going into the unknown.
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I think they were much more trusting of authority.
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than they are now and one of the questions you asked me constantin i remember when we were
00:23:31.280
talking a couple of weeks ago you said could that happen now that that people would send their kids
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off to just go stay with a total stranger there's no way of vetting them they're only vetted locally
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by their communities you know there's no they haven't got their little certificate that prove
00:23:48.560
they aren't a paedophile or something you know um would we would that be able to happen now
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and because you know britain was so much more monocultural then whereas now it's much more
00:24:04.500
multicultural and so between the various um cultures that we have this perhaps they're not
00:24:10.800
the same levels of trust that there were then and you know cornwall particularly you know it's the
00:24:18.340
end of Britain but it you know they spoke a different language in Cornwall they didn't then
00:24:24.060
they'd already stopped speaking it but you know it's culturally very different from the rest of
00:24:27.320
Britain and um you know anyone outside of Cornwall is a foreigner let alone a Londoner it also had a
00:24:35.300
big impact on the towns they went to because you know the village kids what happened is all the
00:24:40.940
you know the London kids all came and the London they were better at sport they were cleverer
00:24:46.700
you know when they had village kids against the vacu's kids football matches or cricket matches
00:24:51.100
whatever the village kids would always get destroyed the the londoners just thought the
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village kids were stupid the village kids resented these new newcomers it you know created so much
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00:25:01.160
social turmoil in the places that they went to there were dads there was fights all the time
1.00
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village kids versus the vacu kids you know any excuse for a fight and um you know they'd arrange
00:25:13.620
these huge fights down in the woods or if it was winter they'd arrange huge snowball fights and
00:25:18.360
so they were never so a lot of them weren't really accepted in the community then
00:25:23.640
i guess i guess some of them weren't some of them weren't yeah um like all these things there would
00:25:30.340
have been some people who opened up their arms to them yeah and other people who didn't want them
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there at all and were there some who just didn't who who kept their children in london because they
00:25:41.180
wanted their children near or was that not really an option at that time i guess there were one or
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two but it's a bit like do you remember how scared everyone was when covid first started
00:25:53.980
at this first lockdown yeah yeah and okay so let's just say you know we've got all this tension at
00:26:00.800
the moment with russia and ukraine and by the way i played it that scene to a load of people the
00:26:05.720
first hour of the musical to a load of people in the car just as russia was invading ukraine
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and everyone said exactly the same things happening in ukraine now with the massive
00:26:16.260
evacuation away particularly from the eastern ukrainian cities so something very similar
00:26:21.640
happened in ukraine and you know you saw them they just wrote their names on a label and sent
00:26:25.940
them off into the unknown but if you just knew that britain's about to be bombed and just and
00:26:31.480
And I'm paralleling with that fear of the unknown
00:26:39.380
It would take someone of a very contrarian mindset
00:26:51.240
although I'm not sure how aware they would be of this fact,
00:26:54.060
Germany were very much in the ascendancy at that point.
00:26:56.980
It was only the decision to invade Russia that did for Hitler.
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Now, what do you think the... because I've never really heard these stories at all,
00:28:25.420
I didn't really even know that this was a thing particularly. What do you think the impact of that
00:28:31.180
was on society going forward? Because these are obviously very significant things for young people
00:28:36.540
to go through at that age and a whole generation of children would have grown up into adults
00:28:41.180
from that experience well i i look at britain in maybe 1911 or something like that at the sort of
00:28:49.260
the height of the empire when we really produced all these amazing individuals and we led the world
00:28:55.020
in science and philosophy and math you know everything in the world and how quickly we
00:29:02.460
descended from that greatness um relative to other countries in the world and it was the two wars
00:29:09.580
first world war and and then you know people give chamberlain a hard time for being in a pisa but
00:29:15.100
i think he lost five of his brothers in the first world war and that was why he was like we can't do
00:29:21.320
this again why he was so reluctant to go into the second world war it's a side of chamberlain that
00:29:25.880
you never hear and so but i think it was yet another thing that just you know destroyed the
00:29:36.100
fabric of Britain's greatness. It was just yet another episode in this sort of ongoing
00:29:40.760
destruction, because ultimately we just lost so many people. And we used to have big families,
00:29:46.640
seven, eight, 10 people. And now, you know, it's one or two kids. And, you know, it all starts
00:29:51.940
with family. And if you destroy the family, and this had a terrific impact on British families.
0.55
00:29:57.320
And you, one thing we're never really aware of is the fact that rationing, it didn't just end
00:30:02.100
in 1945 it carried on for a number of years and in fact there was a lot of london and a lot of
00:30:07.800
cities like liverpool and birmingham that were just that had just rubble for many years afterwards
00:30:13.000
so this idea that we you know bounced back and everything was fine we were broken from the second
00:30:18.320
world world for a long time yeah we were and it's interesting that the the rationing thing the two
00:30:24.260
the kids talk about it how excited they were to eat real eggs yeah and we would take it for granted
00:30:33.180
You get a little bit of it in the country for obvious reasons,
00:30:35.880
but, yeah, rationing was, and sweets and, you know,
00:30:40.940
We take so much of that, the abundance that we have today for granted.
00:30:45.600
That's one of the reasons I love talking to older people
00:30:50.300
probably in an episode with Giles Udy, the historian,
00:30:56.140
My grandmother, who's 96, she lived through, you know, she lived through decollicization,
00:31:09.820
And she was she always tells me how during the war, her and her girlfriends, they would
00:31:15.000
have a bet on whether they would ever eat real bread again.
00:31:18.900
That was the sort of experiences that people were having.
00:31:23.640
I'm curious as well, you know, there's obviously a very deep personal connection here for you with your dad and being able to finish something after he's gone.
00:31:34.960
Well, it's it's been my life's mission for 25 years to to make this musical exist because and it's not just people are looking at it and go, you know, you love your dad.
00:31:49.320
And of course I love my dad, but I'm sure you see this
00:31:54.760
with comedians or something who you think are brilliant
00:31:57.100
and nobody notices them and they seem to spend their whole lives
00:32:02.580
And I just know how good this story is and how brilliant the songs are
00:32:07.320
and how powerful and it's funny and it's got this huge,
00:32:12.320
profound message to it and it also makes you laugh,
00:32:16.480
I just wanted to make this thing exist it's that's it's literally and it's like if I didn't do it
00:32:24.940
nobody would and yeah so how difficult is it to make something like this happen to take a musical
00:32:31.420
from you know the the writing the music putting it together and then taking it to the west end
00:32:37.900
it's it can be really easy and it can be impossible and you know it like if you look at
00:32:48.060
take the example of six uh about the six wives of henry the eighth i think the two it was written
00:32:54.220
by two students or one was a student one wasn't and i think they wrote it in like two weeks it
00:32:58.480
was six songs one for each of the wives of henry the eighth they did it as an edinburgh show did
00:33:03.020
very well in edinburgh suddenly it's a west end show everyone's raving about it it's syndicated
00:33:08.240
all the way around the world i know the guy does the pr quite well and he says he thinks that no
00:33:13.980
musical ever has made as much money as quickly as six and i think it's start and that and that is
00:33:19.400
despite the headwinds that are covid that you know that had to be close so if you just hit something
00:33:26.760
and it flies it can be incredibly easy and then for other people they could we could you could
00:33:33.620
spend your whole life trying to get something on and nobody cares so it can be impossible but you
00:33:38.440
need to to to the problem with putting this show on in the west end is it's got 18 kids in it so
00:33:45.300
you would probably need three sets of kids uh so that's a logistical problem but it's bizarre
00:34:07.600
if there's some kind of brand awareness before you do it.
00:34:10.700
So that's why we have a lot of jukebox musicals.
00:34:15.160
It helps, you know, and you see a lot of revivals
00:34:17.940
of The Sound of Music or Oklahoma, whatever it is.
00:34:20.340
and this had none of that and it didn't have a big star attached to it so that was always
00:34:25.280
headwind rather than tailwind and it makes it very hard but you know the beauty of audio
00:34:31.680
is it's cheaper to make and i'm not convinced that people people seem to want to see musicals
00:34:39.700
rather than hear them um bizarrely but at least i know it now exists and so you upload it to the
00:34:46.460
internet and it's kind of permanent and so that makes me happy i'm sure and when you say it exists
00:34:54.640
how can people listen to it watch it because that was not only beautifully sung and whatever but
00:34:59.740
it's also beautifully filmed and acted too yeah well most that's the only video we made to promote
00:35:05.600
it and but it shows you how it could look if netflix or someone were to turn it into a tv
00:35:12.380
program but Kisses on a Postcard is the website and um you can either you can just get it on your
00:35:19.000
podcast app you know Apple podcast you just type in Kisses on a Postcard and you'll get the four
00:35:23.560
hour it's four and a half hours I didn't I was going to make it two hours and then I just thought
00:35:28.140
you know what people like really long audiobooks people like your show they're like Joe Rogan
00:35:32.300
they like long stuff so I just thought I'm just putting the whole thing in so four and a half
00:35:35.980
hours and um so you would listen to it in half hour chunks the same way you might listen to a
00:35:41.240
a series or something um so yeah you can find it apple podcast spotify wherever you listen to
00:35:46.520
podcasts kisses on a postcard if you want cds you can buy um cds as well old school and
00:35:53.160
i mean even just doing the audio version it cost me a lot of money and i'm gonna i'm gonna make a
00:36:00.200
big loss on it but i don't care yeah because i just wanted to make it happen because that's the
00:36:04.920
problem you stick it up onto a podcast you upload it and there's no existing brand so i can't do
00:36:10.800
I can't advertise all the things that you advertise and so on
00:36:14.600
because that took you several years to get to the point where you...
00:36:31.940
and particularly, you know, the road to the West End
00:36:37.500
how do you take a show and then get it transferred to the west end you it's it
00:36:44.420
a lot of stuff starts in edinburgh a lot of stuff starts in the provinces they'll put on a show one
00:36:51.360
of the regional theaters or in a fringe theater and it it captures a zeitgeist and people get
00:36:56.140
interested and it grows from there sometimes a producer will have a vision sometimes a big star
00:37:01.480
will come along and say i want to do a musical and they'll find a musical that's a vehicle for
00:37:05.400
the big star it happens in any number of different ways but there are only so many theaters in the
00:37:10.080
west end and to get a show on in the west end requires extraordinary amounts of capital to do
00:37:15.920
this now this show would certainly more than five million quid probably near 10 million now today's
00:37:21.100
prices it's an insane amount of money you would need investors angels they're normally called
00:37:25.860
theater investors it's famously high risk there's been all sorts of musicals made about people
00:37:31.020
losing money in musicals you know it's a famous way to lose your money but some of the biggest
00:37:36.900
fortunes in history of Andrew Lloyd Webber Cameron McIntosh two of the richest people in the country
00:37:41.520
made their fortune made their money in the West End so it's it's like it's like how does a big
00:37:48.260
you know how do you become Dave Chappelle or Chris Rock or something you know it's for whatever
00:37:54.600
reason you get the tv gig at the right time you're already good and then people want more of it and
00:38:00.540
stuff just happens for you and you catch a tailwind and it happens for some and it doesn't
00:38:05.440
happen for other stuff. And do you think that in this case, I mean, one of the things I wanted to
00:38:10.300
speak with you about is history, because this is obviously something that is now history,
00:38:16.880
essentially, for most people. And Francis and I, we've had plenty of historians on the show.
00:38:21.600
We are both fascinated by history. I think if you don't understand history, you don't understand
00:38:29.760
those who do not understand the past are doomed to repeat it
00:38:34.420
and those who do are doomed to watch others repeat it,
00:38:46.000
that's big enough for something that's about history
00:38:54.880
Do you think there's enough people who are still interested in history?
00:38:59.720
You know, this is a, you know, not every drama has to be set in the present day.
00:39:08.860
It's set in World War II, but it's not a history lesson.
00:39:11.160
It's a story about the adventures of two kids who leave there,
00:39:16.080
You know, Harry Potter's a story about a kid who's separated from his family
00:39:20.640
This is a story about two kids who are sent from their family in London
00:39:23.240
to a tiny village in Cornwall and it's about the stories of their adventures over four years in
00:39:27.640
this tiny Cornish village and it's got laughter, it's got tears, it's got drama, it's got good
00:39:33.200
songs, it's got fights, it's got stories, it's got everything you want in a drama and so I have no
00:39:39.160
doubt that there is an appetite for it. Because if you think about, I think it's the most popular
00:39:46.080
musical now which is Hamilton. Hamilton is based on historical events. Yeah it is and
00:39:52.700
one of the side effects of Hamilton is you do take an interest in Alexander Hamilton,
00:39:58.620
who you might not previously have known about. I personally don't like the portrayal of Thomas
00:40:02.720
Jefferson, who I think is a rather heroic figure in the past. And I don't like the way he was
00:40:06.820
portrayed in Hamilton. But yeah, Les Mis is about a historical event. You know, a lot of great
00:40:12.120
musicals are. And do you think one of the challenges might be because, and I really like
00:40:17.540
theatre but the more I've looked at theatrical culture and theatre and musicals it does seem
00:40:23.460
to be more and more cross-pollination with Americans so you know there's a show that
00:40:28.120
on Broadway that's a hit they bring it over here and in many ways it just squeezes out our own
00:40:33.880
talent doesn't it? Yeah I'm afraid that's true a lot of stuff that does well on Broadway will
00:40:40.160
come over here that's another route into the West End that I didn't mention before I'm afraid
00:40:46.080
we as the English are lucky that we have English because but it's also in many ways our downfall
00:40:56.240
because um you know if we had a different language that wasn't an international language
00:41:02.600
I'm sure it'd be better to preserve our own things but because we have English we tend to
00:41:06.880
get diluted a little bit by America but particularly musically but um you know the
00:41:14.700
The Hollywood, American theatre, American media, you know,
00:41:21.560
And so it affects, you know, drama and theatre and everything everywhere.
00:41:31.200
And, you know, the entertainment in businesses are –
00:41:33.740
there's a lot more people who want to be famous actors
00:41:36.400
than there is room for famous actors at the top.
00:41:38.760
There's a lot more people who want to be writers.
00:41:40.560
There's a lot more people who want to be podcasters than there is –
00:41:43.540
you know, then there are people who actually want to listen to podcasts,
00:41:46.780
And so it's a cutthroat, ruthless industry and you've got to be hard
00:41:50.860
and you've got to be good and you've got to take the knocks
00:41:53.380
and you've got to grab the opportunities when they come
00:41:58.600
The entertainment industry is ruthless and there's a lot of competition
00:42:01.640
and then you do see the stuff that gets on, particularly on a lot of telly,
00:42:06.600
and you're like, how did that get on when there's so much good stuff
00:42:11.340
that's just queuing up and doesn't get noticed?
00:42:17.440
I don't know. I think if we're going to moan about TV comedy, I think a lot of TV comedy is owned by about two or three agents and they seem to control a lot of it.
00:42:28.620
I think producers don't set the net wide enough. I think there's a lack of risk taking in producers.
00:42:35.700
They don't want to take the risk on a new guy that get this guy because he was the guy from such and such.
00:42:39.580
and therefore, you know, it's the commissioning process
00:43:08.760
I mean, I can see why people would be somewhat risk-averse
00:43:15.100
Would you give me 10 million quid to put this thing on?
00:43:18.780
and have, you know, Hugh Jackman in the lead role.
00:43:33.860
I think it was Lionel Bart who was a perfect example of this.
00:43:37.360
he created and wrote oliver which is a huge global hit success transferred all around the world
00:43:43.900
they made a film of it and then he made robin hood a few years afterwards which sent him
00:43:49.880
completely bankrupt like i don't understand lionel bart because oliver just contains brilliant song
00:43:57.620
after brilliant song after brilliant song it's obviously a fantastic story as well
00:44:01.760
and it's a fantastic musical and everything else that guy did in his life was not very good
00:44:08.740
and yet Oliver was so brilliant and it was like he took his whole life and it's like he did a deal
00:44:14.920
a Faust impact or something he says give me all the talent that I'm gonna have over my lifetime
00:44:18.720
I'm just gonna put all in this one musical and um yeah I don't understand how the same guy can
00:44:25.320
create one thing that's so good and other stuff that isn't but that's the magic of it isn't it
00:44:29.680
You know, it's that lightning in the bottle moment.
00:44:36.460
And for the rest of the time, there was no lightning, only sunshine.
00:44:40.900
Because like we're saying, you know, if you've got other people's money
00:44:45.620
and you have to justify to them why we're going to put it
00:44:48.940
into this unknown musical where there are no stars,
00:44:53.120
or you can take a show that's crushing it on Broadway,
00:44:56.320
like Book of Mormon and it's already got a lot of heat behind it yeah Book of Mormon is brilliant
00:45:02.800
yes but those two guys are already well known from South Park um I think another problem quite
00:45:09.740
interesting I've been thinking about a bit recently is if you like you doing this show
00:45:15.780
are directly answerable to your customers you're you have a direct relationship with your customers
00:45:20.680
And if people start watching the show, you're out of business.
00:45:24.620
A lot of organizations, and this applies to the NHS and also to the BBC,
00:45:29.980
they're not directly answerable to the customers.
00:45:32.380
The customers pay to the middleman, whether the TV tax or your tax,
00:45:36.220
and then that's given to the NHS or to the BBC.
00:45:39.180
So that customer relationship, I mean, you find a lot of people in the BBC
00:45:42.280
often actually have contempt for their viewers,
00:45:45.680
and they think they know better than their viewers.
00:45:47.960
and certainly in the NHS, you know, the customer can't hold the doctor to account in the same way
00:45:52.880
that, you know, I can hold the guy who sells me the shoe shop account or whatever. It's a bad
00:45:59.100
analogy, but you get my point. There isn't that direct customer relationship. And I don't think
00:46:04.500
that leads to quality service. If the provider is directly accountable to the customer in a
00:46:11.720
traditional customer-seller relationship, then there's a lot more accountability and that
00:46:16.380
results in better content broadway's smash hit the neil diamond musical a beautiful noise is
00:46:22.720
coming to toronto the true story of a kid from brooklyn destined for something more featuring
00:46:27.680
all the songs you love including america forever in blue jeans and sweet caroline like jersey boys
00:46:34.160
and beautiful the next musical mega hit is here the neil diamond musical a beautiful noise april
00:46:47.500
Which is why I'm glad we've had you on to talk about
00:46:50.080
it and you've put it out as an audio that people
00:47:01.920
we live in a different world now and in that world
00:47:05.920
or you put stuff out and they don't and you live and die
00:47:09.560
some guy deciding that you are the right person or not the right person.
00:47:14.280
I mean, the destruction of the gatekeeping industry
00:47:17.060
has been one of the greatest boons of this technological revolution
00:47:22.460
And I'm delighted about that, that people like us now have the opportunity
00:47:30.780
People are going to listen to it, and they're either going to enjoy it or not.
00:47:33.340
And that is the judgment of the public with which we all live.
00:47:38.840
and we have to be so grateful in this day and age for technology
00:47:42.780
because suddenly with one phone, you've got a kit
00:47:48.320
that would have cost you $2, $3, $5 million 25 years ago
00:47:52.060
just with one phone and it has democratised anything
00:47:55.760
and I'm like, with everything I do, it's just like I can't be bothered
00:47:59.900
sending in letters to the BBC begging them to notice me
00:48:05.080
I'm just going to go and make the song that I want to make.
00:48:06.980
I'm just going to go and do whatever it is I want to do
00:48:08.800
and if people like it great and if they don't well you know and i just think that has created
00:48:14.780
so many opportunities and it has improved the quality of content if you listen to people
00:48:21.340
15 years ago nobody wants anything that's more than three minutes and then suddenly podcasts
00:48:26.420
came along and people wanted five-hour conversations and they're like what and you know nobody would
00:48:31.100
have commissioned cat videos and i think cat videos are the most and and nobody would commission
00:48:38.220
about how to repair the handle on your mug or something.
00:48:42.000
But those how-to videos are the most watched things
00:48:47.740
And you want the spotty guy that knows about China fragments.
00:48:52.000
You don't want, you know, Emily Maitlis on mugs.
00:48:59.240
Well, Dominic, that's why I'm excited about this.
00:49:02.460
I think people in our space, frankly, need to...
00:49:04.780
I mean, look, we spent a long time whining about all this stuff.
00:49:11.240
Now I think it's up to us to start building things,
00:49:14.820
That's why I'm excited about Kisses on a Postcard.
00:49:23.100
And with that, before we ask you our usual last questions,
00:50:02.660
And it was quite an awkward conversation, I remember.
00:50:22.480
It's just something that I think is happening or could happen.
00:50:27.660
and that is the and it's where i think podcasting is going and that is the power of audio now when
00:50:37.300
if you think we only invented writing as a means to transfer information over distance and over
00:50:46.100
time you know if i needed to transfer words beyond what you can hear in that actual present
00:50:51.100
that's why we invented writing but the brain the human brain actually absorbs words through the
00:50:57.980
ear better than it does off the page and i think once you understand that you understand this
00:51:03.500
extraordinary boom we've seen in podcasting audio books and all the rest of it the the the and they
00:51:09.780
say that radio is the most visual medium it's a it's a lovely old expression because you you
00:51:15.740
create it all and with that in mind i think where media is going is do you remember you're probably
00:51:23.600
too young but in the 70s there was this huge boom in the concept album and so there was the war of
00:51:30.240
the worlds is probably the most famous example audio dramatization of of the war of the worlds
00:51:35.480
by hg wells but there were many other concept albums the wall and there was this huge booming
00:51:39.980
concept albums which was sort of spoken word music drama bowie sort of played with it a lot
00:51:46.440
and just imagine stuff and i think i hope that this podcasting audio boom moves into a sort of
00:51:55.420
people start really experimenting with music audio drama um audio books and it all sort of
00:52:04.360
comes together and we get these incredibly visual audio pieces i i think we could be going in that
00:52:10.560
direction and i think that would be good for art i mean that was a lot less stressful than what you
00:52:15.180
said last time i'm like where is he gonna go with this oh no it's just long podcast with a bit music
00:52:20.940
cool yes but it's all gonna be race-based yeah fantastic there you go uh dominic thank you so
00:52:28.660
much we're gonna ask you a couple of questions that our audience have submitted for uh locals
00:52:37.980
just remind everybody where they can find the musical,
00:52:42.920
And then we will go and ask you those couple of questions.
00:52:49.640
But the website for the show is kissesonapostcard.com.
00:53:01.700
but kissesonapostcard.com it all starts there thanks dominic and thank you guys for watching
00:53:07.180
and listening we will see you very soon on locals and then afterwards with another brilliant episode
00:53:12.140
like this one or or show all of them go out 7 p.m uk time and for those of you who like your
00:53:17.140
trigonometry on the go it's also available as a podcast take care and see you soon guys
00:53:22.820
i've heard dominic talk about how the housing crisis is much more than simple lack of new
00:53:59.480
love including america forever in blue jeans and sweet caroline like jersey boys and beautiful the
00:54:06.040
next musical mega hit is here the neil diamond musical a beautiful noise april 28th through
00:54:12.040
june 7th 2026 the princess of wales theater get tickets at mirvish.com