Interview With Judy Cornwell And Patricia Routledge (Part 1)

who makes me laugh as I tell you it's Sarah Jessica Parker makes me laugh I thinks sex in the city is one of the funniest modern televisions going and you know what's so lovely about it because they're taking really dicey subjects but they do it with such class and such finesse and I find myself howling with laughter with those Whoopi Goldberg makes me laugh Goldie Hawn always makes me laugh Jack Lemmon used to make me laugh I loved his work and Lucille Ball of course she was the sort of one who could when I was a kid I used to watch her and in the early televisions over here the black-and-white ones so a few a lot of the ones a lot of the modern ones now I don't like so much because they're crude the scripts aren't so good and you get bored with swearing it seems the script is replaced by swear words which is bad writing and and it's aggressive a lot of it but something like sex Missa tee is fabulous I think the Victoria Wolfe is great I loved Jennifer Saunders and Joanna lovely as a pair in absolutely fabulous that was the funny really funny I will never forget Patsy falling into the grave as she was walking along that really made me laugh I like wit and I like this situation I think most of the actors here are actors who can be comedic people like Ronnie Barker who's brilliant actor and absolutely fabulous and funny and I've worked with Ronnie in radio show called Navy Lark and we did the first down and egg born play in the London and I often wish that Ronnie had been a director as well because his ideas were just brilliant and that with really good coming and who they will be other lovely ones I used to like Abbott and Costello and Laurel and Hardy I was never keen on Chaplin but I liked Buster Keaton I liked the subtlety things and I once did a whole day spent with George Cukor and he came over here to direct a film and he was testing and he was one of the greatest directors of comedy and I remember him saying one of the big dangers for the British actors is that they like to nudge the audience and you should never nudge the audience you should let them believe it and it is a situation or the script that is funny and what makes me laugh is a funny script or a very truthful performance that is just bizarre and that makes me laugh Lucille Ball I admire she was also very glamorous and yet hysterically funny and she could physically do things really make you laugh she was seemed to be the same sort of background as a lot of us came from which was vaudeville in American or musical as we knew it and I mean I started off stood into a lot of comedians to people like Knapp Mills Najee nettles and Bobbie Anais to get shot out of a helicopter and fall through boxes while singing opera or playing a violin and then fall over something else and so you used to dancing and being able to make things appear funny scripts and ideas I mean I starred opposite marty Feldman in his first film for British lion now he was brilliant brilliant scripts but ideas and enthusiasm that could come from an idea or concept so you have to have the talent to do that and we we would just take off we would be given the situation given the script and then what we did with that they just used to let the cameras roll and we would take off and on that film by the way Penelope Keith came and as a part as an au-pair called Lottie somebody is a big German with big black plastic stuff on and that was a very funny thing but scripts if you don't have a decent script and you have lots of swear words it's not funny and some of it getting in very crude very aggressive and I think rather cruel the great situation comedy keeping up appearances was successful because it had no swear words in it lots of innuendo and all passed like Frankie Howard Ronnie Barker all those people it was innuendo the world lovely one who went to America lots of them went to America it was all innuendo Benny Hill innuendo but not in your face crude showing things and I mean at the moment it's sort of like everybody wants to show a penis it's just so awful and and you can get bored with seeing lots of penises on television it's it's also very aggressive and I don't like it and most people I don't know who the people are who choose it because most of the people I speak to a lot of my fans right saying oh it's good to see all the repeats because some we're fed up with the new stuff so who know that's putting it out I think Britain they started this great thing this theory of we had to take everything out to the regions so everything became regionalised well it's fine but they could still be clear about it there's an awful lot of regions I daresay in America too where actually I don't know what they're talking about because I really want I'll go are and what's that it might be funny if you live in that area but to the rest of the country that in or the hell you're talking about and the wonderful thing about the past was that it was standard just like the Americans have a standard American and now I think they've gone right over the top with regionalization and they need to come back again to something that applies to everybody I remember when Harold snowed of course is the great director who I'd worked with before with dick Emery and when he was going to put a keeping up appearances together he had a pilot scheme they'd given him very little time so he looked up spotlight and looked through all the people he'd worked with who worked fast and he sent his scripts and I looked at it and he said do you think there's anything you can do with dazing as well there's not much going for really is that but then I was thinking of the little character that I'd once done with Matt Mills which was already sort of simple so a childlike and when I got together with the others and I went down to the wardrobe room and I found this really wonderful gray cardigan which was awful and I thought that is my Daisy cardigan and that's it sort of put that on and you felt right and I had some terrible old sandals which I brought up and used and slowly the relationships develop between the sisters so we knew that hyacinths was the bossy one and she'd kept us all down because she's the one who in English term she would have gone to the grammar school we would have all gone to the Secondary Modern and if we sort of lost and felt long and she was the one with the brains and aspirations and so gradually we all sort of started working together and found the Harold told us to make it north of Watford and because of a servant there were Pat's from Liverpool and Zoe's Geoff and that were all these different axes clad swift I'd worked with before in a sort of heavier drama but we all sort of headed up with the northern accent then I had to find the sound so I lifted it up and got it into a higher Tambor than I'm normally used this was very difficult when one year I think was 1993 I was doing cemetary club playing Ida which is new Bronks and so I was using the lower register of my voice but in the mornings I was filming Daisy in in keeping up appearances and to try and leap my voice up back up to Daisy's horse and I remember there was take up to take where I couldn't couldn't hit the right sound and then I got it and it was just one rubbish she take after another the sound is very important mmm and also once Howard gave me a Mills and Boon book which is one of these romantic books and because I believe so much in people reading books I said can I make this part of Daisy sing she hasn't got any romance going on can she please have a romantic book every week and so that was part of my suggestion and what was lovely I I was at a publishing dinner and the Mills and Boon people were there they came bouncing um they said Oh our book sales have gone up so I went to Harold I said carried one of my own books in the pit instead of Mills of Boone he said you are not doing advertising at all

Channel: Adrian Gauna

Views: 421,462

Keywords: Keeping, Up, Appearances, Judy, Cornwell, Patricia, Routledge, Adam060756, NowegicusTheThird, MissKlarissa1, Geezworld234

Id: u4p7ca6f4Xc

Length: 10min 0sec (600 seconds)

Published: Tue May 11 2010