Hartnell's Desert Island Discs - FOUND!

[Si Hunt]

Well 16 minutes of it... and it's on-line now!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p009y3yj

Unfortunately he's just about to start discussing Doctor Who when the clip ends

Si.

[SiHart]

Oh my! What a find

[Richard Brinck-Johnsen]

And it's already offline because someone at Worldwide has clearly got wind of the fact that this recording could make them a lot more money if it sold on CD/DVD at a future date.
Today is one of those rare days when I do not like the BBC.

[SiHart]

Apparently it'll be back at the weekend. It was supposed to be announced with three other finds on Saturday.

[Andrew Curnow]

How exciting - I look forward to hearing what there is of it. It's so rare to see/hear Hartnell rather than the first Doctor.

[Nyder]

I look forward to the weekend then - I wonder what the other finds were??


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[Wayne]

[Nyder]

And funnily enough, Pertwee was on DIDs before Hartnell (sadly this episode doesn't exist)


What an intriguing book choice!

Troughton has never been on the programme. I can't see it as being his sort of thing though!


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[Stuart Wallis]

Well he did seem the sort whereby interviews were to be endured rather than enjoyed. Tom or Colin might make good subjects for it though.

[Richard Brinck-Johnsen]

Listening to it now. Shame there isn't more of it.
Sad to hear him talk of still wanting to do Shakespeare, that would have been marvellous.

[Andrew Curnow]

Interesting to hear him, though, isn't it. He sounds much 'posher' than as the Doctor (in fact, I felt he often sounded rather like Tony Hancock) but not, at first, the easiest interviewee in the world I'd say - some very short answers, except then when it's a subject he warms to (the people he'd understudied, horses, This Sporting Life) he's off and very listenable. I rather liked his honesty about going back to The Army Game ("I said yes - at a price") and of course in hindsight I suppose the questions about his early life were difficult to field because of course it wasn't true.

Nice, if nothing else, to hear him as himself and at a time when he was still unquestionably the one and only Doctor Who - as opposed to what's obviously a rather bitter & defensive interview on the Tenth Planet DVD, where's he's just adjusting to being the previous Doctor Who.

I have a feeling (or a half-memory, maybe somebody can confirm) that in the biography of him, somebody (I think Maureen O'Brien) recalls him deciding what music to choose, and him saying "these will surprise people" - the point being that he wasn't so much 'into' music, but was keen to choose pieces that would perhaps suggest a range, and a wide knowledge of such things. Or is that the Memory Cheating again?

[Stuart Wallis]

Thinking about what we know about him, his choices of, and comments on, Paul Robeson and Yehudi Menuhin are interesting.

[Leah Betts]

I wonder what Hartnell would have done had he been healthy and lived just that bit longer to see an era where he no longer had to be ashamed of his origins.