hello, i'mjohn hello, i'm john wilson, welcome to this cultural life, the radio for podcast on which i asked leading creative figures to reveal the key moments in their life and the most important cultural works that fired their own artistic imagination. my guest is director, screenwriter, and playwright mike leigh, known for gritty social dramas including vera drake and the secrets and lies, domestic comedies like life is sweet and happy—go—lucky, and historical stories including mr turner and peter lew. i spoke to him in one of the many radio studios in bbc broadcasting house. welcome to this cultural life. let's take it to the beginning, what is your earliest cultural

memory? figs what is your earliest cultural memory?— what is your earliest cultural memo ? ~ , . ~ ., ., memory? as a kid, we had, and i was exposed _ memory? as a kid, we had, and i was exposed to _ memory? as a kid, we had, and i was exposed to pantomime, - memory? as a kid, we had, and i was exposed to pantomime, live | was exposed to pantomime, live theatre of various thoughts, circus, the circus was a big deal, variety, live variety, descendants of the music hall, including at the age of nine a trip to the ardwick hippodrome to see laurel and hardy live on stage on the famous tour, which i later realised was the famous tour, and the two important things about that were one, two 22 extraordinary things, one was it was in colour. they were in colour, and two, that oliver hardy completely get his act together at all, he was absolutely out of control and of course later we realised that that was because he was cracking up and it was the end of their career.—

of their career. were they funn ? of their career. were they funny? no- _ of their career. were they funny? no. but— of their career. were they funny? no. but i - of their career. were they funny? no. but i was- funny? no. but i was fascinated, _ funny? no. but i was fascinated, it- funny? no. but i was fascinated, it didn't l funny? no. but i was- fascinated, it didn't make any difference. of course, in—school, from the earliest age, i was drawing, putting on sketches, generally wanted to be creative in all kinds of different ways.— be creative in all kinds of different ways. this is salford grammar school? _ different ways. this is salford grammar school? and - different ways. this is salford grammar school? and even l grammar school? and even talkin: grammar school? and even talking about _ grammar school? and even talking about primary - grammar school? and even l talking about primary school. salford grammar school was of course later in their way — there i was in all the school plays. because obviously we were middle—class, i went to the local schools, local primary school, working kids, 90 odd % salford drama school very much the same, so i kind of had a very broad sense of society, i suppose, of had a very broad sense of society, isuppose, of community and character, but character is what it has been all about from the word go,

just observing people. so it's a sort of cultured _ just observing people. so it'sj a sort of cultured upbringing, to a certain extent, was your creativity encouraged by your parents? creativity encouraged by your arents? . �* , creativity encouraged by your arents? . v . , parents? that's a very interesting _ parents? that's a very interesting question. | parents? that's a very | interesting question. it parents? that's a very - interesting question. it would be very difficult not to say that in many respects my folks were not filler stones, because they kind of were. culture, and this culture. i mean they actually at times went to stratford, and they went to the halliday, so you could say there were cultural, but on the other hand, anything that was in inverted commas arty of what we would identify as avant garde, they were horrified by but apart from anything else, from an early age, i was drawing people, and on the whole, you could describe what i was drawing as caricature is, and when i was about six or so,

my dad the bad me from drawing grown—ups when they came around because it might offend them. and throughout my development, he had a very very strong resistance to my being an artist of any kind. the reason is very straightforward. his father, my paternal grandfather, was a commercial artist, they coloured in photographs in that wishy—washy way they used to be, and they had picture framing business, and in this slump, in the depression, nobody wanted pictures of frames, and grandpa could not feed the family, so my dad had a deep seated fear of the notion of his offspring being an artist of any kind.

later, when i ran out of steam with the academicjourney i was on and announced i wanted to apply to drama school, he was, to say he was horrified would be a gross understatement, he thought it was the worst thing that could have happened. he would have wanted me to be a doctor or a lawyer or something.- doctor or a lawyer or something. doctor or a lawyer or somethina. ~ . , ., , doctor or a lawyer or somethin.. ~ ., , . ., . something. was there any chance they would _ something. was there any chance they would have _ something. was there any chance they would have happened - they would have happened though? they would have happened thou~h? ., ., ., they would have happened thou~h? ., ., . though? now, none whatever. you never had an _ though? now, none whatever. you never had an interest _ though? now, none whatever. you never had an interest in _ never had an interest in medicine?— never had an interest in medicine? ., ~ ., never had an interest in medicine? ., ~' ., . medicine? no. i knew from an early- -- we — medicine? no. i knew from an early... we haven't _ medicine? no. i knew from an early... we haven't talked - early... we haven't talked about movies, i used to go to the pictures as often as they would let you, and there were 14 local cinemas, walking distance of our house. is! 14 local cinemas, walking distance of our house. 14! ? flea pets. _ distance of our house. 14! ? flea pets. a _ distance of our house. 14! ? flea pets, a lot _ distance of our house. 14! ? flea pets, a lot of— distance of our house. 14! ? flea pets, a lot of them, . flea pets, a lot of them, decaying, ancient, horrible places, but they showed movies.

are used to go to the movies, i used to watch westerns, from the earliest age, i remember there were two things, one major thing i always thought about, wouldn't it be great if you could have a film where the characters in the film were like real people, not like actors, and the other thing, a far less significance, or no importance at all is watching westerns, because of the nature of the number of frames and the length of film, the wheels on a vehicle, a stagecoach would go around backwards, and i used to think when i make films, there will go around the right way, and it was a very early age. the first big cultural influence that you picked, that you suggest has had a formative effect on your work is ronald cell, illustrator, artist, best

known for creating century unions, so many books and magazines over the years, in the postwar years, how do you discover him? when i was six, somebody gave me a copy of hurrah for st trinian�*s, a collection of cartoons by ronald searle, for my birthday. that was it. the great thing about searle is that he was, apart from he was a great draughtsman, he was a fantastic observer, and his style of drawing influenced my style. in fact, my handwriting to this day is influenced by ronald searle's style of handwriting. and what was he doing? i mean, just to evoke a sense of his style? well, there are two things, really. one is his observation of character, and his expression of character. but the other is his line. you know, he had a great... ..he had a range of different kinds of line, but he had

a great facility to allow the pen marks to be themselves. in other words, it was polished in his own terms, but it wasn't — it didn't affect to have a kind of gloss finish. you think about the characterisation that ronald searle comes up with in those drawings, those kind of quite spindly characters. they're sort of etiolated figures. is there a link, do you think, in those characters, between those characters and some of the characters that you create in yourfilm? i think the important thing about searle being an inspiration, or, if you like, an influence on me, it's not so much about specific characters. it's about a way of looking at the world. i mean, if you look at my characters in my films, and indeed plays... ..it�*s never — i never allow it to be described as naturalism, it's realism, it gets to the essence of what's real. i mean, you have to believe in it being absolutely real when you see — in the moment when you see it. but there's a certain, there's an edge, there's

a distillation, there's a heightening, which is a natural thing for an artist like ronald searle to do. and that's what i do. so i can't talk about a direct correlation between this ronald searle character or that character in one of my films. it's about a way of looking at life, really. the next big turning point, the next big influence, drawing, life drawing. just tell us about that class. well, here's the thing. i went to rada, i acted fora bit, including in a couple of films. i then went to camberwell art school on the foundation course for a year. i then went to a year in the theatre design department of the central school of arts and crafts, and i went to the london film school, all within four years. for me, what was... ..i mean, of those various kinds of study, the only year i spent, the only thing i did, which wasn't directly related to theatre or film, was the foundation course at camberwell.

but it was there that i had a really seminal experience as an artist. we were all sitting around... ..and had a nude model, and everybody was quietly drawing away, and i looked around the room, and i thought, what is happening in this room is something that we never experienced for one split second at the royal academy of dramatic art. really creative work is happening, everybody in the room is looking at something that's real and finding an organic, truthful way of expressing it, which we didn't do as student actors. it was all mechanical and superficial and inorganic, and therefore dull. and that revelation,

in that moment, in the life drawing class, that, you know, absolutely resonated with notions that i had on the go, in a primitive form, at that point in time, that somehow you could create... ..theatre, you could create films, in an organic way by collaborating in a way, and using rehearsal as more thanjust a mechanical way of interpreting what somebody had already put down on paper. and so, from what i understand, you gather a cast of actors. you have a subject, in a very broad sense. you never give a title to the film, they're usually untitled, and then the year in which you're making the film, and then you ask each of those actors to create their own character. well, i collaborate with each actor to create a character. and what i do to start

with is to get each actor to really make lists of real people they know. and i then, and this involves long discussions, one on one, with nobody else there, with each actor, and we gradually — i finally whittle it down and choose the source, or usually sources, from people they know. so it means the actor has got somewhere to start, something to — like an art... like the artists, like the students looking at the subject, at the model in the life drawing class the actor has got, you know, he or she is going to start to stand up and play this person they actually know, and then that person they know, and then we meld them together and the character is created. but of course, the two famous myths about what i do with actors is, one is that the actors come with ideas, and the committee is formed as to what the subject, that's not the case at all. in fact, it's very — it's essential that they... ..when i say to an actor, participate in this piece of work, this play or this

film, we can't talk about a character, because there isn't a character. you and i are going to collaborate to create a character, and you will never know anything about the whole thing, except what your character knows. so they don't know about the other characters? not until, not until and unless they meet them in the context of the work. are they banned from talking to the other actors about... absolutely. but it works totally. everybody enters into the spirit of it, and there's never been a case where anybody has, as it were, broken the rules or cheated. people, they... ..actors are highly stimulated by it, because it means each actor feels in possession of something that only he or she has, and apart from anything else, it means that the actors can — the actor doesn't have — isn't distracted or inhibited, or in any way affected negatively by an overview. he or she, each actor or actress, sees the whole thing from the point of view of the character, but it mostly means that we can explore situations in a completely truthful and organic way and arrive at the dramatic material.

and on set, are you ever writing down the lines and putting them on a piece of paper? no, i don't write and give to the actors because we don't need to. it comes out... they know it. and actually, one of the things that always amuses me and is, i think, interesting is that every time i've ever made a film, after a few days, you hear an electrician or somebody say, "i don't understand it. "there's no script, but they know the lines. "they never dry up, they never forget their lines." and of course, unlike an ordinary film, particularly films where they don't really rehearse properly, most of the time's taken up with people not being able to remember what to say and stuff, or looking for the character, which obviously in the case of my stuff, we've long since established who and how the character is. your next big influence is not so much a moment, as a whole era. you want to talk about the �*60s. you arrived in london from salford in 1960 at the start of that decade. what are your key cultural memories of that moment when you arrived? well, first of all, talking about movies, all the movies i saw

between 1943, when i was born, and 1960, none of them wasn't in english. they were all hollywood or british movies, with the exception of le ballon rouge, that famous french short, which i was bored to tears by then and i'm bored to tears by now. somebody — they showed it in school, for some reason. so i'm in london and i've just arrived and somebody says, "there's a sort of arts festival going on in st pancras "and there's a film showing. "shall we go?" i said, "yeah, let's go." this is literally in the first week or so. and there was this film in swedish about a knight playing chess. of course, i discovered bergman and i then discovered the french nouvelle vague that was going on, a bout de souffle, breathless, was playing. i discovered the russian cinema, i discovered satyajit ray,

the bengali filmmaker, i discovered rossellini and bicycle thieves and japanese cinema, ozu, kurosawa... i mean, itjust was a massive revelation. the whole world, really, isn't it? absolutely. and what were these directors doing that was so different, do you think? it's the possibilities. the thing about influence and the thing about being stimulated by what other artists do, it's as much about making you think about the possibilities of what you might do. but with the french new wave in particular, was it also about the visual style? do you think that had a direct influence on your later work? well, i mean, the great move forward was shooting in the streets, was shooting in real places. now, of course, i, unlike for example my compatriot ken loach, who was a great pioneer, who, again, was a great inspiration to me a little bit later

on in the �*60s, with the work that he and tony garnett, whom i also used to work with in television, bbc. their great revolution was to say, well, let's not... bbc drama is studio—bound. let's get out there in the street with the guys that shoot documentaries and make, you know... make it real, in that sort of spontaneous and alive way. but just thinking about some of your films and the way that you have explored social issues, whether that's unemployment in meantime, or back street abortion in vera drake, or class and race in secrets and lies, do you regard yourself as a political filmmaker? yes, i do. i mean, i think that my films, with the arguable exception of peterloo, which is obviously about the peterloo massacre and is without any question a simple statement about democracy, i think my films must be understood to be implicitly political,

rather than overtly political. you once said, i'm going to quote you here, "i know i return endlessly to the same preoccupations, "but i'm not always aware of it initially." what are those preoccupations, do you think? well, i mean, if you look at my films and plays, you know, about how we live, relationships, work, responsibility, surviving, secrets and lies, you know, the stuff of living really. class? and class, yes. it's funny, it's interesting, i didn't put that instinctively at the top of the list, but fair do's, you know. could you characterise a typical mike leigh film? what sort of films does mike leigh make? no, i couldn't do that and i'm not going to try. laughing you've chosen as your next cultural moment an experience from 1965. you directed the original production of little malcolm and his struggle

against the eunuchs, a play by david halliwell. you've described this experience as a life—changing experience. why? because... david halliwell, who was a close friend and a very talented guy, he's no longer with us, but he wrote the play so that he could play the main character, malcolm scrawdyke, and to cut a long story short, he was impossible to direct. he'd say, "oh, a director's just a chairman." i'd say, "why don't you move over there on that...?" he'd say, "why? "i could move there, i could move anywhere." and so... at this point, i'd already... we'd talked about this, i'd already formulated notions about... cos i wanted to write and direct and i'd formulated notions about other collaborative ways of making work. and this experience,

much though i felt... think the play is great and much though i was very fond of halliwell and we had a good gang of folk involved, it was a defining experience, just because i decided that this is not what i was going to do. i was not going to battle with scripts. i was going to find a way of creating organic work, basically. how do you regard theatre now, as somebody as somebody who is primarily regarded as a filmmaker? well, i mean, it's... they're two sides of the experience really. i mean, i love filmmaking, i love everything about film, i love being out in the... making the heightened, distilled drama happen in real places. i love what you can do with film and apart from anything else, i love the way that film can be disseminated very widely. theatre is a whole different experience. it's in this closed place. but the audience experience

of theatre is very important because you're actually there, you know. i call it the trapeze factor. you go to the circus, you're in that space, she's in that space, on the trapeze. if she falls of that trapeze and breaks her neck, she's doing it in your space, you know. now, i always say that in films, in movies, i aspire to the condition of theatre, in other words, to the trapeze... to the tradition of trapeze, so that although the audience knows objectively that they're watching something on a two—dimensional screen, that you are drawn into it, so that you really have that sense of reality. and i want my plays in the theatre to aspire to the condition of cinema, in the sense that you really, really believe that it's up there in that real place and it's happening. one of your best known works

is abigail's party, which people think about as a play for today on television, but it actually started out on the stage. it was written as a stage play. are you surprised at the enduring appeal of that piece? yes and no. i mean, one of the reasons why it became so popular is because when it was... i mean, we did it in a theatre, hampstead theatre in north london, and it was very successful and the producer, margaret matheson, was short of something, something had been cancelled and so we wheeled it into the television studio after 104 performances in the theatre, so it was very solid, and just did it. the third time it was shown on bbc was on an evening... on a night when storms raged throughout the british isles. um, there was a strike on itv and a very posh programme withjonathan miller, an esoteric programme on bbc2 —

there were only three channels at the time. this was before channel 4 was invented. and so, 16 million people tuned in to bbci and watched abigail's party and in many ways, the rest is history. well, what d0 we want to listen to then, beverly? demis roussos. well, if everybody else wants to listen to demis roussos, we'll put him on. tone, do you like demis roussos? i yeah, he's all right. he's fantastic, isn't he? sue? i don't know him, i'm afraid. ah, you'll like him. he's lovely. sue, he's really great. - would you like to hear him? yes. yeah? laurence, angela likes demis roussos, - tony likes demis roussos, i like demis roussos- and sue would like to hear demis roussos. _ so, please, do you think- we could have demis roussos on? yes. thank you. at the time, i was... i'd moved to the suburbs, with my ex...

my now ex—wife, alison steadman, who of course was in it, we were living that... ..bohemian but nonetheless suburban experience, you know, um... and we were talking about having kids. indeed, my eldest son, toby leigh, the illustrator, is discernibly inside beverly's tummy when you watch the television version. i think i would have to say that the play worked as a piece and, you know, spoke to the audience really. what drives you on now, mike? well, i was slightly early and so i stood up at oxford circus for a bit and i did what i do, which is ijust clock people walking past, really.

because i knew i was coming here to do this programme, ijumped on the tube and i caught myself doing what i do, which is to clock everybody coming down the escalator... going up the escalator as we went down, just seeing characters, basically. so, fundamentally, what drives me is people and life and wanting to capture it and deal with it and distil it and tell stories about it. mike leigh, thank you very much indeed for sharing your cultural life. thank you. for broadcast episodes of this, go to wherever you get your pod casts. hello there.

i think it's fair to say that the weather doesn't look and feel much like summer at the moment. these were some pictures taken on friday. it was particularly windy in the southwest of england and we actually had more rain in cornwall on friday than fell during the whole of last month, and we had rain far and wide across the uk as well. that rain has been working its way northwards on that weather front there, which is wrapped around an area of low pressure, and that will dominate the weather through the rest of the weekend. now, the rain, by saturday morning, is in the far north of scotland. temperatures, 12—14 degrees. some showers already arriving and we'll see more of those as the winds pick up, particularly across england and wales, with the strongest of the winds in the south. 40mph gusts, quite widely, maybe a bit stronger, especially around some coastal areas. and it could bring some damage and some disruption, especially as those downpours arrive. and we'll see these showers breaking out more widely through the day.

some wetter weather, particularly for wales and western parts of england. thunderstorms almost anywhere. some heavy showers arriving in scotland and northern ireland where it's not going to be quite so windy here, but temperatures are still a bit disappointing, really, for the time of year. we're likely to find 18 or 19 widely. a touch warmer in the southeast where there shouldn't be as many showers in the afternoon. the low pressure itself is continuing to push northwards. it may take away the worst of the weather for sunday. although, having said that, it could be a bit windier than saturday for scotland and northern ireland and we've got some showers here, some of them heavy, maybe some longer spells of rain. but not quite so windy on sunday for england and wales. there may be a bit more sunshine around, but there's still the chance of some showers too. even though there aren't as many showers around, we've still got those temperatures peaking at only 20 or 21 celsius in the afternoon. now, looking ahead to next week and some changes on the way. it's not going to be quite as windy next week. there may be a bit more sunshine around and fewer showers, but we're not going

to get any of the heat that's affecting southern parts of europe — you may be pleased about that. 22 or 23 degrees the top temperature, probably, over next week. it's going to be much hotter across southern parts of europe. temperatures not quite so high around coastal areas, but it will be especially hot as you head inland. the character is.

live from washington, this is bbc news. us secretary of state blinken warns asean nations about the influence of china in the region — but is his message working? the largest strike in nearly six decades is underway in hollywood as actors join the picket lines. record high temperatures are impacting communities across the globe, and it shows no sign of slowing down.

of thousands of hollywood actors have gone on strike, with picket lines formed in new york and los angeles.