yes, you need to take your — take your jacket off. hello, i'm john wilson, welcome to this cultural life, the radio 4 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 — he's known for gritty social dramas including vera drake and secrets and lies, domestic comedies like life is sweet and happy—go—lucky, and historical stories, including mr turner and peterloo. i spoke to him in one of the many radio studios in bbc broadcasting house. mike, welcome to

this cultural life. let's take you to the beginning. what's your earliest cultural memory? as a kid, we had, iwas 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 extraordinary things, one was it was in colour — they were in colour — and two, that oliver hardy com pletely couldn't 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 — of their career. were they 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. this is salford — salford grammar school? well, that's even talking about primary school. and, you know, 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 percent salford drama school very much

the same, so i kind of had a very broad sense of society, i suppose, 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 upbringing, to a certain extent, was your creativity encouraged by your parents? well, that's a very interesting question. i mean, it would be very difficult not to say that in many respects my folks were not philistines, because they kind of were. there's culture, and there's culture. i mean they actually at times went to stratford, and they went to the halle, 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 caricatures, and when i was about six or so, my dad forbade 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 — he — you know, they coloured in photographs in that wishy—washy way they used to be, that used to be the mode, 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 ofany kind.

it meant penury. later, when i ran out of steam with the academicjourney i was on, and announced i wanted to apply to go 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 assumed — he would have wanted me to be a doctor, or a lawyer, or something. was there any chance that would have happened, though? no, none whatever. you never had an interest in medicine? no. i knew from an early... we haven't talked about movies, i used to go to the pictures as often as they'd let you, and the local — there were 14 local cinemas, walking distance of our house. 14?! i mean, flea pets, a lot of them, decaying, ancient, horrible places, but

they showed movies. i 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, which is a far less significance, or no importance at all, is that watching westerns, you know, 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, they'll 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 searle, 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 being a great draughtsman — he was a fantastic observer, and his style of drawing influenced my style. ifact, 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 — 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. 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, for 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. they showed it in school, for some reason. so i'm in london and i'vejust 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 film—maker, 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, who i 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 film—maker? 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. 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 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... and we've talked about this, i'd already formulated notions about... because 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 film—maker? well, i mean, it's... they're two sides of the experience, really. i love film—making, 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 off that trapeze and breaks her neck, she's doing it in your space, you know. 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, 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, because 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. there was a strike on itv and a very posh programme withjonathan miller, an esoteric programme on bbc 2. there were only three

channels at the time. this was before channel 4 was invented. and so, 16 million people tuned in to bbc one and watched abigail's party and in many ways, the rest is history. well, what do 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. oh, 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. l 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 nevertheless suburban experience, you know... 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 here, and so i stood up at oxford circus for a bit and i did what i do, which is clock people walking past really. and then, 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. podcast episodes of this cultural life, go to bbc sounds or wherever you get your podcasts.

hello. our spell of rather cool, unsettled and blustery mid—july weather is set to continue through the remainder of the weekend. this was the picture saturday evening just before the sun set in north berwick, east lothian. we've had some big vivid rainbows around, and we could see more of those on sunday with that mix, again, of some sunshine and further heavy and blustery showers. they won't be as frequent as they were on saturday, though. so we've still got low pressure close by, just edging its way towards the north—east. but still plenty of isobars on the map showing another fairly blustery sort of day. quite a bit of cloud first thing for parts of northern england, scotland as well and we'll continue to see patchy rain on and off for much of the day across northern and western scotland. a bit more sunshine, but also scattered showers further east and really for northern ireland, england and wales, sunny spells and blustery showers. the gusts of wind 30 to 40 miles per hour, even a bit more than that around exposed coasts and hills. so temperatures between about 14 to 22, north to south, but feeling a touch cooler if you are exposed to those north—westerly or westerly

winds that we've got with us. winds do ease away, i think, sunday evening and overnight, some late sunshine before the sun sets in the south. we've got a bit more cloud again as we head through into monday across parts of scotland with a few splashes of light rain, 11 degrees or so here, the overnight lows, but we could see single figures in one or two more rural spots, though, so a fresh start to your monday morning. now monday sees higher pressure trying to nudge in from the south. not as many isobars on the map. so not such a windy day, i think, on monday. and fewer showers compared to the weekend. there will be a fewjust bubbling up through the day across england, wales, northern ireland and scotland too, less in the way of cloud lingering. so a bit more sunshine and a few scattered showers. temperatures similar to recent days around about 14 to 22 degrees, but feeling a touch warmer because we will have lost the breeze. moving ahead now into tuesday in the next area of low pressure moves its way in from the atlantic. so initially, probably a dry start to tuesday for many of us, mainly sunshine. then the rain creeps in across parts of northern ireland, perhaps western parts of england and wales, southern scotland to northern

half of scotland, probably seeing sunshine and showers once again on tuesday. and east anglia and the south—east, you're likely to stay dry for a good part of the day and perhaps a touch warmer up to about 23 degrees or so. but as you can see from our outlook, the next five days or so through much of the week ahead, still unsettled. sunny spells and heavy showers. bye—bye.

live from washington, this is bbc news. south korea's south korea's government is expanding government is expanding its humanitarian and military assistance to ukraine its humanitarian and military as president zelensky meets assistance to ukraine with his south korean counterpart. counterpart. an extreme heat wave has gripped parts of the us and southern europe, with more record temperatures expected. and rescue workers in south korea are struggling to reach people trapped inside vehicles submerged in an underground tunnel.