hello, i'm john wilson, welcome to this cultural life, the radio 4 podcast, in which i ask 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 is your earliest cultural memory? ..pantomime, live theatre of various sorts. circus. the circus was a big deal. variety. live variety, the old,

you know, descendants of the music hall, including, at the age of nine, a trip to the ardwick hippodrome in manchester to see laurel and hardy live on stage. wow. on their famous tour — we later realised was the famous tour, and the two important things about that were, one — two extraordinary things, one is that it was in colour, they were in colour. and two, that oliver hardy completely couldn't get his act together at all. he was absolutely out of control. and of course, later we've realised, we realised that that was because he was cracking up, and it was the end 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 wanting to be creative in all kinds

of different ways. this is salford grammar school. yeah. well, that's even — i'm talking about primary school, and, you know, salford grammar school was, of course, later, and there, i was in all the school plays and did art and all that stuff. because, obviously we were middle class, my old man being a doctor, i went to the local schools, local primary school, working class kids, 90—odd per cent, salford grammar school, very much the same. and so i kind of had a very broad sense of society, i suppose, of community and character, but character is what it's been all about, from the word go, just observing people. so it's a sort of a cultured upbringing, to an extent. your creative... your own personal 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 weren't philistines, because they kind of were. there's culture and there's culture. i mean, they used to... ..they actually at times went to stratford, and they went to the halle. so you could say there were cultural. on the other hand, anything that was, in inverted commas, arty, or what we would identify as avant—garde, they were horrified by. but apart from anything else, from an early age, iwas 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, in case 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 that used to be the mode, and they had a picture framing business. and in the slump in the depression, nobody wanted pictures orframes, and grandpa couldn't feed the family. so my dad had a deep—seated fear of the notion of his offspring being an artist of any kind. it meant penury. later, when i run out of steam with the academicjourney i was on, and announced that i wanted to apply to go to drama school... ..hewas... ..to say he was horrified would

be a gross understatement. he thought it was the worst thing that could have happened. he assumed, you know, he would — 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. imean, from... you never had any interest in medicine? no. i mean, i knew from an early, you know, i used to go to — we haven't talked about movies. i used to go to the pictures as often as they let you, and, you know, the local... there were 14 local cinemas walking distance from our house. 14? 14. i mean, flea pits, a lot of them, really decaying ancient, horrible places. but they showed movies, and they showed — often they'd

i used to watch westerns from the earliest age. i remember there were two things that — one major thing that i always thought about films was, 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 of far, far less significance, or of no importance at all, is that watching westerns, you know, because of the nature of the number of frames on a length of film, the wheels on the, on a vehicle or a stagecoach would go around backwards. yes. and i used to think, sit there thinking, "when i make films, they'll go round the right way." now that was from a very early age. the first big cultural influence that you've picked, that you suggest has had a formative effect on your work, is ronald searle. illustrator, artist, best known for st trinian�*s, for creating st trinian�*s, and for the molesworth books, and also contributing illustrations and drawings to so many books and magazines over the years, in the post—war years. how did you discover searle? 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. 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, 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. so the rehearsal process, the rehearsal room, then, that's where the writing takes place, in effect. 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 of 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 with jonathan miller, an esoteric programme on bbc two. 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. hello. if you're wondering whether any of the heat that's currently affecting southern europe might head our way, well, the answer is a resounding no, but that is good news, i think, when you look at these temperatures. these temperatures which we recorded in the south of europe

on monday, are very dangerous indeed. and this heat shows no real sign of letting up. now, we are stuck in a very different type of weather. the jet stream diving to the south of us that's keeping us away from this hot air, instead keeping us in something cooler, and with low pressure in charge, it is quite unsettled. this weather system pushing its way in from the west right now is going to bring some very heavy rain for some through the day on tuesday. that rain through the morning across parts of northern ireland, then swinging across the irish sea into wales, the north of england, the south of scotland, southwest scotland could be very wet for a time. bit of rain into the southwest of england. northern scotland seeing sunny spells and the odd sharp shower. the southeast of england should hold on to some hazy sunshine and some warmth, 23—24 degrees, but stuck under cloud and rain you may well see temperatures no higher than 14—15 degrees. very wet for a time through the evening, particularly across parts of southern scotland. that rain then tries to pull away eastwards.

i think cloud and some patchy rain may linger across southeast scotland and northeast england into the first part of wednesday. those are the starting temperatures for wednesday. and then this legacy of cloud still sticking around across parts of northern england, maybe southern scotland, down towards the east of england as well, with the odd spot of rain through wednesday morning. elsewhere, sunny spells and scattered showers. some of those could be on the heavy side. and temperatures of around 18 degrees there for belfast, 23 degrees the high in london. forthursday, it's the sunshine and showers day. most of the showers are likely to be across the north and the east of the uk. not as many showers further west. and those temperatures again in a range between 16—22 degrees for most of us. so any big changes as we head towards the end of the week? well, not really. various weather systems, various areas of low pressure still featuring in the forecast. bit of uncertainty about where it might be wettest over the weekend, just how windy it's going to be,

but certainly staying unsettled and relatively cool and no change in that story into the start of next week.

live from washington, about the latest attack this is bbc news. the international community condemns russia's decision to pull out of to pull out of a vital grain deal. a vital grain deal. extreme weather grips parts extreme weather grips parts of asia, europe and the us, of asia, europe and the us, as soaring temperatures show no signs of letting up. plus, a small reason for hope in the battle against alzheimer's. a new drug is able to slow the progression of the disease in some patients. welcome to our show. we begin tonight with two major developments, related to the war in ukraine.

in a moment, we'll hear