1 00:00:01,880 --> 00:00:04,640 MUSIC: "By The Sleepy Lagoon" by Eric Coates 2 00:00:06,480 --> 00:00:11,680 "And one book. You already have the statutory ration of the Bible 3 00:00:11,680 --> 00:00:15,440 and the works of Shakespeare." "I don't want the works of Shakespeare." 4 00:00:15,440 --> 00:00:18,280 "Can I take PG Wodehouse's collected works instead?" 5 00:00:18,280 --> 00:00:23,160 "No. That would... You may take your favourite three or four novels 6 00:00:23,160 --> 00:00:26,000 of PG Wodehouse. We'll bind those together for you." 7 00:00:28,920 --> 00:00:32,360 That's the great Roy Plomley, letting me know who's in charge 8 00:00:32,360 --> 00:00:36,160 on Desert Island Discs nearly three decades ago. 9 00:00:36,160 --> 00:00:40,440 But the programme invited me back just a few years later, 10 00:00:40,440 --> 00:00:44,520 and this time the BBC granted my foolish wish 11 00:00:44,520 --> 00:00:48,080 to take away the life's work of PG Wodehouse - 12 00:00:48,080 --> 00:00:51,160 to my mind, and the minds of better men than me, 13 00:00:51,160 --> 00:00:55,640 the best comic writer who ever laid his fingers on a keyboard. 14 00:00:55,640 --> 00:00:57,840 JAZZ-DANCE MUSIC 15 00:00:57,840 --> 00:01:01,760 So, this is a chance to find out what his work reveals 16 00:01:01,760 --> 00:01:03,960 about his world and ours, 17 00:01:03,960 --> 00:01:06,840 to uncover, if it's possible, 18 00:01:06,840 --> 00:01:09,880 some of the skill and complexity 19 00:01:09,880 --> 00:01:14,000 behind writing that just...trips off the page, 20 00:01:14,000 --> 00:01:21,240 to explore the elusive man behind a familiar, even controversial name, 21 00:01:21,240 --> 00:01:24,880 and to share an abiding passion 22 00:01:24,880 --> 00:01:28,080 with some like-minded coves. 23 00:01:28,080 --> 00:01:31,240 It's impossible to describe the sunniness of the language, 24 00:01:31,240 --> 00:01:34,800 the way it lifts you out of yourself like no other writer on Earth! 25 00:01:34,800 --> 00:01:37,320 I roar with laughter almost all the time. 26 00:01:37,320 --> 00:01:39,960 He's, I suppose, the funniest writer I've ever read. 27 00:01:39,960 --> 00:01:42,760 He is, really... I mean, he is truly a genius, 28 00:01:42,760 --> 00:01:46,480 in the sense that he is unique. There isn't anybody else like him. 29 00:01:46,480 --> 00:01:51,080 It's a deal-breaker. I couldn't be friends with someone who doesn't find him funny. 30 00:01:51,080 --> 00:01:53,720 It's like suddenly being given a glass of champagne. 31 00:01:53,720 --> 00:01:56,640 You just go, "Oh, well, yes. I think so!" 32 00:01:56,640 --> 00:01:59,440 Um... I just love it! 33 00:01:59,440 --> 00:02:02,880 It's a sort of comedy pornography. It's hard comedy. 34 00:02:13,960 --> 00:02:17,080 Well, maybe... Maybe I was being a little rash, 35 00:02:17,080 --> 00:02:20,600 twisting the BBC's arm for Wodehouse's complete works, 36 00:02:20,600 --> 00:02:23,360 because this groaning pile 37 00:02:23,360 --> 00:02:27,640 doesn't even come close to representing the oeuvre - 38 00:02:27,640 --> 00:02:32,800 just a healthy selection of his novels and collected short stories. 39 00:02:33,880 --> 00:02:36,800 Add memoires, countless magazine pieces, 40 00:02:36,800 --> 00:02:39,040 lyrics for the big musicals of the day, 41 00:02:39,040 --> 00:02:41,080 plays and film scripts - 42 00:02:41,080 --> 00:02:45,120 you'd need an age on that desert island to get through it. 43 00:02:45,120 --> 00:02:48,640 The sheer volume of it all is remarkable enough. 44 00:02:48,640 --> 00:02:54,280 But what really knocks you sideways about Wodehouse's 70 years and more 45 00:02:54,280 --> 00:02:57,520 as a professional writer is that virtually everything he did 46 00:02:57,520 --> 00:02:59,800 was bathed in sunshine, 47 00:02:59,800 --> 00:03:02,000 written to amuse, 48 00:03:02,000 --> 00:03:06,600 and that he succeeded with spectacular, joyous regularity. 49 00:03:06,600 --> 00:03:09,440 Just take Bertie Wooster's description 50 00:03:09,440 --> 00:03:12,240 of the formidable Honoria Glossop. 51 00:03:12,240 --> 00:03:15,080 Of course, there are probably fellows in the world - 52 00:03:15,080 --> 00:03:18,480 tough, hardy blokes with strong chins and glittering eyes - 53 00:03:18,480 --> 00:03:21,520 who could get engaged to this Glossop menace and like it, 54 00:03:21,520 --> 00:03:24,600 but I knew perfectly well that Biffy was not one of them. 55 00:03:24,600 --> 00:03:28,200 Honoria, you see, is one of those robust, dynamic girls 56 00:03:28,200 --> 00:03:30,840 with the muscles of a welterweight and a laugh 57 00:03:30,840 --> 00:03:34,920 like a squadron of cavalry charging over a tin bridge. 58 00:03:34,920 --> 00:03:37,520 So, starting somewhere near the beginning, 59 00:03:37,520 --> 00:03:41,960 here's our man Pelham Grenville, or Plum, as he called himself, 60 00:03:41,960 --> 00:03:45,120 as a mere lad - that's him on the right - 61 00:03:45,120 --> 00:03:49,040 alongside his brothers Armine and Peverill. 62 00:03:49,040 --> 00:03:52,640 Years later, Wodehouse would have Bertie Wooster observe, 63 00:03:52,640 --> 00:03:55,800 "You know, Jeeves, there's some raw work pulled at the font 64 00:03:55,800 --> 00:03:59,920 from time to time." I wonder where he got that idea! 65 00:03:59,920 --> 00:04:03,960 He was born into what we would call, I think, the upper-middle classes. 66 00:04:03,960 --> 00:04:08,320 His father was a judge in Hong Kong, 67 00:04:08,320 --> 00:04:12,480 and so his family was symbolic, one might say, 68 00:04:12,480 --> 00:04:17,840 of the type of family in the high period of the British Empire 69 00:04:17,840 --> 00:04:20,560 that both had its roots in the land, 70 00:04:20,560 --> 00:04:23,440 extending, administering, the great British Empire, 71 00:04:23,440 --> 00:04:26,280 the greatest empire the world had ever seen. 72 00:04:27,360 --> 00:04:30,560 'Sir Edward Cazelet, the author's step-grandson, 73 00:04:30,560 --> 00:04:33,600 'explained to me just what being part of a family 74 00:04:33,600 --> 00:04:37,320 'of imperial civil servants meant for the young Wodehouse.' 75 00:04:37,320 --> 00:04:40,280 Plum actually saw his parents only three times 76 00:04:40,280 --> 00:04:42,520 between the ages of two and 15. 77 00:04:42,520 --> 00:04:45,840 He saw them for six months in all over that period. 78 00:04:45,840 --> 00:04:49,760 So he really had no close relationship with them. 79 00:04:49,760 --> 00:04:52,680 Any responsible social worker nowadays would say, 80 00:04:52,680 --> 00:04:55,760 "This is quite intolerable. There'll be problems." 81 00:04:55,760 --> 00:05:00,200 When he was over 90, Wodehouse could still vividly recall a childhood 82 00:05:00,200 --> 00:05:04,280 spent shuttled between his gaggle of aunts and uncles. 83 00:05:04,280 --> 00:05:07,640 Many of the latter were clergymen, and the young Plum would join them 84 00:05:07,640 --> 00:05:09,760 on visits to the local gentry. 85 00:05:09,760 --> 00:05:13,560 There always came a time when the hostess would say, 86 00:05:13,560 --> 00:05:15,880 "Don't you think it would be nice 87 00:05:15,880 --> 00:05:19,520 if your little nephew had tea in the servants' hall?" 88 00:05:19,520 --> 00:05:22,000 And I'd go off to the servants' hall, 89 00:05:22,000 --> 00:05:27,720 and they're full of sprightly footmen and vivacious parlour maids... 90 00:05:29,240 --> 00:05:32,680 ..and I loved it. I got on awfully well with them. 91 00:05:32,680 --> 00:05:36,480 Wodehouse virtually had no contact with his parents. 92 00:05:36,480 --> 00:05:40,040 Do you think that had a lasting effect on his personality? 93 00:05:40,040 --> 00:05:42,400 I think he grew up as a kind of orphan. 94 00:05:42,400 --> 00:05:45,840 Um, the first time he saw his mother, 95 00:05:45,840 --> 00:05:48,680 when he was four years old - the first time consciously - 96 00:05:48,680 --> 00:05:52,440 he thought she was another aunt. And they were absent from his life. 97 00:05:52,440 --> 00:05:55,640 He was brought up by aunts, and by butlers and chambermaids 98 00:05:55,640 --> 00:05:58,080 and footmen. 99 00:05:58,080 --> 00:06:01,720 This was his world. He lived, as it were, below stairs, 100 00:06:01,720 --> 00:06:04,640 and the picture you get of adults in his books 101 00:06:04,640 --> 00:06:08,280 is of a small boy looking at them from the wrong end of a telescope. 102 00:06:08,280 --> 00:06:12,720 Something I particularly love and admire about Wodehouse 103 00:06:12,720 --> 00:06:15,040 is his eternal optimism. 104 00:06:15,040 --> 00:06:19,080 But it's not difficult to see the impact of a lonely childhood 105 00:06:19,080 --> 00:06:22,880 running through his long life. Vast energy went into his books, 106 00:06:22,880 --> 00:06:25,560 but precious little in the way of emotion, 107 00:06:25,560 --> 00:06:29,040 and he dealt with the real world by ignoring it 108 00:06:29,040 --> 00:06:31,040 or making fun of it. 109 00:06:31,040 --> 00:06:34,240 You don't read him to experience a sort of sense of, er... 110 00:06:34,240 --> 00:06:36,480 HE LAUGHS ..of a long, developing story 111 00:06:36,480 --> 00:06:41,120 in which you get closer to the social and, er, 112 00:06:41,120 --> 00:06:44,000 emotional centres of his characters. 113 00:06:44,000 --> 00:06:48,680 One of the reasons I think people read Wodehouse's novels 114 00:06:48,680 --> 00:06:52,320 is not to find out more about people's feelings 115 00:06:52,320 --> 00:06:54,800 but to watch the way in which feeling is managed. 116 00:06:54,800 --> 00:06:57,960 That's why people read Wodehouse when they're unhappy. 117 00:06:57,960 --> 00:07:00,240 He's like a children's writer in one sense. 118 00:07:00,240 --> 00:07:02,240 It's a complete fantasy world. 119 00:07:02,240 --> 00:07:06,040 Nobody really gets hurt. Nothing really terrible happens. 120 00:07:06,040 --> 00:07:09,320 And because they're about people who are doing nothing 121 00:07:09,320 --> 00:07:11,640 and living in this extraordinary world 122 00:07:11,640 --> 00:07:16,520 which is fancy-free and has no consequences, it's comedy. 123 00:07:16,520 --> 00:07:18,720 I'm sorting through these clothes. 124 00:07:18,720 --> 00:07:22,160 Er, these are for repair and these for discarding. 125 00:07:23,200 --> 00:07:27,280 Wait a second! This white mess jacket is brand new! 126 00:07:27,280 --> 00:07:30,520 I assumed it had got into your wardrobe by mistake, sir - 127 00:07:30,520 --> 00:07:33,560 or else that it had been placed there by your enemies. 128 00:07:33,560 --> 00:07:36,760 I will have you know, Jeeves, that I bought this in Cannes! 129 00:07:36,760 --> 00:07:40,480 And wore it, sir? Every night, at the casino. 130 00:07:40,480 --> 00:07:42,880 Beautiful women used to try and catch my eye. 131 00:07:42,880 --> 00:07:45,680 Presumably they thought you were a waiter, sir. 132 00:07:45,680 --> 00:07:47,920 Don't you think it was strange, though, 133 00:07:47,920 --> 00:07:50,360 that he retained 134 00:07:50,360 --> 00:07:55,200 that kind of almost naive English-public-school attitude? 135 00:07:55,200 --> 00:07:57,600 Yes. I mean, the mystery of Wodehouse 136 00:07:57,600 --> 00:08:00,520 is the childlike nature of his character. 137 00:08:00,520 --> 00:08:03,000 In his golden period, really - 138 00:08:03,000 --> 00:08:07,720 he wrote from the mid-Edwardian era all the way through to the '50s - 139 00:08:07,720 --> 00:08:10,560 there is no mention, as far as I can remember, 140 00:08:10,560 --> 00:08:13,400 and I'm pretty sure I'm right, of the First World War 141 00:08:13,400 --> 00:08:15,400 in any of his books. Not a mention! 142 00:08:15,400 --> 00:08:18,480 And that's not to say that he hasn't got a fine eye and ear 143 00:08:18,480 --> 00:08:21,960 for the Zeitgeist, so you find lots of sort of references 144 00:08:21,960 --> 00:08:26,840 to contemporary intellectual trends in his writings, 145 00:08:26,840 --> 00:08:30,120 so he refers to the Freudian subconscious 146 00:08:30,120 --> 00:08:33,440 and he talks about Red propaganda and splitting the atom 147 00:08:33,440 --> 00:08:37,200 and all these sorts of things, but he tends to do it in an ironic way, 148 00:08:37,200 --> 00:08:39,120 to joke about it. 149 00:08:39,120 --> 00:08:42,400 He knew the way the world wagged, and he was not an innocent 150 00:08:42,400 --> 00:08:45,080 in the true sense. 151 00:08:45,080 --> 00:08:47,920 It's just, as far as writing was concerned, 152 00:08:47,920 --> 00:08:50,760 he just closed his mind off to all things political, 153 00:08:50,760 --> 00:08:52,400 all things unpleasant. 154 00:08:52,400 --> 00:08:56,480 It seems to me that he was keeping the true facts, as it were, 155 00:08:56,480 --> 00:09:01,160 about the world, at arm's length throughout his writing career. 156 00:09:01,160 --> 00:09:03,800 Um, but who could blame him for that? 157 00:09:03,800 --> 00:09:08,200 'Whether it was an escape from the real world or an encounter with it, 158 00:09:08,200 --> 00:09:11,480 'Wodehouse began a hugely formative period of his life 159 00:09:11,480 --> 00:09:14,760 'here in the South London suburbs in 1894. 160 00:09:14,760 --> 00:09:17,760 'He entered Dulwich College as a boarder, 161 00:09:17,760 --> 00:09:20,000 'starting what he'd later describe 162 00:09:20,000 --> 00:09:23,240 as "six years of unbroken bliss".' 163 00:09:24,880 --> 00:09:26,840 'Here in the Masters' Library, 164 00:09:26,840 --> 00:09:30,000 'which would have been mightily familiar to Wodehouse, 165 00:09:30,000 --> 00:09:34,440 'there's a chance to learn about the education he absorbed within these walls.' 166 00:09:34,440 --> 00:09:37,480 What would have been the curriculum of the school then? 167 00:09:37,480 --> 00:09:40,920 What would it have left him with? Wodehouse had no doubt 168 00:09:40,920 --> 00:09:44,400 that the ethos of the school was that a boy, a serious boy, 169 00:09:44,400 --> 00:09:48,240 should study classics, and a gentleman should study classics. 170 00:09:48,240 --> 00:09:52,120 And he said it was the best education a writer could have had. 171 00:09:52,120 --> 00:09:54,560 But they read a lot of English literature too. 172 00:09:54,560 --> 00:09:59,600 There are many embedded quotations, as you know, in Wodehouse, from English literature. 173 00:09:59,600 --> 00:10:01,880 If your little scheme works, Jeeves, 174 00:10:01,880 --> 00:10:04,080 and Rhoda gives Uncle George the heave-ho, 175 00:10:04,080 --> 00:10:06,280 it'll do your pal a bit of good, eh? Yes, sir. 176 00:10:06,280 --> 00:10:10,600 I fancy he will consider it a consummation devoutly to be wished. 177 00:10:10,600 --> 00:10:14,600 Rather well put, that, Jeeves! Your own? 178 00:10:14,600 --> 00:10:16,680 No, sir! The Bard of Avon. 179 00:10:17,720 --> 00:10:20,920 When the time came for Wodehouse to leave Dulwich, 180 00:10:20,920 --> 00:10:23,400 the imposing figure of the school's master 181 00:10:23,400 --> 00:10:26,280 passed judgement on his time there. 182 00:10:26,280 --> 00:10:30,480 He said that the boy Wodehouse was often forgetful. 183 00:10:30,480 --> 00:10:33,360 "He finds difficulties in the most simple things, 184 00:10:33,360 --> 00:10:36,360 and asks absurd questions, 185 00:10:36,360 --> 00:10:39,200 whereas he can understand the more difficult things." 186 00:10:39,200 --> 00:10:42,880 "He has the most distorted ideas about wit and humour." 187 00:10:42,880 --> 00:10:45,760 And he ended up by saying, "One's obliged to like him 188 00:10:45,760 --> 00:10:47,800 in spite of his vagaries." 189 00:10:47,800 --> 00:10:50,960 In the Great Hall of Dulwich College, 190 00:10:50,960 --> 00:10:55,000 the honours board bears the name Wodehouse, EA, 191 00:10:55,000 --> 00:10:58,320 marking the success of the author's brother Armine 192 00:10:58,320 --> 00:11:00,560 in gaining a place at Oxford. 193 00:11:00,560 --> 00:11:04,000 And of Wodehouse, PG, there's not a sign. 194 00:11:04,000 --> 00:11:05,960 His father's financial problems 195 00:11:05,960 --> 00:11:10,440 meant his hopes of going to university were dashed. 196 00:11:10,440 --> 00:11:13,200 Throughout his long, long career, 197 00:11:13,200 --> 00:11:17,080 Wodehouse almost never allowed real emotional pain 198 00:11:17,080 --> 00:11:19,120 to impinge on his fiction. 199 00:11:19,120 --> 00:11:22,480 But in this case, he transposed his own disappointment 200 00:11:22,480 --> 00:11:26,160 onto Mike Jackson, all-round good egg and cricketing hero 201 00:11:26,160 --> 00:11:27,960 of some of his early novels. 202 00:11:27,960 --> 00:11:32,880 "'Aren't I going up to Cambridge, Father?' stammered Mike." 203 00:11:32,880 --> 00:11:36,080 "'I'm afraid not, Mike. I won't go into details, 204 00:11:36,080 --> 00:11:39,280 but I've lost a very large sum of money since I saw you last - 205 00:11:39,280 --> 00:11:43,000 so large that we shall have to economise in every way.'" 206 00:11:43,000 --> 00:11:47,400 "'I'm afraid, too, that you will have to start earning your living.'" 207 00:11:47,400 --> 00:11:50,360 "'I know it's a terrible disappointment to you, old chap.'" 208 00:11:50,360 --> 00:11:55,640 "'Oh. That's...all right,' said Mike, thickly." 209 00:11:55,640 --> 00:11:59,040 "There seemed to be something sticking in his throat, 210 00:11:59,040 --> 00:12:01,200 preventing him from speaking." 211 00:12:01,200 --> 00:12:03,480 He'd obviously seen Oxford 212 00:12:03,480 --> 00:12:08,800 as a way out of this somewhat restrictive childhood 213 00:12:08,800 --> 00:12:11,640 and family life, and so I think he was very cast down. 214 00:12:11,640 --> 00:12:14,800 But actually, Oxford's loss was literature's gain. 215 00:12:14,800 --> 00:12:18,040 Do you think he would have been a writer at all if he'd gone to... 216 00:12:18,040 --> 00:12:22,000 Probably not. I think he would have become a civil servant or a judge. 217 00:12:22,000 --> 00:12:25,440 Fate worse than death! TERRY LAUGHS 218 00:12:27,440 --> 00:12:31,080 Instead of following his brother's path and studying Latin and Greek 219 00:12:31,080 --> 00:12:33,680 here in the city of the dreaming spires, 220 00:12:33,680 --> 00:12:35,880 Wodehouse was sent to the City of London, 221 00:12:35,880 --> 00:12:37,640 to begin his working life 222 00:12:37,640 --> 00:12:40,640 on the staff of the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank. 223 00:12:40,640 --> 00:12:43,720 Well, I disliked it at first, of course, 224 00:12:43,720 --> 00:12:48,480 because all I could afford was a cup of coffee and roll of butter 225 00:12:48,480 --> 00:12:52,400 for lunch, which rather shook me to me to my foundations. 226 00:12:52,400 --> 00:12:58,240 But, er, it wasn't bad. When I got used to it, I liked it. 227 00:12:58,240 --> 00:13:01,120 Wodehouse lent his not-inconsiderable presence 228 00:13:01,120 --> 00:13:04,280 to the bank's rugby team, but he was late for work 229 00:13:04,280 --> 00:13:06,560 perhaps a little too often, 230 00:13:06,560 --> 00:13:08,720 and here at his old school 231 00:13:08,720 --> 00:13:11,760 there's evidence pointing to the young man's priorities. 232 00:13:11,760 --> 00:13:15,800 PG Wodehouse, like myself, went off and joined a bank. 233 00:13:15,800 --> 00:13:19,320 But while he was in the bank, he continued to write. 234 00:13:19,320 --> 00:13:22,360 Absolutely, and this notebook is the record 235 00:13:22,360 --> 00:13:25,160 of all that literary work that was going on 236 00:13:25,160 --> 00:13:28,520 in the evenings, weekends, or whenever he wasn't at the bank. 237 00:13:28,520 --> 00:13:30,960 He was writing stories, submitting them, 238 00:13:30,960 --> 00:13:33,320 and getting paid. 239 00:13:33,320 --> 00:13:36,680 £1, 11 and 6, I see here somewhere. It's the old money! 240 00:13:36,680 --> 00:13:40,560 Exactly. Ah, memories! Then we get to September 1902. 241 00:13:40,560 --> 00:13:42,720 It's a marvellous month, where he notes, 242 00:13:42,720 --> 00:13:46,920 "Total for September, £16 and four shillings - record so far." 243 00:13:46,920 --> 00:13:50,560 King's ransom. It's extraordinary. So then he's able to make 244 00:13:50,560 --> 00:13:53,440 this monumental decision on September 9th, 245 00:13:53,440 --> 00:13:56,880 "having to choose between the 'Globe' versus the bank, 246 00:13:56,880 --> 00:14:01,120 and chucked the latter, and started on my wild lone as a freelance." 247 00:14:01,120 --> 00:14:04,600 So he didn't need the day job any more. Wonderful! 248 00:14:04,600 --> 00:14:08,160 'Wodehouse clearly had his shoulder to the journalistic wheel 249 00:14:08,160 --> 00:14:10,200 'in the years after he left school, 250 00:14:10,200 --> 00:14:13,320 'but he wasn't suited to every opportunity that came his way.' 251 00:14:13,320 --> 00:14:17,120 Wodehouse was actually an early Edwardian agony uncle. 252 00:14:17,120 --> 00:14:20,440 He was employed for a brief time by a journal 253 00:14:20,440 --> 00:14:23,480 called Tit-Bits. The owner was very proud of the fact 254 00:14:23,480 --> 00:14:25,920 that they had a problem page. 255 00:14:25,920 --> 00:14:28,560 In some ways it's a surprising find, 256 00:14:28,560 --> 00:14:31,600 but it's not surprising that Wodehouse couldn't handle 257 00:14:31,600 --> 00:14:35,680 an emotional problem page seriously. He couldn't take it seriously, 258 00:14:35,680 --> 00:14:38,080 and in fact he was "let go", as it were. 259 00:14:39,320 --> 00:14:41,600 Still, London in the early 20th century 260 00:14:41,600 --> 00:14:44,240 wasn't a bad place for a young writer to be. 261 00:14:44,240 --> 00:14:47,040 A rising, increasingly literate population 262 00:14:47,040 --> 00:14:51,160 meant that, with titles such as Punch and The Strand to the fore, 263 00:14:51,160 --> 00:14:54,560 this was the golden age of the magazine. 264 00:14:54,560 --> 00:14:58,560 Did he have to write to order, then? If you're writing for magazines 265 00:14:58,560 --> 00:15:01,320 or serials and things, it's to order, isn't it? 266 00:15:01,320 --> 00:15:05,200 Absolutely, and all his life he liked to get paid for what he did. 267 00:15:05,200 --> 00:15:08,560 He liked to deliver what you asked him to do, 268 00:15:08,560 --> 00:15:11,600 on time, to length, and get paid for it. 269 00:15:11,600 --> 00:15:15,680 A real professional. A real professional journalist/writer. 270 00:15:17,520 --> 00:15:20,360 In over 70 years as a published novelist, 271 00:15:20,360 --> 00:15:22,440 beginning when he was just 20, 272 00:15:22,440 --> 00:15:27,160 this professionalism - unfussy, unrelenting - 273 00:15:27,160 --> 00:15:29,440 dominated Wodehouse's life. 274 00:15:29,440 --> 00:15:32,120 One of the things I most love about Wodehouse 275 00:15:32,120 --> 00:15:35,000 was that he was so hardworking, 276 00:15:35,000 --> 00:15:38,160 and he belongs to that generation of writers - 277 00:15:38,160 --> 00:15:42,320 two writers he very much admired, Agatha Christie and Ngaio Marsh - 278 00:15:42,320 --> 00:15:45,960 the same generation where they just put their books out, 279 00:15:45,960 --> 00:15:50,600 one in the spring, one in the autumn, and they worked really, really hard. 280 00:15:50,600 --> 00:15:52,720 He was a supreme professional 281 00:15:52,720 --> 00:15:55,280 for whom the day was all about getting up, 282 00:15:55,280 --> 00:15:57,880 going and sitting in front of his typewriter, 283 00:15:57,880 --> 00:16:02,000 his Royal, the same typewriter he kept throughout his life, 284 00:16:02,000 --> 00:16:06,240 and typing out the words. He said, "I sit at my desk and curse a bit," 285 00:16:06,240 --> 00:16:10,320 when asked what his technique was. It wasn't all that easy for him. 286 00:16:10,320 --> 00:16:12,560 One assumes, the way the books are written, 287 00:16:12,560 --> 00:16:15,800 that the flow would have come to him very easily, 288 00:16:15,800 --> 00:16:19,480 but he didn't sit around waiting for the muse to land. 289 00:16:19,480 --> 00:16:22,920 The Latin scholar in him would have said, "Ars celare artem est" - 290 00:16:22,920 --> 00:16:26,760 "Art is to conceal art", and he certainly concealed it. 291 00:16:26,760 --> 00:16:29,480 He was an artist, an important, very good artist. 292 00:16:29,480 --> 00:16:32,120 But he was also a professional writer, 293 00:16:32,120 --> 00:16:34,320 and he learned how to write, 294 00:16:34,320 --> 00:16:36,760 and he developed his craft deliberately, 295 00:16:36,760 --> 00:16:39,120 sitting down for long hours for years and years, 296 00:16:39,120 --> 00:16:41,560 until he could do it exquisitely. 297 00:16:41,560 --> 00:16:43,440 At his peak of productivity, 298 00:16:43,440 --> 00:16:46,880 Wodehouse wrote 8,000 words a day. 299 00:16:46,880 --> 00:16:51,160 But his work was never just produced. It was polished. 300 00:16:51,160 --> 00:16:53,800 I tell you what I love - I love revising. 301 00:16:53,800 --> 00:16:58,840 Getting the first stuff down is always hard, 302 00:16:58,840 --> 00:17:02,120 but once it's down, you can see what's wrong with it. 303 00:17:02,120 --> 00:17:05,720 'You can see that one page ought to be five pages earlier, 304 00:17:05,720 --> 00:17:07,600 'and that sort of thing.' 305 00:17:07,600 --> 00:17:10,640 Wodehouse had always wanted to pay his way as a writer. 306 00:17:10,640 --> 00:17:14,480 In 1914, aged 32, he'd taken on the additional responsibilities 307 00:17:14,480 --> 00:17:17,920 of a family man, when he married Ethel Wayman, 308 00:17:17,920 --> 00:17:22,000 and became a deeply devoted stepfather to her daughter Leonora, 309 00:17:22,000 --> 00:17:25,480 whom he would call "the queen of her species". 310 00:17:25,480 --> 00:17:29,560 His wife Ethel was quite the hostess, in their various homes 311 00:17:29,560 --> 00:17:34,400 in Long Island and in France, and he would tend to hide in his study, 312 00:17:34,400 --> 00:17:36,640 smoking his pipe and sipping his whisky, 313 00:17:36,640 --> 00:17:39,040 and probably reading back his day's work. 314 00:17:39,040 --> 00:17:44,160 The deal with Ethel, his wife, was that he made it and she spent it. That was the deal. 315 00:17:44,160 --> 00:17:47,760 Given that his wife enjoyed entertaining and gambling, 316 00:17:47,760 --> 00:17:50,680 you can see that Wodehouse needed to keep earning. 317 00:17:50,680 --> 00:17:54,520 But that doesn't begin to explain his devotion to his work. 318 00:17:54,520 --> 00:17:58,080 He didn't write to live. He wrote to exist. 319 00:17:59,480 --> 00:18:03,280 He was only interested in work, 320 00:18:03,280 --> 00:18:06,680 so if you came, and you knew his books, 321 00:18:06,680 --> 00:18:08,640 you knew him. 322 00:18:10,880 --> 00:18:14,440 His routine was, you get up, you work all morning, 323 00:18:14,440 --> 00:18:17,280 you have lunch, you go for a walk, you have a cocktail, 324 00:18:17,280 --> 00:18:20,760 you work some more, have a cup of tea, work some more, go to bed, 325 00:18:20,760 --> 00:18:23,720 listen to the radio, go to sleep, get up, work. 326 00:18:23,720 --> 00:18:25,800 It just goes on and on and on. 327 00:18:25,800 --> 00:18:27,920 He wrote because that's what he did. 328 00:18:29,000 --> 00:18:34,680 And... And his dedication, his fulfilment in writing, 329 00:18:34,680 --> 00:18:36,800 was his life. 330 00:18:39,600 --> 00:18:42,680 'The Clicking Of Cuthbert! 331 00:18:42,680 --> 00:18:46,320 'A rarely seen version of one of Wodehouse's famous golf stories, 332 00:18:46,320 --> 00:18:49,360 'and proof that the work of the master of dialogue 333 00:18:49,360 --> 00:18:52,360 'was in demand from the silent cinema. 334 00:18:52,360 --> 00:18:55,720 'Wodehouse was by now a major name in his own right. 335 00:18:55,720 --> 00:18:58,080 'Enduring characters such as Psmith 336 00:18:58,080 --> 00:19:01,160 'and the denizens of Blandings Castle 337 00:19:01,160 --> 00:19:03,800 'were already well established, along with a duo 338 00:19:03,800 --> 00:19:06,760 'Wodehouse described to a school friend as 339 00:19:06,760 --> 00:19:09,600 '"a bloke called Bertie Wooster and his valet".' 340 00:19:09,600 --> 00:19:13,840 Well, now, that came about... I was writing a short story 341 00:19:13,840 --> 00:19:19,120 where Bertie - he was called Reggie Pepper in those days... 342 00:19:20,800 --> 00:19:25,560 He and his friend got into an absolute fix, 343 00:19:25,560 --> 00:19:29,840 and it's impossible that either of them could find the solution to it. 344 00:19:29,840 --> 00:19:34,040 And it suddenly occurred to me, why shouldn't Reggie, Reggie Pepper, 345 00:19:34,040 --> 00:19:39,400 have a valet who...was omniscient? 346 00:19:39,400 --> 00:19:43,160 Wodehouse chronicled the adventures of the hapless Bertie Wooster 347 00:19:43,160 --> 00:19:46,240 and his rescue by the unflappable, infallible Jeeves 348 00:19:46,240 --> 00:19:50,520 for 60 years, and the characters remain the most familiar route 349 00:19:50,520 --> 00:19:53,360 into the author's world of comic fantasy. 350 00:19:53,360 --> 00:19:58,080 There is no greater lover of words, in my experience, than you. 351 00:19:58,080 --> 00:20:02,120 When did your particular love of Wodehouse start? 352 00:20:02,120 --> 00:20:04,880 I can date it exactly. It was my tenth birthday. 353 00:20:04,880 --> 00:20:06,960 I was given a copy of Very Good, Jeeves 354 00:20:06,960 --> 00:20:10,400 by a godmother, and I consumed it in an evening. 355 00:20:10,400 --> 00:20:13,840 And it was like falling in love, all that sense of, 356 00:20:13,840 --> 00:20:17,520 "I've been here before, I know this." Somehow it was right. 357 00:20:17,520 --> 00:20:20,800 The way the sentences fell was just made for me, and I knew it, 358 00:20:20,800 --> 00:20:23,600 and within a very short time I had a huge collection. 359 00:20:23,600 --> 00:20:26,600 I think it's you that said the plotting is fantastic. 360 00:20:26,600 --> 00:20:28,680 Obviously the characters are amazing, 361 00:20:28,680 --> 00:20:31,160 but it's the words. It's the language. 362 00:20:31,160 --> 00:20:33,480 That's right. It's particularly important 363 00:20:33,480 --> 00:20:35,800 when you come to a dramatisation, 364 00:20:35,800 --> 00:20:38,680 to look at this problem, if you like, with Wodehouse, 365 00:20:38,680 --> 00:20:41,960 that, like any writer, there are three strands - 366 00:20:41,960 --> 00:20:45,560 characterisation, storytelling, and the language that is used 367 00:20:45,560 --> 00:20:49,200 to convey it all. It is the language that rises above all. 368 00:20:49,200 --> 00:20:53,040 It is... No-one else wrote like that. I mean, he was a lord of language, 369 00:20:53,040 --> 00:20:56,320 and there are very few of these born every generation. 370 00:20:56,320 --> 00:21:00,400 How did you feel, yourself, to have to take on the role 371 00:21:00,400 --> 00:21:05,240 of Jeeves, and put the words on the screen, as it were? 372 00:21:05,240 --> 00:21:07,720 It... It was a heck of an ask. 373 00:21:07,720 --> 00:21:11,560 I mean, two things occurred to me when Brian Eastman, the producer, 374 00:21:11,560 --> 00:21:14,800 came to me and Hugh, and we both said afterwards, 375 00:21:14,800 --> 00:21:18,240 on the one hand, we can't possibly do this. It would be sacrilege. 376 00:21:18,240 --> 00:21:22,040 On the other hand, we can't possibly let anyone else do this! 377 00:21:22,040 --> 00:21:25,920 It was going to happen, and therefore we thought, well, gosh, 378 00:21:25,920 --> 00:21:29,320 we would kick ourselves forever if we didn't try. 379 00:21:29,320 --> 00:21:32,920 Among the grim regiment of my aunts, only Aunt Dahlia stands alone 380 00:21:32,920 --> 00:21:35,520 as a real sportsman. I mean, look at my aunt Agatha! 381 00:21:35,520 --> 00:21:38,400 Indeed, sir. Yes. And Aunt Julia! 382 00:21:38,400 --> 00:21:40,960 Quite, sir. And Aunt Charlotte! 383 00:21:40,960 --> 00:21:44,320 Ugh! She's the one who sent me that rather bitter postcard 384 00:21:44,320 --> 00:21:48,120 of Little Chilbury War Memorial when I refused to take her frightful child 385 00:21:48,120 --> 00:21:50,880 to lunch on the way back to school. Aunts are noted 386 00:21:50,880 --> 00:21:54,400 for strong opinions, sir. It's a distinguishing mark of the breed. 387 00:21:54,400 --> 00:21:57,040 It's a tradition. The servant-master comedy 388 00:21:57,040 --> 00:21:59,640 is a very old tradition. It goes back to Roman plays 389 00:21:59,640 --> 00:22:03,320 and through Ben Jonson and Commedia dell'Arte and so on. 390 00:22:03,320 --> 00:22:05,440 People have always found delightful 391 00:22:05,440 --> 00:22:09,240 that of the fool of an employer 392 00:22:09,240 --> 00:22:13,920 having rings run round him by his wiser employee. 393 00:22:13,920 --> 00:22:16,680 The thing that's so unique about Jeeves and Wooster 394 00:22:16,680 --> 00:22:18,800 is that it's told in the first person, 395 00:22:18,800 --> 00:22:21,200 so it's all through Bertie's voice, 396 00:22:21,200 --> 00:22:24,280 and Bertie's voice is one of the great voices in all literature. 397 00:22:24,280 --> 00:22:27,520 'And for me, the greatest voice of Bertie Wooster 398 00:22:27,520 --> 00:22:30,320 'was heard in a classic BBC radio series 399 00:22:30,320 --> 00:22:32,200 'starring Richard Briers.' 400 00:22:32,200 --> 00:22:35,640 "'Morning, Jeeves,' I said." 401 00:22:35,640 --> 00:22:38,120 "'Oh, good morning, sir,' said Jeeves." 402 00:22:38,120 --> 00:22:42,080 "He put the good old cup of tea softly on the table 403 00:22:42,080 --> 00:22:45,240 by my bed, and I took a refreshing sip." 404 00:22:45,240 --> 00:22:48,440 "Just right, as usual." 405 00:22:48,440 --> 00:22:52,720 "Not too hot, not too sweet, not too weak, not too strong, 406 00:22:52,720 --> 00:22:57,080 not too much milk, and not a drop spilled in the saucer." 407 00:22:57,080 --> 00:23:00,040 "A most amazing cove, Jeeves." 408 00:23:00,040 --> 00:23:03,080 "So dashed competent in every respect." 409 00:23:03,080 --> 00:23:05,720 "I've said it before, and I'll say it again." 410 00:23:05,720 --> 00:23:09,360 "I mean to say, take just one small instance." 411 00:23:09,360 --> 00:23:13,480 "Any other valet I've ever had used to barge into my room 412 00:23:13,480 --> 00:23:15,640 in the morning while I was still asleep, 413 00:23:15,640 --> 00:23:18,160 causing much misery." 414 00:23:18,160 --> 00:23:20,680 "But Jeeves seems to know when I'm awake 415 00:23:20,680 --> 00:23:22,760 by a sort of telepathy." 416 00:23:22,760 --> 00:23:26,000 "He always floats in with the cup 417 00:23:26,000 --> 00:23:28,200 exactly two minutes after I come to life." 418 00:23:28,200 --> 00:23:33,600 "Makes a deuce of a lot of difference to a fellow's day." 419 00:23:33,600 --> 00:23:36,160 Wonderful words. Marvellous, isn't it? 420 00:23:36,160 --> 00:23:39,800 Oh! But you took on the role of Bertie Wooster, 421 00:23:39,800 --> 00:23:43,280 and Stephen Fry has said, rightly, that one of the great voices 422 00:23:43,280 --> 00:23:46,320 in English literature was that of Bertie Wooster. 423 00:23:46,320 --> 00:23:50,200 Did you think of him as somebody - fairly vacant mind... Yes, yes! 424 00:23:50,200 --> 00:23:54,000 ..but rapid tongue? Yes. I always felt that he wasn't that thick, 425 00:23:54,000 --> 00:23:57,280 that he did his very best. He messed things up, 426 00:23:57,280 --> 00:24:00,920 but he did have a very good go, and was terrified of the aunts, 427 00:24:00,920 --> 00:24:03,200 of course. Lived in fear of the aunts. 428 00:24:03,200 --> 00:24:07,440 But I thought he was not quite brainless as one thinks. 429 00:24:07,440 --> 00:24:10,400 How many times was he engaged? About seven times? 430 00:24:10,400 --> 00:24:13,560 Terrifying. Only because he was afraid of the women. 431 00:24:13,560 --> 00:24:16,800 He couldn't say no. Extraordinary. Very charming about him. 432 00:24:16,800 --> 00:24:20,600 Now, I listened on the radio to The Purity Of The Turf, 433 00:24:20,600 --> 00:24:26,800 which is a really funny story about Bertie and Bingo 434 00:24:26,800 --> 00:24:29,200 trying to make a few quid on the side 435 00:24:29,200 --> 00:24:34,240 by backing a big fat choirboy, who can run like the wind, 436 00:24:34,240 --> 00:24:37,800 in, as it were, the school fete. 437 00:24:37,800 --> 00:24:41,760 Now, that, in fact, although it's hard to believe... 438 00:24:41,760 --> 00:24:45,240 Yes. ..is in cartoon form 439 00:24:45,240 --> 00:24:47,680 in a Japanese comic. 440 00:24:47,680 --> 00:24:51,200 That's incredible! It starts at the back, of course. 441 00:24:51,200 --> 00:24:55,480 And this is The Purity Of The Turf, as characterised by... 442 00:24:55,480 --> 00:24:58,640 Now, that can only be Bertie. Yes. 443 00:24:58,640 --> 00:25:01,280 That's right. And that's Jeeves. 444 00:25:01,280 --> 00:25:03,920 With the umbrella. And that's the fat choirboy... 445 00:25:03,920 --> 00:25:06,560 RICHARD LAUGHS Terribly fat, yes. 446 00:25:06,560 --> 00:25:09,640 ..who they lost a lot of money on. 447 00:25:09,640 --> 00:25:13,200 You can see how it's all drawn here. Fascinating. 448 00:25:13,200 --> 00:25:15,520 Isn't it amazing? Really amazing. 449 00:25:15,520 --> 00:25:19,160 He was loved universally, wasn't he? Lovely stories. 450 00:25:19,160 --> 00:25:23,240 It doesn't matter that none of us have ever had a man's gentleman, 451 00:25:23,240 --> 00:25:25,520 a gentleman's gentleman, looking after us. 452 00:25:25,520 --> 00:25:28,400 It doesn't matter that we haven't got horrifying aunts. 453 00:25:28,400 --> 00:25:32,560 The fact that it isn't the real world is thrilling. 454 00:25:32,560 --> 00:25:35,640 To paraphrase his great admirer, Evelyn Waugh, 455 00:25:35,640 --> 00:25:39,920 Wodehouse's innocent characters are "still in Eden". 456 00:25:39,920 --> 00:25:42,960 They've never sunk their teeth into the forbidden fruit. 457 00:25:42,960 --> 00:25:45,600 But Wodehouse always insisted that Bertie Wooster 458 00:25:45,600 --> 00:25:49,960 owed something to the reality of life in his Edwardian youth. 459 00:25:49,960 --> 00:25:55,480 London was full of Berties in the old days. 460 00:25:55,480 --> 00:25:58,760 Those fellows were all more or less dependent on aunts 461 00:25:58,760 --> 00:26:01,560 and uncles and various people. 462 00:26:01,560 --> 00:26:03,840 They had their little allowances, 463 00:26:03,840 --> 00:26:07,320 and they didn't want to jeopardise them. 464 00:26:07,320 --> 00:26:10,760 It's curious to think, nowadays, of that life, 465 00:26:10,760 --> 00:26:14,000 but it really did exist at that time. 466 00:26:15,760 --> 00:26:18,200 'And here in London's West End, 467 00:26:18,200 --> 00:26:20,680 'I've joined Wodehouse scholar Norman Murphy 468 00:26:20,680 --> 00:26:23,400 'to hear how he tracked down the real locations 469 00:26:23,400 --> 00:26:27,440 'which feature in the world of Bertram Wilberforce Wooster.' 470 00:26:27,440 --> 00:26:30,120 And then I read the letter, when he said, 471 00:26:30,120 --> 00:26:34,160 "I always like using a real building, a real location." 472 00:26:34,160 --> 00:26:35,880 "It saves time and effort." 473 00:26:35,880 --> 00:26:39,000 And Bertie Wooster's flat is right over there. Really? 474 00:26:39,000 --> 00:26:43,120 15 Berkeley Street. This is where Jeeves ministered to him? 475 00:26:43,120 --> 00:26:47,120 Ministered to him, and Wodehouse was here for three months that year, 476 00:26:47,120 --> 00:26:50,160 third flat, upstairs, exactly as Wodehouse tells us. 477 00:26:50,160 --> 00:26:53,160 That's where it all began. Show me more. Round the corner. 478 00:26:53,160 --> 00:26:55,480 So, Norman, where are we now? 479 00:26:55,480 --> 00:26:58,680 In some respects, we're now in the home of Wodehouse's Mayfair, 480 00:26:58,680 --> 00:27:02,000 because the white building there... Yes. 481 00:27:02,000 --> 00:27:04,400 Number 47... The one with the pillars? 482 00:27:04,400 --> 00:27:08,040 ..is the home of Mrs Dahlia Travers. Oh, my word! Aunt Dahlia. 483 00:27:08,040 --> 00:27:11,480 And Aunt Dahlia he liked. Indeed. Aunt Agatha he was afraid of. 484 00:27:11,480 --> 00:27:15,080 Exactly. Aunt Agatha was based on his own aunt Mary Deane, 485 00:27:15,080 --> 00:27:18,680 who was the curse of his childhood, and Dahlia based on his aunt Louisa, 486 00:27:18,680 --> 00:27:21,760 a lady he did like. They were all based on his own aunts? 487 00:27:21,760 --> 00:27:25,280 The big ones, yes. Two of them were. And he was frightened of them? 488 00:27:25,280 --> 00:27:29,600 Remember, he had 20...15 uncles... He had 15 uncles and 20 aunts. 489 00:27:29,600 --> 00:27:31,400 20! Imagine! 490 00:27:31,400 --> 00:27:35,080 'Next we're off in search of the gentlemen's club 491 00:27:35,080 --> 00:27:38,520 'where Bertie Wooster and his pals whiled away so many days and nights.' 492 00:27:38,520 --> 00:27:42,320 The immortal site is here, the Drones Club. 493 00:27:42,320 --> 00:27:45,400 Ah! The real Drones Club. This is it! 494 00:27:45,400 --> 00:27:47,240 This is it. The Drones. 495 00:27:47,240 --> 00:27:50,400 In 1919, a young officer who'd come back from the trenches 496 00:27:50,400 --> 00:27:52,560 said, "I'm now going to start a club, 497 00:27:52,560 --> 00:27:55,840 a young man's club." He called it Buck's Club, 498 00:27:55,840 --> 00:27:58,240 and in one story, 499 00:27:58,240 --> 00:28:01,600 Bingo Little told Bertie all about his love for Honoria Glossop 500 00:28:01,600 --> 00:28:04,920 in Buck's Club. Bertie wishes he would shut up, 501 00:28:04,920 --> 00:28:07,880 because the man behind the bar, McGarry, was listening 502 00:28:07,880 --> 00:28:11,960 with his ear flapping. Who was barman here in 1941? McGarry. 503 00:28:11,960 --> 00:28:16,680 So these stories are based on real locales? 504 00:28:16,680 --> 00:28:20,280 Places he knew, places his friends lived, places he knew very well. 505 00:28:20,280 --> 00:28:24,000 This was his milieu. This was Bertie Wooster's London. 506 00:28:24,000 --> 00:28:26,240 Bertie Wooster's Mayfair. We're here. 507 00:28:27,440 --> 00:28:30,480 Between its publication in 1923 508 00:28:30,480 --> 00:28:32,840 and the outbreak of war in 1939, 509 00:28:32,840 --> 00:28:37,400 The Inimitable Jeeves alone sold around three million copies, 510 00:28:37,400 --> 00:28:41,240 when the paperback was still in its infancy. 511 00:28:41,240 --> 00:28:45,120 So, you might ask, just what tricks was Wodehouse pulling off 512 00:28:45,120 --> 00:28:48,560 to reach such a vast readership? Well, the fact 513 00:28:48,560 --> 00:28:51,480 that he was able to pepper the Jeeves-and-Wooster stories 514 00:28:51,480 --> 00:28:53,880 with references to great literature 515 00:28:53,880 --> 00:28:58,480 alongside talk of "squaring the elbows" or "parting brass rags" 516 00:28:58,480 --> 00:29:00,640 provides a bit of a clue. 517 00:29:00,640 --> 00:29:03,880 As with HG Wells, or comic predecessors 518 00:29:03,880 --> 00:29:08,640 such as Jerome K Jerome, he found a way to appeal to the swelling ranks 519 00:29:08,640 --> 00:29:13,160 of bank clerks and office workers in Britain and beyond. 520 00:29:13,160 --> 00:29:16,880 And these are people who were using all kinds of local slang, 521 00:29:16,880 --> 00:29:21,080 and he was mixing this with the classical style, 522 00:29:21,080 --> 00:29:23,840 so it's a mixture of the high art and the low art, 523 00:29:23,840 --> 00:29:27,200 and he was somebody who managed to make a new style 524 00:29:27,200 --> 00:29:30,880 out of this mixture of popular and literary. 525 00:29:30,880 --> 00:29:34,600 So, when he writes about fate being like the rock in a stocking 526 00:29:34,600 --> 00:29:37,520 the rock in a stocking is both... 527 00:29:38,560 --> 00:29:41,560 ..wonderfully poetic - I mean, as good as Chaucer - 528 00:29:41,560 --> 00:29:44,440 and...and...and also... 529 00:29:44,440 --> 00:29:46,800 um, incredibly funny, 530 00:29:46,800 --> 00:29:50,120 because it both...it's both banal 531 00:29:50,120 --> 00:29:53,240 at the same time as being... 532 00:29:53,240 --> 00:29:56,400 as being, er...extraordinarily profound. 533 00:29:56,400 --> 00:29:58,840 He's a very, very good writer of sentences. 534 00:29:58,840 --> 00:30:01,360 I mean, when I read Wodehouse as a kid, 535 00:30:01,360 --> 00:30:04,280 you read them for the plots and what happened in them. 536 00:30:04,280 --> 00:30:08,160 As you get older, and you take writing more seriously, as I do, 537 00:30:08,160 --> 00:30:11,720 when I read those sentences, I think that they are...immaculate, 538 00:30:11,720 --> 00:30:15,080 that it's very, very difficult to write a sentence as good as that. 539 00:30:15,080 --> 00:30:18,360 And not only that, to write another one and put it next to it, 540 00:30:18,360 --> 00:30:20,640 and then another one, and a dialogue. 541 00:30:20,640 --> 00:30:25,080 I mean, it's fantastically high-quality writing. 542 00:30:25,080 --> 00:30:27,760 You read it not for the plot, which you can remember, 543 00:30:27,760 --> 00:30:30,600 but for the style, the similes, the metaphors, 544 00:30:30,600 --> 00:30:33,800 the gloriously surreal metaphors. 545 00:30:33,800 --> 00:30:37,880 Uncle Fred In Springtime? It's called Uncle Fred In The Springtime. 546 00:30:37,880 --> 00:30:41,120 There are many Wodehouse characters who occur again and again, 547 00:30:41,120 --> 00:30:44,360 and Uncle Fred is one of them, Lord Ickenham. 548 00:30:44,360 --> 00:30:49,080 He's a splendid figure, and a complete disgrace of an old man, 549 00:30:49,080 --> 00:30:53,920 and Pongo, his nephew, is very scared of his aunt, Lady Constance, 550 00:30:53,920 --> 00:30:57,360 and, er... HE CHUCKLES 551 00:30:57,360 --> 00:30:59,600 ..and this is what Ickenham says. 552 00:30:59,600 --> 00:31:03,680 He says, "'Don't blame me if it turns out that that's the wrong thing 553 00:31:03,680 --> 00:31:06,480 and Lady Constance takes her lorgnette to you.'" 554 00:31:06,480 --> 00:31:10,800 "'God bless my soul, though - you can't compare the lorgnettes of today 555 00:31:10,800 --> 00:31:13,280 with the ones I used to know as a boy.'" 556 00:31:13,280 --> 00:31:15,760 "'I remember walking one day in Grosvenor Square 557 00:31:15,760 --> 00:31:18,760 with my aunt Brenda and her pug dog Jabberwocky, 558 00:31:18,760 --> 00:31:22,760 and a policeman came up and said that the latter ought to be wearing a muzzle.'" 559 00:31:22,760 --> 00:31:25,120 "'My aunt made no verbal reply.'" 560 00:31:25,120 --> 00:31:27,960 "'She merely whipped her lorgnette from its holster 561 00:31:27,960 --> 00:31:31,080 and looked at the man, who gave one choking gasp 562 00:31:31,080 --> 00:31:34,720 and fell back against the railings, without a mark on him, 563 00:31:34,720 --> 00:31:37,520 but with an awful look of horror in his staring eyes, 564 00:31:37,520 --> 00:31:40,240 as if he had seen some dreadful sight.'" 565 00:31:40,240 --> 00:31:43,320 "'A doctor was sent for, and they managed to bring him round, 566 00:31:43,320 --> 00:31:46,440 but he was never the same again. He had to leave the Force, 567 00:31:46,440 --> 00:31:49,160 and eventually drifted into the grocery business.'" 568 00:31:49,160 --> 00:31:52,000 "'And that is how Sir Thomas Lipton got his start.'" 569 00:31:52,000 --> 00:31:55,240 No mark on him, as if he had seen some dreadful sight. 570 00:31:55,240 --> 00:31:57,640 I mean, that's the language of Conan Doyle, 571 00:31:57,640 --> 00:32:00,320 and it's about an aunt bringing out a lorgnette. 572 00:32:00,320 --> 00:32:03,560 I think Wodehouse is the century's greatest comic novelist 573 00:32:03,560 --> 00:32:06,040 surely on the strength of his language. 574 00:32:06,040 --> 00:32:11,720 He managed to use comedy as almost a language distinct unto itself, 575 00:32:11,720 --> 00:32:14,960 a language into which anything could be translated. 576 00:32:14,960 --> 00:32:18,480 You want it to go slowly because the language is so funny 577 00:32:18,480 --> 00:32:22,680 and enjoyable to read - on the other hand, the sort of helter-skelter pace 578 00:32:22,680 --> 00:32:26,040 that's going to propel you from page one right down to the end. 579 00:32:26,040 --> 00:32:28,800 When I say it's a bit like pornography, 580 00:32:28,800 --> 00:32:32,200 it does.... After a while, you can become sated by it. 581 00:32:32,200 --> 00:32:34,440 You start to read too much Wodehouse 582 00:32:34,440 --> 00:32:37,560 and it's not just you exhaust your laughter muscles, 583 00:32:37,560 --> 00:32:41,600 but you start to say, "Yeah, yeah, this is brilliant comedy, 584 00:32:41,600 --> 00:32:46,080 but I'm not sure I could go on reading it all night, 585 00:32:46,080 --> 00:32:51,120 all day tomorrow," because it's got this wonderful artificiality about it. 586 00:32:53,080 --> 00:32:57,400 Although capturing such wonderful artificiality is no cakewalk, 587 00:32:57,400 --> 00:33:01,280 Wodehouse Playhouse, a highly popular series of the mid-'70s, 588 00:33:01,280 --> 00:33:04,000 remains a relatively rare example 589 00:33:04,000 --> 00:33:06,960 of a successful Wodehouse adaptation. 590 00:33:06,960 --> 00:33:09,880 Miss Minna Nordstrom! 591 00:33:09,880 --> 00:33:12,560 And after Tim Rice visited the Wodehouse home 592 00:33:12,560 --> 00:33:16,200 a few years earlier, to discuss a planned Jeeves musical, 593 00:33:16,200 --> 00:33:20,200 he realised the task was not but the work of a moment. 594 00:33:20,200 --> 00:33:23,400 All I felt I was doing was making the great Wodehouse less funny, 595 00:33:23,400 --> 00:33:26,240 and I kept thinking, "This isn't..." 596 00:33:26,240 --> 00:33:29,960 "All I'm doing is unimproving him." 597 00:33:29,960 --> 00:33:32,360 And in the end I pulled out, 598 00:33:32,360 --> 00:33:36,000 because there's nothing really that a musical version can add to it, 599 00:33:36,000 --> 00:33:39,920 I don't think, can add to the genius of PG. 600 00:33:39,920 --> 00:33:43,920 As Punch magazine had it way back when, 601 00:33:43,920 --> 00:33:46,160 criticising Wodehouse's work 602 00:33:46,160 --> 00:33:48,840 is "like taking a spade to a souffle". 603 00:33:48,840 --> 00:33:53,200 But the novels and short stories that just trip off the page to read 604 00:33:53,200 --> 00:33:56,240 are the result, of course, of almost ceaseless effort, 605 00:33:56,240 --> 00:34:01,080 which in turn points to another curiosity about his work. 606 00:34:01,080 --> 00:34:03,600 For him, life was about work, 607 00:34:03,600 --> 00:34:07,880 but he wrote about people who never did any work at all. 608 00:34:07,880 --> 00:34:12,960 And I've always found that the most intriguing paradox 609 00:34:12,960 --> 00:34:14,600 about PG Wodehouse. 610 00:34:14,600 --> 00:34:18,680 It can't be that Wodehouse wanted to join the ranks of the idle rich. 611 00:34:18,680 --> 00:34:23,080 His success made him very wealthy, but idle? 612 00:34:23,080 --> 00:34:25,560 He'd sooner have run a mile in tight shoes. 613 00:34:25,560 --> 00:34:30,440 So was he just fixated on the upper classes? Was George Orwell, 614 00:34:30,440 --> 00:34:33,320 who in many respects understood Wodehouse very well, 615 00:34:33,320 --> 00:34:39,240 right to claim that his work betrays an "old-fashioned snobbishness"? 616 00:34:39,240 --> 00:34:42,400 I think the answer is no, and I think no for two reasons, 617 00:34:42,400 --> 00:34:45,440 the first of which is, if we actually look at the plots, 618 00:34:45,440 --> 00:34:48,200 who's in charge, we can see very much 619 00:34:48,200 --> 00:34:51,960 that Jeeves is in charge of not only Bertie's wardrobe 620 00:34:51,960 --> 00:34:55,600 but his love life and his entire future. 621 00:34:55,600 --> 00:34:59,080 So I think that what you could say about Wodehouse is 622 00:34:59,080 --> 00:35:03,080 that the upper classes are mostly twits. 623 00:35:03,080 --> 00:35:06,800 They are... The benefit of a good education has been lost 624 00:35:06,800 --> 00:35:10,360 on almost all of them. The only person who knows his Shakespeare 625 00:35:10,360 --> 00:35:15,640 and his Pope is Jeeves, so that there are subtle ways where that idea 626 00:35:15,640 --> 00:35:18,360 that the upper class equals good 627 00:35:18,360 --> 00:35:23,040 and the servant class equals put-upon is subverted all the way through. 628 00:35:23,040 --> 00:35:26,160 The second reason I'd say no is class, 629 00:35:26,160 --> 00:35:29,360 and the various ranks of class, are really, for Wodehouse, 630 00:35:29,360 --> 00:35:31,560 they're just a plot device, a system. 631 00:35:31,560 --> 00:35:34,840 Wodehouse's novels revolve around things being out of place. 632 00:35:34,840 --> 00:35:37,680 His job, as a writer, is to play with these things 633 00:35:37,680 --> 00:35:40,920 being out of place, and to put them back into their place, 634 00:35:40,920 --> 00:35:44,160 and class provides one of the ways in which he can do that. 635 00:35:44,160 --> 00:35:47,640 Televised here for the first time in 55 years, 636 00:35:47,640 --> 00:35:50,200 this is the BBC version of perhaps the most famous 637 00:35:50,200 --> 00:35:53,440 of Wodehouse's short stories, set at Blandings Castle. 638 00:35:53,440 --> 00:35:56,800 "McAllister," I shall say, "I've had enough of your tantrums." 639 00:35:56,800 --> 00:36:00,280 "Those flowers are mine, and I shall pick as many as I want." 640 00:36:00,280 --> 00:36:05,480 I shall look him straight in the eye, and no nonsense! Yes, dash it! 641 00:36:05,480 --> 00:36:07,520 Leave my flowers alone! 642 00:36:07,520 --> 00:36:10,480 A typical Wodehouse aristocrat, Lord Emsworth, 643 00:36:10,480 --> 00:36:13,600 is not an oppressor of the masses, but an amiable eccentric 644 00:36:13,600 --> 00:36:17,520 who is terrified of McAllister, his grumpy Scottish gardener. 645 00:36:17,520 --> 00:36:19,720 Well, Your Lordship? Agh! 646 00:36:19,720 --> 00:36:24,160 Er, w-w-well, McAllister, what appears to be the matter? 647 00:36:24,160 --> 00:36:26,320 Your Lordship! 648 00:36:26,320 --> 00:36:29,720 The topics that he writes about are very similar to those of Wilde - 649 00:36:29,720 --> 00:36:34,320 country houses, gentlemen-about-town, aunts - 650 00:36:34,320 --> 00:36:37,040 and he uses that sort of aphoristic wit. 651 00:36:37,040 --> 00:36:40,560 But Wilde really was revolutionary. 652 00:36:40,560 --> 00:36:45,320 Wilde really did turn the world, and, indeed, his own world, upside down. 653 00:36:45,320 --> 00:36:47,160 Um... 654 00:36:47,160 --> 00:36:51,560 But Wodehouse was, of course, conservative. 655 00:36:51,560 --> 00:36:56,080 Despite the fact that revolution is raging around Wodehouse, 656 00:36:56,080 --> 00:36:59,400 one never gets the feeling that he really thinks 657 00:36:59,400 --> 00:37:02,760 that Jeeves, who is clearly much more intelligent than Bertie, 658 00:37:02,760 --> 00:37:05,680 should actually seize economic power. 659 00:37:05,680 --> 00:37:10,200 There's never a sense that he's interested in that kind of change. 660 00:37:10,200 --> 00:37:14,480 No chance of Wodehouse having Jeeves storming the Winter Palace, 661 00:37:14,480 --> 00:37:18,040 particularly when Mrs Wodehouse liked to live in some style, 662 00:37:18,040 --> 00:37:20,360 with a staff of 11, 663 00:37:20,360 --> 00:37:22,800 at this London address, in the '20s. 664 00:37:22,800 --> 00:37:25,360 But does that mean that Wodehouse was a snob? 665 00:37:25,360 --> 00:37:28,680 He married Ethel. Ethel was actually a chorus girl. 666 00:37:28,680 --> 00:37:31,040 His best friend was a secretary. 667 00:37:31,040 --> 00:37:34,880 He had a long correspondence with a housekeeper married to a postman. 668 00:37:34,880 --> 00:37:39,720 For Wodehouse, it didn't matter what you did for a living. It mattered that you did it well. 669 00:37:39,720 --> 00:37:43,440 He tended to write about the aristocracy and the landed gentry 670 00:37:43,440 --> 00:37:46,400 and young men-about town at Drones Club 671 00:37:46,400 --> 00:37:49,600 because he found them funny, and we still find them funny. 672 00:37:49,600 --> 00:37:53,080 And if Wodehouse was obsessed with class, 673 00:37:53,080 --> 00:37:55,800 how is it that he had a longstanding love affair 674 00:37:55,800 --> 00:37:59,680 with the classless, restless energy of New York City, 675 00:37:59,680 --> 00:38:02,600 which began when he was still making his way? 676 00:38:02,600 --> 00:38:06,760 'I managed to sell two short stories in the first day, 677 00:38:06,760 --> 00:38:11,640 'one for $300 and one for 200, which, of course, was wealth.' 678 00:38:11,640 --> 00:38:17,240 So I think that was the first key that drew him to America, 679 00:38:17,240 --> 00:38:19,800 and then soon after that came the musicals, 680 00:38:19,800 --> 00:38:24,000 and obviously very quickly he was the man for lyrics. 681 00:38:24,000 --> 00:38:26,800 For almost 20 years, Wodehouse the lyricist 682 00:38:26,800 --> 00:38:30,320 was a major, enduring figure in Broadway musicals. 683 00:38:30,320 --> 00:38:35,320 In 1917, he had five shows running at once. 684 00:38:35,320 --> 00:38:38,040 And all the while, he was commanding top dollar 685 00:38:38,040 --> 00:38:40,320 in the United States magazine market, 686 00:38:40,320 --> 00:38:43,560 where authors made their name and their money. 687 00:38:43,560 --> 00:38:46,280 He was writing, for a mammoth American audience, 688 00:38:46,280 --> 00:38:51,440 an image of what they would like Britain, England, to be like. 689 00:38:51,440 --> 00:38:54,880 He developed something some contemporary writers have developed, 690 00:38:54,880 --> 00:38:57,160 which is, you sell the story in England, 691 00:38:57,160 --> 00:38:59,760 and you sell the story all over again in America, 692 00:38:59,760 --> 00:39:03,000 so he sells England to America, and America to England. 693 00:39:03,000 --> 00:39:06,480 So no surprise that, when talking pictures arrived, 694 00:39:06,480 --> 00:39:08,840 Hollywood came calling for PG Wodehouse, 695 00:39:08,840 --> 00:39:11,520 leading light on Broadway, world-famous author. 696 00:39:11,520 --> 00:39:15,280 As he said himself, "It was an era when only a man 697 00:39:15,280 --> 00:39:17,600 of exceptional ability and determination 698 00:39:17,600 --> 00:39:22,800 could keep from getting signed up by a studio in some capacity or other." 699 00:39:22,800 --> 00:39:27,400 When he presented himself at the studio, he didn't know what he was going to do. 700 00:39:27,400 --> 00:39:30,320 He hadn't been brought with a specific project in mind, 701 00:39:30,320 --> 00:39:32,880 so he said, "What is it you want me to do?" 702 00:39:32,880 --> 00:39:39,040 And very rapidly discovered that he kind of writing 703 00:39:39,040 --> 00:39:42,840 he was expected to do was not the writing that he did. 704 00:39:43,840 --> 00:39:47,080 This 1937 musical, starring Fred Astaire, 705 00:39:47,080 --> 00:39:49,600 is one of the few substantial results 706 00:39:49,600 --> 00:39:52,240 of Wodehouse's association with Hollywood, 707 00:39:52,240 --> 00:39:54,840 a deeply frustrating experience 708 00:39:54,840 --> 00:39:57,160 which inspired him to turn both barrels 709 00:39:57,160 --> 00:39:59,160 on the Dream Factory. 710 00:39:59,160 --> 00:40:02,320 Seven short stories and two novels. 711 00:40:02,320 --> 00:40:05,600 This is real satire, with a certain amount of anger, 712 00:40:05,600 --> 00:40:09,040 and this, in a way, was his writer's revenge 713 00:40:09,040 --> 00:40:12,720 on the people in Hollywood who'd made a monkey out of him. 714 00:40:12,720 --> 00:40:15,920 It is not easy to explain to the lay mind 715 00:40:15,920 --> 00:40:18,800 the extremely intricate ramification of the personnel 716 00:40:18,800 --> 00:40:21,440 of a Hollywood motion-picture organisation. 717 00:40:21,440 --> 00:40:24,040 A Nodder is something like a Yes-Man, 718 00:40:24,040 --> 00:40:27,120 only lower in the social scale. A Yes-Man's duty 719 00:40:27,120 --> 00:40:30,240 is to attend conferences and say "Yes." 720 00:40:30,240 --> 00:40:33,880 A Nodder's, as the name implies, is to nod. 721 00:40:33,880 --> 00:40:37,080 The chief executive throws out some statement of opinion. 722 00:40:37,080 --> 00:40:40,680 This is the cue for the senior Yes-Man to say yes. 723 00:40:40,680 --> 00:40:43,520 Only when all the Yes-Men have yessed 724 00:40:43,520 --> 00:40:45,600 do the Nodders begin to function. 725 00:40:45,600 --> 00:40:47,880 They nod. 726 00:40:47,880 --> 00:40:51,000 Decades of success in Britain and America 727 00:40:51,000 --> 00:40:53,120 brought Wodehouse considerable wealth, 728 00:40:53,120 --> 00:40:56,560 but not without complications. To simplify his tax affairs, 729 00:40:56,560 --> 00:41:00,520 from the mid-1930s, he, Ethel, and their Pekinese 730 00:41:00,520 --> 00:41:04,960 relocated to Northern France. In these settled surroundings, 731 00:41:04,960 --> 00:41:07,560 he produced some of his very best work, 732 00:41:07,560 --> 00:41:10,240 including a brilliant Jeeves-and-Wooster novel 733 00:41:10,240 --> 00:41:12,400 containing uncharacteristic references 734 00:41:12,400 --> 00:41:14,480 to contemporary politics. 735 00:41:14,480 --> 00:41:18,040 No-one ever wrote a better description of the stupidity of Fascism 736 00:41:18,040 --> 00:41:20,280 than Wodehouse in The Code Of The Woosters. 737 00:41:20,280 --> 00:41:25,240 Wodehouse satirises Oswald Mosley and his Blackshirt movement 738 00:41:25,240 --> 00:41:29,840 by having Bertie Wooster launch a withering verbal tirade 739 00:41:29,840 --> 00:41:33,480 against Roderick Spode, would-be Fascist dictator 740 00:41:33,480 --> 00:41:35,560 and leader of the Black Shorts. 741 00:41:35,560 --> 00:41:39,440 The trouble with you, Spode, is that just because you have succeeded 742 00:41:39,440 --> 00:41:43,000 in inducing a handful of halfwits to disfigure the London scene 743 00:41:43,000 --> 00:41:46,080 by going about in black shorts, you think you're someone. 744 00:41:46,080 --> 00:41:48,160 You hear them shouting "Heil Spode", 745 00:41:48,160 --> 00:41:50,680 and you imagine it is the voice of the people. 746 00:41:50,680 --> 00:41:54,880 That is where you make your bloomer. What the voice of the people is saying is, 747 00:41:54,880 --> 00:41:58,400 "Look at that frightful ass Spode swanking about in footer bags!" 748 00:41:58,400 --> 00:42:01,760 "Did you ever in your puff see such a perfect perisher?" 749 00:42:03,000 --> 00:42:07,800 Encaenia, an annual ceremony steeped in tradition and academic prestige, 750 00:42:07,800 --> 00:42:10,520 when Oxford University recognises the achievements 751 00:42:10,520 --> 00:42:13,760 of a handful of distinguished international figures. 752 00:42:13,760 --> 00:42:17,400 And at the 1939 ceremony, to his great surprise, 753 00:42:17,400 --> 00:42:21,960 Pelham Grenville Wodehouse was awarded an honorary doctorate 754 00:42:21,960 --> 00:42:26,600 by the university where he had hoped to study 40 years earlier. 755 00:42:26,600 --> 00:42:30,720 If you see the photographs of Wodehouse getting his degree, 756 00:42:30,720 --> 00:42:33,920 he already looks quite senior. He's all but 60. 757 00:42:33,920 --> 00:42:38,240 So he had by then been... 758 00:42:40,160 --> 00:42:44,440 ..one of a handful of the most famous writers, 759 00:42:44,440 --> 00:42:47,680 and writers for the theatre and the musical theatre, 760 00:42:47,680 --> 00:42:51,640 in the world. I don't suppose he was matched. Who could match him? 761 00:42:51,640 --> 00:42:56,000 Publishing some of his finest work, honoured by academia, 762 00:42:56,000 --> 00:43:00,920 in the summer of 1939, Wodehouse was at the peak of his reputation. 763 00:43:00,920 --> 00:43:04,120 A couple of months after a day of acclaim at Oxford, 764 00:43:04,120 --> 00:43:07,200 he made a flying visit across the Channel from his French home, 765 00:43:07,200 --> 00:43:10,440 coming here to Dulwich College to watch a cricket match. 766 00:43:10,440 --> 00:43:14,360 'It was the last time he'd ever set foot on British soil.' 767 00:43:24,440 --> 00:43:27,560 Wodehouse was not alone amongst expatriates in France 768 00:43:27,560 --> 00:43:31,760 during that period to think that he didn't have anything to worry about, 769 00:43:31,760 --> 00:43:35,840 and no-one expected France to fall in six weeks. 770 00:43:35,840 --> 00:43:38,880 This was surprising, shall we say. 771 00:43:38,880 --> 00:43:43,560 The road to the radio broadcasts which were to lead to accusations of treachery 772 00:43:43,560 --> 00:43:45,760 and dog Wodehouse for the rest of his life 773 00:43:45,760 --> 00:43:49,560 took him from arrest in Northern France deep into the Reich. 774 00:43:49,560 --> 00:43:52,880 As an enemy alien under 60, he was sent to an internment camp, 775 00:43:52,880 --> 00:43:55,920 but all the while, he continued to write. 776 00:43:55,920 --> 00:44:00,440 I used to write by hand, very laboriously, 777 00:44:00,440 --> 00:44:03,800 in a room with about 50 people playing ping pong 778 00:44:03,800 --> 00:44:07,280 and singing and so on. I managed to get it done, though. 779 00:44:07,280 --> 00:44:11,160 How did the Germans persuade him that it was a good idea 780 00:44:11,160 --> 00:44:14,000 to make broadcasts to America? 781 00:44:14,000 --> 00:44:17,000 It's a painful episode, and it's the episode in his life 782 00:44:17,000 --> 00:44:19,480 which sadly will never go away, 783 00:44:19,480 --> 00:44:23,000 because it's the one thing that people remember about him, 784 00:44:23,000 --> 00:44:25,960 because it was so dramatic. Basically he was in this camp 785 00:44:25,960 --> 00:44:28,880 in Lower Silesia - sorry, in Upper Silesia. 786 00:44:28,880 --> 00:44:32,480 As he said, "If this is Upper Silesia, what must Lower Silesia be like?" 787 00:44:32,480 --> 00:44:36,800 And his books, as you know, are there to cheer people up. 788 00:44:36,800 --> 00:44:42,480 And he thought, I think with commendable stoicism and sang-froid, 789 00:44:42,480 --> 00:44:45,880 that it was a good idea to cheer up the members of the camp, 790 00:44:45,880 --> 00:44:50,160 and he wrote comic pieces for the entertainment of the prisoners, 791 00:44:50,160 --> 00:44:52,400 the internees. 792 00:44:52,400 --> 00:44:55,680 And the Lagerfuhrer, the controller of the camp, 793 00:44:55,680 --> 00:44:57,880 spotted this. 794 00:44:57,880 --> 00:45:00,640 I think the Germans saw a lot of publicity potential 795 00:45:00,640 --> 00:45:02,960 in Wodehouse in 1940, '41. 796 00:45:02,960 --> 00:45:05,520 This was a famous English writer, 797 00:45:05,520 --> 00:45:09,880 and the real idea was to keep America out of the war. 798 00:45:09,880 --> 00:45:13,960 In the summer of 1941, Wodehouse was released from internment 799 00:45:13,960 --> 00:45:17,760 and sent to Berlin. Here he ran into an old acquaintance from Hollywood, 800 00:45:17,760 --> 00:45:20,560 now working for the German foreign office, 801 00:45:20,560 --> 00:45:23,880 who suggested he deliver some radio talks to the United States, 802 00:45:23,880 --> 00:45:26,960 ostensibly to reassure his American fans of his wellbeing. 803 00:45:26,960 --> 00:45:29,840 And Wodehouse thought this would be a jolly thing to do, 804 00:45:29,840 --> 00:45:32,200 which was unbelievably foolish, 805 00:45:32,200 --> 00:45:34,920 not because it was a stupid thing to do 806 00:45:34,920 --> 00:45:37,960 but because he had not taken the temperature back home. 807 00:45:37,960 --> 00:45:43,080 He hadn't been in England for some time. He didn't know what it was like in Britain during the war. 808 00:45:43,080 --> 00:45:47,480 At this time, the full intensity of the Luftwaffe's blitz on Britain was just abating. 809 00:45:47,480 --> 00:45:50,320 Meanwhile, the rapid advance into the Soviet Union, 810 00:45:50,320 --> 00:45:52,680 an invasion which had begun less than a week 811 00:45:52,680 --> 00:45:57,840 before Wodehouse's first broadcast, threatened the prospect of German victory in the East. 812 00:45:57,840 --> 00:46:01,440 If you look at the talks, what he actually wrote and spoke, 813 00:46:01,440 --> 00:46:05,560 they're harmless. They are absolutely classic Wodehouse comic pieces - 814 00:46:05,560 --> 00:46:09,000 the problem being that, if you're broadcasting them from Germany 815 00:46:09,000 --> 00:46:12,040 in 1941, they become something completely different. 816 00:46:12,040 --> 00:46:15,480 "As a matter of fact, all through my period of internment, 817 00:46:15,480 --> 00:46:18,240 I noticed this tendency on the part of the Germans 818 00:46:18,240 --> 00:46:21,800 to start their little expeditions off with a whoop and a rush, 819 00:46:21,800 --> 00:46:25,600 and then sort of lose interest. It reminded me of Hollywood." 820 00:46:25,600 --> 00:46:27,640 You know, it's extraordinary. 821 00:46:27,640 --> 00:46:32,040 Wodehouse compares being carted around by the Germans 822 00:46:32,040 --> 00:46:34,600 and waiting eight hours for a train to leave 823 00:46:34,600 --> 00:46:37,680 to working for a Hollywood studio. 824 00:46:37,680 --> 00:46:39,680 Funny now, 825 00:46:39,680 --> 00:46:45,040 but he plainly failed to grasp the seriousness of his 826 00:46:45,040 --> 00:46:47,200 or his country's situation. 827 00:46:47,200 --> 00:46:50,440 The very fact that the broadcasts are very sarcastic 828 00:46:50,440 --> 00:46:53,680 at the expense of the Germans - that all counted for nothing. 829 00:46:53,680 --> 00:46:56,680 He thought he had been a stiff-upper-lipped Englishman 830 00:46:56,680 --> 00:46:58,960 in times of fear and war, 831 00:46:58,960 --> 00:47:03,400 and he found he was considered someone who'd sold the pass. 832 00:47:03,400 --> 00:47:06,720 So the reaction in Britain was - Was hysterical. 833 00:47:06,720 --> 00:47:09,920 The tabloids went bananas, and he was denounced as a traitor 834 00:47:09,920 --> 00:47:12,600 and as a fellow traveller, a stooge... 835 00:47:12,600 --> 00:47:16,480 You think about the worst things you could say about somebody, they said it. 836 00:47:16,480 --> 00:47:18,720 Wodehouse was attacked in Parliament too, 837 00:47:18,720 --> 00:47:22,320 but discovering the reaction of his beloved old school 838 00:47:22,320 --> 00:47:26,280 was among his major concerns when he fell into Allied custody in 1944. 839 00:47:26,280 --> 00:47:30,520 He was right to worry, and they did take a very dim view of it, 840 00:47:30,520 --> 00:47:32,800 and they cut him off completely, 841 00:47:32,800 --> 00:47:37,200 and it was said that if a boy was seen reading a Wodehouse novel, 842 00:47:37,200 --> 00:47:38,960 he could be caned. 843 00:47:38,960 --> 00:47:41,600 I mean, he was that vilified. 844 00:47:41,600 --> 00:47:45,640 Would he have faced official action? Would he have been called a traitor? 845 00:47:45,640 --> 00:47:48,320 Would he stand trial? This is one of the cruel things 846 00:47:48,320 --> 00:47:51,960 about what happened to him. When he was in Paris in 1944, 847 00:47:51,960 --> 00:47:55,200 he was interrogated by a judge, 848 00:47:55,200 --> 00:47:57,920 and he was given a pretty thorough going over, 849 00:47:57,920 --> 00:48:01,320 and they concluded afterwards that there was no case to answer, 850 00:48:01,320 --> 00:48:04,560 and that's it. But they never told him. 851 00:48:04,560 --> 00:48:09,640 There are those who argue that a man as intelligent as PG Wodehouse 852 00:48:09,640 --> 00:48:11,840 deserves criticism for his wartime conduct - 853 00:48:11,840 --> 00:48:15,800 that he surely must have known what the Nazis were about, 854 00:48:15,800 --> 00:48:18,240 and if he didn't, he should have done. 855 00:48:18,240 --> 00:48:22,200 Well, he was certainly an intelligent, educated man, 856 00:48:22,200 --> 00:48:26,080 but he wasn't the first or the last of those to make a mistake. 857 00:48:26,080 --> 00:48:29,640 He was someone who always assumed the best in others, 858 00:48:29,640 --> 00:48:34,000 who thought he was displaying a stoical disregard for hardship, 859 00:48:34,000 --> 00:48:36,640 but completely misread his times. 860 00:48:36,640 --> 00:48:40,680 Does that mean that the charges levelled at him hold water? 861 00:48:40,680 --> 00:48:42,840 Not in my book. 862 00:48:42,840 --> 00:48:46,000 Was he harshly treated by the British Establishment? 863 00:48:46,000 --> 00:48:48,560 Absolutely. 864 00:48:48,560 --> 00:48:53,080 Do you think that Plum was bitter about what had happened to him, 865 00:48:53,080 --> 00:48:55,760 about the attitude of certain people in England 866 00:48:55,760 --> 00:48:59,800 to what he had done while in Germany? 867 00:48:59,800 --> 00:49:04,080 No. He was not a man who felt bitterness 868 00:49:04,080 --> 00:49:06,200 in any circumstances. 869 00:49:06,200 --> 00:49:11,800 What he was, he was deeply wounded by the attitude that had been taken 870 00:49:11,800 --> 00:49:15,440 by quite a number in this country immediately after the war to him. 871 00:49:15,440 --> 00:49:18,760 He couldn't face the hullaballoo, coming back. 872 00:49:18,760 --> 00:49:22,960 I know I made an ass of myself and had to pay for it, 873 00:49:22,960 --> 00:49:27,360 but... Oh, no, I don't feel any resentment whatever. 874 00:49:27,360 --> 00:49:32,000 Feeling, understandably, unable to return to England, 875 00:49:32,000 --> 00:49:35,000 Wodehouse and Ethel settled in Long Island 876 00:49:35,000 --> 00:49:37,800 outside New York City in the 1950s. 877 00:49:37,800 --> 00:49:40,200 Here, surrounded by books, 878 00:49:40,200 --> 00:49:43,280 he settled into the predictable lifestyle he enjoyed, 879 00:49:43,280 --> 00:49:47,160 including the exercise regimen, his daily dozen, 880 00:49:47,160 --> 00:49:51,400 which he followed without fail for over 50 years. 881 00:49:51,400 --> 00:49:55,440 And, just as his daily life followed a familiar path, 882 00:49:55,440 --> 00:49:57,920 so too did his writing. 883 00:49:57,920 --> 00:50:00,280 The post-war years brought rock 'n' roll, 884 00:50:00,280 --> 00:50:03,760 the phenomenon of the teenager, the revolution in attitudes 885 00:50:03,760 --> 00:50:06,640 towards sex. But one thing that didn't change a bit 886 00:50:06,640 --> 00:50:10,040 was what Wodehouse called "my stuff". 887 00:50:10,040 --> 00:50:12,120 He wanted the world to remain the same. 888 00:50:12,120 --> 00:50:15,400 It was always the same. And not only did he want that 889 00:50:15,400 --> 00:50:18,560 but he kept it the same by writing it the same forever. 890 00:50:18,560 --> 00:50:21,640 He himself said, "I'm a bad case of arrested development." 891 00:50:21,640 --> 00:50:25,960 He never... He was 21 all his life, creatively. 892 00:50:25,960 --> 00:50:29,760 You never met Wodehouse any more than I did, to my great regret. 893 00:50:29,760 --> 00:50:34,040 But what do you think, the fact that he wrote about the same people 894 00:50:34,040 --> 00:50:37,920 in the same kind of situations... Yes. What does that say about him 895 00:50:37,920 --> 00:50:42,080 as a person? I suppose you would say, pretty narrow a writer. 896 00:50:42,080 --> 00:50:47,840 And he was obviously a comic writer. That's what he really wanted to do, 897 00:50:47,840 --> 00:50:52,920 and he certainly didn't get in touch with Ibsen anywhere at all. 898 00:50:52,920 --> 00:50:54,760 HE LAUGHS 899 00:50:54,760 --> 00:50:58,240 It was just really there to amuse and make an immense fortune. 900 00:50:58,240 --> 00:51:01,480 He was a writer who wanted to make money. 901 00:51:01,480 --> 00:51:04,640 He said that very clearly from very early on. 902 00:51:04,640 --> 00:51:08,360 And he was incredibly successful at doing that, 903 00:51:08,360 --> 00:51:12,040 and I think he found a formula for making money and pursued that. 904 00:51:12,040 --> 00:51:15,000 It's very important, and true of all really great writers, 905 00:51:15,000 --> 00:51:17,360 that they understand their limitations. 906 00:51:17,360 --> 00:51:21,360 He understood his, and he did what he did as well as he possibly could all his life. 907 00:51:21,360 --> 00:51:24,200 If you have stories that you want to tell, 908 00:51:24,200 --> 00:51:27,080 and if you feel affectionate toward your characters, 909 00:51:27,080 --> 00:51:29,960 and you've still got stories that you have for them, 910 00:51:29,960 --> 00:51:33,040 that you're dreaming up for them, why would you change? 911 00:51:33,040 --> 00:51:35,360 We don't want to see Jeeves in his dotage. 912 00:51:35,360 --> 00:51:38,480 He understood exactly the age those characters belonged at, 913 00:51:38,480 --> 00:51:40,880 and he kept them there for decades. 914 00:51:40,880 --> 00:51:44,600 Nonetheless, the fact that by the late 1960s 915 00:51:44,600 --> 00:51:48,400 he'd been writing about the same characters for decade after decade 916 00:51:48,400 --> 00:51:51,440 did present some problems. 917 00:51:51,440 --> 00:51:53,960 Because in his head, all day every day, 918 00:51:53,960 --> 00:51:56,920 he was thinking about his plot, 919 00:51:56,920 --> 00:51:59,520 and, at the very end of his life, 920 00:51:59,520 --> 00:52:03,000 he said, "This is difficult. I settle down to write a book, 921 00:52:03,000 --> 00:52:07,880 and the hardest question is, have I written this book before?" 922 00:52:07,880 --> 00:52:12,600 "And I have no means, other than reading them all, to be sure." 923 00:52:12,600 --> 00:52:15,880 In 1968, a year of protest around the world, 924 00:52:15,880 --> 00:52:20,120 Christopher MacLehose became Wodehouse's editor 925 00:52:20,120 --> 00:52:22,320 at his London publishing house. 926 00:52:22,320 --> 00:52:24,440 Although he was the most... 927 00:52:24,440 --> 00:52:28,600 I mean, the iconic...comic writer in the world, 928 00:52:28,600 --> 00:52:32,080 he was only, as I remember, selling something like 929 00:52:32,080 --> 00:52:35,720 15,000 or 20,000 hardback books. I mean, that's not a great many. 930 00:52:35,720 --> 00:52:37,560 And this puzzled him. 931 00:52:37,560 --> 00:52:41,800 "Is it true," he would say, that sex and money 932 00:52:41,800 --> 00:52:45,240 were the only things that people wanted to read about in books? 933 00:52:45,240 --> 00:52:47,520 "I can't do that sort of thing," he said. 934 00:52:47,520 --> 00:52:50,920 Wodehouse's work appeared in the magazines 935 00:52:50,920 --> 00:52:54,280 which signified changing times, but for the eternal innocent, 936 00:52:54,280 --> 00:52:56,480 sex remained out of bounds. 937 00:52:56,480 --> 00:53:01,000 In all the Wodehouse work, beds are things you hide something under 938 00:53:01,000 --> 00:53:04,040 or you hide under yourself. They have no other use. 939 00:53:04,040 --> 00:53:06,840 Or you're woken up with your morning tea by your man. 940 00:53:06,840 --> 00:53:09,240 They have no other place in human life. 941 00:53:09,240 --> 00:53:12,880 Of course, when I started writing, sex was absolutely taboo. 942 00:53:12,880 --> 00:53:15,320 You couldn't even hint at it. 943 00:53:15,320 --> 00:53:18,080 I suppose one got set in one's ways. 944 00:53:18,080 --> 00:53:20,600 Certainly he wasn't going to stop writing, 945 00:53:20,600 --> 00:53:24,040 and he certainly wasn't going to change the way he was writing. 946 00:53:24,040 --> 00:53:26,920 But I think he felt remote 947 00:53:26,920 --> 00:53:31,240 from where what you would call the market was, 948 00:53:31,240 --> 00:53:35,040 and that was one of the reasons he didn't ever come back to England. 949 00:53:35,040 --> 00:53:39,320 He honestly felt that, if he had arrived in Southampton - 950 00:53:39,320 --> 00:53:41,520 he would've surely come by sea - 951 00:53:41,520 --> 00:53:43,960 that nobody would have come out to meet him. 952 00:53:43,960 --> 00:53:46,040 I think the truth is quite otherwise. 953 00:53:46,040 --> 00:53:49,240 I think there would've been bunting, a vast crowd of people, 954 00:53:49,240 --> 00:53:52,680 just to set eyes on him, touch his sleeve. 955 00:53:52,680 --> 00:53:57,080 Would you say his life was enormously happy in America? 956 00:53:57,080 --> 00:54:00,720 He cut himself off, I think, from a lot of the realities of life. 957 00:54:00,720 --> 00:54:05,080 It's an understatement - he was desperately sad not to come back 958 00:54:05,080 --> 00:54:07,120 to this country. 959 00:54:07,120 --> 00:54:11,400 Did he miss England? Did he ask you about how things were? 960 00:54:11,400 --> 00:54:14,640 I think there were three things he wanted above all else - 961 00:54:14,640 --> 00:54:16,880 to see rural England... 962 00:54:16,880 --> 00:54:21,880 One was to, I think, get back to Dulwich, 963 00:54:21,880 --> 00:54:25,040 just go to Dulwich and see it, walk round it and talk, 964 00:54:25,040 --> 00:54:28,920 and go to a test match, a cricket test match. 965 00:54:28,920 --> 00:54:31,680 Although past his 90th birthday, 966 00:54:31,680 --> 00:54:34,960 Wodehouse still talked of returning to England. 967 00:54:34,960 --> 00:54:39,000 I don't know if I'd find it very altered. I suppose I would. 968 00:54:39,000 --> 00:54:44,480 After all, 30... How long is it? 30 years, isn't it? Long time. 969 00:54:44,480 --> 00:54:47,120 'In the meantime he carried on writing, 970 00:54:47,120 --> 00:54:50,520 'as he always had, amid signs that an old error of judgement 971 00:54:50,520 --> 00:54:53,680 'had been forgiven. To his delight, a library at Dulwich College 972 00:54:53,680 --> 00:54:56,760 'was named in his honour.' 973 00:54:56,760 --> 00:54:59,920 He was measured for a waxwork at Madame Tussauds. 974 00:54:59,920 --> 00:55:03,880 And then came the final act of rehabilitation. 975 00:55:03,880 --> 00:55:09,840 PG Wodehouse gets to 90, and finally gets the knighthood. 976 00:55:09,840 --> 00:55:12,760 I think he was thrilled by that. There'd been a big debate 977 00:55:12,760 --> 00:55:16,400 within the British Establishment during the Wilson-Heath years. 978 00:55:16,400 --> 00:55:19,160 Wilson was in favour of it, 979 00:55:19,160 --> 00:55:21,800 and finally it was given in January '75, 980 00:55:21,800 --> 00:55:25,000 the same batch, so to speak, as Charlie Chaplin. 981 00:55:25,000 --> 00:55:27,840 And Wodehouse said a rather lovely thing. 982 00:55:27,840 --> 00:55:31,600 When the news came through, he said, "So, that's that, then." 983 00:55:31,600 --> 00:55:35,480 He'd been absolved, and he'd had his... He'd been given his pardon. 984 00:55:35,480 --> 00:55:38,960 I think it's a sort of graceful act on the part of the government, 985 00:55:38,960 --> 00:55:43,080 sort of more or less saying, "Well, that's that," you know. 986 00:55:43,080 --> 00:55:46,080 But sadly the knighthood in some ways was the end of him, 987 00:55:46,080 --> 00:55:49,440 because he was swamped with fan mail. He felt obliged to answer it, 988 00:55:49,440 --> 00:55:52,360 and he developed a skin condition, went into hospital, 989 00:55:52,360 --> 00:55:56,200 had a heart attack and he died, on St Valentine's Day '75. 990 00:55:58,280 --> 00:56:01,720 Good writers normally deal with death, suffering, pain, 991 00:56:01,720 --> 00:56:06,560 divorce, adultery and sexuality. 992 00:56:06,560 --> 00:56:10,840 He avoids all those things, writes magnificent books, 993 00:56:10,840 --> 00:56:14,680 and manages to write books that will be read 994 00:56:14,680 --> 00:56:17,280 as long as anybody else's books. 995 00:56:17,280 --> 00:56:20,160 Wodehouse has created characters that live for people 996 00:56:20,160 --> 00:56:22,880 who've never picked up one of the novels, 997 00:56:22,880 --> 00:56:25,200 and that is the sign of a really great writer. 998 00:56:25,200 --> 00:56:27,760 You create a character that walks off the pages 999 00:56:27,760 --> 00:56:29,920 and into the world. Amazing. 1000 00:56:29,920 --> 00:56:32,640 I find that, whatever the circumstances... 1001 00:56:32,640 --> 00:56:35,960 There was a point where my daughter was very desperately ill, 1002 00:56:35,960 --> 00:56:38,640 and the only thing I could do was read Wodehouse. 1003 00:56:38,640 --> 00:56:41,280 It got me through the most hideous time. 1004 00:56:41,280 --> 00:56:44,200 He's also left behind a feeling that... 1005 00:56:44,200 --> 00:56:48,160 you can be funny without being cruel. 1006 00:56:48,160 --> 00:56:53,280 You can be nice and charming without being boring. 1007 00:56:53,280 --> 00:56:55,280 I love that. 1008 00:56:55,280 --> 00:56:57,400 The people I most envy on Earth 1009 00:56:57,400 --> 00:56:59,600 are those who've never read any Wodehouse, 1010 00:56:59,600 --> 00:57:03,480 who pick up their first book, because they now have 90 books 1011 00:57:03,480 --> 00:57:08,120 to get through, and people have such sheer pleasure ahead of them. 1012 00:57:08,120 --> 00:57:12,040 There's no pleasure I know like it, and I envy them. 1013 00:57:12,040 --> 00:57:15,240 'After his death, the items which had been so much a part 1014 00:57:15,240 --> 00:57:18,440 'of his long working life were sent to Dulwich College, 1015 00:57:18,440 --> 00:57:20,880 'and reside in the Wodehouse Library.' 1016 00:57:20,880 --> 00:57:23,000 Here we are. 1017 00:57:24,000 --> 00:57:27,600 The great man's study, 1018 00:57:27,600 --> 00:57:32,680 brought across from Long Island in New York. 1019 00:57:32,680 --> 00:57:37,120 Wodehouse used to write down ideas in pencil. 1020 00:57:37,120 --> 00:57:41,040 "Man with horror of cats, like Lord Roberts, 1021 00:57:41,040 --> 00:57:44,480 falls in love with a girl who keeps cats." 1022 00:57:44,480 --> 00:57:46,480 Look at all this! 1023 00:57:46,480 --> 00:57:50,360 The Royal typewriter. This was his first book, I think. 1024 00:57:50,360 --> 00:57:51,920 Yeah. 1025 00:57:51,920 --> 00:57:54,840 The Pothunters. 1026 00:57:54,840 --> 00:57:57,680 HE LAUGHS Very public school! 1027 00:57:57,680 --> 00:57:59,280 The Pothunters. 1028 00:57:59,280 --> 00:58:02,200 "To William Townend, these first fruits 1029 00:58:02,200 --> 00:58:07,240 of a genius at which the world will (shortly) be amazed, 1030 00:58:07,240 --> 00:58:11,680 (you see if it won't), from the author, PG Wodehouse." 1031 00:58:11,680 --> 00:58:16,720 I wonder - modest, kindly, innocent man that he was - 1032 00:58:16,720 --> 00:58:20,560 I wonder if he realised just how much of a genius he was, 1033 00:58:20,560 --> 00:58:24,920 and how much those words would come true. 1034 00:58:24,920 --> 00:58:27,400 The world would be amazed. 1035 00:58:52,720 --> 00:58:56,760 Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd 1036 00:58:56,760 --> 00:58:57,440 E-mail subtitling@bbc.co.uk