Anthony Burgess on Take It or Leave It

A production of the British state broadcaster. This is episode 1.4, which aired on 29th November 1964. Burgess appeared on 11 other episodes of the show between ’64 and ’67. He writes in his autobiography: ‘It was assumed, perhaps rightly, that those who wrote books also read them, and writers were drawn, for a fee of £100, into a Sunday performance called Take It or Leave It. The right answer was flashed on the viewer's screen, though not the participants' monitor, and the viewer had the superior pleasure of knowing who wrote what while his literary betters stumbled. John Betjeman regularly said: 'Surely that's Thackeray' while the viewer's screen said Edgar Wallace or John Dryden. What might be called the cream of the British littérateurs of the sixties paraded in changeable fours, all eager for £100 (Cyril Connolly said that the title of the programme ought to be Money for Jam) - Lord David Cecil, Angus Wilson, Kingsley Amis, Philip Toynbee, V. S. Pritchett, Elizabeth Jane Howard, Bernard Levin, John Gross. It was considered only decent to allow an occasional publisher in, but Anthony Blond, identifying a passage as from Scouting for Boys by Lord Baden-Powell, added gratuitously that there was a statue erected to that hero of Mafeking in West Germany, with the inscription Der große britische Homosexuelle. This had to be cut. Mary McCarthy, the sole American, failed with John Gross to recognise a passage from Saul Bellow's Herzog, though they had been together on a jury that gave the novel an international award.'

[@teddy1066]

Anthony is such a scholar. He even had an inclining on the Kafka excerpt

[@adude9882]

I am definately unworthy ro even comment on this level of erudition yet the fact does not depress me at all rather fills me with hope and a sense that our culture is or perhaps was worth something and there was aomething to look up to and a parnassus to climb. I crawl aroind in the foothills on my hands and knees to this day. I was apparently one year old when this appeared on TV for the delectation of the masses.

[@user-xn2hf9re8r]

love this man - thanks for uploading

[@thewolf888]

Brilliant, thank you.

[@InSearchOfAnthonyBurgess]

👍🏻

[@briangarrett2427]

This was 1964. How much our culture has declined.

[@InSearchOfAnthonyBurgess]

Can you imagine the British state broadcaster putting on such a programme today? A group of highly erudite, witty and engaging people, knowledgeable about their subject but prepared to have their ignorance of many regions of their field (literature, in this case) shown up, sitting and chatting amicably and often amusingly and instructively about writers great and not so great? Preposterous idea. Would be rejected out of hand as being lacking in 'relevance' to today's kidults.

[@eddiewillers1]

@@InSearchOfAnthonyBurgess "Kidults" are the reason why there has been such cultural decline over the last 60 years.

[@borderbioscope1180]

Super. Thank you.

[@InSearchOfAnthonyBurgess]

😀👍

[@eshaibraheem4218]

So funny. Many thanks.

[@InSearchOfAnthonyBurgess]

Funny? How so?

[@InSearchOfAnthonyBurgess]

It was kinda funny I guess in that it is rather strange to us, being from a different age.

[@eshaibraheem4218]

@@InSearchOfAnthonyBurgess I knew Anthony Burgess: he was very amusing and very witty.

[@InSearchOfAnthonyBurgess]

@@eshaibraheem4218 Yep, he sure was. Quite apart from his erudition and his humanity and everything else, so much of his stuff is just so damned funny. He really is a great comic novelist.

[@borderbioscope1180]

Good that it, the tape, wasn't wiped, by some, technician.

[@InSearchOfAnthonyBurgess]

They were all too liable to do that, weren't they - wipe irrevocably perfectly good programmes. I wish someone would upload to KZbin some of the other TILI episodes Burgess was on.

[@_jack_828]

Another great upload- Much appreciated :)

[@InSearchOfAnthonyBurgess]

😀👍

[@briangarrett2427]

Bernardine whoaaaaa!!!!!!

[@InSearchOfAnthonyBurgess]

😰😅 Wow! Yes.

[@InSearchOfAnthonyBurgess]

According to the Grauniad obit, in 1960 'she appeared as the final and youngest witness in support of the literary merit of DH Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover, in a court case brought under the new Obscene Publications Act.'

[@InSearchOfAnthonyBurgess]

'In the mid-1960s, she appeared on BBC television's literary quiz show Take It Or Leave It, presented by Robert Robinson. She more than held her own among her predominantly older, male fellow panellists, such as Anthony Burgess and John Betjeman.'

[@InSearchOfAnthonyBurgess]

burgessodyssey.wordpress.com/2012/09/28/burgess-and-bb/

[@briangarrett2427]

@@InSearchOfAnthonyBurgess I didn't know that ....

[@briangarrett2427]

Isn't this a repeat, Geoff, old boy?

[@InSearchOfAnthonyBurgess]

There are no flies on you, Mr Garrett. It is indeed a repeat, though one that has been digitally remastered by my team of In Search of Anthony Burgess technicians. It was pointed out that the previous one was in five parts - kzbin.info/aero/PLdExTecZ8Pwf8C23O5m9fWHj4E_LK6qEa - while this new-look version can be enjoyed in one sitting with a few beers or a bottle of chilled Muscadet.

[@briangarrett2427]

@@InSearchOfAnthonyBurgess I prefer a chilled cadet, dear boy.

[@InSearchOfAnthonyBurgess]

@@briangarrett2427 Naval man, are you, old fruit?

[@briangarrett2427]

@@InSearchOfAnthonyBurgess absolutely. A vice-admiral's rear is a rear-admiral's vice. '

[@InSearchOfAnthonyBurgess]

@@briangarrett2427🤣 The naval ratings at the low dive in Earthly Powers: `You’re staying here, fucker,’ the milky-eyed one said. You’ve got to get done.’ `You and whose navy?’ I quoted vulgarly from one of my own stupid plays. `Summat to say about it?’ somebody said, flushed face an inch from mine. `Got it in for the fucking Andrew?’ `I’m getting out of here,’ and I marvelled at myself as I grabbed the rump of the smashed glass from the runny zinc and swivelled it from one to another of the blue swayers like a flashlamp. `Ah, playing dirty. Right, here it comes.’ But the proffered fist with its tattooed LOVE AND DUTY with blue flowers could not really connect, drink having drained strength from the arm beyond it. The door opened again and to a windier blackness two genuine matelots came in, French, pompommed caps with MAZARIN on them. ‘Parleyvoo wee wee. Jigajig traybon.’ Of course, my original play title. I dropped the tumbler stump on the filthy wet floor and, for some reason, ground it growling with my heel among the unground out fag ends. Then I shouldered and pushed out. ‘Come back, fucker, to get fucked.’ ‘Dick,’ I called to the sidestreet. There was only one lamp, dimmish, near a Byrrh poster. I ran inland and came to an alleyway. I heard groaning, then a splash. The thin moon emerged to show Dick, sober and vigorous, holding the doubled up sailor up with strong clasping arms round his middle. The sailor’s trousers were right down, hobbling his ankles. Dick was buggering away deep and cheerfully in brutal Norman Douglas style. ‘Just one second, dear,’ Dick smiled, ‘then he’s all yours. Not all that tight, surprising really. Relaxation consequent on nausea and so on.’ And still he ground away. Then he shuddered, lips apart, as on unsugared lemon juice as he spattered. ‘Delicious. So mindless. There, come on, angelface, get it all up for daddy.’ The two voidings were one. I had an erection. I was bitterly ashamed. Then there were voices calling. ‘Porky. Fucking Porky.’ Fucked Porky, really,’ Dick said, releasing him into his own vomit. `All right, dear,’ buttoning up, ‘he’s all yours.’ And Dick ran with long expert strides into the blackness of the alley as the moon buttoned itself into its fly of cloud. It was as if he knew the damned place blind. The boy lay heaving, terribly besmirched, bare arse to the sky. A great gust blew the cloud tatters off the moon. Then Porky’s mates were there.