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" I'll never forget my interview with Barry Humphries - one of the oddest I've ever done. He insisted that for half the time he appeared as Dame Edna. So I interviewed the real Barry Humphries in a suit and tie, and then I interviewed Edna in full fig in her dressing room, where she criticised Barry mercilessly. "

Melvyn Bragg

Done

Time

Forget

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" I've been writing since I was 19. "

" I do think the BBC could do more, but I've always thought the BBC could do more - I think there should be more arts programmes full stop. "

" I'm a class mongrel. "

Melvyn Bragg

Mongrel

Class

" I've been making arts programmes for almost 50 years, and every day, I can't believe my luck. "

" In music, the Specials brought a city, Coventry, bombed out for a second time and riven with racism, to a celebration between black and white musicians and their music. "

" We start out as sand and soot out there in the universe, and who knows, in 40 trillion years' time we might come back. But if we come back without memory, it doesn't really interest me. "

" I was brought up in a strong working-class community by working-class parents and relations until I was 18, and that's what I really am. Now all sorts of things have been added, but that's what I am. "

" Craig has explored the darker recesses of 007's psyche. He has shown us the lonely man. And he has shown him falling truly in love. "

Melvyn Bragg

Falling

Him

" The BBC does a sterling job, but I'd like to see it do more. ITV does four arts programmes a year; it used to be 28. At least Sky, with its two arts channels, is trying. "

" Television, above all, is the place where people can see the world they live in, and if the world they live in is a world without the arts, so much the worse for television, and so much the worse for the viewers. "

" Grime reminds me, if there is an echo, of sort of near enough like Liverpool in the very early Sixties. It's a lot of kids obsessed with music - obsessed with it. "

Melvyn Bragg

Early

Music

" Connery made Bond real through his physicality. He did most of his own stunts and fights, and the audience knew it was him. "

" The arts stimulate imagination. They provoke thought. And then, having done that, all sorts of other things happen. "

" In the 40 or so years I've known David Puttnam, not only has he pursued an outstanding career in films and now politics, but he has been the keeper of the flame of the British film industry. "

" To give religion two minutes a day, in its own space, isn't exactly selling general morality or atheism short. "

" There is an army of the informed wanting to be more informed. "

Melvyn Bragg

Informed

Wanting

" I wanted 'The South Bank Show' to reflect my own life and that of the team around me; to stretch the accepted boundaries and challenge the accepted hierarchies of the arts; to include pop music as well as classical music, television drama as well as theatre drama, and high-definition performers in comedy. "

" One of the great things about making 'Reel History' was meeting British people from all over the class system. It made me realise that London is a different country. "

" I'm addicted to 'Game Of Thrones.' "

" I was the only BBC graduate trainee in 1961 interested in arts broadcasting. I knew I wanted to write, and I had to make a living. "

" It's amazing that Sky is the only place that has two dedicated arts channels. The BBC is doing very well... but why don't they do more? "

" I actually admire some of the books by a lot of the writers who write magic realism very much, but it's not for me. It's not what I can do, but even if I could, I don't really want to try. "

Melvyn Bragg

Admire

I Can

" Dame Barbara Cartland was an endearing eccentric, and when I interviewed her, she wanted me to listen to her dictating to her secretary one of those romantic novels that she turned out fortnightly. "

" I'd been writing fiction for 50 years, since I was 19. And when you write fiction, it becomes a way of thinking: there's always a novel around. The strange thing was that after 'Remember Me,' there wasn't. "

Melvyn Bragg

Remember

You

" We got a copy of the 'New Statesman' at my grammar school in Wigton, Cumbria, in the 1950s. It sat mint fresh every week on the library table, with two or three other bargain-offer magazines. The 'Statesman' came out of the unimaginable Great World. I started to read it then and have pegged along ever since. "

" Britain is undoubtedly becoming more cultural. No question of it. People who say it is dumbing down simply don't look around enough. They don't know enough. "

" The theatre always seems to be in trouble but always thriving. It's deeply comical to me that we agonize about our crap football teams and indifferent Test sides when in front of our noses is a great world success story that no one's interested in apart from those who work in it. "

" We listened to a lot of drama, adaptations of books, comedy. There was a real love of music expressed in choirs, because you didn't have to have instruments except your voice. "

" What artists are doing, and what people who are receiving the arts are doing, is entering into this agreement to occupy a parallel world. The parallel world is ever-expanding. We used to think that it existed only for people who were wealthy, well-born, or educated. It isn't like that. "

" I enjoy what was called 'swotting' in my day. "

Melvyn Bragg

Day

Enjoy