About the Book
John Cleese, Christopher Lee and Michael Parkinson share their passion for cricket with the great broadcaster, Brian Johnston. During the lunch interval on the Saturday of every Test in England, BBC Radio’s ‘Test Match Special’ used to invite a well-known guest into the commentary box for a chat with Brian Johnston about themselves and their passion for cricket. Some turned out to be able cricketers, but they all had stories to tell about matches they had seen and cricketers they had met. Barry Johnston - Brian Johnston’s son - has selected five chats from the series ‘A View from the Boundary’, beginning in 1980 with the playwright Ben Travers, and his vivid recollections of W.G. Grace and other characters from the golden age of cricket. He is followed by Michael Charlton, the political broadcaster and former cricket commentator, who covered the great Australia v West Indies tied Test in 1960, and John Cleese, a lifelong Somerset supporter, who tells some funny stories about ‘Monty Python’ and ‘Fawlty Towers’. Hollywood film star Sir Christopher Lee recalls watching the legendary Jack Hobbs and Don Bradman, and Sir Michael Parkinson talks about opening the batting at Barnsley with Dickie Bird and how he nearly played for Hampshire. Publisher’s note: This recording was taken from part of the cassette release of ‘A View from the Boundary’.
1 CD. 1 hr 15 mins approx.
About the Author :
Barry Johnston is the eldest son of legendary cricketer Brian Johnston. He was educated at Eton before becoming a songwriter for Apple Publishing, and in 1969 he joined the vocal harmony group Design. He sang with them for the next eight years (under his stage name, Barry Alexander) and appeared on over 50 TV shows in the 1970s, as well as writing several of their hit singles and many album tracks. After the band split up, Barry continued writing and, for two years, was manager of The New Seekers. He left the music business in 1983 to start a career in broadcasting, first on Californian breakfast show KLOA-AM and later with Radio Sussex and Radio 5. In 2006, he established Barn Productions, and has since produced over 100 audiobooks, including the award-winning Johnners at the Beeb and An Evening with Johnners. He has also edited several books and is the author of two biographies, Round Mr Horne: The Life of Kenneth Horne and Johnners: The Life of Brian. Christopher Lee (1941-2021) was a British writer, historian and broadcaster, best known for writing the BBC radio documentary series This Sceptred Isle.
Lee's career began when, in his twenties, he re-started his education, reading history at London University, after previously being expelled from school and running away to sea in an old tramp steamer. He later joined the BBC as a defence and foreign affairs correspondent and was posted to Moscow and the Middle East. Leaving his career in journalism for academia, Lee was the first Quatercentenary Fellow in Contemporary History and Gomes Lecturer at Emmanuel College, Cambridge. He went on to research the history of ideas at Birkbeck College, University of London.
Lee is the originator and writer of the BBC Radio 4 trilogy This Sceptred Isle, which recounts the history of Britain and the British Empire from the Romans to the 20th century. His recent books include the three accompanying volumes of This Sceptred Isle, the autobiographic Eight Bells and Top Masts, which tells the story of his time as a deck boy and his circumnavigation of the globe, his The Bath Detective thriller trilogy, Monarchy, Past, present... and future? and Viceroys: The Creation of the British, illustrated by his wife.
He is also the writer of more than 100 Radio 4 plays and series including The House, starring Timothy West, Julian Glover and Isla Blair, Colvil & Soames, starring Christopher Benjamin and Amanda Redman, Our Brave Boys, starring Martin Jarvis and Fiona Shaw, and the Los Angeles production of his The Trial of Walter Raleigh, which Rosalind Ayres produced with Michael York in the title role. His play A Pattern in Shrouds was broadcast on Radio 4 in the summer of 2009 and deals with the consequences of the assassination of the Queen's uncle, Lord Mountbatten in 1979. In 2013 the BBC also ran his play Air Force One, which questioned the events during the 90 minutes between the assassination of President Kennedy and swearing in of Lyndon B Johnson aboard the presidential plane.
John Marwood Cleese was born in 1939 in Weston-Super-Mare. He studied Law at Cambridge University and has enjoyed a successful career in comedy, theatre, film and television.
He first achieved success at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe and as a scriptwriter and performer on The Frost Report. In the late 1960s, he co-founded Monty Python, the comedy troupe responsible for the sketch show Monty Python's Flying Circus and the four Monty Python films: And Now for Something Completely Different, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Life of Brian and The Meaning of Life.
In the mid-1970s, Cleese and his first wife, Connie Booth, co-wrote and starred in the British sitcom Fawlty Towers. Later, he co-starred with Kevin Kline, Jamie Lee Curtis and former Python colleague Michael Palin in A Fish Called Wanda and Fierce Creatures. He has appeared in many other films, including the James Bond films, Harry Potter and Shrek and has guest-starred in numerous TV shows.
