The Good Listening To Show: Stories of Distinction & Genius

Legacy Life Reflections: There's Still a Snap in the Old Celery! Wit, Legacy and a Happy Life in Words with Harry Mount, Editor of 'The Oldie' Magazine

• Chris Grimes - Facilitator. Coach. Motivational Comedian

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What if staying sharp has nothing to do with age and everything to do with curiosity? We sit down with Harry Mount, editor of The Oldie, for a brisk, generous tour through a life shaped by language, architecture, bicycles, and the courage to change course. Harry opens with the soul of the magazine—why it prizes wit over celebrity and celebrates people “with snap in their celery”—and takes us inside Oldie Of The Year, where legends and unsung heroes share a stage and a laugh.

From there, we travel to his “clearing” on the Pembrokeshire cliffs and the four moments that defined his path: the quiet impact of a brother he never met, a childhood powered by worry and exams, a sharp pivot from barrister-in-waiting to gossip columnist, and finally the long, lively challenge of editing a 100-page print institution. Along the way, Barry Humphries’ razor wit, Giles Brandreth’s encomiums, and the thrill of clean copy land with warmth and precision.

Harry’s passions animate every page: the “R factor” of great buildings, from Vanbrugh to Hawksmoor; the classics as living tools woven through two-thirds of English; and the deceptive ease of comic prose from Wodehouse, Waugh, Mitford, and Amis. He shares honest distractions—the tug of the internet, the tonic of Hampstead ponds—and a love of press trips where purpose beats the pressure to have fun. There’s a personal twist too: his distant cousin Tony Adams, whose openness about addiction helped shift the culture around recovery.

Two lines frame the wisdom here. From Virgil: “One day it will help to remember even these things,” a balm for hard seasons and a nudge toward meaning. From Arthur Balfour via Bill Deedes: “Nothing matters very much, and very few things matter at all,” a reminder to edit life with a lighter touch. The dream? To be remembered for a great comic novel—and, failing that, for meeting interesting people, doing interesting things, and writing them up right.

If you love good stories, beautiful buildings, late‑period Elvis, and the feeling of wind-in-your-face clarity on a bike, you’ll feel at home. Listen, share with a friend who needs a purposeful nudge, and leave a review so more curious minds can find us.

Tune in next week for more stories of 'Distinction & Genius' from The Good Listening To Show 'Clearing'. If you would like to be my Guest too then you can find out HOW via the different 'series strands' at 'The Good Listening To Show' website.

Don't forget to SUBSCRIBE & REVIEW wherever you get your Podcasts :)

Thanks for listening!

Setting The Stage

Chris Grimes

Welcome to another episode of the Good Listening to Show. Your life and time is with me, Chris Crimes. The storytelling show that features the clearing. Where all good questions come to get asked. And all good stories come to be told. And where all my guests have two things in common. They're all creative individuals and all with an interesting story to tell. There are some lovely storytelling metaphors. A clearing, a tree, a juicy storytelling exercise called 54321, some alchemy, some gold, a cheeky bit of Shakespeare, and a cake. So it's all to play for. So yes, welcome to the Good Listening to Show, the life and times with me, Chris Grimes. I'm sitting comfortably. Then we shall begin. Welcome to The Good Listing 2 Show Stories of Distinction and Genius. I'm Chris. What's your story, Grimes? This is the Good Listening2 Show Stories of Distinction and Genius, the show in which I invite movers, makers, shakers, mavericks, influencers, and also personal heroes into a clearing or serious, happy place of my guests' choosing. And I'm delighted to have the editor of the Oldie magazine, Harry Mount, in the clearing today. You'll be able to come in in a second, Harry. And what we're doing is a really delicious hybrid of a founder story, because we're going to talk about the story behind the story of being the oldie magazine, which I'll talk about more in a second. But also, this is Harry wanting to experience legacy life reflections, which is the special series strand that uses the same storytelling structure to record your life story for posterity. So Harry Mount, editor of the Oldie magazine, welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_01

Pleasure to be here.

Meet Harry Mount

Chris Grimes

Wonderful. So The Oldie is the magazine that dares to be interesting. It's not a magazine about retirement. It's a free-thinking, funny magazine giving readers a light-hearted alternative to a press that's obsessed with youth and celebrity. Final bit of happy smoke. It's ageless, timeless, free of retirement advice, and crammed with rejuvenating wit, intelligence, and delight. And I got in touch with you about a month ago, Harry, because I'd noticed very enigmatically I was getting some delicious sort of push Facebook ads for the likes of Griffiths Jones, Maureen Littman, Joan Bakewell, Joanna Lumley. And I couldn't help noticing, and Giles Brandreth too, thought to mention him too, there is a delicious demographic involved in the Aldi magazine, which is fruity and juicy indeed for my own purposes too. Terrific. How's morale? What's your story of the day? You've mentioned you've got some awards coming tomorrow for the Aldi magazine.

SPEAKER_01

Morale is high, but we are working unusually hard at the Aldi because we've got our annual Oldie of the Year award that was set up by my predecessor, the great Richard Ingrams, to reward people over the age of 80 who are famous doing things importantly over the age of 80, or they're doing fantastic things. You may not have heard of them. The crucial thing is they've still got snap in their celery.

Chris Grimes

I love that. And I think do they get, I mean, what's the award?

SPEAKER_01

Is it a trophy involving celery or get a trophy and then there's a lunch at the National Liberal Club? And Giles Brandreth, who you've just mentioned, gives uh an encomium to each of them, and then previous uh winners come along, and it's uh it's terrific because there are all these figures like the ones you've just mentioned, who to people of roughly our age who are younger than them, but we grew up with them. So these are people who often everyone knows about, but they're not featuring often so prominently in obsessed papers.

What The Oldie Stands For

Chris Grimes

Wonderful. And enconium, what a gorgeous Latin word that is. So I congratulate you for that. Just tell us a bit more about inconium.

SPEAKER_01

Incomium with an M. Yeah, yeah. Uh it means a sort of poem of praise to someone.

Chris Grimes

Of course it does. I'd like to say I knew that, but maybe I didn't. Also, you've written a Latin book called Amo, Amas, Amat, and all that.

SPEAKER_01

That's right. Yeah, I did that about 20 or so years ago, and that was trying to revive memories in anyone who's lucky enough to learn Latin of those lessons, and also those who hadn't done it to introduce them to the great joys of the language and trying to be funny at the same time, if you can be funny in a Latin book.

Chris Grimes

And if you do get a spare moment, do say hello to Giles Brandreth because I've been sort of flirting with him for quite some time. Michael Palin has said yes recently, and Giles, Giles is well, he keeps saying yes, but then he gets further and further down the path. So it's only a matter of time.

SPEAKER_01

But I'll give him a punch, but he is he's the busiest man in Showbiz.

Chris Grimes

He's definitely, certainly wonderfully another national treasure alongside the ones we've already mentioned already. Harry, you are obviously a uh author and journalist, currently editor of the uh Oldie magazine. And it's gonna be my great joy, pleasure, and delight to curate you through the unique and thoroughly enjoyable storytelling structure of the show that's going to involve a clearing, a tree, a lovely juicy storytelling exercise called 54321. There's going to be some alchemy, some gold, a couple of random squirrels, a cheeky bit of Shakespeare, a golden baton, and a cake.

SPEAKER_01

Can't wait.

Oldie Of The Year Awards

Chris Grimes

So it's all to play for. So, with your permission, shall we get on the open road of the structure?

SPEAKER_01

Definitely, yeah.

Chris Grimes

And the invocation and the invitation is to go where you like, how you like, as deep as you like, into the following structure. So energetically, it all takes place in a clearing or serious, happy place of you, my guests, choosing. So, in your very illustrious career so far, where would you say Harry Mount goes to get Clotterfree, inspirational, and able to think?

SPEAKER_01

Well, it's a little place called St. Twinals, lovely name, a tiny village in Pembrokeshire. And ever since I was a baby, my parents took me on holiday, and my brother and sister to Pembrokeshire. And then when I was about um 11 in 1982, they bought a little cottage there, and we all still go there. And in fact, I'm going there this weekend. It is, it's very quite a remote part of the world, even within Pembrokeshire. And even within that remote world, it's on its own, I'd say, five minutes walk from the nearest house. So it's just incredibly calm, very quiet, right next door to these terrific cliffs, which are flat on top, so lovely to walk along, bike along, limestone cliffs, but with fantastic features to um look at, including the famous Green Bridge of Wales, which I'm sure many of your viewers will know about.

Chris Grimes

I've just noticed what a gorgeous voice you have, very malefamous. Kind of you, Chris. And you well, thank you. Sort of reciprocal happy smoke. That's lovely. Also, um, your grandfather was Thomas Packenham, 5th Earl of Longford.

SPEAKER_01

Great grandfather, yeah.

Chris Grimes

Your great grandfather, lovely. And how big is the whole Mount Squad when you all turn up to your wonderful clearing?

SPEAKER_01

Uh, from you know, just a couple of us to when we're all there siblings, families, parents, it can go up to about um uh sort of 14 or 15.

Chris Grimes

That's quite the gathering right there. Also, when I first was researching you, I know that you're called Harry, but you're also called Henry, so you've got both going on.

SPEAKER_01

That's right. That's like a certain uh Harry currently residing with his wife Megan in uh California. He also was christened Henry, and in a strange way, Harry is the nickname, it's the same with um Prince Hull in uh in the Shakespeare plays. You know, he becomes Henry V.

Chris Grimes

Of course, and a wonderful segue into Shakespeare that is coming further down the track when we start talking about legacy. So just to reincorporate deliberately the flag in the sand, the sort of what three words of where you've gone for your clearing, just say that beautiful name place again near the Green Bridge of Wales.

SPEAKER_01

Uh St. Twinnells, Pembrokeshire.

From Latin To Laughter

Chris Grimes

Boom. I'm now going to arrive with a tree in your clearing, uh, Harry Mount. And I'm going to shake your tree to see which storytelling apples fall out. How do you like these apples? And this is where you've been kind enough to have uh thought about four things that have shaped you, three things that inspire you, two things that never fail to grab your attention and borrow from the film up. That's where two squirrels come in as well. Your monsters of distraction, which I'll unpack later on. And then the one is a quirky or unusual fact about you, Harry Mount, editor of the Oldie magazine. But it's not a memory test, so I'll curate you through it gradually. So uh let's go back to the top of the tree to shake the canopy as you see fit. So, first of all, four things that shaped you, Harry Mount.

SPEAKER_01

Well, I think a very primary thing that shaped me before I was born, that I have a lovely older brother and a lovely younger sister. But I had a a brother born before me, a year before me, who then died, aged only three months of cot death, so of no known cause, called Francis, which is my middle name. So I never never met him. Um he died a few months before I was born. But I think the fact um that he had been there obviously had a shaping effect on my parents, and in a very good way, we're surrounded by pictures of him. They always talked about him. So I think without ever having met him, the fact of having a brother dying before you must have shaped the way my parents brought me up. And the knowledge of his death. I I'm not saying I thought this consciously because you just see these photos around the house, but it introduces you to the concept of tragedy early on, but also in a way being able to absorb it. Because as a child, you're not shocked. I didn't know as a as an infant who this baby was. So it's a tragedy, but uh it's very much a part of my character.

Chris Grimes

Yes, Francis Mount he would have been.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

Chris Grimes

Very profound first shapage. Thank you. There's a bell for if we get stuck anywhere, as a shape, shapage number two now, please. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01

I would say perhaps related to that, I don't know. I was an extremely neurotic child, a great warrior, and I think that affected me enormously in terms of being a SWAT at school. I don't think I was particularly naturally brilliant, but I think working really hard and worrying about exams made me not a very happy child, but it meant non-showing off that I was very good at exams and propelled myself through all these various schools and universities. But it wasn't until I was halfway through university that I really thought about what I enjoyed doing. So I'd say a sort of neurotic ability for exams was number two.

Chris Grimes

You've reminded me of the confidence mantra my own son has, which is I'm not a warrior, I'm a warrior.

SPEAKER_01

Very good.

Chris Grimes

But because I live in Bristol, that's a bit he doesn't speak like this, but the Bristol action would be I'm not a warrior, I'm a warrior. He doesn't speak like that. That's very good. Yeah. But anyway, good on you for being well, the the warrior set you in good stead for the accomplishment of then passing the exams, obviously.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, and and and and also the later realization that there's more to life than exams, but also like your son, it's good to decrease those worries, which I am still a bit of a worrier, but much, much less. I sleep very well now, whereas I didn't when I was a teenager. So it's the the good and the bad side of worrying.

Chris Grimes

And may I ask how many children you have yourself, Harry?

SPEAKER_01

I don't have any children.

Chris Grimes

Okay.

SPEAKER_01

I'm not married.

Chris Grimes

Uh so shapeage number three now, please.

The Pembrokeshire Clearing

SPEAKER_01

Um, I would say related to that is finding what I liked doing in life. So I think related to those worries, I did very conventional jobs on leaving university. Yeah. I was a banker for eight months, I qualified as a barrister and uh did the pupillage stage, but I never actually practiced. But I didn't realize that in retrospect I was doing the conventional things you should do, you think you should do if you've got a good degree. And it wasn't until the age of 27 when I didn't get the tenancy, the lifelong job as a barrister, that I finally thought about what I really wanted to do. And I had a catastrophic fall in reputation from being a libel barrister to a gossip colonist on the Daily Telegraph. And on my first day of being a gossip colonist on the evening on the telegraph, I went on to the evening standard. I absolutely loved that day. I remember it strongly today, and I suddenly realized you could enjoy jobs, and if you enjoyed them, you were that much better at doing them. A really big change in life, finding out what you like doing.

Chris Grimes

And I love the fact that you didn't go past the pupillage to being a sort of beautiful butterfly of a lawyer, and you ended up instead by being a I love that, a majestic glide from grace, I would say, to being a gossip columnist.

SPEAKER_01

A jackal of the press, yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Chris Grimes

So you've you've cut your chops on being a proper hack, then it would seem yes.

SPEAKER_01

Which is really good. I was still quite shy. And I remember the night before that job on the telegraph, I was really dreading having to, you know, stitch up my friends or be rude to famous people. But actually, on doing the job, you realize that the vast majority of the stories are provided by people themselves who want to publicize their book or their film or their poetry collection.

Chris Grimes

Yes.

SPEAKER_01

And so on that first day, the very nice secretary on the desk put up a hand, waved an invitation saying, Who wants to go to the launch of Kingsley Amos's letters, uh, his collected letters, at the Garrick Club. And I loved Kingsley Amos, so I said, I'd love to go along. Went along, met Martin Amos, and I talked to Martin Amos about Kingsley Amos, his father, and also about Philip Larkin, who I also worshipped. And he gave me this wonderful quote, he's very friendly to me as a jackal of the press. He said that I asked what was the effect of Philip Larkin dying on King's Amos' life, and he said before he died, King's Amos had three struts to his later life, which was drink, the Garrick Club, where we were chatting, and Philip Larkin. And it was like three struts of a three-legged stool. And when one of them fell away, Philip Larkin dying, the chair collapsed. Well, that's a perfect little story for a gossip column. So I fell that that evening and I talked to Martin Amos, who I admired, about Kingsley Amos, who I revered, and I realized, God, jobs can be enjoyable.

Chris Grimes

Wonderful. What a first sort of quest or side quest. Just responding to the who'd wants to go to the Garrett Club.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. But it so that was finding out uh a job you like doing and doing it. And as many people have said, if you find a job that you like doing, that's one of the great keys to happiness.

Chris Grimes

In researching you as well, I know you had great pride in getting Barry Humphreys, who you also really admired, doing something for you for the Oldy magazine as well.

SPEAKER_01

That's right. Well, actually, that was going to be uh my fourth one, which was getting the job at the Oldy, because I spent a long time as a journalist, always enjoying my life as a gossip columnist and a leader writer and a New York correspondent. And I'd been the deputy editor of the comment pages of the Daily Telegraph, which is a fairly lowly job, but I had edited stuff, but actually editing a magazine was a whole new thing. And I I'd grown up really admiring Richard Ingram's the founder and founding editor of The Aldi. So that was quite daunting. But it has been the most extraordinary chance to meet and work with people like Barry Humphreys, who had a column on the Aldi for the last three years of his life. So I regularly talked to him, and it was a you know extraordinary to chat to him, but he was still incredibly funny and so quick. I really do think, I really do think the term genius is uh overused, but he was so quick. Um he would often, when we're on the phone, he would say something so quick and so funny in response to something I'd said, it wasn't a prepared anecdote. I'd take a couple of seconds to get it, and I'd want to say to him, Oh, Barry, oh right, I now I get it. He wasn't trying to um uh uh wrong foot me. He just he he really he really was working on a higher level and to talk to someone as intelligent as that and as funny as that who I've admired since childhood, uh what a joy.

Chris Grimes

I had Rob Bryden as a live guest in the live theatre show version of my show here in Bristol a few months ago, and I know that he was with Barry Humphreys very close to his death, and he and Rob too similarly worshipped him.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. Oh no, he was, he I I think it must be difficult for people like that. Perhaps you've interviewed quite a few of them, but where their minds are working more quickly. Barry very famously, which he wrote about, was a raging alcoholic for 20 years. And uh I think part of it might be that other people must feel he never gave this impression, but must seem quite boring because you're moving at supersonic speed. Yes. Everyone, nice as they are, is a bit slow on the uptake.

Chris Grimes

And of course, he was generous enough to allow people to catch up. And a credit that he gave to Rob Bryden, which made Rob Bryden's whole career, was when you work with that audience, you don't just appear in front of them, you befriend them. And that's something that Barry Humphreys took great pride in as well.

SPEAKER_01

And then he would only humiliate those who he really disliked or he knew wouldn't mind. So he was extremely kind. Occasionally he'd ring up the office and he'd get on to the 18-year-old boy doing work experience, and he'd be really polite to him and he'd ask questions of the 18-year-old, and he was genuinely interested in the answer. He was extremely interested in human behavior, which I think the best people are, particularly if you're then going to satirize it, you're observing everything.

Chris Grimes

Absolutely. What a wonderful that is that the fourth shapage in the structure?

SPEAKER_01

The fourth shapage was get was getting the job as an editor of a magazine. It was that although I'd been a journalist for quite a few years when I got that job, it it was, I remember it's quite daunting getting it, and it's uh you're suddenly responsible for you know a hundred-page magazine. Yeah, you know, if you if you libel someone, uh that's your fault. Um, if you make a terrible blunder, that's your fault. And it's still a thing now. I've done the job for nine years, but yeah, fresh copy comes off the press into the office. It's always pleasing to see it. But it's beautifully edited by my colleagues too. But uh, I'd say about no, about one in three times there is a typo or a name left out, just as much my fault as anybody else's. And you think, God, we've been working on this for four weeks. Why didn't I notice it? But anyway, uh, those things are very important, but they're they're not worrying the same way that a uh you know 10 million pound libel suit would be, which would seem I love the iconography of the oldie magazine as well, because of things like the oldie radio, there's an old radio transmitter that looks a bit like Ali Palace, Alexander Palace transmitting. That's right, and we think a lot about those things that we don't want to be consciously retro. And one of the few changes I made uh on becoming editor is having fewer pieces about it being better in the old days. But at the same time, there are things that our readers will appreciate like that. Radio masks at the beginning of RKO films. Yes. Give you um what I call the R factor, which you go as people recognize it, and something goes off in their heart or their brain.

Chris Grimes

Yes.

SPEAKER_01

Warmth and affection.

Chris Grimes

And warmth and affection linked to where would we have been before nostalgia, as that joke would have it.

SPEAKER_01

Very good, yeah, yeah.

Chris Grimes

Wonderful uh shaping to get us going. Now we're looking at three things that inspire you as we go down the tree trunk, the 54321. Three things that inspire you, Harry.

SPEAKER_01

Old buildings. I forgot to say that in my chequered 20s, I did a master's in architectural history at the Courtholt Institute. It had been uh done a term of architectural history in my first degree. And um I absolutely loved and still adore uh old buildings in a good way. I didn't get a I got a place to do a doctorate, but I didn't get the funding. Then I went off and became a barrister. But I'm rather glad because I wouldn't have wanted to become a full-time architectural historian. I think it would have taken the pleasure away from it. In fact, even when I was doing this master's going and looking at old buildings, I still like doing it, but it became more of a job. Whereas um now, doing it for pleasure or writing the occasional article about it, it's pure joy. And in fact, we're just about to come up to the 300th anniversary of the death of the great Sir John Vamborough, who built Blenheim Palace and Castle Howard and many other buildings, most of them with Nicholas Hawkesmoor. And uh a friend of mine called Simon Scott Plumber wrote an article about Van Brah for the oldie. I wasn't writing it, but I went along with him to lots of these buildings. And that was pure pleasure because of loving Simon very much, but also going to see these buildings, many of which I hadn't seen before. And I don't know what you call it, maybe it's the same R factor when something aesthetic strikes your heart and your Brain and the building's right and your moods right, and the weather's got to be right, you've got to be in a good frame of mind. Anyway, something magical happens and you get pure aesthetic pleasure.

Chris Grimes

And that appreciation of all things architectural, is that what was behind Lust for Windowsills, one of your books?

SPEAKER_01

Exactly, yeah. So the idea of that book was that it would be a um a light-hearted guide to uh architectural history, particularly British architectural history, because I think uh a lot of people are really interested in buildings, and it is the great public art. You know, if you're not interested in pictures, you never have to go inside a gallery, but you can't avoid seeing buildings, and that's why it's so important they should be beautiful. So the idea of that book was to be in a in a light-hearted way, uh, explain there really aren't so many of them, but the terms for classical architecture, like the columns like Doric, Ionic, Corinthian, and composite, and the three periods of Gothic architecture, early English, decorated, and perpendicular. Now, all those words sound pretty complicated, but actually there are only four, or you could possibly say five classical orders of architecture, and there are only three periods of Gothic architecture. Once you explain those things, which you could explain to someone, you know, in half an hour or even less, suddenly all these buildings around you come to life. So the idea was to do that in a light-hearted way.

Chris Grimes

So encouraging listeners, watchers to look out for lust for windowsills. And can I just congratulate you for using all those words about architecture of your own volition? Because I wouldn't have known how to get you to say them by asking the right question.

SPEAKER_01

But I love they're lovely words, but we we all do this with all sorts of subjects. I mean, I I don't know anything about quantum physics. I wish someone could teach me the basics of that in in a very light way. I imagine it's more complicated. But as I say, there's only a handful of difficult words there. And once you know them, it's great, great pleasure to know the meaning of lots of words, but particularly if you could see their public incarnation.

Chris Grimes

So maybe the next book could be The Lust for the Big Bang or something like that.

SPEAKER_01

Well, but I'd have to several degrees first, yeah.

Chris Grimes

Wonderful. So uh second thing that inspires you, please.

SPEAKER_01

I would say the the classics, Latin and Greek, which I I read in that, I studied in that nerdy um uh neurotic way from a very young age, from around about eight or nine, I did Latin or Greek. And I was doing it in a very dutiful way, and then I did it at school, then I did it at university, and I had this moment halfway through university where I suddenly thought, what I'm really interested in is history and uh novels. And so I went to my dad, who's good on these things, uh, and I said, That's what I really like doing, and he, or reading. And he said, Well, if you could spend the rest of your life reading novels, do the slightly more difficult one, history, which I did do, and I really loved that. And then a few years later, I started going back to the classics and all the things I'd been told about by my teachers when at school, the reason why I should do classics, you know, it's the foundation of Western European civilization and literature and architecture and art and astronomy and satire and all the rest of it. I suddenly realized they were telling the truth. And I and I'm really glad that I did these, it's really quite difficult. A whole lot of learning of declensions and conjugations, which, if now I'm now 54, I decided to take it up, I wouldn't have the will or the time to do it. But I think when you're a child, your brain is at its spongiest, and in my case, you're at your most obedient. So I did all this really difficult stuff, and it means that I can now really appreciate the link between the ancient past and the modern world, and it's there everywhere. It's it's there in uh architecture, it's there in language. Two-thirds of English words have a uh Latinate or a Greek origin to them, and even in the use of language, consciously or subconsciously. I know when a word is uh classical or Anglo-Saxon, and uh most of the words we use are Anglo-Saxon, and you can use a classical, slightly pompous word in distinction to them. And uh and I think that's uh subconsciously I use it every single day.

Chris Grimes

Now I say this is delicious stuff, Harry. Thank you so much. You're allowed a third inspiration now.

Finding Journalism And Joy

SPEAKER_01

Funny uh prose. The um novelists I really like are the funny ones. So I've mentioned uh Kings the Amos and I love Evelyn War and P. G. Woodhouse and uh Nancy Mitford, and they all have this actually deceptively simple style, but they're brilliant prose stylists, and they're very funny. And I think, particularly in this country, perhaps because we're famous for our sense of humor, being funny is taken for granted. Whereas actually to write funnily is incredibly hard. It's relatively easy to write a very difficult academic piece, but you basically got to get your facts right, come up with some you know intellectually complex idea, and then you're there. But with your well it's the same with stand-up comedians, Barry Humphreys or Rob Bryden, being funny, it's so completely binary. You either are or you aren't. And a lot of people try to be, yes, and they never are.

Chris Grimes

Then there's the notion of physical comedy as well, uh, because of you know, my love of people like Stan Laurel and and classics, and that's why I like Michael Palin so much, because of the physicality to yeah, and that Stan Laurel's an extremely good example.

SPEAKER_01

I watching Lauren Hart the other day, their kind of slapstick. It's a strange sort of magic because it could be very unfunny. If you if you explain them and try to act it yourself, it wouldn't be funny. But it is Barry Cryer, the late great Barry Cryer, who I work with at the oldie, wonderful man, but he talked about people who had funny bones. And I said to him, Well, Barry, you've got funny bones. He said, No, I'm not. I can remember, and he could remember thousands of jokes. But he said he wasn't like he knew um Tommy Cooper well. He said, Tommy Cooper, there was something about it. As Barry used to say, you couldn't analyze comedy. It's like um dissecting a frog, nobody laughs, and the frog dies. But he's he's right, and and Stan Laurel had it, Oliver Hardy had it, Michael Palin's got it. I don't know where it comes from. It is a gift from the gods.

Chris Grimes

Uh Barry Cryer's son awarded the um Comedy Award at the Slapstick Festival just yesterday here in Bristol to Armando Ianucci.

SPEAKER_01

Oh, right, yeah. Oh, he's a lovely guy, Bob. Yeah.

Chris Grimes

So I'm I'm hoping to get Bob into a sort of good book about the Barry Cryer book as well at some point as well. Yeah. Wonderful. So I think that's three influences.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, the the fourth one's a bit of an odd one, but it's it's bicycling.

Chris Grimes

Oh, lovely.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah. Which I'm completely obsessed with. I've done it all my life. And uh I did o used to, I've lived in London most of my life. I did used to own a car, and I'm all for driving. I'm not some cyclists are anti-driving. I'm I'm very pro-driving, but my dream would be to have a car in London, and no one else had one. But um, as I say, I bicycled all my life, and it seems to me a thing of great, great beauty. It's so simple and so perfectly suited. Well, particularly to my life. I live two and a half miles from my office, so I have these terrific bike rides in the morning going down the hill from Islington into the centre of London. Slightly more exhausting coming back in the evening, but it, you know, you feel better even if you're bicycling through the rain. On the very rare occasions I have a hangover. Uh uh, it is like magic. After 15 minutes, the mood lifts. And uh quite often I find myself, this sounds very polyanner-ish, but actually singing. I'm afraid sometimes I listen on headphones on my bike and I sing along to something and it kicks in after 15 minutes. I think it has been shown that um endorphins are created after a certain amount of exercise. Uh, anyway, I really would uh it wouldn't be much good on a desert island having a bike unless the bike was the island was pretty big. But uh that would be my desert island thing if we had a big island with enough um road to bike on. But it's a sort of crucial part of my life. And a day without bicycling, I feel very, very ropey and uh and more self-pitying than usual.

Chris Grimes

Harry, we could be twins because I often say my bike is my freedom. I absolutely adore bicycling as well.

SPEAKER_01

Your freedom, isn't it? I mean, obviously difficult if you live in the country and have to go huge distances. But one of my boring things in London, anywhere that's um seven miles away, it's quicker on a bike. After that, it could be quicker by car.

Chris Grimes

And one of my greatest joys ever was to be in San Francisco and then hire a bike and then go across the Golden Gate Bridge on a bike.

SPEAKER_01

It was just been to San Francisco, but I've never done that. That's wonderful. And um, how are you on e-bikes, or is yours a sort of Yeah, no, no, and I've I've I've got one of those as well, which uh I don't know if you're a peep show fan or your uh viewers are, but there's a brilliant bit where Jez, the sort of uh trendy wild one, says to the nerdy Mark Corrigan, who's trying to cheer up, he says, I've made you breakfast just like you like it. Uh brown toast to begin, then white toast as the treat. Electric bike as a treat. So it's uh I'm normally very self-denying, but have I got to go a long distance or it's raining?

Chris Grimes

I'm in Bristol. I got this mantra which is no hill in Bristol defeats me, but so I haven't succumbed to an e-bike, but I like hiring them when I'm away, actually.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, and it's a treat, isn't it?

Chris Grimes

Yeah, yes, exactly. And now we're on to this. I'm fascinated by this. This is your squirrels now. What are your two monsters of distraction? What two things never fail to distract you, irrespective of anything else that might be going on for you in your life, Harry?

Editing The Oldie

SPEAKER_01

Well, I suppose this is obviously very boring. The internet is is a terrible killer for me, as it is for everyone. And then I do, like a lot of middle-aged men with a midlife crisis, I do swimming in hamstead ponds. And whenever I've got uh two friends, I do it regularly, and whenever they say one of them is or both of them are doing it, uh I'll drop everything to do it. Because actually, it's not unlike bicycling, not least because I bicycle there, but however bad you're feeling, however cold it is, and I know people are very bored by people talking about it, but it does have a magical effect, so I would never turn that down. And the other thing is a foreign press trip, ideally to Italy or New York, where I work for a while. And my terrible admission is I prefer press trips to holidays because um uh holiday, there's always the expectation of great enjoyment, isn't there? A place of great beauty, and uh if you happen to be a place of great beauty and lovely weather, and you're not feeling very well in yourself, then you feel even more miserable. Whereas on a press trip, even when it's going badly, you're not supposed to be enjoying yourself, and you're also in a very small way often working. I mean, quite often you do the act write the actual article when you get back. But I've had some of the most enjoyable, interesting times of my life. On press trips a couple of years ago, I went to Jamaica, and you get these incredible things laid on, and we went to Goldeneye, where Ian Fleming lived, and uh I was allowed to spend a night in Goldeneye, uh Ian Fleming's house, which is now a very smart hotel, and it was so wonderful. There was his desk, yes, all the drinks you could want, and his garage has been turned into a um cinema so you could watch all the Bond films. There was an outdoor bath, there was a little beach, which was his own beach where he could go snorkeling, but I only had a day and a night to do it, so I had to stuff these things into a day and a night. But those are great, great pleasures.

Chris Grimes

It's the notion of purposeful travel rather than go and enjoy yourself, yes.

SPEAKER_01

Exactly. And also, even if something terrible happens, well, that's your first paragraph.

Chris Grimes

Yes, yes, and uh you're you're the second guest that I've had on the show who said that they've been in that room with that desk. And I had a uh a wonderfully enigmatic uh American chap called Stan Slap. He had the name Stan Slap, I think, and he wrote his book, I buried my heart in conference room B.

SPEAKER_01

Very good. That sounds great.

Chris Grimes

That was on that desk as well. And now um it's uh one is the quirky or unusual fact about you, Harry Mount, editor of the oldie magazine, that we couldn't possibly know about you until you tell us.

SPEAKER_01

I would say that uh my cousin is the great Tony Adams, former captain of Arsenal. Oh, and he he married my uh dear cousin, uh Poppy Teacher. Uh but she's quite a distant cousin, but I love her, but she's a third cousin. But I'm a huge Arsenal fan and grew up near Arsenal, and I still live near there. And so when she married him about 15, 20 years ago, it was wonderful. And they say never meet your heroes, but absolutely wonderful in the flesh and very modest. And at several occasions I've trapped him in a corner and bored him to death with questions, and he gives a perfectly good impression of not being too annoyed.

Chris Grimes

Whoa. He's also majestically tall. I've stood behind him recently, and yes, extra if you can furnish me with an introduction to him, too. A little bit of we would come out. That'd be very, very exciting. Thank you very much.

SPEAKER_01

He does such wonderful work because of his own path and journey for uh no, he's incre is incredibly admirable, and he's completely open about that. It's very early on. I think people are generally, thanks to him, very open about these things. But he was very early on in that whole thing. In fact, he's got a book coming out this summer, I think, about it being 30 years since Euro 96 when um uh he uh went on a uh on a huge bender after we lost and then gave up drink afterwards and then hasn't dropped 30 years. No, it's it's a it's a wonderful story.

Chris Grimes

So do you get to see him a couple of times a year at least then?

SPEAKER_01

Just well, occasionally. In fact, I saw him just a couple of weeks ago. Uh, here's his talk forgive the showing off, but talking about the joy of working at the oldie. Through the oldie, I became, well, I wouldn't presume say quite good friends, but friends with with the late Gilly Cooper, and she had the greatest memorial service of all time about a fortnight ago, in Southwark Cathedral, with she was extremely popular. There were her friends and family, uh, there was the Queen, there was Tony Adams, there were her dogs, and everyone adored her. And then, in a way I've never seen before, at the end of it, she'd laid on, I think, could it be really 200 magnums of champagne, and the dean of Southwark, who um had officiated her daughter's wedding, was a friend. And uh, I think church doesn't look down on drinking, but I've never seen so many people knocking back champagne in a cathedral singing the praises of someone so lovely. Anyway, that's the last time. And a hundred times that as it sort of pops up to celebrate when a glass was smashed. Anyway, it's a great occasion.

Chris Grimes

Harry Mount, we have shaken your tree. Hurrah. Now we stay in the clearing, move away from the tree. Now we talk about alchemy and gold. When you're at purpose and in flow, and you've been giving me alchemy and gold by the bucket load anyway. But what are you absolutely happiest doing in what you're here to reveal to the world? It's your purpose imperative, if you like.

Architecture’s R Factor

SPEAKER_01

I would say um meeting someone interesting or doing something interesting and writing it up and it coming out right. The wonderful thing about journalism and particularly about editing is you can never tire of it because you're never going to write the perfect piece yourself. And even if you commission someone brilliant like Barry Humphreys, um that then becomes a brilliant piece. But it's it's impossible, brilliant as all the writers are for the old days, to have uh an issue which is completely crammed with perfect pieces. So you're always looking for the ultimate. And so you're looking for the ultimate magazine you've edited or or pieces you've written. Yes.

Chris Grimes

I'm gonna award you with a cake, uh finally, or sort of penultimately. And um, do you like cake, Harry Mount?

SPEAKER_01

Uh I do, yeah. I've just been to my uh niece's birthday party, had delicious strawberry and cream cake, yeah.

Chris Grimes

I was gonna ask you flavour of choice. So a strawberry and cream cake shall be yours. And now you get to put a cherry on the cake with this is the final suffused with storytelling metaphor, with stuff like what's a favorite inspirational quote, first of all, that's always given you succor and pulled you towards your future.

SPEAKER_01

Okay, well, this is um uh, as I said, I studied Latin and Greek at school, and I was a little nerdy boy, but I was doing this very dutifully, so I was very rarely moved by it, except there's one uh famous line in the Aeneid, which is Virgil's story of Aeneas who fights for the Trojans in the Trojan War and loses to the Greeks. And we all know about Odysseus going back to Ithaca in the Odyssey, which is going to be in a Christopher Nolan film in the summer. But Aeneid Aeneas was coming back or leaving Troy, and he had this god sent mission to found Rome. He's the mythical founder of Rome, and he had a voyage like Odysseus, trying to get to Rome. I mean, at least Odysseus knew where Ithaca was. Ithaca hadn't yet uh Rome hadn't yet been founded, he had to found it. Uh and along the way, he had terrible times just like Odysseus. And there's a moment where he's shipwreck, he's lost practically uh all his crew, and he thinks I'm never going to found this mythical extraordinary story. Oh God, what's the point? He's absolutely miserable. And uh his friend Akartis, faithful Akartes, says, forgive me for quoting Latin, Chris, but he says, Olim hike memenise etiam uvabit, which means one day it will help to remember even these things. Now that's a very literal way of translating, but it basically means even the worst things in life you'll eventually look back at and maybe laugh at, or but you they will have been helpful to you. And even then, as I don't know, 14 or 15-year-old, when I read that, I thought, God, that's amazing. Even then, despite being a bit of a miserable teenager, there were things I could look back on from my childhood which were horrible at the time, which could be quite funny. You'll know the um the who I don't know whose line it is, but that comedy is tragedy plus time. But it it doesn't apply to everything. You know, we all have terrible bereavements and illnesses in our family, which go on being miserable and be miserable forever. But most things which aren't on that level are eventually useful or even amusing to look back at. And I remember being struck by that when I was a teenager, and I feel it even more strongly now.

Chris Grimes

And just to deliberately reincorporate again, just give us the Latin quote again.

SPEAKER_01

Uh, I hope I got this right. Olim hike memenisse etiam uvabit.

Chris Grimes

And I also know that you've written Harry Mount's Odyssey as well, and you must be looking forward to the Matt Damon film of Odysseus. Well, that's that's right.

Classics, Language, And Humour

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, so I about uh 14 years ago tried to recreate Odysseus's journey. It was was, in fact, the idea of a uh terrific ex-girlfriend of mine who thought it was a good, really good idea, way of gently introducing the history of ancient Greece and the uh philosophy and the tragedy and the comedy, all the rest of it, to those who were interested in it but hadn't been taught it. And so uh we started off doing it. We split up soon after uh we began. So there's quite a lot of uh lovelorn self-pity in the book as well. But it meant um Odysseus' journey, it's not clear whether it ever happened, but I'm pretty sure the Trojan War did happen, and certainly there's an ancient site, an amazing palace on Ithaca of the right date, which could be Odysseus's palace. But either way, it looks almost certain that there was a fight between the East and the West. And if there was that sort of fight, the Greeks from the West, having won, would have to get back home. So I'm sure there was some sort of journey. So I um recreated it, and lots of people have done it before, and lots of people have tried to claim bits of the Odyssey as their own. So there's a bit in the Odyssey where Odysseus goes to. The far-flung land of the Camerians, um, shrouded in eternal mist. And a Hebrideans classical scholar on reading that said, Oh, he must have been to the Hebrides. But I think that's not necessarily true. But uh anyway, I went to the places that are most thought to have inspired the Odyssey.

Chris Grimes

Lovely. With the gift of hindsight, uh, what notes, help, or advice might you proffer to a younger version of Harry Mountain? You can decide how old you are when you holographically reappear, put your arms around your own shoulders and whisper the following words in your own ear.

SPEAKER_01

I would say to me, aged uh six, don't worry so much about exams and school work. I would then say to me, aged about 14, do English and history. These are very low-level aspirations, anyway. A levels. And I would then say to the 21-year-old uh Harry Mount, leaving university, uh, become a journalist straight away, don't become a lawyer or a banker.

Chris Grimes

Thus saving you a bit of time. Yeah. Love that. Very good. What's the best piece of advice somebody else has ever given you?

SPEAKER_01

I worked, one of the great joys, I worked at the Daily Telegraph with many of your viewers who will have uh heard of the great Bill Deeds, who uh had started off working at the Telegraph when he was 17 in 1930. He'd won the MC in the war, he'd been a cabinet minister, he'd been the editor of the Daily Telegraph. He's most famous as Dear Bill in uh fictional letters from Dennis Thatcher and Private Eye. Lots of people, he was 73 then, lots of grand people would say, Well, I refuse to work for my successor. Well, Bill was a very modest guy, and he went on working right till he um died, age 92, I think it was, for uh almost another 20 years, and he was wonderful to work with. Uh he'd often come in on a Sunday when he wouldn't have to do the sort of Sunday leader writing rotor. And one of his favorite quotes was from Arthur Bulfer, and he had said a lot in his pieces, but also to me, which is uh nothing matters very much, and very few things matter at all. Um and uh and it's true, it's it's it's a bit like that Latin quote is that things you get in a great panic about in the grand scheme of things, they'll pass into the past, and actually most things not always the case, but will work out fine in the end.

Chris Grimes

It resonates with the Hamlet quote: nothing is either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.

SPEAKER_01

Exactly. That's another terrific one. And and of course, you know, the at the heart of these things, when something's terrible is going on, that doesn't really none of none of those wonderful quotes help that much, but in time, they're almost always come true.

Chris Grimes

And going, reincorporating your Latin quote, of course, that is about the fact that these things shape us uh and and hew us out of the rock of experience, if you like.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, and you even without thinking consciously about those quotes, but if it's happened to you enough and things have got better, something in your subconscious knows that.

Chris Grimes

We're ramping up penultimately to talk about Shakespeare, but just before we do that, this is something called pass the golden baton, please, which is the invitation, now that you've experienced this from within. Who in your network, Harry Mount, editor of the Oldie magazine, might you most like to pass the golden baton along to to be given a damn good listening to in this way?

SPEAKER_01

To do the same interview you've kindly done.

Chris Grimes

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01

Oh, would be good. I would say Tony Adams.

Chris Grimes

I'm kidding, I'm joking, I'm joking.

SPEAKER_01

I try not to think of him. I would say Stephen Frears. I think that because I've just been watching uh a very English scandal of the brilliant uh series he did on uh Jeremy Thorpe, the great Jeremy Thorpe scandal. And I know him a tiny bit, and I think he's consistently uh one of the greatest filmmakers alive, and he's extremely modest. When you praise him for his wonderful films and TV series, he says, uh, well, nothing to do with me. I just get uh you just get good actors and good scripts, but it it really is to do with him. And uh but Chris, you might be better at teasing out of him how you become such a consistently great uh director. No duds.

Chris Grimes

What an extremely generous golden baton pass. Thank you very much indeed for that. And now, inspired by Shakespeare, Seven Ages of Man's Speech, All the Worlds of Steved, all the bitter wibbid mealy players, I'm now going to invite you finally uh to talk about Legacy Harry and how, when all is said and done, you would most like to be remembered.

SPEAKER_01

Ah, well, I would love to be remembered as a great novelist, which seems unlikely because I've actually not published any novels. I've written two novels, uh, which were never even published, uh which I wrote in my twenties and my thirties, and they were really no good, and that's not false deprecation, they were really no good. But I think they're the hardest thing to do and the greatest thing to do. So when I talked about my heroes like Evelyn War, King Famous, Nancy Mitford, I read and reread them, hoping that I could somehow work out how they did it. But I think a bit like Barry Humphreys, they work on a on a higher level. And um, I've written quite a few non-fiction books which I've enjoyed doing, and I love reading non-fiction as well, but that would be the the aspiration. But it um you have to have you have to A write one and B have one published for that to come true.

Chris Grimes

May I ask if you have a favourite piece of music? Because my editor is a genius at texturing in, if I ask that question.

Bicycles, Endorphins, Freedom

SPEAKER_01

I am an absolutely huge Elvis fan. And uh rather perversely, I particularly like late Elvis. I think it's extremely moving that although his range declined, um, his voice remained absolutely heartbreaking. And I love the late ballads, and there's an obscure one sung by lots of other singers, but not many people know him singing, and it's called um And I Love You So. Neatly Heartbreaking.

Chris Grimes

The people ask me how beautiful. When you listen to this back, there'll be a little gift for you at this moment. How I've lived till now. I tell them I don't know. And now, would you please give us the URL, Harry, at mount for the oldie magazine?

SPEAKER_01

Uh it's very easy, the oldie.co.uk, and there are some wonderful deals going for young and old alike.

Chris Grimes

Wonderful. Just a quick announcement for me. Then there is a final, final question for you coming up in a moment. Um, if you'd like a conversation, having heard this show, to being in the show as well. Uh, the website for the show is thegoodlistening to show.com. Very excitingly, the show syndicates to UK Health Radio. And literally, as I go to publish this time, as of a week ago, it also syndicates to brushwood media in the States as well. So if you'd like a conversation about guesting, uh, that's thegoodlistening to show.com. And then also, Harry and I have been um doing a version of a hybrid version of the show, which is called Legacy Life Reflections, which is to record your life story or the story of someone that you love for posterity, lest we forget before it's too late, with no morbid intention. But my own father, Colin Grimes, who died just over a year ago, and when I first rang you, Harry, I was in Madeira dealing with my father's ashes.

SPEAKER_01

I'm so sorry, my condolences.

Chris Grimes

But um, I I recorded my father actually, who's become a really wonderful, beautiful, happy mascot for the show, um, in the halcyon days of his 80s before he slipped into a crater of declining health, which I know through hindsight. As I say, no morbid intention, but we can use this same unique and hopefully you'll agree, Harry, thoroughly enjoyable storytelling structure in order to tell your life story or the story of someone that you love for posterity. Harry Mount, editor of the oldie magazine, here comes your final question. As this has been your moment in the sunshine in the good listening to show, stories of distinction and genius, is there anything else you'd like to say?

SPEAKER_01

The only thing I've missed out in your really good, uh brilliant interview structure is the most important thing I think I did in my life, which was to work as a correspondent in New York for the Daily Telegraph. And it wasn't what I was naturally suited to, because it's quite nerve-wracking. You'd be sitting chatting to uh a friend like you in the evening, and this is the nature of the job, it's quite right, but you'd suddenly get a phone call saying 13 Amish people have been shot dead in Pennsylvania. And as well as the tragedy of that, you suddenly have to get down there and get there before the guy from the Times gets there. And it was very, very nerve-wracking, but it was perhaps because it was outside my comfort zone, it was the most interesting thing I've ever done.

Chris Grimes

And this is a lovely testament to your halcyon days with your hack chops, if you like, in full. Wonderful. So, uh, ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for being here for listening. Um, I've been Chris Crimes, but most importantly, this has been Harry Mount, editor of the Oldie Magazine. Anything else you'd like to say, Harry?

SPEAKER_01

No, just thank you so much. It's been um a real pleasure, and I brought up memories I've forgotten I had.

Chris Grimes

Wonderful. And as you know, there's the uh possibility of a wonderful reciprocal arrangement. I'd absolutely love to be a sort of storyteller in residence for you and your wonderful oldie magazine um demographic.

SPEAKER_01

Fantastic. I must have a word with the powers that be on that one.

Chris Grimes

And thank you very much indeed for listening. I've been Chris Grimes, that's how you mount. Good night. You've been listening to the Good Listening to Show with me, Chris Grimes. If you'd like to be in the show too, or indeed gift an episode to capture the story of someone else with me as your host, then you can find out how care of the series strands at the goodlistening2.com website. And one of these series strands is called Legacy Life Reflections. If you've been thinking about how to go about recording your life story or the life story of somebody close to you for posterity, but in a really interesting, effortless, and creative way, then maybe the good listening to show can help. Using the unique structure of the show, I'll be your host as together we take a trip down memory lane to record the 5-4-3-2-1 of either your or their life story. And then you can decide whether you go public or private with your episode. Get in touch if you'd like to find out more. Tune in next week for more stories from the clearing. And don't forget to subscribe and review wherever you get your podcasts.