Music for Films: The Magic Christian




First broadcast 5pm, 16th January on Resonance FM in London

1 hour version, first broadcast 5pm, 23rd January 2017 on Resonance FM in London.

1 hour 23 mins version.

Every month, interesting people talk about the music, films and music for films which have shaped their lives.

Roz Kaveney and Tim Concannon discuss Sixties oddity ‘The Magic Christian‘ starring Peter Sellers as an eccentric millionaire who plays cruel pranks on people, and Ringo Starr as the young homeless man he adopts.

The penultimate scene – City gents being enticed to swim in a vat of filth to recover fivers, to Thunderclap Newman’s ‘Something in the Air’ – was filmed on waste ground which is now the National Theatre, Southwark, where this show was recorded as part of the annual Scalarama film festival in September 2016.

Roz and Tim discuss this bizarre vanity project for Sellers – penned by Terry Southern, John Cleese and Graham Chapman – and the worst kept secret about swinging London: that all you really need is cash.

In the second half of the extended podcast version of the show, Roz and Tim pay tribute to the musical stylings of Peter Sellers and Dudley Moore.