James Graham on his "stripping vicar" ice-dancing routine

0:00Welcome to Deser Island Disks postcards. I'm Lauren LeVern. We've cast away thousands of people to our imaginary desert island among them many writers. Our postcard today comes from the playwright James Graham who recently adapted his acclaimed play dear England into a hit TV drama. When I spoke to James in 2024 he told me how finding a passion for performance helped him come out of his shell as a young boy. We were like a TV family. We used to love sitting in front of the TV every evening, dinner on our laps and watching dramas and soaps. I loved soaps growing up. What did you love about them? What was the magic of it? I guess if you're sort of a quieter shy kid there's something about the scale of the drama of everyday life with people arguing in pubs or breaking up or playing crashes in everyday or murder in coronation street.

1:02I guess just the escapism and the size of everyday life and hobbies were like a big thing and we were all given sort of instruments or I ended up going ice skating which was a news watch for a young boy in a tough mining town. But for some reason gliding around on the ice I got really excited about it and actually it wasn't technically I wasn't sort of doing the flips and the spins. It was actually the show ice dancing where you put on a costume and dance to a piece of pop music or musical theatre. It was that side of it that I really enjoyed and it's not original but I guess there was something about the permission that gives you to show off to make people laugh to unleash yourself and wave your arms and be silly. That I think I really struggled with in normal life. I remember doing loads of different parts I was addressed up as one of the girls in Aber and there was an absolute bizarre moment when I think it was my mom who came up with the concept where she came up with this idea of the stripping vecker. I was only about ten years old but the routine we came up with was I came onto the ice wearing a little casick and to really holy music and a dance around the ice for like a minute.

2:12And then James Brown I feel good kicked in and I whipped off my velcroed casick and I had like stockings and spanks and of course it on. And I would like to ride across the ice as I could tell you my boy like spanking myself and wriggling my hips and like parents were genuinely mortified and shocked and I could always see my mom laughing and loving it. And we took that on top like around the country people would see me turn up and we go oh no the stripping vecker's air is lost like I get all these plastic trophies for it and I would never like it I could never quite make sense of the little boy who really struggled to be in class or to be in school and around people who could do that. James Graham as the stripping vecker what an image you can listen to his full episode on BBC Sands just search for James Graham desert island discs. James Graham as the stripping vecker.