Culture clinic: Richard Eyre

By Kate Weinberg Published: 11:27AM GMT twenty-six February 2010

And I quote: executive Richard Eyre, similar to Toy Story favourite Buzz Lightyear, needs to sense to contend it in his own difference Photo: REX FEATURES

Patient"s notes

Name: Richard Eyre

Culture Clinic: Michael Ball Culture clinic: India Knight Culture Clinic: Sister Wendy Beckett Culture Clinic: Antoine de Caunes Culture Clinic: Werner Herzog

Age: 66

Job: Theatre, show and movie executive

Last book read: Trespass by Rose Tremain

Last movie seen: Up in the Air

Last song heard: Chris Botti at the Blue Note, New York

Last sip of live culture: My prolongation of Carmen at the Met in New York

Patient examination

Who, in the total of history, would you majority similar to to lay subsequent to on a long-haul flight?

Oscar Wilde: I wouldnt have to speak. I could usually attend to him, curtsy occasionally, giggle mostly and secretly send his majority appropriate prank to my notebook.

Which open figure do you think is majority overrated?

The Pope, with his antithesis to contraception and his await for fast stupidity and superstition. As Mark Twain said: "Gods barbarity to man creates large thousands mourn," aided by his deputy on earth.

If you could have been innate in a opposite century, that would it be?

Id similar to to have been innate in 1600 and lived to the age of 70. I could, as a schoolboy, have met Shakespeare in the time of James I, seen Charles I executed, noticed the Civil War (from a distance), talked to Marvell and Milton during the time of Cromwell, seen the theatres reopened in the Restoration and enjoyed the association of Samuel Pepys and Lord Rochester whilst examination a fool around by Congreve.

What is your clarification of love?

Theres nothing improved than in Shakespeares Sonnet 116: "Love is not love that alters when it modification finds."

What would be your fantasy opposite job?

My father was an pledge manoeuvre and nonetheless I was heedful of horses (and him) as a kid I have turn some-more and some-more lustful of them given and would right away be happy precision racehorses for steeplechasing.

If you had to paint your nation in general competition, what would it be for?

Like majority men my in progress is a bit magnificent and a bit competitive. So Id prepare boeuf bourguignon for my country, though presumably not in an Anglo-French tournament.

What clich majority relates to you or your life?

Hes a lucky, propitious fellah a clich, but loyal in my case.

If you could be stuck in one place in the world, where would that be?

The south side of a mountain in south Gloucestershire seeking over a low hollow at a beech timber on the alternative side.

What has been your biggest find online?

My happiest find is The Arts and Letters Daily website (www.aldaily.com) that facilities links to articles about humanities and governing body from magazines and newspapers via the English vocalization world.

Name something you indeed hold in.

Goodness is a peculiarity that is mostly encountered but frequency celebrated. While open hold up is dominated by bad promises and bad faith, I hold that some-more mostly than not peoples lives in in isolation are driven by good intentions and acts of elementary generosity. But, as Brecht pronounced (in The Good Woman of Szechuan): "No one can be good for prolonged if integrity is not in demand."

Our diagnosis

Your pursuit is to appreciate alternative peoples art, and you patently have good apply oneself for a little of the creators who have made your intellectual, romantic and dignified landscape. But be clever with all those quotations that a piece of you isnt stealing at the back of what others think. The following will enthuse you to contend it in your own words:

Our prescription

Film Toy Story (1995)

The characters might be toys, but the big themes in this Pixar magnum opus are not childs play. Most applicable for you is the myth of the catchphrase amatory Buzz Lightyear, who is assured that he is not a fondle at all, but a space ranger on a mission to lapse to his home planet. Its usually when Buzz stops rising someone elses lines that he discovers who he unequivocally is.

Book Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov

John Shade is a producer who writes a 999-line poem about his hold up and what lies beyond. Or at least, thats how it seems, until the reader is low in to the "annotations" created by his neighbour, Kinbote. Kinbote interprets Shades poem as a potential comment of a kingdom, of that Kinbote believes he is king. This formidable but witty action of triple-ventroquilism by Nabokov warns of the perils of losing yourself in someone elses words.

Music Tin Drum, Japan (1981, Virgin Records)

In Tin Drum Japan eventually found their own voice and pennyless free to emanate an innovative and utterly strange receptive to advice together with the radical strike singular Ghosts. A sign of because the majority appropriate to keep your word.

Richard Eyre directs Private Lives at the Vaudeville Theatre, London WC2 (0844 412 4663). kate.weinberg@telegraph.co.uk