{"id":10775,"date":"2023-04-06T14:55:24","date_gmt":"2023-04-06T14:55:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/?p=10775"},"modified":"2023-04-29T18:47:07","modified_gmt":"2023-04-29T18:47:07","slug":"composer-patrick-doyle-on-his-triumph-over-cancer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/?p=10775","title":{"rendered":"Composer Patrick Doyle on his triumph over cancer"},"content":{"rendered":"

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By Ray Bennett<\/p>\n

LONDON \u2013 Anyone who has spent time with film composer Patrick Doyle (above with wife Lesley and me) knows that he is one of the funniest men alive. Not so many know that his sense of humour played a large part in keeping him from an early death.<\/p>\n

The diminutive Scottish music-maker, who turns 70 today, has an ebullient personality with a ready wit and infectious laugh. They match the thrilling themes and melodies he has conjured for a wide variety of films from the fantasy of \u2018Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire\u2019 to the romance of \u2018Sense and Sensibility\u2019 to the perils of \u2018East\/West\u2019, the irony of \u2018Gosford Park\u2019 and the drama of \u2018Hamlet\u2019.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>His cheerfully mordant view of mortality along with the love of family and friends and a gift for creating music sustained him through a five-year fight against myeloid leukemia diagnosed when he was in his 40s. In 2003, I spent an afternoon with Patrick at his office\/studio at Pinewood Studios for an interview commisioned by the Flanders International Film Festival in connection with the World Soundtrack Awards for a book titled \u2018Moving Music: Conversations with renowned film composers\u2019.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

He described his illness and the precise day of his full recovery in his inimitable way.<\/p>\n

\u2018My wife, Lesley, and I, between us, virtually diagnosed myself. She looked it up in a family health book, all the symptoms. She said, \u201cI think you have leukemia.\u201d I\u2019m a hyponchodriac anyway so I asked for a blood test and got in right away. I was told on the phone. I couldn\u2019t believe it. It was horrible. You\u2019re supposed to be told that stuff gently.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\u2018I was in hospital on and off for five months, St. George\u2019s in Tooting. It was a horrific time of my life but I managed to write a film score while I was doing my first two months of chemo. It was for \u201cQuest for Camelot\u201d (left). When people go into hospital, they go stir crazy, as you can imagine. I couldn\u2019t read. I couldn\u2019t watch TV. I couldn\u2019t watch videos. I couldn\u2019t listen to tape-recorded books. I couldn\u2019t even read The Sun. The only thing I could do was write music.<\/p>\n

\u2018I had my builder come in and he replicated a synth\/computer set-up and above the bed he made shelves of melamine board because your environment is completely sterile. You have special filtered air because you have no immunity. They destroy all your white cells because they\u2019re camcerous so every day they gave me a special solution and I had to wipe it down. No one was allowed near it.<\/p>\n

\u2018I \u201cpresented\u201d very well. You hear this word a lot in \u201cE.R.\u201d I presented very well. I always thought that was a funny word. People would come in wearing their good suit. \u201cHow does he present?\u201d \u201cHe presented very well.\u201d Nice hat, nice shoes. Lovely. Dying of leukemia but he looked fabulous. That word \u201cpresented\u201d. They\u2019d come in and ask how I was feeling. \u201dHi, I\u2019ve got leukemia, how do you think?\u201d It\u2019s all these stage terms they use in hospita;s \u2013 the theatre, he presented very well.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\u2018I heard it and said, excuse me, what is this, a fashion show? \u201cHe presented very badly. Even though he was dying of cancer, he presented very badly.\u201d I couldn\u2019t help but see the funny side of it, I don\u2019t know why. Emma Thompson (with Doyle left) sent me a long black wig and a wee coffin with a skeleton in it. The staff were horrified. I laughed like a drain. She sent me a photograph from a horror movie she did. There was a guy lying in a bed and she lifts the covers. A bubble quote said, \u201cOhmygod, it\u2019s Pat Doyle!\u201d Of course, the staff were horrified.<\/p>\n

\u2018The director of \u201cQuest for Camelot\u201d, Frederik Du Chau, was great. Because it was animation, it was a locked picture; no changes. They pushed the schedule another four weeks for me, which was fantastic. That was Warner Brothers. All the hospital staff and everybody came to the premiere. It was bizarre. The three professors said they\u2019d never, ever, in their whole experience seen anyone be able to do anything intellectual during treatment. One said, \u201c I just can\u2019t believe you did all this while you were there.\u201d Don\u2019t ask me how I managed to do it. It was wall-to-wall music, more than an hour.<\/p>\n

\u2018But then came the third treatment and that\u2019s an horrific treatment. That\u2019s when the deperession came. That was a tough, tough time but you get through it. The third of the third \u201903 was D-day for me: five years. It was a horrible time of my life. After that, the theory is that if you\u2019re ever ill again then it\u2019s a new disease. I feel fantastic now.\u2019<\/p>\n

I was with Patrick in Gent, Belgium, when \u2018Moving Music\u2019 was published. When fans asked him to autograph their copy he said with typical generosity, \u2019You should ask Ray, he\u2019s one of the writers.\u2019 He signed my copy.<\/p>\n

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\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Ray Bennett LONDON \u2013 Anyone who has spent time with film composer Patrick Doyle (above with wife Lesley and me) knows that he is one of the funniest men alive. Not so many know that his sense of humour … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,6,1263,8,2257],"tags":[5342,2768,2217,950,4581,1248],"class_list":["post-10775","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-film","category-interviews","category-memory-lane","category-music","category-recalling","tag-moving-music","tag-flanders-international-film-festival","tag-gent","tag-patrick-doyle","tag-pinewood-studios","tag-world-soundtrack-awards"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10775","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10775"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10775\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10799,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10775\/revisions\/10799"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10775"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10775"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10775"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}