All Creatures Great and Small star Samuel West and composer Alexandra Harwood play Ding Dong! Merrily on High at The World of James Herriot 25th anniversary gala dinner in October, 2024. Video copyright: Linda Renfrew for ACGAS Christmas preview story by Stephanie Smith
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00:00At the end of the second series, for the Christmas episode, Patricia Hodge, as Mrs. Dunfrey and I, played a four-handed version of Ding Dong Merrily on High.
00:11Now, I know it's October, but you're going to hear it now, mostly because when the beautiful Proctor people gave me a beautifully period version of this piece,
00:24it was sort of one-fingered, and I said to them, I'm not a good pianist, but I'm not quite this bad.
00:31And I said to Alex, can you write something for somebody who's sort of grade of four or five that we could learn in two days?
00:39And she did, within about 24 hours. We had 24 hours to practice it. Patricia Hodge played the top bit, I played a bit I'm about to play, with just as many mistakes.
00:51It was the first time I played off-camera. Anyway, it was just a beautiful response to an actor in need, so I'm very pleased that we're going to do it again.