Kirsty Young's castaway is the royal photographer Arthur Edwards. He is a Fleet Street legend and, for more than thirty years, has captured the most memorable moments of the House of Windsor - from the first tentative pictures of a teenage Lady Diana Spencer to the balcony kiss at the marriage of Prince William and Kate Middleton. He's travelled the world, met the Pope and seen inside the Oval Office and the Kremlin - it's a life far removed from his early life in the East End of London where mo...
Sep 25, 2011•37 min
Kirsty Young's castaway is the actor Martin Clunes. He became a household name in the 1990s in the comedy "Men Behaving Badly" and, in the years since, has performed at The National Theatre, presented a number of natural history documentaries and become the gruff GP in the comedy drama "Doc Martin." His prominent ears are among his trademarks and he reveals that early in his career he turned down an opportunity to have them pinned back. He said: "I just didn't fancy it - maybe I hadn't noticed t...
Sep 18, 2011•35 min
Kirsty Young's castaway is the broadcaster and writer Danny Baker. He is a Sony Gold award winning broadcaster with one of the most recognisable voices on our airwaves and his numerous radio and TV shows have brought him legions of fans. As a writer, he has put words in the mouths of Jeremy Clarkson, Ricky Gervais, Chris Evans and even the legendary George Burns. Despite the successes, he says he's never plotted his next career move: "No plan - certainly no plan - you've only got to look at the ...
Jul 31, 2011•36 min
Kirsty Young's castaway is the businesswoman Heather Rabbatts. Born in Jamaica and raised in Britain, her early years were unpromising and she left school with just a few O levels. But after evening classes, she studied law and became a barrister before making her name as the youngest council chief in the country. She's at home in the toughest business environments - from Millwall Football Club to the Royal Opera House - and says: "I definitely like being in charge and I've always felt that I ca...
Jul 24, 2011•36 min
Michael McIntyre interviewed by Kirsty Young for Desert Island Discs. In less than five years he's gone from being an unknown stand-up with debts of more than £30,000 to become one of the most successful comedians in the business - with awards, chart topping DVDs and sell-out arena shows under his belt. He says: "I was on the circuit for years, I did get more and more in debt - it really did drag on and I just couldn't get a break. But when my chance came, I'd envisaged it so many times, I wasn'...
Jul 17, 2011•36 min
Kirsty Young's castaway is the crossword compiler John Graham. Now aged 90, he works under the name Araucaria and, for more than fifty years, has infuriated, intrigued and entertained with fiendish clues and mind-twisting anagrams. Like his father and grandfather he became a vicar but, when divorce forced him to leave the church, crosswords provided an unlikely source of revenue. Of the skills needed to dream up cryptic clues, he says: "So much of it is something that goes on unconsciously. You ...
Jul 10, 2011•37 min
Kirsty Young's castaway is the actor and broadcaster Tony Robinson. His Baldrick to Rowan Atkinson's Blackadder turned idiocy into an art form and the series went on to become one of our best-loved comedies. The role changed his life but, he says, when he first saw the script he didn't think much of it: "It was only about eight lines of dialogue and none of them were funny - but it was with these incredible people. On the one hand, I thought what a lousy part and on the other hand I thought, I'd...
Jul 03, 2011•36 min
Kirsty Young's castaway is the actress Dame Harriet Walter. She has been a stalwart of the stage for more than three decades - winning great acclaim for her work with the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre. Performing ran in the family - her uncle is the actor Christopher Lee and she remembers how, as a child, he would make her shriek by putting on his famous 'Mummy' walk to scare her. She turned down a place at Oxford because she knew she wanted to act - only to find that the dr...
Jun 26, 2011•41 min
Kirsty Young's castaway is the international dance judge, Len Goodman. He became a star of Strictly Come Dancing and the US show Dancing with the Stars, after a forty year career as a ballroom dancer and judge. Born in London's east end, as a kid he was a barrow-boy, selling fruit and veg on his grandfather's stall. He went on to work on the docks as a welder. But come Saturday night he would don his best threads and head for the Embassy ballroom in Welling. He was in his sixties when he found i...
Jun 19, 2011•36 min
Kirsty Young's castaway is the writer Andrea Levy. Born in London to Jamaican parents, she has spent much of her career describing the experiences of Caribbean immigrants and cementing the role they have played in British life. Her books have found both a large and appreciative audience as well as critical success - Small Island was named Whitbread Book of the Year, while Long Song, was shortlisted for the Man-Booker Prize. Her achievements are all the more extraordinary because she says she did...
Jun 12, 2011•37 min
Kirsty Young's castaway is the singer Alfie Boe. He is one of our most popular tenors and, highly unusually, is a sell-out success in both opera houses and musical theatre. The youngest of nine children, he left school to work as a mechanic - before being plucked off the shop-floor for stardom. However, while he's at home on the stage, you won't necessarily find him in the stalls: "I like good singers, I don't necessarily like one genre of music, I just like good singers, good voices and good so...
Jun 05, 2011•36 min
Kirsty Young's castaway is the musician Roger Waters. As one of the founding members of the band Pink Floyd, he has seen huge critical and commercial success. But in 1985 he walked away from the group and years of acrimony followed. They were reunited for one final performance, twenty years later, for Live 8. It was a moment many of their fans thought they would not live to see and it was, he says, highly emotional. "We did a run through on the Friday night and it was remarkable, there were abou...
May 29, 2011•38 min
Kirsty Young's castaway is the singer Debbie Harry. Her group Blondie started out in seedy New York bars and went on to achieve international success - selling tens of millions of albums along the way. She was ultra cool - a striking beauty with platinum hair and a sneer. Now aged 65, her trademark look continues to serve her well, she says: "As far as ageing goes it's rough - I try my best - I'm healthy and I exercise like a fiend. I'm glad that I've had all the radical experiences in my life -...
May 22, 2011•37 min
Kirsty Young's castaway is the actor, director and playwright, Kwame Kwei-Armah. His creative output spans both high art and popular culture. He became a household name starring in BBC One's Casualty, but at the same time he was pursuing a career in writing and his award-winning plays have been staged at the National Theatre. He's just finished a stint as the artistic director of The World Festival of Black Arts in Senegal and his next posting is to the US, where he's taking over a theatre in Ba...
May 15, 2011•36 min
Kirsty Young's castaway is the doyenne of bohemian living, Molly Parkin. She left the Welsh valleys to train as a fine artist in London and was a successful painter then teacher before becoming a fashion writer and novelist. She is as well known, though, for her lifestyle as her work. She adopted a hedonistic approach to life - smoking and drinking through the night and picking up numerous lovers along the way. Now aged 79 she prefers to live alone and says she has found a calmer way of living. ...
May 08, 2011•35 min
Kirsty Young's castaway is the President of the Royal Society of Chemistry, Professor David Phillips. His love of science has taken him on an extraordinary journey. At the height of the Cold War, he swapped a post in America for a place at the Academy of Sciences in Moscow, where he partied with the Bolshoi and was interrogated by the KGB. He is also Emeritus Professor of Chemistry at Imperial College, but, despite his eminence, he admits his students had a 'professor button' fitted onto their h...
May 01, 2011•39 min
Kirsty Young's castaway is the designer Cath Kidston. Cheerful and practical, her products nod towards the 1950s. She began with ironing board covers but these days you can listen to a radio decorated with one of her designs, pitch one of her tents or decorate the children's bedroom with her cowboy wallpaper. In her own room as a child she used to play at keeping shop. These days her business has a turnover of more than £50 million. "I really felt, from very, very early on, I was onto something ...
Apr 24, 2011•35 min
Kirsty Young's castaway is the pioneering fashion journalist Felicity Green. As hem-lines headed north in the early 60s she was hitting her stride in Fleet Street. She was the first woman on the board of a national paper and, as society changed, she kept right up with it. She introduced readers to Mary Quant, Biba and Twiggy and, on one memorable occasion, gave Harold Wilson's wife Mary a home perm. Now in her mid-80s she is still mentoring students at St Martin's College and says "I have never ...
Apr 17, 2011•36 min
Kirsty Young's castaway is the animator and director Terry Gilliam. He first planted his foot-print on our cultural landscape more than thirty years ago - back then, it was a huge, animated foot which squashed everything beneath it and became one of the defining images of Monty Python's Flying Circus. In the years since, his film credits have included Brazil, Twelve Monkeys and The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus. Now aged 70, he's directing his first opera. He says: "I've always liked the extremes,...
Apr 10, 2011•36 min
Kirsty Young's castaway is the actor Martin Sheen. In recent years he has won great acclaim and a Golden Globe for playing the leader of the free world in the hugely successful political drama The West Wing. He's made more than a 100 movies, including Apocalypse Now, Badlands and The Departed. For him, work is often a family affair, in Wall Street he acted alongside his son Charlie Sheen and in his latest movie, The Way he was directed by another of his children - Emilio Estevez. But away from t...
Apr 03, 2011•38 min
Kirsty Young's castaway is the former Chief Inspector of Prisons, Dame Anne Owers. A long-time human rights campaigner, she's spent years immersing herself in the problems of people on the margins of society. During the time she was Chief Inspector, the prison population expanded hugely. "The thing that saddened me greatly is that our prisons became better places but they also became places that soaked up a lot of money and into which we put a lot of people. My view is a lot of that money could ...
Feb 27, 2011•39 min
Kirsty Young's castaway is the former England rugby captain Lawrence Dallaglio. He was capped 85 times for England, played in three Lions tours and led his club side, Wasps, to the top of the premiership five times. Yet, he says, he only started playing rugby seriously after the death of his sister, Francesca. She died in the Marchioness disaster on the Thames when he was 16 and her death, he says, blew his world apart. "Losing my sister was devastating. It made me more determined to do somethin...
Feb 20, 2011•36 min
Immediately recognisable as one of Britain's most versatile actresses she's worked in television, theatre and films over the past four decades. While she's taken roles at the Royal Shakespeare Company and in big budget films, it's her instinct for TV comedy - working alongside Victoria Wood and Julie Walters - that has made her a household name. Audiences loved the spoof soap opera Acorn Antiques and she won an Olivier Award for her role in the stage production. In the early days, though, she re...
Feb 13, 2011•38 min
Kirsty Young's castaway is the writer Howard Jacobson. After many years of swiping at literary prizes, last October he walked off with the biggest one going, the Man Booker. His book, The Finkler Question, was a study of what it meant to be Jewish in England. It's a subject that has been very near to Howard Jacobson's heart. He says: "My sense of myself has always meant being on the outside. On the outside as a Jew, looking into gentile England, but also on the outside of Jewishness too. I have ...
Feb 06, 2011•38 min
Kirsty Young's castaway is the journalist Jon Snow. For the past 21 years he's been the face of Channel Four's nightly bulletins where, along with his patent enthusiasm and vigour for dissecting the day's stories, he's noted for his natty line in neckties and socks. He's a highly experienced foreign correspondent too - he's reported from Haiti, New Orleans, Washington and East Africa among many locations. However it was in El Salvador that he found his name on the list of people who might be tar...
Jan 30, 2011•37 min
Kirsty Young's castaway is the veteran Coronation Street actress Betty Driver. For more than forty years she's been pulling pints and dishing up her hot-pot in the Rovers Return. But her career in showbusiness started decades before she took up residence on Britain's most famous street. She was a child when her mother put her on the stage and she toured the country with an act that showcased her stunning singing voice - it brought success but not happiness. "I did it for over twenty years," she ...
Jan 23, 2011•38 min
Kirsty Young's castaway is the First Minister of Scotland, Alex Salmond. He has spent his political life campaigning for Scottish independence. As a schoolboy he stood in classroom elections - back then, he won on the canny ticket of half-days for all and replacing the school milk with ice-cream. He was a child when he realised he had a knack for public performance - he was a boy soprano who seemed to have a promising career ahead of him. He says: "If you can sing in front of thousands of people...
Jan 16, 2011•36 min
Kirsty Young's castaway is Gyles Brandreth. A former Conservative MP, he is also a some-time actor, broadcaster and prolific writer who has authored biographies, diaries, stage plays and mysteries. Pursuing a political career has been, he says, the over-riding ambition of his life. However the happiest moment came not from politics, but when he was performing in a West End show that he had written himself. These days, his ambitions are to return to the stage and the role he wants to take on is C...
Jan 09, 2011•36 min
Kirsty Young's castaway is the veteran RAF pilot Tony Iveson. Aged 21, he survived being shot down in his Spitfire over the North Sea during his first taste of combat in the Battle of Britain. Unusually for a fighter pilot, he then went on to join Bomber Command and the famous Dambusters squadron, sinking the German battleship The Tirpitz and winning a Distinguished Flying Cross. Aged 89 he returned to the skies, becoming the oldest man to fly a Lancaster bomber: "Well, I got out of that aeropla...
Jan 02, 2011•39 min
