The castaway in Desert Island Discs this week is Margaret Tebbit. She'll be talking to Sue Lawley about the night 11 years ago when the IRA detonated a huge bomb at the Grand Hotel in Brighton, where she was staying with her husband for the Tory Party Conference. Since that dreadful night, she has been severely paralysed, and she'll be describing the effect on her life: the dreams she has in which she no longer has to use a wheelchair, the new friends she's made and the old ones who turned out n...
Dec 31, 1995•37 min
The castaway in Desert Island Discs this week is an entertainer who has managed to captivate a generation. Petula Clark will be talking to Sue Lawley about how the British still perceive her as 'our pet' since her early singing days when she was chosen to sing in Trafalgar Square on VE night. Now, arguably the biggest female recording star Britain has ever produced, she is about to take on the lead role in Sunset Boulevard in the West End. In between, hits like The Little Shoemaker, Down Town an...
Dec 24, 1995•36 min
The castaway this week in Desert Island Discs is the singer and actress Barbara Dickson. She'll be talking to Sue Lawley about how she progressed from being the daughter of a Rothsyth docker to the lead role in Willy Russell's play John, Paul, Ringo and Bert, and later to win an award for her performance in his play Blood Brothers. Along the way, her extraordinary singing voice brought her a string of hit singles, including I Know Him So Well, while recently her acting abilities landed her one o...
Dec 17, 1995•35 min
The castaway in Desert Island Discs this week is the actress Alison Steadman. She'll be talking to Sue Lawley about her role as the monstrous Beverly in the BBC's production of Abigail's Party 18 years ago, as well as her talent for improvisation which she has perfected with her director husband, Mike Leigh. She'll also be discussing how daunting she found it recently to take on the role of Mrs Bennett in the BBC's Pride and Prejudice. [Taken from the original programme material for this archive...
Dec 03, 1995•36 min
The castaway in Desert Island Discs this week is a musician who became famous for producing other people's music. George Martin will be talking to Sue Lawley about how he earned money to pay for piano lessons, was helped by a fairy godfather to study at the Guildhall School of Music and went on in 1962 to sign up and produce the group which changed the face of popular music. He'll be discussing his relationship with The Beatles and his extremely productive life since they disbanded 25 years ago....
Nov 19, 1995•37 min
The castaway in Desert Island Discs this week is the writer Umberto Eco. His best-selling novel The Name of the Rose propelled him from the relative obscurity of his post as Professor of Semiotics at Bologna University to worldwide fame at the age of 50. He'll be talking to Sue Lawley about how he deals with the demands of his celebrity status, his childhood in Mussolini's Italy and his other works - Foucault's Pendulum and The Island of the Day Before. [Taken from the original programme materia...
Nov 12, 1995•37 min
The castaway in Desert Island Discs this week is the Secretary of State for Education and Employment, Gillian Shephard. She'll be talking to Sue Lawley about the importance of her roots in rural Norfolk. Although she briefly left to go to Oxford, she was born and brought up in Norfolk and worked in local parliament there until her late 40s, when she entered Parliament to represent a Norfolk seat. She'll be discussing her own school days, and how they influence her perception of the quality of sc...
Nov 05, 1995•39 min
The castaway in Desert Island Discs this week is the novelist Elizabeth Jane Howard. In 1950, her first novel The Beautiful Visit was published. Now, some 45 years later and after many other books, she has just completed the concluding book of The Cazalet Chronicles. She'll be talking to Sue Lawley about the problems of combining writing and marriage; she abandoned her three marriages - her first husband, being the naturalist Peter Scott, and her last, the writer Kingsley Amis; and she'll be rum...
Oct 29, 1995•41 min
The castaway in Desert Island Discs this week is one of the country's most successful lyricists, Don Black. Songs like Born Free and Diamonds are Forever, and musicals like Sunset Boulevard, Billy and Aspects of Love have made him a rich man. But he'll be talking to Sue Lawley of his early memories of his poor but happy Jewish family in the East End of London and how an apprenticeship on the New Musical Express led him into the world of popular music. [Taken from the original programme material ...
Oct 22, 1995•35 min
The castaway in Desert Island Discs this week is the academic and author Richard Hoggart. Nearly 40 years ago, he wrote the hugely influential Uses of Literacy. In it, he argued that the working classes were being short changed - both by rampant consumerism and by the dross he felt was being churned out by the mass media. Cast well away from materialism and the media on the desert island, he'll be talking about how he now feels about his original thesis and about his own working-class background...
Oct 15, 1995•37 min
The castaway in Desert Island Discs this week is the Controller of BBC1, Alan Yentob. He'll be talking to Sue Lawley about his upbringing in Manchester and London, the Cathedral boarding school where he and his twin brother were the only two Jewish boys and his 27 years at the BBC. During that time he rose steadily through the ranks to become Head of Music and Arts, ending up as the only person to have run both BBC1 and BBC2. [Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition o...
Oct 08, 1995•36 min
The castaway in Desert Island Discs this week is the racehorse trainer Jenny Pitman. She'll be talking to Sue Lawley about the empathy she feels for the horses she trains and her relationship with their owners. She won the Grand National in 1983 with Corbiere, and she has twice trained the winner of the Cheltenham Gold Cup. In 1995 her charge, Royal Athlete, won the Grand National, crowning her spectacular success as a trainer. [Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition...
Oct 01, 1995•41 min
The castaway in Desert Island Discs this week is the advertising man, Maurice Saatchi. He and his brother Charles created what became the biggest advertising agency in the world. Saatchi & Saatchi masterminded the Conservative victory in 1979 with their slogan 'Labour isn't working'. He'll be telling Sue Lawley about the heady days of the 1980s - a red Ferrari would be delivered unannounced to the best names in the business, with the offer of a job with Saatchi & Saatchi. Then, last year...
Sep 24, 1995•37 min
The castaway in Desert Island Discs this week is a man who spans our century. Aged 91, Max Nicholson has enjoyed careers in conservation, politics, journalism and the Civil Service. But his great passion remains ornithology. As a tiny boy, his parents took him one rainy afternoon to see the stuffed birds in the Natural History Museum, and there his great obsession was born. He was a conservationist before anyone understood the idea of ecology. He's played major parts in the founding of the Natur...
Sep 17, 1995•41 min
Sue Lawley's castaway on Desert Island Discs this week is the celebrated American writer John Updike. His novels include Rabbit Run (and three Rabbit follow-ups), Couples and The Witches of Eastwick. He is both poet and historian, famous for charting the changes in post-war American society such as increasing marital breakdown and changing attitudes to death. He started his writing career by selling stories to the New Yorker magazine - something his mother had tried for years but had never succe...
Sep 10, 1995•37 min
The castaway in Desert Island Discs this week is the actress Wendy Richard, one of the best-known faces on British television. She'll be talking to Sue Lawley about a career which started with the Arthur Haines show in the 60s, and took her through a whole series of long-running television programmes - The Newcomers, Are You Being Served? and its sequel Grace and Favour. However, it was 10 years ago that she took the part which was to bring her her greatest popularity - Pauline Fowler in EastEnd...
Jul 09, 1995•37 min
The castaway in Desert Island Discs this week is Gerald Cavendish Grosvenor, the sixth Duke of Westminster. He'll be talking to Sue Lawley about the responsibilities and pleasures of being one of the country's richest men. Having enjoyed an idyllic childhood on the banks of Loch Ern in County Fermanagh, it was a rude shock to be transplanted to an English prep school at the age of seven. The comparatively early death of his father then meant that by the time he was just 19 he was managing one of...
Jul 02, 1995•36 min
The castaway in Desert Island Discs this week is clothes designer Jasper Conran. Son of Sir Terence Conran and Shirley Conran, he has art, design and business in his blood and was always determined to make his own way in the world of fashion without parental influence. He has said, "in a family like mine, if you're not successful, you drown". He'll be telling Sue Lawley about his difficult childhood of nannies and his public school where he was bullied for being overweight, all of which he overc...
Jun 25, 1995•35 min
The castaway in Desert Island Discs this week is one of the great pioneers of heart transplant surgery - Professor Sir Magdi Yacoub. He'll be talking to Sue Lawley about his dedication to his patients, whether heart transplants are now routinely successful and about some of the earlier controversies which his experimental surgery has attracted. He will also be describing his early ambitions to be a doctor, which were discouraged by his father, and how important music is to him. He often has it p...
Jun 18, 1995•37 min
The castaway in Desert Island Discs this week is one of the oldest and deepest voices in rock music - the legendary bluesman John Lee Hooker. The son of a preacher man, he was brought up in Clarksdale, Mississippi, and his first guitar was made from an old inner tube tied to the barn door. By the age of 14, he had his own guitar and ran away to Memphis with two dollars in his pocket for a life touring small blues clubs. With hits like Boom Boom, Dimples and Boogie Chillun, he has been one of the...
Jun 11, 1995•32 min
The castaway in Desert Island Discs this week is the actor Brian Blessed. He'll be talking to Sue Lawley about Z Cars - the series which first brought him to public prominence in the 1960s, about his friendship with the actress Katherine Hepburn and his obsession with climbing mountains - mountains like Everest and Kilimanjaro - when he isn't acting. [Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs] Favourite track: Rite of Spring The Adoration Of Earth...
Jun 04, 1995•37 min
The castaway in Desert Island Discs this week is Marianne Faithfull. Singer and actress, she was the original 1960s wild child. At the age of 17, when she was still a convent schoolgirl in Reading, she shot to fame with the hit single As Tears Go By; written for her by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. She was Mick Jagger's mistress, she hung out with Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix, she was young, beautiful and rich and she seemed to have it all. But the glamorous life of the pop star turned into a ni...
May 28, 1995•36 min
Sue Lawley's castaway in Desert Island Discs this week is Sir Bernard Ingham. For 11 years, one month and five days, almost from when she came to power to the day she left office, he stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Mrs Thatcher. A former card-carrying member of the Labour Party, he became her Chief Press Secretary, adviser and supporter. He was accused by the media of crossing the line between civil service impartiality and political support on that fateful day in Paris in November 1990, just 36...
May 21, 1995•37 min
The castaway in Desert Island Discs this week is one of America's most successful playwrights. Since he opened Come Blow Your Horn on Broadway in 1961, Neil Simon has written at least a play a year, and they include Barefoot in the Park, The Odd Couple, Plaza Suite, Lost in Yonkers, as well as the hit musicals Sweet Charity and They're Playing Our Song. He'll be telling Sue Lawley about his childhood in the Bronx, his days in the army, and how as one of New York's most famous literary sons, he n...
May 14, 1995•37 min
The castaway in Desert Island Discs this week is the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr George Carey. The son of a hospital porter, he'll be talking to Sue Lawley about his childhood in London during the war, his interrupted schooling which meant he left school at 15 with no qualifications and how when he decided he wanted to enter the church, he went on to acquire a clutch of 'O' and 'A' Levels in the space of a year. Never one to shirk a challenge, he'll also be describing his feelings when he was i...
May 07, 1995•36 min
The castaway in Desert Island Discs this week has a classic rags-to-riches story to relate. Born into a poor family in Coventry, record producer Pete Waterman is nowadays estimated to be worth at least 60 million pounds, and is the proud possessor of 10 Ferraris, 15 Jaguars and several houses and railway engines. He'll be telling Sue Lawley how, with no formal education - and still unable to do joined-up writing - he and his company wrote and produced enough hit records in the mid-1980s to have ...
Apr 30, 1995•36 min
The castaway choosing his eight desert island discs this week will also be relating a story of early triumph, 25 years of obscurity and a revival of fortunes at the age of 81 which has made him one of the country's most successful classical composers. He is George Lloyd, and he'll be talking to Sue Lawley about the shell-shock and bad luck which put paid to his early promise - his years growing carnations and mushrooms - and then, thanks to the late John Ogdon's intervention, his re-emergence to...
Apr 23, 1995•38 min
The castaway in Desert Island Discs this week is the actor Hugh Grant. The star of the enormously successful Four Weddings and a Funeral, he'll be talking to Sue Lawley about his life before he was propelled into international celebrity status. Now firmly established as a cinematic symbol of a certain type of Englishman, he had his first big break in the Merchant Ivory film Maurice, after stints in repertory at Nottingham, writing commercials and filming what he calls Europuddings in Spain, wher...
Apr 16, 1995•37 min
The castaway in Desert Island Discs this week is the country's most distinguished counter-tenor James Bowman. He'll be talking to Sue Lawley about how he uses his voice as an instrument, producing the unusually high falsetto sound which characterises counter-tenor parts. He'll also be describing his association with Benjamin Britten, who offered him his first part - as Oberon in Britten's opera A Midsummer Night's Dream. Britten went on to write parts for him in Death in Venice and The Journey o...
Apr 09, 1995•36 min
The castaway in Desert Island Discs this week is the novelist Nina Bawden. She'll be talking to Sue Lawley about the autobiographical aspects of both her adult books - such as Afternoon of a Good Woman and Circles of Deceit - and her children's books like Carrie's War and The Peppermint Pig. All contain tales with twists and turns from her own experience - evacuation during the war, her years as a magistrate and the tragic death of her schizophrenic son. She'll be talking to Sue Lawley about her...
Apr 02, 1995•41 min
