Sue Lawley's castaway this week is the actor Sir Ian McKellen. Ian grew up in Lancashire attending Wigan Grammar school and then Bolton School where he was Head Boy. His first trip to the theatre was as a three year old when he went to see Peter Pan at Manchester Opera House. At seven, a treasured Christmas present was a fold-away Victorian theatre from Pollocks Toy Theatres. Ian's older sister Jean introduced him to Shakespeare - taking him to see Twelfth Night at Wigan's Little Theatre. His fi...
Feb 09, 2003•36 min
Sue Lawley's castaway this week is the comedian and star of The Fast Show, Paul Whitehouse. Born in the Rhonda Valley in Wales, Paul and his family soon moved to Enfield where he grew up. Paul was never particularly ambitious, but he was bright and got a place at University, although he dropped out in his first year. He went on to work as a plasterer and was quite content, enjoying a bit of humorous banter in the pub with his friends who included Harry Enfield and Charlie Higson. Harry was the f...
Feb 02, 2003•35 min
Sue Lawley's castaway this week is the theatre director Trevor Nunn. At the age of five Trevor had decided, to the great surprise of his parents, that he wanted to be an actor. He won his first part at the age of 13 when a local company needed a child actor. But his plans to act fell by the wayside when he realised there was such a job as directing after he directed a school revue at age 16, a role he took initially because he "had the loudest voice". After winning a scholarship to attend Cambri...
Jan 26, 2003•38 min
Sue Lawley's castaway this week is the Nobel Prize-winning scientist Professor Baruch Blumberg. Barry Blumberg was born in Brooklyn, New York in the 1920s, just before the economic depression in 1929. As a young boy he was particularly interested in science, and when his family moved to Queens he turned the basement of his parents house into a laboratory. At age 17, during the Second World War, he was enlisted into the Navy. They sent him to do an accelerated two year physics degree before he wa...
Jan 19, 2003•35 min
Sue Lawley's castaway this week is Gillian Anderson, best known for her role as Dana Scully in The X Files. Gillian was born in Chicago, Illinois. When she was two, she moved with her parents to London. At 11, the family moved to Grand Rapids, Michigan which she found deathly dull in comparison to the big city life of London. Gillian began acting in community theatre productions while in high school and decided to study drama at the Goodman Theater School at Chicago's DePaul University. After sh...
Jan 12, 2003•34 min
George Foreman was born in Texas into a large but poor family. His earliest memories are of being hungry. He found school difficult and felt he was written off because of his scruffy clothes. He had a short temper and would often get into fights as a child, sometimes beating people up for no reason. Soon he discovered that mugging was an easy way to get funds and terrorised his neighbourhood, although he never used knives - just his fists. Heading nowhere fast, George was saved by The Job Corps,...
Jan 05, 2003•34 min
Patricia Daniels was born in 1956 in Miami, Florida. After her parents divorced she moved with her mother and two brothers to Montreat, North Carolina. Her mother suffered from depression and sought help from the Reverend Billy Graham. The reverend's wife, Ruth Bell Graham, became Patricia's friend and mentor and encouraged her to write. She particularly loved telling ghost stories, and would scare the children in her neighbourhood at Halloween. Patricia majored in English at Davidson, a private...
Dec 29, 2002•35 min
Rowan Williams grew up in Swansea and Cardiff. He enjoyed reading, being outdoors and acting in school plays. He remembers attending church every day in Holy week, getting involved cleaning out the store rooms and making a bonfire of the rubbish. In his later teenage years he was inspired by the excellent choir, youth activities and Canon Eddie Hughes, vicar of All Saints, Oystermouth. Rowan went to Cambridge to study theology and for a time he was torn between Roman Catholicism and Anglicanism....
Dec 22, 2002•37 min
Sinead Cusack was born in Ireland into a acting dynasty. Her first ambition, whilst at convent school, was to be a saint. But her behaviour didn't match her early aspiration: as a teenager she was nearly expelled from school for dramatising the Profumo affair for the headmistress's feast day. Her first professional part was at the age of eleven when her father, the actor Cyril Cusack, cast her in an adaptation of Kafka's The Trial at the Olympia Theatre in Dublin. She played a deaf mute - she sa...
Dec 15, 2002•35 min
Sue Lawley's castaway is dub poet Linton Kwesi Johnson. Linton Kwesi Johnson was born in 1950s rural Jamaica. He lived in a farming community and looked after the animals, helping with the sugar harvest and fetching firewood. He lived with his grandmother after his parents separated, loving being the man of the house. She would entertain the young Linton, who she called "me husband", with folk songs, stories and ghost stories. In 1963, when he was eleven years old, Linton came to live in England...
Dec 08, 2002•35 min
John Malkovich makes his film directorial debut this year with The Dancer Upstairs. He's best known for his laconic sophistication in films such as Dangerous Liaisons, In the Line of Fire and The Man in the Iron Mask. He was celebrated in 1999's Being John Malkovich, in which he played himself. Malkovich was born in rural America, where his family ran the local newspaper. He attended Illinois State University but soon changed his major from environmental studies to drama. He and two friends form...
Dec 01, 2002•34 min
Described by Lord Tebbit as "a remarkably normal family man with children", Iain has just completed twelve months as Leader of the Conservative Party - he was the first Leader to be elected by a ballot of the Party's membership. Iain married Betsy in 1982 and they have two sons and two daughters. [Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs] Favourite track: The Benedictus (from Requiem) by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Book: The Alexandria Quartet by Law...
Nov 24, 2002•35 min
Christopher Ondaatje was born in the British colony of Ceylon and educated at Blundell's School in Tiverton, Devon. He moved to Canada and in 1964 was a member of the Canadian Olympic Bobsled team. He is a retired businessman with a taste for adventure, philanthropy and cricket (he is a patron of Somerset County Cricket Club). He is a member of the exclusive club of Labour's 'million plus' donors and his philanthropy does not stop there - he has also given over a million pounds to the Royal Geog...
Nov 17, 2002•35 min
Marguerite Wolff has dedicated her life to performing all around the world. Sir Arthur Bliss composed for her and she studied under Louis Kentner. Marguerite was born into a musical family in London in the 1920s. Her mother began teaching her the piano and would sit and practice with her daily. Soon she was getting up at six in the morning to practice, and continuing on her return from school. Her first public performance was in the Wigmore Hall when she was ten years-old, after she won a compet...
Nov 15, 2002•37 min
Robin Cook was born in Larnarkshire, east of Glasgow; an only child whose father was a science teacher. In his teens the family moved to Edinburgh so that his father could take up a headmaster job and Robin attended the same school. At school his favourite pursuits were the debating society and drama and he had an early interest in politics. Whilst his school friends were poring over the New Musical Express, Robin was reading the New Statesman. Friends recall he always wore two badges on his bla...
Nov 03, 2002•36 min
P D James was born in Oxford, later moving to Ludlow on the Welsh Borders where she experienced a childhood which she says had more in common with a Victorian childhood than anything today. She was a well-behaved, quiet child who entertained herself and her siblings by telling and writing stories. Phyllis attended an old-fashioned grammar school where she enjoyed English lessons. She says "I knew I was going to write books". Because of financial pressures at home, she had to leave school at sixt...
Oct 27, 2002•36 min
Carl Djerassi was born in Vienna to an Austrian mother and Bulgarian father. Both parents were involved in the medical profession and, growing up surrounded by medical paraphernalia, he assumed that he would become a doctor. For the first four years of his schooling in Austria, he attended a girls' school as the boys school was full. He says "women are much more important than men in my life. I mean, I enjoyed it, I'm not complaining at all!" He didn't start studying science until his mid-teens ...
Oct 20, 2002•36 min
Paul Gambaccini was born in New York City in 1949 and revelled growing up to the sounds of the 1960s. He loved listening to the radio and chose to go to Dartmouth College in preference to Harvard or Yale because it had a student-run commercial college radio station. He soon became a news reporter, DJ and eventually manager. Paul came to England to study PPE at Oxford University and, although he was despondent when the local radio station wouldn't give him a job, his luck changed following his gr...
Oct 13, 2002•34 min
Philip Pullman is the author of the celebrated His Dark Materials trilogy: Northern Lights, The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass. He was born in Norwich and spent his early years travelling all over the world with his father, who was in the RAF, and his mother and brother. Whilst in Australia he devoured comic book stories, which made a big contrast to the traditional stories his clergyman grandfather would tell him on return trips to Norwich. Philip planned to be a writer from the age of six...
Oct 06, 2002•37 min
Dame Alicia Markova was born Lilian Alice Marks in December 1910, in a two-bedroom flat in Finsbury Park, London. She began ballet classes because she was flat footed and knock kneed. Her natural talent, when she was ten, was spotted by Diaghilev, the Russian artistic impresario who founded the Ballets Russes and brought the contemporary arts of Russia to Europe. Dame Alicia joined Diaghilev's company, which was based in Monte Carlo, in 1925, a month after her 14th birthday. Diaghilev changed he...
Sep 29, 2002•44 min
Timothy Spall grew up in Battersea, South London. He found school pretty uninspiring and left with art as his only qualification. However, when he played the part of the Cowardly Lion in the school production of The Wizard of Oz, aged 16, he felt he had found his niche. He says "it had a good big audience and they just laughed, and when I came out to do my bow they gave me a big cheer. Something went off in my head then." He had a natural talent, and soon found a place at RADA. Within a year he ...
Sep 22, 2002•34 min
Brian May spent his childhood in Feltham near London and he learnt his first chords on his father's ukelele banjo. He soon progressed to the guitar, which he started learning when he was eight. He perfected his technique by buying records and copying the trickiest guitar parts. Although Brian's dream was to be a guitarist, it didn't seem like a reality so, encouraged by his parents, he went to London University's Imperial College to study physics. Whilst there he continued playing in bands with ...
Sep 15, 2002•37 min
Alan Titchmarsh was drawn to gardening from an early age in Ilkley, Yorkshire, making his first polythene greenhouse at the age of twelve and deciding he was going to be a gardener when he grew up. He left school at fifteen and became an apprentice gardener in the Parks Department of Ilkley Urban District Council, going on to horticultural college at the age of 18. His interest in English literature and writing prompted him to apply for a job as assistant editor of gardening books at Hamlyn Publ...
Jul 07, 2002•37 min
After Minette Walters' father died of injuries sustained in World War II she won a scholarship to Godolphin School, and eventually became Head Girl. From a young age she shunned girls' story books, preferring the more gripping Biggles and later, Agatha Christie. Her ambition was to be a writer. She says, "I just adored the whole thing of escapism into somebody else's world. When you're a writer and you are creating a world - you can only relate to one reader at a time, so it's: how do you persua...
Jun 30, 2002•37 min
Elizabeth Harman was born in London in 1906. Her parents were both doctors, her mother was the niece of Joseph Chamberlain and cousin of Neville Chamberlain, the future Prime Minister. She was one of only a few girls at that time to attend Oxford University. Joining the social set that included John Betjemen, Evelyn Waugh and Maurice Bowra, she became one of the first female Isis idols and was proposed to numerous times before she accepted Frank Pakenham, who was later to succeed to the Longford...
Jun 23, 2002•38 min
Sue Lawley's castaway is writer Jan Morris.
Jun 16, 2002•37 min
Leonard Rosoman's career saw him travel the world as an Official War Artist in the Second World War. He is also a member of the Royal Academy, an illustrator and teacher. The young Leonard dodged the family business by getting a scholarship to the Edward VII School of Art in Durham and went on to paint and teach. When war broke out Leonard was drafted into the Auxiliary Fire Service in London but he didn't stop painting, and he used his experiences to create some of his finest work. This drew hi...
Jun 09, 2002•36 min
Sue Johnston has rarely been out of work since she made her name in Brookside. Her versatility is clear, with credits including such varied programmes as acclaimed drama Goodbye Cruel World; the 1950s feel-good nostalgia series Sex, Chips and Rock 'n' Roll; cult comedy The Royle Family and, most recently, psychological thriller Waking the Dead. Her early career was with the Pilkington Glass Factory, where she got a job in the pensions department specifically so she could join their amateur drama...
May 26, 2002•34 min
Suggs made his name as front man of 80s pop phenomenon Madness and impressed a whole generation with his unique style of singing, silly dancing and fondness for making the mundane the subject of his songs, such as Baggy Trousers, inspired by memories of school. Although his cockney accent is part of his singing style, he was actually born in Hastings and moved to London as a child. His singer mother was perhaps a subconscious inspiration, but Suggs didn't have any particular ambitions in his tee...
May 19, 2002•34 min
Sir Aaron Klug grew up in Durban, South Africa on the edge of the Bush, which provided him with enough snakes and monkeys to satisfy his curiosity. A bright child, he read anything that was available and enjoyed an idyllic childhood. He started studying medicine at university level in Johannesburg at the age of fifteen, but soon switched to chemistry, physics and mathematics, which provided more stimulus for his enquiring mind. He began to research at Cape Town University and later Cambridge, wh...
May 12, 2002•35 min
