Sue Lawley's castaway this week is the jockey Frankie Dettori. Over the past two decades he's won more than 2,000 races including most of the classics at home and abroad and has been Champion Jockey three times. The son of a famous Italian jockey, he was brought up in Italy but sent by his father to train at Newmarket when he was 14 years old - 18 months later he was winning races. In 1996 he won seven races out of seven in a single day at Ascot - a feat that has not been achieved before or sinc...
Jan 15, 2006•36 min
Sue Lawley's castaway this week is one of this country's leading character actors - Richard Griffiths. Most recently, he won three Best Actor awards for playing the English master in Alan Bennett's play 'The History Boys' but he has cross-generational appeal - perpetual adolescents revere his performance as gay Uncle Monty in the film Withnail and I while the younger generation know him as beastly Uncle Vernon from the Harry Potter films. He's had to work hard for his achievements: both his pare...
Jan 08, 2006•35 min
Sue Lawley's castaway is the athlete Dame Kelly Holmes. Kelly Holmes was the heroine of the Athens Olympics. She achieved her lifetime's ambition when, at the age of 34, she won gold medals in the 800 and 1500 metres. As a teenager she witnessed Sebastian Coe's Olympic success in 1984 and that was the inspiration behind her own career in athletics. Early on her trainers recognised she had the natural talent - and determination - to succeed. But her career has been blighted by injury - she bowed ...
Jan 01, 2006•35 min
Sue Lawley's castaway this week is the composer John Rutter. He is the most celebrated and successful composer of carols alive today and this Christmas his music will be heard in concerts and churches all over the world. He is drawn to the simplicity of Christmas carols and says he loves being able to compose 'a hummable tune'. Inspired and encouraged by his school education, he became Director of Music at Clare College, Cambridge, and then with a string of winning commissions already behind him...
Dec 25, 2005•37 min
Sue Lawley's castaway this week is the artist Maggi Hambling. Above all else, she is known as a painter of people. Over the past 30 years she has painted George Melly, Stephen Fry and Michael Gambon among many others. But in the early years, her subjects were not well known; instead they were characters she saw on the streets or in the bars of South London. People whose faces she would commit to memory so that she could draw them when she returned to her studio. She was the first artist to be gi...
Dec 18, 2005•37 min
Sue Lawley's castaway this week is the former Archbishop of York, David Hope. For a decade he was the second most important prelate in the Church of England but, earlier this year, he handed in his notice to return to life as a parish priest. As a young boy growing up in Wakefield, it was his cousin Muriel who would take him along to the town's cathedral to worship - he was captivated by the ritual and atmosphere of the place and 35 years later he returned as its Bishop. A traditionalist himself...
Dec 11, 2005•38 min
Sue Lawley's castaway this week is the actor Colin Firth. He created an iconic moment in British television history when, as Jane Austen's hero Mr Darcy, he emerged wet-shirted from his stately lake. To his surprise, he became a sex symbol, was dubbed the 'male Ursula Andress' and was voted Britain's Most Popular Actor in a BBC poll. He went on to send up the role on the big screen - as the ironically-named Mark Darcy, the brooding boyfriend of Bridget Jones. He always knew he wanted to act - fr...
Dec 04, 2005•36 min
Sue Lawley's guest this week is the veteran broadcaster Sir David Frost - the only British television presenter to have interviewed seven American presidents and six British Prime Ministers who has, over the past five decades, become a broadcasting institution. The presenter once known as a scourge of the Establishment has become something of an establishment figure himself, noted for his formidable contacts book, his star-studded parties, and for his gentle but revealing interviewing style. Bor...
Nov 27, 2005•35 min
Sue Lawley's castaway this week is the philosopher Mary Midgley. For the last 30 years Mary Midgley has been one of Britain's leading moral philosophers. She has been called "the most frightening philosopher in the country" as a result of her ideas and the acuity with which she defends them. Her work is chiefly concerned with the role of science in our lives; whether human nature exists, and if so, what it tells us about ourselves; the concept of wickedness; and the part that art and religion ha...
Nov 20, 2005•37 min
Sue Lawley's castaway this week is the soprano Renée Fleming. Renée Fleming is one of the greatest sopranos on the world's stages today. She has won critical acclaim for her interpretations of Mozart and Strauss and has made a series of operatic roles her own - including the Countess in Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro and Dvorak's ill-fated water-nymph Rusalka. However, she says her route into classical music was far from straightforward. She grew up in upstate New York, the daughter of two musi...
Nov 18, 2005•37 min
Sue Lawley's castaway this week is the broadcaster Chris Evans. He is one of the most creative and influential broadcasters of his generation. He has been hailed as the saviour of more than one radio station and made a name for himself on television too - first of all on The Big Breakfast, but also with his own formats, including Don't Forget Your Toothbrush and TFI Friday. He's won a clutch of awards and, by taking over Virgin radio, made himself a millionaire many times over. But he also gaine...
Nov 06, 2005•35 min
Sue Lawley's castaway this week is the politician and journalist Boris Johnson. He is one of the most popular and unpredictable MPs on the Conservative party benches and, under his editorship, the weekly magazine The Spectator sells more copies than ever before. After Eton and Oxford he made his name as a journalist working for the Daily Telegraph in Brussels. His incisive reports about the future of Europe caused a furore at home and abroad - he claims one of his articles changed the course of ...
Oct 30, 2005•38 min
Sue Lawley's castaway is one of the world's most successful fashion photographers, Mario Testino. Kate Moss, Catherine Zeta Jones and Madonna are among the women who have posed for him and, most famously, he became Princess Diana's favourite photographer. But his route into photography was circuitous. He began studying law and then economics in his native Peru but finished neither course. He had a short spell in America before arriving in London and he says he immediately loved it here. But the ...
Oct 23, 2005•34 min
Sue Lawley's castaway this week is the Children's Laureate Jacqueline Wilson. She's won just about every award going for children's fiction and, in a career spanning more than 30 years, has written more than 80 books. Even as a child she knew she wanted to write but, after an inauspicious time at school, she reluctantly trained to be a secretary instead. Then she began to pitch ideas for a new teen magazine, Jackie, her stories were bought and she quickly became a staff writer. But she was 50 be...
Oct 16, 2005•35 min
Sue Lawley's castaway this week is the film director Michael Winner. Michael Winner is a film-maker, restaurant critic and columnist who has been called Britain's 'Jester Laureate'. He has enjoyed a career spanning 30 years as a director, working with Orson Welles, Marlon Brando and Faye Dunaway as well as being the man behind the controversial Death Wish films starring Charles Bronson. Born in October 1935, the only son of Helen and George Winner, Michael was a shy and sometimes lonely child. E...
Oct 09, 2005•35 min
Sue Lawley's castaway this week is the BBC's Security Correspondent, Frank Gardner. For 10 years, he has been the BBC's expert on the Middle East - always authoritative and insightful, his analysis is based on first-hand knowledge of the region - after years spent studying Arabic and living and working in the Middle East. But in June last year the reporter became the news. He and his cameraman were attacked by gunmen while they filmed in Saudi Arabia. His colleague was killed, he was shot six ti...
Oct 02, 2005•35 min
Sue Lawley's castaway this week is the comedian Julian Clary. Julian Clary brought camp out of the closet and into the TV mainstream. In the late 1980s he burst onto television screens as The Joan Collins Fan Club, attracting a surprisingly broad audience with his extreme make-up and innuendo. The son of a policeman and a probation officer, Julian was born and brought up in Teddington and Surbiton, and as a child was deeply religious. He discovered his comic talent at Goldsmith's University in t...
Sep 25, 2005•34 min
Sue Lawley's castaway this week is the actress Brenda Blethyn. Brenda Blethyn is one of our most versatile and talented actresses with film credits that include Secrets and Lies, Little Voice, Saving Grace and, now, Pride and Prejudice and has won a host of awards for her film and stage work. But she fell into acting by default. Born Brenda Bottle, the youngest of nine children, she had no burning desire to take to the stage. She was working as a secretary for British Rail when a friend had to p...
Sep 18, 2005•34 min
Sue Lawley travels to Provence in the south of France to meet the illustrator and satirist Ronald Searle in his first recorded interview in more than 30 years. Ronald Searle is arguably Britain's foremost graphic satirist, though he has not lived in this country since 1961 and likes to comment that most people in Britain now think he's dead. He is best-known as the creator of St Trinian's, the horrible, suspender-wearing schoolgirls who devote more time to gambling, torture and arson than they d...
Jul 10, 2005•45 min
Sue Lawley's castaway this week is the author Paulo Coelho. Paulo Coelho is a publishing phenomenon - his books have sold more than 65 million copies and he counts Bill Clinton and Madonna among his readers. His most popular work and the one that earned him an international reputation is The Alchemist - a slender tale of a shepherd boy who risked everything to pursue his dreams. Coelho's detractors say his books are little more than self-help manuals - but his readers say their lives really have...
Jul 03, 2005•36 min
Sue Lawley's castaway this week is the broadcaster and comedian Ruby Wax. Her brass neck and immunity to embarrassment led to her pioneering a new brand of journalism which saw celebrities, film stars and even royalty open their hearts - and their sock drawers - to her. She rifled through Madonna's handbag and, with Ruby's encouragement, Imelda Marcos entertained the audience with a rendition of Feelings. Ruby grew up in Illinois, the only child of Jewish refugees who had fled Austria in 1939. H...
Jun 26, 2005•37 min
Sue Lawley's castaway this week is the author Alexander McCall Smith. Alexander McCall Smith was an established professor of law, an expert on ethics and a part time musician when, at the age of 50, he wrote the book that turned his life on its head. The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency became a word of mouth best-seller. He has now written a series of books featuring Mma Precious Ramotswe, a 'traditionally built' Botswanan woman who spends as much time dealing with the trials of everyday life as ...
Jun 19, 2005•35 min
Sue Lawley's castaway this week is Betsy Blair. She was an actress in Hollywood during its heyday and is best known for her role in Marty, the Oscar-winning tale of a shy butcher and lonely teacher who, against the advice of friends and family, fall in love. She was barely 16 when she began her career as a dancer and it was while she was on her way to an early audition that she met Gene Kelly. She was still a teenager and he was 12 years her senior, but they were married and the couple set up ho...
Jun 12, 2005•36 min
Sue Lawley's castaway this week is the cookery writer Nigel Slater. The British public have taken Slater and his recipes to their hearts and - crucially - their kitchens in recent years, encouraged by his philosophy that cooking need not be daunting. Don't cook to show off, he says, or because you feel you should - cook for enjoyment, and comfort. Choose good ingredients, cook them simply, and above all - relax. Slater's passion for food grew out of a lonely, neglected childhood in which his onl...
Jun 05, 2005•34 min
Sue Lawley's castaway this week is the peace campaigner Satish Kumar. He has dedicated his life to promoting a peaceful, measured way of living; walking thousands of miles to raise awareness for his cause. Satish was born in Rajasthan, India, in 1936. As a child he decided to follow a spiritual life and, until he was 18, Kumar lived the life of an itinerant Jain monk, travelling from village to village with no more possessions than a begging bowl and a change of clothes. Then in 1961, news from ...
May 29, 2005•35 min
Sue Lawley's castaway this week is the Government's Chief Scientific Adviser Prof Sir David King. He's had a testing four and a half years in the job - his tenure has coincided with an epidemic of foot and mouth disease, as well as a series of ongoing public health controversies played out in the media, such as the safety of the combined measles, mumps and rubella vaccine (MMR) and concerns over genetically-modified crops. He was born in South Africa and brought up in a middle-class suburb of Jo...
May 22, 2005•35 min
Sue Lawley's castaway this week is the actress Imelda Staunton. Imelda Staunton is one of the UK's most versatile and popular actresses. Through a career spanning nearly 30 years she has consistently refused to be typecast, moving effortlessly from playing brassy Miss Adelaide in Guys and Dolls, to the oppressed Sonya in Uncle Vanya, to a grieving mother in Peter's Friends. Her most recent film role was in Mike Leigh's production Vera Drake - she played the eponymous heroine, a 1950s housewife w...
May 15, 2005•34 min
Sue Lawley's castaway this week is the novelist Josephine Cox. Josephine Cox is one of Britain's most popular authors. She became an overnight publishing sensation at the relatively late age of 43 and has written 34 books which have sold 15 million copies worldwide. Now, her publishers print 'bestseller' on the cover of each new work, they're so confident of its success. But it was by no means a straightforward route to fame and fortune. She was born in Blackburn during World War II and grew up ...
May 08, 2005•34 min
Sue Lawley's castaway this week is the journalist Katharine Whitehorn. Katharine Whitehorn was the first journalist to write a column about her personal and domestic life and draw broader truths from her experiences - it's the kind of material that is now commonly found on women's pages and is satirised in Private Eye's Polly Filler - but in the 1950s and 1960s it was a new phenomenon and she was its brightest and wittiest exponent. She came to journalism through a circuitous route that took in ...
May 01, 2005•35 min
Pulp's singer and musician, Jarvis Cocker is castaway by Sue Lawley. Jarvis formed the band Pulp in the late 1970s and says that as a gawky, self-conscious teenager he felt pop music did not properly inform him about the disappointments and miseries of growing up - and he was determined to write songs that included "the messy bits and the awkward, fumbling bits". He had to wait more than a decade to find success - but Pulp went on to become one of the most popular bands of the 1990s, with hits i...
Apr 24, 2005•34 min
