Desert Island Discs

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Ian Wright, former footballer and broadcaster Feb 16, 2020

Show notes

Ian Wright is a former professional footballer and now a football pundit on TV and radio. He began his career at Crystal Palace before moving to Arsenal where he became their highest goal scorer of all time, a record only surpassed eight years later by Thierry Henry.

Born to a Jamaican couple in south-east London, Ian grew up with his mother and step-father. His biological father had left the family when Ian was under two years old. Things at home were difficult and Ian spent as much time as possible outside playing football.

At his primary school a teacher, Mr Pigden, took him under his wing and Ian would later credit him with changing his life. He left his secondary school at the age of 14 to get a job. Although he took part in trials for many professional football clubs as a teenager, he was never selected. He continued to play for amateur sides. By the age of 21, he had three children to provide for, so when Crystal Palace came calling in 1985, he turned them down three times before accepting a two-week trial, followed by a three-month contract. His football career had finally begun.

After impressing as a forward at Palace, he was bought by Arsenal for a record fee in 1991. He was called up to the England squad the same year and would go on to collect 33 caps. He spent his last couple of years in professional football at a number of clubs around the country and in total, he played 581 league games, scoring 387 goals for seven clubs in England and Scotland. Since his retirement from football in 2000, he has had a career as a pundit on both TV and radio.

He has eight children and has been happily married to his second wife, Nancy, since 2011.

DISC ONE: The Marriage of Figaro: Duettino - Sull'aria by Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper Berlin, composed by Lorenzo Da Ponte and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart DISC TWO: Looking For You by Kirk Franklin DISC THREE: River Deep Mountain High by Ike and Tina Turner DISC FOUR: Redemption Song by Bob Marley & The Wailers DISC FIVE: Mysteries of the World by MSFB DISC SIX: Endlessly by Randy Crawford DISC SEVEN: Crown by Stormzy DISC EIGHT: Just Fine by Mary J Blige

BOOK CHOICE: The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime by Mark Haddon LUXURY ITEM: A seven iron golf club and golf balls CASTAWAY'S FAVOURITE: Endlessly by Randy Crawford

Presenter: Lauren Laverne Producer: Cathy Drysdale

Zoe Ball, broadcaster Feb 09, 2020

Show notes

Zoe Ball is a radio and television presenter. She became the first woman to present the BBC Radio 1 Breakfast Show in 1997, and then the first woman to present the Radio 2 Breakfast Show in 2019.

Zoe grew up in Buckinghamshire with her father – TV presenter Johnny Ball – and her stepmother. After working behind the scenes in TV as a runner and researcher, she first moved into the spotlight hosting children's programmes, including the very successful BBC Saturday morning show Live & Kicking, with Jamie Theakston. In the late 1990s, coinciding with her move to the Radio 1 Breakfast Show, she found herself described in the press as a 'ladette', enjoying the partying culture of the time. Further headlines followed her marriage to superstar DJ Norman Cook - Fatboy Slim - in 1999. She decided to leave Radio 1 in 2000, and her first child, Woody, was born later that year. She and Norman announced their separation in 2016.

Zoe was a contestant on Strictly Come Dancing, and has presented Strictly: It Takes Two since 2011. In 2018, she cycled 350 miles from Blackpool to Brighton as part of Sport Relief, and to raise awareness of mental health, after her partner Billy Yates took his own life. She began presenting the Radio 2 Breakfast Show just over a year ago.

She lives in Sussex with her two children, Woody and Nelly.

DISC ONE: Where Am I Going? by Barbra Streisand DISC TWO: Georgy Porgy (Disco Version) by Toto feat. Cheryl Lynn DISC THREE: Righteous by Ocean Wisdom feat. Rodney P & Roots Manuva DISC FOUR: Shoot You Down by The Stone Roses DISC FIVE: Love Having You Around by First Choice DISC SIX: Do I Love You (Indeed I Do) by Frank Wilson DISC SEVEN: Truth by Kamasi Washington DISC EIGHT: You Can't Always Get What You Want by The Rolling Stones

BOOK CHOICE: A dictionary LUXURY ITEM: A potting shed, gardening tools and seeds CASTAWAY'S FAVOURITE: Truth by Kamasi Washington

Presenter: Lauren Laverne Producer: Sarah Taylor

Sonita Alleyne, Master of Jesus College, Cambridge Feb 02, 2020

Show notes

Sonita Alleyne is the Master of Jesus College, Cambridge, the first woman to hold the post and - more significantly - the first black master of any Oxbridge college. In her previous career in the media, she was the co-founder and former CEO of the production company Somethin’ Else.

Born in Barbados, she came to England aged three and grew up in East London, the youngest of three children. She was an able reader by the time she started primary school, and her potential was spotted at her secondary school, where she was encouraged to apply to Cambridge.

She read philosophy at Fitzwilliam College and, after a brief and unfulfilling spell selling life insurance, she followed her passion for jazz by starting to write for music magazines. In 1989 she joined the radio station Jazz FM. When she was made redundant a couple of years later, she and two former Jazz FM colleagues set up a production company they called Somethin’ Else.

Sonita stepped down as CEO in 2009 to concentrate on other boardroom roles. She served on the BBC Trust for nearly five years, sits on the board of the London Legacy Development Corporation, and founded the Yes Programme to show primary school pupils their future career options. She is a fellow of the Radio Academy and a Fellow of the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts.

Sonita began her ten year tenure as Master of Jesus College in October 2019. She lives in Cambridge with her partner, the screenwriter James McCarthy, and their teenage son.

DISC ONE: I’ve Known Rivers by Gary Bartz & NTU Troop DISC TWO: Les Fleurs by Minnie Riperton DISC THREE: Key To The World by L J Reynolds DISC FOUR: Martha by Tom Waits DISC FIVE: Tennessee by Arrested Development DISC SIX: To Forgive But Not Forget by Outside DISC SEVEN: Last Train to Clarksville by Cassandra Wilson DISC EIGHT: Swing Low Sweet Chariot by Marvin “Hannibal” Peterson BOOK CHOICE: Coming Through Slaughter by Michael Ondaatje LUXURY ITEM:A genie in a lamp which would only work within the confines of the island CASTAWAY'S FAVOURITE:Les Fleurs by Minnie Riperton

Presenter: Lauren Laverne Producer: Cathy Drysdale

Anne Enright, writer Jan 26, 2020

Show notes

Anne Enright won the Booker Prize for her fourth novel, The Gathering, in 2007, and was appointed the inaugural Laureate for Irish Fiction in 2015. She has written seven novels, two collections of short stories and a book of essays about motherhood and her work has been widely translated.

Born in Dublin in 1962, Anne is the youngest of five children. She was a voracious reader from an early age, finishing every children's book at her local library. When she was 16, she won a scholarship to study at a school in Canada, and then returned to Ireland for a degree in English and Philosophy at Trinity College, Dublin. After taking an MA in Creative Writing at University of East Anglia, with teaching from Angela Carter and Malcolm Bradbury, she worked for six years as a TV producer for the Irish broadcaster RTE. When her TV work left her feeling burned out, she began her writing career in earnest. Her book of short stories, The Portable Virgin, won the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature in 1991, and she published her first novel, The Wig My Father Wore, in 1995. Her latest novel, The Actress, is published in February 2020.

She is also now a Professor at University College Dublin and teaches creative writing. She met her theatre director husband, Martin Murphy, at university and they have two children.

DISC ONE: Brahms Intermezzos: Op. 117, No.1 by Glenn Gould DISC TWO: Jersey Girl by Tom Waits DISC THREE: A Case Of You by Joni Mitchell DISC FOUR: Then You’ll Remember Me by Dé Danann DISC FIVE: The Man Comes Around by Johnny Cash DISC SIX: Hiawatha by Laurie Anderson DISC SEVEN: Tower of Song by Leonard Cohen DISC EIGHT: Soave sia il vento from Cosi fan Tutte, composed by Mozart, conducted by Karl Böhm, performed by Elizabeth Schwarzkopf, Walter Berry, Christa Ludwig and Philharmonia Orchestra.

BOOK CHOICE: 'In Search of Lost Time’ by Marcel Proust LUXURY ITEM: High thread-count cotton sheets CASTAWAY'S FAVOURITE: Soave sia il vento from Cosi fan Tutte, composed by Mozart

Presenter: Lauren Laverne Producer: Cathy Drysdale

Dame Sue Campbell, Director Women's Football at the FA Jan 19, 2020

Show notes

Dame Sue Campbell is the Director of Women’s Football at the Football Association. The women’s game has become increasingly popular recently and last year the England team - the Lionesses - made it to the World Cup semi-finals.

Born in 1948, just outside Nottingham, Sue was sporty from an early age, even changing schools to allow her to play football. She became a PE teacher in Manchester and realised how transformative sport could be, increasing self-esteem, motivation and self-belief.

In the mid-1980s, after learning about excellence in sport at Loughborough University and playing netball for England as well as dabbling in the pentathlon, Sue became deputy chief executive (and a year later chief executive) of the National Coaching Foundation, which provided education for coaches at both ends of the spectrum, from parent volunteers to elite coaches.

Ten years later, in 1995, she co-founded the Youth Sport Trust to set up a sports activity programme for every primary school in the country. It was hugely successful: in 2003 only 23% of school children were getting two hours of PE a week. By 2008, this figure had risen to 95%. In 2010, the coalition government cut their funding.

By this time, back at the elite end of the sporting spectrum, Sue was also in charge of UK Sport, where she presided over Team GB's biggest Olympic medal haul in living memory, at the London 2012 games. In 2016, she took her current job as head of Women’s Football at the FA. She has also been a cross-bench peer in the House of Lords since 2008.

BOOK CHOICE: The Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela LUXURY ITEM: A photo album CASTAWAY'S FAVOURITE: Music Of My Heart by Gloria Estefan And *N SYNC

Presenter: Lauren Laverne Producer: Cathy Drysdale

Michael Lewis, writer Jan 12, 2020

Show notes

Michael Lewis is a best-selling non-fiction writer and journalist. He initially worked for an investment bank, and his experiences of Wall Street excess in the 1980s informed his acclaimed first book, Liar’s Poker. Three of his later books – Moneyball, The Blind Side and The Big Short – have been adapted into Hollywood feature films.

He was born in New Orleans in 1960, where his father was fond of quoting the family motto: 'Do as little as possible, and that unwillingly, for it is better to receive a light reprimand than perform an arduous task.' After studying at Princeton and the LSE, he joined an American bank in London, and wrote articles about the quirks of the industry under a pseudonym. In spite of his father’s opposition, he decided to quit his highly-paid job to become a writer.

In Moneyball, he examined how a struggling baseball team used intensive data analysis to find undervalued players overlooked by richer clubs. The Big Short focused on the sub-prime mortgage crisis, and his most recent book, The Fifth Risk, is about the Trump administration’s approach to government.

Michael lives in California with his wife, Tabitha Soren, and their three children.

BOOK CHOICE: A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole LUXURY ITEM: A photo album CASTAWAY'S FAVOURITE: Old Days by Chicago

Presenter: Lauren Laverne Producer: Sarah Taylor

Rupert Everett, actor Jan 09, 2020

Show notes

Rupert Everett is an actor, writer and director whose breakthrough came in 1981 when he was cast as a gay schoolboy in Another Country, Julian Mitchell's play and subsequent film.

Rupert later starred in Dance with a Stranger before making a splash in Hollywood playing Julia Roberts's gay confidante in My Best Friend's Wedding. But his movie career took a dive after The Next Best Thing - in which he played the gay father of Madonna's baby - flopped. After a period out of the limelight he turned his attention to writing and won great acclaim for his witty and illuminating memoirs about his life in showbusiness.

In 2018 Rupert starred in his directorial debut, The Happy Prince - a film about Oscar Wilde's final years in exile. The film was a decade-long labour of love for Rupert from writing the screenplay to securing the funding and persuading his friends Colin Firth and Emily Watson to join the cast. The film was well-received, with one critic calling it a 'deeply felt, tremendously acted tribute to courage'.

Later this year Rupert is starring in the Broadway revival of Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

BOOK CHOICE: Travels with my Aunt by Graham Greene LUXURY ITEM: Vegetables CASTAWAY'S FAVOURITE: Being Boring by Pet Shop Boys Presenter: Lauren Laverne Producer: Paula McGinley

Stephen Merchant, writer, comedian and actor Dec 22, 2019

Show notes

Stephen Merchant first came to fame with the TV sitcom The Office, which he co-wrote and co-directed with Ricky Gervais. He continued to work with Gervais on the series Extras, Life is Short and An Idiot Abroad. His comedy hero as a young man was John Cleese and as a fellow tall West Country boy, he felt he would try his hand at a comedy career.

As a teenager, he worked at Radio Bristol, was a wedding DJ and enjoyed drama at school. While at Warwick University, he created his own radio programme, The Steve Show. Those radio production skills encouraged him to send in his CV to a new London radio station, XFM, where the head of speech was Ricky Gervais. Following a successful interview – conducted in a pub – Stephen became Ricky’s assistant.

Stephen left XFM to join a BBC training scheme. It was the short film he made with Ricky as part of his course which would eventually lead to the creation of The Office.

Alongside his successful comedy partnership with Gervais, Stephen has pursued his acting and writing ambitions and this year wrote and directed his first film, Fighting with my Family, based on a family of wrestlers. His performance as a stand-up led to his HBO series Hello Ladies, and he starred in his first stage play, Richard Bean's The Mentalists, in London in 2015.

His work has earned him two Golden Globe Awards, three BAFTAs, a Primetime Emmy Award, and four British Comedy Awards.

DISC ONE: Whole of The Moon by The Waterboys DISC TWO: Raspberry Beret by Prince DISC THREE: Babies by Pulp DISC FOUR: Regulate (Jammin' Remix) by Warren G featuring Nate Dogg and Michael McDonald DISC FIVE: Thunder Road by Bruce Springsteen DISC SIX: A Case of You by Joni Mitchell DISC SEVEN: Change of the Guard by Kamasi Washington DISC EIGHT: Love Letter by Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds BOOK CHOICE: Roger's Profanisaurus by Viz and Roger Mellie LUXURY ITEM: A piano CASTAWAY'S FAVOURITE: Thunder Road by Bruce Springsteen

Presenter: Lauren Laverne Producer: Cathy Drysdale

Heidi Thomas, screenwriter Dec 15, 2019

Show notes

Heidi Thomas is a screenwriter and playwright best known for Call the Midwife. The BBC TV series, which began in 2012, was originally a six part adaptation of a trilogy of memoirs by Jennifer Worth, recalling her experiences as a midwife in the East End of London. It was an immediate hit, with 10 million viewers a week, becoming one of BBC One’s most popular dramas and a fixture in the Christmas schedules.

Born in 1962, Heidi Thomas grew up as the eldest of three children in the leafy suburbs of Liverpool. Her father ran a drain cleaning business while her mother looked after the children, including Heidi’s youngest brother David, who was born with Down’s Syndrome.

Heidi studied English at Liverpool University, supporting herself by selling ladies’ underwear at a department store. During a bout of viral hepatitis, which left her unable to apply for jobs when she graduated, she entered a competition for new plays and won a prize for her debut, All Flesh is Grass. During the production,of her next play, Shamrocks and Crocodiles, she met the actor Stephen McGann. They went on to marry, and many years later Stephen was cast as the GP in Call the Midwife.

After nearly a decade in the theatre, Heidi made the leap into television, first writing on existing series such as Soldier, Soldier and Doctor Finlay. Her other screenwriting credits include Lilies, based on her grandmother’s recollections, and adaptations of classic novels including Elizabeth Gaskell’s Cranford, Noel Streatfeild’s Ballet Shoes and Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women.

DISC ONE: You Belong to Me by The Duprees DISC TWO: Penny Lane by The Beatles DISC THREE: Gentle on my Mind by Dean Martin DISC FOUR: Who Will Sing Me Lullabies? by Kate Rusby DISC FIVE: The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face by Roberta Flack DISC SIX: Finishing The Hat by Josh Groban DISC SEVEN: Agnus Dei from Requiem, op. 48, conducted by Nigel Short and performed by London Symphony Orchestra Chamber Ensemble and Tenebrae DISC EIGHT: Both Sides, Now by Joni Mitchell

BOOK CHOICE: London Labour and the London Poor by Henry Mayhew LUXURY ITEM: A hot water bottle CASTAWAY'S FAVOURITE: Both Sides, Now by Joni Mitchell

Presenter: Lauren Laverne Producer: Sarah Taylor

Professor Russell Foster, professor of circadian neuroscience Dec 08, 2019

Show notes

Professor Russell Foster is head of the Sleep and Circadian Neuroscience Institute at the University of Oxford, professor of circadian neuroscience and the director of the Nuffield Laboratory of Ophthalmology. An expert in sleep, he describes it as 'the single most important health behaviour we have'.

Born in 1959, as a child he loved his toy microscope and digging up fossils. Despite being labelled “entirely non-academic” by his headmaster and attending remedial classes for some years, he achieved three science A levels which won him a place at the University of Bristol.

There, he developed an early interest in photo-receptors - cells which convert light into signals that can stimulate biological processes. This eventually led to his post-doctoral discovery, in 1991, of a previously unknown type of cell – photosensitive retinal ganglion cells – in the eyes of mice. His proposition that these ganglion cells – which are not used for vision, but to detect brightness – exist in humans too initially met with scepticism from the ophthalmological community.

Russell’s research has made a significant impact, proving that our eyes provide us with both our sense of vision and our sense of time, which has changed the clinical definition of blindness and the treatment of eye disease. He has published several popular science books.

Russell is married to Elizabeth Downes, with whom he has three grown-up children.

DISC ONE: Ode to Joy from the 4th movement of Symphony No. 9, conducted by Wilhelm Furtwängler, performed by Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Elisabeth Höngen, Hans Hopf, Otto Edelman and the Bayreuth Festival Orchestra DISC TWO: Die Walkϋre Act 3, Finale, from Der Ring des Nibelungen, sung by Hans Hotter and performed by Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra and Vienna State Opera Chorus DISC THREE: Don Giovanni, K. 527: Mi tradi quell'alma ingrata by Kiri Te Kanawa DISC FOUR: Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This) by Eurythmics DISC FIVE: (Nimrod): Adagio by BBC Symphony Orchestra DISC SIX: Title: Chasing Sheep Is Best Left To Shepherds by The Michael Nyman Band DISC SEVEN: The Mikado, Act II: The Sun Whose Rays by The D'Oyly Carte Opera Company DISC EIGHT: Let’s Misbehave by Irving Aaronson

BOOK CHOICE: The collected works of Adrian John Desmond LUXURY ITEM: A mask, snorkel, flippers and underwater camera CASTAWAY'S FAVOURITE: Die Walkϋre Act 3, Finale, from Der Ring des Nibelungen, sung by Hans Hotter and performed by Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra and Vienna State Opera Chorus

Presenter: Lauren Laverne Producer: Cathy Drysdale

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