Desert Island Discs

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Bear Grylls Nov 27, 2011

Show notes

Kirsty Young's castaway is the adventurer Bear Grylls.

His first career was with the SAS, but he was forced to leave after a parachute jump went wrong and he broke his back in three places. As he recuperated, he rekindled his childhood ambition of climbing Mount Everest - he went on to become the youngest Briton to reach its summit. His TV series, Born Survivor, has a global audience of more than a billion people who regularly watch him eating the apparently indigestible and risking his life by pitting himself against nature. Married with three young sons, he says: "The unresolved struggle in my life is the fact that I have a job that has an element of danger to it and at the same time I have a gorgeous family - three young boys that are the pride of my life."

Producer: Leanne Buckle.

Robert Hardy Nov 20, 2011

Show notes

Kirsty Young's castaway is the actor Robert Hardy.

He became a household name as the vet Siegfried Farnon in the hit TV series All Creatures Great and Small and, to a younger generation, he is the Minister of Magic in the Harry Potter films. But the role he is best known for is Winston Churchill - he won a Bafta for his performance in Winston Churchill: The Wilderness Years. He believes actors are born rather than made and his own ambitions crystallised when, as a very young boy, he was a page boy at a wedding: "I walked down the aisle with my head held high and as I went, every eye was turned towards me and something inside me said, "That's it, get every eye on you".

Producer: Leanne Buckle.

Anna Scher Nov 18, 2011

Show notes

Kirsty Young's castaway is the drama teacher Anna Scher.

It's more than forty years since she set up her theatre school and it has launched the careers of Kathy Burke, Martin Kemp, Pauline Quirke and Patsy Palmer to name just a few. It started out as a lunchtime drama club - and very quickly grew. Anna Scher says: "There were enormous classes - about seventy in a class - and a lot of those pupils were non-readers and so I fell into improvisation by chance. I found that it was a very effective way of character training."

Producer: Leanne Buckle

Francesca Simon Nov 06, 2011

Show notes

Kirsty Young's castaway is the children's author Francesca Simon.

Educated at Yale and Oxford she initially thought she'd pursue an academic life - but within weeks of her son's birth, found that ideas for children's stories started flowing. She's now written twenty books featuring her creation Horrid Henry and they sell in their millions.

She sees Horrid Henry as sitting within the long tradition of anarchic characters in children's literature. She says: "Everyone responds to Henry because I think everyone feels - however conventional they seem on the outside - that they are rebellious and unconventional, and Henry really taps into that."

Producer: Leanne Buckle.

Lord Victor Adebowale Oct 30, 2011

Show notes

Kirsty Young's castaway is the crossbench peer and social entrepreneur Lord Victor Adebowale.

For the past decade, when not in the House of Lords, he has devoted his time to overseeing services for people who are homeless, suffer from drug or alcohol addiction and have mental health issues or learning disabilities. To many, they are the most disadvantaged people in society, but he says that's not a term he finds useful: "I find it very difficult when people use words like 'bottom of the pile' and 'disadvantaged' - you'd be amazed that the veneer that separates people who don't think they're at the bottom of the pile from people who are is quite thin."

Producer: Leanne Buckle.

Mark Gatiss Oct 23, 2011

Show notes

Kirsty Young's castaway is the writer and actor Mark Gatiss.

His childhood passions have fuelled his adult creative life. As a boy he says he was drawn towards the macabre and gothic - while his teachers remarked that his school essays resembled scripts for Hammer horror films. He has written for - and acted in - Dr Who, was one of the creators of The League of Gentlemen and his re-imagining of Sherlock Holmes for a contemporary TV audience was a huge success.

He says: "When I was a kid, anything supernatural drew me, I would try and find it in anything - Gardeners' Question Time - I would look for something."

Producer: Leanne Buckle.

Michael Johnson Oct 16, 2011

Show notes

Kirsty Young's castaway is the athlete Michael Johnson.

He is the only person ever to hold world records in the 200 and 400 metres at the same time and, by the time he hung up his legendary gold trainers, his haul of medals included five Olympic golds.

His upright running style earned him the nickname 'the duck'. He says: "They called me a really fast duck! I was ranked number one in the world - I'm so far ahead of the other people, why am I the one that's wrong?"

Producer: Leanne Buckle.

Vidal Sassoon Oct 09, 2011

Show notes

Kirsty Young's castaway is the veteran hairdresser Vidal Sassoon.

He developed the architecturally precise bobs and cropped styles that were a defining look of the 1960s. Mary Quant, Mia Farrow and Twiggy were among the glamorous clients who came to his salons in London and Beverly Hills.

His scissors and ambition lifted him out of the grinding poverty of his childhood - he spent six years in an orphanage because his mother could not afford to keep him at home. Now aged 83, he says:" I've had the best adventure you could possible have, for a kid that started from nowhere."

Record: Mahler's 8th Symphony Book: The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky Luxury: A dozen bottles of Vidal Sassoon hair shampoo

Producer: Isabel Sargent.

Anne Wood Oct 02, 2011

Show notes

Kirsty Young's castaway is the children's TV producer Anne Wood.

Her creations - which include Teletubbies, Rosie and Jim and In the Night Garden - have delighted millions of children around the world. She says she is driven by her fascination with children's creative development - and was horrified by the critical response when Teletubbies was first screened. "I wanted to make a programme that had love in it," she says, "You'd have thought I'd started World War Three the response that happened - it's innocent fun, that's all it is."

Producer: Leanne Buckle.

Arthur Edwards Sep 25, 2011

Show notes

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 money was very tight and his mother saved up her wages as a cleaner to buy him his first camera.

Record: Panis Angelicus Book: A photographic album with pictures of his family Luxury: An inexhaustible supply of tea and a kettle

Producer: Leanne Buckle.

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