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Desert Island Discs — Personal Journals
Desert Island Discs

Eight tracks, a book and a luxury: what would you take to a desert island? Guests share the soundtrack of their lives.

Copyright: © (C) BBC 2023

Latest Episodes:

Steve Coogan Oct 11, 2009

Show notes

Kirsty Young's castaway is the comedian and actor Steve Coogan. As a child he found he had a knack for impressions, a talent which led him to work on Spitting Image. Recently he has also found success in films, but is best known for the comic monster he created - Alan Partridge. The chatshow host in Pringle jumper and slacks made us cringe with his crass questions and witless interventions and has remained one of our most enduring comic anti-heroes.

[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]

Favourite track: We Have All the Time in the World by Louis Armstrong Book: The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne Luxury: Fully-restored Morris Minor Traveller with wooden detail.

Dame Ellen MacArthur Oct 04, 2009

Show notes

Kirsty Young's castaway is the solo yachtswoman Dame Ellen MacArthur. She was 28 when she became the fastest person to sail solo around the world, and has been called the 'first true heroine of the 21st century'. She still sails with friends and with the charity she set up for children with cancer and leukaemia, but her ambition now is to try to find a way of living the same sustainable existence on land that she lives at sea. When your life depends on it, she says, you realise how scarce food and fuel really are.

[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]

Favourite track: Boys of Summer by Don Henley Book: SAS Survival Handbook by John 'Lofty' Wiseman Luxury: A fluffy purple worm (which has been taken everywhere).

Barry Manilow Sep 27, 2009

Show notes

Kirsty Young's castaway is Barry Manilow. He has been a hugely successful performer for more than 30 years but, in this intimate interview, Manilow describes how it was never the career he intended to have. He always knew he would be a musician, but thought his future lay behind the scenes, not at the front of the stage. Brought up by his mother and grandparents in Brooklyn, money was always scarce and family life often difficult - but when there was music playing in their apartment, Manilow says, the home was a happy one.

[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]

Favourite track: Over the Rainbow by Judy Garland Book: Man vs Wild - Survival Techniques from the Most Dangerous Places on Earth by Bear Grylls Luxury: A piano.

Roberto Alagna Aug 16, 2009

Show notes

Kirsty Young's castaway is the singer Roberto Alagna. He is one of the most celebrated tenors in the world and one half of opera's golden couple; his wife is the soprano Angela Gheorghiu. Yet, his is not a voice that was honed through early years in a conservatoire. He was brought up in Paris in a family of keen amateur musicians. He used to sing in nightclubs and in those early years, he says, the world of opera was, to him, no more than an impossible dream.

[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]

Favourite track: One Day from the Immortal Heights by Giuseppe Verdi Book: The works by Victor Hugo Luxury: Guitar.

Dame Joan Bakewell Aug 09, 2009

Show notes

Kirsty Young's castaway is the broadcaster Dame Joan Bakewell. Born in Stockport in 1933, it was in the 1960s that she first started to shape the cultural agenda, interviewing the likes of Kingsley Amis and Stockhausen for the radical BBC TV show Late Night Line-Up. It was also during the 1960s that she had an affair with Harold Pinter, a relationship which inspired his play Betrayal. Looking back on it now from the age of 76, she says, "We always said we had a damn good time".

Now appointed as the Voice of Older People by Gordon Brown, her passion for debate and social change is as strong as ever. She says she has always regarded the world to be improved and is not afraid of being called a wishy-washy liberal. "It's a good thing to do," she says, "you feel you can be part of change."

[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]

Favourite track: String Quintet in C Major by Franz Schubert Book: War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy Luxury: An abundance of paper and pencils.

Nicky Haslam Aug 02, 2009

Show notes

Kirsty Young's castaway is the interior designer, socialite and one-time cowboy, Nicky Haslam. His life defies easy description. In America in the 1960s, he was part of Andy Warhol's circle of friends. He got to know Wallis Simpson and the Duke of Windsor and met Cyd Charisse and President Kennedy; and after all that, he became a cowboy. When he returned to Britain he brought the sleek style of the States with him. When he is designing a room, he says, first he lets the room speak to him, then his client - then he gets the last word on how it should look.

[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]

Favourite track: You're Just In Love from Call Me Madam by Ethel Merman & Dick Haymes Book: A Legacy by Sybille Bedford Luxury: A large 18th-century picture.

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall Jul 26, 2009

Show notes

Kirsty Young's castaway is the food writer and cook Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall. Famous for making paté out of placenta and dining on such delicacies as squirrel and rook in his TV programmes, he has made a name for himself as a cook on the wild side. So perhaps it is not surprising that his first ambition was not to spend his life inside a kitchen but in the great outdoors because, he says, he 'wanted to be David Attenborough'.

A stint in the renowned River Cafe in London, however, set him on his way to establishing his own waterside haven for food lovers, his River Cottage in Dorset. From there, he has followed his passion for the environment by campaigning for ethically-produced food, including championing a creature not normally given time on our small screens - the humble supermarket chicken.

[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]

Favourite track: Love Reign O'er Me by The Who Book: Moby Dick by Herman Melville Luxury: Full set of Scuba gear.

David Mitchell Jul 19, 2009

Show notes

Kirsty Young's castaway is comedian David Mitchell. Mitchell has won two Bafta awards and, as a sitcom actor, sketch show writer and humorous columnist, has never been in greater demand.

But as a child, Mitchell was sure he wasn't funny and it was only when he was at university, he says, that he learnt how to have fun. It is now just the rest of his life that Mitchell needs to address - beginning, he says, by tidying up his flat and then, maybe, even getting a girlfriend.

[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]

Favourite track: Rainbow Connection by Jim Henson Book: Decline and Fall by Evelyn Waugh Luxury: DVDs of sitcoms and DVD player.

Prof Hugh Pennington Jul 12, 2009

Show notes

Kirsty Young's castaway is Professor Hugh Pennington. Professor Pennington has spent his life trying to understand diseases and how they spread. He has chaired two major enquiries into E. coli, and his influence is felt everywhere from school kitchens to hospital wards. But he concedes that in his own home, efforts to ban the humble tea towel from his kitchen have so far failed.

[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]

Favourite track: Sonata in D Minor by Johann Sebastian Bach Book: The Cabinet Cyclopedia by Dionysius Lardner Luxury: Brass microscope.

Harvey Goldsmith Jul 05, 2009

Show notes

Kirsty Young's castaway is the impresario and promoter Harvey Goldsmith. From the Rolling Stones to Pavarotti, and with pretty well every other name in music inbetween, he has been one of the country's top promoters for more than 40 years. His career has given him a unique insight into music history; he was there, after all, when Keith Moon threw his first TV out of a hotel window. Always passionate about what he listened to, he acknowledges that his own instrument is the pocket calculator.

[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]

Favourite track: Sing, Sing, Sing (with a Swing) by Benny Goodman Book: The Reader's Digest Complete Do It Yourself Manual Luxury: A piano.

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