Desert Island Discs: Archive 2005-2011

Kirsty Young's castaway this week is one of the world's leading interior designers, John Stefanidis. Described as brilliant and inimitable, his work has blazed a trail since the late 1960s. The homes he designs for a closely-guarded list of loyal customers include palaces in Saudi Arabia and log cabins in Aspen, Colorado. His clients will sometimes ask him to design four or five houses for them. He's also designed commercial properties - the public areas in the Bank of England as well as suites at Claridges and Rocco Forte's Le Richemond Hotel on the shores of Lake Geneva. He had a cosmopolitan upbringing. The only child of Greek parents he was born in Alexandria but, from the age of eight, he mostly lived with his aunt and uncle in Cairo where he became a frequent visitor to the Cairo Museum. It was growing up among the teeming, richly scented streets and bone dry heat of Egypt that he became enraptured with architecture, artefacts and the transformative power of light. On coming to England for the first tim

Kirsty Young's castaway this week is the soprano, Dame Felicity Lott. She is one of Britain's best known and best loved singers and has given performances in opera houses the world over under the batons of such notable conductors as Bernard Haitink, Carlos Kleiber and Georg Solti.As a child, she had always loved singing, but was, she says, a shy, gawky girl who didn't have sharp enough elbows to get to the top. She tried her hand at teaching, but found she was so crippled with nerves that she had to abandon the idea. By good fortune she was delivered to a singing teacher who spotted her talent and gave her encouragement. It was exactly what she needed - she has enjoyed a career spanning more than 30 years and over that time has won a large and loyal army of fans.[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]Favourite track: Moonlight Music - the prelude to the final scene of Capriccio by Richard Strauss Book: Les Miserables by Victor Hugo Luxury: Lots of champagne

Kirsty Young's castaway this week is the cook Antonio Carluccio. He's been hailed as perhaps the best Italian cook in Britain today and the flavours and methods he holds dear are the ones he learnt at his mother's knee, growing up in Northern Italy. The food he ate then was high quality, locally produced and carefully prepared - now, that's every chefs mantra, but when he arrived in Britain in the 1970s it was ground-breaking. Within a few years he'd taken over the Neal Street Restaurant in London's Covent Garden and turned it into an institution and now his highly successful cafes are scattered throughout Britain.For him preparing and cooking food is a sensual act, so perhaps it's no surprise that in his spare time he whittles wood into intricately-patterned walking sticks and tries his hand at clay modelling too. It's all part of a life that, at its best, is a tactile, sensual experience.[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]Favourite track: The Finale t

Kirsty Young's castaway this week the cartoonist, writer and illustrator Posy Simmonds. Her social observation and sharp wit gained a loyal following in The Guardian where - among their stripped pine, lentils and patchwork - she depicted the lives of prototype woolly liberals Wendy and George Weber. Since then she's gone on to create highly acclaimed children's books and also graphic novels Gemma Bovary and Tamara Drew. Posy says she started drawing as soon as she could pick up a pencil and as a child was making magazines and little comics with titles like How to Turn Yourself Into an Up-to-Date Ted and How to Make Love and Be Loved in Four Easy Lessons. She remembers drawing as the perfect thing to do, because she could sit on her own and talk to herself.[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]Favourite track: The opening of the prelude from Cello Suite No 1 in G Major by Johann Sebastian Bach Book: Four volumes of the London Telephone Directory Luxury: The

Kirsty Young's castaway this week is the pioneering surgeon Professor Ara Darzi. He was born in Iraq and brought up in Baghdad but he moved to Ireland when he was 17 to study medicine. He came to England to finish his training and, highly talented and ambitious, was made a consultant when he was barely out of his 20s. Since then he's been nick-named 'Robo-doc' for spearheading the use of keyhole surgery in Britain and for introducing robotics to the operating theatre.For the past year he has combined his surgical work with a position in government - he is a health minister and, on the eve of the NHS's 60th birthday, he is charged with reshaping the NHS in England. It is, he says, the greatest challenge he has yet faced.Favourite track: Seven Seconds by Youssou N’Dour and Neneh Cherry Book: Yes, Minister by Jonathan Lynn Luxury: Pencil and paper

Kirsty Young's castaway this week is the author Peter Carey. He says he grew up in his homeland "thinking that Australian history was dull and Australian literature was dull" and that he developed a strong passion to make it new and fresh. In this he has surely succeeded - he is one of only two novelists to have been awarded the Booker Prize twice. Yet he came to writing relatively late. The son of a car salesman he started off studying science but he abandoned his university career and ended up, in his 20s, drifting into advertising. It was only then that his literary awakening began. "I announced with great confidence one day, 'I’m going to be a writer',' he says, 'I’m an obsessive fool, I was determined to do it!"Favourite track: The Hallelujah Chorus from Messiah by George Frideric Handel Book: Austerlitz by W G Sebald Luxury: A ‘magic’ pudding and a drink

Kirsty's castaway this week is the comedian and actor, Bill Bailey. Lauded for his hugely inventive stand up, he has carved out a highly successful career with an altogether atypical approach. He's a familiar face on television from his regular appearances on quiz shows Have I Got News for You, QI and Never Mind the Buzzcocks.At school he was a gifted pupil who gave up on his education and a pitch-perfect piano student who flunked his music school entrance. He started drifting as a teenager and gave up on university within days of arrival - he says he was looking for the next challenge, and that turned out to be stand-up comedy. He loved having to think on his feet and found the laughter of strangers intoxicating.[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]Favourite track: Once in a Lifetime by Talking Heads Book: The collected works by W. Somerset Maugham Luxury: A pack of cards.

Kirsty Young's castaway this week is the former Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales Lord Woolf. Throughout his career, he has been at the forefront of shaping our justice system. Following the Strangeways riots in 1990 he issued far-reaching reports on penal reform and his part in authorizing the release of James Bulger's killers attracted huge attention. As Master of the Rolls he made an historic judgement allowing Diane Blood to use her dead husband's sperm to have a child. Lord Woolf's appetite to see justice done was sharpened as a wartime school boy and the only Jew at Fettes College in Edinburgh - he developed an early antipathy towards any perceived unfairness. His school master's contention that being a barrister wasn't the profession for a boy with a stutter only made him more determined to succeed.[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]Favourite track: The Prisoner's Chorus from Fidelio by Ludwig van Beethoven Book: The Koran Luxury: A happy

Kirsty Young's castaway this week is the composer Howard Goodall. He's a man of eclectic musical tastes and talents creating choral works, popular TV show themes like Black Adder and The Vicar of Dibley and movie scores and musicals. His enthusiasm and deep-rooted commitment to his life's work has regularly propelled him away from the score and onto our television screens where he's presented award winning documentaries like How Music Works. In January 2007 he was appointed as England's first ever National Ambassador for Singing, leading a £40 million scheme to improve group singing in primary schools.Howard says he hears music in his head all the time - and can't imagine life without it.[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]Favourite track: The first movement of Introitus from the Durufle Requiem by Maurice Durufle Book: The Diary of Anne Frank by Anne Frank Luxury: Ice-cold vanilla vodka and tonics.

Kirsty Young's castaway this week is the MP Diane Abbott. She was the first black woman to become a Member of Parliament and, after her election in 1987, she said she would find herself sitting on the green benches of the House of Commons wondering whether she was really entitled to be there. It was not the first British institution she'd cracked - she had already propelled herself through Cambridge and then into the Civil Service. But she has not always sat comfortably inside these great bastions of the establishment; she says Gordon Brown booted her off an influential committee because she asked too many questions; she was a vocal opponent of the war in Iraq and she attracted a good deal of controversy when she decided to send her son to private school. After more than 20 years in the House of Commons, she is, she says, happy for people to judge her on what she has done and what she has stood up for.[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]Favourite track:

Kirsty Young's castaway this week is one of our most successful singer-songwriters, Annie Lennox. Her extraordinary voice has captivated us for more than a quarter of a century and, as one half of the group Eurythmics and as a solo artist, she's sold tens of millions of records and won fistfuls of awards. As a teenager, her musical ability was her passport out of her home town of Aberdeen. At that point, a career as a flautist beckoned: but, after studying in London, she felt she could never make her mark as a classical musician. It was a chance encounter with aspiring pop-star Dave Stewart that set her on an entirely different path.For much of the 1980s, all her creative energy went into making music. But when her children were born, she says, her priorities shifted. Now she devotes much of her time and energy to supporting different humanitarian causes. She says: "I need to find meaning in my life to make me happy; and that's been an ongoing struggle."[Taken from the original programme material for this arc

Kirsty Young's castaway this week is the actress Penelope Wilton. Her first love is the theatre and she's been highly acclaimed for her stage work in plays by Ibsen, Shaw, Shakespeare, Beckett - she relishes and shines in the difficult roles. Yet as one of our leading classical actresses she has no qualms about turning her talents to TV and film - Calendar Girls, Shaun of the Dead and Dr Who are among her more recent on screen appearances. In-spite of being one of our best regarded actresses she is intensely private, intent upon disappearing into the lives of her characters. Penelope says that thing about being an actor is that you turn into other people, you have to hide yourself a bit in order to let that other person come out. People should see the character on the stage, not the actor. Penelope grew up the middle of three girls and says that her mother was frail and often ill - she says this taught her to be self contained: "I was always worried that I would hurt her by taking a different view so one was

Kirsty Young's castaway this week is the cartoonist Mac. He's been the Daily Mail's cartoonist for the past 38 years - and it's his job, he says, to make the "dreary news copy of the daily paper brighter, by putting in a laugh". Since he was a child he was always drawing - inventing strip cartoons in his spare time and sketching figures in the margins of his school books. Yet despite his obvious talent, there was scant nurturing of his ambitions at home. His father told him he'd never make the grade and, instead, he should concentrate on finding a proper job. But Mac says that all the way through, he's been lucky. Whenever he's found himself stuck, he's come across someone who would encourage him to take the next step. Life has, he says, been a series of lucky coincidences.[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]Favourite track: The Adagio from Bruch's Violin Concerto in G Minor by Bruch Book: The collected works by John Steinbeck Luxury: Tenor saxophone.

Kirsty Young's castaway this week is the radical thinker, writer and broadcaster Tariq Ali. Forty years since the streets of London were filled with demonstrators, Tariq Ali describes how he came to be involved in anti-establishment politics and how, from an early age, he felt drawn towards those people who were the underdogs of society. He was born to privileged, atheist parents in Pakistan, he led his first street protest at 12 and his first strike at 15 He became increasingly political until, after a military coup, his parents were advised to send him out of the country for his own safety and so he came to study at Oxford. He travelled to Vietnam at the height of the war to observe and document the suffering there and also travelled to Bolivia and Palestine. His role as an anti-establishment agitator was cemented when he led two revolutionary marches in London in 1968. Forty years on - and after a successful career as a film-maker and writer - he says it remains important to voice dissenting views and he i

Kirsty Young's castaway this week is the actress Liz Smith. Her story is a triumph of talent and perseverance over circumstance. Her mother died when she was tiny, her father walked out of her life and for many years she was brought up by her grandmother who was in mourning for her only child and her own husband. For Liz, acting and making people laugh was an escape from the often harsh realities of life, but she had to wait until she was 50 for her first real break - a role in Mike Leigh's film Bleak Moments. By that time, she'd raised her two children on her own with very little money and knew that this was her opportunity to prove what she could do.She won critical acclaim and was later awarded a Bafta for her appearance in Alan Bennett's A Private Function and finally, when she was in her 70s, she became a household name through her roles in The Vicar of Dibley and The Royle Family. She's now 86 years old and, although she concedes the characters she plays have a habit of dying on screen, she isn't planni

Kirsty Young's castaway this week is the actor and singer Michael Ball. For more than 20 years he's been the West End's leading man - winning stacks of awards, building a hugely successful recording career and attracting a large and loyal army of fans.He was a teenage drop-out, but when a teacher encouraged him to go to drama school he suddenly realised what he wanted to do. Success seemed to come easily to him and he quickly took on leading roles in Les Miserables, Aspects of Love and Phantom of the Opera. But at one point he feared he would have to abandon his career; he was on stage performing in Les Miserables when he suffered his first panic attack. They became so severe that he could barely leave his flat and he hated the thought of anyone looking at him. He shut himself away for nearly a year as he tried to work out what was wrong with him and overcome his anxieties.In Desert Island Discs he describes how he managed to return to the stage - and reveals the role his partner, Cathy McGowan, has played in

Kirsty Young's castaway this week is the broadcaster David Dimbleby. When he was born, in 1938, his father Richard was already a national institution. Richard recorded reports from bombers flying over Germany, went to Belsen at the end of the war and, of course, commentated on the funeral of King George VI and subsequent coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. In Desert Island Discs, David tells Kirsty how his father had tried to steer him away from journalism. But he believes that it is a job that is addictive and so it was perhaps inevitable that he would become part of the fifth generation of Dimblebys to pursue a career in the media.He is best known for the big state events - he has anchored the BBC's general election coverage since 1979 and commentated during the funerals of both Princess Diana and the Queen Mother - throughout them all, he says, his method is not to think of the audience of millions, but instead to imagine himself sitting on a sofa, next to just one viewer, saying as little as he needs to in

Kirsty Young's castaway this week is the Nobel Prize-winning scientist Professor Sir Martin Evans. He is known as the grandfather of embryonic stem-cell research because of the breakthrough he made more than 25 years ago to first isolate the stem cells of mice and then cultivate them in a laboratory. After that leap forward, he worked alongside his fellow Nobel laureates Oliver Smithies and Mario Capecchi to develop the Knock-Out Mouse - a mouse that has had part of its genetic code disabled so the effect on the animal can be studied. The Knock-Out Mouse has become a scientific tool used the world over - and has vastly increased the amount of knowledge we have about how the human body works.Brought up on the outskirts of London with enthusiastic and encouraging parents, he says that he was always fascinated by science. But, although he was a bright pupil, he was a shy boy and not the kind of student to walk away with glittering prizes.He was within months of retiring when he got the call, last October, that h

Kirsty Young's castaway this week is Oleg Gordievsky. He is the highest-ranking KGB officer ever to become a spy for the British. The insights he gave into the Soviet hierarchy and culture over the course of 10 years were so significant that, according to some, he did more than any other individual in the West to hasten the demise of the communist regime. A bright pupil with an aptitude for languages, he joined the KGB's diplomatic corps thinking it would allow him to travel and fulfil his interest in politics. But he was first enchanted by the liberty enjoyed in the West and then so horrified by the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia that he started to feed information to MI6.He risked his life for a decade, but in 1985 he was recalled to Moscow - his cover had been blown and he realised he had just weeks to live. An incredible escape plan was activated and, after shaking off the KGB surveillance teams that followed him everywhere, he escaped by tram, train and bus to the border with Finland - where British a

Kirsty Young's castaway this week is the writer Dame Beryl Bainbridge. She grew up in Liverpool - in a home filled with acrimony and argument - and started writing when she was still a child. Her only ambition, she says, was to get married and have a 'proper' family, but when her first two children were still young, her marriage broke down and she turned to writing once again. She believes she finds inspiration from the trouble and friction of everyday life and that if her marriage hadn't failed, she would have been too happy to write another word. Now she is one of our most respected authors. She has written 17 novels and countless articles, screenplays and television plays. She's won armfuls of awards too - but, despite being shortlisted five times, she's never won the Booker prize. She doesn't mind not winning, she says, but she would like to be the writer who has had the most nominations.[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]Favourite track: Can I Forg