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Lyt når som helst, hvor som helst 

BBC Radio 4


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


Desert Island Discs

Anna Maxwell Martin is an award-winning actor whose versatility is evident from the breadth of parts she has played in popular television programmes including Motherland, Ludwig and Line of Duty. 

Anna was born and brought up in Yorkshire and loved acting and performing from a young age putting on shows with her friends in the cul-de-sac where they all lived. She read history at Liverpool University and then won a place at LAMDA.

She made her professional debut in the Little Foxes at the Donmar Warehouse directed by Marianne Elliott. Her breakthrough came in 2003 playing Lyra Belacqua in the National Theatre’s landmark production of His Dark Materials. 

In recent years she has become an advocate for vulnerable children and their families – especially those navigating the SEND – special educational needs and/or disabilities – system in schools. She was motivated to take on this role after struggling to get help for her daughters who were struggling with profound grief following the death of their father.

Anna lives in London with her daughters.

DISC ONE: I Love To Boogie – T. Rex
DISC TWO: The Greatest Love of All - Whitney Houston 
DISC THREE: Together In Electric Dreams - Philip Oakey & Giorgio Moroder
DISC FOUR: Gianni Schicchi: "O mio babbino caro" (Lauretta) Composed by Giacomo Puccini and performed by Maria Callas (soprano) and Philharmonia Orchestra, conducted by Tullio Serafin
DISC FIVE: When A Knight Won His Spurs – The Choir of Salisbury Cathedral, directed by David Halls 
DISC SIX: Dry Your Eyes - The Streets 
DISC SEVEN: Ain't No Mountain High Enough - Marvin Gaye, Tammi Terrell
DISC EIGHT: Tell Him - Lauryn Hill 

BOOK CHOICE: Jackson Brodie Series by Kate Atkinson
LUXURY ITEM: Anna’s lucky conker
CASTAWAY'S FAVOURITE: The Greatest Love of All - Whitney Houston 

Presenter: Lauren Laverne
Producer: Paula McGinley

Desert Island Discs has cast away many actors to the island over the years including Julie Walters, Jessie Buckley and Adeel Aktar. You can hear their programmes if you search through BBC Sounds or our own Desert Island Discs website.

Anna Maxwell Martin, actor

Peter Layton is a pioneering British glass artist and the founder of London Glassblowing, one of the most influential glass studios and galleries in the United Kingdom. He played a central role in the development of the studio glass movement, helping to establish glass as an artistic medium.

Born in Prague to Jewish parents, he and his family escaped in 1939 and settled in Bradford, where Peter counted the artist David Hockney among his friends. A trip to the United States in the 1960s to teach ceramics led him to his first encounter with glassblowing, and when he returned to the UK he set up a studio called London Glassblowing. Its ethos of collaboration and openness remains the same 50 years after its founding, and members of the public are welcome to see Peter and his colleagues create spectacular pieces of art out of glass.

Peter’s work is influenced by many things: early pieces tackled political issues, and he finds clouds, pebbles and other natural forms particularly inspiring. Peter lives in London with his wife Ann. He has three children and seven grandchildren.

DISC ONE: When I’m Cleaning Windows - George Formby 
DISC TWO: Kol Nidrei, Op. 4, composed by Max Bruch, performed by Jacqueline du Pré (cello) and Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Daniel Barenboim 
DISC THREE: Take Five - Dave Brubeck 
DISC FOUR: Blowin’ in the Wind - Bob Dylan 
DISC FIVE: White Rabbit - Jefferson Airplane
DISC SIX: Lute Concerto in D Major, RV 93: II. Largo, composed by Antonio Vivaldi, performed by Paul O'Dette (lute) The Parley of Instruments conducted by Peter Holman 
DISC SEVEN: Suzanne - Nina Simone 
DISC EIGHT: Elegy for the Arctic - Ludovico Einaudi

BOOK CHOICE: The Choice by Edith Eger
LUXURY ITEM: A solar-powered digital picture frame 
CASTAWAY'S FAVOURITE: Suzanne - Nina Simone 

Presenter: Lauren Laverne
Producer: Tim Bano

Desert Island Discs has cast away many artists to the island over the years, including Peter’s friend David Hockney, as well as the sculptor Anthony Gormley and Cornelia Parker. You can hear their programmes if you search through BBC Sounds or our own Desert Island Discs website.

Peter Layton, artist

Guy Martin is a television presenter, mechanic and former motorcycle racer. During his career he achieved 17 podium finishes at the Isle of Man TT (Tourist Trophy) Races – one of the most prestigious and dangerous motorcycling events in the world. His television programmes often focus on his daredevil nature and combine two of his greatest loves - engineering and history.

Guy was brought up in the village of Kirmington in North Lincolnshire. When he was five his father, who raced bikes himself, bought him his first motorcycle which he promptly crashed into the rose garden. His father is a mechanic and Guy used to sit and watch him at work in the shed from a young age and at 12 he began working for him at weekends and during school holidays.

Guy’s first race meeting was at Cadwell Park in Lincolnshire when he was 19. Less than a minute into the race he crashed. He was not badly injured but the bike was destroyed in the process. In 2004 he made his debut at the biggest road race of them all – the Isle of Man TT, finishing seventh in the Senior race and winning the Newcomers Trophy. 

Guy retired from racing in 2015 after a very bad crash at the Ulster Grand Prix. After that he turned to his bicycle and has taken part in several endurance cycling events, including the Tour Divide, to test his resolve and stamina and fill the adrenaline gap.

Guy lives in Lincolnshire with his wife Sharon, their daughter Dottie and three dogs. 

DISC ONE: Bam Ba Lam (Here Comes Daddy) - Alabama 3 
DISC TWO: Testify - Rage Against the Machine 
DISC THREE: Blinded by the Light - The Streets 
DISC FOUR: Getaway - The Music 
DISC FIVE: Me and my Monkey - Robbie Williams 
DISC SIX: Hurt – Johnny Cash 
DISC SEVEN: The Day is My Enemy - The Prodigy 
DISC EIGHT: With or Without You - U2 

BOOK CHOICE: Stealing Speed by Mat Oxley
LUXURY ITEM: The back catalogue of Race Engine Technology magazine 
CASTAWAY'S FAVOURITE: With or Without You - U2 

Presenter: Lauren Laverne
Producer: Paula McGinley

Guy Martin, presenter and former motorcycle racer

Emily Watson is an award-winning actor, widely regarded as one of the finest character actors of her generation.

She began her career on stage with the Royal Shakespeare Company before rising to prominence in 1996, when she was cast as Bess McNeill in Lars von Trier’s Breaking the Waves. The role earned her an Academy Award nomination. She received a second Oscar nomination for Hilary and Jackie, for which she learned to play the cello to portray Jacqueline du Pré.

Watson has built a reputation for a level of commitment that is as intense as it is acclaimed. She describes her craft not merely as a profession but as a profound internal necessity, stating: "I love the sense of creating and inhabiting something. That feeling of making it feel magically real. That's the addiction".

She grew up in London and was a passionate reader before leaving home to study English at Bristol University. Her parents were members of the School of Economic Science which proscribed that followers eschew TV and popular culture. Emily joined in with the university drama productions and followed her passion, with her parents’ blessing, to pursue a career in acting. 

Emily Watson lives in London with her husband, and they have two children. 

Presenter Lauren Laverne
Producer Sarah Taylor

Desert Island Discs has cast other actors away over the years including Emily’s fellow actor from Hamnet, Jessie Buckley. The writer, Maggie O’Farrell is in there too along with Emily’s friend from university, the writer David Nicholls. You can hear their programmes if you search through BBC Sounds or our own Desert Island Discs website.

Emily Watson, actor

Journalist Gary O’Donoghue is the Chief North America Correspondent for BBC News. Last year his coverage of the 2024 assassination attempt on Donald Trump won the Royal Television Society Breaking News Award. He made the news himself in 2025 when he secured a 20-minute exclusive phone interview with Trump who was by then the US President.

Gary was born in London and brought up in Essex. When he was eight he lost his sight and attended specialist schools for blind and partially sighted children. He read philosophy and modern languages at the University of Oxford before embarking on his BBC career.

He has reported on mass shootings, filed stories from the Macedonian border during the Kosovo conflict, covered the Iraq War and chronicled seven British general elections. He became the BBC’s Washington correspondent in 2014 and, as well as Donald Trump’s two terms, has covered the administrations of Presidents Obama and Biden. 

Gary is based in Washington DC and when in the UK lives in West Yorkshire with his partner Sarah. 

Presenter: Lauren Laverne
Producer: Paula McGinley

Desert Island Discs has cast other journalists away to the island over the years including Lyse Doucet, Clive Myrie and Lindsey Hilsum, You can hear their programmes if you search through BBC Sounds or our own Desert Island Discs website.

This episode was recorded before the shooting at the White House Correspondent's Dinner on 25th April 2026.

Gary O'Donoghue, journalist

David Morrissey is an actor who grew up in Liverpool. 

His screen work ranges from playing a ruthless survivor of the zombie apocalypse in The Walking Dead to a troubled police officer in James Graham’s Sherwood.

His television debut performance came playing a teenager in the Channel 4 series One Summer. Since then his career has seen him win awards including the Royal Television Society award for Best Male Actor for his role as Gordon Brown in The Deal. 

Morrissey’s interest in acting started in primary school, when he was cast as the Scarecrow in a production of The Wizard of Oz. As a teenager, he developed his passion further at the Everyman Youth Theatre in Liverpool, where he took guidance from professional actors.

After his first TV role, he went on to train at RADA. He is best known for portraying complex and troubled characters, and in more recent years has also demonstrated a flair for comedy in series such as Daddy Issues.

David lives in London. 

Presenter Lauren Laverne
Producer Sarah Taylor

Desert Island Discs has cast other actors away over the years including David’s fellow actors in Sherwood, Monica Dolan and Lesley Manville. The writer, James Graham is in there too. You can hear their programmes if you search through BBC Sounds or our own Desert Island Discs website.

David Morrissey, actor

Si King is a broadcaster and cook, best known as one half of the duo The Hairy Bikers. 

Together with his onscreen cooking partner and real-life best friend Dave Myers, the pair travelled over 650,000 miles around the world on motor bikes filming their cooking exploits and they also wrote a number of bestselling cookbooks.

Si was born in a pit village near Gateshead, the youngest child of three. His father had served in the arctic convoys and had met his wife whilst on shore leave in Newcastle when she was singing with a big band. 

Si’s father died when he was eight years old and Si and his mum, Stella, bonded by cooking together which led to his lifelong appreciation of food.

His love of motorcycles started early when his uncle introduced him to his garage full of broken motorbikes that he enjoyed tinkering around with. Si fell in love with motorbikes and as a teenager used to give him mum a lift back from the shops.

After leaving school, Si played drums in a band to earn a living, during which time he met his former wife, Jane. He became a father at 23 and soon began his television career as a runner on the children’s series Byker Grove. This opened the door to work in TV and film as a location manager, where he met make up artist Dave Myers on the set of a Catherine Cookson drama. After discovering they shared a passion for food and motorbikes, the pair developed the idea for a TV show that would see these two rather hairy motorcyclists travel around the world cooking for people. 

After Dave’s death in 2024, Si was involved in two commemorative “Dave Days” in which many thousands of riders from the motorbike community showed their support for Dave and his family by travelling in convoy from London to Dave’s home town of Barrow in Furness.

Si King lives in the North East.

DISC ONE: Winter Song - Lindisfarne 
DISC TWO: Boil the Breakfast Early - The Chieftains 
DISC THREE: Anonymous: Liturgy of Saint Anthony - Ad Missam - Introitus: Os justi meditabitur - Coro Gregoriano De Lisboa 
DISC FOUR: Stay With Me Till Dawn - Judie Tzuke
DISC FIVE: Set The Fire To The Third Bar - Snow Patrol feat. Martha Wainwright 
DISC SIX: Still in Love with You (Live) - Thin Lizzy 
DISC SEVEN: On The Wire - Troy Cassar-Daley 
DISC EIGHT: Ask the Lonely - Journey

BOOK CHOICE: Combined works of William Dalrymple
LUXURY ITEM: A solar-powered fridge and rum
CASTAWAY'S FAVOURITE: Ask the Lonely - Journey 

Presenter Lauren Laverne
Producer Sarah Taylor

Desert Island Discs has cast other cooks away to the island over the years including Delia Smith, Nigella Lawson and Nigel Slater. You can hear their programmes if you search through BBC Sounds or our own Desert Island Discs website.

Si King, cook

Sara Pascoe is a comedian and writer who has appeared on programmes including QI, Taskmaster and the Great British Sewing Bee. She is also a screenwriter and the author of three books including her debut novel Weirdo which won the inaugural Jilly Cooper Prize for fiction last year. 

Sara was born in Dagenham and grew up in Romford. She joined a drama club when she was 14 and set her heart on an acting career but failed to get a place at drama school. She read English Literature at the University of Sussex and after graduating took on various jobs to make ends meet including a stint as a London tour bus guide.

In 2007 she performed her first comedy gig to an audience of 12 people in a south London pub. Even though no-one laughed at her jokes, she was well and truly bitten by the stand-up bug and the following year was joint runner-up at the Funny Women Awards. In 2010 she performed her first show at the Edinburgh Festival and appeared on the BBC’s Live at the Apollo two years later.

She is currently touring her latest stand-up tour, I Am A Strange Gloop. Sara lives in London with her husband Steen Raskopoulos and their two children.

DISC ONE: Rhythm Of Life - Sammy Davis Jr. And Ensemble (from Sweet Charity)
DISC TWO: Never Forget - Take That 
DISC THREE: Telemachus - Pascoe & Martin 
DISC FOUR: Scar Tissue - Red Hot Chilli Peppers 
DISC FIVE: Gett Off - Prince & The New Power Generation
DISC SIX: Rock Star - N.E.R.D
DISC SEVEN: Best Friend - 50 Cent 
DISC EIGHT: Wizardry - Self Esteem 

BOOK CHOICE: 1984 by George Orwell
LUXURY ITEM: A typewriter
CASTAWAY'S FAVOURITE: Telemachus - Pascoe & Martin 

Presenter: Lauren Laverne
Producer: Paula McGinley

Sara Pascoe, comedian and writer

Professor Stephen Westaby is a former heart surgeon and writer. During his career he performed over 11,000 operations and pioneered the use of life long artificial hearts as an alternative to donor transplants.

Stephen was born in Scunthorpe in 1948 and went to medical school at Charing Cross Hospital in 1966. The following year he suffered a serious head injury during a rugby match which had a major impact on his personality. He changed from being a shy person lacking in confidence into a fearless, ambitious operator – qualities, he believes, made him entirely suited to being a surgeon. 

In 1981 he took up a Research Fellowship in Alabama with John Kirklin, the first surgeon to successfully perform a series of open-heart operations using a heart-lung machine. During his time there Stephen discovered that medical nylon caused some patients to die of post-perfusion syndrome. Following his discovery, the manufacturers of the equipment removed it from the circuit which led to a substantial drop in cardiac surgical mortality.

In 2000 he implanted a revolutionary new heart pump into a man who was terminally ill with heart failure using a device called the Jarvik 2000. Temporary devices – known as bridge to transplant devices – had been used to stabilise patients while they waited for a donor heart but this surgery – transplanting a permanent artificial heart instead of a donor heart was the first of its kind.

Stephen retired from the NHS in 2016. The following year he published Fragile Lives: A Heart Surgeon’s Stories of Life and Death on the Operating Theatre which won the BMA President’s Award.

Stephen has two children and lives with his wife in Oxfordshire.

DISC ONE: Wonderful Land - The Shadows 
DISC TWO: Viva La Vida - Coldplay 
DISC THREE: Baker Street – Gerry Rafferty
DISC FOUR: America - Simon & Garfunkel 
DISC FIVE: Forever Autumn - Justin Hayward 
DISC SIX: Moonlight Shadow - Mike Oldfield 
DISC SEVEN: Go Your Own Way - Fleetwood Mac 
DISC EIGHT: Rachmaninoff: Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, Op. 43: Var. 18. Andante cantabile Performed by Vladimir Ashkenazy (piano) and London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by André Previn

BOOK CHOICE: Exercitatio Anatomica de Motu Cordis et Sanguinis in Animalibus by William Harvey
LUXURY ITEM: A family photograph
CASTAWAY'S FAVOURITE: Forever Autumn - Justin Hayward 

Presenter: Lauren Laverne
Producer: Paula McGinley

Professor Stephen Westaby, surgeon and writer

Jessie Buckley is an actor and singer. She recently won a BAFTA and a Golden Globe Award for her critically acclaimed role playing Shakespeare’s wife Agnes in Chloé Zhao’s film Hamnet. Her performance has also garnered her an Academy Award nomination.

Jessie won an Olivier Award for her portrayal of Sally Bowles in a 2021 West End revival of Cabaret. Her breakout film role came in 2018 when she played an aspiring country music singer in the musical Wild Rose.

Jessie was born in Killarney in County Kerry to creative parents. Her mother trained as a singer and harpist and her father, who ran a guest house when she was growing up, writes poetry. As a child Jessie and her siblings put on Irish dancing performances for people who stayed in the guest house.

In 2008 she appeared in the BBC talent show I’d Do Anything – the televised search to find a Nancy for a West End production of Oliver! Jessie came second in the competition and afterwards Sir Cameron Mackintosh, one of the judges, sent her on a Shakespeare workshop at RADA which she says changed her life.

She made her professional stage debut as Anne Egerman in the 2008/2009 revival of Stephen Sondheim's A Little Night Music at London's Menier Chocolate Factory. In 2010 she stepped away from professional work and enrolled at RADA where she studied for three years.

After graduating she performed on stage, screen and television. She received her first Oscar nomination playing opposite Olivia Colman in the 2021 film the Lost Daughter. 

Jessie lives in Norfolk with her husband and their baby daughter.

DISC ONE: Samhradh Samhradh - The Gloaming 
DISC TWO: O Holy Night. Composed by Adolph Adam and performed by Marina Cassidy 
DISC THREE: Who Knows Where the Time Goes (Live at Philharmonic Hall, New York, NY - October 1969) - Nina Simone 
DISC FOUR: Troy - Sinéad O'Connor 
DISC FIVE: Send In the Clowns – Judi Dench
DISC SIX: Shobis Galoba (Christmas Song) - Basiani Ensemble 
DISC SEVEN: The Red Shoes - Kate Bush
DISC EIGHT: Old Note - Lisa O'Neill

BOOK CHOICE: The Complete Poems of Tim Buckley 
LUXURY ITEM: Jessie’s own bathtub and bath salts
CASTAWAY'S FAVOURITE: Samhradh Samhradh - The Gloaming 

Presenter: Lauren Laverne
Producer: Paula McGinley

Jessie Buckley, actor

Roy Plomley's castaway is historian Martin Gilbert.

Favourite track: M'Appari by Beniamino Gigli
Book: The document volumes of the Churchill biography by Martin Gilbert
Luxury: Drawings of his two children

Martin Gilbert

Lyt når som helst, hvor som helst

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