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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

Lauren Laverne talks to the musician Thom Yorke in a programme first broadcast in 2019.

Classic Desert Island Discs - Thom Yorke

Sue Lawley talks to the primatologist Dr Jane Goodall in a programme first broadcast in 2000. Jane Goodall died in October 2025, at the age of 91.

Classic Desert Island Discs - Dr Jane Goodall

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

Dwayne Fields is an explorer and broadcaster who was appointed the UK’s Chief Scout in 2024. He is the first black Briton to reach the Magnetic North Pole. His television work includes fronting the series 7 Toughest Days and co-presenting Endurance: Race to the Pole, and Expedition: Search for the Nile, with fellow adventurer Ben Fogle. 

Dwayne was born in Jamaica and was brought up by his great-grandmother for the first few years of his life. When he was six he moved to north London to live with his mother. He struggled to adapt to his new surroundings until he found his way to a Cub Scouts meeting where he experienced a sense of belonging for the first time since his arrival.

As a teenager, he grew up surrounded by gang violence and experienced a serious knife attack when he was 19. A few years later, during a heated confrontation, he had a gun pointed at him. The gun misfired twice and he survived. This shocking incident spurred Dwayne to change his life and challenge himself to inspire other young people to do the same.

In 2010, he walked 400 nautical miles to reach the Magnetic North Pole. In 2019, he co‑founded the WeTwo Foundation with explorer and wild camper Phoebe Smith. The Foundation gives young people from challenging backgrounds the chance to experience life‑changing adventures

Dwayne lives in Peterborough with his wife Angelique, and their five children.

DISC ONE: Three Little Birds - Bob Marley And The Wailers
DISC TWO: Dance With My Father - Luther Vandross 
DISC THREE: I Miss You - DMX feat. Faith Evans 
DISC FOUR: The Loco-motion - Kylie Minogue 
DISC FIVE: Here I Come - Dennis Brown 
DISC SIX: You’re the Apple of My Eye - Louis Armstrong and Velma Middleton 
DISC SEVEN: Roar - Katy Perry 
DISC EIGHT: I'm Still Standing - Elton John 

BOOK CHOICE: The Untold Railway Stories: Celebrating 200 Years of Passenger Railways edited by Monisha Rajesh
LUXURY ITEM: A multi-functional pocket knife
CASTAWAY'S FAVOURITE: Three Little Birds - Bob Marley And The Wailers

Presenter: Lauren Laverne
Producer: Paula McGinley

Dwayne Fields, explorer

Roula Khalaf is a journalist and the first woman to serve as editor of the Financial Times in its 138‑year history. She joined the paper in 1995 as North Africa correspondent, covering the Algerian civil war before reporting more broadly across the Middle East, including Syria, Iran and Iraq, and later the Arab Spring.

Roula was born in Beirut and grew up there during the Lebanese civil war which began in 1975. She studied communications at Syracuse University in New York State and then completed a Master’s degree in International Affairs at Columbia University.

She joined Forbes Magazine in 1989 before relocating to the UK. Her work has earned several awards, including Foreign Commentator of the Year at the Editorial Intelligence Comment in 2016 Awards and the Foreign Press Association’s Feature Story of the Year for her reporting on Qatar in 2013.

Roula has two children with her husband Assaad and lives in London.

DISC ONE: Misunderstanding - Genesis 
DISC TWO: Dernière Danse - Indila 
DISC THREE: Oghneyat Al Bostah - Ziad Rahbani
DISC FOUR: Feeling Good - Nina Simone
DISC FIVE: Zina - Babylone 
DISC SIX: Ya Laure Houbbouki - Fairuz 
DISC SEVEN: Good Riddance (Time of Your Life) - Green Day 
DISC EIGHT: 7 Seconds - Youssou N’Dour ft Neneh Cherry 

BOOK CHOICE: A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East by David Fromkin
LUXURY ITEM: A notebook and pen 
CASTAWAY'S FAVOURITE: Ya Laure Houbbouki - Fairuz 

Presenter: Lauren Laverne
Producer: Paula McGinley

Roula Khalaf, journalist

Richard Young is a photographer who was once known as the “king of the paparazzi”.

His portfolio is a who’s who of some of the biggest stars in film, music, stage and popular culture from the past fifty years. From gatecrashing Elizabeth Taylor’s party for Richard Burton’s 50th at the Dorchester to later being invited to photograph her Damehood celebrations. He can count the first photographs of Paul Getty Jr. after his kidnapping as just one of his many scoops.

He was born in Hackney to a Jewish family and his father ran a hosiery stall in Berwick Street market for more than sixty years. Richard has dyslexia and after being expelled from school at fourteen, he went to Soho and landed a job in fashionable clothes shop frequented by Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, David Hockney and Francis Bacon.

A two-year stint in New York followed, working as a studio assistant at Electric Lady Studios, before he returned to London and found himself in a bookshop handed a camera and told to get on with photographing authors.

For the past fifty years, he has lived a nocturnal, high octane life of private jets, parties and exclusive events, eventually becoming as much a fixture in the world of celebrity as the people he photographed.

Richard lives in London with his wife Susan. His photography gallery is in London and has visitors from around the world.

DISC ONE: Rehab - Amy Winehouse 
DISC TWO: Just Walkin’ in the Rain - Johnny Ray 
DISC THREE: Cosmic Dancer - T. Rex 
DISC FOUR: Positively 4th Street - Bob Dylan 
DISC FIVE: Point Blank - Bruce Springsteen 
DISC SIX: Isn’t It a Pity - George Harrison 
DISC SEVEN: A Beautiful Day - Queen 
DISC EIGHT: The Gypsy’s Wife - Leonard Cohen 

BOOK CHOICE: Siddhartha by Herman Hesse
LUXURY ITEM: Caviar
CASTAWAY'S FAVOURITE: Point Blank - Bruce Springsteen 

Presenter: Lauren Laverne
Producer: Sarah Taylor

Desert Island Discs has cast other photographers away to the island over the years including David Bailey, Sally Mann and Vanley Burke. You can hear their programmes if you search through BBC Sounds or our own Desert Island Discs website.

Richard Young, photographer

Tahra Zafar is a costume and creature effects designer. 

She designed the Paddington Bear puppet featured in the hit West End production Paddington: The Musical.

Born into a theatre family, she grew up with an Armenian American father who worked as a choreographer in the first West End production of West Side Story, and a mother who moved from a career as a ballerina to theatre work around the world. Her interest in making began early, helping her father with practical projects such as restoring their house, even learning to build walls and spending her spare time model making, with Airfix creations suspended from her bedroom ceiling.

After studying theatre design at Central Saint Martins, she began her career making theatre costumes. She spent some time at the Jim Henson creature workshop where she made some of the creatures for the first Harry Potter film including Hedwig the owl and Scabbers the rat.

After her daughter was born, Tahra worked on some of the characters for In the Night Garden with her daughter, a willing judge of what worked for toddlers. 
In 2012, Tahra was in charge of 23,000 costumes for the London 2012 Olympic opening and closing ceremonies. This role included an audience with the late Queen to ensure the wig and dress were correct for Her Majesty’s stunt double when that iconic skydive was performed at the Olympic opening ceremony. 

Tahra lives in London with her daughter.

DISC ONE: Thunderbirds (Main Theme) - The Barry Gray Orchestra 
DISC TWO: Gee, Officer Krupke. Composed by Leonard Bernstein and performed by Leo Kharibian, Norman Furber and Vince Logan 
DISC THREE: Beethoven: Symphony No. 9 In D Minor (movement six) Composed by Ludwig van Beethoven and performed by Berlin Philharmoniker, Wiener Singverein and conducted by Herbert von Karajan
DISC FOUR: Brazil – Geoff Muldaur
DISC FIVE: Sir Duke - Stevie Wonder 
DISC SIX: Groove Is in the Heart - Deee-Lite 
DISC SEVEN: Eclipse - Pink Floyd 
DISC EIGHT: Take Five - Dave Brubeck 
 
BOOK CHOICE: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Complete Books by Douglas Adams 
LUXURY ITEM: A set of art materials and a storage box
CASTAWAY'S FAVOURITE: Eclipse - Pink Floyd 

Presenter: Lauren Laverne
Producer: Sarah Taylor

Desert Island Discs has cast other costume designers away to the island over the years including Oscar winners Jenny Beavan and Sandy Powell. You can hear their programmes if you search through BBC Sounds or our own Desert Island Discs website.

Tahra Zafar, costume and effects designer

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

Rupert Everett, actor

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