Desert Island Discs

Kirsty Young interviews the comedian Lee Mack. He writes and stars in the BBC One hit show "Not Going Out". His stand-up tours do great business and his lightening sharp comedy reflexes are also put to good use on a number of prime-time panel shows. His first ever performance was doing impressions for his school mates, but it took him more than ten years to pluck up the courage to step on stage. L...

Kirsty Young's castaway this week is the novelist and critic, Zadie Smith. First published at just twenty four her debut novel "White Teeth" garnered huge attention and praise. As a result she suffered the unnerving experience of doing her literary growing up in public. Yet in spite of the scrutiny she blossomed. In the 13 years since, her novels, essays and short stories have brought numerous lit...

The psychologist Daniel Kahneman, who won the 2002 Nobel Prize for Economics, is interviewed by Kirsty Young for Desert Island Discs. Widely acknowledged as one of the world's most influential living psychologists, his many years of study have centred on how and why we make the decisions we do. As a child, he lived in Nazi occupied France and he says that, from a young age, he already had a pretty...

Kirsty Young's castaway is BAFTA award-winning production designer, Eve Stewart. Her big screen credits include Les Miserables, The King's Speech and Vera Drake and for TV The Hour, Upstairs Downstairs and Call The Midwife. Responsible for locations, scenery and all the props she is renowned for creating entirely convincing, cohesive worlds that capture a beguiling sense of time, place and spirit....

Kirsty Young's castaway is Mary Robinson, former President of Ireland and ex-UN Commissioner for Human Rights. Her professional life has been defined by public service at the very highest level and she appears the epitome of the cool-headed pragmatist. And yet she is also something of an enigma: a committed Catholic who fought hard to legalise contraception and divorce; an elected head of state wi...

Russell Brand, comedian & actor, is interviewed by Kirsty Young for Desert Island Discs. Actor, comic, writer, Russell Brand is a compelling cultural phenomenon who in 2006 was, in his own words, "plucked from a life of hard drugs and petty crime and rocketed into the snugly carcinogenic glare of celebrity." Along with an athletic wit and a florid turn of phrase he specialises in going too far...

The writer, Val McDermid, is interviewed by Kirsty Young for Desert Island Discs. Crime fiction is Val's chosen genre and the millions of novels she sells examine and dissect the darkest recesses of human behaviour. Domestic violence, murder, abduction - it's difficult to imagine a subject she'd shy away from. She once described herself as "A mixture of hard bitten cynical hack and Pollyanna". Bro...

Kirsty Young's castaway this week is the cardiologist Jane Somerville. Now an Emeritus Professor in her discipline at Imperial College London she's gained a worldwide reputation for her pioneering work on congenital heart disease. She began studying medicine in the early 1950s when only a very few women were admitted through the doors of medical school. Since then she's been responsible for ground...

Kirsty Young's castaway this week is cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker. An author and Harvard professor he's been named by Time Magazine as one of the world's 100 most influential scientists and thinkers. The psychology of violence and where language comes from are just two of his specialist subjects. Bill Gates is officially a fan, the man who sends him hate mail related to his work on irregul...

Kirsty Young's castaway is the actor, Hugh Laurie. If life were straightforward he'd be marooned on the island because of his achievements as an Olympic rower. But his early promise on the water was scuppered by a bout of glandular fever - so he's had to make do instead with life as a worldwide entertainment superstar. Very British comedy, very big budget movies, very successful syndicated TV dram...

Kirsty Young's castaway this week is the editor of British Vogue, Alexandra Shulman. In spite of being in charge of one of our leading 'style bibles' for more than 20 years, her reputation is that of someone rather down to earth. She thinks designers cut clothes too small, refuses to let superstars have photo and copy approval and when she was first appointed editor, she'd never even been on a fas...

Kirsty Young's castaway this week is the mountaineer Conrad Anker. Some of us choose a life in I.T. or event planning - Conrad Anker has opted to swing from a nylon stepladder 19,000 feet up a cliff with a dose of trench foot and a wedge of stale cheese for supper. It may seem an odd way to spend one's life but it's his way. One of the world's elite climbers he's credited with a long list of first...

Kirsty Young's castaway this week is the out-going Governor of the Bank of England, Sir Mervyn King. He has been in charge during a period of unprecedented global financial turmoil yet under his leadership the Bank of England has emerged as one of the world's most powerful central banks. He may have grown used to the pink tails coats and top hats of his attendants in Threadneedle Street but his ba...

Kirsty Young's guest this week is the ballerina, writer and broadcaster Deborah Bull. The Royal Ballet, where she was a principal dancer for almost two decades owes a debt of gratitude to the Janice Sutton School of Dance in Skegness. It was there, aged 7, two floors above a fish and chip shop and a row of amusements arcades - and having practiced "good toes, bad toes" - that she knew precisely wh...

Kirsty Young's castaway this week is the Pulitzer Prize winning writer Alice Walker. Author, poet, feminist and activist, it was her novel The Color Purple that brought her worldwide attention and acclaim. The story of a poor black girl surviving in the deep American south, between the wars, it is a landmark work, disturbing and exhilarating in equal measure. If one subscribes to the idea that "ar...

Kirsty Young's guest this week is the artist Damien Hirst. Life, death, desire, fear, beauty, horror - his creative preoccupations are standard fair; his art - using sharks, maggots, butterflies, glass, formaldehyde and even sometimes paint - is not. His best known works have become iconic symbols of contemporary culture and his exhibitions and auctions attract attention the way a carcass attracts...

Kirsty Young's castaway this week is Sir Sydney Kentridge QC. Widely regarded as a leading advocate of the 20th century, he continues to make his mark in the 21st; he recently appeared for the first time in the European Court of Justice and at the end of last year he spent the actual day of his 90th birthday working in the English Supreme Court. Born in South Africa, he was first called to the bar...

Kirsty Young's castaway this week is the writer and campaigner Jasvinder Sanghera. She has counselled government and travelled widely advising on how to put a stop to forced marriage and so called honour violence. At 14, Jasvinder was shown a picture of the stranger thousands of miles away she was to marry and in the face of intimidation she fled her family, chose her own husbands and gained a fir...

Actress Julie Goodyear is castaway by Kirsty Young. For a quarter of a century, Julie's Coronation Street TV character Bet Lynch set the gold plated standard for big, brassy, back chatting blondes. Behind the bar of the Rovers Return her bosom swathed in leopard-print and her head piled high with platinum curls she was Manchester's answer to Mae West. Her MBE was awarded for her services to drama...

Kirsty Young's castaway this week is the writer David Almond. Most of his work is for children but the adults who populate the juries of heavyweight literary prizes really like it too. The accolades began with his first novel Skellig published in 1998 when he was 47; it won the mighty "Whitbread Children's" award and then many others besides. Ever since, he's been acclaimed for his ability to craf...

Kirsty Young's castaway this week is the photographer Rankin. He started out doing fashion shoots and is very good at making pretty young things look even prettier. But his work and influence have spread well beyond the glossy pages of style bibles. From Congolese war widows to canoodling pensioners his skill is capturing a moment of spontaneous and often surprising truth. He should really been do...

Professor Uta Frith, developmental psychologist, is interviewed by Kirsty Young for Desert Island Discs. Uta Frith's groundbreaking work on autism has revolutionized our understanding of the condition; overturning the traditional, long-held belief that the root of the problems are social & emotional; discovering instead that autism is the result of physical differences in the brain. She arrive...

Kirsty Young's castaway this week is the cricket commentator Jonathan Agnew. Known simply as "Aggers" to the army of fans devoted to Test Match Special, his charm, knowledge and ready wit have gained him a place in the heart of anyone who loves the game. His own infatuation began as a young boy at boarding school and along with his talent and determination it took him all the way to the top of the...

Kirsty Young's guest is the writer Julie Burchill. As a columnist and author she is a committed non-conformist - daring the world to take issue with her vociferous life and work and depending on whom you ask is either a 'Marxist critic' or 'a right wing columnist'. As a child she used to hide away when potential playmates came to call, at 17 she was writing for the NME and in the decades since she...

Kirsty Young's castaway is Sir Terry Leahy, the businessman and former CEO of Tesco. His first job with the company was as a teenager when he worked as a shelf-stacker, but he made his name transforming the supermarket from a lack-lustre brand into Britain's biggest retailer. His ascent to the very top was marked by a fundamental understanding of his customers' needs and a single minded determinat...