Desert Island Discs

Sue Lawley's castaway this week is the director Franco Zeffirelli. He was born the illegitimate son of a philandering businessman and a successful fashion designer, both of whom were married to other people. Unable to give him his father's or her own name, his mother plucked a word out of a Mozart opera - 'Zefferetti', meaning 'little breeze' - and gave it to her son. Somewhere along the line a sl...

Sue Lawley's castaway this week is the composer George Fenton, whose work includes music for Groundhog Day, Shadowlands, Cry Freedom, The Company of Wolves and The Fisher King. Born George Howe in South London in 1950, he taught himself to play the guitar at the age of eight and by the age of 14 was playing the organ - "dreadfully"! He wanted to be an actor, and got an early break in Alan Bennett'...

Sue Lawley's castaway this week is the sociologist and Oxford Emeritus Professor A H Halsey. Prof Halsey played a key part in the switch to comprehensives as an adviser to Labour Education Secretary Anthony Crossland in the 1960s. Born in 1923 to working class parents he grew up convinced that intelligence wasn't dependent on class. Chelly, as Halsey was universally known, won a scholarship to gra...

Sue Lawley's castaway this week is the impressionist and satirist Rory Bremner. He was born in Edinburgh in 1961. A self-confessed show-off, he started doing impersonations at primary school, sending up teachers, sports commentators and Moira Anderson! Entertaining his school friends inevitably developed into performing on stage and he worked as a stand up on the comedy circuit, and notably at the...

Sue Lawley's castaway this week is the writer Margaret Atwood. Born just after the outbreak of the Second World War, Margaret Atwood spent much of her childhood in the Canadian outback where her father's work involved studying insects. She grew up mostly without television, cinema, mains electricity or even a proper road to civilisation. For company she had only her parents and her brother, with w...

Sue Lawley's castaway this week is David Gilmour of Pink Floyd. Gilmour grew up in Cambridge, where his father was a senior lecturer in zoology and his mother was also a lecturer and film editor. He was educated at a private school, in the hope that he would shine academically, but he really wanted to be playing music with his friends at the local state school, the County. At 16 he left and went t...

Sue Lawley's castaway this week is the actress Kristin Scott Thomas. She was born in Redruth, Cornwall in 1960. Her father, a Naval pilot, was killed in a crash when she was five. Her mother married another pilot six years later, but he was also killed under similar circumstances. Kristin moved around the country with her parents and four siblings until she went to Cheltenham Ladies College at the...

Sue Lawley's castaway this week is the composer of the hit musicals Les Miserables and Miss Saigon, Claude-Michel Schönberg. Claude-Michel always knew he would be a composer. As a small boy growing up in Brittany he would play the piano and compose pieces for his mother. He dreamt of getting away from his little village on the French coast and going to live in Paris and compose operas. To please h...

Sue Lawley's castaway this week is the photo journalist Nick Danziger. Nick was born in London but grew up in Monaco and Switzerland. He developed a taste for adventure and travel from a young age, and, inspired by the comic-strip Belgian reporter Tintin, took off on his first trip to Paris aged 13. Without passport or air ticket, he managed to enter the country and travel around, selling sketches...

Sue Lawley's castaway this week is the comedian Jim Moir, best known by the name of his alter ego Vic Reeves. Jim was born in Leeds but soon moved to Darlington with his family. He attended the local school and left with one O level in Art. He fulfilled the expectations of his school by getting a job in a factory, completing his apprenticeship and working there for four years. However, he was bore...

"Sue Lawley's castaway this week is the singer-songwriter Gene Pitney. Gene grew up in Rockville, Connecticut, the middle child of a large family. His father worked in the local mills and the family sold fruit and vegetables from their garden to supplement this income. A shy child, Gene says that performing couldn't have been further from his mind, although he enjoyed singing. His first solo perfo...

Sue Lawley's castaway this week is the actor, George Clooney. George was born in Lexington, Kentucky in 1961, the son of Nick Clooney, a TV newscaster. From the age of five, George spent time pottering round his father's sets, joining in where possible, shouting out the temperature during the weather report. After an initial plan to follow his father into broadcasting, then studying for a short wh...

Sue Lawley's castaway this week is the artist Cornelia Parker. Cornelia grew up in the country where she lived on a small holding looked after by her father. She spent much of her time mucking out pigs, milking cows, laying hedges and tying up tomato plants. Her means of escape was to run into the fields to daydream. English and art were her favourite subjects, and a trip to the Tate Gallery in Lo...

Sue Lawley's castaway this week is the actor Sir Ian McKellen. Ian grew up in Lancashire attending Wigan Grammar school and then Bolton School where he was Head Boy. His first trip to the theatre was as a three year old when he went to see Peter Pan at Manchester Opera House. At seven, a treasured Christmas present was a fold-away Victorian theatre from Pollocks Toy Theatres. Ian's older sister Je...

Sue Lawley's castaway this week is the comedian and star of The Fast Show, Paul Whitehouse. Born in the Rhonda Valley in Wales, Paul and his family soon moved to Enfield where he grew up. Paul was never particularly ambitious, but he was bright and got a place at University, although he dropped out in his first year. He went on to work as a plasterer and was quite content, enjoying a bit of humoro...

Sue Lawley's castaway this week is the theatre director Trevor Nunn. At the age of five Trevor had decided, to the great surprise of his parents, that he wanted to be an actor. He won his first part at the age of 13 when a local company needed a child actor. But his plans to act fell by the wayside when he realised there was such a job as directing after he directed a school revue at age 16, a rol...

Sue Lawley's castaway this week is the Nobel Prize-winning scientist Professor Baruch Blumberg. Barry Blumberg was born in Brooklyn, New York in the 1920s, just before the economic depression in 1929. As a young boy he was particularly interested in science, and when his family moved to Queens he turned the basement of his parents house into a laboratory. At age 17, during the Second World War, he...

Sue Lawley's castaway this week is Gillian Anderson, best known for her role as Dana Scully in The X Files. Gillian was born in Chicago, Illinois. When she was two, she moved with her parents to London. At 11, the family moved to Grand Rapids, Michigan which she found deathly dull in comparison to the big city life of London. Gillian began acting in community theatre productions while in high scho...

George Foreman was born in Texas into a large but poor family. His earliest memories are of being hungry. He found school difficult and felt he was written off because of his scruffy clothes. He had a short temper and would often get into fights as a child, sometimes beating people up for no reason. Soon he discovered that mugging was an easy way to get funds and terrorised his neighbourhood, alth...

Patricia Daniels was born in 1956 in Miami, Florida. After her parents divorced she moved with her mother and two brothers to Montreat, North Carolina. Her mother suffered from depression and sought help from the Reverend Billy Graham. The reverend's wife, Ruth Bell Graham, became Patricia's friend and mentor and encouraged her to write. She particularly loved telling ghost stories, and would scar...

Rowan Williams grew up in Swansea and Cardiff. He enjoyed reading, being outdoors and acting in school plays. He remembers attending church every day in Holy week, getting involved cleaning out the store rooms and making a bonfire of the rubbish. In his later teenage years he was inspired by the excellent choir, youth activities and Canon Eddie Hughes, vicar of All Saints, Oystermouth. Rowan went...

Sinead Cusack was born in Ireland into a acting dynasty. Her first ambition, whilst at convent school, was to be a saint. But her behaviour didn't match her early aspiration: as a teenager she was nearly expelled from school for dramatising the Profumo affair for the headmistress's feast day. Her first professional part was at the age of eleven when her father, the actor Cyril Cusack, cast her in...

Sue Lawley's castaway is dub poet Linton Kwesi Johnson. Linton Kwesi Johnson was born in 1950s rural Jamaica. He lived in a farming community and looked after the animals, helping with the sugar harvest and fetching firewood. He lived with his grandmother after his parents separated, loving being the man of the house. She would entertain the young Linton, who she called "me husband", with folk son...

John Malkovich makes his film directorial debut this year with The Dancer Upstairs. He's best known for his laconic sophistication in films such as Dangerous Liaisons, In the Line of Fire and The Man in the Iron Mask. He was celebrated in 1999's Being John Malkovich, in which he played himself. Malkovich was born in rural America, where his family ran the local newspaper. He attended Illinois Stat...

Described by Lord Tebbit as "a remarkably normal family man with children", Iain has just completed twelve months as Leader of the Conservative Party - he was the first Leader to be elected by a ballot of the Party's membership. Iain married Betsy in 1982 and they have two sons and two daughters. [Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs] Favourite...