Desert Island Discs

Desert Island Discs is a radio programme broadcast on BBC Radio 4. It was first broadcast on the BBC Forces Programme on 29th of January 1942.^[1]

Each week a guest, called a 'castaway' during the programme, is asked to choose eight recordings (usually, but not always, music), a book and a luxury item that they would take if they were to be cast away on a desert island, whilst discussing their lives and the reasons for their choices. It was devised and originally presented by Roy Plomley. Since 2006, the programme has been presented by Kirsty Young.

More than 3,000 episodes have been recorded, with some guests having appeared more than once and some episodes featuring more than one guest.^[2]

Format

Guests are invited to imagine themselves cast away on a desert island, and choose eight recordings, originally gramophone records, to take with them; discussion of their choices permits a review of their life. Excerpts from their choices are played or, in the case of short pieces, the whole work. At the end of the programme they choose the one piece they regard most highly. Guests are also automatically given the Complete Works of Shakespeare and either the Bible or another appropriate religious or philosophical work. They are then asked which book, of their choice, they would like to take with them. Popular choices include Charles Dickens and Jane Austen. Actress Judi Dench, who suffers from macular degeneration, was permitted to take an audiobook in place of a printed manuscript.^[3][4]

Guests also choose one luxury, which must be inanimate and of no use in escaping the island or allowing communication from outside. Roy Plomley^[5] enforced these rules strictly. He did, however, grant a special dispensation to Princess Michael of Kent, who chose her pet cat.^[6][7] The rules are, however, less strictly enforced today; for instance, Lawley allowed John Cleese to take Michael Palin with him, on the condition that he was dead and stuffed. Examples of luxuries have included champagne^[8] and a piano, the latter of which is one of the most requested luxuries.^[9]

After Plomley's death in 1985, the programme was presented by Michael Parkinson and from 1988 by Sue Lawley.^[5] Lawley stepped down in August 2006 after 18 years, her final castaway being actress Joan Plowright.^[10] She was replaced by Kirsty Young, who interviewed illustrator Quentin Blake for her first show, broadcast on 1 October 2006.^[5]

Notable guests

The first castaway was Vic Oliver, and several castaways, including Arthur Askey, Kenneth Williams, Terry Wogan, Enoch Powell, David Attenborough and Adele Leigh have been cast away more than once. The most requested piece of music over the first 60 years was "Ode to Joy", the last movement of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony.^[11] One of the most remarked broadcasts was Elisabeth Schwarzkopf's 1958 selection of seven of her own recordings.^[12][13] This record was subsequently beaten by British pianist Dame Moura Lympany on her second appearance on the programme on 28 July 1979 when all eight of her selections were of her own recordings.^[14] In the early 1970s, Roy Plomley attempted to interview Alistair MacLean, but ended up speaking to somebody else with the same name - and the programme was never broadcast.^[15]

Opening theme

Plomley originally wanted the sounds of "surf breaking on a shore and the cries of sea birds" to open and close each programme. But Leslie Prowne, the head of popular record programmes at the BBC, was concerned that it lacked definition and insisted that music would also be used. Plomley and the series' producer Frederic Piffard selected "By the Sleepy Lagoon", composed by Eric Coates (who appeared on the show in 1951). The tune has been used since the first transmission in 1942. The sound of herring gulls has accompanied the music except for a period of time in 1964 when tropical bird sounds were used.^[16]

Copyright status

Until late September 2009, Desert Island Discs could not be heard on the BBC's iPlayer service, which allows most programmes to be heard up to a week after transmission. The programme's website^[17] explained this was due to rights issues, as explained in The Sunday Times in 2006.^[18]

It was announced on 27 September 2009 that an agreement had been reached with that the programme would be available to stream via the iPlayer.^[19] The first castaway available through the Player was Barry Manilow. Subsequently, the programme was also made available as a podcast,^[20] beginning with the edition broadcast on 29 November 2009 which featured Morrissey. However, due to music clearance issues, the music selections on the podcast versions are reduced to only playing for around thirty seconds or so (and in rare instances are unavailable, as mentioned in an announcement made by Kirsty Young during the appropriate point of the programme).

On 30 March 2011, the BBC placed over 500 episodes from the show's archive online to listen to via iPlayer. More have since been added, both new and old.

In the early years of the BBC, programmes were broadcast live and generally not recorded. This, in addition to the BBC's policy of wiping that was applied during the 1950s and 1960s, means very few episodes from the first 20 years of the show are known to exist; the earliest episode still in existence is from 1951 and features actress Margaret Lockwood. Several extracts were preserved for posterity at the request of the guests, such as an extract featuring Alfred Hitchcock where he speaks about his films The Pleasure Garden and Rebecca, gives his view on the changing landscape of the film industry and briefly discusses his then upcoming film Psycho.

Appearance in fiction

• In Tom Stoppard's play The Real Thing, the playwright protagonist, Henry, frets over his forthcoming appearance on Desert Island Discs, worrying about whether he should be honest and admit his admiration for pop music (particularly pop music derided by critics) or pretend to favour more conventionally admired music.
• In the 1979 British comedy film Porridge (based on the BBC TV series of the same name), criminal boss, and avid Radio 4 listener, Harry Grout stated that it was an ambition of his to one day appear on the programme. (As of 2016, Peter Vaughan, the actor who portrayed the character, has not appeared as a guest on the show.)
• In Howard Jacobson's The Finkler Question, Finkler is invited to appear on the programme.
• The 1996 Absolutely Fabulous episode "The Last Shout" featured the character Edina Monsoon (played by Jennifer Saunders) being interviewed by Sue Lawley (in an off-camera cameo) for Desert Island Discs. All of Edina's music choices were songs by Lulu.
• For the "Dibley Live" (1998) episode of The Vicar of Dibley, in which the characters are generating programming ideas for the village's one-week radio station, the chronically dull Frank originally proposes a programme called Desert Island Desks, in which he would recount his favourites from the many desks at which he has sat during his lifetime. Instead, he opts for An Hour of Frank Talking, in which he unexpectedly reveals how he came to discover his – hitherto undisclosed – homosexuality; however, none of the locals turns out to have heard the show, having anticipated a boring hour and chosen not to tune in.^[21]
• The 2015 National Theatre production of George Bernard Shaw's Man and Superman featured an opening sequence in which the lead character Jack Tanner is on the show being interviewed by Kirsty Young and selects Mozart's Don Giovanni.^[22]

List of publications

• Desert Island Discs (1977, by Roy Plomley)
• Plomley's Pick (1982, by Roy Plomley)
• Desert Island Lists (1984, compiled by Roy Plomley and Derek Drescher)
• Desert Island Discs: 70 Years of Castaways (2012, by Sean Magee, foreword by Kirsty Young)^[23]
• Desert Island Discs: Flotsam & Jetsam (2012, by Mitchell Symons)^[24]

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Desert Island Discs.

• Desert Island Discs (BBC latest episode)
• Sue Arnold, "The Lagoon Show", The Observer, London, 17 March 2002