Desert Island Discs

Ann Patchett is an American writer. She is the author of ten novels, several works of non-fiction and three children’s books. Her breakout hit, Bel Canto, won the PEN/Faulkner Award and the Women’s Prize for Fiction in 2002. It was her first bestseller and made her name around the world. Ann was born in Los Angeles in 1963, the youngest of two daughters to Frank and Jeanne Patchett. Her parents divorced when she was just four, and her mother moved Ann and her sister to Nashville where she eventually married her second husband. Ann’s stories are often about family and are sometimes inspired by her own experience of growing up with her biological parents, two stepfathers, a stepmother and numerous siblings. She says, “We weren’t the products of our parents’ happy marriages; we were the flotsam of their divorces.” Ann started publishing journalism and short stories in the 1980s. Her debut novel, The Patron Saint of Liars, followed in 1992, but it wasn’t until her fourth, Bel Canto, which came out in 2001, that…

Plomley's castaway is impresario T C Fairbairn. Favourite track: Prize Song by Richard Wagner Book: The complete works by John Milton Luxury: Tape recorder

Professor Dame Parveen Kumar is a gastroenterologist and co-author of one of the most influential medical textbooks in the world - Kumar & Clark’s Clinical Medicine. She was born in Lahore (then still in British India) in June 1942, one of three children to Cyril and Grace Kumar. When Parveen was four and her hometown was gripped by violence ahead of the 1947 Partition of the country into India and Pakistan, her mother packed up the family and fled to Delhi, then on to Simla, and later still to China before returning to India. Parveen was educated at the Lawrence School in Sanawar and then, following her mother’s decision to move to England, at Paddington and Maida Vale High School before she began studying at Barts Medical School. She specialised in gastroenterology, with a particular interest in coeliac disease, and, in 1982, was appointed one of the first women consultants at St Bartholomew’s Hospital. In 1987, Parveen published Kumar & Clark’s Clinical Medicine, co-edited with her supervisor, Mike Clark.…

Matt Haig is the bestselling writer, whose work ranges from magical realism to memoir. His novel The Midnight Library became a global phenomenon, selling 15 million copies, while his memoir Reasons to Stay Alive has provided comfort to millions around the world. He grew up in Newark-on-Trent in a loving family, though his mother struggled with post-natal depression. Difficulties at school and the death of his grandmother led to a period of teenage rebellion. Matt met his future wife, Andrea, at university and credits her with helping him through the most dangerous period of his life. In their early twenties they spent summers in Ibiza, culminating in Matt’s mental breakdown, and an intense three-year recovery. In 2015 he published Reasons to Stay Alive, a memoir based on his breakdown. It became a bestseller and transformed his public profile, though the way he handled his newfound success has become one of his biggest regrets. Further literary success came in 2020 with his novel The Midnight Library, which…

The writer and broadcaster Richard Osman was cast away by Lauren Laverne. He is the author of the Thursday Murder Club series and has presented popular BBC shows including Pointless and Richard Osman's House of Games. When he appeared on Desert Island Discs in 2021, he revealed that at a time when his career was going well, he was struggling with an eating disorder. It's something he continues to manage day by day, but says he no longer feels any shame about. You can listen to the full episode on BBC Sounds.

The actress Penelope Keith, who died earlier this year, was cast away by Roy Plomley in 1976. She became best known for her roles in the BBC sitcoms The Good Life and To the Manor Born, but Penelope Keith began her career in repertory theatre. In 1963, she joined the Royal Shakespeare Company, getting notices as a very enthusiastic 16th citizen in Julius Caesar. You can listen to the full episode on BBC Sounds.

The boxer Anthony Joshua was cast away by Lauren Laverne in 2024. He is a two-time heavyweight champion and Olympic gold medallist who was raised by his mother after his parents divorced when he was 12. He credits her with much of his success, but says that she can't watch his fights, staying in her hotel room to pray for him instead. You can listen to the full episode on BBC Sounds.

The actor and comedian Kathy Burke was cast away by Kirsty Young in 2010. She came to prominence when she appeared in Kevin and Perry TV sketches opposite Harry Enfield. Perry, the prepubescent schoolboy, was a role she was able to draw on from her own years as a teenager. What saved her, she says, was the arrival of punk music. You can listen to the full episode on BBC Sounds.

The actor Stephen Mangan was cast away by Lauren Laverne in 2025. He made his breakthrough on television playing Adrian Mole in The Cappuccino Years in 2001. Although he was glad to get the part, he describes being cast by Adrian Mole's creator, Sue Townsend, as a somewhat disconcerting experience. You can listen to the full episode on BBC Sounds.

The singer songwriter Nick Cave was cast away by Lauren Laverne in 2025. He has written huge hits such as "Into My Arms" and "Where the Wild Roses Grow", but songwriting doesn't come easily to him. His notebooks are full of what he describes as "bad stuff", and he'd like them to be burned after his death, thank you very much. The best way to approach the job, he says, is in office hours and wearing a suit. You can listen to the full episode on BBC Sounds.

The actor and writer Meera Syal was cast away by Sue Lawley in 2003. She was awarded a Damehood earlier this year, but Meera Syal rose to prominence as one of the writers of the TV series Goodness Gracious Me. It came at a time in the 1990s when the perception of the British Asian experience was changing and, she says, held a mirror up to British society. You can listen to the full episode on BBC Sounds.

The BBC's chief international correspondent Lyse Doucet was cast away by Lauren Laverne in 2022. She has reported from many war-torn countries, including Afghanistan, Iran and Iraq, but says she doesn't want to be defined by war. Instead, she is interested in the human cost of conflict. When she arrives in a place, she embeds herself in the lives of the local people; discovering what she calls the “heat and dust” of a society helps her to tell their stories. You can listen to the full episode on BBC Sounds.

The former England manager Gareth Southgate was cast away by Lauren Laverne in 2024. He was 25 when he made his debut for the England team. By the time he retired from international football, he had been capped 57 times. As England manager, he led the team to two finals in the European Championships, further than they had come in more than five decades since 1966. You can listen to the full episode on BBC Sounds.

The actor Michael Sheen was cast away by Lauren Laverne in 2025. He has portrayed many real people on stage including Tony Blair, Brian Clough and David Frost, though never Jack Nicholson. That was his father's department, who had a second career impersonating the actor, which started around the time Nicholson played the Joker in the 1989 Batman film. You can listen to the full episode on BBC Sounds.

Chaka Khan’s unmistakeable voice and musical versatility have made her one of the most influential musicians of the past six decades, with an estimated 70 million records sold. Whether fronting the band Rufus or performing as a solo artist, she's moved effortlessly between funk, soul, jazz, and pop, creating era-defining hits including I'm Every Woman, Ain't Nobody and I Feel For You. She grew up in Chicago, in an artistic family where she was surrounded by music. As a teenager, she became involved with the Affro-Arts Theater, where she was given the Yoruba name Chaka, and a political awakening led her to join the Black Panther Party. By her late teens, she had joined Rufus, whose breakthrough hit Tell Me Something Good launched the band to international success and marked the beginning of her recording career. She has since won 11 Grammy Awards, including a Lifetime Achievement Award in 2026, been inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, and collaborated with some of music’s modern greats, including…

Professor Dame Pamela Shaw is a pioneering Neurologists and a leading figure in tackling motor neurone disease or MND. She is the founder and Director of SITran – the World leading Sheffield Institute for Translational Neuroscience, which is slowly but surely unlocking the secrets of MND and other devastating neurological conditions. Pam was born in Rothbury, Northumberland, in 1955, and at three moved to Kuwait when her father took up the position of harbour master. She lived there until she was eleven, but with no suitable secondary school available locally, she was sent back to Northumberland to board at Our Lady's Convent High School in Alnwick. She studied medicine at Newcastle University and began her clinical training in the North-east. Following her appointment as a consultant neurologist she developed an interest in Motor Neurone Disease. A chance meeting with a recently dignosed MND patient led to Pam founding the Sheffield Institute for Translational Neuroscience in 2010. She was made a Dame in…

Emma Grede is the businesswoman behind major fashion brands including Skims and Good American, which she co-founded with Kim Kardashian and Khloé Kardashian, respectively. Last year Forbes included her on their list of America's Richest Self-Made Women, with an estimated net worth of $405 million. She grew up in Plaistow, East London, the eldest of four daughters. Her parents separated when she was five and she was raised by her mum, who worked long hours as a trader at an investment bank. Emma took on a lot of the responsibility at home caring for her sisters. Dyslexia meant she struggled at school, but she found satisfaction in a string of part-time jobs, from delivering newspapers to making sandwiches in a deli. She later dropped out of the London College of Fashion to pursue a career in the industry, and by her mid-twenties she had founded her first company. She made her name brokering deals between celebrities and brands that included signing Natalie Portman as the face of Dior. In 2016 she founded an…

Sir Roger Deakins is an acclaimed cinematographer who is known for his visual artistry on films including The Shawshank Redemption, 1917, Fargo, Skyfall and Blade Runner 2049. His talents have been acknowledged with a knighthood, five BAFTAs and two Oscars. Roger was born in Torquay, Devon in 1949. In 1968 he attended the Bath Academy of Art where he was inspired by one of his tutors, the street photographer Roger Mayne, to go out with his camera and capture what he saw. Roger Deakins followed this advice and spent his weekends shooting people and places in British seaside towns. In 1975 Roger graduated from the National Film School in Beaconsfield and started work as a cameraman – making documentaries and music videos. His first feature film was Cruel Passion which came out in 1977. In 1984 he worked on Michael Radford’s film adaptation of George Orwell’s novel 1984, starring Richard Burton and John Hurt. The first of Roger’s collaborations with filmmakers Joel and Ethan Coen started in 1991 with the film…

Shania Twain is a singer and songwriter and one of only two artists in history to have three consecutive diamond albums. By the time she was eight years old, she had a repertoire of one hundred songs which she would sing in bars. She began to write her own songs at the age of ten. Her mother was convinced that she was going to be a star and took her to perform in smoky clubs. Off stage, all was not well in the family home and Shania grew up in a turbulent household where there was much fighting. When she was thirteen years old, she persuaded her mother to drive Shania and her sisters to Toronto to a women’s shelter. Her parents eventually reunited and then were both killed in a car accident when Shania was twenty-two years old. She then became the guardian of her younger siblings and put her music dreams on hold to look after them. Eventually she got a job in a golf resort singing and came to the attention of a Nashville music executive and was offered a recording contract when she was thirty. She was…

Paul Farmer is a charity leader who has spent his life campaigning, fundraising and changing the national conversation around some of the most challenging issues in our society. Currently at the helm of Age UK, he previously spent 16 years as the CEO of Mind, the UK’s largest mental health charity. Paul was born in Oxford, the son of a former Benedictine monk and a former nun. He read history at St Peter’s College, Oxford, where he met his future wife, Claire. After graduating, he found a role working for a heritage centre and fell in love with the charity sector, moving to the Samaritans. His experiences taking calls from those struggling with their mental health awakened a passion for working in the mental health sector. In 2006 he moved Mind, where he became CEO. He led a fifteen-year campaign that helped to change legislation, and the national conversation around mental health. For the past few years, he has campaigned for older people as Chief Executive at Age UK, and encouraged the public to prepare…

Professor Liz Morris is a glaciologist whose work in some of the earth’s most inhospitable environments has broadened humanity’s understanding of climate change and polar science. Her accolades include the prestigious Polar Medal and an OBE for services to Polar Science. Liz was born in London in 1946 and family legend has it that she fell in love with snow and ice the following year during what was known as the Big Freeze - one of the most severe and punishing winters in British history. She studied physics at Bristol University and applied for a role at the British Antarctic Survey in the early Seventies. At that time the institute did not have any female scientists working in the field and her application was rejected. Liz bided her time and eventually did get to work at the BAS, becoming head of the Ice and Climate Division in 1986. The following year she became the first British woman to undertake tent-based research in Antarctica, arriving just as the ozone hole discovery was breaking. Liz completed…

Norman Cook is a musician and DJ also widely known as Fatboy Slim. As a DJ, he has played everywhere from Bondi Beach and the Great Wall of China to the House of Commons and a fish and chip shop. His many accolades include a world record for the most number one singles by one musician in different acts. He has had a number of musical aliases including Pizzaman, Cheeky Boy and Beats International. He was also a member of the Housemartins. He was christened Quentin by his parents and changed his name to Norman when he embarked on his musical career. His passion for music and collecting records led him down the path of becoming a DJ and his outdoor gigs, particularly in Brighton, saw him play to crowds of over a quarter of a million people. He has been married twice, his second wife was the DJ and radio presenter, Zoe Ball. Norman lives in Brighton DISC ONE: The Adventures of Grandmaster Flash on the Wheels of Steel - Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five DISC TWO: Golden Slumbers / Carry That Weight - The…

Jo Nesbø is a writer, known as the king of 'Nordic Noir'. His internationally bestselling crime thrillers following the exploits of detective Harry Hole have been translated into fifty languages, sold over sixty million copies and have been adapted for film and TV. Being a bestselling author was not his first job. As a teenager, he played football professionally before an injury put paid to his sporting career. He played guitar and wrote songs for a band which then became very successful in Norway and he combined his gigging nightlife with a day job on Norway’s stock market. His relentless schedule led to him taking time off from both the band and the stock market and whilst he was travelling on a plane to Australia, he wrote his first draft of his debut Harry Hole novel. He has since gone on to write thirteen Harry Hole novels along with children’s stories and other standalone books. Jo lives in Oslo. DISC ONE: Perfect Skin - Lloyd Cole and the Commotions DISC TWO: Ticket To Ride - The Beatles DISC THREE:…

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…

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…

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…

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.…

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…

Archers actress Patricia Greene is castaway by Kirsty Young. For nearly 60 years she's played the role of Jill in BBC Radio 4’s The Archers which celebrates its 65th anniversary on January 1st 2016. Over the decades the storylines have followed her character through one marriage, four children and since 2010, widowhood. Born in Derby in 1931, Paddy’s love of acting began early on inspired by her father who was a keen amateur actor. As an only and independent child she was surrounded by the adult world and would often eavesdrop as she hid under the kitchen table. Her parents loved entertainment and would take her to the cinema every week to see Hollywood romances or comedies. After attending a grammar school she went to the Central School of Speech and Drama in London in 1951. She wanted to be a classical actress, but then a phone call from the Archers production office changed her career path and she joined the cast initially on a six week contract in 1957. Her character Jill went onto marry the farmer Phil…

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…

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 - and when she left the series in 1995, her departure pulled in 19 million viewers. Yet whatever the scriptwriters came up with it was never as dramatic as the life she's lived beyond The Street. Julie got pregnant at 17, her second husband abandoned her for their best man, and in 1979 she was diagnosed with cancer and told she'd a year to live. She's now married to her fourth husband. She says, "If anyone should be interested in an epitaph for my life, I would like them to consider, 'At least she tried." DISC ONE: Nancy Sinatra - These Boots are Made for Walkin’ DISC TWO: Eileen Wilson - A You're Adorable DISC…

Kirsty Young's castaway is actress June Spencer. She is one of the best-loved matriarchs in broadcasting. As Peggy Woolley in The Archers, she's the only original member of the cast still in the show. It's 60 years this spring since the pilot episodes were first broadcast and, although she is now aged 90, June has no plans to retire. She says, 'It's a great bonus for me that The Archers has run as long as it has, and I've gone along with it.' DISC ONE: Fred Astaire - Let's Face The Music And Dance DISC TWO: Nelson Eddy - I Passed by Your Window DISC THREE: Andrei Gavrilov - Frédéric Chopin’s Revolutionary Study DISC FOUR: Northern Sinfonia Orchestra, conducted by Jean-Bernard Pommier - Claude Debussy’s En bateau (from Petite suite) DISC FIVE: John Williams - Concierto De Aranjuez DISC SIX: Harry Secombe - Giacomo Puccini’s E Lucevan Le Stelle (from Tosca) DISC SEVEN: The Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Leonard Slatkin - Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Overture to The Sleeping Beauty DISC EIGHT:…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

Professor Michele Dougherty is President of the Institute of Physics and Professor of Space Physics at Imperial College London. She was appointed Astronomer Royal last year – the first woman to hold the post in its 350-year history. She was brought up in Durban in South Africa and studied for a Bachelor of Science degree in applied maths at Natal University. After completing a Master’s and PhD she took up a fellowship at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Germany where she investigated solar wind and galactic wind outflows. In 1991 she joined Imperial College London where she helped devise a magnetic field model for the Ulysses mission. In 1997 she became principal investigator for the magnetometer instrument on board the Cassini probe which was sent to study Saturn and its system. She is currently lead investigator for the J-MAG magnetometer instrument on the European Space Agency's JUICE mission (Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer) which launched in 2023. It will reach Jupiter in 2031 and spend at least…

Kemi Badenoch is the Conservative MP for North West Essex and the Leader of the Opposition. Since winning her seat in 2017, she has held cabinet positions as Minister of State for Equalities under Boris Johnson and Secretary of State for International Trade under Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak. She became leader of the Conservative Party in 2024 after Rishi Sunak’s resignation and is the first black person to lead a political party in Britain. Her Nigerian parents came to Britain for medical treatment and Kemi was born in a private hospital in Wimbledon in January 1980. Her parents returned with their newborn daughter, and she was brought up in Nigeria in an affluent suburb of Lagos. After a series of military coups and economic downturns, her family, along with many other middle-class families in Nigeria saw their wealth decline and Kemi was sent to London to study for her A levels. Instead of following her parents into medicine, she chose to pursue Computer Systems Engineering and went to Sussex University. A…

Adeel Akhtar is an award-winning actor whose breakthrough role came in 2010 when he starred in Chris Morris’s black comedy Four Lions. He won his first BAFTA for Best Actor in 2017 for his role in the BBC drama Murdered by My Father. His second, for Best Supporting Actor, came in 2023 playing Andy Fisher in the BBC series Sherwood. Adeel was born in Hounslow in West London and grew up in Buckinghamshire. He discovered a love of acting at school when he and a group of friends put on a production of Harold Pinter’s play The Homecoming. He read law at university but in 2002 followed his true passion and took a drama course at The Actors Studio in New York. He got his first screen part playing one of the four hijackers of United Airlines Flight 93 in the television docudrama Let’s Roll: the Story of Flight 93. He has gone on to stretch his talents playing roles in the television series Fool Me Once, The Night Manager and Killing Eve. More recently he appeared on stage in The Cherry Orchard and a new play called…

Jesse Armstrong is a British author, screenwriter, and producer. He has written several award-winning TV comedies and satirical dramas and won many accolades for his work including two BAFTA TV Awards, three Golden Globe Awards, and three Writers Guild of America Awards. His hit HBO series Succession has won nineteen Emmys. Jesse was born and educated in Oswestry, Shropshire, and attended Manchester University where he studied American Studies as an undergraduate and American History for his Masters. After university, he worked as a researcher for a Labour Member of Parliament for a couple of years it was an experience that would later inform his time as a writer on The Thick of It. He met his writing partner, Sam Bain, at Manchester University and together they created and co-wrote 9 seasons of Channel 4’s BAFTA-winning comedy Peep Show and 4 seasons of the student comedy Fresh Meat. During this time, he also wrote for the political satire series The Thick of It and co-wrote the film In the Loop, the latter…

Jojo Moyes is a British novelist and screenwriter. She began her writing career as a journalist and worked at the Egham and Staines News, Independent and South China Morning Post. Whilst working nightshifts on the Independent, she pursued her novel writing ambitions and wrote books by day. Her first few books were well received but did not topple the best seller lists. That all changed in 2012 when her novel You Before Me was published. Readers fell in love with the story of Louisa Clark, who takes a job looking after an angry young quadriplegic man. The book sold fifteen million copies, was made into a film and Jojo wrote two sequels. Her novels are beloved of book clubs and have sold in excess of fifty seven million copies and have been translated into forty-six languages. Jojo lives in London. DISC ONE: Are You Lonesome Tonight? (Laughing Version) (Live) - Elvis Presley DISC TWO: Golden Slumbers - The Beatles DISC THREE: Silly Games - Janet Kay DISC FOUR: The Art Teacher - Rufus Wainwright DISC FIVE:…

Kate Winslet is an actor who achieved global fame playing Rose DeWitt Bukater, opposite Leonard DiCaprio as Jack Dawson, in the 1997 James Cameron epic Titanic. During her career she has won five BAFTAs, two Emmys, five Golden Globes and an Academy Award for her role in the Reader. Kate was born in Reading in 1975 and attended Redroofs School for the Performing Arts in Maidenhead, Berkshire. Her film debut came in 1994 when she played a teenage killer in Peter Jackson’s film Heavenly Creatures. The following year she played Marianne Dashwood opposite Emma Thompson’s Elinor in Sense and Sensibility, directed by Ang Lee. Kate’s performance earned her a BAFTA for Best Actress in a Supporting Role. She went on to consolidate her reputation as one of the most versatile actors of her generation by starring in a list of popular and critically acclaimed films including Hideous Kinky, Iris, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and The Holiday. Last year Kate directed her first film, Goodbye June, starring Helen…

Lee Child is a writer who is best known for his series of bestselling novels featuring Jack Reacher. Reacher is an enigmatic 6ft 5in, 17-stone ex-military police major who rights wrongs before disappearing off into the sunset. The books have sold in their millions around the world and have inspired two films starring Tom Cruise and a television series. Lee Child was born James - Jim - Grant in 1954 and grew up in Birmingham. He studied Law at the University of Sheffield and then joined the presentation department at Granada Television where he was a shop steward and became a thorn in the side of the management. At 40 he was made redundant and sat down to write his first Reacher novel Killing Floor. He found himself an agent and the novel was published in March 1997 - the franchise was up and running. In the UK Lee outsells both Stephen King and John Grisham and worldwide he sells between 12 and 15 million copies a year. In 2020 Lee announced that he was handing over the Reacher franchise to his younger…

Writer Margaret Atwood is castaway by Lauren Laverne. Margaret is a Canadian writer. She has published more than sixty books spanning novels, poetry, short stories, non-fiction, children’s literature, and graphic novels, and has been called “one of the sharpest and most imaginative novelists writing in English”. She is one of only four writers to have won the Booker Prize twice: for The Blind Assassin in 2000 and for her 2019 follow-up to The Handmaid’s Tale, The Testaments. Margaret was born in Ottawa in November 1939, shortly after the outbreak of the Second World War, the second of three children to Carl Atwood, an entomologist. During her early life, she would spend the warmer months in the remote forests of northern Quebec and Ontario where her father tracked insect infestations, and the winters in the city (first Ottawa, later Toronto). She didn’t attend school for a full year until the age of twelve. Her childhood scribblings – a “novel” about an ant called Annie, a volume of rhyming poems about cats,…

Gordon Buchanan is a wildlife cameraman and TV presenter. He is best known for the Animal Family & Me series of BBC documentaries in which he gets up close to wild bears, Arctic wolves, elephants and reindeer among other species. Gordon was brought up in Tobermory on the Isle of Mull where he spent his days exploring the island and developed his lifelong love of the outdoors. In 1988, when he was 17, he met the charismatic wildlife cameraman Nick Gordon who invited him to become his assistant for a project to film primates on the island of Tiwai in Sierra Leone. Gordon spent 18 months in Sierra Leone working with Nick and after that the two of them worked in West Africa and South America. At 22 Gordon set up on his own – his first job was a year-long assignment to make three half-hour programmes for a 14-part wildlife series called Wild Islands. In 2001 he made his debut as a presenter on the BBC’s Natural World strand. He was appointed an MBE for services to conservation and wildlife filmmaking in 2020.…

Sir Salman Rushdie is a writer who has written over 20 books, seven of which have been nominated for the Booker Prize. In 1981 he won with his novel Midnight’s Children which also topped the polls for the 25th and 40th anniversaries of the prize, making it the most lauded novel in Booker history. He was born in Bombay in 1947 and educated at Rugby School in Warwickshire. After studying history at the University of Cambridge he worked as a copywriter at various advertising agencies before publishing his first novel Grimus in 1975. His breakthrough came with Midnight’s Children and he was one of 20 writers named on Granta magazine’s inaugural list of Best Young British novelists alongside writers including Martin Amis and AN Wilson. He attracted considerable controversy with his fourth novel the Satanic Verses which won the Whitbread Award and was shortlisted for the Booker. Some Muslims considered the subject matter blasphemous and Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa calling for the death…