Desert Island Discs

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 drama - his 30 year career has taken him from A Little Bit of Fry & Laurie to a big bit of broadcasting history: his role in the U.S. show House ran for 8 series and had a global audience of 81 million. So why now does he feel the need to risk his stellar reputation by making music too? He says, "as soon as I acknowledge to myself that something is frightening and carries the risk of public humiliation I feel like I have to do it."Producer: Cathy Drysdale.

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 fashion shoot. During her tenure Vogue's circulation has increased.Her first job as editor was with the men's magazine GQ and she's had spells at Tatler, the Sunday Telegraph and writing a weekly column for the Daily Mail.She says, "Vogue is not my personal taste, really. I think of it more as a kind of newspaper, reporting on what's out there."Producer: Cathy Drysdale.

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 time ascents. He's also summited Everest three times. During one renowned climb he discovered the icy corpse of the legendary George Mallory who had perished along with Sandy Irvine as they tried to scale the peak - in nothing more than hobnail boots and tweeds - in 1924.When he isn't exploring the far corners of the world's wilderness he's at home in Montana with his wife Jennifer, the widow of his best friend Alex Lowe, who was killed by an avalanche that narrowly missed Conrad himself.He says of his life, "Most people are so risk averse. The world is full of couch potatoes ... we climbers should get government stipends for keeping the risk-taking gene pool alive."Producer: Cathy Drysdale.

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 background was far from privileged. His father worked on the railways and then became a teacher; his mother was a housewife and sang in the church choir. Their son studied hard and gained a top first at Cambridge before going on to teach at MIT and the London School of Economics. Throughout his demanding public life he has been sustained by his twin passions for cricket and Aston Villa football club. His other great love appears to have been an intriguingly slow burn: he first met Barbara, the woman who would become his wife, in 1970 - they married in 2007. He says, "Being the Governor of the Bank of England is actually the easiest job I've ever done; you're in charge & you've got tremendous support." Producer: Cathy Drysdale.

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 what she wanted to do with her life.After many years of success at the top of her profession, she said goodbye to her childhood dream and jetéd into her life's next act - for a time serving as Creative Director of The Royal Opera House and more recently working far beyond Covent Garden promoting creativity and cultural partnerships across Britain.She says "I always thought I'd feel a passionate sense of loss when I stopped dancing. What was absolutely wonderful was, as the volume turned up on the new career, the volume turned down on the old one."Producer: Cathy Drysdale.

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 "art is a wound turned to light", then Alice Walker's early life proved crucial to her future creations. Shot and blinded in one eye by her brother's BB gun it was through the isolation of her injury that she began to write. She once described poetry as "medicine".She has also said, "I know the world's a mess, but there's so much that's gorgeous in it. I wish everybody could have what I have."Producer: Cathy Drysdale.

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 flies.Growing up in Leeds his mother was something of an early artistic influence - she had dots painted on the front door and whenever Damien said he'd finished a drawing, she'd lay another sheet of paper down and tell her son "carry on."He once said, "People don't like contemporary art but all art starts life as contemporary. I'm sure there were people in caves going 'I like your cave but I hate that crap you've got on the wall'."Producer: Cathy Drysdale.

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 there at the end of the 1940s and played a leading role in some of the most significant political trials of the apartheid era. 'Understated, controlled, relentlessly rational' - and with devastating cross-examination skills - the verdict of one of his clients - Nelson Mandela.He himself says "I hope there's only one thing about my professional life of which I've boasted and which I think, as a lawyer, is unique on my part - I have acted as an advocate for three winners of The Nobel Peace Prize. I don't think anyone else has done that."Producer: Isabel Sargent.

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 first class degree. Her books have shone a piercing light on the veiled world of shame, brutality and coercion that some young women endure whilst Karma Nirvana, the pioneering charity she set up and runs, offers refuge and practical help.She says, "my life has had to take paths where responsibility was the key thing. Now I'm at a point in my life where I'm more content than I've ever been. I've reconciled the disownment."Producer: Cathy Drysdale.

Kirsty Young's castaway this week is the actress Julie Goodyear.For a quarter of a century her Coronation Street 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. She 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."Producer: Cathy Drysdale.