Desert Island Discs

Kirsty Young's castaway this week is the broadcaster and journalist Andy Kershaw. His career to date is as distinctive as his delivery - he combines an evangelical enthusiasm for world music with a fascination for reporting from the planet's most unstable places. He says he is happiest when marinated in mosquito repellent and living out of a rucksack - and although he is best known for unearthing unfamiliar tunes and bringing them to a wider audience it is his current affairs reporting that has brought him the greatest acclaim. Rwanda, Burundi and Haiti are among the 81 countries he has visited; his front line dispatches vividly conveying the true horror of conflict. His reporting and his music broadcasts have won him many, many awards and both careers are, he says, the result of his insatiable nosiness.[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]Favourite track: Hupenyu Hwangu by Bhundu Boys Book: The collected works by Ryszard Kapuscinski Luxury: Lots of toilet roll.

Kirsty Young's castaway this week is the writer J P Donleavy. The author of a dozen novels as well as numerous plays and short stories, he remains best known for his first novel, The Ginger Man, which is widely regarded as a modern classic. Born in 1926 and raised in New York, J P Donleavy was the son of Irish immigrant parents. They told him little of Irish culture when he was growing up but, after the war, he moved to Dublin to take up a place at Trinity College. He was already a skilled boxer when he arrived in Ireland and found that street-fighting was almost a form of public entertainment in the city - and one which he excelled in. Despite Trinity's stature, his student life revolved around drinking, partying, writing and painting. He became friends with Brendan Behan and the legendary Irish writer became the first person to read the completed script of The Ginger Man. Although The Ginger Man was banned in Ireland and expurgated in Britain and America it became a word-of-mouth success. But its publication plunged J P Donleavy into a legal battle that took 20 years to resolve. It was a legal struggle, though, that was worth fighting for - for the past 50 years it has never been out of print.[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]Favourite track: 2nd movement of Emperor Concerto by Ludwig van Beethoven Book: 1972 Social Registry of New York Luxury: His own long-handled spoon to make dressings.

Kirsty Young's castaway this week is the journalist Andrew Neil. For 11 years he was editor of The Sunday Times. Under him, the paper broke the story of Israel's nuclear capabilities, revealed the Queen's dismay at the tone of Margaret Thatcher's administration and shone a bright light onto the difficulties of Princess Diana and Prince Charles's marriage. But as well as reporting the news, the paper made headlines too - Andrew Neil steered The Sunday Times through its move to Wapping and the bitter and often violent dispute that followed.Much has been made of his rise to be a figure at the heart of the establishment. A grammar school boy who went on to study at Glasgow University, he threw himself into university life; he edited the student newspaper, was a keen young debater and chairman of the Federation of Conservative Students. It seemed as if he was destined for a life in politics - but he decided he wanted to live a little first and then found that while he revelled in the political debate, the life of an MP was not for him. He is now Editor in Chief at Press Holdings and an established and authoritative political broadcaster.[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs] Favourite track: First Movement of Violin Concerto in D Major by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Book: Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith Luxury: Wind-up radio.

Kirsty Young's castaway this week is the artist Grayson Perry. For more than 20 years his work was broadly unknown outside the narrow confines of the art world. But in 2003 he became a household name after a collection of his exquisitely ornate pots won him art's most prestigious award, the Turner Prize. He's described as 'the hottest potter in the world' but newspaper headlines describing his success focused at least as much on his clothes as his art - when he collected the prize he wore a lilac party dress with a bow in his hair.He started dressing in his sister's clothes when he was a child - initially as part of his imaginative games and then for an erotic thrill. In part, women's clothes represented the tender emotions he was too scared to show in his repressive and sometimes frightening family home. Now, they're a way of controlling how people see him, what kind of attention he attracts and, if nothing else, they're a unique selling point. He acknowledges the debt he owes to his profession; only the arts would tolerate, he says, a transvestite potter from Essex.Favourite track: Prophecies by Philip Glass Book: An art book on Gothic and Renaissance altar pieces Luxury: Loads of really good pens and paper

Kirsty Young's castaway this week is the screen writer Paul Abbott. He has written some of the most controversial and successful television programmes of the past decade. Shameless, Clocking Off and State of Play all flowed from his pen and have won him bags of awards. But he was driven to write as a response to the chaotic and traumatic childhood he'd suffered. One of eight children, both parents had left the family home by the time he was 11, leaving his older sister to bring them up. They had a near-feral existence, and lived, says Paul, like rats. At 15 he attempted suicide and ended up in a psychiatric ward. After that, without wanting to or really being aware it was happening, he wrote as a way of letting out the rage he felt inside him. He was quickly able to turn this writing into short stories, radio plays and film scripts and to sell them. Now he is credited with making television the 'new National Theatre'. But it's not his greatest achievement - he is proudest of his successful marriage to Saskia, his wife of eighteen years, and of their two children.[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]Favourite track: Town Called Malice by The Jam Book: Complete Works by Arthur Miller Luxury: Writing pad and pencils.

Kirsty Young's castaway this week is the singer and songwriter Neil Tennant. He is best known as one half of The Pet Shop Boys which, over the past 20 years, has been one of Britain's most successful and popular bands, noted for combining dance music with witty lyrics and delivering them in a uniquely English style. As a teenager growing up in Newcastle upon Tyne, he felt himself to be an outsider at school, but found friends in an amateur theatre company. Yet he always felt his life would be different to theirs and used to tell them that he would become a celebrated pop star.But Neil was 30 when he finally left his day job as a writer for Smash Hits magazine to pursue the musical interests that had dominated his life since he was a teenager. By that time, he was anxious that he had missed the boat. Now, as well as continuing to release records with The Pet Shop Boys, he has branched out into other forms of composition, writing a live score for the film Battleship Potemkin, a West End musical and being involved in collaborations with Robbie Williams and the Scissor Sisters, among many others.[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs].

Kirsty Young's castaway this week is the author Brian Aldiss. He is best known for pioneering, alongside JG Ballard, a new wave of British science fiction writing in the 1960s. He says science fiction is not so much a prediction of the future as a metaphor for the human condition; and for him, at least, writing it offered an escape route and a filter through which to view his own extraordinary upbringing. He grew up in a small Norfolk village in a very devout and austere home. While his father was distant, his mother was still suffering from the grief after her first child, a daughter, was still-born. He was the second child and even when he was very small, remembers feeling a strong sense of his mother's disappointment in him. The army finally offered a way out for him and it was on his return to England that he started writing seriously while also working in a bookshop. One of his early works was a short story describing the sadness felt by a boy who was never able to please his parents, which was turned into a film by Stanley Kubrick. While he remains best known for his science fiction writing - and has won every major award in the field - he has also written novels, poetry and biographies and short stories. Now, he says, he aims not for high sales but to become a better and better writer.[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]Favourite track: Old Rivers (with the Johnny Mann Singers) by Walter Brennan Book: Biography of John Osborne by John Halpern Luxury: A banjo

Kirsty Young's castaway this week is the Polar explorer Ann Daniels. Before she was 30, she hadn't so much as walked with a rucksack and had no experience of navigating with a compass. Then her husband saw a newspaper advert seeking ordinary women to join an all-women relay to the North Pole. Ann was successful and since then she has walked to both Poles, become a Polar guide and now has her sights set on being the first British woman to walk solo to the North Pole - an endeavour she'll attempt for the second time this March. While she is on her expeditions, the life she leaves behind is also far from routine - she is a mother to four children including triplets. She has met some criticism for leaving her children for long periods, but she responds by saying that they are her inspiration - she wants to demonstrate to them how to live life to the full.[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]Favourite track: Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This) by Eurythmics Book: The Worst Journey in the World by Apsley Cherry-Garrard Luxury: A bar of soap

Kirsty Young's castaway this week is the writer Edna O'Brien. Described as a 'poet of heartbreak' her lyrical storytelling captures the fragility and pain of the human condition, reflecting the drama of her own life as much as the imagined journeys of her characters. She was born and raised in a small village in County Clare, where the only books in the house were prayer books which sat alongside her father's bloodstock magazines. Her mother thought writing was in essence sinful and tried fiercely to stop her becoming an author. She was living in England when she published her first novel, The Country Girls, in 1960. It was a huge hit and was critically well received - but in Ireland she was decried and her book was burnt in the streets. Although she's lived in London for most of her adult life, she continues to draw on her Irish background for inspiration - she says: "it's in my roots, and when I dream at night it's the place I go".[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs] Favourite track: Foggy Dew (Sinead O'Connor) by The Chieftains Book: Ulysses by James Joyce Luxury: Vault of a very good white wine

Kirsty Young's castaway this week is the musician Lady Natasha Spender. She was born at the end of the First World War and has spent her life immersed in the arts. Gifted with perfect pitch, she studied under Clifford Curzon and enjoyed a highly successful career as a concert pianist. In the months after the end of the Second World War she gave a concert at Belsen to inmates who were recovering in its hospital wing and, a couple of years later, she was chosen to be the soloist in the world's first ever televised concert for the BBC. She was also one half of a cultural 'it' couple - for more than 50 years she was married to the poet Sir Stephen Spender. They had met at a literary lunch he was hosting and became friends after Natasha stayed behind to help him with the washing up. They were friends with many of the greats of the past century, including T S Eliot, Stravinsky and Leonard Bernstein. She is now the executor to Sir Stephen's very considerable estate and is writing her own memoirs. [Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs] Favourite track: 1st movement of String Quintet in G Minor by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Book: Desert Islands: An Anthology by Walter de la Mare Luxury: Her grand piano.