0:00:09 > 0:00:13MUSIC: Desert Island Discs theme
0:02:46 > 0:02:51Desert Island Discs has been on air for 75 years,
0:02:51 > 0:02:54attracting to its shores Nobel laureates,
0:02:54 > 0:02:56Oscar winners, politicians,
0:02:56 > 0:03:01Olympians, business titans and some of the world's greatest thinkers.
0:03:01 > 0:03:03Not bad for a little show dreamt up
0:03:03 > 0:03:06one chilly night in a Hertfordshire bedsit
0:03:06 > 0:03:10and expected to run for no more than about six episodes.
0:03:10 > 0:03:14What follows is the Arena film made in 1982
0:03:14 > 0:03:16to celebrate its 40th birthday.
0:03:16 > 0:03:19Desert Island Discs' presenter back then was the same fellow
0:03:19 > 0:03:24who'd come up with the format at the tail end of 1941, Roy Plomley.
0:03:25 > 0:03:27In the last three quarters of a century,
0:03:27 > 0:03:31the premise has remained remarkably faithful
0:03:31 > 0:03:33to his original, utterly brilliant idea.
0:03:33 > 0:03:37Eight discs, a book to add to the complete works of Shakespeare
0:03:37 > 0:03:39and the Bible, and a single luxury
0:03:39 > 0:03:43to make life on this lonely little spit of land
0:03:43 > 0:03:45just a bit more bearable.
0:03:45 > 0:03:47There are some superb sequences,
0:03:47 > 0:03:50including Paul McCartney's recording,
0:03:50 > 0:03:52which includes a track from John Lennon,
0:03:52 > 0:03:55who had been killed just over a year previously.
0:03:56 > 0:03:58A zinger of an admission
0:03:58 > 0:04:01from the gravel-voiced actress Tallulah Bankhead,
0:04:01 > 0:04:04and comedy genius Frankie Howerd's touchingly tender choice
0:04:04 > 0:04:07of his little luxury.
0:04:08 > 0:04:12Interviewing is essentially a consensual activity,
0:04:12 > 0:04:17and when it happens is almost as important as who it happens with.
0:04:17 > 0:04:20These days, sadly, I'm not allowed the indulgence
0:04:20 > 0:04:25of loosening my guests' tongues with a couple of large G&Ts,
0:04:25 > 0:04:26as Roy sometimes did.
0:04:26 > 0:04:30But I do have the advantage of talking to castaways in an era
0:04:30 > 0:04:35when a little bit of introspection is considered a desirable thing.
0:04:35 > 0:04:37I do wonder if Otto Preminger
0:04:37 > 0:04:39would have been quite as tricky a castaway
0:04:39 > 0:04:42if he were recording his Desert Island Discs these days.
0:04:42 > 0:04:47So I've been marooning the great and the good on the island
0:04:47 > 0:04:51for ten years now, and it's been as rewarding a task
0:04:51 > 0:04:54as any I can think of in broadcasting.
0:04:54 > 0:04:57Before me, the island was in the custody of Sue Lawley
0:04:57 > 0:04:59and before that, Michael Parkinson.
0:04:59 > 0:05:02But before all of us was the man
0:05:02 > 0:05:05who thought of the whole thing in the first place.