Kirsty Young: 75 Years of Desert Island Discs Arena

MUSIC: Desert Island Discs theme

Desert Island Discs has been on air for 75 years,

attracting to its shores Nobel laureates,

Oscar winners, politicians,

Olympians, business titans and some of the world's greatest thinkers.

Not bad for a little show dreamt up

one chilly night in a Hertfordshire bedsit

and expected to run for no more than about six episodes.

What follows is the Arena film made in 1982

to celebrate its 40th birthday.

Desert Island Discs' presenter back then was the same fellow

who'd come up with the format at the tail end of 1941, Roy Plomley.

In the last three quarters of a century,

the premise has remained remarkably faithful

to his original, utterly brilliant idea.

Eight discs, a book to add to the complete works of Shakespeare

and the Bible, and a single luxury

to make life on this lonely little spit of land

just a bit more bearable.

There are some superb sequences,

including Paul McCartney's recording,

which includes a track from John Lennon,

who had been killed just over a year previously.

A zinger of an admission

from the gravel-voiced actress Tallulah Bankhead,

and comedy genius Frankie Howerd's touchingly tender choice

of his little luxury.

Interviewing is essentially a consensual activity,

and when it happens is almost as important as who it happens with.

These days, sadly, I'm not allowed the indulgence

of loosening my guests' tongues with a couple of large G&Ts,

as Roy sometimes did.

But I do have the advantage of talking to castaways in an era

when a little bit of introspection is considered a desirable thing.

I do wonder if Otto Preminger

would have been quite as tricky a castaway

if he were recording his Desert Island Discs these days.

So I've been marooning the great and the good on the island

for ten years now, and it's been as rewarding a task

as any I can think of in broadcasting.

Before me, the island was in the custody of Sue Lawley

and before that, Michael Parkinson.

But before all of us was the man

who thought of the whole thing in the first place.