Professor Dame Kay Davies

Presenter0:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in two thousand nine.

Presenter0:27

My castaway this week is the scientist Kay Davis. A leading geneticist, she has dedicated much of her life to finding a cure for the severest form of muscular dystrophy, and is tantalizingly close to realizing her ultimate ambition. Human trials for possible treatment will begin this year.

Presenter0:45

A professor of genetics at Oxford, her work has also paved the way for therapies for other genetic disorders like cystic fibrosis and diabetes.

Presenter0:52

Quite something for a woman who doesn't have an O-level in biology. Although, even as a child, she did possess that critical quality crucial to scientific pioneers. I loved solving problems, she says. I was very tenacious, and I would sit in my room until I had finished the problem. I am a sticker. Given that you are a sticker, and it's a great word, and that you do power away at things until you get it right. I'm imagining, of course, with the type of work you do, Katie, is that you're not able to take that work home, that it has meant many long hours and long days at a lab bench. It does. I mean, it's very satisfying because you do it with a passion. But biology is very unpredictable, so some of the experiments you expect to work don't work.

Presenter1:36

And sometimes they work for three weeks and they the same experiment will stop working for another three weeks. So unless you're tenacious, it can be very frustrating. I felt slightly cautious in the introduction using the word cure, but that is what you're aiming at now for this form of muscular dystrophy. Is it to cure people who already suffer from the condition? Well yes it is and of course to cure those that are born. It's unlikely that we'll be able to have a complete cure, certainly for the people that are suffering today. But if we could get an effective treatment then we'd be able to do that as soon as the boys are diagnosed with the disease early on and probably give them a normal life. I mean that would be the objective.

Professor Dame Kay Davies2:03

Right.

Presenter2:13

So successful trials already in animals, but the trials to begin soon in humans. Is this a very anxious time for you then? Yes, and it isn't the only treatment. Three years ago I used to stand up and say I don't know when treatment for Duchenne muscular dystrophy is going to be available. Now I stand up and say I'm really optimistic that the next ten years either the treatment we're developing or treatment other people are developing or a combination of those will provide an effective treatment for the disease. Just to be clear, Duchenne muscular dystrophy is the severest form of muscular dystopian dystrophy.

Professor Dame Kay Davies2:37

The disease.

Professor Dame Kay Davies2:41

P Y Series?

Presenter2:43

We are going to talk in some detail about the work you do later, but but for now I am relieved to know that uh music plays an important part in your life. You you do crank up the volume at times of stress.

Professor Dame Kay Davies2:52

Yeah.

Speaker 32:52

Uh

Professor Dame Kay Davies2:52

Twitter.

Presenter2:54

It suits every mood, actually, whether I'm happy, sad, or stressed. Music can usually unpick it. And you like it loud? I do, yes. And your twenty-year-old son, I hear, has to retreat to the other end of the house to get away with it. There's always a floor between us. He plays his music loud, and I do the same. Yes. Tell me about your first choice today, then. The first choice is Alfred Brendel playing the second movement at Schubert's piano sonata in B-blat major, which is a beautiful piece of music. And the reason I've chosen it is because I first heard Alfred Brendel live in Edinburgh when I was cleaning out Nick's flat before he went up to university. So we used to clean the bath out, my friend and I, in the morning and then go to a concert in the afternoon. And he's just such a superb player, and this is just a beautiful piece of piano work. And I also play the piano. It's even something I can't play like he does, of course, but I can have a go.

Professor Dame Kay Davies3:04

So is it

Professor Dame Kay Davies3:06

Yeah.

Speaker 34:37

Yeah.

Presenter4:38

Alfred Brendel playing the second movement of Schubert's piano sonata in B flat major, and a perfect antidote to a morning of cleaning the bath in your son's flat up in Edinburgh when he started university. What about your own childhood then? Describe your your early home life.

Speaker 44:51

You're a

Presenter4:52

Um well that was extremely happy. And one of the great features of that was at half past six every morning in the summer, from spring until the well, late October, we used to get up at half past six and drive to Wales, to the mountains, leave my father fishing somewhere and then my mother and my two brothers used to go walking. You were in the middle, you had uh an older brother and a younger brother. That's right, one two years older, one two years younger. Right. Were you were you a competitive bunch?

Professor Dame Kay Davies5:10

But in the middle of the

Professor Dame Kay Davies5:14

Right.

Presenter5:16

Not not in the scientific sense,'cause neither of them are scientists. I mean, we fought like three offspring always fight, but uh we were very happy, actually, and we did we just loved the country and we loved the sea and we loved the mountains. And we used to go there and pick the bilberries on the way back, so we could have bilberry and apple pie on the Sunday.

Presenter5:33

And your mum and dad? What sort of parents? What sort of people? My father worked for the car industry. He's a very warm, giving person. And actually indeed so is my mother. But my mother is the person that's highly organised, which is where I get that from. In fact, she often criticised me now for being so intense and doing this and doing that. But I used to say, well, I'm just like you. It's my fault. It's your fault. And were they ambitious for you? Oh, yes. They're very supportive all the way through. And I was a quite a timid child. I didn't have much self-confidence at all. And they helped a lot with that. In fact, when I first went to Oxford, they almost had to glue me to the seat for the first term.

Speaker 35:52

This would have been a

Professor Dame Kay Davies5:52

Hold.

Speaker 35:52

Yeah.

Professor Dame Kay Davies5:54

And where

Speaker 35:56

Oh yes.

Presenter6:10

Until the the college system within Oxford supported me uh and I was fine. You say it's your mother's fault, if you like, that you're you're so organized and intense. You're you're immaculately turned out. Were you one of those little girls with a scrubbed, shiny face and a a a a nice frock on? Well, it was part of the tradition of the Black Country, really. You always had to turn out looking good. And my mother always made sure she made all my dresses and I always turned out looking good. She sewed them. She made them. In fact I can still sew. Doesn't have time to do it now.

Professor Dame Kay Davies6:33

She sat with them.

Presenter6:38

And it's a skill that's dying, but that was the tradition then. And can you remember her then late nights at the sewing machine? Yes, I can, getting the uh a particular dress ready for the party that I was going to at the particular disco. Tell me about the dress. What was it like? Well, it was a turquoise dress that that I wore for the rugby Starbridge Rugby Club.

Professor Dame Kay Davies6:43

Two years ago.

Presenter6:53

But she spent a lot of time doing that. And how old would you have been for the past? And did you have any C in the pattern?

Professor Dame Kay Davies6:56

The party door

Presenter7:00

Oh yes. I know it was a joint project, but of course I couldn't do it the way she could do it.

Presenter7:05

You were saying that they had ambition for the fact that you would behave properly and study, but but how early did they know that in their midst was a was a bright little thing? I was always very good at maths in junior school, and the headmaster spotted it then. So I think they probably knew. And then I went to the high school, and it was even more evident that I was very good at maths. Okay, more of that in a second. For now, though, what's your second disc today? The second disc is a tribute to my brothers and the family, and us actually just running through the hills, because it was such a happy time, and it's Alan Jones singing the skylark.

Speaker 37:38

Vivus a merry, viscino gerki, rifemo kohri ma divor.

Professor Dame Kay Davies7:40

Yeah.

Professor Dame Kay Davies7:42

Uh

Speaker 37:49

Ridra sa kumulit, draudrasa ringis quit.

Speaker 37:55

Grivelo to warn who is dreamed at times.

Speaker 38:02

Forget all Ivanos, Tsiros.

Presenter8:04

See you in a while.

Speaker 38:08

Uh

Presenter8:09

Anna Jones singing Or Ehedeth the Skylark. So, Kay Davis, you say that you liked solving problems and that was evident even at primary school. A bright girl who then went on to grammar school. And it was there, I understand, that, like so many people who develop a strong affinity with a subject, there was a teacher who ignited your interest. Who was that? That was the chemistry teacher, Miss Presley. Tell me about Miss Presley. There were only six of us doing chemistry. She just was passionate about the subject and passionate about golf.

Professor Dame Kay Davies8:32

Tell me about this presentation.

Presenter8:38

So she used to set us a practical and then go off to the golf course and come back a couple of hours later. That wouldn't have been allowed today. But uh but allowed us to experiment and really discuss it and be much more relaxed about the subject itself.

Professor Dame Kay Davies8:44

I like her.

Presenter8:51

Were you quite a swat? Uh yes.

Presenter8:54

I was definitely a swat. You know, I enjoyed it. I still had a social life, but I worked hard. Now, I mentioned in the introduction that you don't have a biology O-level, and this was because they encouraged you to study Latin. It's because in order to get into Oxford, I had to have Latin. Right. So you was it in your mind early on to get to Oxford? No, it wasn't. It wasn't until just until I went into the A level year, and the school approached my parents about the potential for that. And then my parents, both of them, were very keen for me to have a go. But given that earlier on you'd been encouraged to do Latin and not do another one of the sciences, it sounds to me as if they knew pretty early on that you were the right stuff. Well, they were hoping that I might do languages. They kept on saying, well, you know, you may not want to do this science stuff because there was definitely. Not a positive encouragement to do science, particularly as a woman in those days. I'm wondering, being so much more capable than the other pupils around you, did that have a tricky side to it as well? Did you feel you had to keep that private? Well, in socially, that's definitely true. But of course, in school, there were lots of bright people doing languages and other subjects. It's just in the sciences, because there's such a small number of us, I could easily stand out. Right. And so when you say socially, it was sort of keeping it from the boys. That's right. That you were a smarty. Yes. And that you were a smarty in science? Yes. Because you felt it wasn't what, feminine? I think I didn't think it was feminine. I also think that since a lot of people in my family hadn't been to university before, in part of my father's family, hadn't been to university before, there was a sort of I just felt self-conscious about it. And so you were. Because I should have been more confident about it. And so you were only the second girl from your school, is that right? That's right. Can you remember finding out, hearing that you'd won the place at Somerville College? Oh, yes. Because that's always at Christmas, just before Christmas. It comes in a letter, and there it is. You've been offered a place at Somerville College, Oxford. Wow. Were Mum and Dad standing at your side as you opened it? Oh, yeah, yes, yes. It's a wonderful time. It was great celebrations for all the family that Christmas. So tell me about your next piece of music there.

Professor Dame Kay Davies10:27

So you

Professor Dame Kay Davies10:33

That's right.

Professor Dame Kay Davies10:47

Dad standing at your side as you opened?

Presenter10:56

Uh the next piece of music is The Beatles Let It Be, because that uh epitomizes my going up to Somerville. My parents tried to get me something musical'cause they knew I'd still listen to my little crystal set and my father found me a second hand reel-to-reel tape recorder and I could put all this music on it before I went up. And one of those was The Beatles Let It Be.

Speaker 411:17

When I find myself in times of trouble, Mother Mary comes to me, speaking words of wisdom.

Speaker 411:26

Let it be.

Speaker 411:30

And in my hour of darkness she is standing right in front of me, speaking words of wisdom.

Speaker 411:39

Let it be

Speaker 411:42

Let it be, let it be.

Presenter11:47

The Beatles and Let It Be. So, K Davis, I'd like to spend a little time just now talking about this illness that you have spent so much of your life trying to unpick and understand. As you said, it's called Duchenne muscular dystrophy, the severest form of muscular dystrophy. It affects solely boys. Explain to me how it affects them. Yes, it's a progressive muscle wasting disease. So that means that they usually show symptoms between the ages of three and five, having difficulty pulling themselves up from the floor and climbing upstairs. And they're usually wheelchair-bound by the age of eleven or twelve, and then they die in their early twenties of respiratory failure most commonly.

Presenter12:24

You've also said interestingly that uh the

Presenter12:28

The young boys, the children who suffer from this disease, seem to have a character that reaches out to you. Explain a bit more about that. Because they have so much courage. They start off playing football with their friends and progressively they can't do that any more.

Presenter12:41

And they're very innovative in the way they fight the disease and and make the best of life. And it's just it's just to see that and see how their parents deal with it, because they're the full-time carers towards the end stage of this disease. So you've only got to meet them to I think everyone is touched by DMD boys. As a scientist then, how much contact do you have with the people themselves? A lot, because there are now annual muscular dystrophy campaign conferences, Action Duchenne conferences, lots of different charities hold an annual event and then I would go and present the latest data.

Presenter13:15

and talk with the funders about where we are.

Presenter13:18

You represent to them, you individually I know you work with a team, but but you you lead that team and you represent to them enormous hope.

Presenter13:27

I'm wondering about the complexity.

Presenter13:30

of managing both things that they are to you. They are people. You are a mother with a son. You're watching what the families are going through. You're watching what the sons are going through. And yet, in a sense,

Presenter13:42

You must also have

Presenter13:44

clinical view of what's happening with them, uh to them, a detached view of what's happening to them. Well, I wouldn't say it was a detached view, because I think i eventually you do get emotionally involved with these families, but of course you're not there in the very end.

Professor Dame Kay Davies13:53

Do you use five?

Presenter13:56

their lives in your taking the stress of caring for them every day.

Presenter14:00

The families themselves have to do that. But you work with the families and the clinicians.

Presenter14:05

We in hope

Presenter14:07

And the way you have to tackle life when something tragic like that happens is through hope. And one of the things they've taught me is exactly that. You've got to live for what you can get out of the situation, not concentrate on the negatives. And all of the families do that in a quite honourable way. And a lot of them go on to fundraise for the disease long after their boys have gone. How do you personally cope with the expectation that they're not going to be able to do that? That's very difficult.

Speaker 314:30

Uh

Presenter14:32

Very difficult indeed, and in fact, up till as I said three years ago, when you were almost nothing on the horizon, it was very hard indeed.

Presenter14:40

Your son, Nick, is at university. You clean the bathroom there, at least. He doesn't clean the bath anymore. He cleans it himself.

Professor Dame Kay Davies14:44

You don't see the bath anymore.

Speaker 314:45

Yeah. Uh

Professor Dame Kay Davies14:45

Yeah.

Presenter14:47

When he was a little boy, and you were doing the same work, and you were learning so much about the disease and how it worked.

Presenter14:54

What was the feeling you had when you opened the door and there you saw him vigorously running through the hall aged seven, eight, nine, ten, when you were dealing with something where you saw essentially the very heart of a family?

Presenter15:05

Fundamentally affected by the illness of their young sons. I think what I thought was that it was very important for Nick to understand what some of these other families were going through. So, in fact, he did come to one of the muscular dystrophy meetings with me. I think he's very aware of disability in a way that he might not have been if his mother wasn't engaged in it. And he does know all about my work, so yes. When you were pregnant, is it true that you had every test going to you? There weren't very many tests then, so it wasn't an arduous task, but yes. So I would test myself for a carrier status for DMD and cystic fibrosis.

Professor Dame Kay Davies15:29

Yeah.

Professor Dame Kay Davies15:32

Yeah.

Presenter15:38

And so on, yes. It is an area right now of huge controversy, the idea that m the more we understand about our predetermined genetics, the more we are able to influence how our families look, the make up of those families, whether everybody is normal. I'm using that word advisably.

Professor Dame Kay Davies15:54

Rustin

Presenter15:56

Yes, and I think the the every family has to make their own private decision on that. Um if there's a brother of DMD, then because we helped in the development of the first prenatal diagnosis of this disease um where no prenatal diagnosis existed before. And that was a huge step forward for families, because some families aborted males. They didn't even want to take the risk

Presenter16:19

of having a Duchenne boy at all. So they aborted males. So in fact, the first thing that happened when we had prenatal diagnosis of DMD is that those normal males were able to go to term.

Presenter16:30

Tell me about your next choice, then.

Presenter16:32

I'm very fond of Mozart, so I'll listen to Mozart any time of day and night. I'm particularly fond of this piece. This is Swale Sikovsky's singing The Countess Azaria from the Marriage of Figaro,'cause I'm also very fond of opera. And it's just wonderful for any mood at any time of day.

Speaker 316:54

Peaceful.

Speaker 317:01

And watch it.

Speaker 317:32

We know.

Speaker 317:35

Goodness for me.

Presenter17:51

Soyla Isakoski, singing the Countess's Aria Dovesone from Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro. So, K Davis, it was we're going to spool back then the summer of nineteen sixty nine, just coming to the end of the summer, and you were arriving at Somerville College, Oxford. How did you look?

Presenter18:07

Smart.

Presenter18:10

I certainly wasn't wearing jeans in those days and I didn't really know what to expect. I think my parents didn't know what to expect. I mean, did you have the hippie hair or anything? Uh yes, I had a maxi coat and a mini skirt.

Professor Dame Kay Davies18:17

Uh

Professor Dame Kay Davies18:19

Nice.

Presenter18:21

Had a maxi coat with fur on the bottom that my mother had put all the way round the bottom. I loved that coat. I bet. Sounds fabulous. And there you were arriving, and what was the atmosphere like?

Presenter18:32

Um it was a little bit tense because everyone was as insecure as me. If you do a science subject, you spend a lot of time in the lab doing the practicals. So trying to get that balance right, working really hard because the terms were so short, and yet being able to develop

Presenter18:49

Uh in a personal sense, was quite a challenge in the first term. Tell me then about life outside the lectures and the tutorials. What did you get up to? I know I used to play folk songs in the in the pubs. Um they certainly don't have that standard of lousy folk music anymore. Um and but you sang? Well, I sang and I uh played my guitar, yes. But um sort of in a pub on your own?

Professor Dame Kay Davies19:05

What you said?

Professor Dame Kay Davies19:10

To what

Presenter19:12

No, no, there was a group of us. Right. Just a group of us got together at random and used to do Bob Dylan songs and that sort of thing. So it it wasn't very high standard. But it got us all together. I'm doing myself down here, but You are, because I you know, I I'm wo I'm thinking Emmy Lou Harris. I'm wondering if there was this sort of ra you know

Professor Dame Kay Davies19:13

Right.

Professor Dame Kay Davies19:24

But you

Presenter19:31

Shy but strong character, enough of a nerve to get up there and join in. Well, I wouldn't have done it solo. I would have only done it in a group.

Professor Dame Kay Davies19:36

Uh

Presenter19:38

And I really enjoyed it.

Presenter19:40

And it was while you were at Oxford then that you met the man who you would later marry. Am I right in this? You were attracted by his long hair and his knowledge of card games and the ability to mix chemical compounds. Well I I met him because he was the best person to meet in the practical class, because he'd always produce more compound than anyone else. So if your experiment failed you could go and get some extra from Steve. So that's how the relationship developed. But he's He's very innovative and very intelligent and I always just found him very fascinating because of that. And yes, he could play cards. And you were twenty-two when you married. Of course, that sounds young now. Did it seem young at the time? No, not really. It just seemed right. And so these two scientists then went to Paris. What was the reason for going to Paris? Well, initially, Steve went first because he had a a fellowship with one of the Nobel Prize winners in chemistry. And actually, I stayed in Oxford for a year because I wasn't quite sure whether he was going to stay.

Presenter20:33

And then a year later I had the opportunity to go to a lab in France. And it was going to Paris ostensibly to join him that established an interest in genetics. That would have been the late 70s. I mean you must have felt as if you were at the very frontier of science at that point.

Professor Dame Kay Davies20:41

Do you know?

Professor Dame Kay Davies20:50

of science at that point.

Presenter20:57

to do prenatal diagnosis of disease. We didn't know whether it would work.

Presenter21:01

And I thought, this is really exciting. If this takes off, it's going to transform the world in medicine. And of course it has, and still is. So I haven't looked back since. And it was fifteen years before you had your son, Nick. Wa was that purely to do with the fact that you were immersed in this world of work, and indeed your husband was too? Yes. Well we were both workaholics. And I think we knew that we wanted children, but I don't think we we didn't stop and think about it.

Presenter21:27

I would have been disappointed, I have to say. I think both of us would have been disappointed if we hadn't been able to have children, and very fortunately it happened very quickly when we wanted to have them. But yes, I think up to that point we were both so completely immersed in getting either the chemistry or the biology or the genetics right that nothing really came in other than that. Tell me about your next piece of music then. The next piece of music is by the IMM impostors. Everybody be there. I mean one of the happiest periods of my scientific career is in the what is now called the Wetherall Institute of Molecular Medicine, the IMM. And it's a fantastic institute. It's unbelievably competitive science that goes on in it, but it's done in a very friendly way. And I still have a lot of contact, a lot of colleagues there. And the impostors? The impostors are a group of people that work at the IMM. And at the parties, they always played. And they're incredibly talented.

Professor Dame Kay Davies22:12

Is it in

Presenter22:21

They just represent.

Presenter22:23

the passion of science, the happiness of the whole place, which is what science should be.

Speaker 322:28

Everybody please!

Speaker 322:31

Everybody be there.

Speaker 322:34

Everybody be ready.

Speaker 322:37

Everybody behind

Speaker 322:40

Everybody be there!

Speaker 322:43

Everybody be there.

Speaker 322:46

Uh

Professor Dame Kay Davies22:46

Everybody'd be there.

Professor Dame Kay Davies22:48

Everybody be there!

Professor Dame Kay Davies22:51

BAY

Professor Dame Kay Davies22:52

The

Professor Dame Kay Davies22:54

Nah ya ya ya ya ya ya ya ya.

Presenter22:58

Everybody Be There, written by Alex Sternberg and performed by your colleagues at the Institute of Molecular Medicine at Oxford. That's why they're known, I guess, as the Impostors. K Davis, I wonder if I can ask you to look back to one of your most significant moments, one of your Eureka moments. It happened around about twenty years ago.

Presenter23:18

You identified a protein that you knew would be critical in finding a way of tackling Duchenne muscular dystrophy. Tell me about I mean, can we pin it down to a day, to an afternoon, to an hour? No, I think it was a Sunday morning. A Sunday morning in the lab on a Sunday morning where I went into the dark room to develop the film to find out where a particular sequence was localised on the chromosomes. Now and we thought we'd just bring another bit of the sequence from the gene that we already knew about up. What the particular film showed us when we developed it was that it wasn't there at all, it was somewhere else.

Speaker 323:31

A Sunday morning.

Professor Dame Kay Davies23:32

Lab on a Sunday morning.

Presenter23:55

In the human genome. And that told us that there was another sequence very similar to the gene that was missing.

Presenter24:02

The solution of one problem reveals a whole set of another one. That's the great wonder of science. You know, you've isolated the first gene, then you've got to think about a treatment for the disease. Sure, we can diagnose it 100% of the time, but then we've got to find a treatment. And it wasn't until that Eureka moment on that Sunday morning that we even dreamt that there might be another gene that might help with the treatment.

Presenter24:22

And so we got very, very excited about that.

Presenter24:25

Now the tests that are beginning now, and we've said that the human testing, the human trials, are about to start, that is as a direct result of this finding on the Sunday morning in the dark room. Yes, so it's taken quite a long time to go from that time to now. And of course, the trials will only be safety trials for the drug. Then there'll be another stage after that where we test it on the patients. And that is why there is this five to ten year, you think, time scale. Yes, to develop any drug actually for these sort of for any condition. What about your relationship with the outside world, the commercial world, the drug companies, who of course are the people that you then hand this knowledge and these discoveries on to? Well that's when we realised we weren't ever going to get the treatment to the clinic unless we set up a company to do it. And that's where my ex-husband, as it was then, and I sat down and thought, well, yes, we need to set up the company.

Presenter25:20

Tell me about your next piece of music then. The next piece of music is a rather sad piece, but it's a lovely ballad by Eric Clapton. I used to play lots and lots of Eric Clapton. This is a rather sad piece, uh Tears in Heaven, when he was a sad time in his life. Uh I had sad times in my life and it just picks you up.

Presenter25:36

So, you know, when I got divorced it was a traumatic period, I've passed through that, but it was that network of people that can support you, and that just reminds me of

Presenter25:44

Another episode.

Speaker 325:46

Would you know my name?

Speaker 325:52

Keep my soul in heaven.

Speaker 325:58

Would it be the same?

Speaker 326:04

I saw you in heaven.

Speaker 326:10

I must be strong.

Presenter26:15

Eric Clapton and Tears in Heaven. And you said, K-Daves, it was chosen not just because you love his music, but also because it reminds you of a difficult period in in your own life. Your marriage broke down in two thousand. As you mentioned, you had set up this company with Steve, your husband, a fellow scientist, during your marriage. You have set up another company since, which seems to

Presenter26:36

Indicate to me that you've managed to do that thing that so few people realistically do, which is to get on after the divorce. Yes, well, we, you know, we were good for each other for 25 years. We grew up together in many ways. We were both workaholics. So once the hurt had passed, you realised that you still had a bond and you still had this mission to try and do something about this terrible disease, Duchenne muscular dystrophy. So we sat down in the pub and tried to work out a way in which we could continue to work together to try and find that. And, you know, life changes. And I'm incredibly happy now, and hopefully he is too. So, and we're good friends, that's fine. And not just happy, but I feel I have to say all these things because I get the feeling that you are not going to. The success that you've seen is quite astonishing. These antenatal testing we were discussing earlier that you developed for DMD is used now across the world. You are the Dr. Leeds Professor of Anatomy at Oxford. You're also the Director of the Medical Research Council's Genetics Unit. You're a Fellow of the Royal Society. You are a Dame as well. Do you use Dame Levi? No, no, not usually.

Professor Dame Kay Davies27:37

Yeah.

Presenter27:39

I do if it helps to raise money for charity, though.

Professor Dame Kay Davies27:41

Yeah.

Presenter27:42

And what about life post the divorce? We know that there is this successful company. We know that you power ahead with this scientific research. You know, how how's life at home? I mean, you didn't you use doing up a house as a kind of creative experience I like to think about it. But yes, I I bought a very run-down house and you know every pipe, every bit of it wiring had to come out of it.

Professor Dame Kay Davies27:54

Yes, I did. So I was traumatic.

Professor Dame Kay Davies27:59

Yeah.

Presenter28:05

But again, you know, I had a lot of friends that helped me with that. Everybody just joined in. Then we had a big party at the end of that as well to just thank everybody for being so helpful. How long did it take?

Presenter28:15

It took um well the whole thing took eighteen months, and we had to live in the house at the end for a bit, and that was uh god dear, builders are disgusting.

Presenter28:24

But it was it was a great time. I absolutely cannot imagine you living with the builders in. The idea of them not quite knowing when they're leaving and constantly coating what I imagine would otherwise have been an immaculate home in dust.

Presenter28:36

Did it drive you up the wall? Uh, it did. It did. But, you know, I'm also a very social person, so lots of friends coming round all the time, so it didn't matter, as long as the friends still came coming round. And and now I have to put up with the mess,'cause my whenever my son comes home from university, all his friends come round.

Presenter28:52

So you can't keep a tidy house with uh lots of twenty-one-year-olds around. That's for sure. Tell me about your next piece of music then.

Presenter28:59

The the next piece of music is Ten C C, The Wall Street Shuffle. I know it's rather topical, but we used to love ten C C when I was doing my D fill.

Presenter29:07

I just remembers giggling on the floor. I don't know about what, but it was again, it was a huge community of people that just loved science.

Presenter29:16

The joining together, the team playing that is such a part of the sort of science that I do, internationally as well as nationally, and in this case in the lab. So we used to study the words of ten CC songs as well, so that's why this is particularly good.

Speaker 329:41

Did your money make you better?

Speaker 329:46

Are you waiting for the hour when you can screw me?

Speaker 329:52

Are you big enough to do the Wall Street shuffle?

Presenter29:59

Ten C C and the Wall Street shuffle, memories there of your student days and giggling on the floor with your friends when you weren't looking down microscopes. Um your son has taken up science. He's studying science at university. Wondering if that's a bit like Eric Clapton's child taking up the guitar. Does he does he is he not worried with the t the two parents that he has that he might not live up to your very uh high standards? I think he he's always aware of that. Um and I think his father wanted to be him to be a chemist.

Professor Dame Kay Davies30:13

Does it

Presenter30:24

But he's always been a biologist. Has there been a degree of competitiveness between you and your husband trying to get him intr touting your various brands of science? A l a little bit, but but not much. But genetics is not his f favourite bit of the biology course in Edinburgh. And whether that's deliberately moving away from me or he just he just has uh other interests. I think he just has other interests. And do you think on this desert island you would be practical? Do you think uh you would be one of those people who'd roll your sleeves up and make the best of it? Well, yes, absolutely. What would your plan be? Make myself a nice, comfy place to li to live first. Either to protect myself from the sun,'cause I get sunburned very easily, or keep myself uh warm in the cold, depending on whereabouts it was. But it'd be fun, you could design things from whatever.

Speaker 331:01

Hmm.

Presenter31:12

was around you. You don't give the impression at all of the solitary scientist. You say that so much of your work has been about the teams that you've worked with. You've spoken about all of the laughs and the socializing and even quite enjoying having the builders in. Yes. You'd be lonely, wouldn't you? I would be. I have to say, I would be.

Professor Dame Kay Davies31:21

Yeah.

Presenter31:29

So I'd have to find some way of compensating for that. You've got the music, of course. And the music would have to be it. Tell me about your final choice, then. So my final choice is Pavarotti's singing La Done Mobile from Verdi's Rigoletto. I'm very fond of opera and someone was kind enough as my fiftieth birthday present to give me tickets in a box at Covent Garden and I took six of my friends along and we had a ball.

Professor Dame Kay Davies31:36

Tell me about your f

Speaker 331:52

The world is the same.

Speaker 332:26

What is your

Speaker 332:42

Bless you.

Presenter32:47

Luciano Parotti, singing La Done Immobile, Woman is Fickle from Verdi's Rigoletto. So, Kay, I will give you the complete works of Shakespeare and the Bible to take onto this island. What's your additional book going to be? It's going to be Alan Bennett's Untold Stories. Because parts of it are sad and parts of it are really, really funny. You have to recognise that occasionally you're sad, but you also have to recognise that most of the time it's fun and it's certainly worth it. So, I'll take that. Right, and a luxury. It has to be something to do with music. It's very boring, but it has to be a piano. Because I can be creative, I can try and be as good as Alfred Brendel if I get really lonely.

Professor Dame Kay Davies33:14

Right.

Presenter33:24

And he can even make up my own tunes. So the piano, please. And if the waves were to crash to the shore and threaten to wash away the discs, which one would you run to save? Er Schubert's piano sonata, etc. such a beautiful piece.

Presenter33:38

Kay Davis, Dame Professor Kay Davis, thank you very much for letting us hear your Desert Island discs. It's been fun, thank you very much.

Presenter33:51

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.