Sharon Horgan

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BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts.

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Hello, I'm Lauren Laverne and this is the Desert Island Discs podcast. Every week I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, book and luxury they'd want to take with them if they were cast away to a desert island. For rights reasons, the music is shorter than the original broadcast. I hope you enjoy listening.

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My castaway this week is the actor, writer, and producer Sharon Hogan. As co-creator of TV comedy hits Catastrophe, Motherland, Pulling and Divorce, she's made an internationally successful career out of training the spotlight on the very darkest corners of our emotional lives. The characters she writes are complex, conflicted, sometimes unsympathetic, and often crackling with anxiety. They are painfully recognisable and painfully funny. Growing up on a turkey farm in Ireland, she was, I'm told, a competent plucker. Perhaps that's why she's so adept at removing the carefully constructed plumage we cover ourselves in to reveal the scabrous truth beneath. Her own stellar career seems a world away from where she began and the characters she writes today, but she says, If I was to track my life and someone was to track the programmes I made alongside it, I think there is a massive overlap. I had nothing and now I have something and I managed to cobble together a family along the way. But at the heart of it, I'm still a mess. And there's still just a mess at the heart of all my work. Sharon Hogan, welcome to Desert Island Discs. Hi, thanks for having me.

Sharon Horgan1:48

So have a meeting.

Presenter1:49

It's a pleasure. So let's start with the mess then, Sharon, and the appeal of writing about it. Why are you drawn to it?

Presenter1:56

Oh, well, uh I don't know that I'd know what else to write about really. I've never been that great at working things out or or talking.

Presenter2:10

So you can tap it into your laptop.

Presenter2:14

And that feels kind of easier than saying it out loud. Yeah, and and interestingly, your style is unflinching and unsentimental, I suppose. So it does have that laboratory kind of thing. You're looking at a problem and trying to fix it. Is that how it feels when you're writing? Yeah, definitely.

Presenter2:33

I think generally I'm trying to explore parts of my life that I haven't sort of fully worked out. I mean, I've recently started having therapy and doing the sort of normal person's route rather than making a TV show about it. But for years, I didn't want to do that. I kind of felt I wanted to hold on to the mess. Like, I was worried if I got anything fixed, that you know, something would be taken from me creatively, you know, which is a really sort of

Presenter3:05

Assholy thing to do. It's not uncommon, though, is it? I mean, you know, you have a lot of creative people who are like that, I think. They worry about pulling at the threads. That's it. As you've said, there is often a crossover between things that have happened in your own life or the lives of those around you and what ends up on screen. So, in that case, do your friends and family need to be careful about what they reveal to you?

Presenter3:26

Are you a watcher? Oh yeah, I'm a watcher. I'm like a comedy dogger. I just kind of, I especially, I really love watching people's relationships. Sometimes I get angry at myself because I think be in the room, don't be thinking about what you can do with that thing because it feels sort of cheeky, I suppose, but.

Presenter3:50

I've always done it, and I used to do it in a way that was perhaps not.

Presenter3:56

Well, not the right way to do it. I kind of squirreled away the stories and then they just sort of turn up on screen. But now I I'm very open and honest with people. If they're telling me something that I know for a fact is going to go in somewhere, I you know, I tell them.

Sharon Horgan4:08

You know, it tells

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We're going to get into your first disc now. Why have you chosen it? Well, yes, I wanted to find a record from my parents and brothers and sisters because I love them madly. I've gone with the David Bowie record because he was my first obsession. I just remember seeing him on Top of the Pops, the Ashes to Ashes video, and I think I must have been 10 or 11 and just being like, what the hell is this? So I just went out and bought all his albums and learned all the words and listened to him religiously and it makes me think of my family and

Presenter4:42

our house in Bellewstown in Orland, and I ended up choosing rock and roll suicide because I think David Bowie asking me to give him my hands and telling me I'm not alone on a desert island would really help.

Speaker 24:54

You're not alone!

Speaker 25:00

Just turn around with me!

Speaker 25:02

And you're not alone.

Speaker 25:07

Have an me!

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Tell him

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Give me your hands!

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Give me a

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What a fucking

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David Bowie, Rock and Roll Suicide. So Sharon Horgan, that takes you back home. Let's head back to the beginning. When you were born, your parents, Ursula and John, were running a pub in the east end of London. Your dad's originally from New Zealand. Your mum's Irish. You moved to County Meath and they started running this turkey farm. How would you describe your childhood?

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I mean, it was great. There was a lot to love about it. But, you know, there was stressful elements because it was a turkey farm and my parents made all their money at Christmas. So Christmas, which is supposed to be, I guess, for most kids, this time of joy and anticipation, it was just kind of us watching our father have a slow heart attack and he would start smoking again every Christmas and my mum would be literally covered in feathers. She just would spend like two weeks in a shed just trying to get it all done and Christmas Eve everyone would turn up at our house with all their tickets that they collected from every turkey they plucked and we would pay it all out. So I just remember all these sort of big stacks of money around the house and.

Presenter6:39

The stress of that and the Rottweilers sitting there. And then Christmas Day they'd just sleep. They would just fall asleep and they would sleep, you know, for days. I was just thinking while you were describing it there, actually anyone who's lived with a writer or been a writer knows that that kind of deadline stress is

Presenter6:57

There's actually a kind of symmetry there, isn't there? Yeah, yeah. I mean, I honest to God, and I think it's sort of.

Sharon Horgan6:59

Yeah.

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You know what it's attributed to my personality and the personalities of all my brothers and sisters because we all have this.

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Mad sort of panic in us, and also drive, you know, and it's all based on.

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Anxiety, but they still managed to buy the presents and make the dinner, and we had a great time. There was lots of us, and so it always felt like a party. Yeah, you're one of five. Were you competitive as kids? Yeah, I mean, more so when my brothers came along, there was competition for attention, and you know, it doesn't take a genius to work out that that's where it all kind of stemmed from. For me, it was like I just wanted to make them laugh. I knew that that was a way to sort of.

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Focus attention on me, and my dad's very funny, very dry, but cracking my mama.

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Well, I'd sort of do anything for that. She's a real lady, you know, she's very sort of refined. But just making her really bark laughing was the challenge that I sort of rose to.

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It's time to hear your second disc today, Sharon. What have you gone for? I've gone for a Smiths track. So the Smiths, when they came along, they sort of changed everything for me because I didn't really.

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Get into punk really until much later. And I think the Smiths were kind of my punk in Ireland.

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You know, Marcy was so obnoxious and contrary and parents definitely didn't get it, but you know, I just loved them so much. My friends and I went to see the Smiths Live at a pub in Dundalk, I think about 1985, and we had to prepare ourselves for the gig by turning on the Smiths album Full Blast and squashing ourselves into a corner of my friend's bedroom and just moshing against each other into the wall.

Presenter8:46

To sort of recreate that feeling. So it makes me think about my best friendships from school. I went to convent school, but they were all crazy and brilliant. But anyway, we worship the Smiths.

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The popular subscriber

Speaker 48:59

Bye-bye.

Speaker 49:00

And the church was snatching money, the queen is dead by him so long.

Speaker 49:11

That's the curve that breaks your body And the church all I want is your money The Queen is dead boys And it's so lovely on a live

Presenter9:27

The Smiths and the Queen is dead. So, Sharon Hogan, you are a former convent school girl. What was your time there like?

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I guess

Presenter9:36

Not great. When I look back on it now, I think about the girls and just the sort of giddiness of it all and our sort of response to being under the thumb of an actually quite psychotic nun. There was just this constant sort of fear running through you and it was very old school. It was very sort of hellfire and brimstone and it built up a really nice juicy level of guilt and shame in you at an early age. So if you had any streak of boldness in you at all, it was terrifying because you're always going to get caught. And did you? You were one of those girls who kind of couldn't help yourself. Oh yeah, I got caught drinking wine in the classroom. That was one of the most terrifying moments of my life. Someone sort of smuggled it in. We couldn't even get the cork out. We just put a compass through the top of it. So literally, I mean, it was like drips. A drizzle of wine. A drizzle of wine. But you could get in trouble for anything. You know, I got in trouble for drawing a smiley face on a uterus, you know, in science class. There was a certain way to look and behave.

Sharon Horgan10:16

Oh yeah, I

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But yeah, it's a little bit of a

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And that was not just in the school, it was outside of the school as well. Everywhere you went, you kind of had to keep your eyes peeled and just sort of watch yourself.

Presenter10:52

I suppose it's quite a kind of writerly point of view to assume as well, that self-awareness and noticing your own feelings and your circumstances. When did you start writing?

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Well, I mean, I started writing pretty young. Myself and my best friend, we decided we were poets and we used to write each other poems and intend to write a book, but never did. And when I got this notion into my head that I was going to be an actor, I, for some reason, never sort of looked to find a play to practice on. I would just write my own angsty monologues and perform them. And was it in your teens that you first fancied the idea of acting? Yeah. Again, I don't know where it came from. I just remember telling my mother a very outlandish claim that, I mean, this is really embarrassing, but I said.

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Gonna win an Oscar one day, so she better hold onto her hat and wait for that.

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And yeah, you know, she was very nice about it, but she did tell me I might need to set my sights a little lower. And so I think I did. I think my parents were really good at, I guess, making sure that you were working within your capabilities, but also finding a way to make you work harder. They knew I'd sort of do it my own time, I guess. Well, we'll come to that. But before we do, it's time for your third disc.

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So I've chosen a song by an artist that not many people would know called Mick Christopher. I went to art college in Dublin in 1989 and my life changed.

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I was pretty miserable there and probably never should have gotten in'cause I was pretty much one of the worst. So had a bit of a breakdown and I was quite lost and miserable.

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But in the middle of all that, I got a couple of jobs and one of them was as a waitress at this Dublin cafe where all the buskers from Grafton Street would go.

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And I met and fell in love with one of them and that was Mick Christopher. It was the first time that music was right in front of me like I could touch it. It was just always music and beautiful voices and fiddles and barons and it was kind of magical. So I've chosen one of his songs. It's called Kid Song. He died in 2001 very tragically and I'm choosing this because I'd like to have Mick on the island with me and because I know he would get such a gas out of his song being played on Desert Island discs. It's also for my daughters. They love this song. When I told them I was doing this show, it was one of the songs they first suggested I should play, even though they haven't got a clue what Desert Island Discs is. So it's called Kid Song.

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But how comes this girl that I knew Well sometimes she don't look

Speaker 213:32

Looks so good, oh well her mom says it's blue, but she was coaxing a gym class at school

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I tell her I wanna be friends with you, will you be friendly to me?

Presenter13:57

Well I won't be friends with you, will you be friend later?

Presenter14:06

Mick Christopher and Kids Song. So, Sharon Hogan, you moved to Dublin to go to art school and, as you described it, a very tricky transition. What about your acting ambitions at that point? What was going on there? Oh, yeah, so I didn't even think about drama school. It wasn't even on my radar, but I signed myself up to do this weekend course. So, I do art college all week, and then on Saturday and Sundays, I went and did this drama course at the Dublin Oscar Theatre School. So, I did that for as long as I could afford it.

Presenter14:37

And then I had sort of had this weird thing happen where my friend was going out with this guy who had his own band, and it was kind of a weird band. And she asked me if I was a goth band, Sharon. It was kind of a goth band. It's probably important to say that there's a strong visual element to this that we should alert the listener to at this point. Yeah, so I don't know what you described the music as, but I guess it was kind of gothy. She asked me, would I join not as a singer, as a backing dancer? And, you know, we'd do gigs. And at one of those gigs, this manager guy, I'm doing inverted commas with my hands. One of those managers. Yeah, well, I mean, actually, weirdly, he had credentials because I had to sort of look into him because he sort of said, you know, I think I'm going to make you a star.

Sharon Horgan14:47

Farsa gone.

Sharon Horgan14:49

Probably

Sharon Horgan15:03

Mm-hmm.

Sharon Horgan15:11

One of those monages.

Presenter15:22

And I was like, Okay. And he's like, But you have to come to Switzerland. So I went and told my parents, I was like, So I'm going to go to Switzerland and, you know, become a star. And they were like, Well, you're not. And they made me take my sister with me. So they they let us go. But, you know, we were borderline adults, I suppose. What happened when you got there?

Presenter15:40

Well, I mean, initially, kind of normal-ish stuff, like he made a little film of me doing some speeches and

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He tried me out as a singer, did a little recording.

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This all sounds so mental now, Lauren, that it's making me feel a bit crazy. But he got me to a modelling shoot. And then one morning I woke up and he was.

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He was in the bedroom with me stroking my face. And we were supposed to be leaving the next day and suddenly we couldn't find our passports. And my sister went absolutely bonkers. And we both turned the place upside down and went crazy. And eventually they were suddenly like found.

Presenter16:18

And we skedaddled and and then I never heard from him again. But it did do this weird thing where I thought that someone was, you know, just going to tap me on the shoulder and tell me they were going to sort everything out for me again. So that that kind of stayed

Sharon Horgan16:29

Yeah.

Presenter16:31

In me for a long time, very unfortunately, because it meant that I sort of did nothing for quite a while.

Presenter16:39

It's time to take a break for the music shower on disc number four.

Presenter16:43

So this is a a song by The Fall and I don't think many bands map out my twenties like the fall.

Presenter16:52

I mean, mainly downs, if I'm honest, and failures and stuff. But I I dropped out of art college. I failed to get a place at Trinity College to study theatre and I moved to London and tried to get into all the drama schools in London, but I had no joy.

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So I spent my 20s doing not very much really. I worked in a job centre and made plans.

Presenter17:10

But it was all just a bit grimy and dark. I was squatting for a big portion of it and yeah, and the fall was just my soundtrack. I play them all the time and I thought I need a song to get angry to or dance angrily to because I figure I'll be really angry at times on the island. So this is telephone thing and it's for my misspent 20s and everything they gave me.

Presenter17:40

I hear you chuck on thing, listen to

Presenter17:50

I did you assume I wanna polytheon with you?

Presenter17:55

Sorry to be so short with you.

Speaker 418:01

But

Speaker 418:06

And sir.

Sharon Horgan18:07

So

Sharon Horgan18:11

Hey you talk on fan, listen to the hell

Presenter18:16

The four and telephone thing. So Sharon, you moved to London in 1990. What kind of place was it to spend your 20s? Well, I moved to Stockwell first, then to Manor House and then to Finsbury Park. And really, I have no idea what London was like at that time because I didn't see London unless you had access to whatever parties were the parties to go to or the kind of places to be, you could sort of really live on the fringes of it. You know, I went to Kilburn to do my job, but I left the job centre after six and a half years. Why did you leave?

Presenter18:52

That's such a burning question. Why did I stay, Lauren? Why, Sharon Horgan? What happened? I'll tell you what happened. I hated it there and I was so bad at my job, but I stayed there and I worked and I sort of expected promotions. Like, why aren't I an executive officer, guys? Because I've been here for five years and they'd be like, you don't do anything. But one day, the manager of the job centre asked me if I'd clean up the back of the job centre because someone had made a mess. And I went outside and it was.

Presenter19:24

Human feces. Someone had taken a crap outside the job centre, and I think I quit very, very soon after that. You thought this is it? This is it. This ends here. Yeah, and I got my equity card by putting on a Punch and Judy show. So I was like, great, now I can officially act. But I thought I can't just leave work. I need to have something under my belt. So I went back to university and did a degree. And it was while I was at uni that I moved to Camden and got a job as a waitress and got a job in a bong shop to fund that. So you had you changed tactics, and at that time, you met up with Dennis Kelly again. You'd acted together previously. You started writing together, and that drew the attention of the late BBC comedy producer Harry Thompson. And that led to BBC3 commissioning pulling. What was that moment like? Yeah, it changed everything. I genuinely never had the same level of excitement as when Harry called me and said our treatment had been commissioned. I remember him laughing down the phone at me because he couldn't believe.

Speaker 220:06

Yeah.

Sharon Horgan20:12

What was that moment like?

Presenter20:28

the the pitch of my excitement.

Presenter20:31

You know, at that point I had done shows as an actor and enough to be making a good living, but this was my own thing and Dennis's thing. We had this freedom creatively that, as it turns out, is really hard to hand back once you get it. Type of more music. What are we going to hear next?

Presenter20:50

Well, I figured that time was so massive for me, leaving Finsbury Park and moving to Camden and my misspent twenties were maybe going to turn into misspent thirties, but I met Dennis in a pub in Camden and

Presenter21:03

That's when everything changed and I think from that era there's loads of great songs, but this one is by the Charlottens and it's the only one I know and

Presenter21:13

I chose this because they get better all the time and I just I find that really inspiring and it makes me want to do that. So this song is for Dennis and for Camden and for that mad time in London and also for Tim Burgess who's one of the best people I've ever met.

Presenter21:29

Leo Linnaeus comes and take me away Leo This man tastes it with me

Presenter22:10

The Charlatans and the Only One I Know. Sharon Hogan, we were talking about pulling a moment ago and you said that it being commissioned changed everything. I love the description that that you and and co-creator Dennis Kelly had of it at the time, which was sex in the city with kebabs. It just it puts you there so neatly. And you were writing perhaps characters that you weren't seeing elsewhere.

Sharon Horgan22:25

It puts you there.

Presenter22:31

Yeah, I mean you generally weren't seeing female characters overall being that funny or being allowed to be funny or being allowed to be really sort of flawed and messed up. And it was exciting to just think that we had this opportunity to put female characters who weren't necessarily.

Presenter22:54

You know, I wouldn't say they were completely sympathetic. They were selfish or drunks or any number of faults, and that was okay. And I think previous to that, certainly in sitcoms, you know, the female characters were eye-rolling, put upon women who had to put up with selfish children who were their boyfriends.

Presenter23:16

And there's nothing really fun to play in that. And I think it's not that fun to watch either. And I've always known women like that. I've always been a woman like that.

Presenter23:25

Sharon, it's disc number six. Tell us what we're going to hear and why you've chosen this. So, this is a track by Motronomy, and I just sort of fell in love with them, everything about them.

Presenter23:35

Their look, their videos, and I got to be in one of their videos. It was directed by Dawn Shadforth, who is one of the most iconic.

Presenter23:43

music directors of the last ten years and uh

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I had to learn to dance for this video and I can't really dance because I'm self-conscious. Like I'm fine at dancing at gigs, but when you dance with someone in front of someone, I don't know where to look. Do you look all around the place like a loon? Do you look into someone's eyes? I don't know. I've tried looking into someone's eyes or closing my eyes and

Speaker 423:59

We made a

Presenter24:05

But anyway, so I had to do this dance in the video. At the end, I sort of threw my head back. My eyes were closed. And when I threw my head back, the camera operator wasn't expecting it.

Presenter24:14

He had the camera right up close to my face. So when I threw my head back down, I head-butted the camera like full impact, split my eyebrow, and I had to go sit in AE for five hours. And Dawn finished the video, and it was still beautiful. Anyway, I wanted to put this in because that's a memory.

Sharon Horgan24:22

Scared.

Presenter24:31

And I chose this particular song because I just love the back and forth of their voices singing to each other and the refrain, you know. I think I just, it's such a simple notion that everything will be okay this time around. Like, you shot me in the heart that time, but now everything's going to be fine. And it's optimistic, but I just really like that idea.

Presenter24:52

When I took you back

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I thought you'd own it up and run

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But you're still here.

Presenter25:02

I know

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When I took you back

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I thought you'd all be up and wrong.

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May you still hear

Presenter25:18

You're still here.

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And now everything goes well.

Presenter25:26

Metronomy, everything goes my way. So, Sharon Hogan, you set up your own production company, Merman, in 2014, and one of its earliest projects was Catastrophe, echoing your own experience of getting pregnant quite early on in a relationship. Catastrophe is the story of a couple. They have a six-night stand, find out she's pregnant, and decide to make a go of it. So, it's you and your co-writer, American comic Rob Delaney. It's extremely funny, often makes you wince. And a lot of the stories that appear in the show are taken from your own life. So, I think that your ex-husband, Jeremy Rainbird, also nearly paid £20,000 more than he meant to for your engagement ring. You originally wanted to call one of your daughters by a name he couldn't pronounce. You've talked a little bit about that idea of kind of writing those experiences out and exploring them. Your comedy is often described as confessional, and I wonder who you're confessing to and what absolution is like, where that comes from.

Presenter26:24

Well, I mean those things like the the ring buying incident and the murin name they were just really funny.

Presenter26:29

I think there's harder, more confessional truths that go in there. It's partly sort of getting it off your chest, like admitting that being a mother doesn't always make you happy. You know, we had an episode of Catastrophe where the characters, they thought for a while that they might be carrying a baby that had a chromosomal abnormality and I had that experience and what I felt, like what I thought at the time.

Presenter26:57

The fear and all the complicated feelings that surrounded that, I thought if we wrote about it in the right way, could be really helpful.

Presenter27:06

And what about for you, you know, having explored all of this emotional territory yourself, have you discovered anything about yourself watching back on screen? Yeah, I mean, generally, if I'm honest, it just makes me wish I was more brave in real life. Especially, you know, when I watch my character in catastrophe, giving people what for or being so sort of, that's just how it is. This is what I stand for and stand by.

Presenter27:29

I just feel this sort of slight shame that I haven't quite got her love of balls, you know?

Presenter27:36

It's time to hear some more music. What's it going to be, Sharon? It's Arcade Fire and I chose this because I j I love making T V and I love telling stories and music is always such a a huge part of that. This particular song was always one that Rob and I wanted for the end of the series.

Presenter27:52

So the final moments of catastrophe, they're sitting on the beach together and they've they've had this terrible fight, but they've made up and Sharon, my character, decides to strip down her underwear and run into the sea and Rob doesn't want to join her, but

Presenter28:06

You sort of notice there's a sign behind that says there's a riptide.

Presenter28:10

So he calls for her, but she's already too far out. So Rob joins her in the ocean and they kiss. And then we sort of see them swim back to the beach, but we don't really know if they get back. But the music kicks in as soon as Rob goes into the water, and it's a metaphor, I guess, for this couple who are always swimming against the tide. And we wanted it to be ambiguous, but there had to be this message of hope in there. And we knew even if it seemed really dark, we could do that with a beautiful final image and also with the music.

Presenter28:46

All the time that we wasted our own

Speaker 428:50

Who's taken

Speaker 428:56

No one loved the wasted camera.

Speaker 429:02

Why?

Presenter29:09

Well I've got to ask.

Presenter29:14

Sometimes I can't believe it.

Presenter29:19

Arcade Fire and the Suburbs continued.

Presenter29:23

So Sharon Horgan, moving on from Catastrophe, you wrote the pilot for the HBO series Divorce, but when it was picked up, you went to America. It meant leaving your family in London and spending five months in Brooklyn, which must have been tough. How did you manage?

Presenter29:39

Oh, well, I lost my mind completely, and I.

Presenter29:44

You know, I've got ACD from it. I sort of developed anxiety. I would sort of like lie in bed at night and I'd feel my heart going and I'd think, oh, I'm about to have a heart attack. And it was only afterwards that I sort of realized it was anxiety. I mean, I didn't not see my kids for five months. Every couple of weeks I'd go back or they'd come over, but it was still ridiculously long. And

Presenter30:06

Painful. They came over for Christmas. Jem brought the girls over, and I was so up for being the best Christmas mum in the land. We were in Austin, Texas, and they had a trampoline in the back garden, and I was just like jumping on the trampoline with my girls and just broke my ankle, cracked a piece of bone off, and it was terrible. I went back on set and

Presenter30:30

I was even more annoying.

Presenter30:34

Presence could

Presenter30:35

I'd be walking up to people on crutches giving notes. They're like, oh, Jesus. So, yeah, it was awful, but it was a sort of choice we made as a family, and lots of good things came out of it. But it certainly sort of messed me up for a while, and I wouldn't want to do it again. Thankfully, you're back home now. You and Jeremy are amicably divorced, and you're co-parenting. What kind of mum are you? You're the mum on the trampoline, so fun mum.

Presenter30:59

Yeah, I mean, I was Fun Mum for years. I mean, I entirely thought that was my role.

Presenter31:04

But no, that sort of changes a bit when you co-parent everything changes, and you take on a lot more sort of roles and.

Presenter31:12

you know, I'm much more practical than I was. And I think that's a positive thing. And it sort of had some dips in the middle where I thought, oh, that thing that I thought I was, which is a good mother, I'm not entirely sure about.

Presenter31:25

When you bring anything like that into your into your kids' life, it's it's tricky, you know, when you sort of just turn the world upside down and but it b it balances out and everything's sort of eased back and you know, it's locked down and it's weird, but I like being here. I'm here all the time.

Presenter31:41

What keeps you going when life gets especially messy?

Presenter31:46

I think I just still have a a mad love for what I do. I don't know if I still get the same kind of buzz from my own stuff, but I definitely get a buzz when we get something picked up that.

Presenter31:57

You know, it's the first show that they've written. It's just a mad buzz and sometimes it's a bit much and I know I take on a bit too much, but it it's because I'm genuinely excited. It's all stuff that I truly love and with people I I really admire.

Presenter32:13

One more disc then before we send you off to the island. I really wanted to put a love song in and this song is by Kate Bush and it's just pure love. And Kate Bush, like David Bow, is just one of my enduring obsessions. So this is moments of pleasure and it really moves me. And this is a really good song to cry to. I've cried to it a lot.

Presenter32:36

Some moments that

Speaker 432:38

That's huh.

Speaker 432:40

Some moments of pleasure

Sharon Horgan32:54

I think about us lying

Sharon Horgan32:59

Yeah, not a beautiful.

Presenter32:59

Beach somewhere I think about us diving, diving off a rock into another moment

Presenter33:13

Kate Bush and Moments of Pleasure. Sharon Hogan, I'm about to cast you away to your desert island. To keep you company, you'll have the books, the Bible, the complete works of Shakespeare, and another book of your choice. What'll you go for?

Presenter33:26

I think I'm going to bring Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises because it's a very light tone. It just transports me, and I think that'd be good on the island. You can also have a luxury item, of course. I think my luxury item has to be something that I can get better at. And this is really boring, but I'm going to bring my laptop and I just use like a word processor because I can escape when I write. I can legitimately talk to myself out loud because I do that a lot when I write. And I figure I'll just write all the things I've ever wanted to write. I'll adapt The Sun Also Rises, maybe a couple of the stories from the Bible, and I'll get all my work done. And then when I'm rescued, I'll just hand it all over and just retire immediately. Okay, well, as a word processor only with every other function disabled, and a really good solar-powered battery, because presumably you would need that, it's yours.

Sharon Horgan34:11

Yeah.

Presenter34:18

Oh, thank you so much. And finally, perhaps the hardest question of all, if you had to save just one of your eight discs from vinyl eating sharks, which would it be? I think it would be Kate. I'd have to bring Kate with me. Sharon Horgan, thank you very much for letting us hear your Desert Island discs. Oh, thank you for having me.

Sharon Horgan34:44

Uh

Presenter34:49

I very much look forward to watching Sharon's adaptation of the stories from the Bible after she's rescued from the island. I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Sharon. There are many other comedy writers in the Death Island Discs back catalogue, including Steve Coogan, Ruth Jones, James Corden, Dawn French, and Ricky Gervais. You can listen to all of those programmes via BBC Sounds. Next time, my guest will be the naturalist Steve Backshall. I do hope you'll join us.

Speaker 435:27

Hi, I'm Joe Wicks and I'm just popping up to tell you about my brand new podcast with BBC Radio 4. It's extraordinary, it almost turbocharges you. I'm really interested in the links between physical and mental health and what kind of ordinary everyday activities people do to keep on top of things.

Sharon Horgan35:42

I keep fit because it's relaxing, because it absolutely relaxes my mind. And that's so important.

Speaker 435:49

So in this podcast, I'm having a chat with some of my favourite people to find out their tips and tricks to staying healthy and happy. For me...

Speaker 235:55

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Speaker 435:59

I think you're going to love it. Hit subscribe on the Joe X podcast on BBC Sounds. Let's do this.