Professor Jean Golding

Presenter0:01

BBC Sounds, Music, Radio Podcasts. 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. And, for rights reasons, the music is shorter than the original broadcast. I hope you enjoy listening.

Presenter0:44

My castaway this week is the epidemiologist Professor Jean Golding. If you visit Bristol University, you'll find that the Institute of Data Science bears her name. It was at Bristol that she began a biobank before the word even existed. It's widely known as the Children of the Nineties study, or more formally, the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children. It's now a unique, world-famous resource containing over a million samples taken over the course of 30 years, a treasure trove of data that has led to global discoveries about everything from cot death, obesity and nut allergies to the way our grandparents' health can influence our own well-being. Persuading others to see the value of this work wasn't easy, especially since, statistically speaking, she's always been an outlier. When she first started at Bristol, she was a woman in a man's world, a mathematician doing medical research, and there was also a certain amount of pressure to declutter her frankly enormous collection of placentas. Luckily, Professor Golding is used to overcoming challenges. She faced numerous bouts of serious illness, including polio, during childhood. Long stays in hospital disrupted her education, but she credits her experiences with making her a keen observer of people and the world around her. She says, I was lucky. My scientific achievements developed in response to a number of illnesses, stresses and chance occurrences, and I am humbled by the success I've had. Professor Jean Golding, welcome to Desert Island Discs.

Presenter2:16

Thank you.

Presenter2:17

Jean, Children of the Nineties continues to improve scientists' understanding of health and disease to this day. Now, at the moment, data from the study is helping to pinpoint people who are most at risk from developing long COVID. What does it mean to you on a personal level that the study's still relevant and still informing future treatments?

Professor Jean Golding2:38

It actually makes me feel quite emotional. I'm

Professor Jean Golding2:41

Just so proud and so grateful to all the people who've put in their time.

Professor Jean Golding2:48

And the information that's being collected from everybody is just fantastic.

Presenter2:54

And are you surprised that it's still having such an impact? You can't have foreseen this at the beginning.

Professor Jean Golding2:59

At the beginning, I hoped it might last for seven years. Yeah.

Presenter3:05

Yeah.

Professor Jean Golding3:06

Yes.

Presenter3:08

Jean, your own personal equilibrium and attitude has been so important to your story, as we'll hear today. And a colleague of yours once said about you, her optimism was off the charts. Where does that come from in you, do you think?

Professor Jean Golding3:24

Yeah.

Presenter3:24

What a

Professor Jean Golding3:25

Well, my family would phrase it more as stubbornness rather than optimism.

Presenter3:28

Yeah.

Professor Jean Golding3:31

Why? Where where does that characteristic come from?

Professor Jean Golding3:33

I think possibly from my history, when I had polio and various illnesses, the support of my parents was very much for battling it through. It's going to be all right in the end.

Presenter3:47

And are you someone who, you know, when your back is against the wall, that's when you come out fighting, you rise to a challenge?

Professor Jean Golding3:55

I do indeed. In fact, it's probably the best thing that can happen to me in terms of what I do next is to be told I can't. So a stubbornness to show that I can do things has been something that's guided a lot of my life.

Presenter4:16

Life.

Professor Jean Golding4:17

Uh

Presenter4:17

Well, the challenge of the island awaits you today, but before that we have got the pleasure of your discs, your music choices. So I think we should get started with your first gene. Tell us about your first piece of music and why you're taking it with you today.

Professor Jean Golding4:31

Well, I was born in Cornwall. I count myself as Cornish, even though I only lived there for the first seven years of my life. This is known as the national anthem of Cornwall, although if you go back into history, it's not celebrating somebody whose ideas that I would particularly like to emulate.

Professor Jean Golding4:54

But the tune is good and you've got a really good choir singing this.

Speaker 45:01

A good sword and a trusty hand, A merry heart and true

Professor Jean Golding5:03

Try

Speaker 15:04

They had a marriage

Speaker 45:07

King James's men shall understand what Cornish lads can do, And have they fixed the where and when And shall Trelawney die? His twenty thousand Cornish men will know the reason why And shall Trelawny live?

Presenter5:31

TRELONY PERFORMED BY THE FISHERMAN'S FRIENDS. So, Jean, as we've heard, you were born in Hale, in Cornwall, in nineteen thirty nine. Your father, Harry, was a clerical worker. He worked down at the docks in your local town. How would you describe him?

Professor Jean Golding5:47

Oh, very much as a Cornishman, very proud of being Cornish. He was a rugby player and a cricket player, and I think that's how he saw himself.

Professor Jean Golding6:02

Yeah.

Presenter6:02

You've said that you felt you and your two younger brothers were a bit of a disappointment to him. Why why was that?

Presenter6:08

Because we weren't playing. Yeah.

Presenter6:11

Cricket. Because you weren't sporty then. Not sporty kids.

Professor Jean Golding6:14

Not sporty games.

Professor Jean Golding6:17

He had a tough start, didn't he? His mother died when he was less than a year old. His father had remarried.

Presenter6:25

Hmm.

Professor Jean Golding6:26

He was a Wesleyan minister and he'd been made to go to chapel three times every Sunday, and had been brought up very much in the thou shalt not drink, thou shalt not enjoy yourself particularly on the Sabbath. And my mother, of course, had a different upbringing.

Presenter6:50

Yes, so tell me about your mother, Peggy. She was Canadian.

Professor Jean Golding6:53

Well, she was Canadian but came from a family that lived in in Cornwall. She came over at the invitation of an aunt of hers to uh see George the Sixth's coronation, see from outside the Westminster Abbey, not not within it.

Professor Jean Golding7:16

But

Presenter7:17

Kind of person Two. Okay.

Professor Jean Golding7:18

She was just somebody who was interested in everything. As children we were always introduced to looking for new things, identifying birds and insects and flowers and looking things up in books, so that there was a a strong element of searching for information.

Presenter7:42

She had uh three of her younger brothers who were in the Canadian Air Force during the war. What happened to them?

Professor Jean Golding7:50

Yes, two of them were were killed and one of them was a prisoner of war for many years of the war and really traumatized. Sh she had a lot to cope with. She had

Professor Jean Golding8:04

Three children born during the war.

Professor Jean Golding8:08

And

Professor Jean Golding8:09

Each of my two younger brothers were born just after one of her her brothers had died. So it was almost simultaneously.

Speaker 18:18

Ugh.

Professor Jean Golding8:19

Um which can't have helped.

Professor Jean Golding8:22

Yeah.

Presenter8:22

It's time for your next disc, Jean. What have you got for us?

Professor Jean Golding8:26

Well, it's not music in its usual sense. I'm really keen on people's voices and words and the radio. So I've chosen Under Milk Wood, the opening part of that read by Richard Burton, who has such a fantastic voice and it's such wonderful words.

Speaker 48:50

To begin

Speaker 48:51

At the beginning.

Speaker 48:54

It is spring, moonless night in the small town, starless and bible black, the cobbled streets silent and the hunched, quarters and rabbits' wood limping invisible down to the slow black.

Speaker 49:06

Slow

Speaker 49:08

Black

Speaker 49:09

Crow black fishing boat bobbing sea

Speaker 49:13

The houses are blind as moles, though moles see fine to night in the snouting velvet dingles, or

Presenter9:20

Under Milkwood to begin at the beginning from the BBC radio recording with Richard Burton as the narrator.

Presenter9:27

Gene Golding, you didn't enjoy the best of health as a child, and you spent quite a long time in hospital during your early years. What was wrong?

Professor Jean Golding9:36

Oh, in my very early years I had T B.

Professor Jean Golding9:42

It wasn't the respiratory T B, but it was uh it affected glands in my neck.

Professor Jean Golding9:48

So each time it was sort of six weeks in hospital.

Professor Jean Golding9:52

They didn't have children's ward. Uh I was the only child.

Speaker 19:56

Ah

Professor Jean Golding9:56

And I was in a large ward of women. If you can envisage a sort of oval-shaped ward.

Professor Jean Golding10:05

All the beds were facing towards the centre.

Professor Jean Golding10:09

And in the centre was my cot. So there was no escape. Everybody was looking at me the whole time.

Professor Jean Golding10:17

And that had a a long term of effect, I think. I in what way? Uh I didn't like crowds. I didn't like new people. I felt

Professor Jean Golding10:29

Very much somebody who would rather be on their own and read or do things, but not be on public view. And the fact that parents weren't allowed to visit children except once a week and that was because it

Presenter10:45

God

Professor Jean Golding10:49

It caused so much distress to children when their parents left.

Professor Jean Golding10:55

So we were deprived of that, and that really did have an effect on me. What happened? Well, I I would spend a lot of time clinging to my mother when I came out of hospital, and there was always a bit of uncertainty as to what was going to happen next.

Presenter11:08

Um

Presenter11:14

And then, Jean, when you were thirteen, you you contracted polio. Now, by that time, your your family had moved, you were living in Chester, and that that meant another long hospitalization, three months, I think.

Professor Jean Golding11:26

Yeah.

Presenter11:26

How did you cope this time around?

Professor Jean Golding11:28

Yeah.

Professor Jean Golding11:29

I felt I was almost used to it. I knew how to cope with h hospitals. And it was a different sort of hospital. It was a hospital that was quite a long way away from our home in Chester, but one or other of my parents would make sure to come every day.

Presenter11:47

How did those stays in hospital influence the person that you grew up to be?

Professor Jean Golding11:53

I think it made me far more able to or interested in observing other people, because I was in a ward with people from quite different backgrounds, just listening to the conversation and what they were interested in. And I think that is one of the things that has kept with me is an interest in

Speaker 112:10

Yeah.

Professor Jean Golding12:18

how people of various different backgrounds react to things and what their interests are and what their

Presenter12:27

Sumptions are

Presenter12:28

Gene, we're going to go to the music. It's disc number three. What are we going to hear next and why are you taking this with you to the island?

Professor Jean Golding12:36

Well, this is Badpenny Blues. Humphry Littleton did used to star on the radio, and when I was at university, I went to at the end of my three years, I went to a ball at which he was playing, and that was a fantastic way of signing off what had been a really wonderful three years.

Presenter14:02

Humphrey Lyttelton and Bad Penny Blues. So, Jean Golding, you were out of school with Pollio for quite some time. You had to take a year off. But I know that you quickly caught up with the rest of your class. Did you feel different from from your classmates? Had your experiences set you apart?

Professor Jean Golding14:20

I felt different, but that was for all sorts of reasons. My father used to choose which schools his uh children went to.

Professor Jean Golding14:31

on the state of their playing fields and how good they were at various sports, which, as I've mentioned, is not quite appropriate to his children, but anyway.

Speaker 114:41

The

Professor Jean Golding14:43

That's why in Plymouth I went to Devonport High School, which was where the children of the dockyard and all sorts of different children would go to, but they had good playing fields. It was a fantastic school. I was really, really happy there.

Professor Jean Golding15:09

And then in Chester, the school with the best playing fields was the opposite. It was the school where the most well to do went.

Presenter15:21

Ah, so you're at the posch school and you didn't feel like you fit in?

Professor Jean Golding15:23

Didn't feel what you fit in. I was at the posh school, didn't understand the language or the attitudes or what anybody was interested in. I then had to cope with not being able to walk.

Professor Jean Golding15:38

very well. I had a caliper, which is a long steel or two steel rods that keep your legs straight and they fit into a shoe. Now in this posh school everybody wore what we called plimsels that made no noise at all, but my shoes had to be very sturdy and heavy. So walking around I would be very conscious of going clunk, clunk, clunk, clunk, particularly in the school hall.

Presenter16:15

With all of that to contend with as well, I wonder how easy it was for you to make friends. Were you able to do that?

Professor Jean Golding16:22

I wouldn't have said I made close friends there at all. But I was very conscious that they had all been talked to by the teachers to say you must be kind to this skull.

Professor Jean Golding16:35

And

Professor Jean Golding16:36

I didn't want people to be kind to me. I want you

Presenter16:40

You know, I wanted to be treated normally. So where did you find happiness and pleasure? I know that you were an avid reader as a little girl. That must have been an escape.

Professor Jean Golding16:49

Oh, that was an escape. And I was beginning to read uh much more scientifically a lot in terms of bird behaviour and the way creatures interact with one another was of particular interest.

Presenter17:04

So so zoology was a a passion that was emerging for you?

Professor Jean Golding17:08

It was, and is something I would have taken up had I been more mobile at the time, or had it been now, because there are now so many aids that one can use to get around and cope, but just standing in a laboratory for more than an hour or two was too much.

Professor Jean Golding17:30

Let's hear your next disc. What have you chosen?

Presenter17:33

Listen.

Professor Jean Golding17:34

Oh, next I thought on my desert island I would like to hear some English bird song.

Professor Jean Golding17:41

I always wake up early and in spring that's a particular pleasure because you hear the birdsong.

Professor Jean Golding17:49

In the stillness of the morning.

Presenter18:22

An extract of The Dawn Chorus from the BBC's Sound Archive. Gene Golding, you studied maths at Oxford and after you graduated you got married, but the marriage didn't last and by 1964 you were a single mother with two small children to support and you were looking for work you could do at home around the kids and you answered an advert that changed your life.

Presenter18:43

What did it say, and why did it appeal to you?

Professor Jean Golding18:46

It said that it wanted somebody who could do calculations and would be interested in working for a research group.

Professor Jean Golding18:57

This was a study which had taken place in Great Britain in 1958. It involved all the births in one week in that year. And it also involved all the stillbirths and deaths occurring over a three-month period. And the aim was to try and find what it was that was contributing to these stillbirths and baby deaths. It was a detective story. Here were some clues and

Professor Jean Golding19:35

Could you put them together and try and find out what

Presenter19:39

What was happening and why? So this was the mid sixties. There were no sophisticated computers, no software, and you were dealing with a huge amount of data. How did you keep track of it all?

Professor Jean Golding19:48

There was a great advantage to not having computers because you got to know your data very well. So what we used to have were cards that we put the information for each case on. The way in which I liked to do it was with cards that you could actually write on, but you also punched little holes round the edges of. And you could sort these with a knitting needle.

Professor Jean Golding20:19

Yeah.

Presenter20:19

So you put your needle in in the hole and what does that that so that groups together cards that share a common factor.

Professor Jean Golding20:22

Groups together.

Professor Jean Golding20:25

Yeah. Or the the the ones that fall down will share a common common factor. Okay. Uh and the ones that are left won't have got that factor. And then you can sort further the ones that are left or or the ones that have fallen through.

Presenter20:42

We'd love your next piece of music. What's it going to be and why are you taking it with you today?

Professor Jean Golding20:47

This is reminding me of that time in London when I had my two children. We were young.

Professor Jean Golding20:56

It's the hippopotamus song from Blunders and Swan, and it's something we used to sing together and laugh at.

Speaker 421:06

Mark

Speaker 421:07

Mutt, glorious mud, nothing quite like it for cooling the blood. So follow me follow, down to the hollow, and there let us wallow in glorious mud.

Speaker 421:25

The fair hippopotama he aimed to entice From her seat on that hilltop above.

Speaker 421:31

As she hadn't got a ma to give her advice, Cain tiptoe

Presenter21:36

The Hippopotamus Song by Flanders and Swan. Jean Golding, by the nineteen seventies you'd moved to Oxford. You were continuing your research there with large data sets. Now, not many women were working in that area. Did your gender ever make things difficult?

Professor Jean Golding21:51

My gender certainly and very obviously made things difficult. I mean, I I was interviewed by one scientist

Professor Jean Golding22:01

and told that all things being equal, I wouldn't get the job because, you know, I was a woman, I might have children, more children. So my response again is my Cornish stubbornness coming up. I'm going to show I'm not equal, I'm better.

Presenter22:21

Yeah. How did you deal with it day to day? Because that's tough. You must have had to develop a thick skin. A thick skin.

Professor Jean Golding22:28

I

Presenter22:29

And keep

Professor Jean Golding22:29

your head down and keep churning out good research so that eventually it will be realized that, you know, a woman can do these things. It doesn't just have to be the domain of men.

Presenter22:44

Then

Presenter22:45

In 1978, Jean, you were asked to help design a new study for the Department of Health, and it was looking at, among other things, the causes of premature delivery and the quality of antenatal care. So you proposed to monitor every woman in the country who got pregnant, so 800,000 women, and follow the 50,000 or so who would actually deliver during a particular month. It was the most ambitious longitudinal study of its kind and very high stakes as an undertaking. Did you want to do it?

Professor Jean Golding23:14

because it gave me the excuse to go and talk to a variety of different experts in different fields, particularly in obstetrics and in

Presenter23:25

So, Jean, in studies like this, processing so much information, it is very difficult to start with a definite hypothesis. There are just too many variables. And I know that many scientists were sceptical of your approach. One, I think, described it as a fishing expedition. What did you say to them?

Professor Jean Golding23:43

I did say that unless you have the nets and go fishing you can't catch fish.

Presenter23:51

In the end, Jean, you you didn't get the funding for the study that time round. Can you remember how you felt when it was rejected?

Professor Jean Golding23:55

Can you return?

Professor Jean Golding23:59

Oh, I felt absolutely downcast. I felt total failure.

Professor Jean Golding24:04

That took a few months to get over that.

Presenter24:08

It's time for more music, Jean.

Professor Jean Golding24:10

This one is one that I find very amusing and perhaps other people might be shocked that I've chosen. It's the song from My Fair Lady, where Rex Harrison is contemplating his feelings about women and his puzzlement about women. Whenever I feel that as a woman I've been downtrodden, I listen to this and just laugh.

Speaker 424:37

Figgering

Speaker 424:38

Why can't a woman be more like a man?

Speaker 424:41

Yes, why can't a woman

Speaker 424:44

More like a man. Men are so honest, so thoroughly square.

Speaker 424:50

Eternally noble, historically fair.

Speaker 424:54

Who when you win will always give your back a pat?

Speaker 424:57

Why can't a woman be like that?

Speaker 425:02

Why does everyone do what the others do?

Presenter25:05

Can't a woman learn to use her head? A hymn to hymn performed by Rex Harrison from the film soundtrack of My Fair Lady, composed by Alan J. Lerner and Frederick Lowe. I'm not sure if you've run the science on that, Gene Golding, but I would say those lyrics questionable.

Presenter25:24

So, Jean, in 1990 you launched the Children of the Nineties study and that enrolled more than 14,000 pregnant women living in Avon who were due to give birth in 1991 and 1992. It's been following the health and development of those parents, their children and now their grandchildren ever since. What were your aims for this project at the start?

Professor Jean Golding25:48

Oh, the aims at the start were to try and find what it was that could improve the health and development of children overall. And as I think I said, I had originally developed the plan for following the children up to the age of seven. And only when that was obviously so successful did I put a zero on the end of that.

Presenter26:17

But even in the beginning, when when your expectations and and ambitions were more modest, they were still broad. Were you daunted by the task that you'd set yourself?

Professor Jean Golding26:28

Uh I think I would have been if I'd had time to to um

Professor Jean Golding26:32

contemplate, but actually once it started

Professor Jean Golding26:36

It was something that you couldn't get off. It was ongoing. There was so much happening. These children, one wanted, particularly in the early years, you wanted to get all the details as to

Professor Jean Golding26:52

How they were, what was happening, what they were eating, what they were playing with. And there were times when I wanted to say, just stop. I need to have a, you know, a few months to plan the next bit. But you couldn't because they were already that old. They just grow so f.

Presenter27:11

It just grows so far.

Professor Jean Golding27:11

Yeah.

Presenter27:11

Fast, it sounds like it's a cliche for a reason, isn't it? I mean, it it flies by tho tho those first few years.

Professor Jean Golding27:18

Yes, and we were trying to send questionnaires out so that we could capture what was happening.

Professor Jean Golding27:26

fairly frequent intervals. So at some stage I was getting about three and a half hours' sleep a night because there was just so much to do to keep up.

Presenter27:38

How did you keep it going in the early days, though? I mean, particularly when it comes to the funding, because taking a long term view like yours is it's a rare perspective to have. You must have been working on a knife edge to keep the money coming in.

Professor Jean Golding27:50

Yeah.

Presenter27:51

It was

Professor Jean Golding27:51

a knife edge, and in fact we fell over the knife quite often. The staff we had, who were fantastic, we only had enough money at a time to give them a one month contract.

Professor Jean Golding28:08

But they would carry on working, so they had such faith in the study.

Professor Jean Golding28:13

Well

Presenter28:14

We couldn't let it fail. So, Jean, there was one Christmas in particular where you had to take drastic measures. What happened exactly?

Professor Jean Golding28:21

Yes, I this was fairly near the start of the study, where it was very obvious that we were in the red. I can remember writing a letter to the Vice Chancellor.

Professor Jean Golding28:36

It was very cold, and I delivered the letter by hand. I can remember standing outside while he came to the garden gate in a pinny. I didn't actually get on my knees, but metaphorically I was on my knees begging that he would allow us to carry on.

Presenter28:57

And he did.

Presenter28:58

And he did. Gene, it's time for your seventh selection today. What are we going to hear next and why are you taking it to your island?

Professor Jean Golding29:05

Well, I was discussing this with my daughter, and she has this vivid memory of my discovering the joy and relief of having a power chair in which to move around.

Professor Jean Golding29:20

And somehow the trout quintet displays that sense of movement and motion and freedom.

Presenter29:56

She bits the track quintet performed by the Melos Ensemble.

Presenter30:01

Gene Golding, today the Children of the Nineties study is lauded as the world's leading study of its kind and it has changed government policy. Of all the findings that came out of it, what are you most proud of?

Professor Jean Golding30:13

One of the most exciting things was looking at peanut allergy. I hardly knew that it existed at the time we planned the study. We worked with an expert in the field called Gideon Lack and were able to show that at least some of the cases of peanut allergy were associated and probably caused by the sort of creams that young babies were having put on their skin. So nappy rash essentially. Like nappy rash, yep.

Presenter30:46

So that's the first thing.

Professor Jean Golding30:50

or eczema of any sort. And many of these creams were containing

Professor Jean Golding30:55

Arrakis oil, which is peanut oil.

Professor Jean Golding30:58

which could then prime the immune system and cause a reaction the next time it was exposed. And it has resulted in those creams taking arrakis oil out of their products. We can never be absolutely sure that that has prevented cases of peanut allergy, but it certainly did cause a change.

Professor Jean Golding31:28

in the product of various products, and hopefully a lot less peanut algae than would have occurred otherwise.

Presenter31:38

Jean, by two thousand and five you'd reached the age of sixty five, the compulsory retirement age, and and you had to hand the study over at that point. How difficult was it for you to let go?

Professor Jean Golding31:50

Oh, that was very difficult. You know, it was my baby being adopted by somebody else. But.

Presenter31:53

You know

Professor Jean Golding31:58

I was very fortunate in being allowed to carry on working with it, and it's nice to know that it's carrying on so well.

Professor Jean Golding32:07

And there's so many questions that it's still able to look at and answer.

Presenter32:14

Gene, I'm about to cast you away to the island. What are you expecting? I mean, we've heard that you're an optimist. Do you think that'll help you?

Presenter32:22

I think it's the only thing that will get me through, yes.

Presenter32:27

Alright, Jean. Well, one more tune before we send you away your final disc today. What's it gonna be?

Professor Jean Golding32:33

What I wanted to end with was Morecombe and Wise singing Bring Me Sunshine. This reminds me of family Christmases and it's just so joyful.

Speaker 432:47

Bring me sunshine.

Speaker 432:50

Ain't your smile.

Speaker 432:53

Bring me laughter.

Speaker 432:56

All the while.

Speaker 432:59

In this world where we live, there should be more happiness, so much joy you can give To each brand new bright tomorrow, make me happy.

Speaker 433:13

Through the years.

Presenter33:17

An optimistic anthem to keep you going on the island, Jean Golding, Bring Me Sunshine by Morecombe and Wise. So, Jean, I'm going to cast you away now. I'm giving you the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare to take with you. You can also take another book. What will it be?

Professor Jean Golding33:33

What I would like to do is read a lot of modern poetry. I was up to date with modern poetry when I was at university, but I haven't had time since. So what I would like is an anthology of everything published since 1960.

Presenter33:56

Alright, we could do that for you, Jean. You can also have a luxury item. What would you like?

Professor Jean Golding34:02

Now, whether it's a luxury, it would also be essential. What I would like is a power chair that can do everything on this desert island. Like, you know, climb over tree trunks and go into the water and allow me to swim off it and on back onto it and trundle back up the beach.

Speaker 134:23

Yeah.

Presenter34:23

And

Professor Jean Golding34:26

Do you think that's allowed?

Presenter34:27

Well, I think that the power chair itself is obviously a practical item and you should just have it anyway. But I I think we need to take it out of the realms of the practical and into the luxury. It's going to be top notch and I mean, James Bond level. That's what I think we should give you.

Professor Jean Golding34:42

Excellent.

Presenter34:43

Good. It's the least you deserve, Jean. And finally, which one of the eight tracks that you've shared with us today would you rush to save from the waves in your top-notch powerchair if you had to?

Professor Jean Golding34:54

Uh

Presenter34:54

What I would

Professor Jean Golding34:56

Specially like is the bird song.

Professor Jean Golding34:59

I can't guarantee I'm going to get the right sort of birdsong on the island.

Presenter35:03

Yeah.

Professor Jean Golding35:04

But that would do me very well.

Presenter35:05

Uh

Presenter35:06

Professor Jean Golding, thank you very much for letting us hear your desert island discs. Thank you.

Presenter35:27

Hello. I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Jean. We'll leave her to enjoy the sound of birdsong to bring back memories of home. We have cast away many epidemiologists including Professor Sir Michael Marmot and Jean's former colleague, Professor Sir Richard Doll. You can find these episodes in our Desert Island Discs programme archive and through BBC Sounds. The studio manager for today's programme was Sarah Hockley, the assistant producer was Christine Pavlovsky and the producer was Paula McGinley.