Gabby Logan

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 broadcaster Gabby Logan. For the past 20 years, she's brought TV audiences closer to some of the most memorable sporting moments of our times. She was one of the first female sports anchors to break into terrestrial television when she joined ITV in 1998, becoming the first woman to anchor the channel's football coverage. Today, she is a lynchpin of the BBC's sports presenting team and has hosted major events including the Olympics, Premiership Football, the London Marathon and the Soccer World Cup. When the Lionesses brought football home at the Euros in 2022, her heartfelt closing piece to Camera, calling for more support for the women's game, was testament to her ability to look beyond the result of a match to find its meaning. Her own story is the perfect example of just how meaningful sport can be and how it can shape a life. Her father is the leads and Welsh international footballer Terry Yoruth and she became a gymnast representing Wales in the Commonwealth Games. Her impulse to make it as a broadcaster was driven by the tragic death of her brother Daniel when they were teenagers. He was a talented footballer himself and on the day of his funeral she promised him that she would not waste a moment. She says, sport has always been at the centre of my life. It's given me life lessons, introduced me to spectacular people and brought me complete and utter joy, as well as frustration and tears. Gabby Logan, welcome to Desert Island Discs. Thank you so much for having me. So let's start with those lessons then, Gabby. When you think about the many lessons that that sport has taught you, I mean, I wonder what springs to mind first. What's the most important?

Gabby Logan2:18

I think back straight away to being a child running around after dinner with my siblings chasing each other around the garden. Ostensibly this was a game but it always had a competitive element. Or there would be jumpers for goalposts and jumpers for tennis nets and there was joy there but there was also life lessons at every turn, you know, learning to lose, learning to win gracefully as well.

Gabby Logan2:43

Yeah.

Presenter2:43

That piece to camera at the end of the Euro's coverage, that s it felt to me watching that at home and I was watching it. I I don't even I'm not even a huge football fan, but I was crying my eyes out watching it. So emotional. And it struck me as something that you had wanted to say for a long time.

Gabby Logan3:00

That morning I was on my way to Wembley and I was in the back of a cab and I'm heading towards the arches and I thought if they win today and it made me tingle kind of sitting there thinking about the change that could come, the change that has been and I got my iPad out and I just started writing and this closing link appeared on my screen. I was writing it and I put my iPad down. I thought right I might get to use that or I might not. We'll see what happens during the day and England won and I was just so happy that I got to express those things which was that we've come a long long way and but actually this is the start for women's sport in lots of ways because women's football for me is a bit like a flag for society, a flag for our country and that's why I think a lot of women who watched the Euros final who don't watch a lot of football felt so emotional because it was about purpose and about change and about possibility and it's about young girls seeing women do extraordinary things and knowing they could do something extraordinary too.

Speaker 13:44

Felt so

Presenter3:56

Well, I think with that in mind, Gabby, we'd better hear your first piece of music.

Gabby Logan3:58

Dick, what have you chosen? I'm an Olympics nut. So I had to choose something that took me back to the summer of 2012. And there are so many pieces of music that are synonymous with that summer. And then this just hit me between the eyes. And it is Emily Sandey singing Abide With Me. Now, she was synonymous with both the opening and closing ceremonies. And Abide With Me is also associated with the FA Cup final. It's been sung ahead of the FA Cup final since 1927. And it's also sung at the Challenge Cup final in the Rugby League. It's been sung at Rugby Union World Cups. And when I listen to this,

Gabby Logan4:32

The heartbeat that was used in that opening ceremony is the heartbeat for me of a nation, of a sporting movement, of everything that was about to come. The words really for me just mean take a chance on me, I won't let you down, please stick with me and that's sport.

Gabby Logan4:53

Fast falls even tight.

Gabby Logan5:00

The darkness deepens Lord with me abide.

Gabby Logan5:10

When of the heaven

Presenter5:19

Abide With Me, performed by Emily Sandey for the opening ceremony of the twenty twelve Olympic Games. So Gabby, let's uh let's talk a bit more about when you were growing up. Um your dad, Terry Yorath, was a professional football player. Did you go and see him play, see the team play?

Gabby Logan5:34

When we were kids, Saturday afternoons were going to home matches wherever he was. And then when he became a manager, the same thing. Being the child of a player is a lot easier than being the child of a manager, for sure.

Presenter5:44

I mean, what way?

Gabby Logan5:45

Every week you're walking on a tightrope and there were days where you came home not knowing maybe if that was the final day of the job. And I had one of those days where I walked into the gates from a school bus and I saw his car on the drive and I knew it shouldn't be there, because managers work much longer hours than players, and I knew he'd been sacked that afternoon.

Presenter6:00

Afternoon. So you were born and lived in Leeds in the early years of your childhood, which was where your dad played. What kind of dad was he?

Presenter6:09

He was good far.

Gabby Logan6:09

He was hardworking, but he was very young. They were 21 when they got married, 23 when they had me. By 26, they had three kids under three. So they'd go out every Saturday night to nightclubs or parties. They were young people with a young family, you know, and a certain amount of fame, obviously, that came with the job. So we had a busy, lively, fun childhood. And how did your parents meet? My nana Sheila had a cafe called Sheila's Cafe opposite Alland Road. And that's where all the Legion United players used to go and get their sandwiches post-training from. And my dad had gone in, he was going on a date, and he asked my mum to iron some trousers. She happened to be working in the cafe. She was doing her A-levels. And she said no, which I'm really proud of her for saying no. And then he decided that this really cute girl behind the counter was much nicer than the girl he was going to take to the disco. So he then asked her out on a date. And that's how they met at 17 years old. You know, obviously very young. But the manager of Legion United at the time, a guy called Don Revy, who's a very famous football manager, he really encouraged his players to get married quite young and settle down because he realised the players who were settled in family environment were often more successful. You know, they weren't going out gallivanting around. So as soon as he saw a player in love, he'd send the wife or girlfriend flowers to kind of, you know, keep her kind of sweet. Keep the relationship going. So yeah, so it worked for a while anyway.

Presenter7:24

Sweet. How did the relationship go?

Presenter7:27

For a while, anyway. So, your mom, she sounds very no-nonsense back then. How would you?

Gabby Logan7:31

Yeah, how would you describe

Presenter7:32

Scribe the tummy look

Gabby Logan7:32

But mom. She was very much the kind of person who would say to you things like, Well, that's a good thing to do, because if you go to university, you'll need that on your C V. And I always wondered how she knew those things because nobody in her family had ever been. And she must have read and listened and talked to people and heard things, and she seemed to have.

Speaker 17:41

Because

Speaker 17:43

Yeah.

Gabby Logan7:51

I think when she was at school, she went to a convent school, Convent Grammar School in Leeds. I think she was on the edge of being that person that went away and did those things. And I don't think she had regrets, but I think she wanted us to all have the possibility to do things we wanted in life.

Presenter8:06

Gabby, it's time for some more music. Your second choice today. What have you gone for and where?

Gabby Logan8:10

Well, that noisy, busy young household that I described then was full of Motown. This song kind of sums up lyrically, I think, what it meant to be loved by my parents and grow up in an environment that was unconditional love, support and yet a freedom to go and do what you want to do. And it is at Marvin Gaye and Tammy Terrell's Ain't No Mountain High.

Presenter8:33

He called me no matter

Presenter8:35

Ah, no matter how far Just call my name, I'll be there in a hurry, you don't have to worry, cause baby there ain't no mountain high enough.

Presenter8:50

Uh

Speaker 28:50

Ain't no value low enough

Speaker 28:54

Ain't no ripple wild in the hood Uh

Presenter8:57

Ain't no mountain high enough. Marvin Gaye and Tammy Terrell. Gabby Logan, when you were about nine, you started going to rhythmic gymnastics classes with your sister Louise. Choosing the accompanying music was very important in that sport, wasn't it?

Gabby Logan9:15

Gymnastics, as the title says, is all about the music. And when I was a kid, the music could only be one instrument. I once got a local harmonica player in Leeds to play Dixon of Dot Green for me, because I decided I was going to be really avant-garde and have a harmonica. I think I paid him £10 and I sat in his living room. You can imagine what a harmonica player of 80 years old in Leeds thought of this girl rocking up and saying, yes, play it again, please. I've got my cassette recorder here.

Presenter9:41

And by 1990, when you were seventeen, you were chosen to represent Wales in the Commonwealth Games in Auckland at the time. And you were also studying for your A levels. So how did you fit in all the training? How disciplined did you have to be?

Gabby Logan9:53

And I loved that part of it. It's very important, I think, as well for teenage girls to understand their bodies. And I think at a time when it can be quite tricky, and I did, you know, navigate a little bit of, I suppose, an eating disorder in terms of not eating enough, because I wanted to retain a prepubescent body. But it gave me a sense of what my body was capable of. And that was doing a sport that I loved.

Speaker 110:10

Yeah.

Presenter10:10

Because I'm on the

Presenter10:18

But what about that other downside? Because obviously there have been so many stories, especially recently, about the kind of emotional difficulties that young gymnasts have been through. We've heard about physical, psychological abuse of young female gymnasts and a lot of it focussing on their weight. I mean, so you were like you say, skirting the borders of an eating disorder.

Gabby Logan10:24

No.

Gabby Logan10:35

Yeah, I think it was at the time though, in that setup, at that time in rhythmic gymnastics, it was purely from us gymnasts to each other almost. It wasn't that the coaches were saying to us, you know, you need to be this weight, although we did have weigh-ins. We weren't body-shamed. We weren't told what not to eat. And actually, it would have been more helpful if there had been a nutritionist helping us. So our idea of losing weight or our idea of maintaining weight was to go on weird mono diets. Oh, I'm only going to eat tomatoes this week.

Presenter11:02

How did that go down at home when you went home and you said to your mum, presumably, Right, I'm only eating courgettes this week.

Gabby Logan11:07

She played it very cool, and she just kind of let me get on with it because she thought, okay, she looks healthy, she doesn't seem to be. And she was quite clever in that she didn't come down on me really quickly about it, she just let it happen for a little while. And then I think I realized that I needed, you know, a certain amount of nutrition. Because it was never that I actually looked at myself in the mirror and thought I'm fat because I knew I wasn't. It was all about the sport. And in my head, I think I decided that once the sport was over, my relationship with food would normalize again. And so it did, yeah, it righted itself quite quickly. And I was lucky because it doesn't always.

Speaker 111:36

And so

Presenter11:37

Yeah.

Presenter11:41

So you retired in nineteen ninety one because of back pain, but luckily you'd made an appearance on Blue Peter and that had planted the seed of another dream. You were fifteen when you appeared on the programme demonstrating your gymnastic skills. What was that like?

Gabby Logan11:54

I love the light going on, the cameras, the and it was one of the enormous studios there. And at the end of the show, I decided that this was where I wanted to work. I wanted to work in Telly, and I wrote to the producer, who was a guy called Lewis Bronze, and the British Gymnastics Association sent the letter to him, and he wrote back to them and said, thank you very much. And, you know, go to university and I'll see you later, kind of thing. It wasn't really steeped in lots of advice, but it was very sweet of him to get back to me. And that was it, the eureka moment of this is it.

Presenter12:23

Well, we'll find out about your next steps in a moment. First, though, Gabby, it's time to make some room for the music. Disc number three. What are we going to hear?

Gabby Logan12:30

Anne Tallantyre, the coach I had at Leeds Gymnastics Club, she used to drive us to national squad training. She smoked all the way there with the window open, but she also played either Radio 3 or a cassette that was some kind of jazz compilation. And so she opened up my ears and my eyes to all kinds of music: a love of jazz, an early knowledge of a bit of opera, classical music that I never would have heard at the Motown-loving home that I came from. And this track is Summertime from Porgy and Bess, and this is by Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong.

Speaker 213:02

Oh nice little baby.

Speaker 213:07

So

Presenter13:23

One of the He's morning. Yeah.

Speaker 113:30

Yeah.

Presenter13:30

Damn.

Speaker 113:30

You gonna ride

Presenter13:31

Uh

Presenter13:32

I'm singing

Presenter13:35

Summertime, Ella Fitzgerald and Louise Armstrong.

Presenter13:38

Gabby Logan, I want to take you back to May 11th, 1985, when you were 12 years old. You went to watch Bradford City play Lincoln at Valley Parade, the Bradford Stadium. Now, your dad, Terry, was Bradford's assistant manager at that time, and the whole family was there. You, your mum, your grandparents, sister Louise, and brother Daniel. What happened that day?

Gabby Logan14:00

We always sat together as a family, but that day because of the numbers we had to sit in separate seats and we were teenage, well tweet on the edge of being teenagers. Me and my brother and sister and I were allowed to sit on our own, a bit away from my mum. And just before half-time, she always left a few minutes before half-time, my mum, to avoid the crush in the bar, you know, to get there first and get the drinks in. And she shouted down to us from the back of the stand, you know, did we want to go with her?

Speaker 114:16

And to get

Gabby Logan14:23

To the bar, or did we want to get a drink ordered? And we kind of looked at each other and thought, we'll go with her. And that was one of the most important decisions I probably ever made in my life because, as the eldest, I led us up there. And within a minute and a half, somebody opened the door to the bar and told us all to get out because a fire had started in the stand.

Gabby Logan14:43

And it was already at this point smoke was filling the air, acrid smoke was in the air, and it took hold so quickly because it turned out the wooden stand had been built on a lot of rubbish and the cigarette that had been discarded had caught something in the stand. But of course at that time I suppose we all assumed that the gates at the back of the ground were open and that people were leaving the ground. What we now know is that the people who went to the back of the the ground to get out could not get out because they'd locked the gates. People either went to the front of the stand to get over the wall or they went to the back the way they'd come in. And that was the way me and my brother and sister would have gone because that's the way my mum had just gone.

Speaker 115:20

Is that

Gabby Logan15:23

So she'd gone through to the lounge obviously at that point, but those most of those people didn't know that that lounge was even there. You know, they were going back to where they'd come in.

Speaker 115:29

You know that

Gabby Logan15:32

And in the end, fifty-six people lost their lives that day, and our family was

Gabby Logan15:38

Incredibly lucky.

Presenter15:39

You and the rest of the family had got out relatively quickly. Your dad, he stayed behind and and he saw some awful

Gabby Logan15:42

Mm.

Gabby Logan15:44

Yeah.

Gabby Logan15:45

Yeah, awful things. He was with a policeman trying to navigate his way through and the policeman said to him, Don't turn around. And he did. And he, at the time, he said, I'll never unsee what I saw. And I don't think as kids we fully appreciated at this moment what had happened. And over the weeks afterwards, my dad was always wearing a black tie, going to funerals, visiting families. The scars and the residue emotionally for him

Gabby Logan16:14

probably has never ever really properly been dealt with and gone away. I think it it was something that he struggled to come back from.

Presenter16:22

And what about for you? I mean, living through that experience as as a little girl, how did it change you?

Gabby Logan16:28

The one thing that kind of came out of that which was a real beacon of hope was that my mum fell pregnant and we were thrilled as siblings to have this baby in our young mother.

Presenter16:38

So this is your youngest brother.

Gabby Logan16:40

Yeah, so this is Jordan and so I was thirteen when Jordan was born and my younger brother Daniel was ten and he always wanted a little brother and I think that was the the thing that kind of got us through, focusing on this baby and feeling like there was there was light at the end of this tunnel.

Presenter16:57

Gabby, it's time for some more music. Your fourth choice today. What have you gone for, and why?

Gabby Logan17:01

So my fourth choice today is Going Home, which is by Diastraits and Mark Knopfler on guitar. And everything began in the North East for me in terms of my career. And it was, if you know anything about Newcastle, the football team is pretty much everything. And when I eventually left the North East and took a job at Sky, I remember driving down the A1 and looking back, it was a beautiful summer's day, early evening, and I could see the Time Bridge behind me and St James's Park and tears streaming down my face because I kind of knew I wouldn't be back. I always said, yeah, I'm going to London for a couple of years and I'm coming back. But I kind of knew I wouldn't. And I knew this place had given me everything for four years. I'd given it everything and it had given me back. And this song is played every home game at St James's Park and it's soppy and sentimental. It is my most nostalgic choice, I think, going home.

Presenter18:22

Going Home Theme of the Local Hero by Dire Straits.

Presenter18:27

Gabby Logan, in 1992 when you were 19, your mum Christine called you and she had some terrible news.

Presenter18:34

What did she tell you?

Gabby Logan18:35

Yeah.

Gabby Logan18:36

She didn't really have an introduction, she just said the words that changed our lives, which Daniel has died. And Daniel was my 15-year-old brother at the time. He was a couple of months off his 16th birthday. He'd just signed to be a professional footballer for League United, who had just won the league. And he was a beautiful, strong, fit, healthy, handsome, popular young man. And he had everything to live for.

Gabby Logan19:03

Did you know what had happened to him at that point? He had collapsed in the garden at home playing football with my dad and my dad thought he was joking, kind of went over to get the ball from him and rolled him over. And later we found out within a few days of the post-mortem, he had a hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. His heart just had a catastrophic heart attack.

Presenter19:20

Hmm.

Presenter19:25

Events like that in in someone's life, there's always a before and an after. And it it was very much like that for you and and for your family. How did things change?

Gabby Logan19:28

The four

Gabby Logan19:31

Yeah.

Gabby Logan19:34

As the eldest child, I think I assumed quite a lot of responsibility. I went and picked up his death certificate, for example, with a friend who was staying. And everyone deals with it differently. My dad was very much a person who felt the glass was half empty already. And for him, this was confirmation that life was no good. And he kind of pulled himself away from a lot of our family life, the family life that I described earlier, which was so all-encompassing and so vibrant. And he started drinking a lot more. And that didn't help.

Gabby Logan20:04

My mum eventually went on a more searching journey to try and work out why this had happened. And although we'd been brought up Roman Catholic, she started exploring other faiths and other religions and asking questions of people. And she sought help through counselling and other ways of kind of dealing with what was going on. And so eventually, I think it was about ten years later, my parents separated.

Presenter20:28

So I mean, for you it it you had to step up and and had to step in and and do things that, you know, no nineteen year old should ever have to go and pick up their their little brother's death certificate. It's just awful. But the the other side of that is that you said it made you pretty fearless, you know, in terms of what you would take on and what you would try.

Gabby Logan20:46

I think what happened, I went to Durham and I thought, right, every day is for grabbing hold of and doing things and trying things. And yeah, I'd like to work at the radio station in Newcastle. I'm going to... And I attacked my university life with that kind of energy, I suppose. And I suppose I was running away a little bit probably from the stillness that would eventually come and learning to handle grief and how...

Presenter21:09

So you were blocking that?

Gabby Logan21:09

Yeah, I think there was an element of that. But I think in my heart I kind of felt like that he'd not had that chance and I was going to take it.

Presenter21:10

Yeah.

Presenter21:18

Gabby, let's take a minute for some music. This is your fifth choice today. What are we going to hear?

Gabby Logan21:24

So the night that Daniel died, the first thing I wanted to do was listen to Elton John's Daniel. And I've listened to it many times since. And my children, as babies, as toddlers, loved me singing it to them when they were going to sleep at night. My daughter Lois was quite particular though because the lyrics are Daniel, my brother, you're older than me, and she always used to say, younger. And it kept his memory and his spirit alive with them and it's a really special song to us.

Gabby Logan21:53

Daniel my brother

Gabby Logan21:55

You are older than me, do you still feel?

Speaker 222:00

Yeah.

Gabby Logan22:00

Feel the pain.

Speaker 222:02

What the skies there long

Gabby Logan22:04

Don't hear you.

Speaker 122:05

Your eyes have done.

Gabby Logan22:08

Uh

Speaker 122:08

You see more than I

Speaker 122:12

Get you, you are a star in the faith of the sky

Presenter22:21

Daniel by Elton John. So, in the wake of Daniel's death, Gabby, you took up your place at Durham University and threw yourself into student life there, but you also started to develop your love of broadcasting and seek out this broadcasting career. So, there was a local radio station, Metro FM, and you'd started doing some shifts there while you were studying at uni. Now, after you graduated, you then joined Sky Sports as a presenter. So, at that time, there are very few women anchoring sports programmes, and TV in general was a boys' club. But what was the atmosphere like?

Gabby Logan22:54

Boom boop.

Gabby Logan22:55

During that time. There were some great men there. That's really important to say. There were some brilliant, encouraging, supportive, fantastic men there. But of course, there were those men who are the alphas who like to throw around, obviously, insecurities by saying things and doing things aren't appropriate. A certain guy who was a presenter shouting my name in the office as I walked past and turning around and saying that I had a great arse, but it would be one of those asses that would be down by my knees by the time I was in my 30s. That kind of thing. And another who shouted across the office, How many Premier League footballers did I have notched up on my bedpost? I always feel quite uncomfortable when I think back talking about it, because there's parts of you that feels guilty that you didn't deal with it head on and think, I should have said more at the time. I should have done something different. And my idea was that I'd just keep working really hard and prove them wrong. And I've always had a bit of that in me. I'll prove you wrong. I'm going to do this.

Presenter23:09

What kind of thing?

Presenter23:49

Be satisfying in 2023, however far we might still have to go to to look back at how things have changed and think this isn't what it used to be like.

Gabby Logan23:54

It really is.

Gabby Logan23:56

It's really satisfying and to have more representation and thankfully we've also focused in the last few years on that being a studio that looks different. It's not just about having one woman and four men. It's where what do those men look like? What do the women look like? Where are they from? What are their backgrounds? To have all those kind of influences is so important on the outcome that you get.

Gabby Logan24:19

It's time for you next time.

Presenter24:20

Next piece of music, Gabby. Number six, what have you got and why are you taking it to the island?

Gabby Logan24:24

I first came across this song in 2019 when we'd gone up to Scotland on one of quite a few road trips we do as a family. Kenny's from Sterling, but we've taken trips right up to the islands and Highlands. And that summer we were taking the kids up to the islands for the first time and we were stopping off at our great friend Doddy Weir's house, his farm near Gala. And we were staying for the night. And Doddy had been diagnosed with motor neuron disease in 2017. And that summer Doddy was still walking and he was still able to drive his car just about. I'm not sure that he should have been, but he used to have, because he was a farmer, he had these kind of off-road vehicles and he said, right, we're going to go over to our friend's house and we're going to, it was a beautiful summer's evening. He said, we're going over for a drink. They've got amazing views. And we were all packed into this car and he was playing Belta by Jerry Cinnamon and the sun was shining and the windows were open and everybody was laughing and here was this man with this horrendous diagnosis living life as he did every day, never feeling sorry for himself, never exhibiting pity and it always reminds me of how life can be cruel but how people like Doddy just get hold of it and make a difference as he did raising almost £10 million in five years actually that he's raised for motor neuron disease and making sure that he died knowing he did everything he could to change the conversation.

Presenter25:41

Uh

Speaker 125:41

Uh

Presenter25:41

See

Speaker 125:42

She is a built tar different from the rest Diamonds on her finger and she always looks her best She is a gangster With a hundred males

Presenter25:52

Now when she walks, her feet don't touch a flower, she has a belt up.

Presenter26:04

She plays the lightning, have a hundred miles high. Does she not the thunder like a god inside the sky? She is a dancer. Jerry Cinnamon and Belta. Gabby Logan, that was for your friend, the rugby player Doddy Weir, who died last year.

Presenter26:21

Gabby, in 1998 you joined ITV. You became one of the first female sports anchors to break into terrestrial television. Did you enjoy the recognition that came with the job? No matter how

Gabby Logan26:31

How you think you can cope with it and how well prepared you think you are.

Gabby Logan26:36

There are times where you get dangerously close to being what I describe as being an arsehole. And.

Presenter26:39

And M? How close did we skirt to this gabby?

Gabby Logan26:43

There's no

Presenter26:43

I sailed quite close to the wind at times. You were adjacent, but not all the way in.

Gabby Logan26:48

I stepped into the world of assholeness and then came back again very quickly because you've got enough good people around you who can pull you back in. But I think it's, you know, you're walking literally up red carpets and you're being sent things for free. People will open doors to restaurants that you previously didn't think you'd get into and given tables and, you know, just for what? It's presenting a bit of sport on the telly, you know? And so I think that those things can turn your head a bit. And if you haven't got the right people around you, then you can get lost in all of that.

Presenter27:17

You were at ITV for eight years, but after that your time there came to an end. It was a a pretty difficult transition. What exactly happened?

Presenter27:26

Yeah.

Gabby Logan27:26

It's important to realise that not everybody has to like you in life. And I had a boss who had arrived at ITV, who had been my boss at Sky, who I immediately sensed didn't really want me there anymore. And I fought against it, and he probably couldn't properly kick me out because I had a contract. But I was slowly being dropped off quite major programmes. And then I was presenting the World Cup in 2006, and I was supposed to be the headline presenter of England games, and I got dropped off those. And then I come home at the quarterfinal stage, and a lovely guy who was one of the commentators had called me up to say he was really sorry to hear I was leaving. And I didn't know anything about my departure, but apparently he'd obviously picked this up from other colleagues. How did you feel? Oh, I was devastated because I wanted things to be on my terms and you know, like we all do, and also because I felt like that was the end. And Kenny just said, well, whoa, whoa. My agent at the time was a guy called John Holmes, who was a wise, wise old head. And he said, just, you know, let's just take a moment here. And the BBC approached me and said, we'd like you to come and present this new show called Inside Sport. And it's going to be like the news night of sport. And we'd like to come and do a screen test. And I went back to that studio that I'd been in at Blue Peter all those years before to do a screen test. So although it wasn't the way things had in my head were going to pan out, I was given a huge opportunity. And actually, that boss at ITV, I'm thankful for now that he stuck to his guns, which was to replace me because I wouldn't have taken those opportunities.

Presenter28:59

I think we'd better have your next piece of music, Cabby. What are we going to hear?

Gabby Logan29:02

Yeah. The next song is As by George Michael and Mary J. Blige. This was supposed to be the first dance at our wedding. And a couple of nights before, Kenny not being a very musical fella, if you saw him on Strickley come dancing, not a particularly dancy fella either. He wanted to put a few steps together and so we played the song and I love the words this and you know it's just a beautiful track. It was a Stevie Wonder song that was done by these two and we had a little dance ready to do and on the night of the actual first dance we had an amazing gospel choir who transformed from singing gospel in the day to blues and soul in the evening and the band struck up and they started playing Bill Withers Lovely Day and indeed it had been a lovely day but that wasn't my first dance and on all the pictures and in the video you can see me looking at them as if to say what are you doing this for Kenny has no idea what's being played he didn't even know to know but right now for one night only here's our first dance this is as

Speaker 229:51

Uh

Gabby Logan29:58

Be loving you always

Speaker 130:01

See

Speaker 130:02

Um the stars out of the sky Always Until the ocean over there always

Speaker 230:10

I'm still the game at A Times A Times Agency

Speaker 230:21

Did you know the true love asked for nothing?

Presenter30:27

As by George Michael and Mary J. Blige, for your husband, the former rugby player, Kenny Logan. Now last year, Gabby, Kenny was diagnosed with prostate cancer. How did you deal with his diagnosis as a couple and as a family, too?

Presenter30:41

Kenny's

Gabby Logan30:41

Very, you know, he's got that sportsman's kind of right. This is the plan. This is what we're going to do. And we've done that when we'd gone through IVF to conceive Reuben and Lois. We'd had this right. This is we're going to try and get the best help we can and do the best we can and be the fittest, you know, eat well, Kenny, and exercise and be in good shape. We've been together such a long time that, you know, there aren't many things that surprise you anymore about that person in the sense that, you know, you think you've uncovered all the corners of their personality. But actually, the vulnerability that I saw in Kenny last year, it made me feel quite sad for him that, you know, that he was going through that. He's been really positive and brilliant since then, Kenny. And as always, he's got so much enthusiasm, but it does feel like it's doubled a bit. You know, he's good. Well, I'm glad he's.

Presenter31:23

Doing well. Now, Gabby, it's almost time to send you off to the island. What's your survival strategy going to be?

Gabby Logan31:28

Obviously, I'm going to be on my own, so I'm going to have to talk to myself quite a lot because I do like talking.

Presenter31:36

So will you talk to yourself out loud when it's in your head?

Gabby Logan31:38

Yes, I'll talk to myself out loud. Otherwise I think my own voice would scare me eventually when I'm rescued. So I'll probably do some broadcasting. I'll have a nightly news bulletin for the animals, you know, tell them what's gone on. We'll have some games planned and things. I think you've kind of your imagination.

Presenter31:52

Sport and training and and

Gabby Logan31:54

There'll be definitely there'll be fitness.

Presenter31:56

Well, before we send you there, we're going to let you have one more track. It's your final choice today, Gabby Logan. What are we going to hear?

Gabby Logan32:01

We are going to hear You Got the Love, which is by the source featuring Candy Staten. And I've always loved this song. It's the one that makes you just want to stand up and dance and just raise your hands in the air. But I think it is all for me about that incredible unit that I have around me who are Kenny, Ruben and Lois. And I've got their love and they've got mine.

Presenter32:22

Sometimes I feel like throwing my hands up in the air

Presenter32:28

I know I can count on you.

Presenter32:31

Sometimes I feel like saying, Lord, I just don't care But you've got the love I need to see me through Sometimes it seems the boy is just too rough

Presenter32:52

You Got the Love, The Sauce featuring Candy Staten.

Presenter32:56

So Gabby Logan, it's time. I'm going to send you away to the island. I will of course give you the books to take with you. The Bible, the complete works of Shakespeare, and another book of your choice. Well

Speaker 132:57

Good set

Gabby Logan33:04

What would you like?

Presenter33:05

Yeah.

Gabby Logan33:05

I think I should take something that is going to make me laugh and entertain. Okay. And I've already said that I'm going to be talking to myself. So I'm going to take.

Presenter33:08

Okay.

Gabby Logan33:13

The complete works of Alan Partridge. There is a book which I've actually already got, which is all the scripts of everything from Knowing Me, Knowing You, right through.

Presenter33:22

Now, as a broadcaster, I think it's okay that I can say this, Gabby. It is as one to another, it can be a little bit close to home.

Gabby Logan33:30

Are you sure? We've all had those moments, Lauren, where in your head you've said something on telly and you think to yourself, Alan would have said that. But Alan Partridge is still something of a folk hero of mine, and something of an icon. You can also have a luxury item. What's your fancy?

Presenter33:34

If I should

Speaker 133:35

Uh

Presenter33:36

Alright.

Gabby Logan33:47

I'm going to take a piano. Just practising every day for a few hours a day, I'll be able to come off and play something better than I do now. And it's a good use of my time away from the Ireland Olympics, which I'm organising and the Alan Partridge shows which I'm doing for the local animals as well.

Presenter34:02

It's definitely. I mean, it's going to be a busy island, but there's a lot happening. I quite like the sound of it.

Gabby Logan34:03

Busy islands.

Presenter34:07

And finally, which one track of the eight that you shared with us today would you rush to save from the waves? You got the love.

Presenter34:15

Gavi Logan, thank you very much for the

Gabby Logan34:16

Linguisti are your desert island discs. Thank you so much for having me. It's been so enjoyable. Thank you.

Presenter34:45

Hello, I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Gabby. I love the idea of an Animal Olympics. Those dolphins don't know what they've got coming. We've cast away Gabby's colleague Gary Lineker as well as a host of Olympians in the past, including Jessica Ennis Hill, Nicola Adams, Sir Bradley Wiggins, and you can find all those episodes in our Desert Island Discs programme archive and through BBC Sounds. The studio manager for today's programme was Jackie Marjoram, the assistant producer was Tim Banno and the producer was Paula McGinley. Next time my guest will be the writer Michael Pollen. I do hope you'll join us.

Presenter35:26

Think you're back.

Presenter35:29

Hello, hello, and welcome to Nature Bang. I'm Becky Ripley, I'm Emily Knights, and in this series from BBC Radio 4, we look to the natural world to answer some of life's big questions. Like, how can a brainless slime mold help us solve complex mapping problems? And what can an octopus teach us about the relationship between mind and body? It really stretches your understanding of consciousness. With the help of evolutionary biologists, I'm actually always very comfortable comparing us to other species.

Speaker 236:00

Philosophers. You never really know what it could be like to be another creature.

Presenter36:04

And

Gabby Logan36:04

And spongologists. Is that your job title? Are you a spongologist? Well, I am in certain spheres. It's science meets storytelling. With a philosophical

Presenter36:12

Uh

Gabby Logan36:12

Focult.

Presenter36:12

Twist.

Speaker 136:13

It really gets to the heart of free will and what it means to be you.

Presenter36:17

So, if you want to find out more about yourself via cockatoos that dance, frogs that freeze, and single-cell amoebas that design border policies, subscribe to NatureBang from BBC Radio 4, available on BBC Sounds.