Professor Sharon Peacock

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.

Presenter0:46

My castaway this week is the scientist Sharon Peacock. She is Professor of Public Health and Microbiology at Cambridge University and is widely acclaimed as one of the world's leading virus hunters, tracking down new and dangerous variants during the COVID-19 pandemic. In the first weeks of the pandemic, she set up COGUK, a consortium of scientists leading the charge to map the genetic sequence of the virus as it spread and mutated, a challenge she's likened to assembling an aeroplane during takeoff. Within a year, COG UK had gained worldwide recognition after sequencing almost half the coronavirus genomes mapped around the globe. And that data is vital in the development of vaccines and treatments. She didn't take the traditional path to scientific excellence. At 16, she'd left school and was working in her local corner shop when she answered an advert for a job as a dental nurse. As she puts it, she moved from teeth to patients, becoming a nurse, then a doctor. All of this took time and determination. She says, failure is a feature of everyone's life, but we don't generally talk about it enough. I failed my 11-plus exam. I failed to get into medical school. Just try and get back up, learn from it, and do things differently. Professor Sharon Peacock, welcome to Desert Island Discs. Thank you. It's such a pleasure to be here. I know that it's only quite recently, the last couple of years, that you've started talking about your past and how you got where you are today. Why did you want to keep your story to yourself before now?

Professor Sharon Peacock2:17

I felt slightly awkward about it, I suppose.

Professor Sharon Peacock2:21

I also think you have to feel comfortable with yourself before you start to talk about where you came from and who you were in your earlier years. You have to develop that confidence, I think, to be able to talk about the fact that you did work in a corner shop and you did fail the 11 Plus. I've reached that level of confidence now. Knowing that I'd really struggled to get into university, I wondered actually, deep down, whether I really merited being at university and whether it was really true that I got a place. It's almost like a fairy story to me that all of this happened and I succeeded. And looking back, there is this element of, well, did that really happen? Did I really deserve that? I've sort of got over that, but I think that awkwardness was around

Professor Sharon Peacock3:03

This is quite a remarkable story, and yes I do deserve to be

Presenter3:08

Interesting. So it was almost like you couldn't believe your luck and you didn't want to question it. But then eventually, along the way, you know, you've done so much work that you realize actually there's more than just that going on here.

Professor Sharon Peacock3:11

B

Professor Sharon Peacock3:18

Yes. And the interesting thing about luck is

Professor Sharon Peacock3:21

What happened to me was I did meet some people that were really influential in my life, but actually luck is also down to practice. So it's not just luck, it's who you happen to meet, but then actually working hard.

Presenter3:33

Why don't we turn to the music now? Your first disc today. What are we going to hear and why have you chosen it?

Professor Sharon Peacock3:39

Well, my first disc is Tracy Chapman Fast Car. Now what she says in this is that she wants a ticket to anywhere and I had a feeling I could be somebody when I was sixteen.

Professor Sharon Peacock3:51

And I really didn't have a future at that point. I didn't know what I was going to do. But what I knew is I felt I had a lot of energy, a lot of passion, enthusiasm to do something. I just didn't know what it was at that point. So a ticket to anywhere was my sentiment at sixteen.

Speaker 44:08

You get a fast car I wanna take it to anywhere Maybe we make a deal

Speaker 44:15

Maybe together we can get somewhere, any place is better.

Speaker 44:19

Starting from zero, got nothing to lose Maybe we'll make something Me myself, I got nothing to prove

Presenter4:36

You got a fast car

Presenter4:38

Tracy Chapman and Fast Car. So Sharon Peacock, you were born in Margate in nineteen fifty nine. Your father Francis worked in construction as a carpenter and your mother Mary wanted to become a nurse.

Professor Sharon Peacock4:49

Well, she partly trained as a nurse, but in those days you if you got married you had to leave your training. Was that a source of regret?

Presenter4:56

Was that a source of regret for her?

Professor Sharon Peacock4:57

Did she talk about it? She never talked about it, but I suspect it was, because she really wanted to be a nurse and she didn't get that opportunity.

Presenter5:04

What kind of person was she?

Professor Sharon Peacock5:06

She was a quiet woman. She didn't say very much, also very caring, and clearly my mum and dad loved each other very much.

Presenter5:14

Much And their faith was absolutely central to their lives. They and also their parents were devout Pentecostal Christians. What were their roles in the church?

Professor Sharon Peacock5:17

I'm sorry.

Professor Sharon Peacock5:23

My father and my grandfather, they built their own Pentecostal church in Margate. There was uh a high platform at the front where they would give their sermons, but underneath that there was a trap door where there was a very large water tank where people would be baptized.

Presenter5:39

To full emotion.

Professor Sharon Peacock5:39

Full immersion, yes. Prior to that, my grandfather would baptize people in the sea. But once this building was constructed, they would actually immerse people fully. And I've got a photograph of my father being baptized in that tank by his father.

Professor Sharon Peacock5:55

The faith was very important in everything we did and thought about growing up.

Presenter5:58

So you're part of the congregation yourself?

Professor Sharon Peacock6:00

Very much so, yes. But there were pluses and minuses. We had an immediate community. The downside to that was that there was quite a strict code of living.

Presenter6:00

Very

Professor Sharon Peacock6:10

And that could be quite constrictive actually.

Presenter6:12

What were you not supposed to do? Where were the restrictions?

Professor Sharon Peacock6:14

Well, you would have to dress in a certain way, so you'd have to wear you wouldn't be able to wear trousers. You couldn't go to the cinema.

Professor Sharon Peacock6:21

So I went to see Doctor Dolittle with my mum when I was quite young.

Professor Sharon Peacock6:26

And she said, Promise me you won't tell anybody. We've been to see this film. I'm now telling everybody about it. But she goes to the show.

Presenter6:33

So she would she would occasionally sneak you tweets then.

Professor Sharon Peacock6:35

She would. She would. She'd take me to the cinema, which was just marvellous, but it was forbidden fruit, actually.

Presenter6:43

It's time for your next disc today, Sharon number two. What are we going to hear?

Professor Sharon Peacock6:47

Well, disc number two is A Boy and a Girl, which is sung by Botches Eight. This song is deeply spiritual, if you like, very moving to me and it actually helps me to pause, breathe and think and reflect. When I was nursing, I specialised in end-of-life care, and I worked in several hospices in Brighton.

Professor Sharon Peacock7:12

It taught me how to live a life well.

Professor Sharon Peacock7:15

It taught me to go for what you want, and it taught me not to have any regrets.

Professor Sharon Peacock7:21

And this song reminds me of that balance between life, death, and the ability to enjoy life.

Speaker 47:38

Still

Speaker 48:05

In the spirit.

Presenter8:29

A Boy and a Girl, performed by Voches Eight and composed by Eric Whittaker. Sharon Peacock, as we've heard, you failed your eleven plus and you went to a secondary modern school. Were you able to take science or levels there?

Professor Sharon Peacock8:41

I was allowed to take biology and human biology, but I wasn't allowed to take maths, physics, chemistry or modern languages because

Professor Sharon Peacock8:49

It's difficult to know the decision making, but either I considered it wasn't time well spent to teach women, or

Professor Sharon Peacock8:56

It was the case that people didn't think I was able enough.

Professor Sharon Peacock9:00

We were being prepared by a system that was looking in the rearview mirror.

Professor Sharon Peacock9:04

And I feel very strongly that

Professor Sharon Peacock9:06

We were a generation of wasted talent.

Presenter9:10

So there were no A-level options at all. You left school at 16, 1975 this would have been, and you got a job in the local corner shop. Did you enjoy it?

Professor Sharon Peacock9:17

Absolutely loved it. I loved the symmetry of stacking tins and biscuits and things. I loved the beauty of stacking shelves. But I also liked the small deli counter. There was a uh one of these probably highly hazardous meat slices in the back room and I was considered to be sensible enough to actually not only use it but actually strip it down every week and wash it. So, you know, the nuts and bolts of undoing all that, putting it all back together, I kind of really enjoy

Presenter9:43

Enjoyed that. So I want to ask a little bit about life outside work and school. You were sixteen then, with money in your pocket. What did you get up to when you weren't working?

Professor Sharon Peacock9:54

By the time I got to thirteen I was growing into quite a rebellious girl. You can tell from my school reports my effort really dropped off. My rebellious self I guess it's still there, that's what gives me my fight.

Professor Sharon Peacock10:08

But my rebellious self was very much channelled towards my friendship group, where I was living.

Professor Sharon Peacock10:13

So I shifted my friendship group from the people I was at school with at 16 to a much older crowd of people. And at the time I think I was looking for my tribe and I thought they were quite strong. They looked quite tough. You know, in retrospect, that probably wasn't a very wise choice. And I think if I'd stuck with them, it wouldn't have gone anywhere sensible. So why was it a bad idea? The wrong crowd for you? They were definitely the wrong crowd.

Speaker 410:21

Uh

Professor Sharon Peacock10:39

We're definitely working on the wrong side of the law at times. And I sort of turned a blind eye to that. And several of the people that I mixed with did go to prison for the crimes that they committed, which was absolutely warranted. And I think that this isn't an area I've talked about before, and it's something that makes me feel quite uncomfortable. What I knew was that they were

Professor Sharon Peacock11:02

not a good lot to be mixing with and I needed to move on.

Presenter11:07

So how did you move on? How did you extricate yourself from that friendship group in the end?

Professor Sharon Peacock11:12

Uh

Professor Sharon Peacock11:13

It was a chance meeting with my husband. So we'd been together for forty seven years and we were at a disco. It was called Cinderella's, and it w it was situated between where he lived in Brighton and where I lived.

Professor Sharon Peacock11:26

And the embarrassing things from his perspective is he forgot my name. So he rang me up a few days later and couldn't quite remember what I was called. So we got over that. We quickly got over that.

Professor Sharon Peacock11:37

He was in many ways my saving grace.

Professor Sharon Peacock11:41

And he helped me take that first step away from my hometown and I moved in with him actually when I was quite young.

Professor Sharon Peacock11:48

Sometimes in life you reach these kind of turning points, don't you? And I don't like to think about what would have happened if I hadn't met him, but I did, and much of my success is really down to his encouragement.

Presenter11:58

Well, I think we'd better have some more music, Sharon. What's next? What are we going to hear?

Professor Sharon Peacock12:02

So the next track is Time Has Told Me by Nick Drake, which is for my husband, Peter. It says, Time has told me you're a rare, rare find. And I think I've only appreciated that looking back at everything my husband has done to support my life, my work, our lives together, our family. And he doesn't know this, by the way, but whenever I listen to this, I think of him.

Speaker 412:25

Time has told me.

Speaker 412:32

You're a fine mood.

Speaker 412:38

Trouble

Speaker 412:44

For a troubled mind

Speaker 412:51

Yeah.

Presenter12:51

Time has told me. Nick Drake and Time Has Told Me. So Sharon Peacock, you worked in the shop for several months, but then you got a job at a dentist practice just a few doors further up the road. How did you get on there?

Professor Sharon Peacock13:05

Okay. I got the chance to train, so I went to a technical college in the evenings to study dental nursing.

Professor Sharon Peacock13:13

And I also like really being with people. People are often quite frightened about going to the dentist, or some people are, and actually helping them through that fear, getting them into the chair, helping them get their treatment and out the door. I really did like being a dentist.

Presenter13:26

Gentleness.

Professor Sharon Peacock13:26

Yeah.

Presenter13:26

So in nineteen seventy eight, you decided to start training to be a nurse at the Royal Sussex County Hospital in Brighton. But it was a few months later that you realized you wanted something more than that. What happened?

Presenter13:40

Yeah.

Professor Sharon Peacock13:40

Six months into my nursing training I was on a male medical ward where people had had strokes and heart attacks and so on.

Professor Sharon Peacock13:47

And it suddenly dawned on me I wanted to train to be a doctor. But there was a bit of a problem because I didn't have any of the right qualifications and I didn't dare tell anyone because they would probably laugh me out of the ward. Nobody at work, but did you tell Pete? Yes, absolutely. And he believed in me from the outset. It's interesting because I told my parents and they said, well, nursing is a really good profession. Why would you want to go and do something more? But Pete absolutely got it. He said, right, okay, well, if you need to have some tea whilst you do some study or whatever, I will make it for you. And he believed in me, but I didn't have the confidence to tell many people. It was just him and my family.

Presenter14:24

Yeah.

Presenter14:29

You had a a dream. What gave you the gumption to go after it in the way that you did, do you think?

Professor Sharon Peacock14:34

You did.

Professor Sharon Peacock14:35

I think that there's always been an inner

Professor Sharon Peacock14:38

determination. Perhaps it was that rebelliousness coming into doing something productive with that energy, enthusiasm, passion. And I wasn't gonna let it go. So you

Presenter14:48

Just kept putting one foot in front of the other. I did. Off you went to night school then. You got your G C S E's in maths, physics and chemistry, but you needed A levels to get into medical school. So how did you manage your studies?

Professor Sharon Peacock14:49

But it

Presenter15:00

Well, I finished my

Professor Sharon Peacock15:00

Nursing training, and when I'd qualified, I specialized in end-of-life care.

Professor Sharon Peacock15:07

There were two hospices in Brighton and I worked in them nights, evenings, weekends. And I went part-time to a technical college in Lewis which did A levels on a part-time basis. And so you take an A level over the course of a year. So I managed to do three A levels in two years. At the start of the chemistry A level

Professor Sharon Peacock15:28

The teacher said, Well, we're doing this in a year, and there's three parts to this A level. We can only cover two parts sensibly. So, you're going to go into an exam without any knowledge of inorganic chemistry. So, we'll do physical chemistry, we'll do organic chemistry. We're not going to teach you inorganic chemistry because we can't do that in a year. And so, I went into the chemistry A level with only two-thirds of the knowledge, but that wasn't going to put me off. So, you knew what you had a shot at like a bit, maybe a B, a C, if you were looking?

Presenter15:56

Amazing.

Professor Sharon Peacock15:58

Amazing.

Presenter15:59

Yeah, with two thirds of the syllabus.

Presenter16:01

Let's take a break for some music.

Professor Sharon Peacock16:02

Sharon, this is your fourth choice today. What's next? Driving Home for Christmas by Chris Rea.

Professor Sharon Peacock16:09

When I went to medical school in Southampton, my husband and I had to live apart. So he was a fireman at that time. He was a fireman. We'd just got married. He decided to remain as a fireman in Brighton.

Presenter16:14

He was a five.

Professor Sharon Peacock16:20

But every weekend I would cram my work in Monday to Friday, and on the weekend

Professor Sharon Peacock16:26

I drove back to Brighton to see him. And so driving home for Christmas, it wasn't just Christmas, it was every weekend. And it was the memories of coming back to a kind of a lovely flat that we'd bought together and to spend the weekend with him.

Speaker 416:39

I'm driving home for Christmas

Speaker 416:44

Oh I can't wait to see those faces

Speaker 416:50

Drivin' home for Christmas, yeah.

Speaker 416:54

Well I'm moving down that line.

Speaker 417:00

And it's been so long

Speaker 417:04

But I will be there sing this song

Presenter17:09

Chris Rhea and driving home for Christmas. So Sharon Peacock, after you passed your A levels, you started applying to medical schools. Now we know that it took a couple of tries to get in, so this was crunch time. Did you ever think of giving up?

Professor Sharon Peacock17:23

No.

Professor Sharon Peacock17:24

Never.

Professor Sharon Peacock17:26

Um

Professor Sharon Peacock17:27

You're right that I tried twice to apply to medical school, including through clearing, and nobody wanted to offer me a place. But my husband said to me, Why don't you just ring up the University of Your Choice, which was Southampton, because they ran a mature student programme and asked them why you can't go there. And they said, Well, okay, come along, and you can meet the admissions tutor called David Wilton. And that's what I did. I toddled along and I chatted to him. What did you say?

Professor Sharon Peacock17:59

I told him I was passionate about doing medicine, and I'm still in contact with David actually, and I guess he saw something in me that.

Professor Sharon Peacock18:06

meant he would take a chance on me'cause he was definitely taking

Presenter18:10

By chance.

Professor Sharon Peacock18:11

Yeah.

Presenter18:11

So a dream come true, but also a a real kind of unknown quantity. How did being at university change your outlook?

Professor Sharon Peacock18:20

I was like a sponge. I sort of unfurled my academic wings. I was wanting to learn everything.

Professor Sharon Peacock18:25

And it was at that moment really that I thought this is the start of the next trajectory of my

Presenter18:30

A life.

Professor Sharon Peacock18:30

Yeah.

Presenter18:30

So you qualified as a doctor, which I'm sure was a joy. But there was a a difficult time that followed because I know that your father died of bowel cancer not long after you finished your degree. Did understanding what he was going through professionally help in those circumstances?

Professor Sharon Peacock18:48

It helped him that I diagnosed his problem, so he called me and said, Come over to the house, I'm not feeling very well. And so I did go over and I took a history and I checked him out and I knew

Professor Sharon Peacock19:00

Then that he had a serious problem in his bowel, and I said, You've got to go to hospital straight away.

Professor Sharon Peacock19:06

And

Professor Sharon Peacock19:08

In some ways it was good that I was able to say, Dad, you have to go to hospital.

Professor Sharon Peacock19:13

But in other ways it was really hard because for all the knowledge I had in my head, I couldn't help him in his moment of need. Seeing him dying he he died at home actually and I was present during some of his care.

Professor Sharon Peacock19:25

There were tough moments throughout that journey with my dad, because you have the understanding, and people can sometimes talk to you as if you're a professional, but you're not, you're a daughter.

Professor Sharon Peacock19:34

And you're feeling like a daughter.

Presenter19:38

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

Professor Sharon Peacock19:43

My next track is Take A Bow by Muse. When I was working in Oxford as a doctor, I got a chance to go to Thailand and I worked there for seven years. We travelled extensively, Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos. And what we found ourselves doing was actually reflecting back on life in the UK, reflecting on life across the world and the geopolitics. Take a Bow is about politicians taking responsibility for the choices they made. And certainly my children started to wake up to the fact that geopolitics is vital for global stability.

Speaker 420:20

Road, you close.

Speaker 420:24

Bring corruption to all the eternal

Speaker 420:33

You'll be who

Speaker 420:35

And beholden for all that you've done.

Speaker 420:41

And a spell, cast a spell, a cast a spell.

Presenter20:48

Muse and take a bow. Sharon Peacock, by april twenty nineteen, you were the Interim Director of the National Infection Service for Public Health England. The first cases of COVID nineteen came to light later that year. How quickly did you realize that you had a part to play in the response to the virus?

Professor Sharon Peacock21:05

Very quickly. If you know anything about pathogens, you know that they do mutate, so they get mistakes in their genome.

Presenter21:13

So every time there's a new infection in a new person, there's an opportunity for one of these typos.

Professor Sharon Peacock21:17

Good.

Professor Sharon Peacock21:19

Yes, so in SARS-CoV-2, it mutated at a rate of around twice a month in its natural cycle of infection. And many of those typos in the genome wouldn't matter.

Professor Sharon Peacock21:32

some of them would actually allow that virus strain to become more transmissible or avoid the immune system. And so the point of sequencing is to actually start to catalogue the genetic changes, the typos that were accumulating over time.

Professor Sharon Peacock21:47

So how did you set up COG UK and what were its aims at first? I set it up by realising we needed to sequence the virus large scale. So we had all of the component parts in the country. We had the expertise, we had the machines, we had the people who were willing to do it, but we hadn't connected it all together. So early March, I actually emailed five people to say, can you just speak to me? And I said to them, do you think what I'm planning to do sounds sensible to you? And they said, yes, we're behind you. And then invited 20 people into a room in the Wellcome Trust. And I said, we're going to develop a blueprint today for how we're going to develop a sequencing capability for the country.

Professor Sharon Peacock22:28

And that's what we did. Over the course of a day, we talked about the how, the where and the who of sequencing and put it together.

Presenter22:35

I mean just to jump in that developing a blueprint for a response to a pandemic or an epidemic as it might have been at that point in a day that sounds pretty fast. It was very fast.

Professor Sharon Peacock22:45

Quite extraordinary. But we didn't have very long. As a scientist, you might spend six months perfecting a perfect application to do a piece of science to get funding. We had a matter of days before the number of cases were going to start to increase. And actually, by the middle of March, we were already sequencing genomes before we even got the funding on the first day.

Presenter23:06

Yeah. Uh There were scientists who said, oh, this is going to be a waste of money. Why did they think that? And how did you respond to it?

Professor Sharon Peacock23:13

Well, there was a general view that the virus wouldn't mutate fast enough to make a big difference to the way it's behaving. And looking at the comments on the Internet, it was a case of you're going to be sequencing the same virus over and over again. It's just a waste of money.

Professor Sharon Peacock23:27

Now, that bothered me, and I lost a few nights' sleep, but actually, at the end, I decided that

Professor Sharon Peacock23:34

If the worst came to the worst, we'd have lots of really nice data that scientists could use. If actually what I thought was going to happen did happen, then variants would start to emerge that had different biological characteristics. They behave differently as they interacted with us. And at that point, we'd be ready. So

Professor Sharon Peacock23:51

When when the alpha variant emerged at that point we had the justification we needed, but in the meantime we just had to keep faith in what we were doing.

Presenter24:01

Let's take a moment for some more music. Your sixth choice today. What are we going to hear, and why are you taking it to the island with you?

Presenter24:08

My sixth

Professor Sharon Peacock24:08

disc is Farais Cantique de Jean Racine. My youngest daughter trained as a junior chorister at Saint Catherine's College in Cambridge, and I'd go and listen to her service every week. And the pleasure of

Professor Sharon Peacock24:21

actually immersing myself in the music and actually reflecting, coming back to this idea that you need a moment to yourself to reflect. And actually this is one of her favorites, and that's why I chose it.

Speaker 424:42

Christmas.

Speaker 425:01

For no morale.

Speaker 425:08

We have stronger seeds.

Speaker 425:17

Lord is God.

Speaker 425:22

Be proud of us.

Presenter25:32

Foray's Contique de Jean Racine, performed by the Choir of Saint John's College, Cambridge, conducted by Andrew Nethsinger.

Presenter25:39

Sharon Peacock, in November twenty twenty, COG UK helped detect a cluster of cases in Kent with a bigger than usual number of genetic changes. Now this eventually became known as the Alpha variant, and it turned out to be more transmissible. What happened next?

Professor Sharon Peacock25:54

We knew that there was an expansion of cases in parts of London and Kent.

Professor Sharon Peacock26:01

that was faster than one would have predicted because actually there was kind of lockdown at the time and we were in very early stages. We didn't really know what any of these mutations really meant.

Professor Sharon Peacock26:11

But at that point, early to mid December, there was a suspicion.

Professor Sharon Peacock26:16

That this variant that we were seeing may be associated with greater transmissibility, and we had to do the science to prove that.

Presenter26:24

So Sharon, earlier this year you found yourself caught up in the story of Matt Hancock's leaked WhatsApp messages. They date back to when he was the health secretary and he actually criticised you personally. In one case he believed you'd known about Alpha in September but hadn't warned him about its potential to spread until November. He called that a total outrage. How did you feel about the criticism?

Professor Sharon Peacock26:46

When you read that about yourself, it's always going to be a shock.

Professor Sharon Peacock26:50

However, I thought it was completely unjustified.

Professor Sharon Peacock26:53

In September, we saw that there were five alpha genomes. Out of 16,000 genomes that we generated, that's 0.03%. And there were 200 other variants all circulating at the same time. By October, alpha was 0.28%, with 200 variants circling. So there's no reason why we would see

Professor Sharon Peacock27:15

something at such low prevalence in October. A variant will ring an alarm bell when it starts to behave differently, so looking at the genome is meaningless. You can only interpret a variant's genetic construction, if you like, once you see how it's behaving in people.

Presenter27:30

So it's present in early autumn, but it's not until later in the year that it really starts to increase. So November.

Professor Sharon Peacock27:35

Amber was the uptick.

Professor Sharon Peacock27:38

You also have to bear in mind that it took us in those days around two weeks to generate the genome, analyze the genome, put it together with the information about who it came that that sample came from, and then pass it on to public health agencies. So there was a two week lag.

Professor Sharon Peacock27:53

And so to say that we were hiding information was a tough one because there were these genomes buried in a large number of other genomes. But furthermore, all of our data was released into the public or scientific public domain, so anybody could look at the genomes project, wasn't it?

Presenter28:08

That was the point of the project, wasn't it? To get the information that you could then share with everyone. Yes.

Professor Sharon Peacock28:13

With everyone.

Presenter28:15

And what was the personal cost for you of being caught up in the politics of the pandemic like that?

Presenter28:21

Familiar.

Professor Sharon Peacock28:21

To me, that article was a gift.

Professor Sharon Peacock28:25

Because I worked at who my friends were. I had huge support. I had people ringing me. My house was full of flowers, more so than when I was married. It was absolutely extraordinary.

Professor Sharon Peacock28:34

Yeah.

Presenter28:34

Do you think scientists have been collateral damage at times during the pandemic?

Professor Sharon Peacock28:40

There are a whole string of highly regarded scientists who

Professor Sharon Peacock28:44

have been exceptionally productive during the pandemic, for example, in the vaccine programme. And to write things about them that's a disrespectful, inevitably you have to say that there is collateral damage and that scientists are part of that collateral damage.

Professor Sharon Peacock29:00

Do you think it damages public trust and

Presenter29:02

Scientists and what they're saying.

Professor Sharon Peacock29:04

There can be a risk that this can affect how people trust scientists, but at the end of the day, people will make up their own minds.

Presenter29:13

Scientists have had death threats, and I think you have too. I have had death threats. What happened?

Professor Sharon Peacock29:19

It was by email, and I've had several emails indicating that somebody was going to kill me. I won't go into the details because they're not very pleasant and it gives that person airtime that they don't deserve. But certainly I did have death threats throughout the pandemic.

Presenter29:34

Let's take a minute for some more music. Your penultimate choice today, if you would. What's it gonna be?

Professor Sharon Peacock29:39

My seventh choice is Symphonie Fantastique by Berlioz. In this piece of music, the tubular bells reminds me of the virus, the very clear note that it sounds. And then that's surrounded by phrenetic activity of the orchestra, and that's what happened during the pandemic as we responded to it.

Professor Sharon Peacock29:56

Good was to come out of that, but during that period of time it felt like it was a tough life.

Presenter31:01

Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique performed by Orchestre Revolutionnaire A Romantique conducted by Sir John Eliot Gardner.

Presenter31:10

Sharon Peacock, Cog UK was wound up earlier this year. How do you look back at its achievements?

Professor Sharon Peacock31:17

Well, it was wound up at the end of March, so it still feels quite raw.

Professor Sharon Peacock31:22

I am just so proud of everything we achieved. There were 600 people in that consortium and every one of them was really valuable in what they contributed.

Professor Sharon Peacock31:31

to the overall consortium, I have a deep sense of pride.

Professor Sharon Peacock31:34

But also, I know that the legacy will go on to mean that we use sequencing again in a very productive way. So before it was very much a research tool. Now we have to see it as a proactive tool, for example, the next pandemic.

Professor Sharon Peacock31:47

Looking back at what you've achieved, Sharon, what would you say has been your

Presenter31:51

Yeah.

Professor Sharon Peacock31:51

Driving force

Professor Sharon Peacock31:53

I don't know why, but very deep rooted in me is a sense of service to the community. And that sense of service will last for the rest of my life. I'm not quite sure where it comes from. Perhaps it's always been there, but that is a guiding principle for me, that I'm on this planet to make a difference, however small or big.

Professor Sharon Peacock32:13

For other people.

Presenter32:15

It's almost time to cast you away. There won't be any people on the island, I'm afraid just you. But you will have your scientific mind. I wonder whether that you'll be able to put that to good use on the island.

Professor Sharon Peacock32:25

I would never liken myself to Darwin, but but perhaps I could actually study the nature and look for signals of natural selection. That would be fascinating, to start to really map the flora and fauna of the island. I'd love that.

Presenter32:39

One more track before we cast you away, though, Sharon. What's it gonna be?

Professor Sharon Peacock32:43

Well, I'd like to end with a very uplifting piece, The Lark Ascending. And what I like about this is that it really

Professor Sharon Peacock32:50

It kind of holds the prospect of peace, harmony and joy. So this piece is really about the countryside, but actually I think it's a very optimistic and hopeful way of looking to the future.

Presenter34:01

Vaughan Williams' The Lark Ascending. The BBC Symphony Orchestra with violinist Tasman Little conducted by Sir Andrew Davis. So, Sharon Peacock, I'm going to send you away to the island now. I will give you the books to take with you, the Bible, the complete works of Shakespeare, and you can take one other. What would you like? Well, it has to be.

Professor Sharon Peacock34:19

The Oxford Textbook of Medicine. This was a book that I would have read a lot in my junior doctor years. There's a sort of four-volume tome and I want to read that and rediscover all the things that have been developed in medicine since I qualified. The great thing is if anyone rescues me from this island, then I'll be even more qualified to be a doctor. After all, you stand ready at all times. Stand ready. I can tell, Charlotte.

Presenter34:46

I can tell, Sharon. So when you were growing up, it was only the Bible and Shakespeare that you had in the house, I think.

Professor Sharon Peacock34:51

I had three books. I had the the Bible, which was very well read, I had the complete works of Shakespeare, which was never read, and a very old and dusty ancient encyclopaedia set, which I have no idea where they came from, but living in my house was like living on a desert island.

Presenter35:06

You can also

Professor Sharon Peacock35:07

Have a look.

Presenter35:07

Shuya

Professor Sharon Peacock35:07

Aye, some what you fancy?

Professor Sharon Peacock35:09

Well, I had to take my life's collections of photos and videos, preferably in a kind of an immersive experience, because I'd never be alone.

Presenter35:16

An immersive mixture of photos and film, that's what you're looking for then, is it? Yes. Okay, we'll get you maybe a projector of some kind. That would be good. I'm sure we can do that.

Speaker 135:19

Yes.

Professor Sharon Peacock35:20

Uh

Professor Sharon Peacock35:23

We can do that.

Presenter35:24

And finally, which one track of the eight would you rush to save from the waves, if you had to?

Professor Sharon Peacock35:30

This is such an easy decision. It has to be Time Has Told Me by Nick Drake because it reminds me of my husband, and if he's not going to be there, I might as well.

Professor Sharon Peacock35:39

Imagine he's there, and that music will really help me to do that.

Presenter35:43

Professor Sharon Peacock, thank you very much for letting us hear your desert island discs. Thank you. It's been an absolute pleasure.

Presenter36:01

Hello, I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Sharon. I've no doubt at all that she'll put that medical textbook through its paces. We've cast away many scientists from all specialisms, including Professor Colin Pillinger, Professor Heinz Wolff and Professor Gene Golding. Sir Jeremy Farrow, who also contributed significantly to the fight against COVID-19, is there too. You can find these episodes in our Desert Island Discs programme archive and through BBC Sounds. The studio manager for today's programme was Emma Hart. The assistant producer was Christine Pavlovsky and the producer was Paul McGinley. Next time my guest will be the snooker player Ronnie O'Sullivan. I do hope you'll join us.

Speaker 436:48

Hello, I'm Jeremy Bowen, the BBC's international editor. For nearly 40 years, I've been reporting from some of the most complex and dangerous places in the world. In my new 10-part series, Frontlines of Journalism, I'm taking you to some of the most difficult stories I've had to cover. Six mortar rounds landed in or around the graveyard.

Speaker 437:10

Getting a bit emotional about it actually. To look at the obstacles that get in the way of the truth and how journalists like me navigate around them. It is never definitive.

Professor Sharon Peacock37:19

We can have this argument.

Speaker 437:20

Journalists tend to argue.

Speaker 137:20

John.

Speaker 137:24

If the world saw the world would react.

Speaker 437:28

Subscribe to Front Lines of Journalism from BBC Radio 4 Now on BBC Sounds.