Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Multi-award winning broadcaster, best known for BAFTA-winning coverage of the Passchendaele centenary and 12 years as host of this programme.
On the island
Eight records
Prelude from Cello Suite No. 1 in G majorFavourite
Prelude from Cello Suite No. 1 in G major, BWV 1007
The keepsakes
In conversation
Presenter asks
2:31What do you think it is about Desert Island Discs that people love so much all these decades on?
I once described it as a sort of hammock-like quality, just to fit itself around the person who is there. So, therefore, if it is a sort of Premier League footballer or if it is an astrophysicist, their music and the amount of time you spend talking to them, and then also the ways in and the ways out of the music, are sort of beautifully kind of soft and comfy. So, people come into the studio and they're kind of surrounded by their own bits of furniture and the music. So, they've got the comfort of that familiarity, and also whatever they choose gives each programme a unique flavour.
Presenter asks
7:01Tell me about your mother's tenacity during that time when she was on her own with you and your sister.
There are lots of single parents in the world, aren't they? And they all deserve us to toast them for the work they do. I was really tiny, a baby when she was on her own. My sister was three, and she is the very definition of a self-starter. I can't imagine how difficult that would be. … My mum gave us enough love for everybody. She definitely did that. And that, you know, that is, that's no small feat, I think.
Presenter asks
22:32You almost didn't apply for the BBC trainee job – why not?
The book
Nora Ephron
it is the voices of all the wonderful, smart, funny women I have been lucky enough to know and do know, sort of encapsulated into the works of Nora Efron.
The luxury
a cinema with all the films I've ever watched
that way I'll have company and I'll have memories and I'll have stories and I'll have escapism.
Well, I didn't have the nerve. It was the BBC, Lauren. I was working as a researcher at a small independent. … somebody who worked with me said, you should apply for this. … on the final day before it was closing, my work colleague said, no, you really should apply for this. So I feel that he literally drove me to the reception and watched me hand it in. So that was a very kind thing for them to do. I lacked a wee bit of nerve, I think.
Presenter asks
29:06What are your memories of being on air on 9/11?
I'd gone back to work after having one of my daughters, so I'd only been back at work for maybe about six weeks, I think. And my husband called me on the way into work and said he was in New York and he said there's been a plane crash … By the time I got into the studio and I was getting rigged up with a mic, they said it's happened again, a second one's gone in. So it was very clear there was some moving story, and from the back of the gallery, I heard in my earpiece, we're going open-ended, which basically means we're going on air, we don't know when we're coming off, and we came off … five just over it was over five hours later. It was a very, very intense experience, a terrifying time for the world, and not least for those extraordinary New Yorkers.
Presenter asks
32:27Looking back on your twelve years presenting Desert Island Discs, what do you take away from that experience?
Very, very early on in my career I was given great advice by somebody which is: listen to the answer. It's all very well to think of your kind of smarty Knickers' questions. Listen to the answer. And so I got to listen. I got to listen to brilliant, high achieving, contradictory, infuriating, marvellous, funny, talented people. I really love the long-form nature of it. I love that there was room for people to breathe and talk, and there was room to give the f to ask the follow-up question.
Presenter asks
33:34What was it like being told you had fibromyalgia and rheumatoid arthritis and that you needed to step away from work?
I had been around the houses with my health for about a year, seeing different specialists trying to work out what was going on and it was a little bit of a complex picture and the pain was increasing and I was feeling really, really ropey. … he said, you know, this is how I believe you can get better. And if you want to get better, you've got to take this seriously because it's going nowhere if you don't. … Part of getting better is we can introduce all sorts of drugs, we can monitor you, we can do this and we can do but you have to reduce the stress in your life and you have to take this seriously and you can't just keep shoveling painkillers down your neck which don't work anyway and feel shocking. If you want to get better, this is how to do it. … I remember I pulled my car over and just had a good old, well, to use a good Scottish short, good old greet about it. And I thought, right, well. Them's the facts, and you're really going to have to think about this.
“a dog doesn't go back and inspect its own mess”
“I felt like a fraud”
“I thought if I'm not that, what am I now? What's what am I for? What's a Kirstie for?”
“the cracks are where the light gets in”