Classic Desert Island Discs: Victoria Wood

04/08/18 • 35 min

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Another chance to listen to the comedian speaking to Kirsty Young in 2007. For decades she was one of our best-loved writers and performers. The television series she made - including Acorn Antiques, Dinnerladies and Housewife 49 - won her a devoted following as well as stacks of awards. But, in a moving and open interview, she describes how, as a teenager, she felt she was a misfit - she had few friends, she struggled with her weight and at school she used to steal other people's homework. She joined a youth theatre and it was, she says, the saving of her. She found like-minded people and a sense that she had something to offer. She was very careful about how much of her own life she put into her work. She doesn't mind saying she cuts her pubic hair with nail-scissors, but rarely discusses her children on the stage. Favourite track: What a Fool Believes by The Doobie Brothers Book: A big book by Charles Dickens Luxury: A bumper book of Sudoku with blank pages & pens

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Classic Desert Island Discs: Hugh Masekela

Another chance to listen to the world famous musician speaking to Sue Lawley in 2004. As a boy growing up in the impoverished townships of South Africa, he was inspired to learn the trumpet after seeing Kirk Douglas play Bix Beiderbecke in Young Man With A Horn. He begged one of his teachers - the anti-apartheid crusader Father Trevor Huddleston - to buy him a horn and in return he promised to stay out of trouble. Hugh soon made a name for himself in South Africa but as the racial tensions intensified during the 50s he decided he had to leave his homeland to get a better music education in America. There he quickly made a name for himself with his fusion of African jazz music and became a 'flower child' playing with some of the great bands of the decade: Bob Marley, Jimi Hendrix and the Byrds. He's still probably best known for his number-one track, Grazing in the Grass, which sold four million copies worldwide in 1968. He returned to Africa in 1973, spending the next 17 years working on a range of musical collaborations in Botswana, Liberia, Nigeria, Congo and Guinea. Then, after thirty years in self-imposed exile, he returned to his homeland in 1990. Favourite track: Lilizela Mlilezeli by Mahlathini & the Mahotella Queens Book: Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens Luxury: A keyboard

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Classic Desert Island Discs: Stephen Hawking

Another chance to listen to the theoretical physicist speaking to Sue Lawley in 1992. Stephen Hawking wrote the best-selling A Brief History of Time and was the founder of the Centre for Theoretical Cosmology at the University of Cambridge, where he was also the Emeritus Lucasian Professor. He talked to Sue Lawley about his life and work, and the illness which left him severely disabled, as well as selecting the eight discs he would choose to take to the mythical island. Favourite track: Requiem by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Book: Middlemarch by George Eliot Luxury: Crème brûlée