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PROGRAMME INFO |
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Desert Island Discs is one of Radio 4's most popular and enduring programmes. Created by Roy Plomley in 1942, the format is simple: each week a guest is invited by Sue Lawley to choose the eight records they would take with them to a desert island.
The discussion of their choice is a device for them to review their life. They also choose a favourite book (excluding the Bible or other religious work and Shakespeare - these already await the "castaway") and a luxury which must be inanimate and have no practical use. |
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LISTEN AGAIN |
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PRESENTER |
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Sue's biography
- Sue's interview
- Quiz about Sue |
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"Lawley's consensual, almost sensual probing, producing an ambiguous bond like that between hostage and hostage-taker, is ... a masterpiece of technique."
The Sunday Times 17 March 1996
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PROGRAMME DETAILS |
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Billy Connolly
Billy Connolly has known since he was a boy that he was funny. He kept his school friends entertained. He says "There's four rows in the class, the "clever", the "not-quite-so-clever", the "stupid-but-saveable" and the "stupid". I was in the "stupid-but-saveable-row" because I could write and stuff - and I was alright, because boys in that row were quite fun!"
When he became an apprentice welder in the Clydeside shipyard, his impressions of drunks made his fellow workers laugh: "They're not red nosed drunks with broken cigarettes. Not jolly drunks. My drunks were serious - they're proper drunks."
But it was his banjo playing that was his first paid job in entertainment. He forgot the words of his song and resorted to finishing the story by simply telling it. When the audience started roaring with laughter at the spoken version he realised he was really enjoying himself.
From there he graduated to his one-man shows and the major breakthrough came when he was a guest on Parkinson in 1972.
Much of his material throughout his career is drawn from a difficult childhood. His mother left when he was four: "It was the middle of the war and I've never held it against her, never. I think I might have done the same. She was a teenager, Germans were bombing the town. My father was in India and we lived in a slum in Glasgow". Billy and his older sister Florence were brought up by two aunts and their father and while "being battered to death" was the fate of many of Billy's friends, ("violence was normal") his Aunt Mona also liked to humiliate him publicly by telling him how stupid he was. "Humiliating someone is so much worse than hitting them. It takes so long to get over it".
It was only when his father had died that Billy told Florence and his wife Pamela Stephenson about the sexual abuse he suffered from his father. Confronting his past has not been easy, but now he feels that "I am out of jail. It's a lovely feeling. It's difficult to describe - it's like there was a film over me and it's gone."
1. Foggy Mountain Breakdown
Performer: Flatt and Scruggs
Composer: n/a
Publisher: Bear Family
CD Title: Flatt and Scruggs 1948-1959
Band: 12
Label: Bear Family
Rec No: BCD 154472/A
2. Sky Boat Song
Performer: The Regimental Band & the Massed Pipes of the Scots Guards
Composer: trad
Publisher: Music for Pleasure
CD Title: The Scots Guards on Parade
Band: 16
Label: EMI
Rec No: CC 292
3. Long Gone Lonesome Blues
Performer: Hank Williams
Composer: Williams
Publisher: Acuff-Rose Music
CD Title: The Legendary Hank Williams
Band: side 2 trk 3
Label: K Tel
Rec No: NE 1121
4. Tutti Frutti
Performer: Little Richard
Composer: LaBostrie-Penniman
Publisher: Speciality Records
CD Title: Rockfile Vol 23
Band: 11
Label: Backline
Rec No: BLCD 9.00905
5. Across the Universe
Performer: Beatles
Composer: Lennon/McCartney
Publisher: EMI Records
CD Title: Past Masters Vol 2
Band: 13
Label: Parlophone
Rec No: CDP 790044 2
6. Highlands
Performer: Bob Dylan
Composer: Bob Dylan
Publisher: Sony Music
CD Title: Time out of Mind
Band: 11
Label: Columbia
Rec No: 486936 2
7. Morris Room
Performer: The Celebrated Ratliffe Stout Band
Composer: Devereux, Palmer & the Rats
Publisher: Plant Life Records
CD Title: Vanlag/Celebrated Ratcliffe Stout Band
Band: side 1 trk 5
Label: Plant Life
Rec No: PLR 030
8. Only the Lonely
Performer: Roy Orbison
Composer: Orbison/Melson
Publisher: The Connoisseur Collection
CD Title: 25 Years of Rock 'n' Roll - 1960
Band: 1
Label: Connoisseur Collection
Rec No YRNR CD 60
If Billy could take just one record it would be No 3, Long Gone Lonesome Blues.
His book, apart from The Bible and the Complete Works of Shakespeare, the Oxford English Dictionary.
His luxury would be his banjo.
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