Neil Tennant

Kirsty Young's castaway this week is the singer and songwriter Neil Tennant. He is best known as one half of The Pet Shop Boys which, over the past 20 years, has been one of Britain's most successful and popular bands, noted for combining dance music with witty lyrics and delivering them in a uniquely English style. As a teenager growing up in Newcastle upon Tyne, he felt himself to be an outsider at school, but found friends in an amateur theatre company. Yet he always felt his life would be different to theirs and used to tell them that he would become a celebrated pop star.

But Neil was 30 when he finally left his day job as a writer for Smash Hits magazine to pursue the musical interests that had dominated his life since he was a teenager. By that time, he was anxious that he had missed the boat. Now, as well as continuing to release records with The Pet Shop Boys, he has branched out into other forms of composition, writing a live score for the film Battleship Potemkin, a West End musical and being involved in collaborations with Robbie Williams and the Scissor Sisters, among many others.

[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs].

Choices

1.

Rex Harrison

Why Can't the English?

Others who chose this artist

2.

The Beatles

She Loves You

Others who chose this artist

3.

Ralph Vaughan Williams

Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis

Orchestra: Sinfonia of London Conductor: Sir John Barbirolli

Others who chose this artist

4.

David Bowie

Changes

Others who chose this artist

5.

Shannon

Give Me Tonight

Others who chose this artist

6.

Billie Holiday

Good Morning, Heartache

Others who chose this artist

7.

Castaway's favourite

Dusty Springfield

I Don’t Want to Hear It Anymore

Others who chose this artist

8.

Dmitri Shostakovich

Symphony No. 5 in D minor - 1st movement

Orchestra: New York Philharmonic Conductor: Leonard Bernstein

Others who chose this artist

Book

The Human Comedy by Honore de Balzac

Others who chose this author

Luxury item

DVD projector and DVDs

Others who chose a similar luxury