For some, a desert island is a tropical sanctuary, for others it is a cage or an irritant (Rolling Stones drummer Charlie Watts reckoned that on his desert island there would be “too much sand and sun”). And who would you include (or exclude), anyway? The aforementioned Watts does not feature in this book, but for that there is surely one reason: if you put too many people on an island – and there have been more than 3,500 “castaways” on BBC Radio 4′s Desert Island Discs – trouble in paradise is bound to happen.
Published to celebrate the 80th anniversary of the acclaimed radio programme (or the “Library of Babel”, as it was described by author David Mitchell), this compendium edition, ideal for book-shaped Christmas stockings, features 80 interviews transcribed and adapted into feature articles complete with chosen discs and (with more than 15 former guests) follow-up interviews.
Like the Desert Island Discs format, it’s a great idea, but the downside to published versions of the radio conversations – which are more confessional than you might think – is glaringly obvious: no matter how adept UK music writer Ian Gittins is at capturing the tenor of the interviews as conducted by the programme originator Roy Plomley (who presided over his creation from 1942-1985), Michael Parkinson, Sue Lawley, Kirsty Young and, from 2018, Lauren Laverne, the tone of the original interviews is so crucial to the listening experience that nothing can replace it.
It is, perhaps, a cruel question, but who wants to read compacted (if skilfully written) interviews with Peter Ustinov (1951), Judi Dench (1972), Maya Angelou (1987), General Norman Schwarzkopf (1995), Robert Fisk (2007), Martina Navratilova (2012), John Cooper Clarke (2019) and Adele (2022) when most of us can listen and hear them enunciate, express and engage in their singular glory?
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And yet, you have to tip a hat to this book’s often surprising range and calibre of guests. This writer, an avid fan of the radio programme, was not aware that Norman Wisdom (1953), Victoria Wood (1987), John Lee Hooker (1995) and Keith Richards (2015) had been castaways. Cue earphones and Spotify.
