Desert Island Discs: Archive 2000-2005

Sue Lawley's castaway this week is the mathematician Sir Roger Penrose. His prize-winning work with Stephen Hawking on the nature of black holes brought his name to public attention in the 1960s. Since then he has made a controversial contribution to the debate over human consciousness and whether or not computers will ever be able to mimic the workings of the human mind.

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

Favourite track: Crucifixion from B Minor by Johann Sebastian Bach

This week, Sue Lawley's castaway on Desert Island Discs is Michael Portillo.

Favourite track: Viene la Sera by Giacomo Puccini

Sue Lawley's castaway this week is Alan Parker. When Alan Parker's Bugsy Malone came out in 1975, it marked the beginning of a very successful and sometimes controversial career. Films like Midnight Express, Fame and The Commitments underline his versatility and have won him countless awards all over the world.

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

Favourite track: Nimrod by Edward Elgar

Sue Lawley's castaway this week is the playwright Peter Nichols. His award winning work, including Privates on Parade and A Day in The Death of Joe Egg has left audiences in stitches and sometimes in tears. With the recent revival of Passion Play, his darkly comic tale about adultery, Peter Nichols talks to Sue Lawley about his life and writing, and chooses eight records to take to the mythical desert island.

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

Favourite track: Hostias (from Requiem in D Minor) by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Sue Lawley's castaway this week is Dr Max Perutz. When he left Austria in 1936 to study at Cambridge, his fellow students dismissed his ambition to decipher the structure of the protein haemoglobin as 'mad'. No-one had seriously attempted to map a molecule that was made up of 10,000 atoms. Twenty-two years later he was successful. It was an achievement that earned him and his colleague John Kendrew the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1962 - and has since contributed to the study of blood diseases like sickle cell anaemia and Huntington's disease.

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

Favourite track: Piano Sonata No.30 in E Major by Ludwig van Beethoven

Sue Lawley's castaway this week is Donald Sutherland. He has acted in 104 films, including such classics as MASH, Don't Look Now and JFK. Tall and lanky as a child, he was called 'Goofus' or 'Dumbo' because of his big ears. However, it was those ears that caught the attention of the director of The Dirty Dozen and thus his film career was launched.

Now appearing on the British stage for the first time in 36 years, he chooses eight records to take to the mythical desert island.

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

Favourite track: Horn Concerto No. 1 in D major 412 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Sue Lawley's castaway this week is Clive James. Author, critic and television personality, he is presently contemplating his fourth autobiography - tracing the journey from his childhood in Australia to the Footlights Review at Cambridge University, and then to becoming the wittiest television critic and presenter in Britain.

During the interview Clive reads extracts from his poem 'Young Australian Rider, P.G. Burman', taken from his book Other Passport Poems 1958-1985.

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

Favourite track: Jailhouse Rock by Elvis Presley

Sue Lawley's castaway this week is Professor Geza Vermes . When he wrote Jesus the Jew in the early 1970s, it shocked the Christian world. He continued to examine Jesus through three more books, drawing on his lifetime's study of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Born in Hungary in the 1920s, his Jewish parents had converted to Catholicism, but it did not save them from the Nazis. He was ordained a Catholic priest, but returned his Jewish roots and his study of the religion and culture of first-century Palestine.

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

Favourite track: Now from the Sixth Hour by Johann Sebastian Bach

Sue Lawley's castaway this week is John Bird. As a student, he changed the face of the Cambridge Footlights review by rejecting jokes on bed-makers and punting and writing a political review instead. In the early 1960s he helped found The Establishment Club with Peter Cook. Writing sketches with John Fortune, they found they were unable to find suitable actors to perform their work, and so took to the stage themselves. Satire, he says, died in the late 1960s and he struggled to make a living, until Rory Bremner hired them. As 'The Two Johns', their dialogues featuring an awkward interviewer and slippery politician have won them much recognition and a BAFTA award.

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

Favourite track: Repons by Pierre Boulez

Sue Lawley's castaway this week is Dame Norma Major. In her book on the Prime Minister's residence, Chequers, she revealed how Neville Chamberlain would spend time measuring the girths of his favourite trees, and how Ramsay MacDonald chopped wood every morning dressed in plus-fours. She herself was uncomfortable there, and she remembers the loneliness and stress of being the country's First Lady. She says her love of music, and her work for charity helped her through the tough times.

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

Favourite track: Norma by Bellini