Desert Island Discs

Nick Cave is a singer and writer who, with his band Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, has released emotionally intense and provocative music since the mid-Eighties. He is also a novelist, composer and has written film scripts and soundtracks along with his writing partner and Bad Seed Warren Ellis.

Nick grew up in Wangaratta, Australia the third of four children. He formed his first band, the Boys Next Door, in 1973 while he was at school. He studied fine art at the Caulfield Institute of Technology in Melbourne but left to pursue music. In 1980 the band relocated to London, renaming themselves the Birthday Party on the flight over. In 1984 Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds’ released their debut album, From Her to Eternity, and they have gone on to put out a further 17 albums.

In 2017 he was named an Officer of the Order of Australia.

DISC ONE: Metal Guru - T. Rex

BOOK CHOICE: The Adventures of Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi

Presenter Lauren Laverne

Harriet Wistrich is one of the country’s most prominent human rights lawyers. In 2016 she founded the Centre for Women’s Justice and over the course of her career, she has won landmark victories in very difficult legal cases. She has helped women imprisoned after killing their abusers regain their freedom. She’s also represented women seeking justice from the Metropolitan Police over their deployment of undercover police officers who have had relationships and children with female activists.

After studying PPE at Oxford, Harriet moved to Liverpool and began her career working in film and documentaries. She retrained as a lawyer in her early thirties and in 1990 co-founded the pressure group Justice for Women.

Harriet lives in London with her partner, the journalist Julie Bindel.

DISC ONE: I Will Survive - Gloria Gaynor

BOOK CHOICE: Middlemarch by George Eliot

Presenter: Lauren Laverne

Laurie Anderson is an artist and performer who came to fame in the UK with her 1981 hit O Superman. Her work spans music, film and multimedia projects which interrogate our relationship with technology and tell stories about the world we live in.

She was born in Chicago in 1947, the second-oldest of eight children, and started learning the violin when she was five. She studied Art History at Barnard College in New York and took a Masters in Sculpture at Columbia University.

In the 1970s she was part of the downtown New York art scene and her friends and contemporaries included Philip Glass, Gordon Matta-Clark and the choreographer and dancer Trisha Brown. One of Laurie’s first performance art pieces featured a symphony played by car horns.

In 1992 she met Lou Reed, the singer and songwriter who fronted the Velvet Underground. They were together for 21 years until his death in 2013. Laurie is the head of Lou’s archive which is at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts and open to anyone who wants to learn more about his musical adventures.

In 2024 Laurie was awarded a Lifetime Achievement award at the Grammys and a Stephen Hawking Medal for Science Communication.

DISC ONE: Pony Time - Chubby Checker

BOOK CHOICE: Speak, Memory by Vladimir Nabokov

Presenter Lauren Laverne

Mark-Anthony Turnage is a composer of contemporary classical music. Once called “Britain’s hippest composer”, he has been in a rock band, got drunk with Francis Bacon, and tackled anything from drug abuse to football in his works.

DISC ONE: Symphony No. 9 in D Minor, Op. 125 II. Molto vivace - Presto - Molto vivace – Presto. Composed by Ludwig Van Beethoven and performed by The Berlin Philharmonic, conducted by Sir Simon Rattle

BOOK CHOICE: Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier

Presenter: Lauren Laverne

Marianela Núñez is a Principal dancer of the Royal Ballet and Opera. Born in Argentina in 1982, Marianela knew she wanted to be a ballet dancer from the age of five and joined the Teatro Colón Ballet School in Buenos Aires when she was eight.

She dedicated herself to becoming a professional ballerina and had the full support of her parents despite having to leave home at fifteen to join the Royal Ballet in the UK. After spending a year at the Royal Ballet School and learning English from watching episodes of Friends, she joined the corps de ballet and worked her way up the company to become Principal Dancer.

DISC ONE: Adíos Nonino (“Goodbye Grandad”) - Astor Piazzolla

BOOK CHOICE: The Collected Works of Jorge Luis Borges

Presenter Lauren Laverne

Gareth Southgate OBE is the most successful England men’s football manger in the modern game.

He holds the record as the man who has represented England in more games than anyone else, with 102 games as men's senior team manager, 57 caps as a player and 37 as men's under-21 head coach, leading to a total of 196 games in which he has been involved as a player or coach.

It’s a remarkable career and one which shows his resilience and determination. Ever since he joined a football team as a schoolboy, he dreamed of being a footballer and perhaps one day, wearing the England shirt. He was rejected by Southampton as a teenager and was determined to come back and succeed. He managed to do that, playing for Crystal Palace, Aston Villa and Middlesbrough as a defender and midfielder. After his playing career ended he went into management eventually becoming one of the England national team’s most successful managers. Along the way, his different approach to leadership in sport, together with his quest to understand what is Englishness makes him one of the most impressive football managers in England’s history.

Southgate is an Ambassador for The Prince's Trust and Help for Heroes.

DISC ONE: The Way It Is - Bruce Hornsby and the Range

Presenter Lauren Laverne

Cher has been a global star for over six decades. Her career has spanned music, television and film and throughout that time her outfits have made flamboyant fashion statements.

She was born Cherilyn Sarkisian in El Centro, California and had a peripatetic childhood. Her mother married six times and with each new husband the family moved house.

In 1962, when she was 16, Cher met Sonny Bono in a coffee shop. She moved in with Sonny as his housekeeper and personal assistant and began singing backing vocals for his boss, the music producer Phil Spector. In 1965 Sonny and Cher released I Got You Babe which reached number one in the US and UK charts – knocking the Beatles off the top of the chart.

Cher is an award-winning actor who has starred in films including Silkwood, Mask and Moonstruck. In October 1998 she released her 22nd studio album Believe – the title track remains the biggest-selling number one by a solo female artist in British chart history.

DISC ONE: Whiter Shade of Pale - Procol Harum

Presenter Lauren Laverne

Former cricketer Ebony Rainford-Brent is the first Black woman to play for England and she was part of the team which won the Women’s Cricket World Cup in 2009. Today she is a broadcaster and cricket commentator for Channel 4, Sky Sports and the BBC’s Test Match Special.

Ebony was born in south London and as a child it was football that caught her attention, especially Liverpool FC and her hero Robbie Fowler. At primary school she was encouraged to have a go at cricket through a charity called Cricket For Change which was set up to encourage more state school children into the sport. Holding a bat in her hands for the first time, she hit the ball as hard as she could and, as she watched it soar through the air, she was hooked.

Ebony started out playing for Surrey Cricket Club’s Under 11’s team as a bowler. In 2003 a serious back injury forced her to stop playing and she thought her sporting career was over. She was determined to prove the medics wrong so she retrained as a batswoman as batting was easier on her back.

In 2007 she made her debut for England and two years later was part of the World Cup-winning team. In 2020 Ebony joined forces with Surrey Cricket Club and founded the African-Caribbean Engagement Programme (ACE) to build grassroots cricket programmes for young people in black communities across the UK. In 2021 she was awarded an MBE for her services to cricket and charity.

DISC ONE: Cold Sweat - James Brown

Presenter Lauren Laverne

Mark Steel is a writer, comedian and radio presenter.

His performing career began as a poet in the alternative comedy scene in the early eighties at the Comedy Store. A regular presenter on Radio 4, he began his award winning series, Mark Steel’s in Town in 2009.

Alongside his performing career, he’s been a regular newspaper columnist writing for the Guardian and Independent Newspapers.

DISC ONE: My Boy Lollipop - Millie Small

Presenter Lauren Laverne

Steven Knight CBE is a screenwriter, producer, and director for film and television.

DISC ONE: I Want You - Bob Dylan

BOOK CHOICE: The Greek Myths by Robert Graves