One evening in 1941, a man called Roy Plomley was
sitting at home when he got an idea for a new radio
programme. He wrote a letter to the BBC with his
idea, and the BBC loved it. In 1942, they started to
put the programme on the radio with Plomley as the
presenter, and now, over seventy years later, the
programme is still going strong on British radio. The
name of the programme? Desert Island Discs (aka DID).
The idea of the programme is this: each week, someone well known is invited to the programme – often an actor, a singer, a politician or someone from TV. In recent years, people like actor Colin Firth, adventurer Bear Grylls, celebrity cook Jamie Oliver and novelist J. K. Rowling have been guests. And what does the guest have to do? Well, he or she has to imagine that they have been cast away on a desert island, but that they are allowed to have eight pieces of music with them. The programme is an interview with the guest, talking about their life and work, and the eight pieces of music that the guest talks about are mixed in.
After some initial programmes, the list of eight songs was added to: guests are now also allowed to choose one book and one special, luxury item to have with them on the island. That certainly brought some cool ideas. The writer of children's books, Allan Ahlberg, asked for 'a wall to kick a football against', while famously pale-skinned singer Annie Lennox asked for suncream. And, perhaps not surprisingly, writer J. K. Rowling asked for 'an endless supply of pens and paper'.
From the very beginning, DID was incredibly popular, and it still is – there have been thousands of programmes. Plomley was the presenter for every episode until he died in 1971, and since then there have only been three other presenters. The programme's opening and closing music has never changed, and for British people it is immediately recognisable as the DID theme music.
There have been some memorable guests. One of the most controversial was an opera singer, Elizabeth Schwarzkopf, whose eight records included seven of herself singing – though, to be fair, it did seem that no one had explained the concept of the show to her well enough!
The idea of choosing just eight pieces of music to
listen to forever, while you're completely alone in
the world, is one that seems to capture people's
imagination. What would you choose to have with
you? Of course, if you like music at all, it's almost
impossible to come up with a list of only eight
pieces of music without leaving out things that you
love. But that, perhaps, is part of the beauty of the
whole DID concept.
