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K irsty Young is quitting Desert Island Discs deciding instead to “pursue new challenges”.
Since joining Desert Island Discs in 2006, Young has presented 496 episodes of the programme and her insightful interviewing style and ability to get under the skin of her subjects has marked her out as one of the best presenters the show has ever had.
From poignant heart to hearts with Dawn French and Lily Allen, to teasing out classic anecdotes from Tom Hanks and Steve McQueen, here are Young’s top 10 Desert Island Discs interviews.
Show all 11 1 /11Kirsty Young’s top 10 Desert Island Discs interviews Kirsty Young’s top 10 Desert Island Discs interviews Scroll through for Kirsty Young's best interviews
Kirsty Young’s top 10 Desert Island Discs interviews Tom Hanks The beauty of Young’s interview approach is how masterfully she manages to get under the skin of her subjects. Here, Oscar-winning actor Hanks speaks emotionally about the loneliness he felt during his nomadic childhood.
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Kirsty Young’s top 10 Desert Island Discs interviews Yoko Ono One of the songs chosen by the Japanese artist is her late husband John Lennon’s "Beautiful Boy", a solo work about their son Sean, who was born just five years before his father was shot dead. “When I was listening to 'Beautiful Boy',” says Ono, “I felt John just jumped out in the corner saying, 'Good idea…’ He is always somewhere, jumping out and saying things."
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Kirsty Young’s top 10 Desert Island Discs interviews David Nott Surgeon Nott gives one of Young’s most moving interviews of all time, discussing his experience of working in warzones and treating patients in hospitals - while being bombed - in vivid detail. When he returned from working in Aleppo in Syria and met the Queen, Nott was too traumatised to speak so they simply fed the corgis together, instead.
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Kirsty Young’s top 10 Desert Island Discs interviews Lily Allen Singer Allen reveals to Young the “extreme” highs and lows of her life, from playing on the main stage at Glastonbury to having a stillbirth six months into her pregnancy with her first child. It is an affecting, political, poignant interview that packs a punch today as much as it did back in 2014.
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Kirsty Young’s top 10 Desert Island Discs interviews Morrissey The Smiths frontman is uncharacteristically chirpy in his interview with Young, talking about his relative ease with life aged 50 and how he’s “very glad indeed” he didn’t grow up to be normal.
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Kirsty Young’s top 10 Desert Island Discs interviews Steve McQueen Oscar-winning 12 Years a Slave director McQueen tells Young about his triumph over dyslexia, saying: “Art was my salvation.” This unpicking of his decorated career is fascinating – and he picks some great music too, with tracks from the likes of Miles Davis, Kate Bush, and Prince.
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Kirsty Young’s top 10 Desert Island Discs interviews Dawn French During French’s interview she tells a deeply moving story about how Etta James’s “At Last” was played at the funeral of her mother, who believed that when she died she would be reunited with French’s late father. The classic James track is, of course, one of the discs French chooses to save from the waves.
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Kirsty Young’s top 10 Desert Island Discs interviews Ray Winstone Actor Winstone’s music choices are classic, from Frank Sinatra to Johnny Cash, and him and Young build a solid rapport as he discusses his career as a “hard man” actor, meeting Ronnie Kray and his days as a schoolboy boxing champion.
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Kirsty Young’s top 10 Desert Island Discs interviews George Michael The late, great Michael speaks candidly about his private hardships and public triumphs in this 2007 interview. He delves into how difficult it was to be a young gay man in the 1980s during the Aids epidemic, and of losing people he loved to the disease.
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Kirsty Young’s top 10 Desert Island Discs interviews Lynn Barber Here, the tables are turned on master celebrity interviewer Barber, whose episode is bursting full of hilarious anecdotes. On a slightly darker note, Barber opts for poison pills as her luxury, as she is unable to bear the thought of being cast away.
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On announcement of her departure, Young described her tenure as “12 incredibly happy and fulfilling years”.
The BBC said 6 Music presenter Lauren Laverne, who was drafted in as cover for Young during her recent absence , will continue to host Desert Island Discs “for the foreseeable future”.
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