Hello, I'm Krestey Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive.

For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

The program was originally broadcast in 1991, and the presenter was Sue Lawley. My castaway this week is an actor. Born in New York, the son of a vaudeville artist, he went on the stage at an early age.

By his mid-30s, he'd been in several films and starred on Broadway. It was then that he landed the

part that transformed his life. He was cast as the wise-cracking womanizing surgeon

Hawkeye in the American television series, Mash.

It made him rich, it made him famous,

but it didn't stop his appetite for work.

He's written, directed, and starred in his own films,

Sweet Liberty and Betsy's wedding at two. He's even stolen the limelight in other

peoples. He was the eager maniacal film producer in Woody Allen's crimes and misdemeanors.

At the moment he's doing something he hasn't done for more than 20 years.

He's back on the stage again, playing in the West End of London the gentle thoughtful

narrator in Thornton Wilder's Our Town.

He is Alan Alder.

Well, Alan, after all those films and television series,

it must be a kind of professional culture shock

to walk onto a stage, beginner play,

and not stop until it's finished.

I wish I could say it was.

I feel like I'm coming home to the stage.

I'm on the stage the whole time, whether I'm in front of the audience or not,

...