Alan Johnson

Desert Island Discs

BBC

Society & Culture, Music Commentary, Music, Personal Journals

4.4 • 13.7K Ratings

🗓️ 7 October 2007

⏱️ 35 minutes

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Summary

Kirsty Young's castaway this week is the Secretary of State for Health, Alan Johnson. He has the task of managing one of the most challenging briefs of government - and the stakes are raised further because, when there is an election, the Prime Minister Gordon Brown has made it clear that the main battleground will be health.

Johnson says that unlike many politicians, he is not a keen strategist who has spent his life plotting his career, instead he has simply 'drifted along', taking whatever challenges fate offered. He has drifted on quite an incredible journey - raised among the deprivation and squalor of London in the 1950s, he was orphaned when he was 12 and brought up by his sister. He left school without an O-level but with ambitions to join the music industry. Instead, after a spell stacking supermarket shelves, he became a postman and by the time he was 20 he was married with three children. He rose through the trade union movement where his astute negotiating skills and political acumen brought him to Tony Blair's attention. According to those who know him best, however, his political ambitions are limited - his children say he would still rather be the lead singer in a band than Prime Minister.

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

Favourite track: And Your Bird Can Sing by The Beatles Book: Diaries by Samuel Pepys Luxury: Digital radio.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello I'm Krestey Young and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive.
0:05.0	For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.
0:08.0	The program was originally broadcast in 2007. My cast away this week is the Secretary of State for Health, Alan Johnson.
0:32.0	His rise to the top tier of government has been
0:34.6	remarkable, not just for its speed but for the uniqueness of the journey too. It reads
0:39.6	like a frankly unbelievable plot to a blockbuster novel.
0:43.0	Brought up among the deprivation, squaller and race riots of 1950s Notting Hill.
0:48.0	His dad walked out on the family when little Alan was still in short trousers.
0:51.0	His mother died when he was 12, leaving him to be brought up by his teenage sister.
0:56.6	He left school planning to be a rock star and without an o-level to his credit, which is quite something for a man who has gone on to be one of our most
1:05.4	influential politicians.
1:07.0	I'm not over-egging your significance there because of course as we know the Prime Minister
1:10.8	says he intends to fight the next election on health.
1:16.0	No pressure then.
1:17.0	No in that sense yes it's a very important job wherever I describe myself as one of the most
1:21.3	significant politicians I don't know but you know as I didn't expect to be a politician any job
1:27.2	there for me is a joy. So this brief the Secretary of State for Health do you
1:31.1	feel the pressure of that?
1:33.0	I do, but I'm used to pressure.
1:36.0	You know, I was the General Secretary of a Trade Union for a long time.
1:40.0	And if you want pressure, you know, when 180,000 of your members are out on strike
1:45.0	they're all looking to you to settle the dispute you know that's that's big pressure
	...

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