Hello, I'm Kirstie Young. Thank you for downloading this podcast of Desert Island Disks from BBC Radio 4.

For rights reasons, the music choices are shorter than in the radio broadcast.

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Radio 4. The My castaway this week is the drama teacher Anna Cher. When she set up her

theatre school in London more than four decades ago, children queued round the block to get in.

Kathy Burke, Martin Kemp and Pauline Quirk are among those who handed over their tenpence pieces every week,

and the cast of EastEnders would have been sadly depleted without a long line of

Schur's graduates.

It's more than ten years since depression forced her to step down, but when she tried to return,

there was no job for her leading the organization which bore her name.

So she started again, set up a new school and recruited a new group of teenagers.

Teaching is the love of my life, she says. Teaching is everything for me. It's my raison d'etra.

I'm wondering, Anachir, what do you say to those young, eager teenagers who comes through the doors for the first time dreaming of

their leading role in Oliver or a starring part in East Enders.

Well I give them the ground rules that we start with discipline, but our staple is improvisation

and that makes for very believable actors.

We have many actors over the years in East Enders and that's the way to do it I think, you know.

How old are the kids?

Well we start them at six and then we go up to people in their 60s. There's no upper age

limit. And do they come in with, I'm wondering if they and sometimes with their

parents slightly nudging them from behind, do they come in with stars in their eyes? Do they think,

ah yes, this is the woman who makes the stars who get on the telly? That used to be, but not so much now. I think they come

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