Hello, this is the BBC World Service.

I'm Audrey Brown and over the next half hour,

I'll be looking back at the remarkable life of Desmond Tutu.

He had particular skills and abilities,

which put him head and shoulders above the others in the public arena.

Extraordinary use of language and extraordinary capacity

to communicate with people and the ability to get under the skin

or white-so-efficans.

Various people have said that he's the best advert for Christianity they know.

I'm always surprised to be in places where my father was treated

like something of a rock star because he is my dad.

And I had the privilege of growing up with a father

who wasn't world famous.

Desmond Tutu was indeed something of a rock star.

Fated in music by the jazz great Miles Davis,

he's appeared on the covers of magazines like Vanity Fair,

with celebrities like the actor Brad Pitt and Oprah Winfrey.

Born on the 7th of October 1931, a sickly child,

he was called Mpilo, meaning health or life

in the coser language of his father, Zakaria.

His mother was Mace Ney Matlare.

Here he is speaking to the BBC in 2014.

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