Hello, I'm Kesti 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 1990, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

My castaway this week is an actress, born and bred in the east end of London, her effervescent

cockney humour delighted audiences first in musicals like Fing's Ain't What They Used

To Be, and then, of course, most famously, in the carry-on films.

The public image of a bubbly, fun-loving personality is, however, in stark contrast to the problems

of her private life.

For more than 20 years, she was married to a man who eventually stood trial for murder,

and who later fled to Spain, a fugitive from the British police.

She's now written her autobiography, a rumbuscious account by a woman whose honesty, determination

and endless good humour have buoyed her up in often frightening circumstances.

She is Barbara Windsor.

Barbara, the most amazing thing I've read about you is that you once wanted to be a nun,

can this be true?

Yes, my mother said that she came home one day, and I was prancing around a kitchen with

a tea towel over my head, practising to become a nun.

What changed your mind?

I was at a convent, you see, and when I was 13, I was appearing at the Stoet Newton Town Hall,

Maddenham Behennett, Juvenile Jolities, and a gentleman called Brian Mickey, who was a talent

scout, came in, and he said to bed of Behennett, that little plump girl on the end, the little

blonde one, she's got something, and I didn't have the boobs in those days, and he said,

...