Hello I'm Krusty 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 1993 and the presenter was Sue Lolly. My cast away this week is an academic, never one to retreat into scholarly seclusion, she's also an active

labour politician and a leading public servant.

She was educated at the London School of Economics, where she went on to teach, and then at the

age of 35 joined the Downing Street think tank

advising Wilson, then Callahan. Having twice failed to be selected as a Labour

parliamentary candidate she returned to the world of education. She became Deputy Education

Officer at the Inner London Education Authority and more recently master of

Birkbeck College in London. She was made a life peer in 1987 and became Baroness Blackstone of Stoke Newington,

but she prefers to be known simply as Tessa Blackstone.

What does the handle Lady Blackstone do for you, Tessa?

Does it put your teeth on edge or does it just make you laugh?

I really hate it. I much prefer just to be called Tessa and I regret the fact that serving my party in the House of Lords means that I have to carry a title with me.

I wish I didn't have to be called Baroness Blackstone or Lady Blackstone.

On the other hand you do in the end get used to these

things. A lot of people still call me Dr. Blackstone or Professor Blackstone and I prefer

that in many ways. And a lot of people call you master because you're master of

Birkbeck do they? Some of the staff at Birkbeck call me master. I think these

rather archaic titles will become gender neutral eventually just as a result of more and more women occupying the

posts that go with the titles. So having got over the problem of how to address you

there's then the problem of how to categorize you because as I've said you're an academic but I could as well have said

...