Hello, I'm Kirstie 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 cast away this week is a political peer.

She's never taken an examination in her life, preferring the test of high office.

Here she's passed with flying colours, starting off as a mayor of Cambridge

and graduating to Government Whip and now enjoying ministerial rank.

A tireless campaigner she's shown herself unafraid of controversy.

She champions Sunday trading, advocated the use of folkland sheep as mine detectors

and pioneered explicit advertising in the AIDS campaign.

She brings to it all a formidable presence and a robust sense of humour.

For the past ten years she's rejoiced in the title of Baroness Trumpington

of Sandwich in the County of Kent.

It's a wonderful title Lady Trumpington but there is no Trumpington in Sandwich

or indeed in the County of Kent, is there?

Perfectly right, but the thing was really the Trumpington part came because I wanted to

thank the show how grateful I was to Trumpington who'd kind of nurtured me for about 20 years

and where I'd lived and I'd represented them first on the City Council then on the County Council.

In Cambridge?

In Cambridge and then I'd always lived in or near Sandwich and I still do.

But you could have used your married name, couldn't you? You could have been

plain old lady Barker.

...