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 1986, and the presenter was Michael Parkinson. Our cast away today is by common consent, one of Britain's finest and most versatile of actors

and more than that he's a star of international reputation because of his portrayal of Gandhi

in Richard Attenborough's film, a performance which gained him the Academy Award for Best Actor.

He is Ben Kingsley.

Ben I didn't realize until I started reading about you that in fact you're a Yorkshireman.

I am indeed I was born in Sainton which is near Scarborough. My father had a

well he didn't have his own practice as a doctor then he was a junior assistant to a

country doctor out in the Sainton area and I lived there for the first two years of my life and then of course did the dreadful act of crossing the penines.

You went to live in Lancashire. I went to live in Lancashire.

Ben Kingsley wasn't your name in those days, was it?

No, it wasn't. It was by my father's council that I changed my name.

I was very fashionable at that time for actors in Manchester to find stage

names for themselves and I used to drink with all the Granada Television Chaps in a pub in Manchester.

And I was very struck by them and their lifestyle.

And they advised me to change my name as well.

I opted for Ben Kingsley because of my father's nickname which was Ben and Kingsley which

has connections with my grandfather's nickname on my father's side and it's stuck and

it's now legally my name.

What was your real name?

My mother gave me my fore name, Krishna,

...