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 2001, and the presenter was Sue Lolly. My castaway this week is an impresario. He is a one-man history of the British musical over the last 20 years.

Cats, Les Misarablum, Miss Saigon, Phantom of the Opera, they're all his productions.

Stage struck from the age of seven when he first saw the musical salad days,

he put on his first show when he was 23.

It left him 40,000 pounds in debt.

He's learned a thing or two since then. These days he shows not only pack him in in the West End,

but in Buenos Aires, Hong Kong and Broadway too.

Success has brought both wealth and contentment.

I've done it, he says. I recognize how lucky I am. I have

no urge, no need to do it again. He is Sir Cameron McIntosh. If you weren't quite so successful,

I suppose Cameron one would say that was complacent.

I can't really think the fire has gone out of your belly for the musical, hasn't

Oh, far from it. In fact, I'm busier now than I have been for ages.

I'm just having to put on my shows all the way around the world.

Now I mean I've always known that I was lucky. I mean I thought it was quite normal for a 10 year old to know exactly what they were going to do when they grew up.

By the time I was in my mid-20s I realized that very few people knew what they wanted to do.

And luckily I was able to do it all my life and have been and haven't had to grow up completely on the way

absolutely and have these huge numbers of hits so now you're 55 I mean what are you saying

that you you don't want to do another new musical that's all I'm doing I'm not doing any new musicals for the foreseeable future.

But I can't believe, you know, if the Andrew Lloyd Weber of the 21st century walked through the

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