Hello, I'm Kirstie Young. Thank you for downloading this podcast of Desert Island Disks from BBC Radio 4.

For rights reasons, the music choices are shorter than in the radio broadcast.

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Radio 4. the My castaway this week is the writer Craig Brown, a satirist columnist and critic with a prodigious

output. He's best known for his

skeering parodies, lampooning everyone from D.H. Lawrence to Victoria

Beckham. The warning signs came early. At 14 he was writing spoofs of Harold Pinterplays. By 20 he was being published in the

Spectator, the New Statesman and Tatler, swiftly graduating to the Sunday Times.

He says, I feel religious and empty churches, but atheist in a

fool one. I'm left-wing among right-wing people. I am just contrary. You're

comfortable with being a contrarian, are you Craig? I suppose

I mean if you're not comfortable by 55 then that's very uncomfortable position

to be in. But I sometimes think I should have stronger held beliefs and opinions, but I always see the other side and then dislike the other side.

So I'm always sort of bouncing off people.

And other times when you think, well I wish I believed in something?

Well I believe in basic humanitarian virtues, but if you ask me, do I believe in the

EC or do I believe that cannabis should be legalized or even do I believe in God I'd come out with different answers depending on the time of day?

The voices in your head I wonder about because of course what you do so

brilliantly is you capture the voice of the people you parody and you manage to

get it down on paper with with great wit and often a good deal of wisdom too.

Are there voices in your head do you

suddenly find yourself sort of what I think of myself as Doris Stokes you remember the old

...