Danny Dyer, actor

Desert Island Discs

BBC

Society & Culture, Music Commentary, Music, Personal Journals

4.4 • 13.7K Ratings

🗓️ 8 June 2025

⏱️ 51 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Actor Danny Dyer became a household name when he joined the cast of EastEnders as Mick Carter, landlord of the Queen Victoria pub. He recently stole the show from some stiff competition playing Freddie Jones in the television adaptation of Jilly Cooper’s novel Rivals which won him a Royal Television Society Award for Best Supporting Actor.

Danny was born in Custom House, East London in 1977. He loved drama at school and, with his teacher’s encouragement, he signed up for after-school classes in north London which were run by a charity called Wac Arts. When he was 14 he was cast in the television drama Prime Suspect 3 alongside Helen Mirren and David Thewlis.

He went on to star in a series of films including Human Traffic and Football Factory. In 2000 he played the waiter in Harold Pinter’s new play Celebration and went on to appear in two other productions by the playwright - No Man's Land and The Homecoming.

In 2013 he took over the Queen Vic and his performances earned him three National Television Awards. He appeared on the BBC genealogy programme Who Do you think you Are? in 2016 and discovered he was descended from King Edward III and related to Thomas Cromwell.

Danny lives in Essex with his wife Jo. They have three children and three grandchildren.

DISC ONE: Slave to Love - Bryan Ferry DISC TWO: Rebel Yell - Billy Idol DISC THREE: Move Closer - Phyllis Nelson DISC FOUR: Wish You Were Here - Pink Floyd DISC FIVE: Playing with Knives - Bizarre Inc DISC SIX: Columbia - Oasis DISC SEVEN: Nebraska - Lucy Rose DISC EIGHT: Wicked Game - Chris Isaak

BOOK CHOICE: Ray Mears Essential Bushcraft: A Handbook of Survival LUXURY ITEM: A Lego Star Wars Millennium Falcon CASTAWAY'S FAVOURITE: Playing with Knives - Bizarre Inc

Presenter Lauren Laverne Producer Paula McGinley

Transcript

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0:00.0	Before this BBC podcast kicks off, I'd like to tell you about some others you might enjoy.
0:05.1	My name's Will Wilkin and I Commission Music Podcast for the BBC.
0:08.7	It's a really cool job, but every day we get to tell the incredible stories behind songs,
0:13.5	moments and movements, stories of struggle and success, rises and falls, the funny, the ridiculous.
0:19.1	And the BBC's position, at the heart of British music
0:21.7	means we can tell those stories like no one else.
0:24.5	We were, are and always will be right there at the centre of the narrative.
0:28.6	So whether you want an insightful take on music right now
0:31.3	or a nostalgic deep dive into some of the most famous and infamous moments in music,
0:36.1	check out the music podcasts on BBC Sounds.
0:40.1	BBC Sounds, music, radio podcasts.
0:43.7	Hello, I'm Lauren Levern, and this is the Desert Island Discs podcast from BBC Radio 4.
0:48.5	Every week I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, book and luxury that they'd want to take
0:53.3	with them if they were cast away to a desert island.
0:55.9	For rights reasons, the music's shorter than on the original broadcast,
0:59.2	but you can find a version with longer music tracks on BBC sounds.
1:03.4	Listeners will also get access to episodes 28 days earlier than everyone else.
1:07.7	I hope you enjoy listening.
1:34.7	Music everyone else. I hope you enjoy listening. My castaway this week is the actor Danny Dyer. He was born and raised in East London,
1:39.7	and he wasn't much interested in school, except for Miss Flynn's drama class. By the time he was 16, he'd become an in-demand teen actor. His first grown-up role, if you could call a drug-dealing party animal grown-up,
1:46.1	was in the film Human Traffic.
1:48.0	A year after its release, he was cast on the London stage by Harold Pinter,
	...

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