Hello I'm Krusty 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 1978 and the presenter was Roy Plumley. This week our cast away is the bearded botanist whom we see on the box.

It's Dr David Bellamy.

David, are you a Londoner?

Yes, yes.

Where about in London?

Or Malleybone Road to be exact.

Very handy.

Very. Very.

You're bright at school.

Oh, no, terribly dull, I think.

I like playing rugby and I like chasing the girls and I you know like enjoying myself and academia

rather seem to go out the window.

What did you want to be as a boy?

I'm not quite sure my parents would have liked me to be a medic and that's later on when they saw I had some

sense between my ears but I always taught the stage I'd have liked to have gone into the

ballet and then I grew too big. Did you do it?

Well, you know, in a very amateurish way.

I was very, very interested in it.

I sort of did a little bit of choreography and hopped about.

What did you do when you left school?

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