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 the year 2000, and the presenter was Sue Lawley. My castaway this week is a broadcaster, originally rejected by BBC management on the grounds that he lacked and I quote

background experience and personality, he went on to become one of its most famous faces and the man associated with nearly all of its sports coverage.

When last year he left the corporation to join I TV, his defection was a story of national proportions, but the man who caused the storm seems

characteristically unperturbed by the buffertings. The dry, dead pan, yet always reassuring

style which made his reputation, has settled down comfortably

in its new home.

Perhaps because, as a fellow presenter once observed, there have only been three great white entertainers, Presley, Sinatra and my guest this week,

Linham, Des Linham that is. It is true, Des, I mean when you left it was amazing,

epic proportions, you were top of the news, weren't you?

I'm only just recovering from it and it's, well, a year and a half ago now.

I was front-page news on every newspaper.

I led, I think, the nine o'clock news and certainly the six o'clock news

day it was a quiet it was August and I it was extraordinary I mean I still don't really

fully understand it but it did it caused a big kerfuffle at the time.

The fact remains that you seem, I mean I don't know how to stopwatch on it, but we seem to see less of you.

I mean particularly in the Olympics back in September, I mean you must miss it, miss us, are you homesick?

I'm not homesick, I miss some of the people, obviously I work with some terrific people at the BBC and

I miss doing the Olympics up to a point although I worked

on every Olympics since 72 so I'd been there so to speak.

And Wimbledon this summer you must I mean tennis is your thing but But I love it, but I went.

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