Hello, I'm Christy 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 1987, and the presenter was Michael Parkinson.

To list the shows our castaways appeared in as to catalog the Great Western Musical Hits

of the past 20 years.

She made her debut in the chorus of Have, followed it with Jesus Christ Superstar and played

her first leading role in Greece.

She scored a great personal success in Billy, opposite Michael Crawford, and followed

this with the role that made her an international star, Eva Peron, in a Vita.

Then came Katz, followed by the lead in the current hit musical, Chess, and she is Elaine

Page.

Elaine, as I said in the introduction there, I mean, all those parts that any of the actors

would die for, has it been luck or good management, do you think?

I think I have to say luck, probably, and a lot of hard work and just a matter of persevering

really, because very early on in my career I found that I would go up for auditions, and

I always managed somehow rather to get down to the last two or three.

Inevitably I would then get the big elbow, and somehow it didn't seem to quite get the

job.

Yes, but none of us, you're in them, and none of us, they had a significant part in the

development of...

Oh, absolutely, yes.

You can't start at the top, I mean, you've got to learn, and that's how I learnt really

...