Hello, I'm Christy Young, and this is a download from the Desert Island Discs Archive.

This edition may be slightly different from what was actually broadcast, but it is the only

version we have.

It comes from the British library's radio collection

the recording didn't contain the guest's eight music choices so we've rebuilt

the original show by using discs from the BBC Gramophone Library.

For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

Full details can be found on the Castaways page on the Desert Island Discs website.

The program was originally broadcast in 1980 and the presenter was Roy Plumley. This week our cast away as the actor Gregory Peck. Is music an important thing in your life, Gregory.

Oh yes. I've always loved music and we have it on more or less constantly.

My wife and I have somewhat different tastes. She has her music box and I have mine.

But some of the things that I've asked you to play do mean a good deal to me. Yes, I do love it very much.

Have you ever sung on stage or screen? I once sang in a musical in summer rep many years ago badly.

What was it?

It was a Sheridan piece called La Duena and it was somewhat modernized and it was destined

to be a Broadway musical, but it closed in Cape Cod. But a few years ago, I had a notion that I would be just the ticket for the screen version of the Don Quixote piece, the men of La Mancha.

And so I went to a coach and I worked for four months on those songs,

the difficult songs by the way.

And I made a recording and I sent it off

to the producer and the director who by that time

were in Rome preparing the production and the message it came

back that was that I had done quite well for a man who had never sung before and had

...