Harry Hill, comedian

Desert Island Discs

BBC

Music, Personal Journals, Society & Culture, Music Commentary

4.3 • 14.3K Ratings

🗓️ 31 August 2025

⏱️ 51 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Harry Hill is a comedian, writer and broadcaster best known for presenting popular television shows including You’ve Been Framed, Junior Bake Off and the multi award-winning TV Burp.

He was born Matthew Hall in Surrey and brought up in Kent. He became a Cub Scout and got a taste for performing when he was nine after playing Widow Twankey in the Christmas pantomime.

In 1983 he started studying medicine at St George’s Medical School in London and began work as a trainee doctor in 1988. He wrote and performed in medical revues during this time and comedy became his true passion. In 1990 he made the decision to follow his heart and leave medicine to try his luck as a stand-up.

In 1993 Harry got his first show on BBC Radio 4 – Harry Hill’s Fruit Corner. Four years later he starred in his own television series on Channel 4 which allowed him to channel his off-the-wall humour in a series of wildly unpredictable comedy sketches.

In 2001 he started writing and presenting Harry Hill’s TV Burp on ITV which looked back at the week’s television output in a series of comedy sketches and inventive parodies. The show won three BAFTAs, three Royal Television Society awards, a Rose d’Or and Seven British Comedy Awards.

Harry lives in London with his wife Magda. They have three children.

DISC ONE: Ernie (The Fastest Milkman in the West) - Benny Hill DISC TWO: Have I The Right - The Honeycombs DISC THREE: Grandad’s Flannelette Nightshirt - George Formby DISC FOUR: Gay Bar - Electric Six DISC FIVE: Life During Wartime - Talking Heads DISC SIX: Hey Bulldog - The Beatles DISC SEVEN: Never Give Up on Love - Steve Brown DISC EIGHT: Life Is The Name Of The Game - Bruce Forsyth BOOK CHOICE: Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes LUXURY ITEM: A bucket and spade CASTAWAY'S FAVOURITE: Never Give Up on Love - Steve Brown

Presenter Lauren Laverne Producer Paula McGinley

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm Rory Stewart and I grew up wanting to be a hero and I'm still fascinated by the ideas of heroism.
0:09.0	In my new series, I'm taking in the long sweep of history from Achilles to Zelensky and asking, what is a hero?
0:16.0	Simply doing your job, being a decent human being.
0:20.0	A true hero is someone who just kind of shines by
0:23.1	their own light and that light is to be recognised by others. The long history of heroism with me,
0:28.6	Rory Stewart. Listen on BBC Sounds. BBC Sounds, music, radio podcasts. Hello, I'm Lauren Nvern, and this is the Desert Island Discs podcast from BBC Radio 4.
0:41.6	Every week, I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, book and luxury that they'd want to take with them if they were cast away to a desert island.
0:49.0	For rights reasons, the music's shorter than on the original broadcast, but you can find a version with longer music tracks on BBC Sounds.
0:56.5	Listeners will also get access to episodes 28 days earlier than everyone else.
1:00.9	I hope you enjoy listening.
1:05.8	Music My castaway this week is the comedian, writer and broadcaster Harry Hill. He's carved out a career as one of the most popular comics on primetime TV, with shows like You've Been Framed, Harry Hills, Alien Fun Capsule, Junior Bakeoff and a hit series TV burp. Over the course of 11 years, it won three BAFTAs, three Royal Television Society Awards, a rose door,
1:45.0	and seven British comedy awards. His surreal send-ups of British pop culture are as unpredictable
1:50.8	as they are delightful. One of his shows played out each week on a musical number by the
1:55.2	Delia Smiths, a female singing group dressed as the TV cook covering songs by Morrissey.
2:00.2	Another featured the
2:01.0	K-Factor, an X-Factor spoof about knitting, which was eventually won by a character called
2:05.6	Peter the Duck. Then there was the time he staged a fight between EastEnders, Phil Mitchell,
2:10.3	and Mr. Blobby, to establish which of them was better at making a dramatic entrance.
2:14.9	It's all a world away from his first career as a doctor. He hung up his
2:18.5	stethoscope in 1990 and won the Perrier Award for his Edinburgh Friends show just two years later.
2:24.1	He says, writing good original gags is really hard, but when it works, it's a fabulous feeling.
2:29.5	You want to punch the air or run out into the street and tell the joke to the first person you see.
	...

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