Hello, I'm Krestey 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 2008. My castaway this week is the composer Howard Goodall, musicals, cordial works, movie,

scores and popular TV show themes, including Blackadder and the

vicar of Dibley, his talent extends to almost any area of musical endeavor.

His enthusiasm and deep-rooted commitment to his life's work have regularly

propelled him away from the score and on to our television screens where he's presented

award-winning documentaries on the power and importance of composition, earning him the

sober K of music teacher to the nation. Indeed in January last year, he was

appointed as England's first-ever national ambassador for singing, leading a 40 million pound program to improve group

singing in primary schools.

Howard, you've said before that you hear music in your head all the time.

To those of us who don't, that's most of us that seems quite odd.

Can you explain how it goes? Yes, it's a bit like a CD playing of music you've never heard

before all the time and I suppose that's why I became a composer because I suppose

I would have started to happen when I was a boy around eight or nine or ten years old I just

started to hear music all the time and then we'd

started to write it down. You said that it began round about the age of eight.

When did you realize, well I was going to say when did you realize that it wasn't

normal that's a bit judgmental isn't it but it certainly it wasn't normal that's a bit judgment isn't it but it certainly it wasn't

the experience of most people on the planet well I was in a choir school when I was

eight years old and a lot of the other choristers were very musical and therefore I

...