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 1989, and the presenter was Sue Lolly. My castaway this week is a royal duchess. She enjoyed an idyllic Yorkshire childhood and then 28 years ago met

and married the Queen's cousin. At the beginning of her life as a member of the Royal Family, she gained

recognition for her sense of fashion and was often voted one of the world's best dressed women.

But her popularity has been earned through her charitable work.

She's also enjoyed a lifelong love of music and is patron of the Leeds piano competition

and president of the Royal Northern College of Music.

The Yorkshire girl called Catherine Worsley is today known everywhere

as her Royal Highnessness the Duchess of Kent.

Your Royal Highness does the idea of being cast away on a desert island appeal to you in

anywhere at all?

It appeals to enormously at this very moment just before Christmas. I can think of absolutely nothing nicer than being cast away on a desert island, with no timetables to keep to and just lying and being myself.

Is there a way in which you might almost enjoy the loneliness of it?

I would, yes. I really would. I suppose only for a certain length of time.

And are you practical at all?

I think Cecil Beaton once described you as the perfect outdoor girl.

Did he mean in more than just looks?

I think I would after a while become practical. I mean very soon

I'd have to come practical because I'd have to think how I was going to catch my fish

or whatever there is on the island that I'm going to eat.

But could you do that? I mean could you gut a fish?

...