Hello I'm Kirstie 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 1988 and the presenter was Sue Lawley. My cast away this week is a man who belongs to what appears nowadays to be a dwindling group of people,

much-loved broadcasting executives.

At I TV in the BBC and latterly as Chief Executive of Channel 4,

he has starkly defended the principles of public service

broadcasting and been responsible for a wide range of distinguished television

programs from panorama to the World at War.

At the beginning of this year he deserted the minefields of the Tele for the equally

treacherous territory of International Opera, where as general director designate of the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, he could enjoy influence over the other great passion in his life.

He is Jeremy Isaacs.

I wonder Jeremy, if you had to choose between producing a great opera or a powerful

documentary program which would it be?

If I had to do it myself of course I could only do the documentary because I wouldn't begin

to know how to produce opera. But I mean I haven't

exchanged making programs for making opera productions. I have exchanged presiding

over a channel in which people could make decent programs for an

opera house in which I hope people will put on splendid operas and splendid ballets, because of

course I've got the Royal Ballet and Sanders Wells Royal Ballet as well as the

Royal Opera to look after.

But let me ask you first about the island and music and presumably it will be your

salvation.

...