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 1993 and the presenter was Sue Lolly. My castaway this week is a journalist, born and brought up in Belfast he enjoyed a distinguished career in

newspapers serving as deputy editor of both the Guardian and the Observer. Then at the

age of 54 he moved to television. There he became a household name as most nights of the week he reported on Britain's political scene. Though mocked by the satirists for his herringbone overcoat and Ulster accent, his humour and precision ensured that he always

kept the attention of his audience. He is the former political editor of the BBC,

John Cole. How is retirement, John? Are you as busy as ever?

Well I am at the moment so I've taken on a freelance contract with the BBC and I write a column for the new

station and I write occasionally for the telegraph and do a few other things.

But I've made a deal that I won't work during the summer, so come the end of May, retirement

will begin at least for a few months.

But I presume it's impossible to imagine your life without

politics. And politics all your life is what's turned you on really, isn't? Well, politics and journalism, you know, both of them they ran together

at least in the later stages of my career but most of my

friends are either politicians or journalists or broadcasters so inevitably I spend a

lot of time with them and enjoy it's the, that's what you've always found exciting, isn't it?

I mean, is it the thrill of the chase or is it politics for itself?

What is it that's made you so fascinated by Westminster?

Well, originally it was the thrill of the chase I mean I

suppose my formative job as a political journalist was as labor correspondent of

the Guardian and I used to chase stories there and that was a good

period because the trade unions were very much in the news and the nationalised

...