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 2004, and the presenter was Sue Lolly. My castaway this week is a satirist. For the past 12 years, he's appeared regularly

on television as one half of a wittily

toe-curling conversational duet.

A cynical spin-doctor, clueless toff, ruthless businessman businessman or one of many other alter egos, he and his partner

John Byrd skillfully reveal the absurdities and inconsistencies of modern British life.

For him it's been a return to frontline show business

after a long absence. A member of the group of iconocasts that came out of

Cambridge at the turn of the 60s, he was one of the talents with Peter Cook behind the establishment club in

Soho and wrote for and appeared regularly on the new genre of satirical television shows such as

not so much a program moral way of life.

Born in Bristol 65 years ago, he might never have made it to Cambridge and the glittering

footlights, but for an English teacher who encouraged and inspired him. He's more responsible, he says, than

anyone else in my life for anything I've achieved. He is John Fortune. What was his name then,

John, this English master?

His name was Teddy Martin, also called Sandy Martin,

and he was in his late 40s I suppose when I was about 15.

And I was about 15.

And I was pretty average at school, and that's flattering.

And then one day, Teddy came into an English class,

and without saying anything at all started to read the

...