Hello I'm Kirstie Young and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive.

For Wright's reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

The program was originally broadcast in 1984 and the presenter was Roy Plumlee. Our castaway this week is an actor who's done some exceptionally good work on

television and in films and in the theatre John Hurt. John, how well could you adapt

yourself mentally to a Desert Island existence? I can't imagine the idea of going there and wanting to get off it,

so therefore I think I would have to adapt pretty quickly, I think.

Would a modest supply of music help you?

I'm not by nature a tremendously musical person but I suppose

yes a modicum of music would have. Have you any musical talent do you sing or play

an instrument? I like to think that I sing, but nobody else agrees.

Have you sung in public?

In a performance?

I've only sung in one performance and it took me 22 years to get to that and that was the

fool in Lear that I did with Sir Lawrence.

And they had very, very simple little songs, but it took me a full month to get those right.

Did you have any plan in choosing your eight records?

Yes, I did. I thought, well, in many ways of looking at this, and I decided that the way to I approach it was to pinpoint parts of my life.

That's all, things that remind me of a particular area of my life.

Where do we start? Well we start at

St Martin School of Art really, circa 1959 with Leadbelly. What's he singing? Backwater Blues. Look at the yonder.

I hear you. And it rained five days in the skies, sun dark at night.

And it rained five days in the skies, trying dark as night.

...