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 costaway this week is an entertainer, born in Liverpool and brought up in a strict Catholic family, he first came to fame in the 60s as an anarchic disc jockey on Pirate Radio. Sacked for making offensive jokes, he moved to the BBC where his humour resulted in the same fate.

His personality, however, proved irrepressible. He went on to establish a huge following on capital radio

and on television where he had his own show during the

80s. His unorthodox style mirrors his life. He's taken drugs, attempted suicide, and after the

breakup of his 12-year- old marriage he came out as a

homosexual. Earlier this year he revealed he'd been diagnosed as having the AIDS

virus. He faces the possibility of death philosophically.

My sense of humour, he says,

will probably be the last thing to go.

He is Kenny Everett.

In fact, Kenny, you've known you were HIV positive

for some years, haven't you?

Yes, about four years. So why did you

suddenly decide to go public on it? Hello by the way. Well I didn't decide to. I

came back from a little holiday in Italy and there was a bunch of press people waiting with

microphones and cameras and it turns out that I'd been spotted going into hospital by a press

cameraman and he just took lots of photographs of me

walking in the rain with an umbrella and no beard I'd take my beard off. I was walking

into the hospital looking a little annoyed about the rain.

So they took this picture from behind a tree

...