Hello, I'm Christy 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 1984, and the presenter was Roy Plumley.

This week, our cast away is the actor Leo McKerm. Leo, how well can you take loneliness?

Not too well. I find the older you get, the less fitted you are. In our days, if I have to go

the way out of the country to do a film, for example, unless there is some of the family with me,

I've been trying to get very depressed. How much does music mean to you?

Well, it means a great deal, but on the other hand, I don't listen nearly as much as I should to it.

I'm a so-called lovely stereo to him, which is rather splendid.

Do you make music? Do you play the piano? Do you sing?

No, I did learn to sing when I was quite a young man in Australia, from a very good teacher,

Welsh teacher, who taught the bell canter, and it was very good, not for the singing was so much

as it placed my voice for acting. I think it's very valuable.

Did you have any kind of scheme in choosing your eight records, or is it a haphazard choice,

one from here and one from there and whatever? Well, it is pretty haphazard.

I decided that it was impossible to choose eight favourite records, and if you did and you were stuck

with them, they wouldn't be your eight favourite records after the first one.

So, no, what I've done, I've chosen things that simply remind me of parts of my life and of things

that I've enjoyed. What's the first one you had on that little pile there? Well, it started with

something rather delightful and bright, the introduction and rondo capricioso by Sons and played

by Yasha Haifetz. Why do you choose this? Where does this take you mentally? I didn't discover

music until well into my teens when I met some young people who all you could say lived for it,

...