Hello, I'm Kirstie Young. Thank you for downloading this podcast of Desert Island Disks from BBC Radio 4.

For rights reasons, the music choices are shorter than in the radio broadcast.

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Radio 4. My cast a witness week is Lord Victor Adabawale. A cross-bench pier, he spends his time in the

Palace of Westminster among the great and the good of the land, discussing matters of legislation

and state, in sharp contrast to his working life outside the chamber.

That's been spent among the disadvantaged and addicted the people so often labeled hopeless cases. He wasn't quite a

hopeless case himself when he started out but failing all his A levels and

becoming a road sweeper gives us something of a flavor of his early years.

He says of his prominent position in public life, I'm a six-foot black guy from Wakefield who isn't

rich, didn't go to Eton or Oxbridge, isn't a lawyer. What the hell am I doing here?

So Victor, Adabowale, is that what other people think, do you think? Or sometimes when you're

sitting on those red leather benches among the Lord's spiritual and

temporal is that what they think? I don't think they all think that some of them might do.

I mean the 700 peers I'm sure that statistically there must be some of them thinking what's he doing here but then I'm sure that statistically there must be some of them thinking what's he doing here

but then I'm probably thinking the same thing about them as well so it's fair enough.

Is there another one with dreadlocks or is that just you?

No there are quite a few with long hair, but not dreadlocks.

You know, I'm nearly 50, I'm just growing it because I've got it.

Yeah, you suit it.

You were one of the, it was 2001 when you were appointed as one of the,

they became known as the people's peers it was this

...