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 1982, and the presenter was Roy Plumley. Our castaway this week was described in the times as the eccentric biologist.

He's also an archaeologist and an anthropologist and a man who is truly fascinated by the

supernatural. He's the author of some unusual and enormously

successful books and one of the world's greatest authorities on Wales. It's

Lyle Watson. Dr. Watson, you're an inveterate traveler.

Have those travels taken you to any desert islands?

I was cast away on one once.

You were?

Yes, it wasn't deliberate.

I got tied up with a cyclone, an unseasonal cyclone in the the Bander Sea, which lies east of Bale,

yes, and I and two crewmen on a small prowl, an Indonesian sailboat.

We're stripped, the mast and rigging just fled, and after two days and nights at sea we were washed

up on the shore of a little volcanic island. Not really a desert island. I must be honest

there were people there in those little village. Though we had to spend nine months

there before we could get away. Nine months? Yes.

If you had been on your own and it had been a desert island or deserted island, could you endure

Dernlanus, you think?

Oh, without a doubt, I'm a very solitary creature. I need long periods of time on my own and if I'm not forced to be cast away I cast myself away. I lock myself up in a remote place and and literally for weeks on and I don't talk to anybody.

How important to you is music?

It is important but not in the usual way.

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