Marjorie Wallace

Desert Island Discs

BBC

Society & Culture, Music Commentary, Music, Personal Journals

4.4 • 13.7K Ratings

🗓️ 1 November 2015

⏱️ 36 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Kirsty Young's castaway is the mental health campaigner and Chief Executive of SANE, Marjorie Wallace.

After leaving University College London with a psychology and philosophy degree, her first job in the media was working on The Frost Programme with David Frost. She went on to produce religious programmes and became a current affairs reporter and director for the BBC. She joined the Sunday Times Insight team as an investigative journalist and wrote a series of articles highlighting the financial and emotional plight of young Thalidomide victims. Her articles on mental illness - The Forgotten Illness - elicited a huge public response and in 1986 she founded the mental health charity SANE. She has received numerous awards for her journalism and books and has twice won the Campaigning Journalist of the Year award.

In December 2008 she was awarded the CBE for services to mental health.

Producer: Sarah Taylor.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello I'm Kirsty Young. Thank you for downloading this podcast of Desert Island Disks from BBC Radio 4.
0:06.0	For rights reasons, the music choices are shorter than in the radio broadcast.
0:10.0	For more information about the program, please visit BBC.co.uk.
0:17.0	Radio 4. And the My castaway this week is the mental health campaigner Marjorie Wallace.
0:40.0	Founder and Chief Executive of the charity Sain,
0:43.0	her work revolves around ensuring those who need support for their problems
0:47.0	find not just a sympathetic and understanding ear,
0:50.0	but a practical help they need to cope and carry on with their lives.
0:55.0	It's a vital service and one she feels passionately about.
0:58.6	But it wasn't her first choice, a talented pianist she had planned to study at the Royal Academy of Music.
1:04.0	Instead, she ended up with a degree in philosophy and psychology,
1:08.0	landing a job on a TV show that was the epitome of all that was hip and happening
1:12.0	in 60s Britain, the Frost program.
1:15.2	Her print journalism won awards at the Sunday Times.
1:17.8	She was part of the team whose landmark investigation uncovered the devastating effects of Thalidomite. She says, I have lived life on the edge and I want to give a voice to other people on the edge. I would like to be able to forgive myself for my frailties and so say all of us I think
1:35.2	Marshall is about forgiving ourselves our frailties. We shall talk about your life
1:39.1	in detail and the fascinating twists and turns that it has taken it. It would be fair to say I think that lots of people
1:44.9	listening will know the name Marjorie Wallace and they will certainly recognize you when they see you on television.
1:50.6	You come up always in reports about government plans for social care and
1:55.7	mental health care about funding. When you've been out there in public for 30 years
1:59.8	championing a cause, how comfortable is it for you to sit with me today and think,
2:04.0	gosh, I've actually got to fill the time talking about me.
	...

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