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. On our desert island this week is the comedian Mike Harding.

Mike I'm not betraying a confidence in saying that you come from Lancashire.

No I should think that would be fairly obvious to anybody who's listening.

Sometimes my accent varies a lot but when I'm back home it's

even thicker than it is here. How well could you put up with complete loneliness? I thought

about this after I was first asked to come on the program I thought about it a lot

and I do a lot of walking on the program. I thought about it a lot and I do a lot of

walking in the hills and I recently walked the Pennine Way from north to south and I

was alone on my own then when I walked over the tops. This was a charity walk

wasn't? Yes I did it to raise money for mentally

and physically handicapped children. And I was alone for about eight or nine hours a day walking, but by the time I'd

done that, I was beginning to talk to myself a bit and then I started answering myself but and even worse I started

contradicting myself so I think I could stand a certain amount of loneliness but I think that probably

I would look to be rescued eventually I should imagine. Now you have eight discs did it take you long to choose?

Not really the hardest thing was not being able to take the 800 I would want to take

because I'm out I collect masses of records and at home I've got a usual library of gramophone records,

various things. My interests are very wide and varied.

The hard thing was finding eight records that I thought I couldn't really do without. That was the most difficult thing.

What's the first one on top of the pilot?

Well, I want something that would remind me of home. I'm not particularly a nationalist, but I was born in England and brought up here and it doesn't mean a lot in the English countryside means a lot to me

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