Neil Tennant
Desert Island Discs: Archive 2005-2010
BBC
4.4 • 804 Ratings
🗓️ 4 February 2007
⏱️ 35 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Kirsty Young's castaway this week is the singer and songwriter Neil Tennant. He is best known as one half of The Pet Shop Boys which, over the past 20 years, has been one of Britain's most successful and popular bands, noted for combining dance music with witty lyrics and delivering them in a uniquely English style. As a teenager growing up in Newcastle upon Tyne, he felt himself to be an outsider at school, but found friends in an amateur theatre company. Yet he always felt his life would be different to theirs and used to tell them that he would become a celebrated pop star.
But Neil was 30 when he finally left his day job as a writer for Smash Hits magazine to pursue the musical interests that had dominated his life since he was a teenager. By that time, he was anxious that he had missed the boat. Now, as well as continuing to release records with The Pet Shop Boys, he has branched out into other forms of composition, writing a live score for the film Battleship Potemkin, a West End musical and being involved in collaborations with Robbie Williams and the Scissor Sisters, among many others.
[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs].
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You're about to listen to a BBC podcast, but this is about something else you might enjoy. |
| 0:05.4 | My name's Katie Lecky and I'm an assistant commissioner for on demand music on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:10.7 | The BBC has an incredible musical heritage and culture and as a music lover, I love being part of that. |
| 0:17.4 | With music on sounds, we offer collections and mixes for everything, from workouts to helping |
| 0:22.7 | you nod off, boogie in your kitchen, or even just a moment of calm. And they're all put together |
| 0:28.7 | by people who know their stuff. So if you want some expertly curated music in your life, |
| 0:34.9 | check out BBC Sounds. Hello, I'm Krista Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive. |
| 0:41.8 | For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music. |
| 0:44.9 | The program was originally broadcast in 2007. |
| 1:07.6 | Music My castaway this week is the pet shop boy Neil Tennant. |
| 1:12.1 | He is as untypical a pop star as you're likely to find, having hit stardom at the relatively late age of 30, and resolutely |
| 1:15.4 | refusing to succumb to the populist packaging and promotion |
| 1:18.5 | of a regular chart topper. West End Girls was the |
| 1:22.3 | mould-breaking single that catapulted the group to world |
| 1:25.2 | stardom in the 80s. It sounded at the time like a classic one-hit wonder. |
| 1:29.9 | More than 20 years later, the duo has sold tens of millions of records |
| 1:33.2 | and holds a significant place in pop history. |
| 1:36.6 | Since he was a child, he says he's always hated being taught what to do |
| 1:40.7 | and prefers to find out for himself. |
| 1:43.7 | It's an independence of spirit that's allowed him to take creative risks |
| 1:47.1 | and plough his own furrow in an industry famed for its disposable tendencies. |
| 1:52.5 | Would it be fair to say, Neil, that you are known in pet shop boys' terms as the tall, less grumpy one? |
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