Hello, I'm Krestey Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive.

For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

The program was originally broadcast in 1999, and the presenter was Sue Lolly. My castaway this week is an actress. Three years ago she was voted the

nation's favorite actress thanks to her performances as those two redoubtable

dowages of the BBC's television schedules, Hyacinth Bucket, pronounced bouquet, and Hetti Wainthrop.

The roles in which she's found such success disguise the depth of her craft at Stratford in Shakespeare at the National Theatre in a

musical such as Carousel or in sensitive portraits like Alan Bennett's

talking heads she's displayed her effortless versatility.

But she knows how much of a disguise it all can be.

The essential you comes out, she says,

because you're vulnerable up there,

whatever big hat you've got on. She is Patricia Routledge. Do you still

feel vulnerable, Patricia, after all these years of being up there?

Oh yes, because every time you appear in front of a camera or walk out onto a stage.

For me it's like the first time, even night after night, when you put your hand on the handle of that door. It's an unknown quantity, however much

you've rehearsed.

Because it's always different when you get out there or because it's always the performance and you're always properly nervous. always

the performance and you're always properly nervous.

Yes, that's correct.

And the audience is an unknown quantity

and you have to share an imaginative experience with the audience and you hope that they're

going to receive it.

...