Hello, I'm Kirstie Young. Thank you for downloading this podcast of Desert Island Disks from BBC Radio 4.

For rights reasons, the music choices are shorter than in the radio broadcast.

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Radio 4. The My castaway this week is the renowned voice coach Patsy Rodenberg.

Her work at the National Theatre and the RSC has spanned decades and her students include Judy

Dench, Ian McKellen, Maggie Smith and Daniel Day Lewis. A shy child with a speech

impediment herself she was dispatched to elocution lessons, only to be met by a disappointed

teacher who said, Oh dear, you will never speak. Well, she proved her wrong and then some.

And her works not all with famous acts. Well, she proved her wrong and then some.

And her works not all with famous actors, businessmen, politicians, and even criminals have been on her client list too.

She says,

Everyone comes on to the planet with a fantastic voice, but people lose it.

You don't know how good a teacher you are until you teach people who know very little.

So for you, Patsy Rodenberg, what does the voice tell you about someone?

I suppose where they're blocked.

If you think of a baby's voice, this amazing amazing instrument and then life gets to you and our habits crowd in on us and they crowd into the body and the breath.

But the good news is that the natural wants to come through you.

I talk about the natural voice as opposed to the habitual.

People will come in, you know, but their voices like that and they say,

this is my natural voice back in. I said, no, it's your habitual voice. You have a very free,

open voice if you can let go of certain things. And so that must start. I mean if we think even about our own

friends as children or our kids friends, people's voices seem to start to

...