Hello I'm Kirsty 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 1988 and the presenter was Sue Lawley. My castaway this week is a woman who spent her professional life listening to the problems of the nation from acne to the menopause

from the misery of a savage husband to the despair of unrequited love they all all landed on her desk. For 38 years Peggy Macins attempted

on the problem page of Woman magazine to provide answers where there were some comfort where

there were none, because she was perhaps the most

famous agony aunt of them all Evelyn home. Peggy 38 years coming up with the

answers you must be the wisest woman in Christendom.

No no no very foolish most of the time my family would give you a whole list of my

foolishnesses. Now how has all that emotion that that anxiety albeit secondhand how has it affected

you and your life over the years?

I think very largely to although I am emotional, to distrust emotion, because what you do in an emotion,

what you do in anger or indeed what you do in grief or what you do when overwhelmed with fright are very

unreliable actions. I think what I've learned about emotion is that you were given a

brain in order to think about your feelings.

And it's quite a difficult process, but that's what I've learned about emotion.

The things that people have done emotionally have very often been things that

things that they've bitterly regretted afterwards.

It must have been a terribly depressing job though that.

I can't imagine you rushing to work in the morning thinking,

oh, this is going to be fun.

Oh, no, no, I didn't think that.

...