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 2001, and the presenter was Sue Lolly. My castaway this week is a folk singer and songwriter.

Born in America, she came to this country by her own admission,

dirty and penniless in the 1950s.

From this inauspicious start,

she led the revival of the British folk scene together with her partner of

30 years, you and McColl, the man who wrote in her honor the ballad the first time

ever I saw your face. She comes from a musically accomplished family. Her father and mother

taught music. Her brother is a famous folk singer too and now back in the United States

she continues to write and perform with the new partner in her life a woman. Songs

entertain us influence our thinking make us feel better or worse she says. At best

they can help us cope with life. She is Peggy Seger. It's a wonderfully romantic story,

Peggy, your first meeting with you and McCall. You'd have been 21 years old and he was,

what, 20 years older than you. How did it come about?

I was youth hosteling in Denmark and Alan Lomax the collector phoned my father in California and said where's Peggy because he

wanted for a television program called Dark of the Moon he wanted a female

singer who played the banjo. This was the Granada television. So he

started phoning youth hostels and found me in Copenhagen and I said yes. I was in a

knapsack with a guitar and a banjo and dressed in my old dirty jeans and he picked me up and he looked at me and his face fell he says we're going to have to do something about you.

He was going at that time with a model named Susan Mills who was

glorious looking and she looked to look at me and she just started stripping me

...