Hello, I'm Kirstie 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 1993, and the presenter was Sue Lolley.

My cast away this week is a rock star. Unlike many others in his profession, he has the reputation

of being clean living, almost wholesome. He was brought up in a middle-class family in West

London where his main pastimes were acting and drumming. In 1970, he joined the rock band Genesis,

becoming its lead singer five years later. From there, he developed his enormously successful solo

career with long strings of hits and albums. He sold some 35 million records worldwide.

But he's also kept up the acting. In 1988, he played Buster in the film of that name.

This year, he played a mad insurance investigator in frauds, and there are more cinema plans

of foot. All this has made him very rich, but also level-headed. He doesn't deny a few personal

problems, but basically, he says he's as English as fish and chips. He is Phil Collins, and he's

sitting opposite me here in the Genesis studio five minutes from his home in Sussex, where he's

spending Christmas. Your major problem seems to be, Phil, that you have this wholesome reputation,

and you don't much care for it. It grates on you for some reason.

Holds him. Yeah, what it kind of does a bit. But why? I mean, is that because rock stars are

supposed to be mean and moody and mysterious? Yeah, I'm not quite sure. I think it all started

from a newspaper ringing my mother up and saying, now come on, Mrs. Collins, give me some of Phil's

faults, you see. And my mum sort of actually, she told me this after, she said, well,

all I said was, I can't think of anything off the top of my head and says, ah, so suddenly,

I became Mr. Perfect, you know, and then that became Mr. Nice guy. And although there's

nothing wrong with being nice, and I actually really when it comes down to it, I don't mind

...